Hey wir sind Heiden - We are the Pagans

Green man design on the choir stalls in Marien Dom in Erfurt

The Pagan Police Association has been recognised as a legitimate organisation by the Home Office and its members are now permitted to take time off. Even David Davis, the right wing Conservative libertarian sees no harm in it - so long as money isn't involved.

But is paganism really such a joke? People in Europe, just like the Cherokee, Cheyenne or Sioux native Americans, like the Zulu and the Aborigines, have their cultural identity. Going back to these traditions harms nobody, but it takes us back to a golden age before nature was under attack and paganism makes us feel we belong to the earth and that we are connected to our ancestors beyond the complicated disasters of the 19th and 20th Century.

My friends and I celebrate Samhain on the 31st October. We all meet in a forest near our town Hagen in the Ruhrgebiet and we bring plenty of meat and mead with us.

We celebrate Samhain by roasting and eating meat and drinking mead. Mead is a simple wine made of honey and water which the ancients drank. You can taste the honey in mead. We pour it into horns and as we drink the mead we remember our ancestors.

 And we also usually have a lot of beer with us. By the time all the mead and beer are gone, we are all dog drunk and singing “Hey wir sind Heiden” which basically means: "We are the pagans."

We toast Donar, the god of thunder; Wodan the god of war; Freya the goddess of fertility; Loki the treacherous; Baldur the son of Wodan, and Tyr the god of justice. As we do this we feel renewed, we feel we are a part of nature, and very strong - as if the gods give us strength, as if the mead has magical properties.

Samhain is the celebration of the beginning of a new pagan year. During Samhain you celebrate the bravest of your dead ancestors. Celebrating Samhain means facing death, because the new year starts when the weather becomes cold and plants start to die back. This makes it different to other religions which don’t dwell on death.

Courage when facing death and violence is at the centre of Norse paganism. You mustn’t fear death any more, because when you die, you go to the Gods and all your ancestors will cheer you for your bravery an your honourable and well intentioned actions.

By Iring