What Is Epicism?
What Is Epicism?
Our belief is polytheistic. We have a pantheon. We have Gods. We have law. There is no denying this, and those that do so have proven to have ulterior motives. As Children of the Gods it is imperative for us to understand and learn their ways, the ways that have been passed down to us by our ancestors. We dishonor them by ignoring the material handed down to us, by allowing outsiders to interpret their words, and by injecting modernist views into the way of life that has been laid out to us. This is our belief, and as such we must do everything that we can to rebuild what was lost to us at the hands of the Christian Empire.
But how do we do so? Is it even possible? For the longest time the source material was analyzed and theorized by people hostile to our ancestors. This hostility would later transfer towards the development of any sort of polytheistic religious movement. Many lost hope and thought that such a reconstruction was not possible, and that these ideas would be forever lost to us. This was until we discovered the Epic Method.
Originally discovered in the late 1800s by Viktor Rydberg, the method developed as a research tool that would allow one to sift through the sources handed down to us and apply to information discovered utilizing a specific methodology. This methodology was built upon the premise that The Poetic Edda and skaldic poetry are sources of ancient Nordic Polytheist wisdom and lore, and as such must be viewed as the only primary source. Every source after it, including the Prose Edda, the Sagas, and the Histories, are all secondary sources that present Christian theories and ideas as Teutonic history. We can use these sources, but they can never be allowed to contradict the primary source: The Poetic Edda. Since almost all academics have always placed the Prose Edda as the highest, primary source, their theories greatly differ from the Epic Method and present a completely different model of the ancestral beliefs. Ideas on Seidr, on Valhall, on Fate and Destiny, on Damnation, on cosmology, etc. all differ and represent a conflict between the research methods that must be meted out.
So how is the method "Epic?" The most prominent thing that you will notice about the Epic method is that with it we are able to piece together the sources in a way that creates a chronology. We call this chronology "The Epic Chain." This is the idea that our ancestors, as religious people, developed a mythos that allowed for an evolution of ideas and storylines that would grow within the chain. As stories developed through the inspired skalds and then became popular within the Folk-Consciousness, they would be added to the chain. This chronology is made abundantly clear within the poem Völuspá, and shows us clearly that a mythic timeline does indeed exist. Once we recognize the layout of this timeline, we can begin with statements in The Poetic Edda, then find what we call "Lines of Convergence" within the secondary sources to flesh the tale out.
Allow me to give you an example: let's take the story of Rind, where Odin has to have the son Vali in order to avenge the slain Baldr. Now, we know that this is an authentic polytheist tale because we find mentions of it in The Poetic Edda. We see mention of it in Völuspá 32-34, in Hávamál 96-101, and in Baldr's Draumar 11. We would then turn to The Prose Edda and Saxo, both of whom have elements of the story that do not contradict the primary material. When they do not do this, we can see the likelihood that the tradition is authentic. We have established its ancient validity, we have discovered the passages on it, we have built our lines of convergence, and then we have a completed tale. After this, we look to where this tale could fit within the Epic Chain, by discerning the lives of all involved and where their pieces fit within the puzzle. That is the Epic Method in a nutshell. It has been a daunting task to look over all of the data, but it has also been a fruitful one nonetheless.
From this we then realized that we can learn so much more from the sources than what has been handed down to us by academics. New symbolic structures developed, new symbols emerged, and all of it based upon a solid foundation within the Poetic Edda as a polytheistic source. As the years rolled on we began to see an actual religion emerge. Not a belief that we were creating or inventing, but one that we could prove. This would move us beyond the cults of personality, beyond the worship of academia, and beyond the interjection of modernism. We could see the religion unfolding before our very eyes, and it changed everything.
Once we developed our work as a hierology, we then could see how this method of establishing a source, then building Lines of Convergence, could be applied to any and every Fundamental within this religion. Our school established The Twelve Fundamentals in order to methodically research each one and develop a full reconstruction for each. Once this is complete we will have rescued our entire culture from the ashes and moved us forward as a people. The Twelve Fundamentals are: Lore, Law, Pantheon, Nature, Combat, Diet, Music, Dance, Spirituality, Arts and Crafts, Folk/Ancestry, and Ritual/Prayer. This is our culture, and with this method we know that we can revive it.
The Epic Method is our ultimate weapon against the lies and denigrations that were spread in regards to this faith. It is the tearing open of the veil and seeing what is truly there, rather than seeking interpretations from paid gatekeepers. We are here to give our folk the tools to look to the horizon and achieve what no one ever thought possible. Using sound research and a proven methodology, we are rising up like never before! Hail the Folk! Hail to Our Awakening!
