"A lambkin in peace, but a lion in war, The pride of her kindred, the heroine grew: Her grandsire, old Odin, triumphantly swore, -" "Whoe'er shall provoke thee, th' encounter shall rue!" - Robert Burns, Caledonia.

Gordon's, Forbes', Rose's, Leslie's, Douglasses, Inneses, Brodie's, Ogilvies, Dunbar's, etc. were all families that were neither borderers or highlanders. Yet all of them practiced loyalty to surname, engaged with one another in clannish ways, had chief's, feuded, and prided themselves on the amount of well armed men they could raise at any given time. Scotland was a martial kin-based society in general, regardless of whether we are referring to individuals from the lowlands or the highlands.

Curious, do many of my followers have a particular tutelary deity? And how have you come to recognize it? I have one, or more, that I have spoken about before. I'm not sure if anyone could guess by the way I post and so on. But perhaps they could.

Which is sad. Because Australia has its own aesthetic and cultural history to embrace in the face of globalism.

Whilst I'm no fan of the Empire, nor of the United Kingdom -- I am not shameful of the fact that the very small branch of the family that is mine has successfully settled large swathes of our former territories. Particularly in New Zealand and Canada. Even those that remained at home, such as the remainder of my ancestors, engaged in the Imperial project through martial means. We were the 'victims' after the Jacobite risings, we were not gaels, but our wealth was lost and reputations in tatters -- yet we proceeded still, like even the gaels, to massively engage in the British Empire .. willingly, not as victims but as equals to the English.

Heathens will often argue in favour of animal sacrifice by pointing out that it is no different to slaughtering an animal for consumption, and that in fact, most animal sacrifices were actually consumed also. However, this is not true. In my opinion, by trying to moralize sacrifice in this way -- we teeter the edge of what could be seen as borderline atheist or nihilist views. By moralizing it in this way, not only are we denouncing the non-consumed sacrifices that our ancestors undeniably made -- but we are suggesting that that these were the illogical innovations of a primitive mind. It assumes that the non-consumed sacrifice is somehow 'wasteful', when in truth, it is to be received by an other-than-human agent -- it is about as wasteful as feeding ones own child. So the same can be said for human sacrifice. I dislike this line of thinking where we moralize it by suggesting that 'only captives' 'POW's' or 'criminals' were slaughtered in this way.

For e.g., I was recently looking into a specific teacher that I'd seen promoted by certain channels on telegram. It took one brief look-over their website's explanation of the refuge vows to find 'Yidam' translated as 'Archetype' which was enough for me to simply drop them immediately. It isn't just the mainstream consensus Buddhists that can be problematic.

Tweets like this are funny. It is why I value when people identify themselves by their surname immediately. If we are to look at the surname Humphrey's in Scotland, we're unlikely to find any evidence of it being particularly associated with the Gaelic culture of the Highlands. We find it in Ireland & England predominantly. So where does this 'our' come from?

See this kind of rhetoric not only in consensus Buddhism, but even in certain Sangha's that portray themselves as authentic lineages. It's a really good litmus test in fairness. If someone talks of archetypes, representations, or symbols, I don't consider them particularly worth looking to for teachings. Both in regards to Buddhism, and paganism.

I will never have a high school romance with my childhood friend in the Kyudo club. I think a certain Semitic tribe from the Middle East is to blame...

If you can afford it, do a Big-Y! Not only because it is useful for your personal genealogical studies, but because I want to see more data..

Despite its influence on me, I cannot be a Buddhist because I start from Heathenry as my ground of operation. Working from a heathen ontology, you can take refuge, you can engage in the practices, but you will never really be considered a Buddhist by any conventional Buddhists. I do however think that structures like 'Dzogchen' and non-monastic tantric practices can be used by Heathens (who want to) to engage in a kind of Buddhism without betraying heathen principles. You just have to ask yourself if bloody sacrifice and in-group based morality will conflict with the goal of your practice. Germanic paganism is ontologically relational, i.e., animistic. It has its ways of doing things and logic systems that I agree with (naturally however, certain conclusions differ to those of historical heathens as a result of technological and social change). However interwoven with that, I do engage in some kind of a low level of Buddhism that helps frame things in a wider metaphysical perspective. - I respect the precepts and seek to uphold them to a certain extent for my own benefit as well as the benefit of others, the vows similarly. Yet I would never stand against bloody sacrifice or violence in general, and I may even suggest and be open to the notion that these practices can lead people toward various forms of enlightened states. One cannot help but notice similarities between the state of being an Elf and the luminous body for e.g.. The end goal of Buddhist practice is a realization, a state of being. Even in the times of Shakyamuni's mortal wanderings it was made abundantly clear that there is not just one path toward this realization to attain total freedom and bliss.

For me this is exceptionally true. I was raised without any familial relations to religion whatsoever, I attended a Christening once as a child and felt a strange feeling of awe at a church -- and we had to pray in school every morning also at the morning assembly. Besides this, I had nothing religious indoctrinated into me. Yet by the age of 12 I was talking to my deceased great-great grandfather and trying to emulate aspects of his life in my own. Animism is the natural way humans engage with the world.

Adams is genuinely one of the most vile, treacherous rats in existence.

Careful what you post online about this, FYI. If you are British, keep quiet and safe.

If I see someone referring to symbolism, x is a symbol of y, or x is symbolic of y, I have come to totally ignore whatever they have to say. I do not like 'symbolism' as a concept.