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There was only once where I felt I was asked to show blood in good faith of making a request to Odin. After that moment he began barking orders at me and the situation let up some and started happening more and more often for luck for another person. The person I had asked him to protect was being protected and to this day they still are. I can’t go into specific details due to someone elses privacy, but I can tell you this: Blood is not required for every task you may ask of the gods and goddesses of Norse origins. Blood is only required when they ask it of you, which is usually in the case of some kind of contract or honor bound service you are offering to them. Depending on what you can do and how the gods see it, they may simply ask that you honor them, thank them, give them offerings of food, drinks or what have you. Never assume number one that all the gods and goddesses of the Norse pantheons will ever ask for only blood, as in my experience..it is mostly not required, it’s usually when you ask for big things and even then only a drop from your own finger will suffice.
I can’t say that everyone’s experience will be the same way because it won’t. The gods work with people in different ways depending on who that person is, how they see them, how they see their situation, etc. We shouldn’t ever put any kind of limitations on a person or requirements on a person for their spiritual enlightenment. My insights with Odin speak how it is not any persons right to judge others practices, no matter how much we may disagree with them or think them false. Those of the same religion often times like to say the ultimate rules in which proclaiming that gods only act a specific way. How can you say or even believe in the gods if you’re thinking in a one minded way about them? Only the gods have the right to tell someone that they must practice a certain taboo because they can see far more than we can in someones life. So before anyone starts judging someone based on how they practice even if you’re in the same religion and it contradicts all ways you have known or read about, take a lesson from here and think to yourself “Maybe the gods told them to do it in that way” or “Maybe that’s the only way they can do it”.
If one of my fellow heathens/northern tradition pagans practice differently than I do, then do you know what I say? I say something along the lines of “Oh really? That’s really interesting.” I don’t go off and tell them “you’re doing it wrong” because that isn’t nice and it isn’t very respectful towards them and most of all, it’s disrespectful towards the gods themselves because they’re probably having a hand in them practicing that specific way!
Oh my gods! This is the kinda shit that makes me mad. Who do you think you are questioning someone else’s spirituality!? What god died and made you king or queen of the mountain? This is just ridiculous, it isn’t something we should even be fighting over! You’re going to tell me I’m doing it wrong? Well I don’t give a dwarves golden treasure! I am going to do what I feel the gods are telling me to do in honor of them, not listen to some human who doesn’t even live in Jotunheim, Asgard, Vanaheim, or wherever. If you so happen to find a seat among one of those places then you give me a call and tell me how to do my own worship, until then you leave me out of it!