NorsePlay Reviews: Bifrost -- Glimpses at the Gods.

For Yule my bestie supportively gifted me the new publication from The Fellowship Of Northern Traditions, Bifrost: Glimpses at the Gods, and I have to say it definitely surpassed my expectations of what I thought it would be.

[yes, this is exactly the same great library photo from our earlier post, not sorry.]

For some context of where this 76-page magazine's from, tFoNT started as a one-man YouTube channel in 2020 CE (then The Wisdom of Odin before changing to tFoNt), and surprisingly gained excessive traction from new practitioners to quickly become an online organization that began to host ritual meetups at campgrounds, to then acquire non-profit status with intentions to build a temple hall. 
 
While I think nearly any in-road for people who want to discover the Norse Gods is positive, I'd always felt tFoNT, with its heavily theatrical ritual-centric approach, fostered its own culture of god-bothering gnosis chasers that have post-conversion/modern holdover ideals of personal relationships with the divine (which is the impression one gets from their videos & podcasts) and in Bifrost I totally expected some seriously over-the-top divine first-person delusions along the lines of summoning Freyja for a make-out session ending in one's selection as a goddess-husband. Bifrost, however, was nothing like that.

Broken down into experiences or reflections with 14 deities (though this is Cernunnos [and Loki] inclusive), each chapter is a personal account that many Heathens can probably identify with. Most were indirect or passive or gentle, a more believable, seemingly truthful influence on how that God/dess helped them through a crisis or situation. Reading through them felt inspirational in most instances, which practitioners will appreciate and find worldview affirming.

Broader than its purpose, what I found most exciting about Bifrost is that it seems it's the first attempt at aggregating modern UPG experiences, which is something I believe needs to be done so that those events can be compared, and possibly made into shared personal gnoses, and perhaps even confirmed into verified personal gnoses. While NorsePlay's desire for such data collection isn't Bifrost's aim, it was so satisfying to see anyone take a step in that direction. The Fellowship's second issue will be centered instead on wyrd and fate, so that may very well be the end of Bifrost's aggregation of divine gnoses (plus the founder's recently announced they want to broaden out tFoNT's scope into a more global comparative/experimental shamanism, so we'll see what that means for the group's self-definition and current membership participation as a whole), but given this issue's merits, NorsePlay will definitely check that second issue out and let you know if it deserves the same attention this one does.

[NorsePlay deeply thanks Justino Beltran for his gift of Bifrost to make this review possible! You rule, hermano!]

#    #    #

Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.