/lit/ - Literature

>>20139117
>I'm just looking for methods for forming relationships with the Norse Gods.
That seems a bit of a presumptuous goal, anon.
That said, I would be skeptical of any book by a modern, especially a non-academic, or someone who claims to know what the magical practices pertaining to the runes actually were.
I'll assume you've already studied Snorri and the Poetic Edda (though I'd strongly recommend learning Old Norse & studying it in the original; no translations are really adequate for the nuances) and are familiar with what's known about Germanic religious practices from the Sagas &c.
I would then recommend studying better-attested IE religious practices (Greek, Roman, Vedic & modern Hindu) and perhaps some non-IE practices (Ægyptian and Shintou), and then use these to devise your own rite.
Or just find an idol or a grove and start hymning & making offerings. I wouldn't assume that any of this is going to have any great effect though.
Remember also that a prayer is incomplete without a request.
>>20142736
That we live in the Kali Yuga / Iron Age / Skeggjǫld, Skálmǫld, sklidir ro klofnir, Vindǫld, Vargǫld, áðr Verǫld steypisk (mun engi maðr ǫðrum þyrma), that is, the age of continuously worsening impiety, when men turn from the gods and the gods turn from men, is well known principle of Indo-European religion. See e.g. Hesiod on this.
And there can be few things more impious than Christianity & Islam, being religions that literally demand that you worship a god that is torturing your ancestors for all eternity, and be glad that he is doing so. Remember that for original Christian converts, these wouldn't be distant ancestors either, but their own parents, grandparents, siblings, even children whose alleged damnation they shrugged at.
And it's not like Christianity isn't in its turn being replaced with even more degenerate ideologies either.
>>20140220
The Poetic Edda was written *down* by Christians, but the scribes didn't compose the poems, they merely wrote down the oral tradition.
It's possible that some of the poems were composed after the conversion to Christianity (of the poems concerning the gods directly, Thrymskvidha actually is probably the best candidate here), but I'm very dubious that even if this was the case, that those poets weren't working in the older tradition even as they did so.
Most claims of Christian influence on Norse mythology seem to be made by those with little knowledge of other mythologies.
>>20142736
And Christians are literal cannibals!

There's a lot of relevant texts, though some dated or dubious, here:
http://www.germanicmythology.com/