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It was in 1982/1983 that a small group of heathens met in Berlin. Each individualof this group had his/her own conceptions of what the heathen religion should look like and how it should be practiced. This was also due to the origin of some of the heathens which came from different already existing groups (for example some were more aligned to the old customs and others were more “ariosophical”). It was clear to us that with this initial situation we could never achieve a position that even came close to a halfway uniform heathenism and that continuous factional fights were pre-programmed.
For this reason we concentrated on that which we had in common: All had a link to the Germanic people, wanted to maintain the religion of the Germanic people, some in a more “renewed” form, others in an “occult esoteric” form. Geza von Nemenyi therefore made the proposal to try to practice exactly that which our ancestors did, both sides could not have any problems with that. To find this out, we wanted to rely on scholarly studies as well as on reliable heathen research (for example by Otto Sigfrid Reuter), but in principle we granted absolute priority to the primary sources, since it was clear that (usually Christian) scholars could never be objective in a society that is Christian and hostile to anything to do with the Germanic people.
That is why everything we did in the cult, we did in accordance with the sources. When we burned native tree resins for the first time, one of the participants commented "this is like in church". We showed him, after the celebration, exactly where it was statedthat this kind of burning was used by our ancestors. Thus the criticism was solved.
Our way of traditional and researched Germanic heathenism was succesfull, we were the first in Germany (and probably world-wide) who went this way, others tried, usually less succesfull, to follow this path. Because this way presupposes a good knowledge of the sources, which others did not have.
If we had allowed “new things” to be added to this heathenism, it would no longer have been possible to follow this path, because everyone would have wanted changes (depending upon their own knowledge and spiritual preference). The occult inclined heathens would have wanted a male and female “primal God” to stand above the Gods, heathens more aligned to the old customs would not have wanted a cult of the Gods. It would have been impossible to get this all together.
The main problem is however, that the person that doesn’t know the sources exactly, can’t say at all, what “heathenism” actually is. Without the primary sources, only vague conceptions, dreams or interpretations of that particular time remain. One often comes across people who believe that the Teutons did not have a humble relationship with their Gods, that one did not kneel or pray/pleaded for assistance or that one did not have to sacrifice at all (in reference to the wrongly translated strophe Hávamál 145), that there weren’t any priests and/or one did not need them, that there were no dogmas and that religious obligations didn’t exsist at all. That was the founding time/Wagner/Nietzsche-heathenism, where one wanted to free oneself from “Rome” and would bring nothing to heathenism that even came close to anything remembering of the church and Christianity. In the GGG this direction also exsisted, and when in the 1930's a temple was to be built (property was already available, the plan also), resistance came from these circles and the project was prevented.
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