Heiðarblót
Rise from the ashes
When I was in the group I now call a cult, I was working on a second Master’s degree in forensic psychology, focusing on victimology. I wanted to work on this because I really wanted to specialize in individuals who had left high-control groups or coercive control. During the pandemic, I started watching a bunch of documentaries, podcasts, and memoirs of people who had escaped cults. In psychological research, there is a concept known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also referred to as the frequency illusion. Basically, it’s when I started working at a Mitsubishi dealership and saw a ton of Mitsubishis on the road. Once you experience or learn about something, you see that thing more frequently.
Because I was studying cults (fun fact: the vast majority of my papers were written about individuals with experiences in Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint groups because there was a good amount of academic research on those groups and individual experiences) and I knew about the frequency illusion, so when I saw red flags, I would often write them off as me being surrounded by cult information.
The group was obsessed with a goddess named Gullveig, who is also known as Heið. We even had Her name in what we called the group. We had done a seiðr session (a type of trance magic where you can talk to a deity) with Heið, and She was lovely. She seemed really honored that we would name our group after Her.
Her advice for us was “stay together.”
Gullveig isn’t really mentioned in the Norse stories. Some academics even think that Gullveig and Heið are both just different versions of Freyja (but there are a lot of academics who think damn near every female Norse goddess is Freyja —the same phenomenon happens with Frigg). The one story we have that is specifically Heið is that She is the cause of the Æsir-Vanir War. Heið showed up in Asgard; why, we don’t know, but She did. The Æsir were so bewildered and essentially intimidated by Her, They just started stabbing Her and setting Her on fire.
But Heið would not die.
So when I made Heiðarblót, or an offering to Heið, I wanted a scent that really spoke to Heið’s resiliency, and I think I achieved it while mixing in some of the things that we know She loves. What I love now is when someone comes into my booth at a fair and lets me vibe check them and match a scent to them (if you see me in real life, please, please, please let me vibe check you, it’s one of the most fun parts of this job). I always recommend Heiðarblót to those who radiate resilience- the ability to rise, like Heið, from the ashes over and over again.
Seeing Heið in so many individuals reminds me of my own resilience. It helps keep me aware that sometimes you have to see what is in front of you as it is and still stand for what you believe in.
