Education

Lore Program

For Heathens who want an in-depth course on the scholarly background of the Heathen faith.

Thomas de Mayo Provost Troth Lore ProgramThomas de Mayo | Provost | Lore Program

How can someone practice a religion, but not want to learn what it consists of?

Heathenry has some amazing sources, especially considering how much of it comes filtered thru Christianity. Beowulf and the Family Sagas are world-class literature. The Prose Edda still serves as a key to mythology down to today. The Poetic Edda is richer than almost anything else we have from any other European paganism.

Heathenry is largely a reconstructed religion: one that attempts to revive and restore pre-Christian beliefs and practices.

We need people familiar with the surviving evidence of those practices, and with modern, scholarly interpretations of their meaning and context, in order to inform our own endeavor. To reconstruct our faith after such a long hiatus, our communities need heathen scholars who know the sources and can navigate the various interpretive difficulties they present.

As we build modern forms of Heathenry, those who desire to recreate the past need to know what it is they are rebuilding.

Those who wish to adapt heathenry to modern times, need to understand what they are changing, its traditions and its character, in order to consciously construct a version suitable for today but consonant with ancient heathenry and its traditions.

In The Troth Lore Course you’ll learn how to think critically and analyze both Literature and History.

This isn’t training for how to become Clergy, that’s something different that we also offer, but it’s not what the Lore Program is about. Our program’s mission isn’t to create priests or even to create scholars. Our goal is to equip everyday people with the tools they would need to think critically and analyze the Literary, Historical and Anthropological sources to better understand their religion and evaluate what people say about it.

Our Lore Program isn’t about teaching any one particular kind of Heathenry as “historically accurate” and superior to any other. We aren’t purporting to give you “the one True Way to read the Lore.” You also don’t have to take any of our courses to “become Heathen” (as if there were some kind of test you needed to take in order to prove your faith). This Program for people who are genuinely curious about our shared source material and want to find new ways to read it, think about it and contribute to the greater conversation about it.

The Troth’s Lore Program exists to educate people for this role.

The Lore Program consists of a series of Modules, starting with the Heathen Essentials module available to all on our website. This Module teaches or refreshes students’ knowledge of the myths, practices, and concepts of Heathenry. Further Lore Program Modules (available to Troth members) offer a deeper examination of various topics: Mythology, Heroic Literature, Wights and Ancestors, and more.

Heathen Essentials is a free sample course from our Lore Program that is available for all, along with a free monthly study guide for people interested in the course.

If you’re interested in the full Lore Program but you’re not ready to commit to it right now, or you’re not ready to join The Troth, we have provided our Heathen Essentials course as a Sample Course for the Program. This course also comes along with a study group provided by our volunteers, hosted twice a month, to help people work through the material and talk about Heathenry in general. For more details, click the button below to see the course!

You can find our Heathen Essentials Study Group Sessions in our Events.

Each Module is roughly equivalent to a mid-level college speciality course.

Students read a bibliography of required and recommended reading on each topic, capped by an exam, and write research essays related to their studies. A community of other students, Provost and graduates exists for advice and support. To graduate from the program, a student completes seven modules and three research papers. The Lore Program also serves as the gateway to the Troth’s other educational programs, such as our Clergy Program and our Esoterica Program. Students interested in these Programs take an accelerated selection of three Lore Modules before beginning these Programs.

The Troth’s Lore Program is an online, self-paced correspondence course that provides an in-depth examination of the historical sources of Germanic religion (the “Lore”) and their scholarly interpretations.

We are fortunate to possess a rich corpus of material, both written and archaeological, that illuminate our mythology and traditions.

The Lore Program guides students through the surviving sources and explains what modern scholarship has concluded about them. Knowledge of the Lore connects Heathens today to our religion’s rich past, and grounds our current endevaors in an understanding of its history.