Odin Brotherhood

The Odin Brotherhood is the name of an alleged group that practices the modern Pagan religion of Heathenry. The group first came to attention when Mark Mirabello published a book discussing the group and its beliefs, The Odin Brotherhood, in 1992. Many in the Heathen community have expressed scepticism as to its existence.

According to Mirabello's account, the Brotherhood alleges to be the direct survival of an ancient pre-Christian belief system. Mirabello's book has been mentioned in several publications on religions or secret societies, and the Odin Brotherhood is listed in the eighth edition of J. Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions.

In 1992, Mark Mirabello—then working on a PhD in history at Glasgow University—published The Odin Brotherhood, in which he claimed to have encountered the eponymous group. The scholar of religion Graham Harvey subsequently stated that although he had received "enigmatic letters" from individuals claiming to be members of the group, he had been "unable to check the veracity of Mirabello's claims." Harvey noted that no other Heathens he communicated with "has any knowledge of the group beyond reading the book. Most doubt its existence". This was true even of one Heathen who was named as a contact in one of the "Brotherhood" letters. Similarly, in the Cultic Studies Review, Thomas Coghlan, a forensic psychologist with the New York Police, stated of Mirabello's book: "at first read it appears specious."

Stephen E. Adkins writes that "British Odinists claim that there has been a secret Odinist movement , the Odin Brotherhood, since 1421....Membership of the Odin Brotherhood has always remained small, but undoubtedly, some adherents made it to the American colonies and the United States."

Unlike most Heathen groups, which claim to be reconstructionist, the Odin Brotherhood alleges that it preserves genuine traditions of pre-Christian paganism. The group claims that it was founded in 1421: a widow was accused of practicing Odinism and burned, and a Catholic priest forced her two sons and daughter to witness the burning, those children were Christians in public, but secretly formed the group to preserve Odinism. Many groups have made claims of being many years old, and it would be really extraordinary if the group had been really founded in 1421.

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