Nine Charges
The Nine Charges are, like the Nine Noble Virtues, followed by practitioners of Odinism across the globe. Although not universal, they are accepted by a large proportion of adherents worldwide and were codified by the Odinic Rite in the 1970's.
The charges are:
- To maintain candour and fidelity in love and devotion to the tried friend: though he strike me I will do him no scathe.
- Never to make wrongsome oath: for great and grim is the reward for the breaking of plighted troth.
- To deal not hardly with the humble and the lowly.
- To remember the respect that is due to great age.
- To suffer no evil to go unremedied and to fight against the enemies of Faith, Folk and Family: my foes I will fight in the field, nor will I stay to be burnt in my house.
- To succour the friendless but to put no faith in the pledged word of a stranger people.
- If I hear the fool's word of a drunken man I will strive not: for many a grief and the very death groweth from out such things.
- To give kind heed to dead men: straw dead, sea dead or sword dead.
- To abide by the enactments of lawful authority and to bear with courage the decrees of the Norns.
See also