Editor’s Note: If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not losing your mind. This is something I launched in the past, but unfortunately, my digital products seem to be targets for spam purchases and I’m tired of the chargeback fees (thanks Shopify 🫠). So I’m turning my digital products into posts here instead. Onward…
I’ve noticed a trend in the larger spiritual space over the last few years. You usually get one of five choices:
Crystals-and-manifestation, girlboss witch babe 💖
Gandalf-core, hedge witch with a cauldron and cosplay 🧙🏻♀️
Flowy tie-dyed pants, patchouli, and peace symbols ☮️
Pseudo-Viking Nordic workout music, sigil tattoos, and bro energy 🗡️
Organized religion ⛪️
If you’re anything like me, none of those quite fit. Maybe you tried a couple. Maybe you got as far as buying the crystals before quietly returning them to the drawer where they now live next to your dead AirPods. Maybe you’ve spent years being vaguely interested in something older and more grounded than any of the above and you just couldn’t find it anywhere that didn’t also smell like patchouli. (IYKYK.)
Maybe you’re the kind of person who finds organized religion hollow but isn’t prepared to replace it with rose quartz and a vision board. Who’s drawn to folk horror and medieval history and the occult as a feminist lens without necessarily wanting to explain any of that at a dinner party, because same. Who quietly suspects that the things you surround yourself with matter more than a purely rational worldview would allow but you’ve never found a framework to help you figure that out.
If you’re that person, I built this exactly for you.
14 short, easy to understand (and implement) essays covering pre-Christian Northern European folk practice designed to fit invisibly inside a real, modern life.
Each one is part history — pre-Christian Norse, Scottish Gaelic, and Continental Germanic folk traditions, stripped of the romantic nonsense that’s been layered on top of them — and part practical, something small and invisible you can do with what you just learned that requires no special tools, no altar, no performance, and no need to explain anything to anyone else.
Threshold isn’t a side project or a random interest I’m monetizing. It’s the philosophical underpinning of everything I make and write and curate for Double Kick. I sell only pieces that carry vision and weight — aesthetic originality, intentional materials, heirloom quality. Threshold is the explanation of why that matters. Pre-Christian traditions are the origin point of the idea that objects have presence, that the things you surround yourself with participate in your life rather than just sitting idly in it.
In short, Threshold is the soul of my larger worldview, whereas Double Kick is the physical expression of it. (And I mean come on, I’m a metalhead, don’t tell me you’re surprised - the metal to folk practice pipeline is deep-rooted for a reason.)
The first five essays lay out the underlying worldview architecture these traditions share: animism, cyclical time, ancestor relationship, the complete non-separation of sacred and mundane. Then we go deeper into each tradition specifically before the final stretch of piecing together a practice that fits seamlessly into your life without another to-do list on top of it.
By the end you’ll simply have a toolkit, and you’ll know how to build something from it that’s actually yours if you want it.
What this isn’t: A complete system handed down through unbroken lineages. (Those don’t really exist, and anyone selling you one is selling you something else along with it.) A requirement to believe anything specific. A reason to buy anything. Wicca. Viking cosplay. Love and light. A course on manifestation. Religion bashing.
I’m not a historian nor an academic. I’m simply someone who left organized religion a long time ago, found the pink-and-crystals world deeply unsatisfying and annoying, and spent years piecing together a practice from pre-Christian source material that actually fits inside my real and modern life in a grounded and unfussy way. Take what fits, leave what doesn’t.
Why Northern European traditions specifically? It’s where my own practice lives. You don’t have to share the lineage to find it useful.
If the last thing you tried in this space made you feel like you were performing something insane or idiotic, or doing something wrong because you didn’t have enough sage, come join me. 🍃
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