But Freya herself says, "The next major turning point for me was a life-changing spiritual and magical experience: an intense, spontaneous invocation of the God Woden. I took this to be a calling to open up the Northern pathway, which until then, was virtually non-existent within the occult community."

Pagan Wiki defines invocation as, "Invocation - The act of drawing the aspect of a particular deity into one's physical self."

If this doesn't imbue some knowledge, and taint the independence of other knowledge, then more historians would "channel" their subjects rather than going to the bother of researching them. No reputable historian would admit to this in their CV since its only reasonable that such "sourcing" cast doubts about the primacy of their other sources.

Speaking of which, you still don't seem inclined to do one bit of citing. So again, I'm left to do it for you.

In the Poetic Edda, chapter 24 of the Lay of Harbarth ⚠️ ↗ comes as close as you'll get.

"In Valland I was, | and wars I raised,
Princes I angered, | and peace brought never;
The noble who fall | in the fight hath Othin,
And Thor hath the race of the thralls."

And yet most other Norse descriptions of Bilskirnir list no human inhabitants. The Lay of Harbarth mentions Thralls, but not in connection to any other class, and is utterly silent about how they are treated or any comparison with the treatment of others. Whereas many other sources go into great detail about the pleasures of the Einherjes in Valhall.

Into that silence you may read anything you wish.

You, in contrast, haven't given a single bit of evidence that many modern historians do not believe that Thor was the god of the lower classes or that the modern interpreation of his hammer as a symbol of the working class of today is invalid.

You may read what you wish to into the silence of the Eddas on the subject. But not only can't I find proof for what the Eddas don't contain, I shouldn't have to.

I could just as easily fail to find evidence that scholars believe that Bilskirnir had fast cars and rap music. The demand for negative proof is absurd. My expectation that you can find positive proof in primary sources isn't.

I have amply cited online sources for translations which are held in high regard and cited by modern Pagan and secular historians alike. Pore over them at your leisure.

Oddly you dispute the very primary sources that your sources employ. And then you turn logic on its head by saying,
Usually, the best way to insure that a certain interpretation is valid (if not outright "correct") is if several individuals record the same thing. I provided evidence that several writers have in fact said the same thing about Thor and his relationship to the lower classes.

Either the Eddas are source enough to validate the interpretations of Aswynn and Guerber, or if they must be thrown out, then the work dependent on them by Aswynn and Guerber must too be rejected.

However, most scholars take another approach entirely, which is to return back to primary sources rather than to allow secondary sources to be cited by tertiary souces ad infinitum like a game of Telephone ⚠️ ↗.

Oftentimes a particularly egregious error will creep into later interpretations and be repeated by the vast majority who substitute interpretations for the original. Fer instance ( and don't make me have to cite this since the citing has been so one-sided thus far ) the notion that during the Great Fire of Rome the Emperor Nero played a musical instrument which wouldn't be invented for centuries. It was so often cited that "Nero fiddling while Rome burned" became a cliche.

The article reprinted from Idunna showed how some of Guerber's misstatements have become accepted by those who would never read the Norse for information about the Norse. And are often repeated unquestioningly by those who believe that Guerber is a decent source.

As for Aswynn's acceptance by modern syncretists, I have no doubt.

While we owe the Pagan Revival a debt of gratitude for a renewed interest in the old ways, it is mixed with dismay at the lack of respect for the origins and contexts of many practices, and for the ease with which scholarly and historical perspectives are drowned out by self-anointed experts who parthenogenically appear and publish for an audience who could care less about respect for true ancestral ways.

Since so few wish to read mythology in order to learn mythology I have no doubt that I will fight a losing battle on this topic.

It is with similar dismay that I cite primary sources on Japanese pop-culture ( ie, actual Japanese scholars of pop-culture ) while only hearing one American "otaku" quote another on the use of the word "otaku." Note; look if you wish and you will find the Japanese interpretation of the word vastly outnumbered by those culturally removed from its contextual use. By all rights I should accept the "evidence" and give up insisting that the word had an original meaning independent of its misinterpretation.

* sigh *

Dante