Seidhr for me

I’m not really so naive that I don’t see the connections I touched on in my entry Seidhr today, August 5, 2004. My (American Indian) connection to ravens and those dreams about flying horses that haunted me for so many years have parallels in Norse religion. I can never bring myself to be fully candid with my friends when I talk about the dream life I have in the so-called parallel universe. Frankly, seidhr scares me. Not surprising, considering Ridge’s problems, or what I think his problems were.

I’ve been exploring some Internet sites on the subject of seidhr. Many of them, even the heathen sites that trumpet their own authenticity, are talking about nothing more than a recreational guided visualization. But, I also see a few that have a ring of authenticity. There really are people out there who are reaching levels deep enough to be difficult or frightening, and it seems that they have a better support system than I thought possible. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I might benefit from their experience and learn a thing or two if I could bring myself to talk about what happens for me, and -- even harder -- be willing to undertake these journeys knowingly. A first step, I think, would be to relax the stranglehold I have on seeing myself as a rational being.

At the simplest level, what happens for me is this. A universe exists for me to the side of this one. Many of my dreams take place there, and it is relatively easy to me to enter it by beginning to fall asleep but stopping short. In that universe, there is a geography with many familiar points. The highway that heads west. The lighted bridge. The neighborhood that’s so hard to find just to the west of downtown. The street with the house in Logan and the changing zoo just north of that. The town that is Mantua, but not Mantua, with the highway that I keep trying to follow. The dam, with the reservoir and the elevator down to the powerplant and the enormous water pressure above. The empty room that has so much in it behind the wall. Roads and pipes everywhere. Houses and rooms in houses. All of these places have a stable geography and relationship to one another, although I don’t yet have a full map of their relationship to one another. And then, there is the well. The horse that takes me there, even though I’m terrified of heights. The clearing. The lake. They exist on a different level. The house where I live my other life. The old woman I go to at the fire and call her Mother and learn from her but never remember to bring back what she tells me. And the man I used to call Pan, who is me but not me, and who laughs that I want a name for him. Are these one world, or three? I’m not sure, because when I’m in one place I’m just there.

I don’t object to visiting any of those places. In fact, my visits are rather pleasant even though I rarely go intentionally. I can talk about them as though they are parts of dreams, so it is not very threatening to think about them. In fact, they could be dreams if I didn’t know that they aren’t, if they didn’t have a sharp reality, a numinous quality, an underlying sense (with the landscape, at least) that I am choosing to give these particular forms to things that really have other forms because it is less frightening that way.

It’s some of the other things that are truly frightening. When I get on that horse, I don’t know where I’ll end up and I don’t know how to control my destination. Sometimes, I’m in places so overwhelming and confusing that I can no longer cope with the idea. I will be paralyzed, not able to escape, and not sure how to return to myself. When I do come back, I’m drained. I might be despondent for days and terrified that I’ll cross a line someday and become psychotic, as so many of Evelyn’s ancestors must have been.

It’s that fear that has me thinking I could learn something from other practitioners, if I could find ones who know what they’re doing. I read something on one seidhr site today about the way he sees ley lines, and I thought, “Yes! That’s the pipes, the highways.” (I didn’t think until tonight that I actually believe in ley lines, but yes, now I know what they’re talking about. Those things. I feel like a simpleton. Of course, I know what they are.) I was also reading tonight about fylgya and it occurred to me for the first time that maybe my ravens are like that, and perhaps I can send them out the way Odhinn does and have them come back to me. Again, the simpleton. I don’t even have to try it to know that it would be very simple.

But, thinking about the gods . . . why is it that there is nothing in this alternate universe I can recognize as being connected to any pantheon?

Enough for tonight. Writing has relieved some of the anxiety that’s been building the past few days. Maybe I can sleep now.

Freyja and Frigga

I’ve been thinking about the construction and survival of myth. I don’t think there’s any argument that myths change over time, and that the myths of any particular culture in the form we have them are not the only forms that ever existed. They are merely the only forms that survived. In fact, the more we know about a particular culture the more likely that we have surviving variants. To a greater or lesser extent, these variants allow us to make guesses about the original form of the myth.

For the Norse myths, the "final authority" is Snorri Sturluson, a 13th century Icelandic poet and historian who preserved what he knew about the religion of his ancestors. Other bits and pieces survive, but we are often indebted to Snorri for giving us the framework in which to understand them. Even so, he was writing more than 200 years after Iceland officially converted to Christianity. We can trust him, but he was not infallible, and just where to draw the line is a matter for scholars to debate.

The question that has caught my interest is whether the goddesses Freyja and Frigga might have originally been the same. Snorri separates them and his interpretation is considered authoritative. By his time I suppose they were thought to be two separate goddesses. But, were they originally separate? Were they separate throughout the Norse world? Indeed, were they even separate in Iceland when it converted to Christianity? These are difficult questions, because there is actually quite a bit of evidence that they might have once been identical. I don’t pretend a scholarly analysis, but I’ve collected some of the points that I find significant.

Names

Their names are similar, although they come from different sources. Freyja and Frigga. Freyja seems to mean Lady and Frigga seems to come from an Indo-European root meaning Love. Among the many-named Norse gods, we might expect that Freyja would be a title for a goddess with another name -- and what more likely name than one with sexual overtones?

Moreover, their husbands have similar names, Oðinn and Oðr. In fact, these two names are linguistically related.

Days of the week

The French Vendredi preserves the name Venus, while Friday preserves the name Frigga. If they were different goddesses, it seems more logical to me that the Romans in their Interpretio Germanica would have equated Venus with sexually active Freyja, not with chaste Frigga.

Promiscuity

Freyja is presented as promiscuous. Loki accused her of having slept with all the Æsir, and with her own brother. Mostly famously, she slept with four dwarves to obtain the necklace Brisingamen. Frigga, generally represented as chaste, had her own moments. When Oðinn left on a long journey, Frigga slept with his brothers. In a story preserved by Saxo Grammaticus, Frigga slept with a slave in order to get his help in despoiling a statute of Oðinn for the gold on it. This story seems to me to be parallel in many ways to the story of Freyja and the dwarves.

Stories

Freyja is married to Oðr, who is absent on long journeys and the tears she cries for him become amber. I think this story dovetails nicely with the story of Odhinn being absent for so long that Frigga slept with his brothers. In fact, in Saxo Grammaticus’ version, Oðinn went into exile in shame because Frigga had slept with the slave. Oðinn’s search for knowledge also seems to me to imply, or perhaps merely reinforce, the idea that he might have been often absent.

Sky and Earth

Oðinn is essentially a sky god, married to both Jörd (the Earth) and Frigga (the Queen of Heaven). However, both Freyja and Frigga can also be seen as earth goddesses. Snorri says, “The earth was his daughter and his wife. With her he made the first son, and that is Ása-Thor.” Freyja, as one of the Vanir, can be easily cast as an earth goddess. Frigga tried to preserve the life of her son Baldr by exacting oaths from everything on earth not to harm him. Rocks, trees and every kind of plant take the oath. She fails to ask the lowly mistletoe, which ultimately becomes the cause of Baldr’s death. The story, it seems to me, suggests that Frigga has authority over the earth; authority more in keeping with Jörd or Freyja than with Frigga’s status as Oðinn’s wife.

Magic

Freyja is preeminently the goddess of magic. It is she who taught seiðr to Oðinn. Yet, Frigga is said to know the future, which she does not disclose. What is more likely than that Oðinn learned magic from his wife, who nevertheless withholds some part of her knowledge?

Division of warriors

The Norse believed that the souls of those who died in battle belonged half to Freyja and half to Oðinn. My personal impression is that this division makes more sense if warriors are being divided between husband and wife. I am thinking, of course, of other examples, such as The Nibelungenlied, where Gunther and Kriemhild each have their own band of warriors (and the animosity between the two creates some problems). I find some support in Paulus Diaconus’ story about a dispute between Oðinn and Frigga, where Oðinn favored the Vandals and Frigga favored the Langobards. That story seems to me to yet another echo of the story pattern where husband and wife each have their own war-band.

Another opinion

William Reaves suggests a different interpretation: that Oðinn’s wives Jörd and Frigga were the same (Nine Reasons to Identify Frigg with Jord at http://www.aetaustralia.org/articles/arwrfrigg.htm). He ventures arguments that I’m still thinking about, but his fundamental argument (I think) is that Frigga was the daughter of Fjörgynnr, while Fjörgynn was another name for Jörd. Because Fjörgynnr and Fjörgynn are parallel names (like Freyr and Freyja), Reaves thinks they might have been father and daughter. He notes that in the surviving literature, Thor is twice called son of Jörd and twice called son of Frigga.

I have a different first impression: it seems to me the doubling of names happens with siblings. So, Fjörgynnr and Fjörgynn are more likely to have been brother and sister (like Freyr and Freyja, or Njördr and “Nerthus”). So, Fjörgynn-Jörd should be a niece of Frigga Fjörgynnr’s-daughter. This would make sense if Jörd were the first wife and the mother of Thor, and Frigga were the second wife, as in Snorri.

This leaves me with an elegant, but unorthodox theory that Fjörgynnr-Njördr (the sea) and Fjörgynn-Jörd (the earth) were brother and sister, and the parents of Freyr and Freyja. Fjörgynn-Jörd married Oðinn and they were the parents of Thor. There was a war between the Vanir and the the Æsir, which was settled by an exchange of hostages. Njördr, Freyr and Freyja went to live with the Æsir. Freyja-Frigga married Oðinn, with whom she then shared power, teaching him seiðr, and becoming the mother of Baldr. She betrayed him in her lust for gold. He went into exile. She cried for him, but slept with his brothers. When he returned, they were reconciled. And so on.

Complications

As if all of this were not purely spun from my own imagination, I’m still troubled by Snorri’s comment that Jörd was Oðinn’s wife and his daughter. He also says that she had a brother Aud (“Rich”), which seems a likely title for Njördr. From what I can find, Jörd was the daughter of Nótt by her second husband Ánar (“Second”). Could this have been another name for Oðinn? Nótt’s first husband, the father of Aud, was Naglfari (a name associated with a ship). So, it hangs together, but I’ll think about that some other time.

My guesses aren’t the final answer, even for me. I’m just thinking out loud.

Settling into NRR

And now, Athanasios’ announcement that he has appointed Galerius Aurelianus and me as pontifices in The New Roman Republic.

I’m still in Nova Roma, and I’m pretty sure that Celetrus is too. NRR is a much smaller, much newer group. Very similar concept to NR, but without the strong personalities at loggerheads that makes life in NR so trying sometimes. Our materfamilias has sanctioned membership in SVR, but hasn’t given her seal of approval to NRR yet. I’d like to see our gens exist as a single family across all the Roman reconstructionist groups, with the requirement that none of us ever publicly criticize any of the groups. Seems to me like this is the only practical way to handle the divisions and differences of opinions that are bound to come up.

Understanding the Norse gods

When I have a day to myself, as I did today, I play with the computer and generally poke around the web in search of interesting problems connected with being pagan. Today it was the genealogy of the Norse gods.

The past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about a book about Norse myths I had when I was growing up. I wish I could remember something about it so I could find it again. (I gave away most of my childhood books to my nephews, so perhaps one of them has it. The only two I kept, and still have, are Viking Adventure and Tarzan and the City of Gold.)

The book of Norse myths presented the relationships of the gods in a different way from most of the presentations I’ve seen as an adult. Most significantly, it made Frigga and Freyja the same person. It had Freyr and Freyja as brother and sister, children of Njörd and Jörd, who in turn were children of Night. That much I remember. I wish I could remember the rest.

I don’t think it is anything new that Freyja and Frigga might originally have been the same goddess (so Odhinn and Odhr would be the same god), but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a full analysis or any discussion about how the various gods would then fall into relationship with one another. Early on, I encountered a categorical assertion that Freyja and Frigga were completely separate. I took it in uncritically. No doubt that idea played some role in my decision to part with my childhood book that “confused” the two. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed over the years that there is always some footnoted suggestion that the two might once have been identical.

What is more interesting to me is the identification of Jörd as the sister/wife of Mjörd. Makes sense to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it anywhere else. It would give a name to the goddess so often given only as “perhaps some form of Nerthus.”

So, with the vastness of a day away from work, I spent some time looking for more information. I was able to find a William Reaves article that argues for Odhinn’s wives Jörd and Frigga being the same person. I didn’t spend the time today to follow all his arguments because I wanted to see if there might be other theories elsewhere. Apparently not. My childhood book would have made Odhinn’s two wives mother and daughter, not identical as in Reaves’ argument. Is it really possible that the original form of the myth had Odhinn married one woman (Jörd, apparently the first wife if she was mother of Odhinn’s eldest son Thor’s), and then later to her daughter (Frigga/Freyja)? And, would a children’s book actually present the myth that way? I wonder. Maybe I just remember it that way.

I seem to remember from my childhood book that Freyja married Odhinn as part of the settlement that ended the war between Vanir and the Aesir. Can that be right?

I didn’t find my answers today, but now that the question has come to the forefront of my consciousness, I’ll be alert for further clues. And, with luck, I’ll have more time to explore later this weekend. However, this might be one instance where I need to leave off looking through the web and start looking in a real library with real sources.

Role-playing Romans

Some of the people I talk to criticize Nova Roma as a role playing game. I’m not fond of some of the games played in Nova Roma, and I would agree that the organization is foundering for lack of a common vision, but I don’t agree that it is a role playing game.

The three items most commonly cited as proof that Nova Romans are role playing are, first, that Nova Roma is a a micronation. Second, that Nova Roman priests wear a toga. And third, that Nova Romans adopt Roman names. It’s easy for most of us to see how the conjunction of these oddities creates the appearance of role playing.

Certainly, the Internet is full of micronations that are nothing more than role playing games for adolescents. I have yet to encounter a micronational project that doesn’t suffer from some degree of delusion. Yet, unlike other Internet nations, Nova Roma, in my opinion, is able to articulate a coherent reason for choosing to define itself as a nation: only a restored Roman state can fully re-create the nexus between religion and state, which they believe is a fundamental requirement for a full restoration of the Religio Romana. Others may disagree with this formulation, but an error in reasoning does not amount to role-playing.

If you believe that the Roman Republic can be legitimately restored as a micronation, the questions of Roman costume and Roman names are easily settled in favor of adopting traditional forms. If you have some lingering doubts, as I do, these are still not proof of role playing.

Adopting period costume is commonly associated with role playing groups such as the SCA. But, here too the Nova Roman priests who wear the toga have a reason unconnected with role playing. For Romans, the toga had a symbolic importance that may strike an odd note in the modern mind. The toga was the badge of citizenship and the hallmark of civic pride. Roman men were required to wear the toga when engaged in civic or legal business. Men who were not citizens were forbidden by law to wear togas. It should come as no surprise that priests of the Religio Romana in the 21st century regard the toga as a liturgical garment. The Roman cultus was remarkably conservative and orthopraxic; it should be no surprise that priests of the religio wear a toga while performing the rites of the religio. Of course, this argument in favor of priests wearing togas does not apply to citizens or to the magistrates of the virtual republic. I leave it to others to judge those cases.

In contrast, adopting Roman names is a bit more problematic, in my opinion. It does rather smack of role playing. However, if you believe that the Roman republic can be restored as a micronation, there is no reason that its citizens should not adopt Roman names. As with their togas, the Romans of antiquity were serious about their names. The classic Roman format, the trinomina consisting of praenomen, nomen and cognomen, was reserved to men who were Roman citizens. By law, non-citizens could not use the cognomen. I know of no religious argument in favor of adopting Roman names in the same way Wiccans adopt magickal names (but, it would not surprise me if someone, somewhere has examined all the sources and determined that it is impius not to have a Roman-style name). What bothers me most about the practice is that so many Nova Romans adopt the famous names of antiquity. To me, this seems like role-playing.

If I were to establish a modern Roman republic, I might easily be persuaded that citizens should use the trinomina, but I would forbid the use of historic nomina. That is, there would be no Iulii, no Claudii, and none of the other famous Roman names. Instead, I would encourage citizens to find a way to Latinize their own names following the formulae used by the ancient Romans when foreigners acquired citizenship. Our own given names evolved from the cognomina of the Late Empire. A simple application would be to Latinize the surname of a new citizens into a nomen, Latinize the citizen’s given name into a cognomen (or allow the adoption of a new, non-historic cognomen), and allow the citizen to choose a praenomen from among the limited number of historic praenomia.

I have several friends with very strong feelings on both sides of the role playing debate. In the end, I believe it comes down to a question of the legitimacy of Nova Roma itself. If you believe that a virtual republic can replace a real city, it is not role playing to resurrect the salient features of the ancient republic. If you cannot accept that leap of faith, I would still argue that wearing togas and adopting Roman names is not necessarily role-playing, at least not in every case. And, if you regard Nova Roma as simply a government simulation game played by some ardent practitioners of the religio and some Christians with no clear idea of what their faith means by blasphemy, then what difference does it make?

Sacrifice

The subject of sacrifice quickly leads to heated debate among practitioners of the religio, with each side accusing the other of bad faith. I’m inclined to think that animal sacrifice is a barbaric relic, but others disagree with me.

There is some justification, I think, for looking to Hellenistic practice, as well as Roman and Greek philosophers, for guidance. I’m not saying that these sources are definitive expressions, but that they come out of the same general cultural matrix, and can be legitimately used to understand the direction the religio might have taken if it had not lost the battle with Christianity.

Greek Apollon, it is well known, did not demand animal sacrifice. Indeed, he deplored it. In the Hymn to Apollo, Homer has Apollon demand a sacrifice a sacrifice of barley and meal from his first priests, and he gives clear instructions about how to perform the sacrifice. Apollo is also supposed to have said that the man is more pious who in his heart loves the gods and is temperate and moderate, and who made offerings of burned barley corns at his hearth, over the man who sacrifices and burns a hundred animals at an altar. This, of course, is Apollon. It is not an attitude that can be attributed to the other gods.

Numa, the Roman king who founded the religio is said to have forbidden blood sacrifice. (Cicero, Republica 2.28, Tusuculum 4.3; Livy 1.18. 40.29-14; Dionysius of Halcarnassus 2.59; Plutarch, Numa 18; Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.4.481, Fasti 3.153; Pliny, Natural History 13.87). However, reputable scholars believe that this idea is a much later attribution, related to the mistaken idea that Numa was a Pythagorean. In fact, Numa must have lived before Pythagoras.

Deliriant isti Romani

Those who read my journal are aware that I’ve been discussing Nova Roma’s role in the religio with various folks. The question that has really bothered me is whether having a state of some sort is a sine qua non of restoring the religio. I don’t think it is.

In Roma Antiqua, worship was both public and private. In the words of my new friend Ursus77, the public religio “was nothing less than a contract between the entire family of the Roman people and the gods . . . .” Today many people practice the religio privately, but the city of Roma practices Christianity not the religio romana. Vedius Germanicus and Iulianus Cassius founded Nova Roma as a way to restore the public religio. They defined Nova Roma as a virtual nation (“micronation”) and gave it the full panoply of Roman magistrates and priests, including censors, consuls, tribunes and pontifices. Their idea was that they could use Nova Roma as a base to restore the public rites, which could now be conducted on behalf of a modern Roman state. Cassius, as Nova Roma’s Pontifex Maximus, said recently, “The Collegium Pontificum [of Nova Roma] is responsible solely for the State Cults, and the rebuilding of the official rites that were part of the official infrastructure of the Roman State.” Further, “The Priesthood is sanctioned to do rites on behalf of the State” and “the most important duty of the Nova Roman priesthood should be the maintaining of the State rituals . . . .”

I think I could understand the founders’ reasoning if they had formed a sodalitas, or even a virtual oppidum. I think the gods would have been pleased to accept communal rites offered to them on behalf of a group of New Romans who didn’t pretend more. But, try as I might, I can’t rationalize the founding of a fake Rome to replace the real city on the Tiber. I’m an attorney, used to splitting hairs in order to make a case for a questionable proposition, but I haven’t been able to find even a tortuous path to make this one work.

It seems to me that what the founders have created is a government simulation game. A recent discussion on the main list should dispel any notion that being a micronation is just a convenient fiction to further the religio. Recently, when some citizens questioned the need to keep an old lex authorizing the Senate to give diplomatic recognition to other micronations, Vedius defended the practice and the granting of recognition to Corvinus. Moreover, citizens regularly launch discussions about how to make Nova Roma’s claim of sovereignity a reality.

I also think that the infighting for which the main Nova Roma list is famous bears out its essentially political nature. There has been a constant grumbling about a blasphemy decretum that “interferes with freedom of speech” by forbidding attacks on the religio. A Buddhist became a priest, then was outraged when the pontifices demanded that she respect the religio. A consul has proposed that pontifices be elected by Christian citizens in order to ensure a better balance of power between Christians and practitioners of the religio. It’s nuts.

Now, we find that Cassius has been working on a rival religio list since last May, finally going public with it last night. He seems to be having doubts about the validity of reconstruction, as the new list “is not specifically a reconstructionist list.” Announcing the list, Cassius articulated his vision for the religio in Nova Roma as “an organized, moral, and inclusive, and non dogmatic system that was and could be again respectful to all deities, able to grow and change, able to understand other systems, live along side them in peace, and even incorporate them without losing its unique identity.” Elaborating, he said, “Surely such a religion could be shared peacefully by everyone that had even a tangental interest in the ancient Gods, or even in ancient philosophies or ancient Virtues. It would be the cement that would bind a new sovereign community together. It would help bridge gaps of nationality and ‘modern’ heritage, and create tolerance and understanding.”

Even a casual reading of Cassius’ vision shows that he wants to restore and expand the Greco-Roman syncretism of the ancient world. And, if there were any doubt about the scope of his vision, Cassius himself has been talking about charting Nova Roma’s turmoil using astrology to track retrogrades of Mercury. Pretty cool, but it’s not the antique religio. His vision doesn’t require a Roman state, and never did. I think Cassius himself must belatedly realize this, else why start a rival list for his version of the religio?

I hesitate to say more, because a good friend of mine turns out to be a long-standing member of this rival list. But, frankly, I’m disappointed. I came to Nova Roma through the Julian Society, another of Cassius’ creations. Nova Roma was supposed to be a more serious reconstruction project, but it’s turned out to be something quite different. Its fundamental premise is illegitimate, shrugging off, as it does, the continued existence of the real city of Rome.

How can a fake country uphold a real contract with the gods? It can’t. All discussion aside, I might have finally been convinced -- or at least willing to indulge the point -- if Nova Roma had been blessed by the gods. I see no indication that it has. Instead, Nova Roma is a very turbulent and dysfunctional community. Not even the exceptional efforts of my chum Athanasios have been able to make a dent in the politics.

I’m out of arguments in favor of Nova Roma. So, today I withdrew my application to become a sacerdos of Neptunus and resigned as Flamen Volturnalis. In coming to this decision, I have no doubt offended some very good friends, both those conservative reconstructionists who choose to honor the religio through formal positions in Nova Roma, and those who follow Cassius’ dream of a new syncretic religion. But, I would be false to myself if I continued to serve as a priest in a simulation game. No doubt, the gods are pleased to accept the honors paid them by devout worshipers, but I believe they are accepting the devotion of individuals, as they did in my case during the Volturnalia, not the devotions of the priests and pontifices of a fake Rome.

A primer on the domestic religio

I’ve been plaguing my chum Ursus77 with questions about his practice of the religio. Today, I see that he’s written a very interesting primer, anticipating the next dozen or so questions I was going to be asking him:

Q&A on the Religio: www.livejournal.com/users/ursus77/45225.html

If anyone is expecting me to abandon my romanitas any time soon, it’s not gonna happen. For one thing, I’ve spent many years moving toward a Roman style of practice, and if I begin to drift away now the process will also take many years. For another, my basic philosophical orientation is Stoic, and that’s not likely to change whatever adjustments I might make in other areas. Really though, I just prefer the simple dignity of Roman ritual formulae to the alternatives I’ve seen. My practice is likely to retain a Roman flavor for many years into the future.

Halls of my ancestors

When I die, I expect to be reunited with my ancestors in their halls “on the other side.” For many of my friends, that doesn’t come as any surprise, but I think it bears some elaboration.

I have a lifelong interest in genealogy, as well as pre-Christian religions. No surprise then that my polytheist journey will have taken me to the belief systems of my ancestors, or that I would want to rejoin them in death. For many years I’ve experimented with the question of who my ancestors are. The Indian family of my father? The Swedish family of my mother? The Celts? Romans?

How far back do you go, and when do you stop? A typical American Westerner, my ancestry is mixed. Roughly 1/2 English, 1/4 Swedish, 1/8 Scottish, and 1/8 Pawnee, with a smattering of French, German & German-Swiss, Dutch, Welsh, and Wampanoag. Sorting out a specific cultural identity becomes even more difficult when the cultural identity of certain ancestors doesn’t match their ethnic background. For example, my grandmother is half-Pawnee, but she’s culturally Lakota because one of her aunts married into that tribe and when she was growing up those cousins were the only relatives she had on a reservation. So, my father, a man who was only 1/4 Indian, and Pawnee at that, was a Lakota medicine man. If I had been raised by him, I would identify as Lakota too.

Now, this “folkish” approach might offend some. If you are called by the gods of a particular pantheon, you just choose them. Somehow that answer doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, if you think you’re called, take that path. Me, I like to think I have some choice.

Eventually, I came around to refining my question. Not, who are my ancestors? But, which ancestors do I want to rejoin in death? (A few simple calculations will show that the number of ancestors for any given person expands exponentially as you go back in time. Go back a few hundred years and you’d be rejoining several million folks.)

Now, in my case, that’s a pretty easy question to answer. My mother’s family, of course. They came to America from Sweden at the turn of the century. They’re all hardworkers and very well-educated, as well as being very warm and inclusive. Not to mention that I grew up among them and they’re the set of folks I think of when anyone talks about extended family.

As I thought about this, a process that took many years, it occurred to me that in our society we bear last names as a badge of family membership. Perhaps most of the people I know would characterize surnames as a nominal survival of a formerly patriarchal order. Maybe so, but it seems to me that surnames nevertheless tell us the family someone formally belongs to. That’s as true of married women as it is of children born into a nuclear family.

I didn’t want to belong to my father’s family. They have a lot of strong points -- some very colorful people, some very talented people, a sprawling and diverse set of folks that includes relatives who are Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Indian. Nevertheless, they are also the most dysfunctional set of people you’d want to meet. They are torn apart by feuds that go back a hundred years, and many of them are deeply troubled by alcoholism, violence, and psychosis. The thought of spending an afterlife among them is too much to bear. I’d be better off as a Christian expecting them all to end up in Hell.

Eventually I reach a point where it seemed to me that the surname test was easily solved. I changed my name. A simple matter for me, as I only needed to drop the name I had at birth and leave my last middle name as my new last name. That done, and now done so long ago, I think I’m safe. I don’t belong to the male line of my Norse ancestors, but I bear the surname they adopted during the Napoleonic wars. I’m confident now that I’ll join them when I die.

Every once in a while, one of my friends will object (although “object” might be an understatement for a tirade delivered as a screech). The objections I hear are generally some variation on the theme that not everyone wants to join their relatives after death. I shrug. I’m not making rules for anyone else; I’m talking about what I believe personally.

If someone is distressed by my beliefs, I suspect it’s because he or she feels threatened by the idea that we might all rejoin our families at death. Not everyone wants to do that. I’ve heard some interesting accounts of dysfunctional families in the process of arguing the point. My advice is make your peace with your family now, on this side of death, so you can have a peaceful afterlife together. They’re all fundamentalist Christians? Then, I’d say you have some work to do if you’re going to find a way to live in peace. I’ve got relatives who are Episcopalian, Lutheran, Fundamentalist, and Mormon, and we’re all trying to get along now (albeit we have different reasons for trying). You were abused as a child? More work to do. They’re manipulative? Please! Everyone I know claims to come from a manipulative family. If you believe you’ll be living in your ancestral halls after you die, I suggest you quit thinking about how awful that might be, and figure out a way to start fixing it now.

On the other hand, if you really can’t fix it, or don’t want to, choose a different branch of your family to identify with. Adopt their surname. Hang out with them. If you’re a married woman with your husband’s surname, take a good look at those in-laws, ‘cause you’ve left your own family and you’re going to end up with them. And, if you happen to like the family you’re in and you love the idea of spending the afterlife with them, good for you. I’d say you’re living out your heathen values.

Resignation

“With respect, I hereby withdraw my application to become a sacerdos of Neptunus and tender my resignation as Flamen Voltunalis.”

Some days are a gift

Sometimes I have to laugh at myself. So much earnest thought on questions of religion. A comment from Ursus77 about emphasizing the ancestors and the local spirits reminded me that thinking about choices is a luxury I give myself because I enjoy it. Combine that with a lazy afternoon listening to Covenant. Is there any doubt which direction I’m going? I’m a heathen. I really don’t understand why I struggle against it.

I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years now. I was leafing through very old journals yesterday. My entries were often spotty; those journals are useful mostly because they take me back in memory to a particular time. I see, though, that I was aware of, and connected to, Ásatrú Free Assembly as early as 1977 and that by 1978 I was working on several articles for their newsletter (which I don’t seem to have ever finished -- I’ve schlepped the drafts from one computer to another ever since).

I’m pleased to know that. I’ve been wondering whether it was before or after I married Missey (1980). I was thinking it must have been before because that was the last time for many years that I showed any real religious independence outside my relationships, but also thinking that it could have been in the period just before I met Jim (1982), or perhaps during my SCA period (say 1983-84). It makes sense that my earliest official heathen period was during the time after I met Will (1977). I had remembered that particular period as Wiccan, but my journal certainly doesn’t bear out that memory. I’ll have to let the memories come to the surface in their own time, but I’d guess it was Missey who talked me into leaving the AFA when I was uncomfortable about their racism.

A part of my past recovered. It’s hell to get older and start forgetting when things happened. (Someone asked me once why heathens are always so anxious to establish how long they’ve been heathen. My answer: Because they can’t pretend that their families went underground during The Burning Times. The heathen and pagan communities are defensive about reviving non-Christian religions, so they go for all the antiquity they can get.)

From Call the ships to port, by Covenant, one of my favorite songs:

“A billion words ago the sailors disappeared,
A story for the children to rock them back to sleep,
A million burning books like torches in our hands,
A fabric of ideals to decorate our homes,
A thousand generations the soil on which we walk . . . .
A billion words ago they sang of song of leaving,
An echo from the chorus will call them back again.
A choir full of longing will call our ships to port.
Tonight we light the fires, . . .
Tonight we walk on water,
And tomorrow we’ll be gone.”