Pagan Priesthoods

How do neo-pagans create priesthoods from nothing (ex nihilo)?

I often talk to people who see this as an issue facing modern pagans. We don't have an "apostolic succession" going back to the ancient priests. The interrupted transmission is a barrier to the legitimacy and credibility of pagan priests in modern times.

Elsewhere, in some Indo-European cultures we see hereditary priests, but we don't have that either, not in Norse history and not as a survival in our modern world.

Everyone's answer seems to be self-initiation. Someone studies up, initiates themself, then initiates others, founding a new priestly line. I'm not sure whether the missing element is thought to be some kind of laying on of hands or some kind of training, but this seems to be the only thing anyone knows that can fix it.

But why is this even a problem? It seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding. When I reached a point where I was beginning to struggle with this issue, my mother brought me back to earth. She pointed out that we're all born pagans. That's the whole point of being baptized into Christianity. If you never get baptized, you're yet another heathen soul.

Not only that, we're all born into the particular paganism(s) of our ancestors. There wouldn't be a way to be born into any other paganism, now would there?

Along the same lines, it's a minority opinion but some Indians tell me that everyone on earth is born into the Sanatama Dharma. By definition it's the eternal truth. There cannot be any other. Each child is born to it, and every religion on earth is some form of it. Or so goes this line of thinking.

Finding Priests

It becomes much easier to think about the question of authentic priesthood after we're clear about our natural status as pagans. Bear with me for a minute while I digress into some Christian theology. I think the point will become clear.

There is a Protestant idea about the priesthood of all believers. The way I learned it as a kid in the Lutheran church, all Christians hold the priesthood by virtue of their baptism. Martin Luther wrote in The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude: Preached and Explained that “this word priest should become as common as the word Christian” because all Christians are priests.

The thing that sets apart the professional clergy among Protestants is that they have been trained to exercise priesthood, and called by the congregation they serve to exercise priestly functions on behalf of the congregation. Any baptized Christian could, say, perform a baptism or officiate at a wedding or funeral but for the sake of good order it's better if we let a professional do it.

Roman Catholics have a similar idea bout a priesthood of the faithful but nevertheless they set off ordained priests as a higher order. "The ministerial priesthood differs in essence from the common priesthood of the faithful because it confers a sacred power for the service of the faithful" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1592). "The sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a 'sacred power' which is none other than that of Christ" (Catechism, 1551). "'In the name of the whole Church' does not mean that priests are the delegates of the community. . . . It is because the ministerial priesthood represents Christ that it can represent the Church" (Catechism, 1553).

These differing ideas about priesthood between Protestants and Catholics are exactly on point for the debate about pagan priesthoods.

The Protestant idea of priests being called by a community and authorized by them to act in a priestly capacity is perfectly adaptable to the situation of modern pagans. It is also fully consistent with a traditional pagan world where the head of household is responsible for its ritual observances, as being consistent with the mingling of priestly and magisterial functions in societies as far apart as Rome and Iceland.

There is also an interesting footnote here. One of the boasts of the 19th German nationalists was that the Protestant Reformation was specifically successful in northern Europe because the Germanic soul had traditions of freedom and brotherhood that southern Europeans lacked. One of the proofs advanced for this idea was that the Protestants rejected the notion of priests as a higher order in favor of a model that emphasized the essential equality of believers.

There is much more to be unpacked here. For example, whether Roman Catholic ideas of priesthood correspond to something important in the traditional pagan world, and whether there would be any reason for trying to attach modern priesthoods to a Brahman caste.

• Boaz Vilallonga, "On Pagan Priesthood and Public Worship", YouTube (Sep. 4, 2019).

More Information

• Chris Aldridge, "Becoming Hellenic and Pagan Clergy - Problems and Paths", YouTube (Feb. 8, 2017).
• Tom Rowsell, "Jive Talk: The Role of the Pagan Priest", Survive the Jive at YouTube (Aug. 5, 2019).
• Spirit of our Forefathers, "Reconstructing a Pagan Priesthood", YouTube (Sept. 7, 2019).

Related Posts

• Essence of Paganism

Tribal Religions

One of the fundamental difficulties faced by neo-pagans is that one cannot reconstruct the homogeneous cultural experience in a diverse modern world. Where most of our pagan ancestors lived in communities so uniform they did not need words for race and religion, nor were their communities large enough to created notions of nationalism. They simply belonged to a particular culture.

Efforts to create a new, pagan identity in the modern world--even if founded on ethnicity--cannot overcome actual cultural experience created by a shared national identity inculcated by a uniform educational system.

Further, the chance thread of an ethnic identity nested within a national identity (or even regional identity), is not often available in the ethnically mixed culture of North American.

I might occasionally call myself Swedish-American, but that is only one identity available to me, and the immediate problem I would encounter is that the Swedish gods belong more clearly and strongly to my cousins in Sweden. I participate much more weakly when they are only ancestral gods, and only one possible set of ancestral gods, at that.

"The tribal religions had one great benefit other religions did not have and could not have. They had no religious controversy within their communities because everyone shared a common historical experience and cultural identity was not separated into religions, economic, sociological, political, and military spheres. It was never a case, therefore of having to believe in certain things to sustain a tribal religion. One simply believed the stories of the elders and these stories had significance as defining the people's identity. Today we can say the have specific themes, but that is our interpretation and not the way the people understood them. No tribe, however, asserted its history as having primacy over the accounts of any other tribe. As we have seen, the recitation of stories by different people was regarded as a social event embodying civility. Differing tribal accounts were given credence because it was not a matter of trying to establish power over others to claim absolute truth."

• Deloria, Vine, Jr. "The Concept of History". Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader (Barbara Deloria; Kristen Foehner; and Sam Scinta (eds.), 290-304. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999, 292.

We Did It to Ourselves

One of the most transparent lies white supremacists tell themselves is that Christians forced their religion on Europe. No. No, they didn't.

Everywhere across northern Europe, people looked at Rome, so rich and sophisticated, and decided they wanted some of that for themselves. Back then, if anyone was forcing you to become Christian, it was your own leaders.

#PaganSoyBoys

• Kristian Vikernes a/k/a Varg Vikernes, "Dear Native Americans!" (ThuleanPerspective/Varg Reupload), WitWolf, YouTube (June 5, 2019), visited Nov. 2, 2019.
• Lisa Rigoni, "Own It! How To Stop Your Child Blame Shifting", Grow Kids Minds, visited Nov. 2, 2019.

Essence of Paganism

Here we have Tom Rowsell saying that all paganism in Europe is defined by dedication to deities. He thinks it's all about the gods and worshiping the gods.

I think he has the wrong end of the stick there. Rowsell's emphasis on the gods leads him into some needless complexities, as well as some blind spots.

The essence of everyday paganism--the mentalité we want to recover--is honoring the ancestors and the local land spirits. Life at the household level.

The gods are something more. Too great a focus on them at a personal level is misplaced. They are too many for one person. They belong collectively to the community, to the nation, and to the great national holidays.

If we were to follow the pattern of our pagan ancestors, we neo-pagans in Europe and in the European diaspora would be participating, more or less gladly, in the "public" rites of Christianity. Our ancestors didn't get a pass because of their personal belief systems and neither do we.

I think many people understand this, but not all. But those who do understand don't know how to break out of the problem. It's as simple as recognizing that the ancestral world, with its mono-ethnic dominance, is likely gone forever.

It's easy to be a modern pagan if you focus on the personal and household sphere. But where the gods are larger than life expressions of ethnicity it's no longer possible for them to dominate the national community.

Our fellow citizens don't universally share either our heritage or our paganism. Not anymore, and probably not ever again.

• Boaz Vilallonga, "Conversation with Survive the Jive: Modern Pagan Practice and Belief", YouTube (Apr. 18, 2019).

More Information

• Spirit of our Forefathers, "The Purpose of Pagan Ritual", YouTube (June 28, 2019).

Hyper Masculinity

Ever run into one of those hyper-masculine LARP types, who make themselves into a cartoon Viking while thinking they're reconstructing old Norse religion? These Viking wannabes go and on about Odin, Valhall, and their fighting spirit.

One of the ways to spot someone who is still a baby in the faith is that they'll riff to orgasmic heights about how the Norse refused to a bend a knee to anyone, not even to their gods. That's the swagger of an adolescent male who's been reading too much fantasy. This post is for them.

Do your research. Our Norse ancestors had a culture easily recognizable as a relative of other old European cultures. Bowing and prostrating was a thing.

Here's a link to get you started. You want the list Bowing and Prostrating as Worshiping Practices. It's toward the bottom. The first item on the list is "Ibn Fadlan paragraph 85 describes the Swedish Rus prostrating before a carved image of a God."

• Grumpy Lokean Elder, "Heathen Statues and Idols, Worship Building Structures, Kneeling and Prostrating", Tumblr. Retrieved Nov. 3, 2019.

Don't know Ibn Fadlan? Think The 13th Warrior. It will be worth your time to read the whole list, and for each item to tack back to the sources so you understand the context.

Then, keep watch as you read. Can you find other instances where Norse men kneel? Here's one of mine.

As Beowulf lay dying:

"Then, kneeling before the broken king, Wiglaf undid his helmet and took him into his arms saying: 'Sire, stay with us in your hour of victory!'

"Then Beowulf opened his eyes and said: 'No my faithful friend Wiglaf, this is your victory. I name you King. The treasure is yours to do as you will with it. Just bring one piece that I may see it and hold it before I die which will be soon, therefore make haste. . . . I go now and I forgive those who ran from me in my hour of need. I thank you good and faithful Wiglaf for standing by me and now sharing my final moments. Carry me to the Whale’s Headland and build me a barrow there. Now I sleep.'"

That is nobility.

This Land

I've been wanting very much to read This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West, by Christopher Ketcham (2019). Then I cried the whole way through.

"A hard-hitting look at the battle now raging over the fate of the public lands in the American West--and a plea for the protection of these last wild places."

If modern paganism will mean anything it will mean protecting our local place.

Norse Baptism

Even in the days before Christianity the Norse "baptized" their children. Meaning that babies were sprinkled them with water, apparently as a sign of accepting them into the family line.

• Jackson Crawford, "Norse Pagan 'Baptism'", YouTube (Apr. 12, 2017).