Pagan Reconstruction

I like to watch Neo-pagan, Heathen, and Reconstructionist videos on YouTube. And, we have customers who follow these and related paths.

It's all very magical and mystical and romantic, but it seems a mirage to me. I'm a minority voice here. We know so little and no one likes to hear that the light on their path is coming from within themselves and not from an ancient tradition.

I'll give just one, negligible example. A few months ago a woman on Twitter, a self-identifying Heathen, was moaning because someone she knows, a Jewish woman, used the Valknut. Very sus, she thought, because the woman doesn't even know what it means. That should strike us all as bizarre, but it's a level of naïveté I see every day. Truth is, none of us know what the Valknut signified. We only know the various meanings the Heathen community today has invented.

Those old religions cannot realistically be reconstructed. Maybe just a few pieces used for glitter and spice in a modern path. Thomas O'Loughlin, writing about Celtic Christianity, says it very well.

"Because we are dealing with fragments and trying to overhear the conversations of faith of a past era, there can be no question of producing a 'Celtic Path' of spirituality. A path assumes that you can cover the ground, and map its ups and down, and give a fullsome description. Rather, we are going to look at individual events and texts on different topics: we are going, as it were, to chat to walkers here and there along the path which we cannot see in its entirely." (O'Loughlin, 33)

Going further along the same lines, "spirituality is always embedded in a place, within a culture and its hopes, fears and expectations." (O'Loughlin, 49) We'll all learn that; I'm sure of it.

• Thomas O'Loughlin, Journeys on the Edges: The Celtic Tradition (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000).

LARPing tribalism

I don't understand the reason so many modern heathens and neo-pagans are drawn to fantasies of re-creating antique tribalism.

I don't think they understand the idea of tribes. That's why I see it as LARPing. Our ancestors used tribe as a synonym for ethnicity and nationality. The Saxons were a tribe; the Franks were a tribe. In Latin, gens (plural gentes).

Many modern heathens confuse our modern colloquial use of the word tribe to mean simply community to mean the same thing as the tribes of our ancestors. It's not. I belong to the tribe of Denver Broncos fans, but I don't confuse the other fans with my ethnicity, nationality, or family.

It's noteworthy, I think, that when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded what is now England in, let's call it the 5th century, they settled in tribal regions but ultimately melted into a pot of just English. When the Norwegians settled Iceland and Greenland in, say the 9th and 11th centuries, they didn't try to preserve their antique tribal heritage and didn't set up new tribes. I could go on in this vein, but I think the point is clear.

Sure, over time, newly settled communities tend to become interrelated. At least, historically, and because of relatively low mobility. My mother comes from a little town in Wyoming. There was a Pony Express station there in the 1860s, but settlement in the area didn't really begin until 1912, or so. By about 1961 every family in the valley was connected by blood or marriage to every other family.

It took just 50 years for that melting pot to get a good start. How much longer would it be for a clan to emerge from the town? Or for the locals to see themselves as a different ethnicity or tribe? And could a new tribe even emerge in a town politically integrated into a larger area, even if geographical mobility were fairly low?

It seems modern heathens are in rush to create an artificial structure. Are they reading too many fantasy novels? Why do they think they need to consciously create something that in the past happened organically? And why do they imagine a little group of a dozen or a few dozen people carries the same weight and importance as an ethnic group of thousands?

I don't buy it. My belief buddies and praxis pals are my community, not my clan, not my tribe.

Eric Sjerven's YouTube channel provides an example of modern usage. Nice guy, and I often enjoy his videos, but I part ways with him here.

• The Raven's Call - Ep 94 - Building Tribal Identity
• The Raven's Call - Ep 95 - Building Tribal Mythos
• The Raven's Call - Ep 103 - Unpacking The Term Tribalism
• The Raven's Call - Ep 106 - Heathenry and the Decay of Family

Ceisiwr Serith

Update: I'm re-reading Ceisiwr Serith. He makes this same point:

"Worship in the home comes first, but gathering a few like-minded households together is certainly fun, and the increase in the talent pool gives greater possibilities to learn. A Proto-Indo-European word which can be used for such a group is *wiks (Latin vicus, "town," Gothic weihs, "village, domain" (Benveniste, 1969:251)). This is not a clan or a tribe, since those are essentially extended families, but more like a village (emphasis added)."

For "clan" and "tribe", substitute "kindred."

• Serith, Ceisiwr, Deep Ancestors (Tucson: ADF Publishing, 2007), p. 102.

Revised Jan. 17, 2022

Coping with Eostre

Many neo-pagans resist scholarship because it destroys the fantasy.

"Every possible religion that ever was and is is the result of a cultural soup with borrowed elements from everywhere and there is no such thing as a pure, unique, and original religious background. It was like that in the past and it is like this nowadays."

"Religions evolve, change, become better and that's the way it should be, and not being stagnated. Clinging on to things that no longer makes sense, because whether you like it or not we are always in a constant state of evolution."

• Arith Härger. "Ishtar is NOT Eostre - A Comment on Neo-Pagan Misconceptions." YouTube <youtube.com>, Apr. 8. 2020.

Indigenous Religion

I like this post about indigenous religion by ReligionForBreakfast.

There are some important points here. My neo-pagan chums often have a weak understanding of indigenous religions, even though that's what they are trying to recreate from the fragments of their own past.

• Place, relationship to land
• Power, sacredness located in the landscape
• Protocol, ceremonial obligations

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Watch the video and think about the ways your own practice measures up. Or doesn't.

More Information

• Religion For Breakfast, "Intro to Indigenous Religions," YouTube, Jan. 30, 2020.

Dying into the Mountain

If you learned Old Norse religion from children's book, as many of us did, you might have a too simplistic idea about the afterlife. Likely, you think most men were warriors so they went to Valhöll, Odin's hall in Ásgard.

Maybe so, but there's more difference of opinion among scholars than you might know, and there was probably also far more complexity.

The stories we have were recorded in Christian times, which makes them late and arguably unreliable to some degree. By the time they were written down the oral culture that produced them was already being transformed by new ideas imported from Romanized Christianity.

In pre-Christian times, it seems likely the Scandinavians had only a generalized idea of an underworld ("Hel"). This seems to have been the belief common among European cultures. The soul might or might not have been something separate from the body. No one is quite sure how much of that is due to Christian influence. Personally, I'm inclined to think our ancestors had a tripartite soul, so I tend to see it as body, soul, and spirit; three components separating at death. That's a debate for another day.

Systematized ideas about the "Nine Worlds" and the halls of different gods probably date to Christian times, and probably evolved in response to Christian notions of Heaven and Hell.

In pre-Christian times the dead went to live underground, in burial mounds (or somewhere near the place of interment). If the soul separated from the body, it was probably not a far separation, perhaps only as far as the nearest burial mound or mountain. Rudolf Simek (2007) says some mountains in southern Sweden that were believed to house the dead were called Valhall. Their relationship to Odin's hall is not clear.

For our ancestors, the dead were the alfar ("elves"), to whom offerings were made. They evolved into genii locorum ("spirits of place") who go by various names now; tomtar, nisser, brownies, and so on. These protective beings represented the first farmer to clear the forest and establish the homestead there.

The story of Þórolfr Mostrarskegg in Eyrbyggja saga, although very late, shows how this belief might have worked in practice. Þórolfr was a pioneer of Iceland. He gave Helgafell ("Holy Mountain") its name and designated it as a sacred place. He believed he and his descendants would "die into the mountain." That is, they would go to live inside the mountain when they died. Notice: in death they do not travel back to Norway to join their ancestors there. Instead, they pioneer a death-place in the new land.

This story is said to have been confirmed when Þórolfr's son Þorsteinn drowned. A local fisherman saw the mountain open up, and heard Þórolfur welcoming Þorsteinn to the feast that was taking place inside.

So, what about a separable soul? Again, Eyrbyggja saga is a late and potentially unreliable source. We have a drowned man, one whose body was apparently not recovered, yet he joins his father in their family's holy mountain. His soul must have separated from his body. Was it that way in the original? We don't know. It could be Christian influence. Or not.

Many of my neo-pagan friends are attached to their ideas about Valhöll and Fólkvangr, and all that. Too much glitter for me. Aesthetically, I far prefer the idea dying into the land, or -- since I live in Denver -- dying into the mountain. Presumably Mt. Evans. There's something very basic here that transcends both historical pedantry and romanticized fantasy.

• Arith Härger, "Do Women go to Valhalla?" YouTube, Nov, 27, 2019.

Related Post

• Justin Durand, "Viking Mortuary House." Pagan Cowboy, Oct. 21, 2019.

More Information

• Jackson Crawford, "The Minor Afterlives of Norse Myth." YouTube, Nov. 30, 2019.

Pagan vs Post-Christian

C.S. Lewis asks, "Are there any Pagans in England for me to write to? I know that people keep on telling us that this country is relapsing into Paganism. But they only mean that it is ceasing to be Christian. And is that at all the same thing?"

He thinks not. They're very different things.

"To say that modern people who have drifted away from Christianity are Pagans is to suggest that a post-Christian man is the same as a pre-Christian man. And that is like thinking . . . a street where the houses have been knocked down is the same as a field where no house has yet been built. . . . Rubble, dust, broken bottles, old bedsteads and stray cats are very different from grass, thyme, clover, buttercups and a lark singing overhead.”

Because it's Lewis, you know there will be a pitch for Christianity. It's what he's known for. And here it is. Pagans and Christians have in common religiosity, a belief in objective right and wrong, and a sense that it impossible to be perfect.

Post-Christians have lost it all. If you start as post-Christian, you must go through paganism to Christianity. "All that Christianity adds to paganism is the cure."

"It is hard to have patience with those Jeremiahs, in Press or pulpit, who warn us that we are “lapsing into Paganism.” It might be rather fun if we were. It would be pleasant to see some future Prime Minister trying to kill a large and lively milk-white bull in Westminster Hall. But we shan’t. What lurks behind such idle prophecies, if they are anything but careless language, is the false idea that the historical process allows mere reversal; that Europe can come out of Christianity “by the same door as in she went” and find herself back where she was. It is not what happens. A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the Pagan past."

"It looks to me, neighbours, as though we shall have to set about becoming true Pagans if only as a preliminary to becoming Christians."

It's always a pleasure to read C.S. Lewis. He organizes his thoughts so cogently that even if you don't agree, he sets you to thinking.

• CSLewisDoodle. "A Christmas Sermon for Pagans." YouTube <youtube.com>, June 7, 2019.

America is a Religion

Just finished watching "Americans Are Religious About America". That rings some bells.

"Basically, American Civil Religion is when Americans are religious about America. The series argues that Americans are being religious when they create and curate American identity and ideals."

Robert Bellah says, "The phrase 'civil religion' is, of course, Rousseau's. In chapter 8, book 4 of The Social Contract, he outlines the simple dogmas of the civil religion: the existence of God, the life to come, the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice, and the exclusion of religious intolerance. All other religious opinions are outside the cognizance of the state and may be freely held by citizens. While the phrase 'civil religion' was not used, to the best of my knowledge, by the founding fathers, and I am certainly not arguing for the particular influence of Rousseau, it is clear that similar ideas, as part of the cultural climate of the late eighteenth century, were to be found among the Americans."

There was a thing briefly, 10 or 11 years ago I think, that takes it further. One of my Roman neo-pagan chums--I can't remember who it was--posted for awhile about launching an American neo-paganism constructed consciously along Roman lines. I can't find it now, might have been at LiveJournal, so I'm relying on memory. The idea was that it makes no sense for Americans to hold on to European (or other) gods. We declared our civil independence, so why not our religious independence?

For a project like that, Rome was an easy choice. The new American republic was modeled in part on the Roman republic. When America was founded, Neoclassicism was a major cultural and political influence in both Europe and America.

I was quite taken with this idea, in part because of my deep roots in America and in part because of the logical consistency. I had a website at ReligioAmericana. Very briefly. I can't find any of its content now, but there wasn't anything memorable.

I don't remember much about the social conversation. There was stuff about heroes, holidays, and monuments. I do remember some of them. Dea America (perhaps aka Our Lady of Guadalupe), Columbia, Lady Liberty, the deified George Washington, and all the company of Founders; the patriotic holidays; and the national monuments and battle fields.

I can understand all that. When I was growing up the lamp on my nightstand was a bronze cast of George Washington praying before the Battle of Valley Forge. Definitely a religious piece, as well as a heritage piece. The lamp had belonged to my (step) father and his father before me. My grandfather was George Washington Place. I'm guessing his name was the reason for buying the lamp.

That was the year I added Fortuna Denveriensis and her festival on November 22 to my calendar. In the classical world every city had its local Fortuna. I wouldn't want to risk not honoring Denver's.

I also remember a post about the importance of rivers in classical paganism. So, Dea Plata for the patron deity of the Platte River that runs through Denver. Once upon a time I knew the Latinized deities of other American rivers. Now I remember Chalchiuhtlicue but not the re-named Colorado River or Green River. How strange is that?

I think my dad would have been pleased. He believed and taught that foreign religions could not take root in America. The land would reject them. He was thinking of the lure of American Indian religions, but a Romanized American paganism seems like it might be another possibility.

More Information

• Bellah, Robert N. "Civil Religion in America." Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 96:1(1967), pp. 1-21. Reprinted at <robertbellah.com>. Retrieved Nov. 18, 2019.
• ReligionForBreakfast. "Americans Are Religious About America." Episode 1. Youtube, Oct. 10, 2019. Retrieved Nov. 18, 2019.
• ReligionForBreakfast. "The Cold War Origins of 'In God We Trust'." Episode 2. Youtube, Jan. 16, 2020. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
• ReligionForBreakfast. "The American Flag is a Religious Symbol." Episode 3. YouTube. Mar. 27, 2020. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
• ReligionForBreakfast. "Ceremonial Deism: The Religion of the Supreme Court." Episode 4. Youtube, June 16, 2020. Retrieved June 18, 2020.

Updated June 18, 2020 to add links.