The right direction

After performing a caerimonia for the Volturnalia a few days ago, I feel very positive about my involvement in the religio. This, in contrast to a week ago when I was beginning to wonder whether the constant turmoil in Nova Roma was worth whatever benefit I might find. The difference between then and now, I see, is that by performing a ritual beyond my simple daily devotions I have re-affirmed the thing that drew me to Nova Roma in the first place. Here in Denver, it rained the entire day. I don’t know if rain at a harvest festival would have been a positive sign in the ancient world, but we have had a long drought here, so the rain was very welcome, and there were no floods. It seemed to me that all of the water gods were joining with me in rejoicing. I kept going outside to stand in the rain. More than anything anyone could have said to me, my present feeling tells me that I should stay out of politics and focus on what really matters to me.

Going with this feeling, today I submitted an application to become a priest of Neptunus. Neptunus is important to me on many levels, not the least of which is that he is the Roman equivalent of my old heathen patron Njörd. Although it will be irrelevant to the pontifices who will vote on my application, I was born on December 15th, the day of the Consualia in honor of Neptune and my mother thought that an auspicious day for my birth because my surname is Swanstrom, which in Swedish means “river of the swans.” My mother, perhaps frivolously, also asserts that we are descended from Njörd, so he has always been rather special to me despite the fact that I live a zillion miles from the sea. I am also mindful that I chose to become Flamen Volturnalis because Volturnus is a river god. Finally, I noticed with interest my reaction to the Neptunalia and the earlier Consulia this year, when Neptunus had no priest recognized by Nova Roma and no public rites were performed. I felt very down about it and was tempted to rush an application to the Collegium so that rites could be performed. The pattern of my devotions hangs together.

I thought about making my priesthood application for one of the gods I particularly honor. Faunus, perhaps, or Sulis Minerva, or Britannia. For one reason or another, none of them seemed to call to me as much as Neptunus. I also thought about applying to become a Pontifex. In fact, I veered off that course only at the last minute. I have a hard time understanding my reaction. For some reason, it just didn’t feel right. Perhaps I’m not ready and I recognize that on some level. Or, perhaps I am put off by the thought of taking part in the religious divisions of Nova Roma. I don’t know. I do know that I should not apply while I have even the least of reservations about doing so.

So, what will happen to my application to become a priest of Neptunus? Any religious decision in Nova Roma has political overtones. I wonder whether the Collegium will reject me and how I will react if they do. I have a bad record for being able to predict how I will feel in a given situation, but I rather think that this application symbolizes for me a gamble on Nova Roma and the religio. If I am approved, then the gods are still willing to accept my service within the religio. If I am rejected, I think I will believe -- whatever the actual reason -- that they no longer want me to structure my devotions along Roman lines. Bottom line: I feel unusually vested in the result of this application. It will be several weeks, probably, before it even comes up for a vote, and then, as a non-voting member of the Collegium Pontificum, I will have the opportunity to see who likes me, who dislikes me, and who thinks I need to work on what aspect of my religious life. What a fate!

More on land spirits

Apparently, one only has to ask in order to receive an answer. A few days ago I posted a question I’ve struggled with for many years, only to have it answered simply and easily in a matter of hours by Heathen Guy.

To recap, I was struggling with the idea of being an Anglo living in an area that was formerly Indian. It seemed to me that it might be appropriate to worship the pre-Christian gods of Europe because that is my heritage, but it also seemed that it might be wrong to ignore the Indian-ness of the local land spirits. Yet, my Indian cousins would be quite distressed if an Anglo claimed any part of Indian heritage simply by reason of occupying the land as a conqueror. Heathen Guy responded that the land spirits are not tied to a specific ethnicity, even though they might have been long accustomed to receiving offerings in an Indian fashion.

I think this is a very practical and common-sense solution. It is an elegant counter-argument to the Icelandic Ásatrúar who opined that Americans and Australians ought to be looking at their own indigenous religions rather than to the religion of their ancestors.

The ethnicity of land spirits first became an issue for me because of articles like Stephen McNallen’s Wotan vs. Tezcatlipoca: The Spiritual War for California and the Southwest (http://www.runestone.org/wotvstez.html) or his The Birth of California: A Modern Creation Myth (http://www.runestone.org/calmyth.html). I see now that he was making a quite different argument, but when I originally read these articles, it seemed to me that they were written against a background assumption that Anglos have brought their land spirits to this land, as well as their ethnic gods.

I am still a bit confused over when a particular deity is a land spirit and when he or she is something more. For example, Tonantzin, the great Aztec corn goddess, is Christian in her aspect of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As Tonantzin, she is arguably an ethnic goddess of the Aztecs. But, as the Virgin of Guadalupe she is Queen of Mexico, Celestial Patron of Latin America, Empress of the Americas, and Mother of the Americas. With these titles, it seems to me that she is the land spirit par excellence of North and South America. Tonantzin is an interesting example to use, because hers is a borrowing now sanctioned by time. For the indigenous people of Mexico City, she is a part of their cultural heritage, baptized, like them, into the Catholic faith. Yet, for American Catholics, she is merely one aspect of their goddess, the Virgin Mary.

Perhaps the answer should be that this goddess is indeed the land spirit of the Americas, but her aspects as Tonantzin and Guadalupe are cultural artefacts respectively of the Aztecs and Catholic Latinos. Even so, it seems to me that where something specific is known about any land spirit, it would be appropriate for heathens to incorporate that information rather than re-forming the spirit in an entirely Norse way. Such an approach would be consistent with the orthopraxy of indigenous pagans worldwide, who typically believe that the offerings they make to the gods are the offerings preferred by those gods, and that the rituals they conduct are efficacious only if done properly.

I’ll have to think more about how adaptations would work in practice. My neighbor, for example, as an Anglo could offer a ceremony to the spirit of the buffalo who roamed these plains, but if he would cross a line if he were to use use any part of the Cheyenne or Arapaho or Lakota ritual. (I use the example of the buffalo because I’m not aware of any nearer equivalent of land spirits to the tribes whose hunting ground Denver once was.) If my neighbor knew that a medicine bundle with particular components was believed by those tribes to ensure an abundence of buffalo, wouldn’t he want to incorporate that knowledge when constructing his own ceremony to honor the buffalo? Does it make a difference whether he adopts only the broad outline without copying the details? And, if so, who decides when the line has been crossed? Would it make a difference if the tribes were extinct? I think a folkish heathen would say, along with the Indians themselves, that my Anglo neighbor, if he needs to honor the buffalo, should adapt a Norse (or Saami?) ceremony, say for honoring the reindeer. Such an adaptation would be culturally authentic, but still ignores the problem of orthopraxy.

After re-framing the question to remove the assumption that land spirits are ethnic, it becomes clear that the ancient Norse who moved into the Scandinavian peninsula and into Iceland and Greenland did not take the land spirits with them; they found them there. In the same way, the Indians did not bring the land spirits of my local area with them.

From this revised perspective, I can once again affirm with my Indian cousins that it is morally reprehensible for Anglos to expropriate the cultural heritage of Indians, yet now understand that it is appropriate for heathens to worship the local spirits according to ancestral custom.

But I have one further quibble: it’s not always easy to separate land spirits from the ancestors. Indigenous people typically claim a kinship with their gods that later people living in the same area would not have(or would have to invent). For example, katsinas who live in the San Francisco mountains and come down for a season each year among the Hopi are both land spirits and a type of god similar to the Shinto kami. The Hopi explicitly hold their land by a grant from Masaw, one of the katsinas, who is the guardian of this world. And, as you might expect, the Hopi creation story links them to the gods in a way that makes the Hopi “relatives” of the katsinas. So, what is the relationship between the katsinas and non-Hopi people living on Hopi land? Would the katsinas still visit the new inhabitants of the Hopi reservation even if those new inhabitants had their own tribal ideas about land spirits that did not include the katsinas and who did not claim a physical relationship to the katsinas?

On a personal note

If I seem to make much of an Aztec goddess, it is because of my personal history with her. As a child, perhaps at about the age of 8, I conceived the idea -- I don’t know how -- that there is Goddess of the Americas to whom I ought to be praying in addition to my Christian prayers. In my childlike theology, I thought of her as a daughter of Mother Earth, to whom of course it was also necessary to pray. (Adults, it seemed to me, just don’t think things through properly.) When I got a bit older, I was very excited to find a name for Mother Earth (Demeter), and it really bothered me that the American goddess didn’t seem to have a name. When I was much, much older and getting ready to convert to Roman Catholicism, I discovered the Virgin of Guadalupe. She had previously been pretty much invisible to me for cultural reasons even though she had been floating around my peripheral awareness for many years. Remembering my youthful devotion to the unknown Goddess of the Americas, I chose Juan Diego as my confirmation name. Just as the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego, I wanted to honor the way she “appeared” to me, in the sense that I knew she must exist long before I found out who she was. A silly story, I know, but it’s one of my favorites about myself and paganism.

Indigenous religion

With the help of some good friends, I’m thinking about how I relate to Ásatrú and Forn Sed. One of the questions that nags at me is the idea of heathenism as an indigenous religion. My ritual practice is primarily Greco-Roman, and has been for years, but it seems to me that going furthest back in most of the indigenous religions of Europe, there is generally a similar structure -- gods who are deceased ancestors, gods who are spirits of place, and gods who personify natural forces. I see this in the Greeks, Romans, the Celts, and the Norse.

Viewing indigenous religions in this way, I always come back to the same quibble. How can it be proper for Americans to honor European spirits of place? To personalize the issue, I can understand that in praying to my ancestors it is proper to use Norse forms because they were Scandinavian. But wouldn’t it be proper to pray to Indian land spirits? And maybe even Indian forces of nature?

I’ve never found anyone who can answer this question, perhaps because everyone I know who has ever given it a moment’s thought identifies with one or another single tradition. I don’t find anyone really thinking about what it means to be an American with European ancestry, except perhaps Stephen McNallen, who has declared a war by the Norse gods against the Mexican gods for supremacy in southern California. Not an example I would want to follow.

Against this background, I recently came across an interview of some Ásatrúar in Iceland. In this interview, I find a striking statement:

“I always said, with whom shall we communicate?..to communicate with Ásatrú people abroad, that?s OK, but . . . it?s more interesting that we should communicate with people in native religions....like native people in Australia, Indians in America, people like that. About Ásatrú, some people say it is racism, and it is very hard to hear that, because for me...I think that no person is better than another.... There are Ásatrú people all over the world, and I respect them highly for their interest...but they have not so much in common with us. We should help them with their studies, but we should be more interested in native religions, because, for instance, Ásatrú people in the southern part of the globe, they are always going further from their own origin, from their own culture. They are stepping away from their culture, their history, their tradition. . . . What we are trying to do is build on our ancient tradition, to know our history, to try to live and understand our background...Ásatrú people in Australia are maybe not doing that, but what they?re doing is good, they are interested and that?s OK . . . but if they would think about the native religion [in Australia], they would go and try to build . . . on the ancient values [of Australian native religion]. Therefore, we [Ásatrú in Iceland] have more in common with native peoples and religions than with [foreign forms of] Ásatrú.” (Ásatrú in Iceland: ?Our Custom?, Sacred Heritage)

Here, it seems, is one answer to my question, but it raises (for me anyway) an equally perplexing problem. On the one hand, at least one Ásatrúar in Iceland sees it as the indigenous religion of that country and not really exportable with the same relevance. No nuance of folk and land, but in Iceland there is no divergence between the two, so fair enough.

But, there is something extremely disconcerting (and even insensitive!) about urging the descendants of immigrants to explore the indigenous religions of their adopted countries. My family happens to be culturally connected with the Lakota (my father was a medicine man), so I know: this is a highly political issue for the Indians in America. They feel that having Anglos expropriate native tribal religions is just another form of conquest. Not only did the Anglos take their land, but now the Anglos want their religion as well.

Yet, I wonder -- perhaps the Indians are missing a dimension to this dialog. Granted that wannabes are a pretty sad lot, and that there really is no way to become a member of a tribe by converting to its belief system -- isn’t there something to be said for honoring the native land spirits?

For myself, I could weasel an answer. With my quantum of Indian blood, with a medicine man father, with cousins on the reservation, I could say, “I’m Indian enough that the condemnation of Anglos doesn’t apply to me. But, that would be a dishonest answer. In fact, I am Anglo in every meaningful way. And, the only answer to this question of ancestor gods and land gods will be the answer that works for other Anglos in America.

I have no answer. This entry merely captures in a rough way a question that is bothering me. I will continue to think about it, and perhaps this entry will ultimately lead me to someone who has an answer.

Who are the gods?

Anyone who follows my journal regularly knows that I’ve spent quite a bit of time the past few weeks thinking about the problems of reviving the religio in a virtual state. Because I’m not entirely happy with the justifications given for reviving Rome in the incertus, I’ve spent a smaller amount of time looking for some other model for reviving the religio. Now, I want to spend some time thinking about the gods themselves.

By definition, the Roman gods are those whose worship was established at Rome at an early period, and who were not, as for example Isis, regarded as foreign gods. Most of the Roman gods originated among the Latins, others were originally Sabine and Etruscan gods. They were worshipped even before the birth of Rome in the larger society from which Rome emerged.

The most famous of these gods are the Dii Consentii, the 12 gods who correspond, more or less, to the Greek Olympians. The parallel is not a coincidence. At some point in the distant past, the Romans seem to have had a revolution that self-consciously transformed certain native gods by equating 12 of them to the Olympians and promoting them to primacy over the older agricultural gods.

The older agricultural gods were those who presided over the grain, irrigation, the fruits, and so on. These were the gods of the Roman landscape, with whom the agrarian Roman state had its first contract. In contrast, the Dii Consentii were universal gods. Both sets of gods were undoubtedly honored both communally by the state and privately by its citizens.

Another set of gods were those of hearth and home. Camillus makes much of the gods of hearth and home in his speech arguing that Rome should be rebuilt: “Surely it would be nobler to live like country shepherds amongst everything we hold sacred than to go into universal exile, deserting the gods of our hearths and homes.” (Livy, 5.54)

Finally, there were the ancestors. Here, my best information comes from Celetrus: “The Latins called the maleficent ghosts of the dead, Larvae, and called the beneficent or harmless ghosts, Lares, or Manes, or Genii, according to Apuleius. But all alike were gods,--dii-manes; and Cicero admonished his readers to render to all dii-manes the rightful worship: ‘They are men,’ he declared, ‘who have departed from this life;-consider them divine beings.’”

Shinto illustrates what must also have been true of the most ancient Romans. A quote sent by Celetrus: “Before the advent of Buddhism, there was no idea of a heaven or a hell. The ghosts of the departed were thought of as constant presences, needing propitiation, and able in some way to share the pleasures and the pains of the living. They required food and drink and light; and in return for these; they could confer benefits. Their bodies had melted into earth; but their spirit-power still lingered in the upper world, thrilled its substance, moved in its winds and waters. By death they had acquired mysterious force;--they had become ‘superior ones.’”

In short, the deceased became gods in the oldest Greek and Roman sense. M. de Coulanges observes, in La Cité Antique: “This kind of apotheosis was not the privilege of the great alone. no distinction was made. . . . It was not even necessary to have been a virtuous man: the wicked man became a god as well as the good man,--only that in this after-existence, he retained the evil inclinations of his former life.” (Quote provided by Celetrus.)

For a religio that must emphasize private rites, and perhaps communal rites, over the rites of a non-existent state, the understanding that the dead become gods is a key insight. It allows us to understand how it is that the religio developed from the private and communal rites of the patrician gentes. The original rites must have included ceremonies honoring the ancestors of the household (including perhaps Quirinus and Indiges), the spirits of hearth and home (who might originally have been the ancestors), and the forces of nature relevant to an agricultural society (who might have also had some connection to the ancestors, as for example Tiberinus, Faunus and Marica). The universal gods came later, and their cults blended with the original cults of the Romans.

In this, the religio differs only in its details from the larger picture we have pre-Christian Europe and of many other indigenous religions. Yet, I think that the emphasis in the religio has been so much on the gods of the Roman state that the fundamental connections to other cultures will surprise some.

Two Romes

Religious authority in a virtual republic

This turbulent week has been a period of growth for me. I continue to think about the nature of religion on the Internet, and I watch with interest a proposal in Nova Roma to require the election of Pontifices, as well as the indifference in New Roman Republic to Celetrus’ charge that the revival of the public rites in a virtual state is impious and illegitimate.

A closely related question is the constitutional basis for the power of the Pontifices to supervise the sacra publica.

What authority are we talking about when we discuss the Pontifices?

“The pontifices have authority over the most important matters in the Roman state. They serve as judges in all religious cases involving private citizens or magistrates or ministers of the gods. They make laws concerning religious rituals which have not been recorded or handed down by tradition, but which they judge as appropriate to receive the sanction of law and custom. They closely scrutinize all the magistracies which have duties involving any sacrifice or ministry of the gods. They also scrutinize all the priesthoods, and watch carefully their servants and ministers whom they employ in the rituals to make sure that they commit no error in regard to the sacred laws. For private citizens who are not knowledgeable about religious matters concerning the gods and divine spirits, the pontifices are explainers and interpreters. And should they learn that some people are not obeying their injunctions, they punish them, examining each of the charges. They themselves are not liable to any prosecution or punishment, nor are they accountable to the senate or people, at least concerning religious matters.” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.73.1, 2)

From Marinus in Nova Roma, I find this interesting observation:

“In Roma Antiqua, the pontifices could make an argument of an ‘unbroken chain’ going back to the time of the Kings. This chain of co-optation could, arguably, support the notion that the pontifices of, say, 700 auc held their ius pontificum by membership in that unbroken chain going back to the kings. Even so the Romans of antiquity eventually concluded that it was better to elect their pontifices as proof-positive that the ius pontificum was being bestowed by the Quirites. But Nova Roma never had a king. We’ve had a Pontifex Maximus for six and a bit years, and he just arrogated the ius pontificum to himself. We can argue that the fact people have joined NR is proof of his tacit approval, but that’s really shakey. It gets even shakier when we consider that he’s been sharing out the ius pontificum with the rest of [the Collegium Pontificum], and that ius pontificum was never bestowed by anyone. Not a king, nor a comitia, placed the ius pontificum into the person of any of our pontifices. I’m not sure what that makes you guys before the Gods, but I have a hard time seeing how they’d be convinced you have the ius pontificum and the right to bind them into a pact with us.”

Marinus is highly regarded by my Materfamilias, and I count him an honest man even though the politics of Nova Roma frequently place us on opposite sides of any given issue. His point here was to advocate the election of Pontifices. Because the citizens of Nova Roma are largely non-practitioners, many of them hostile to the religio, I can’t agree that the citizens should elect Pontifices or that such an election would confer any particular legitimacy.

Marinus is arguing here that the ius pontificum derives from the Quirites, the people of Rome. Although the ultimate power in Rome following the Republican revolution was vested constitutionally in the comitia, I think this discussion has suffered from a blurring of constitutional and historical arguments. Historically, there is no doubt that the ius pontificum belonged originally to the kings and that it predated the comitia curiata. Scaurus argues that the Lex Domitia and the election of pontifices is “a late epiphenomenon of Republican factional politics.” Constitutionally, the Republican revolution shifted the theoretical basis of all power from the kings to the people (Livy, 1.59, 2.1). The revolution made the Pontifices ultimately answerable to the people as their delegates for the proper execution of the public rites and thus for maintaining Rome’s contract with the gods. Yet, I none of this interesting debate really answers the question of fundamental legitimacy before the gods themselves.

For the Romans, legitimacy was organic. In the quote from Marinus’ above, he notices the unbroken continuity that gave legitimacy to the ancient Collegium Pontificum, no matter how its theoretical basis might have shifted and despite varying practices over the centuries of its existence. What happens in a virtual republic is that one man, or small group of men, assume a mantle of authority and set up something akin to an apostolic succession with themselves as the font. (I see this pattern in other reconstructionist groups as well.)

To break out of this self-perpetuating illegitimacy, I think we need to follow the example set by the historic process rather than looking to re-create, full-blown, its result. Instead of establishing a Roman state, we should be gathering the “Roman people,” the practitioners. The religio evolved initially from the collective and private rites of the patres, those antique heads of Roman families who were the original members of the Comitia Curiata. From the collective practices of this curia patriae, with due attention to historical practice, it would be possible to re-create the foundation of a collective religio, which in time might (sure, it might) become the foundation for a new Roman state.

Where Nova Roma and New Roman Republic made their mistakes, the same mistake in each case, was in founding their republics by fiat. They should, instead, have assembled a group of practitioners, who as patres could have elected Pontifices to form a collegium presiding over the rites of a village, not of a full-blown state.

Two Romes?

A few days ago I incautiously suggested to Celetrus that there might somehow be room in the world for more than one Rome. I had not then thought through the implications, I was merely rambling, and he has correctly heaped scorn on the very idea.

A moment’s reflection will show that no citizen of Roma Antiqua could have owed allegiance to two states, both claiming to hold the Pax Deorum. Competing factions, rebellious generals wanting to be Emperor, yes. Two states, no.

Celetrus offers an amusing scenario to illustrate the point:

“A sweaty, dusty messenger is ushered in to the Senate by burly lictors of very little brain. He reads from a scroll written by the commander of the ___ Legion. It tells of a State in the incertus that is building temples to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno and Minerva, indeed to all Dii Consentes, claiming that They have abandoned Rome and the Pax Deorum belongs to this them. What would happen? The might of Rome would swiftly fall on these people. Legions from the other side of the Empire would clamor to send detachments so that all could take part in the utter and complete destruction of this State. The destruction of Carthage would look like an urban renewal project in comparison.”

The legacy of Rome is an attractive prize, even so long after the Fall. After 410 CE, the government in the East claimed to be Rome’s heir, and Constantinople became Nova Roma, the New Rome. After Byzantium fell in 1453, the Grand Prince of Moscow claimed the title of Caesar (Czar) and asserted that Moscow was the Third Rome. In the west, the Pope crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor in 800, and his successors down to 1806 claimed the title “Holy Roman Emperor.” French Revolutionaries saw themselves as successors to Roman ideals, and Napoleon sought self-consciously to revive the Empire, even creating his infant son King of Rome. But these ersatz Romes, real enough states, might be heirs to empire but they are not heirs to Rome itself. Rome-on-the-Tiber went its own way, and still continues, while others argue for the right to call themselves the heirs of its former glory.

Now, we find Rome-on-the-Internet. And, not just one Rome, but several. Can one belong to all of them? I rashly suggested that maybe someone could. It would be nice, I thought, if the Ambrosii could exist as a single gens across the different groups, showing by example that we can be amicable folk even while disagreeing on some fundamental issues. What I did not think through properly is that, while a single gens could perhaps exist across different republics, a single individual cannot.

If Rome can exist in a virtual state at all, it remains a fact that only one of them can be Rome. There might be honest disagreement about the legitimacy of this Rome or that one, but a private citizen must choose one of them. Hedging bets might be a human failing, but it should not be standard practice for someone who wants to re-establish the Pax Deorum. (I don’t apply this line of reasoning to SVR, which does not take the form of a Roman state.)

I am going through a period of examining the philosophical foundations of Roman reconstruction, and I am doing so as a citizen of Nova Roma. I thought there might be good arguments for also becoming a citizen of other virtual states, but as soon as I look at that proposition, I see it as folly. Others might choose other states, but I have already chosen Nova Roma, and there I intend to stay until I am either fully persuaded that the micronational model is illegitimate, or until I leave as part of an emigration en masse by the faction to which I belong. I will be resigning my citizenship in New Roman Republic.

Restoring the religio

In 394 CE the Emperor Flavius Theodosius intimidated the Roman Senate into removing the altar of Victory, thereby ending the Pax Deorum and sealing a new covenant with the Christian god. A few months later the gods ended the Emperor’s life, and in 410 CE the western Empire came to an end. Other cities claimed Rome’s glory, and now they too are gone.

Rome, as a city, continued to exist, but the city and people of Rome have moved on. They are Christians now and the Pontifex Maximus is the head of the Roman Catholic church. Actually, the Romans have done pretty well for themselves, considering that they abandoned their ancient contract with the gods. I don’t buy the argument that Byzantium or Moscow is the successor to Rome, any more than I buy Charlemagne, the Habsburgs or Napoleon. Heirs to the Imperial dream, sure. Heirs to Rome, no.

But, Rome-on-the-Tiber has breached its contract with the gods. Where does that leave its citizens? Where does that leave the gods? Certainly, the gods are still with us. As Celetrus says, “they didn’t go into hibernation back in 375, waiting to be awakened when the old ways were restored.” We know next to nothing about late survivals of the religio in Christian times. Some of the old gods entered the Christian pantheon as saints, and there are hints here and there of what might have been a religious survival in a nominally Christian culture. In fact, I would be very surprised if there have not always been a few scattered folk who paid honor to the gods. (I include in this number the more enthusiastic of the amateur scholars of the Renaissance and the 18th century.)

With Caracalla’s grant of citizenship to just about everyone in the Empire in 212 CE, a good number of Europeans must still be citizens of the old Empire, although none of them can prove it. Any number of them could reconstitute the religio in the modern era just as their ancestors constituted it in the beginning.

The religio grew out of the private and community rites of the patrician gentes, and this is the path to revival: re-form the gentes with a view to organizing a patrician curia. Delegate supervision of the community rites and instruction in the private rites to the curia. Work on building a community. When the community is large enough, a comitia curia will become necessary. Only then will we will be at a point to consider consuls and the other trappings of a non-religious government.

The patrician curia would, of course, work with an eye to historic practice. They would order the religious life of the community. Confirm sacerdotes and, if necessary, elect a pontifex. Deal with the divisive issues that confront modern practitioners: Can a woman be a pontifex? Are animal sacrifices necessary or even allowable? And, coming right down to basics -- Is the tria nomina really a necessary element of the religio? What about wearing togas? The curia’s legitimacy in the eyes of other practitioners would be largely defined by its answers to such questions.

What I like about this scenario is that it would rebuild the religio from the ground up rather than the top down. It is consistent with the Republican view that constitutional authority rests with the comitia curiata, by placing religious authority in the hands of the only type of curia that can claim any legitimacy. This is far preferable, in my opinion, to creating historic priesthoods and then looking for people to fill them; a practice that makes the religio little more than an RPG.

Further, it would place the religio in the hands of people who do not pretend to govern Rome; instead, they would credibly govern the religio. It would be the “religio in exile” rather than the “government in exile.” Of course, it is always open to anyone to argue that when Rome violated the Pax Deorum, its government lost legitimacy, therefore any group of Romans can now seize power to re-constitute Rome and the religio some other way. But, when I read about any person or group claiming to embody the new Roman state, I am reminded of the many foreigners who have also claimed to be the heirs of Rome.

What is problematic about this approach is that it leaves Rome as the center of the religio, but not a fully restored religio. There is a parallel for this in Judaism. For some 1900 years, Jerusalem was the center of Jewish religion even though there was no Jewish state and the Jews themselves were in exile. Similarly, practitioners hold the real Rome in their heart as the center of the religio even though the city is not governed by practitioners.

Moreover, there are certain rites of the religio that should be performed on behalf of the state but there is no state on whose behalf to perform them. Other rites, such as those of the flamines, should properly only be performed in Rome. So, this approach would leave part of the religio un-restored until such time, with the favor of the gods, Rome itself restores the religio. A loss, to be sure, but again there is a parallel in Judaism. The temple cannot be rebuilt and the ancient sacrifices of Judaism cannot be resumed because one of the holiest Muslim shrines stands on the site. I am confident that the Jewish god understands why the sacrifices have not resumed, just as the Roman gods understand why certain rites are presently not impossible.

Despite these problems, the essence of the religio is the worship of the Roman gods, not the connection to a Roman state. At least this is my opinion. The gods did not cease to exist when Rome broke its covenant with them in 394 or after they punished the city in 410. The gods have demonstrated that they do not need Rome, or perhaps that they are punishing it still. In either event, our task must be to restore their worship as we are able without a Roman state, and if that effort pleases them, perhaps they will then restore the state.

In summary, the civil authority of the Roman government cannot be arrogated by a virtual entity, even if the object is to please the gods. I have sketched, briefly, an alternative for restoring the religio by using a process with its roots in Roma Antiqua. (An alternative that owes as much to Celetrus’ vision as to mine.) For now, the gods know, as we do, that we are not the government of Rome. Both sides must be content with the religio itself. And, I fancy that if this religio in exile proves worthy, it will be favored by the gods, who just might give it greater prominence in the future.

A troubled republic

Celetrus has resigned as Consul and as a citizen of The New Roman Republic, explaining , “I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Religio Publica cannot be reinstated as a State religion by a ‘virtual’ nation.”

Although I am not fully persuaded by his reasoning, I had a nightmare last night in which I was tormented by infidelity. That’s all I remember. Having asked the guidance of the gods before going to bed, it was enough to warn me that I might be going beyond the point where I’m comfortable. Until I understand where I’m headed, it would be impious for me to go forward. I cannot take an oath I might not be able to keep. Therefore, I’ve stepped aside as Pontiff in New Roman Republic. If I can work through my reservations, I will apply again later, but probably in Nova Roma.

I found and joined another very interesting group last night: Temple of the Religio Romana. Unlike Nova Roma and New Roman Republic, their project is to restore the religio without the apparatus of a state.

The problem of reconstruction

The project of reconstructing an ancient religion has unique challenges. If the practice of a particular religion requires reconstruction, the culture in which it originally existed is dead. Perhaps the religion can be reconstructed, but the culture in which it existed cannot be revived. How then to know what to take and what to leave behind? This is a structural problem, complicated by personal sensibilities and religious feeling.

Here, in this entry, I’m not thinking about my opinions on the issues that face reconstructionists as much as I’m thinking about the nature of reconstruction.

In Wicca and the neo-pagan community that stems from it the issue does not arise. Although Wicca claims an ancient heritage, in fact it dates to about 1952 and incorporates elements of various occult lodges of the 19th century. Wiccans approach the problems of reconstruction by ignoring them. 21st century Wicca largely takes an unstructured syncretic approach to historic religion -- it takes the trappings it likes, but ignores any historic contradictions that result.

Other groups, calling themselves pagan (not neo-pagan!), polytheist or heathen, take on the projects of reconstruction directly, although often with highly devisive opinions about how strictly to approach their project. I’m thinking of the Norse, Germanic and Baltic heathens and Celtic pagans, as well as Roman and Hellenist polytheists.

Among the the heathens, the problem of reconstruction seems to center around a debate about whether it is a “folkish” religion. If, as for many, rejecting Christianity is followed by a desire to explore the non-Christian faith of their ancestors, then it makes sense that the old Norse and Germanic gods are part of the heritage of the Scandanavian and German people. How can such gods ever belong to those from another culture? At the most conservative extreme, the heathen reconstruction project is hijacked by white supremacists. A more moderate position leads to the questionable search for a way to believe that a person of a different background might have Germanic ancestors. The favorite way of making this connection is to link any culture connected in some way with the Roman Empire to the fact that the Romans used Germanic auxillaries; therefore, anyone who is even remotely European could have a line of Germanic ancestry. A more liberal approach is to simply acknowledge that anyone called by the gods should be welcome in the heathen community. All of these approaches to reconstruction can be found in Asatru, the largest of the heathen projects in North America. However, Forn Sed has a different solution to the problem -- instead of reconstructing the antique religion, they approach it as a revival of ancestral customs. This formulation allows them to avoid the conflicts inherent in reconstruction.

The same structural problems, and the same types of solutions, exist in Roman polytheism. I’ve spent a great deal of time in this journal looking at two related problems -- how can a religion as inherently formal as the Roman religio be restored with few surviving texts, and how can it be restored outside the traditional lands of the Romans (lands that were much smaller than those ruled by the Romans as part of their empire). But, there are actually two much more difficult issues involved in Roman reconstruction -- animal sacrifice and the status of women. (The same issues potentially exist in heathen reconstruction, but they don’t draw the same vitriol there; heathens are restoring a religion that was far less structured.) Nova Roma, the leading organization for Roman polytheists, currently refuses to allow women to become Pontiffs, while it takes a neutral stand on animal sacrifice, neither requiring it nor condemning it. In practice, these are highly devisive issues.

Now, what sets off a reconstruction project from simple neo-paganism is the idea that the ancient faith, whichever faith it is, should be restored as fully as possible. Highlighting this approach, Asatru proclaims that it is “the religion with homework.”

The catch is the formula “as fully as possible.” The original cultures of reconstructionist religions are dead. They cannot be revived. But, certain elements of the religion were rooted in the culture. Unfortunately, there’s often no bright line between religious practice and its culture. And, if you approach reconstruction with the idea that you’ll leave out all the parts you don’t like, how is that an authentic reconstruction? And too, if you start leaving out quite a bit, at what point do you no longer have a defensible reconstruction? At what point does the project become just a modern religion flavored with an antique culture?

I would like to believe in the projects of reconstructionists. I would like to think that it is possible today to practice an authentic version of an antique religion. The problem for me is that, in the absence of general agreement about the essentials, I don’t see a way to rationally choose between competing theories about what is essential and what is not.

Some aspects of reconstruction can be decisively decided by reference to personal moral principles. For example, I first encountered the problems of reconstruction in the context of heathenism back in the 1980s (having come to it from a variety of initiatory Wicca). Although I was strongly drawn to the Norse gods, I did not like the direction heathenry was going. I was hearing rants about a war for the soul of America between the White race and the Hispanic race. Pure racism, in my opinion, and not an authentic restoration of antique Norse belief. So, I left. That particular group, now reincarnated with a similar name, is still preaching its version of a race war, but I’m not interested.

Other aspects of reconstruction are just as clearly contrary to modern sensibilities, but perhaps harmless enough. Nova Roma will not allow women pontifices at the moment. That could change. Nova Roma has already allowed full equality for women in other respects, even where doing so has been entirely contrary to historic practice. Pontifices were historically male, so I see the conservative argument for holding to the ancient practice. But, I’m also reminded that the Roman Catholic church still prohibits women priests, while the Episcopal church has accepted them. Now, I was an Episcopalian when we made the transition to having women as priests. After much soul-searching, the church decided that the historic practice of limiting the priesthood to men was a matter of cultural tradition, not a matter of theology. A lot of people were very upset. Some people doubted the efficacy of sacraments administered by a woman. I sailed through the tumult without much interest in the subject. It will be no suprise, then, that I approach it the same way in Nova Roma -- I don’t think it would hurt anything to have women as Pontifices, and I don’t think it will be end of the world if it takes a while to get there.

The real challenges are those problems that lie between these two; that cannot be clearly decided by reference to personal moral principles and that are perhaps not quite so harmless. A good example here is animal sacrifice. Many of us moderns are surprised at first by the idea that anyone would want to do such a thing. Yet, anyone who eats meat is already participating in a much larger and much more cruel system of killing animals. (Don’t get me started on the abuses of the food industry.) If an animal already destined for the dinner table loses its life humanely and in the context of a religious ritual (and still ends up on the dinner table), where’s the harm? I don’t know what to make of this argument. At first, it struck me as simply odd. On closer reflection, it seems sound enough but still odd. Yet, I can’t get away from the idea that animal sacrifice was an historic practice of many ancient people, including the Jews and the Romans. Indeed, if the Jewish Temple could be rebuilt, many Jews believe that the Temple sacrifices would necessarily be resumed. Not only was animal sacrifice an historic practice, but it seems to me that it was not simply a cultural artifact in the way that the subjugation of women was. Indeed, the idea of sacrifice seems to underlie the whole structure of the religio (even though certain rites required only sacrifices of grain, wine, incense, flowers, whatever).

It seems to me that, absent a clear argument against reviving a particular practice, the reconstructionist is bound by his or her project to restore all that can be restored. If not in one’s personal practice, at least by assenting to restoration by one’s particular reconstructionist community. I’m not firmly convinced that this is the correct principle, although it will go a long way to explaining to my friends why I belong to the Boni, or conservative, faction of Nova Roma. Having associated myself with a reconstructionist project, I feel compelled to accept the restoration of every aspect of the ancient religio that is both authentic and not personally repugnant to me.

Yet, I still have a sense that I am overlooking some essential point, and that perhaps the point I am missing is that I am personally more syncretic than reconstructionist at heart.

It’s not my project here to arrive at any conclusion. And, I don’t expect anyone reading this to classify the moral urgency of different issues in the same way I do. What I hope to have done is, purely for my own thought-processes, put in writing some of the issues floating around in my mind.

The Romans Didn’t Leave Rome

Can the sacra publica be established in a virtual state? Celetrus and I continue our debate. He argues that the religio is tied to the traditional Roman lands, and that the sacra patria cannot be revived by a virtual state established outside the traditional Roman lands. Unexpectedly, I find support for his position in Livy’s History.

In Book 5 of the History, Livy tells the story of a proposal to abandon the city of Rome. Some background is necessary. First, there was a war between Rome and the far wealthier city of Veii. The war ended in 386 BCE with the capture of Veii and the removal of the goddess Iuno to Rome. The Romans began arguing about whether they should abandon Rome and move to Veii. Then, in 396 BCE, Rome itself was captured by the Gauls. The Romans fled their city, some of them taking refuge in Veii. There were too many sacred items, so the priests took some and buried the rest. The Romans left a garrison in the city under siege. As the garrison became increasingly weak from hunger, the Romans prepared to ransom their city. The transaction was stopped by Camillus, the hero of the recent war with Veii. He defeated the Gauls and re-took Rome. The Romans, surveying their ruined city, began again to consider moving to Veii.

At this point in the story, Livy puts a speech in the mouth of the hero Camillus. This speech suggests how Livy might answer the proposal that a Roman republic can be established at a distance from Rome. The entire speech is too length to reproduce here, but I can assume that most of my readers own a copy of Livy and can read it in full if they are interested enough to do so:

“The question was no longer whether or not I personally should live in my native city, but whether the city should herself remain on the spot of earth which is own. . . . Why did we save Rome from the hands of our enemies, if we are to desert her now? When the victorious Gauls had the city in their power, the gods of Rome and the men of Rome still clung to the Capitol and the Citadel -- and shall we now, in the hour of victory, voluntarily abandon even those strongholds which we held through the days of peril? Shall victory make Rome more desolate than defeat? Even were there no sacred cults coeval with Rome and handed down from generation to generation, so manifest at this time has been the power of God working for our deliverance that I, for one, cannot believe that any man could slack his duties of worship and thanksgiving. . . .

“We have a city founded with all due rites of auspice and augury; not a stone of her streets but is permeated by our sense of the divine; for our annual sacrifices not the days only are fixed, but the places too, where they may be performed: men of Rome, would you desert your gods - the tutelary spirits which guard your families, and those the nation prays to as its saviors? . . .

“It may be said perhaps that we shall perform these duties in Veii - or sent our priests to perform them here. But in neither case could the proper sanctities be preserved. I cannot now make mention of all our gods, or of all our rites - but think, for instance, of Jupiter’s Feast: how could his couch be decked anywhere but on the Capitol? What of Vesta’s eternal fires, or of the imagine preserved in her shrine as a pledge of Rome’s dominion? What of the sacred shields of Mars and of Quirinus, our Father? All these things you would leave behind on unconsecrated ground - sanctities as old as Rome, older. How different we are from the men of long ago! Our fathers entrusted to us the celebration of certain sacrifices on the Alban Mount and in Lavinium: to transfer them - from enemy towns, as they were then - to Rome was felt to be impious - yet now you would take others of our own into an enemy town. How is that possible without sin? . . .

“I speak of holy rites and holy places, but what of the priests? Surely it has occurred to you what sacrilege you are proposing to commit. The Vestal Virgins have their place - their own place, from which nothing but the capture of the City has ever moved them; the Flamen of Jupiter is forbidden by our religion to spend even one night outside the City walls - yet you would make them, one and all, go and live forever in Veii. Ah, Vesta! Shall thy Virgins desert thee? Shall the Flamen of Jupiter live abroad night after night and stain himself and our country with so deep a sin?

“Remember, too, our public functions, nearly all of which we transact, after due ceremony, within the pomermium, and to what oblivion and neglect we are condemning them. . . . Where with the proper rites can these be held but in the places tradition has made them sacred? Either, I suppose, we shall transfer them to Veii, or else the people will come here, to a city deserted by gods and men, just to vote at elections - a convenient alternative indeed! . . .

“I cannot believe that you would commit so shameful a crime simply because you shrink from the labor of restoring these ruins; even if it were impossible to build here anything better or bigger than Romulus’ hut, surely it would be nobler to live like country shepherds amongst everything we hold sacred than to go into universal exile, deserting the gods of our hearths and homes. . . .

“Suppose some fool, or some knave, should set Veii on fire - suppose the wind spread the flames and half the town were destroyed - what should we do then? Move on to Fidenae, or Gabii, or anywhere else we could find? So it seems - if indeed the soil of our native city and the earth we call our mother have so weak a hold upon us that our love of country is co-extensive with timber and stone. . . .

“Not without reason did gods and men choose this spot for the site of our City . . . . all these advantages make it of all places in the world the best for a city destined to grow great. The proof is the actual greatness - now - of a city which is still comparatively young . . . . Should you go, I grant you may take your brave hearts with you, but never the Luck of Rome. Here is the Capitol, where, in the days of old, the human head was found and men were told that on that spot would be the world’s head and the seat of empire; here, when the Capitol was to be clear of other shrines for the sake of Jupiter’s temple, the two deities Juventas and Terminus refused, to the great joy of the men of those days, to be moved; here are the fires of Vesta, the sacred shields which fell from heaven, and all our gods who, if you stay, will assuredly bless your staying.”

I am mindful that this is a patriotic speech, invented by Livy to add drama to his story. It is not a scholarly analysis of the foundations of the religio, yet I was reminded of it by Celetrus’ remark that Rome is the center of the Religio Romana just as Jerusalem is the center of Judaism. It’s not clear that Livy thought that the religio was inseparably tied to Rome, although he does speak of moving the Roman people as abandoning the hearth and household gods. And, I think it is significant that he makes much of the Vestals, who tend the fire at the sacred hearth of Rome.

Gibbon makes the same point:

“The spot on which Rome was founded has been consecrated by ancient ceremonies and imaginary miracles. The presence of some god, or the memory of some hero, seemed to animate every part of the city, and the empire of the world had been promised to the Capitol. The native Romans felt and confessed the power of this agreeable illusion. It was derived from their ancestors, had grown up with their earliest habit of life, and was protected, in some measure, by the opinion of political utility. The form and the seat of government were intimately blended together, nor was it esteemed possible to transport one without destroying the other. (Decline and fall, 1.327)

At the very least, Camillus’ speech shows that Livy did not think that the religio would have remained the same if the Romans had removed to Veii. At best, it and Gibbon’s comment show that the city, the government, and the religio were intimately bound together in a way that could not be easily separated. After the religio was replaced by Christianity -- although the process started with Diocletian -- the capital of the empire was removed first to Milan and Ravenna, and later to Byzantium. What would have happened to the religio if it had still existed?