Disconnected

I find I've been struggling with heathenry lately. Not a struggle in terms of comprehension, or spiritual turmoil, but in waning energy for the subject. I'm not reading as much as I should. I'm not putting in the work I should. I'm not connecting with it in the way I have previously been. I know this is a temporary lull, but I feel like I should address it, particularly as it has meant I haven't been posting here like I should.


I think a lot of it is a community issue. I'm an introvert by nature, so I'm naturally inclined to hermit up and keep to myself. On top of that, I haven't really made many connections to fellow heathens. I did manage to track down a group of locals via facebook, but thus far haven't been able to attend any of their events. Of course, this may be at least in part for the best, as certain comments made within their group are troubling. Of particular note, one announcement bothered me a good deal: 

"Types of ceremonies/rituals will be Asatru with some Druidic peppered in. We want to have them for the holidays (on the Druidic and Asatru calender)" 

This is troubling for a number of reasons. The first and foremost being that I'm a reconstructionist heathen. By definition, the goal is to condition one's practice to emulate the religion of our ancestors as closely as possible. Why you would intentionally dillute this practice with outside elements, I don't know. 

The second issue is closely related to the first, and that is the idea that Druidism has any kind of place at a heathen ritual or ceremony. There is this weird kind of assumption out there that european pagan traditions can be mix-and-matched without any issue, and that is not only not the case - it's also kind of insulting. Not just to me, but to the other side as well. It ignores the fact that there are specific cultural values and an entire world-view built around those traditions. To lump them in together with a kind of broad strokes "pagan is as pagan does" is cheapening both religions and cultures. One would not say "we're going to be practicing catholic mass, with some Vedic tantra and Shinto mixed in."

But I think my biggest bugbear is that Druidism is such a sketchy subject in general. We know almost nothing about druids. At all. We have nothing surviving about what they actually did, or what they believed. We know nothing of their practices whatsoever. The only historical sources we have for druids are what greeks and roman writers thought about them (pro tip: it wasn't kind), some archeologial findings (implements and the like), and whatever tidbits can be gleaned from study of irish folklore. Nothing we have comes even close to a working religious or philosophical system. In my experience (and one could make a case for this by necessity being universally true) anyone claiming to have knowledge of Druidic traditions is full of new-age bullshit. Things billed as Druidic can almost always be traced back to the same strains of neopaganism that came out of Gardnarian Wicca. 

Why on earth would I want that anywhere near my religious traditions?

Ranting aside, I think a secondary issue has simply come the fact that the circles in which we travel shape who we become. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on the subject of innangard, and forming of a tribe, and I realize that the people with whom I am closest are not heathen. With the standards I hold for company I keep, I begin to wonder if I will find fellow heathens that would measure up. Or if they do, how will they deal with the fact that my closest tribe members are not themselves heathen? 

It's a perplexing thing, and I think I've stuck things on the back burner while I chew on it. 

Stay tuned. 

Heathenry and Atheism

As so many of these posts begin, I had a conversation with someone the other day. This party made the statement that they used to study heathenry to some extent, and liked it.. but they ultimately became an atheist instead. "I've never much believed in 'belief.'"

I find a single quote to come up for me again and again when having this kind of conversation. My man, Socrates.

Before we can analyze a thing, we have to agree on what it means. Disbelief in "Belief" is exactly as contradictory as it sounds. A belief is, at its simplest, a statement that you accept a thing is true. Literally every assumption you make about the world around you - the very assumptions you must make in order to function in physical reality (the sun will rise, things fall down rather than up, etc) - is some form of belief. These beliefs collectively make up your world view. One can argue that we "know" certain things, but because of the way our brains work, we cannot arrive at absolute objective knowledge simply because we as fallible humans have to process that information.

What the person is actually discussing - and what atheism boils down to - is a rejection of faith. Faith is a complete trust or confidence in something apart from empirical evidence to support it. Indeed, Faith is generally glorified as being more important because of the lack of evidence to support it. The ability to believe in something that either is not known, or cannot be known is considered by many as a kind of spiritual strength.

The thing about Heathenry, which I will here and always define as the authentic, historical religion practiced in pre-christian northern Europe which is pursued by Recons, is that it doesn't actually require Faith. You absolutely can have faith, but it isn't a required part of the world-view, certainly not where the gods are concerned.

Heathenry is a votive religion. It works on the notion that one is obliged to do certain actions, and in turn, the gods / spirits / etc hold up their end of the deal. It is not a religion concerned about one's personal beliefs or relationships with the divine. Indeed, the root of the word piety is from the Roman pietas, which is literally translated not as any kind of faith, but as honor and duty. To be a pious man in the pagan sense is to fulfill one's duties to the gods - not to "have faith" in them.

I've often said I "felt at home" when I started into heathenry. It had nothing to do with gods or mythology. I've said before, I come to it from a purely philosophical angle and a love of the culture. My arrival in heathenry was almost purely secular.

Personally? I'm undecided on the literal existence of a god or gods, but I certainly don't have "faith" in them. Given how fond I am of Marcus Aurelius, I don't suspect it actually matters. It doesn't effect my day-to-day actions. Instead, Heathenry requires that I observe the proper rituals and traditions, that I make offerings, that I pay proper due to my ancestors, and so on. Heathenry is not a religion that is interested in your intentions or your faith. It isn't about what you think, it's about what you do.

An Interesting Comment

I had a discussion with someone the other day who discussed that their background was in Odinism, and they made a comment that I felt deserved a more thorough examination.

"A reconstructionist, by definition, does not fit into the religion as handed down, folk style. You are picking out the pieces and reconstructing the religion to fill your needs or personal requirements to construct a new belief system." 

This is an interesting statement, as I both agree and disagree with the person at the same time. It's easiest to break this down into two sections for discussion.

"A reconstructionist, by definition, does not fit into the religion as handed down, folk style."

I will actually agree with this wholesale, but not for the reasons the speaker would hope. The key here is the phrase "the religion." Imagine if you will, that you had as your heart's greatest desire the goal of being a good and proper Catholic. A significant part of being a Catholic is, of course, the nature of the church and the role it should play in your life. Now imagine that the church you have been going to is run by a man who claims to be a priest. He wears the robe, he has the little white collar. He may even speak fairly good latin, and within the cathedral, the light filters through stained glass windows and illuminates the statues of hundreds of saints. He goes around offering the wine and crackers, lighting the candles, taking confessions - everything he is supposed to do. The problem is, his sermons are about Mary Magdolin as the divine goddess, and he seems incredibly adamant that the best practice for life is to make sure your chakras are properly aligned. Really, the important thing to keep in mind is saluting the four-corners before mass, and whatever you do, make sure you're doing enough meditation at home. That, my sons, is the path to God.

The problem here is that he may be a Priest, of sorts. He may even claim to be a catholic, and grown up catholic himself, but what you are learning is not Catholicism. It doesn't matter how good your intentions, how genuine or sincere you were in your seeking, in making use of this information - in practicing this doctrine - you are not being a Catholic. 

Others can, in fact, examine the beliefs you have learned and accurately say "those are not catholic beliefs." They can objectively claim that you are not a Catholic. This is not because they are mean, or dismissive, or narrow minded. This is not because they have "declared themselves pope." It is because we have a fair body of evidence for what Catholicism is, and thus can claim with fair certainty what it is not. 

The Problem with Odinism

I almost hate to write this, because I know I'm going to get a lot of flak from it. For a long time I've shied away from criticizing any specific group within heathenry with the idea that I just didn't know enough about their internal politics or philosophies to say. The more I see of Odinism, however, the more I find it suspect and more to the point, the less I find it "heathen."

The problem with Odinism is that most of the things I see promoted within Odinism are either ahistorical practices, imports from other groups or cultures, or wholesale fabrications. Chief among these is the central claim popularized by McNallen that Odin has been "the god of the European race" and worshiped in one form or another for 40,000 years. Someone with even a cursory knowledge of human civilization can easily point out the flaws in this. To start with, you're claiming we have evidence of Odin worship dating back to the middle of the last ice age. Yeah. No. I'm not going to harp on about this here for space reasons, but even the best information we have of any religious practice only dates back to 6000BCE or so, and that's in the middle-east, not Europe. Before that it's a total clusterfuck of guess-work, and absolutely nothing to support these claims.

Beyond that, we have even more fun. Among other claims and practices I've heard from the Odinist crowd:

• The authenticity of the Hammer Rite, which is in fact a direct copy from Wicca, which itself was invented by Robert Gardner in the last century.
• The overwhelming influence of Catholicism in the philosophy and structure, with Odin set up as an almost monotheistic arch-god.
• The importance of a reward-based afterlife, substituting Valhalla for Heaven and Hel for..well. Hell.
• A repackaging of the Völkisch movement as "authentic heathenry," despite the entire concept being invented no earlier than the 19th century.
• Meta-genetics: a completely unprovable and counter-factual theory used to justify a racial/ethnic agenda, packaged in the same kind of bullshit pseudoscience that expects "intelligent design" to be looked at as a possible origin for human life.
• ..The list goes on.

Even if we accept that everything else about Odinism could be grounded in historical heathenry, it can already be fairly claimed that Odinism is not authentically heathen. Like the Priest above, it has deviated too far from core doctrine to be considered wholly true to the original claim.

So yes, when you say "A reconstructionist, by definition, does not fit into the religion as handed down, folk style." I will absolutely agree that recons do not fit into the Odinist religion as handed down. We have no interest in it. Our goal is to learn Heathenry, and the tool we use to do that is Reconstruction. 

"You are picking out the pieces and reconstructing the religion to fill your needs or personal requirements to construct a new belief system." 

Like the first section, I can both agree and disagree. The goal of recon is indeed to "pick out the pieces," in the same way one picks out the pieces of chaff in order to gain the wheat. We are in fact "Reconstructing the religion to fill [our] needs." The difference is that this sentence can be construed to mean that Recons are creating "their own" religion, in the sense that new-age neopagans can simply make it up as they go along. This is demonstrably untrue. Our "Need" in this sense is to practice the religion of our ancestors - the historical form of heathenry practiced prior to the Christianization of northern Europe. We are not constructing "a new belief system." We are working to learn what came before - we are reconstructing the belief system of our ancestors.

Like the Catholics in the thought experiment before, we can effectively point out what "is" and "isn't" heathen, as defined by the historical practice of pre-christian germanic pagans. We are not creating something new. We outright reject it, in most cases. We are trying to restore what is lost through every discipline available - studying the literature left behind, studying the historical accounts from every angle, researching the archeological scholarship - everything goes into this study, and then is violently filtered through the marketplace of ideas. It is not an easy path, but few things worth doing are. You have to be willing to constantly evaluate and challenge your own ideas and beliefs, and be willing to change or drop them when new information contradicts your previous perceptions. 

This isn't the way our ancestors learned about their religion, but they had the benefit of being born into a living culture and world-view. We did not have the luxury of having our religion handed down to us "in the folkish way." No one did. That world doesn't exist anymore. We are, by definition, trying to reconstruct that world-view and live it as authentically as possible. 

If forced to choose between "correct information" and "correct distribution method," I will choose the correct information any day. 

Folkish vs. Universalist (pt2)

Arguments for Folkish

With the more ridiculous arguments out of the way - and I won't even get into the Scientology-level bullshit that is "metagenetics" - I'll take a moment here to examine some of the more reasonable discussions I've had on the subject.

While Folkish is often criticized as "white people only" there are others who argue that it's not about skin color or ethnicity, but about heritage. Because ancestor veneration is such a large part of the religion and world-view, they view it necessary to have some heritage somewhere leading back to northern europe. They define "folk" as family, no matter how far back.

They are also quick to argue that Heathenry is itself an ancestral folk-religion, here in the sense that it was connected to a specific tribal people at a specific time, and that gives us "claim" to it. They will point out that you can't simply walk onto a Sioux reservation and claim to be part of their tradition or their religion. The Sioux will not accept you, and yes, it will be because you are white. You are not part of their tribe.

There is a certain logic here, but does that make it right? Historically, white people have become part of the Sioux or other native traditions. The problem, it turns out, isn't that you're white. It's that they don't believe you have an earnest interest in converting. I am sure if I went out to a given group and made myself useful, ingratiated myself to them, and showed that I wasn't just another lost Caucasian out to either rip them off or cheapen their culture by adopting a parody of it and calling it my own, they might just accept me in time and teach me their world-view. Of course, there might be people among that tribe who also wouldn't accept me simply because I wasn't blood, but if the only reason one can level against you is race, then that is by definition racist. It doesn't matter who is doing it.

Universalists Corrupt the Core Values

I recently had a conversation with someone whom I otherwise held in fairly high regard. He called himself a Gothi, a claim of which I was skeptical even then, but he otherwise had some insightful things to say. Then he posted a thing on being folkish, and first stated how he didn't believe that you can't be a heathen if you weren't of European decent, but that he wouldn't want you in his kindred personally.

My natural inclination when presented with a position that I don't understand is to assume that the other person's position is valid, and that I simply don't have enough information to understand it. With that in mind, I struck up a conversation on the topic and asked him to explain it to me. I was told that being Universalist " is to corrupt the core values of the faith by bringing in or allowing to be brought in worship from areas foreign to our blood." He then went on to explain that one time someone tried to bring one of the celtic gods into a blot of his, and he was quite upset about it. He then elaborated on the argument with "Universalists have more of a wiccan mindset, most if not all wiccatru are universalists."

My respect for this person began to rapidly decline. The latter argument basically amounted to "If you don't exclude people based on race, you're basically a wiccan." The former wasn't actually an argument against race at all. Instead, what he was actually arguing for was purity of world view. Bringing a celtic god into a blot isn't a racial issue (and even if you tried to make it so, I have never heard anyone examine someone's ethnicity and go "well, you're Irish. You guys make fine slaves but you can't be heathen."), its an issue of mixing traditions.

I made a counter-argument, pointing out that the example given mixes two different issues. Legitimacy of blood or heritage had nothing to do with the conversation. It was about bringing in outside traditions. The only way it could hold legitimacy is if you assumed that someone who had no european blood had a brain shaped so fundamentally differently that they were physically unable to process the concepts of heathen culture and world-view. That bringing in a japanese man would by default force him to involve shinto spirits to the Blot. This is, of course, bullshit.

The thing about world-view and culture is that it has to be learned. And re-learned. You could be 100% Scandinavian with the purest, bluest eyes, the fairest hair and the most majestic of beards. Chances are you grew up christian, and just like our hypothetical japanese man, you would first have to unlearn your previous world-view and culture (christian, in this case) before you could correctly assume the heathen mindset. 99% of Heathens will come from a culture that isn't heathen. Why does their ancestry matter?

I was informed by the Gothi that he would be happy to answer me, but he was at work. He then refused to answer any other messages I sent him.

Drink from your own Well

There is frequently a discussion of something that amounts to a "folk soul." This is argued that the different tribes of people each have some kind of collective heritage soul. Each tribe has its own gods, its own ancestors, its own soul. In this arrangement, the Heathen gods are argued to be one set among many and  Folkish (or at least, this individual person's view of folkish) believe that by letting people into Asatru whose ancestors were not northern European, we are hurting that person's own soul / folk soul / ancestral line, because by allowing them to become Asatru, we are preventing them from finding /returning to their own tribe. On a more mystical level, one could make the argument that we are stealing from these other tribes in the way that the Christians stole from ours.

The real problem with a "folk soul" is first that the very concept didnt emerge until the 1800s, and was essentially coined to drum up a nationalist spirit for Germans during the Romantic era. We may quibble about the authenticity of Snorri, but I'm sure even the most lenient of will recognize that this places the notion about 700 years too late for any kind of authenticity.

The secondary issue is one more of internal consistency. Even if we assume that one is somehow bound to the gods and traditions of their ancestors, this is nothing like how most actually practice. Pan-germanic heathenry is a myth. Each individual tribe had their own arrangement of gods, myths, beliefs and customs. If you take this belief to heart, you cannot simply decide that you have "northern European" heritage and then call it a day. You need to know from where that heritage comes and then practice that specific set of beliefs. One whose ancestors come from Frankish origins would have a different "folk soul" than those who come from German, Saxon, Russian, Danish, or Geat tribes. This is a major inconsistency, given that the overwhelming majority of heathens (myself included) practice a distinctly Icelandic / norse flavored heathenry by simple virtue that it is the world-view for which we have the most data. If you believe that you are tied to the gods of your ancestors, however, that's simply not good enough.

This raises some additional issues as well. If one is both Irish and German, to which set of gods does your soul "belong" to? I've yet to come across the exclamation that person X is Irish and thus their soul belongs to the Dagda, or someone of white features informed that they have some slavic ancestry and thus their soul first belongs to Czernobog.

Ragnarok Commeth

A more interesting argument I've had has been actually involved the invocation of the Ragnarok myth. Before the big climax of the story, what do the ancient heathens see as an ending of their world? Endless winter, starvation, and a world where the bonds of kindship mean nothing. That kinship and blood mean nothing. This argument essentially boils down that blood is held in a higher regard than belief, and that blood>belief is what it means to be folkish, that it is central to the world view. This will occasionally become an argument about the survival of the cultures themselves. Often, discussions of this sort will have a weird undertone as though Scanadanavian / Germanic traditions/culture/mythology are somehow "endangered" and letting outsiders in will "water it down" and somehow corrupt it.

Sometimes this idea is sold in a tune that sounds something like "but everyone's culture and heritage is beautiful and should be preserved" that can catch even well-meaning people off-guard. Unfortunately, the direct implication here is "Your culture is equally beautiful. Now go practice it instead, somewhere away from us."

I don't buy anyof these arguments. The uncomfortable truth is that if our bar for faith is based on ancestry, every single "folkish" heathen out there should spend a significant chunk of their time celebrating their catholic heritage along with their heathen heritage, as the last thousand years of their more immediate ancestry has been christian, almost without fail.

Then we have the fundamental issue "if we let people into Asatru." As far as I know, there is no asa-pope and no clergy to officially recognize who is and isn't Heathen. As argued previously, the very idea that you could bar someone from celebrating gods that you recognize as independent beings is both ludicrous and antithetical to a polytheistic world view.

But for me, the most egregious of the errors at hand is the patronizing notion that you have a right to tell other people what is best for them and have any right whatsoever to make that decision for them. I've repeatedly mentioned that my coming to heathenry was based around attraction to the philosophy involved. If someone else finds that philosophy more appealing than their native philosophy, and embraces that world-view, who has the right to tell that person "I'm sorry, we know better than you that your place is in whatever ancestral philosophy you were born to. It's for your own good." It's a bit ironic, really. As fiercely independent as Heathens tend to be, I would think the heathen response to such crap would be to tell the person to go fuck themselves.

Where do I Sit?

I personally have a hard time paying attention to the debates. There are places in which I can agree with and even sympathize with the Folkish. For me, culture and world-view is the biggest part of my interest in heathenry, and I do place some reverence on my ancestry. There is a comforting feeling of coming home and an almost boastful pride in looking at and learning about their world with the knowledge these were my people. Particularly coming from American standard culture, where ethnic culture has been completely whitewashed away (forgive the pun), there is a kind of longing to reconnect with ones ancestry. However, I don't entertain that this is and can be the only gateway into heathenry. It's more than a "racial heritage." It's more than a religion. It's a culture we would like to see live again. Blood is not a requirement thereof. 

To the Odinist's horror, I would dare argue that the group with whom modern heathens have the most in common would actually be modern Jews. They are both an ethnic group and an insular subculture of their own. They exist both in the world and culture around them, but maintain their own identity and world-view. Conversion to Judaism is not a simple matter. One cannot show up at a synagogue and simply declare themselves to be Jewish. On the other hand, one can try to prove their worth to the community and ask to be accepted into it. This is a model modern heathens would do well to adopt, and with the way in which Kindreds work, we are well on our way.

At the end of the day, the argument is tired. As much as I would like to sympathize with the Folkish, I've yet to come across a good argument for their perspective. At the end of the day, you're still telling me "above all else, I'm going to judge this person not on their values, deeds, or worth, but on their ethnic background." I've yet to find anyone who can argue this in such a way as to be anything other than an asshole. Does this make me Universalist? Maybe, but I think I'm something else entirely:

Someone who doesn't give a damn.

I am a reconstructionist. My only concern is what was and wasn't actually practiced and believed by the historical culture. What is and isn't part of the traditional world view. It's not my right to decide who finds their home in Heathenry, and it's disrespectful to the idea of divinity that my personal biases can speak for them.

The only authority I have is deciding whether someone I can only decide whether I want them to be part of my tribe - my kindred. I can only choose to accept someone as part of my tribe, or reject them, and I should do so by their actions and strength of character. I don't care about race, and I frankly don't care to discuss it. That is, ultimately, the beauty of heathenry. There is no higher organization I have to appease, no human agency to whom I need to appeal. I'm going to do what I need to do, and continue trying to follow the paths of those that have come before, as best as I understand them.

Folkish vs. Universalist (pt1)

Last time I posted, I went into some length about the divisions in Heathenry and the most common being where someone's personal beliefs sit on a sliding scale of Recon to UPG. This time, we're going to talk about a conflict far more nasty. This is a conflict of ideology that tends to get so heated that most forums and discussion pages outright declare the topic off-limits.

That's right, we're going to break down into the ever-popular Folkish v. Universalist debate.

This has been a really hard one for me to tackle, because it's hard for me to find people who agree one what either of those terms actually mean, let alone the positions entailed. Heathenry has in the past had some unsavory associations where racial politics are concerned, with hate groups adopting some of the symbology and mythos to suit their own agenda. This, of course, is idiotic. Assuming that heathenry has an in-built racial agenda because of its associations makes about as much sense as assuming that idiots burning crosses and spouting "the jews are edomite mud-people" has anything to do with mainstream Christiandom. Unfortunately, this conversation is with us for the foreseeable future, so here it is as I understand it.

From a purely outsider perspective, the nearest I can tell is that the two camps fall into:

Folkish people believe someone's ethnicity has something to do with whether or not they can be / should be a heathen or accepted as heathen, and universalists maintain that your background and ethnicity has nothing to do with whether you should be accepted as a heathen. Folkish people are of course then characterized as racists and bigots, and universalists are then calculated as being hippy, fruity, new-agers.

Now, it should be noted that I've come across an entirely different group of Folkish as well - people who claim that they don't care about race one way or another, and that they are more interested in the preservation of the culture and traditions. They identify universalists then as people who are bringing new age traditions into the fold. I don't exactly know what to make of these people by comparison, as their definitions of folkish and universalist seem to be exactly what I was talking about in my previous post about recon v. UPG. As it is though, the majority of "Folkish" heathens I've seen, heard, or interacted with seemed to be operating on the racially-based definition, so I will operate on that assumption here.

So, where do I sit? Frankly the whole conversation confuses me. I've talked extensively with the Folkish many of whom I regard as relatively intelligent and rational human beings. Others have clearly been hiding a petty racial agenda beneath their religious arguments. I've not spoken to many universalists, but then again most universalists don't need to go around calling themselves such. They don't bother bringing the issue up at all.

So. let's examine the argument for ethnicity in Folkish heathenry. Taken from the In Defense of the Folkish View, publicized by the AFA

Biology, culture, and spirituality are all intimately connected, and any attempt to separate them is doomed to frustration. The ancestry of the group, what the group does, and the spiritual perception of the group are not three different things, but only aspects of a greater whole. 

This Folk-centered essence of Asatru often comes under attack from those who are new to our ancestral ways, or who have not shaken off the conditioning of modern culture. The idea that religion, culture, and biology are intertwined runs against the political dogma of our day, and is sometimes labeled "racist" by those who do not understand the deeper truths involved.

This is often further expanded into quasi-mystical or scientific roles, including notions of a "folk soul" (a notion invented in the Romantic period to instill a sense of nationalism) that one's people posses, or the amazing pseudo-science that is "metagenetics." I have been assured, however, that one need not worry, if you are Caucasian and come from pretty much anywhere in Europe, you are fine.

Race as a Concept

First we have the problem of "Race" itself. I have an extremely hard time believing that the Germanic cultures in question had even the faintest idea of "race" in the modern sense. Lumping "white people" or even "Europeans" together is a concept entirely foreign to their world. The smallest division in the heathen world-view is first the family, then the community and tribe. Thus, any conversation about "race" or heritage must be framed in exactly that context.

If you are a Dane, the Norse and the Geats are just as alien of a tribe from one another as are the Irish Celts, the Franks, Saxons, or Byzantines. There is no sense that the celts are "more related" to you or more "your kin" than the Saami or the Skraeling. Part of my skepticism in any conversation about the "folk soul" or other such concepts is the lack of differentiation. With the notable exception of Theod, most heathens take it for granted that even different germanic pagan tribes had significantly different names, rituals, beliefs and practices within their individual cultures. Instead, what is often assumed to be "heathenry" is actually specific to the icelandic norse, usually because this is where we have the most information and thus it is the most convenient place to gather data. Worse still are those that seem to think that all of Europe seemed to be monolithic and unified in its religious beliefs and practices, as though all of the tribes and cultures got together and worked the rules out together at some point. In my experiences thus far, certain self-identified Odinists have been the worst about this - seeming to believe in some kind of pan-heathen monoculture that existed with Odin as the chief god as of 40,000 years ago. There are no words.

There is no concept of "white" or Caucasian in the ancient world view, and I don't have reason to believe they thought anything of the concept. Case in point, one of the stories involves a visit to King Atli - aka Atilla the Hun. They story doesn't see fit to point out that he was an Asian warlord. The stories do not think it worth mentioning that he's not white, and Gudrun winds up marrying him.

Arguments in the Mythology

The loudest cry usually comes from people who take the mythology in some way literally. For the sake of the following arguments, lets pretend that we take the mythology literally as well. It is generally best to argue these things at their own level.

The racial position is a surprising one to take, as I don't find that the mythology in any way supports this view. Odin is said to walk the earth, all of midgard.. not just "specific areas of northern Europe." If you go with the Voluspa, it says that the first people were made from an ash and an elm tree. Another version of the story says that they grew out of Ymir's armpits. If you go with either of these stories, we run into the problem again that the gods created men as a species. Not "the men specific to northern Europe."

Granted, there is an argument that in one story, Rig (whom people identify with Heimdall) creates three races of men. In the Rigsthula (Lay of Rig), the god creates three orders of men: slaves, free men, and aristocrats. Slaves are stereotyped as having been created dark, short, stupid, gloomy, ugly, etc, with black hair and dark features. Free men are created to be the average of men, with brown hair and an independant spirit. And finally aristocrats who have bright eyes and shining hair, etc etc. I've had individuals inform me that this is evidence of racial endorsement in the literature, but I can only shake my head. If taken literally, what you are actually stating you believe is that non-Europeans were made to be a slave race to proper white folks, and that our leadership should be based on hair color.

Every part of this is bullshit, of course. Even if we accepted this as being an authentic story of the period (rather than one that comes about or is distorted in the 13th century, as some believe), an even passing familiarity with norse literature will point out that having darker features (as well as being short, stupid, and gloomy) is a stereotype that is used throughout the literature when talking about slaves. More importantly, it doesn't talk about "Dark people" in the sense of being of non-Caucasian decent. Remember as above, to a Dane, the Franks are not your people. They are not your kin. You don't have to be non-white to be darker and shorter than the Norse. That covers pretty much all of Europe - particularly the Celts. This is most likely how the stereotype comes about.

But the most obvious issue here is that what we are reading isn't an issue of racial order, or divine judgement as an order of species. This is clearly a myth set aside to explain why the society of the time was structured how it was - with some people's lot in life to be slaves, and others to be nobility. In any case, no one could have taken this all that seriously, as light hair and bright eyes were not a requirement for leadership, and dark-haired people didn't lose their rights automatically by way of birth.

I've heard a counter-argument to this that goes something like "tribal humans were extremely ethnocentric, and thus their myths concerned only themselves, not all of mankind." It further reasons that if we assumed that the myths literally applied to "all of mankind" or "the whole world" then we would be assuming that the natives assumed that their cultural myths were right and all others were wrong - that odin was the creator god and usurped the power of / had more validity than the gods of whatever other tribes.

The problem with this counter is two-fold. The first being the difficulty of accepting the "only our tribe" logic when one considers the other portions of the lore. Do we believe that ymir's body only created Northern Europe? Does his blood only form the Norwegian and North Seas? Hardly. I would love to see someone apply this logic to Yggdrasil, or find reference to anyone in Scandinavian culture asserting the belief that Asia and Africa were beyond the borders of midgard.

The second problem is that the argument itself is self-defeating. We are to on one-hand accept that the tribes were so ethnocentric that they named themselves things like "the true people," but on the other hand were so multi-cultural that their position was "well, I would never assume that my beliefs were any more true than your beliefs, where the two contradict, there must be some third truth of which neither of us are wholly aware!" I actually would agree that tribal people are extraordinarily ethnocentric - which is why they would have no problem believing that their gods were the ones who made everything and did all of the important things. Sure, other gods can claim the same things, but..we all know who really deserves the credit.

Divinity as External Reality

Another concept that gets in the way of "who can be heathen" is the very notion that our ancestors self-identified as Heathen. I remember a quote that went something along the lines of "truly religious cultures aren't religious any more than you or I are tooth-brushious. It's not a separate and modular part of their life, it is their life."

Before they came into contact with Christianity, there wasn't really a concept of "our religion" vs "your religion." Like most tribal religions, their way wasn't a choice they took up or one religion among many. It was their collective world-view and customs. To them, it was not a religion or a philosophy - it was an objective reality in which they lived.

If a foreigner came to live among the Danes under whatever circumstances, it would be natural that the foreigner come to learn of the gods and even pay respects, in just the same way that the they might acknowledge how rough the north sea is, or how fierce the storms. In the ancient world view, these are all just facts of life. If someone came to live among them, they would be expected to learn the local ways, laws, and customs.

There is no sense of "this is our way, and our religion, and you can't be part of it." If you believe that the gods exist outside of yourself, then you are ultimately faced with the realization that they aren't "yours." They aren't your sister or your lover or a family member that you can jealously protect and guard from unwanted suitors. They do not belong to you. If anything, you belong to them. Claiming "You have to be X to have a relationship with the northern gods" is no more useful than claiming "You must be Irish to date Felicia Day." I can shout that to all I want, but ultimately the choice is between Felicia Day and the men whom she chooses to date. She has not asked my opinion, has no use for my opinion, and is in all likelyhood insulted by the notion that I think I can speak for her.

At its heart, to argue whether or not someone can "be" heathen is antithetical to a world-view in which one accepts that the gods are literal things. There is no conversion process in the ancient world-view. There is no initiation, there are no gate-keepers between you and the gods. The only thing we have are our individual relationships, both spiritually and with one-another. The only authority anyone has is to decide with whom they will personally associate.

On Friday, we'll be discussing some of the Folkish arguments I've come across so far and examining them in more detail. 

Division and Politics (OR 'Why I'm a Reconstructionist')

I spent quite a while sticking to myself in the whole heathen thing. It's how I do most things, first taking them up in private and fiddling with and figuring it out before I get involved with anyone else or want to participate in a community. I think it's a prideful kind of thing: I want to at least look like I know what I'm doing before I open my mouth. That in itself is kind of a heathen sentiment - don't open your mouth unless you've got something worth saying.

When I finally did begin seeking out other heathens and trying to get a grip on the community, I was unprepared for the politics. Having been weened on Raven Radio, Asatru Lore, and the Recon community, I hadn't realized what a diverse - and divided - group the broader spectrum of heathens actually was. With the group being as small as it is (relative to other religious groups), I would have thought there would be more concern for similarities than differences. In a way, it reminds me of The Life of Brian.

"Judean People's Front? We're the People's Front of Judea!"... "The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front."

Of course, this is perhaps to be expected. Heathenry is a religion that stresses the relationships between people in individual communities, rather than any kind of pan-heathen brotherhood. The notion that we should all be Brothers and Sisters in Christ Odin is leftover baggage from someone else's religion. Innangard is one of the core concepts from the world view and is by definition exclusionary. This is also a religion that encourages someone to stand their ground, and comes from a culture that celebrates independence and personal charisma, so heathens by nature tend to be both opinionated and stubborn, with no divine commandment of subservience or humility to stand in their way.

I'm the first to admit that I fit all of these issues to a T. I'm part of the problem. While I wish that there were a greater consensus on a number of things, I realize that most Heathens do, and like all other heathens I would prefer my version of the story to be the one that is agreed upon.

In my mind, however, there is a difference and here I will present a case for my position.

In the world of Heathenry, there are essentially two categories of declarative statement. The first falls broadly under Reconstruction. Reconstruction is essentially the factual, objective information we can point to the lore itself (sagas, eddas, etc), from outside texts (Tacitus, Saxo Grammaticus, ibn Fadlan), and from archeological and other scholarship. The other half falls under UPG - Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis. Any time someone leads with UPG, what they are talking about is their personal experience and insight that is unsupported by outside sources. This doesn't mean that their UPG is wrong, or even goes against the lore, but any time it is UPG one cannot make the claim "This is true," they can only espouse a personal belief or opinion.

Even if I'm not the most deeply educated of heathens (yet), I tend to lean towards hard recon myself. What this means in practice is that I assume the humble position that the people who actually practiced this faith centuries ago understood their lore, gods, and philosophy better than I do. Thus, what is and isn't "heathen" to me falls squarely on the shoulders of "what did our ancestors believe?" In my view, if you're claiming to be heathen, then you assume that the answer to that question is what you should be incorporating into your religious practice. This is not to say that I'm entirely against UPG, I have some of my own. But it means that I assume UPG is like sexual preference - everyone's got some, yours has nothing to do with mine, and you should assume no one wants to hear about it unless they ask you directly.

So why would anyone ever not push for Recon? Well, there are some pretty common arguments I hear:

Recons live in a fantasy world / are trying to pretend they are vikings
This is a fairly common opening argument, usually because the person at hand doesn't actually understand what recon is. Reconstructionists are not out to put on costume and live in the 10th century, but instead are trying to understand the world view of those that came before and apply it to modern life.

We can never know what they believed, so why bother?
This comes from a simple ignorance of just how much we actually do know, and we know more every year. There are far fewer gaps in the collective scholarship than people would have you believe.. but.. of course, you'd actually have to do the work and study to understand that.

We live in a different world now.
This is also occasionally changed to sound something like "Heathenry is a living religion and it must be updated with the times." I find this claim to be both absurd and kind of misleading. For me, the philosophy is actually what brought me to Heathenry, so claiming that it needs to be updated is a kind of idiocy that could only be represented by idiocy as some kind of platonic ideal. The world itself is full of other religions and other schools of thought that are more "modern." To me, that is the biggest reason to choose heathenry, to get away from the shallow and sickly philosophical notions that permeate modern society and religion. And as stated before, if you don't actually follow the philosophy of a religion, why bother?

The real problem with this claim is the idea that the philosophy needs updating at all. Heathenism is a life-affirming and human-centric, humanistic religion and it's underlying philosophical tenants bear that out. If someone wanted to make a very well-reasoned argument about a specific point that could use changing, I'd be all ears. Unfortunately, this argument only ever really means "I want to import this non-heathen concept from some other religion, call it heathen, and have everyone else accept its validity."

Recons are as dogmatic as christians!
This is one of my favorites, and forms a nice catch-all for the rest of the issues that might come up. Heathenry has no dogma. It has a world-view, as does every culture and every religion. It needs no dogma, and no commandments (don't get me started on the "Nine Noble Virtues") because if you understand the world-view, none of the rest is required.

Generally speaking, this is the retort of someone who has tried to hybridize their heathenry, infusing it with their leftover christian baggage, or tried to import wicca or other new-age influences and presented it as "their" heathenry to other people. Some groups will be fine with that, but this is where pejoratives like "wiccatru" and other less than friendly accusations come in from the recon-crowd. It's not that there's anything wrong with wanting to be High Priestess Silver Odinswolf of the Mjolnir-Bearer's Coven. You are free to do that, but what you are doing is substituting what we factually know about the way heathens organized and worshiped historically with non-heathen sources. You can do it as you please, but what you are doing is not heathenry. Some embrace this openly, referring to themselves as part of "The Northern Tradition" instead. For the most part though, people who fall under these categories seem to be either new heathens who haven't learned any better yet or people who either simply don't care enough to learn what was actually practiced, or actively want to disregard what was practiced in order to craft a religion more suited to their own personal politics and convenience.

Ultimately, that's the best argument I can make for Recon. In many ways it strikes parallels with the role of the role the Constitution is meant to play in US government. Whatever differences in philosophy you might have or UPG or other ideas you might bring to the table, Recon serves as a neutral ground and a boundary line. It is an objective standard by which one can measure ideas and objective middle one can meet at and declare "this is heathenry." You cannot one day make the declaration "This is heathenry, and because I call myself a Gothi, I declare it so" any more than a president can stand up and declare himself king (try as they might).

And the case for those against recon? All I can say is that I've noticed that whenever someone comes out and states that some god or another, or their ancestors, or whatever source decides that they are such a special and remarkable individual that they can speak for the truth of heathenry, that source almost always sounds like "You are perfect just as you are, do what feels good" and almost never sounds like "we gave you this information already, we have been arguing for the same kinds of rites, rituals, and cultural values for thousands of years. Go out there and do the work."

Just a touch too convenient, if you ask me.

What is a Heathen?

This was originally meant to be a handful of things, first a "Why I'm Heathen" then a "What does Heathenry mean to me," but I realized that both of these require further unpacking. As per usual, I'll never claim to be an expert on anything, but I can explain as I understand it.

So lets start simple:

What is a Heathen?

At it's heart, Heathenry is a general term for a continuation of the pre-christian religion native to the Germanic cultures of Northern Europe. Speaking in the broadest commonalities, it involves some measure of ancestor veneration, and a belief in various forms of spirit: land wights, house wights, etc. It involves certain world-view concepts such as Wyrd, Orlog, and Luck. Of course, what any of that means is up for debate.

If you asked a hundred self-identified Heathens, you'd get as many answers. This is not because Heathenry is a blanket religion like Wicca in which just about anything can be included, but because Heathenry is a folk tradition that varies naturally between groups, regions, and points in time. The modern landscape is little different. Though we share some general precepts, how we relate to those beliefs and what we do with them varies quite a bit.

I am not going to get into the various 'denominations' that have cropped up. I'm not familiar enough with Odinism or Theod to tell you much about it, and while I probably have the most in common with Asatru, I don't like to define myself by it. Instead, I prefer to go by heathen. It's a good term, simple and straightforward - which is, to my mind, what a good heathen term should be. More importantly, it's mercifully devoid of the political implications of some of the other associations. 

There's a history to the term I can appreciate as well. Heathen is itself a dirty word. It comes about after the conversion to Christianity, to designate the people "of the hearth." It refers to the people they thought of as hicks and hillbillies who still practiced their naive, native ways. Heathen was the word for those too backwards and uneducated to realize that they should abandon their cultural heritage in favor of the foreign God and his chosen authority structure on earth, rising up from the south and east. It was meant to be a  pejorative, but for me it evokes the kind of stubborn resistance to outside force and loyalty to one's past that I would expect from Heathens today. 

I'll wear it with pride. 

A Journey Here

To understand where you're going, you've got to know where you're coming from. Hopefully, you'll forgive this brief foray into autobiography, but since the blog is meant to be half-journal, I might as well get it out of the way.

My route here is as long as it is convoluted. I grew up in a household that was nominally Christian. While I remember our family attending with fair regularity when I was very young, by the time I was six or seven we had fallen out of the habit. For most of my childhood then, my experience of religion was mostly as a bar against which I was supposed to measure or an authority to which my parents would appeal. I don't recall a time in which Christianity was an active practice in my home that meant something on a spiritual level.

For the most part, it was the appeal to authority, often for what appeared to be arbitrary reasons. I remember being lectured about having female friends, because it was "improper" for an adolescent male to have female friends. This was mighty inconvenient, given that boys of my age were mostly into sports, pot, and porn for much of my developmental years. Lacking an interest in any of the above, I had a hard time connecting. I remember being lectured against reading the wrong things, because somehow knowing about other cultures or belief systems is how the devil gets you. There may be some truth in this, I suppose given that I am a heathen now. I remember being told that fantasy was dangerous, and being lectured against my interests in anything martial - swords and dragons and violence, these were all things hated by God. The net effect was that I learned to conceal my interests and tastes, and when I did get romantically involved with someone, I kept it quiet.

On the other hand, by the time I hit 14 or 15 years old I had a growing interest in spirituality. By then I was already a history nerd, and my interests expanded into not only who these people were and what they did, but a deep desire to understand what they believed and the culture they lived in. Like many, I first turned back to the bible, but knowing as much as I knew already, I couldn't take any of modern Christianity seriously - not knowing the truth about the pagan origins of this or that, or how much of the Bible was essentially cobbled together by the Council of Nycea to select which stories most fit the political aspirations of a developing state religion. Worse still was actually reading the bible. One cannot get out of genesis without having some serious moral questions. I would carry these with me for a very long time.

I then turned to Gnosticism, but while it developed in me an interest in the esoteric, I found too much of what caused me to resent Christianity in the first place - a denial of the world around you in favor of some promised mythology.

My studies became more obsessive with time. I spent some time in Islam and Judaism, Kabbalah.. I eventually turned to the Western Esoteric tradition and spent a good deal of time studying Hermeticism (something I'm still fond of conceptually, even if I do not identify with or practice it). This was about the time I had my first brush with paganism -- unfortunately, through Wicca.

Wicca is a topic for another blog, but suffice to say that while I was first captivated by the notion of returning to pre-christian religion, so much of it was.. flatly wrong. The "origin story" was highly suspect, the cult of persecution and victimization, and most importantly, the underlying assumptions of how paganism actually worked in a historical context. The new age movement soured me on paganism for a long time, and I eventually returned my search to other cultures and contexts.

Along the way I encountered Stoicism, and next to Heathenry, Stoicism is perhaps my second favorite ideology. It shares many of the core values of Heathenry and ultimately, Stoicism is what freed me from Christianity.

There's a funny thing about growing up as a Christian. Even if you don't intellectually buy the story, there's a part of your brain that will always go "..but what if I'm wrong?" What if there is a God and he is as described by the desert faiths? What if there is a hell, and torment, and all of that. While stumbling through Stoicism, I found a quote that is perhaps one of my favorites of all time.

"If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them." Everything fell into place at that moment. I realized it ultimately didn't matter if the desert god was real, he was not someone I wanted any part of. I was free.

The next few years would see me reading deeply on everything from classical Greek philosophy to Buddhism and Shinto, but I always found myself trying to cobble things together. Pick a bit of this, a bit of that. I briefly wondered if I would have to simply write my own religion and start some minor cult somewhere.

Then one day, on a whim, I downloaded a handful of podcasts from itunes, of all things. Among them was an episode of a pagan podcast called Raven Radio -- specifically, a Heathen podcast. The topic of the episode was "Does Wicca and Asatru speak the same language?" Being somewhat wary of wiccans, I was curious. I was instantly hooked.

Raven Radio was a very reconstructionist oriented heathen podcast. The people were ..normal human beings. Down to earth. They had jobs and lives and lived in the real world. Before that episode was over, I was overwhelmed with the feeling "these are my people." It was an awakening for me, a feeling of home and community I've never known elsewhere. I immediately downloaded everything I could get ahold of, grabbed a couple books I found on the subject, and got to work. It was not a long process to realize not only was Heathenry a kind of coming home -- It was not a conversion. I've always been Heathen. I just didn't know it.

I hope one day to get a hold of those guys - Chuck, Bill and Bob. Maybe even meet them in person. If it hadn't been for the work they put in on that show, I may never have found a place to call home.

God Poles

God poles are an interesting expression of germanic paganism. They seem to be about as old as the culture itself, with some bog finds dating back to the ninth century, references to them in the writings of Ahmad ibn Fadlan along the Volga, and descriptions of the statues at Uppsala. Proper god poles can be six or seven feet tall, and more than a foot across and almost always carved of wood. Most often, one would reserve a small area of their land as a kind of sacred space, and erect the pole(s) there.

The function seemed to be some cross between altar, totem and good luck charm. From what I understand, when the pole was erected, the god was invited to inhabit the carving providing a more direct link between the ..erector? ..and the divine. The pole seemed to function primarily as an altar of sorts, with some of them having been described as having hollow mouths to leave offerings in. Finally, there also seemed to be an idea that one would orient the poles in such a way to look over one's land and home, with the notion seemingly that the gods would then be "watching over" your home in a literal way. 

All of this rattling in my head, I decided to sit down and carve a little something for myself. 

My efforts are.. humble.. to say the least, but given that this is my first attempt to actually carve anything, I think it turned out alright. It's not a very large piece, obviously - maybe four inches tall - and would probably qualify more as a good luck charm than a proper god pole, but I'm happy with it. He will be a little desk Thor, for the time being.

After the project was done, I wound up feeling curious and looking up how people who seriously carve as a hobby go about doing it - my effort was mostly "chip at it until it looks like something." Turns out they get super thin, sharp knives and specialized gouges and scoops and then select a nice soft wood like birch, or fir or pine. Then there's me, muscling a K-bar through an old oak branch I got out of the back yard. True to form, I only look up the instructions after they are no longer helpful. Apparently, people tend not to carve oak unless they are using power tools. As sore as my hands are, I can see why.

That said, it was a really nice experience regardless of how the actual statue came out. I feel like I got a lot of value from the experience even outside of any kind of ritual significance of the statue itself. Something about working the wood brings an odd kind of connection, a physical expression of the faith and culture. One can almost imagine an ancestor a thousand years distant, sitting around the fire and carving a little charm of his very own. It's a very satisfying connection.

I think I've got a new hobby. Albeit, next time I may have to invest in proper tools.

Applied Philosophy

There is a concept that I need to discuss that is central to the way in which I understand spirituality. This isn't a concept unique to Heathenry, but one that has developed organically for me as I've studied religions, cultures, and philosophies over the years. I'll warn you ahead of time, it's not a concept that is likely to make me popular.

Simply put, it boils down to: Religion is an applied philosophy.

Depending on where you are at in your life, this may sound obvious, or it may be confusing. What we're talking about is the way in which your beliefs interact with your actions and world-view.

Beliefs are simple enough things. We form thousands of them each day. We change and update these constantly, constantly taking in new information and revising old beliefs. Some of these are changed because the new beliefs seem more correct. On the other hand, some of these never change at all. Human nature makes us very stubborn where beliefs are concerned 

Over time, certain beliefs become important to us and collectively, they form a set of rules for how we view the world. This set of rules and paradigms becomes our philosophy, whether we like it or not. This is the lens through which we view and process the world. 

Religion is another step entirely. It's not enough to simply believe a thing to be true. Religion is the application of philosophy to one's actions and life choices. 

Now the part that will make me unpopular. 

Inherent to every religion is a philosophy and a set of rules and values that go along with it. Agreeing with the beliefs of a religion is not enough to claim it. You must both understand the philosophy of that religion and put it into practice in your daily life. You can claim to be a Christian, you can even "believe in Jesus," but unless you have embraced the philosophy and values of Christianity and applied the rules to your life, you are not a Christian. The same goes for any other faith, whether Buddhism, Islam, Shinto or yes, Heathenry. 

The majority of people in the United States are simply born into their religion. Many will on some level pick up on this concept, even if they don't have a word for it. In simplest terms, it will amount to "being a good Christian." 

For me, Applied Philosophy is a measure of one's spiritual and intellectual integrity. It is the application of philosophy that led me to a home in Heathenry, and it is through applied philosophy that I realized not that I should become Heathen, but that I always have been Heathen... that, however, is a story for another blog. 

Heathen in Progress

First posts are always the hardest. We put so much weight on introductions and opening statements, but perhaps that's the wrong way to do it. Nothing to do but to do it.

Heathen in Progress is meant to be exactly what it says on the tin. A place for me to wax philosophical and record my thoughts as I begin a serious study into the kind of Germanic Paganism that was practiced throughout pre-Christian Northern Europe. I have a suspicion the blog will itself become half-theorycrafting, half-opinion, and half note-taking. I expect to be wrong frequently, and hopefully having my mistakes a matter of public record will keep me humble.

More than anything, I think this is meant to be a record of my journey and beliefs, not just for me but for friends, loved ones, and family members. Its not easy to find out that someone you love is interested in something that can sound so scary or unknown. I hope that through this, I might be able to explain myself and leave something for anyone who might follow.

Wish me luck.