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.