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.