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. 

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. 

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.