There’s a certain simplicity in dealing with an overgrowth of English ivy. It could more appropriately be called an infestation, even. Untouched, it is a quite pleasant plant to look at – rustic houses residing in a bucolic countryside, be-garlanded with a lattice of evergreen and woody vine-work which inexorably enshrouds the entirety of whatever structure it is anchored upon, in a green embrace.

It paints a quite pretty picture, although the reality is often something else entirely. If left unchecked, it proves to be quite the nuisance.

Removing such a tenacious and damnable plant is simply done – all one must do is do. Grab one’s gloves and begin, with liberal amounts of elbow grease. Shortcuts exist, of course: herbicides and animal controls are options. Those of a particular financial endowment may employ legions of gardeners who are able to coax and caress the plant into a facsimile of domesticity.

It is, however, only a facsimile. The plant longs to grow, ever upward and ever outwards. For those with no such inclinations, or desire, to dance to the Dionysian tune of such a voracious and expressive assemblage of greenery, English ivy can be a dogged, implacable interloper. In regions where it is not a welcome guest, but instead an invasive trespasser, one which was mistakenly planted by well meaning (yet ignorant) landscapers, it is a damnable menace – one which will fell trees and crowd out native life. His otherwise Victorian sensibilities aside, Thomas Hardy’s “being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright” is a concern, for such an ambitious plant has felled many a strong tree. By the way, I have a Siberian elm which is growing above my house, entirely encased in such a vine. And that species of tree is most certainly not a stable entity in its own right. Concerns for a later day.

But removal of ivy? Ultimately, it is a simple act – snipping the vine, peeling it bit by bit from the masonry and brick to which it clings, planting one’s knees in the loamy soil and digging until the roots give way from the foundation, until they are pulled free to such an extent that they cannot regrow.

At least that is the theory. We shall in the end see who is more tenacious.

It is a simple statement and a simple execution of action, but sometimes, those simplest acts are the hardest. In this case, it is a right bastard to do, consisting of aching wrists and forearms, of soiled clothes and mud-caked boots, strained back muscles of repeated and methodical extraction from the red loam that fills my yard. We won’t even speak about the “strategic reallocation of the soffit panels” underneath the overhang of my roof where the vines had previously grown under an earlier tenancy.

Those soffits were, of course, pried apart and are now hanging down as I pulled on the vines to try to dislodge them in an earlier investigation. The ivy is still there. For now.

The removal is a repetitive and rote. If the judging gaze of my cats staring at my actions through the windows is any indication, it is also an ignoble one. Rigby Cincinnatus, I’d like to see you out here doing this. You don’t even have thumbs.

Tools help, ideally. I started this with nothing more than my gloved hands, a single flat screwdriver that I had found while previously repairing a pair of burst pipes before the new year, a pair of garden shears (also left by the previous tenants), and a pair of pruning shears. My years of archaeologist experience had made me something of a menace with a tool like a screwdriver, but such a thing is very obviously not up to the task. On day two, I dug out my actual archaeologist’s trowel, as well as a hand saw I use for bushcrafting and camping purposes – some of those vine stumps are thick! By day three, pity was taken, and I was sent out to buy some “real” tools. I’ve been living in a yard-less apartment complex for the past five years, don’t blame me for not having any of these things.

I’m still in the ground with the trowel (the screwdriver has been retired), but at least I can move hunks of earth with some of the shovels which I purchased, and leverage stronger implements against the wall so I can pry tenacious root clusters free. It’s slow going – there’s lots of ivy – and this is just around the house, never mind the seven other infested sites on the very small property. I think fire will be an option in those cases.

While I’m lost in the dirty action of this extraction, my mind wanders and I find myself thinking of the practical actions of this going and doing. It moves beyond simple yard work, into the realm of theology and philosophy and religious action. There’s a similar level of practicality that must be established, expected even in the religious enactment of contemporary Western polytheisms like Heathenry. I’ve been around in the Online world of polytheistic space for a long time, from the days of LiveJournal (Hello, fourth decade barreling at me!) to serving as a member of the welcome committee on dedicated polytheist Discord servers or simply just being Very Online. I see all-too-common stumbling blocks consisting of inaction in the face of adopting these new religious traditions and practices and, despite repeated admonitions of go and do it always seems like there is reluctance to do such things.

This isn’t a criticism of modern action/inaction, either, for history is replete with admonitions of lecturers and teachers of all types. Erga ou logoi. “Deeds not words.” A seemingly very Heathen concept… from 5^th Century Athens, where Socrates rails against Sophistry.

Perhaps it is the Stoic in me, the resultant practical philosophy of the later Imperial period which influences (dominates) the popular conceptual discourse on that intellectual disposition (versus more metaphysical or cosmological concerns), with the remnants of Arius Didymus echoing:

“It is not the person who eagerly listens to and makes notes of what is spoken by the philosophers who is ready for philosophizing, but the person who is ready to transfer the prescriptions of philosophy to his deeds and live in accord with them.” (Arius Didymus, 2.7.11k, trans. Pomeroy, c.f., John Sellars “Stoic Practical Philosophy in the Imperial Period”, pg. 2)

And the crotchety old teacher Epictetus, reportedly declaiming aneu tou prattein, mekhri tou legein, “without deeds, limited to words” as a criticism of those who zealously followed the pursuit of philosophy without applying them to the daily life. In fact, while all of ancient philosophy could be described (as Foucault does) as concerning itself with living well, the surviving statements that concern themselves with actions and living come from Stoic or Stoic-adjacent sources. So yeah, we’ll blame the Stoic in me for this.

We run across self-imposed or externally-imposed blocks to acting and doing. We are chained by fears. Fears of not knowing enough, not doing enough, not being enough in the eyes of the religious figures we are concerned about – colleagues, friends, whichever big name Pagan we want to emulate or impress, even the Gods and numinous divine themselves. We fear mistakes, of the idea of insulting the divine, of doing “it” wrong in the eyes of history, or in the eyes of some figure which professes sole knowledge and The One Right Way. They’re all shackles and impediments to action, and they have to be broken through, only, by action itself.

For many years I have said that I believe the tendency towards the creation of historiographies within reconstructionist polytheism is at once both a help, and a hindrance. It, on one hand, encourages the proficiency of the history of traditions in a chosen religious system, and it is absolutely a useful tool in the exploration of religious themes and how they relate to the individual or the group. On the other hand, it often serves as the focal point for a rigorous argument, a treatment of intellectual analysis in which one possesses the weight of historic fact and precedent in order to “be right”. It acts as an anchor, weighing down the lived enactment of religion, which might otherwise go and develop in unknown or otherwise uncomfortable (or uncritiquable) directions.

As the aggregate wealth of knowledge piles up, so too do the perceptions that we need to be more sure in our understanding, leading to more study, and a continued reluctance to engage in the material and in the enactment of the system being uncovered. Self reinforcing.

This criticism of mine isn’t new, either. Nor is it one which I am solely alone in. I often return to a piece written some years ago (where has the time gone?) by Sarenth, and you can be sure that I have thought of it lately while I was in the dirt with this ivy. It’s the same underlying principle behind Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid, something I liken towards my understanding of do ut des – that theory cannot sustain us, and that alternative structures are possible through doing the work, and that through only action will we find ourselves liberated.

Musonius Rufus said:

“Just as there is no use in medical study unless it leads to the health of the human body, so there is no use to a philosophical doctrine unless it leads to the virtue of the human soul.” (Musonius Rufus, lecture 3.7, trans. Cynthia King in Musonius Rufus: Lectures and Sayings, 2011, pg. 28)

I would add to it, that religious theories are of no use unless they lead to the cultivation of right action and a right relationship with the divine.

These tools do absolutely help, just like in extricating this damn ivy (that I am now going on 6 days pulling apart as I write this). The tools of philosophy and of history and of modern social sciences and comparative studies all help in the development and enactment of these religions.

But they must be used in order to build something lasting, and one cannot gain proficiency in a thing without taking what one has learned and summarily experimenting with it or applying it. Taking abstract theories and engaging with them, without simply regurgitating them (Epictetus would say “spewing” or “vomiting”), and learning what works and what does not. A flat-head screwdriver might not work very well at digging ivy out of the ground, but it does a very good job at prying the ivy vines from the side of a brick wall or wood fence.

“A builder doesn’t come and say, ‘Listen to me lecture on building,’ but he accepts payment, builds this house, and thereby shows his expertise as a builder.” (Epictetus, Discourses, book 3.21, trans. Robin Waterfield in The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, and Fragments, 2022, pg. 212)

It is simply not enough to know the principles of these religious actions or the mechanics of their enactments; they must be put into practice in some way, shape, or form. If we take the gifting cycle to be the underlying concept of most of Western polytheism, then that foundation is built on the relationship between person and divinity. Relationships are intrinsically and inherently actionable – they do not and cannot exist without effort or the expenditure of energy in maintaining and in cultivating them, even those that are renewed after a lapse in time are built on past actions.

Theory is preliminary to practice, but ultimately the action must be done. I can sit about all day, reading how English ivy is an invasive species for my region, and how damaging it can be to structures and the native plant life, but without taking that action to remove it, that knowledge does nothing to help me in cultivating a better relationship with my home and the land it is on. The theory lets me decide the best course of action is, in my case, to dig up the root nodules as best as I can and not simply clip the vines close to the ground, as that will require prolonged labor later (hopefully).

In classic Stoic style, the practical will incorporate the theoretical into an essential component of itself, supplementing it with training, exercises, or practices, and it will then translate into action. Otherwise it can be an impediment to the way in which we can act, or a token of vanity, with the collective accumulation of wealth acting as a treasure hoard being put on display. Some of the Stoics (Epictetus) had comments about people who sought to learn philosophy (which I extract to knowledge in general) simply to be good conversationalists, too, and they’re not very pleasant.

After all, theories and methods are (generally) easy to understand – easier to hoard – but translating those ideas into actions is difficult:

“And so the philosophers must first train us in theory, which is the easier task, and then lead us on to more difficult matters; for in theory, there is nothing to restrain us from drawing the consequences of what we have been taught, whereas in life there are many things that pull us off course.” (Epictetus, Discourses, book 1.26, trans. Robin Hard in Epictetus: Discourses, Fragments, Handbook, 2014, pg. 79)

Stoic philosophy was conceptualized as being supported by spiritual exercises that translates the theory and proofs of what is needed to live well into behavior – philosophical theories into philosophical actions. The parallel here, to me, is obvious, with the goal being related, but at the same time distinct. Instead of wholly cultivating ourselves and our own souls, we also religiously cultivate those relationships with the divine numinous through exercise, through repetition, through application of ritual and cosmological theory and knowledge and all of the weight of history that we are capable of sussing out and understanding.

Armed with the background knowledge and the theories of engaging within the polytheistic system of Heathenry or of other Western traditions, one simply has to take that step and go and do, and no be burdened by an excess of material or the fear of making a misstep.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a ladder.

____

Works referenced:

Hard, Robin, Epictetus: Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Oxford University Press. 2014.

King, Cynthia, Musonius Rufus: Lectures & Sayings, CreateSpace.com. 2011.

Sellars, John, “Stoic Practical Philosophy in the Imperial Period”, Greek and Roman Philosophy, 100 BC-200 AD, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Suppl. 94/1 (2007). Academia.edu.

Sellars, John, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, Second Edition, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2009.

Waterfield, Robin, Epictetus: The Complete Works – Handbook, Discourses, and Fragments. University of Chicago Press. 2022.

Categories: Community Thoughts, Conversational, Generalist Paganism, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts

Tagged: action, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religious practice, Western Polytheism

Phil-thoughts-ophy

Marc

Posted on January 17, 2023

J. P. F. Wynne’s 2019 monograph Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination opens its introduction with a with a pointed and cutting sentence:

“The Romans did not understand their own religion.”

I was browsing through the book, to see if it would be of some indeterminable use in the future for my personal reading and polytheistic musings, and this sentence stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Derived from the situation presented by Marcus Tullius Cicero in Academica 1.9, the sentence is certainly direct and eye catching, befitting an introductory hook.

And, yet, instead of simply rolling my eyes and breezing past it, I sat with the thought a moment. The Romans did not understand their own religion? How could this be? A people of such antiquity, with a vast tradition of both historic inquiry and practical, priestly traditions, unaware of their own religion(s) or religious views?

He clarifies immediately:

“They were the heirs to immemorial practices in honor of their gods. But when they paid the gods cult, they did not know the meaning of what they did, nor the nature of the gods they worshipped. The result was that they moved through their own city, looking for a way to feel at home.” (Wynne, 2019 pg. 1)

This last sentence is the picture painted by Cicero in his work, from which Wynne takes his very pointed remark. In his work, Wynne is crafting an argument for the development of Cicero’s translation of (Greek) philosophy into the Latin corpus, especially from the interpretation of the works On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum) and On Divination (De Divinatione) and from the position that they were actually the fabrication of a careful and methodical philosopher – a title which has historically not been granted to Cicero.

Also, as a modern scholar, Wynne is writing in a tradition of academic scepticism and, without knowing his personal life or predilections, most probably one inculcated in a Christian-dominated academic milieu (that which either has inherited ideas of “religion” from scholasticism or, conversely, attempts and sanitize such things through a “secular” lens). So from a certain perspective (that being modern/post-modern Christo-academia), it is possible to argue that the Romans did not understand their own religion.

Wynne contrasts Cicero’s project – the application of Greek philosophy – with the alternative and then-popular remedy of Varronian antiquarianism, both employed by a small class of intellectuals who would naturally be concerned with the rigors of understanding such a thing as the “why” or “how” of religion.

At the risk of grossly misinterpreting Varro and the misrepresenting the accounts left to us of his Antiquitates (via Augustine of Hippo and Tertullian, for more on this and treatments of Varro, see scholars such as Burkhart Cardauns, Jörg Rüpke, et cetera), Varro’s efforts were a reconstructive attempt at recalling ‘forgotten’ religious lore, the laying of data to recall the Romans to their orthopraxis and traditions, practices he felt were falling into disuse or lapsed beyond memory, and an attempt to foster a sense of piety-through-historic-convention.

Effectively, Varro’s work was a form of social memory (Rüpke 2014, pg. 250). Cicero’s one of philosophical theology. Both authors approached the idea that the Romans had lost something – a helpful understanding of their religion – and sought to give interested parties the tools to regain that understanding.

I personally see parallels with this discussion in the modern polytheist movement, especially as I have experienced it. Put simply, many of us simply do not understand out religion(s). I most assuredly and emphatically consider myself one of these people, and it is a large reason why I do what I do and where my interests lead me. As someone who strives to understand the “why” and the “how” of this great contemporary experiment, the overall sentiment professed by Wynne deeply resonated with me.

I have made no small criticism of contemporary Western polytheist traditions and their tendency to levy the weight of historic precedent and historiography as both road map and justification for an unerring reconstruction of religious modes of practice, of expression of identity. It is such that, in effect, many of the lesser-attested traditions which are lifted by contemporary practice engage in their own forms of religious historiographical creation. Historic precedent (either attested or reconstructed) forms a cornerstone for further inquiry, sometimes at the detriment to contemporary exploration or development. In many cases it serves as a barrier to entry.

In this case, I very much see my desires and predilections reflected with greater clarity in the Ciceronian style of inquest, though with different levels of concern for what constitutes impiety or superstitious views. It simply does not satisfy me to solely recreate the aspects which we can glean from “the sources”, their interlocutors, translators, or contextual reporters, without understanding the deeper meanings. In doing so does little more than appealing to history as a fallacy and, to me, is lazy intellectualism, for it promulgates a lineage of regurgitated orthopraxis, where few from before understand the philosophical mechanics involved.

When we collectively speak of ritual reflexivity (ex. Kimberley Patton), or the cosmological foundations of ritual and rituals role in the wider metaphysical and physical world (ex. Mircea Eliade, or Paul Bauschatz, or Roger Woodard, or Roy Rappaport, or Catherine Bell, etc.,), or simply the why of something like sacrifice and the economy of gifting (ex. Marcel Mauss, Seneca, etc.,) and all other subjects or religious topics, we are speaking to the intellectual project of understanding our religions and religious practices from this mechanical perspective. It is not one strictly, or even necessarily, the traditional or historical.

I shall fully and readily admit that, perhaps, this is not the driving fixation for some (Many? Most?). My anecdotal experience is – after all – anecdotal. There is no fault to the practitioners who are quite contented with a road map and instruction guide, or even simple exposure to the themes enough to engage in ritual enactment with the numinous. Should they desire to take it that “far”, that is their prerogative, and I shall not be construed or misinterpreted so as to be speaking to a totality on this. My views, wants, needs, or desires within the wider understanding of contemporary polytheism should not be taken as the sole method, nor the presiding guidepost from which to follow.

For his part, Cicero wasn’t antagonistically critical of Varro’s writing, and his narrators credit Varro’s methods as helping the Roman populace at large. The right way, to Cicero, was to return to the legacy (expounded by Varro), with philosophical moderation and the application of philosophical theology to the benefit of the whole. A carefully weighed view of the Gods will lead closer to pious action (Wynne 2019, pg 278), or, failing that, helping each Roman find theological meaning in their religion.

Contemporary consensus argues that most likely the average Roman was not very much influenced by the philosophical-back-and-forth on the nature of the divine or the practices associated with the religion(s) at Rome. Cicero and Varro were writing for a small and elite audience, even if principally they were not likely to see the results of the philosophical help that the elite were designing and arguing.

Wynne does bring up the idea that it is possible that the “diagnosis of alienation and bewilderment in the face of the traditional religion was true for people even beyond those with the leisure and education for intellectual pursuits” (Wynne 2019, pg. 73-74, footnote 33). I would say it is probably more than possible, but a likelihood, given the various contemporary experiences of modern polytheists. The question would then be whether the Roman populace at large employ or consider new philosophical ideas, a question which is largely unanswerable.

Now, much as then, there are individuals who are engaging in a rationalization of their religions, which in itself is a part of religious experience and expression (Rüpke 2014, pg. 248, this is not to say that such ruminations satisfy the prescribed religious requirements of a faith-practice.). This rationalization I believe, is intrinsically necessary as we are exposed to new challenges of thoughts and theories, and new developments in society, else we remain out-of-step.

Comparably, we have the luxury of having at our fingertips access to a mutually intelligible education combined with a robust network and global information infrastructure, permitting us to – unlike Cicero and Varro, and all the other philosophers and historians at the time who were approaching these questions – engage with an unfathomably wide treatment from which we can pursue our goals and aims. These formerly “elite” questions, the philosophically mechanical and historic both, are no longer confined to a class of means or leisure and can (should) be asked, in my view. By doing so, the collective “project” of Western polytheism can only be fortified and holistically enriched.

However, we mustn’t box ourselves in by cleaving to a singular historic or philosophical precedent. To do so risks much in the way of isolating our understanding. The question of which philosophical theological framework could be of use is another matter, entirely. I would not care to force myself into the same manner of box of historic philosophy, understanding my philosophical theology “simply because the Stoics said so”, as my criticisms to those performing a rigorous historic reconstruction would then be self-applicable.

So, as I sit with Wynne’s quoted text, above, I see some similarities in states of existence and history. I see the yearning and the use of history and of philosophy to engage in the natures of the religions, and keenly understand a listlessness in theological belonging. I also see tremendous opportunity for rigorous intellectual expression, provided it is crafted in such a way that it is not elevated beyond the reach of those practitioners who form the beating heart of the contemporary enactment of our polytheistic religions.

References:

Rüpke. Jörg. 2014. “Historicizing Religion: Varro’s Antiquitates and History of Religion in the Late Roman Republic.” History of Religions, Vol. 53, No. 3 (February 2014), pp. 246-268. https://doi.org/10.1086/674241.

Wynne, J.P.F. 2016. Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press

Categories: ACADEMIC ELITISM!!1+1, Community Thoughts, Conversational, History, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts

Tagged: Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Philosophy, Polytheism, Religion, Theology, Western Polytheism

With the Wind at My Back

Marc

Posted on December 20, 2022

Just under a week ago, I left New England.

I tendered my resignation at work, said “Goodbye” to the life I had known for the past half-decade. At two minutes before two in the morning I loaded what bags I had left in the back of my car and drove with my two very grumpy, very surprised, cats for ten hours.

Almost seven hundred miles later, I finally got to a new home.

It’s in a new region, with its own local slang, idioms, customs and expectations.
It’s in a different growing season, with variable temperatures, rain patterns, and new local geography.

So many things are different, more than you would really think to expect when you set out. Time itself is different, despite being in the same demarcated zone – the sun rises differently here and sets later, and it’s enough to throw me off. The air smells different. The soil is a different color. There are plants that, despite it being December, I do not necessarily recognize, or are in greater abundance than I had seen in New England.

Of course, in my life, I have moved. I’ve moved for school and for work, just as a matter of course. But school was a transitional period, and I never remained around the college(s) which I had attended for further employment. I’ve never really moved outside a two-hundred mile radius from “home”. For the Northeast, that covers most of it.

To me, it’s an interesting experience. It’s not interesting because I’ve been a lifelong resident of the various areas of New England (and, yes, I count where I grew up in Upstate New York as “New England” given that it is linguistically connected to one of the four New England English dialects).

It is interesting when viewed through the lens of polytheism. We, at least those in the circles which I am still present, often talk about the localization process. We speak to personal internalization of, and – if you would permit me – the customization of identity and locality into our realms of religion. The ‘how’ of divine interaction through our distinctly local sacred landscapes, how They manifest with the multitude of Their faces, guises, and intentions.

I don’t know that it is common for us to speak to the flip-side of that localization process – the act of letting go of aspects tied to the location when we transition to newer, different, locations and experiences, to those newer fields of view. We, and I am speaking to the American experience, are generally pretty transient – although geographic mobility has reduced in the past handful of years. When all things are said and done, Americans are more likely to change their locations than many of their counterparts in the world around them. There are continuing developments of identity among Americans regarding the economic privilege of mobility which are actively shaping distinctions in class groupings, a confluence varying factors that are creating new lines of division among peoples.

But we as polytheists take as our road map those peoples who were not necessarily as transient, less likely to travel far distances, at least with as great a frequency as ourselves. We can talk a great deal about how the Greek colonies around the Mediterranean spread and developed locally distinct identities, or how the Roman provinces incorporated local priesthoods or religious understandings as distinct from the City of Rome itself. While we speak to the mobility of various peoples in history, those timescales are just that – historic. Individual experiences are generally lacking from the record.

Clearly, people quite obviously moved, cults clearly spread outside of their native regions. But they were also working within a polytheistic milieu – one, perhaps, where they did not have to think quite so hard about moving religious cults. Even in the case of local cults, with their own idiosyncratic views of deity, it could have been taken as a matter of course that a suitable cultic reflection would invariably be found, or otherwise transplanted within reason.

Why this waxing about localizations? In January 2021 I contracted COVID-19 from work. My place of employment had resumed in-person office work in May of 2021, and I had only a few blessed weeks of working from home before a short stint of being furloughed. I’m still dealing with the after effects of that, physically, like so many others.

Without truly getting too deep into it, during the height of the illness I had a fever dream (or, perhaps, simply a fevered inclination) of a hyperlocalized, dark-eyed, “Apollo of Providence”. This notion then spiraled into developing a triad of divinities for the City of Providence where I lived, in the style of the Aventine, consisting of Apollo, Minerva, and Mercurius. Largely inspired by the historic nature and geographic foundation of the city, it included influences from the healing centers, the educational history, various iconographies and other comparisons with Providence. Epithets flowed, observances planned, with intentions for sites scouted for surreptitious offering locations prior to this move.

And now I am gone from that place, and that work has to be reevaluated, with some things set to the side and other things modified for the new locality in which I find myself. Clearly, I do not need to “leave” the triad of these Gods behind – They are certainly bigger than any one single human city, or single location. However, these localized cults of worship and emphasis drew heavily on the immediate landscapes, themes, and histories of the city in which I formerly resided.

As Akestōr (Ἀκέστωρ), of course, Apollo remains, as an epithet of that magnitude is transnational and pan-regional, not at all tied intrinsically to one fixed location. Contrast this to an epithet like the Napian Apollo, the Ἀπόλλων Ναπαῖος, tied to the city of Nape, a far more localized reflection of the cultic expression of Apollo there. And so, here, there is no Federal Hill. There’s no cultural expression which fed into my understanding of this Triad of Providence through the lens of being Italian-American. No College Hill where prayers to Minerva are offered, there is no port here to make prayers for Mercurius as trader and wayfarer.

Ultimately, that’s the nature of the beast – many polytheisms from which we can craft our religious views. In this process of regionalizing and localizing modern cults for deities, we see how much happens to change when we take ourselves out of that element, where the modern semi-rootless nature of transience meets what we popularize as fixed identities of static cults.

There’s nothing to say that parts of this cannot be carried with me, simply that there are bits that have to be let go or, at least, re-envisioned. I am thinking specifically of Apollo Smintheus, whose cult spread from a location near the town of Hamaxitus to the Island of Rhodes. Will there be an observance held in my life, in comparison to the Sminthia in that location, in honor of the time spent with the cult in Providence? Who is to say.

However, there is a mountain outside the back window of my bedroom now, where there wasn’t one this time last week. Who is it? Whose is it? Who resides there? How many of Them? Questions abound, and for sure, the one constant is that localization, local theophany and engagement with the numinous, never is really “done”. It’s always there, always needing to be engaged with, and expanded upon when our own horizons shift around us.

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Tagged: Local Cult, Movement, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religion

On Identity Generation in Western Polytheism

Marc

Posted on March 8, 2022

Identity formation is an ongoing process – achieved through both interactions with groups of individuals consisting of a common outlook, and through performative actions of rituals throughout life (Khademi-Vidra, 2014). How they form, are applied through the self or from external sources, and how they are integrated has spawned a century-old subfield of sociology, which only briefly will be spoken about here.

In the modern world, identity formation and enactment is often stripped from individual and communal spaces, largely through a combination of socio-economic forces that dismantles in order to replace in the service of its own ends – that is, the exploitation of capital (Krawec, 2022). Social spaces and relationships which would otherwise ground and offer foundation to one’s identity are destroyed; in its place a deep-rooted insecurity and longing for a sense-of-self is erected, as neighborhoods, ties to location and history, and even family ties are all uprooted and dissolved.

At the same time as it is being stripped, “identity” is often commodified. Whether for retail sale and sightseeing (including fetishization), the proffering of “authentic” products targeted to both diasporas and voyeur tourists (Heller, 2003), or even in the case of for-profit genetic testing kits. The latter is particularly representative of the dystopian capitalist landscape, a product developed which capitalizes on this very insecurity and lack of historic ties in order to “aid” individuals in finding some sense of themselves.

The intrinsic sense of longing which many Westerners feel under this demeaning socio-economic system, for identities which have been sundered and the urge for belonging by forging family connections, for a sense of continuity in place, is indelibly grafted into the cultural psyche. Raised in and exposed to this climate for the past thirty or forty or more years, Western polytheists (especially in America and Canada, but to an extent in Europe) are seeking identity for themselves, and their notion of self often intersects and interacts with their religious perspectives.

Identities, as with many other labels, are sometimes gained and applied, shed and discarded, as one develops a greater sense of self; matures into a greater sense of perspective or expectation of the world, especially regarding their role within it and, ultimately, who they desire to be. The possession of such labels and self-identifying qualifiers can even amount to reappropriation – as Galinksy et al explore in “The Reappropriation of Stigmatizing Labels: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Power and Self-Labeling”. Self-identification and self-labeling provide a powerful tool in the development of the self, as they encourage self-esteem or give individuals and groups the opportunity to more properly define their own discursive expressions of identity.

How we apply those labels – who is attracted to those identities – are intrinsically linked, especially due to the nuances driving ways in which we collectively act on social and (in some cases) the parasocial levels. For communities which are amorphous and possess nebulous boundaries consisting of many varied characteristics (as in the case of those which are primarily considered “online” versus “offline”, as one such example), it can be challenging to define identity. This is especially true when there is no such perception of cohesive social expression, where things like widespread globalization, reliance on ephemeral and distant relationships for companionship – especially through the near-omnipresence of social media – and neoliberal managerialist attitudes conspire to create societies consisting of little to no physical community (Karkov, 2020).

In contemporary Western polytheistic practice it is common to associate one’s religio-spiritual identity with a previous cultural incarnation, one that broadly aligns to both notions of divinity as well as practical religious enactment. That is, modern practitioners appropriate the image of extinct ethnonyms as their own form of self-identification and the labeling of their religious practice.

In the various non-Wiccan, non-Wiccanate polytheistic circles it is common to be a “Norse” or “Anglo-Saxon” Heathen, a “Roman” cultor, a “Gaul”, or other such identified practitioner. It is commonly employed shorthand, used to easily identify oneself from another group in terms of appearance and “flavor” of belief. Likewise, two individuals with great vagaration in practical behavior may nevertheless ascribe to the same identifying label. These ethnonymic labels appear to provide an easy, all-encompassing range by which people can develop a sense of religious identity; how they can collectively act on both the personal and on the macroscopic social level in an inter/intrafaith dialogue.

And yet, there are repeated incidents where individuals feel their faith is in crisis, that their identities do not encapsulate all that they feel they should be or that they exist out of step with their notion of self, leading to dissatisfaction in practice and a constant seeking for a missing piece.

It is understandable. Defining communities as varied and amorphous as those encompassing contemporary polytheisms in a satisfactory manner is intrinsically difficult due to extensive nuances, historical precedents and divergences, and an understanding that in the transition from individual/microcosm to communal/macrocosm a definition will ultimately try to assert a relatively narrow display of norms and views.

On the outset, questions easily arise: which group of people in an oftentimes broad coalition of tribal entities serves as a model? Whose views and norms shall be appropriated? And so on, and so forth, with ever-smaller units of expression being utilized as identities that people latch onto, effectively hyper fixating on reconstructing a particular location and narrow period of time.

Doing so, ultimately, accomplishes two things:

It relegates the myriad understanding of theological concerns to a mere cultural affectation and accoutrement. That is, if we consider the worship of the divine as a (or, perhaps more appropriately, the) defining feature of polytheistic religious identity, then this action shoe-horns myriad different and numinous beings into strictly human categories. It effectively conflates the demarcation of divinity with what is essentially a demarcation of perceived cultural boundaries, creating false barriers when none were historically present.
It also establishes boundaries based on what amounts to superficial understandings of cultural identities in a very anachronistic sense, all based on temporally distinct and no-longer-applicable ethnonymic categories which ignore the nature of polytheistic theology (as above), the precedents of cross-cultural transmission, pluralism, and a fluid exchange of ideas which are all historically attested.

The idea of a rigidly and clearly defined boundary for religious practice and definitions is appealing to many people for many reasons; perhaps it stems from a scientific perspective, where an orderly world of classifications and categories delineate disparate groups, stemming from historic and scholastic convention. This point is especially true of religious beliefs as presented by antiquarians and nineteenth century scholars – the foundations of much of modern scholarship as presented by writers like Thomas Bullfinch who promoted the idea of uniformity of belief through collections of mythologies categorized by their rigid philological or linguistic background and not through any notion of the development of culture.

As modern scholars of the study of pre-Christian and non-Christian religions have relatively recently begun discussing, scholasticism does not often do the vagaries in these religious identities justice. Instead of consisting of orthodox arrangements of neatly defined beliefs which are categorically identifiable (a la Christianity, the archetypal “representation” of religion in Western scholarship), these religious instances are instead being typified as various “religious systems”. For instance, instead of speaking of a cohesive and rigid representative “pantheon”, as Terry Gunnell explores in “Pantheon? What Pantheon?” (Gunnell, 2015), scholarship reappraises and challenges conventional modes of thinking with these pre-Christian peoples. This reappraisal often accepts and elaborates on a shared diversity of belief, blurred boundaries of practice and worship, and the intrinsic notion of differences between geographic and civic regions, theological entities, and mundane professions.

This notion of an academically constructed and constrained idea of religion, influenced and typologically presented in the vein of (or contrast to) Christianity, or the Christo-Academic experience, is not a new phenomenon in recent scholarship; it is one that has been addressed for the religions of other pre-Christian peoples in many disciplines. Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (trans. Paul Cartledge) opened their introduction of Religion in the Ancient Greek City (Zaidman, pg. 3) by advocating for a “preliminary mental readjustment” in order to “abandon familiar cultural territory and radically question received intellectual categories” when studying ancient Greek religious life. Out of the gate they stress the incompatible nature and the fundamental difference in societal concepts between twentieth (now twenty-first) century conceptual frameworks that were used to describe “contemporary religious phenomena”, and those frameworks of the ancient Greeks themselves.

Jonathan Z. Smith went so far as to claim that “Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy” (Smith, cf. Polinskaya, pg. 4). In the case of the study of Greek religion, Jean-Pierre Vernant argued that “in the checkerboard pattern formed by various typological combinations there is no square in which to enter Greek religion. It hardly appears as a religion at all.” (Smith, cf. Polinskaya, pg 3). These developments of notions of “popular religion” among pre-Christian peoples while skewing somewhat from its Christian teleological influences, nevertheless are indelibly marked by the privileged position held by that other religious system’s existence in the mindscape of Western intellectual thought.

Western polytheists who embark on the various reconstruction attempts, utilizing the methodology of reconstruction (which, perhaps, encourages this line of thinking unintentionally given its close relationship with academia), must likewise undertake an intellectual readjustment. Theirs no more privileged, no more “correct”, an intellectual position simply because they themselves choose to believe in and enact with the efficacy of these religious systems, where modern scholars or lovers of mythology may otherwise not. Divestiture from these academically-fostered notions is as fundamentally required to the Western polytheist as it is to the academic.

In order to cleave to an identity within a system dominated by singular religious enactment – one which is intrinsically hostile to polytheistic expression, Western polytheists focus on the resurrection of an ethnos of a people. This refraction of their desires for an understanding of themselves and their modeling of “religion” is cast through what amounts to a distorted prism that not only locks divinity into a-historic group borders but also transposes very modern views of ethnicity and belonging onto the past.

Further, it is possible that contemporary polytheist identity so manufactured can be critically viewed through the lens presented by Zygmunt Bauman – something akin to a retrotopia. That is, it is a place or world which no longer maintains the hope for a future utopia and so transposes happiness and communal identity on what amounts to an imaginary past. It is something which is centered on a yearning and an emptiness, one which may (or may not) be exacerbated by the incidence of larger, and more distant, virtual communities (Bauman, cf., Karkov, 27).

It would not be unrealistic to present these views as ultimate products of a form of nostalgia – a rejection of the modern (and thus within the West) Christian-influenced world, buttressed by a melancholia for the imagined conditions of the past. What starts as a seemingly easy method of classification and categorization of identity (ethno-religious identity) morphs into something more haunted and consuming – it becomes a potential avenue for self-expression from what is seemingly mundane, the solitariness of modern Western existence.

This adopted ethnicity and culturally identifying heritage, again paraphrasing Bauman, seemingly becomes both a refuge and, in some respects, a weapon in this battle to establish community (Bauman, 58-60). To practitioners of Western polytheist traditions, the most well known representation of this battle is the inclusion and exclusion of groups based on racial “appropriateness” to such a regional religious identity. Typically constrained to geographic locality or ethnic affinity (read: vagaries of whiteness), claims of exclusivity of worship of deity and religious systems are used as bludgeons against those deemed “other”.

In these peoples and in what amounts to constructed religious identities, the past is rectified and amplified, something which is ultimately enhanced. But it is also simultaneously antiquated and modernized, familiarized but exoticized, and adapted to present conditions while clinging to memories and desires of what is overall an imaginary, out of touch, people. Descartes wrote that “Even the most famous histories that neither change nor argument the significance of things to make them more readable, almost always omit the most commonplace and least striking events, thereby distorting what they leave in.” (Descartes, 51-2).

What can one then expect from Western polytheists who are working to rebuild and revivify the idea of religious worship from spot-welded, incomplete histories and accountancy, rife with preconceived notions and influenced by external themes? Beneath the surface of doing so is the risk of creating a mythic past, encouraging the persistent error of understanding. No matter how unintentionally, it is a mythic past which is both indebted to, and ripe for, the misuse by romanticist, ethno-natonalist designs.

Intentions aside, this type of identity building is ultimately an act of anachronistic appropriation. It is the definition and constraining of one’s religious identity typified by delineations of a people not one’s own. This identity, so often, proves itself to be an inexact fit within the world-as-it-exists, leading practitioners to question their role in their religion, their religion’s role within their lives. Questions relating to piety, to acts of worship, and to ritual efficacy are instead trumped by feelings of inadequacy of self, of being less-than-perfect at whichever polytheistic enactment one has decided upon, which then reinforce the belief that one is not good at, does not belong to their religious practice. Or, damningly, that their religious practice doesn’t exist in a real and tangible sense.

Western polytheistic edifices, constructed around incomplete and romantic notions of ancient peoples, yet at the same time eschewing modern labels and identities in favor of a seemingly nostalgic past will continue to suffer repeated identity crises, and continue to proffer themselves as an ultimately empty space. To paraphrase Catherine Karkov from her book Imagining Anglo-Saxon England (Karkov, 216), this “retro”-migration leads directly into a form of Bauman’s retrotopia of tribalist identity, one which does little to instill the importance of true religious veneration, instead only serving to erect arbitrarily drawn borders and influence the conceptions of peoples who came before.

Theirs is a heightened potentiality of developing what amounts to a static ontology (again, paraphrasing Karkov), one which is steeped in perpetuating a melancholic position and image, that is concerned more with authenticity of what amounts to an imaginary ethno-tribalist image than it is concerned with religious enactment.

Western polytheists have the tools at their disposal which can create identity, without resorting to rigid structures of cobbled-together identities mistakenly derived from these ethnonyms which fundamentally act out of step of their day-to-day. Instead of something as trite as being hung up “as a Saxon” and only begrudgingly observing familial birthday celebrations (despite any lacking historicity to the notion), Western polytheists can instead embrace the notion of the divine as truly autonomous beings worthy of worship, of elaborating worldviews and philosophies and applying those to their daily lives, of disavowing the makings of problematic and romanticized constructs which can be used for ethnic hierarchies and ideologies, and, most importantly, not looking back in order to find their voice, but look forward towards a more holistic and encompassing, inclusive, expression.

References:

Bauman, Zygmunt. Retrotopia, Cambridge, 2017.

Descartes, René. Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire la raison et cherchez la vérité

dans les sciences (1637; Paris: Vrin, 1989).

Galinsky, Adam D., Cynthia S. Wang, Jennifer A. Whitson, Eric M. Anicich, Kurt Hugenberg, and Galen V. Bodenhausen. “The Reappropriation of Stigmatizing Labels: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Power and Self-Labeling.” Psychological Science 24, no. 10 (October 2013): 2020–29.

Gunnell, Terry. “Pantheon? What Pantheon?” Scripta Islandica. ISLÄNDSKA SÄLLSKAPETS

ÅRSBOK 66/2015.

Heller, Monica. “Globalization, the New Economy, and the commodification of identity” in Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/4, 2003: 473-492.

Karkov, Catherine E. Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotoipia, Dystopia, The Boydell Press: Rochester, NY, 2020.

Khademi-Vidra, Ainko. “Identity Spaces”, Acta. Univ. Sapientiae, Social Analysis, 4, 1-2 (2014) 109-120

Krawec, Patty. “To Be Good Kin”, The Midnight Sun Magazine 2.14.22, https://www.midnightsunmag.ca/to-be-good-kin/ accessed 2.15.22.

Polinskaya, Irene. A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People and the Land of Aigina 800-400 BCE, Brill: Boston, 2013.

Zaidman, Louise Bruit and Pauline Schmitt Pantel (trans. Paul Cartledge). Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Cambridge, 1993.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Heathen, Heathenry, Identity, Pagan, Paganism, Polytheism, Religion, Religious Identity, Western Polytheism

Rosmerta of Roanoke: Our Lady of the Valley

Marc

Posted on February 26, 2022

In my hiatus, as I am writing my own new material, you should read this. Please, and thank you.

The Wind's Eye

Local Gods hold a special place in my particular religion, where I emphasize connection and interdependence. I’ve always been drawn to building relationships with the spirits that surround me, even from a young age when I didn’t explicitly identify as pagan. Going into the woods as a kid, I tried to feel out the spirits of the trees, the living breath of the forest. I craved those immediate, commonplace connections, discovering the hidden holiness around me, and a feeling of intimacy with a place, before I had any interest in petitioning more widespread and historically attested Gods.

When I first visited Roanoke six years ago, I was captivated by it. I loved the small but cosmopolitan energy of the place — the silver whale of the ultramodern Taubman Museum cresting above the late 19th century brick market and railway buildings, the sprawling Tudor-style monolith of the Hotel Roanoke and the…

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A Prayer to Janus

Marc

Posted on January 1, 2022

Divine Janus,
Two-Faced God of Things that Were
and Things Yet To Be,
As the Light gives way to the Dark
and the Dusk again to the Dawn,
Each in turn a new beginning,
Bear well Your benevolence on this new turning.

Janus Pater
Bring forth the Sun,
You who begins each year, fleeting,
through renewal of that which came before,
be gracious and merciful,
Open new doors and reveal new vistas.

Janus, God of Gods,
Father of Gods, 
Gatekeeper, Beginner, Creator, 
Source of Years,
Provide peace upon us.

Categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Pagan, Paganism

You Cannot Eat Theory

Marc

Posted on July 19, 2021

I just read an amazing quote that sums up my feelings on so much: “You cannot eat theory.” This goes for leftists, polytheists, environmentalists, for damned near anything. You cannot FUCKING eat theory. If your response to someone struggling is to say ‘read theory x’ or ‘read this book/book list’ you are lost. A popular […]
You Cannot Eat Theory

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Mothers Night, the Dead, and the Flickering Amongst the Dark

Marc

Posted on December 20, 2020

Clear orbs of light from the natural beeswax tapers flicker in the dark of the room, the flames dancing and forcing the shadows to write along the walls and the corner that the table is set against. It is as if this shrine, this holy space to my ancestors and dead, was a sentinel in that darkness, guarding and bolstering against it even if it is, in reality, simply in one spare bedroom of my apartment overlooking a busy road in Rhode Island.

I always offer sacrifice and prayers at night, at least on holidays that are in observance to the Infernal Gods and the Dead.

My space is adorned with memories and offerings: images of the dead, flowers (violets, to be precise, if and when I can find them) in order to remember the warmth of the year in the dark of a New England winter, cups of wine, and of coffee, and oil are placed alongside plates of food and bread which are laid out for my honored dead.

The curls of incense fill the room, scents of loose herbal arrangements drifting throughout the space. And I am there, sitting alone in that room with just the candle light and my memories to accompany me, the mothers of my family, who have passed away from this world yet exist within the fabric of reality and in the layering of Wyrd in the Well.

It is Modraniht, one of the holiest nights of the Anglo-Saxon Heathen calendar, a night when I worship my Matrons and my Matronae in the vein of those peoples that lived along the borders of Rome, and of Gaul, and of Germania. It’s a time when I sit with my dead grandmothers, and great grandmothers, and my great aunts, and all the other women of my line. Betty, Dorothy, Cornelia, Constance, Mary, and so many others.

Even those women who I am not related to by blood, but by bond. I think of them, all. Honor them all. They all influenced me, molded and shaped me. Made me, well, me.

And we’re entering that time again, once more. We always do, we always return to this point. Even with as insane as this year has been, and as fortuitous as the eve of this solstice and in the presence of a rare celestial event, it is fitting to observe at this time.

This time of year often sees so much in the way of commentary on death, and the Dead. It is almost ubiquitous in Pagan writing. And it’s natural, since They form so much of our religious life, across the breadth of our religious practices and communities. It is a time for remembrance, and a time for worship, and for some of us, it is a time for propitiation.

“Oh?”, you may ask. “Is not the Yule-tide a sort of festival of lights?”

Well, yes. But also, no. As there is no one right practice, there is no one right interpretation of Yule. Of Geola. It has always come across to me as a series of holy days that are decidedly….less optimistic than a light-bringing holy day.

After all, it is the time of the Wild Hunt, when Old One-Eye leads His hounds across the skies, where His undead host of malevolent revenants follow. As much as it is a season to looking towards spring and feasting with family and friends, it is also as much a season of keeping *those sorts* away. And honoring our dead prevents them from growing restless.

There is a stillness, a pause, and a respite from the motion of the world. There is a palpable sense where something could very well be encroaching on the other side of the door. It is a decidedly liminal period. Moreso, I think, than many other times of the year.

The shrine before me is the best that I can do. My life has recently been one of bouncing from home to home, job to job, and region to region, for so many years that I have not had the luxury of setting roots down yet. A travesty afforded by modernity and being in the inevitable social and economic position of being an older Millennial, I suppose.

I have no mound on which to sit, to properly talk and listen to my dead. The tomb, that second half of our religious practice which enshrouds all the lives and continuing life of our dead, is far away from me. In truth, as an American descendant of so many different peoples, there is no single place where I could go and find my family tomb. I could not lay down violets, pour wine or favored drinks, or leave food, even if my present geographic location was not an issue. My dead are scattered all over the Northeast of the United States, or are back in Italy.

It is a loss that such roots have been forcibly severed, and as I grow older I feel that loss with growing regularity. I feel it every year, it is just more pronounced now.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, though, Mothers’ Night amidst the winds of the Hunt. On one hand, it’s a night in which I seek to attract the attention, and wisdom, and love of my ancestral matronly dead. At the same time, on the other hand, I am hiding from the ravenous dead, the malign dead that would scoop one from the byways of the world if you notice them and they notice you.

I do my best to avoid the ire of Old One-Eye.

It’s not exactly the jolly, joyous image that many people have. It hardly is befitting a Pagan themed Hallmark holiday movie, for sure.

Our Pagan religions collectively worship our ancestral dead, it’s a fact regardless of the individual faith tradition. Many of us do not have recent ancestors who shared our religious proclivities, or even who would approve of what it is we do. The matrons of my family are staunch Italian and English Catholics, strict Scots Presbyterians, Pennsylvania Dutch Friends, and kind-hearted Methodists. I do not think many would approve of such methods in my life.

But in death? In death it is said that many things change, and perceptions widen. I firmly believe that unless our ancestral dead were absolutely abhorrent in life they largely move beyond such prejudices. Many of them appear simply to be happy that they’re being remembered and engaged with. Mortal perception is so wholly limited. And among the death workers I am privileged to know, and who have never lead me astray in their guidance, this is a common feeling.

As much as we are of Them, of our Dead, They are of us. They are not gone, and they never have been. Modern Westerners, particularly in those Protestantized nations that are driven by single-use consumerism lose family, grieve for some small time, and then move on. It’s the notion that death is an end of one’s influence in the world or their participation in the family that I rail against. It may be callous of me to say, because no one person’s grief is quantifiable to another’s, but in looking at the experience of Western death (sociologically, anthropologically, colloquially and anecdotally, etc.), it’s hard not to see it as a reflection of throw-away culture.

And that’s not how it’s been historically reasoned, and it’s not how it is in our theologies. The tomb is simply an extension of the house. The maxim “What is remembered, lives”, is very apt here. As the second half of the lifecycle of the house, the dead were included in the daily lives of the living, fed, honored, approached for guidance, all manners of engagement. They simply aren’t with us in the tangible, limited, world of the here and now.

It’s keeping all this in mind, in the effort to divest myself from the modern and spiritually polluting ideas of capitalistic excess, that I go out of my way to re-engage in do ut des with my dead. I give so that They might give, so that the sacred relationship which had been torn asunder through conversion, through the drift of history and memory, and through the increasingly distracting fixation on material concerns, may be reaffirmed and recognized as holy.

And I’m going to keep on in my practice, until my great gran’ beans me over the head because I’m not doing it the Catholic way.

Categories: Ancestors, Anglo-Saxon, Community Thoughts, Conversational, Fyrnsidu, Germanic, Hearth Cult, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, It me, Super Fun Holiday Things, Theology, Thoughts

Tagged: Ancestors, Anglo-Saxon Heathen, Fyrnsidere, Fyrnsidu, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism

Insularity and the Other, On Being a Heathen “Citizen of the World”

Marc

Posted on September 9, 2020

It should surprise no one that Heathenry and its associated, yet nascent, theology breeds insularity. Many reconstructionist attempts at understanding pre-Christian Germanic religion have fixated, falsely I feel, on the concept of a smaller tribal nucleus as an attempt to organize their worldview and establish an identity within and beneath the wider Western culture. While in-groups and out-groups exist in all walks of life and all social situations, Heathenry’s efforts are ultimately derived from the dated scholarship of Vilhelm Grønbech, and other contemporaneous scholars of his time, further inspired by romanticist movements, and taken to almost fanatical levels of dogma among many disparate groups of Heathens.

The Inner-Outer dichotomy, a feature of Heathen social and religious positioning, is admittedly under-attested in the majority of the ‘Lore’ that Heathens utilize and rely on to inform their praxis and worldview. Nevertheless, these concepts are present within Germanic linguistics, particularly in the case of Old English, which includes a number of distinctions for in-groups and out-groups. This is a fact which is conveniently overlooked by current discourse arising from more critical sectors of Heathenry and Heathen-adjacent views that seek to typify the dichotomy as an anachronistic breeding ground of problematic ideology.

We know that the Old English language maintains divisions of knowns and unknowns, representing various geographic or locative relationships (town dweller vs. country dweller, foreigner, etc.). In the linguistic corpus, these are employed in a similar manner as the modern concept – delineation of space.

What we do not know, and what we will ultimately never be able to ascertain, is the role that this view played in the wider cosmological and metaphysical worldview as articulated by these pre-Christian groups, and how that can be applicable towards a working religious paradigm that contemporary practitioners can engage with. To be sure, this is a familiar story in Heathenry.

Heathen theology exhibits hints at concepts like containment and boundedness, with the Well of Wyrd holding all of reality and, if one follows Bauschatz, an upheaval of chaos when the Well overflows (exemplified by Ragnarok). We can also couch the Germanic exegesis into the wider Indo-European and related religious developments of sacred space, of cordoning off such things from the mundane, and other such examples.

But, if there were any cosmological significance that existed at all to the inner- and outer- dichotomy it is ultimately lost to us, as far as we are presently able to ascertain. While this is a roadblock, to be sure, this does present a collective opportunity for contemporary practitioners to innovate a workable metaphysical model which can be employed for the furtherance of the religious identity.

Heathenry’s tendency to self-isolate, separate, and create an insular network of relationships is not a singular phenomenon. What it has done in the Heathen sense is attempt a form of neo-tribalism, providing some manner of band or tribal system of enforced, constructed connections, duties, and obligations. Ultimately, this is a feature of postmodernism, which reacts to the communal and social failures perceived in society as well as the degradation of the idea of the individual and the domineering guise of the West-as-it-had-been and modernity.

With a root in the same genesis as other subculture/neotribe/band groups in the past forty years or more, combined with an increasing trend of social isolationism, devaluation, and being ‘left behind’ by what is ultimately a system of social and economic forces and other inequities, Heathenry’s neo-tribalistic view is hardly unique.

The present fixation on the idea of the clan as affecting the relationship between the group and the Other, specifically to the stranger, and is called an “obsession” of postmodernism by Maffesoli (Maffesoli 1996, 104). With cultural and individual dynamism based on the tension between heterogeneous elements in society, Modernism’s views of unity and the end goal of rationalism have been left far afield. Historic surveys have, of course, shown that this is a common result after attempts at unification and centralization, that the pendulum returns once again to particularism and localism (Maffesoli 1996, 105).

While the efforts at a Heathen organic solidarity are not in and of themselves problematic (indeed, the multiplication of small affinity groups is a feature and not a bug for our multicultural centers, one which I support), it is the lack of harmonizing with wider sociality makes it particularly troublesome: it becomes reminiscent to that of a disputatio, the assertion of necessary self isolation for affectations of socio-cultural and religio-cultural purity. Heathenry’s social self-isolation attempts small-scale religious unity, even as it reacts to the efforts of unity on a wider scale, and it has erected barriers which encourage ambivalence (at best) and disregard (or worse) to people outside such a system. These barriers are, as above, the dichotomous relationship between the collective Inner(yard) and the wider Outer(yard).

The above diagram is an example of the typical arrangement of the Inner-Outer in contemporary (especially (neo)tribalistic) Heathenry, despite having tradition-specific. Roughly, it focuses on the ‘hearth’, the familial unit (although in this example extending to non-family members sharing a communal housing situation), extending to the wider extra-residential kin group, and finally to one’s unrelated-yet-still-local community, the intentional neo-tribal entity.

Beyond the terminus of this community entity resides the Outer-yard (Ūtanbord/Ūtangeard), that which encompasses everything else. In the most prolific Heathen view, which replicates what is known or surmised of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples, this is representative of the unknown and the wilds. Given its traditional, historical, concepts of extra-territorial living, groups of people or individuals living beyond the common laws of the tribal body commonly drew on connotations of outlawry, for the cohesive tribe was governed by common laws for the good of the people, and everything else existed outside those laws. (Harlan-Haughey 2016, 25)

It should be readily apparent how, especially in a modern, politically charged climate, Heathenry has comparatively found itself grappling with the problems of a classification of existence which actively Others groups of people, dividing them literally into an “us vs. them” mentality, which lead to the aforementioned anachronistic ideologies taking root and proliferating among practitioners. This is all despite warnings and amonitions from “the Lore” regarding courtesy and hospitality to guests and the unknown peoples of the world (as the random visitor may yet be a deity in disguise!).

This is one of the failings with attempting to relocate a religious conception from a period vastly different than the present: a period of insularity, where many men and women would largely not have moved beyond the borders of their immediate vicinity, as compared to one of a globally interconnected world that purports universal idas of human rights and natural laws. This dialogue has not found much purchase in common Heathen spaces, where we have spoken about different “types” of inclusive or exclusive Heathenries. Historically, we have been forced to speak in terms of “universalism” versus “folkishness”, although these have lately been recognized for what they really are: non-racism versus racism.

Wedged into this discussion is the late-comer of “tribalism”, a third way of discussing Heathen views which has elaborated on and pressed forward with the strict erection of an inner-outer dichotomy, as we have mentioned above. Yet, in this discussion of the outer-as-beyond-law, are not all citizens of one state, then, subject to the same laws (however unequally they are enforced, but that is for another time)? Could someone, anyone, be rightly determined as an outyarder in a system where we recognize the theoretical sanctity and importance of all human life in a fundamental and essential, intrinsic way? More importantly, as the world hurtles towards greater challenges in the next phases of this new anthropocene, are these perceived barriers between peoples truly the best way to move forward?

It would be simple to assert that, both cosmologically and religiously, the Inner and Outer can only be held with regards to practitioners of Heathenry-as-a-religious-system, and perhaps extend to any person who can rightly be determined to be “Heathen-Adjacent” (partners/family, etc.). Doing so, however, would run counter to the common assertion that the maintenance of frið (a reciprocal relationship of selflessness, often glossed with ‘peace’) drives all of a Heathen’s interactions with the wider world and is paramount to maintain if at all possible. So we are necessarily forced, in the present moment, to consider interactions and worldviews that include members of dissimilar religious and cultural ethos from the Heathen individual.

Where a person is in the world, and the duties which they possess to that world at large has been a constant question for philosophy for millennia. Numerous philosophical schools sought the answer to this situation, but it is in Stoicism where I have found a world-view system where various obligations of the Inner fit and, more importantly, are expanded so as to offset the hyper-inclusive view of many Heathenries. This comes through the Stoic concept of oikeiōsis (οἰκείωσις), and the duly required levels of beneficence given to the perception of the world.

A diagram of this is below:

While a thorough discussion is out of the scope of this paper, an explanation is nonetheless required. Roughly, oikeiōsis is a practice of “appropriation” which was positioned by the Stoics as an intrinsic act of all living things, although given the failings of English at translating other languages, it is also correctly translated as “familiarization” and “affinity”, and similar words, which all must be looked at to gauge the concept. (Sedley 1998). In Stoic philosophy, oikeiōsis is divided into “interior” and “exterior”, split between looking to the self and to one’s own constitution and nature, and looking towards the external good and that which regards other people. In the original sources, this multifarious definition is referenced different times by different names, different definitions for oikeiōsis, which makes a simple English translation all the more difficult.

In Stoicism, the first, natural impulse, of all living beings is one which consists of self-preservation, procreation, and social bonding by developing a perception of the self and then moving away from that self-awareness to active self-preservation. This self-preservation is done through identification of similarities in nature through other beings, or to familiarize oneself with the reflection of one’s own constitution within another entity. This act of self-preservation, or, in Cicero’s words, a formation of a “bond of mutual aid”, extends from the initial recognition of the self to encompass the whole of the world.

Thus, the perceiver, the perceived, and both the act of perception engages in self-love, characteristic in the Stoic view, of all creatures in Nature (Ramelli 2009, x). To have hope to survive entails caring for other beings, extending as one matures into their rationality and reason.

It is important to understand that while all things reach out towards benevolence, this appropriative familiarization, is also actionable. By recognizing similarities which we share in others, both human and divine, we establish as great a continuity as possible between wider circles of sociable oikeiōsis and narrower ones – the end result being that others are as closely bound to us as possible in terms of benevolence or, at the very least, affinity (Ramelli 2009. 128).

This can be envisioned as follows:

I must note that modern depictions of oikeiōsis ignore the final, most distant, ring which I have included here – the Gods and Nature. This incidence is part of the de-polytheisation of ancient philosophy and supports a commodification and repackaging of modern Stoicism into atheistic and capitalist, consumerist, needs.

At first glance, the concept of oikeiōsis would appear to reinforce at least one conceptual understanding of Heathen theology: that the Gods are most distant and least-vested in the individual petitioner’s life, that they conform to the outermost ring of one’s awareness and are, thus, the least important (See “Eric” 2020, and Gregsson 2020 for fairly typical takes regarding individual-divine relations and one’s place in the world in Heathenry). This may be the case, were it not for the actionable aspects of oikeiōsis.

Stoics, effectively, would seek to draw the outside inwards, becoming familiar with the outermost ring of oikeiōsis first and pulling it towards the self, doing so by recognizing shared attributes with the wider world – that is, recognizing the reason which is shared among creation. In this polytheistic system, a sage would first come to know the Gods and the divine Nature, and then seek to understand the wider human community, a key focus of its cosmopolitanism and the ethical arrangement of the Stoic philosophy and moral/ethical virtue (Sedley 1998).

Oikeiōsis can be informally divided into the intrinsic, contrasting to the extrinsic. The intrinsic, to reiterate the earlier point, would be that which is the innate understanding of the self and the urge for one’s self-preservation. I would argue that familial relationships and those closest to the development of rational awareness, as a child naturally does with those who occupy the first three circles depicted in the model above, also can be grouped within the intrinsic.

From there, the individual must make the conscious, rational, choice to appropriate themselves towards the wider community, the whole of mankind, and the very divine of the world. Doing this foments virtue and understanding of one’s place in the world and, importantly, engenders a reciprocal obligation towards compassion and concern for the well being of others.

It is naturally impossible to maintain the same intensity of benevolence within a system of ever-widening circles of individuals. The oft recited “friend to all is a friend to none” among Heathen circles is, however, accounted for. Benevolence may decrease the further one moves from the core, yet the sense of affinity must nevertheless be maintained with these efforts of appropriating ourselves to these circles (Ramelli 2009, 127), for to do so is to maintain the universal understanding of rights pertaining to humanity and nature at large. Rendering these degrees of affinity through oikeiōsis within the system as promulgated best by Hierocles does not, and cannot, excise the close or traditional kinship relationships for the sake of humanity at large; there is no expectation of surrendering the importance of these close social ties (Reydams-Schils 2002, 246).

The stance of the Middle Stoa is that there is no community unless we collectively start with the one closest to our home, a stance of Stoicism which aligns closest to the perception of the social values of Heathenry. The familial affection and the relationships between close friends, allies, and the immediate community, that of the intrinsic oikeiōsis is “in accordance with nature, and good” (Epictetus 1904, I.II), where the extrinsic oikeiōsis can be considered “reasonable and rational”.

Where does this place the concept of the Outer? If the whole of the world recognizes (optimistically, to be sure) that of fundamental human law and the rights of nature, and that it is both reasonable and rational that we seek to draw ourselves in affinity to the whole of the world and the Gods and of the divine Nature, then there is thus no outer save for that which is intentionally done.

Heathen and Heathen theology is, above all, based on the relationships between action and inaction (see “Marc” 2018). One’s actions are intrinsically important to their sense of being and the very reality of the world, with little regard for their circumstance of birth, location, or whichever malleable and nascent neotribal entity they hold allegiance to. It is the conscious desire, then, to set one’s self against what is good and virtuous, to willingly step beyond into the Outer where reason holds no sway, and to embrace a life that is, in Harlan-Haughey’s position, one of an outlaw.

References:

“Eric”. “Personal Relationships with the Gods.” Accessed September 7, 2020. https://archive.is/nUdAR

Epictetus. 1904, “Discourses”, trans. George Long.

Gregsson, Lee. “Tribe as the Foundation for the Reconstruction of Heathenry.” Accessed September 7, 2020. https://archive.is/y1eHW

Harlan-Haughey, Sarah. 2016, The Ecology of the English Outlaw in Medieval Literature: From Fen to Greenwood, Routledge.

Maffesoli, Michel. 1996, *The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society*, trans. Don Smith, Sage Publications: London.

“Marc”. “De Natura Temporis Et Rituum Germanicorum”. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://axeandplough.com/2018/07/12/de-natura-temporis-et-rituum-germanicorum/

Ramelli, Ilaria. 2009, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts, trans. David Konstan, Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta

Reydams-Schils, Gretchen. 2002, “Human Bonding and Oikeiosis in Roman Stoicism”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 2.

Sedley, David. “Stoicism.” Accessed Aug 31, 2020. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/stoicism/v-1/sections/oikeiosis

Categories: ACADEMIC ELITISM!!1+1, Community Thoughts, Conversational, Fyrnsidu, Generalist Paganism, Germanic, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, Larhus, Northern Tradition, Not-Quite-Northern, Philosophy, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts

Tagged: Anglo-Saxon, Cosmology, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Philosophy, Religion, Theology

Syncretism and the Formation of Contemporary Heathen Religious Identity

Marc

Posted on June 24, 2020

Author’s Note: This is part II following the post I made a year prior. It’s long, I don’t want to wait another year to publish a part III. Thanks to my proofreaders.

Heathens who are interested in developing a realized and coherent religious practice already engage in syncretic methods of construction, largely through interpretation driven by comparative research as well as a general methodology of wider reconstructionist practices. This is a necessary aspect of Heathen theological scholarship in order to establish a healthy and viable identity which can be transmitted to and embraced by future generations of interested practitioners. In the time since Heathenry’s emergence as an identifiably new religious movement, Heathen practice and theology has always benefited from the commingling of various practices of different groups of people. These groups are broadly seen as “Germanic” and thus loosely affiliated, despite no relation to any one cultural expression. One such example is the implementation by Norse-focused Heathens of various Old English customs or concepts in order to streamline and buttress their understanding of religious practice [1].

Socioanthropological and historical-anthropological studies have shown that syncretism is not only a common feature within the human condition beyond simple religious constructs: it is one which is also willingly used to justify, enact, and both intentionally and organically establish a cohesive image of a group’s identity and communal history. A goal of syncretism is to ask whether parts of a specific culture or religion are borrowed and, if so, how these borrowed facets should be contextually interpreted [2]. Challenges of identity, boundaries, and asking who comprises in-groups and out-groups are common questions which can appear in daily life, and syncretism directly interfaces and critically examines these common questions of religious and cultural existence [3]. Further, studies from a syncretistic point of view does not lead to an abandonment of other forms of cultural observation, nor posit that one should uncritically accept or pursue the proffered practice [4].

Heathenry exists as a nascent religious subculture within a domineering cultural milieu which takes the form of a hegemonic overculture, purporting itself to be a multicultural society [5]. In this context, syncretism and syncretic practices specifically enable the creation of a visible and defined religious system, and a more clearly imparted identity, which serves as a banner to which practitioners may flock. Syncretism also enables the identity of Heathenry as a practice to divorce itself from problematic ideologies, side-stepping cultural and religious essentialism through assumptions of “unsullied pristineness” and “objective realities” of a discrete unit which would insist on the purity and priority of their own voice, a common feature among the study of developing and emerging cultures [6].

Despite providing an immense contribution to the Heathen revivalist movement through extensive scholarship, academia traps itself by reducing both culture and religion to a dichotomous relationship, pitting them as binary constructs which then address syncretism independently of its historical contexts . It is common to encounter the view that syncretism is an expression of “adaptive growth” within the context of a single culture. Yet, the opposite exists in discussion of “religion”, where syncretism is portrayed and typified as a fundamentally impure, intrusive, and tainted influence [7].

This is further compounded by academia’s enthusiasm for deconstructing various cultural and religious traditions – especially those which have been identified as “syncretic” – which echos colonial attitudes and produces yet one more brand of intellectual imperialism, ignoring the realities of the subjective, experiential, and phenomenological representations of those traditions as they manifested and were nativised in-context. This results in throwing context out the window in favor of a “religion” which is decidedly Western, ethnocentrically biased, and thoroughly influenced by perceptions of Christianity as the exemplar — and deterministic outcome — of all religious expression [8].

New religious movements share attempts at the identification of core, constituent parts of their identities which may not be extant, or of a similar priority, in older traditions. In like kind, NRMs utilize practical and theoretical applications to explore these facets of self. The identification of religious mores, how one can bound and set their religion apart from other groups, self-determination descriptions, and more have become foci within the discussion of syncretic processes among both NRMs and their religious ethnographers [9].

The quest of contemporary Heathen religions to define their own religious identity faces numerous external challenges. “Heathenry”, as a collective religion, exists not only beneath the cultural milieu of an opposing hegemonic, monotheist, cultural identity, but is also identified through a detached academic lens focusing on deconstruction. It must also compete with and position itself against ethnonationalist sentiment and racialist separatism which would take the notion of purity of an idealized non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-foreign identity and force it onto the religious concept as a whole, as a rallying cry for racialist nationalism. A simple survey of the labels shows how ill-fitting they are even at their simplest.

Modern dictionaries will define “Heathen” and “Heathenry” in one of two ways: either through a Christo-centric religious terminology — that is, defining a person as being ‘Non-Christian’, with the implications of uncivilized status — or simply as someone who adheres to “Germanic neopaganism” [10]. Both definitions are unsatisfactory for the self-identification of practice due to their broad scope as well as their attachment of Heathenry-as-religious-culture to either Christian themes of religiosity or a veneer of “Germanic culturalism”.

Dispensing with the burdens of Christianity, the generic description of Heathenry as “Germanic neopaganism” does not distinguish the disparate religious paradigms which exist under the “pagan umbrella”. Through this description, practitioners of such religious traditions as Norse Wicca, Saxon Witchcraft (formerly Seax-Wica), or Nordic-focused groups associated with Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) would be “Heathen”, despite maintaining their own religious paradigms, definitions, and identities which many self-identifying Heathens do not share [11].

Thus, Heathnery-as-religion collectively has problems with definition, particularly because such labels are relativized. A casual observer may wonder why the notion of labels is so important. The symbolism and representation of identity embodied by a label assists in navigating the complexities of social organizations, and provides a transmittable group cohesion [12]. The history of ideas is complex, and labels are fluid and mixed. Without the process of critically questioning self-identity, and without the developments which are afforded by syncretic theory, contemporary Heathenry as a religious identity is bereft of agent self-determination.

In order to begin to differentiate an identity among the various Heathen religions [13], reconstructionist methodology is employed in order to utilize contemporaneous facets of other “neighboring” religions through the use of complementary research. This deliberate reconstruction is often identified by observers as the most distinctive aspect of Heathenry as a religious identity [14]. This is not undertaken to merge Heathenry into an eclectic morass of “best” practices under the purview of the individual but, rather, to take the viewpoints put forth by the juxtaposed tradition(s) so as to better articulate a workable and contemporary ‘Heathen’ religious system. The fundamentals of religious engagement, that is, the role and expression of ritual, or prayer, of the very nature of cosmological understanding, is left to contemporary practitioners to innovate what can be broadly described as ‘religion’, due to a lack of attested and historic representation.

As a primarily empirically-driven religion, Heathenry’s methods of inquiry are informed by the Historical Sciences. There are two considerations regarding this reliance. The first is that developments in scholasticism are of limited use in the contextualization of thought or action within the minds of the people being studied [15]. Reconstructions can vary from privileging textual sources in the absence of in situ material evidence to resorting to mere speculation when presented with incomplete material evidence and little or no complementary textual evidence. Ideally, one strives to incorporate both types of evidence to achieve a holistic view of a given practice one wishes to reconstruct. None, however, can truly impart the knowledge of an individual’s engagement within their time and circumstances; we are presented only with a fragmentary view. An ancient Hellenic philosopher imparts their particular worldview, to be sure, yet it is reflective of a particular class of people and not the fullest extent of society or the vagaries of religious expressions of the time. The particular spirit behind this text or that artifact cannot be meaningfully reconstructed by a Modern individual, being so far removed from the particular conditions and considerations of any given Pre-Modern society.

Various Heathen religions, once differentiated by now-lost religio-cultural boundaries, possess very little in the way of textual evidence. Even the broadly shared common ‘Germanic mythology’ (typified by Eddic Lore) is recorded through a Christian paradigm, to say nothing about the individual vagaries which ultimately inform local belief. This leads into the second consideration of reliance on the ideas of academia – the mutability of the idea. Cultural representations, syncretism among them, are the product of input processed by the human mind, each with a separate lived experience [16].

Individual ideas form the genesis of syncretic thought, from the exposure of new concepts through the progression of reconciliation with currently held beliefs. These concepts are then argued communally, through the agency of the individual, through ritualized or interpersonal action, or with interacting in the local and regional landscape [17]. The person – the individual in their myriad of social and religious capacities – are engaged in these social worlds through a bonding of shared identity. The argument that syncretism occurs only on the macro-scale of human interaction ignores the micro- and localized phenomenological contexts which form the foundation of communal alterations and interpretations of tradition, effectively erasing the day-to-day business and basis of practitioners who live and breathe the culture. The difficulty in observing the process of syncretism does not deny the ubiquity of its role in the human condition, nor does it negate its importance.

Existing within the traditional pre-Christian religious frameworks of the European-Mediterranean basin and the Ancient Near East [18] syncretism can be as prominent and easily recognized as pan-regional deities such as Zeus-Ammon, Sarapis, the whole of the process of Hellenization throughout the Mediterranean, or the development of the cult of the god Mars [19].

Again, only emphasizing this aspect of syncretism ignores the microscopic interactions of day-to-day views and enactment of religions, as syncretism can be as innocuous as that of the dedicatory altar designated RIB 1102. Found at Ebchester (Vindomora) in 1784, this piece of epigraphic evidence is particularly interesting for contemporary practitioners of Heathenry as it provides evidence of what the community could view as the actions of a predecessor to their own religious beliefs and identities.

Inscribed upon the buff sandstone votive are the words “Deo | Verno|stono | Cocidi| o Viri[l]is | Ger(manus) v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) ❦ ”, “To the god Vernostonus Cocidius, Virilis, a German, willingly fulfilled his vow.”[20] This inscription provides an example of the fluidity of religious engagement, a tangible remnant of syncretic ritualized actions and intents, whereby a Germanic tribesperson of no known historic importance engages in ritualistic cult to a Celtic deity, within the cultural and religious milieu of the wider Latin-speaking world. In this way we can see the translation of these concepts into a “third language” of religion, paraphrasing de Vries, one which was at once understandable, approachable, and of importance to even a single individual yet capable of coexistence with the original expression [21].

In the context of revivifying the essence of these polytheistic beliefs within religions such as modern Heathenry, syncretism can be approached as David Frankfurter does, treating it not as a “weaving together of two theological systems or institutions” but as “an assemblage of symbols and discourses [..] to articulate a new religious ideology.” [22]. Unlike assimilation (influence), fusion (intertextuality), or other modes of eclecticism, syncretism’s most important goal is to articulate through its own paradigmatic frame of reference these concepts into a workable worldview. This takes the origin material and enunciates it for another audience, transforming it from what it once was [23].

This enunciation manifests as a process of bricolage in order to create a religious identity, the use of readily available elements of religions encouraged a proliferation of varieties and re-creations of local cults, utilizing an ever diversified vocabulary [24]. In an increasingly connected world, local peoples historically reshaped their cults and mythologies, expanding their growing vocabulary of religious terms in order to find a “best fit” in the dialogue between mundane and divine interaction [25].

Stepping back from the individual to the immediate local worlds, being argued once more from the position of the individual-as-local-community-member, where interpretations of adoption and adaptation of new and foreign deity concepts and cults, there are diverse experiences of local cults depending on the status and context where they are found, which above all differentiates them from associated supralocal entities or religious edifices. Increasing interaction of varying peoples has historically increased the religious diversity, and the individual had a much wider choice for both public and private devotions [26]. The use of media, theonyms and epithets, physical religious tools, etc., all aided in the creation of new deity-concepts which were previously unknown, yet no less valid than what had come before. It is through these processes that local identities are preserved under an external occupying force, while at the same time productively establishing relationship bonds which enabled the continuance of such practices [27].

Traditional cultural studies focus on a dichotomous interaction between forces and external powers, emphasizing one-way impacts and autonomous works, essentially culminating in a singular path of influence, which ignores the complexity of religious, social, and cultural creation [28]. Syncretic studies which can be applied within Heathenry highlight capacities of minor actors within the wider religious picture, and how contemporary practitioners can combine or rework new ideas and methods in order to develop increasingly complex schools of thought and traditions of religious practice. Given the decentralized nature of modern religious development in Heathenry as a new religious movement, it would be less effective to focus on a one-way give-and-take in order to enshrine the makings of a specific identity.

What is historically classified as “syncretism” in the late antique and migration-era periods has been argued to represent not a new mode of thought, but the ancient, original, ideas of popular religion. These ideas, suppressed in popular discourse on the subject by veneers of classicism and misrepresentation of indigenous religion, were deep-seated enough to rise to the surface, becoming apparent when the layers of whitewashing are stripped away through closer contextual engagements [29]. Heathenry as a modern revival of the religious identity of the pre-Christian Germanic tribes peoples, fits neatly into the paradigm established by the greater antique world, one of interconnectedness where religious mixing was the rule and not, as portrayed by dogmatic religious or academic institutions, an exception.

In engaging with syncretism in a positive and productive manner, Heathenry can develop an expansive and flexible religious language which gives an understanding to vastly different messages, preserving individual differences while allowing for a series of religious traditions to engage in expression. Unlike wider hegemonic forces, such as Westernization or mono-religious secularism, this process of syncretism, historically exemplified by such processes as Hellenism, allows the inner workings of each distinct Heathen religious practice to be visible with its own identity [30]. Thus a grounding of one’s identity — both individual and collective — can be understood in diverse ways, through the application of what can be considered religio-spiritual creativity [31].

There exists an inherent tension within Heathenry between the needs of innovating a modern practice and the connection of those practices to ancient traditions and the historicity behind them [32]. The ability to have contemporary identities emerge is gifted through creative re-elaboration of the traditions on which they are based. It paradoxically unites conservative and innovative impulses, through translation and syncretism, utilizing this intrinsic creativity afforded by the present informational give-and-take [33].

Impermeable religious categories are an extension of a Western Christian tradition which seeks to promote hegemony and diminish the uniqueness, diversity, and importance of other competing concepts. Recognizing this opens an expansive frontier of performative differences available to Heathenry. Contemporary Heathen practice, positioned within a globalized world, finds itself in a parallel situation to the historic experiences faced by local religions in the Western Roman period, whereby a society focusing on high levels of individualization (when compared to what came before) allowed for a greater flexibility of personal interpretation on a wider religious expression [34].

Cross-fertilization of cultures provides a creative process; this is as true of the time of the Principate of the Roman-era to the aptly named Information Age of the present [35]. In engaging with the material in this way, by focusing on the individual social agents of religion from a “bottom-up” approach and shifting emphasis away from the predominate centers of geopolitical power, we employ a more holistic understanding through globalist studies, in contrast to narrow discourses focusing on imperialism or colonialism.

Through local and individual interpretation, religions will naturally diverge, despite sharing the same decisive symbols which form the fundamental core of their religious expression. As Harrison puts it, “We all have some sort of religion which will differ from the religion of others, who bear the same label, and everyone’s religion is astoundingly complex.” [36] This truth, articulated simply, is that Heathendom-as-religion will inevitably diverge based on geographically local, culturally distinct expressions, or simple day-to-day differences in the practitioners which make up the lifeblood of the living system. The growth of these different identities is ultimately the result of syncretic practices that inform their practitioner’s understanding of the religion.

Most often, individuals leverage a purity of tradition or appeal to a historicity of a previous tradition — thus, arguing against syncretic tendencies — in order to mitigate uneasy feelings of self-consciousness, or a pressing sense that the newly assembled identities are contrived [37]. Yet the result is often far more deleterious than intended.

Positioning that individuals lack agency in affecting or imparting their experiences on a cultural system not only echos antiquated views of unchanged continuity of cultures and traditions, it exhibits a form of deprecating nihilism as to one’s position within that human community. Downplaying their contribution to local and regional neighborhoods in favor of a fanciful, non-existent purity of tradition, is an unjust assumption which diminishes the effects an individual may have, ultimately manifesting in erasure along class or social lines. The idea of a pure religion, of a pure culture, in the West has its roots in the Protestant experience, whereby attempts to “syncretize” the churches in the Reformation were accused of nefarious ends. It has consistency with romanticist and scientific racialist influences of the 19th century, positioning an anachronistic ethnocentrism into the development of an anti-Enlightenment nationalism [38].

When we speak of syncretism within Heathenry we should remember that the understanding of syncretic processes is not uniform. The grounding of one’s collective identity, or interpretation of material, can be understood in equally diverse, equally valid ways [39]. Attempting to enforce purity standards within a religious system as Heathenry, which has as its core fundamental history a myriad of vagaries of valid interpretations, presents a disingenuity of the history of these groups and those that would follow them.

Purity standards are enforced as measures of ideological control on the system of religion and culture, which coalesces power over that system in the hands of an elite that acts against opening the many contributors responsible for any collective identity [40]. Boundedness, continuity, and homogeneity are not objective aspects of social life, but often metaphors used to create an entitivity of a system, and in the discussion of some kind of social or religious absolute Truth, syncretic practices are seen as corruption [41].

As religious experiences, like all lived experiences, are subjective it is entirely wrong to maintain that syncretic developments are an exercise in conscious eclecticism [42]. The acknowledgements by syncretism of the permeability and fluidity of social life is diametrically opposed to the homogeneity preferred by those who would argue for strict, arbitrary, ideological purity standards.

Ultimately, with syncretism and Heathenry, we should be left with a quote by William Harrison:

“The reality then is that syncretism is a common process that touches every religion. It is so truly universal that we often do not recognize its presence. However, syncretism is a good thing and a necessary survival skill, for both individual persons and for whole religions.” [43]

[1] C.F., utilization of Beowulf, following in the comparative steps of scholars like Richard North and Paul Bauschatz.

[2] Stewart, Charles. “Syncretism as a Dimension of National Discourse in Modern Greece”, in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, eds. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Routledge: New York, 2005, pg 120.

[3] Harrison, William H. In Praise of Mixed Religion: The Syncretism Solution in a Multifaith World. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 2014, pg. 33.

[4] Lambropoulos, Vassilis. “Syncretism as Mixture and as Method”, in Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol 19. 2001. Pg. 233.

[5] If defined as a cultural system, see also: Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural system”.

[6] Koepping, Klaus-Peter. “Manipulated Identities: Syncretism and Uniequeness of Tradition in Modern, Japanese Discourse”, in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, eds. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Routledge: New York, 2005, pg 157.

[7] Richard, H.L. “Religious Syncretism as a Syncretistic Concept”, International Journal of Frontier Missiology, 31:4 Winter 2014, pg. 213.

[8] Stewart, Charles & Rosalind Shaw in Lambropoulos. pg 232.

[9] Greenfield, Sidney M and A.F. Droogers. Reinventing Religious Syncretism and Transformation in Africa and the Americas. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. pg. 25

[10] Wiktionary contributors, “Heathenry,” Wiktionary, The Free Dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Heathenry&oldid=54427301

[11] For this, see D.J. Conway’s “Norse Magic”, Ed Fitch’s “Rites of Odin”, and Raymond Buckland’s “Saxon Witchcraft” for typical approaches to Germanic-based Wiccan traditions. There is sizable overlap in reconstructionist methodologies between Heathenry and ADF , which muddles this example. However, while there are self-identified Heathen members of ADF, the organization largely identifies its members as ‘Druids’, first and foremost, regardless of their pan-Indo-European group makeup.

[12] Harrison, pg. 167.

[13] That is, those developing through the revivification of linguistic and group incidences, eg., “Anglo-Saxon”, “Norse”, “Frankish”, etc. Heathenries.

[14] Harvey, Graham, “Inventing Paganism”, in The Invention of Sacred Traditions: Sacred Creativity, eds. Stefania Palmisano and Nicola Pannofino, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham. Pg. 283.

[15] Harrison, pg. 166.

[16] Martin, Luther H. “Syncretism, Historicism, and Cognition: A Response to Michael Pye.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion Vol. 8 (1996) pg. 220.

[17] Frankfurter, David. Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2018, pg. 24.

[18] I utilize this designation of geographic cultural continuity as the foundation for what we can determine to be modern contemporary paganism, see Michael York’s Pagan Theology and Jordan Paper’s The Deities are Many for further clarifications.

[19] Warrior, Valerie. Roman Religion, Cambridge University Press: New York, 2006, pg. 11.

[20] RIB 1102. Altar dedicated to Vernostonus Cocidius, Roman Inscriptions of Britian, Page generated: 2020-06-08 02:23:39, Https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1102

[21] Lambek, Michael. “Provincializing God? Provocations from an Anthropology of Religion”, in Religion: Beyond a Concept ed, Hent de Vries, Fordham University, 2008, pg. 146.

[22] Frankfurter, pg. 16.

[23] Leopold, Anita. “The Architecture of Syncretism” in Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 27, No. 3, Retrofitting Syncretism? (Fall, 2011), pg. 417.

[24] Haeussler, Ralph. “Interpretatio Indigena. Re-Inventing Local Cults in a Global World” in Mediterraneo Antico, XV, 1-2, 2012, pp 143-174. Pg. 146.

[25] Haeussler, “Interpretatio”, pg. 171.

[26] Haeussler, “Interpretatio”, pg 146.

[27] Roymans, Nico. “Hercules and the Construction of a Batavian Identity in the context of the Roman empire” in Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition, eds. Ton Derks & Nico Roymans, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pg 223.

[28] Lambropoulos, pg. 232.

[29] Barb, A.A in Kadmus. True to the Earth: Pagan Political Theology, Gods And Radicals Press: Olympia, Washington, 2018, pg. 83.

[30] Assmann, Jan. “Translating Gods: Religion as a Factor of Cultural (Un)Translatability”, in Religion: Beyond a Concept ed, Hent de Vries, Fordham University, 2008, pg 149.

[31] Roussou, Eugenia. “The Syncretic Religious Landscape of Contemporary Greece and Portugal: A Comparative Approach on Creativity Through Spiritual Synthesis”, in Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions: Sacred Creativity, eds Palmisano & Pannofino, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 pg 161.

[32] As discussed by scholars such as Catherine Tully in “Researching the Past is a Foreign Country” and Mathias Nordvig in “Paganism Past and Ideas of Authenticity”.

[33] Palmisano, Stefania and Nicola Pannofino. “Conclusion”, in ‘Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions: Sacred Creativity’. eds, Palmisano & Pannofino, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pg. 224.

[34] Haeussler, pg. 172.

[35] Haeussler, pg. 173.

[36] Harrison, pg. 233.

[37] Grimes, Ronald L. Deeply Into The Bone: Re-Inventing the Rites of Passage, University of California Press, 200, pg. 209.

[38] Stewart, pg. 123.

[39] Stewart, pg. 164.

[40] Guss, David M. “Syncretic Inventions: ‘Idianness’ and the Day of the Monkey” in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, eds. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw. Routledge: New York, 2005, pg 137.

[41] Handler, Richard. Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec, Madison: WI University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, pg. 8.

[42] Ringgren, Helmer. “The Problems of Syncretism”. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 30 (January 1, 1969), pg.

[43] Harrison, pg 16-17.

Categories: ACADEMIC ELITISM!!1+1, Anglo-Saxon, Community Thoughts, Fyrnsidu, Generalist Paganism, Germanic, Heathen Theology, Heathenry, Polytheism, Theology, Thoughts

Tagged: Academic Heathenry, Heathen, Heathenry, Pagan, Paganism, Religion, Syncretism

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