Folkish

Ancestor Worship is Not About Biology

There’s this notion among some Heathens (even, occasionally, progressive ones) whereby ancestry is reduced to biology. This is unfortunate for a few reasons.

First, it is anachronistic. There are interesting saga references by which an individual’s personal orloeg could be inherited by someone named after them – even if not related, in fact, even if the child of their enemy! So if ancestry can be determined by intentional naming, that’s much more complex and nuanced than the crass rigidity of biological reductionism, which really only emerged as a convenient way of legitimating colonial invasions in the last few hundred years.

Jettisoning biological reductionism opens up the realization that a connection to ancestry is rooted in an ongoing relationship, not mere static membership of a group based on some kind of (possibly quite arbitrary) putative genetic connection. After all, geneticists consistently find that there is more genetic variation within specified racial or ethnic groups than between different groups!

Biological reductionism implies that the work of being connected to the ancestors is done by default. This is a short step from basically ignoring the ancestral currents that might be present. If I recognize that ancestral connection is an ongoing conversation, one in which at best I am an equal partner, well that’s going to have a very different implication for what “ancestor worship” might mean to me.

When we look at traditional cultures we see an emphasis on regular personal and ritual practice aiming at maintaining and strengthening relationships with ancestral figures, be they specific individuals or more nonspecific (and that can include animal spirits, plant spirits, spirits of place, etc.). Ancestral connectedness is rooted in practice, not in labels. There is little room for the cultivation of reverence if we burden ourselves with the blinders of biological reductionism.

Secondly, biological reductionism, particularly in the context of painfully modern (and unscientific) racial categorizations, obscures the fact that ancestor worship is not about abstract categories and groupings (like “white” or “Asian” or whatever). It is about my personal, specific lineages, the specific threads of relationships that bind me to the weave of history.

So when the now openly white supremacist Stephen McNallen says he would never have had children with a Tibetan woman because he would want his descendants to “look like us,” he is missing something really obvious, namely that by having children with our hypothetical Tibetan lady, he would be melding lineages with that woman, and thus the Tibetan ‘them’ and McNallen’s white ‘us’ would be united, woven as one. His Tibetan-European children would look like “us,” because in his marital union his “us” would have expanded from what he had before.

Indeed, this applies even if two people of the same race marry, since as I noted genetic variation within groups is greater than between them. Thus, genetically speaking, McNallen might have actually promoted more uniformity in his genetic descendants precisely by marrying and procreating with someone of a different race! I am sure this nicety would be lost on someone as dim as McNallen, of course.

Thirdly, biological reductionism excludes the possibility of spiritual and philosophical ancestors. Figures such as C. G. Jung, Lao Zi, Sylvia Rivera, Milton Erickson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Kropotkin, Nelson Mandela, and Marie-Louise Von Franz are all philosophical or spiritual ancestors to me, even though I am not biologically related to any of them.

Similarly, I have much deeper connection to the people I choose as family than almost all of my biological family – why should that be devalued in the name of biological reductionism? And that’s before I get to the Heathens I’ve known who are not of European descent yet who have taught me such profound lessons about the old gods and ways, and who are clearly and deeply connected to the Heathen current (much more so, in fact, than many, perhaps most, of the European-descended Heathens I have met).

And now I think about it, I have no Heathen blood relatives, so all of my experience of Heathen ritual and community has been shared with people I am unrelated to. Does our at-best distant ancestral similarity somehow undermine the very real depth and power of our relationships? I should think not.

In our book I write about how ancestor worship ultimately articulates an animistic vision of mutual symbiosis, interconnection, and relationship among all things. If I am really serious about worshipping my ancestors, it is arbitrary to say that they end at the elusive and ever-shifting boundaries of skin color or nationality.

Odin, Vili, and Ve are described as creating the first humans from trees. Those trees are ultimately formed from the remnants of Ymir’s corpse, since that is what the whole cosmos is shaped from. How can Odin be the ancestor of any human, therefore, if ancestry merely means biological relationship? Indeed, how can we call him a god when he is clearly described as being of giant stock? And yet we are assured that he is the Allfather, and the highest of the Aesir; apparently his kind of ancestrality transcends mere blood relatedness.

Thus ancestor worship, once it is freed from biological reductionism, opens an infinity of doors. But when it is burdened by biological reductionism it merely amounts to stagnation, hypocrisy, and denial. It takes fertile possibility and makes a barren waste of them.

Ultimately, reducing ancestry to biology is a move from the miser’s playbook. It’s anachronistic as far as Heathenry goes, and it stifles the free flow of the creative spirit. It reduces living relationships to empty, static formalisms. It violates both the primary sources and the philosophical foundations of Heathenry, assuming we understand the Heathen worldview to be based on a vision of wyrd as the interconnecting matrix of all.

Thus: it is really crucial that we divest the concept of ancestor worship from modern oppressive concepts of biological race. Not only for the above reasons (i.e. that biological reductionism undermines the quality of our Heathenry), but because biological reductionism threatens to reduce Heathenry and/or ancestor worship to being an excuse for hatred and bigotry. No thanks!

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Odin Says: “Shut it!”

MELLIN(1850)_p1.156_ODENOf his wit hath need       who widely fareth
a dull wit will do at home
A laughingstock he          who lacketh words
among smart wits when he sits.
–Havamal, st. 5

It has long been my observation that bigotry is stupid and hackneyed. When one looks back at, say, racist humor from the 1970s, one marvels at how anyone ever found the old jokes funny (though sadly it remains the case that there are still plenty of souls who would).

From the vantage point of how public discourse has improved, getting rid of racist humor has raised the quality of comic performance. This is marvelously ironic, since we’ve been assured time and again that “political correctness” would be the death of humor. Perhaps the folks preaching that line never noticed the observation I described above, namely that bigotry is stupid and hackneyed. Indeed, as comedians set bigotry aside they found their creativity flowed more powerfully.

One of the motifs of the Old Norse poem Havamal is its repeated admonishments to silence. There are two general aspects to this advice. The first is that even if you really are possessed of wisdom, it is still best to be cautious in speaking, to present oneself as “middle wise.” In Old Norse times, impression management was a matter of dignity, and being impressive had little to do with having a big mouth.

The second general aspect to the Havamal’s advice is that even a fool can pass without censure if that fool at least has the sense to keep quiet. Apparently there were a lot of loud mouths in Heathen times that needed to be told to hush themselves up.

(Which goes to show that the endless hordes of loud mouthed contemporary Heathens are probably more faithfully engaged in reconstructive Heathenry that they get credit for, though it is unfortunate that they are reviving aspects of former times that even the original Heathens would have preferred to do without).

You can almost imagine Odin (Havamal’s  author by reputation) as trying to shut down some foolish interlocutor, perhaps at an important social function. “Shut it!” Cries Odin. “But –” says the fool. “Shut it!” Roars Odin. “How about if –” says the fool. “Shut it!” Shrieks Odin. And so on. Actually, if one were to substitute “back to the breath” for “shut it” one would have a pretty good approximation of anapana meditation. Maybe Havamal can also be read as a handy guide to technologies of enlightenment (well we knew that anyway). But I digress.

The point is, fools wag their tongues and do so thoughtlessly. Whereas the wise are considered in their choices of speech – not that they never say anything, but that their communication is deliberate and thoughtful. And also, if the foolish were to stay silent – well they might learn and grow and become better people.

Now let us return to my observation that bigotry is hackneyed and stupid and uncreative. Is it possible to be any of these things while also possessing wisdom? Probably not. We must conclude therefore that bigotry is part of the language of the fool, the language that Odin repeatedly silences in the stanzas of Havamal.

My (not entirely tongue in cheek) conclusion is that we have a clear reconstructionist mandate for telling bigoted Heathens to shut their mouths. And indeed, I think we probably have a responsibility to do so if we want to have a happy, healthy Heathen community; if we want a Heathen community that has maximum access to positive, creative (divine? Odinnic?) energy.

Your choice: be a hackneyed bigot, or be a conduit for the gods, spirits, and ancestors. Hmm, that’s a hard one (and surprisingly, for some people it really is…makes you wonder why they think they want to be Heathen).

If getting rid of bigotry makes for better comedy, I think it reasonable to expect the same holds for Heathenry. Certainly in my observation the shallowest, silliest antics in modern Heathenry come from groups like the AFA (anyone remember their hilarious space program?) rather than from the more serious, focused groups like The Troth. (And that’s before we even touch the new AFA leader’s all-but-card-carrying-neo-Nazi statements from last year).

Anyway, right now the political tide is bursting with stupid, petty hatred. Scumbags who want to tear down the very institutions and communities they have claimed leadership over will try to ooze their poison into every little corner of the world, including Heathenry. That’s not something to which we should acquiesce.

And those Heathens who were already on board the poison ooze parade need, more than ever, to know that they are being stupid, boorish, and hackneyed. If they won’t divest themselves of their stupid bigotries then I think the rest of us can assume that they have burning desires to be made laughingstocks (we have it on Odin’s authority, after all), and respond accordingly. Just as we must respond to that fragile little ego in the White House and his nasty little cronies…and then some.

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Generosity Means Resistance

Sutton.hoo.helmetRecently I wrote about the importance of hospitality within Heathen tradition, as well as about the importance of generosity. Something I did not point out in that article was this: the virtues of hospitality and generosity were of particular significance when it came to rulers. The tight fisted king could not expect to win good regard, nor expect to have a comfortable reign. The community was worth more than any one individual, and was not afraid to flex its muscles.

As I discussed in my essay on Heathen Harvest about why universalism makes infinitely more sense than folkism, the picture of unitary ethnic tribes ruled by monarchs was something more or less invented by Christian missionaries. It was a tactic, since it legitimated the fiction that converting the ruler of a tribe or group was de facto converting every member of the community. A transparent bit of political sleight of hand, yet history teaches us that even the flimsiest pretext can be enough to excuse all sorts of outrage. (I love the irony, too, that the folkish notion of ethnic exclusivity was originally a Roman Catholic concoction to facilitate the pacification of the Northern barbarians).

Let’s compare these two ideas: on the one hand the miserly king, on the other, the pretense of uniformity as a device for making a monarch into a tool. We can see how tight-fistedness in a ruler saps the strength of the people ruled, rendering them both more and more vulnerable to abuse and less and less empowered to be creative, magical, and vigorous in their lives. No wonder the mean master was deplored and the unwelcoming lord held in contempt.

The original Heathens, I suspect, were conversant in what we now call game theory; they recognized that a co-operative strategy for dealing with life yields richer rewards than a war of all against all. This doesn’t mean there was never conflict, greed, or selfishness of course; but individualism and aggression for its own sake would have likely been seen as absurdities and death wishes by anyone grounded in the lore of Heathen spiritual tradition.

Underlying this co-operative approach to life, I suspect, was the awareness of the concept of wyrd, the recognition that all events have some degree of significance, and that all things are interconnected in profound ways. As such, rash actions easily have undesired consequences, possibly far in excess of anything that could be expected (who could have predicted, for example, the unfolding crisis triggered by the decision so many years ago to start burning fossil fuels in industrial quantities?).

Generosity makes sense when one recognizes the interconnections of wyrd and grasps that the value of another person cannot easily be gauged by first impressions. When we consider that the smallest action could have incalculable implications (the classic chaos butterfly at work), and that we are incapable of guessing which, when, and how, it makes sense that generosity and hospitality should be default stances. In other words, generosity and hospitality are not just noble gestures; they are expressions of self-interest, and expressions of care for the horizon of mystery, that which rune magicians  refer to as Runa.

To trust Runa is to embrace the unknown. One who is strong with mystery, who has powerful will, is able to trust in all the unimaginable threads of the web of time, in all the infinity of rivulets that trickle down from the fleeting present back into the well of the past. So generosity and hospitality are gestures of grace and power and trust that one can become aligned with Runa for the betterment of all.

Modernity has been rife with masters who have been misers. Colonialism, capitalism, (ironically, given its stated values) communism, and (especially) fascism have been built on principles of miserliness. Of tight-fistedness and inhospitability. Indeed, one could argue that modernity has been a process of attempting to abolish mystery, to abolish uncertainty and the awe and fear that is inseparable from Runa herself. It does not work of course; the tighter the fist is clenched, the less it is able to grasp.

And so that brings me to the topic of January 20, 2017. The day that one of the most flagrant misers in the world, one of the pettiest haters of all time, will ascend to mastery of the most powerful empire in human history. This man, who has done so well at convincing his own victims to vote for him and celebrate him, does not understand generosity and hospitality. He fears and hates wyrd, for it is the omnipresent threat to his callow ego. And in his (and his followers’) attempts to clutch to illusions of certainty (such as illusions of lost glory days that never were), he will gladly sacrifice anything. And for a man with that much power, that means sacrificing everything.

Heathens must stand against this fool and his lackeys. Trump and his gang of thieves have  nothing but contempt for the institutions that have elevated them, for the people that have elected them, and for the people their actions have and will hurt (which includes those who elected them and many others besides, nationally and internationally). We must not be fooled, distracted, discouraged, or bought off. The ancestral ways are clear: Trump and his lackeys are terrible rulers, guided by nothing but cowardice and willful ignorance.

This is not to pretend that Trump is an accident, or that the pointless greed of the corporate-controlled Republicans is an accident, or that we should be surprised that the Democrats have become so ineffectual, bought off as they are by the same masters as those who rule the Republicans. It is apparent that few in positions of power have the slightest interest in service. That the institutions of the US have never protected its citizens with even a pretense of equality.

Yet here is where we stand. We must fight the miser with weapons of generosity and hospitality that can build unbreakable communities. We must reach out without stint and resist every outrage. This new master, who holds his own office and responsibilities in contempt, must be contained and constrained. The institutions of power and governance must be reclaimed from the control of the corrupt. Because of our values of generosity and hospitality, our honoring of wyrd and Runa, we Heathens have more obligation than most to stand up and be counted. Let us not waste any time.

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Take the IAT Challenge!

Little Red Riding Hood(Yes, I said IAT, not IOT, sorry, sorry).

Many Heathens of European descent are mortified at the prospect of being called racist – regardless of their political beliefs. This is understandable; the Nazis tainted the reputation of Heathen mythology and who wants to be associated with Nazism? Well, I suppose some people do, but I would like to think that if they’re Elhaz Ablaze readers then maybe they’re hip to the possibility that they’ve got some exciting growth opportunities (e.g. away from all that Hitler crap) when it comes to politics. Here’s a hint of how getting away from fascism might be good for Heathens currently enamored of it or its echoes:

“I have in this War a burning private grudge – which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler… Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Of course, outside of Heathenry, folk of European descent also tend to be mortified at the prospect of being accused of racism. Who can blame them? It’s a dirty word. Or wait…maybe there’s something about long histories of violence and inequality that persist right through to the present day. Oh yeah, we wouldn’t want to be seen as having anything to do with that.

And no, I’m not trying to invalidate all the kinds of suffering and even structural inequality that white people also experience. If you’ve known suffering, how about experimenting with the fine art of finding empathy for someone else’s? You might find it healing for you as well. That’s what they call solidarity, and it’s what our capitalist masters have been busily working to constantly undermine for a very long time now.

I’m sarcastic perhaps, and perhaps a little unfair. The reality is, racism has been a huge force in the world for a good few centuries, a central component of imperialism and colonialism, and of the gradual unfettering of the capitalist class as it inches its tentacles across the globe (but note that it doesn’t seem to have had much to do with Heathenism…). (Marx predicted that the exploitation of the proletariat would reach its apogee in the ruthless domination of developing world economies by Western corporations, and he was spot on). And there are plenty of European descended folks who are genuinely disturbed by this continuing legacy.

But I digress. European-descended Heathens are afraid of being called racist, and to some extent that’s very reasonable, particularly in light of the events in Europe in the 20th century. It is also very reasonable because some of us actually are racist. A few are hard-core, card carrying haters, but let’s set them aside for a moment and acknowledge that it is hard not to allow broader racist social narratives affect one’s mindset. Mainstream media – Fox News, CNN, etc. – makes a vigorous habit of pumping racist BS into our minds (though I would like to think that even conservative Elhaz Ablaze readers would be too sensible to muck about with the likes of Fox News!).

So this isn’t an article in which I wish to point the finger in a shrill, moralizing sermon (any more than I already have?). What I really want to do is quietly, soberly ponder the realities of racism in contemporary Western societies. And I want to invite myself and my readers to withdraw all projections on the issue. I’m not asking you to change your mind, or anything like that. Projections can be accurate or inaccurate, but either way we always have them (they’re the basis of our consciousness) and it is worth our while to withdraw them, to hold them out and evaluate their weighting and momentum, to evaluate the ways that they contort and construct our perceptions.

Isn’t it worthwhile to reclaim one’s mind from social conditioning, especially the banal and miserly conditioning that predominates these days?

If we can bring this kind of sobriety to the question of prejudice, we are first freed of the indignity of making excuses. For example, folkish Heathens on the racist end of the spectrum will try to say they are not racist simply by disputing the definition of racism. I have often seen, to pick a common scenario, the invocation of that magic phrase “separate but equal.” Such folk seem to forget that such language provided the scaffolding for Jim Crow, South African apartheid, and ultimately for the Holocaust as well.

So even if they genuinely do not wish to express a racist sentiment (I’m giving the benefit of the doubt for the sake of the argument), they might like to know that “separate but equal” is so steeped in histories of racism that it only makes them look worse, not better. And I feel genuinely embarrassed on their behalf.

Since it is clear that the issue of race (and, actually, many others too) makes Heathens of European descent go loopy (regardless of their political views), I would like to propose a quick and efficient tool for settling the question of where projection begins and ends. It is called the Implicit Association Test (IAT). It won’t solve all our problems, but it will give some constructive grist for the mill.

The IAT was developed by Harvard psychologists and has been adapted to study all kinds of unconscious preferences (so there are actually many different IATs, depending on the subject at hand). They’re simple web based tests, and they rely on reaction speed to access the underlying preferences that surface once the conscious mind is distracted or overloaded. They’ve been robustly researched and validated, and if psychology can sometimes be rigorous and sometimes a farce, they’re definitely up over on the rigor end of the scale.

There are IATs for various aspects of racial, religious, gender, sexual identity, ability/disability, etc. prejudice. They’re a great tool for expanding one’s self-knowledge – even if we might not always like the answers!

I did 8 of the IATs tonight. Turns out I think Muslims are alright, prefer African Americans to European Americans, and I see Native Americans and Asian Americans as being more “American” than European Americans (being a European-descended immigrant to the US myself, this last result doesn’t seem so surprising). I found out that I have no preference in any direction when comparing young folk and old folk, but I do have a slight prejudice against disabled people, which is useful information and points to an opportunity for my own growth. Yes! I’m not afraid to admit my shortcomings.

I also found out that in a comparison of my views on Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, I was very positive about Hinduism and Judaism, somewhat positive towards Islam, and very negative toward Christianity (but not as negative as I expected). I’d still like to be free of all bias, even against Christianity. The false comforts of prejudice are much less valuable than the possession of true perception.

SO! Instead of mouthing weasel words about how you aren’t a bigoted Heathen, why not step on up and take the tests. I suspect some universalist Heathens might be embarrassed by hard-to-admit prejudicial peccadilloes , and more than a few folkish Heathens might be forced to wonder whether their racial or other convictions really are so rational after all. The best of both groups will aggressively pursue the question of how to grow and change, regardless of the results they score.

Since my results were pretty consistent with my progressive politics, I learned that I need to consider conservative opinions more carefully – not that this means I have to become politically centrist, but that I need to consider my bias and strive to see truly. If I really believe my way of seeing things is correct then I should not need to fear that exposing myself to other points of view might prove me wrong. “The prover proves what the thinker thinks” is a threat regardless of the content of one’s beliefs.

Take the IAT challenge! Most of the tests will not only tell you where your prejudices (if any) lie, they’ll tell you also what the general American population’s distribution of attitudes is as well, so you can situate yourself in the bigger picture. Sorry, its rather American-centric, and as a non-American I found some of them a bit tricky to make sense of at first. Yay cultural hegemony. But don’t let that ruin the fun they can nevertheless offer.

Maybe Death in June and their ilk could do the IAT for us all. And maybe so could their detractors. Maybe Steve McNallen could put his money where his mouth is and do a few IATs, since he still insists he isn’t racist no matter how many politically stinky bombs he drops. Maybe Heathen United Against Racism members would be willing to take the IAT and perhaps even have the courage to admit if they too have work to do on shifting prejudices.

This test won’t “prove” or “disprove” whether a person is “a racist” or “not a racist,” (a number of champions for racial justice have flunked IAT tests looking at racial prejudice, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done important and worthy work), but it certainly grants a powerful reality check, and it would certainly help separate out the lovers from the haters.

Look, I’m writing flippantly because the reality of prejudice in the Heathen community is enough to make me want to cry. I’ve seen a few haters, but also plenty of unconsidered projection and unconsciousness. I’d love to see en masse completion of the IAT, and en masse honest reporting of the results, and en masse commitment to step up and work on changing whatever prejudices and blind spots are revealed. Maybe we would end up with a more honest  and (here’s my own bias speaking) more inclusive community.

Do it for social justice, for honor, or just for the sake of your own intellectual honesty or curiosity. Seriously, life is too short to let unconsciously held beliefs shape the course of our lives (whether those beliefs be politically charged or no). Just click the link and get cracking, and be willing to share your results (even if just with a few trusted friends) and what you’re willing to work on, whatever your prejudices turn out to be:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Do you really own your own beliefs? The IAT gives us a tool to help stop our beliefs from owning us.

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Arguments in Favor of Universalist Heathenry

the-ash-yggdrasil-by-friedrich-wilhelm-heineA little over a year ago I wrote a piece which I intended to be the ultimate critique of folkism in favor of universalism (ironically I now feel it could benefit from being made still more comprehensive, but you have to start somewhere). Elhaz Ablaze was on hiatus, and the article ended up being posted at Heathen Harvest (thanks Sage!).

It went on to garner plenty of excitement; I received hate mail and love letters in even measure. I also received many promises of folkish rebuttals, though none materialized (which does little for the tattered intellectual credibility of the doctrine).

Recently someone added a new comment to the article, a brazen anti-Semitic ejaculation. It would be funny if it weren’t, as far as I can tell, dead serious.

I posted a riposte to this comment – and then realized that I had never shared the piece on Elhaz Ablaze itself. And seeing as this month has been grueling and I’ve not had time to write a new article for the site…it seems like a cheap way to dig my way out of the publication hole (part of the reason I’ve been busy is that I’ve been doing editing work on our forthcoming book).

So I hope you enjoy the essay, or if not, then I hope you are willing to at least consider its challenge and respond in a less silly, or even ugly, way than some others have (I gave folkish Heathenry some measure of benefit-of-the-doubt in the essay, but since then the folkish response hasn’t exactly been making it easy for me to maintain that stance). Anyway, here’s the link:

http://heathenharvest.org/2014/09/28/arguments-in-favor-of-universalist-heathenry/

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Composing Heathenry

I wrestle endlessly with the somewhat related themes of reconstructionism and cultural specificity as they pertain to Heathenry. Tonight some playful (pun unintended but welcome) analogies to music occurred to me. They might help to elucidate my thoughts on both reconstructionism and the Folkish/universalist thing. First I’ll set the scene with some comments about music, but stick with me, even if it seems tangential or obscure at first – I promise to bring my rumination to bear on the field of contemporary Heathen thinking.

As a musician I’m big on knowing theory. I can talk about double harmonic minors, and 13:8 time, and 16th note sweep picking (on a bass, whee!) all day long. And I can effortlessly apply that theory: it isn’t just words or ideas (well, ok, the 16th note bass sweeps do take a bit of effort, but I’m getting there!).

The discipline of all that structure is paradoxically freeing. When I want to do fast, complex music, my hands know what to do because my brain is so well versed. I know intuitively how different tones will combine from my theoretical understanding. I can break down compositions and assemble arrangements with both flair and rapidity. I can store a lot of information about musical structure very simply through the application of underlying rules of harmony or rhythm, which makes learning, performing, and remembering material a lot easier.

I’m far from perfect, and my music theory is very much geared towards practical usage rather than armchair reflection (I’m 100% self-trained). But nonetheless, I think the point is made.

I have even found that, being so deeply grounded in the “rules” of music, I can break them freely. I often find myself doing this with harmonic construction these days. I like the challenge of creating fresh tonal canvasses within the “rules” of conventional scales and chords, but I also find myself freely able to break up recognisable patterns and work atonally. Because I know what the “rules” of music are I can break them in interesting and enjoyable ways.

Occasionally I encounter the view that learning a lot of music theory can be a straightjacket that destroys spontaneity and the creative impulse. I know this does happen sometimes, especially for heavily drilled classical students.

Yet most people I’ve met who claim to avoid learning theory in order to preserve their freedom of expression actually have a rather limited range. They often seem to devolve to the same two or three tricks over and over again, not understanding how to develop their sound. They might be able to “hear” how to give flesh to the bones of their ideas, but lack the skill to embody their creations in a satisfying way.

In the worst cases they resort to “experimentalism” as a substitute for inspiration and ability, hiding behind provocative bungling as though it were a purposeful choice and not an inarticulate flailing.

So my point should be clear: with prudence and an adventurous attitude one can free oneself by submitting to the rigour of musical theory. One needs to avoid the reef of drudging slavery to musical form, and one needs to avoid the seemingly free – but actually inarticulate and blundering – position of being anti-theory.

Well, I see Heathenry in a similar light.

Sure, reconstructionism produces various boffins who shackle themselves to academic minutiae and end up saying the most ridiculous things. On the other hand, without the discipline of historical grounding, people cook up the most half-baked spiritual repast and, not knowing any better, think that they’re somehow creating something wonderful! Yet their efforts lack depth, grit, character (and you see this just as much among “Folkish” Heathens as among Universalists, incidentally).

The better road is to take the adventurousness of the Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis (UPG) brigade (the anti-theory, or anti-reconstruction types), and the rigour of the reconstructionists. In this way, theory can offer a discipline which frees the creative spark to express itself with great subtlety.

For me this manifests as what I generally refer to as Psychological Reconstructionism. For example, to me understanding the worldview of the old Heathens – the importance of wyrd, time, interconnection, sacredness, hospitality, gift-giving, and reciprocity – stands over and above particular debates about exactly what clothes were worn when or the like.

And this attitude frees me to recognise the similarities between Heathenry and other traditions, even while simultaneously preserving a feel for the uniqueness of the Heathen traditions (and others). Just as music is a universal language spoken in an infinite range of nuances – so too culture. Hence, for example, when I see in Odin the archetype of (among others) the Wounded Healer, I can recognise how this connects him to many other cultures and traditions, even though I can still celebrate the manner in which he is a unique manifestation of that meme.

As a musician I’ve played in prog rock bands, death metal bands, world music outfits, experimental groups, folk ensembles, and bands that have fused various of the aforementioned influences. I’ve touched on genres as varied as black metal, hip hop, and ‘live’ dance music. I’ve played with blast beating metal drummers from hell, African percussionists, tabla masters, Middle Eastern percussionists, you name it (in some cases, I’ve played with people who’ve had mastery of several of these domains!). In all of these configurations, I’ve used the same language to find my way, bringing my particular idiom (to borrow from Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail) to bear in each case.

And I have the same attitude with culture. I bring my own spiritual idiom to the world, but I can freely interface with kindred spirits across all sorts of literal and figurative borders. My deep sense of specific identity – my interest in reconstructionism and ancestor worship – informs my spirit in ways that also enable me to interface with the Other, until I come to appreciate the ways in which seemingly hard barriers are always more porous and fascinating than first shallow glances might suggest.

Hence I am a reconstructionist who loves UPG; and I am a staunch ancestor worshipper and Europhile who embraces cross-cultural exchange and intermingling at the same time. Because to me, the latter is part of the heritage I glean from the former. Just as I am a theory-based musician who thinks nothing of violating every harmonic law in the book if it creates the effect I want (and indeed, I use my knowledge of the ‘rules’ of music and spirituality to break themselves in creative and appealing ways).

The fundamental question is this: are the forms of tradition (be it musical or spiritual or whatever) there to serve us, or are we to serve them? Or is it a bit of both? If we respect them we recognise that they were born from the inspiration of our predecessors, and hence to truly be “reconstructionist” (which, I should mention, is NOT at all necessarily synonymous with being Folkish or Universalist or any other -ism, as these comments on the whole imply) one might have to break the rules of reconstructionism now and again.

In my personal microcosmos Elric and Odin and alchemical Mercury are deeply related (yet naturally distinct); and for me the profound obsession with memory in Heathenry seems uncannily like the same obsession in Sufism (yet I at least cannot seem to effect a straightforward, simple fusion of the two). Things can be different yet the same; in fact this is what the symbol of Yggdrasill is all about: reminding us of the simultaneous oneness and difference of all things, and reminding us of the necessary interdependence that binds the archetypes of  isolation and dissolution.

Blur the lines and we see things as they are; blur the lines and we begin to shed abstraction and embrace the endless mystery from which our world is woven. The closer you examine any boundary, the less distinct it becomes – that might not make it less real, but it forces us to recognise that our specific, localised uniqueness is not dependent on rigid separation, nor necessarily threatened by absence of the same.

What counts is our integrity and our vulnerable imagination. Rigidly clinging to rules about either isolated specificity or generalised universality amounts to underutilising our human faculties and potential. As always, George Orwell had it right to blame the ills of the world on the gramophone mind and not on the particular records being played at any given time.

For like it or not, we are all hedgewalkers like Odin (another reason to call him Allfather), whether it comes to musical expression or spiritual inspiration. The point of being strict…is so that we can become free of all restriction.

All only in my humble, internally contradictory, and frighteningly arbitrary opinion, of course.

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At the Art Gallery

(Warning: I use the term “arch-Heathen” in this post. It refers to the “original Heathens” from back when Europe was a pre-modern, pre-Christian place. I don’t know who first coined this term).

I’ve found myself at a strange loose end these last few days, following the dismantling/collapse of one of the most important things in my life. Consequently I’ve been staying at the home of my band mates, and because of the time of year the world around me rather reflects the limbo I have entered.

Today more than most I knew that I needed to move, evolve, shift my consciousness. I found myself alone, in solitude, and while there was a temptation to raid my band mates’ disgustingly huge CD collections, I know myself. I had to get the blood moving through my limbs and brain.

Uncertain where to head, particularly on a glaring and disgusting Sydney summer day, I called on Woden as the Wanderer and invited him to set my feet on the correct path. He responded; my journey took me into the city, then had me roam in a seemingly accidental spiral, which tightened and tightened around the New South Wales Art Gallery.

I love the NSW Art Gallery. I love visiting the old statuary of Hindu gods, today pausing in particular to acknowledge an image of Vishnu surrounded by his many avatars. I wondered idly if Woden is not in fact an avatar of Vishnu, and I an avatar of Woden – an avatar of an avatar! I love the Hindu gods – they’re like friendly and well-known cousins to my own Indo-European spiritual forebears.

I love staring into the infinity of Aboriginal dot art. These huge canvasses seem at first to have little merit, being covered in uniform rows of white dots. The magic lies in staring at them for an extended period of time. Only machines make perfectly uniform lines, and so the slight variations in the arrangement of the dots create visual illusions and beautiful trance states.

Folk glance at these images for but a handful of seconds and then wander off, thinking Aboriginal art to be little more than primitive splotches. If they exhibited even a little depth or patience, they’d discover whole universes.

But the reason Woden led me to the Art Gallery was that, although I did not know it, the current feature exhibition was on Impressionism, with Monet in the starring role.

“All I have ever done is try to convey my experience before nature” – Claude Monet, 1912.

I love Monet. He is my favourite painter. He paints with light. His work does not represent reality; it presents for you the thing itself, the very experience and spirit of the thing or place that he has painted. Look too close and you’ll fall in. When I behold his paintings I smell the grass or the snow, feel the wind, the taste of dawn light or afternoon shadow. My understanding of the natural world was grossly incomplete before I encountered his work.

I was fortunate enough to see a major Monet exhibition a few years ago and in the final room was a massive water lily painting. It literally filled the entire room with colour and radiance and it took me some 15 minutes acclimatising before I could bring myself to even look at it, let alone really engage with it.

The waterlilies were produced in the final years of Monet’s life, and they represent the pinnacle of his work. Vast multiverses await anyone brave enough to really gaze into these images. From the pond in his own back yard Monet presented the whole fabric of Being for all to see. What artist could ever even dream of competing with that?

It doesn’t work with the prints you can buy of his work, either. Mass-production ruins the spell. Only the actual works by the actual artist can take you into the magic.

Seeing these marvellous images, being thrown into deeply altered states of consciousness by these paintings, caused me to reflect on something I read recently in an article that touched on the “folkish versus universalist” debate in Heathenry.

Regular readers will know that I consider this debate to be a barren waste of time, and will also know that I happily incorporate elements of both points of view into my own – which to me just demonstrates how vacuous the argument is.

This particular article argued that extremely strict and rigourous historical reconstruction is needed for modern Heathenry and that anything less is a deep affront and offence to the gods. The worst of the lot, the argument went, were those bloody universalists, off syncretising Heathenry with other traditions.

Of course many universalists are not in fact syncretists, so this particular person was obviously a bit of an expert at executing straw men.

And of course, there is a logical flaw in arguing that the gods would be offended if we’re not strict reconstructionists – because from what I can see that view could only be supported by Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis, and is therefore an example of the kind of creative license this article regarded as anathema.

There is of course the passage in Havamal that asks if you know how to carve, stain, offer, sacrifice, etc. But there is no passage in that poem that runs “and if you don’t reconstruct exactly how we did these things then we’ll get pissed at you”.

There is also an emphasis on doing things the “right” way – but again I can’t see any historical basis for equating this with hard reconstructionism, though it seems likely that being familiar with history would rather be of assistance.

Given that my strange chaos magic-influenced runic experiments seem to work I can only conclude that the gods are Not in fact adverse to innovation, though I suppose keeping it in the spirit of the tradition would be good manners (whatever “the spirit of the tradition” means – another matter of arbitrary opinion I fear).

This isn’t to say we should throw out the historical record of course – on the contrary, it is a source of marvelous riches. Often when you do the research you find that the arch-Heathen’s view on a particular issue was much more interesting than the psuedo-historical stuff that folk sneak into modern Heathenism all the time.

But just because it is old and original doesn’t mean it is the best – the Heathen cultures of yore certainly didn’t agree with one another on how to do things, and in the meantime I think we can safely dispense with human sacrifice and the like.

Look at me – I started by rhapsodising about the rich experiences afforded by Monet’s work and now I am debating ideas and ideology. What a degeneration! It troubles me that so many Heathens are so eager to debate theory and ideology but so few are willing to go and directly engage with the magic of the ancestral traditions, the natural world, the runes, and so forth.

(In fact, given that the arch-Heathens seemed far too busy living life to be splitting intellectual hairs, it seems distinctly syncretistic and unHeathen to get obsessed about distinctions like folkish/universalist).

The point of my questioning the hard reconstructionist view that the only valid sources for modern Heathenry come from the original Heathens is this: what if the spiritual and cultural current of Heathenry never really went away, but has instead been happily manifesting itself in all sorts of guises since the Conversion?

My instinct is to say that this possibility could only ever be the truth. What else would guide us back into the arms of history but the latent Heathen intuition and instinct that still lives within us?

And so I turn to Monet, whose art – like the Greek temple Heidegger invokes in his landmark essay “On The Origin Of The Work Of Art” – redeems us to a reverent relationship to nature.

This reverent relationship is deeply scored in the art, mythology and physical culture that the arch-Heathens left behind. And yet I would argue that its most refined and ultimate expression does not occur until nine hundred odd years after the Conversion: on the doorstep of nihilistic modernity Monet erected the final distillation of the Heathen-animist experience.

Monet is not the only one – Nietzsche, Heidegger, Moorcock, Cave, Von Till – the list goes on, artists, thinkers, writers, musicians who, whether consciously or not, have expressed in powerful terms the threads of arch-Heathen consciousness.

We would be utterly insane not to draw upon these living, breathing (though concealed) manifestations of the life-urge which shaped arch-Heathen culture and consciousness in the first place.

In Hinduism, a useful and valid Indo-European cognate to Heathenism, there are always new developments, as great humans are elevated to godhood and as cultural mores shift. For our ancestors it was no different – we need only compare the different branch cultures of old Heathenry. Modern Heathenry will not be truly reconstructionist until it whole-heartedly embraces innovation.

Again, this is not to dismiss the reconstructionist project, which is utterly needed if we are to have a fluid connection to the Well of Memory. I am as amused and disappointed by the endless hordes of shallow and idiotic pseudo-Heathen writings and articles as anyone else. But if we dismiss the impulse that produces these well-meant attempts then the game is over, too.

Look at it another way: as soon as we reduce modern Heathenry to hard reconstructionism we are left with two choices: either continue to draw on post-Conversion Heathen manifestations such as Monet’s art and thus become hypocrites; or abandon computers, modern languages, stop eating potatoes, and countless other absurd sacrifices. The reconstructionist project might be necessary but it sure as hell is not sufficient to produce a genuinely flourishing modern Heathenism.

Me? I’ll be letting Woden guide me to the art gallery, where I’ll gorge my soul on Monet and listen to the advance reference tracks of the new Ironwood album (about to come out) on my mp3 player. And hope that one day the focus of mainstream Heathenry will be the experience, the thing itself, and not irresolvable debates about what amount to arbitrary rules.

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