Philosophy

The Joy of…Fermentation

Tonight I came home from work, ate dinner, and then got busy preparing some traditional foods – a bucket of salsa, a jug of beet kvass, and three buckets of sauerkraut! The more I explore the art of making food from scratch the more joyous it becomes and I wanted to share some reflections that came to me tonight.

First of all, getting into more traditional cooking is easier than it seems. At first having to work from raw ingredients, putting it all together by hand, seems intimidating for anyone used to pre-made supermarket convenience. But traditional cooking is like meditation – the effort invested quickly pays itself off and then starts raking in the interest on very favourable terms.

After only a little experience you begin to realise just how fun it is to make salsa or kvass or sauerkraut or whey & cream cheese. I feel deeply energised even though I worked all day and then spent more than a couple of hours in the kitchen.

I spent my time cooking listening to the music of Ironwood, which always makes me happy, and preparing food from raw ingredients involves a lot of repetition – cutting, and pounding the cabbage for the sauerkraut. This work provides brilliant doors for trance!

Everyone knows that repetitive rhythms can induce trance and in the process of my cooking tonight I drifted into some lovely and quite blessed states. I wandered through different worlds and I could literally feel the small wounds of daily life healing throughout my body from the altered consciousness into which I had drifted. What a bonus!

And of course it makes my soul happy to know that I am making fermented foods, which are super-nutritious and super-delicious and fun to make. My kind of traditionalism (small t used on purpose folks) is not ideological – I am neither against nor for the modern world, though I have many criticisms to make of it.

Rather, my kind of traditionalism is empirical in basis – for there is extensive and very sound science for the view that premodern approaches to cuisine are far superior to the high calorie, low nutrient rubbish so prevalent these days.

The fact that making food as healthy as sauerkraut (a far superior source of Vit C than any pill), or beet kvass (which cures allergy attacks, mouth ulcers, and jet lag with casual alacrity in my personal experience, as well as tasting divine) also connects me with the living experiences that shaped the mythic worldviews of old Europe is just beautiful, elegant even.

I really think that exploring such practices and ways is just as essential – perhaps more so – than even delving into mythology or runic artefacts or whatever. These simple domestic practices were and still can be the bricks and mortar which nourished the pre-Christian Heathen imagination.

You’ll notice that all the foods I made tonight – salsa, sauerkraut, beet kvass – are fermented foods. Fermentation is a fascinating thing. Before we had fridges we used fermentation to make food last – and it just so happens that fermentation (of which making alcohol is only a very small part) also loads up the food with nutrients and makes them super-easy to digest. A nice little bonus which we in our fridge-age unfortunately no longer reap.

Fermentation is essentially the art of letting food rot into something tastier, healthier, and longer-lasting than what it would be straight out of the ground. There’s something brilliant about the way this simple practice marshals the vast chemical complexity of food molecules.

One of the reservations I have about untrammelled technologisation is that it invites us into simplistic understandings of the world, since we begin to focus on what we understand and tend to forget that things are way more complex than we might like to think (a common problem that has been studied extensively in experimental psychology, and to which it seems even the most brilliant scientists have been found to be susceptible to).

But fermentation elegantly marshals the vast chemical complexities of food with a dead simple strategy – chop it up and let it sit at room temperature for a few days. Brilliant! I see fermentation as a brilliant analogy for various alchemical processes, and so as I make my fermented foods I experience it as a spiritual analogy, just as alchemists use the quest for gold as a physical metaphor for their spiritual quest for the philosopher’s stone, for enlightenment or healing.

This is one of those things that really illustrates the fact that spiritual life and everyday mundane life are not qualitatively different. They exist on a continuum and if we are imaginative, curious, and a little bit industrious we can shorten that continuum so that the spiritual permeates the everyday and the everyday permeates the spiritual. To me that is nothing more or less than animism in action, the gods living at one with our every breath. And isn’t that the whole goal of premodern spiritual paths such as Heathenry?

Incidentally, for those wondering, I’ve been doing more research on premodern lifespans and health. The only sound and genuinely empirical, quantitative study I found (other than Weston Prices’s work) looked extensively at fossils and human remains from before the current age, and also at contemporary premodern cultures (mostly hunter gatherers).

They found that the average lifespan under these conditions is in the mid 70’s. They also made some other surprising discoveries – for example it appears that infant mortality rates were not through the roof in these cultures!

From other archaeology material I’ve read – Barbarians to Angels provides some low key but very clear examples – it is clear that the premodern lifestyle produced good health generally, including good dental health. Monty Python’s mud-eating, snaggle-tooth peasants are hilarious, but they’ve maybe unduly prejudiced our ability to understand the lifestyles of premodern times.

This is all in line with Weston Price’s work on nutrition. His theory was that the premodern diets of many cultures were and are superior to modern processed diets because they are super-dense in nutrients and relatively low in calories – just the opposite of McDonalds, really.

Can anyone really argue with such a view? Certainly from reading Michael Pollan and Nina Planck it seems to me that rigorous research (and sadly much nutritional research isn’t) strongly supports this view.

So eating traditionally accords nicely with the modern scientific method, a perfect example of why “going back” to the past for inspiration can sometimes actually be much more scientifically sound than the reckless technical “innovation” to which we in the West are unfortunately quite invisibly addicted to.

Incidentally if you think you can’t afford to eat organic or small-farm grown you might like to look at what you do spend your money on…do we need cable TV, three cars per household member, 10,000 inch televisions, etc, etc? There’s more room in your budget for good food than you realise.

Raw ingredients, even organic or small-farm grown, have two other advantages – making food from scratch generally works out more economically than processed premade foods anyway, and also such foods (in Australia at least) are largely GST exempt, so its cheaper than you think.

Plus you can explore food co-ops, growing your own, etc, etc. If you are willing to use your imagination you can do it. That said, please don’t take my comments in a finger-pointing or moralising way. I’m hoping to inspire rather than harangue. Did I mention how fun and easy it is to make  fermented foods?

Incidentally, from what I’ve read it also seems clear that premodern cultures traded food with one another extensively. The poisonous monoculture that lurks in this modern world is not a product of cross-cultural food munching, despite what some more ideologically based traditionalists might like to think.

Multiculturalism is not monoculturalism, and premodern peoples, from what I have read at least, loved to chow down on each others’ specialties.

Sauerkraut, that quintessential German dish, arrived in Europe with the Mongols. That doesn’t take away its special Germanic-ness, which has accrued quite legitimately over some nine centuries, it just reminds us that there’s a difference between cultural purity (which pretty much doesn’t exist and never did and is purely a modern fabrication) and cultural specificity (which clearly did and does exist since we can talk about distinctly unique and different groups, but which included intercultural exchange as one of its elements).

In other words, the isolationist tendencies of ideologically-based traditionalists are anachronistic and untrue to the ancestral ways – and do not in fact do much to safeguard the old traditions. How ironic.

As often is the case my writing jumbles together politics, philosophy, history, spirituality, mythology, domesticity, health sciences, psychology, and eating! We divide the world into neat categories but in doing so we lose our ability to understand it. As Mr Heinlein said, “specialisation is for insects.” My thoughts keep rotting up into more and more complexity and richness, and fermentation is a great metaphor for both the creative and the intellectual processes…

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Building a Life

I have a long term quarrel with our education system. I’ve always believed our present system spends way too much time teaching us things we don’t need and de-emphasizes or completely ignores way too many things we do.

Most, so-called, magickal and occult training systems are no better. In fact, they’re usually worse.

But it’s easy to level criticism without offering any solutions. What is important? What do we need to know? I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about these questions, and I think I’m getting pretty close to having a definitive answer.

In my view there are four elements, four key components, to building a life.

Health & Safety

Wealth & Lifestyle

Sex & Relationships

Meaning & Purpose

Each of the elements has two main aspects and each of the four (or eight) implies a critical skill set you must master in order to function as a complete, independent, adult human being.

Astute readers may notice some similarity between my list and Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. You may also notice there’s a fair degree of crossover with Carroll’s “Eight-Colour Theory of Magic”. Actually, the inspiration for my four element model came from somewhere much more unexpected. A simpler version of this model was published in the book “The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed” by Erik von Markovik. (Told you that was unexpected.)

In Mystery’s (von Markovik’s) version, the meaning of life is given as “Survive/Reproduce” and the elements of a life are given as Health, Wealth and Sex.

I was immediately attracted to the cynicism and simplicity of this model (for reasons obvious to anyone who knows me) and even more impressed with his explanation of how the elements are interrelated. According to Mystery, the three elements are interdependent. A deficiency in one area will sooner or later lead to a deficiency in another area and eventually to the collapse of the entire system (your life).

This is a radically different way of looking at things than the more commonly known Maslow model, but seems much more correct to me. My expanded, four element model is also intended to be taken as interrelated. Some elements might seem logically to be more fundamental (or more urgent) than others, but if you don’t cover all four you’re going to have a serious problem.

In my next few posts, I plan on reviewing the four elements in more detail.

Leave a comment if you feel I’ve left out anything important.

Clint.

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Review: Georgia Through its Folktales (Michael Berman)

Georgia Through Its Folktales by Michael Berman, with translations by Ketevan Kalandadze and illustrations by Miranda Gray
2010, O Books, 153 pages

This book is unlike most compendiums of folktales for two reasons: firstly, the relative obscurity (in the English language at any rate) of the subject matter; and secondly, the unique and fascinating reflective threads with which the stories on offer are bound together.

Georgia Through Its Folktales is part travelogue, part folk tale anthology, part cultural history lesson, and part spiritual exploration. It is neither fiction, nor is it not fiction; it is neither non-fiction nor is it not non-fiction. Berman and his collaborators have created something odd-ball and unique and characterful in this exploration of Georgian folk traditions.

Georgia is an Eastern European region which hosts a range of related cultures, many of which to this day maintain pagan customs and beliefs in one form or another. Berman waxes lyrical about the rich traditions that persist in this land, the complex and subtle ways in which its people have woven incredibly disparate influences from east and west into a truly unique whole.

In order to enable his (presumably) Western reader to appreciate the stories, Berman goes to great lengths to explain the history and character of the region. Whether the subject is diet, agriculture, or the whimsy of children, Berman approaches his subject matter with warmth and gusto, and it is hard not to be swayed by his obvious love for the Georgian peoples and their traditions.

Yet this book is much more than a kind of travelogue. Berman contends that stories are doors into trance, both in the telling and in the content of the tales themselves. With a background in shamanism, it is no wonder that he turns his attention to the traces of shamanic influence that course through the stories recounted in this book. Characteristic Georgian folk tale conventions – such as vagueness about time and even whether the events recounted are real or not, as well as recurring numerological and symbolic patterns – are analysed by Berman as markers of shamanic experience, suggesting that these stories are rooted in deep spiritual experience and not merely in flights of fancy.

By Juxtaposing such reflections against the folktales presented in the book Berman draws our attention to the complex relationships between spiritual experience, cultural forms, and history. Berman sees folktales and mythology as being more than just the glue or rationale for a culture – he sees them as doors into the divine, and as such as the means for a people to deepen their connection to the beauty and numinosity of the world around them. This aspect of the role of myth is all too often overlooked by more or less atheistic modern commentators.

Without being seduced by simplistic romanticism, Berman skilfully elucidates the relationship between culture and personal spiritual experience in traditional / pre-modern culture. As such this book educates us not only about Georgian culture and myth, but also equips us to explore a fresh appreciation for almost any cultural or spiritual tradition.

One of the motifs of this book is the necessarily hybrid nature of Georgian culture, located as it is near so many other strong cultural groups. Somehow, rather than become a monocultural mishmash, the Georgians have woven a unique and very special identity from the array of influences to which they were and are exposed. I think there is an important point to be made here, namely that the integrity of a culture depends not on isolationism (though of course some separation of identity is necessary) but rather on the creativity and spirit (or otherwise) of its people.

I think this point is very important in this modern age where on the one hand we have those who fear exposure to any kind of difference for fear of losing themselves…and on the other hand those who fear any kind of specificity of identity for fear that they will lose their sense of (perhaps illusory) self-creation. Bubbling through this book is a deeper perspective, perhaps one held by many polytheistic and animistic folk traditions – namely that culture arises not through our narcissism (be it isolationist or dissolute), but through our attempt to find our place in the world in all its animistic glory. It is our means of making ourselves at home in a universe of infinite mystery, and we require all of our creative powers if we are to make it serve that purpose well.

This thought reverberates throughout the widespread continuation of pagan practices and beliefs in Georgia, which often persist in hybrid form together with Christian practices. The Georgian peoples as presented by Berman have found a happy accommodation between polytheism and monotheism, not unlike the followers of Voudoun in South America. While some of us will prefer to have little or nothing to do with Christianity, one cannot deny the spiritual fertility attested to in Georgian folktales and customs, a fertility that appears to have aggressively thrived through fusion of pre-Christian and Christian influences.

It would seem, then, that the Georgian peoples enjoy some unique combinations of cultural and spiritual influences, and indeed draw their particularities of character precisely from these combinations. This may in fact be true of all cultures in some fashion or other, but judging from Berman’s account Georgia is a paragon of such richness.

In case these reflections are misleading, I should also point out that this book never gets lost in the abstract indulgence that mainstream academia often stumbles into. Berman writes with subtlety and draws the recurring motifs of the book together with care and lightness. Rather than spew heavy handed injunctions, he invites one to reflect, think, and drawn one’s own conclusions.

If there are any limitations to this book they lie in peripheral issues – namely, that the proof reading and editing is somewhat lax, and at times this makes the book less readable and enjoyable than it could be. I hope that on subsequent printings the publisher will see fit to correct the various errors that cloud the text so that this gem may shine more fully.

The playful spirit that suffuses this book – both the stories and Berman’s discussions thereof – is its greatest strength. It is a sincere and joyous celebration of tradition, spiritual exploration, culture, history, and story telling. The translated stories are marvellous, and the artwork, which peppers the text freely, is resplendent. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in history, culture, folk traditions, shamanism, and especially, in the peoples and customs of Eastern Europe and the Near East.

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Superstition VS Tradition

In previous articles, I have described the contribution of Germanic Heathen tradition to modern ideas of individual rights, reasonableness, and even evidence-based knowledge that really gave us the tools with which we can discover and describe the physical world.

One of the most ancient surviving Heathen institutions is the English Common Law, which provided a fair and reasonable approach to determining truth. The lawyer Sir Francis Bacon thought about applying the idea of cross examination to nature, and delineated the basic process of scientific investigation. Combining Bacon’s method with another English principle, Occam’s razor, the Royal Society tightened the standards of evidence and proof, resulting in British Empiricism which gave us the strict processes that enable us to conduct modern science.

Thus, as I have explained elsewhere, the modern world owes much to the survival of some ancient Heathen principles, and can be seen as a natural evolution of Heathen culture.

From this perspective, I have to look back to other aspects of our culture and ask once again, how do we reconcile the spiritual aspects of our heritage with the intellectual and material culture we have today? To answer this, it helps to first look at where other popular religions have gone wrong, and why they have been rapidly losing credibility.

The Church had put humans at the centre of the Universe, both figuratively and literally. When Copernicus discovered that the Earth was merely one of many planets orbiting the Sun, he was denounced as a heretic, and his book banned. When Galileo confirmed the discovery, he was placed under house arrest, and threatened with torture. Over the next century, the facts had been so well verified by astronomers, that the position of the Church had become laughable. In trying to maintain its authority over something completely outside of its expertise, it had made itself an anachronism and lost credibility among many educated people.

Likewise, when Darwin discovered and described the evidence for evolution, and put forward his famous tree of life, religious groups reacted with outrage. Like Copernicus, Darwin had removed humans from the centre of life, and shown them to be one of many branches on a tree in which all creatures had common ancestors. Although the Catholic Church has recently accepted Darwin, learning from their mistake with Copernicus, many other religious groups are still unable to come to terms with it.

Perhaps the most obviously ridiculous religious position, short of the Flat-Earth Society, is Young Earth Creationism, which proposes that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.

What we see here is a repeating pattern of religion attempting to simply decree the facts about the physical world, in order to make them fit their mythology in a literal way. However, the physical world does not bend to the decrees of Popes or Gurus. Any religion making such claims will lose out to science, and damage its own credibility. Claims about the physical world that contradict, or are unsupported by, the observable facts are rightly called “superstition”.

The faith-based religions maintain their ability to prevent their followers from discovering the truth by early indoctrination, social penalties for those who question, and a regime of fear-inducing tales of supernatural punishments for those with insufficient faith (blind belief) in their dogmas.

The only way to avoid entangling religion and tradition with superstition, is to keep a clear demarcation, and avoid confusing the spiritual and physical worlds.

Unfortunately, humans are rather prone to superstitious thinking. We have a natural inclination to see patterns. If condition ‘A’ is often followed by condition ‘B’, we tend to assume a causal connection. Nine times out of ten, we will be correct, even if our explanation of the link is wrong. This has survival value, as it allows us to make predictions. The problem is that for common conditions, A will often be followed by B purely by chance. This becomes anecdotal evidence, which is then confirmed and perhaps given a fallacious but plausible explanation by a perceived authority (a priest or village witchdoctor). Even when the link has been shown to be bogus, the superstition can persist among otherwise educated people for a considerable period.

A good example of this is the recent anti-vaccination campaign. A large number of children are vaccinated, a large number also become autistic. Anecdotal evidence provided an abundance of examples of vaccinated children becoming autistic. Authority was provided by a researcher who prematurely published a paper on a possible link. People were rightly concerned, and stopped vaccinating. This gave the existing small anti-vaccination movement an enormous boost. In the meanwhile, it was obviously a priority for researchers around the World to test for the existence of the causal link. Many studies were done, and failed to find any evidence that vaccinated children were more likely to become autistic than the unvaccinated ones. Neither was any plausible explanation found for the claimed link. The original research paper has since been thoroughly exposed as flawed, manipulated, and agenda ridden. Yet the myth continues as hearsay or superstition, and is manipulated and politicised by interest groups.

This kind of causation fallacy is not obvious to the general public, but can be illustrated by an example: The anecdotal evidence is that most adults drive cars, most adults eventually have to go to the dentist. I could observe that every adult I know who has needed dental work, has first been a driver. All I need now is an authority figure to publish that vibrations from the wheel, up the arms, and into the jaw, will cause drivers to have dental problems. In the time it takes for reputable researchers to debunk the myth, there will already be a significant number of believers. The superstition is likely to persist for some time as it is spread by word of mouth, aided by the fact that everyone can think of examples that seem to confirm it.

Of course, it is not only fringe interest groups that manipulate and politicise information, or misinformation. Governments, churches, and corporations are notorious for covering up real indications of adverse effects, the tobacco industry being the most infamous. However, the good thing about science is that nothing is settled until many independent groups have tested the claims in question. The truth will always come out in the end, and bogus claims, or cover-ups, will eventually be exposed. Unfortunately, good science takes time, and many people are impatient and will just go with the popular trends, or the urban myths.

If we are to build a sustainable and credible tradition-based culture, we must become more science literate, not less. We must resist the temptation to take the easy way out, and mire ourselves in convenient falsehoods. Mythology provides a powerful symbolic resource for self knowledge and empowerment, not a means of escape from the real world.

Different Heathen groups have dealt with the problem of reality in various ways. The weakest and least credible approach has involved a kind of denial of reality. Aspects of the now discredited philosophy of post-modernism have been used to virtually dismiss reality from the equation by a kind of cop-out, claiming that reality is a social construction. Being able to sidestep the inconvenience of reality, these groups are then free to create their own. For xenophobes, it also justifies a reluctance to understand other cultures, as they can be dismissed as living in different “realities”.

Other groups have recognised the credibility and persuasive power of science, and resolved to invent their own pseudo-science. They put together scientific-sounding justifications for their positions, borrowing from the credibility of science, without the inconvenience of any actual research or evidence. McNallen’s racist “Metagenetics” is one that comes to mind, although New-Ageism abounds with other examples of pseudo-scientific fraud and charlatanry.

Neither do we need to deny the mystery and esoteric side of our traditions. We have perfectly good words to describe this side, Wyrd for one. We do not need to explain it away with peudo-science as Metagenetics tries to do, nor justify our Heathenness with voodoo linguistics and quasi-racist psychology as post-modernists like Thorsson are doing.

It is frankly embarrassing that some may associate Heathenism with these sorts of intellectual laziness and deception. If we are to avoid being duped by the snake-oil peddlers, or worse joining them, we must make the small effort necessary to attain a basic level of scientific literacy. At the very least, we need to avoid the anti-science agendas common in the New-Age movement. We also need to understand were these anti-science attitudes came from.

The first wave of anti-science was instigated by the churches during the 1600s & 1700s as they felt their authority over truth being challenged. Some religious groups still carry on this fight. The second wave was a romantic upsurge during the 1800s as a reaction to the perceived loss of mystery involved in discovering the real universe. The third wave is the reaction to the corporate greed and environmental damage that really started to become widely talked about in the late 1960s.

One of the major causes of the last reaction was the blatant hijacking of the notion of “progress” by unscrupulous developers. “Progress” had previously been the term used to describe a continual acquisition of knowledge and technical capabilities that are put to use for the benefit of humanity. Having too often been used by corporations and governments to justify large environmentally and socially destructive projects, by the mid 1970s, the word could not be pronounced without a note of cynicism. Different groups dealt with “progress” in various ways.

Again, post-modernists have the weakest and somewhat defeatist argument, that there is no such thing as progress. Things just change and go around in cycles. By any number of measures, this is demonstrably false. Even during the so-called Dark Ages, our ancestors were continually finding ways to improve their lives. It is human nature to accumulate knowledge and improvements in the way we do things. It is simply obtuse to deny the fact that over time, civilisation advances in numerous ways.

New-Agers and traditionalists, on the other hand, do recognise that progress happens, but many see progress itself as the problem. They would prefer to stop the clock, or wind it back. They long for a romantic vision of a simpler age. Many can not see a way to reconcile their dream with the advancing technology around them. They equate technological progress with the environmental destruction, and social disconnection that are real problems in the World.

As I have argued previously, science and knowledge are powerful but neutral, with the potential to harm or help. Blaming them for our problems is not helpful, or even rational. More than ever, we need them to help solve our problems. Sustainable energy and food production, and solving other of the World’s most pressing problems, will be impossible without highly technical research and solutions.

The answer is to recognise the different functions of the physical and spiritual realms. Just as religion can not inform us about the physical world, technology can not make us happier or more fulfilled in our lives. However, science does not make us less happy either. That is our own personal challenge.

For those of us interested in our cultural heritage, and keeping traditions alive, we must make our application of those traditions relevant and useful. If we withdraw into pseudo-science or superstition, we will fail to create a sustainable legacy. If parts of the tradition are shown to be at odds with reality, the whole tradition loses credibility. Like all superstitions, it will eventually die out, but in the meanwhile, false information leads to bad decisions. Superstition is disempowering, while tradition is a source of strength.

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Reflections from the Tree

“There’s no one path to god, but there is an authenticity to every path that is there, and it is your job to get to that.”

– Arrowyn Craban

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

– Rumi

I recently had a beautiful experience at an Isis gig, dissolved into totally wild dance as their crushing, trance inducing post-metal swept all before them. Isis tend to draw fans from the metal and hardcore scenes – blokes who don’t know how to be in their bodies and who find it difficult to respond to the simultaneous subtlety and force of Isis’s music – whereas I have years of studying improvised dance behind me and a sharp nose for doors into altered consciousness.

I threaded my way through wild and beautiful embodied consciousness, dissolving into communion with the whole cosmos – with the World Tree as the binding force of all oneness and difference, the paradoxical solution to the contradiction of universality and particularity. The most wild “spiritual” states tend to go with intensely physical expression – a perfect conjunction of opposites.

The final song of the set had a long and potent build that exploded into ecstasy and after that I floated, sated, through the encore, in a state of high bliss. Who needs drugs when there is music and dance in the world? I just wish there were more good opportunities for experiences like that, I suppose it is up to me to be open to finding them. I spouted poetry praising the World Tree and my patron, and sang and laughed. It was berzerkergang but without a military purpose, yet the same kind of state, driven by the parasympathetic nervous system.

And curiously, I even found myself dipping into the Sufi practices I have not participated in for some years, head swaying right then left, the turning away and remembering from heart to universe to heart, the sacred words la illah ha il allah spilling from my lips. It felt good to find that I can still call Sufism home. I wish more people knew what a spiritual jewel lies beneath the hard monotheistic armour of Islam (including more Muslims)!

And this gets me to thinking about my tendency to rubbish Christianity too. There’s no essential reason why Heathenry has to adopt any particular stance towards Christianity. At its best it is a marvellous religion – and while I deplore the many terrible things done in its name, I think that if I am going to be able to consider myself to be possessed of a mature spirituality then I think it is time to put aside the easy contempt I tend to lazily adopt towards Jesus and his sheep.

In the same motion, of course, I’ll never stop having contempt for the horrors perpetuated in Christ’s name – which are too many to even begin to enumerate – nor will I accept the various foolish consequences of Christian influenced philosophy. On the other hand, the ideals of love, compassion, and personal responsibility are noble and cherished by most human beings, including (I would guess) most Heathens. Without such ideals no society or family or culture can last for long, even if we are not obliged to follow these threads in the fashion that Christianity (in its infinite and hilariously mutually contradictory variations) would see us do.

But at the end of the day, when I am in trance, when I am dipping thickly into the Well of Memory and I recover the primordial experience of the poignant beauty of the mystery of oneness and difference…well, I remember how much Sufism has taught me about how to be a spiritual practitioner, and how similar Sufism and Heathenism are with their emphasis on the importance of Memory and Recollection (Plato has to join them on this one, too).

And while we are all free to erect all kinds of rules about which tradition goes where and how we “should” think, and all the rest of it…well, I’d rather be the guy at the Isis gig, tranced out of his head from dance and song and amazing music amongst the sea of awkward heavy metal dudes.

Religion is a door, a door which can open into experiences which are ineluctable. We can invoke them with poetry but we cannot capture them in words. Which door is best? Can we really be certain that our dogmatic beliefs about religion are indubitable, when nothing seems to be? Heathenry is the door that caresses my nature into pulsating life, yet Sufism has been an essential part of my journey and I will always consider myself a Sufi…indeed, I hope to be to Heathenry what Sufism is to Islam – the spiritual quicksilver that lies within the dead armour of the essential but insufficient religious forms.

I’d rather be the blood in the tree, swelling and sluicing and radiating LIFE than I would the dead bark of authorities and rules and commands. That isn’t to say the bark is inessential…but those that speak for the armour and the rules of a tradition generally try to suppress those that speak for the living breath of the tradition (the former are generally motivated by fear and ignorance in this endeavour). Actually…why put form and essence into opposition? They are meant to be complementary. I want it all.

Hence the importance of the magic of the Hedge! To have one foot here and one foot there, dancing impossibly between extremes – for is this not what the whole universe does at every moment in every place? We think we have made of sense of reality by splitting it into pieces, yet the more concrete our understanding the less accurate it becomes.

I am learning to trust more in my wyrd. I am unbinding the bonds of my orlog, the weight of the chains of negativity that have pursued me in various ways throughout my life. I am moving energy and causing transformation that is needed. I am just as mortal, inconsistent, confused, and fallible as everyone else, but at the same time, the currents of the flow of the waters of life through the World Tree grow stronger and stronger through me.

To some, these words will mostly be gibberish. To others they might make perfect sense. I congratulate the former for their bewilderment and the latter for their successes in walking the authenticity of their path.

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Chaos and Mystery

...it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.

Henry David Thoreau, „Walden“


In such a union „each element achieves completeness, not directly in a seperate consummation, but by incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it can enter into contact with all others.“ (Teilhard de Chardin) Tillich was expressing the same thought when he denied that union with the Ground of Being means a loss of self in a larger whole. „If the self participates in the power of being-itself,“ said Tillich, „it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swollow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does.“

Braden, „The Private Sea – LSD and the Search for God“


There are two souls living in my breast. Goethe said that. And I often feel the same way. On the one hand there is the „Anarch“ (Ernst Jünger), the free spirit („Freigeist“), the one, who dares to live without certainty and follows his own path… …and then there is the one, who follows more systematic approches to Mystery by more experienced magicians, the one, who needs some guarantee that he’s on the right track, someone who believes that someone ‘out there’ might have THE answers. Ironically these antagonistic forces in my soul led me once into the arms of the OTO. They promise freedom of speech and individualism, but practice dogma, rigidity, hierarchies and, ultimately, the subordination of the individual under certain ‘truths’ (read DOGMA=AMGOD). The fine line where freedom of speech ends and dogma begins is not easily seen, especially when you’re a 19 years old occultist, who believes in the Great White Brotherhood (I know why cynics exist). However, when I study the magical systems of others and try to follow their approaches to the Mystery, I always get stuck at some point where I begin to question some (or all) of their basic premises. This always leads me to the same conclusion: that I’m not a follower type, that I want to create my own philosophy and that there are Masters and Magicians who can help along the way, but there are no guarantees. If I may just quote a quote that resonated deeply with my being:

„Theoretical loyalty provides clear direction but is inherently limiting; theoretical anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts uncertainty…there are no fixed and correct ideas or methods…and therefore no inherently right ways…“ 

Just think about it: Theoretical Anarchy enables flexibility but also inserts Uncertainty! Don’t we all just yearn for that absolute certainty? But with absolute certainty Mystery ceases to exist. Hasn’t the world reached that point already? The way of the world is not my way… Uncertainty means freedom, certainty means dogma.

To trust my own instincts is the hard part of the equation. I do, but not all the time. However, doubts and conflicts have always been an important part of my path. They have often created a Need-Fire (Nauthiz), which led me to new horizons beyond what any magical model can describe as every model is „a map, not the reality“ (RAW). This dynamic of ‘friction-resistence-breakthrough’ was also behind the process to go beyond Crowley’s Thelemic model that finally culminated in the termination of my OTO membership in 2006 (and that dynamic is behind many other important processes that led to inner development). I regard this step as one of my most important ones towards an independent magical path.

In Occultism there is the tendency to explain everything, to package the Mystery in a formulae. Crowley’s teachings are full of such formulas and they explain a lot, but ultimately mean nothing. They may be used, but after all they cloth the Mystery in some costume. But this costume is not the Mystery itself. The Mystery is sensed in a certain state of consciousness (usually a kind of gnosis in a CM sense) and fills the seeker with awe. (Rudolf Otto described this awe in his work about The Holy and called the two emotions of man when he encounters the Divine mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans.) And after such an experience the seeker tries to rationalize what he experienced by creating certain correspondences between his experience and the system he’s using. He does this by assigning certain concrete elements of his experience to certain abstract qualities of his system-in-use. Too abstract? Ok, I give you an example:

Let’s say I invoke my Genius / HGA / Augoides / Wode-Self / Fylgja (what ever you want to call it – I’m not saying it’s all the same thing; the HGA seems to represent a combination of Wode-Self and Fylgja) and I’m deeply rooted in the Kabbalistic Psychocosm. If you invoke that part of your psyche in that system you will do it with surrender and love and, maybe, with submission. After you have established a rapport with your Deep Mind a voice starts speaking (not necessarily verbally, but visually or otherwise) that seems to come out of the core of your very existence (one-dimensional, uneducated and spiritually underdeveloped primates often think they met „God“). After this mysterious experience you turn towards your Tree of Life and assign that experience to Tiphareth. This corresponds to the Sun and the Heart. This again is connected to the Anahatha-Chakra, which leads to another chain of correspondences. In modern QBL these can be connected to the Hebrew aphabet and Tarot cards, so that finally a psychocosm full of correspondences is created. Too many are obsessed with the symbols, signs, correspondences, colours etc., so that they forget what the initial intention was behind to use them in the first place. And that’s basically to allow the mind to focus and use all those tools as keys for opening the doors of perception and thus to reach higher states of conciousness. BUT, once you are there, as Isreal Regardie never stopped emphasising, throw away the ladder, because you don’t need it anymore! All too often from such correspondences predetermined routes to „enlightenment“ (also known under its mysterious name „delusion“) are created that alienate the true seeker from the goal.

So, what is the goal? In my experience the first and foremost aim is to experience reality directly, without immediately conceptualising and contexualising the experience itself. Though I don’t deny the usefulness of certain concepts I realize that it’s all to easy to take the package for the content. Honestly said, I believe that my path has often revolved around CONCEPTS (package) explaining some of my (hardly to explain and hardly to accept) mystical and/or magical experiences (content). This, I believe, is the reason why Jan Fries said in my interview that „I believe that the individual is a lot more important than any system, religion, cult or school. And if you have to stick a label to yourself to do your thing you ain’t good enough yet.“

Labels, they give certainty, don’t they? Words are more real than reality – for most of us. But in truth we’re caught in our own prison of concepts most of the time.

Ludwig Feuerbach, the first real atheist we know of (maybe the Greeks had also some examples of what we think of as ‘atheists’ today) showed how to free man from the concept of a transcendental being called „God“. He was a German philosopher, who declared that God was nothing but the projection of human qualities in their perfected form. He argued that the superhuman deities of religion are involuntary projections of the essential attributes of human nature, and this projection, in turn, is explained by him by using a theory of human consciousness that is heavily indepted to Hegel. Feuerbach is really the unrecognised father of the criticism of religion, because whatever was interesting in Feuerbach has been taken up by Marx and Freud (I’m not saying they’re right), who formulated their theses in a more logical, coherent and systematic fashion. However, Feuerbach proved that ‘God’ is just a WORD (label). But wait, words are more real than reality, right? In the beginning was the word… and the word was God. (By negating the existence of God – after his daughter has died at a very early age – Feuerbach has been prohibited to publish his works.) But those of us who experienced the Divine (content) cannot believe in the explanations of religion (package). And isn’t it strange that those Christians, who encountered the Divine in mystical experiences (like Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Blaise Pascal etc.) were doomed by the Church and that the Fathers of Dogma (who are the fathers of fear) became the patrons of this alien creed called Christianity? Before they imposed their dogmas on our forefathers and foremothers we had no conception of THE Divine (as the “One God”), but experienced that quality of reality (or consciousness – after all, I don’t know, if it has an objective reality) in different forms (thus polytheism). So, if Feuerbach is right (albeit a materialist), then he is confirming the mystical premise that the Gods live in our breasts. Thus the projections of “the superhuman deities of religion” that man has created aren’t mere illusions of human consciousness, but become an essential expression of the divine nature of Consciousness itself (Óðr).

In this way the label “God” degenerated into a concept that man has to believe in, instead of being the vision of each man realizing the core of his very existence. (I finally have to read Emerson. I know that he had a lot to say about that.) This imprisonment to labels is the hypnotising effect of language itself and due to an “evolutionary error” in our brains to ceaselessly create meaning. Zen Masters and other Masters of Meditation developed all kinds of techniques –including shock techniques, gazing at walls for hours, silence, sensory deprivation, mantras, mudras, yantras etc. – to overcome that miserable condition, also known as the conditio humana.

What I learn from this is that being a chaos mystic – doing your own research, experiments, rituals, meditations asf., and trusting your own experiences and your own perception, asking any premise and any dogma, system or preacher – is the only way to go. We can learn from those who walked the Path before us (magicians and mystics), we can learn to read their sign posts (symbol systems) and explanations (philosophies), but after everything is said and done, whom will you trust when you’re in danger or when death approaches? Your guru, your system, your God?

My answer is: “No, I will trust mySelf.”

This Self, I believe, is part of the Divine energy of godhead that creates and maintains the universe, who is the Alföðr and whom the Einherjar called Óðinn.

Persistence is all. Search continues…

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Sugar: The Other White Christ

Warning: any resemblance to anti-Christian sentiment in this is article is purely coincidental.

One of the distinct impacts of Christianity has been the unilateral and wholesale destruction of cultures. Wherever missionaries have gone traditional ways of life, traditional knowledges, cuisines, religions, and material cultures suffer and dissolve. The blinding light of Jesus disintegrates everything before it, like a noxious cosmic bleach.

The Old Norse referred to Jesus as the “White Christ,” and he stood in particular conflict with blustery, red-beared Thor. The Christians of the day presented their religion in terms that would make sense to the Heathens, with the intention that they could then change everything around once they had power.

This still goes on today with Bible revisions and retellings tailored to specific audiences. Such duplicity, such slimy legerdemain, was the antithesis of straight-shooting, honest-to-the-root Thor.

The Heathens didn’t even have a word for themselves, let alone destructive designs. Indeed, new research suggests that even the Viking raids may have been little more than self-defence (of course, the Christian kings also got up to the same sort of behaviour, but to the Christians of the day it seemed that rape and murder was only verboten if you happened to worship more than one god).

There you go though: in place of the rich and subtle constellation of spiritual flavours afforded by decentralised polytheism comes the bland, one-size-fits-all model of Christianity (of course the reality is that there are infinite versions of Christianity, too, but none of them seem willing to acknowledge the extent of their de facto and abstract polytheisms).

In recent times the White Christ has taken on a new form: refined sugar. Refined sugar is the enemy of traditional cuisine and cooking. It is the enemy of healthy eating, the product of a worldview uprooted from the sacred interconnections of all things. This worldview might be nihilistic, but it borrows its contempt for the world from Christianity.

Don’t believe me? Here is an example of a good, respectable Christian opinion on the matter, from Robert Boyle in 1686:

“[love of nature is] a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over the inferior
creatures of God.”

We might as well say “reverence is a discouraging impediment…” or, given I am here writing about sugar, “good taste is a discouraging impediment…”

As I understand it, refined sugar causes massive health problems: obesity, diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, hypoglycaemia, depression and mood swings, and probably cancer. It contains no nutrients of its own, and apparently to process it the body needs to strip mine itself of existing minerals and nutrients. Eating sugar makes you fat and malnourished at the same time.

In my case sugar also exacerbates my allergies terribly, making my body attack itself. I won’t labour that particular analogy to Christianity, it should be perfectly obvious.

You could say that sugar is like monotheism. Instead of the endless subtle tastes and nutriment of polytheism – which has something for everyone, and acknowledges the sacredness of all things – we get the White Christ of the dinner table, White Sugar, which is poisonous, ruins the palate, and reduces human beings to a low ebb.

Trying to get White Sugar out of one’s life is not easy. Almost all processed, mass market foods have sugar added – regardless of what the food actually is, and even if it is meant to be sour or bitter. Don’t believe me? Have a good look. Oh, “high fructose corn syrup” is like the Pope of refined sugar, in case you were wondering. It isn’t just Jesus that gets rammed down our throats as children.

So not only is sugar very addictive, but it takes a lot of effort even to get food that doesn’t predestine you to sugar addiction. Imagine trying to quit smoking in a world where tobacco was put in everything in the supermarket!

I don’t know if Christianity is addictive but it is “the opiate of the masses,” and really, I think that it can be very hard for folk to disentangle themselves from Christian mentalities, even if they have formally rejected the religion. The apparently widespread presence of dualistic thinking in some Heathen circles attests to this in particular.

Keeping off the sugar once you are on your way is no easy feat either. I am at a point of getting onto and falling off the wagon at the moment. Last year I managed to stay “clean” for six weeks. I have never felt better in my entire life. Then one night I decided to indulge in an elaborate dessert and the next day fell into a rock-bottom depression, just like that.

All that said, as I eat less sugar I crave less sugar. Tastes are relative so the less we expose ourselves to the junk, the less our palate will require distorted and exaggerated flavours. We begin to appreciate richness, subtlety, the delicious tang of sweetness in its natural flavour context of bitterness and all the rest. I am getting there, slowly but surely.

If latter day “capitalism” (I use the inverted commas to distinguish from the thing that Clint would call capitalism) wants anything, it wants to present a seamless veneer of fixed-white—teeth-and-a-shiny-new-car happiness, the kind of shallow happiness that is utterly empty, like having a priest absolve one’s sins so that one is ready to recommit them for the rest of the week.

Much better is the honesty of vulnerability and depth, putting aside the ridiculous shining ideals (I use the word loosely) of capitalism and (particularly evangelical) Christianity. When we pass through the fake happiness of refined sugar (and its attendant ideologies), we give ourselves a chance to shoot for something much better: well-being.

Well-being isn’t necessarily happiness (sometimes happiness is an irrational and unhelpful emotion), although it does include a good deal of happiness. But rather than this happiness being the product of endless consuming, or the bloody death of some distant messiah, it comes from setting things right between you and the world.

How to do that? By adopting an attitude of reverence, by working to cultivate and deepen the living memory of the sacredness of all things – including our own bellies. Christianity tends to devalue the spirit of all things but their distant messiah (pantheistic Christianity is ok though), and capitalism sees only opportunities to cash in, sees no forests or people but merely resources and consumers. Units of exploitation.

So just as quitting refined sugar in our sugar-saturated world is hard, so is quitting irreverence. I think perhaps that if I make my battle against sugar a twin to my battle against the nihilistic amnesia that can so easily sweep over me (and most of us) then I might get just the boost I need. After all, if there is only spirit…then eating right is a spiritual practice of great sacredness.

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The Prime Directive: The Fallacy of Cultural Purity

Up until the mid 20th Century, Christian missionaries felt it their duty to seek out isolated indigenous cultures, and effectively stamp them out. The missionaries often saw any customs and traditions, even language and modes of dress, as links to their old (necessarily evil) religions. Some governments also formulated policies to eradicate the language and traditions of indigenous peoples in order to expedite their assimilation into the dominant society.

By the 1970s anthropologists were alarmed at the rate of acculturation of tribal people in the Amazon and other remote areas of the World, and raised a new awareness of the importance of preserving and studying these cultures. By the 80s, some anthropologists were agonising over the fact that even the act of visiting an isolated society for study, would introduce unforseen changes in the very thing they were trying to preserve.

It was in this climate that the stories for Star Trek’s “Next Generation” were written. Many of these stories hinged around moral conflicts arising from the Prime Directive. This directive was their all important principle of non interference with less developed civilisations. In some episodes, anthropologists have to study their subjects from a hidden location. It is considered harmful for these societies to even learn of the existence of more advanced civilisations. This directive reflects the feelings of many in reaction to the previous injustices; that we need to hermetically seal isolated societies to save them from contamination from the modern world.

However, if we really take a good look at both of these extreme positions, the first assumes that the indigenous people have an inherently inferior culture, and are incapable of harmonising with their more numerous neighbours. The second assumes that the people are not even capable of dealing with the truth of their situation in the World. Both positions are patronising in the extreme. Neither of these positions give indigenous people any say in how they might prefer to deal with their futures.

Is there a middle way? If we discover a tribe that has never had outside contact, do we let the missionaries destroy their way of life, or do we quietly build a wall around them, so they will never know we exist? In reality, they can not remain unaffected by the outside World forever. Eventually, they will be forced to deal with the World. We have seen from historical experience, that culture shock nearly always leaves indigenous people vulnerable to the depredations of religious, political, or commercial exploiters. The only reasonable solution is to carefully prepare and inoculate the culture against the worst effects of outside contact.

The suffering and losses of indigenous culture have not been due to their inferiority or stupidity. They were merely caught unprepared, and at a huge disadvantage. If they had been forewarned and prepared, they would have been able to retain more of their original cultural heritage. Many governments are starting to see the value of this middle way, and now encourage their indigenous people to preserve their language and traditions while adapting to the wider society and its laws. Many indigenous groups are now turning back to their traditions for inspiration, and identity.

This adaptation does require change. Not all traditions should be preserved. A century ago, head hunting was common in remote regions around the World. Obviously, keeping some traditions would cause more harm to a culture as a whole, as outside contact increases.

In Star Trek’s early references to the Prime Directive, it was expressed merely as non-interference in the internal politics of other cultures. Later, it was expanded to express non-contamination of less developed cultures. This probably reflects the influence of some “postmodernist” thinkers of the time, whose version of “multiculturalism” saw a need to preserve cultural differences, even if it meant encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.

In the real world, cultures have always been changing. Complete isolation is a rare and temporary condition. Cultures change from within, as traditions are handed down and re-interpreted. Elements are constantly borrowed from neighbouring cultures and languages. There is no such thing as cultural purity, and therefore complete preservation is illusory.

Hopefully, most of us will have an interest in preserving, and even reviving parts of our own ancestral heritage. If we are to maintain these traditions, we must do so consciously. In the modern World, we have access to so much information, that we are free to choose what works for us. Many will don the trappings of various cultures as little more than fashion accessories. Others will be more deliberate and research their choices. In their search for connection, many modern individuals are emulating tribal customs, such as tattooing and piercing.

In former times, culture was absorbed unconsciously, enforced by the norms of society. Now, we have more freedom, but also more responsibility. However we decide to construct our own cultural background, we must do it in the context of the wider society in which we live, while still being respectful and knowledgeable about the cultures we draw from. To do less will merely result in an anachronism or eccentricity that will not really benefit anyone, and even trivialise or dilute the deep symbolism involved. If researched and applied successfully, it will be a source of pride and empowerment for ones self, and a benefit to the wider community.

Sweyn

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Odysseus, Odin, and Euhemerism

Clint recently made the point that we Heathens can learn a lot from the Indo-European traditions that are cousins to our own. In support of that potentially controversial claim, I intend to explain how one can deepen one’s understanding of Odin by reading the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is Greek myth, hence, like the Germanic myths, part of the Indo-European tradition. Odysseus as a figure shares many common features with Odin. Both are kings, but also vagabonds. Both are eternally in the beginning of their twilight years, though still possessed of great power.

Both are brilliant warriors, but more powerful still are their wits and wisdom, and it is for these that they are most celebrated. Both are ardent lovers, with many subtle and complex relationships with women. Both have vulnerability of feeling, and are not merely armoured caricatures of masculinity (though many of Odin’s followers seem to not understand this about him).

Both are exiled: Odysseus because Poseidon prevents his return from Troy; and Odin, according to Saxo, is exiled for a time, too.

Reading about Odysseus in Homer’s peerless writing gives one a deep and joyous appreciation of the subtleties of Odin’s character, too.

Of course, there are many differences, the foremost being that Odysseus is not a god! Clearly they are not identical figures, but they do both broadly partake of what might be loosely termed the Hermetic Current (which runs, achronologically, something like Thoth-Vishnu-Hermes-Mercury-Woden-Hermes Trismegistus, and probably includes others).

Is this shameless universalism? I think that so long as we have our faculties about us there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by comparing and contrasting different mythologies and figures. Surely it would be a very unimaginative and rigid dogmatism to argue against this. Just because I think the Odysseus-Odin comparison yields sweet fruit doesn’t mean I have to subscribe to some naïve idea that they are identical.

Turning to a theme that somehow feels related – though I’m not sure how – I have recently been reflecting on the Euhemeristic theories of Norse mythology, namely the theory that the gods were actually once mortals who were deified after death, and therefore that the mythology is more or less a load of empty hogwash.

This idea mainly stems from three sources: Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes; and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and Heimskringla. There was also Sophus Bugge’s much later attempt to claim that Heathen mythology was just a really bodgy corruption of Christianity, but Bugge’s Christian agenda was blatant and his scholarship filled with implausible speculation and systematic ignoring of evidence that contradicts his ideas (yep, a great example of RAW’s “the prover proves what the thinker thinks”).

While we cannot be certain, I think there are many sound reasons to reject Euhemerism in relation to Germanic Mythology.

1) The Euhemeristic sources were written by Christians; what sources we have that seem to likely be genuinely Heathen (e.g. material in the Poetic Edda) only ever present the gods as being mythic. In other words, as far as we know, there is no continuous tradition of native Germanic Euhemerism. This suggests that the medieval and more recent Christian authors mentioned above almost certainly are the originators of the theory.

It is a purely Christian theory about Germanic mythology, conceived in isolation from actual Heathenry, and seems designed either to excuse writing about paganism at all (in the case of Snorri), or else explicitly as an attempt to undermine paganism (Saxo, Bugge).

Are we also to believe every other derogatory claim that Christians have made about other religions, particularly when there is no independent evidence for their views? I hope not.

2) The Germanic mythic corpus is very similar to the other Indo-European mythic bodies (Hinduism, Greek, Celtic, etc). It therefore seems far more likely that the Indo-European groups who became what we now call the Germanics brought the essential seeds of Germanic mythology with them into Europe. This is as opposed to the Euhemeristic theory, which says that Germanic mythology was only fabricated after they arrived, since it is based on their deeds on arrival.

It seems highly implausible that, if such a Euhemeristic scenario were true, this newly created mythology, based on arbitrary historical events, would accidentally bear such incredible similarity to the other traditions that, if we are not Euhemerists, we can declare with the precision of Occam’s Razor to be organic cultural cousins.

3) Heimskringla presents the gods, such as Odin, Njordr, and Frey, as a succession of kings. Of course, we know from Tacitus that for the early Germans Odin was more of a Mercury figure than a Zeus figure, so Heimskringla’s supposedly historical portrayal of him in the style of his late Norse Heathen manifestation seems like a bit of an anachronism!

It appears likely that Tyr was a more central ruler god in the earlier mythology, but Snorri’s euhemeristic dynasty doesn’t accord him much chop at all. This suggests that even on Snorri’s account some of the gods are actually gods, since again he is caught out in anachronism by seeing Tyr only in his late Norse form as a more minor god. If Snorri is stuck with some of the gods still genuinely being gods then I’d say that starts to make the whole Euhemerist aspect of his account look pretty limp.

4) Other historical accounts: Snorri says the Aesir came from Asia (on the basis of ultra-dodgy folk etymology), and they specifically came from Troy. From memory though, there are other nutty theories that say that the Trojans founded not a Scandinavian dynasty but rather a British one!

They can’t both be true, and neither theory has any evidence other than the say-so of its promulgator. Healthy scepticism induces me to reject both until such time as they can furnish more than the opinions of their promulgators (who were writing centuries after the fact) as evidence. It seems that at various points it was fashionable to claim that any exotic northern culture was descended from Troy, and such a fad should not be confused for a sincere attempt at recounting history.

5) If the Norse gods were a historical dynasty descended from Troy then the anachronisms get even worse! That means by the time of Tacitus, Odin has lost has his power to Tyr, only to get it back just in time for Snorri to write Heimskringla. Only Heimskringla mentions nothing of these back and forth shenanigans. Another blow to the Euhemeristic thesis.

6) Euhemerism doesn’t take anything away from the gods’ divinity or specialness anyway. Many important Hindu deities were living people who were deified for their amazing spiritual achievements and no one considers them less “godly” than those Hindu gods of non-human origin. Similarly, it seems likely that Bragi actually was a deified human, and no one thinks less of him for it (actually, I’m bloody impressed by his efforts)!

7) Spiritual experience. Given the vast range of truly intense experiences I have had with Odin (and other gods), and the vast age and power of this being as I have experienced it, I just don’t see how he could be “merely” a big-noted human. That is no more substantial a piece of evidence, of course, than the opinions of Saxo or Snorri, but at least it isn’t riddled with inconsistencies, coheres with the genuinely Heathen mythological corpus, and isn’t part of a blatant religious-ideological assault. Oh, and it is way more parsimonious to suggest that the mythology is mythological in my humble opinion.

8) Finally, how can the Euhemerists counter the possibility that the gods simply chose to manifest as avatars with their actual personalities at play, but that they nevertheless predated these historical manifestations? That general sort of thing seems to happen in other mythic contexts (e.g. Hinduism, Greek myth). In other words, even if the Euhemerists were right, there is still plenty of room to suppose that they might be wrong nonetheless. Such a theory does fall afoul of Occam’s Razor, but if the Euhemerists make that criticism then they’re totally throwing stones from a glass house.

I know, that was a quick and dirty little opinion piece, and I haven’t bothered to reference my ideas (I’m 99% sure they’re all based in sound academic research and actual primary sources though, I promise)! I think we all get the point though. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the Euhemerists have a much harder job of making their case than I do.

One thing is for sure: to understand history you have to make a bit more of an effort than just taking one or two sources at face value without trying to grasp their context. Otherwise you’ll end up subscribing to all kinds of ideas without really having informed yourself at all. If you are lucky you might still get it right, but it is a pretty shabby way to proceed.

Oh, and none of this is to say that I have any idea what the true nature of the gods actually is. Honest perplexity beats smug dogmatism any day (I just hope I don’t start believing that dogmatically).

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Kicking Romantic Rears For Their Own Good

I’m going to turn away from my recent thread on deconditioning to have a little rant about a theme I’ve been pondering for a while now: the relationship of Heathenry to Enlightenment and Romantic values. I guess I’ve been provoked by Sweyn Plowright’s article on the subject, as well as various other reflections, readings, and interactions.

There is plenty of material arguing the connection between Romanticism and Heathenry. It is an obvious intellectual link to make, the Romantics with their back-to-nature-and-paganism ideals seem like natural precursors feeding into the evolution of modern Heathenry.

On the other hand, we are told by various pundits, the spirit of Enlightenment has brought massive cultural dislocation, the injustices and perversions of industrialisation, the destruction of localised cultures, and an age of instrumentalist technocracy where the entire world has been stripped of its sacredness.

Whoa, wait a minute. The Enlightenment did that? The ideals of free expression, rational inquiry, and faith in humanity’s ability to grow and evolve produced all of the rubbish that fills modernity to the gills? Maybe I am missing something here. That doesn’t sound like a plausible theory at all.

I should jump in before I go any further and mention that I tend to side with the Romantics and always have. That’s as good a reason as any for me to write a piece which attempts to defend the rationalist current in Western thought: why imprison oneself in a single prism?

I think it is very cheeky to blame so many of the ills of modernity on the Enlightenment. Mass monoculture, the use of technology to engender sleepwalking populations, mass environmental destruction, global economic inequality that is orders of magnitude greater than it has ever been, the systematic violation of organic cultural orders and communities by nihilistic mega-corporations: these hardly sound like the Enlightenment ideal!

I think it is fair to say that the history of the development of the present predicament is a little more complex than just dumping the blame at the door of folks like Voltaire, who was such an ardent foe of injustice and cruelty and repeatedly personally put himself on the line for those values.

I’d like to see some of the more prominent Heathen windbags put to the tests that Voltaire bravely endured: I reckon they’d be exposed, in many cases, as little more than loud-mouthed frauds. Voltaire would abhor the way that the world has evolved, the way that so much of our modern technical genius has been built on and turned to unofficial but widely pervasive slavery. All these self-righteous anti-modernists who love to bitch and moan: they’re all resting on Voltaire’s laurels!

There seem to be plenty of Radical Traditionalists and the like out there who go on an on about how bad liberalism (surely the offspring of the Enlightenment) is, and how Romanticism is a much better taproot for cultural and spiritual rejuvenation in this time of nihilistic emptiness. Well they have some good points to make, but I think they fly off the handle and carry on a little too petulantly at times: here’s why.

Ok: the whole liberalism bashing thing. Without the tradition of free speech (to which Voltaire can probably take credit) we’d still be in a situation where arguing with the dominant paradigm would get one into serious hot water.

Radical Traditionalists and Heathens who rail against liberalism forget that without its “free speech” ideal they’d probably all be imprisoned, lynched, exiled, or burned at the stake (and their writings too…writings only possible because of the intellectual and educational traditions founded by the Enlightenment and promulgated through its ideological and technological offspring).

Of course free speech doesn’t actually exist in modernity because there are all sorts of unscrupulous powers in the world hoarding knowledge and the right to speak with authority. This is a hangover from the latter days of the Roman Empire, where in 381 Theodosius outlawed all forms of Christianity and paganism but for the orthodox Nicene formulation (there is a great book on this subject called, you guessed it, AD 381).

With this law Theodosius tore apart centuries of free debate between pagans of all stripes, and also tore apart the emerging view that even Christians should be allowed to have their say so long as they allowed overs to have theirs (it is worth remembering that in the early days of Christianity the religion was very different to how it is now).

Fast forward through a few centuries of backward Christian silliness and we find that the Enlightenment struck a bold blow (however flawed) against both autocratic power-mongering (surely a practice alien to the decentralised Heathen cultures) and the Christian monopoly on truth.

Without that assault: no attempt to clear a ground for freedom of expression. Without that attempt – and really it was always going to be deformed and lamed – the anti-Enlightenment, anti-liberalism complainers would all be dead or imprisoned or outlawed. Not that they would even have had the wherewithal to articulate their dissent in the first place, most likely. So a little gratitude where it is due, folks.

Romanticism: oh nature! Oh, poetry! Oh, feeling! Oh, the folk-of-the-land! Let’s all put on tights! Great, what a fantastic thing. I love it. I love Beethoven and Rilke and all that jazz. Well, maybe not the tights. How did they get in there anyway?

Then again, let’s face it: Romanticism is utterly obsessed with the notion of the Singular Genius who is going to save the day, the Ultimate Cultural Hero. At the same time it indulges all the most stupid excesses of human emotionality (Beethoven stands out as a particularly preposterous personality, go ahead, do some research) and loses the ability to distinguish between the base and the sublime. It all gets so bloody tasteless and pompous so easily.

Do we really need a bunch of Ultimate Cultural Heroes running around to save us? I consider that to be just as disempowering as the notion that we need Enlightenment-inspired “experts” to tell us what to eat or how to think (when anyone who is paying attention will have noticed that, for example, mainstream Nutrition Science seems to constantly have egg on its face as “certainty” after “certainty” of the last five decades of research gets torn to shreds…to reveal that traditional cuisines and cultures had it right all along – check out Michael Pollan’s great book In Defense of Food and prepare to get your mind blown).

I intensely dislike the idea of Ultimate Cultural Heroes, just as I dislike furrowed brows and grandiose misery. Have I indulged in this sort of silliness myself? Absolutely. But I was very young and stupid (as opposed to what I am now, young and stupid). The more I learn the more I realise that a furrowed brow is just…well, a furrowed brow. I’d rather be making silly faces because of how perplexed I am than because of how full of Romantic Genius I think I am.

Needless to say this sort of grandstanding is pretty alien to the old Heathen values, but it seems to animate certain modern Heathens with a puffed up silliness that the arch-Heathens would have howled in laughter at. I mean, really folks. I’m not going to name any names, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to figure out the kind of notorious characters I have in mind if you are familiar with the Heathen scene.

The other problem with Romanticism is that it used history for its own, decidedly anachronistic, ends. Rousseau’s image of humanity’s original nature, for example, is a terrible piece of speculative anthropology (and incidentally, feeds nicely into liberalism, which just goes to show that you can’t always make hard and fast distinctions between schools of thought anyway).

Similarly, it is all very well to go on about how great the agrarian olden days were, but at the same time there was plenty of brutality, war, destruction, rapine, and all the rest. We haven’t solved those problems in modern times – quite the contrary in fact – but nor were they invented in modern times.  Heathens love to go on about worshipping the ancestors, but you know what? A lot of my ancestors were utter jerks. It’s true, I’ve learned about my family history and/or known these characters personally and/or seen the effects of their actions on more immediate family. I’m not going to pretend my ancestors were all champs when they weren’t.

To me ancestor-worshipping is as much about settling the debts of wyrd they ran up and then dumped on their descendants as anything else. For those of us in this circumstance we can either use their nasty orlog as a crucible or we can drown like cowards. Read this book if you want to more know about that idea. Oh, and this applies just as much to mimetic ancestors – philosophers, artists, leaders, etc – as it does to actual relatives.

Look, none of this is to say we shouldn’t draw inspiration from Romanticism or any other cultural current in our attempts to make sense of this whole crazy Heathen gig we’ve got going. It is to say, however, that we’d look a lot less foolish if we declined to wallow in adolescent sentimentality. And if, in the case of liberalism, we had the good taste not to so self-righteously bite the lumpy and deformed appendage that feeds us.

Hmm…which inspires the image of Fenris munching on Tyr’s hand. I better stop now before someone accuses me of accusing other people of being giant-loving, Ragnarok-provoking so-and-sos. Which of course, they probably are without realising it. That’s usually how it goes, right?

Oh yeah, despite all this I still love John Ralston Sauls’ critiques of Rationalism and the like…but I think his perspective is probably more true to the Enlightenment than most of its actual offspring anyway…and probably a more useful expansion and development of Romanticism than any other, too.

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