Caustic Ramblings

A reply of mine to a friend who was asking me my take on a hypothetical "monastic order" for those who study/practice (non-Christian) Western mysticism and philosophy:

I think that here in the current western world, any notion of any full-time monastic life outside of an established institutional religion that includes a monastic path, like Christianity or Buddhism, is pretty much a fantasy. It took those religions centuries of institutional growth and geographic expansion to garner the resources necessary to allow for organized and well-funded monastic life to be a possibility. AND those religions existed in a cultural environment that was supportive of monastic life in the first place. Prior to that it was ascetics living out in the desert or jungles or whatnot, subsisting on handouts from the local rural people they came in contact with on their daily rounds (Southeast Asian Buddhist monks still live like this); those local people held a belief that supporting those wandering mendicants was the right thing to do and something that conferred personal benefit to themselves. I can say that here in the US, most Americans aren't going to give people money to sit around all day and pray, meditate, and philosophize.

What can be done though, is if someone has the means to life a mostly-solitary life then they can go that route, given they are able to support themselves or get support from family or friends. Even living with family though isn't really an ideal monastic life, since one will have to deal with the everyday stress of dealing with people who don't necessarily have any understanding or respect for what you are doing. One of the things that differentiates monastic from ordinary life is living in a place that is isolated from the everyday hustle-bustle of ordinary society. Having a nagging mother bugging you about your daily chores, sure ain't that. On the other hand, the abbot bugging you about your daily chores is at least going to be spiritually on the same page as you.

A little addendum on Americans and monasticism; I'd say in an American context, the only way this would work is if the monks/monastery provided some tangible service to the surrounding community. America works on the customer model. Also, ordinary people in the community would need to see your order as being legitimate. New Religious Movements are notoriously looked down as being fake and non-serious by the average person. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Secondly, yes Americans will send people money to people or organizations for non-commercial purposes, but it's almost always to either those deemed as downtrodden according to their preferred set of political beliefs, or to charitable organizations or political activists who advance the political-social agenda the donor-in-question finds to be congenial.

Interesting little speculative tidbit from Tom Rowsell (Survive the Jive) on the possible origins of Odin/Woden:

My current understanding of the development of the cult of Wodanaz is as follows:

In the Bronze age the pre-Germanic people of Scandinavia worshipped a sky father derived from PIE *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr but he merged with and became indistinct from the dark god of the Männerbund, guardian of the cattle herds and the underworld known in PIE as *Welunos.

By the time Proto-Germanic was spoken in 500 BC they called this god *Wōdanaz " one of divine-frenzy" and his worship was probably widespread in all Germanic speaking regions, which by then included the continent (North Germany).

With the influence of Rome on Germania in the common era, and many Germanic folk serving in the Roman military, the cult of *Wōdanaz took on a Roman character - especially in Germany - with the Germanic comitatus being based in part on Roman military culture and *Wōdanaz himself being depicted in Romanised forms, sometimes even with Roman artefacts. The military Germanic elite represented a changing power structure in the region, and with the increased regional power and wealth of Odinic military aristocratic leaders, many of whom had served in the Roman army, there was a corresponding increase in the focus on the cult of *Wōdanaz.

I don't think this means he wasn't the principle deity before Roman influence, but I think that the cults of other gods diminished in importance as the emphasis on these new military elites defined the Germanic culture. This is the time when the duel raven motif starts to proliferate and also the bracteates which seem to depict Germanic kings in the style of Roman emperors on solidi, but surrounded by Odinic imagery; ravens, swastikas, runes, horses. One runic bracteate inscription even says "he is wodnaz's man". The deliberate invention of the purpose built runic script by an elite literate caste coincides with these events around 2000 years ago.

*Wōdanaz retained this status and the association with runes, ravens and war throughout the Germanic world for over 1000 years until his cult was destroyed by Christians.

"Welunos" sounds a lot like the Slavic god Veles, in both name and speculative attributes. This hints at a very ancient Indo-European theology that had the "Sky Father" bifurcated into Light and Dark aspects. In the archaic Roman religion (prior to its Hellenization), the Jupiter/Veovis pairing may have been another instance of this duality. In the later (Hellenized) Roman religion, most of the archaic Italic elements were memory-holed and this dark aspect was either lost or conflated with other cthonic gods like Dis Pater and Pluto (Hades). In the Greek tradition, I've seen associations of Hades and Dionysus, which may be getting at the same sort of thing; Dionysus being the "dark side" of Zeus makes a lot of sense. As an aside, one thing that bugs me a bit about our modern-day "Germanic" theology that has been cobbled together from loose scraps, is the lack of the "Light side" of the Sky Father; it seems like Thor serves as a proxy for this, though he's more of a son than father figure. A few among the more philologically-inclined Heathens have suggested that Tiw/Tyr once performed this function, but from what I've seen, the evidence seems very lacking for thing, as mere cognates are not really good evidence for theological connections, in my view.

Anyway, this all seems like quite fascinating food for thought.

If there was one book that decisively “ruined” the modern pagan revival (as a serious religious endeavor with any multigenerational staying power) for me it would be The Ancient City by the French historian and proto-anthropologist Fustel de Coulanges. Well, there’s actually been a few, but this one takes the cake. In the book, the author, with what to me seems like an amazing degree of intuitive insight, teases out and explains what he sees as being the foundational element of ancient religion; what we today call “paganism.” I won’t bother droning on with any exhaustive summary of the book, but here is a very brief one:

“Originally published in 1864 as La Cité Antique, this remarkable work describes society as it existed in Greece during the age of Pericles and in Rome at the time of Cicero. Working with only a fraction of the materials available to today's classical scholar, Fustel de Coulanges fashioned a complete picture of life in the ancient city, resulting in a book impressive today as much for the depth of its portrait as for the thesis it presents.

In The Ancient City, Coulanges argues that primitive religion constituted the foundation of all civic life. Developing his comparisons between beliefs and laws, Fustel covers such topics as rites and festivals; marriage and the family; divorce, death, and burial; and political and legal structures. "Religion," the author states, "constituted the Greek and Roman family, established marriage and paternal authority, fixed the order of relationship, and consecrated the right of property, and the right of inheritance. This same religion, after having enlarged and extended the family, formed a still larger association, the city, and reigned in that as it had reigned in the family. From it came all the institutions, as well as the private law, of the ancients."

When most of us modern people think of paganism, we think of the great civic religions and mythological traditions of late-stage classical civilization, particularly the traditions of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial eras. We think of rigid pantheons of rudely-anthropomorphized gods and goddesses and the ossified mythological literary narratives associated with those deities. We also might think of great sages and their elaborate philosophical teachings and great works. In fact, all these things are the product of specific high cultures and their literary traditions. We think today that “paganism” is precisely that. Well, its foundational form was never that at all.

Contra these popular modern (mis)understanding, Coulanges takes us back to a time long before recorded history, i.e. long before writing technology was a thing. He parses out the archaic religion of the Indo-Europeans and their offshoots in the Mediterranean world, focusing particularly on the family cults of archaic Greece and Rome. In his view, the religion of the family is the foundation of all religion in the ancient world; tribal and civic cults are much later developments that evolved as smaller social units continuously merged into larger ones as classical civilization became ever-grander and more complex.

Private Religion, Private Law

As the story goes, religion was once a wholly private affair. By private I mean one confined to the household and its immediate surroundings. Each cultic household (i.e. what neopagans today call “ the hearth”) was an ancestor-veneration religion unto itself. The beliefs and rituals were specific to each individual family; no two families rites and beliefs were ever the same. And it was utterly taboo for anyone outside the household to partake in the rites of the family religion. Marriage and adoption were the only means by which new members could be admitted.

Western patriarchy, monogamous marriage, and archaic kingship (that of the paterfamilias) each derives from this very ancient way. When a woman would leave her natal household and join a different one via marriage, she had to ritually leave the religion of her birth and join the religion of her husband’s household (she must be carried over the sacred threshold of her new house); no one back then could be a member of two household religions at the same time. To do anything other than what ancient custom mandated would be to offend the ancestral gods; if any serious wrong were to be committed, they would become vengeful ghosts and proceed to mercilessly vex the entire household until its participants made a sufficient degree of ritualistic restitution.

The modern atheist-rationalist strawman of Abrahamic religion is that off an all-seeing busybody sky god tyrant watching your every move. Well, the ancients weren’t so different in their belief, it’s just that the all-seeing busybody was a patriarchal ancestor god dwelling under the ground instead of being an abstract all-spirit way up in the sky. Same basic stuff, different epoch. The “fear of God” being the basis of all religious piety and humility is a very ancient teaching indeed.

From Lares and Manes to Culture Gods

In the book, Coulanges supposes that the gods and goddesses we know of today began either as (a) proprietary family deities, or (b) personified parts of nature. It’s on this first supposition that he gives most of his attention to. Over time, the Lares and Manes of a triumphant family eventually become the gods of the whole culture. How this would work is that some particular family grows to prominence and, by marriage or adoptive patronage, absorbs many other families under its umbrella. Thus family becomes a clan. The paterfamilias becomes the clan Chieftain. The patron god of the clan’s leading family becomes the patron god of the entire clan; every clan member now participates in the rites of that deity; the once very-private religion has become a little less private and a little more public. In due time, other clans (for various reasons) join up with the big clan and now it’s a tribe. The patron deity of the tribe becomes the patron deity of every tribal member. The cult of the tribal deity has become even more public. Archaic kingship is born. Tribes settle down and become organized states with elaborate lore traditions and the beginnings of legalism. The same scaling-up process rinses and repeats until we get the mega-states and sprawling empires that our history books tend to lavish with the most attention.

You get the picture by now. The illustrious Athena of the Athenian Parthenon, the awesome protectress of all of Athens, was once-upon-a-time a humble family deity. That family became one of the most dominant and successful families of Athens and because of that, its patron goddess become the civic goddess par excellence. Yahweh was likely once a humble family deity of this type and over time become the clan of Judah’s tutelary god (“The god of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac” can perhaps take on a literal meaning here). And as the saying goes, the rest is history!

Forgotten Inheritance

Speaking on that tangent, it becomes quite apparent to me that the Christians inherited the remnants of these ancient gentile institutions The Ancient City talks about at length. But the early Christians understood very little about the origin of things like monogamous marriage, archaic kingship, and patriarchal families; they saw that those just worked, and left it at that. Humans in general seem to prefer the approach of doing things over and over again by rote over understanding why they do things to begin with (once you have to ask why, it’s obvious the magic has already worn off) Of course the Christians were by no means unique in this regard, as this was how most pagan religions operated as well. By the late decadent era of blustering moralists like Cicero, Cato, and Seneca, the learned Roman understood very little about the why of their venerable religion. Why these religions worked the way they did is a deeply-esoteric topic for another time.

What the author had pieced together more than 150 years ago constitutes a key component of of what ancient Natural Religion actually was. We could use the term Gentilism for this. However this is not the only piece. Animism is the other main part. It’s something that Coulanges briefly acknowledges in a few spots but tends to gloss over. After all, he was a rationalist scholar who followed the popular habit of his time, that is dismissing the notion of an enchanted world as being something more than ancient superstition. However, I’ve found an occult reading of his work to be quite illuminating, to put it lightly. This is something I’ve been working out in my own head for awhile now.

Putting the Canopy before the Roots

Sad to say, but to me this synthesis seems to be something that greatly trivializes modern-day efforts to revive ancient religions. The pantheon-first approach is highly-anachronistic and little more than romanticized classicism (ancient familial and tribal religions didn’t have fixed pantheons, but that’s another topic for a different time!). In practical terms, this approach constitutes an attempt to grow a tree starting first with the uppermost branches (yeah, imagine that). Of course, I don’t intend here to denigrate an individual’s personal spiritual practice that might involve the veneration of ancient deities; you do you! But such a practice sans any familial or communitarian element is really just a glorified occult or mystical practice, or maybe a rogue form of Folk Catholicism. In my humble view, if one can’t get their whole household to participate in whatever it is they do in front of their altar, then it’s not a religion proper.

By this criteria, I think the only successful pagan revival groups here in the Anglosphere are those Germanic pagans (Heathens) who do indeed have their whole families or even mini-communities participating in cultic activities, even if that’s just meeting up a few times a year for ritual feasts and outdoor gatherings. But even Heathens usually default to the classical pantheon approach, when really each hearth and kindred should be working with something unique, if the religion is to be an authentic gentilism (I do realize how massive a tall order this is in our postmodern era).

Back to Basics

For a whole family or household to participate, the aspiring religion has to be something more visceral and relatable than some cultic version of a D&D session or a Renaissance Fair. Fine for the nerds, but boring or just plain weird for everyone else. Whichever pioneering soul can figure out how to harmoniously blend ancestor work with strict family discipline, and with some compatible ethos and world-conception (like perhaps a combination of Nietzschean Vitalism and Animism), might really be onto a working formula that can make for a tradition that lasts for more than half a generation.

It goes without saying that intelligence is very prized and valued in our culture. What I mean by intelligence is a grab bag of “big brain” traits like mental sharpness, cleverness, mathematical proclivity, and good verbal skills. In so many of our culture’s high-paying, high-status occupations, intelligence is key. Intelligence is very useful; especially when it comes to manipulating the physical environment and coming up with ever-more efficient ways of extracting goodies from it. Having an advanced degree from a prestigious academic institution is supposedly a good proxy (err...a very expensive one!!) for being gifted in the area of measurable intelligence, or so the story goes.

Wisdom is much harder to measure, if it can even be measured at all. It’s why grading papers (beyond the technical aspects of writing) is mostly a subjective art, as opposed to the completely-objective process of scoring a math test. If Intelligence corresponds with the so-called “left brain,” then Wisdom is the domain of the “right brain.” Wisdom contains the intangible and unquantifiable aspects of what actually make us “smart.” Wisdom is creative, artistic, and intuitive, whereas Intelligence is technical, nimble, and quantifiable. If Intelligence is STEM, then Wisdom is the Humanities side of academia.

Those familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, and similar Fantasy Role Playing Games (RPGs), will immediately recognize these two terms as being attributes found on the player’s character sheet. Intelligence is what makes a powerful Wizard, and Wisdom is what makes a good Cleric. Of course, the human physical and psycho-spiritual makeup is magnitudes more complex than a simple list of eight attribute scores. But to make a quick point, a small dose of nerdy category-reductionism can be sometimes helpful. In D&D, Wisdom is a shorthand way of saying “psycho-spiritual acumen.” It’s much better marketing to use a commonly-understood word than to explain the game mechanics using clinical-sounding psychobabble. But I do digress.

Incarnation as a levelling-up process

Our finest spiritual teachings might suggest that both Wisdom and Intelligence are things that increase in the individual soul as it accumulates more and more human incarnations under its belt. One very key thing to take into account is that Intelligence all by itself has nothing to do with a person’s morality; intelligence is a gift that can be used for good, evil, and neutral purposes. A soul that develops intelligence at a fast past over a limited number of human incarnations may experience several lifetimes where they misuse their intelligence in service of various self-serving and short-sighted goals; this would be the “clever fool.” To understand the sometimes-amoral nature of intelligence, it’s interesting to recall that Mercury is the god of thieves and fraudsters. Mercury is the celestial intelligence that rules over flexibility and nimbleness of all kinds, including mental nimbleness. Mercury is raw intelligence. Mercury is the god of Tricknology. (Sorry D&D purists, but Intelligence is really just Cognitive Dexterity)

There is a connection though between Wisdom and moral agency; a wise person may “know” what’s right in a situation, even if they fail to act on that realization. In isolation, Wisdom is a passive state consisting of a cross-contextualization of accumulated experiences and abstract impressions. Without right action, Wisdom is wasted potential. A soul with a lot of Wisdom (been there, done that, many times over) will cultivate a native sense of right and wrong; such a person will have much less dependence on whatever set of concrete rules and moral commandments their culture imposes on them. As a result, a “wise” person can become quite resentful if they happen to live in a society that’s way too conformist and restrictive. In excess, this resentment can result in a state of perma-rebelliousness and a tendency toward reactive anitnomianism. Another downside of Wisdom is the tendency to get lost in lofty abstractions and lose touch with the banal reality on the ground. Adults without families (or businesses) to take care of are especially prone to this sort of psychological waywardness. No, “fur babies” don’t count. Au contraire, our spiritual “lessers” still know how to touch grass.

Ugh, more categories

In the Myers-Briggs personality typology (a commercial bastardization of Carl Jung’s psychological type theory), the trait “Intuition” is a fairly close proxy for the sort of Wisdom I’m getting at here. The so-called “Intuition type” has become an identity for adoring fans of this system to latch onto as a crude means of differentiating themselves from the hordes of those pitiful, simple souls with less Wisdom (i.e. “Sensing” types) than thou, or so the story goes. “INTJ” and “INTP” types are those who fancy themselves as being gifted in the areas of both Intelligence and Wisdom. “NF” types like INFJ are more specialized in the area of Wisdom, though typically with an artistic, creative, or romantic bent (maybe this is where that other attribute, Charisma, starts to creep in).

There are of course other systems of accounting for the varying levels of soul maturity found throughout humanity. The Gnostics of late antiquity uses a tripartite scheme. They categorized all people into three categories, from least to most wise, (1) Hylics, (2) Psychics, and (3) Pneumatics. Hylics have very little Wisdom. They are are those young, immature souls who are the most drawn toward the ordinary sensory experiences the material world has to offer; they are sensual, possess rudimentary intellect, and are mostly driven by their base appetites. Pneumatics have Wisdom out the wazoo are seen as being spiritually gifted; these are the rare souls known to us as sages, mystics, philosophers, and saints; that is, when they do decide to come out of their hidey-holes and show themselves to the unwashed masses. Psychics are the broad mass of humanity that makes up the middle ground between these two extremes. Really, there are many different levels and gradations that might fall within this expansive umbrella. Most people reading this post are likely going to be in the mid-to-upper tiers of the Psychic category.

The Gnostics borrowed this scheme from Plato’s conception of the soul having thee parts (and infused it with their obsession with spirit/matter dualism): Nous (Higher Mind), Thumos (Spiritedness, Passion), and Epithumia (Appetite, Survival Instincts). This is somewhat similar to the three “gunas” of Hindu Yoga philosophy: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. In Taoist internal alchemy theory there are: Shen, Qi, and Jing. So on, so forth, you get the picture.

Diversity is our strength

These overlapping theories might lead one into the uncomfortable territory of entertaining the notion that “humanity” is in fact an intractable hodgepodge of differing levels of soul-development and maturity; some individual souls are closer to the animal realm they recently emerged out of, whereas others are closer to graduating out of humanity and eventually becoming something akin to a demigod or angelic being.

The next logical step within this theory is the idea that these differing qualities manifest quite differently in different cultures and ethnic groups, when we speak of group-average traits and behaviors. After 2000 years of mono-ideologies ruling the roost, the notion of Difference has become somewhat of a scare-concept; after all, the American constitution says we were all created “equal” or something. Today, the discussion of innate difference is quite taboo in some circles. Among the educated literati of the West, the tendency of outright bunk theorizing is either to deny human group difference outright (Blank-slate Egalitarianism) or to embrace it in a gross, vulgar, materialist-reductionist manner (Race Realism); when the lowly plebes latch onto the latter theory, it tends to get even more gross and vulgar. I think the taboo fixation associated with the former comes from the sort of cognitive dissonance that is a product of the West’s obsession with Practical Intelligence; we love it and we hold the entirety of humanity to a weird standard that’s defined by almost solely by ideals associated with Intelligence-related aptitudes. When the facts on the ground report back to us that an imbalanced development of Intelligence isn’t the global norm, nor is it the be-all, end-all of human existence, Western brains start to go haywire and respond erratically (what’s known as “Reeeeeeeeeee!” in today’s memeology). Few “smart” people these days can talk about this sensitive topic without an emotional meltdown quickly ensuing.

Closing thoughts

I think this is one of those areas where Intelligence and Wisdom should certainly be harmonized. But, no, a balanced approach to discoursing on hot topics is apparently something the ancients were able to do, not us (I’m being a bit facetious here; surely, the ancients of various locales each had their own assortment of no-no topics).

Whatever one’s perspective may be on this subject matter, it’s quite apparent that there is no shortage of sup-topics to explore on the wonderfully-varied landscape of human psycho-spiritual qualities. With Intelligence and Wisdom gracefully-applied in tandem, such exploration will be something more nuanced and interesting than an IQ score, a D&D character sheet, a crude racial stereotype, or a silly Myers-Briggs personality type profile.

Copypasting here my response to a very fascinating Magic Monday thread topic jprussell started. His original question:

I recently heard about a hypothesis that the Old Testament is consciously modeled on Plato and is essentially an attempt to do what he recommended in the /Republic/ and take the known myths of a people and rework them to create a body of belief that would help forge a unified and virtuous people. Advocates of this theory point to similarities in the content and ordering of the Old Testament and Plato's presentation of "the Law," to the fact that we have no textual record of the Old Testament earlier than the time of the Septuagint, and some of the archaeological and textual evidence we do have (like the Elephantine letters) that show the Hebrews being fairly normal eastern Mediterranean polytheists with multiple Gods, temples, harvest festivals and the like, with no mention of things that we now know to be central to the religion (Moses, the Law, the Exodus, and so forth). Have you, JMG, or anyone else here, heard of this theory, and what kind of credibility do you give it? I've heard it second hand from intelligent and knowledgeable people, but it strikes me as one of those theories that might appeal precisely because it is contrarian. Some sources the folks I'm talking to are drawing from: Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible by Russel Gmirkin and Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity edited by Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas Thompson

Here is my response (with some minor edits), which is actually to JMG's reply, but it very much expands on many of the things mentioned in the original question:

For starters, the Elephantine letters is slam dunk proof that polytheism was still quite normal among the Hebrews as late as the 400s BC. The letters even show friendly correspondence between the Elephantine community and the Jerusalem priesthood. So it seems Yahweh-only monolatry as a state-mandated policy in/around Judea would have been a rather late development, relative to the Hebrew Bible' internal chronology (which in the first place should be seen as legendary, rather than factual-historical).

The theory Jeff is referring to is a product of some rather recent developments in critical biblical scholarships, particularly the works of an academic by the name of Russell Gmirkin (as Jeff mentioned); he's published three extensive books so far which lay out his theory. In the first he makes a case, via comparative literary critique, that the Pentateuch has source dependency on the works of Berossus (Seleucid Babylonia), Manetho (Ptolemaic Egypt), and a number of Greek works. Now this is not to say that the stories within the Hebrew bible aren't ancient; many of them most certainly are. But the literary format and narrative those stories were encoded in are a product of the Hellenistic era, according to Gmirkin's thesis.

In his works he dated the penning of the Pentateuch to around 270-275 BC, and the whole affair was funded by the Macedonian-Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus; that he assembled all or most of the Jewish tribal elders in Alexandria and gave them access to the great library to help them compose their encyclopedic corpus. It was a known policy of the post-Alexandrian kings to employ local priests/scribes of newly conquered subject peoples to write extensive accounts of their own culture's history, lore, laws, and religious practices (see Berossus and Manetho I referred to above). So by this, the documentation Ptolemy wanted on his Jewish subjects is reflective of the same domestic policy other Macedonian Greek rulers implemented for their various other subject peoples. His other books (I only read his first so far) seem to go into extensive comparison between the Platonic corpus and the Hebrew bible.

Flavius Josephus in his histories of the Jews actually goes into vivid detail on how precisely the Septuagint was composed: in Alexandria and with the financial patronage of the Ptolemies, which coincides with Gmirkin's thesis (perhaps he got this idea from reading Josephus). I'll stop here because it would probably take me at least ten more paragraphs to fully flesh out the finer details of this theory.

From an esoteric standpoint, that 270s BC date seems quite interesting because this time period seems to coincide directly with the onset of the Age of Pisces. I believe this was also the approximate time of the Edicts of Ashoka in India (i.e. the first mass-deployment of religious missionaries). In the Middle East, this was also the time the first birth pangs of Magian religiosity, if we're to bring Oswald Spengler's theories into this equation.

Finally, I have to point out that the term "Judaism" needs careful consideration when used in the context of Greco-Roman antiquity. What we understand today as "Judaism" is merely one version of Hebrew religion dating to the Roman era. Particularly, it's a Roman-approved (after three failed revolts against the empire) form of Pharisee Judaism that later underwent considerable changes in the middle ages. There was actually a lot more ideological diversity in and around Hellenistic and Roman Judea/Palestine than most people today understand; the Gnostics, Essenes, and proto-Christians being prime examples (heck, we don't even know what the Sauducees actually believed). The Mandean religion that survives to this day may in fact be a preservation of older Judaic beliefs that have long been snuffed out everywhere else (perhaps an offshoot of the Essenes).

1700+ years of church propaganda asserting the Bible as a historical document (an infallible one at that!) has long made it politically incorrect to suggest that anything other than a literal reading of Biblical chronology is a historically-accurate version of the events that led up to the emergence and development of the Abrahamic religions. What the difference is today is that it's now finally permissible for researchers to propose and present alternative hypotheses.

What follows is a very brief summary of the religious, spiritual, and occult practices of the ancient Etruscan culture of Iron Age Italy. It’s what we know or can deduce via historical records, archaeology, and semi-contemporary second and third-hand sources. Much of this information I gleaned from a book on “Pagan Europe” by Nigel Pennick, an English historian, occultist, and pagan.



1. Spiritual Science: The Etruscans seems to have made no hard distinction between priestcraft, spirituality, science, and occultism. They apparently saw all of these areas of study as being of a divine/numinous nature. A spiritual view was incorporated into every facet of life. “Secularism” as we know it today would have been totally alien to the Etruscans.

2. Professional Priests: Unlike the Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans had a full-time, professional priesthood. A Priest was known as a Maru, whether he was a Cultic Priest, Augur, or Sacral Magistrate (deputy to the Lucumo). Religious specialists underwent periods of intensive training at specialized colleges.

3. Sacral Kingship: The Etruscans as a whole people had no centralized state. Rather, they formed a league of different city-states and surrounding territories, usually numbering about 12. Each city-state was headed by a high priest known as the Lucumo, who (along with his deputies) was responsible for carrying out the public ceremonies of the Etruscan religion. The Lucumo was regarded as a king, but perhaps just in a ceremonial sense during the later phases of Etruscan civilization. The style of his diadem, his scepter, his purple robe, his staff of office, and his ivory throne were adopted by the Roman magistrates, later by the emperors, and eventually by the Roman Catholic Pope and cardinals. The sacred offices of the lucumones were carried out after the overthrow of the Etruscan kings in Rome by a ceremonial “king,” the Rex Sacrorum. What’s fascinating here is that we see a very ancient priestly practice that carried on in an unbroken manner from deep prehistorical times, up until the modern age in the West. Perhaps the Tarot trump, “The Hierophant” best encapsulates the essence of this venerable Western tradition.


Reject lawyer-priest modernity; retvrn to priest-king tradition

4. Master Diviners: Each Lucumo was advised by a body of priestly scholars, known as haruspices. Today we mainly remember them for their skill in divination, but they were also known for being astronomers, mathematicians, and engineers. Even after Rome destroyed Etruscan political power, a college of haruspices was maintained in the city of Rome as a part of its administrative establishment. Bird augury, the examination of animal livers, and the interpretation of various other omens were the primary types of Etruscan divination practices. Multiple Roman authors and historians have pointed out that Rome’s divination practices were derived from the Etruscans. These Roman commentators also noted how divination was everything to the Etruscans; practically everything they did in ordinary life was accompanied by divination of one sort or another. The Romans were more secular-minded and generally regarded the Etruscans as being very superstitious. Having said that, I think from this we can conclude that the Etruscans were masters of divination like no other people in the region of that time.

5. Revealed Texts: Though thoroughly-polytheistic, like just about all other peoples of that time period, the Etruscans derived much of their religious instruction from a corpus of revealed texts. The books were manuals on divination, interpretation of omens, the allotment of time, the afterlife, and instructions on the proper performance of cultic rituals. One of the twelve cities, Tarquinii, became the holy city of the entire league. It was in that city where priests from all over the Etruscan realm went for training. Perhaps the “Sibylline Oracles” of Roman tradition are derived from this.

6. Magical City Layout: Nigel Pennick speculates that the way the Etruscans plotted out their cities and countryside districts seemed to have been magical in nature. Town plans were optimized for magical protection of settlements, and perhaps there was an astrological component to this sacred science. They used a foursquare plan, oriented to the cardinal points of the compass. From a central point or plaza, four roads ran out, each intersecting with the city wall to form four gates. Though often, the Northern quarter was omitted and thus it was a system of three roads and three gates instead. This plan seems to date to the Bronze Age, and is likely derived from the town layouts of the Terramare Culture of Northern Italy. The Romans acknowledged that their concern with land and law was derived from the Etruscans. Roman military camps were based on this Disciplina Etrusca, and some Roman towns and cities were built around the foursquare plan; a famous example being the Roman-British city of Colchester, founded by the Etruscophile emperor Claudius in 49 CE. I can only speculate that the magic of Etruscan town planning had a lot to do with the art and science of how to keep miasma and noxious entities out of their settlements. The Romans considered the home itself to be a sacred enclosure that should be safe from the chaotic energies of the outside world and the wilds beyond.

7. Fatalism: The Etruscans seemed to believe that everything that occurred was the will of the gods, in one way or another. They even plotted out precisely how long their own civilization would last, and these predictions ended up being not too far off the mark. Perhaps this is why the Etruscans went out without so much as a whimper, once it became readily apparent that Rome would gobble up all of Italy in due time. Though whether this fatalism also applied to personal spirituality is anyone’s best guess. In fact, we know very little about the inner spirituality of the Etruscans, as these things were either never written down, or if they were, any records of their beliefs on these topics would have been lost beneath the shifting sands of history.

8. Etruscan Religion: I won’t go into much detail here on the Etruscan pantheon, as that would go well beyond the scope of this brief summary. But if so inclined, read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Etruscan_mythological_figures

Having said that, one thing I find quite interesting is that the Etruscans worshiped multiple pantheons side-by-side. They had one for their own archaic indigenous gods, then a group of celestial deities that seem to be of Indo-European origin, and then at some point they adopted a some of the Greek gods and heroes the during their orientalizing phase. Some of the indigenous gods made it into the Roman pantheon; for example, Selvans as Silvanus. Finally there was a fourth category of deities, the dii involuti ("veiled" or "hidden gods") which were a group of gods, or possibly a principle, superior to the ordinary pantheon of gods. In contrast to the ordinary Etruscan gods, these hidden gods were not the object of direct worship and were never depicted. Another very interesting thing is that there was some dispute among Romans on whom the chief Etruscan deity was. One view was that the (very Indo-European) sky god Tinia, (also god of boundaries and the law, much like the Greek Zeus) was the head god. Varro took a different view and considered Voltumna (aka Veltune) to be the chief god. It seems Veltune was some sort of cthonic counterpart to Tinia. The early Roman religion seems to have shared a similar dynamic, with Vediovis being an underworld version of Jupiter. I’m reminded too of Slavic paganism having a similar dynamic with Perun (sky) and Veles (underworld). Overall, it seems the Romans inherited the Etruscans eclectic tendencies regarding deities and mythology.

9. The Dead: From archaeology, perhaps the most notable thing about the Etruscan religion was their reverence for the dead. The earliest Etruscan remains are elaborate stone tombs dating from about 750 BCE. As the culture devolved they built vast Necropoli, which have been uncovered in modern times near the sites of what were the most significant Etruscan cities. Almost everything we know today about Etruscan art comes from these tombs. Just look up images of Etruscan art on your favorite search engine and you’ll see exactly what I’m referring to. Note however that the artistic style and technique tends to be very derivative of Greek (and to a lesser extent, Phoenician) styles.

10. What Remains? The aforementioned Etruscan-loving Roman emperor Claudius reportedly wrote a massive 12-book history of the Etruscans. Unfortunately, that work was lost in its entirety after the Western Roman Empire collapsed and hordes of Christian fanatics and barbarian invaders reduced must of classical antiquity’s high culture to dust. What I listed above are merely fragmentary hints as what must have been the immense splendor of Etruscan religious, spiritual, and magical traditions. It seems the Romans inherited many of their religious and divinatory practices from the Etruscans, but even this must have come to them in a piecemeal and fragmentary form. The Romans certainly did a lot of history-rewriting and memory-holing after they became the undisputed king of the Italian hill. Some things we’ll just never know. My very rough and speculative take is that magical knowledge as a whole has been on the steady decline since the Bronze Age, and the Etruscans were one example of a culture that did a fantastic job at holding onto as much of the old knowledge as they were capable of doing.

When speaking about history, archaeology, culture, ect., “prehistoric” refers to the times/places beyond or before written historical records. In an Ancient European context, “historic” generally means cultures the Greeks and Romans wrote about, including their own. In Italy, the Romans didn’t start writing about their own past until relatively late in the game. Thus Roman writers and poets took many creative liberties with filling in the gaps of what they knew about their own history. Greek accounts do tell us about some of the peoples of ancient Italy they encountered as they explored the region and settled the southern part of the peninsula.

Prior to the spread of farming and herding throughout Europe, there were various hunter-gatherer cultures. With regard to Western and Central Europe, archeogeneticists today refer to these populations as Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG). The I2a Y-haplogroup is one of the most common male lineages found among WHGs and has survived over the millennia into modern European peoples. About 10,000 – 5,000 years ago, farmers and herders from the Middle East (primarily from Anatolia) started migrating into Europe in successive waves. These Neolithic newcomers split into two main groups, (1) a south group that traveled along the Mediterranean Littoral, eventually reaching Iberia and North Africa; and (2) a north group that entered the interior of Europe via the Danube river valley and gradually made their way through the dense forests of Central and Western Europe, all the way to the Atlantic coast. Archeogeneticists today refer to these populations as Early European Farmers (EEF). Starting around 5000 years ago there was a massive invasion of peoples from the Pontic/Caspian Steppe region into the interior of Europe. These were warlike pastoralists (primarily cowherders) who had developed military technology vastly superior to most of the peoples they encountered on their rude travels. These Steppe nomads, Western Steppe Herders (WSH), likely spoke the earliest Indo-European languages (IE), which they spread wherever they set foot.



The ancestral Italic language was likely the first form of IE speech in Italy. It was probably pastoralists from maybe the upper Balkans or Carpathian region who brought archaic Italic speech into the Italian peninsula; perhaps beginning around 2000 BCE. Their speech seems to have branched off from the same ancestral IE dialect that produced proto-Celtic. The first Italics were cattle herders and would have encountered sedentary peoples, i.e. Neolithic farmers (EEF + WHG mix), who had already been there for quite some time. Over time these peoples mixed, and by the Early Roman Republic period, genetic studies today tell us that the average person from Central Italy had an ancestry that was roughly 30% Steppe in origin, and 70% EEF + WHG. The modern population of Sardinia is perhaps the best genetic preservation of what the pre-IE peoples of Italy looked like, as their Steppe ancesty is the lowest among all modern Europeans; they have practically none of it.

This is a very brief summary, and primarily from a genetic and ethno-linguistic perspective. The Wiki (FWIW) article gives a ton more detail for anyone who is interested in delving deeper; be warned though, that the “scholarly consensus” these article defer to is constantly in flux and often subject to the sort of fad-based groupthink that dominates academic circles in the current era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Italy

Notable Peoples Ancient Italy: Late Bronze and Early Iron Age.

Polada Culture: The Bronze Age farmers of Northern Italy; their orgins likely stem from people who migrated (via the Alps) c. 2200 BCE from Southern Germany and Austria into the modern-day territories of Lombardy, Trentino, and Veneto. These farmers were skilled metallurgists and lived in pile dwellings, typically near lakesides and marshes. They may have fled their original homelands due to the rapid spread of the Bell Beaker (Western IE) culture further north. If this is the case then they probably would have spoken non-IE languages and had limited-to-no Steppe admixture. Or perhaps this culture was a cluster of different ethno-lingusitic groups that happened to have shared a similar material culture. If the later is the case then maybe some Polada groups were IE-speaking.


Pile dwelling replicas. BTW, who would want to live on a swamp?

Appenine Pastoralists: My best guess here is that the first Italic groups were associated with the Apennine cultural complex of Bronze Age Central and Southern Italy. These would have been cattle herders who led a very simple and rudimentary existence. Their religion would have been mostly animistic and featured the preservation of many very old IE deity names. Both the animism and IE deity names survived into the Roman period. Now did these herders mingle and integrate with the previous inhabitants (EEF + WHG farmers) in a forceful or peaceful manner? We don’t really know, though the R1b male lineages (most common among Western IE peoples) tend to stand out the most in modern Italians. So I think we can say there was a widespread replacement of male lines, though many of other male lineages remained in significant numbers, it wasn’t one of those “the invaders killed all the males” scenarios that seemed to have been a lot more common north of the Alps. In the historic period, the Greeks and Romans grouped the various Italic groups into distinct regional-ethnic categories like Latins, Umbrians, Oscans, Sicels, and Venetics. Of course the Romans owe their origins to one of the Latin tribes.

Terramare Culture: The most notable culture of the Bronze Age Po Valley (Padana) region, and probably an offshoot of the above-mentioned Polada. They lived primarily in marshy and lakeside areas, as evidenced by the pile dwellings they lived in (again, like the Polada). Materially speaking (because that’s all archaeology can really look at), there seems to have been a close connection between the Terramare and contemporary peoples of the Alps and Southern Germany. Really, the ancient history of so-called “Northern Italy” is coterminous with that of Central Europe. On the question of how much of an ethno-lingustic connection this culture had with the broader Urnfield complex is an open debate and we’ll probably never know anything definitive on that. I would venture to guess that they may have been ancestors of the later Etruscan civilization, or at least they were one ancestral component of what was actually a complex composite population. This culture came to an abrupt end around 1200 BCE, which is the time period we generally know as “the Bronze Age Collapse.” It was a time when everything seemed to be going to complete crap all over the map.

Nuragic Civilization: i.e. Bronze Age Sardinia, est. around 1700 BCE, and lasted up until Roman colonization in the 3rd century BCE. Seemingly the height of material development of the EEF/Neolithic peoples of Southern Europe, the Nuragics were able to learn and absorb various Bronze Age technologies, while retaining their own culture and language(s). Their island location protected them from large-scale invasions and migration events, so these people were able to adapt to changing conditions on their own terms. By the late Bronze Age they were an advanced seafaring civilization, and may have been one of the infamous “Sea Peoples” the Egyptians talked about in their records around the time of the Bronze Age Collapse; probably the Sherden. The most distinguishing feature these peoples left behind was their conical tower fortress, the nuraghe. The ruins of more than 7000 of these towers dot the modern Sardinian landscape. It seems like a lot of really cool and unique folklore from the ancient culture has survived up to the present day. As mentioned above, modern Sardinians have the least amount of Steppe ancestry of all present-day European peoples. They really are an intact preservation of the ancient Mediterranean Neolithic Farmer (EEF) genetic profile.

Villanova Culture: were the people (who branched off from the Central European Urnfield Culture) that introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula. They're what archaeologists generally consider to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization. Most of their archaeological sites are in Tuscany c. 900-700 BCE, though we also see some in Latium, Emile-Romagna, and even a few in Southern Italy. Their origins are clearly due to a large-scale migration from somewhere north of Tuscany. We see here a population that possesses military and settlement practices similar to that of the Hallstatt culture (proto-Celts) of contemporary Central Europe. They specifically chose steep plateaus and flat hilltops for their primary town sites and fortified the heck out of them, once established. In other words, they had defense on the brain, which suggests they did not enter Central Italy in a very peaceful manner.


Eyyyyy, just here to protect your hills and plateaus for you, nothing to worry about.

So this group seems “very Indo-European” as far as its MO is concerned. But here’s the twist, the historical culture the Villanova peoples would evolve into, spoke a decidedly-non-IE language, i.e. Etruscan. The origins of the Etruscans have baffled historians from classical antiquity and the modern era alike. There have been lots of differing theories, opinions, and conjectures on the origin of the Etruscans, but that is beyond the scope of this summary. If I ever do a detailed look at the Etruscans, I’ll touch on that matter. The main point here is that the Villanova culture was THE culture of Iron Age Italy. The Etruscans and Romans (among other contemporary Italics) alike can thank their existence to them.

One final point is that recent historical genetics studies show that the Italic Latins and Etruscans of the late Iron Age were the same exact race of people, genetically speaking. Despite their very different languages, it would have likely been impossible to tell a Latin and Etruscan apart just by looking at physical appearance (unaided by clothing and jewelry, of course). On top of that, after the Roman Republic went into conquest-overdrive and gobbled up all of Italy, the Etruscans quickly assimilated into Roman culture, and it’s likely that many of the notable plebeian gens of Republican Rome were of Etruscan origin. The more advanced Roman priestly practices almost entirely come from the Etruscans, but that is whole different topic for a different time.

I was planning on doing a follow-up to my last blog on Right Wing Neopaganism, this time on the Hellenic side of this seeming phenomenon. On second thought, there’s really not much to this beyond some online noise that may or may not matter much. In other words, I’m going to keep this short.

What has happened is that a few right-wing internet personalities have taken to calling what they do “Hellenism.” Now, what is it that they do exactly? I can say one thing – it’s not anything that really has much to do with pagan religion in any practical sense. Rather it’s just an aesthetic that employs some degree of Ancient Greek branding. In this case, it’s a mix of “gym bro” culture, some "Manosphere" (i.e. anywhere on the internet men gather to talk about men's issues without the presence of female nagging) themes, the usual assortment of objections and counterarguments to leftism and feminism, and a pseudo-Nietzschean philosophical orientation.

There is one particular internet personality I have in mind – the pseudonymous Bronze Age Pervert (BAP). He is an author and internet provocateur best known for his book, Bronze Age Mindset. I haven’t actually read it myself, but I have seen enough quoted excerpts from it to get the general idea of what it’s all about. In essence, it’s a Nietzsche-flavored attempt at formulating an alternative morality for men who have rejected progressivism and the constellation of institutional and establishmentarian organizations and causes which now mindlessly parrot the woke progressivist party line. Since his book became a big hit back around 2017-2018, BAP has gathered a fair number of followers on Twitter and other social medias. Like any band of good little sycophants, many of these followers attempt to ape his general demeanor and aesthetic. In addition to that, there is no shortage of copycat social media profiles with names like “Stone Age Herbalist” and “Raw Egg Nationalist,” to name a couple of examples.

Anyway, what’s this “new” morality all about? Well, I think the Nietzschean part gives it away. Or should I say, a shallow interpretation of Nietzsche. In other words, nothing new under the sun. We’ve already seen the likes of Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Ayn Rand, Anton LaVey, and other edgy pop culture personages attempt to make contrarian cultural waves during each of their respective times. BAP takes a similar approach and glorifies the the “overman” concept, plus engaging in a not-so-subtle inversion of Christian morality and the general Piscean religious paradigm that has been the default thinking of Western culture for the past 1000+ years. What this means in practical terms is the promotion of a martial and vitalist ethos and a rejection of values like compassion, self-sacrifice for some cause other than self-glorification, and really anything containing a hint of feminine or communal sentimentalism. BAP (ironically, it seems) praises the unsung heroes of history like brigands, pirates, kings with massive harems, conquistadors, the Sea Peoples, shameless tyrants who ruled their city states with an iron fist, and “Trad Olympic” athletes, just to name a few.


Yes, so Greek.

So the obvious question arises: what has any of this to do with Hellenism in the religious sense? I would say, not a whole lot, beyond a smattering of superficial elements. It seems like BAP’s “Hellenism” is yet another postmodernistic collage. There’s quite a lot of homoeroticism (ironic or not) strewn about BAP’s works and internet sh*tpostings, which plays on established stereotypes we have today about the sexual proclivities of Ancient Greek men. Then there’s his literal readings of Homeric literature. Again, this is probably more irony than anything serious. I would have to say that for me the most audacious thing BAP does is praise the reckless and hubristic Athenian politician Alcibiades as the “real hero” in the Socratic dialogue that goes by his name. This should maybe clue any serious spiritual seeker to the fact that BAP is all fun and games and not anything approaching a serious commentator on spiritual or philosophical matters. Rather, we could say that his shtick is a way the original spirit of “punk rock” might manifest in the current year. On a more positive note, it seems like we might have the stirrings of a (rather weird) resurgence of classicism, i.e. a take on what exactly it means to be "Western" sans the usual Judeo-Christian baggage.

Since I don’t want this blog turning into an exhaustive exposition on BAPism, I will conclude here with my general observation that for the most part it seems that Neopagan Hellenism conforms to the same left-leaning, progressivist cultural motif that defines most of the other Neopaganisms. Yes, I have encountered a stray person or group here and there asserting an explicitly anti-progressivist Hellenic practice, but for the most part, the former pattern tends to hold true.

Addendum: for anyone who is interested in reading a full-on critique of BAP and his ideas from the perspective of an established spiritual system, here is a very good (IMHO) essay by a Buddhist ex-monk:
https://politicallyincorrectdharma.blogspot.com/2021/06/bronze-age-mindset-more-or-less.html

I’ve blogged exhaustively in the past about Neopagans, particularly the woke form of it, which I believe accounts for a good portion of Neopagans who use their “religion” is a shallow front for the expression of their political beliefs and overall worldview that’s mostly rooted in modern-day pop culture. Since I’ve more than put that issue to bed, I won’t drone on about it any further.

Starting several months ago, out of curiosity, I took to social media (ugh, I know..), read a few books, and a listened to few podcasts, in order to check out the right-wing side of the Neopagan scene. You see, I have been something of an amateur anthropologist since I can remember. I’ve always had a blazing curiosity about whatever this or that “scene” is up to. Anyway, back on topic; I had already been aware of the so-called “Folkish vs. Universalist” ideological war within Heathenry, (Germanic Neopaganism) and in my investigations I learned that this has spilled over into some of the other Neopagan ethnic ice cream flavors. Below, I’m mostly going to be talking about American right-wing Neopagans. I believe that Europeans (who tend to live in countries with mostly-homogeneous ethnic ancestry) have a lot more of a legitimate claim on the things I will be talking about.

All in all, I found the American iteration to be ruled by an incoherent mob mentality and a very pronounced disdain for philosophy and intellectualism (no, Frederich Nietzsche quote-memes don’t count). Instead, I found plenty of the following:

*Pseudo-masculine sentimentalism
*Shallow collectivist yearnings
*The copious use of reheated 19th century romanticist leftovers
*Repetitive yapping about “ethnic gods”
*The shrill insistence that ideas and beliefs derive their validity from the ethnic pedigree of each respective idea (as opposed to inherent truth value)
*Lots and lots of grievance politics (sound familiar?)

As far as I can tell, the lion’s share of right-wing Neopagans are Heathens and their common themes I’ve seen coloring their paganism are:

*”The Folk” (that is, the yearning for ethnic collectivism as form of social organization)
*The idolization of their claimed ancestry; typically revolving around ethnic groups (ex: the Old Norse culture) that ceased to exist many centuries ago, or have evolved into modern day ethnicities that have very little in common culturally with their pre-Christian forebears, despite maybe a few preserved vestiges of the older folk culture.
*The notion that a person's blood content determines which gods they should worship.
*Appeals to “might makes right” morality
*”Blood and Soil” nationalist tropes claimed as spiritual teachings
*Hard Polytheism taken to absurd extremes
*A literal interpretation of myths and other literary source materials

And these themes are what we see before even getting into the political side of this particular niche subculture.

By “folk” they are referring to their attempt, as European Americans (i.e. Whites), to create a modern-day collectivist, neo-tribal identity based on this-or-that European ancestral stock the group in question claims descent from. The main issue I see with this is that they are appealing specifically to pre-Christian ancestry; which in practice means appealing to ancestry from so far back in time that it’s nearly impossible to know much of anything about such ancestors. So this “ancestry” they talk about all the time is little more than an abstraction, in practical terms. This abstraction fails to correspond with any modern day lived experience. On the contrary, virtually all of their knowable ancestors are Christians, for better or worse. There’s a huge gaping historical void between the Christianized present and the very distant pagan past these people are hearkening back towards. I’ve come across more than a few right-wing Heathens with very mixed European ancestry (i.e. “Amerimutts”) acting like whatever Germanic ancestry they might have as being their only spiritually-significant ancestry. One of the leaders of a sizable East Coast Folkish group has an Italian surname. The founding father of American Folkish Heathenry (Asatru Folk Assembly is his organization) is a man by the name of Stephen McNallen; yeah, I’ve seen no shortage of Irish and Scottish surnames among the followers of these groups. Yet, the Germanic deities are the only ones they seem find relevant based on ancestral appeals.

An Instant Coffee Religion

If I am going to take a wild guess here, I’d say that most participants in these groups aren’t exactly genealogy aficionados, nor are they history buffs. Rather, the guiding ideology is White Nationalism, which is a form of identitarian grievance politics based on White American racial identity. Because of this we see bizarre claims like that the specifically-Germanic deities are somehow the “folk gods” of all white people. It really just means their main criteria for letting people in their groups is that they are passably-white. I doubt anyone is being subjected to a DNA ancestry test. Really though, I think the folkist adoption of the Germanic/Norse pantheon and folklore originally came about as an arbitrary decision based on the fact that the collection of medieval Icelandic sources (Eddas, Sagas, ect.) is the closest thing we have to any detailed documentation of pre-Christian Northern European religion. So those materials are simply “good enough” to appropriate and claim as an instant pan-White, non-Abrahamic religion to latch onto for identity purposes. Don’t let the contradictory appeals to ancestry get in the way of that! Also, on the resurgence of Germanic Neopaganism in general, we should remember this first came about in the wake of the 1960s counterculture. The hippies were big on the whole “noble savage” thing. From the Summer of Love onward, it was high time to get back to nature and simpler times! Neopagans could have just as easily adopted the Greco-Roman pantheon as a basis for a Western pagan identity, but no, that whole thing was all about High Civilization, cosmopolitanism, multi-ethnic empires, cultural and religious syncretism, and other complicating factors. You see, this is all about feelings and aesthetics. Spirituality whaaaaat?

One last word on ancestry. I, myself have done a DNA ancestry test, and later on I built myself a dandy little family tree. Actually, it’s quite elaborate and detailed. I’ve been able to trace many ancestors on the British Isles side of my family back to the 1500s. These ancestors hail from every single British Isles ethnic group. This raises an important question in my view; why are my Highland Scot ancestors (Campbells, represent!) any more special or meaningful than my English ancestors? What about my Welsh and Irish ancestors? Why would any one of these ancestral ethnicities have any special bearing on what form of spirituality I study or practice today?

You are more than your physical body's molecules

I guess what I’m getting at is that I think that for Americans, appealing to ancestry is a rather shallow way of deciding on which spiritual path or pantheon of gods to follow. In a recent Magic Monday response, John Michael Greer explains this quite well from an Occult perspective:

“Yes, I'm familiar with [the belief that ancestry should define one’s sprituality], but I consider it mistaken. The genetics of your present material body simply don't have that much to do with your spiritual and occult practices. Past life connections tend to be considerably more important, and it's fairly rare these days for anyone to have an unbroken series of lives in one and only one ethnic group -- far more often, it's a complete jumble, and appropriately so, since one point of reincarnation is that it gives you the chance to explore many different ways of being human.”

I’ve seen some rather entertaining “Twitter battles” between pagans who utilize elaborate systems of thought like Platonism, Hindu philosophy, or Buddhism to guide their pagan practice, versus the kinds of ethno-cosplayers I’ve describe above. The usual retort from the latter tends to be the assertion that the philosophical belief in question is DEAD WRONG because those ideas happened to have originated from the “wrong” ethnic group. For example, Platonists were Greeks, so to mix in Platonism with Germanic paganism is outright heresy! Yes, the absurdity reveals itself immediately. Not only is this crude materialism masquerading as spirituality, but according to them, ideas have no independent merit; ideas just means to an end for some mundane concern or agenda. Ideas are nothing more than a reflection of some group’s will-to-power dynamics. Sound familiar? Yes, such utterances are a direct product of the postmodernist paradigm. Like their leftist Neopagan counterparts, right-wing Neopagans are very often atheists who use their “playganism” as a perma-Halloween costume to gallop around in.

Anything to bring back a sense of enchantment

Honestly, I can understand what motivates this kind of cosplay act. In today’s postmodern industrial Western world, there is a crushing level of anomie which has been brought about by mass social atomization and the rise of rampant consumerism, “dog-eat-dog” rat race economics replacing most forms of community cohesion, ubiqutous and hegemonic materialism, the loss of a coherent civilizational identity, the steep demographic decline of the core Western ethnic stock (i.e. White Europeans), and the overall uglification and vulgarization of nearly everything in the physical environment. So yeah, I get it. Turning back the clock and retreating into a “noble savage” fantasy world might seem like a rather appealing alternative to those who aren’t especially gifted in the imagination department.

On a more charitable note, the sort of ideas and behaviors I pointed out in the above sections are mostly associated with a handful of social media personalities who are vocal proponents of said ideas (in addition to their followers who frequently post comments). As many of us know quite well, loud people on social media don’t necessarily define the whole or majority of whatever groups they associate with or claim to represent.

I did look into a few Folkish Heathen organizations, and for the most part these seem like very wholesome, family-oriented groups. Their events are centered around weekend camping activities and outdoor worship of the gods. In other words, very cool stuff! The members appear for the most part to be working class people who work in the trades and other honest occupations that are closely connected to the physical economy. This stands in stark contrast to the leftist/woke/universalist camp, which (as far as I can tell) is populated by people associated with the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC), who are generally-affluent, university-educated people and very often employed in salaried office jobs, i.e. work that deals with abstractions and tends to be rather disconnected from the physical economy. Leftist neopagans see the folkish types as being evil incarnate and hurl the usual angry slurs (racist!!, sexist!!, bigot!! nazeeeeeeee, ___phobe!!, ect.) in their general direction. What I think is really going on is the usual class bigotry we see from PMCs toward white working class people; of course very thinly clad with moralistic pretense. From what I’ve observed though, Folkish pagans tend to be rather egalitarian on most issues; for example, the men treat women as equals in terms of worth and intelligence, which seems to be a healthy balance with their very positive attitude toward masculinity. But of course that doesn’t at all stop the hysterical accusations and incendiary invective woke Neopagans keep spitting in their general direction.

Left-wing heathens are extremely paranoid and hyper-reactive when it comes to past associations of Germanic pagan elements with National Socialism. In many ways I don't fault them for this. The reactions are quite predictable though when any form of not-leftist neopaganism is even hinted at in their online spaces. The moment the leftist pagan group begins to suspect even an ounce of sympathy (or even tepid non-denouncement) toward the Folkish side of things from a newcomer, that newcomer is immediately dogpiled and then very quickly ejected from the group. Worse, if the newcomer was unfortunate enough to share photos and personal details about themselves, they just might become an immediate target of doxxing and harassment. But yes, the Woke Neopagans have now become the witch-burners and heresy-hunters that just prior generations of Neopagans would vehemently decry. The hunter becomes the hunted, and the hunted becomes the hunter; this is human nature in a nutshell.

It seems I have digressed much and that I’ve only touched on one particular subculture within the fold of Right-wing Neopaganism. In the next installment, I’ll explore the Hellenic quarter of this post-liberal counterculture that has a thing for dressing up in historical pagan garb.

Ahh, the million cattle-head question.

According to my own peculiar definition of paganism, a “pagan” today might simply be anyone who has spiritual beliefs that are not dependent upon agreeing with or assenting to specific dogmas, doctrines, metaphysical propositions, or special dispensations. This Minimalist Pagan believes that existence is more than just material properties; there is something more out there, but there’s no compulsion to harbor a specific belief about or define what exactly that is. Rather, there’s myriad metaphysical models available to explain or speculate about supersensory phenomena. In essence, specific schools of thought can and do exist within this pagan umbrella, but participation in or adherence to such schools is entirely voluntary.

The following metaphysical propositions can be said to be pagan according to the above definition:

Psychism – is the first level of metaphysical belief above that of crude materialism. It’s the belief in the most rudimentary conception of “soul,” which could be said to be an immaterial “psychic” property or substance; this is a consciousness principle which either animates or supersedes matter. Modern psychism tends to favor an “archetypal” model for explaining such phenomena, and adherents of this line of thinking tend to see psyche as an impersonal force or collection of forces.

This type of belief is adjacent to atheism, agnosticism, and deism, though the admittance of a layer of reality above/beyond matter “psyche” as something that sets psychism apart from the prevailing Scientific Materialist Orthodoxy of this era. In some corners of Establishment Academia, an open belief in Psychism is permitted, or at least tolerated to some degree, though it’s long been fully excised from the field of Psychology – which is of course farcical, considering the fact that “Psychology” according to its etymological roots means, “the study of the soul.” Of course, what passes for “official” psychology today is vehemently hostile toward anything that materialist scientism can’t (or simply refuses to) explain.

Psychism can be both metaphysically-assertive and agnostic. The former approach usually coincides with a position which can be termed Panpsychism, which is the idea that everything in the universe is foremost comprised of Psyche (Soul-stuff). Whereas the latter position refrained from imposing any particular metaphysical proposition.

Spiritualism – is the belief in nonphysical, personal beings who can and do interact with our own world. In it’s modern form, Spiritualism is (1) the belief in nonphysical spiritual entities which are human-like and usually said to be the souls of deceased humans; and (2) the notion that living humans can communicate with these spiritual beings through mediumistic methods (this sometimes involves trance-inducement). Overt Spiritualism of this type became quite popular during the 19th century, through the early 20th, though it has long since fallen into obscurity. Much of this movement has shown itself to metaphysical investigators as being fraudulent, in addition to its practices being rife with psycho-spiritual dangers. Practically speaking, we could say that unacknowledged and semi-acknowledged Spiritualism does indeed play a role in a number of alternative religion/spirituality movements, especially the “devotional” end of Neopaganism, in addition to a few other syncretic neo-religions.

Animism – simply the belief that everything in Nature is “alive with spirit.” There is spiritual essence and even sentient intelligence in and around everything beyond what is apparent to our five senses. Unlike in Spiritualism, sentient spirit entities are not necessarily souls of the human dead, though they can be; in fact most spirits are non-human entities. This is the default belief system of most of the world’s ancient cultures, though animism often overlapped with polytheism. Two clear examples of this blend; (1) the (pre-Greek) ancient Roman religion, and (2) Shinto, which is the indigenous religion of Japan that survives to this day.

Theism – belief in one or more Deities. Of course, what defines a Deity (a God or Goddess) is open to a whole world of debate and well beyond the scope of this analysis. Perhaps a general definition is that a Deity is simply a “divine” being; that is, a nonphysical being who wields an immense degree of knowledge and power compared to human beings and ordinary spirits. Typically, theistic belief differs from that of the preceding tiers, in that worshippers assign archetypal and mythological characteristics to their Gods and Goddess. Deities are specific to an entire culture or polity, whereas a spirit is usually just relevant to a specific locale, physical object, deceased person, or ancestral figure. Traditional cultures the world over have almost always grouped their Deities into distinct pantheons.

Over time, polytheistic religions sometimes morph into more specific approaches like Henotheism (worship focused on just one of the deities), and Monolatrism (belief that only one of the deities is worthy of worship). Eventually this might further narrow into Monotheism, which is a theological arrangement that retains god-status for only one of the original deities of the culture in question. In practice though, Monotheism seems to be built on a bed of semantic gamesmanship. What this means is that monotheistic systems usually retain other entities from their source culture’s original pantheon, though the other divinities are demoted to a “non-god” category of one type or another. The less-than-god entities are re-imagined as being mere aspects, hypostases, emanations, or creations of the (now) “one, true god.” Once we take a few steps back from the new categorization scheme, the monotheistic system seems like an exercise in sophistic gimmickry. In traditional polytheist cultures, the differences between Gods, demigods, spirits, angels, heroes, dignified ancestors, and other entities, were often nuanced, fluid, and full of overlapping definitions and criteria. Taking all of this into account, we can see that what is to be considered a god and not-a- god is more or less a matter of crafty wordplay, not to mention a product of the opinions and agendas of those who get to define who/what is and isn’t “the one, true god.”

Theism (especially Polytheism) can be inclusive of all the prior layers of metaphysical recognition. For example, most polytheisms are infused with varying degrees of psychism, spiritualism, and animism. Thus we can see how this entire schema is somewhat hierarchical.