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"Real Paganism” (1 / 2): Gentilism
Jul. 11th, 2024 02:49 pmIf 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:
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.
“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.
