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causticusSomeone recently asked me my opinion on the revisionist vs. reconstructionist approaches to modern paganism. Here's my response.
I'm more in the revisionist camp. To me, reconstructionist ethnic paganism is highly reductive, pedantic and pointless. An example would be groups who attempt to reconstruct not just Germanic or Nordic paganism but very specifically Anglo Saxon paganism. First, we have very little info on the exact pantheon or ritual practices of the Anglo Saxon culture, secondly, this culture was very short lived in any purely pagan form, as they invaded Britain in the 500s and were largely Christianized by the 800s. So that's like a 300 year window to reconstruct, which in the history of the British Isles is just a tiny blip...seems rather arbitrary. They might as well go Brythonic pagan, as the Celtic Britons had been established there for a much longer span of time.
We could say that the Anglo Saxon culture didn't simply cease to exist once the people were Christianized. As we know, there were more invasions to the Island (ex, the Vikings and later the Normans) and thus changes to the cultures. The things about cultures is that unless they are in very isolated/remote locations, they tend to change/shift quite a bit over time. The reconstructionist mentality assumes a static, unchanging culture....which is pretty divorced from reality.
A crucial part of Anglo-Saxon (i.e. English) culture includes the importation of Old Norse and Norman French language and culture into the overall mix. Fast forward to today and the modern English language happens to have a vocab that's about 70% derived from medieval French, and much of that French is derived from classical Latin. So we could say that a genuinely "Native English" pagan religion for today might have a lot of Latin/Roman elements to it, not just Germanic, much less a tiny snapshot of one particular Germanic localization frozen in time.
In closing, I'm of the belief that any purely antiquarian endeavor (like reconstrucitonist paganism) taking place today is nothing more than a LARP.
I'm more in the revisionist camp. To me, reconstructionist ethnic paganism is highly reductive, pedantic and pointless. An example would be groups who attempt to reconstruct not just Germanic or Nordic paganism but very specifically Anglo Saxon paganism. First, we have very little info on the exact pantheon or ritual practices of the Anglo Saxon culture, secondly, this culture was very short lived in any purely pagan form, as they invaded Britain in the 500s and were largely Christianized by the 800s. So that's like a 300 year window to reconstruct, which in the history of the British Isles is just a tiny blip...seems rather arbitrary. They might as well go Brythonic pagan, as the Celtic Britons had been established there for a much longer span of time.
We could say that the Anglo Saxon culture didn't simply cease to exist once the people were Christianized. As we know, there were more invasions to the Island (ex, the Vikings and later the Normans) and thus changes to the cultures. The things about cultures is that unless they are in very isolated/remote locations, they tend to change/shift quite a bit over time. The reconstructionist mentality assumes a static, unchanging culture....which is pretty divorced from reality.
A crucial part of Anglo-Saxon (i.e. English) culture includes the importation of Old Norse and Norman French language and culture into the overall mix. Fast forward to today and the modern English language happens to have a vocab that's about 70% derived from medieval French, and much of that French is derived from classical Latin. So we could say that a genuinely "Native English" pagan religion for today might have a lot of Latin/Roman elements to it, not just Germanic, much less a tiny snapshot of one particular Germanic localization frozen in time.
In closing, I'm of the belief that any purely antiquarian endeavor (like reconstrucitonist paganism) taking place today is nothing more than a LARP.
