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causticusI’ve been steadily working my way through (what I can only hope is) a broad survey of the Germanic Pagan Revival (GPR). My interest in this has ebbed and flowed over the past couple years, but once I got over the initial hurdle, my interest has seemed to only intensify. So what was that hurdle? I’d call that the Asatru problem. By this, I’m referring to the fixation much of the GPR has had on the Viking Age Norse/Scandinavian culture, due to the obvious fact that most of the surviving source materials we have on the pre-Christian Germanic religion comes from the medieval Icelandic sources anyone today even somewhat familiar with the GPR already knows about quite well.
The main issue for me is that I don’t find the Viking Age stuff to be the least bit appealing. I have zero desire to LARP as a Viking or pretend I even have a slight clue what it was like to be part of a harsh warrior culture from 1000 years ago in a far off land. Search anywhere on the internet for Germanic paganism and nearly everything that comes up is saturated with Viking themes and sources. I think this leads many to conflate “Germanic” with Norse/Viking; when in fact Germanic culture is magnitudes more broad and expansive than that. I think this problem is due to a problem inherent in all of Neopaganism; namely that the whole edifice is build on a seething aversion to Christianity and Europe’s long Christian past. So here we have a religious paradigm that defines itself by what it is not, as opposed to what is it. That’s never a good way to start things off, in my view.
No need to cut out the Middle Ages
I recently read a fascinating book which challenges the “Pagan Germanic = Viking” trope. In the book, “The Northern Dawn” by Stephen E. Flowers, the author provides lots of compelling evidence that “Heathen” culture survived quite deep into the post-Christianization of Northern Europe. He shows many examples of how this culture actually shaped the Christian Middle Ages of Europe in many ways. We could say that this overall culture was roughly 1/3 Germanic Heathen, 1/3 Catholic, 1/3 Classical (Greco-Roman). Some of his examples seemed to me a bit far-fetched, and others quite intuitive and logical. All in all though, it becomes quite apparent that “Germanic” means a lot more than the small handful of inscriptions, medieval manuscripts, archaeological finds, and outside contemporary accounts (like Tacitus) we have of the pre-Christian culture. Flowers even brings medieval German mysticism (a la Meister Eckhart) into the equation, which I find to be a fascinating angle, despite its nominal Christian overlay. I would take it a step further and throw late medieval and early modern German / Central European occultism into the mix, but that would be something for a whole serious of articles, and thus well beyond the scope of what I’m getting into here. And then finally there is the topic of medieval German folklore, which is heavily influenced by the old Heathen ways, but that too is another topic for another day. Flowers does touch upon that in his book.
Mining our own past for clues
Yes, English
Next is the obvious fact that English culture is deeply rooted in the Pagan Germanic past. Yes, English that language we speak today! Yet few native speakers today are aware of its linguistic and cultural roots. So then why go full-Viking when our own cultural (and blood, for some of us) ancestors hailed the same deities and followed similar customs? Here we get to the almost-forgotten branch of the GPR, the so-called “Anglo-Saxon Heathenry.” Few might be aware that this branch, known as Theodish Belief, rose quite independently of Asatru! It would take me way too many words and too much time to go into the history, but I shall say I find its backstory to be most fascinating. I vaguely recall being somewhat dismissive of Theodism in some past posts and comments (on the surface it seemed like yet another cosplay party), but since doing more research on it, I’ve come to be far more sympathetic to its core concepts, not to mention its raison d'être. But again, this is a topic whole a whole serious of posts. Lets just say, the founder of Theodish Belief may have actually received guidance from the Allfather himself. This to me seems like a far more compelling religious impetus than pretending one’s bookish antiquarian hobby is itself a religion.
Pennsylvania Heathery: As American as Apfelkuchen
Finally, the other almost-forgotten branch; that is, the wealth of Germanic folk culture that has been long-established here in the US. It was the so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch” (err, Deutsch) who, during the 18th century, came over here as immigrants and brought with them an extensive body of lore and practices from their mother country. Just look up “ Pennsylvania Dutch art” in your favorite image search engine and you’ll get a crystal-clear idea of what I’m getting at here. As far as I know, most of these immigrants came from Southern Germany and nearby regions. When thinking of Germanic Paganism we seldom factor the Southern reaches of Greater Germania into the equation. We know the Germans of Pennsylvania were all nominally Christian. Some of them very very piously so, and others had quite eclectic beliefs and practices (see JMG’s main blog posts on early American occult traditions for some great insights on this topic). But yes, it’s not far-fetched to say that these people brought over folk practices which very likely go back to the old Heathen days. And from that, there is a modern Heathen denomination called Urglaawe which orients itself around these folk traditions. Think: Amish-style wagons clad in runic art, stars, and hexes. Yes, that. Very homegrown, very American; no fakery necessary. Even if their backstory doesn’t quite check out in the empirical sense (they say that the goddess Holle guided the PD out of Europe and overseas to Pennsylvania), there still seems like something very organic to what this group has been attempting to create. We’ll see if it lasts.
Wagons of Peace; No Longships necessary
To save myself from droning on too much longer, I’ll wrap this up with a one sentence recap. Essentially, Germanic Paganism can and should be thought of as something that goes far beyond Viking costumes and drinking horns. Actually, I think I made a good case above that it shouldn’t be that at all.
The main issue for me is that I don’t find the Viking Age stuff to be the least bit appealing. I have zero desire to LARP as a Viking or pretend I even have a slight clue what it was like to be part of a harsh warrior culture from 1000 years ago in a far off land. Search anywhere on the internet for Germanic paganism and nearly everything that comes up is saturated with Viking themes and sources. I think this leads many to conflate “Germanic” with Norse/Viking; when in fact Germanic culture is magnitudes more broad and expansive than that. I think this problem is due to a problem inherent in all of Neopaganism; namely that the whole edifice is build on a seething aversion to Christianity and Europe’s long Christian past. So here we have a religious paradigm that defines itself by what it is not, as opposed to what is it. That’s never a good way to start things off, in my view.
No need to cut out the Middle Ages
I recently read a fascinating book which challenges the “Pagan Germanic = Viking” trope. In the book, “The Northern Dawn” by Stephen E. Flowers, the author provides lots of compelling evidence that “Heathen” culture survived quite deep into the post-Christianization of Northern Europe. He shows many examples of how this culture actually shaped the Christian Middle Ages of Europe in many ways. We could say that this overall culture was roughly 1/3 Germanic Heathen, 1/3 Catholic, 1/3 Classical (Greco-Roman). Some of his examples seemed to me a bit far-fetched, and others quite intuitive and logical. All in all though, it becomes quite apparent that “Germanic” means a lot more than the small handful of inscriptions, medieval manuscripts, archaeological finds, and outside contemporary accounts (like Tacitus) we have of the pre-Christian culture. Flowers even brings medieval German mysticism (a la Meister Eckhart) into the equation, which I find to be a fascinating angle, despite its nominal Christian overlay. I would take it a step further and throw late medieval and early modern German / Central European occultism into the mix, but that would be something for a whole serious of articles, and thus well beyond the scope of what I’m getting into here. And then finally there is the topic of medieval German folklore, which is heavily influenced by the old Heathen ways, but that too is another topic for another day. Flowers does touch upon that in his book.
Mining our own past for clues
Yes, English
Next is the obvious fact that English culture is deeply rooted in the Pagan Germanic past. Yes, English that language we speak today! Yet few native speakers today are aware of its linguistic and cultural roots. So then why go full-Viking when our own cultural (and blood, for some of us) ancestors hailed the same deities and followed similar customs? Here we get to the almost-forgotten branch of the GPR, the so-called “Anglo-Saxon Heathenry.” Few might be aware that this branch, known as Theodish Belief, rose quite independently of Asatru! It would take me way too many words and too much time to go into the history, but I shall say I find its backstory to be most fascinating. I vaguely recall being somewhat dismissive of Theodism in some past posts and comments (on the surface it seemed like yet another cosplay party), but since doing more research on it, I’ve come to be far more sympathetic to its core concepts, not to mention its raison d'être. But again, this is a topic whole a whole serious of posts. Lets just say, the founder of Theodish Belief may have actually received guidance from the Allfather himself. This to me seems like a far more compelling religious impetus than pretending one’s bookish antiquarian hobby is itself a religion.
Pennsylvania Heathery: As American as Apfelkuchen
Finally, the other almost-forgotten branch; that is, the wealth of Germanic folk culture that has been long-established here in the US. It was the so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch” (err, Deutsch) who, during the 18th century, came over here as immigrants and brought with them an extensive body of lore and practices from their mother country. Just look up “ Pennsylvania Dutch art” in your favorite image search engine and you’ll get a crystal-clear idea of what I’m getting at here. As far as I know, most of these immigrants came from Southern Germany and nearby regions. When thinking of Germanic Paganism we seldom factor the Southern reaches of Greater Germania into the equation. We know the Germans of Pennsylvania were all nominally Christian. Some of them very very piously so, and others had quite eclectic beliefs and practices (see JMG’s main blog posts on early American occult traditions for some great insights on this topic). But yes, it’s not far-fetched to say that these people brought over folk practices which very likely go back to the old Heathen days. And from that, there is a modern Heathen denomination called Urglaawe which orients itself around these folk traditions. Think: Amish-style wagons clad in runic art, stars, and hexes. Yes, that. Very homegrown, very American; no fakery necessary. Even if their backstory doesn’t quite check out in the empirical sense (they say that the goddess Holle guided the PD out of Europe and overseas to Pennsylvania), there still seems like something very organic to what this group has been attempting to create. We’ll see if it lasts.
Wagons of Peace; No Longships necessary
To save myself from droning on too much longer, I’ll wrap this up with a one sentence recap. Essentially, Germanic Paganism can and should be thought of as something that goes far beyond Viking costumes and drinking horns. Actually, I think I made a good case above that it shouldn’t be that at all.
Re: Rhineland Mystics
Date: 2023-02-18 05:06 am (UTC)What you said sounds a lot like the Gnostic/Hermetic Divine Spark concept. Which I imagine just of landed Eckhart in some hot water after (maybe after his death) whenever it was his writings were put into circulation.
Re: Rhineland Mystics
Date: 2023-02-19 03:13 am (UTC)