Right-Wing Neopaganism, Part I: Folkism and Ancestral Appeals

[causticus]

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.

Comments

[jprussell]

Wonderful post! Also, thank you for venturing into the fetid swamps of social media to bring back your anthropological report - those of us not bold enough to get those findings for ourselves welcome it.

I was actually just talking about the woeful "Hyper-Left-Wing Universalist" or "White Nationalist Folkish" dichotomy that many folks seem to want to impose upon and/or reinforce from within Germanic polytheism/paganism/heathenry over lunch with a friend of mine on Tuesday, so I was well-primed to have some thoughts to share (likely not short, of course):

1) One thread that I think might be not-fully-developed above, but which might help with part of what has you scratching your head is where the ridiculous (as you rightly point out) idea that "Germanic = Pan-White" comes from. I don't think you're wrong on any of the motivations that lead folks to embrace that idea, but it has something of a more definite historical basis. 19th and early 20th century scholarship (mostly philological, but the burgeoning field of anthropology got in on the act as well) developed the idea that the "Aryans" (what they believed, perhaps correctly but perhaps not, the Proto-Indo-Europeans called themselves) arose/originated in the "urheimat" ("first homeland") of what are now the Nordic countries. If the area around the north sea was the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, then the folks who have lived there for as long as we have records for must be the most closely related to the originals.

Even though this was almost certainly heavily influenced by romantic notions and questionably accurate methods of evaluating physical relatedness, to be fair to these scholars, it took many decades of very interdisciplinary work to get a pretty conclusive answer that the Proto-Indo-Europeans actually had a fairly complicated migration history, but originally came from the steppe north of the Black Sea (modern Ukraine/Eastern Russia). The fact that Nordic origin line of theorizing got picked up enthusiastically by the Nazis and that led to facts getting stretched to meet political ends led both to mainstream scholars avoiding anything with a whiff of connection to these theories for decades and to neo-Nazis and their sympathizers picking up on the idea that "whiteness" is fundamentally Germanness.

2) Again, I don't think your analysis of what these folks are looking for out of "the Folk" is wrong, but I wanted to point out that for a variety of reasons (one of which is my #3 below), I think at least some of this folks yearning for a coherent, non-post-modern culture, and desperately trying to figure out what the hell that might be, and the combination of an easy-to-tell-apart ethnic identity (see here) plus sweet axe-wielding, beer-swilling Viking Gods is an attractive one. The first paragraph of your last section does a good job of saying what they're fleeing, but I thought I'd offer at least a bit of sympathy for what they're trying to get to

3) I whole-heartedly agree that the loud bits of both sides of this are jumping into grievance politics in a big way, but I thought I'd explicitly connect the right/folkish flavor of this as falling into a trap that Curtis Yarvin has explained rather well, I think: folks on the right see folks on the left getting what they want through activism, grievance politics, and so forth and think "that's the way to get what we want!" but they miss the fact that a) the things the left want are usually breakdowns of traditional/orderly things, which those tactics more easily achieve, whereas the right wants the continuation or restoration of traditional/orderly things, and b) left wing activists, grievance peddlers, and twitteristas have the support of the culturally influential, and the right do not, which makes all the difference in if your activism will get you what you want or get you prosecuted.

4) As for actual, biological ancestry, I feel like this is one of those areas where the twitterified screaming match between the loud minorities on both sides make it especially hard to have an interesting and nuanced conversation. For the most part, I agree with you and JMG that biological ancestry shouldn't make much difference in what spiritual truths are valid or useful to you, and I think all of your points about why not to fixate on it are good ones.

I did, though, want to point out that I think there's at least some argument for not ignoring such things completely. For one, the DNA each of us has is one of the methods by which karma/wyrd/etc has worked out what this incarnation is going to be like. For another, I personally find it helpful to think about all of the veeeeeerrrrryyyy many folks who had to live, love, build, and otherwise do things to make the world I live in and for me to be here in it (both biologically, but also everything else). It helps me be grateful and not give myself too much credit (but note that I didn't single out only my English ancestors, as I am also a mostly-British Isles mutt). Lastly, and this may be an unfortunate side-effect of grievance politics and fixation on ethnic identity, but I think some folks are more comfortable taking up non-standard spiritual practices if they can claim their "belonging" in a way that they think other folks will accept. I don't think that's a particularly strong reason, but hey.

5) When you mentioned that folkish Heathens are more likely to take hard polytheism and reconstructionism to the max, it made me think about the question of "authenticity" (as discussed by JMG here). I've been mulling this over and might do a post of my own, but I think many of the folks you discuss are seeking authenticity, and that many of the reasons for wanting authenticity are not particularly good ones, but I can think of at least two that may have some merit.

First, if you're super nit-picky about not mixing your chocolate with your peanut butter (e.g. "No dirty Mediterranean Platonism in my pure White Eddas!"), it will tend to impose a certain amount of consistency and coherency, which can have some benefits aesthetically speaking, if nothing else. And I think aesthetics are a super important factor of religious practice.

Secondly, and likely more importantly, the folks who actually worshipped back in pre-Christian times had waaaaaay more knowledge of their beliefs, practices, and Gods. We're picking up the fragments of fragments and trying to get an idea of what the rough shape is. Obviously, one approach to all of the gaps and pieces that don't fit is to supplement with non "authentic" material, which is the one favored by non-reconstructionists. The other approach, though, is to say "whoah, whoah, whoah! Just because that piece kinda sorta fits in that huge gap doesn't mean it really ought to go there. Putting it there might trick you into thinking you have a more complete picture of the practice than we really do." This kind of discipline can occasionally be helpful, and authenticity will get it for you sometimes.

6) Just a general grumble that large swaths of the cultural heritage of Northern and Western Europe have been judged permanently-attainted by one awful 20th century regime in a mid-tier geopolitical power. I wish that Neo-Nazis would stop getting their grubby hands on myths, Gods, and symbols I find spiritually worthwhile, and also that post-modernists fired up on their own moral supremacy would stop strengthening the association by scaring off everyone else.

Sorry for a wall of text that practically required a divine horse to help build, but clearly I enjoyed the post and found a lot of good stuff to think about here. Thanks again!
Jeff

[causticus]

Thank you, Jeff! First thing I'll say is that you certainly never disappoint with the epic textwalls ;) So many great point btw; I feel like a lot of what you said fills in the gaps in what I laid out above.

1. Yeah I'm vaguely aware of the backstory you mention here but you're way more knowledgeable in the details so I'm definitely appreciative of you sharing those details here! Funny thing regarding some of the social media haunts I alluded to in my post; there is the tendency among this crowd to still use the term "Aryan" to refer to all IE peoples, despite the fact that we see no strong evidence of its use as an endonym outside of the Indo-Iranian branch of the family. They know way better though than to rehash the old bunk theory that Norther European was the IE urheimat. Even the most nationalistic of RW pagans firmly acknowledge the Pontic/Caspian steppe region as being the original PIE homeland. Of course this makes their LARP even more convoluted, as it's now become a bit of a habit to consider "Scythians" to be very close kin to the Nordic peoples. I've seen some bloggers and vloggers assert that these two peoples has essentially the same exact culture. So it seems like the old bad idea has simply been updated and rebranded in the face of newer archaeological and linguistic evidence.

2. I'm in full agreement here and I share the same sympathies. Here in the US I really do want these groups to succeed, grow, and thrive. Though hopefully in a way that better integrates into the modern North American culture and landscape(s). If it can't move beyond marketing itself (and behaving like) as a strictly Old World diaspora faith then it's basically going to be little more than Judaism dressed up in a Viking costume. Of course I'd say the same for any type of Euro paganism being practiced here in North America.

3. I think Yarvin is dead on here. BTW, have you seen his article where he employs a "Elves vs. Hobbits" analogy to illustrate the American culture war? Half the post on substack is paywalled, but he basically uses “Elves” for the PMC and “Hobbits” for the working class:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-tolkien-system-of-social-roles
The analogy is quite crude and he got quite a bit of pushback from his readers because of it, but I think the basic logic is sound and reflects what you said above.

4. You're right that this issue is heavily polarized and it can be very difficult to break the binary. I do think there's something hardwired into humans which makes appeals to lineage and ancestry a very convincing means of persuading people that a tradition is "authentic"...as you very well touch on in the next point. JMG's article does a great job as showing why Reonstructionists do what they do, and why their appeals can seem so "legit" to ordinary people. And just 100 years ago it was the norm of most Occult orders to claim some super-ancient lineage that goes back to time immemorial. People by default seem to prefer tradition over novelty. On topic here, the RW materialist pagan version of this is to see "blood" as their lineage, and thus an "authentic" appeal that makes their paganism properly rooted in the past.

5. Funny enough I’ve seen the “No dirty Mediterranean Platonism in my pure White Eddas!" sentiment plenty of times on social media. Usually in a muffled form like, “those ideas are not from our folk, therefore it’s wrong.” Yeah, again the absurdity speaks for itself. Also, I’ve seen some in the Hellenic camp express hostility toward Platonism, usually employing sort of sloppy consequentialist sophistry that goes something like, “Platonism is Monist, and Monism was the gateway drug to Christianity. Also, Monism encouraged disbelief in the gods and myths, which is what led to the destruction of pagan Hellenic civilization.” Basically, slippery slope rhetoric. I’ll probably go into this more on my Hellenism post.

6. Totally agree here. It kind of shows the idea-schizophrenia of leftists who (claim to) practice Germanic paganism today. As the Left tends to see a present-day interest in anything old and traditional associated with European peoples as a slippery slope to a second coming of Hitler. Which begs they question: why are they even interested in Northern European ancestral traditions to begin with? Why don’t they sod off and go practice Shinto or Cabala or something? Rather mind-boggling, though I bet you have way more insight than I do on this particular topic.

[jprussell]

Well, thanks, I try to at least make the verbosity relevant, glad I mostly hit the mark this time.

1. Very interesting - I had assumed a lot more un-examined acceptance of tropes that came from politically-adjacent groups. On the other hand, it makes a certain amount of sense given these group's strong interest in "blood" as you mention, and therefore they tend to follow the genetic evidence which really took the already strong Pontic Steppe origin theory and made it a slam dunk. As you say, though, it's weird that they jump through hoops to equate PIE with Germanic, rather than just saying "Proto-Indo-Europeans were the original whites, so I'll be a Proto-Indo-European reconstructionist!" And yeah, I've purposely avoided using the term "Aryan" outside of the Indo-Iranic branch due to its lack of attestation and the political baggage it has picked up, whether or not it was the ethnonym used by PIE speakers (or if they even had one for all of them!)

2. Absolutely, full agreement here. I hope that my tongue-in-cheek tone came across when I stated that their version of coherent culture was "attractive" - I more meant "I can see how some folks would find that attractive, but I do not for all of the reasons you mention and more."

3. I did read that article (I'm a subscriber) and enjoyed it. I think his class labels are accurate enough to be useful (whether his old attempt at it using a mishmash of different labels, or the new Tolkien-inspired one), but as with all models, leave some things out for the sake of ease of understanding. One interesting area of tension with his model versus things I've picked up around the Ecosophia community is that he puts much less emphasis on "how you make your living" than JMG does, and more on cultural/ideological factors. Also, he tends to use the same rough and ready ethnic associations with each class that have been largely true for a while now, but which JMG points out might be starting to change along the edges due to similar economic interests. Also, Tolkien must be rolling over in his grave to have folks equate Elrond and Gil Galad with American Liberal PMC elites.

4. Yeah, definitely. As you and I have maybe talked about before, I think a fixation on authenticity (or lineage) is often a symptom of someone with a materialist worldview desperately trying to justify things that give them meaning (or that they hope will), but don't easily fit materialism.

5. Huh, I was not aware of the anti-Platonic strand of thinking in Hellenism, but then I haven't much looked into it, as I feel very little draw to Hellenic worship, despite knowing the myths and culture rather well (I was a Classics major in college). What's hilarious to me is that the slippery slope you mention is so very similar to the Heathens who are allergic to any hint of Christian influence in the myths or practice - some to the point of rejecting Baldur as a Christ-substitute and the regeneration after Ragnarok as a Christian tack-on.

6. I don't know how much more insight I can offer, but as you say, it's wacky. It is always dangerous to psychoanalyze on the internet, but I wonder if at least sometimes there isn't some Freudian/Jungian-style compulsion toward the repressed (kind of the reverse of "what you contemplate, you imitate"). Now that I think of it though, there might be an element of PMC-typical hubris: "I am smart and compassionate and wise enough to take this filthy, tainted racist/sexist/homophobic/Nazi religion and turn it into a shining example of today's PMC values." Likely the best counter-example that comes to mind of a very Left-wing practitioner of Germanic religion who seems to nevertheless express why it's a draw and what it has to offer is Rune Rasmussen from Nordic Animism. I roll my eyes at his politics sometimes, but he at least takes seriously that you can acknowledge the value in learning from the folkways of your land and ancestors without that making you a racist.

[causticus]

1. I should have mentioned that I found there's now a Heathen subculture that brands itself "Vedic Heathenry." Though it might just be this one American guy calling himself "Hammer and Vajra" and the couple of followers he has on social media: http://www.hammerandvajra.com/
His schtick is syncretic rather than reconstructionist, but it does follow the basic "The Proto Indo-Europeans were the original whites" template. The gimmick he employs is using the Vedas as a proxy for the closest thing we can guess to be the original PIE faith. So he mines the Vedas for philosophical ideas, but in practice he worships the Germanic pantheon. There's another guy, a New Zealander, Curwen Rollinson (https://aryaakasha.com/), who takes a similar approach and has written some rather elaborate comparative IE mythology, but he identifies as a Hindu. I'm not sure if he should be a part of my profile though, as he isn't right wing, nor does there seem to be any racial motivation behind his work. But his overall objective seems to be to provide something approximating a pan-IE theology. He uses an Interpretatio Indica method to do so. He has a very friendly relationship with Germanic polytheists, though I've seen a few hardline folkish Heathens sparring with him over his Hindu-centric orientation.

2. Of course.

3. For me it's his materialism and cornucopian approach to technology that has me limiting the scope of his applicable I consider his perspective to be on some issues.

4. That and old Protestant thinking habits that tend to die hard. I think I remember us talking about that at least a few times. Though I suppose we could say that Protestantism and Materialism are largely the same thing.

5. Precisely! Both "sides" of the politicized equation use almost the same type of consequentialist slippery slope shrieking to shut down ideas that make each of them uncomfortable.

6. With someone like Rune Rasmussen I can certainly see the validity in what he does. The Norse tradition is an important part of his own country's deep heritage and I think there certainly needs to be a recognition of it in modern times that strongly repudiates those unfortunate mid 20th century associations. That said, from what I've seen of his video, I agree he says a lot of cringey woke stuff. I hope he realizes one day that wokeness is as bad an American import as McDonalds.

[jprussell]

1) Huh, now that's a weird one! I'm all for comparative PIE work, but picking the most extensively documented child religion and saying "this one must be the closest to the original!" strikes me as very similar to the drunk looking for his keys at the base of the street lamp because that's where he can see.

3) Yeah, definitely - many of his solutions have a variety of problems, but his assumption of infinite one-way technological progress is usually one of the bigger ones.

4) Indeed! These days, the model I'd most likely apply is "Faustian Culture --> Protestantism --> "Enlightenment" --> Materialism" All of these are developments/different manifestations of the same cultural presuppositions, as filtered through different circumstances and metaphysical assumptions.

[randomactsofkarmasc]

I enjoyed this post and am definitely looking forward to your post on the Hellenistic groups. I looked online (briefly) and decided I was not a good fit for any of the groups I found... I am curious to find out what you have found.

[causticus]

Thank you for the kind words!

To give a very brief sneak preview of what I observed: It seems to me that (online, at least) Hellenism is on average a lot more individualistic and less infused with contemporary politics than Heathenry. Though with organized groups I'm guessing (as you allude to) the same sort of problems tend to crop up. That said, I'm guessing this is an area you are a lot more knowledgeable in than me. It's why I'm looking forward to your insights which will certainly help me fill in my (likely very wide) knowledge gaps. The observations I'll be sharing mostly concerns a few social media personalities who have branded their edgy body-builder/neo-masculniity cultism as "Hellenism." I'll go into talking about a genuine practicing group too.

[randomactsofkarmasc]

I never even got far enough into the groups to figure out their politics. The ones I found were adamant dogmatic reconstructionists. No how they decided exactly which era of Greek polytheism was 'right' and worth reconstructing, I have no idea. I've only been working with (for?) the Greek deities for a little over a year, so I don't know that I'll have many insights to share. But I'll do my best. :-)

[causticus]

Sadly, the adamant dogmatic reconstructionist thing is all too common these days among whatever remains of the neopagan scene. I chalk it up to the general lack of imagination that pervades our culture and the tendency for people educated backgrounds to put academics and academia up way too high on a pedestal.

When it comes to the focusing on one era thing you mention, it's kind of funny how the "religion" diehard reconstructionists want to copypaste into the present is always based on a static image of one particular time period. One would think this is more difficult to do with Hellenism since we have very clear historical records of many different stages and periods of Hellenic culture and civilization. I've noticed that the Hellenists who embrace Platonism tend to be less annoying about this though, as Platonism became big during the later Hellenistic period when syncretism was all the rage.

[lincoln_lynx]

I haven't had much experience with Hellenic groups but from what I've seen they lean heavily Leftist.

[causticus]

That doesn't surprise me at all.

[(Anonymous)]

My experience as well, that the Hellenic scene at least was liberal, in the freedom of speech freedom of expression sort of way, the kind where the few conservatives there were were welcomed. Of course I left the community a long time ago and my information is well out of date. I don't know if they've become a howling woke mob. Looking forward to the future post, very curious to see what's changed and what's stayed the same.

[causticus]

Sounds like the 80s and 90s neopagan culture. They were way more tolerant and open minded back in those days. Even the more reconstructionist-oriented groups were full of creativity and openness to different approaches.