Caustic Ramblings

I’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.

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Something I just jotted down in another discussion area; on the topic of forming new spiritual groups or projects to address the state of acute cultural disintegration we Americans (and Westerners) are experiencing right now. Basically,

I'm kind of black-pilled on there being any religious or spiritual solution for the state of steep cultural decline we're now in. It seems like Americans in particular will corrupt any all types of spirituality and make it either all about money or all about themselves, or all about some stupid serving-up of pop culture blather that happens to be fashionable at the moment. Honestly I think the only real "solution" is for wise individuals to forget about "fixing society" as a whole and just find/form a tribe and try an infuse some basic spiritual principles into that.

I get the impression that the Gods are rather irate at humanity as a whole right now, and for good reason. I, guessing that there won't be until there is a significant population decline that any sort of new spiritual dispensation might come our way. The old ones are mostly worn out and largely irrelevant to our own cultural reality today, but there are tools and insights within those old systems we can adapt to the conditions of today and use to weather the onslaught of storms that are only going to get worse from here on.

Pseudo-Spirituality for Bored Affluenziacs

I've grown quite skeptical toward the usual stories I read/hear in certain circles about people chatting with Gods and Goddess directly in a nonchalant manner as if they're just some long-lost friends from whenever. Now, some of these stories might be altogether made up, or simply exaggerations of some vague dream or momentary flash in the pain brain fart that gets misconstrued as a profound spiritual experience. In other cases I'm inclined to believe there is some sort of spirit contact happening, but not in the way the recipient of such an experience might think. How many people do banishing rituals before chatting with their spirit buddies? (Yes, this is a rhetorical question) I've gotten the impression that the more serious end of Neopaganism is basically just Spiritualism dressed up in various ethnic costumes. Any sufficiently-intelligent spiritual entity (good, bad, or ugly) can appear in whatever shape or form they want via the psychic connection they establish with the human on the other end; it's just too easy to deceive and play tricks on the naïve dabbler who doesn't have much in the way of occult knowledge under their belt. Now of course I don't deny the existence of the Gods, not to I deny that the Gods can and do help individual humans in certain situations. I'm just rather suspicious of those people who like to talk a big game about what they believe to be divine communications. This is probably the same reason why I'm rather dismissive of prophetic religions.

Now onto the next bit of this rant. I'm gonna spout some Neopagan heresy.

Daimones: Say it Ain't So

It's nice to believe the "Gods" we think we are communicating with are in fact THE Gods, and not merely emissaries, angels, or spirit-messengers of those Gods. However, if we're to accept the idea that the Gods are in fact universal to all cultures, as opposed to being neatly divided up by human tribes and ethnic groups, it would then seem sensical to posit that the Gods appear to many different peoples in many different guises. Thus the "ethnic costumes" that are the "Gods" of each pantheon or cultural tradition, are just different expressions of the Divine Powers. Or maybe they are in fact messenger spirits who each have personality types that correspond with the deity-name they answer to. In Greek terms, these spirts are known as Daimones (Latin: Genii). The Northern traditions might call them Elves. There's some hints in Neoplatonic literature that the "Gods" that demand sacrifices are in fact not Gods but Daimones. Some notes from the Greco-Roman (Neoplatonic) philosopher Porphyry, via sdi:

But for the gods within the heaven, the wandering and the fixed (the sun should be taken as leader of them all and the moon second) we should kindle fire which is already kin to them, and we shall do what the theologian says. He says that not a single animate creature should be sacrificed, but offerings should not go beyond barley-grains and honey and the fruits of the earth, including flowers. "Let not the fire burn on a bloodstained altar," and the rest of what he says, for what need is there to copy out the words? Someone concerned for piety knows that no animate creature is sacrificed to the gods, but to other daimones, either good or bad, and knows whose practice it is to sacrifice to them and to what extent these people need to do so.

[..cont.]

One thing especially should be counted among the greatest harm done by the maleficent daimones: they are themselves responsible for the sufferings that occur around the earth (plagues, crop failures, earthquakes, droughts, and the like), but convince us that the responsibility lies with those who are responsible for just the opposite. They evade blame themselves: their primary concern is to do wrong without being detected. Then they prompt us to supplications and sacrifices, as if the beneficent gods were angry. They do such things because they want to dislodge us from a correct concept of the gods and convert us to themselves. They themselves rejoice in everything that is likewise inconsistent and incompatible; slipping on (as it were) the masks of the other gods, they profit from our lack of sense, winning over the masses because they inflame people's appetites with lust and longing for wealth and power and pleasure, and also with empty ambition from which arises civil conflicts and wars and kindred events. Most terrible of all, they move on from there to persuade people that the same applies even to the greatest gods, to the extent that even the best god is made liable to these accusations, for they say it is by him that everything has been thrown topsy-turvy into confusion. It is not only lay people who are victims of this, but even some of those who study philosophy; and each is responsible for the other, for among the students of philosophy those who do not stand clear of the general opinion come to agree with the masses, whereas the masses, hearing from those with a reputation for wisdom opinions which agree with their own, are confirmed in holding even more strongly such beliefs about the gods.

Now it does seem like Porphyry is imposing a type of dualism that was quite fashionable in his time; effectively dividing the "sprit world" into two diametrically opposed camps of "good" and "bad" spirits (Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism were the most guilty of this originally, and this habit trickled down into Christianity). While there are indeed a lot of bad (or at least cruddy) spiritual entities out there, I think there are many that simply aren't very relevant to human existence, nor are really categorizable according to human morality. Their neither malicious or beneficial to us; they simply are their own thing. But the overall takeaway from the above quote is that the object(s) of human worship can very easily become misdirected toward entities that don't exactly have our best interest at heart, or maybe just don't care about us. Where do the Gods come into this? Honestly, this is something I'm exploring and have nothing resembling concrete answers on, other than the fact they do exist and their presence(s) are all-but-ubiquitous. But the Gods are foremost mysteries and that we've lost most of the knowledge we used to have about them, which was probably garbled to begin with.

Personally, I lean toward the position that the "True Gods" are something akin to the Aeons of the Gnostics, and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Northern Buddhists. I think the Neoplatonists referred to such entities as "Hypercosmic Gods." Anyway, I think these "pure" entities are so far removed from human experience (and unlikely to meddle in our petty affairs) that we can only experience their mysteries through spiritual intermediaries; again, the Archangels, Angels, Spirit Guides, and other beings well advanced beyond the human level of consciousness, yet not exactly "Gods" in the full sense.

This rant has been excessively long, disjointed, and perhaps contradictory at points. But oh well, I needed to spill this out somewhere. There's likely a fair number of spelling, grammatical, typographical, and punctuation errors in there too. But too bad, I'll get around to fixing those later.

I'll end this with an annoying question:

Is the "Odin" or "Hecate" some bored American suburbanite communicates with before bedtime a Daimon (Spirit) or a God/Goddess?

I noticed an interesting comment on the Ecosophia monthly Open Post a few weeks back. It touches on a topic that I think very often gets dodged or ignored in the collapse-sphere, perhaps with the exception of Jim Kunstler's blog; he certainly has the stones to bring up topics that make most modern people very uncomfortable. I too might ruffle a few feathers with what I have to say here. Anyway, I procrastinated a bit on writing up something about it, but I figured I'd do so sooner or later. Anyway here's the comment:

FWIW, I think that modern feminism has a limited shelf life for the following reasons:
(1) Much of “womens’ liberation” is an artifact of modernity, and will not survive its passing. The main reason women can use men like wallets and sperm banks, then discard them when they are through with them, is that such women are actually “married” to the State, via modern welfare systems. When modern welfare states go away, so will the above life strategy.
(2) Radical feminist women (and Wokesters in general) are not having children at replacement rates. The only people who are reproducing at or above replacement levels, are more traditional (and usually deeply religious) groups of people. Since “the future belongs to those who show up for it,” I expect that more traditional sex roles will be re-established for that reason alone, if no other.

I strongly agree with this analysis. IMO, it's much more coherent than the usual Mainstream Right's responses to feminism, which usually amounts to pegging feminism as some kind of Marxist conspiracy that cropped up in academia starting in the late 1960s and then spread like a cancer onto the whole society, devouring of the Holy American Dream one savory morsel at a time. In fact, feminism is one among many of the productive of the industrial age. By "feminism" I mean in the most general sense, gynocentric identity politics and its various ideological iterations and activistic incarnations. Since there are in fact many different "feminisms," from this point on I will speak of the general doctrine of "gender equality" rather than continuing to invoke the rather vague label "feminism."

But first, I'd like to point out MG's response to this comment above:

Martin, to my mind it’s a mistake to treat things as this kind of either/or binary. There wasn’t just one set of traditional sex roles — check out the history of women’s legal status sometime, and you’ll find (for example) that the Protestant Reformation saw a dramatic decline in women’s legal status, with women being deprived of legal rights they’d had for centuries. When the welfare state implodes, no question, things will change — but that doesn’t necessarily amount to a lurch straight back to Victorian attitudes, you know.

Now, I don't think any and all criticism of postmodern sexual mores must automatically harken back to Victorian takes on this issue, but yes, I do agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles. That indeed is a valid observation to make. Though this is not the first time I've seen "Victorian" used as a Strawman-mascot for traditional sexual mores across all pre-industrial cultures. When used in this manner, I think "Victorian" serves as a quick and convenient deflection from genuine criticism of the so-called "Sexual Revolution" and its aftermath. I believe the points Martin made in his original comment certainly qualify as genuine criticism. In reality, it seems there is a whole wide world between the extremes of severe prudishness / sexual repression and "anything goes" hyper-individualistic licentiousness, and most of that generous terrain I'd say squarely falls within the realm of traditional family arrangements and sexual practices.

I'll explain further. Again, I'll agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles among the world's great cultures, BUT there is most certainly a common set of patterns we can easily observe among all cultures that have developed into notable civilizations. (Greece/Rome, China, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, the Maya, among many others) They all valued marriage and stable family structures. NONE of them extolled the "virtues" of women or men running around and sleeping with a cornucopia of different partners. Few-to-none of them even tolerated the idea of sex before marriage. None of them promoted sterile/childless lifestyles as something positive or desirable for the average person. None of them ever advanced the idea that men and women are the same or that they should all work in the same occupations. NONE of these cultures championed women spending their most fertile years spending all day working outside of the household (maybe unless they were slaves or courtesans/prostitutes). No, those traits are those of our own modern industrial western culture. Some of these are also the sexual traits of a dying civilization (see: the fall of Rome). To defend the current/modern version of those attributes "just because!" is to engage in the sort of apologetics that involves lots of usage of the special pleading fallacy, or even the slippery slope argument like idea that any scaling back of modern gender egalitarianism means backsliding into the fields of that horrific Victorian strawman.

But back to the main theme of this post. The idea that men and women should be engaged in the same occupations is one that can only find fertile ground when we have machines and energy slaves doing most of our "back-breaking" work. The social classes today which most strongly promote "gender egalitarianism" are those comprised of people who mostly work in climate-controlled offices. We could say that office jobs are androgynous; which means they privilege neither the nature of men or women. If one's work-existence is limited to the office then they might indeed start believing that men and women can easily do all the same kinds of tasks. But take away the machines and their energy slaves and this delusion suddenly collapses like house of sand! Once we find ourselves back to those grueling pre-industrial conditions, then the sexual mores of olde' will be back with a vengeance. Men will be back to doing brawny jobs and women will go back to taking care of the household and other tasks that don't require a ton of muscle or life-threatening actions each day. But in general, men AND women will be working with their hands most of their waking hours. Both will be too busy and tired to be worrying about any sort of decadent or boutique identity politics; nor will there be any social media platforms left as an arena to spend one's waking hours fighting about these soon-to-be inconsequential abstractions. And no aspect of this impending future need involve any Victorian* neuroses. Neither does the future absence of a welfare state to subsidize the collapse of the family mean a return to Victorianism. But it does means that modern gender ideologies will cease to exist as anything the state (what remains of it) can or will enforce on the general populace.

Now, one more response in that threat I found to be interesting; one that ties into some of the points I made above:

It’s interesting when a couple makes a real attempt to live sustainably ‘off the grid’ (to a greater or lesser degree) they tend to go back to what some would term traditional gender roles. As you say, once you take away the safety net, and also machine labour, it is pretty simple that men are better/capable at some things and women are better at others, and thats where things tend to fall. Either sex has authority in their domain, and the other one helps out in ways they can.

What industrial society has done is to denigrate traditional womens ‘work’ and raised mens work to be overly important, so that a woman can only be ‘successful’ if she competes with men in the traditionally masculine fields. This is more to the benefit of the industrial system than individual women (or men).

Historically, mens task were actually less important day to day than womens. Mens tasks are traditionally high impact but only occur/succeed every now and then, like hunting, building the home, or defending the family.

Womens tasks were the care, maintenance and functioning of the family and without them the whole thing collapses.

Of course, these are generalisations and not locked binaries, and everyone has elements of male/female within them to a greater or lesser degree.

It would be interesting to follow up same sex couples living this way to see if the same thing happens depending on personal preference.

It's my view that the effort to confuse men's and women's work goes back to when Corporate America started admitting women into the workplace (and away from their families!!) en masse, and how they immediately framed this as a "women's empowerment" issue. No, in fact companies did this specifically to depress wages across the board. It's the old "scab labor" trick from the Robber Baron era. Only this time around, big business caught onto the idea that they could rebrand their labor-degrading practices as "social justice" causes. Ditto with illegal aliens doing manual labor jobs and any criticism of this practice is suddenly "racism." It's amazing how much the masses have bought into these lies and how easily they are fooled by these gimmicks time and time again. Though fortunately, more and more of us having been waking up to the truth on these matters.

I'll end this with the simple acknowledgement that this issue is super-sensitive and not easy to discuss around casual company. A "psychology of previous investment" (JHK term) has set in and now tens of millions of women (and many men) defend as a sacred cow the idea that the mass of women should spend their most fertile years being a cubicle serf. Supporting one's husband is now a high (cultural) crime, whereas being a slave to a corporate boss who doesn't give two flicks about the female employee in question is somehow ok. To me this attitude reeks as a type of Stockholm Syndrome plus lots of cognitive dissonance. But maybe that's just me.

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*It is in my view, that Victorianism could be seen as a modern-age culture movement. Its "mores" are more a cartoon caricature of the traditional family and its values than an authentic expression of how traditional families manifested in the older agrarian nobility the Victorians fancied themselves as emulating. In a nutshell, Victorianism was cultural movement that came about as a modern industrial merchant-class (middle class) attempt to crudely approximate older aristocratic culture norms from previous eras. In essence, a very upright LARP. We could say this movement was something akin to the Hellenistic-era moralists like the Stoics trying to combat the decaying culture of their own era.

I think I just had my first super-obvious TSW magical experience last night. And lo and behold, it was from Natural Magic; the most basic of it, to be honest.

But first. I have to point out that I'm quite blessed to have an amazing park right around the corner from where I live. There's a whole system of hiking trails there and many of them pass through secluded forested areas. I've developed a fondness for a cluster of majestic Northern Red Oaks that grow in one particular corner of the park.

Anyway, I discovered a plentiful supply of Mugwort (Artemisia Vulgaris) growing alongside a couple of of the trails. I have actually been looking for Mugwort for quite some time, but my plant-identification skills are still in the amateur phase. I've found plant identification apps on my phone to be quite the useful tool for speeding along my learning process in this area. By that, I was curious what this very tall and conspicuous "weed" growing in large clusters actually was. The app pegged Mugwort being the highest likely match for this plant. I then said to myself, "duh!" Knowing this plant has magical properties, particularly associated with protection and vivid dreams, I harvested some and brought it home.



Before I went to bed I placed a couple of leaf-bunches on my night table, right next to where I sleep. And within minutes I started feeling that intense "vivid dream" haze taking over my consciousness, even before I actually fell asleep. Instant results.

Now, I've had experiences doing other types of magic, but my experiences with that tends to be on the mild side of things and never beyond the threshold of plausible deniability (in terms of those experiences being anything other than just weird sensations).

The obvious takeaway here seems that Natural Magic is probably the most accessible "gateway drug" to the realm of demonstrable magical experience out there. It's just unfortunate that unflattering labels like "witchcraft" have become attached to this age-old body of practices.

Having said all of that, I'm open to other possible uses for this magical herb!

Not long after I first delved into the magical side of John Michael Greer’s (JMG) work, I began contemplating the idea of getting involved with organized Revival Druidry. Eventually, after about a year of somewhat-steady SOP practice and casual occult study, I joined the Ancient Order of Druids of America (AODA). However, to this day, I have yet to become active there, in terms of starting their curriculum, or getting involved in their online forum and chat group. I joined, thinking they were the last "sane" organization of this type still around. And by sane, I mean not totally overtaken by the woke mind virus that has consumed nearly every alt-spirituality organization. I figured that AODA came to be in its current form largely thanks to the great efforts of JMG in saving the order from near-death and rebuilding it into a robust and active organization. Granted, he rebuilt the order long before the general culture shifted its collective focus to politics away from non-political things. Before this shift (c. 2013), most organized human activities here in the US, be it hobbies, pop-culture fandoms, religious groups, sports clubs, ect. were primarily focused on whatever the actual purpose of their group was. The intrusion of outside politics tended to be minimal. Well, not so today!!

Vibes Do Tell

When I first signed up for AODA, I read over its literature quite meticulously so as to get an overall feel of the organization’s “vibe.” I tend to be very cagey and cautious when it comes to getting involved with any new group. Being already quite familiar with Revival Druidry, what I read in the literature wasn’t all that surprising. But a few things rubbed me the wrong way. I could tell that the overall group culture leaned pretty far to the left. The typical “progressive” and “PC” values were right there, front and center, though not in any kind of aggressive or obnoxious form. There was no obvious “Cultural Marxism” (i.e. “oppressor vs. oppressed” demographic conflict rhetoric) that has become the mainstay of most of the Neopagan scene in recent years. But I saw the seeds of this eventual intrusion lying in wait. It was clear much of the membership base came from the typical middle-class “PMC” university-educated background. People in this cultural bubble are usually dialed into the ubiquitous Neoliberal mass media echo chamber, and thus their political and cultural beliefs on any given day tend to be whatever the mainstream media feeds them; even if last month’s “news” totally contradicts this week’s “news.” Granted, conservatives are dialed into their own media echo chamber, and their own “news” parroting behavior is very little different from that of the left’s. But I don’t have space or patience to further explore the topic of media critique, so I’ll leave that off right here.

Woke Progressivism Consumes All

So even that vibe didn’t deter me from considering to start the curriculum at some point. But life got in the way and various duties and distractions became a barrier to me being able to devote my undivided attention to what would be a very involved grade-advancement process. So that non-active state persisted for many months as I kept weighing the pro’s and con’s of getting involved. And then one day, on one of these Ecosophia-adjacent DW blogs, I read an interesting comment that suggested something I had suspected would eventually happen to AODA. To paraphrase the comment, “AODA is currently imploding from wokeness.” Of course, I must acknowledge that this was an anonymous comment, and taken at face value, is merely a rumor coming from one person who claims to be a member of the group. Since I’m not involved in the group’s discussion spaces, I have no real way of conforming or denying the rumor. But, if there is any truth to the rumor, I have to say I’m not surprised at all. Circling back to the group’s literature, I remember quite clearly being a bit off-put by overall writing style of the contributing authors: the sheer amount of wishy-washy relativism, permissiveness (the seeming urge to be 'inclusive' of everything under the sun that doesn’t oppose progressivism), and general female-orientation to the whole affair. These attributes are quite typical of new age, neopagan, and alt-spirituality groups in this era; all which are cultural offshoots of the 1960’s counterculture. Basically, the Druid Revival in its current form, despite its “Mesopagan” roots, is firmly adjacent to the Neopagan scene; one that happens to be in a state of full-blown collapse right now. Thus I’ve concluded that it's a not good idea to get involved with any of these groups right now, as they've all been infected by the aforementioned woke virus, which itself seems to be merely a symptom of the collapse of the Neoliberal Order, and the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) which serves as the overseer class of this regime. Because of these monumental cultural forces at play, I’m loathe to blame the leadership of these DR organizations for what’s currently happening. The current Grand Archdruid of AODA seems like a very nice and wise person. But she can’t control the kind of media and other pop-culture influences the broader membership consumes on a daily basis. She can’t control which friends, family, and work colleagues each member fraternizes with. After all, one of the central ethical planks of Revival Druidry is to not employ the methods of mind-control cults!! At the end of the day, people are going to do what they are going to do, and in reality this usually means going along with whatever herdthink prevails among one’s own subculture or social class.

So, HYPOTHETICALLY, if say 65% of AODA's membership goes woke and starts demanding the leadership make woke ideology the organization’s main stated purpose for existing, there’s nothing the leadership can do except, (a) capitulate to the mob’s demands and make the organization officially woke, which is what happened to ADF, (b) resign and walk away, leaving the organization in the hands of a new woke leadership, or (c) immediately purge all the wokesters and brace for impact; (d) quietly disband the organization and wait for all the culture war insanity to die down before re-forming the group. Unless the leadership has an iron cohones, super thick skin (not afraid of hurting people’s feelings), and knack for decisiveness, (c) ain’t going to happen, and probably not (d) either. Option (c) seems rather un-Druidly anyway, since the leader would have to become a Grand Inquisitor and devote their time and energy to engaging in counter-witchhunts. A weak or negligent leader will often go with (a), naively thinking they can appease the mob and comply their way out of mass hysteria. It’s perhaps (b) which would be the most foolish choice of all, as it will result in wokesters taking over and essentially destroying the organization and its brand/symbolism, and possibly contaminating the group’s egregore to the point of no return. Overall, it seems like anything but (d) is the makings of a lose-lose situation.

Without Groves, What's the Point?

On a more personal note, even if AODA wasn't compromised (which may be the case still, as I'm going on just a rumor), I still think that participating probably wouldn't give me much more than I'd get from self-study and self-initiation. The organization itself is rather small and as a result there's very few local groves that actually exist. One of the big advantages I'd see from joining a Druid Order would be the opportunity to be part of a local grove. But, fearing the aforementioned rumor is likely true to some extent, getting involved with a local grove probably wouldn't be all the helpful or desirable for me given the sort of left-progressive culture that permeates these groups. No, I most certainly don't want to be a part of any human activity where I have to constantly walk on eggshells around the other participants, out of fear of saying something "offensive" to whatever The Current Thing deems offensive this week. And if I'm really looking for peer support in this work, I honestly think at this point the Ecosophia/MM commentariat is more than sufficient.

Going Along to Get Along vs. Going Against the Grain

To reiterate something I was getting at above, I think even the best and well-meaning organizations within the Neopagan/Alt-Spirituality fold are essentially defenseless against the woke onslaught. It's not so much these groups get "infiltrated" by wokesters; rather it's the membership base that has been in these groups all along is constantly downloading mental "software updates" via their preferred media echo chamber, and what typically happens is that next week the The Current Thing updates to some new cause-du-jour, and the rank and file start making demands on the leadership to "take a stand" against whatever The Current Thing is raging at the moment. If the leadership is evasive or does nothing, an even bigger stink is made until they capitulate; if still nothing is done, some kind of split or schism with the group happens and the "old faction" which refuses to get with the times is quickly denounced as being complicit or sympathetic with whatever the mob happens to be shrieking about, thus the “brace for impact” quip above. I think in most cases, otherwise-well-meaning leadership is weak or simply afraid of negative publicity or people being offended, thus they fold. And thus another one bites the dust.

Sadly, I believe the Druid Revival (as a group activity) will not survive the cultural collapse we’re going through right now. If it’s to re-form some time in the future after the dust finally settles, it must rise from the ashes in a new form; a form that is as distant as possible from anything reeking of Neopagan, New Age, Boomerism, or Neoliberal “Progressive” aesthetics and values.

I was reminded again today during a "debate" on some other platform, that the so-called "Alt Right" is just as bad as the Woke Left. The only thing that makes them less annoying than Woke Progressives, is the fact the Alt Right currently enjoys zero institutional power/influence. So arguing with them is harmless, in that whenever they lose arguments (their ideas are complete garbage, so they always lose to anyone who can slap together a coherent string of statements) they have no sympathetic internet hall monitors to cry to in order to get your account blacklisted or banned from whatever social platform you might be interacting with them on. But hypothetically, if these people were to be in a position of real power, they would probably be just as terrible and authoritarian as the Woke Left is right now when it comes to the exercise of that power.

Now, I do have to say that I used to lurk on some forums and other spaces where Alt Right people would hang out, particularly the "Chan" boards. But this was during the 2014-2017 era, back when the memes originating from the Chans were pretty funny and edgy, and largely spread around the internet in an ironic manner as a pushback against the initial emergence of Woke ideology into the cultural mainstream. After around 2017, with Trump firmly in office, Alt Right memes became stale and played out. By this time, anyone remaining too far to the Right openly found themselves banned from mainstream social media platforms and thus shunted into their own little echo-chambers. And like with any small echo-chamber, an atmosphere of shrill insularity is what results. I find such places to be utterly boring and obnoxious.

Identity Politics vs. the Intellect

Both the far Left and Right ideological camps are each built on shaky foundation of identity politics (idpol). For the Wokesters, it's class-based (PMC) idpol masquerading as various "civil rights" causes which ostensibly exist for the benefit of whatever grab-bag of "underprivileged" demographic groups are currently en-sympathy-vogue among the PMC-Left. And for one particular noisy corner of the Alt Right, the "White Identitarians," it's race-based, and focused on a collectivized "Whiteness" not too dissimilar from what Wokesters today like to focus their rage-energies on. This mentality assumes anyone living in the US who is of primarily European ancestry, must have the same political interests and cultural preferences (this is obviously not the case). Proponents of this particular idpol flavor seem to express the idea that within this homogenous "White" identity, there are no important class or cultural differences (also completely wrong). But I don't have enough space in this brief essay to go into the ins-and-outs of these bad beliefs. I want to instead focus on the main theme one might quickly come across when interacts with these people.

Besides the usual gratuitous racist rhetoric, the main expressive theme is Antisemitism. It's a totally unavoidable stink in those corners of the internet. Spend just five minutes in an Alt Right online space and you'll soon see the Jews being blamed for everything and anything wrong with the world; particularly things involving the downfall of Western Civilization. Of course, never mentioned are any problems with the Western culture itself, nor any acknowledgment of the natural rise/fall cycles every single civilization and culture is subject to, nor the acknowledgment that European Jews are in fact a subculture within the fold of Western civilization. Many of these Alt Righters seem to believe that "Jews" collectively lord over them like a privileged aristocracy. Taken further, "the Jews" are said to engage in all sorts of illicit and debased activities that of course go totally unacknowledged and unpunished. I won't get into the gory details, but I will simply say that many of these accusations are quite reminiscent of the "blood libel" hysteria so common in Medieval Europe. As someone of partial Jewish ancestry, this rhetoric of course rubs me the wrong way, to put it lightly.

Original Sin was always a Stupid Idea

I see the "Blame the Jews" rhetoric as being the mother of all "ancestral guilt" narratives. I see ANY narrative of this type as being a combination of wrong, evil, and stupid. But of course the proponents of these narratives always employ some permutation of the Special Pleading Fallacy to convey the idea that their own brand of hateful garbage is uniquely correct! The Woke Left today has taken the Ancestral Guilt Narrative and turned it onto different set of collective abstractions: "White people" and "whiteness." Though of course the American Woke Left is mostly White, and by that, they don't include themselves as being "White People" in this context. Well, I think this is because it's not actually racial hatred toward Whites as a whole that's at play here, but rather it's class hatred, despite what the more naïve elements of the Right might believe. When Wokesters screech about "White People" what they really mean is White People from the less privileged classes of society, i.e. non-PMC white people. You know, the Deplorables, the Rednecks, the inhabitants of the country's interior "flyover" states who consistently vote the wrong way, ect. But I digress much.

Finally, the racist/antisemitic corner of the Dissident Right so easy volunteer themselves, like the clueless dupes they are, as a ready-made boogeyman/strawman; one that gives the Neoliberal establishment and its corporate media bullhorn an easy villain for its PMC flock to fear as some sort of imminent and credible threat (which of course they are not). The Alt Right volunteer themselves as the the prefect rallying cry to bring unity to what's otherwise a morally-bankrupt and increasingly-degenerate cultural aristocracy. The emerging Populist movement has woken up to the fact that the PMCs hates their guts, though they tend to lack the precise language of class analysis to make crystal clear sense of what's actually going on (i.e. they think it's "Libtards" who are out to get them). Thankfully, most of the Populists are too good-natured to sink to the low of responding in kind to the PMCs with counter-bigotry. No, it's mostly just the Alt Right (who are rebel PMCs for the most part) who do that.

Lastly, I do realize there are other corners and factions of the Dissident Right, and ones that have more interested and nuanced ideas from that of the popular conception of the Alt Right. Maybe I'll get into those groups another time. Though, despite a few observational insights or worth to be found within, I find their ideas to also be intellectually-bankrupt, for the most part.

Please forgive me if the following comes off as moralistic preaching, but I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops that I have no business telling other people how to live their lives. Nor do you. Specifically, I mean that I have no business providing unsolicited advice to strangers and casual acquaintances. Now, what about those people within my own little circle of immediate family and close friends? If I feel so inclined, I may offer a few pointers and other forms of light feedback on whatever is it they are doing or expressing, granted the person in question seems at all interested in what my opinion might be on whatever is troubling them. And even if the issue is something that’s bugging me quite a bit, I’ve learned over the years to tread lightly, and mind my own P’s and Q’s before gawking at the mote in an eye that is not mine.

I’m going to define Moralism here as the art and science of telling strangers how they should and shouldn’t conduct their own affairs. It’s an art and science usually based on some sort of religious or philosophical code, or simply whatever the prevailing social norms happen to be at the time. But first, we need to get definitions out of the way. What is a stranger? Well, pretty much the entirety of humanity, I’d have to say. I think I sort of get at this in the above paragraph. Since those of us who are inmates of the contemporary industrialized Western word are now mostly atomized, and thus without community-proper, anyone outside of our own personal bubbles is effectively a stranger.

When your Facts touch my Feelings

Am I going to get a bit cranky when I see someone wearing ratty sweat pants out in public, like say in the supermarket? Sure. How about those skin-tight, spandex “yoga pants” that are all the rage these days among young women? No comment. Ditto for vulgar displays of tattoos, piercings, and other forms of so-called “body art” that come off to some of us as an expression of self-vandalism rather than beauty. How about when someone dumps their garbage out their car window and onto the road? How about when someone drives like an utter maniac on the same road I happen to be driving on?

Fortunately there are laws and ordinances in place to address those last couple items. But I think you might be getting the point here. One of the great struggles of life here on this planet is dealing with how utterly obnoxious, rude, and self-unaware other people can be. Those behaviors which yield manifest externalities can be justifiably dealt with via the aforementioned legal process. But it’s the subtle things that often irk us the most. It’s when we attempt to legislate against those subtle transgressions of common decency that the problems start happening. This is when the situation calls for a priesthood of one type or another to determine when, where, and how to censure those behaviors and actions which don’t do any harm in a directly-measurable manner, but might do harm in the long term if not contained, according to the gut feelings of many members of the community. Now we get into the icky territory where facts and feelings collide and create an intractable mess.

Middle Class Insecurities

I’m going to assert that Moralism is a modern-day phenomenon. It’s a very middle class (bourgeois, in the old lingo) type of social control. Our Moralism arose long after the dissolution of the self-policing societies of yore. By this, I mean the clans, tribes, extended families, and other intimate forms of social organization; those that had no need to write down their systems of rules, obligations, and entitlements. Contrast this with the Nation State, which is an entirely modern creature. Or really, it’s the Polis expanded out onto a wider territory. The modern Nation State is the vain attempt to create a family where there’s only masses of strangers who happen to inhabit the same geographic expanse, speak the same language, and have some vague sense of common origin or collective purpose. It actually seems to work ok (to an extent) when everyone residing within the geographic expanse-in-question does in-fact speak the same language, follow the same type of religion, and most members of the nation look not too dissimilar from one another. But nothing beats the old-type family network, where the web of accountability and reciprocity was an up close and personal affair. Under this arrangement, transgressions against familial norms elicited face-to-face consequences. Compare this to the impersonal state of the modern era, where it’s some form of byzantine jurisprudence that has been put in place to deal with myriad forms of social turbulence which might arise.

Fear-based Righteousness

Now we might see that Moralism is the outer expression of an inner angst that goes something like, “THAT PERSON is behaving in a way that makes my blood boil but there is nothing I can actually do about it!! Arrrgh!!” That’s right, it’s the type of existential torment known as powerlessness.

The Old Ways would of course counter with this simple piece of advice, “If they’re not your family, why do you even care?”

I think I have to defer to the ancients on this one. Really, if you have no formal social connections with another person, and they are not directly doing harm to you, then why is their business your business? On what authority do you have the right to police their conduct?

The inner turmoil of the Moralist is one that is fueled by the loss of membership in meaningful social arrangements. When we feel a sense of powerless over our surroundings, fear starts to bubble up. And that fear grows until it finds a release. The is the stuff or moral panics and “mass formation” sorts of collective outbursts that end up making life miserable for anyone within earshot.

Moral Sovereignty

Back in the ancient past, it was the Clan Chieftain, or Tribal Elder, or Parish Priest (or some equivalent figure) who was tasked with nipping these things in the bud; they were empowered to take quick, decisive action before the petulant whiners and complainers of the tribe could slowly brew up a fresh batch of bubbling hysteria over this or that contentious issue. That Clan Elder, or Friendly Neighborhood Rabbi was probably on a first-name-basis with anyone in the community who mattered.

So fast forward back to our crappy today. Instead of getting all in tizzy about what the countless human abstractions around us are doing, why not find or join a family? (Whatever that Family is, it can take on many forms; blood relation need not be required) And then stopping stressing out about whatever harmless idiosyncrasies non-family might be acting out?

I suppose now I can boast about my blissful indifference to total strangers thumbing their nose at what is proper and decent.

Using the analogy of seasonal cycles,

Spring (17th century - mid 20th century) -- The first stirrings of anything resembling a Polytheist revival begins with the popularization of esoteric currents, from the Renaissance on through the early modern period. The Rosicrucian movement gives way to the Masonic current, which coincides with the industrialization and secularization of the Western world. We could say that the so-called "Mesopagan" development which coincides with the Masonic movements; this reflects the loosening up that hard-dogmatic Christianity had on the European soul for centuries prior. Though, the rise of a truly "pagan" orientation doesn't really begin until the European Romantic movement and later Neo-Occult groups; featuring authors/poets like Sir James George Frazer, Robert Graves, Margaret Murray, and Gerald Gardner, among others. During the 20th century, the twin influences of (1) the Occult movement (mainly the Theosophical and Golden Dawn Currents), and (2) the archetypal studies of Carl Jung and his followers, helps flesh out the essence of what later "Neopaganism" would become. A lesser known current, one tied to nationalistic romanticism, would come to influence the later non-left/progressive niche within Neopaganism; usually in the form of far-right identity politics.

Summer (1967 - 1995) -- The 1960s counterculture is what gave rise to a "true" pagan/polytheist revival; i.e. that which is completely free of overt Christian influences (though not psychological, which is a whole different topic). Its "Holy Land" began as the San Francisco Bay Area and not long after, it expanded into the Northern California evergreen forests and up through the Pacific Northwest region. Neopaganism's first generation of luminaries was the likes of Starhawk (founder of Eclectic Witchcraft), Issac Bonewits (of ADF fame), and those who followed in their respective footsteps.

As with other things associated with the 60s counterculture, the spiritual impetus behind this movement was largely fueled by a massive rebellion against the Christian past. Because of the great rejection, we could say the Neopaganism was a political movement from the getgo. The very beginnings were infused with the "New Left" political orientation (the youth-wing of the Neoliberal paradigm) that defined the counterculture. Things like feminism and freedom-of-religion were core values from the start. This political ideology would later morph into what we would today recognize as Left-Progressivism. In fact, the Summer period of Neopaganism directly mirrors the Summer period of late 20th-century Progressivism. During this time, it was the progressives who were the champions of tolerance, open-mindedness, artistic inspiration, critical thinking, free speech/thought/expression, and an opposition to rigid dogma, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Post-Gardnerian Wicca would emerge as the largest "denomination" of Neopaganism.

Overall, for the Neopagan movement at large and the general progressive culture, the future looked bright, though this belief came to be largely based on an investment of blind faith in the power of industrial/technological progress. The Neopaganism of the early summer period more or less reflected the ecological/environmentalist attitude of the 1970s, but by the 80s, consumerism and tech-mindedness certainly shifted the overall mentality of this movement. Pagan festivals/gatherings during this period reflect the general attitude of free-spiritedness and acceptance. It would be a long time yet until this cultural movement would perceive itself as being under attack, beyond the usual opposition of their main foes, the Conservative Christian/Evangelical movement.

Autumn (1996 - 2015) -- Asatru/Heathenry (Germanic Neopaganism) emerges as a major force within the Neopagan fold; it came to serve as the masculine counterpart to the rather-feminine Wicca. In general, a period of both cultural ossification and rationalistic tendencies shapes Autumnal Neopaganism, and really this begins with the mass-popularization of the internet. The growing "Reconstructionist" approach to Neopagnaism becomes its Rationalist wing; whereas the "anything goes" sentiment of the earlier era is now recognizable as the Eclectic wing. By this time, Neopaganism as a whole appears to be a constellation of "fandoms"*, which we could say are consumerist "subcultural" expressions of affluent North American culture. The various currents become interest-cliques. The mentality of the Reonstructionists seems to align with that of the growing "New Atheist" movement; that is, an almost-deification of academia and its academics, and the specialist-oriented empiricist methods of inquiry those types usually favor. For the Recons, archeologists, comparative linguists, and historical researchers become their de-fact high priests. The Eclectic side seems to mirror extreme Protestant tendencies of rejecting ecclesiastical order altogether, and as the Autumn years roll on, they become ever-more shrill about their rejection of hierarchy and order as such things might pertain to their own practices and studies of Neopaganism. This mirrors the evolution of the general Progressive culture in the direction of embracing "politically correct" ideological dogma, shrill moralism, and self-righteousness. Neopagan book sales peak around 2007 and after this there is just a few remaining years of normalcy and calm with the overall movement.

By 2012-2013, most of the Neopaganisms suddenly become very politicized; the annoying "PC" rhetoric of prior years devolves into the "woke" phenomenon we know of today; which is an totalitarians cult of extreme "us vs. them" dichotomization of everything under the sun. Sadly, since Neopaganism was always tethered to the progressive culture, it was destined to follow along with its trajectory of growth, flourishing, and decline. If we're to take a glance of the most prominent Neopagan blogs of the Autumn period, we could see that posting activity seems to peak between 2010 and 2015, with that last year being the lash hurrah of normal posting activity. After this, blog activity appears to sharply taper off or else become way more about politics than about spirituality.

Winter (2016 - Present) -- This year marks the emergence and ascendancy of the Big Bad Orange Drumpfler to the US Presidency. The Progressive culture, and the Professional-Managerial Class in general, goes into full panic mode as the ideology of progress seems to no longer be following up on its old promises. All of Progressivism feels itself under attack since its now apparent a sizable portion of the American population wholly rejects this pseudo-religion. Well, no actually it was because Orange Man Bad!! In fact, Orange Man is so bad that previously-denounced practices like Demonolatry become commonplace among Wicca practitioners. So we see Witches becoming Literal Witches, i.e. the Straw-woman of old that the term Witch used to mean to the average person.

So I already pointed out several times above how Neopaganism and Progressivism were joined at the hip since the beginning, it's only natural the downfall of Progress would also be the downfall of Neopaganism. The so-called "inclusiveness" of the Neopaganism becomes quite the opposite; it's "inclusive" only of people and ideas that are in 100% agreement of whatever the prevailing Progressive orthodoxy of the month happens to be. Ironically, the Wild Hint became the age-old Witch Hunt, as Neopagans begin to see "Fascists" and "Nazis" and "Racists" and "Sexists" everywhere and under every couch cushion, reminiscent of the way McCarthyite conservatives would see communists everywhere during the height of the Red Scare; and reminiscent of "Satanists" being hidden during every nook and cranny during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. A movement that once staunchly opposed ideological inquisitions and intolerance of differing opinions now became the a movement of inquisitions and intolerance; this closely mirrors the Progressive Left's takeover of major social, cultural, and governmental institutions on the US. The "oppressed" becomes the opressor. Old Boss, meet New Boss.

From 2016 onward, Neopagan blogs, forums, and other online groups become a lot more about politics than what was once a strictly-religious and cultural focus. Joining many of these groups would require new members to voice repeated loyalty confessions and denunciations of perceived enemies. There was no longer much of a focus on Deities, unless we're to consider Progress and Pathological Inclusion to be the Patron Gods. Finally, I should mention here that these types of ideologies are those who have remained within Neopaganism. In reality, the numbers of people engaged in this fandom-cluster have dropped off precipitously since the 2020-2015 period. Overall interest shifted from the religio-cultural to the political sphere. The charred remnants of this movement seem destined for the dustbin of history; we can even say now that Neopaganism has ceased to be any meaningful cultural force here in the industrialized West. Its final death is probably not far off on the horizon.

Of course, the Gods are not going anywhere. But we should ask, what comes next, as far as any organized movement of recognizing and venerating the Holy Powers?

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* Here I call Neopaganism a "fandom" instead a religion-proper, since membership tends to have very little to do with nuclear families or local communities consisting of whole families. It's typically only one member of a biological family that would have any interest at all in the polytheist revival; the rest of the family either remaining Christians and secularists/atheists of some variety. In this sense, Neopaganism is no more a religion than the anime subculture, or comic book collectors, or Trekkies, or Furries, or....well, you get the general idea here. Yes, there were in fact a few "pagan families" but these constituted an extreme exception, not the rule.

When it comes to the naming and branding of any new group, project, or endeavor, I subscribe to the concept of "Occult Memetics." This concept is basically a recognition of the magical power of language. The term itself is something the Youtuber Tarl Warwick (Styxhexenhammer666) came up with, and he even published a book by that name further explaining the concept.

On how I'm working with that concept right now, it has much to do with the recent turn I've taken in terms of my own polytheistic religious orientation (which I'll explain in another post). I had a recent conversation with a few friends of a similar orientation on how words like "paganism" and "heathen" are loaded with so much historical-ideological baggage that they tend to elicit certain emotional responses in ordinary people who hear these words uttered and it immediately taints the way the rest of the conversation proceeds. Because of that, in my view, organizations/groups that proudly brandish those labels tend to attract more than their fair share of misfits and malcontents; certainly more of these types than sensible people of moderate temperament who are looking for a spiritual option that isn't a dogmatic organized religion that's bogged down with a 1500 year old ideology.

Some alternative brands a few of us have been proposing are as follows:

-Natural Faith
-The Natural Way
-The Ancestral Way
-The Way of Spirit
-Ancestral Faith
-Natural Faith: Northern Tradition (Germanic/Heathen)
-Natural Faith: Southern (or Classical) Tradition (Greco-Roman)

All of these fit well within the fold of the broader effort to revive and revitalize polytheism and animism as religions people can take on and incorporate into their everyday lives. And by refraining from using "polytheism" as the main label, "Natural Faith" allows for the inclusion of various metaphysical positions like Pantheism, Panentheism, ect.

Ultimately, if these "Natural Faiths" of ours are to (re)grow and stick around for the long haul, they must appeal to enough "normies," that is, people who are not excessively eccentric and misfit types; in other words, people who are busy with the things we associate with ordinary life like raising families, working at a trade or other discipline, running businesses, ect. In times past, these traditions survived and thrived in family lineages. This is how the real "paganism" of yore existed.

The way it stands today is that "Paganism" (especially Neopaganism) is little more than a lifestyle diversion for city-dwelling ex-Christians who feel a great sense of alienation from their faith-of-upbringing. The astral and egregoric content associated with words like "Pagan" and "Heathen" are quite off-putting for anyone who hasn't delved into that particular "fandom" subculture.

In a follow-up post I'll go into more detail about the gradual disappearance of the tribe and clan in any official capacity, and the various ways these associations have cropped up again (and disappeared) over time. And of course, I'll go into how these associations are a must if any of us are to revive and revitalize the Ancestral Way.