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A reply of mine to a friend who was asking me my take on a hypothetical "monastic order" for those who study/practice (non-Christian) Western mysticism and philosophy:

I think that here in the current western world, any notion of any full-time monastic life outside of an established institutional religion that includes a monastic path, like Christianity or Buddhism, is pretty much a fantasy. It took those religions centuries of institutional growth and geographic expansion to garner the resources necessary to allow for organized and well-funded monastic life to be a possibility. AND those religions existed in a cultural environment that was supportive of monastic life in the first place. Prior to that it was ascetics living out in the desert or jungles or whatnot, subsisting on handouts from the local rural people they came in contact with on their daily rounds (Southeast Asian Buddhist monks still live like this); those local people held a belief that supporting those wandering mendicants was the right thing to do and something that conferred personal benefit to themselves. I can say that here in the US, most Americans aren't going to give people money to sit around all day and pray, meditate, and philosophize.

What can be done though, is if someone has the means to life a mostly-solitary life then they can go that route, given they are able to support themselves or get support from family or friends. Even living with family though isn't really an ideal monastic life, since one will have to deal with the everyday stress of dealing with people who don't necessarily have any understanding or respect for what you are doing. One of the things that differentiates monastic from ordinary life is living in a place that is isolated from the everyday hustle-bustle of ordinary society. Having a nagging mother bugging you about your daily chores, sure ain't that. On the other hand, the abbot bugging you about your daily chores is at least going to be spiritually on the same page as you.


A little addendum on Americans and monasticism; I'd say in an American context, the only way this would work is if the monks/monastery provided some tangible service to the surrounding community. America works on the customer model. Also, ordinary people in the community would need to see your order as being legitimate. New Religious Movements are notoriously looked down as being fake and non-serious by the average person. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Secondly, yes Americans will send people money to people or organizations for non-commercial purposes, but it's almost always to either those deemed as downtrodden according to their preferred set of political beliefs, or to charitable organizations or political activists who advance the political-social agenda the donor-in-question finds to be congenial.
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In the first installment of this series I started grasping at an idea – that our popular understanding of “paganism” (i.e. Natural Religion) today comes from a very distorted perspective. We generally look at these ancient religions from several thousand feet up in the air; we see the rooflines and treetops rather well, but have nary a clue about how the buildings of the towns and cities are constructed, or what types of trees we are seeing in the surrounding woodlands.

This misleading perspective stems from out tendency to look first at fixed pantheons and standardized mythologies and then other aspects second. Modern academics and enthusiasts typically gloss over the “on-the-ground” building blocks of the religion or at least downplay these fundamental elements in terms of overall importance.

Over the past several years I have read several books which starkly challenge this popular set of assumptions. The first I gave a very brief look at in my first post in this series. The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges, the author presents a compelling thesis – a proposal that ancient religion begins first with the family cult, and then over time, it gradually scales its way up to the “high” civilizational forms of paganism most of us are familiar with today. I found this to be a sound thesis, though missing an important element; namely that of the actual numinous experiences of the people participating in these ancient religions. The book is written from a wholly detached, secular perspective; the implication seems to be that these religions primary served as a social technology; one that was utilized for a very long time to propagate and uphold a culture’s family structures and civic institutions.

As a “believer” in all sorts of numinous things, I’m inclined to mix in some missing elements to the half-empty cauldron that is Coulanges’ insights. Well, I’m thinking of one missing element in particular. I propose that even older than the family cults (gentilism), was the massively-shared understanding which says that the world around us is quite alive; that everything in our environment, including trees, rocks, rivers, springs, hills, mountains, ect., is imbued with some sort of numinous life force, or even active consciousness. Today we understand this set of assumptions as being “animism.” The specific flavor of gentilism Coulanges explains in great depth was a likely something specific to various offshoot nations of the ancient Indo-European people. Integral to those cults was animistic belief. Animism itself is something found in every single native religion in all times and places the world over. The universality of animism is something that points toward a shared reality that anyone can experience.

I’m inclined to propose that gentilism arose in response to animist spiritual experience; the family cult came about as a way of making sense of our weird experiences with the rather-murky spirit world that surrounds and interacts with us. Once we start assigning concrete meaning to our hazy, dreamlike experiences, it becomes much easier to explain away all those chaotic things that’s an ever-present wellspring of anxiety and uncertainty. Those odd spirits lurking about can be (temporarily) satiated with material offerings of various sorts. Shamans, mediums, and diviners can communicate with those spirits to figure out what it is they they want and what benefits they can provide for us in return for creating and maintaining a gift cycle. Telling the people that at least some of these spirits are in fact ancestral ghosts, adds several layers of piety and familiarity to the practice of keeping these beings content and willing to help out out from time to time.

The second book I’d like to mention is The Deities are Many, by Jordan Paper. It does a great job (in my opinion) of getting at the sorts of things I’m talking about in the above paragraph.

What’s really neat about this book is that the author himself is both an academic and a practitioner of polytheism. Not only that, but he is a practitioner of several living polytheisms, as opposed to merely being involved with neopagan historical reconstructions. In other words, this isn’t just another dry academic work! The pages are quite alive and full cross-cultural propositions based on the author’s own personal, “hands-on” experiences with the book’s subject matter. I’ve read a bunch of very dry academic books on pagan topics and those tend to bore me to no end. This one is quite the opposite.

In the very early chapters he speaks of direct experiences with nature deities in Appalachia. He then tells us how he studied closely with Native American practitioners of their traditional religions. After that talks about how he lived in Taiwan for several years and studied the traditional Chinese folk religion in close detail. During that time he married a Taiwanese woman and got to partake directly in her Chinese family cult and the venerable temple traditions of the surrounding community. He tells us all sorts of interesting stories about trance mediums being possessed by deities and then those deities relaying rather concrete tips and tricks to their human devotees. He also gives us a much more holistic understanding of shamanism then we are used to hearing about from the usual sources. One gripe I have is that he often speaks very negatively about everything-Western (in a typical leftist-deconstructionist sort of way) and makes some crude generalizations about Western culture as a whole, but overall I found this to be a minor annoyance and doesn’t really detract much from the work as a whole.

To me, the book is a fascinating summary of the living traditions Paper studied and worked with. It would take me way too many words and posts to accurately summarize this work here. I will say though that after my first time reading it, I experienced a significant perspective-shift as far as my “paganism studies” are concerned. And without reading this book, I likely would have had a more difficult time properly contextualizing the insights of Coulanges. Paper’s observations tell us that it is in fact animism that constitutes the basic building blocks of these religions. I’m currently about ¾ the way through my second reading and that’s really helping me grasp some of the finer details I might have missed the first time around.

Paper’s book will probably take at least a few posts, as far as unpacking its main highlights is concerned. In the meantime, I think I can sign off with a very general statement – that it’s today’s living polytheisms which give us the best insights on how and why Natural Religions actually work.
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If there was one book that decisively “ruined” the modern pagan revival (as a serious religious endeavor with any multigenerational staying power) for me it would be The Ancient City by the French historian and proto-anthropologist Fustel de Coulanges. Well, there’s actually been a few, but this one takes the cake. In the book, the author, with what to me seems like an amazing degree of intuitive insight, teases out and explains what he sees as being the foundational element of ancient religion; what we today call “paganism.” I won’t bother droning on with any exhaustive summary of the book, but here is a very brief one:

“Originally published in 1864 as La Cité Antique, this remarkable work describes society as it existed in Greece during the age of Pericles and in Rome at the time of Cicero. Working with only a fraction of the materials available to today's classical scholar, Fustel de Coulanges fashioned a complete picture of life in the ancient city, resulting in a book impressive today as much for the depth of its portrait as for the thesis it presents.

In The Ancient City, Coulanges argues that primitive religion constituted the foundation of all civic life. Developing his comparisons between beliefs and laws, Fustel covers such topics as rites and festivals; marriage and the family; divorce, death, and burial; and political and legal structures. "Religion," the author states, "constituted the Greek and Roman family, established marriage and paternal authority, fixed the order of relationship, and consecrated the right of property, and the right of inheritance. This same religion, after having enlarged and extended the family, formed a still larger association, the city, and reigned in that as it had reigned in the family. From it came all the institutions, as well as the private law, of the ancients."


When most of us modern people think of paganism, we think of the great civic religions and mythological traditions of late-stage classical civilization, particularly the traditions of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial eras. We think of rigid pantheons of rudely-anthropomorphized gods and goddesses and the ossified mythological literary narratives associated with those deities. We also might think of great sages and their elaborate philosophical teachings and great works. In fact, all these things are the product of specific high cultures and their literary traditions. We think today that “paganism” is precisely that. Well, its foundational form was never that at all.

Contra these popular modern (mis)understanding, Coulanges takes us back to a time long before recorded history, i.e. long before writing technology was a thing. He parses out the archaic religion of the Indo-Europeans and their offshoots in the Mediterranean world, focusing particularly on the family cults of archaic Greece and Rome. In his view, the religion of the family is the foundation of all religion in the ancient world; tribal and civic cults are much later developments that evolved as smaller social units continuously merged into larger ones as classical civilization became ever-grander and more complex.

Private Religion, Private Law

As the story goes, religion was once a wholly private affair. By private I mean one confined to the household and its immediate surroundings. Each cultic household (i.e. what neopagans today call “ the hearth”) was an ancestor-veneration religion unto itself. The beliefs and rituals were specific to each individual family; no two families rites and beliefs were ever the same. And it was utterly taboo for anyone outside the household to partake in the rites of the family religion. Marriage and adoption were the only means by which new members could be admitted.

Western patriarchy, monogamous marriage, and archaic kingship (that of the paterfamilias) each derives from this very ancient way. When a woman would leave her natal household and join a different one via marriage, she had to ritually leave the religion of her birth and join the religion of her husband’s household (she must be carried over the sacred threshold of her new house); no one back then could be a member of two household religions at the same time. To do anything other than what ancient custom mandated would be to offend the ancestral gods; if any serious wrong were to be committed, they would become vengeful ghosts and proceed to mercilessly vex the entire household until its participants made a sufficient degree of ritualistic restitution.

The modern atheist-rationalist strawman of Abrahamic religion is that off an all-seeing busybody sky god tyrant watching your every move. Well, the ancients weren’t so different in their belief, it’s just that the all-seeing busybody was a patriarchal ancestor god dwelling under the ground instead of being an abstract all-spirit way up in the sky. Same basic stuff, different epoch. The “fear of God” being the basis of all religious piety and humility is a very ancient teaching indeed.

From Lares and Manes to Culture Gods

In the book, Coulanges supposes that the gods and goddesses we know of today began either as (a) proprietary family deities, or (b) personified parts of nature. It’s on this first supposition that he gives most of his attention to. Over time, the Lares and Manes of a triumphant family eventually become the gods of the whole culture. How this would work is that some particular family grows to prominence and, by marriage or adoptive patronage, absorbs many other families under its umbrella. Thus family becomes a clan. The paterfamilias becomes the clan Chieftain. The patron god of the clan’s leading family becomes the patron god of the entire clan; every clan member now participates in the rites of that deity; the once very-private religion has become a little less private and a little more public. In due time, other clans (for various reasons) join up with the big clan and now it’s a tribe. The patron deity of the tribe becomes the patron deity of every tribal member. The cult of the tribal deity has become even more public. Archaic kingship is born. Tribes settle down and become organized states with elaborate lore traditions and the beginnings of legalism. The same scaling-up process rinses and repeats until we get the mega-states and sprawling empires that our history books tend to lavish with the most attention.

You get the picture by now. The illustrious Athena of the Athenian Parthenon, the awesome protectress of all of Athens, was once-upon-a-time a humble family deity. That family became one of the most dominant and successful families of Athens and because of that, its patron goddess become the civic goddess par excellence. Yahweh was likely once a humble family deity of this type and over time become the clan of Judah’s tutelary god (“The god of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac” can perhaps take on a literal meaning here). And as the saying goes, the rest is history!

Forgotten Inheritance

Speaking on that tangent, it becomes quite apparent to me that the Christians inherited the remnants of these ancient gentile institutions The Ancient City talks about at length. But the early Christians understood very little about the origin of things like monogamous marriage, archaic kingship, and patriarchal families; they saw that those just worked, and left it at that. Humans in general seem to prefer the approach of doing things over and over again by rote over understanding why they do things to begin with (once you have to ask why, it’s obvious the magic has already worn off) Of course the Christians were by no means unique in this regard, as this was how most pagan religions operated as well. By the late decadent era of blustering moralists like Cicero, Cato, and Seneca, the learned Roman understood very little about the why of their venerable religion. Why these religions worked the way they did is a deeply-esoteric topic for another time.

What the author had pieced together more than 150 years ago constitutes a key component of of what ancient Natural Religion actually was. We could use the term Gentilism for this. However this is not the only piece. Animism is the other main part. It’s something that Coulanges briefly acknowledges in a few spots but tends to gloss over. After all, he was a rationalist scholar who followed the popular habit of his time, that is dismissing the notion of an enchanted world as being something more than ancient superstition. However, I’ve found an occult reading of his work to be quite illuminating, to put it lightly. This is something I’ve been working out in my own head for awhile now.

Putting the Canopy before the Roots

Sad to say, but to me this synthesis seems to be something that greatly trivializes modern-day efforts to revive ancient religions. The pantheon-first approach is highly-anachronistic and little more than romanticized classicism (ancient familial and tribal religions didn’t have fixed pantheons, but that’s another topic for a different time!). In practical terms, this approach constitutes an attempt to grow a tree starting first with the uppermost branches (yeah, imagine that). Of course, I don’t intend here to denigrate an individual’s personal spiritual practice that might involve the veneration of ancient deities; you do you! But such a practice sans any familial or communitarian element is really just a glorified occult or mystical practice, or maybe a rogue form of Folk Catholicism. In my humble view, if one can’t get their whole household to participate in whatever it is they do in front of their altar, then it’s not a religion proper.

By this criteria, I think the only successful pagan revival groups here in the Anglosphere are those Germanic pagans (Heathens) who do indeed have their whole families or even mini-communities participating in cultic activities, even if that’s just meeting up a few times a year for ritual feasts and outdoor gatherings. But even Heathens usually default to the classical pantheon approach, when really each hearth and kindred should be working with something unique, if the religion is to be an authentic gentilism (I do realize how massive a tall order this is in our postmodern era).

Back to Basics

For a whole family or household to participate, the aspiring religion has to be something more visceral and relatable than some cultic version of a D&D session or a Renaissance Fair. Fine for the nerds, but boring or just plain weird for everyone else. Whichever pioneering soul can figure out how to harmoniously blend ancestor work with strict family discipline, and with some compatible ethos and world-conception (like perhaps a combination of Nietzschean Vitalism and Animism), might really be onto a working formula that can make for a tradition that lasts for more than half a generation.
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I've gotten myself into a particular substack rabbit hole as of late. Specifically, on the topic of how "Monotheism" arose during late antiquity and how the many manifestations of this new movement interacted with the traditional cults of the Hellenic/Roman world.

The thesis of this substack author and the academics he cites is that the (once-popular) notion that "Monotheism" arose as uniquely-Judean phenomenon is simply dead wrong. In fact, according to this hypothesis, there was an indigenous "Pagan Monotheism" in and around the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East that become quite popular throughout Anatolia, Thrace, and Greece during the Roman era. The primary evidence for this is a cult that Christian church fathers referred to as the "Hypsistarians"; in reference to the object of their worship, Theos Hypsistos, which translates as, "God Most High" (sound familiar?)

Modern archeologists have found more than 300 inscriptions throughout the aforementioned geographic areas that can be linked to this cult. Some scholars in the past have claimed the Hypsistarians were simply gentile "God-fearers," i.e. Greeks and Romans who worshipped the Jewish god but were not actually a part of the Jewish community. The evidence from the inscriptions totally contradict such assertions, as we can see Hypsistarians venerating Apollo as an "Angel of God Most High." Nothing we know about their worship seems to point to them being Jews or Christians. If the Hypsistarian movement (and other similar cults) arose out of indigenous paganism then this would put to bed the once-popular notion that "God Most High" was a unique insight of the Judeans and that any religion or movement based on this concept somehow owes its origin to Judaism (the mere existence of Zoroastrianism already disproves that idea, but I do digress). Anyway, if these Hypsistarian folks poured one out for Apollo, they undoubtedly did as well for other pagan deities. To make a long story short, I think this three-part series of posts explains the hypothesis much better than I can:

https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-case-for-pagan-monotheism
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-hypsistarian-church-of-god-most
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-theology-of-the-hypsistarian

This is all quite so fascinating (as least I think so), but one objection I must voice is the use of the term "Monotheism" for this movement. To me, "Monotheism" simply means the belief in one and only one god. The author however expands the definition to include systems of belief that feature a "big G" God and include many "small g" gods. I understand this reasoning. He does this for pragmatic purposes, as he wishes to make a case for "uniting the right" of religious believers of various stripes. He sees the constant online infighting between Christians and Pagans as silly and counterproductive, and that they have more beliefs and goals in common than what might seem apparent. I get his intentions and I think they come from a good place. But the idealist in me is very sketchy about muddying the definition of words for the sake of practical or political expediency. Examining the concept of Monotheism though does open up its own can of worms: Is Christianity really Monotheist? (trinity, angels, saints, ect.). Is Zoroastrianism Monotheist or Di-theist? (that religion has a whole pantheon of divinities as well).

I instead propose a more neutral term, "Megatheism," to account for belief systems which have both the big-G God and little-g gods. This creates a very big tent that can include lots of different religions, philosophies, occult theories, ect. Embracing Megatheism can theoretically put to bed all the silly back-and-forth sniping "Monotheists" and "Polytheists" like to fling at one another. By this, great thinkers and sages like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, Plutarch, Apollonius of Tyana, Valentinus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Julian the "Apostate" (among so many others), were Megatheists through and through.

One the above hypothesis as a whole, I see the Hypsistarian movement as being part and parcel of the broader (then ascendant) "Magian" culture that the German historian Oswald Spengler wrote much about. According to my own intuition-based headcanon, the original Magian "ground zero" was a region that spanned from Upper Mesopotamia to Central Anatolia. The ancient Assyrian city of Harran was a key nexus of what was then a new religious awakening. The original cultures to partake in Magianism were the Arameans, Chaldeans, Medes/Persians, Cilicians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Thracians, Armeneans, and perhaps some other groups. The Jews were the first people to codify Magian ideas into a concrete, book-based religion, however none of the core elements of Magian spirituality originated with the Jews (they were however instrumental in spreading Magian religious sentiments around to many different locales).

One useful thing I can see coming out of this discourse is the possibility the we can finally put to bed the popular adherence to the silly idea that a single historically-marginal people had unique and exclusive access to correct ideas about the Divine and Divinity. What we do really need now is an intelligent and principled form of ecumenism; 1000 boats each going their own way does not a community make! In that sense, I believe the above substack author really does have his intentions in the right place.
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For quite a long time now I’ve been pondering the question, “what might a future Paganism here in North America look like after Neopaganism has fully run its course?”

After thinking about this and going back-and-forth on some ideas, I came to the “Captain Obvious” realization that I cannot predict the future. Duh. So, I refrained from trying to make any futile attempts to guess what the specific details might look like; particularly, when it comes to whatever cultic practices and spiritual teachings any such hypothetical future Pagan groups might have.

Instead, I thought about the possible social, cultural, political, and economic attributes of “Future Paganism.” First I shall defined Paganism is any type of religious or spiritual approach moving forward that is neither Abrahamic, nor a copypaste of some Eastern tradition.

Anyway, I think the examination of cultural-social criteria here is appropriate approach because Neopaganism seems to have been mostly a reflection of the social-cultural value system of its secular parent culture (the 1960s counterculture and the progressivist politics that followed) rather than a distinct set of spiritual teachings could stand on its own feet. Really, I’m of the belief that whole “separation of church and state” mantra is a farcical delusion; in any practical sense, at least. A belief system is a belief system. And an effective belief system is one that is capable of ordering and shaping the lives of its adherents, regardless of whatever the stated source of those beliefs might be. A non-theistic belief system that successfully tells a critical mass of people what to do is just as much a “church” as one that claims a God or Gods as the ultimate source of its authority. By that, I’ve yet to see any evidence that a “theocracy” of college professors, corporate managers, and government bureaucrats is inherently better than one consisting of people dressed in fancy robes who invoke deities and claim to divine the intent of beings vastly more intelligent and complex than humans (I’d argue the latter arrangement is better, but that’s just my opinion).

I think it’s a safe bet to say that future trends in religion and spirituality will reflect the broader culture just as much as present-day spiritual fads do. The question on whether it will be the religion that shapes the culture, or the other way around is a fascinating one, but not a question that’s a concern of mine right now in this post. What I am laying out below is simply an exercise in comparing and contrasting the values that shaped the alternative spirituality scene (and its Neopagan offspring), versus my thought experiment on what an emerging “post-liberal” value system might look like, whether that system shaped by religious or secular forces. The primary hypothetical I am taking into account is the gradual (or more sudden) decline of industrial civilization and the eventual dissolution of the sort of values and cultural expressions that have resulted from our present reality of cheap energy, material abundance, easy travel, and transient living patterns.

Below I describe each pattern using a list of keywords. The first is the arrangement we’ve been stuck with for the past several decades, though it’s now deep into its death throes. The second is something I see emerging right now out of the populist (anti-neoliberal/globalist) counterculture that has gained quite a bit of ground over the past ten years or so.

Values of the late 20th century alt-spirituality scene (which includes Neopaganism): rejection of time-honored traditions and ancient wisdom; spiritual novelty over established praxis; egalitarianism; secular humanism; (i.e. primary values derived from materialist and utilitarian doctrines rather than spiritual sources); liberal globalism; politeness and sensitivity being seen as more important than truth; hyper-individualism and the promotion of individual license; the rejection of limits and boundaries; logophobia; a thick firewall erected between religious and secular values when it comes to traditions claiming an ancient source; pacifism; nature romanticism; emotional self-expressionism; feelings and subjectivism taking precedence over impersonal observations and reasoned discourse; feminism and gynocentric perspectives taking center stage; apprehension toward making substantive value judgements; stated aversion to hierarchies and the hierarchical values (though not practiced in mundane, everyday lives); radical inclusionism; moral relativism; noble savage romanticism; “blank slate” wishful-thinking about human nature; lack of any serious challenge to big city living and consumeristic cosmopolitanism despite rhetoric suggesting such; being a cog in the system rather than challenging it despite rhetoric suggesting otherwise; romantic notions of love and family; ideological environmentalism that favors a preach over practice approach; emphasis on the foreign and exotic over the familiar; civilizational self-loathing; persistent pandering to narcissistic and solipsistic sentiments; ambivalence (or even hostility) towards family-formation and pro-natal lifestyles; aspirations toward a classless society; blind acceptable of scientific-materialist dogmas, despite rhetoric which sometimes claims otherwise.

Post-liberal religion and spirituality (which would include post-Neopagan Paganism): spirituality of localism and community-focus, with some degree of disregard toward abstract notions of “humanity”; a positive view toward ancestry and time-honored traditions; a recognition of natural limits, boundaries as being a part of the cosmic scheme; the willingness to work within those constraints rather than fight them or pretend they don’t exist; metaphysical belief becomes more a personal matter than a collective imperative; inter-community pragmatic relations rather than sectarian antagonism; religious and secular values seen as inseparable; emotional restraint and modesty/humility becoming important public virtues once again; providing a challenge/alternative to industrial modernity rather than just reflecting its favored lifestyles and value system; local experience over universal abstractions; meritocratic hierarchy (though this can easily degrade into nepotism over time); families and guild/fellowship societies as the fundamental social unit (as opposed to the atomized individual); constructive martial values; recognition of the sexes as being fundamentally different, though having complementary roles and being co-equal in terms of spiritual worth; cultural self-confidence; emphasis on small-town, small-city, and rural living; local food production; attentiveness to local ecological conditions; craftsmanship valued over raw efficiency; providing an alternative to being a cog in the system; pragmatic notions of love and family; acceptance and encouragement of family-formation and pro-natal lifestyles; practical environmentalism; recognition and utilization of natural social classes; skepticism toward scientific-materialist dogmas.

***

I’m probably missing a lot of things from both patterns. Please feel free to suggest anything that should be added or omitted!
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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.
causticus: trees (Default)
Ahh, the million cattle-head question.

According to my own peculiar definition of paganism, a “pagan” today might simply be anyone who has spiritual beliefs that are not dependent upon agreeing with or assenting to specific dogmas, doctrines, metaphysical propositions, or special dispensations. This Minimalist Pagan believes that existence is more than just material properties; there is something more out there, but there’s no compulsion to harbor a specific belief about or define what exactly that is. Rather, there’s myriad metaphysical models available to explain or speculate about supersensory phenomena. In essence, specific schools of thought can and do exist within this pagan umbrella, but participation in or adherence to such schools is entirely voluntary.

The following metaphysical propositions can be said to be pagan according to the above definition:

Psychism – is the first level of metaphysical belief above that of crude materialism. It’s the belief in the most rudimentary conception of “soul,” which could be said to be an immaterial “psychic” property or substance; this is a consciousness principle which either animates or supersedes matter. Modern psychism tends to favor an “archetypal” model for explaining such phenomena, and adherents of this line of thinking tend to see psyche as an impersonal force or collection of forces.

This type of belief is adjacent to atheism, agnosticism, and deism, though the admittance of a layer of reality above/beyond matter “psyche” as something that sets psychism apart from the prevailing Scientific Materialist Orthodoxy of this era. In some corners of Establishment Academia, an open belief in Psychism is permitted, or at least tolerated to some degree, though it’s long been fully excised from the field of Psychology – which is of course farcical, considering the fact that “Psychology” according to its etymological roots means, “the study of the soul.” Of course, what passes for “official” psychology today is vehemently hostile toward anything that materialist scientism can’t (or simply refuses to) explain.

Psychism can be both metaphysically-assertive and agnostic. The former approach usually coincides with a position which can be termed Panpsychism, which is the idea that everything in the universe is foremost comprised of Psyche (Soul-stuff). Whereas the latter position refrained from imposing any particular metaphysical proposition.

Spiritualism – is the belief in nonphysical, personal beings who can and do interact with our own world. In it’s modern form, Spiritualism is (1) the belief in nonphysical spiritual entities which are human-like and usually said to be the souls of deceased humans; and (2) the notion that living humans can communicate with these spiritual beings through mediumistic methods (this sometimes involves trance-inducement). Overt Spiritualism of this type became quite popular during the 19th century, through the early 20th, though it has long since fallen into obscurity. Much of this movement has shown itself to metaphysical investigators as being fraudulent, in addition to its practices being rife with psycho-spiritual dangers. Practically speaking, we could say that unacknowledged and semi-acknowledged Spiritualism does indeed play a role in a number of alternative religion/spirituality movements, especially the “devotional” end of Neopaganism, in addition to a few other syncretic neo-religions.

Animism – simply the belief that everything in Nature is “alive with spirit.” There is spiritual essence and even sentient intelligence in and around everything beyond what is apparent to our five senses. Unlike in Spiritualism, sentient spirit entities are not necessarily souls of the human dead, though they can be; in fact most spirits are non-human entities. This is the default belief system of most of the world’s ancient cultures, though animism often overlapped with polytheism. Two clear examples of this blend; (1) the (pre-Greek) ancient Roman religion, and (2) Shinto, which is the indigenous religion of Japan that survives to this day.

Theism – belief in one or more Deities. Of course, what defines a Deity (a God or Goddess) is open to a whole world of debate and well beyond the scope of this analysis. Perhaps a general definition is that a Deity is simply a “divine” being; that is, a nonphysical being who wields an immense degree of knowledge and power compared to human beings and ordinary spirits. Typically, theistic belief differs from that of the preceding tiers, in that worshippers assign archetypal and mythological characteristics to their Gods and Goddess. Deities are specific to an entire culture or polity, whereas a spirit is usually just relevant to a specific locale, physical object, deceased person, or ancestral figure. Traditional cultures the world over have almost always grouped their Deities into distinct pantheons.

Over time, polytheistic religions sometimes morph into more specific approaches like Henotheism (worship focused on just one of the deities), and Monolatrism (belief that only one of the deities is worthy of worship). Eventually this might further narrow into Monotheism, which is a theological arrangement that retains god-status for only one of the original deities of the culture in question. In practice though, Monotheism seems to be built on a bed of semantic gamesmanship. What this means is that monotheistic systems usually retain other entities from their source culture’s original pantheon, though the other divinities are demoted to a “non-god” category of one type or another. The less-than-god entities are re-imagined as being mere aspects, hypostases, emanations, or creations of the (now) “one, true god.” Once we take a few steps back from the new categorization scheme, the monotheistic system seems like an exercise in sophistic gimmickry. In traditional polytheist cultures, the differences between Gods, demigods, spirits, angels, heroes, dignified ancestors, and other entities, were often nuanced, fluid, and full of overlapping definitions and criteria. Taking all of this into account, we can see that what is to be considered a god and not-a- god is more or less a matter of crafty wordplay, not to mention a product of the opinions and agendas of those who get to define who/what is and isn’t “the one, true god.”

Theism (especially Polytheism) can be inclusive of all the prior layers of metaphysical recognition. For example, most polytheisms are infused with varying degrees of psychism, spiritualism, and animism. Thus we can see how this entire schema is somewhat hierarchical.
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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.

Read more... )
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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 [personal profile] 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?
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This is sort of a follow-up from a more extensive entry I wrote awhile back. This is also inspired by a re-reading of an old Ecosophia thread from about a couple of years ago regarding the feasibility of forming a new "Druidic" religious organization that lacks the dysfunctional, woke, and clusterfracky characteristics that defined ADF to the core. I saw some very insightful comments, among many others that expressed a lot of confusion on how a Druidic religious organization might differ from that of an initiatory order. I don't blame them for this confusion, as nearly all Druidic orders (with the exception of RDNA and its offshoots) have belonged to the latter category.

Here is the organizational wish-list JMG posted in the first comment:

- I'd like something with plenty of room for solitary practice. Not everyone is well suited to group activities, and some of us would rather eat live tarantulas than go through round after round of group meetings.

- I'd like something that makes room for Christian Druids. I'm not one, but I know quite a few of them, and I've never understood the attitude that insists that you can take any deity for your patron but Jesus. At the same time, appropriate protections need to be put in place to keep anyone from forcing their god on anyone else.

- I'd like something that doesn't pretend to be ancient. The Druid Revival has been around for 300 years; that's ample heritage to claim.

- I'd like something set up to minimize internal politics. The more energy needed for internal group management, the less will be available to worship the gods. If there have to be elections, let them be at long intervals. If elections can be avoided, even better. A lot of nonprofits have a board of directors that appoints its own new members, and ordinary members can vote with their feet if they don't like the existing policies; that might be a model worth considering.


Well, this sounds a lot like the basis of a Fraternal "Grand Lodge" type of organization; something like Freemasonry. Basically, an organization that requires only a vague belief in a Divine Power(s), with nothing specific beyond that. The inclusion of both "Christian Druids" and "Druids" who venerate non-Celtic pantheons means that a shared liturgy, shared set of holy days and festivals, or shared mythos involving specific divine names is off the table right out of the gate. So then how is this a religion exactly? It seems like we're circling back to the disjointed mess that was/is ADF. And this raises the obvious question that many commenters raised: What exactly makes this organization specifically Druidic? Many ADF members who had nothing Celtic about their own beliefs and practices certainly felt the "Druid" identity* of ADF was rather confusing and nonsensical. If this organization is to use the Druid Revival as a common theme and mythic backdrop WITHOUT an explicitly Celtic pagan spirituality being shared among all members, then this will be a non-religion and essentially a duplication of what AODA/OBOD has already been doing. Then what's the point exactly?

And then we come upon what I found to be one of the most on-point comments:

Perhaps this is just my perception, but I feel like we are discussing two different potential organizations. One being a "druid" religious organization and the other being a polytheist religious organization.

Personally, I don't consider myself a druid or really anything in religious terms but I am a polytheist of the plain old uncategorized variety.

I am not much drawn to organized religion but I feel like I would be interested in a polytheist religion that was actually concerned with how to relate to deities. When you throw druid into the mix though I feel like you immediately start down some well worn paths, for example needing to protect the environment. I am all for taking care of the environment, but I don't necessarily see that as something related to relating to the divine, or at least no more so than any other activity can be linked to the divine.

I think charity is another of these issues. What's wrong with helping those less fortunate? Not a thing but, again, I don't necessarily see that as directly related to relating to the divine.

I think having a polytheistic religious organization that was serious, rather than the aforementioned larp party, could be a great thing but I think that, especially given the current climate, it would need to keep a hard focus on being a religion in order to avoid the slippery slope into a politics, social agendas and the like.


Yes, it does seem like there were two different conversations going on. I think what's really wanted here is a "polypantheonic" religious organization. Basically an Ecosophia version of ADF. And once again we are faced with questioning the logic of having "Druid" be in the name/identity of the organization. If "Druid" here means "Druid Revival" (which is a specific tradition) then this really whittles down the appeal the organization might have to what's otherwise a general polytheist (and open-minded Christian) member base. The Ecosophia community is already tiny and geographically-scattered enough; those among this group who are specifically attracted to the DR tradition is an even tinier slice of an already-tiny group.

I think this is all interesting food for thought. In another follow-up I might elaborate on what a viable "alt spirituality" organization moving forward might look like. In the most general sense, it will be more like a think-tank or a guild rather than a church.

---

*ADF's Druid branding was a holdover from its founder Isaac Bonewits branching off ADF from RDNA (Reformed Druids of North America), of which he was a member. RDNA started off as a joke organization and its "Druidry" was basically an "anything goes" ethos, with a vague nod to environmentalism. By that, RDNA is a social club, not a religion. And so it seems that beyond its obscure RDNA origins, it seems that there was nothing all that "Druid" about ADF. This became an endless source of confusion and disorientation among the membership. In reality, ADF functioned (barely) as a Pan-Neopagan Church.

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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.
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Periodically I like to ask myself just for kicks, "So, what is my religion?" Then there's a few alternatives to this self-inquiry that might go something like, "What's my philosophy?" or "What's my political ideology?" After a few minutes of thinking back and forth on the matter, the vague answer that comes back seems to always be, "none of the above." In other words, "don't even try and put me in a box!" Yeah, that does sounds kind of snowflakeish, but oh well.

It seems to me in this day and age of non-compulsory metaphysical beliefs (though currently under threat, I might add) that the aspiration of independent-mindedness and the self-identification with some prepackaged set of beliefs are two things that stand in opposition to one another. If I'm to identify with an "ism" then it seems that I cease to be a free inquirer and instead must function as an apologist, shill, or sophist in service of the "ism" in question, whenever I'm to speak in the company of others about said "ism." Also, when I do identify with any philosophy or belief system, then the person or people I'm conversing with will automatically assume I support ever position popularly-ascribed to that doctrine or school of though.

No, I'm a Metaphysical Free-Agent, or as I like to put it simply, a Seeker. Does this mean I believe in nothing? Or that I'm some kind of milquetoast fence-sitter who is incapable of settling on a position on whatever issue? Or that I'm some kind of postmodern relativist who doesn't believe there is a such thing as objective truth? Or that I'm a perma-rebel who refuses to accept an external epistemological authority?

Well, maybe there's some truth to that last one. But for the other rhetorical-hypotheticals? No. In fact, I would say the idea that one must identify with a concrete belief system is something peculiar to an era encapsulating roughly the last 2000 years. Prior to that, it was quite normal for philosophers, seers, and other thinkers to professor their own peculiar beliefs and most especially to clash with the other known thinkers of their time. I'm reminded of Cicero, who was a sort of philosophical eclectic, drawing many influences from the Platonism from his time, and some ideas from the very popular Stoicism, yet not strongly identifying with any particular school. Many other Greco-Roman intellectuals of that time took a similar approach. Yet, most of these men were very pious, conservative, and patriotic. It's only in the modern era that it's popularly-assumed that to be conservative and loving of one's own culture/society, it's imperative to be "religious" in the dogmatic sense. Not being a "religious" person of this type must mean giving into the political opinions of liberals/leftists who are out to erode society, or whatever it is they are doing.

I don't think so.

The other charge that conservative and pseudo-traditional tryhards tend to issue forth is that not being "religious" though being "spiritual" at the same time must mean one buys into the usual grab-bag of "New Age" fluff that religious sectarians associate with any and all non-canonical spiritual ideas of the current time. No, in fact, the spiritual ideas I give most credence to tend to be rather ancient, yet they don't need to be boxed up in a book or some convenient collection of writings. So, yeah I think the implication that not "believing" in some closed set up beliefs makes one a "libtard" is quite silly and groundless. As if independent thinking and epistemological chaos are one in the same. Rather, it seems this sort of reflexive "conservativism" is just the usual lazy thinking and desperate search for easy answers that most people tend to default to in times of confusion. The kind of dogmatic religion we know too well, just be the only kind of religion, because that's what seemed to work in the recent past. Any inquiry beyond that is asking too many annoying questions and trying to introduce too much nuance and debate into what should be such a clear-cut issue.

On my own "beliefs" I could say that I'm quite sympathetic to Platonic ideas compared to the ideas of other philosophical schools. Yet I'm loathe to declare myself a "Platonist" partisan and box myself into a a limited set of concrete propositions on the nature of reality. I'd rather just keep asking questions and see what insights then come to me (for better or worse). With regard to any specific religion, the answer is a resolute "none of the above." I think all the big religions that have survived to this day are highly flawed and ill-suited to the present times we live in; not to mention, many of them are plagued/burdened by what I see is as just plain bad doctrines and dogmas. I'm sympathetic to polytheism as a concept, but I will not pretend for one moment that I hail from any of the cultures the old pagan cults came from. I like some ancient Greek motifs, but I am of course not an ancient Greek. Nor am I an ancient Germanic/Norse person. Nor pre-Christian Celtic, or anything of that nature. And I'm not going to start randomly cold-calling the various deities from those old traditions anytime soon. Again, I'm going to be patient and see what insights might or might not come to me.

In summary, I think there's much to be said for taking the humble position of being a Philosophical Independent, or simply a Seeker.
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A question from a friend that I thought I might be somewhat qualified to answer based on theoretical occult knowledge I've picked up (not my own direct experience!!)

Q: How would you say knowledge from past lives is retained into this one?

Here is my best attempt to take a stab at answering. I do realize I'm largely parroting what modern Western Occult Philosophy has to say on this matter, especially drawing on JMG's answers to similar questions on various Magic Monday posts.

A: It's not so much direct/concrete knowledge, but experience and impressions that are retained and influence future lives. For example, you might become an accomplished pianist in this life. In your next, you won't "remember" exactly how to play piano, much less musical theory relating to piano playing, but you will have a natural aptitude with learning to play a music instrument and a general sense of harmony, rhythm, ect. You'll have more of a natural talent for music stating in your next life than you did starting this current one. As you can see, these natural aptitudes, inclination, and attitudes are cumulative.

To use a closer example, right now, in this life, the habit you've gotten into of reading philosophical works, will certainly help sharper your intellect more and more. In your next life, intellectual and philosophical subject matter will come even easier to you. Now this doesn't mean in your next life you will remember the specific school(s) of philosophy you have studied in this life. Nor does it mean you will take up study in those same schools in the next life. Again, this is more a question of general inclination.
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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?

---
* 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.
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The Astrological Ages, aka the Precession of the Equinoxes

Age of Taurus (Earth element, governed by Venus) approx. 4000 - 2420 BCE -- Religion across the world mostly consists of hyperlocal fertility cults and elaborate funerary customs, with a ton of bull and snake symbolism. Practices are very nature/earth oriented. Compared to the two Ages to follow, some degree of gender equality is the norm, though most of the major cultures are at least some patriarchal, due to the tendencies of monarchy and the increases in fixed property ownership as societies become more agrarian and sedentary. The cultures which grow and develop technological complexity end up funneling much of their collective resources into earthworks, engineering projects, and monumental buildings. In these cultures the institutions of sacralized monarchy, legalism, and organized priesthoods become established and more complex and ossified as time moves on.

Age of Aries (Fire element, governed by Mars) approx. 2420 - 260 BCE -- War, conquest, militarism, fire sacrifices, and a martial heroic ethos, and masculinity in general. are the hallmarks of this age. Thundering sky and war gods play a leading role in the cultures which rose to prominence in this age; these “leading edge” cultures are extremely patriarchal and socially-stratified, sometimes marked by fixed caste systems. Aries commences with the warlike Semitic Akkadians conquering the Sumerian civilization. At the same time, the Indo-European steppe tribes spread all over Eurasia and conquer and assimilate many different local farming cultures. The symbolism of the bull being sacrificed is marks the transition from Taurus to Aries, and this lives on in many traditions including Judaism (Exodus) and Mithraism (its key motif). The mythos of the classical Greek culture is thoroughly infused with Aries symbolism and this is most exemplified by Homer's epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. (The Hebrew Bible as well) The older cultures on the fringes of civilization still retain quite a bit of their Tauran elements far into this age however, only to eventually find Arian cultures banging at their doorstep (see: the Mycenaean conquest of the Aegean, and the ‘Hyksos’ invasion and conquest of Egypt, as prime examples).

Age of Pisces (Water element, governed by Jupiter and Dionysus; Vishnu and Shiva in the Indic traditions) approx. 260 BCE - 1900 CE -- This is the age we just emerged from and the one that is by far most familiar to those of us living today. The old martial and fiery essence of Aries gave way to the self-sacrificing Saint motif, once Pisces was in full swing. Religion mostly shifted from being praxis-oriented to being centered around affirmed belief in abstract doctrines, i.e. professed faith. In many corners of the Earth, the old "pagan" religions of the prior ages quickly gave way to these now belief-based sectarian movements. The hyper-patriarchy of Aries stuck around and blended into the Piscean paradigm. The primary themes of this Age were unity/oneness, ideological brotherhood, frenzy, mass hysteria, secrecy, utopianism, political skulduggery, "humanity" as a universal ideal, the blending of politics and religion, salvationist doctrines, doomsday cults, hyper-focus on the afterlife at the detriment of worldly life (and other eschatological obsessions). The general trend was the consolidation of religions into top-down, toltalizing systems which dominate every aspect of the followers ordinary lives. Wanton religious intolerance, ideological crusades and inquisitions quickly became the "new normal" by late antiquity and persisted all throughout the middle ages and up into the modern era.

Age of Aquarius (Air element, governed by Saturn and Prometheus) approx. 1900 - 4660 CE -- This is the Age we very recently crossed into, though it will be at least several centuries before the Piscean currents become diminished to the point where they no longer govern religion and ideology around the world. How this age will unfold is a huge unknown, especially given the "weirdness" of Aquarian nature. By that, everything that follows should be seen as wild speculation and probably taken with a grain of salt; on top of that, Aquarius is bound to hurl at least a few curveballs in our general direction. One thing we can say however is that it will be nothing at all like the drug-addled fantasies of 1960s and 70s hippies, who were largely projecting Piscean-utopian fantasies onto the future. Instead of a homogeneous "one brotherhood of humanity" we might a reverse in course toward more independence, idiosyncrasy, and differentiation among peoples. Secession and independence movements could very well dominate politics. If this happens, then it’s going to be an age of "people going their own way" and various permutations of that pattern. Homogeneity of thought across groups will become less and less of a thing as this age comes into full swing, though whether groupthink will dominate within particular groups is anyone’s best guess. At any rate, there will be a lot of different ones!

Religion will once again become more praxis-oriented and less obsessed with shared beliefs and ham-fisted enforcement of doctrinal compliance. Religious convictions will become a personal matter and not so much a communal concern. Religious/Spiritual specialists (clergy, gurus, seers) will become something more akin to guides and helpers, rather than ideological enforcers of yesteryear. The Piscean religions will be forced to adapt or die in this Age. For groups on the leading edge of Aquarian currents, the dispassionate investigation of reality (i.e. science in its true form) and intellectual pursuits will be emphasized over blind faith. Immersive spirituality might become centered around the training of the mind and the connection of an individual to their Genius.

Due to the Saturnine element, the peoples of this ages will struggle greatly with sinking into the all-too-familiar pit of materialism; though the Promethean influence might be a mitigating factor (or a destructive nuisance!), as people will seek out novel means of escaping the materialist ideological straitjacket. We can easily observe today that many forms of high weirdness are on the up-and-up and that the thundering destruction of age-old ways of doing things is even now becoming "the new normal." Idiosyncratic “subcultures” may become a new type of tribalism, and if this comes to be, then the idea that everyone should dress and act the same will be a quaint relic of the distant past. Few will mourn the loss of the Western business suit, which is perhaps the most stifling, conformist, and uncomfortable formal garment ever to see the light of day.

At first there will be much resistance to these new currents, and as long as the techno-industrial systems remain scalable, we may very well see what were once polite “democratic” societies morph into totalitarian police states; we are already beginning to see technology turned against the people and used as a means of mass-enslavement. The global technological superstructure may very well collapse due to a steadily-shrinking supply of energy resources. If this happens it will only further hasten the now-natural urge to break off into splinter groups and differentiate. The old limits of geographical distance and other barriers will come back into play and help provide natural barriers between the new subculture-tribes.

Now in terms of social structures and mores, we can observe that right as Aquarius started coming to play, we started to see the beginnings of the old hyper-patriarchy of Aries finally beginning to wane in cultures science had already taken precedence over faith-based religion. By the late 19th century, we suddenly saw the proliferation of female spiritual leaders and intellectuals, which was something quite foreign to pretty much most cultures for a very long time. Expect female contributions and leadership in religion and spirituality to be something here to stay in this Age. However, the so-called "gender equality" movements of recent history have been plagued with Piscean ways of thinking, as they've been ideological crusades which embraced the opposite extreme of the old norm. As with anything, we could say that the wise way is the Middle Way. As these destructive ideological movements lose their sway over the popular imagination, we should begin to see ideas which promote a healthier balance when it comes to sex/gender issues. Sexual puritanism (a Piscean trait due to the fear/hatred of the body found in many of its religions) may also become a thing of the past, and like above we might see a more balanced approach to this issue, rather than the present-day trend of running head-first into the opposite extreme of sexual licentiousness.

Once again, the above predictions should not be taken too seriously. These are rough guesses at how general patterns and trends might unfold, as opposed to being a concrete speculative timeline of how the future will come to be.
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Some recent thoughts of mine on why occultism (psychism) is can be such a dangerous path for the type of people who exist in this age and culture:

1. The practice of Psychism devoid of Spirituality always leads to disaster, in my estimation. Many people have enough trouble navigating the material plane without any solid principles to live by; taking the same condition to the astral is going to be even worse by many degrees. It's simply too easy and common for the ignorant and egocentric to get seduced and tricked by the various classes of baddies who dwell on the subtle planes.

2. Spirituality devoid of religion (which doesn't necessarily have to be a big, organized one) offers very little in the way of an intelligible means for the average seeker to distill spiritual principles into concrete rules, precepts, guidelines, advice, ect. Yes, more mature seekers, ones who are at least somewhat self-directed, and philosophically-minded, can do this on their own (granted they are practicing an established system or method) but this doesn't really work for the untrained and clueless, which is the vast majority. I would consider myself a lower-level seeker and I've come to terms with the idea that I'm struggling quite a bit with trying to practice spirituality in a self-directed manner; even using established methods has proven to be quite the challenge. But on that last part; this is why reputable teachers and written sources are so crucial. I almost hate to admit that I find myself religion-shopping (A cringe term, I know...) once again. For most, I don't think the esoteric can be practiced safely in lieu of an exoteric doctrine or set of precepts; and if two are combined then they cannot be too symbolically dissimilar, lest the unfortunate combination might amplify the pre-existing elemental imbalances of the immature seeker.

3. The degenerative culture we now live in is one of hyper-atomized individualism; people by and large reject competence hierarchies when it comes to the qualitative sciences. Ever since the late 60s, we've been mentally programmed to think it's "cool" to see the Critical Parent archetype (which in Spirituality, is the Hierophant or Guru) as something to constantly mock, deride, and act in defiance of. And since then, any formal type of social organization (except the state or one's big corporate employer, funnily enough) scaled higher than the nuclear family is something that's to be seen as suspect. And now the family itself is under this same type of attack. So, by all of this, the notion that one must defer authority and experience in spirituality to a reputable grand master or high priest or even a humble teacher with a lot of sweat equity under his or her belt, is something to be harshly rejected; because after all, it's an affront to modern sensibilities! There's no question why the vast majority of those butting their nose into occultism these days have no clue what they are doing. In fact, they probably pride themselves on this, though likely that part takes place subconsciously. In our Brave New (Woke) World, Truth is subjective and everyone is their own pope. The legions of astral critters chomping at the bit out there in the shadowy mists must absolutely adore this arrangement.

4. With this arrangement of inverted and broken-down social hierarchies being the norm now, most attempts to organize a group of seekers along sane principles and a proper baseline respect of knowledge and skill, is bound to devolve into chorus of shrieks, howls, and general psychodrama. The so-called "alt spirituality" scene, the place where those interested in occultism tend to flock, are the kind of people who were raised by the TV, online social media, and the sort of mind-rotting garbage that passes for "education" in today's government indoctrination centers. In other words, the kids sure weren't raised by knowledgeable and caring elders, much less ones they've personally met face-to-face. As a result, when the misguided moderns and postmoderns dive head-first into things like occultism and the attempt to venerate the Old Gods, they're bound to see things like deities, spirits, spiritual powers/attainments, psychic abilities, ect. like they are pokemons or power-ups they easily grab in their favorite video game. No one is around to teach them otherwise, and even if they were, their knowledge would surely be spat upon with puerile defiance.

5. I think the relative anomaly this is JMG's Ecosophia group/commentariat , helps illustrate some of my above points. Through years of JMG's diligent comment-weeding and troll-banning, we have a nice little group of respectful and open-minded people who can respect expertise and knowledge without falling into the opposing extreme of blind guru worship or devotional madness (typical Piscean pitfalls). This I think might be good template of how spiritual order gets reestablished in the Aquarian Age. But most seekers today aren't fortunate to have found a group like this. Or they lack the character and maturity to behave courteously in such a group.

6. No matter how much I rant about how occultism today is too dangerous for most people, those curious people are going to do it anyway. And may the universe have mercy on their souls when they screw up big or just do something really stupid. I've been taught that the Gods don't really have a plan for this, or really any sort of systematic mitigation process in place. The notion that most of the Gods are uncaring is another factor that's brought on my new round of religion shopping. The Eastern religions in particular all tend to be anchored around transcendent principles that aren't dependent on mythological particulars and peculiarities from 3000 years ago.
causticus: trees (Default)
This is something I've been thinking about a lot as of late; the notion that the system of ethics and morality that governs our lives today in the contemporary West, is based not on Sacred Natural Law principles (what I'd term Ancestral Law), but rather a negative ethos based on the rejection of our older value system, which is the medieval European social order.

The so called 'enlightenment' period of Western intellectual culture which followed the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, largely revolved around the rejection of Clergy and Nobility. Once Roman Catholic church authority was kicked to the curb, next came the various dogmas, theology, and moral presuppositions of mainstream Christianity as a whole.

Now, it doesn't help much here that Christianity itself is antinomian* in character, owing to the fact it rose in opposition of a preceding social order, which was that of the imperial Roman system of polytheistic cults. The old 'pagan' system derived its ethics and morality from various wisdom and mythological traditions which accumulated over a very long period of time; a composite umbrella tradition comprised of divine revelations from myriad sages, oracles, seers, bards, lawgivers, mystics, and other wise men.

So once Christianity was finally jettisoned from the intellectual leading edge of the rapidly-modernizing West, what exactly was there to fall back on? To be fair, the various liberal intellectuals did try to revival the classical Greek and Roman values, but only really in a rationalistic manner, one devoid of any divine pretenses. No one but a tiny handful of weirdos and eccentrics did anything super radical like worshiping the old gods once again! So what we were left with was a dry rationalistic intellectual culture that effectively left anything remotely numinous and magical in the hands of the various competing Christian churches. And the churches themselves were going in a rationalistic, a-numinous direction. No exalted person of 'enlightenment' consequence was really all that interested in renovating and re-distilling the ancient Divine Law for modern times (Thomas Taylor shall get a shout-out here); rather they were more fixated on what they were against rather than what they were for.

What we have today that passes for ethical values is almost entirely negative in nature; it's the ethics of what the individual deserves not to have done to them (the basis of 'negative rights'); very little is said about the duties and responsibilities the individual has to the social order (reciprocity). The infantile ravings of pseudo-intellectual vandals like JJ Rousseau illustrate this general attitude loud and clear. Heirs to Rousseau's 'tradition' (if we dare call it that) like the great scoundrel Karl Marx and his long line of followers, also had zero intention of building anything, much less anything sacred and time-tested. Those on the other side of this coin, like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand, had little to offer in response beyond intellectualized vulgar romanticism of various 'noble savage' fantasies (think: both Warrior and Merchant freed from any obnoxious restraints).

Fast forward to today and we can see precisely how this Lawlessness has been manifesting and wreaking havoc upon 'postmodern' Western civilization. If I may say, the only thing that may save us from total ruin is a rediscovery and re-presentation of the ancient Sacred Laws. Imagine the Delphic Maxims** being taught in elementary schools (Yeah, not gonna happen, as virtue*** and mental slavery mix like oil and water).

Finally, the positive: We do indeed have an Ancestral Law; one that comes from a multitude of sources and cultures which have fed into today's Western civilization. Our 'ancestors,' the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Teutonics, Celts, among others, have lots of interesting and insightful things to say on Divine Law and human nature.

__

*Yes, I'd say that Christianity is rather antinomian. The New Testament scriptures barely contain anything that could be construed as law-giving tradition; thus Christians end up punting the legal ball to the Old Testament in search of moral precepts. Of course, thanks to the rabble-rouser Paul of Tarsus, Roman Christians (and all the subsequent offshoots of the Roman Church) have always had a rather awkward relationship with the Mosaic Laws, which is a specifically Jewish code of religious laws. Remember that before the rise of Christianity, the Jews were little more than the inhabitants of a marginal Levantine polis; one of little consequence to the rest of the great Mediterranean civilization of the time, beyond the several diaspora communities they had in a handful of Roman cities. And thus their ancestral laws are of little relevance to the rest of the traditions which form the foundation of Western civilization.

**Meditating on these numinous precepts and aphorisms raises the seemingly-obvious notion that Athens indeed has no use for Jerusalem.

***Here I specifically mean Arete, not the warmed-over, secularized fire and brimstone craziness that passes for 'virtue' today.
causticus: trees (Default)
From a conversation I was having in a chat recently:

In my own view, Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul of the Christian tradition) would seem to be a rather tragic personage, and on his own abilities and personality, a sort of pseudo-knower (Gnostic). Granted, he must have been quite wise and intuitively-gifted, and probably had a fair number of profound spiritual experiences of his own. However, like many other failed initiates of his era, it seems apparent that he never bothered to master any of the systems of practice he had been involved with prior to starting his own cult (classic blunder of failed initiates). And thus he never effectively dealt with his own ego issues prior to having the bright idea (on the Road to Damascus, surely) of starting his own religion. And predictably, the cult he did found ended up being permanently tainted by his own ego-flaws. Paul could be seen as a classic example of the junior initiate who betrays the mysteries by sharing some of the teachings with the masses; which he most certainly did when he dumbed down some of the inner teachings (which he undoubtedly pilfered from whatever mystery cults he did actually belong) into into silly parables and simple doctrinal talking points. He would have called these digestible tidbits, 'milk for babes.'

Yes, it seems Saul was a rather complicated character. He was caught between two worlds, the Jewish and Hellenic (Platonic, to be more specific), and as a result had an inner identity conflict he tried to resolve though the hybrid cult he ended up trying to spread all over the Mediterranean. I suspect that earlier in his life he was an avid reader of both Plato and Philo's Jewish take on Plato's philosophy. And as I alluded to above, he probably also belonged to one or more Hellenic mystery cults, likely each with a Platonic or Neo-Pythagorean core theme; his lifetime and geographic region would have made a plausible case for him possibly having been a student of the great 1st century CE Neopythagorean sage Apollonius of Tyana, or perhaps a student of an offshoot school of his.

So at some point Saul had the bright idea of trying to convert fellow Jews to his own peculiar, rather dualistic and partially-Judaized interpretation of Platonic doctrines. And when that mostly failed he took his strange new cult doctrine to the non-Jews; mostly the Hellenes of various Anatolian cities of the Roman Empire. And for one reason or another, disaffected Hellenes were eventually joining his cult in droves, though in the letters we're clued into the probable reality that the laity and clergy were taught very different doctrines. In other words, the common rabble, with their vulgar, wordily understanding of reality, were starkly differentiated from the initiates who had tasted the first fruits of Gnosis. At this point in early Christianity, the Knowers and Hearers (to use the old Pythagorean organizational model) were members of the same Church body. At the new religion spread around further and gained more members it started schisming off into different sects. Undoubtedly, there were many hearers who were deemed unsuitable for initiation into the ranks of knowers, but that didn't stop them from thinking they had things figured out on their own, and the more egocentric among them would go off and forms their own churches, sans-knowers. And we all know how history proceeded from there.

I would agree with Nietzsche's assessment of Pauline Christianity being 'Platonism for the people.' This does indeed seem like what Saul was attempting to accomplish in spreading his new cult ideology around the Eastern parts of the empire. But this all raises the question, what did Saul actually himself believe? My best guess is that his beliefs were a combination of what I mentioned above (Judaic Platonism), coupled with a grab-bag of mystery school doctrines which were circulating around during the 1st century. Two primary ideas he would have understood were, (1) the cycle of rebirths human souls experience over countless lifetimes, and (2) the Precession of the Equionixes, which is the esoteric doctrine which informs on the Astrological Ages we experience here on Earth. A thorough understanding of the latter doctrine would inform the initiate that humanity at the time was entering a long 'dark age' and thus the next 6,000 years or so would be a time of sorrow, ignorance, crass materialism, degeneracy, non-virtuous living, and a whole host of other spiritual ills. In other words, a terrible time to incarnate on this planet. Perhaps to Saul, the best viable alternative would be to gain sufficient Gnosis in order to ascend into 'The Kingdom of Heaven' which really was just his own quasi-Judaized way of referring to Plato's realm of Perfect Forms. The idea was, "we must get out NOW, before it's too late!!" And here Saul conveniently borrowed the immanency and urgency of Messianic Jewish time-perception and incorporating it into his own bastardized set of public teachings. He may of purposefully withheld the (true) doctrine of reincarnation from the Hearers, possibly thinking that telling the truth would undermine the sense of urgency he was trying to convey to his followers. Though some of the later, more mystically-inclined Church Fathers like Origen (along with many of the so-called 'Gnostics') would openly profess the reality of reincarnation. Again, the problem with the teaching of reincarnation is that it undermines and subverts the sort of microscopic time scales Abrahamic religions revolve around (this is the #1 reason why the post-Nicene Roman Church tried so virulently to expunge this doctrine from the written record). If there are indeed countless lifetimes available to a human soul to grow and evolve, then the message of "Immediate Salvation in this very lifetime, noowwwwwww!!' is rightly seen as being immensely infantile, especially when foisted upon less-mature human souls.

In summary, I believe Saul of Tarsus was a failed initiate of the higher mysteries and an ardent popularizer of Platonism (or rather, his own understanding of Platonism). He tried in vain to share some of these teachings with the masses and as a result ended up creating countless more problems than he solved. Hell, even the New Testament (a direct product of Paul's teachings) warns against this very act!!

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
-Matthew 7:6

As we know, the original core of initiates that constituted the leaders of early Christian movement were eventually trampled underfoot by the uninitiated literalists and dogmatists who later took over the church and remade it in their own cruddy image.

What a tragic figure indeed Paul was!
causticus: trees (Default)
Numenism? What in the heck is that? Have I finally lost it?

So yeah, I just conjured a neologism out of thin air. Well, it's more like I made it up many months ago and have been sloshing the term around in my head as a potential label for my own particular religious belief and practice.

Now a casual observer might simply call me a 'pagan' after learning the basic gist of what my spiritual worldview is. I believe in multiple gods and most certainly posit a pluralistic way of recognizing and conceptualizing the world's many religious traditions. But really, I hate the term 'pagan'; I despise it for a plethora of reasons. I won't go into the quite lengthily details on that here, as many of my older posts illustrate that position quite clearly, if I may say so. (Just click the 'paganism' tag and see so for yourself, if you are so inclined)

Recently I started thinking deeply on a religious concept that was a key component of the early Roman religion, before it became almost completely Hellenized. The central concept is 'Numen' which is a very general term for any spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place. In other words, the word Numen can denote a god or goddess (usually a localized manifestation of), a spirit, a demigod, the general energy or 'vibe' of a particular place, the vital energy of living beings and objects, ect. As some examples, think of an all-encompassing term like "Kami" in Shinto, the indigenous Japanese religious tradition, and also the "Teotl" of the indigenous Mesoamerican religion. On that, the plural of Numen is Numina. The term carries both animistic, polytheistic, and spiritualitic undertones, yet it's flexible and vague enough not to get pigeonholed into any one reductionistic category (modern-era pseudo-intellectuals do this to a fault).

So I figure a very old word shall be new again. Anyone familiar enough with linguistic memetics might know that a label or piece of terminology carries a lot of memetic content. And the more a term has been used over and over in recent times, the more memetic baggage it has attached to it, and often very unhelpful and misleading baggage. The more baggage, the increased likelihood of the average person associating the terminology-in-question with things you might not have in mind.

Numen? Numina? Numenism? Yeah, very few people have heard of this. So mentioning this term will likely draw a blank stare from some random person I mention it to. And this is a good thing, for the purpose of what I'm getting at. No baggage! Fresh start! How about that?

Now, how does one become a Numenist? It's pretty simple. All one needs to have is a basic belief or recognition of the existence of Numina. That's all. Beyond that there's a mathematically grand set of possibilities one could explore to craft their own personal/unique variety of Numenism. As of right now, the Numenist umbrella is a religion-of-one, i.e. my own religion. And I'd be perfectly happy if it never went beyond one. At the same time, I wouldn't mind of other people adopted this fresh label and did something interesting, or even spiritually-fulfilling with it.

In a series of follow-up posts I'll be elaborating on my own 'school' (if we could call it that) of Numenism. But for now Numenism is just a word, and a rather vague one at that.
causticus: trees (Default)
Short answer: Hell No.

Long-winded answer:

The notion that polytheistic traditions of yore are somehow a direct refutation of the kind of religious hierarchy we find in... say... various Christian churches, is an idea that is quite popular among many self-styled "pagans" of this current era. Of course this is an erroneous and baseless idea.

It seems that so many people in this era who are attracted to ‘paganism’ flock to it because of the perceived ‘lack-of-hierarchy’ or something along those lines. Neopagans of various stripes do a bang-up job convincing themselves that the pre-Christian religions and their practitioners lacked hierarchical structure and were categorically opposed to the entire concept. Umm, no. In reality, the neopagans, who are usually some combination of naïve and rebellious youths, and sometimes outright misfits who fail to make any headway in the competence hierarchies of normal society, are just shopping around for a ‘religion’ they believe to be the opposite of the (likely) Christian environment they were raised in, or some other type of hyper-structured (and possibly dogma-based) upbringing that left a bad lasting impression on them.

Of course the idea that pre-Christian folk religions lacked hierarchy is a totally ahistoric view, and quite ridiculous to those of us who have actually done the relevant homework on this. I often quip the actual neopagan worldview (and obnoxious reconstructionists that I also class as neopagans) who like to make this claim is actually much closer to that of the Protestant Christians they’re under the impression they are running away from (not quite!!), than anything resembling an ancient culture where honoring the gods was the norm.

The second major thing that might give them the impression of non-hierarchy, is that, in practice modern polytheistic movements are actually not very hierarchical owing to the fact that the movement as a whole is so small, niche (compared to the big popular religions) and geographically scattered all over the place; and to boot, it’s subdivided into many different sub-movements based on differing folk traditions. Such small numbers means the lack of resources to establish and sustain brick-and-mortar polytheist religious institutions, which seems to make it appear as there aren't real clerical/priestly hierarchies (though this isn’t really true once we scratch beneath the surface).

This is aslo the major reason why pagan/polytheist spaces seem to be so chock full of Leftists (i.e. people's whose true religion is modern-day secular-left ideology) wearing ‘pagan’ skinsuits. The broader movement seems to attract mostly the wrong type of people, as opposed to genuine seekers and devotees seriously interested in honor the gods, and placing the honoring of the gods above whatever petty contemporary secular political ideology-of-the-week happens to be favored at any given moment. Organizations without clear leadership, a strict vetting process for leadership positions, and a clearly-defined, tradition-faithful knowledge base that can’t be quickly rewritten or memory-holed on a whim, are super-easy for entryists to subvert and pervert. The entryists easily use their tried-and-true emotional bullying and gaslighting tactics to strongarm the typically-easygoing founder of the original group to bend to their will and let them hijack the group.

Finding polytheists these days who are serious and rightly put religion over politics seems to be like finding a needle in a haystack. They do exist though and thankfully I've found a few great people to interact and exchange ideas and insights with.

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