The Christian captivity of any notion of "heathenry"

**Lutiferre** · 10-27-2009, 03:39 PM

I wanted to open this thread simply as a point of criticism, not against the teachings as such of any of what you call heathenry, but against the very designation of there being such a thing as heathenry, and against the mandate for spending even a second on such a notion.

The thing I want to say is very simple. If you are not Christians, if you reject Christianity, then you also reject heathenry, and you also acknowledge that no is more heathen than another. Because to say that you are a heathen when you are not a Christian, is to miss the fact that with a real rejection of Christianity comes the cognition of the absolute worthlesness of any terms such as "heathenry"; which imply the division between those in ignorance and those in truth; those Christians and those unupdated; the absolute truth and the perverted and corrupted outsiders which are all deficient in their knowledge of truth. As long as you center the division in history between self and other when it comes to cult, indeed on Christianity, then you still posesses a Christian mindset, you still assign a primacy and uniqueness of Christianity, and possibly other religions as well, of your own arbitrary choice. This has no value whatsoever given that Christianity is itself heathen, itself pagan, for a true non-Christian appreciation of self and other, in cult; it is not something that hinges on Christian synthesis or sentiments, only so for those still breathing in the Christian selfawareness.

This notion, of course, reduces itself to nothing when you reject Christianity, because it is itself a condition of Christian selfawareness, which is utterly irrelevant to a non-Christian phronema which you haven't acquired. You are still living in captivity to the Christian phronema, to the Christian division between "everything that is not Christian" and that which is Christian.

In truth, if Christianity is rejected, or at least, if this Christian mindset, to the extent that it still occupies the minds of non-Christians, is purged out and taken up from it's roots to wither away, Christianity is itself no more and no less heathen than anything else. Indeed then, if you reject Christianity, then from your point of view Christians should be heathens and pagans just as much you (because nothing else exists), if not more than you, because you still live in captivity to notions you deem yourself unheathen, which is itself a notion that is utterly incoherent and irrelevant, and so too becomes the distinction of who is more or less so; all that remains then are you own private conceptions in all their modernity and detachment from all actuality of authentic non-Christian historical self-understanding into the Christian selfawareness that permeates your minds.

It becomes interesting to note that you are all, on that note, repeating a Christian historicism and selfawareness, defeating the creed who is somehow wrong, which can be reduced to falsehood (the Christian who imported semitic filth into the religious affirmation of the incompatible and right people; your own - or, alternatively, for the Christian, heathens, non-Christians), while you are somehow right, which translates to the absolute truth value (the untainted and noble heathens who will have no Semitic influence; or for Christians, Christianity itself and it's actual adherents).

A kind of absolute division between one and other in terms of cult, and spirit, which simply does not exist from a truly non-Christian standpoint, except as a cheap repetition of a really Christian awareness, exclusivism and mutual division, rather than the more historically authentic mass of indistinct pluralism and interexchange of the plurality of religious and spiritual circulation, of which it is completely indifferent to any exclusivistic viewpoints, that are only really reflections of a repetition of Christian historicism in a so-called heathen version. It is Christian selfawareness turned against Christianity.

**SuuT** · 10-27-2009, 04:29 PM

If you substitute your use of the term Christian with Heathen in your treatise, you come closer to actually saying something.

In other words, one could take the same axiomatic approach, invert your qualifiers, and it would appeal to Heathens as opposed to Christians and the notion that Christianity contains all Heathen attributes in the highest expression of their truth.

**Liffrea** · 10-27-2009, 04:47 PM

Sorry Lutiferre but if there is a point in that lot it’s way over my head….

**Lutiferre** · 10-27-2009, 05:03 PM

Originally Posted by SuuT

If you substitute your use of the term Christian with Heathen in your treatise, you come closer to actually saying something.

In other words, one could take the same axiomatic approach, invert your qualifiers, and it would appeal to Heathens as opposed to Christians and the notion that Christianity contains all Heathen attributes in the highest expression of their truth.

You exactly commit the error I was commenting on and blindly continue exactly the thing I was criticizing without even noticing it

What I was criticizing is the very way in which you use the word "Heathen", which I believe is ultimately meaningless, self-refuting, not "heathen" teaching, which itself presupposes the very notion I was criticizing and begs the question to the point of reducing itself to a circular fallacy.

Originally Posted by Liffrea

Sorry Lutiferre but if there is a point in that lot it’s way over my head….

Read it again.

up

**SuuT** · 10-27-2009, 05:25 PM

I apologise, Lutiferre. You are right. Your treatise is perfectly lucid, Heathenry is a sham, you have a godlike grasp on truth and I am off to wipe my ass with my Doctoral degrees in Philosophy and Education.

**Lutiferre** · 10-27-2009, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by SuuT

I apologise, Lutiferre. You are right. Your treatise is perfectly lucid, Heathenry is a sham, you have a godlike grasp on truth and I am off to wipe my ass with my Doctoral degrees in Philosophy and Education.

If you had understood even the repeated keywords in all its chaotic confusion, you wouldn't have a need for lucidity.

**Electronic God-Man** · 10-27-2009, 05:54 PM

You said a lot of unnecessary crap, but...

I'd agree that the term "heathen" should be used in contrast to "Christian", as it has been throughout history. I wouldn't want to follow any path that defines itself through not being something else and "heathen" does seem to imply "not Christian".

I wish there was a better term. We won't find one. It wasn't a unified system. No one knows how the "heathens" referred to themselves collectively. Most likely they simply considered themselves "the people" and believed in "their Gods".

**Psychonaut** · 10-27-2009, 06:06 PM

Just as Heidegger spoke after reading Sartre, there is but one appropriate word: dreck.

**Lutiferre** · 10-27-2009, 06:17 PM

Writing in confusion and ambiguity is the best way to write for a (in any case) pessimistic scenario of oneness in mind with those it's addressed to.

**SuuT** · 10-27-2009, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by Soten

I'd agree that the term "heathen" should be used in contrast to "Christian", as it has been throughout history. I wouldn't want to follow any path that defines itself through not being something else and "heathen" does seem to imply "not Christian".

...:confused2:

All spiritual traditions have an internal and an external: Heathenry is no more defined in virtue of not being Christian than the Christian is by not being Heathen. And the fact remains that the one is not the other, although Lutiferre would have every Heathen truth sucked into the ravenous maw of Catholicism.

... It wasn't a unified system.

One of the substantive differences between Chritianity and Heathenry, then as well as now.

No one knows how the "heathens" referred to themselves collectively.

Sure we do: Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, etc.

Most likely they simply considered themselves "the people" and believed in "their Gods".

Not so simple at all, though.