Religious Syncretism and Heathenry

[Loddfafner]

I am happy to toast Cernunnos along with the Norse deities as the Gods of my blood. I also acknowledge spirits of place, who in America might be relics of the Indian peoples. My immediate ancestors have had a longstanding relationship with the Chumash spirits in particular.

[heathen_son]

Also, it's incredibly dangerous to summon gods from different pantheons as they usually don't get along with each other.

I wouldn't know, not being a Wiccan and feeling happy enough sticking with a single reconstructed ethnic worldview.

They would also probably be arguing over who gets the soul when you die. Your soul probably can't go back and forth between the deitys' realms (afterlife worlds/ final resting place).

Assuming you have a soul, assuming the gods want it, and assuming they can claim ownership of it. Assumptions that fit well with Christianity, but not assumptions I am personally inclined to accept from reading Germanic sources.

Blasphemy isn't really much of a Christian thing. In its essence, it means doing something towards a god(s).

While "doing wrong towards religion" is not just a Christian concept, the fluid nature of pagan religion is evident in the lore, and suggests that gods rose and fell, and that the "pantheons" of distinct cultural groups were not in a position of competition with each other.

Blasphemy was not sticking to custom (e.g. for a Seubi chief to walk unbound into the sacred site, or for a man who was not a priest to look upon the image of Nerthus), not worshipping another deity.

Hedeby was a powerful settlement that was both Christian and Pagan. There is no evidence to suggest that they didn't get along.

http://www.archeurope.com/_texts/00049.pdf

[Aemma]

That's the problem with every pagan religion. Personally I think there is literally only one Pantheon of Gods, with a Sky Father (who the Hebrews would call Yahweh) and lesser deities. Every culture and nation has interpreted the God(s) differently which is where we get different religions. It may sound somewhat new agey but I don't see it that way.. at least the Romans & Greeks would have agreed with me.

But the thing is there is not only "a sky god" who is a common god in many cultures. And don't get me started on YWHW because he rightfully belongs to a cult for monotheists.

But coming back to the sky god, if you think about Germanic/Norse heathenry, Thor, the sky god par excellence, was replaced by a warrior god, Odin. The lore shows how the overall cult changed over time: the elementals (Jotnar) gave way to the more agricultural gods (the Vanir) and then to the more warrior-like gods (the Aesir).

As for the notion of a supreme god, some polytheists interpret the gods in this manner but not all. Some polytheists recognise a certain equality of the gods, if you will, where there is no notion of a supreme deity and lesser deities.

.....

[Argyll]

Fuck this bullshit.

[Argyll]

So basically all the Celts who ever lived under Romanisation, and worshipped the likes of Hercules-Ogmios or Minerva-Belisama, are fucked, yes?

That's a good few centuries worth of Celtic souls from Iberia, Britannia, Gaul, Rhaetia, Northern Italy, the Danubian Provinces, and Galatia that you've just written off. Sounds like bollocks to me.

Yes, they should be fucked because they strayed from their true deities. That's only fitting for those that leave their true deities. But maybe the Roman deities were sympathetic to those wretched and accepted them.

The problem with a lot of Celtic stuff is... Where do pantheons begin/end?

Celtic lore is categorized and made neat and clean like the Germanic and Greco-Roman lore. Many deities overlap with each other and it's not very clear.

It's like a certain Germanic tribe adopting Epona, a Celtic horse goddess (as I have mentioned before).

Our ancestors were pagans and individuals, not strict and dogmatic people who had to rigidly adhere to a mythos.

If they want to go and worship deities not from their people; fine. But they are contributing to the downfall of their culture and the rise of multiculturalism.

I wouldn't know, not being a Wiccan and feeling happy enough sticking with a single reconstructed ethnic worldview.

Lol, you fuckwit. I'm not Wiccan.

Assuming you have a soul, assuming the gods want it, and assuming they can claim ownership of it.

First of all, what is the point in having a religion if you don't have a soul?
Second of all, if the gods didn't want it, then why would they bother getting worshippers?
If they couldn't claim ownership over it, then why would they care at all about us?

Assumptions that fit well with Christianity, but not assumptions I am personally inclined to accept from reading Germanic sources.

Germanic isn't the only heathen path.
If you say "I will kill Odin and take his place," don't expect him to be nice to you.

While "doing wrong towards religion" is not just a Christian concept, the fluid nature of pagan religion is evident in the lore, and suggests that gods rose and fell, and that the "pantheons" of distinct cultural groups were not in a position of competition with each other.

They may not have been in direct conflict with each other, but today, they're having to fight over worshippers. With my personal communions with The Morrigan, she's not very happy with ANY religions that have taken place on her people's land.

Go ahead and make fun of that and question it. I don't give a fuck what people on this forum think, anymore.

[qoute]Blasphemy was not sticking to custom (e.g. for a Seubi chief to walk unbound into the sacred site, or for a man who was not a priest to look upon the image of Nerthus), not worshipping another deity.

Hedeby was a powerful settlement that was both Christian and Pagan. There is no evidence to suggest that they didn't get along.

http://www.archeurope.com/_texts/00049.pdf[/QUOTE]

[RagnarLodbrok666]

Why stop there? Seeing as how West Europeans are mostly of pre-IE origin, you mine as well reject all those Astiatic, alien Indo-European Gods and stick to some Basque-like Megalithic religion. That's why this "Folkish" stuff seems silly to me.

This is what I meant, I said that Mercury sounds just like C. Von Hoffmeister. For dismissing the common Nordish, Mediterrean and Slavic kinship and traditional paganism as having nothing to do with our peoples history.

Yes Von Hoffmeister the Stalin worshipping futurist in that link.

[Mercury]

Well that's a coincidence because I'm also a Stalin worshiping futurist.

Yes, they should be fucked because they strayed from their true deities. That's only fitting for those that leave their true deities. But maybe the Roman deities were sympathetic to those wretched and accepted them.

That reminds me of the Christian mindset. Either follow the true God or your soul is fucked. What happens if some of those Celtic gods were made-up deities or merely a dead King who was deified? You would be worshiping a fake being and your soul would have nowheres to go in the afterlife.

[heathen_son]

Germanic isn't the only heathen path.

Once you grow up a bit and stop acting childishly, my advice to you Argyll, would be to go and actually research pagan cultures properly. Find out who the authors are that write to academic standards and stand up to peer review. Then, once you've got a bit more understanding about the subject, you will stop embarassing yourself and can contribute more postitively to discussions.

Until then, I don't think you'd recognise a heathen "path" if it slapped you round the head with a whetstone.

[Argyll]

Once you grow up a bit and stop acting childishly, my advice to you Argyll, would be to go and actually research pagan cultures properly. Find out who the authors are that write to academic standards and stand up to peer review. Then, once you've got a bit more understanding about the subject, you will stop embarassing yourself and can contribute more postitively to discussions.

Until then, I don't think you'd recognise a heathen "path" if it slapped you round the head with a whetstone.

It's funny that you think you can tell me what a heathen path is since I've been on several different ones since I was 10. I have researched various authors, paths, religions, and traditions. You might want to know actually know me before you start making accusations.

[Loddfafner]

Argyll,

Do you mean 1) that syncretism is inappropriate for yourself, and that you urge others to reconsider syncretism, or 2) syncretism is so offensive that you demand everyone else avoid it, and take grave offense at any attempt to open up the question?

Two problems have been raised about ethnic purity in pantheons one acknowledges: 1) that individual heathens today may have roots in multiple traditions, ie Celtic and Germanic (Aemma and me), and 2) that the original pantheons were themselves the products of cultural conflict and collision, and were not as coherent as nineteenth-century Romanticists believed (Osweo).

You raised a serious argument of your own, that there might be some important incompatibilities between the pantheons which could be dangerous to glibly wish away.

I see that, while the arbitrary, fanciful combinations of traditions by the fluff-bunny Wiccans strike me as silly and counter-spiritual, full reconstruction is impossible. But, I do want to know what scholars know with reasonable certainty based on archaeological and literary evidence, and what is a recent fantasy based on someone's personal vision.

In my own religious practice, I take the discoveries of scholars seriously but I also let myself be guided by my own visions. I do not accept claims of visions of others that are confused with, and asserted as, facts that scholars have established. Scholars have found evidence against the very Romanticist views of pre-Christian Europe that originally inspired a lot of us. Inconvenient discoveries, I think, should be taken especially seriously.

Now, is it better to have this discussion in a spirit of listening and learning from each other, or is it better to attack those who disagree, and express hostility towards real friends who take the risk of stating heartfelt feelings that may differ from yours?