Rewilding and Paganism

Regenerative Culture Spiritual Technology
#21
In this conversation we also need to account for the impact of 'classical pagan belief' on the land...namely the desertificaiton of the mediterranean and the mideast.

You mean the Greeks? Why do you say they caused the desertification? Do you have any info to read about that?

I hope that didn't sound too poopy. Smiley But I mean it sincerely. I think the condition of the landbase tells us a lot about the sustainability of the religion/ethic/relationship of the people.

Every place has its own unique energies and spirits. Bringing your gods with you to a new land or worshiping gods that are at odds with the land certainly can cause a lot of problems.

Sigh. I can't quite articulate it, but somehow this particular subject leaves me with odd mixed feelings.

As we rewilders move away from our Taker ancestors ideas about the world and move back towards ideas more in line with the Leavers (our much older ancestors) we are bound to run into some mixed up feelings now and again. I know I certainly do!

#22

It should have said “did not hold sway”. The mythology greatly emphasizes the fact that the gods are as bound as we are to fate.

Yeah, that was me. Sorry if I sounded confrontational/overly critical. It is a nice piece.

I look at the history of the landbase and I see much conquering, claiming, and controlling of the land done by those same peoples.
Not entirely true. One group of Norse, the vikings, were about on par with the other cultures of the time in regards to violence, but not even they conquered land as a rule. The Norse traveled to the far east, and to north america, as far south as egypt, and had a beneficial relationship with the Sami tribes to the north (who lived like indiginous american tribes, and later suffered similar problems), with no evidence of attempted conquest.

The dichotomy you see is likely the interference/oversimplification of later scholars. Loki is one of the Aesir…a mischievous god, both boon and bane to the gods. Their relationship with him later sours, pitting him against them.
In all of this, there is no black and white. Gods and giants intermingle, work together, and coexist in many cases.

That Gods have replaced the thing they represent is something to think about, but they originated as a way to explain a phenomenon.
Thunder was Thor riding across the sky, lightning was his silver hammer flying, the tides came to be when he visited the hall of a giant who challenged him, among other things, to a drinking contest…in which the ocean was connected to Thors drinking horn. Sheet lighting is Freyja’s agricultural contribution, testing the rye with flint and steel. This came from the distinction between distant and relatively harmless sheet lighting, vs dangerous bolts. Thors weapon of war vs Freyja’s tool of peace.

This is the origin of religion/mythology itself…to explain the world.

Its a very complex mythology, and only Freyr, and to a lesser extent Freyja, were associated with agriculture.

The only real problem I had was that it is unfair to call them farming gods, when only two held that association, and then only among other things. Anything beyond that is me getting carried away, or a “by the way” aside.

I would like to note that I do not claim to follow this belief… I have a great deal of trouble believing in gods of anything. Spirits within everything is more comfortable for me. It is something I have a great deal of interest in, however, and the mythology resonates with me very much.

PS: (another BTW aside) the ancient Finns spoke of “Brother Moon” as noted in the Kalevala. This region has many parallels with the Norse, but more in touch with nature and animism. Though both are shamanic, ancient Sami and Suomi were far more so.

#23
You mean the Greeks? Why do you say they caused the desertification? Do you have any info to read about that?

Now we get to a failure of my scholarship. I personally have read that, and I don’t remember where. Probably Spell of the Sensuous? Maybe?

In any case, the anecdote that I remember: a greek fellow noted that the Shrines to the gods, traditionally placed in fertile, abundant places in the hills for good luck, even in his time now lay surrounded by withered vegetation, rocky slopes, and dry scrub.

I know most of us have read the same books here. Can anybody direct us to where I read that?

You know why I have mixed feelings about this conversation? Because, above all else, I value any connection with the Land above none at all. In this kind of conversation, “sustainability” can sound a lot like a stamp of approval, like a buzzword. “Your beliefs aren’t [sic] sustainable, bro. Sorry!”

Yuck.

My curiosity about what happened compels me to personally investigate this subject, but pooping on other people’s beliefs (other people who love the Land too) doesn’t thrill me.

Like Christians who reach an amazing vista in the Rocky Mountains, and say “Wow! We’ve reached God’s Country”, one apparently can love the land but not have a sustainable relationship with it.

#24

Not at all. Good to know you posted that!

Not entirely true. One group of Norse, the vikings, were about on par with the other cultures of the time in regards to violence, but not even they conquered land as a rule. The Norse traveled to the far east, and to north america, as far south as egypt, and had a beneficial relationship with the Sami tribes to the north (who lived like indiginous american tribes, and later suffered similar problems), with no evidence of attempted conquest.

Intriguing! I actually think the exceptions to this notion of “farming gods vs. nature gods” reveals as much as the notion itself. But I have to still point out, that a domesticated (albeit cosmic) cow brought the Norse gods into this world.

This is the origin of religion/mythology itself....to explain the world.

I agree with Joseph Campbell in this instance, that rather than mythology explaining the world, it brings us into accord with it. This connects to the Daniel Quinn’s notion that only the civilized obsess with asking “Why?”. Indigenous folks seem to ask “How - how do we act in accord with the community of life?”. Modern hierarchical folks need reassurance that a life of misery makes sense somehow, so they ask “Why?”. The whole “how the leopard got his spots” style of myth never just explains it - it means to tell us how to live.

The only real problem I had was that it is unfair to call them farming gods, when only two held that association, and then only among other things. Anything beyond that is me getting carried away, or a "by the way" aside.

Unfair? This makes me worry that calling them “farming gods” sounds like pooping on them. I experience a lot of rich story, metaphor, and wealth of meaning in Norse myths. Also, I see more than a couple references to hierarchy, and by implication, farming and domestication. Norse peoples had way more of a connection to the land than any of us. But how did we get to where we stand today? How did our stories change to excuse and rationalize a new relationship? I see the line we crossed as one of leaving other-than-human family - from our father the sun, to an All-Father Odin.

I would like to note that I do not claim to follow this belief... I have a great deal of trouble believing in gods of anything. Spirits within everything is more comfortable for me. It is something I have a great deal of interest in, however, and the mythology resonates with me very much.

I don’t know if you know it, but I have Danish ancestry, and have read about Norse mythology since I was I li’l tyke. So I understand your interest!

PS: (another BTW aside) the ancient Finns spoke of "Brother Moon" as noted in the Kalevala. This region has many parallels with the Norse, but more in touch with nature and animism. Though both are shamanic, ancient Sami and Suomi were far more so.

TOO COOL for school, man. I love it.

By the way, this may all read a bit disjointed, as I’ve got some multitasking going on. I enjoy reading your view on this issues, and the stories you have to tell about Norse people and their myths!

#25

Please dont refer to a living tradition as “ancient”. Just a little pet peeve of mine, the notion that somehow they are not still here (or there, as in this case).

#26
Unfair? This makes me worry that calling them "farming gods" sounds like pooping on them.
Not really. The problem is Freyr just happens to be associated with agriculture... he isn't [i]the[/i] unquestionable "god of grain". Without agriculture, he would still exist, in some form. It's just one of his aspects, and he is just one of many parts of the pantheon. To say they are gods of a farming culture would be fair, however. Kinda strange eh? They have little to do with farming, yet the culture that they were a part of was largely agricultural. Makes me wonder about the history of farming in the region.
I don't know if you know it, but I have Danish ancestry, and have read about Norse mythology since I was I li'l tyke. So I understand your interest!
I did not know that. Very cool. My mother is from Danmark, and my introduction to Norse mythology was through my grandfathers stories.
Please dont refer to a living tradition as "ancient". Just a little pet peeve of mine, the notion that somehow they are not still here (or there, as in this case).
Will do. It felt weird to phrase it that way to be honest. I mean, it [i]is[/i] an ancient tradition, but as you said, it is still very much alive. Do you have a connection to the region/culture? Most people wouldn't catch that.
#27

I’ve read the Kalevala when i lived in Suomi (Finland) and it indeed is a very animist epic. I only seem to realise that now that you mention it and i really want to read it again. I’ve been interested in myth since as along as i remember, but at that time i wasnt much aware of the animist perspective. You will find many animst myth outside of europe but inside europe everything is hidden/forgotten under lots of layers of domesticated myth.

#28

Another cool thing - you mention the gods as “bound to their fate” as much as peoples. This in fact stands out as one of my favorite aspects of hierarchical/agricultural religions.

Every belief system holds an incredible amount of wisdom, about a way of life. Dualistic good/evil belief systems will teach you a huge amount about the struggles, ecstasies and insights of that way of life. Three choice systems do the same.

So Norse religion, though casting it as a battle between order (norse gods) and chaos (nature giants, at the same time has a story to tell about the ultimate futility of imposing order on the world. Ragnarok represents the failure of Order, and the ultimate categorical rebellion of nature under the yoke of control. The Norse myth cycle admits we can’t really do it.

Much like Christianity says, the path of choosing good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, ultimately will destroy itself, with god sorting the good from the bad and then closing the curtains.

The eschatology (end times) aspect to hierarchical religions, to me, expresses their innate wisdom that they know this experiment in agriculture can’t last - that one can’t subjugate the wild and irrepressible land forever - that it can only end in disaster - and unless one casts an environmental cataclysm as a “moral victory” (which some make sure to do), the experiment doesn’t end with anybody having achieved anything at all, except their own doom.

When you find a belief system with an end times aspect, I think it speaks to this: in some way, the people’s dream selves know that their relationship with the land has a built-in countdown clock, for whatever reason. Unless they change to a more long-term sustainable lifeway, they will always acknowledge this somehow, even if only on the deepest level.

I haven’t explored this as much as the battle between the gods and giants though, so this may have some holes in it, but it sure explains a lot for me!

#29

Ooh, can I provide a visual aid?


Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory”

In the dream world (which surreal art like this is intended to depict), clocks lose their meaning… time as we know it ends and is lost to insect-eaten decay. The elemental landscape persists, eclipsing our vain instruments of enforced rationality.

#30

I’d like to think that in some distant past these elements were included by someone who saw the need to preserve that wisdom.

Ragnarök makes a great metaphor, if we take the ‘order vs chaos’ view prevalent in many written sources, for the collapse. Growing tension, coming to a final showdown, and great mutual destruction, but a new age begins.

Thor slays Jormundr, but later dies from the venom which that battle imbued him with. We have ‘beaten’ aspects of nature, but at what cost to ourselves?

Thor’s sons Magni and Modi, will survive the battle, the new gods of an era of peace. Not all is lost, it’s not the end of the world, its the end of an era.

This said, I am unsure about the duality present in the mythology, given the sources for much of the knowledge were Christians who openly undermine many aspects, and related much of it to their own religion.
Most of these sources pit gods vs giants, but forget about the other 7 worlds and other races within them. They give you Valhalla or Helheim, as heaven or hell, forgetting the many halls of the Aesir, and many layers of Helheim, some of which are not even a bad place to be.

Edit: I should also note that the fire giants which ride from Muspelheim destroy all people, except for two which Odin hid away, where else? In the forest. :slight_smile:

#31

I’ve never thought that the whole Order vs. Chaos interpretation held any water. Some of the Aesir continually show themselves to be just as much forces of Chaos as the Jotuns. Thurisaz, the fourth rune in the Futhark, can mean Thor the Thunderer and giants. Thor, of course, really is a giant. Odin becomes blood brother with Loki partially because they both share an aptitude for using less-than-honest methods to achieve goals. His various quests have to do with preserving the Aesir (i.e. delaying the foreseen Ragnarok), not necessarily preserving Order. Skadhi is a giantess who marries into the Aesir, her husband demanded as payment for the slaying of her father.

Basically, I see it more as two feuding tribes, and one of them happens to be on the side of humans.

#32

Just a word about the Jotuns in the world of contemprorary neo-paganism. There is an author named Raven Kaldera who is sort of the center of a movement of Northern Tradition Shamanism that actively embraces the Jotuns as the main powers they work with. They also take the view that many of the Jotun powers (and Alfar and other beings of Norse/Germanic cosmology) may represent older powers especially related to nature that were supplanted by the arrival of the Aesir worshippers. I think there’s even some speculation about the Jotuns being representation of animistic forces that Neolithic northern Europe had connection with. Raven also has some interesting history of shamanistic techniques from Northern Europe including Finnish, Norse, and Lapps.

The website is www.caldronfarm.com and check out the jotunbok section.

#33

pathfinder, your link is not working.

#34

my 2 cents, as someone who has dealt w/ the Aesir & Vanir for several years:

Willem, I think you’re spot on to point out the progression. Both the Aesir & Vanir have changed; they’ve changed since the Viking Age to now, and I see no reason to think that they hadn’t changed prior. Obviously, this can make it a little difficult to make broad sweeping statements about them.

I’ve never understand why a duality of Order vs Chaos has been drawn over the Aesir/Jotun relationship either. In my experience, no such relationship exists*.

As for the entire concept of “god(dess) of _____”, i’m no anthropologist, obviously, but I suspect that’s a very recent view spread from too many poorly designed & written role-playing games :wink:

Again, based on my experience, neither the Aesir nor the Vanir work like that. They have their own personalities and “feel”, which at times can lead to a superficial resemblance to “god(dess) of ____”, but that resemblance doesn’t go very deep.

However, I don’t see how I could dispute that Norse paganism, at least in the Viking Age, was a farmer’s religion. Even in the sense that it was also a king’s religion and a warrior’s religion and a trader’s religion, all of that ultimately and increasingly rested upon agriculture.

Myself, I find it more useful to ask, what can I learn from these relationships and beings? Granted, the Aesir & Vanir may want to teach me different lessons than the ones I actually learn from them, but… I’m fine with that. ;D

*Just to clarify, I very much see the trends of hierarchy in Norse paganism, however, I don’t necessarily see hierarchy as “Order”, neither do I necessarily see anarchy as “Chaos”.

#35
As for the entire concept of "god(dess) of _____", i'm no anthropologist, obviously, but I suspect that's a very recent view spread from too many poorly designed & written role-playing games

Quite right, though the source is really more from Victorian era writers and such. Not that the crappy RPGs helped.

However, I don't see how I could dispute that Norse paganism, at least in the Viking Age, was a farmer's religion. Even in the sense that it was also a king's religion and a warrior's religion and a trader's religion, all of that ultimately and increasingly rested upon agriculture.

This is one of the reasons I’ve always been more interested in Icelandic traditions of polytheism. The people who moved to Iceland, though they did have some small farming, got quite a large amount of their subsistence in fishing and to a lesser extent hunting. They also had a representative government, which although not really egalitarian was still much more democratic than any European country at the time. As such, their religion reflected these facts, and vice versa.

Since we’ve veered off specifically to Norse/Germanic traditions, it probably warrants mentioning that these cultures were far from homogeneous. Their subsistence methods varied, as did the political structures and cultural traditions. Some were certainly 100% farming people; others, not so much.

#36

In my experience, pagan and heathen are synonymous. They are used by many to cover nearly everything outside of christianity, judaism, and islam. I consider myself pagan, though my interactions with this earth are governed by beliefs that do not include gods or rituals inspired by past forms of paganism. I’m pagan cuz I’m not christian and still spiritual, I think the terms pagan and heathen are the only terms that could be fit under. Plus it bugs a lot of uptight christians. :wink:

Reading the icelandic sagas I got the impression that the reason their relationship was beneficial because the vikings were afraid of the Saami magic and so didn’t fuck with them too much. they negotiated a little more with them, as opposed to conquering them for long enough to make off with their valuable goods.

#37

Okay, a couple things.

Once again, I have no interest in pooping on someone else’s earth ethic. If you’ve found a way to make a relationship with Norse gods a nourishing one, then great. If it meant you changed something about the religion, great; if it meant you didn’t have to change a thing, because in your opinion it already works, great.

When we have these kinds of conversations, I prefer to have everything on the table. If you truly don’t care what I say about Norse religion, fine. If you do care, because you have received help and wisdom from the religion, and you don’t want someone pooping on it, then please tell me, rather than arguing the details. Because the details appear pretty consistently. And I’d rather not pin insects to a board in the name of “correctness”, not noticing that the insects still squirm and suffer.

As far as the soundness of “gods and goddesses of_______”, this concept goes back for as long as we’ve had civilized gods. The Romans took special note that each one of their gods had a greek correspondence. I haven’t said something new here; it doesn’t have anything to do with pop culture or role-playing games; you can find it appearing even with catholic saints and in other such appropriate contexts.

I don’t, myself, find much benefit between discriminating between hierarchy and order, or chaos and anarchy. To a civilized mind, I think those seem synonymous. I love semantics, but that goes a little far for me.

Perhaps I’ve just gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but I don’t think I have any more interest in following this conversation. It has begun to rub me the wrong way. I feel like much of what I’ve said above somebody else in this thread could have offered up themselves, if they felt safe and generous in this conversation. This feels too much like defending/attacking Norse religion.

#38

Well I’d personally prefer you stick with the conversation, Willem, since you’ve contributed some great stuff, but if it makes you uncomfortable at all then it probably isn’t worth it.

And as for the Romans, one of the reasons they were so quick to equate their gods and goddesses so easily with other cultures’, and labeled them as such was because they had divorced the worship of the gods entirely from any mythology. Most of the gods were simply worshiped out of habit. They instead historicized their mythology, swapping in kings and heroes where the gods and goddesses had previously been. It’s interesting to compare their history with a lot of the “history” the U.S. has today.

#39

huh

well, i had no intention of coming off defensive. frankly, you can poop over whatever you like as long as it’s not my food/drink :wink:

my relationship w/ the Norse gods is very mixed, and i have some pretty serious issues with some of them. mostly, i bring up that i actually have a relationship because all too often discussions like this tend to go to the same place time after time: scholarly, academic study of a dead religion. i just wanted to point out that that’s not a representation of my relationships to these guys, i have an active, living relationship, not a static dead one; and when it comes down to actually understanding what’s what, i think that makes a big difference.

re: hierarchy v order; chaos v anarchy; that actually draws a lot from my math training, any religious/philosophical applications came after that. which is to say that this isn’t something i tacked on as a semantic band-aid, so much as an application of an actual perspective on what constitutes hierarchy, order, chaos, anarchy.

i figured i had some decent perspectives to toss in this discussion, but i certainly didn’t want to shut it down. i have my own opinions on the subject, and i’m more than willing to admit that you (or anyone else) would be hard pressed to change to my mind. it’s taken a lot of time and searching to form those opinions! and i’d be the first one to admit that this isn’t something that’s easily reducable to pinning insects to a board, there’s far too much feeling and experience required for that. in fact, the only real point i had was just that: that trying to pin this shit down in a nice clearly labeled way with pretty, concise pictures is doomed to failure.

in short, i’m not interesting in either attacking norse religion or defending it. just trying to throw in my 2 cents.

sorry for the disruption.

#40

hey guys, no biggie. for some reason i’ve had difficulty communicating what i want to get out of this conversation. also i did get up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

i’ll think about this and come back to it when i’ve figured out my intention here. :stuck_out_tongue: