One thing I often see, both from the reconstructionist and non-recon sides of Paganism, is a blind spot when it comes to sources that derive from Christian writers. I see this a lot particularly in Ásatrú and related Heathen faiths: when there’s a debate on something in the Sagas, or the Eddas, someone will inevitably chime in with the fact that most of the written lore comes down to us from Christian writers, who were writing after the official conversion from Heathen beliefs to Christianity, as if to shut down the discussion by impugning the sources.

The reality, of course, is that without the written sources, we would know next to nothing about the religion of the Norse. Indeed, much of our knowledge of Roman Pagan religion also comes to us from Christian sources, and the watchword from a Pagan or Heathen point of view could be, “If the Christians were against it, it’s probably a good idea.”

For example, a masterpiece of erudition on the subject of Roman religion by Marcus Terentius Varro, a book called Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum is lost. Its contents are known to us chiefly through Augustine’s City of God, in which he critiques Varro. But for Augustine, our knowledge of Varro would be much less, and thus our knowledge of the Religio Romana would be all the poorer.

This past weekend I spent a wonderful Saturday with my tribe as we celebrated Summer Meal (or, as we call it, sumarmál, at which we do a ritual called sigrblót: "offering for victory"; yeah, there's a lot of Old Norse gets tossed around). It's our tribe's version of May Day, sort of.

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about the ritual, which was terrific and moving, and which is probably very different from what most of you reading this are used to.

I'm not going to talk about the historical and literary origins of Summer Meal, or the place of ritual in pre-Christian Norse society.

I'm going to talk about the kids.

The ancient Romans were famously religious people. Their faith was expressed in myriad forms, both privately and publicly  and was tied to what we today would call the “secular” functions of the state. Notable (and not-so-notable) decisions were undertaken only after determining the favor of the Gods, and every home bore a shrine to the Gods of the household (the lares).

That said, the Romans differentiated between religio, which was the “proper” expression of religious practice that contributed to the peace and prosperity of society, and superstitio, which was taking religion to an uncomfortable and improper degree. When the Romans say you've gone off the deep end religiously, you should pay attention.

There was no hard and fast line between what was considered religio and what was superstitio. Like pornography in the modern era, “you know it when you see it”, but in the case of superstitio, it might be appropriate to add “in others”. Rarely do we see ourselves as going too far, being over-the-top, or otherwise anything other than completely appropriate in our religious observances. 

While it is the case that most Pagans who are inspired by Wicca tend to organize themselves into covens (when they choose to belong to groups beyond themselves at all), this is most certainly not a universal thing amongst those who are most often held to be under the Pagan/Heathen umbrella. Take, for example, the phenomenon of modern tribalism. 

Many people who practice Heathenry today organize themselves into tribes of one sort or another. This sort of organization into inangards and utgards (within-the-boundary and outside-the-boundary) is essential to the historical Germanic mindset, and sets the tone for many, if not most, Heathen forms of organization today. 

The recent events in Boston have pointed out, yet again, that there is a problem within the Muslim community that does not figure in most other faith communities. We don’t see many headlines that feature Mormons setting explosives at the end of marathon races, and the videos of Methodist neighborhoods cheering planes flying into skyscrapers in New York City are not to be found.

While many Pagans and Heathens in the United States and Europe are focused on Christianity as a perceived threat, the truth is that Islam is a much more real and present danger than even the most radical Christian sect aspires to be. And while there are indeed Christians who would like to see a theocracy established in the United States, they are a pitiful handful of fringe kooks, while there are hundreds of thousands, even millions of Muslims who support the aims of Islamist organizations who would impose their puritanical vision of Islam over the whole globe.

This is not to say that all Muslims are terrorists, nor is it to say that all Muslims support or are terrorists. But it can’t be denied that for the last two decades the majority of terrorist attacks have been inspired by Muslim ideology. 

I am not a fan of Christianity. It is a destroyer of cultures, religions, science, philosophy, and anything else that stands in its way of complete domination of the mind-space of everyone it encounters. 

I am also not a fan of eclectic Paganism. Taking deities and other beings out of their cultural context can sometimes lead to them becoming gross caricatures or over-simplified reductionist parodies of the historical reality. 

That said, I find that I must take issue with Sam Webster’s recent decree that "You Can't Worship Jesus Christ and Be Pagan". Indeed, I would posit that, in the context of an eclectic Paganism that allows for the integration of deities and other beings from widely disparate cultural and historical contexts, forbidding the inclusion of a deity from the Christian pantheon is not only arbitrary, but actually feeds into Christian ideas of uniqueness and implicit privilege. 

There is a tendency among some within the kulturgeist that is contemporary Paganism to make proclamations regarding who is and is not, or who can or cannot be, Pagan. Generally, these polemics take the position that, if someone holds a belief or affiliation with which the would-be Pagan Pope disagrees, then that person cannot, by definition, be Pagan.

Ásatrú went through a similar phase about 15 years ago, but a general attitude of “live and let live” has prevailed since, reinforced by a more general tendency on both sides of the various points of disagreement to tell would-be excluders to just shut up. In so doing, all sides have come to the realization that those with whom they disagree aren’t evil monsters out to promote some sort of political agenda while merely wearing their religion as a mask to cover their true aims. On both sides of any issue there are people who have much to contribute to the commonalities within the Ásatrú community, and to attempt to exclude them, ultimately harms the very people who yearn to ban those with whom they disagree on non-religious issues. 

This sort of “libertarian” (ahem) approach to Paganism makes the most sense both from a practical and from a philosophical point of view. Rather than desperately trying to create new (and, ultimately, inaccurate) definitions designed specifically to exclude a certain group or class of people, Paganism as a whole – an amorphous, impossible-to-define, whole – should, at the very least, not try to be in the business of telling people what they must or must not believe. 

I don’t have the right to say you’re not Pagan, and neither do you.  

It may seem odd to even ask the question, but it occurs to me that the answer to the question might not be as obvious and universal as it might seem at first. First, of course, we must define our terms. Paganism, as I've discussed in earlier posts, is a slippery entity indeed to define. Any single definition is inadequate, unless it is then burdened with so many arbitrary special cases to shoehorn in particular groups and paths that it becomes little more than a directory. For purposes of this discussion, I will settle for paraphrase of Justice Stewart’s definition of pornography: I know Paganism when I see it (and so do most of us).

That leaves us with the question of what is a Nature religion (or Earth religion, or any similar turn of phrase). Wikipedia tells us that it "is an academic term used to refer to those religious movements which believe that the natural world is an embodiment of divinity, sacredness or spiritual power." 

Recently, my fellow PaganSquare blogger Gus DiZerga made some rather pointed remarks about the intersection of politics and spirituality that I feel require some rebuttal. Mr. DiZerga is coming from an admittedly liberal/progressive/left-wing perspective, while I happily admit a conservative/libertarian/right-wing perspective. 

Aside from the material differences in our world-views (which are considerable), perhaps the chief thing that differentiates me from Mr. DiZerga is his willingness to declare that someone cannot be a Pagan (coherently) because of their political views. I don’t pretend to any such powers of defining thought-crimes for which the penalty is excommunication. 

There’s a bill currently wending its way through the House of Representatives; H.R. 592, the “Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2013”. (Hey, everyone likes "fairness", right?)

In fact, it’s set to be voted on tomorrow (Wednesday, February 13).

The gist of the bill is that churches and other religious organizations, which are currently not eligible to receive Federal disaster relief due to superstorm Sandy, would become eligible to receive it.

Over at the PJ Media Lifestyle section (who knew PJ media even had a lifestyle section?), Dave Forsmark has a piece extolling the virtues of a new self-published novel from one of his PJ Media colleagues. I’m not going to get much into his review of the book itself, mostly because I haven’t read it and have no plans to do so, but his essay leading into the review is so rife with misinformation and unsupported assumptions and conclusions, mostly at the expense of the Norse Gods, that I felt it necessary to respond.

Please note that this is not intended to be a Christianity-bashing article. Rather, the intent is to point out that Christianity is not some pure and good religion, and the Christian God is not somehow on a unique moral plane compared to other Gods and Goddesses, as Mr. Forsmark claims. The various crimes and failings of other faiths that he brings up are to be found in Christianity in spades, and so Christianity doesn't enjoy any special place among the world's religions. If anything, it has more than its share of wrong-doing.

Americans have a naïve view of religion. The religious freedom that is so ingrained in our tradition — and our Constitution — has morphed beyond tolerance to a sort of anthropomorphic acceptance of pretty much anything.

Okay, I just read yet another "Asatru for Beginners" book that makes the erroneous claim that Iceland was the heroic last holdout of Germanic Heathenry in Europe against the onslaught of Christianity, and I just can't take it any more. In the interests of the dissemination of fact, here's the actual timeline of Christianization in northern Europe. Naturally, dates are approximate in some cases, but these are the accepted dates among scholars.

Some individuals during the current wide-ranging discussion on Pagan identity make the argument that, even if there is no consensus as to what Paganism is, all Pagans should stick together for the sake of solidarity. Let us first ask the question, how should that solidarity, if it exists, be expressed?

If all “Pagans” are supposed to feel some level of solidarity with one another, then some level of support should be expected. But what sort of support? Good wishes? Signing a petition? Letters to the editor? Picketing the business? Paying the rent of the Dianic Wiccan until she can find another job? 

Expressions and expectations of solidarity can take many forms. Just where are we supposed to draw the line?

Today, January 16, is Religious Freedom Day, and has been proclaimed as such by the President of the United States since 1996. Barack Obama is no exception, and has dutifully issued a proclamation to that effect today. That statement says, in part:

Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose. 

That is the entirety of the definition of “religious freedom” within the proclamation, and that, I think, is a problem (and it is not a problem specific to Obama; both Clinton and Bush made similarly limited pronouncements in the past). Because religious freedom is about more than “just” worship. At its most basic, religion is about beliefs and practices, not merely that small subset of actions that falls under the rubric of “worship”. Indeed, the First Amendment is much broader in its protections:

Many people have expressed some trepidation that we, collectively, are even having the conversation about what it means to be “Pagan”. I think that part of the angst comes from the fact that many people who self-identify as “Pagan”, or who place others under the “Pagan” umbrella, don’t realize just how much diversity there is under that umbrella. They are familiar with their own way of doing things, and “all the other Pagans I know do it this way”, so they assume that everyone else does it that way, too. One finds this most often among Wiccans, and it’s difficult to fault them for the attitude, since Wicca casts such a large shadow. But it is most certainly not the only game in town.

First, to answer the rhetorical question posed in the title of this post, no, we don’t all worship the Goddess. Many of us, particularly historical reconstructionists and hard polytheists, don’t have a single “Goddess” or “God” in our cosmology. Freyja is Freyja, Isis is Isis, and Ceres is Ceres. They are not “aspects of the Goddess”, or “emanations of the ultimate female life-force” or anything like that. To us, they are distinct and unique beings with their own personalities, qualities, and complex natures. Still others see the Gods as Jungian archetypes, or merely as useful mythological creations with no objective reality. 

Does this mean that dualists, or Goddess-worshippers, are “wrong”? Not at all. It merely means that there is no consensus among those often found under the “Pagan” umbrella as to the nature or number of the Gods, and thus it is insufficient to form a definition of “Pagan” on that basis. 

There has been much talk of the question of Pagan identity of late. High-profile Pagans have given up the label, while others make the case that the Pagan label is still relevant. I would like to begin my own analysis of the subject with some thoughts on one facet of Pagan identity; the question of the “Pagan community”. 

The Pagan and Wiccan communities were outraged the other day when a small Mississippi newspaper, having collated information publicly available on the web, posted an interactive map showing the names and addresses of known Wiccans and Pagans across several counties in the state. This comes in the wake of several high-profile cases in Great Britain and Australia in which self-professed Witches were convicted of child molestation. 

When asked, the paper said that the information was all in the public domain, and that they felt they since they had the legal right to publish the information, they had the moral right to do so as well. “We feel it’s ultimately a matter of public safety,” a spokeswoman for the paper stated. “After all, parents should be able to know whether they are sending their kids to play in a house where there are witches present, and should know whether their teachers, babysitters, and, yes, neighbors, are witches.” 

One of the most common uses one sees for the runes in modern Pagan and Heathen literature is divination. There are “runic spreads” that are obviously based on Tarot cards, which can range from a simple “draw three runes for past, present, and future” to complex patterns of a dozen or more, each of which is drawn blindly and represents a specific aspect to a given question. What most don’t realize is that the question of whether the runes were historically used as a divinatory tool is actually hotly disputed among both scholars and modern-day Heathens. The origin of the claim that the runes were used as a divinatory tool comes from a passage in Tacitus’ Germania:

"A Merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!" -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

One of the Yuletide traditions that my family has enjoyed for many years is the making of the traditional bowl of Smoking Bishop. Smoking Bishop is a drink (a very alcoholic drink) from Victorian times that is served hot and mixes fruit, spices, and sugar for a heart-warming drink perfect for cold winters' nights. It's particularly good for families such as ours that celebrate both Yule and Christmas. Here's how I make it.

In the wake of the awful tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, many Christian and Jewish religious leaders are asking themselves, and attempting to answer the question, “How could God allow such an evil thing to happen?”

The fact that such questions are even relevant points to a very pointed difference between the theological conception of the divine as envisioned by the Abrahamic faiths and that envisioned by Pagan faiths.

The Abrahamic God is, at least in the modern conception, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent (all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good). Theologians have been wrestling with the question of how a deity that shares all three of those traits could exist, because they seem to be contradictory in a world where evil exists.