Remarks to the ECER 2023 in Riga Latvia

 On June 29-30, the European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER) met in Riga, Latvia. Here is the speech I gave at this gathering.

Hello.  I am very pleased to be with you today.  As most of you know, before the ECER there was the WCER (World Congress of Ethnic Religions).  I was at the first WCER  meeting in Vilnius in 1998 when it was initially called the WPC—the World Pagan Congress. I attended several meetings after that, in Athens in 2004 and Antwerp in 2005.  I am not a member of any ethnic religion or Pagan group, officially, but am a scholar with training in the history of Indian and Pagan European religions, who has had close relationships with the Asatru religion in Iceland, Romuva in Lithuania and Dievturi in Latvia, the last of which makes me especially happy to be here today.

In that first conference in 1998, we debated what name to use for the kind of religion we were involved with. The word “Pagan” was advanced as a way to indicate that we represent what came before Christianity in Europe and that we continue to suffer disrespect and suppression from Christian authorities. It was also mentioned that in modern times, Pagan often means a nature-oriented religion that allows for the worship of ancient gods. Others preferred “ethnic” as a way of indicating that the religious traditions under discussion were connected with particular places and peoples. Finally, the decision was made to accept the Ethnic Religion label as our official designation. I continue to prefer the term Pagan, so I ask you to forgive me if use this term today.

Today, as one of the only people here who was at the first meeting and who has what is now a long history of studying and supporting European Pagan or ethnic religions, I want to offer some thoughts on the future development of Paganism or ethnic religion in the years ahead.

Paganism reaches into the past to find spiritual meaning that can still be valid today.  We are thus all very concerned with preserving and protecting traditions from the past. However, all human life, all human culture, including religion, needs to evolve and develop.  If we look at any of the major world religions whether Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or others we can see that these religions change over time, often involving a lot of debate and discussion about what to keep from the past, what to put aside as no longer useful or meaningful, and whether to develop new things.  Early Hinduism practiced animal sacrifice, but this was later abandoned, and now we often associate Hinduism with strict vegetarianism. The Buddha told his followers that he was not a god and not to worship him, but over the centuries, the Buddha has been worshipped like a god. Therefore, we who are Pagans or follow ethnic traditions grounded in the past should not feel constrained to only repeat what has been done in the past, especially considering the difficulty in actually knowing and recreating what exactly people did and believed a thousand or ten thousand years ago.  We have to be humble about the past, because we have never been there. We have never met our ancient ancestors. We only have limited information about the religion of the past. We can and should take inspiration from the past, but not be trapped by it. It is great to visit the museum, but who really wants to live there?

This actually opens great possibilities for development of European Pagan religions. From the beautiful fragments of the past that we find in archaeology, in folklore, and other sources, we can create new visions and practices, taking inspiration from the past, but also recognizing that we live in a changing world with many sources of information that were not available a thousand years ago. If someone wants to create new religious music that is computer-based and electronic, not played on a kokles or kankles, we should not reject this just because it is not a thousand years old or even a hundred. We should see if it has spiritual meaning that connects to people today, and if it helps the tradition speak to modern times and not only ancient.

One particular challenge we have today is that we live in societies of increasing diversity. This creates questions for Pagan or ethnic religions about who should be allowed to participate in our religious activities or to obtain membership in our organizations. Some would say this should only be people with the exact same ethnic identity as the original creators of the religious traditions that we honor. I think this is wrong on several levels. First of all, historians and archaeologists can tell us that people in the past were actually more diverse than we might think. Tribal identities were fluid and changeable, and people migrated, moved, and mixed a great deal. So, the people of the past may not fall into the kind of neat ethnic categories that some like to imagine. Second, to survive today, our religions must reflect the societies we live in, unless we want our religions to be hostile fortresses where we keep out outsiders and live in a mental world of paranoia and resentment., which can easily degenerate into outright racism and white power fantasies.  I think there is a better way, which is to focus on maintaining and developing sacred traditions, not obsessing over who is involved in the traditions. If a black person, an Asian or a Roma feels a sincere interest in becoming a Czech or a Greek or a Norwegian Pagan, why not let them in?  If they are willing to learn the traditions and practice them with deep sincerity, are they not at least equally deserving as some white person with the right kind of ethnic surname who may be of poor moral character, limited intelligence and not care at all about the tradition?  Pagan or ethnic religions do not have huge membership. They need to grow.  And accepting people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds is one way to do that.

Finally, I want to call on all of you to consider that in ancient Pagan or ethnic religions, nature is sacred.  I believe that one of the best ways for our religions to unify and to also have positive relations with other religions in the world is to dedicate ourselves to only worshipping nature, but protecting it. I believe it would be a very good thing for Pagans to be at the forefront of environmental action, to fight against pollution, climate change and the other severe problems affecting our earth. In this way, we show the world that we do not live in a museum. We live in the world and just as we honor and protect our ancient traditions and ancestors, we honor and protect the earth that is the mother of us all.

Thank you.

 

Nature, Art and Beauty: European Inspiration

Dear Friends,

On a recent visit to Europe which took me to Iceland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, with very enjoyable stops in Reykjavík, Stockholm, Prague and Brno, I met with members of Ásatrú and other Pagan movements as well. I found that many of the people I spoke with shared my concerns about certain tendencies in the American form of Norse Paganism such that I have often elaborated on this blog. Like me, they are not at all enthusiastic about a military-oriented Paganism, have no intense attachments to guns or other instruments of death, and absolutely understand the need to completely distance any viable modern Paganism that wants to be taken seriously from anything remotely racist or Nazi or neo-Nazi. I am sad to say this, but it is only when I break bread with my European Pagan brothers and sisters that I actually feel hope for Norse Paganism as a peaceful, inspirational spiritual path that is completely free of violence and hatefulness.



Since I have found it very hard to discuss, let alone reach agreement, with American Norse Pagans about the concerns and values that my European friends seem to quite readily understand, I have concluded that my natural spiritual home is probably not in the USA, but in Europe. I see America as a society heavily burdened, if not fatally flawed with a psychologically and spiritually destructive heritage of racism and violence, and this spills over into many products of our culture. Indeed, I do at times wonder about simply relocating to Europe, where in so many ways I feel more at home, but there are other things that tie me to America and will continue to do so for a good many years to come, such as a desire to do my little part to make the country a slightly better or at least less awful and mean-spirited place through my involvement in education. Also, there are practical considerations that would not make such a relocation an easy task to execute. As things stand, I expect to remain in America as an out-of-place, internationalized American for some years to come, and to continue to develop my spirituality in consultation with my European Pagan friends.

In this essay I will focus on explaining the inspiration I received on this trip. The inspiration was in fact of two sorts, one from nature, and one from art. In Iceland, with my old friend Baldur (an actual human being who is a father, husband and teacher, not the god who dies such a tragic, youthful death in Norse mythology!), it was the power of nature that most spoke to me.



I wanted to get out of the city to see mountains and rivers, and we drove north from Reykjavík one cold but clear Sunday.



As had first happened to me during my first sojourn in Iceland in 1996, I was absolutely bowled over by the raw power of nature as it is manifested in the Icelandic landscape.





Everywhere you turn there are mountains in the distance, rivers and streams cutting through the rough countryside, waterfalls rumbling, hot springs erupting,birds wheeling and screeching in the sky.





The wind is strong, the blue in the sky seems more vivid than in other places, and rocky hills and stone outcroppings are easy to understand as the dwellings of sacred beings.



I felt revived and renewed, and remembered that it was in Iceland that I first experienced Ásatrú in a beautiful outdoor ritual in which we gathered around a roaring fire in a stone circle framed by a towering mountain decorated from above by stars twinkling in a dark autumn sky.

The artistic inspiration grew out of both talking with Pagans in Iceland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, and observing my friends and their surroundings. I reflected on how important art is to Paganism, and how the best types of Pagan religion that I have come across have always had a highly developed artistic dimension. The first Ásatrú ritual I ever participated in in Iceland was totally suffused with art, from improvised music by skilled musicians, not just amateurs banging away on acoustic guitars, to a banner on which each person attending was invited to write or draw something of significance to them.

This artistic flair carries over into the leadership, or perhaps the reverse should be said, that the greatest Pagan leaders. in Iceland at least, have often been artists. The first leader of Icelandic Ásatrú, Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, was a poet and singer who was open-minded enough to get on the stage in front of punk bands in the 1980s and recite traditional rímur poetry, though by this time he was a white bearded old man, not someone you would expect to be hanging around with punk musicians, let alone getting on stage with them.



The current high priest of the Ásatrúarféladið (Ásatrú Fellowship) in Iceland is a professional musician and composer, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, who has composed prize-winning film scores among other achievements, and recently released a CD with contemporary musical backing of the very rímur poetry that Sveinbjörn used to write and perform. The CD is called Stafnbúi on the 12 Tonar label, see http://www.12tonar.is/2012/21_steindor-hilmar-stafnbui.php .



Compare American Ásatrú, where two of the founding figures were both military men, Stephen McNallen and Valgard Murray. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and Icelandic Ásatrú accordingly took an artistic direction, and American Ásatrú a martial one. This is not to say that American Ásatrú is lacking in art, as there is a lot of poetry and music that can be found at such sites as http://www.odins-gift.com/index.html , but my own experience is that the artistic impulse is overshadowed by war-related elements. I would be curious if readers know of other examples of artistic contributions playing a major role in Paganism.



In Sweden, two of the leaders of the Swedish Ásatrú group that I know in Stockholm are artists, one a musician and photographer, the other a sculptor.



I am not aware of any of the Pagans I know in the Czech Republic being artists,per se, but one of the places we met, a lovely teahouse in the Castle district in Prague called Čajový klub „Duhovka.“

http://www.duhovka.eu .

.

The Duhovka had a very artistic, bohemian atmosphere. And why shouldn't it be bohemian? The Czechs were the original Bohemians, you see, and Bohemia is the name of one of the Czech regions.





In Lithuania and Latvia, folk musicians have led the way in the most vibrant modern Pagan movements there, such as Lithuanian Romuva, led by the skilled folk singers Jonas and Inija Trinkūnas and their folk ensemble Kūlgrinda.



See http://www.last.fm/music/Kūlgrinda .

Most of the artistic Pagans I know in Iceland and Europe have little interest in war and weapons. Their eyes and art look toward nature and beauty, not anger and death. However, here I must contradict myself. There is another branch of Norse Paganism-inspired music in Europe that does celebrate weapons, war, anger and aggression, this being Pagan-related "death metal" heavy metal music. It is not to my taste, but it certainly has its fans. Taking this into account complicates the nice binary opposition I was speaking of earlier. It requires me to say that yes, there are also things in European Paganism that I do not like! However, I tend to think that this kind of music appeals mainly to young people, and I would speculate that as they mature in both life and spirituality, they will not look at this music the same way anymore. If some grizzled death metal fan in their sixties wants to write in and tell me I am wrong, that they still start and end the day headbanging and chanting angry death lyrics like they did when they were 16 or 22, that is fine!

Age, that is, a person's position in the unstoppable life-cycle, is indeed something to consider. I am 53, closer to old age than to youth, and perhaps some of my preferences and perspectives are rooted in my own aging process. I seek beauty, calm and inspiration in nature, and hope for a form of Paganism that is in tune with those needs and aspirations. Perhaps younger men and women need different things, more angry, energetic and expressive of the stormy passions of youth.

Be that as it may, I also think of this in a broader frame, beyond a strictly Pagan context. Look at any great religious tradition, from Christianity to Judaism to Buddhism to any other, and you will find that art has played a key role in the development, propagation and perpetuation of that religion. In Prague, I stopped into a former medieval convent, now a museum, displaying Czech Christian art. See http://www.avantgarde-prague.com/prague-guide/things-to-see-in-prague/museums/convent-of-st-agnes/ The artwork was overwhelming in its concentrated force of expression. I have had the same experience contemplating ancient Hindu or Buddhist or Greek art. The articulation of religious themes and sensibilities through art is one of the secrets of success to any of the world's most well-known and respected religions. In contrast, there has never been a religion that ever became great or long-lasting simply by celebrating war and martial valor. That makes good patriotic propaganda, but its artistic merit may be limited. I believe the same will apply to Paganism, whether Ásatrú or other types. In the end, whoever comes up with the most profound, powerful and enticing religious art, in whatever media, will also be the ones to create the most enduring and important forms of modern Paganism. So, while some might call for warriors to take up arms, I call on poets to take up their lexicons, painters, their brushes, and sculptors, their clay. Express your spirituality through the most beautiful art you can muster, and we will all be the richer for it!

Among the Czechs

In a trip in March of this year to the Czech Republic, which also took me to Hungary, I had some very interesting and stimulating discussions with Czech Pagans in Brno and Prague. All of our meetings took place in pubs, as was quite fitting for a Czech religious discussion as the pub is the most sacred of Czech institutions. Many of those in attendance were familiar with this blog as well as the book Modern Paganism in World Cultures that I helped to put together some years back. In fact, I discovered that portions of the Modern Paganism book have been translated into Czech and circulated on the internet, which was surprising to me and also very flattering, especially since I have Czech ancestry on my father's side.

I was really amazed at the wide variety of forms of Paganism being developed and experimented with and pleased to see that Czech Pagans with quite different ideas and orientations were quite friendly with one another despite their differences. It is the magic of the Czech pub, I guess, or perhaps a secret ingredient in Czech beer that just can't be found in the American Budweiser.

Judging from the people I met in Brno and Prague, I would guess that the two most popular forms of Czech Paganism are Slavic reconstructionist Paganism and Norse-Germanic Paganism or Asatru (in several different varieties, I should emphasize.) I had expected most of the people to be Slavic-oriented, so the large number of Germanic-oriented Asatru followers was a surprise at first. On reflection, I realized that this makes sense in terms of Czech history. The Czech lands have always had a large German population, which is one reason that the Nazis invaded back in the 1930s. I would speculate that the modern Asatru-followers are perhaps inspired by this heritage, but I don't know their motivations deeply. It may also be that Norse-Germanic Paganism is attractive simply because it is well-developed and organized with a lot of sister organizations in other countries.

In my discussions, I raised my usual concerns about ethnic Paganism risking association with problematic political perspectives from racism to fascism. I felt that some Czech Pagans were annoyed with me for bringing up these issues. They see it as very simple, just a matter of standing up for one's land, heritage and traditions. I find this problematic in a region which has provided a home to many different peoples across the centuries: Celts, Jews and Roma (also known as Gypsies or Tsigane) along with Czechs and Germans. Some of the earliest settlers in the region were not "Czechs" in the sense of Slavs, but Central European Celts. The name "Bohemia," one of the major regions of the Czech lands which includes Prague, goes back to the Celtic tribe of the "Boii," noted by Roman writers around 50 BCE. The Slavs came some time later in about the mid-first millennium CE, circa 500 CE, arriving from the north and east. Germans probably established themselves in the region in about the same period, but could have come even earlier. Jews are first reported living in the Czech lands in the late tenth century, in a document dating from 995 CE, with Roma (Gypsies) arriving in about the 15th century or possibly some centuries earlier. There are other smaller groups that could be mentioned, in particular further sub-divisions of Slavs to include Polish, Ukrainian and Slovak Slavs, and also Magyars or Hungarians.

To my knowledge, there is no obvious lasting trace of the Celtic Boii as a distinctive cultural, linguistic or ethnic group in the Czech lands, which suggests that long ago they assimilated into other groups such as the Czech Slavs or Germans. As regards the other four main groups mentioned above (Czech Slavs, Germans, Jews, and Roma), three have been present in the Czech lands for more than a thousand years, while the last-noted Roma have been present for over five hundred. After that long a time in the country, should they not all be counted as Czechs, as part of the Czech culture, heritage and gene-pool?

Taking these different long-term inhabitants of the Czech lands into account, it seems to me important to acknowledge that such concepts as "Czech heritage," "Czech roots," and "Czech tradition" are far from simple matters. Where does Slavic influence end and German begin? What about the centuries-long interaction with Jewish and Roma minorities? That cannot simply be wished away. These diverse groups' presences and contributions are now part of the "blood and soil" and the memory and imagination of the Czech lands. One can apply a very narrow definition of Czech heritage as a Czech Slavic-only tradition, but that would actually leave out a lot of Czech history and culture. All of the above-mentioned groups can lay some claim to some share of Czech heritage, some kind of Czech roots, some piece of Czech tradition, some contribution to Czech culture. I know some of my Czech friends will shake their heads reading this, thinking "Oh, that stupid, arrogant 'multicultural' American! He has spent too much time in New York City eating sushi, shish kebab and Korean tacos with his mixed-race, multi-kulti friends! May all his tiresome preaching about diversity lead him to a good long bout of diarrhea!"

My point is that Czech Pagans as well as other Pagans need to be careful how they draw the boundaries of the identities and communities they want to construct and inhabit, and to keep in mind that cultural diversity and mixing of peoples and traditions is in itself a very old and powerful tradition. Though there are times and places that could be pointed to as exceptions--usually very temporary exceptions, I would point out--diversity and mixing have always been a stimulating force in human history, and in my opinion, we should avoid constructing versions of the past that romanticize it as a mono-ethnic paradise of racial and cultural purity, because it rarely was and if it ever was, it did not stay that way for long. Soon, new peoples will always arrive with new traditions and the contact between cultures stimulates new developments. It is inevitable.

It is one thing to enjoy particular ethnic traditions and seek to continue them, as in worshipping Slavic or Germanic gods and goddesses and finding inspiration in ancient songs, myths, and practices, but over-emphasis on ethnic exclusivity runs the risk of changing Paganism from a celebration of particular traditions into a rallying point for hatred, racism and oppression.

Let me concede that these issues of which traditions to preserve, how to go about preserving them, and who to include or exclude in a community focused on such traditions are all very important issues and not very easy ones to define or navigate. I personally tend to favor preservation of ethnic tradition as the core of any particular style of Paganism, while also allowing for modernization of such tradition, and openness to people of different ethnic backgrounds who are attracted to a particular tradition. I know that others have different ideas, and we should continue to discuss these matters. Until such time as my plans for a world dictatorship under my personal benevolent leadership fully materialize, I am happy to allow such discussions to continue and to contribute what I can.

As I have been researching Eastern European Jewish history for a book project, I have been struck by an intriguing possible parallel between the Eastern European Jews of the past and modern-day ethnic Pagans. If Pagans REALLY want to form separate, closed communities that preserve old customs, beliefs and traditions and resist modern cultural and social trends that seem to push toward diversity and mixing, might not the Jews of Eastern Europe serve as a model for what they seek to develop? You could have a Pagan shtetl right next to a Jewish one, or maybe one ghetto for the Slavic Pagans, another for the Germanic Pagans, and a third one for Jews, and so on. Is this what we want?

I think it is highly interesting that Norse-Germanic Paganism is so popular in the Czech region. It exploded my expectation that Czech Pagans would be strictly devoted to a Slavic-based Reconstructionist Paganism. It was also great to see the Slavic-oriented and Germanic-oriented Pagans getting along quite well.

I also was greatly impressed by some unusual forms of Paganism I had never heard of before. One was a group dedicated, as I understand it, to recreating the hunting lifestyle of the Paleolithic period with a focus on wolves as a sacred animal. A fellow at one of the pubs brought with him a hybrid wolf-dog puppy that quickly became the center of attention of our gathering. Another man spoke of a cult of Cthulu, the divine monster or monstrous divinity of H.P Lovecraft tales. Strictly speaking, this development of religious thought and practice derived from modern fantasy literature might not be considered a "Pagan" tradition per se, but insofar as it is dealing with issues of the sacredness of nature and the boundary-line between the natural and the supernatural, I see it as at least quasi-Pagan or Paganesque or perhaps post-Pagan.

Therefore, I will leave off for today wishing you all the Blessings of the Wolf-God and Cthulu; may they rule our universe in peace and not rip us all to pieces!

Spiritual Indecision...Or Do You Call It Pluralism?

A fair number of comments to this blog have raised provocative questions and heartfelt concerns about the linkage between ethnicity, including the problematic concept of "race," and Pagan spiritual traditions in much of modern-day Paganism or neo-Paganism. This is something I have also struggled with, and I am not yet sure who or what has won the struggle!

I have divided loyalties between two different European Pagan traditions, the Norse or Nordic Paganism of Iceland and Scandinavia, and the Baltic Paganism of Lithuania and Latvia. I have Czech and Lithuanian ancestry, but was exposed to Norse mythology at an early age--I am not ashamed to admit it was through the comic book "The Mighty Thor!!"--but always felt a great curiosity about Lithuania, from dribs and drabs that my mother would relate to us, based on her mother's recollections of her childhood in Lithuania in the early 20th century. In undergraduate college, I did a research paper on Nazi appropriations of Norse mythology--highly ironic as I am now working on a somewhat higher level research paper on the same topic that I hope to publish in a scholarly journal like "Nova Religio" or "The Pomegranate." When I started graduate school in the mid-1980s, I made Norse Mythology one of my areas of study. This carried on with study of the Old Norse language at the University of Wisconsin at the end of that decade, and led me to obtain a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Iceland in the mid-1990s, which led to participation in Asatru Fellowship activities in the Reykjavik area, and continuing connections with Iceland and Asatru.

However, the same year that I went to Iceland, I also went to Lithuania, where I came to know Jonas and Inija Trinkunas, the husband and wife leaders of the Lithuanian Pagan group Romuva. This led to further visits in 1998 and 2002. A bit later, after teaching in Japan several years, I scored a second Fulbright Fellowship to teach at Siauliai University in Lithuania from fall of 2004 to spring of 2005, and was once more highly impressed by Lithuanian spirituality, but also frustrated at my inability to learn the Lithuanian language, which was really necessary for me to fully participate in Romuva.

I came back to the USA in 2005 with a pragmatic sense that I would henceforth concentrate on forging links with people involved in Nordic Paganism, largely because it was more accessible with most of the materials being translated into English, with several generations of Asatru in America having developed a workable American version of Nordic Paganism. However, I still feel connected to Lithuania and Romuva, and do not by any means renounce my ties to them. (Hey, what's the point of being polytheistic if you can't be pluralistic?) I see the traditions as kindred branches of the Indo-European spiritual tree, anyway, with Perkunas being the Lithuanian version of Thor, and Velnias being the Lithuanian version of Odin, and the Lithuanian World Tree being no less of a vivid symbol of interconnectedness between mankind and nature than Yggdrasil in Norse mythology. In many ways, I see myself as an Indo-Europeanist, which also allows me to feel at home in other related spiritual traditions like Hinduism.

However, I am such a shameless spiritual slut, or religious eclectic, anyway, that I cannot really accept being walled off from other traditions that appeal and make sense to me. Having lived in Japan from 1999-2004, I am very appreciative of Shinto, which of all religions I have known, is the one whose closeness to nature has most impressed me. When I pray to my various gods, spirits and ancestors, I often bow and clap my hands twice, Shinto-style, and I do not imagine that Odin or whoever else I am addressing feels slighted by this elegant and respectful gesture. Furthermore, my analytical mind tells me that all names and forms of the "divine" (or whatever you want to call It) are just provisional place markers to help the human psyche reach out to something beyond yet deep within itself; however, I find certain god-images and personalities emotionally moving. And, at the risk of sounding ridiculous--and I can assure you I am not saying this in a flippant way--I like the fact that in religion, we can return to the child in us who enjoys playing with dolls and toy figures. I think that play is actually highly significant.

An acquaintance of mine in Sweden made a very pertinent point about this kind of eclecticism. He told me that he likes to worship the Scandinavian goddess Freyja, and has also taught his daughter to do the same, but that if she were to decide to instead worship the Greek goddess Diana, he would not have a problem with it, as he sees them as ultimately meaning very much the same thing. However, he would PREFER that she worship Freyja, as this would be more in keeping with their particular cultural and ethnic context, but he would not insist on it. I think that is a lovely attitude, and I am grateful to him for sharing that.