Negating Denialism

In ancient Indian philosophy, there was a formula called "neti, neti," which literally means "not this, not this," found in  ancient Hindu texts such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The double-N "meme" was used to guide the seeker through a process of metaphysical elimination, ruling out various things that were found to not be the true essence of reality. The goal of this was to gain understanding of what was truly, eternally real, the cosmic Self, the Atman. In our time, we find a somewhat similar process being conducted by right-wing propagandists, who reject the reality of  contemporary threats to life and health  like climate change, the Covid pandemic and the January 6 attempt to disable American democracy, deny the necessity of taking any action to solve or protect against these dangerous problems, and denounce the politicians, journalists and authorities who advocate such action. The goal  is to generate hostility toward any person or organization who dares to challenge the authority of Donald Trump, and to glorify Mr. Trump as the ultimate arbiter of reality . 

It works like this: What Trump says, goes. What others say is anti-American, liberal garbage.  Trump = truth.  Non-Trump is non-truth. Do not trust the fake media. Trust only in Trump. What glorifies Trump is real. What does not glorify Trump is not real. Who glories Trump is trustworthy. Who does not glorify Trump is not to be trusted.  If it is claimed that Trump lost the 2020 election, this is not possible because Trump could not have lost an election. The election must have been stolen. Trump tells us to rise up and fight. So we must rise up and fight. If Trump says that our electoral processes are fraudulent, then our elections are frauds and we should no longer trust elections. Who needs democracy? Trump shows the way to something better:  authoritarian dictatorship by the only reliable authority in America:  Donald Trump.

This would be laughable if not for the worrisome truth that a sizeable minority of Americans seems to be  completely devoted to this false logic. I have found Trump followers to be impervious to logical argument. Ancient Indian philosophers they are not. They have absorbed a binary view of the world where they will take Trump's word over any other authority or information source and reject anything else as wrong, evil, even Satanic. According to Trump's evangelical supporters, Trump is the fulfillment of prophecy.

How can we fight against this?  This mass delusion is powerful and growing. I do not know the answer, but I would counsel one thing: DO NOT BE SILENT.  When you hear Trumpian nonsense like anti-vaxx, anti-mask and anti-election conspiracy theories being spoken by people around you, challenge it. You do not have to be nasty, hostile or snide. Just let it be known that you do not agree, that you feel that what is being said is incorrect.  If the person gets agitated or hostile, back away, just as you would if dealing with a psychotic person who you feared might become dangerous. The point is not to convince this person to alter their worldview, but more importantly, to let that person and those around you  know that not everyone agrees.

This is important because, with many Trumpians being belligerent bullies, many people who disagree with what they say will remain silent, will become intimidated. DO NOT ASSIST THIS INTIMIDATION by being another silent person. Each time someone speaks up to oppose Trumpian dogmas, it shows others that disagreement and opposition DO exist and ARE possible.

So please, do your part. In the words of a First Lady of the 1980s, "Just say no!"  It is important. If enough people say "no" everyday, then Trumpian illusions will lose their momentum and appeal. But if everyone who opposes these things stays timid and silent, Trumpian denials of reality will gain force and credibility. Which outcome would you prefer?.

Multi-Culti Santa and the Dilemmas of Representation

Ho ho ho!

Santa Claus is a fascinating and often contentious figure. He is claimed by Christians as the mythologized version of Saint Nikolaos/Nicholas, an ethnic Greek citizen of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire who lived from 270-343 and grew up to become Bishop of Myra in the region known today as Turkey. As a leader of the Byzantine Christian community, Nikolaos participated in the Council of Nicaea in 325. Nikolaos was later canonized as a saint of the Byzantine Church, and was particularly popular with sailors and fisherman, becoming a patron saint of such seagoing professions. He was also remembered for a practice of giving gifts to needy persons. This formed one of the kernels of the legend that gradually developed around him, transforming him from a leader of the fourth century Church to a mysterious, supernatural benefactor who provides gifts to the good in the season of Christmas each year. In many accounts of the genesis of Santa, this is where the story stops, with a gift-giving Christian Saint Nicholas who is eventually transformed into today's Saint Nick or Santa Claus.

However, there is much about our modern Santa that is hard to explain as deriving exclusively from the life of this Byzantine Greek Saint. What does the life of a fourth century Byzantine bishop in Turkey have to do with a portly old fellow dressed in red, one who is totally lacking in any Christian accoutrements, nary a crucifix nor a baby Jesus in sight, flying around the world, at night, in a magic sleigh drawn by eight flying reindeer? Why is he associated with elves and the North Pole? Why are Christmas presents left around a gorgeously decorated evergreen tree? To answer these questions, we have to move beyond a strictly Christian framework to consider Pagan elements that were woven into the many-faceted legend of Saint Nick. It is not in Christian hagiography, but in Germanic Pagan mythology that we find a coherent explanation of these aspects of the Santa Claus legend. The god Odin emerges as something of a Pagan alter ego of the supposedly Christian Santa. Odin, like Santa, watches over all the world and observes the deeds of all mankind. Like Santa flying all around the world in the winter night, Odin wanders far and wide. Though Odin is not associated with a flying sleigh drawn by eight reindeer, he has an eight-legged flying horse, Sleipnir, who bears him through the sky,and Norse myth tells of a number of deities who have conveyances drawn by animals, most notably Thor's chariot drawn by goats, and Freyja's wagon drawn by cats. The ornately-decorated Christmas tree is prefigured by the World Tree of Norse mythology as well as the practice among the Pagan Scandinavians, as documented by the Christian author Adam of Bremen, of a massive sacrifice of animals and humans who would be hung on evergreen trees near the Pagan temple at Uppsala, in Sweden. The North Pole and reindeer associations clearly associate Santa with Scandinavia, homeland of Norse myth and of Odin. The elves too are drawn from Norse-Germanic mythology. Finally, we know that the Northern Pagans had a cherished tradition of feasting and celebrating in the depths of winter, in the time of Jól or Yule.

Putting together the Christian legend of the gift-giving Nikolaos of Myra with the Scandinavian lore of Odin and other myths and traditions of the Norse-Germanic Pagans, with just the teeniest little dash of twentieth-to-twenty-first century capitalist consumerism sprinkled on top, we arrive at today's Santa Claus. I take delight in this mixing and mashing of diverse and contradictory elements, all the more when I hear Christians complain about the un-Christian-ness of the materialism and the non-Biblical-ness of Santa's appearance and trappings, and Pagans bemoaning the Christian gloss on (or theft of) Germanic folklore. Relax, folks; this is how human culture works. Everything is regurgitated and recombined over time, with the loose ends still showing that you can trace back to find the roots tapping into much older traditions. I don't think this glorious recombinant confusion is something that started in our so-called "post-modern" age; I think this has always been going on across the ages. Humans are hoarders, tinkerers and cobblers by nature. We hoard little pieces of the past, tinker around with them, adding and subtracting new-old meanings and stories, and cobble together new creations out of the remnants of the old that answer to no one's ideal of purity.

I salute my cheesy little plastic Santa, perched on my window, with a low-wattage bulb lighting up his innards. I see Odin playing tricks on the Bishop of Myra, all the way to Walmart, and the Bishop having a good laugh too.

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On a more serious note, I am saddened but not surprised by the tempest in the cable news media teapot sparked by the Dec. 11 comment of Megyn Kelly, hostess of the FOX news program The Kelly File that "Santa Claus just IS white...so you know, kids." Many have criticized Ms. Kelly for offering a racist perspective on Christmas and Santa Claus. Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's news parody program The Daily Show noted on Dec. 12 that Christmas was supposed to be for EVERYONE, implying that Megyn Kelly was wading into racist waters with her insistence on Santa's whiteness. In defense of Megyn Kelly, it should be pointed out that the vast majority of visual representations of Santa Claus DO portray him as, well, an old white man: a rotund, elderly Caucasian male with rosy red cheeks and a flowing white beard. Ms. Kelly's comments came in response to a Dec. 10 blog essay on the Slate web site by Aisha Harris that proposed that since the usual representation of Santa Claus as white was out of keeping with our modern, multi-cultural, inter-racial, poly-ethnic world culture, it might be a nice idea to replace the image of Santa as a jovial old white guy with a penguin, since everyone loves penguins and there would be no possibility of a racial agenda or interpretation being imposed upon such a creature. See http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2013/12/santa_claus_an_old_white_man_not_anymore_meet_santa_the_penguin_a_new_christmas.html

I have some sympathy for all of the viewpoints noted above. Kelly is right that, in reality, Santa Claus is most often portrayed as white; Stewart is correct that Christmas is nowadays meant to be a universal holiday without racial overtones; and Harris makes a valid point that a cute animal icon might be a way out of the racial dilemma posed by the traditional image of the old white Santa. Where Kelly went a little off the rails, in my view, was in her further statement that if people felt uncomfortable with Santa's white image, it was their obligation to get over their discomfort and accept the traditional image rather than expect the tradition to change to suit their sensitivities. Stewart acutely observed, "that is the definition of oppression."

This dilemma of how to take a tradition or image rooted in an earlier, less ethnically diverse place and time and render it suitable for today's multi-ethnic world, in societies such as ours that have struggled so mightily and even heroically to overcome racism and other kinds of prejudice and oppression, is indeed very delicate and complicated. It has direct bearing on modern Pagan religious movements. Pagans living in the twenty-first century must ask themselves how their Pagan gods and goddesses, primarily derived from European cultural traditions, are to be perceived and represented in a time when people of non-white, non-European background may be interested in taking these gods as their personal deities, icons and symbols. The same dilemma holds for non-European based religious revival movements with a strong ethnic component as well. For example, persons of non-African background may well wish to become involved in African or Afro-Caribbean religious traditions such as Santeria, Ife or Voudoun. In each case, should the deities continue to be imagined in the form of the people among whom the religion first developed, or should worshippers or participants with different racial or ethnic origins be allowed to re-interpret the images of the gods in keeping with their own identities?

This is not just a superficial, cosmetic matter of slapping on a few ethnic attributes, such as skin, eye or hair color, to accommodate people of varied ethnic origins and identities. This issue also calls upon us to ask ourselves if the gods are essentially ethnic or racial in nature, or whether ethnic trappings and characteristics are not essential attributes of Pagan divinity. As Odin is the god who I most often relate to in my religious thinking and ritual life, I ask myself, is Odin essentially white, Caucasian, European, or something beyond all of that, something/someone ineffable and transcendent, that happened to find expression in Norse myth and religion? Is Odin a person, with a face, with a certain kind of hair and skin color, or a spiritual essence beyond all of that? In this matter, I think Paganism can learn from the monotheistic traditions which grappled so extensively with the issue of whether their God has any particular form or physicality, or is beyond all such things. Hinduism provides another useful perspective, with the idea that gods are beyond physical form but may temporarily inhabit physical forms, such as statues or temples, to provide darśan to their human devotees. It is likewise in Shinto, where the kami gods are summoned to inhabit particular images on particular occasions, such as rice-gods called down from the mountains to dwell in temples near the rice field for the time of planting and growth, only to be dismissed back to the mountain when the harvest is complete. I also see value in the Jungian perspective, that what we think of as gods may be just our personalized or culturally-determined forms of deeper psychological or spiritual realities.

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I went to see the second Thor film, Thor: The Dark World a few nights ago. I didn't expect much, knowing it was mainly a mass-market, special effects-laden, big-bang action-film, and I left the theatre a bit tired from all the repetitive fight sequences that seemed to me more Star Wars than Snorri Sturluson, more Hollywood than Hávamál. One small element in the film does relate to the previous discussion, however. The god Heimdall is portrayed by Idris Elba, a great British actor of African descent, best known for his performance as erudite drug dealer Stringer Bell in the acclaimed American TV series The Wire, and more recently, for his much-praised portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the just-released Mandela film biography Long Walk to Freedom. Mr. Elba's version of Heimdall seemed to work fine in the film, and his brown-skinned appearance had no special import for the sequence of events, one way or another. I did not see the first Thor film and do not know how modern Norse-Germanic Pagans responded to Heimdall's Africanized appearance. Anyone out there want to comment on this?

Another interesting aspect of the film to me was how the Hollywood version of Thor has completely dispensed with the human alter ego that the Marvel comic book Thor once had. This makes Thor all-god, all-the-time. The Don Blake, alter-ego version added more complexity to his character, which the Hollywood Thor could have badly used, in my opinion. He was really rather stiff and uninteresting, all noble virtue and manly courage, quite boring in comparison to the film's clever, cunning and humorous Loki, who was the only character who seemed to possess any notable complexity or depth. However, who is to say how these figures should be portrayed? I take solace in the view that whatever ultimate meaning or reality these gods have, it is beyond any particular representation, but always open to reinterpretation, reinvention and reimagination.

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Plastic, six-inch Santa, I once again salute you! May thy plasticity and elusiveness long endure to delight further generations of children and provoke further generations of adults to reflection, befuddlement, and argument!

Hmm, maybe it is Loki having the last word here....

Looking to the East

Friends, isn't it true that we are all divided beings? Don't we all have internal conflicts, mixed loyalties, inner contradictions? I have been reflecting on some of my own, and this is leading me to a new course of action. Over the last twenty or more years, I have been a student of Norse, Celtic and Baltic mythology, also of Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Born in the USA, I have lived in Iceland and Lithuania, and also in Japan. I see value in the nature-centered spirituality of the Western Pagan traditions, but I am also drawn to the search for higher levels of consciousness and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality in the Eastern traditions. Sometimes the pendulum swings one way for me, and sometimes it swings the other. Just now, the East is calling me.

This is partly because I have been feeling so disenchanted with what I know of American Asatru. I don't mean to stereotype or throw everyone into the same pot under the same lid, but my experiences have led me to believe that what most--not all, but most--American Asatru followers are most concerned and motivated about is preserving an idealized version of European ethnic heritage, reaching back to a fabled time when, in the Republican Senator Trent Lott's words, "we didn't have all these problems" about diversity, multiculturalism and the mixing of races. A nice white Viking society, pure as the driven snow in whichever Germanic country you prefer.

I have been feeling queasy for a long time about how this comes way too close to comfort to the very ugly tradition of racism and white supremacy. Now I just want to get away from this. It's not what I have known as Asatru in Iceland or Sweden or with German Heathens that I have met along the way. This is not to say that there are no racists in those lands, which would be a ridiculous statement, but simply that in those places, I have met a good number of Asatru followers with a clear, analytical, comprehensive understanding of the need to completely renounce anything that approaches racism. For knowing such people, I am grateful. I just wish there were more like them in the USA, but I think American Asatru is on a somewhat different track, certain clear-minded exceptions aside. And of course I don't like the implicit or explicit militarism in much American Asatru, the "worship of the war god" as discussed in past postings.

Celebrating ethnic heritage or playing GI Joe in Viking drag is not the primary thing that I want out of religion or spirituality. I want to feel close to nature and in touch with some kind of absolute reality. Recent contact with members of the Hare Krishna-Krishna Consciousness movement and a branch of Tibetan Buddhism known as Diamond Way have made me think seriously of how these traditions all use methods of mind-stimulation to reach higher states of consciousness where they experience Something that could be called Krishna, or Buddha, or Mind, or what not, but something that gives them peace, joy and clarity. I have always been a piss-poor failure at any kind of meditation, but now I am moved to try again.

Ultimately, I would like to somehow combine these different pathways, perhaps,to put it humorously, chanting "Hare Odin" or visualizing Thor's hammer as the thunderbolt that flashes enlightenment! Or, leaning to my Lithuanian side, maybe it will be "Hare Velnius" and Perkunas as the bringer of enlightenment. Now I am really going to be on the shit list of people who are committed purists, but you know what? I don't care. This kind of mixing and matching may not be to everyone's taste, but as a person torn between East and West, it makes perfect sense to my perfectly divided self. I also know that the past history of religions involves plenty of borrowing and blending, so it's not like I am in the first person in history to have these wicked thoughts and heretical urges.

I would be interested to hear of similar thoughts,experiences or experiments that others have had.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Evolution vs. Reconstruction

Recently I find myself increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated by reconstructionist Paganism. This is a bit of a turn-around for me from earlier years when I was very much impressed by the apparent scholarly acumen of people willing to dig into medieval and ancient history to retrieve bits of information about pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices that could be built upon anew. I still respect the scholarly enterprise of investigating the past, but I have become increasingly suspicious of certain aspects and implications of the reconstructionist enterprise.

First of all, the attitude of a good many reconstructionists seems to be to privilege the past over the present, to judge that those living in the good old days of medieval or ancient wherever were really in touch with spiritual truth whereas we moderns and post-moderns are sadly misguided creatures cut off from primal reality. And so, we must strive to emulate the wise ones of the past as much as possible. I see a major problem with this, in that we don't know enough about the past practitioners of Paganism to make such grand statements about their superiority. We have some of their traditions in fragmentary form; that is all we have. I enjoy those fragments of myth and belief and take inspiration from them, but it seems intellectually dishonest to assume that we today can know past traditions completely or how to follow them just as the past masters supposedly did.

I also note that in America, many modern followers of Paganism, at least Norse-Germanic Paganism/Asatru, interpret the Norse-Germanic traditions in ways that are suspiciously similar to American conservative views and values. I have commented on this many times before, so I will just give the short version, with just two key points: (1) emphasis on machismo, war and militarism, equating modern soldiers in places like Iraq and Afghanistan with Viking warriors or Odin's einherjar, and making this the most holy of holies, as if Odin and Thor were employees of the Pentagon; (2) interpreting medieval eddas, sagas and texts describing small-scale, pre-modern, pre-industrial communities through the lens of typically American conservative anti-government attitudes that prioritize rugged individualism and small-town living, and disdain modern government attempts to provide for collective welfare, as if Ayn Rand were the reincarnation of Freyja. This is a thoroughly American conservative version of Norse-Germanic lore, with some parallels in right-wing European thought, and is by no means the sole possible or self-evident interpretation that can be applied to Pagan traditions. It is not the "one true faith," in other words. I am not saying that this is not a viable interpretation for those with such conservative views and values, but it is an interpretation that rises out of a particular ideological viewpoint, and it should not be imposed on those of us who do not share such conservative ideology.

Reconstructionist Paganism, by prioritizing the world of the past over the society of the present time, lends itself to conservative political interpretation and manipulation, because the fundamental conservative impulse is to fear and hate the new and the modern. For those of us of more liberal or progressive ways of thinking, who believe that the society of today is better than the society of the past because there has been steady progress in such areas as human rights, respect for women, appreciation of cultural diversity, and the use of government programs to provide for human needs and to not simply leave the old, sick and disadvantaged to wither and die, strict Reconstructionism is a spiritual and political dead end. What we need is an open-ended Paganism that has affection and respect for traditions of the past, but realizes too that we live in a modern world and must not be bound and gagged by the ways of the past.

This means accepting that religions, like any other aspect of human life, will necessarily evolve over time. A great injury done to the Pagan traditions of Europe by the process of Christian domination is that they were not allowed to naturally evolve in a healthy manner. Therefore we are stuck with medieval tales and myths that do indeed feature a good bit of slashing and smashing with swords, spears and other medieval weapons, along with other aspects that speak to other areas of human endeavor, such as family, fertility, beauty, art, agriculture, love, laughter and mystical experience. If Christianity had not come along with its harsh and oppressive influence, how might the religions of Europe have further evolved?

This is an open question that no one can answer definitely, of course. It is hard enough to know what was but impossible to know what might have been. However, I see one analogy that we can at least consider: the case of Hinduism. The earliest forms of Hinduism, the Vedic traditions recorded in such texts as the Rig Veda, are something rather similar to European Paganism, which is why we can talk about Indo-European connections between pre-Christian Europe and early Hindu India. In the Vedas, we find nature-centered polytheism, veneration of ancestors, tales of war, animal sacrifice, gods of many functions.

If India had followed the same trajectory as Europe, and Hinduism the same sequence of events as Paganism, with Christianity coming in and freezing development of this religious tradition, this could have been the end of the story, and Hinduism would be associated with meat-eating, animal-sacrificing, wealth-loving, nature-worshipping warrior tribes. Hinduism however continued to evolve, most spectacularly in the period of the Upanishads. These were philosophical texts from the first millennium BCE that move Hinduism from simple polytheism and a somewhat materialistic view of life to ideas of karma, reincarnation and transcendence. Later came another stage of intense devotion of personalized deities, known as bhakti. All three of these stages still exist and are still respected as spiritual options within the larger fold of Hinduism.

Perhaps if Paganism had been allowed to evolve, it might have undergone some such further stages of development. Well, there is no time like the present. So, let's evolve! New horizons are waiting. You don't have to keep living in a thatched hut, sharpening your axe!

I find exactly this kind of open, progressive attitude among my Scandinavian and German Pagan friends. They are inspired by the Pagan traditions of the past, such as these can be known, but they are not prisoners of the past. They embrace the modern world, and this is also seen in their politics. They are grateful for modern government programs that can provide a better life and better security than in ancient or medieval times. They are not looking to retreat into the past but to build a better future. They have evolved. Can American Pagans do the same? I hope so.