Seeking Inspiration in a Time of Exhaustion

Dear Friends, if, like me, you are a liberal, a leftist, or even just a compassionate person in America, or if you are somewhere else in the world looking in at this country, I am sure that you must find the non-stop barrage of insults, threats, aggression and intolerance issuing forth from the Trump White House mentally exhausting and spiritually depleting, as I do. I have been especially appalled by the ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which disrupted so many people's lives for no good purpose, and which sets the tone for increased animosity and ill will between the USA and the Muslims of the world. It had become the norm in recent decades to hear U.S. presidents extol the virtues of diversity and inclusiveness, but Trump has turned his back on all this in order to push the country on a retrograde path back toward the worst moments in American history, the ones that cause intelligent Americans to hang their heads in shame, the times when blacks were enslaved, segregated and lynched, when native peoples were exterminated and dispossessed, when Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps, when artists and intellectuals were hounded for real or imagined communist sympathies, when Vietnamese were demonized as “gooks,” when Iraqi prisoners of war were tormented and humiliated in violation of the Geneva convention, when gays, lesbians and other non-heterosexuals had to live in constant fear of harassment, humiliation and beatings ranging from the frightening to the fatal. As we see with the Muslim Ban executive order—which in Trumpian terms is of course NOT a Muslim Ban even though it mainly affects Muslims and is the fulfillment of a campaign promise Trump made for months—Trump is obviously going to use “national security” as the justification for all manner of oppressive actions toward ethnic and religious minorities and any and all who dare to criticize or oppose him. I fear that we are living in a time not unlike 1930s Germany, where the storm cloud are gathering and the storm troopers are massing.

But I digress. There is much to say about the actions of the Trump regime and what we can and must do to fight back against them, but my main point today is to muse on how we must be careful to not let the constant din and doom of Trump and his minions so exhaust and deplete us that we are unable to do anything besides reflecting the darkness and dishonesty that is now emanating from the White House like radiation from Chernobyl. We need sources of solace and comfort, reassurance and inspiration. Different people will seek out different points of refuge and recharging. For me, this means turning toward Paganism.

As my strongest affinity is for the Norse (Germanic) Pagan traditions of Scandinavia and Iceland, I look there first. I see first of all that the world of the Norse myths is a world of uncertainty, struggle and often great sorrow. It is one in which the god of wisdom and knowledge is tortured, first gaining wisdom in a painful, shamanistic self-sacrifice, second, seeing his own son killed and being unable to help him, third, preparing to lead the gods in battle against gigantic forces of destruction, all the time knowing, owing to his power of foresight, that his side is going to lose, despite their best and most valiant efforts, and the world is going to be ruined and burnt. We are told in the Eddic poem Voluspá that in the end, or rather, after the end, after all has been destroyed, there is the possibility that the world will re-emerge, and that the gods too will be restored; or maybe not.

Relating this to our own situation, I see that we who seek knowledge and wisdom in difficult times should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling tortured, psychologically speaking, when we see our society electing a dangerously ignorant, rage-driven buffoon who unleashes a maelstrom of chaos, confusion and brutality, cheered on by equally ignorant and rage-driven hordes. Obviously, this mental torture could even become a physical experience, should we internalize our anxiety and sorrow to where it causes bodily ailments like hypertension, ulcers, strokes or heart attacks. It could also become a physical reality if the Trump regime decides that “national security” requires the interrogation, detention, and/or public shaming of regime opponents, echoing the “Red Scare” tribunals and blacklists of the 1950s.

I also think of Yggdrasil, the “World Tree” in Norse mythology, which supports and connects all worlds but itself suffers daily from being continually gnawed and damaged by various beings who come to feed on its branches and shoots. This reminds me of how in our modern world, the kinds of institutional systems that support and connect the world and provide succor and aid to many are under constant threat from the right-wingers like Trump, Pence and Ryan who seek to cut off the branches of government and let the tree of international cooperation wither, so that all will be left to fend for themselves, the weak and poor having no recourse, the wealthy and powerful feeling no responsibility, and institutional supports that make life better for the disadvantaged and lessen animosity and inequality between the peoples of the world, degraded if not dismantled. I would not doubt that right-wing Pagans have different interpretations, perhaps viewing Norse mythology through the lens of Ayn Rand and thinking of the tree as the society of the "maker" elite whose wonderful works and wealth are unfairly drained and diminished by the parasitic class of unproductive "takers," the world's underclass, regarded here as the architects of their own infirmity through their laziness, stupidity and "poor choices," with Ragnarök as the necessary destruction of an evil, socialistic world order that caters to the demented underclass rather than their majestic overlords. Myths, like any texts, are of course open to interpretation, and I can only say that mine is the one that makes sense to me and meshes with my values and concerns. I would hope it resonates with some of you as well.

I feel a special connection to trees. Whenever I see them, they comfort me and seem pillars of natural health and vitality, rooted deep, reaching high, providing shade and shelter for all living beings, free of charge. I always lament when I see trees harmed or cut down when there seems no urgent necessity. The status of trees seems to me a bellwether of the state of society. A society that values trees and greenery, and does not feel the need to mow down trees to create a blankly utilitarian landscape, is a healthier, saner one, in my view, than that which sees trees as a nuisance and would prefer dead concrete or an artificially perfect, chemical-drenched green lawn.

The plight of the World Tree is reflected in so many situations that one sees everywhere, everyday, above all the horrendous threat to the world's weather systems posed by climate change and global warming, which echoes the disturbance of nature said to presage the final destruction in the prophecy of the Voluspá. The Tree suffers much but still sustains us all, and I think this is the right way to think of one's moral duty in society in troubled times such as ours. We may have to suffer with and from people whose ideas and intentions seem ill-informed, distorted, destructive and hateful, but we must never forget to support and sustain human AND humane society and the health and well-being of the natural order which in turn gives us our health and well-being. Like Odin, we must seek wisdom, even if the quest is torturous and painful, and we must muster all our strength, intelligence and courage, even if we sense that the forces arrayed against us are truly ferocious and horrifically powerful.

The ambiguous ending of the Ragnarök tale in Voluspá gives room for hope that the powers of destruction, whether Frost-Giants, Fire-Demons, or Fascistic American Presidents, will not prevail forever. Their day will pass and a new day will dawn. We just have to hold on as best we can and make sure that the things we hold in our hearts as true and valuable and life-enhancing are not forgotten or erased, so that they may rise up as beacons of hope after the floodwaters of darkness subside. Like the gods in Voluspá, we must keep in mind that while our own time is limited, the world will go on, and we should dedicate ourselves to giving what we can to make that future world better than the one that we now see engulfed in flames. Pagans tend to look to the past, to enjoy reliving and reviving traditions of many centuries ago, but we should not forget that those traditions also looked to the future. The Vikings didn't stay at home and remain passive when times were hard. They went out and created a new world, reaching toward the future.

The hour of Trump will pass. Remember that, and don't let him drag you down into his angry darkness. Find peace and courage in nature, which endures much, but always regenerates.... eventually. Even Chernobyl, site of one of the world's worst environmental calamities, has green plants growing and animals roaming.

When his son Baldur was dead and his body laid out for his cremation, Odin bent down to his corpse and whispered something into his ear. According to the myths, no one knows what it was that the All-Father said. As there would seem little point in speaking to someone truly dead and departed, it may be that Odin knew something about the future, a future in which Baldur--and the world--would be revived, as is indeed suggested in the final lines of Voluspá.

I like that idea just now.... Something beyond the darkness.

Crossing Boundaries, Combining Deities, Creating My Own Tradition

Lately I have noted two different spiritual impulses in myself that cannot seem to be satisfied by recourse to a single ethnically-based Pagan tradition. Though I realize this is heresy to some of my Pagan friends, I am feeling like the solution to my spiritual dilemma is to combine deities of two different traditions. I know full well that this goes against the principle followed by many ethnic Pagans of ONLY orienting themselves to god/desses of ONE ethnic tradition, and not mixing this devotion with any involvement with any other deities drawn form other traditions of Pagan Europe or elsewhere. Yet I feel this impulse. Let me explain further, and I would be happy to hear from readers if they have had similar issues in their own spiritual development, and how they deal with them.

I am of mixed Baltic and Slavic descent, and since visiting Lithuania in 1996 I have felt myself very connected to the Baltic Pagan tradition, through almost two decades of contacts with the late Jonas Trinkūnas and his wife Inija Trinkūnienė, respectively the past and current leaders of the Lithuanian Pagan movement Romuva, and also with Pagan friends in Latvia, among other things. However, I have a fascination with Norse mythology that goes back to childhood that pulls me to the Norse Pagan world as well. My first fumblings into Paganism were discussions with fellow Norse enthusiasts in the Boston area in the early 1990s, and my real introduction to a spiritually vibrant Pagan practice came in Iceland a few yeas later. Since then, I have found myself always feeling connected to both traditions, the Norse and the Baltic, and unable to choose between them or fully commit myself either way. Now I am thinking that perhaps, I do not have to.

I have long felt, through dreams and other ways, that Odin was the most important god for me. As someone who has lived in different countries and been deeply affected by all of them without ever being able to really settle down anywhere with a sense of satisfied finality, I relate strongly to Odin's aspect as the ever-wandering seeker of wisdom whose travels lead to knowledge and power but not necessarily happiness or contentment. Thinking in a Baltic way, I have tried to harness this sense of connection and focus it onto the approximate Lithuanian equivalent of Odin, Velnias, but Velnias has never seemed as vivid to me as Odin. This is partly no doubt because I have long been aware of Odin's myths as recorded in the Eddas, which I have read and reread and reflected on for many years, and I know of no Lithuanian texts that give as compelling an account of Velnias, at least in English translation. And so, I see the need for Odin to play an important part in my personal worship practice.

But then there is another spiritual impulse that has been growing in me, a voice inside calling me to revere and offer devotion to the earth-goddess. More than twenty years ago, I studied Marija Gimbutas' theories of a "Goddess Civilization" in Neolithic "Old Europe" between approximately 7000-3500 BCE, as laid out in books like "The Language of the Goddess." Like many academics of the time, I tended to dismiss her idea of a goddess-centered culture complex because it seemed that she had exaggerated certain points and perhaps gone overboard with her enthusiasm, writing more emotionally than scientifically. And yet I had never been able to decisively conclude that Gimbutas was completely wrong. It has always seemed to me that she was certainly correct on a very interesting and meaningful point, that there is a strong feminine component in many European mythological traditions that creates strange tensions with the male gods of those same traditions, and that this definite feminine power in the Pagan European mythology that has come down to us could be a vestige of even older traditions.

And then this last spring, teaching a course on "Neo-Paganism" at a college in the northeastern United States, I found myself again re-examining Gimbutas' goddess and Old Europe theories, and I discovered them resonating with me more deeply than ever before. I did not suddenly forget about all the criticisms and reservations expressed by archaeologists, Indo-Europeanists and others about possible inaccuracies and overstatements in Marija's work, but I was aware of another point of view as well. Modern academia and science tend to be very narrowly-focused, delving deeply into the most minute data, rather than stepping back to allow contemplation and speculation of larger connections and meanings. In such a situation, Gimbutas could not but come off badly and be viewed as a nutty old lady who went over the edge of reason, science and academic respectability. However, the narrowly-focused super-specialists who tend to dominate today may simply not be temperamentally or professionally equipped to evaluate writing and thinking that is as broad and visionary as the work of Gimbutas.

(As an aside, let me note that I have the same perception about modern-day psychological researchers who have in some ways reduced psychology to a biologically reductive "brain science" and are thus quick to dismiss the broader, more speculative thinking of early giants of their field like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, because if you can't open a brain stem or a nerve cluster and find a mother-complex or an archetype there, than these are obviously false and meaningless constructs to be relegated to the psychiatric scrap heap. Hmm, this may require further discussion in the blog another day...)

Returning to Gimbutas, it strikes me that those who dismiss her later publications have not always taken seriously the fact that she came to her "extravagant" goddess theories after not just many years, but many decades of immersion in exactly the kind of fine-pointed archaeological data that are considered the proper stuff of archaeology by those who now disdain her later work as unscientific and unsupported. I don't know about you, but I tend to take seriously the opinions of those who have spent a long time, especially a life-time, on a particular subject or skill.

A computer program designed by a twenty-five year-old researcher might produce an analysis of classical music that "scientifically" ranks the great composers of the past in such a way that Beethoven is placed at #54, Mozart at #21 and Tchaikovsky at #88, according to some mathematical formula or algorithm, and this "brilliant scientific research" might be all the rage for a time, and certainly be attractive to corporations looking to classify and market music according to numerical values as with online services like Pandora, but I would be more inclined to listen to the views of a seasoned, dedicated 70 or 80 year old virtuoso musician or conductor who has been playing this music all their life and speaks from deep familiarity and personal experience. Similarly, it may be quite easy for someone with certain kinds of academic training to locate weaknesses or errors in Gimbutas' work and then proceed to rip down the whole edifice, thereby quickly advancing a few professional levels in the academic demolition-derby, but has that person actually spent as much time as Gimbutas did in working with the actual archaeological data and artifacts from Neolithic Europe? She may have been wrong on particular points, and even exaggerated or distorted this or that along the very long road that she traversed, but her overall thesis that there were very strong elements of feminine symbolism in Southeastern-Central Eastern Neolithic Europe that seem suggestive of goddess worship is something that I think must be taken seriously, and I do.

I have been finding that the kinds of Neolithic goddess images highlighted by Gimbutas, the "Venus of Willendorf" type figures of superabundant proportions with all feminine attributes heightened and magnified speak to me on some very deep level. The spiral motif often associated with these figures, which according to Gimbutas symbolizes not only the life and pleasure-giving contours of vulva, vagina and womb, but birth and death and infinite plenitude and regeneration as an all-encompassing feminine mystery, has also captivated me. Perhaps it is that I still feel the loss of my mother, who passed on some eleven years ago, or like most men, the need of a female partner in love and in life, that feed this fascination, but I don't think that this can be simply reduced to these personal, psychological factors. I interpret it as a need to be connected to the earth as mother, the ultimate feminine, and so I have been seeking a proper form through which to develop this devotion.

To complement Odin in my personal devotion, it would be convenient and culturally congruent to select a Norse goddess, but here I cannot seem to find the right fit. The fertility goddess from Norse myth that is most vivid to me is Freyja, but I am conscious that she is not specifically an EARTH goddess in the Norse tradition, but is just as much a warrior queen and a death-goddess. The "earth-mother" position in Norse myth is filled by the mother of Thor, Fjörgyn, also sometimes known as Jörð and described as Odin's partner. However, she is not well-represented in the surviving mythological texts, and I find my spiritual focus gravitating instead to the Lithuanian goddess of earth and fertility, Žemyna. I do not know any myths of Žemyna, but I know that she was worshipped in the past in a humble but evocative manner by offerings of drink poured onto the ground and that she is highly regarded in the Romuva movement. She has in these different ways been impressed on my psyche,and become a dear and familiar figure to me. And so, Žemyna it is.

I will now be groping and experimenting to find my own way to focus devotion onto these two figures, from separate Pagan traditions, who I now combine into a new Pagan tradition--my own. My first thought is that I should meditate on Odin at night, as I associate him with wisdom and mystery tinged with darkness, and focus on Žemyna in the morning, as the bearer of new life in each new day on this earth--HER earth. And so I begin.

As noted earlier, I am interested to hear from others who have similarly experimented with combining deities from different traditions and from across cultural and ethnic boundaries.

What's Your Limit?

As humans, we dislike any limits on our way of life, our freedom of choice, and our range of options and so we rail and strain against them. However, the voice of wisdom tells us that some limits are necessary. When as a child you want to run as fast as you can and enjoy the vitality of your young body, that is a good thing. However, should you decide that in your enjoyment of limitlessness you want to race right off a cliff, not knowing or believing that there could be awful consequences, you may need someone to hold you back in order to save your young body from smashing to bloody bits on the rocks down below. This applies to so many things in our world today, most of all, our relationship to the natural environment, where human beings must learn to respect limits on our production and consumption of carbon-based energy and our usage of dangerous, poisonous chemicals, or we and the world are both going to be falling off a very steep cliff indeed.

In Norse mythology, there is an intriguing story of limits, the binding of the dangerous, demonic wolf Fenrir. As described in the text known as the Prose Edda, also known as the Snorri Edda, as it was written by the diplomat and poet Snorri Sturluson, Fenrir is one of the "trouble children" of the often-though-not-necessarily-always malevolent god Loki. From an early point in the life of young Fenrir, the gods realize that the wolfy child is trouble. They know that when he grows to full size, he will be immensely strong and dangerous, and pose a serious threat to the peace and order of the gods and the world. The gods decide they must find a way to bind Fenrir with a fetter strong enough to restrain him for all time. Lots are drawn and it falls to the brave god Tyr, a god of victory and justice, to persuade Fenrir to step into the seemingly frail rope loop that the gods have imbued with magic strength to hold the demon wolf fast. Fenrir, son of the trickster god, is not stupid, and only agrees to step into the rope circle if Tyr will put his hand into Fenrir's huge and horrible mouth as a guarantee that no trickery is involved. Tyr does this, and then loses his hand when the rope seizes Fenrir and he exacts his price by clamping down on Tyr. After this, Tyr is a one-handed god, and Fenrir is bound tight, for many ages. However, at the end of time, in the chaos of Ragnarok, he will break loose and wreak horror and havoc, finally devouring the leader of the gods and ending Odin's life.

What can we learn from this? That when a danger is great enough, a means must be found to keep it under control. If we were to say that the greatest threat to the world today is our addiction to carbon-based energy threatening life-threatening global warming, then means must be found to bring that threat under control. We must bind this Fenrir, but it will not be easy. The carbon fuel industries are as immense and powerful as the frost giants and fire demons and other ogres of the myths, and we may have to sacrifice much and suffer great pain and loss to bring them to heel. But this is our duty as guardians of the earth.

I am also moved to contemplate how so many things in our modern economy seem to revolve around promoting various kinds of addiction. These are other forms of Fenrir that we need to bind and resist. Our capitalist economy requires constant growth, with the corporate profit monster demanding endless feeding, like a young, growing Fenrir. Out of this need for limitless growth, our corporate magicians have learned to create many kinds of profitable mass addiction, because as any drug dealer knows, the best customer is the one who always needs and wants more. So how shall they addict thee? Let me count the ways....

Cigarettes...Casino gambling...Video gambling...Video games...Violent video games...E-Cigarettes (they're "e"! they're high-tech! wow, I want to try the heroin flavor!)...Junk food laced with salt, sugar, fat and chemicals...the list goes on, and on.

But one of the top prizes in the addiction competition has to go to the pharmaceutical industry. And you have to give them credit. They have really worked hard on this! They have pills to calm you down, pills to boost you up, pills to make you smarter, pills to make you sexier, pills to energize you, pills to stabilize you, pills to numb you. The government tells the young that "drugs are bad," especially ones that might help you relax and are not produced in corporate laboratories, like marijuana, or other types that might make you think thoughts that challenge the social order, like LSD, but then the children find that their school principals and psychiatrists, armed with helpful information provided by the pharmaceutical companies (aka Big Pharma, or is is Big Phenrir?) tell them that they really do need to take pills for the ADHD that keeps them from concentrating, unless they are depressed, in which case they need pills to obliterate their sorrow, and never mind the causes of that sorrow. Tinkering with brain chemistry and marketing magic in a bottle is ever so much more profitable than trying to change social conditions or provide support to people in difficult environments...

Another contender for top Wolf in the Addiction Olympics has to be the electronics industry. They really know how to make people psychologically dependent on having the latest device, the latest technology, the latest app. Do you remember ten year ago, when the consumer electronics titans were pushing the idea that you had to have a really, Really REALLY big TV in your home, or you weren't really a hip, happy, modern consumer? Well, nowadays they have flipped this around and the "in" thing is to watch your video on really, Really REALLY small screens on your favorite "smart" phone. What is so smart about watching tiny figures on a two inch screen? Never mind that! Shut up and buy Buy BUY what we tell you to. And what about Fecebook? How many times a day do the poor addicted Fece Folk have to update their profiles and share their exciting news about their cat's indigestion, the improperly buttered toast served to them at the chain restaurant, or their silly new sunglasses? What could be better for our society's well-being than people spending hours in idiotic states of distraction? After all, it is not like there were any problems outside our technological gadgets that require our urgent attention... If there was something we should do besides enjoy inane updates and endless streams of advertising, FeceBook and Gluegle would tell us, wouldn't they? After all, high tech companies know everything and care only for our welfare and the planet's well-being.

No...no....no!

We need limits. Limits on consumption, limits on advertising, limits on carbon, limits on chemicals, limits on mindless entertainment, limits on technology that takes us away from reality. But how can we bind our multiple Fenrirs? That is something we must continue to discuss and put into action where and when we can.

The Rites of Spring, Then and Now

Sacrifice and Revolution...are these the Rites of Spring?

I was listening tonight to a radio program featuring a discussion of Stravinsky's composition "The Rites of Spring," a ballet inspired by Slavic Paganism and the notion of human sacrifice. The music and dancing in "The Rites" were so radical, so jarring, so unlike anything that had gone before in European classical music that this ballet actually caused riots in Paris when it was first performed in 1913. The discussion I listened to was on Chris Lydon's Boston NPR program "Open Source," which replayed a discussion of Stravinsky from the year 2000 on "The Connection," the program Lydon hosted on WBUR at that time. You can hear it at http://radioopensource.org/rite-of-spring-revival .

I am moved to reflect upon sacrifice, spring and revolution. We are just a few days in from May Day, once a worldwide day of tribute to workers and socialism, and more recently, a date on the calendar when modern-day Pagans often celebrate Beltane or other "rites of spring." In Stravinsky's vision, the Rites of Spring means the selection of a young maiden to be offered in human sacrifice in order to bring on the life-giving renewal of spring. The maiden is then driven to dance until she dies, which the frantic, driving music of the composition renders both hypnotic and frightening. Stravinsky's, and not only Stravinsky's view of sacrifice is that it is a very basic spiritual mystery, a primal bargain in which death pays for life, in which something must be given, wasted, killed, destroyed--sacrificed--by one, or by some, so that new abundance can be obtained for the many, or even for all of us. There is a similar logic in Christ's crucifixion and in Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in the Old Testament.

In Norse myth, the world itself is created by the sacrificial killing and dismemberment of the primal being Ymir, and wisdom, poetry, writing and more are made possible for mankind by Odin's agonizing self-sacrifice on the world tree Yggdrasil. The apocalyptic vision of the end of the world in the poem Voluspa is also in a sense a story of sacrifice, as the destruction of the existing world is the prelude to the revitalization and re-creation of the world, rising up from the depths of the ocean, "fresh and green."

With our retrospective knowledge of what would happen in Europe and Russia in the years immediately following the debut of the "Rites of Spring," Stravinsky's ballet now seems not only a powerful reflection on sacrifice and death, but an artistic prophecy of the huge changes about to occur in Europe through WW I and the Russian Revolution. I find its message still entirely relevant, still full of jarring, even frightening resonance, in our own time. Our society has become dominated by a corporate and economic elite as corrupt, self-serving and unresponsive to human needs and aspirations as was the Tsarist regime of Stravinsky's time. Are we perhaps building up to the point when a revolution--a massive, horrific, collective sacrifice--is again required to make this society a more promising place for all of its citizens, not just a privileged elite? Will we need to rise up and accept the necessity of risk, loss, ruin, danger, and even death, to break the death-grip of the corporate oligarchy that now controls the parameters of our lives?

It is a tired refrain of American political thought that in a democracy such as ours, we must work through the political system, with all its flaws and contradictions, to achieve improvements in society, and that we should accept the reality that change comes slowly, and may take many generations. There is no need for drastic action, so this thinking goes, no reason to imagine anything as violent and radical as a revolution. America had a revolution once, it is true, but that was long ago, and we now have a constitutional democracy designed to accommodate public demands and to foster change and adjustments in our society, however slowly. All things in good time, you see.

Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" reminds us of other, darker chords that can be played on the strings of the collective social orchestra. We are not in a time of social and political progress. The system is not working, or if it is, it is only working for those with massive financial power to bring about the results that they desire. Thus, when we have a financial Ragnarok as in 2008, it is only the oligarchic elite that gets much help from the government that is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, and for the people." Thus, when the world is threatened by massive climate disruption, when the icecaps are melting and increasingly violent storms and droughts rock one country after another, the carbon fuel industry is able to manipulate the media and cloud the public discourse in the United States to such a degree that most people doubt the need for any decisive action, and the profits of the carbon companies go up and up and up, just like the earth's temperature, with all the great danger that entails. Whatever happens in our world now is assimilated, adapted and repackaged by the forces of international finance and corporate power into a way for them to gather greater wealth and influence. What chance do the rest of us have?

In our world of dazzling, digital distractions, where our concerns about pressing social and political issues and our desires for real and meaningful change can be so easily dissipated, neutered and anesthetized by ever-proliferating forms of mind-crippling entertainment, it is hard to imagine a massive uprising such as the French, Russian or American revolutions. Furthermore, in a world where the economy has been transformed into an ever-more competitive, ever-less supportive, ever-more frightening zone of total insecurity for the vast majority of wage-earners, more and more of whom fear that at any moment they might be replaced by the latest "labor-saving" technology, which offers vast profits to the corporate and financial elite and the prospect of unemployment or progressively lower-wage work to many, most people are rightfully terrified to embark on any course of action that could endanger what little economic and occupational security they have managed to hold onto against the powerful techno-capital forces rumbling in the background like Tyrannosaurus Rex monsters looking to devour any and every creature that they can force into their perpetually ravenous mouths.

And yet... and yet, the brutal lesson of history, and of the "Rites of Spring," is that there can be no real spring, no true renewal, no large-scale social progress, without sacrifice and loss. The time may come when people will rise up to demand this, and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the welfare of future generations. It is my hope that as the threat of such uprising and revolution begins to take on shape and form and momentum, as began to happen with the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011 and 2012, that the people with great power in government and the corporate and financial sectors will finally realize t the need for a thorough renegotiation of the basic social contract, and then our society can be renewed on a better basis for all. But if they are unable or unwilling to accept the need for such change... if they are so blinded by their own narcissism and the delusional belief that they have a right to perpetuate the order that is of such service to them and such disservice to others... then all bets are off, and the "Rites of Spring" may again need to be performed.

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....

Pagan-Jewish Parallels

I have been researching Eastern European Jewish history this summer, and this has led me to reflect on some possible Pagan-Jewish parallels. No, I am not making a claim that the ancient Pagans of this or that region of Europe were one of the legendary lost tribes of Israel that made a wrong turn in the Mediterranean and ended up in Stonehenge or Uppsala. Nothing like that! Instead, what I have been contemplating is how the complicated status of Judaism and Jewishness as both religion and ethnic identity provides an interesting mirror to the status of Ethnic Reconstructionist Paganism as both a form of religion or spirituality AND an adaptation of particular ethnic traditions of particular European regions. Let me take you through some of the areas of correspondence that I have been considering between Paganism and Judaism, and also demonstrate that some of the areas of absolute difference between Paganism and Judaism may not quite be so absolute as is often believed.

1. Both Jews and Pagans follow religious traditions rooted in a particular place or "holy land." Even when followers of these traditions find themselves very far away, the original place of their religion's development remains sacred and meaningful. All the long centuries after the Roman Empire's crushing of the original Jewish kingdom in ancient times, Jews continued to regard Palestine as their sacred homeland, up to the development of a modern Jewish state, Israel. The Pagan parallel involves Pagans living outside of Europe in such places as the United States and Australia continuing to regard the area in Europe in which their religious tradition first developed, such as Lithuania for Romuva believers, Ireland for Celtic Pagans, Scandinavia for Norse Pagans, and so on. Travel to the homeland is a powerful spiritual experience for Pagans, as is visiting Israel for Jews.

2. The corollary of the love of a spiritual homeland is the sense of exile and loss, which is again common to both Jews and Pagans.

3. The language of the original homeland is likewise valued as sacred,with Hebrew for the Jews; European languages related to particular European regions for Pagans. Both Jews outside of Israel and Pagans living outside of Europe struggle to acquire and maintain knowledge of these languages.

4. In both Jewish mysticism and some forms of European Paganism, the ancient script,indeed the very letters and symbols of the sacred language is seen as possessing magical, divinely inspired powers. Compare the Kabbalistic view of the magical powers of Hebrew letters with the significance that Norse Pagans invest in the ancient Germanic runes. Other Pagans such as Celts, Balts and Slavs also tend to regard their earliest forms of writing as possessing sacredness and possibly magical power.

5. Both Jews and Pagans have a range of views about who is qualified to claim identity as a member of these religions. All Jewish denominations see birth from Jewish parents, with priority on a Jewish mother, as a legitimate qualification for Jewish identity. Some sects see having a Jewish father as sufficient. Most Jewish sects allow conversion to Judaism by people not born Jewish, with different rules as to how conversion is to be carried out. Among European ethnic Pagans, there is an ongoing discussion about whether and to what extent a family ancestral link to the European spiritual homeland is an important qualification for membership in a Pagan community. Most forms of ethnic Paganism allow those without an ancestral link to participate in their religious activities, but there is often a preference and privileging of those with ancestral links, though this is not always explicitly stated. There are also some ethnic Pagans who insist on ancestry as a necessary factor for inclusion in the community. Just as Jews have long debated and disagreed about these issues, Pagans are likely to do the same. I myself would advocate for totally open conversion without preference to, or prejudice against, ethnic background, but I am well aware that others have quite different and even opposite opinions!

6. Jewish communities in Eastern European history were often segregated to greater or lesser extent, though this was rarely a total sealing off of Jews from contact with non-Jews. It can be argued that this segregation helped to maintain Jewish identity and foster the development of distinct Eastern European traditions such as Hasidism. Though most if not all Pagans today live in mixed, pluralistic societies, I have on a number of occasions met Pagans who would like to live in a more segregated manner, in tight-knit Pagan communities that would be distinct and separate, though not totally sealed off, from mainstream, Christian-dominant society. Some Pagans create temporary communities in the summer months, whether camping out together at festivals, or constructing an intentionally archaic, folkloric village, as the leaders of Romuva have done in Lithuania. I wonder, will we see Pagan versions of shtetls and ghettos in the future?

7. The sacredness of nature is common to both Paganism and Judaism. While this may be more obvious and central in Pagan traditions, Judaism is replete with nature symbolism. Jewish festivals such as Sukkoth and Shavuot are essentially agricultural festivals, celebrating the fertility of the earth. The Old Testament and the Kabbalah both utilize trees as sacred symbols. To take up the contrary view, one that has become rather conventional among Pagans, the argument is sometimes made that Judaism is un-natural and anti-natural insofar as it involves the desire of God that mankind will subjugate and dominate all other creatures, whereas Paganism supposedly involves a more reverent attitude of harmony with nature. I think this difference is overstated. Most Pagan traditions are grounded in an agricultural lifestyle which also involves a domination and subjugation of animals and the natural world. Even if the natural world is highly respected and honored as sacred, it is still subjugated and dominated by mankind in any form of European-derived Paganism I know of. Judaism is also sometimes criticized by Pagans as a religion of the desert, but let us not forget that the Holy, Promised Land of the Bible is the "land of milk and honey," not a wasteland but a fertile land conducive to animal breeding and agriculture, much like Old World Europe.

8. But what about the fundamental difference between Judaism as a monotheistic faith and Paganism as a polytheistic worldview? I would not deny that this is a real difference, but I would also note that there are some monotheistic tendencies in Paganism just as there are polytheistic ones in Judaism. Greek Pagan philosophy moved toward a conception of the One behind the Many, and Norse mythology describes Odin as the All-father, and speaks of some sort of One greater than the gods arising after the world-destruction of Ragnarok. Judaism contains angels, which are arguably divine beings, certainly greater-than-mortal, and the Kabbalah has multiple powers and beings that are also greater-than-human, notably the Shekhinah, a female personification of the Jewish nation that looks a lot like a Jewish goddess. There are also the rejected goddess (or demoness) figures like Lilith in the Old Testament.

I would therefore argue that there are a good many parallels between Paganism and Judaism that are well worth pondering. I believe that open-minded Jews and Pagans can find a certain amount of common ground, if they wish to.

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!

Some Modest Proposals

Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels" once sardonically suggested in an essay entitled "A Modest Proposal" that the best solution to the proliferation of poor people in Britain was to give them a useful role in the British economy as a food source; that is, to eat them. Since in America, we are in the middle of the most severe economic recession since the 1930s, with our "deficit hawk" politicians in Washington refusing to extend the unemployment benefits that have been a lifeline to millions of unemployed workers, we need to think seriously, as Swift did, about how we want to deal with the reality that there are an increasing number of very poor people in our society. The simplest solution is just to kill them. This approach has the great virtue of being in tune with the American value of pure rugged individualism and the lofty Social Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest. If these people are unable to find jobs and take care of their own financial futures, if they have failed in the great America free market of competition, why should they be allowed to go on living? They are just taking up space that could be better used to provide luxury housing and retail outlets for those Americans who ARE good people and have proven this by becoming fabulously wealthy.

Furthermore, the extermination of the poor could be televised as a--naturally--"Pay Per View" program, to raise money for some worthy cause like medical research into the health problems caused by excessive wealth, in which super-wealthy Wall Street executives, oil company CEOs, multi-millionaire baseball and basketball players, pop music stars, and other examples of God-given success, are allowed to execute poor people in a manner of their choosing. Market survey research has proven that this kind of programming would be far more popular with the majority of Americans, including those who are sliding into poverty but prefer to think of themselves as "middle class," than programming that explores the actual circumstances of poor people.

Who needs the poor? Let them die. This would be somewhat embarrassing for our nation, it is true, but certainly far less shameful than forcing our government to go into debt to provide financial assistance to these worthless individuals. Given the choice between adding to the national debt by helping the jobless and simply exterminating them in a cost-effective manner, the choice is clear. It is the duty of every red-blooded, patriotic American to either become rich, or kill the poor.

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The above is my attempt at satirical humor. My more serious thoughts on this subject are that we should absolutely take care of those who are losing jobs and falling into poverty in our society. I disagree with the way that this issue is being framed by most politicians and media pundits. According to them, the only way we can provide aid to the jobless and poor is by the government going deep into debt and driving up the deficit. There is another way to go. When a government budget faces a shortfall, the crucial choice is between cutting services and raising revenues. We have heard plenty of voices saying we must tighten our belts, we must cut back government programs, and so forth. I think we should consider the other possibility, of increasing revenues by raising taxes.

I know that the very phrase "raise taxes" is enough to mobilize a hundred million conservative Americans into an angry, frothing frenzy, but I persist in calling for this, because I think it is the only way forward without decimating services that are widely needed across this country. Let me add as an aside that not only are unemployment benefits on the chopping block, but many other government services from education to fire departments to you-name-it. Check out your local news to see how this is unfolding in your state or local community, as it is becoming nearly universal across the USA, with very few exceptions. I would also like to point out that there is a huge amount of research showing that from about 1980 onwards, with the Reagan tax cuts, the decline of labor unions, and other factors, the wealthiest 5% of Americans have seen an exponential growth in their income and assets, while the vast majority of Americans have seen their level of income and assets dwindle and diminish, while their level of debt has been rising dramatically and continuously. That is to say, there has been growing income inequality for decades. Since we now face a crisis that is hitting the most vulnerable members of our human community with brutal force, isn't it time for those wealthy Americans to give something back, to sacrifice a small amount of their vast wealth, to help those who are on the edge of despair and homelessness? It is time for the greedy to face the needy. We should move quickly to institute income tax increases on the top 5%. THEY CAN AFFORD IT. If we are unable to face this issue, then my joking proposal in the first half of this entry will prove to not be a silly joke, but a grimly accurate prophecy. Have we really become a "winner-take-all" country where the lucky few get to live lives of immense luxury, while millions scrape and struggle? That is pretty much the same as letting the rich kill the poor. It just not as direct and dramatic as what I mention above.

Though this blog entry is primarily one about American politics, it does also connect to one of my main concerns about American Paganism. I have detected--and please correct me if I am wrong--that among American Asatru believers, there is a general right-wing, conservative, or libertarian political orientation, that is totally opposed to the kind of tax policy I mention above. These are people who largely, in my experience, like to fancy themselves modern-day, Viking heroes, tough, independent, and not needing no help from nobody, least of all Big Government. Here is why I think their viewpoint is wrong, and here I must ask forgiveness of my readers for repeating a point I have made repeatedly in the early days of this blog. If we look to the homeland of the Vikings, to Scandinavia, we find that these societies have continued to evolve from medieval times onwards to embrace large, effective government, generous social programs including substantial jobless benefits, and progressive tax policies that require the well-to-do to pay high levels of tax to take care of the rest of society. The results have been spectacular: a healthy, well-educated population, much less of a gap between rich and poor, much less crime, and still, a very successful, thriving business sector, from Nokia to Ikea and beyond. It can be done, and the modern-day Vikings show how.

I believe that the most important thing in religion is to waken in ourselves our "higher mind," our greatest potential. I believe that the gods of any and all traditions represent the human attempt to symbolize and personify many different peoples' glimpses of that higher mind that speaks to us to beckon us to a higher level of awareness. In the Norse tradition, I see that higher mind symbolized and personified by Odin. I think modern-day Scandinavia is, in a certain sense, still listening to Odin and tapping into that higher awareness, and using that to create some of the most pleasant and equitable societies in the world. I wish America could do the same.

I regret deeply that my Asatru brothers and sisters in the USA seem to be only devoted to looking backwards, to trying to create some kind of fossilized version of tenth-century Viking heroism, combined with a particular brand of modern-day American "rugged individualism" wrapped up with love of the military and dislike of government. I think Odin has moved on, and they should too!

PS. We could also take money out of the military budget to pay for human needs in the USA, but I guess that is simply impossible. The military is sacred.

Unthinking America

This Political Pagan has been silent for some time not only because of end-of-semester exhaustion but also due to despair and depression about recent events in the USA. First, the April 5th explosion and 29 deaths in the West Virginia coal mine operated by the Massey Energy Company, which investigators have found to possess a disgusting record of violations of safety practices that practically guaranteed that a disaster like this would come to pass sooner or later.

Then came the fiery collapse of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, with equally brazen corporate carelessness causing 11 deaths and a hellish future of environmental devastation through the spreading plume of poisonous oil and the equally poisonous chemicals being poured into the Gulf to disperse the oil.

Then came April 23rd, when Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law a set of measures empowering state police to interrogate any person suspected of being an undocumented alien or "illegal immigrant," and to arrest any such person found to be without proper identification papers. This controversial law split the country down the middle between those in favor of such harsh treatment of suspected illegal immigrants, and those who oppose this legislation for promoting anti-Hispanic prejudice and whittling away at the Fourth Amendment constitutional protection against "unreasonable search and seizure." The passage of what was widely felt by Hispanics, and others concerned with civil rights and the country's sad legacy of racial prejudice, to be essentially anti-Hispanic legislation echoed Arizona's earlier history of resisting accepting the designation of a holiday for the slain Civil Rights hero Martin Luther King.

Next came the Rachel Maddow interview on May 19th with Republican primary winner and presumed Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of the past libertarian Presidential candidate Ron Paul and named for the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand. In this interview, Paul expressed reservations about the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits private businesses from discriminating against people on the basis of race, creed, national origin and so forth. Though Rand claimed to support the concept of opposing racial discrimination, he felt bound by libertarian principle to reject government intervention in the economic sphere, such as the government requiring restaurants to serve African-America or other minority patrons, as mandated by civil rights legislation. To Rand and his libertarian compatriots, it is more important to allow private businesses total freedom, including the freedom to discriminate, than for government authorities to take action to prevent abuses perpetrated by private businesses.

Finally, just a few days later, Rand applied similar reasoning to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf, arguing that it was "un-American" for President Obama to harshly criticize BP for the ecological holocaust that it had unleashed through its carelessness. Freedom of business trumps government regulation and protection every time, for Rand and his followers. "America" seems to be synonymous with business and corporate interests, not the needs and rights of others in American society.

In my analysis, this depressing sequence of events has a common denominator of cruel and selfish thoughtlessness, which I fear is becoming the default setting for American morality. The corporate masters of Massey Energy and BP clearly were not thinking about the safety of their workers when they pushed for faster production and skirted the limits of legal guidelines and accepted practices within their respective industries, nor were they thinking carefully about the environmental consequences of their extractive procedures. They were only thinking about how to maximize profits in the short term.

According to Rand Paul, this is as it should be. In the old Calvin Coolidge adage, "The business of America is business." Civil rights and environmental concerns may have their place, but their place is not to stand in the way of private business or corporate profits. The question of what kind of America we will have if our civil rights are trampled upon and our environment fouled into toxicity is irrelevant. If the corporations make profit, if quarterly dividends are positive, if the Dow Jones index goes up three hundred points instead of down three hundred points, this is all that matters.

The ruthless nature of the American economy, its tendency to divide society into winners and losers, with many more losers than winners, invites resentment, scapegoating and paranoia. Even as corporate profits for companies like BP swell to mind-boggling proportions, many Americans find themselves out of work, and even those who are employed often enjoy little job security and dwindling job benefits, their debt level rising much faster than their wages, with the interest on their debt swelling the profits of bank and credit card companies. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, millions unemployed, and huge profits for Wall Street.

With such storm clouds on the horizon, what is the solution of political leaders like the governor of Arizona? Direct people's attention elsewhere; find the vulnerable scapegoat; prepare the sacrificial victim. Blame it on the immigrants. Blame it on those dark-skinned, Spanish-speaking Latinos. They did it all. They brought down the economy in 2007-08. They created the financial regulations that give much greater protection to corporate interests than average citizens. It was those damned wetbacks risking their lives to cross the border who caused the stock market to crash. It was the Mexicans who loosened up the regulations on oil drilling that led to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. That's right, Gulf of MEXICO. The name says it all... It's all their fault....let's arrest them, put them in prison, OK to rough them up a little bit, hey, no one's watching; let's separate fathers from mothers, mothers from children; let's ship them all back to Mexico. With rising budget deficits that make some in Washington reluctant to provide unemployment compensation to the millions unemployed, now is the time to spend millions or billions on a "Fence" between Mexico and the US.

Why is the governor of Arizona supporting this legislation? I can't see inside the workings of her mind, but to me it seems pure political calculation. She is a Republican, dependent mainly on white votes, with Arizona having a large number of retired white senior citizens who form her political base. Latinos are more likely to vote Democratic. Many of the white retirees hate and fear the Hispanics they pay to mow their lawns and perform other physically demanding tasks that they are unable or unwilling to do. For a Republican candidate who is not too concerned about civil rights, morality or basic human decency, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by beating up on Hispanics and romancing the racists. The same calcuation may apply to Rand Paul as a Republican candidate in Kentucky, though in his case, there does seem to be an actual ideology involved, that of Ayn Rand-style libertarianism. However, as that ideology is totally blind to and disinterested in issues like racial inequality and social injustice, which are irrelevant to the overriding libertarian concern with private property and individualism, that ideology, when applied to real life in ethnically diverse and socially unequal American society, is always borderline racist or potentially racist.

Whether it's the corporate pigs of BP or the politicians happy to cater to racism, I see the same common denominator of utter thoughtlessness and selfishness. No regard for what kind of environment we will have down the road, nor what kind of society. The Gulf of Mexico could become an ecological dead zone, a Gulf of Mordor. What does BP care? Current law limits their liability to $75 billion. They can write that off, pull out of the Gulf region, and set up new operations elsewhere. Note that one thing BP and its associated businesses did with great care and speed following the initial accident was to rush around with liability forms and try to get the traumatized, lucky-to-be-alive workers coming off the Deep Horizon rig to sign away their right to sue for damages. Massey did much the same. These fellows are very thoughtful indeed when it comes to protecting their profits; they just don't waste a lot of brain cells when it comes to thinking about protecting their workers or the world we live in.

This exposes one of the worst dangers of the "privatizing" trend that began with Reagan of turning over more and more functions and responsibilities to corporate control. Corporations and most businesses do not think long term. They think only of short term gain. To trust your environment, your planet, your health or your country's economic future to corporate good will is a horrible mistake, whose ramifications we can begin to see in these recent incidents. This is also true on the local level. To trust your town's landscape and natural resources to the tender mercies of real estate developers is to invite devastation of the land that brings short-term profit but long-term waste. The fact that human beings can be greedy, selfish, and thoughtless about the future is why we have a public sphere, why we have democratic governments instead of corporate government, why our ancestors talked in terms like "commonwealth" and "the common good." This has been forgotten and it needs to be renewed.

To trust your society to the whims of businessmen and corporations is likewise short-sighted. They think only of profit, not justice. The poor interest them only as potential low-cost labor, and they are quick to oppose any effort by poor citizens to improve their lot by community organizing or labor union formation. Their financial DNA is oriented to serving up whatever the most profitable demographic group wants. So if the key market group is white racist, no need to worry about other groups like African Americans or Latinos. If you want a good, safe and humane society where everyone can prosper and thrive, it will not come from giving in to the profit motives of businessmen, because they do not believe in society, only "The Market." Ronald Reagan's soulmate Margaret Thatcher famously declared, "There is no such thing as society...only individuals." The prison and armaments industries in the USA are thriving, and have been since the Reagan era, but few would say that we or the world are safer or fairer as a result. But not to worry: new fears create a profitable market for new forms of repression, called "security," whether it is fear of crime driving people to seek the luxury prisons known as "gated communities," or our endless wars against people who we are afraid might take up arms against us, overlooking the fact that our repeated bombings and invasions of other lands might just be a factor in others wanting to get revenge against the USA.

I am sad that many people I know in the American Asatru-Heathen community seem to subscribe to some version of the libertarian political philosophy. Dan Halloran, Theodish Heathen elected to the City Council in New York, who some Republicans would like to see try for higher office, is of the libertarian stripe, I believe. As I understand it, love of Libertarianism among American Asatruar has come about because they see individualism and tribalism, with no concern for any larger social unity or humanity in general, as values encoded in ancient Germanic lore, and find libertarianism in accord with this. I would dispute this reading, but that is an argument for another day. For today, I would note that the racial composition of American Asatru is nearly 100% white, and the disdain that many conservative Asatru followers seem to hold for government efforts to combat racism and reduce social inequality in the USA does seems to be more in line with the race-baiting of politicians like George Wallace, Jan Brewer, and perhaps Rand Paul, than with the thinking of individuals more commonly understood as intellectual and moral heroes like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

Odin, the god of wisdom in Norse-Germanic mythology, is famed for thinking long-term about the future fate of the world, ALL the world, not just tribe X in region Z or rugged individual Q swinging his ax on a raid on village Y. To me this points the way forward. We must raise not our axes, but our minds up to think about the welfare of ALL, for the long-term future, not just short-term gain and selfish individualism.

If you think I am wrong, go swing your ax at the Gulf of Mordor...I mean Mexico.

Odin and the Buddha

Watching the fine documentary about the life of the Buddha that premiered Wednesday,7th April 2010,on Public Television (PBS.org) in the USA, I was moved by many elements of the Buddha's life story and message, but by one aspect above all: the emphasis on compassion in Buddhism. This is seen not simply as an ethical teaching--that it is nice to be nice to other people and living beings--but also as a crucial spiritual practice, that helps us to feel more connected to others in the world, and to the world in general, and to thus get beyond our egotistical selves. This spiritual dimension of connectedness and compassion is something that I find missing in most modern Norse Paganism, and I suspect that it is not well-developed in other forms of Paganism too. I see this as a failing both of Pagan spirituality and Pagan ethics, but I believe it can be remedied.

There is a lot of discussion of ethics in Norse Paganism or Asatru, but much of it revolves around the idea of warrior honor and loyalty to one's family and tribe. I don't doubt that these are good values, but I still see them as inadequate in comparison to the Buddhists' larger sense of connectedness and compassion, which is also echoed in other religious traditions, and might even be said to represent a universal human value.

Is there any basis in Norse Pagan lore for inferring anything like a concept of universal compassion? Certainly there is no direct statement of any such thing. On this basis, it might be deemed justifiable to reject this whole idea, and I don't doubt that some Norse Pagans might reach that conclusion on reading my words.

The closest direct parallel to a concept of compassion is the discussion of the importance of hospitality. There were a number of thoughtful essays on this topic in the latest issue of Idunna , the Troth.org publication. The viewpoints on hospitality in Idunna and elsewhere in modern Norse Paganism tend to emphasize being a good host to visitors and reciprocity ("a gift for a gift," as this is often expressed) in relation to others within one's own circle of close and trusted associates.

Since we live in a world where we must interact and share the common social space with many others, not only people who we know well or might identify as our "tribe," I find this interpretation of hospitality intriguing and illuminating of the original medieval context of Norse writings, but ultimately insufficient both as a moral guidepost and as a spiritual practice.

Let me therefore explain how I see other possibilities inherent in Norse Pagan lore and traditions.The Norse text that probably contains the most discussion of hospitality is the Eddic poem the Havamal. There is much here about how a person should should behave cautiously as a guest and graciously as a host. The text clearly speak to a medieval world of dangerous conditions where travelers were much at the mercy of those they encountered. The text repeatedly states how good it is to find a friend, to make a friend, to maintain friendship through mutual caring and sharing. Nowhere does this poem state that one should limit their friendships to those within one's own tribe, village or kingdom. In fact, the idea of travelers relying on hospitality suggests a larger view of human relations, with the expectation that one might easily find themselves in a larger social universe and needing to behave in that larger community in such a way as to merit respect and protection. The text also says much about the need to protect oneself in potentially dangerous situations, so this is not all sweetness and light, but the focus is on protecting oneself, not attacking or provoking others.

I would therefore argue that there are thus at least two ways to interpret this text as regards social relations and hospitality. One way, which I have found often expressed among today's Heathens, is a conservative, suspicious view of the social universe, stressing the need to be on guard, ready to defend one's property, honor and person, hand on the hilt, finger on the trigger. Hospitality in this perspective is to be limited to those who prove worthy of close companionship. My own, alternative way of interpreting the text is to see it as arguing for the benefits of securing an ever-wider circle of friendly relations through behaving graciously and honorably both as guest and as host, whether at home in one's own neighborhood, or anywhere else one might travel to.

Having lived in different countries and not always been sure where I stood with those I met or broke bread with, I can certainly vouch for the practical value of this viewpoint. Beyond that, though, I perceive in this the kernel of a notion of universal compassion and self-transcendence. We are all vulnerable creatures in need of others' help from time to time; and we all have the opportunity, if not indeed the obligation, to treat well, and if possible provide assistance to those whose paths cross our own, both for the practical fact that good relations may redound to our benefit in the future, but also because it is the right thing to do by any reasonable moral analysis of the human condition that goes beyond simple selfishness and greed. Considering our mutual vulnerability and dependence can help us develop compassion, not unlike that preached by the Buddha. And, just as compassion in Buddhism serves as both moral value and spiritual discipline, this expanded sense of hospitality can connect us to a larger world that brings us beyond our everyday, limited view of who we are and who we belong to or are obligated toward.

Of course, this is just one man's view of how Norse Pagan lore MIGHT be interpreted and its meaning expanded upon in a certain direction. I would never claim this is the only meaning or "the" true meaning. We must each make of these things what we will, and I do not scorn or blame those who disagree with my thinking or sit back, shake their heads and laugh at my words. As your host on this page, I encourage you to enjoy yourselves as you see fit. Have a laugh on me if you like.

I would however offer certain additional points in favor of my "Buddhistic" version of Norse Pagan morality. It seems to me that in the mythology of Odin, there are hints that can lead us to such a broader view of morality, self and universe.
Odin is first of all a constantly wandering god who acquires much of his wisdom and abilities through interaction with other beings in the universe. He does not stay at home, sitting on his throne, safely protected behind the walls of Asgard, and close off his relations to those outside his tribe or circle of trusted associates. He is always open, always voyaging, always learning. If we take this aspect of Odin as any kind of moral signpost, it is one which points us away from closed or narrow conceptions of our place in the world.

Then there is the myth of the death of Odin's son, Baldur. Without the warrior bravado that is indeed quite common in Norse mythology, this death is presented as a terrible tragedy that is an occasion for deep mourning. Indeed, the Prose Edda version of the myth tells us that if all living beings had shared in weeping for Baldur, he might have been saved from death, but a grim giantess, the trickster Loki in drag disguise, refused to cooperate, and so Baldur stayed among the dead in hell (Hel). What is this tale if not a provocative illustration of the need for universal compassion?

Of course, the narrow-minded could argue that the myth only tells us that the death of Baldur merited widespread tears; perhaps in the case of others, their suffering or death is of no concern, and we should all just take care of our own and to Hel with everybody else. This seems to me an extremely hard-hearted, if not thick-headed view of the text, and so I prefer the alternate view, seeing this incident as another possible Norse kernel of compassion.

My third example is of Odin's shamanistic self-torture on the tree of Yggdrasil, slashing and hanging himself in nine days and nights of agony in order to receive the magical wisdom of the runes. Why does he undergo such a wretched ordeal? To get the wisdom, of course, but what, and who is this wisdom for? It is to be shared with others, to help mankind and perhaps other beings as well. Killing and then reviving himself, he transcends himself, with the ultimate goal of aiding others. This parallels both Christ on the cross, as often noted, but also Buddha under the Bodhi tree.

Similarly, his position as the master of the warrior-hall of Valhalla is ultimately for the purpose of protecting mankind. Of course, the warriors there gathered are practicing the arts of war, not chanting Buddhist sutras, but the ultimate aim is to save the world, not to win glory or goods in war. As Odin has foreknowledge of the world's destiny, it would seem he knows that the whole enterprise is doomed to failure, Odin himself fated to fall against the Wolf, but he persists in preparing nonetheless. In this, he is like a Bodhisattva who undergoes self-sacrifice for the sake of others, even if the others may be deluded, unreasonable, or self-destructive.

And in the end, the world is miraculously renewed, but it is not restored by force of arms. The great battle is unsuccessful, the greatest warriors fail, but after all who fight have fallen and all seems lost, the world reemeerges, fresh and green. There is hope beyond war. I would argue that this sequence of events might even represent a critique of war, suggesting that war can destroy the world, for sure, but it cannot save it.

On this point, I would note that most people in the Viking period were not glorious warriors, but farmers, craftsmen and fishermen, who might well have dreaded rather than glorified war and violence. They might have enjoyed Viking war poems and myths in much the same way your average Joe today enjoys watching war movies and police programs, as colorful, larger-than-life entertainments, but not necessarily as a serious guide as to how to conduct themselves in daily life. I find it quite interesting that Thor, the most macho of Norse gods, the god who is famous for crushing giants' skulls with his hammer, is also the god who receives the most mocking and humorous treatment in such texts as the Thrymskvida . His hammer is oddly short in the handle, a little bit lacking in a way that Dr. Freud might find most interesting. Perhaps this also tells us something about alternate views of violence and war in the imagination of the authors and audiences of the Norse myths. Also, laughing is known to induce a sense of common human foibles and frailty, another step on the path to compassion.

These are just a few hints that I feel suggest the possibility of a moral system in Norse paganism that was, is and can be more than just tribal ethics or a code of warrior honor, as Norse Pagan morality is often taken to be, but include a vision of the world animated by a self-transcending sense of compassion, like other great religious traditions.

I would not deny at all that my interpretations here push Norse Paganism beyond what it is commonly thought to be. This is definitely not a strict and traditionalist reading, and I do not pretend that it is such. I believe this expansion and amplification of the meaning of Pagan tradition is, however, justifiable in light of a critical historical fact: that the natural development of Norse Paganism was interrupted at a rather early point by the rise to dominance of Christianity in Europe. I believe that the strongly martial character of many Norse texts may have more to do with the social conditions of the late Pagan age, when war with Christian forces was an overwhelming reality, than an essentially warlike cast to Norse Paganism. The points in the myths where war fails, where the war gods are ridiculous, where there is laughter and weeping, suggest something more to me. I furthermore would assert the view that if Norse Paganism had been able to survive the Christian onslaught and continue to develop in conditions of peace and tolerance, it would have taken on new forms and embraced a larger view of the world, a world beyond war and conflict, in which the more spiritual and compassionate sides would have been given greater play.

Today, we have the opportunity to undertake such further development, to start imagining further extensions and directions, including borrowing from other traditions and perspectives, possibly even Buddhism. Though the more traditional minded might find this heretical, I would point out that there is indeed precedence for such borrowing. The Germanic tribes and Vikings borrowed much from the Roman world, including the runes, which many scholars believe to have been modeled on the Roman alphabet. The gods' mighty fortress of Asgard may well have been modeled on the then-impregnable fortress of Constantinople, where King Harald served in the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor for a time. Most interestingly, a small Buddhist figurine was found in a Viking hoard in Sweden in the eighth century, no doubt acquired through Viking trading across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Though it was most likely simply collected as an exotic bauble, perhaps there was something more to it than that?

Make of it what you will.

Peace.

Terrorism and Tribalism

The recent near-terrorist incident involving the bungled attempt by Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to cause an explosion on the Christmas flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, following the horrific shooting spree by the American soldier Nidal Malik Hassan at Fort Hood, Texas in November, have brought forth responses in the media, the public and our politicians that again illustrate a general American inability to respond to these difficult situations with anything more thoughtful and probing than a knee-jerk reaction of seeking to punish the perpetrators of these actions and to blame those who did not stop these situations from progressing to where they nearly caused, or in the case of Nidal Hassan, actually did cause harm and tragedy. There is also the infantile desire for government to provide a guarantee of 100% security to all Americans at all times. This writer will concede that more could perhaps have been done to prevent these incidents from unfolding as they did--or nearly did--but what he finds sadly lacking from the discussion is any serious consideration of WHY these Muslim individuals are so willing to take up the cause of violence against the USA and/or the West, even at the cost of their own lives. The general discussion seems to assume that these "bad guys," as labeled by former President Bush, are beyond understanding. They are simply "bad." Or maybe crazy. Or maybe misled by bad, crazy ideology. Or all of the above.

Rarely will you hear any discussion of how the Islamic world in general has been suffering a long-burning sense of humiliation, frustration and anger since being unsettled, disabled, carved up into pieces and then rearranged this way and that by Western colonial powers from the British to the French to the Russians to us for the last several hundred years. The post-WW II creation of the state of Israel by non-Islamic powers from outside the Middle East is one particularly grating example of events that have often taken place against the will of Islamic countries and without their consultation or any serious consideration of their interests or sensitivities. To put it bluntly, the Muslims are tired of being pushed around. Americans may recall we had a similar feeling toward the British in our colonial days, a feeling which prompted us to undertake a certain war of independence. To our British rulers in that period, Americans seeking to break away from the British Empire must have seemed like crazy, evil terrorists, "the worst of the worst."

So, when Islamic radicals take up arms against American forces occupying their lands, their actions, however regrettable or horrific, are not really all that crazy or irrational, nor are they so impossible to understand. What is needed is to seriously and thoughtfully consider their own point of view--which is not the same thing as agreeing with it--and not simply condemn it as evil or insane. These radicals are responding to what they see as unfair American domination of their world, an "American empire," if you will, and this is their attempt to make it end, or die trying.

I would argue that we will never succeed in stopping these repeated attempts at destabilizing our world through terrorist violence until we seriously consider how past and present actions of America and other Western countries have destabilized others' worlds, particularly those of Islamic peoples who once lived in proud, powerful Islamic states that boasted an advanced sophisticated civilization. We tend to assume that the rest of the world should accept American dominance, including allowing our military forces to freely operate in or near their territories--though we would never allow others to bring their military forces onto American soil--and merrily join in with our economic system and form of government.

Consider how we would feel in the reverse situation. If Saudi Arabia used its oil wealth to construct a huge military and then, after some perceived humiliation of some Saudi citizens in the United States, demanded that we allow Saudi soldiers to set up military bases in say, upstate New York and the Florida coast, and to be allowed to occupy these bases for an indefinite period, we would think it crazy and never accept it. Yet we expect other countries around the world to acquiesce to exactly this kind of humiliating and infuriating arrangement. Our military presence in the Middle East and Southwest Asia needs to be considered in this light.

But the kind of discussion I am calling for will probably not happen, certainly not in the mainstream USA media nor the halls of government. The media and the government prefer to hew to the party line of "American exceptionalism," believing that we are a particularly blessed and virtuous nation, beyond all criticism or objections, and that other countries should "naturally" accept our leadership--or else.

In a strange way, this is actually a very tribal point of view. Our tribe of the USA is incapable of seeing any other point of view other than that which glorifies and justifies our own greatness and entitlement. Any disruption of our tribal interests will be met with maximum harshness, without excuses or compassion. A one-day attack in 2001 that kills a small number of our total population but involves no disruption of our government nor any occupation of our territory becomes the justification for eight plus years of war in which we invade two other countries, overthrow their governments, kill tens of thousands, take prisoners that we ship to overseas prisons for indefinite detention, and ignite or re-kindle interminable civil wars. Our armies march through foreign lands with no apparent understanding of how frightening, disturbing and humiliating our presence may be, establishing fortress-like bases wherever we like, like crusader castles of old, giving orders and issuing demands to local rulers that make a mockery of our supposed belief in democracy, and killing those who dare stand up against our occupation of land that is not our own.

Once you take off the self-justifying, other-distorting glasses of American exceptionalism, this is not so hard to see. It also helps to travel and talk to non-Americans once in a while.

In my writings in this blog on Paganism, I have struggled a great deal with the relationship of tribalism to ethnically-based forms of Pagan revivalism, particularly Asatru/Heathenry. Now I see a new and disturbing connection with the world situation. It is my impression that the same American Heathens or Asatru followers who are most enthusiastic about the retro-ideal of a closed tribal community are the ones most likely to unquestioningly support the US military in carrying out its imperialistic duties in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It seems that they view the American military as the most wonderful tribe of all; a tribe beyond criticism, whose legitimacy or purpose cannot be questioned.

A few months ago, on a Yahoo Heathen group that I often peruse, I read many messages of congratulations to a young man going off to war in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Not one voice was raised to question the wisdom of the war; there was just the simplistic, sentimental "support the troops" point of view. I didn't want to spoil the party, so I said nothing.

Does Norse Pagan tradition have anything to say about the current situation beyond the easy glorification of war that one may derive from the battle-scenes in the Eddas ans Sagas? This is obviously a matter of interpretation, but I believe there are several strands in Norse mythology and history that show something more complex and nuanced than a simplistic glorification of the tribe and exultation in war.

(1). In the account of the "first war in the world" between the Aesir and Vanir tribes of gods described in the poem Voluspa, the resolution of the conflict comes not from one side completely subduing the other, but through truce and compromise that results in a blending of the two tribes. Could this be applied to America's conflict with Muslim militants? It might save some money and lives if we tried to figure out what these "bad guys" wanted, instead of assuming that they are insane and should all be killed, and see if we could work out some kind of compromise. I have a feeling that they would first of all like to see our troops leaving. Guess what? So would many Americans, including this one.

(2) In the satirical poem Lokasenna, the suspicion is voiced that Odin, in his function as arbiter of war, often gave victory to the less deserving side on the battlefield. Other texts show Odin as being fickle in terms of his support of one side or the other. Does this apply to anything today? Well, it might give us a little humility in viewing the odds for American victory in Afghanistan and elsewhere (Yemen? Somalia? Iran? Sudan? Pakistan?), when we reflect on how the god of war does not guarantee victory to anyone.

(3) When the Norse explorers attempted to settle in North America, probably on the coast of Newfoundland at the site of L'Anse aux Meadows, they were eventually driven off by the hostility of the Native Americans. Victory is not assured when occupying foreign lands.

(4) Both the Norse gods, in mythology, and the Norse peoples, in history, often blended with and assimilated with other beings/peoples/cultures. The Norse gods fight giants, but also mate with them. The Vikings fought the English, Irish and French, but also settled among them and in time became completely mixed with them. This suggests something that the American military is realizing about Afghanistan: it helps to get to know people and form relationships with them, not just order them around and bomb them when they become disagreeable. This is quite different from assuming that we Americans all have the answers and that the other side should become our obedient subjects.

(5) We also find, when we examine the course of Scandinavian history, that the Scandinavian countries became much more pleasant and prosperous places when they gave up their dreams of empire and conquest. That's the good news. The bad news is that no one gives up empire willingly. I imagine that American imperialism is in its final stages, because we are rapidly reaching the point where we simply cannot afford to keep all these troops trained, equipped, and deployed all around the world. Not if we want to preserve any kind of public services within the home base of the empire. I think the sun is starting to set on America as the dominant world power, but it will take a while. I look forward to the quiet day when we become a modest, medium-sized power, like Britain after World War II, when it gave up its African and Asian colonies. I also believe that when we stop trying to dominate the world, Islamic extremism will lose its raison d'etre and the Muslim world will calm down too. However, it is going to take a while.

This is all quite painful to ponder. I take none of this lightly. I seek solace in the spirits of nature, the quiet patience of trees and water and stones.