Pagan Cowboy

Just the other day I was writing about American pagans tying themselves to ancestral European ethnic paganisms. I expressed skepticism. Surely cultural heritage belongs (mostly?) to the people whose own national heritage it is. More, anyway, than to the people whose ancestral heritage it is. (If you’re not following that summary, this is not the topic for you.)

After making this argument for many years now, as soon as I took the time to write about it, even so superficially, I came across an obvious counter-argument. Here’s a link to Tom Rowsell, talking about how replacement populations appropriate and re-name local features.

“Anglo-Saxon pagans appropriated the Celtic burial mounds and Bronze age burial mounds in a new religious context, using them to bury their own dead and also for meeting places. The Christians later adapted these burial places for yet another context, as an execution ground and a designated haunt of devils and demons. Pagans today often worship at Neolithic monuments in an anachronistic way quite incongruous with their original purpose, but this does not make it less authentic paganism when we consider how historic pagans themselves appropriated monuments of other peoples for their own purposes.“

• Tom Rowsell, Sacred Land – Pagan perspectives on barrows and ruins, at Survive the Jive on YouTube (Feb. 12, 2019), visited Feb. 26, 2019.

The example is not perfect, though. Rowsell’s discussion centers on appropriating and renaming barrows, without distinguishing between cases where the place is appropriated because the invaders have buried their own dead there, and other cases.

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As I write about this subject I’m trying to avoid making a direct connection to old Nazi blood and soil arguments. Very difficult because these ideas are the same at base. I often hear objections from modern pagans that they’re different, and that’s what I’m exploring. Are they really?

Before I started studying any of this, my framework was the story in 2 Kings 17. This is how I expected paganism would work when transplanted to a new land. (Yes, I had a Christian education.)

24 The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns. 25 When they first lived there, they did not worship the Lord; so he sent lions among them and they killed some of the people. 26 It was reported to the king of Assyria: “The people you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know what the god of that country requires. He has sent lions among them, which are killing them off, because the people do not know what he requires.” 27 Then the king of Assyria gave this order: “Have one of the priests you took captive from Samaria go back to live there and teach the people what the god of the land requires.” 28 So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria came to live in Bethel and taught them how to worship the Lord. 29 Nevertheless, each national group made its own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them up in the shrines the people of Samaria had made at the high places.

“Teach the people what the god of the land requires.” That’s how it seemed like it should work, and I wonder if perhaps Rowsell’s discourse on barrows just doesn’t range far enough.

My thought is that every pagan nomadic people faces this same dilemma. You have your own ethnic gods, who are your ancestral gods as well as your own deified ancestors. Then you also have the gods of the land, who unknown unless you can learn something about them from neighboring people.

This, by the way, is why there are always two tribes of gods. The Olympians and the Titans. The Aesir and the Vanir. It’s not that there has been some sort of conquest. It’s that by definition there have to be two types of gods. As far as I know this idea is unique to me. I haven’t convinced anyone else yet that generations of scholarship on this issue is pure bunk.

I generally like Tom Rowsell. Keeping in mind that he’s operating as a advocate for his particular views. Sometimes, though. He goes over the line. I hoped this one might give a more nuanced view of Julius Evola. Nope. It’s a lot of “begging the question” and “straw man arguments”. Rowsell gets so agitated he’s no longer thinking clearly. I did finish it but just barely.

STJ response to Philosophy Tube: Julius Evola and Cheddar Man rebuttal

Responding to: Steve Bannon | Philosophy Tube

See what I mean?

The only surviving prayer to the Norse gods appears in the Sigrdrífumál.

Hail, day!
Hail, sons of day!
And night and her daughter now!
Look on us here
with loving eyes,
That waiting we victory win.

Hail to the gods!
Ye goddesses, hail,
And all the generous earth!
Give to us wisdom
and goodly speech,
And healing hands, life-long.

This is Henry Bellows’ 1936 translation. There is some dispute about the phrase “daughter of night”. The word he translates as daughter is “nipt“, which means a close female relation.Bellows translates it as night because he thinks the relative of it must refer to Jörð (Earth), daughter of Nótt (Night). Sophus Bugge (1867) thought nipt would not refer to Jörð because there is a direct reference to Earth in the next stanza. Benjamin Thorpe (1866) sidesteps the problem by leaving the words as proper names.

The Day addressed here is Dag, son of Delling (Dawn) and Nótt (Night). I wrote about him a few days ago (Hyndla, Patron of Genealogists).

In Hyndluljód (Lay of Hyndla), the hero Óttarr is descended from Svan the Red, who was son of Dag, according to Ættartolur.

Hyndla spake:
12. "Thou art, Ottar, | the son of Instein,
And Instein the son | of Alf the Old,
Alf of Ulf, | Ulf of Sæfari,
And Sæfari's father | was Svan the Red.
 

So, I still have the same question. Whose line is this? It must have been an important family. Freyja helps them discover their descent from important mythological figures, Day and Night and Dawn and the Sun. And Brynhild addresses a prayer to those same figures when she meets Sigurd, and gives him some general advice.

But the experts don’t seem to have put it together in quite this way. Yet. I’m convinced there’s a clue here we’re missing. 

More Information

• Crawford, Jackson. “The Sigrdrifa Prayer“. YouTube, Aug. 9, 2017.

I think the Norse giant Hyndla (“She-Dog”) must surely be the Patron of Genealogists. In Hyndluljód (Lay of Hyndla), the hero Óttarr has recklessly bet his entire inheritance that his ancestry is more illustrious than Angantyr’s. Now he needs to prove his ancestry so he can claim his inheritance. He’s been a devoted worshiper of the goddess Freyja so she takes up his cause. She disguises Óttarr as her boar Hildisvíni, then she rides him to meet Hyndla. Freyja forces Hyndla to reveal Óttarr’s ancestry, and to give him a memory potion so he will remember what she tells him.

Hyndla parts with her information grudgingly, but reveals quite a bit of information, including Óttarr’s direct paternal ancestors.

Hyndla spake:
12. "Thou art, Ottar, | the son of Instein,
And Instein the son | of Alf the Old,
Alf of Ulf, | Ulf of Sæfari,
And Sæfari's father | was Svan the Red.  

Svan might have been an important genealogical figure, although nothing about him survives except his name and place in the genealogies. Nor is is it clear who Óttarr might have been, or what purpose is served by recording his genealogy.

Ættartolur, the genealogy section of Hversum Noreg byggdist, says Svan’s sister was Svanhild, who married Finnalf the Old, an ancestor the Norwegian kings.

“Finnalf the Old married Svanhild, who was called Gold-Feather. She was the daughter of Dag Dellingson, and Sola, daughter of Mundilfara. Their son was Svan the Red, father of Saefara, father of Ulf, father of Alf, father of Ingimund and Eystein” (Ættartolur).

This piece is conventional Norse mythology. Svan and Svanhild are children of Dag (Day) and Sól (the Sun). Dag is son of Delling (Dawn or Day-Spring, the Shining One) and Nótt (Night). Sól and her brother Máni (the Moon) are children of Mundilfari (the World Mill).

Viktor Rydberg, a 19th century writer, speculated that Óttar is another spelling for Freyja’s husband Óðr. He identifies Freyja with Menglöð and Freyja’s husband Óðr / Óttarr with Svipdagr.

More Information

• Hyndluljoth, Henry Adams Bellows, translator.

I wonder how many modern pagans know they are using a system of elements drawn from Greek philosophy, not from their ethnic pagan spirituality? There are three elements, not four.

In today’s “Western Tradition”, there are conventionally four elements. Earth, air, fire, water. They are part of the foundation for everything from astrology to ceremonial magic to Jungian psychology. But they’re part of a self-consciously intellectual tradition.

The ancient Greek philosophers had a variety of systems to describe, explain, and categorize the elements. The system that survived was the system of Empedocles (5th century B.C.E.):

“Hear first the four roots of all things: shining Zeus (commonly identified as fire) and life-bringing Hera (commonly identified as air) and Aidoneus (commonly identified as earth) and Nestis (commonly identified as water).” 

In the 4th century B.C.E. Aristotle added some additional spiff. His idea was the four elements arise from the interplay of the properties of hot and cold, and wet and dry. Earth is dry and cold. Its opposite is Air, which is wet and hot. Fire is dry and hot. Its opposite is Water, which is wet and cold. Aristotle’s imprimatur ensured the survival of the system. No one trumps Aristotle.

(Aristotle also added a fifth element—Aether—which is not changeable and corruptible like the others. That would be a fun subject for another day.)

This system of four elements is very elegant, but its success obscured an older Indo-European system.

My first glimmer that there is another system came from studying Georges Dumézil in college. There is extensive evidence that three was the sacred number of the ancient Indo-Europeans. Dumézil theorized they structured their society and religion around the number three. His theory, called the trifunctional hypothesis, was that the Indo-Europeans had three social classes (priests, warriors, and commoners) that reflected the three functions of the gods (sacral, martial, and economic). In medieval Europe, three estates: nobility, clergy, farmers. Easier than it sounds.

Dumézil had some trouble over his theory because of its political implications. It’s not clear whether he was a Nazi sympathizer but he seems to have been anti-democratic. He supported the traditional authoritarian order in Europe, with the Three Estates as part of an obviously natural order because they would be rooted in the ancient Indo-European forms he had discovered.

Reading Dumézil, it’s hard not to see a different tripartite order. The division of the world into sky, land, and sea is a common feature of Indo-European religions, which lends support to the idea of correlating it with three elements.

The Greek gods might be the most familiar example. The world is ruled by three brothers. Zeus rules the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon the sea. Air, earth, water. Three elements.

In some variations of this system, the sea is thought to be beneath the earth, while in others the sea is in the middle. These three worlds correspond to the upper world, middle world, and lower world of shamanic cultures. They are amplified by the Norse into the Nine Worlds, a superlative of the Three. My guess is that each of the three levels would be divided into three sections.

If we accept this correlation between elements and worlds, we can look for places it would illuminate our understanding of the sources. For example, in Vafþrúðnismál 21 we learn Odin and his brothers killed the ancient giant Ymir. Afterwards:

For example, in Vafþrúðnismál 21 we learn Odin and his brothers killed the ancient giant Ymir. Afterwards:

“Out of Ymir’s flesh was fashioned the earth, And the mountains were made of his bones; The sky from the frost cold giant’s skull, And the ocean out of his blood.”

It’s not uncommon for translators to insert the goddess Jörð in this passage as the personification of “earth” Elsewhere, Odin says Earth was his daughter and his wife (Gylfaginning 9). That passage makes very little sense unless we understand that Odin is her father is the sense he created her. This would be the passage where he did that.

Armed with these clues we can push forward. The sky created from Ymir’s skull must be Tyr, the Indo-European cognate of Zeus, and original ruler of the Norse gods. Tyr likely lost his sovereignty when he lost his physical perfection by sacrificing his hand to Fenris.

And the ocean created from Ymir’s blood must be Njörð. Njörð of course married his sister Jörð. They were parents of Frey and Freyja, then later Jörð married Odin, and they were parents of Thor. Frey and Thor are therefore the “Hero Twins”, actually half-brothers through their mother. It’s possible Jörð was also married to her brother Tyr before Odin usurped his position. She might in fact be the one who brought Odin his sovereignty.

These three—Tyr, Njörð, and Jörð —can be said to be children of Odin who created them or children of Ymir from whose body they were made.

There’s still one more dimension here in our typology of three elements. The three parts of the human soul. In the ancient world, even the Bible, these are called the body, spirit, and soul. In the modern world we say body, mind, and spirit instead. Same thing. (Keep an eye on spirit. It switches meaning.)

Gylfaginning 9 says Odin and his brothers created the first humans. There are different versions in other works but in this one, “The first [god] gave them spirit and life; the second endowed them with reason and power of motion; and the third gave them form, speech, hearing and eyesight.”

It’s not a stretch to read these as soul, spirit, and body. Or in modern-speak as spirit, mind, and body. These would correspond to the three original elements of the Indo-Europeans—air, water, and earth, in that order.

There is probably a system where Odin and his two brothers also track to our tripartite division of the world but I haven’t tried to do it. And there could be others.

The Norns are likely to be an example of the sacred number three but they stand more or less for past, present, and future. It’s not obvious how they might correspond to earth, air, and water but there’s in intriguing alternative here.

Modern pagans find it very convenient to work with four elements, which they connect with four directions. A spatial mapping. It seems possible our pre-Christian ancestors connected the three elements with time, instead. A temporal mapping. We might be seeing a discontinuity between ancient and modern paganism.

Astrological symbolism might preserve the meeting of these systems. The 12 signs of the zodiac are grouped in four elements (fire, earth, air, water). Three times around the circle, in that order. But they are also grouped into three “modes”. Cardinal, fixed, mutable, four times around the circle, in that order. These modes can be understood, very loosely, as beginning, maturity, and decline.

I did my work on this subject probably 20 years ago, and again 12 years ago. The cycle is coming back around now. I expect to think and write more in the coming months, but for now I’m seeing three elements, not four.

More Information

• Georges Dumézil, Gods of the Ancient Northmen (1974).
• Tom Kerns, “Plato’s Three Parts of the Soul“, philosophycourse.info, visited Nov. 2, 2019.
• Daniel McCoy, “An Introduction to Georges Dumézil“, Norse Mythology for Smart People, visited Nov. 2, 2019.
• Kerwin Rodriguez, “Alchemy, the Liver and the Soul“, Holistic Mystics (Mar. 23, 2017), visited Nov. 2, 2019.
• Tom Rowsell, “Reincarnation and the Tripartite Soul of Indo-European Tradition“, Survive the Jive at YouTube (June 14, 2017), visited Mar. 25, 2019.

Revised Nov. 2, 2019 to add links.

Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) doesn’t like the Norse gods. He thinks Odinism is a “comic book religion in a lot of ways”. It makes sense he (and they) would think so. White supremacists love Odin. That gives Ásatrúar a bad name. And throughout Europe (and much of America) neo-Nazis and the radical right love Julius Evola.

The SPLC charter includes monitoring hate groups and other extremists. They added Neo-Volkisch pagan groups, including the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), to their list of hate groups in 2017. No surprise. Short version,
“Born out of an atavistic defiance of modernity and rationalism, Völkisch adherents and groups are organized around ethnocentricity and archaic notions of gender.“

On the surface, that seems a bit harsh. There is certainly a hefty dose of hyper-masculinity in the way some moderns romanticize the ancient Norse. And really, it is comic. But it’s hard to see how that’s a sin.

The real issue that got them black-listed is their racial separatism. Often, these groups are centered around “survival of white Europeans and the preservation of dead or dying cultures they presume to embody.” And in some groups that turns into an explicit endorsement of White supremacy (although I don’t see Stephen McNallen and the AFA going that direction).

I see some of this very differently. Euro-Americans seem to be preoccupied with turning themselves into a tribal people. (More on that some other time.) And, it shouldn’t be a surprise when tribal people have tribal gods and are descended from those gods.

In Europe, ethnic paganism is a natural fit for arch-conservatives and reactionaries. But in America? No, it doesn’t have to be that way. In America someone can participate in romanticized ancestral identities without ever becoming anything but American.

The past is malleable enough to support whatever ideology someone wants to find buried there.

More Information

• Dorothy Kim, “White Supremacists Have Weaponized an Imaginary Viking Past. It’s Time to Reclaim the Real History” (Apr. 12, 2019), Time, visited Oct. 28, 2019.

Related Posts

• Racism on the Edge (Oct. 8, 2017).

Updated February 11, 2019; revised Oct. 28, 2019 to add links.

Listening to Benebell Wen on religious syncretism. If you don’t already know, this is a thing.

There’s this:

"The fixation with reconstructing the past and correlating authenticity with history or even specific [sic] the color of your skin or even your DNA is a fascinating conversation . . . ." Syncretic Religious Practices | Bell Chimes In #4 at 14:11.

That’s a great way place to start. She’s promised more on that topic. I’m looking forward to it.

And there’s also this, on the subject of borrowing from other cultures and reinterpreting the material:

 "Slam the door shut on the naysayers and keep doing what you're doing. But I will probably criticize you because imperialism, post-colonialism, social studies, critical race theory, privilege, and politics." Syncretic Religious Practices | Bell Chimes In #4 at 15:16. 

The people in my world tend to be metaphysical but they do not like — not at all — these topics. I’m very pleased whenever I find someone who enjoys teasing out the underlying ideas.

More on a related topic from this remarkable woman at Cultural Appropriation | Bell Chimes In #5.