Pagan Cowboy

I’ve been thinking about the construction and survival of myth. I don’t think there’s any argument that myths change over time, and that the myths of any particular culture in the form we have them are not the only forms that ever existed. They are merely the only forms that survived. In fact, the more we know about a particular culture the more likely that we have surviving variants. To a greater or lesser extent, these variants allow us to make guesses about the original form of the myth.

For the Norse myths, the “final authority” is Snorri Sturluson, a 13th century Icelandic poet and historian who preserved what he knew about the religion of his ancestors. Other bits and pieces survive, but we are often indebted to Snorri for giving us the framework in which to understand them. Even so, he was writing more than 200 years after Iceland officially converted to Christianity. We can trust him, but he was not infallible, and just where to draw the line is a matter for scholars to debate.

The question that has caught my interest is whether the goddesses Freyja and Frigga might have originally been the same. Snorri separates them and his interpretation is considered authoritative. By his time I suppose they were thought to be two separate goddesses. But, were they originally separate? Were they separate throughout the Norse world? Indeed, were they even separate in Iceland when it converted to Christianity? These are difficult questions, because there is actually quite a bit of evidence that they might have once been identical. I don’t pretend a scholarly analysis, but I’ve collected some of the points that I find significant.

Names

Their names are similar, although they come from different sources. Freyja and Frigga. Freyja seems to mean Lady and Frigga seems to come from an Indo-European root meaning Love. Among the many-named Norse gods, we might expect that Freyja would be a title for a goddess with another name — and what more likely name than one with sexual overtones?

Moreover, their husbands have similar names, Oðinn and Oðr. In fact, these two names are linguistically related.

Days of the week

The French Vendredi preserves the name Venus, while Friday preserves the name Frigga. If they were different goddesses, it seems more logical to me that the Romans in their Interpretio Germanica would have equated Venus with sexually active Freyja, not with chaste Frigga.

Promiscuity

Freyja is presented as promiscuous. Loki accused her of having slept with all the Æsir, and with her own brother. Mostly famously, she slept with four dwarves to obtain the necklace Brisingamen. Frigga, generally represented as chaste, had her own moments. When Oðinn left on a long journey, Frigga slept with his brothers. In a story preserved by Saxo Grammaticus, Frigga slept with a slave in order to get his help in despoiling a statute of Oðinn for the gold on it. This story seems to me to be parallel in many ways to the story of Freyja and the dwarves.

Stories

Freyja is married to Oðr, who is absent on long journeys and the tears she cries for him become amber. I think this story dovetails nicely with the story of Odhinn being absent for so long that Frigga slept with his brothers. In fact, in Saxo Grammaticus’ version, Oðinn went into exile in shame because Frigga had slept with the slave. Oðinn’s search for knowledge also seems to me to imply, or perhaps merely reinforce, the idea that he might have been often absent.

Sky and Earth

Oðinn is essentially a sky god, married to both Jörd (the Earth) and Frigga (the Queen of Heaven). However, both Freyja and Frigga can also be seen as earth goddesses. Snorri says, “The earth was his daughter and his wife. With her he made the first son, and that is Ása-Thor.” Freyja, as one of the Vanir, can be easily cast as an earth goddess. Frigga tried to preserve the life of her son Baldr by exacting oaths from everything on earth not to harm him. Rocks, trees and every kind of plant take the oath. She fails to ask the lowly mistletoe, which ultimately becomes the cause of Baldr’s death. The story, it seems to me, suggests that Frigga has authority over the earth; authority more in keeping with Jörd or Freyja than with Frigga’s status as Oðinn’s wife.

Magic

Freyja is preeminently the goddess of magic. It is she who taught seiðr to Oðinn. Yet, Frigga is said to know the future, which she does not disclose. What is more likely than that Oðinn learned magic from his wife, who nevertheless withholds some part of her knowledge?

Division of warriors

The Norse believed that the souls of those who died in battle belonged half to Freyja and half to Oðinn. My personal impression is that this division makes more sense if warriors are being divided between husband and wife. I am thinking, of course, of other examples, such as The Nibelungenlied, where Gunther and Kriemhild each have their own band of warriors (and the animosity between the two creates some problems). I find some support in Paulus Diaconus’ story about a dispute between Oðinn and Frigga, where Oðinn favored the Vandals and Frigga favored the Langobards. That story seems to me to yet another echo of the story pattern where husband and wife each have their own war-band.

Another opinion

William Reaves suggests a different interpretation: that Oðinn’s wives Jörd and Frigga were the same (Nine Reasons to Identify Frigg with Jord at http://www.aetaustralia.org/articles/arwrfrigg.htm). He ventures arguments that I’m still thinking about, but his fundamental argument (I think) is that Frigga was the daughter of Fjörgynnr, while Fjörgynn was another name for Jörd. Because Fjörgynnr and Fjörgynn are parallel names (like Freyr and Freyja), Reaves thinks they might have been father and daughter. He notes that in the surviving literature, Thor is twice called son of Jörd and twice called son of Frigga.

I have a different first impression: it seems to me the doubling of names happens with siblings. So, Fjörgynnr and Fjörgynn are more likely to have been brother and sister (like Freyr and Freyja, or Njördr and “Nerthus”). So, Fjörgynn-Jörd should be a niece of Frigga Fjörgynnr’s-daughter. This would make sense if Jörd were the first wife and the mother of Thor, and Frigga were the second wife, as in Snorri.

This leaves me with an elegant, but unorthodox theory that Fjörgynnr-Njördr (the sea) and Fjörgynn-Jörd (the earth) were brother and sister, and the parents of Freyr and Freyja. Fjörgynn-Jörd married Oðinn and they were the parents of Thor. There was a war between the Vanir and the the Æsir, which was settled by an exchange of hostages. Njördr, Freyr and Freyja went to live with the Æsir. Freyja-Frigga married Oðinn, with whom she then shared power, teaching him seiðr, and becoming the mother of Baldr. She betrayed him in her lust for gold. He went into exile. She cried for him, but slept with his brothers. When he returned, they were reconciled. And so on.

Complications

As if all of this were not purely spun from my own imagination, I’m still troubled by Snorri’s comment that Jörd was Oðinn’s wife and his daughter. He also says that she had a brother Aud (“Rich”), which seems a likely title for Njördr. From what I can find, Jörd was the daughter of Nótt by her second husband Ánar (“Second”). Could this have been another name for Oðinn? Nótt’s first husband, the father of Aud, was Naglfari (a name associated with a ship). So, it hangs together, but I’ll think about that some other time.

My guesses aren’t the final answer, even for me. I’m just thinking out loud.

When I have a day to myself, as I did today, I play with the computer and generally poke around the web in search of interesting problems connected with being pagan. Today it was the genealogy of the Norse gods.

The past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about a book about Norse myths I had when I was growing up. I wish I could remember something about it so I could find it again. (I gave away most of my childhood books to my nephews, so perhaps one of them has it. The only two I kept, and still have, are Viking Adventure and Tarzan and the City of Gold.)

The book of Norse myths presented the relationships of the gods in a different way from most of the presentations I’ve seen as an adult. Most significantly, it made Frigga and Freyja the same person. It had Freyr and Freyja as brother and sister, children of Njörd and Jörd, who in turn were children of Night. That much I remember. I wish I could remember the rest.

I don’t think it is anything new that Freyja and Frigga might originally have been the same goddess (so Odhinn and Odhr would be the same god), but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a full analysis or any discussion about how the various gods would then fall into relationship with one another. Early on, I encountered a categorical assertion that Freyja and Frigga were completely separate. I took it in uncritically. No doubt that idea played some role in my decision to part with my childhood book that “confused” the two. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed over the years that there is always some footnoted suggestion that the two might once have been identical.

What is more interesting to me is the identification of Jörd as the sister/wife of Mjörd. Makes sense to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it anywhere else. It would give a name to the goddess so often given only as “perhaps some form of Nerthus.”

So, with the vastness of a day away from work, I spent some time looking for more information. I was able to find a William Reaves article that argues for Odhinn’s wives Jörd and Frigga being the same person. I didn’t spend the time today to follow all his arguments because I wanted to see if there might be other theories elsewhere. Apparently not. My childhood book would have made Odhinn’s two wives mother and daughter, not identical as in Reaves’ argument. Is it really possible that the original form of the myth had Odhinn married one woman (Jörd, apparently the first wife if she was mother of Odhinn’s eldest son Thor’s), and then later to her daughter (Frigga/Freyja)? And, would a children’s book actually present the myth that way? I wonder. Maybe I just remember it that way.

I seem to remember from my childhood book that Freyja married Odhinn as part of the settlement that ended the war between Vanir and the Aesir. Can that be right?

I didn’t find my answers today, but now that the question has come to the forefront of my consciousness, I’ll be alert for further clues. And, with luck, I’ll have more time to explore later this weekend. However, this might be one instance where I need to leave off looking through the web and start looking in a real library with real sources.

Some of the people I talk to criticize Nova Roma as a role playing game. I’m not fond of some of the games played in Nova Roma, and I would agree that the organization is foundering for lack of a common vision, but I don’t agree that it is a role playing game.

The three items most commonly cited as proof that Nova Romans are role playing are, first, that Nova Roma is a a micronation. Second, that Nova Roman priests wear a toga. And third, that Nova Romans adopt Roman names. It’s easy for most of us to see how the conjunction of these oddities creates the appearance of role playing.

Certainly, the Internet is full of micronations that are nothing more than role playing games for adolescents. I have yet to encounter a micronational project that doesn’t suffer from some degree of delusion. Yet, unlike other Internet nations, Nova Roma, in my opinion, is able to articulate a coherent reason for choosing to define itself as a nation: only a restored Roman state can fully re-create the nexus between religion and state, which they believe is a fundamental requirement for a full restoration of the Religio Romana. Others may disagree with this formulation, but an error in reasoning does not amount to role-playing.

If you believe that the Roman Republic can be legitimately restored as a micronation, the questions of Roman costume and Roman names are easily settled in favor of adopting traditional forms. If you have some lingering doubts, as I do, these are still not proof of role playing.

Adopting period costume is commonly associated with role playing groups such as the SCA. But, here too the Nova Roman priests who wear the toga have a reason unconnected with role playing. For Romans, the toga had a symbolic importance that may strike an odd note in the modern mind. The toga was the badge of citizenship and the hallmark of civic pride. Roman men were required to wear the toga when engaged in civic or legal business. Men who were not citizens were forbidden by law to wear togas. It should come as no surprise that priests of the Religio Romana in the 21st century regard the toga as a liturgical garment. The Roman cultus was remarkably conservative and orthopraxic; it should be no surprise that priests of the religio wear a toga while performing the rites of the religio. Of course, this argument in favor of priests wearing togas does not apply to citizens or to the magistrates of the virtual republic. I leave it to others to judge those cases.

In contrast, adopting Roman names is a bit more problematic, in my opinion. It does rather smack of role playing. However, if you believe that the Roman republic can be restored as a micronation, there is no reason that its citizens should not adopt Roman names. As with their togas, the Romans of antiquity were serious about their names. The classic Roman format, the trinomina consisting of praenomen, nomen and cognomen, was reserved to men who were Roman citizens. By law, non-citizens could not use the cognomen. I know of no religious argument in favor of adopting Roman names in the same way Wiccans adopt magickal names (but, it would not surprise me if someone, somewhere has examined all the sources and determined that it is impius not to have a Roman-style name). What bothers me most about the practice is that so many Nova Romans adopt the famous names of antiquity. To me, this seems like role-playing.

If I were to establish a modern Roman republic, I might easily be persuaded that citizens should use the trinomina, but I would forbid the use of historic nomina. That is, there would be no Iulii, no Claudii, and none of the other famous Roman names. Instead, I would encourage citizens to find a way to Latinize their own names following the formulae used by the ancient Romans when foreigners acquired citizenship. Our own given names evolved from the cognomina of the Late Empire. A simple application would be to Latinize the surname of a new citizens into a nomen, Latinize the citizen’s given name into a cognomen (or allow the adoption of a new, non-historic cognomen), and allow the citizen to choose a praenomen from among the limited number of historic praenomia.

I have several friends with very strong feelings on both sides of the role playing debate. In the end, I believe it comes down to a question of the legitimacy of Nova Roma itself. If you believe that a virtual republic can replace a real city, it is not role playing to resurrect the salient features of the ancient republic. If you cannot accept that leap of faith, I would still argue that wearing togas and adopting Roman names is not necessarily role-playing, at least not in every case. And, if you regard Nova Roma as simply a government simulation game played by some ardent practitioners of the religio and some Christians with no clear idea of what their faith means by blasphemy, then what difference does it make?

The subject of sacrifice quickly leads to heated debate among practitioners of the religio, with each side accusing the other of bad faith. I’m inclined to think that animal sacrifice is a barbaric relic, but others disagree with me.

There is some justification, I think, for looking to Hellenistic practice, as well as Roman and Greek philosophers, for guidance. I’m not saying that these sources are definitive expressions, but that they come out of the same general cultural matrix, and can be legitimately used to understand the direction the religio might have taken if it had not lost the battle with Christianity.

Greek Apollon, it is well known, did not demand animal sacrifice. Indeed, he deplored it. In the Hymn to Apollo, Homer has Apollon demand a sacrifice a sacrifice of barley and meal from his first priests, and he gives clear instructions about how to perform the sacrifice. Apollo is also supposed to have said that the man is more pious who in his heart loves the gods and is temperate and moderate, and who made offerings of burned barley corns at his hearth, over the man who sacrifices and burns a hundred animals at an altar. This, of course, is Apollon. It is not an attitude that can be attributed to the other gods.

Numa, the Roman king who founded the religio is said to have forbidden blood sacrifice. (Cicero, Republica 2.28, Tusuculum 4.3; Livy 1.18. 40.29-14; Dionysius of Halcarnassus 2.59; Plutarch, Numa 18; Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.4.481, Fasti 3.153; Pliny, Natural History 13.87). However, reputable scholars believe that this idea is a much later attribution, related to the mistaken idea that Numa was a Pythagorean. In fact, Numa must have lived before Pythagoras.

Those who read my journal are aware that I’ve been discussing Nova Roma’s role in the religio with various folks. The question that has really bothered me is whether having a state of some sort is a sine qua non of restoring the religio. I don’t think it is.

In Roma Antiqua, worship was both public and private. In the words of my new friend Ursus77, the public religio “was nothing less than a contract between the entire family of the Roman people and the gods . . . .” Today many people practice the religio privately, but the city of Roma practices Christianity not the religio romana. Vedius Germanicus and Iulianus Cassius founded Nova Roma as a way to restore the public religio. They defined Nova Roma as a virtual nation (“micronation”) and gave it the full panoply of Roman magistrates and priests, including censors, consuls, tribunes and pontifices. Their idea was that they could use Nova Roma as a base to restore the public rites, which could now be conducted on behalf of a modern Roman state. Cassius, as Nova Roma’s Pontifex Maximus, said recently, “The Collegium Pontificum [of Nova Roma] is responsible solely for the State Cults, and the rebuilding of the official rites that were part of the official infrastructure of the Roman State.” Further, “The Priesthood is sanctioned to do rites on behalf of the State” and “the most important duty of the Nova Roman priesthood should be the maintaining of the State rituals . . . .”

I think I could understand the founders’ reasoning if they had formed a sodalitas, or even a virtual oppidum. I think the gods would have been pleased to accept communal rites offered to them on behalf of a group of New Romans who didn’t pretend more. But, try as I might, I can’t rationalize the founding of a fake Rome to replace the real city on the Tiber. I’m an attorney, used to splitting hairs in order to make a case for a questionable proposition, but I haven’t been able to find even a tortuous path to make this one work.

It seems to me that what the founders have created is a government simulation game. A recent discussion on the main list should dispel any notion that being a micronation is just a convenient fiction to further the religio. Recently, when some citizens questioned the need to keep an old lex authorizing the Senate to give diplomatic recognition to other micronations, Vedius defended the practice and the granting of recognition to Corvinus. Moreover, citizens regularly launch discussions about how to make Nova Roma’s claim of sovereignity a reality.

I also think that the infighting for which the main Nova Roma list is famous bears out its essentially political nature. There has been a constant grumbling about a blasphemy decretum that “interferes with freedom of speech” by forbidding attacks on the religio. A Buddhist became a priest, then was outraged when the pontifices demanded that she respect the religio. A consul has proposed that pontifices be elected by Christian citizens in order to ensure a better balance of power between Christians and practitioners of the religio. It’s nuts.

Now, we find that Cassius has been working on a rival religio list since last May, finally going public with it last night. He seems to be having doubts about the validity of reconstruction, as the new list “is not specifically a reconstructionist list.” Announcing the list, Cassius articulated his vision for the religio in Nova Roma as “an organized, moral, and inclusive, and non dogmatic system that was and could be again respectful to all deities, able to grow and change, able to understand other systems, live along side them in peace, and even incorporate them without losing its unique identity.” Elaborating, he said, “Surely such a religion could be shared peacefully by everyone that had even a tangental interest in the ancient Gods, or even in ancient philosophies or ancient Virtues. It would be the cement that would bind a new sovereign community together. It would help bridge gaps of nationality and ‘modern’ heritage, and create tolerance and understanding.”

Even a casual reading of Cassius’ vision shows that he wants to restore and expand the Greco-Roman syncretism of the ancient world. And, if there were any doubt about the scope of his vision, Cassius himself has been talking about charting Nova Roma’s turmoil using astrology to track retrogrades of Mercury. Pretty cool, but it’s not the antique religio. His vision doesn’t require a Roman state, and never did. I think Cassius himself must belatedly realize this, else why start a rival list for his version of the religio?

I hesitate to say more, because a good friend of mine turns out to be a long-standing member of this rival list. But, frankly, I’m disappointed. I came to Nova Roma through the Julian Society, another of Cassius’ creations. Nova Roma was supposed to be a more serious reconstruction project, but it’s turned out to be something quite different. Its fundamental premise is illegitimate, shrugging off, as it does, the continued existence of the real city of Rome.

How can a fake country uphold a real contract with the gods? It can’t. All discussion aside, I might have finally been convinced — or at least willing to indulge the point — if Nova Roma had been blessed by the gods. I see no indication that it has. Instead, Nova Roma is a very turbulent and dysfunctional community. Not even the exceptional efforts of my chum Athanasios have been able to make a dent in the politics.

I’m out of arguments in favor of Nova Roma. So, today I withdrew my application to become a sacerdos of Neptunus and resigned as Flamen Volturnalis. In coming to this decision, I have no doubt offended some very good friends, both those conservative reconstructionists who choose to honor the religio through formal positions in Nova Roma, and those who follow Cassius’ dream of a new syncretic religion. But, I would be false to myself if I continued to serve as a priest in a simulation game. No doubt, the gods are pleased to accept the honors paid them by devout worshipers, but I believe they are accepting the devotion of individuals, as they did in my case during the Volturnalia, not the devotions of the priests and pontifices of a fake Rome.

I’ve been plaguing my chum Ursus77 with questions about his practice of the religio. Today, I see that he’s written a very interesting primer, anticipating the next dozen or so questions I was going to be asking him:

Q&A on the Religio: www.livejournal.com/users/ursus77/45225.html

If anyone is expecting me to abandon my romanitas any time soon, it’s not gonna happen. For one thing, I’ve spent many years moving toward a Roman style of practice, and if I begin to drift away now the process will also take many years. For another, my basic philosophical orientation is Stoic, and that’s not likely to change whatever adjustments I might make in other areas. Really though, I just prefer the simple dignity of Roman ritual formulae to the alternatives I’ve seen. My practice is likely to retain a Roman flavor for many years into the future.

When I die, I expect to be reunited with my ancestors in their halls “on the other side.” For many of my friends, that doesn’t come as any surprise, but I think it bears some elaboration.

I have a lifelong interest in genealogy, as well as pre-Christian religions. No surprise then that my polytheist journey will have taken me to the belief systems of my ancestors, or that I would want to rejoin them in death. For many years I’ve experimented with the question of who my ancestors are. The Indian family of my father? The Swedish family of my mother? The Celts? Romans?

How far back do you go, and when do you stop? A typical American Westerner, my ancestry is mixed. Roughly 1/2 English, 1/4 Swedish, 1/8 Scottish, and 1/8 Pawnee, with a smattering of French, German & German-Swiss, Dutch, Welsh, and Wampanoag. Sorting out a specific cultural identity becomes even more difficult when the cultural identity of certain ancestors doesn’t match their ethnic background. For example, my grandmother is half-Pawnee, but she’s culturally Lakota because one of her aunts married into that tribe and when she was growing up those cousins were the only relatives she had on a reservation. So, my father, a man who was only 1/4 Indian, and Pawnee at that, was a Lakota medicine man. If I had been raised by him, I would identify as Lakota too.

Now, this “folkish” approach might offend some. If you are called by the gods of a particular pantheon, you just choose them. Somehow that answer doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, if you think you’re called, take that path. Me, I like to think I have some choice.

Eventually, I came around to refining my question. Not, who are my ancestors? But, which ancestors do I want to rejoin in death? (A few simple calculations will show that the number of ancestors for any given person expands exponentially as you go back in time. Go back a few hundred years and you’d be rejoining several million folks.)

Now, in my case, that’s a pretty easy question to answer. My mother’s family, of course. They came to America from Sweden at the turn of the century. They’re all hardworkers and very well-educated, as well as being very warm and inclusive. Not to mention that I grew up among them and they’re the set of folks I think of when anyone talks about extended family.

As I thought about this, a process that took many years, it occurred to me that in our society we bear last names as a badge of family membership. Perhaps most of the people I know would characterize surnames as a nominal survival of a formerly patriarchal order. Maybe so, but it seems to me that surnames nevertheless tell us the family someone formally belongs to. That’s as true of married women as it is of children born into a nuclear family.

I didn’t want to belong to my father’s family. They have a lot of strong points — some very colorful people, some very talented people, a sprawling and diverse set of folks that includes relatives who are Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Indian. Nevertheless, they are also the most dysfunctional set of people you’d want to meet. They are torn apart by feuds that go back a hundred years, and many of them are deeply troubled by alcoholism, violence and psychosis. The thought of spending an afterlife among them is too much to bear. I’d be better off as a Christian expecting them all to end up in Hell.

Eventually I reach a point where it seemed to me that the surname test was easily solved. I changed my name. A simple matter for me, as I only needed to drop the name I had at birth and leave my last middle name as my new last name. That done, and now done so long ago, I think I’m safe. I don’t belong to the male line of my Norse ancestors, but I bear the surname they adopted during the Napoleonic wars. I’m confident now that I’ll join them when I die.

Every once in a while, one of my friends will object (although “object” might be an understatement for a tirade delivered as a screech). The objections I hear are generally some variation on the theme that not everyone wants to join their relatives after death. I shrug. I’m not making rules for anyone else; I’m talking about what I believe personally.

If someone is distressed by my beliefs, I suspect it’s because he or she feels threatened by the idea that we might all rejoin our families at death. Not everyone wants to do that. I’ve heard some interesting accounts of dysfunctional families in the process of arguing the point. My advice is make your peace with your family now, on this side of death, so you can have a peaceful afterlife together. They’re all fundamentalist Christians? Then, I’d say you have some work to do if you’re going to find a way to live in peace. I’ve got relatives who are Episcopalian, Lutheran, Fundamentalist, and Mormon, and we’re all trying to get along now (albeit we have different reasons for trying). You were abused as a child? More work to do. They’re manipulative? Please! Everyone I know claims to come from a manipulative family. If you believe you’ll be living in your ancestral halls after you die, I suggest you quit thinking about how awful that might be, and figure out a way to start fixing it now.

On the other hand, if you really can’t fix it, or don’t want to, choose a different branch of your family to identify with. Adopt their surname. Hang out with them. If you’re a married woman with your husband’s surname, take a good look at those in-laws, ‘cause you’ve left your own family and you’re going to end up with them. And, if you happen to like the family you’re in and you love the idea of spending the afterlife with them, good for you. I’d say you’re living out your heathen values.

Sometimes I have to laugh at myself. So much earnest thought on questions of religion. A comment from Ursus77 about emphasizing the ancestors and the local spirits reminded me that thinking about choices is a luxury I give myself because I enjoy it. Combine that with a lazy afternoon listening to Covenant. Is there any doubt which direction I’m going? I’m a heathen. I really don’t understand why I struggle against it.

I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years now. I was leafing through very old journals yesterday. My entries were often spotty; those journals are useful mostly because they take me back in memory to a particular time. I see, though, that I was aware of, and connected to, Ásatrú Free Assembly as early as 1977 and that by 1978 I was working on several articles for their newsletter (which I don’t seem to have ever finished — I’ve schlepped the drafts from one computer to another ever since).

I’m pleased to know that. I’ve been wondering whether it was before or after I married Missey (1980). I was thinking it must have been before because that was the last time for many years that I showed any real religious independence outside my relationships, but also thinking that it could have been in the period just before I met Jim (1982), or perhaps during my SCA period (say 1983-84). It makes sense that my earliest official heathen period was during the time after I met Will (1977). I had remembered that particular period as Wiccan, but my journal certainly doesn’t bear out that memory. I’ll have to let the memories come to the surface in their own time, but I’d guess it was Missey who talked me into leaving the AFA when I was uncomfortable about their racism.

A part of my past recovered. It’s hell to get older and start forgetting when things happened. (Someone asked me once why heathens are always so anxious to establish how long they’ve been heathen. My answer: Because they can’t pretend that their families went underground during The Burning Times. The heathen and pagan communities are defensive about reviving non-Christian religions, so they go for all the antiquity they can get.)

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From Call the ships to port, by Covenant, one of my favorite songs:

“A billion words ago the sailors disappeared,
A story for the children to rock them back to sleep,
A million burning books like torches in our hands,
A fabric of ideals to decorate our homes,
A thousand generations the soil on which we walk . . . .
A billion words ago they sang of song of leaving,
An echo from the chorus will call them back again.
A choir full of longing will call our ships to port.
Tonight we light the fires, . . .
Tonight we walk on water,
And tomorrow we’ll be gone.”

After performing a caerimonia for the Volturnalia a few days ago, I feel very positive about my involvement in the religio. This, in contrast to a week ago when I was beginning to wonder whether the constant turmoil in Nova Roma was worth whatever benefit I might find. The difference between then and now, I see, is that by performing a ritual beyond my simple daily devotions I have re-affirmed the thing that drew me to Nova Roma in the first place. Here in Denver, it rained the entire day. I don’t know if rain at a harvest festival would have been a positive sign in the ancient world, but we have had a long drought here, so the rain was very welcome, and there were no floods. It seemed to me that all of the water gods were joining with me in rejoicing. I kept going outside to stand in the rain. More than anything anyone could have said to me, my present feeling tells me that I should stay out of politics and focus on what really matters to me.

Going with this feeling, today I submitted an application to become a priest of Neptunus. Neptunus is important to me on many levels, not the least of which is that he is the Roman equivalent of my old heathen patron Njörd. Although it will be irrelevant to the pontifices who will vote on my application, I was born on December 15th, the day of the Consualia in honor of Neptune and my mother thought that an auspicious day for my birth because my surname is Swanstrom, which in Swedish means “river of the swans.” My mother, perhaps frivolously, also asserts that we are descended from Njörd, so he has always been rather special to me despite the fact that I live a zillion miles from the sea. I am also mindful that I chose to become Flamen Volturnalis because Volturnus is a river god. Finally, I noticed with interest my reaction to the Neptunalia and the earlier Consulia this year, when Neptunus had no priest recognized by Nova Roma and no public rites were performed. I felt very down about it and was tempted to rush an application to the Collegium so that rites could be performed. The pattern of my devotions hangs together.

I thought about making my priesthood application for one of the gods I particularly honor. Faunus, perhaps, or Sulis Minerva, or Britannia. For one reason or another, none of them seemed to call to me as much as Neptunus. I also thought about applying to become a Pontifex. In fact, I veered off that course only at the last minute. I have a hard time understanding my reaction. For some reason, it just didn’t feel right. Perhaps I’m not ready and I recognize that on some level. Or, perhaps I am put off by the thought of taking part in the religious divisions of Nova Roma. I don’t know. I do know that I should not apply while I have even the least of reservations about doing so.

So, what will happen to my application to become a priest of Neptunus? Any religious decision in Nova Roma has political overtones. I wonder whether the Collegium will reject me and how I will react if they do. I have a bad record for being able to predict how I will feel in a given situation, but I rather think that this application symbolizes for me a gamble on Nova Roma and the religio. If I am approved, then the gods are still willing to accept my service within the religio. If I am rejected, I think I will believe — whatever the actual reason — that they no longer want me to structure my devotions along Roman lines. Bottom line: I feel unusually vested in the result of this application. It will be several weeks, probably, before it even comes up for a vote, and then, as a non-voting member of the Collegium Pontificum, I will have the opportunity to see who likes me, who dislikes me, and who thinks I need to work on what aspect of my religious life. What a fate!

Apparently, one only has to ask in order to receive an answer. A few days ago I posted a question I’ve struggled with for many years, only to have it answered simply and easily in a matter of hours by Heathen Guy.

To recap, I was struggling with the idea of being an Anglo living in an area that was formerly Indian. It seemed to me that it might be appropriate to worship the pre-Christian gods of Europe because that is my heritage, but it also seemed that it might be wrong to ignore the Indian-ness of the local land spirits. Yet, my Indian cousins would be quite distressed if an Anglo claimed any part of Indian heritage simply by reason of occupying the land as a conqueror. Heathen Guy responded that the land spirits are not tied to a specific ethnicity, even though they might have been long accustomed to receiving offerings in an Indian fashion.

I think this is a very practical and common-sense solution. It is an elegant counter-argument to the Icelandic Ásatrúar who opined that Americans and Australians ought to be looking at their own indigenous religions rather than to the religion of their ancestors.

The ethnicity of land spirits first became an issue for me because of articles like Stephen McNallen’s Wotan vs. Tezcatlipoca: The Spiritual War for California and the Southwest (http://www.runestone.org/wotvstez.html) or his The Birth of California: A Modern Creation Myth (http://www.runestone.org/calmyth.html). I see now that he was making a quite different argument, but when I originally read these articles, it seemed to me that they were written against a background assumption that Anglos have brought their land spirits to this land, as well as their ethnic gods.

I am still a bit confused over when a particular deity is a land spirit and when he or she is something more. For example, Tonantzin, the great Aztec corn goddess, is Christian in her aspect of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As Tonantzin, she is arguably an ethnic goddess of the Aztecs. But, as the Virgin of Guadalupe she is Queen of Mexico, Celestial Patron of Latin America, Empress of the Americas, and Mother of the Americas. With these titles, it seems to me that she is the land spirit par excellence of North and South America. Tonantzin is an interesting example to use, because hers is a borrowing now sanctioned by time. For the indigenous people of Mexico City, she is a part of their cultural heritage, baptized, like them, into the Catholic faith. Yet, for American Catholics, she is merely one aspect of their goddess, the Virgin Mary.

Perhaps the answer should be that this goddess is indeed the land spirit of the Americas, but her aspects as Tonantzin and Guadalupe are cultural artefacts respectively of the Aztecs and Catholic Latinos. Even so, it seems to me that where something specific is known about any land spirit, it would be appropriate for heathens to incorporate that information rather than re-forming the spirit in an entirely Norse way. Such an approach would be consistent with the orthopraxy of indigenous pagans worldwide, who typically believe that the offerings they make to the gods are the offerings preferred by those gods, and that the rituals they conduct are efficacious only if done properly.

I’ll have to think more about how adaptations would work in practice. My neighbor, for example, as an Anglo could offer a ceremony to the spirit of the buffalo who roamed these plains, but if he would cross a line if he were to use use any part of the Cheyenne or Arapaho or Lakota ritual. (I use the example of the buffalo because I’m not aware of any nearer equivalent of land spirits to the tribes whose hunting ground Denver once was.) If my neighbor knew that a medicine bundle with particular components was believed by those tribes to ensure an abundence of buffalo, wouldn’t he want to incorporate that knowledge when constructing his own ceremony to honor the buffalo? Does it make a difference whether he adopts only the broad outline without copying the details? And, if so, who decides when the line has been crossed? Would it make a difference if the tribes were extinct? I think a folkish heathen would say, along with the Indians themselves, that my Anglo neighbor, if he needs to honor the buffalo, should adapt a Norse (or Saami?) ceremony, say for honoring the reindeer. Such an adaptation would be culturally authentic, but still ignores the problem of orthopraxy.

After re-framing the question to remove the assumption that land spirits are ethnic, it becomes clear that the ancient Norse who moved into the Scandinavian peninsula and into Iceland and Greenland did not take the land spirits with them; they found them there. In the same way, the Indians did not bring the land spirits of my local area with them.

From this revised perspective, I can once again affirm with my Indian cousins that it is morally reprehensible for Anglos to expropriate the cultural heritage of Indians, yet now understand that it is appropriate for heathens to worship the local spirits according to ancestral custom.

But I have one further quibble: it’s not always easy to separate land spirits from the ancestors. Indigenous people typically claim a kinship with their gods that later people living in the same area would not have(or would have to invent). For example, katsinas who live in the San Francisco mountains and come down for a season each year among the Hopi are both land spirits and a type of god similar to the Shinto kami. The Hopi explicitly hold their land by a grant from Masaw, one of the katsinas, who is the guardian of this world. And, as you might expect, the Hopi creation story links them to the gods in a way that makes the Hopi “relatives” of the katsinas. So, what is the relationship between the katsinas and non-Hopi people living on Hopi land? Would the katsinas still visit the new inhabitants of the Hopi reservation even if those new inhabitants had their own tribal ideas about land spirits that did not include the katsinas and who did not claim a physical relationship to the katsinas?

On a personal note

If I seem to make much of an Aztec goddess, it is because of my personal history with her. As a child, perhaps at about the age of 8, I conceived the idea — I don’t know how — that there is Goddess of the Americas to whom I ought to be praying in addition to my Christian prayers. In my childlike theology, I thought of her as a daughter of Mother Earth, to whom of course it was also necessary to pray. (Adults, it seemed to me, just don’t think things through properly.) When I got a bit older, I was very excited to find a name for Mother Earth (Demeter), and it really bothered me that the American goddess didn’t seem to have a name. When I was much, much older and getting ready to convert to Roman Catholicism, I discovered the Virgin of Guadalupe. She had previously been pretty much invisible to me for cultural reasons even though she had been floating around my peripheral awareness for many years. Remembering my youthful devotion to the unknown Goddess of the Americas, I chose Juan Diego as my confirmation name. Just as the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego, I wanted to honor the way she “appeared” to me, in the sense that I knew she must exist long before I found out who she was. A silly story, I know, but it’s one of my favorites about myself and paganism.