On Pigs and the Evolution of Gods | Home | Clergy Program | Contact | Join | Links | Member Services | Organization | Our Faith | Resources | On Pigs and the Evolution of Gods William Bainbridge On two occasions, I have had the honor of an invitation to participate in a Heathen ceremony at which the ritual sacrifice of an animal was planned. Without wishing to indicate in any way the factors leading to such outcomes, I think it would be fair to say that, in both instances, the rites, well, did not go as planned. Now, it is unquestionable that the old Asatru blots generally involved the ritual slaughter of one or more animals, and on really "special" occasions, humans. However, after much consideration of my two experiences with contemporary slayings, and with all due respect to the true Heathens who invited me to their gatherings--and with respect as well for their theological principles which supported, or even required, reinstituting animal sacrifice--I have to admit that my original feelings on this sort of thing have, for me, been confirmed: I do not believe that the gods necessarily want all of us to be honoring them today in the same ways our ancestors did many centuries ago. Some pretty basic assumptions go into this belief, and some fairly far-reaching consequences result from it. Although the assumptions do not seem to me very controversial from the standpoint of Asatru theology, I do not know that they are all that widely considered or applied. The first is simply that our gods and goddesses are real in and of themselves, and not merely patterns within our collective psyche. Because they are real, they are capable of, among other things, behaving in ways we have not anticipated and that do not appear in our previous religious literature. It is also possible, indeed, quite likely, that they change and evolve just as we do during our lives, and as we clearly have as a culture since the time our ancestors' relationship with the gods and goddesses of Asgard began. Thus, our forebears' views of our gods are important as the best indication we have of the traditional nature of our relationship with the ®sir and Vanir, but are not absolutely reliable in telling us what that relationship is, and should be, today. My second assumption is that, among the various things that go on in our interaction with the gods and goddesses, they teach us things, or at least, they try. This leads to a conclusion that some folks may not find entirely comfortable: if they are trying to teach us, they probably wish us to learn things we do not already know. I doubt, that is, that Oðinn is intimately concerned with instructing us in the lessons of the Havamal, since, after all, we have the Havamal, which we can read anytime we want. Further, the kinds of activities the gods may have led our forebears to engage in are probably not the ones we need to be occupying ourselves with now. As an example, however much we make of the Vikings, we need honestly to face the fact that the functional equivalent of a Viking raid today would be a bunch of good old boys who drove their pickups down to some small Mexican town, shot everyone, men, women and children, grabbed everything they could, and made it back across the border before the federales showed up. These days, most of us would regard such people as armed robbers and murderers who belong in prison, not as role models. Somehow, I do not think our gods would accord them any more honor and esteem than we would, and probably even less. So times have changed, and we had better be prepared for the gods' lessons to have changed as well. The last of my major theological assumptions is that the gods often do not let us know exactly what is going on. I expect that many of Oðinn's chosen may have experienced this on a personal level, but I extend this notion far past the personal. It strikes me as most unlikely that the gods have remained aloof from human affairs for over a thousand years simply because most people ceased believing in them; I expect they remained with us and continued to teach and affect us, but under other guises, and I see in much that has set our Folk apart in history, for better and worse, evidence that the gods' influence continued to be strong with us, even when we have failed to recognize it for what it was. I consider it more than a coincidence, for instance, that the writings of Nietzsche have had such an honored place in the thinking of many in modern Asatru. As a recent example, Stephen McNallen, in his various expositions in The Runestone of what he terms, "Evolutionary Asatru," seems to treat Nietzsche virtually as an exponent of Asatru. I agree; Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" makes far more sense as Wotan than as the Persian prophet, notwithstanding Nietzsche's facile remark that Zarathustra was the first to proclaim absolute good and evil, and should therefore be the first to proclaim their end. At bottom, Zarathustra is about the ecstasy of life, and of self-overcoming: "Der Mensch ist etwas, das Überwunden werden soll," he taught--"Man is something that should be overcome." Does it require much effort to hear Oðinn speaking those words to us? Some years ago, I wrote that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reflects at least as much of the wisdom of Oðinn as anything that has appeared in a modern Asatru journal. I would include the entire Bill of Rights within the scope of that observation, as it expresses a largely Heathen view of the place and dignity of the individual, not a view based on Roman law or Christian theocracy. A rather more ambivalent observation was that of Jung, who, in his essay, "Wotan," saw the hand of the god--or rather, his "archetype"--in early German Nazism. Without presuming to bring the Alfather into the dock at Nuremburg, one yet cannot help but feel that the Third Reich, with its references to, and eventual misuse and perversion of, so much of Germanic spirituality, provides an extraordinarily effective object less on on our need to approach that spirituality, and life in general, in the twenty-first century in very different ways than our predecessors in Asatru approached them in, say, the fourth. It is not my intent, in this article or anywhere else, to condemn or criticize those who feel impelled to express their Heathenism in the old ways, or at least, those of the old ways capable of being practiced without being charged as felony offenses. Rather, I wish to set out the theoretical foundation of my own theology and practice of Heathenism, which I view as no less legitimate or true than any other I have seen, and in which I believe myself, based upon observation, to be far from alone. I have no problem, that is to say, with living as a twentieth, soon to be twenty-first, century Heathen, making as full use as possible of what humanity has learned, from whatever source, since the Christianization of Europe, and remaining open to the very real possibility that the gods and goddesses of Asatru have a few completely new and unprecedented things in store for those of us willing and able to grasp them. Though I claim no direct line to deity such that I can proclaim the "new teachings" for all and sundry, I do believe there are some areas in which we might fruitfully begin to search for those quiet messages, hidden within the depths of our hearts and minds, that bear the faint fragrance of Asgard's plains. A viable contemporary Asatru must, for one thing, help to create reasonable and meaningful lives, economically, socially and spiritually, for Asafolk amid the debris of post-industrial society. The tribalism that marked early Asatru must recast itself in an era where it is most often impractical to form separate communities of blood relatives, concentrated in one geographical area. Diana Paxson's idea of a new tribalism based upon affinities, rather than descent, forms a useful foundation on which to build, but also requires that each "tribe" be able clearly and forcefully to articulate its own distinctive character and purpose. Finding new ways of self-challenging and self-overcoming that do not necessarily involve killing people, or training to do so, is another possibility that occurs to me, though, again, I have no desire to disparage those who do train as warriors. Nonetheless, the various warrior skills were valued so highly in former times because they were essential to the folk's survival. While the martial arts can still be highly useful for training the will and the mind, in addition to, less frequently, insuring one's physical survival, the fact is that in today's world, and most likely tomorrow's as well, many other skills are needed for a folk to survive and flourish that have little to do with physical conflict, but require at least as much time and devotion to master. Further, in order to adapt ourselves fully to a world in which physical violence is less and less an effective response to the challenges of life, we should be developing new paradigms within Asatru that are equally compelling and transforming, but which better prepare us to meet the contemporary needs of our communities. And perhaps we ought also, as McNallen has suggested, to show an honest respect for the title, "warrior," by reserving it for those who truly merit it, in the fullest sense of the word. A new, "Heathen economics" is needed. Capitalist political economy is founded on a materialist world view, with its assumption that human aspiration is reducible to expression as sums of money. Socialism and Fascism, both, are based upon the view of government as a benign and paternalistic arbiter of values and relationships. Neither of these views, however much they determine the character of so many people's lives in modern society, is meaningful for a Heathen. To succeed, however, a Heathen economics must address, not only Heathens' spiritual needs and perceptions, but the inescapable need to compete successfully against both Capitalism and Socialism. I am informed by someone who has what seems to be a reasonably active relationship with Oðinn that helping to bring us all into a less destructive relationship with the earth is very much a present concern of the gods as well. Certainly, it is past time to make clear to society that it is not only American Indians who have sacred mountains, forests and streams, and that new generations of Heathens are also demanding that wild areas be set aside, not only for recreation and economic exploitation, but for religious purposes as well. To paraphrase Geza von Nemenyi, editor of Germanen-Glaube, Teutonic culture is a forest culture. A new Heathenism must become more active in reasonable and credible movements, both to stop the destruction of the earth in the name of various discredited ideologies, and to assert the interests of nature religion in the preservation and use of the land and waters. And we should actually go there, into the forests and onto the mountains, often, and meet our gods and goddesses in the settings in which our most ancient predecessors first perceived them. But perhaps most important, I feel we should recapture for Heathenism the mantle of that school of religious and philosophical thought embodying and representing the quintessentially Germanic view that the highest calling of humankind, its work, is to become something greater, more powerful, more conscious, and more whole than it heretofore has been; to, in Nietzsche's words, create beyond itself. The Germanic soul was born and nurtured in struggle and need, and has ever sought to transmute these into transcendence of its own limitations and imperfections. Thus, the Germanic peoples, despite their respect and reverence for the past, have been among the most dynamic and forward-looking of any in human history. To become the true successors of the old Heathens, we need, to be sure, to understand and honor our origins, but we also need to be prepared to leave them, as the Teutons have so often before left their ancient homes in search of new worlds and a new destiny. Asatru, to be worthy of itself, must contain elements that drive us, not merely to an appreciation or re-creation of a past, but into an uncertain, transforming, and struggle-filled future. Our new communities, if they are to succeed, will have to create a new, Heathen society out of nothing, or rather, out of the very-nearly-nothing comprising modern mass culture. Grasping our destiny will require both a firm grounding in who we are, which we learn in no little part from who we have been, and also the ability our folk has always shown to look at the world and our lives as if for the first time, and to create something unprecedented out of them. Or so I see Asatru's destiny, and the place of theology within it. At any rate, whatever lessons the gods decide we ought to be learning, I do not have any sense that I, personally, would much please them by obtaining and killing a pig in their honor; for me, such a thing would be affected and, at bottom, dishonest. Yet I cannot help but believe that the gods and goddesses of Asatru might nonetheless find some useful work for me, and others of similar ilk, to be doing. | Home | Clergy Program | Contact | Join | Links | Member Services | Organization | Our Faith | Resources | This page was last modified on Tuesday, 12 February, 2002 at 03:12:58 This site, and all documents copyright © 1995-2005 The Troth, except where otherwise stated. All rights reserved, especially those of print or electronic publication for public distribution, whether or not that publication is for profit. For more information or to obtain permission, e-mail [e-mail].