Another Ask-A-Pagan thread

[Brendan_64]

The Eddas are allegorical stories, they are meant to convey a point.

Grimms fairy tales are allegorical tales, so what makes the Eddas more authoritative than they are? Are the Eddas simply men’s way of trying to make sesne of the world? If so then that would make your gods the inventions of the men who invented the sagas and Eddas.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Skadi-

Which of the following ideas would you accept?

A. All is one. Reality is a seamless garment.
B. All is God. God is an all-pervading impersonal Energy, Force or Consciousness.
C. Self-deification/self-salvation. We look within for power, knowledge and healing.
D. Paranormal potential. We can experience ESP, telepathy, spirit-contact (spiritism), etc.
E. Ethical relativism. Moral absolutes can be transcended.
F. Cosmic evolutionism. The human race is progressing toward a new age of planetary peace and prosperity.
G. Religious syncretism. All religions are really one, and teach the above (A-F). For example, Jesus was just one of many mystical masters. Reincarnation is stressed.

Thanks.

 

[Skadi]

Skadi-

Which of the following ideas would you accept?

A. All is one. Reality is a seamless garment.
B. All is God. God is an all-pervading impersonal Energy, Force or Consciousness.
C. Self-deification/self-salvation. We look within for power, knowledge and healing.
D. Paranormal potential. We can experience ESP, telepathy, spirit-contact (spiritism), etc.
E. Ethical relativism. Moral absolutes can be transcended.
F. Cosmic evolutionism. The human race is progressing toward a new age of planetary peace and prosperity.
G. Religious syncretism. All religions are really one, and teach the above (A-F). For example, Jesus was just one of many mystical masters. Reincarnation is stressed.

Thanks.

Sorry it took a while its been a very busy few days.

A. I guess that would depend on what you mean by all is one.
B. Yes.
C. We can, but there are external sources aswell, and which I would say are more powerful.
D. Yes.
E. No, There is a base morality. There may be room for relativism above that base, but the core is unchanging.
F. Were evolving, but i don’t buy into that “future of peace and prosperity” new age stuff. If anything im pessimistic about the future.
G. No not realy, I do believe all diety’s are part of the Is All like us, but not to the extent that the New Agers go to.

 

[Skadi]

Grimms fairy tales are allegorical tales, so what makes the Eddas more authoritative than they are? Are the Eddas simply men’s way of trying to make sesne of the world? If so then that would make your gods the inventions of the men who invented the sagas and Eddas.

They are allegorical tales about things that actually exist.

 

[Gullveig]

Grimms fairy tales are allegorical tales, so what makes the Eddas more authoritative than they are? Are the Eddas simply men’s way of trying to make sense of the world? If so then that would make your gods the inventions of the men who invented the sagas and Eddas.

Actually, many of Grimm’s “fairytales” probably relate back to Indo-European proto-myths, as the same, oddly specific plot elements are found across many Indo-European cultures and seem to mesh well with accepted linguistic theories about language distribution in Europe. They may be simply corruptions of very ancient stories, which have been sanitized and embellished by people cut off from the cultural tradition and oral lore over the years to appeal to children so that they have lost their original meanings. They were collected well after the other oral traditions that went along with the stories died out.

The Eddas, however, were collected in a time and place were the oral tradition was still strong and a daily part of life. Norse cultures lacked a well-developed system of writing, and so made up for it with intense oral memorization by bards, lawspeakers, and other keepers of lore. The Eddas, therefore, represent knowledge given by the gods to man at a time in the distant past and which has been worked into the bardic style for easy memorization. The Sagas, in most cases, are recountings of actual historic events. They are not religious stories, but heathens find them valuable because they illustrate how our ancestors lived and thought about things, as well as providing some clues that, along with archaeology and independent historical sources, help us fill in some gaps in our knowledge of what our ancestors believed and how they practiced their faith. Some sagas are understood by scholars to be fictional (and if you read them, you can easily tell the difference), and these are more like parables. They’re meant to entertain, but also to illustrate various moral principles.

Had the Sagas and the Eddas not been written down, it’s likely that the stories would have become more like Grimm’s fairytales, in that they would have lost their cultural context. You can see how this has happened with some mainland Norse lore, as after the violent suppression of heathenism, the organized bardic tradition was broken, though the stories were still told with greater veils of allegory and with corruptions by Christian storytellers until over time they became simply fairytales about elves and trolls and so on. In Iceland, however, the chain of oral lore continued more robustly for much longer, which is why the lore from Iceland is much more coherent than much of the lore from the mainland.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I would like to share the following with all of the pagan guests here at CAF…it was written by Fr. Robert Barron, and the full article may be found using the link below.

I will begin with an analogy. If you are coming to know a person, and you are a relatively alert type, your reason will be fully engaged in the process. You will look that person over, see how she dresses and comports herself, assess how she relates to others, You’ll Google her and find out where she went to school and how she is employed, ask mutual friends about her, etc. All of this objective investigation could take place even before you had the opportunity to meet her. When you finally make her acquaintance, you will bring to the encounter all that you have learned about her and will undoubtedly attempt to verify at close quarters what you have already discovered on your own.

But then something extraordinary will happen, something over which you have no real control, something that will, inevitably, reveal to you things that you otherwise would never know: she will speak. In doing so, she will, on her own initiative, disclose her mind, her heart, her feelings to you. Some of what she says will be in concord with what you have already found out, but much of it—especially if your relationship has deepened and your conversations are profound and intimate—will be new, wonderful, beyond anything you might have discovered on your own.

But as she speaks and as you listen, you will be faced with a choice: do you believe her or not? Again, some of what she says you might be able to verify through your own previous investigation, but as she speaks of her feelings, her intentions, her aspirations, her most abiding fears, you know that you have entered a territory beyond your capacity to control. And you have to decide: do you trust her or not? So it goes, whether we like it or not, anytime we deal with a person who speaks to us. We don’t surrender our reason as we get to know another person, but we must be willing to go beyond our reason; we must be willing to believe, to trust, to have faith.

This is, I think, an extremely illuminating analogy for faith in the theological sense. For Catholics (and I would invite my Internet friends to pay very close attention here), authentic faith never involves a sacrificium intellectus (a “sacrifice of the intellect”). God wants us to understand all we can about him through reason. By analyzing the order, beauty, and contingency of the world, there is an enormous amount of “information” we can gather concerning God: his existence, his perfection, the fact that he is endowed with intellect and will, his governance of the universe, etc. If you doubt me on this, I would invite you to take a good long look at the first part of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.

Now one of the truths that reason can discover is that God is a person, and the central claim of the Bible is that this Person has not remained utterly hidden but has, indeed, spoken. As is the case with any listener to a person who speaks, the listener to the divine speech has to make a choice: do I believe him or not? The decision to accept in trust what God has spoken about himself is what the Church means by “faith.”

strangenotions.com/what-faith-is-and-what-it-isnt/

+++

I, Randy, add this:

The Christian worships a God who has spoken through the Word and continues to speak to us individually today through prayer and scripture, etc. The pagan worships gods who do not speak (except when there are actually demons masquerading as the gods) to those who worship them. Consequently, the pagan is stuck in the “Google” phase…learning more about the “history” and characteristics of his or her god, but never hearing his voice or knowing intimacy.

 

[adawgj]

Whats the difference between pagans and heathens?

 

[Skadi]

I, Randy, add this:

The Christian worships a God who has spoken through the Word and continues to speak to us individually today through prayer and scripture, etc. The pagan worships gods who do not speak (except when there are actually demons masquerading as the gods) to those who worship them. Consequently, the pagan is stuck in the “Google” phase…learning more about the “history” and characteristics of his or her god, but never hearing his voice or knowing intimacy.

Many pagans believe in personal revelation, the gods speak, but to us individually, through personal religious experiences.

 

[Skadi]

Whats the difference between pagans and heathens?

Pagan is a blanket term, while heathen generally denotes Pagans who worship the Germanic pantheon, ie. Asatru

 

[Gullveig]

I, Randy, add this:

The Christian worships a God who has spoken through the Word and continues to speak to us individually today through prayer and scripture, etc. The pagan worships gods who do not speak (except when there are actually demons masquerading as the gods) to those who worship them. Consequently, the pagan is stuck in the “Google” phase…learning more about the “history” and characteristics of his or her god, but never hearing his voice or knowing intimacy.

I would say that this is a misunderstanding of how pagans experience their own religion. As a reconstructionist, I care very deeply about the historical validity of what I practice and what the ancient heathens believed, but that does not mean that I am restricted by that either. To take your allegory, I “google” my traditions and learn about the way the gods have revealed themselves to man through peer-reviewed archaeological and historical work as well as period historical documents. But our religion is a living religion, I also experience the presence and interaction of our gods and ancestors as a presence in my daily life. As a seithr practitioner, this is most salient to me, as I practice seithr as a means of more direct communing with my gods and ancestors and learning from them.

In Asatru, knowledge is categorized in terms of what was historically practiced and what is personal gnosis. Most reconstructionist heathens, by long standing tradition, simply consider personal gnosis to be an intensely private thing that is only to be discussed sparingly, sometimes because the revelations may not be meant for a wider audience and sometimes because they are simply very difficult to explain with words. For instance, there are some things that I have learned through seithr that I could never explain sufficiently to anyone except another seithr practitioner because there is no way to adequately convey the information to someone hasn’t experience similar things themselves. Most of us focus on historical rituals because it connects us with our ancestors, but innovations are made to account for circumstance and group/individual gnosis. The historical rituals, of course, were created by the personal gnosis of our ancestors.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I would say that this is a misunderstanding of how pagans experience their own religion. As a reconstructionist, I care very deeply about the historical validity of what I practice and what the ancient heathens believed, but that does not mean that I am restricted by that either. To take your allegory, I “google” my traditions and learn about the way the gods have revealed themselves to man through peer-reviewed archaeological and historical work as well as period historical documents. But our religion is a living religion, I also experience the presence and interaction of our gods and ancestors as a presence in my daily life. As a seithr practitioner, this is most salient to me, as I practice seithr as a means of more direct communing with my gods and ancestors and learning from them.

In Asatru, knowledge is categorized in terms of what was historically practiced and what is personal gnosis. Most reconstructionist heathens, by long standing tradition, simply consider personal gnosis to be an intensely private thing that is only to be discussed sparingly, sometimes because the revelations may not be meant for a wider audience and sometimes because they are simply very difficult to explain with words. For instance, there are some things that I have learned through seithr that I could never explain sufficiently to anyone except another seithr practitioner because there is no way to adequately convey the information to someone hasn’t experience similar things themselves. Most of us focus on historical rituals because it connects us with our ancestors, but innovations are made to account for circumstance and group/individual gnosis. The historical rituals, of course, were created by the personal gnosis of our ancestors.

Seithr - had to look that word up on Googe, and here’s what I found on Wikipedia:

Seiðr (sometimes anglicized as seidhr, seidh, seidr, seithr or seith) is an Old Norse term for a type of sorcery which was practised in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age. Connected with Norse religion, its origins are largely unknown, although it gradually eroded following the Christianization of Scandinavia. Accounts of seiðr later made it into sagas and other literary sources, while further evidence has been unearthed by archaeologists. Various scholars have debated the nature of seiðr, some arguing that it was shamanic in context, involving visionary journeys by its practitioners.

Seiðr practitioners were of both genders, although females are more widely attested, with such sorceresses being variously known as vǫlur, seiðkonur and vísendakona. There were also accounts of male practitioners, known as seiðmenn, but in practising magic they brought a social taboo, known as ergi, on to themselves, and were sometimes persecuted as a result. In many cases these magical practitioners would have had assistants to aid them in their rituals.

Within pre-Christian Norse mythology, seiðr was associated with both the god Oðinn, a deity who was simultaneously responsible for war, poetry and sorcery, as well as the goddess Freyja, a member of the Vanir who was believed to have taught the practice to the Æsir.

In the 20th century, adherents of various modern pagan new religious movements adopted forms of magico-religious practice that they have referred to as seiðr. The practices of these contemporary seiðr-workers have since been investigated by various academic researchers operating in the field of pagan studies.
**
Sex magic**

Certain aspects of seiðr were sexual in nature, leading Neil Price to argue that it was very likely that it actually involved sexual acts. Various scholars have argued that the staff used by seiðr practitioners may have been used as an imitation penis. As evidence, they have highlighted the fact that the staffs have phallic epithets in various Icelandic sagas

Price noted that, because of its connection with ergi, seidr was undoubtedly located on ‘one of society’s moral and psychological borders’.

I think I can understand why you only discuss this sparingly. :sad_yes:

 

[Gullveig]

Because, of course, everyone knows Wikipedia only uses non-biased well-researched sources and isn’t at the mercy of anyone who knows how to click buttons on the internet.

I’m not going to give you a crash course of seithr, because I don’t think you’re really interested. I will say that the article you’ve cited is badly written and contains very little accurate information. It’s ridiculous to reduce seithr to sex magic, because there are so many different kinds of seithr-work and because it misunderstands the broadness of the “ergi” cultural complex in history and presumes too much from scant evidence. You’d be better off finding some of the scholarly articles on the subject or reading some of the stuff on hrafnar.org.

I practice oracular seithr, which is concerned with communion with the gods and divination. It would be practically impossible to work sex into it. The majority of seithr-workers I know personally frown on sex magic, because its impractical and unnecessary and presents ethical problems that are better avoided. It’s difficult to talk about what happens when practicing oracular seithr not because there’s anything to be ashamed of or because its graphic, it’s difficult because it’s a mystical and highly emotive experience. It’s like trying to describe the color yellow to someone who has been blind since birth.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Because, of course, everyone knows Wikipedia only uses non-biased well-researched sources and isn’t at the mercy of anyone who knows how to click buttons on the internet.

I’m not going to give you a crash course of seithr, because I don’t think you’re really interested. I will say that the article you’ve cited is badly written and contains very little accurate information. It’s ridiculous to reduce seithr to sex magic, because there are so many different kinds of seithr-work and because it misunderstands the broadness of the “ergi” cultural complex in history and presumes too much from scant evidence. You’d be better off finding some of the scholarly articles on the subject or reading some of the stuff on hrafnar.org.

I practice oracular seithr, which is concerned with communion with the gods and divination. It would be practically impossible to work sex into it. The majority of seithr-workers I know personally frown on sex magic, because its impractical and unnecessary and presents ethical problems that are better avoided. It’s difficult to talk about what happens when practicing oracular seithr not because there’s anything to be ashamed of or because its graphic, it’s difficult because it’s a mystical and highly emotive experience. It’s like trying to describe the color yellow to someone who has been blind since birth.

The article says “certain aspects”, so there is no implication that ALL of the seithr is sexual in nature. However, how could the “majority of seithr-workers [you] know” frown on something unless they were at least aware of it? Obviously, they and you ARE familiar with these “certain aspects” to some degree, at least. Additionally, a majority which disapproves implies a minority who do NOT frown on sex magic.

 

[Gullveig]

The article says “certain aspects”, so there is no implication that ALL of the seithr is sexual in nature. However, how could the “majority of seithr-workers [you] know” frown on something unless they were at least aware of it? Obviously, they and you ARE familiar with these “certain aspects” to some degree, at least. Additionally, a majority which disapproves implies a minority who do NOT frown on sex magic.

The article clearly does stress that aspect of it, though. Either way, the works cited are not representative of the scholarship on the subject and seem to be biased in favor of specific controversial theory of historical seithr work. There is actually no explicit indication that sex was ever used as a part of historical seithr practice. The modern use stems from some people ascribing to the views of a few researchers, like Price, who have made inferences from other cultural aspects. Many other researchers in the field feel that this is a poor extrapolation of the implications of the ergi complex and a misunderstanding of historical shamanic practices. So, yes, we are aware that there are people who do it now, but there is no substantial evidence to suggest that it was done in period or even how it would have been done, so it is frowned upon by the greater community both because it has a much greater propensity to degenerate into unethical behavior, is a relatively dangerous method when many other better methods are available, and because it has shoddy historical backing.

Oracular seithr was not a marginal cultural practice, as there are several instances in the lore and the historical record of oracular practitioners being highly valued members of society and their counsel much sought after. What was marginal were the practices that were closer to what we call “witchcraft” now.

 

[Lokadottir]

Oracular seithr was not a marginal cultural practice, as there are several instances in the lore and the historical record of oracular practitioners being highly valued members of society and their counsel much sought after. What was marginal were the practices that were closer to what we call “witchcraft” now.

Odin practiced seithr! Just saying.

 

[Gullveig]

Odin practiced seithr! Just saying.

Yes, but that’s Odin and something of a unique case. Odinn is also taunted about it a few times in the lore as well. Historically, non-oracular seithr seems to have been a mixed bag. It’s difficult to say exactly how Norse people thought about it in period because of later Christian revisionism, but my educated guess would be that while spakona (oracular practitioners) were socially mainstreamed per examples in the lore and archaeological finds that place the tools and garments of oracular practitioners in the burials of prestigious women, seidkona (witches, for lack of a better term) were treated similarly to equivalent magical practitioners in other non-Christian European cultures at the time ( that is to say, with equal parts local respect and suspicion) and their woe-working abilities were magnified over the weal-working aspects later on. It’s likely that most women among Norse cultures practiced a little bit of seithr-type sympathetic magic in daily life in the same way that you can still find people out in the countryside today who charm warts and so forth, and most men probably used other types of galdr from time to time.

 

[Lokadottir]

Yes, but that’s Odin and something of a unique case. Odinn is also taunted about it a few times in the lore as well. Historically, non-oracular seithr seems to have been a mixed bag. It’s difficult to say exactly how Norse people thought about it in period because of later Christian revisionism, but my educated guess would be that while spakona (oracular practitioners) were socially mainstreamed per examples in the lore and archaeological finds that place the tools and garments of oracular practitioners in the burials of prestigious women, seidkona (witches, for lack of a better term) were treated similarly to equivalent magical practitioners in other non-Christian European cultures at the time ( that is to say, with equal parts local respect and suspicion) and their woe-working abilities were magnified over the weal-working aspects later on. It’s likely that most women among Norse cultures practiced a little bit of seithr-type sympathetic magic in daily life in the same way that you can still find people out in the countryside today who charm warts and so forth, and most men probably used other types of galdr from time to time.

Very true. I suppose I meant that it was not so far of societal borders.

 

[Skadi]

The article says “certain aspects”, so there is no implication that ALL of the seithr is sexual in nature. However, how could the “majority of seithr-workers [you] know” frown on something unless they were at least aware of it? Obviously, they and you ARE familiar with these “certain aspects” to some degree, at least. Additionally, a majority which disapproves implies a minority who do NOT frown on sex magic.

I understand that to Christians Sex magic is often seem as an extreme perversion given the sacred nature of sex in Christianity. However, I dont see it at all as negative. Asatru/Germanic paganism is usually considered the conservative side of paganism, and some of us have a tenancy to look down on “those wiccan hippies running naked through the woods.” However I think its important to actually remember the treatment of sex in the old societies from whom our ways are based. While there were sexual taboo’s Germanic culture in ancient times was strikingly open towards sex when compared with its contemporaries. Im not saying extreme promiscuity is acceptable, or the breaking of ones marriage commitment, but the sagas are honestly full of the gods “getting around”.

 

[Phalanx]

I’ve seen some germanic pagan answers in these thread. So these questions are for those who identify with common germanic deities

What is your primary source of pagan knowledge?
From where have you learned the most usefull things?
What do you know about the source of previous two answers?

In Sweden we learn about the nordic mythology (Asatron - Odin, Thor, Sleipner, Loki, the 4 giant dwarwes, Yggdrasil yada yada) before any other religion. But even then during education it is stated that the nordic religions is a bunch of nonsense. How do you feel about the fact that the native population and direct descendants from the ancestors of your faith has abandoned what you believe in?

 

[Skadi]

Firstly I just want to say that not all have. I am a direct descendant of that native population, My ancestors have lived in southern Germany and Switzerland for thousands of years after coming down from Scandinavia with the rest of the German peoples. While the majority of ethnic Germanics are no longer pagan that dosnt mean the gods have left us. And Asatru/Ect. is definitely strongest in Scandinavia.

to answer the first two questions, from the Edda’s (interpreted allegorically) and personal experience.