If I needed a label for my religious views it'd be like "Germanic, Celtic, Scythian, Neolithic European, Indo-European Paganism and Shamanism" lol but mostly Germanic and Shamanistc
Idon't associate myself with any groups, I've always been a "Solitary Pagan" or what have you..
Especially now. As I sometimes feel how diluted so many Heathen groups are, all they seem to care about is the Viking age (as if that?s the only part of Germanic history?) and drinking mead and talking about the Poetic Edda constantly, some even glorifying that Hollywood-Barbaric fake version of Germanic culture. And also so many seem to only concentrate on the Eddas, which were written down by a Christian and show obvious Christian bias. They act like the Eddas are a bible and the absolute law to be followed by all Heathens.
So many religions are seriously lacking something huge that ancient people had.
Don?t get me wrong, it?s absolutely important to learn about things like the Poetic Edda or any source of your people?s or religion?s stories like the Bible or Baghadavita.
But when all you do is obsess over that, it becomes like how mainstream Christianity or Islam is today. There is no progress. No one is taking those steps to go beyond just talking about old stories, etc.
They just get stuck in the modern human aspect (couldn't find any other wording) and it destroys everything. I mean were religions just meant to have their beginning stages and early history and then just stop forever?
Leaving people to just use what they have already recorded and not have people who continue the path and journey. Which also don't get me wrong, I am not attacking Reconstructionism. In fact I often times if needed to label myself, will stick with that label as it's the closest to how I feel. But even Reconstructionism seems to be afraid to take Heathenism into their own hands and help it continue instead of just being a history.
In some cases I've been criticized for discussing these things:
I was pretty much called a false believer and ridiculed (reminded me of being in a church?) by Heathens for bringing up that I use Cannabis and Shrooms in my worship occasionally, as did ancient Germanic and Celtic people (and for sure Scythians, which is a culture I follow a bit) and asking if anyone else has. I felt like the majority of responses were filled with modern bias against entheogens, especially *shock* "That Europeans did it?!"
They also seemed to forget that even Mead was used as an ethneogen and was not something you just drank 24/7 casually.
I also brought to attention the lack of "Spiritual Leaders" in Heathenism who have devoted their life to the gods and to being a Shaman, Völva, Seiðrman, Goði, etc etc.
I look at a place like India (which shares similar traditions because of the Indo-European connection) and I look at Sadhu's. I imagine that early Indo-European priests must have been similar to them. And I wonder, why aren't there guys doing that but instead of devoted to Shiva, they're devoted to Odin?
A response I had to that once was basically that "None of us have the right to do that, we aren't living in that society" That right there makes me think that it's not a religion to them but just Historical Reenactment.
Did our ancestors just expect someone like a Völva to just randomly fall out of the sky one day? "Here I am! To console you in spiritual matters and divine the gods and spirits!"
Well, to be technical. In a sense it went like that. But not in that way. From what we can figure from other cultures that are observed in indigenous religions that can be considered in ways similar to ours through ancient means (Sami, Siberian and Mongolian Shamans) such a person would have been chosen at birth by spirits and the gods, right?
So how do these people know there aren't individuals born to do such duties? Who will guide them? Who will encourage them? When there is a large Pagan community that (in my experience) treats them like insane people and turns them down.
We should also remember, things like "insanity" would be signs of a possible Shaman to an indigenous community.
Back to what I was saying though, how "We aren't living in that society" Why can we not recreate such society?
If someone truly feels the calling of being such, why discourage them?
I also sometimes feel it?s all about social status and all of that crap, you know? Like how you see some Church's. They forget that they are their for Spirituality and their God and it just becomes people gossiping and drama, I'm sure you've seen examples.. Every religion today, it seems you have to go completely on your own journey by yourself to really achieve anything real. The social aspect ruins it for me.
Of course, maybe I just haven't met the right people.
I guess a reason this has always been important to me, is because I myself am one of those people who have always felt a calling towards the more shamanic and deep paths of Heathenism. If I could I'd give up everything in this life, to follow that path. Every other path in life just doesn't seem to draw me at all. Maybe it's because I truly am being called by the gods to follow that path regardless of the challenges the modern world puts against it, or maybe as someone who has Aspergers and things that would be labeled as "Schizophrenia" I desire that society where someone like me wouldn't be looked at as having a "Mental disability" as modern western medicine says. But just as a human who happens to function on a different level, mentally and spiritually.
Time will tell? Thanks for listening to my rant/essay whatever you want to call it.
28 Jul 2014, 12:24 am
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