European Native Traditions

[Cassius23]

Good morning,

While getting ready to go to bed I came across a post where, obliquely, the ancestral religion of Europeans was briefly mentioned, and it was mentioned in the vein of "earth loving, peaceful" spirituality.

I think that it should be said that, for the most part, the traditions contemporary with the Native Americans as far as "closeness to the earth" were not all that much better as far as our current views. Back then they had over 300 individual deities with a few that were sortof the "Over-bosses", once of which was the Morrigan,

The Morrígan ("terror" or "phantom queen") or Mórrígan ("great queen") (also known as Morrígu, Morríghan, Mor-Ríoghain, sometimes given in the plural as Morrígna) is a figure from Irish mythology who appears to have once been a goddess, although she is not explicitly referred to as such in the texts.

She is associated with sovereignty, prophecy, war, and death on the battlefield. She sometimes appears in the form of a carrion crow, flying above the warriors, and in the Ulster cycle she also takes the form of an eel, a wolf, and a cow. She is generally considered a war deity comparable with the Germanic Valkyries, although her association with cattle also suggests a role connected with fertility, wealth, and the land.


Or, maybe further north to the Nordic countries? Their ancient deities made the Celts look like a Dead show. There is the one story that I always liked of poor old Harald Wartooth who was so great in battle that Odin himself came down and beat him to death with Harald's own weapon.

So where am I going with this?

There never was a gentle, loving, peaceful culture in ancient Europe that we would be able to draw some sort of romantic, bucolic natural spirituality.

It was turtles, blood, spit, mud, and brutality all the way in.

C23

[elleng]

1. Trying to understand.

Are you saying that what is known of 'ancient' European religions leads to the conclusion that Native American cultures included more earth-loving, spiritual attributes?

[Cassius23]

2. What I am addressing is this..

There are some among the political and religious community that believe the following.

A.- The values of Native Americans are, de-facto, closer to the earth, more gentle, loving, etc,etc,etc.

B.- White people do not have that because they exterminated their own ancient culture through the rise of Christianity. If they investigated this ancient culture then they would have an earth worshiping spirituality just as good as the Native American religion, even better because it is uniquely the property of Europeans and they should follow said spiritual path and stay away from anything "belonging" to the Natives.

What I am saying is that if you look at the historical record, the "ancient cultures" in Europe going back since the bronze age were defined as being nasty brutish people with nasty brutish gods.

The above is also a shot at people who tell individuals who adopt Native American elements into their spiritual practice but are 100% white that they should investigate their own spiritual tradition. Which would most likely mean the returns of cattle raids and going a'viking.

[NashVegas]

19. What Christianity Did Was Help Leaders Get Everyone On the Same Page

and consolidate their power and holdings. But going back even before that, whatever civilizations had religions where their gods looked like humans, they were a step ahead, in terms of ability to progress and build wealth.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. The funny thing is, the myth of the "noble savage" or these ideas that humanity was in some idyllic

state before the introduction of (take your pick) a) Market capitalism, b) Patriarchal society, c) Industrial technology, d) Meat eating, etc. ... well, the irony is, these simplistic viewpoints are really just re-castings of the old "original sin" saw.

Maybe the idyllic state of man was before we filled our heads with all these variations of this original sin and fall fluff.

Hmmm.

[Dragonfli]

4. I disagree

There is more to the old traditions than what you characterize.
A great deal has been lost, but the way you paint it would be similar to someone in the future claiming that all of christianity was hate based and then quoting Westboro baptist types.

The nature based traditions place most of the emphasis on the earth (mother) the sun (god) and there place in the seasons and the parallels to be drawn in human existence. The ethical bits are best described in the Wiccan rede "an it harm none do as thou wilt". What you describe are the more anthropomorphic deities followed by some of the fundie types in some cultures. What I have learned as a wiccan Priest is more about finding balance in ones self and with the world as a whole.

You have done the same thing to the native religions. Again, with them as well, the focus by and large is on balance with nature and wisdom within oneself. This leads me to believe that your own faith is Fundamentalist in nature. One must not confuse the forest for the tree or the word for the thing.

The goddess is in all things as is the god. All things in nature seek balance and that is the lesson.

I am not even sure what the point of your post is, other than to vilify my faith, if there is a point I would like to know what it is.

[moriah]

6. I don't know what her point was.

I posted about mine to show one viewpoint -- the reconstructionist view where a person attempts to, without bias or editing, reconstruct the practices of a culture.

There is also another path that many take, which was widely publicized by Starhawk -- reclaiming.

A person who holds a view more influenced by the reclaiming philosophy does not care what the original practices may have been, and whether or not the beliefs and rituals they practice have any tie to what actually happened in an earlier culture is not the point -- the point is to reclaim the ideas and make them into a religion that fits for you.

I know very, very few Wiccans who will try to claim that Lady Sheba's grimoire is an accurate depiction of rituals in pre-Christian Europe. But that does not matter to Wiccans, nor should it -- they have gained inspiration from aspects of the culture and have created their own religion and practices that work for them, and there is nothing wrong with that.

As with the Rede, I know very few Wiccans who will try to claim that it was recited 2000 years ago. Most will admit that it likely is a derivation from "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" as said by early 20th century occultists. But the origins of the phrase and the idea are not as important as the way the phrase is used now and the moral framework it gives modern Wiccans.

[Dragonfli]

7. I understand you, and could not express it as well or I would have

One point I would make is that it is true the Rede was most probably not recited as it is today, I believe it was even less likely that it was recited as "uncle Al" would have us believe, "Do as thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" is entirely Thelemic. A point that Mr Crowly was trying to make himself. I have a great fondness for him and love his deck, as well as most of his writings, but his ego was as legendary as his many abilities.

[moriah]

8. "Uncle Al" was an unusual soul, for true....

So was Gerald Gardener.

To be blunt, by most accounts Mr. Gardener was somewhat of a perv, and created a religion so he could get young women to go naked and let him paddle or scourge them. He borrowed heavily from Thelemic and Masonic ideas.

Doreen Valiente, in my opinion, is the real person to thank for making Wicca more than that.

She is the first person to put the Rede out in print, and she rewrote the Charge of the Goddess into its most quoted form. She also is the one who re-wrote most of Gardener's rituals to give them a more cohesive form. When conflict between Gardener and Valiente came to a head after Gardener presented "The Ardanes" -- which, coincidentally, said that an older High Priestess should be replaced by a younger because youth was so prized and the greatest asset of a High Priestess, and was only presented after Valiente and another student were drafting proposed laws for the coven -- she went her own way and continued to contribute much to make Wicca and Neopaganism what they are today.

Unlike Gardener, Valiente did not base the validity of the religion on spurious accounts of "family traditions". She did attempt to trace back who "Old Dorothy" was and determined there was a person by the name who lived in the area, but never was able to determine factually if "Old Dorothy" actually initiated Gardener into any tradition, familial or otherwise. Nor did she make it a "cult of personality".

As far as the Rede, I really doubt that "Fam Trads" generally had such a maxim. I've seen quite a few purported practitioners of "Fam Trads" who advocate a moral code much more similar to Crowley than to the Rede. One of them advocated the idea of "heart in hand", saying that what was important was for a person's true will and intention to be manifested, and that nothing, "magickal" or otherwise, should be done frivolously.

I do think the adoption of a moral code like the Rede was necessary to gain mainstream acceptance, or at least to differentiate between Paganism and Satanism. That was another thing Valiente worked toward, especially after she parted ways with Gardener.

[Marrah_G]

13. You are spot on in regards to Valiente.

She was the real force behind the movement.

I am very grateful that she was.

Not a ritual goes by without her words being spoken at some point.

A good number of modern Pagans have little knowledge about their history beyond their romanticized views.

Much like modern day Christians.

[Dragonfli]

20. I have never found it fruitful to disparage any one tradition over another

Nor to summarily pass judgment on The founders of said traditions. In all truth, I have seen an alarming trend over the last ten years at the larger festivals among the neo-pagan community to adopt an unhealthy fundamentalism - claiming an "absolute knowledge" of "the very first real wiccan revival" - to me these arguments seem solely based on the traditions and grimoires of the covens that the combatants were first initiated into. I have watched them get into arguments similar to those usually seen among protestant christian traditions - raising only negative energy. At times I have had to ask people to leave my campsite and then "pull out the sage and sweet-grass". These Pagan fundamentalists always claim the oldest "true tradition" and like to argue more than anything else it would seem to me. Do I have my favorite teachers? of course I do, as do many. My wife had gained her second degree in both Gardnerian and Alexandrian Covens before later helping to form an eclectic coven that incorporated elements of both as well as other traditions before finally practicing in solitary fashion with me on work that was important to us as soul-mates. If she were still with us it would be helpful to me within this thread as she was always the historian in our family.

Before Wicca I spent 20 years studying Taoism and Joseph Campbell style comparative religion so I have always remembered my favorite lesson, "Those that say, do not know. Those that know do not say."

Similarly, I know far too many very good people that have reached varying degrees within the O.T.O. to wish to insult their teachings so off-handedly as some enjoy doing. I have never known anyone from the Golden Dawn or any other tradition older than the O.T.O., (or perhaps I have, Their secrets are very important to them) so I do not know as much about the Thelemic traditions as you seem to, having never been initiated by them to a degree that would allow me such knowledge of their secrets, I will have to concede to the knowledge you appear to have been privy to regarding the "older" Thelemic traditions.

There are those, I agree, that use various traditions (Wiccan and Thelemic) for sexual predation, I attended several excellent Seminars back in the day given by Janet and Stewart Ferrar on the subject and have always liked them personally as well as their teachings (they may have written a book on the subject as well, If so I would gladly recommend it).

I have always found such predation as you describe to be more a personal weakness of individuals than of traditions and steer initiates away from such individuals without disparaging any one tradition. But that is my way, One of unity and tolerance for many traditions, perhaps also the reason I hate all the bashing going on in this thread, starting most notably with the OP, but sadly continuing within this thread by pagans putting forth the "my tradition is better than the others" nonsense that I feel only hurts the neo-pagan community.

Peace and farewell.

[juno jones]

10. You are correct.

Please check out my post #9. European Natives are not the ones who have benefitted from to writing their early history. Conquerors tend to exaggerate the negative. Not to say it wasn't there, but it wasn't the whole raison d'etre for the thing.

It doesn't hurt that we have new thought about our beliefs. It shows that we are growing and vital as opposed to petrified in dogma. If you can find Sam Webster's articles on Buddist Thelemism and Paganism, I highly reccomend them. (I tried to link, but I can't locate it right now.)

[moriah]

5. According to my friend who calls herself....

... a Gaian Shamantic Ecofeminist Post-Neo-Jungian Reconstructionalist (yes, really), it was both.

There were deities that the fluff bunnies nowadays would like, and also those that they would run from screaming. Brighit was associated with poetry, smithcraft, and healing. In the Norse pantheon, Frigga/Freya (it's hard to tell if they may be the same Goddess, likely so) has fertility associations.

But even those nice happy shiny associations have another side. Brighit has associations with fire and skill in warfare, Freya has warrior associations as well.

It is unlikely that the pre-Christian inhabitants of Europe were the "peaceful and loving" people many would like to idealize them as, just as it is unlikely that they were horrible evil people who had no appreciation for peace or beauty or life.

They were people. It is unlikely that the Native American peoples had a "romantic, bucolic natural spirituality" either.

However, the fact that the pre-Christian inhabitants of Europe did have holidays that were related to the cycles of the earth is pretty much undisputed. Some of what happened during those festivals may be disputed -- very few want to admit that the Elysian Mysteries were likely related to the ingestion of ergot-contaminated barley made into kykeon, and it may be that the festival to honor Demeter had a different component to the kykeon, but that is the most likely explanation that can be found.

For the Celts and the Vikings, there were likely other unsavory components of their festivals that would make people squeamish. What does seem to be true about the pre-Christian inhabitants of Europe is that they revered all aspects of life -- which includes death. Several of the later harvest festivals seem to have links to slaughter of cattle for meat over the winter, as one example of things that might make fluff-bunnies cringe.

If a person wishes to attempt to accurately reconstruct the practices of earlier cultures, they cannot do so without acknowledging the parts that may not appeal to our current lifestyle of having our meat wrapped in plastic and in our grocer's freezer. But that does not mean that those practices were bad, or that the attempt is not worth it.

[juno jones]

9. Sedna is pretty gnarly

So is Manitou. The Native Americans were not all rainbows and sunshine. None of us are. The world is sometimes a dark place.

So the Celts and Norse had some pretty gnarly gods and goddesses. All systems with gods plural tend to acknowledge the dark side. Kali ring a bell? Hell, yahweh is not exactly cuddly sometimes either. Most people don't know that Allah and Yahweh, althogh single gods, bear a multiplicity of names to decribe their various aspects. Not all are nice.

It's hard to say how bloodthirsty the Celt and Norse religions actually were. Much of what we know about them was filtered thru the writings of the Romans, who viewed their competitors for Europe with the same jaundiced eye that later conquerors viewed the Native Americans. Both groups are recieving rehabilitation by modern spiritual explorers who are looking past the propaganda and trying to discern the actual intent of the symbolism.

What I find interesting is the fact that the farther north you go, myth tends to get more gnarly. The Finns and the Inuit both have almost nightmarish legends that include evil spirits playing cat's cradle with their own intestines, children's fingers being cut off, etc. But then again, the tales of the Brothers Grimm sometimes reflect a dark pattern as well.

However, pagans ARE earth-loving for the most part and there are some interesting articles out there by a man named Sam Webster, who is an initiate of several different sytems both pagan and buddist showing how the influx of buddist thought to paganism has manifested a culture which is predominantly peace=loving and compassionate.

[LiberalEsto]

11. The brutal folks usually win

There may have been gentler Europeans, but history shows us that the more warlike, brutal peoples generally win. The winners write their version of history to suit themselves.

[lutefisk]

18. And the US has spawned a new kind of brute: The Chickenhawk Brutes

Haven't most past leaders of "brutes" been men who had at least demonstrated personal courage, bravery, or some sort of sacrifice while working their way to the top?

Now it seems that "men" like Bush, Cheney, and their revolting chickenhawk peers are truly cowards on a personal level while acting as spoiled brutes from positions of power - and that almost seems worse...

[Marrah_G]

12. No country or people have a history devoid of violence.

War, generally over resources was a way of life everywhere. Anyone who has such a romantasized view of European pre christian history needs to read more. There are good and bad sides to everything. Often it depends on what side you are looking from.

They lived in a rough and brutal time, scratching out survival for their clans and finding happiness where they could.

Modern day European based paganism has tried to take the good and leave the bad behind, often swinging way toward the peaceful, gentle, loving side to combat modern day misconceptions about Witchcraft, Paganism, Druidism, Wicca, Etc.

Our Gods have multi-facted personalities, much like people do. No one is all good or all bad.

Morrigan is seen as a single Goddess or a triple Goddess "The Morrigan". Goddess of War, fate, fertility, among other things. It was said they she would chose who lived and died in battle, who won or lost in battle, but not so much her CAUSING the battles.

In Paganism's History Dieties are often seen as ruling over what people think of as opposites... such as Birth and Death. War and Peace.

[Critters2]

14. All civilizations have at their root what Girard calls "the founding murder",

whether it was sacrifice of a willing victim, sacrifice of one's prisoners of war, war itself, or the violent overthrow of a ruler, all cultures have used violence for community building. They have also all then re-enacted that sacrifice in religious ritual or civic history-telling to maintain that sense of group identity.

[bean fidhleir]

15. Try the Minoan culture on Crete

Peaceful, trade oriented, class and sexual equality, Goddess-worshiping.

http://wsu.edu/~dee/MINOA/MINOANS.HTM

[H2O Man]

16. Those darned Europeans!

Then we get all their boat people here.

[Marrah_G]

17. ROFL

" Then we get all their boat people here."

Best line of the morning !

Want some :donut: ?