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Veneration 20181203: Reviving a Dead Religion
Imagine, if you will, that a battle had gone differently on October 10, 732 in France. The Battle of Tours not only stopped the Islamic conquest of Europe from Africa and up the Iberian Peninsula, but started the reversal which would culminate in 1492 with the Iberian Peninsula united into two Christian kingdoms with the Muslims (and the Jews) eventually cast out or forced to convert. What would have happened had the Muslims won? The battle took place at least half the way into the heart of France. Had the Muslims been successful there, things would have been dark for European Christendom. It’s possible that Byzantium could have faced a two-front war within a few hundred years. Byzantium might have fallen earlier, leaving only Islam in Europe with Paganism on the Northern fringes in areas that were not yet Christianized. Over time, those areas, too, might be brought into Islam.
Now, imagine further that a thousand years after the thorough conquest, a thousand years after the last Christians and Jews had converted to Islam, that someone wanted to revive the old religion. Perhaps Islam was starting to fall under its own weight. The only problem is that nobody had wanted to be seen as trying to preserve the old religion against Islam, so very little was left. All that scholars had found about Christianity was one fairly well-preserved version of the Book of Psalms, and then some attestations throughout time that didn’t really get into exactly how the whole religion worked and was practiced. Certainly, it lacked the cosmogony and theology components. Further, there had been three scholars writing about “the old ways” a couple of hundred years after the fall of Christianity, but the true scholars of the old languages, history, and archaeology were pretty sure that their writings were very tainted with their Islamic religion, plus they were probably misunderstanding things from spotty oral history that had passed down for two hundred years by the time the stories reached them.
Imagine, then, that you wanted to revive this old religion to take the place of a moribund Islam that nobody any longer believed or cared about, at least in Europe. Would you look at the lack of data and give it up as a lost cause? Or would you fake it until you make it?
Germanic Neopaganism is in exactly that situation. During the Romantic Period of the Nineteenth Century and into the early Twentieth Century, some German Romanticists tried reviving the old religion of the Volk. This was tied up with German Nationalism. Germany only “kind of” became a country in 1871. Before that, it had been a loose confederation of states with related languages and traditions for about a thousand years. Even then, it was still not what we would think of as one nation until after WWI. Beginning especially after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, many Germans were feeling the lack caused by their disunity. They wanted one ring to rule them all…or something like that. And that is the period, while the Brothers Grimm were starting to study old German folk tales and Beethoven was writing big works and Richard Wagner was glorifying the old stories with the Ring Cycle, that there was first interest in reviving the old Germanic Paganism. These revival movements went through into the Twentieth Century and got themselves entangled with German National Socialism, which sort of put a damper on them for a quarter of a century. But by 1970, some people were back at it, trying to revive the old Germanic Paganism.
There was only one problem. They really never had too much information to revive it with. You know how I asked you to try imagining restarting Christianity with only the Book of Psalms, a few historical attestations, and the writings of some Muslims trying to record the traditions two hundred years after they had died out? Well, the old Germanic Pagans weren’t really big on writing things down, and about all that is left is the equivalent. There is the Poetic Edda, a collection of old poems that mention aspects of the old religion as it existed in Iceland, at least. There are a few attestations of how things were supposedly done that have come down through other cultures, such as the Romans and at least one Muslim traveler. This includes accounts of human sacrifice, by the way. Then there are the works written by Christians, two of three of whom were probably monks, and all of whom were writing hundreds of years after their area and country had converted to Christianity.
The rest of what these German Neopagan movements have been doing is filling in the prodigious gaps as best they can. They are classified as New Religious Movements, not as revivals of old religions. Why? Because the gaps were that big. Again, imagine trying to restart Christianity without the Gospels or most of the Old Testament, only the poetry of the Psalms.
I am left wondering what sort of desperation drives people to try to reconstruct religious practices based on so little information. Certainly, the Germanic Neopagans are not the only example out there these days.
What do you think, Ricochet? Are such things worth the effort? Are they all stuff and nonsense? Should the Mexican peoples try to reconstruct the old Aztec religion? What is your reaction?
Published in Group Writing
Tea for me.
Touring Ireland with my family this summer, we’d sit down for breakfast and the waitress would come by the table and ask, “Tea?”
I would respond, in my American accent, “No thank you.”
She would immediately answer, “Ah. Coffee, then?”
Was it said in the same tone as, ‘oh, it’s one of you people’?
Ah what you all need is Fritz Cola from Berlin. Or Afri-Cola from Bad Teinach. Local brands rule!
I guess that depends on your local brand. Ours are more known for their root beer than cola.
I’m pleased to see nobody is suggesting Sam’s Choice as a viable contender.
I haven’t had it for a while but I think the best that can be said is it gets the job done.
Depends on what the job is.
Delivery of desired caffeine dosage via a single-serving carbonated liquid solution.
Yes, as long as you don’t care that it tastes almost entirely of cinnamon, it does meet your needs.
By that logic, Crystal Pepsi should count. So your logic must be flawed somehow because no viable solution set should ever include Crystal Pepsi.
I don’t think you could get Wotan to drink Crystal Pepsi.
Just tell him it will make him more eloquent and knowledgeable.
I rise today in defense of the much-wronged Crystal Pepsi™. Has there ever been a Pepsi product more hated, more mocked than this see-through cola? Do we loathe 7-Up™, the tonic that heals us when we are sick, that mixes with Seagrams as though they were soul mates of destiny? We do not. Yet when a cola so pure that you can see into its only slightly murky soul is born to deliver unto us our daily caffeine in a non-teeth-staining way, we denounce it, we sneer at it; we drive it into hiding for years. Have we no respect for science? For branding?
This is not some supplanting socialist New Coke™ come to destroy all that was good in a cola; Crystal Pepsi™ was meant to give us choice – a Clear Choice™. So let us make no more calumnies, nor cast new aspersions. The time for reconciliation is at hand. Let us drink from the Bubbly Bottle of Brotherhood in this best of all times.
Lift your ice-filled, aesthetically condensated glass (possibly with a slice of back-lit lime) and drink to out glorious Crystal Pepsi™ future!
Wow, I never thought of it that way before. Let me do that now…
No.
Yes. New Coke.
Loathe is perhaps too strong a word, but this is hardly a valid comparison. 7-Up has no caffeine, though it is more cola-like than Crystal Pepsi.
Yes! And?
Neil Degrasse-Tyson tried for hanky panky with science, and look where it got him.
And it was someone’s branding (by way of tattoo) that got him in trouble.
Technically you’re right, but only because New Coke was actually Fascist instead.
It’s less-clear if you mix it with kool aid.
Or you can mix it with Zima and at least get a buzz.
Now with 30% more ravens!
Dude. I am in negotiations for a PepsiCo/Ricochet merger, so ixnay with the egetivitynay.
And remember kids, if you meet a bad poet, it’s because he drank the mead of poetry that came out when Wotan farted in the face of the giant he stole it from, not from the mead that Wotan regurgitated once he was safe in Asgard.
Seriously, Germanic mythology is great reading.
Bad poets drink Crystal Pepsi?
The Poetaster of a New Generation!™
Thanks. This is chortle inducingly amusing. “The tonic that heals us when are sick…” ah, childhood memories…..
Just saw this one:
Late to the party due to school commitments, I only read pages 1 and 7, going from paganism to despised beverages, and am sorry to have missed so much. Howsomever, why should I allow ignorance of 5 pages of Ricochet opinions to stop me from offering my own, which no-one will ever read anyway?
Here’s my point: Wicca gives me the heebie-jeebies, especially the fact that several people whom I love and respect ascribe to it. A recently-invented pseudo-religion (well, the 1970’s-1980’s is fairly recent to me, at least) with no scriptural foundation, no preserved oral tradition, no liturgy, no formal practice and no organization for religious instruction of ministers, it lacks the discipline necessary for submission to the divine. What’s left if you have none of those? A jumble of sword and sorcery fantasy, unfounded belief in a secret European herbal medicine tradition, mother-worship, ecological romanticism, and narcissism. Blessed be, indeed!
Hogwarts?
I read it, and it was good.
Hogwarts has significantly more history and cultural history behind the stories than Wicca does.
From what I understand having never read the books (stone him) the Harry Potter books touch on a number of Bible stories/parables. There was a debate between two of my friends as to whether Rowling did this on purpose or whether it was subconscious.
Describing actual pagan rituals to a Wiccan is always entertaining. We don’t know much, but we do have little bits and pieces like Viking funeral observations and such. Anyway, Wiccans are whacked.
@Saint Augustine: Yes, Rowling did her research on bestiaries and even medieval herbal guides.
@percival: She did insert the Christian elements in the books intentionally. Deathly Hallows goes as far as to have John 15:13 on the tombstone of Harry’s parents.
If we ever do that won’t be the reason.