Uplifted by your work, as ever Rhyd. There is something oddly reassuring about the fact that the rural/urban dichotomy goes back so far and accounts for so much.
And.
I have to acknowledge that the dilution of the rural animist roots of terms like pagan and heathen makes me a little sad. Not surprising, I suppose. In this cultural moment it sounds like it is morphing into a signifier anytime you want to refer to the "unwelcome, unwashed 'other'". The bad ones. After years in the clutches of civitas I find I have much more in common now with my unwelcome and unwashed siblings than my urban techno-utopian friends. A reminder, perhaps, that the 'other' is relative and has more to do with the outstretched finger of condemnation than the particular faith or beliefs of the condemned. Thank you for your work, good sir.
The same thing has occurred for me as I grow older and also as I now live in the rural. I had absolutely adopted all the urban prejudices against rustic life-ways in my decades of living in cities, and I found myself confronted with all of that -- and realising I'd been wrong -- once I moved to this small village.
I opted for the Druid path back in 2011 (living in London at the time and suffering its shadow dance of drudge and consumerism), and subsequently moved to the country. I did so to cultivate an actual relationship with place which I feel gives me a broader worldview than I had in the city. Urban ideas are constantly framed as the only ideas that matter - this is only because we, divorced from engagement with our specific environment, see what's funnelled through screens and mistake them for reality. Paganism might be a resurgent method to get back some balance.
I definitely think so, yes. Of course, there's the problem that much of what's being called paganism by both its critics and also its adherents isn't really anything pagan peoples actually did or believe. I've long been quite critical of many "neopagan" trends, though these are absolutely driven by irresponsible publishers and social media influencers, not organic belief.
Even more than the content, your continuing focus on research and scholarship keeps you
at the top of my reading activity. Hard to find this skill in presenting information to the 'general' reader in these times (well, any times). SO very appreciated. Be well.
Thanks so much! I often worry whether readers find essays like this too long or too academic, so I deeply appreciate hearing that they feel accessible to a wider readership.
Keep it coming, please! The historical context is so very important. It fills in much of the Story that is missing, ancestral threads, you might say. It is an essential element for connecting to the reality of who we are. A deep bow of gratitude to you, Rhyd!
Reading this, I was thinking something again which I'd been thinking also in regards to this piece: https://seanfhocail.substack.com/p/brigid-beyond-belief (so I suppose I'd better comment there too). If you concentrate on rural / urban rather than on polytheist / monotheist, then how important is polytheist / monotheist anyway? At least with respect to these questions.
I mean is it really 'Christianity' which has done any of these things that are blamed on it, or just urban systematizers doing what they (or we) have always done?
There were authoritarian father figures in polytheist systems too - and still are - even those of small scale 'animist' societies. And there are plenty of Christians who are against emphasising - or even believing in - that aspect of the Christian God.
This really deserves a very long response, but I'll try to tackle it with a shorter one. :)
Martin of Braga's letter is really interesting for this, because many of the rustica who he is denouncing had also adopted Christian beliefs in with their pre-existing pagan ones. This is akin to the situation in early Ireland that Sean is referring to, and is also what happened time and time again in Africa. Much to the consternation of missionaries, evangelists, and bishops, people would just "add" Jesus to their pantheon of gods and spirits, rather than deleting all the other ones and replacing them with him.
This comes down to a core difference between polytheism and monotheism, something that Kadmus shows quite well in his book, True To Earth (https://abeautifulresistance.org/true-to-the-earth). Polytheism are additive, meaning they tend to just expand their cosmologies when encountering a "foreign" or "new" god to include it. Monotheism, starting with late Judaism and seen especially in Pauline Christianity and Augustine onward, renarrate the gods of others as "false" or "demons." There can be only one, in otherwords, and that one is theirs.
The point about late Judaism is important here. Jewish belief wasn't always monotheist, but rather henotheist (acknowledging many gods but only worshipping one of them exclusively). Henotheism is quite common in Hinduism, too -- selecting a favorite among the gods to devote oneself to.
In Judaism, Henotheism switched to Monotheism around 800 BC, and it was brought about by a militant attempt to assert dominance over the rest of Palestine in order to form a national identity. That's also the kind of mechanism of the urban over the rural.
To your question, then, I think yes -- the urbanizers or authoritarian figures have a lot of responsibility for this. But we also have to be clear that if the belief of any particular Christian is Monotheist (there is only one god and all others are false and evil), then they'll tend towards authoritarianism also. There are absolutely Henotheist Christians (who wouldn't use the label henotheist, of course) who don't assert such a thing. The syncretic folk christianities of Central and South America would be one such sort. Of course, more dogmatic Christians don't see what such people are doing as Christian at all, and, like Martin of Braga or like John Calvin, preach against and sometimes try to directly purge out the "pagan" parts of those beliefs.
“But we also have to be clear that if the belief of any particular Christian is Monotheist (there is only one god and all others are false and evil), then they'll tend towards authoritarianism also.”
Agreed. I have challenged Mr. Kingsnorth on this very issue, my argument being his monotheistic view is not at all dissimilar from The Machine and its various monocultures, its flattening of variety and diversity into the One Right Way. I don’t think he’s a fascist like many of his accusers do, but I can see why, in light of your assertion here regarding authoritarian tendencies in monotheists, why they might think so. I have to say, when I started reading your (fine) essay, he popped into my head, and I was unsurprised to see him referenced here. I don’t expect him to respond in the comments; I imagine him to be crafting a response via his own essay. (He follows you and has read it, to be sure.) We shall see. Looking forward to seeing how he will attempt to square this circle.
I think with religious beliefs, just like political and ideological beliefs (which are all essentially the same thing, cosmologies), it's really crucial to keep in mind that these shift over time. What's more, especially for formalized religions based on conversion, there is often an early period of zealotry that the believer isn't necessarily aware of and usually grows past. It's almost a necessary stage for conversionist religions, I think.
Remembering that context helps take a longer view of certain drives. Recent converts tend to be far more dogmatic than people who've been in the religion for decades, and I've already noted a shift from his initial way of seeing these things to a maturing outlook. Give people time to bodily (as opposed to just mentally, which is the initial conversion experience) work through their beliefs and they usually come to the conclusion that the mysteries are far more complex and, well, mysterious, than they initially thought.
I agree. However, to my mind, conversion is a closing as it’s etymology shows us (i.e., a total reversal, a complete return or going back). Monotheisms demand this, and it is the exclusivity that I find so troublesome. I prefer widening circles (Nod to Joanna Macy) that include all the beings, seen and unseen, in my corner of the world. And, I have no problem including Christ or Woden into my relations.
I find this argument that something called 'monotheism' is more 'authoritarian' than something called 'paganism' to be deeply historically weird. Given that the great majority of the world's authoritarian empires, from the Aztecs to the Romans, were 'pagan' - ie, polytheist - I don't see how anyone can make it stand up, and I have never seen a convincing argument for it.
As for 'fascism': er ... the fascists glorified the 'old gods'. The Nazis were knee-deep in occultism and blood-and-soil Woden worship, while Mussolini wanted to be the New Caesar. Place-based 'indigenous' gods, to my mind, are far more likely to lead to racial tyranny and human sacrifice than the church of Christ, terrible as that has sometimes been in its alliances with power. And they often do. Missing in the commentary here is the reason that so many people voluntarily moved to follow the church when it arrived: the sheer awfulness of the 'old gods.'
So I don't see a circle to be squared. I see humans, everywhere and at all times, using religion and politics and tribalism as an excuse for their own depradations and desire for territorial expansion. The notion that 'Christians' or 'monotheists' are more responsible for that than Shinto practicioners or Native Americans is parochial, Eurocentric worldview that doesn't hold up.
Personally I think that all Christians should be repenting for many of the past actions of their church. But I also think that Christ and his way are the only path out of the human cycle of blood and revenge.
I was starting to craft my reply as I read your comment, but then I made it to the end and: "I also think that Christ and his way are the only path out of the human cycle of blood and revenge." There is no room for further conversation, really, is there? Well done, you.
Okay, I'll play. No, we do not have to agree, but my disinclination goes a bit deeper than disagreement. The statement of yours that I quoted is a foreclosure which indicates that you will be less than likely to consider what I might have to say, and, if that is the case, there is little room for connection and relationship, even in this already truncated medium. Moreover, I live in Kentucky ("The Bible Belt"), and for my entire life I have been hammered, shamed, cajoled, and even sometimes politely invited to accept the exclusivity of your religious position. I am very open to, appreciative of, and even well-versed (Catholic education) in Christian perspectives, but not to the exclusion of other traditions. And, it is tedious to rehash the argument over and over again, thus my lack of enthusiasm to engage with you here. Plus, you already proved my point regarding exclusivity by stating it clearly in the quote.
That said, I will respond. Firstly, I think you set up a straw man with "the great majority of the world's authoritarian empires, from the Aztecs to the Romans, were 'pagan' - ie, polytheist". That certainly does not include the vast majority of human beings going back 200,000 years who did not live in empires but who could be seen as pagan, although 'animist' would be more appropriate to my mind. I am not arguing that they were pure or nonviolent or any such romantic hogwash, but one would be hard pressed to say that they were more authoritarian than monotheists over the last 2000 years. Perhaps the disagreement here turns on the word 'pagan', and that could use some more fleshing out, but I disagree with your statement because it limits 'pagan' or animist practices to the last 3-4,000 years in order to prove your position.
Secondly, regarding fascism: One cannot blame mythopoetics from several hundreds to thousands of years ago with the advent of Nazism/fascism. And, I did not assert that you or Christians are fascists. (I did once defend you against the accusation of being a fascist a writer at A Beautiful Resistance levied against you). And your statement "Place-based 'indigenous' gods, to my mind, are far more likely to lead to racial tyranny and human sacrifice than the church of Christ" is nothing but an unsourced opinion on your part that I assume to be colored by your own prejudice. Let the heretics burned at the stake be my witnesses.
Lastly, the notion that the "sheer awfulness of the 'old gods'" is the reason folks in Europe turned to the Church is sheer bunk. It was forced assimilation, and one must ignore the historical record of violence against traditional lifeways of local peoples in Europe by Christian forces to think otherwise.
I do not think I will say anything more. I will read whatever response you might give, but I find conversations like this exhausting, so you can have the last say. Yes, I know, I made the initial comments. I find it (online discussion) to be a horrible trap that I mostly avoid (I am not on any other social media), but, believe it or not, I appreciate your work. That is, I appreciate what you did with Dark Mountain and the Vaccine Moment and other cultural criticisms, but you have lost me with your recent work, and maybe that is why I feel compelled to argue with you, why I created my own trap into which to step. I am disappointed, but that is my responsibility to hold, and I do not require anything from you. Thank you for the work you did which helped free me from the despair of Covid and the environmental movement. God bless you.
I'm thinking that, to muslims, Christians can seem polytheist because they believe in the Trinity and to Christians, muslims can seem henotheist, because they believe in djinn. Hindus can be as monotheist as Christians if they see all gods as aspects of the One. Neoplatonists were generally like that too, I think?
So - yes - but I'm not sure. When you say 'any individual Christian who believes this will tend...' I kind of agree, but on the other hand what is this 'tendency?' It's like 'anyone who has a woodburner will tend to get lung cancer,' a statistical truth applied at the individual level.
I'm thinking of Martin Shaw's recent post called 'to know an unknown god' - he talks about Paul in Athens saying he came to preach on behalf of the god they did not know until now. Someone in the comments popped up to warn Martin that he was forgetting the next thing Paul said: that worshipping other gods was no longer permissible, now that they'd been told of the one true God. I assume (though I'm not sure) that this person believes that is true Christianity - what Paul said - and Martin still has a lot of paganism to let go of. And there are plenty who think CS Lewis was too pagan, or so I've heard.
I was able, for some time, to keep Christianity out of my life by agreeing with this. Now, not so much.
Yeah, so... I've actually seen a really strong push from the readers of both men to purge their Christianity of pagan remnants. I had to stop reading the comments on Kingsnorth's essays because some of them were really quite frightening and frankly fanatical.
Which is quite amusing, when you think of it, and is a bit why I focused on Martin of Braga here. I adore Kingsnorth's holy well series, while at the very same time being very amused by the fact that veneration at wells was pre-Christian (pagan) practice that Christian authorities identified creeping into Christianity and tried to stop. Martin of Braga would have foamed at the mouth to read Kingsnorth speaking so beautifully and kindly of the practice!
The specific bit in Acts is definitely interesting, because it's the first time you really see the introduction of the idea that "before, God was tolerant of your ignorance and soon he will not be." Currently reading Augustine (ugh) to get a clearer picture of exactly how the "other gods are demons" doctrine came about, since Paul had only begun to formulate this idea in his letters. The main thrust seems to have come after, though.
I've got something like this with 'immanentizing the Eschaton.' Shouldn't have given us an Eschaton to immanentize :-)
I've had times recently feeling like I'm no longer part of the proper crowd commenting on Martin Shaw's posts - although admittedly that's kind of a thing for me - but them I'm abandoning that space to the orthodox (small 'o') - just as an example.
Ah I know this feeling well. It happens both in leftist and dark mountain-adjacent (animism without the spirits) conversations for me because of my paganism.
With the Christians, though, I tend to know the Bible and Christian history much better than they do, so I think they at least tolerate me for now. But of course, “even the devil quotes scripture…” 🤣
So I have to say this - it's a funny story (on some level) - I did the wilderness vigil with the West Country School of Myth. I was so scared on the way in and I remember one worry was that I'd come out Christian - because of this thing that happened to me in the forest in Vietnam. (I recounted that event... https://nicholaswilkinson.substack.com/p/praying-on-unstable-ground).
Anyway I remember being scared that the School of Myth people wouldn't like me any more, and I'd have to leave. They'd be all "no, sorry, we're pagan, get out of here." Those were my exact words, describing my anxiety, and I was reassured about it! But this was in the same wood and must have been roughly the same time that Martin had his vision. So...
Is Dark Mountain animism without spirits? A lot of them seem pretty into what I'd have thought were spirits but maybe, as a whole, it's agnostic?
Thanks for this. I take your criticism and I think you are right. 'Silicon gnosticism' wold have been a better description of what I was trying to get at than 'silicon paganism.'
I think there are some deeper things to dig into here as well though. Not in a comment but maybe somewhere else. My view is that the spiritual void opened up by the collapse of Western Christianity is being filled with a lot of different things. That silicon gnosticism seems to be the worldview of choice of the ruling class. It is, though, also being filled by an actual returning paganism, with a lot of ideas about 'old gods' and with an obvious resurgence of the occult. Another monotheism - Islam - is also rushing in to fill the void, especially in Europe.
Something else worth discussing is that your work on Christianity is focused a lot on the Reformation variant, and then sometimes also (as here) on what the Roman church did before that. But by the time the Roman church began its work on the West, the church as a whole had already split in two, with the eastern ('Orthodox') world cleaving much closer to the inner tradition of the early Christians. There's a whole Christian world that that Western people know very little about. To me it has been hugely revealing.
I personally would like to hear how you - a self-described pagan - actually define paganism. Myself, I would probably point to a worship of the immanent over the transcendent. But the issue is also the Father versus the 'gods.' Those 'spirits' that you talk of, that I also used to follow and worship and all the rest: to a Christian they really are to be avoided. Not just to a Christian, either. My wife is a Sikh and the teaching there is the same. It isn't just Christians who think that 'the gods of the nations are demons.' This really is the big division, rather than that of rural vs urban. After all, it's Christianity which is becoming, ironically, the religion of the rural hicks in the West today.
What I find interesting - and I see it in the comments here too - is that there is a broad sidestepping in this conversation of the heart of Christianity: Christ. He is the only reason to become a 'Christian.' And 'Christianity' is not in fact a philosophy - or indeed a political movement, no matter what the Roman church may have tried on. It is what its early followers, and Christ Himself, described it as - a 'way.' If Christ is who he said he was, he is the centre of history. If he wasn't, he was just the leader of a now-fading cult which is only of historical interest. To me, this is the only thing that matters. The rest is just fluff.
I definitely think "Silicon gnosticism" is a great word for it, and I also consider it as much a threat to pagan ways of being as you see it to Christian ways of being (and, really, a threat to the world and to all the humans and non-human things in it as well).
And yes, I do think lots of things are rushing into the void, because voids have a tendency of wanting to be filled. Islam in Europe is one of those cosmological systems, while Rodnovery (slavic paganism) is actually taking quite a bit of a hold in eastern Europe. I'm also suspecting that we'll start seeing a huge burst of American evangelical Christian missionaries arriving in Europe also (as they did in the former soviet union, much to the consternation of the Russian Orthodox church), and I've seen a lot more Mormon missionaries here than I ever did before.
To the last question -- I think I sent you the book I wrote on this, Being Pagan? I'd have to kindly reject your proposed definition because the words "worship," "immanent," and "transcendent" are all embedded in the Christian cosmology. I'd switch out "worship" for "revere" or at least go back to worship's oldest meanings (see this and follow the reference to "worth" to see what I mean: https://www.etymonline.com/word/worship ). Also, "immanent" and "transcendent" don't really apply since paganism(s) don't have a sense of anything being outside the world.
But a shorter-than-book-length definition of paganism would be "European animism, characterized by reverence for and relationship to multiple gods and spirits of nature, with rituals often focused on sacred natural sites such as groves, trees, fountains, caves and often specific seasonal or agrarian events." And no, this doesn't really fit in with what Wicca or other neo-pagan groups assert. :)
Yes, and I will properly read that book before we speak, if we do.
When I was a Wiccan, my coven's 'high priestess' always insisted that Wicca was not neo-pagan. She didn't like the neo-pagan movement either. I think she would have agreed with your definition here though - that's certainly what I thought I was getting into, and doing.
Perhaps then, these sense of there being 'nothing outside the world' is really the dividing line. Even when I was at my most pagan, I never believed - or felt - that. And that is one way in which the modern world is 'pagan' in a limited sense. It accepts nothing but the world. It just strips out the gods and puts us in their place.
John Michael Greer has written a lot about this last bit, as the problem with associating the secularist-atheist trend we see now with paganism is that paganism wasn't atheist at all.
There's a really good case to be made (and Greer cites several religion scholars making this case in his book A World Full of Gods) that atheism is actually another offspring of Christianity, since the very same tools Christian theologians employed to defend the singular nature of the Christian god were what were then used by the early atheists. A way of putting this (Edward Butler made this point, I think), is that once you start whittling down the gods from "many" to just "one," it's a quick step to "none."
That's an interesting thought. Though I will always come back to the pesky 'what is true?' question. It's obvious enough why this is so vital to a Christian. Either the incarnation and the resurrection happened, or they didn't. A lot of modern sort-of-Christians (like the CofE, for example ;-)) like to try and fudge this but it can't be fudged, because it's about the nature of reality. It's what makes Christianity so weird and unique and often hard to swallow.
I think modern atheism is probably an offspring of Western Christianity. Maybe an unintentional consequence of the Roman Church's magisterium, in which every tiny detail of the faith must be codified. I think that once you start trying to rationalise or explain God - beyond a certain point - you are doomed. Of course pagans weren't 'atheist'. But if there is 'nothing beyond the world' then where did all these 'gods' come from? Are they a consequence of the world being, in essence, a living thing (which I still believe)? Then where did life come from? And how? If nowhere and for no reason is the answer, then you end up back here.
You know what's really weird? When I was a Christian, I thought a whole lot about the creation story and the origin of life and that felt really important. Oddly, when I stopped being a Christian, the question of where everything came from also completely disappeared. So when you asked that, I found myself suddenly confused as to why that ever felt like an important thing to me and why, for the last 20 years or so, it stopped being important at all.
I think it all comes down to cosmologies. If one worships or venerates a creator god, then the creation of the world is an important matter (especially if that creator god is also the only god!). Just as how salvation isn't a relevant point in other formal religions because they don't have a savior-god and don't believe there's anything humans need to be saved from.
Lots of paganisms (again, plural here) have origin stories involving beings who died in the process of creation (as with women in childbirth). Others don't have any at all, as if it's not a question they expect religion to have any answers for. And for some, the creation story is crucial because it's an ongoing process influenced by a specific god or group of gods. For me? It's really not something I ever think about anymore.
It is certainly the case that different cosmologies change the individual worldview. I was shocked by how my relationship to nature changed when I became a Christian, for example. This wasn't an intellectual stance: I didn't decide to see things differently because the church said I had to. It just all changed. So I can perhaps see what you mean.
To me of course it's not just about where things came from but where we are going. These are the two great questions of human existence. I can't imagine ever not being haunted by them. Who are we, why are we here? What is the nature of things? Paganism never answered these questions for me. Maybe it is not designed to.
Hail Arduinna! A lovely piece of writing indeed. At our time of living, all the foregoing traditions are part of our ancestry and so we can rejoice in what works and seek solace and help where we need. As a dedicated animist, I just love this.
I don't think I'd be so quick to point the finger at Christianity for the neo-gnosticism that is transhumanism. If anything it's the other way around, Christianity being a syncretic amalgam of Judaism and various mystery cults. Gnostics, Hermetics, and other occult religious systems propagated within the framework of Christianity, and sometimes claimed to be compatible with it, but mainstream Christianity disavowed them in substance even where it incorporated some of their ideas. Christians might throw this all under the umbrella of witchcraft and paganism as "non-Christian" but I don't think "no u" is the right response.
I adore this quote! I've not yet found where it is from. Do you happen to know?
Ooooh thank you!!!!
Uplifted by your work, as ever Rhyd. There is something oddly reassuring about the fact that the rural/urban dichotomy goes back so far and accounts for so much.
And.
I have to acknowledge that the dilution of the rural animist roots of terms like pagan and heathen makes me a little sad. Not surprising, I suppose. In this cultural moment it sounds like it is morphing into a signifier anytime you want to refer to the "unwelcome, unwashed 'other'". The bad ones. After years in the clutches of civitas I find I have much more in common now with my unwelcome and unwashed siblings than my urban techno-utopian friends. A reminder, perhaps, that the 'other' is relative and has more to do with the outstretched finger of condemnation than the particular faith or beliefs of the condemned. Thank you for your work, good sir.
The same thing has occurred for me as I grow older and also as I now live in the rural. I had absolutely adopted all the urban prejudices against rustic life-ways in my decades of living in cities, and I found myself confronted with all of that -- and realising I'd been wrong -- once I moved to this small village.
I opted for the Druid path back in 2011 (living in London at the time and suffering its shadow dance of drudge and consumerism), and subsequently moved to the country. I did so to cultivate an actual relationship with place which I feel gives me a broader worldview than I had in the city. Urban ideas are constantly framed as the only ideas that matter - this is only because we, divorced from engagement with our specific environment, see what's funnelled through screens and mistake them for reality. Paganism might be a resurgent method to get back some balance.
I definitely think so, yes. Of course, there's the problem that much of what's being called paganism by both its critics and also its adherents isn't really anything pagan peoples actually did or believe. I've long been quite critical of many "neopagan" trends, though these are absolutely driven by irresponsible publishers and social media influencers, not organic belief.
Even more than the content, your continuing focus on research and scholarship keeps you
at the top of my reading activity. Hard to find this skill in presenting information to the 'general' reader in these times (well, any times). SO very appreciated. Be well.
Thanks so much! I often worry whether readers find essays like this too long or too academic, so I deeply appreciate hearing that they feel accessible to a wider readership.
Keep it coming, please! The historical context is so very important. It fills in much of the Story that is missing, ancestral threads, you might say. It is an essential element for connecting to the reality of who we are. A deep bow of gratitude to you, Rhyd!
Thank you!
Reading this, I was thinking something again which I'd been thinking also in regards to this piece: https://seanfhocail.substack.com/p/brigid-beyond-belief (so I suppose I'd better comment there too). If you concentrate on rural / urban rather than on polytheist / monotheist, then how important is polytheist / monotheist anyway? At least with respect to these questions.
I mean is it really 'Christianity' which has done any of these things that are blamed on it, or just urban systematizers doing what they (or we) have always done?
There were authoritarian father figures in polytheist systems too - and still are - even those of small scale 'animist' societies. And there are plenty of Christians who are against emphasising - or even believing in - that aspect of the Christian God.
This really deserves a very long response, but I'll try to tackle it with a shorter one. :)
Martin of Braga's letter is really interesting for this, because many of the rustica who he is denouncing had also adopted Christian beliefs in with their pre-existing pagan ones. This is akin to the situation in early Ireland that Sean is referring to, and is also what happened time and time again in Africa. Much to the consternation of missionaries, evangelists, and bishops, people would just "add" Jesus to their pantheon of gods and spirits, rather than deleting all the other ones and replacing them with him.
This comes down to a core difference between polytheism and monotheism, something that Kadmus shows quite well in his book, True To Earth (https://abeautifulresistance.org/true-to-the-earth). Polytheism are additive, meaning they tend to just expand their cosmologies when encountering a "foreign" or "new" god to include it. Monotheism, starting with late Judaism and seen especially in Pauline Christianity and Augustine onward, renarrate the gods of others as "false" or "demons." There can be only one, in otherwords, and that one is theirs.
The point about late Judaism is important here. Jewish belief wasn't always monotheist, but rather henotheist (acknowledging many gods but only worshipping one of them exclusively). Henotheism is quite common in Hinduism, too -- selecting a favorite among the gods to devote oneself to.
In Judaism, Henotheism switched to Monotheism around 800 BC, and it was brought about by a militant attempt to assert dominance over the rest of Palestine in order to form a national identity. That's also the kind of mechanism of the urban over the rural.
To your question, then, I think yes -- the urbanizers or authoritarian figures have a lot of responsibility for this. But we also have to be clear that if the belief of any particular Christian is Monotheist (there is only one god and all others are false and evil), then they'll tend towards authoritarianism also. There are absolutely Henotheist Christians (who wouldn't use the label henotheist, of course) who don't assert such a thing. The syncretic folk christianities of Central and South America would be one such sort. Of course, more dogmatic Christians don't see what such people are doing as Christian at all, and, like Martin of Braga or like John Calvin, preach against and sometimes try to directly purge out the "pagan" parts of those beliefs.
“But we also have to be clear that if the belief of any particular Christian is Monotheist (there is only one god and all others are false and evil), then they'll tend towards authoritarianism also.”
Agreed. I have challenged Mr. Kingsnorth on this very issue, my argument being his monotheistic view is not at all dissimilar from The Machine and its various monocultures, its flattening of variety and diversity into the One Right Way. I don’t think he’s a fascist like many of his accusers do, but I can see why, in light of your assertion here regarding authoritarian tendencies in monotheists, why they might think so. I have to say, when I started reading your (fine) essay, he popped into my head, and I was unsurprised to see him referenced here. I don’t expect him to respond in the comments; I imagine him to be crafting a response via his own essay. (He follows you and has read it, to be sure.) We shall see. Looking forward to seeing how he will attempt to square this circle.
I think with religious beliefs, just like political and ideological beliefs (which are all essentially the same thing, cosmologies), it's really crucial to keep in mind that these shift over time. What's more, especially for formalized religions based on conversion, there is often an early period of zealotry that the believer isn't necessarily aware of and usually grows past. It's almost a necessary stage for conversionist religions, I think.
Remembering that context helps take a longer view of certain drives. Recent converts tend to be far more dogmatic than people who've been in the religion for decades, and I've already noted a shift from his initial way of seeing these things to a maturing outlook. Give people time to bodily (as opposed to just mentally, which is the initial conversion experience) work through their beliefs and they usually come to the conclusion that the mysteries are far more complex and, well, mysterious, than they initially thought.
I agree. However, to my mind, conversion is a closing as it’s etymology shows us (i.e., a total reversal, a complete return or going back). Monotheisms demand this, and it is the exclusivity that I find so troublesome. I prefer widening circles (Nod to Joanna Macy) that include all the beings, seen and unseen, in my corner of the world. And, I have no problem including Christ or Woden into my relations.
Henotheism is my word of the day😉
Etymology is really everything sometimes! :)
Well, here I am, responding...
I find this argument that something called 'monotheism' is more 'authoritarian' than something called 'paganism' to be deeply historically weird. Given that the great majority of the world's authoritarian empires, from the Aztecs to the Romans, were 'pagan' - ie, polytheist - I don't see how anyone can make it stand up, and I have never seen a convincing argument for it.
As for 'fascism': er ... the fascists glorified the 'old gods'. The Nazis were knee-deep in occultism and blood-and-soil Woden worship, while Mussolini wanted to be the New Caesar. Place-based 'indigenous' gods, to my mind, are far more likely to lead to racial tyranny and human sacrifice than the church of Christ, terrible as that has sometimes been in its alliances with power. And they often do. Missing in the commentary here is the reason that so many people voluntarily moved to follow the church when it arrived: the sheer awfulness of the 'old gods.'
So I don't see a circle to be squared. I see humans, everywhere and at all times, using religion and politics and tribalism as an excuse for their own depradations and desire for territorial expansion. The notion that 'Christians' or 'monotheists' are more responsible for that than Shinto practicioners or Native Americans is parochial, Eurocentric worldview that doesn't hold up.
Personally I think that all Christians should be repenting for many of the past actions of their church. But I also think that Christ and his way are the only path out of the human cycle of blood and revenge.
I was starting to craft my reply as I read your comment, but then I made it to the end and: "I also think that Christ and his way are the only path out of the human cycle of blood and revenge." There is no room for further conversation, really, is there? Well done, you.
Why not? That's my thought. You might have others. Isn't that what 'conversation' is? Or do we have to agree on everything?
Okay, I'll play. No, we do not have to agree, but my disinclination goes a bit deeper than disagreement. The statement of yours that I quoted is a foreclosure which indicates that you will be less than likely to consider what I might have to say, and, if that is the case, there is little room for connection and relationship, even in this already truncated medium. Moreover, I live in Kentucky ("The Bible Belt"), and for my entire life I have been hammered, shamed, cajoled, and even sometimes politely invited to accept the exclusivity of your religious position. I am very open to, appreciative of, and even well-versed (Catholic education) in Christian perspectives, but not to the exclusion of other traditions. And, it is tedious to rehash the argument over and over again, thus my lack of enthusiasm to engage with you here. Plus, you already proved my point regarding exclusivity by stating it clearly in the quote.
That said, I will respond. Firstly, I think you set up a straw man with "the great majority of the world's authoritarian empires, from the Aztecs to the Romans, were 'pagan' - ie, polytheist". That certainly does not include the vast majority of human beings going back 200,000 years who did not live in empires but who could be seen as pagan, although 'animist' would be more appropriate to my mind. I am not arguing that they were pure or nonviolent or any such romantic hogwash, but one would be hard pressed to say that they were more authoritarian than monotheists over the last 2000 years. Perhaps the disagreement here turns on the word 'pagan', and that could use some more fleshing out, but I disagree with your statement because it limits 'pagan' or animist practices to the last 3-4,000 years in order to prove your position.
Secondly, regarding fascism: One cannot blame mythopoetics from several hundreds to thousands of years ago with the advent of Nazism/fascism. And, I did not assert that you or Christians are fascists. (I did once defend you against the accusation of being a fascist a writer at A Beautiful Resistance levied against you). And your statement "Place-based 'indigenous' gods, to my mind, are far more likely to lead to racial tyranny and human sacrifice than the church of Christ" is nothing but an unsourced opinion on your part that I assume to be colored by your own prejudice. Let the heretics burned at the stake be my witnesses.
Lastly, the notion that the "sheer awfulness of the 'old gods'" is the reason folks in Europe turned to the Church is sheer bunk. It was forced assimilation, and one must ignore the historical record of violence against traditional lifeways of local peoples in Europe by Christian forces to think otherwise.
I do not think I will say anything more. I will read whatever response you might give, but I find conversations like this exhausting, so you can have the last say. Yes, I know, I made the initial comments. I find it (online discussion) to be a horrible trap that I mostly avoid (I am not on any other social media), but, believe it or not, I appreciate your work. That is, I appreciate what you did with Dark Mountain and the Vaccine Moment and other cultural criticisms, but you have lost me with your recent work, and maybe that is why I feel compelled to argue with you, why I created my own trap into which to step. I am disappointed, but that is my responsibility to hold, and I do not require anything from you. Thank you for the work you did which helped free me from the despair of Covid and the environmental movement. God bless you.
Chris
I'm thinking that, to muslims, Christians can seem polytheist because they believe in the Trinity and to Christians, muslims can seem henotheist, because they believe in djinn. Hindus can be as monotheist as Christians if they see all gods as aspects of the One. Neoplatonists were generally like that too, I think?
So - yes - but I'm not sure. When you say 'any individual Christian who believes this will tend...' I kind of agree, but on the other hand what is this 'tendency?' It's like 'anyone who has a woodburner will tend to get lung cancer,' a statistical truth applied at the individual level.
I'm thinking of Martin Shaw's recent post called 'to know an unknown god' - he talks about Paul in Athens saying he came to preach on behalf of the god they did not know until now. Someone in the comments popped up to warn Martin that he was forgetting the next thing Paul said: that worshipping other gods was no longer permissible, now that they'd been told of the one true God. I assume (though I'm not sure) that this person believes that is true Christianity - what Paul said - and Martin still has a lot of paganism to let go of. And there are plenty who think CS Lewis was too pagan, or so I've heard.
I was able, for some time, to keep Christianity out of my life by agreeing with this. Now, not so much.
Yeah, so... I've actually seen a really strong push from the readers of both men to purge their Christianity of pagan remnants. I had to stop reading the comments on Kingsnorth's essays because some of them were really quite frightening and frankly fanatical.
Which is quite amusing, when you think of it, and is a bit why I focused on Martin of Braga here. I adore Kingsnorth's holy well series, while at the very same time being very amused by the fact that veneration at wells was pre-Christian (pagan) practice that Christian authorities identified creeping into Christianity and tried to stop. Martin of Braga would have foamed at the mouth to read Kingsnorth speaking so beautifully and kindly of the practice!
The specific bit in Acts is definitely interesting, because it's the first time you really see the introduction of the idea that "before, God was tolerant of your ignorance and soon he will not be." Currently reading Augustine (ugh) to get a clearer picture of exactly how the "other gods are demons" doctrine came about, since Paul had only begun to formulate this idea in his letters. The main thrust seems to have come after, though.
I've got something like this with 'immanentizing the Eschaton.' Shouldn't have given us an Eschaton to immanentize :-)
I've had times recently feeling like I'm no longer part of the proper crowd commenting on Martin Shaw's posts - although admittedly that's kind of a thing for me - but them I'm abandoning that space to the orthodox (small 'o') - just as an example.
Ah I know this feeling well. It happens both in leftist and dark mountain-adjacent (animism without the spirits) conversations for me because of my paganism.
With the Christians, though, I tend to know the Bible and Christian history much better than they do, so I think they at least tolerate me for now. But of course, “even the devil quotes scripture…” 🤣
So I have to say this - it's a funny story (on some level) - I did the wilderness vigil with the West Country School of Myth. I was so scared on the way in and I remember one worry was that I'd come out Christian - because of this thing that happened to me in the forest in Vietnam. (I recounted that event... https://nicholaswilkinson.substack.com/p/praying-on-unstable-ground).
Anyway I remember being scared that the School of Myth people wouldn't like me any more, and I'd have to leave. They'd be all "no, sorry, we're pagan, get out of here." Those were my exact words, describing my anxiety, and I was reassured about it! But this was in the same wood and must have been roughly the same time that Martin had his vision. So...
Is Dark Mountain animism without spirits? A lot of them seem pretty into what I'd have thought were spirits but maybe, as a whole, it's agnostic?
Let's hope Martin never lets go of that Paganism. We've had too many centuries of too many Christians.
Thanks for this. I take your criticism and I think you are right. 'Silicon gnosticism' wold have been a better description of what I was trying to get at than 'silicon paganism.'
I think there are some deeper things to dig into here as well though. Not in a comment but maybe somewhere else. My view is that the spiritual void opened up by the collapse of Western Christianity is being filled with a lot of different things. That silicon gnosticism seems to be the worldview of choice of the ruling class. It is, though, also being filled by an actual returning paganism, with a lot of ideas about 'old gods' and with an obvious resurgence of the occult. Another monotheism - Islam - is also rushing in to fill the void, especially in Europe.
Something else worth discussing is that your work on Christianity is focused a lot on the Reformation variant, and then sometimes also (as here) on what the Roman church did before that. But by the time the Roman church began its work on the West, the church as a whole had already split in two, with the eastern ('Orthodox') world cleaving much closer to the inner tradition of the early Christians. There's a whole Christian world that that Western people know very little about. To me it has been hugely revealing.
I personally would like to hear how you - a self-described pagan - actually define paganism. Myself, I would probably point to a worship of the immanent over the transcendent. But the issue is also the Father versus the 'gods.' Those 'spirits' that you talk of, that I also used to follow and worship and all the rest: to a Christian they really are to be avoided. Not just to a Christian, either. My wife is a Sikh and the teaching there is the same. It isn't just Christians who think that 'the gods of the nations are demons.' This really is the big division, rather than that of rural vs urban. After all, it's Christianity which is becoming, ironically, the religion of the rural hicks in the West today.
What I find interesting - and I see it in the comments here too - is that there is a broad sidestepping in this conversation of the heart of Christianity: Christ. He is the only reason to become a 'Christian.' And 'Christianity' is not in fact a philosophy - or indeed a political movement, no matter what the Roman church may have tried on. It is what its early followers, and Christ Himself, described it as - a 'way.' If Christ is who he said he was, he is the centre of history. If he wasn't, he was just the leader of a now-fading cult which is only of historical interest. To me, this is the only thing that matters. The rest is just fluff.
I definitely think "Silicon gnosticism" is a great word for it, and I also consider it as much a threat to pagan ways of being as you see it to Christian ways of being (and, really, a threat to the world and to all the humans and non-human things in it as well).
And yes, I do think lots of things are rushing into the void, because voids have a tendency of wanting to be filled. Islam in Europe is one of those cosmological systems, while Rodnovery (slavic paganism) is actually taking quite a bit of a hold in eastern Europe. I'm also suspecting that we'll start seeing a huge burst of American evangelical Christian missionaries arriving in Europe also (as they did in the former soviet union, much to the consternation of the Russian Orthodox church), and I've seen a lot more Mormon missionaries here than I ever did before.
To the last question -- I think I sent you the book I wrote on this, Being Pagan? I'd have to kindly reject your proposed definition because the words "worship," "immanent," and "transcendent" are all embedded in the Christian cosmology. I'd switch out "worship" for "revere" or at least go back to worship's oldest meanings (see this and follow the reference to "worth" to see what I mean: https://www.etymonline.com/word/worship ). Also, "immanent" and "transcendent" don't really apply since paganism(s) don't have a sense of anything being outside the world.
But a shorter-than-book-length definition of paganism would be "European animism, characterized by reverence for and relationship to multiple gods and spirits of nature, with rituals often focused on sacred natural sites such as groves, trees, fountains, caves and often specific seasonal or agrarian events." And no, this doesn't really fit in with what Wicca or other neo-pagan groups assert. :)
Yes, and I will properly read that book before we speak, if we do.
When I was a Wiccan, my coven's 'high priestess' always insisted that Wicca was not neo-pagan. She didn't like the neo-pagan movement either. I think she would have agreed with your definition here though - that's certainly what I thought I was getting into, and doing.
Perhaps then, these sense of there being 'nothing outside the world' is really the dividing line. Even when I was at my most pagan, I never believed - or felt - that. And that is one way in which the modern world is 'pagan' in a limited sense. It accepts nothing but the world. It just strips out the gods and puts us in their place.
John Michael Greer has written a lot about this last bit, as the problem with associating the secularist-atheist trend we see now with paganism is that paganism wasn't atheist at all.
There's a really good case to be made (and Greer cites several religion scholars making this case in his book A World Full of Gods) that atheism is actually another offspring of Christianity, since the very same tools Christian theologians employed to defend the singular nature of the Christian god were what were then used by the early atheists. A way of putting this (Edward Butler made this point, I think), is that once you start whittling down the gods from "many" to just "one," it's a quick step to "none."
That's an interesting thought. Though I will always come back to the pesky 'what is true?' question. It's obvious enough why this is so vital to a Christian. Either the incarnation and the resurrection happened, or they didn't. A lot of modern sort-of-Christians (like the CofE, for example ;-)) like to try and fudge this but it can't be fudged, because it's about the nature of reality. It's what makes Christianity so weird and unique and often hard to swallow.
I think modern atheism is probably an offspring of Western Christianity. Maybe an unintentional consequence of the Roman Church's magisterium, in which every tiny detail of the faith must be codified. I think that once you start trying to rationalise or explain God - beyond a certain point - you are doomed. Of course pagans weren't 'atheist'. But if there is 'nothing beyond the world' then where did all these 'gods' come from? Are they a consequence of the world being, in essence, a living thing (which I still believe)? Then where did life come from? And how? If nowhere and for no reason is the answer, then you end up back here.
You know what's really weird? When I was a Christian, I thought a whole lot about the creation story and the origin of life and that felt really important. Oddly, when I stopped being a Christian, the question of where everything came from also completely disappeared. So when you asked that, I found myself suddenly confused as to why that ever felt like an important thing to me and why, for the last 20 years or so, it stopped being important at all.
I think it all comes down to cosmologies. If one worships or venerates a creator god, then the creation of the world is an important matter (especially if that creator god is also the only god!). Just as how salvation isn't a relevant point in other formal religions because they don't have a savior-god and don't believe there's anything humans need to be saved from.
Lots of paganisms (again, plural here) have origin stories involving beings who died in the process of creation (as with women in childbirth). Others don't have any at all, as if it's not a question they expect religion to have any answers for. And for some, the creation story is crucial because it's an ongoing process influenced by a specific god or group of gods. For me? It's really not something I ever think about anymore.
It is certainly the case that different cosmologies change the individual worldview. I was shocked by how my relationship to nature changed when I became a Christian, for example. This wasn't an intellectual stance: I didn't decide to see things differently because the church said I had to. It just all changed. So I can perhaps see what you mean.
To me of course it's not just about where things came from but where we are going. These are the two great questions of human existence. I can't imagine ever not being haunted by them. Who are we, why are we here? What is the nature of things? Paganism never answered these questions for me. Maybe it is not designed to.
Hail Arduinna! A lovely piece of writing indeed. At our time of living, all the foregoing traditions are part of our ancestry and so we can rejoice in what works and seek solace and help where we need. As a dedicated animist, I just love this.
Mic Drop
I don't think I'd be so quick to point the finger at Christianity for the neo-gnosticism that is transhumanism. If anything it's the other way around, Christianity being a syncretic amalgam of Judaism and various mystery cults. Gnostics, Hermetics, and other occult religious systems propagated within the framework of Christianity, and sometimes claimed to be compatible with it, but mainstream Christianity disavowed them in substance even where it incorporated some of their ideas. Christians might throw this all under the umbrella of witchcraft and paganism as "non-Christian" but I don't think "no u" is the right response.