European religion: ritual and reconstruction

I. Introduction
In our previous post—which ought to be read before continuing this one—we discussed the generational stratification of modern culture; its relation to the conception of modernity as "secular"; the origin of said conception in the Mosaic distinction; postrationality; and the matter of religion and how to define it. As explanatory as all this has been, it has left us with even more questions; and where the previous post was descriptive, this post will venture—though not terribly far—into the prescriptive. Note that where the term religion is used, it refers to systematic myth and ritual unless otherwise specified.

Let's start with the present condition of Christianity in the West, as well as its main competitors (as the previous post ought to have made clear, we should like not to have the sense that spiritual organizations are "competing" for souls—but the term applies well enough here).

Over the past century, Christianity has gone from being a dominant force in Western societies to a relatively weak one, and its decline has occasioned less a massive inundation of new religious movements—though there have been a good number of these, of which we'll soon discuss a few—and more a mass apostasy. As we discussed in our previous post, this apostasy is part of a process specific to Western Christendom, which has been exported to some extent around the world but which is conditioned by the system from which it is proceeding—that is, Christianity. As the West continues to exit its former Christian paradigm, it does so in a Christian way, making use of epistemic distinctions—that of "secularity" versus "religiosity" and that of modernity versus antiquity being twin chiefs among them—which emerged from none other than the Western Church and her academies.

II. Christianity, High and Low
In order to discuss this issue any further, we must know that not all Christianity is the same.

To start with: there is a "high church", and there is a "low church". Litmus tests for the former include: a Sunday liturgy referred to as Mass; a priest whose term of address is Father; and a beautiful interior, if not exterior, to the church building itself. If you encounter a church that eschews liturgy, uses saltine crackers and grape juice for the Eucharist, and is little more adorned than any "secular" conference center, you are dealing with the low church.

What the high church understands (though not as well as the ancient world did), and which the low church has trouble with, is that spirituality is a matter of experience and not of "belief". Formulaic prayer and singing; lighting of incense; sacramental use of bread and wine—none of this would be unfamiliar to an ancient "pagan", especially one who had been initiated into one or more mystery religions. If such a man were to happen upon a congregation of low-church Protestants, he would be liable to wonder where the icons and incense had gone.

Protestant churches without liturgy or sacred objects I have always found wanting. When I have attended Orthodox Christian services, on the other hand, I have always, unquestionably, felt God's presence. This had nothing to do with whether I believed in the Nicene Creed and everything to do with the experience.

For that matter, I have also felt God's presence reading one of Boëthius' hymns over a fire in the middle of a dark wood. Christianity has no monopoly on this feeling, and this fact does not somehow invalidate or belittle Christian worship—rather, it justifies it in a way that Christianity is not accustomed to, that is, it justifies it non-exclusively as a means, but not the means, of ensuring the soul's progress after death. This is the whole point of mystery religion.

Proper arguments for the existence of an eternal soul are beyond the scope of this post, but it is worth noting that more convincing arguments have been made for it than have ever been made for the existence of an "authentic" self that knows what it wants—yet this latter belief today surrounds us. If you're a materialist or somesuch and therefore deny that life follows death, you can simply substitute the soul's progress after death with a person's stoicism in facing death. In any case, the Eastern Orthodox Church preserves the Platonic understanding of theosis, which gives it a special affinity with the Greco-Egyptian mystery religions that preceded it and puts it philosophically ahead of any other branch of Christianity. From La Wik:

Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism have a substantively different soteriology. Salvation is not seen as legal release, but transformation of the human nature itself in the Son taking on human nature. In contrast to other forms of Christianity, the Orthodox tend to use the word "expiation" with regard to what is accomplished in the sacrificial act. In Orthodox theology, expiation is an act of offering that seeks to change the one making the offering. The Greek word that is translated both into propitiation and expiation is [hilasmos] which means "to make acceptable and enable one to draw close to God". Thus the Orthodox emphasis would be that Christ died, not to appease an angry and vindictive Father, or to avert the wrath of God, but to change people so that they may become divine, that is to say, become God in his energies or operations but not in his essence or identity as God (see theosis).^[39]

Even Orthodoxy, however, is limited by the Mosaic distinction. If the Church functioned as the ancient mystery cults did, there would be a process of initiation consisting of certain actions and experiences, which may have certain entry criteria but not a prohibition on participation in other cults; the Eleusinian Mysteries, for example, were limited simply to non-barbarians—i.e. those who could understand Greek—who had also not committed murder.

The initiation process in high-church Christianity consists of two components, one Mosaic and one rather "pagan": catechesis, in which doctrine rather than ritual is the focus, followed by baptism, which is not unlike pre-Christian purification rituals involving bathing.

In the Eleusinian Mysteries, of course, one could perhaps simply lie about the second requirement; likewise, one might lie by taking Communion at a church full of strangers while having never been baptised. But in practice these rules have a way of enforcing themselves; according to Suetonius, even the Emperor Nero turned himself away from Eleusis out of guilt.

Note that not all religion must meet the standards of mystery religion; it is perfectly natural for a people to have rites which might be understood simply to bind them together, and perhaps encourage their reverence for God or nature, which are only made salvific or enlightening by one's prior initiation into a mystery religion which interprets them—in other words, ethnic religion, or civic religion.

Christianity plays this role, too, but again inconsistently: the Church may form the foundation of a people's self-definition, but it still demands creedal allegiance, which means that its interests do not align with the interests of that people as such, but as Christians.

So when the Church was the dominant institution in Europe, it was de jure universal but de facto thedishly European, and thus, in defending itself, defended European identity against, for example, invaders from the Muslim world. Now that the Church is no longer dominant, it does not engage in any such defense of Europeans—to the contrary, the current Pope has called on us to "pray for a heart which will embrace immigrants" and argued that the present trend of mass immigration into Europe is enriching.

Thus present-day Europeans, looking for a system of ritual to renew their sense of attachment to their own collective past, have no more robust and established institution to turn to than one which, after centuries of uniting them—and having removed, by force and otherwise, all prior thedishly European systems of ritual and belief—calls for their own demographic replacement as a display of piety. This would be the case whether or not Westerners were to reconvert en masse to Christianity.

By all means, attend Mass. Enjoy the liturgy. Have fellowship with other worshippers. But if we are not confident in the Church's willingness to safeguard Europeans from demographic eclipse, or if we have reservations about assenting to the Mosaic distinction--nay, if the amalgamation of Hebrew prophecy with Greek philosophy simply does not satisfy us as an account of divine truth--what are we to do?

III. Post-Christianity
A number of neopagans have their answer: to reconstruct the old pantheons and pick up, more or less, where our pre-Christian ancestors left off. This approach--aptly called reconstructionism--has a number of limitations, however, which mirror those of present-day Christianity.

The problem which seems to lie at the fundament of most attempts at reconstructionism—at least those I have come across—is their inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that Christianity happened to us as Westerners, and that it did very much to shape who we are today. It, along with feudal economic structures, altered the way we form families. Pre-Christian Europeans, outside the Mediterranean, lived in tribes, which were held together by cousin marriage; the spread of Christianity was also the spread of Roman and Greek breeding practices, which caused nearly all of Europe to become outbred, and to form what we now know as nations rather than tribes. Europeans whose ancestors come from within the Hajnal line have been living without inbred tribes for about a thousand years.

I see many neopagans who want to reconstruct—for example—a pure Germanic pantheon, untouched by dreaded "syncretism", and yet in the same breath lament the many inter-European wars of religion. No more brother wars!

The grand irony is that without those brother wars, present-day Europeans would not even have the sense of collective identity necessary to lament their tragedy. This is not to say that we should all convert to Christianity, or that religious differences between European ethnic groups cannot or should not be maintained or redeveloped. It means simply that we must have a narrative, as Europeans and as members of our respective ethnic groups, that explains how and why Christianity was able to affect us so mightily. If we can't come up with any such explanation, we're lacking a key component of what will make new European religions viable.

I have never come across a neopagan who does not acknowledge that things have in fact changed since Antiquity, and that he will therefore have to tailor his worship somewhat to suit the exigencies of postmodern life (such as work schedules, dealing with family who are averse to non-Christian religious practice or even religious practice in general, und so weiter). But in such acknowledgement, I do notice not only a lack of willingness to confront the Christian question as outlined above, but also the fact that such an adaptive approach as that acknowledgement demands is rarely followed logically—that is, followed to the point that one understands that in any effort to reconstruct myths and rituals which have gone unpracticed for centuries, one is in fact creating something new.

We can go forward with a deeper reverence for our ancestral traditions and with an understanding of the deadly quality of the Mosaic distinction, or we can indulge in idle fantasies of launching new Catholic Crusades (as many young "traditionalists" do) or becoming caricatures of the noble savages our pre-Christian ancestors are imagined by some to be (as many neopagans do); but there is no going back. Time, as Spengler said, does not suffer itself to be halted; the cosmic clock runs only clockwise.

Related to the desire to ignore Christianity's importance to the European past is an aversion to practices which are deemed to resemble Christian ones. This, too, is impoverishing and inconsistent. As Westerner, even if we do not profess belief in the Nicene Creed or in some watered-down low-church derivative thereof, we are no less descendants of Christian civilization than any Bible-thumper, and it would behoove us to take everything of value from Christianity that we can.

As discussed somewhat above, high-church Christianity retains a good deal of "pagan" or non-Mosaic religious behavior: Mariolatry, prayer to the saints, prayer for the dead, baptism, lighting of incense, icons, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist are not Mosaic concepts. They are, by and large, express violations of the First Commandment, which is why the low church, not to mention other monotheistic groups, distrusts or even despises them.

Someone who reacts to such obviously extra-Biblical practices as Lenten fasting or Mariolatry like a vampire to a crucifix—and certainly such people do not constitute the entirety of those who call themselves pagans today—is missing the whole point of rejecting counter-religion. We ought to be willing to see the value in such practices that many Christians themselves do not.

IV. Translation and Distinction: Religion as Language
This aversion to Christianity is often accompanied by an aversion to ideas or practices associated with other "paganisms"—as mentioned above, there is a dread among neopagans of "syncretism" or "mixing cultures", and a concern for the "purity" of myth and practice. This concern is not without merit, of course.

The healthy aspect of such a concern is evident from the truism that different cultures are different, and that no one likes to be told by another culture how they must perform their rituals or tell their sacred stories. Certainly translation of other cultures' archetypes, and tolerance of their differences, does not necessarily entail the adoption of their ways.

But the extent to which many neopagans take their desire to keep a "pure" religion leads to a rehashing of the very Mosaic distinction which motivated the destruction of so many European traditions in the first place. To our pre-Christian ancestors, the idea that different religions were somehow totally incommensurate with one another was simply unthinkable. Different religious traditions were treated much like different languages: local traditions with distinctive qualities unique unto themselves, but which were also translatable, with common archetypes addressing underlying truths. Myth and ritual form the language-games by which men communicate with the divine.

Furthermore, in the case of Celtic and Germanic reconstructionism, there is such a paucity of written knowledge about what the ancients were up to in the regions in question that any attempt to rebuild their pantheons without any reference to non-Northern-European traditions will amount to nothing but speculation and ignorant role-playing. Slavic, Baltic, and Finnic reconstructionism are in a similar predicament. Roman, Greek, and especially Egyptian religion are much better preserved, and I would encourage anyone wishing to make a meaningful revival and adaptation of the less-preserved traditions to study them.

V. Practice, Past and Present
This brings us right back to the question asked—and not quite answered—earlier: what is a European, whether on the continent or a member of the diaspora, to do if he wishes sincerely for a way to worship God and not YHWH, whose name is Jealous?

As suggested above, any such means of worship will necessarily come from a combination of what we know of pre-Christian European traditions with the accumulated wisdom of existing non-Mosaic religious ideas and practices—and that means looking outside of Europe for guidance.

The Hellenes of old, for example, had no problem learning from Indians—whom they called gymnosophists—in order to perfect their own religion, and neither should we. That doesn't mean "converting" to Hinduism—which is, anyway, impossible for you if you are not an Indian—but it does mean accepting that there are other ethnic groups who have been more fortunate than we in maintaining their time-tested religious customs and resisting Mosaic counter-religion, and that we have a great deal to learn from their historical experience and present-day practice.

Note that the understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine—and thus of the necessity of "assimilation to God as far as is possible", as Plato would suggest—which exists in various traditions around the world is not shared by all religions. The embrace of the perennial kernel of wisdom which many religions happen to share should not be misinterpreted as an anything-goes endorsement of any and all religious practice. Some religious traditions are simply primitive and do not look upward, and others are downright evil.

So read up on how Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Shinto practitioners go about things—and read some Plato, Plotinus, and Hermes Trismegistus while you're at it. If mass immigration has brought non-Muslim Indians or Asians to your area, take advantage of it and start talking to them about their worship. And if there's anything you take away from this post, let it be that practice precedes belief—and there are plenty of ways to ease yourself into practice.

Start praying and meditating daily, for example—mantras in particular are wondrously effective at inducing a calm and reverent mental state, and there are plenty of European prayers and phrases which work very well as mantras. The nine doxologies from Poemander (see page 46 in the linked PDF), whether in Latin or in the original Greek, are especially good. Look through those ancient hymns and prayers which survive and use any part of them which strikes you as especially pious (perhaps you'll enjoy the hymn from Boethius mentioned earlier as much as I do). There's also a recent Burzum track which is little more than a repeated mantra and may be attractive to you. Get some incense, too—frankincense and myrrh are tried and true.

There is much more to say and even more to do, but start small with reading and prayer first. If any of our readers actually take this advice and stick with it for at least a week or two, do leave a comment and share your experience. ἅγιος ὁ θεὸς!