From tyagi@bjt.net  Tue Dec 10 18:58:29 1996
Return-Path: tyagi@bjt.net
Received: from kudonet.com (kudonet.com [165.227.52.1]) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.7.4/8.7.3) with SMTP id SAA32115 for <tyagi@hollyfeld.org>; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 18:58:26 -0500
Received: from kudo20.kudonet.com by kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id OAA05260; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 14:51:39 -0800
Received: by kudo20.kudonet.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id OAA01038; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 14:43:43 -0800
Message-Id: <199612102243.OAA01038@kudo20.kudonet.com>
Subject: Satanism/Neopagan/9612.socdyns.bm
To: tyagi@hollyfeld.org
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 14:43:42 -0800 (PST)
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Orientation: House of Kaos, St. Joseph, Kali Fornika, US -- Kali Yuga
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8b]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Status: RO

# To: alt.religion.all-worlds,alt.satanism,alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca,
#     talk.religion.misc
# From: bkm0482@cc.utah.edu (Brenda Mobley)
# Subject: Paganisms old and new (Was: Re: SATANIC Hypocrisy)
# Date: 4 Dec 1996 02:15:32 GMT
# References: 
# <Pine.SOL.3.91.961123182228.3975B-100000-100000@gladstone.uoregon.edu> 
# <19961126235900.SAA17179@ladder01.news.aol.com> 
# <Pine.SOL.3.95.961126174758.5525F-100000@jersey.uoregon.edu>
# 
# Because this thread is so cross-posted, please note that unless 
# your response includes alt.satanism, if you want me to see a copy of your 
# response, please send me an email copy.  Thanks.  Now to get on with it:
# 
# Kerry Delf (kld@jersey.uoregon.edu) wrote:
# : On 26 Nov 1996 dwest64054@aol.com wrote:
# : > "Mr. Scratch" <scratch@gladstone.uoregon.edu> writes:
# : > > I want you to think about a couple of things here;  first off, the
# : > > reason CAW claims it refuses to recognize Satanists as Pagan is
# : > > because Satan is "part of the Christian mythology".  At the same time,
# : > > however, they appear to be willing to permit Christians entry into the
# : > > CAW -- just not Satanists!
# 
# It's stuff like this that is making me increasingly uncomfortable with a 
# lot of neo-paganism.  I will discuss, first, my impression of the 
# relationship between neo-paganism and paleo-paganism (indigenous 
# traditions), and second, my personal views on the relationship between 
# both paganisms and Satanism.
# 
# On the one hand, I value pagan resources in my community as a sincere and 
# valuable source of community and ritual with persons I know to be at a 
# highly evolved spiritual/ethical level.  But these are people I know.  
# 
# On the other hand, it has become 
# increasingly clear to me that there's an unconscious racist element in 
# a lot of neo-pagan literature, in the way that two very different 
# thealogical elements are being treated as if they were the same.  One of 
# these elements I will call, for short, Revivalist, and it includes most 
# of the people doing European-derived pagan religion.  The other I will 
# call, for want of a better word, Surviving.  Under Surviving I will 
# include not only non-white indigenous but also surviving European traditions 
# which are now in a more-or-less syncretic form with Christian culture, 
# such as those from Iceland, Finland or Lithuania.  In the case of the 
# Icelanders, modern nationalistic identification with the tradition has 
# made it a part of the culture of the land, so that it is not merely 
# literature.  The same could be same of African-American Kwanzaa.
# Even the Greek material gets a very different treatment if the person 
# writing about it is actually a Greek, rather than a "classically" educated 
# Englishman.  The intersection of old writings and architecture with 
# ongoing folklore and custom make for a more substantial product.
# 
# This isn't to say that the Revivalist thread is trivial; but it is almost 
# entirely the product of English and French speaking literary 
# exploration.  The Christianization of the elite in the West is total.  
# The white identity of this elite is entirely tied up with their Christian 
# religion.  (It's not just rednecks in swamps who think this way; their 
# well-heeled cousins are just more subtle about it.)  Somebody practicing 
# a Slavic paganism could be as blonde as the day is bright, and their 
# "whiteness" would still be suspect in the form of the kind of foreign 
# alienness Americans used to project onto Evil Russians.  They were... 
# somehow... too Oriental!
# 
# So while I read the recent "Green Egg" on the subject of "African 
# Diaspora" religion, I felt more and more uncomfortable.  I couldn't 
# exactly pin down why.  After all, if I borrow African elements in ritual 
# or thealogy I'm doing the same thing as the white writers of the 
# articles, aren't I?  But it sticks in my mind that while I'm 
# intellectually borrowing, the people carrying the traditions are still 
# living in a society that will tell you that by worshipping Oluddumare, 
# you are worshipping the Devil (a Black Devil, at that!)
# 
# Syncretism is a loss.  It is always a loss, for it signals, in a way 
# nothing else can, that autonomous nations have become submerged into 
# another society and lost their independence.  When that society is 
# Christianity, educated whites had better beware not to be glib 
# dilettantes, because the price they are STILL paying is the ongoing 
# destruction of what little is left of their own European paganisms!
# 
# While we play with made-up rituals based on the fantasies of English 
# Romantics, the last traces of the folklore of the British Isles are 
# disappearing, never to return, unless someone takes the trouble to 
# practice an approach rigorous enough to separate out the facts from our 
# projections onto them.  Fortunately, there are historians and folklorists 
# willing to do that.  But these historians are academics, and so 
# practically by definition, they are Christians, and they are often 
# missing the point; and the old folks who tell the stories are not 
# Christians in the same way, or for the same reasons.  To Hell with 
# interpretation, practice decent anthropology!  But at least the academics 
# are trying.
# 
# I don't think most neo-pagan writers are trying, really, to recover the 
# past, and that's ok; but lying about it amounts to soul murder of what 
# little was not erased by Christian education, Christian inquisitors, and 
# that all-important Christian cash.
# 
# When this set of observations fully evolved in me, I started calling 
# myself Asatruar, because it was the most intact version of pagan 
# literature/organization that I could get my hands on, that most 
# closely matched what I had received on a folk level from 
# post-Anglo-Norman culture as it is exists in northern New Hampshire.
# Which is where I grew up.
# 
# If I value my own folk heritage and those of my friends of assorted 
# backgrounds, I will be careful 
# NEVER to judge by privileging the Christian measures of religion, since 
# that is the process by which so much has been lost.
# 
# : > The early pagan groups in the first 3 centuries of the common era, also
# : > accepted Christianity, and even Christ into their pantheon.  Just
# : > another god to worship, among many.  
# : 
# : The objection is not that the CAW accepts Christians and/or Christo-Pagans
# : into their organizations, and supports Christianity in such ways as using
# : a quote about Satanism by an obviously underinformed Christian minister in
# : their hate-rag _WSaOC:WWaWW_;  the objection is that the CAW supports
# : and/or accepts Christianity, but then refuses to support or accept
# : Satanism, on the false basis that it is based on Christianity.  Seems a
# : bit hypocritical, doesn't it, Dave?
# 
# I haven't seen the publication you're quoting, but I have seen a lot of 
# hostility in the form of "we are NOT Satanists, we are nice pagans" and I 
# think this is caving in to Christian monomaniacal prejudices in the worst 
# way.  If reverencing a God of Darkness makes you a Devil-worshipper, so 
# what?  If people were sincere about the gods their ancestors were 
# actually worshipping they'd notice a lot of gods devoted to war and power 
# among their other attributes.  It's amazing to me how often eco-political 
# pagans ignore the fact many of the Goddesses are war deities.  Being a 
# competent commander was considered just one of the attributes of a 
# well-rounded leader, to whom the Goddess was then muse and inspiration.  
# We are talking about FOLK religion, after all!  If a warlike Goddess 
# inspired cults of Amazons, so much the better; but none of this is modern 
# eco-pacifist goo.
# 
# Anyway, this takes me to Satanism.  When it is totally and entirely a result 
# of Western thought - and admits it - that's VERY refreshing.  When it's 
# pagan, well, that's honest too.  I'm 
# aware, at least, that Satan has been taken in many places as a political 
# symbol of opposition to Roman Catholic power; this includes France, of 
# course, and so Satan has always been active in my mind as (among other 
# things) a symbol of democracy and liberal freedoms.  There were versions 
# of a ceremony calling itself a "black mass" in France that were 
# enactments, not of debased sexual excess, but of the desire for the 
# ordinary people for freedom.  At the end of the mass, a flock of birds 
# was released into the night.  In this, very folkloric and Revivalist 
# sense, I am myself a Satanist.
# 
# P.S. I would be delighted to correspond with others interested in 
# Satanism or concerned with current directions being taken in paganism.
# 
# --Hellerune
#   bk.mobley@m.cc.utah.edu
#   http://www.cc.utah.edu/~bkm0482/beginhere.html