Sunday 10 September 2017

Asatru

Poul Anderson shows us:

Norse gods;
people who worshipped them;
possible historical originals for Odin and Thor;
a time traveller mistaken for Odin.

SM Stirling shows us Asatru reconstructionists. I have met some of the latter. See here.

Heathens regard the gods as real individual beings, not as archetypes or aspects of a greater being. I can see them only as archetypes or aspects. However, we can participate in ceremonies while having different understandings of the objects of worship.

Mythologically, the Buddha is a teacher of gods and men. Buddhists practise meditation while otherwise accepting a current world view. Thus, the context of meditation can be polytheist or atheist. Japanese offer to Shinto gods and to Buddhas. I can accept food that has been offered to Krishna because the devotees' religious practice is to cook vegetarian food, offer it to the god, then give it to the public whereas my Christian or Muslim friends might avoid food that has been offered to an idol.

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I, being a Christian would feel obliged to refuse food offered to idols, to "gods" which are nonentities. Because St. Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 8.1-11 that while a "strong" Christian could eat meat sacrificed to idols because they are nothing, he should show deference and consideration to "weaker" Christians who would be scandalized to see him eating such foods. And refrain from so doing. St. Paul also added that Christians shouldn't be too scrupulous about the origins of foods offered for sale in the markets, even if some was likely to have been sacrificial offerings to idols. The sensible Christian buys such foods and gives thanks to the true God, dismissing the false gods.

Sean








S.M. Stirling said...

Horse sacrifices were made to Odin and Thor; this is probably the source of the taboo on horse meat.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Mr Stirling,
My informant, called Jez, also said this. In particular, some bishop banned horse meat in England.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,

Mr. Stirling: except, of course, at the sacrificial meals following the offering of horses to Odin and Thor. Over and over I've seen mentioned in Anderson's Scandinavian works that Norse pagans ate the meat of sacrificed horses. Of course I realize that was merely an exception, done at special times for religious reasons. Which makes me wonder, do any CURRENT Asatru sacrifice horses to their "gods"?

And, of course, the ancient Scandinavian pagans practiced darker rites, such as human sacrifices to Odin at specified times. Assuming something like the Change, I can't help but wonder how long it would before SOME Asatru reconstructionists lapsed into human sacrifices (esp. if there were no Christians or Jews around to shame them into refraining). After all, I can easily see some of these "hard polytheists" arguing that if Odin approved of human sacrifices, who were they to object?

Fond as he was of his ancestral Scandinavian heritage, Poul Anderson had no illusions about the KIND of religion they had, which he dismissed in his Introduction to HROLF KRAKI'S SAGA as "heathen rites obscene or bloody."

Paul, I assumed this bishop lived soon after the conversion of the Anglo Saxons to Christianity. And the ban was because of how horse meat was associated with Odin and Thor.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sorry, too brief: I meant the taboo on horsemeat among north European Christians. That arose precisely because of the memory of pagan sacrificial feasts.

One of the things about reconstructionism to keep in mind is that you can never really recreate the past, even, as one of my characters says, "if you wear its clothes".

The Religions of the Book are in a way a sword across the history of the human race -- they changed the moral reflexes of mankind.

You can see this clearly by looking at people like the Japanese, who were never Christians and whose basic religious sensibility is more like Classical paganism.

(There are very strong similarities between that and Germanic, Celtic and Baltic or Slavic pre-Christian religions, of course.)

Neo-pagans are no more like their remote pre-Christian ancestors than, to quote Lewis, a divorcee is like a virgin.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

Replying to your note paragraph by paragraph.

First: then we both agree about the use or non use of horse meat.

Second: which is what I have to keep in mind as I reread your Emberverse books. I can't help but think the Wiccans to be absurd and un-historical.

Third: I recall GK Chesterton saying something very like that in THE EVERLASTING MAN. As I recall, Chesterton said the rise of Christianity made it impossible to truly take paganism seriously.

Fourth: there was a time when the Japanese too might have become Christians. By the time of the early Tokugawa Shogunate many, many Japanese had converted. So much so that the Tokugawa unleashed a truly vicious and bloody persecution of Japanese Christians.

Fifth: VERY distant common origins Japanese paganism shared with the other kinds of paganism you listed?

Sixth: again, I need to keep that in mind as reread the Emberverse books. See my second comment.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
That is correct. I think the bishop was also an emissary from Rome. The distaste for horse meat is in English culture to this day.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And these days, of course, the dislike for eating horse meat comes from the PASSION many Britons have for horses. And their well known love for dogs included disapproval of eating them.

Sean