A Response to Harijawulfaz's "On Paganism".

A critique of Paganism has been making the rounds here on Telegram, though it seems to have been drafted with much error regarding the facts as to what Paganism is and what Pagans actually believe. The bulk of the points in the post are entirely false and misunderstood and thus I have found myself in a position to act out the Odinic duty of calling out lies and deception.

I shall include the original points made and follow up with my responses to each one, in order. So, let's clear some stuff up shall we.

"1. Many members of the Nationalist community, to this day, adopt "Pagan" beliefs. The cause of this is a rejection of Christianity as weak and foreign, while exalting those characters of Pagan traditions which coincide the most with Nationalist ideas."

* This is somewhat true but not an honest presentation of how Pagans view this subject. It is a matter of fact that the Bible, especially the teachings of Jesus, are entirely against nationalism. Verses such as Galatians 3:28, Romans 10:12, Philippians 3:20, Acts 10:34-35, Matthew 24:14, Mark 16:15, Mark 13:10, Matthew 10:16-18, among many others, make it evidently clear that Christianity is meant for ALL people who accept the gospels and that ALL people and nations are to be "unified" in Christ.

Furthermore, Jesus preached some very anti-familial rhetoric as well, namely in Matthew 10:34-39.

How can we expect any White Nationalist who reads such verses to take them as any sort of valued advice regarding our prosperity as a people or adherence to family, folk and nation?

Contrasting this, the ways of yore held that our families were to be valued and never abandoned for the so-called "love" of any one "jealous" god (see Deuteronomy 4:24). Our traditional beliefs valued lineage and ancestry as something in the realm of sacred.

Furthermore, we had (and still have) multiple Gods that embodied various aspects of war and combat which placed such actions into the realm of the sacred, meaning that we had a religious incentive to defend our families, not only from sheer necessity, but also in approval of the Gods and a means of becoming more like the Gods. Our Gods do not demand we leave our families, nor do they demand that we "spread the gospels to all nations of the world". Our beliefs are strictly ethnocentric and tribal.

"2. Paganism is not a revealed religion. It has evolved through thousands of years, in different forms according to different geographic locations. If it is to be dispelled, it must be done with reason, as with any other superstition. For the sake of this document, we will take as a main point of reference Nordic Paganism, as that is the most widespread form of Paganism."

*This is a common strawman that Christians and others who do not understand Pagansim put up. They love to bunch every form of "Paganism" together as simply variations of the same thing, but this is very disingenuous as it bunches together very, very different belief structures and ethnocentric religions as something very similar to one another.

The argument that Christianity being a revealed religion means it is a better religion or more valid religion is absolutely absurd. "Revealed" to a Christian means it was revealed to them by their god, but the manner in which it was truly "revealed" was that it was presented to them by foreign people from the Middle East. There is absolutely nothing about this book or Christianity that can be proven or even logically suspected to be "revealed by god".

"2a. We define superstition thusly: "A belief, or set of beliefs, stemming either from ignorance or from an unrational preference of something to be true, disregarding actual truth.""

*This is simply attaching the meaning of superstition to a religion which the author clearly has no comprehensive understanding of. This is quite rich really, in an ironic and hypocritical manner.

Let us see how he defines what makes Folkish Heathenry, Asatru, Paganism, whatever you prefer to label it, "superstitious" or "unrational" (irrational) in contrast to his religion which speaks of talking donkeys, angels with wheels covered with eyes, talking burning bushes,and a man who had a sword protruding from his mouth, among many other such examples.

Pagan Practices

"3. Pagans do not have any official religious text, their practices relying entirely on a complex system of oral tradition. Very few documents of these have been transcribed, almost entirely dealing with mythology instead of actual practices."

*This is simply not true. Our main offical text, The Poetic Edda, though being transcribed by supposed Christians, is entirely Pagan in origin. It is a transcription of oral traditions that flow immediately from pre-Christian Europe. One also finds it intriguing that Christians would find such stories so important as to transcribe them for future reference, as well as repeatedly referring to the Germanic pantheon as "Those Holy, Holy Gods" (see Voluspa stanzas 6, 9, 23, and 25). Why would men who had believed in the gospels have still, repeatedly, referred to these "false idols" as "Holy"?

Furthermore, the practices of the Germanic pagans are documented and laid out in other works (granted not in full, flawless and complete detail) such as Germania by Tacitus, The Prose Edda, The Skaldic Poems, The Sagas, as well as other written works from the 10th-13th centuries, which albeit were transcribed by Christians, were nevertheless transcribed by people who lived in a time where the practices of Paganism were still "fresh" and well known, and more than likely still being practiced by a minority of people even though these nations were officially Christian in the sense that it was the state religion.

It is also worth noting that most Christians outside of Catholicism and Orthodoxy find many ways to practice their religion and worship their god. To claim that we Pagans have no uninterrupted, complete, written step by step instructions is to dishonestly disparage the practices that we do have, such as Blót and Sumbel, amongst many other seasonal holidays and rituals. Easter is a prime example of a Germanic Pagan holiday which is centered around the worship of Ostara, or Eostre (from which the name "Easter" is immediately derived), a spring fertility Goddess associated with the Spring Equinox, hence the imagery of rabbits, eggs, flowers, bird chicks, etc. A ceremony that is still very much intact sans the actual invocation of Eostre.

The hypocrisy in this claim is that the Bible itself has been cobbled, edited, passed around and altered by countless hands, as well as reinterpreted time and time again and thus a similar argument against the legitimacy of the Bible and Christianity itself can be applied in an honest and sincere situation.

"3a. If the Pagan gods were real, and were in fact able to visit our homes and families at will, nothing explains why their worship has died out in the first place; moreover, nothing explains why there hasn't been a single recorded visit where rituals were given back to the practitioners."

*The Pagan ways were deliberately suppressed and attacked by Christians, who today now ask why Paganism was heavily damaged. It's almost as if Christians have a streak of Judaic behavior about them. One has to wonder where they got that tactic from in first place.

Furthermore, there are cases of people who had called upon the Gods and Goddesses in times of need and have had their prayers and invocations answered, as well as believing themselves to have been contacted or visited by deities in physical or spiritual form.

"4. These mythologic texts have been transcribed centuries after Christianization of Pagan lands, by Christian monks. They may hardly be regarded as 100% accurate, and belief may only be based on them with complex rationalization."

*Not all of the sources were transcribed by Monks, and in the event that they were, they do not seem to have been done so in the favor of Christianity, at least for the most part. This could have been done for the sake of simply documenting Paganism as a means of the Church better understanding it's adversary, and thus we can presume are fairly accurate, perhaps with added elements of smears, dehumanization, as well as to demonize Pagans and paint them as "wicked".

  Regarding the time frame, as I have already pointed out, one needs to consider the historic proximity to the Pagan era. Many people were likely still practicing Paganism at home and in private even though the official state religion was Christianity. This is was certainly the case in Scandinavia. This means that the Pagan belief structures were not "extinct" or even "forgotten" during that time frame. To contrast this idea, one needs to understand that after the time when many of these works were transcribed, Paganism was still alive and well in other parts of Europe, namely Lithuania, which had not been Christianized until the 14th century, as well as much of the rest of the Baltic people in the 13th century, Finland hadn't fully succumbed to Christianity until the 14th century, and to this day a strong element of Folkish Paganism remains alive in the Baltic, primarily Lithuania where large festivals and rites are still being preformed and even shown on YouTube. To claim that it is all lost simply because monks transcribed traditions and that this occured two to three hundred years after the state adopted Christianity is incorrect.

"5. Certain specific practices and uses have indeed survived outside of these texts, especially in extremely rural places, such as putting lavender in the corners of a room or throwing salt over your left shoulder. There is, however, a great doubt that this is nearly enough to reconstruct an entire religion, and a part of them may stem from countryside utilitarianism rather than religion. This makes genuine religious practices almost indiscernible from everyday rural practices."

*This point claims that "throwing salt over ones shoulder" (which was always seen as an act of inciting bad luck) or that "placing lavender in the corner of a room" is assumed to be a religious practice for Pagans, but this is not the case. The author of this post which I am responding to is overlooking the large quantity of practices we still have in place in the form of traditional celebrations and ceremonies, such as May Day, Easter, the Wassail celebration of England, Midsummer (which is still greatly relevant in Sweden), the Pagan origins of Ash Wednesday, Halloween (Hâlogiaptann), the very evident Pagan elements of Christmas (Jule), Pentecost (Skóklasfallsdagr), and many other holidays still celebrated which are rich with Pagan elements and meanings, leaving more than enough material for us to rebuild sufficient celebrations, practices and ceremonies. The author also suggests that all we have to justify our folk religion are things as benign as "placing lavender in corners of rooms" or "throwing salt over ones shoulder".

"6. It follows that any systemized practice of adoration must be speculative in origin, and prone to errors, misinterpretation, bias and large gaps due to simple ignorance."

*I am not entirely sure what this point is trying to convey, so I will assume that the author is asserting that if a practice is not one-hundred percent on par with the way in which it was conducted, say, 1,200 years ago then it is by default invalid and null. This is simply not true, but if it were true, that would render the bulk of Christianity invalid as well. Another point worth mentioning is the way in which the vast majority of Christians do not care how you pray to Yahweh, but rather that you pray to Yahweh. This represents a double standard and reveals that the Christian will ignore the plank in his own eye in order to pick splinters from those of the Pagan.

To say that a Pagan must absolutely practice ceremonies and prayer rituals exactly as they did in 1,000 CE or else said practices are pointless only serves to gaslight Pagans and ignore the same faults and discrepancies that Christianity has seeded deep in it's foundations.

Pagan Ontology

"7. There is no unified belief in Pagans regarding ontology, as their own religious texts never touch on it. However, there is a rather sizeable number of Pagans believing gods are not material creatures, but incarnations of aspects of reality."

*This is a wide topic and often misunderstood. The majority of Pagans do in fact believe their Gods and Goddesses to be real, just not in the same way Christians, Muslims and Jews see their God as a "real" God sitting in the heavens or another dimension holding total dominion over mankind while disregarding the earthy realm as "evil".

 Pagans often believe that their Gods and Goddesses do in fact live in another realm, but that they manifest into this world in various ways, sometimes that includes various aspects of reality, such as Odin and his insatiable desire for knowledge, Freyr and his association with fair weather and bountiful harvests, or Sif and her association with golden wheat fields, beauty, fertility and family. These Gods and Goddesses are associated with these traits, as well as others, and thus these elements of reality serve as a conduit between them and us.

  Furthermore, the author is displaying his lack of knowledge in the field of Heathen beliefs by making the assertion that Pagan texts do not touch on Ontology. This is blatantly false.

"8. Should gods serve a representative function, the entire idea of basing a religion upon them is animistic. This in itself is in direct contrast with the religious texts, which speak of the gods as living and breathing creatures, intervening in the affairs of men, thus a theistic conception."

*Once again, the Gods and Goddesses do not simply represent functions, nor would that necessitate animism. But even if it did, the author seems to be forgetting just how different polytheism, namely European Paganism, is from Abrahamic Monotheism. It is literally a world of differences apart, and thus we cannot expect to use the standards of Abrahamic religions who serve as a set standard which defines and validates the framework and essence of what any other religion is. An equivalency to this standard would, for instance, be that "Christianity only has one god while Germanic Paganism has many Gods and Goddesses and therefore Christianity is invalid as a religion". This is a very manipulative means of determining if any one religion counts as a religion at all.

"9. Intrinsic within animism there is the belief that certain aspects of reality have a divine aspect; however, since no criterion seems to be established as to which aspects are divine and which are not, they may indeed have been chosen arbitrarily."

*Yet again, this claim makes clear the great misunderstanding Christians have regarding Paganism in the first place. The Christian is assuming that one "divine" element in nature must be "divine" in accordance to what Christians consider "divinity", which would be a highest power or something immediately tied to Jesus or Yahweh, for example the Shroud of Turin (which many Christians still believe to be a legitimate holy relic) being "divine" because it supposedly was wrapped around the body of Jesus in his tomb and therefore is "divine". When a Pagan states that something in nature is divine (if they would even label it as such to begin with), such as The Summer Solstice or start of a Salmon run, it is divine in that it is the blossoming of a meaningful event in the cycle that we experience here in Midgard. For example, the Winter Solstice would be "divine" due to the fact that it marks the end and start of the New Year, the end of the shortest day of the year, the death of the sun, yet the rebirth and renewal of a solar cycle or a "new sun".

Or in the event of the start of the Salmon runs, it is a large natural event that marks fertility and bounty in the form of abundance of food resources, not just for humans but also for many things in the world, the bears, eagles, other fish that feed upon flesh and eggs of passing Salmon, and even the forest floor and trees which are nourished by the scraps and carcasses of Salmon. These are just a few examples of how the natural world manifests the "divine" in the Pagan Weltanschauung. This clearly marks what could be considered "Divine", whereas a natural disaster or treachery in a clan or family may be considered a negative or "evil" manifestation in the real world. One could even say a "manifestation of Loki", to further address point number 7.

"9a. Worship takes place either to honor or to ask for favors (do ut des)."

*Not entirely true. Many rituals are to give thanks, as is the purpose in many sacrificial ceremonies. Again, this assertion goes to show that the extent of the author's knowledge of Paganism is restricted to internet banter, much of which I suspect is from other Christians spreading such misconceptions, and no real study. But regardless of these facts, the assumed purpose of "why" Pagans worship their Gods and Goddesses, that being to solely "honor" and "ask for favors", are some the primary reasons why Christians themselves pray to their god.

"9b. Should it be to honor reality, we do not see the point in honoring something that is not affected by it; one may appreciate the beauty of a forest, but it seems wholly excessive to sacrifice livestock to the abstract and intangible idea of the forest with the absolute certainty of having changed nothing."

*Our ancestors did not sacrifice livestock for the sake of the forests. The sacrifice of livestock was mainly held in larger events of particular significance. Now, if the author did any real, unbiased, sincere research into the subject he would find that the overwhelming majority of sacrifices were often in the forms of libations of food and drink or the sacrificing of crafted items. This is why so many great and supremely intricate works of jewelry and weaponry are found in rivers and bogs, often in very dense numbers. Compared to artifacts unearthed in non-sacrificial situations, like villages, towns, battlefields, etc, the artifacts found in rivers, bogs, and other sacrificial situations are of vastly superior quality and workmanship. Many of the weapons found in these situations are far superior to anything used in any real battle situation. This represents the sacrificial value being the time, craftsmanship, and value placed into the items to be "given" in the sacrifice. There is far more evidence of these sorts of sacrifices than there is anything regarding animal sacrifice.

"9c. Should it have been, instead, to ask for favors, to prove or disprove paganism would be a mere statistician's game; and should, for example, Islamic prayer prove to have a greater success rate, to Islamize Pagan Europe would have been much easier than to Christianize it."

*This claims that prayer alone is what allowed the Christianization of Europe, nevermind the countless cases of coercion, kidnapping and holding children for spiritual ransom, violently attacking random Pagans, using the power of the state to assert Christianity onto the public, threats of death, trade restrictions, social ostracization, etc. It is also worth noting that Pagans do not center their prayer ceremonies around begging for help. Most prayer is done to better grow a relationship with the Gods and Goddesses, to thank them, and ask for a bountiful harvest, etc, but Pagans maintain that the Gods and Goddesses help those who help themselves, and thus begging for help in such situations is generally not considered to be the normality. Unlike Christianity, groveling like needy servants or slaves is not desired or welcomed by our Gods and Goddesses.

Overall, this claim assumes that prayer alone should have been adequate at stopping Christian subversion and violence against, most often, innocent Pagans.

"10. Should Paganism be comprised of both an esoteric and exoteric component, as some would suggest, the esoteric part would be closer to a philosophy than a religion, and thus, depending on what is agreed upon, may even be compatible with Christianity; and the exoteric part would have no reason to exist altogether."

*This is a fallacy, that once again, seeks to hold Paganism to the standards of what validates Christianity. Paganism was, and still remains, a very broad religion that is not confined to the strict directions laid out in a book. Philosophy is certainly a central tenet of Paganism, but so are many exoteric elements, often times transcending one another. One cannot assume that the exoteric would cease to have meaning simply because it would do so in Christianity.

Overall, Harijawulfaz lacks any substantial understanding of Paganism and is making an attempt to hold European Paganism, namely Germanic Paganism, to the same standards and legitimizing factors of a foreign, Abrahamic, monotheistic religion that was born from the culture, philosophies, mythos and ethos of an entirely different people, which in itself is a great testament to just how alien Christianity is to the original, traditional beliefs of the European.