Mar
Academic and Soulless
There are so-called Heathens who spent monumental efforts on researching trhe findings of academics. They pore over tomes and obscure journals for any notes on Norse lore. They think they are uncovering facts, but in 9 out of 10 instances they are only reading the opinions of academic scholars. Opinons, not facts. Most of what is written by the researchers and anthropologists is not hard fact, but speculation about facts.
Is that a secure place on which to build?
Reasearch has its place, but let us keep it in perspecticve. This is a religion, a way of life, NOT a dry, heartless research project. The plain fact is that we know very little of the old days. Certainly, we do not know enough to reconstruct an entire religion and culture. That would be fruitless, anyway. The ways of the past are severaly limited in the present and future. Look at the Amish, or the Hasids. Even they have to come to terms with modern life, but they abide on the edges of the modern world.
Heathenism must remain alive, bright, vibrant and new. We cannot anchor ourselves to the stodgy atmosphere of the library, nor the dusty excavations of archaology. This is not a college class. It is a way to live and succeed.
I run onto the academic type heathens who think they have all the answers, but in reality are just amateur speculators who are adopting the speculations of professional speculators. They are so busy trying to measure everything by their specualtive standard that they lost their soul in the process.
We need to work more to develop Heathenism for today, to adapt and adopt that which works while respecting that which has gone before. This is the age of technology, and we are the ones who are writing the book for Heathens of this generation.
Hi, Uncle Thor! Thank you as always for your well-grounded, valuable thoughts. I agree that heathenism needs to develop today. I think it’s possible to have a balanced approach. I think the legitimacy of a footnoted approach can be as an effector of anti-authoritarianism : ie., I don’t have to take the author’s word for it, but have the ability to understand the development of their ideas, where they came from, and make up my own mind about things. This doesn’t mean we need to prove our own need to breathe or walk! Some people take things way too far! We need a soulful approach, where people are bold enough to speak their mind, to shoot from the hip, to trust their intuitions, but who are also willing to share a little bit about how they came to the conclusions they came to so that each of us has the opportunity to make up our own minds. It’s less dogmatic that way. Obviously, one can take the academic approach far too dogmatically. Maybe we need what I feel you are often advocating, and that is just good old common sense, an approach that follows the middle path of moderation.
As you say, this is a “way of life”, not just a research project. We need to be able to live our thew, not just discourse about it. Yet, as you also say, research has its place ; I have found that if I go back to the sources, whole-souled, with curiosity and an open-mind, I am often refreshed, and sometimes find new important details I hadn’t noticed before. In “Wyrd Megin Thew”, I wrote a little bit about how one can use the lore as a “scrying” tool, a way to stretch one’s imagination back to the ancestors, not in order to live their lives, but to form a connection that can allow for communication and inspiration in the present.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:21 am