I like talking with people who have changed religions. Here is one of them. Previously: Aadita Chaudhury.
Can you tell me a little bit about your religious background growing up? Did your parents talk much about their own faith, or take you to any religious services? When do you first remember being aware of the concept of God, and what did you think of it?
I grew up very Catholic. My mother’s side was Irish and Italian but primarily Italian. My great-grandmother was around until I was 14 and was clearly the matriarch. She spent her days running the house where my mother grew up and my uncle and grandmother still lived and “doing laps” as my father would say. (Praying the rosary). She was exceptionally Catholic and that was passed on to the family. On my father’s side everyone is French Canadian and so also Catholic. The family would all get together every Christmas Eve for a huge celebration and all the adults and teenage children would attend midnight mass while one parent would stay and watch the younger children who’d been put to bed. So culturally we were always very Catholic, but I think that faded as we all got older and relationships changed in the family.
We went to both Mass every Sunday, then catechism (Sunday school) after, where eventually my parents became the teachers. That was after I’d become a “problem” though and was not particularly into Catholicism anymore.
As a child with this upbringing I was exceptionally religious and a strong believer. I had a strong concept of God from my youngest memories. I liked what people had to say about Jesus, but honestly had no idea what the point of the Old Testament readings the priest would often go over during Mass were about at all. I prayed quite a lot, both in the context of asking for “favors” and also just maintaining a spiritual connection. I think even as a child I was drawn to the esotericism inherent in the ritual of Catholicism.
My falling out with the church began when I was a young teen, first railing against, then accepting my queerness as inevitable. I don’t recall ever asking God to not make me queer, but I do remember realizing I really had no choice and I’d just have to deal with it. I began looking more in-depth at my religion and realizing that I couldn’t at all understand the God which preached non-judgmental love, and also hating those people over there. I was sure there was some mistake. I told my parents and they were not pleased (understatement) and so we all went off to discuss this with the head priest. Each of us sure he’d be on our side; after all, didn’t Jesus say to love everyone? Not to judge? As it turns out in the priest’s interpretation I was quite obviously going to hell. This event coupled, with my inability to comprehend an essential truth of monotheism, that God does “terrible” things simply because you don’t understand his plan, pushed me farther and farther from Catholicism and set me looking for something new.
Is that when you also became an atheist? I’m always curious when talking with other gay/queer people about their own experience with religion – did you feel like you had no religious options, as a queer person, or did you feel like your queerness simply opened the door to atheism that you might have found otherwise?
So as I was a 14-year-old lesbian in the mid-90s, I did not in fact go straight to atheism without first having a mild couple of years of attempted Wiccanism, which was generally not as cool I was lead to believe from The Craft. For one, I did not meet three hot girls who would always hang out with me in gothic clothing. I came to atheism sometime around 18, I guess, and held to to that through college and for several years after. I don’t think I could really let myself consider another religion until I was pretty well out of that know-it-all teenage phase that lasts until somewhere around 26.
As for whether or not queerness opened a door to atheism, I don’t think I felt like I had no options but I do feel like once you’ve gone from Catholicism to queerness and survived, you’ve stepped over this threshold that makes you think, “What other imaginary forbidden lines can I cross that will result in me being happier?” So you proceed try out a lot of things that society says will give you chlamydia and die, like witchcraft and atheism.
Without that major transgression I feel like each minor experimental transgression would have been a huge deal, whereas after it I was already theoretically damned so it didn’t really matter, or I wasn’t damned and who knows what else I could do.
OH, THE CRAFT. OH, SEASON FOUR OF BUFFY. How heavily they both influenced my ideas on lesbianism and Wicca! (Both involved, naturally, a LOT of candles).
I definitely know what you mean about feeling like once you’ve transgressed that line of queerness, everything else is sort of on the table, so to speak. “I’ve already done the one thing I know I’m not supposed to, so let’s see what else is out there, I don’t have anything left to lose, really.”
I personally know very little about neo-paganism! Can you tell me a bit more about Asatru? Do you have any Norse heritage? How do you practice? How does it differ from your teen Wicca years? Is it like The Wicker Man?? (Is asking about the Wicker Man a stupid thing to ask a Norse neo-pagan?)
So Asatru is a reconstructed polytheistic religion of northern European origin, that has a lot in common with other proto-Indo-European religions. Most people would recognize it best as “Norse Mythology” but that’s probably just because most was written by Icelanders and the Nordic peoples, though its roots go back quite a lot further. It’s an animistic religion, and nature worship tends to play a large part, with “low mythology” (ideas about elves and land spirits and everyday ritual) playing nearly as large a part as “high mythology” (stories of the Gods ‘proper’, large holidays, etc). We don’t believe our Gods are all-powerful, we don’t have sins really, just a collection of stories that outline what it means to live a good life and a selection of rough suggestions on what Odin personally feels you probably ought to do. (Shut up, never give up, and be hospitable.)
While we have a good deal of information from the age of the sagas, much of it is filtered through Christian ideals so we spend a lot of time doing our homework, reading Roman accounts of our ancestors’ habits, looking at how our beliefs are mirrored in other PIE religions such as Hinduism.
As for my heritage, I’m half French, and a quarter Irish so it’s likely I have some Germanic blood, but I haven’t bothered to be tested. While many certain Asatru groups feel that it’s very important to ensure someone is “really” Germanic, as a member of The Troth, I’m firmly in the camp of practitioners that believes that your heritage matters not at all. If you’re called to the Gods, more power to you, and I support that. I think concerns raised about appropriation or dilution of beliefs is kind of silly when A) you’re reconstructing the religion in the first place so almost no one grew up in an Asatru culture, and B) you’re not speaking out about Marvel turning your holiest Gods into intergalactic magical space alien super heroes. Can you imagine if someone made a movie where Jesus were an alien from outer space who came to earth through a super wormhole and Jewish God was his space alien dad? [Ed. note: WELL.]
I practice mostly solitary on our own land, but also sometimes with a small group of local practitioners. Primarily I focus on the land. Small sacrifices and rituals when we plant food, when we harvest food, when one of our animals dies, when we’re forced to kill a wild animal to protect our livestock. We put out sacrifices for the land wights (spirits) at the equinoxes and solstices. We take care of the small old cemetery near our home. Those are the observances that are most important to us. We also of course celebrate the larger scale holidays, Yule, Ostara, Winter Nights (generally celebrated as Halloween) and a number of others. The three listed specifically are the three largest and most important.
This differs from my Wiccan years in that during those years I was a teenager, and mostly I read New Age books, and The Mists of Avalon (the title of which I just blanked on and remembered by googling “arthurian lesbians”), driving to sing-songs with hippies on communes, and generally praying to the moon to escape being queer in a small town. So, it’s a fair departure to be sure.
That must be interesting; I can’t imagine what participating in a religion that’s attempt to reconstruct itself after a long – dormancy, I guess? – is like.
It seems like participating in a reconstructed religion like neo-paganism brings a lot of the issues that plague any religion – how you determine membership, how different cultures play a role in shaping religious belief, who determines policy and dogma, how racism and white supremacy can affect the way certain traditions take hold – into sharper relief. It also seems incredibly rewarding, that you’re able to be part of a process that determine what shape your faith takes.
I’m interested in hearing more about the Troth – my first association with neo-Nordic religion (after, like you said, the Marvel Universe) is with white supremacy. Is that a source of contention within Asatru? Is this something that gets talked about much, or is there a pretty clear divide between people who are interested in Asatru on its own merits versus people who are interested in, I guess, deifying their idealized version of whiteness?
It is interesting – we tend to do a lot of “homework.” There is an enormous amount of archeology, writing from Iceland, missives from the Romans about the culture, as well as historical and mythic tales from the periods where people practiced actively. Even distilling a single culture out of all of this can be difficult. Thankfully the Icelandic sagas can be a fairly good indicator here; they’re just a lot of reading. Even with all this homework people get differing impressions and so you take some time finding people that you see eye to eye with in the community. Asatruars can range from highly esoteric “woo-woo” liberally-minded people who are all about their personal experience of the Gods to extremely conservative lore-only types. You have to do a fair bit of hunting to find where you fit within this scope.
So before I start answering this second part, some quick terminology: Asatru is a specific form of what can more generically be called “Heathenism” which covers all European reconstructionism, apart from Celtic beliefs. So, Theodism (which is folkish and clan-based), Anglo-Saxon neopaganism, Germanic neopaganism, and Norse. I’ll use the term “heathen” as an umbrella term.
I think it’s both a clear divide AND something that is talked about often. So not to dig too deeply into the history here, in the US, the main organizations are The Troth, and the Asatru Folk Assembly, which identify as universalist and folkish respectively. They were previously a single organization, the Asatru Free Assembly until they split over obvious differences. Universalist groups are accepting and eager to welcome all peoples regardless of race, orientation, etc, and tend to be more liberal. Folkish groups often require some “provable” amount of northern European ancestry and tend to be much more conservative about sexual orientation and other things. (Personally, I can’t believe someone would have the balls to call their heathen movement “folkish” considering the past of the “volkisch” movement, which was what married germanic heathenism to the Nazis.)
I sometimes find it hard to come up with a good argument against folkish thought on the grounds that I think random hippies appropriating Native American practices are terrible, but the difference to me is that there is no danger of a random non-white person entering the group and “corrupting” or “diluting” the culture as the culture is already dead and must be resurrected. So the ideas of any non-white person about what the culture should be, if they are called to practice are just as valid as my own. The situation that makes those negative things possible just doesn’t exist in heathenism.
There are plenty of groups who are not interested in anything beyond their whiteness, and for this reason The Troth engages in prison “inreach.” This service aims to provide reading materials and support to inmates interested in heathenry in order to show them that the beliefs of these racist groups are not the only way the religion can be practiced and that they needn’t rely on gangs for support either inside prison, or when they are released.
It’s a a very big deal, and very sad, and honestly I think if there’s a danger to the religion it comes exclusively from these supremacist movements and not at all from people of color practicing heathenry.
Lurene Grenier is a veteran of the information security industry. She currently resides in rural Massachusetts with her husband, four dogs, six cats, and many chickens.
Really interesting post! I was wondering though, as a non-historian who is weirdly obsessed with the histories of the North Sea nations, I was always under the impression that our understanding of Norse and Germanic religion was still pretty compromised by the major sources. The Eddas were written in Christian Iceland a couple of centuries after the Viking age, and Roman authors like Tacitus had a pretty clear political agenda, setting up the vibrant Germans against his Roman audience. So I was wondering how those sources are reconciled and adapted, and how the archaeological evidence fits in the gaps?
Yeah, I had some arguments like this with a friend who got into paganism in college (I was a history major), and it’s hard to phrase it without sounding like kind of a jackass, but… I guess the question I would ask is, how much does the authenticity or literalism matter? I know that the literal-truth thing falls along a really wide spectrum, from “god(s) talk to me” to “I find some comfort in our shared pretense of belief.” I spent some time at that second point before I threw in the towel on Catholicism, and the effort to reconstruct a religion sounds a little like what I was doing then- but maybe more transparently? Wanting to have the structure and ritual of religion without being tied to heavy-handed interpretations. But maybe I’m totally wrong, if any pagans in the audience want to correct me.
*meant as a reply to Punny Dreadful
I mean, I’m Jewish, we’re all about those primary and secondary sources. But out of all the world religions, that’s much more of the exception than the rule. And we know more about the Norse religion than we do, say, the druids (mostly from Julius “These guys seemed pretty smart before I had them all killed” Caesar). If the answer is “we’re not all that interested in establishing a historically-pristine dogma” it’s a valid answer.
honestly I think if there’s a danger to the religion it comes exclusively from these supremacist movements and not at all from people of color practicing heathenry
bold!
These are lovely, but can I make a request? Can you put the religion that this is primarily about at the top? I thought this was another atheist one until about halfway down. I like reading about the path that each person has taken to their religion, but this essay jumped from Catholicism to Atheism nicely, but then went to neo-paganism without any kind of transition and I got lost, haha.
Seconded! I was a bit confused.
Oh excellent. I love reading about and learning about reconstructionist religions.
Oh man. My sideline into Wicca during middle school/high school included a heavy dose of Asatru. Because out of all the barbarian hordes I contain most of them are Viking. This brought back such memories. Such strange, half-buried memories.
Great article!
Asatru is something I’ve come back to time and again, but I’m a fickle being and tend to travel on until I return.
Asatru is lucky because they do have a decent amount of resources from various areas to reconstruct something say, Celitc reconstructionists can’t really do so well because of oral traditions.
For me personally though, reconstruction is something I don’t fully grasp. I always remember something Joseph Campbell said [loosely quoted btw], “that religion belongs to another time, another age, with a group of different values.” So to have them work in say, a modern context seems a little unrealistic, but I’m not fully satisfied with that!
I lolled at “running laps”!
Oh lord, I want to ask a question without sounding too obtuse, but I don’t know if it will be taken as a slight. I’m hoping it is taken with the good faith I intend it:
With resurrecting these lost religions, do you think many people practice because they feel it is important to adhere to the rituals, to observe the customs, to follow in the footsteps of an otherwise lost culture, rather than to actually “believe” believe that the religion is meaningfully true? Or in other words, is there space in religions such as these for a kind of symbolic religious practice that also includes, personally, one’s ontological atheism?
In a word, yes, but groups differ, and you may have to look around a lot to find a like-minded set of ontologically atheistic pagans.
I am glad you asked, because I have wondered this myself but really could not think of a way to phrase it!
That’s a fascinating consideration. I know very little about heathanism and paganism, but I imagine there’s quite a difference between those drawn to the rituals/values and who practice out of respect, versus those who believe in and fear Odin and Thor and the rest as real living entities to appease Or Else, the way Nordic cultures once did.
If I may make so bold as to make a suggestion for this very awesome series — can you ask about initiation experiences, if they’re willing to discuss it at all (either the actual ceremony or the religious/emotional/psychological experience)? That would be WONDERFUL to study across the series!
Seconded!
This was so awesome! And I’m really interested in learning more about Asatru, any advice on maybe where to start with that? Or texts that you think are foundational?
And I really don’y have anything of substance to add other than I think “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” is a really underrated song and I’m pretty sure I paid to see Hamlet 2 in a theater.
OT, but I totally thought that YouTube link for Space Jesus would be to a Superman movie.
Me too!
I thought it would be to Dune.
I hope I’m not too late for this thread, because as an actual Scandinavian this is making me feel stuff. I’ll just leave this here while I get something to eat…
…Okay SO. I have sandwiches and I am ready.
New paganism/asatro/”fornsed” as the modern believers call it (“ancient practice”) is on the rise here too, and I’ve never met one who didn’t at least talk about “national pride” or rant against muslims on Facebook. Historical reenactment is ALSO getting popular (among nerds such as myself), and the Viking reenactment community have, uh, differing opinions on the subject. Viking reenactment has a much bigger problem with white supremacists than other reenactment communities, because that’s what the racists want to do, they wanna be vikings. Viking reenactors constantly have to clean up racism, form groups such as “Vikings Against Racism”, walk in the Pride parade, etc (yep, the Stockholm Pride parade has vikings).
The overlap with fornsed is big but not 100%. “Fornsed”, despite the name, isn’t reenacting. Fornsed people also defend themselves against accusations of racism, insisting that fornsed is absolutely not about resurrecting proud white warriors, and it isn’t, but still, lots of nationalists are drawn to everything viking related, and so they show up there as well. I… pretty much assume that anyone who’s into fornsed at least partly does it out of a sense of national pride, really. They are literally worshipping our cultural heritage. That’s always a bit suspicious to me.
But that’s us, our white supremacists are part of the culture that used to be vikings. Americans aren’t. To see that some American Asatruers actually consider blood tests to see if they’re “really Germanic” – that’s CRAZY racist. That’s INSANE.
1) no they aren’t, an American is an American, culture isn’t blood, blood testing for “true” heritage is literally LITERALLY Nazism
2) that’s my blood they’re fetishising and it feels very gross
I’m very happy that you don’t do this, Lurene! You’re completely right that white supremacy is the biggest threat to old Norse culture. I can see it in the reenactment movement, and you see it in your religious community.
So, modern Asatru isn’t real history and usually doesn’t pretend that it is, I don’t believe in the Asa gods anyway and I don’t want to be around most of the believers since they are often very racist. So I shouldn’t care, these gods should be free for anyone who wants them. You believe in them, I don’t. And yet I did care when I read this: “no one grew up in an Asatru culture”, “the culture is already dead and must be resurrected”, “our Gods”
No. Wait. We didn’t die. We’re still here. Scandinavians still exist. We just changed a bit. Christianity happened (slowly, over centuries), but history didn’t stop and start over. The viking era culture didn’t disappear, it wasn’t erased – it changed. I grew up in places that were named a thousand years ago after Asa gods. Tor/Thor is a normal name here, as unremarkable as Mary is in English. There are still a few proverbs based on Asa gods – just a few, but they exist. Rune stones are everywhere. Many churches are built on viking temple sites, not by outside oppressors but by the same people who built the temples and then developed a new faith. There are great comic book albums with viking myths. My language is derived from their language. Etcetera.
This has nothing to do with blood, this is culture. It’s my culture, so I know it exists. You are welcome if you want! Everyone’s welcome! And I totally agree that no one is actively practicing anything similar to the Asa religion, except you and your fellow believers. And it’s definitely true that white supremacists try to exaggerate history and pretend that Asatro has been practiced non-stop, when it hasn’t. But maybe reconsider thinking of the culture as “dead”? It’s not TOTALLY up for grabs, just… open for new members.
Did your child self “die” when you became an adult? Or is it the same “you”, who simply changed? Does “yesterday you” die when you wake up in the morning? Philosophical questions, but important. At least, they suddenly felt important to me even though I usually speak out against making vikings too important. I don’t think it’s an inner Nazi speaking, I just think I felt a bit appropriated and erased.
I thought it would be to Dune.
“Can you imagine if someone made a movie where Jesus were an alien from outer space who came to earth through a super wormhole and Jewish God was his space alien dad?”
Star Trek V?
Quick thought/question: isn’t a concern with tolerance (i.e., not being racist) itself a Christian value? Prior to the dawn of Christianity, I don’t think there ever was a religion that openly embraced converts regardless of their ethnic background, or which was explicitly open to different expressions in different cultures.
Well, I don’t know that I can think of a counterexample, but I’d guess it’s really more of a Roman value, with their ideas about identity and belonging and power having swallowed up Christianity’s early persecuted cult-like existence. I think it was Mary Beard that was writing about the idea of Roman-ness as an identity that could be transplanted to any ethnic or cultural background, and how important that was to their success, and let’s just leave these blatant parallels to America out where someone might step on them…
Very late reply, but: pharaonic Egypt.
With the exception of Atenism during the Amarna Period, polytheistic Egyptian religion would sometimes adopt gods introduced from outside of Egypt proper (for example, Reshep). Additionally, Egyptian society was much more concerned with foreigners who came to live in Egypt adopting the Egyptian way of life than their ethnic background. Stelae and other objects have been found depicting individuals who appear ethnically Nubian or Syrian in otherwise traditional Egyptian fashion, sometimes in Egyptian dress themselves and with wives and/or children who have Egyptian names.
Despite what Hollywood still prefers to depict, pharaonic Egypt was most likely fairly mixed during all periods. The value in depicting foreigners as certain ethnic groups was rooted in the ideological ideal of the pharaoh protecting Egypt from its enemies, not from any inherent value placed on ethnicity.
Well, I don't know that I can think of a counterexample, but I'd guess it's really more of a Roman value, with their ideas about identity and belonging and power having swallowed up Christianity's early persecuted cult-like existence. I think it was Mary Beard that was writing about the idea of Roman-ness as an identity that could be transplanted to any ethnic or cultural background, and how important that was to their success, and let's just leave these blatant parallels to America out where someone might step on them…
Very late reply, but: pharaonic Egypt.
With the exception of Atenism during the Amarna Period, polytheistic Egyptian religion would sometimes adopt gods introduced from outside of Egypt proper (for example, Reshep). Additionally, Egyptian society was much more concerned with foreigners who came to live in Egypt adopting the Egyptian way of life than their ethnic background. Stelae and other objects have been found depicting individuals who appear ethnically Nubian or Syrian in otherwise traditional Egyptian fashion, sometimes in Egyptian dress themselves and with wives and/or children who have Egyptian names.
Despite what Hollywood still prefers to depict, pharaonic Egypt was most likely fairly mixed during all periods. The value in depicting foreigners as certain ethnic groups was rooted in the ideological ideal of the pharaoh protecting Egypt from its enemies, not from any inherent value placed on ethnicity.