ᛉ Sagnamaðr Stark ᛉ

The other day, I saw someone post “Syncretism is a form of universalism”. I’m going to have to strongly disagree.

First of all, like it or not, our sources on European paganism are fragmentary. Charlemagne and his friends made sure of that. The “Dark Ages” are called such because of the lack of written records, often due to the destruction of all things pagan in the emerging Christian kingdoms, including literature.
Germanic pagans are very fortunate in that we have more surviving texts than most to go on, such as the Poetic Edda, the Icelandic Sagas, and medieval anti-pagan laws. Other European cultures aren’t so fortunate.

While the many branches of Hinduism and Buddhism are by no means the same as the ancient European religions, what they are is uninterrupted lines of Indo European religious tradition. They share a common root, and many of our Gods are cognates. Several sects have changed a lot over the centuries, but some, such as Trika Shaivism, have changed very little.
I am a Germanic pagan first, foremost and finally, but I have learned a lot from studying Shaivism in particular. I find it made a lot more of our lore make sense, helped the pieces fall into place.

And, syncretism wasn’t unheard of in the ancient world. For example, the ancient Greeks syncretized their religion with Buddhism in Bactria and Egyptian religion in Egypt to strengthen their alliances. Many Romans adopted the cult of Mithras, and it’s possible that the Saxon cult of Krodo was influenced by their West Slavic neighbours.

You can accept that you’re part of a bigger picture without giving up your unique cultural and religious identity. Some want to piece it all back together without accepting any help from the unbroken lines of Indo-European tradition? Get comfortable, you’re going to be working on it for a while.
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Let’s get something straight…
FOLKISH
(adjective) folk•ish
“Characteristic of or based on a traditional culture, or the common people.”

A lot of people don’t know what this word actually means. Most non-Abrahamic religions are, by definition, folkish, shaped over the centuries by the cultures who founded them and passed them down. And, every European pagan religion involves ancestor worship, binding the faith to its folk. Every culture has an ethnic religion of its own.

As for the second part, paganism is folkish in the sense that it was the religion of the common people; in many cases, Christianity initially gained traction among the elite, and therefore, in urban centres. The very word pagan comes from Latin “paganus”; rustic. Heathen (ON: heiðinn, and OE: hǣþen) means “heath dweller”, and by extension, uncivilized, undeveloped. By the view of the ancient Christians, they were the “woke” ones, and the pagans were the flyover rural rednecks who had yet to see the correct way. Considering the aspect of nature worship in European pagan religions, it’s almost fitting.

That said, I do not think it necessary to bar non-Germanic people from practicing Germanic paganism if they’re serious about it.
Regardless of the fact that many of us today are of mixed ancestry, Norse paganism has become quite prominent in mainstream media, and may serve as someone’s first introduction to an ancestral religion, and I’ve often seen people start off as a Norse pagan, dig deeper into their own ancestry, and eventually learn about their own ancestral faith, for example, Celtic and Slavic paganism.
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From the Saga of Erik the Red, when the crew was forced to overwinter in North America…
“After that they called upon god, praying that he would send them some little store of meat, but their prayer was not so soon granted as they were eager that it should be. Thorhall disappeared from sight, and they went to seek him, and sought for three half-days continuously.
On the fourth half-day Karlsefni and Bjarni found him on the peak of a crag. He lay with his face to the sky, with both eyes and mouth and nostrils wide open, clawing and pinching himself, and reciting something. They asked why he had come there. He replied that it was of no importance; asked them not to wonder thereat; as for himself, he had lived so long, they needed not to take any account of him. They begged him to go home with them, and he did so. A little while after a whale was driven ashore, and the men crowded round it, and cut it up, and still they knew not what kind of whale it was. Even Karlsefni recognised it not, though he had great knowledge of whales. It was cooked by the cook-boys, and they ate thereof; though bad effects came upon all from it afterwards.
Then began Thorhall, and said, "Has it not been that the Redbeard has proved a better friend than your Christ? This was my gift for the poetry which I composed about Thor, my patron; seldom has he failed me."
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