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cultus deorum, Heathen, marxism, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, Pagan, Wicca
If I had to name my favorite and most influential philosopher, I would have to go with Nietzsche. His concepts tend to be brilliant, often misunderstood, and relevant in ways one never really suspects until much later. He tends to live up to that bad ass mustache of his.
One of the things that has greatly influenced my life is his view on life, and his theory of eternal recurrence. Eternal Recurrence is the idea/thought experiment that everything in this life has already happened and will happen again, From big bang to death of the universe, which in turn sparks the big bang and existence repeats itself exactly as it has happened. You have already lived your life an infinite number of times and you will live it an infinite number more. If that sounds amazing and depressing as it sinks in, good, that was the idea.
The idea he followed that with was that you had to affirm your life. Everything good, and everything bad. No matter how good, or how bad. Because it was going to happen a lot. And if you couldn’t affirm it, then you should end your life so that at least your eternal suffering wouldn’t last as long. Most people balk at this idea, but when you realize all the things he suffered personally, and the fact that he never gave in, leads me to believe that Nietzsche held himself to this standard. It’s a standard I try to hold myself to as well.
But this “affirmation” can extend past ourselves, and into other areas of our lives. I touched on this a bit in my previous post when I said we need to “affirm our religions,” as part of preserving them and bringing back the elders we are rapidly loosing to political strife.
A lot of people in paganism talk about it being for “spirituality,” which really just translates into “something that makes me feel good.” Now, I’m not going to say there’s anything inherently wrong with that (Just like I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with smoking, drinking, or doing weed because they make you feel good), but what I’m going to say today is a bit biased based on the way and reasons I came to Paganism almost 15 years ago.
I didn’t pick Paganism because it made me feel good. I didn’t come to paganism because I was looking for anything “spiritual.” I came to Paganism because I came to believe the Gods were real, all gods, including the Christian and Muslim one. And I didn’t come to Paganism because I was necessarily looking for anything “objectively moral.”
I became a Pagan (well, Heathen then) because I was looking for a religion I could believe in and affirm.
Religions, regardless of their origin, are fundamentally a set of ideals. Each religion is its own ideology, with it’s own framework of what is right and what is wrong. What is acceptable behavior, and what is unacceptable behavior. It has its solutions for how to deal with bad behaviors and how to reward good behaviors.
So I looked around, I looked at a number of religions, I looked at my ancestor, my personality, my beliefs at the time and I said to myself, “What religion can I affirm with my whole being?”
And to start of with, it has Heathenism, the religion of my Scandinavian ancestors. It was a religion within whose morals I could function and find guidance, and whose customs I could affirm in their entirety.
And I do mean in their entirety.
Now, I’m going to guess that some people don’t really get what I’m saying there, so I’ll explain it in a bit.
I talked yesterday in my three points about how you have to “know and affirm your orthodoxy.” For so long, Paganism as an umbrella has been defined by “orthopraxy over orthodoxy.” Which in a larger societal context is good. As long as you are behaving in the right way and doing the right thing, it shouldn’t matter what you believe. As a Rationalist, I agree with this position. However, as many Rationalists are discovering, there are ideologies (like Marxism or a few others) which are inherently harmful to all of humanity both in terms of the freedoms they destroy as well as the violence they commit to enforce their ideology. Many Rationalists I watch on Youtube like Sargon of Akkad, are reaching much the same conclusion I have.
There must be an Orthodoxy in your life. For rationalists like Sargon, it’s that things have to be objectively factual and inherently liberal. Truth and Freedom is his Orthodoxy, and that which seeks to subvert or even remove that Orthodoxy must be dealt with and even removed. It’s uncomfortable, it’s not a happy choice, but it is the realistic one he and other Rational Liberals are having to make.
For each of us in various pagan Religions, we have an orthodoxy handed down to us. Be it from religious founders like they have in Wicca and other initiatory religions, or in the historical orthodoxy found in say Asatru and Cultus Deorum. If we wish to be a part of these religions, then we must accept their orthodoxy or we are not practicing those religions. We’re using their names, their images and symbols, but we are not doing as we claim we wish to. If we do not engage in the “Right Beliefs” as well as the “Right Practices” then we are not affirming our religions, we are not understanding our religions, and we cannot then defend those religions from ideologies like Marxism which seek to destroy and replace them which do know and affirm their ideology.
Now, I get that some people are going to be a bit uncomfortable with enforcing Orthodoxy. “I don’t like to tell other people what to believe,” is a common line against the use of Orthodoxy. Here’s the thing though…you won’t be. You won’t be dictating what other people, or anyone else, has to believe. Because they will be free to go to a different religion or path if they do not agree with the Orthodoxy of your Religion.
The only thing you will be saying is this:
These are the beliefs of this religion, and if you cannot affirm these beliefs in their entirety, then you must go elsewhere. You may not change them to suit your own desires. For we affirm our religion and will not compromise our standards for your comforts or ideologies.”
Really, it’s not different than insisting that a person follow the laws of a nation while visiting. The only time you would be forcing someone to believe what you want is if you went out and conquered them. But as long as they are free to leave then you are not forcing them. You’re merely saying “When in Rome, believe as the Romans do.”
But here’s the rub. You have to affirm your religion’s orthodoxy and orthopraxy in its entirety. Not just the gloriously wonderful stuff you like. I mean even the stuff you don’t. This is important because even if this stuff isn’t anything that is going to come up in your lifetime, the entire idea is we are rebuilding these religions so that they can endure for the rest of humanity (with any luck).
So if you’re a Heathen, you have to affirm that sometimes violence is the answer. That tribalism is inherently part of your religion. That ideas about gender and sex and morality may run counter to present, modern, “progressive” or “correct” ideals about those things. And people are going to call you a lot of bad names because rather than affirming their beliefs on those subjects, you’re affirming your beliefs, your religion’s beliefs, on those subjects.
Same with Wicca, with Cultus, with Dianics, with any religion out there. Your religion is going to hold orthodoxies which do not agree with, and may even run counter, to modern “correct” ideals. And that’s okay, that’s a good thing. Objectively most “progressive” or “correct” ideals out there are no better or worse than anything you believe in. And you’re going to have to sit down and ask yourself…For the things I like in my religion, for the things that make my life worthwhile in my religion, can I affirm, endure, and even practice these things that will make my religious life complete and true…but harder.”
If you can, you will find a strength to your faith unlike any you imagine. I know, I’ve done it. It’s been hard sometimes, but by affirming every aspect of my religions as I go along I have known only the strength to endure those hardships through an iron will and the strength of the Gods.
If you can’t though…end it. Bail out. Go find something else you can affirm or find something that never demands that of you.
But, given posts like this one I think a lot more of you will have the strength to affirm your religions, even as they challenge what you think you presently believe.
On the bright side though, most Pagan Religions have a pretty broad Orthodoxy, so you won’t feel completely chained down and you won’t be inherently “intolerant” towards “wrongthink.” It’s just a new way of looking at the world (or an old one I guess) which will give you a firm place to say “this is right, this is wrong, and you will not be able to ruin my religion with your totalitarian beliefs or practices.” Orthodoxy in Polytheistic Religions doesn’t demand cookie-cutter mindsets, it just demands certain standards of behavior and belief and that those standards never be compromised. Keep to them, and the Gods will honor you and help you keep out those ideologies which seek the destruction of your religions.
Bellona Invicta and Hela Bless
Son of Hel 
I’m curious: what is the orthodoxy of the cultus deorum other than a belief in many gods, which is already implied in the word “deorum”?
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Since the Cultus is still rather new, I don’t think it’s been collected and defined fully yet. It’s at that early stage Heathenism was a few years ago where everyone is still getting as many books about Rome and by Romans as possible in order to put it all together. The joys of recreating a religion whose empire lasted for thousands of years and spanned entire regions.
Some of the basics do appear to be as follows: Piety to the Gods, Piety to the Republic (even as an empire the republican system endured a long time. Piety to Justice (though roman ideals of justice are a bit different than current ones), and an emphasis on reason over emotion. It’s actually a project I wanna do to sit down and try and collect all the bits I can find and put them all together.
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Piety in the old sense means duty. There’s nothing specifically Roman about that in that most forms of polytheism stress a sense of (ritual) duty towards the Gods.
Piety to the republic implies a political side, which goes against what you’ve been saying about politics in religion and is an anachronism in several ways: you don’t have to be loyal to an ancient State in order to be a modern Roman polytheist; you can be a monarchist and a cultor (just as ancient Romans were in the early days of Rome); and while politics intersected with religion in the ancient world, they’re not one and the same.
Piety to justice… define justice. It’s not just an issue of old and modern notions of justice, it’s also the concept as defined by several philosophies. Even in the ancient world, different schools had different views on it and all its members were nonetheless Roman polytheists (or at least could be), regardless of where they stood on the issue of justice.
So again, what is the orthodoxy of a religion that had virtually none and was defined in terms of practice, not faith?
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You are in essence correct, piety means duty, concepts like justice are fairly universal. To define all the nuances between different schools of thought within Rome and the sum total of ideas both mortal and divine is a project, one that I hope to work on. But it is those nuances which show the “orthodoxy.” I’m also not entirely sure what you mean by the religion of rome being defined by practice, but not faith.
But I’ll give you an example. In the Roman Ideal of Justice, it was an unjust act to question or complain about the “privileges” someone had in society (if you wanted those privileges, you should go earn them, but it was a just thing that they had those privileges). In the “social justice” ideal of Justice, having privileges others do not is unjust. The former then, would be the “orthodoxy” of Roman culture and religion.
When I say “piety to the republic” i mean Pius to the ideals of the republic. This doesn’t mean that one has to be politically active, just that one knows their duty to the republic and holds that the republic is the sacred form of government (as opposed to monarchy or tyranny) and espouses the ideals of representation within government, etc. Much like the later Imperial cult did for the Emperors.
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You’re mistaking social taboos and values for religious ones, but they’re not one and the same.
Roman religion had no scriptures, no sacred book with a revealed theological truth or moral commandments that fixed official beliefs. It was a ritual practice first, theological speculation later – and there was plenty of speculation from different sides and in a free environment, precisely because there was no orthodoxy. Or to put it differently, it was a religion where tradition regulated more the ritual gestures and less the theological beliefs of each person. That was up to the individual and his/her choice of philosophy, of which there were different schools, none of them official and not all of them in agreement on the nature and agency of the Gods. So if you’re going to look for common nuances, you’ll be missing the point, because you’ll be looking at the product of a given social context, not of the religion per se and hence not an orthodoxy.
That’s because the lack of a text that could fix beliefs also produced a lack of values. Roman religion had no moral doctrine outside that of society, so if the social reality changes – as it naturally does and has tremendously in the last 1500 years – so too will the values reflected on and by the religion. Otherwise, you might as well claim that slavery or gender discrimination are part of the values of Roman polytheism. They’re not. They were part of the culture of an ancient society and thus naturally reflected by the religion it practiced. Change the society and the religion changes as well, much like a liquid assumes the form of its vessel. For instance, women today can take on the leading role in family life and hence domestic religion, as opposed to what happened in ancient Rome, where they were ultimately subordinated to a male head of the household. And to say that we need to reproduce the society of ancient Roman in order to be true Roman polytheists is like saying Catholics need to live in a medieval society, complete with medieval clothing, language, values, politics and stratification in order to be true Catholics. Which is far from being true, so if none of that is needed in Catholicism, which has scriptures, a moral doctrine and a regulated faith, why should it be in Roman polytheism, which has none of those things?
You’re also mistaking a political construct for a religious one. The fact that the old Roman republic intersected with religion doesn’t mean they’re one and the same. The Gods participated in every aspect of life and that naturally includes politics, but to say that the republic is a “the sacred form of government” is like saying that a toga is sacred clothing, Latin a sacred language, slavery a sacred institution, villas a sacred form of housing, Roman hairstyles a sacred form of hairdo, Roman cutlery a sacred type of cutlery. They’re not. They’re simply the status quo of a given time and place, where the Gods participated accordingly. A new age and site will result in new forms of divine participation.
We, modern westerners, have a tendency to look at religion as having to have not just an orthopraxy, but also an orthodoxy, scriptures, moral doctrine and an official cosmology. That’s what we get from a religious discourse that has been shaped by monotheism. But nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to ancient European polytheisms, which lacked many of those things and were instead diverse, decentralized and unorthodox. I can go on and on about this, but I’ll just leave a link to something I wrote for the exact purpose of not having to repeat myself every few months on different blogs or pages:
Also, on the issue of Roman polytheism not being a faith:
http://polytheist.com/fleet-footed/2015/08/05/matters-of-faith-and-practice/
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You’re presuming a separation of culture and religion. However, cultural norms have historically had their basis in religious belief and vice versa. “separation of church and state” is a new concept, so to speak. No, the Romans had no set holy texts like a bible. No, there was no written “orthodoxy” set aside anywhere. Yes, much of religious ritual was overseen by the state while personal beliefs were not.
But orthodoxy means “right belief,” and in a larger context that means exactly that. What is/are the morally right beliefs of a people and their religion. Can these be gleaned from religious texts? yes. Can they be gleaned from religious commentary? Yes. Can they even be gleaned from non-religious, but cultural sources? Yes.
Does Wicca have a holy book? No. Does Wicca have religious commentaries? yes. Do Wiccans have a culture based around the principles of their faith? Yes. Can/do wiccans have an orthodoxy? Yes.
Do Heathens have a holy book? No. Do Heathens have sets of religious commentaries from back in the day? No. Do Heathens have a culture based upon the known myths and traditions of their people and their past culture? Yes. Can/do Heathens have an orthodoxy? Yes.
This is what I am advocating here. Study the myths. Study the culture. Study the philosophies of the peoples who worshiped these things. From this it is possible to divine and synthesize an “orthodoxy” within ones religious group that is factually accurate to the beliefs and standards of those whose religious we are practicing and trying restore, even if previously no such collection of “orthodoxies” was recorded. So that when people come up to you and ask “what do you believe?” or say “you should believe this!” you can “this is what we believe.”
Now, if that is not something you want within your branch of the Religio Romana, that is fine, it is up to you and those who walk with you if you choose to have absolutely no orthodoxy what so ever. But do not attempt to dictate that such a thing cannot exist/should not exist to anyone else inside or outside of the Religio Romana simply because you don’t want it, please.
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You’re forgetting that Roman culture didn’t just die out in the 5th century, but evolved into a part of the national cultures of several European countries and the wider western culture in general. So it’s not like you’re transporting Roman religion into an alien cultural context, but rather to its modern successor. Or at least you get a sense of that when you’re native to and live in southern Europe, connect your religion to your modern language and culture and thus feel less of a drive to recreate social attitudes from a bygone age in order to feel properly Roman.
What was the right moral belief in a given time and age isn’t morally right in another. Otherwise, torturing people before they can testify at court simply because they’re social status required it would be just as right now because it was seen as right by ancient Romans. Culture is not static and neither is religion – especially one that lacks the mechanisms of doctrinal crystallization. The only purpose of studying the ancient culture is to understand the components and dynamics of its religion, what was religious and what was social, so as to know what to revive, what to adapt, what to drop and avoid anachronisms, moral mismatches or a misread of what the religion was.
And if you don’t want me to come across as dictating something to you, then don’t speak of the cultus deorum as a whole. I’m not against specific groups within Roman polytheism having an official philosophy and orthodoxy, but as I mentioned in a comment to another post of yours, that would be a sect or sub-sect within a wider religion, not the religion as a whole. And you’ve been talking about the cultus deorum, not a specific sect with the cultus. Be precise when you say things, otherwise you will get criticized.
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I have not been speaking for the cultus deorum as a whole. I have been speaking from my place as a follower Cultus Deorum (Cultor Deorum if we wanna get grammatical). I have made no claims for the larger context. I have made no dictations to a larger context. If I have done anything in regards to the larger Cultus it is the same thing I have been doing with every other pagan religion in these posts. Calling to action for people to get together and codify their beliefs, not dictating what those beliefs should be. I do not believe I have failed to make that part clear in any of this discussion or on my blog as a whole.
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To quote your own post:
“Same with Wicca, with Cultus, with Dianics, with any religion out there. Your religion is going to hold orthodoxies which do not agree with, and may even run counter, to modern “correct” ideals.”
The cultus has no orthodoxy and as such it doesn’t have to have ideas that don’t agree or go against modern ideals. Some cultores may have a doxa that does, others may not, some may even be indifferent to the whole matter, precisely because there no such things as the doxa of the cultus deorum.
Be precise. When speaking of orthodoxy, be explicit about the context. Is it the doxa of group X or A? What’s the name of the group, school or sect? Is it Platonist, Sceptic, Epicuran, Stoic, other? Or is it the Lucius doxa and Lucius’ only? If you’re not specific, if you just say cultus, you’re simply allowing people to take the part for the whole.
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As you define it, is there a difference between cultus deorum and Religio Romana? Because there have been RR groups around for going on twenty years.
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That’s something I’ve been learning myself. I know the “religio romana” was linked mainly with a group called Nova Roma, which apparently got taken over by “cosplayers” according to some people (even the founder left to go start a new group), so the information I get from other in the cultus tends to be there is a bit of a difference. Now, that difference might be as big as the difference between universalists and folkish in Heathenism, or much smaller. Still new to this part of my path and I’m still going through as many sources as i can. Functionally the Cultus Deorum and Religio Romana do appear to be the same thing though.
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Cultus Deorum and religio romana are synonyms. They’re often used interchangeably and both refer to the same thing – Roman polytheism – in one case by stating the Roman element explicitly, in the other by implying it via Latin.
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“That ideas about gender and sex and morality may run counter to present, modern, “progressive” or “correct” ideals about those things.”
I am troubled by this line, because I disagree with granting license to discriminate against homosexuals, bisexuals, polysexuals, pansexuals, transgenders, genderqueers, etc. The ancients had ideas concerning the matter of gender and sexuality based on a lacking and incomplete understanding of human sexuality and gender, compared to what we now know about these things. That people who belong to these groups are as they are in ccordance with their nature, and thus (speaking from a Heathen perspective) presumably as something intended by Óðinn, Hœnir, and Lóðurr when they created humankind. Whereas the ancients (wrongly) assumed these things are in certain situations counter to their nature; e.g. a man who is penetrated by another man, which was considered to be not in accordance with the male nature, and who was therefore considered argr.
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You have actually provided a very good example of what I was talking about, so thank you.
As I am not an expert in Heathen orthodoxy (or what heathen orthodoxies may come) I am not going to directly address the gender example you gave. But as you pointed out, Ancient Heathens had a different understanding of sexual orientations and desires than we do (presumably, could be they knew a lot more but the Christians purged that knowledge). Their beliefs on the subject, in part at least, are recorded.
Now, thanks to that record we know what Ancient Heathens believed. If you wish to follow ancient heathen religions, in theory you have to believe what they believed. If you believe differently, then you are not following that ancient religion, you’re following something else (maybe a modern religion with roots in the ancient one, but not the ancient one itself) depending on how much you shift away from historically recorded beliefs. In some contexts this is okay, but if you are say a “Reconstructionist” and you leave out a part of belief that you find “offensive,” regardless of the reason or how legitimate you feel its exclusion is, then you’re not upholding your claimed intent to reconstruct said ancient religion and follow it.
Now, it is not my place to say what you should do, or how you should resolve this problem. Things like that are going to be up to whatever elders or councils of elders that your path creates to create an orthodoxy for your path to resolve. But, that knowledge is going to be used by some path to do what you don’t want to be doing, and they will legitimate be following ancient traditions and religious practice. And because that was the factual position back in the day, your elders may decide that in order to keep the faith, things like that must be made part of the orthodoxy in order to keep it as factually accurate to the original worshipers and how the Gods laid it down.
Because here’s the thing, the Gods laid down those original frameworks. Odin may have indeed created people with a multiplicity of orientations when he made the first humans, but the Aesir and Vanir did also dictate to their worshipers that a man who takes it up the butt is “unmanly.” Why they did this, I got no clue. Wasn’t there. But that’s how it was/is. Changing that is no small matter and I fully suggest that during any orthodoxical councils there be priests and divinators there who can be put through blind tests (keep them in separate rooms, don’t tell them what the issue is, just poll them on yes or no, go with the majority answer) to divine if the gods have decided to change their minds in regards to any paths newly recorded orthodoxy. If we want to change something, it must be done by the will of the Gods.
And if the Gods decide “nope, we like the old way better that you find ignorant/offensive” or your elders do the same after much research and discussion, then that is when you’re going to have a choice. Do I hold my view on this issue as sacrosanct (for whatever reason) or am I willing to release this issue to the will of the gods and live by their rules, their standards, and their beliefs. The former is fine, no person should be chained to a path they cannot agree with, but if you decide on the latter, you must affirm and uphold this belief that the gods dictate because even if it is undesirable or immoral to you, it is desirable and moral to them, and it is their religion first and foremost.
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I wasn’t aware people came to paganism because it “felt good”. I came to a polytheist version of Buddhism because it was closest to what I believe in, and I was raised in Buddhism so I already knew what was expected of me, both the good and the bad (most people balk at the whole “give up the material objects of your existence for enlightenment” and “your body is only a vessel, so don’t focus so much on your own vanity” bits). Most of the polytheists/pagans I know are the same, they left Abrahamic religion because it didn’t fit with what they believed and they came to polytheism/paganism because that’s what they felt best matched their beliefs. Otherwise, good stuff here and I pretty much agree fully.
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