28 Jun 2003
Folkish Universalism

Well, a mailing list got me again. On the subject of religion, of course, and I posted a doozy. Long winded, but Iif I do say so myself) rather good. It was well received, too.

The subject is the "Great Divide" in Asatru - Folkish vs. Universalist. Do you have to be northern European to be Asatru? I've been well known over the years to answer "No!" but recently my rationale has changed. And I've found myself becoming more "folkish" - concentrating on ancestors, while still maintaining my belief that anyone can be Tru. Here's the post ...

I've been more or less known, over the years I've been active in heathenry, as a strident Universalist. Everybody and anybody can be Asatru. And while that position hasn't changed, the rationale for it has, and so has the label I apply to myself. I've only recently began to consider calling myself "Folkish", and even then it's been hyphenated (so far ... have I hedged my position enough?). As you said, the voice of the ancestors is very real.

It is very, very rare on Planet Earth, currently, to find someone who is not "ethnically mixed". Perhaps the odd Icelander or Japanese, but even in those cases there have been successive waves of ethnic admixture. Perhaps this explains the state of "spiritual confusion" we observe around us ... but I doubt it.

Assume with me, for a moment, that the voices of our ancestors are all that call us to our spiritual path. Of necessity, some of those voices will be stronger than others, as anyone who attends family reunions can attest. Those are the voices that shine thru most clearly to us - those are the ones we hear and (hopefully) heed.

So it does not surprise me that there are more than a few folks of apparent non Northern European descent who are called to our path. I say "apparent" because of the known proclivity to humans to, well, er, make the beast with two backs with whoever's available. Politely termed "ethnically mixed".

So, even if the "metagenetics" hypothesis is correct, then nearly all of us have some ancestor who followed the Gods of the North, or their cultural predecessors, cousins or descendants. This has been my favorite argument for years: where is the "religion gene"? Which specific sequence contains it? How much of it does there have to be, and from where? And it's still a pretty good argument! But recently it's dawned on me that there's one very important point that metagenetics (as biology) doesn't address - why do the ancestors call to us?

They don't speak to us to remind us to do laundry, nor do they seem too concerned about our diet or automobiles. It seems obvious to me that our ancestors must be speaking because they want something. That's the basic reason for all human communication, after all, and I see no reason to invent a completely new reason for spiritual communication. What could they want? The only possible answer is that they call to be remembered. That's the whole point of any ancestor cult - be it Shinto, Confucian, Roman or Asatru. That's why every culture raises monuments or markers for the dead - this trait is considered by anthropologists to be a true hallmark of humanity. You must remember your forefathers (and foremothers). "I know one thing that never dies - the reputation of a good man" ...

Those of us who are Heathen are those who hear and heed this desire for remembrance by our ancestors. We worship the Shining Gods and Goddesses because the ancestors who speak most loudly and clearly to us worshipped them, or because they provide a spiritual and cultural venue for honoring our ancestors which would be otherwise unavailable.

This fits quite well with the reality I observe as well. I know one "non-European" Asatrurar quite well - Chul Kim is an oathed member of the Kindred of Ravenswood, which I founded in 1992 and to which I still belong. Chuck is an ethnic Korean - also a follower of Njord, who has done time on commercial fishing boats in the Gulf of Alaska while wearing his Hammer! He is known by his deeds as a Tru man, at least within the circle of the Kindred.

Chuck's parents fled North Korea in 1952, coming to the US in 1955. Chuck was born here. Does Chuck have any trace of any bloodline vaguely related to an old Scots-Irish Vinlander like me? Who knows? But given the time scales involved, it is almost certain that sometime in the possibly very distant past, given the dispersion of the Indo-Europeans and the Uralic-Altaic peoples that were the forerunners of the population of the Korea, that my ancestors and his actually did cross paths. It is possible.

The native, ethnic religion of Korea has been devastated over the centuries by waves of invasion and repression. Both Chinese and Japanese have successively imposed their culture on Korea. In reaction, most Koreans are today Christians, as Christianity was seen as the ultimate rebellion against the Japanese attempt to impose State Shinto during the occupation of the 19th and 20th centuries. Suffice it to say that recovering ethnic Korean religion would be vastly more difficult than recovering Asatru has proven to be, and that has been pretty tough, as we're all well aware.

I think the important point here is that Chuck uses the framework that Asatru provides to honor his known ancestors, Korean tho they may be. Being born here, he's culturally American to the core, and consequently heavily influenced by European models and motifs. He's taken this cultural underpinning that he has, sought it's root and arrived in heathenry. He has toasted his Korean ancestors in sumbel, remembering word and deed from his worthy forebearers. If the human spirit craves undying fame and remembrance, and I believe that it does, then does it really matter a whit that Kim Han Jong has been toasted and remembered with mead and pork instead of rice wine and kimchee? Personally, I think Chuck's great grandfather is probably glad to be remembered at all! Few of our worthy ancestors are these days, it seems....

So, if ancestors call us to our spiritual path, and Chuck's ancestors were calling him, they were calling him to be remembered, which he's doing. Purely folkish, in the most literal sense of the word.

At the most recent Trothmoot, it was my great pleasure to finally meet Mr. McCoy, who being on this list can certainly speak for himself here. Suffice it to say that I found him to be a Tru man in word and deed, honoring the ancestors as would any "folkish" Asatrurar, and, other than a rather deep tan and a lack of hair, in no way "different" from the other fine folks there gathered. In James' case, given the sordid history of black slavery in the New World, it is nearly certain that there is more than a smidgen of European in his family tree. He's following his ancestral path.

The reality is that there are those of us who couldn't be poster kids for Norwegian tourism, but who nonetheless are Tru to the Shining Gods and Goddesses and Tru to the undying memory of their clan and family. That's the bottom line.

But perhaps the thing that has forced me to see the whole issue in a new light is a meeting I had earlier this year, at the Our Meadhall Moot. I finally got to meet Steve McNallen. More than meet him, I had the honor of driving him from the campground to the airport in St. Louis, three hours away, following the close of the event. Wonderful conversations, ranging from sci-fi (Heinlein, mostly, we're both big fans) to lore to philosophy and ritual formats.

Steve and I have corresponded for years, both point to point and on various lists, arguing the metagenetics thing mostly, with poor Chuck as our "bone of contention". But it was always conducted with respect - we never degenerated into name calling or mud slinging. Still, it was quite startling to some of the folks at the Moot to see Dave Haxton, arch-universalist, and Steve McNallen, arch-folkish, to not only get along so well but agree on so much. Steve himself said it best: "Who would have thought ..."

I can't speak for the past, only for the present - others who have known Steve in the past have told different tales. But I found in McNallen a man who would be perfectly willing to consider anyone as Tru - based on their deeds and their honor, not on their "ethnicity". He's focused on ancestry, to be sure, and believes that every human should honor their ancestors in an appropriate fashion. I didn't find him egotistical enough to declare exactly what the appropriate fashion for each human on earth was, however. That's purely a matter for the individual and their gods and ancestors, according to him. He expressed to me a belief that all Heathens have much more in common than we have as differences, and practical observation bore this out. I was throughly impressed by this man - and not at all as troubled by his philosophy as I had expected to be. In fact, I found it to be nearly concordant with my own! Oft a meeting in person is worth a thousand flaming emails...;>)

I am more encouraged about the state of Heathenry now than I have been for many years. It seems as though slowly, our splits are healing themselves. We're really getting down to the point of arguing mere semantics, I think. Of course, new splits (Liberal/Conservative comes immediately to mind) are now starting to rear their heads, but those are going to be a lot easier for us to deal with than the bull we've put up with since the "Great Divide".

The job is not done yet. There are still Asatrurar who are convinced that members of the AFA and Asatru Alliance arrive to blot and sumbel wearing black shirts and jackboots, as there are those who are certain that the Troth is an organization of Great Goddess worshipping Wiccan wannabees bent on destroying Heathenry. But more and more of us are showing up in the middle, recognizing our commonalities as well as our differences, and realizing that, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.

We must realize that ancestry is universal, and that we who hear and heed the call to remember are therefore both "folkish" and "universalist". Folkish-Universalism ... has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link