gdp's Comments

The Wild Hunt : Esoteric Publishers, Crowley, and the 'New Right'

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:37:33 +0000

It is definitely easy to see from the Finnish perspective, but honestly the meaninglessness of the concept of 'Europe' should be even more obvious for anyone looking at the religious environment of the ancient Mediterranean world, but people somehow manage not to see it.

The Wild Hunt : Esoteric Publishers, Crowley, and the 'New Right'

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:23:47 +0000

Actually, this Finn tends to agree with Apuleius. I think that the whole idea of Europe is intimately connected with the dominion of Chrisitianity (notice how the line demarcating the division of Europe and Asia roughly coincides with the borders of where Chrisitianity was dominant. Even geographically the notion that Europe is a separate continent is pretty questionable) and that ancient Pagans wouldn't have recognized any such separation from Asia and North Africa. My own pre-Christian Finnish ancestors practiced a religion that arguably had more in common with that of North Asian peoples than it did with say 'European' peoples such as the Greeks or Romans (which makes sense since the people, like Finns, who speak Uralic languages ultimately originated somewhere in Siberia/North Asia).

The Wild Hunt : Esoteric Publishers, Crowley, and the 'New Right'

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 21:07:12 +0000

Even though my approach, I suppose, is reconstructionist, I often have the same criticism of the way that reconstructionist methodologies are used by Pagans. I have never viewed 'Finnish Paganism' as some separate, pure thing that ever existed but rather something that existed within an interrelated spectrum of cultures and groups across Eurasia. Even the very idea of 'Finnish-ness' is arguably a construct formed over the last thousand years, but especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. If you go back far enough 'Finnish' is indistinguishable from, say, 'Estonian' (both linguistically and culturally). Ethnicity, as you say, can be a difficult concept to superimpose over ancient Paganism because those ethnicities are often formed much later.

The Wild Hunt : Guest Post: Patrick McCollum on Why His Fight Matters

Wed, 8 Jun 2011 21:04:03 +0000

Christianity and Islam certainly have a concept of Hell, but Judaism must have missed your memo that they are supposed to believe in it too since Judaism doens't have any such belief.

The Wild Hunt : Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Fri, 3 Jun 2011 21:52:13 +0000

Hell, I regularly hear the word 'Jew' used as in insult, in fact I just heard someone do that yesterday (and they were apparently unaware of my Jewish background since they did it right in front of me).

The Wild Hunt : Pagan Community Reacts to McCollum Decision

Fri, 3 Jun 2011 06:37:32 +0000

So, basically, your religious privilege is being threatened and you are now lashing out at those who are only asking for the same rights as guaranteed by our constitution to EVERYONE (as in, not just the ones you happen to like or manage to bring yourself to tolerate).

The Wild Hunt : The Pagan Terminology Discussion Continues

Thu, 2 Jun 2011 04:43:10 +0000

That's a great book, not just all of the texts that wouldn't otherwise be available in English (and also in the original languages, that excites my inner linguistics geek), but all of the introductory material is great. I actually have my whole collection of books on a bibliography on my blog ( http://kauko-niskala.blogspot.com/2011/01/bibliog... ). That lists pretty much every book I own on the subject. A lot of them were out of print and/or hard to get. Another great anthology of folkloric material, in this case restricted to Finnish/ Karelian material is Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic. Unfortunately, it was published in the 70s and is out of print now. I paid a ridiculous amount to get a copy. It has a diverse selection of folk poetry, including material that Lönnrot used in forming the Kalevala, both in English and the original Finnish. There is also some good introductory material and notes on the individual poems at the end.

The Wild Hunt : The Pagan Terminology Discussion Continues

Wed, 1 Jun 2011 17:49:04 +0000

Correct, suomenuskolainen would refer to someone who practices suomenusko (the -lainen ending usually added to roots to denote a person belonging to the group indicated by the root, amerikkalainen, for example = American). I'll admit I've been generally using 'Finnish Paganism' in place of suomenusko, just for recognition, but I've thought about mixing in suomenusko occasionally to get people used to seeing it. One issue for me is that suomenusko, unlike various forms of Heathenry, Theodism etc which are established in the English speaking world, is pretty much limited to Finland right now, with rare examples of people of Finnish ancestry, like me, outside Finland who are exploring it. It also suffers from a general lack of English language scholarly resources about pre-Christian Finnish religion(s). I have what is probably among the best selection of books relating to the subject in English and they add up to less than two shelves on my book case.

The Wild Hunt : The Pagan Terminology Discussion Continues

Tue, 31 May 2011 02:47:57 +0000

I tend to stick with Pagan because for what I do there don't feel like there are any good alternatives. I could call myself 'Suomenuskolainen' but that would just be awkward to an English speaking audience and I shudder to think at how the pronunciation would be mutilated :)

The Wild Hunt : Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Sun, 29 May 2011 02:49:35 +0000

In a technical sense, if there were such a thing as indigenous 'European' religions it would be the religious beliefs of the first humans to inhabit what we now call Europe. Groups like the Indo-Europeans and Finno-Ugric people didn't arrive until much later, and both of them likely came from what we would now call Asia. Genetic testing among Finno-Ugric peoples strongly indicate a Siberian/North Asian origin and of course the place of origin of Indo-European peoples has long been a subject of debate. The religions of all the peoples throughout the Eurasian continent and north Africa (and beyond) have historically been so intertwined and influenced each other so much that any reconstructionist claiming to limit there focus on some concept of a single 'ethnicity' to the exclusion of any 'foreign' influence, as you point out, owes more of their ideology to modern racist psuedo-science than to the actual religious lives of ancient peoples.

The Wild Hunt : Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Sat, 28 May 2011 23:11:14 +0000

So people using a reconstructionist methodology toward, let's say, Egyptian, Canaanite, Babylonian paganisms are 'the Ethnic Religions of Europe'?

The Wild Hunt : Unleash the Hounds! (Link Roundup)

Sat, 28 May 2011 18:21:28 +0000

"In fact, the modern concept of "Europe" is intimately and inextricably tied up with the birth of Western Christendom in the 8th century AD." This. I've had the very same thought many times, that the whole idea of Europe as separate from Asia and North Africa is completely the result of Christianity and would have been unknown to pre-Christian peoples.

The Wild Hunt : San Francisco Peaks Update, Pagans on Wikipedia, and other Pagan News of Note

Mon, 23 May 2011 21:36:09 +0000

People seem to be taking my comment more seriously than was intended, which was tongue-in-cheek. Of course, things like religious equality would be foremost on the agenda of most Pagans. I was commenting on the use of agenda in the comment to which I was replying, a use which seems to suggest some sinister cabal of Pagans out to take over the country which is some how the equivalent of what people like Barton are trying to do. Similarly, when social conservatives talk about a 'gay agenda' it seems to suggest that all of the GLBT people in the US got to together and voted on how they plan to destroy family values and indoctrinate children into the 'homosexual lifestyle'.

The Wild Hunt : San Francisco Peaks Update, Pagans on Wikipedia, and other Pagan News of Note

Mon, 23 May 2011 21:03:30 +0000

Aside from my obvious sarcasm, there's 'agenda' as may well actually exist within any group of people, as you describe, then there's 'agenda' as a scare tactic that some people use to whip up their followers to believe that some group that is a minority or outside the mainstream has plans to destroy all this is good and right in the world.

The Wild Hunt : San Francisco Peaks Update, Pagans on Wikipedia, and other Pagan News of Note

Mon, 23 May 2011 20:03:36 +0000

Woah there's a Pagan agenda now? I so must have been absent on the day we all voted on that one. I also missed the day when the gay agenda was voted on. I must suck at being present for these important decisions.

The Wild Hunt : Ronald Hutton Answers His Critics

Sat, 21 May 2011 19:55:11 +0000

Oh, I've not claimed that anything has gone down through the centuries 'unbroken' or 'unchanged', everything changes. I'm just contending that the religious environment that emerged over the centuries it took Christianity to spread over Europe could arguable be called Christo-Pagan. I reject the notion that we should privilege the first half of that by claiming that only it survived and accounted for what it was people were doing religiously, when there were obvious Pagan components that continued on through the centuries in the religious/ spiritual lives of people throughout Europe. I've said before that Paganism in Europe didn't truly begin to truly disappear until all of the social/ political/ technological upheavals of that 19th-20th centuries. Were it not for the modern Pagan revival over the last decades I think that that Pagan heritage that had survived through the centuries would have disappeared under the force of the pressures of the modern world.

The Wild Hunt : Ronald Hutton Answers His Critics

Sat, 21 May 2011 19:42:25 +0000

cont. I have a similar complaint about the way the discussion in the comments here have gone, with 'pagan' being generically thrown around usually with a dismissal of the notion that Paganism survived in any way the Christianization process (compounded by people entering the debate with different definitions of just what Pagan survival actually is). If people here are restricting their debate only on the question of Wicca/ witchcraft and whether some kind Pagan witch-cult survived in Western Europe and became the modern day religion of WIcca, that's a very specific question and debate, but people aren't being clear that that's what they are discussing, if it is. Instead, I'm seeing blanket statements that Paganism didn't survive in Europe, often with the defense that because the people called themselves Christian that made every that they did 'Christianity', a position which I just don't personally agree with.

The Wild Hunt : Ronald Hutton Answers His Critics

Sat, 21 May 2011 19:42:11 +0000

I definitely get that Hutton's speciality and focus deals with Britain, Wicca/ religious witchcraft, my problem with the interview, though, was that he doesn't really specify that he might only be refering to those things. He throws the generic word 'pagan' around a lot without being more specific. So, when I read the interview it often felt like he was uncritically lumping all of Europe together and treating the questions of Pagan survivals like a question with a single answer, instead of being a complex question whose answer differs a lot depending on just where in Europe and which group of people he's talking about.

The Wild Hunt : A Raptured Roundup of Pagan News

Sat, 21 May 2011 17:25:01 +0000

I thought the rapture was supposed to be later this evening. Maybe, I got the times wrong. I'm still waiting so I can go through all my Christian neighbors' houses and just take all of their good stuff. I figure it's not stealing if they've been raptured away.

The Wild Hunt : Ronald Hutton Answers His Critics

Sat, 21 May 2011 02:38:12 +0000

cont. (because again it doesn't seem to let me post more than one paragraph) Honestly, I can't help but see this whole debate as being so Wicca-centric or at least Western European-centric that it fails to see the wide variety of forms of Paganism that existed throughout Europe and how strongly many of those traditions (especially on the outskirts of Europe) have remained throughout the centuries despite the imposition of Christianity. My own Pagan practice only exists because of a living oral tradition in Finland that continued to pass on the ancient Finnish myths right up to the 19th and 20th centuries. This didn't happen because of the power of Christianity, it happened because those myth, those stories, those gods, those spirits of the land, rivers, oceans, mountains and forests continued to live in the hearts of some people, people who thought it was worth passing on to every generation.