Solstice Series: Traditions Ancient and Modern

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in December we will be asking people questions about Paganism and Pagan religions and culture. Want to weigh in? Find the next question at the bottom of this post!

We tend to pick and choose what we reclaim from ancient and not-so-ancient traditions. Do you tend to try to make the ancient ways fit into your modern lifestyle, or do you feel the modern sensibility needs to be retooled to accept ancient traditions?

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus:

In modern Paganism, and particularly in reconstructionist methodologies, one has to do both.  Many of the social realities of the premodern world and its various cultures no longer apply to our modern situation, and thus are no longer appropriate, or won’t work quite as well.  Things like divine rulers might be appealing on some level, but I’m almost certain that most people in modern Paganism aren’t really very interested in slavery, legal subordination of women, or a variety of other things.  And while some technological advancements probably aren’t that difficult to integrate into an alternative religious framework, sometimes those frameworks themselves are supported by notions of social inequality, hierarchical and class-based organization, or what we would think of as “political” motivations that may not only be less effective today, but may even be actively offensive, if not illegal in many cases.

At the same time, there’s an awful lot wrong with the modern world in many respects, and so the values upon which many premodern religions are based would seem to be ideal antidotes to some of these excesses.  The desire for monetary gain at all costs and regardless of the consequences is far too great a motivation for many people and corporations in the modern world, and a more ecological, charitable, and socially responsible ethic is therefore desirable, and was indeed a part of many premodern forms of Paganism to the point that it didn’t even really need to be delineated or articulated explicitly.  The notions of hospitality that were utter social necessities in certain premodern cultures would be considered by many people now to be dangerous and even overly altruistic; but, just because it seems that way, it doesn’t mean that one has to fling one’s doors open to anyone and everyone on a cold night.  It is entirely good, however, to maintain those hospitable responsibilities whenever possible with one’s co-religionists, and those who provide bad hospitality or who receive hospitality in a less-than-virtuous manner would then be liable to censure within their local spiritual community, if not more widely.

There are many small ways in which more ancient sensibilities can be adapted, if not adopted without much change, to the modern situation, and likewise with some modern ideas and values being accepted into a framework of modern Paganism’s practice.  It would be both impossible and inappropriate to “go back” in every possible way to premodern religious cultures, and there are not very many reconstructionists that I know of that are in favor of doing so (and those who characterize all recons in this manner are simply ill-informed).  Religions change over time and culture, and given that both time and culture have shifted considerably since many of these Pagan ideals and virtues were upheld, there will have to be a new synthesis produced and new compromises made, under the guidance of the gods, logical discernment, and personal taste, in order for what comes about to be effective and appropriate in the early twenty-first century and beyond.

Sarenth:

My own view is that this idea of picking and choosing has gone on since spiritualities and religions first came into being.  I look at it as a kind of adaptation: if long hours of prayer do not connect me to God/dess or the spirits, why would I use it?  If sitting and concentrating on a rock, perhaps listening with all that I am, enables me to contact a spirit, why would I give that up?  I admit I am quite utilitarian in my spiritual practice: if something does not work, I don’t use it.  That said, I do try to fit ancient traditions where they will fit into my lifestyle.  Many have had to be retooled to modern times, as I don’t have all the skills or abilities within my community to provide the kinds of traditions that would work to retool some of the ancient practices I like.  For instance, I have neither the hides nor the experience to make a hide drum for my shamanic journeying, so I buy one.  I don’t have the expertise or abilities to make my own mead, or many tools I use, so I find them or buy them as needed, or learn by books how to make them.  Some practices, such as seidhr, divination by Runes, all come into my modern experience by their own ways.  I read with bone Runes stained by my own blood, but they are not the long sticks as recounted by ancient sources.

Tess Dawson:

I look around me and see a laptop perched on a black folding table, a battery operated resin-cast snake-sculpture clock, a recreated statue of the snake goddess of Crete, a fern in a lime green plastic pot, a coffee mug portraying a Bohemian woman with intense eyes, a small dark brown leather chair with a corduroy patchwork pillow, and three broad burgeoning bookcases. Oasis-pools of electric-generated light add warmth to the room on a windy, grey day in North America. My office/library/dining room is a far cry from the stone or mudbrick rooms of a Bronze Age Canaanite temple: pottery oil lamps with their linen wicks kissing the flames which would cast light upon low offering benches at the far wall, a travertine floor which awaits the footsteps of the priests, and a niche filled with a deity’s image even as the deity’s spirit would fill the entire inner sanctuary.

So how do I reconcile ancient ways with modern when differences are vast? How do I come to terms with the fact that I can never worship ancient deities exactly as they were worshipped in days of long ago; and even if I could, would I want to? These questions are constant struggles: a system of checks and balances when I weigh ancient and modern concerns. At the liver* of it all, I try to understand ancient peoples’ reasoning for their beliefs and ritual acts, and bring those ideas into the modern setting.

For instance, the ancients believed offerings support the deities, the clergy, and the community. Instead of walking to the temple of Ba‘al in the middle of town and witnessing the sacrifice of a sheep or making a tithe to clergy and temple, I make an offering of my meal to the deities (support the divine), study history and ancient texts (support clergy), and make donations to charity (support community). In this way, I honor the ancient traditions but update them as if they had remained unbroken through time.

In another example, Rakia is a Lebanese custom of silently praying over a person affected by the evil eye, or more simply “the Eye.” The Rakia prayer is received through an initiatory process—this prayer remarkably shares similarities to a 3000-year old prayer against the Eye originally written in Ugaritic cuneiform and found in Syria in the 1930’s. In practicing Rakia, I continue a tradition which hearkens back to ancient ways but has been updated by a natural progression.

By balancing my heart* through research, and my liver* through meditation, prayer, and intuition, I find it easier to understand and support the deities’ needs as well as my own.

*The ancient Canaanites saw the liver as the bodily home of emotion, while one’s mind resided in the heart.

Candice McBride:

Part of the problem with Christianity, I think, is that they try to keep their religion in stasis, unchanging, despite societal pressures. So when we, as Pagans, confront the ancient practices of our religions, it becomes important to adapt them to modern times in order to remain fresh and forward thinking. After all, we are not those people; we are their descendants. We know more about the world. We have different social mores, different ways in which we react to the world, and different ways that we interpret events in our lives.

A religion which lacks the capacity for change is doomed. This, coupled with the fact that so much has been lost through the millennia, makes the adoption of traditions directly from the most recent inception of our religions all but impossible. Even when we go back to the historical records that do exist, there is a great deal of divergence between different peoples supposedly worshiping the same gods (Romans, Greeks, Egyptians), as well as differences between how the religion was last practiced and how it began. If we go back to how the Egyptian religion changed during the thousands of years that it existed as a Pagan nation, for instance, we see a great deal of change from its beginning to the end when the Romans adapted it to mingle with their own gods.

I’m not saying that we can’t try to keep the traditions as close to their origin as possible, but then the question becomes “which origin,” the most recent, something from the middle, or the very beginning? It’s impossible to be utterly exact in keeping things true to the letter, and better to go with the spirit. I, for one, am happy not to have to sacrifice any live animals on my altar to those gods who required it in ancient times.

Next question:

There is a rather firm ideological and almost tribal divide between many of our traditions, Wiccans and Heathens for example. Does this division serve a positive purpose? Or is the division harmful?

If you’d like to weigh just e-mail me your short response (250-500 words) before Dec 10th. It’s sfoster at patheos.com.