The seventh worldwide Gathering of the
Elders
On 20-21 February 2021, the 7th
international Gathering of the Elders was held. This is the world conference
organized every 3rd year since 2003 by the International Center for Cultural
Studies, hitherto always in an Indian city: Mumbai, Ujjain, Hardwar, Maisuru,
Mumbai; Till now this event was always held in an Indian city, more or less
coinciding with the start of the triannual Hindu mega-festival Kumbha
Mela. The choice for India has strongly been supported by participants
worldwide, but this was the first time that it was in the form of an unlocated
teleconference, in sessions coinciding with late morning in
respectively Asia/Pacific, Africa/Europe and the Americas.
This
organization is headquartered in Washington DC, and was started at the
initiative of Yashwant Pathak, professor of Pharmacy and RSS office-bearer
(pracharak). As a known critic of the
Hindu-nationalist movement RSS, I acknowledge that unlike their performance at
the political level, their local workers' initiatives at the ground level can
be very commendable. Indeed, the idea of building bridges with the world’s
remaining pre-Christian and pre-Islamic traditions was a stroke of genius.
But the show was still entirely run by
Hindus, for Europe mostly the British National Hindu Students' Forum. The
footage of the annual One Tree gatherings between British Hindus and Druids
that filled the time between events was quite inspiring.
To those who have preserved their
traditions (even through a difficult period of Christian domination), from
Maoris to Mayas, this may be a very different world, where ex-Christian set out
to rediscover their roots. They have to reconstruct what to hereditary Pagans
is automatic, and thereby risk some artificiality,
In the 1980s I had worked in a New Age
bookshop and got to know the whole spiritualist scene, both the native and
Oriental schools and movements. But I only decided to involve myself after I
had gotten to know the Hindu philosopher Ram Swarup. In his book Names of
Gods, he calls on Christian-born Westerners to make a pilgrimage back in
time to the religion of their ancestors.
In particular, I used to stress that the
ethnic self-centredness of quite a few neo-Heathen groups was only seemingly
based on the traditions of the ancestors. Of course their geographical horizon had
been more limited, but they did not reject foreign inputs on principle. Indeed,
a consciousness that different “religions” (to use a term appropriated by
Christianity and wrongly given the connotation of discrete doctrinal boxes)
were essentially a single continuum was already present. This was seen e.g. in
the interpretatio Romana, the tendency to “translate” the gods of one
people into those of another, as still seen in the names of the weekdays: Wednesday
= Woden’s day = Mercurii dies = Budh-war.
Also, the oft-heard critique that
Christianity had to be rejected because it was a “foreign imposition” and a
“desert religion” made no sense. The desert is one of the landscapes to which
human communities have had to adapt, and it is just as legitimate as the lush
vegetation in our own environment. As for impositions, they are a pity, but not
really because of their foreign origin. If the Christian message had been true,
as it claims to be, then the foreign intrusion and the violation of the native
cultures could be taken in stride for the greater good; the problem with the
new religion was that it failed to live up to this promise. Maybe, with
hindsight, some reforms were welcome in the ancestral cultures, but even then
there was no need of the Christian novelty, and certainly no need for the
native religionists to “burn what they had worshipped” (as demanded of the
Frankish king Clovis upon his baptism in 496).
This problem of nationalist
appropriation of the native religion and obsession with its ancestral purity was
gradually solved, not so much by my own interventions, but because the founder
made it clear that the group’s purpose was religious, so that more political
people lost interest. I don’t usually bring it up, and the new generation of Traditie
members doesn’t even know about our debates in the early years; good for them.
It is not really important, and unlike what journalists might think, it is not
that significant for the European neo-Pagan scene, which is essentially a
matter of post-Christians in search of something to fill the “God-shaped hole”
left behind by the passing of a mighty religion. But it should not be denied or
disowned either. A Sanskrit word for the lotus flower is panka-ja, which
means “born from the mud”: let us own up the juvenile mistakes from which we
have had to wrestle ourselves free in order to rise to the light.
Another problem that the undersigned
troublemaker rose up against, was more doctrinal. The group’s name was Traditie,
not just a general reference to what has been passed on from the ancestors, but
specifically to the “Traditionalist” movement. This was started in the interbellum
by the French mathematician René Guénon, who believed in a past Revelation that
held the truth, that we could at best only preserve, and from which no progress
was possible. No wonder he converted to Islam, the very model of a static
religion that claimed to be revealed and that tried to preserve the entire body
of doctrine and commandments given at its outset. It seemed to me that this was
at variance with the very idea of Paganism.
Both the words “Pagan” and “Heathen”
mean “rustic”, and refer to the European situation in the mid-1st
millennium, when the cities were being Christianized while the countryside
still preserved its ancestral ways. It had a connotation of “backward” but was
at once very revealing for a genuine distinction. Christianity was a “religion
of the Book”, an artificial construct that preachers in the population centres had
to tell you about, whereas the ancestral religion was based on nature. Wherever
there is reality, Pagan religion has to come up, inevitably. You can start from
scratch and it will develop. Our ancestors too had developed it from scratch.
No presumed revelation was needed, nor any frantic attempt to preserve this
revealed religion intact and impose it on the next generations. If ever we
forget all about it, we can rediscover it for it is ever-present all around us.
Yes, there is a lot of antiquarian
interest in the Pagan Revivalist scene, with re-enactments of epic battles and
breathing new life into old arts and crafts, but this is not a matter of
principle. Not far from here, there is a place where our ancestors brought
human sacrifices, with the victims all dressed up and painted for the occasion,
possibly even honoured that they had been chosen for the role; I do not have
the impression that anyone feels bound to revive such practices. Our
sensibilities have evolved, and we start from who we really are, not from
reaching back to an idealized past that fundamentalists might dream of. At
heart neo-Paganism is a contemporary religion. I don’t think that the Maoris,
Mayas and Hindus present would deny that their religion, though old, is very
much a contemporary religion.
Over the years, we increasingly focused
on the variegated Heathen lore as it really exists (or as is easy to bring to
the surface). Initially this closely followed in the footsteps of the
Scandinavian movement Ásatrú, “being true to the gods”, which can base
itself on a large transmitted corpus of documents, inscriptions and sculptures.
This remains a source of inspiration, but the emphasis today is more on
existing practices and rituals of which the profound source waits for
rediscovery. This largely ties in with a broader social phenomenon in our
post-Christian society: even religiously uninformed people try to create
rituals to accompany the turning-points in their lives. A typical funeral
nowadays does not take place in church anymore, but in a secular crematorium
(burials are on their way out), where a relative or friend of the deceased
person chooses or writes appropriate texts and music and devises his own
appropriate ritual. One of our board members is professionally involved with
this tendency, which is the most visible dimension of the repaganization of
Western society.
An element of this “back to reality” is
the reclaiming of Christian lore that long ago was “inculturated” from Pagan
sources. Thus, my sons recently walked in a procession for the Virgin Mary,
which originally was devoted to a local river-goddess. Much of this lore fits
in purely local traditions, not in a Pagan religion that might be construed as
rivalling Christianity. For instance, there is a revival of the Celtic cult of
the sea-goddess Nehalennia in nearby Zealand, hardly noticed in books about
Celtic religion. Traditie has chapters in the provinces with a very distinct
identity.
Some feedback
Now, a brief comment on all that I hear
being said here. No one can fail to observe the attention given to
environmental issues. This is commendable and necessary, but I am inclined to
restore the balance a bit. Care for nature satisfies the Christian stereotype
that Pagans are rustic, at best Noble Savages. Of course environmentalism,
solving the energy scarcity without hurting it, controlling the climate
sufficiently etc., is important, but religion has more to offer. What has
Paganism to say to urban dwellers? As I have learned here from Druid spokesmen:
their congregations out in the forest or in Stonehenge suffer the same seeming
loss of interest as the churches and as most volunteer societies nowadays do;
but they are a great success on the internet, where the younger generation
feels more at home.
An example of what should be another
legitimate concern: the disappearance of the family in Western society. So far
it is only the Evangelicals who address this issue and provide an (albeit old)
alternative, whereas Pagans over here count as old hippies, dissolute and fully
part of the individualistic and hedonistic society that we now live in. I would
like to see a more articulate Heathen solution for the broken family. To be
sure, on such topics, harder choices will have to be made, whereas
environmentalism is a safe concern which no one really questions.
Within the ecological discourse, I
discern a pessimistic tone. More civilized variations on angry-faced Greta
Thunberg’s dramatization of the present situation: “How dare you?!” Global
warming, overpopulation, plastic pollution and the energy crisis (at least if
you insist on going nuclear-free) seem to drive some speakers into a panic. While those topics are not my
specialty, I know enough about the world to recognize these problems are but new
variations on past problems that seemed formidable but proved eminently
solvable. Who remembers “acid rain” or “the hole in the Ozone layer”? They were
solved by human ingenuity, and I am confident that the problems presently
before us can likewise be solved.
If the religious dimension that we are exploring here can contribute
anything, it is confidence. For ages, religious people have faced
hardships but relied on the basic trust that “God will provide”. The divisions
in society too can be relativized, lightened, by looking at the transcendent
dimension. Let us overcome all despondency and focus on the difference we can
make. Let us ennoble the world!
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