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Magic Monday

It's getting toward midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.

The picture? I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. I'm currently tracing my Martinist lineage. That's rendered complex by the Martinist tradition that one does not name one's initiator, so we'll have to go back through less evasive routes. Both of the last two honorees, and most of the other Martinist lineages in existence, were also taught and influenced by this man, Robert Ambelain, a prolific writer and occult scholar whose work extended from astrology and Freemasonry to Druidry and Martinism. Ambelain was born in 1907; he became an astrologer in the 1920s, proceeded to become a major figure in the Martinist scene and a bishop in one of the French Gnostic churches, played a central role in reviving several defunct occult orders, published 42 books, and earned the Croix de Guerre for his service to France during the Second World War. He died in 1997.

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To both JMG and the commentariat: is there any merit to claims that the AFA is a racist hate group? I've been visiting their website and reviewing some of their materials, and they strike me as very reasonable (at least on the surface). Since the Anglo-Saxon Gods are a major part of my religious practice now, and the AFA has a decent real world presence, I've been considering applying for membership.

Edited 2023-06-26 04:34 (UTC)

I have no idea. I don't have a lot of contact with Asatru circles; I know there have been some groups connected with that scene that are fond of armbands and jackboots, but I also know that accusations along those lines have been flung at groups that don't deserve it. Anyone else?

So, I do not have any close contact with AFA and I may be mistaken, but I was also taking a look at their website after they came up in one of last week's comments as an example of an organization focused more on doing its own thing than on decrying others.

From what I've seen then and now, AFA is a "Folkish" group. Folks like the SPLC will tell you that "folkish" is just code for "racist," but folks who use the label mostly have a more nuanced way of describing it, but it's one of the lightning rod issues among Germanic polytheists. My understanding is that those of a folkish persuasion believe that 1) most religions do/should have some link with the ethnicity that historically practiced it, 2) that worship of the Germanic Gods is historically linked with people of Northern European ethnicity, and 3) it's right and proper for at least some modern groups to insist that if you want to be a part of this historically-ethnically-linked religion, you should be a part of that ethnicity.

Now, notice I used "ethnicity" here, in part to skate around the core issue that causes most of the fighting: by "ethnicity," do we really just mean race? From what I've gathered, different folkish groups come down on this differently. Some seem to really mean "it's for white folks," others want you to have some amount of ancestry from Germanic-language speaking countries, and some seem to embrace a more cultural definition of "ethnicity" - if you speak a Germanic language (like English) and were raised in culture predominantly shaped by a Germanic culture (like America coming from England), then sure, you're part of the Folk.

What seems to cause most of the fighting is a combination of two factors: 1) the fact that any kind of White/Germanic ethnicity exclusivity is viewed as morally repugnant by many folks these days, no matter the fine points, and 2) the belief that such beliefs are attempts to put out up respectable front for secret full-on, Hitler-loving, goose-stepping, Sieg Heiling Nazism. This is not helped by the fact that some actual, self-describing Nazis have adopted some Germanic polytheistic beliefs, practices, and symbolism, which leads some folks to treat all Germanic polytheistic beliefs, practices, and symbolism as potential dog whistles for Nazism, and doubly so if folks start talking about what blood you have or what soil your ancestors came from.

Now, for the AFA specifically, I have seen some video clips of its founder, Steve McNallen, saying some stuff that sounds rather a lot like actual white supremacy (not the current hot definition, but what folks would have meant by those words a few decades ago). I do not know the degree to which he's still involved, whether he still holds those beliefs, or if they have anything to do with what the AFA teaches or does now, but it was enough for me personally to think "maybe this isn't all PC nonsense." I just haven't looked into it much since then.

Sorry for not having anything more definitive, but I hope this helps!

Thanks, Jeff! This is quite similar to what I've discovered so far. I did see some clips from McNallen that struck me as borderline as far as White nationalism/supremacy might go. But having some controversial views on race does not necessarily make one a racist. Do you happen to recall where those video clips can be found? They might not be the ones that I saw, and so it might provide a clearer picture of the situation. McNallen retired as leader of the AFA in 2016 (I think) but I do not know how active he is in still guiding the organization. That said, the current leadership still speaks quite highly of him (and that might be quite justified, for all I currently know) and so I'm guessing the AFA's current teaching is still heavily influenced by his thought.

FWIW, I'm mostly finished with reading McNallen's book "Asatru: A Native European Spirituality." I haven't found anything overtly racist, or even anything I'd think of as covertly racist. But maybe I missed something.

I suppose my primary concern would be if the AFA actually condones (in secret or not) hatred for non-White races and/or teaches that the White race is superior to all other races. At least, that's how I'd define actual racism.

Hmmm, I'm not positive, but it might have been one of these two videos by Ocean Keltoi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6SXC2mRS34
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLpFU9J1mfk

As you can tell from the titles, he does equate Folkishness with Racism, and he's against it. For some context, Ocean Keltoi seems to have some very progressive views, but in all the videos I've seen of him expressing them, he's done so in a measured and mostly respectful way. So, there's a definite viewpoint there, but he doesn't seem like a ranting ideologue. As such, I might recommend trying to find a pro-McNallen source to compare this with, if it does have the clips I vaugely remember.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

brenainn - 2023-06-26 17:53 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

brenainn - 2023-06-26 23:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

jruss - 2023-06-27 02:55 (UTC) - Expand

Maybe I should have said I belong to the Odinic Rite which does have people in the US.
The AFA has done well it's much bigger and if you are after community that's where I would go.
Steve McNallen has written constantly about Love of people not hate of others.
The non folkish heathen groups I have been involved with, have tended to be very progressive very woke and very intolerant.
Cealin

Thanks for both of your comments, Cealin. I am inclined to agree with much of what you've written. Since I do not think it is racist or hateful for Amerindian (and similar indigenous/ancestral) religions to be restricted to Amerindians, I do not think that forms of Asatru that have a similar racial/ethnic component are necessarily racist. As I said in my reply to Jeff, I think White racism involves actual hatred for non-White races and/or a belief that the White race is superior to all other races. So far, I'm not finding anything like that in the AFA's teachings.

In perusing Natural Magic I have been studying (but not practicing) Hoodoo and came to a thought that may apply here.

It seems we have two systems of Hoodoo, Open and Closed. Now I MUST stress this point every clearly - Open is not superior or inferior to Closed and visa versa. Let me say this again one is not better then the other.

If you forbears practiced a form of spirituality that you are rediscovering and you are very fortunate to have a living mentor or written instructions then you can approach that spiritual discipline with a different slant then someone who has no cultural connection with it.

Now reading about the AFA - I get the sense that we may have two concurrent systems that embody what Buddhist call the "Two Truths". How that would play out would depend upon ones starting point.

For example if you decided to connect with Odin and you had no ethnic connection, no in depth knowledge of the theology and no connection with people who practice then you would need to follow an "Open Odin" path - initiation, cultural study, dialogue and respect for those who practice would be baseline behavior. If in the process you get the hint that this is not for you then be respectful and move on.

If you were born into AFA and know people who practice and have a good, if unrefined idea of it and follow the culture then you can participate in the "Closed Odin" path - I would presume a lot of the formalities would be unnecessary but it would require a different process of study and spiritual dialogue and untimely an evolution of the very meaning of the AFA faith for yourself.

There are a lot of shades of grey in this - I am half Scandinavian by blood but culturally I grew up in multicultural polyglot southern California. I would not presume the "Closed Odin" path at all.

That is an interesting way of looking at it. One thing that did occur to me before is that it is possible to have both a folkish and open version of Asatru, and for both to be legitimate forms of the religion. This is especially so if there is more than one god who answers to the name Thor or Odin or so on. I suspect the situation of multiple Jesii isn't limited to deities named "Jesus."

As a folkish heathen myself in the UK I would say we see our Gods as linked to our people/ancestors in a similar way that native north American Indians do. So there is a racial component. However none of my group "Hate" any other people or groups. Having a preference for worshiping and socializing with a particular group of people is an expression of love not hate
Cealin

Personally, I would recommend The Troth -- in addition to having a significant real world presence, their lore program and courses are excellent. Also, the AFA's Declaration of Purpose groups all white people together as if part of a single monoculture ("All native religions spring from the unique collective soul of a particular race."), not taking into account particular groups of people like Slavs and Celts whose cultures were not the same as the Germanic or Norse.

Thank you for the suggestion. I've looked over The Troth's website and I've encountered what, for me, are red flags. They have a DEI committee, and some of the position statements and official announcements on the "Latest News" page of their website leads me to think that the organization is probably on the "woke side" of things. I wouldn't be a good fit in such an organization.

On the subject of the AFA and a monocultural view of White people, that's a very fair point. An Englishman isn't a Frenchman, and neither are Polish. The cultures are distinct. But the situation in the United States is a bit different. I suppose we don't have much of a real culture to begin with. Different European peoples blended together, and a pan-European approach might be more tenable here. I'm not sure, though. I'll have to meditate about this aspect of the issue.

I checked out The Troth a few years ago and they seemed to have gone all-in on the wokeness craze. From their web site, it seems readily apparent that they are totally intolerant of any political views that stray even an inch from their own, i.e. whatever the preferred woke/prog flavor of the month happens to be.

IIRC, this is the group Stephen Flowers (pen-name: Edred Thorsson) founded back in the early 90s. Not long after founding it, he quickly excommunicated from his own group because of his past associations with the Temple of Set (a rather edgy LHP initiatory organization); some of the membership base had a real aversion to anything connected to ceremonial magic and likely didn't want the group to get caught up in the Satanic Panic moral hysteria that was real big at the time. The woman who took over the group ended up leading it in a rather leftward direction and laid the groundwork for the sorry state it's in today.

I'm not a Heathen myself, though I did seriously consider it a few years back after doing a ton of background research on the Norse/Germanic religion and the modern-day attempts to revive it, and consider myself to be an amateur scholar on comparative religions, FWIW. So take the following with a hefty grain of salt.

On that first bit:

"Racist hate group" today has mostly devolved into a neoliberal establishmentarian, thought-stopping slur-word for any human endeavor in the contemporary West that strays too far from the imperial orthodoxy of pseudo-cosmopolitan globalism. Yes, there are some historical groups that are deserving of this term (like the KKK, Nation of Islam, ect.), but the self-appointed "hate watchers" of today massively overstate the influence of a few selected examples over today's affairs, and of course has zero shame in conflating other, more currently-relevant groups when them; when in fact they usually have nothing much at all to due with historic "hate groups." As our gracious host as pointed out on several occasions, "hate" is to today's comfortable classes what "sex" was to the Victorian middle classes. "Hate-watching" has become the new form of heresy-hunting for those eager to score brownie points within those circles.

On AFA in particular:

To me, they seem magnitudes less hateful than their (very loud) detractors from the left/progressivist side of Germanic Neopaganism. From what I've seen, the average AFAer just wants to do their thing and be left alone. Sure, AFA's web site proclaims wignat (white nationalist) sorts of views on race (which I personally find rather cringe, but to each their own) and see their form of Heathenry as being foremost an ethnic religion. But so what? If someone doesn't agree with their views, there's plenty of other Heathen groups for them to choose from. Why can't people just do their own thing and leave others alone?

It does seem like AFA is one of the few modern pagan groups in the US who has successfully (besides maybe ADF) built local pagan communities and has actually established brick-and-mortar places of worship. Perhaps there's some envy going on, coming from the terminally-online type of pagan who can't even set up a proper temple in their living room, much less in a public place.

I think primarily, leftist Germanic pagans hate AFA and similar groups with such zeal because AFA membership tends to be comprised primarily of ordinary, working class white people, which is the primary demographic that is very fashionable and permissible for the affluent/comfortable classes to hate on in the current year. Leftist/Prog pagans OTOH tend to come from the latter classes. As per usual these days, most of the genuine hate seems to comes from those who are shouting the loudest and accusing everyone else of being hateful bigots.

On the Folkish ideology in general, I find it to be rather lacking philosophically, among other things. Like practically all of the alt-spirituality that emerged out of the 1960s counterculture, these movements are based a ton more on emotionalism, sentimentalism, and a sense of resentment against the Christian overculture, rather than any set of reasoned, systematic views on the Divine. Some Folkish views on the gods seem to border on atheism; like the notion that the gods are merely a product of the ethnic groups that worship them. The seems to reduce the Divine to mere anthropological and sociological phenomena (this rivals the "archetypalist" view embraced by other types of neopagans). The massive time-discontinuity of practice and belief between pre-Christian peoples and today is probably a major factor at play, and something that has plagued all the forms of "authenticity"-seeking modern paganism in general.

Having said all of that, if you happen to work in a PMC-adjacent career field or swim in that sort of social circle, public knowledge of you associating with a group like AFA could become a seriously liability to your reputation.

I do find it pretty sad that there isn't much of a middle-ground, third option between the woke/wignat binary that plagues much of Heathenry today. There is however a marginal "sect" of Germanic paganism, Theodism, which might be to your liking if you don't mind very pedantic reconstructionism with an exclusively Anglo-Saxon focus. They do seem to do a very thorough job keeping ALL politics out of their public materials and group functions, which is a refreshing (IMO) thing to see in this current year.

Let me just second causticus's recommendation to look into Theodism, especially if your interest is in the Anglo-Saxon Gods specifically. The Ealdrice Theod is the currently most active group and has gotten the blessing of the founder of Theodism, Garman Lord. From the outside looking in, it seems mostly due to the very active efforts of Thorbeorht Ealdorblotere, the current Cyning (Sacred King). While I am less drawn to their very reconstructionist approach, they have put out some extremely well-researched books.

Their website: https://ealdrice.org/
Their Lulu Store: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/haliggyldbooks

This looks very interesting, Jeff. Except for Mithras, my devotion is mostly to the Anglo-Saxon Gods. Theodism might very well be a good option for me.

Having done a little research the past hour or so, I will say that I find the "Sacred King" thing a bit off-putting. Do you know much about that aspect? I don't want to misunderstand it or otherwise get an inaccurate impression.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

jprussell - 2023-06-27 00:27 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

causticus - 2023-06-27 01:11 (UTC) - Expand

Thanks for this. I'll think over several of your points here, and I'll also look into Theodism. Fortunately, I am not a member of the PMC nor do I run in those social circles. Most of my social circle consists of White working class people. I don't imagine AFA membership would cost me any social standing.

Re: Asatru Folk Assembly

(Anonymous) - 2023-06-27 00:09 (UTC) - Expand

There is a current schism happening in the AFA ranks after someone was allowed in to the organization that has a past criminal conviction for possession of child pornography. This has given some folks the opportunity to see the groups internal dynamics and what they believe their purpose is, and some of that is available here: https://twitter.com/FolkishFacts/status/1672781123070377985

One of the statements mentioning their avowed ability to conquer and dominate "lesser peoples" was particularly illuminating.

I'll look into the accusations made by "FactsAboutFolkish" in that Twitter link. Thank you.

Folkish Heathenism involves ancestor worship. That means that if your ancestors aren't broadly germanic, there's almost certainly a more suitable way of doing ancestor worship for you, plus worshipping someone else's ancestors and not your own is icky, in a cuckoldy kind of way.

My own genealogical research and an ancestry DNA test all confirm that I am entirely of European heritage, and mostly Germanic peoples at that. But also Celtic ancestry as well. I'm very much drawn to ancestor worship, which is probably one (though not the sole) reason why I am considering Asatru. Though if something like reincarnation is correct, the question of ancestry might be more muddled.

Further, as a folkish Heathen, my view on the wokesters who denounce my faith is that they are not Heathens at all, just a bunch of gay communists wearing stolen semiotics like a flayed skin.

I suspect there is a great deal of hypocrisy involved. I can't imagine woke critics of folkish Heathenism would denounce Amerindians for excluding non-Amerindians from their religion. But then, I don't pay a lot attention to the woke crowd these days. The Twitter link provided above seems to be an account whose hatred for the AFA and folkish adherents is quite palpable. It brings me back to Causticus's comment about the critics of the AFA coming off as significantly more hateful than the AFA itself. I find that rather telling.

_Being Viking_ by Jeff Calico is a history of Norse paganism in the US. It is a bit dated, published 2018, but is pretty extensive on the history of AFA and other groups, allegations of racism, teachings and practice, etc.

Rita

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