Fucking prove it.

Written by thehouseofvines

As a tribalist and traditionalist my political beliefs have never really mapped well onto the Right-Left dichotomy of the American (and more broadly European) system, leaving me without a party or an interest in participating in this country’s institutions since I began thinking seriously about such matters. (Longer even, as I haven’t voted since I was a teenager. I did it once, didn’t like it, and decided never again for me.)

This is why it has amused me when people persist in calling me a Nazi, despite the numerous posts I’ve written breaking down all my criticisms of the ideology (for instance, my rejection of the nation-state; of socialism; and of industrialization and modernism, all of which were such foundational principles that they’re in the fucking name itself), that my ancestors fought and died fighting fascism, and I even quit using all representations of the Sonnenrad Heinrich Himmler designed for Wewelsburg castle (even though the symbol was ultimately unpopular and actively opposed by the Nazis themselves and my decision to use it had nothing to do with its origin) lest there be any confusion.

So it’s not that I believe that one’s polytheism should be politics-free (I’m not even sure that that is possible, although I’ve attempted to create apolitical space in the past so that we could come together despite our differences to worship and discuss sacred things for it to inevitably get hijacked) it’s just that I’m really uncomfortable with the ways in which people go about combining them, especially when they attempt to ascribe political and party affiliation to our Gods, as John Beckett, Tess Dawson, Sarenth Odinsson, the r/hellenism and r/dionysus forums on Reddit, and so many others have. Now, keep in mind, these people are not making inferences based on the principles of a given religious tradition, speculatively engaging with myths and sacred texts, or other perfectly acceptable (if incorrectly applied) types of exegesis.

No.

They are presuming to act as the mouthpieces for the Gods (as if our Mighty Ones were not capable of communicating their wills and desires on their own) and what’s worse (and inevitable with such individuals) they are claiming this as their own sole prerogative, and damning any who would dare to follow their example, especially if they happen to arrive at differing conclusions and sloganeering.

It’s all so tedious and predictable, and would be laughable if history wasn’t littered with uncountable examples of the atrocities that all too often follow such talk. Actually, scratch that. There’s precious little that’s funny about blasphemy and hubris (excluding the punishment this brings down which can be a laugh riot, provided you’re a safe distance away when it happens.)

This, to bring it back around, is why I am a traditionalist and tribalist. Our traditions have safety mechanisms built in to protect against such impiety and the countless evils that this vice unleashes into a community. Probably the most important being: let’s take it to the diviners and oracles. You think Zeus supports your “No Kings” riot? Fucking prove it. And accept the consequences if it turns out mantikē has a different story to tell.

For instance, one of my strongest detractors, who has jumped in every time my name’s come up in various fora to shout about how evil I am and how horribly I’m misrepresenting things whether people want to hear it or not for years and years, finally had the good sense to take it to the mat and, much to her surprise, discovered that Dionysos affirmed the positions I have been advocating this whole time. (Though she’s still mistaken about my alleged fascism.) And you know, respect to her for not only checking but having the moral courage to admit it publicly. That certainly puts her ahead of the folks I’ve been discussing.

And that’s not only why I embrace the tribalist identity (or rather it’s one of numerous reasons) but have no interest in the pan-polytheist movement which reached its nadir circa 2010-2014 or the endless communal brouhahas. I can say, “Those people simply ain’t my people; why would I care what they think?” and instead focus on those who are, and the wonderful things we are doing together for our Gods and spirits. 

23 thoughts on “Fucking prove it.”

  1. While I don’t always agree with your political views- which you are entitled to- I never got the vibe that you are a fascist in any way.
    While I’m a Marxist and a polytheist, I do keep the two separate. I don’t belief mixing politics with religion is in the best interest of anyone. Nothing good comes from it. A politician canner religious but his politics should be religion free so that they can serve the people, not just their base.

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    1. In our present systems, I tend to think politicians are there to serve their own interests and screw over their constituents. But I appreciate your more optimistic view.

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        1. Yup. In capitalism everything’s got a price. For politicians that price is almost always their soul, however virtuous their intentions may have started out.

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          1. and in communism it’s even worse. The price is paid in blood, suffering, and soul and fools fall for it every generation.

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  2. I don’t know if you care to hear about it but a lot of what has been talked about in this post has been on my mind lately and I’ve been thinking about talking about a conclusion that I have come to these past few months. I think I’ll go ahead and get to typing.

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  3. As you know, Life is multiple choice, not binary. There is always a third way, which people are brain washed not to find. After all, Edward Butler was declared a Nazi, and Rhyd defended him and got thrown under the bus for it. John Michael Greer got smeared as well. However, all these people are seeing things in multiple focus.

    Too bad about the rest. I guess they have to have something to rant on to prove that they are the good people. I pity them for the need of always being on the site of the “right.” Life is so much more.

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    1. Yeah, I’ve never pretended I was a good person. Being one requires a lot of hard work, self-sacrifice, and impossible decisions. (As opposed to just seeming one, or declaring yourself to be.) Most damning of all, it handicaps yours efficacy, and getting shit done is too important to me to allow something like morality to get in the way. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love my Gods, I love my people, there are clear lines I will not cross no matter what, and I will not be swayed once I have chosen a course of action, or been told what my Gods need of me, no matter how great the consequences. But these virtues produce nobility, not goodness.

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      1. One thing I never understood was this public signaling of “I am no longer with THOSE PEOPLE.” I figure it was a rite of belonging with the COOL PEOPLE. I have problems with everybody including you. But washing dirty laundry in public? It is simply not done.

        I did wonder about that one person who thought that the Gods should smite you for being you. My ideas about Gods at least from the Roman sense is that They are for Good Governing, which is different from what side They are on. That is not what They do, run around smiting people for political reasons. Smite people, yes, but for hubris.

        As for Beckett, he is conflating Progressivism with Polytheism. I think it is a part of the frustration that various Neo-Pagans feel that the new world promised by Obama is not coming about. A new world is coming about, but right now, we are just muddling through. What that new world is? Not sure, but it seems to be more conservative.

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          1. yep. and I’m reminded in the previous comment, of a Roman saying (I forget the man who said it — I have it saved somewhere but no time to hunt it up): “The Gods will support virtue but They are not there to provide it.” It’s up to us to make the decision to cultivate virtue every day and when we fail, to seek Them out directly or through Their oracles and diviners, and course correct.

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              1. Of course, then people game the system by producing divination that fits their world view or interpreting the divination that way. I am reminded of John Beckett and his various readings of divination such as interpreting Loki’s pronouncements and later Tarot readings. I wonder how does one actually hear the Voice of the Gods without static.

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                1. Several good questions here.

                  With the question about dueling interpretations, then you bring in multiple diviners. If the majority of them receive X then it is probably X. However I wouldn’t automatically discount the diviner who got Y; I would interrogate why their results differed. Are they projecting their own biases onto the mat? Are they picking up on a thread that simply isn’t evident to others yet, or because they looked in a direction no one thought to? Are the Gods intentionally obscuring the results, either from the majority of the diviners, or from the one who got a divergent answer, and if so, why?

                  How competent are the diviners involved, both the majority and minority, specifically how reliable is their record? If they have a 90% reliability rate, I’m going with them even if the answer doesn’t make immediate sense to me, trusting that in time it will. If the person is usually wrong, I’m still going to consider their counsel, but only as one piece of information among the many I already have, because even if it is mostly wrong there might still be a kernel of truth hiding in there.

                  Then there is the question of who are they consulting, and what involvement does that God or spirit have in the situation? Are you certain that that divinity was speaking, or could something else have “jammed the signal” because the diviner was incompetent, didn’t properly ward the space, is lying about who they divine with, or put out an open call without bothering to find out who responded?

                  To answer your other major question: it is essential that the diviner be able to separate themselves from the process, that they report exactly what they saw without addition, subtraction, or projection. They need to make it clear what was communicated, and what is their interpretation, and how they arrived at that interpretation: sometimes they are out of the altered state and providing a rational analysis, and sometimes the God or spirit is still communicating with them, albeit not as directly, so that the interpretation is still partially inspired, and may go beyond what was initially communicated.

                  You also need to determine if the interpretation (and the whole divination for that matter) is intended for an individual or a community, as certain things may come through that wouldn’t be present otherwise, or expressed in a particular way that confounds interpretation. For instance, if I’m getting a message from Dionysos he may allude to something personal and private, which the diviner and interpreter has no way of knowing about, but which he gave to me so that I could be certain of the message transmitted. If someone attempts to interpret that minus the details I possess, they’re going to end up with a wrong answer.

                  And you need to know the skill set of your diviner, the interpreter, if the same individual is performing both tasks or if separate people have been assigned these roles, and how good they are at shifting between those states of consciousness if the person’s doing it alone. For instance, you might have a diviner who sees with exceptional clarity but is shit at interpreting what they’ve seen in ways that the audience can understand, or vice versa, have someone who can’t see what’s standing right in front of them, but is very gifted at teasing out the answer in a jumbled, visionary response. Being able to perform both functions is challenging, which is why in antiquity these roles were often divided among different people, as at Delphi where you had the raving Pythia and then the Prophetes who made sense of the word salad and even converted the message into metrical responses. Today most of us have to do double or triple duty. As a consequence, the diviner often isn’t able to go as deep as they might otherwise be able to, especially if that level of contact with the divine renders them non-functional. I learned as a solitary, meaning I never had interpreters or a ground crew to offer assistance/support afterwards, and consequently I developed the ability to multitask and to transition in a snap. There are both strengths and weaknesses to this approach.

                  But along with all the things that a diviner needs to know and do to be competent, the community or recipient also needs to have been properly trained in how to receive messages from the Holy Powers i.e. how to properly accept and utilize or act upon the message that has been given them, what to accept at face value, and what needs to be teased out further, either through rational analysis or by asking additional questions and getting further information from the source. Is their interpretation honest and clean, or are they projecting their biases onto a perfectly neutral piece of intelligence? What do they do with this information once they’ve been given it? Sit on it and do nothing? Twist it so it conforms to their hopes and expectations and then do what they were planning to all along? Properly interrogate it, and then act in conformity with the message they have been given, whether they like the answer or not? Homer, Xenophon and Herodotos among others are full of examples where the message was spot on, the interpretation is accurate, but the recipient failed to comprehend or make good use of the message that came through, so this isn’t just a failing of us moderns. (They also contain examples where the diviner, or more often the interpreter, turned out to be biased or corrupt, giving the client an incomplete or compromised message which led the recipient into a bad situation.)

                  Even before the message is received the client needs to know how to properly phrase the question. If there is ambiguity, the answer may come out jumbled. If they phrase the question one way, but in their mind are really wanting to know about something else, the God or spirit may choose to answer what was asked, or what was needing an answer even if it wasn’t spoken aloud. That can cause confusion for the interpreter.

                  Divination is not a game, but one of the most important tools and sacraments our Holy Powers have given to us, and it must be treated accordingly by all parties involved. Otherwise it has limited utility or can be actively harmful.

                  This is why when I’m teaching I spend so much time covering this material and driving home things like proper discernment, etiquette, and how to actually make good use of messages received.

                  Note: for the sake of brevity I am combining both diviners and oracles here, though their methods and results and how to interpret and analyze the results may wildly differ.

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                    1. Thank you. I take the professionalism of my craft very seriously because the communication we receive from the Gods and spirits through divination is a true grace. There is a great responsibility in being given such messages to convey And I have seen what happens in traditions which lack this kind of direct access, for instance mainstream Christianity. In fact I’m in the process of helping clean up a mess caused by somebody who made a serious error because he applied guesswork rather than resorting to divination or similar techniques. Since the client is a complete normy with zero experience in esotericism and total faith in the individual my job is that much more difficult, because I can’t badmouth the “expert” even though I keep finding areas they overlooked or were just sloppy or negligent in dealing with, some so obvious even an amateur diviner would have picked up on.

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                  2. All the diviners’ results are filtered through the minds, brains, and feelings of that particular diviner.

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                    1. This is why a good diviner must always strive for utter objectivity and clarity. It’s a cold place to which one must go to do divination well — why I don’t divine for myself if I care about something deeply. We are responsible for translating and interpreting the information we receive as clear and precisely as possible.

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                2. We can’t. But for some people, they ignore the static; or worse, they interpret it to support their personal biases.

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