Tag Archives: morality

Uncategorized

Polytheistic Theology: Avenue of Avenues

4 Comments

When we think of theology, we typically think of monotheistic theology, especially the structures found within Abrahamic faiths. But theology itself is not inherently monotheistic – in fact, theology is simply the study of deity. Because most polytheistic faiths are inherently pluralistic, it is safe to say that it is impossible to identify a single theology that unifies polytheistic belief. That’s part of what makes polytheistic faiths so beautiful.

It’s easy to prove how impossible it is to identify a single theology for polytheistic faiths. Take Hinduism, for example, and examine the way many sects of Hinduism base their faith around the idea of a unified plurality – there are multiple deities, but those deities are all aspects of the greater whole. Then take another polytheistic faith, like Asatru, that bases faith around the concept of multiple distinct deities, all separate and completely unique from one another. While there are certainly connections between polytheistic faiths like Hinduism and Asatru, the way that deity is approached is distinct between them.

Because of that distinction, a singular approach to theology – the study of deity – is impossible. However, I do think that it is possible, within each polytheistic faith, to approach deity through multiple strands of exploration. That is what I propose is the best way to approach the study of deity through polytheistic faiths, and I am proposing a framework for a polytheist to use in their own study of deity within their own religions, rather than proposing that deity can be understood the same way through all polytheistic faiths.

Note: When I say deity, I mean the essence of deity or what makes a god a god (what makes gods gods).

I believe the following components can be explored through all polytheistic faiths:

  • Cosmogony
  • Cosmology
  • Theogony
  • Sacred Calendars, Rites, and Practices
  • Eschatology
  • Axiology
  • Pneumatology
  • Psychology
  • Semiotics & Symbology
  • Sexology
  • Sophology
  • Occultology

Cosmogony is the study of the creation of the universe (or multiverse). Studying how the cosmos originated in accordance with a particular polytheistic tradition through myths and legends allows us to begin to develop a framework with which to approach deity through our respective faiths.

Cosmology is the study of the universe (or multiverse). Different faiths propose different models of the world. For example, in many shamanistic traditions, there are three worlds while in the Norse view, there are nine worlds. Understanding the cosmos is a necessary foundation before exploring what deity actually is can really get underway.

Theogony refers to the lineage of the gods. Every pantheon has a unique structure and hierarchy (though it can be argued that some pantheons aren’t hierarchal). It seems self-evident that the pursuit of theology requires the understanding of theogony.

Sacred Calendars, Rites, and Practices. This particular component is really three-in-one, but every polytheistic faith has a calendar of sacred rites and practices. Since most (if not all) polytheistic faiths are orthopraxic (focused on right practice), this is the most direct route of exploring theology – again, when I say theology here, I mean the pursuit of the understanding of deity.

Eschatology is the study of death, judgment, and final destination. In essence, it is the study of the afterlife. Every faith has an idea of what happens to a person after they pass from this world. Not all polytheistic faiths believe in a final judgment, but some do. This is an area where the greatest discrepancies between faiths exist, and it may also be an area where the greatest insights into the nature of deity can be found.

Axiology is the study of values and ethics. In other words, the study of morality. At first glance, it may not be obvious what this has to do with theology. However, the myths and legends of each tradition shape the morality of the people who follow those traditions. Understanding the ethics held by a particular culture can enhance the pursuit of theology.

Pneumatology is the study of spiritual beings and phenomena. Beliefs about mythical creatures like dragons, sirens, mermaids, brownies, kelpies, the Fae, ghosts, landvaettir, etc. This is where understanding the cosmology of a polytheistic faith comes into play as well, as some traditions have worlds set aside specifically for certain types of entities.

Psychology is the study of the soul, and it is the closest term I could find to describe what I actually mean. When I say psychology here, I don’t mean the traditional Western version of the study of the human psyche. I wish there were a better term (so if someone has an idea for one, I’m all for suggestions). What I mean is the study of the constructs of the soul-the parts of the soul. Many polytheistic traditions propose that the soul is not a singularity but a plurality, constructed of a myriad of parts that are meant for particular purposes. Understanding the way in which the soul is viewed is vital in the pursuit of theology, as the soul is the expression of the most inherent divinity a living being has in its possession.

Semiotics & Symbology is the study of signs, symbols, and their interpretations and uses. This includes things like the study of divination and omens. While some symbols are fairly universal – like the serpent that represents wisdom – others are not as clear-cut. Understanding the way that a particular tradition utilizes semiotics & symbology helps create a clearer path towards the understanding of deity.

Sexology is the study of sex. Each religion approaches sex in different ways, and in many traditions, the act of sex is one the most powerful ways to experience divinity. There aren’t many polytheistic faiths that view sex in a negative light, and I say that simply because there may be a few that do – I do not proclaim to be an expert on all the polytheistic faiths that exist, and I do not wish to potentially exclude even one.

Sophology is the study of wisdom. Defining wisdom is a very difficult thing to do, as it is a very abstract concept. Generally speaking, it is the ability to take acquired knowledge and put it to good use. In many polytheistic traditions, the study of wisdom is equated with the study of the myths and the cultures with which the traditions started. But because wisdom relies on application, it assumes that a person will take the myths and cultural learning they have developed and will incorporate it into their own practices. Applying the knowledge gained of deity through the myths is, perhaps, one of the most direct ways to approach theology, although it is by no means the only way.

Occultology is the study of the occult, meaning mystery or secret. It is generally associated with magic, and there are several polytheistic traditions that incorporate magic into their practice. There are many different types of magic, but the one that deals most directly with deity is Theurgy, which is magic done with the aid of deity.

Many of these components, on their own, require extensive research, and many of them weave in and out of one another. These are the strands that I see throughout every polytheistic faith – though each faith has its own unique set of these strands.

I’ve read multiple books on polytheistic theology, and every time, I see the same problem arise – there is no unified set of principles that underlie every polytheistic tradition. Some polytheistic traditions venerate ancestors, others don’t. Some believe in pluralistic deities, others in unified plurality.

So this is my attempt to address that issue – rather than looking for underlying principles that exist in all polytheistic traditions, I decided to look for the categories of principles that weave through all polytheistic traditions. Sometimes, to simplify, you have to complicate, and looking at categories instead of principles isn’t an obvious thing to do. The stark truth is that we still live in a predominantly monotheistic culture, and we all often fall into the trap of trying to collapse things down into smaller parts.

As polytheists, we need to work on expanding outward, breaking things into larger pieces rather than collapsing things down into smaller ones. So what I have done here is propose a framework, an avenue of avenues of exploration for those who are interested in the pursuit of theology from a polytheistic perspective.

Uncategorized

What is Morality?

3 Comments

I stumbled across this question today: ” When it comes to questions about ethics what is the yardstick in Asatru to measure if something is right or wrong?”

And there is no good answer because morality is relative. It boils down to the question, “If killing one person would prevent the deaths of millions, would you kill the one to save the many or save the one?”

In my experience, most people faced with this ethical dilemma will choose to save the one person they know they can save and hope that something will happen to keep the person from killing millions of others. It’s the whole, “If you could go back and time and kill Hitler, if by doing so you would save millions of lives, would you?”

Most people say no to that question because there is an inherent understanding that changing the past is somehow intrinsically wrong. There are a few people who say yes, but the majority say no, even though Hitler did incredibly horrible things. In some ways, Hitler taught us who we don’t want to be, which is just as important as learning who we do want to be.

I think, in Heathenry, acting morally comes down to a decision – your own sense of ethics vs. the community’s sense of ethics. There are times when a community’s sense of ethics are flawed, when persecution is embraced, and that’s when you can’t allow yourself to be fully swayed by the ethics of the society you live within.

At the same time, if your sense of morality tells you that a man should be killed for killing someone else, but the community thinks that imprisonment is a more viable option, then your sense of ethics needs to be put aside in favor of the community’s.

Figuring out when your ethics should be embraced over the community’s sense of ethics and when you should embrace the community’s sense of ethics is, in my mind, what defines morality.

I might think it a kindness to allow terminally ill patients to euthanize themselves, but society says that it’s cruel and illegal, so I abide by that decision. Laws are, for the most part, what guide the overall framework for society’s moral stance.

Morality is an incredibly hard concept to define because it’s more than a simple right vs. wrong argument. Because sometimes what seems right is the wrong thing to do, and sometimes what seems wrong is the right thing to do. We don’t live in a world where right and wrong are so clear-cut that mistakes can’t be made. But it’s through those mistakes that we learn where we stand on moral issues, and it’s also how we grow into our own humanity.

Uncategorized

The Gods are Amoral

7 Comments

I’ve been watching the anime Noragami Aragoto, and the basic premise of the anime is that there is a god Yato attempting to get his own shrine so he can become more powerful. There was one event that happened where Yato said that it is people that decide what is right and wrong, for gods can do no wrong. And yes, an anime did set me to thinking on philosophical/religious terms. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, and it probably won’t be the last. I tend to take my inspiration from the world around me, so it isn’t weird to me that something in an anime struck me as interesting.

Anyway, I started thinking about how each of the Gods are different. Odin, Loki, and Tyr all have different personalities, and each of them want different things from the world. But the Gods never question their own morality. In the myths, there is no internal struggle faced by any of the Gods over whether the course of action they are taking is right or wrong. The Gods just act. It could be said that the Gods act in their own self-interest at all times, and I don’t think that statement would be inaccurate.

Before I get further into that, I’d like to clarify what amorality is. Most people are familiar with morality and immorality. Amorality is the lack of a sense of morality altogether. If an action can be considered neither positive nor negative, then that is an amoral action. Essentially, saying that the Gods are amoral is saying that they lack a conscience that tells them wrong from right.

I’m sure that a lot of people will disagree with me, and I imagine one of the criticisms this idea will receive is the question, “If the Gods are amoral, how can they act in loving ways?”

To answer that question, however, I need to explain the difference between amorality and sociopathy. Amorality simply means that you have no sense of right or wrong. There is no distinction. A sociopath has a sense of right and wrong but chooses to disregard it. There’s a very fine line of difference between the two, but understanding the difference is the key to understanding the answer to how Gods can still act lovingly even without possessing a sense of morality.

In my mind, picturing the Gods as amoral helps resolve some difficult contradictions. It explains why the Gods can embrace Loki as one of their own – no matter what he does, he is still a God. It explains why the actions of Odin can seem sometimes noble and sometimes ignoble – he breaks oaths without much thought.

The Gods are complex – much more complex than a human being, and, let’s face it, us humans are pretty complex beings. We project our humanity onto the Gods, forgetting along the way that the Gods aren’t human. They’re Other. We have a spark of divinity inside of us, thanks to Loki, and that spark is what allows us to relate somewhat to the Gods. But I think that we too often forget that the Gods aren’t human.

So we end up painting the Gods with our own sense of morality, then get upset when the actions of the Gods don’t add up to what we have grown to expect. As an example, a large portion of pagans view Loki as evil incarnate, but Loki isn’t inherently evil. In fact, he is morally ambiguous, which is really just another way to say that he is an amoral being. Of all the Gods, it is perhaps Loki and other trickster Gods who demonstrate the truth of the amorality of Gods the most clearly.

I think the most difficult part of this concept to grasp is how the Gods can function without a sense of morality. For us, as human beings, we need a conscience. We need to distinguish between right actions and wrong actions in order to understand our paths through our lives. The idea of a lack of morality, of a lack of a conscience, is immediately alien and difficult to imagine. This is, perhaps, the reason that the Gods defy human understanding.

Uncategorized

Tyr’s Path

10 Comments

I’ve talked about Odin’s path and Loki’s path, but they aren’t the only paths I follow. Considering it’s Tuesday, it seems appropriate to discuss Tyr today. Tyr is an interesting god because he’s one of the gods that doesn’t have a lot of surviving lore. The best known story about Tyr is, of course, the role he played in chaining Fenrir and how he lost his arm in the process.

Tyr, who raised Fenrir and was essentially best friends with the wolf, was the god instrumental in chaining Fenrir. I’ve heard a lot of interesting interpretations over the years, most falling into the category of “Fenrir was a danger that needed to be contained,” but there were others along the lines of, “If Fenrir was never chained, he would have never posed a threat.” One assumes that Fenrir was an immediate threat – the other, that Fenrir was turned into a threat. I haven’t really reached a conclusion one way or the other because both sides have merit.

And that’s really where Tyr’s path begins – looking at both sides of an argument. Or, in cases where there are multiple perspectives, viewing the situation from every perspective. In a way, this is a talent that every polytheist has to develop because we’re dealing with multiple deities with vastly different personalities on a daily basis. The only real option is to adapt and learn to deal with it.

Because of that, I try to look at the story of the chaining of Fenrir from Tyr’s perspective. Odin, someone whom he highly respects and trusts to tell him the truth in all matters has told him that Fenrir is a threat. Tyr, viewing Fenrir as one of his best friends (the two were practically inseparable before the chaining), is in turmoil because he knows that Fenrir could pose a threat. But he doesn’t know that for sure. So, at first, he resists the idea. After all, they are best friends, right? Then suppose something happens that makes Tyr start doubting his friend – something unusual in his words or behavior – and Tyr starts to wonder if maybe Odin is right. Tyr’s primary duty is to keep the universe balanced – to maintain order. The Irminsul is his symbol for a reason – he is the scales. If Tyr felt that the universe was in danger of falling out of balance, then his duty has to come before his friendship.

Tyr doesn’t make excuses when he tricks Fenrir into being chained. He doesn’t lament the loss of his arm. In a way, it’s like he knows that he has to make a sacrifice to balance out the terrible fate he is inflicting on his best friend. Sure, the loss of an arm isn’t equivalent to being chained up for eternity (or until Ragnarok – I’m still not sold on the apocalypse, to be frank), but it is a sacrifice. A payment of a debt, perhaps. It’s hard to really figure that all out because there has been so much lore lost.

Moving back to what it’s like to walk Tyr’s path – it’s not easy. I don’t think any of the paths the gods set before us are easy ones to walk, and why should they be? Life is a journey, and journeys are boring if nothing ever goes wrong. We get our best stories from our worst happenstances, ironically enough. And the good and bad have to balance out. That’s where Tyr’s path really comes into play. Walking his path, I’ve learned, is about viewing events from all sides. When something goes wrong in my life, that’s when I need to look for an opportunity to turn it around and make it better. When something goes well in my life, I’ve learned to be thankful and wary – good is necessarily succeeded by bad and vice versa.

I feel, in some ways, that Tyr’s path is really about utilizing your personal luck (hamingja) as best as you can. Some people argue that doing good deeds for the sake of doing good deeds is selfish, but that’s a convoluted statement, and I think that doing good deeds is essential to maintaining positive luck. If it’s selfish behavior, it’s selfish for all the right reasons. Conversely, becoming more aware of the effects that my actions have on others has given me insight into what deeds aren’t considered good ones. I think this varies for everyone, based on your own set of moral standards, and I think that’s okay. We’re all different, we all hold different values, and the gods – considering how varied their own personalities are – surely understand that. After all, I can’t imagine Odin and Loki getting along if they didn’t have a healthy respect for the different approaches to morality taken by the other.

Anyway, I was starting to feel like this was becoming an Odin and Loki blog, and that was never my intention. I haven’t discussed any of the goddesses yet because I have a harder time working with them, due to certain circumstances of my past, but I do walk the paths of Sigyn and Freyja. I’m not quite comfortable with Frigga yet, which goes back to the circumstances I alluded to, but I’m working on it.

I’m curious, though – if any of you walk Tyr’s path, and what your thoughts are on that path.

Uncategorized

Honor: My Interpretation

Leave a comment

Here’s my second essay on the Nine Noble Virtues, the one on Honor.

Honor

Honor is probably the most difficult of all of the virtues to define because it is such an intangible idea. Socrates said “The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be,” and I think that captures honor – the way I understand it – pretty well.

Every society has its own view of morality, and staying true to the moral code or ethical code is generally perceived as being honorable. But I think that honor is more than that – I think it has to be more than that, as the moral code our society embraces is not always one I view as being honorable.

For me, being honorable is equivalent to being trustworthy and worthy of the respect you gain through your own efforts. It is an essential quality of life, and I think if you replace the word “honor” with “respect” the idea becomes a little easier to grasp. Respect is something we earn through our deeds – as is honor. And to defend the reputation we gain after establishing that respect is required if we wish to maintain that respect.

But we all wear a mask. We all pretend to be something – a particular quality, perhaps, like honest, or trustworthy. And it may start out as pretense, or as an exercise to try and better ourselves. The pursuit of self-improvement is an honorable one, and, if we maintain the pretense long enough, it starts to become our truth. The idea that we can “fake it til we make it,” seems like a cop-out, but it isn’t.

Like any muscle must be worked in order to keep it from atrophying, we must work our moral muscles as well. If we wish to be honest people, then we must practice being honest. If we wish to be kind, then we must practice being kind. If we wish to be noble, then we must practice being noble. Our species is one that learns by mimicking others.

If we grow up watching others steal, then we admire thievery and seek to establish ourselves as thieves. If we grow up watching others lie, then we admire deceit and seek to establish ourselves as great manipulators. But if we grow up watching others be honest, then we learn to admire honesty and seek to establish ourselves as truth-tellers. If we grow up watching others be kind, then we learn to admire kindness, and seek to establish ourselves as compassionate.

Honor, therefore, is a very personal thing. What I view as an honorable act may seem dishonorable to someone else because we had vastly different learning experiences growing up, and thus value different actions. For example, a person who has developed a reputation as a great thief will put his honor on the line for a great heist – if he fails, then his reputation (and thus his honor) is destroyed, but if he succeeds, he becomes even more of a legend. For a great detective, catching such a thief will allow him to maintain his honor, but failing to do so will destroy his reputation.

So honor is different for every person – we all view morality in different lights. On my part, I admire great teachers, and I aim to become a great teacher myself, after obtaining the necessary education. But I’ve already started to build a reputation as a good teacher because I teach my classmates when they need help, and I’ve established a trust with them. I can easily lose that trust if I fail to adhere to my own understanding of what makes a teacher a good one.

And that’s an important fact about honor – it can be gained, maintained, and lost easily. It takes effort to maintain a good reputation, and if a person’s not willing to put in the work required to create a good reputation or maintain it after it’s achieved, then the honor is lost. Respect is lost. And once you lose someone’s respect, part of your honor is destroyed, and there’s no real way to repair that rift.