Heathen Dawn

Spinning off from <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=47&t=001294" target="_blank">Ojuice's thread here</a>, I've begun to wonder what believing in Religio Romana means at all, or why Recon[structionist] pagans choose a particular pantheon.

A Celtic Recon will believe in the Sun God Belenos, and an Egyptian Recon will believe in the Sun God Ra. Now, for the Celtic Recon:

1) Does Ra exist?

2) If so, does the Sun have two gods controlling it - Ra and Belenos?

3) Or is there just one Sun God under many names/faces, of which Ra and Belenos are two?

If the Celtic Recon does not believe in the existence of the Egyptian Sun God Ra, then isn't he guilty of the same elimination prejudice as those Christians and atheists who don't believe in Belenos? (Remember that Christians were called "atheists" in the old Roman Empire because of their disbelief in the Roman pantheon)

If Ra and Belenos are the same - two faces of the same Sun God - then what meaning, other than cultural, does "Celtic Recon" or "Egyptian Recon" or "Hellenismos" or "Religio Romana" have at all?

My point is that any claim of "I am an X reconstructionist" is problematic when it comes to real-world claims. The gods of each culture are separately depicted in their mythologies (eg no interaction between Belenos and Ra). Saying "I believe in Jupiter" is understandable from a cultural point of view (="I identify with the Roman culture, its deities and mythologies") but can hardly be justified as a real-world claim ("Jupiter is the Lord" - but the Greeks say "Zeus is the Lord" - are Jupiter and Zeus the same, or does only one of them exist, or have we two Lords?).

I would assert that reconstructionist paganism merely amounts to playing "ancient X" (where X = Roman, Greek, Celt or whatever); as a belief system, recon paganism doesn't seem to be coherent, being so parochial.

--Heathen Dawn the Secular Pagan

Ojuice5001

Well, first you should know that I'm not that big on the rituals. I have two rituals, both of which I perform every day. The morning ritual is
<a href="http://www.novaroma.org/religio_romana/daily_lararium_e.html" target="_blank">this one</a>, and the evening ritual, which is my own creation, is simply to get on my hands and knees, face east, and say, "Jupiter and Postverta, today was a good day [or, if the day was not a good day, what it was]. May tomorrow be a good day for me and for you." The main aspects of my religiosity are meditation on the Roman gods, using them as explanations for events in the world, an attempt to convert the Christian-and-atheist world, and attempts to make my behavior pleasing to my patron goddess, Postverta. This last brings me to your second question.

I worship the Roman gods rather than the Celts, Egyptians, North Americans, etc., because I believe that they chose me, or rather that one of them did, Postverta of the Past. I was a Christian for a short time, then an atheist, then I decided that neither was the right way to look at the world. I had to find something other than those two to believe in. But how to choose? Various approaches were skepticism, attempts to know divinity through reason (resulting in a rather woolly metaphysics that still has some influence on my thought to this day), and beliefs in specific spiritual presences that have not stood the test of time. One of them, however has. This was a belief that my life was ruled by a spirit who had an affinity to the past. This belief had two qualities that are signs of truth: congruency with known reality, and a tendency to keep on seeming as real as ever. There are a lot of ways that I'm different other people, and it's surprising how many of them can be explained by positing that my habits, circumstances, and appearances are influenced by a being that wants things to change slowly and reflect regressions to states of affairs earlier in the history of my life and the world.

So for two years, I merely believed in a spirit of the past who ruled over my life. In some ways, there is nothing wrong with a belief that simple, and yet an obvious question arises: If I have had contact with this being, why not other people? For a while, this question was a minor one, but when I found out that the Roman pantheon (unlike the majority of pantheons) includes a deity of the past, this was all it took to convince me that this deity of the past was none other than the Roman goddess Postverta. Postverta is a minor goddess, but an authentic part of the Roman pantheon. Just type "Postverta" into a search engine, and you will find a handful of mentions of her. Somehow it seems more plausible that a minor goddess takes interest in me, and claims me as her own, than that a major one does. (I suppose this deity could be a different culture's deity of the past, but the only other one I know of is of the Korean pantheon. It is conceivable that my life is ruled by the Korean god of the past, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem as likely.)

Although much of this is atypical of the process of becoming a Reconstructionist Pagan, one typical part is that many Recons felt drawn by a particular deity, and began to worship that deity and others in his/her pantheon.

So that's my personal anwer, as to what I mean when I say I am a Religio Romana, and why I say it. I'm not exactly a prototypical Religio Romana; in fact I wouldn't rule out the possiblility that I would be better off ceasing to call myself a Religio Romana, though for obvious reasons I should consider them brethren. If you want to know what answer a typical Recon would give, I suggest asking someone else, on another board. (No one else on this board comes even as close as I to being a Reconstructionist.)
1. Yes.
2. Yes. And Apollo, of course.
3. No.

I think the other gods do exist, as separate entities. Some Recons agree with me, while others agree with your third option. (The first is, at best, a rarely held position.) You don't go into detail about why you think option 2 is problematic, but I will try to see what objections a non-polytheist might have to it.

You seem to think that this approach is flawed because it makes the gods seem parochial and isolated. The first thing to get clear is that most historical polytheists did see the gods as parochial in this sense. The Romans did not express surprise over the fact that the Persians worshipped other gods, and consider Ormuzd to be nonexistent or identical with a Roman god. The reaction of quite a few pagans to the first Christian missionaries was to believe that their gods and Yahweh were separate entities from different lands. Whatever else this idea is, it is not a purely modern concept. Celsus said, "The world is governed by various Gods, and divided into provinces. Each nation is run as it ought to be." One nontraditional consequence does follow, and that's the fact that we have to give up saying, "My pantheon created the world, and I know it was mine and not another one." As for the fact that the sun is not part of Italy and therefore not part of the Roman gods' province, my answer is simple--the sun, no less than the earth, could be divided up into territories if anyone wanted to.

But maybe the objector I'm imagining thinks that the gods must not be limited in that way, or if they are they must be unworthy of worship, or irrelevant to the modern world, etc. All I can say to this objection is that its assumptions are not known to be true. I find nothing wrong with worshipping a higher power that is nothing more or less than an immaterial, very intelligent being that influences events that a naturalist considers random. And I think there aren't any critical flaws with the position that the gods, like the humans, were once isolated in their own territories but have become less so.

Or maybe the problem is that modern Recons are worshipping the gods of a culture that has merged with other cultures and thus lost its identity. My answer: Yes, the culture has changed beyond recognition, but that doesn't mean the gods have done the same. You seem to think this, and think it's an argument that should bother theistic Reconstructionist Pagans, yet it begs the question of whether the gods really are nothing but cultural constructs.

That got longer than it should have been. But I hope it is helpful. BTW, if this was a reaction to me, why not include the Roman pantheon as one of the two examples.

[ November 01, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Heathen Dawn

Aha, I see you're what is called a "hard polytheist" - believing in many literal gods. The question I have about hard polytheism is what influence we can have over multi-ruled events. If a Canaanite polytheist prays to Baal for less sun and more rain, can he be reasonably certain the prayer will be answered, or is there constant danger of the other controllers such as Apollo and Thor vetoing the request? With so many rulers together, things may really seem to be more random than controlled.

For my part, I disbelieve in external sovereignty over the natural entities. I believe the natural entities each act according to their own animae (soul, which is inherent in all natural substances, from the tiniest atom to the greatest planet), and the sum of their interactions equals the "blind, indifferent fate" which Richard Dawkins talks about. I'm a naturalist and animistic pantheist, see <a href="http://www.geocities.com/emotionalatheism/animism.htm" target="_blank">this theory page here</a>.

muon

The ancients had absolutely no trouble identifying gods across cultures (eg. Zeus=Jupiter). It was accepted that the gods chose to reveal themselves in different manners to different cultures. There were even myths dealing with this---for example, one Greek myth says that the gods once fled to Egypt to escape an attack by giants, and disguised themselves as animals. And, so the myth goes, this was why Egyptians worshipped gods with animal form.

Nor was the pantheon ever fixed to the exclusion of new gods. The Greeks considered Zeus to be the strongest god, stronger than all the other gods put together, but also believed that it was possible that some future god might be born who could overthrow Zeus, just as Zeus overthrew his own father.

The model of having different gods with conflicting interests fighting over things is actually an intellectually attractive feature of polytheism. This circumvents the problem of evil that plagues omnipotent, omnibenevolent deities, and arguably is a better explanation of the messy world we live in.

Amos

Gods only exist in mythologies and are therefore mythology specific. No God is greater but what you can do with God varies from the description of him and it is therefore that some mythologies prosper while others decline.

Nice, but nicer to poke full of holes. Just tell me when.

Heathen Dawn

Polytheism rose out of apotheosis of the various animae (souls). According to animism (which I believe in), each entity of nature has its own inner accord/will making it do what it does - ie a river flows because its watery anima has the accord of running.

Apotheosis of those animae meant that the natural entities were no longer independent, but controlled by gods like puppets on a string. This is polytheism. Whereas animism is compatible with naturalism, polytheism inserts the theistic element of petition: you can petition the gods to do something you want. Here's where I, a naturalist by thinking, part ways with polytheism: I don't believe there are literal entities that can be petitioned to change the flow of fate.

The most important burden of proof that rests on the theist, whether he is monotheist or polytheist, is to prove the existence of external sovereignty over the natural realm. I don't care about the mere existence of one god or a hundred; just don't start saying that a prayer to them can make it rain.