Author’s Note: This is the first part in a multi-part series in which I critique the rise of paganism within certain Dissident Right circles, listing the major reasons why I think paganism is a dead end for the Right and that it will only end in disaster.
The first and most primary reason why I am not a pagan is simple enough – I am a Christian. I believe there is one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe that God the Son came to earth in the form of a man named Jesus Christ, who is both fully divine and fully human. I believe that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary and came to earth to save sinners, whom I am one. I believe that He lived a sinless life but was unjustly executed, dying a cruel death on the Cross. However, on the third day, He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father.
I do not believe in the old gods of paganism. I do not believe that Jupiter, Thor, Morrigan, or any other pagan deity exists now or in the past, at least not in the same way they were assumed to have existed by the ancient pagans. They may very well have been a complete figment of their imaginations, similar to the Easter Bunny, but they also may have been demonic entities misunderstood to be “gods.” Additionally, I do not think Valhalla is an actual place; heaven or hell is the ultimate destination of mankind.
That is, in a nutshell, the single biggest reason I am not a pagan. I believe in the teachings of Christianity and do not think the old pagan gods existed, and certainly not as deities worthy of worship. Notwithstanding the spiritual issues with pagan worship, there is a political component, too. The political problem with paganism, and why it leads to a dead end for the Right, is that the vast majority of self-described modern “pagans” do not believe Odin exists, either. They may claim to be the “Soldiers of Odin” (or some other nonsense), but when challenged, they will fall back and claim that they do not actually believe in Odin. Instead, modern pagans view Odin as some sort of role model, looking up to him in the same way a young boy admires Bruce Wayne and Superman.
That is one of the biggest flaws of modern paganism, and why embracing it is suicidal for the Right. It is a fringe movement for edgy atheists and, more importantly, it cannot inspire the kind of fanaticism that is needed to save the West. The truly devout will always have a great advantage over the wishy-washy, and that devotion can topple empires. A great example were the wildly successful Arab Invasions of the 7th and 8th centuries. By any measure, this should not have happened. The Arabs were few in number and had no history of organizing into a polity, and they were going up against the great empires of late antiquity – Rome and Persia. But conquer they did, completely vanquishing Persia and driving Rome into its core territory of Anatolia. There are many reasons why the Arabs were so successful: they were skilled horsemen, well adapted to desert fighting, Arab migration into Persian and Roman territories helped, and, finally, the Romans and Persians were exhausted after centuries of fighting.
However, one aspect of Arab victory cannot be overlooked – to them, they were literally on a mission from God. This gave them the fighting spirit needed to forge their empire, and also made it much more difficult for the Roman strategy of late antiquity to work (namely, bribery and espionage). The importance of religion can be observed in how Arab culture was able to thrive post-conquest. What the Arabs did was not completely unprecedented, barbarian tribes have been able to overrun decadent agricultural societies before (see the Mongols). In the vast majority of cases, the barbarians eventually merge with the customs of the conquered culture/society. At most, a synthesis occurs, such as in the case of the Germanic-Classical mixture in the former Western Roman Empire. With the Arabs, they were able to supplant the old culture. They certainly were not going to change their religion, but language could also not be changed. Arabic is the literal language of God – it is mainstream Islamic belief that the Koran always existed, and hence why the vast majority of Islamic scholars are against translating it. And when they conquered, they conquered territories full of people weak in their faith. Much of the old Roman territory the Arabs conquered, and later Islamized, were strongholds of Arianism, and these people were resentful of being ruled by a Trinitarian government. They could not offer the resistance that the devout had, and this was fatal to the Roman war effort.
The point of this is not to defend Islam or suggest the Dissident Right should embrace Islam as its religion – they cannot happen under any circumstances. Rather, it is to demonstrate what the devout can achieve. Devout and fanatical Arab nomads brought down two of the greatest empires and ended the world of antiquity, forming a brand-new civilization in its wake. Only a people absolutely sure of their mission can attain such a task.
This is why paganism is such a bad idea for the Right – it is not the realm of the true believers, the spiritually dedicated. It is full of edgy atheists and, as such, does not have the devotion needed to complete the task at hand. And while there may be some within the Dissident Right that view Christianity in terms of pure social utility, this is by no means as common within paganism. “Paganism,” as it exists today, does not have the devotion needed to save the West.
The distinguishing characteristic of paganism is that it taught no morality. Pagan worship and practice is all about appeasing the gods and seeking favors. For the average Roman, the Empire was a living Hell, with brutality, debauchery, and oppression the norm. To an ancient Roman, one of the real benefits of Judaism and Christianity was the moral codes, the demands for decency and mutual love.
Modern paganism is deeply fake. The modern pagans get all of their morality, if they have any, from their Christian past.
This article and several commentators make the mistake of thinking the old pagan gods were imaginary and so neo pagans are just larping by romanticizing old folktales.
On the surface the neo pagan thing is a larp. But the old gods are real and still exist. They’re probably the principalities etc Paul talks about in Ephesians. A major theme in the OT is Yaweh claiming territory against the other pagan gods and the continuous slipping into idolatry of the Israelites showed that it was an ongoing spiritual war played out in the earth with this people group.
The late Dr Michael Heiser is a Biblical scholar who discusses the supernatural in the Bible, mostly OT and his Unseen Realm video is a good place to access his work. He died early this year but left a ton of content on the internet to help believers understand the Bible better.
You do this group a disservice by labelling them as edgy atheists. They seek some kind of bond and connection to something more than the futility of modernity, but their spiritual eyes have been blinded to the Gospel. The dark spiritual forces are what’s keeping them blinded. So they need someone to evangelize to them who has an understanding of their beliefs.
Praise be to Jesus. Somebody is addressing the Pagan Pink Elephant in the room. I tried to address this on Gab and was attacked by the NAZIS. Southern Nationalists and National Socialists have nothing in common. NAZIS are just Yankees with edgier uniforms. They are Darwinists LARPing as Pagans.
As a Christian man I have no interest in a Southern Nationalist movement that fellowships with such vermin.
You may want to read some first person accounts by National Socialists, and maybe supplement them by reading Richard Stiegman-Gall’s ‘The Holy Reich’. Certainly there were some pagans in their number (as is the case with every people), but they were definitely in the minority. Don’t believe all the BS on network TV.
National Socialism and Christianity
https://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/NSChristianity.html
Actually, Southern Nationalists and National Socialists – NSDAP , ‘nazi’ is a propaganda word coined by churchill’s (((handlers))) – do have much in common, not the least is affection for blood and soil.
Most of the people claiming to be ‘nazis’ in this day and age are government agents provocateurs. Actual NS adherents certainly have no problem with Christianity; see Hitlers published prayers as well as even Goebbels comments on the high purpose of Christianity.
Paganism is a New Age religion – a boomer invention. The monks who wrote down the Icelandic sagas excised the parts where the cult practices are described because they were considered heretic. But the mythology itself was just considered folk tales so they put them in.
In other words, the “pagans” don’t actually believe in the mythos and they don’t know anything about the cult practices so they’re just making it up as the go along.
This needs to be said really badly. Among other problems with neo-paganism is that religion only “works” in terms of its social utility if people actually believe in it, which neo-pagans don’t. This is the same mistake that the NRXers made when it came to religion – you can’t just bolt together a religion formed around some social results you want to achieve, put on a funny hat and robe, and expect it to work. Without genuine belief, people will just wander away into football or Xbox or internet porn. As for the argument that these gods are worth worshipping because they are the embodiment of ideas, even if everyone knows that they don’t really exist, let me repurpose an old atheist argument: If your ideas are so obviously true and good, why do you need to make up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo gods to embody them instead of just letting them speak for themselves? So do you actually believe your own ideas, or don’t you?
An eternal meme: The best pagan tradition is converting to Christianity.
Inshala! I mean….Amen!
Heard an interesting story by an fbi agent on a podcast. He claims the 2 bankrobbers involved in the Miami shootout in their apartment had a shrine devoted to the berserkers, the cops found incense still burning. The fbi put out the story that they were high on angel dust, but the reality was their drug tests were only positive for tobacco.