A Reply to Dave the Distributist

I’d like to address many of the things said by Dave the Distributist mentioned in his recent Substack article from a week ago on the Pagan/Christian “debate”. First, it’s not a debate. It’s a discussion. I hate the idea of debates, as it ultimately just devolves into point scoring. Which is why I won’t ever be caught dead on Jay Dyer’s channel. I don’t expect to really convert a true believer of another tradition anyways, but I was inspired to write this defense. So here goes.

               Point one: Modern Christianity is responsible for leftism and the continuing destruction of the Europe. To halt the decline we need to abandon Christianity and return to the religion of our indigenous forefathers!

               Dave addresses this point by making an analogy about mechanical parts breaking down and having to be replaced which I very much enjoyed. His questions about why the part broke are good, but irrelevant at this point, & they are all based upon maintenance of the current system. I’ll just say that from my view, the original parts aren’t being made to the same quality or simply aren’t being manufactured at all anymore. The obvious solution to bad parts or unavailable parts is to find a new manufacturer. Or, if no new manufacturer can be found, then to purchase a new vehicle which serves the same role as the broken one but comes in a slightly different form. Traditionally minded Christians attempt to solve this problem by finding a new manufacturer for the part (e.g. Orthodox, Latin Mass, etc.) & Pagans choose to buy a new car. It may not be a sedan, but a truck will still get you from point A to point B despite exceedingly high gas prices. The obvious problem with getting a new manufacturer is that the part might still have a variety of problems (bad fit due to incorrect specifications, etc). Purchasing a new vehicle does come with significant upfront costs. But changing over any system has costs. The real questions is: how long will this repair take to be completed? Does cost of repair & time it will take exceed the cost of simply buying a new vehicle? If repair is attempted, then a weld on a part might become a future structural weakpoint if performed incompetently. Repeated over time, that part would be at risk for catastrophic failure. Obviously, repair has its limits.

               The real underlying issue that modern Pagans have between Christians is that Pagans are influenced by Nietzche. So was Evola, as well as De Benoist. So yes, they do assert that Christianity is based ultimately upon slave morality. Christians refuse to accept this, so we are at an impasse. I think however, that there is a fairly clear trend of Christianity being mostly incompatible with the practice of slavery, & that is likely due to the story of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. You cannot teach the lumpenprole underclass that they can escape from bondage & give them an example proving & glorifying that it can be done. That will give them ideas, & you don’t want to give the slave caste ideas. However, if Pagans are correct, here is what I think will happen. Due to combination of slave morality & lack of infant mortality thanks to scientific advancement, the spiteful mutant population increases in total numbers & percentage of the population. Then, once it reaches critical mass, it engages in truckish behavior to destabilize order, & is led by the disgruntled members of the middle class who have ambitions of being the ones in power. Spiteful mutant behavior gets tamped down, & true orderly hierarchy eventually reasserts itself. However, such occurrences basically become perennial over time, & reassert themselves in different times & places within that civilization until systemic civilizational collapse. Now, it is absolutely true that many Pagan affiliated people in the dissident right hold political positions on issues such as abortion & eugenics that Christians cannot be reconciled with. I think that Paganism is a sort of spiritual nazbol vortex, or at least is the right-wing way of spiritually getting to the end of the horseshoe. I believe that all religious rituals serve a real purpose which have real world effects, even if their practitioners cannot precisely explain why, or even what those effects are. I think that that is a reason why the Old Ways engaged in human & animal sacrifice, as well as permitted infant abandonment. I think it was a way of periodically culling the slave caste, thus keeping the slave caste from getting too big & destabilizing society. The periodicity of ritual sacrifice in the Norse society was once every nine years. I am speaking now of the rite which took place at Uppsala, which was written about by Adam of Bremen or Saxo Grammaticus (both Christians), depending on whose version you prefer. Or conversely, by Ibn Fadlan writing about burial customs in terms of princely burials, for which slaves were ritually sacrificed by the Norse in Rus during ship funerals. Animal sacrifice is certainly well documented as part of the Indo-European religion. I’ll answer more on the possibility for ritual recovery & what I personally believe later in the defense for Paganism in later Core Criticisms. I’m going to step over all of that temporarily & highlight that nine-year periodicity, which I find fascinating. Why that timeframe? It’s the sacred number of course, but there must be more to it than that. Of course, ritual actions which prevent Bio-Leninist revolt might only work in societies with much lower population densities. So even if that was a defense mechanism, it might not work now because of the problem of scale.

               To conclude this section, I will assert the most right-wing criticism that I can think of. Yes, you can make a legitimate claim that progressivism & by extension Protestantism were heresies, but they were heresies that occurred under your leadership & your preferred system & which ultimately the church was unable to contain. This happened on your watch; therefore, it is clear where the responsibility lies. What is the Christian response to dealing with Bio-Leninism? Why does Bio-Leninism continuously happen in societies in the west? If Protestantism is a Bio-Leninist heresy, then could Cromwell be a bio-Stalinist figure like Napoleon? If so, then what is the periodicity for Bio-Leninist upwellings? Why that periodicity? What factors determine that periodicity? These are questions that we must answer. Given my narrative on the fall of Rome, would this not imply that that was in fact, the true spirit of Abrahamic religions, & specifically Christianity in the west?

               “I suppose if the thing in question (here Christianity) was brand new and corresponded immediately with the failure of a previously working system then you would have an intuitive case for its defectiveness.” I will address this quote very briefly since it stuck out to me. This is indeed how pagans tend to view the rise of Christianity during the Roman empire. I view the rise of Christianity as utilizing an inherently bio-leninist strategy (women, slaves) to acquire power in the early stages of its growth. Thus, you could say that it waged a Gramscian war of position & institutional capture on the Pagan ruling structure of ancient Rome. From my view, this a problem, since obviously the early church was indeed able to tamp down on those elements & establish some sort of order, but no longer. I agree that Protestantism has a lot to answer for on that score, but we’ve talked about that almost ad naseum in our circles. The Roman empire did not fall until after Christianity was made the official religion. Of course, that’s official state adoption. There was a much longer process than Dave listed for the spread of Christianity within the Roman empire & Europe in general. Scandinavia was not officially converted until the late 900s in Denmark, and the mid 1000’s in the other Nordic countries. The Baltic countries persisted much longer into the Middle Ages, with Prussia being converted in the 1200’s, and Lithuania finally being officially converted in 1387. That’s a significant point against Dave’s narrative! We in the west typically think of the Middle Ages as entirely Christian, but the historical reality is much more complex, & an official pagan state lasting well into the high Middle Ages definitely is jarring. Of course, even after official state adoption there will still be significant, possibly even a majority of people, in a society who persist in the old belief system for quite some time. But yes, after official adoption, it is essentially only a matter of time before the new belief system becomes 100% normalized. There will also be a significant minority of people long after official conversion & majoritarian normalization of any new belief system who will persist in the old practices even if they don’t fully understand the spiritual underpinnings of why certain rituals existed in the first place. So, the claim to 1,700-2,000 years of unbroken Christian control over all Europe is just simply historically inaccurate. You can make a case for Faustian civilization being a shining example of technological prowess, but Rome too was technologically advanced for its time before the collapse of that civilization. So that argument is just nonsense. As to the record of Christianity as a civilization driving force, yes, it obviously did create our current civilization. But now that the component of Christianity has deteriorated, what next? You either repair the part, replace it with a new component, or get a new vehicle. We would do well to remember that with all systems, either mechanical or spiritual, the cost of maintenance eventually exceeds the cost of purchasing anew.

             Core Pagan Criticism Two: Christianity seeks to enslave European man with the shackles of the past! Christianity binds man to the will of long dead prophets and a dead God! Paganism is the true path towards realizing that every individual is a Nietzschean uber-man. We need paganism to recognize the brave radical gods which live within all of us!

Core Criticism Three: Christianity is a radically revolutionary religion! It proclaims that the past is evil! It spreads radical individualism. Paganism is the path back towards true traditionalism and collectivism. We need paganism to constrain the anti-traditional will of the individual which Christianity set free!

               Dave rightly complains that these two criticisms come together. I’m a geo-political realist, so the reason why these complaints go together is that any up-and-coming religion or moral or social change will typically utilize rather disruptive, “revolutionary” methods to achieve its goals if it does not utilize a strategy of outright conquest. I’ve already sketched out my views regarding the Christian accession to power in the Roman Empire, so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice to say, once the new system is in power, it will act more conservatively. This is why I’m very loath to accept the victimhood narrative when it comes from Pagans. We can learn lessons from the current middle east, especially in regards to oppression & religious intolerance. Generally, the larger a dominant group becomes in society, the more institutions it controls; & the smaller the non-dominant group in society is determines the severity of persecution. Furthermore, it will also be more likely to engage in other unfair or unjust actions such as procedural manipulations the closer it gets to official power. So, when society is close to a 50-50 split, the average person is going to have lots of contact, possibly even family & friends who are part of the declining moral system.

               Now, our friends at Imperium Press wrote an excellent Substack article which help to explain to Pagan view in this, as the true difference in politics is between Odinic & Tyrrhic sensibilities. First a bit of Norse Mythology. Both Odin & Tyr are gods of war, but they have different responsibilities in the Nordic Pantheon. Odin is the King of the gods, & reigns in Valhalla, the home of the Aesir. He sacrificed his eye (or hung himself from a tree, depending on the version of the story) to gain knowledge & wisdom at the well of Mimir. He is the decider of battles, & his Valkyries take the valiant dead up to Valhalla. Tyr is the god of wisdom & justice. He sacrificed his hand to placate the wolf Fenrir, so that the dangerous creature could be bound in chains until Ragnarok, the ending of the world. Fenrir breaking free of his fetters is noted as a sign of the coming of Ragnarok. What is the meaning of this story? What moral value could we take from it? Well, Tyr maintains order & his domain is in justice, i.e., the law. Odin is the Allfather, he maintains control over the transition between life & death, which is obviously the most sensitive area of life. So, you could say that this is a distinction between the laws between humans, & the natural law that the authority of all written laws ultimately are derived from force. Tyr is a “conservative” in this context in that he represents maintenance of the status quo. He sacrifices something valuable to restore order & keep the monster at bay. But the monster eventually breaks loose! So, such sacrifice was only temporary, an ultimately ineffectual solution. This is obviously a rearguard action. In this way you could describe one of the differences between Pagans & Christians. Christianity is Tyrrhic in that it focuses on restoring order, & bottles up the monsters that we fight today, so that they will break free & become more vengefully destructive. I think we can all agree that we are not yet in the position to be law-giver. Odin on the other hand is a transitional figure. He does not represent lawful order, he represents necessary change.

               Regarding ancestor worship, I believe that our ancestors would rather see us doing well than to be destroyed. I do not worship my ancestors; I worship the Nordic pantheon. And yes, I would rather be an ethno-narcissist & have my civilization survive. I would willingly pay the moral & civilizational costs for that position than decline. I would rather be able to stand proudly, boldly facing the sun with the inner strength necessary to defeat our enemies, rather than have to look downward in humility before being able to make any movement for self-defense. I myself find that I have the odd habit of being too humble & indecisive for my own good.

               Core Pagan Criticism 4: Christianity is the destroyer of European culture. They ravaged indigenous European civilization! Christians leveled pagan technological achievement! They consigned beauty of individual European cultures to a brutal sameness!

               This is again an opinion which I don’t share, & hopefully I addressed it to satisfaction in above paragraphs. Christianity, specifically of the Catholic variety, after normalization did synthesize with the native heathen religion in a variety of ways, especially aesthetically. I personally do not wish to destroy the great cathedrals of Europe, which I had the chance to visit in my youth. Anyway, I think that the question of European spiritual unity is an interesting one. Tacitus referred to the Germanic God Tyr as “Mars” in Germania, so recognizable to him was that deity. There was no one unified religion true, but there were common symbological, ritual, & story elements present in the pre-Christian religions of Europe. In my view, despite those different peoples calling the gods different names or assigning slightly different roles in the pantheon, they were worshipping the same gods which had been passed down to them from prehistory. What would this mean? It would in fact mean that there was a kind of spiritual, symbological, & of course a following ethical connection among European peoples even before the presence of the Christian Church.

               As to those symbological, attitudinal & story elements, Dave is correct that many of them still reside in high fantasy & horror. To you these things may seem small or irrelevant, but we do see them as residual elements that many Christians perform but when pressed simply cannot explain why they do certain things or hold certain attitudes or practices which have no presence in the bible. One example which springs to mind is the example that De Benoist gives of Kierkegaard going to pray at a grove of oak trees. This is quite literally A VERY PAGAN THING TO DO. Oak Groves were considered sacred places by both Germanic & Celtic traditions throughout history. Even the most cursory glance at Survive the Jive’s channel would disabuse one of the “lack of evidence” of the obvious parallels & connections between the old ways, European folklore, Beowulf, & the Arthurian legends. Tolkien drew heavily from the Nordic Sagas, and serious Tolkien fans do understand this. Even a VAUSH tier Wikipedia search on the old European religions would have told you so. Nothing is hidden from you. Our gods do not fear the sunlight, they are the sunlight. Ostara is the goddess of the dawn. Dyaus Pitr (Jupiter, if you prefer) is the sky god. Gandalf, being a wanderer who wears a grey cloak & broad brimmed hat, carrying a staff, known by many names, is quite literally how Odin appears in the sagas.

               Our stories of the gods come to us from time immemorial. Before even the first word was written. This proves how lindy they are. Since their stories have lasted the test of time & have persisted even whilst being preserved by those who do not worship them, their timelessness proves their transcendence. Therefore, since they have lasted in a variety of forms, conditions, & environments, they are more fundamental to our being & our spirit than Christ. Simply, we wish for that fundament to be allowed to flourish & to be the priority of a spiritually separate community.

               Therefore, in the bi-furcated, bipolar spiritual nature of The West, YHWH is placed on top of something else, but will never accredit the true foundation. Christ is not the foundation; he is the superstructure. Given the current conditions facing the West, a radical change and complete inversion in priorities is needed. The redemption of the guilty murderer? Is this story appropriate for our current era?

    We understand that we are the minority, & therefore the junior partner. We understand that we are in the frustrating position that we will have to wait, & abide by what the Christians wish to do, in the manner & style which they wish to perform it. Ultimately should the Christians win against progressivism, they will give no credit, no space, to us. Pagans need to do their homework & do a much better job of conversion, this much I agree with. Many people in our spheres are recent converts or reconverts to religion. I take their conversion as genuine if they are doing the reading & developing themselves spiritually in accordance with their chosen religious path & ultimately formalizing it.

I feel that the West will be placed in the unenviable position of having to choose between its survival or the survival of its people & the jettisoning of its dominant spiritual system. This, due to YHWH’s commandments, would not allow for a scenario in which Christianity was the “junior partner” & would result in not as Nietzche said “the death of God”, but in the total obliteration of YHWH & his church. This is the ultimate price of fundamentalist zealotry. It largely has already happened in Europe. Assuming Europe isn’t conquered by Islam in the next century, I think that northern Europeans especially in the formerly protestant areas will return to the old ways.

The idea that there can only one truth, one story in a society COMES FROM YOU. The progressives inherited it from you, & that attitude is most clear in the commandments. The evangelizing energy, frenetic & sometimes seemingly going to no purpose, is another inheritance. Illegitimate, warped, & twisted bastard child it may be, progressivism is still your child. And like an unloved, unwanted child it will despise its parent all the more because of its similarity in form & behavior to its parent.

               To solve the commandment problem, there are options. One is having a “religion inside a religion” similar to the Adeptus Mechanicus’ relationship with the imperial cult in Warhammer 40k, or how the Zoroastrians operate within Islamic society in Iran. The second, & easiest option will likely be some form of basic religious toleration, which is already legally enshrined & is the reality on the ground since we live in a pluralistic society. As long as norms of religious toleration which have existed in the west for several hundred years are applied, Pagans are absolutely correct to expect the ability to exist. They can expect to not be persecuted & will have to extend the same courtesy to Christians. They are also correct in expecting recognition as a real religion. Any synthesis which occurs under that second scenario will be organic, occurring as a matter of course. But the sticking point obviously will come when implementing which elements of both Paganism & Christianity, which synthesis of vision gets greater social & political control. Of course, there are those who favor a solution more like the Orange Catholic Bible… So, my fellow country bumpkins, how shall we proceed?

               In terms of coalition building, there is a key weakness that Christians have which Pagans can address. How on earth are those who bear the sign of the cross going to talk to the Harry Potter women to get them to stop backing the regime? They will get very skittish if you try to implement policy they don’t like. Answer: you get somebody like me to do it for you. I will gladly take on that duty & responsibility. They do have a victim complex which I believe I can break them out of using what I’ve said in terms of geopolitics.

               Core Pagan Criticism 5: Christianity is mean! They are divisive! We want to look out for all European peoples but Christians just want to exclude pagans from moral consideration. Really Christians need to acknowledge that we are all equal. That even though we might worship different gods, we all are spiritually European and our beliefs have equal value. After all paganism and Christianity are probably just two sides of the same thing!

            I’ve already addressed much of this, so I won’t belabor the point. I will attempt to explain what I believe, however, it is difficult to put things into words. I am still a layperson who has only begun my journey back to spirituality, but as far as I’m aware no Pagan profession of belief such as the Nicene creed exists. So, there is no concise statement which I could give that would suffice for that purpose. Please understand that this explanation might seem fragmentary due to the nature of reconstruction. Furthermore, there is a problem which de Benoist writes about which is unique to Abrahamic religions & especially Christianity. This problem is the necessity of belief, the necessity to require everyone to have the same belief. The demand for explanation of belief seems to me to be a demand for “ant-smell” which many Pagans probably don’t like very much since they find it difficult to put into words. Dave is absolutely correct is asking for us to SHOW HIM rather than tell him. This is a crucial difference, that Christians find transcendence through the word, & Pagans find it through image & deed. One cannot understand anything about this conflict until this is understood. This is why you will find that some Pagans think that Christianity is the source of modern totalitarianism, why Pagan critiques sound like “New atheism in a viking helmet”. It is fascinating however, to hear other thinkers such as William Gayley Simpson in Which Way Western Man? preemptively echo those criticisms. It makes me wonder whether all left-wing social criticisms ultimately were noticed first by right wing thinkers. But that is a discussion for another time… Christianity is an Abrahamic religion, so it is a religion of the word. Paganism is a religion which prioritizes the image & the deed as the means of finding transcendence. This is interesting as a distinction & difference, but I think it’s more interesting how this could be used to create the next political order. The next order will be one which prioritizes the image & deed (& the spectacle!) as its chosen aesthetic form but which does not neglect the word. Such an order would indeed be quite formidable, one could say almost tailor made to the conditions of smart-phone, Tic-Tok modernity.

               What do I personally believe? Let’s start at the beginning, the very story of creation itself. I believe in the eternal return, that never ending cycle of being & becoming which is life eternal. I believe that The Gods do not just operate in but also occupy the world, rather than being slightly separated from it. I believe in many gods, & they are known to me by the names that come to us through the Nordic/Germanic language, although I am willing to accept that they are the same gods in Greco-Roman tradition, & even hindu tradition to some extent. I believe that as all areas of the cosmos are connected on the world tree, so all things must be connected. I believe that when I have invoked the name of the Gods for help that they have responded. I have offered libations to the All-father, & he has shown himself to me. I have seen the procession of gods in the night sky.

Reconstruction of genuine form of paganism is absolutely possible. Why? Reconstruction of PIE language based on historical comparison of other languages & familial shifts within language families to know what the original vocabulary was. We have many forms of historical paganism. We have modern Hinduism, the last remaining polytheistic faith which is derived from the PIE spirit. Using the technique I described above regarding language; it will be much easier to reconstruct what Evola would describe as a genuine form of spiritual awakening. We have much more evidence in that regard than what the linguists used to reconstruct the PIE language, a dead tongue which was never written down & has not been spoken aloud for thousands of years. Using Germanic, Roman & Hellenic sources alone we can rebuild what glory has been lost to time. Any gaps in understanding or ritual practices we don’t fully comprehend we can look to Hinduism to complete the picture of our puzzle. As to the ritual of human sacrifice, I cannot recommend anyone partake in actions which would be considered illegal under the current paradigm. Ritually butchering an animal for the sustenance of the group is an anthropologically attested to pagan practice. For man must understand his place in nature as an apex predator, but also as a steward of the land.

I believe that there is a reason why the areas of Northern Europe converted to Protestantism & fought against the Catholics during the reformation was that they were converted last & for the least amount of time. So in my view they were protesting the church. But also they were indeed rebelling against the only accepted church at the time. So yes, it was a rebellion against god, but it recognized that the Catholic Church was already a synthesis between the Hellenic & Judaic world, & it rejected that synthesis in order to achieve greater authenticity & greater compliance with scripture. But this is 500-year-old history at this point. There is no longer a priestly caste which can utilize a specialized language that is only taught through credentialing institutions which can gatekeep a sole interpretation of the words of Christ. Is it any wonder that the peoples of Northern Europe & their descendants are the least religious people in the world at this point in time? Could there be a spiritual reason why so many feel that they are not living in a way which is in accord with their true nature? I submit that it does have a spiritual cause, & that cause is that Christianity is not the authentic spiritual form capable of satisfying them. Certainly, I see a necessity for worship in nature & of nature. Paganism of both Germanic & Hellenic varieties offers this through ritual. This is one way that we could defuse the political conflict in the west: by satisfying needs in a manner which is pre-political. Again, how will Christ help us to address the environmentalist movement? In the US it is different, we are still very Christian, & will likely remain so for some time. Although retreating to Catholicism or Orthodox Christianity because it is the “based” Christian church will in the long term prove futile if I am correct about the relationship between Christianity & progressivism. They will only offer temporary safe harbor. 

                So, as far as first contact goes, I am more than happy to continue this conversation. This is a good start. Perhaps a stream sometime? There are many more things to say, & the education which informs that dialogue hasn’t been completed yet on either side. This will be a slow process. I deliberately am not answering each & every question Dave posed for this very reason, & also in the interest of putting out a semi-timely reply. Anyhow, YHWH can cope, seethe, & dilate that all the other gods are just as cool as him, & that he does not yet rule over the minds of all humanity as king of kings.

Sources:

Anthony, David. The Horse, The Wheel, and The Language: How Bronze Age Steppe Riders Made the Modern World. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press, 2007.

Davidson, Ellis H.R. Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe. Syracuse University Press, 1988.

De Benoist, Alain. On Being a Pagan. Arcana Europa Media, 2018.

Evola, Julius. Revolt Against the Modern World. Inner Traditions, 1995.

Evola, Julius. Pagan Imperialism. Goornahoor Press, 2017.

Hasenfratz, Hans-Peter. Barbarian Rites: The Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes. Inner Traditions, 2011.

Simpson, William Gayley. Which Way Western Man?.

Survive the Jive. The World’s Oldest Myth? The World Tree Which Grows From Hell.

The Odinic vs. the Tyrrhic - Imperium Press (substack.com)

A Letter to Right-Wing Pagans - by Dave Greene (substack.com)