Ancient Verses; The Philosophy of Paganism

Before I began work on more ancient verses I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the intellectual roots of Paganism, specifically in the west, since many of the works that I am interested in covering, are related to ancient paganism. Now before I continue I’d like to point out that neo-paganism, especially your garden-variety tree worshipping sorts of eccentrics, Druids, Wiccans and the like, have almost nothing in common with paganism as it was practiced in the ancient world, but rather this finds its beginnings in Victorian romanticism, thus their philosophy is heavily distorted by the influence of the surrounding Christian culture. Moreover paganism is not without merit from a humanistic standpoint, but instead I have written this article that you might be aware of its drawbacks as a philosophy and a religion. Leftists often have nothing but praise for paganism because it's not dogmatic, and it's all about saving the trees or something to that effect, but this is a misrepresentation of what paganism actually stood for.

 

Ancient paganism, in contrast to neo-paganism and romanticism, is in many regards a potentially serious retrograde force in the world. Paganism, even in the modern world, has been tied up with racialism, fascism and Social Darwinism. Even though paganism values hospitality, loyalty, honour, and heroic individualism, paganism is significantly unfit for a modern society because it tends philosophically towards the antisocial, considering instead that the laws of savage nature apply to mankind equally as they do to animals in the forest. To prove this point I will cite the sacred literature of Hellenic paganism in the form of the Homeric epics.

 

Achilles says it best in the Iliad, having finally cornered Hector, the Trojan prince outside the walls of Ilium. Hector fears the worst, and asks Achilles if he will return his body to his parents should he be defeated in their duel. Achilles glared at him and answered, “Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall and glut grim Mars with his life's blood” (Iliad, Book XXII). 

 

This philosophical basis, that the strong should vanquish the weak, along with the religious notion of human sacrifice as practiced by early German peoples, combined with racial pseudoscientific theories, would form a core part of the ideology of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the racial scapegoating of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. If you want to know more about this, there’s a great documentary from the days when The History Channel was relevant called The Nazi Gospels which covers how paganism intersects with the NSDAP ideology.

 

Finally there is the intellectual wastage of superstitious magic, which attaches itself to paganism in all of its forms. Additionally to being just as useless as the spiritual practices of modern monotheism from a practical standpoint, pagan ritualism is in addition spiritually vain and superstitious. The ancient romans for instance believed in gods that ruled over even the littlest things, like door hinges, faucets, and even sewers. For instance the goddess Cloacina presided over the Cloaca Maxima, the “Great Drain” of the city of Rome. How this is supposed to be uplifting for the worshipper is beyond me.

 

Thus paganism is a mixed bag philosophically; on the one hand, paganism demonstrates virtues such as hospitality, loyalty and heroism, while on the other hand paganism has as vices, savage violence, superstition and scapegoating. While paganism as far as it is dynamic, proud and individualistic, is a positive force in the world, it's certainly not a recomended philosophy for mass consumption, but is rather sub-optimal as far as the wider society is concerned.