The
Roman Catholic Church in the Czech Republic is setting up a commission
to open the trials from the Burning Times.
The inquiry begins this month, starting with Sumperk witch trials
of 1679, to determine whether they should get pardon's.
What
a total waste of time, apologising for things your ancesters [sic]
did. Only surpassed by asking for such an apology.
(The
above was taken from a letter in the Ásatrú news-group
alt. religion.asatru. I didn't quote the authors because I see no reason
to. However, if the authors wish to lodge a complaint to the Seiðman
about not posting names - fine.)
What a stout Viking-like
attitude! We don't care about all this silliness that happened in the
past! What a waste of time to worry corpses that are nothing but dirt–let's
worry about the future! Get on with life! Sheeeeesh!
Hmmm. . . I wonder. The
past. All dead and gone. No need to apologize for ancestral deeds. Actually,
to this seiðman, the attitude sounds more like remnants of the Industrial
Age.
Let's throw out the spiritual
mystical stuff from the argument for a minute and just stick with some
general physical principles.
Let's look first at the
concept behind the word "apology" and it's common application:
Over a period of, say, 10
years, a man cheats on his wife, slaps around the children in drunken
rages, and accidently, during one of his binges, he kills the neighbor's
dog by flinging a rusty barn door hinge at him and hitting him in the
head.
Now, the theory behind "apology" says that if he gathers the
wife, the kids, and the neighbors together, and pronounces the words
"I'm sorry" with an intonation that sounds like he really
means it, then everything is somehow mystically set aright. Most, including
the above newsgroup poster (and myself), don't buy that. Mystical words
don't undo the damage. Some words do have power, but these two usually
don't. Why? Mainly because of his history as a liar, we've no reason
to believe his sincerity.
Most of us, however, buy into the theory of "restitution":
above, the wife divorces the jerk, gets child support, and he pays the
neighbor for the dog. Even if it doesn't get to this point, the situation
demands some type of change in the mode of action (on the part of the
husband). Right? Wrong. According to the newsgroup post above, we should
"let bygones be bygones," get on with life. After all the
past is the past.
The Medite plant was a "pressboard
plant" in a small New Mexico community. It was owned by a well-off
oil firm out of Dallas, Texas, which had no vested interest in the community
except that it was a cheap source of labor. It and its owner/ operators
functioned for 10 years and in the meanwhile managed to pollute the
primary water source of the community, managed to be implicated in several
deaths, stole money from the local treasury which was easy because the
poor stupid New Mexicans neither had the money nor the where-with-all
to take action against the big powerful corporation (remember the oil
company?). When the New Mexicans discovered their error, they rose up,
closed the plant, threatened the lives of the Texans, ran them out of
town, and demanded clean up of the river.
According to the philosophy of the above poster, et al., they should
not have done anything: the past is the past (polluted water under the
bridge?). They should have gotten on with their miserable (albeit polluted),
little lives. Just ignore the dead relatives after all they are just
dirt.
"What a total waste
of time, apologising for things your ancesters did.
Only surpassed by asking for such an apology."
The KKK in a south Georgia
town were notorious for hanging blacks. John C. Tyler was a black man
who was hanged in 1934 by Augustas "Augie" Maken, Grand Wizard
of the local chapter. Now, in 1972, John's aging grandson through a
little research finds a letter that Augie had written to his brother
dated Nov. 12th, 1935 that reads
"We
strung up that little nigger buck Tyler. Pat wouldn't let me gut him
out but at least we all got to watch that scum quiver and twist while
his soul dripped down to that nigger Hell where all them bastards
belong. Tiny was trying to get me to publically fess up but it ain't
gonna ever go that far. Pat's got his little brother in the Klan now.
I wish we'd a strung up the whole damn bunch of em, though."
Augie's grandson, "Buck"
Maken, has taken up the family tradition of Klan, and has just been
subpoenaed by the courts. His grandfather's crime is finally being presented
in a fair court with proper evidence and proper representation for the
plaintiff.
Let the dead rest in peace. There is no need dredge up past errors.
"What a total waste of time, apologising for things your ancesters
did.
Only surpassed by asking for such an apology."
From a logical point of
view, the past is the foundation upon which the present is built. For
most of modern culture, at least industrial age culture, the past has
no "real" existence; it is a "memory" akin to "imagination"
or "fantasy." By the same logic, however, attitudes which
produced the past can continue into the present: the KKK, the Catholic
Church, the "big corporation eats up small insignificant town."
Changing these these things usually requires some type of action being
demanded from the perpetrators by the perpetatratees.
Take it as you will.
Let's talk about luck for
a minute. The Catholic Church's luck has been somewhat poor of late.
"Well, they deserve it" you say. True. Its attitude toward,
hmmm, women, indigenous peoples, non-Christians, pro-abortionists, gun
control, birth control, etc. might have something to do with declining
popularity. Pedophiliac priests being protected by the Mother Church
might also have something to do with the problem – hard to tell.
Do you think that maybe if the Church reviewed it's behavior of the
past 1000 years, it might find where it was at fault, perhaps discovering
a pattern of mistakes, so it can readjust its attitude in the present?
Do you think the attitude displayed towards the non-Christians and "different
thinkers" of the Middle Ages might be related to the attitudes
of the Church towards black people during the last century, towards
Jews during WWII, and towards indigenous peoples of today? Do you think
the cover-ups of the witch trials might be related to the techniques
used to cover-up pedophilia? Do you think that the right to "clean
up your act" is something that only good Ásatrú folk
do and does not extend to other people? Because if you do, you may want
to pull your head out of your hypocritical ass and take a whiff of the
real world.
As a seiðman, I have
one of those mystical, spooky views of the time-line. I know that past
action is important, making restitution on debts owed never goes away
by itself. Very often, I deal with people whose luck has disappeared.
I can follow the river of their lives into the past and look at the
the little cesspools that they have made in their ancestral streams,
and me and my ghosts can help clean up those things. For some folks,
without someone going back into the past to see the screw-ups and where
they originated, there is no such thing as "going forward and getting
on with life." They are sometimes like the fisherman who has a
tangled mess of the lines. True, sometimes it is better to throw out
the reel (I don't normally condone murder, though), but if the reel
and line can be saved, sometimes it is worth the little extra effort.
Sometimes, the cesspool
is inherited rather than created by the hapless one. Sometimes, generations
of drugs, killing, drinking, and prostituting the family lineage results
in some nasty work to get back to a functional life. Sometimes nothing
can be done, or if something can be done, it is a long involved process.
These folks didn't mess up the fishing reel; it's the one that grampa
left them!
Regular folks with industrial
age eyeballs can't usually see what I see at the graveyards. Folks who
go around preaching that the "dead are dead" have, for the
most part, a functional worldview, just very narrow. Usually, these
folks have no sense of luck until they lose it. We have what we have
because we are provided for by our ancestors, genetically, psychologically,
financially; if you have industrial grade eyeballs with an industrial
age philosophy of life, you can call it inheritance, if you want. Occasionally,
one of the narrow-minded ones will just piddle away his luck and die
a miserable little death. More often than not, he will become a powerless,
whimpering ghost who isn't accepted into the ancestral household by
his folks, so they hang around to harrass and welch a thieving afterlife
off the Living. Pretty harmless, usually, like pesty little mosquitos:
irritating but getting by on the little scraps he can steal. Luck is
a little broader in scope than this guy was able to understand.
Pissing off the dead can
be somewhat different than dealing with the little whimperer described
above. It really depends on the strength of the individual ghost. Wimpy
little ghosts are harmless and are a dime a dozen. There are others,
though, who are not so powerless: it is best not to piss them off. These
were real men and women who led decent lives and, who even after
death, love to take restitution for wrongs committed. Quite a different
matter entirely. These can do some real damage. Setting oneself
in line with the dead can work to one's benefit. If it requires reopening
trials, repaying old debts, and changing behaviour / attitudes, it might
be worth it.
There seem to be a large
handful of modern Ásatrú folk who say that they adhere
to the philosophy that "the past is past," that welching on
debts left by their ancestors is OK. It's odd, though, that many of
these same don't mind the concepts of laying blame and taking responsibility.
I would venture to guess that not many of them would mind, for example,
suing an Archdiocese if the local priest had committed sodomy upon their
10 year old son, or who wouldn't go after the local HIV positive drunk
/ drug addict who penetrated their niece with bloody fingers. I doubt
that any would hesitate to make good on a bad check that they had accidently
written or would feel no remorse for accidently breaking the neighbor
girl's leg in a car accident. It's a matter of personal honor, after
all.
Why is it then that we do
not shoulder the blame for the slave movement in the US? The Holocaust?
We are of the same line. I don't like the idea any more than anyone
else, but my ancestors DID it. I know it, and I admit it. I've looked
at the past, examined it, and I have chosen to take responsibilty and
alter the current behavioral pattern of my lineage. That is my right;
no not right – that is my duty! In my experience, my ancestors
were wrong during their time in the past, and I choose to stop the pattern
in the present. I choose to make peace with the ghosts of those my ancestors
had wronged, and, if they (the ghosts) agree, I choose them as allies.
There is power there. The dead are not just dead. But, then, I am a
seiðman, and I live by that kind of power.
I say, if the Holy Mother
Church can make peace, can make restitution, with the dead and, thereby,
change her nasty attitudes towards Jörd and her inhabitants, let
her. We've nothing to lose by it. If we deny the Church her chance to
do good for once, then we're either narrow-minded, living by double
standards, or just plain stupid.
