! Assembly of The Elder Troth - Article - Beyond Ásatrú

What is The AET?

Contacts Database

The Assembly of The Elder Troth would like to welcome you to our website. Please click on the links to the left to enter the relevant area of our site.

Heil and welcome to the Articles section of the Assembly of The Elder Troth website. Here you can find items written by many wide and varied folk. The idea is to provide a venue for discussion, debate and education amongst the folk by giving people an individual flavour to the information provided. Every article here is the work of its' author. Copyright rests with the Author, reproduction is prohibited without the authors permission.

Beyond Asatru - by Rurik Grimnisson

My involvement with the culture of the Northern Tradition, over the last sixteen years, has given me the opportunity to witness, as well as participate in its reconstruction as a viable alternative to the mainstream socio-religious philosophies and materialistic lifestyles. The failure of many models, world wide, that have been set up and the consequent disillusionment of those involved have caused me to contemplate deeply on our level of collective consciousness in relation to the paradigm of Asatru, as a religious/cultural movement within Western Society.

The question we all ask ourselves at some stage is "what has drawn us to feel affinity with the heathen northern tradition?". Simply answered it is an innate resonance with our ethnic, cultural and spiritual inheritance - our ancestors, our customs, our languages and above all the psychic excitement we feel as we intuitively draw closer to the noumenal experience personified in our Holy Wights. In our post-modern society with its opportunities for education and nearly instantaneous communication, the dogmas of our Christian past and related social conditioning soon become transparent as fabricated tools to control our minds and our lives. Hence we seek out our roots in an attempt to reconstruct our personal and communal continuity. Some of these yearnings are biologically prompted. The human propensity is for genetic continuity, in short 'survival of the species'. The urge to procreate is innate but so is its cognate on a higher level - the continuity of cultural preference both personal and collective. Man is a social animal who needs psychologically to feel he 'belongs', for he knows that survival chances are enhanced when individuals join together for mutual protection and support. On an even higher level, we seek the company of like-minded people both as individual friends and mentors. These relationships enable self-reflection and empathy, communication of thought and feeling seeking common platforms of experience in the effort to make sense of our personal life journeys. These realtionships can provide mutual guidance in times of emotional tribulation and inspire us to acquire greater moral fortitude in the face of hardship or to rise above adversity that is seemingly beyond our control.

For a moment I want to share some of my background experiences that you may understand my concerns. I was brought up in an extended family that polarized when I was a child. My immediate family were conservative right-wing intellectuals and demonstrated bigotry that is often associated with this orientation. They were often in conflict with other members who were left-wing and social reformers but who also demonstrated their own bigotry, more from economic fear than prejudice. The political wrangling and emotional hurts they inflicted on each other left a strong impression on me. I stayed culturally and politically conservative until early adulthood. I began a personal exploration of my own spirituality through meditation and study of mainstream Buddhism, Hinduism and Western Occultism. This was the time of the Vietnam war which I initially supported, believing in the propaganda of the south-east Asian 'Domino' Theory. Soon I saw through the lies of our government and its allies and understood that politics was all about self-interest.

Like many others of my own age I travelled. I visited South Africa in 1970 and saw first hand the evils of bigotry and colonialism and was myself a victim of the heavy-handedness of the Boer government. It was a shock and my illusions about our western culture were well and truly shattered. Back in Australia I found folk who were interested in setting up alternative communities. My first experience, on a few hundred acres, showed that politics of personal and clique power was still the main motivator in our society regardless of what alternative social policy was espoused. My second experience only confirmed my observation. Here we were dealing with thousands of acres of land and many families. I saw folk being ripped off, slandered and persecuted, all for the coveting of their personal possessions or to remove them as possible opposition to political ambition within the administrative clique.

I withdrew to my own land and invited a few families to share. This situation worked amicably for some years. I knew it was possible to achieve mutual community support but not on a political level - bonds had to be made on the basis of personal trust. The main cause of the breakdown of my personal experiment was religious zealotry. While we all shared a broad paganism there was no problem but when individuals became entangled in dogmatic cults that played on people's personal fears - spiritual and social, the bonds between us soon weakened. While those who weren't caught up in dogma practiced tolerance and understanding, the zealots saw this as a sign of weakness and attempted to manipulate the situation to sow mistrust among us. Eventually they succeeded. In disgust and disappointment I terminated the experiment and returned to living as a nuclear family.

To me, the essence of the Northern Tradition is not in its social culture but in its culture of spirituality. It is in the teachings of our ancestors on the nature of reality, the phenomenal and noumenal nature of existence, albeit hidden in poetic myth, legend and symbolism. These ancestors of ours stretch back into the mists of time and we, their descendants carry access to the collective racial memories of our antecedents through what is known as morphogenetic resonance. But being cultural beings, we need to identify with the historical experiences of our forbearers in order to activate the resonance that will unlock the hidden memories of the knowledge and wisdom accumulated through our genetic and/or cultural continuity and rebirths. To those who identify with the Northern Tradition, the broad culture of the Indo-Europeans is our matrix, and although we know that beyond this label our ancestors were still gathering in viable cultural units, we rely mostly on written history and archaeology to provide speculative portraits of their lives. Thus tangible identification starts mostly with the advent of the Iron Age with written records provided by the Greek, Roman and subsequently by the Christianised cultures of Eurasia. This information helps us to find our roots but it is up to us to create our future by intuiting the most probable consequences of our actions in the present.

The term Asatru is a modern construction, a product of the native Icelandic revival of their heathenism. It is used generically to include all the various branches and cults of Germanic heathenism. Other cognate terms are just as valid and in particular, the English term "Elder Troth" for those who were born or live within the English speaking culture. Since my involvement with Asatru, which came after my initial experiences in the northern tradition as a student of rune-lore, I have participated in the various forms of reconstructed socio-religious community models for the study and practice of Our Troth. All of these have been based on variations of the hierocratic principle - in short religious hierarchies or their 'democratic' equivalents but all were 'temple-cultures', never-the-less. The question is; "what do these models share in common?" The answer is that they are Dark Age or Medieval models of government, some used by our heathen ancestors and others used by their Christian descendants. We all know that certain levels of administration are necessary to co-ordinate groups of people but what is inherent in the medieval models is the opportunity for political opportunism; power, prestige, title and the instigation of a caste or class system based on the judgment of individual usefulness to those in or seeking power. Many can see no problem with this, after all, isn't the whole world run on similar principles at present? And haven't our records of the past shown that this is the way the world has been run since the first tribal 'civilizations' arose to absorb and dominate their neighbours? The answer is yes, and it should be remembered that it was within these models that our ancestors succumbed to Christianity. That is precisely why these models are inappropriate for those practitioners of the Elder Troth who are seeking asylum from the madness of the post-modern world, seeking a supportive environment that enables the personal search for self-actualisation, which in its highest potential is the spiritual realisation of one's essential divinity; to be pursued without the materialistic and negative distractions of ego-driven power politics. In other words, the function of Troth networks is to facilitate the personal quest for ultimate freedom of consciousness. This is, indeed, a great expectation to place on any movement or supporting organisation but it is the essential nature of all religious thought and motivation. A cultural matrix can provide most of the ritual and social needs of its members but when the aim of self-realization is not the primary motivation then organisational stability will be short lived for the diverse levels of conscious awareness will manifest through divergent goals within the group. In this scenario either strong cult leadership or common socio-political focus is the only means to maintain group integrity; in other words, politics.

What has occurred within the Asatru movement is political polarization. The origins of this dualism arose from a misunderstanding of our ethnic identification. All cultures arise from their ethnic origins but no culture retains the purity of its origins. Culture, as we know it is identified by language and custom and as history shows us many individuals and collective ethnic groups are absorbed into the other cultures. This may occur by warfare, economic opportunity or personal choice, e.g., migration. Primary cultural identification is through ethnic and linguistic continuity but it is not the only criteria as we have said, and this topic had been debated by many commentators on the northern tradition. What has occurred in Asatru is a division into two groups of thought; one identified as 'Universalists' and the other as 'Folkish'. This maybe an oversimplification but the extreme public view is that the Folkish (or Folkists) hold that ethnicity is the prime criteria for being an Asatruar while the Universalist hold that cultural affinity, regardless of ethnicity is the prime criteria for being an Asatruar. The sad part of this labelling and over simplification is that both schools of thought consult the same academic and lore sources from which they have derived their preferences. The differences between both groups are actually minimal. They hold lore and ritual practice in common. The division that arose was purely of a socio-political nature.

The folk who were labelled Universalist were groups who desired that Asatru be accepted as a mainstream alternative to established religions. They chose to register with local, state and federal government agencies, within their respective countries, to attain recognition for their godhar or priesthood. They desired the public right to enact the rites of passage in a heathen manner, such as child-naming, marriages and funerals. To do so, they had to meet with certain govt. criteria, basically the same that was applicable to the mainstream churches - a matter of law. To the folkishly inclined, this was seen as too much of a compromise and unworkable in the light of our ancestral traditions; in many cases they were proved correct but in others they were wrong for the organisational Kindreds did flourish. What occurred though was that the external social structures that were imposed began to institutionalise the groups until they appeared very little different from their Abrahamic mainstream counterparts in the way they approached the administration of their respective organizations both internally and externally. They began to feel threatened by the presence of those Asatruar who chose to practice their Troth unconcerned by mainstream social tolerance or government recognition.

In turn, the Folkish feeling marginalized became more insular and more Euro-centric believing, justifiably, that Asatru was in danger of becoming a New-Age parody of the ancestral heritage; new-Age in the sense of being compromised to suit the dogma of 'political correctness' that was spreading through western civilization like a virus. Criticism of this 'Universalist' revisionism was met with outrage by institutionalised Asatru, and from these early clashes arose the spectre of political expediency. Individuals were slandered, organizations were defamed; administrations overthrown in coups and prior iconic figures banished to the heathen wilderness. In turn the disaffected and marginalised Folkish Asatruar reformed and forged alliances amongst themselves. The lines were drawn and from this hypothetical point the politics of identification were enjoined; you were either a Universalist or a Folkist. And while communication still continued between individuals and associations in either camp, it was with suspicion, distrust and defensiveness. The feeling was that each was trying to subvert the other, with the justification to prove moral or ethical superiority. The big picture was forgotten. Asatru, in the minds and hearts of those standing on the periphery - the pagan community and those attracted to the northern tradition was seen as a faction racked confederation of fundamentalist authoritarians. The Folkish had become just as dogmatic as their Universalist twin. The Universalists began equating Folkism with racism, a dangerous defamation and in turn the Folkists saw the Universalists as traitors to the ancestral identity, a sad slander. Now, instead of encouraging exploration of our lore with the purpose for the individual to discover his/her personal resonance, we had a political battle on propaganda lines. Both groups trying to convince the potential members that their particular brand of Asatru was somehow more authentic than their rivals - for rivals they had become. The seekers were viewed more as consumers as the organizations became competitors in the market place. Such attitude breeds an aggressive and defensive consciousness within the organisations and usually ends up being projected out wards into the Asatru community with paranoid intensity.

Then another aberration arose amongst both polarities, perhaps out of the struggle for 'superior' authenticity, perhaps as a calculated strategy to marginalize even more folk within Asatru, those not truly 'converted' in either camp. This was the prioritisation of the academic process as the pre-eminent measure of one's comprehension of the lore, and the prime qualification to be taken seriously. This phenomenon was not a new instigation as a prominent international rune-lore organization had as its entry criteria over ten years ago, the possession of a university degree. While no intelligent person will ever doubt the importance of sound scholarship in the investigation of our ancestral heritage, it is not and can never be the measure of personal spiritual experience, intuition, insight and realization. Historical records tell us how others viewed our ancestors, and interpreted their ritual and mythological world; archaeological finds are interpreted by scientific professionals who base their speculations on the opinions of other scholars. What is obviously missing in this equation is the esoteric connections that can only be made by the individual by practical and personal experience. When academia is given ascendancy over mysticism (where in reality, the two should be used in balanced harmony) then dogma can be easily and firmly entrenched. The various religions of collective Christianity are prime examples, being both dogmatic and sectarian, and any who argue with their individual interpretation of the 'lore' as it applies to the social politics of divine empowerment are deemed heretical. And such is now the direction that the mainstream sects of Asatru are heading towards. Dogma has no place in the Elder Troth whether it be political, academic or religious; and no political label makes an organization any more 'tru' than another.

This is not to say that blame, guilt or shame should be invoked. No, these are useless emotions when it comes to understanding the pattern of wyrd, just as useless as anger, pride and aggression in defence of dogma. Until we can reach a platform of neutrality within our selves as individuals and as a collective, we cannot understand the wyrd of the Elder Troth nor evolve through the raising of consciousness that this neutrality enables.

It is time to go beyond the narrow understanding of Asatru, perhaps even to go beyond the use of the name itself, a name so loaded with historical weight and expectation; so loaded down with 'flame wars' fuelled from ego-driven political power struggles. There is magic in names and so I prefer to use the term Elder Troth. Neither myself, nor the AET identifies with either the term Folkish or Universalist. They are worst than useless now, although they once served their purpose in stages of our growth. These identifications that have become purely sectarian and political are a fetter that will bind us until we wither away from exhaustion. I came to the Troth to find my way home. It is to me a personal door to the spiritual realms of infinite possibility, opened for me by my ancestors. I am not a religionist; not a politician, not an academic, just a man with a yearning for frith and spiritual freedom in this life. If we believe that we are reborn into our ancestral matrix and that what we set up now, we will inherit then it is time to take a long hard look at ourselves, and at the structures that we are putting into place. If we make no attempt to transcend the beguilement of egoism then we deserve the consequences of our weakness.

In Troth,
Rurik

HOME | Articles Home | Top Of Page

Page maintained by Schmitt Services

Last Update: Saturday, June 28, 2003