On Paganism - by Harijawulfaz

*1. Many members of the Nationalist community, to this day, adopt "Pagan" beliefs. The cause of this is a rejection of Christianity as weak and foreign, while exalting those characters of Pagan traditions which coincide the most with Nationalist ideas.

1. Paganism is not a revealed religion. It has evolved through thousands of years, in different forms according to different geographic locations. If it is to be dispelled, it must be done with reason, as with any other superstition. For the sake of this document, we will take as a main point of reference Nordic Paganism, as that is the most widespread form of Paganism.

2a. We define superstition thusly: "A belief, or set of beliefs, stemming either from ignorance or from an unrational preference of something to be true, disregarding actual truth."*

Pagan Practices

*3. Pagans do not have any official religious text, their practices relying entirely on a complex system of oral tradition. Very few documents of these have been transcribed, almost entirely dealing with mythology instead of actual practices.

3a. If the Pagan gods were real, and were in fact able to visit our homes and families at will, nothing explains why their worship has died out in the first place; moreover, nothing explains why there hasn't been a single recorded visit where rituals were given back to the practitioners.

1. These mythologic texts have been transcribed centuries after Christianization of Pagan lands, by Christian monks. They may hardly be regarded as 100% accurate, and belief may only be based on them with complex rationalization.

2. Certain specific practices and uses have indeed survived outside of these texts, especially in extremely rural places, such as putting lavender in the corners of a room or throwing salt over your left shoulder. There is, however, a great doubt that this is nearly enough to reconstruct an entire religion, and a part of them may stem from countryside utilitarianism rather than religion. This makes genuine religious practices almost indiscernible from everyday rural practices.

3. It follows that any systemized practice of adoration must be speculative in origin, and prone to errors, misinterpretation, bias and large gaps due to simple ignorance.*

Pagan Ontology

*7. There is no unified belief in Pagans regarding ontology, as their own religious texts never touch on it. However, there is a rather sizeable number of Pagans believing gods are not material creatures, but incarnations of aspects of reality.

1. Should gods serve a representative function, the entire idea of basing a religion upon them is animistic. This in itself is in direct contrast with the religious texts, which speak of the gods as living and breathing creatures, intervening in the affairs of men, thus a theistic conception.

2. Intrinsic within animism there is the belief that certain aspects of reality have a divine aspect; however, since no criterion seems to be established as to which aspects are divine and which are not, they may indeed have been chosen arbitrarily.

9a. Worship takes place either to honor or to ask for favors (do ut des).

9b. Should it be to honor reality, we do not see the point in honoring something that is not affected by it; one may appreciate the beauty of a forest, but it seems wholly excessive to sacrifice livestock to the abstract and intangible idea of the forest with the absolute certainty of having changed nothing.

9c. Should it have been, instead, to ask for favors, to prove or disprove paganism would be a mere statistician's game; and should, for example, Islamic prayer prove to have a greater success rate, to Islamize Pagan Europe would have been much easier than to Christianize it.

1. Should Paganism be comprised of both an esoteric and exoteric component, as some would suggest, the esoteric part would be closer to a philosophy than a religion, and thus, depending on what is agreed upon, may even be compatible with Christianity; and the exoteric part would have no reason to exist altogether.*