W numerze:
Scott Simpson, Immanencja i polityka: dlaczego polscy i amerykańscy
neopoganie są tak podobni, a zarazem tak różni? (opis zjawiska).
Bogumił Grott, Jan Stachniuk (1905-1963) i jego doktryna a czasy obecne. Próba podsumowania w stulecie urodzin.
Kazimiera Mikoś, Ideologia volkistowska: u źródeł niemieckiego neopoganizmu.
Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, Maciej Szymkiewicz, Od Wotana do człowieka z Kennewick. Koncepcje rasy i społeczeństwa w Asatru.
Dorota Ziętek, Indianiści w Polsce jako wspólnota społeczno-kulturowa.
Jacek Sieradzan, Aleister Crowley jako mistyk neopogański.
Leonard J. Pełka, Rodzimowierstwo słowiańskie. Materiały do bibliografii.
Maciej Strutyński, Neognoza polska.
Jarosław Tomasiewicz, Wokół neopogańskich koncepcji Jana Stachniuka.
Tomas Bubik, Henryk Hoffmann, Międzynarodowa Konferencja Religioznawcza: Religia a nauka (Pardubice, 15-16.11.2005).
SUMMARIES
Scott Simpson
IMMANENCE AND POLITICS:
HOW CAN POLISH NEO-PAGANS AND AMERICAN NEO-PAGANS
BE SO SIMILAR AND YET SO DIFFERENT?
A sharp divide exists between American Neo-Paganism (itself an example of a broader grouping of English-language Neo-Paganism) and Polish Neo-Paganism (an example of a Continental grouping of Neo-Paganism). When one of these two types of Neo-Pagans hears about the other, their reaction is often one of shock and horror. For the left-wing American Neo-Pagan, the Niklot Neo-Pagan is surely no more than a neo-Nazi thug insincerely using the Pagan past as a cover for their political Nationalism. For the right-wing Polish Neo-Pagan, the Reclaiming Collective Neo-Pagan is a deluded New Age dilettante misappropriating European history to legitimise their magical fantasies. Should these groups really be lumped under the same label of „Neo-Pagan” as is commonplace in academic literature? This paper argues that there are a number of common denominators that make a shared category useful to understanding and discussing Neo-Paganism on both sides of the Atlantic, most importantly the deep commitment to an immanent sacrum.
Furthermore, this paper shows how, working from similar core concepts, these two branches
of Neo-Paganism can diverge so radically. It should be emphasised that the mainstreams of Polish and American Neo-Paganisms do not share a direct causal relationship or family tree. Most Polish Neo-Paganisms are not imports from the United States, or visa-versa. Before the Second World War, the term „Neopagan” had been applied to both Jakub Wilhelm Hauer’s Deutsche Glaubensbewegung (the German Faith Movement) and Jan Stachniuk’s Zadruga in Poland. In the US, use of the word „Neo-Pagan” may be traced to Tim Zell’s publication „Green Egg” in the US in 1967, which was one of the catalysts for creating a sense of unity among the US Neo-Paganisms (Wicca, Druidism and Asatru).
The rejection of the transcendental universalism of the Judeo-Christian tradition in Europe and the desire to return to an immanent particularism is common to all groups and philosophies covered by the label Neo-Pagan. It is this immanent sacrum which gives rise to many of the shared features of Neo-Paganism in Poland and the US, but it is also the key point which allows them to diverge in such a signal manner. The paper first traces immanent particularism through Continental European Neo-Pagan writers, including Jan Stachniuk, Alain de Benoist, Tomasz Szczepański and Lech Emfazy Stefański, and then follows a similar path through Gerald Gardner, Miriam Simos (Starhawk), Isaac Bonewits and Stephen McNallen.
Bogumił Grott
JAN STACHNIUK (1905-1963) AND HIS DOCTRINE IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES.
AN ATTEMPT AT A SUMMARY ON THE HUNDREDTH
ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTHDAY
The author considers the nature of Stachniuk’s doctrine, its fate (its rejection by the Polish society), the causes for such a course of events, and its prospects for the future. According to the author, „Jan Stachniuk’s activities can be treated as an attempt to implement, by use of political means, practical conclusions derived from intellectual inquiries concerning the influence of religion on the economic mentality of societies in order to raise the level of those who fall behind”. The author also writes that „Stachniuk called the planned activities an experiment ‘which no nation has yet undertaken’’. The author attributes Stachniuk’s defeat in his extreme anti-traditionalism, which could not be successful in Poland where the idea of the „Catholic Country of the Polish Nation” enjoyed great popularity and upon which, after the war, communism of Marxist flavor was imposed by force. The author also points out the fact that the neo-pagan movement, which was represented by Stachniuk’s group, had little chance of success because the Polish nationalism was increasingly falling under the influence of Catholicism. The pagan trends, on the other hand were much stronger in Germany where Christianity was in crisis during the time between the two world wars. The author believes that Stachniuk’s practical design, expressed in the Institute of the Reconstruction of Culture which he was planning, may after all have a chance in contemporary Poland, but in the form of an expert-discussion club, which would take on the issue of the adaptation of the Polish spirituality to the demands of the contemporary industrial civilization. He is also convinced that the metamorphosis of the Polish psyche is very much needed because it leads to the intensification of the creative and productive potential of the society, which is a condition of maintenance of its national identity in the world that is undergoing globalization.
Kazimiera Mikoś
VOLK IDEOLOGY:
AT THE SOURCE OF THE GERMAN NEO-PAGANISM
The author, having attempted to establish a relation between the birth of the German neopaganism and the moment of the rise of the volk (folk) ideology in its racist version offers – by way of introduction – some of her own definitional-terminological observations; they pertain mostly to the concepts and terms of „volk” and „neo-paganism”. Next, she discusses briefly the recently predominant views on volk ideology and the relation of the „breakthrough moment” in the development of this ideology with the German neo-paganism. After presenting the results of the most recent research, the author formulates conclusions with regard to the matter, which can be summarized as follows: The matter of the rise of the racist component of the volk ideology should not be linked with some „breakthrough moment” because in its history – at least in this regard – there were no revolutionary shifts. The ideology had this component from the time of its origin at the beginning of the 19th Century. Teutonism or Germanism, was also evident in the oldest-known concretizations of the thought pattern which was the core of the volk ideology. Accordingly, those first concretizations should be the focus of increased attention of the scholars of the German (volk) neo-paganism, even if one were to maintain the traditional assumption that, in the organizational sense, the volk-religious movement does not begin until 1894 – i.e., at the moment of the creation of Lange’s Deuthschebund.
Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, Maciej Szymkiewicz
FROM WOTAN TO THE KENNEWICK MAN.
CONCEPTS OF RACE AND SOCIETY IN ÁSATRÚ
In neo-pagan tradition, even a very cursory review allows discernment of two trends: the liberal and the nationalistic. The first includes, above all, the Wicca; the second, a number of local groups which relates to various indigenous pre-Christian traditions. In the United States, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries, the largest and the most conspicuous (but also most the most differentiated) representative of the nationalistic trend is Asatru, which attempts to reconstruct the paganism of the Normans. The proponents of Asatru base their identity on two oppositions: opposition to Christianity and opposition to the contemporary liberal culture. In practice, both these oppositions result in promotion of more or less contrived family, tribal, national and racial relations as opposed to individual and common relations. The proponents of Asatru very often proclaim an elitist vision of the society – juxtaposed against the Christian and democratic egalitarian vision. Such vision is motivated in a variety of ways – most often by invoking the ethos of the Vikings which is reconstructed based on the Scandinavian sources. The most extreme neo-pagans are quick to utilize a particular concept of race, which was proposed by theosophists in the 19th Century and was later developed by the Nazi occultists. In the most extreme version represented by Varg Vikernes (Norway), the Germanic race is regarded as the body of god Wotan, and care for its purity and development, on the cost of other races, is a religious duty. Another example of a strategy of justifying and promoting neo-pagan vision of the society is the matter of the so called „Kennewick Man”, a skeleton from at least 9.000 years ago, found in the State of Washington. On the basis of a diagnosis of anthropologists, who classified the „Kennewick Man” as being of white race, the Asatru Folk Assembly group undertook an action in the media to promote the idea of merica having been colonized in ancient times by pagan Europeans. Both these examples show how important the concept of race (understood in the ethnic sense) is for neo-pagans with nationalistic orientation.
Dorota Ziętek
INDIANISTS IN POLAND
AS A SOCIAL-CULTURAL COMMUNITY
The author begins with a brief presentation of the concept „culture” and in a later part, she moves toward its formulation proposed by Antonina Kłoskowska. The three categories of culture that she delineated – the social culture, the symbolic culture and the culture of being – became the methodological perspective for the analysis of the Indianist (the lovers of Native Americans) milieu in Poland. In order to depict the social dimension of this community, she presented the genesis of the interest in the Indian issues, as well as the circumstances of creation and the structure of the basic organizational unit of the community of the Polish Movement of the Friends of the Indians. Within the framework of the presentation of the symbolic culture of the Indanists, rituals of this group were discussed, with the clear differentiation between those which belong to the sphere of sacrum, and those which have a distinctly lay character.
The political activities of this community, which falls within the frame of symbolic culture, were presented on the basis of the international „Sacred Runs”, which are based on a traditional ceremony of the Euromeetings, and, above all, by presenting the activities of the Polish Group for the Support of Leonard Peltier (PGPLP) and the „CONDOR”, the Association for the Support of the Native Americans. An interesting matter discussed in the article is the issue of the identity of the people who combine the passion for the Native American ceremony and way of life with the sense of Polish national identity and the challenges of daily life, which is work and family. For some, syncretic „Indian villages”, which are becoming more common, are the solution. In the context of the analysis of the community of the Friends of Indians in Poland, it was observed that the element that determines its social dimension is the collective, country-wide dimension, the basic assumption of which is working together toward common goals. In this case, the inspiration comes from the Native American cultural principles and values, and less often beliefs. Accepted and internalized values are the fundamental factor consolidating the Indianists, despite their internal division. They have great meaning for the collective life and for internal cohesion of this group. The sense of social closeness, based on the Native American worldview shared by the community, is its integrating stimulus.
Jacek Sieradzan
ALEISTER CROWLEY AS A NEO-PAGAN MYSTIC
The article „Aleister Crowley as a neo-pagan mystic” presents the best known 20th Century esoteric man. It shows the role of how various realms of the so called secret knowledge (magic, astrology, cabal, tarot), and from Eastern traditions buddhist meditation, yoga, tantra, sufism and taoism played in his life. The main sources of Crowley’s secret knowledge were travel, reading and his unusual visions and psychic trips, called „astral travels”. In his visions he received insights and initiations from gods (Osiris Dionysus, Horus, Hekate, Bhawani), and other spiritual beings: angels and spirits of the elements. Visions played a significant role in Crowley’s life and they make him one of the most original mystics and visionaries of his age.
Integral parts of Crowley’s neo-pagan vision of perceiving the world were his experiences with hallucinogenic substances and narcotics, and his bizarre sexual conduct, which encompassed sadomasochistic and homosexual relations. The article stresses also Crowley’s creative role as a precursor of New Age and as an advocate of the change of mores which became part of life in the second part of the 20th Century.
Scott Simpson
IMMANENCE AND POLITICS:
HOW CAN POLISH NEO-PAGANS AND AMERICAN NEO-PAGANS
BE SO SIMILAR AND YET SO DIFFERENT?
A sharp divide exists between American Neo-Paganism (itself an example of a broader grouping of English-language Neo-Paganism) and Polish Neo-Paganism (an example of a Continental grouping of Neo-Paganism). When one of these two types of Neo-Pagans hears about the other, their reaction is often one of shock and horror. For the left-wing American Neo-Pagan, the Niklot Neo-Pagan is surely no more than a neo-Nazi thug insincerely using the Pagan past as a cover for their political Nationalism. For the right-wing Polish Neo-Pagan, the Reclaiming Collective Neo-Pagan is a deluded New Age dilettante misappropriating European history to legitimise their magical fantasies. Should these groups really be lumped under the same label of „Neo-Pagan” as is commonplace in academic literature? This paper argues that there are a number of common denominators that make a shared category useful to understanding and discussing Neo-Paganism on both sides of the Atlantic, most importantly the deep commitment to an immanent sacrum.
Furthermore, this paper shows how, working from similar core concepts, these two branches
of Neo-Paganism can diverge so radically. It should be emphasised that the mainstreams of Polish and American Neo-Paganisms do not share a direct causal relationship or family tree. Most Polish Neo-Paganisms are not imports from the United States, or visa-versa. Before the Second World War, the term „Neopagan” had been applied to both Jakub Wilhelm Hauer’s Deutsche Glaubensbewegung (the German Faith Movement) and Jan Stachniuk’s Zadruga in Poland. In the US, use of the word „Neo-Pagan” may be traced to Tim Zell’s publication „Green Egg” in the US in 1967, which was one of the catalysts for creating a sense of unity among the US Neo-Paganisms (Wicca, Druidism and Asatru).
The rejection of the transcendental universalism of the Judeo-Christian tradition in Europe and the desire to return to an immanent particularism is common to all groups and philosophies covered by the label Neo-Pagan. It is this immanent sacrum which gives rise to many of the shared features of Neo-Paganism in Poland and the US, but it is also the key point which allows them to diverge in such a signal manner. The paper first traces immanent particularism through Continental European Neo-Pagan writers, including Jan Stachniuk, Alain de Benoist, Tomasz Szczepański and Lech Emfazy Stefański, and then follows a similar path through Gerald Gardner, Miriam Simos (Starhawk), Isaac Bonewits and Stephen McNallen.
Bogumił Grott
JAN STACHNIUK (1905-1963) AND HIS DOCTRINE IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES.
AN ATTEMPT AT A SUMMARY ON THE HUNDREDTH
ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTHDAY
The author considers the nature of Stachniuk’s doctrine, its fate (its rejection by the Polish society), the causes for such a course of events, and its prospects for the future. According to the author, „Jan Stachniuk’s activities can be treated as an attempt to implement, by use of political means, practical conclusions derived from intellectual inquiries concerning the influence of religion on the economic mentality of societies in order to raise the level of those who fall behind”. The author also writes that „Stachniuk called the planned activities an experiment ‘which no nation has yet undertaken’’. The author attributes Stachniuk’s defeat in his extreme anti-traditionalism, which could not be successful in Poland where the idea of the „Catholic Country of the Polish Nation” enjoyed great popularity and upon which, after the war, communism of Marxist flavor was imposed by force. The author also points out the fact that the neo-pagan movement, which was represented by Stachniuk’s group, had little chance of success because the Polish nationalism was increasingly falling under the influence of Catholicism. The pagan trends, on the other hand were much stronger in Germany where Christianity was in crisis during the time between the two world wars. The author believes that Stachniuk’s practical design, expressed in the Institute of the Reconstruction of Culture which he was planning, may after all have a chance in contemporary Poland, but in the form of an expert-discussion club, which would take on the issue of the adaptation of the Polish spirituality to the demands of the contemporary industrial civilization. He is also convinced that the metamorphosis of the Polish psyche is very much needed because it leads to the intensification of the creative and productive potential of the society, which is a condition of maintenance of its national identity in the world that is undergoing globalization.
Kazimiera Mikoś
VOLK IDEOLOGY:
AT THE SOURCE OF THE GERMAN NEO-PAGANISM
The author, having attempted to establish a relation between the birth of the German neopaganism and the moment of the rise of the volk (folk) ideology in its racist version offers – by way of introduction – some of her own definitional-terminological observations; they pertain mostly to the concepts and terms of „volk” and „neo-paganism”. Next, she discusses briefly the recently predominant views on volk ideology and the relation of the „breakthrough moment” in the development of this ideology with the German neo-paganism. After presenting the results of the most recent research, the author formulates conclusions with regard to the matter, which can be summarized as follows: The matter of the rise of the racist component of the volk ideology should not be linked with some „breakthrough moment” because in its history – at least in this regard – there were no revolutionary shifts. The ideology had this component from the time of its origin at the beginning of the 19th Century. Teutonism or Germanism, was also evident in the oldest-known concretizations of the thought pattern which was the core of the volk ideology. Accordingly, those first concretizations should be the focus of increased attention of the scholars of the German (volk) neo-paganism, even if one were to maintain the traditional assumption that, in the organizational sense, the volk-religious movement does not begin until 1894 – i.e., at the moment of the creation of Lange’s Deuthschebund.
Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, Maciej Szymkiewicz
FROM WOTAN TO THE KENNEWICK MAN.
CONCEPTS OF RACE AND SOCIETY IN ÁSATRÚ
In neo-pagan tradition, even a very cursory review allows discernment of two trends: the liberal and the nationalistic. The first includes, above all, the Wicca; the second, a number of local groups which relates to various indigenous pre-Christian traditions. In the United States, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries, the largest and the most conspicuous (but also most the most differentiated) representative of the nationalistic trend is Asatru, which attempts to reconstruct the paganism of the Normans. The proponents of Asatru base their identity on two oppositions: opposition to Christianity and opposition to the contemporary liberal culture. In practice, both these oppositions result in promotion of more or less contrived family, tribal, national and racial relations as opposed to individual and common relations. The proponents of Asatru very often proclaim an elitist vision of the society – juxtaposed against the Christian and democratic egalitarian vision. Such vision is motivated in a variety of ways – most often by invoking the ethos of the Vikings which is reconstructed based on the Scandinavian sources. The most extreme neo-pagans are quick to utilize a particular concept of race, which was proposed by theosophists in the 19th Century and was later developed by the Nazi occultists. In the most extreme version represented by Varg Vikernes (Norway), the Germanic race is regarded as the body of god Wotan, and care for its purity and development, on the cost of other races, is a religious duty. Another example of a strategy of justifying and promoting neo-pagan vision of the society is the matter of the so called „Kennewick Man”, a skeleton from at least 9.000 years ago, found in the State of Washington. On the basis of a diagnosis of anthropologists, who classified the „Kennewick Man” as being of white race, the Asatru Folk Assembly group undertook an action in the media to promote the idea of merica having been colonized in ancient times by pagan Europeans. Both these examples show how important the concept of race (understood in the ethnic sense) is for neo-pagans with nationalistic orientation.
Dorota Ziętek
INDIANISTS IN POLAND
AS A SOCIAL-CULTURAL COMMUNITY
The author begins with a brief presentation of the concept „culture” and in a later part, she moves toward its formulation proposed by Antonina Kłoskowska. The three categories of culture that she delineated – the social culture, the symbolic culture and the culture of being – became the methodological perspective for the analysis of the Indianist (the lovers of Native Americans) milieu in Poland. In order to depict the social dimension of this community, she presented the genesis of the interest in the Indian issues, as well as the circumstances of creation and the structure of the basic organizational unit of the community of the Polish Movement of the Friends of the Indians. Within the framework of the presentation of the symbolic culture of the Indanists, rituals of this group were discussed, with the clear differentiation between those which belong to the sphere of sacrum, and those which have a distinctly lay character.
The political activities of this community, which falls within the frame of symbolic culture, were presented on the basis of the international „Sacred Runs”, which are based on a traditional ceremony of the Euromeetings, and, above all, by presenting the activities of the Polish Group for the Support of Leonard Peltier (PGPLP) and the „CONDOR”, the Association for the Support of the Native Americans. An interesting matter discussed in the article is the issue of the identity of the people who combine the passion for the Native American ceremony and way of life with the sense of Polish national identity and the challenges of daily life, which is work and family. For some, syncretic „Indian villages”, which are becoming more common, are the solution. In the context of the analysis of the community of the Friends of Indians in Poland, it was observed that the element that determines its social dimension is the collective, country-wide dimension, the basic assumption of which is working together toward common goals. In this case, the inspiration comes from the Native American cultural principles and values, and less often beliefs. Accepted and internalized values are the fundamental factor consolidating the Indianists, despite their internal division. They have great meaning for the collective life and for internal cohesion of this group. The sense of social closeness, based on the Native American worldview shared by the community, is its integrating stimulus.
Jacek Sieradzan
ALEISTER CROWLEY AS A NEO-PAGAN MYSTIC
The article „Aleister Crowley as a neo-pagan mystic” presents the best known 20th Century esoteric man. It shows the role of how various realms of the so called secret knowledge (magic, astrology, cabal, tarot), and from Eastern traditions buddhist meditation, yoga, tantra, sufism and taoism played in his life. The main sources of Crowley’s secret knowledge were travel, reading and his unusual visions and psychic trips, called „astral travels”. In his visions he received insights and initiations from gods (Osiris Dionysus, Horus, Hekate, Bhawani), and other spiritual beings: angels and spirits of the elements. Visions played a significant role in Crowley’s life and they make him one of the most original mystics and visionaries of his age.
Integral parts of Crowley’s neo-pagan vision of perceiving the world were his experiences with hallucinogenic substances and narcotics, and his bizarre sexual conduct, which encompassed sadomasochistic and homosexual relations. The article stresses also Crowley’s creative role as a precursor of New Age and as an advocate of the change of mores which became part of life in the second part of the 20th Century.
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