I keep seeing the notion of heathen hearth cult eg Iâve read comments of heathens saying they âskipped hearth cult yesterday because they were tiredâ or âIâll join you later once Iâve done hearthcult.â
But whenever Iâve looked any deeper it seems the notion of hearth as a religious focus is more related to Greek/Roman pagan traditions.
Iâm not disparaging the practice, but it doesnât seem very historically accurate.
Whatâre your thoughts on this?
Thereâs a higher-than-normal risk of me talking out my ass about something Iâm uninformed about here, because I honestly donât really pay much attention to the online heathen spaces where this sort of stuff proliferates. But yeah, we have very little evidence for how at-home worship was done among Norse people. Not no evidence, but I donât see a lot of influence from VĂślsa Þåttr and St. Birgittaâs missionary work in Sweden on modern heathen hearth cult stuff.
I donât think thereâs actually anything wrong with hearth cult existing, it makes sense to me given that we are all so atomized even when we donât have a pandemic going on but the idea that itâs âthe most important, foundational practice in Heathenryâ (from the Longship website) comes from absolutely nowhere and itâs a serious problem that the same sector of internet heathenry that pushes it is constantly vying for their articulation of heathenry as the objective, universalist one is a serious problem. Theyâve managed to both insist on our fundamental, irresolvable isolation from each other and still dictate what weâre allowed to do.
Recently Iâve been recommending this book a lot, and Iâm going to do it again... An Arena for Higher Powers by Olle Sundqvist makes it incredibly clear that at least in the times and places where we can compare and contrast saga descriptions with archaeological evidence, we canât isolate private worship from social connections, positions, obligations. Admittedly, itâs exactly what we would expect to have better evidence for public (and legally important) forms of worship and celebration. But the idea that individual approaches to religious practice were fundamental rather than being in flux and reciprocal co-determination with collective approaches, or that either of these werenât, in turn, in reciprocal co-determination with the changing social, political, and material circumstances of the Migration Age, the Viking Age, the settlement of Iceland, the formation of kingdoms, etc, etc, etc.......... is a bad idea.
Itâs telling that on the Longship site they start the page on hearth cult by universalizing Durkheim as if we have learned nothing in the last hundred years, yet there is not one single reference to any pre-modern text. Abstract theoretical models are more real to these people than reality is. On their reading list they also donât list any primary sources until the end of their suggested self-education, I guess weâre not prepared to listen to the stories our ancestors told until weâve properly internalized early-to-mid-20th century analytics.
I have concerns that I think most people will find alarmist or overblown about Neoplatonist entryism into heathenry. I encourage heathens to read up on Neoplatonism (a lot of my own knowledge of the subject comes from these podcasts: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ and https://shwep.net/) because itâs an interesting subject for study anyway, to better understand the various lineages of Western thought generally, and so that you can recognize it when it enters heathen discourse. And if someone finds it more fulfilling than heathen reconstructionism then, cool, thatâs great. But letâs please be honest about it, and Iâm personally not interested in participating.
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