Filip: We might be live already. I’m not sure. We’re live. Okay, hello, everyone and welcome to the channel. We are currently in Malmö at the conference for the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, which means it was an amazing opportunity for me to meet up with some of my amazing friends. Zevi, from Seekers of Unity and Dr Angela Puca, from Angela’s Symposium and Dr Justin Sledge from the channel Esoterica. This is actually the first time we’re meeting in person, all of us. So it’s really a great, wonderful moment for all of us, and we just thought we’d do a quick live-stream. Maybe answer some questions and hang out for a few minutes.
Angela: And talk about our experience.
Filip: Yes, so feel free to ask any questions in the chat. What do you guys think about this whole…
Angela: We’ve had a lot of theological, philosophical discussions today. It felt really intense.
Justin Yeah it’s funny that when normal people get together and talk about like what shows they’re watching. We get together and we’re like so what kind of exotic causations do you believe?
[Laughter]
Angela: Right, so what is your opinion about this theology?
Angela: And talk about our experience.
Filip: Yes, so feel free to ask any questions in the chat. What do you guys think about this whole…
Angela: We’ve had a lot of theological, philosophical discussions today. It felt really intense.
Justin Yeah it’s funny that when normal people get together and talk about like what shows they’re watching. We get together and we’re like so what kind of exotic causations do you believe?
[Laughter]
Angela: Right, so what is your opinion about this theology?
Justin: Yeah, like do you believe in other kinds of causal theory?
Angela: So how do you evaluate your a priori assumptions about reality?
Justin: Right, right. Well, we should do favourite colours or something like… something a little lower bar but…
Filip: What’s your favourite colour, Justin?
Justin: You know that BMW makes this sort of gunmetal blue colour. So it’s halfway between like blue and grey. It’s that colour. I think it may be called gunmetal but I don’t like the… it’s a little too, that sounds too intense but I like that spectrum, somewhere just between blue and grey.
Filip: Yeah, that’s nice My wife once said that her favourite colour was white because it’s all the colours at the same time and I like that answer. I steal that sometimes.
Justin: Let me guess what Angela’s favourite colour is.
[Laughter]
Angela: Well it’s less obvious than you think. My favourite colour is actually a shade of purple in colour, which is a mixture…
Filip: Let’s do a fist bump.
Angela: Oh okay, is it yours too?
Filip: Yes.
Angela: Okay.
[Filip and Angela fist bump]
Otherwise, well I’m wearing amethyst, if you can see.
[Angela displays a ring]
Zevi: Like the purple you are wearing on your eyes?
Angela: Yes, so I really like purple but especially the amethyst, especially the type of purple that goes into blue, so like indigo.
Filip: At our wedding, we had purple as our colour theme. So we are actually discussing colours.
Zevi: I don’t mean to be rude.
Angela: I think people want to hear us talking more about philosophical stuff than colours.
Zevi: I’m not on my phone here, I’m just getting questions because the screen is so far away.
Filip: I gave Zevi the job to be in charge of questions and comments, so if you have
any for us…
Angela: If you have questions about Sufism or Paganism, Shamanism, Jewish mysticism and
everything in between.
Filip: Colours whatever.
Justin: Yeah, colours, you never told us your favourite colour Zevi.
Zevi: I always love turquoise blue – between blue and green.
Justin: Like teal is?
Zevi: Something like that. Something like a sky-thrown blue. Yeah, because I really did as a child. Not just because of the historical or theological significance.
Filip: We could discuss the metaphysical qualities of colour. What do the Kabbalists say about colour?
Zevi: Sefirot colours.
Justin: yeah unless you’re on the colours
Zevi: Yeah, we got some, we’re getting some questions.
Justin: But also how colours, like it’s like what in the world were they thinking when they wrote The Iliad, right? Like the “wine dark sea.” Like what in the world, I think Jackson Crawford actually wrote his whole dissertation on colours and Norse mythology. It’s interesting how even what we perceive as various colours – like is there really such thing as orange? Like why do we pick out certain colours to give names there’s like billions, it’s a spectrum. Obviously, it’s this literal Spectrum but we pick out certain shades to give names. Like what are the names of all those colours?
Zevi: We have a question from Jared 33. Have you guys ever experimented with some of the ancient ritual techniques you studied and did you get any interesting results?
[Laughter]
Filip: It’s always these questions.
Justin: I think that the next time we do a live we should just go through and answer like you do a like a FAQ top five and just answer them – so my answer is easy, no.
Angela: My answer is that I only talk about these things from an academic point of view on my channel.
Filip: My answer, it depends on what you mean by ancient, I think the short answer is no but because I’ve done fieldwork in Sufi contexts and stuff. That’s not really ancient, that’s medieval and forward but I have participated in a certain…
Angela: Well, in that sense then me too. But I don’t think it classifies as ancient because…
Zevi: We were talking on the last stream we did about the ancient very, very ancient practice – perhaps the oldest practice known, it’s been kind of breathing. and I get that I do that with interesting results, both as a joke because I breathe and it has good results but also because of breathing. There are like new forms…
Justin: I heard it’s a fad frankly.
Zevi: No, have any of you gotten into like holotropic breathing or like like rhythmic psycho-breathing, that kind of stuff?
Angela: Like the yogic practices? Like pranayama?
Zevi: Or that, yes?
Filip: Not to any significant degree. Like I’ve tried it once, not in a particular form but like the kind of yoga breathing techniques but not really.
Justin: I was just reading about some of those practices in the Merkabah mysticism the other day on the train and they have breathing practices. Yeah, it’s like there actually are breathing practices there’s an interesting study we made between Merkabah, what little we know from those [..] practices, mentions breathing practices and postures and it’s like oh yeah it’s this very yogic sounding.
Filip: And breathing techniques seemed to be very, at least almost universal across different traditions and stuff clearly there’s something very powerful that can happen when we control our breathing in different ways. We have it in Sufism and in Hinduism and Daoism all the way in the Far East and like Hesychasm and Christianity, [..], Kabbalah yes, very fascinating.
Justin: Yes it’s just a Woulter Hanegraaff’s point that he made the other night at the round table. We all have the same brains, we have the same bodies, basically and we all need oxygen and when you deprive your brain of oxygen the results are really instantaneous, yeah and how you systematically derive you know deprive your brain of oxygen, of course, really it’s kind of a cross-cultural reality because we’re a cross-cultural open range, we’re cross-cultural agents.
Zevi: Yes, I think I think a lot of academic work is trying to create distinctions and whole distinctions important and so between cultures but I think there’s sort of a new trend in Academia to point out that there is something shared amongst these cultures which is the human organism. And although we may conceptualize it in very radically different ways, it still fundamentally is organically the same manner that we’re dealing with and therefore doing things we have the same breath or would have comparable effects, let’s say, whether you’re doing that in the Far East or in the West or down South – wherever right?
Justin: Yeah, like getting drunk basically every culture develops some form of intoxication. Unsurprisingly alcohol seems to affect everyone in the same basically everywhere or you know, whatever lots of different forms of intoxication and I think that depriving the brain of oxygen is just another type of intoxication.
Filip: Yeah, I mean try to hold your breath for a while and see.
Justin: You feel weird. Yeah, like I think that it’s just again focusing on the power of intoxication.
Filip: Yeah, I mean try to hold your breath for a while and see.
Justin: You feel weird. Yeah, like I think that it’s just again focusing on the power of intoxication.
Zevi: This is a question from Flightskoo.
I think I’m reading it right. Can you talk about the differences between Zen Buddhism and Daoism?
Zevi: [to Justin] You can?
Justin: I can’t.
Filip: [to Angela] I think you’re the expert here.
Angela: Yeah, I’ve studied Buddhism for a long time even though my specialism is more Indian and Tibetan Buddhism but Daoism and Zen Buddhism, I would say, are pretty different. They are two different religions and Zen Buddhism, it was Zen Buddhism, right? Not Chan.
Zevi: Yeah it was Zen Buddhism.
Angela: Yeah okay, Zen Buddhism is Japanese. Chan Buddhism is Chinese and
incorporates some elements of Daoism but it’s still not quite the same as Daoism. And Zen Buddhism is also quite different from Chan Buddhism. So they are just very different religions, to be honest. There have been some influences it’s a bit like with but Vajrayana Buddhism which is the tantric form of Buddhism that has some influences from Tantra, from the Indian tradition but it’s still Tantric Buddhism is not the same as Tantra, they are quite different. In Buddhism, you have all the basic elements of the Four Noble Truths and the aim of the Nirvana as something that you want to achieve and it’s not something that you really find in Daoism. So they’re very different systems I’d say.
Zevi: What would you say is the… it’s funny I feel like now I’m not really…
Angela: The comparison probably is more feasible between Chan Buddhism and Daoism rather than Zen Buddhism because Zen Buddhism is Japanese.
Zevi: What would you say are the main differences that stick out to you between the two besides them being entirely different systems?
Angela: Yeah, I think that you cannot really compare Zen Buddhism and Daoism and Buddhism because they are culturally, very, very different.
Filip: So how about Chan Buddhism then? Because I did my video on Chan slash Zen. I did distinguish between them in the video but I discussed the fact that certain aspects of Chan Buddhism seem to be, at least, somewhat influenced by Daoism, and correct me if I’m wrong but, for example, there seems to be this emphasis in Chan Buddhism, not necessarily on nirvana in the sense of like escaping or transcending the world but of sort of living in the world in a sort of virtuous… with virtuosity, with spontaneity and that seems to me rather similar to certain Daoist ideas like would you agree?
Angela: Yeah, there are similarities, though I still see them as a bit different. Like when you look at Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism I think for a long time I
really struggle to see a difference between advice Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism because it seems like, at the end of the day, they both really argued that there’s a non-dualist perspective, a very radical non-dualist perspective because in Buddhism you have the idea that nothing exists in isolation, that everything appears into existence. There’s the concept in Sanskrit pratītyasamutpāda – dependent arising. So there’s nothing that appears into existence in an independent, solid and permanent state. So to me that always seemed very close to the idea of Advaita Vedanta. But then I think probably the sort of sociological element is different in Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism.
Justin: Did Daoism ever get much of a foothold in Japan?
Filip: Not that I’m aware of.
Justin: It’s interesting what did and I’d be curious, like I was wondering if it didn’t get a foothold why? And why did Zen get a foothold? Like to what extent was there a similarity to the indigenous religion and so…
Filip: I think Zen Buddhism incorporated aspects of Shinto. Whether that was an already existing Tradition at that point it’s hard to say but the indigenous religious tradition of Japan became incorporated into Buddhism. So I argue in one of my other videos that they’ve become essentially indistinguishable from each other for a couple of hundred years.
Angela: Something similar happened with Bön in Tibet and Buddhism, that they influence each other and I remember that my professor of Tibetan used to say that if you go in Tibet it’s very difficult to distinguish a Buddhist sacred place from a Bön sacred place.
Justin: Christianity had that back in Europe too. I mean Christianity was a bit more triumphalist in terms of, you can always tell where the old Pagan shrines were.
Filip: Yeah, the churches.
Justin: Yeah, because that is where the churches are now. Like you can tell the word the capital of Teotihuacan was because that’s where they tore everything down and build a church on it. So it’s the assimilation and you’ll go up to Uppsala and the big church there where they tore everything down.
Filip: I think Daoism made its way somewhat into Korea, more so than Japan but this is not my field of expertise. I don’t find a lot in Japan.
Justin: And also why East and not West to me, outside from the fact there’s a mountain. But it’s interesting how something like a mountain can determine which way religion goes. Like geography plays a decisive role in how religions travel. And like the Silk Road, we’ve got to see this recently, they found those little statues of the Buddha in Egypt.
Angela and Filip: I didn’t see that.
Justin: And also why East and not West to me, outside from the fact there’s a mountain. But it’s interesting how something like a mountain can determine which way religion goes. Like geography plays a decisive role in how religions travel. And like the Silk Road, we’ve got to see this recently, they found those little statues of the Buddha in Egypt.
Angela and Filip: I didn’t see that.
Justin: Yeah, I think one of my favourite things is actually here, actually here in Sweden, in Stockholm in the museum, they have that exploded grave of a Viking Chieftain and you walk into the grave and it shows you all the things in space around his body. And one of the things he had was a little statue of the Buddha. That was made of lapis lazuli and that probably came from Afghanistan. We had tons of Islamic coins, for silver and like he had this little Buddha and you’re like, what in the world was a Viking Chieftain doing with a little Buddha? This shows you how far things can travel in the ancient world. But if physical objects can travel that far, certainly ideas can.
Filip: Yes and we often imagine the ancient sort of people, back in the day, had been completely shut off from each other but that’s really not true at all.
Justin: Yeah and so there’s always a speculation to what degree the so-called Gymnosophists, where they look at their ideas over across the Spice Road or whatever like Alexander’s armies always pressing into Afghanistan and you get this Gandhara art – it’s like this beautiful mixture of Indian and classical Greek art. We know the Buddhist missionaries were being sent and did arrive in Egypt. There were actively Buddhist missionaries out there competing with Manicheans and stuff. There’s a great movie to be made about that, where you just get a mix of like the Manichean guy and the Buddhist
are having a debate about… I mean it’s such a cool scene for a movie because if…
Filip: There isn’t a movie?
Justin: If there’s a movie? No, I don’t know of one.
Filip: I thought you said there was.
Justin: There is no movie.
Filip: I have to see this movie!
Justin: Yeah, it’d just be the most interesting…
Angela: You have to make it.
Justin: Yeah, we gotta get in the film-making industry.
Zevi: Yeah, we have some fun questions here. Both technical ones and some broader, abstract ones. There’s a question where the username is a string of lettuce. I’m not going to try and read it. Is the Virgin Mary story a translation mistake from the Old Testament into Greek? And then there are some broader questions. If these questions are too technical.
Filip: Like the idea that she was a virgin?
Zevi Yeah.
Justin: Yeah, the parthenos problem. Because Isaiah 7:14 says she was an alma, not a betulah. I think it is a translation mistake. But I think it’s one the Rabbis made, I think whoever translated it, translated on purpose. They knew that word, they mistranslated it on purpose.
Zevi: Do you want to do some context there?
Justin: So the version Isaiah says, “and a young woman will conceive a child” – alma – the word alma can have all kinds of valences but it can even have valences of professional non-virgin and even like mean sex worker, so it can have a range of valences. But there’s a distinct word in Hebrew for virgin, betulah and the Hebrew is not betulah. But when they translate it to Greek they translated it as parthenos, parthenos definitely means virgin. And so the real question is why did the very Jewish scholars elect not to try to translate and I think in Onkelos too it just translated as […] Onkelos is the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible. It also just reproduces it as young woman.
Zevi: Yeah, it seems to me like the author of Matthew is intentionally translating there as virgin. Because at the end of the verse which is, “and the child’s name should be called Emmanuel, “God with us” and so it’s the end of the verse which is informing us the way that he’s known.
Justin: And it’s funny because Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel and yet he leans so heavily on the Greek translation, which was a very Jewish translation, the Septuagint is a very Jewish book but it’s an interesting moment where this very Aramaic sounding, thinking writer leans Greek because he needs the birth miracle, really, he really needs to get off the ground. But I don’t know if it’s a mistranslation but there’s so there’s some there, there and it isn’t straightforwardly the word betulah is not in that sentence.
Zevi: Right, so to answer the question I would say that it’s not a mistake, it’s an intentional mistranslation.
Justin: Yeah, that’s what I’ve always considered.
Filip: I don’t feel informed enough to have an opinion but I trust these two.
Justin: But I will say that sometimes so much world history has turned on that Greek translation.
Zevi: Here’s a broader question. Beyond just the book of scholarship, this is from Leonardo Capstick, with the so-called new-atheist movement dying out do you think and the scare quotes are there in the question, do you think public discourse about religion will improve?
Angela: What does it mean, new-atheist movement?
Justin: New atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, Sam Harris…
Angela: Is it dying out?
Filip: I don’t know that’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Zevi: Can we question the question or do we accept the premise of the Question?
Justin: I don’t think they have hegemony on that on that conversation any more.
Angela: Yeah, that’s different from dying out, it’s more losing the hegemony over the public conversation.
Justin: Right but I think that aside from the dark corners of Reddit where new atheism is pretty popular, I think that people are definitely ready for a more nuanced conversation about religion and they realize that that even atheism is actually…
Angela: A religion.
Justin: Well, I would say there’s a lot of nuances to non-theism and militant evangelical non-theism is actually just one vocal, frankly irritating, camp. But I think there are lots of non-theisms out there. Like I’m a non-theist but I’m pretty interested in having very subtle conversations about like, for instance, mysticism and mystical experiences but I think are totally available to non-theists. And so I think that the public is very interested, eager to have conversations around religion that are a lot more subtle than, evolution’s, true God’s dead. Like that’s for 16-year-old Nietzscheans that we could use a lot less of in the world, right?
Zevi: So let’s say the question is if that movement is dying out will that improve the discourse about religion?
Filip: I think hopefully because my opinion has always been that the new-atheist position is often based on a very shallow understanding of religion to begin with. And if it’s sort of dying out or if they’re losing hegemony over the conversation maybe that’s the result of people wanting to be more informed than having more nuanced discussions on religion. And that’s, in that case, I definitely think it’s it’s a sign that we’re getting better.
Justin: Yeah, we’re proof of that, right? Like, if this is between all of us sitting here, we have…
Angela: Different beliefs.
Justin: We have different beliefs but also we have almost a million subscribers, right? People are interested in having deeper conversations about religion and I think that Richard Dawkins level, right? That may be good on the science but they’re really bad on the religion and I think that having more deeper, more sophisticated conversations on these topics, I think where the fact that our channels are successful in the way that they are. So to me, good evidence of the debate is that people’s interest is shifting and they want more subtlety about it.
Zevi: Yeah, I would add that it’s the, let’s say, the dying hegemony of the new atheism and also the end of the hegemony of religion. Both sides need to come down for a nuanced conversation, to imagine, I think, that people feel more liberated from oppression, from this religion, and now have the freedom to turn back to religion on their own terms, to ask of it their own existential questions and that’s something that I’ve seen in my own value, my own friend groups. I missed a fun question here from earlier. Did you want to add something, Angela?
Angela: I agree with you guys. I think that if you have a nuanced conversation, I think that people now are also ready for that. I think there was a time when people believed that we were going towards a secularized age and more and more people would become atheists or non-religious. But I think that even though the term that Peter Berger the sociologist of religion had turned against his own idea, the initial idea about the Secularization Theory. Then he moved on from that and he said, well actually we don’t live in a secular age we live in a pluralist age where you have multiple layers of beliefs within families and even within one person. So I think that also the idea of religion that we have has changed. I think that what people thought of as religion was something that was heavily Christian or Abrahamic-based. And now it tends to be a bit more nuanced and complex. That’s why a lot of people that do not abide by the three main monotheisms, used to say, ‘I’m spiritual – I’m not religious’ and there are scholars that have studied the so-called ‘nones’ which are the ‘non-religious’ and it turns out that they are actually very religious indeed. It’s just that the way they classify religion is an institutionalized form of religion that resembles, especially, Christianity but also Islam and Judaism. So they see that as a structure that they don’t identify with because usually people that identify as spiritual want a more eclectic, individually-tailored approach to religiosity. But it is still religion, it’s just that they didn’t call it religion because of that bias or what they thought of as religion.
Zevi: We had a follow-up question here which again another sort of big question, is religion important?
Angela: Yes.
Filip: Yes, it’s important. It’s important as a subject of study because it is important to people around the world, which means it’s important for us
to understand it, understand how people relate to it and what relationship people have to it.
[Laughter]
Filip: Yes, that’s the whole point.
Justin: Yeah I mean I would say not only is it important just as a fact but I would say it’s important as a discourse. Because, unlike philosophy which operates ideally, like an interrogative discourse that asks questions, I think what makes religion so frightening and powerful is that it’s a discourse of absolute belief in absolutes. And that those people who speak on behalf of the gods, they have enormous social power. So I think that in that way being able to interrogate religion is an incredibly important human right. I’m thinking about human rights discourse and interrogating religion, freedom to religion and also freedom from religion. But also the freedom to interrogate religion.
Angela: I think that is just the question about religion is just unavoidable because I would argue that every person has religious beliefs even the atheists and the agnostics. I mean it is still a religious stance, if you say, I don’t believe in God or I suspend my judgment about God, the Gods, the divine, the metaphysical world – that is still a religious stance. And that is still affecting the way you live in society, the way you live your life, the way you interact with people. So I think that religion is very, very important to understand everything about human society, history, sociology, and how we relate to society. It just permeates everything.
Zevi: Yeah, I have a question for you Angela, for everyone but maybe you first. And this is from Ahmed Shayo, is there a difference between Paganism and Satanism?
[Laughter]
Justin: No, no!
[Angela playfully hits Justin]
Angela: Hey, don’t ruin my job!! Yes, there is a difference between Paganism and Satanism and when when I talk about Paganism, now I’m currently co-editing the volume for Equinox on “Pagan Religions in Five Minutes” which is part of a series of religion in five minutes and Susan Owen and I are curating the Pagan religion side and that’s one of the questions that because it’s one of the most asked questions. So when I talk about Paganism I talk about contemporary Paganism, the capitalized Paganism, because paganism from the ancient worlds – scholars don’t capitalize it. So the way we distinguish between the two is not capitalizing the ancient form of paganism and capitalizing contemporary Paganism. Whereas in the past there used to be the term Neopaganism which scholars are not using any more or we prefer contemporary Paganism.
But anyway, no it’s not the same as Satanism because contemporary Paganism is a new religious movement that has certain main traits: it tends to be very nature-based, it tends to worship and align with the cycles of Nature and it doesn’t really employ Christian or Abrahamic worldviews because it’s Pagan. So there’s Paganism, it has its own worldview and its own way of conceptualizing deities and Satanism is very much rooted in Christianity. And you could argue maybe in Abrahamic religious system but I think the system is very much linked to Christianity in the way it is it is conceived. And the idea of Satan is formed because, in the Hebrew Bible, Satan is not really – well we can understand it now in the public discourse when we talk about Satanism, it’s something that’s quite different and has developed in a certain way via the Christian discourse. So no, I would say that paganism is not, and I repeat, is NOT the same as Satanism because Pagans say, we don’t even believe in Satan, we don’t believe in the Christian mythology, so how could we worship Satan, how could we worship the devil. So that’s not really what Pagans do. I could make things more complicated but it’s better today…
Filip: Yeah, that was a great answer.
Justin: Yeah, I think that it’s just like simply put there, it’s hard for Pagans to be Satanists if there’s no Satan in their opinions.
Angela: Yes, how can you be a Satanist if you don’t endorse the Christian view? And also, the other way Pagans see the divine and deities is completely different from Christianity. You don’t have the arch enemy or the pure evil. Pagan gods and pagan deities are all good and evil according to the way we say good and evil. I don’t think that Pagans believe in good and evil anyway, in such demarcated ontologically moral ways. So it’s not something that can be so easily defined. Pagans tend to believe in an ethics based on individual responsibility. Then it also depends on the type of Pagan. Because in Wicca you have the threefold law which means everything that you do, good or bad which we could… better words might be beneficial or harmful, anything that you do comes back to you threefold. That’s one part of the Wiccan Rede but this is something that Wiccans believe, whereas other types of Pagans don’t abide by that and they just say that they believe in an ethics that is based on individual responsibility. You don’t have Gods, or deities that will send you to one place or another depending on the actions that you take.
So it’s all based on individual responsibility and you may ask, how is the individual responsibility assessed? Many pagans believe or are animists or pantheists – they believe that divine is imbued in everything and many also believe in a sense of interconnectedness of things. So usually there is a sense that, and probably many other people as well, the idea that you want to do good to others in terms of being beneficial and creative because you are adding to the interconnected web that you are part of, you are contributing in a creative way and not in a destructive way. So it’s more a sense of I’m part of this interconnected web; the more benefit and the more creative energy I can input into this web the better. Because it’s not a sense that somebody is going to punish me if I don’t, it’s more sense that I feel that I’m similar to you, I feel that I’m similar to a plant, to a chair to everything. So that contributes to how you assess ethically what to do and what not. Although it’s very complex because of course Pagans also accept the idea that destruction is also part of Nature and so it should also be embraced. So it’s actually a very complex discussion but I hope that gives a succinct overview.
Filip: Why do you think some people would even equate Satanism with Paganism?
Angela: I think that’s because for a long-time pagan has been used as non-Christian or non-the religions that I’m part of. I think that also in Islam and Judaism, you have the idea of pagan as non-Jew.
Justin: Right, so first there’s no word in Hebrew for pagan. Like there are other words for outsiders but there’s no… it was invented by Christians or like and even even used by ancient pagans to describe people in the countryside. It just means like people in the countryside, right?
Angela: Yeah, Pagan comes from paganus, pagana, an inhabitant or dweller of the pagus. The pagus is a rural place, basically. So it was a term that was a derogatory term to call people that lived in rural places and were so ignorant or backwardly that they wouldn’t confess Christianity. So I think it has a heavily Christian connotation, in that sense. So I think that’s why, viewed from a Christian lens, people would equate Paganism to Satanism because it’s the evil, it’s what is not Christian and if you’re not Christian then you must be evil, so it equals Satan.
Justin: Which is interesting because they had a special word for it. Like they could have just called them Satanists but they didn’t. Clearly like just because you’re an ignorant rural person doesn’t mean…
Angela: I don’t think, that at the time they had the concept of Satanism.
Justin: I think when the term pagan came out because even I think even so-called pagans used it too. I think I’ve read that elite Roman writers would also describe people who lived in the countryside as paganus. Then Christians adopted that language because they were not speaking Latin originally. The technical language that develops in the Greek word hairesis, they’re heretics, they believe they have incorrect opinions. So I think it develops later in the Roman West bumpkin is maybe a translation of it.
Angela: I don’t know because, in some of the scholarly work that I’ve read, it seems that the first occurrences are from Christian authors. If I remember what’s the action of this first one.
Filip: Would they have an equivalent term?
Justin: I think continuing to talk about heretic, heresy, early on is early picked up in the Greek word. Like Origen and people like that use that language. I don’t think that there’s an equivalent in Islam like a nice convenient word for people who don’t convert. So we don’t think a word like that ever… but it’s really clear vocabulary in early Christianity. The closest term to something like that as a slur in Judaism is avodah zarah – foreign worship but there isn’t a term for someone who does avodah zarah is there?
Zevi: Well you would just call them abodat zarah or someone who is abodat kokabim u-mazzalot – people who worship Stars and Constellations
Justin: Yeah, that’s in the legal texts it’s abodat kokabim – people who worship Stars.
Filip: In Islam, you have Mušrikūnbasically, polytheists or literally like sorcerers. That would be the closest I think
Justin: Terms like abodat zarah describe things that Jews aren’t allowed to do. There’s a kind of a concern that if you’re on some other team you should do whatever you want or you should do whatever. But there’s a sense of, if you’re a Jew you can’t do certain kinds of things, you can’t appear like you do certain things. It’s much more concerned about what Jews do and don’t do as opposed to what Christians are, Persians or Zoroastrians.
Zevi: Should we try to do a lightning round of questions? Because we have a lot of wonderful questions that just keep…
Justin: Speed dating.
[Laughter]
Zevi: Okay, have you ever delved into a topic and been amazed by how much you’ve learned?
Justin and Angela: Yes.
Filip: Yes, but more so by how much I don’t know.
Zevi: Thoughts on free will. Do we have free will or is everything determined?
Filip: Yes.
[Laughter]
Angela: Yes to what?
I think that the concept of Free Will is very Christian. So the idea of free will is a Christian concept. I would see it more as, what amount of agency do we have? I would reframe it that way because I think that having free will or not having free will is a very Christian question.
Justin: I’m a determinist, yeah, like a hyper-determinist even.
Angela: I’m not surprised.
Justin: Yeah. Like I am a Spinozist
Angela: So I am not a determinist. But I think that…
Justin: A compatibilist is something we call y’all.
Angela: A what?
Filip: I would be something like a compatibilist I can compatibilize but I wouldn’t be able to formulate in what way.
Angela: Yeah, so for me it’s more a matter of what degree of agency I have. Because, in a way, I’m sort of determinist but to a degree. So I think there are some things that we are determined by and others that we have control over and the amount of agency that you can have, the extent of agency that you can have varies depending on multiple factors. Maybe including magic. If you believe in that.
Zevi: Filip and I were chatting about this in the car yesterday. And there was a quote which I brought up from David Loy a great scholar. He wrote a book on Buddhist and Hindu comparative studies of non-duality between the two. And he writes that if we’re to take a non-dualistic position, which is a topic we studied then ultimate determinism and ultimate free will coincide in that moment and I found that to be a persuasive position.
Justin: I guess I should also say even though I’m a pretty hyper-determinist, I’m also kind of Kantian about this and say that free will is regulated by ideal was necessary for ethics and therefore I would say that free will functions as a regular ideal a la Kant but it is regulative and ideal, it’s really important. But actually, I’m like just going straight at first-order metaphysics or physics for that matter, physics also now seems to be clearly indicating itself.
Zevi: A question from Colin Gallagher, how are you guys?
Filip: I’m doing good. I’m happy to be hanging out with wonderful friends.
Angela: Likewise for the first time we meet in person.
Justin: Yeah, I think it’s like I’m sort of in that part of my journey actually, that’s like a hot, like a big, or like in this…
Zevi: In this lifetime.
Angela: Yeah you’re sounding like a mystic.
Justin: Yeah, a mystic. No like I mean it’s like my time in Europe or like I’m hitting that first wave major wave of homesickness you know I’m feeling that but also it’s just like, especially for those of us who have been travelling, we’ve really been doing a ton. Like I’ve been in how many countries now? For some period of time like at least four in the past like seven days.
Angela: It’s a lot.
Justin: Yeah, good but like it’s good, I’m glad to see the light at the end of the Tunnel.
Zevi: You were in four countries just yesterday.
Justin. Yeah, yeah.
Angela: So are you going back on Wednesday to the US?
Justin: I’m going back to Amsterdam for Wednesday I’ll be there…
Angela: So you’re staying in Amsterdam?
Justin: I’m staying for one night in Amsterdam I just to like have a night to myself. I like to walk the streets and because I also Schiphol is such a nightmare I did not want to get there the same day I was flying.
Zevi: That’s cool. Garte Bera and I apologize for mispronouncing, that Alex asks, who is the most important political theologist?
Angela: Political theologist?
Filip: Oh wow! Important. He doesn’t specify if it’s contemporary or historical.
Zevi: The entire question.
Justin: Like what are we talking about? Political theology or what I guess it depends on how those adjectives and nouns are structured. Because there’s political theology which is a whole domain of philosophy. There’s important philosophers in that realm who are… I mean Augustine probably.
Filip: That’s the name that came up in my head too.
Justin: Yeah Augustine like did more to shape the tenor of things like Just World Theory and what makes a legitimate Sovereign and there’s basically no Western theological politics right outside of Augustine. It’s a super intimidating work but if you’ve never read “De Civitate Dei” – “The City of God.” The City of God’s – there’s also important stuff in magic in there, as well as the fourth reading because for that if you just want to do the magic stuff. But I would say that in many ways like Western Civilization, Western Latin civilization is basically a dialogue with that book it’s a huge way
Zevi: let’s see if we can get a short answer on this. Samir Karki says is Satan better than Jesus?
Angela: Satan better than Jesus? It’s better that I don’t answer that.
[Inaudible]
Justin: I mean I’m not a particular fan of either frankly.
Angela: I don’t know why but your question reminded me of something that I read on an Italian wall: Jesus loves you but Satan can do the thing with his tongue.
[Laughter]
I hope you’re not getting in trouble.
Justin: There’s always these great, Jesus can do this but so-and-so can do this. Like Jesus saves but Moses invests.
[Laughter]
It’s like a little bit of antisemitism in there.
Filip: I like Jesus better, that’s my answer.
Justin: Yeah, I’m not a fan of either.
Angela: I don’t have a preference.
Justin: And you’re leaving yourself out of these questions Zevi. You can’t moderate yourself out of these questions brother.
Zevi: I don’t know if I fully understand this question, but you guys, do you feel that modern psychology has a line to esoteric/Mystic thought or is the apparent need for scientific ideas to have a definable and discrete categorization in any reconcilable difference?
Justin: Two very different questions. The answer to the first question is definitely yes, there’s no modern esotericism without Jung.
Filip: True.
Justin: Just like period. Although not just Jung, Freud too. Like Aleister Crowley in The Goetia, his version of Goetia even says things like the goetic demons are just regions of the human brain. So like he was, even that early in the early 20th century, was very clear inherently…. now Crowley changed his mind about that and began to believe in the independent existence of these entities toward the later part of his life. But there’s no esotericism question without reference to a psychology analogy.
Angela: Yeah, I also have a video on Crowley and the psychologizing of entities. But yeah. I agree I think that psychology definitely changed the game of esotericism and how it was conceptualized and also opened the door for the so-called soft polytheism. And I also have a video on the difference between hard polytheism and soft polytheism on my channel. And the idea is that in hard polytheism people think that there are different entities that are ontologically existent and independent from us, while soft polytheism is more the idea that gods exist in relation to us in certain ways. Like, for instance, there could be archetypes like Eros could be the archetype of passion within ourselves or that could be seen as forces of nature. So it’s a way of seeing the deities that are considered soft because they are not ontologically real in and of themselves. But they are real in relation to certain aspects of us which are usually heavily psychologized. And I think that there are also some atheists witches who adopt forms of soft polytheism and they argue that that is a form of atheism, which is also interesting. Others don’t see that as a form of atheism, they just see that as another type of polytheism.
Justin: Also I would say it’s not just esotericism but like modern religion like there’s no existentialism and there’s no like [neoclassicism, neoclassicism ?] Also downstream of this shift it’s just that people say what they want to about psychoanalysis but there is no contemporary intellectual world without it, for better or for worse.
Zevi: Thoughts on perennialism?
[laughter – Justin gives a thumbs-down sign]
Filip: It’s a question, we had a whole discussion about this like a year ago.
Zevi: Yeah, we did we did a whole selection on it.
Filip: There are perennialist scholars that I definitely admire.
Angela: I think that perennialism can be a viable spiritual tool for people who believe in that but academically speaking that would be terrible because a
perennialist view, adopted as an academic, I think that it would go outside of a rigorous methodology that leads to accurate knowledge.
Justin: Also I think it’s like a function of this weird thing, I don’t know if you look at these comments on your channel but there’s a tendency of the human mind to assume that because two things can be compared they must be connected.
Filip and Angela: Yeah, right.
Justin: Like I sometimes call comparamania, that like if two things can be compared they must be connected and the idea is that comparativa is not a ground for any ontological connection whatsoever. But like oh, this god’s associated with lightning and this god is associated with lightning, so they must be the same God. That doesn’t logically follow and it certainly doesn’t historically follow.
Zevi: We have some super chats which we can pull up here as well.
Everyone: Thank you.
Zevi: Smashing Paper Tigers asks, do you think contemporary pagan religions will become more organized (communities, places of worship legal recognition etc.) over the next 50 years?
Angela: I’m guessing that’s a question for me.
Zevi: Sounds like it is.
Angela: So it depends on what you mean by organized. In terms of having more places of worship, even though Pagans would, I don’t think they would use the term ‘worship’ but sacred places to practice, yes. And I think that’s happening already. Even in Italy, for instance, there’s the goddess temple in Rome and there are very few temples, pagan temples or pagan sacred places in Italy but they are not institutionalized because there isn’t an essential dogma or a central authority in Paganism and in terms of whether that will change, whether Paganism will become more institutionalized like other types of religions that are more dogmatic and more institutionalized I don’t think so. And at least I can use the case study of both Finland and Italy because in both places, at least I’m sure that it probably happened in other countries too, but in both these countries what happened is that in order to get legal recognition as a religion there, they formed a group to to do that. But in Italy and the same happened in Finland [Lithuania], there’s a paper by Teemu Taira on that if you want to look that up it’s a peer-reviewed paper which, when I read it’s like, oh the same thing happened in Italy and what happened is that since to be recognized as religion in Italy you need to resemble Christianity, basically. There was a massive fight within the Pagan community and they said, no we are not doing this – we’d rather not be not classified as a religion than just alter the very nature of Paganism. So there were very few that were trying to do that and they were accused of
wanting to become the ‘Popes of Paganism.’ So that didn’t go down well.
Justin: A great band name. I like their name, Popes of Paganism.
[Laughter]
Angela: So I think that Paganism is very resistant to institutionalization and I think that many Pagans are anti-dogma and anti-that kind of structure. So I don’t think that that is going to happen. What might happen more is the fact that different traditions within Paganism might become more organized but at least I don’t see anytime soon, Paganism becoming more institutionalized in that sense. And if it gets recognized as a religion, which in a way, indeed the British Druid Order got charity recognition as a religion but you need to have a country that has a view of what constitutes as a religion that doesn’t resemble Abrahamic religions. [To Justin] And you don’t like that term, I’m sorry. What can I call them? The three monotheistic religions?
Justin: This is also why governments need to have religious studies people working for them because otherwise, they’re going to make really bad stupid policy decisions and really discriminate against people.
Angela: So what I see more happening is probably governments and the public discourse around religion changing to the point where a religion like Paganism, which is very different from Abrahamic religions, can and be seen as a religion and it doesn’t have to change its very nature to be recognized as such. And also since Pagans are generally quite anti-dogmatic, I don’t think that they care as much about the label they care more about what they believe in and the practices and the fact that they remain the way, they are with that kind of mindset.
Justin: So does Italy recognize Hinduism?
Angela: I don’t think that Italy recognizes Islam, I think it doesn’t recognize Islam as a religion. I think the problem was also the same, that it doesn’t resemble that… because the law around recognizing a religion, I think it still dates to the fascist era, so it won’t surprise anyone.
Filip: Yeah, I mean Islam is relatively similar in structure.
Angela: Yeah, it is present in Italy as well but as far as I know, I think that the time at the time when these all Pagan things happened in Italy was 2007, 2008 and I remember that there was a whole conversation about the fact that not even Islam was recognized as a religion and there was a whole conversation in the pagan community about that and the fact that the problem was more that the law had to change rather than the Pagans had to abide by those standards and that was the winning argument was that we shouldn’t try to seek religious status since things are like this now, we should try and change the government considers to be a religion. And that will benefit not only Pagans but also Muslims and other people. So that was the winning argument within the pagan community.
Filip: It is interesting that it still happens today because I’m reminded of Sikhism under British Colonial rule which, if you wanted protection as a group or as a religious group, you needed to be seen as a religion. And so the Sikhs, at least this is what a lot of historical scholarship says, were also somewhat forced to shape their religion according to a Christian or Abrahamic framework in order to be seen as a religion on its own, to get the kind of protection from the government.
Angela: I think another thing about it is Buddhism got the recognition because they created an organization, don’t quote me on that, because I can’t remember the details off the top of my head but if I remember correctly, they created like an organization called the Buddhist Italian something and so the association got the recognition. But I think that the process was that you have to create a sort of organization in order to get legal recognition, which is strange. I think that the law should change but, yeah.
Justin: Yeah, any law written during the fascist period should be re-evaluated. As an idea, it’s like the fascists weren’t so great at making fair laws in my understanding of what they were up to.
Filip: It’s my impression as well.
Angela: It seems to be everyone’s impression, at least the people here.
Justin: Filip, do you know of any successful attempts to rebuild any sort of the old Norse temples here in Sweden and Uppsala? Or it seems like since the Christians tore down their temples and put churches there, it’s like the pagans should be able to throw a temple up next door at least.
Filip: I don’t have any temples but there are definitely smaller shrines that are put up and I know in Stockholm and Uppsala, for example, and there are groups that are holding like blöt ceremonies. I’m not sure about their legal status, actually, now that you ask.
Justin: Because I know that we got, Pagans got, Wiccans at least got recognition, in my lifetime, in the US, in the military where they could get… I think one of the guests that was on your Show recently was really responsible for that, where they were able to get Pagan, Wiccan imagery on the tombstones for veterans. I’ve been to a graveyard, a veteran graveyard where I saw a couple of those. Like for a person who, like me cares about freedom of religion, seeing that.
Angela: Yeah that’s nice.
Justin: I was like, okay well, it’s good at least people can rest under symbols that served their country, they should be recognized.
Zevi: Yeah we have another Super Chat here from Louis Jorge which is their first Super Chat.
Justin, Angel, Filip: Thank you, thank you very much.
Zevi: For the four; any interest in Mesoamerican folk religion?
Filip: Sure definitely. I don’t know much about it but I’ve been looking into to making some content about that which is a great excuse for me to learn new things. I would love to cover the Aztec religion, for example.
Angela: I know Andrew Henry from Religion for Breakfast made a video on Aztec Religion.
Filip: He also made one on the Maya religion and they’re both great. So if you’re interested you could definitely check those out.
Justin: Mayan religion – mysticism related to bloodletting. Yeah, one of my favourite names of all time is, you could be named something like Jaguar Shield Heavily-Scarred Foreskin. You can earn the title of Heavily-Scarred Foreskin. Man, it’s like some culture is just like that’s…
Filip: Metal.
Justin: Metal, pure metal.
Angela: There’s a friend of mine who’s done a PhD in Mayan archaeology. So I always think that I should invite her over on my channel. That would be interesting. But yeah it’s something that I’d like to cover as well.
Justin: The role of Venus in those cultures, especially the Mayan cultures, like astrology and astronomy and their religious cycles. Like you really it’s really impressive to go down to Chichén Itzá and like see the first observatories built in the new world for tracking the path of Venus and just like they had a whole calendar just around Venus transits. Really, really amazing stuff.
Filip: They had a developed like the Aztecs had to develop deep theology and philosophy.
Justin: There’s a great book out about the Aztec philosophy. It was actually written by a scholar of Spinoza who reframes Aztec theories of time and space and motion and it really puts them in Western philosophical categories in a way that’s it was really nice because it allowed Western philosophers access to so really important indigenous wisdom. It’s a great book.
Filip: I look forward to more research being done on that topic because I think there’s a lot to explore there.
Justin: It’s really important that we do that because otherwise what gets left, the default image of the Aztecs, especially Aztecs is a Conquistador image of just bloody sacrifices. It’s funny that often we Western People, European people will think of them as like, oh the Aztecs, they’re just like sacrificing people every day and we literally don’t see Cortez murdering the entire population. We were walking around the churches in Amsterdam, like one of the one of the things that boils my blood is like really listening to Europeans just like, oh Muslims they just tear things down and they break all these shrines and things and I walked past a church just destroyed by Protestants in the 17th century and like…
Filip: Iconoclasm.
Justin: Like, yeah you guys have done your share of iconoclasm I want to hear anybody… You guys want to point fingers it’s going to get real uncomfortable really fast.
Zevi: Yeah, it’s like throwing stones in stained-glass houses.
Justin: It’s literally that.
[Laughter]
Zevi: We have a super chat from Zikdomov who says, thank, you this panel has not much of a question but a gratitude; thank you this panel has absolutely changed how I see the world.
Angela: Oh wow, thank you, that’s lovely
Justin: I hope that’s good.
[Laughter]
Filip: It could have changed in any direction.
Angela: I mean yeah yeah if you’re gonna spend the next days crying in the shower I don’t know who I am any more.
Justin: Yeah, thank your video destroyed my faith in God. Oh crap, sorry. I hope, let’s hope for the positive.
Angela: Considering that he’s Super Chated, I guess that’s a good thing.
[Everyone agrees]
Zevi: A question here from Alrum, thoughts on eschatology itself and its effects on religious societies. Do you think they might be true predictions or do they represent different ideas?
Zevi: That’s a theological question.
Justin: Yeah I don’t know if I can answer that.
Zevi: Well we can answer the first, the sociological; do eschatologies affect religious societies?And maybe how so?
Justin: I think one of the things, I guess, I can speak to about Judaism and it would be interesting to hear what you think Zevi, too. It’s like one of the things I love about Judaism is its relative lack of eschatology. like there’s a great line […] like those people who speculate about the end of the world they may not come into the world. There’s something about like don’t rap into the world, it’s going to sort itself out, like the world’s gonna be fine. Just sort your life out and I think, as we know, we talk about apocalyptic religions and here I mean being apocalyptic in the sense of focusing on eschatology, not apocalyptically in a strict sense.
But those whose religious belief is among the more worrying beliefs, especially the idea that the world’s about to imminently end because it allows people to basically abdicate any responsibility for this world. I think there was an EPA guide here the Reagan Administration who was asked point blank like /what are we going to do about the ozone layer or whatever? And he was like, well do this that and the other but the truth of the matter is that Jesus is coming back soon so we don’t have to worry about it. And I don’t want Jesus to take the will to be my political strategy for making the whole world better.
[Laughter]
So I worry especially about like the kind of moral things they’ll do to like imminentize the eschaton, right? Like if we can force the hand of God to come back by doing things. It’s had a powerful effect on human history, I think, often for the negative.
Filip: Let me just say that the same phenomenon can have the opposite effect too that if the end is coming and you believe in an eschatology where you will be judged for your actions, that might not make people even more keen to be like now I have to really be good.
Justin: Yeah, it certainly makes it a compulsion to be pure and to purify. With that purifying often comes at the price of things like the Bonfire of the Vanities of Savonarola. It rarely works out as a live-and-let-live attitude, very rarely.
Angela: In Paganism you don’t have much eschatology either. It’s also very based on the present.
Justin: Ragnarök for the Norse.
Angela: Yeah, you have that in Heathenry.
Filip: It’s interesting the question how that influences religion as a religious Society.
Zevi: Or society in general.
Filip: I’m trying to think of the difference between a religion or religious isms like Paganism versus Christianity or Islam which would be like the polar opposites in this case, very much concerned with eschatology and not so much.
Justin: I don’t see Thelema as an eschatological religion [] to me that’s true. I see very much Crowley’s upbringing from his hardcore Protestant days, this idea of like he’s a kind of apocalyptic prophet and there’s like a new aeon and its not eschatological…
Angela: I’m not sure I see that as apocalyptic though. And even the New Age movement has something like that you know which is the New Age of Aquarius. So I see it more as a way of sort of brushing away the past and sort of starting anew rather than apocalypticism.
Justin: Well I think that even in Christian apocalypticism, like the world doesn’t really end, that’s about the funny thing about the end of the world is it’s not really the end it’s just the beginning of the end. It’s sort of like the world gets purified and perfected and it’s like on the other side of things there’s either heaven or the new Earth or whatever. It’s often the end of the world is not the end of the world it’s just the transformation of the world in some important sense and that’s true.
Angela: So maybe in that sense you have that in Paganism too.
Justin: So I think eschatology broadly can end things, like broadly speaking the end of this world is what it’s talking about, right?
Zevi: The end of the world as we know it.
Justin: Right. And that’s certainly true within Judaism.
Angela: Yeah, if it is true about also the end of a cycle without that sense of doom, impending doom. Then I think that… although you have also the Kali Yuga, for instance, so yeah maybe there is eschatology in pagan religions.
Filip: That’s true, Ragnarök too. Because that’s like the end of the world but it’s also a rebirth.
Justin: Right, Baldr, Baldr’s son or whatever survives but he’s the only one, right? The young person?
Filip: He’s not mentioned by name but someone’s gonna come, that might there’ll be a later…
Justin: I can see a Christian some Christians sticking that in there.
Filip: Yeah but there seems to be the idea that after Ragnarök there’s a rebirth, where everything, sort of a beautiful world comes back. But it’s a new world, that’s the point.
Zevi: Yeah I think we might we might just need to speak up a little for the audience. I think there is this tension in Judaism for showing Jewish mysticism between the desire to imminentize the eschaton, to sort of make the end of days now. To end that and like what someone like Gershom Scholem calls the Jewish Messianic Mystics and others living life in the firmament as if this current moment is not good enough in history and only when the new thing starts, the things get good and I think it’s what you were saying Filip, it very much depends on what the image of that eschatology is. If it’s one in which all heathens burn and we roll over our enemies then trying to imminentize that vision might not be the best thing for a society, or what we’d like to see. But if the eschatological vision is one where the lamb shall lay with the lion or you know, a peaceful version essentially, then I think that the attempt to immanentize that might be a helpful one. And there may be some sort of despair that if this reality, if this cycle or this reality is as it is, nothing can change, nothing will ever change and we’re stuck under the powers that be, then why try and do anything? I think that the impetus to bring the end when that ends the positive one can be helpful.
[Sound of machinery drawing a curtain in the room]
Filip: Ghosts.
Justin: So the curtain closes on its own apparently.
Zevi: We’re trying to close the curtain on this stage of history and so to the next one.
Angela: Yeah and are they going to shut us down?
Filip: I don’t know.
Justin: We’re locked in – it’s over.
Angela: This is our Ragnarök.
Zevi: Kind of, we kind of escaped here privately and the irony of privately streaming to hundreds of people.
Justin: It’s Ragnarök, it’s the appropriate country to be in for Ragnarök. Uppsala was the most holy place for the Norse, right? Like the biggest holy shrine.
Filip: It was a big one but I don’t know if it was considered the biggest one. I don’t think the cult was that centralized, it was much more spread out
and localized but for sure, it’s important, it’s one of the important places.
Justin: Christians, I mean I guess I’m also reading that from Christians – they really argued that because they really worked hard to like de-paganify and it took some effort.
Filip: Yeah, it was one of the last places too, I think.
Justin: It was the last to hold out. Yeah, I think the Christians really had a fight on their hands because like the the last of the Norse priests were also pretty willing to fight. I mean they’re going to Valhalla, you go in the Valhol defending that place you’re gonna really fight hard. To think that the Christians had a really difficult time to Christianify and they really made a big deal and they built a big nice church.
Filip: And then Uppsala became like the centre for Christianity.
Justin: I think part of that was really about rooting it out from the core. Yeah, unfortunately. Everyone’s had trouble with the Christians, including other Christians.
Zevi: Serious question here. So do you believe that the gods made heavy metal?
Angela: Yes!
Justin: Only the gods, not God. Just the gods.
[Laughter]
And the devil, right? He had a hand in there. Good stuff.
Zevi: Do any of you know your zodiac?
Filip: Not really. Oh, my Zodiac oh my sign?
Zevi: Yeah.
Filip: Oh yeah, sure I’m Capricorn.
Angela: Aquarian.
Justin [to Angela]: I think I’m the same as you
Angela: Yeah, we are both Aquarians. You can tell that.
Zevi: Pisces.
Angela [to Zevi]: Pisces, oh sweet.
Filip: I don’t know what any of that means.
Justin: Nor do I. It’s a little funny because I only know like really technical Hellenistic astrology. I know absolutely nothing about modern sun-sign astrology. So it’s I know next to nothing about what any of that’s supposed to be.
Zevi: A question for Dr Puca, what’s going on in current trends in European Paganism?
Angela: In European paganism, the current trends.
Zevi: What’s hot in the market?
Justin: It sounds like a journal. Current Trends in European Paganism.
Justin: It sounds like a journal. Current Trends in European Paganism.
Angela: That’s true.
Justin: Published by Brill.
Angela: That’s a good question. So current trends. I would think that for a long time, there has been a trend towards eclecticism and now Pagans are moving more towards traditionalism or multi-traditionalism. And what other trends I can see? People are not meeting in groups as much, especially the younger generations. I actually gave an interview recently about that and one of the reasons might be that younger generations are more used to interacting and finding their communities online. But it seemed like in the past there was more. even though they were probably fewer Pagans and my main frame of reference is Italy here because that’s where I do my fieldwork even though I’ve researched European Paganism as well but I think that yeah there’s also a trend towards practising more by yourself or having your community online because that way you can find exactly the people that align with your worldview and that maybe work with the same pantheon, with the same deities.
Whereas when you go to pagan groups or pagan moons, pagan moons are usually the once-a-month meeting that pagans have. You will find that the other people… well Pagans are not that many so in a city you will find that there might be I don’t know 10 people or 20 people and they all have a slightly different take on Paganism and different practices, so it’s a bit difficult to have a practice together. That’s why, for instance, in Italy, one thing that happened was that the pagan groups in Italy tended and probably still tend to have a more eclectic, Wiccan-based approach because that seems to be more inclusive. So that you have sort of the main things that you find in Paganism, that you find in a Wiccan way because I think the Wicca did a very good job by syncretizing many things and putting them together as it did with the Wheel of the Year, for instance. And creating things in a new way that at the same time gives you a blueprint of Paganism that you can shape however you like. So there was a trend about having an eclectic type of Paganism so that it’s a bit more inclusive and welcoming.
And then everybody will obviously have their own specific tradition but I think people pagans are now moving away from a wild eclecticism and either trying to be eclectic in a more systematic way of being more traditionalist which means that you can work with different deities from different pantheons or different traditions but you see those two things are separate you don’t mix together Hekate and Cernunnos for instance but you may work with Hekate in a sort of reconstructed Hellenic way and work with Cernunnos and a Wiccan way, for instance, and that would be multi-traditionalism. Whereas an eclectic approach would be to work with both of them at the same time which is also something that you find. I’m not saying that eclectic pagans don’t exist any more, they very much exist but I think that there is a trend towards a more traditional approach.
Justin: How many Pagans are there in Europe?
Angela: It’s impossible to say. That’s one of the things, we had a lecture about at the University I think a couple of years ago and we had a discussion with my PhD supervisor and me, about how impossible it is to determine how many Pagans are there because pagans elude statistics because some
Pagans wouldn’t identify as Pagans, they would identify as Druids or as Heathens or as something else so they would identify with one of the things that Scholars would still consider to be part of the Paganism umbrella and there are also Pagans that would say oh I practice as a Pagan but I don’t want to use the label. So I think Paganism as a religious movement and the Pagans tend to elude a little bit of that kind of research.
Justin: Is there in any sense a really big margin of error? Like ten thousand, t plus or minus five thousand even with a big margin of error.
Angela: No, I don’t know. I will have to look up the latest research because…
Justin: Certainly in the UK they do pretty good polling and that stuff, I think, right?
Angela: Religious polling yes but there was the conversation that I was having it was about religious… okay but I can’t remember the numbers now off the top of my head and I would have to check the latest research but it is a growing religion. I think that I saw recently an article in the UK saying that Paganism is the fastest-growing religion. It is a growing religion – I don’t see it ever becoming as big as, I don’t know, Christianity but it’s definitely a fast-growing religion.
Justin: So does anyone know when our next event is, downstairs?
Filip: 6:30.
Justin: Is that the welcoming thing?
Filip: Yeah. Okay, so we should probably be wrapping up pretty soon.
Angela: I’m also hungry.
Justin: Dude, I forgot about food. This is the thing with these cerebral people we sit around all day talking about the ontology of things and forget that we need calories to live.
Angela: I don’t forget it.
[Laughter]
Zevi: This is an interesting question, and can you guys just tell me when you want me to stop pulling out questions and we can wrap it? Again from Smashing Paper Tigers, is the growing tendency towards religion being individually tailored and eclectic, as we’re discussing here, the unique product of all this talk at the moment or were there similar tendencies earlier in history?
Justin: I think it has everything to do with liberalism.
Angela: I think it has to do with the access, the wide access to information because in ancient times you didn’t have access to as much information about different traditions and cultures as you have now. You would probably have a very limited amount – you would have access to a limited amount of information about religion. So you are either stuck with what you have been exposed to or you generally had much less exposure to information whereas now since we have the internet and YouTube channels and all of that.
And talking about religion I think that that’s that’s a massive part because you I can see even in my research with certain folk traditions that were very radicated in Italian culture, they are starting to become more eclectic because of the internet. For instance, I did part of my PhD research was on vernacular healers in Italy and they tend to be more in rural places, in places that are not as much in communication with the big cities and they tend to be quite local and their knowledge was passed down from generation to generation without that much variation.
But in recent years, thanks to the internet and that is admittedly on the part of these practitioners thanks to the wide access to information, if you have been exposed to a certain tradition and then you read online about I don’t know the Goddess Diana and you feel a sense that you feel drawn towards that goddess you will say, oh you know what, maybe I can try and incorporate this practice that my grandma did with the moon and I can syncretize and I can also work with Diana at the same time. So I think that wider access to information is definitely one of the major reasons why we have more individual-tailored approaches.
Filip: There are individual examples in history. I’m thinking of people like Kabir in India or maybe Guru Nanak the founder of Sikhism and it’s interesting because those were people who lived in an environment where they had access to all these different traditions like Hinduism, in particular Hinduism and Islam in this case. Whereas in maybe other regions of the world it is relatively more closed off in terms of information regarding other religious institutions and that would really only speak for your point here is that today that we live now in an environment where most people have that access to all kinds of information, to some degree. So I definitely agree with you.
Justin: I think it’s also a function of how we conceive of ourselves since the 17th century as individuals. Many Asian people also thought of themselves as part of a community and it wasn’t the unit of religious selection wasn’t the individual it was the community. So I think of places like Alexandria where, at least in magical practice, we see some syncretism but in the actual religious communities, there’s not much blending. Like the indigenous Egyptian religion, the Christians and the Jews saw themselves very differently and you see very little cultural crossing over there even though they had access to the information.
But the idea was no, I don’t pick my religion like that’s not for me, it’s a really community-based religion, it just survives in some traditional communities where the idea is, like, it’s not about what I believe it’s about how my beliefs fit into a larger network of community and what’s normative is actually about the community and not what I believe. I’m trying to like that, I prefer that.
Angela: I think it’s also a matter of cultural identity, I think that in the past there was more of a political and social need for having a strict social identity. For instance, as an Italian or whatever it was. So there was a sense that you had to build that sense of identity via tradition and now with globalization, I think that there these needs are less felt. So you can see that not just with religion but even with other things like the cuisine, you know, now you see that you can eat the types of food from different regions and different countries which in the past was not exactly something that you would find as easily. So you can eat sushi and then go to the Mexican and then to the Italian restaurant. So you have also the integration of different cultures and it’s not seen as a threat to your cultural identity whereas in the past I don’t think that you would have seen that much mixing in this way. Obviously, synchronisms have always happened but it’s not quite the same as globalization.
Justin: Yes, it’d be funny to meet a person who’s like a culinary fundamentalist.
Angela: Italians!
[Laughter]
Justin: Yeah, you’ve got to be Catholic, you have to eat this food.
Angela: Yeah, Italians are very fussy about food. I’m Italian by the way. I’m not particularly fussy by the way.
Justin: I think the places that have good food can be fussy.
Angela: I shouldn’t talk about my family online, but my Mum says, says that outside of Italy is fake food. You have to come back and eat real food because what you have over there is fake food.
Zevi: Maybe we’re doing one more question then we start wrapping up. The Super Chat here from before, the question is from Seth Fee, Filip please cover every page of Shams al-Ma’arif.
Filip: I’m on it. I’m gonna take like two decades or something.
Justin: How much of the recent English translation is covered in the text?
Filip: The first, I think, eight chapters which would be like maybe 10%.
Justin: It’s really a substantial book.
Filip: Well maybe a bit more but yeah, it’s just a relatively tiny portion.
Justin: Yeah it’s a pretty Monumental work. This is also just grist to the mill of how much we’ve talked about this at the round table. Just especially in the Islamicate, Near East context. It’s a really huge gap in our understanding, or those of us who include the Middle East and what is called the West, it’s just a massive gaping maw of what we don’t know and we don’t have translations for. It’s amazing how… again it’s like how Islamophobia and this like and has just destroyed the narrative we all are carrying around with us is going to be so fundamentally revised that most of the work that we’re doing now in like in the next 200 years is going to look really silly. It’s going to look really primitive actually.
Filip: That’s why the scholarship of people like Liana Saif, who is here today actually, is very, very important. I have the Arabic version of the Shams al-Ma’arif at home it’s like this basically it’s a big book, tiny type too.
Zevi: Here is a final question which is, there’s been a few questions around this and I thought we can pull them together, question is from Zev, how would you advise me to build a group of people to help build a new religion?
[Laughter]
Filip: Do you want to be like the leader of this religion like a cult?
Zevi: Let’s go with that.
Filip: A beard is a good start.
Justin: Yeah, they tend to have that.
Filip: No seriously, I don’t know, that’s a difficult question.
Angela: Why would you do that? Why would you want to do that?
Justin: I mean I think we know pretty well how so-called cults operate, right? Separate people from their families, don’t allow people to access, to contact, like love bombing and then there’s these psychological techniques that are pretty well understood at this point. The really sad thing is that there are probably out there actively using them, right? Also, I tell people these techniques like I’m mentioning, love bombing, other kinds of things like that, these techniques are really well attested and if you find yourself in a religious setting or business settings also use these techniques to like build business solidarity.
Literally businesses, like corporate businesses, have gone and looked at cult studies. I mean like they do? They’re like let’s do that to our… like it’s really sinister, right? So I would really encourage people to look at these like signs and if you ever find yourself in any group whatsoever, whether it’s a political group or a religious group or a corporate group and you can see them doing this stuff to you – run get out of there. And also in relationships, like the same kinds of psychological techniques, like really harshly judging someone and then showering them with love afterwards. It’s a really well-understood technique, that people do to like to manipulate people’s emotions. It’s really frightening.
Zevi: Yeah, I kind of like the aesthetics. Not what they do often but the aesthetics of cults and I was joking with a friend that we started called with the acronym; Compassion, Understanding, Love and Tolerance – kind of use the group psychology to try and make…
Angela: That does sound like a cult.
[Laughter]
Justin: I think also, another thing, I wouldn’t trust any cult leader if they didn’t have some badass clothes. I want them to have some really cool… That was the first thing when I looked at David Koresh I was like I don’t trust that dude he’s not dressed cool enough. Like you need to dress somewhere on the Star Wars Spectrum, right?
Angela: So who do you think of the four of us would be a better cult leader? Let us know in the comments.
Justin: I vote for Filip. Filip is like the Still Waters Run Deep.
Zevi: I would join Filip’s cult.
Justin: I bet you could pull a great… you grow your hair out, get some grey like great… what’s his name? The Russian guy?
Filip: Rasputin?
Justin: Yeah, Rasputin. You should get some good Rasputin stares.
Zevi: You don’t see this over the camera but Filip has very piercing eyes there, they’ll put people under his spell.
Filip: So be careful people – that I don’t if I shower you with too much love.
Angela: We thought he was really happy to see us but it was just a technique.
Justin: A technique yeah. Yeah, I get it Filip, I see what you’re doing.
Filip: I was happy to see my initiates.
[Laughter]
Justin: Filipism, Holmism – it does sound like a religion.
Zevi: We have to get going to draft the tenets of Holmism.
Justin: Yep, we’re gonna, in fact, begin the first sectarian fight.
Zevi: The Filippian Council.
Justin: Yeah, we should get some food.
Filip: Yeah, I think it’s time to wrap up. Just want to express again, like like we said in the last live stream, it’s such an amazing honour and just a lovely thing to be able to have this community with you guys, in person and also with the audience, of course. It really means so much to us. I think I can speak for all of us. Yeah, that we have this platform to speak about things we are passionate about and have you in the audience be along for that Journey. We were in Amsterdam last week, at least the three of us, we got to meet some of you in person and that also was an incredibly special experience. So thank you, all so much for for being there, for watching and for engaging with with all of our channels. If you guys aren’t subscribed to these guys, you should definitely go do that right away. Do you want to like to pitch your channels?
Zevi: Seekers of Unity; history and philosophy of mysticism with an extra focus on Jewish mysticism, perennialism and trying to look about how it might be helpful to us in a contemporary global moment existentially and in other ways.
Angela: My channel is Angela’s Symposium and I cover academic research and academic scholarship on magick, esotericism, Shamanism, Paganism and occult topics.
Justin: I’m Esoterica and my channel focuses on the academic study of Western esotericism, so Kabbalah, alchemy, magic, and other stuff. Yeah, the Esoterica grab bag.
Filip: Great, go subscribe. Thank you all so much for coming and being part of this live stream. We’re gonna go get some food.
Angela: Otherwise it will get cold.
[laughter]
They call it live stream now.
Filip: Now thank you so much, we’re gonna get going so maybe you want to tune out.
All together: Bye.
Streamed 27 Jun 2023