Sanguina Cruenta
I have written sort of a thing for my blog about identifying as a reconstructionist and I was wondering how many people identified as "reconstructionist", or whether you use terms like "revivalist" or "reconstructionist derived".
I'm sort of prodding at the boundaries of this term and wondering, you know, how far it stretches as per what people do and how they do it vs how people think about their religious practices. If that makes sense. So um.... weigh in.
For those unfamiliar, reconstructionism is a methodology of building a religion in which one attempts to reconstruct or revive pre-Christian Pagan beliefs and practices associated with a particular culture. (And by "pre-Christian" I mean more "pre-Conversion".)
In a sense I think I'm more on the "liberal" side of Heathenry, but sometimes when I look at what this kindred does or that group believes, I feel like a staunch recon. Not that they shouldn't add to the old stuff to build their religions, I just see things like the NNV or whatever becoming modern traditions, and kind of... muddying the water? and I'd rather do it myself. Like, reconstruct it myself with help from other people's work, rather than adopt a pre-reconstructed version, you know? In that sense, sometimes I feel a lot more like a reconstructionist than like the AFA or whatever.
Thoughts?
I considered reconstructionism as a path about a decade ago. In the end I found myself unable to embrace it for many reasons.
The rigidity of the traditionalists left me feeling as if it was a path for 'armchair' Pagans. Lots and lots of books and lore and theories from both archaeology and anthropology, but no spontaneity, no real sense of having a connection to the world I lived in. Many of the 'hard recons' didn't actually practice at all, which I found odd, and then annoying - don't tell me I'm doing something wrong, when you're not doing at all...
There was definitely no sense of a community to join; there were many factions, who often argued bitterly and derisively against each other. You sort of flailed along and gleaned what you could from others - but carefully, lest you suddenly ended up in the vitriol. Talking to one person about something would easily make you
persona non grata with someone else. And there was no welcome for newbies, no attempt to try to help them ease into something. Most of the time there was a strong current of 'You're clearly not serious or hard enough for this, go dabble elsewhere' which did a lot to drive people away.
Buried under the weight of the 'homework' one did to understand holidays and ritual practice, then deciding what ritual practice was practical for you and how you did it, planning...it left me cold. I love to research, I'm insatiably curious and I have a university-level education in history. Getting into the meat of the subjects at hand was not the issue. It was simply this: Rituals were not fun. They were joyless and dry and took forever. And after a while I decided for me that I personally didn't need joyless and dry but historically correct practice. I wasn't connecting with my Gods that way.
When a few folks insinuated that I wasn't getting 'joy' out of my rites because perhaps I wasn't understanding the materials, that perhaps I was too stupid and should go back to something 'basic', I decided reconstructionism could eat its' own arse.
My recon experience taught me that there's a level of ecstatic experience that I want from ritual. I want the Mysteries. You can't find those in texts. I need both intellectually satisfying and stimulating practices, and ones that will still produce ecstatic joy from simply being there. I still retain parts of recon-influenced practices, and my ritual style when I'm doing my own thing probably owes more to those practices than to ENP or Wicca. What I do now can have a foot in both worlds - past and present - and is perfectly relevant to who I am and where I am.
There seems to be two camps of recons. 'Hard recons' seem to be heaviest on the 'homework', not fans of UPG or adaptation to modern context, and really really harsh on seekers. They don't really seem to have interest in being numerous, since that cuts into their ability to been seen as superior intellectuals. Attacking other, 'softer' approaches to their gods or religion seems to be a standard practice for some as well - they really want to be the only game in town. There's a "We're right, and you're wrong" thing going on.
'Soft recons' tend to be a little more flexible about adaptation (as it only makes sense to reconstruct things for the world we live in, rather than the world that's past us), more UPG-friendly, and not as apt to try to chase newbies off their front porch with a stick. There's room for debate about interpretations of lore with 'soft' recons.
Of course some people fall between the two. And it's all relative: a 'soft' recon might look 'hard' to a non-recon who's never met one before.
Reply
