PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

This blog post is about the modern religion Asatru. It's not about science and so it's not about when life begins. This is about when Asatru teaches that a being becomes a person. A person is a member of a society with rights. This is about souls and the way society recognizes human rights and the rights of other types of beings. 

Asatru is one of several modern Heathen religions based on the historical Heathen cultures, which are generally the cultures spanning the areas and time periods of Germania, Scandinavia, and Scandinavian colonies such as Iceland. Iceland has a unique place in Asatru as the culture that wrote down many oral traditions and gave us a lot of the literature on which we base our collectively decided canon we call The Lore. 

It's got to be one of the lesser ironies of the current war in Ukraine that both its hero and its villain (I'll leave you to decide which is which) share the same name.

Russian Vladímir, Ukrainian Volodýmyr: two equivalent Slavic names, both with their roots in Norse.

(This is unsurprising, since the Slavic state was first founded by east-faring Viking traders-cum-mercenaries; the classic Slavic woman's name Olga, for example, derives from Norse Helga “[female] holy [one].”)

Indo-European languages have long favored two-element names—e.g. Beowulf, “Bee-wolf”—and the Norse name Valdimar is of the same sort. One could translate it “power-fame” or “powerful fame.” Its first part is kin to the English word wield. (We still speak, tautologically, of “wielding power.”) Compare, also, the Yiddish expression oi gevalt, literally “O Power!” (i.e. “O 'God'!”). Gods being, by definition, powerful, one could perhaps render the name “divine fame” or “godly fame.”

Drawing, no doubt, on the name's “foreign” feel, J. K. Rowling recasts it as a Norman French charactonym for the main antagonist of the Harry Potter-verse: Voldemort, which one could parse as “death-willing.” (Cp. deus vult, “'God' wills [it]”.] That, a thousand years after the Noman invasion, the good guys of Rowling's series tend to have Anglo-Saxon names (Potter) while the bad guys have French ones (Malfoy) probably tells you quite a bit about the enduring nature of the English class system.

Still, Voldemort Putin.

This is Steven Posch, the pagan blogger.

This is Stefan Posch, the Austrian football player.

The Posches are an old Viennese family. (Back in the days when there were such things, the Vienna phone book had pages and pages of Posches.) Looking at the two of us, you can see something of the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Me, I look very Germanic. (When I'm in Germany, people on the street automatically address me in German.) Stefan has that square, south Slavic face. Ah, Central Europe, cauldron of nations.

Needless to say, we don't know one another, but I know about him, and I'm guessing that—the internet being what it is—he probably knows about me, too. (Such is the nature of being a public person.)

One wonders what Stefan thinks of his gay, pagan counterpart. If anything, I'm guessing that he probably finds our shared identity (such as it is) amusing. In his place, I probably would too.

Well, Stefan, if ever you should happen to read this: my greetings, brother, one to another. Next time you're in Minneapolis, let me know, and I'll happily stand you a beer.

Hi, my name is: Steve.

The name my parents gave me at birth has always been a comfortable fit. Although—unfortunately—a biblical name, by origin it's impeccably pagan. Steven: from the Greek stéfanos, “a wreath (or crown).” Not the kind of wreath that you hang on your door, but the one that you win in a competition.

One of the things that I like about it has always been that, though not a common name, it's familiar enough not to seem weird or be impossible to remember.

That said, if you run into a guy that lives on my block and say: Steve?, you'll stand a good chance of being right. There are four of us here (that I know of). I suppose that statistically it was bound to happen sooner or later. There's me, the guy down at the other end of the block, and the two Stephens next door, one upstairs, one down.

(Responding to the moronic nazz quip “'God' didn't create Adam and Steve, you know,” gay comic David Sedaris pertly retorts: “Of course not! It was Adam and Steven,” alluding to the stereotype that gay men prefer formal forms of their names. I suppose that it encourages people to take us seriously, which can be difficult for gay guys. Adam and Steven: the first gay couple.)

Me, I tend to use Steven in formal situations and Steve in informal. I suppose that makes me bi.

Yes, it's a name I bear like a victor's crown. Although I've had plenty of pagan names over the years—Deer Stands Up and Two Stags F*cking, both gifts, are my two favorites—none of them have ever really stuck. That's OK with me. I don't divide my life into the pagan and the rest. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be pagan full-time, and that's how I've led my life. It's a decision that I've never had cause to regret, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a career choice.

Holy cusswords, B@&m*n! Cussing is of course a euphemism for cursing, which can mean using a socially unacceptable word, naming a power in an undignified manner ("taking the Lord's name in vain") or formally casting bad magic. Present day Asatruars use the Old Icelandic word blot, meaning sacrifice, as a name for one of our rituals. In modern Icelandic, the word has become blota, which means a cuss word. That which is holy transformed over time into what is a curse and then into what is an empty phrase that may once have been a curse, merely a cuss now. Or is it still a curse? Or is it still holy?

Words have power; that's why a magic spell is called a spell, the same word that means to write a word. When we use a minor cussword like f--- or sh-- that refers to a bodily function, the thing that makes it a cussword is the social taboo of the word and of the action, that is, it refers to something society considers unacceptable to do in public. The same goes for cuss words that refer to parts of the body; they are socially taboo because they refer to body parts normally covered by clothing. These words and concepts are not inherently bad, merely socially taboo. But more religious oriented cusswords like d--- or the name of a god are in another category. To say d--- is to literally curse, that is, to place a curse of damnation on someone or something. If we believe in magic we should be cautious about using such words. If we believe in gods we should be respectful of their names. To say H--- is to call upon Hel, goddess of the dead. The situation may call for that, or it may not. We should be mindful whether the situation calls for calling upon such a god.

I always cringe when I hear the term “wiccaning.”

Moral of the story: Let the borrower beware.

Announcing the perpetrator of the most recent mass shooting, the police chief of Virginia Beach said pointedly: “I'm only going to mention his name once.” It's been gratifying to note other news commentators following his lead.

This restraint fulfills an ancient and ancestral urge: why reward ill-wreakers with fame?

Case in point: the Troll-in-Chief. We've got a geis in place against mentioning his name at our coven meetings, and I note that, even at other times, we do the same. I've noticed the same practice among other Lefties.

To speak the name gives life, said the people of ancient Egypt. To this end, they spoke of You-Know-Who—the heretic pharaoh—not by name, but as the Criminal of Akhetaten.

Why give life to the undeserving?

The ancestors were driven to deeds of heroism to make their names live after them. As for those who do the opposite, let their names die with them.

"The dead are pleased when their names are remembered," say the Kalasha, the only remaining Indo-European-speaking people who have practiced their traditional religion without interruption since antiquity. The bale-workers, let us deservedly forget.

On the day that Alexander the Great was born, the most beautiful temple in the world—the temple of Artemis at Ephesos—was destroyed by a massive fire. When they caught the arsonist, they asked, unbelieving, “Why did you do it?”