Considerations about being a “mindset focused” Heathen in Brazil

Sonne Heljarskinn

If one wants to understand what it means to be Heathen in South America, specifically in Brazil, it must be important to notice that there are many ways in which people call themselves as Heathens outside our country.

Nevertheless, we will deal here with the idea of reconstructionist Heathenry focused in the revivalism of the worldview, ideology, psychology, cosmology and religious practices of ancient or arch-Heathens, before their conversion to Christianity. It is in this way that the complex word “heathen” will be used in this piece.

So, if we want to analyze our situation here as this kind of heathens, we will have to agree that we have some advantages and some problems. Some of these problems can be found in several other places where Western civilization placed itself, and some of them are most concerned to our own historical development as a so called “third world” country.

As Freud argues in “Totem and Taboo”, “evolution” to (Western) civilization is individualization. Understanding the way in which tribal peoples, no matter if they are Tupi, Guarani, African or Germanic, place themselves to perceive and relate to the world “outside” of what modern Westerns call “Self” is an superhuman effort. Recognizing thought patterns and the subtle shadings which guide(d) tribal peoples is very satisfying though.

But most people became satisfied with taking points that they could easily recognize and reinterpret through modern (post-Christian, post-cartesian and post-illuminist) Western lens. It is the rule, and we even cannot blame them for doing so. After five centuries of Christianization in Brazil we are apparently somewhat far from our pre-Christian past than some other cultures around the world, and even our neighbors who were colonized by Spain. But that seems not to be the case maybe in Pará and Amazônia, as well some of other regions where people were not so culturally influenced by the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (which hold, in spite their industrialization, most people who call themselves as Norse pagans or Heathens).

We are not saying that people who do not seek for the application of the whole heathen worldview’s content that is still available to us “are doing it wrong” at all. But, if we look to the arch-Heathens, approaching them to learn and live their mindset(s) today (what is NOT the aim of all those which call themselves as Heathens), there are several many ways in which pre-Christian peoples did not act, think, live, nor worship as well as there is no single “right way” for many of these points. Cyclical time, hearth cult, ancestors’ worship, heroes’ worship, animism (or the belief in a supernatural reality interwoven to ours in the way that the arch-Heathens probably understood), active fate (wyrd and ørlög), world acceptance and the gifting cycle are roughly understood and agreed as “core points” of a Heathen worldview in Brazil, where “orthodoxy” (which here means nothing but a religious empathy to the Æsir and in some cases the Vanir) absolutely reigns over the orthopraxy common to ancient and living indigenous, pagan or pre-Christian peoples around the world. If one tries to point out that any Heathen should act aiming to reach these heathen worldview’s elements, he probably will be misinterpreted. Even if we have left alone “the single right way” to approach any of these core points.

If Christianity and Catholicism influence us for the bad, we cannot say it for the good. We have so many troubles to organize ourselves as a community, preferring to act as a bunch of individual mystical or spiritual seekers (in the negative sense), instead of as a community. Valhalla is still our heaven, and alcohol our Holy Communion. We cannot see the earth as our land, and the underworld as the place where our Ancestors live. The wind is still unseen and unheard, and the waters are still a product. The desacralization of both our daily lives and environment, if appointed by someone, is mocked as “new age” attitude. The individual is still their last undivided unity, and the groups can’t live because of their absence of tribal understanding. But I still think that we can, as a “third world” and a bit less individualized society, progress in this point roughly faster than people condensed outside Latin America. We just have to understand that reciprocity is not charity and community and tribe are not “evil communism”.

I think that most of these problems come from the fact that we have hard problems to deal with English – the language which holds the greater part of published books, research and papers concerning to Heathenry. I am quite literally learning English because I research about Heathenry. And I cannot even have done the first step without a friendly pressure of a priceless friend called Andreia. As Luther in the Dark Age, we must to convert Heathenry as a native idea, a folk centered practice, instead of a way to create a cult over our supposed wisdom of heathen subjects. English to us represents what Latin did to Germans in the Middle Ages. We have to get our books in Portuguese, not only Sagas, Eddas and academic papers (even though NEVE (Viking and Scandinavian Studies’ Center) is doing a pretty useful work), but true heathen books and content done by Heathens for Heathens.

Racism – yes, we should to talk about it again – is a large problem. If in United States we have an open hate spreading through culture, the supposed “racial democracy” stated in Brazil we have the exhausting common “I’m not racist but… (insert your bigoted discourse here)”. “I’m not racist but Norse paganism is for white people”, and they just forget that, even if Heathenry was only for those who have white Ancestors, well, they raped our Native and African foremothers and created us. Skin tone does not imply in itself religion, as Jung wrongly said (of course, for lots of white folks, familial heritage or bloodline is directly equal to skin color). Heathenry is the way in which I project myself towards my Ancestors, Nature, and Human Community. It is a way of seeing and relating to the world and judging my own acts. It is a culture. And a culture is acquired through socialization, not by blood. And socialization depends upon geography. A geographical and cultural outsider could understand and adopt a culture if one strove to do so. This is why I reject the poor theology (influenced by Jewish-Christian mindset) of a people chosen by a god, to reign over the world. Also, we are but one of the various silent or visible conscious nature’s beings which populate this world.

Within the large cities where most of Pagans live today we also have to deal with the fact that a mediaeval fair could but should not necessarily be one of the few events to revive heathen religious practices. Heathenry is not just a section in an online or offline market. I think that in this point we are not so different from the rest of the world, but we struggle every day to show newcomers that to be Heathen is far more than tattooing an ancient symbol in his body, or acquiring products made to attract pagan consumers. Heathen is something you are, not something you bought. We also have to deal with people that treat Eddas and Sagas not as tales of the arch-Heathens, but as a species of Sacred Books, teaching the wisdom of the God(s). If you are a mindset focused Heathen it is quite curious that you prefer to buy rather than make something or that you are looking for a Holy Book among peoples who were in their majority illiterate.

There are also some people who do not understand the differences between the meanings of “religion” and “belief” to the arch-Heathens and Christians, and want to see a centralized institution (probably guided by themselves) dictating practices and beliefs to other Heathens. Even if they cannot state clearly which are the differences between Christian and Heathen worldview and practices. Even if they cannot understand religion outside the box of the “pray to gods” Christian custom.

But the most painful point of being a mindset focused Heathen in Brazil is isolation. Heathens are nothing but an inexpressive and almost inexistent minority of our population. If you live in a large city in the Southeast or South, you will probably find more Heathens and Norse Pagans in general to love or to hate (being a Heathen or Norse Pagan almost never makes someone be nicer than he or she would be if he or she were not a Heathen or Norse Pagan). We worship our individual selves in a way in which most of us are not able to build a common religious practice, something that we can give to our sons as a heritage. So, it is hard to mindset focused Heathenry to grow up here since a mindset, to live, must be shared and constantly exercised. If one does not interact with people who share the same culture, values, ideas, understandings, ways of acting, he or she will be incorporated and homogenized within the mainstream (Western, with all its contemporary implications) culture.

Mindset focused Heathenry is not an easy thing. But it fairly rewards those who honestly dare to break new ground. We have, as Brazilians and Heathens, our indigenous peoples to look for wisdom, and help as well as guide us in this ancestral path. We have our green and living land, even if it is not that “cold beauty” of the snowy northern hemisphere. We have our mango trees, so vivid and sacred in our daily lives as the European oaks. We have our own sacred wells, our powerful Ancestors, and primal wights which wander here since forgotten times. Also, Visigoths, Vandals and Suebi provides us with their Germanic cultural influence through Portuguese colonization. The young Brazilian Heathen community has to discover its own surroundings, Ancestral links and way to manifest themselves in the world as Heathens. We have to face our own giants but, as Beowulf did in his tale, I, as a Brazilian Heathen, am ready to fight to protect my kin, my relatives and this heathen culture I learned to love since I first met it.