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Sharing out — by Author Maria Kvilhaug
“Due to various responses, I feel the need to clarify what I mean by unbroken traditions, the way I see them here in India versus how these lack in Europe and European-descended cultures like the USA and so on.’
‘The direct lines to the pagan past have been broken over and over and actively so. That sort of lack or near-lack of direct connection to the past is also present in many other places in the world, with only a few, local exceptions.… ”
Author Maria Kvilhaug
·Due to various responses, I feel the need to clarify what I mean by unbroken traditions, the way I see them here in India versus how these lack in Europe and European-descended cultures like the USA and so on.
The direct lines to the pagan past have been broken over and over and actively so. That sort of lack or near-lack of direct connection to the past is also present in many other places in the world, with only a few, local exceptions.
India is actually quite unique because the main religion is a blend of extremely old traditions that were never suppressed successfully. Not that the Mughal or the British Empires did not try their best, they just did not succeed in most places. Myths and legends of the past are still told and present everywhere, even in modern action movies the heroes may suddenly turn out to be possessed by a god or an incarnation of said god, replaying an ancient battle with the rakshas (demons) in the modern world. The ancient lore is literally everywhere. Children learn ancient dance and texts in school, on TV, and in society as such.
What sort of ancient, spiritual lore were you mostly exposed to, in turn? In school, in the streets, in the neighborhoods, on TV…
Paganism?
No, you were’nt.
Although all cultures always do change internally with history, even India, there are countless direct, unbroken links to tribal, Vedic and Harrappan (Indus Valley) religious and spiritual traditions here, still alive and thriving without ever having been suppressed or shut down.
And here is why we just cannot say the same for the Western world (or for most other places). I will ask you some questions:
Did you grow up in a home where altars to the pagan gods and other powers were present because everyone around you believed in them?
No, you didn’t.
Were these everywhere in the landscape, remembered with the same stories as a thousand years ago?
No, they were’nt.
Did all your neighbors also have such altars and beliefs?
No, they didn’t.
Did you grow up and live in a world where all the ancient shrines and temples to the pagan powers still exist and there are unbroken lines of priesthoods or specialists attending them, knowing the old languages and able to recite thousands of chants and poems and epics going back thousands of years?
No, you didn’t.
I mean shrines and altars and temples that were never demolished and replaced by churches, and never forbidden, never replaced with saints and virgins in an attempt to forget the original power residing there?
No, you didn’t.
Did and do priests regularly bring statues of the gods in chariot processons from house to house to give blessings and receive offerings?
No, they don’t.
Have people ritually been painting up that Freystone down in the field regularly for the last thousand years to invoke the god’s presence in that stone, like the Shiva stone in this picture?
No, they have’nt.
Did you grow up with a ritual moon-based calendar for worship and offerings that everybody in your culture follow and know by heart, that everybody attend to? No, you didn’t.
Are statues of the gods everywhere to see? Shrines and altars? Not the forgotten ones. Not the ones that were replaced with churches, saints and chapels. Not the ones Tuva and I and obviously archaeologists keep finding forgotten in the wild, necessary to dig up in order to figure it out. No, I mean the ones that were never forbidden, never forgotten, never replaced — how many of those surround you?
None. Not a single one. They are either discovered and dug out by archaeologists or hidden beneath churches and chapels.
The line back was broken.That does not mean that your sense of connection with the past or with ancient gods and powers is invalid. But no, it is not a part of your unbroken cultural heritage. Because that culture was broken, and violently so, more than a thousand years ago, and replaced with new heritages over and over after that. To think there are direct lines back, in no need of rediscovery, beneath the layers of centuries of changes, such as the conversion process, Medieval Catholicism, Protestantism, witchhunts and heresy hunts, feudalism the Renaissance, puritanism, industrialism, capitalism, secularisation and all the other layers of culture that lay between you and the pagan past, is utter delusion.
Do the young people seek apprenticeship and mentoring from elders who learned it from their elders who learrned it from their elders going back thousands of years without stop, without oppression?
Obviously not.
Do men in your culture generally, actively seek knowledge from women?
Obviously not. Christianity put an end to that pagan tradition a long time ago. Each and every misogynist out there represents a direct line to nothing but an active and brutal break with pagan culture, involving the aggressive suppression of an ancient tradition of wise woman teachers for men in favor of religion-based spite towards women’s intellectual capacities and roles.
Is knowledge and learning appreciated and respected as an integral part of yourself and the culture surrounding you?
No, it is not.
Are the people who dedicate their lives to transmitting the ancient lore respected?
Nope.
Are people respected for their knowledge and learning?
No way.
We are often called retards or nerds or waste or even ridiculously enough accused of trying to suppress the very knowledge we have dedicated our lives to transmit, like witches and heretics of the time of inquisitions, because that knowledge dangerously expands rather than shuts down the mind. And only pagan gods like Odin are into all that expanding the mind and seeking knowledge and humbly learning from others-thing. Only fools need to pretend they know it all.
Do people generally believe that traveling expands your mind and makes you wiser?
Not anymore. Today, the people who are heimski, who never knew anything but what they grew up with, are full of ignorant confidence, unaware of the old pagan importance of exploring and seeking knowledge.
Will you all weigh your words and never hurl out an abusive slur unless you are prepared to die from it because everyone is hellbent on defending honor and integrity to the death?
Nope. You can spread your hateful spite everywhere and whine about people standing up to you all you like without getting killed or cursed. That is an absolute break with the pagan past.
Is everybody appreciative of learning and knowledge?
No. It is not as if we have that sort of culture anymore.
People who never studied the old language of the Eddas and of the sagas will think they have just as equal understanding of that lore from translations and modern TV series, a sort of confidence in ignorance that would have been ridiculed endlessly in the past.
You may have valid experiences spiritually, but you will never really know the lore that was transmitted without knowing the language or the history of these transmissions.
The general rule is that if knowledge of the past does not fit in with one’s dogmatic beliefs in a one-truth-one-path system, one will rather throw slurs at the knowledge-transmitters. And that, my friends, is a complete break with ancient pagan culture and a direct result of the totalitarian, monotheistic religion that actively and violently suppressed it.
When people despise knowledge and learning because it fails to feed their little dogmas about themselves and their ideals, they are actively continuing the oppression and the total break with the past.
All in all, the line back was broken both culturally and spiritually, first with violent oppression and then with the oppression of memories, and then with the oppression of the minds and lives of people for a thousand years.
No matter how much the pagan powers and lore and traditions speak to you personally, you are not a part of an unbroken tradition. You have a real sense of connection, but you are not part of a tradition.
You are something new, digging up and dealing with whatever you experience and learn.
And that is ok. It is still as real and meaningful and powerful as you think it is.
Your sense of connection is valid.
You can stake up the old paths anew, but you are going to do that in your own way, not in an unbroken way.
Unlike the old pagans, you can pick and choose and adapt the beliefs you want, because that is how the modern world works.
You consciosly choose rituals, they were not imparted into you by the thousands of people who imparted these into you by constant example everywhere.
To think the line back is direct and unbroken is absolute delusion.
That does not mean you cannot try to mend it, or that your mending is invalid. It is valid. But it is not unbroken. Most of it has to be dug up.
There.
19 January 2025 In conclusion at this time, this card obscured an obscure story, although it reveals so much truth.
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