{"id":7744,"date":"2016-02-09T17:13:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T00:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7744"},"modified":"2016-02-09T17:13:56","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T00:13:56","slug":"paganism-close-under-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7744","title":{"rendered":"Paganism Close Under the Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9eoENoLpGvQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In central and eastern Europe, and maybe elsewhere, there is a tradition to end a group hunt for deer, boar, and other animals with a ceremony. I have never seen the like in America, but then all my hunting has been with individualistic Westerners \u2014 which is not to say that sometimes informal rituals are not performed, but not with everyone lined up and flaming torches.((Clifton&#8217;s Second Law of Religion: If there are no torchlight processions, it&#8217;s not a real religion.))<\/p>\n<p>The Baltic people were the last old Pagans in Europe, Christianized at sword point in the Middle Ages.((&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jesusneverexisted.com\/christianization-lithuania.html\">The Last Pagans in Europe<\/a>.&#8221;))\u00a0 Their Pagan reconstructions in the 1920s\u20131930s, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dievtur%C4%ABba\">Dievturiba<\/a> in Latvia, assumed that folksongs etc. preserved the Old Religion, a common assumption among 20th-century Pagans. Maybe, maybe not \u2014 is every tree in a folksong really the World Tree in disguise? Certainly the new Paganisms, with their strong ethnic and nationalist components, have gained respectability quickly.((&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltictimes.com\/news\/articles\/27265\/\">Baltic Diaspora and the Rise of Neo-Paganism<\/a>.&#8221;))<\/p>\n<p>The hunt in the video was a women&#8217;s hunt \u2014 in Latvia as here, more women are taking up hunting than did a generation or two ago. The description at the I<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/International-Conference-Women-and-Sustainable-Hunting-1151381131569100\/\">nternational Conference Women and Sustainable Hunting&#8217;s Facebook page reads<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At last in Latvia we now have a chance to make lady hunters more pro-active. And we had the chance to organise first ever in Latvia a driven hunt for ladies &#8211; ladies are shooting, guys are helping. Now we are in the process of creating our own Lady hunting club under Latvian Hunters\u2019 Association.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Watch and you&#8217;ll see lots of tramping in the snowy woods, but right at the end \u2014 wow. That&#8217;s an altar, folks. Folk-memory or reconstruction, they are tapping into Old Stuff. I suspect that they know what they are doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In central and eastern Europe, and maybe elsewhere, there is a tradition to end a group hunt for deer, boar, and other animals with a ceremony. I have never seen the like in America, but then all my hunting has been with individualistic Westerners \u2014 which is not to say that sometimes informal rituals are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[270,201],"class_list":["post-7744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hunting","tag-latvia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-20U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10588,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10588","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":0},"title":"Religion News Service: Baltic Pagans Spurred by Conservation","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A new article from the Religion News Service, which does not normally acknowledge polytheists, describes the long-standing Pagan revivals in the Baltic republics: The pagan [sic] religions have been spurred especially by a growing awareness of climate change and the rise of conservation movements that tap into a deep local\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Estonia\"","block_context":{"text":"Estonia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=estonia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5210,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5210","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":1},"title":"The Secret Police as Ethnographers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The next issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies will be devoted largely to new forms of Paganism in the Baltic countries, if all goes as planned. One article that I have been reading is entitled \"The Dievturi Movement in the Reports of the Latvian Political Police,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10622,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10622","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":2},"title":"Quick Review: &#8220;The Pagan King&#8221;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"My \"Pagan-ish\" blog tag seems mostly to go to Latvian materials, and here is another one, The Pagan King. Set in the 13th century, when the Baltic peoples were to be the last Europeans Christianized at sword's point, it is the story of a young man named king of Semigallia,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Medieval Pagan Latvians","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5710,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5710","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":3},"title":"Polish Pagans Hold Congress","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Scott Simpson, co-editor of Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, is quoted in an article on Polish Paganism in a June 18, 2013 article in Rzeczpospolita,\u00a0one of Poland's largest daily newspapers. He offers this translation: Polish Pagans Combine Their Strength At their first congress in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/grafik.rp.pl\/grafika2\/1020954%2C1091965%2C16.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11803,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11803","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":4},"title":"Book to Explore Paganism in Early Modern Lithuania","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I post a lot about old and new Pagan movements in the Baltic nations, a region that I have never visited, although some of my family members have.((One of my older sisters lived the last couple of years of her life in Kaunas, Lithuania, but that had nothing to do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","url_meta":{"origin":7744,"position":5},"title":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World's Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.This year's parliament in Melbourne listed \"Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples\" as one of its key topics.Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the \"indigenous card\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7744"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7757,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7744\/revisions\/7757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}