[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on Devotional Polytheism

[jprussell]

This week, a fairly quick rundown of my thoughts on Devotional Polytheism by Galina Krasskova.

As always, let me know what you think!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I appreciate your view on this book, Jeff. Because I started out Gaelic Polytheist instead of Heathen I did sometimes wonder "well, how do *I* do this?" while reading it. But I think there's an answer to your critique that Galina doesn't give definite instructions--she seems to continually get massive amounts of flak from the Heathen sphere: "Meanie gatekeeper, how dare you make us feel judged, what about Sally No-Hands who can't make offerings because she has no hands but you're obviously saying she can't be a real polytheist and who elected you Asapope, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" So I presume she was being circumspect and trying to just get the idea of devotion out there, with hopes that readers would be inspired to search out information on How. My best guess, anyway.

--Sister Crow

[jprussell]

Huh, an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me, so thanks very much for sharing. I guess since I've mostly just caught echoes of this sort of thing in hanging around her blog, rather than seeing it in full force.

It seems somewhat ridiculous to me to even suggest this, but perhaps we need some kind of framework for very clearly articulating something like "here is a right way to do things, which may even be the right way to do things for certain people in certain contexts (like members of a group with its own practices), but that by no means makes it the only right way for all folks." I have an inkling that a useful way of organizing for Heathens would be borrowing the "Haliggild" concept from the Theodish, where groups that want to practice together form "Holy Guilds" with their own bylaws, practices, rules for who can and can't be members, and so forth, allowing lots of local specificity, but then those guilds can band together in larger affiliative groups (or not!) to get more flexibility at higher levels and avoid things like overly strong dogmatism and ultraorthodoxy. I'm not really in a place to take it much beyond an inkling just yet, though, so it doubtless has all kinds of flaws I haven't considered.

Cheers,
Jeff