How We Speakļ¼ A Path Towards Piety
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the role of religion in shaping the way we think and speak about our ancestors, goddesses, and gods, and how they shape our ideas of God and the universe. I talk about the role religion plays in shaping our understanding of the world and how we speak about them.
Transcript
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Sometimes we don't think before we speak or sometimes we don't think about the way we speak
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and how it reflects our worldview and sometimes informs it. Like any religion, Alcatru has
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developed some bad habits over the years. Some habits are good, some are inherited,
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and all of them come from a good place of intention. Some are repeated so often that
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People stop questioning where they come from, though.
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Modern Alistair and broader traditional European religion are no exception to this.
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Over time, certain phrases have become slogans, spoken casually, shared as memes, and treated as markers of identity.
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We don't kneel before our gods, or I worship the old gods.
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Speaking of our ancestors strictly in the past tense is another example.
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All of these are usually spoken with good intentions, but all three also quietly distort theology.
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Not because the people who say them are malicious, but because these habits did not arise from a spiritual or ancestral worldview.
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If we want a path toward genuine piety, we have to break some bad habits.
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And the first habits to examine are the ones shaping how we think about, speak about, and physically approach the gods, goddesses, and ancestors.
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Early generations of modern Auschwitz were formed in a cultural environment saturated by Christianity.
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Many practitioners come from backgrounds carrying frustration, disappointment, or even spiritual trauma.
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Instead of simply rejecting Christian theology, some also rejected anything that resembled Christianity.
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And from this reactionary environment emerged, we don't kneel before our gods.
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Not because our ancestors taught that, but because modern people needed a symbolic distancing from their former religion.
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But reaction is not tradition, and trauma is not theology.
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Alcetru cannot be built as an emotional recoil, but it must be built on the correct relationship.
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Across the ancient European world, archaeological and artistic evidence repeatedly show humans kneeling, bowing, and prostrating themselves before divine or authority figures.
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To claim that ancient Europeans never knelt before their gods is not Reconstruction
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Traditional societies knelt before kings, queens, and chieftains
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Not because they were worthless, but because they recognized order.
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If one would kneel before royalty, but refuse to kneel before the gods and goddesses of their folk,
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Our gods are not our peers. They're not metaphors.
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Refusing to kneel before such beings is not strength.
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modern minds hear kneeling and they think well i am nothing ancient minds understood kneeling as
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i know my place and the order of things hierarchy is structure hierarchy is not oppression the cosmos
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itself is structured and kneeling is a voluntary alignment with that structure
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i worship the old god sounds poetic and it's usually memed with a background of mountains
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and some archaic script but modern language loads this word old with meanings like outdated
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replaced or belonging to the past yes our gods are ancient but no they are not obsolete
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a god who only exists in history is not a god that is merely a character and our gods are so
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much more than that here's an important distinction when it comes to our ancestors and our speech
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they are not gone they're not erased they're not memories only and also true ancestors exist both
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beyond a veil and within us. Their blood is in our veins. Their instincts move our hands.
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Their courage and their choices echo in our own choices. They are living in another mode of being.
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Our gods are our most ancient ancestors, yet they did not die or pass beyond a veil.
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Our ancestors are living beyond death, and our gods, eternal beyond time.
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Both are present. Neither belong to the past, though.
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My grandfather loved me. My grandmother believed in me.
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this type of speech quietly implies that their love ended when their body stopped breathing
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that is not an ancestral worldview our ancestors are still aware they still witness
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and they still care the correct mode of speech and the correct tense should be
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my grandfather loves me my grandmother believes in me they are proud of me
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Their love for us did not expire at death, and our relationship with them did not terminate at the grave.
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We do not say, I used to have ancestors. We say, I have ancestors.
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When we speak of gods as old, we treat them casually.
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When we speak of ancestors as were, we unconsciously distance ourselves from them.
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It is a living religion with living relationships.
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we kneel willingly before our gods and goddesses.
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I worship the living and eternal gods of my folk.
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Instead of, my grandfather loved me, my grandfather loves me.
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Before the altar, and before the horn, before the offering, piety begins in the mind.