There is a battle going on between Christians and “pagans” in the right dissident community. I admit I am a bit perplexed by the infighting, particularly as we are all being besieged, an invasion of tens of millions of fighting age male immigrants, not a few of whom are quite violent, and Washington DC and Wall Street increasingly acting like a country all their own, occupying, colonizing America, these migrants increasingly like their mercenary force. This infighting on the right feels like two people arguing about who is the better home builder, while the house burns down around them. Christians have historically been the better builders. Pagans have some momentum and are arguably more free to be creative. Both are seeing a resurgence, the times being so fragile, so confusing, many are returning to some belief in a creator.
By “right dissident” I mean something like the conscience of the right, of conservatives. Normie Christians, conservatives and Republicans are not deep thinkers generally, or adventurous. The chattering class of the right is mostly imperial, drill baby drill, wars and more wars, consumer lifestyle we have grown accustomed to forever and a day. Right dissidents act as a kind of spiritual vanguard, defining the course the right will take, some of whom might lead the right one day, but mostly it is cranks, lunatics and madmen, who are free to peer into the abyss and risk finding answers to their questions.
As example, speaking of the conscience of the right, right dissidents have been talking for a very long time about chronic illness, pollution and the food supply, and now, thanks to RFKjr and Trump, central to the messaging of this Republican campaign 2024. (About that, I think I thunder sometimes, but then Mark Bisone on a rare occasion deigns to talk politics and takes a war hammer to the overton window.)
Christianity is on the one hand experiencing a kind of revival, as people seek deeper meaning in the madness of these increasingly authoritarian times; on the other, it is dead in the water, moribund, putrefaction by decadent liberalism, flying the rainbow flag of the degenerate queer mafioso, or merely trapped in the mire of crass, conspicuous consumerism. In my own small town, there are many more churches than bars, but the parishioners are mostly quite aged, and young and old they are cornfed. This is corn and soybean country; a lot of right dissidents like to claim that liberalism has made Americans and Christians weak, which is true, but more than anything, corn and atrazine etc endocrine disruptors have made Christendom in America plump and squishy.
Actually, the pagan right argument from the “vitalists” is, the egalitarianism of Christianity inevitably led to liberalism, so the destruction of the West ultimately is traced to the Christianization of the West. According to the vitalists.
Some “Pagans” on the right are trying to retvrn to something like the glory of the Hellenic period, of Western origins, the pagan glory of Greek and Roman antiquity - or maybe the Nietzschian interpretation of the Apollonian and Dionysian period. There is a new translation of Julius Evola’s Pagan Imperialism, supported by the great Arktos. This seems the core of the vitalist crowd. Pagans are trying to build some kind of sense of themselves, in this fat, retarded modernity, progress looking more like some sort of regression, if the general health physical and mental of Americans is the measure - by looking to the comparative vitality of pagan Greek and Roman antiquity.
Other “Pagans” on the right are done with imperialism, more nationalist and populist in their worldview, enemies of the GAE, Global American Empire, otherwise known as Globohomo, wanting to retvrn to the local, to local community, resilient and strong, America producing most of what it needs. That is also the dream of many traditionalist Christians, the trad-Catholic movement taking something of the lead on that.
Other pagans want to go to the stars, they want some techno futurism, AI as rebirth of the technological age, we only need to get the government and idiot liberal preoccupations about race and gender out of the way, unleash the creative genius of America and Americans.
Pagans are in no way unified, organized, nor do they have anything like the foundation that Christendom or Islam has. For those who think we can go back to worshiping Zeus et all Greek and Roman gods, it is probably more likely we build our own mythical pantheon here in America, in the aftermath of the collapse of Globohomo/Western Civilization. There is a long, deep Western magical tradition, there is a very strong foundation of written material, which is unknown to most “pagans.” Pagan also, is a term denoting nothing, a Christian pejorative for pretty much anyone who was not a monotheist, that was nominally embraced by believers in magic and a universe full of entities seen and unseen, who are generally at home on earth, who actually like it here. But pagan is a term Christians use probably more than people practicing some alternative spirituality call themselves pagan.
I was raised evangelical, but I rejected Christianity in my coming of age. I did not reject Christians or Christ - though I did go through a period when I was young, when I was very hostile and critical. When I was eight years old I “gave my life to Christ,” I was “born again,” at a Petter’s Brothers concert1, though I mostly did it because my mother desperately wanted me to, not because I felt called. I remember it clearly, nothing really changed, there was no great revelation, I did not see any vision of Jesus or angels. I even asked a friend who went through it at the same time, quietly, whispering, did you feel anything? Neither of us had, even as we tried to talk ourselves into believing something had.
I have thought a lot more about that, in recent years - giving my life to Christ, not the Petters Brothers. These days, I revere Christ in the Occult sense, the king of the magi, the greatest of all the magi, the Son of God that is also God only in the sense that we are all capable of such, on a long enough timeline, some taking a lot longer to get there than others, some probably never making it there.
The passage had been dark, but the reading room was full of sunshine. I stood for a moment in the ray of golden light that came through the window, and then the whole side of the room opened out and I seemed to be caught up through space, and found myself on a plateau among great snow mountains, which I knew to be the Himalayas, and I was kneeling at the feet of two of the Masters. I could not see Their faces, for They were lost in a blur of light; nor could I see their hands, for they were concealed in the loose sleeves of the robes They wore, but I knew one was the Master Jesus…given the title of Most Holy, Lord of Compassion….the Master Jesus gave me the impression of having an infinite patience with the week and lowly. Though he would lead by rough ways, He would lead gently and slowly, suiting his pace to the most foolish and footsore of his sheep
- Dion Fortune, speaking of a dream she had, after a grueling 10 trial she put herself through, to meet “The Brotherhood of the White Lodge, the Heirarchy of Adepts who watch over and guide the evolution of humanity,” in the introduction of The Cosmic Doctrine
Technically, from a Christian standpoint, that is heresy. Though there have been many Christian occultists who thought much the same about reincarnation, or the visions of Dion Fortune. Tippareth in the cabala, central to the Western magical tradition, is the sixth sephiroth, in the central pillar, like a symbol of the solar plexus, aka Christ consciousness.
Christianity absolutely is a strong foundation for anyone who is looking for a spiritual foundation, in these very troubled times. “Paganism” can be a solid foundation too, there are abundant teachers and books, John Michael Greer’s work for a start. Paganism actually fits well on the right, because find a pagan and you will find a pagan different from every other pagan. That is also something of a problem, if you are also talking about restoring the local, rebuilding community, or fighting TPTB, there has to be some shared mythology, some shared story to unite around. Christianity is capable of that, paganism, in the broadest sense, has not achieved that anywhere significant in a long time. The vast, vast majority of exercises in building a community around some alternative spirituality whatever that might be, have ended in failure within a few short years. There have been a lot of stories like that, here in America, particularly in the 19th century, but during the 1960’s also.
Though I am a “pagan”, though I don’t generally call myself that, I think attacking Christianity is absurd. I get that there is a hangover from the church of our youth, a church that was not inspiring, not fulfilling, not even interesting and not a little oppressive. I left the church because my youthful exuberance and sense of justice and rightness could not reconcile the hypocrisy, so very evident in every church we attended. The churches with a band were not actually an improvement, even if they seemed at first.
I am less judgemental these days, about any believer. The church, or churches, is not Christianity. We are in the midst of some holy war, WWIII most definitely, some war of good vs evil, we are being targeted, Christians and “pagans” on the right, free thinkers and believers in a creator, who also believe in the promise of America - targeted for elimination. We are not going to win this war by fighting about which is more based, Christianity or Paganism. We will probably be fighting about that a thousand years from now, but there will be no fight between us to be had, if we both lose to this death cult that is this post-modern, woke liberal/progressive, technocratic globalisation, laying waste to Western Civilization and America.
I have thought of myself as “pagan” long before I thought of myself as a right wing dissident. I was a Christian before I was either. The neoliberal Regime would have us infighting, to distract us. It is not difficult at all, for these masters of black magic to manipulate old grievances between Christians and pagans, just as they manipulate and exacerbate old grievances about race, between men and women, or the right wing and jooz, or now the left wing and jooz. Trans is the perfect foil, to preoccupy us while the petro dollar and dollar are killed, while America is killed by jabs, toxic food and WWIII. They would keep us all infighting, while they yank the rug of freedom out from under us all.
What is hard, is to see that black magic for what it is, let go of those grievances, to focus on coming together to lay waste to the sorcerers and warlocks of the media, deep state and international organizations. DC, Wall Street and the City of London are the true axis of evil. One could add the UN, WEF, WHO, the EU in Brussels, and the Bank of International Settlements. These are your enemies, Christians and Pagans, free thinkers everywhere. They want to silence you. They want to disappear you.
God speed in coming together to defeat that.
The Petters Brothers were semi-famous, or maybe infamous, in the eighties, traveling around the country playing Christian music and talking about demonic, Satanic subliminal messages in Rock ‘n Roll. I distinctly remember Queen’s “Another One Bite’s the Dust,” played backward, supposedly saying “smoke Marijuana”, though I distinctly remember thinking that it didn’t say that, no matter how many times I listened to it, even as I tried to convince myself that it did.
Yes, yes, and absolutely yes. We are in a spiritual war much greater than any man made organizations can handle. It's foolish to turn on one another in the face of the greater unity of the enemy.
Thank you for this thoughtful essay. As a westerner in Thailand, I have become convinced that the differences between religions, though real, are far less important than the chasm between tradition and modernity, even though, to some extent, almost all of us straddle it.