Jews Archives — The Rational Heathen

Christian Trolls and Other Idiots

January 28, 2018 Tyra Ulfdottir Comments 0 Comment

Well, the Rational Heathen has been trolled by a Christian, who either is terribly misinformed, or just a troll. Christians, he believes, converted barbaric Heathens peacefully. According to him, Heathens were just mass killers and rapists. Now, if that got you bristling, good. Here are the facts behind so-called peaceful Christians and barbaric pagans.

Before I get started, let me point out there were so many instances that they just don’t fit in a single
post. So today I’m just going to talk about forced conversions and just touch on the witchcraft trials and other lovely situations like burning at the stake. If you’re really interested in the background behind my assertions, (and the gory details–literally), that’s going into a premium post which you can access for just $1.

Let’s Talk “Peaceful Conversion”

Let me point out that Christians were exceedingly barbaric once they got into power. From Constantine on, both sides of the Roman Empire (East and West), began systematic elimination of pagan practices, most which were punishable by death. Pagan temples were regularly looted and closed by the government. While there were a few emperors who turned a blind eye to pagan traditions, others would come along that would close pagan temples and colleges, loot the temples and strip the priests and Vestal Virgins of their pay, and outlaw sacrifices to pagan gods which would cause the practitioner to be put to death. Another interesting practice outlawed with the death penalty as punishment was reading the entrails of fowl or sheep to predict the future. Constantine looted temples; his successor, Constantius II carried on a crusade against pagans. Eventually Theodosius I made paganism illegal and many Jews as well as pagans were forced to convert or suffer loss of their possessions, buildings, or even their lives.

Desecrate Sacred Places

Pope Gregory I knew there were still pagans among the Christians who practiced their own religion in secret. To crowd them out, he decreed that the Church should take over their sacred glens, grottoes, caves, and mountains and put Christian altars and relics there. The idea was to remove all pagan symbolism and to establish it as being Christian and not pagan. You can probably imagine how the pagans felt seeing their own holy areas desecrated in such a fashion.

If you’re a Christian, imagine how you might feel seeing your church replaced by a pagan temple and you’ve been told that the pagan gods are the only true gods, and that you can’t worship your god there. Wow. I bet that just blew your mind. Never mind that Heathenism doesn’t do that, nor do most pagan religions, but think about it. What if you could not worship your god and if you did, be put to death? Yes, there are some countries that treat Christians badly, but imagine this was across the world as you knew it: the Roman Empire.

In Fear for One’s Life and Freedom

Once Christianity took hold, Christians were just as barbaric to pagans as the Christian troll stated the pagans were to Christians. In many places, a Christian owning Christian slaves was forbidden, but it was a-okay for Christians to own pagan, Muslim, or Jewish slaves. (Now, granted the same was true with other beliefs: Muslims generally would not own Muslims, Heathens would usually not own Heathens, etc. As long as you were of the “other,” castrating you and sending you into slavery was just fine.) The Vikings had a huge slave trade economy, but then so did the Italians, the Muslims, and other faiths. Eunuchs were big business and there were special eunuch houses designed just for that purpose.

If that isn’t enough to make you shudder, consider Charlemagne. During the Saxon wars, he forced the Saxons to convert and those that didn’t were put to death. The Massacre of Verden saw the death of 4500 pagan Saxons alone because they refused to convert.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

After Spain drove out the Moors, the rest of the non-Christians were forced to convert or be executed. They then had to endure the Spanish Inquisition which tortured and put to death many of the forced converts who were under suspicion of practicing their former religion in secrecy. It’s estimated that about 30,000 to 50,000 people were burned at the stake in a 300 year period by the Inquisition alone. If you confessed to your “sins” you would be strangled before being burned to show mercy. Either way, dead or alive, you were going to get torched. Remember, these are the followers of the so-called “Prince of Peace.”

Burning Witches and Other Horrid Practices

Now, whether you want to split hairs about whether the people burned were heretics or whether they were actually pagans is pretty immaterial. Burning at the stake was a common method of “saving” people’s souls. I ran into one site that claims in the 16th and 17th centuries about 200,000 people were burned to death just for witchcraft. That’s pretty horrible. Now, granted not all of them were pagan or claimed to be witches, but these were people who died horrible deaths. Oh, and I saw some statement that burning was considered different than being immersed in boiling liquid. (Death by boiling.) Fuck that shit. Christians were cruel.

I’m not saying our Heathen ancestors were lily-white either. But those who live in glass houses should never throw stones.

Chickens and Nazis, or maybe, Chicken Nazis

May 22, 2017 Tyra Ulfdottir Comments 0 Comment

Lately I’ve been reading about how the Nazis and the White Supremacists have been joining and

changing Heathen and Asatru groups. Quite frankly, I just don’t get it.

Let’s Talk Chickens

Apparently folks here like to hear about the cluckers, so let me tell you a story. My mom would only eat white eggs (true story). She thought the brown eggs tasted funny. She was pretty sure there was something wrong with the brown eggs, because they were brown and not white. Try as I might to convince her otherwise, she hated brown eggs.

When my coworker sold chicken eggs from his farm, the eggs were brown. I bought the eggs and enjoyed them. My mom wanted fresh eggs, but I told her he only had brown eggs. She was disappointed. She actually told me to tell him to get chickens that laid white eggs.

My coworker told me that egg color had to do with the breed of chicken (back before I had my own flock). He explained that most white egg layers were leghorns. He considered leghorns to be flighty and aggressive, so he didn’t have them. Instead, I believe he had Rhode Island reds, which he thought were more docile. (I actually think they can be a pain, too, but that’s my opinion.)

I told my mom this, but she never ate a brown egg if she could help it. As a result, she didn’t get farm fresh eggs.

People versus Chickens

Obviously people aren’t chickens, but there’s a good point here. Whether you eat brown eggs, white eggs, green eggs, or blue eggs, they’re all from chickens and they all taste good if they’re fresh. I tend to like the blue/green eggs because they’re cool looking, but I’ll eat brown and white eggs too. Oh, and I have chickens that lay chocolate colored eggs. Those are the coolest to see.

Now, granted people aren’t chicken eggs, but the prejudice is similar enough to talk about. It’s about judging by the outside wrapping. You can’t look at an egg by the color and say it is a great tasting egg. You can’t point to a brown egg and say it is better than a white egg because it it brown. Likewise, you can’t point to a white person and say he or she is better than a black person just by the color of their skin.

Apparently, Some People Don’t Get It

Race is a construct. We’re all humans under the skin. We’re mostly Homo Sapiens mixed with Neanderthal and Denisovian. We may have genetics from a third race (race in the true sense) running around in us. And you know what? Only those who are purely from African roots are pure Homo Sapiens. Surprise!

So, if you’re a white person, you’ll find you are not only not a race, but you’re a mutt as well. There isn’t anything special about that white skin, except that those of us with lighter pigment needed it to absorb more of the sun’s rays to produce enough Vitamin D to avoid rickets. Gee, using color is really a great way to determine worthiness of an individual. NOT!

My Experience with Nazis

When I was growing up, no one except the fringe lunatics would ever consider joining the Nazi cause. Hitler’s Germany was a totalitarian government. He oppressed people, including his own people. Hitler and his Nazis tortured and murdered millions. And he started an incredibly horrible and costly war that involved most of the civilized world.

I was born less than 20 years after that war, which probably puts me on the end of the Baby Boomer generation. My dad joined the Army when he was 17. He was in Germany after the war and got to see the horror of the concentration camps and the overall devastation. He was also in Japan in the late 50s.

I grew up knowing full well that Hitler and his Nazis were evil. It is no secret, which is why it puzzles me that anyone would be attracted to those beliefs.

Uh, You Weren’t Even Born Then

A lot of white supremacists weren’t even born during the time Hitler rose to power, let alone experienced the Third Reich for themselves. Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power because of the terms of surrender enforced on the Weinmar Republic after World War I. We could argue all day whether the Treaty of Versailles actually caused Hitler’s rise to power and World War II, but that’s not really the point of this piece. If you were born after 1945 and claim to be a Nazi, I’d asked with all sincerity, “What the fuck?” You weren’t affected by the war personally. Maybe your grandparents were, or great-grandparents, but seriously? It’s HISTORY. Most WWII veterans are dead. Most people who lived through it are either dead or in nursing homes.

Nobody has Held you Down

One of the things I really don’t get about white supremacists is the thought that other ethnicities (often called incorrectly, “races”) are inferior and that somehow they’ve held the white man down. Seriously? Let’s address the holding the white man down idea first.

According to the United States census, about 77.1 percent of Americans are “white,” and “whites” are expected to remain in the majority at 73.1 percent by 2050. Looking at the largest minority class, that being blacks/African Americans, they are around 12.4 percent in this country. Every other minority is a smaller percentage yet. As for businesses, guess who owns them? Yes, whites. According to US News and World Report, only 17.5 percent of businesses were owned by minorities.

Now, let’s look at the Jews, since the white supremacists and Nazis seem to have issues with them. In the United States, we have a 2.2 percent population (or 5.3 million people) of those who are Jewish out of a population that is more than 300 million. This includes those Jews who are atheist, those have a Jewish background who don’t practice, and those who only consider themselves partly Jewish.

Are there a lot of Jewish business owners? Yes. Why is that, you wonder. Could it be that they worked their asses off to get where they are today? Could it be that because they weren’t allowed to own land in the past due to discrimination during the Middle Ages, they were forced to become bankers (because Christians didn’t become moneylenders at the time) and business people? So, they have a legacy of working in those areas. Nowadays you have fewer people who identify as Jewish than back in the 1950s (I believe the number was around 4 to 5 percent), so those whom you consider Jewish don’t even consider themselves such.

If you feel that Jews or other ethnicities have caused some sort of wrong against you, I’ve got news for you. You’re wrong. Nobody has held you down. If you’d get off your ass and get a job, or at least move out of your parents’ basement, it would be a good start. You can still get educated, get a job, and be a productive member of society. Look, kid, nobody hands anything to anyone on a gold plate. You have to go out and work for it. Quit wasting your time with losers (the Nazis, by the way, were and still are, losers), and try working toward improving your life. You’d be amazed at what a change of attitude can do.

I hope I’ve at least given you some thoughts to consider. If you’re the bigoted type, maybe I’ve brought you a bit out of your comfort zone to start thinking about your worldview. Maybe you might quit blaming other people for your problems. Or maybe, at least, you won’t care what color your eggs are.