On Usoniandeutsch (and Schwäbisch-Amerikanisch) Identity Within Heathenry
By Sean Jobst
“Wo an wohlgebahnten Straßen (Where on well-paved roads)
Man in neuer Schenke weilt, (one dwells in a new inn,)
Wo dem Fremdling reichermaßen (Where the stranger is richly)
Ackerfeld ist zugeteilt, (allocated arable field,)
Siedeln wir uns an mit Andern. (We settle with others.)
Eilet, eilet, einzuwandern (Hurry, hurry, immigrate)
In das neue Vaterland! (to the new fatherland!)”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Lied der Auswanderer” (Song of the Emigrants), 1794
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| Illustration associated with Goethe's "Lied der Auswanderer." He would often be inspired to write his poems sitting under an oak tree. The oak tree was revered by ancient Germans, associated with the Thunderer Donar, and with the Celtic Druids, whose name meant "oak-wise". |
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| "Landverhuisers" (The Emigrants, 1896) by the Flemish artist Eugène Laermans (1864-1940) |
Lately I’ve been thinking more deeply about how Heathenry directly relates to we who live outside our ancestral lands of Heathendom. This question is not in the sense of any perceived (much less real) “conflict”, but how different layers of identity actually complement each other. These layers each form a concentric circle, distinct with their own merits but still overlapping to contribute into our holistic Being which is ever living and instinctual.
So it is that I am an American, born and raised in the
United States, with a German immigrant father (and naturalized US citizen since his youth) from Schwaben (with one ancestral
line also from northwest Spain), and a Flemish-American mother whose four
grandparents (all my maternal great-grandparents) were immigrants from West Vlaanderen
who settled in Missouri and Kansas. The fact that my step-grandfather – who was
very much my grandfather for all intents and purposes – was a German-American
from Missouri added another dimension to my Euro-American identity informed by
nature and nurture.
Suebi and Alemanni, Alpine Celtic, Belgae, Low Country Germanics, Celtiberian – all these specific tribal lines combined to incarnate me. The sacrifices, sorrows, passions, resilience, courage, and choices of my individual ancestors combined to preserve their lineage and ultimately make me their American descendant born, raised, nurtured and rooted within these western shores. Lineage and Memory together represent continuity, and as their descendant I am as much borrowing from the past – the memories left by my ancestors – as much as I am actively building my future.
None of these layers erase the ancestral memories encoded
within my DNA, the folklore and customs (conscious and unconscious) that
were passed down to me, photos and other material objects I inherited from my
ancestral lands, the spätzle and other culinary traditions among my
childhood memories, extended relatives I retain across the Atlantic – nor does
it change the fact that Gods and Goddesses accompany a people, no matter where
they come to live (or how geographically distant from the biosphere that first
nurtured their veneration).
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| "Die Nornen" (1882) by the German illustrator Ludwig Burger (1825-1884) |
Three Living Elements of Heathenry
Heathenry
is the specifically Germanic expression of Ethnic or Folk Faith. To me the
latter is a more direct meaning behind the catch-all term “Paganism,” although
at the end of the day these terms simply express the same deeper Reality and Being
of Indigeny.
Heathenry (called by the German Heidnische on this blog) is what our ancestors
termed their Ethnic Faith, with connotations of home and innate belonging to a
tribe.
The constituent parts of Heathenry are the Divinities, who
exist and accompany us wherever we may be, without conflicting with the
pre-existing spiritual beings of this land; and the Ancestors, who are within
our blood and exist in a reality parallel to what we can directly perceive (but
sometimes the “veils” separating the two worlds are thinned, such as with
Walpurgisnacht or Samhain, about which I wrote several articles). So both
elements are clearly active within a living Heathen practice in America.
Now, we get into the third constituent part of Heathenry:
Animism,
the knowing that there is spirit and consciousness imbuing all being, and that
there is a whole tapestry of infinite beings, seen and unseen. This
includes giving recognition or offerings (whatever the case may be) to various
land spirits, tied to place and the various features of land, water and air. At
the highest and most primal level is Mother Earth, whom all peoples and races share although we name Her by different names and interface with Her in different
ways.
We find distinct land spirits everywhere, but there’s also a
strong probability that some spirits we knew in our ancestral forests followed
us. Although perhaps more “esoteric” and thus speculative, the subject of
Diffusionism – including the oral accounts of Native Americans about
transoceanic contact, comparative mythology,
the complementary shapes of Europa and North America, similar forested and
mountainous landscapes along the respective coasts, scientific findings about
continental drift and ridges underneath the Atlantic – express another
continuity between European ancestral lands and American homeland.
Within the one American homeland, these vast
transcontinental frontiers with their diverse landscapes, there are multiple
and distinct “nations” reflecting the dominant ethnic group which settled a
region. Their customs and folklore melded with the land. Old folklore gave rise
to new folklore and customs, without infringing upon either the spirit or integrity of the old.
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| I couldn't find the exact source of the quote, but Kurt Vonnegut - born into a prominent German-American family in Indiana - was very proud about his heritage |
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| German Emigrants Embarking for America (Source) |
A Distinct Usoniandeutsch Identity
This is the same for the various constituent ethnicities of
the American nationality, just as it is for German-Americans. As part of my
ongoing project of Schwäbisch Heidnisches Glaube, expressing a distinctly
Southwest German Heathenry, I write this article as one foundation, to be followed
in the near future by an account of my personal Heathen journey and another on
the methodology for Swabian Heathenry. But for the time being, I introduce a
term and concept that has recently come to my awareness (nothing is by
“accident,” its all about resonance and synchronicity).
That term and concept is Usoniandeutsch.
Coined by one of the founders of Hyperborean Radio, who defines it as “an
alternate term for ‘Americans’ Usonians from Usonia (United States of Northern
Independent America) and the German word for Germans Deutsch.” “To meet the two
identities of the American German rather than to have them be at odds,” via the
heritage, culture, and history of Germans within America. Their public Telegram
page is an extensive catalogue of the folklore, customs, and lived experience
of German-American communities across the US (and the broader folklore and Paganism of other European peoples). As he writes:
“We have made our indelible mark on this great land. Our
folklore, language, cuisine and much more. This is not a betrayal of ancestors
of the old country but a carrying forth of their will to the new. The
Mountains, Forests and Prairie stripped back all the extra and left what must
remain. The ‘Stamm’ or Stem has shifted but we continue forth as the Race
‘Root.’ … You are part of the unbroken line of German Heritage that Stemmed Off
onto this new land, but you are no less German of Blood and Bone for it.”
Parallel to this is another interest of mine: Ethnogenesis –
the origin myth of a people and how it “evolves” through their migrations, not only their
consciousness but the organic nature of a land and history itself.(1) The
Germanic tribes migrated into other regions, leaving their imprint even outside
the areas now known as the Germanic countries. This continued centuries later,
such as the rise of the Donauschwaben as a German folk across the Danube,
Balkans and Volga (their descendants later migrating to the Americas); or the
Pennsylvania Deitsch, whose experience within one section of Nordamerika formed
them into a distinct culture.
Sometimes there is an esoteric law of correspondence
“guiding” these migrations. Some of the Donauschwaben (not all of them Swabians
but some from other regions) were – perhaps unknowingly – tracing the migratory
paths of the Ostrogoths into those eastern lands. Or how one section from my
own Suebi tribe migrated to what is now Galicia and northern Portugal, their
customs blending with the Celtic tribes just as the Swabia their ancestors left
had originally been Celtic – and our broader Swabian identity emerged from this
blending of Celtic with the Germanic Suebi and Alemanni.
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| "Der große Schwabenzug" (The Great Swabian Procession) by Alsatian-German painter Fernand Schulz-Wettel (Source) |
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| "Wotan als Wanderer" (1903) illustration by Arpad Schmidhammer (1857-1921) |
Migrations to all the Americas – Lesson from The Wanderer
All these migrations beautifully express the spirit and
archetype of Wodan – the Wanderer, the metaphoric fury of the storm and
cleansing power of wind, and leader of the Wild Hunt. The striving and
resilience, the relentless search for wisdom not for its own sake but to
reclaim our own primal experience. To be an animist is also to recognize the
death and destructive forces of Nature, not only the fertility and order
– and that too was most experienced in various migrations, where the Faustian
spirit embraced the land with all its mysteries. For me that is another “esoteric”
lesson to be gathered from the Wild Hunt as not only about “death” and the
otherworld.
This is an arduous path filled with great rewards but also
challenges that come naturally and should be faced with steadfastness. This
reward itself can be found in embracing the world with all its Runas –
Mysteries. Such is a valuable lesson for a Heathen no matter where upon this
beautiful planet we find ourselves, for our Gods and Goddesses are immanent and
not distant off-planet beings.(2) I invoke the lesson of Wodan the Wanderer as expressing
the energies that inspired millions of Germans to forge new paths in lands across
all directions.
Some of their descendants even found themselves in the
southern hemisphere, with German settlers in South America who found even their
concept of time and the seasons completely turned upside-down as the magnetic
pole energy flipped. Being happily and proudly married to an Uruguaya (colonial
Spanish and Portuguese ancestry), and having been to both Uruguay and some
Brazilian border towns of Rio Grande do Sul, the Southern Cone region is
particularly dear to my own heart – and I’ve found that its own history and
heritage serves as a mirror to our own experiences as North Americans of
European ancestries. There are colonies of Germans and Swiss across the region,
sometimes in unlikely places.(3)
Totally unrelated to my own travels, I found a Brazilian
effort to reclaim the Suebi-Visigothic Heathen heritage that migrated from
Portugal to that massive Lusophone country. Called Alþeis Sidus, this effort preserves distinct Heathen
traditions of the Suebi and Visigoths while still incorporating the rich
animistic tapestry of their own Brazilian spiritual landscape.(4) They recognize
the land spirits and contributions of other ethnicities in the formation of
Brazil, but their pantheon of Deities is distinctly Heathen, further
informed by Germans who settled the southern estados of Rio Grande do Sol, Santa
Catarina, and Parana.
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| Painting of 39 German immigrants arriving in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (Source) |
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| "Weihnachtsfest der Deutschen Division am Potomac" (Christmas with the German Division of the Potomac), American Civil War. The Yule tree a German tradition which harkens back to Heathen times. (Source) |
Living Heathenry in Nordamerika
Bringing it full circle to our experience in Nordamerika, there
are several noble efforts to forge a continental Heathenry distinctly tailored
to our own landscape. Pennsylvania Deitsch (misheard by the English as ‘Dutch’)
preserved traditions via a vibrant Heathen tradition called Urglaawe. In the
great North called Canada, a group of French descendants have reclaimed Frankish Heathenry.(5) Called Thia Frankisk Aldsido, its founder explains how
“This is not a reconstructed religion but a renovated tradition built on
consideration.” This is realized through “a formal structure to promote growth,
development, and the localization of cult centers.” Indeed, Thia Frankisk
Aldsido localized these with new sacred sites and Godpoles within Canada.
A group of Saxon Heathens called the Aldsidu have resurrected a living continental practice in Chicagoland, showing how being
faithful to historical sources is not mere imitation of a “lost” tradition from
across the ocean but flows like a vibrant spring nurturing even an urbanscape.
Finally, while stressing that my own Heathenry is solitary and I do not
belong to any group, there is the effort that inspires my own the most – the
Irminenschaft, whose various blogs and website I link within my own blog. I
highly recommend its seminal text Germanic Heathenry – to be understood
as a useful handbook of traditions and folklore, not some kind of “scripture” -
which immediately resonated with me in ways Scandinavian sources never could or
did.
I close with some comments I made to a YouTube video where Finnish
Pagan writer, Aki Cederberg, was interviewed about his book Holy Europe.
It’s a very informative book holding a useful place (among many others) within
my own library. The author stresses sacred spaces and spiritual pilgrimages,
which need not only be to sites only regarded as “spiritual” but can include
the artistic and apparently “mundane”. I know this only too well, as my trip to
Stuttgart – visiting the Landesmuseum, walking along the Neckar River and
adjacent streets in Bad Cannstatt where my dad in his youth and my direct
paternal side lived, and hiking up the Birkenkopf – was the first catalyst to
my own Heathen journey.
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| Just some photos from my July 2016 pilgrimage to Stuttgart and Bad Canstatt, catalyst for my reawakening to Heathenry |
“Second, we can look at Diffusionism and lost continents,
continental drift, and how not only do the shapes of North America and Europe
resemble a puzzle fitting together but there's something in the fact that our
forested, mountainous landscapes here on this continent resemble those our
ancestors left in Europe. That is certainly no accident but has something to do
with our destiny of which we are active participants and co-creators.
“Third, taking the principles about ‘sacred space’ from such
thinkers as Mircea Eliade etc. we can build new Heathen sacred spaces on this
landscape. Was not the Irminsul the physical representation of a more cosmic,
metaphysical principle that is ever existing? Were not the sacred trees and
groves of our various tribes also the physical representations? So perhaps we
can build new Heathen God-poles and consecrate sacred trees such as oak or elm
etc. and springs and groves here in North America. Never to ‘replace’ those of
our ancestral lands but to make the realities of Divinity and Heathenry as a
living, uninterrupted practice more profound and evident for us.”
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| ....and just some photos from my hiking excursions in the forests and mountains of southern Appalachia, connecting with the spiritual energies of this land. |
Footnotes:
(1) Origin myths are not to be confused with “creation”
myths such as we see with Abrahamism. Rather the tribal and indigenous model
worldwide is one of Emergence and Emanation from the Earth. I harmonized
this model with the Sophianic narrative of how Earth morphed from the physical
and dream body of the Goddess, with the origin myths of various tribes then
picking up where that primordial universal myth leaves off. For example, the
account of Tacitus about how the ancient Germans saw themselves as “autochthonous”.
See the fourth article of my Animism series, entitled “Emergence, Emanation, True Meaning of Matrix, and Debunking the Simulation Inversion”.
(2) Although they certainly have cosmic correspondences, as
I examined in a recent article about Walpurgisnacht and its relation to
astrotheology and the Runes.
(3) For example, I once saw a Mennonite outside the Rivera
bus station; and I passed Swiss-founded towns on the way to Colonia still
preserving their Alpine architecture and heritage. Although this is another
subject entirely, perhaps it’s no accident these Swiss descendants would be
drawn to a land historically called the “Switzerland of South America” (at
least before statism and ever-growing bureaucracy wrecked its damage just as in
other countries). The decentralized cantons of Switzerland itself owe much to
the tribal confederacy structure of the Alemanni, including the Suebi.
(4) This reminds me of the broader Brazilian syncretism
called Umbanda, with its own complex cosmology informed by the Africans,
Portuguese, and Indigenous Amazonians who each imbued Brazil with their own
traditions. Its pantheon of the Orishas is Yoruba, syncretized as “saints” and
other Christian figures - perhaps merely to hide in plain sight, although some
practitioners take the Christian imagery to heart, while the related Candomblé
tend to stress the African polytheism. Umbanda’s spiritual hierarchies include
distinct linhas and phalanxes identified as European, African, or
Indigenous Brazilian. This pattern is repeated with the Exus, a vast category
who even include spiritual beings from the Ciganos (Gitanos/Romani) who settled
Brazil.
(5) Due to the fact that Frankish monarchs such as Clovis and Charlemagne became the battering ram of Christianization against other Germanic tribes, we tend to forget that the Franks were also our Heathen cousins and Christianity was imposed upon them first. At times this was to great difficulty of the conquerors, as the accounts of Martin of Tours attest to lingering Heathenry of even many “converted” Franks. Christianization was never a singular event but a gradual process of centuries.
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