Bruce Lee and the Tao of Ásatrú

Hard to say, yeah? I'm definitely bringing in the baggage of my positive personal interactions with the author combined with my knowledge of other things he's written, neither of which necessarily has a place in interpreting this particular piece. That seems like a wacky inclusion in a job interview introduction, incidentally. *bemused face*

I guess,it might be in how we interpret the tone. "We should be educated on and respectful of the cultural precursors" just comes across as academic doublespeak to me. Particularly as I saw a very similar line used in a job interview introduction a few months back. So that's probably just my own misinterpretation then.

Your interpretation of his piece has some differences from my own in a few areas, but just minor ones. The part where he begins talking about a fundamentalist worldview is immediately preceded by a paragraph in which he says "We should be educated on and respectful of the cultural precursors to modern Ásatrú in long-ago times, for sure. The more we learn about how the ancient religions were practiced, the more we are informed on how to build the modern religions in a way that is positive and meaningful for all involved." I took this to mean that we should do something very similar to what we do in KoSH, learning as much about pre- and immediately post-conversion Germanic culture as possible to assist us in the establishment of our contemporary practice. As far as big tent paganism: Seigfried has argued in other pieces against such a thing, or at least against its usefulness. Admittedly, in this piece he doesn't specifically do that, but I think he alludes to it (and expands on his previous arguments a bit) with his bit arguing against national organizations for Heathenry. My interpretation of his argument for local Heathenry going along with his previous arguments against big tent paganism may be off base, admittedly, since he doesn't specifically mention it in this piece. I share the disagreement with the idea that a Germanic worldview is unknowable. I find his dismissive statement about "some overarching worldview that was shared by members of some true and unified universal church of Odin over large stretches of time and distance" to be frustratingly limited. While specifics may vary over time and geography, we in fact do get enough similarity across centuries and locations that we can approach an understanding. With our modern perspective and our ability to seek information from different areas including archaeology, linguistics, and histories, we can get some ideas as to how aspects of the culture(s) changed to better fit the realities of a particular time, place, or other set of circumstances. I used to waste significant amounts of time arguing with Linzie over the usefulness of a pan-Germanic approach to worldview (and as is likely evident, I've modified my position only slightly over the years 😉).

Interesting, it has been a long time since I read the Tao of Jeet Kun do. A couple of thoughts, I think his interpretation of Bruce Lee is both interesting and flawed. As I recall, Bruce Lee was deliberately not taught the secrets of Wing Chun, and allegedly his master forbade his best pupils from teaching certain secrets to Bruce Lee. All the railings against form and such, are because Bruce Lee was not inaugurated in the hugest levels of the discipline where such things were taught. Now how much of that is sour grapes and hind sight, I am not a martial arts historian to pull all of those threads.

In using Bruce Lee as his example, I think Siegfried is falling into the same trap he complaining against. He is taking specific pieces of the image and story of Bruce Lee that fit and ignoring the rest. He is putting certain easily accessible information on a pedestal and ignoring what else is out there.

I do agree with Siegfried in that “the decision of who can practice is totally up to us here today, right now.“ I think one of the pushes and pulls in religion is how much change and what change.

However, then he goes off the rails completely. “A resolute obsession with trying to know the ultimately unknowable interior worldview of the ancient Germanic pagans … leads to a form of fundamentalism that insists on the possibility of reconstructing a Viking Age Icelandic or other ancient Germanic religious world of belief and practice … leave today’s American practitioners ‘crammed and distorted by the classical mess’ as they constantly turn their inner eyes backwards through time.” Siegfried is wrong, and he doubles down on being wrong “Lee criticized this focus on replicating the forms of the past rather than engaging with the present.”

Alright, so why is he flat out wrong. Well, the reason lies at the heart of what does it mean to be heathen or Asatru. As you all have heard me rant before, I agree with the common idea that worldview being the central core of being heathen. Well why worldview? One, worldview means that actions are what what is important. We are or deeds as it were. Two, worldview brings in the ideas orlog and wyrd. From the well and the tree reading, looking back at the past and how that shapes the future is key. Three, the worldview emphasis on community over the individual. As Chris would say, “its not about you.” Well, so what? Whats the point? Using the idea of worldview as the central idea of heathenry allows us to answer two fundamentally modern questions: Who we are, and how are we different from big tent neopaganism. One of the hardest questions to answer when starting out in heathenry, is how to describe who we are with out describing who we are not. I know, it seems silly, but I have come to believe that it is a really important question. The sort of if you ask 3 heathens a question you should get 5 to 6 different answers. Yes, we worship the AEsir, yes it is the modern revival of pre-Christian religion of Northern Europe, but what does that mean how is it different? Its different in the attempt to use reconstruction to apply the worldview of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples to modern life. This fundamentally makes it different from big-tent-wicannate-neo-paganism. The worldview of wiccanate neo-paganism, is modern, individual, and based in Victorian teachings of the occult. There are a lot of things that are just are in wiccanate-neo-paganism that are direct bits of 19th century British occultism. So we have modern, community, pre-Christian Germanic worldview described against modern, individual, Victorian British(we could argue English speaking too, I suppose) occultist worldview.

So whats the take away from the rant. I think Siegfried is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He is essentially telling people to join big-tent paganism.

He tries to find a fig leaf of legitimacy in engaging with “doing methodology over the ‘simple and direct and nonclassical’ being in a living religion.” That runs into we are our deeds (doing), the notion of engagement with community (being), and the fundamental idea that people keep talking about in neo-paganism but never get around to: it simply being a part of what people do as opposed to what people believe. He is not going to find that in his big tent, they have been looking for it since the nineties and last I heard hadn’t found it yet.

The rest of it is the usual local heathenry, and then I guess what I can only describe as Siegfried’s personal gnoiss, that I find distasteful. Really “saints?”

Anyways. Thank you Sorn for posting the article I did enjoy reading it, even if he is wrong.

-Schuyler

Quotations from

Siegfried, Karl. (2021, August 28). “Bruce Lee and the Tao of Asatru” Wild Hunt. https://wildhunt.org/2021/08/column-bruce-lee-and-the-tao-of-asatru.html Accessed 8/30/2021.

Edit: I walked away and realized I did a terrible job in conclusion.

Karl Siegfried is right in that in Asatru and heathenry there is a choice as modern people about who to include, and drawing a wide net will beneficial. I think his arguments on why Asatruar and heathens should do this are terrible.