On Being a Pagan

by Alain de Benoist

“In this small masterpiece, the great French thinker Alain de Benoist claims that only the pagan deities of ancient Europe offer a spiritual recourse to the present religious malaise. The guilt, the fear, the narrow petty-bourgeois obsession with well-being, and the self-loathing love of the Other that has left Western man defenseless before the destructive behaviors of our nihilist age derive from the alien belief system that Christianity introduced to the West. They are not part of the pagan spirit that lives still in the Rig Veda, the Iliad, or the Edda. Benoist helps us rediscover these ancient wellsprings and the fonts from which future greatnesses may again flow. But let the reader be warned, his On Being a Pagan proposes no folkloric or New Age “return to the past,” but rather a Nietzschean recurrence in which the future bears all the promise of our distant origins—and thus of another great beginning.”—Michael O’Meara, author of New Culture, New Right

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Paganism, History, Politics, Theology, Spirituality

233 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1981

About the author

Depuis plus de trente ans, Alain de Benoist poursuit méthodiquement un travail d'analyse et de réflexion dans le domaine des idées. Ecrivain, journaliste, essayiste, conférencier, philosophe, il a publié plus de 50 livres et plus de 3000 articles, aujourd'hui traduits dans une quinzaine de langues différentes.

Ses domaines de prédilection sont la philosophie politique et l'histoire des idées, mais il est aussi l'auteur de nombreux travaux portant notamment sur l'archéologie, les traditions populaires, l'histoire des religions ou les sciences de la vie.

Indifférent aux modes idéologiques, récusant toute forme d'intolérance et d'extrémisme, Alain de Benoist ne cultive pas non plus une quelconque nostalgie «restaurationniste». Lorsqu'il critique la modernité, ce n'est pas au nom d'un passé idéalisé, mais en se préoccupant avant tout des problématiques postmodernes. Les axes principaux de sa pensée sont au nombre de quatre : 1) la critique conjointe de l'individuo-universalisme et du nationalisme (ou de l'ethnocentrisme) en tant que catégories relevant l'une et l'autre de la métaphysique de la subjectivité ; 2) la déconstruction systématique de la raison marchande, de l'axiomatique de l'intérêt et des multiples emprises de la Forme-Capital, dont le déploiement planétaire constitue à ses yeux la menace principale qui pèse aujourd'hui sur le monde ; 3) la lutte en faveur des autonomies locales, liée à la défense des différences et des identités collectives ; 4) une nette prise de position en faveur d'un fédéralisme intégral, fondé sur le principe de subsidiarité et la généralisation à partir de la base des pratiques de la démocratie participative.

Alors que son oeuvre est connue et reconnue dans un nombre grandissant de pays, Alain de Benoist reste largement ostracisé en France, où l'on se borne trop souvent à associer son nom à celui de la « Nouvelle Droite », expression dans laquelle il ne s'est jamais véritablement reconnu.


Biography in English at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_d...

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book; I found it liberating. Comparative religion as I’ve not read it before.

Paganism is compared mainly with Judaism and then Judae-Christianity. Polytheism v Monotheism. Affirmation v Negativism. The comparisons are stark.

It’s a complex book and I’m massively oversimplifying, no doubt,...The Pagan creed seeks to celebrate man’s achievements in their glorious setting – our world and universe. It is there to strengthen and encourage man in reaching forward timelessly. The past, present and future are all as one. With Judaism this is not the case: we have a disapproving Other ready at all times to punish His creation (Man and her/his world) at the fist sign of rebellion. The Old Testament is stuffed with stories of Divine vengeance wreaked on a disobedient humanity. Children were/are taught this stuff and encouraged to worship and adore. No wonder this world of ours is so fucked up!

Although Judaism sought to kick its puny rival into the long grass its strengths were noted and before too long the early (Christian) church was espousing the doctrine of the Trinity – God in Three Persons. It caught on!

Not an easy read but it’s well worth the effort. It’s a welcome addition to my reference shelf and I plan to re-read it asap.

[Fadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect. It suits my Nietzschean taste.

[Da1tonthegreat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Houston Stewart Chamberlain wrote, “The life of Jesus Christ is an open declaration of war [...] against the inner spirit of mankind, against the motives which underlie their actions, against the goal which they set for themselves in the future life and in the present.” This summarizes much of Benoist’s brilliant, thought-provoking argument. Paganism, not Judeo-Christianity, is the true native religion of the European and is reflective of his Faustian spirit. It holds that this world in which we live our lives is not merely a way station we must endure before the afterlife, it is sacred. The “pagan” beliefs of our ancestors, which developed organically with them over the millennia, are intimately tied into human nature and the rhythms of the natural world of which we are a part.

Christianity, by contrast, is an alien belief system imposed on them. Indeed it was so foreign that it would not have survived the grafting process had it not co-opted many aspects of the 'heathen' faiths it supplanted. Still, like Liberalism or Marxism, it is an artificial ideology that clashes with our nature at every turn. It does not work with humans as we are, but as it would like us to be (and what it would like us to be is not human). It constantly reaffirms the worthlessness of life, of humanity, of the natural world. Furthermore, as opposed to the ethnic deities of polytheism, Christianity is a universalist creed. There is one God, his religion is the only acceptable way to live, and it ought to be imposed on all men. What then do borders and races matter. This is the line of thought that spawned globalism. Benoist writes “There is no such thing as a unique human culture; there are only cultures. The diversity of cultures stems precisely from the diversity of man."

Christianity is inherently and irrevocably tied to Judaism. "By exchanging his foundational myth for that of biblical monotheism, the West has transformed Hebraism into its super-ego." Instead of OUR gods – Odin, Jupiter, Zeus, Wotan, and many others created in Western Man's image – we instead have the Hebrew Yahweh and Jesus Christ. Strength, nobility, love, loyalty, honor, family, even the simple pleasure of a good meal or the beauty of a work of art – these things they would deny us. Instead we should ideally live as cloistered, ascetic monks praising God day in and day out as we yearn for death to end the suffering of our wretched, sinful lives. We’ve been cut off from our roots, from the mythology that gave meaning to countless generations of our ancestors and that sprang directly from their history, their environment, their spirit. Most of this wisdom has been lost to the sands of time, intentionally destroyed by zealous crusaders or forgotten. Judeo-Christianity and the soulless dark age it spawned – the 'liberal and 'progressive' new world order we currently live in, characterized by spiritual malaise among many other ills – is on its way out. From the ashes, there is hope that our descendants will live lives more infused with meaning, more in harmony with their communities, nature, tradition, and themselves – as our pagan ancestors once did.

[TR · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Benoist shows the fundamentals of what the pagan world represented and how its echoes are still present today. This is contrasted with monotheism. Essential for pagans/pantheists, and monotheists that think modern pagans have bad arguments.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Trump is not a pagan. A heathen maybe, but not a pagan."---Bill Maher. Paganism just don't get no respect. And no, it does not mean you will be sacrificed to the Wicker Man. Most people take "pagan" to mean what they dislike in religion. Take for instance, this pronouncement from the Archbishop of Canterbury: "This country{Great Britain} is increasingly becoming pagan." What His Grace obviously meant was secular. I've known a Wiccan or two in my life, but De Benoist's ON BEING A PAGAN is the finest defense to date of returning Europe to its pre-Christian roots. Unlike his archenemy on the European New Right, Alexander Dugan, De Benoist does not have the Orthodox Church to fall back on, so he must reach back to Eurasian root religions. His case against Christianity is that by sacrificing this world to some metaphysical cloud cuckoo-land it denies all of life. As for the morality of Christianity De Benoist finds in it the exaltation of the mediocre and failures. Paganism, understood as the sacralization of all life, is anti-humanistic but not anti-human. Rather, it places humanity in a spectrum of all life forms and worships the cosmos, not some godhead who issues decrees from Mt. Sinai. In a pagan world nothing is profane since everything is sacred. The recurrence of life, like the seasons and the crops and the stars, not its end and transformation at the moment of death, is what gives life meaning; not a book for the squeamish but definitely the start of a great conversation.

[Andrés · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no words. This is the best book about religions that I have read, and I have read too many.

Can you imagine if Nietzsche had a little more intellectual rigour and less testosterone? Then this is the book he would have written.

Comparison of the features of paganism with those of judeo-christian religion is done with such a precision and entomological detail that you will never forget the differences and advantages, and what we have lost (and win) when changing from one cosmovision to the other.

Absolutely outstanding, each and every chapter.

It has a defect, however: given that the topic discussed is paganism vs. christianism it is strange that the author does not devote a single line to slavery and its abolition, probably the most postitive (in practice) consequence of christianism.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was not what I expected in the most pleasant way. Far from a simple overview of paganism, de Benoist draws on philosophy and comparative religious studies to paint a portrait of the pagan spirit defined by the traditions that eventually eliminated most traces of it from the world. Erudite and informative, this short book went to much greater depths than I expected.

[Karen Engelsen]

n this small masterpiece, the great French thinker Alain de Benoist claims that only the pagan deities of ancient Europe offer a spiritual recourse to the present religious malaise. The guilt, the fear, the narrow petty-bourgeois obsession with well-being, and the self-loathing love of the Other that has left Western man defenseless before the destructive behaviors of our nihilist age derive from the alien belief system that Christianity introduced to the West. They are not part of the pagan spirit that lives still in the Rig Veda, the Iliad, or the Edda. Benoist helps us rediscover these ancient wellsprings and the fonts from which future greatnesses may again flow. But let the reader be warned, his On Being a Pagan proposes no folkloric or New Age "return to the past," but rather a Nietzschean recurrence in which the future bears all the promise of our distant origins—and thus of another great beginning.

[Крюкокрест · Rating 4 out of 5]

В книге Алан де Бенуа развивает идеи Майстера Экхарта, Ницше, Юнга и Хайдеггера. Некая попытка систематизации принципов и общих мест языческого мирополагания. Работа строится на противопоставлении арийской веры иудео-христианству. Из их коренного отличия вырастают антиномии Священность/Святость, Миф/Логос, Становление/Тварность, Автономия/Покорность, Образ/Понятие...

-1 звезда за сумбурность изложения и непроработанную структуру. На читателя то и дело сваливают без подготовки горы ссылок, источников и цитат. Возможно играет роль (не)погруженность в академическую религиоведческую среду, но для меня текст воспринимался со скрипом.

[Michael Michailidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great surprise

I did not consider reading De Benoist before as he was named as on of the “damned.” Those regressive right wing fanatics whose thought is obscured by prejudice. Quite the contrary. In his book De Benoist shows how it is truly those ancient Jewish prejudices of the Hebrew and Christian Bible that have so permitted - and indeed founded - the modern world.

[Bahaa Mohammed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Study of Judio-christianity and contrasting it with paganism. I agree with most of his arguments and I see what he sees. I had some preservation on some of the arguments that he made. Some of them looked to me far reach.

[Fnaught · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are the two messages I sent to my best friend whilst finishing this book:

1.

"My views are very simple really. I think the West is the best in almost every respect and we should rule the entire world and be happy."

2.

“I feel I have the responsibility to tell you that I just crossed myself and renounced what I said, begging forgiveness from God, because I had a terrifying vision of a giant golden cross sweeping over the floor in a marble hall and I realised that Pagan idols would not defend me, nor make any difference. They would all fall away.”

Make of that what you will.

[Michael Nguyen · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is something very off about the notion that the Jewish God and the Christian God are lumped together as a biblical Yahweh. First of all, the term “Judeo Christian” makes no sense as Hasidism is nothing like Catholicism.

“To eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is therefore to personally enter this real world where human ini­ tiative “combines” good and evil. Adam’s transgression, from which all the others are derived, is clearly “that of autonomy'”

First of all, this is a CATHOLIC reading. Judaism has a rabbinical tradition which actually praises Adam’s actions. So this is very wrong. Judaism is not solely based on the so-called Old Testament. Which in Jewish Tradition is called the Tanakh. It’s just so wrong. The constant naming of the Jewish God as “Yahweh” again is not a Hasidic tradition. In fact the name is forbidden. And he is referred to as Hashem. God does not have a gender either in Hasidism, whereas in Christian doctrine there is God the Father. And so again, lumping the panentheistic Hashem with the Christian “God the Father” is a complete disservice to both religious traditions. It’s just so wrong, over and over again. Another issue, is that he briefly mentions Kabbalah in the earlier chapters, the emanations of God, and does not acknowledge that this is a panentheistic notion of the divine. Immanent and transcendant. It is mischaracterized as dualistic. Again, combining Judaism and Christianity into Judeo-Christianity. This term is the most non-nonsensical term that was ever invented and people need to stop using it. Nobody practices the type of Judaism he refers to. Not even the Karaites, who have their own tradition and reject the authority of the rabbinical texts.

I’ve decided to go through the rest. But this is like reading through Guenon. When writers are so self assured of their inaccuracies about a particular religion. That it becomes a form of righteous stupidity. Not that Guenon was stupid, but Guenon’s attitude towards indologists and Sanskritists was that of disdain. A problem with Westerners and their white guilt, and superiority complex towards Indology – aka David Frawley, the latter of which rejects Aryan Migration Theory on political and ideological grounds.

“He has chosen, as Lévinas puts it, Totality as opposed to Infinity, the “pagan” conquest of space against the Hebrew possession of time as eternity. For this attach­ ment to a given soil, rootedness, bears within itself the warning signs of everything the Bible stigmatizes as idolatry.”

Again, this is not the Jewish perspective. Judaism is a highly nature centric religion. If one observes the Jewish Festivals, there is the Jewish New Year of Trees called Tu Bishvat, there is the Jewish tradition of Sukkot, an agricultural festival of thanksgiving. There is Shavuot, which is a festival of fruits and grains. This argument against the Hebrew lack of soil and rootedness is completely false and unfounded. Again, his views are tainted by Catholic asceticism and hatred for the body. And that is projected onto the whole Jewish religious tradition. It’s completely disingenuous. From now on, every time he writes Judeo-Christian, he really means Catholic Old Testament. And every time he refers to Hebrews, he’s really referring to the Catholicised reading of the Israelites.

“The Christian conception of God,” writes Nietzsche again, “is one of the most corrupt con­ ceptions of God arrived at on earth; perhaps it even represents the low water mark in the descending development of the God type. God degenerated to the contradiction oflife, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, the will to life! God the formula for every calumny of ‘this world,’ for every lie about ‘the next world’!”23

Please stop with the Nietzsche quotes. It’s getting old now.

"Contrary to Yahweh who is only being (“I am that I am”), cos­ mic man is both being and non-being. He is the place where all the relative oppositions meet, melt, and exceed themselves. He is the preeminent place where all opposites are reconciled. When the organization of the world took place, all the “complementary opposites” emerged from him, in the same fashion that opposing mythemes proceed from one single foundational myth. "


Kabbalah is mentioned so many times, but nowhere in this statement is there a recognition that in the Jewish mystical tradition that HASHEM (the correct way to say God’s name in Judaism, which also omits the “o” and is written as G-d), the Ein Sof is simultaneously existent and non-existent. As much as the Vedantic Brahman is. This conception of a universal “Judeo-Christian” God named Yahweh is an extremely disingenuous to the actual theology taught in Hasidic Judaism, expounded by Maimonides, and historically explored by Gershom Scholem. All from different angles too. This contrast between Vedic Brahman and the “Yahweh” projection is simply just bad theology. Even the emanations of the 10 sefirot in Kabbalah which the author discusses are twisted to fit into the projection of a self hating religious doctrine of a strict duality between man and God. Anti-Judaism, Anti-Catholic garbage.

"To start, cosmic man gives birth to the sexual principles. The name Ymir is akin to the Sanskrit yama^ which means “bisexual, hermaphro­ dite.” It is he who gave issue to the two giants, Burr and Bestla, who formed the original couple. Burr and Bestla then had three sons, who were the first ALsir or sovereign gods: Odin, Vili, and Ve.5They in turn gave birth to the first men or civilizing heroes, Ask and Embla—“and by them were engendered the race of men who could live and inhabit Midgard.”

Same thing in Kabbalah. Hashem and Shekhinah. The divine feminine. But nowhere to be found in the author’s argument he decidedly constructs against the Yahweh strawman he has constructed.

"In the Rig Veda, Purusha also engendered the representatives of the functional classes: “The mouth (of Purusha) became Brahman, the Warrior was the product of his arms, his thighs were the Artisan, and from his feet were bom the Servitor.”

Judaism also has classes. Prophets like MOSES, Priests known as KOHEN, Kings like KING SOLOMON, Israelite civilians, and outsiders like the Caananites.

“The idea that earth and heaven derived from the body parts of a primitive giant, a kind of fabulous arche­ type is ancient Indo-European.
Does the author not realise how ironic this is? He just mentions the ten sefirot and God projecting himself outwards, the emanations of God and the tzimtzum, then he describes how indo European notion of God is that of earth and heaven being derived from the primitive body parts of a giant. If you look at the Ten Sefirot, a picture of it in Jewish tradition. You will see the first sefirot, the Keter where it descends all the way down to Malkuth which is the earthly realm. Can he not see the relation between Ein Sof and Brahman, between act of Tzimtzum and the division of the body of Purusha, between Prakriti, the three gunas and Malkuth? I know they are not the same thing. But in the author’s model of comparative indo-european cosmology, he fails to accurately compare Judaism to fairly to the Indo-European traditions, instead focusing on a literalist interpretation of the Old Testament, which in the Jewish tradition is not called that at all. But rather, it is called the Torah, 5 books of Moses. And the complete compilation of the texts are called the Tanakh.

There is no mention anywhere of core Jewish traditions like the Kollel or the Yeshiva. No reference to Reform Judaism. Also his remarks on Christianity are largely limited to Catholicism. No where does he mention the theology of Orthodox Christianity, theosis. Divinisation of the individual by reflection on Christ. He massively oversimplifies Judaism and Christianity as "Judeo-Christianity", which essentially is meaningless and a strawman. This book should have had more descriptions about paganism and less about "Judeo-Christianity". Too many references to Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Eliade, Evola, and Heidegger. Extremely repetitive. He also does what Evola does which is mishmash and overgeneralise religions: Vedanta, Hinduism, Brahminism, Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology. Too much of this happens in academia. Too much of this Joseph Campbell relativism. The author needs to do more work in anthropology, sociology and actually properly study the Jewish religion, not rather than promote his speculations on the religion. He also has a bias against asceticism. Evola mentions this as a critique against Nieztsche as well. Asceticism is a path to the sacred not an impediment to it.

The one interesting thing the author mentioned is Meister Eckhart. That's probably the only positive from this book.

[Hiéroglyphe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le livre est bon et informatif, très agréable à lire, mais tombe dans deux travers :

1) Contrairement à ce que son titre pourrait laisser penser, s'il décrit la pensée païenne, il n'explique jamais comment être païen en pratique, dans la société moderne.

2) Ironiquement, Alain de Benoist tombe dans le travers qu'il reproche à certains néo-païens, à savoir se placer avant tout comme "anti-chrétien". Le livre est en effet écrit suivant la formule : « plusieurs pages décrivant un travers des religions monothéistes, suivit d'un paragraphe commençant par "le paganisme, au contraire..." ». Résultat, les trois-quarts de cet ouvrage sont une description du judéo-christianisme (histoire, morale, conséquence…), certes intéressant mais ce n'est pas forcément ce qu'on vient chercher dans un livre sur le paganisme.

[Erisson]

From this review on plutonica.net this sounds like a very interesting book.

[Wulf Grimsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly magnificent work

[Margot Tustin · Rating 1 out of 5]

In summary = Christianity bad because the Jews. This is Nazi bullshit.

[PATRICE PRIVAT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un essai magnifique et stimulant (je n'arrêtais pas de prendre des notes et de me verdir les doigts avec le Stabilo tant De Benoist ouvre des pistes sans cesse vers d'autres lectures) . Un cataloque complet et dialectique entre ce qui oppose les paganismes (religions Grecque, Romaine, cultes Germains, Celtes, Baltes, Sagas, Védas et Upanishads etc..) et les trois monothéismes avec en toile de fond une vue en profondeur du Judaisme des origines (qui m'a donné envie d'en savoir plus) . Pas de religion-fiction facile sur ce que le monde serait devenu si le Paganisme avait triomphé mais tout un ensemble de mises en perspectives de l'essor des sciences, de la destruction de la nature et des peuples autochtones, du péché originel, de l'avènement de la Raison, de l'essor du Capitalisme et de la chosification du monde et aussi differents avis sur la toute puissance de la technique humaine (et bientôt transhumaniste).
Avec un retour constant aux Ecritures , à la Torah, aux Evangiles et à Nietzsche aussi dont l'éclairage sur tout ce faisceau de questions reste indispensable et, en grande partie, indépassé.

[Rob Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book designed to convert you to paganism, nor is it a detailed analysis of specific historical pagan belief systems. Instead, this book proposes a value system and a way of perceiving the world and human history that stands in opposition to the Monotheistic (specifically Judeo-Christian) worldview. The author avoids simpleminded criticism, and presents a very nuanced critique in several dimensions. He then offers a non-Christian, but not explicitly anti-Christian alternative view.

While his critique of the Monotheistic perspective is interesting, and informed by a staggering number of sources, his view of paganism seems to be original and more or less invented out of whole cloth.

Nevertheless, an interesting take, and well worth the time it takes to read the book.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very profound reading experience even though I rated it as mediocre. I think it was because it allowed me to gain valuable insights into the implications of polytheism and animism at the same time that I found myself almost laughing at his tendency to divide paganism and monotheism so absolutely while extolling the virtues of paganism for refusing the very kind of dualism he employs. Monotheistic and polytheistic traditions are on much more of a continuum than he believes, but his emphatic arguments nevertheless made for some very engaging reading and provocations.

[Adam84 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tvůrčí, rozmanitost a pestrost světa podporující pohanství a proti tomu náboženství abrahámovská s univerzalismem, se sklony k totalismu, hlásaje jedinou pravdu. Mám dojem, že nějaká ta rituální obětina bohům, nebude na škodu.

Bůh je mrtev, ať žijí bohové.

Doporučing pro všechny etnopluralisty.

[Ashley Yakeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a long review here.