Tradition and Identity
by Marc Penninck, Chairman of the Order van Eglantier, Netherlands
Antwerp, 7th March 1999
© Marc Penninck, 1999
"I am the son of Poetry,
Poetry, son of Reflection
and Reflection, son of Meditation.
Meditation, son of Tradition,
Tradition, son of Investigation,
Investigation, son of Great Knowledge,
Great Knowledge, son of Intelligence,
Intelligence, son of Understanding,
Understanding, son of Wisdom
and Wisdom, son of the three Gods of Dana."
(from: "The Dialogue of Two Wise")
Dear Public,
When I had been asked to contribute to this 2nd International 'Heathen Symposium', I realized immediately that it's not so self-evident to give a lecture on Tradition and Identity -- especially not in such a short space of time. Tradition and Identity......heavily burdened words used in so many different contexts, laden with a wide variety of political, social and religious connotations. If we want to understand each other correctly -- we have to strictly understand the meaning of these words. Because the danger exists to use all-too-easy simplifications and generalities, it is absolutely necessary to explain what exactly is meant with the terms 'tradition' and 'identity'.
First a couple attitudes around 'tradition'.... (I tend to speak here from personal experience). Concerning this term, I can't do away with the impression that it has been dealt with quite a few times over the last decades.
All too often one has been confronted with traditionalistic experiences, purports and super subtleties.
There seems to be a wide offer and an inexhaustible supply of goods on the -- what I would like to call -- supermarkets of traditionalism. Essenes traditions; Templar and Freemason traditions; witch traditions; druid traditions; marksmen traditions; Rosicrusian traditions; Egyptian traditions; Rotary and Lyons traditions; Hindu traditions; Christian and Muslim traditions; football traditions and even...UFO traditions.
Every respectable institute, sociological or religious phenomenon explains its existence from a historical origin and continuation, and claims a tradition -- if not the tradition.
In this light of course we can also see all these Celtic Revivals of 'real' or 'would be' Celts. Back to the roots they call it.......
In light of these Celtic Roots and even more, in general we can ask ourselves to which extent this sort of traditionalism can be considered as part of the true and authentic tradition.... I would like to stress the singular form 'tradition' here, since it should already be clear to you that I believe that there can be only one tradition.
That authentic 'tradition' is rooted in primal times and has probably to do with a pre human, a deeply religious origin.. Therefore authentic and true tradition has nothing to do with the sterile, harsh and often narrow-minded protectionist ideology from the 'traditionalist'.
'Tradition' is an essential 'universal' concept. Tradition is inherent and common to humanity.... as a totality, as a living organism, part of one nature. With this I mean that every human, every group is part of the Great Whole....; and therefore every man and every group of men has the right and maybe --- even stronger --- has the primordial duty to call upon this authentic tradition.
On the other hand we can't deny the fact that on a spiritual-religious, cultural and sociological level there is a strong tendency towards a so-called universal ethic and attitude of thinking. Be careful...I'm talking here about artificial commercial universalism, without any authentic depth. This 'melting-pot' universalism is a rather recent sociological phenomenon that only exists by the grace of the 'free market' and a particular obscure sort of global mercantilism. It is the modern - or (even better) - the post modern hedonism from the path of the least economical resistance.
Opposing this 'globalism' I place authentic in depth universalism. The striving for the essential unity in humans' diversity. Therefore it is extremely important to return to oneself, oneself as an individual..., oneself as a group. Therefore reverting to a spiritual quest for their own traditions, nourished by the intense conviction of the fundamental unity of the universe.
With this we must bear in mind that the splendor and power of the one and only authentic universal tradition lays in the diversity of the distinct ethnical traditions.
True tradition is necessarily based on difference, diversity and authenticity...on qualitative norms and criteria; this in contradiction to the more quantitative standardization of pragmatic modernism as the religious 'melting-pot'. In this light it is about time that man without compromise truly conforms to a reflection on his place in nature instead of repeating himself over and over again in a crude mutual profit.
By any means this is going to be a difficult path. Try - honestly and sincerely - regardless of all fashionable tendencies and modernism to start this quest to the oldest and most authentic tradition; merely the tradition of man who is connected to the cosmic cycles of the eternal and timeless movement.
The mercantilism of Nature, the continuous parasiting on natural energies for the honor and glory of a certain kind of people can and shall in the end only lead to self destruction.
Therefore time has come for men to abruptly stop any further urbanization, to stop the flagrant overestimation of ourselves and to stop the spiritual fading and psychological destabilization, all in favor of the above mentioned commerce of the melting-pot.
This alienation process between man and Nature, between man and tradition and finally between men is by no means strange to the big monotheistic religions.
However the monotheistic movements are clearly rooted in the One Authentic Tradition, it is them who have finally chosen for quantity, numbers and powers....at the expense of quality, personal experience and spiritual connecting to Nature. Their history is the history of power play, the unsparing profit.....the story of the traders in the Temple....
For they --- some of them more 'fine-spun' and vigorous than others --- have indoctrinated man until he became a haughty and worthless ruler of nature; until he became intolerant and uncivilized towards his consorts.
For our Celtic, Germanic (and - as far as I'm concerned - Scandinavian) ancestors concepts as superiority of religious feeling and superiority over nature didn't exist, weren't even considered; not to mention the striving for systematically exploitation of Nature or Fellow-man., two entities that were considered as the Throne of the Divine.
I am however aware of the danger of simplifying things; merely if I would present the old Celto-Germanic cohesion as some sort of a Hyperborean Garden of Eden. For even these cultures had their weak spots, their vanities and cruelties... barbarism is truly of all times and cultures....!
Nevertheless we should stress the absolute necessity to promote our old and authentic traditional heritage in schools as an obliged object of study. Connected to a sober moral meditation this can only lead to the elevation of mankind.
Only in this way - (and now we're touching the second point of this lecture: Identity) only in this way the individual and the group can come to an identity.
Dear friends, how are we - at the end of the 20th century - wrestling with our identity! As individuals alone, one life doesn't seem to be enough to learn to know our own identity, not to mention the capability to place our identity in a wider 'Higher' context.
Put aside this poor self-identification (isn't this a pleonasm?). A truly disaster it becomes when trying to identify as a group. What did I say: ... a disaster? ... It becomes extremely dangerous when undifferentiated and intolerant thinking, immorality and profiting impose a certain identity on a group. There are many examples of this in history. In this case man becomes Lord-of-the-Great-Equality (!), the incarnation of Lie.
Identity - this equally goes for Tradition - has to do with personality and the inner man.
In mass activities the inner self can not be found, at the most a collective behavior and in most cases even a manipulated history. A mass activity is truly something exotic...; identity, personality and the inward are esoterical experiences. A mass cannot (and this in contradiction to what bigger religious movements pretend) be consecrated.
From an etymological point of view the word or concept 'esoteric' has merely to do with... 'esos', points to the inward, the hidden inside. Esotericism rises as a primal inner and traditional truth, protected from profanation; definitely a field inaccessible for the uninitiated.... however very recognizable and comprehensible for the initiated. Esoterical knowledge is closely linked to religious experience and is at the same time attached to the ripeness of the soul and thus the individual maturity of man.
The above-mentioned can without any problems be considered as a perfect definition for the concept of identity. It should be clear that the 'identity' I have been talking about by no means could be equated to so-called elevated nationalistic tendencies that without doubt are part of the ideology of the Great Equality. Identity stands and falls with the quality of the personal inner relation with the self!
May I hereby warn you of the 'excavation' of the concept identity, and even more, for the profanation of man as identity, for the un-divination of our existence!
As modern Westerners, children of Humanism, Renaissance and the Enlightenment, we succeed in confusing 'identity' from 'individualism'. Where 'identity' can be seen as the esoterical -thus initiatic- completion of the divine task of men to become one with the Universe and to experience this..., 'individualism' comes down to mans profanation into an egocentric navel-gazer who doesn't have any clue about inner feelings and emotions and who is tormented and afflicted by psychic disharmony - and therefore becomes an easy target for all kinds of manipulators. Manipulating forces that will finally enslave him - that is by forbidding his feelings; or by over stimulating these feelings.
Goethe once wrote: "Niemand ist mehr Sklave dan Er sich für frei hält ohne es zu sein..."
What also belongs to the world of Tradition and Identity is the symbol. The word 'symbol' likely is derived from the Greek 'symbolon'. The old Hellenes described a symbolon as follows: the feeling of belonging together, fitting together the different parts of a whole.
So it seems that some pieces of a broken vase in one way or another fit together, refer to each other and at the same time refer to a whole, namely the vase. This feeling of a union, of a connection or some sort of a interrelation between the parts and a relation between every single part and the whole, was called 'symbolon' by the Greeks.
There is no doubt that this Hellenic 'symbolon' is connected in a very precious way with a certain level of consciousness...and the level of consciousness no doubt has to do with ...Tradition and Identity, so much is clear.
Because the entire life, 'Everything ' is filled with symbols, full of symbolism... full of relation-signs, communication signs and references. All those parts and particles of the totality of creation refer to each other and at the same time to a Totality, to a Higher Reality.
In order to comprehend this cosmic interaction, to understand this big cohesion, the knowledge of the symbol is of primary importance. The symbol is nothing more, but definitely nothing less, than the indispensable link between the human psyche and the Consecrated Mystery.
Marc Penninck
Back to the Antwerp Congress page