Veracity, Validity, and Polyvalance

So, catching up on my RSS feed I spent a while reading about the Shopping Cart blow up via Devo and then poked around on the general forums to confirm my suspicions and noticed our now almost annual Problems with Reconstructionism blow up on the Cauldron (2013 edition, 2011 edition). This seems to be the time of year when shit goes down in the various Recon communities. Seriously. Both of these are the same argument cloaked in a slightly different forms.

The problem is I don’t think we’re arguing about what we think we’re arguing about...

It seems to come down to which people value more: the veracity of their practice or the validity of it. Veracity is most simply defined as the characteristic of being accurate and precise, of conforming to known facts. Validity is best framed (in this discussion) as the characteristic of being well grounded and effective, of producing a desired result. When applied to reconstructionism, the proportion of these two values seems to dictate whether one favors conducting a restoration of the ancient faith or prefers renovating it complete with modern retrofitting. And like sexual orientation or any other basic facet of individuality, it seems to be a sliding scale rather than a one-side-of-the-line-or-the-other sort of thing with people leaning either way to various degrees and creating a diversity of positions on the matter that serves to obscure that underlying problem.

We’ve talked about Recons, and Revivalists, and Reformations, and Resurrections. We’ve debated the proper use of the 42 Negative Confessions and the Ecology of Shopping Carts and totally missed the point. The deeper issue is a far simpler set of questions: Which is better, fact or function? Which is the ideal future, a return to the past or an evolution from it? Which do we value more, a consensus of opinion among a community (aka Religious Canon), or individuality and personal expression of faith (aka UPG)? Do we adapt ourselves to the ancient ways or do we adapt the ancient ways to fit us?

The correct Kemetic answer to any of the above is “Yes”. If pressed for how “yes” can be an answer to an either/or question, admit that “No” might also work.

Seriously, though, this is a polyvalent faith. Either/or questions frequently have no place in a polyvalent system. The One and the Many.  The key word there being “and”. My biggest take away from back when I read that particular work by Hornung was that Ancient Egyptian theology ceases to exist if it ever tries to definitively come down on one side or the other of the question of monotheism vs polytheism.  I think that idea can be generalized to other things in our world. To my thinking, the greatest danger of all would be answering any of these questions.

To take and follow just one of those many threads: As soon as you decide that the ancients were closer to god and therefore their way is inherently better than anything we can create, you find yourself with a static, incomplete religion. As soon as you decide that the ancients were no better than modern practitioners and that esoteric and often inaccessible academic sources don’t contribute to viable religion among the laypeople you lose the moorings of the past, blind yourself to useful (if obscure) ancient wisdom, and end up reinventing the wheel.

 There is no way around the problem of having to mix UPG and primary sources in the bibliography of your religion. 

And there is no correct ratio for that mix either; likewise there isn’t a wrong ratio for it. What works for one person doesn’t work for someone else. The trouble arises when some idiot out there gets it in his/her head that he/she has figured out the “correct” formula. No. You haven’t. Because the nature of the beast is that there isn’t a “correct” one. 

That’s the entire point of the thing.