Polytheistic Reconstructionism - History

History

D. H. Lawrence put a sketch of a fictional program into the mouth of a character in The Plumed Serpent (published in 1926):

So if I want Mexicans to learn the name of Quetzalcoatl, it is because I want them to speak with the tongues of their own blood. I wish the Teutonic world would once more think in terms of Thor and Wotan, and the tree Igdrasil. And I wish the Druidic world would see, honestly, that in the mistletoe is their mystery, and that they themselves are the Tuatha De Danaan, alive, but submerged. And a new Hermes should come back to the Mediterranean, and a new Ashtaroth to Tunis; and Mithras again to Persia, and Brahma unbroken to India, and the oldest of dragons to China.

The term "Reconstructionist Paganism" was likely coined by Isaac Bonewits in the late 1970s. Bonewits has said that he is not sure whether he "got this use of the term from one or more of the other culturally focused Neopagan movements of the time, or if just applied it in a novel fashion." Margot Adler later used the term "Pagan Reconstructionists" in the 1979 edition of Drawing Down the Moon to refer to those who claimed to adhere to some sort of historical religion. This emphasis on reconstruction is in ostensible contrast to more fanciful approaches to "paganism" in Romanticism, as seen for example in Germanic mysticism.

Reconstructionist Paganism has evolved into Polytheistic Reconstructionism, and is a distinct movement from the syncreticism and eclecticism of popular Neopagan culture, and from the Wiccan ritual format that many Neopagan groups have adopted. Reconstructionist religions are based on the surviving historical record, and on surviving folk practices of the culture in question.

According to Linzie (2004), the reconstructionist movement originated around 1970 with early attempts to reconstruct pre-Christian religions, with Germanic neopaganism in the USA, the UK and Iceland focussing on Norse religion of the Viking Age, and reconstruction of Hellenic polytheism in Greece, and of Baltic polytheism with Romuva.

In a second phase beginning in the 1990s, these movements have been joined by serious attempts at reconstructing Roman polytheism and Celtic polytheism (see Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism). Many of these groups focus on the 1st millennium AD (with the exception of Greek and Roman polytheism which is already well-attested in sources of the mid to late 1st millennium BC), up to the period of Christianization of the respective populations. Most also include folkloric practices that have survived into recent history or, in some cases, into the present day.