In short, the problem with eclecticism is that it seems just too dang unprincipled to be viable.
I have written before about how I get to feel claustrophobic with boxed religion. Although I was specifically talking about religions that present the whole package–theology, practice, etcetera–in one neatly-defined package with firm orthodoxy-borders all the way around it so that everything in the box is prescribed and everything outside the box is proscribed, I feel similarly about conceptual boxes on a smaller scale. This is part of why I can’t go with a reconstructionist religion like Hellenismos or Asátrú. Even having experienced intense mystical contact with gods from Greek mythology, a single flavor of paganism is just not sufficiently spiritually fulfilling.
The thing is, although I see the value in picking one direction and sticking with it, I genuinely feel spiritually moved by the Celtic and the Norse as well as the Greco-Roman. Maybe it’s a heritage thing; my ancestors were Celts, Teutons, and Vikings, and my cultural ancestors are the Greeks and Romans. I am a fusion of multiple strands of paganism, so it is only natural that I should feel some attachment to each of them. And again, while I can see that there could be personal benefit in picking just one, I don’t think I am capable of doing that. My connection to these three (at least) mythical-cultural traditions is not one that allows for picking and choosing. It is sufficiently strong so that I would feel that I was denying a part of myself if I left one of them behind.
(Interesting: three traditions. Possible Druidic significance?)
In short, while I acknowledge the probable spiritual benefits gained by embracing one tradition exclusively, it is vastly outweighed by the sense of deep personal spiritual connection that I feel to each of these three: they touch my heart, mind, and soul in a deep and primal way. It’s basic economics of the soul, really: what I stand to gain by specializing is worth less to me than what I stand to lose by specializing, so I choose not to specialize.
On the other hand, I look down on eclecticism. I think of it as unprincipled, ridiculous. If you can have three different mythic traditions, why not four? Why not ten? Why not all? Why not just take whatever you want from whatever tradition you want?
The questions actually aren’t completely rhetorical. I think it’s worth asking whether picking and choosing is a big deal, especially given that we’re going to pick and choose to a certain extent no matter what. In the end, though their reasons may be subtle and complicated, everyone is going to choose the religious expression that most suits them. I’m not Muslim after all, because on some level and for whatever reason, Islam does not suit me. If not for some permutation of personal preference then we would have a much harder time picking a religion. What metric would we use to decide what we believe, even if we stayed in the religious tradition we were born into?
But at the same time, I think that the idea of submission is incredibly important to religion. One of the most religious utterances ever made is “not my will but thine be done.” The ultimate spiritual experience is mystical union with the divine, where the self is swallowed up into somehting greater. Self-denial, putting aside your own special narcisissm in favor of something greater and higher, is at the heart of religion and real spirituality.
If you’re just ordering whatever you want from the menu and cobbling together a religious gumbo from whatever concepts, practices, and gods suit your fancy, then you are really not worshipping a Deity at all, but in a twisted way you are actually worshipping yourself. Real gods demand that we grow and change in order to worship and experience them. Real religion has to be fundamentally transformative; otherwise it’s just a sociocultural phenomenon that serves no individual spiritual purpose. And in order to be transformative, religion has to be demanding. On a certain level, God is undamentally alien to humans, and in order to experience God, humans have to be willing to bend and be shaped to be able to meet God partway. If you’re assembling some kind of a FrankenGod from a pile of divine characteristics, then all you have is an imaginary god born of individual fancy. Your own fancy. That’s what you are worshipping.
So how to reconcile this with the undeniable fact that people pick and choose when it comes to religion, and with my personal spiritual connection to multiple strands of paganism? I don’t really know, but I feel like there’s a line between the extremes that can be walked. If we recognize and embrace the tension between these competing religious metavalues or realities or whatever, then maybe there’s a way to navigate them and even benefit from them without being torn apart or thrown one way or the other.
Incidentally, Tony Lamb has a good post on the topic at the Association of Polytheist Traditions.
Sailing to Byzantium 
If you’re just ordering whatever you want from the menu and cobbling together a religious gumbo from whatever concepts, practices, and gods suit your fancy, then you are really not worshipping a Deity at all, but in a twisted way you are actually worshipping yourself. Real gods demand that we grow and change in order to worship and experience them. Real religion has to be fundamentally transformative; otherwise it’s just a sociocultural phenomenon that serves no individual spiritual purpose. And in order to be transformative, religion has to be demanding.
This doesn’t jibe with all religious thought. If Thou Art That, then worshiping yourself isn’t far from the mark. Instead of religion demanding that we transform ourselves (a very Western idea, I think) religion could be seen as the effort to discover ourselves. Mindfully following our own instincts makes sense in that context, whereas trying to become something other than we are would seem to be counterproductive.
Please excuse the runaway italics.
Half my ancestry is Scandinavian (Norse) and half my ancestry is British (Welsh and English). I’ve looked (and am looking) at both pantheons of Gods within both traditions.
I find them intellectually interesting, but other than a dream I had once about Freya (I think), I’ve had no experiences with any of them and don’t find them calling to me.
I’m currently not finding myself called by any Gods of any pantheons I’m familiar with.
Does that make me eclectic? Possibly. It depends on how one defines eclectic.
I suspect that I’d find a home within Wicca (because of the duotheism), but only if I could forgo the group rituals and some of the smells and bells. I think doing this would probably make me an “Eclectic Wiccan.”
Perhaps I’m using the word too broadly?
“If Thou Art That, then worshiping yourself isn’t far from the mark.”
Good point, Jonathan. We get into weird territory here: how do you give in to something greater than self while at the same time epistemologically propose that it is probably all in our heads anyway?
“Instead of religion demanding that we transform ourselves (a very Western idea, I think) religion could be seen as the effort to discover ourselves. Mindfully following our own instincts makes sense in that context, whereas trying to become something other than we are would seem to be counterproductive.”
This is actually pretty complex in both the East and West. One could argue that the Theravada/Mahayana split is most profound on the grounds that the Theravadin is trying to *become” an Arahant (self transforming self) and the Mahayana is trying to slough off the klesas that cover up the Tathagatagarbha (self discovering self).
On the other hand, few Christianities would admit that they encourage their adherents to transform themselves; even Eastern Orthodoxy’s Apotheosis doctrine is, as I understand it, still a process of God working within you to make you more like God. The “saved by faith”/”saved by works” dichotomy is an outdated polemic designed by Paul to criticize Pharisaic Judaism in Jesus’ time and only brought back as a sort of rhetorical slam for other Christian deonominations (non of whom actually think they are saved by works, but just differ on the nature of the human [non]action/response required to access grace).
You say that you couldn’t pick and choose just one path because you would be denying part of yourself to do so, and yet you criticize answering this call as creating a “FrankenGod” based in narcissism. Are you calling yourself narcissistic? I’m not sure where you’re going with that. It seems like an internal contradiction in the post, but maybe I’m missing something and you intend to be self-critical here. Or, I suppose, the tension you describe is right there in that contradiction.
“If you can have three different mythic traditions, why not four? Why not ten? Why not all? Why not just take whatever you want from whatever tradition you want?” Did you sit down one day and decide that you thought the Norse, Celtic and Greek gods were all super-cool and you were going to “take” them? I think you already know that this isn’t how it works. If it was about what you wanted and what was easy, I think you’d be an Episcopalian right now. Eclecticism is unprincipled only in that you’ve got to work those principles out for yourself. That’s sort of the point of stepping out of the box.
“Real gods demand that we grow and change in order to worship and experience them. Real religion has to be fundamentally transformative; otherwise it’s just a sociocultural phenomenon that serves no individual spiritual purpose. And in order to be transformative, religion has to be demanding.” – all I can say to that is, well, yes. It’s really hard to listen to your own heart, to listen to the gods, to listen to the fairies, and to work it out for yourself. It takes attention and practice every single day and it takes fierce commitment to self-knowledge and true love for the gods. Otherwise, it would be a lot simpler just to go ask some Authority Figure how to do it. That doesn’t work for me – if I don’t allow the gods to lead me, I usually end up somewhere I don’t belong.
“Self-denial, putting aside your own special narcisissm in favor of something greater and higher, is at the heart of religion and real spirituality.” I agree, but I’d still take that as an argument in favor of an eclectic approach. Do I listen to the voice of the gods speaking to me, or do I deny that because of what some other human being wrote or said? I’ll hand my will over to the gods gladly but not to anyone else.
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this blog. Many of the topics you discuss here are the same things I obsess about every day.
If you’re just ordering whatever you want from the menu and cobbling together a religious gumbo from whatever concepts, practices, and gods suit your fancy, then you are really not worshipping a Deity at all, but in a twisted way you are actually worshipping yourself.
The problem, of course, comes when you realize that no tradition has all the answers, and that while some are “more wronger” than others, they all probably have a piece of the truth – at that point, a certain degree of eclecticism becomes almost mandatory.
Nettle said, “If it was about what you wanted and what was easy, I think you’d be an Episcopalian right now.” I know I would. We actually considered returning to Christianity when my wife was pregnant, but in the end we couldn’t do it because we just don’t believe it has enough of the Truth, we had experienced too much that it simply doesn’t account for in any way we could find acceptable.
I agree with Nettle and Erik.
“On the other hand, I look down on eclecticism. I think of it as unprincipled, ridiculous. If you can have three different mythic traditions, why not four? Why not ten? Why not all? ”
Your eclectic practice doesn’t have to have anything in common with the eclectic practices of others.
“If you’re just ordering whatever you want from the menu and cobbling together a religious gumbo from whatever concepts, practices, and gods suit your fancy, then you are really not worshipping a Deity at all… ”
Again, you don’t need to do this. I am inclined to think the numbers of Neopagans who do this are in decline.
Advice for not doing the above: pick one or two base pantheons to start with. Don’t mix them up in the same ritual. Study real scholarship about those cultures all you can. See where you’re at in six months.
Euandros, thanks for the advice. I actually have a pretty good idea at the moment of how all of this gets structured in my head, in a personal-theology sense, and I plan on putting together a post about it in the near future. I have drawn diagrams. 😉
Ooh, pictures! Are they pretty? 🙂