Dan McCoy wrote a lengthy essay, or a little book, of about 100 pages about “the Sacred and the Profane in Germanic Polytheism”. The text contains a ‘contemporary heathen theology’ such as represented in The Journal of Contemporary Heathen Thought. It might have fitted in that journal, since McCoy’s text is about as academic as the texts in JOCHT.
McCoy mostly speaks about the difference between monotheism and polytheism. The terms get a very specific meaning in this book. Monotheism is not just the form of the three Abrahamistic religions, but the author also applies it to science which he calls the religion of our time. He spends a large part of his book (the first chapters) showing the flaws of monotheism, it duality and rigidity. The text gets a thick ‘monotheism is bad, polytheism is good’ tone and like the “French theologian” that McGoy refers to in the beginning (Alain de Benoist), the author spends more pages on showing what is wrong about ‘that other philosophy’ than elaborating his own.
Just as with the terms monotheism and polytheism, McCoy has very specific explanations of other terms, such as “myth”, which is anything ‘above human’ that ‘just is’. This can be just as well mythology as scientific hypothesis. Other terms (also Icelandic) get very simple explanations and translation.
It takes the author until the last chapter before he turns towards the “destiny” of his subtitle. This does not really concern more than a very free retelling of the Balder myth though.
The above sounds quite critical, I know. I do recommend this book for people interested in ‘contemporary heathen thought’, though. Like for reading the mentioned journal you should not be afraid of scholarly language and moderns ways of reasoning. There are not too many contemporary heathens not just trying to show how things were in the past, but writing about ‘heathen subjects’ from a contemporary viewpoint, hence describing a paganism for the world of today. Or the other way around, McCoy shows a contemporary heathen’s perspective on things.
There are things in this little book that I would have described differently and things that I simply do not agree with, but by reader other views I have to reconsider my own, so this is never a bad thing. Besides, I am happy to see another articulate comtemporary heathen writing about ‘heathen things’. That alone
2013 CreateSpace, isbn 1492761559