Reconstructionist Methodology

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Reconstructionism is a rigid and strictly historically informed methodology of reconstructing the practices and worldview of the past. It is revivalism of the cultures of the European-Mediterranean cultural basin. It essentially means doing your homework for the practices you’re trying to emulate. As such, reconstructionism is merely the methodology of practice. It’s not a “denomination,” and it has nothing to do with any form of belief. Reconstructionism is a tool, not a religion.

 

What Reconstructionism Isn’t

Reconstructionism isn’t “something which ignores cultural differences between the past and the present,” because reconstructionism isn’t ignoring the cultural differences between now and antiquity, nor is it trying to live like it’s the Iron Age, nor is it even practicing the precise religion of the Iron Age. Furthermore, it isn’t disregarding modern ethics and values. As stated, it is merely a methodology of practice. Reconstructionism gives the past a vote, not a veto.

Nor is reconstructionism something which “causes spiritual stagnation.” The religions that use reconstructionist methodology, if practiced, will be living religions. This means there will be change and adaptation, and with that spiritual progression.

 

Why use Reconstructionist methodology in the first place if the cultures that are being reconstructed are dead religions?

The cultures that reconstructionist polytheist Pagans seek the emulate may be dead, but that doesn’t mean there’s isn’t any value in their philosophical worldview, nor does it mean that their understanding is somehow less valuable than those that survived destruction at the hands of evangelism, proselytization, and persecution. These questions heavily display blatant ethnocentric snobbery. The idea that what we have now, the violent Protestant overculture that has stripped the world of its resources and created a system of consumerist hyper-commodification is somehow “better” or “more acceptable” than the traditions of our ancestors is nothing more than self-indulgent pomposity.