The Red Flags of Neo-Myth

Lilith is (not) the first wife of Adam

Krampus is (not) the son of Hela

Santa is (not) based on Odin

These are three fairly popular, social media myths that continually go around and, frankly, they bug me. To say I have a stick up my butt is accurate. I have discussed all three and explained why. I am not doing that here. What I am going to do here is explain why I feel they’re harmful neo-myths and why it’s a red flag when I see a page or teacher posting them.

We live in an age where knowledge is very easy to obtain, but at the same time, very difficult to find. You have to wade through miles and miles of crap to find the golden nugget you’re looking for. This is really difficult for anyone coming into something new. That is true for just about any topic. Want a good, vegan cheese cake recipe? You’ll need to try 82 before you find one that actually works. Looking to learn to smoke brisket, same thing. When it comes to a less-solid topic, such as spirituality, the problem is amplified. Digging into research is crucial; even more crucial is experimentation.

With folklore, it’s extremely solid. All three of the above statements are historically incorrect. Lilith is not mentioned in Jewish folklore. Krampus and Hela’s lore do not overlap. Santa is not based on Odin. The third being more of opinion rather than claiming folklore says it. When you know how to look into folklore, it’s really easy to disprove these things. When you don’t, its really easy to find “proof” that they’re true.

Right now, I can find “proof” that the earth is flat, that dinosaurs are not extinct, that Elvis is alive and that the sun is a portal to the reptilian dimension. There are websites, podcasts, books, memes, and social media pages dedicated to those. There are people with fancy titles and a lot of knowledge who know how to speak intelligently and eloquently and who will state any of the above. Finding a website where someone agrees with you is not research. Finding a website where someone agrees that the lore states that Krampus is the son of Hela is not research. Finding exactly where in the lore it states, that is.  If someone claims to be a spirit worker and that Krampus/Hela told them the two are mother/son, then sure, that is UPG — and I am team UPG. I may go and ask them myself and I’d lean in on my own UPG, but I have yet to see a spirit worker make such a claim. Typically, when someone makes such claims, they’re either secular or they’re atheo-pagan or soft polytheist. To be clear, none of those three things are bad. Spirit workers typically lean into hard polytheism. When you work with spirits on the regular, you’re not going to claim they’re just figments of our minds, or that they’re archetypes.

That rabbit hole aside now: Why are these neo-myths harmful?

This is my opinion and its that they kill culture. Lilith has her own culture, one which the ancient Israelites all but decimated. Archeological proof of Lilith’s worship predates Abraham; we know she had her own culture. To shoehorn her into the culture that ended hers is, to me, offensive. We can put together scraps of her original culture; we have the Hebrew lore to look at (the entirety of the dead sea scrolls can be purchased at Barnes and Noble, it’s not hidden!) and see that she is not in it. Can we find people, even Rabbis, saying that Adam’s first wife was Lilith? Yes. Can we say its in the lore? No, because it’s not. Same can be said for Krampus and Hela. They each have their own cultures that are fully separated, even more so than Lilith and Adam. There is no overlap at all between Krampus and Hela. We can look at both of their respective lores and see no indicator of the other. Can we find people saying they’re related? Yes. Is it backed up by lore? No. Nothing in Adam’s, Lilith’s, Krampus’s or Hela’s lore backs these claims up and I have yet to find a spirit worker making a UPG claim. We wash their cultures into one another, erasing some of their own, authentic ties to their original culture.

When it comes to Odin and Santa, the situation is slightly different. The claim here isn’t that some hidden bit of lore directly says that Odin and Santa are one in the same. This one truly is opinion. It’s opinion of ignorance. I recently led a Temple service for Odin and I addressed this. An attendee brought up Old Man Winter as a more likely source for Santa and I admit, I was well not versed in Old Man Winter. I am not, as of writing this, well versed enough to say that is Santa; I didn’t truly dig into real lore, but it does seem more likely.

Why do I view this as a red flag? Some random person sharing a meme isn’t a red flag; today that’s how we share things. It’s when a teacher, an organization dedicated to information or even a social media group of practitioners shares these…. It’s a red flag. It instantly reveals that someone is teaching from a position of ignorance. Ignorance is not bad; we are all ignorant of many things. Ignorance is simply a lack of deep knowledge. I am ignorant of how to fix any part of my car. I am ignorant of all African tribal folklore. I am ignorant of how to make rocket fuel. This does not make me bad, stupid or unworthy. It only means I cannot teach these things. We cannot teach what we do not know, but we’ve begun to. We are in this age where being big on social media holds a lot of value. It can even become a high paying job. Social media influencers can get paid a lot of money. They can get paid a lot of praise, which validates many people. We have scientific studies proving that the like button gives us dopamine. Many pump out good-looking content quickly, the energy often going to that rather than to authenticity. I do not think this is done maliciously. Wading though the miles of crap to find the golden nugget is hard, and when you’re a content creator… your effort doesn’t often go there. This is why we have so much false information. AI-produced content being pushed out at a rapid rate. People are trying to pay the bills, and/or get a big following (typically in order to pay the bills). As such, when someone in that kind of position shares these incorrect neo-myths, it shows me that they did not do the research. At best, they Googled it and of course you’ll find it on the first page. I’ll find that the earth is flat on the first page of Google. For folklore, it’s fairly easy to see if it’s true. Read the folklore. If it’s not in there, it’s not true. But that’s work — and it’s work that people are not doing.

It can be a hard pill to swallow. We shouldn’t be pumping out content just for the sake of pumping out content. Not when its real people’s culture, real people’s history that’s at stake. You have a meme page for funnies, have at it. You have a page dedicated to teaching something, you yourself have to know that thing and know it well. Reading a meme or even a couple of random websites is not enough. Sadly, because this has grown into such a big problem, many more resources are not good enough anymore. Don’t teach if you’re not in a position to teach.

This September, one of my temple services had to be canceled. This one was dedicated to Hecate, who I do not work with. I had arranged for someone else to lead that service and they were no longer able to. I cannot lead for Hecate, I am not able to teach you about her. Even if I got a book, read some blogs. Knowledge takes time.  If I decided to learn now, in a year or more, sure I could lead that service. But I couldn’t right now, I would just be regurgitating someone else’s knowledge and claiming it as my own. That is dishonest and wrong by my moral code.

So when someone posts a meme from their pagan page saying that Lilith is or Krampus is or Odin is… it tells me they’re pumping on content for the sake of something other than authentic knowledge sharing.  That is a red flag. That means this page is not one I would turn to for educational resources. Whoever shares it is not in a position to teach, is not researching and is just pumping things out — probably to grow the page and keep it active. Active pages are great. Sharing things to keep it active when those things squash cultures is not.

Keep learning yall! 

P.S. I highly recommend sacredtext, a website, for digging into lore. Most lore books from many traditions are available on there for free, and you can search exact words to check specific topics.