gorm-sionnach:

This stems from a slightly recent conversation with a few other polytheist/neoPagan sorts, and the utilization of specific phrases that have no actual meaning or bearing in a polytheistic/neoPagan context. The specific context was the use of “punctuated exclamations”, and in particular those phrases and exclamations which are necessarily rooted in the mythology of the Abrahamic religions.

“Oh my God!”,“Jesus Christ!”, “God Damn!”, “Go to Hell!”, “Thundering Tarnation!” (okay few folks actually use this one anymore, but it is a contraction of eternal damnation, and delightfully ornery), and so on! 

Many of us, perhaps even most of us, will continue to use such phrases, despite having long ago shed the cosmological and theological worldview that informs such punctuated exclamations. This is because the metaphoric and symbolic language we have used and the culture(s) we matured in are imbued with this worldview as a given. Not only is such imagery inescapable in a very physical sense, it is literally insidious; it haunts our very speech patterns and ways of thinking.

The remedy is relatively simple, if considerably difficult in its execution and fulfillment; metaphoric reprogramming. We have shed (or never earnestly developed) the monotheism of our fore-bearers, and have taken up the mantle of our ancient progenitors as expressed in a polytheistic understanding of the nature of the gods. Yet, to comprehensively and wholly adopt a different world view, we need to internalize all that such a perspective entails.

And not halfheartedly, though a move in the correct direction, we are going to have to use our whole-ass. So for you Asatruar’s and Heathe’s out there, dropping the last “l” from “Hell” isn’t clever by half. Surely while the skald’s and elite sought the halls of Valhalla, the common folk would go to Hel; not at all comparable with the Christian version the expression derives from. So telling someone “Go to Hel”, do better.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in your thinking and your words. For all those Recons out there, this is exemplified in the learning of the native language the culture you are reconstructing is from (or at the very least the modern form), because language creates the worldviews we have, and so very much is lost in translation. Metaphoric language operates the same way, and so it behooves us to internalize our myriad mythologies to the extent that they not only inform our understanding of the gods, of religion, but of every facet of our lives, our punctuated exclamations included.

There are some easy ones that can be adapted from existing phrases, and while making the transition, are certainly better than what comes before them.

“Oh my gods!”, and yes that little “s” really makes all the difference theologically.
“By the gods!”
“By Jove”- A “classic” if there ever was one

Get creative; one trope involves making proclamations which related to mythic narratives involving the injuries of the gods themselves or some element of them; these are expressions utilized while in a state of pain, frustration and anger, there is an element of the irreverent in them:
“Bride’s Girdle!”
“By the bloody stump of Nuadu!”
“An Dagda’s hairy backside!”

We’re a creative bunch, I’m sure we can do better than my meager offerings, but you see the point? For if our instinctual, automatic or unconscious reaction to pain, anger and frustration is to fall back onto a metaphoric language we’ve abandoned, have we really adopted a new understanding at all?

Ha!  Good point.