Seize the Day

SEIZE THE DAY
by John Zerzan
The rapidly mounting toll of modern life is worse than we could have imagined. A metamorphosis rushes onward, changing the texture of living, the whole feel of things. In the not-so-distant past this was still only a partial modification; now the Machine converges on us, penetrating more and more to the core of our lives, promising no escape from its logic.

The only stable continuity has been that of the body, and that has become vulnerable in unprecedented ways. We now inhabit a culture, according to Furedi (1997), of high anxiety that borders on a state of outright panic. Postmodern discourse suppresses articulations of suffering, a facet of its accommodation to the inevitability of further, systematic desolation. The prominence of chronic degenerative diseases makes a chilling parallel with the permanent erosion of all that is healthy and life-affirming inside industrial culture. That is, maybe the disease can be slowed a bit in its progression, but no overall cure is imaginable in this context--which created the condition in the first place.

As much as we yearn for community, it is all but dead. McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Brashears (American Sociological Review 2006) tell us that 19 years ago, the typical American had three close friends; now the number is two. Their national study also reveals that over this period of time, the number of people without one friend or confidant has tripled. Census figures show a correspondingly sharp rise in single-person households, as the technoculture -- with its vaunted "connectivity" -- grows steadily more isolating, lonely and empty.

In Japan "people simply aren't having sex" (Kitamura 2006) and the suicide rate has been rising rapidly. Hikikimori, or self-isolation, finds over a million young people staying in their rooms for years. Where the technoculture is most developed, levels of stress, depression and anxiety are highest.

Questions and ideas can only become currents in the world insofar as reality, external and internal, makes that possible. Our present state, devolving toward catastrophe, displays a reality in unmistakable terms. We are bound for a head-on collision between urgent new questions and a totality--global civilization--that can provide no answers. A world that offers no future, but shows no signs of admitting this fact, imperils its own future along with the life, health, and freedom of all beings on the planet. Civilization's rulers have always squandered whatever remote chances they had to prepare for the end of life as they know it, by choosing to ride the crest of domination, in all its forms.

It has become clear to some that the depth of the expanding crisis, which is as massively dehumanizing as it is ecocidal, stems from the cardinal institutions of civilization itself. The discredited promises of Enlightenment and modernity represent the pinnacle of the grave mistake known as civilization. There is no prospect that this Order will renounce that which has defined and maintained it, and apparently little likelihood that its various ideological supporters can face the facts. If civilization's collapse has already begun, a process now unofficially but widely assumed, there may be grounds for a widespread refusal or abandonment of the reigning totality. Indeed, its rigidity and denial may be setting the stage for a cultural shift on an unprecedented scale, which could unfold rapidly.

Of course, a paradigm shift away from this entrenched, but vulnerable and fatally flawed system is far from unavoidable. The other main possibility is that too many people, for the usual reasons (fear, inertia, manufactured incapacity, etc.) will passively accept reality as it is, until it's too late to do anything but try to deal with collapse. It's noteworthy that a growing awareness that things are going wrong, however inchoate and individualized, is fuelled by a deep, visceral unease and in many cases, acute suffering. This is where opportunity resides. From this new perspective that is certainly growing, we find the work of confronting what faces us as a species, and removing the barriers to planetary survival. The time has come for a wholesale indictment of civilization and mass society. It is at least possible that, in various modes, such a judgment can undo the death-machine before destruction and domestication inundate everything.

Although what's gone before helps us understand our current plight, we now live in obvious subjection, on a plainly greater scale than heretofore. The enveloping techno-world that is spreading so rapidly suggests movement toward even deeper control of every aspect of our lives. Adorno's assessment in the 1960s is proving valid today: "Eventually the system will reach a point--the word that provides the social cue is 'integration'--where the universal dependence of all moments on all other moments makes the talk of causality obsolete. It is idle to search for what might have been a cause within a monolithic society. Only that society itself remains the cause." (Negative Dialectics, p. 267).

A totality that absorbs every "alternative" and seems irreversible. Totalitarian. It is its own justification and ideology. Our refusal, our call to dismantle all this, is met with fewer and fewer countervailing protests or arguments. The bottom-line response is more along the lines of "Yes, your vision is good, true, valid; but this reality will never go away."

None of the supposed victories over inhumanity have made the world safer, not even just for our own species. All the revolutions have only tightened the hold of domination, by updating it. Despite the rise and fall of various political persuasions, it is always production that has won; technological systems never retreat, they only advance. We have been free or autonomous insofar as the Machine requires for its functioning.

Meanwhile, the usual idiotic judgments continue. "We should be free to use specific technologies as tools without adopting technology as lifestyle." (Valovic 2000). "The worlds created through digital technology are real to the extent that we choose to play their games." (Downs 2005).

Along with the chokehold of power, and some lingering illusions about how modernity works, the Machine is faced with worsening prospects. It is a striking fact that those who manage the dominant organization of life no longer even attempt answers or positive projections. The most pressing "issues" (e.g. Global Warming) are simply ignored, and propaganda about Community (the market plus isolation), Freedom (total surveillance society), the American Dream (!) is so false that it cannot be expected to be taken seriously.

As Sahlins pointed out (1977), the more complex societies become, the less they are able to cope with challenges. The central concern of any state is to preserve predictability; as this capacity visibly fails, so do that state's chances of survival. When the promise of security wanes, so does the last real support. Many studies have concluded that various ecosystems are more likely to suffer sudden catastrophic collapse, rather than undergo steady, predictable degradation. The mechanisms of rule just might be subject to a parallel development.

In earlier times there was room to maneuver. Civilization's forward movement was accompanied by a safety valve: the frontier. Large-scale expansion of the Holy Roman Empire eastward during the 12th-14th centuries, the invasion of the New World after 1500, the Westward movement in North America through the end of the 19th century. But the system becomes "mortgaged to structures accumulated along the way" (Sahlins again). We are hostages, and so is the whole hierarchical ensemble. The whole system is busy, always in flux; transactions take place at an ever-accelerating rate. We have reached the stage where the structure relies almost wholly on the co-optation of forces that are more or less outside its control. A prime example is the actual assistance given by leftist regimes in South America. The issue is not so much that of the outcome of neo-liberal economics, but of the success of the left in power at furthering self-managed capital, and co-opting indigenous resistance into its orbit.

But these tactics do not outweigh the fact of an overall inner rigidity that puts the future of techno-capital at grave risk. The name of the crisis is modernity itself, its contingent, cumulative weight. Any regime today is in a situation where every "solution" only deepens the engulfing problems. More technology and more coercive force are the only resources to fall back on. The "dark side" of progress stands revealed as the definitive face of modern times.

Theorists such as Giddens and Beck admit that the outer limits of modernity have been reached, so that disaster is now the latent characteristic of society. And yet they hold out hope, without predicating basic change, that all will be well. Beck, for instance, calls for a democratization of industrialism and technological change -- carefully avoiding the question of why this has never happened.

There is no reconciliation, no happy ending within this totality, and it is transparently false to claim otherwise. History seems to have liquidated the possibility of redemption; its very course undoes what has been passing as critical thought. The lesson is to notice how much must change to establish a new and genuinely viable direction. There never was a moment of choosing; the field or ground of life shifts imperceptibly in a multitude of ways, without drama, but to vast effect. If the solution were sought in technology, that would of course only reinforce the rule of modern domination; this is a major part of the challenge that confronts us.

Modernity has reduced the scope allowed for ethical action, cutting off its potentially effective outlets. But reality, forcing itself upon us as the crisis mounts, is becoming proximal and insistent once again. Thinking gnaws away at everything, because this situation corrodes everything we have wanted. We realize that it is up to us. Even the likelihood of a collapse of the global techno-structure should not lure us away from acknowledgement of our decisive potential roles, our responsibility to stop the engine of destruction. Passivity, like a defeated attitude, will not bring forth deliverance.

We are all wounded, and paradoxically, this estrangement becomes the basis for communality. A gathering of the traumatized may be forming, a spiritual kinship demanding recovery. Because we can still feel acutely, our rulers can rest no more easily than we do. Our deep need for healing means that an overthrow must take place. That alone would constitute healing. Things "just go on", creating the catastrophe on every level. People are figuring it out: that things just go on is, in fact, the catastrophe.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson (The Place You Love is Gone 2006) expressed it this way: "Suddenly now it hits, bizarrely easy to grasp. We are inexorably heading for the Big Goodbye. It's official! The unthinkable is ready to be thought. It is finally in sight, after all of human history behind us. In the pit of what is left of your miserable soul you feel it coming, the definitive loss of home, bigger than the cause of one person's tears. Yours and mine, the private sob, will be joined by a mass crying..."

Misery. Immiseration. Time to get back to where we have never quite given up wanting to be. "Stretched and stretched again to the elastic limit at which it will bear no more," in Spengler's phrase.

Enlightenment thought, along with the Industrial Revolution, began in late 18th century Europe, inaugurating modernity. We were promised freedom based on conscious control over our destiny. But Enlightenment claims have not been realized, and the whole project has turned out to be self-defeating. Foundational elements including reason, universal rights and the laws of science were consciously designed to jettison pre-scientific, mystical sorts of knowledge. Diverse, communally sustained lifeways were sacrificed in the name of a unitary and uniform, law-enforced pattern of living. Kant's emphasis on freedom through moral action is rooted in this context, along with the French encyclopedists' program to replace traditional crafts with more up-to-date technological systems. Kant, by the way, for whom property was sanctified by no less than his categorical imperative, favorably compared the modern university to an industrial machine and its products.

Various Enlightenment figures debated the pros and cons of emerging modern developments, and these few words obviously cannot do justice to the topic of Enlightenment. However, it may be fruitful to keep this important historical conjunction in mind: the nearly simultaneous births of modern progressive thought and mass production. Apt in this regard is the perspective of Min Lin (2001): "Concealing the social origin of cognitive discourses and the idea of certainty is the inner requirement of modern Western ideology in order to justify or legitimate its position by universalizing its intellectual basis and creating a new sacred quasi-transcendance."

Modernity is always trying to go beyond itself to a different state, lurching forward as if to recover the equilibrium lost so long ago. It is bent on changing the future -- even its own --

With modernity's stress on freedom, modern enlightened institutions have in fact succeeded in nothing so much as conformity. Lyotard (1991) summed up the overall outcome: "A new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment of language, new poverty, merciless remodeling of opinion by media, immiseration of the mind, obsolescence of the soul." Massified, standardizing modes, in every area of life, relentlessly re-enact the actual control program of modernity.

"Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to prove the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print." (Ellul 1964). Which is not in any way to deny the centrality of class rule, but to remind us that divided society began with division of labor. The divided self led directly to divided society. The division of labor is the labor of division. Understanding what characterizes modern life can never be far from the effort to understand technology's role in our everyday lives, just as it always has been. Lyotard (1991) judged that "technology wasn't invented by humans. Rather the other way around.

Goethe's Faust, the first tragedy about industrial development, depicted its deepest horrors as stemming from honorable aims. The superhuman developer Faust partakes of a drive endemic to modernization, one which is threatened by any trace of otherness/difference in its totalizing movement.

We function in an ever more homogeneous field, a ground always undergoing further uniformitization to promote a single, globalized techno-grid. Yet it is possible to avoid this conclusion by keeping one's focus on the surface, on what is permitted to exist on the margins. Thus some see Indymedia as a crucial triumph of decentralization, and free software as a radical demand. This attitude ignores the industrial basis of every high tech development and usage. All the "wondrous tools," including the ubiquitous and very toxic cell phone, are more related to eco-disastrous industrialization in China and India, for example, than to the clean, slick pages of Wired magazine. The salvationist claims of Wired are incredible in their disconnected, infantile fantasies. Its adherents can only maintain such gigantic delusions by means of deliberate blindness not only to technology's systematic destruction of nature, but to the global human cost involved: lives filled with toxicity, drudgery, and industrial accidents.

Now there are nascent protest phenomena against the all-encompassing universal system, such as "slow food," "slow cities," "slow roads". People would prefer that the juggernaut give pause and not devour the texture of life. But actual degradation is picking up speed, in its deworlding, disembedding course. Only a radical break will impede its trajectory. More missiles and more nukes in more countries is obviously another part of the general movement of the technological imperative. The specter of mass death is the crowning achievement, the condition of modernity, while the posthuman is the coming techno-condition of the subject. We are the vehicle of the Megamachine, not its beneficiary, held hostage to its every new leap forward. The technohuman condition looms, indeed. Nothing can change until the technological basis is changed, is erased.

Our condition is reinforced by those who insist -- in classic postmodern fashion -- that nature/culture is a false binarism. The natural world is evacuated, paved over, to the strains of the surrender-logic that nature has always been cultural, always available for subjugation. Koert van Mensvoort's "Exploring Next Nature" (2005) exposes the domination of nature logic, so popular in some quarters: "Our next nature will consist of what used to be cultural." Bye-bye, non-engineered reality. After all, he blithely proclaims, nature changes with us.

This is the loss of the concept of nature altogether -- and not just the concept! But the sign "nature" certainly enjoys popularity, as the substance is destroyed: "exotic" third world cultural products, natural ingredients in food, etc. Unfortunately, the nature of experience is linked to the experience of nature. When the latter is reduced to an insubstantial presence, the former is disfigured. Paul Berkett (2006) cites Marx and Engels to the effect that with communism people will "not only feel but also know their oneness with nature," that communism is "the unity of being of man with nature." Industrial-technological overcoming as its opposite--what blatant productionist rubbish. Leaving aside the communism orientation, however, how much of today's Left disagrees with the marxian ode to mass production?

A neglected insight in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents is the suggestion that a deep, unconscious "sense of guilt produced by civilization" causes a growing malaise and dissatisfaction. Adorno (1966) saw that relevant to "the catastrophe that impends is the supposition of an irrational catastrophe in the beginning. Today the thwarted possibility of something other has shrunk to that of averting catastrophe in spite of everything."

The original, qualitative, utter failure for life on this planet was the setting in motion of civilization. Enlightenment--like the Axial Age world religions 2000 years before--supplied transcendence for the next level of domination, an indispensable support for industrial modernity. But where would one now find the source of a transcending, justifying framework for new levels of rapacious development? What new realm of ideas and values can be conjured up to validate the all-encompassing ruin of late modernity? There is none. Only the system's own inertia; no answers, and no future.

Meanwhile our context is that of a sociability of uncertainty. The moorings of day-to-day stability are being unfastened, as the system begins to show multiple weaknesses. When it can no longer guarantee security, its end is near.

Ours is an incomparable historical vantage point. We can easily grasp the story of this universal civilization's malignancy. This understanding may be a signal strength for enabling a paradigm shift, the one that could do away with civilization and free us from the habitual will to dominate. A daunting challenge, to say the least; but recall the child who was moved to speak out in the face of collective denial. The Emperor was wearing nothing; the spell was broken.

Why Primitivism?

WHY PRIMITIVISM?
by John Zerzan

Debord biographer Anselm Giap referred to the puzzle of the present, “where the results of human activity are so antagonistic to humanity itself,” recalling a question posed nearly 50 years ago by Joseph Wood Krutch: “What has become of that opportunity to become more fully human that the ‘control of nature’ was to provide?”

The general crisis is rapidly deepening in every sphere of life. On the biospheric level, this reality is so well-known that it could be termed banal, if it weren’t so horrifying. Increasing rates of species extinctions, proliferating dead zones in the world’s oceans, ozone holes, disappearing rainforests, global warming, the pervasive poisoning of air, water, and soil, to name a few realities.

A grisly link to the social world is widespread pharmaceutical contamination of watersheds. In this case, destruction of the natural world is driven by massive alienation, masked by drugs. In the U.S., life-threatening obesity is sharply rising, and tens of millions suffer from serious depression and/or anxiety.There are frequent eruptions of multiple homicides in homes, schools, and workplaces, while the suicide rate among young people has tripled in recent decades. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other “mystery” /psychosomatic illnesses have multiplied, vying with the emergence of new diseases with known physiological origins: Ebola, Lassa fever, AIDS, Legionnaires’ disease. The illusion of technological mastery is mocked by the antibiotic-resistant return of TB and malaria, not to mention outbreaks of E coli, mad cow disease, West Nile virus, etc. Even a cursory survey of contemporary psychic immiseration would require many pages. Barely suppressed anger, a sense of emptiness, corrosion of belief in institutions across the board, high stress levels, all contribute to what Kornoouh has called “the growing fracture of the social bond.”

Today’s reality keeps underlining the inadequacy of current theory and its overall retreat from any redemptive project. It seems undeniable that’s what’s left of life on earth is being taken from us. Where is the depth of analysis and vision to match the extremity of the human condition and the fragility of our planet’s future? Are we simply only with a totalizing current of degradation and loss?

The crisis is diffuse, but at the same time it is starkly visible on every level. One comes to agree with Ulrich Beck that “people have begun to question modernity…its premises have begun to wobble. Many people are deeply upset over the house-of-cards character of superindustrialism.”Agnes Heller observed that our condition becomes less stable and more chaos-prone the further we move away from nature, contrary to the dominant ideology of progress and development. With disenchantment comes a growing sense that something different is urgently needed.

For a new orientation the challenge is at a depth that theorists have almost entirely avoided. To go beyond the prospectless malaise, the collapse of social confidence so devastatingly expressed in Les Particules élémentaires (Michel Houlebecq’s end-of-the-millennium novel) , the analytical perspective simply must shift in a basic way. This consists, for openers, in refusing Foucault’s conclusion that human capacities and relations are inescapably technologized.

As Eric Vogelin put it, “The death of the spirit is the price of progress.” But if the progress of nihilism is identical to the nihilism of progress, whence comes the rupture, the caesura? How to pose a radical break from the totality of progress, technology, modernity?

A quick scan of recent academic fads shows precisely where such a perspective has not been found. Frederic Jameson’s apt formulation introduces the subject for us: “Postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good.”

Postmodernism is the mirror of an ethos of defeat and reaction, a failure of will and intellect that has accommodated to new extremities of estrangement and destructiveness. For the postmodernists, almost nothing can be opposed. Reality, after all, is so messy, shifting, complex, indeterminate; and oppositions are, of course, just so many false binarisms. Vacuous jargon and endless side-stepping transcend passé dualisms. Daniel White, for example, prescribed “a postmodern-ecological rubric that steps past the traditional either-or of the Oppressor and Oppressed…”

In the consumerist realm of freedom, “this complex node, where technologies are diffused, where technologies are chosen,” according to Mike Michael, who can say if anything is at all amiss? Iain Chambers is an eloquent voice of postmodern abjectness, wondering whether alienation is not simply an eternal given: “What if alienation is a terrestrial constraint destined to frustrate the ‘progress’ introjected in all teleologies?…Perhaps there is no separate, autonomous alternative to the capitalist structuring of the present-day world. Modernity, the westernization of the world, globalization, are the labels of an economic, political and cultural order that is seemingly installed for the foreseeable future.”

The fixation on surface (depth is an illusion; so are presence and immediacy), the ban on unifying narratives and inquiry into origins, indifference to method and evidence, emphasis on effects and novelty, all find their expression in postmodern culture at large. These attitudes and practices spread everywhere, along with the technology it embraces without reservation. At the same time, though, there are signs that these trivializing and derivative recipes for “thought” may be losing their appeal. An antidote to postmodern surrender has been made available, largely through what is known as the anti-globalization movement.

Jean-François Lyotard, who once thought that technologized existence offered options, has begun to write about the sinister development of a neo-totalitarian, instrumentalist imprisonment. In earlier essays he pointed to a loss of affect as part of the postmodern condition. More recently he has attributed that loss to techno-scientific hegemony. Crippled individuals are only part of the picture, as Lyotard portrays social effects of what can only be called instrumental reason, in pathological ascendance. And contra Habermas, this domination by instrumental reason is in no way challenged by “communicative action.” Referring to global urban development, Lyotard stated, “We inhabit the megalopolis only to the extent that we declare it uninhabitable. Otherwise, we are just lodged there.” Also, “with the megalopolis, what is called the West realizes and diffuses its nihilism. It is called development.”

In other words, there may be a way out of the postmodern cul-de-sac, at least for some. Those still contained by the Left have a much different legacy of failure to jettison—one that obviously transcends the “merely” cultural. Discredited and dying as an actual alternative, this perspective surely also needs to go.

Hardt and Negri’s Empire will serve as a classic artifact of leftism, a compendium of the worn-out and left-over. These self-described communist militants have no notion whatsoever of the enveloping crisis. Thus they continue to seek “alternatives within modernity.” They locate the force behind their communist revolution in “the new productive practices and the concentration of productive labor on the plastic and fluid terrain of the new communicative, biological, and mechanical technologies.” The leftist analysis valiantly upholds the heart of productionist marxism, in the face of ever-advancing, standardizing, destructive technique. Small wonder Hardt and Negri fail to consider the pulverization of indigenous cultures and the natural world, or the steady worldwide movement toward complete dehumanization.

Claude Kornoouh considers monstrous “the idea that progress consists in the total control of the genetic stock of all living beings.” For him, this would amount to an unfreedom “that even the bloodiest totalitarianism of the 20th century was not able to accomplish.” Hardt and Negri would not shrink from such control, since they do not question any of its premises, dynamics, or preconditions.

It is no small irony that the militants of Empire stand exposed for the incomprehension of the trajectory of modernity by one of their opposite number, Oswald Spengler. As nationalist and reactionary that Spengler was, The Decline of the West is the great masterwork of world history, and his grasp of Western civilization’s inner logic is uncanny in its prescience.

Especially relevant here are Spengler’s judgments, so many decades ago, concerning technological development and its social, cultural, and environmental impacts. He saw that the dynamic, promethean (“Faustian”) nature of global civilization becomes fully realized as self-destructive mass society and equally calamitous modern technology. The subjugation of nature leads ineluctably to its destruction, and to the destruction of civilization. “An artificial world is permeating and poisoning the natural. The Civilization itself has become a machine that does, or tries to do everything in mechanical terms.” Civilized man is a “petty creator against Nature.” “…This revolutionary in the world of life…has become the slave of his creature. The Culture, the aggregate of artificial, personal, self-made life-forms, develops into a close-barred cage … ”

Whereas Marx viewed industrial civilization as both reason incarnate and a permanent achievement, Spengler saw it as ultimately incompatible with its physical environment, and therefore suicidally transitory. “Higher Man is a tragedy. With his graves he leaves behind the earth a battlefield and a wasteland. He has drawn plant and animal, the sea and mountain into his decline. He has painted the face of the world with blood, deformed and mutilated it.”Spengler understood that “the history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close.”

Theodor Adorno seemed to concur with elements of Spengler’s thinking: “What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.” Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment has a critique of civilization at its core, with its focal image of Odysseus forcibly repressing the Sirens’ song of eros. Dialectic’s central thesis is that “the history of civilization is… The history of renunciation.” As Albrecht Wellmer summed it up, “Dialectic of Enlightenment is the theory of an irredeemably darkened modernity.” This perspective, now continually augmented by confirming data, tends to render irrelevant both sources of theory and the logic of progress. If there is no escape from a condition we can understand all too well, what more is there to say?

Herbert Marcuse tried to lay out an escape route in Eros and Civilization, by attempting to uncouple civilization from modernity. To preserve the “gains” of modernity, the solution is a “non-repressive” civilization. Marcuse would dispense with “surplus repression,” implying that repression itself is indispensable. Since modernity depends on production, itself a repressive institution, redefining work as free play can salvage both modernity and civilization. I find this an implausible, even desperate defense of civilization. Marcuse fails to refute Freud’s view that civilization cannot be reformed.

Freud argued in Civilization and Its Discontents that non-repressive civilization is impossible, because the foundation of civilization is a forcible ban on instinctual freedom and eros. To introduce work and culture, the ban must be permanently imposed. Since this repression and its constant maintenance are essential to civilization, universal civilization brings universal neurosis. Durkheim had already noted that as humankind “advances” with civilization and the division of labor, “the general happiness of society is decreasing.”

As a good bourgeois, Freud justified civilization on the grounds that work and culture are necessary and that civilization enables humans to survive on a hostile planet. “The principal task of civilization, its actual raison d’etre, is to defend us against nature.” And further, “But how ungrateful, how short-sighted after all to strive for the abolition of civilization! What would then remain would be a state of nature, and that would be far harder to bear.”

Possibly civilization’s most fundamental ideological underpinning is Hobbes’ characterization of the pre-civilized state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Freud subscribed to this view, of course, as did Adorno and Horkheimer.

Since the mid-1960s there has been a paradigm shift in how anthropologists understand prehistory, with profound implications for theory. Based on a solid body of archaeological and ethnographic research, mainstream anthropology has abandoned the Hobbesian hypothesis. Life before or outside civilization is now defined more specifically as social existence prior to domestication of animals and plants. Mounting evidence demonstrates that before the Neolithic shift from a foraging or gatherer-hunter mode of existence to an agricultural lifeway, most people had ample free time, considerable gender autonomy or equality, an ethos of egalitarianism and sharing, and no organized violence.

A (misleadingly-named) “Man the Hunter” conference at the University of Chicago in 1966 launched the reversal of the Hobbesian view, which for centuries had provided ready justification for all the repressive institutions of a complex, imperializing Western culture. Supporting evidence for the new paradigm has come forth from archaeologists and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins, Richard B. Lee, Adrienne Zihlman, and many others; these studies are widely available, and now form the theoretical basis for everything from undergraduate courses to field research.

Archaeologists continue to uncover examples of how our Paleolithic forbears led mainly peaceful, egalitarian, and healthy lives for about two million years. The use of fire to cook tuberous vegetables as early as 1.9 million years ago, and long distance sea travel 800,000 years ago, are two findings among many that testify to an intelligence equal to our own.

Genetic engineering and imminent human cloning are just the most current manifestations of a dynamic of control and domination of nature that humans set in motion 10,000 years ago, when our ancestors began to domesticate animals and plants. In the 400 generations of human existence since then, all of natural life has been penetrated and colonized at the deepest levels, paralleling the controls that have been ever more thoroughly engineered at the social level. Now we can see this trajectory for what it really is: a transformation that inevitably brought all-enveloping destruction, that was in no way necessary. Significantly, the worldwide archaeological record demonstrates that many human groups tried agriculture and/or pastoralism and later gave them up, falling back on more reliable foraging and hunting strategies. Others refused for generations to adopt the domestication practices of close neighbors.

It is here that a primitivist alternative has begun to emerge, in theory and in practice.To the question of technology must be added that of civilization itself. Ever-growing documentation of human prehistory as a very long period of largely non-alienated human life stands in stark contrast to the increasingly stark failures of untenable modernity.

In the context of his discussion of the limitations of Habermas, Joel Whitebook wrote, “It may be that the scope of and depth of the social and ecological crisis are so great that nothing short of an epochal transformation of world views will be commensurate with them.” Since that time, Castoriadis concluded that a radical transformation will “have to launch an attack on the division of labor in its hitherto known forms.”Division of labor, slowly emerging through prehistory, was the foundation of domestication and continues to drive the technological imperative forward.

The challenge is to disprove George Grant’s thesis that we live in “a world where only catastrophe can slow the unfolding of the potentialities of technique,” and to actualize Claude Kornoouh’s judgment that revolution can only be redefined against progress.

FIRE and the FOG

FIRE and the FOG

by Stephen McNallen

When I first approached Asatru back in the late 1960's, what attracted me was the panache, vigor, and passionate assertiveness of the Vikings. Bold and free, it attracted my testosterone-laden teenage soul like a magnet I...and it still calls to me, after all these years. My spiritual evolution has added to, rather than changed, that early, naive impression.

The Way of the North was in sharp contrast to the musty meekness I perceived not only in mainstream Christianity, but in the world as a whole. Underlying the insistent Viking freedom was a deeper validation of a heroic view of human individuality, and for me this was an essential.

Everywhere else I turned, however, the spirit of the age cried the opposite. "Merge with the Godhead, become a drop in the infinite sea"..."Take your ego off the throne in your heart, and place Jesus on it"..."We must rise from the individual to the whole"..."Humans must surrender the swords of their willful egos to the planet as a whole." From Buddhism to Christianity to New Age pabulum, just about everybody was saying that individuality was bad, and that the only remedy for the human condition was to blend into "God," by whatever name. This viewpoint wasn't limited to religion and spirituality, but underlay a great deal of political philosophy, as well. Marxism in particular, and various state socialisms in general, were manifestations on the Earthly plane of the same idea.

I didn't buy it, and still don't. To "become one with God" is to die.
The deniers of self, in all their forms, constitute a fog - amorphous, drifting, surrounding, non-human. Like the fog, this mass-mentality is made up of a multitude of insignificant particles moving not of their own volition, but rather, powerless before the breeze and the rules that govern chaos.

We, on the other hand, are the fire. We burn, leaping assertively from the Earth, reaching for the heavens, passionate. The fog disintegrates where we touch it and it would smother us in its clammy coldness, if it could.

But we will not let it.

The Gods and Goddesses of our Folk do not want slaves. "They want us to grow up," as veteran Asatruar David James recently put it. We are to follow in their footsteps - not on a chain, but with our walking staffs in hand, engaged in the quest to be greater! In that respect, I suppose my personal view of Asatru is more what Edred Thorssson would call "Odian" rather than "Odinist;" I don't worship Odin so much as I want to imitate him. I don't even want to "become one with" him. I can almost imagine this great God waiting somewhat impatiently, spear in hand and hat tipped over his eye, for us to figure out that our role is to grow into freedom, might, and wisdom without end, rather than to exchange the Christian shepherd for just another master. He's ready, when we are.

Ego in Asatru

Perhaps this is a good time to reflect on the role of ego in Asatru - or even to simply think about what this word means. Is it the ego per se that we are defending here? And just what is an ego?

It's easy to say, in the words of the dictionary, that the ego is "the permanent and conscious subject of all experience" or "the self...as the consciousness of the individual's distinction from other selves." But what this means for us, philosophically, is neither easy nor simple.

In one sense, ego is transcended every time we change or grow in any way, no matter how minor. Like a flowing river, "I" am not the "I" that I was an hour ago - and that teenager in the sixties, or even the oilman of the eighties, seems very much like another human being altogether!

You and I change, and the content of the "I" is ever-evolving, but that does not mean that the concept is invalid. We are still separate entities, characterized by "distinction from other selves."

In Asatru, we know quite well that the ego is not the sum total of our being. The unconscious lurks outside our daily awareness, yet is still part of who and what we are. Similarly, our religious lore describes the hamingja, fylgja, and soul portions or qualities such as the ond and the othr. These have been described in several books and articles, and there's no point in launching into a mini-essay on them here. Suffice to say that the ego binds these together, making them a coherent whole. Far from denying the ego, Asatru tells us that the ego has an important role to play.

Quantum Obfuscation

Ardent proponents of the fog do not like the ego, and are constantly trying to convince us that it doesn't exist. They draw in material from quantum mechanics, that branch of physics that deals with the nature of things below the atomic level. True, there is a sense in which everything and everyone is interconnected. Bell's Theorem is a famous equation explaining, or at least asserting, that fact. They then tie Oriental mysticism in with science, and proclaim that the ego does not exist - and then comes the social and political implications of their ideas, which of course just happen to be the same collectivist, liberal twaddle they've been trying to shove down our throats for the better part of a century! Is this a coincidence? Probably not; a clear ideological agenda is at work here.

Ultimately, though, the interconnectedness of things does not mean what they say it does. "Quantum nonlocality" does not mean sameness, does not mean homogeneity, and does not deny the uniqueness of individual parts in any system. A rock is still not a pillow, and a cow is still not a horse. Whatever Asian inscrutabilities are invoked, and whatever equations are used to justify them, the evidence of our senses provides a workable description of reality once we get into the macro-world. It is noteworthy that these quantum gurus are generally firm believers in multiple realities, the equivalence of different frames of reference, and the like - until one chooses to operate in a reality that says ego is real and that all things are not, in some mystical way, all the same!

Ego works for us, in the same way that Newton's equations work to describe motion unless one is working with the very large or the very small.

Interestingly enough, there is at least one "Eastern" school of thought which goes against the stream of ego-abnegation. In The Serpent of Paradise, Chilean author Miguel Serrano tells how he met the head of Suddha Dharma Mandalam, a yoga organization based in India. Its leader assured Serrano that the oldest yoga, predating Patanjali by thousands of years, taught that a strong ego was essential to enlightenment! This remarkable attitude, so different from what we find popularized in the West, indicates that we Asatruar might have some spiritual allies as we oppose the fog.

Group versus the Individual

Now, lest it need clarifying, I am not advocating unrestrained license, nor justifying random acts of selfishness. We northern Europeans are a paradoxical bunch. On the one hand, we are the world's great individualists, stubborn and jealous of our rights, and always on the outlook for any infringements. This caused problems even in Viking times. During military campaigns, a disgruntled chieftain might well pack up and sail for home - taking with him the men and ships needed for victory. The whole idea of republican government sprang from us, attesting again to the value of the individual.

On the other hand, we are quite capable of extensive cooperation, even when that means subordinating our personal needs and desires to the success of the larger group. Some of the world's best-known utopian movements were born of our genius, too. So I am not advocating irresponsibility or raising the "me, me, me" attitude to a moral pedestal. On the contrary, I understand the delicate yet dynamic balance between the individual and his or her family, clan, tribe, and nation. But the proponents of the fog have never been satisfied with that balance; perhaps it is too heroic for them. They want the individual crushed, completely.

Fire against the Fog

All of this sounds academic, but it's not. In the realm of human affairs, the philosophy of the fog has made huge headway. All the major religions of mankind seem to have adopted it, to one extent or the other. In fact, most people cannot conceive of any form of spirituality which asserts a contrary viewpoint. But then, its basic assumptions are favorable to the weak and the dim - it says we're each as good as the other, and unconditional love reigns supreme when all are accepted despite their failings. It is a philosophy for the mass, tailor-made for the non-exceptional. Followers of the fog will always outnumber the people of the fire. Fortunately, quality is on our side!

We who love the flame must not be deceived; the fog is not tolerant. Like some soul-eating monster out of a science fiction movie, it intends to consume us. How can it tolerate that which proves it wrong? The aim is a world of fog...a world where the human ingenuity represented by the fire is smothered. They would kill Prometheus.

We are the keepers of the fire. With our enduring will and our deeds great and small, we fight for the individual, for heroic self-assertion. So long as we stand firm, the fog has no chance against us!

The High C's of Treason

HIGH C's of TREASON

By Ron McVan

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and woman submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
......................William E. Borah

(Constantine) Today's Christians still venerate the Roman emperor Constantine to saintly status as the Great Christian liberator. In truth, Constantine was far from saintly throughout his life. The nature of Constantine's conversion to the Christian faith has long been a matter of dispute. Though he used the banner of Christianity to secure power and reek havoc and slaughter upon his pagan enemies, he refused to be baptised until he was on his death bed.

Born approximately 280 C.E. the age of Constantine's rule was at a time of high government autocracy and much discontent among the people of Rome. Satirical verses were often affixed to the palace gates, comparing the ostentatious extravagance and bloody reign of Constantine to that of Nero. A pervasive decay was felt in every part of the public administration; the Emperor himself, though he still retained the obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. After the conquests under the sign of the cross and much accumulated wealth, Constantine developed an Asiatic pomp and assumed an air of softness and effeminancy. History relates that he was portrayed with false hair of various colors, laboriously arranged along with a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets and varigated flowing robe of silk, curiously embroidered with flowers of gold.

The Emperor had been married twice, the second wife, Fausta, he condemned to death by scalding steam and suffocation. Constantine's eldest son, Crispus, he had secretly put to death. Over time the executions would include a nephew and a great number of respectable and innocent friends, as his paranoia and tyrannical rule increased.

To sustain the Emperor's vain splendor, heavy taxes and much oppression were extracted from the people. The western part of the Empire had been very nearly wrung dry; a Gaelic writer protested to Constantine that tax assessments had "drained our very life". At times the burdens were extreme within the provinces; cruel prosecutions and tortures were common fare for insolvent debtors. A desperate but frequent alternative to the over-taxed was to murder their newborn infants to lessen further penalties.

The Christian conversion of Constantine's Empire ultimately wedded church and state, diverting Roman funds into church coffers laying the groundwork for the dread medievil Dark Ages to come.

(Charlemagne) Charlemagne has been credited with great political and humanitarian vision and a devout religious conviction. As a result, many have been led to think of his military ventures as Crusades. He was in fact a glutonous and superstitious illiterate who had a considerable capacity for brutality. His accomplishments were due mostly to the egocentric energy with which he pursued his military goals and the ruthlessness with which he treated any of his opponents.

In 768 C.E. Charlemagne and his brother, Carloman, inherited the Frankish kingdom (most of present day France and part of western Germany). The entire kingdom passed to Charlemagne when Carloman died in 771. When in the surrender of Verona his nephews posed an inconvenience, he had them executed.

For the next few decades Charlemagne ravaged through northern Europe pursuing a ruthless policy for total power, using the alien Christian doctrine to enforce the most severe of torture and death upon non-believers.

Among the Aryan Celts and Teutons there was quite enough violence, but cruelity throughout Northern Europe was uncustomary. With the Christian conversion of the North the alien custom of cruelity entered the land.

Charlemagne would later become known as the "Saxon Slayer", as he followed a rigid pogrom of Christian "baptism or death" against all Saxons. In 782 at Werden Charlemagne conducted an execution of 4,500 high ranking Saxon warriors for refusing to bow down to the law of the Christians. Under the guise of a peaceful treaty he enticed the Saxon warlords to enter his court, leaving their weapons behind. Having secured these men in his confines, he had them bound and beheaded to the very last warrior.

A further symbolic climax of malicious intolerance was Charlemagne's order to cut down and destroy the sacred "Irminsil", the holy pillar which represented the cosmic axis or column of the universe. This Saxon spiritual shrine was devastated totally and all of its treasures plundered by Charlemagne's troops.

(Catherine de Medici) The terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's day was the planned and dreadful deed of Catherine de Medici, wife of Francis I, and granddaughter of Lorenzo de Medici. It was in the month of August 1572 in Paris that 2,000 defenseless French Huguenots were butchered by order of the Roman Catholic Church. Each door of the Huguenots homes were marked for death with a white Christian cross. The Roman Catholics put a white cross on their hats and tied a hankerchief around their arms, so that they might know one another when the bell began to toll in the church steeple for the slaughter to begin. It would last all through the night and into the next day. Following the example of Paris, the carnage spread to an additional 20,000 victims nationwide as Catholics throughout the countryside joined in on the death-dealing frenzy under the prevailing powers of the Church.

It is ironic that Catherine would pursue non-Catholics with such brutal ruthlessness, when she herself brought the black magic Ruggieri to France from Italy to be her personal sorcerers. It was through this alliance that she was to learn the secrets of "devil dolls", which she would employ on her enemies to increase their suffering from afar.

By habit, Catherine was a Catholic, but paramount above all else was her driving obsession for power for herself and her son, Charles IX, whose life she vigorously dominated. Catherine died Janurary 5, 1589. Soon afterwards Henery IV came to the aid of the Huguenots in the Edict of Nantes (1598) granting them toleration and a degree of self-goverment.

(Cromwell) Agent of God or Cold-blooded Butcher? And the psalm saith, "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy children against the storm." Perhaps there is no name more hated in Irish history than Oliver Cromwell. He firmly believed all non-Christian Irish to be idolotrous, barbarous savages, less than human. Accompanied by Puritan preachers, Cromwell arrived in Ireland in 1649 with 35 ships. From their pulpits the preachers exorted the invading army to "kill all that were, young men and old, children and maidens." Hoping to make an impression that would terrify the rest of the pagan populace into submission, the slanghter in the city of Droghedn was tremendous, no one would be spared. Cromwell's comment to his troops, "Nits make lice", was used to justify the murder of all non-Christian infants. It should be particularly noted that the butchering of infants under Cromwell's command was diligently attended to during this period. It is a matter of record that babies were tossed on spears as a manner of sport by the common soldiers in the presence of officers.

At the height of the horror, his soldiers barracaded the doors of St. Peter's Church where a number of terrified men, woman and children had taken refuge in the steeple. Using the wooden pews for fuel, Cromwell's men set fire to the church. The hapless victims trapped inside were mercilessly burned alive. The rack and dungeon and roasting to death was employed for many of the captives, they stopped at nothing, even hanging women with child.

Cromwell's armies then moved across Ireland for nine months like a plague, devastating everything in their path. He was hailed a hero by the Christians and English Parliment. On October 2, 1649 the English Parliment appointed a National Thanksgiving Day in celebration of the dreadful slaughter.

Cromwell, without equal, was the coldest-blooded butcher of the many butchers Ireland had ever experienced in seven centuries afflicted. The extent of Cromwell's carnage was almost beyond description. Even the English themselves came to despise Cromwell, as he bullied his way to dictatorship and had to rely on his soldiers and spies to protect himself. Cromwell was to follow in the footsteps of the wicked Cardinal Richelieu, who had never cared about human life or freedom of the people.

(20th Century) For the past 2,000 years Christians have been killing Catholics, Catholics killing Christians, Christians and Catholics torturing and massacring Pagans. As a consequence, millions upon millions of our Aryan folk were butchered mindlessly over whims of totalitarion religious doctrines, sadistic leaders and power-hungry world government controlers.

The High C's of Treason were to become further institutionalized through the exploitive directions of Marxist Communism, Capitalism and Christian universalism. Aryan genocide in the 20th century, already exceeded 100 million in fratricidal wars, bears testiment to the self-imposed insanity that consumes all foundations of reason, logic and natural instinct.

The inhuman evil contained in the mind of a Joseph Stalin can surface in a single, swift act at any given moment, as witnessed by Winston Churchill's vengeful total incineration of the peaceful cultural town of Dresden, Germany, or as recent as Bill Clinton's willful annihilation of the Branch Davidian group in Waco, or George W. Bush's highly unwarrented invasion of Iraq.

The principles of Nature's Law decree that there can be no freedom without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity and no unity without a vision or common purpose. It is virtually impossible for a race to prosper under the rule of an alien government or religion not born of its people. It will take a total restoration of our Aryan folk consciousness; it will take what is now being blatently denied us as a distinct species and culture, which is the right to live and procreate among our own folk, with the freedom of ethnic pride and spirit which is our God given right as a race. Our future depends upon a total revolution of thought in the minds of the entire existing Aryan race, a shared vision as a united people must manifest within and from the very essence of who we are, and all that we ever hope to achieve.

The Quest for the Holy Grail

Otto Rahn & the Quest for the Holy Grail

By M. SABEHEDDIN

Otto Rahn (1904-1939), described as a gifted young author and historian, was one of this century’s truly fascinating figures. Prior to his mysterious death, at age 35, he wrote two books about the Cathars of southern France: Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”) and Luzifers Hofgesind (“Lucifer’s Court”). Myth and legend continue to shroud both his life and tragic death. While his books influenced such authors as Trevor Ravenscroft and Jean-Michel Angebert, they were never translated into English. In the 1982 best selling book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Otto Rahn’s name appears in a small but intriguing footnote.

Otto Rahn believed that he had found the location of the Holy Grail Mountain, the Montsalvat of legend, in the Cathar mountain fortress of Montsegur in the French Pyrenees. He was, says Prof. Joscelyn Godwin, “largely responsible for the mythological complex that associated the Cathars and Montsegur with the Holy Grail and its Castle.”

Norma Lorre Goodrich in her own highly acclaimed work The Holy Grail pays tribute to Otto Rahn’s Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”) describing it as “a wonderful book, a monument to this German idealist author, who died mysteriously during a descent in the Alps.”

According to his French translator, Otto Rahn believed with absolute conviction that (1) the Cathars were the last owners of the Holy Grail, and (2) the Holy Grail “perished” when they died at the hands of the “pope and the King of France” at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Otto Rahn maintained that hidden within the Grail Romances was the essence of Catharism. The Quest for the Holy Grail was a symbolic presentation of Cathar initiation and the Grail itself (which in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is a sacred stone) symbolised the Secret Tradition of the Cathars.

The war of the Roman Catholic Church against the Cathars is variously described as a war where Roma and Amor stood opposite each other, in which the catholic (‘common’) idea triumphed with flame and sword over the catharic (‘pure’) idea.

The Cathars or Cathari were members of a Gnostic Christian community which appeared in Western Europe in about 1050. They were also known as the Albigensians or men of Albi. This name derives from the city of Albi in southern France which was one of the Cathars' chief centres. Perhaps as many as two million people belonged to the movement by the twelfth century and Catharism was beginning to become a serious rival of the Church of Rome.

The Cathar claim to be the true church of Jesus Christ was a real threat to the authority of the Roman Church as Zoe Oldenbourg explains in Massacre at Montsegur:

“The Cathars declared themselves the heirs of a tradition that was older than that held by the Church of Rome — and, by implication, both less contaminated and near in spirit to the Apostolic tradition. They claimed to be the only persons who had kept and cherished the Holy Spirit which Christ had bestowed upon His Church; and it looks as though this claim was at least partially justified....

“Today we are better informed than they were concerning the practices of the Early Church, and have to admit that the Cathars merely followed a tradition somewhat more ancient than that of the [Roman] Church herself. It was with some appearance of reason that they claimed Rome as the party guilty of ‘heresy’ through her falling-out from the original purity which had characterized the Church of the Apostles.”

The medieval Cathars believed in a cosmic battle between the principles of Light and Darkness on whose meetings and encounters everything in the universe was based. Darkness was for them dark matter, the unperfected, the transient. They identified all clerical and secular rulers, principally the Catholic Church as the personification of the Darkness. In their mythology the sun symbolised the primordial Light from which all life emerged. Miguel Serrano coined their doctrine: Solar Kristianity. For Otto Rahn, Montsegur was the “Lighthouse of Catharism.”

Otto Rahn

Rahn’s Grail Quest

Otto Rahn was born on 18 February, 1904 in Michelstadt in southern Germany. In secondary school he developed a fascination with the history of the medieval Cathars, their faith and revolt against king and pope. From 1922 to 1926 he studied jurisprudence, German philosophy and history. Rahn intended to write a dissertation on Guyot, the Provencal Troubadour on whose lost Grail poem Wolfram von Eschenbach claimed to have based his Parzival.

The medieval Germanic tale of Parzival, revived in the 1800s by Wagnar’s popular mystical music dramas, fired Otto Rahn’s latter day quest for the Holy Grail. He soon pieced together a series of clues gleaned from a study of the history of the Cathars and the poem of Wolfram von Eschenbach, a Knight Templar of the thirteenth century.

Driven by his deep interest in the Cathars and Grail legends, from 1928 to 1932 Rahn researched and travelled widely in France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

Early in the summer of 1929 Otto Rahn made his first appearance in the Languedoc region of southern France. He quickly settled in the village of Lavelanet and over the next three months systematically explored the ruined Cathar temple-fortress on Montsegur as well as the surrounding mountain grottoes.

It was in Languedoc that the city of Carcassonne, the holy mountain of the Cathars (Montsegur) and the mysterious church of Rennes-le-Chateau were located. All of these places were steeped in Cathar lore and it was here that all legends of the Holy Grail seemed to converge.

Montsegur

At Montsegur, writes Nigel Pennick, “in 1244 the heretical Cathars had made their last heroic stand against a Catholic crusade which finally triumphed in their destruction. Here, tradition affirms that on the night before the final assault, three Cathars carrying the sacred relics of the faith slipped unnoticed over the wall. They carried away the magical regalia of the Merovingian King Dagobert II and a cup reputed to be the Holy Grail.

“Possession of the Grail has always been the dream of chivalric orders. The Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, the Templars, even the Teutonic Knights have sought the mystic vessel. But Otto Rahn believed that he could triumph where centuries of questing had failed. He had studied the sacred geometry of Montsegur, its sunrise orientations and its relationship with other sacred places, and had discovered secret underground passages, where he felt the treasure must be concealed.” (Hitler’s Secret Sciences)

Nigel Pennick traces Otto Rahn’s knowledge of ‘sacred geography’ back to the Druids and Templars. The Cathars were also said to be familiar with this esoteric science.

In many meetings with the local people (he spoke the local Provencal language fluently) Otto Rahn gathered everything concerning the Cathars and the Grail.

In 1931 Rahn made an extensive exploration of the grottoes of the Sabarthes area south of Montsegur, notably Ornolac and the massive cavern of Lombrives. Here he explored a huge chamber called “the Cathedral” by the local people. Rahn later described this magnificent cavern as follows:

“In time out of mind, in an epoch whose remoteness has been barely touched by modern historical science, it was used as a temple consecrated to the Iberian God Illhomber, God of the Sun. Between two monoliths one which had crumbled, the steep path leads into the giant vestibule of the cathedral of Lombrives. Between the stalagmites of white limestone, between walls of a deep brown colour and the brilliant rock crystal, the path leads down into the bowels of the mountain. A hall 260 feet in height served as a cathedral for the heretics.”

Rahn tells how, “Deeply stirred I walked through the crystal halls and marble crypts. My hands put aside the bones of fallen pure ones and knights...”

The local people called him a “seducer doubled with believer, an eternal adolescent with a superhuman passion for the Grail and the Hermetic Tradition”.

Both Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”) and Luzifers Hofgesind (“Lucifer’s Court”) are full of remarkable insights and revelations of important historical links.

Deep within the grottoes of Sabarthes Otto Rahn found chambers in which the walls were covered with symbols characteristic of the Knights Templar, side by side with emblems of the Cathars. This finding confirmed the notion, fostered by esoteric historians, that the Knights Templar and the Cathars were at one time closely associated. One intriguing image carved into the stone wall of a grotto was clearly a drawing of a lance. This depiction immediately suggests the bleeding lance that appears over and over again in the Arthurian legends.

The legend of the Grail, explains the Chilean mystic Miguel Serrano, “reappears forcibly Christianised in the Middle Ages. The Templars disseminated it. It is centred on the legend of the court of King Arthur (who is the King of the Grail and is also called Amfortas). It is interesting to point out that Arthur is Arthos, Bear, that is to say Arctic. By which the exact geographical position of the lost continent of the first Solar Age is pinpointed: Hyperborea, seat of the Grail. In the Middle Ages, it became a cup, when the myth was Christianised, the one from which Christ was said to have drunk at the Last Supper, or else the one in which Joseph of Arimathea received the blood of Christ as it spurted from his side as he hung on the cross.”

Otto Rahn believed it was possible to trace the Cathars, who guarded the Holy Grail in their castle at Montsegur, back to Druids who converted to Gnostic Manichaeism. The Druids in Britain were forerunners of the Celtic Christian Church. He saw in the culture of the medieval Cathar stronghold of Languedoc strong resemblances to the Druids. Their priests akin to the Cathar Parfaits. The Cathar secret wisdom being preserved by the later Troubadours, the travelling poets and singers of the medieval courts of France.

Most Troubadours, according to Rahn, were secret Cathars. Their apparent yearning and longing songs only seldom dedicated to a special woman, their feminine symbolism referred to the Cathar community, the Sophia, the Wisdom of the Gnostics. Julius Evola explains in The Mystery of the Grail: “To make this doctrine inaccessible to the profane, it is hidden in an erotic symbolism, similar to the Grail cycle where it is represented by a heroic symbolism.”

When Otto Rahn first studied Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival he noticed remarkable similarities with names and places in southern France, and he suspected that Parzival’s Grail castle Munsalvaesche (Richard Wagnar called it Montsalvat) was none-other than the Cathar solar-fortress Montsegur. In Eschenbach’s work he discerned the influence of Cathar poetry. Otto Rahn adopted from the research of Cathar enthusiast Antonin Gadal the probably incorrect assumption that the persecuted Cathars had retreated under the earth and celebrated their mysteries in subterranean churches. Gadal gave Rahn the freedom of his library and private museum. In letters Rahn called him his “Trevrizent” (the uncle of Parsifal in Eschenbach’s work) and developed the propositions laid out in Gadal’s Au Chemin du Saint Graal.

Antonin Gadal believed that the Cathars or ‘Good Christians’ derived from the original ‘Johannite’ form of Gnostic Christianity. ‘Johannite Christianity’ was based on the teachings of St John the Evangelist, the disciple whom Jesus loved and personally instructed in the Mysteries. The Cathars were said to possess the original version of John’s Gospel.

The tale that Otto Rahn actually found the Grail and kept it until the end of World War II in the Wewelsburg, the SS castle near Paderborn, is easily disproved. There was a Grail in Wewelsburg but it was just a huge rock crystal. Rene Nelli, an important scholar of Catharism, maintains that existing Cathar texts do not mention the Grail, while Julius Evola did not think much of the Cathar Grail thesis.

Return to Germany

Otto Rahn left France in September 1932 and returned to Germany to devote himself to further studies of the Grail. In 1934, following on from his library research and his various expeditions, Rahn completed Kreuzzug gegen Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”).

Rahn showed that the heroes of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail romances were modelled after real personalities. The pure knight Parzifal was a Carcassone Cathar, one of the foremost and heroic victims of the Crusade. The hermit Trevrizent was the Cathar Bishop Guilhabert de Castres; the King Anfortas, Raimon-Roger de Foix; and Montsegur was Montsalvage. Moreover, Montsalvage is protected by a Fountain “Salvage” in which Rahn believed he recognised the intermittent fountain of Fontestorbes, a few kilometres from the Pog, Montsegur’s promontory. Also, the forest around Montsalvage is called the “Briciljan” and close by Montsegur is Priscilien Wood. Rahn firmly concluded that the Fortress Castle of Montsegur was the Temple of the Grail.

Rahn associates the Cathar Church with the Church of the Grail, with the mystical group Fideles d’Amour of Dante. He believed that the Templars after their enforced dissolution found refuge in the Pyrenean caverns. Rahn wrote of the many indications that the white tunic with octagonal red cross of the Templars was to be found with the black cassocks and yellow cross of the Cathars in the dark grottos of Sabarthes.

Rahn believed that the Grail consisted of several tablets of stone engraved with runic or even pre-runic inscription. He believed that it was either one perfect emerald with 144 facets or 144 tablets of stone engraved in emerald. This emerald would have graced the Crown of Lucifer, symbolising his third eye, and which fell to earth, precisely on the Montsegur.

Soon after its publication Kreuzzug gegen den Gral came to the attention of Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler. The SS hierarchy were eager for Otto Rahn’s collaboration in SS-sponsored research. After first joining the SS heritage bureau, the Ahnenerbe, as a civilian, his superiors quickly recognised his talents. Persuaded to formally join the SS in 1936, Otto Rahn became member 276 208 of the Allgemeine-SS.

Paul Ladame, a friend of Rahn’s, insists that Otto joined the SS because there was no option. Ladame says Otto was no Nazi or racist. Himmler offered him a salary and the freedom to conduct his own academic research. To refuse may have resulted in Rahn’s eventual imprisonment anyway.

In September 1935 Rahn was writing excitedly to the chief of the Ahnenerbe about the places he visited in his hunt for Grail traditions in Germany, requesting complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler.

Otto Rahn is even rumoured to have founded a neo-Catharist circle within the SS. In the summer of 1936 he undertook, by order of the SS, an expedition to Iceland. Intriguingly, the ship that sailed for Iceland flew a flag with a blue swastika on white background (in sharp contrast to the official standard of the Third Reich). Highlights of this journey formed part of some chapters in his second and final book Luzifers Hofgesind (“Lucifer’s Courtiers”), published in 1937.

Rahn’s second book reads quite differently from his first. Arnaud d’Apremont writes in the preface to Luzifers Hofgesind that its style is more ideological, to all appearances ‘national-socialist’. However, more perceptive critics see Rahn in a quandary, having to toe the nationalist party line, negotiate the censor, and be able to write the full objective text he would have liked. He may even have indicated the irony of his position in the book’s title.

But it is clear from Luzifers Hofgesind that Otto Rahn did not see Lucifer as synonymous with Satan, the Adversary, or the Devil. To Rahn, Lucifer was the Pyrenean Abellio, the Celtic Belenos, the Nordic Balder, the Greek Apollo. These are the Light-Bearers, an attribute Rahn, himself, wanted recognition for: a Lucifer.

For Rahn the primordial Light came not from the East but from the North. He travelled around the ancient sacred places of Europe: Externsteine, the site of Irminsul, sacred symbol of the Saxons; Thingveillir, place of assembly of the ancient Icelanders, and Reykholt, birthplace of Sturlusson, the Nordic Homer and author of the Edda.

One reviewer describes Luzifers Hofgesind as “an expedition through the ‘garden of roses,’ Rahn’s affectionate term for the Kingdom of the Asgardian Elfin, and a realm closed to non-believers or the uninitiated. Rahn dreams of a return to Thule, the primordial centre of the European Hyperboreans. He pines for a return to the Golden Age.”

For Rahn the Holy Grail was an emblem set up in opposition to the Catholic Church — indeed it was a truly Luciferian [Light-Bearer] symbol. Lucifer stood in opposition to the god of Darkness, the god of the Church of Rome. Thus Otto Rahn wrote in his final book:

“There is much more [Light] than in the houses of god — cathedrals and churches — where Lucifer neither is able nor wishes to enter due to all the sombre, stained glass windows whereon are painted the Jewish prophets and apostles, the Roman gods and saints. The forest, that, that was free!”

During his time with the SS Rahn noticed that his telephone was tapped and that he was being spied upon.

We know that Otto Rahn fell into disgrace with the Nazi hierarchy in late 1937 and for disciplinary reasons was assigned a tour of duty at the SS run Dachau concentration camp. In the winter of 1938/39 he wrote to the SS Reichsfuhrer requesting immediate dismissal from the SS. A few months later he was dead.

Rumours abound concerning Otto Rahn’s departure from the Nazi SS. Some claim that he was a homosexual or of Jewish ancestry, but evidence is lacking. In a conversation Rahn claimed that he had been betrayed and that his life was in danger. In a letter to a friend he openly expressed his concern about the Third Reich:

“I have much sorrow in my country. Fourteen days ago I was in Munich. Two days later I preferred to go into my mountains. Impossible for a tolerant, liberal man like me to live in the nation that my native country has become.”

Col. Howard Buechner, the author of the Emerald Cup, says that Rahn “let it be known that he opposed the war for which Germany was obviously preparing in 1938. In place of war, he believed that Germany and then Europe, should be transformed into a community of ‘Pure Ones’ or Cathars. In other words, Rahn’s long association with the history of the Cathars and their unjust persecution by the church and the throne of France, had led to his conversion to the Cathar faith. He was also proposing a ‘New Order’ in which the states of Europe, and perhaps all other nations, would adopt the Cathar beliefs in the interest of world peace.”

Otto Rahn gave his last public lecture-based on Luzifers Hofgesind- in January 1938. A local newspaper reported on his talk:

“The Albigensians [Cathars] were exterminated. 205 leading followers of the Light-Bearer were burnt on a huge pyre by Dominicans in the South of France after a large-scale priestly Crusade in the name of Christian clemency. With fire and sword, the Lucifer doctrine of the Light-Bearer was persecuted along with its followers. The Albigensians are dead, but their spirit lives on and has an effect today through new devotion and rejuvenated enthusiasm. The Vicar of Christ could truly burn men; but he was mistaken if he believed that he burned along with them their spirit, devotion and longing. This spirit became alive again before many men yesterday, powerfully and visibly, in Otto Rahn, a descendant of the old Troubadours.”

A little over one year later, on 13 March 1939 — almost on the anniversary of the fall of Montsegur — Otto Rahn died in the snow on the Tyrolean mountains. “In the manner of the Cathar heretics,” says Nigel Pennick, “Rahn voluntarily left a world he saw disintegrating.” A few years earlier Otto Rahn had written in Kreuzzug gegen den Gral (“Crusade Against the Grail”):

“Their doctrine allowed suicide but demanded that one did not put an end to his life because of disgust, fear or pain, but in a perfect dissolution from matter. This kind of Endura was allowed when it took place in a moment of mystical sight of divine beauty and kindness...It is only one step from fasting to suicide. To fast requires courage but the final act of definitive ascesis requires heroism. The consequence is not as cruel as it may look.”

The story of the enigmatic life and work of Otto Rahn, symbolising as it does a greater mystery, will always fascinate both students of the Holy Grail and seekers of the Cathar tradition. This mystery can be discerned in the following quote from Miguel Serrano’s Nos: Book of the Resurrection:

“When we talk about the religion of love of the troubadours, of the initiated knights of the Grail, of the true Rosicrucians, we must try to discover what lies behind their language. In those days, love did not mean the same thing as it does in our day. The word Amor (Love) was a cipher, it was a code word. Amor spelt backwards is Roma. That is, the word indicated, in the way in which it was written, the opposite to Roma, to all that Rome represented. Also Amor broke down into ‘a’ and ‘mor’, meaning Without-Death. That is, to become immortal, eternal, thanks to the way of initiation of A-Mor. A way of initiation totally opposed to the way of Rome. An esoteric, solar Kristianity. The Gnostic Kristianity of Meister Eckhart. And mine. Because I have tried to teach western man to resurrect Kristos in his soul. Because Kristos is the Self for western man.

“This is why Roma destroyed Amor, the Cathars, the Templars, the Lords of the Grail, the Minnesanger, everything which may have originated in the ‘Hyperborean Blood Memory’ and which may have had a polar, solar origin.

“The love talked and written about so much in novels, poetry and magazines, the love of one’s neighbour, the universal love of the churches, love of humanity, has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘loveless love’ (A-Mor, Without-Death), which is a harsh discipline, as cold as ice, as cutting as a sword, and which aspires to overcome the human condition in order to reach the Kingdom of the Immortals, Ultima Thule.”

This remains a fitting tribute to Otto Rahn.

MANIFESTO:THE BASIC CONSPIRACY BEHIND ALL CONSPIRACIES?

The Basic Conspiracy Behind All Conspiracies?


On the eve of a new millennium all humanity appears to be going through a time of dangerous transition and instability.

The old and accepted theories are just not working anymore. From all sides we hear men and women claiming ‘this’ or ‘that’ group or ideology is responsible for the plight of the modern world.

Without doubt there are many ‘conspiracies’ at work on all levels of society. And yes, there are many powerful secretive groups lurking behind national and international events.

But, is there a hidden factor common to all the identifiable crimes, conspiracies and manipulative cabals plaguing human existence on this planet?

Man: The Animal

Our age is one in which the materialist outlook dominates. Even “consciousness,” the economist J.K. Galbraith said, “is a byproduct of material forces.”

This official view of Man, propagated by intellectuals of all professions, is that the human being is, basically, a material entity, a form of complex machine. Just a talking animal. As such, his actions are determined by a variety of causes, to be analysed on various levels: physiological, chemical, biological, or even sociological and psychological. Accordingly, Man does not have any purpose, but only reacts to stimuli. The difference between a human being and a robot is only complexity and materials.

Arthur Koestler captured this view in these words from his The Age of Longing:

“…what one calls a ‘person’ was after all merely an assembly of bits and qualities and odours and so on; apart from those bits and qualities, the person did not exist, was merely an illusion, and vanished into nothingness.”

This ‘scientific’ analysis of Man is the foundation of all philosophies, theories, programs and conspiracies seeking to control, dominate and forcibly ‘perfect’ human life.

The German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt wrote in the late 19th century that Man is only the highest of animals. In his view, Man is devoid of spirit and self-determinism, being basically just a stimulus response animal.

Wundt laid the basis for the principles of conditioning later developed by Ivan Pavlov and the American behavioural scientists. Schools were to be orientated toward the socialisation of the child rather than toward the development of the intellect and the continuation of culture; and for the growth of a society increasingly devoted to the satisfaction of sensory desires at the expense of any transcendent values.

Building on the foundation laid by Wundt, American psychologist Dr. B.F. Skinner, who worked closely with the CIA, specialised in control of human behaviour. Skinner wanted to discover how to transform the human being into a ‘more effective’ stimulus response conditioned reflex machine. He justified his ‘work’ in the following terms:

“My image in some places is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.”

Of course, Skinner did not believe he – himself – needed to be controlled. Who can control the controllers? The same old question. Rather, he should control others. We are all equal, wrote George Orwell, except those who are more equal. These, however, should be hidden.

Today, as a result of this materialist view, subliminal messages, drugs, shocks, starvation, aversion therapy, hypnosis… all the diabolical methods of mind control are valid ‘scientific’ techniques for the subjugation of individuals. Making them suitable subjects of modern consumer society. Human robots who faithfully conform to the dictum: ‘Work, Consume, Breed, Obey and Die.’

This view of the human being is also behind the dream of a controlled and planned New World Order. It is the basis of monopoly capitalism with its vision of the faceless, universal consumer. In the age of Big Brother, Man the animal must be tamed and held in check by a system of laws backed by an ever present threat of punishment. Market forces and the rule of law improve society and mould human consciousness, or so the ruling elites want us to believe.

Throughout the twentieth century scientists, thinkers and revolutionaries sought to solve the problems of injustice and human suffering by addressing the social, political and economic aspects of life.

By altering the environment, human consciousness was to be changed. Man’s material and physical needs being the principle motivators of his actions. Modern civilisation hasn’t bothered to discover what Man really is; it has simply tried to treat him as a rational, mechanical soulless being. Reducing all things to the lowest common denominator and placing supreme value in the individual’s limited ‘everyday consciousness’ and egoistic ‘everyday behaviour’.

Missing Dimension

The British writer Colin Wilson observed: “Civilisations wreck when they lose control over their own complexity. And they begin to lose control the moment they begin to think in materialist categories: for ultimately, all power is spiritual power.”

What if Man is NOT a sophisticated, talking animal? Not a complex stimulus response mechanism? If the materialists of both the Left and the Right have got it wrong, then our entire modern world is built on a gigantic deception.

All the high civilisations of antiquity and all the great religious traditions agree Man is not a body. The ancient philosophers and prophets taught the reality of the spirit. This means you are not your body. Your true being is not your body. You have the potential to expand beyond the bounds of the small individual ego.

If Man is a spirit then there is something more to life. Improving society has to start by improving the individual. Not vice versa.

Consequently, this essential element in all spiritual traditions is not bondage but the ultimate freedom. The only freedom that cannot be destroyed by anybody and cannot be taken away by anybody is of the spirit. Myths and legends, arcane testimonies to a spiritual reality, are only a symbolic language transmitting universal cosmological and philosophical concepts. To quote Joseph Campbell: “The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teachings be heard.”

The ultimate conspiracy aims to keep you blind to your true self. You are an animal. You are a body. This is your assigned permanent condition. To be a body, to be nothing else, to stay a body. To be an animal, to be nothing else, to stay an animal. Maximise physical pleasure, minimise physical pain, that’s your only aim. Work, Consume, Breed, Obey and Die. The conspiracy behind all conspiracies is constantly working to convince you there is really nothing beyond the physical.

But when you know the real you is not a body, then you are free. You begin to see the vanity of all human pretensions. You awake to the fact that mediocre day to day physical existence is a prison. You see beyond the ugly preoccupation with possessions and the endless search for sensory pleasure. No conspiracy can confine you, for you are a spirit and you are heading for the stars.

Rejecting the materialist view of the human being, we understand the social conditioning we are subjected to caused us to lose that knowledge of who and what we really are.

The late Robert S. De Ropp in his book Self Completion vividly illustrated the condition in which humanity finds itself:

“In this state of ‘waking sleep’ humans voyaged from birth to death aboard a ship of fools. The captain was asleep, the steersman was drunk and the navigator had forgotten the aim of the voyage. Any fool on board could push the steersman aside and try to steer the ship. The great human agglomerates who call themselves nations were just as much at the mercy of the fools in their midst as were individual men and women. The Technological Titanic, modern society, was proceeding full speed ahead into the fog, but there was no one in control. Under these circumstances it would not be surprising if the vessel hit a rock or iceberg. The surprising thing was that it stayed afloat at all.”

Are we in ignorance of our true being? Has this ‘sleep’ allowed us to fall into bondage? Is the conspiracy behind all conspiracies concerned with concealing from us our true nature? The uncovering of the ultimate conspiracy means knowing we are not bodies. “Man Know Thyself” was the ancient admonition at Delphi. Does it say something to us today at the beginning of the 21st century?

Russia and the Coming Age of the Spirit

Russia and the Coming Age of the Spirit

One cannot rationally fathom Russia. One cannot measure it with a measuring stick. It has a special nature. One can only believe in it.
— Fyodor Tyutchev

In his famous “Letter to Soviet Leaders” penned close to twenty five years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed that the Russian nation has suffered more than any other in the twentieth century. Indeed, this century could be said to be the time of Russia’s ‘Golgotha’. A hundred years of incredible human suffering and national sacrifice claimed millions of Russian lives. Within the first five decades of this century the Apocalyptic Horseman of Famine and War ravaged the vast Russian land. Archaic landmarks swept aside and old values overturned only to be replaced by radical new ways which themselves were soon found wanting. Spectacular material triumphs accomplished at the cost of freedom and paid for in human blood.

The collapse of the Soviet super power did not deliver Russia from her agonies. The end of communist rule subjected Russia to the worst excesses of the capitalist market. Financial chaos, mafia banditry and the corruption of political life quickly replaced the stagnation and certainties of a once great authoritarian state.

Back in the nineteenth century the Russian political thinker Alexander Herzen concluded “disorder saves Russia.” For despite all the external turmoil and pain, the unchanging, eternal essence of the Russian national soul remains. This essence or Idea, which owes nothing to politicians or earthly power, is preserved by humility, a craving for Truth, centuries of God-seeking and suffering.

The chief festival of Russian Orthodoxy is the Festival of Easter. Christianity is interpreted as above all the religion of Resurrection. Suffering is redemptive. Jesus suffered on the Cross before being resurrected. According to Ancient Wisdom long trials and suffering are inevitable for the pilgrim on the path of spiritual enlightenment, since they lead to purification. On the national level suffering can be said to cleanse society in preparation for collective renewal. There is a purpose, a transcendent meaning in all the trials and tragedies of earthly existence.

Dostoyevsky, Golden Age Prophet

God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth…and they germinated….But that which grows lives and enjoys vitality only through its sense of contact with other mysterious worlds….Much on earth is hidden from us, but in exchange we have been given a secret and hidden sense of our living bond with another world.…
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky1

The “theme of redemption through suffering,” observes the American scholar Tim McDaniel, “is absolutely fundamental to Russian culture, and central to a great many views of Russian distinctiveness.”2 For the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), “the main and most fundamental spiritual quest of the Russian people is their craving for suffering.” Dostoyevsky called the Russian nation an “extraordinary phenomenon,” with a unique national character unlike any European people. “The character of the Russian people,” said Dostoyevsky, is:

so different from that of all other contemporary European nations, that up until now the Europeans have not succeeded in understanding it – on the contrary, they have completely misunderstood it. Europe is losing her universality and the Christian links between people are losing their power. Contrary to Europe, the highly synthetic ability of panreconciliation, of panhumanism, is more and more strong among the Russians. A Russian does not have European awkwardness, impenetrability, inflexibility. He can come to terms with everybody…he has an instinct of panhumanism.

Panhumanism arrived at through love and suffering is the only antidote to Western egoism and materialism. In the West, Dostoyevsky noted, “all is now strife and logic,” driven on by “the dream of Rothschild,” the soulless pursuit of “money as the highest virtue and human obligation.”

By contrast “the Russian vocation,” Dostoyevsky believed, “is to wait until European civilization expires in order to take its ideals and goals and to elevate them to a panhuman meaning.” Shortly before his death, he prophesied, “A new Russia will arise which in due time will regenerate and resurrect the old one and will show the latter the road which she has to follow.” “To be a real Russian,” he told a breathless Moscow audience in 1880, “means to become the brother of everyone, to become All-Man….It means finding an outlet for the anguish of Europe in the All-Human and All-Uniting Russian soul.” Russian panhumanism is a new world idea heralding the way toward a higher stage of civilisation, in which conflicts would be resolved by creating a “concert of all nations in the Gospel of Christ.” Dostoyevsky wrote:

The sun appeared in the East, and it is from the East that the new day begins for mankind. When the sun is shining in its full glory, then it will be understood what the real ‘interests of civilization’ are.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a true prophet of the return of the lost Golden Age. His writings take us “from the real to the more real,” as he searches for the meaning of life in the depths of human experience. He placed his hope for the future not in the ‘anthills’ of the capitalist West, but in a new Golden Age of “brotherly communality…. the voluntary, totally conscious sacrifice of oneself in the interests of all made under no sort of compulsion.” This is Russia’s destiny. Her world mission. “Nations are moved”, we read in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, “by a force whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This…is what philosophers call the aesthetic or moral principle; I call it simply the quest for God.”

European occultists esteemed Dostoyevsky as an initiate of esoteric wisdom and some modern authors speculate about his membership in a secret brotherhood. His writings display the deep influence of a Christian mysticism infused by Gnosticism and we know through out his life he communicated with Russian religious dissidents such as the Old Believers. “The creative work of Dostoyevsky is eschatological through and through,” said the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. “It is interested only in the ultimate, only in what is orientated to the end…His prophetic art consists in the fact that he revealed the volcanic ground of the spirit; he described the inner revolution of the spirit…It is precisely in Dostoyevsky that the Russian messianic consciousness makes itself most keenly felt….It is to him that the words ‘The Russian people is a God-bearing people’ belong.”3

The Third Kingdom

Everything visible to us
Is only a flash, only a shadow
From what cannot be seen
by the eye.
— Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900)

Like Dostoyevsky the gifted Russian poetess Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) longed for the dawn of the Golden Age when the earth would unite with Heaven into one blissful Kingdom. And like Dostoyevsky Gippius saw the tragedy of human existence in man’s alienation from the spiritual world and the superficiality of his mere faith in God. Much of her writings express the trial of the spirit in its attempts to free itself from material reality and to fly heavenward.

Gippius and her husband the celebrated Russian novelist and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1866-1941) distinguish three phases in the history of humanity and its future. These phases represent three different realms: the realm of God the Father, the Creator – the realm of the Old Testament; the realm of God the Son, Jesus Christ – the realm of the New Testament, the present phase which is now closing; and the realm of the Holy Spirit, Divine Sophia (Wisdom) – the era of the Third Testament, which is now dawning, gradually disclosing its message to humanity. The Kingdom of the Old Testament revealed divine power and authority as truth; the Kingdom of the New Testament reveals truth as love; and the Kingdom of the Third Testament will reveal love as inner freedom.

Just as the previous Kingdoms symbolise a change in human consciousness, so the final Kingdom of the Third Testament is to be ushered in by a new religious consciousness, the genesis of a New Humanity. The Third Testament will resolve all present antitheses – sex and asceticism, individualism and society, slavery and freedom, atheism and religiosity, hatred and love. The enigma of Earth and Heaven, the flesh and the spirit, will be solved in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will redeem the world, giving humanity a new life in peace, harmony, and love. The Three in One will be realised, and Spiritual Christianity – long ago driven underground – will be brought into the open. God the Father and God the Son will be synthesised by the Holy Spirit, Divine Wisdom. The emphasis the Merezhkovsky’s placed on the Holy Spirit, reminds us of Dostoyevsky’s thought:

The Holy Spirit is a direct conception of beauty, a prophetic consciousness of harmony and hence a steadfast striving toward it.

In propagating their ‘Cause of the Three in One’ Gippius and Merezhkovsky hoped for a religious revolution, a spiritual metamorphosis of man to prepare him for the Third Kingdom. According to Gippius the aim of all universal-historical development is the end of humanity and the world in their present forms through the Apocalypse. Only the coming of Christ will unite humanity in brotherly love and harmony as one living family. At this point in the spiritual evolution of mankind the apocalyptical Church will be established, not as a temple, but as a new experience of God in human consciousness and in the human soul.

Gippius and Merezhkovsky gave expression to the messianic idea at the heart of Russian life. In the process they drew on the eschatological doctrines popular among Russian Gnostics and religious sectarians. From earliest times Russian thought was saturated with a particular Gnostic dualism characterised by a constant struggle between the evil powers which organise the earth (and earthly life), and the forces of good which seek for the City of Truth and Justice to come. Gippius and Merezhkovsky travelled deep into Russia beyond the Volga river, to visit Russian mystics in their secluded monasteries. On the road to Kerzhenets, near the legendary invisible city of Kitezh, they met with representatives of diverse mystical sects. Merezhkovsky maintained a correspondence with some of these Russian Gnostics and Gippius penned a story describing, with a great deal of inside knowledge, the secret rites of the Gnostic Khlysty community.

The Khlysty, know as “God’s people,” were heirs of the Bogomils and early Gnostic Christians. Savagely persecuted by the official Orthodox Church they preserved their teachings in secret. They met not in a church but in an isolated meeting place usually known as “Jerusalem” or “Mount Zion.” They conducted not a solemn service but a “rejoicing.” They comprised not a congregation but an “Ark,” and were led not by a priest but by a “pilot” for the voyage from the material to the spiritual world – into the seventh heaven where men could rediscover their lost divinity. The means of ascent lay partly in the “alchemy of speech” – spiritual songs and chants which produced a state of ecstasy, a sense of liberation from the material world. The Khlysty were just one of numerous Spiritual Christian communities owing their allegiance, not to the Russian Empire or official Church, but to the Third Kingdom. The most important of their commandments being “Believe in the Holy Spirit.”

In seeking the freedom of the spirit, the divine spark within, the Khlysty rejected all earthly laws and institutions. A Spiritual Christian guided by the Holy Spirit did not need to obey any external law. The official report of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1900 recognised the Khlysty as the most influential of all sects. A prominent church missionary reported in 1915 that Khlysty had invaded all Russia and that there was no province where the sect did not exist in one form or another.

Spiritual Revolution

After the Bolshevik Revolution, many people who once had vested their hopes in religion and magic turned to science and technology instead. The Bolsheviks adapted occult ideas, symbols, and techniques to political propaganda. Occult and quasi-occult ideas nourished early Soviet utopianism, pervaded literature and the arts, and contributed to the Lenin cult.

Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky believed the Bolshevic Revolution to be a diabolical perversion of the spiritual influences of the incoming Third Age. A monstrous and catastrophic parody of the Kingdom of the Spirit. After fleeing Russia Merezhkovsky explored the links between the Russian people and the so-called lost tribes of Israel. He saw Russia’s catastrophic plight foreshadowed in the Biblical prophecies of the dispersed Israelites and condemned Bolshevism as Antichrist.

Other Russian mystics and religious dissidents welcomed the Bolshevic Revolution as a necessary part in Russia’s fulfilment of the divine plan. The very fact that the Revolution had taken place in Russia was a striking demonstration of Russia’s unique historical mission. Prior to the First World War the “holy fool” Marfa Medvensky, whose prophetic utterances enjoyed wide popular support, had passed a “verdict of death on all external manifestations of religion, all sacraments, all ritual, all human institutions.” The October 1917 communist takeover brought an end to the cruel institutions of Church and Empire that had long persecuted Russia’s Spiritual Christians.

Nikolai

The republic is for the mind, Mother Russia is for the heart….The republic is for the mind, Kitezh-city is for the heart.

Alexander Blok (1880-1921), the greatest Russian poet at the beginning of the twentieth century and contemporary of the Merezhkovskys, wrote in 1918, “I see before me Russia, that Russia which great writers saw in their terrifying prophetic dreams. I see that Petersburg which Dostoyevsky saw, that Russia which Gogol called a speeding troika…Russia is destined to suffer the pains of humiliation and division. But she will emerge from these humiliations reborn and great in a new way.” With inner vision he predicted, “Russia is a big ship that is destined to make a great voyage.”

Drawing inspiration from Dostoyevsky and the Russian mystic tradition, Blok discerned in Bolshevism the first rays of a coming national renaissance. His poem “The Twelve” captured the spiritual dimension beyond the external chaos of the Revolution. At the end of the poem the Christ appears before the Bolshevic Red Army soldiers, symbolising Russia’s eventual spiritual destiny.

The communist revolution and the Soviet experiment can be understood as the momentous birth pangs of the Third Age. The manifestation on the earth plane of a spiritual transition from one era to the next. The working out in world history of a stage in the grand cosmic battle. In the Bolshevik Revolution the old First Kingdom era ideas of power and authority vied with the fading Second Kingdom demand for absolute service and equality. Russia in giving expression to all these elements revealed an innate striving toward the Third Kingdom. But the crucial element lacking was spiritual freedom. Freedom for the inner man, the realisation of the God within.

The Russian Idea at the eternal heart of Russian life and culture is the idea of community and the brotherhood of man. It is apocalyptic and messianic, heralding the new era of the Holy Spirit, an era of love, panhumanism and inner freedom. Secular and rational Western European civilisation mistook the freedom to exploit and consume, for the real freedom of the spirit. A secular civilisation exhibiting an arrogant need to cast aside everything not deemed materially useful, would do well to heed the Russian Idea. In the words of Nikolai Berdyaev:

The Russian people, in accordance with its eternal Idea, has no love for the ordering of this earthly city and struggles towards a city that is to come, towards the new Jerusalem….The spirit of community and the brotherhood of mankind are a necessity for the new Jerusalem, and for the attainment of these it is still endeavoring to have the experience of an era of the Holy Spirit, in which there will be a new revelation about society. For this the way is being prepared in Russia.

At the end of this century we see the Three Kingdoms expressed in three distinct human mentalities. For the people of the First Kingdom, God is principally a stern school master, their thinking directed to power and authority. They seek conformity to external law and order. Their God requires worship and obedience, demanding “Thou shalt not.” The mentality of the Second Kingdom is typically one of service and sharing. God comes down to humanity in the person of Jesus the Christ and worshipped in acts of service to humanity. Even contemporary political and social events display the tensions between these two modes of consciousness. In the incoming Third Kingdom human beings look for God within themselves. All the opposites and struggles which so characterise the first two eras are reconciled. The Third Age is one of brotherly communality and the reign of the Holy Spirit, an era of love and freedom. The Age of the Spirit which inspired Dostoyevsky as it did all seekers of truth throughout history.

When Russia follows principles developed by other peoples and alien to the Russian Idea she inevitably suffers pain and bondage, unable to realise her spiritual destiny as harbinger of the Age of the Spirit. Russia’s mission is marvellous, but it exists only potentially. Both Soviet Russia and the post communist capitalist Russia failed to unleash the power of the spirit.

In the third millennium of the Christian era, crucified Russia will come down from the Cross to which it has been nailed and build a bright new future for itself and for others. On that day Mother Russia will give birth to new paths, and not repeat the errors of the West, which has concentrated all its powers on building the outer man and has completely forgotten about edifying the inner man. In this bloody century providence prepared Russia, in the crucible of suffering, for a better future. From Russia will come a third culture that is different and superior to materialist Marxism and capitalist liberalism. Just as at the beginning of this century Russian teachers planted the seeds of the New Age movement (see accompanying article), so in the next century from Russia will emerge the Third Testament, the dawn of the Third Era, the Age of the Spirit.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke shared German philosopher Nietzsche’s conviction that although God had died in the West, he continued to live in Russia. With the profound insight of a poet-prophet he wrote:

If I had come on this earth as a prophet, I would preach all my life that Russia was the chosen land over which lies God’s massive sculptor’s hand as though in a provident delaying action: everything it needs is to come to this land, but the fulfilment of its destiny is to be slower and clearer.

Source

10 Myths of the Middle Ages

10 Myths of the Middle Ages

By J Frater

The Middle Ages spanned roughly the 5th century to the 16th century – a total of 1,100 years. During the time following the Middle Ages (which is often referred to as the Enlightenment), the previous millennium was criticized and condemned – just as we now condemn the actions of some during the Victorian Period (sexual prudishness for example). Many of the writers of the newly invented Protestant movement harshly attacked the Middle Ages because of its Catholicity. Unfortunately many of the myths and misconceptions that sprung up at the time are still believed today. This list aims to set things straight.

10
Death Penalty

Myth: The death penalty was common in the Middle Ages

Despite what many people believe, the Middle Ages gave birth to the jury system and trials were in fact very fair. The death penalty was considered to be extremely severe and was used only in the worst cases of crimes like murder, treason, and arson. It was not until the Middle Ages began to draw to a close that people like Elizabeth I began to use the death penalty as a means to rid their nations of religious opponents. Public beheadings were not as we see in the movies – they were given only to the rich, and were usually not performed in public. The most common method of execution was hanging – and burning was extremely rare (and usually performed after the criminal had been hanged to death first).


9
Locked Bibles

Myth: Bibles were locked away to keep the people from seeing the “true word”

During the Middle Ages (until Gutenberg came along) all books had to be written by hand. This was a painstaking task which took many months – particularly with a book as large as the Bible. The job of hand-printing books was left to monks tucked away in monasteries. These books were incredibly valuable and they were needed in every Church as the Bible was read aloud at Mass every day. In order to protect these valuable books, they would be locked away. There was no conspiracy to keep the Bible from the people – the locks meant that the Church could guarantee that the people could hear the Bible (many wouldn’t have been able to read) every day. And just to show that it wasn’t just the Catholic Church that locked up the Bibles for safety, the most famous “chained bible” is the “Great Bible” which Henry VIII had created and ordered to be read in the protestant churches. The Catholic diocese of Lincoln makes a comment on the practice here.

8
Starving Poor

Myth: The poor were kept in a state of near starvation

This is completely false. Peasants (those who worked in manual work) would have had fresh porridge and bread daily – with beer to drink. In addition, each day would have an assortment of dried or cured meats, cheeses, and fruits and vegetables from their area. Poultry, chicken, ducks, pigeons, and geese were not uncommon on the peasants dinner table. Some peasants also liked to keep bees, to provide honey for their tables. Given the choice between McDonalds and Medieval peasant food, I suspect the peasant food would be more nutritious and tasty. The rich of the time had a great choice of meats – such as cattle, and sheep. They would eat more courses for each meal than the poor, and would probably have had a number of spiced dishes – something the poor could not afford. Wikipedia has an interesting article here which describes the mostly vegetable and grain diet of the peasants in the early Middle Ages, leading to more meat in the later period.

7
Thatched Roofs

Myth: Peasants had thatched roofs with animals living in them

First of all, the thatched roofs of Medieval dwellings were woven into a tight mat – they were not just bundles of straw and sticks thrown on top of the house. Animals would not easily have been able to get inside the roof – and considering how concerned the average Middle Ager was, if an animal did get inside, they would be promptly removed – just as we remove birds or other small creatures that enter our homes today. And for the record, thatched roofs were not just for the poor – many castles and grander homes had them as well – because they worked so well. There are many homes in English villages today that still have thatched roofs.

6
Smelly People

Myth: People didn’t bathe in the Middle Ages, therefore they smelled bad

Not only is this a total myth, it is so widely believed that it has given rise to a whole other series of myths, such as the false belief that Church incense was designed to hide the stink of so many people in one place. In fact, the incense was part of the Church’s rituals due to its history coming from the Jewish religion which also used incense in its sacrifices. This myth has also lead to the strange idea that people usually married in May or June because they didn’t stink so badly – having had their yearly bath. It is, of course, utter rubbish. People married in those months because marriage was not allowed during Lent (the season of penance). So, back to smelly people. In the Middle Ages, most towns had bathhouses – in fact, cleanliness and hygiene was very highly regarded – so much so that bathing was incorporated into various ceremonies such as those surrounding knighthood. Some people bathed daily, others less regularly – but most people bathed. Furthermore, they used hot water – they just had to heat it up themselves, unlike us with our modern plumbed hot water. The French put it best in the following Latin statement: Venari, ludere, lavari, bibere; Hoc est vivere! (To hunt, to play, to wash, to drink, – This is to live!)

5
Peasant Life

Myth: Peasants lived a life of drudgery and back-breaking work

In fact, while peasants in the Middle Ages did work hard (tilling the fields was the only way to ensure you could eat), they had regular festivals (religious and secular) which involved dancing, drinking, games, and tournaments. Many of the games from the time are still played today: chess, checkers, dice, blind man’s bluff, and many more. It may not seem as fun as the latest game for the Wii, but it was a great opportunity to enjoy the especially warm weather that was caused by the Medieval Warming Period.

4
Violence Everywhere

Myth: The Middle Ages were a time of great violence

While there was violence in the Middle Ages (just as there had always been), there were no equals to our modern Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Most people lived their lives without experiencing violence. The Inquisition was not the violent bloodlust that many movies and books have claimed it to be, and most modern historians now admit this readily. Modern times have seen genocide, mass murder, and serial killing – something virtually unheard of before the “enlightenment”. In fact, there are really only two serial killers of note from the Middle Ages: Elizabeth Bathory, and Gilles de Rais. For those who dispute the fact that the Inquisition resulted in very few deaths, Wikipedia has the statistics here showing that there were (at most) 826 recorded executions over a 160 year period – from 45,000 trials!

3
Oppressed Women

Myth: Women were oppressed in the Middle Ages

In the 1960s and 1970s, the idea that women were oppressed in the Middle Ages flourished. In fact, all we need to do is think of a few significant women from the period to see that that is not true at all: St Joan of Arc was a young woman who was given full control of the French army! Her downfall was political and would have occurred whether she were male or female. Hildegard von Bingen was a polymath in the Middle Ages who was held in such high esteem that Kings, Popes, and Lords all sought her advice. Her music and writing exists to this day. Elizabeth I ruled as a powerful queen in her own right, and many other nations had women leaders. Granted women did not work on Cathedrals but they certainly pulled their weight in the fields and villages. Furthermore, the rules of chivalry meant that women had to be treated with the greatest of dignity. The biggest difference between the concept of feminism in the Middle Ages and now is that in the Middle Ages it was believed that women were “equal in dignity, different in function” – now the concept has been modified to “equal in dignity and function”.

2
Flat Earth

Myth:People in the Middle Ages believed the earth was flat

Furthermore, people did not believe the Earth was the center of the universe – the famous monk Copernicus dealt a death blow to that idea (without being punished) well before Galileo was tried for heresy for claiming that it proved the Bible was wrong. Two modern historians recently published a book in which they say: “there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference.”

1
Crude and Ignorant

Myth: People of the Middle Ages were crude and ignorant

Thanks largely to Hollywood movies, many people believe that the Middle Ages were full of religious superstition and ignorance. But in fact, leading historians deny that there is any evidence of this. Science and philosophy blossomed at the time – partly due to the introduction of Universities all over Europe. The Middle ages produced some of the greatest art, music, and literature in all history. Boethius, Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli are still revered today for their brilliant minds. The cathedrals and castles of Europe are still standing and contain some of the most beautiful artwork and stonework man has been able to create with his bare hands. Medicine at the time was primitive, but it was structured and willing to embrace new ideas when they arose (which is how we have modern medicine).

The Path Toward the Sacred

The Path Toward the Sacred

by Alain de Benoist

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance was genuinely a re-naissance, a rebirth. "It involved," as Ernest Renan said, "seeing Antiquity face to face." Yet that rebirth was not a journey backward nor a simple resurgence of the past, but on the contrary a point of departure for a new spiritual adventure, a new adventure of the Faustian soul, henceforth triumphant because finally awakened to itself. Today "neo-paganism," likewise, is not a regression. It is, on the contrary, the deliberate choice of a more authentic future, more harmonious, more powerful -- a choice that projects into the future, for new creations, the Eternal from which we come.

If one acknowledges that something is great, Heidegger says, "then in the beginning of that greatness there remains something still greater." Paganism today clearly requires, in the first place, a certain familiarity with ancient Indo-European religions, their history, their theology, their cosmogony, their symbolic system, their myths and the mythemes of which they are composed -- familiarity of knowledge, but also spiritual familiarity; epistemological familiarity, but also intuitive familiarity. Paganism is not only a matter of accumulating knowledge about the beliefs of the various regions of Europe, nor can we ignore the features that distinguish them, often profoundly. Paganism also requires, above all, identifying the projection of those beliefs, the transposition of a certain number of values which, as heirs to a culture, belong to us and concern us directly. (That, as a consequence, leads to reinterpreting the history of the last two millennia as the story of a fundamental spiritual combat.)

This recovery of pagan traditions is a considerable task. Not only do the religions of old Europe cede nothing to monotheism in their richness or their spiritual and theological complexity, but we can even say that on this terrain they often prevail. Yet whether pagan religions are indeed more rich and more complex than monotheism is not the most important issue. What is important is that they speak to us, and for my part I draw more lessons from the symbolic contrast of Janus and Vesta, more ethical understanding from the Oresteia or from the account of Ymir's dismemberment, than from the adventures of Joseph and his brothers or the story of the aborted murder of Isaac.

Beyond the myths themselves, it is advisable to look for some conception of divinity and of the sacred, some system of interpretation of the world, some philosophy. Even to declare disbelief in the existence of God, as Bernard-Henri Lévy does, presupposes an implicit monotheism. Our epoch still remains profoundly Judeo-Christian in how it conceives history and in the essential values it assumes, even though the churches and synagogues have emptied. Conversely, a pagan need not believe literally in Jupiter or Wotan, although that would be no more ridiculous than a literal belief in Jehovah. Contemporary paganism does not consist in erecting altars to Apollo or reviving the worship of Odin. It implies instead looking behind the religion and, according to a procedure henceforth traditional, seeking the "mental equipment" of which the religion is the product, the interior universe it reflects, the form of apprehending the world it denotes. In short, it implies considering the gods as "centers of values" (H. Richard Niebuhr) and the beliefs of which they are the object as systems of values. The gods and the beliefs pass, but the values remain.

That is to say that paganism, far from being characterized by a denial of spirituality or a rejection of the sacred, consists on the contrary in the choice (and the reappropriation) of another spirituality, of another form of the sacred. Far from being confounded with atheism or agnosticism, it interposes, between man and the universe, a fundamentally religious relationship, which in its spiritual quality seems to us much more intense, more serious, stronger than what Judeo-Christian monotheism can lay claim to. Far from desacralizing the world, it sacralizes it in the literal sense of the term, since it regards it as sacred, and it is precisely therein that it is pagan. Thus, as Jean Markale writes, "paganism is not the absence of God, the absence of the sacred, the absence of ritual. Quite the contrary, it is the solemn affirmation of transcendence, which begins with the recognition that the sacred no longer resides in Christianity. Europe is never more pagan than when she searches for her roots, which are not Judeo-Christian."

Spirituality, the sense of the sacred, faith, belief in the existence of God, religion as ideology, religion as system and as institution -- all are very different notions and do not necessarily intersect, and they are no longer univocal. There are religions that do not have any God (Taoism, for example); belief in God does not necessarily imply belief in a personal God. On the other hand, to imagine that all religious concerns could be permanently removed from mankind is, in our eyes, pure fantasy. Faith is neither repression nor illusion, and the best human reason can do is recognize that reason alone is not sufficient to exhaust all man's inner aspirations. As Schopenhauer observes: "Man is the only being who is astonished by his own existence; a brute animal lives in its tranquillity and is astonished by nothing ... This astonishment, which occurs especially in the face of death and in view of the destruction and disappearance of all other beings, is the source of our metaphysical needs; it is because of this that man is a metaphysical animal." The need for the sacred is a fundamental human need, in the same way as food or copulation. (If some choose to forgo any of these, so much better for them.) Mircea Eliade notes that "the experience of the sacred is a structure of consciousness," which one cannot hope to do without. Man needs some belief or some religion -- we distinguish here religion from ethics -- as ritual, as actions that comfort him by their unvarying regularity, forming part of the habitual patterns by which he is constructed. In this respect, the recent appearance of genuine disbelief is among those phenomena of decline that are destructuring man in what makes him distinctively human. (Is the man who has lost the capacity or the desire to believe still a man? One can at least pose the the question.)

"It is possible," Régis Debray writes, "to have a society without God; it is not possible to have a society without religion." He adds: "States on the way to disbelief are also on the way to abdication." George Bataille's remarks are also pertinent: "Religion, the essence of which is the search for a lost intimacy, is essentially an effort of the clear consciousness to become entirely self-awareness." That is enough to condemn Western liberalism. We would certainly give Judeo-Christianity too much credit if we rejected all the concepts over which it claims a monopoly simply because it has claimed them. We need not reject the idea of God or the concept of the sacred simply because of the sickly form in which Christianity has expressed them, any more than we must break with aristocratic principles simply because they have been caricatured by the bourgeoisie.

We should note as well that in pre-Christian antiquity the word "atheism" is practically meaningless. Ancient trials for "unbelief" or "impiety" are generally concerned, in reality, with other offenses. When the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus remarks that "there are some people for whom the sky is empty of gods," he specifies that they do believe, nevertheless, in magic and in the stars. In Rome it was the Christians who were accused of "atheism," since they showed no respect to images of the gods or to places of worship. In Greece, rational thought itself only reoriented theogony and mythical cosmology. That is why Claude Tresmontant, after having gratuitously likened pantheism to "atheism," is compelled to write that the latter is "eminently religious," that in fact "it is far too religious, since it unduly divinizes the universe." In ancient Europe, the sacred was not conceived in opposition to the profane, but rather embraced the profane and gave it meaning. There was no need for a Church to mediate between man and God; the whole city itself effected this mediation, and religious institutions constituted only one aspect of it. The conceptual antonym of Latin religio would be the verb negligere. To be religious is to be responsible, not to neglect. To be responsible is to be free -- to possess the concrete means of exercising a practical liberty. To be free is also, at the same time, to be connected to others through a common spirituality.

When Lévy remarks that "monotheism is not a form of sacrality, a form of spirituality, but on the contrary, the hatred of the sacred as such," his comment is only apparently paradoxical. The sacred involves unconditional respect for something; yet monotheism, in a literal sense, outlaws such respect, placing it outside the Law. For Heidegger, the sacred, das Heilige, is quite distinct from traditional metaphysics and from the very idea of God. We say, to use an antimony favored by Emmanuel Lévinas, that the sacred vests itself as a mystery in this world, that it is based on an intimacy between man and the world, in contrast to holiness, which relies on the radical transcendence of the Other. Paganism sacralizes and thereby exalts this world, whereas Judeo-Christian monotheism sanctifies, and thereby deducts from and diminishes it.


Excerpted from Alain de Benoist, Comment Peut-on Etre Païen? (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), translation by Irmin Benoist.

SPIRITUALISM:THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

SPIRITUALISM
THE HIGHEST FORM OF POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

THE HAU DE NO SAU NEE MESSAGE TO THE WESTERN WORLD

The Hau de no sau nee, or the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuously existing cultures in the world. We still remember the earliest doings of human beings. We remember the original instructions of the Creators of Life on this place we call Etenoha -- Mother Earth. We are the spiritual guardians of this place. We are the Ongwhehonwhe -- the Real People.

In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who walk about the Earth have been provided with all the things necessary for life. We were instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the Vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.

Ours is a Way of Life. We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. Spirits can be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter -- grass matter. The spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass.

All things of the world are real, material things. The Creation is a true, material phenomenon, and the Creation manifests itself to us through reality. The spiritual universe, then, is manifest to Man as the Creation, the Creation which supports life. We believe that man is real, a part of the Creation, and that his duty is to support Life in conjunction with the other beings. That is why we call ourselves Ongwhehonwhe -- Real People.

The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives -- the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end.

Our roots are deep in the lands where we live. We have great love for our country, for our birthplace is there. The soil is rich from the bones of thousands of our generations. Each of us were created in those lands, and it is our duty to take great care of them, because from these lands will spring the future generations of the Ongwhehonwhe. We walk about with a great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.

We are not a people who demand, or ask anything of the Creators of Life, but instead, we give greetings and thanksgiving that all the forces of Life are still at work. We deeply understand our relationship to all living things. To this day, the territories we still hold are filled with trees, animals, and the other gifts of the Creation. In these places we still receive our nourishment from our Mother Earth.

We have seen that not all people of the Earth show the same kind of respect for this world and its beings. The Indo-European people who have colonized our lands have shown very little respect for the things that create and support Life. We believe that these people ceased their respect for the world a long time ago. Many thousands of years ago, all the people of the world believed in the same Way of Life, that of harmony with the universe. All lived according to the Natural Ways.

Around ten thousand years ago, peoples who spoke Indo-European languages lived in the area which today we know as the Steppes of Russia. At that time, they were a Natural World people who lived off the land. They had developed agriculture, and it is said that they had begun the practice of animal domestication. It is not known that they were the first people in the world to practice animal domestication. The hunters and gatherers who roamed the area probably acquired animals from the agricultural people, and adopted an economy, based on the herding and breeding of animals.

Herding and breeding of animals signaled a basic alteration in the relationship of humans to other life forms. It set into motion one of the true revolutions in human history. Until herding, humans depended on nature for the reproductive powers of the animal world. With the advent of herding, humans assumed the functions which had for all time been the functions of the spirits of the animals. Sometime after this happened, history records the first appearance of the social organization known as "patriarchy."

The area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers was the homeland, in ancient times, of various peoples, many of whom spoke Semitic languages. The Semitic people were among the first in the world to develop irrigation technology. This development led to the early development of towns, and eventually cities. The manipulation of the waters, another form of spirit life, represented another way in which humans developed a technology which reproduced a function of Nature.

Within these cultures, stratified hierarchical social organization crystallized. The ancient civilizations developed imperialism, partly because of the very nature of cities. Cities are obviously population concentrations. Most importantly though, they are places which must import the material needs of this concentration from the countryside. This means that the Natural World must be subjugated, extracted from, and exploited in the interest of the city. To give order to this process, the Semitic world developed early codes of law. They also developed the idea of monotheism to serve as a spiritual model for their material and political organization.

Much of the history of the ancient world recounts the struggles between the Indo-Europeans and the Semitic peoples. Over a period of several millenia, the two cultures clashed and blended. By the second millenia B.C., some Indo-Europeans, most specifically the Greeks, had adopted the practice of building cities, thus becoming involved in the process which they named "Civilization."

Both cultures developed technologies peculiar to civilizations. The Semitic peoples invented kilns which enabled the creation of pottery for trade, and storage of surpluses. These early kilns eventually evolved into ovens which could generate enough heat to smelt metals, notably copper, tin and bronze. The Indo-Europeans developed a way of smelting iron.

Rome fell heir to these two cultures, and became the place where the final meshing occurs. Rome is also the true birthplace of Christianity. The process that has become the culture of the West is historically and linguistically a Semitic/Indo-European culture, but has been commonly termed the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Christianity was an absolutely essential element in the early development of this kind of technology. Christianity advocated only one God. It was a religion which imposed itself exclusively of all other beliefs. The local people of the European forests were a people who believed in the spirits of the forests, waters, hills and the land; Christianity attacked those beliefs, and effectively de-spiritualized the European world. The Christian peoples, who possessed superior weaponry and a need for expansion, were able to militarily subjugate the tribal peoples of Europe.

The availability of iron led to the development of tools which could cut down the forest, the source of charcoal to make more tools. The newly cleared land was then turned by the newly developed iron plow, which was, for the first time, pulled by horses. With that technology many fewer people would work much more land, and many other people were effectively displaced to become soldiers and landless peasants. The rise of that technology ushered in the Feudal Age and made possible, eventually, the rise of new cities and growing trade. It also spelled the beginning of the end of the European forest, although that process took a long time to complete.

The eventual rise of cities and the concurrent rise of the European state created the thrust of expansion and search for markets which led men, such as Columbus, to set sail across the Atlantic. The development of sailing vessels and navigation technologies made the European "discovery" of the Americas inevitable.

The Americas provided Europeans a vast new area for expansion and material exploitation. Initially, the Americas provided new materials and even finished materials for the developing world economy which was based on the Indo-European technologies. European civilization has a history of rising and falling as its technologies reach their material and cultural limits. The finite Natural world has always provided a kind of built-in contradiction to Western expansion.

The Indo-Europeans attacked every aspect of North America with unparalleled zeal. The Native people were ruthlessly destroyed because they were an unassimilable element to the civilizations of the West. The forests provided materials for larger ships, and some areas provided sources of slave labor for the conquering invaders. By the time of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-Nineteenth Century, North America was already a leader in the area of the development of extractive technology.

The hardwood forests of the Northeast were not cleared for the purpose of providing farmlands. Those forests were destroyed to create charcoal for the forges of the iron smelters and blacksmiths. By the 1890's, the West had turned to coal, a fossil fuel, to provide the energy necessary for the many new forms of machinery which had been developed. During the first half of the Twentieth Century, oil had replaced coal as a source of energy.

The Western culture has been horribly exploitative and destructive of the Natural World. Over 140 species of birds and animals were utterly destroyed since the European arrival in the Americas, largely because they were unusable in the eyes of the invaders. The forests were leveled, the waters polluted, the Native people subjected to genocide. The vast herds of herbivores were reduced to mere handfuls, the buffalo nearly became extinct. Western technology and the people who have employed it have been the most amazingly destructive forces in all of human history. No natural disaster has ever destroyed as much. Not even the Ice Ages counted as many victims.

But like the hardwood forests, the fossil fuels are also finite resources. As the second half of the Twentieth Century has progressed, the people of the West have begun looking to other forms of energy to motivate their technology. Their eyes have settled on atomic energy, a form of energy production which has by-products which are the most poisonous substances ever known to Man.

Today the species of Man is facing a question of the very survival of the species. The way of life known as Western Civilization is on a death path on which their own culture has no viable answers. When faced with the reality of their own destructiveness, they can only go forward into areas of more efficient destruction. The appearance of Plutonium on this planet is the clearest of signals that our species is in trouble. It is a signal which most Westerners have chosen to ignore.

The air is foul, the waters poisoned, the trees dying, the animals are disappearing. We think even the systems of weather are changing. Our ancient teaching warned us that if Man interfered with the Natural Laws, these things would come to be. When the last of the Natural Way of Life is gone, all hope for human survival will be gone with it. And our Way of Life is fast disappearing, a victim of the destructive processes.

The other position papers of the Hau de no sau nee have outlined our analysis of economic and legal oppression. But our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and plant life are also destroying the Native people. And that process is Western Civilization.

We know that there are many people in the world who can quickly grasp the intent of our message. But experience has taught us that there are few who are willing to seek out a method for moving toward any real change. But, if there is to be a future for all beings on this planet, we must begin to seek the avenues of change.

The processes of colonialism and imperialism which have affected the Hau de no sau nee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that mystified the peoples of the Earth.

The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural World, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and egalitarian societies.

It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical analysis of the West's historical processes, to seek out the actual nature of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives.

We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every program, and every process that the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere wrote, in his book, the "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," that it is the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that response to oppression.

The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all the things that support Life -- the air, the waters, the trees -- all the things which support the sacred web of Life.

We feel that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere can continue to contribute to the survival potential of the human species. The majority of our peoples still live in accordance with the traditions which find their roots in the Mother Earth. But the Native peoples have need of a forum in which our voice can be heard. And we need alliances with the other peoples of the world to assist in our struggle to regain and maintain our ancestral lands and to protect the Way of Life we follow.

We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold the dignity of Man. But that position is growing in strength, and it represents a necessary strategy in the evolution of progressive thought.

The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization which hold the promise of unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We are here to impart that message.

Back to Paradise

Back to Paradise

By Richard Heinberg

Ten years ago I was hard at work on what would be my first book, Memories and Visions of Paradise Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age. It was published in 1989, and since then I have periodically looked back on it to see how my thinking has changed and how much I’ve learned. I was able to incorporate some new information and ideas on the subject in the revised edition (Quest Books, 1995), especially in the Update chapter at the end.

In the book, I explored how the paradise myth may refer to a state of consciousness (related, perhaps, to deep meditative states or the near-death-experience), a recollection of infancy, a forgotten civilisation, a time prior to devastating world cataclysms, a lost homeland, or the era before the emergence of civilisation itself. Each of these interpretations, it still seems to me, has some validity.

Even since 1995 there is news to report concerning the paradise myth and these divergent ways of looking at it.

Paradise: A Lost Global Civilisation

Standard views of human history leave little room for a lost paradise. But it seems that each year brings fresh evidence suggesting that our knowledge of the ancient human past is sketchy at best. For example, the recent discovery of a carved bone flute in a Slovenian cave, dated (by current estimates) at between 43,000 and 82,000 years old, suggests that humans have had music – and probably language and art as well – for a very long time indeed. What were people thinking and doing for all those millennia?

Answers to that question are difficult to come by, because most ancient centres of human habitation have likely been submerged or otherwise destroyed. People have always tended to congregate along rivers and sea coasts, and so the dramatic rise of the sea level roughly 12,000 years ago must have erased most of whatever signs of settlement then existed. Moreover, much of the material culture of the people who lived, say, 15,000 or 50,000 years ago probably consisted of highly perishable plant and animal materials that have long since disintegrated.

Nevertheless, tantalising clues continue to crop up. Newly discovered large, artificial stone structures submerged in the region of Okinawa and Taiwan suggest that the catastrophic rise in the oceans at the end of the Pleistocene may have obliterated an “impossibly” early civilisation in the western Pacific. And if the huge pyramids in Shensi Province, China, turn out to be older than the currently estimated 4,500 years (in 1912, two Australian traders reportedly met an old Buddhist monk who told them that the pyramids were described in the 5,000-year-old records of his monastery as being “very ancient”), then perhaps they are associated with the same, or a related, lost civilisation..

There are reasons to think that, even in the millennia after the late-Pleistocene (ca. 10,000 B.C.) catastrophes, whole chapters of human history may be missing from our current reconstructions. In his remarkable book Sailing to Paradise: The Discovery of the Americas by 7000 B.C. (Simon & Schuster, 1994), Jim Bailey marshals an extraordinary array of evidence suggesting that America was a world power many millennia ago, before being engulfed by wars, and that sea-bordering nations in nearly every part of the globe engaged in extensive trade long before the dawn of recorded history. These early traders, it seems, were motivated by the desire for rare metals such as copper and tin. Bailey points out, for example, that the sources for the copper and tin that fuelled the Near Eastern and European “copper Age and “Bronze Age” are unclear; meanwhile, around Lake Superior in North America there are huge, nearly-exhausted prehistoric copper mines, but no sign (in the Americas) of where all that copper went. Bailey also notes the presence in the New World of inscriptions in ancient Old World languages, and discusses evidence that early seafarers from the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean were well aware of the existence of the Americas. “Without reference to the transatlantic trade in copper and alluvial tin” , writes Bailey, “one cannot begin to understand the cultures and events of the Fertile Crescent between 6000 and 1000 B.C.; nor can one make sense of American prehistory.... Although the evidence available to us today is fragmentary and dispersed, it is conclusive in demonstrating that there was a long and influential relationship between the Old and the New Worlds. There are simply too many facts for which no other explanation is coherent.”

Bailey’s theory finds support in recent discoveries of cocaine and tobacco residues in Egyptian mummies – discoveries implying that the international drug trade is nothing new. The mummy of Ramses II, for example, was found to have extraordinarily high nicotine levels. Tests by a Dr. Balabanov (reported in a Discovery Channel broadcast) on bodies from China, Germany, and Austria, spanning the years 3,700 B.C. to 1100 A.D., also showed incredibly high percentages of nicotine. The coca and tobacco plants are, of course, believed to have grown nowhere other than the Americas prior to the European invasion of the 16th century.

Then there is the book, Origin of the Olmec Civilization, by H. M. Xu, in which the author asserts that Central American civilisation originated in China. When the Shang Dynasty collapsed around 1122 B.C., 250,000 soldiers and civilians suddenly disappeared. Xu attempts to prove that some of these people landed in Central America and founded the Olmec civilisation. He points to written records on this side of the Pacific that include what appear to be Chinese symbols, and also to similarities in the art, architecture, religion, and astronomical knowledge of the Olmecs and Chinese.

The picture that is slowly emerging from such bits of theory and evidence (there is far more of the latter than I could possibly mention here) is one of widespread maritime trade and contact among cultures beginning about 7000 B.C. and lasting, in a few instances at least, until about 1000 A.D. But why were these contacts broken off? Bailey mentions several factors – a collapse in the price of bronze (following the Old World shift to the use of iron), climate change (the end of the climatic optimum that began around 8000 years ago and lasted till roughly 4000 years ago), the consequent deterioration of sea conditions in the North Atlantic, and signs of recurring natural disasters.

Charles Ginenthal, editor of the journal The Velikovskian, has speculated that the climatic optimum – or hipsithermal – was the “Golden Age.” This is a thought that bears further consideration as we gradually come to better understand what was actually happening in human cultures 4000 to 8000 years ago.

Comets, Catastrophes, And Civilisation

Increasingly, it seems that human history simply cannot be understood without reference to natural catastrophes. In Memories and Visions of Paradise, I called attention to worldwide myths of flood, fire, and celestial upheaval. These myths, I suggested, are central to any meaningful reconstruction of humanity’s psychological, spiritual, and social history. The catastrophic events referred to in myth were the key to what traditional cultures regard as “the Fall” – and also to the commencement of civilisation. In A New Covenant with Nature I suggested that the connecting mechanism might have been a kind of collective, intergenerational, post-traumatic stress disorder that caused people in at least a few cultures to defer to strong male leaders, to treat their infants and children harshly, and to regard nature as an enemy to be vanquished.

This way of looking at cosmic catastrophes and their effects on early human societies is looking less heretical all the time – though on this side of the Atlantic there are as yet few social scientists who appear to have grasped the implications.

In England, the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies held its second Cambridge Conference at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University from July 11 to 13, 1997. The subject of the meeting was, “Natural catastrophes during Bronze Age civilisations: archaeological, geological, astronomical and cultural perspectives.” I quote from the brochure:

“Historian Dr. Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, who is helping organise the meeting, said the Bronze Age – a crucial time at the dawn of civilisation – appeared to have started more or less simultaneously in different parts of the world.

“He suggested this could have been triggered by a sudden change in global climate caused by a catastrophe such as worldwide impacts of small cometary fragments. ‘We also think violent rituals, such as human sacrifices, started in many cultures during the Bronze Age and then stopped at its end,’ Dr Peisner said. He said it was possible these were used by people to overcome the trauma many would have suffered during such times.

“Prof. Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory and another of the conference’s organisers, said recent research has suggested the quantity of asteroids and comets hurtling into the Earth’s neighbourhood was much higher than previously thought, boosting the likelihood of such disasters. ‘If a comet broke up and the stream of debris intercepted the Earth’s orbit, the planet could have been periodically bombarded with small objects and everyone would have known an event like the Tunguska impact in Siberia,’ he said.

“Palaeo-ecologist Prof. Mike Baillie, of Queen’s University, Belfast, said his studies of tree rings had uncovered evidence of ecological catastrophes coinciding with the dawn and end of the Bronze Age. ‘The series of events that show up in the tree rings could have been major turning points in human society,’ Prof. Baillie said. ‘There might be more to these events than just volcanoes – we cannot rule out comets.’”

Also from the brochure: “An increasing number of astronomers have suggested that a series of cosmic disasters punctuated the Earth in prehistoric times. Scholars such as Victor Clube, Bill Napier, Mark Bailey, Sir Fred Hoyle, David Asher, and Duncan Steel claim that a more ‘active’ and threatening sky might have caused major cultural changes of Bronze Age civilisations, belief systems and religious rituals....

“In the light of new astronomical and archaeological theories and the emergence of scientific neo-catastrophism, it seems necessary to re-assess the origins and cultural implications of apocalyptic religions and catastrophe traditions in ancient mythologies and rituals. In particular, the significant cultural and religious changes at the beginning of the Bronze Age and those which occurred after its final collapse will be re-evaluated.”

The Site Of Paradise

Some paradise myths seem to describe a specific place, a lost homeland. Many legends speak of a sunken island or a great world mountain as the original paradisal home of humankind.

In Memories and Visions of Paradise, I mentioned the Tibetan legend of lost Shambhala – “a mystical kingdom hidden behind snowy peaks somewhere to the north” where “a line of enlightened kings is guarding the innermost teachings of Buddhism for a time when all truth in the outside world is lost in war and greed. Then, according to the prophecy, the King of Shambhala will emerge with a great army to destroy the forces of evil and bring in a new Golden Age.”

Tibetan and Western scholars have looked everywhere for Shambhala – from the Gobi Desert to the North Pole. Three recent books offer relevant new information and insight.

In Dawn Behind the Dawn: A Search for the Earthly Paradise (Holt, 1992), cultural historian Geoffrey Ashe theorises that the idea of a lost paradise began with a goddess-worshipping cult in the region of the Altai-Baikal region of northern Asia some 25,000 years ago. The book is erudite and impressively researched, touching on subjects ranging from Near Eastern mythology to Indo-European philology to modern feminism. Ashe summarises his reconstruction as follows:

“Tens of thousands of years ago, shamans in Siberia and Mongolia held the seven-star constellation [Ursa Major] in reverence. It was all the more important because the pole, which it ruled, was not marked then by a separate polestar of conspicuous brightness. ...The chief deity was a powerful Earth Mother and Mistress of Animals, with whom female shamans were closely associated. Her cult and symbolism, passing from tribe to tribe, played a part in forming the Paleolithic Goddess substratum across Siberia and Europe. Her chief animal form was a bear....

“The constellation built up a unique numinosity, partly because of its relation to the pole and hence to shamans’ ideas of comic centrality, expressed in the image of a central tree or world-mountain, which they climbed in their trances to meet superior spirits. In the Altai region, actual gold that gave the range a name, and an actual mountain cult, helped to evoke the divine world-mountain as golden....

“Late in the fourth millennium B.C., around the Altai, Indo-European groupings such as the Afanasievo came under shamanic influence and acquired a mythical ‘package’ comprising some of the ancient themes, which in the hands of these new people took on a rekindled life and energy. The package included the golden world-mountain... this eventually evolved into golden Meru, central to the universe, a paradisal abode of gods. It also included the seven stars... and something of the connected [mystique surrounding the number seven]. The mythical package was carried south and southwest in Indo-European expansion.” Ashe cites the Tibetan Shambhala legend as referring to the original Altaic homeland.

Victoria Le Page’s Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-La (Quest, 1996) is an esotericist’s view of the same materials. Le Page has read Ashe carefully – as well as earlier scholars on the subject, such as René Guénon and Nicholas Roerich. Guénon interprets the paradise mountain – Mount Meru in Buddhist lore – as not a mountain at all, but “a metaphor for a conduit of terrestrial energy constituting the earth’s primary power source whose nature, location, and function is presently unknown to us. [Guénon] suggests that the knowledge of this fact belongs to a most arcane and little-known branch of the tantric science that is concerned with cosmic Shakti and the building of worlds, and which for that reason has been jealously guarded from the public view for many thousands of years.”

Le Page follows occultist Nicholas Roerich in his quest to find the true geographical Shambhala – in the Altai mountains. But she has more than a historical interest in decoding the myth. For her, Shambhala – the realm of jewel lakes, wish-fulfilling trees, and speaking stones – is central to the “new world model,” the ideology of the New Age. “Shambhala has had many locations, many names, many forms; over the ages it has been known as a taboo region of Paleolithic magic, a vast Megalithic sanctuary, a sacred kingdom, and underground Wisdom center, a modern complex of ashrams and training-schools.... Its credibility has probably never been so severely tested as in this age of high technology, dense population and intensive exploration; and yet in another sense we have never been more open to transcendental ideas, to the possibility of dimensions unseen, of higher-order beings and energies and presences celestial, of guidance from above.”

Olga Kharitidi, M.D., provides still more insight into the Shambhala myth in her recent book, Entering the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist (Harper Collins, 1996). This riveting autobiographical narrative is the latest entry in the New Age/shamanic adventure genre pioneered in the books of Carlos Castaneda and Lynn Andrews (and more recently in the Celestine Prophecy and Mutant Message from Down Under). Fortunately, Entering the Circle is not just an attempt to cash in on a publishing trend; in fact, it may be the best-written book of its kind so far.

The author, formerly a psychiatrist in a Siberian mental hospital, is invited by a former patient to meet his new teacher, a female shaman who lives in a remote village in the Altai mountains. The curious but skeptical psychiatrist soon finds herself launched into a chain of events that will forever change her views of healing, science, and consciousness.

Like Castaneda, Kharitidi is taken into apprenticeship by a magician with baffling powers, illogical habits, and a bizarre sense of humour. But Uma – the author’s spiritual teacher – offers more than the standard lessons in transcending time, space, and rationality; she also unlocks a gateway to what could be the fountainhead of the world’s spiritual truths.

Nearly every culture maintains some vestige of shamanic rituals, practices that date back to Paleolithic times. In his classic study of shamanism, historian of religion Mircea Eliade traced the phenomenon to the natives of Siberia. And as we have just seen, Geoffrey Ashe and Victoria Le Page, in their books, have suggested that the universal ancient myth of a lost paradisal kingdom – the birthplace of civilisation and religion – may refer to a site somewhere in the Altaic mountains bordering Siberia and Mongolia. Thus when Kharitidi’s Altaic spiritual guide begins to tell her about Belovodia (the local name for Shambhala), one gets the sense that a tremendous secret may be on the verge of disclosure.

Back in the city of Novosibirsk, Kharitidi meets a nuclear physicist whose research into the fringes of human consciousness dovetails with her own exploding interest in the mysteries of the soul.

Working together, they retrieve more knowledge about the fabled Belovodia. “There have always been people within each [spiritual tradition] who were directly in touch with Belovodia,” writes the physicist during an exploratory trance session. “From time to time, knowledge from there has been opened up to your own civilisation. This has happened at moments of real threat to humanity. It is becoming open to you again now, because the power and energy you have accumulated are capable of causing many different kinds of catastrophes. Belovodia is becoming accessible to your consciousness to protect you by showing you other ways to live.”

Kharitidi’s story – convincingly told – seems destined to become a classic and deserves at least as wide a readership as the spectacularly successful (but fictional and clumsily written) The Celestine Prophecy.

Human Nature, Chimps, And Bonobos

The paradise myth tells us that we humans are not inherently or innately as destructive as we are in the context of civilisation. If today we are warlike and ecocidal, these are acquired tendencies that can also be un-acquired. In other times and places, people have been far more gentle, and have lived in far greater harmony with one another and with nature. In this regard, the paradisal worldview is starkly at odds with the Hobbesian notion that human beings in their “natural” state are violent and selfish, and that civilisation serves to moderate our deep-seated brutish inclinations.

Discussions about human nature inevitably turn on evidence drawn from studies of apes, who are genetically our closest relatives. Revelations about the territoriality and irascibility of chimpanzees have tended to favour the Hobbesian, as opposed to the paradisalist, view. Thus it was refreshing to see an article in the New York Times of April 22, 1997, by Natalie Angier, titled, “Bonobo Society: Amicable, Amorous.” The article is essentially a preview of a new book – Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, by primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University.

Bonobos – sometimes called pygmy chimpanzees – are more graceful and slender than their cousins, with smaller heads, longer legs, straighter backs, and more human-like posture. But their most glaring departure from chimps is in the area of social behaviour. According to the Times article, “Bonobos are much less aggressive and hot-tempered than are chimpanzees, and are not nearly as prone to physical violence. They are less obsessed with power and status... and more consumed with Eros.... Infanticide has never been seen among Bonobos.”

Among bonobos (quoting the Times again), “the female... is the dominant sex, though the dominance is so mild and unobnoxious that some researchers view bonobo society as a matter of ‘codominance,’ or equality between the sexes.”

Why are the bonobos so peaceful? It may be because, as de Waal writes, “The chimpanzee resolves sexual issues with power; the bonobo resolves power issues with sex.” The Times writer notes that “Bonobos lubricate the gears of social harmony with sex, in all possible permutations and combinations: males with females, males with males, females with females, and even infants with adults. The sexual acts include intercourse, genital-to-genital rubbing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and even a practice that people once thought they had a patent on: French kissing.”

“Bonobos use sex to appease, to bond, to make up after a fight, to ease tensions, to cement alliances.” According to de Waal, “all this sex is not driven by orgasm or seeking release. Nor is it often reproductively driven. Sex for a bonobo is casual, it’s quick, and once you’re used to watching it, it begins to look like any other social interaction.”

Dr. de Waal questions the prevalent view that, since chimpanzees are genetically our closest animal relatives, and since chimps appear to be driven by “aggression, hierarchical machinations, hunting, warfare and male dominance,” therefore these characteristics may to some degree be “hardwired” into humans as well. He reminds us that bonobos are as genetically close to us as chimpanzees are, sharing 98 percent of humans’ DNA. “There’s more flexibility in our lineage than we thought” , according to de Waal.

If there is “more flexibility in our lineage,” that suggests there may also be more flexibility in ourselves – and that a great deal of what we think of as “human nature” may in fact be culturally conditioned.

The primary way cultures inculcate attitudes and behaviours is through patterns of child-rearing. Clearly, if we wish to produce a culture that is creative, peaceful, and happy, we must begin by treating infants with the care and interest that evolution has led them to require. Otherwise, we shall have still more generations of traumatised, unhappy, often violent adults.

An excellent new book that explores the implications of this subject is Early Child Care: Infants & Nations at Risk, by Dr. Peter Cook (News Weekly Books, Melbourne, 1996). Cook writes, “It remains indisputable that the early experiences of infants and young children in the western industrialised world have changed dramatically over the past several decades. Whereas it was once normative for mothers to remain at home to care for their children through the infant and toddler years, particularly if the family was not poor, it is no longer unusual to find mothers of children of under one year of age in the work force.... Needless to say, this change in maternal work patterns, stimulated by both economic needs and changing views of the role of women in society, has radically altered the world of the young child.”

Cook marshals a wide range of evidence showing that this change has ominous implications for society at large, and passionately argues for alternatives, such as Sweden’s program of work leave and financial support for mothers of young children. He also advocates more cultural support for breastfeeding, and calls carrying the baby in arms “the best ‘behavioural vaccine’ for healthy development.” This is a very important book for anyone who has or cares for young children.

The Garden Beckons Still

At lectures and in discussions I still often encounter the idea that it’s psychologically, politically, or philosophically wrongheaded to look back to an imaginary time in the past when life was somehow better; that if we are to imagine any paradise at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past. However, it occurs to me that this way of thinking is very much conditioned by modernism. The delegitimisation of the paradise myth was essential to the purposes of industrial civilisation, which substituted for the universal, ancient belief in a lost Golden Age the idea of brutish origins and continual progress. Among traditional peoples, the paradise myth appears to implant a feeling of security and stability; it is perhaps the cultural equivalent of the memory of loving parents and a happy childhood. The evolution-from-barbarism myth, on the other hand, imparts a sense of primal insecurity, which well serves the purposes of a civilisation that must continually disrupt existing social bonds in order to rebuild society in a way that serves the interests of a wealthy elite.

Other people object that, even if the paradise myth makes us feel good, it is pure wishful thinking; there is no evidence that such a condition ever actually existed. The assumption at the heart of this view is that paradise must refer to a perfect, unblemished state. Given that definition, I would agree. It is indeed preposterous to suppose that there was a time when there was no suffering of any kind, when whatever one wished for immediately became reality. The historical paradise, if it existed, was almost certainly not perfect in this absolute sense.

There is evidence – not of that imaginary paradise, but of ancient civilisations, cultures, and conditions that simply do not fit the conventional view of humans as slowly and steadily emerging from darkness into light, from barbarism to civility. A sympathetic view of the paradise myth encourages us to open ourselves to this new evidence, and also to admit that what we know of human prehistory is still sketchy at best.

The Great Tradition of which the paradise myth is a part tells us that there has been a succession of world ages. Our era is not the only one in which people have grasped at Promethean powers. Civilisations have come and gone; like the others, ours too will pass away. But the greater story continues. There have been – and will yet be – times when human society will strive more for material simplicity and spiritual depth than for wealth and power.

The worldwide myths of cosmic catastrophe remind us that we are wounded creatures who are dependent upon systems far larger than any we can control. We live by the grace of the gods of nature and cosmos, and we would do well to serve them by protecting and healing, wherever possible, the web of life.

The cynicism that denies the Great Tradition protects us from having to face the spiritual chasm that has grown between our present way of being and both our heritage and our potential. But it is only when we acknowledge that such a gap exists that we can begin to bridge it.

For those of us who hold to that Great Tradition, our job in the present world is clear: to keep the paradisal vision alive through the end of this dark age, and to build the foundation for a Golden Age yet to come.

Reprinted with permission from MuseLetter No. 66, June 1997. Richard Heinberg is the author of Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (Quest Books: 1995), Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony (Quest Books: 1994), and A New Covenant With Nature. He also publishes MuseLetter, an excellent monthly newsletter exploring issues in cultural renewal. For further details, visit www.museletter.com.

The Secret of the Gothick God of Darkness

The Secret of the Gothick God of Darkness

by Edred Thorsson

There is a Secret God, a Hidden God, who dwells in a spiralling tower fortress and who has guided and overseen our development from time immemorial--and who has remained concealed but very close to us awaiting the "future" time of re-awakening. The time of the re-awakening is near. Already we have heard the distant claps of thunder which signal the coming storm.

The legacy of the Dark Gothick God is one which can guide those chosen by him to a state of development wherein they have attained a permanent (immortal) consciousness which is free to act or not act in the material universe as it desires. This consciousness becomes privy to all manner of secrets of life and death and life in death. The price for this attainment is contained in the cost of attaining it--for one who has been so chosen there can be no rest, no respite from the Quest which is, and remains, the Eternal Work.

Because the way in which knowledge of this Dark Gothick God is passed from generation to generation contradicts the favored methods of the so-called "major religions" of the world--the religions of the "book"--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--this knowledge and its methods have been forbidden and made increasingly tabu for all of the centuries since the cunning ideological conversion of Europe by Christianity.

Books can be burned, religious leaders can be killed--but the blood endures.

The Gothick God

In the past ten or fifteen years our western European culture (including all the "colonies" of western European cultures such as those in North America and Australia) have witnessed a revival of an aesthetic "Gothick Kulture." This revival, or reawakening, of the Gothick spirit in many respects follows the characteristics of all the previous revivals.

The word "Gothick" is the key to understanding the nature and character of the spirit behind the aesthetic. (Here I use the "-k" spelling for aesthetic reasons as well as to differentiate the cultural movement from designations of architecture or literary history--more commonly spelled in the standard way.) "Gothick" is ultimately derived from the name of an ancient Germanic nation--the Goths.

These Goths came out of the far North (from present-day Gotaland in Sweden) and swept down into southern Europe beginning about 150 CE. They split into two major groups along the way: the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. In the south they established kingdoms in present-day Italy (with its capital in Ravenna) and southern France (with its capital in present-day Toulouse). This latter kingdom, under pressure from the Franks, moved its capital to the present-day Spanish city of Toledo. In all of these regions the Goths established many secret traditions at the highest levels of society. The tip of this secret iceberg is revealed when you see how many Spanish and Italian names of nobility are derived from Gothic forms. Some of the more familiar examples would be Frederico, Adolfo, Carlo, Ricardo...

The mystery of what happened to the lost treasure of Rome (including the "Lost Ark") can be solved through knowledge of Visigothic secret history. But that is a story for another time. Eventually the Goths were militarily defeated by a coalition of the Roman Catholic Church and the king of the Franks, who was the first Germanic king to convert to Roman Catholicism. All others before him, including many Goths, had "converted" to their own brand of esoteric "Gothic Christianity." The final end to overt Gothic rule in Spain came with the Muslim invasion in 711 CE. But their secret traditions lived on.

The Goths gained a reputation in their own time, and through subsequent ages, as a sort of "master-race." In ancient Scandinavia the word gotar was used as an honorific title for heroes, as even today members of the noble class in modern Spain are referred to as gotos ("Goths"). As time went on, some of the secret Gothic tradition merged with some of the established traditions of the peoples among whom they disappeared, while other parts of it were submerged in the cultural "under-class" of peasants, vagabonds and heretics.

Four to five centuries after their official "demise" an aesthetic in memorial to the spirit of the Goths was created in northern Europe--later art historians even named the style "Gothic." But nowhere the Goths had been remained unmarked by their prestige and secret tradition. This dark and mysterious Gothick past of superhuman qualities loomed as a secret alternative to the bright and rational Classical past which was used as a model for both Christian theologians of the Middle Ages and rational humanists of the Renaissance.

It is in this cultural framework that the Romantic movement began to grow in the 1700s. The Classical models had failed the avant-garde of the day. They looked to a more distant past, as a way of looking into a deeper, more mysterious, and at the same time more real, level of themselves. When the French looked beyond their Medieval Christian roots they found the Romans, and hence the word "Roman-tic" aptly described what it was they were looking for. In northern Europe, however, the term "Romantic" was generally found wanting by the adventurous souls who saw nothing of the deep-past = deep-self formula in the word. It was still remembered that our noble past was not Roman, but Gothick. (By now the word "Gothick" was also a synonym for "Germanic" or "Teutonic" as well.)

The Gothick world was a world of the distant and powerful past, shrouded in mist and swathed in darkness--a night-side world of dream and nightmare. The Gothick images conjured by the artists of the day--poets such as Burger, Novalis, Byron, and Hugo, or painters such as Fuseli, Arbo and Dore--acted as doorways for opening the world to the Gothick stream. The dead came alive once more and walked among the living--and upon the living begat the children of darkness.

This process has continued from those nights to these branching out in ever wider circles to encompass more aspects of life. But at the level of what might be called "popular culture" clear traces can be seen which connect Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho to M.G. Lewis' The Monk to C.R. Maturin's Melmoth to Edgar Allen Poe's tales and poetry to R.W. Chambers' The King in Yellow to Bram Stoker's Dracula and on to Hanns Heinz Ewers, H.P. Lovecraft and Anne Rice. All in their own ways, wittingly or unwittingly, have contributed to the descent of the Gothick God of Darkness in popular culture.

In many respects Stoker's famous novel, Dracula, was a "warning" concerning the emergence of an "evil influence" from the Gothick past--Die Toten reiten schnell! Stoker has his evil nobleman declare his kinship with the northern Berserkers who fought with the "spirit which Thor and Wodin [sic] gave them," and even obliquely refers to the Gothic tradition reported by Jordanes in his Getica that the Huns were the offspring of Gothic sorceresses, known as Haljurunas (Hel-Runes), and devils that roamed the steppes.

Neither was this influence lost on the American writer H.P. Lovecraft, who, when he was feeling more "heroic" in his younger days, strongly identified with the Gothick heritage. In a letter from October of 1921 he wrote: "I am essentially a Teuton and barbarian; a Xanthochroic Nordic from the damp forests of Germany or Scandinavia... I am a son of Odin and brother to Hengist and Horsa..."

The most important God of the ancient Goths was their most distant ancestor, which the Gothic histories record as one named Gaut. Old Norse literature provides the key to discovering the a more familiar identity of this God. There we find this name among the many specialized names given to the God Odhinn or Woden (as he was known among the Anglo-Saxons). Odhinn is called the All-Father, and Gaut is at the head of the genealogy of the Gothic kings just as Woden is at the head of the genealogies of all the pre-Norman English kings.

This God--or ultimate paeterhuman ancestor--is a wise and dark communicator. He is the master of all forms of mysterious communication by means of signs and symbols. In ancient times a system of such symbols for communication were discovered, and called "Runes." In order to learn these the God hung himself for nine nights on a tree and thereby encountered the realm of Death--and from that spear-tip point which is the interface between life and death he at once comprehended the Runes--the Mysteries of the World.

These Runes form a system of semiotic elements which are not only potent in a purely abstract or theoretical way, but which are, by their very nature, connected to the physical universe and the realm of generation and regeneration.

Even in ancient times, when Wodan was acknowledged as the High-God of the Germanic peoples, he was not a very "popular" God. He hid himself from most, and many were glad of it. Then and even now he dwells in deep darkness and travels to the most forbidden zones of the multiverse in his eternal search for ever increasing knowledge.

As with the ancient Goths, Wodan's most essential role is as the All-Father, as the progenitor of a continuous blood-line--and through that blood-line the forger of a permanent link with humanity. The importance of blood as a symbol of what it is that is really going on in a more mysterious way is essential. The mystery and secret of Wodan is not that "knowledge" of him is passed along through clandestine cults (though this too occurs), or even through the re-discovery of old books and texts (though this happens)--but rather that such knowledge is actually encoded in a mysterious way in the DNA, in the very genetic material, of those who are descended from him. This in and of itself is an awful secret to bear--and once grasped it is a secret which has driven more than one man mad.

Runic (Mysterious) information is stored "in the blood" where it lies concealed and dormant until the right stimulus is applied from the outside which signals its activation. In this way, knowledge can seem to have been eradicated, but yet resurface again and again with no apparent, or apparently natural, connection between one manifestation and other subsequent remanifestations.

Scientists have more recently discovered the phenomenal platform for this noumenal process in the form of the double helix of the DNA molecule.

The Secret

The Gothick obsession is an obsession with the Mystery of Darkness. It is no accident, or if it is an "accident" it is a meaningful synchronicity, that the name of the mythic sorceresses of Gothic history who gave birth to the Huns was Halju-runas, which literally translated from the Gothic would be "The Mysteries of Death." The Gothick offspring have always sought to pry into the Mysteries of Life and Death, to penetrate to the depth of the self and to the outermost reaches of the darkened and chaotic world. Boldly forging into the Darkness to seek the Grail of Undefiled Wisdom, to Seek the Mystery, is the highest Quest of the Gothick Children of the Night. There is great power in the Quest, and the Quest alone.

The Gothic word for "mystery" is runa. When the Gothic bishop Ulfilas translated the Christian Bible into Gothic for use in the Gothic cult he translated the Greek word mysterion with the Gothic runa.

The practical power of this at once simple and obscure idea of mystery was once well illustrated in an episode of the popular American television series, Unsolved Mysteries. One day an out-of-work father took his sons fishing in remote forest area where they discovered some stones in the river carved with a variety of arcane symbols. The father and his sons were deeply struck by the signs--What could they mean? Who could have carved them? They went home filled with a sense of mystery and awe. Within a short time business opportunities poured the father's way and the family was soon prosperous. They attributed their good fortune to the power of the stones. (Experts from a nearby university determined that the signs were carved recently and were not Amerindian petroglyphs, although they appeared to be imitations of similar designs.) Indeed, the family had come by their turn of good fortune from the stones--but not because of the particular shapes or qualities of the signs themselves but rather because of the sense of mysterious power which had struck the father and sons upon seeing the stones.

In the coming years the value and power of the concept of pure Mystery, or the Hidden, will become more apparent as the ways of the Gothick God of Darkness begin to unfold.

That which links this world with that of the Mysterious Gothick realm is clearly symbolized by the blood. But do not mistake the symbol for the entirety of the thing itself--although it, as a true symbol, is a fractum of the thing itself. The Gothick heritage, the heritage of power and knowledge, is encoded information which is by some as yet unknown paraphysical process passed from generation to generation. Knowledge of this mode of transmitting information is among the greatest tabus in our contemporary society. The reason for this is that it represents the greatest challenge to the Christian and Modern establishments with their dependence on conventional modes for transmitting information (especially the written word). The forbidden secret of the Gothick God is that you can be informed from within, by means of innate structures, which are stimulated by actual experience in the framework of objective intellectual knowledge (undefiled wisdom). When the right constellation of individuals with this knowledge are present the Ages of Dependence--on Medieval Churches or Modern Governments--will begin to come to an end. One of the chief signs of the dawn of the emerging new paradigm will come on the fifth of May in the year 2000.

The Gothick God of Darkness is the Unknown God, the Hidden God--and hence the God of unknown and hidden things. His actions are hidden because he is hidden. Mere words cannot reveal this information, only Words (the hidden forms behind a certain key concepts) can do this. It is these which hold the secrets of eternal consciousness and power beyond death. Look, you see it before you now! If you see it, you must work to realize it within--and having mastered it there, to realize it without.

In his landmark work The Postmodern Condition the French critic Jean-Francois Lyotard has some interesting things to say about the character of knowledge and the unknown in the coming years: Postmodern science--by concerning itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incomplete information, 'fracta,' catastrophes and pragmatic paradoxes--is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, non-rectifiable, and paradoxical. It is changing the meaning of the word knowledge, while expressing how such a change can take place. It is producing not the known, but the unknown. (p. 60)

Among the unknown things which will be produced in the Unmanifest zone, which the profane call "the future," will be the engendering of a new Gothick realm which will be none other than the remanifestation of the elder realm. As yet it lives in a crimson darkness, but in the spiraling tower the Gothick God waits and watches as those who will call his realm forth work their wills upon the world.

Reyn til Runa!

Ed. Note: Mr. Thorsson is author and translator of many books on Northern magic, Runecraft and the occult including Futhark, Runelore, The Nine Doors of Midgard, The Book of Ogham, Fire and Ice (as S. Edred Flowers), Lords of the Left-Hand Path, Runes and Magic (as Stephen Flowers), and recently Hermetic Magic.

A complete list of his titles (including those too dark and controversial for mainstream publishers) is available from Runa Raven Press, PO Box 557 Smithville TX 78957 USA. He is the founder of the Rune Gild.

He knows what secret Odhinn whispered in Balder's ear.

MANIFESTO: RIDING THE TIGER IN THE AGE OF THE WOLF

MANIFESTO: RIDING THE TIGER IN THE AGE OF THE WOLF

All revolutions are doctrinal. For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine.
— G.K. Chesterton

REVOLT AGAINST THE MODERN WORLD

A thinking person must come to the conclusion to reject the current system in its entirety. This national crisis makes a total change necessary. The European and worldwide crisis can only be resolvable through a radical political transformation.

What the world needs is in some ways a revival of the past. This past may be called "mythical" in the sense that it is not the past of official history but what the myths tell us of former ages. We emphasize the revision of conventional history to create a true view of the past, which has been destroyed by various developments under the name of progess.

The nations of the modern world are largely governed by political parties. A study of this fact will reveal that a political party is, by definition, a body which represents part of the nation, rather than the whole of the nation. Thus, in a typical "democracy" we have parties which represent different interests. The party principal promotes the division within the population to the detriment of the National Interest, the common good and the freedom of the individual. To the idea of division based upon class, religion or status, we counterpoise the idea of national unity. An unity based upon the need to seek the temporal and spiritual welfare of every citizen; upon the notion that true unity is a consequence of an all embracing justice; upon the recognition of a nation as a community of communities. A political party necessarily promotes conflict and hatred; we reject these nihilistic tendencies and seek the promotion of co-operation, love of family and community and a sense of honour, tradition and common cause.

Basically, one can say it is best to avoid dramatic social and political change but the current situation and the revolutions Europe has gone through call for a new revolution in reverse.

Our aim must not not be creating a new society and not attempting to create a revolutionary new modern state. It is necessary to restore a traditional one. We are conservative in the sense that we try to restore the past and in the sense that we do not belive in liberal democracy. We reject such doctrines as liberalism, individualism, materialism, and communism. The revolt means a struggle against modernism, Capitalism, American-Zionist imperialism, against the decay of the West in all its expressions: in a word, against Globalism , the project of conformity of peoples and continents to the totalitarian one-way thinking of the America-centred New World Order.

The Wesern nations need to regain the heroic spirit of this lost past through radical social, cultural and moral transformations. The necessary changes cannot be brought about by tinkering within the System, or by relying on the System's own institutions. They can only spring from a Counter-Revolution. This revolution must begin in the hearts and minds of individuals, then spread by example to involve whole communities in alternative structures.

Once we cease to depend on the old State, it can be swept aside. This means to create a new type of total culture in which values, politics, art, social norms, and economic activity are all part of a single organic national community. This changes must attempt to transform society in order to overcome perceived sources of national weakness. There is hardly one healthy part of the nation's existing political and social life to be retained. Since a change cannot be made by evolutionary development, we therefore try to bring about revolutionary change. In this way and in this sense we are revolutionary and opposed to conservatism as the strive to maintain the present state and avoid dramatic social and political change. The decadence of our society is such that we can only be a revolutionary movement with its objective nothing but a total and complete transformation of our society and its life principal.

Modern liberal-capitalist society cannot be "reformed". Between the soul destroying materialism of this system, with its attendant curses of mass unemployment, drug addiction, sexual deviancy, and spiritual and cultural degeneration, and the New Social Order sought for the good of our People, there is an unbridgeable gap. The crisis will end and a new age will begin that restores the people to a sense of belonging, purpose, and greatness. We need to take drastic action against our nation's "inner" enemies. The end result of this conservative revolution will be the emergence of a new man and new woman. This new man and new woman will be fully developed human beings, uncontaminated by selfish desires for individual rights and self-expression and devoted only to an existence as part of the renewed nation's destiny. The worst Age, the current Age of Iron would then necessarily be followed by a new Golden Age. Though for the time being one cannot hope to bring about the dawn of a New Golden Age he still has the choice to fight the demons in himself and within society to form distinguished individuals and a state of order.

THE AGE OF THE WOLF

”Again, we can see that the various facets of the contemporary social and political chaos are interrelated and that it is impossible to effectively contrast them other than by returning to the origins. To go back to the origins means, plain and simple, to reject everything that, in every domain, whether social, political and economic, is connected to the “immortal principles” of 1789 in the guise of libertarian, individualistic and egalitarian thought, and to oppose to it a hierarchical view. It is only in the context of such a view that the value and freedom of man as a person are not mere words or pretexts for a work of destruction and subversion.” (Julius Evola, Gli uomini e le rovine, Rome: Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, 1990, p. 64.)

"Our momentary situation takes the form of a great battle--a battle which may take more than one war to resolve it, or which may be resolved by a sudden cataclysmic happening, entirely unforeseeable to us now. On the surface of history it is the unforeseen that happens. The most human beings can do is to be prepared inwardly." (Francis Parker Yockey )

"An irreligious time which coincides exactly with the idea of a world-city is a time of decline. True. But we have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of Civilisation. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realising that though we may lie to ourselves about it we cannot evade it." "We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the last position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man." (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West)

"The only thing that matters today is the activity of those who can ‘ride the wave’ and remain firm in their principles, unmoved by any concessions and indifferent to the fevers, the convulsions, the superstitions, and the prostitutions that characterize modern generations. The only thing that matters is the silent endurance of a few, whose impassible presence as ‘stone guests’ helps to create new relationships, new distances, new values, and helps to construct a pole that, although it will certainly not prevent this world inhabited by the distracted and restless from being what it is, will still help to transmit to someone the sensation of the truth – a sensation that could become for them the principle of a liberating crisis." (Julius Evola)

"The possibilities still available in the last times concern only a minority and may be distinguished as follows. Besides the great ‘currents’ of the world there are still individuals who are rooted in terra firma. Generally speaking, they are unknown people who shun the spotlight of modern popularity and culture. They live on spiritual heights; they do not belong to this world…by virtue of these people, Tradition is present despite all; the flame burns invisibly and something still connects the world to the superworld…There are an increasing number of individuals who experience a confused yet real need for liberation, though they do not know in the name of what. To orient these people…to lead them to see the truth and sharpen their will to join the ranks of the first type of people is what can still be done…this is the only justification for tangible action that can be carried out by men of Tradition living in the modern world, in a milieu with which they have no connection. In order for the abovementioned to be successful it is necessary to have ‘watchers’ at hand who will bear witness to the values of Tradition in ever more uncompromising and firm ways, as the antitraditional forces grow in strength." (Julius Evola)

"There is a superior unity of all those who despite all, fight in different parts of the world the same battle, lead the same revolt, and are the bearers of the same intangible Tradition. These forces appear to be scattered and isolated in the world, and yet are inexorably connected by a common essence that is meant to preserve the absolute ideal of the Imperium and to work for its return." (Julius Evola)

"Although the Kali Yuga is an age of great destruction, those who live during it and manage to remain standing may achieve fruits that were not easily achieved by men living in other ages." (Julius Evola)

"Those who will be successful in overcoming all these obstacles and in triumphing over the hostility of an environment opposed to all spirituality will doubtless be few in number; but, once again, it is not numbers that count here, for this is a realm where the laws are quite other than those of matter. There is therefore no occasion for despondency; and even where there is no hope of achieving any visible result before the collapse of the modern world through a catastrophe, that would still not be a valid reason to refrain from embarking upon a work extending in scope far beyond the present time. Those who may feel tempted to give way to discouragement should remind themselves that nothing accomplished within this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can enjoy no more than a specious and purely ephemeral triumph, that every kind of partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the great equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth; for their motto they should take the one adopted in former times by certain initiatory organizations in the West: Vincit omnia Veritas." (Rene Guenon, Crisis of the Modern World)

"Life here on earth cannot be viewed as a coincidence. Moreover, it should not be regarded as something we can either accept or reject at will, nor as a reality that imposes itself on us, before which we can only remain passive, or display an attitude of obtuse resignation. Rather, what arises in some people is the sensation that earthly life is something to which, prior to our becoming terrestrial beings, we have committed ourselves, both as an adventure and as a mission or a chosen task, undertaking a whole set of problematic and tragic elements as well."(Julius Evola, Etica aria, p. 24)

"It is the attitude of a man who can choose the hardest road, fight even when he knows that the battle is materially lost and live up to the words of the ancient saga, ‘Loyalty is stronger than fire!’ Through him the traditional idea is asserted, that it is the sense of honor and of shame – not halfway measures drawn from middle class moralities – that creates a substantial, existential difference among beings, almost as great as between one race and another race. If anything positive can be accomplished today or tomorrow, it will not come from the skills of agitators and politicians, but from the natural prestige of men both of yesterday but also, and more so, from the new generation, who recognize what they can achieve and so vouch for their idea." (Julius Evola, Spengler e “Il tramonto dell’Occidente” (Quaderni di testi Evoliani, no. 14) (Rome, 1981).)

"A lot will now depend on how the individual can form his experience of battle: on whether he is able to accept heroism and sacrifice as a catharsis, as a means to liberation and inner awakening. This inward, invisible deed of our warriors has nothing to do with gestures or grand words, but it will be of decisive significance not only for the eventual victorious conclusion of this stormy time's events, but also for giving form and meaning to the Order that will arise from victory. This new man will vanquish everything tragic, obscure, and chaotic in himself, and will constitute the start of a new development in the time to come. According to ancient Aryan tradition, such heroism on the part of the best men can work as an evocation, and re-establish the contact between the world and the higher world that has been weakened for centuries." (Julius Evola)

"Before the vision of the Iron Age, Hesiod exclaimed: 'May I have not been born in it!' But Hesiod, after all, was a Pelasgic spirit, unaware of a higher vocation. For other natures there is a different truth; to them applies the teaching that was also known in the East: although the Kali Yuga is an age of great destructions, those who live during it and manage to remain standing may achieve fruits that were not easily achieved by men living in other ages." (Julius Evola)

"These truths must penetrate the soul: there is no place to go, nothing to ask for, nothing to hope for, nothing to fear. The world is free: goals and reasons, ‘evolution’, fate or providence – all that is fog, an invention by beings who did not yet know how to walk on their own and needed crutches and supports. Now you will be left to yourself. You must perceive yourself as a center of strength and know the action that is no longer dictated by this or that object, but for the sake of itself." (Julius Evola)

"Modern man has not only to fight against materialism, but must also defend himself from the snares and allures of false supernaturalism. His defence will be firm and effective only if he is capable of returning to the origins, of assimilating the ancient traditions, and then of relying upon the ascesis to carry out the task of re- establishing his inner condition. For it is through this that these traditions will reveal to him their deepest and perennially real content and show him, step by step, the path." (Julius Evola, Doctrine of Awakening)

"What may be called the tendency to ‘popularization’…in other words, the pretension to put everything ‘within the reach of all’, to which attention has already been drawn as being a consequence of ‘democratic’ conceptions, amounts in the end to a desire to bring all knowledge down to the level of the lowest intelligences." (Rene Guenon)

"There are two ways to surpass the bourgeois order…the first possibility leads lower still towards collectivist humanity with proletarian values…The second possibility is to fight the bourgeois order in order to rise above it. The new man will be anti-bourgeois, but on the basis of a superior, heroic and aristocratic conception of existence..whoever can only fight the left in the name of idols, of a life style or the mediocre conformist morality of a bourgeois, has lost the battle in advance. The man who had held himself upright through the purifying fire which has devastated his life – such a man, just as he refuses to be the instrument of a pseudo reaction, so he will be attached to forces and ideals that are superior to the bourgeois world and the era of economics. By such an attachment, he will create his line of defense and consolidate the positions from where, at the opportune moment, he will move to action and reconstruction." (Orientamenti, Julius Evola)

"By now you should understand what the main task of our Art is: detach yourself from the humid substance that you are made of, and be regenerated in the solar strength. Be transformed into a ‘being who is’, or into a breathing center, freed from the bonds of sublunar natures. You must wear out the thirst, the fever, and the endless and dark yearning for existence. This is the condition for going beyond the law of men." (Ercole Quadrelli, Gruppa di UR)

"The Initiate is a being who has learned how to take control of the totality of the cravings and deficiencies which urge him internally. He has learned how to resist them, and has the power to say NO, and how to break their law and how to develop a new life without them." (Julius Evola)

"I don't believe that philosophy taken in its narrow theoretical meaning, is able to influence politics. It has to be turned into ideology or universal vision of the world. Such an example was given by Enlightenment, Marxist dialectic materialism and by certain philosophical ideas, which were included in the concept of German national socialism." (Julius Evola, excerpt from an interview)

"The 'differentiated person' feels like an outsider in this society and feels no moral obligation toward society’s request that he joins what he regards as an absurd system. Such a person can understand not only those who live outside society’s parameters, but even those who are set against such (a) society, or better, this society." (Julius Evola, Cavalcare la tigre, p. 179.)

3.MANIFESTO:WE ARE A LIGHT AGAINST THE APPROACHING DARKNESS

MANIFESTO:THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN WORLD, GLOBALISM, THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND KALI YUGA

THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN WORLD, GLOBALISM, THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND KALI YUGA

THE REVOLUTION AND THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN WORLD

"Any historical prospect reveals that, just as man's civilizations know, after a dawn and a development, a decline and an end. Some tried to discover the law which governs such a destiny, the cause of the decline of civilizations. This cause could never be brought back to purely historical factors and naturalists." (Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World)

"There are diseases that incubate for a long time and become manifest only when their hidden work has almost ended. This is the case of man's fall from the ways of what he once glorified as civilization par excellence. Though modern men have come to perceive the West's bleak future only recently, there are causes that have been active for centuries that have contributed to spiritual and material degeneration. These causes have not only taken away from most people the possibility of revolt and the return to normalcy and health, but most of all, they have taken away the ability to understand what true normalcy and health really mean." (Julius Evola in Revolt Against The Modern World)

"This present "civilization"... has brought to all strata of society and to all races the following "gifts": restlessness, dissatisfaction, resentment, the need to go further and faster, and the inability to possess one's life in simplicity, independence, and balance. Modern civilization has pushed man onward; it has generated in him the need for an increasingly greater number of things; it has made him more and more insufficient to himself and powerless." (Julius Evola in Revolt Against The Modern World)

We live among ruins in a World in which "god is dead" as Nietzsche stated. The ideals of today are comfort, expediency, surface knowledge, disregard for one’s ancestral heritage and traditions, catering to the lowest standards of taste and intelligence, apotheosis of the pathetic, hording of material objects and possessions, disrespect for all that is inherently higher and better - in other words a complete inversion of true values and ideals, the raising of the victory flag of ignorance and the banner of degeneracy. In such a time, social decadence is so widespread that it appears as a natural component of all political institutions. The crises that dominate the daily lives of our societies are part of a secret occult war to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values in order to turn man into a passive instrument of dark powers. The common ground of both Capitalism and Socialism is a materialistic view of life and being. Materialism in its war with the Spirit has taken on many forms; some have promoted its goals with great subtlety, whilst others have done so with an alarming lack of subtlety, but all have added, in greater or lesser measure, to the growing misery of Mankind. The forms which have done the most damage in our time may be enumerated as: Freemasonry, Liberalism, Nihilism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Imperialism, Anarchism, Modernism and the New Age. Each of these creeds - materialist at base - is philosophically wrong and discredited in practice. Our definition of modern and modernism has nothing to do with what may be 'new or in the shape of the present', instead, what is here defined as modern, is that which is cut off from the Divine, the Transcendant, or the 'Supernatural', everything that does not refer to - and is isolated from - "the immutable principles which govern everything and which are known to man through revelation." (S. H. Nasr)

The French Revolution of 1789 which was effect of the ideas on which modern society is based upon was only one markable eruption of this development towards annihilation. It was the primary event which thrust philosophical materialism from under surface onto the world stage. In the intervening two centuries, the power of Organized Naturalism in all its diverse forms - that is to say, the systematic tendency to deny in theory and practice the reality of Soul and Spirit - has grown steadily to the point that it now threatens to engulf the entire world.

"The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national event -- the characteristics of a psychological crowd." (Gustave Le Bon)

"The idea that institutions can remedy the defects of societies, that national progress is the consequence of the improvement of institutions and governments, and that social changes can be effected by decrees...was the starting point of the French Revolution, and the social theories of the present day are based upon it. The most continuous experience has been unsuccessful in shaking this grave delusion ... institutions are the outcome of ideas, sentiments, and customs, and...are not to be recast by recasting legislative codes. A nation does not choose its institutions at will any more than it chooses the colour of its hair or eyes. Institutions and governments are the product of the race. They are not the creators of an epoch, but are created by it." (Gustave Le Bon)

"The civilization of the modern West appears in history a veritable anomaly: among all those which are known to us more or less completely, this civilization is the only one which has developed along purely material lines and this monstrous development, whose beginning coincindes with the so-called Renaissance, has been accompanied, as indeed it was fated to be, with a corresponding intellectual regress; we say corresponding and not equivalent, because here are two orders of things between which there can be no common measure. This regress has reached such a point that the Westerners of today no longer know what pure intellect is; in fact they do not even suspect that anything of the kind can exist; hence their disdain, not only for eastern civilization, but also for the Middle Ages of Europe, whose spirit escapes them scarcely less completely. How is the interest of a purely speculative knowledge to be brought home to people for whom intelligence is nothing but a means of acting on matter and turning it to practical ends, and for whom science, in their limited understanding of it, is above all important in so far as it may be applied to industrial purposes ?" (Rene Guenon, East and West)

KALI YUGA AND THE IRON AGE

The modern world has case broken away from all historical awareness whereas "traditional" structures, for example the Greco-Roman or the Irano-Indian, were organized on the basis of their awareness of their own belonging, belonging that is, to the "eternal" unchanging cycles of human history. The Ancient World at the time of Plato was aware of everything recurring in history. The modern world has put an end to every traditional order and has replaced it with chaos. The individualism of modern societies, which are without Tradition, accepts neither that people are unequal nor that Authority and Hierarchy as such defy analysis.

In "Works and Days" Hesiod divided time into five ages:--the Golden age, ruled by Cronos, when people lived extremely long lives 'without sorrow of heart'; the Silver age, ruled by Zeus; the Bronze age, an epoch of war; the Heroic age, the time of the Trojan war; and lastly the Iron age, the corrupt present. This is similar to Hindu and Buddhist concepts of the Kali Yuga. The idea of a Golden Age has likewise had a profound impact on western thought. The characteristic of the modern Age, which can be equated with the "Age of Iron", the "Kali Yuga", outlines and forseen in nearly all pre-modern societies, is the loss of identity and the rise of collectivism, a characteristic of Bolshevist and Western societies alike.

De Maistre explained that savage peoples are not primitive peoples in the sense of original peoples, but rather the degenerated and/or degenerating remains of ancient peoples that have disappeared. In contrary to the evolutionary dogma animal species clearly show the degeneration of primordial man’s potential. Julius Evola wrote: “These unfulfilled or deviant potentials manifest themselves as by-products of the true evolutionary process that man has led since the beginning. For this reason, ontogenesis, the biological history of the individual, does not repeat in any way the process of phylogenesis, the presumed evolutionary history of the species, but passes again through some eliminated possibilities. It stops to roughly outline them and then moves beyond, subordinating these possibilities to the superior and specifically human principle, which is defined and fulfilled little by little in the development of the individual.”

If anything characterizes our times, it is a sense of pervading chaos. In every field of human endeavor, the windstorms of change are fast altering the ways we live. Contemporary man is no longer anchored in certainties and thus has lost sight of who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. We are now living in an age of increasing strife and chaos. Almost every nation of the West has entered a dangerous age of mediocrity, weakness, and decline. Europe has fallen and brought its destructing forces to the whole world. The whole World faces a profound crisis. The so called progress and the development of mankind have brought us to a point near the end.

That "no more tradition's chains shall bind us" is one of the fundamental ideas of socialist/progressivist thinking. Man must be freed from tradition. Reason is to be the guiding light. The devil can cite scripture for his purposes. Reason can often be used to support any position. If men and women are freed from tradition, the experiences of history and the family environment, they can be manipulated and used by ideological and religious leaders, eccentrics and maniacs. If tradition declines, ideologues can mould and influence individuals.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND GLOBALISATION

The process of building the "new world order", at the centre of which stand the political-financial oligarchic groups of the West, is called as globalisation. The victims of this process are the sovereign states, the national cultures, the religious doctrines, the economic traditions, the manifestations of social justice, the surrounding environment - every spiritual, intellectual and material variety on the planet. The term "globalism" in the customary political lexicon means just "unipolar globalism", i.e. not the fusion of the different cultures, social-political and economic systems into something new (as this would be "multi-polar globalism", "eurasist globalism"), as the imposition of Western stereotypes upon mankind.

The type of world under construction was implicit in the history of imperialism and capitalism since the Second World War. The sudden and apparent collapse of Communism as the dominant and official political ideology in Eastern Europe was quickly heralded as proof of the technical superiority of Capitalism and Liberal Parliamentary Democracy, not only over State Socialism, but over all other political philosophies. From this background, the moral superiority of the current Western political order was also assumed, not by a process of rational and informed debate, but by simply stating it as axiomatic, as something which did not need to be discussed since it was 'self-evident'. But it has not been enough to dismiss the great thinkers and leaders of two millennia by whom Europe was originally formed and moulded as irrelevant to education in the modern world, except in a purely historical sense. It has also become necessary to create a sustained campaign against any manifestation of what might be regarded as 'anti-liberal' or 'anti-modern' thought.

Current political debate has become increasingly focused on matters of minor importance while issues of greater significance are not given a public airing.

There has been a steady internationalization of capital leading to the growth of the multinational corporations and the international banks to a stage where their power is organized through international institutions- the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade forums and the European Economic Community bureaucracy. The forces of global capital have created political ‘clubs’ such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberger Group. In Australia we have the Committee For The Economic Development Of Australia. We are witnessing before our eyes the emergence of a transnational class. This group has no allegiance to any ‘Western’ state, to any race or cultural identity. It is beyond the structures of international politics as have developed over centuries. The ownership of capital is not the sole entry ticket to membership of this class. Service in politics, management, the arts, academia or in certain professions, will win admission.

The "values" of the transnational class are economic. In the free-market of goods and ideas, a New World Order of plenty and peace will be built. All countries, all peoples are welcome to "join". All barriers to the movement of money and people will come down. Philosophies and religions will all become aspects of a cultural pluralism which can be ‘chosen’ by people on the basis of taste. Like a new Roman Empire, all is permissible if loyalty is rendered unto Caesar.

This New World Order was proclaimed the moment the old Eastern Bloc disintegrated. It is obvious that there are peoples who are not part of this Order. The Chinese superpower is not a member of the club; nor is India, and Russia remains unwelcome. The Islamic world cannot be part of a system that directly involves Zionism. African countries scarcely count at all. This does not mean that these lands are not penetrated by international capital, nor that they don’t contain sectors who would dearly welcome globalism. It does not mean that cheap labour countries are not exploited to provide cheap products – or immigrants to the factories of the home-bases of the NWO. The fact that whole areas of the globe are outside this system means that its claim to political normality is a basic lie. It must thence rely upon the impact of economic globalisation for its power.

In the struggle against the New World Order it is necessary to appreciate the presence of peoples and states outside of it, and possibly opposed to it. Not all these forces are fulsome or even conditional friends. Some are eying Australia also as an open-land available for possible settlement. Yet, in the world of realpolitik, facts are facts and it is necessary to surrender to the facts. It is obligatory that we mobilize our ideological weapons to win allies where we can, or to disintegrate or damage those structures imposed upon any people by the new Order. We must weaken this system.

This means we understand that if we demand national freedom for ourselves, we cannot repudiate it for others. We must favour national independence struggles. We must accept the genuine plurality of cultures and peoples, as opposed to the false pluralism of liberal-internationalism, which seeks to standardize humanity and culture. We must encourage armed neutrality against alien blocs and support - even critically - any regime bullied by the new Order.

2.MANIFESTO:RIDING THE TIGER IN THE AGE OF THE WOLF

Wisdom for the Wolf Age

Wisdom for the
Wolf-Age:
A Conversation With
Dr. Stephen Flowers

by Michael Moynihan

One of dominant paradigms of modern society is fragmentation. In the world of popular culture this translates into dazzling distractions and endless ephemera, while in the world of academia it engenders over-specialisation and an unspoken refusal to even attempt to understand the “bigger picture,” especially from a metaphysical perspective.

In this atomised environment, anyone extolling a cohesive vision that is marked by traditional values – not to mention high standards – automatically becomes an anomaly. So it is the case with Dr. Stephen Flowers, who is the rarest of breeds: a scholar with spirit, one who is single-minded yet open-minded. For more than a quarter-century he has dedicated his energies toward unraveling the mysteries not only of the ancient symbolic alphabet of the Runes, but also of the deepest realms of the Germanic myth and culture from which they arose. For Flowers, this quest is summed up in a single word, RUNA, which is the old Gothic language form of “rune” and was equivalent to the Greek term mysterion (“mystery”). It was in the early 1970s that Flowers heard this word audibly whispered in his ear, and since that time he has tirelessly pursued a path of understanding its implications.

Following graduate work in Germanic and Celtic philology under the esteemed professor Edgar Polomé (1920–2000), Flowers received his Ph.D. in 1984 with a dissertation entitled Runes and Magic: Magical Formulaic Elements in the Elder Tradition(later published by Lang, 1986).In the mid-1980s Flowers also began a more public writing career under the name Edred Thorsson. His books on the Runes and Germanic magic (Futhark, Runelore, At the Well of Wyrd, Rune-Might, Northern Magic, The Nine Doors of Midgard, and A Book of Troth) have become classics of sorts, and although they are aimed at the occult book market, they reveal a depth of understanding and degree of knowledge that is unusual to find in this genre.

Under his own name he also published less speculative material, for example Fire & Ice, about the German magical order the Fraternitas Saturni, and his translation of the Galdrabók, a medieval Icelandic grimoire. His interest in Germanic topics extends not only to the distant past, but also into more recent and controversial manifestations, such as the völkisch period at the turn of the 19th century or the esoteric aspects of the Third Reich, and his translations of Guido von List’s Secret of the Runes, S. A. Kummer’s Rune-Magic, or the writings of Karl Maria Wiligut (The Secret King: Himmler’s Lord of the Runes) all shed scholarly light on these topics. He has also written Lords of the Left-Hand Path, a lengthy study of darker occult currents, and an innovative analysis of ancient Greek magical texts entitled Hermetic Magic.

Unlike many who possess academic credentials, Flowers was never content to relegate his interests to a purely intellectual level, and thus he has long been active in the contemporary revival of Germanic heathenism, variously called Odinism or Ásatrú (a coinage derived from Old Norse, meaning “loyalty to the gods”). He was an original member of Stephen McNallen’s seminal organisation the Ásatrú Free Assembly (which still exists today as the Ásatrú Folk Assembly), and in 1979 founded his own initiatory group, the Rune-Gild, dedicated toward the serious exploration of the esoteric and innermost levels of the Germanic tradition, as well as the greater Indo-European culture of which it is but one branch.

Underlying all of his work is a belief in the profound importance of traditional Germanic thinking and the eternal relevance of its mythological expression. After all, English is a Germanic tongue, and our society – fragmented or decayed as it now may be – owes its true origins as much, if not more so, to northern Europe than to Athens or Rome. Dismayed at the ongoing erosion of support for Germanic studies at most universities across the Western world, Flowers has recently unveiled his latest project: the Woodharrow Institute. This non-profit educational institution aims to maintain and foster the tradition of Germanic scholarship, offering courses and publications, and interacting with academic circles wherever possible. Besides administering the Institute, Flowers and his wife Crystal also direct the Rûna-Raven publishing house, which issues an ongoing catalog of titles concerning varied aspects of ancient Germanic culture, along with specialised language studies and works in related areas.
– Michael Moynihan

Michael Moynihan: Can you recall what initial event or events led to your setting out upon the path you’ve taken toward understanding the mysteries of the Germanic tradition?

Stephen Flowers: I started out my “career” in understanding the mysteries of the Germanic tradition as what I would later come to understand as an “occultizoid nincompoop.” I was interested in a variety of pretty nutty things. One of my first passions was monster movies. Perhaps Famous Monsters of Filmland was my first bible. My “favourite monster” was the one created by Frankenstein. There was simply something about the “Gothic,” Germanic origin of the myth that appealed to me. Before that I can remember being drawn to all things Germanic (and Scandinavian) the films The Vikings (which I saw during a childhood trip to San Antonio) and the Fall of the Roman Empire vaguely inspired me with certain scenes of Germanic “barbarism.” Later this slightly matured into an interest in the Morning of the Magicians/Spear of Destiny mythology, and culminated in my “hearing” the word RUNA in 1974. This was a catalyst for a quantum leap in my development. It caused me to delve into the scientific and academic basis of what it was that had so fascinated me from childhood. All of this experience laid the foundation of the nature of my own teaching, following this pattern: (irrational) inspiration, leading to (rational) objective study, leading to (subjective) internalisation, which ultimately leads to objective enactment (= understanding/personal transformation).

Michael: What brought about your initiation into organised Ásatrú or Odinism, and how do you look back on this period now?

Stephen: Back in the mid-1970s there were only a very few individuals entertaining the idea of the revival of the old Germanic religion. My own individual journey started as early as 1972. However, I will say that it remained rather haphazard and undirected until 1974 when I heard the word RUNA whispered in my ear. But even then, with the inspiration from a higher source, the struggle to understand the full significance of it all was a significant one that had to be carried out in the earthly plane. I saw notices in places like Fate magazine for the Ásatrú Free Assembly and was intrigued, but for some reason I thought it unwise to contact this group until I had something significant to offer. By 1975 my work had taken the direction of being more guided by scholarly discipline. Once I had made significant progress in the reformulation of my runic philosophy (which found expression in the manuscript that became Futhark) and in my graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I felt prepared to make contact with Ásatrú groups.

I first met the leader of the AFA, Stephen McNallen, at the first AFA Althing in the summer of 1979. Meeting Steve was a life-changing experience for me. He is an embodiment of a kind of Germanic spirituality that puts words into action. It was at that time that I was named a godhi [the Old Norse designation for a spiritual leader] in the AFA. It is now the only credential that I hold as being of any significance in the world of Ásatrú /Odinism. Despite whatever history might have passed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there can be no doubt that Stephen McNallen is the guiding light of American Ásatrú. I count Steve McNallen as a friend and colleague and very much value the fact that it was from him that I received my godhordh – or “authority as a godhi.”

Michael: You have often spoken about how essential disciplined scholarly training can be for understanding the esoteric aspects of the religion and how to most effectively put these into practice. Presumably, such an exchange also functions simultaneously in the reverse direction – in other words, what positive ways did your active involvement with the religion impact your academic work?

Stephen: The esoteric, spiritual aspects function as initial forms of inspiration to the mind. This is essential to the Odian approach to life. First there is an “irrational,” or supra-rational, impulse – a bolt out of the blue that sets the conscious mind on its mysterious course. That impulse can, for many, be a disorienting stroke from which they never recover. They simply sink deeper and deeper into a sea of subjectivity. For another group, the subjectivism is eventually re-balanced with rational work. Understanding of the inspiration is gained, without “explaining it away.” The allowance of subjective inner experience and insight to coexist with objective, rational analysis is essential to the process of truly understanding the tradition in a scientific way, as well as to the process of personal development based on the traditional symbology.

It was noted by outside observers, my mentors in the academic world, that I had an uncanny ability to make sense of obscure myths and to apprehend the hidden connections between and among various mythic structures. This ability stemmed from my inner experience which was constructed on a basis lying outside the purely rational models. If one is trying to delve into the mysteries of the symbolic culture of an archaic world – one very much separated from our own contemporary society and values – then obviously some key must be found which is something other than plodding logic or wild speculation. For me this key is the balanced openness to the mythic spirit of Odin. I was lucky enough to have academic mentors who supported me in this approach, who were themselves spiritual men. Without their inner support I could not have achieved whatever it is I have achieved.

Michael: Why is the notion of a scholar of pre-Christian religion who actually adheres to the spiritual ideas that he also studies such a radical one? Is this simply a byproduct of the situation in the West where any religious path outside of the “mainstream” monotheistic faiths is painted as cultic and marginal?

Stephen: I think this attitude stems almost entirely from two sources: 1) the antagonism of the materialist worldview toward the traditional spiritual one, and 2) the opportunity the adherents to the materialistic worldview have taken to attack the spiritual view based on historical events surrounding World War II. This materialist worldview is “monotheistic” in the sense that it allows for only one set of orthodox values. In this way it is really a secularised form of monotheistic religion. The Judeo-Christian system of thought has lent itself very well to being secularised in such a way that it can be turned into a model for modern political and economic theories. As a side-note, Islam has been much more stubborn in its adherence to its original values, which has caused it to be very much “out of step” with its monotheistic cousins.

Judaism and Christianity can be tolerated by the establishment scholarly world because they can be viewed as theoretical prototypes of the materialistic and positivistic model that now dominates thought in the West. Earlier traditional models are seen not so much as a threat to religion as they are seen as a threat to the monolithic political and economic order. The pre-Christian, traditional philosophies are too divergent and multivalent to be coerced into one single “market” of ideas. This points to the fatal hypocrisy of the current crop of modernistic “thinkers,” who spout off about “multiculturalism” and tolerance, but who exclusively support monolithic socio-economic models that enact the opposite of what they publicly espouse. Surely the ancient, traditional and pre-Christian world is more in line with what really sounds best to most people. Are not ancient, pre-Christian Athens or Alexandria more ideal models for the future over medieval Rome or Constantinople?

Clearly the animosity to those who see value in pre-Christian models stems not from the religious side of the debate, but rather from the secular challenge traditionalism poses to the current political order. What is needed is a campaign for the re-education of the academic world to show that the idealised future is one that is more likely to be based on the mosaic of pre-Christian traditions than it is to be based on the monolithic Christian model.

Scholars of pre-Christian tradition must indeed be sympathetic and even empathetic to the paradigms they are studying. If they do not have a subjective link to the paradigm they are seeking to understand, then they have categorically placed an insurmountable barrier between themselves and the “object” they seek to understand. Hence they have in fact disqualified themselves from ever being able to really understand the patterns of thought in question.

Michael: You have always tried to encourage those involved in neo-heathenism to uphold a higher intellectual standard, and whenever possible to actively pursue serious academic study. Have you noticed any significant number of people willing to rise to the challenge?

Stephen: To this point I would say that there has indeed been a significant number of people who have taken up the challenge to pursue academic goals as a way to put their inner, spiritual lives on a more firm foundation. The number may be significant, but not large. It is hoped that with the advent of the new Woodharrow Institute a greater number of people will “get” what it is I am trying to convey in this trend. The whole “neo-pagan” world has been made a part of the Bohemian “underground” sort of mentality of the Anglo-Saxon (this includes the imitative American) culture. What I am trying to do is simply call the Anglo-Saxon culture back to its more organic Germanic roots. This includes the way in which the idea of “neo-paganism” is approached.

As I outlined in my essay “How to Be a Heathen,” printed in the volume Blue Runa (Rûna-Raven, 2001), there was a time when “pagan knowledge” indicated something that was rigorous to begin with, and gradually evolved to higher realms of the ordinarily ineffable. “Christian faith” was something which opposed “pagan knowledge” and was characterised by subjectivism and infinite appeals to unverifiable authorities from the beginning to the end of the process. In this way it can be seen how the typical “New Ager,” or “wiccan” [sic] is in fact paradigmatically much closer to the original Christian model of thinking than is the average “Christian believer” today. Serious Christian seminarians would not think of ignoring the study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, yet the many aspirants to the “priesthood” of Ásatrú today think that learning Old Norse is an unreasonable thing to require. It is remarkable to note how many people don’t even get the grammar of their supposed “Norse name” right!

The reasons for this apparent virtual hostility to learning are a part of the Anglo-Saxon “anti-egghead” mentality. By contrast it can be noted that some of the turn-of-the-century German revivalists were in fact professors, e.g. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (Tübingen) and Ernst Bergmann (Leipzig). This inner cultural bias must be first recognised before it can be overcome. Do not think for a minute that I am extolling the great wisdom or character of the typical modern academic. The academy is presently in decay. However, the basic and systematic knowledge possessed by those who have spent decades in specialised studies, and who have been the traditional recipients of knowledge handed down from several previous generations of scholars is a resource that is indispensable to us.

Michael: While your focus is usually on traditional Germanic or northern European culture and religion, you have also addressed other areas in some of your work, such as with the book Hermetic Magic. What was your reason for doing so – and how do these seemingly distinct realms fit together or cross-fertilise?

Stephen: In Hermetic Magic I concentrated on the operations from the Greek magical papyri that made use of the symbolic power of language and the alphabet (i.e., the more Greek-influenced operations). Indeed there is a great deal of possible cross fertilisation between the Germanic and Greek traditions of verbal and alphabetic magic. The book Hermetic Magic was an experiment in the use of the principle of RUNA in the decoding of a tradition other than the Germanic. It proved to be generally successful. Much of what Hermetic magic was all about has been lost in the Golden Dawn/OTO-style magic of the Victorian gents. Hermetic Magic is an attempt to go ad fontes, i.e., back to the sources of what Hermetic magic is, in order to arrive at a fresh and eternal perspective on the power of the human will. This is an exercise in the power of RUNA, Mysterion, as I see it. Hermetic Magic shows what can be done with the principle of RUNA/Mysterion. That it has been generally ignored by the run-of-the-mill “hermetic” crowd is a sign of just how esoteric the actual tradition is.

Michael: The work of Georges Dumézil, the French scholar of Indo-European comparative religion, has been a strong influence on your own outlook. What do you consider to be the most important aspects of his work, and why did they resonate with you to such a degree?

Stephen: First of all, I suppose I came to it as a matter of tradition. My own teacher, and Doktorvater, Edgar Polomé, was a (qualified) Dumézilian. Beyond what I learned in his classrooms, however, I saw that his objective studies (which involved making detailed dossiers of the various Indo-European Gods, etc.) coupled with his structuralist approach allowed for the beginnings of a contemporary and living synthesis of ancient ideas with those of Jung and others. The ideas of Dumézil are 1) accurate and objectively verifiable to a great degree, and 2) are potent tools for current self-transformational work.

Michael: In recent years there seems to be a consistent effort on the part of certain segments of the academic community to discredit Dumézil’s work, and especially his formulation of the tripartite/tri-functional model. Such attempts are reminiscent of those directed against Mircea Eliade and other scholars of religion and myth. Why this animosity, and what are these discreditors so afraid of?

Stephen: They are afraid of the resurgence of Indo-European culture. They have intellectually invested in the idea that internationalism is good and that anything that glorifies the non-European world is preferable to anything that seems to lend prestige to European culture. All of this is so ironic because the ideals from which they draw are entirely of European origin. Nevertheless, as a matter of ideology, but probably more as a matter of an intellectual fashion trend, the academic establishment frowns on anything that they see as “glorifying” the European culture. They would probably argue that their reasons for this vaguely have something to do with Germany in the 1930s. In conversations with German academics in runology I discovered that the same things are happening at German universities now as happened in American ones in the 1980s and 1990s – anything relating to ancient or medieval northern Europe is being dismantled.

There is also the fear that Europe will really be able to make peace within itself based on the Indo-European model, rather than the Christian and/or Marxist model. This would discredit their intellectual prejudices once more. Specifically on Dumézil and the tripartite theory, his theories have the potential of forming the basis of a pan-Indo-European cultural unity. They are the greatest challenge to Christianity and to materialistic positivism in the 20th century. So it is not without some justification that Dumézil has been so widely attacked. His theories do pose a challenge, and are not merely intellectual curiosities. They call for some sort of action and some sort of change on the part of the reader of his ideas.

The dirty little secret is probably merely that in academia the study of old languages and ancient history is hard, whereas what they are replacing all of this with is relatively easy. So that the “war on the Indo-Europeans” is really part of the general “dumbing down” of the academy.

Michael: Not so long ago you attended an international scholarly conference on runology in Denmark. What were your impressions about how this discipline is faring in today’s academic world?

Stephen: The academic field of runology, like any other academic discipline, is subject to the dictates of fashion and changing intellectual trends. (This is where an academic discipline differs from a Traditional discipline.) Most of the 19th and early 20th century runologists accepted the relationship between religion or magic and the runes as a given fact. They accepted this uncritically because it appeared to them (perhaps rightly) as the most obvious conclusion based on all prima facie evidence. Because they were uncritical in their acceptance, however, this left the door open to a subsequent generation of runologists to question the earlier generation’s assumptions. In the world of science this is a good thing. If those who did not question the “magical” nature of the runes had not been so uncritical, then a deeper and more insightful exploration of the idea of runes and magic might never have been undertaken.

I was very gratified to have younger individuals – many still students – at the runic conference discreetly approach me and tell me that part of the reason they came to the conference was to meet me, and that they had first been exposed to the wondrous world of the runes and the esoteric Germanic tradition through my more “popular” works.

The changing face of academia dictates that what is “in” today, will be “out” tomorrow. The seeds of the next generation of runologists have already been planted. On some level, perhaps, those who are foes of tradition have sensed this. Their strategy is perhaps to prevent the seeds from growing by not allowing the seeds to exist in fertile soil. The whole fields of runology, comparative religion, Indo-European studies, etc., are being systematically rooted out of academic institutions. Especially in America this is occurring with simultaneous impetus both from the “right” and from “left.” The international left sees the European tradition as being in power, and their myth of the dialectic determines they should seek to disestablish whatever is in power for “revolutionary” reasons. The right, on the other hand, is dominated in America by a Christian sentiment, which sees interest in our ancient traditions as being hostile to the Christian model. It is interesting to note that these apparently divergent interests of the “left” and “right” are, in America at least, in agreement that at least one of their common “enemies” is the organic national traditions of Europe.

This is occurring not just in America, but in Europe as well. Recently the position of Prof. Dr. Klaus Düwel at the University of Göttingen in Germany was terminated by the administration of the university. At the runic conference in Denmark the runologists signed a petition aimed at the university administration to ask that this prestigious position be maintained. The roots of the academic study of runes at that institution go back to the Grimms.

Michael: Is the founding of the Woodharrow Institute for Germanic and Runic Studies in some ways a response to the current situation regarding these areas of study?

Stephen: The Woodharrow Institute is not only a response to this current situation in academia, but also to shortcomings, as I see them, in the “esoteric subculture.” The Institute stands apart from the current “magickal subculture” in that it is informed by, and on its most basic level must conform to, all the legitimate rules and regulations of scientific procedure – all of which are beneficial to the overall process if kept in perspective. These methods infiltrate our way of approaching esoteric areas, or areas of inner work, as well. As has always been the case with the Rune-Gild – which in the future will be re-established within the context of the Woodharrow Institute – we start with what is objectively known and move from that base into an exploration of the darker corners of the unknown.

So the Woodharrow Institute is intended to meet a challenge from two ends of a pole: it is to bring an objective and scientific basis to the beginning of inner work, and to re-envision the final purpose or aim of intellectual work itself as a completion of the self. It is to bring objective standards to a morass of subjectivity (the occultizoid culture) and to bring inner purpose to the often sterile and pointless pursuits of academia. This is a formidable challenge, to be sure. Yet this is what makes it worth undertaking.

Michael: What role do you see the Institute ultimately fulfilling, and how might it interact with more established or formal academic institutions?

Stephen: It is clear from what has already been said that the academic discipline of runology, as well as those of older Germanic studies and Indo-European studies, etc., are in trouble. If scientific runology is left to its normal cycle of intellectual fashion, there is no harm done. The radical traditional runologist would be free as always to partake of the fruits of that intellectual labour and have his inner work enriched by it. However, if the traditional academic fields are uprooted and marginalised to extinction then this would no longer be possible.

The Woodharrow Institute is designed to be a refuge for the academic tradition – and to foster to some extent a sort of guerrilla scholarship. The basic work for the Institute must not in any way be compromised by “occult thinking”; it should be entirely historical and academic. We will “play the scholarly game” according to its rule and according to its standards. Then and only then can the Institute fulfill another of its major tasks: to act as a “think tank” for those interested in inner work. The fact that the word “academic” is used to describe only that kind of work which is “purely scientific,” is in a sense a misuse of the term. Plato’s school, the Academy, from which our modern use of the term is ultimately derived, did not have as its final aim the production of scientific data limited to what can be quantified and objectively known. That was only a stepping stone to the true purpose of the school, which was the transformation of the individual into a higher form of being – in other words, the final “product” was the completed soul. This whole ultimate purpose has been lost in the modern academic institution, except perhaps where secret pockets of scholars might preserve it unofficially.

The Woodharrow Institute seeks to restore the complete model of the old Academy in a Germanic context. As such its ultimate purpose is transformational, and not merely “scientific” as understood in modern parlance. Participants in, or members of, the Institute will, however, not be required to pursue this inner work as any sort of prerequisite for membership. The Institute will develop a full range of areas of interest and research.

It is hoped that the Institute will in the future be able to establish good relations with mainstream academia. We could offer practical programs in language study, experimental archeology and, most importantly, experimental or experiential ideology. Our mission in mainstream academia would be merely to restore traditional areas of study where they have been lost and to help retain them where they are in jeopardy.

The Institute then has two main purposes in the world:

1) to act as a refuge for displaced scientific work in the fields of runology, Germanic studies, and general Indo-European studies; and 2) to act as a think tank for individuals interested in making use of the scientific work as a basis for inner development. The Woodharrow Institute is a weapon in the struggle against both modernism and occultizoid subjectivism.

Michael: In the ancient Germanic cosmology, a cyclical dynamic exists where the old order collapses and is torn apart from both within and without, but this is a necessary step that precedes the unfolding of a new beginning. Is it a stretch to look at contemporary events in this light? And if not, what is the best way for the aware individual to approach the present situation?

Stephen: It is my contention that traditional views are eternally valid and ever-meaningful. The Germanic cosmology, ragnarök, which can actually refer to the beginnings, middle or end of the cosmological process, involves at the end of the process certain ages. These are referred to in the poems of the Elder Edda with terms such as the “Wolf Age,” which refers to the “greedy,” “covetous,” or “appetitive” nature of the age. Clearly the world as a whole is in a “Wolf-Age.” The individual, and certain groups of elect, can, as Julius Evola put it, “ride the tiger.” This means that certain individuals and groups can, exercising their will against the grain of consensus reality as informed by Tradition, lay the personal and transpersonal foundations for the next (inevitable) cyclical development. This next cycle will (naturally) be more imbued with Tradition, as the developmental wheel turns.

Portions of this interview with Dr. Flowers have previously appeared in the British journal Rûna: Exploring Northern European Myth, Mystery and Magic, available from BM: Sorcery, London WC1N 3XX, UK. To learn more about the Woodharrow Institute, or to request a catalog of books available from Rûna-Raven Press, contact PO Box 557, Smithville, Texas 78957, USA.

Michael Moynihan is a writer, artist, and publisher from New England. He is co-editor of the annual journal TYR: Myth – Culture – Religion, published in Atlanta, Georgia. He regularly contributes to cultural and music periodicals worldwide, and is also the North American Editor of Rûna. He may be reached at: dominion@pshift.com.

Solar Symbology in the Chronicles of Narnia

Solar Symbology in the Chronicles of Narnia
by Christopher Knowles

Far from being the dour hermit of Evangelical propaganda, CS Lewis was a much more complex and fascinating character. His eccentric personal life has come under scrutiny in recent years (his only marriage came in his late middle age and was an immigration scam, he also never fathered any children) and his religious eccentricity has never really been a secret. He once wrote to a friend, "I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn't feel it would have been very wrong - would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis." Lewis biographies are rife with this kind of enthusiasm.

Indeed, Lewis came to Christianity from a lifelong obsession with Nordic and classical paganism, which he never disavowed. Indeed he imagined Christianity as the fulfillment of paganism, particularly that of the Solar tradition. As a serious scholar, Lewis understood how similar the Solar monotheism of the late Roman Empire was to Christianity, and it's the earlier tradition that informs his most famous work of fiction...


Lewis' first novel in The Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, tells the story of the four Pevensie siblings- Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy - sent away from London during World War II to the countryside to stay with a kindly professor named Kirk.

Stuck inside on a rainy day, they explore the professor’s large estate and find an empty room with nothing but a wardrobe in it. Lucy, the youngest, enters into the wardrobe during a game of hide and seek and finds herself in a snowy forest. She stands near a lamppost in a clearing and encounters a faun named Mr. Tumnus. The faun then invites Lucy to his home for a typical British teatime. There, Tumnus informs Lucy that he was instructed to kidnap her. Overcome with pangs of conscience, he then lets her escape.

Lucy returns to Kirk’s estate through the wardrobe and tells the others of her adventures. They dismiss her story as childish fantasy, but during another round of hide and seek Edmund, the second youngest, follows Lucy into the wardrobe, and then into Narnia, the snowy land. Unable to find Lucy, Edmund encounters Queen Jadis the White Witch, ruler of Aslan. She offers Edmund a dessert called ‘Turkish Delight,’ which Edmund finds irresistible. The Witch then asks him to bring his brothers and sisters to Narnia.

Following this, Edmund finds Lucy in the woods, and the two return through the wardrobe together. Lucy tells Susan and Peter that Edmund too discovered the land of Narnia. Edmund's denies this, much to the consternation of Lucy. But the others end up hiding in the wardrobe one day when the professor has over visitors. They then enter the land of Narnia together. Lucy takes her siblings to see Mr Tumnus, only to discover that his home had been trashed, and he had been arrested by Maugrim the wolf, head of the White Witch’s secret police. They decide to try to find him, since they are unable to find the way to the wardrobe.

The Pevensie children then meet Mr and Mrs. Beaver, who take the kids to their home in a dam. The Beavers feed their guest and tell them of the horrible curse of the White Witch, who has kept Narnia in winter for a 100 years. They tell the Pevensies of the prophecy of Aslan, who will come and defeat the white witch. He will bring the Spring with him. The Pevensies then resolve to go meet Aslan at the Stone Table, where is supposed to appear. But Edmund flees the beavers’ home while this conversation takes place and returns to the White Witch. He lusts after the Turkish delight the witch keeps. He betrays his siblings by telling the Witch and Maugrim all that the Beavers had said of the return of Alan.

The Beavers then take the other children on journey to find Aslan. They spend a cold night huddled together in a cave. That morning they meet Father Christmas, who gives them all presents. Mr Beaver proclaims that the return of Father Christmas is a sign that the Witch’s spell is beginning to break and that Aslan’s power is on the rise. Meanwhile, the Witch takes her sleigh and her wolves to find Aslan and defeat him. Edmond is dragged behind her team, quite miserable. But the sleigh runs aground as the ice and snow begin to thaw. Springtime is coming to Aslan.

The other children then meet Aslan at the Stone Table. He greets the children and tells Peter of his destiny of king of Narnia. Aslan then learns that the Witch is planning to sacrifice Edmund, so he sends the Talking Beasts to rescue the boy from her clutches. But the White Witch comes to Aslan’s camp and claims that Edmund is rightfully hers. She claims his life on the basis of the ancient law that allows her control over all traitors. Aslan and the Witch confer and come to an agreement. Then Aslan leads his followers to the Fords of Beruna, to prepare for battle against the forces of the Witch.

That night, Aslan leaves camp for the Stone Table, where the White Witch has set up her camp. Lucy and Susan accompany him. They hide as Aslan presents himself to Witch for sacrifice. The witch orders that Aslan’s mane be shaved and that he be tied to the Stone Table. Aslan is then killed, and the Witch takes her minions to Beruna to finish off his forces. Lucy and Susan go weep for him at the Stone Table. As dawn breaks, mice begin to unravel his bonds and he is restored to life as the Sun rises. The Stone Table cracks. He and the girls then go frolic on a hilltop. After this idyll, Aslan goes and frees the animals that had been turned to stone by the Witch and kept in her courtyard.

Aslan then leads the freed beasts to battle against the forces of the White Witch. She is defeated and the Pevensie children are crown the Kings and Queens of Narnia. Years pass and the children- now grown- go hunting for the fable white stag and end back at the lamppost which marked the doorway between the two worlds. They then tumble back into the wardrobe and back into their present day. They are children once again. The Professor warns them not reenter the wardrobe, since they will return to Narnia soon enough.

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOLAR SYMBOLS

The use and placement of pre-Christian symbols in The Lion, the With and the Wardrobe correspond with their role in the course of the narrative. And what is clear is that it is not Christ, but rather the reborn sun of the Winter Solstice that Aslan actually symbolizes. Most modern Christians are almost as weak on their Bible as they are on the traditions that influenced the construction of Christianity, so this fact is mostly lost.


The first signifier we see in Narnia is the lamppost in the forest, an obvious phallic/obelisk symbol. Ancient obelisks were often topped with lamp-bowls. The Victorian model he uses is merely a utilitarian version of that ancient device.

Mr. Tumnus is simply Lewis’ fanciful name for Pan. He is the first denizen of Narnia that Lucy meets, which points to his significance in the story. Pan is identified with nature and fertility, and his capture by the White Witch’s minions corresponds to the diminution of fertility in the winter months.

Mr. Tumnus tells Lucy “about long hunting parties after the milk-white stag who would give you your wishes if you caught him. “ (pg.17) The White Stag is a manifestation of the Celtic sun god, Lugh.

Tumnus reveals to Lucy that the Witch represents the cold winter months in this elemental struggle: “It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas, think of that” (pg. 20) It is never Christmas there, because December 25th is the day when the recovery of daylight first becomes noticeable.

Mr. Beaver then reveals that Aslan is the strengthening Sun of the post-Solstice days as the Winter gives way to Spring on the Equinox. He tells the children that when Aslan bares his teeth “Winter meets its death. When he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again” (pg. 85) The Lion’s mane is an ancient symbol of the Sun’s rays.

Lucy is identified as a representation of the summer months when Lewis tells us "At the name of Aslan, Lucy got the feeling you get when you wake in the morning and realize it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer." (pg. 74)

The children shout out "Tell us about Aslan...once again that strange feeling - like the first sings of spring had come over them." (pg. 85)

Mr Beaver says when Father Christmas shows up, “This is a nasty knock for the witch. It looks as if her power is already crumbling.” (pg. 116) This is a clear reference to the ‘Nativity of the Sun god’ on December 25th. Indeed, this is when the power of Winter “begins to crumble.”
Similarly, Father Christmas himself says that his coming showed that “Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.” (pg. 117) This is exactly the reason the Ancients celebrated the rebirth of the Sun on the day we now know as Christmas.

The gifts receive from Father Christmas correspond to their identities as the four seasons.

Father Christmas gives Susan a bow and a quiver of arrows. Arrows are an ancient symbol for the rays of the Sun, predating both Judaism and Christianity. In the ancient Egyptian hymn to Aten, the Sun’s arrows are praised:

“Thy rising [is] beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life. Thou dost shoot up in the horizon of the East, thou fillest every land with thy beneficence. Thou art beautiful and great and sparkling, and exalted above every land.. Thy arrows (i.e., rays) envelop (i.e., penetrate) everywhere all the lands which thou hast made."

This identifies Susan as the Spring, the season where the Sun comes into its fullest power, from the Equinox to its peak on the Solstice.

Father Christmas gives Lucy a bottle with a tonic made from the fireflowers “that grow in the mountains of the Sun.” He tells Lucy that the elixir will restore anyone who is hurt to health. (pg. 118-9) Again, this reinforces Lucy's role symbolizing the hot summer months, which are signified by the fireflowers.


Edmond- who symbolizes the dying sun of the days following Autumnal Equinox- then becomes a witness to the Sun’s gathering strength while the Vernal Equinox approaches. Lewis writes that “the mist turned from white to gold” and that “(s)hafts of delicious sunlight struck down onto the forest floor.” Edmund sees the ground “covered in all directions with little yellow flowers” (pg. 131)

The Witch’s dwarf henchman reiterates Aslan’s identity as the Sun when he cries to her, “Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing.” (pg. 133)
Aslan’s power is such that the forest is seen “passing in a few hours from January to May.” It is explained that only the Witch knew that this is what would happen when Aslan returned to Narnia. (pg. 136)

Lewis’ description of Aslan’s camp is rife with inarguably Solar imagery, here expressed in color: “A wonderful pavilion it was - and especially now when the light of the setting sun fell upon it - with sides of what looked like yellow silk and cords of crimson and tent pegs of ivory; and high above it on a pole a banner which bore a red rampant lion..." (pg. 138)

As the Sun sets, Aslan later takes Peter to a hilltop to show the boy his future domain. Lewis describes the sight of the castle as “shining because it was a castle and and of course the sunlight was reflected from all the windows which looked toward Peter and the sunset, but to Peter it looked like a great star resting on the seashore.” (pg. 142) This tableau was used in Disney’s The Lion King.

The juxtaposition of the “sunset” and the boy’s future seat of kingship show that Peter will be the guardian of the Sun while it works to regain its power in the winter months. Castles were designed as fortresses meant to protect the King or lord.

Aslan leaves his camp for his sacrifice at the Stone Table while “(t)he moonlight was bright” (pg. 163) This recalls the primacy of the moon in the winter skies of the Nordic lands that Lewis was so obsessed with.

The Witch commands that Aslan “ first be shaved.” The cutting of the lion’s mane is an ancient motif meant to symbolize the weakening of the Sun’s rays in days leading up to the Solstice. (pg. 166) This has a parallel in the Samson stories as well.

Aslan’s face is linked to the sunrise when Lewis writes that it “ looked nobler as the light grew and they could see it better.” Remember that the name Horus comes from the Egyptian Heru, meaning “face.”

Aslan’s resurrection is presaged by a pack of mice who chew at his restraints to free him. Susan note that the mice “think it’ll do some good untying him.” (pg. 175) In Ancient Greece, mice were sacred to Apollo, who later became identified with Helios, god of the sun.
Aslan’s resurrection is linked unmistakably to the sunrise. “The rising of the sun had made everything look so different...the Stone table was broken into two pieces ...and there was no Aslan.” (pg. 177)

Christ remains in the cave for three days and nights in the Christian resurrection story, but Aslan dies at night and is reborn with the sunrise. This directly parallels the Sun’s ‘rebirth’ on the morning following the Winter Solstice, when the daylight hours begin to lengthen.

The reborn Aslan is then depicted as “shining in the sunrise.” Aslan is bigger and stronger than before and is depicted as triumphantly shaking his regrown mane, again a ancient symbol of the Sun’s rays (pg. 178)

Hilltops are important in this story, just as they were to ancient Sun Worshippers. After his resurrection, the first thing Aslan does is take Susan and Lucy for a hearty romp atop a hill. (pg. 179)

The girls then "climbed onto his warm, golden back" (pg. 180) and rode atop Aslan through the forest. This corresponds to the girl’s identity as symbols of the fertile spring and summer months, when the Sun is in its glory.

Aslan’s breath melts and thaws the ‘stone curse’ of the witch. This action compared to "lighted match" put to "a bit of newspaper.” (pg. 184) This “slow burn” corresponds to the thawing power of the Springtime sun.

In Chapter 17 (the final chapter) we see the grown up Pevensie siblings hunting the white stag. Secret Sun readers are familiar with the number 17 as being identified with Horus avenging the death of Osiris, and the number of the New Age through the Aquarius symbolism in the Tarot.

At the end of the story, the remnants of the Witch's army linger in the forest just as the fields thaw first and the forest stays frozen longer.

Chasing the white stag into a thicket they come across the iron lamppost, then return to Britain as children. (pg. 203) This is the ‘reversal of time’ motif, yet again.

The day Lewis chose to first show the printed proofs for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the ‘Inklings’ - June 22 - is the first day following the Summer Solstice, and the day the Sun enters the astrological sign of Cancer. The significance of this day in relation to Biblical prophecy was discussed in an earlier chapter, and given the promiscuous use of Solar symbolism in his novel, my guess is that he understood the inherently Solar nature of those prophecies as well.

CORONA-TION

The Pevensie children’s coronation scene in the Disney/Walden adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reveals what they are meant to represent and their thrones are all decorated with golden rising sun motifs. The order in which they are placed and each character’s role in the death and rebirth of Aslan correspond to the four stations of the Sun- the Autumnal Equinox, the Winter Solstice, The Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice.


The first in line is Edmond. He is the traitor to the Sun. It is through his subjection to the power of the White Witch leads to the death of Aslan, the Sun King. He represents Autumn, when the Sun's power weakens and dies. Aslan dies in Edmond’s ‘place’ (meaning the Autumnal Equinox in the Fall) and is then reborn.
Second in line is Peter. Just before he leaves Narnia, Aslan bestows his authority upon Peter, who represents the Lion in winter. The name ‘Peter’ comes the Greek petra, meaning ‘stone.’ The significance of his name is symbolized by the stone statues in the garden of the White Witch symbolize the frozen earth. Peter is the young apprentice king, and his uncertainty in wielding his sword represents the reborn Sun in winter as it slowly regains its power after its ‘death’ at the solstice.

Next is Susan. The name Susan comes from the Hebrew Shushan, meaning ‘lily.’ The lily had sexual connotations in the ancient world, and hence became associated with the ancient mother goddess Astarte (or Eostre), and the arts of sexual love and procreation. Today, lilies are used by Christians in Easter celebrations. Since she and Lucy found the reborn Aslan, she represents the Spring, when the Sun regains its power against the night.

• Last in line is Lucy. Lucy means ‘light’ and she represents the power of the Sun at its zenith. It is she who discovers Aslan, and it is her arrival in Aslan that breaks the spell of the White Witch. It is Edmond who follows her through the Wardrobe, just as the Autumn follows the Summer.

THE BATTLE OF WINTER AND SUMMER

The idea of the a dramatized battle between the summer Sun and the Winter is nothing new. Sir Frazer tells us that such dramas have an ancient and venerable history:

SOMETIMES in the popular customs of the peasantry the contrast between the dormant powers of vegetation in winter and their awakening vitality in spring takes the form of a dramatic contest between actors who play the parts respectively of Winter and Summer.
In Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike also explored the origin of the Solstice celebrations in ancient times:

(Prehistoric humans) knew nothing of the immutable laws of nature; and whenever the Sun commenced to tend Southward, they feared lest he might continue to do so, and by degrees disappear forever, leaving the earth to be ruled forever by darkness, storm, and cold. Hence they rejoiced when he commenced to re-ascend after the Winter Solstice, struggling against the malign influences of Aquarius and Pisces, and amicably received by the Lamb. And when at the Vernal Equinox he entered Taurus, they still more rejoiced at the assurance that the days would again be longer than the nights, that the season of seed-time had come, and the Summer and harvest would follow. And they lamented when, after the Autumnal Equinox, the malign influence of the venomous Scorpion, and vindictive Archer, and the filthy and ill-omened He-Goat dragged him down toward the Winter Solstice. Arriving there, they said he had been slain, and had gone to the realm of darkness. Remaining there three days, he rose again, and again ascended Northward in the heavens, to redeem the earth from the gloom and darkness of Winter, which soon became emblematical of sin, and evil, and suffering; as the Spring, Summer, and Autumn became emblems of happiness and immortality.

In this regard, Lewis’ use of the Lion as the protagonist in this Solar ritual drama is also significant. The association of the Lion with the Sun goes back to at least the ancient Sumerians, in the third millennium before Christ. The constellation of Leo also has been invested with Solar significance:

Leo has always been associated with the Sun. Pliny wrote that Egyptians worshiped the stars of Leo because they knew that the Sun appeared to enter them during the time when the Nile flooded to bring fresh fertile soil onto the land. Because of this, it was thought that the Sun rose in Leo at the time of creation. Thus, Leo was the emblem of the fire and heat that nourished the land, intimately associated with all the blessings that rained down from the greatest of the gods that filled the world with light each day.

It’s important to remind ourselves that that lion was also a pivotal symbol in the Solar religion of Mithraism as well, as is December 25th and the militaristic symbolism we see in the Narnia books.

Christians often note that Christ is named as the "Lion of Judah" in the book of Revelation, but in I Peter 5:8, the Bible tells us that the devil is also a lion: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly coincidental that Disney's Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe premiered 666 months after Lewis first presented the galleys of the book to the Inklings at Oxford. But again, 666 represented the Sun in many ancient traditions, and modern Biblical scholarship has proven that it is actually 616 which was "the number of the Beast."

When the Trees Were Silenced-Hagalaz' Runedance

When the trees were silenced
Yggdrasil’s children fell
bloodstained leaves decaying
and noone was left to tell
the tales of the gods, of fates
and of the timeless worlds
wisdom we people once knew
of the wonders of life
and of nature’s own way…

When the trees were silenced
by the ones that fooled you well
when the trees were silenced
because they know the truth to tell
sorrow is the name of their song
the memory lives on
the spirit of the green man has gone
why has it been so long?
The seeker hears the cries within.

Will you remember the trees proud and tall?
Will you listen and answer nature’s call?
See, your dead world is starting to fall
let life return!

PILLARS of WISDOM

PILLARS of WISDOM
By RON McVAN

Wisdom consists in confirming one's conduct both to reason and to feeling,

to science as well as to faith, to the true as well as the beautiful.
...........................Alexis Carrel

All the world is a laboratory of experimentation---every stick and stone preaches a sermon---every living thing a lesson. To many, mythology was long thought to be nothing more than a mere collection of folkish fairy tales from the minds of wise old story tellers. Whole civilizations and cultures such as Atlantis, Lemura, Minoan Crete and the less distant Troy were brushed off by dim sighted historians as fable.

Archaeologists today have unearthed and exposed to the world the long lost reality of these nearly forgotten empires, and there are undoubtedly many that may be lost to the world forever. With the technical advantages of NASA satellites, ancient stone roads, temples and even pyramids can now be seen on the ocean floor. A fascinating renaissance of discovery through modern state of the art technology is beginning to unravel an exciting new understanding of our ancient mysteries and lost civilizations.

As children we grew up hearing many tales of human giants and for one to logically speculate that such a race at some distant time truely existed was long considered a child's folly. Archaeological digs, however, have proven otherwise. There has been evidence found of human skelatons up to twelve feet and over in length, discovered in places such as the Isle of Crete and the British Isles.

Christopher Chippindale, curator in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology states in his book "Stonehenge Complete", that at times, under various hillocks and monticules in England, one can find evidence of giant bones and that he personally has found a bone of a giant of an estimated 12 feet in length. In a Dialogue between Midas the Phrygian and Silenus that has survived in fragmentary form from the time of Alexander the Great, Silenus says that "men grew to double the size of the tallest men in his time, and they lived to twice the age." This exinct race of human giants no longer roams about our planet, nor do the dinosaurs. With an earth life stretching over billions of years, we can only imagine what other life forms have come and gone.

In Louisiana, signs of human civilization have been found in earth strata beneath that of the dinosaur age! Not only does this prove that humankind pre-existed the dinosaur age, but that the American continent was once a host to long forgotten races and civilizations as many new findings are now beginning to reveal. It is a reputable theory that the continent of Atlantis was once situated between America and Europe, loosely connecting the two now seperate land masses, There has been an abundance of ancient underwater ruins and artifacts discovered along the eastcoast of America and the westcoast of Europe to accurately support the real historic existence of the mythic long lost continent.

In the lower Mississippi valley, pavements and cisterns of brick have been found seventy feet below the earth's surface. In the state of Illinois an artesian well auger boring down into the earth brought up copper jewelry, iron hatchets and engraved rolled coins from a level one hundred fourteen feet deep! With this one find alone we are standing face to face with a civilization which may even likely predate Atlantis---so old, in fact, that it would be quite difficult to put a date on it. In the words of the honorable scholar Ignatius Donnelly: "How petty, how almost insignificant, how schoolboy like are historians, with their rolls of parchment under their arms, containing their lists of English, Roman, Egyptian, and Assyrian Kings and Queens, in the presence of such stupendous facts as these!"

"Some of the beliefs and legends bequeathed to us by Antiquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have many features in common is due to chance, and whether the similarity between them may not point to the existence of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared."

.....Oxford professor and Nobel Laureate Frederick Soddy (1910)

The unbiased, open-minded researcher can find ample signs of extra-terrestrial visitation upon this planet, evidenced in most every major civilization. The increased sightings in the latter half of the twentieth century and credible evidence only further lend more creedence that we are not alone in the incomprehensible vastness of space. While the world has made progress in science and industry, it can claim very little mental, spiritual or philosophical growth after thousands of years up to our current times. We live amongst worlds teaming with life all aroud us that we cannot even see with our feeble biological eyes. A Masonic star is often depicted with 33 rays of light. In the secret societies of the Masons 33 degree's is the highest level one can obtain, and for good reason. The age that was given to Jesus Christ of the Christians could only have been 33, just as the age of Aleaxander was destined to be 33. The number 33 has been found encoded in the works of Bacon, Shakespeare and in the Rosicrucian Manifestoes. It is encoded on the tombs of both Shakespeare and the alchemist Fludd, translator of the Authorized Version of the Christian Bible. The significance of this number is one of the oldest and most closely guarded secrets of esoteric philosophy. Thirty-three is the rhythm of the vegetative realm of the cosmos, the dimension that controls the interactions between the spirit worlds and the material world of matter. The closest to an explicit reference to it perhaps comes in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where the murdered Caesar's spirit described exiting by his thirty-three wounds. The secret of 33 refers to the number of gateways by which the human spirit may travel between the material world and the spirit worlds. Pactical knowledge of these pathways is usually only known to initiates of the highest level, because it enables them to slip unobtrusively in and out of the material realm.

We as earthbound physical realm humans do possess the ability to break from our fleshy prison of the body and travel into non corporal realms or even contact others in a non corporal manner. The eminent German writer, philosopher, poet and playwright, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe wrote of his own experiences on such non corporal interconnections with others: "We all walk in the mysteries. We do not know what is stirring in the atmosphere that surrounds us, nor how it is connected with our own spirit. So much is certain that we can at times put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits.....one soul may have a decided influence upon another, merely by means of its silent presence, of which I could relate many instances. It has often happened to me that, when I have been walking with an acquaintance, and have had a living image of something in my mind, he has at once begun to speak of that very thing. I have also known a man who, without saying a word, could suddenly silence a party engaged in conversation by the mere power of his mind. We all have some electrical and magnetic forces within us; and we put forth, like the magnet itself, some, attractive or repulsive power.... With lovers this magnetic power is particularly strong and acts even at a distance. In my younger days I have experienced cases enough, when, during my solitary walks, I have felt a great desire for the company of a beloved girl and have thought of her till she has really come to meet me. I was so restless in my room, 'she said, 'that I could not help coming here."
The ancient mystery schools taught that there are two kinds of men: those who are awake and those who are asleep. The majority of humans have constructed their own narrow coffins of limitation through egoism, selfishness, materialism, blind faith of religions and willing surrender to the mind controlling powers of media manipulation and the existing institutions of mislearning. To the sleeping masses, life carries on rountinely as a futile struggle against the inevitable, while the inescapable grave becomes a closing episode. To phrase it concisely, 'life' is the realization of life, and 'death' is the lack of that realization. There is no question that our forefathers had evolved much higher spiritually and certainly lived closer to nature, the gods and the All High Creator than we find ourselves today. The mindless have never lived. Life is more than animated existence! A race must also pursue its own indigenous spiritual quest, as it must likewise pursue and perfect the vital ethnic, genetic and characteristic qualities of its species.

Man should never be without knowledge of his self and origin or from knowing the purpose of his existence. Those who stray too long and far from the roots of their kind will eventually become spiritually and ethnically bankrupt as well as disoriented from life's profound purpose. The single most pervasive reason that the Christian religion survived as long as it has thus far in the Western European mind was that it absorbed and incorporated much of the pre-existing Euro-pagan spiritual customs and repackaged the ancient mystery school teachings, thus making it palatable to the minds and cultures of its adherents.

"The modern man abhors dogmatic postulates taken on faith and the religions based upon them. He holds them valid only in so far as their knowledge-content seems to accord with his own experience of the deeps of psychic life. He wants to know---to experience for himself." .............................C.G. Jung

It might be asked why we continually reject those original, divine truths of our ancient pagan, spiritual myth's, proffered to us out of the past? Why do we turn our backs on the ethnic divinities of our folk and those splendid doctrines of profound ancestral wisdom, willing only the present to be real and of concern, and the past but idle superstition? Do we seriously believe that we are wiser now than in ancient times? It is worth looking in a little more detail at what 'myth' really means. For our distant ancestors myths were not a distinct, fantastical genre although we have smugly chosen to view them as such. In ancient times mythology emanated from real beliefs, real history and actual life experience. Sophocles said: "Thrice happy are those who have seen the Mysteries before they die. They will have life after death. Everyone else will only experience suffering." Plutarch was also to say: "Those who die experience for the first time what those who have been initiated have already experienced."
If we study the history of vanished civilizations we can clearly discern the cause of our own path of destruction. When a nation ceases to serve the spiritual and ethnic needs of its species it has already begun to die. When a cause departs from natural law, that cause, has already failed. Man will always lose when he tips the balance of Nature's perfection and ignores the life law reality of biological determinance. The spiritual unity and genetic cultivation of a people is its strength, and through such a strengh all things are possible.

There is a simple evidence that in classical times enlightened individuals joined together in sacred pursuits and gnostic groups which powerfully influenced nations. The true workings of these spiritual groups were secret for two obvious reasons: (1) Not everyone is willing to try hard to live out what he knows, as did the gnostic brotherhoods, and not everyone has the same capcity for enlightenment. (2) Tyranny, slavery, illiteracy and other features were quite as antithetic to any opposite political and social expression of spirituality as are the stark ignorance and the dark physicalism of our own times, which is no less hostile to absolute altruism. Most people are unable to throw off established ideas and beliefs to which all of us are relentlessly subjected to through our lifetime. Those who have been able to awaken to their own ageless ethnic wisdom have experienced a complete transformation into a more vital, confident and effective living.

It is our indigenous mythologies which answer the fundamental need of the mind, and to grasp this fact we do not need to artificially invent the idea of a primative thought. Everything in us that is not transfused by rational knowledge belongs to our inborn ethnic mythos, which serves as the spontaneous defense of the human mind when faced with an unintelligible or hostile world. Myths represent paradigmatic models established by supernatural beings, We can even go further and say not only that the unconscious is "mythological" but also that some of its contents carry cosmic values; in other words, that they reflect the modalities, processes, and destiny of life and living matter. The essence of our ethnic myths remain indelibly coded into our DNA. Hence, myths constitute the sum of useful knowledge to guide us in our lives and in our quest to reach ever higher levels of understanding and awareness.

Our search for security and endurance is really the search for higher being, yet higher being must not be sought for, but realized. With the assistence of myth and the profound teachings of the arcane mysteries, many people resolve a thousand and one everyday problems, and attain both moral equalibrium and wisdom. The greatest civilizations and cultures of all time were built with the implicit belief and understanding of their own ethnic myths and divinities. Our wise ancestors not only studied and honored the myths and arcane mysteries .......they lived them!

Cities In Dust-Souxsie and the Banshees

A blast from the past. One of my favs.



Water was running; children were running
You were running out of time
Under the mountain, a golden fountain
Were you praying at the Lares shrine?
But oh your city lies in dust, my friend

We found you hiding we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes .......

And your city lies in dust

The Forgotten Philosopher:Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Wisdom

Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher
by John J. Kessler, Ph.D., Ch.E.


In the year 1548 an Italian boy was born in the little town of Nola, not far from Vesuvius. Although, he spent the greater part of his life in hostile and foreign countries he was drawn back to his home at the end of his travels and after he had written nearly twenty books.
When he was thirteen years old he began to go to school at the Monastery of Saint Domenico. It was a famous place. Thomas Aquinas, himself a Dominican, had lived there and taught. Within a few years Bruno had become a Dominican priest.

It was not long before the monks of Saint Dominico began to learn something about the extraordinary enthusiasm of their young colleague. He was frank, outspoken and lacking in reticence. It was not long before he got himself into trouble. It was evident that this boy could not be made to fit into Dominican grooves. One of the first things that a student has to learn is to give the teacher the answers that the teacher wants. The average teacher is the preserver of the ancient land marks. The students are his audience. They applaud but they must not innovate. They must learn to labor and to wait. It was not Bruno's behavior but his opinions that got him into trouble.

He ran away from school, from his home town, from his own country and tried to find among strangers and foreigners a congenial atmosphere for his intellectual integrity that he could not find at home. It is difficult not to get sentimental about Bruno. He was a man without a country and, finally, without a church.

Bruno was interested in the nature of ideas. Although the name was not yet invented it will be perfectly proper to dub Bruno as an epistemologist, or as a pioneer Semanticist. He takes fresh stock of the human mind.

It is an interesting fact that here, at the close of the 16th Century, a man, closed in on all sides by the authority of priestly tradition, makes what might be termed a philosophical survey of the world which the science of the time was disclosing. It is particularly interesting because it is only in the 20th Century that the habit of this sort of speculation is again popular. Bruno lived in a period when philosophy became divorced from science. Perhaps it might be better to say that science became divorced from philosophy. Scientists became too intrigued with their new toys to bother about philosophy. They began to busy themselves with telescopes and microscopes and chemical glassware.

In 1581 Bruno went to Paris and began to give lectures on philosophy. It was not an uncommon thing for scholars to wander from place to place. He made contacts easily and was able to interest any group with whom he came in contact with the fire of his ideas. His reputation reached King Henry III who became curious to look over this new philosophical attraction. Henry Ill was curious to find out if Bruno's art was that of the magician or the sorcerer. Bruno had made a reputation for himself as a magician who could inspire greater memory retention. Bruno satisfied the king that his system was based upon organized knowledge. Bruno found a real patron in Henry Ill and it had much to do with the success of his short career in Paris.

It was about this time that one of Bruno's earliest works was published, De Umbras Idearum, The Shadows of Ideas, which was shortly followed by Ars Mernoriae, Art of Memory. In these books he held that ideas are only the shadows of truth. The idea was extremely novel in his time. In the same year a third book followed: Brief Architecture of the Art of Lully with its Completion. Lully had tried to prove the dogmas of the church by human reason. Bruno denies the value of such mental effort. He points out that Christianity is entirely irrational, that it is contrary to philosophy and that it disagrees with other religions. He points out that we accept it through faith, that revelation, so called, has no scientific basis.

In his fourth work he selects the Homeric sorcerer Circi who changed men into beasts and makes Circi discuss with her handmaiden a type of error which each beast represents. The book 'Cantus Circaeus,' The Incantation of Circe, shows Bruno working with the principle of the association of ideas, and continually questioning the value of traditional knowledge methods.

In the year 1582, at the age of 34 he wrote a play Il Candelajo, The Chandler. He thinks as a candle-maker who works with tallow and grease and then has to go out and vend his wares with shouting and ballyhoo:

"Behold in the candle borne by this Chandler, to whom I give birth, that which shall clarify certain shadows of ideas ... I need not instruct you of my belief. Time gives all and takes all away; everything changes but nothing perishes. One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, however obscure the night may be, I await the daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night ... Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love."

There came a time when the novelty of Bruno had worn off in France and he felt that it was time to move on. He went to England to begin over again and to find a fresh audience. He failed to make scholastic contact with Oxford. Oxford, like other European universities of this time, paid scholastic reverence to the authority of Aristotle. A great deal has been written about the Middle Ages being throttled by the dead hand of Aristotle. It was not the methods of Aristotle nor the fine mind of Aristotle which were so much in question as it was the authority of Aristotle. A thing must be believed because Aristotle said it. It was part of the method of Bruno to object in his own strenuous fashion to the cramming down one's throat of statements of fact because Aristotle had made such statements when they were plainly at variance with the fresh sense experience which science was producing.

In his work The Ash Wednesday Supper, a story of a private dinner, being entertained by English guests, Bruno spreads the Copernican doctrine. A new astronomy had been offered the world at which people were laughing heartily, because it was at variance with the teachings of Aristotle. Bruno was carrying on a spirited propaganda in a fighting mood. Between the year 1582 and 1592 there was hardly a teacher in Europe who was persistently, openly and actively spreading the news about the "universe which Copernicus had charted, except Giordano Bruno. A little later on another and still more famous character was to take up the work: Galilee.

Galileo never met Bruno in person and makes no mention of him in his works, although he must have read some of them. We may not blame Galilee for being diplomat enough to withhold mention of a recognized heretic. Galilee has often been criticized because he played for personal safety in the matter of his own difficulties. We demand a great deal of our heroes.

While in England Bruno had a personal audience with Queen Elizabeth. He wrote of her in the superlative fashion of the time calling her diva, Protestant Ruler, sacred, divine, the very words he used for His Most Christian Majesty and Head of The Holy Roman Empire. This was treasured against him when he was later brought to trial as an atheist, an infidel and a heretic. Queen Elizabeth did not think highly of Bruno. She thought him as wild, radical, subversive and dangerous. Bruno found Englishmen rather crude.

Bruno had no secure place in either Protestant or Roman Catholic religious communities. He carried out his long fight against terrible odds. He had lived in Switzerland and France and was now in England and left there for Germany. He translated books, read proofs, and got together groups and lectured for whatever he could get out of it. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture him as a man who mended his own clothes, who was often cold, hungry and shabby. There are only a few things that we know about Bruno with great certainty and these facts are the ideas which he left behind in his practically forgotten books, the bootleg literature of their day. After twenty years in exile we picture him as homesick, craving the sound of his own native tongue and the companionship of his own countrymen. But he continued to write books. In his book De la Causa, principio et uno, On Cause, Principle, and Unity we find prophetic phrases:

"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things."

His other works were The Infinity, the Universe and Its Worlds, The Transport of Intrepid Souls, and Cabala of the Steed like unto Pegasus with the Addition of the Ass of Cyllene, an ironical discussion of the pretensions of superstition. This "ass," says Bruno, is to be found everywhere, not only in the church but in courts of law and even in colleges. In his book The Expulsion of the 'Triumphant Beast' he flays the pedantries he finds in Catholic and Protestant cultures. In yet another book The Threefold Leas and Measure of the Three Speculative Sciences and the Principle of Many Practical Arts, we find a discussion on a theme which was to be handled in a later century by the French philosopher Descartes. The book was written five years before Descartes was born and in it he says: "Who so itcheth to Philosophy must set to work by putting all things to the doubt."

He also wrote Of the Unit, Quantity and Shape and another work On Images, Signs and Ideas, as well as On What is Immense and Innumerable; Exposition of the Thirty Seals and List of Metaphysical Terms for Taking the Study of Logic and Philosophy in Hand. His most interesting title is One Hundred Sixty Articles Directed Against the Mathematics and Philosophers of the Day. One of his last works, The Fastenings of Kind, was unfinished.

It is easy to get an impression of the reputation which Bruno had created by the year 1582 in the minds of the clerical authorities of southern Europe. He had written of an infinite universe which had left no room for that greater infinite conception which is called God. He could not conceive that God and nature could be separate and distinct entities as taught by Genesis, as taught by the Church and as even taught by Aristotle. He preached a philosophy which made the mysteries of the virginity of Mary, of the crucifixion and the mass, meaningless. He was so naive that he could not think of his own mental pictures as being really heresies. He thought of the Bible as a book which only the ignorant could take literally. The Church's methods were, to say the least, unfortunate, and it encouraged ignorance from the instinct of self-preservation.

Bruno wrote: "Everything, however men may deem it assured and evident, proves, when it is brought under discussion to be no less doubtful than are extravagant and absurd beliefs." He coined the phrase "Libertes philosophica." The right to think, to dream, if you like, to make philosophy. After 14 years of wandering about Europe Bruno turned his steps toward home. Perhaps he Was homesick. Some writers have it that he was framed. For Bruno to go back to Italy is as strange a paradox as that of the rest of his life.

He was invited to Venice by a young man whose name was Mocenigo, who offered him a home and who then brought charges against him before the Inquisition. The case dragged on. He was a prisoner in the Republic of Venice but a greater power wanted him and he was surrendered to Rome. For six years, between 1593 and 1600 he lay in a Papal prison. Was he forgotten, tortured? Whatever historical records there are never have been published by those authorities who have them. In the year 1600 a German scholar Schoppius happened to be in Rome and wrote about Bruno, who was interrogated several times by the Holy Office and convicted by the chief theologians. At one time he obtained forty days to consider his position; by and by he promised to recant, then renewed his "follies." Then he got another forty days for deliberation but did nothing but baffle the pope and the Inquisition. After two years in the custody of the Inquisitor he was taken on February ninth to the palace of the Grand Inquisitor to hear his sentence on bended knee, before the expert assessors and the Governor of the City.

Bruno answered the sentence of death by fire with the threatening: "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." He was given eight more clays to see whether he would repent. But it was no use. He was taken to the stake and as he was dying a crucifix was presented to him, but he pushed it away with fierce scorn.

They were wise in getting rid of him for he wrote no more books, but they should have strangled him when he was born. As it turned out, they did not get rid of him at all. His fate was not an unusual one for heretics; this strange madcap genius was quickly forgotten. His works were honored by being placed on the Index expurgatorius on August 7, 1603, and his books became rare. They never obtained any great popularity.

In the early part of the 18th Century English deists rediscovered Bruno and tried to excite the imagination of the public with the retelling of the story of his life, but this aroused no particular enthusiasm.

The enthusiasm of German philosophy reached the subject of Bruno when Jacobi (1743-1819) drew attention to the genius of Bruno and German thinkers generally recognized his genius but they did not read his books. In the latter part of the 19th Century Italian scholars began to be intrigued with Bruno and for a while "Bruno Mania" was part of the intellectual enthusiasm of cultured Italians. Bruno began to be a symbol to represent the forward- looking free-thinking type of philosopher and scientist, and has become a symbol of scientific martyrdom. Bruno was a truant, a philosophical tramp, a poetic vagrant, but has no claims to the name of scientist. His works are not found in American libraries. In this age of biographical writing it is surprising that no modern author has attempted to reconstruct his life, important because it is in the direct line of modern progress. Bruno was a pioneer who roused Europe from its long intellectual sleep. He was martyred for his enthusiasm.

Bruno was born five years after Copernicus died. He had bequeathed an intoxicating idea to the generation that was to follow him. We hear a lot in our own day about the expanding universe. We have learned to accept it as something big. The thought of the Infinity of the Universe was one of the great stimulating ideas of the Renaissance. It was no longer a 15th Century God's backyard. And it suddenly became too vast to be ruled over by a 15th Century God. Bruno tried to imagine a god whose majesty should dignify the majesty of the stars. He devised no new metaphysical quibble nor sectarian schism. He was not playing politics. He was fond of feeling deep thrills over high visions and he liked to talk about his experiences. And all of this refinement went through the refiners' fire -- that the world might be made safe from the despotism of the ecclesiastic 16th Century Savage. He suffered a cruel death and achieved a unique martyr's fame. He has become the Church's most difficult alibi. She can explain away the case of Galileo with suave condescension. Bruno sticks in her throat.

He is one martyr whose name should lead all the rest. He was not a mere religious sectarian who was caught up in the psychology of some mob hysteria. He was a sensitive, imaginative poet, fired with the enthusiasm of a larger vision of a larger universe ... and he fell into the error of heretical belief. For this poets vision he was kept in a dark dungeon for eight years and then taken out to a blazing market place and roasted to death by fire.

It is an incredible story.

The "Church" will never outlive him.

Media- Sol Invictus

Here we go again: the same old lies again
The empty words again, the pigs can fly again
From Wall Street to your heart
Neon Hollywood lights the dark,
Hear the bleating of the sheep
At the jokes of a media creep

And there's nothing I can say
See a world of tanks, ruled by a world of banks
Turn up you TV set, forget the chains of debt
See it all go down the drain
Switch channels, do you think it'll change?
Lapping prole food in the sun
Hail the masses—ugly and dumb

And there's nothing I can say

Against the Modern World- Sol Invictus

So this is the West, a land we're meant to defend,
Of happy slaves, who will babble to the end,
Beneath the towers, where financers roost,
But above them the sun,
That sings out an ancient truth,

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

On a hill, that leads down to the sea,
The last batallions, of those who wait to see,
The northern lights, and the midnight sun,
They await their sunrise,
That they know will surely come,

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

So this is the West, a land we're meant to defend,
Of happy slaves, who will babble to the end,
Beneath the towers, where financers roost,
But above them the sun,
That sings an ancient truth,

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

On a hill, that leads down to the sea,
The last batallions, of those who wait to see,
The northern lights, and the midnight sun,
They await the sunrise,
They know will one day come,

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

Against, the modern world.
Against, the modern world.

Original Album: Against the Modern World
Year: 1987

Sol Invictus - Here We Stand

Here we stand, on some lost and lonely shore
All that's left to us, empty thrones and broken swords
Shall we watch the sun throw itself into the sea?
Shall we open our veins and bleed?

Here we stand alone, empty days
Here we stand alone, never saved
See the world, watch her shake with rage
At this mass of fools, who mock her holy stage
She will spit them out like so much dust
For this is the age of gold, not blood or love

Here we stand alone, empty days
Here we stand alone, never saved

See the horseman ride in from the sea
See the Wildhunt through the trees
A hand shall come down and tear out the last page
The final act of the final age

Dead Waters- Nebelhexe

It's just me
On the dirty street
Voice in the distance
I hide from you
I dreamt so bad
The sounds in my head
The voice getting louder
I run from you

Dead dead waters...

Bad girl, bad girl
I know you
Shadow on the wall
I walk with you

Bad girl, bad girl
I see you
So pretty on the wall
I’m in love with you

Dead waters lie deep
Where dark thoughts sleep

You and me
We’re a team
I like to play
And I’m willing to pay

I won't care
Too self aware
Look behind my smile
Into blackened eyes

Dead waters...

An Asatru Primer

Asatru…The Way of Our Ancestors…
Calling Us Home

Asatru is an expression of the native, pre-Christian spirituality of Europe. More specifically, it is the Way by which the Germanic peoples have traditionally related to the Divine and to the world around them.

From Iceland to Russia, from the frozen north of Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, the Germanic peoples wandered and settled over a span of thousands of years. Today, their descendants are spread around the world. We may refer to ourselves as Americans or English, Germans or Canadians, but behind these labels lurks an older, more essential identity. Our forefathers were Angles and Saxons, Lombards and Heruli, Goths and Vikings - and, as sons and daughters of these peoples, we are united by ties of blood and culture undimmed by the centuries.

Asatru is our native Way. Just as there is Native American religion and native African religion, so there is native European religion. Asatru is one of its expressions. It gave our ancestors comfort in millennia past, and it can give us strength and inspiration today.

The word "Asatru" comes to us from Old Norse, the tongue of ancient Scandinavia, where it means "those loyal to the Gods." Since the ancient Scandinavian version of our Way is the best documented, it has given us much of Asatru's terminology and imagery. The soul of Asatru, however, is not confined to the Scandinavian model, but encapsulates the belief of all the Germanic peoples. Indeed, Asatru reflects the deeper religiosity common to virtually all the nations of Europe.

As a part of the great European Folkway, Asatru has a number of characteristic beliefs. Some of these are:

The world is good. Prosperity is good. Life is good, and we should live it with joy and enthusiasm.

We are free to shape our lives to the extent allowed by our skill, courage, and might. There is no predestination, no fatalism, no limitations imposed by the will of any external deity.

We do not need salvation. All we need is the freedom to face our destiny with courage and honor.

We are connected to all our ancestors. They are a part of us. We in turn will be a part of our descendants.

We are also linked to all our living kin - to our families and to every man and woman rooted in the tribes of Europe. They are our "greater family."

We are connected to Nature and subject to its laws. The Holy Powers often express themselves in Nature's beauty and might.

We believe that morality does not depend on commandments, but rather arises from the dignity and honor of the noble-minded man and woman.

We do not fear the Holy Powers, or consider ourselves their slaves. On the contrary, we share community and fellowship with the Divine. The Holy Powers encourage us to grow and advance to higher levels.

We honor the Holy Powers under the names given them by our Germanic/Norse ancestors.

We practice Asatru by honoring the turning of the seasons…the ancestors…the Divine…and ourselves - in everyday life.


Asatru is about roots.

It's about connections.

It's about coming home.

An Asatru Primer
by Stephen A. McNallen

The native beliefs of our forebears were much more sophisticated and complex than generally acknowledged. Far from being a collection of simple tales and savage practices, Asatru contains depth, wisdom, and mystery enough to satisfy the most demanding inquiry.

What follows is a basic primer of Asatru - a quick introduction to the spiritual path of our people, arranged in a logical sequence. In the sections that follow, we explain about Asatru as our native religion, polytheism, and the reality of the Holy Powers. We introduce some of the Gods and Goddesses of Asatru, and tell you where to go for more information. Perhaps most significantly, we tell you how you can begin practicing Asatru right now, today, if you choose to do so!

Asatru: A Native Religion

Asatru is a native European religion - one developed by the Germanic peoples from the very essence of their soul, rather than imposed from without.

Perhaps the best way to understand Asatru is to compare it with the more familiar American Indian spirituality. Both are tribal. Both honor the ancestors, and both have much to teach us about our connection with the natural world around us. Both offer a noble set of values. Most relevant to the point we are trying to make, the Germanic Way and the Way of the American Indian are both native religions - the indigenous religions of specific peoples.

When we see that Asatru is a native religion, it becomes clear that this is not some "pagan" religion we have arbitrarily adopted, nor is it some New Age fantasy, nor is it a whim or passing fad. Asatru has ancient roots - our roots. It is the spiritual path of our Germanic ancestors, and as such it deserves to be taken seriously.

Far from being unusual, this connection between ancestry and spirituality is very natural. What is truly strange is to adopt a religion that began in another part of the globe, among people who were not our ancestors!

Asatru honors the Holy Powers - the Gods and Goddesses. It does so using the names by which they were called in ancient times. The Vikings were among the last of the European cultures to be stripped of their ancient beliefs, so followers of Asatru often call the Holy Powers by their Norse names, such as Odin, Thor, Freya, and so forth. This does not mean that modern followers of the Germanic Way dress or act like Vikings, run around in horned helmets, wear bearskins on their shoulders, or pretend that they live a thousand years in the past. Modern-day Asafolk, like modern-day American Indians, drive automobiles, use computers, and dress like ordinary people.

In short, Asatru is not some strange cult, nor something we have taken up casually, nor a historical hobby group. It is a native religion of a large and important part of the Earth's population - the peoples of Europe. As such, it deserves respect just like the religion of the Indian peoples, the African nations, or any other group on Earth

A World with Many Gods

One of the greatest stumbling blocks for those who would return to the way of our ancestors is the whole question of monotheism versus polytheism. Since we live in a larger society that believes overwhelmingly in only one God, it is a large step for most of us to even consider that there might in fact be many Gods - and Goddesses, too.

Much of the rest of the world, by the way, considers it perfectly natural that there should be many Gods and Goddeses. In the paragraphs that follow we will examine some arguments in favor of this idea.

Our own science has opened the door to the polytheist proposition, though we have hardly noticed. For decades, our physicists and philosophers have been tugging at the Establishment coat tails, trying to tell us that the world of predictability, linearity, and monolithic materialism has disappeared into a sea of uncertainty. The world is not the interplay of matter and energy described by Newtonian mechanics and Marxist dogma - it is, as one thinker has said, more like a vast thought than a vast machine. Einstein, too, failed to grasp the nature of things: God not only "plays dice with the universe" but he isn't the only player! Many dice, many Gods, a multiverse of profound and wondrous mystery...

It is this sense of mystery that pervades the new physics, and it amounts to nothing less than a reawakening of religious awe in a world which has become jaded, boring, and pointless. This time, we are all priests rather than peasants - not content to accept dogma mindlessly, but rather free and happy to pull and tug at the mysteries, to fathom the quantum enigmas and seek the truhts that underlie existence. The sense of the miraculous remains, even as we plumb the deepest secrets of the wonder around us.


The Improbability of Monotheism

Looking at history objectively, we have to wonder why monotheism captured men's minds in the first place. Does our observation of nature support it? Consider nature: storm and calm, ice and fire, plants and animals, life and death, sky and earth, all in endless combinations and complexities. The world around us is characterized by a multiplicity of forms and phenomena of very different kinds. It is perhaps more likely to ascribe this wide range of forces, things, and events not to one cause - one spirit or mover or God - but to many. The natural world does not encourage us to believe in a single deity, but in numerous ones.

Is the nature of human populations consistent with monotheism? Just as the world of natural phenomena is complex and varied, so is the array of nations and tribes that make up the human race. The way of Asia is not the way of Africa, which is not the way of Europe - is it logical that one supernatural Power can be the only true God for all of mankind? Is it not more reasonable to assume (as in fact each tribe and nation insisted until convinced otherwise by fire and sword) that each group has a set of Gods that expresses divinity in accordance with its own vision?

Does the direct spiritual experience of mankind, as witnessed by shamans, mystics, and holy men, support the contentions of monotheism? On the contrary, countless cultures assert that the multiverse is teeming with non-human entities, many of which can be categorized as Gods and Goddesses both major and minor. The claim that there is only one God is by no means the only view. Indeed, the existence of Thor, Odin, and the other Norse Gods was acknowledged by Christian missionaries and chroniclers, while the idea that they are fictional is a more recent development. Of course, the position of the Church was that the old Gods and Goddesses were demons - but the self-serving nature of this claim makes it transparent to all but terrorized peasants.

In summary, monotheism is contradicted by our observation of nature's manifold and differing phenomena, by the widely diverse peoples that make up humanity, by the direct experience of those in every culture who deal with the Otherworld, and even by the testimony of men who claim to follow the One God!


The Effects of Monotheism

Around the world, the rise of the monotheism was accompanied by intolerance and persecution. In a world where it was accepted that there were many Gods and Goddesses, religious wars were hardly possible. It was assumed that each pantheon had a special relationship with a particular tribe, race, or nation. No single deity or collection of deities demanded the right to rule all mankind; Gods and Goddesses were not particularly transferable from one group to another.
Monotheism changed all that. If there was only one God, the Gods of the tribe across the river became demons, usurping the devotion that should go to the One True God. The followers of those Gods were now devil worshippers, and they must be killed for their heresy. Conquest, previously justified by greed, now had a new motivation - righteousness! It was the beginning of a bloody phase of human history that continues down to the present.

Anywhere monotheism met polytheism, the followers of the One God went on the offensive. Horrible things were done in the name of religion. Monotheism was accepted peacefully in only a very few cases. More typically, the confrontation of belief systems meant wars lasting for years or generations. Only after about a thousand years of conflict did the tribes of Europe officially surrender their native ways - and even then, remnants of the old faiths survived in the remote regions beyond the reach of "law and order."

Looking at this record of intolerance and outright genocide, it is hard to claim that monotheism, in and of itself, has bestowed any blessing on mankind. We cannot help but contrast this with societies where many Gods and Goddesses were known: Although polytheistic cultures waged wars of greed and conquest, at least they felt no need to convert their neighbors. Religious war was unknown in Europe until the coming of monotheism - and since that time, sectarian strife has not ceased - as the Irish can testify.


Polytheism and Liberty

Another way in which polytheism differs from monotheism is in regard to political freedom. By its very nature, polytheism promotes real freedom of choice. Monotheism offers only one option for worship, and it historically enforced that option with a social structure in which authority flows from the top downward. One God, one ruler - the idea of the "divine right of kings" came only after monotheism took control of society.

Without exception, our concepts of freedom can be traced to the polytheistic tribes of Europe. Representative government in Europe and America derives from the Germanic tribal assemblies. Centuries before the British parliament was founded, Iceland was governed by a nation-wide legislative and judicial assembly called the Althing; the same is true of the Isle of Man. Tribal leaders were generally chosen by the leading families or by the entire assembly of freemen. Some tribes did not even have a real leader, except in time of war.

Our deepest ideas of law derive from the Germanic world, through the Norse and the Anglo-Saxons (Hence "Anglo-Saxon Common Law"). Indeed, the very word "law" comes from Old Norse, not from Roman, Greek, or Hebrew. Indigenous European law applied to all freemen, and the king was not above it; defiance of tyrannical rulers is a common thread running through the old sagas of Europe. Iceland was colonized in the ninth century to provide escape from the dictatorial edicts of Olaf Tryggvason, the law-breaking king who forced his countrymen to accept monotheism or die.

Many of the individual freedoms we take for granted in the West today had their counterparts in our ancient tribes. Women in traditional Germanic culture had many more rights than did their sisters in later centuries. Similarly, the right to bear arms belonged to all freemen in Germanic society - a right that eroded after the triumph of monotheism.
The list can go on and on, but the essence is this: Northern Europe, under its traditional, ancestral religion was dominated by republics with built-in safeguards to protect the rights of the free folk. After the destruction of that religion, royal power was centralized at the expense of the ancient checks and balances, and human freedom was drastically lessened. These rights were painfully regained through the centuries, with the Magna Charta, the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.

In summary, freedom is a birthright from our polytheistic ancestors in Europe, not something we imported from monotheists!

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A Summary: Monotheism and Polytheism in the Balance

The variety of natural phenomena and the multiplicity of human races and cultures all argue for polytheism and against monotheism. The truth of polytheism is attested by thousands of years of observations by holy men and wise women, mystics, and shamans.

Monotheism has been the main cause of religious warfare, which began in ancient times and has continued to this morning's news. Our political freedoms are rooted in native, polytheistic belief - and those freedoms have typically diminished when monotheism has gained control.

Luckily for us, the Way of our ancestors remains open to us. And to find ourselves, to serve our kin and to attain our destiny, we must stride boldly through that door. It is, after all, the front door to our own home - the spiritual home that served us well for countless millennia and still offers us comfort, dignity and freedom today.

The Reality of the Holy Powers


What makes us think that the Holy Powers honored by our ancestors actually exist? Here are a few reasons -

1. Our ancestors - hundreds of generations of them - considered the Gods and Goddesses to be as real as their own family, as real as the mountains looming over their homestead, or the clouds blowing through the sky. Of course, it is easy today to say that our ancestors were stupid, or at best ignorant and naive, but can that really be true? The human brain has not significantly changed over the last few thousand years.

In terms of innate intelligence, some of our brighter forebears could have invented the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics a thousand years ago. This didn't happen, of course - because the conceptual foundations had not yet been laid by others, and because our ancestors were busy doing other things, such as growing food and fighting off the tribe from the next valley over. Discovering quantum physics is one thing, but inventing the necessary mathematics and all of classical physics at the same time, while planning raids and sowing the crops, is a little much to ask! Lack of brainpower, per se, was not the problem
.
2. Tribal Europeans (and just about everyone else in the world) lived in an environment that selected intensely for intelligence and hard-headed practicality. Stupid people tended to make mistakes that got them killed. Impractical dreamers likewise met untimely and tragic ends. By comparison, we live much more protected lives, insulated from the effects of the natural environment and from hostile people armed with axes and swords. Fools, self-deceivers, the gullible, and dreamers did not fare well in early society. The ancient Germans and Celts are not likely to have believed in the Gods and Goddesses unless they had some reason to do so. We on the other hand, living in an environment with much less evolutionary stress, are much more likely to believe in superstitions like dialectical materialism and the good intentions of politicians.

3. The enemies of the Gods - the Christian missionaries and later chroniclers - believed the Gods and Goddesses were real. The Christian kings of Norway, tyrants who made free folk into royal subjects and forced them to give up the old ways or die, met Thor and Odin in mysterious encounters that have come down to us in the sagas. One can argue, of course, that the stories are made up, but the very existence of the stories clearly reflect a belief that the old Gods were real. Nowhere in the surviving sagas do the Christian writers think of Odin, Thor, Frey, or any of the others as delusions. In fact, the oath required of the Saxons upon converting to Christianity specifically renounced the old deities, thus by implication acknowledging their existence.

4. The Gods and Goddesses manifest to living men and women today. The old religion of the pre-Christian Nordic and Germanic lands has been revived in an organized form for hardly thirty years, but the might of the Gods and Goddesses has shown itself many times. These instances are of varying types and qualities. When we make requests of the Holy Powers, we often get dramatic results. In other words, our prayers are answered. People get healed, children are born, difficulties are resolved, the future is foretold, and so forth. In short, the Gods work!

Other times, the Gods and Goddesses (and other entities described in the Nordic lore, for that matter) actually appear to people in visions. You can call these delusions or hallucinations, but they are generally associated with real results that happen, then or later, in the real world.

Finally, there are cases, admittedly rare, when Gods and Goddesses manifest to humans under conditions that do not appear to be visions at all - when they are as real as your house or the rock on which you stub your toe.


Real, but Different

To say that the Gods and Goddesses are real is not to tell us much. The next question is...what are they like?
Aside from the odd personal encounter and rare representations as statues or on old tapestries, the only descriptions we have of the Holy Powers are in the myths. When we look at the stories, we find Thor pictured as a muscular fellow with a red beard and flashing blue eyes. Odin is a tall, older man with a gray beard and one eye, and he sometimes travels in the company of his two wolves and ravens. Freyr - well, he's a fertility God, with the appropriate physical attributes.

Are we to take these vivid, dramatic images literally? That depends on how you want to think of the Gods and the myths in which they appear. Here are two possibilities:

We can think of myth as metaphor. In this scheme, the myths are symbolic ways of transmitting spiritual truths. They have multiple layers of meaning. On the most obvious and superficial level, they are entertaining tales that often make a moral point or illustrate virtues like the love of wisdom, sacrifice, and bravery.

Below this level, things get trickier. Some mythologists (not themselves followers of our ancestral religion) will say they are allegories describing natural phenomena such as lightning, or the warming of the land with the departure of winter, or the cycle by which vegetation grows, dies in the winter, and comes to life again in the spring.

Psychologists, particularly those who are students of Dr. Carl Jung, interpret the myths as depictions of psychic realities rather than external ones. In this model, the ancient stories tell us important things about the personal and collective unconscious. The heroic quest and the growth and maturation of the individual are typical themes. The Gods and Goddesses are thought of as psychic forces in the person and in society, but are not considered objectively real.

We can admit the value of these viewpoints in a technical or analytical sense, while not conceding they represent the whole truth. Many Asatruar consider the myths to be true - not in the literal sense but in the sense of tales which tell spiritual truths, "those things which never happened, but always are." The tales of Gods become allegories, some of which can be deciphered by reason. Others cannot be interpreted in terms of logic, because they speak a deeper, non-linear "meta-language," the secret code of the unconscious. In this case, the myths communicate with us subtly, without words, influencing our mind and spirit.

For Asatruar who think of the myths as metaphor, the Gods and Goddesses are real, but the anthropomorphic images of them presented in the old lore are strictly symbolic. Thor is not really a gigantic, muscular, man-like figure with a red beard, any more than Jehovah is a human-shaped entity in a white gown sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by clouds. The description of Thor we find in the stories gives us a way to relate to the very real force in the cosmos that we call Thor, but it is not him.

The Gods and Goddesses are not limited by the constraints of flesh and blood. So while it is convenient for us to picture Freya as a beautiful woman wearing a shining necklace, or Heimdal as having golden teeth, these are allegorical. The Gods and Goddesses themselves are mighty spiritual powers, existing within us and without us, capable of manifesting to humans in any form they wish.

Our Place in the Order of Things

OUR PLACE IN THE ORDER OF THINGS

by Robert Blumetti



The three monotheistic religions see God as someone with a master plan, who has laid down the law and demand that everyone obey his laws, and if they don't, they will suffer the most excruciating pain for all eternity. Ironically enough, everyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be born in a part of the world that has never heard the "divine word" is damned along with those who heard it and rejected it. Thus, God, who is suppose to be all-knowing and infallible, has deliberately created billions of people whom he has damned to Hell. He is all-knowing and infallible–so that means he knew that billions of people would never have the chance to be saved, as well as those who he knew would choose to reject his law, and thus, they would be condemned after death. Why? Why would God do such a thing? Well, the followers of monotheism like to say, "We can never know what God does, or why he does it, but we have got to have faith." This is poor comfort for those billions burning in Hell. Of course, that doesn't concern those who know that they are saved.

Pagans do not believe in a God who is concerned with suffering and pain. We don't see God as a great judge, passing judgement on everyone, condemning billions to eternal suffering. We don't fear God or his wrath. We know that God does not inflict pain and suffering on us. We know that the terrible things that happen to us are not the "will of God." The monotheistic God is a God with a plan, and we are all suppose to be a part of his plan–whatever it may be? He is supposed to have created us so that he can torture us–torment us with temptation. He created the Devil to temp us away from him and made us weak so that the great majority of us will fall victim to the wily ways of Satan. He then deliberately makes our lives a living Hell by sending earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, floods, hurricanes, disease, storms our way, to test our faith, all the while killing thousands even millions in wars and plagues, and our clergy try to reassure us that it's all part of "God's will" and that the fallen are "in his hands." But if God is in complete control of the universe, why does he send such horror to torment us? Is this the behavior of a truly loving and merciful God?

For us, the Gods, by whatever name you refer to them as, are a balancing force is the universe. They represent the natural laws of science that act as a balancing factor in nature to counter the chaotic and destructive forces that are represented by the giants. They are far too powerful a force to be concern with the pain and suffering, or salvation, of every little individual on the face of the earth. But that does not mean we cannot tap into their power to help us in our lives. It does not mean that we are completely disconnected from the power that is the Gods, which maintain order in the universe, to help us succeed in everything that we do.

We pagans, followers of the Folk Faith, realize that the universe is ruled by the physical laws of science, and that the actions and reactions of nature, are the opposing forces of chaos (the giants) and order (the Gods). We were not created out of dirt to be tested and judged. We were created from the same Life Force that holds the universe together–the same Life Force that is the essence of the Gods, and that we are part of the life-changing, evolutionary process that holds the universe together, that keeps the planets rotating around the sun and the sun, along with the billions of other stars, rotating around the center of the galaxy, and propels the galaxy, and the billions of other galaxies, through the vast, limitless void of space. This means we are part of nature and ruled by the same laws of nature that governs all living things on this planet, and perhaps on other worlds. And because we are part of the Life Force, the action-reaction of order and chaos, that governs the universe, all our actions contribute to one or the other. By the way we live our lives, and the decisions we make every minute of the day, we either contribute to the chaotic, destructive forces that are the giants, or contribute to the ordered force that is the Gods. There is no sin or breaking of commandments, but the simple fact that the environment that surrounds us, the society we live in, the way people interact with each other and treat each other, are all determined by the way we act. If our actions are destructive, then we will live within a chaotic destructive society, but if we live by the golden rule, then we will live in a healthy, orderly and progressive society.

The Gods have set up the rules by which the universe works. If we adjust our lives according to those rules, we will benefit from them and eventually, we, both individually and collectively as a people, will become great. And over time, in generations from now, our children will become God-like.

This is the truth that we must understand–we are governed not by commandment, of which we will be condemned if we break, but should live by the simple golden rule of treating people in the same way that we want them to treat us, but at the same time, we recognize that if others treat us badly, we will not tolerate it. Thus, we hate no one, and seek to do harm toward anyone, but we are not pacifists, for pacifism is permitting others to dominate or harm, you. Thus, we do not sit around praying for God to intervene for us, but we do seek to forge bonds with our Gods, so that we can tap into the Life Force that we share with them, and thus help us in our actions, and give us the power to succeed. So we do not sit back and accept fate without doing anything about it. We know that we must act in a productive way if we are to be successful in life and all things that we do. We know that we can only be successful by positive thinking, backed up by positive action.

We do not believe in sin, because we have no commandments to break. We understand that there are right and wrong actions, and when we make mistakes, we don't pray for forgiveness, but instead,we accept the fact that we are not perfect and recognize that we did wrong and make a promise to ourselves and loved ones, to try not to do it again. We know that mistakes are part of life and we can actually learn from them and grow–becoming a better person by trying not to repeat our mistakes. Thus, while we should own up to our mistakes, and when necessary, make amens for the wrongs that we might do, we should not feel guilty or shame, especially if we truly recognize the wrong that we did. In fact, we should even talk about it to others, as a lesson in teaching others, especially our children and young people, as examples of what not to do if they want to lead a happy and successful life. We all know that it is often better to confess our mistakes then to keep it bottled up inside, permitting them to fester and eat away at your mind and soul with guilt and shame.

The problem with the monotheists is that they are intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their interpretation. Monotheists claim that anyone who disagrees with them is condemned. Even among themselves they cannot agree and have a long history of hating each other, waging wars against each other and persecuting each other. Christians have always considered Jews, the children of the Devil, because they rejected Christ, and Jews consider anyone who does not belong to the chosen people, inferior. Even among Jews and Christians there is disagreement. Orthodox Jews disagree with Conservative Jews and both disagree with Reformist Jews, and of course there is the Hasidic, and even they don't agree. The Christians are even more divided. Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians all disagree. Catholics believe all Christians who do not belong to the Catholic Church are condemned to burn in Hell. Orthodox Christians believe the same about everyone who does not belong to the Orthodox Church. They are all condemned to burn in Hell. Protestants consider both Orthodox and Catholics to be heathens and "pagans." Then there are the Muslims, who are also divided and war among themselves, they consider everyone else heathens, who can be killed, enslaved, raped and tortured with impunity because they do not believe in Allah. Of course, all this is insane.

As pagans we do not hate any other faith, even the monotheistic religions. We respect all religious beliefs, even if we disagree with the interpretation, we respect the religiosity. For most of the people who practice these faiths are basically good, or seek to do good, but their faiths are wrong. Most people just want to lead good lives, and we can respect anyone, no matter what they believe, who just want to lead good lives. The ancient Romans made it a custom of trying to associate their Gods with the Gods worshiped by other people. There were certain practices that the Romans abhorred, such as human sacrifice and homosexuality, but as for the actual Gods that other people worshiped, the Romans tolerated and even adopted them into their own pantheon of Gods. As a pagan I have no problem with saying a prayer to Jesus, because I know that the spiritual essence of the God, Jesus, that is worshiped, is essentially a God of peace, and I can associate Jesus with Balder or any other God of peace.

Wotansfolk

Wotansvolk

By Ron McVan

Since the dawn of human existence the Aryan tribes have had numerous matriarchal and patriarchal gods. Though the names have changed the essence remains virtually the same. In the writings of Tacitus he states: "the chief god of the Germans (Wotan) is the same as Mercury among the Romans".

To the ancient Greeks Wotan was considered one and the same as Hermes. It is also becoming more widely believed by many today from mounting historical findings that both Wotan and the Egyptian Hermes were one and the same entity. Somewhere in the Fourth or third century B.C.E. the Aryan patriarchal god Wotan began to emerge to the forefront as the central deity of the Northern Europeans particularly the Teutons. Wotan replaced the former Allfather Tyr and the further distant Poseidon who's realm reached back into Atlantean times. To the Scandinavians he was known as Odin, to the English, Woden and the Germans, Wotan. The days of the week were named after the Wotanic gods of the Asir and still remain so to this day. Sunday (Sun) Monday (Moon) Tuesday (Tyr) Wednesday (Wotan) Thursday (Thor) Friday (Frigga) and Saturday (Saturn).

In the beginning of the first chapter of the book "Teutonic Mythology", by Victor Rydberg Ph.D., copyright 1906, he states: "Already at the beginning of the Christian era the name Germans was applied by the Romans and Guals to the many clans of people whose main habitation was the extensive territory east of the Rhine, and north of the forest-clad Hercynian Mountains. That these clans constituted one race was evident to the Romans, for they all had a striking similarity in type of body; moreover, a closer acquaintance revealed that their numerous dialects were all variations of the same parent language, and finally, they resembled each other in customs, traditions, and religion."

The name 'German' and 'Teutonic' are Aryan tribal names. The name Teutonic derives from the ancient worship of that clan of Aryans who aspired to the war god known as "Tyr" or Teu. Teutonic warriors well into the Viking age were known to inscribe the Tiwaz rune (symbolic of Tyr) into their battle sword in his honor and that it would bring them victory and protection. The Teutons are believed to have been the founders and builders of Troy. Rydberg also mentions in his Teutonic Mythology book that "Wotan had been a Trojan chief, and when he appears in Teutonic Mythology as the chief of the gods, it seemed most probable that he was identical with the Trojan King Priam, and that Priam was identical with Hermes-Mercury." Further, the author of the Younger Edda speaks of the Trojan decent of Odin and his people, should marry Thor to the most famous of Trojan woman." Still, this marriage is not invented by the author. The statement has an older foundation, and taking all circumstances into consideration, may be traced to Germany, where the goddess "Sif" (Thors wife), in the days of widespread Aryan Wotanism, was as well known as Thor.

In today's times Wotan is not just the god of the Teutons exclusively but representative of the entire Aryan race. Wotan is a God of the blood and as adaptable to modern society as it was to ancient times. In the proto Aryan civilizations our race was simply one people genetically defind as Aryans which is the true and accurate biological name of our race as a species. Through the long course of history the Aryan people split off into many various tribes religions and nations which only served to further divide us as a distinct unified race. Those today who identify themselves as Wotansvolk do so in the knowledge that it is not the name of an organization, club or guild, but in essence describes those of Aryan extraction who continue to adhere to the indigenous practice of Wotanism and recognize that the first and highest law of Nature is the preservation of one's own kind.

After two thousand years of universalist, alien religion imposed upon the Aryan tribes by force of church and state, the White race worldwide now faces the very real prospect of total extinction as a species in the very near future. Miscegenation is genocide. Racial integration is genocide. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide. Birth control pills, abortion and homosexuality all work against our advancement as a race and do more collectively to deplete our population than any war and thus greatly lessen our chances for survival. The ability to adhere to the upward evolutionary path of natural instinct and biological determination; the will to victory and the ability to advance and secure it, separates Wotansvolk from other relatively similar ethnic belief systems.

Wotansvolk practice what is known as "The Nine Noble Virtues": Courage, Honor, Fidelity, Truth, Discipline, Industriousness, Perseverance, Self-Reliance, and Hospitality. The Aryan from earliest times has always intrinsically followed a basic code of ethics. It was in the ninth century that "The Havamal" (The words of the High One) as we know it today, was compiled as one of the poems in the Codex Regius of the Elder Edda. The Havamal best expresses the deepest essence and character of Aryankind as practiced by our ancestors. By the close of the 20th century a compiled adaptation of those ethics was made available for easy access and use for modern times and needs which are known as:

"The 14 Codes of the Aryan Ethic"
• (1) Honor no gods but those of your own Folk----(As alien gods destroy you.)

• (2) Nature's laws evidence the divine plan----(As the natural world is the work of the All-High Creator.)

• (3) Act nobly and courageously, always carefully considering the consequences----(As the effects of your deeds live on after you pass from Midgard.)

• (4) Live within the reality of this life; fear not your fate----(As fear is for fools and cowards; a valorous man boldly faces what the Norns decree.)

• (5) Love, protect, reproduce and advance your Folk----(As natural instinct prohibits miscegenation and self-destruction.)

• (6) Be honest, be disciplined, be productive and loyal to friends----(As the Aryan spirit strives for excellence in all things.)

• (7) Treasure your history, heritage and racial identity----(As your ancestors have entrusted, it falls with you, it will rise with you.)

• (8) Honor the memory of your kith and kin, especially those who have given their lives or freedom for the folk----(As your race lives on through your blood and
your will.)

• (9) Respect the wisdom of your elders----(As every moment of your lives links the infinite past with the infinite future.)

• (10) Honor your mate, provide for your children and carry no quarrel with family to sleep time----(As family is your purpose and fulfillment.)

• (11) May your word to a kinsman be a bond of steel----(As your troth is your dignity and strength.)

• (12) Be cunning as the fox with enemies and Skraelings----(As their goal is your extinction.)

• (13) Secure, defend and cherish your homeland----(As Nature's Territorial Imperative demands.)

• (14) Live in harmony with Nature and the Folk and compromise
not with evil----(As racial survival is your perpetual struggle.)

Authority maintains its power and influence only by imposing false doctrines upon the people since knowledge is not one of its attributes. Wotansvolk remains an open door to infinite knowledge and it is indisputably evident through the teachings of the Havamal and the practice of Wotanism that it is not rooted in any kind of fear, neither fear of deity nor fear of death. To the Vikings who followed Wotan's path, honor and acclaim was like rain upon a parched meadow. It was a strong belief at that time that through a life of unflinching courage and achievement and a glorious death that a man will be remembered for many generations. Wotansvolk also believe in the infinite intelligence of the All High Creator of the Universe above and beyond our divine ethnic gods and goddesses.

As generations of our heroic forefathers laid the foundation for Aryan culture, and existence, Wotansvolk recognize and strengthen that chain of heredity with our god given uniqueness, determination and natural abilities. Wotanism rises out of the mystical soul of Aryankind to bind us together as one Folk, one Destiny, and certain Victory! Volk is Teutonic for "Folk", the culture-producing, culture-bearing part of the race, who place a high value upon ancestry, heritage, knowledge, spiritual development and awareness. From this vantage point Wotanism is able to attain a higher state of mind above and beyond the man made religion aspect by establishing an essential Folk Consciousness, both as an individual and collectively. To the enlightened Aryan the whole universe breathes the very spirit of Wotan and the gods of Asgard. As Allfather of Aryankind, Wotan reaches deep into our collective conscience and unites us as a people in a uniquely ethnic, symbolic and emotional way, something that alien religions are not capable of achieving. Through Wotanism we find the innermost character of the Folk Soul and a balanced self-assertion in the universal order of life. Wotanism opens doors to the true inner temple of manifestation in the essence of our being, our race and the world in which we live.

88 Precepts

88 PRECEPTS

by David Lane

Until the White race realizes that there is only one source from which we can ascertain lasting truths, there will never be peace or stability on this earth. In the immutable Laws of Nature are the keys to life, order, and understanding. The words of men, even those which some consider “inspired” are subject to the translations, vocabulary, additions, subtractions, and distortions of fallible mortals. Therefore, every writing or influence, ancient or modern, must be strained through the test of conformity to Natural Law.

The White Peoples of the earth must collectively understand that they are equally subject to the iron-hard Laws of Nature with every other creature of the Universe, or they will not secure peace, safety, nor even their existence. The world is in flames because Races, Sub-races, Nations, and Cultures are being forced to violate their own Nature- ordained instincts for self-preservation. Many men of good will, but little understanding, are struggling against symptoms which are the result of disobedience to Natural Law. As is the Nature of man, most take narrow, provincial stances predicated on views formed by immediate environment, current circumstances, and conditioned dogma. This is encouraged by that powerful and ruthless Tribe which has controlled the affairs of the world for untold centuries by exploiting Man’s most base instincts. Conflict among and between the unenlightened serves as their mask and shield. A deeper understanding of the Fundamental Laws that govern the affairs of Men is necessary if we are to save civilization from its usurious executioners. These few pages are not intended to provide a detailed system of government, but as PRECEPTS which, when understood, will benefit and preserve a People as individuals and as a Nation.

1. Any religion or teaching which denies the Natural Laws of the Universe is false.

2. Whatever People’s perception of God, or Gods, or the motive Force of the Universe might be, they can hardly deny that Nature’s Law are the work of, and therefore the intent of, that Force.

3. God and religion are distinct, separate and often conflicting concepts. Nature evidences the divine plan, for the natural world is the work of the force or the intelligence men call God. Religion is the creation of mortals, therefore predestined to fallibility. Religion may preserve or destroy a People, depending on the structure given by its progenitors, the motives of its agents and the vagaries of historical circumstances.

4. The truest form of prayer is communion with Nature. It is not vocal. Go to a lonely spot, if possible a mountaintop, on a clear, star-lit night, ponder the majesty and order of the infinite macrocosm. Then consider the intricacies of the equally infinite microcosm. Understand that you are on the one hand inconsequential beyond comprehension in the size of things, and on the other hand, you are potentially valuable beyond comprehension as a link in destiny’s chain. There you begin to understand how pride and self can co-exist with respect and reverence. There we find harmony with Nature and with harmony comes strength, peace and certainty.

5. Secular power systems protect and promote religions, which teach of an after-life. Thus, people are taught to abandon defenses against the predators of this life.

6. History, both secular and religious, is a fable conceived in self-serving deceit and promulgated by those who perceive benefits.

7. Religion in its most beneficial form is the symbology of a People and their culture. A multi- racial religion destroys the senses of uniqueness, exclusivity and value necessary to the survival of a race.

8. What men call the “super natural” is actually the “natural” not yet understood or revealed.

9. A proliferation of laws with the resultant loss of freedom is a sign of, and directly proportional to, spiritual sickness in a Nation.

10. If a Nation is devoid of spiritual health and moral character, then government and unprincipled men will fill the vacancy. Therefore, freedom prospers in moral values and tyranny thrives in moral decay.

11. Truth requires little explanation. Therefore, beware of verbose doctrines. The great principles are revealed in brevity.

12. Truth does not fear investigation.

13. Unfounded belief is pitfall. A People who do not check the validity and effect of their beliefs with reason will suffer or perish.

14. In accord with Nature’s Laws, nothing is more right than the preservation of one’s own race.

15. No greater motivating force exists than the certain conviction that one is right.

16. Discernment is a sign of a healthy People. In a sick or dying nation, civilization, culture or race, substance is abandoned in favor of appearance.

17. Discernment includes the ability to recognize the difference between belief and demonstrable reality.

18. There exists no such thing as rights or privileges under the Laws of Nature. The deer being stalked by a hungry lion has no right to life. However, he may purchase life by obedience to nature- ordained instincts for vigilance and flight. Similarly, men have no rights to life, liberty or happiness. These circumstances may be purchased by oneself, by one’s family, by one’s tribe or by one’s ancestors, but they are nonetheless purchases and are not rights. Furthermore, the value of these purchases can only be maintained through vigilance and obedience to Natural Law.

19. A people who are not convinced of their uniqueness and value will perish.

20. The White race has suffered invasions and brutality from Africa and Asia for thousands of years. For example, Attila and the Asiatic Huns who invaded Europe in the 5th century, raping, plundering and killing from the Alps to the Baltic and the Caspian Seas. This scenario was repeated by the Mongols of Genghis Khan 800 years later. (Note here that the American Indians are not “Native Americans,” but are racially Mongolians.) In the 8th century, hundreds of years before Negroes were brought to America, the North African Moors of mixed racial background invaded and conquered Portugal, Spain and part of France. So, the attempted guilt-trip placed on the White race by civilization’s executioners is invalid under both historical circumstance and the Natural Law which denies interspecie compassion. The fact is, all races have benefited immeasurably from the creative genius of the Aryan People.

21. People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.

22. In the final analysis, a race or specie is not judged superior or inferior by its accomplishments, but by its will and ability to survive.

23. Political, economic, and religious systems may be destroyed and resurrected by men, but the death of a race is eternal.

24. No race of People can indefinitely continue their existence without territorial imperatives in which to propagate, protect, and promote their own kind.

25. A People without a culture exclusively their own will perish.

26. Nature has put a certain antipathy between races and species to preserve the individuality and existence of each. Violation of the territorial imperative necessary to preserve that antipathy leads to either conflict or mongrelization.

27. It is not constructive to hate those of other races, or even those of mixed races. But a separation must be maintained for the survival of one’s own race. One must, however, hate with a pure and perfect hatred those of one’s own race who commit treason against one’s own kind and against the nations of one’s own kind. One must hate with perfect hatred all those People or practices which destroy one’s People, one’s culture, or the racial exclusiveness of one’s territorial imperative.

28. The concept of a multi-racial society violates every Natural Law for specie preservation.

29. The concept of “equality” is declared a lie by every evidence of Nature. It is a search for the lowest common denominator, and its pursuit will destroy every superior race, nation, or culture. In order for a plow horse to run as fast as a race horse you would first have to cripple the race horse; conversely, in order for a race horse to pull as much as a plow horse, you would first have to cripple the plow horse. In either case, the pursuit of equality is the destruction of excellence.

30. The instincts for racial and specie preservation are ordained by Nature.

31. Instincts are Nature’s perfect mechanism for the survival of each race and specie. The human weakness of rationalizing situations for self-gratification must not be permitted to interfere with these instincts.

32. Miscegenation, that is race-mixing, is and has always been, the greatest threat to the survival of the Aryan race.

33. Inter-specie compassion is contrary to the Laws of Nature and is, therefore, suicidal. If a wolf were to intercede to save a lamb from a lion, he would be killed. Today, we see the White man taxed so heavily that he cannot afford children. The taxes raised are then used to support the breeding of tens of millions of non-whites, many of whom then demand the last White females for breeding partners.

As you can see, man is subject to all the Laws of Nature. This has nothing to do with morality, hatred, good or evil. Nature does not recognize the concepts of good and evil in inter-specie relationships. If the lion eats the lamb, it is good for the lion and evil for the lamb. If the lamb escapes and the lion starves, it is good for the lamb and evil for the lion. So, we see the same incident is labeled both good and evil. This cannot be, for there are no contradictions within Nature’s Laws.

34. The instinct for sexual union is part of Nature’s perfect mechanism for specie preservation. It begins early in life and often continues until late in life. It must not be repressed; its purpose, reproduction, must not be thwarted either. Understand that for thousands of years our females bore children at an early age. Now, in an attempt to conform to and compete in an alien culture, they deny their Nature ordained instincts and duties. Teach responsibility, but, also, have understanding. The life of a race springs from the wombs of its women. He who would judge must first understand the difference between what is good and what is right.

35. Homosexuality is a crime against Nature. All Nature declares the purpose of the instinct for sexual union is reproduction and thus, preservations of the specie. The overpowering male sex drive must be channeled toward possession of females, as well as elements such as territory and power, which are necessary to keep them.

36. Sexual pornography degrades the Nature of all who are involved. A beautiful nude woman is art; a camera between her knees to explore her private parts is pornography.

37. That race whose males will not fight to death to keep and mate with their females will perish. Any White man with healthy instincts feels disgust and revulsion when he sees a woman of his race with a man of another race. Those, who today control the media and affairs of the Western World, teach that this is wrong and shameful. They label it “racism.” As any “ism,” for instance the word “nationalism,” means to promote one’s own nation; “racism” merely means to promote and protect the life of one’s own race. It is, perhaps, the proudest word in existence. Any man who disobey these instincts is anti-Nature.

38. In a sick and dying nation, culture, race or civilization, political dissent and traditional values will be labeled and persecuted as heinous crimes by inquisitors clothing themselves in jingoistic patriotism.

39. A People who are ignorant of their past will defile the present and destroy the future.

40. A race must honor above all earthly things, those who have given their lives or freedom for the preservation of the folk.

41. The folk, namely the members of the race, are the Nation. Racial loyalties must always supersede geographical and national boundaries. If this is taught and understood, it will end fratricidal wars. Wars must not be fought for the benefit of another race.

42. The Nations’ leaders are not rulers, they are servants and guardians. They are not to serve for personal gain. Choose only a guardian who has no interest in the accumulation of material things.

43. Choose and judge your leaders, also called guardians, thus: Those who seek always to limit the power of government are of good heart and conscience. Those who seek to expand the power of government are base tyrants.

44. No government can give anything to anybody without first taking it from another. Government is, by its very nature, legalized taking. A limited amount of government is a necessary burden for national defense and internal order. Anything more is counter-productive to freedom and liberty.

45. The Organic founding Law, namely the Constitution of a Nation, must not be amendable by any method other than unanimous consent of all parties thereto and with all parties present. Otherwise, the doors are opened for the advent of that most dangerous and deadly form of government, democracy.

46. In a democracy those who control the media, and thus the minds of the electorate, have power undreamed by kings or dictators.

47. The simplest way to describe a democracy is this: Three people form a government, each having one vote. Then two of them vote to steal the wealth of the third.

48. The latter stages of a democracy are filled with foreign wars, because the bankrupt system attempts to preserve itself by plundering other nations.

49. In a democracy that which is legal is seldom moral, and that which is moral is often illegal.

50. A democracy is always followed by a strongman... some call him dictator. It is the only way to restore order out of the chaos caused by a democracy. Pick your strongman wisely! He must be a guardian in his heart. He must be one who has shown that his only purpose in life is the preservation of the folk. His ultimate aim must be to restore the rule of Law based on the perfect Laws of Nature.

Do not choose him by his words. Choose one who has sacrificed all in the face of tyranny; choose one who has endured and persevered. This is the only reliable evidence of his worthiness and motives.

51. A power system will do anything, no matter how corrupt or brutal, to preserve itself.

52. Tyrannies cannot be ended without the use of force.

53. Those who commit treason disguise their deeds in proclamations of patriotism.

54. Propaganda is major component in all power systems, both secular and religious; false propaganda is a major component of unprincipled power systems. All power systems endeavor to convince their subjects that the system is good, just, beneficent and noble, as well as worthy of perpetuation and defense. The more jingoistic propaganda issued, the more suspicious one should be of its truth.

55. Political power, in the final analysis, is created and maintained by force.

56. A power system, secular or religious, which employs extensive calls to patriotism or requires verbosity and rhetoric for its preservation, is masking tyranny.

57. Propaganda is a legitimate and necessary weapon in any struggle. The elements of successful propaganda are: simplicity, emotion, repetition, and brevity. Also, since men believe what they want to believe, and since they want to believe that which they perceive as beneficial to themselves, then successful propaganda must appeal to the perceived self-interest of those to whom it is disseminated.

58. Tyrannies teach what to think; free men learn how to think.

59. Beware of men who increase their wealth by the use of words. Particularly beware of the lawyers or priests who deny Natural Law.

60. The patriot, being led to the inquisition’s dungeons or the executioner’s axe, will be condemned the loudest by his former friends and allies; for thus they seek to escape the same fate.

61. The sweet goddess of Peace lives only under the protective arm of the ready God of War.

62. The organic founding Law of a Nation must state with unmistakable and irrevocable specificity the identity of the homogeneous racial, cultural group for whose welfare it was formed, and that the continued existence of the Nation is singularly for all time for the welfare of that specific group only.

63. That race or culture which lets others influence or control any of the following will perish:

• Organs of information;

• Educational institutions;

• Religious institutions;

• Political offices;

• Creation of their money;

• Judicial institutions;

• Cultural institutions;

• Economic life.

64. Just Laws require little explanation. Their meaning is irrevocable in simplicity and specificity.

65. Men’s emotions are stirred far more effectively by the spoken word than by the written word. This is why a ruling tyranny will react more violently to gatherings of dissenters than to books or pamphlets.

66. The organic founding Law of the Nation, or any law, is exactly as pertinent as the will and power to enforce it.

67. An unarmed or non-militant People will be enslaved.

68. Some say the pen is more powerful than the sword. Perhaps so. Yet, the pen without the sword has no authority.

69. Tyrannies are usually built step by step and disguised by noble rhetoric.

70. The difference between a terrorist and a patriot is control of the press.

71. The judgments of the guardians, the leaders, must be true to Natural Law and tempered by reason.

72. Materialism is base and destructive. The guardians of a Nation must constantly warn against and combat a materialistic spirit in the Nation. Acquisition of wealth and property, as need for the wellbeing of one’s family and obtained by honorable means is right and proper. Exploitation, particularly through usury, is destructive to a nation.

73. Materialism leads men to seek artificial status through wealth or property. True social status comes from service to Family, Race and Nation.

74. Materialism ultimately leads to conspicuous, unnecessary consumption, which in turn leads to the rape of Nature and destruction of the environment. It is unnatural. The true guardians of the Nation must be wholly untainted by materialism.

75. The function of a merchant or salesman is to provide a method of exchange. A merchant who promotes unnecessary consumption and materialism must not be tolerated.

76. The only lawful functions of money are as a medium of exchange and especially usury are unlawful.

Usury (interest) at any percentage is a high crime which cannot be tolerated.

77. A nation with an aristocracy of money, lawyers or merchants will become a tyranny.

78. The simplest way to describe a usury-based central banking system is this: The bankers demand the property of the Nation as collateral for their loans. At interest, more money is owed them that they created with the loans. So, eventually, the bankers foreclose on the Nation.

79. Usury (interest), inflation, and oppressive taxation are the theft by deception and destroy the moral fabric of the Nation.

80. Wealth gained without sacrifices or honest labor will usually be misused.

81. Nothing in Nature is static; either the life force grows and expands or it decays and dies.

82. Respect must be earned; it cannot be demanded or assumed.

83. Avoid a vexatious man, for his venom will poison your own nature.

84. Self discipline is a mark of higher man.

85. One measure of a man is cheerfulness in adversity.

86. A fool judges others by their words. A wise man judges others by their actions and accomplishments.

87. In our relationships or interactions, as in all of Nature’s Laws, to each action there is a reaction. That

which we plant will be harvested, if not by ourselves, then by another.

88. These are sure signs of a sick or dying Nation. If you see any of them, your guardians are committing treason.

• Mixing and destruction of the founding race;

• Destruction of the family units;

• Oppressive taxation;

• Corruption of the Law;

• Terror and suppression against those who warn of the Nation’s error;

• Immorality: drugs, drunkenness, etc.;

• Infanticide (now called abortion);

• Destruction of the currency (inflation or usury);

• Aliens in the land, alien culture;

• Materialism;

• Foreign wars;

• Guardians (leaders) who pursue wealth or glory;

• Homosexuality;

• Religion not based on Natural Law.

Into the Dust

Into the Dust
by Edgar J. Steele

"I can think of few things more degrading than being proud to be white."
--- Maggie Gallagher (White columnist), The Rhetoric of Race (NY Post, 10/20/95, p. 25.)

"White people are scared, because minorities are taking over...minorities in numbers alone are taking over, and white folks are scared because they are afraid that we are going to do to them exactly what they've done to us. And they are absolutely right."
--- Danyel Smith, quoting Black comedian Paul Mooney, Full Moon (The Bay Guardian, 3/3/93)

"Go back to Simi Valley, you skunks! Go back to Woodland Hills! Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the future. You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you. Leave like beaten rats. You old white people, it is your duty to die..."
--- Barbara Coe, quoting Augustin Cebada, Reconquista, The Takeover of America (California Coalition for Immigration Reform, 1998)

"Neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son."
--- Deuteronomy 7:3

Into the West is a new, four-disc video release on DVD. Rent or borrow it. Watch it. Learn. It operates on many levels simultaneously, the most important of which clearly is unintended and the one with which I will deal after we examine the more obvious messages of this extended video. Don't buy it, however, as the makers do not deserve the revenue.

Into the West chronicles the surge of White America during the 1800s from the East Coast into all the rest of America, ending finally with the massacre of defenseless Indian men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. So near as I have pieced together from other sources through the years, the general depiction of what actually went down at Wounded Knee in 1890 is accurate. And, the general thrust of all six episodes seems accurate, as well, but the spin - ah, the spin - now, that is another story altogether.


At its most superficial level, Into the West depicts a form of self-contrived manifest destiny, whereby White America relentlessly drove to the Pacific, killing everything along the way while terraforming the land to meet White expectations and needs. Like the American Indian, the buffalo was hunted to near extinction in the name of vanity, protection, pure sport and downright meanness.

Many believe that America was a vast, empty wilderness when the Pilgrims arrived. Not true. America was fully occupied by a huge, complexly-organized Indian population. A huge population that gave way to the inexorable and incremental advance of White European civilization. By "gave way," I mean that America's founders and their progeny simply killed most of them. Sometimes with disease and famine, but most often with bullets and swords. Nothing can excuse what was done to the American Indians by White Europeans. Nothing. That is the first clear message borne by Into the West and one with which I wholeheartedly agree.

It is important to remember that you and I were not there and are not responsible for what took place, despite what some of our ancestors may have done. Nor are the few, rag-tag remnants of Indian civilization heir to damages for what was done to their forebears. What happened was reprehensible, but, like slavery, we didn't do it. Don't buy into this potent, secondary White-guilt message of Into the West. That was then. This is now. That was them. This is us.

Into the West depicts American Indians as having been noble, forthright and naive, similar to what is taught throughout America these days. Some were all that, to be sure, but a great many were savages in every sense of the word. Even without seeing what was being done to their comrades, some took up the killing and torture of Whites as a sport. That brutal and unforgiving face of the Native American Indian seems to have been lost. A great many deserved just what they got. Dead, that is. Of course, the same could be said for a great many of the Whites who died at the hands of Indians, as well. General Custer had it coming.

Fact is, though, just as we Americans are interlopers in the Middle East today, so, too, were White Europeans interlopers in America two hundred years ago. They (not "we," don't forget) wanted the land, the gold, the rivers, the game...they wanted it all. So they took it. They stole it, fair and square, goes the joke. But it was no joke at the time, certainly not to the American Indians, who were on the business end of a massive campaign of genocide, fueled by ignorance, propaganda and greed.

Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for genocide these days, but it still involves killing people. Today's closest parallel to what happened in America of the 1800s can be found in Palestine, as the Palestinians are made to give way to bloodthirsty and soulless Israelis possessed of a state of mind eerily similar to that of many of America's westward-bound pioneers. And, of course, America carries Israel's water throughout the rest of the Middle East. The ignorance, propaganda and greed fueling America's current march through Afghanistan and Iraq, soon to be Syria and Iran, as well, in pursuit of oil and Israeli hegemony, is not much different from that extant in America as recently as just a few generations ago.

Into the West begins with miscegenation, the marriage of a White man to an Indian woman, and the series roughly chronicles the travails of their resulting extended family's members over the next three generations. That is another clear message of the video - that racial mixing is good for everybody involved. The reality was and is different, however.

I grew up next to an Indian reservation in Washington State and went to school with Indians, both full- and half-breed. Trust me on this one. I know that, even a century after the times depicted by Into the West, racial intermarriage simply did not work very well, particularly for the children. One of Into the West's main characters, an Indian simply schooled in White ways, said it best: "I don't belong here and I don't belong there. I belong nowhere." The growing Mestizo problem throughout America, legacy of Spanish miscegenation with southern, Central and South American Indians, bears strong witness to the failure of racial mixing. There is no significant northern American Mestizo problem simply because most northern American Indians were killed, thereby leaving too few descendants to create a problem.

As Into the West wound to a close, I was struck by how lacking the script had been in honest, thoughtful and compassionate White men. Even the educated White men in this production were both venal and avaricious. The only token good White guys were the ones who married Indians or their mixed-breed progeny. This, too, is a lesson intended by the series, the same lesson being pounded into us by every aspect of modern American media: White European men are stupid, shiftless and unworthy of surviving, sort of a nation of Homer Simpsons. The reality, George W. Bush notwithstanding, is quite the opposite, of course.

So, given all that, why do I tell you to watch this video? Because there is yet another message, one that I consider to be vitally significant to White Americans today and one that I guarantee you Steven Spielberg, who produced Into the West, did not intend. Yes, he intended the viewer to identify with the Indians, to be sure. However, he did not intend that we identify with them racially. Racial identification with Into the West's Indians is easy because of their noble and sympathetic depiction throughout the video. It was a point of view that I adopted about halfway through the six episodes. Put yourself in their place. Walk a mile in their mocassins, so to speak. Got that concept fixed firmly in your mind? Good. Hold onto it, because you're going to need it for the rest of this piece.

Here's the punch line: White Americans are the modern American Indian. Bear with me for a few more minutes and see if you don't agree.

Currently, we White Americans are so numerous and seemingly so in control of things that the possibility of our eradication must seem as alien a thought to most as it would have seemed four hundred years ago to Pocahantas and her tribe. Yet, the seeds were being sown, even in the early 1600s, for the genocide of all Native American Indian nations less than three centuries later. It took about two hundred years to get into full gear. Then, when the dust settled, one hundred years later, the American Indian was all but a memory. Things move faster these days, however, and already we have been on the same path for nearly one hundred years.

By analogy, just now we seem to be coming into a period which looks a great deal like that which immediately preceded the Indian wars of the mid-1800s. No, we are not being encroached upon by a technologically-superior or smarter race, as were the American Indians. But, then, what really conquered the American Indians was not things like the railroad or the repeating rifle. America's Indians were forced to yield to the sheer mass of White humanity, just as we now face and must inevitably yield to the burgeoning non-White mass in America. Let's take a few events from just this past week to illustrate my contention that the end draws nigh.

Riots take place all the time throughout America. The media simply does not report on these everpresent riots because of their politically-incorrect nature. These riots always involve Blacks and/or Mestizos, you see. Always. Post-Katrina New Orleans was a riot that simply got too large to ignore, but it took only a couple of days of our watching Blacks looting and sitting around on their fat asses with that expectant look of entitlement on their faces, not to mention hearing about the countless Black beatings, rapes and murders, particularly of Whites, before the media bosses shifted the emphasis to White America's failure to render disaster relief to Blacks. Remember the shift? Sure you do. Do you remember any serious reporting about Whites who also got wiped out all along the Gulf Coast? Consider the contrast for a moment. Now contrast all that with a riot that did make the national mainstream news a few days ago.

You remember the Toledo, Ohio riot just a few days ago, don't you? The one conducted by those nasty White supremacist Nazi types. Yes? Well, it didn't happen - not the way it was reported, anyway. Media outlets like ABC News labeled that riot "White Supremacists Riot in Toledo, Ohio." You see, a few members of a National Socialist group took out a permit and were set on holding a march and demonstration to protest recent, outrageous Black gang criminal behavior in Toledo. The city's Blacks were mobilized in force and started rioting, then looting local stores, then attacking and burning vehicles, including police cruisers. Well over one hundred Blacks were arrested. Not one single White demonstrator was arrested. Not one. But the news reports never spoke about anybody's race except them nasty Nazis, and those reports left you, intentionally, with the impression that, not only were the Whites the ones rioting, but also the ones arrested. In fact, the demonstration got cancelled by the police before it even got underway because of the Black rioting. ABC, taking point on this story for America's media community, wanted us all to believe that it was "White Supremacists" who rioted and who were arrested. Though Time Magazine's reporting superficially was more honest, even it excused the Black rioters and looters by blaming Whites for having "triggered" the Black rioting and looting.

See how it works? Even when civil disruption and crime gets reported, somehow the blame always shifts off the perps and onto White America. Just the way that the media fed propaganda to White America throughout the 1800s about wild Indians murdering Whites, though just the opposite was taking place. We are the modern American Indians.

Here's another example, also from just a few days ago: Cable-TV's CSPAN carried, nationwide, the "Millions More Movement" forum. Billed by CSPAN as "an independent discussion on creating unity among activists and media," the forum focused exclusively on Blacks and showcased speaker Kamau Kambon, who made the following statement: "...and they’re monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people? Because that, in my estimation, is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off of the face of the planet to solve this problem." Nice, eh?

You didn't hear about Kambon's call to arms, did you? Made on TV, too. Nationwide TV. Imagine the sort of jail cell into which you or I would be tossed and therein held, indefinitely and without charges under the Patriot Act as a domestic terrorist, were we to make such a public statement about Blacks or, more to the point, Jews. Some are more equal than others, to paraphrase George Orwell, who fashioned the statement in an attempt to account for Jewish hubris. They actively discuss our demise, all while a racial street war of epic proportions rages in America's cities; a war which has claimed more White American lives than were lost in either the Viet Nam or Korean wars. Like the Indians in the mid-1800s, we act oblivious to the open plotting of our genocide. We are the modern American Indians.

Want another example? Admittedly, the newspaper article from which the following item comes was printed at the end of August, but it was only within the past few days that it made its way into generalized distribution around the Internet. The Washington Post reported, in an article entitled "Deejay's Appeal: 'Kill The Whiteness Inside,'" that a Brooklyn disk jockey has developed a following for parties at which he appears and repeatedly exhorts attendees to "Kill Whitey!" "I'm trying to kill the whiteness inside," said the DJ, who calls himself "Tha Pumpsta," to the Post's reporter, who went on to speculate in print that "it has something to do with young white hipsters believing they can shed white privilege by parodying the black hip-hop life. In this way, they hope to escape their uptight conditioning and get in touch with the looser soul within them." Going native, in other words. We are the modern American Indians, with some of our number, like Custer's Indian scouts, actually assisting in our own demise. For extra points, guess the ethnic background of "Tha Pumpsta" (hint: remember, this is in Brooklyn, where almost everybody's last name rhymes).

Here's another: It may seem that I am picking on ABC, but it's just the luck of the draw this week. Other weeks see each of the other major media outlets foaming at the mouth to denigrate White Americans and thereby elevate all other races. A couple of nights ago, ABC's magazine news program, PrimeTime, featured a young White Nationalist singing duo, thirteen-year-old twins named Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who call themselves Prussian Blue and perform songs that they, themselves, have written. ABC's on-line article about the segment is entitled "Young Singers Spread Racist Hate" and, like the program aired, bemoans the "indoctrination" of children like Lamb and Lynx, as well as misrepresenting them as using "their talents to preach a message of hate."

The hatchet job conducted by PrimeTime's interviewer and editors was among the worst I have seen, given the manner in which they attempted to skew the appearance of these fine young girls. To their credit, the girls' answers to direct questions were far better than I have seen most adult White Nationalists give during interviews. The overlays of the interview with pictures of Nazis, book burning and David Duke in his Ku Klux Klan robes all were attempts to misportray Lamb and Lynx as haters.

Why must it always be racial hatred when Whites talk about racial pride, yet it is admirable when members of other races do the same about their own race?

Why is the way in which the Gaede girls are being raised any different from the manner in which other children are raised into the Presbyterian faith or the Amish way of life or preened for membership in the Black Panthers? Why?

As I discuss at length in Defensive Racism, unless we White Americans actively participate in our own racial demise, we are branded as racists and haters. ABC's treatment of the Gaede twins more than amply demonstrates the truth of my argument. Nor is it just ABC, either - all media outlets do the same, day in and day out.

I know Lamb and Lynx. I am a fan of their work. By the way, Lamb and Lynx' newest album will be out soon and can be ordered from their web site, www.prussianblue.net. They are fine young girls with strong family values, character and manners beyond their years. I am more than a little proud of them, as should be any White American. Their music is uplifting and positive, in that it promotes White racial awareness without relying upon the hatred of others. Unlike "gangsta rap," which is perfectly acceptable to American media and which advocates "pimps," "Hos," White hate and cop killing, all the while spewing the vilest of language, Lamb and Lynx rely upon building up the esteem of White Americans. Like the Indians of the Old West, we need it.

Blacks advocate killing Whites and that is acceptable. Whites advocate preserving their own race and get roundly condemned for their racism and hatred. Go figure. Seriously. Go figure it out. You have all the tools you need, just from this single article.

The girls of Prussian Blue were grilled on camera about their placing on one of their albums' liner notes what has come to be known as "Fourteen Words," a phrase first articulated by David Lane that has come to symbolize White Pride: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.

No. Stop right there. I saw you running away. Come back in here and read that phrase again. Here, let's do it together: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children. Now, tell me - what is wrong with that sentiment? Seriously. Tell me anything that is wrong with it. Tell me why that White ABC interviewer wielded it like an accusation against someone who had just proposed we shove Jews into gas chambers.

Tell you what: Let's look at it from a different angle. If Fourteen Words is racist and hateful, let's try an exercise. Let's simply restate it in opposite terms, which should make it all warm and fuzzy if, indeed, it is so racist and hateful: White people need not survive and White children need no future. Let's call this phrase "Eleven Words." So, Eleven Words must be acceptable, huh? Well, it is - to Mr. Kambon and many others, since it unequivocally calls for the extermination of White people.

As I said before, unless we actively participate in our own demise, we White people are deemed to be racist haters. This is just the way that so many Indian leaders were tricked into keeping their people in check while the White European interlopers were picking them off, at first, then conducting wholesale slaughter. They have been picking us off for years. Next up: wholesale slaughter. You think it can't happen here? You haven't been paying attention.

Meanwhile, White Nationalist leaders who don't go along end up being unjustly jailed or killed, just as has happened to David Lane and so many others who refuse to subscribe to the politically-correct tenor of our time. This is exactly what happened to Native American Indian leaders like Sitting Bull, don't forget.

There's more from the past week, just like the items I have herein cited. Lots more. This was just a typical week in America these days. An America in which the modern American Indian's days are numbered, just as they were for the Native American Indians a few generations ago. The modern American Indian, of course, being White America.

Long before White Europeans breached the Mississippi and began to flood into the West, Native American Indians could have banded together and thrown them back into the Atlantic Ocean. But, the Indians saw no need for that. They saw no danger to their existence as a race. So they stood by while their country was flooded with Whites, until the sheer number of Whites present made inevitable their demise. And now they are all but gone...forever. That, gentle reader, is a most powerful message and the very reason I want you to see Into the West. That, too, is the message that Spielberg certainly did not intend with his most recent piece of propaganda.

Stephen Spielberg is, of course, Jewish. The single most successful movie maker of all time, Spielberg has in recent years taken to producing only movies and videos with strong, politically-correct messages. Movies like Schindler's List, for example, which now is touted as a dramatization of real history. Schindler's List was a novel - a complete fictionalization about events connected to the so-called Holocaust. It never happened. In its first editions, the book was clearly labeled fiction and placed on book store fiction shelves. Try this, however: go into any bookstore today and ask for Schindler's List. You will locate it under nonfiction. Open it. No longer does it admit to being fiction inside the covers. This is how history gets rewritten.

We modern American Indians now stand on the cusp of a racial divide. We still are strong enough to throw off our interlopers and eject them from our country. Before long, however, our fate will be sealed and we will come to an end no better than that which we accorded Native American Indians at Wounded Knee, South Dakota a century ago. Perhaps a century from now, others will lament our passing with a video entitled something like Into the Dust.

Got White Pride? Get it soon, before it is too late. It is a matter of life and death. Yours, too, not just that of your children. Become who you are.

New America, an idea whose time has come.

Sun of God

Sun Of God
By Ron McVan

Amid the radiant orbs, that more than deck, that animate the sky,
The life-infusing suns of other worlds…..
The enlighten’d few…..
they in their powers exult, that wondrous force of thought,
which mounting spurns this dusky spot, and measures all the sky.
James Thomson - 1746

The sun as symbol of both God the creator and of his representative son, to the Egyptians, was a symbol of immortality, for, while the sun died every night, it rose again with each ensuing dawn. From the sun came the concept of the Trinity which finds its way into all the great religions. Trinities in every instance represent the threefold form of the one Supreme Intelligence. When Christians proclaim that one cannot find the father except through the son Jesus Christ, it is that Jesus, as solar deity, not unlike Baldur of Euro based Wotanism, or Lugh and Bel of the Celtic pantheon, or Apollo of the Olympian pantheon, or Ra, Horus, or Thoth-Hermes of ancient Aryan Egypt all likewise serve their respective religion as son of God, teachers of spiritual truth and bearers of light.

Without the sun there is no light or life only darkness and death. We know now that God is not the literal sun but it is through the light of the sun that God makes his presence and influence known and by the sun that all life grows and flourish. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, whose body, Nature is, and God the soul. No matter what religion you choose to practice one should always strive to attain full sun-consciousness, the literal door to human soul perfection and only through the light life giving force of God can mankind ever hope to progress in his long and arduous journey back to the source.

The sun generates in all forms of life the needed vitality and the urge to move forward. Within us we possess our own solar fire and through the discipline of our will that solar fire can be used to achieve its object. Unlike other life forms, man has the ability to shape his own destiny. The sun inspires us to seek God, light from the dark, unreal to the real, death to immortality. It is the duty of man to play his part in this great rational whole, to subordinate himself to the universal harmony, to subject his will to law and reason, to help realize the will of God.

An atheist will proclaim that God does not exist on the premise that he cannot see him. God is not of this lower dimension but his being or presence permeates all dimensions of the extended universe. When a doctor dissects a human body he cannot see a man’s soul therein nor will a brain surgeon find a single thought in a brain laid open before him. And yet, soul and spirit and thoughts work through these organs of the flesh just as God works through our soul and thoughts. All around us are unseen entities, just as the many forces of mind staggering powers such as electricity, radio waves, magnetism, atomic force and so on. Likewise, neither thought, essence, or life can be seen by the naked eye.

All living life is but a thought in the mind of God just as we ourselves live within the physical ‘world thought’ of mankind. If someone says the word ‘Paris’, the mind immediately thinks of France and perhaps Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is nothing more than a projected thought form from the mind of its designer. If we were to unbolt and dismantle the Eiffel Tower piece by piece all that would remain would be one big ugly heap of metal of no significance. It is the single thought that creates something out of nothing. Likewise, once the soul is absent from our flesh it is as useless as that of a worm or garden slug. Without God in our reality and his creative thought to provide us form and purpose we would be as insignificant as that heap of metal. It is the
God force that holds the scales of life, but it is mans freedom of choice to do as he will with his body, mind, actions and relationships with others. Man does not often take into consideration the idea of how his every thought, his every word, sets in motion the Karmic pendulum.

Many Christians mistakenly refer to Jesus as “God” and it would be equally wrong for Wotanists to view their own Son of Light, Baldur, as the All High God of Creation. At best they certainly can serve as Gods representatives and lesser gods over Man with the real ability of guiding mankind to God, but they are not the source of the light, only God the absolute can be that. Christians, too often get caught up in the personality of Jesus and even build churches around his personality. That this happens in Christianity as with most all religions is due fundamentally from the need of man to have a personality of human character to worship.

The Christian bible itself starts off with its own personal creation story that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created the heavens and the earth, not Jesus! All the ethnic pantheons of gods make it very clear that the gods are fallible. We can relate to these lesser divinities because they are like us in many respects and thereby it becomes an easier task for mankind to learn their life lessons. Our ethnic gods serve as archetypes that help mankind to understand God and direct us to the majesty of his essence and thereby deliver us from the low conscious state of gross matter through which we now exist. The law still holds good that man’s religious consciousness is transferred from earth to the moon, from the moon to the sun, and then further extended and distributed among a number of deities more or less closely associated with the various heavenly bodies, ultimately leading back to God, the source of all that is.

The moon (like its corresponding “element” water) symbolizes Emotion; the sun (like fire) symbolizes intellect. Man’s brain and heart are the microcosmic analogues of the moon and sun. Eventually, the human soul will attain complete control of the warring lower elements of its conflicting nature, symbolized as the serpent-fire locked within the earth. The sun, shining in man’s heart center, rises in strength and glory to illumine the earthly mind and our whole being, enabling the soul to function henceforth in the solar body. The ancients taught that the greater life cycle of man consists of about 800 physical lives.

Darkness can never uplift the soul of man, or bring him the lasting comfort of true bliss; only the light of God can do that through his divine ray of life giving power. God is the light that radiates in the darkness (chaos). Man is a composition of spirit and matter and through that union is generated the intellectual principle. Danger arises when a person’s mental knowledge and intellectual development outweighs his spiritual unfoldment, for this leads to mental and spiritual arrogance, which can reverse the whole process of spiritual growth. This is why the great knowledge of the mysteries are obscured from the unworthy majority of mankind because the ignorance, arrogance and lower untrustworthy nature of man would grossly violate and abuse such sacred works of higher learning. Pythagoras was of the belief that it was ignorance and dissipation, and not age, that destroyed the body. Whatever the case may be, it has proven out over and over again that man’s audacity is far in excess of his ability and that his thinking process has actually… degenerated since the golden ages of antiquity. We have moved from a state of fertility to sterility. Truth still remains the supreme fact, the most practical and reasonable of all beings and essences.

There is an essential need for our ethnic pantheons of god archetypes which is why they have always existed since the beginning of man’s spiritual development. These primordial images remain in our D.N.A. and work through us as a human being and as a race. A man that Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe much admired, Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) had this to say: “Insofar as the idea of life is no other than the idea of an eternal manifestation of the divine essence through nature, it belongs among those original insights of reason that do not come to man from outside……These insights open up in the inwardness of man; they must reveal themselves and, once a man has reached a certain level of development, they will always reveal themselves.”

Every God and Goddess represents a particular aspect of nature and divinity exemplified within our own being and the adventures of gods, goddesses, myths and legends are often parables of the phenomena of our own interior and exterior experience. Archetypes are capable of manifesting as autonomous psychoid forces in that middle realm where what we call spirit and matter interact and should never be taken lightly. Our ancestors had a far greater intimate understanding of their divine ethnic gods and goddesses and gave them the highest of honor and respect and built mankind’s finest temples and monuments to their worthy names.

Our ethnic gods and divinities serve and guide us as heroic ideals to be appreciated and emulated and can intervene into our daily lives and consciousness while providing us with both wisdom and strength in times of need. Man however still needs to understand how the microcosmic sun within, reflects the macrocosmic SUN OF GOD and how Gods being permeates all living creatures, nature and the universe. Not until man has found the continuity of the divine functions operating in his always active unconsciousness, can he grasp the concept of the real potential that can elevate his being and soul to its highest stage of spiritual development. Many equivocate upon what should be expected of man within the narrow time-frame of his short fleeting life. Should he go this way or that way, sacrifice this, or pay penitence for that? Should he be with this religion or that religion? Put an end once and for all to the discussion of what a good man should do or should be…… AND BE ONE!!!

“The star is the god and the goal of man. The inner star is the “one guiding god” and the place where the soul travels after death. Approaching closer the star on the zenith of one’s inner world helps one. Realize that it too, is a sun. Thus, the star and God are sun and are one. With this knowledge of the pagan path of redemption, the grateful dead become silent and vanish up into the night sky to travel to seek their own inner stars.”
……………….Gustav Carl Jung