Monday, February 26, 2018

Race is spiritual as well as physical

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"Evola believes that race is spiritual as well as physical. If a man comes to you and says, ‘Oh, I’m White! You should be looking after me, mate!’ he would say: what is your intellect? What is your quality? What is your moral sense? What do you know about your civilisation? How far are you prepared to fight for it? What pain can you endure? Have you had understanding of death in your family and in life? Are you a mature and profound human being or are you part of the limitless universality (although you were born in a particular group which I respect and come from myself)? That’s the sort of principle that he would have"

—Jonathan Bowden

Τrain harder than the enemy

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“You must train harder than the enemy who is trying to kill you. You will get all the rest you need in the grave.”

― Leon Degrelle

 

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Christ is not Logos

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“In defiance of the law of gravity, the religion founders walked on sea waves. Contrary to the law of procreation, religion founders were put into the womb of virgin girls along supernatural path. In defiance of the law of motion, the sun stopped in its “course” for the reason of the wishes of a Semitic tribe. In defiance of the law of substance, water was transformed into wine. In defiance of the law of death, corpses already in the process of decay had to be resurrected. One then called miracle! Violence was inflicted upon the law with club blows. In mockery of the great order began the revision under the cross measure of faith in miracles. To those who were poor enough in intellect to accept without contradiction the teachings of the religions of salvation, heaven and all heavenly joys were promised. But the strong, who remained in the law, were threatened amidst the howl of applause of the unleashed masses with eternal damnation and the torments of hells sprung from a perverse imagination. The heretical laughter of the strong at the fever delirium of the weak was viewed as heathen stubbornness.”

Kurt Eggers

He will descend from the sky

[caption id="attachment_5848" align="alignnone" width="718"]tumblr_owqb7hHagI1w388tko1_1280 *made by Sandgroper from ironmarch.org[/caption]

“The return of Kalki, who will come to judge, mounted on a White Horse, carrying a flaming sword, like a comet… The return of the Fuhrer, at the limit of the disaster (the change of the Age into the New Age), in the confines between one world and another, of the physical earth and the spiritual earth, will be in a vimana, in a Disk of Light (that “will descend from the sky”). And he will also come to judge, rescuing his chosen ones of the Ultimate Battalion, of his Wildes Heer.” 

~ Miguel Serrano, A.H: Ultimate Avatar

Friday, February 23, 2018

The Spirit of Horst Wessel

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Who Was Horst Wessel?

Horst Wessel (September 9, 1907- February 23, 1930) was a German National Socialist
who eventually became a hero of National Socialism after being martyred by Jew led
Communists. As a teenager Horst Wessel was a leader among the youth group of the
German National People's Party, a conservative nationalist party. He would often lead
the group into brawls against Communists. But when the organization began viewing him  as too extreme he became more involved with the National Socialists and the
Stormtroopers (the SA). Eventually in 1926, he abandoned his studies of law at Berlin's
Friedrich Wilhelm University to become a full-time Stormtrooper; and also to develop
more of an understanding of workers' problems and to protect lower class Germans from  the Red Terror and Communist intrusions. Now, as a leader of the SA, he often made  speeches and led marches and fights against Communists in the streets. While Berlin was a mainly Liberal and Communist city, with his charisma Horst Wessel began winning over the support and votes of many Berliners for the National Socialists. The Judeo- Communists did everything they could to thwart Wessel' s influence, including killing SA members, and also spreading lies about Horst Wessel, saying he was originally a street beggar, a thief, and even a Berlin pimp. Eventually Wessel became too much of a threat, so the Communist Party decided to assassinate him. On the night of January 14, 1930 Horst Wessel opened the door to a Communist assassin who shot him in the face. Wessel was rushed to the hospital and would survive for forty days before passing away. During those forty days he was frequently visited by Joseph Goebbels and SA members.


Goebbels describes his experience of this in the essay below tiled "Raise the Flag High"

Raise the Flag High!

by Joseph Goebbels

It was late in the evening and I was enjoying the rare pleasure of reading a good book. I was relaxed and at ease. The telephone rang. I picked up the phone with trepidation. It is worse than I expected. “Horst Wessel has been shot.” Trembling with fear, I asked: “Dead?” “No, but there is no hope.” I felt as if the walls were collapsing around me. It was unbelievable. It cannot be!

*A few days later. I step into the small hospital room on the ground floor and am shocked by the sight. A bullet in the head has done terrible damage to this heroic lad. His face is distorted. I hardly recognize him. But he is happy. His clear, bright eyes shine, though we cannot talk for long. The doctor has ordered him to keep calm. He only repeats a few words: “I am happy.” He does not need to say it. One sees it by looking at him. His young, bright smile overcomes the blood and wounds. He still believes.

*I sat by his bed on a Sunday afternoon as streams of visitors came until evening. One can hope. He is improving. The fever has dropped, the wounds healing. He sat up part way and talked. What about? A foolish question! About us, about the movement, about his comrades. They stood outside his door today, and one after the other came by and raised his arm to salute the young leader for a moment. “I could not bear it otherwise!”

I look at his hands, which are now small and white. His strong nose stands out in the middle of his face, and two bright eyes sparkle. But the fever is back? He cannot eat, his strength gradually declines, though his spirit remains fresh and alert. He is not allowed to read. He may only talk. It is hard to obey the warning look of the nurse. Will I ever see him again? Who knows! If blood poisoning does not develop, everything will be OK.

A lonely mother sits outside. Her face reflects a question. “Will he make it?” What can one say but yes? I try to persuade myself and others.

Blood poisoning develops. By Thursday, there is little hope. He wants to talk with me.

The doctor gives me a minute. How hard it is to walk past the death watch into the room! He does not know how serious his condition is. But he senses it may be the last time: “Do not go away!” he begs. The nurse relents, and he is comforted. “Do not lose hope. The fever comes and goes. The movement, too, has suffered in the last two years, but today it is hard and strong.” That consoles him. Come back!,” his eyes, his hands, his hot dry lips, say, as I leave with a heavy heart. I fear I have seen him for the last time.

*Saturday morning. It is hopeless. The doctor is no longer allowing visits. He is hallucinating. He does not even recognize his own mother any longer.

*It is 6:30 Sunday morning. He dies after a hard struggle. As I stand by his bed two hours later, I can not believe that it is Horst Wessel. His face is yellow, the wounds still covered with white band aids. Stubble shows on his chin. The half-open eyes stare glassily into the eternity that we all face. The small cold hands lie in the midst of flowers, while and red tulips and violets.

Host Wessel has passed on. His mortal remains have given up struggle and conflict. Yet I can feel almost physically his spirit rise, to live on with us. He believed it, he knew it. He himself put it in words: He “marches in spirit in our ranks.”

*One day in a German Germany, workers and students will march together singing his song. He will be with them. He wrote it in a moment of ecstasy, of inspiration. The song flowed from him, born of life and bearing witness to that life. The brown soldiers are singing it across the country. In ten years, children will sing it in the schools, workers in the factories, soldiers on the march. His song makes him immortal. That is how he lived, that is how he died. A wanderer between two worlds, between yesterday and tomorrow, between that which was and that which will be. A soldier of the German revolution! Once he stood with his hand on his belt, proud and upright, with the smile of youth on his red lips, always ready to risk his life. That is how we will remember him.

I see endless columns marching in spirit. A humiliated people rises up and begins to move. An awakening Germany demands its rights: Freedom and prosperity!

He marches behind them in spirit. Many of them will not know him. Many will have gone where he now is. Many others will have come.

He strides silently and knowingly with them. The banners wave, the trumpets sound, the pipes sound, and from a million threats the song of the German revolution resounds:

"Raise the flag high!"

(This was the opening line to the "Horst Wessel Song," a poem he had written that became the Nazi Party anthem.)

The Flag High!

The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA march with calm, firm steps.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit in our ranks.

Clear the streets for the brown battalions,
Clear the streets for the stormtroopers!
Already millions look with hope to the swastika
The day of freedom and bread is dawning!

Roll call has sounded for the last time
We are all already prepared for the fight!
Soon Hitler's flag will fly over all streets.
Our servitude will soon end!

The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA marches with a calm, firm pace.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit in our ranks.

Horst Wessel Funeral Speech by Joseph Goebbels 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO1OrJDTTHY&bpctr=1519429920

[caption id="attachment_5842" align="alignnone" width="634"]tumblr_nin2xnC1Z91r9kp8no1_r2_1280 Horst Ludwig Wessel 9. Oktober 1907 – 23. Februar 1930[/caption]

Thursday, February 22, 2018

The Unknown Adolf Hitler

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by Mike Walsh

Battlefield heroism knows no frontiers. However, it is difficult to identify any whose valour equals that of a WWI (1914 – 1918) volunteer who at the time was an unknown corporal.

Corporal Adolf Hitler saw frontline action at Yser, Ypres, Flanders, Neuve Chapelle, La Bassee, Arras, Artuis, Somme, Fromelles, Alsace Lorraine, Aillette, Montdidier, Soissons, Rheims, Oise, Marne, Champagne, Vosle, Monchy, and Bapaume.

During those terrible years, the future leader of the German people displayed exemplary courage in a conflict that involved more than forty battles. He was wounded on October 5, 1916, and hospitalised for two months. Then he was back at the front until October 15, 1918, when he was hospitalised again, this time for gas poisoning.

WAR & CONFLICT BOOK ERA:  WWI/PERSONALITIES

Hitler’s battlefield heroism was the stuff of legends and on a par with that of the Spartans of Thermopylae.  Even Jews, notoriously hostile to the German statesman, were unstinting in their praise. That few people are aware of this is entirely due to the cowardliness of many palace publishers and media presstitutes.

Their spinelessness is such that they cannot honour their enemy; for thousands of years a European tradition. Hitler’s wartime record is not a matter of dispute and explains why recognition is muted, censored or lied about.

ADOLF HITLER THE WARRIOR


“He was a model of coolness and courage in both trench warfare and assault combat. He was always ready to volunteer for carrying messages in the most difficult and dangerous situations.” ~ Lieutenant Colonel Godin in his official request that Hitler be awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.

“He was always ready to help out in any situation, always volunteered for the most difficult and most arduous, and the most dangerous missions, and to risk his life and wellbeing for the Fatherland. On a human level, I felt closer to him than to any of the other men.” ~ Statement by Colonel Anton Tubeuf further on the recognition being awarded.

“Hitler inspired all his comrades. His fearless courage and devotion to duty, particularly in combat impressed them. His qualifications, modesty, and his admirable sobriety earned him the greatest respect of his comrades and superiors alike.” ~ Great War veteran Colonel Spatny who commanded the 16th Regiment

“Hitler’s wartime record; campaigns, decorations, wounds, periods in hospital and on leave, is fully documented. In addition, there is evidence to show that he was comradely, level-headed and an unusually brave soldier, and that a number of his commanding officers singled him out for special mention.” ~ Werner Maser, former head of the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Munich, author of the biography Hitler, Legend, Myth, and Reality (Harper and Row, 1971).

“Hitler was quick in mind and body and had great powers of endurance. His most remarkable qualities were his personal courage and daring which enabled him to face any combat or perilous situation whatsoever.” ~ (1922) General Friedrich Petz summary of the High Command’s appreciation of the self-effacing corporal Adolf Hitler.

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“Hitler was a courageous and efficient soldier and was always a good comrade.” ~ Joachim Fest, German historian, and journalist.

“The courage and the composure with which he faced the most deadly fire made him seem invulnerable to his comrades. As long as Hitler is near us, nothing will happen to us, they kept repeating. It appears that made a deep impression on Hitler and reinforced his belief that he had been charged with a special mission.” ~ Joachim Fest, German historian, and journalist.

“In the course of the preceding months, he had escaped death on innumerable occasions. It was as though he had been wearing a good luck charm.” ~ John Toland, historian.

“Corporal Hitler was in all probability one of the German soldiers who got closest to Paris in 1918.” ~ French Historian, Raymond Cartier.

“Hitler had a fierce courage unmatched by anyone at the time or since.” ~ Sebastian Haffner, the Jewish writer who was fanatically anti-Hitler.

“He was a pleasant and likeable man who took an interest in the welfare of all his companions.” ~ Karl Hanisch, a Jew who shared lodgings with Hitler.

Karl Hanisch later recalled that his fellow lodger “. . . was neither proud nor arrogant, and he was always available and willing to help. If someone needed fifty hellers to pay for another night’s lodging, Hitler would always give whatever he had in his pocket without another thought. On several occasions, I personally saw him take the initiative and pass the hat for such a collection.”

https://europeansworldwide.wordpress.com

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Wotan: The Archetype of the Awakened Aryan Man

[caption id="attachment_5827" align="alignnone" width="720"]tumblr_ourz6i6hlD1vbkbyeo1_1280 Kris Verwimp[/caption]

Wotan/Woden/Odin represents the archetype of the questing and awakened Aryan man, in particular the questing and awakened Germanic man.

Whilst it is clear from our studies of Germanic mythology that Wotan was not the original primary God of the Germanic pantheon-that honour rests with Tiw/Tyr/Ziu nevertheless Wotan represents that questing and awakened part of the Aryo-Germanic soul more than any other deity.

In this article I wish to focus in particular on Wotan`s sacrifice of his eye and the way in which he has been presented as a wandering and questing God, especially in the Wagner`s music dramas contained within Wagner`s magnum opus, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wotan appears in only the first three of these music dramas:-Das Rheingold, Die Walkuere and Siegfried. He is conspicuous by his absence from Goetterdaemmerung. In Das Rheingold and Die Walkuere he is known by His primary name of Wotan but in Siegfried, where the emphasis switches to the God-man Siegfried and the world of Middle Earth He appears in His guise as Der Wanderer-the Wanderer.

It is in this human guise that he interacts with the world of men. Der Wanderer makes his appearance in Act One Scene One and is described by Wagner as follows: "The Wanderer[Wotan]enters from the forest through the door at the back of the cave. He is wearing a long, dark-blue cloak; he carries a spear as a staff. On his head he wears a hat with a broad, round brim, which hangs down over his face."

Clearly Wagner is drawing an association with Wotan as the Wild Huntsman who emerges from the forest. It is in the forest that we as His followers may more effectively communicate with Him. He is known in other forms and in particular in England as Herne the Hunter.
His purpose as the Wanderer is two-fold: to obtain wisdom and to impart it.

"Much I`ve fathomed,
much made out:
matters of moment
I`ve made known to many
and many I`ve saved
from whatever irked them,
cares that gnawed at their hearts."
[Stewart Spencer translation]. 

It is surely no coincidence that all the great advances in technology and learning throughout history have been made by Aryan man and in particular by Germanic man. Within the psyche of Aryo-Germanic man there is a thirst for learning and the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, not for the sake of acquisition but in order that we may advance to the next stage of our development-the God-man. Aryo-Germanic man is the Sun Initiate who having come from the stars seeks to return there.

It is no coincidence that the modern space age is the direct result of the achievements of German scientists, many of whom were used by both the USA and the USSR after WWII to further their quests for the exploration of outer space. During the Third Reich Germany experienced an explosion of knowledge and technological development which coincided with the Wotan archetype being unleashed in the collective mind of the German people through His avatar Adolf Hitler.
Germanic man is by his very nature an explorer, an explorer of new worlds, whether on this planet or in outer space, even the world of the human psyche and I think in particular of the Swiss-German founder of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustav Jung who has done more than anyone else to reveal once again the great Aryan soul-lore of our pre-christian ancestors, knowledge that was suppressed by the alien creed of Christianity.

Wotan represents for us the supreme Aryo-Germanic man[or woman]. He encapsulates everything that we are-or should be. Jessie L. Weston in her Legends of the Wagner Drama defines Wotan as "the embodiment of the spirit of the Germanic peoples."

In order to obtain wisdom Wotan sacrificed his eye for a drink from Mimir`s well, which is where He resorted to to gain wisdom and knowledge. His eye now dwells in the depths of the well. The Eddas do not reveal which eye He sacrificed. By sacrificing His eye He gained wisdom and in many ways this should like his hanging on the world tree be viewed as an initiation. His sacrificed eye is associated with wisdom which cannot be acquired through personal experience but that which is granted to the individual, that which in a sense is inherited just as we inherit wisdom and knowledge via the Collective Unconscious from our ancestors. This type of wisdom is deep as represented by the depths of Mimir`s well and must be associated with the right side of the brain which is the storehouse of images and symbols-the means by which the Collective Unconscious communicates with us whilst the left side of the brain is more analytical and concerned with the human Ego.

Christianity and its associated secular creeds have temporarily detached the Germanic peoples from the Wotan archetype. It is only by responding to His call, the Call of the Blood that we can realise both individually and collectively our supreme destiny.

Wotans Krieger

http://aryan-myth-and-metahistory.blogspot.gr

Monday, February 19, 2018

The aggressive will to power of the East

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“Western Man, becoming aware of the aggressive will to power of the East, sees himself forced to extraordinary measure of defense, at the same time he prides himself on his virtue and good intentions. What he fails to see is that it is his own vices, which he has covered up by good international manners, that are thrown back in his face by the communist world, shamelessly and methodically. What the West has tolerated, but secretly and with a slight sense of shame( the diplomatic lie, systematic deception, veiled threats), comes back into the open and in full measure from the East and ties us up in neurotic knots. It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron Curtain.” 

- Carl Jung’s “Man and His Symbols”

Mythology is not a lie

[caption id="attachment_5821" align="alignnone" width="1044"]The Council of the Gods via Peter Paul Rubens The Council of the Gods via Peter Paul Rubens[/caption]

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.”

– Joseph Campbell

‘Giordano Bruno’ by Walter Pater

GiordanoBruno

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was a Dominican friar, philosopher, and astronomer, who ended up being burned at the stake for his mystical and controversial views. In addition to believing that the Earth revolved around the Sun, Bruno thought the stars were other Suns like ours, with planets revolving around them. As God was infinite, so too must be the universe, he said. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Bruno was not executed for his scientific views, but for his views that Christ was not God but simply a skilled magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, and that the Devil will be saved.

The following essay by the English essayist Walter Pater paints a picturesque portrait of Paris during the Italian’s stay there, Bruno’s love of the ancient Greek philosophers, his pantheism and view that the Holy Spirit is everywhere.

‘Giordano Bruno’ by Walter Pater*


“Jetzo, da ich ausgewachsen,
Viel gelesen, viel gereist,
Schwillt mein Herz, und ganz von Herzen,
Glaub’ ich an den Heilgen Geist.”
— Heine**

It was on the afternoon of the Feast of Pentecost that news of the death of Charles the Ninth went abroad promptly. To his successor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday afternoon that curious Parisians had the opportunity of listening to one who, as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event then commemorated, had a great deal to say concerning the Spirit; above all, of the freedom, the independence of its operation.

The speaker, though understood to be a brother of the Order of St. Dominic, had not been present at the mass — the usual university mass, De Spiritu Sancto, said today according to the natural course of the season in the chapel of the Sorbonne, by the Italian Bishop of Paris.

It was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined, somewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured, Italy in France, more Italian still. Men of Italian birth, “to the great suspicion of simple people,” swarmed in Paris, already “flightier, less constant, than the girouettes on its steeples,” and it was love for Italian fashions that had brought king and courtiers here today, with great eclat, as they said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely considered dress of the moment, pressing the university into a perhaps not unmerited background; for the promised speaker, about whom tongues had been busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had come from Italy. In an age in which all things about which Parisians much cared must be Italian there might be a hearing for Italian philosophy.

Courtiers at least would understand Italian, and this speaker was rumoured to possess in perfection all the curious arts of his native language. And of all the kingly qualities of Henry’s youth, the single one that had held by him was that gift of eloquence, which he was able also to value in others — inherited perhaps; for in all the contemporary and subsequent historic gossip about his mother, the two things certain are, that the hands credited with so much mysterious ill-doing were fine ones, and that she was an admirable speaker.

Bruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it, that the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its silence and self-concentration. The prospect of such freedom sufficiently explains why a young man who, however well-found in worldly and personal advantages, was conscious above all of great intellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a remarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty, chastity, obedience, in a Dominican cloister. What liberty of mind may really come to in such places, what daring new departures it may suggest to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified by the dubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and Joachim of Flora, reputed author of the new “Everlasting Gospel,” strange dreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that later dispensation of the spirit, in which all law must have passed away; or again by a recognised tendency in the great rival Order of St. Francis, in the so-called “spiritual” Franciscans, to understand the dogmatic words of faith with a difference.

The three convents in which Bruno lived successively, at Naples, at Citta di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed freely, we may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius in which, from the first, a heady southern imagination took the lead. But it was from beyond conventional bounds he would look for the sustenance, the fuel, of an ardour born or bred within them. Amid such artificial religious stillness, the air itself becomes generous in undertones. The vain young monk (vain, of course!) would feed his vanity by puzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of Dominic with his neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching them their own business — the new, higher, truer sense of the most familiar terms, the chapters they read, the hymns they sang, above all, as it happened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the reign of the Spirit, its excellent freedom. He would soon pass beyond the utmost limits of his brethren’s sympathy, beyond the largest and freest interpretation those words would bear, to thoughts and words on an altogether different plane, of which the full scope was only to be felt in certain old pagan writers, though approached, perhaps, at first, as having a kind of natural, preparatory kinship with Scripture itself.

The Dominicans would seem to have had well-stocked, liberally-selected, libraries; and this curious youth, in that age of restored letters, read eagerly, easily, and very soon came to the kernel of a difficult old author — Plotinus or Plato; to the purpose of thinkers older still, surviving by glimpses only in the books of others — Empedocles, Pythagoras, who had enjoyed the original divine sense of things, above all, Parmenides, that most ancient assertor of God’s identity with the world. The affinities, the unity, of the visible and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of all things whatever, with each other, through the consciousness, the person, of God the Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time, in every atom of matter, at every point of infinite space, ay! was everything in turn: that doctrine — l’antica filosofia Italiana — was in all its vigour there, a hardy growth out of the very heart of nature, interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness of primitive utterance. A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from the first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, some possible modification of, a freer way of taking, certain moral precepts: say! a primitive morality, congruous with those larger primitive ideas, the larger survey, the earlier, more liberal air.

Returning to this ancient “pantheism,” after so long a reign of a seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts “the vision of all things in God” to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as of all inquiry into nature: the Spirit of God, in countless variety of forms, neither above, nor, in any way, without, but intimately within, all things — really present, with equal integrity, in the sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering drop of water as it evaporates therein. The divine consciousness would have the same relation to the production of things, as the human intelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning them. Nay! those thoughts are themselves God in man: a loan, there, too, of his assisting Spirit, who, in truth, creates all things in and by his own contemplation of them. For Him, as for man in proportion as man thinks truly, thought and, being are identical, and things existent only in so far as they are known. Delighting in itself, in the sense of its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, fiery intelligence, evokes all the orders of nature, all the revolutions of history, cycle upon cycle, in ever new types.

And God the Spirit, the soul of the world, being really identical with his own soul, Bruno, as the universe shapes itself to his reason, his imagination, ever more and more articulately, shares also the divine joy in that process of the formation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of creation, to the evolution of things. In a certain mystic sense, which some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is creator, himself actually a participator in the creative function. And by such a philosophy, he assures us, it was his experience that the soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l’anima, mi s’aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l’intelletto!

For, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this theory in the whole range of its consequences. Its more immediate corollary was the famous axiom of “indifference,” of “the coincidence of contraries.” To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through which God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him. The differences of things, and above all, those distinctions which schoolmen and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented for themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the philosophic survey; nothing, in itself, either great or small; and matter, certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but divine. Could one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit had made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and spirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom and necessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be superficial rather than substantial differences. Only, were joy and sorrow also to be added to the list of phenomena really coincident or indifferent, as some intellectual kinsmen of Bruno have claimed they should?

[caption id="attachment_5814" align="aligncenter" width="495"]Engraving of Giordano Bruno from ca. 1830 Engraving of Giordano Bruno from ca. 1830[/caption]

The Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away from the election, the seeming “vocation” of his youth, yet would remain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in some predominant qualities of temper. At first it only by way of thought that he asserted his liberty — delightful, late-found privilege! — traversing, in mental journeys, that spacious circuit, as it broke away before him at every moment into ever-new horizons. Kindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect draws from him cries of joy, a kind of religious joy, as in some new “canticle of the creatures,” a new monkish hymnal or antiphonary. “Nature” becomes for him a sacred term. “Conform thyself to Nature” — with what sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he enounces the precept to others, to himself! Recovering, as he fancies, a certain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, in which Pythagoras and other inspired theorists of early Greece had abounded, in his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a sacred poem, as it had been with them. That Bruno himself, in “the enthusiasm of the idea,” drew from his axiom of the “indifference of contraries” the practical consequence which is in very deed latent there, that he was ready to sacrifice to the antinomianism, which is certainly a part of its rigid logic, the purities of his youth for instance, there is no proof. The service, the sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great light that has dawned for him, which occupies his entire conscience with the sense of his responsibilities to it, is that of days and nights spent in eager study, of a plenary, disinterested utterance of the thoughts that arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of martyrdom. The work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, exalts, inebriates him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of prayer, sacrifice, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. She, too, possesses, not less than the soul of the world, initiatory power, responding with the free gift of a light and heat that seem her own.

Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in purely physical ardours. His pantheistic belief that the Spirit of God was in all things, was not inconsistent with, might encourage, a keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life and character for humanity in all its visible attractiveness, since there, too, in truth, divinity lurks. From those first fair days of early Greek speculation, love had occupied a large place in the conception of philosophy; and in after days Bruno was fond of developing, like Plato, like the Christian platonist, combining something of the peculiar temper of each, the analogy between intellectual enthusiasm and the flights of physical love, with an animation which shows clearly enough the reality of his experience in the latter. The Eroici Furori, his book of books, dedicated to Philip Sidney, who would be no stranger to such thoughts, presents a singular blending of verse and prose, after the manner of Dante’s Vita Nuova. The supervening philosophic comment re-considers those earlier physical impulses which had prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely to the advantage of their abstract, incorporeal equivalents. Yet if it is after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the natural stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. That there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice or Laura, by no means proves the young man’s earlier desires merely “Platonic;” and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of their force and propriety by such deflection, the intellectual purpose as certainly finds its opportunity thereby, in the matter of borrowed fire and wings. A kind of old, scholastic pedantry creeping back over the ardent youth who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if Love himself went in for a degree at the University) Bruno developes, under the mask of amorous verse, all the various stages of abstraction, by which, as the last step of a long ladder, the mind attains actual “union.” For, as with the purely religious mystics, union, the mystic union of souls with each other and their Lord, nothing less than union between the contemplator and the contemplated — the reality, or the sense, or at least the name of it — was always at hand. Whence that instinctive tendency, if not from the Creator of things himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the physical universe, as in man? How familiar the thought that the whole creation longs for God, the soul as the hart for the water-brooks! To unite oneself to the infinite by breadth and lucidity of intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal life — this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous soul — “a filosofia e necessario amore.” There would be degrees of progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose intellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the heady, sweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air, the exaggerated humour of gothic carvers, the thick stratum of pagan sentiment beneath (“Santa Maria sopra Minerva!”) are indelible in him. Tears, sympathies, tender inspirations, attraction, repulsion, dryness, zeal, desire, recollection: he finds a place for them all: knows them all well in their unaffected simplicity, while he seeks the secret and secondary, or, as he fancies, the primary, form and purport of each.

A light on actual life, or mere barren scholastic subtlety, never before had the pantheistic doctrine been developed with such completeness, never before connected with so large a sense of nature, so large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is. The eyes that had not been wanting to visible humanity turned with equal liveliness on the natural world in that region of his birth, where all its force and colour is twofold. Nature is not only a thought in the divine mind; it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which, ever identical with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the successive forms of life, of thought, of language even. But what seemed like striking transformations of matter were in truth only a chapter, a clause, in the great volume of the transformations of the Spirit. To that mystic recognition that all is divine had succeeded a realisation of the largeness of the field of concrete knowledge, the infinite extent of all there was actually to know. Winged, fortified, by this central philosophic faith, the student proceeds to the reading of nature, led on from point to point by manifold lights, which will surely strike on him, by the way, from the intelligence in it, speaking directly, sympathetically, to the intelligence in him. The earth’s wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by a whole generation the “philosophy of experience:” in that, the bold, flighty, pantheistic speculation became tangible matter of fact. Here was the needful book for man to read, the full revelation, the detailed story of that one universal mind, struggling, emerging, through shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in various orders of being — the veritable history of God. And nature, together with the true pedigree and evolution of man also, his gradual issue from it, was still all to learn. The delightful tangle of things! it would be the delightful task of man’s thoughts to disentangle that. Already Bruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room perhaps for Darwin also. That Deity is everywhere, like all such abstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its practical effect on the mind which admits it, on the peculiar perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century, faint, consumptive, with a hold on external things naturally faint, the theorem that God was in all things whatever, annihilating, their differences suggested a somewhat chilly withdrawal from the contact of all alike. In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every form of experience — a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite might figure as “the infinitely little;” no blade of grass being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. But the earth itself, hitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited universe, was, after all, itself but an atom in an infinite world of starry space, then lately displayed to the ingenuous intelligence, which the telescope was one day to verify to bodily eyes. For if Bruno must needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate knowledge of the earth — the infinitely little; he looked back, gratefully, to another daring mind, which had already put the earth into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. If God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds innumerable. Yes! one might well have supposed what reason now demonstrated, indicating those endless spaces which sidereal science would gradually occupy, an echo of the creative word of God himself,
“Qui innumero numero innumerorum nomina dicit.”

That the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth is of like stuff with the stars: now the familiar knowledge of children, dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from the prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly exhilarating sense of enlargement of the intellectual, nay! the physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and order did not desert him in that larger survey, making the utmost one could ever know of the earth seem but a very little chapter in that endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so greatly in the admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve from matter new conditions. The immovable earth beneath one’s feet! one almost felt the movement, the respiration of God in it. And yet how greatly even the physical eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was flattered by the theorem. What joy in that motion, the prospect, the music, the music of the spheres! — he could listen to it in a perfection such as had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras even.
“Veni, Creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita,
Imple superna gratia,
Quae tu creasti pectora!”

Yes! the grand old Christian hymns, perhaps the grandest of them, seemed to blend themselves in the chorus, to deepen immeasurably under this new intention. It is not always, or often, that men’s abstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal spirits, affect conduct. It was what they did with Bruno. The ghastly spectacle of the endless material universe, infinite dust, in truth, starry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes — that prospect from which Pascal’s faithful soul recoiled so painfully — induced in Bruno only the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship and sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such, might well be pushed aside for the “excellency” of such knowledge as this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a kind of dark ingratitude; the one sin, to believe directly or indirectly in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, because involving denial of the indwelling spirit. A free spirit, certainly, as of old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that presented itself to the infinite relish of this “prodigal son” of Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a largeness, a beneficence, impiously belied by any theory of restrictions, distinctions, absolute limitations. Touch, see, listen, eat freely of all the trees of the garden of Paradise with the voice of the Lord God literally everywhere: here was the final counsel of perfection. The world was even larger than youthful appetite, youthful capacity. Let theologian and every other theorist beware how he narrowed either. The plurality of worlds! how petty in comparison seemed the sins, to purge which was the chief motive for coming to places like this convent, whence Bruno, with vows broken, or obsolete for him, presently departed. A sonnet, expressive of the joy with which he returned to so much more than the liberty of ordinary men, does not suggest that he was driven from it. Though he must have seemed to those who surely had loved so lovable a creature there to be departing, like the prodigal of the Gospel, into the furthest of possible far countries, there is no proof of harsh treatment, or even of an effort to detain him.

[caption id="attachment_5815" align="aligncenter" width="612"]The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de' Fiori, Rome. The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de' Fiori, Rome.[/caption]

It happens, of course most naturally, that those who undergo the shock of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise their debt to the deserted cause: how much of the heroism, or other high quality, of their rejection has really been the growth of what they reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk: his philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a new religion. He came forth well fitted by conventual influences to play upon men as he was played upon. A challenge, a war-cry, an alarum; everywhere he seemed to be the creature of some subtly materialized spiritual force, like that of the old Greek prophets, like the primitive “enthusiasm” he was inclined to set so high, or impulsive Pentecostal fire. His hunger to know, fed at first dreamily enough within the convent walls as he wandered over space and time an indefatigable reader of books, would be fed physically now by ear and eye, by large matter-of-fact experience, as he journeys from university to university; yet still, less as a teacher than a courtier, a citizen of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual light. The philosophic need to try all things had given reasonable justification to the stirring desire for travel common to youth, in which, if in nothing else, that whole age of the later Renaissance was invincibly young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile spirit of the world, ever renewing its youth, became, sympathetically, the motive of a life as mobile, as ardent, as itself; of a continual journey, the venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever new discoveries, of renewed conviction.

The unity, the spiritual unity, of the world: — that must involve the alliance, the congruity, of all things with each other, great reinforcement of sympathy, of the teacher’s personality with the doctrine he had to deliver, the spirit of that doctrine with the fashion of his utterance. In his own case, certainly, as Bruno confronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, his language, were the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which soon had hold of his audience also; alien, strangely alien, as it might seem from the speaker. It was intimate discourse, in magnetic touch with every one present, with his special point of impressibility; the sort of speech which, consolidated into literary form as a book, would be a dialogue according to the true Attic genius, full of those diversions, passing irritations, unlooked-for appeals, in which a solicitous missionary finds his largest range of opportunity, and takes even dull wits unaware. In Bruno, that abstract theory of the perpetual motion of the world was a visible person talking with you.

And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he presented himself in the comely Dominican habit. The eyes which in their last sad protest against stupidity would mistake, or miss altogether, the image of the Crucified, were to-day, for the most part, kindly observant eyes, registering every detail of that singular company, all the physiognomic lights which come by the way on people, and, through them, on things, the “shadows of ideas” in men’s faces (De Umbris Idearum was the title of his discourse), himself pleasantly animated by them, in turn. There was “heroic gaiety” there; only, as usual with gaiety, the passage of a peevish cloud seemed all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, by many a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of repose, to an expression of high-bred melancholy, it was a face that looked, after all, made for suffering — already half pleading, half defiant — as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake a hair’s breadth from its estimate of yourself.

Like nature, like nature in that country of his birth, the Nolan, as he delighted to proclaim himself, loved so well that, born wanderer as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or later, at the risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without selection, and, with all his contempt for the “asinine” vulgar, was not fastidious. His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric illustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old pagan one, the primitive Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt his speech, as they do the carved and pictorial work of the age, according to the fashion of that ornamental paganism which the Renaissance indulged. To excite, to surprise, to move men’s minds, as the volcanic earth is moved, as if in travail, and, according to the Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of the teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university. Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre-eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on people and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to revive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of his old readings. He seemed to promise some greater matter than was then actually exposed; himself to enjoy the fulness of a great outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the curiosity of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you seemed to see that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified kindling from word to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris,*** insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied — the volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for Plato’s genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a very courtly exterior, with mordent words, in unabashed criticism of all real or suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for the “triumphant beast,” the “constellation of the Ass,” shining even there, amid the university folk, those intellectual bankrupts of the Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them gravely a worthless “parchment and paper” currency. In truth, Aristotle, as the supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending to determine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the proper nature of things from the eyes of men. Habit — the last word of his practical philosophy — indolent habit! what would this mean in the intellectual life, but just that sort of dead judgments which are most opposed to the essential freedom and quickness of the Spirit, because the mind, the eye, were no longer really at work in them?

To Bruno, a true son of the Renaissance, in the light of those large, antique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform would figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon some deeper, more radical antagonism between two tendencies of men’s minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and the world, say! Christ and the flesh? — that so very ancient antagonism between good and evil? Was there any place for imperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest thought, could not escape from God’s presence? Who should note the crime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, which could have made no misshapen births? In proportion as man raised himself to the ampler survey of the divine work around him, just in that proportion did the very notion of evil disappear. There were no weeds, no “tares,” in the endless field. The truly illuminated mind, discerning spiritually, might do what it would. Even under the shadow of monastic walls, that had ever been the precept, which the larger theory of “inspiration” had bequeathed to practice. “Of all the trees of the garden thou mayst freely eat! If you take up any deadly thing, it shall not hurt you! And I think that I, too, have the spirit of God.”

Bruno, the citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn off the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its proper speculative limits. But a kind of secresy, an ambiguous atmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the doctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters, the alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel reign of the spirit — what it might actually be — would hardly fail to find in Bruno’s theories a method of turning poison into food, to live and thrive thereon; an art, surely, no less opportune in the Paris of that hour, intellectually or morally, than had it related to physical poisons. If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the ethic or practical equivalent to his theoretic positions, there was that in his very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which seemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things. The loose sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art, distinguishing, rejecting, refining. Commission and omission; sins of the former surely had the preference. And how would Paolo and Francesca have read the lesson? How would this Henry the Third, and Margaret of the “Memoirs,” and other susceptible persona then present, read it, especially if the opposition between practical good and evil traversed another distinction, to the “opposed points,” the “fenced opposites” of which many, certainly, then present, in that Paris of the last of the Valois, could never by any possibility become “indifferent,” between the precious and the base, aesthetically — between what was right and wrong, as matter of art?

Notes:

*Pater’s article was first published in The Fortnightly Review, 1889. Later it was greatly revised and included as a chapter in the unfinished novel Gaston de Latour.

**From Heine’s Aus der Harzreise, “Bergidylle 2”: “Tannenbaum, mit grunen Fingern,” Stanza 10. This translates to:

Now that I have grown to manhood,
Read and travelled more than most
Swells my heart, and I acknowledge
With full heart the Holy Ghost.

***E-text editor’s transliteration: hybris. Liddell and Scott definition: “wanton violence, arising from the pride of strength, passion, etc.”

Friday, February 16, 2018

Human Sacrifice in Legends and Myths (Part II)

By D. L. Ashliman **


Entombed


skeletal-remains

Germany


In the small village of Vestenberg, 2 1/2 hours from Ansbach, there is a large hill, surrounded by a deep moat. Traces of ancient towers are still visible there. Remnants of grave containers can be found just below the earth's surface. A beautiful oak forest lies adjacent to the hill. The names of some of the places in this forest are Himmelreich, Helgraben, and Gründlein.

By the beginning of the middle ages Vestenberg was already the seat of the noble family by the same name. The Vestenbergs were among the most widely spread and wealthiest families of Franconia....

The narration of an eighty-year-old woman:
When Vestenberg Castle was being built, the mason built a seat into the wall. A child was placed on the seat to be sealed into the wall. The child cried, so to pacify it, they gave it a beautiful red apple.

The unmarried woman, whose child it was, had given it up for a large sum of money.

After the mason had finished mortaring the child into the wall, he gave the mother a hard slap on the face, saying: "It would have been better if you had begged your way throughout the country with your child."

...A superstitious man claimed that the railroad bridge over the Göltsch Valley near Reichenbach in Saxony cannot be completed. They cannot find firm ground. Whatever they build during the day disappears the following night. The work will not succeed until they sacrifice seven humans to the Evil One for it. They have already entombed one child in it. People suspected this, and for this reason the schoolmasters were asked to count their children, and it turned out that one child was missing. The narrator heard this account in a tavern in Nürnberg.

In Hof a rumor was circulating among the superstitious that a man was seeking a child to entomb in the Göltsch Bridge. A gymnastics teacher, wearing his white gymnast's suit and carrying a rope in his hand, chanced to walk down the disreputable Fisher Street in Hof, where he so frightened the children that they all fled screaming into their houses.

Between Breitenbrunn and Wollmetshofen in Swabia lies the Hartenberg Forest. A hill there was being excavated for gravel for road construction. All sorts of things were found there: charcoal, bones, broken containers, etc. A human skeleton was also excavated, which was not lying, but rather standing upright. According to legend there was a castle at Hartenberg. A donkey carried water to this castle. Once when the animal had not been seen for several days the peasants suspected that something had happened at Hartenberg, and they went there. To their astonishment they could see nothing of the castle, for it had sunk into the earth. Three days later they heard a rooster crowing from the depths.

Source: Einmauern. In Friedrich Panzer, Bayerische Sagen und Bräuche: Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie (München: Christian Kaiser, 1855), vol. 2, pp. 254-56.

The Entombed Child 


[caption id="attachment_5801" align="alignnone" width="600"]AK09434a Vilmnitz (Rügen)[/caption]

Germany


When Christianity was introduced to Rügen, they wanted to build a church in Vilmnitz. However, the builders could not complete their task, because whatever they put up during day was torn down again by the Devil that night. Then they purchased a child, gave it a bread-roll in one hand, a light in the other, and set it in a cavity in the foundation, which they quickly mortared shut. Now the Devil could no longer disrupt the building's progress.

It is also said that a child was entombed in the church at Bergen under similar circumstances.

Source: A. Haas, "Das eingemauerte Kind," Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (Stettin: Johs. Burmeister's Buchhandlung, 1903), no. 195, p. 173.

The Ghost at Spyker


[caption id="attachment_5802" align="alignnone" width="600"]Schloss_Spyker_Sammlung_Duncker Spyker Castle around 1860, Alexander Duncker Collection[/caption]

Germany

Uncanny things happen at Spyker, the ancient castle of the Wrangels. The tower there is haunted. It is said that while they were building it, every night it would collapse, until they entombed a human within its walls. He now wanders about.

Source: A. Haas, "Der Spuk in Spyker," Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (Stettin: Johs. Burmeister's Buchhandlung, 1903), no. 128, pp. 116-117.

Sacrificing Virgins to Lakes The Old Church at Kohlstädt


verurteilte_nonne

Germany

There is a lake where every year a virgin is sacrificed. If this does not happen then the water becomes unruly, the waves grow larger and larger, then rise higher and higher until they finally flood the entire land.

There is also a city whose citizens have a virgin entombed within a wall every year. But today no one knows exactly where this is or why it is done. Some claim that this girl is also a sacrifice to a large lake, which otherwise would swallow up the city.

Source: A. Haas, "Jungfrauenopfer an Seen," Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (Stettin: Johs. Burmeister's Buchhandlung, 1903), no. 93, p. 86.

The Old Church at Kohlstädt


[caption id="attachment_5804" align="alignnone" width="600"]Ruine Kohlstädt Ruine Kohlstädt[/caption]

Germany

Next to the brook beneath Kohlstädt there is an old wall which is called the Old Church. It is said that during heathen times children were sacrificed there and that Weinberg Hill got its name from the children's crying mothers who watched the sacrifice from there.

Source: Adalbert Kuhn, "Alte Kirche zu Kohlstädt," Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen und einigen andern, besonders den angrenzenden Gegenden Norddeutschlands, vol. 1 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1859), no. 253, pp. 223-24. Kuhn lists his source simply as "oral."

Translator's note: The suffix Wein- in the name Weinberg can either be translated as "wine," or -- as the legend claims -- it could derive from the verb weinen, "to cry."

Kohlstädt is midway between the North German cities of Detmold and Paderborn.

The Name Greene


[caption id="attachment_5806" align="alignnone" width="600"]Bad Gandersheim Bad Gandersheim[/caption]

Germany


It is said that in ancient times they once sacrificed a child on the mountain above Greene. It is no longer known what the occasion was. The child grinned beneath the butcher-knife, and one of the executioners said: "It is still grinning!" (Es greint noch!) From that they named the place that was soon built at that location "Greine" or "Greene."

Source: A. Kuhn and W. Schwartz, "Der Name von Greene," Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg [Mecklenburg], Pommern, der Mark, Sachsen, Thüringen, Braunschweig, Hannover, Oldenburg und Westfalen: Aus dem Munde des Volkes gesammelt (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1848), no. 276, p. 247.

Greene is a village on the Leine River, not far from Gandersheim.

An Infant Speaks


[caption id="attachment_5805" align="alignnone" width="600"]Stargard Castle Stargard Castle[/caption]

Germany


Ages ago the cruel custom ruled of entombing infants in the foundations of castles and fortresses in order to provide protection against storms, weather, and the dangers of war. The infants were purchased from their mothers for large sums of money. Once a fortified castle was to be thusly built in the Stargard region. An infant had already been purchased. Before committing the cruel deed, the masons who had been engaged for the construction were talking with one another: "What is sweeter than a mother's nipple?"

The answer came to them from the infant's mouth: "The grace of God!"

Taken aback, the workmen laid down their tools and refused to proceed with the wicked building.

The castle was never completed.

Source: A. Haas, "Der Spuk in Spyker," Rügensche Sagen und Märchen (Stettin: Johs. Burmeister's Buchhandlung, 1903), no. 128, pp. 116-117.

** D. L. Ashliman (born 1 January 1938) is an American folklorist and writer. He is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Pittsburgh, and is considered to be a leading expert on folklore and fairytales. He has published a number of works on the topic.

 

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden

dresden.back

At 10 p.m. on February 13-14, 1945, the Master Bomber broadcast the cryptic order: ‘Controller to Plate-Rack Force: Come in and bomb glow of red T.I.s as planned.’ The ill-famed R.A.F. attack on Dresden had begun. The target city was among Germany’s largest, but had little military or industrial value. It was a center for the evacuation of wounded servicemen, and schools, restaurants, and public buildings had been converted into hospitals.

The authorities expected that this, a city often compared with Florence for its graceful Baroque style, would be spared. By 1945 the legend was deeply entrenched that Dresden would never be bombed. It was not to be. In February 1945 with the war’s political and military directors meeting at Yalta, Mr Winston Churchill urgently needed some display of his offensive strength and of his willingness to assist the Russians in their drive westwards. Dresden just seven miles behind the eastern Front, became the victim of Mr Churchill’s desire for a spectacular ‘shattering blow’. As things turned out this, the most crushing air-raid of the war, was not delivered until the Yalta conference ended.

The city was undefended - even the Luftwaffe night fighter force was grounded. There were no proper air raid shelters. Dresden was housing hundreds of thousands of refugees from Silesia, East Prussia, and western Germany, in addition to its own population of 630,000 Up to a hundred thousand people, perhaps more, were killed in two or three hours, burned alive, that night. Yet until the first edition of this book appeared in 1963 the raid scarcely figured in the Allied war histories. A veil had been drawn across this tragedy.

Dresden_hires_30x45

Stung by foreign revulsion at this new St Valentine’s Day massacre, the British prime minister - who had ordered it - penned an angry minute to his Chief of Staff, even before the war ended, rasping that ‘the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing’. It is from this remarkably forgetful minute that the sub-title of this documentary account is taken. For the first time the full story, omitting nothing, of the historical background to this cruel blow and of its unexpected political consequences, is told.

David Irving 

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Unknown One

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“I shall and will know thee, Unknown One, Who searchest out the depths of my soul, And blowest through my life like a storm, Ungraspable, and yet my kinsman! I shall and will know thee, and serve thee.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Last Avatar

[caption id="attachment_5783" align="aligncenter" width="650"]The Wild Chase by Franz von Stuck The Wild Chase by Franz von Stuck[/caption]

"At the end of time, our Volk Leader will return for the Wild Hunt (Wildes Heer), with his Final Battalion, astride a White Horse, Sleipnir, his eight-legged steed. He will be the Last Avatar, also known as Wotan and Vishnu-Kalki. This time He will come to conquer and to judge."

Miguel Serrano [Foreword, Temple of Wotan, by Ron McVan]

Wotan - the Sun God

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The power of Wotan is a metaphysical potential available to each and every one of his people through a process of spiritual introspection and development. To properly appreciate the character and uses of this power, it is necessary to understand its metaphysical background.

To begin, we must develop a realization of the spiritual nature of the universe. The universe, as a whole, is a spiritually living being -- the ultimately supreme God, if you will. This is not the place for an examination of the motives and processes underlying the manifestations of this universal being. Let it suffice to say that our solar system is one small living part of that being, as a cell is one small living part of a larger organism.

The center of our solar system is, of course, the sun. What is often overlooked by modern man is the fact that the sun is more than the physical center; it is also the spiritual center. Life on the planet Earth is derived from, dependent upon, and expresses the sun's energy. Naturally, this energy is manifested in other ways as well: the moon supplies reflected energy which has seen subtly altered; the seas absorb, transform, and release that energy; plant life stores the energy in a profoundly altered form; etc.,etc. And, most importantly, each and every living human being is a repository for the sun's energy, and is blessed with the capacity for using that energy in a highly complex and creative way.

From the earliest times, man has recognized the various sources and centers of this spiritual energy from the sun, and has expressed this recognition in a process of deification of the natural features of the world and its surroundings (the moon, stars, etc.). For most peoples, the sun has played a central role in this process, as it should. Wotan represents the Teutonic* attempt to deify and understand this primary source of spiritual energy.

To equate the designation of Wotan as a sun god with the idea that his worshipers view him simply as a giver of life and warmth, however, is to seriously misunderstand the matter. As an organism absorbs, transforms, and expresses the sun's energy, it partakes of the spiritual essence of the sun,, and moves in the direction of becoming one with that being on a metaphysical plane. Moreover, just as one kind of plant will share in this process in a way that differs from that of another kind of plant, so the various genetic strains of humanity each have their own way of expressing the sun's energy. The ancient Egyptians, for example, stressed the idea of Majesty, and this theme dominated every aspect of their lives. In contrast to this, the Zoroastrian tradition saw the sun as man's champion in the struggle against the forces of darkness. For a Christian, the sun represents a stern but protective father who will save his worshippers if they will only accept him and his ways. Examples could be cited almost endlessly, but the same implicit concept will be found again and again: the sun/deity is an all-powerful spiritual being that imposes his will on the people of the world. In the case of Wotan, however, the spiritual essence of the sun is seen in a significantly different way -- and it is from this that Wotan's power is derived.

Wotan stands alone as an evolving, honorable and aloof deity. In the mythologies of other religions, the sun god is presented as a complete, finished deity; Wotan learns and grows, and is ever striving to achieve new heights of power and wisdom. In other religions, the sun god is portrayed as being primarily concerned with enforcing the established order; Wotan is always seeking to create the new. The other sun gods present an arbitrary code of conduct to humanity and accept no questioning of its basis, or their own conduct; Wotan demands of his followers only that they be honorable - and applies this requirement to himself as well. And, perhaps most importantly, the sun gods of the other religions impose themselves upon their peoples, demanding obediance and allegiance, while Wotan stands apart and makes himself available only to those who choose his way and actively seek him out.

Of all the peoples of the world, the Teutons are alone in having experienced the miraculous and sublime process of evolutionary change that has enabled them to see the sun's energy as alive, evolving, and creative. The sun gods of other peoples were static from their inception - and therefore stillborn; their survival as objects of worship was made possible only by a grasping and hypocritical priesthood.

Unfortunately for humanity, Wotan's people lacked the courage of their convictions; they opted for the easy road, and accepted Christianity. Now, after centuries of betrayal, hypocrisy and revealed falsehood, his people are rejecting the Judeo-Christian lie and turning to their inner spiritual selves for truth and understanding -- and they are finding Wotan. There can be no more impressive demonstration of the creative power of Wotan than this.

We stand on the threshold of a new era, and what we see before us is the universe. As we carry the banner of our Sun's spiritual energy to the farthest galaxies, we can take pride in the knowledge that we are the bringers of the seed of evolution, creativity, honor, and dignity.

* The word Teutonic is used here in the sense of "noting or pertaining to the northern European stock that includes the German, Dutch, Scandinavian, British, and related peoples".

Random House Collegiate

Thursday, February 8, 2018

The loss of Willpower

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“No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.”

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1978

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The Poetry of Sacrifice

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“We have thought for a long time that fascism was a kind of poetry, the poetry of the twentieth century. I tell myself that it cannot die. Little children who will be boys of twenty later will marvel to learn of the existence of this exaltation of millions of men, the youth camps, the glory of the past, parades, cathedrals of light, heroes struck down in combat, Jose Antonio… I shall never forget the radiance of the fascism of my youth.”

-Robert Brasillach

Monday, February 5, 2018

Karl Brandt (January 8, 1904 – June 2, 1948)

[caption id="attachment_5771" align="aligncenter" width="400"]27540259_1764525270522933_6966114383572235164_n SS Brigadier Karl Brandt moments before his execution (1948)[/caption]

"Ethical obligation has to subordinate itself to the totalitarian nature of war"

Karl Brandt

Human Sacrifice in Legends and Myths (Part I)

By D. L. Ashliman **

King Aun Sacrifices Nine Sons to Odin




[caption id="attachment_5760" align="alignnone" width="800"]temple An early 20th-century painting depicting the mid-winter festival at the Gamla Uppsala temple. Artist: Carl Larsson[/caption]

Sweden

King Aun returned to Uppsala when he was sixty years of age. He made a great sacrifice, and in it offered up his son to Odin. Aun got an answer from Odin, that he should live sixty years longer; and he was afterwards king in Uppsala for twenty-five years.

Now came Ale the Bold, a son of King Fridleif, with his army to Svithiod against King Aun....

Then Aun fled a second time to West Gautland; and for twenty-five years Ale reigned in Uppsala, until he was killed by Starkad the Old.

After Ale's fall, Aun returned to Uppsala and ruled the kingdom for twenty-five years. Then he made a great sacrifice again for long life, in which he sacrificed his second son, and received the answer from Odin, that he should live as long as he gave him one of his sons every tenth year, and also that he should name one of the districts of his country after the number of sons he should offer to Odin. When he had sacrificed the seventh of his sons he continued to live for ten years; but so that he could not walk, but was carried on a chair. Then he sacrificed his eighth son, and lived thereafter ten years, lying in his bed. Now he sacrificed his ninth son, and lived ten years more; but so that he drank out of horn like an infant.

He had now only one son remaining, whom he also wanted to sacrifice, and to give Odin Uppsala and the domains thereunto belonging, under the name of the Tenth Land, but the Swedes would not allow it; so there was no sacrifice, and King Aun died, and was buried in a mound at Uppsala. Since that time it is called Aun's sickness when a man dies, without pain, of extreme old age.

Thiodolf tells of this:
In Uppsala town the cruel king
Slaughtered his sons at Odin's shrine --
Slaughtered his sons with cruel knife,
To get from Odin length of life
He lived until he had to turn
His toothless mouth to the deer's horn;
And he who shed his children's blood
Sucked through the ox's horn his food,
At length fell Death has tracked him down,
Slowly, but sure, in Uppsala town.

Source: Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla; or, The Sagas of the Norse Kings, translated from the Icelandic by Samuel Laing; 2nd edition, revised, with notes by Rasmus B. Anderson, vol. 1 (London: John C. Nimmo, 1889), pp. 301-302.

Human Sacrifice among the Gauls


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The nation of all the Gauls is extremely devoted to superstitious rites; and on that account they who are troubled with unusually severe diseases and they who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them, and employ the Druids as the performers of those sacrifices; because they think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious, and they have sacrifices of that kind ordained for national purposes. Others have figures of vast size, the limbs of which formed of osiers they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in the flames. They consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or in robbery, or any other offence, is more acceptable to the immortal gods; but when a supply of that class is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even the innocent.

Source: Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, translated by Edward Brooks, Jr. (Chicago: Farquhar and Albrecht, 1896) ch. 16, pp. 202-203

Buried Alive


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Sweden

Many years ago an epidemic swept over Dalland, to which thousands of persons fell victims. Many people fled to the forests, or to other regions. The churches were deserted, and those remaining were not enough to bury the dead. At this stage an old Finlander came along, who informed the few survivors that they need not hope for cessation of the scourge until they had buried some living thing.

The advice was followed. First a cock was buried alive, but the plague continued as violent as ever. Next, a goat, but this also proved ineffectual. At last a poor boy, who frequented the neighborhood, begging, was lured to a wood-covered hill at the point where the river Daleborg empties into Lake Venem. Here a deep hole was dug, the boy meantime sitting near, enjoying a piece of bread and butter that had been given him.

When the grave was deep enough, the boy was dropped into it and the diggers began hurriedly to shovel the dirt upon him. The lad begged and prayed them not to throw dirt upon his bread and butter, but the spades flew faster, and in a few minutes, still alive, he was entirely covered and left to his fate.

Whether this stayed the plague is not know, but many who after night pass the hill, hear, it is said, a voice as if from a dying child, crying, "Buried alive! Buried Alive!"

Source: Herman Hofberg, Swedish Fairy Tales, translated by W. H. Myers (Chicago, Belford-Clarke Company, 1890), p. 140.

Of the Pestilence in Jutland


Filling a mass grave at night during the Plague of London, c 1665.

Denmark

On the east side of the churchyard of Fur no one is buried, because when the Black Death raged in the country, a living child was buried there, in order to stay the contagion.

Other instances are given of this method of staying the pestilence.

Source: Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands, vol. 2 (London: Edward Lumley, 1851), p. 219.

The Höxter Ghost




[caption id="attachment_5764" align="aligncenter" width="479"]215298611_ab8ff06cf0 Höxter[/caption]

Germany

When Höxter was being fortified, a small child was entombed in the wall near the Ovenhausen Gate in order to make the town invincible. Even today the child can be heard crying every seven years.

Source: Unpublished papers of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.

** D. L. Ashliman (born 1 January 1938) is an American folklorist and writer. He is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Pittsburgh, and is considered to be a leading expert on folklore and fairytales. He has published a number of works on the topic.

 

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Better to deny everything, to destroy everything

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"Better to deny everything, to destroy everything, in order to renew from the ground up. Violence, is the quickest and most definitive way of reaching the revolutionary goal…No bourgeois hypocrisy, no sentimentalism: action, direct and sharp, carried out to the end at whatever cost."

Italo Balbo

Thursday, February 1, 2018

The historical unity called the Patria

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“Fascism is not a system of tactics-violence. It is an idea-unity. Against Marxism, which affirms the class struggle as a dogma, and against Liberalism, which demands the party struggle as its very machinery of operation. Fascism maintains that there is something above party and above class, something whose nature is permanent, transcendent, supreme: the historical unity called the Patria.”


José Antonio Primo de Rivera

Elitism - "Quand l'étoile de David Brûlait" CD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmP2vi1t1T4

Black Metal Crime Art from France.
Debut full lenght-album. Pure 90s Black Metal spirit.

Limited to 500 copies, including strictly limited die-hard version with patch and sticker.
Co-release with Honour and Hate Productions.

eli_cd2

ELITISM TS
S to XXL size (girly included)

eli_ts2

www.werewolf-promotion.8merch.com
www.werewolf-webshop.pl
www.honourandhate.net

No coalescence with foreigners

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“Only a damn fool can expect the people of one tradition to feel at ease when their country is flooded with hordes of foreigners who—whether equal, superior, or inferior biologically—are so antipodal in physical, emotional, and intellectual makeup that harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible.”
— H.P. Lovecraft