Night of the Long Knives

[caption id="attachment_9055" align="aligncenter" width="648"] Hitler and Hermann Göring with SA, 1928.[/caption]

"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot."

Adolf Hitler speech in Reichstag, July 13, 1934

[caption id="attachment_9054" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Ernst Röhm and Karl Ernst[/caption]

"For us as Secret State Police and as members of the SS, 30 June was not - as several believe - a day of victory or a day of triumph, but it was the hardest day that can be visited on a soldier in his lifetime. To have to shoot one's own comrades, with whom one has stood side by side for eight or ten years in the struggle for an ideal, and who had then failed, is the bitterest thing which can happen to a man. For everyone who knows the Jews, freemasons and Catholics, it was obvious that these forces - who in the final analysis caused even 30 June in so much as they sent numerous individuals into the SA and the entourage of the former Chief of Staff and drove him to catastrophe - these forces were very much annoyed at the rout on 30 June. Because 30 June signified no more and no less than the detonation of the National Socialist state from within, blowing it up with its own people. There would have been chaos, and it would have given a foreign enemy the possibility of marching into Germany with the excuse that order had to be created in Germany."

Heinrich Himmler speech to Gestapo officials on 11th October, 1934

"I point out to the Führer at length that in 1934 we unfortunately failed to reform the Wehrmacht when we had an opportunity of doing so. What Röhm wanted was, of course, right in itself but in practice it could not be carried through by a homosexual and an anarchist. Had Röhm been an upright solid personality, in all probability some hundred generals rather than some hundred SA leaders would have been shot on 30 June. The whole course of events was profoundly tragic and today we are feeling its effects. In that year the time was ripe to revolutionize the Reichswehr."

Joseph Goebbels

No Fixation on Present

[...]

We shall now examine the principle of "riding the tiger" as applied to the external world and the total environment. Its significance can be stated as follows: When a cycle of civilization is reaching its end, it is difficult to achieve anything by resisting it and by directly opposing the forces in motion. The current is too strong; one would be overwhelmed. The essential thing is not to let oneself be impressed by the omnipotence and apparent triumph of the forces of the epoch. These forces, devoid of connection with any higher principle, are in fact on a short chain. One should not become fixated on the present and on things at hand, but keep in view the conditions that may come about in the future. Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, while keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when "the tiger, which cannot leap on the person riding it, is tired of running." The Christian injunction "Resist not evil" may have a similar meaning, if taken in a very particular way. One abandons direct action and retreats to a more internal position.

The perspective offered by the doctrine of cyclical laws is implicit here. When one cycle closes, another begins, and the point at which a given process reaches its extreme is also the point at which it turns in the opposite direction. But there is still the problem of continuity between the two cycles. To use an image from Hoffmansthal, the positive solution would be that of a meeting between those who have been able to stay awake through the long night, and those who may appear the next morning. But one cannot be sure of this happening. It is impossible to foresee with certainty how, and on what plane, there can be any continuity between the cycle that is nearing its end and the next one. Therefore the line of conduct to be followed in the present epoch must have an autonomous character and an immanent, individual value. I mean to say that the attraction of positive prospects, more or less short-term, should not play an important part in it. They might be entirely lacking right up to the end of the cycle, and the possibilities offered by a new movement beyond the zero point might concern others coming after us, who may have held equally firm without awaiting any direct results or exterior changes.

[...]

JULIUS EVOLA

Hellenic Vision

By Bruce Nelson, Eleusis Publishing

"The first thing we ought to preach is reverence toward the gods. For it is fitting that we should perform our service to the Gods as though they were themselves present with us and beheld us, and though not seen by us could direct their gaze, which is more powerful than any light, even as far as our hidden thoughts."
Julian

One of the most remarkable events in the history of the Classical world was the ascension to the throne in 360 CE of Flavius Claudius Julianus, known as the Emperor Julian. In his brief reign he sought to strengthen the Roman empire, which had suffered under almost fifty years of Christian dominance, by restoring the ancient spiritual foundations that had nourished it for over a thousand years. His legacy and vision as a true spiritual and temporal ruler is still an inspiring testament to the strength and brilliance of the Hellenic religious tradition.

Julian is of special significance because he was one of the first and most enthusiastic *converts* to Hellenism. For someone in his position, a potential heir to the Emperor, to pursue the ancient religion at that time was quite dangerous and required a great amount of courage. It was also a stunning refutation to the Christian myth that their ascent to power was based on a higher morality and a deeper spiritual vision rather than on an aggressive willingness to use religion and spirituality as a means to achieve political control.

Christian leaders took quick advantage of their official status as decreed by Constantine in 313 CE to expand their influence. By Julian's time, they had become the state cult, and were using their powers to destroy with equal fervor both traditional religious rites and dissenting Christian practices. Akin to the Bolsheviks of our own era, the Christians at that time were a small but well organized radical elite who exploited the anxiety of a country in transition to seize power for themselves. And like other revolutionary movements would do after them, the Christians ruthlessly sought the elimination of opposition, both within and outside their ranks, while imposing on the populace an unprecedented spiritual conformity whose tenets were carefully crafted to ensure that political and spiritual authority remained concentrated.

As a child, Julian experienced in an immediate and visceral way the essential evil present in the new order when his family was murdered on the order of Constantine II. His discovery of the ancient religious traditions became for him a stunning counter vision to the atheism and fanaticism that had come to pass for spirituality. At that time, the principle school of ancient philosophy was what scholars have come to call Neoplatonism - a synthesis of Platonic wisdom with strong devotional and ritual practice. Julian was able to learn deeply both the philosophical teachings and ritual practices. He participated in the Mysteries and his love and devotion to the ancient Gods was unparalleled. As the Greek rhetorician Libanius described Julian's conversion,

"He met with people who were steeped with the learning of Plato, and he learned of Gods and spirits and the real creators and saviors of the whole universe; he gained knowledge of the nature of the soul, its origin and destination, the causes of its glory and elevation, and of its ruin and debasement: he discovered its bondage and its freedom, and the means to avoid the one and attain the other, and he washed a sour story clean with sweet discourse, casting out all that earlier nonsense and in in it's place introducing into his soul the beauty of truth."

[caption id="attachment_9046" align="aligncenter" width="600"] 19th century depiction of Julian being proclaimed Emperor in Paris (fancifully located in the Thermes de Cluny, then thought to have been the Imperial Palace), standing on a shield in the Frankish manner, in February 360.[/caption]

This vision of a restored Hellenism and a true love of the gods guided Julian through numerous dangers and challenges. When he became Emperor of Rome he immediately sought to bring to life this vision of spiritual renewal, a restoration of the balance between Hellenism and Romanitas that would bring peace and prosperity both to the state and to it's Citizens. As Plymnia Athanassiadi expressed it in her book, "Julian an Intellectual Biography",

"For him true paideia (learning) means an understanding of the Graeco-Roman cultural tradition in all its aspects and implications; only through this knowledge can man hope to begin to know himself, and thus ultimately be led to union with the divine. Like all truly great human achievements, Graeco-Roman culture is for Julian the product of divine revelation...Thanks to the revelation of Apollo-Helios the Greeks developed an admirable religious, philosophical and artistic tradition which their kinsmen, the Romans, were to perfect by enriching it with the best political constitution the world had known... For Julian, the sanctity of Greek culture was ensured by the fact that Apollo-Helios, the patron of culture and the god of truth, acted as the teacher of humanity and, in special cases, could also bestow his divine grace through instant illumination."

[caption id="attachment_9043" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Julian the Apostate presiding at a conference of sectarians, by Edward Armitage, 1875[/caption]

Julian himself had experienced this illumination. He discovered not only that the Classical tradition was a continuous and living spiritual force, but that the gods *are* eternal and even if forgotten by a confused and disgraced populace, are still present and willing to share their blessings with those who recognize and honor them. Julian's vision was one of renewal - he worked to train priests, to rebuild temples, to reinstitute ancient rites. He did not shy away from debate, discussion and teaching, and his two most spiritually profound works, "Hymn to Helios" and "Hymn to the Mother of the Gods" are still unsurpassed as theurgic expositions reflecting the highest spirit of devitional Neoplatonism. In Libanius words,

"He divided his life into care for the state and devotion to the altars, associating with the Gods in countless initiations, mourning for our desecrated temples, when mourning was all that he could do, but then, when the opportunity came, taking up arms for them. He restored the ruined temples to their places, and he restored their ritual back to them and all others: he brought back, as it were from exile, sacrifice and libation, and renewed the festivals that had fallen into abeyance. He did away with the danger that was attached to the worship of higher powers, never allowed his intellect to be diverted from his consideration of the Gods, dispersed the mist that enveloped so many, and would have done the same for us all, had he not been untimely taken from us."

[caption id="attachment_9044" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Coptic icon showing Saint Mercurius killing Julian.[/caption]

In 363 CE Julian was killed while leading the Roman army against it's longtime enemy, Persia. Christian leaders rejoiced at this turn of events and renewed their assault on the ancient faith with increased fervor and intensity. Yet this destruction was not without consequence. Scarcely fifteen years later, the demoralized Roman army would suffer its greatest defeat ever at the battle of Adrianople. Thirty years later Rome itself was sacked and Western civilization was plunged into a spiritual dark age from which we are only now beginning to emerge. In it's wake not only did we lose our ancient spiritual traditions, but Christianity, a religion ostensibly born in love of the divine, would make martyrs of millions of men, women and children in Europe and the new world, even forcing it's hatred against the earth itself.

And yet it didn't have to be that way. Julian through his life and teachings presented a compelling alternative, one with respect for the past and hope for the future, a path not of persecution and destruction. His conversion is the one our society still needs to make, perhaps now more than ever. For the way to harmony is the same as always - reference for the Gods. With their grace, the West having neared the end of history, may yet remember what it knew at it's beginning.

[caption id="attachment_9045" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Ioulianou autokratoros ta sozomena (1696)[/caption]

"The book that contains the reflections of the Emperor Julian should be circulated in millions. What wonderful intelligence! What discernment, all the wisdom of antiquity! It's extraordinary!"
Adolf Hitler

 

Shattering false and baleful idols

“How many times has Fascism been accused with obtuse malevolence of barbarity? Well yes: once you understand the true significance of this barbarity we will boast of it, as the expression of the healthy energies which shatter false and baleful idols, and restore the health of the nation within the power of a State conscious of its sovereign rights which are its duties.”

Giovanni Gentile, Che cosa è il Fascismo (what is fascism?), lecture delivered in Florence (March 8, 1925)

Ignorant fools

[caption id="attachment_9036" align="aligncenter" width="534"] The Devil Carrying Off One of the Damned Antoine Joseph Wiertz (1806–1865)[/caption]

"I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live."

~ Epictetus

A globalized desert

"Globalization is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and value of nothing. Without borders the world will become - is visibly becoming - a howling desert of traffic fumes, plastic and concrete, where nowhere is home and the only language is money."

Peter Hitchens

The detachment from Myth

[caption id="attachment_9028" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Nocturne ~ Mariusz Lewandowski [/caption]

Western philosophers have made a sustained effort to remove myth from education and life, thus threatening to strip from us the ability to examine and embody those structures that provide a model for decision making in complex situations, and condemning us to live within the fog of theories about knowledge. Nietzsche writes ‘Mankind today, stripped of myth, stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots’. 

Antonio T de Nicolás, from the preface to The Bhagavad Gita, the ethics of decision making. 

MARCHING TOWARDS SOL INVICTUS - Summer Solstice: An Archetypical Memory

[caption id="attachment_9019" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Willy Knabe - Summer Solstice, 1943[/caption]

On the 22^nd of June, an extreme condition of the Sun’s ascendance reaches its ultimate phase. This day becomes the longest of the year, the day with the greatest luminance, decreasing the Night and limiting it in the shortest period that it can last.

Science describes typicaly this phenomenon as the longest day and the shortest night. Yet, a simple notice will make us aware of the gradual absence of light taking place in the following day, the 23^rd of June, thus in the beginning of the third decameron of September we have a total timely balance between day and night. This is definitely a well-known date for the simple folk since it is accompanied with the one-hour change of the clock putting us through a process of psychic coherence and adjusting us for the coming Winter.

But the standardization of these dates in modern reality lies far beyond their magico- religious symbolical content in the distant Past and their unquestionable metaphysical influence on the cultural effects of the Archaic and Classical periods.

Since the prehistoric times, for many races the Sun worship was the nucleus of their religious worship and of their primitive philosophical directions. But for only a few it escaped from the narrow magic rituals of a primitive society who based its existence on the worship of nature and on the harmonious identification with its primeval functions. This peculiar brake from the society of sacrifices, of hunting and of proto-mythology was marked actually from the dessimination and the cultural outbreak of the great Aryan Race which transformed the Sun-worship into the highest celebration of the virtues of the White Man in his life-long struggle to surpass the achievements of the Sun itself.



Where this so-called transformation became evident? Everywhere! In poetry, in sculpture, in painting, in music, in the social ideas and the philosophical perceptions, prevailed an ideal of life, whose basic axis was the belief on the “circular” motion of things. With the recycling of birth, life and death, the Aryan managed to inspire in his daily life the breath of the “eternal duration” of his deeds and creations in order to oppose the obscurity of the Eastern religions and the semitic civilization which condemned the members of its society in a temporary appearance in life marked by a terrible death and an after-death judgment.

The Aryan adopted confidence. “Nothing dies” [1]. Everything is repeated. Sacrifice obtained for him a symbolic value, as it takes place for something superior to come in the future. The moral values of courage and bravery accompanied a Great Man who refused the philosophy of the “temporary” and identified with the belief that he consists a regulator of the future of the members of his Race.

As the Sun dies during the Winter Solstice in order to be reborn on the Spring Equinox, to culminate his glory on the Summer Solstice and fall in decay once again during the Autumn Equinox, likewise He! Behind a lost battle lies a new Victory, behind an elaborate marble there is a Monument without any material value but it will remain eternal and immortal.

[caption id="attachment_9020" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Apollo (Tiepolo Giovanni Battista)[/caption]

The four stages, the four quarters of a flaming Sunwheel, the aesthetic image of the cyclical Swastika in its inexorable swirling, the authentic solar symbol of a Man who never ceases to fight and to create. The Hyperborean Apollon who brings the brightness of the energy of the Sun is connected with the beginning of the Pagan year on the Spring Equinox [2] and an inexorable ascension towards the skies begins until the Summer Solstice. In opposition with the three-faced goddess of the Moon, the Hecatean Apollon identifies his essence in the form of Aguieas, on a conical pillar with a square base, on this peculiar combination of circle and square, reminded to us lately by the Celtic Cross.

The designs of the ancient cities, the place of the theatres, the tracing of the roads towards the Oracles and the places of the ancient Temples in general, are appointed by a secret hieratic system with a wise geometrical interpretation of the characteristic stages of the Great Sun [3]. From the Indo-Aryan myths to the Celtic oral traditions of the druids, the symbolisms of the mythologies are joining in the battle between the light, fair solar gods and the swarthy tellurian demons. The White As Baldr in the North and the Persian rider Fravasi, the Dioskouri and Apollon, the Slavic Cernobog and the radiant Ossian, all of them against the racial mixing and the inferior spirit of the chthonic or lunar gods.

The “archetypes” of the collective subconscious of the Aryan Race are bringing through the dreams and the ecstatic visions the memory of the divine powers who once taught to the leaders of the clans the secret of fire and the taming of the solar animals. The swans, the horse and the wolf, the dolphin and the hawk leaped under the touch of a sunray that joined them forever with the Hellenic creator. They rode, raged and flew with him in a crash-course towards the Sun like eternal Phaethons. During the Summer Solstice a strangely sketched “octopus” symbolizes the zenith of the light in the land of the abundant sun, in the land of Delos and Delfi. It is the Janua Inferi, the Gate of Hell and the process of decay, the symbolical beginning of the fall.

Thus, during the ancient Aryan pagan celebrations the Summer Solstice was the feast of the “resurrection” [4]. The rising and falling march of the golden disc in flesh and bones on the similar process of the heroes which the Aryan traditions everywhere characterized as “solar”. The demigod Hercules expressed this tragic loss of power and energy that came, departed and that will come again. He was cremated at Oete on the peak of his unsurpassed glory in the same manner of the fall of the last Bogatyr, of Tyr, who perished because of his wounds and of Cuchulain, who killed by mistake his own son.

Yet from death comes life, from the darkness, light is born. In the remote Iranian tradition the Aryan Sigiamik although killed from the demon Dib, the son of the dead hero, Hosag, will avenge him by killing the demon and restoring the Solar world order.



Maybe the tradition, the great solar tradition of the Aryans reaches the ears of the modern people as a compilation of incomprehensible magical rites while the noise of the cars on the dirty streets of the concrete cities seem to shut these poor and tormented ears.

Maybe this weak little man doesn’t care about such “luxuries” as his monetary pursuits pin down his weak personality.

Yet, despite his efforts to neglect the ”unconscious” side of his character, it still exists. It existed since millennia in the genes of his ancestors, and it still exists, although uncultivated, in his decayed body which in vain tries to overcome the weight of his spiritual being.

Neglected but always strong it visits him during his sleep in his deep and unexplained dreams, sometimes in the shape of Theseus slaying the Minotaur, sometimes with the symbolical sacrifice on an altar outdoors, sometimes with a multitude of symbolisms stemming from “solar” actions and memories of lives lost in the dawn of time. They visit him, they advise him and they have their revenge on him. They have their revenge on him like the archer Apollon and at the same time they grant him rebirth, reminding him a sacred and unbounded duty.

Because no one is able to escape from a life, whose course will be enlightened forever by the one, the Unrivalled, the Inexhaustible Sun!

 

Notes

1. The magnificent conception of the pro-Socratic Titan of the philosophical Ionia, Heracletos, was summarized in the phrase “Everything Flows”. Milleniums later Nietszche awoke the sleeping giant, which Borman accepted with passion exclaiming towards the threat of a destructive war that “essentially, there is not death”.

 

2. According to the myth of the return of the god from the land beyond the North (Thule, the cradle of the first Aryans) to the ancient Phigaleia where it exists the only Temple in Hellas with its sanctorum facing the North instead the East as it was customary.

 

3. In this case there is a sacred “magic” number which in the arithmetic rules of the researchers and the architects it derives as the perfect paragon of harmony.

 

4. The favourite celebration of the Hitler Jugend because of the revival of the old Teutonic myths.

The Primordial Black Metal Forest… Is My Throne

Since the early days when Black Metal started to take its shape, it has always also reflected the environment of its creators. It is no surprise that especially in North European Black Metal, dark woods would enable different kind of visions than what was created by metal musicians who live in culturally opposite metropolises.

While some of the Black Metal emerged from highly urban environments of big cities, it appears to be an undisputed fact that vast majority of Finnish Black Metal bands originate from small cities and villages. People who created Black Metal still lived on the border of civilization and something beyond. This “beyond” represents itself in the form of dark woods, presenting itself not only as a metaphor or an ideal but as a reality.
Many times the theme of dark northern forest would not be utterly specific by its intention. If one was to interpret, there would be possibilities to find countless ideas echoing in those woods. Antimodernism. Antihumanism. Lethal dangers and endless struggle. Merciless cycle of life and death. Unexplained phenomena far beyond our abilities to understand. Existence where man appears as an anomaly. Complexity of nature as organism, way beyond any mechanical explanation. One could approach nature in many ways. From esoteric worldviews to brute forms of Social Darwinism.

An entirely different culture itself is very easy to see. Youth did not grow surrounded by fetishized catholic nuns they desired to punish. Hollywood aesthetic of rituals that belong to very different religious setting may have been interesting, but also as distant and artificial as horror movies designed to reflect the life of common American youth. And so on and on. Our forefathers, and the stories that are told, are within the dark forests.



Only a few generations ago, many people still lived the world of MAYHEM’s “Pagan Fears”. This atavistic quality is well described in these lines:

Woeful people with pale faces
Staring obsessed at the moon
Some memories will never go away
And they will forever be here

In front of nature’s mysteries, man will always be small. It was the same then, as it is now. Hostility of environment is concrete after merely taking a few steps from the nearest electric light and heat source. It’s unlikely few naked chicks, candles and chanting would evoke a similar feeling as the nocturnal winter forest. Presence of something beyond good and evil may be very concrete without a single culturally learned idea.

Some people have asked what is evil in the forest. This leads us to merely old questions of nature of evil itself. It leads to lazy semantics, where most often descriptions of the evil appear in form of vulgarities. Certainly, there is charm in perversions and vulgarities, but it’s not the end of all. In a forest, there is no vulgarity. Its evilness doesn’t appear in humane decadence. Its evilness doesn’t appear in the form of humane malicious intent. It goes far, far beyond it. It is so far from the drug infested concrete jungles and social media toughness that it may be difficult to grasp where some of the Nordic Black Metal comes from.

Back in 2010, I sent a handful of questions to selected Finnish Black Metal bands, to collect thoughts regarding forest in the context of Black Metal. My hope was to escape all the trappings of academic observation and embarrassing psychological rubbish. I hoped to gather together people from various perspectives, which connect somehow into the same theme. I feel the topic would make even an entire book possible and this is barely a scratch in the surface. It is possible most of the bands would say something different now than they did more than half a decade ago. To me it appears obvious that perception is becoming again somewhat clearer and after the dominance of all sorts of decadence, semitic esoteria, suicidal sobbing and such, we may well see a return to the Primordial Nordic Black Metal Forest!

By Northern Heritage



VORDR – "Forever North"
Blazing winter fires
Unforgiving frost
Snow blinds the eyes
That seek for light

Hopes are suffocated
Under a pillow of ice
Every breath a razorblade
Carving in the lungs

Born to bare the legacy
Born of stronger blood
Stubborn customs of pride
Heritage of honorable men

Both sword and greed
Have drowned the wisest of men
Hiding the rage inside
Never uttering the miseries

Blazing winter fires
Forever north

Role of Nature and Forest as Subject Matter for Black Metal

Phlegein: "Nature and forests are things that belong to Black Metal. Nature has had a part in Black Metal at least from the beginning of 1990's, and for me it is completely part of it. When people think about gloomy forests or desolate mountains, usually they describe those as dark or evil places, and this is simply true. Black Metal is dark and evil, so they fit together perfectly."

[caption id="attachment_9003" align="aligncenter" width="410"] Count Grishnackh[/caption]

Musta Kappeli: "Personally for me nature has always been an essential part of the Black Metal imagery and spirit. From the old 90's promo shots of corpsepainted demons in dark forests to hymns of primordial darkness and of wanderings in the mystical pure nature. I've never experienced Black Metal as an urban thing but rather as a howl of the woods. Man has always feared nature and its dark essence. In the older times it was a place not to venture in alone and unprepared. And still, nature is something that, despite the several attempts of man to wield for his use, manages to surprise us and show us its power. By this I mean catastrophes like tsunami, earth quakes, floods etc. that help in depopulation of this earth from the plague of humans. The adversary, the force of destruction that is needed for creation, chaos that disrupts order, Satan. But even if we forget that, for me a walk in the dark forest – or even daytime – is something so mystical. I feel that I'm closer to the essence of Satan and His mysteries, the purity of nature, where the eternal wheel of creation & destruction, life & death, keeps on turning. Black Metal aims for that misanthropic purity and worships the primordial darkness. Satan manifests in different forms and places but for me nature – forest – is where I feel closest to Him."

 Vordr: “Nature itself can hardly be treated as a subject of Black Metal per se. Writing lyrics based on woods, lakes, animal life, and what have you can only be effectively married to black metal when it's used as a way to approach or deal with the core subject of Satanism. Therefore, in my view, the most successful nature-inspired themes and lyrics on Black Metal albums evoke similar feelings and visions as any other type of lyrics of the genre even though they deal with the subject matter in a different fashion.”

Dead Reptile Shrine: "Black metal uses shadowy, ambiguous forms to realize a breathing space in the patterned life of modern man, in effect much like wooded regions where ‘unknown’ and ‘spiritual’ things can happen, as definition does not exist. Anyone who has been held in the frozen grasp of fear in nocturnal woods, when ‘something’ is stalking you but ‘nothing’ seems to be there, knows the feeling. Not ‘definition’ of Satan or evil, but the mere indescribable abstract presence. That is most pure Black Metal, in essence. It is extremely real to the perceiver; it is not ‘only a thought’, like most theories are. Power becomes through contemplation and connection with the abstract spirit world and this was realized by old Black Metal artists in the primitive, ‘non-definite’ visions of darkness, the woods and evil spirits. When occult names, theologies, diagrams and other pseudo-exact knowledge took over, it was easier to see that no one has any idea what they are talking about."

[caption id="attachment_9002" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Satanic Warmaster[/caption]

Satanic Warmaster: “As we live to reflect the dark, cruel and destructive face of nature, the presence of nature and the acknowledgement of its beauty and frightening power is something that cannot be denied when it comes to Black Metal as I see it. I was raised in the middle of forests, and used to wander in the woods for hours in search of my own thoughts and to feel the breath of the ancient times before the arrival of man. There is nothing like the feeling of walking deep into the forest, not having anyone to help you on a moment of danger, the uncertainty of knowing the way back home and the sheer veneration for a kingdom where you could easily get lost and die in. A twilight fog at an opening in a forest or a raging tsunami of destruction, both are manifestations of nature and a vision I would connect with Black Metal.”

PHLEGEIN – “White Top”
Nightly stroll up the mountains
So near and yet so far away
Way up high, near the white tops

As the evening sun descend behind
And mountains fade and darken
In the skies burning stars we find

Start feeling close to everything
At the white top

Spirits soaring through the sky
And wind screaming so loud
Moon is my torch and creates
Fine shades to darkness

Flashing red spots in the sky
Eyes of blood seeking creatures
Yet they vanish into the dark
At the white top

Heads held proud against the sky
That seemed so cloudy and dark
Valleys down below gazed mist
Feel the wind that wouldn't stop

Your face is made of stone
Your heart is rock solid
Standing so firm, unrelenting
I'm only human, flesh and blood
Trying to understand your supreme might

Blatant Reality vs Usage of Nature through Mysticism or Metaphors



 Phlegein: "I've lived all my life in small villages or cities, near nature. My past and living habitat is strongly influencing me as an artist. It takes a 5 minute walk from my front door to be surrounded by trees only. I could never live in a concrete jungle."

Musta Kappeli: "I'd choose mysticism even though using metaphors is an interesting approach, too. I'm not saying that only Black Metal that deals literally with forests or nature is the one and only right interpretation, but I do find a special appeal in it. As I explained in the previous answer, nature is a mystical element that we may never quite understand, just like Satan. It creates a certain atmosphere that for me gives a stronger feeling to approach it than regular BM of some other theme."

Dead Reptile Shrine: “Mysticism in the woods must be real and the experience follows oneself everywhere. That means, even in the heart of the city, the sylvan darkness can exist with us and we can listen to the whispers of the leaves and the rustle of the branch. So it is with all the myths of the ancient peoples, who attributed trolls, werewolves and other "non-beings" as living in the darkness of the woods. They probably did actually face some manifestations, but when outside the woodlands, they remembered the teachings. Again, real to the perceiver, and through them, real to others.”

Vordr: “Both have their place when properly employed but the latter plays better for myself. With Vordr, we take advantage of both approaches but usually cold realism and hard facts have less desirable effects, especially if you are after an emotional – or even spiritual, in some cases – response, for myself at least. In fact, I often tend to try and read more into superficial and/or uninteresting lyrics than there probably really is to them, just to avoid dealing with how realist (or more often, generic and meaningless) they are.”

Satanic Warmaster: “There is nothing wrong with nature as it portrays itself to most. On the contrary, nature in all its variations possesses aesthetics that can work for the benefit of certain kinds of musical creations. Yet I have to say that the unseen forces of nature that lie much deeper and the metaphorical approach, for example the issue of mankind's foolish attempt of distancing/elevating itself from nature, hold much more value for me personally.”



SATANIC WARMASTER – “Of the Night”
In an arcade of woods in a sombre forest
I rise my hand in a devoted hail
To the obscure Horns that lead me
To my black destiny to grow humble

As the funeral breeze blows in my face
and runs through my blonde hair
I know who I am: A dweller of a palace encircled in the mist

I see the fullmoon behind the grim branches
Like the unspeakable truth in this soil
They both give a vision of a purified mind
A black heart has knowingly burned
all that is impure from this forest of sorrow
and everything that is not of Satan

To each man his own, and to me this silence
The serenity that awaits for the beastly roar
To awaken the somber kingdom given to me
In the darkness, still so far far away
A gate waits for me to enter the circle
The eternal cycle of death and of the night

Your Own Location or Your Past Influencing Themes

Satanic Warmaster: “As nature has played such a great role in my life from my early childhood, it was natural for me to feel attraction towards such themes. For some it might be only because of the standards of the genre, but for someone like me, who used to run away into the forest without anyone knowing when I couldn't even read yet, it was something that I found in myself in the first place and in Black Metal after that.”

Musta Kappeli: "It's most definitely an important factor. I've always lived in contact with nature and valued that contact. I've lived in a city my whole life but in the suburbs, like in most parts of Finland, the forest is next to your house. I've spent time in forests during my childhood and admired them. I think it would be hard or even false from urban people to sing about forests if they've never been to one. For me the element of nature in Black Metal that I create comes naturally as it has always been a (mystical) part of my life. These roots go deep in my soul."

Dead Reptile Shrine: “I might have never chosen this path or vision at all if it wasn't for an obsession with the sadness, might and bestiality of northern woodlands, and I believe a great majority of the important voices of Black Metal shared this deep call of the wild, much like 19th century Romantics, writers like Jack London and Tolkien, etc. So I would say it is the connection with nature which inspires to seek radical, storming, beautiful, cruel and dark pathways in philosophies of life – all the way.”



Vordr: “I could probably credit my affection for nature to the fact that I grew up in the countryside and that my grandparents and other relatives have passed on a good deal of country wisdom and traditions to me, but the fact remains that no matter how much inspiration it gives me, the relationship the wild and I share is quite superficial. Like most of us, I live in a modern town, in a house with all the mod cons you can think of and the actual, live encounters with nature are rare and far between. However, I believe this somehow ties with how I prefer to maintain a somewhat mystic approach to many of the things I hold closest to my heart in life. Nowadays man is overexposed to pretty much everything; violence, sex, voyeuristic tendencies, an array of religious views, material science etc. When you think of the sphere of thought of a common man, there can't be many wonders left that aren't utterly castrated by demystification. I feel lucky for being blessed with an inclination to think beyond – or below, however you wish to see it – reason and logic and not be faced with an existence that to me would otherwise seem rather pointless. To sum up, even though it probably doesn't hold true with many of the bands out there, I would like to think that whatever fascination for nature arises from this day and age could be accredited to either thinking outside the box or never really even having fit in it.”

MUSTA KAPPELI – ”Kaarnaisen Vihan Arvet”
Kalmaisina hiutaleina
varisee kuolemaa ylle maan
Hautaa sen mustaan tuskaan
Elon sieluja hitaasti kalvaen

...sillä minä olen kalma
kosto metsiltä havuisilta
Ruoskien heikkoa ihmishenkeä
suuren käärmeen kuoloisella kielellä
Arven minä olen polttava
merkin kaarnaisen vihan

Kaikkoaa ihmissydämmestä ilo
Lähestyy syleillen ahdinko
Ikuisesti "jumalan" kiroan ja hän
josta elämä hiljaa hiipii
Kauhunkangistamat kasvot
tyhjyyteen tuijottavat

..sillä minä olen kosto havuisten metsien

Connections of Nature to Spirituality and Nationalism

Musta Kappeli: "As a Finn, I love the nature of Finland as it is beautiful, so yes, it is a matter of nationalism, too, and somehow it does reach to me spiritually as it has reached to the Finns of ancient times. They understood to admire and fear nature, for it can be a generous but also a dangerous element. "

[caption id="attachment_9012" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Dead Reptile Shrine ‎– A Journey Through The Darkest Of Forests[/caption]

Dead Reptile Shrine: “The further one goes to the labyrinths of social intentions, there's probably less and less real connection with man's inmost self (and the beast-side) but then arise reactions through which man wishes to take back his heart from the traitors. Spirituality is a reaction to the oppression by objects (the human meaning given to objects); nationalism is often a reaction to false promises, to talk with no meaning. Nature is hard to politicize because all ideologies have meaning mostly on a social level, whereas nature cares less about ‘progress’ and more about ‘evolution’. Two separate concepts.”

Vordr: “There is an atavistic quality to the atmosphere of the woods, for example, that's far more distinguishable than what you'd come across in urban surroundings. This obviously makes nature and natural phenomena a perfect tool for various types of political and spiritual agendas. Of course around 99% of this is nothing but empty propaganda but to answer your question – yes, it does connect for example to the two things you mention. A fitting and popular example of both might be the occult leanings that the leadership of the Third Reich at least partially subscribed to but of course nature plays a pivotal role in all great religions and movements.”



Satanic Warmaster: “For our region, where men have lived for centuries at the mercy of nature, it is clear that our identity has been forged by the winters and the forests to a high degree. My family was given the land we still live on hundreds of years ago for virtues in war, so naturally me and others of my blood still hold our soil in the highest esteem. For me this surpasses any modern concept of nationalism and goes back to even more pure concept of tribalism.”

SATANIC WARMASTER – “Raging Winter”
Frozen woods holding within the wisdom
Forbidden spirit of war and our blood
Ancient battles that were fought then
Are now revived to glorify our reign

Agonizing freezing winds
Whip your christian flesh
Our heathen steel will break your bones
And leave you lying dead in the snow

Warlike songs to celebrate the horns
Are sung around our campfire before the dawn
Grant us the strength to fight
To spill the holy blood on the pagan soil

Raise the hammer, ancient gods of war
The lightnings shall strike once more
Break the cross and abolish the lies
Striking them down with steel and your raging winter

People Who Say This Is Not Dark and Evil Enough for Black Metal

Dead Reptile Shrine:  “The social sphere feeds on true crime, abomination, lifeless antipathy etc. These are topics of newspapers, but hardly the essence of Black Metal. Also, they are not a consequence of ‘evil’ but mutations of a degenerate society. In recent news someone had phoned in from the forest, followed by a strange creature, then the person disappeared. But one cannot manipulate any ‘social standing’ with such stories so who cares? The mythical wanderlust, virility, adventures in nature and other such themes are pro-life and pro-death because they are realistic ideas; one of the paradoxes in metal is that a song about street fight might be totally escapistic (not related to experience at all) while a song about opening the gates of Hell might be deeply connected to real, personal knowledge and experience. There are cases when music might not be evil enough – when it is an idealized, false image of something the creator, a mirrored persona of a deluded human, wants to believe. It is easily recognized impotent music.”



Musta Kappeli: "Maybe these are people who have never been in a dark forest or otherwise experienced the ‘evil and dark’ of nature. Black Metal today is such a wide genre of expression that I won't expect all people to see it the way I do. I recall it was Thyrane in an old SFP magazine interview that stated ‘Black Metal shouldn't be about cold winds and mountains but about Satan’ or something like that. To a certain degree I agree with that statement, but why do these two have to be separate things? Black Metal, of course, isn't a forecast of cold weather or a nature lesson for hippies – there has to be the Satanic approach – but for me nature and Satan are quite the same thing in the Black Metal expression. Maybe these same people you describe in the question also make statements how only child-raping, murder and drugs are EVILLLL. This only gives me a reason not to engage in a rational conversation with them."

Phlegein:  "It's no surprise that I can't understand people who think the dark side of nature isn’t suitable. This must be a thing that has come along with later Black Metal subgenres or something. Personally these kind of critics don't bother us at all and don't affect us as artists. I think everyone who is at a deeper level with Black Metal understands perfectly the use of nature themes, even if their personal choice is different. It's so easy to criticize and whine about things but if you don't have any basis for doing it, it's just simply stupid and you're making a fool of yourself."

Satanic Warmaster: “Any words concerning things like this from people who have gotten their values from the shock aesthetics of Black Metal no longer surprise me. To these people whose ideology is dictated by Quorthon's three first albums I have nothing to say.”

DEAD REPTILE SHRINE – “A Journey through the Darkest of Forests”
Set up the Traps
And await for the Prey
The Twilight is always ever so Near
Slice the Throat
Let its Life-Blood spill forth
And feel the Surge of Power
After a Thousand Rotting bodies
Look behind and see
What once were the
Inseverable Parts of Life and
Psychodynamics
But still, the Battle-field lies Ahead
And the ceaseless Hunt
Must go on Forever

Memorable and Influential Experiences in Nature

Dead Reptile Shrine:  “One influential memory is of woodlands near my home, where always on Samhain night some dwelling spirit flashed white lights and I followed it across dark pools, stumbling and dirty, always losing track and eventually getting into weird places which seemed to shift every time even though the woods are small. I have also travelled to other countries to smell the scent of their forests, slept there and lit candles while beckoning the ancient voices to teach me the truths that existed before the dawn of mankind; and I can say with total honesty that each and every time something relevant has happened and stayed with me. A journey into the woodlands, no matter how small, is never futile and useless. It might not be a purposeful project, and it can turn deadly. Woods are still unpredictable, even in this day and age.”



Musta Kappeli: "There are countless of them but to name a few, mainly the experiences of being in the darkness of the woods. The wanderings in solitude and uneasy feelings of what might be lurking in the shadows. In my teenager years we used to paint our faces and go wander in the forests in the middle of the night with cameras to capture the feeling of that deep darkness and nature. Those are quite memorable times. In my adult days I remember this one time we were walking home at night from a cabin that had no driveway to it. There was a walk of maybe 1-2 kilometers to where your car could be parked. It was in wintertime and the coldness made the snow crackle under our feet. Suddenly I stopped. We were in the middle of untouched winter forest with nothing but darkness, trees and snow as far as the eye could see around us. Total silence and calmness. I stood there for a while just gazing into the darkness, inhaling the magic of the moment. It made me feel like I would've wanted to stay there, not to return to civilization. To be buried in snow and ice and stay there forever. I tried to capture that feeling to a lyric I wrote but it failed and was never published. Sometimes these experiences are hard to put on paper and sometimes the words just flow from your soul. Mystical as the very nature itself."

Phlegein:  "Can't specify anything, because nature is so strongly part of my daily life. It doesn't differ really if I'm making firewood at my own forest or walking at the mountains; they're both surely rich experiences in their own way and influencing me directly or subconsciously."

VORDR – "White Night"
When the sun no longer sets
When the air is warm through the night
When the midnight fires burn

When the tribes will gather
When the knives will shine again
When the words of hate will spring

When the night is white
When the morning never comes
When the dreams are all disturbed

White night

Featured in The Sinister Flame Issue V: Aristocracy of Wolves (2016 e.v.)

[caption id="attachment_9010" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Stanislav Brusilov[/caption]

 

The Holy Path of Honor and Duty

Our heroes, our Gods — these are the role models that mold men of our sons, wives and mothers of our daughters, noble creatures of us all— all who dare to tread the holy path of honor and duty.

Aryan antiquity provides the seeds of our culture, our culture defines our essence, our essence demands a purpose, and that purpose is congealed in our living Gods, the folk-God Archetypes of the Aryan Tribes.

The seemingly instinctual impulse toward self-sacrifice and heroism is sparked and nurtured by our knowledge of the Good and our lust for Truth and Justice.

Aryan Pagans, whom we call "Wotansvolk," are the reincarnation of ancient spirits, manifest in our modern world. The insatiable quest for spiritual understanding drives us toward our own divinity. Wotansvolk cast off the delusions of universalist creeds, embrace the ethnic traditions of our kind and stand boldly against the storm's fury, unrelenting in purpose.

The task at hand in this, the third millennium of the Common Era, is best expressed in the sacred credo known as the 14 WORDS, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children." Coined by the contemporary Aryan freedom-fighter David Lane, this imperative ethic demands uncompromising priority in our daily lives. The worldwide resurgence of Wotanism is the manifestation of this oath.

Current political and spiritual decadence invites condemnation and resistance. Wotansvolk meet this challenge with the profoundly inerrant antidote — obedience to Nature's Laws. The inevitable result is a massive flight from the destructive institutions which promote our genocide, to seek an alternative lifestyle in which we live by our own folk customs and values, bestowed upon us through our ancestral mythology.

Katja Lane - Temple of Wotan 

The Kings of Metal Enthroned in the Land of Gods!

[caption id="attachment_8973" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Taken by me in The Final Battle concert in Athens - 14/6/2019[/caption]

21/11/1992 - 14/6/2019: 27 years since the first time that the eyes of a 16 y.o. boy witnessed his heroes live. 27 years after, the 43 y.o. man answered again to the duty call of his heroes and he was there to see them again (for a 5th time) and remind him once again that nothing has changed, that to stand against the world means to stand intact forever! That once you have heard wisdom's voice, you rise and you keep the Secret of Steel forever! Those outside the myth will never feel, will never understand and they will laugh but one day they will kneel and bow their heads watching us rising once again! Those who seek a life of Honour, free from all false pride will forever stand alone! Hail and Kill! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoCd1bc79nE

MANOWAR live in Athens 14/6/2019: Hector's Final Hour

Here inside the walls of Troy, the Gods weigh my fate
From this bay do I abstain, to a memory of hate 
To pay for all the blood that spilled the many thousands i did kill 
No walls can contain the Gods' almighty will

I hear the silent voices I cannot hide
The Gods leave no choices so we all must die
Oh Achilles let thy arrows fly, into the wind, where eagles cross the sky
Today my mortal blood will mix with sand it was foretold 
I will die by thy hand into Hades my soul descend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=vmv5g6o1zNY

[gallery ids="8975,8974" type="rectangular"]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duP4B4DFb2I

MANOWAR party, signing session and interview for the Greek TV, Friday November 20 1992. 

[gallery ids="8977,8976" type="rectangular"]

A Deadly Hate

[caption id="attachment_8970" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Chicago - August 21, 1966[/caption]

“Love, the natural healthy kind, is indeed what makes the world go round, and it is the most beautiful, holy miracle we ever see here on earth.

But without a deadly hate of that which threatens what we love, Love is an empty catchword for hippies, queers, and cowards…”

- George Lincoln Rockwell, White Power

Of that Immense and Blest Eternitie

Old Sages by the Figure of the Snake
Encircled thus did oft expression make
Of Annual-Revolutions; and of things,
Which wheele about in everlasting-rings;
There ending, where they first of all begun…
These Roundells, help to shew the Mystery
of that immense and blest Eternitie,
From whence the CREATURE sprung, and into whom
It shall again, with full perfection come”

– George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (London, 1635)

I talked to Hitler

[caption id="attachment_8962" align="aligncenter" width="412"] Adolf Hitler with David Lloyd George[/caption]

by the Right Honourable David Lloyd George

I have just returned from a visit to Germany.

In so short a time one can only form impressions or at least check impressions which years of distant observation through the telescope of the Press and constant inquiry from those who have seen things at a closer range had already made on one's mind.

I have now seen the famous German Leader and also something of the great change he has effected.

Whatever one may think of his methods—and they are certainly not those of a parliamentary country—there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvelous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook.

He rightly claimed at Nuremberg that in four years his movement has made a new Germany.

It is not the Germany of the first decade that followed the war - broken, dejected, and bowed down with a sense of apprehension and impotence. It is now full of hope and confidence, and of a renewed sense of determination to lead its own life without interference from any influence outside its own frontiers.

There is for the first time since the war a general sense of security. The people are more cheerful. There is a greater sense of general gaiety of spirit throughout the land. It is a happier Germany. I saw it everywhere, and Englishmen I met during my trip and who knew Germany well were very impressed with the change.

One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic, dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will and a dauntless heart.

He is not merely in name but in fact the national Leader. He has made them safe against potential enemies by whom they were surrounded. He is also securing them against that constant dread of starvation, which is one of the poignant memories of the last years of the War and the first years of the Peace. Over 700,000 died of sheer hunger in those dark years. You can still see the effect in the physique of those who were born into that bleak world.

The fact that Hitler has rescued his country from the fear of a repetition of that period of despair, penury and humiliation has given him unchallenged authority in modern Germany.

As to his popularity, especially among the youth of Germany, there can be no manner of doubt. The old trust him; the young idolize him. It is not the admiration accorded to a popular Leader. It is the worship of a national hero who has saved his country from utter despondency and degradation.

It is true that public criticism of the Government is forbidden in every form. That does not mean that criticism is absent. I have heard the speeches of prominent Nazi orators freely condemned.

But not a word of criticism or of disapproval have I heard of Hitler.

He is as immune from criticism as a king in a monarchical country. He is something more. He is the George Washington of Germany—the man who won for his country independence from all her oppressors.

To those who have not actually seen and sensed the way Hitler reigns over the heart and mind of Germany this description may appear extravagant. All the same, it is the bare truth. This great people will work better, sacrifice more, and, if necessary, fight with greater resolution because Hitler asks them to do so. Those who do not comprehend this central fact cannot judge the present possibilities of modem Germany.

On the other hand, those who imagine that Germany has swung back to its old Imperialist temper cannot have any understanding of the character of the change. The idea of a Germany intimidating Europe with a threat that its irresistible army might march across frontiers forms no part of the new vision.

What Hitler said at Nuremberg is true. The Germans will resist to the death every invader of their own country, but they have no longer the desire themselves to invade any other land.

The leaders of modern Germany know too well that Europe is too formidable a proposition to be overrun and trampled down by any single nation, however powerful may be its armaments. They have learned that lesson in the war.

Hitler fought in the ranks throughout the war, and knows from personal experience what war means. He also knows too well that the odds are even heavier today against an aggressor than they were at that time.

What was then Austria would now be in the main hostile to the ideals of 1914. The Germans are under no illusions about Italy. They also are aware that the Russian Army is in every respect far more efficient than it was in 1914.

The establishment of a German hegemony in Europe which was the aim and dream of the old pre-war militarism, is not even on the horizon of Nazism.

But, as any one who knows war can tell, there is a great difference between a defensive and an offensive armament. On the defensive the arms need not be as powerful and the troops that wield them need not be as numerous or so well trained as in attack. A few selected machine-gunners skilfully hidden and sheltered can hold up a division backed up by shattering artillery.

Germany has constructed strong defensive positions and has, I have no doubt, a sufficient number of trained or rather half-trained men with enough machine-guns and artillery to hold these positions against attack. She has also a very efficient and powerful air fleet.

There is no attempt to conceal these facts. Re-armament proceeds quite openly, and they want it. It accounts for the outburst of defiance hurled against Russia. They feel safe now.

But it will take Germany at least 10 years to build up an army strong enough to face the armies of Russia or France on any soil except her own. There she can fight successfully, because she can choose battlefields which she has carefully prepared and fortified, and she has plenty of men trained sufficiently to defend trenches and concrete emplacements.

But her conscript army is very young - there is a gap of years to fill up in the reserves and particularly in officers. As an offensive army it would take quite 10 years to bring it up to the standard of the great army of 1914.

But any attempt to repeat Poincare's antics in the Rühr would now be met with a fanatical resistance from myriads of brave men who count death for the Fatherland not a sacrifice but a glory.

This is the new temper of the German youth. There is almost a religious fervour about their faith in the movement and its Leader.

That impressed me more than anything I witnessed during my short visit to the new Germany. There was a revivalist atmosphere. It has had an extraordinary effect in unifying the nation.

Catholic and Protestant, Prussian and Bavarian, employer and workman, rich and poor, have been consolidated into one people. Religious, provincial and class origins no longer divide the nation. There is a passion for unity born of dire necessity.

The divisions which followed the collapse of 1918 made Germany impotent to face her problems, internal and external. That is why the clash of rival passions is not only deprecated, but temporarily suppressed.

Public condemnation of the Government is censored as ruthlessly as it is in a state of war. To a Briton accustomed to generations of free speech and a free Press this restraint on liberty is repellent, but in Germany, where such freedom is not as deeply rooted as it is here, the nation acquiesces not because it is afraid to protest, but because it has suffered so much from dissension that the vast majority think it must be temporarily called off at all costs.

Freedom of criticism, is therefore for the time being in suspense. German unity is the ideal and the idol of the moment, and not liberty.



I found everywhere a fierce and uncompromising hostility to Russian Bolshevism, coupled with a genuine admiration for the British people with a profound desire for a better and friendlier understanding with them.

The Germans have definitely made up their minds never to quarrel with us again. Nor have they any vindictive feelings towards the French. They have altogether put out of their minds any desire for the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine.

But there is a real hatred and fear of Russian Bolshevism, and unfortunately it is growing in intensity. It constitutes the driving force of their international and military policy. Their private and public talk is full of it. Wherever you go you need not wait long before you hear the word "Bolschewismus," and it recurs again and again with a wearying reiteration.

Their eyes are concentrated on the East as if they were watching intently for the breaking of the day of wrath. Against this they are preparing with German thoroughness.

This fear is not put on. High and low they are convinced there is every reason for apprehension. They have a dread of the great army which has been built up in Russia in recent years.

An exceptionally violent anti-German campaign of abuse printed in the Russian official Press and propelled by the official Moscow radio has revived the suspicion in Germany that the Soviet Government are contemplating mischief against the Fatherland.

Unfortunately the German leaders set this down to the influence of prominent Russian Jews, and thus the anti-Jewish sentiment is being once more stirred up just as it was fading into turpitude. The German temperament takes no more delight in persecution than does the Briton, and the native good humor of the German people soon relapses into tolerance after a display of ill-temper.

Every well-wisher of Germany— and I count myself among them— earnestly pray that Goebbels's ranting speeches will not provoke another anti-Jewish manifestation. It would do much to wither the verdant blades of good will which were growing so healthily in the scorched battleground which once separated great civilized nations.

But we should do wisely not to attach extravagant importance to recent outbursts against Russia. The fact of the matter is, the German Government in its relations with Russia is now in the stage from which we ourselves have only just emerged.

We can all recall the time when Moscow, through its official publications, Press and radio, made atrocious personal attacks on individual British Ministers—Austen Chamberlain, Ramsay MacDonald and Churchill—and denounced our political and economic system as organized slavery.

We started this campaign of calumny by stigmatizing their leaders as assassins, their economic system as brigandage, their social and religious attitude and behavior as an orgy of immorality and atheism.

This has been the common form of diplomatic relationship between Communist Russia and the rest of the world on both sides. We must not forget that even when we had a Russian Minister here we actually sent the police to raid one of the official buildings of the Russian Embassy to rummage for treason in their hampers of frozen butter.

No one imagined that was intended as a preliminary or a provocation to war on either side. The slinging of scurrilities between Germany and Russia is only the usual language of diplomacy to which all countries have been accustomed during the last 20 years where Communist Russia is concerned.

It is important we should realize for the sake of our peace of mind that a repetition of this unseemly slanging match does not in the least portend war. Germany is no more ready to invade Russia than she is for a military expedition to the moon.

What then did the Führer mean when he contrasted the rich but under-cultivated lands of the Ukraine and Siberia and the inexhaustible mineral resources of the Urals with the poverty of German soil? It was simply a Nazi retort to the accusation hurled by the Soviets as to the miseries of the peasantry and workers of Germany under Nazi rule.

Hitler replied by taunting the Soviets with the wretched use they were making of the enormous resources of their own country. In comparison with the Nazi achievement in the land whose natural wealth was relatively poor.

He and his followers have a horror of Bolshevism and undoubtedly underrate the great things the Soviets have accomplished in their vast country. The Bolsheviks retaliate by understating Hitler's services to Germany.

It is only an interchange of abusive amenities between two authoritarian Governments. But it does not mean war between them.

I have no space in which to give a catalogue of the schemes which are being carried through to develop the resources of Germany and to improve the conditions of life for her people. They are immense and they are successful.

I would only wish to say here that I am more convinced than ever, that the free country to which I have returned is capable of achieving greater things in that direction if its rulers would only pluck up courage and set their minds boldly to the task.

Did the Viking Age Really Start on 8 June 793 AD?

BY THORNEWS

“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race (…). The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets”.

With these words, Alcuin of York, a Northumbrian scholar serving King Charlemagne of the Franks and Lombards described the surprising and brutal attack in June 793 on the church of St Cuthbert on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

The brutal Viking raid sent a shockwave through England and the rest of Christian Europe.

The 8th of June is according to the Annals of Lindisfarne the exact date when Vikings raided the Holy Island. Consequently, the Viking Age is defined to have started on this date, maybe at sunrise so that the raiders could sneak into the Northumbrian island under cover of dusk.

But is this really the exact date when Vikings became Vikings? Of course not, but the date marks a deep sword stab into the midst of the heart of the Christian Anglo-Saxon England.

These men from the fjords represented a new and uncontrollable threat, and the attack clearly demonstrated that the English kings (and other European kings) were more or less unable to protect their own people, even priests and monks, facing these brutal raiders.

[caption id="attachment_8955" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Year 805 AD, Yorkshire, England: Imagine, you wake up in the morning and you see this Norseman waiting outside your door. (Illustration by: Stian Dahlslett)[/caption]

The Vikings did not start to be Vikings in the year 793. The Viking Age started long before and followed the development of keels and sails until their longships easily could cross the North Sea and other open waters.

The Oseberg ship (built around 820-834) is the first proof of sailing ships in Scandinavia, but it is likely that this type of vessels were built as early as the mid 700’s.

Three Ships of Northmen

The attack on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, just off the Northumbrian coast in northeast England, was not the first on the British Isles. In the year 789, three ships of Northmen who had landed on the coast of Wessex, killed the king’s reeve (chief magistrate) sent out to bring the strangers to the West Saxon court.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports:

During the reign of King Beorhtric 789 – 802], there came for the first time three ships of Northmen and then the reeve rode to them and wished to force them to the king’s residence, for he did not know what they were; and they slew him .

The Vikings did not leave their written version of events. Nor do the later sagas tell anything about their eight century raids.

However, the assault on the Holy Island was something new and represented a great threat because the pagans attacked the sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom and dishonored the very place where the Christian religion started on the British Isles.

This was the holy island where Cuthbert (c. 634 – 687) had been bishop, the man who after his death became one of the most important medieval saints of Northern England.

[caption id="attachment_8956" align="aligncenter" width="610"] A carved stone found on the island, known as the “Doomsday Stone”, could represent the Viking attack on Lindisfarne. (Photo: english-heritage.org.uk)[/caption]

As soon as the shocking news reached Alcuin serving at the Charlemagne’s court, he wrote to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne:

The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans, a place more sacred than any in Britain .

The raid on Lindisfarne made the Englishmen understand that their lives would never be the same again, and the start of the Viking Age is therefore set to the “dark date” of the attack, i.e. 8 June 793.

However, if the Vikings had got the opportunity to describe themselves, they probably would have said something like: “We come from the north and honor Odin, Thor, Freyr, and our ancestors. Feel free to call us heathens or Vikings, but we have always been, and always will be free men from the north”.

Furthermore, the Viking Age did not come to an end at the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066, a date determined by today’s historians and archaeologists.

But, this is quite a different story.

Top image: They came from the fjords of Western Norway, and when they left, only silence could be heard. (Illustrating photo from “Trace” Viking movie, by Markus Dahlslett).

The article ‘ Did the Viking Age Really Start on 8 June 793 AD? ’ by Thor Lanesskog was originally published on ThorNews 

Shell Shock

An ode to the Vietnam Veteran, the song is a letter from Special Forces' soldier who struggles to survive hell on earth and returns a free spirit. The song's grizzled narrator foresaw author David Morrell's First Blood character John Rambo.

Ross: it was an anthem for Vietnam Veterans.

Joey: We always felt that those guys got fucked over. We still get complained for the song to this day.

Liner notes from Manowar 's Battle Hymns Remastered "Silver Edition" CD 2001 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WrvruYLsPM

I don't know
Well, there's no charge for the haircut
And the bullets come free
My Uncle Sam sent a letter, said:
He's got a mission for me
Now I'm a ranger, not a stranger
And I live in Saigon
We've got a team of special forces
And we deliver napalm
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind
Baby it's not gone just a little hard to find
By the time this letter gets home
I'd be gone, gone, yeah gone
And if they tell you that I'm M.I.A.
Think a little less about me each day
'Cause if I ever get back
I'll be shell shocked, whoa
Shell shocked, yeah
Feels funny riding in my car
Used to drive a tank and shoot a B.A.R.
I know I'm home
But I feel gone, gone, yeah gone
Now it's over and the homeland's safe
Got a purple heart to show the world I'm brave
The businessmen sat at home
Well I got shell shocked, whoa
Shell shocked, whoa
Shell shock
Shell shock
Shell shock

The Many Faces of National Socialism

By Karl Radl

National Socialism is often conceived of, like Christianity or Marxism, as a monolithic weltanschauung that had one goal and expression: the  creation of the Third Reich. From this perspective it logically follows  that since the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, therefore National  Socialist thought stopped evolving in 1945 and simply tries to create a  carbon copy of Third Reich in the coming Fourth Reich in the vein of  ‘Nazi Revival’ films and series such as ‘The Odessa File’ and ‘Kessler’.

In a sense, the view that the goal of National Socialism today is to  create the Fourth Reich is correct because National Socialism does  indeed seek to embody its revolutionary social conceptions in the form  of a state. Unlike proponents of ‘critical theory’ and ‘feminism’, National Socialism does not seek to reform specific bits of state policy  as if it were a pressure group like the National Rifle Association, but  rather seeks to completely rebuild the state.

Naturally, it will use elements of the old to create the new, but  unlike every other political ideology that has ever existed (except maybe  anarchism), it openly acknowledges the need to reserve the right to tear  down the state in its entirety in order to create the new order. This  is because in any given geographic area and time a different solution  may be required; there is no ‘one size fits all’ blueprint that can be parachuted in.

This brings us nicely into the fact that National Socialism has had  many different expressions, even during the limited existence of the  Third Reich. There was the classic Hitlerian National Socialism as  expressed in the NSDAP’s Party Programme, but there was also the  Catholic National Socialism of Belgium’s Rexist and Croatia’s Ustasa  movement. There were Per Engdahl’s Swedish National Socialism and Anton  Mussert’s Dutch National Socialism that openly endorsed Protestantism rather than Catholicism.

Even within the Third Reich’s borders and the NSDAP itself there  were major differences with Joseph Goebbels having modernist socialist  vision of the Third Reich, Heinrich Himmler and Richard Walther Darre  envisioned a neo-pagan rural civilization based upon colonies of  neo-Spartan warrior-farmers, while Alfred Rosenberg imagined creating a  Race-based senate to govern the Third Reich rather than a Fuhrer.

The point is simple in that many critics of National Socialism – both  from the right and left – assume that it is a monolithic ideology that  expired in 1945 with the surrender of the Third Reich. What they forget  is that evolution is at the very heart of National Socialism – remember  that the first book of Mein Kampf is not a statement of Hitler’s  political ideas but rather a narrative of how he had evolved his ideas  and principles; only in the second book does Hitler tell his reader  what those ideas and principles actually are – and baked into the  clay of its ideological core, so-to-speak.

Thus, National Socialism has had – and continues to have – many  variants and whatever soil in which you wish to place it will result in  either an existing adaptation being favoured, or a new variant of  National Socialism being created by the struggle between the blood and  the soil of the given people and the unique political situation of the  time.

National Socialism can and will adapt to any situation anywhere, unlike Fascism or Marxism, because the need to evolve based upon the  requirements of the situation it finds itself in is at the core the  ideology itself. Liberalism, Libertarianism, Anarchism, Fascism,  Marxism and the host of other political ideologies that are out there  have trouble doing this.

This is because evolution is not part of their ideological make-up  and is often just grafted on to the ideology as an afterthought. The  reason for it is because all of these ideologies see themselves as ‘end  of history’ philosophies that can be implemented anywhere, at any time  and in any way. This creates an ideological inflexibility that is an  important reason why they have historically (and currently) failed so  badly when implementation has been attempted because they demand that nature fit ideology rather than ensure that ideology is derived from  nature.

It is this basis in nature that is so powerful within National  Socialism: rather than being a Church with a dozen different  heretical sects within it that it tries to extirpate, National Socialism  is a tree from which a dozen different branches grow and one can use  one or the other dependent upon the situation without recrimination or  accusations of heresy.

What makes National Socialism… well… National Socialism is the desire  to evolve and adapt to fit the situation and time, as well as the fact  that it is based upon and informed by nature itself as embodied in both  the human and physical landscape and the results of the  application of the scientific method.

https://thepurityspiral.com

Aryan femme fatale

[caption id="attachment_8939" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Nico, 1979 by Antoine Giacomoni[/caption]

Nico was described by some friends and colleagues as racist. Her friend Danny Fields, the American journalist who helped her sign to Elektra Records, described her as "Nazi-esque", saying: "Every once in a while there'd be something about Jews and I'd be, 'But Nico, I'm Jewish,' and she was like 'Yes, yes, I don't mean you.' She had a definite Nordic Aryan streak, [the belief] that she was physically, spiritually and creatively superior." According to Fields, in the early 1970s, Nico attacked a mixed-race woman at the Chelsea Hotel with a smashed wineglass, saying "I hate black people".

During a performance in Berlin, the audience rioted after Nico performed the German national anthem "Deutschlandlied", including a verse omitted since 1945 for its nationalist associations.

Source: wikipedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7OtusXPnAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgG3EaOCh_c

A Throne out of His Inextinguishable Pyre

"That Angel who was brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in full divine light; strong enough to still reign in darkness amidst agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his inextinguishable pyre."

History of Magic, Éliphas Lévi

Legionary Death Teams

Legionary Death Teams, also known as Iron Guard death squads ("death team" or "death squads" is a translation from Echipa morţii), so devoted that they took oaths together that they would be ready to die for the movement.

First Formation

The first Legionary death team was formed in May of 1933 and was made up of the following members: Father Ion Dumitrescu, Nicolae Constantinescu, Sterie Ciumetti, Petru Tocu, Constantin Savin, Bulhac, Constantin Popescu, Rusu Cristofor, Adochitei, Iovin, Traian Clime, Iosif Bozantan, Gogu Serafim, Isac Mihai, Professor Papuc, Radoiu. Codreanu described why it was formed in his book For My Legionaries, asserting that "...in the face of these obstacles, blows, intrigues and persecutions, assaulting us from every direction, having this terrible feeling of aloneness, having nowhere to turn, we opposed all this with a firm determination to die. 'The death team' is the expression of these inner feelings of the legionary youth throughout the whole country, to receive death; its determination to go forward, through death."

This team traveled throughout Romania as representatives of the Legionary Movement and the members were willing to take any blows they received without striking back. They were determined to do everything within the limits of what was legal. Unfortunately, their enemies were not. Corrupt and cruel policemen beat them harshly several times during their travels even though the team was not doing anything illegal; just traveling and singing, not even making speeches.

Later "Death Teams"

There were multiple groups of Legionaries after the first "death team" that were similar to the first one. It is arguable that only the first "death team" was actually a true death team at all, since no other group bore that name. However, there are three notable groups of Legionaries who assassinated some major enemy of the Legion that are referred to by anti-Legionary propaganda as "death squads". These three, along with the deceitful propaganda that is spread around concerning them, need to be noted. The groups were the following:

• In 1933, the government of I.G. Duca had banned the Legion to keep it from participating in elections, arrested 18000 Legionaries, and tortured and murdered several others. On December 29-30 of that year, the Legionaries Nicolae Constantinescu, Doro Belimace and Ion Caranica (who are often referred to as the Nicadori) assassinated Duca for revenge.

[caption id="attachment_8923" align="aligncenter" width="411"] Nicadori: Doru Belimace, Nicolae Constantinescu and Ion Caranica[/caption]

• In 1934, Mihail Stelescu, a member of the Legion, was investigated by top Legionaries and discovered to have had planned to betray the Legion and create his own group and was therefore expelled. Stelescu then created the group in 1935, calling it Cruciada Romanismuliu (“The Crusade of Romanianism”), and slandered Codreanu in its newspaper. There is also evidence that Stelescu was plotting to assassinate Codreanu and that, after contacting top political figures, he received government support for this plan. In this situation, ten Legionaries later called the Decemviri (“The Ten Men” - so called because they numbered ten men, like their Ancient Roman equivalents. Ion Caratănase led the squad; its other members were Iosif Bozântan, Ştefan Curcă, Ion Pele, Grigore Ion State, Ion Atanasiu, Gavrilă Bogdan, Radu Vlad, Ştefan Georgescu and Ion Trandafir) shot him.

[caption id="attachment_8925" align="aligncenter" width="627"] Decemvirii[/caption]

• It has been claimed by anti-Legionary propaganda that the Decemviri cut Stelescu's body to pieces and danced around until the police arrived. None of these propaganda claims have any substantial evidence to back them. It has also been claimed that because Codreanu awarded the Decimviri personally when visiting them in prison, he must have known about their decisions beforehand despite claiming otherwise publicly. This only shows a lack of logical thought, since it is clear that it is most likely that he did not know anything but was happy with their decision after it was done.

[caption id="attachment_8924" align="aligncenter" width="646"] Mihail Stelescu, to the right of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. PHOTO www.miscarea-legionara.net[/caption]

• In November of 1938, Armand Calinescu had the military police illegally murder Codreanu (who was earlier that year imprisoned to 10 years at unfair and biased trials under unproven charges), the Nicadori and the Decemviri. On September 21, 1939 nine Legionaries referred to as the Rasbunatorii (“The Avengers”) assassinated Calinescu. After they turned themselves in, they were tortured and executed without trial. These nine men were: Miti Dumitrescu, Cezar Popescu, Traian Popescu, Nelu Moldoveanu, Ion Ionescu, Ion Vasiliu, Marin Stanciulescu, Isaia Ovidiu and Gheorghe Paraschivescu.

[caption id="attachment_8926" align="aligncenter" width="444"] Codreanu's lawyer Miti Dimitrescu - He led the Prahova legionary team who shot Armand Calinescu[/caption]

Finally, it needs to be noted that the three preceding "death squads" are actually not even death teams at all, because they chose to assassinate their enemies. The purpose of the Legionary death team was to receive death and not to give death. Anti-Legionary propaganda claims that Codreanu intended that the Legionaries were to both accept death and kill their enemies. Such claims are blatant lies, since the Legionary Movement was meant to be a completely legal and non-violent movement, despite the fact that unusual circumstances later changed this (the Legion's enemies ruthlessly and cruelly persecuted them).

Death, only a Legionnaire's death
Is our dearest wedding of weddings,
For the Holy Cross, for the country
We defeat forests and conquer mountains;
No prison can frighten us,
Nor any torture, or enemy storm;
If we all fall, hit in the forehead,
Death for the Captain is dear to us!

Main Sources

[caption id="attachment_8927" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Decemviri and Nicadori, along with Codreanu, were exhumed and given a lavish burial service in November 1940.[/caption]