Jung & Serrano: A Phenomenological Critique of Radical Traditionalism

Chrysopoea_of_Cleopatra_1I recently read an academic paper that critiqued Radical Traditionalism (RT). The paper was dissatisfying because it lacked any compelling argument against RT. It relied on a common left wing habit of assuming RT to be mistaken by default of its political orientation – no need to critique its claims, assumptions, and conclusions. Flowing from that superficiality, the paper seemed to assume that since RT claims to be anti-modernist, anti-modernism must ipso facto be worthless. This seemed ill-considered and, frankly, intellectually lazy.

Radical right wing notions will continue to propagate so long as leftist thinkers content themselves with critiques that amount to the accusation of crimethink! We inadvertently endorse RT’s claims to legitimacy when we decline to challenge it for the intellectual turf to which it lays claim. Therefore, this paper sets out to destructure and dismantle RT, and in doing so perhaps rescue anti-modernism from RT’s undeserving (and ironically modernist) clutches. Additionally, I hope to provide a basis on which all variants of RT can be shredded at will.

Reclaiming Anti-Modernism from the Right

The right have worked hard to convince themselves and everyone else that the pre-modern world offers an arsenal of validation for patriarchy, racism, violence, rigid hierarchy, domination, objectification, cultural and ethnic isolation, etc. Yet even a cursory review of human history indicates that RT’s appeal to the pre-modern world is nothing more or less than a twisted nostalgia, an invocation of  heavily distorted (if not outright fabricated) and selective cultural memories. Thoughtful reflection reveals that the only way pre-modernity can become a sound basis for RT ideology is if RT writers dumb down historical narratives and keep them shallow.

For example, we often see right wing Heathens appeal to the original Heathens as a justification for racism, isolationism, militarism, or cultural paranoia. Yet when we review the historical record or read the old myths we struggle to find much justification for such notions. This is not to say that violence and fear were not parts of the historical Heathen experience (they are universals of all human experience), but it is to say that so were hospitality, generosity, and harmonious cross-cultural exchange. Ancient Heathen cultures would have collapsed without the latter aspects, but probably could have got along just fine (and indeed tried to prevent, though customs such as wergild) the former aspects. Why would we neglect values such as generosity, hospitality, and open-mindedness? Why would we collude with the Right to submerge such values in the brackish, amnesiac waters of conservative revisionism?

To the extent that we do make this concession, I believe we do out of lack of self-belief. The hyperbole of RT is compelling (at least so long as it remains unexamined). It seeks to stake out an emotional and spiritual sensibility, one seemingly  resonant with legitimacy. Yet I assure my reader: we are just as entitled to that sensibility on the Left, and indeed if we follow the suggestions made in this essay, we will find ourselves far better positioned to preserve and cultivate the magical spark to which RT presumes to lay an exclusive claim.

If we reflect for even a moment, we recognize that anti-modernism is a venerable companion of progressive critique. Marx’s “alienation of the worker” is a central element of the critique of modern capitalism, and depends almost entirely upon an appreciation for the pre-modern experience of craft, creativity, and labor. Weber’s “disenchantment of the world” offers a similar, fundamental critique of modernity, of its tendency to reduce all relationships to processes of objectification and domination. Kropotkin’s studies on mutual aid throughout history illustrate dozens of examples of pre-modern cultures that operated on principles of community, de-centralization, and hospitality.

These brief remarks provide plenty of foundation to contest and dismantle the RT appropriation of anti-modernism, the RT appropriation of nostalgia for a Romantic history that probably only ever existed in our hearts and imaginations (though there is no shame in that, so long as we own it). It is fashionable in Leftist circles to cede any ground that the Right lays claim, out of a misguided loyalty to some notion of white-light ideological purity. We need a more compelling critique of RT than those usually proffered, one that does not cede the territory of anti-modern critique and pre-modern fascination without a fight. We have to end the RT theft of anti-modernism. To do that we have to get beyond the goal of mere ideological hygiene.

Phenomenology and Coherence

Phenomenology is the much-neglected ancestor of both existentialism and post-structuralism, neither of which seemed to grasp the fundamental point of phenomenology (to all our cost). The slogan of phenomenology’s founder Edmund Husserl was “back to the things themselves,” by which  he partly meant that we cannot understand any phenomenon  – even a political phenomenon like RT – unless we attempt to understand it on its own terms.

This approach amounts to a test of coherence. Is the phenomenon coherent with itself? Is RT coherent with itself? The move to assess an ideology by attempting to square the various major elements of its structure is far more powerful than attacking it on the basis of partisan acceptability, on whether we approve or disapprove of that ideology’s conclusions.

With this thought in mind I intend to present a specific instance of RT which I believe speaks to the broader fault line upon which the whole ideology collapses. This collapse, I must stress, is an internal collapse, that is to say, RT does not cohere with its own methodology and objectives. My critique is such that if the adherents to RT understand it they will be forced to either abandon right-wing dogma, or throw themselves into open embrace of hypocrisy and absurdity.

Before we proceed, it is appropriate to speak a little more to the phenomenological orientation. In this orientation we are encouraged to set aside any concern about matters of fact, that is to say, the ‘true’ state of matters in the world. Instead, our focus is on phenomena, propositions, ideas, etc., as they present themselves. We set aside any concern about their ultimate substance, whatever that might or might not comprise. This is liberating because it frees us from a host of metaphysical and epistemological burdens.

If I am not obliged to reach constantly to the conclusion that RT is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ then I am more likely to be able to dig into its roots and understand it. Without such an understanding, there is little hope of any further productive work. And of course, I suspect that most adherents to RT have not themselves engaged in such an investigation and therefore themselves are ignorant of the structure and framework of their own ideology. All of which offers a wonderful opportunity and modality for critical analysis.

Serrano and Jung

Miguel Serrano (1917-2009) was a somewhat less prominent RT writer; however I have made him my point of departure because his case offers rich pickings for phenomenological analysis. A Chilean diplomat, Serrano spent some years living in India (among other countries), and was strongly influenced by yoga and Hindu mysticism.

Serrano regarded himself as an elite (like many RTs), and so naturally wanted to surround himself with the most rarified of atmospheres. He was something of a collector – he liked to collect visits to spiritually significant locales, and he liked to collect friendships with spiritually impressive people. The precipitate of these tendencies is his 1966 book C. G. Jung and Herman Hesse: A Tale of Two Friendships, which documents his relationship with each of the luminaries named in the title.

Serrano was significantly younger than Hesse and Jung and so knew them in their twilight years (though even in their twilight it appears they remained mentally undiminished). The book is somewhat painful to read, for the relationships it documents are rather one-sided. While both Hesse and Jung appeared to have a fondness for Serrano, he nevertheless comes off – even in his own book – as being a little like a toy dog excitedly yapping at the heels of much larger, more graceful and powerful hounds.

A Tale of Two Friendships is valuable because it offers a view to the phenomenological question of whether RT can claim internal coherence. The book is riddled with fascinating contradictions, in part because it reflects the thoughts of a writer who was himself in a state of intellectual flux.

As a RT, Serrano expresses many of the expected regressive opinions – patriarchy, racism, totalitarianism, individualism – along with some of the more benign RT notions such as the belief in a perennial philosophy, a hidden cosmic order that structures the universe and to which humanity, to varying degrees, can either conform to or diverge from. His international life experiences further complicated and enriched his perspective. Thus we find Serrano making some interesting, complex statements about history and politics, as RTs sometimes do. For example, he says that,

I thought the West was now interested in rediscovering the values of the soul, while the East was beginning to experience technology and the results of a purely extroverted civilization. I said that I thought this development posed a tremendous threat for the white man, who would have to face the expansion of the many colored races all over the world. The only solution for the white man was to dive under, like a swimmer when confronted by a huge wave, in order to come out on the other side. I felt that he ought to keep quiet and allow the colored races to speak. The white man would also have to withdraw somewhat, in order to preserve a legacy for the future. This, I felt, was the only possible way to deal with the millions of hitherto oppressed people who have a just desire for vengeance.

If Serrano’s allegiance to white supremacy and patriarchy is evident here, along with an uncritical adoption of binary thinking (c.f. the rigid projections of “East” and “West”), there is nevertheless also recognition of the profound injustices of European colonial imperialism. This multifacetedness is precisely what makes RT so fascinating, and at times so perplexing to its Leftist critics. Consider, then, this further quote from the book:

This act of diving under should not be merely a political or social act, but a spiritual one in which the white man tries to rediscover his Myth and Legend. Only in this way would the white man preserve the essence of his civilization. What was needed most of all, then, was work of individual perfection. And success in this line depended on the realization of magic. In social terms, it involved the emergence in the West of strong individualists capable of equalizing the incoherent movements of the masses.

Again we see the interweaving of regressive politics (e.g. lionizing the ‘strong individualist’) with something deeper, a recognition that white people (what a problematic term!) cannot negotiate a healthy relationship with people of color if they do not undertake major work within themselves (a point that James Baldwin so powerfully argued but from the perspective of the recipient of racial oppression).

There’s a powerful stench of modernity around the RT obsessions with the perfected, isolate individual – despite the appeal to the spiritual, we know that venerable pre-modern traditions entail far more nuanced and complex understandings of the relationship of self to community. The attempt to reduce culture to isolated, individual agency is also rather resonant with Thatcherism and neoliberalism, both supposedly outlooks that RT opposes.

In Serrano’s words on the one hand we find an allegiance to a vision of history as a process of irresolvable conflict, in which civilizations are inevitably either oppressed or oppressor (both internally and in relation to one another). A worldview based on a presumed incommensurability between races and cultures, a fiction of history as a record of hermetically sealed, unchanging groups grinding one another to dust. This worldview lionizes the absurd image of the isolate, perfected individualist, an intellectual swindle that obfuscates the profound difference between independence of thought and the sullen act of refusing to play with others for fear of being tested and found wanting.

On the other hand we find a thread of thought which recognizes that individual, inner work is not about posturing and shows of power, but about exploring within. And that with this work goes a process of stepping back, acknowledging wrong, showing ownership and accountability: whites facing their shadows, be they collective (genocide, colonialism) or personal. The recognition that healing, growth, and psychic wholeness cannot be achieved through brute egoic violence. That armor and aggression as a basis for a sense of self or a sense of cultural destiny leave a core that is hollow and rotten.

Viewing the incongruous juxtapositions evident in Serrano’s thought with a phenomenological lens exposes an interesting rupture. Serrano calls for inner work, a process that typically requires vulnerability, curiosity, the relinquishing of the ego unto the mysteries of the deeper self. Yet his mechanism for achieving this goal is “strong individualism,” which is to say, the denial of vulnerability and the assertion of linear, egoic force. The matrilineal embrace of the unknown is conjured, then immediately subverted back into the patriarchal lust for the illusion of certainty and control. Thus we begin to trace entangled yet contradictory currents active in Serrano’s thinking as a RT.

Serrano is only one example of RT, and A Tale of Two Friendships is far from the definitive RT statement, yet we have found something here that is worth further exploration. Can Serrano effect a rapprochement of these two, conflicted, ideologies? Can RT? If not, then RT fails the test of phenomenological coherence. And naturally, I believe that it fails miserably. Indeed, it does not even understand the task it sets itself (despite Evola’s superficial appeals to the primacy of enantiodromia, the process by which polar extremes trade places and transform themselves).

In the course of reading A Tale of Two Friendships, Serrano makes clear that his endorsement of the second perspective – that of genuine inner work – sprang in large part from his reading of Jung’s book The Undiscovered Self ­– and indeed from his relationship with Jung as a whole. Serrano had been caught in a psychic rigidity, a collapsed relationship to self, from which birthed his worldview of clashing cultures, of ‘Western’ literalism against ‘Eastern’ mystery, of introjected racist, sexist, and classist authoritarianism against repressed curiosity, vulnerability, and imagination.

In Serrano, we see how RT thus plants its feet in two contradictory currents – historically conditioned authoritarianism on the one and a claim to timeless reverence for mystery on the other. What happened to Serrano when he lost the major support for the latter current in his own thought? What happened to his thought in the wake of Jung’s death? The answer to this question will determine whether RT can lay claim to phenomenological coherence.

Literalism and the Numinous

There is an incident in A Tale of Two Friendships that offers important context for understanding the basis of Serrano’s RT thought. In the book, Serrano relates that he underwent an out of body experience which left a marked impression on him. He was convinced it was a significant and meaningful encounter with the numinous. Later, he described the experience to Jung on one of his visits to Switzerland. Jung’s advice to Serrano was to treat the experience psychologically. Serrano was angered, because he thought that in making this recommendation Jung was suggesting that the experience was ‘merely’ psychological, that Jung was somehow undermining the validity of the revelation.

Serrano was not alone in rejecting Jung’s habit of psychologizing religious experience; in The Mystery of the Grail, Evola rejects Jungian-style appeals to the unconscious as a basis for the recurring motifs of myth and magic. He prefers to appeal to a “supraconscious” basis for these phenomena. He appears to think that Jung is somehow undermining the reality of these phenomena as spiritually significant or meaningful, and attempts to save them from this psychological oblivion through the appeal to hidden, overarching dimensions of existence to which (presumably) only Evola’s own exalted consciousness could attain. Both Evola and Serrano are guilty of an unfortunate and blocked-headed literalism; they simply did not understand Jung.

(To be fair, this could be said of many contemporary folk, too. Jung is often mistakenly understood to be ‘reducing’ the spiritual to the ‘merely’ psychological, even by some of his putative followers, let alone his critics! The difference is, Evola and Serrano had direct access to Jung, free from the chaotic misdirection of New Age appropriation of Jung’s work, and yet still they could not grasp the purpose and significance of the procedure of psychologizing spiritual phenomena).

So what did Jung mean when he told Serrano to understand his out of body experience psychologically? He was inviting Serrano to adopt a phenomenological perspective.

Let us consider. An experience presents itself to me. If I lack a phenomenological perspective, then I am obliged to reduce the experience to whatever underlying framework of belief I might have – at least if I want to attach significance to that experience. Yet as soon as I am reaching past the experience into some conjectured hidden reality, I have abandoned the experience itself. Serrano’s out of body experience was (presumably) an irruption of something magical into his life, yet in his literalism he felt compelled to bastardize it, to leap past the phenomena itself and appropriate the experience into a narrative of the ‘perennial philosophy’ over which he could assert some kind of domination.

When we are confronted with the numinous, we are usually also confronted with the question of our relationship to the numinous. The numinous is alive, active, behaves as though it has intention (it may well do). There is dense, vibrant, intense power to an experience such as traveling beyond one’s body. Yet Serrano, and RT more generally, will not tarry with the experience as it reveals itself; for Serrano, the experience can only be of ‘real’ significance if he can tie it to some sort of supraconscious reality. This is like the spiritual version of the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. It stems not from a superior consciousness, as RT would like to think, but from self-doubt and shallowness.

Serrano, as a Radical Traditionalist, needs to allocate his experience of spontaneous numinosity into a neat, literal category because he is profoundly entangled in the modernist tradition of objectification. The Radical Traditionalist experiences something that moves their heart. Yet their worldview is a worldview of hierarchy, domination, subjection, objectification. They do not know how to tarry with the numinous experience. They can only make sense of that experience if they can attach it to a hierarchy of  evaluations, either base or elevated. In the rush to objectify the experience it slips away, buried beneath the clutching of some notion of spiritual status, of soul aristocracy. The magic slips away, and all that is left is the hollow armor of possessiveness and gnawing anxiety. If magic is a cicada, RT only ever manages to grasp its discarded shells.

Literalism – the need to entrap experience in dogma – destroys RT’s relationship to the numinous. The numinous is not property or an object, but rather a process that unfolds quite independently of any human categorization. It confronts us with mystery. The rejection of that mystery – the cowardice of modernity – resonates throughout RT, its addiction to rules, hierarchy, habitual grasping for ownership. This rejection becomes a vicious circle; the more the Radical Traditionalist tries to ground the numinous experience in appeals to some arbitrary yet rigid table of values, the more numinosity slips away. The more it slips away, the more scarcity the Radical Traditionalist feels, the more rigidly they cling to their abstractions. The more they violently insist on the absolute and eternal reality of the numinous as property, the more the numinous  mocks, defies, and abandons them.

Thus the younger Serrano washed up on the shores of puerile literalism in his later ‘spiritual’ writings. With the loss of Jung’s influence it appears that Serrano began to drift in his sense of place in the world (which he felt was already in question for, as a South American, Serrano described a sense of struggle around his identity, which he could not readily force into his typology of Eastern and Western culture).

Specifically, the tenuous balance between Serrano’s authoritarian self-hatred and his desire to give over into numinous exploration was thrown off, and he thrust himself whole-heartedly into the former mentality, with the added irony of attempting to clad it in convoluted pseudo-spiritual dressing (a contradiction that we can see again and again in the pages of RT writings). The sad nadir of Serrano’s rootlessness appeared in 1984 with the publication of his book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar. This 600+ page text is an unintentionally comedic tour de force of racist fantasy, with a healthy lashing of esoteric veneer; an extravaganza of nihilistic, dissociated, binary modern thought.

The Last Avatar is a kind of pseudo-Gnostic epic in which he outlines his belief that white people – “Aryans” – came to earth from outer space and landed on the north pole; whereas all other races are native to the earth and  (naturally) of inferior terrestrial origin, etc., etc. Yes, bad science-fantasy writing on a par with the inane Xenu ramblings of L. Ron Hubbard, himself another fashion victim(-izer) of modern pseudo-Gnosticism.

Serrano’s book speaks of ectoplasmic alien beings, a Demiurge dedicated to preventing white people from manifesting their true perfection, and various bizarre earth-shattering wars to determine the spiritual fate of the planet through recovering the mysteries of the “perennial philosophy,” the sacred, eternal, universal esoteric tradition that apparently waits breathlessly to be rediscovered by its blonde-haired liberators.

The book takes pains to weave in the odd reference to real earth history here and there, for example citing Neanderthals as an example of an inferior race created to foil the lovely Aryans. How ironic that we now know that European-descended peoples have a small amount of Neanderthal heritage – whereas African folks do not. In other words…the biological evidence would only fit Serrano’s fantasies if those with dark skin were the flawless aliens from another world, and those with light skin the degenerate earthly stooges of the Demiurge! Hmmm, there could actually be something to that…

Polar UFO immortal Aryan overlords fighting for cosmic right by oppressing people of color is about as hilariously awful as it gets, and this is more or less what Serrano’s thought devolved into. Yes, we will be told that it is all intended as metaphor, and yet that somehow almost makes it worse: this is your notion of poesis? This farce is the pinnacle of spiritually ‘elite’ expression?

We are left pondering: What happened to Serrano? His writing in the 1960s might have been marred by totalitarian political sentiments, but it also evinces a tension with something else, a sense of vulnerability, wonder, and reason.

Contrasting A Tale of Two Friendships with The Last Avatar, we can see the fumbling Radical  Traditionalist adulation of mystery and the perennial tradition invariably seems to collapse into an embarrassing farce of literal-minded white patriarchal anxieties. How convenient that patently historically-bound ideologies of colonial domination, or racial and gender stratification, should be rooted in an eternal order of esoteric wisdom. The Christian appeal to Divine Right is the true ancestor of RT, no matter that RT (particularly as appropriated by right-wing Heathens) might claim to revile Christianity.

Of course, we know that humans love to appeal to eternity in order to excuse the passing fashion of the day. ‘That’s just how it is’ must be the most overused justification for injustice ever conceived. Notice how, in the case of Radical Traditionalism, a genuine desire to engage with the mystery, magic, and beauty of the world (the appeal to a perennial philosophy), gets turned into self-parody by the boys’ club obsession with temporal hierarchy? Helpful hint for the haters out there: your hatred of others is a kind of self-hatred, and it will always ruin your intuition for the divine.

Everything is Projection

Jung’s strategy to avoid the pitfalls of literalism, of objectification, of the modern urge to reduce numinosity into the dust of dead matter, is psychologization. As alluded, psychologization is a phenomenological strategy, that is, it privileges the phenomena, the experience, the irruption of the numinous, over the constructions and artifices of human reason. It does not discard rational analysis, but it does attempt to activate rational analysis on the basis of phenomenological patience, respect, and intuition. The strategy has an air of paradox, but in unpacking it the paradox will be seen to subside (this being a true expression of enantiodromia, the mutual embrace of opposition).

When I am confronted by the divine, it may be tempting to anchor that experience in belief, dogma, or ideology. This will inevitably lead me to edit my relationship with that experience in order to make it conform with what my pre-existing beliefs tell me it ‘should’ be. The experience becomes something which can be right or wrong, real or fake, valuable or worthless. Its reality as an experience of something magical is utterly abandoned; I pass over it completely, instead diving into all sorts of arbitrary ideas, beliefs, evaluations, judgments; I begin taking the becoming-present of the numinous as a license to see these necessary yet ephemeral mental constructions as real, eternal, concrete entities.

Jung’s genius move is to say that if I treat my experience – be it numinous or (seemingly) mundane – as being primarily psychological, then I am immediately freed from the burdens of ‘objective’ truth, that is to say, of objectifying truth. I am freed from the obligation to prune my understanding of the experience to make it fit received wisdom. I am freed from the need to defend its validity or to impose that validity on others. I set aside all the intellectual and emotional hubbub that humans construct around the raw honesty of our experiencing selves.

In short, by psychologizing, by setting aside all question about the ‘real,’ ‘objective’ nature of my experience, I become free to truly pay heed to the experience itself. To attend to its subtleties. To map out how it unfolds in my awareness. To lay hold of my reactions and responses. This phenomenological orientation is a stance of reverence. So long as I feel obliged to adopt a stance of literalism, I am at risk of ignoring the unique specialness of the very numinosity I think I value. I reduce its value to a unit of trade in the market of spiritual or psychological dogma.

Now, here is the really important thing: Jung is emphatically clear that the move to psychologize the numinous (or anything else) is not a judgment on the ‘real’ existence of the experience. He is simply saying, ‘let’s set aside the question of underlying reality and attend to the phenomena as they present themselves, that is, psychologically.’ This enables a posture that is deeply engaged, yet also non-attached, a balanced perspective in which faithful attention can be offered without becoming lost in the traps of normal objectificatory human consciousness.

When we adopt this posture, two things happen. First, we no longer need to prove ourselves in contests of hierarchical chest-thumping, because we now have a sense of irony. I recognize that even when my projections are accurate (and often projections  are accurate) they are still projections. They are still psychological processes. So I don’t need to prove the literal reality of my experience. I have internalized my sense of worth. This is a real individuality, not the oxymoronic, totalitarian individuality of RT, which is based entirely on an extraverted stance of dominance and submission; RT is a religion of hollow idols.

Second, we orient ourselves to the inherent mystery that seems to be the basis of all experience. This is an accepting yet active stance. I am freed of the need for denial, since I am no longer attempting to live up to some pre-determined notion of what I think I ‘should’ be. This orientation is reverential. It draws us into the present. It integrates us into the past. It is the enigma that RT tries and fails to capture in the phrase ‘perennial tradition.’

Jung’s stance can be adopted by anyone, regardless of their beliefs. The implication of his approach is that the way we believe (preferably with irony, humor, and ardent yet light touch) is much more important than what we believe. When the latter, dogmatic, stance becomes primary, we become lost in mazes of disowned projection, we feel the numinous turning from us, we start objectifying, and then we are back in the vicious reductive cycle of modernity, which in its lust for magic leaves a wake of endless mundane devastation.

The statement that ‘everything is projection’ is not, therefore, reductive. It is not taking away the magic of numinous experience or devaluing spirituality as being ‘merely’ psychological. Rather, it is emancipatory; when I become open to the possibility that everything is projection, I become free to form truly reverential, open, playful, heartful relationship with the numinous.

There is also considerable discipline entailed by Jung’s approach, and this discipline can be unforgiving. It is far more exacting than Radical Traditionalists seem capable of; for all their martial pretensions, they lack the basic discipline of self-awareness. For all his claimed adherence to yoga, Serrano lacked even the slightest reflexivity or non-attachment when challenged by Jung. Thus, again, the Radical Traditionalist must convert what might be genuine spiritual inspiration into the puerile ramble of Serrano’s later work, or of Evola’s endlessly obscurantist mutterings about the Grail or Hermetic philosophy (which somehow seem to wash up on the shores of Italian fascism’s almost comedic  incompetence).

The Ego and the Depths

Egotism cannot abide psychologization, because the latter forces the ego to cease its misplaced despotism and assume a smaller, more appropriate role. The ego is the part of self most intimately bound up in modernity; psychologization is a profound weapon against modernity with its endless impulses for dogma, objectification, and denial. RT is egotism par excellence, and this is why Evola is absolutely obliged to reject Jung. In so doing, he mires himself in the very modernism that he claims to despise.

Jung explored the dynamics of ego and unconscious extensively in his writings on alchemy. In particular, he made the observation that since patriarchal Christianity set out to impose a rigid, ego-based dogma on spiritual expression, it was necessary for a feminine, underground alchemical tradition to emerge and undermine – or at least transform – that imbalanced order. Everything about RT’s social ideology – hierarchy based on patriarchal violence, elitism, scarcity mentality, paranoia about the Other – is part and parcel of the very Christian social order that suppressed the unconscious, the numinous. RT is absolutely built on a template that rejects the ‘perennial philosophy,’ because the latter can only be fully encountered in the sinuous coils of the phenomenological orientation.

Ultimately, for Jung, the collective unconscious connects the individual psyche through to matter itself; indeed, it dissolves the very distinction even as it preserves it, and thus does psyche speak to us through the ‘material’ manifestations of the phenomenon of synchronicity. To put that another way: Jung does not, at bottom, conceptualize a rigid distinction between mind and matter. This view is reflected in more modern psychologies of embodied consciousness, just as it is in the teachings of the Buddha and many other pre-modern spiritual traditions. So when Jung says we should psychologize our experiences, he is not making a statement that they have no material or objective reality. He is talking about whether we take a reverent, phenomenological stance, or a self-defeating, dogmatic, egotistical stance. Whether we embrace mystery, or entertain the illusion that we can exploit it.

The latter stance, so redolent of RT, is the same stance that produces fast food franchises, factory farms, Third-World industrial exploitation, and the destruction of the planet at the behest of a few rich, shallow, sociopathic white males at the top of the pile. Anti-modernism is a rejection, therefore, of RT, which like modernity itself is utterly unable to reconcile its contradictions. And if we wish to reject RT without also moving beyond literalism we are at risk of turning into the very sort of thing we claim to despise.

The tactic of psychologization, by virtue of its phenomenological orientation, gives over to a poetic consciousness. It tends to the interrelatedness that is so fundamental to the structure of the world – not some hidden, ‘perennial’ property of existence, but one that coils through every moment and every place in plain sight. The occult nature of existence is concealed from us only by our tendency to slip into literalism. Every moment is a priceless gift that comes without cost, for it is beyond the circus of domination and submission, the circus of objectification to which RT is enslaved.

The proof of the failure of RT is revealed in the form of Steve Bannon, certainly its most famous adherent (Bannon is reportedly a big fan of Evola). Bannon is clearly a shallow hack; a reactive, paranoid, self-congratulatory buffoon whose scarcity demons are such that no amount of grasping will ever satisfy the yawning pit in his heart. He lacks the most basic of dignity. If this is the vaunted philosopher king, if this is what an aristocrat of the soul looks like, then RT is a tragic and ugly farce, lost in the mirrored hall of its totalitarian anxieties and haunted by the specters of its disowned projections.

The antidote to RT is anti-modernism, for RT is the very non pareil of modernism – even its fumbling nostalgia for carefully sanitized histories is classic, even archetypal, modernity. And the road to anti-modernism – or perhaps we should call it trans-modernism – is through psychologization, that magical process by which matter and spirit may be reunited through the reverent embrace of mystery. Let us review what traces of literalism – the driver of RT – we might find in ourselves, and let us root them out in a spirit of vulnerable, creative, open-minded playfulness.

For there is a genuine magical impulse entangled in the confusions and hypocrisies of RT. The mistake of RT is to take this impulse of the heart – feminine, grounded in feeling, fleeting yet persistent – and pass it off as an artifact of patriarchal reason. This subterfuge leaves a horrible scar on the Radical Traditionalist’s conscience, and this bad faith in turn impels the embrace of bitter, empty, obscurantist arrogance. The same bad faith is the true root of white supremacy, of patriarchy, of colonialism, of technocracy. In dismantling Radical Traditionalism, let us not abandon the heart impulse, but rather offer it a better home in the arms of a phenomenological orientation, so that it might heal the course of history rather than dam it into oblivion.

One final point remains to be made: Jungian psychological irony is not a call to apathy. It does not mean we give up since ‘everything is projection so who cares?’ That attitude, again, secretly smuggles literalism into the equation. When I truly adopt a phenomenological attitude, I become able to hold resolute beliefs even as I recognize them for the subjective, more or less arbitrary, processes that they are as products of my own subjectivity. No longer am I perverting my conviction for the sake of ego payoff. I can stand with unyielding strength, yet without slipping into the noxious waters of righteous arrogance. I thus give myself the chance to embody the ideal of so much of Hindu thought: to be non-attached, yet deeply caring. This is the well-spring in which progressive politics – particularly as it presents in the world of Heathenry, paganism, and occultism – will most profitably root itself.

Afterword: Jung, Uncertainty, Paradise

In A Tale of Two Friendships, Serrano expresses disappointment with Jung. He comments that, right up to the very end, Jung seemed haunted by a sense of searching, of longing, of questioning. Serrano much preferred Hesse, who he saw as complete, settled, final. Serrano’s projection toward Jung is telling here: he could not understand how curiosity or questioning could be a strength. Jung never ceased to plunge himself into the challenge of embracing mystery; Serrano, in the grip of literalism, could not understand that this was a profound strength of Jung’s character.

This is not to say that Jung was free of colonialist, racist, or patriarchal prejudices. Although his ideas undermine such ill-considered outlooks, Jung was like most great (and privileged) thinkers, not entirely the equal of his own thought, and there are places in his writing where he does not embody his own philosophy. Jung, too, must be overcome in favor of his ideas – if we are to both benefit from his legacy, and if we are to successfully dismantle the noxious weed that is Radical Traditionalism. Nietzsche has Zarathustra tell his followers, “to find me, first lose me and find yourself.” This is a genuine kind of individuality, not the totalitarian sleight of hand that characterizes Radical Traditionalism, in which the oppression of nature and humanity alike is seen as perfectly reasonable collateral damage inflicted for the sake of a supposedly enlightened few.

I hope that by working through the phenomenon of Radical Traditionalism I have not only shown how this ideology collapses under its own weight, but also offered some helpful clues on how we can better proceed as anti-modern progressive thinkers. I choose to conclude with the words of Milan Kundera, who could have easily been speaking of Radical Traditionalism and its right wing totalitarianism bedfellow, though the object of his words was in fact Iron Curtain tyranny. In both instances, the phenomenological orientation could have offered the quicksilver to turn political lead into gold.

Totalitarianism is not only hell, but also the dream of paradise – the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another…If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way, and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets ever smaller and poorer…It is extremely easy to condemn gulags but to reject the totalitarian poesy which leads to the gulag by way of paradise is as difficult as ever.

(Quoted in Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, p. 85).

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Thoughts on Generosity

img_0612-1Generosity shows up as a central value in the remnant corpus of Old Norse Heathen literature. Whether celebrating the ruler who shares wealth readily, or exhorting the hall to welcome the stranger without hesitation, it is clear that for the old Heathens generosity and hospitality were fundamental practices that benefitted both the individual and the collective. The Gebo rune, and other references in the lore, also suggest the importance of gratitude, an attitude that recent research indicates can physically heal the brain of trauma.

Arguably a component of generosity is acceptance. Acceptance is a stance I can adopt or set aside, and it entails a gift to both myself and my recipient. Naturally, my acceptance of the other provides them the  freedom to set aside armor (literal or psychic) and find either repose or the opportunity for deeper engagement with life. And in accepting the other I free myself from the burden of resisting what wyrd has brought to pass. As such I become more free to respond with creativity and intelligence.

A common mistake one encounters is the confusion of acceptance and acquiescence. The latter refers to a passive submission, often involving allowing another to harm me. This, however, is not acceptance. Acceptance is merely the act of recognizing what is before me. It does not instruct me on any course of action, be it passive or active. It merely instructs me not to waste my energy on phantasms of my own mind and instead attend to what is.

If I were to wax poetic, acceptance is a means of romancing the Norns and the work that they do. It is a form of religious piety; if Heathenry is a this-worldly tradition (in contrast to, say, the otherworldly focus of much of Christianity) then acceptance must be a fundamental Heathen practice.

Acceptance runs both directions when the question of generosity or hospitality arises. Not only is it poor Heathen form to decline to extend the generous hospitality of acceptance, it is also poor form to decline generosity or hospitality when they are offered. The Heathen perspective, being fundamentally practical, sees reality in terms of relationships (this is what Wyrd is, the dynamic unfolding of relationships). It follows that isolationism and autarky are ill practices from a Heathen point of view.

As such, in the practice of generosity we discover that the ancient Heathen customs are designed to break down rigid dualities. This is difficult for modern people to approach because the modern world – rooted in Christian assumptions – is founded on irreconcilable binaries: good and evil; progression and regression; rich and poor; black and white; colonizing and colonized; dominance and submission. Given such a context it is no wonder that people cannot tell the difference between acquiescence and acceptance, seeing as the latter violates the prevalent binary mentality.

Rigid binaries also existed in premodern times and non-Western cultures of course; the difference is that in some times and places, people realized that binary opposition is just one link in the eternal pattern that wyrd weaves, and not the absolute condition of existence. Thus it is that non-dual philosophies exist, and are often misunderstood by those coming from a Western context. Buddhism, for example, has often been called ‘world-denying,’ yet in reality it teaches radical embrace of this reality as it is right now. How ironic projection can be.

Well, the ancient Heathens left many clues for the overcoming of rigid binaries. We modern Heathens have a lot of work ahead of us. The great danger we face is that, lacking perspective on just how deeply binary thinking has been embedded in our bodies and minds, we will anachronistically project dualism onto the Heathen current as we rebuild it.

This is what is happening when we encounter, for example, folkish Heathens who cannot escape the very modern terms of racial categorization (and often too, poisonous and gratuitous narratives of dominance and submission, which are ultimately founded on a very modern autarkism that would not have been well received in Heathen circles).

One generous way to approach Heathenry itself is to treat it like an estranged lover with whom we have just begun to reconnect. We must be tentative. We must reach out from beyond our own assumptions. We must be wary of cutting the Heathen cultural corpus to fit our pre-existing prejudices and perspectives (those who use Heathenry to justify the worst in themselves would be better off removing themselves). If we can resist the lures of disowned projection, we extend hospitality to Heathenry itself. Only then might it begin to enter our halls and enrich them with its songs.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Medieval Fight Book

A new National Geographic Channel special on Talhoffer’s Medieval German Fight Book is currently available on YouTube.

The manuscript includes seige engines and techniques for combat with a variety of weapons, including unarmed and dagger work.

 The show includes reproductions of some surprisingly advanced technologies (including a medieval frogman suit), and re-enactments of a couple of different fighting techniques. I think the highlight for me was seeing ARMA director John Clements demonstrate half-swording techniques against an armoured opponent in free sparring.

Highly recommended. Watch it while it’s still available.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

“Everything fornicates all the time” or: Goddess, let our minds copulate with Infinity!

If I cast my eyes before me, what an infinite space, in which I do not exist, and if I look behind me, what a terrible procession of years, in which I do not exist, and how little space I occupy in this vast abyss of time.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

All beings are buddhas … there is no being that is not enlightened, if it but knows its true nature.” Hevajra Tantra

“I have been waiting beyond the years
Now over the skyline I see you’re travelling
Brothers from all time gathering here
Come let us build the ship of the future
In an ancient pattern that journeys far
Come let us set sail for the ‘always’ island
Through seas of leaving to the summer stars

Seasons they change but with gaze unchanging
O deep eyed sisters is it you I see?
Seeds of beauty ye bear within you
Of unborn children glad and free
Within your fingers the fates are spinning
The sacred binding of the yellow grain
Scattered we were when the long night was breaking
But in the bright morning converse again.

The Incredible Stringband, “The Circle Is Unbroken”

The method to enlightenment according to Crowley, who has boiled down the Eastern teachings to its essence after having travelled to India and other places in the Orient, is very simple: Sit down, shut up, stop thinking, and Get Out! It’s simple, but not easy. Even the Tantric scholar, Hugh B. Urban, admits that Crowley had a fairly well-grounded understanding of Yoga, as his book, Eight Lectures on Yoga (a book still worth reading), proves. Let’s look closer to what Crowley meant by his formula.

Sit down: This refers to Asana, a term in Yogic literature for posture. It needs to be solid, but also comfortable. After all, you are supposed to sit in this posture for about half an hour. (You should be able to sit like this for hours. One hour is the most I reached once. However, don’t be too masochistic.)

Shut up: This one is hard. At least for people like me. I like to talk a lot. Most westerners are talking or are listening to talking people most of the time. (Here talking includes singing, making sounds, listening to the radio, watching TV etc. Even reading is talking, as whilst you read those words an internal voice is speaking to you. Isn’t it?) So, this one is really hard. But, after we have sat down we have to invite silence into our heads.

Stop Thinking: This is impossible, you say? I hear you, my friend. I know, it’s next to impossible. But hey, haven’t we began our quest for magic, myth and mystery because we strive for that which is miraculous and fills our hearts with Joy and Awe? Isn’t magic the science of the extremes and the impossible? The violation of probabilities? Haven’t they told you sigil magic doesn’t work, it cannot happen, but IT DID!!! In the same way we must push our boundaries of Achievable Reality with every breath we take. We learn slowly. Magic cannot be learned at a retreat or weekend workshop. We learn by applying our insights in daily life. This is an endless process. On this way we must accept our imperfection, stop worrying, stop wishing, yes, stop thinking! We must learn to watch our thought patterns and thus become aware of the origination of thoughts. We must not strive for anything, we must not force our minds to do anything, but just watch. „Breath in, breath out,… thoughts… breath in, breath out …“ asf. Finally, we will establish mental silence, or to be more accurate, it establishes itself. And even a few seconds of this mental silence are like a short glimpse at eternity, a foretaste of real inner peace.

Get out: This leads to profound stages of gnosis. It doesn’t make really sense to talk about it, because one gets there easier when one shuts up” and “opens up” to silence. The idea of “getting out” ultimately points to the experience of illumination. But what is illumination? Well, the short answer: I don’t know. But we can look closer to what has been said how magic and illuminated states of consciousness are linked up.

Beside Yoga another fundament of Crowley’s teachings is the modern version of Qabalah / Kabbalah. Though I respect Qabalah as a mystical current in Judaism I think that too many ‘occult masters’ turned qabalah into a rather intellectual exercise without any real spiritual value. The study of correspondences is an ancient art that belongs to the great Arts of Imagination, that was practised back in the days when Imagination was not just seen as unreal and put on a level with fantasy. One of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance and a reviver of Neoplatonism, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), rediscovered this ancient art during a time when Florence was the place to hang out for hip artists and ‘avant-garde’ intellectuals, an important centre of the ending Mediæval Ages, where cultural innovations and developments took place that led to an end of the dominance of the Church. New ideas began to spread that resulted in intellectual transformations of a grand scale. The Renaissance is viewed today as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. The Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, but what I find most fascinating is that it was inspired by the past, the classical age: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. So it doesn’t come with a surprise that this was also a revival of Magic. Humanists asserted “the genius of man… the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind.” In that special intellectual environment Ficino taught what he considered to be ‘Natural Magic’, and so laid the foundation for what is called ‘Ceremonial Magic’ now, known to us through such magical authors like McGregor Mathers, Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie. This form of magic is still practiced in their occult orders all over the world today.

Ficino’s magic was grafted on to an existing tradition of medieval magic, which in turn had derived from Arabic sources such as the notorious manual of spirit evocation called Picatrix. The fundamental idea was the doctrine of correspondences, which teaches that everything in the universe corresponds to other things on higher or lower levels of being.” (Godwin 2007: The Golden Thread – The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions, p. 99)

This idea is really old. It seems it never disappeared completely. With the rise of modern science in the 17th century Kepler (1571 – 1630) and Newton (1643 – 1727), both deeply into the occult, have cut through the band of nature and psyche, man and the world, the subjective and the objective universe, that has existed since the rise of human consciousness, known to the ancients as the world-soul, anima mundi. (Actually both, Kepler and Newton, saw the harmonious order of the divine creation in the physical laws they discovered, a kind of clockwork universe (instar horologii) and ‘world machine’ (machina mundi). However their physical laws made the idea of a divinely ensouled universe (instar divini animali) obsolete.) For the ancients the world-soul was the vinculum amoris, the band of love, that connected the inner world with the outer world, man and nature. Three centuries later we would come to conclusions that allowed us again to re-imagine this sacred bond between man and nature. We needed quantum physics and a swiss prophet to re-member again. This prophet was, yes you guessed it, Carl-Gustav Jung. His ideas of the archetypes and a collective unconscious made magic possible again. He wrote in 1916, after a spiritual crisis:

Man is a gateway, through which one enters from the outer world of the gods, demons, souls, into the inner world, from the greater world into the smaller world.” (Jung [1916]: Sermones ad Mortuos, in: Jung 1963: Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 380)

That means that we can enter deeper, hidden realities by finding pathways through which we can communicate with our unconscious, which Jan Fries calls the “Deep Mind.” When we open up to that possibility we begin to interact magically with our environment, and a sacred psychogeography is thus created: “It is through the human unconscious that one passes from the ‘greater world’ to the ‘smaller world’ of the interior universe. The God of the ‘exterior’ universe is the sun; and the interior world is, accordingly, illuminated by the sun of man’s personal inner divinity.”(Hanegraaff 1996: New Age Religion and Western Culture, p. 503)

Hence the archetypes of the collective unconscious are simultaneously part of the macrocosmos (the outer world) and the microcosmos (the inner world), which leads to the fascinating, magical conclusion that the world of the psyche and the world of “outer” reality are ultimately only reflections of a higher reality, the unus mundus, the “One world,” or to put it differently: the world and the psyche are each mirroring the one reality. This means that Jung assumed a monistic meta-level behind or beyond the subjective (psychical) and objective (physical) reality – the unus mundus, a term which refers to the concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and returns to.


To me this conception is the fundament of magick. Being a modern learner on the magical path I always imagined that connection more in scientific terms. My thoughts were running along those lines: If there was a Big Bang (even if Carroll says this idea is nonsense) everything in the physical universe has the same origin. And when we then look to quantum physics we can see that it proves that two particles that have the same source behave somehow as if they were still connected, even though they are seperated by a huge distance. This means that if one of the two particles gets affected by certain events, the other is affected in the same way though it’s physically somewhere else. One must be blind, if one doesn’t see a connection between these new discoveries and the old conceptions of correspondences, even if we cannot conclude from this that science is now accomodating some of the conclusions magicians have reached millenia ago. Or can we? Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900 – 1958), an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics, was examing the synchronicity principle with Jung, and he argued that there must be a psychophysical unified reality that connects the psyche and the world. He thought of it as an invisible, potentially existing reality that could only be unlocked by studying its effects on the visible world. He was looking for a new language” that could describe that reality. I think he found it in Jung’s theories. We have found it in magical systems and terminology. It’s no mere accident that Jung became so popular in magical circles. There is a sublime truth in his psychology. It points at an underlying unified reality, the unus mundus, a term Jung borrowed from the alchemist Gerardus Dorneus (1530 – 1584).

It’s also not a coincidence that when scientists (Metzner, Leary, Grof etc.) took LSD, Mescalin, asf. they entered these wyrd inner landscapes, where the ‘laws’ of the unus mundus reign. Certain drugs can lead you to the experiences of unitary consciousness. When these psychedlic drugs reveal that underlying unified reality, it happens sometimes that when an unprepared person takes LSD – has a wrong set, as Leary said (a wrong attitude, f.e. feels bad or is depressive or anxious) or is in an unappropriate environment (like a disco, a ‘wrong setting) – that such a person gets a ‘bad trip’, which mainly means paranoia: everything in the universe, strangely connected in weird ways, is a conspiracy against you. There is, however, a way of perception that inverts that process and it’s an effective method to communicate with the Universe, and experience a communion”. For that purpose you can conceptualise the Universe, like the Tantrics did, as the body of the Goddess – known to me as Eternity, or Nuit. That’s a form of gnosis that Satanists and Setians will never know: it’s called pronoia. I came across this term in Humphries’ and Vayne’s fascinating Grimoire Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick. ‘Pronoia’ is a state of consciousness that is intimately connected to the Holy Guardian Angel concept. Here the seeker experiences that the Universe is actually alive and that it cares for you and it tries to help you in any way possible to get closer to your Self that, in essence, – on a profound, meaningful and transcendent level invisible to the eye – is One with the Universe. The realization of this Oneness implies a particular attitude on the part of the adept toward cosmos, like in Ficino’s Natural Magic or in Hindu-Tantra, whereby s/he feels integrated within an all-embracing system of micro-macrocosmic correlations. The Universe here is not just a thing out there’, but Her – She, the Mysterious Universe being the Goddess Herself (for mystical monotheists it’s mostly Him, God the Father or Christ). Every attempt to conceptualize Her / Him / It leads to an anthropomorphisation of Her: the Goddess in Her various forms: Nuit, Freyja, Kali, Virgin Mary, the Holy Whore.

All our ancient ways are wrought with love of Her, lifting up Her skirts and showing off Her irresistible flesh, our flesh, all flesh… For only a real fool, the worst drudge, would ever refuse Her come-on. Even those with little wisdom know in their hearts that She has but one aim: to bring you ecstasy, to destroy the illusion of seperateness…” (Dave Lee 2006 [1997]: Choatopia!, p. 203)

I don’t know why, but I feel very attracted to the perception of the Goddess (on one level of reference) as Nuit. Probably it’s because it’s the first Goddess I encountered on my Path when I discovered The Book of the Law. Nuit has been described by Crowley in various ways. First of all he equated this Egyptian Goddess of the Night Sky with the Qabalistic concept of Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light: the Godhead, prior to Its Self-Manifestation,  before It emanates into manifestation on verious levels of existence and thus creates the world(s). This idea probably derived from Ibn Gabirol (1021 – 1058), an Andalucian Hebrew poet and Jewish philosopher, who coined the term, “the Endless One” (she-en lo tiklah). Ain Soph may be translated as “no end,” “unending,” “there is no end,” or “the Infinite.” Hence a term like Ain Soph Aur (אין סוף אוֹר) means “Endless Light.” Ain Soph is the divine origin of all created existence, which emanates out of infinite no-thing-ness (Ain). Another way to approach the Mystery of Nuit (at least in Crowley’s sense, I’m not concerned with Old Egyptian religious conceptions here) is to understand it as a certain state of being that the Buddhists called Nibbāna in Pali, known as Nirvāna (Sanskrit: निर्वाण) to most. It is a state of being free from suffering (dukkha). In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme Being (=God) through Moksha (Sanskrit: मोक्ष) or Mukti (Sanskrit: मुक्ति), which literally means “release” in the sense of “letting go.” The concept of Nirvāna is often associated in Western minds with the false impression of a nihilistic, life-denying stance, because it means “blowing out.” However, in truth things are more complicated. It might have been a world-denying concept, but basically it refers to the blowing out of the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion. Over centuries this concept was transformed in Tantric Buddhism to the idea that Nirvana is a purified, non-dualistic “superior mind,” unclouded by any dualistic perceptions. In Western occultism we now have the confused impression that the ideas of “Self” and “No Self” are somehow contrary, and certain so-called “LHP” adepts assume that the RHP traditions lead to “self-annihilation” and that the LHP traditions lead to a “preservation of the self.” Don Webb, an initiate of the Temple of Set, writes:

Crowley believed that when one left the Adept Grade, one could either give up one’s ego or become a Babe of the Abyss, being at one with Nuit OR one could shut himself away from the universe and become a Black Brother, a follower of the Left Hand Path. These unfortunate SOBs were eventually destroyed by the universal tides acting upon them, much like stones being worn down by sea waves. We in the Left Hand Path (LHP) see this matter differently. If we didn’t we would scarcely have an interest in the First Beast [the “Second Beast” being Aquino for Setians, my remark]. Crowley believed that the Master of the Temple obtained a true Union with the objective universe and by so doing could interpret any event in that universe as a communication from its meaningful and purposeful side. Ultimately one would realize the unity of spirit and matter, and the folly of believing one’s thoughts to be seperate from the Cosmos. Crowley saw himself as a teacher of the Right Hand Path. (Webb 2005: Aleister Crowley – The Fire and the Force. p. 32)

This is just a terribly confused position (resulting from Descartes’ cogito ergo sum hypothesis, and Mr. Kepler’s and Newton’s destruction of the vinculum amoris, which I have mentioned above) that has no relation to any deeper or ancient Tradition, but is more or less a modern, neo-satanic myth that somehow developed between the antagonistic positions of Mme Blavatsky’s and LaVey’s (and his pupils’) occult ideas, who both got it all wrong, because the RHP’s and LHP’s goal is the same: the Unio Mystica, the sacred marriage of homo and deus. The aim is shared by both paths. What is different are their methodologies. The same confusion arises when Hinduistic and Buddhistic concepts are compared. Whilst Advaita Vedanta (Advaita means literally “non-duality”), a monistic school of Hindu philosophy, promotes the idea that the Self (Atman) and the Whole / “God” (Brahman) are identical, and thus presupposes a True Self, Buddhism describes exactly the same phenomenon, but calls this discovery No Self (Anātman), and thus presupposes an Emptiness (Suñyatā). The truth is that both, True Self and Emptiness, are descriptions of the same thing, but we less insightful seekers with not enough meditative experience get lost in concepts and conceptions. And, as so often, the truth gets lost in translation, too. We must keep in mind that these things are very very hard to grasp, and it’s even harder to put those experiences into words.

But to come back to Nuit: She, as a Goddess of Eternity, embodies these concepts of Ain Soph Aur and Nirvana in a beautiful and unique way, beyond words and reason. The HGA, then, is that kind of entity that tries to re-connect you with Her. Here the idea of Angels as intermediary beings, as the „messengers of God“, the Pleroma or Nous, must come from, I assume. For that concept to be of any use to a sane modern individual today, we need a very clear and grounded understanding of what the nature of that Angel is. It’s been stated by Crowley several times that he incorporated the notion of a Holy Guardian Angel into his system of magick, because he found it so ‘ridiculous’ that, he assumed, noone would ever confuse it with Angels in a literal sense, but look for the higher and deeper meaning of the necessity of that experience.

The Holy Guardian Angel is everything you are not. It is other. It cannot be described, for if it could it would be part of you. The search for it is therefore not the search for a specified goal, but a great search for other. It is the search for some kind of metaphysical experience and unity, bliss and joy. As you grow and your knowledge increases ; so the Holy Guardian Angel changes, leading you further along the path into the unknown. The magician is aiming to establish a set of ideas and images that correspond with the nature of his genius, and at the same time receive inspiration from that source. It is your purpose in existing. It is what you are here for, it is why you chose to incarnate at this time, in this place. Its goals become your goals, it cares about what you do and wants you to achieve them. To ally your desires with its desires is to enter into a divine communication … .” (Humphries & Vayne 2004: Now That’s What I Call Chaos Magick, p. 141)

This idea has totally seeped into my Life a long time ago and it is connected to my deep drive to re-connect with the Divine, a hidden, deeper reality that lurks behind the outer forms of the visible, measurable world. It was exactly this mystical fire that burned in my heart, when I entered the magical path. It was just later that I came to know that such concepts as sigils, magical power, and in some contexts the exaltation of the ego, are part of what is called magick. It’s the mystic’s passion that pushes me forward on my magickal journey that I identify as the main purpose of my Life. But Life and Magick are the same, “and both can only be about a spiritual journey, a path towards a Re-Union with a Supreme Creator, with God, with the Divine.” (Genesis P-Orridge) Even if I do consider the idea of a “Creator” as an utterly useless concept that is unnecessary in my understanding of the Divine, and even if the concept of “God” sounds heavily Christian or monotheistic, it’s always been clear for me why I have entered the magical arena: to re-unite with the source of All. Nothing else is serious. And that source of all is No-Thing or Nuit , “the Boundless Light,” as modern qabalists put it. In this sense I consider the modern, neo-satanic conceptions of the LHP with their notion “Preserve the self at all costs! Resist the evil mystics!“ rather misleadinging. I do not believe that this mystical process known as Coincidentia oppositorum (“coincidence of opposites”) leads to “self-annihilation” as Aquino and other promoters of that modern form of the “LHP” formulated it. The principle of the “uniting of opposites” is an ancient one and constitutes a fundamental element of what Aldous Huxley baptized Perennial Philosophy. The experience of the Coincidentia oppositorum was used in describing an alchemical process, to be exact, its fourth stage, rubedo (“reddening”): the unification of man with God. In Thelemic mysticism this is the unification of the limited (individual consciousness), or Hadit, with the unlimited (cosmic consciousness), or Nuit , ”the Boundless Light.” In this regard the mystical experience can be seen as a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different. Such insight into the unity of things is an experience of a transcendent reality, a meta-level, the unus mundus, as described above. This level of being (actually transcending being and non-being) shouldn’t be regarded as “foreign” to magic, but as its fundament – the origin and aim of all magic – that helps us to explore the metaphysics of our practice. The experience of the coincidence of opposites is known in Germanic spirituality, albeit in its Christianized version. It can be found in various descriptions of German mystics that constitutes a religious current known as German or Rhineland mysticism, which was a late medieval Christian mystical movement, that was especially prominent within the Dominican order and in Germany. Although its origins can be traced back to Hildegard von Bingen, it is mostly represented by Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Henry Suso, Rulman Merswin and Margaretha Ebner, and the Friends of God (“Gottesfreunde”). Actually this “golden thread” (Jocelyn Godwin) can be traced back to magico-mystical traditions all over the world. The idea occurs also in the traditions of Tantric Hinduism. These mystical features are shared by the esoteric teachings of many religions. They do not seem to be just bizarre or irrelevent products of the fantasies of certain religious enthusiasts, but rather the lived and embodied knowledge of each religion that is central to its thorough understanding.

“Just as previously our deficient understanding of Christianity has been corrected by considering mysticism and such figures as Meister Eckhart and Saint John of the Cross and our understanding of Judaism has been corrected by the study of the Kabbalah and such figures as Isaac Luria, so our understanding of Hinduism will be revised when Tantrism and its key historical figures are given appropriate scholarly attention. Issues and individuals that were once considered bizarre or irrelevant must now be considered essential; without them our understanding is not merely intellectually impoverished but historically negligent.” (Douglas Renfrew Brooks 1990: The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Sakta Tantrism, p. ix)

In the same way it is true that our understanding of Islam will be transformed, when Sufism is taken into account. These essential, dare I say, eternal truths, are also known in the various Tantric schools of Mahayana Buddhism, including Zen, and in Daoism. Already in my teenage years I was aware of the significance of the mystical experience on the magical path, even if in an overtly romantic and “psychedelicized” way. This might be the reason, why in the beginning I didn’t understand what the point of Chaos Magic (CM) is, with their emphasis on “results” and why LaVeyean Satanism made me only shake my head in disgust or shrug my shoulders in apathy. The “old” systems of Western Magic (the Golden Dawn-style approach developed in the 19th century), then again, seem to loose themselves in table of correspondences and intellectual exercises for climbing up “Jacob’s Ladder” towards abstract conceptions of the Divine. (Though I know an initiate of the G.’.D.’. who is the living proof that these approaches still work and are valid today.) This is why the Chaos approach popularised by Pete Carroll became necessary and why the chaotes developed such a rigorous, “technocratic” approach to magic, where results are of main interest, not mystical mumbo-jumbo and cosmic foo-foo (with which New Age became obsessed in an unhealthy way). Over the years / decades some chaos magicians became drawn towards mystical experiences, despite Carroll’s exclusion of mysticism in the CM Current. This can be explained rather easily from my point of view. It’s because magic and mysticism are connected in profound ways. They are two sides of the same coin. If you exclude one from the other you do so at your own peril. It seems that the accumulation of gnoses, of many altered states of consciousness, leads to a mystical longing in a magician.

Repeated experience of higher states of consciousness eventually leads to some experience of the core paradox of individual being. The mind starts asking questions like: Why don’t I always feel this ecstatic? Why don’t we just get ecstatic when we finished our day’s work? What is the origin of individual consciousness? Why does the ego keep wittering on in its tedious internal monologues of past-oriented identity, and what can I do about it? How can I get to an unconditioned mind? The occasional extra bit of money, sex, personal power and healing no longer satisfy; everything is muddied by the taste of the ego. Transformation and ecstasy become urgent.” (Dave Lee 2006 [1997]: Chaotopia!, p. 151)

The Self in Ecstasy, by Austin Osman Spare

The Genius of the chaos-mystical stance is to me that all descriptions of these higher states of consciousness (all these Nirvanas, Ain Soph Aurs, Nuits, Pleromas, Shunyatas, Gods, Holy Ghosts asf.) are regarded as descriptions or “maps” invented or developed by other psychonauts, who made their journeys to the hidden chambers of the Soul before us (mystics, tantrics, yogis, senseis, magi, gurus, enlightened teachers asf.). And their “maps” are not the “territory” itself. A chaos mystic does not accept any theories about enlightenment, immortality, eternal bliss and “Big Daddy up there.” These are all theories. There are then two types of seekers if you like: those “working from a top-down / theoretical perspective (presumably because the reports they read resonate with some deep part of their own experience) and those who need to proceed from bottom up, proving the reality of the stages of higher consciousness to themselves at each stage, without assuming a pre-determined endpoint of enlightenment.“ (Dave Lee) To me this is the true difference between a LHP and a RHP initiate, if we still consider these categories to be useful. Well, I do. To me the LHP magician really is the seeker who goes out and looks for himself what is behind the curtain and afterwards develops his own psychocosm, psychogeography and magico-mystical system. In this sense I still agree with the definition of the LHP I have given in my first post one and a half year ago, namely that the best definition of the LHP to me is that one does not follow anyone or any fixed routes to enlightenment, but rather that one follows one’s own path. The Chaotick Path makes more sense. Amen.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Honor Your Ancestors

A fundamental tenet of Reconstructionist Heathenism is that we should honor our ancestors and practice traditions in line with our genetic heritage.

On the face of it, this seems a fairly reasonable suggestion. What’s always confused me, though, is why so many people then proceed to focus on just one aspect of their own ancestry, and one short period of history at that. And while we’re at it, why is this so often treated as a commandment and not just a helpful suggestion?

When I think of “my heritage” there are many different periods that come to mind. My immediate ancestors were Australian for several generations on both sides and my Australianness is something that I, predictably, feel much more connected to since having left that great land. Beyond that, there is much  of history that I cannot help but find fascinating.

The Viking age has always caught my attention, for sure, but then so has the Renaissance. So has the stuff that came before the Viking age. More recently I find myself returning, again and again, to the period that came before iron, before bronze even before agriculture.

Honor your ancestors? Absolutely. Why not? But honor all of them, all the way back, from those within memory to the beginning of time.

This gives us a lot more tradition to play with.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Joy of…Fermentation

Tonight I came home from work, ate dinner, and then got busy preparing some traditional foods – a bucket of salsa, a jug of beet kvass, and three buckets of sauerkraut! The more I explore the art of making food from scratch the more joyous it becomes and I wanted to share some reflections that came to me tonight.

First of all, getting into more traditional cooking is easier than it seems. At first having to work from raw ingredients, putting it all together by hand, seems intimidating for anyone used to pre-made supermarket convenience. But traditional cooking is like meditation – the effort invested quickly pays itself off and then starts raking in the interest on very favourable terms.

After only a little experience you begin to realise just how fun it is to make salsa or kvass or sauerkraut or whey & cream cheese. I feel deeply energised even though I worked all day and then spent more than a couple of hours in the kitchen.

I spent my time cooking listening to the music of Ironwood, which always makes me happy, and preparing food from raw ingredients involves a lot of repetition – cutting, and pounding the cabbage for the sauerkraut. This work provides brilliant doors for trance!

Everyone knows that repetitive rhythms can induce trance and in the process of my cooking tonight I drifted into some lovely and quite blessed states. I wandered through different worlds and I could literally feel the small wounds of daily life healing throughout my body from the altered consciousness into which I had drifted. What a bonus!

And of course it makes my soul happy to know that I am making fermented foods, which are super-nutritious and super-delicious and fun to make. My kind of traditionalism (small t used on purpose folks) is not ideological – I am neither against nor for the modern world, though I have many criticisms to make of it.

Rather, my kind of traditionalism is empirical in basis – for there is extensive and very sound science for the view that premodern approaches to cuisine are far superior to the high calorie, low nutrient rubbish so prevalent these days.

The fact that making food as healthy as sauerkraut (a far superior source of Vit C than any pill), or beet kvass (which cures allergy attacks, mouth ulcers, and jet lag with casual alacrity in my personal experience, as well as tasting divine) also connects me with the living experiences that shaped the mythic worldviews of old Europe is just beautiful, elegant even.

I really think that exploring such practices and ways is just as essential – perhaps more so – than even delving into mythology or runic artefacts or whatever. These simple domestic practices were and still can be the bricks and mortar which nourished the pre-Christian Heathen imagination.

You’ll notice that all the foods I made tonight – salsa, sauerkraut, beet kvass – are fermented foods. Fermentation is a fascinating thing. Before we had fridges we used fermentation to make food last – and it just so happens that fermentation (of which making alcohol is only a very small part) also loads up the food with nutrients and makes them super-easy to digest. A nice little bonus which we in our fridge-age unfortunately no longer reap.

Fermentation is essentially the art of letting food rot into something tastier, healthier, and longer-lasting than what it would be straight out of the ground. There’s something brilliant about the way this simple practice marshals the vast chemical complexity of food molecules.

One of the reservations I have about untrammelled technologisation is that it invites us into simplistic understandings of the world, since we begin to focus on what we understand and tend to forget that things are way more complex than we might like to think (a common problem that has been studied extensively in experimental psychology, and to which it seems even the most brilliant scientists have been found to be susceptible to).

But fermentation elegantly marshals the vast chemical complexities of food with a dead simple strategy – chop it up and let it sit at room temperature for a few days. Brilliant! I see fermentation as a brilliant analogy for various alchemical processes, and so as I make my fermented foods I experience it as a spiritual analogy, just as alchemists use the quest for gold as a physical metaphor for their spiritual quest for the philosopher’s stone, for enlightenment or healing.

This is one of those things that really illustrates the fact that spiritual life and everyday mundane life are not qualitatively different. They exist on a continuum and if we are imaginative, curious, and a little bit industrious we can shorten that continuum so that the spiritual permeates the everyday and the everyday permeates the spiritual. To me that is nothing more or less than animism in action, the gods living at one with our every breath. And isn’t that the whole goal of premodern spiritual paths such as Heathenry?

Incidentally, for those wondering, I’ve been doing more research on premodern lifespans and health. The only sound and genuinely empirical, quantitative study I found (other than Weston Prices’s work) looked extensively at fossils and human remains from before the current age, and also at contemporary premodern cultures (mostly hunter gatherers).

They found that the average lifespan under these conditions is in the mid 70’s. They also made some other surprising discoveries – for example it appears that infant mortality rates were not through the roof in these cultures!

From other archaeology material I’ve read – Barbarians to Angels provides some low key but very clear examples – it is clear that the premodern lifestyle produced good health generally, including good dental health. Monty Python’s mud-eating, snaggle-tooth peasants are hilarious, but they’ve maybe unduly prejudiced our ability to understand the lifestyles of premodern times.

This is all in line with Weston Price’s work on nutrition. His theory was that the premodern diets of many cultures were and are superior to modern processed diets because they are super-dense in nutrients and relatively low in calories – just the opposite of McDonalds, really.

Can anyone really argue with such a view? Certainly from reading Michael Pollan and Nina Planck it seems to me that rigorous research (and sadly much nutritional research isn’t) strongly supports this view.

So eating traditionally accords nicely with the modern scientific method, a perfect example of why “going back” to the past for inspiration can sometimes actually be much more scientifically sound than the reckless technical “innovation” to which we in the West are unfortunately quite invisibly addicted to.

Incidentally if you think you can’t afford to eat organic or small-farm grown you might like to look at what you do spend your money on…do we need cable TV, three cars per household member, 10,000 inch televisions, etc, etc? There’s more room in your budget for good food than you realise.

Raw ingredients, even organic or small-farm grown, have two other advantages – making food from scratch generally works out more economically than processed premade foods anyway, and also such foods (in Australia at least) are largely GST exempt, so its cheaper than you think.

Plus you can explore food co-ops, growing your own, etc, etc. If you are willing to use your imagination you can do it. That said, please don’t take my comments in a finger-pointing or moralising way. I’m hoping to inspire rather than harangue. Did I mention how fun and easy it is to make  fermented foods?

Incidentally, from what I’ve read it also seems clear that premodern cultures traded food with one another extensively. The poisonous monoculture that lurks in this modern world is not a product of cross-cultural food munching, despite what some more ideologically based traditionalists might like to think.

Multiculturalism is not monoculturalism, and premodern peoples, from what I have read at least, loved to chow down on each others’ specialties.

Sauerkraut, that quintessential German dish, arrived in Europe with the Mongols. That doesn’t take away its special Germanic-ness, which has accrued quite legitimately over some nine centuries, it just reminds us that there’s a difference between cultural purity (which pretty much doesn’t exist and never did and is purely a modern fabrication) and cultural specificity (which clearly did and does exist since we can talk about distinctly unique and different groups, but which included intercultural exchange as one of its elements).

In other words, the isolationist tendencies of ideologically-based traditionalists are anachronistic and untrue to the ancestral ways – and do not in fact do much to safeguard the old traditions. How ironic.

As often is the case my writing jumbles together politics, philosophy, history, spirituality, mythology, domesticity, health sciences, psychology, and eating! We divide the world into neat categories but in doing so we lose our ability to understand it. As Mr Heinlein said, “specialisation is for insects.” My thoughts keep rotting up into more and more complexity and richness, and fermentation is a great metaphor for both the creative and the intellectual processes…

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Review: Georgia Through its Folktales (Michael Berman)

Georgia Through Its Folktales by Michael Berman, with translations by Ketevan Kalandadze and illustrations by Miranda Gray
2010, O Books, 153 pages

This book is unlike most compendiums of folktales for two reasons: firstly, the relative obscurity (in the English language at any rate) of the subject matter; and secondly, the unique and fascinating reflective threads with which the stories on offer are bound together.

Georgia Through Its Folktales is part travelogue, part folk tale anthology, part cultural history lesson, and part spiritual exploration. It is neither fiction, nor is it not fiction; it is neither non-fiction nor is it not non-fiction. Berman and his collaborators have created something odd-ball and unique and characterful in this exploration of Georgian folk traditions.

Georgia is an Eastern European region which hosts a range of related cultures, many of which to this day maintain pagan customs and beliefs in one form or another. Berman waxes lyrical about the rich traditions that persist in this land, the complex and subtle ways in which its people have woven incredibly disparate influences from east and west into a truly unique whole.

In order to enable his (presumably) Western reader to appreciate the stories, Berman goes to great lengths to explain the history and character of the region. Whether the subject is diet, agriculture, or the whimsy of children, Berman approaches his subject matter with warmth and gusto, and it is hard not to be swayed by his obvious love for the Georgian peoples and their traditions.

Yet this book is much more than a kind of travelogue. Berman contends that stories are doors into trance, both in the telling and in the content of the tales themselves. With a background in shamanism, it is no wonder that he turns his attention to the traces of shamanic influence that course through the stories recounted in this book. Characteristic Georgian folk tale conventions – such as vagueness about time and even whether the events recounted are real or not, as well as recurring numerological and symbolic patterns – are analysed by Berman as markers of shamanic experience, suggesting that these stories are rooted in deep spiritual experience and not merely in flights of fancy.

By Juxtaposing such reflections against the folktales presented in the book Berman draws our attention to the complex relationships between spiritual experience, cultural forms, and history. Berman sees folktales and mythology as being more than just the glue or rationale for a culture – he sees them as doors into the divine, and as such as the means for a people to deepen their connection to the beauty and numinosity of the world around them. This aspect of the role of myth is all too often overlooked by more or less atheistic modern commentators.

Without being seduced by simplistic romanticism, Berman skilfully elucidates the relationship between culture and personal spiritual experience in traditional / pre-modern culture. As such this book educates us not only about Georgian culture and myth, but also equips us to explore a fresh appreciation for almost any cultural or spiritual tradition.

One of the motifs of this book is the necessarily hybrid nature of Georgian culture, located as it is near so many other strong cultural groups. Somehow, rather than become a monocultural mishmash, the Georgians have woven a unique and very special identity from the array of influences to which they were and are exposed. I think there is an important point to be made here, namely that the integrity of a culture depends not on isolationism (though of course some separation of identity is necessary) but rather on the creativity and spirit (or otherwise) of its people.

I think this point is very important in this modern age where on the one hand we have those who fear exposure to any kind of difference for fear of losing themselves…and on the other hand those who fear any kind of specificity of identity for fear that they will lose their sense of (perhaps illusory) self-creation. Bubbling through this book is a deeper perspective, perhaps one held by many polytheistic and animistic folk traditions – namely that culture arises not through our narcissism (be it isolationist or dissolute), but through our attempt to find our place in the world in all its animistic glory. It is our means of making ourselves at home in a universe of infinite mystery, and we require all of our creative powers if we are to make it serve that purpose well.

This thought reverberates throughout the widespread continuation of pagan practices and beliefs in Georgia, which often persist in hybrid form together with Christian practices. The Georgian peoples as presented by Berman have found a happy accommodation between polytheism and monotheism, not unlike the followers of Voudoun in South America. While some of us will prefer to have little or nothing to do with Christianity, one cannot deny the spiritual fertility attested to in Georgian folktales and customs, a fertility that appears to have aggressively thrived through fusion of pre-Christian and Christian influences.

It would seem, then, that the Georgian peoples enjoy some unique combinations of cultural and spiritual influences, and indeed draw their particularities of character precisely from these combinations. This may in fact be true of all cultures in some fashion or other, but judging from Berman’s account Georgia is a paragon of such richness.

In case these reflections are misleading, I should also point out that this book never gets lost in the abstract indulgence that mainstream academia often stumbles into. Berman writes with subtlety and draws the recurring motifs of the book together with care and lightness. Rather than spew heavy handed injunctions, he invites one to reflect, think, and drawn one’s own conclusions.

If there are any limitations to this book they lie in peripheral issues – namely, that the proof reading and editing is somewhat lax, and at times this makes the book less readable and enjoyable than it could be. I hope that on subsequent printings the publisher will see fit to correct the various errors that cloud the text so that this gem may shine more fully.

The playful spirit that suffuses this book – both the stories and Berman’s discussions thereof – is its greatest strength. It is a sincere and joyous celebration of tradition, spiritual exploration, culture, history, and story telling. The translated stories are marvellous, and the artwork, which peppers the text freely, is resplendent. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in history, culture, folk traditions, shamanism, and especially, in the peoples and customs of Eastern Europe and the Near East.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Review: Runic Amulets & Magic Objects (Mindy MacLeod & Bernard Mees)

Runic Amulets and Magic Objects by Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees
The Boydell Press, 2006
278 pages

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in runes or indeed European cultural history. Macleod and Mees decline to adopt the recent fashion in academic circles for dismissing the idea that the runes had any kind of magical significance, just as they refuse to pretend that different regions were hermetically sealed from one another. They steer a balanced path between emphasising the many mundane applications of the runes and their magical function, and indeed the book focuses on the latter, as may be inferred from the title.

The authors document and interpret scores of inscriptions from amulets, artefacts, monuments, and written texts, bringing incredible breadth and depth of learning to the task. Their vibrant enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, and consequently the book is anything but dry or boring. Indeed, there are even moments of high humour, such as a hilarious passage that recounts some of the more ribald love magic charms of the runic era!

The interpretations and explanations of the inscriptions are fleshed out with background perspective on cultural history and a real empathy for folk long dead, and this make the book much more than just a study of dusty museum pieces to be nit-picked and quarrelled over. The endlessly unfolding cultural and political evolution of Northern Europe over the centuries is explored through the angular scratchings of the runes, and the reality of Europe’s convoluted history is graphically exposed in the inscriptions that remain.

One of the most striking things that emerges from this book is the incredible diversity of runic writings. Although we talk about, say, “the Elder Futhark” as though it were a defined and uniform 24 character alphabet, the reality is that rune carvers modified the characters ceaselessly, obeying all manner of personal whims as to the orientation, style, and variety of ways of carving the runes. There is an almost aggressive outpouring of creative invention in the way that the rune carvers improvised on the basic themes of these archaic characters, a phenomena that we in our age of standardised spelling and formatting might struggle to grasp.

The book goes deep into the patterns and structures by which magical runic inscriptions on charms and amulets were composed. Indeed, their analysis of the five-fold structure of these inscriptions is elegant and brilliant, as is their discussion o the significance of terms like “alu.” Anyone interested in making their own modern rune carvings would benefit greatly from this book, which inadvertently serves as a detailed and clear “how to” manual.

In the course this analysis of the structure of runic amulet inscriptions the authors also underscore how indebted the Germanic runic tradition was to the Etruscans – for the fundamental magical structure used in the rune inscriptions was adopted wholesale from Etruscan/Rhaetic traditions. This is a fine illustration of the point that cultural exchange and mixing can sometimes strengthen the cultures involved and help them become more unique and distinct: this non-Germanic influence surely seeded one of the most distinctive aspects of Germanic culture. The tendency of some academics to only focus on specific regions (say, England) therefore risks grossly distorting our understanding of both history and the runes.

The book also makes the point that the runes were heavily used for Christian as well as Heathen purposes in later centuries, that they were combined with various other magical traditions, sometimes quite elegantly and even seamlessly, though it is clear that their place as a magical tool eroded by the middle ages and their usage became progressively more trivialised. This in turn underscores the complex cultural dynamics unleashed by the coming of Christianity, and the durability of Heathen cultural practices and aesthetics post-conversion, although the magical tradition of the runes seems to have ultimately declined into ignorance and ignominy.

The authors express some very valid criticisms of the use of the Icelandic sagas as sources for understanding rune lore, but their analysis of the Eddic poems “Havamal” and “Sigrdrifumal” concludes that these sources do provide valuable insights for understanding rune magic, again making the point that in the past some academics have been perhaps sceptical of these sources to an unjustifiable extent. This is very useful information, particularly as the mistake of seeing the sagas as a faithful representation of Dark Age Scandinavian culture seems very common.

I find myself disagreeing with the authors’ view that the various rune poems were merely mnemonics for remembering the rune alphabet orders, however. From personal experience I can assure the reader that memorising these poems for the most part) is far more arduous than merely memorising the Futhark alphabet(s) – indeed, I have forgotten my verbatim memory of the poems (though the substance remains), but remembering the correct Futhark order is easy and was, I found, almost a prerequisite for being able to absorb the rune poems into memory. An intelligent young child could happily memorise the rune names and order, but almost certainly not the poems.

Furthermore, the poems themselves seem to echo many aspects of Heathen culture and worldview and paint incredibly evocative images that, at least in my opinion, resonate much further than any putative modern mnemonic equivalent (“the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” comes to mind). There are various other criticisms that could be made of the book, too, although ultimately it survives its flaws admirably.

On the whole this book is a revelatory window into the free-wheeling, anarchic, and bracing world of rune magic as attested by primary sources (as opposed to wishful thinking in either too-fanciful or too-cynical directions). It is fun, fascinating, and inspiring, and strongly, strongly recommended. The price tag is rather high, and this may dissuade some from making the purchase – but please, take the plunge, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects is worth every penny.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Prime Directive: The Fallacy of Cultural Purity

Up until the mid 20th Century, Christian missionaries felt it their duty to seek out isolated indigenous cultures, and effectively stamp them out. The missionaries often saw any customs and traditions, even language and modes of dress, as links to their old (necessarily evil) religions. Some governments also formulated policies to eradicate the language and traditions of indigenous peoples in order to expedite their assimilation into the dominant society.

By the 1970s anthropologists were alarmed at the rate of acculturation of tribal people in the Amazon and other remote areas of the World, and raised a new awareness of the importance of preserving and studying these cultures. By the 80s, some anthropologists were agonising over the fact that even the act of visiting an isolated society for study, would introduce unforseen changes in the very thing they were trying to preserve.

It was in this climate that the stories for Star Trek’s “Next Generation” were written. Many of these stories hinged around moral conflicts arising from the Prime Directive. This directive was their all important principle of non interference with less developed civilisations. In some episodes, anthropologists have to study their subjects from a hidden location. It is considered harmful for these societies to even learn of the existence of more advanced civilisations. This directive reflects the feelings of many in reaction to the previous injustices; that we need to hermetically seal isolated societies to save them from contamination from the modern world.

However, if we really take a good look at both of these extreme positions, the first assumes that the indigenous people have an inherently inferior culture, and are incapable of harmonising with their more numerous neighbours. The second assumes that the people are not even capable of dealing with the truth of their situation in the World. Both positions are patronising in the extreme. Neither of these positions give indigenous people any say in how they might prefer to deal with their futures.

Is there a middle way? If we discover a tribe that has never had outside contact, do we let the missionaries destroy their way of life, or do we quietly build a wall around them, so they will never know we exist? In reality, they can not remain unaffected by the outside World forever. Eventually, they will be forced to deal with the World. We have seen from historical experience, that culture shock nearly always leaves indigenous people vulnerable to the depredations of religious, political, or commercial exploiters. The only reasonable solution is to carefully prepare and inoculate the culture against the worst effects of outside contact.

The suffering and losses of indigenous culture have not been due to their inferiority or stupidity. They were merely caught unprepared, and at a huge disadvantage. If they had been forewarned and prepared, they would have been able to retain more of their original cultural heritage. Many governments are starting to see the value of this middle way, and now encourage their indigenous people to preserve their language and traditions while adapting to the wider society and its laws. Many indigenous groups are now turning back to their traditions for inspiration, and identity.

This adaptation does require change. Not all traditions should be preserved. A century ago, head hunting was common in remote regions around the World. Obviously, keeping some traditions would cause more harm to a culture as a whole, as outside contact increases.

In Star Trek’s early references to the Prime Directive, it was expressed merely as non-interference in the internal politics of other cultures. Later, it was expanded to express non-contamination of less developed cultures. This probably reflects the influence of some “postmodernist” thinkers of the time, whose version of “multiculturalism” saw a need to preserve cultural differences, even if it meant encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.

In the real world, cultures have always been changing. Complete isolation is a rare and temporary condition. Cultures change from within, as traditions are handed down and re-interpreted. Elements are constantly borrowed from neighbouring cultures and languages. There is no such thing as cultural purity, and therefore complete preservation is illusory.

Hopefully, most of us will have an interest in preserving, and even reviving parts of our own ancestral heritage. If we are to maintain these traditions, we must do so consciously. In the modern World, we have access to so much information, that we are free to choose what works for us. Many will don the trappings of various cultures as little more than fashion accessories. Others will be more deliberate and research their choices. In their search for connection, many modern individuals are emulating tribal customs, such as tattooing and piercing.

In former times, culture was absorbed unconsciously, enforced by the norms of society. Now, we have more freedom, but also more responsibility. However we decide to construct our own cultural background, we must do it in the context of the wider society in which we live, while still being respectful and knowledgeable about the cultures we draw from. To do less will merely result in an anachronism or eccentricity that will not really benefit anyone, and even trivialise or dilute the deep symbolism involved. If researched and applied successfully, it will be a source of pride and empowerment for ones self, and a benefit to the wider community.

Sweyn

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Odysseus, Odin, and Euhemerism

Clint recently made the point that we Heathens can learn a lot from the Indo-European traditions that are cousins to our own. In support of that potentially controversial claim, I intend to explain how one can deepen one’s understanding of Odin by reading the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is Greek myth, hence, like the Germanic myths, part of the Indo-European tradition. Odysseus as a figure shares many common features with Odin. Both are kings, but also vagabonds. Both are eternally in the beginning of their twilight years, though still possessed of great power.

Both are brilliant warriors, but more powerful still are their wits and wisdom, and it is for these that they are most celebrated. Both are ardent lovers, with many subtle and complex relationships with women. Both have vulnerability of feeling, and are not merely armoured caricatures of masculinity (though many of Odin’s followers seem to not understand this about him).

Both are exiled: Odysseus because Poseidon prevents his return from Troy; and Odin, according to Saxo, is exiled for a time, too.

Reading about Odysseus in Homer’s peerless writing gives one a deep and joyous appreciation of the subtleties of Odin’s character, too.

Of course, there are many differences, the foremost being that Odysseus is not a god! Clearly they are not identical figures, but they do both broadly partake of what might be loosely termed the Hermetic Current (which runs, achronologically, something like Thoth-Vishnu-Hermes-Mercury-Woden-Hermes Trismegistus, and probably includes others).

Is this shameless universalism? I think that so long as we have our faculties about us there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by comparing and contrasting different mythologies and figures. Surely it would be a very unimaginative and rigid dogmatism to argue against this. Just because I think the Odysseus-Odin comparison yields sweet fruit doesn’t mean I have to subscribe to some naïve idea that they are identical.

Turning to a theme that somehow feels related – though I’m not sure how – I have recently been reflecting on the Euhemeristic theories of Norse mythology, namely the theory that the gods were actually once mortals who were deified after death, and therefore that the mythology is more or less a load of empty hogwash.

This idea mainly stems from three sources: Saxo Grammaticus’s History of the Danes; and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and Heimskringla. There was also Sophus Bugge’s much later attempt to claim that Heathen mythology was just a really bodgy corruption of Christianity, but Bugge’s Christian agenda was blatant and his scholarship filled with implausible speculation and systematic ignoring of evidence that contradicts his ideas (yep, a great example of RAW’s “the prover proves what the thinker thinks”).

While we cannot be certain, I think there are many sound reasons to reject Euhemerism in relation to Germanic Mythology.

1) The Euhemeristic sources were written by Christians; what sources we have that seem to likely be genuinely Heathen (e.g. material in the Poetic Edda) only ever present the gods as being mythic. In other words, as far as we know, there is no continuous tradition of native Germanic Euhemerism. This suggests that the medieval and more recent Christian authors mentioned above almost certainly are the originators of the theory.

It is a purely Christian theory about Germanic mythology, conceived in isolation from actual Heathenry, and seems designed either to excuse writing about paganism at all (in the case of Snorri), or else explicitly as an attempt to undermine paganism (Saxo, Bugge).

Are we also to believe every other derogatory claim that Christians have made about other religions, particularly when there is no independent evidence for their views? I hope not.

2) The Germanic mythic corpus is very similar to the other Indo-European mythic bodies (Hinduism, Greek, Celtic, etc). It therefore seems far more likely that the Indo-European groups who became what we now call the Germanics brought the essential seeds of Germanic mythology with them into Europe. This is as opposed to the Euhemeristic theory, which says that Germanic mythology was only fabricated after they arrived, since it is based on their deeds on arrival.

It seems highly implausible that, if such a Euhemeristic scenario were true, this newly created mythology, based on arbitrary historical events, would accidentally bear such incredible similarity to the other traditions that, if we are not Euhemerists, we can declare with the precision of Occam’s Razor to be organic cultural cousins.

3) Heimskringla presents the gods, such as Odin, Njordr, and Frey, as a succession of kings. Of course, we know from Tacitus that for the early Germans Odin was more of a Mercury figure than a Zeus figure, so Heimskringla’s supposedly historical portrayal of him in the style of his late Norse Heathen manifestation seems like a bit of an anachronism!

It appears likely that Tyr was a more central ruler god in the earlier mythology, but Snorri’s euhemeristic dynasty doesn’t accord him much chop at all. This suggests that even on Snorri’s account some of the gods are actually gods, since again he is caught out in anachronism by seeing Tyr only in his late Norse form as a more minor god. If Snorri is stuck with some of the gods still genuinely being gods then I’d say that starts to make the whole Euhemerist aspect of his account look pretty limp.

4) Other historical accounts: Snorri says the Aesir came from Asia (on the basis of ultra-dodgy folk etymology), and they specifically came from Troy. From memory though, there are other nutty theories that say that the Trojans founded not a Scandinavian dynasty but rather a British one!

They can’t both be true, and neither theory has any evidence other than the say-so of its promulgator. Healthy scepticism induces me to reject both until such time as they can furnish more than the opinions of their promulgators (who were writing centuries after the fact) as evidence. It seems that at various points it was fashionable to claim that any exotic northern culture was descended from Troy, and such a fad should not be confused for a sincere attempt at recounting history.

5) If the Norse gods were a historical dynasty descended from Troy then the anachronisms get even worse! That means by the time of Tacitus, Odin has lost has his power to Tyr, only to get it back just in time for Snorri to write Heimskringla. Only Heimskringla mentions nothing of these back and forth shenanigans. Another blow to the Euhemeristic thesis.

6) Euhemerism doesn’t take anything away from the gods’ divinity or specialness anyway. Many important Hindu deities were living people who were deified for their amazing spiritual achievements and no one considers them less “godly” than those Hindu gods of non-human origin. Similarly, it seems likely that Bragi actually was a deified human, and no one thinks less of him for it (actually, I’m bloody impressed by his efforts)!

7) Spiritual experience. Given the vast range of truly intense experiences I have had with Odin (and other gods), and the vast age and power of this being as I have experienced it, I just don’t see how he could be “merely” a big-noted human. That is no more substantial a piece of evidence, of course, than the opinions of Saxo or Snorri, but at least it isn’t riddled with inconsistencies, coheres with the genuinely Heathen mythological corpus, and isn’t part of a blatant religious-ideological assault. Oh, and it is way more parsimonious to suggest that the mythology is mythological in my humble opinion.

8) Finally, how can the Euhemerists counter the possibility that the gods simply chose to manifest as avatars with their actual personalities at play, but that they nevertheless predated these historical manifestations? That general sort of thing seems to happen in other mythic contexts (e.g. Hinduism, Greek myth). In other words, even if the Euhemerists were right, there is still plenty of room to suppose that they might be wrong nonetheless. Such a theory does fall afoul of Occam’s Razor, but if the Euhemerists make that criticism then they’re totally throwing stones from a glass house.

I know, that was a quick and dirty little opinion piece, and I haven’t bothered to reference my ideas (I’m 99% sure they’re all based in sound academic research and actual primary sources though, I promise)! I think we all get the point though. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the Euhemerists have a much harder job of making their case than I do.

One thing is for sure: to understand history you have to make a bit more of an effort than just taking one or two sources at face value without trying to grasp their context. Otherwise you’ll end up subscribing to all kinds of ideas without really having informed yourself at all. If you are lucky you might still get it right, but it is a pretty shabby way to proceed.

Oh, and none of this is to say that I have any idea what the true nature of the gods actually is. Honest perplexity beats smug dogmatism any day (I just hope I don’t start believing that dogmatically).

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail