On Saturday the 15th of November 2014 the Green Nationalists organized a meeting around the theme: Being Pagan. One of the speakers was Roger Dols, who talked about what being pagan means in our time. This is a general recapitulation of his speech.
In his research into Indo-European civilizations Georges Dumézil* recognized three complementary functions, namely the material, the martial and the sacral functions. In short this means:
The material covers the domain of physical objects in a community.
The martial covers the domain of warriors and martial art (not to be confused with modern armies).
The sacral covers the spiritual domain.
The first one is needed to provide livelihood. The second is needed to mentally and physically oppose internal and external subversive influences. The third is needed to give life a focus which transcends the bare existence.
The metamorphic soul
The Faustian spirit** is the binding factor between the civilizations of the Nordic peoples. Although “Faust” is a story from the christian middle ages, it has a strong pre-Christian essence. For our pagan forefathers the gods were no entities for whom they fell humbly on their knees. They honored the gods by pursuing after them and by leading a life which demanded respect. In other words, they lived (as Evola called it) according to the heroic spiritual path and their minds aimed at an infinite focus, past the horizon.
This was no longer allowed during the middle ages. They called this striving for pride and therefore labeled it as heretical. However, Faust wanted to know everything and understand everything in the world. In those times this meant that he could only turn towards the Devil. Faust also had his focus on the infinite and wanted to go past the horizon. In his day and age the heroic spiritual path was hardly known anymore, this was therefore labeled as something evil.
The building of cathedrals can also been seen as an expression of that very same strife. Man no longer may be perceived as a god, so they did the only thing they were allowed to do; Erecting a structure that, emotionally, reached to heaven. This way they so to speak pulled god towards them. This is just as well the Faustian spirit at work.
In our time this spirit is still present in our people. Our society has however lost the spiritual and material aspect, this is nowadays only expressed in the material sense. More money and more entertainment. But also more moralistic, as a shadowy compensation for the loss of meaning.
During all the ages the Nordic peoples went through, the same Faustian spirit arose. It is the constant factor in the changing shapes of civilization. In my own words I call this the metamorphic soul of our people.
End of an era
In our time we stand before and are at a crossroads. The only aspect our society still knows is the material, and even that aspect is about to collapse. The trust in our system is languishing and we have lost our identity to the modern, globalist and humanist maelstrom. Each end of an era is accompanied by many subversive and destructive forces. The trusted elements of our society fall away one by one and slowly the faith in our own destiny disappears. This is what we can witness happening all around us.
In the Nordic mythology this ending age is called a storm age, wolfs age. In the Volusopa*** this is described in a symbolic sense. One cannot stand on one leg. This is why the modern materialist ideologies cannot carry our society. A fall is unavoidable when both legs have disappeared.
Therefore, what is happening to us now is no surprise. Only the timing and the exact form can still surprise us. As pagans; we, more than our modern kin, probably have the best papers to find a way out of this.
Christianity is incapable to do this, because since her beginning it denied and banned out its martial aspect. They even reduced the spiritual aspect to mere religious dogma's. Paganism is a worldview which unites all three aspects. Both the material, martial and spiritual has an even place in it. The spiritual aspect is even stronger than within Christianity, because it rejects the artificial “Thou will" dogmas and is based on the natural dogmas of life itself.
With this natural dogmas we need to think about matters such as:
Gravity.
The need to eat.
But also deeper issues such as:
Kinship.
The need to be fit and (also in a deeper sense) to be strong, so that we can handle life with energy, courage and dedication.
Not death is the opposite of life, but the anemic, the sterile and lifeless. Death is the keystone of our lifework. But the anemic makes us crawl back into our comfort zone and prevents us to perform acts.
These natural dogmas are not invented by mankind, but are an essence of life itself.
Our struggle
Struggle is the foundation of everything that lives. Everything around us has to do with entropic powers that make everything decay. If you don't maintain your garden, it will decay into a jungle. When we don't work on our skills and fitness, we get weaker and our skills wear out. Also, when we don't give energy and make anti-entropic efforts, our society will collapse. Without struggle there is no civilization that is even worth that name.
Precisely because of our pagan roots, we have ideas, symbols and thoughts with which we can go into a struggle in favor of society that is complete. Struggle enables us to recreate our world and enables us to give our metamorphic soul a new shape. Our mythos also learns us that creation always, and necessarily, involves destruction. That which is destructive, must be destroyed, so that the healthy can take its place. Every doctor knows this. This destruction is not blind anger, but an upwardly directed and disciplined fury.
In the Nordic mythos Wotan is many times seen as the one who stirs up conflict and struggle, but also as the one who brings wisdom and a new balance. The common thread is the increasing flow of Óðr (ancient Nordic for inspiration, life force, fury, energy, etc.). Every order which stiffens, also smothers the life and wil finally wither away. Order is not by definition a good thing, just as chaos is not necessarily bad. Paganism teaches us that we have to master order and Chaos, to master our faith. We don't find these lessons in modernity and/or in Christianity. It is our mythos which will be once again the breeding ground to recreate ourselves as a civilization.
Paganism also teaches us that we must not put our hopes on a miracle from above, but that we personally must be the spark and that divine power houses in ourselves. The heroic spiritual path is something that starts with us. Like the axis mundi**** symbolizes the force of own source, we have to establish and build this, so that we can become an axis mundi ourselves. This way we become a source of power that works as a positive attraction in our environment. Power, after all, creates its own space.
That we will find obstacles on our path is not only not a problem, these obstacles are ways to prove and lift ourselves to a higher plain. He who loves his destiny and has reconciled with death, will find himself in the divine fire and shall find in his obstacles welcome sparring partners. This way he will grow himself into a mind that is both Faustian as well as divine. He, in my own words, could develop into a Gott-Faust, who by his natural feeling for kinship also makes his power work for his community. What other, own source outside of paganism gives us this potential?
Notes:
* Georges Dumézil - Georges Dumézil (French: [dymezil]; 4 March 1898 – 11 October 1986, Paris) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Proto-Indo-European religion and society.
** Faust is the title of the well known work of the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, inspired on the 16th century physician and the from this person derived Faust legend.
*** Völuspá Völuspá (Old Norse Vǫluspá or Vǫluspǫ́, Prophecy of the Völva (Seeress); Modern Icelandic [ˈvœːlʏˌspauː], reconstructed Old Norse [ˈwɔluˌspɑː]) is the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end, related to the audience by a völva addressing Odin. It is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology.
**** Axis mundi - The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, center of the world, world tree), in certain beliefs and philosophies, is the world center, or the connection between Heaven and Earth. As the celestial pole and geographic pole, it expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet.
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