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Norse Revival
 SCRR
Studies in Critical Research on Religion

Series Editor
Warren S. Goldstein, Center for Critical Research on Religion
and Harvard University (u.s.a.)

Editorial Board
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle (Australia)
Christopher Craig Brittain, University of Aberdeen (u.k.)
Darlene Juschka, University of Regina (Canada)
Lauren Langman, Loyola University Chicago (u.s.a.)
George Lundskow, Grand Valley State University (u.s.a.)
Kenneth G. MacKendrick, University of Manitoba (Canada)
Andrew M. McKinnon, University of Aberdeen (u.k.)
Michael R. Ott, Grand Valley State University (u.s.a.)
Sara Pike, California State University, Chico (u.s.a.)
Dana Sawchuk, Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada)

Advisory Board
William Arnal, University of Regina (Canada)
Jonathan Boyarin, Cornell University (u.s.a.)
Jay Geller, Vanderbilt University (u.s.a.)
Marsha Hewitt, University of Toronto (Canada)
Michael Löwy, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
Eduardo Mendieta, Stony Brook University (u.s.a.)
Rudolf J. Siebert, Western Michigan University (u.s.a.)
Rhys H. Williams, Loyola University Chicago (u.s.a.)

VOLUME 5

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scrr

 Norse Revival
Transformations of Germanic Neopaganism

By

Stefanie von Schnurbein

LEIDEN | BOSTON
 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
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License, which permits any non-commercial use, and distribution, provided no
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Cover illustration: Godafoss, Iceland. Photo: Rett Rossi

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Names: Schnurbein, Stefanie v., author.

Title: Norse revival : transformations of Germanic neopaganism / by Stefanie
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Description: Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Studies in critical research on
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Identifiers: LCCN 2015045120 (print) | LCCN 2015041674 (ebook) | ISBN
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Subjects: LCSH: Neopaganism. | Norse cults.
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Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Series Editor Preface ix
List of Figures x
Notes on Translations xi
Notes on Previously Published Material xii

Introduction 1
Initial Encounters 1
Transformations and Key-Questions 4
Twisted Terminologies 9
What Others Say 11
Complicated Involvements 13
Receptions, Adaptions, and Goals 15

1 Creating the Paradigm: Historical Preconditions of Modern Asatru 17

The Search for a National Mythology in European Romanticism 18
The Search for a German Religion in Fin de Siecle Germany 28
German(ic) Faith and Ariosophy in the Early Twentieth Century 37
Post-War Revivals 48
Witchcraft and the Celtic Revival 51

2 Creating a Religion: The Emergence and Development of Late

Twentieth Century Asatru 54
In Search of Religiosity: Germanic Neopaganism 1970–1990 55
In Search of Respectability – Asatru after 1990 62
Asatru International 77

3 Believing and Doing 88

Finding Asatru 88
Heathen Beliefs 91
Heathen Practices 106

4 Contested Fields I: Race and Ethnicity 123

Asatru and National Socialism 123
The ‘Folkish’ Versus ‘Universalist’ Controversy 128
An ‘Ethnic Religion of Nature’? 133
Ethno-Pluralism and the European New Right 136
Cultural Essentialism beyond the New Right 140
vi Contents

5 Contested Fields II: Concepts of Religion and Anti-Monotheism 146

Attitudes Towards Christianity 147
The Question of Anti-Semitism 152
Praising Polytheism 155
Anti-Monotheism in Asatru 167
Religion of Experience 171
Heathenism as Religious Secularism 175

6 Asatru – A Religion of Nature? 180

Nature Spirituality in Asatru 181
Environmental Protection, the Heimat-Movement and Völkisch
Religion in Germany 185
Nature Religion in England and the United States 198
Nature and National Identity in Scandinavia 204
Right-Wing Ecologism and Asatru 208

7 Gender and Sexuality 216

The High Position of Germanic Women 217
Masculinity and Männerbund 232
Queering Asatru? The Question of Sexuality 243

8 Asatru – An Academic Religion? 251

How Heathens Relate to their Sources 252
Völkisch Scholarship and Germanic Faith 260
Remnants of Völkisch Scholarship after 1945 273
Asatru Uses of Scholarship 286

9 Germanic Neopaganism – A Nordic Art-Religion? 298

Nineteenth Century Concepts of Germanic Art-Religion 299
J.R.R. Tolkien and the Nordic Art-Religion of Middle-Earth 308
Religious and Ideological Art in the German Faith Movement 314
Heirs of Wagner and Tolkien: Asatru Novelists 321
Dark Heirs of Wagner and Tolkien: Metal and Neofolk 336
Art-Religion – An Encompassing Paradigm? 347

10 Instead of a Conclusion 351

Interviews Conducted by Author 361

Bibliography 363
Index 412
Acknowledgements

This book is based on thirty years of research and critical engagement with the
shifting scene of Germanic Neopaganism. In spite of my efforts to structure
and develop consistent arguments, it still teems with unmanageable details.
My hope for my readers is that they will not perceive this as a lack, but will
instead find pleasure in getting lost in quirky detail and meandering thought.
Sometimes, it is this getting lost itself that holds potential for new insights
beyond what is written.
There are multiple reasons that Nordic myth and its reception have occu-
pied my mind for so long. The most relevant of them are laid out in the chap-
ters of this book. Others are of a more personal nature. They have to do with the
convoluted threads that tie me, and Germans of my age group, to the thoughts,
activities, guilt, and suffering of the previous two generations, whose thoughts
and actions shaped the 20th century. It is impossible to do justice to these ties
here. But I want to give credit to them by thanking my late grandfather. His
erring enthusiasm and later his critical revision of his own passionate thoughts
have motivated much of my research without my being fully aware of it for a
long time.
During the course of my research, I gradually discovered how similar some
a-racist Heathens’ struggles with this history are to my own. My most sincere
gratitude goes to all of my interview partners, who have made it possible for
me to investigate these vexing problems in depth, and thus, to write this book.
Without their openness toward a researcher who they must have perceived
with understandable skepticism and suspicion, this book would look very dif-
ferent. I would also have missed a valuable opportunity to question my own
assumptions about religion, politics, and art. Engaging critically with their
positions, questions, and doubts has allowed me to revise my own relationship
to not only the discourse on Nordic myth and my own field and interests, but
also to religion, spirituality, the aesthetic, and politics in general – questions
that I will continue to investigate with the help of other materials. The work
with real, unpredictable, illogical, multifaceted, and contradictory people has
given me the opportunity to examine tensions and contradictions in my own
life as a researcher and beyond, and helped me be more relaxed about them.
On the other hand, it has alerted me to the fact that there is a significant gap
between the official image or ideology that is projected outward through pub-
lications and social media, and the lived experience of contemporary Germanic
Neopagans, their self-perception, and their intentions as they become visible
in interviews and personal encounters. I hope that this book reflects the fact
viii Acknowledgements

that my critique is mostly directed at official statements and outward repre-

sentation, and that gratitude and the pleasant memories stem from the per-
sonal encounters with reflective and reflecting individuals who shared their
views and knowledge with me.
Beside these subjects of my research, my thanks goes to all those whose
critical minds have accompanied my work in the last years: Stefan Arvidsson,
Mette Buchardt, Nina Trige Andersen, Florian Heesch, René Gründer, Bruce
Lincoln, Catharina Raudvere, Andreas Åkerlund, Horst Junginger, Uwe
Puschner, Heinrich Anz, and many others who have given me the opportunity
to discuss my theses at conferences, in class, or just in private.
I thank the Volkswagen and Thyssen foundations and their “Opus Magnum”
initiative, which financed an 18 month leave for me to do field-work and write
a first version of the manuscript. This grant gave me the rare opportunity to
concentrate on my writing, free of the daily obligations of teaching and admin-
istration, but also free from the pressure of delivering a specific result at a spe-
cific time. If this book turns out to be better than the first version of the
manuscript, it is due not only to the critical eye of my first readers but also to a
grant with no ties attached, which allowed me the time and freedom to use as
much space as was necessary for a thorough revision. Therefore, special thanks
goes to Gudrun Tegeder, who encouraged my application from the first phone
call onwards and saw me through most of the process, and to Adelheid Wessler
and Johanna Brumberg, who took over to see it to the end.
Jana Eder, Jan Schröder, and Heike Peetz assisted with transcribing the inter-
views, the latter also with background research. Rett Rossi and later Angela
Anderson extended invaluable help with transforming the text into a hopefully
readable English. Series editor Warren Goldstein’s thorough reading and sound
suggestions have improved the manuscript to the extent that I heeded his
advice. Paul Greiner and Kyle Greenwood braved the tedious work of copyedit-
ing. Maarten Frieswijk from Brill publishing house helped with all the practical
detail involved in the publishing process.
Finally, I want to thank all those around me who came to share my excite-
ment and suffering during the long research process. Sabine Meyer, who got
a close look at my joys and desperation in writing this book as did other
friends, family, students, and colleagues at Nordeuropa-Institut at Humboldt-
Universität. The deepest and thus inexpressible thanks goes to my fellow
­traveller in life, Rett Rossi, for being there all along and for other ineffabilities.
Series Editor Preface

Norse mythology has come to be associated with the extreme right in

Germany – particularly since its appropriation into Nazi ideology. Stefanie von
Schnurbein, who has had a decades-long interest in this topic, engages in an
in-depth exploration of Germanic Neopaganism. She examines its roots in the
völkisch movement of the late 19th and early 20th century as well as engages in
ethnographic research of the current movement. While parts of the movement
remain racist, anti-Semitic, nationalistic, and xenophobic, other parts of it
have emerged which are not. Von Schnurbein’s stance toward the movement is
critical in that she discerns by separating the regressive elements of
Neopaganism from those that are more progressive. With this, she raises the
question whether Norse mythology can be freed from its reactionary baggage.

Warren S. Goldstein, Ph.D.

Center for Critical Research on Religion
www.criticaltheoryofreligion.org
List of Figures

6.1 Carl Larsson’s first sketch for Midvinterblot (1911). Source: Torsten Gunnarson,
ed. Carl Larsson (Stockholm: Wiken, 1992), 223. Work is in the public
domain 206
9.1 Portrait photograph of Guido von List (probably 1909/10). Published with
permission from the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv). Barch, Bild
183-2007-0705-500/Conrad H. Schiffer 315
9.2 Fidus, Lichtgebet (1894/1924). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2014 319
9.3 Painting by Hermann Hendrich, “Walpurgishalle,” Hexentanzplatz, printed on
postcard by Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co., Berlin. Published with permission from
Georg Jäger, www.goethezeitportal.de 320
9.4 Peter Nikolai Arbo, Åsgårdsreien (1872). Published with permission from the
National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway 338
Notes on Translations

All translations from original sources and other material are mine unless noted
otherwise.
Notes on Previously Published Material

Parts of Chapter 5 have been published in Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “The Use of

Theories of Religion in Contemporary Asatru,” in Nordic Ideology between
Religion and Scholarship, edited by Horst Junginger and Andreas Åkerlund,
225–246. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2013.
Parts of Chapter 8 have been published in Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Tales of
Reconstruction. Intertwining Germanic Neo-Paganism and Old Norse Scholar­
ship,” in Critical Research on Religion 3, no. 1 (2015).
Parts of Chapter 9 have been published in Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Germanic
Neo-Paganism – A Nordic Art Religion?” in Religion, Tradition and the Popular.
Transcultural Views from Asia and Europe, edited by Judith Schlehe and Eva­
maria Sandkühler. History in Popular Cultures, 243–260. Bielefeld: transcript
2014.
This book has been kindly funded by the Volkswagen-Stiftung and the Fritz
Tyssen Stiftung within the framework of the “Opus Magnum” initiative.
Introduction

Initial Encounters

“How could this happen to me?” – It is 1986 and I am sitting in a hall in an old
German castle amongst a small, rather diverse crowd: men and women of all ages
in ceremonial robes, long-haired, gentle-eyed esotericists, martial-looking young
men in paramilitary black, and families in traditional German costumes.
Listening to Richard Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” on a hoarse cassette
player in front of an altar adorned with runes, Easter eggs, and small bread-­
ornaments along with a clumsily painted image of the goddess Freya, ostenta-
tiously blue-eyed with wavy blond hair, I feel out of place. A tall woman with a
charismatic voice stands and begins speaking about the true ancient significance
of Easter: a seasonal celebration dedicated to fertility. And then it comes: fertility
not only in general, as a celebration of life reborn in nature, but in the service of
the Germanic race. I feel a sense of panic. She is actually giving us instructions
on how to most effectively breed blond-haired and blue-eyed children and to
­re-awaken the spirit of the Germanic people. What am I doing here? How in the
world did I, a reasonably politically critical, left-leaning albeit a little naïve stu-
dent in my mid-twenties end-up in a situation like this, where I have to listen to
racist ideology couched in esoteric terminology and ritual for an entire weekend?

At the time, it was quite common to search for a mythic world with roots far
back before the advent of Christianity – a spiritual world which also reaches
beyond established religion. There was a longing for a religion close to nature,
a reservoir of ancient truths and a tradition not purloined from Asian, Native
American, or other indigenous cultures. Worshipping deities such as Odin,
Thor, and Freya, along with the rich world of Nordic myth promising to recon-
cile green-alternative, esoteric and seemingly non-exploitive, anti-imperialist
ideas – all of this vaguely reverberated with the popular Romanticism sur-
rounding American Indian spirituality and Tolkinian worlds. They exuded a
seductive appeal to me as a young undergraduate student searching for an
authentic spirituality that would not contradict my academic interests. Thus,
in 1985, when I first heard about a group that based its religion on Norse
mythology, I was slightly intrigued. I arranged an afternoon visit with one of
its leaders, the above-mentioned woman who served herbal tea from her
kitchen garden. She styled herself as a wise woman of old, and told me stories
about living, albeit well-concealed, allegedly ancient, German-Celtic esoteric

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004309517_002

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 3.0. Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
2 Introduction

traditions. As charismatic as the woman was, the afternoon failed to entice me

into pursuing the matter further; although at the same time, no alarm-bells
were set off either.
This could not be said of the situation that I ended up in a year later, when
I decided to re-establish contact with this group in order to do interviews for
a class paper. I was admitted to a Thing, a weekend of ritual, celebration,
song, dance, and lectures, and ended up in the scene described above. I was
alarmed by my own naïvety, along with the fact that not only the overtly
right-wing extremist activists present, but also the more alternative-minded
participants seemed convinced that they were in the presence of ‘high initi-
ates,’ and that the racist teachings seemed to be accepted by all as deep eso-
teric truths.
Returning home, I found that my fellow students, my professors and the
general public were completely unaware of such right-wing religious groups.
My critical spirit was spurred by this experience, and I made it my mission to
further investigate the phenomenon of Germanic Neopaganism – an endeavor
that resulted in my dissertation, two books and several articles in different
languages.1 All of them concluded that Germanic Neopaganism is a field in
which alternative, dissident spirituality and ultra-nationalist, racist, and radi-
cal right-wing ideology meet and influence each other.
The association between the radical political right and Germanic Neopaganism
can be traced back to common roots in the völkisch movement of the late 19th
and early 20th century. Core ideas of today’s radical right-wing thought were
formed within this ideology, which merged nationalism, cultural pessimism,
racism, anti-Semitism, anti-materialism, anti-liberalism and an enthusiasm for
all things ‘Nordic’ or ‘Germanic’ into a heterogenous Weltanschauung. Among
these core ideas characterizing right-wing radical thought today are:

• the belief in a social inequality based on racial or ethnic categories,

• the belief in the ethnic homogeneity of peoples,
• an anti-egalitarian stance directed against universal human rights,

1 Stefanie v. Schnurbein, Religion als Kulturkritik. Neugermanisches Heidentum im 20.

Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1992); Göttertrost in Wendezeiten. Neugermanisches
Heidentum zwischen New Age und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Claudius, 1993); “Fornyet
naturreligion eller rasistisk kult. Moderne åsatrogrupper i Tyskland og Norden,” chaos.
Dansk-norsk tidsskrift for religionshistoriske studier 22 (1994); “Religion of Nature or Racist
Cult? Contemporary Neogermanic Pagan Movements in Germany,” in Antisemitismus,
Paganismus, Völkische Religion – Antisemitism, Paganism, Voelkisch Religion, ed. Hubert
Cancik and Uwe Puschner (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2004).
Introduction 3

• the priority of community over the individual and the subjection of the
individual under a strong state or a strong community and
• the rejection of a pluralism of values as promoted in liberal democracies.2

Völkisch, and to a certain degree today’s right-wing radical ideology, envisioned

the renewal or rebirth of the German people living in unity with its territory, its
culture and its racial substance. This “palingenetic nationalism,” as Roger
Griffin3 has termed this constellation in his discussion of international fas-
cism, already implies religious connotations, and it comes as no surprise there-
fore that the völkisch movement put religion at the centre of its attention. The
search for a religion that was suitable and indigenous for this reborn German
Volk formed a site of vivid discussion and fierce controversy. While a majority
of völkisch thinkers favored a Christianity purged of its Jewish roots, so-called
Ariosophy and the German(ic) Faith Movement sought to (re-)create a religion

2 These core ideologemes are derived from Hans-Gerd Jaschke’s definition of right-wing
extremism, which he formulated in Peter Dudek and Gerd Jaschke, Entstehung und
Entwicklung des Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik. Zur Tradition einer besonderen
politischen Kultur, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1984). See also Armin Pfahl-
Traughber, “Konservative Revolution” und “Neue Rechte.” Rechtsextremistische Intellektuelle
gegen den demokratischen Verfassungsstaat (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1998); Uwe Backes,
ed. Rechtsextreme Ideologien in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Schriften des Hannah-Arendt-
Instituts für Totalitarismusforschung (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2003). More recent
culturally-oriented studies of international fascism conducted by Anglo-American scholars,
such as Roger Griffin or Roger Eatwell, emphasize the importance of themes like a palinge-
netic renewal of the nation (or other entities imagined as ‘natural’ and ‘eternal,’ such as tribal
regions, or Europe), the creation of a ‘new man,’ and a new state, whereby a key element has
been so-called ‘mythic thinking.’ See for example Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism
(London/New York: Routledge, 1991); Roger Eatwell, “The Nature of ‘Generic Fascism‘. The
‘Fascist Minimum’ and the ‘Fascist Matrix,’” in Comparative Fascist Studies. New Perspectives,
ed. Constantin Iordachi (London: Routledge, 2009), as well as the controversial discussions
in Andreas Umland, Werner Loh, and Roger Griffin, eds., Fascism Past and Present, West and
East. An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme
Right (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2006). The terms ‘right-wing extremism’ and ‘right-wing radicalism’
have given cause to much controversy and are used somewhat differently depending on the
national and disciplinary contexts. For the purpose of this book, I use the terms synony-
mously in order to emphasize the continuities within the spectrum of the far right. As the
main interest of my book lies in exploring continuities of völkisch ideology, I limit the use of
the term ‘fascism’ to the fascist regimes of Europe in the 1930s, without denying the continu-
ities with the contemporary right-wing phenomena to which Griffin points. Nevertheless, my
approach to such continuities is not dissimilar to Griffin’s, as both point out the significance
of cultural aspects in the formation of political ideology and action.
3 Griffin, The Nature of Fascism.
4 Introduction

appropriate for the German people, the Germanic folk-soul, or the Nordic or
Aryan race – a religion that is opposed to and goes beyond Christianity, which
was seen as racially and culturally foreign, not the least because of its Jewish
roots. Contrary to general opinion, this religious movement had little influence
during Hitler’s regime, in spite of indubitable ideological affinities. However, it
was revived after 1945, and in the late 1980s and early 1990s the ideologi-
cal affinities originating in völkisch and fascist ideology turned Germanic
Neopaganism into an organizational and ideological link between the political
radical right and the esoteric and Pagan scene in general.
By the time my books were published in the early 1990s, there were few
exceptions to this rule, though some younger people within the scene had
expressed growing concern about this völkisch history and its racist implica-
tions. There were also a few groups in Scandinavia which seemed to avoid con-
tact with right-wing ideology quite successfully. They promoted something
that looked more like the benign religion of nature which had initially attracted
me to the scene, and which was based not on the racial-esoteric speculations
of Ariosophy, but presumably on ‘original’ written and material sources.
Many academic researchers of Neopaganism relate stories of how they were
changed or even converted through their participation in rituals, festivals and
personal encounters with the subjects of their research.4 My initial experience
was the opposite. I entered the field of Germanic Neopaganism with a vague
personal interest in and openness to Pagan and esoteric teachings and ritual
experience, and left it in the beginning of the 1990s not only with a deep and
well-founded scepticism toward such attempts at a Pagan revival, but also with
the will to enlighten the public about its problematic aspects.

Transformations and Key-Questions

My own naïve encounter with the Germanic Neopagan scene, along with my
own initial ignorance of its right-wing and racist connections, had alerted
me to a number of general problems underlying attempts to reconstruct or
re-imagine ‘ancient,’ ‘pre-Christian’ religions and cults. I became increasingly
aware of how deeply ingrained some of the stereotypes of an indigenous

4 See many of the contributions in Jenny Blain, Douglas Ezzy, and Graham Harvey, eds.,
Researching Paganism (Walnut Creek etc.: Altamira Press, 2004), as well as Jone Salomonsen,
Enchanted Feminism. Ritual, Gender and Divinity among the Reclaiming Witches of San
Francisco (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), and Helen A. Berger, A Community of Witches.
Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States (Columbia, sc: University of
South Carolina Press, 1999).
Introduction 5

Germanic or Nordic spiritual tradition are, not only in right-wing contexts, but
also in other alternative circles as well as in mainstream thought, where ele-
ments of völkisch ideology continue to thrive.5 Synchronous with my deepening
awareness of such mainstream remnants of völkisch ideology, the Germanic
Neopagan scene underwent a number of changes throughout the 1990s and
even more so in the 2000s. New groups emerged in Scandinavia, North America,
and Germany. The Internet facilitated the rapid internationalization of the
scene, while parts of the community started to develop a critical distance to
the right-wing radical and racist ideology in addition to the völkisch traditions
within their own history.
When I went back in 2010 to conduct the research and interviews that form
the basis of this book, my interview partners from these new groups expressed
a strong desire for respectability, and assured me that they most definitely did
not belong to any right-wing political scene. While these encounters changed
my perception of the field and its activists, they still did not cancel out the
fact that the basic assumption underpinning the idea of a revival of Germanic

5 See for example Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Gjenbruken av edda-diktningen i ‘völkisch-religiöses

Weihespiel’ rundt århundreskiftet i Tyskland,” Nordica Bergensia 3 (1994); “Die Suche nach
einer ‘arteigenen’ Religion in ‘germanisch’- und ‘deutschgläubigen’ Gruppen,” in Handbuch
zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht
(Munich etc.: K.G. Saur, 1996); “Mütterkult und Männerbund. Über geschlechtsspezifische
Religionsentwürfe,” in Kybele – Prophetin – Hexe. Religiöse Frauenbilder und Weiblichkeit­
skonzeptionen, ed. Richard Faber and Susanne Lanwerd (Würzburg: Königshausen &
Neumann, 1997); “Kräfte der Erde – Kräfte des Blutes. Elemente völkischer Ideologie in
Marion Zimmer-Bradley: Die Nebel von Avalon und Diana Paxson: Der Zauber von Erin,”
Weimarer Beiträge 44, no. 4 (1998); “Transformationen völkischer Religion seit 1945,” in
Völkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne. Entwürfe ‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der
Jahrhundertwende, ed. Stefanie v. Schnurbein and Justus H. Ulbricht (Würzburg: Königshausen
& Neumann, 2001); “Religionsforskning og religionsfornyelse i ‘nordisk’ ånd i Tyskland etter
første verdenskrig,” in Myter om det nordiska – mellan romantik och politik, ed. Catharina
Raudvere, Anders Andrén, and Kristina Jennbert, Vägar till Midgård (Lund: Nordic Academic
Press, 2001); “Religiöse Ikonographie – religiöse Mission. Das völkische Weihespiel um 1910,”
in Kunst, Fest, Kanon. Inklusion und Exklusion in Gesellschaft und Kultur, ed. Hermann
Danuser, Herfried Münkler, and in cooperation with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
(Schliengen: Edition Argus, 2004); “Schamanismus in der altnordischen Überlieferung – eine
wissenschaftliche Fiktion zwischen den ideologischen Lagern,” in Kontinuität in der Kritik.
Zum 50jährigen Bestehen des Münchener Nordistikinstituts: Historische und aktuelle
Perspektiven der Skandinavistik, ed. Klaus Böldl and Miriam Kauko (Freiburg i.Br.: 2005);
“Neuheidentum und Fantasyroman,” in Bilder vom Mittelalter. Eine Berliner Ringvorlesung,
ed. Volker Mertens and Carmen Stange (Göttingen: 2007); “Kontinuität durch Dichtung.
Moderne Fantasyromane als Mediatoren völkisch-religiöser Denkmuster,” in Völkisch und
national. Zur Aktualität alter Denkmuster im 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Uwe Puschner and G. Ulrich
Großmann (Darmstadt: wbg, 2009).
6 Introduction

religion is inherently problematic: the persuasion that religious identity

can and should be based on indigenous landscape, soil, climate, ancestry and
heritage – or to say it short and polemically – on ‘blood and soil.’ This ‘Norse
revivalism’ is a cluster of ideas taken from an ideological constellation that
can be traced back to 19th century Romantic nationalism in Germany and
Scandinavia, as well as to Anglo-Saxonism of the same era. It is a politically and
ideologically malleable constellation, which has had influence on both nation-
alist and diverse counter-cultural movements up until today. However, it
remains dependent on a certain logic of exclusion. It allows for diversity
between nations, religions, or cultures as well as between different traditions,
but it requires internal homogeneity. It does not allow for pluralism within
these national, ethnic, or cultural holistic entities and thus remains tied in with
theories of race and ethnicity, or a cultural essentialism. Furthermore, it has a
tendency to ‘purify’ the respective ‘diverse’ traditions. It is this aspect which
was taken up and radicalized into more violent politics of racial and cultural
exclusion by the völkisch movement during the beginning of the 20th century.
Such observations motivate the core question of this book: how can we
account for discrepancies between a self-understanding of the majority of cur-
rent Germanic Neopagans as part of a pluralistic, democratic society, and the fact
that Germanic Neopaganism carries with it remnants of völkisch ideologemes?
My thesis is that we have to look at changes both within Asatru and within main-
stream thought in order to understand this development and field of tension.
On the one hand, Asatru has undergone a reform process during which fantasies
of racial or ethnic exclusion and the striving for purity or purification of one’s
‘own’ tradition have become less violent. On the other hand, the reception of the
Romantic constellation of a unity between nature, ethnicity, cultural tradition
and religion has moved from being perceived as a paradigm of the radical right
into being a viable facet of mainstream thought in the 1990s and 2000s.
The shift within Asatru away from racial ideology and into a more critical
attitude toward the völkisch heritage has of course not been absolute. Rather, it
can be described as a shift in the centre of gravity between three main factions
within the scene:

(1) A racial-religious current that bases religion on a biological concept of

race and continues to promote a radical völkisch racial ideology along
with ideas of racial and religious purity and purification.
(2) A current that has been labelled ‘folkish’ and that I choose to call ethni-
cist in order to stress the fact that religion here is based on a traditional,
homogenous heritage that is to be preserved or restored. This herit-
age is not exclusively conceptualized in biological terms, but is seen as
Introduction 7

rooted in landscape, nature, climate and culture as well. The ethnicist

faction thus tends toward a cultural essentialism which sees ‘culture’ as
an immutable and ideally homogenous entity rooted in a deep past – an
idea which often carries with it a desire to purify and re-homogenize this
alleged essential, traditional culture.
(3) A current that has been called ‘universalist’ or ‘anti-racist,’ but that I
choose to describe as a-racist because it (a) rejects the category of race
and goes against conflating biological heritage and religion, (b) is gener-
ally inclusive of individuals of all backgrounds, but (c) usually does not
go actively against racism, as the term ‘anti-racist’ would suggest. This
faction tends to conceptualize culture in a more dynamic way, as some-
thing that is to be created and that is continually transformed through
cultural exchange and mixing.

What remains common among all these currents is the close relation which is
seen between religion and culture, and therefore, an emphatically culturalist
understanding of religion. This common link unites the different factions,
which of course never exist in pure forms, but instead intersect in complex and
often contradictory and inconsistent ways. As a general tendency, however, we
can say that while Germanic Neopaganism in the 1970s and 80s was dominated
by racial-religious and ethnicist groups and the controversies between them,
the racial-religious groups have been increasingly marginalized throughout
the 1990s and 2000s, while the mainstream, most widely accepted, and visible
part of Asatru today moves in the field between ethnicist and a-racist.
The shift in mainstream discourse that has contributed to Asatru’s gaining
of respectability has to do with the perception of religion, culture, and ethnic-
ity. Ideas about the intimate correlation between these entities were perceived
as right-wing radical in the 1970s and 80s, but have become more generally
accepted after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the end of the Cold War, and even
more so after September 11, 2001. This is most visible in the discourse on immi-
gration and Islam, where culture, religion, and ethnicity are conflated into
one indistinguishable and immutable entity posited as an antagonist to ‘our’
cultural identity. Already around 1990, Etienne Balibar had argued that the
exclusionary mechanisms of racist thought were not dependent on a natural-
ist or biological paradigm, but that a cultural essentialism had more or less
replaced ‘race’ in public discourse.6 This allowed for a circumvention of the

6 Racism is traditionally defined as “the idea that human beings could be placed in groups
based on physical characteristics, or more deeply, their genetic make-up, and that an indi-
vidual’s personality and likely behavior could be read off from that membership.” (Ralph D.
8 Introduction

racial biological paradigm that was strongly stigmatized after 1945. In this pro-
cess, ‘culture’ or ‘cultural identity’ became equally deterministic; unchange-
able, essentialist foundational entities and anxieties about mixing and
exchange permeate such discourses as much as they did classical racism.7
I would argue that this cultural or ‘differentialist’ racism, as Balibar calls it, has
by now moved beyond the confines of the political and cultural (New) Right’s
ideology and entered mainstream discourse. Moreover, I would put forth that
the central factor in this constellation is religion. Nowadays, there is a general
tendency to view ‘culture’ as a quasi-sacred entity, as well as to perceive reli-
gion as a phenomenon that is closely tied not only to ‘culture,’ but also to
specific ‘cultures.’
The thesis of this book can thus be specified as follows: The sacralization of
culture and simultaneous culturalization of religion found in both Asatru and
in mainstream discourse contribute to the increased respectability of Asatru,
while at the same time renewing interest in ‘Germanic’ or ‘Nordic’ religion and
pre-Christian cultural heritage in high and popular culture alike.
The intertwined developments of Asatru reform and the change in main-
stream discourse, with regard to the sacralization of culture and culturaliza-
tion of religion, motivate the double perspective of this book. The first part
provides the historical genealogy (Chapter 1), the further development of
Germanic Neopaganism and its organizational progression (Chapter 2), and
the core beliefs and practices (Chapter 3). This encompassing description of
the international, alternative, spiritual subculture or cultic milieu8 of Asatru

Grillo, “Cultural Essentialism and Cultural Anxiety,” Anthropological Theory 3, no. 2 (2003),
162). However, as I will show in Chapters 4 and 5, ‘classical’ racism has never existed without
strong references to ‘culture’ and religion either.
7 Cf. Étienne Balibar, “Is there a ‘New Racism,’” in Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities, ed.
Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London/New York: Verso, 1991).
8 The concept of ‘cultic milieu’ was first elaborated by Colin Campbell in 1972. It describes
‘fuzzy’ constellations held together loosely by a “bundle of ideas and practices related to other
ideas and practices in the cultural underground of society” (Jesper Aagaard Petersen,
“Introduction: Embracing Satan,” in Contemporary Religious Satanism. A Critical Anthology,
ed. Jesper Aagaard Petersen (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 4) – milieus which spurn
the emergence and decline of “ephemeral and highly unstable” (Colin Campbell, “The Cult,
the Cultic Milieu and Secularization,” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 5 (1972), 120)
groups, whereas the general milieu and field of discourse from which these groups emerge are
relatively stable and cohesive, although not coherent and consistent. The concept has been
fruitfully applied to the study of modern esotericism, occultism, and “Satanism” (cf. Wouter J.
Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought
(Leiden/New York/Cologne: Brill, 1996); Petersen, “Introduction: Embracing Satan”).
Introduction 9

lays the groundwork for the in-depth investigations that follow. In the latter
part I examine:

• the interactions and flow of ideas between this religious sub-culture and
more general developments in history;
• the history of ideas, ideology and aesthetics;
• the history of the humanities in general, and of religion and Scandinavian
studies in particular.

In summary, I closely analyze the ‘fields of discourse’ and ‘shared concerns’

that constitute Germanic Neopaganism and tie it to surrounding societies.9
In this lengthier second part, the micro-phenomenon Asatru is used as a
prism through which to focus on discourses and concepts that have been pre-
dominant and contested in what we call ‘Western societies’ since the 19th
century, and which play a central role in the processes of a culturalization of
religion and sacralization of culture. They comprise contested fields such as
race and ethnicity (Chapter 4), concepts of religion (Chapter 5), and dis-
courses developed in relation to social movements, such as ideas about nature
(Chapter 6) and gender (Chapter 7), and their relation to religion. Last but not
least, they include the areas of academic thought (Chapter 8) and art and aes-
thetics (Chapter 9), in which ideas about the relations between religion and
culture – as well as about Nordic myth – have been systematically developed
and popularized.

Twisted Terminologies

The inner contradictions, changes, and transformations of this religious phe-

nomenon, which I have thus far called Germanic Neopaganism, are mirrored
in the shifting terminology used by the groups themselves as well as outside
observers. In the first third of the 20th century in Germany, it was called
‘German,’ ‘Nordic,’ or ‘Germanic Faith,’ indicating a mythization or spiritualiza-
tion of the nation or the ‘Aryan’ or ‘Nordic’ race. As we shall see, all of these

9 The concepts of “shared concerns” and “fields of discourse” is inspired by the German histo-
rian of religion Kocku von Stuckrad, who uses it to account for the “fuzziness” of recent reli-
gious movements. Stuckrad bases his investigations on the observation that “religious
identities are shaped through communicative processes. They are not found but negotiated.”
(Kocku von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism. A Brief History of Secret Knowledge (London:
Equinox, 2005), 86).
10 Introduction

terms, as well as the word ‘Teutonic,’ which has been used in English-speaking
contexts since the mid-19th century, refer to constructions of ethnic entities,
which by now are strongly contested, and which are based on untenable ideo-
logical, for example nationalist and imperialist, assumptions.10
Following the terminology of Alexander Rud Mills, an Australian sympa-
thizer with National Socialism and founder of an Anglo-Saxonist version of
Germanic Faith, the first American and English post-war groups called their
religion Odinism, a term which is still fairly widespread in the uk and North
America. As a reaction to the ‘monotheistic’ connotations of the term ‘Odinism,’
American groups started to adopt the Scandinavian term Asatru.11 The term
derives from modern Icelandic, and denotes the belief, trust in or allegiance to
the Norse gods called Æsir.12 Together with ‘Heathen’,13 a Germanic word for
Pagan, it is most commonly used today both by adherents of the religion and
by outside researchers. The term ‘Asatru,’ however, is criticized by many for
being a relatively young term, having arisen in Scandinavian Romanticism.
A still more recent development is the rejection of terms that were not used
in pre-Christian times. This is based on the observation that pre-Christian reli-
gions did not identify ‘religion’ as a separate field within society, and thus did not
have words to describe their world-view and religion or to distinguish them from
other religions. As a result, names like ‘Forn Sed’ or ‘Forn Siðr’ (Scandinavian and
Old Norse terms for ‘the old way’ or ‘the old custom’) have been adopted. This is
also a reaction to the fact that both ‘Paganism’ and ‘Heathenism’ are terms which
were originally coined by the Christian churches in order to separate ‘proper
religion’ from rejected forms of worship. The terms ‘Pagan’ or ‘Heathen’ were
associated with rural people who adhered to regressive beliefs and lived at the
margins of society. Nowadays, when groups or persons describe themselves as
Pagans, it can be understood as an attempt to re-signify an originally pejorative
term in a similarly complex way as with the term ‘queer’ for example, i.e. in order
to both re-evaluate traditional assumptions and to be provocative.
The prefix ‘neo,’ which is common within scholarship and the general pub-
lic, is equally misleading. It presupposes the existence of an ancient, original

10 For discussions of concepts of the ‘Germanic’ see the contributions in Heinrich Beck, Zur
Geschichte der Gleichung “germanisch – deutsch.” Sprache und Namen, Geschichte und
Institutionen Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).
11 Asatru is also spelled Ásatrú, Asatrú or Asatro.
12 The singular for Æsir is Áss and the genitive plural Ása.
13 Equivalents of Heathen are also commonly used in German (Heiden) and in Scandinavian
languages (hedning).
Introduction 11

Paganism that only needs to be recovered and revitalized. In fact, the opposite
is the case: (neo-)Paganism is a decidedly modern phenomenon, which con-
structs an idealized religious and cultural past, projecting this imagined past
onto sparse sources that tell us very little about pre-Christian European cults.
It is not the task of this book however, to dissolve such terminological contra-
dictions.14 Since they are still most common amongst believers and scholars
alike, I shall thus use the terms ‘Asatru’ and ‘Heathen’ for the modern groups
described here. I will employ the more artificial term ‘Germanic Neopaganism’
to describe the phenomenon in its broader historical dimension, i.e. for both
older German Faith groups and modern Heathen groups.

What Others Say

Due to the right-wing political inclinations and activities in parts of the inter-
national Germanic Neopagan milieu, the political and ideological aspects of
Asatru and Odinism have attracted the most attention from researchers and
more popular writers. The first study conducted was Jeffrey Kaplan’s examina-
tion of the American scene in a chapter in his Radical Religion in America,15
published in the late 1990s. More recently, the most important study in this
context has been Mattias Gardell’s Gods of the Blood from 2003. Gardell, a
Swedish historian of religion, offers an in-depth investigation of the racist,
white supremacist, Odinist underground in the usa. Based partly on Kaplan’s
earlier research, but mostly on in-depth interviews with racial-religious and
ethnicist Pagans in North America, this book alerts us to the political radical-
ism present in parts of Asatru, and brings to light the major significance of the
Norse religious revival for a North American context. However, it does not
address the international contexts and German origins of such radical thought.
Moreover, it excludes a-racist (or in Gardell’s terminology anti-racist) groups.
Hence, Gardell’s investigation is unable to illuminate the more problematic
sides of the mainstream discourse on culture and religion, i.e., the intersections

14 For a more thorough discussion of terminology from the point of view of a practitioner
and researcher see Michael Strmiska, “Modern Paganism in World Cultures. Comparative
Perspectives,” in Modern Paganism in World Cultures. Comparative Perspectives, ed.
Michael Strmiska (Santa Barbara, ca: abc-Clio, 2005).
15 Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America. Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to
the Children of Noah (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997), for Germany see for
example Franziska Hundseder, Wotans Jünger. Neuheidnische Gruppen zwischen Esoterik
und Rechtsradikalismus (Munich: Heyne, 1998).
12 Introduction

of völkisch, Germanic Neopagan and contemporary mainstream discourse on

Norse myth, which are of central interest in this book.
In the past few years, a-racist Asatru has attracted the attention of younger
scholars, who have reacted against the one-sided focus on the racist and right-
wing extremist dimension of earlier research. Firstly, studies of national
European milieus have been offered by insiders, i.e. researchers with Pagan
affiliations themselves, who tend to take an apologetic stance and whose main
goal is to actively contribute to Asatru gaining respectability.16 More impor-
tantly, two master theses and two dissertations now provide field-studies of
the national Asatru scenes in Iceland,17 Sweden18 and Germany,19 written in
the respective languages by students and scholars not affiliated with Asatru or
Neopaganism in general. Swedish historian of religion Fredrik Gregorius and
Icelandic master’s student in the history of religion, Eggert Solberg Jonsson,
take historical approaches, situating the respective Northern European Asatru
groups in a context reaching back to National Romanticism. Gregorius’ conclu-
sion in particular, that Swedish Asatru is driven by a fundamental cultural
essentialism, coincides with my own reading of the phenomenon. Both studies
are based on first-hand material such as interviews and participant observa-
tion, and thus provide material for my investigation as well.
The same is true for the dissertation by German historian of religion René
Gründer, who conducted in-depth interviews with German Asatruers. In con-
trast to the other researchers, Gründer chooses a knowledge-sociological
approach and provides insight into individual German Heathens’ construction

16 The following books on Pagan movements contain comprehensive chapters on Asatru:

Graham Harvey, Listening People, Speaking Earth. Contemporary Paganism (London:
Hurst&Company, 1997), Michael Strmiska, ed. Modern Paganism in World Cultures.
Comparative Perspectives (Santa Barbara, ca: abc-Clio, 2005); Blain, Ezzy, and Harvey,
Researching Paganism. Jenny Blain currently researches British and American Asatru and
has already published parts of her results. See Jenny Blain, Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic.
Ecstasy and neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism (London etc.: Routledge, 2002);
Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis, “Heathenry,” in Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, ed.
James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009).
17 Eggert Solberg Jonsson, “Ásatrú á Íslandi við upphaf 21. aldar. Uppruni, heimsmynd og
helgiathafnir” (Master’s thesis, University of Iceland, 2010).
18 Fredrik Gregorius, Modern Asatro. Att konstruera etnisk och kulturell identitet (Lund:
Lunds Universitet, 2008).
19 René Gründer, Germanisches (Neu-)Heidentum in Deutschland. Entstehung, Struktur
und Symbolsystem eines alternativreligiösen Feldes (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2008); Blótge­
meinschaften. Eine Religionsethnografie des ‘germanischen Neuheidentums’ (Würzburg:
Ergon, 2010).
Introduction 13

of their own world-views in late modernity. He focuses on individual perspec-

tives and appropriations along with individuals’ attempts to situate their
world-view within the conditions of late modernity. It thus alerts one to inner
contradictions and ideological problems that circulate within the scene –
information and observations which are highly informative for my own inves-
tigation on the changes within Asatru in recent years. One of the more stunning
findings of Gründer’s study is the degree to which the individual believers’
religious constructions that he lays out in his book deviate from the official
written material the respective groups have published in books, pamphlets,
and on the Internet. Gründer, who is interested in reconstructing individuals’
world-views in the context of post-modern neo-liberal society, chooses to
almost completely ignore such written material. This keeps him from address-
ing the complicated historical continuities and transformations, as well as the
more general significance of the discursive clusters on which my book focuses.

Complicated Involvements

Alerted to the gap between written material and individual beliefs by Gründer’s
study, my approach to it is the reverse. Since I am more interested in continu-
ities and transformations of a discursive constellation, I pay closer attention to
the public image of Asatru as it is presented in diverse published materials
(texts, images, music distributed through various media, inside journals, flyers,
and not least the groups’ homepages, Asatru forums and blogs on the
Internet).20 Here, we find the influences of older ideas. Moreover, it is mainly
through these public materials that Asatru interacts with other social and dis-
cursive fields, for example academia, the arts and social movements. Such
written materials contribute to the transmission and transformation of con-
cepts, ideas and (particles of) ideologies over time and space. However, relying
exclusively on published and Internet material brings with it the danger of not
being able to judge the factual importance of persons, groups, and individual
statements. In order to assess the relative importance and impact of my find-
ings, I established contact with leaders and prominent members of Asatru
groups operating nationwide in Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the usa,21

20 In order to respect the right to, and wish for, privacy, I am only using material from public
forums, and not from those which have restricted access or require registration. Moreover,
I quote without mentioning names or pseudonyms.
21 I limited my field research in Sweden and the usa because the studies by Gregorius,
Modern Asatro and Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood. The Pagan Revival and White
14 Introduction

England, and Germany. Mainly in 2010, I conducted 25 unstructured quali­

tative interviews, most in person, although some via e-mail or over the
telephone,22 and attended events of a few German and Danish groups.
My personal contacts, especially with German Asatruers, were complex to
say the least. In addition to my books and articles, I had been indirectly involved
with the scene for almost twenty-five years through my earlier interviews and
participant observation in the 1980s. My research (or rumors and word-of-
mouth information about it) had been observed, despised and hailed by differ-
ent groups, mostly, but not exclusively, in Germany since the 1990s.
Some Asatruers had used my books in an attempt to actively rid the scene of
extreme right and racial esoteric influence; others had spent considerable
energy distancing themselves from my and others’ allegations of the close ties
of Asatru to the extreme right. In the process of gaining respectability, Asatruers
had taken on the role of interpreters and critical analysts of their sources as
well as their own traditional assumptions. In doing so, they also related to
more recent texts, such as my own, or books by other critical commentators,
such as Kaplan, Gardell, Gregorius, or Gründer. All of this resulted in awkward
feedback loops for both sides, which shaped the perception of my questions
and the informants’ answers. In other words: my writing pre-formed the
assumptions my interview-partners had about the stories I wanted to hear, and
the stories they told were colored by these assumptions.
Working in the field this time around, I could not deny sympathies and
shared interests with parts of the scene that are interested in uncovering the
völkisch roots of contemporary Asatru and getting rid of shady political asso-
ciations. I thus re-defined my role as that of a critical observer and interlocutor
of these parts of the scene, realizing that through my continuing work with a
field that I had studied earlier, I had become an unintentional contributor to
the tendency of normalization that I observed within the field. It also has to be
taken into account that my current and future work (i.e. my conversations with
Heathens, as well as this book) will continue to interact with the scene and
contribute to its change. Metaphorically speaking, my position has oscillated
between that of being a member of the audience watching and analyzing a
play called Asatru, and that of an actor playing the role of adversary and criti-
cal companion within the play. Acknowledging that this book will have certain

Separatism (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2003) already provide abundant

field-material.
22 These interviews are quoted in two ways: statements made by holders of offices within
the groups regarding official group policies are quoted by name; statements regarding
individuals’ beliefs and convictions are quoted anonymously.
Introduction 15

effects on the scene, as a scholar writing on Asatru I am cast in the position of

a co-writer of the play as well – a role which becomes amplified and compli-
cated by the fact that Asatruers themselves are making eager use of popular
academic writing in order to gain respectability (as Chapter 8 shows in detail).

Receptions, Adaptions, and Goals

As of today, the attainment of respectability for Asatru and the changes within
it have not caught considerable public attention. That Asatruers in general
have been more heavily subjected to a scrutiny of the right-wing implications
of their faith than other alternative-religious communities is certainly due to
Germanic Neopaganism’s history and the current involvement of several
groups and individuals with Germanophile, racial and ethnicist ideology.
However, this association has also been exacerbated by a public and by outside
observers who are more interested in sensationalist accounts of the political
dangers connected with marginal and exoticized new religions than in neutral
assessments of their beliefs and practices. The reaction of some friends and
colleagues to my tales about the changes within Asatru and the pleasant
encounters and good conversations I have had is quite indicative in this respect:
“But if they are not actually racists, what is the point of researching them?”
One of this book’s goals is to dispel such easy accusations and apologies
alike. Asatru today presents itself as a lively micro-cosmos where all imagin-
able ideas, topoi, and stereotypes about ‘Germanic’ myth, religion and culture
are used, discussed, re-contextualized, and transformed. It is a grateful field of
study for anyone who wants to learn about the reception and adaption of such
ideas in different historical, political, and ideological contexts. It is a dynamic
field of exchange where relations between religion, political and cultural ideol-
ogy have played a prominent role all along, and where they still lead to contro-
versy and give rise to schisms. It is thus a vibrant field, which can serve as an
instructive prism for studies of the complex and contradictory relations
between religious subcultures and political ideology.
Instead of singling out Germanic Neopaganism as a weird, marginal, and
aberrant form of a political religion, this critical investigation into this small
but by now quite diversified subculture offers the occasion to question, discuss
and revisit much broader intellectual problems. It is able to shed light on fun-
damental questions about the relation between modernity and constructions
of the past. More particularly, as will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, it can
illuminate the role that has been assigned to the constructed categories of
race, ethnicity and religion in building identities. It can also serve as a prism
16 Introduction

through which to investigate environmental and gender issues in their relation

to modern spirituality, as we shall see in Chapters 6 and 7. Last but not least, it
can tell us much about the place and function of the humanities, poetry and
art in regard to myth and religion in modern societies, as I will show in Chapters
8 and 9.
Thus, rather than just being an analysis of Germanic Neopaganism as a form
of cultural essentialism (which it is), this book strives to provide a critical
analysis of traces of such cultural essentialism in different contexts of so-called
‘mainstream discourse.’ It is not so much a study of the political involvement
of individuals and groups (although these play a role and have to be addressed),
but rather a more general critical discussion of discursive figures and circulat-
ing signs, their history and broader implications which, though much more
widespread, crystallize in Asatru in a way that makes for a fruitful field of
investigation.
Methodologically, my reconstruction of a Germanic Neopagan discourse in
particular, as well as a mainstream discourse on Nordic myth, is informed by
the somewhat diverse approaches of the history of ideas and ideology as well
as analytical discourse theory. Both approaches have one interest in common:
the analysis of the flow and transformation of ideas (not individual or group-
policies) over time and space, and their potential political and ideological
implications. Both methods are suitable for analytically negotiating between
the descriptions of a contemporary social and religious phenomenon, its
immediate cultural historical contexts, and its being embedded in contempo-
rary and historical discourse.
This approach requires simultaneous discussions about established intel-
lectuals, philosophers, theorists and Neopagan authors of articles in obscure
underground magazines with a minuscule circulation. The purpose of discuss-
ing such ideological intersections is not to level out the significant differences
in erudition and intellectual complexity between these texts and authors, but
rather to reveal the broad distribution of a persistent discursive constellation
connected to ideas about Nordic myth, religion and culture, in addition to dem-
onstrating interactions and interrelations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and
to put into question the only seemingly clear distinctions between mainstream
and aberrant, marginal discourses. Ultimately, this book is concerned with
broad questions about the relation between conceptions of myth, nature, tra-
dition, heritage, spirituality, culture and identity. Focusing on a small and man-
ageable phenomenon such as Asatru helps to illuminate the broader fields of
discourse which constitute it and which it has helped constitute.
 chapter 1

Creating the Paradigm: Historical Preconditions of

Modern Asatru

Modern Asatru, as well as the current popular appeal of ‘Germanic’ or ‘Nordic’

themes and images, are outcomes of and contributors to a discourse of
Germanic myth. This discourse is related to a general tendency to conflate cul-
ture, religion and ethnicity, or to culturalize and ethnicize religion and simul-
taneously sacralize culture. In this chapter I argue that we can identify two
prior eras, two points of crystallization, where similar tendencies were promi-
nent and which were formative for later religious and ideological appropria-
tions of Germanic myth: German Romanticism around 1800 and völkisch
nationalism in the first third of the 20th century.
The first formative moment was defined by the scholarship of Johann
Gottfried Herder, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and other intellectuals of German
Romanticism. They were the first to systematize ideas about a holistic unity of
natural environment, language and history located in a deep past and in rural
populations. This unity and its expression in an indigenous mythological heri-
tage were perceived as the necessary foundation for a proper nation or Volk.
This Romantic constellation proved to be exceptionally malleable, productive
and persistent. It influenced both cultural pluralism and exclusionist ideolo-
gies with affinities to racism and anti-Semitism. It inspired nationalist move-
ments not only in Germany, but in Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and Baltic
countries as well. Moreover, it provided the basis for European and North
American counter-cultural movements as diverse as Anglo-Saxonism and
modern witchcraft (Wicca). It is no coincidence that the years after 1900 – our
second point of crystallization – have been characterized as ‘neo-Romantic.’
Romantic ideas about a unity of the Volk were radicalized in the German
völkisch movement and turned into an alternative religion around 1910.
Thus, it seems relevant to begin our discussions of the genealogy and signifi-
cance of modern Asatru by briefly introducing the main contributors (persons
and organizations alike) to a discourse on Nordic myth in Romanticism, focus-
ing in particular on the names and concepts which will reappear in the follow-
ing chapters. Furthermore, in this chapter we will consider völkisch religion
and the German(ic) Faith Movement, and their broader context in several
nationalist and alternative movements. Finally, modern witchcraft, or Wicca,
will be presented. While the latter takes up the same Romantic constellation as
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18 chapter 1

the others, due to its origin in England in the 1950s it gives the constellation a
different twist. In many senses, it also contributes a more flexible framework
and more malleable ritual practices, both of which prove to be important for
contemporary Asatru.

The Search for a National Mythology in European Romanticism

While we can identify German Romanticism as a key formative moment for

the emergence of a discourse of Germanic myth, individual elements within
this influential cluster of ideas were in place already in European humanism
and Renaissance thought. This era extended its interest in the mythologies of
Greek and Roman antiquity to imagined national antiquities as well. German
humanism contributed with a patriotic interpretation of Tacitus’ Germania
and Annales and established the misleading and fateful idea that the German
nation was a direct descendant of the Northern tribes on the eastern side of
the river Rhine, who were not subject to Roman rule and whom Julius Cesar
called “Germani”.1 Consequently, the traits that the Roman ethnographer
Tacitus (informed by Aristotelian climate theory and contemporary stereo-
types of the ethnic other) had perceived as typical for northern barbarian
primitives, now appeared to the German patriots of humanism as timeless,
positive national characteristics of a warrior people that:

• is hardened by a harsh climate

• is impressive in its simplicity and authenticity
• possesses a fierce sense of freedom and independence
• is faithful
• is pure
• worships nature
• venerates its women and priestesses
• is prone to excessive drinking.2

1 Cf. Dieter Mertens, “Die Instrumentalisierung der ‘Germania’ des Tacitus durch die deutschen
Humanisten,” in Zur Geschichte der Gleichung ‘germanisch – deutsch.’ Sprache und Namen,
Geschichte und Institutionen, ed. Heinrich Beck, et al., Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der
germanischen Altertumskunde (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).
2 This version of a German ideology is discussed in depth in Klaus v. See, Deutsche Germanen-
Ideologie vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenäum-Verlag, 1970). See
also Barbar Germane Arier. Die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1994).
Creating the Paradigm 19

Swedish Renaissance scholars used the Roman scholar Jordanes’ Getica (or
History of the Goths, around 551 ad) in a similar way: as a classical witness to
the greatness of the Swedish nation as the alleged homeland of the Goths. The
acclaimed scholar and founder of Swedish runic studies, Johannes Bureus
(1568–1652), identified the antique lost continent Hyperborea as Sweden. He
then used this finding to justify prehistoric Scandinavia as mankind’s oldest
culture. Driven by the contemporary trend to establish Sweden’s status as a
great European power, the internationally celebrated Swedish historiographer,
Olaus Rudbeck, took this idea even further in his 3000 page treatise Atland eller
Manheim (Atlantica, 1679–1702). Both Bureus and Rudbeck, like many of their
contemporaries, took a keen interest in occultism and Rosicruceanism, thus
adding a spiritual and mystical notion to their speculations about the Nordic
origin of culture.3
In Denmark, several simultaneous events in the middle of the 17th century
spurred the Scandinavian movement of Göticism as well. In 1643, the Danish
scholar Ole Worm initiated the academic investigation into the runic alpha-
bet. In the same year, an inconspicuous manuscript was discovered by the
Icelandic bishop Brynjolfr Sveinsson. It soon attracted considerable attention
and was donated to the Danish king twenty years later. The manuscript con-
tained mythological poems about Norse deities such as Odin, Thor, Frey and
Freya, cosmological visions about the origin and end of the world, as well as
heroic poetry related to the Nibelungen cycle. The find was all the more sen-
sational as it treated the same mythological materials as another medieval
work, the Edda, authored by the Icelandic cleric, historian and politician
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241). Snorri had composed this volume as a manual
for poets and skalds. Since traditional Norse poetry was based on intricate
metaphorical circumscriptions, Snorri felt the need to relate the mythologi-
cal basis necessary for the understanding of these poetic images, which he
feared would not be accessible to Christian poets and audiences. The manu-
script identified as being found here was initially (albeit falsely) believed to
be the source from which Snorri had quoted the interspersed verses in his
Edda. Consequently, this untitled manuscript was named Edda as well. It
became known as the Elder Edda, Saemundar Edda (after an alleged author)
or Poetic Edda (most common today).4 As a result of this false assumption,

3 Klaus Böldl, Der Mythos der Edda. Nordische Mythologie zwischen europäischer Aufklärung
und nationaler Romantik (Tübingen etc.: Francke, 2000), 19.
4 The extent to which these works contain pre-Christian mythological knowledge is disputed
up until today. Both works were written in the Christian Middle Ages, more than 200 years
after the Christianization of Iceland. In the case of Snorri, rather than relating “authentic”
20 chapter 1

two lays of the Poetic Edda, the Völuspá and the Hávamál, were included
when the first edition of Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda was published in
Denmark in 1665. This edition of medieval Norse literature remained the pri-
mary source of knowledge about Scandinavian mythology throughout the
entire 18th century. Its influence is palpable up until today: the two lays
included from the Poetic Edda remain the most well known, and are the most
quoted in Asatru contexts.
Inspired by Scandinavian scholarship, Renaissance England also developed
a variety of Gothicism. ‘Gothic’ became a common term denoting ‘Germanic,’
mingling with the Italian use of the word, which associated medieval architec-
ture with the Goths. Also in the English case, this humanist appropriation of
Nordic myth was driven by patriotic sentiment. It countered contemporary
pejorative Italian stereotypes of the Nordic barbarian with ideas of a ‘Germanic
freedom.’ In all cases, the North–South distinction was thus associated with
anti-Catholic affects. In Germany and Scandinavia, this anti-Catholicism was
informed by the respective varieties of Protestantism,5 whereas the English
and English colonists in America subscribed to the idea of a pure Anglo-Saxon
church along with the myth of the free nature of Anglo-Saxon political institu-
tions (which they based on their reception of Tacitus).6
18th century Enlightenment thought contributed additional elements to
the discourse of Germanic myth. The French political philosopher Monte­
squieu’s revaluation of Aristotelian climate theory rehabilitated Northerners
as industrious, inventive, honest, proud and self-confident individuals, as bear-
ers of nations never subjugated and thus in possession of an original, natural

Pagan worldviews, his Edda gives an impressive image of medieval European imaginations of
one’s Pagan “ancestors’” ideas and beliefs. The case of the Poetic Edda is even more hotly
debated; the age of the individual lays, as well as the materials they are based on, is estimated
with great variance by different scholars. Here too, influences of, and engagement with, both
classical and medieval Christian ideas are palpable and must be taken into account.
Comprehensive research summaries are provided in the introductions by Ursula Dronke, The
Poetic Edda: Heroic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), The Poetic Edda: Mythological
Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), and Anthony Faulkes, “Introduction,” in Snorri
Sturluson: Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (London: Viking Society for
Northern Research, 2005).
5 See Böldl, Der Mythos der Edda, 67.
6 See Allen J. Frantzen, Desire for Origins. New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition
(New Brunswick/London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 31f; Reginald Horsman, Race and
Manifest Destiny. The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, ma: Harvard
University Press, 1981), 9–12.
Creating the Paradigm 21

freedom.7 Montesquieu’s republican ideals were a significant inspiration for

Paul Henri Mallet, a Swiss who served as a professor at the University of
Copenhagen. In 1755, he published the first French translation of Eddic poetry
in his Introduction to the history of Denmark. It was followed by a second part
in 1756 under the title Monuments de la mythologie et de la poésie des Celtes et
particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves (Monuments of the Mythology and
the Poetry of the Celts and Particularly the Ancient Scandinavians) and soon
translated into Danish, German and English.8
Renaissance and Enlightenment antiquarian approaches to the antique eth-
nographic and medieval mythological sources thus established Nordic or
Germanic myth as an integral part of various patriotic endeavors. Holistic ideas
of the late 1700s and early 1800s finally integrated this discourse of Germanic
myth with emphatic notions of an organically rooted people. The idea that
such an organic unity of landscape, language and history had to be based in
mythology soon posed a problem for German thinkers, as mythological sources
or information about pre-Christian German religion were practically non-­
existent. The assumption that language and myth were closely related, however,
served as a justification for the appropriation of Scandinavian sources (written
in a related language) for the (re)construction of a ‘German mythology.’
The Weimar-based theologian and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder
(1744–1803) developed an elaborate, albeit contradictory theory about the
uniqueness and equal worth of all the diverse peoples of the world in his four
volume Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for the
Philosophy of History of Humanity, 1784–91). He also suggested turning to
Norse mythology (as it was transferred to Germany by Mallet’s writings) in
order to revitalize German poetry using allegedly ‘authentic’ sources.9
Herder’s broad and notoriously unsystematic approach led to a number of
internal contradictions in his work, which in turn motivated equally contradic-
tory trajectories of reception. His writing revaluated cultural difference, pro-
moted the equal value of vastly different cultures, and criticized the colonial

7 Gonthier-Louis Fink, “Diskriminierung und Rehabilitierung des Nordens im Spiegel der

Klimatheorie,” in Imagologie des Nordens. Kulturelle Konstruktionen von Nördlichkeit in inter-
disziplinärer Perspektive, ed. Astrid Arndt, et al. (Frankfurt a.M. etc.: Peter Lang, 2004), 80f;
Böldl, Der Mythos der Edda, 27.
8 Thomas Percy’s translation Northern Antiquities from 1770 was to influence the Victorian
reception of Eddic literature to an immense degree. See for example Andrew Wawn, The
Vikings and the Victorians. Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (Cambridge: Brewer,
2000), 183–212.
9 Aesthetic appropriations of Germanic myth are discussed in Chapter 9.
22 chapter 1

endeavors of the European powers of his era, even going so far as tentatively
questioning Christianity’s right to mission.10 At the same time, Herder’s work
was driven by a Christian humanism which sought to integrate this cultural
diversity into a universal history of salvation in which the German Volk was
assigned particularly high status.11 Simultaneously, Herder formulated nega-
tive exceptions to his tolerant and inclusive concept of equality in difference
by repeating common cultural stereotypes. Gypsies and Jews were not consid-
ered proper Völker due to their lack of a homeland and were thus a potential
danger to other peoples. Turks and Huns appeared as barbarians, whereas
peoples exposed to extreme climates, such as Africans and Greenlanders, were
attributed primitive, animalistic qualities. With this oscillatory organicist,
holistic concept of a nation or Volk, Herderian thought established a field of
tension that haunts relativist, holistic and organicist concepts of culture to this
day, and still reverberates in the tensions between a-racist and ethnicist con-
ceptions of Asatru today.12

10 See e.g. Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise. Aryans and Semites. A Match Made
in Heaven, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Other Press, 1992), 37–50, on the ques-
tion of mission 42.
11 For such contradictory perceptions of Herder see for example Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing
Myth. Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press,
1999), 52–54 and Zeev Sternhell, “Von der Gegenaufklärung zu Faschismus und Nazismus.
Gedanken zur europäischen Katastrophe des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Die Dynamik der
europäischen Rechten. Geschichte, Kontinuitäten, Wandel, ed. Claudia Globisch, Agnieszka
Pufelska, and Volker Weiß (Wiesbaden: vs Verlag, 2011).
12 Herder’s scholarship is debated still today. A point in case is Paul Lawrence Rose,
Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner (Princeton, nj: Princeton
University Press, 1990) who accused him of laying the grounds for an exclusionary, anti-
Semitic, aggressive German nationalism and Pan-Germanism, thus preparing directly for
the National Socialist regime. Others have hailed him (slightly uncritically) as the creator
of a modern, non-normative, non-repressive concept of culture and aesthetics, the fore-
runner of an anthropological or cultural turn in the humanities. (Cf. Ulrich Gaier, “Herder
als Begründer des modernen Kulturbegriffs,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 57,
no. 4 (2007); Wolfgang Pross, “Herder und die moderne Geschichtswissenschaft,”
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 57, no. 4 (2007), and Renate Stauf, “‘Was soll über-
haupt eine Messung aller Völker nach uns Europäern?’ Der Europagedanke Johann
Gottfried Herders,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 57, no. 4 (2007)). For a bal-
anced discussion of these contradictory stances see Karol Sauerland, “‘Die fremden Völker
in Europa.’ Herders unpolitische Metaphern und Bilder zu den höchst politischen
Begriffen Volk und Nation,” in Unerledigte Geschichten. Der literarische Umgang mit
Nationalität und Internationalität, ed. Gesa von Essen and Horst Turk (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2000), for a comprehensive discussion of Herder’s oscillating work, as well as
the controversies around it, see Anne Löchte, Johann Gottfried Herder. Kulturtheorie und
Creating the Paradigm 23

While Herder looked to Scandinavian mythology for aesthetic inspiration,

the brothers Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) gave this
search for myth a more cultural, socio-political and scientific turn. They spent
their productive lives trying to reconstruct the deep roots of German identity
in a pristine pre-Christian German past with the help of diverse sources, rang-
ing from fairy tales to legal documents.13 Of their works, Jacob Grimm’s
Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology) is the most critical for our context.
This collection, however, cannot be separated from the others. The unity of
society, its rules and laws, its aesthetic expressions and its religion was founda-
tional for the thought of Jacob Grimm in particular, who read legal sources in
a mythological manner, and examined mythology in its social aspects.14 Jacob
Grimm took a twofold approach to solving the problem of lacking mythologi-
cal sources. Rejecting Scandinavian sources as insufficiently cognate with the
German ones, he looked for mythological remnants in various contexts: in
rural folk beliefs and customs, fairy tales, place names, language etc., postulat-
ing a continuity of folk beliefs, especially in an idealized countryside from pre-
Christian times up until his time of writing. Nevertheless, in order to make
sense of what he thought to have identified as those remnants, he drew on
Scandinavian sources to anchor his finds in a coherent mythology. By way of
creating a unity of Germanic sources, he established the image of a coherent
Germanic culture in the service of German nation building. Moreover, he con-
tributed significantly to the appropriation of Scandinavian material for not
only a German, but by way of the reception of his work, for also English and
Scandinavian national ideologies.15 Like Herder before him, Grimm found the

Humanitätsidee der Ideen, Humanitätsbriefe und Adrastea (Würzburg: Königshausen &

Neumann, 2005).
13 The Grimms believed fairy tales to be much more ancient than assumed today, and to
contain remnants of Pagan German mythological ideas. Legal sources were seen as rem-
nants of an indigenous legal system opposed to the ‘foreign imposed’ Roman law which
must have been the basis of the organization of the original German nation. The results
of the brothers’ endeavors were published in a number of commented collections of
these alleged sources for the German national past starting with fairy tales (Kinder- und
Hausmärchen, 1812–1815) and legends (Deutsche Sagen 1816–1818, 2nd ed.1865–1866),
followed by grammar (Deutsche Grammatik 1819, 2. ed. 1822–1840), legal sources (Deutsche
Rechtsaltertümer 1828, 2nd ed., 1854), mythology (Deutsche Mythologie (1835, 3. ed. 1854)),
and finally, a comprehensive dictionary of the German language which is still in use today
(Deutsches Wörterbuch 1854).
14 Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, Deutsche Mythologie. Die Erfindung einer nationalen Kunstreligion
(Berlin/Vienna: Philo, 2000), 51.
15 For a critical discussion of Grimm’s reconstructive method and his unacknowledged
appropriation of Scandinavian material see Beate Kellner, Grimms Mythen. Studien zum
24 chapter 1

justification for this appropriation in the linguistic proximity between the

Scandinavian and German languages. As this proximity also applied to Old
English, Grimm claimed Anglo-Saxon literature for his program of a renewal of
national German poetry and culture as well: “Anglo-Saxon poems […] belong
to all Germany as much as to England; indeed, they belong to us more than Old
Norse poems in so far as their language is closer to ours.”16
Herder’s aesthetic and Jacob Grimms’ philological interest in Germanic myth
was supplemented with yet another dimension in the late 19th century by
Wilhelm Mannhardt (1831–1880). Inspired by Grimm and contemporary eth-
nologists, for example E.B. Tylor’s thesis of ‘primitive tribal cultures’ survival in
modern eras, he turned to contemporary German folk customs and rituals in
search of remnants of pre-Christian Germanic myth in his two volume Wald-
und Feldkulte (Forest and Field Cults, 1875 and 1877). Together with another
highly significant medium of popularization, Richard Wagner’s aesthetic stage
imaginations of Norse gods and heroes,17 these scholars firmly established an
idealized image of a mythic national past, rooted in landscape, folk litera-
ture and customs, which was formative for the later religious reception of a dis-
course of Germanic myth. More importantly though, Herder, Grimm, Mannhardt
and others set the standard for modern methodologies in the emerging aca-
demic disciplines of philology and folklore, as well as studies of religion.18
Although Grimm’s approaches and results regarding his German Mythology and
Mannhardt’s ideas about contemporary survivals of ancient rituals have both
since been proven wrong, their impact cannot be underestimated.19

Mythosbegriff und seiner Anwendung in Jacob Grimms Deutscher Mythologie (Frankfurt

a.M.: Peter Lang, 1994).
16 From Jacob Grimm’s preface to his 1840 edition of Andreas and Elene, translated by and
quoted in Eric Gerald Stanley, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (Cambridge: Brewer,
1975), 13.
17 See Chapter 9.
18 Cf. Bernhard Maier, Die Religion der Germanen. Götter – Mythen – Weltbild (Munich: C.H.
Beck, 2003), 53; Hans Gerhard Kippenberg, Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte.
Religionswissenschaft und Moderne (Munich: Beck, 1997), 120–125.
19 Modern folklore and religious studies highlight the fact that many of the customs
observed by Mannhardt are playful modifications or reversals of Christian rites. Some of
them might even originate in 19th century theories inspired by Mannhardt and other
scholars. Cf. e.g. Maier, Die Religion der Germanen, 53 and 85. For the use of Grimm’s and
Mannhardt’s theories in modern Wicca see Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon. A
History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), e.g.
113. For a critique of Grimm’s methods see Kellner, Grimms Mythen.
Creating the Paradigm 25

With their emphasis on creating the German Volk by rooting it in a national

mythology, Herder’s and the Grimms’ ideas were also formative for the emerg-
ing German cultural nationalism. Paradoxically enough, these nationalist
agendas had a strong international impact. The philological method offered
by the Grimms promised access to the “concealed origins, the problem of
detecting pure, native culture hidden beneath layers of Christian teaching.”20
Its adoption became crucial for the conceptions of pre-Christian mythology
and culture in the Scandinavian countries, and – in the case of Anglo-
Saxonism – England and America, as they all saw their roots in Germanic cul-
ture as well. The early 19th century ‘discovered’ Old English literature in the
wake of the Grimm brothers’ and other German scholars’ works, hoping to
recover “half-veiled remains of pagan poetry,”21 not least from Beowulf.22
Through English scholarly and literary works (especially by Walter Scott),
and through the studies of leading American intellectuals in Germany,
German Romanticism and Anglo-Saxonism were also dispersed throughout
North America. Whereas in the English context theories of Germanic, Indo-
European, or Aryan industriousness, adventurousness, and expansionism
were used to justify colonialism, in the American case, the same features
served to vindicate the westward expansion.23
In the Scandinavian countries, the reception of the German scholars’ theo-
ries constituted an even greater paradox. Danish scholars and intellectuals
such as Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872) and Rasmus Rask
(1787–1832) harshly criticized what they considered the illegitimate appropria-
tion of Scandinavian material in the service of a German national mythology.
In order to affirm a Danish tradition countering the dominant German schol-
arship, they simultaneously employed the self-same aesthetic and philologi-
cal methods. By looking for an alliance between the Icelandic and Danish
sources, they created a synthetic view of the Old Norse mythic material in
Danish literature. Grundtvig’s ideas in particular had a major impact on later

20 Frantzen, Desire for Origins, 68, cf. 62–71.

21 Stanley, The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 12.
22 Cf. ibid., 67. Beowulf consequently came to be considered an original expression of the
ancient Germanic national character in both England and Germany.
23 At the end of the 19th century, such Indo-European theories constituted a “potent strain
of the New Imperialism,” emphasizing Anglo-Saxon supremacy and providing the foun-
dation for the ideology of a “joint destiny” which was to secure British and American
world domination. Cf. Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Empire and Emancipation. Power and
Liberation on a World Scale (London: Pluto Press, 1989), 264f.
26 chapter 1

Danish popular imaginations of Norse myths and tales, through their wide dis-
persion in the influential folk high schools initiated by him.24
A parallel attempt to renew literature through the use of Norse mythology
was carried out by Swedish poets of the late Romantic era. Translations of Erik
Gustaf Geijer’s and Esaias Tegnér’s works had a significant impact on the
French and English conceptions of the Viking world.25 Their poems reconfig-
ured the Vikings as a purifying social force, creating hope for a regeneration of
the Occident from the North, downplaying their brutality and emphasizing
their heroic violence, as well as their spirit of adventure and discovery.26 In the
Victorian era, Anglo-Saxonism was thus vitalized with a veritable flood of
images and theories on Vikings and Norsemen that were utilized for a variety
of political, intellectual and aesthetic agendas.27
Herder’s and Grimm’s ideas also spurred an interest in folklore in the
Scandinavian countries, as demonstrated by the successful recorders of fairy
tales, folk tales and songs (i.e., Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in
Norway as well as Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius in Sweden). Another collec-
tor and editor whose work was eagerly received, not only in his native coun-
try of Finland but also internationally, was Elias Lönnrot. He compiled folk
tales and songs into what was to become Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala
– a central source of inspiration for contemporary popular culture and
Neopagans alike.28
Productive as they were for nation building and the development of the
modern humanities, the Romantic searches for a deep past, a lost ethnic
authenticity and unmediated unity as a necessary basis for contemporary
national cultures have inherently problematic aspects. First and foremost,
they are dependent on operations of exclusion. They tend to neglect or devalue
the change, cultural mixing and blending which comes with all cultural devel-
opment. At the same time, they frequently align regional differences and

24 Cf. Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen, “Gundtvig’s Norse Mythological Imagery – An

Experiment that Failed,” in Northern Antiquity. The Post-Medieval Reception of Edda and
Saga, ed. Andrew Wawn (Middlesex: Hisarlik, 1994).
25 Cf. Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, 117–141.
26 Cf. Régis Boyer, “Vikings, Sagas and Wasa Bread,” in Northern Antiquity. The Post-Medieval
Reception of Edda and Saga, ed. Andrew Wawn (Middlesex: Hisarlik, 1994), 72f, Wawn, The
Vikings and the Victorians, 99f, 176f.
27 Garman Lord, The Way of the Heathen. A Handbook of Greater Theodism (Watertown, ny:
Theod, 2000).
28 Cf. Øystein Sørensen, “Drømmen om det storgermanske rike. Pangermanismen i Norge
ca. 1850–1945,” in Jakten på Germania. Fra nordensvermeri til ss-arkeologi, ed. Terje
Emberland and Jorunn Sem Fure (Oslo: Humanist forlag, 2009).
Creating the Paradigm 27

­ istorical eras that often lie several centuries apart.29 Any definition of iden-
h
tity is, of course, dependent on exclusions as well as inclusions. Nevertheless, in
theories of continuity of a deep past and of pure origins, these exclusions
tend to turn against national minorities and often lead to the promotion
of ethnic purity. Romantic constructions pitted the ‘Germanic,’ ‘Nordic’ or
‘­Indo-Germanic’ against traditional exterior adversaries: France in the case of
Germany, Germany itself in the case of Denmark and, to an extent in the case
of England,30 Rome (as the embodiment of the devalued but dominant south),
and with it, Catholicism in most national cases. In all cases however, it was a
familiar ‘interior enemy’ who was targeted, the Jew. This particular Romantic
anti-Semitism derogates Jews because of their alleged lack of exactly the ele-
ments that form a proper Volk according to the Romantic logic:31 rootedness in
a homeland, a proper language,32 literature, and mythology.33 It is then not
only the distinction between North and South – Protestant and Catholic – but
rather a more or less fierce distinction between the ‘Germanic,’ ‘Aryan,’ or ‘Indo-
European’ and the ‘Semitic’ that lies at the basis of the Romantic constellation
of Germanic myth and religion. As George S. Williamson has argued, “anti-
Catholicism and, increasingly, anti-Semitism were not matters simply of indi-
vidual prejudice or hatred (although these factors also played a role) but instead
structural features of the discourse on Germanic mythology”34 – f­ eatures which
haunt its reception more or less overtly up until the present day. In these

29 Thus Tacitus’ ethnographic account of different tribes in central Europe in the Germania
from the first century, Eddic literature from 13th century Iceland, and contemporary folk
customs from Germany and Scandinavia are considered expressions of the same essence
and used to illuminate each other in order to form a holistic image.
30 Cf. Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, 99. Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 38
alerts us to the fact that some English were unwilling to accept an all-pervasive Germanic-
Norse mystique and adhered to the idea of the superiority of the “free Anglo-Saxons.”
They used the Aryan or Indo-European myth to give the Anglo-Saxons a deeper past, but
played down their links to other Germanic peoples.
31 For a comprehensive discussion of the varieties of Romantic anti-Semitism see Wolf-
Daniel Hartwich, Romantischer Antisemitismus. Von Klopstock bis Richard Wagner
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).
32 Cf. Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth. A history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe (New
York: Basic Books, 1974); Ruth Römer, Sprachwissenschaft und Rassenideologie in
Deutschland (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1989); Olender, Languages of Paradise.
33 Cf. Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols. Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans.
Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
34 George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany. Religion and Aesthetic Culture
from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 297.
28 chapter 1

c­ onstructions, the alliances on the ‘positive’ side (i.e. assumptions about who
belongs to the ‘Germanic’ or ‘Nordic’ peoples, and is thus perceived as a fellow
campaigner) can vary, so that we are faced with shifting identifications (e.g.,
Germany and the Scandinavian countries, England and Germany, America and
England), which can change according to the current political situation.
So far, we can conclude that already the earliest (re-)constructions of a
Germanic pre-Christian religion are fraught with both methodological and
ideological problems, which often, if not always, imply cultural imperialist as
well as anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic notions. In none of these early cases, how-
ever, did the search for a national past and identity lead to genuine attempts to
renew the reconstructed Pagan religion as such. Romantic endeavors saw the
alleged Pagan ancestors as sources of aesthetic and national renewal, rather
than as serious religious competition to the established Protestant churches.

The Search for a German Religion in Fin de Siecle Germany

The first calls to ‘Germanize’ religion by rejecting central parts of Christianity,

and to orient a national religion toward an allegedly more authentic national
mythic past appear in Germany in the latter third of the 19th century. They were
motivated by a twofold lack of unity in German history: the lack of a unified
nation state up until 1871, and the lack of a unified state religion, since German
territories were traditionally split among Catholicism, Lutheranism and
Reformed United Protestantism. No individual denomination could therefore
be claimed as the faith for a Germany that was to be unified poli­tically, as was the
case with the Catholic church in post-Napoleonic France, the Anglican Church
in England, or Lutheran state Protestantism in the Scandinavian countries.
The first intellectual to publicly voice the explicit need for Germany to find
its own national religion was the Göttingen orientalist Paul de Lagarde (born
as Paul Anton Bötticher, 1827–1891). He rejected both Catholicism, because of
its internationalism, and Protestantism, which he saw as a degenerate, par-
ticularistic organization. In an era when Germany as a whole was seized by
the optimism of progress after the foundation of the new empire in 1871,
Lagarde deplored the materialism and the lack of an inward or spiritual
unity of his country. He worked actively for a religious renewal and under-
stood himself as the prophet of a national rebirth: a fundamental reshaping
of German national politics, economy, education, and finally, religion.35

35 For a brief but comprehensive overview of Lagarde’s ideas see Ina-Ulrike Paul, “Paul
Anton de Lagarde,” in Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner,
Creating the Paradigm 29

He envisioned the integrative, supra-denominational future religion as a

Chris­tianity purged of all influences that he saw as foreign to the German
people, in particular all Jewish influence, which he claimed to have found in
the teachings of Paul especially. Lagarde’s anti-Semitism was not based on a
biological notion of race but rather on the idea of a unity of religion and
nation. Nonetheless, he employed a radical rhetoric of extinction that was to
influence later German anti-Semitism, including leading National Socialists
such as Alfred Rosenberg.
Lagarde’s efforts to ‘Germanize’ Christianity were not to take effect until
later in the century, when the general optimism that prevailed during the era
of state foundation and industrialization gave way to cultural pessimist fears of
decadence. Lagarde’s ideas were taken up by Richard Wagner’s son-in-law,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who brought French race theory to
Germany, in particular Comte de Gobineau’s ideas about the expansion and
degeneration of the white race. With his two-volume racist and anti-Semitic
manifesto, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century 1899), Chamberlain became another guiding intellectual
force for the völkisch movement and National Socialism.36 The third inspira-
tional force for early 20th century revivals of an alleged Germanic religion was
Julius Langbehn (1851–1907), a dropout from bourgeois academic life who
became immensely popular with his cultural critical manifesto Rembrandt als
Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator, 1890). He championed a new reformation
toward an ‘original wholeness’ on the basis of Germanic art and philosophy.37
The idea of a Germanization of Christianity was followed up and fur-
ther popularized by the theologian and former Lutheran minister Arthur
Bonus (1864–1941). In his brochure Von Stöcker zu Naumann. Ein Wort zur
Germanisierung des Christentums (From Stöcker to Naumann. A Word about

Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht (Munich etc.: K.G. Saur, 1996). Cf. also Friedrich
Wilhelm Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Götter. Religion in der modernen Kultur (Munich: C.H.
Beck, 2004), 145.
36 Cf. Hildegard Chatellier, “Rasse und Religion bei Houston Stewart Chamberlain,” in
Völkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne. Entwürfe ‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der
Jahrhundertwende, ed. Stefanie v. Schnurbein and Justus H. Ulbricht (Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2001).
37 Cf. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology
(Berkeley, ca: University of California Press, 1961); Bernd Behrendt, “August Julius
Langbehn, der ‘Rembrandtdeutsche,’” in Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918,
ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht (Munich etc.: K.G. Saur, 1996).
Rembrandt als Erzieher reached 43 editions in its first three years.
30 chapter 1

the Germanization of Christianity, 1896)38 Bonus called for the rejuvenation of

a Christianity purged of its “Semitic” and Paulinian notions, one reconstructed
with ‘native’ Germanic elements.39 More important for our context is the fact
that he contributed to the introduction of another body of Nordic sources, the
medieval Icelandic sagas, to his contemporaries, and to the then-emerging
searchers for religious alternatives.
The sagas are a unique genre, codified mainly in Iceland in the late 12th and
13th century. Their most popular sub-genre, the family sagas or sagas of the
Icelanders, treats the activities, politics and violent feuds of the early
Scandinavian settlers in Iceland in the 10th century.40 Their realistic style ren-
ders laconic facts and dialogues but no direct information about the colorful
protagonists’ emotions or motives. Therefore, the sagas were long considered to
be reliable, orally transmitted documentation not only of the events depicted,
but also of the cultural, social, political and legal structures of pre-Christian
Iceland, and not least of its Pagan beliefs and practices. Both the Pagan content
and the validity of the sagas’ oral transmission have long been disputed.41
Nevertheless, around 1900, they seemed to Bonus and many others perfect evi-
dence of the inherently “modern”, unsentimental and heroic character of the
medieval Icelanders, as well as of contemporary Germans – again an example
of the well-established identification of the Germans with the Germanic.
Bonus was a major force behind the ambitious translation project of the
Icelandic sagas, called Sammlung Thule (Thule Collection), which promised to
provide a basis for the “Germanization of Christianity” and the “heroization
of Christ” which he stood for.42 At the same time, the now accessible saga

38 Arthur Bonus, Von Stoecker zu Naumann. Ein Wort zur Germanisierung des Christentums
(Heilbronn: Eugen Salzer, 1896).
39 Cf. Rainer Lächele, “Germanisierung des Christentums – Heroisierung Christi: Arthur
Bonus – Max Bewer – Julius Bode,” in Völkische Religion und Krisen der Moderne. Entwürfe
‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhundertwende, ed. Stefanie v. Schnurbein and
Justus H. Ulbricht (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001).
40 For an English language discussion on saga literature cf. the standard work by Carol J.
Clover, The Medieval Saga (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 1982).
41 Cf. Julia Zernack, Geschichten aus Thule. Íslendingasögur in Übersetzungen deutscher
Germanisten, vol. 3, Berliner Beiträge zur Skandinavistik (Berlin: Freie Unversität Berlin,
1994).
42 Cf. Lächele, “Germanisierung des Christentums”; Julia Zernack, “Germanische
Altertumskunde, Skandinavistik und völkische Religion,” in Völkische Religion und Krisen
der Moderne. Entwürfe ‘arteigener’ Glaubenssysteme seit der Jahrhundertwende, ed.
Stefanie v. Schnurbein and Justus H. Ulbricht (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,
2001).
Creating the Paradigm 31

l­iterature and the views which Bonus and other leading academics harbored
about its pre-Christian context became relevant sources for the emerging
Germanic Pagan groups.
It was no coincidence that the saga translations as well as the translations of
Eddic literature in the Sammlung Thule were published in Eugen Diederichs’
publishing house. Inspired by, among others, Langbehn and Lagarde (whose
work he published and popularized), Diederichs campaigned for a “new myth
born from religious forces;”43 a second Reformation and Renaissance. His neo-
Romantic editing program featured a syncretistic blend of works by the most
diverse religious and cultural reformers, as long as they promised a contri­
bution to a spiritual renewal, the regaining of a German cultural identity:
Christian as well as völkisch Neopagan, anti-Semitic as well as Jewish, socialist
as well as fascist.44
With this program, Diederichs’ publishing company became the “most
significant platform for the new-religious movement” of Wilhelminian
­
­Ger­many,45 an institutional center for a number of alternative movements that
established themselves in Germany (and partly other European countries)
around 1900 and in turn formed the fertile ground in which the first Germanic
Neopagan groups would take root. The most important of these were the

43 “einen neuen Mythos, geboren aus religiösen Kräften.” Quoted in Justus H. Ulbricht,
“Wider das ‘Katzenjammergefühl der Enwurzelung.’ Intellektuellen-Religion im Eugen
Diederichs Verlag,” Buchhandelsgeschichte 76 (1996), B 112.
44 It should be noted that Diederichs never narrowed his nationalist and cultural critical
impulse to a national chauvinist attitude, not even in the heated atmosphere of World
War i. See “‘Meine Seele sehnt sich nach Sichtbarkeit deutschen Wesens.’ Weltanschauung
und Verlagsprogramm von Eugen Diederichs im Spannungsfeld zwischen Neuromantik
und ‘Konservativer Revolution,’” in Versammlungsort moderner Geister. Der Eugen
Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. Gangolf Hübinger (Munich:
Diederichs, 1996), 337. For Diederichs, his publishing house and his journal Die Tat (The
Action) see also Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, “Das Laboratorium der Moderne. Zur
‘Verlagsreligion’ des Eugen Diederichs Verlags,” in Versammlungsort moderner Geister. Der
Eugen Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. Gangolf Hübinger
(Munich: Diederichs, 1996); Edith Hanke and Gangolf Hübinger, “Von der ‘Tat’-Gemeinde
zum ‘Tat’-Kreis. Die Entwicklung einer Kulturzeitschrift,” in Versammlungsort moderner
Geister. Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. Gangolf
Hübinger (Munich: Diederichs, 1996); Meike G. Werner, “Die Erneuerung des Lebens
durch ästhetische Praxis. Lebensreform, Jugend und Festkultur im Eugen Diederichs
Verlag,” in Versammlungsort moderner Geister. Der Eugen Diederichs Verlag – Aufbruch ins
Jahrhundert der Extreme, ed. Gangolf Hübinger (Munich: Diederichs, 1996).
45 “die bedeutendste Plattform für die neureligiöse Bewegung des Wilhelminismus.” Quoted
in Ulbricht, “Wider das ‘Katzenjammergefühl der Enwurzelung,’” B 113.
32 chapter 1

densely interwoven youth movement, life reform movement, contemporary

occultism, and völkisch movement.
The German youth movement emerged from a number of independent
small circles, associations and journals, amongst them the famous Wandervogel,
founded in 1901. It gathered hiking groups run by high-school students and
reform-oriented teachers. For these groups, ‘youth’ represented a more authen-
tic state of being, which was set against the stifled, materialistic bourgeois cul-
ture of their fathers, and could be accessed through outdoor activities and
allegedly authentic, natural cultural activities such as folksong and dance.46
The youth movement never developed original political or religious ideas and
was open to impulses from various directions. It took up influences from
the völkisch movement from the beginning, and many of the hiking Bünde
(­associations) were closely intertwined with völkisch religious organizations,
especially those of the non-Christian kind.47
Equally important impulses came from the life reform movement, which
shared central goals with the youth movement such as an emphatic focus on
‘authenticity,’ ‘purity,’ ‘beauty,’ ‘naturalness’ and ‘health.’ United by such general
ideals, and by a bourgeois anti-capitalism critical of blind industrial progress
and urbanization gone awry, the life reform movement presented as a hetero-
geneous network of more or less loosely structured associations, circles, jour-
nals, businesses, publishers and individuals. Fears of degeneration were
countered with an array of reform efforts regarding body and soul, concepts of
nature, and various life practices.48 Among its branches were movements for

46 Cf. Frank Trommler, “Mission ohne Ziel. Über den Kult der Jugend im modernen
Deutschland,” in ‘Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit.’ Der Mythos Jugend, ed. Thomas Koebner,
Rolf-Peter Janz, and Frank Trommler (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985); Winfried Mogge,
“Wandervogel, Freideutsche Jugend und Bünde. Zum Jugendbild der bürgerlichen
Jugendbewegung,” in ‘Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit.’ Der Mythos Jugend, ed. Thomas Koebner,
Rolf-Peter Janz, and Frank Trommler (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985). See also Uwe
Puschner, “Völkische Bewegung und Jugendbewegung,” in Ideengeschichte als politische
Aufklärung. Festschrift für Wolfgang Wippermann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Stefan Vogt,
et al. (Berlin: Metropol, 2010).
47 Winfried Mogge, “‘Wir lieben Balder, den Lichten…’ Völkisch-religiöse Jugendbünde vom
Wilhelminischen Reich zum ‘Dritten Reich,’” in Die völkisch-religiöse Bewegung im
Nationalsozialismus. Eine Beziehungs- und Konfliktgeschichte, ed. Uwe Puschner and
Clemens Vollnhals (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).
48 Cf. Klaus Wolbert, “Die Lebensreform – Anträge zur Debatte,” in Die Lebensreform.
Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900, ed. Kai Buchholz, et al.
(Darmstadt: haeusser, 2001), Diethart Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke, Handbuch der deutschen
Reformbewegungen 1880–1933 (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag, 1998).
Creating the Paradigm 33

the protection of nature and landscape; garden settlements; the renewal of

architecture and crafts;49 alternative agriculture; naturopathy and alternative
medicine; reform of education, art, music, dance, clothing and nutrition; anti-
alcoholism; nudism; social and racial hygiene; and sexual reform. As practical
as individual undertakings within the movement were, some of them can be
read as interventions into religious discourse as well, since all of these con-
cepts of nature, the body, and health took on a spiritual or transcendental
quality. In our context, it is important to note that the North became the loca-
tion of such desired qualities as light, naturalness, youth and beauty – a fact
that linked the life reform movement with equivalent movements in the
Scandinavian countries, and allowed the inclusion of racial ideologies of
whiteness.50 Nevertheless, the life reform movement, as with most of the alter-
native movements discussed in this book, was not politically unified, rather it
“connected modernity and counter-modernity, enthusiasm for progress and
reaction, a rational world-view and irrational eccentricity.”51
Religious or spiritual ideas within the life reform movement were based on
several contemporary intellectual and popular currents that also became rele-
vant for völkisch religion. Modern worldly conceptions of religiosity were based
on 19th century theological anticlerical philosophies, historical-critical bible
studies, and historical Jesus studies originating in David Friedrich Strauß’ and
Ernest Renan’s ideas of Jesus as both a human and merely an example of an
eternal divine essence of humanity.52 Another strand of influence was contem-
porary Darwinism, especially in the form of Monism, which the zoologist and
physician Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) promoted in the popular science founda-
tion Monistenbund (Monist League, founded 1906).53 Vitalist philosophers
such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard von Hartmann
and Ludwig Klages emphasized the irrational and its rejection of intellectual-
ism and mechanism, thus providing many contemporaries with immanent,

49 This is an equivalent of the English arts and crafts movement, with which it shared
motives and was connected to on many levels.
50 A spiritualization of race was particularly prominent in German nudism, which was
dominated by a spirituality of the sun, light, and whiteness and quickly moved into a cult
of the healthy, light Aryan body. Cf. Ulrich Linse, “Nordisches in der deutschen
Lebensreformbewegung,” in Wahlverwandtschaft. Skandinavien und Deutschland 1800–
1914, ed. Bernd Henningsen, et al. (Berlin: Jovis, 1997).
51 Wolbert, “Die Lebensreform – Anträge zur Debatte,” 17: “vernetzt die Moderne mit der
Gegenmoderne, die Fortschrittsbegeisterung mit der Reaktion, die rationale Weltsicht
mit irrationaler Verstiegenheit.”
52 Cf. Arvidsson, Aryan Idols, 92–96.
53 For Haeckel see Chapter 6.
34 chapter 1

activist concepts of religion as well. Vitalism was frequently combined with

racial theories attributing ‘Aryans’ or Germanic peoples a specific propensity
for this kind of activist spirituality.
Whereas Ernst Haeckel’s scientific concepts played a certain role for racial
theories of an immanent religion, a spiritual version of such racial teachings
was developed in several varieties of contemporary Western occultism, as in
Theodor Reuss’ Ordo Templi Orientis (o.t.o.), Aleister Crowley’s Order of the
Golden Dawn,54 and particularly in the international theosophical move-
ment.55 As a whole, theosophy, as well as the manifold secret orders and lodges
by which it was inspired and which it in turn inspired, oscillated between two
poles: a liberal faction, which emphasized the unity of mankind and the hope
for a New Age in which love and beauty would rule; and a racist, nationalist
faction that gained more and more influence throughout the early 20th cen-
tury, and held strong connections with the European anti-Semitic movement.56
A German branch of the Theosophical Society (founded in New York in 1875,
and later relocated to India) took hold around 1900 within the life reform
movement, with which it shared its ambivalent political and ideological posi-
tion. It attracted liberals and progressive bohemians at the alternative spiritual
center at Monte Verità near Ascona, but also individuals with conservative and
völkisch leanings and Wagnerians.57

54 For an overview over occult orders and secret societies in the era see Stuckrad, Western
Esotericism, 113–121. For a discussion of Crowley’s significance for modern Paganism in
general cf. Henrik Bogdan, “The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Gerald Gardner and the
Early Witchcraft Movement,” in Handbook of Contemporary Neopaganism, ed. James R.
Lewis and Murphy Pizza (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009).
55 Modern theosophy originated within the context of American spiritualism in the last
half of the 19th century. It was mainly based on the writings of Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831–1891), a Russian-born adventuress who spent parts of her life in India,
where she claimed to have had medial contact with spiritual masters who conveyed
their ancient teachings to her. Combining traditional occultist elements with popular-
ized Hinduism, Buddhism, and Darwinian evolutionary theory, Blavatsky depicted
world history as a continual spiritual progress towards ever-higher spiritual spheres. See
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Helena Blavatsky (Berkeley, ca: North Atlantic Books, 2004),
for a brief summary and for more literature on theosophy see Stuckrad, Western
Esotericism, 123–132. Claiming that all religion was based on a common esoteric essence,
which she ‘revealed’ in her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), she
imagined an intricate system of so-called “root races” and “sub races” with the “Aryans”
at the very top of the scale.
56 Cf. James Webb, The Occult Establishment (La Salle, il: Open Court, 1976), 213–222.
57 Cf. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism. The Ariosophists of Austria and
Germany 1890–1935 (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Aquarian Press, 1985), 22–27.
Creating the Paradigm 35

Within this complex conglomerate of alternative spirituality, one person

stands out who was to influence later Neopaganism to a significant extent: Carl
Gustav Jung, the student and collaborator of Sigmund Freud. Jung turned the
focus of depth psychology from early childhood sexual trauma and fantasy to
a theory of the collective unconscious, in which myths and tales were seen as
foundational for the development of the human psyche. What is less well
known today is the fact that he based his reflections about the collective
unconscious and its archetypes on theories of land and nationhood, which he
saw as foundational for psychological as well as cultural forms. He thus
assigned a mythic substructure to not only individual, but also national and
racial psychologies. He proclaimed a clear distinction between the ‘Aryan’ and
the Jewish psyche. Germans and Jews thus became complementary ‘nations’
with complementary psychic and mythic structures.58
In their complex structures and often contradictory ideologies, the life
reform and occultist movements resembled another integrative network of the
era, the völkisch movement, with which they overlapped significantly. The
völkisch movement was characterized by an equally confusing organizational
structure, an extra-parliamentarian conglomerate of small associations, c­ ircles,
journals, etc. Its ideology was far from unified, as it contained contradictory ele-
ments of anti-modernism and modernism, nationalism and pan-Germanicism,

Rudolf Steiner, a former chair of the German Theosophical Society, went on to develop his
own version of theosophical thought, anthroposophy. Anthroposophy shifted the empha-
sis from Eastern to Gnostic-Christian spirituality and was to bring forth a number of alter-
native reform efforts, the most internationally well-known being biodynamic agriculture
and Steiner schools. For a comprehensive recent biography of Steiner see Helmut Zander,
Rudolf Steiner. Die Biographie (Munich: Piper, 2011).
58 For discussions of Jung’s attitude towards Jews and anti-Semitism see Aryeh Maidenbaum
and Stephen A. Martin, eds., Lingering Shadows. Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism
(Boston/London: Shambala, 1991); for his role as a “psychologist who lent his authority to
nationalism, thereby legitimizing ideas of innate psychological differences between
nations” see Andrew Samuels, “National Socialism, National Psychology, and Analytical
Psychology,” in Lingering Shadows. Jungians, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism, ed. Aryeh
Maidenbaum and Stephen A. Martin (Boston/London: Shambala, 1991), 188. In his contro-
versial book, The Jung Cult, Richard Noll, The Jung Cult. Origins of a Charismatic Movement
(New York etc.: Free Press Paperbacks, 1994) uncovered the connections between Jung
and Jungianism with the völkisch movement and völkisch ideology. Jung’s “post-Holocaust
assault on the God of the Jewish people” (Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion after Religion.
Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, nj: Princeton
University Press, 1999), 177) was criticized by Martin Buber as a testimony of gnostic anti-
Semitism (ibid). See also Chapter 5.
36 chapter 1

spirituality and scientism.59 Based on an outspoken anti-Semitic and racist

ideology, the völkisch movement promoted an extensive renewal or rebirth of
the German people, which was to counteract the widespread fear of a ‘racial,’
‘cultural’ and not least ‘spiritual’ ‘degeneration.’ This program of renewal was
based on the German ideology discussed above, which conceived of a true Volk
as a holistic, self-referential, pure, and natural organism. Ideally it was to be
structured in an ‘organic’ feudal, medieval social order, which was antitheti-
cally set against the alleged individualism, rationalism and liberalism of
Mediterranean civilization and modernity.60 (Neo-)Romantic ideals thus reap-
pear in völkisch ideology in a radicalized and especially racialized form. The
desired national and cultural renewal is founded on a program of often violent
racial purification and rebirth. Völkisch protagonists objected strongly to their
ideology being reduced to an exclusively anti-Semitic, pessimistic racial ideol-
ogy that focused on resistance against negative cultural forces (which they
certainly saw in Jewish and ‘degenerate racial elements’). Their commitment
to ‘positive’ goals, and to a cultural, mental and spiritual renewal of the German
people led to the promotion of a new, positive spirituality. Thus, as Uwe
Puschner has aptly remarked, religion became the “archimedic point” of
völkisch ideology.61
Its promotion of a holistic or totalitarian cultural renewal and its peculiar
mixture of anti-modernist and modernist elements link the völkisch move-
ment to a larger ultra-conservative current in Germany in the early 20th
­century: the Conservative Revolution. The term was coined by Armin Mohler,
the most prominent post-war apologist of this heterogenous extreme right-
wing movement, in an attempt to distinguish it from National Socialism proper,
which many of its adherents regarded with a mixture of fascination and skep-
ticism.62 Although it has been considered contentious due to the mythic and

59 See Uwe Puschner, Die Völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Sprache –

Rasse – Religion (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001) for a comprehen-
sive investigation of the völkisch movement and ideology prior to ww i. An English
summary of his findings can be found in “‘One People, One God, One Reich.’ The ‘Völkisch
Weltanschauung’ and Movement,” German Historical Institute London Bulletin 24, no. 1
(2002).
60 Cf. Die Völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland, 92f.
61 “Deutschchristentum. Eine völkisch-christliche Weltanschauungsreligion,” in Der
Protestantismus – Ideologie, Konfession oder Kultur?, ed. Richard Faber and Gesine Palmer
(Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2003), 96.
62 Mohler’s seminal work on the Conservative Revolution, albeit apologetically tainted, has
appeared in several editions since 1950. See for example Armin Mohler, Die konservative
Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932. Grundriss ihrer Weltanschauungen (Stuttgart: Vorwerk,
Creating the Paradigm 37

idealizing quality Mohler’s use gave it,63 the term has become established. It is
useful for our purposes because it captures a central moment that is also con-
stitutive for the völkisch religious currents discussed here. While conservatism
is traditionally understood as a political movement which aims at preserving
existing political, social and cultural structures, Conservative Revolutionaries
are convinced that modernization has already proceeded too far, and that
there is little or nothing left that is worth preserving. They conclude that what
is to be preserved (a new holistic state structure, a new organic culture, and a
new man) has first to be created or restored in a violent revolutionary effort
which is to destroy the existing structures. These “politics of cultural despair”64
are not exclusively retrogressive or anti-modern, but combine a rejection of an
allegedly ‘degenerate’ modernity with modernist elements in shifting combi-
nations, which lend them their peculiar dynamic – a dynamic which, as we
shall see in the following chapters, characterizes large parts of Germanic
Neopaganism and its attempts at religious reform and re-creation as well.

German(ic) Faith and Ariosophy in the Early Twentieth Century65

In the first decades of the 20th century, a number of Germanophile religious

and spiritual associations began to grow out of the contradictory amalgama-
tion of turn-of-the-century ideas and ideologies of spiritual, national, and
racial renewal. Early groups such as the Deutschbund (German Union, founded
in 1894) and Deutschreligiöser Bund (German Religious Union, 1903) promoted
a German Christianity. Here journals played a key role in not only spreading
German religious ideas but also in establishing groups: for example, the
Deutsche Erneuerungsgemeinde (German Congregation of Renewal) grew out
of the anti-Semite Theodor Fritsch’s journal Hammer (first published in 1902),66

1950); Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932. Ein Handbuch, 6. revised and
expanded ed. (Graz: Ares, 2005). Historian Stefan Breuer has suggested limiting it to a
much smaller faction of interwar right-wing intellectuals. Cf. Stefan Breuer, Anatomie der
konservativen Revolution (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993).
63 Cf. “Die ‘Konservative Revolution’ – Kritik eines Mythos,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 31,
no. 4 (1990).
64 Stern, The politics of cultural despair.
65 This sub-chapter follows my brief outline of Germanic Faith groups found in Schnurbein,
“Die Suche nach einer ‘arteigenen’ Religion in ‘germanisch’- und ‘deutschgläubigen’
Gruppen.”
66 Michael Bönisch, “Die ‘Hammer’-Bewegung,” in Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’
1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht (Munich etc.: K.G.
38 chapter 1

and a reading circle formed around Der Volkserzieher (The People’s Educator).
The latter was an influential journal, begun in 1897 by the teacher and journal-
ist Wilhelm Schwaner, which focused on reforms in education, culture and
religion (mainly in a German Christian sense).67
A number of programmatic publications in the first decade of the 20th cen-
tury suggested thinking beyond Christianity altogether, paving the way for the
establishment of Germanic Neopagan groups after 1910. The first public initia-
tive was taken in 1900 by Ernst Wachler (1871–1945), a Germanist and promoter
of the open air theater movement,68 in a booklet titled “Über die Zukunft des
deutschen Glaubens”69 (On the future of German faith) – “the prototype of all
later ‘neopagan’ prophecies.”70 Following Lagarde in his scathing rejection of
the Jewish roots of Christianity and “the epileptic fanatic” Paul, Wachler asks:
“Who knows if our natural belief, our world-view will not return? Has returned
and lives amongst us.”71
“Are you, German soul, not rich enough to build yourself a shrine out of
your innermost being?”72 – With this question, the painter, art professor and

Saur, 1996), 358. The co-founder of Deutsche Erneuerungsgemeinde (founded in 1904) was
the promoter of an Aryan “racial breeding” Willibald Hentschel.
67 Justus H. Ulbricht, “Völkische Erwachsenenbildung. Intentionen, Programme und
Institutionen zwischen Jahrhundertwende und Weimarer Republik,” in Handbuch zur
‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht
(Munich etc.: K.G. Saur, 1996), 257–262, discusses Schwaner’s significance for völkisch
­educational programs. See also Christoph Carstensen, Der Volkserzieher. Eine historisch-
kritische Untersuchung über die Volkserzieherbewegung Wilhelm Schwaners, Diss. Jena
1939 (Würzburg-Aumühle: Konrad Triltsch, 1941) and Alfred Ehrentreich, “Wilhelm
Schwaner (1863–1944) und die Volkserzieherbewegung,” Jahrbuch des Archivs der deutschen
Jugendbewegung 7 (1975).
68 The significance of Wachler and his theater reform for Germanic Neopaganism is dis-
cussed in Chapter 9.
69 Ernst Wachler, “Über die Zukunft des deutschen Glaubens,” Irminsul. Schriftenreihe für
Junggermanische (eddische) Religion und Weltanschauung 44 (1930 [1900]).
70 Puschner, Die Völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Deutschland, 226. This fact has been
largely obscured by later protagonists of the movement, who tried to downplay Wachler’s
significance as a key figure for the early Germanic religious movement after 1913 because
of his partial Jewish descent (cf. ibid., 233).
71 Wachler, “Über die Zukunft des deutschen Glaubens,” 13. “Wer weiß, ob nicht unser
Naturglaube, unsere Weltanschauung wiederkehren wird? Wiedergekehrt ist und unter
uns lebt?” [Emphasis in original].
72 Der Volkserzieher 6 (1907), 42f: “Bist du, deutsche Seele nicht reich genug, dir aus
Ureigenstem ein Heiligtum zu bauen?”.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
decorated his capital in the hope that it might become a
formidable rival to those great Egyptian cities which he
had taken and occupied.[358] All the other rock-cut
temples were the work of Rameses II.; they are, as we
ascend the Nile, Beit-el-Wali, near Kalabcheh (Figs. 236
and 237); Gherf-Hossein, or Gircheh, Wadi-Seboua,
Dayr, and Ipsamboul.

Fig. 236.—Plan of speos

at Beit-el-Wali;
from Prisse.

Fig. 237.—Longitudinal section of the speos at Beit-el-Wali;

from Prisse.

We may give Gherf-Hossein as a good example of the hemispeos

(Figs. 238 and 239). It was approached from the river by a broad
flight of steps, decorated with statues and sphinxes, of which but a
few fragments now remain. A pylon gave access to a rectangular
court, on the right and left sides of which stood five piers faced with
colossal statues of Rameses II. These statues were about twenty-six
feet high. Next, and at a slightly higher level, came a hypostyle hall;
its roof was supported by twelve square piers, those forming the
central avenue being of caryatid form and higher than the others. The
subterranean part of the temple begins with a passage cut in the rock
on the further side of this hall. This passage leads to a long transverse
vestibule, from which open two lateral chambers, and three from its
further side. The furthest chamber on the major axis of the whole
building was the sanctuary. This is proved by its position, its shape,
and the niche which is cut in its further wall. Four deities are
sculptured in this niche, and in spite of the ill-usage to which they
have been subjected, one of them can still be identified as Ptah, the
chief god of the temple.[359]
 Fig. 238.—Plan of the hemispeos of Gherf-Hossein; from
Prisse.

We find almost the same arrangements in the hemispeos of Wadi-

Asseboua.[360] That of Derri (Figs. 240 and 241) is more simple. There
are neither dromos nor pylon, properly speaking, and only four
caryatid pillars; but there is an open court with a hypostyle hall and a
sanctuary cut in the rock. At the back of the sanctuary there is a stone
bench upon which three statues were seated.

Fig. 239.—Gherf-Hossein, longitudinal section; from Prisse.

The two temples of Ipsamboul are so well known and have been so
often illustrated and described, that they need not detain us long. The
chief thing to be noticed here is that they are without any external and
constructed part, and that from their position, high above the river
and close to it, it was impossible that they could have any dromos;
and yet between the doorway of the speos and the river bank there
were steps which are now either worn away by the action of the
floods or hidden by the débris from the cliffs. The façades of these
temples were, however, as richly decorated and as monumental in
their way as those of the most sumptuous buildings in Thebes.
 Fig. 240.—Plan of the hemispeos of Derri; from Horeau.
Fig. 241.—Longitudinal section, Derri; from Horeau.

The prototype of these façades is the Theban pylon. They have the
same trapeziform surfaces covered with figures and inscriptions,
circumscribed by a moulding and crowned by a cornice in bold relief;
they are inclined from the perpendicular, and they afford a background
to the statues of the king who caused them to be made. The chief
difference is in the situation of these statues. In the case of a built
temple they are monoliths, brought from a distance and erected in
front of the pylon. But space was wanting for such an arrangement at
Ipsamboul; besides which it was better, for many reasons, that the
whole edifice should be homogeneous, and that the statues should be
carved in the rock from which its chambers were to be cut. The way to
do this was obvious. The colossi had but to recede a pace or two so as
to be incorporated in the substance of the pylon itself.
At Ipsamboul there are, as we have seen, two temples close to one
another. Their façades, though conceived in the same spirit, executed
by the same processes, and having a good deal in common in their
design, are yet by no means similar. That of the temple of Hathor,
generally called the Smaller Temple, is on a smaller scale than the
Great Temple, but perhaps its design is the happier and more skilful of
the two. The front is 90 feet wide and nearly 40 high. It is ornamented
by six colossal upright statues, four of them Rameses himself, the
other two his wife Nefert-Ari. These statues, which are about 34 feet
high, are separated one from another by eight buttresses, two of them
acting as jambs for the door, above which they unite and become a
wide band of flat carving marking the centre of the façade. The gentle
salience of these buttresses forms a framework for the statues (see
Fig. 242), which are chiselled with great care and skill in the fine
yellow sandstone of which the mountain consists.
The façade of the Great Temple is much larger. It is about 130 feet
wide by 92 high. It is not divided by buttresses like the other, but it
has a bold cornice made up of twenty-two cynocephalic figures seated
with their hands upon their knees. Each of these animals is sculptured
in the round, and is only connected with the face of the rock by a
small part of its posterior surface. They are not less than seven feet
high. A frieze, consisting of a dedicatory inscription carved in deep and
firmly drawn hieroglyphs runs below the cornice. Above the doorway a
colossal figure of Ra is carved in the rock, and on each side of him
Rameses is depicted in low relief, in the act of adoration. This group
occupies the middle of the façade. But the most striking feature of the
building is supplied by the four colossi of Rameses placed two and two
on either side of the door. They are the largest in Egypt. From the sole
of the feet to the apex of the pschent which the king bears on his
head, they are about sixty-five feet in height. Rameses is seated, his
hands upon his thighs, in the pose ordinarily made use of for the royal
statues at the entrances of the temples. In spite of these enormous
dimensions the workmanship is very fine. The countenance, especially,
is remarkable for its combination of force and sweetness, an
expression which has been noticed by all the travellers who have
written upon Ipsamboul.
 Fig. 242.—Façade of the smaller temple at Ipsamboul.

Fig. 243.—Plan of the smaller temple.

Fig. 244.—Perspective of the principal chamber in the smaller
temple;
from Horeau.
 Fig. 245.—Longitudinal section of the smaller temple; from
Horeau.
Fig. 246.—Plan of the Great Temple.

The interiors of the two temples are still more different than the
exteriors, and, in this instance, the variations are entirely in favour of
the greater monument. The total depth of the smaller edifice is about
ninety feet. A single hall, supported by six square Hathor-headed
pillars, precedes the sanctuary. The latter is nothing but a narrow
gallery, in the middle of which a small chamber or niche is cut, in
which the rock-carved cow of Hathor may be seen with a statue
between its legs. The other temple is a great deal larger. Its total
length is about 180 feet. The first hall is 60 feet long and 53 wide; the
roof is supported by eight pillars, against each of which a colossal
figure 33 feet high is placed. A doorway in the middle of the further
side leads to a second chamber not quite so large as the first, and
supported by four thick square pillars. Three openings in its furthest
side lead to a third chamber, as wide as the second, but only 10 feet
deep. Through this the innermost parts of the speos are reached; they
consist of three small chambers, those on the left and right being very
small indeed, while that in the centre, the adytum, is about 13 feet by
23. In the middle of this chamber was an altar, or table for offerings;
at the back of it a bench with four seated statues. The walls of both
temples are covered with pictures like those of Luxor, Karnak, and the
Ramesseum. They represent the battles and triumphs of Rameses,
and the king seated upon the laps of goddesses, who act as the
tenderest of nurses.
 Fig. 247.—Perspective of the principal hall in the Great
Temple;
from Horeau.

Besides the halls which form the main body of the temple, the plan
shows eight lateral chambers, some perpendicular to the major axis of
the building, others falling upon it obliquely. Several of these do not
seem to have been finished. There are indications that they were
utilized as depositories for the objects worshipped in the temple.
 Fig. 248.—Façade of the Great Temple at Ipsamboul.

We have now briefly noticed the principal rock-cut temples in Egypt

and Nubia. Neither in plan nor in decoration do they materially differ
from the temples of wrought masonry. The elements of the building
are the same, and they are arranged in the same order—an avenue of
sphinxes when there is room for it, colossi before the entrance, a
colonnaded court, a hypostyle hall acting as a pronaos, a naos with its
secos, or sanctuary; but sometimes one, sometimes many of these
divisions are excavated in the living rock. Sometimes only the
sanctuary is subterranean, sometimes the hypostyle hall is included,
and at Ipsamboul the whole temple is in the mountain, from the secos
to those colossal statues which generally form the preface to the pylon
of the constructed temple.
 Fig. 249.—Longitudinal section of the Great Temple; from
Horeau.

Except in the case of the peristylar court, the interior of the rock-cut
temple did not differ so much in appearance from that of the
constructed edifice as might at first be imagined. We have already
explained how scantily lighted was the interior of the Egyptian temple;
its innermost chambers were plunged in almost complete darkness, so
that the absolute night which was involved in their being excavated in
the heart of a mountain was no very great change from the obscurity
caused by the thick walls and heavy roofs of the edifices in the plain.
In the case of a hemi-speos the internal effect must have been almost
identical with that of any other religious building. In the great temple
of Ipsamboul the daylight does not penetrate beyond the second hall;
from that point onwards artificial light is necessary to distinguish
objects, but the Egyptians were so thoroughly accustomed to a
mysterious solemnity of shadow, to a "dim religious light," in their
temples, that the darkness of the speos would seem no drawback in
their eyes.

The column occurs very seldom in these subterranean temples.[361]

Even those chambers which correspond to the hypostyle hall by their
places in the excavation and the general characteristics of their form,
are hardly ever supported by anything but the rectangular piers in use
in the early ages of the monarchy; but these piers are often clothed
with an elaborate decoration which is unknown in the works of the
primitive architects. This preference for the pier is easily to be
explained by the necessity for having supports of sufficient strength
and solidity to bear the weight of the superincumbent mountain.
Another and more constant peculiarity of the underground temples, is
the existence in them of one or more seated statues carved from
masses of rock expressly left in the furthest recesses of the
excavation. These statues, which represent the presiding deity of the
place and his acolytes, do not occur in the constructed temples. In the
latter the tabernacle which stood in the secos was too small to hold
anything larger than a statuette or emblem. We think that the cause
of this difference may be guessed. At the time these rock temples
were cut, the Pharaohs to whom they owed their existence no doubt
assigned a priest or priests to each. But their position, sometimes in
desert solitudes, as in the case of the Speos Artemidos, sometimes in
places only inhabited for an intermittent period, in the quarries at
Silsilis for instance, or in provinces which had been conquered by
Egypt and might be lost to her again, rendered it impossible that they
could be served and guarded in the ample fashion which was easy
enough in the temples of Memphis, Abydos and Thebes. All these
considerations suggested that, instead of a shrine containing some
small figure or emblem, statues of a considerable size, from six to
eight or ten feet high, should be employed, and that they should be
actually chiselled in the living rock itself and left attached to it by the
whole of their posterior surfaces. By their size and by their
incorporation with the rock out of which both they and their
surroundings were cut, such statues would defend themselves
efficiently against all attempts on the part of enemies. In spite of their
age several of these statues came down to us in a sufficiently good
state of preservation to allow Champollion and his predecessors to
recognize with certainty the divine personages whom they
represented. During the last fifty years they have suffered as much at
the hands of ignorant and stupid tourists as they did in the whole of
the many centuries during which they were exposed to all the
vicissitudes of Egyptian history.[362]
Fig. 250.—Dayr-el-Bahari; according to M. Brune.
Our study of the Egyptian temple would not be complete without a
few words upon the buildings called Dayr-el-Bahari.[363] By their
extent, their picturesqueness, and the peculiar nature of their
situation, these ruins have always had a great effect upon foreign
visitors. Those who know Thebes will, perhaps, be surprised at our
having said so little about them hitherto, especially as they are older
than most of the buildings over which we have been occupied. We
have not yet described them because they do not belong to any of the
categories which we have been treating; they form a class by
themselves; their general arrangement has no parallel in Egypt, and
therefore we have reserved them to the last.
The building in question is situated at the foot of the Libyan chain, in a
deep amphitheatre hollowed out by nature in the yellow limestone
rocks which rise on the north-west of the necropolis. On two sides, on
the right and at the back, it rests against perpendicular walls of rock
cut by the pickaxe and dominating over the built part of the temple.
On the left this natural wall is absent and is replaced by an inclosure
of bricks (Figs. 250 and 251).
Under such conditions we need feel no surprise at finding part of the
temple subterranean. In backing his work against the mountains in
this fashion the architect must have been partly impelled by a desire
to make use of the facilities which it afforded. The mausoleum of
Hatasu, unlike the other funerary chapels at Thebes, is, then, a triple
hemispeos. At a point immediately opposite to the door in the external
pylon, but at the other extremity of the building, a chamber about
sixty-five feet deep was excavated in the rock. This must have acted
the part of a sanctuary. Right and left of it, and at a shorter distance
from the entrance, there are two more groups of rock-cut apartments.
The whole arrangement may be compared to the system of three
apsidal chapels which is so common at the east end of European
cathedrals.
In approaching this temple from the river bank, a dromos of sphinxes
had to be traversed of which very scanty traces are now to be found,
but in the time of the Institut d'Égypte there were still two hundred of
them to be distinguished, a few of the last being shown in the
restoration figured upon the opposite page (Fig. 251). At the end of
the dromos, upon the spot where a few traces of the bounding walls
still remain, we have placed a pylon with a couple of obelisks in front
of it. We have done so not only because nearly all the important
temples had such a preface, but also because Sir Gardner Wilkinson
says that he saw the foundations of two obelisks and of a doorway.
After passing the pylon, a first courtyard was entered, which
communicated with a second by an inclined plane stretching almost
across its width.[364] Here the arrangements which constituted the
real originality of Dayr-el-Bahari began. The whole interior of the
temple, between the pylon and the commencement of the speos,
consisted of four courtyards, rising in terraces one above another like
the steps of a gigantic staircase. The walls upon which these inclined
planes and terraces were constructed are still to be traced in places.
In order to furnish the vast courts, we have supposed them to contain
seated statues at regular intervals along the inner faces of their walls;
in such matters of decorative detail a little conjecture may perhaps be
allowed.[365] As for the portico which ornamented the further side of
the second court, its remains were visible even before the excavations
of Mariette.[366]
Fig. 251.—Restoration in perspective of Dayr-el-Bahari, by Ch.
Chipiez.
Those excavations have since 1858 led to the discovery of the porticos
of the third court. There seems to have been only a plain wall on the
left of this court, while on the right there was a long colonnade which
masked a number of chambers cut in the rock which rose immediately
behind it. Facing the entrance to the court there was also a colonnade
which was cut in two by the steps leading to the fourth and highest
terrace. In the middle of this terrace a line doorway leading to the
principal speos was raised. While all the rest of the temple was of
limestone, this doorway was built of fine red granite, a distinction
which is to be explained by its central situation, facing the gateway in
the pylon though far above it, and forming the culminating point of
the long succession of terraces and inclined planes. The attention of
the visitor to the temple would be instantly seized by the beauty and
commanding position of this doorway, which, moreover, by its broad
and mysterious shadows, suggested the secos hidden in the flanks of
the mountains, to which all the courts were but the prelude.
These terraced courts have surprised all visitors to the cenotaph of
Hatasu. "No one will deny," says Mariette, "that the temple of Dayr-el-
Bahari is a strange construction, and that it resembles an Egyptian
temple as little as possible!"[367] Some have thought foreign influence
was to be traced in its arrangements. "Are we to consider it an
accident, asks Ebers, that the stepped building at Dayr-el-Bahari was
built shortly after an Egyptian army had, under Thothmes, trodden the
soil of Mesopotamia for the first time, and found monumental
buildings constructed in terraces in its great cities? Why did the
Egyptians, who as a rule were so fond of repeating themselves that
they became almost incapable of inventing new forms, never imitate
the arrangements of this imposing building elsewhere, unless it was
because its forms reminded them of their foreign enemies and
therefore seemed to be worthy of condemnation?"[368]
We are content with asking the question and with calling attention to
its interest. The materials are wanting for a definite answer but the
suggestion of Professor Ebers is probable enough. Twelve or thirteen
centuries later the Persians, after their conquest of Egypt, carried back
with them the notion of those hypostyle halls which gave to the
buildings of Persepolis so different an aspect from those of Assyria,
although the decorative details were all borrowed from the latter
country. So too the Egyptians, in spite of the pride which they felt in
their ancient civilization, may have been unable to control their
admiration when they found themselves, in the wide plains of Persia,
before those lofty towers with their successive terraces, to which
access was obtained by majestic flights of steps. It seems by no
means unlikely that one of their architects should have attempted to
acclimatize an artistic conception which was so well calculated to
impress the imaginations of the people; and none of the sovereigns of
Egypt was better fitted to preside over such an attempt than the high
spirited and enterprising Hatasu, the queen who reared two obelisks in
the temple of Karnak, one of them being the highest that has
remained erect; who made the first recorded attempt at
acclimatization;[369] and who was the first to launch a fleet upon the
waters of the Red Sea.
Whether Hatasu's architect was inspired by those artistic creations of
the Chaldees which, as time went on, were multiplied over the whole
basin of the Euphrates and even spread as far as northern Syria, or
whether he drew his ideas entirely from his own brain, his work was,
in either case, deserving of high praise. In most parts of the Nile
Valley sites are to be found which lend themselves readily to such a
building. The soil has a gentle slope, upon which the erection of
successive terraces would involve no architectural difficulties, and
there is no lack of rocky walls against which porticoes could be
erected, and in which subterranean chambers could be excavated.
Upon a series of wide platforms and easy gradients like these, the
pompous processions, which played such an important part in the
Egyptian ritual, could defile with great effect, while under every
portico and upon every landing place they could find resting places
and the necessary shelter from the sun. Why did such a model find no
imitators? Must we seek for the reason in the apparent reaction
against her memory which followed the death of Hatasu? "The
Egyptian people chose to look upon her as an usurper; they defaced
the inscriptions which celebrated her campaigns; they effaced her
cartouches and replaced her titles with those of her brothers."[370]
It is certain that nowhere in Egypt has any building of considerable
dimensions been discovered in which the peculiar arrangements of
Dayr-el-Bahari are repeated. At most it may be said that something of
the same kind is to be found in those rock-cut temples of Nubia which
are connected with the river bank by a dromos and flights of steps.
When the princes of the nineteenth dynasty wished to raise funerary
temples to their memory in their own capital, it would have been easy,
had they chosen, to find sites upon the slopes of the western chain
similar to that which Hatasu had employed with such happy results;
but they preferred a different combination. They erected their
cenotaphs in the plain, at some distance from the hills, and they chose
a form which did not essentially differ from that of the great temples
on the opposite bank of the Nile.
The religious architecture of Egypt, in all its richness and variety, is
known to us only through the monuments of the second Theban
Empire, through the great works of the kings belonging to the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. We are tempted, however, to
believe that the architects of the Sait period must have introduced
fresh beauties into the plans, proportions, and decorations of those
temples which the princes of the twenty-sixth dynasty, in their desire
that their capital and the other cities of the Delta should rival or excel
the magnificence of Memphis and Thebes, confided to their skill. Both
the statues and the royal tombs of the Sait period have characteristics
which distinguish them from those of earlier epochs. In all that we
possess from this last period of artistic activity in Egypt, there is a new
desire for elegance, for grace, carried sometimes to an extreme which
is not free from weakness and affectation. It is probable that the same
qualities existed in the religious architecture of Sais.
Unhappily all the buildings constructed in Memphis and Lower Egypt
during the Sait supremacy have disappeared leaving hardly a trace
behind, and the Greek writers have left us nothing but vague accounts
to supply their place. Herodotus goes into ecstasies over the
propylæa, that is, the pylons and outer courts, which Amasis added to
the temple of Neith at Sais, and over the enormous size of the stones
employed. He describes in great detail a chapel carved out of a single
block of Syene granite, which Amasis transported from the quarries at
great cost in order that it might be erected in the sanctuary of the said
temple; unhappily it was so much injured on the journey that his
intention had to be abandoned.[371]
All that we learn from the historian is that the Sait princes made use
of colossal stones in their buildings without much regard to their
appropriateness, but simply to impress their contemporaries with an
exaggerated idea of their wealth and power. The contractors of an
earlier age were also in the habit of employing blocks which seem
astonishing to us from their length and size, but they were never used
except when they were required, to cover a void or some other
purpose; the earlier architects never made the mistake of seeking for
difficulties merely to show how cleverly they could overcome them.
It is to be regretted that we know so little of the monument attributed
by Herodotus to Psemethek, and described by him in the following
terms:—"Having become master of the whole of Egypt, Psammitichos
constructed those propylæa of the temple of Hephaistos which lie to
the south of that building. In front of these propylæa he also caused
to be constructed an edifice in which Apis was nourished as soon as
he had manifested himself. It was a peristyle ornamented with figures.
Colossal statues, twelve cubits high, were employed as supports,
instead of columns."[372] We may assume that these colossi were, as
in other Egyptian buildings, placed immediately in front of the real
supports, and did not themselves uphold an entablature. Herodotus
was not an architect, and, in taking account merely of the general
effect, he doubtless used an expression which is not quite accurate.
The most important point to be noticed in this short extract from the
Greek historian is the hint it contains of the attempts at originality
made by the later generations of Egyptians, by "men born too late in
too old a century," and of the means by which they hoped to rival their
predecessors. The architect of Psemethek borrowed a motive which
had long been disused, of which, however, there are many examples
at Thebes, and employed it under novel conditions.
The caryatid form of pier is generally found, in temples, in the
peristyles of the fore-courts or the hypostyles of the pronaos.
Psemethek made use of it for the decoration of what was no more
than a cattle stable.[373] The stable in question had, it must be
confessed, a god for its inhabitant, and so far it might be called a
temple; but it was a temple of a very peculiar kind, in which the
arrangements must have been very different from those required in
the abode of an inanimate deity. In it the god was present in flesh and
blood, and special arrangements were necessary in order to provide
for his wants, and to exhibit him to the crowd or conceal him, as the
ritual demanded. The problem was solved, apparently, in a method
satisfactory to the Egyptians, as the guide who attended Herodotus
called his attention to the building with an insistance which led the
historian to pay it special attention.
Herodotus does not tell us what form the caryatides took in this
instance. It is unlikely that they were Osiride figures of the king, as in
the Theban temples, but as Apis was the incarnation of Ptah, the great
deity of Memphis, they may very possibly have been carved in the
image of that god.
Between the days of Cambyses and those of Alexander, Egypt
temporarily recovered her independence more than once. The art of
that period—during which numerous works were carried out and many
others restored—was a prolongation of the art of the Sait princes. Its
aims, methods, and taste were entirely similar. We may, therefore, in
spite of the limits which we have imposed upon ourselves, mention a
work carried out no more than fifty years before the Greek conquest,
in the reign of Nectanebo I. We mean the small building which is
sometimes called the southern temple, in the island of Philæ. It is the
oldest building upon the island, all the rest being Ptolemaic or Roman.
Its arrangements are different to anything we have hitherto
encountered in religious architecture. There are no internal
subdivisions of any kind, nothing which resembles a secos. According
to all the plans which have been published, it contained only one hall,
or rather rectangular court, inclosed by fourteen graceful columns and
a low, richly-decorated wall, which forms a kind of screen between the
lower part of the columns. This screen does not extend quite half-way
up the columns; these latter support an entablature, but there has
never been a roof of any kind. There can be no doubt that the building
was consecrated to Isis, whose image is carved all over it; but could
an edifice thus open to the outward air and to every prying eye be a
temple? Ebers is disposed to look upon it as a waiting-room.[374] Close
to it the remains of a wide staircase are to be traced, against which
boats were moored, and upon which they discharged their loads. Thus
the faithful who came to be present at the rites of Isis would assemble
in the waiting-hall, whence they would be conducted by the priests to
that sanctuary which became the object of so many pilgrimages in the
later years of the Egyptian monarchy.
Certain peculiarities in the management of the column, which grew
into frequent use in the Ptolemaic epoch, are here encountered for the
first time. This is not the place for its detailed consideration, but one
must point it out as a second result of the desire shown by the
architects of the period to achieve new developments without breaking
the continuity of the national traditions. Here, as in the monumental
cattle-shed at Memphis, there is no invention of new forms; all the
architectural elements introduced are to be found in earlier buildings.
It is the general aspect and physiognomy of the building that is new.
Whatever we may call it, the edifice erected by Nectanebo at the
southern point of the island is certainly novel in form; we have found
nothing like it either in Egypt or in Nubia, but the repetition of its
forms in a much later generation proves that it answered to a real
change in the national taste and to new aspirations in the national
genius. Painting, engraving, and photography have given us countless
reproductions of the picturesque building which rises on the eastern
shore of the island, amid a bouquet of palm-trees. It has been
variously called the bed of Pharaoh, the eastern temple, the great
hypæthra, the summer-house of Tiberius, &c. It is nothing more than
a replica of Nectanebo's creation; it is larger and its proportions are
more lofty, but its plan is quite similar.[375] In the sketch lent to us by
M. Hector Leroux, the eastern temple is seen on the right, while the
left of the drawing is filled up with the pylons of the great temple of
Isis (Fig. 252).

Fig. 252.—The ruins on the Island of Philæ; from a sketch by

Hector Leroux.

If we knew it better, we should probably find that the architecture of

the Sait period formed the transition between that of the second
Theban empire and that of the Ptolemies. We should find in it at least
hints and foreshadowings of those original features of which we shall
have to speak when we arrive at the Græco-Egyptian temples.
Unhappily, as none of the temples built by Psemethek, Amasis, and
their successors have been recovered from the sands of Egypt, we
shall be reduced to conjecture on this point. But must all hope of
recovering something from the ruins of Sais be abandoned? Mariette
himself made some excavations upon its site, and confessed that he
was discouraged by their result, or rather by their want of result.
Perhaps, however, deeper and more prolonged excavations might
bring to light sufficient indications of the ordonnance and plans of the
more important buildings to permit of some attempt at restoration
being made.[376]
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