The Myth of the 20th Century

(Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts)

by Alfred Rosenberg

All present day struggles for power are outward effects of an inward collapse. All State systems of 1914 have already collapsed, even if in part they still formally exist. Collapsed also have social, church and ideological creeds and values. No highest principle, no supreme idea governs undisputed the life of Folks. Group struggles against group, party against party, national values against international dogmas, rigid imperialism against spreading pacifism. Finance with its golden meshes swallows States and Folk, economy becomes nomadic, life is uprooted.

The Great War, as the beginning of a world revolution in all domains, has revealed the tragic fact that, although millions sacrificed their lives, this sacrifice was to the advantage of forces other than those for which the armies were ready to die. The dead of the war were victims of a catastrophic epoch that had lost all its values, but at the same time—and this is something which begins to be grasped in Germany today, even if so far by few—the martyrs of a new dawn, of a new faith. The blood which died, begins to live. In its mystical sign the cells of the German Folkish soul renew themselves. Past and present suddenly appear in a new light, and for the future there results a new mission. History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other.

However, the values of the racial soul, which stand as driving forces behind this new image of the world, have not yet become a living consciousness. Soul means race seen from within. And, conversely, race is the external side of a soul. To awaken the racial soul to life means to recognise its highest value, and, under its dominance, to allot to other values their organic position in the State, in art, and in religion. That is the task of our century; to create a new human type out of a new view of life. And for this, courage is needed; courage of each single individual, courage of the entire generation growing up, indeed of many following generations. For chaos has never been mastered by those without courage, and a world has never been built by cowards. Whoever wishes to go forward, must therefore also burn bridges behind him. Whoever sets out on a great journey, must leave old household goods behind. Whoever strives for what is highest, must turn his back on what is lesser. And to all doubts and questions the new man of the coming great German Reich knows only one answer: I alone will triumph!

Despite the fact that so many today agree with these words, nevertheless no community can as yet be established on the basis of the ideas and conclusions laid down in this work. These are personal avowals throughout, not points in the program of the political movement to which I belong. This has its own great special task, and as an organisation must keep itself remote from disputes of a religious, churchish political kind, as well as from the obligation to a definite philosophy of art or a fixed style of architecture. Thus it cannot also be made responsible for what is put forward here. Philosophical, religious, artistic convictions are only to be based on the prerequisite of personal freedom of conscience, and that is the case here. The work, however, is not directed at persons who live and work happily and firmly rooted within their own faith communities, but certainly at all those who, inwardly released from the latter, have still not fought their way forward to new ideological links. The fact that these already number millions lays obligations on every fellow fighter to help himself and other seekers through deeper reflection.

This work, the basic idea of which goes back to 1917, was already completed in fundamentals in 1925, but new everyday duties again and again held up its final appearance. Works of colleagues or opponents then demanded renewed attention to questions which had hitherto been put aside. Not for a moment do I believe that here a solution to the great themes placed before us by destiny has been achieved. But I certainly hope to have clearly posed questions and to have coherently answered them as the foundation for the bringing about a day of which we all dream.

Munich, February 1930

The publication of this work immediately called forth the most violent arguments. Owing to my deliberate questions and sharpened outlines, attacks were to be expected. But if I am to be completely honest, then I must say that I am astounded (but also overjoyed) at the concentrated hate I have encountered along with the unscrupulous distortion of what I have written, by the manner in which these attacks appeared as if by command. In particular, the wild unrestrained abuse by Roman churchish circles has shown how deeply justified the assessment of the Roman Syrian dogma in fact is in the present work. According to old established methods, certain conclusions and assertions were, of course, taken out of context from this extensive book, and the blasphemy, the atheism, the Wotanism of the author were held out before the credible reader in the German Roman press and in pamphlets. The falsifiers omitted that I even went so far as to postulate Wagner’s assertion that a work of art is the living representation of religion and the starting point for the whole of Germanic art and its foundation. The great respect which is shown the founder of Christianity in the work was overlooked. It was deliberately concealed that my religious observations have the clear intention of viewing his great personality without the eternal distortions by various churches. It was omitted that I rendered Wotanism as a dead religious form (but naturally have respect for the Germanic character which gave birth to Wotan as well as Faust) and, in an unscrupulous manner, the fantasy was concocted that I wished to reintroduce the pagan cult of Wotan. In short, there was nothing which was not distorted and falsified; and what appeared correctly expressed in a literal sense received a completely different colouring by being taken out of context. The Roman churchish press omitted entirely all historical—because unassailable—factual affirmations; all thought processes which led to a definite outlook were thoroughly distorted, and the bases of the requirements presented were deliberately overlooked. The prelates and cardinals mobilised the faithful masses, and Rome, along with atheistic Marxism, that is, with the political support of the subhumans, conducted a war of annihilation against Germany, to the total sacrifice of the German catholics, and yet had the effrontery to suddenly chatter about a culture war. The context of this work, which according to form and content certainly stands above those of the everyday level, were not made into an objective, and therefore, to be welcomed, critique, but were utilised for the most desolate everyday conflicts. Not against myself alone—that would have left me indifferent—but also against the National Socialist Movement to which I have belonged since its inception. Despite the fact that, in the introduction and in the work itself, I expressly declared that a political movement which includes diverse religious denominations could not solve questions of a religious or artistic philosophical nature; that consequently my world outlook as a creed was a personal one—in spite of all this—the obscurantists did everything in their power to divert attention from their political crimes against the German Folk, and once again to lament about religion endangered; although true religion is endangered by nothing so much as by the systematic cultivation of Marxism by the Centre Party under direction of the Roman prelates. The National Socialist Movement is not concerned with exerting religious dogmatism, neither for nor against a particular denomination, but the fact that a man in the forefront of political life must claim the right to represent a religious conviction which runs contrary to that of Rome, reveals to what degree spiritual gagging has already been successful.

The admissibility of activity in the national camp is measured by its value to the Roman dogmatism, instead of such a presumption being seen as impossible from the start. An undoubtedly serious attempt to cleanse the personality of Christ from the non Christian Pauline, Augustine and other additions, has as a consequence brought forth a one sided fury among the ruling utilisers of the distortion of the spiritual figure of Jesus; not because high religious values were touched upon, but because a position of political power attained through the spiritual anguish of millions is threatened by a potential proud awakening. Things are now such that the Roman Church feels no fear before Darwinism and Liberalism, because, especially in the latter, it saw only intellectual attempts without a strength capable of shaping communities. But the nationalistic rebirth of German man, from whom the entanglements of the old values had fallen away through the upheaval of 1914-1918, appears as so dangerous because from it a power, capable of forming Types, threatens to arise. The ruling priest caste only senses this from afar, and particularly it sees that this awakening makes efforts to strengthen everything noble and strong. Therefore its alliance with the Red subhumanity has to be close. This will only alter when the German Front proves itself victorious; at that hour, Rome will attempt as friend to achieve what it could not attain as enemy. However, to pursue these possibilities does not lie within the scope of this book; it is concerned with the chiselling out of the actual spiritual Types, hence about the man seeking to become self conscious; an awakening of the feeling of value and the steeling of the character; of resistance in the face of all hostile enticements.

The uproar about my writings was all the more typical, since not a word was uttered to express my disassociation from the slandering of great Germans, such as has for long been the literary preoccupation of the Jesuits and their associates. The slandering was quietly furthered, of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and so on, and no objections were raised when the pacemakers of Rome saw their religious task in the hindrance of the formation of a German National State; when at catholic pacifist gatherings it was demanded that German soldiers be refused a salute; when catholic clergy dared to publicly deny the truth about the actions of the Belgian Franc tireurs and to accuse German soldiers of murdering their comrades in order to have an excuse for the persecution of Belgians; when the German Folk’s Army was wrongly accused in French propaganda of desecration of altars and the host committed in Belgian churches. No bishops and cardinals have protested against this deliberate slander of what is German, of its fallen and living defenders; but there certainly followed on the part of these same bishops and cardinals attack after attack upon German nationalism. And if the latter were pilloried, it shows that the Roman political and religious groups were advancing their own national feeling.

The Roman Church in Germany cannot dispute its full responsibility for the Folkish destructive work of its numerous pacifist clergy, since in other cases where honourable catholic priests found words of true German national will, they were excluded without further ado from free speech. Thus there exists a proven systematic politically ideological attempt to rob the German Folk of its pride in the defenders of the homeland of 1914, to desecrate their memory, and to drag into the muck the fiery will to protect Folk and Fatherland. To establish this requires the simplest truthfulness, and how the faithful come to terms with their church authority is a matter of conscience. Things are not such that in order to silence awakening struggles they can pass off these undeniable facts as mere aberrations, but courage is particularly necessary for defence against the politics of the highest church authorities. Whether those so awakening discern the entire ideological contrast or not must remain their own affair. What is important is that the serious will awakens to defend German national honour, not only against Marxists but equally so, indeed even more sharply, against the centre and its church allies as the massive breeders of Marxism. An evasion of this point would merely reveal an un German disposition.

I will not mention all the individual hostile voices. But the typically unscrupulous methods may be singled out in which the Jesuit Jakob Notges has the effrontery to assert that the protection of the mother tongue belongs to the catholic order, although his order in particular has been the most bloody opponent of the right to the mother tongue; that the love for Folk and Fatherland is demanded by all great moral theologians, in which respect his order in particular fights forever against German Nationalism! The Christian neighbourly love of this gentleman finally unloads itself in the words: This Balt is a culture fighter, in the manner of a boxer. The poor man suffers from an incurable fear of St Peter’s Square, which finds its expression in raging and shouting. Then Hitler is advised to put me in a straitjacket since putting me on ice is no longer of use because he has experienced the Russian winter too often. The furious unreasoned hatred by this Jesuit whose Roman sunstroke passes beyond every boundary is enlarged by other colleagues of his order in the contrasting manner of combat. The Jesuit Koch, for example, tries to speak of a German racial soul, calls the experience of life as this resounds from the Myth serious and honourable, in order in conclusion to celebrate Boniface as the greatest German! This form of one hundred percent falsification is something we will often meet in the future where there is the realisation that incitement no longer helps; therefore, such Germanic attempts must also be treated with caution. The destruction of the German soul is always seen as the goal both of the apostles of incitement as well as of the handyman artisans of the SOCIETAS IESV and its fellow protagonists—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

My book has also called forth a violent upheaval in evangelical (protestant) circles. Countless articles in newspapers and journals prove that it clearly touched upon very sensitive spots. At evangelical synods, at congresses of the evangelical league, the Myth often stood at the centre point of debate, and many pamphlets of protestant theologians give evidence that a struggle of values has become renewed and deep in the midst of Lutheranism. My prediction that the evangelical church would behave in an anxious manner toward the new religious feeling—similar to Rome with its dogmatic base towards the Reformation—has unfortunately been confirmed. The theologians and professors fulminating against my work made it easy for them to be seen as being in full possession of evangelical truth; they simply confirmed the heretical nature of my assertions, praised national feeling (without obligation), and were delighted to be able to establish (apparent) inaccuracies, and then to reject these.

It was reported to me that at one of these synods after just such a report, an honest white haired clergyman stood up and declared that he could not acknowledge what had been said. It was hats off before this honourable man! Irrespective of whether his search reveals the same conclusions as mine, every genuine fighter will show respect to the searching opponent, but not to the old guardians of dogma who believe that they must at all costs hang on to their tenuous positions.

In discussion with learned theologians, I was further able to establish the following: they conceded to me that the evaluation of ancient history from the racial soul aspect was correct. But when I drew the conclusion that the Jews must then necessarily also have their own completely determined character—their blood linked idea of god—that consequently this Syrian life and spiritual form did not concern us in the least, then the Old Testament dogma arose like The Great Wall Of China between us; suddenly, the Jews appeared as an exception among Folks. In all seriousness, the Cosmic God was said to be identical with the dubious spiritual assertions of the Old Testament! Hebrew polytheism was elevated to a model of monotheism, and no deeper a knowledge had come to Lutheran theology from the original magnificent Aryan Persian idea of the world and the cosmic comprehension of God. In addition there appeared the revering of Paul, an arch sin of protestantism, against which Lagarde, as is known, attacked by the entire official theology of his day, fought in vain.

The protestant theologians everywhere submit, with universal agreement, to the antifolkish view of the world; the arrogant assertion of the Roman Church that the racial evaluation of Folks signifies un Christian idolatry. These gentlemen overlook, however, that the exceptional position which they attribute to the Jews, represents nothing other than idolatry of the parasitic Judaic manipulators, always hostile to us. Also typical is the answer which David Strathmann made in a leaflet to the criticism, that the churches should concern themselves with the German Folk, and, in view of the latter’s impoverishment, not bother about negro missions: as if that were their task! For the sake of the racial cult they are to deny the humanitarian task of the missions! The race and soul of the negroes is regarded—along with the good Jews—as being more important than the nation to which one has the honour to belong. This appears to them as self evident, just as they likewise prefer to overlook that this glorification of Jewry together with the unleashing of Jewish impulses has caused the impoverishment of our culture and our politics, against which the present direction of protestantism has proven itself incapable of successfully fighting, particularly owing to the idolatry of Jewish ways.

It is disconcerting if the present representatives of evangelical theology are so un Lutheran as to represent the views in which Luther was understandingly still caught up as permanently fixed dogmas. Luther’s great deed was, in the first instance, the smashing of the exotic priestly idea, and secondly, the Germanising of Christianity. The awakening of Germany, however, also led after Luther to Goethe, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Lagarde, and today approaches its full flowering with powerful strides. When David Kremers, a leader of the Evangelical League, declares in an article that the Myth is swallowed by academic youth, then he shows that he is aware how a powerfully new life is already active in the young protestant generation. Is it not more important now to promote this spiritual folkishly rooted life than to hang on inwardly to long fallen dogmatic idols? This young generation nevertheless wishes nothing more than to see the cosmic personality of the founder of Christianity in its actual greatness, without those falsifying additions with which Jewish zealots like Matthew, materialistic rabbis like Paul, African jurists like Tertullianus, or unprincipled crossbreeds like Augustinus, have presented to us as the most frightful spiritual ballast. The young wish to grasp the world and Christianity from their own essence, from Germanic values; to assert their self apparent right to this world, but which (especially today) must be regained with hard struggle.

If the ruling church orthodoxy is unable to grasp all this, it will nevertheless not alter the course of things; at most, only be able to make them hesitant. A great era would have then once more encountered a petty, self righteous generation. However, this coming time affirms both the Strasburg cathedral as well as the Wartburg, and denies the arrogant Roman Centre just as it does the Jerusalem Old Testament. It draws more strength from the roots of Germanic drama, its architecture and music, than from the comfortless tales of the Jewish people. It recognises much deep Folkish symbolism within the catholic church, and links the latter with the truthfulness of what is truly Lutheran. It unites with a great encompassing of racial soul world outlook all that is individualistic to the full blooded organism of a German essence.

The young evangelical priest must move forward since a training, crippling of the soul, does shackle him, as with catholic priests, until the time ripens when, from the latter also, Germanic rebels arise, and the work of the monks Roger Bacon and Eckehart lead to the freedom of practical life, just as the other great martyrs of the west also lived, suffered and fought in the past.

On the part of National circles, the Myth was greeted with deadly silence out of fear of the catholic Centre Party. Only a few risked joining themselves to its train of thought. The negative judgement from this camp, however, always consisted of claiming that I wished to be a founder of a new religion, but that in this respect I had failed. In the chapter on the Folkish Church, however, I have rejected this allegation in advance; what I am really concerned with, along with the foundation of the racial study of history, is to place in antithesis to one another the values of soul and character of the different races and Folks and systems of thought; to establish the organic order of rank of these values for what is German, and to pursue the Germanic will in all domains. The problem is thus: To introduce an orientation of soul and spirit against chaotic confusion; to reveal the prerequisites of a general rebirth. The value of my work is to be measured by this act of will and by criticism of what I have not undertaken to carry out, which will be the task of a reformer who will arise from the longings of a clearly adjusted generation.

Voices in other countries are throughout more objective than the echoes from circles needing reform in Germany. But more important than all this are the countless expressions of agreement from all countries of the world, above all from those Germans who have become conscious of the present great spiritual hour of destiny for both Germany and the western Folks. The questions which confront us, also confront other nations, and only a very grave destiny compels us to a more honest account, drives us to step out upon a new path because, otherwise, with political collapse, spiritual catastrophe must also appear, and the German Folk as a real Folk will vanish from history. However, true rebirth is never a matter of political power, even less than a matter of economic reorganisation, as empty Marxist heads arrogantly assert, but it signifies a central experience of the soul, the recognition of a highest value. If this experience is continued millionfold from man to man, finally, if the united strength of the Folk places itself before this inward transformation, then no power in the world will be able to prevent the resurrection of Germany.

The democratic Marxist camp had at first attempted by dead silence to deny the appearance of this work. However, it was then forced into declaring its attitude. These people have now attacked the fake socialism, such as was apparently taught in my work to the detriment of the workers. The true socialism of social democracy clearly surfaces in that there is an untroubled continuation of the literal enslavement of an entire Folk over many decades through continuation of the pawning of all still existing values with their subjugation under the dictates of international finance. True socialism further consists in that the decent creative German Folk are delivered into the hands of degenerate theatre and film propaganda, which knows only three heroic types: the prostitute, the pimp, and the criminal. The true socialism of the Marxist leadership, in effect, consists in that the little man is flung into jail for a small misdemeanour, whereas the big swindler walks away free, just as hitherto this had been the cultivated view of the most influential circles around democracy and social democracy. The whole of Marxism has revealed itself, as was unavoidable, as disintegrating of every organic community in favour of alien nomadic instincts. It must therefore regard a new foundation and the taking root of such Folkishly socialistic, style forming, feeling as an attack upon its existence.

Marxism and liberalism today find themselves along the entire front in a disorderly rearguard action. For many decades it was regarded as particularly progressive to speak only of humanity, to be world citizens, and to reject the racial question as retrogressive. Now all these illusions are not only politically disposed of, but the ideology upon which they are based has become brittle, and it will not be long until it collapses completely in the souls of those who, although misled, are still to some degree healthy. Closely pressed, nothing is left to scientific Marxism other than to attempt the proof that Karl Marx also expressly recognised the influence of Folk and race on world events! This mission to incorporate the blood awakening of the German worker, which can no longer be stemmed, into Marxist orthodoxy, which for decades has furiously fought the racial delusion, was undertaken, among others, by socialistic education—an attempt which in itself characterises the inward catastrophic spiritual collapse even if after the admission, with gnashed teeth, of the justification of the racial standpoint, is the general assertion that Marx rejected racial fetishism. What is self evident, is that otherwise he would have had to depart for Syria as a teacher—where he rightly belongs. To recognise this and to uproot Marxist materialism and financial capitalist backing from German life as an alien Syrian Jewish plant, is the great mission of the new German Workers’ Movement which as a result will win the right to the leadership of their own future.

We on our side do not deny very diverse influences: landscape and climate and political tradition; but all this is outweighed by blood and the blood linked character. Things evolve around the reconquest of this order of rank.

To reestablish the ingeniousness of healthy blood, is perhaps the greatest task upon which man can set himself today. At the same time, this affirmation gives evidence of the sad situation of the body and the spirit, that such a deed has become a vital necessity. A contribution to this great coming act of liberation of the 20th century is what the present book intends to be. Not only the shaking up of many awakening men, but also of opponents, is the desired result. I hope that the confrontation between a newly arising world and the old forces will take on more and more offshoots, penetrate into all domains of life, always fructifying anew, producing more blood linked pride, until the day when we can stand on the threshold of the fulfilment of our longing for a German life, until the hour when all wellsprings will unite into one great river of a Nordic German rebirth.

That is a dream worth being taught and lived. And this experience and this life alone are the reflections of a presaged eternity—the mysterious mission of this world into which we were placed in order to become what we are.

Munich, October 1931

In December, 1936, the printing of the Myth exceeded half a million copies. That is something which can no longer merely be described by the words a wonderful book, as it reveals far more that my work has become a part of the life of the German people, and has been taken as an inward possession by millions who had the courage to throw away from themselves what was dead in order to break courageously toward a new future.

I have been through the book once more, and have had to alter virtually nothing. Formulations which were laid down at the time of the most bitter political struggle, have revealed their deep justification for the present. Only in the domain of actual state political activities have some things been surpassed at one place, and the elaborations have been made appropriately.

The ideas laid down in the Myth have been established in later speeches which are summarised in two volumes: Blood and Honour, and Shaping of the Idea. I have answered my Roman opponents in the pamphlet: To the Obscurantists of our Times (edition of 680,000 copies).

The decisive transformation of soul and spirit completes itself throughout Germany. In its service, The Myth of the 20th century stands today in the foremost ranks.

Berlin, January 1937

Today one of those epochs is beginning in which world history must be written anew. The old images of the human past have faded, the outlines of leading personalities are distorted, their inner driving forces falsely interpreted, their whole nature for the most part totally misjudged. A youthful life force—which also knows itself to be age old—is impelled toward form; an ideology, a world view, has been born and, strong of will, begins to contend with old forms, ancient sacred practices, and outworn standards. This means no longer historically but fundamentally; not in a few special domains but everywhere; not only upon the heights but also at the roots.

And this sign of our times is reflected in a turning away from absolute values, that is to say, in a retreat from values held to be beyond all organic experience, which the isolated ego once devised to create, by peaceful or violent means, a universal spiritual community. Once, such an ultimate aim was the Christianising of the world and its redemption through the second coming of Christ. Another goal was represented by the humanist dream of mankind. Both ideals have been buried in the bloody chaos of the Great War, and in the subsequent rebirth out of this calamity, despite the fact that now one, and now the other, still find increasingly fanatical adherents and a venerable priesthood. These are processes of petrifaction and no longer of living tissue: a belief which has died in the soul cannot be raised from the dead.

Humanity, the universal church, or the sovereign ego, divorced from the bonds of blood, are no longer absolute values for us. They are dubious, even moribund, dogmas which lack polarity and which represent the ousting of nature in favour of abstractions. The emergence in the nineteenth century of Darwinism and positivism constituted the first powerful, though still wholly materialistic, protest against the lifeless and suffocating ideas which had come from Syria and Asia Minor and had brought about spiritual degeneracy. Christianity, with its vacuous creed of ecumenicalism and its ideal of HVMANITAS, disregarded the current of red blooded vitality which flows through the veins of all peoples of true worth and genuine culture. Blood was reduced to a mere chemical formula and explained in that way. But today an entire generation is beginning to have a presentiment that values are only created and preserved where the law of blood still determines the ideas and actions of men, whether consciously or unconsciously. At the subconscious level, whether in cult or in life, man obeys the commands of the blood, as if in dreams or, according to natural insight, as a happy expression describes this harmony between nature and culture. But culture, with the growth of all subconscious activity and of expanding consciousness and knowledge, becomes more and more intellectual, and ultimately engenders not creative tension but, in fact, discord. In this way, reason and understanding are divorced from race and nature and released from the bonds of blood. The ensuing generation falls victim to the individualistic system of intellectual absolutes, and separates itself more and more from its natural environment, mixing itself with alien blood. It is through this desecration of the blood that personality, people, race and culture perish. None who have disregarded the religion of the blood have escaped this nemesis—neither the Indians nor the Persians, neither the Greeks nor the Romans. Nor will Nordic Europe escape if it does not call a halt, turning away from bloodless absolutes and spiritually empty delusions, and begin to hearken trustingly once again to the subtle welling up of the ancient sap of life and values.

Once we recognise the awesome conflict between blood and environment and between blood and blood as the ultimate phenomenon beyond which we are not permitted to probe, a new and, in every respect, richly coloured picture of human history becomes manifest. This recognition at once brings with it the knowledge that the struggle of the blood and the intuitive awareness of life’s mystique are simply two aspects of the same thing. Race is the image of soul. The entire racial property is an intrinsic value without relationship to material worshippers who apprehend only discrete events in time and space, without experiencing these events as the greatest and most profound of all secrets.

Racial history is therefore simultaneously natural history and soul mystique. The history of the religion of the blood, however, is conversely the great world story of the rise and fall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.

Today, historical vision can see deeper into the past than was imaginable at an earlier time. The monuments of all peoples now lie spread out before us, excavations of the very oldest examples of pictorial art allow a comparison of the driving forces of cultures, the myths from Iceland to Polynesia have been collected, the treasures of the Mayans in great part unearthed. In addition, modern geology enables us to draw maps as things were tens of thousands of years ago. Underwater exploration has raised solid masses of lava from great depths of the Atlantic Ocean, the summits of suddenly submerged mountains in whose valleys cultures had once arisen before one—or many—frightful catastrophes destroyed them. Geographers depict for us continental masses between North America and Europe whose fragments we see in Iceland and Greenland. On Novaya Zemyla, in one area of the far north, old water lines are revealed more than 100 metres above the present ones. These suggest that the north pole has shifted and that a much milder climate once prevailed in the Arctic. All in all, the old legends of Atlantis may appear in a new light. It seems far from impossible that in areas over which the Atlantic waves roll and giant icebergs float, a flourishing continent once rose above the waters, and upon it a creative race produced a far reaching culture and sent its children out into the world as seafarers and warriors. But even if this Atlantis hypotheses should prove untenable, a prehistoric Nordic cultural centre must still be assumed.

We have long since been forced to abandon the theory of an identical origin of myths, art, and religious forms among all peoples. On the contrary, the strongly substantiated proof of the frequent travelling of Sagas from people to people, and their taking root among many different groups, shows that the majority of basic myths have a fixed point of radiation—their place of creation. Thus, in their outward form, they are only comprehensible on the basis of a completely distinct point of origin, and the migrations of races also become a certainty in the most prehistoric times. The solar myth, with all its ramifications, did not arise spontaneously as a stage of general development, but was born where the appearance of the sun must have been a cosmic event of profoundest significance, that is, in the far north. Only there would the year be sharply divided into two halves, and only there would the sun represent a certainty in man’s innermost being of the life renewing, primal creative substance of the world. And so today the long derived hypotheses becomes a probability, namely that from a northern centre of creation which, without postulating an actual submerged Atlantic continent, we may call Atlantis, swarms of warriors once fanned out in obedience to the ever renewed and incarnate Nordic longing for distance to conquer and space to shape.

These currents of Atlantic men moved by water in their swan and dragon ships into the Mediterranean and to Africa; by land over central Asia to Kucha, perhaps even to China; over north Africa to the south of our own continent.

Ahura Mazda says to Zoroaster: Only once in the year does one see the rising and setting of stars and sun and moon; and the inhabitants hold to be a day, what is a year. This must be for the Persian god of light a distant memory of the Nordic homeland, for only in the far north do day and night each last six months.

The Mahabharata reports of the Indian hero, Arjuna, that during his visit to the mountain of Meru, the sun and moon daily passed around from left to right. Such an idea could never have originated in the tropical south, for only in the far north does the sun disc roll along the horizon. A prayer is also addressed to the Indian Adityas: May the long darkness not come over us, and it is complained of bright Agni that he had tarried too much in the long darkness, all of which can only be attributed to the long Hyperborean night.

Together with these primeval Aryan Atlantic memories appear those cult allegories, costumes, carvings which are understandable only in terms of Nordic origin. In predynastic Egypt, we find the Nordic boat with its swan neck and trefoil. But the rowers are the later ruling Amorites, already recognised by Sayce as fair skinned and blue eyed. They once traversed north Africa as strictly homogeneous hunter clans which gradually subdued the entire land. They then migrated somewhat further, across Syria and toward the future site of Babylon. The Berbers, among whom even today one finds light skins and blue eyes, do not go back to the Vandal invasions of the fifth century A.D., but to the prehistoric Atlantic Nordic human wave. The Kabyle huntsmen, for example, are to no small degree still wholly Nordic (thus the blond Berbers in the region of Constantinople form l0 % of the population; at Djebel Sheshor they are even more numerous). The ruling stratum of the ancient Egyptians reveals significantly finer features than the subject people. These Hamites are apparently a crossbreed of the Atlanteans and the negroid aboriginal population. Suddenly, around 2400 B.C., there appear reliefs of men with fair skin, reddish blond hair and blue eyes, those blond Libyans of whom Pausanias later reports. In the tomb paintings at Thebes, we find four races of Egypt represented: Asiatics, negroids, Libyans, and Egyptians. The last are depicted with reddish pigmentation; the Libyans, on the other hand, are always shown bearded, with blue eyes and white skins. Pure Nordic types are shown on a grave of the Senye dynasty, in the woman on the pylon of Horemheb at Karnak, by the swanboat people on the temple relief at Medinet Habu, and by the Tsakkarai who founded Phoenician sea travel. Light skinned men with golden hair are shown on the tombs at Medinet Gurob. In the most recent excavations in 1927 in the mastabas at the pyramid of Cheops, the Princess and Queen Meres Aneh (2633-2564) were found depicted with blond hair. Queen Nitokris, legendary and surrounded by myths, is likewise always said to have been blonde.

All these are racial memories of a prehistoric Nordic tradition in north Africa.

The Amorites founded Jerusalem, and they formed the Nordic weft in later Galilee, that is, in the pagan region whence Jesus is said to have come. The Amorites were then augmented by the Philistines, who also brought to Syria hitherto unknown Nordic ship designs, with axe and trefoil as the stem symbols.

It is still uncertain where the prehistoric homeland of the Nordic race lies. As the south Atlanteans swarmed over north Africa and southern Asia, so the north Atlanteans must have carried the sun god from Europe to Mesopotamia, even to the Sumerians, whose yearly calendar had once begun on the day of the winter solstice. The most recent investigations in Iceland and Scotland indicate a possible stone age immigration. The ancient Irish ideal of beauty was of milk white skin and blond hair. This was abandoned later with the arrival of a dark, round headed race.

Much remains obscure. Perhaps only future investigation will be able to establish whether the oldest of cult symbols—the first rock drawings of the stone age—were also the basis for the predynastic Egyptian linear script, and that other scripts in the world are also derived from this Atlantic symbolism. Whatever the results of future research, however, nothing can alter the one supreme fact that the march of world history has radiated from the north over the entire planet, determining in vast successive waves the spiritual face of the world—influencing it even in those cases where it was to be halted.

These migration periods—the legendary march of the Atlanteans across north Africa, Persia and India, followed by the Dorians, Macedonians, and Italic tribes; the diffusion of the Germanic folkish migration—culminated in the colonising of the world by the Germanic west.

When the first great Nordic wave rolled over the high mountains into India, it had already passed through many hostile races. Instinctively, as it were, the Indoaryans separated themselves from the dark alien peoples they encountered. The institution of caste was the outcome of this instinctive aversion. Varna means caste, but it also means colour. The fair Aryans thus linked themselves to an acceptable image of the human type, and created a gulf between themselves as conquerors and the black brown natives of pre Aryan India. According to this opposition of blood and blood, the Aryans evolved a worldview which, for depth and range, cannot be surpassed by any philosophy even today, although admittedly this was only after a long battle against the constantly intruding ideas of the racially inferior aborigines. The period, for example, which lies between the heroic songs of the Vedas and that of the Upanishads is one both of expansion and of a simultaneous struggle against sorcery and degenerate ecstasies. The sacrificial cult of spirits and gods had begun to infiltrate. The priest, with his sacred ladle and firebrand, was not immune to these magical ideas. Every touch of the hand, every gesture, acquired a mystical significance. As Deussen established, ritualism developed between the mythological and the philosophical periods. Prayer, which with the true Brahman was only a powerful elevation of the heart, became an incantation to compel the gods by magic. In the midst of this murky process, the Ãtman doctrine appeared to light a ray of hope. It was not an act of psychological development, which would be utterly meaningless (even Deussen does not attempt to explain it) but represented a new awakening of the Aryan soul in the face of the superstitious and magical beliefs of the subjugated non Aryans. This interpretation is at once confirmed when it is established that the great doctrine of the personal value of the spirit—devoid of magic and the demonic—originated in the courts of the kings, and was diffused from the warrior caste. Although the Brahmans were later to become the teachers of the new idea of the essential oneness of the world soul and the individual soul, they were never able to conceal the origin of the new concept. Thus it comes about that instruction concerning Ãtman is given by King Ajatactru to the Brahman Gargya Balake; by the war god Sanatkumara, to the Brahman Narada; by King Pravahna to the Brahman Aruni. Thanks to this aristocratic reassertion, the un Aryan magic cult retreated further and further, and did not proliferate once more until later when racial decay overtook even the India of the Kshatriyas.

As a born master, the Indian felt his individual soul expand into the Ãtman which pervaded the entire universe and lived within his own breast as his innermost self. The concept of an impersonal nature, rich and virtually all provident, could not divorce him from this metaphysical union. An active life, which was always demanded as an ineluctable duty of the world renouncing thinker, gave place more and more to the aim of journeying into the universe of the soul. This transition to the pure light of knowledge led to the noble attempt to overcome nature through reason. There is no doubt that many Indians, as individual personalities and aristocrats, were successful in this quest. But for later men only the teaching remained, devoid of its vital racial prerequisite.

Soon the rich, blood based meaning of Varna was entirely lost. Today it is only a division between technical, professional, and other classes, and has degenerated into the vilest travesty of the wisest idea in world history. The later Indian did not comprehend the threefold significance of blood, self, and universe. He saw only the last two. And he perished in the attempt at isolated contemplation of the self in racial pollution, whose modern products are wretched mongrels, seeking healing for their crippled existence in the waters of the Ganges.

After he had overcome the polarised ideas of self / universe by a rational choice in favour of the one part, the Indian monist also endeavoured to eliminate the antithesis between them, and violently to attain freedom through nature and master nature through freedom. He, therefore, was inclined to regard race and personality as being aspects of a higher concept and as illusory. The late Indian monist came to see nature as something unreal—an evil dream. The only reality for him is the world soul (Brahman) and its eternal reoccurrence in the individual soul (Ãtman). With this turning away from nature in general, the once clear idea and concept of race became ever more hazy. Philosophic dogma uprooted instinct from its earthly basis. If the only reality is the world soul, and if Ãtman is essentially one with it, then individuality vanishes and an undifferentiated universal oneness is achieved.

The result was that Indian thought ceased to be creative. It grew rigid. The alien blood of the swarthy Sudras, who were now thought of as equally valuable bearers of Ãtman, seeped in. Thus was destroyed the original concept of the identity of caste and race. Bastardisation was inevitable. Serpent and phallic cults of the aborigines began to flourish and spread. Symbolic interpretations of the hundred armed Shiva, like creeping vines in the primeval forest, begin to appear in a horrible, bastard art. Only at the courts of the kings were the old heroic songs still heard, and the lyricism of such as Kalidasa and other, mostly unknown, poets still honoured.

Çankara attempted a new refurbishing of Indian philosophy. But it was in vain. Through too deep an intake of breath, the arteries of the race were ruptured. Aryan blood flowed out and trickled away. Only here and there, where the dark soil of ancient India sucks it up, does it still fertilise. But it leaves only a cultivated philosophical and technical orthodoxy which, in its later insane distortion, rules Hindu life today.

We must not short sightedly assert that the Indian first polluted his race and then surrendered his personality. It is rather the case that a metaphysical process took place, and that this was manifested in a passionate yearning for the abolition of dualism as well as the reciprocally conditioning lower forms of polarity.

Viewed from the outside, philosophical acceptance of an equation of Ãtman Brahman engendered racial decay. In other cultures, this decay was not consequent upon the establishment of a pervasive philosophy, but was, simply, the result of uninterrupted miscegenation among two or more races. In such cases the essential characteristics of the various races were neither elevated nor strengthened, but ended in mutual annihilation.

From the sixth century B.C. on, Iran underwent a vast expansion by the Aryan Persians. Under Arshama, there arose one of the greatest personalities of Indoeuropean history, Spitama (Zoroaster, or Zarathustra). Concerned about the fate of the Aryan minority, he developed an idea which is only now beginning to revive in the Nordic west—protecting the race by endogamy within kin. But since the Aryan ruling aristocracy were sparsely scattered, Zoroaster tried to reinforce this imperative by creating an ideologically bound community of faith. Ahura Mazda, the eternal god of light, became a cosmic idea—the divine protector of Aryans everywhere. He had no special abode or temple like the gods of the orient and even of later Rome. He was simply the holy whiteness of perfection. His enemy is the dark Ahriman who is locked in struggle with him for world domination. This is a truly Nordic Aryan concept of Zoroaster. In this struggle, we must fight on the side of Ahura Mazda (just as the Einheriar in Valhalla would fight for Odin against the Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Serpent). Man must not, therefore, withdraw into world renouncing contemplation and asceticism. He must see himself as the struggling bearer of a world preserving idea; he must arouse and arm all the creative powers of the human soul. Whether as a thinker or an active creator, man must always serve what is highest. Wherever he goes, he serves the creative principle—when he sows and reaps; when he is true to himself; when he considers a handshake as an inviolable oath. The Vendidat epitomises all this in the sublime words: Whoever sows grain, sows saintliness.

But struggling man is surrounded by evil and temptation. To be able to oppose these forces successfully, Zoroaster invokes the Aryan blood which calls upon every Persian to serve the god of light. After death, good and evil are separated forever. In a final struggle, Ahura Mazda defeats Ahriman and constructs his kingdom of peace. For a time, the Persians derived great strength from this splendid religious epic. But in spite of such an heroic attempt, the dilution of Aryan blood in Asia could not be stemmed, and the great kingdom of the Persians declined. Yet the spirit of Zoroaster and his Myth continued to influence the greater world. The Jews adopted Ahriman as Satan, and evolved their own entirely artificial system of racial admixture out of a Persian system devised to preserve racial purity. This was combined with an obligation ridden religious law which was, of course, wholly Jewish. The Christian church appropriated the Persian idea of a saviour as a prince of peace—the Çaoshiahç, although adulterated with the Jewish idea of a messiah. Today, in the heart of northern Europe, there has awakened to heightened consciousness the same racial soul idea which was taught by Zoroaster. Nordic self awareness and Nordic racial discipline are the answer today to the Levantine east, which has diffused itself throughout Europe in the form of Jewry and varieties of faceless ecumenicalism.

Persian culture was a grafting upon a Semitic oriental trunk. As the commerce and money power of the lower races began to gain for them material influence, power, and honours, the graft began to decompose. The kin marriage imperative was forgotten, and the equalising of all races necessarily led to bastardisation.

Cut into the rock walls of Begistun on the order of a great Persian emperor are the words:

I, Darius, the great king, king of kings, of Aryan race .....

Today, the Iranian mule driver passes, uncomprehendingly, by this wall; a sign to the multitude that personality is born and dies with the race.

Most beautifully of all was the dream of Nordic man made manifest in Hellas. Wave upon wave came from the Danube valley and overlaid the earlier population of mixed Aryan and non Aryan immigrants, bringing fresh creative powers. The ancient Mycenaean culture of the Achaeans was predominantly Nordic in character. Next, Dorian tribes stormed anew the citadels of the racially alien aborigines, subjugating them and overthrowing the dominion of the legendary Phoenician Semitic King Minos. Until then, he had been master of all the area which was to be known in later times as Hellas.

As sturdy masters and warriors, the Hellenic tribes supplanted the decaying civilisation of the Levantine traders, and with the labour of the subjugated races, constructed an incomparable creative culture. Great sagas were carved in stone, and leisure time devoted to the composition and singing of immortal tales of the heroes. A true, aristocratic constitution proscribed any miscegenation. The Nordic strength, though reduced by chronic warfare, was continually refreshed by further immigration. Dorians, and then Macedonians, protected the creative blond blood up to the time when these tribes, too, were exhausted, and the vastly more numerous forces of the near east infiltrated through a thousand channels, poisoned Hellas and, in place of the ancient Greeks, produced the effete Levantines who share only the name with their predecessors. The Hellenes have vanished forever; only dead images in stone, only a few isolated remnants remain to proclaim the glorious racial soul which once created Pallas Athena and Apollo.

The Nordic’s absolute rejection of magical forms is never more clearly shown than in the religious values of Greece, which are still too little heeded. When scholars do happen to touch on the religious aspects of the Hellenes, they only interest themselves in the periods of introverted contemplation, when the Greek was already divided within himself and vacillated between his own natural values and those of alien and exotic origin.

But it was the earlier age of Homeros, confident in its destiny, which was a period of true religion. For this, our nineteenth century—another age of decline—had no real empathy. The Homeric golden age was not tormented yet with ethical problems. The figures of Apollo, Pallas Athena, sky father Zeus, were deifications of the truest religious feeling. Golden haired Apollo was the guardian and preserver of everything noble and inspired—order, harmony, artistic balance. Apollo was the dawn of day, at once the protector of inner vision and of the gift of sight. He was the god of song and of rhythmic movement; not, however, of frenzied dance. The swan, originating in the north, was sacred to him, a symbol of his own bright majesty. And in the manner of the south, the palm was also dedicated to him. On the Delphian temples are engraved the words:

Nothing in excess

and

Know Yourself

— two Homeric Apollonian credos.

Next to Apollo stood Pallas Athena, symbol of lightning, sprung from the head of Zeus, the blue eyed daughter of the Thunderer. She was the goddess of wisdom and prudent guardian of the destiny of the Hellenes.

These creations of the Greek soul exemplify the upright and still pure life of the Nordic. In the highest sense, they are religious postulates which proclaim confidence in the Nordic character and in the deities who, ingenuously, reveal themselves as well disposed towards men. Homeros offers neither polemic nor dogma, says Erwin Rohde, and in this single sentence Rohde has defined the very essence of true religion. This profound student of the Hellenic nature adds: Homeros has little interest in omens and ecstasies, lacking any taste for such. It is the moderation of a superior race which resounds from every page of the Iliad, and echoes in all the temples of Hellas. But beneath this creative level, there lurked and proliferated Pelasgian, Phoenician, Alpine, and, later, Levantine values. Continually, in proportion to the strengths of these races, their gods intruded. If the gods of the Greeks were heroes of light and heaven, the gods of the Levant were of the earth. Demeter, Hermes and others are essential creations of the alien racial soul. Pallas Athena is a warrior protectress of the life struggle: the Pelasgian Ares is a monster dripping blood, Apollo is the god of the lyre and song: Dionysos (at least in his non Aryan aspect) is the god of ecstasy and frenzied lust.

For the past two hundred years we have struggled over an interpretation of the Greek world. From Winckelmann by way of German classicism up to Preller and Voss came the adoration of light, of what is open to the world, of what can be clearly seen. Gradually, however, this line of inquiry loses impetus—its curve becomes flatter and flatter. Thinkers and artists became isolated objects of study, divorced from blood and soil. Attempts were made to explain and to critique Greek tragedy as products of an individual’s psychology. Homeros was understood only in a formal aesthetic manner. Late Hellenic rationalism was called upon to grace bloodless academic journalism. The other school—the Romantic movement—busied itself with the spiritual undercurrents which appear at the end of the Iliad, in the festivals for the dead, in the actions of the Erinyes (as described by Aeschylos). Romanticism delved into the souls of the chthonic countergods opposed to the Olympian Zeus. Proceeding from death and its riddles, it came to revere the female principle—especially Demeter—and it ended with the god of the dead, with Dionysos. Welcker, Rohde, and Nietzsche all allude to Mother Earth as the formless procreator into whose womb all expiring life returns. With shuddering awe, the great German Romantic movement sensed darker and darker veils interposed before the gods of celestial light, and it immersed itself deeper and deeper into the impulsive, formless, demonic, sexual, ecstatic and chthonic, and into mother worship. Yet it continued to describe all this as Grecian.

Now two lines of investigation go their separate ways. Albeit the Greek tribes took on a physically and spiritually alien nature; what interests the real researcher is not so much this alloying, which is often only artificial, but the content and form of the dominant element. When Jacob Burckhardt says: What they (the Greeks) did and suffered, they did and suffered freely and differently from all earlier peoples; they appear as original, spontaneous and wide awake, where with all others mindless necessity more or less prevailed, he illumes with the light of the mind the profoundest qualities of the Greek world. Yet, though he refers later to the Hellenes as Aryans, and instances other peoples and races, it never again occurs to him that he had uncovered a law of the racial soul.

Burckhardt describes the Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. as complete. The dramatic struggle of races, souls, and gods is thereafter lost in an individualistic aggregation of types. In the end, for all the accumulated knowledge, allusions, and intuitions, the Greek personality is extinguished. The inner freedom of the ancient Hellenes had waged a struggle against the oppressive brutishness of the near east. It was this great drama of an entire people which not only inspired their greatest achievements, but also made the Hellenes less fortunate than is commonly believed. If this contradiction in the history of Hellas was interpreted later in other ways, that is because the essential basis was ignored.

According to Bäumler, it was Görres who first attributed a universal polarity in history to the tension between the masculine and feminine principles. Bachofen it was, however, who developed and fully formulated this idea, which, in this present era of disintegration of all forms and figures, is celebrating its rebirth.

It was the maternal elements, Night, Earth, Death, which romantic intuition perceived as the undercurrents of ancient Greek life. From Etruria, by way of Crete and the depths of Asia Minor, matriarchy became dominant in both custom and law—even in the case of the masculine TYRANNIS. As a result there arose the Amazon concept and the hetairai, as well as poetic hymns to the dead and the mysteries linked with the earth spirit. Mother figures appear, each representing an aspect of the one great mysterious Earth Mother. They are holy and untouchable. If even one mother is slain, the earth itself arises in the shape of the Drinyes demanding blood who give no rest until the slayer’s blood has been spilled and sucked up by the earth as expiation. There is no question of whether right or wrong rests with the mother. A value in itself is represented by each one of them and affords them absolute inviolability. From the mother, the daughter inherits property which secures her independence, her name and her rights. Woman appears as the embodiment of the immortality of matter, or, more correctly, as the image of the indestructibility of matter as an abstraction.

So thought the Lycians and the Cretans (who alone used the term Motherland): so thought the Greek islands; so, indeed, thought Athens itself until the Nordic Theseus defeated the Amazons before its gates, and a mother was no longer the tutelary deity but the motherless and childless virgin, Pallas Athena.

From the aspect of the world history, the first great and decisive struggle between racial values was decided on Greek soil in favour of the Nordic. Thereafter man approached life from the day, from the laws of light and heaven. From the spirit and will of the father came everything which we claim for ourselves in the great legacy of Greek culture.

Thus it is neither true that matriarchy with all its consequences was devoid of any relationship to the people, nor that the new system of light was only a later stage of development, in which the dominance of woman persists as what was originally given (Bachofen). This one great misunderstanding, despite many accurate insights, clouds all other observation and gives rise to a misunderstanding of the whole spiritual development of Greek and Roman antiquity, as well as the deepest spiritual struggles of later western Germanic culture.

Late Roman, Christian, Egyptian, or Jewish ideas and values have penetrated into the soul of Germanic man and partly destroyed it. We shall have to separate the Germanic values from all others if we are not to be false to ourselves, and if we regard history in general as a manifestation and product of the struggle to give form to the most personal self. It is deplorable that first Christian, and later humanist, values have pushed this view of history more and more into the background, and substituted the dogma of a supposed general development of mankind.

In various guises, an abstraction began to uproot life. The reaction in the form of German romanticism was therefore as welcome as rain after a long drought. But in our own era of universal internationalism, it becomes necessary to follow this racially linked romanticism to its core, and to free it from certain nervous convulsions which still adhere to it. The Germanic peoples have not developed on the basis of some nebulous goal proffered by priests or scholars, but have either asserted themselves, or have disintegrated and been subjugated. Similarly, the pre Greek peoples of the Aegean did not develop from the basis of belief in chthonic gods to the sun heaven cult of Zeus Apollo. They were submerged after lengthy struggles and, in part, politically subjugated, in part spiritually assimilated. Nevertheless, they always waited for moments of weakness among the Nordic Greeks in order to assert once more their old values and their old gods.

Neither climate nor geography nor any other environmental influences are valid as ultimate explanations; for the sun that shone on Homeros shone likewise on the worshippers of Isis and Aphrodite. And it continued to shine over the same earth when Greece had passed away.

Before they arrived in Greece, the Hellenes did not view female dominance as the first stage of development. From the cradle, they obeyed the law of the father. Had it not been so, the Greek gods would have entered into an easy alliance with the Pelasgian Cretan or proto Libyan Egyptian gods in the same manner that the later Greeks rediscovered their own Hellos or Hercules in the gods of Aryan India. On the contrary, the Greek myths tell of constant struggle and victory. The Hellenes destroy the bloody Amazon rule in Lemnos with Iason’s raid; they send Bellerophon to wipe out this same rule in Lycia; in the Danaid version of saint Bartholomew’s Eve, they establish the triumph of Zeus and of the great saviour mediator, Hercules, over the dark tellurian powers of the earth and underworld.

In contrast, therefore, to Nordic Germanic mythology, Nordic Greek is so richly formed and so manifold (yet nevertheless in all its main lines the victory of light over darkness remaining) because the Teutonic Germanic gods had far less resistance to overcome with regard to the religious systems of other races. That is why the Iliad is one great paean to the triumph of life and light. Homeros understood that death and life are not opposites, but that they mutually condition each other. Goethe, too, was to recognise this. It is birth and death which confront each other, but both constitute life. Recognising the necessity of this inner law is also to recognise an impersonal destiny—the Moirai. Thetis foresees the death of her son, but she does not pray to Zeus to let him live. She knows that the sky, personified in him, is also subject to cosmic law, symbolised in the scales of eternity.

The Moirai, like the Norns in Teutonic mythology, are female because in woman the impersonal alone rules. She is the passive vessel of the law.

Here again a Nordic value is revealed; Apollo, whom Aeschylos calls destroyer of primeval demons, is the vanquisher of the un Nordic cults. The Lycian Glaucos, when Diomedes asks him about his family, says sadly that the generations of man are like the leaves of a tree. Here is seen the formless and depersonalised pre Greek ideas which persist despite the introduction of Apollonian sun worship into Lycia.

In Greek tragedy, which was born at a time when Greece fought its heaviest battles and shattered its human reserves, the Hellenes were compelled to struggle anew against the ancient chthonic forces. This can no longer be expressed in the confident, triumphant words of Homeros:

No, whoever once has died, should be sorrowfully mourned

For one day, and then buried with a resolute heart.

Now it takes the form of the most bitter struggle between two world views as expression of two utterly different racial souls.

Eriphyle betrays her husband for a necklace; the latter is avenged by his son, who kills his mother. The law of the pre Greek does not weigh the guilt of the mother. The very earth rises to avenge her shed blood, and the Erinyes drive Alkmaeon to madness. Only the advice of Apollo to place his foot on a piece of earth which was still invisible at the time of his mother’s slaying, finally saves Alkmaeon. He discovers a newly arisen island.

The conflict of racial souls appears most magnificently in Orestes. Here, in the clearest consciousness, the old and new forces are contraposed, and this work becomes a parable for all time. The law of the near east concerning motherhood is not concerned with the guilt of Klytemnestra, but dispatches its female agents to exact revenge upon the matricide.

The guardians of the Nordic ethos stand before Orestes to protect him as the avenger of his murdered father. She was not related by blood to the man whom she slew, cry the Erinyes. Apollo answers: It is the father, not the mother, who is the procreator of her children. Then Athena, daughter of Zeus, declares: With all my heart I honour everything masculine. However, Athena and Apollo magnanimously offer their hand to the defeated powers in a gesture of reconciliation. To appease them, they promise those dwellers deep in sunless night the respect of men:

But I, ever girded for bold struggle in battle for fame

Will not rest until all the world

Holds in highest honour my victorious city.

Thus Aeschylos concludes just as powerfully and conscious of strength as Homeros.

However, Apollo’s magnanimity had the result that the chthonic gods continued their subterranean life. After the later miscegenation between the Greeks and the aborigines, neither the chthonic nor the celestial deities appear again in pure form. They mingle in the Dionysian rites. Although Dionysos represents the father right, he also becomes the god of the dead upon whom Antigone calls. He loses the clear, strong character of Apollo, and becomes effeminate and drunken. Ultimately, he sinks down into all that is demonic, Maenadlike, and nocturnal. Even the animals consecrated to this demonic god are dark. Only at night is homage paid. Everything Dionysian in Greek life appears as something racially and spiritually alien—and ancient. It is to become the surest sign of the psychic deterioration which paralleled the attenuation of the Nordic blood.

By the flickering light of torches, to the clang of cymbals, accompanied by thumping on drums and the shrilling of flutes, the Dionysian celebrants performed their swirling, circling dances. It was mostly the women who whirled about to the point of exhaustion. They wore bassars, long flowing garments stitched together from the pelts of foxes. Their hair streamed wildly. Snakes, sacred to Sabazios, were held in their hands. They brandished daggers. In this fashion did they rave until they attained the uttermost climax of excitement. Then, in their holy madness, they fell upon the animals chosen for sacrifice, clawing and rending the bloody flesh with their teeth and swallowing it raw.

All such rites were diametrically opposed to the ethos of the Greeks. They represented that religion of frenzy (Frobenius) which dominated the entire eastern region of the Mediterranean world, and was evolved from the African near eastern races and racial mixtures. There is a direct line from the insanely possessed King Saul, through the earthbound intoxication of Dionysos, to the whirling dervishes of Islam. The phallus became the symbol of the later Grecian world idea. Thus, what we find relative to art and to life in this symbol is not Greek, but the antithesis, that is, near eastern.

The deities of the near east were everywhere sapping the foundations of the magnificent Hellenic edifice. Thus, for example, the primeval earth god Poseidon, repelled by Athena: he dwells in the ground under her temple in the form of a serpent; he is the fortress snake of the Acropolis who is fed each month with honey cake (Pauly Wissowa). The Pelasgian python dragon is also buried at Delphi under the temple of Apollo. Every eight years the slaying of this dragon was enacted before Apollo. This is the same place as the burial of Dionysos.

But the Nordic Theseus did not manage to slay all the monsters of the near east. At the first signs of the weakening of Aryan blood, they arose again and again as monsters combining the bestial with the physical robustness of oriental men.

So vital is this knowledge to the proper understanding of both mythology and world history that it is also desirable here to follow the great clash of racial souls where the victory of the Nordic Apollonian light principle (Pindar speaks of Danai with blond locks) was only temporary, and the old forces reasserted themselves in many hybrid forms.

This spiritual bastardisation was naturally furthest advanced in Asia Minor, in Colchis, and in some of the islands. There, the ruling Greek stratum was very thin and could not defend itself forever against chthonic multitudes.

These great and lengthy struggles were naturally condensed in saga and myth, as in the story of the Argonauts and the Apollonian Iason. They sailed, as the saga tells, before a northern wind—a memory of the Nordic origin of Apollo. From the north is the hero of light awaited.

Everywhere the followers of Iason go—like Greek Vikings—they find confronting them dark, chthonic gods, Amazon rule, and the most sensual conception of life. The existence of the Amazons can be easily explained. Roving bands of warriors often left their homes for long periods of time. The women who remained behind had to adjust their lives and to learn to defend themselves against attack. If their men folk finally returned, they often brought with them strange women, which repeatedly resulted in outbreaks of murder of the males. Such a deed, reported of the women of Lemnos, reverberated throughout the whole of Greece as a most horrible crime, and was retold again and again with renewed horror.

Women, maddened by sexual frustration, fell into unbridled hetairism, a way of life which always appeared when the Apollonian principle weakened. Yet initially the victory of the latter was always welcomed, since it laid the first real foundations of a stable civilisation. Later, nevertheless, the old impulses rebelled against it.

It was thus that Iason was received by the Lemnian Hypsipyle; it was thus that he wedded Medea, and contraposed the institution of marriage against the systems of the hetairai and the Amazons. Through marriage, the woman, the mother, gained a new and honourable status in accordance with the Nordic Apollonian principle, and the nobler, fruitful aspect of the Demeter cult gained ascendancy in a manner comparable to the transmogrification of Isis into the Mother of god of the Teuton. But this all disappears wherever Apollo, that is, the Greek, failed to maintain his dominion. This side of the story is illustrated by that same Iason who becomes unfaithful to his marriage while in Corinth, a city deeply under Phoenician influence. It is also to be seen in the story of Hercules, that enemy of matriarchy, who defeats all the Amazons and sweeps across the whole of north Africa as far as the Atlantic, only to fall before Omphale in Lydia.

Thus Apollo could not maintain himself in the east, and the compromise is represented by Dionysian religion. The fair haired Iason wears a panther’s skin across his shoulders, which symbolises the subordination of the Apollonian by the Dionysian. The emphasis on Apollo’s radiant virility is melded with hetairalike ecstasy. Dionysos’ law of unbridled sexual indulgence signifies the unhindered racial mixing between Hellenes and all types and varieties of the near east. The formerly man hating Amazons reappear as crazed Maenads. The Apollonian marriage principle is again broken, since the character of Sabazios is wholly oriented toward the female. The male sex begins to lose its identity. Men participate in the Dionysian revels, but only dressed as women.

From this racial pollution of the near east, the bastardy of Dionysos extended itself westward until it dominated the entire Mediterranean. In Rome, the Dionysians especially proliferated among the criminal classes. In the second century, the senate, after long tolerating this quasireligious cult, felt compelled to repress with great rigour the Bacchic gatherings. About 7,000 perjurers, swindlers, and conspirators were banished or executed. Only in Hellas itself did the radiant Apollonian principle, mastering chaos, still prevail.

Thus Dionysos, while he appears in Greek paintings as Hellenic, is effeminate and is surrounded by near eastern satyrs, who also appear on grave monuments as screeching grotesqueries of a decadent world. Bachofen sums it up by saying that Apollo invaded Asia, but returned as Dionysos. However, what he and others overlook is that Zeus Apollo represented the spiritual imperative of Nordic Greek blood, whereas the hetaira lifestyle is an expression of near eastern and African races. The mixing of Mythi and values was simultaneously a process of racial bastardisation, and many of the legends of the Greeks are the poetic allegories of the struggle between different racially determined souls.

This near eastern African underworld is revealed most vividly in the historically attested figure of Pythagoras. He is said to have travelled throughout Babylonia and to India. He himself is described as a Pelasgian, and he did in fact practice his mysteries in Asia Minor, joined by ecstatic mystical women. He was unable to gain credence in Greece proper. Aristoteles and Heraclitos referred to him derogatorily, and were plainly resentful of his mathematical cabalism. Aristoteles said that Pythagoras’ fame was based on his appropriation of alien spiritual values. This was also the opinion of Heraclitos, who said that Pythagoras had woven together a false art and charlatanry from various writings. A pretence at universal knowledge, said the Hellenic sage, does not instruct the spirit.

So Pythagoras moved to the west, to southern Italy, where, like some ancient blend of Rudolf Steiner and Annie Besant, he set up his school of mysteries complete with priestesses. He was regarded throughout the entire African littoral—whence came the collectivist sexual mysteries of the Egyptian Karpokrates to his aid—as the wisest of the wise. Universal equality is once again promoted in the form of democratic ecumenicalism. Women and property are held in common, although this had been the basis of non Nordic Mediterranean ideas when Apollo first battled against them.

It cannot be emphasised too often that such assertions, as the end of human development will again bring back the earliest animal state, represent a grotesque error. This is all the more certain when, like a lightning flash, we see that the Pythagorean cult can be traced back to pre Hellenic peoples. Further confusion follows, however, by statements to the effect that the Hellenes had wrested themselves free from the chthonic substance—as though they had been embedded in the latter!

The dramatic creation of Greece took place on two levels. On one level there is an organic evolution of substance—from nature symbolism, crowned with the gods of light and the heavens, to Zeus, father of the gods; and on the other, from the mystical artistic level to the dramatic artistic recognition of the spiritual essences, and finally, to the intellectual system of Platon, which was a philosophical perception of what had already been developed in myth.

This entire development, however, stands in continuous conflict with other mythical and intellectual systems, the products of alien blood. In part ennobled by fusion with the Greeks, nevertheless such systems eventually welled up on all sides. As products of the Nilotic swamps, the waters of Asia Minor, and the deserts of Libya, they were hostile to the Nordic ethos of the Greeks, and sought to pervert, falsify, and destroy its vital character.

This must not be mistaken for an explosion of natural tensions within an organic whole. It was rather a struggle between hostile racial souls to which we bear awed witness even today when we observe the ruin of Hellas with clear eyes. Our own blood dictates where our own loyalties lie, and only bloodless pedagogues can prate here about the parity of two great principles.

With infinite sadness we watch the epiphenomena of the psychic racial decline of the Homeric Greeks who once, in the proud words of the poet, entered the arena of world history: Always to be first, and always to press forward. We watch the Greek become a participant in racial spiritual decay, wearing himself out in the struggle against what is alien, as well as against his own disintegrating essence. The great Theognis complains that money mixes the blood of the noble with that of the ignoble, and that in this way race, which is strictly protected among asses and horses, becomes polluted among men. In the Gorgias Platon vainly makes Kallikles proclaim the wisest of messages: The law of nature demands that the higher breeds rule over the lower. To be sure, our (Athenian) laws were different. In accordance with them the strongest and most virtuous would be caught like young lions, to be corrupted by magical songs and trickery. If a true hero should again appear, he would trample down all these magical rites and advance radiantly forward by a natural right.

But this yearning for a hero was in vain; money, and with it the subhumans, had already triumphed over blood. Lacking sure instinct, the Hellene began to devote himself to trade, politics and sophistries, rejecting on one day what he had praised on the day before. Sons no longer respected their fathers; slaves from all over the world agitated for freedom; sexual equality was proclaimed. Symbolic of this democracy—as Platon scornfully remarked—asses and horses began to push aside men who stood in their way. As warfare depleted the race, newcomers were admitted to citizenship. Foreign barbarians became Athenians, much as in our era eastern Jews become Germans. Thus Isokrates, lamenting, remarked that after the Egyptian expedition of 458 B.C., those noble families which had survived the Persian War were annihilated. But call not that city happy which gathers its citizens willy nilly from all ends of the earth, but only that one which best preserves the race of its founders. Similarly the sad utterance of Jacob Burckhardt: From the inception of democracy, they were seized by an impulse to persecute without limit all superior individuals. It was the usual hatred of talent. However this democracy was not the rule of the people but the dominion of the near east over the Greek tribes, whose manpower and strength were being rapidly dissipated. It was the rule of the now uninhibited scum over the hoplites who were no longer sustained by a racially kindred peasantry, and had become effete. Demagogues without conscience incited the masses against Athens in order to be able to denounce them later. However, when the Athenians came, there was a mass flight from the threatened cities, and supine surrender to the advancing imperial power. The cry was: If we had not declined so quickly, we should have perished. In a frenzied effort to rebuild the land, the chaotic democracy instituted amnesties, cancellation of obligations and land redistribution. In doing so, it only became more effete than ever.

The city states exhausted themselves in bloody economic wars, or became desolate and empty, as the Hellenes migrated to all parts of the known world. There they either fertilised barbarian soil with Greek culture, or suffered further decline and ultimate annihilation. Where flourishing cities had once stood and gleaming temples, where the free Greeks had once competed in the arenas, later travellers found only desolation, a depopulated land, fallen pillars. Empty pedestals gave mute testimony to the gods and heroes whose statues had once stood upon them. By Plutarchos’s time, scarcely 3,000 hoplites could still be mustered. Dion Chrysostomos reported that the ancient Greek type had become a very rare phenomenon. Does not the Peneus stream through an empty Thessalia, and the Ladon flow through a devastated Arcadia? Are there any cities more abandoned than Croton, Metapontum, and Tarentum? Thus did Hysiai, Tiryns, Asine and Orneai lie in ruins. The temple of Zeus at Nemea had fallen; even the port of Nauplia was abandoned. Of Lakedaemon’s hundred cities, there remained only thirty villages. Pausanias described the ruins of Dorion and Andania in Mykenai. Of Pylos only ruins remained, of Letrinoi only a few dwellings. Megalopolis, Great City, was now only a great desolation. Only a few wretched traces could be found of Mantinea, Orchomenos, Heraia, Maenalos, Kynaitha, and so on. Of Lykosura only the city walls still stood; of Oresthasion only temple pillars. The acropolis of Asea was destroyed except for some fragments of wall. Daphnos, Augeia, Calliaros, once praised by Homeros, were torn down. Orleanos was dust. The jewels of Hellas, Kaledonia and Pleuron, were obliterated. Delos was so devastated that when Athens dispatched a guard to the temple there, they constituted the sole inhabitants.

And yet even in his deepening twilight, the Greek had stemmed the incursion of Asia and scattered his own brilliant gifts all over the world, gifts which inspired the Nordic Romans, and later became the greatest heritage of the Germanic west. In spite of the sacrifice of the Greeks, therefore, Apollo may be credited with the first great victory of Nordic Europeans, for after him there emerged from the Hyperborean fastnesses new bearers of the same values of freedom of soul and spirit, of organic shaping and questing creativity. For a long time the Roman sword repelled the reinforced near eastern spectre. More rigorously and consciously, Rome nurtured the patriarchal principle. It thereby strengthened the idea of the state as such and of marriage as the prerequisite of national and racial preservation. Finally, in time, Germania (in a new form) became the representative of the god of the heavens.

The history of Rome essentially parallels that of Hellas, although it is set against a greater expanse of territory and a larger political power structure. Rome, too, was established by a Nordic folkish wave which poured into the fertile valleys to the south of the Alps long before the Gauls and the Teutons. It broke the dominion of the Etruscans, that mysterious and alien near eastern people. Presumably this wave blended with the still pure indigenous tribes of the Mediterranean race, producing a hybrid character of the greatest toughness and tenacity which combined nimbleness of intellect with the iron energy of masters, farmers and heroes. Ancient Rome, about which history tells us little, became a true folkish state through sound breeding, and was united in the struggle against the whole of orientalism. All the brains and strengths, which would be squandered later when Rome engaged in world conflicts, were formed and banked, as it were, in this prehistoric period. The three hundred ruling noble families supplied the 300 senators, and from them came also the provincial governors and the senior army officers. Encircled by the maritime races of the near east, Rome was often compelled to defend itself ruthlessly with the GLADIVS.

The destruction of Carthage was a deed of superlative import in racial history: by it even the later cultures of central and western Europe were spared the infection of this Phoenician pestilence. World history might well have taken a very different course had the obliteration of Carthage been accompanied by a total annihilation of all the other Semitic Jewish centres in the near east. The act of Titus came too late. By then, the near eastern parasite was no longer centred in Jerusalem, but had already spread its strongest tentacles from Egypt and Hellas to Rome itself, to which city everyone possessed of ambition and greedy for profit was drawn. There they made every effort to buy the acquiescence of the sovereign, self governing people with bribes and promises. As a result of alien racial immigration, there arose from a previously legitimate popular electorate—peers with common roots—a degraded mass of characterless human rabble, a permanent threat to the state. Cato stood as a lonely rock in the midst of this quagmire. As praetor of Sardinia, consul in Spain, and finally censor in Rome, he fought against corruption, usury and extravagance. In this he resembled Cato the elder who, after a fruitless struggle to stem the utter decay of the state, threw himself upon his own sword. Such a deed has been called old Roman. Indeed it was. But old Roman is synonymous with Nordic. In later times, when the Germans offered their services to weak, degenerate emperors who were surrounded by impure bastards, the same spirit of honour and loyalty lived within them as had once lived in the ancient Romans. The Emperor Vitellius, a poltroon without equal, was dragged from his hiding place to the forum, a rope around his neck. His German bodyguard refused to surrender and spurned the offer of absolution from their oaths. They were slain to the last man. The same Nordic spirit possessed the German which had dwelled in Cato. It is the spirit we saw in Flanders in 1914, in the Coronel Islands, and for years in all quarters of the globe.

By the middle of the fifth century B.C., the first step towards chaos had been taken. Mixed marriages between patricians and plebeians were made legal. Racial mixing thus became for Rome, as it had for Persia and Hellas, the seed of ultimate decay of folk and state. In 336, the first plebeians had pushed their way into the Roman assembly, and by about 300 into the priesthood. In 287, the plebeian popular assembly had become a state institution. Traders and moneylenders pushed their interests. Ambitious, renegade patricians like the Gracchi espoused democratic causes—motivated perhaps by mistaken generosity. Others, like Publius Claudius, placed themselves openly at the head of the Roman city mob.

In these chaotic times, a few men still held true: The powerful, blue eyed Sulla, the pure Nordic Augustus. But they could not turn the tide. And so it was that control of the masses of the vast Roman Empire came to depend, like a monstrous game of chance, upon control of the praetorian guard, or the adherence of a mob of hungry clients. Sometimes a great man would arise; sometimes a bloodthirsty monster. Rome’s initial treasure house of racial strength was exhausted by four hundred years of democracy, destructive of race. The Caesares came now from the provinces. Traianus was the first Spaniard to wear the purple; Hadrianus was the second. Caesares were now adopted as a last ditch attempt to save the situation. Since reliance could no longer be placed on bloodlines, it was felt that only personal selection could ensure the continuity of the state.

The values held by Marcus Aurelius, another Spaniard, were already enervated by Christian influences. He openly elevated the protection of slaves, the emancipation of women, and doles to the poor (what we call unemployment benefit) to official state policies. He also disenfranchised the PATERFAMILIAS, which had been the strongest tradition in republican Rome, and which was the last remaining source of type formation.

There followed Septimius Severus, an African. Pay the soldiers well and scorn everyone else, he advised his sons, Caracalla and Geta. Influenced by his Syrian mother, (daughter of a priest of Baal in Asia Minor), Caracalla, the most loathsome bastard ever to sit on the throne of the Caesares, declared that all free inhabitants of the Roman empire were citizens of Rome (212 A.D.).

So perished the Roman world. Macrinus next murdered Caracalla and became Caesar himself. After he was murdered in turn, he was succeeded by the monster Elagabalus, nephew of the African Severus. In the midst of all this appeared the half German Maximinus Thrax and Philippus the Arab (a Semite). The senate seats became mostly lounging spots for non Romans. The culture of this period was supplied by the Spaniard Martialis and the Greeks Plutarchos, Strabon, Dion Cassios, and the rest. Apollodoros, who rebuilt the forum, was another Greek. Included in this last category was Aurelianus, an Illyrian born in Belgrade. There was also Diocletianus, son of an Illyrian slave (perhaps of partly German ancestry). Constantius Chlorus was of Illyrian origin, though of superior stock. After his death, the soldiers chose a truly powerful man to bear the title of Augustus. This was Constantinus, the son of Constantius Chlorus and a barmaid from Bithynia. Constantinus triumphed over all his rivals. With Constantinus the history of imperial Rome ends and that of papal and Germanic Rome begins.

In this sea of bewildering diversity, Roman, Syrian, African and Greek elements were intermingled. The gods and the ceremonies of all lands found a place in the venerable forum. There the priest of Mithras sacrificed bulls, latter day Greeks prayed to Hellos, astrologers and oriental sorcerers touted their miracles. The Emperor Elagabalus harnessed six white horses to a gigantic meteorite and had this dragged through the streets of Rome as a manifestation of Baal of Emesa. He himself danced at the head of the procession. Behind him were dragged the old gods, and the people of Rome applauded. The senators abased themselves. Street singers, barbarians, and stable lads became senators and consuls—until Elagabalus, too, was strangled and thrown into the Tiber, that final resting place of so many thousands for two millennia.

Even if we had lacked the more recent racial historical investigation, we should have been compelled to endorse this interpretation of the Roman past, because in the course of studying ancient Roman customs, myths, and definitions of law and the state in all areas, we see that the very ancient values which were associated with Africa and the near east, suddenly or gradually transformed into their opposites (even when retaining their old nomenclature).

Thus our learned historians have ascertained—and they are still doing so—that in north and central Italy lived the Etruscans, Sabines, Oscans, Sabellians, Aequi, and Samnites, whereas in the south were the Phoenicians, Sicilians, Greek traders and settlers, and various near eastern peoples. Suddenly—how and why is not explained—a conflict broke out against one section of these tribes, their gods and goddesses, their concepts of law, their political pretensions. No mention is made of the new factor in this upheaval, or if it is mentioned, it is without any inquiry into its real nature. The academic world falls back on the threadbare development of humanity cliche, which apparently rose up in the service of ennoblement. At this point the fact collectors are at one with the romantic school of mythologists; both agreeing that the Etruscans certainly possessed a higher culture than the bucolic Latins.

Since this version of a sudden, almost magical, leap toward a higher spiritual level and superior forms of social organisation eventually became discredited, even newer interpreters of history invented the theory known as cyclic culture. This new doctrine was just as vacuous as the theory of universal development, which has validity only in the mind of the academic or the priest. There was as little mention of the creators of this cultural revolution as there was of evolution in the writings of nineteenth century popes. Out of the blue one day, a cultural revolution drops magically upon Indians, Persians, Chinese, or Romans, and effects a total transformation of human creatures who had previously embraced different MORES. We are told of a kind of vegetablelike growth, the blossoming and decaying of mystical cycles, until the proselytisers of the morphology of history, faced with the strongest criticism, finally mumble at the end of the second or third volume something about blood and blood relationships.

Even this latest intellectual legerdemain is now beginning to lose credibility. The Roman culture cycle and new development did not stem from the native Etruscan Phoenician stock, but in spite of it and its values. The new culture bearers were Nordic immigrants and a noble Nordic aristocracy which began to contest the soil of Italy with the aboriginal negroid Ligurians and the near eastern Etruscans. It is true that in this environment the Nordic aristocracy had to make a number of concessions. However, it demonstrated its true character in the most bitter of struggles, and more relentlessly than the more artistically gifted Hellenes had done, when it expelled the last Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus. Though a great part of these achievements became the common heritage of all Europe, much that was decayed and alien was later transmitted into Europe by the strong resurgent tide of racial chaos.

The Etruscans, Ligurians, Sicilians, and Phoenicians (or Carthaginians) were not an earlier stage of development, nor were they tribes of the Roman people which had each made its contribution to the general culture. The true shapers of the Roman state stood implacably against them all, and, on the basis of racial folkish principles, subjected and partially exterminated them. Only that spirit, that will, those values which revealed themselves in this struggle, deserve to be called Roman. The Etruscans present us with an unequalled example of the way in which the Greek religion and way of life afforded them neither progress nor spiritual elevation. Like other near eastern peoples, the Etruscans had encountered at one point the Atlantic Nordic Mythi, which were by then embodied in Greek tradition, and they imitated Greek plastic and pictorial art as best they could, even appropriating the Hellenic pantheon. They succeeded only in corrupting everything they touched and turning each attribute into its opposite. Yet this provided reason enough for certain researchers to prattle foolishly about the extraordinary spiritual legacy of the Etruscans and the basis for growth it provided, and for the world historical dedication symbolised in their tragic fate. All this plainly derives from the same inner sense of identity which binds the rising asphalt humanity of the megalopolis in a very significant way to all the wretched refuse of Asia.

The legends and the tombs of the Etruscans make very clear the reasons why the virile, healthy farmer folk engaged in so desperate a war against them. Two examples epitomise the character of the Etruscans; the sacred prostitute and the priest magician who, by means of dreadful rites, kept at bay the terrors of the underworld. The great whore of Babylon of whom the Apocalypse speaks is no fairy tale or metaphor, but an historical reality attested to a hundredfold. It was literally the rule of the hetairai over the peoples of the near and middle east. On high festival days at all the centres of these various racial groups, the official prostitutes were enthroned as the embodiment of a common sensuality and universal lechery. In Phoenicia they served Kybele and Astarte; in Egypt, the great procuress Isis; in Phrygia as priestesses of wholly unbridled communal sexual orgies. The reigning priestess of love was joined by her lover dressed in diaphanous Libyan robes. Anointed with costly perfumes and bedecked with precious jewels, they then copulated before all the people (just as did Absalom with David’s concubines in II Samuel XVI:22). This example was imitated in Babylon, in Libya, and in Rome under the Etruscan dynasty where the goddess priestess pushed the institution of the hetairai to its extreme limit in the closest collaboration with the Etruscan priests.

Attempts were made quite early to interpret Etruscan inscriptions on graves, mummy wrappings, and papyrus rolls, but not until Albert Grünwedel was the script successfully deciphered, and the results show the Etruscans in a hideous light. Even the Greek solar myth that the sun dies and is then reborn as a god out of the dark night and with redoubled potency, was appropriated as an Etruscan motif. But in the hands of the Etruscan priests this becomes Asiatic magic, witchcraft linked with pederasty, masturbation, the murder of boys, magical appropriation of the manna of the slaughtered by the priestly murderer, and prophecies derived from the excrement and the piled up entrails of the victims. The virile sun impregnates itself with the magical phallus on the solar disc (the Egyptian point in the sun) which finally penetrates it. From this is born a golden boy, the foetus of a boy with a magical orifice. This is the so called seal of eternity. The violence of the magical phallus is imagined as a bull which copulates with such frenzied force that the disc rolls and the phallus bearer of the horn turns to fire, the phallus of him who possesses the heavens.

In endlessly repeated obscenities, the original myth is degraded into repulsive homosexual love. This is to be seen on the wall paintings of graves, as in the Golini tomb where the dead man holds a banquet with his boy lover in the next world, and where two gigantic phalluses spring up from a sacrificial fire as a result of magical satanic rite. According to the inscription, this, the lightning of perfection, is thus perfected.

Translated from the jargon of magic, that means that the creature born of woman is deified after putrefying, and becomes a phallus.

From the inscription of the Cippus of Perugia, there is recorded a convocation of satanic priests who perfect a spectral manifestation so as to burn in demonic frenzy. He who has this boy has the demonic knife. Eternal is the fire of the boy ..... a magus of the perfected seal.

The murdered boy now becomes a little goat. Thunder personified is a metamorphosis of the son gained by violation—the perfected little goat. Here is to be found the origin of the horned apparition and the goat headed devil, whose appearance in the literature of witchcraft was hitherto an unsolved riddle. Its antique types are the Minotaur, especially the one over the well known grave of Corneto, the Tomba dei Tori, and the Greek Satyr. He clearly illustrates a crime crying out to heaven, comments Grünwedel. The meaning of these constantly repeated customs of the Etruscan religion is to be seen in the fate of the shamefully abused boy prostitute who is slit open to symbolise the birth of the diurnal sun from the egg that his apparition has developed when fertilised by the semen collected in bowls.

Thus a spectral bull appears, fiery like the sun, sexually erect, and accomplishes again and again the demonic self copulation. With the performance of this ritual, the manna of the murdered boy is supposed to pass to the priest, who is the representative of the Chosen (Rasna, Rasena), as the Etruscans—like the Jews—called themselves. The priest next lets the fumes from the entrails ascend to heaven. There is also the magical use of faeces, once again in a vile travesty of the Greek solar myth. The divine cherub attains the supreme power which emanates from him as six rolls of gold excrement, creating the fire of the heavens.

The chosen one becomes such by supplying his entrails. Etruscan vases provide ample evidence of this; witches are portrayed, offering money to youths to persuade them to dedicate themselves and then to ascend to heaven in flames. Herein lies new evidence for the primeval home of witchcraft and Satanism on European soil. It is easy to understand a scholar like Grünwedel, who in this respect sees close analogies with the Tibetan Tantras of Lamaism, saying:

A nation which is ready to paint wall pictures over the entrances of graves like the two scenes in the Tomba dei Tori, which permits itself to write such filth in graves and paintings like those in the Golini grave, and to cover sarcophagi with the most repulsive scenes (I need mention only the sarcophagus of Chiusi), to place into one’s hands representations of the dead as in the text of the Pulenana papyrus roll, to cover toilet articles with the most hair raising obscenities, parades the most despicable human degeneracy as its national legacy and religious persuasion.

It is necessary as a prelude to be quite clear about the true nature of the Etruscans so that we may understand fully that the Nordic Latins, the true Romans, had the same experiences as the Nordic Hellenes before them and the Nordic Teutons after them. As a numerically small people, they waged a desperate struggle against the forces of hetairism, with their strong emphasis on patriarchy and the family. They purified the great whore Tanaquil by transforming her into the faithful protectress of motherhood and portraying her with dresses and a spindle as a guardian of the family. Against the sorceries of an outrageous priesthood they posed the hard Roman law and the dignity of the Roman senate. With the sword they cleansed Italy of the Etruscans (as a result of which the great Sulla came particularly to the fore) and of the Carthaginians, whom the former always called to their aid. Yet the preponderance of numbers, prevalent superstition, and the usual international solidarity of rogues and charlatans gradually eroded the old honourable Roman life. This was exacerbated by the necessity of maintaining Roman strength by enlisting the support of the racial cesspool of the Mediterranean peoples. In particular, Rome was unable to cast out the HARVSPICES and the AVGVRES. Even Sulla was accompanied by the HARVSPEX, Postumius, and Julius Caesar after him by another of that ilk named Spurinna. Burckhardt had already had an inkling of these now established facts—which are carefully ignored by the Etruscans of our great cities. He wrote in his Griechische Kulturgeschichte as follows:

When, however, with the unleashing of all human passions during the last years of the Roman republic, human sacrifice again appeared in a most abominable form, when oaths were made over the entrails of slaughtered boys—as with Catilina and Vatinius (see Cicero, IN VATINIVM, 6)—then it is to be hoped that this had nothing to do with Greek religion or the ostensible Pythagoreanism of Vatinius. The Roman gladiatorial contests, towards which Greece maintained a permanent abhorrence, had derived from Etruria, at first as funerary rites for dead aristocrats.

This clearly indicated that human sacrifice was also a feature of the Etruscan religion.

The Etruscan priest Volgatius who, at Caesar’s funeral, ecstatically proclaimed the last century of the Etruscans, was only one of the many who exercised great power over Roman life and manipulated the sufferings of the people in the interests of the near east. When Hannibal stood before the gates of Rome, these HARVSPICES declared that victory was only possible by adopting the cult of the Great Mother. This was brought from Asia Minor, and the senate abased itself by going down to the shore on foot to receive it. In this way, the priesthood of Asia Minor entered the eternal city along with the great whore of the Pelasgians or the beautiful and delightful whore (Nahum III, 4), and took up residence on the sacred Palatine, the focal point of the old Roman thought and culture. There ensued the usual near eastern religious processions. Later, however, the debaucheries were restricted to the district to the rear of the temple walls in order to escape the anger of the better part of the people.

The HARVSPICES triumphed. The Roman papacy was their immediate successor, and the temple hierarchy, the college of cardinals, represented an amalgam of the Etruscan near eastern Syrian priesthood, with the Jews and the Nordic Roman senate.

The medieval picture of the world also derives from the Etruscan HARVSPICES, that frightful superstition of magic and witchcraft to which the millions of Europe fell victim. Nor did this die out with the Witches’ Hammer. It still survives in church literature today, to be resurrected at any time. It can be seen in those gargoyles which not infrequently disfigure our Nordic Gothic cathedrals with a grotesquerie of extreme abnormality.

Even in Dante, in a grandiose form, bastardised Etruscan antiquity erupts anew. His Inferno contains the ferryman of hell, the fiery swamp of the Styx, the bloodthirsty Pelasgian Erinyes and Furies, the Cretan Minotaur, those fiends in the form of disgusting birds who torment suicides, and the amphibious monster, Beryon. The damned run through a scorching desert under a rain of fiery drops. Malefactors are turned into bushes upon which the Harpies feed, and from every broken twig of which their blood gushes forth accompanied by unending screams of agony. Black bitches pursue other evildoers and tear them to pieces with unspeakable pain. Horned demons scourge swindlers. Prostitutes are drowned in stinking excrement. Popes, guilty of simony, are confined within narrow ravines. There they languish, their tortured feet writhing in flames, while Dante rails loudly against the degenerate papacy as the whore of Babylon.

The grave inscriptions and paintings in Tuscany reveal that all these ideas of the underworld are of Etruscan origin. Just as in the Christianised upper world of the middle ages, the idea of eternity is depicted with people hung by their hands and tormented with burning faggots and other fiendish devices.

The avenging Furies were depicted by the Etruscans as utterly loathsome, with animalistic or negroid features, pointed ears, matted hair, fangs, and so forth. It was one such Fury with a bird’s beak who tortured Theseus with her poisonous snakes, as a wall painting at the Tomba dell’ Oreo at Corneto shows. Does this reveal the primeval hatred for the legendary conqueror of the ancient demons of Athens? Beside these Furies are Typhon and Echidna, those horrible, one eyed demons with snakes for hair. The Etruscans generally dwelt with sadistic pleasure over every possible representation of torture, murder and sacrifice. The slaughter of human beings was especially delightful for them.

Musically untalented, lacking any poetic gifts, incapable of producing an organic architecture of their own, and without even the rudiments of philosophy, this near eastern people devoted itself to the study of birds’ entrails, and to complex magical and sacrificial rites. Not without some technical ability, it was almost wholly dedicated to commerce, and because it was tenacious, it poisoned Roman blood and transmitted its obsession with hellish torments in the world to come to the churches. The ghastly and bestial demons became an enduring and effective tool of the popes, and, through the conceptual world that had been poisoned by the church of Rome, dominated our middle ages. Medieval art gives shocking testimony to this. One can see the proof of this even on the Isenheim altar, as well as in the Descents into Hell by other artists.

Only when we have learned to recognise the utterly alien origins of these concepts and muster the resolution to rid ourselves of this diabolism will we have cast off the middle ages. But with our emancipation, the Roman church, which is inextricably linked with the sadistic visions of the Etruscan hell, will collapse from within.

The whole mystagogy of Dante’s Inferno consists of a hideous marriage of Etruscan demonology and Christianity. Nevertheless, even though Dante was not free from the incubus of this thousand year old malefic vision, the Germanic spirit still stirred within him.

In purgatory, Vergilius says of Dante: He seeks freedom. Such words are a direct denial of the psychic milieu from which witchcraft and the idea of powerful evil spirits arose. In the end, Vergilius could safely leave his protégé, since Dante had acquired the necessary strength of his own.

My knowledge, my words, can explain nothing more to you

Free, upright, healthy, are the signs of your will.

It would be foolish not to follow it.

Such are the two worlds that tore apart the heart of Nordic man in the middle ages. On the one hand was the near eastern idea of a hideous hell which the church adopted; on the other, the longing to be free, upright and healthy. Only insofar as he is free can the Teuton be creative. Only where the insane terrors of witchcraft did not hold sway could great centres of European culture flourish.

Into this raceless stew which was now Rome came Christianity. Its success is largely to be explained by its concept of a sinful world and redemption through grace, which was its natural compliment. The doctrine of original sin would have been incomprehensible to a people whose racial identity was unadulterated. In such a people there dwells a secure confidence in itself and in its will, which it regards as Destiny. The concept of sin was as alien to the heroes of Homeros as it was to the ancient Indians, the Germans of Tacitus, or the epics and sagas of Dietrich von Bern. An oppressive sense of sin is a sure symptom of racial bastardy. Race pollution shows itself in a number of stigmata; in an absence of clear direction in thought and action; an inner self doubt; the feeling that existence is simply the wages of sin and not the necessary and mysterious imperative of self development. The sense of personal depravity leads to a yearning for grace, and this is the only hope for the products of miscegenation.

It was natural, therefore, in whomsoever the old Roman character still lived, that a revulsion arose against the spread of Christianity, most especially as it represented a thoroughly proletarian and nihilistic political ethos. The grossly exaggerated accounts of bloody persecutions of Christians were not in fact attempts at suppression of conscience, as church history claims (the Roman forum was open to all gods), but rather aimed at the protection of the state against a political threat to its existence. It was reserved to the church, in its Pauline Augustinian form, to invent doctrinal councils and burning at the stake for the purpose of annihilating the spirit. Classical Nordic antiquity did not know the like of this, and the Germanic world has likewise always rebelled against this Levantine import.

Ecclesiastical Christianity has made Diocletianus a particular target of its attacks. Diocletianus was of lowly origins, though probably of part German ancestry. He had blue eyes and a very white skin, and was a man of personal probity of the type admired by Marcus Aurelius. His family life was above reproach. In all matters of state, Diocletianus conducted himself with great moderation. He was opposed to all forms of oppression, and favoured religious toleration, and only authorised action against Egyptian tricksters, fortune tellers, and sorcerers. The Emperor Gallienus had already given official recognition to the Christian cult, and Christian buildings were erected without interference. What disturbed an organic development, however, was initially the squabbles of the rival bishops.

Diocletianus excused his Christian soldiers from the pagan sacrifices, and insisted only on military discipline. But it was precisely in this area that his authority was challenged by the leaders of the African church, so that recruits refused to perform their duties on the grounds of their Christianity. One such pacifist, despite friendly admonitions, persisted in his obduracy until at length he had to be executed for mutiny. Such threatening symptoms at last persuaded Diocletianus to insist on the participation of Christians in state ceremonies of a religious nature. Even now, he did not generally punish Christians who refused to obey, but merely granted them discharges from military service. The only result was a stream of unmitigated abuse from the Christians, the mutual conflicts of whose factions also menaced civil peace in other ways. Finally, the state took action in self defence. Even now, Diocletianus did not exact the death penalty (as he did in the case of some swindling merchants) but only reduced the contumacious to the status of the slave class. The outcome of this was rioting and arson directed against the Emperor’s palace itself. Provocations by the Christian communities, hitherto unmolested and which had become arrogant in consequence, followed one after another throughout the empire. The ensuing terrible persecutions of the Christians by the monster Diocletianus amounted to—nine rebellious bishops executed, and in Palestine, the centre of the most violent resistance, a total of eighty death sentences actually carried out. By contrast, that supremely Christian Duke of Alba slaughtered 100,000 heretics in the tiny Netherlands alone.

Only by reexamining these events is it possible to shake off the hypnotic effect of systematically falsified history. Thus does Iulianus the Apostate, who also believed in equal rights for all the cults, appear in a new light, because he did not shirk, on the grounds of pious convictions, standing out against teachers of the representative of god. He well knew what was involved when he wrote:

Through the follies of the Galileans, our state was almost ruined; but now, the gods be praised, it is saved. Therefore we shall honour the gods and every city in which there is still piety.

This proved thoroughly justified, for no sooner had Christianity become the state religion under Constantinus, than the old testament spirit of hatred showed its hideous face. The Christians at once demanded the application of the punishments prescribed in the old testament against the worship of idols. In Italy, with the exception of Rome itself, the temples of Jupiter were closed. We can sympathise with the despair of Iulianus, but at the same time we can see that the history of early Christianity needs rewriting—and that Bishop Eusebios is hardly a reliable source. Christianity, as it was introduced to Europe via the Roman church, derives from a multitude of roots. This is not the place for a more detailed study of its sources; a few observations only must suffice.

The great personality of Jesus Christ, whatever form it might have taken originally, was distorted and confused immediately after his death with all the rubbish of Jewish and African life. In the near east, Rome ruled with great firmness and exacted the taxes efficiently. Accordingly, among their subject populations there arose the desire for a liberator and leader of the slaves; hence the legend of Christos. Beginning in Asia Minor, this Christos myth spread to Palestine, where it became linked with Jewish messianic yearnings, and was finally attached to the personality of Jesus. Besides his own utterances, there were falsely attributed to him the words and doctrines of near eastern prophets and, ironically indeed, in the form of an extension of ancient Aryan moral precepts; for example, the nine commandment table which had already been appropriated by the Jews as their ten prohibitions. In this manner was Galilee joined with the whole near east.

The Christian movement, disrupting old forms, seemed to the Pharisee Saul to hold great promise of practical usefulness. In a sudden decision he joined its ranks and, possessed by an unrestrained fanaticism, he preached international revolution against the Roman empire. In spite of all subsequent attempts at reform, his teachings still remain the Jewish spiritual basis, the Talmudic oriental aspect of both the catholic and the Lutheran churches.

Paul accomplished something which is never admitted in churchly circles. He made the suppressed Jewish national rebellion internationally effective, thus paving the way for the further spread of racial chaos in the ancient world. The Jews in Rome knew very well what they were about when they placed their synagogues at his disposal as places wherein he could make his proselytising speeches.

The fact that Paul, despite occasional criticism of the Jews, knew quite well that he served a Jewish cause is to be seen in several all too candid passages in his letters:

..... Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.

And so all Israel shall be saved ..... Whose are the fathers ..... Who are the Israelites; to whom pertains the adoption and the glory and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of god, and the promises;

..... and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came ..... For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?

This is identical to the teachings of the modern misbegotten sect of serious bible students.

The Gospel of saint John, which still retains an aristocratic spirit, strove to defend Christianity against this collective bastardisation, orientalisation, and Judaisation. About the year 150, Markion, who was a Greek, once again represented the Nordic idea of a world order based on organic tension and hierarchical structure. This was in direct contrast to the Semitic conception of a capricious god who exercised a boundless despotism. Marcion therefore rejected the old testament as the book of laws of so false a deity. Similar efforts were made by a few of the Gnostics. But Rome, now racially polluted beyond redemption, was utterly committed to Africa and Syria, and smothered the simple essence of Jesus with the accretions of late Roman goals of world empire and ecumenical church.

The conflicts of the earliest centuries of our era are not to be understood except as struggles of racial souls against the Hydra headed racial chaos. In this the near eastern amalgam of superstition, insane magic and sensual mysteries gathered to itself all that was chaotic, broken, and degenerate, thus infecting Christianity with that schismatic character which still afflicts it to this day. Thus a servile religion, its true nature disguised through the misuse of the great personality of Jesus, entered Europe. Emergent Christianity, derived from a multiplicity of sources, demonstrated an astounding combination of abstract spirituality and demonic sorcery, as well as exceptional powers of infiltration irrespective of other currents which were assimilated in it. The idea of the trinity, for example, was familiar to many of the peoples of the Mediterranean basin in the form of the father, the mother and the son, and in the precept Everything divides threefold. The mother symbolised the fertile earth, the father the creative principle of light. Now, in place of the mother there appears the holy ghost as a conscious retreat from the purely physical. Such was the hagion pneuma of the Greeks, the prana of the Indians. This spirituality and its emphasis were not rooted in a racial national ground conditioned by the polarity of organic life. Instead it became a force without direction.

Here is neither Jew nor Greek, here is neither slave nor free, here is neither man nor woman, wrote Paul to the Galatians—that last remnant of a great Celtic migration down the Danube valley and into Asia Minor. On the basis of this nihilism, which is a denial of everything organic, he then calls for a belief in Christ. This constituted a total rejection of all the culture creating values of Greece and Rome—although to be sure, Christianity took over a degenerate form of such values—and effected their disintegration. Thanks to its strongly exclusive character, Christianity was then able to gather to itself all those who had lost direction.

A further step toward the denial of natural life lay in the dogmatic assertion of the virgin birth. Yet this is commonly a part of a solar myth to be found among various peoples from northern Europe to the south sea islands.

Abstract spirituality, however, was flanked on each side by all the magic of Asia Minor, Syria and Africa. The demons which were driven out by Jesus and passed into the swine; the calming of the stormy sea at his command; his certified resurrection from the dead; his ascent into heaven—all these were the real point of departure for Christianity, and undoubtedly greatly strengthened the ability to endure much suffering.

Thus the world did not proceed from the life of the saviour (soter) but from his death and its miraculous consequences. This is the single motif of the Pauline epistles. Goethe, on the contrary, held that it was the life of Christ which was important, not his death. In this he was attesting to the soul of the Germanic west expressed in Positive Christianity, as opposed to negative Christianity based on priesthood and witch mania and deriving from Etruscan Asiatic concepts.

As we have indicated earlier, it is misleading when our scholars represent the transformation of Greek life as if there had been a development from chthonic gods to a deity of light, and from matriarchy to patriarchy. It is equally false when they speak of a naive popular outlook which later ascended to lofty thought. In reality, alongside the antichthonic struggle, in the later predominance of intellectual doctrinal systems, in the attempt to exert political restraint over the earlier, unconstrained ways, there occurs a drying up of creative racial powers. In the end, we have only the Platonic reaction which strove to attain by artifice what the blood alone was already too weak to achieve.

The Nordic Greek recognised no separate priestly caste. His priests came from the aristocratic families. His singers and poets related to him the deeds and acts of his heroes and his gods. The free Greek spirit was as alien to dogmatism as was the earlier Indian and the later Teuton. Gymnastics and music were the substance of his education, and these established the necessary prerequisites for the production of the hoplite, the citizen of the state. Only a Sokrates could preach such insanity as: virtue could be taught and imparted to all men, an idea further refined by Platon. He who should really understand the nature of the world of ideas must of necessity be virtuous. With the promulgation of such an individualistic and faceless worldview, the axe was truly laid at the roots of Greek life.

At the same time, this rootless intellectualism permitted the recrudescence of all those Asiatic practices which had been put to flight by Apollonian Greek discipline. Here we can follow with absolute objectivity the alternating play which takes place between intellectualism and magic. Both reason and will, if not always consciously, pursue the same goal. Both are true to nature, blood determined and organically conditioned. To the degree to which the rational worldview becomes unsure of its validity because of the changed nature of those who represent it, it also becomes too narrow for rational constructs. At the same time, that part which is based on will degenerates into magic and the proliferation of one superstition after another. The result of the disintegration of the rational willed racial soul is a world view based on an intellectual magical substructure—when it is not merely meaningless individualism and unbridled bastardy. In the former case, the catholic church and, to a lesser extent, protestantism provide intellectual justifications for a magical belief. Late Hellenism offers an example of the latter.

Negative and Positive Christianity were locked in conflict from the beginning, and that conflict is today being waged with ever more bitterness. The negative type emphasises its Levantine Etruscan tradition, its abstract dogmas and hoary old customs; the positive consciously calls upon the Nordic blood to awaken, just as in their simple innocence the first Teutons did when they pressed into Italy bringing renewed vigour to that sick land.

Like a mighty and awesome primordial destiny, the Cimbri had once stormed in from the north. An initial repulse could not stay the Nordic Celts and Teutons from repeatedly pressing upon the frontiers of Rome. In campaign after campaign the military skill of the Romans proved ineffectual against the rude strength of a young people. Giant blond slaves began to appear on the streets of Rome, and the Germanic ideal of beauty became fashionable among a decadent people bereft of all ideals of their own. Free Teutons also were soon no rarity in Rome. More and more the Caesares came to depend for support on the loyalty of the Germanic soldiery. Yet at the same time the Germans came to constitute the greatest threat to the existence of the wretched state now without values of its own. By imposing fines on bachelors, subsidising marriage, and public welfare, Augustus attempted to regenerate his own people. It was in vain. Teutons were instrumental in the election of Claudius, of Galba, and of Vitellius. Marcus Aurelius sent his Teutonic prisoners from Vienna to Italy where instead of making them into gladiators he had them farm the long desolate soil. By the time of Constantinus, the Roman army was almost entirely Germanic. Whoever cannot see racial forces at work here must be blind to all historical processes. It is patently obvious that both decomposition and rebirth are present in this. The regenerative process continues past Constantinus to Stilicho, Alaric, Ricimer, Odoacer, Theodoric, the Langobards and to the Normans. These last named started by establishing a kingdom in the south which reached its apogee under the incomparable Friedrich II, whose Sicilian kingdom became the first secular world state, and whose provinces were settled by German nobility.

In this process of Nordicising Italy, the work of Theodoric the Great was particularly significant. For more than thirty years this strong, yet generous and gentle ruler, governed Italy. What Marcus Aurelius and Constantinus had begun, he continued. The Teutonic settlers now became not merely tenant farmers and small holders, but also the owners of large estates. One third of all the landed property passed into the hands of the Germanic soldiery. Although unfortunately widely dispersed, nevertheless more than 200,000 Germanic families settled in Tuscany and around Ravenna and Venice. Once again Nordic hands drove the plough through the soil of middle Italy and made the hitherto impoverished and desolate land fruitful and independent of the grain imports from north Africa.

Set apart from the indigenous population by their adherence to the Arian denomination and by laws prohibiting intermarriage, the Goths and the later Langobards played the same character forming role as had the first Nordic immigrants for old Republican Rome. Racial amalgamation only began with the conversion of the Germanic Christians from the Arian creed to Roman catholicism.

At last came the Renaissance as a thunderous reassertion of Nordic Germanic blood. With a sudden shattering of constricting social barriers, there arose from the cultivated soil one genius after another. Meanwhile, all of Africanised Italy south of Rome remained mute and uncreative, until today, when Fascism, again arising from the north, is attempting to reawaken the old values. Attempting!

Even before the appearance of the work of Houston Chamberlain, it had long been common knowledge that all the creative values of the nations of the west were of Teutonic origins. Chamberlain recognised as self evident that with the increasing dilution of this Germanic blood there would be a concomitant waning of the creativity, creative of nations, forming of types, which was its function, and that the entire culture of the west must perish.

New studies of prehistory support Chamberlain’s thesis, and in combination with ethnology have spurred ever more serious reflection. Today, we have the terrible awareness that we are face to face with a final decision. Either we upbreed the old blood and thereby find renewed vitality and a heightened will to struggle, or the Teutonic European values of culture and ordered government will sink under the filthy human flood of Cosmopolis; crippled on the hot and sterile asphalt of a bestialised subhumanity; or, perhaps, infiltrate like plague bacilli into South America, China, the Dutch East Indies and Africa, where ultimate bastardisation will overtake them.

There is another feature of Chamberlain’s thought which is of decisive importance today. Besides his emphasis upon the creation of a new world through German influence, he understood that an historical interval lay between the old Nordic Rome and the new Germanic west, and that this intervening epoch was characterised by unchecked racial mixing. He saw this bastardisation as the welling up of everything diseased, of Levantine superstitions and sensual excesses, until the febrile psyche of the population permeated the entire world. Chamberlain, with the consummate artistry of a seminal historian, called this period the age of racial chaos. Even if its temporal limits defy precise demarcation, an awareness of this process has become widely disseminated and is self evident to those possessed of deeper insight.

This new periodisation, in the place of antiquity and the middle ages, was one of the greatest discoveries of the late nineteenth century, and forms the basis for all our studies of history as the twentieth century advances. This new insight means that if no Theodoric had followed the Caracallae, the darkness would have descended forever upon Europe. It is probable that the roiling morass of Asiatic and African half breeds—indeed, of all the peoples of the Mediterranean littoral—would have eventually settled, after wild excesses. Life, ever resurgent, would probably have eliminated much that was decayed and deformed. Eternally lost, however, would have been the creative power of a soul which had continuously created new cultures. Vanished forever would have been the world transforming genius of that universally questing Nordic man. Only an undifferentiated humanity would have remained to perpetuate a vegetable existence, much as it does in southern Italy today—not living, but brutishly surviving, without bold visions of body and soul, without any real yearnings, dwelling in deep, submissive contentment on lava masses or amid stony wastes.

Therefore, if even today, some 2,000 years after the first appearance of the Teutons in history, there still exist in some places national cultures, creative abilities, and a daring spirit of enterprise, such forces, even though they contend greatly with each other, owe their very existence to that new northern wave which enveloped and fertilised everything, passing stormy floods over the whole of Europe, washing around the feet of the Caucasus, sending its surf beyond the Pillars of Hercules—and only ebbing away in the deserts of north Africa.

Seen in its broad outlines, the history of Europe is the history of the struggle between this new human type and the forces of Roman racial chaos, which, numbering in the millions, stretched from the Danube to the Rhine. This dark tide carried some glittering values on its surface and catered to some nerve tingling lusts; its waves spoke of a past of once mighty world dominion and of a religion which answered all questions.

A considerable number of the Nordics succumbed to the seductive enticements with careless, even childlike, abandon. Thus they became themselves the servants of a kind of dream of ancient Roman grandeur. Too often they fought throughout the world in the cause of a fantasy, and so became, instead of the progenitors they had been, merely the inheritors. Until Martin Luther appeared on the scene, such was the form taken by the struggle between the Teuton and the forces of racial chaos. It became an internecine struggle between kindred based heroism and heroism in the service of an alien fantasy. Frequently, those who confronted each other in war to defend mortally opposed values were of the same race. It is only too easy to understand how the representatives of this race, pouring out of the northern German plain in a natural and violent manner into Gaul, Spain and Italy, were not wholly conscious of their own spiritual characteristics. With astonished eyes, they took to themselves that which was both new and alien and—as masters—ruled over it. If they reshaped it, they also—as a minority—had to compromise with the new situation. Today, those supporters of national rights who yet preach the ideal of a united mankind and laud a single, organised, visible, ecumenical church which is to determine and embrace all public life, all science, all art, all ethics, on the basis of a single dogma, display the end result of those ideas, born of racial chaos, which have poisoned our true nature through the centuries. This is exemplified by the kind of commentator who says: What Austria is striving for, the whole world must attain on a vaster scale. This is racial pollution and spiritual murder elevated to a world political program.

Emperor and pope once fought for this universalist and antinational idea; opposed to it were the German kings. Martin Luther created a national political idea as against the papal world monarchy. Developments in England, France, Scandinavia and Prussia gave added strength to this defence against chaos. The rebirth of Germany in 1813 and 1871 moved things a stage further, but still always unconsciously, as it were, striving toward the goal. The collapse of 1918 tore apart our very vitals, but at the same time laid bare to the searching soul the threads which had woven their fabric of mixed blessings. From the tribal consciousness of ancient Germania, by way of the ideas of the German kings, through the new leadership of Prussia and the faith in a united Germany, there is born today, as the greatest flowering of the German soul, a racially based folkish consciousness. On the basis of this experience we hail as the religion of the German future the fact that, though lying now politically prostrate, humiliated and persecuted, we have found the roots of our strength, and have actually discovered and experienced them anew with such force as no previous generation has known.

At last, Mythic feeling and conscious perception no longer confront each other as antagonists but as allies. Passionate nationalism is no longer directed toward tribal, dynastic or theological loyalties, but toward that primal substance, the racially based nationhood itself. Here is the message which will one day melt away all dross, eliminate all that is base, and bring into being all that is noble.

Further research will reveal, as well as the Germanic struggle against racial chaos, the line taken by other indigenous or infiltrated races of Europe. It will be able to assess the formerly more submissive and more indifferent Mediterranean race which is not entirely at odds with Germanic values. It will show that, as long as it is not a mass phenomenon, many a mixture with it is not an unconditional loss but often an enrichment of soul. It will acknowledge the less culturally creative Dinaric race which, gifted with a robust temperament, nonetheless has often played an effective role in great European dramas. But it will take into account also that its near eastern admixture produces symptoms of bastardy as, for example, can be seen in Austria and in the Balkans. The newly enlightened observer can next see how the unenterprising, brunette Alpine race, which is nevertheless well endowed with powers of resistance, patiently pushes forward and multiplies. The Alpine does not openly rebel against the dominant Teuton. Here and there, by mass penetration, it actually increases in individual cases the Germanic powers for tenacious resistance. But it also clouds the creative talents, overlays and smothers them. Great areas of France, Switzerland and Germany already show the stigmata of Alpine influence, which is inimical to all that is great. Political democracy, spiritual sterility, cowardly pacificism, combined with craftiness in business and a lack of principle in commercial enterprises when profit is in view, these are the awful signs of an Alpine influence over European life.

All the great and bloody struggles of the Teutons against the Roman racial chaos weakened, often for a considerable time, the vitality of the former. Moreover, even though Alpine man was not infrequently involved in wars, he was nevertheless spared far more than the Nordic insurgents who, initially as heretics, cleared a path for free thought, that is, thought linked to racial type.

If we overlook the early struggle of the Arians for religious liberty, the entire west, once Romish political power was consolidated, demonstrates the lack of a self contained, organically rooted way of life. If the victorious ecumenical Roman church was the lineal descendant of the faceless late Roman empire, even if the Roman emperors constituted themselves the most powerful arm of this idea, even if highly gifted members of Germanic families placed themselves at the service of its seductions, nevertheless everywhere and in all domains the counterforces straightaway began to stir. Politically, this occurred with the German kings and French Gallicanism; in ecclesiastical matters, in the struggle of the bishops against the Curia; spiritually, in the demand for freedom of natural inquiry; in philosophy and theology, in the call for freedom of thought and belief. Although in the earlier period these forces still sometimes paid obeisance to Rome as an idea, and were often not fully aware of the significance of their demands—even if they were, perhaps, borne upward by the naive hope of cleansing the church—they were, in the last analysis, forces of ardent nationalism. We recognise in them a racially linked, resolute and subconscious mode of thought and feeling against any variety of universalism.

The authority of a king or duke, territorial limits to episcopal sees, and personal freedom—are all directly rooted in the soil, even though these forces competed, and still do, for ascendancy. If it is clear now that it was the most purely Nordic Germanic states, peoples and tribes which most consistently and resolutely defended themselves against the assault on everything organic by Roman ecumenical conformism, then we shall be able to see that even before the great victorious awakening of those forces from the hypnotic influence of Rome and the Levant, there was an heroic struggle in progress directly linked to the still pagan Teutons. The history of the Albigensians, Waldenses, Cathars, Arnoldists, Stedingers, Huguenots, the reformed church and the Lutherans, as well as of the martyrs of free inquiry and the heroes of Nordic philosophy, draws an impressive picture of a gigantic contest for character values, those prerequisites of soul and spirit without the assertion of which there could have been neither European nor national culture.

Whoever looks at modern France, democratised, misgoverned by crafty lawyers, plundered by Jewish bankers, spiritually glittering, but living now only on its past, could scarcely imagine that this land once stood from end to end as the focal area of heroic struggles and, for over half a millennium, produced figures of the boldest type who were succeeded, generation after generation, by men of heroic disposition. Who among the cultured of today actually knows anything about Gothic Toulouse, the ruins of which still attest to a proud race? Who knows of the great ruling families of that city which were annihilated in bloody wars? Who is familiar with the history of the Counts of Foix, whose castle is today only a miserable heap of stones, whose villages are desolate, whose lands are occupied only by wretched peasants? The pope, declared one of these bold counts about 1200, has nothing to do with my religion, because the faith of each man must be free. This fundamentally Germanic idea, which even today is only partially realised, cost southern France its finest blood, and was smothered forever with its extermination in this region. As a last vestige of the Visigothic spirit, Montauban, France’s only protestant college, is still to be found there.

The same heroism inspired a tiny people dwelling in the midst of the Italian French Alps. Here, the will that welded them all together goes back to a great and mysterious personality, a merchant of Lyon who had migrated to that cite (we still do not know from where) and whose name was Peter. Later, the surname Valdo, or Waldes, was attributed to him.

For many years he conducted his affairs honourably, and was regarded as a devout man who, presumably, had not thought of rebellion. But he became more and more aware of the discrepancy between the simplicity of the gospels and the ostentation of the church. He felt ever more deeply the crippling effect of coercive religious doctrines. So, in the sincerely held belief that he was serving the supreme spiritual authority, Peter Waldes made a pilgrimage to Rome, there to urge simplicity of moral conduct, honesty in dealings, and freedom to teach on the basis of Christ’s own words. In Rome it was agreed to make concessions to him except in those things which were most essential. At this, Waldes divided up his property, parted from his wife, and declared to the representative of Rome who tried to force him to recant: One must obey god more than man.

This was the hour of birth of a great heretic and a great reformer, to whom, even today, all Europeans—including all catholics—have cause to be grateful. The simple greatness of Peter Waldes must have been enormously influential in organising the communities of the poor of Lyon, as well as his triumphs during his travels along the Rhine and to Bohemia. The formation of Waldensian communities in central Austria, in Pomerania, and in Brandenburg, show that his demand for freedom to teach the gospels had struck a bright chord from the ancient German heartstrings. Now it had taken a firm root in men’s souls and could no longer be rooted out. It was the same demand which was raised by Peter of Bruys, Henry of Cluny and Arnold of Brescia. A sculpture of Waldes at Mainz shows him to have had a pure Nordic head, a strong, high forehead, large eyes, a powerful and slightly aquiline nose and a firm, beautifully formed mouth. On his chin was a beard.

After its expulsion from Lyon, the community fanned out in different directions, preaching and recruiting. They met a friendly reception in Gothic Albigensian Provence, as also in the Rhineland. In Metz, the Waldensians had soon grown so numerous that members of the magistracy refused to obey the commands of the bishop to arrest them, giving as their reason that which Waldes himself had once put forward, namely that one must obey god rather than man. Thereupon followed the persecution by Pope Innocentius III, the burning of the scriptures which had been translated from Latin into the mother tongue, and the execution of a number of the members of the sect. The survivors then fled throughout Lorraine and into the Netherlands and those other parts of Germany where every door, beyond the immediate reach of Rome, was opened to them. Yet another group fled into Lombardy. There it found similar heresies being spread by, among others, the Patarians in Milan, and the teachings of Arnold of Brescia who strove beyond what was purely evangelical for ecclesiastical as well as political reform, and who denied the pope a title to temporal power as a prerequisite for his spiritual health.

Next the community of the Waldensians poured into the valleys in the western slopes of the Alps and gained a foothold in the districts with the poorer soils which, thanks to the diligence of their hands, blossomed into fruitful gardens. They had no wish but to live quietly and modestly in their faith and to fulfil their evangelical duties on this earth. But at length the bells of the Inquisition began to peal throughout the west. Even the quiet valleys with their two little towns and twenty villages were plunged into tumult. By the mid fourteenth century, the Waldensians were having to pay heavy tribute to appease the church and the lords of the land—which were naturally, at that time, unproductive. This was the period when the black death raged in the German districts. French troops, under the direct command of the Inquisitor, moved into the quiet Alpine valleys. Twelve Waldensians were first taken in chains to the church. They were garbed in yellow gowns on which were painted the flames of hell. Anathema was pronounced against them, their shoes were removed, each had a rope tied around his neck, and they were then all burned at the stake. These and other tortures broke the resistance of many, causing them to recant. However, these reverses only brought further humiliations in their wake. Fresh revolts broke out and inevitably brought about fresh repressions. An epic of human struggle began which has seldom been equalled for heroic conduct. The Waldensians were stripped of all their property and filled the prisons of the Inquisitions in such numbers that they were only able to be fed through the generosity of the people.

However, their numbers were conveniently diminished by the usual expedient of being burnt by the officers of the religion of love. A single Inquisitor persecuted the Waldensian community. For thirteen years, he was repeatedly successful in catching many of them who had made some heretical remark. Prisoners were then tortured on the rack, had their hands cut off, were strangled or burned alive. In spite of this, the archbishop of Embrum had to report to the pope that the Waldensians remained obdurate in their faith.

At this time, when from every part of Europe the storm winds of a rebirth were rattling the gates of Rome, the deputy of the Vatican marched with the French troops once more into the Alpine valleys in order to trample down with military might the remaining resistance.

In 1487, the vicious Innocentius VIII issued a papal bull calling for the final extermination of the Waldensians. Under the command of La Palus, the crusade began. The houses of the heretics were looted and the inhabitants massacred. Most of those who survived did so by fleeing. The few who remained behind in the ruins of their ancestral dwellings were seemingly broken and ready to make their peace with the almighty church. Their property was then returned to them.

A period of quiet, however, proved not to be peace but only a prelude to new storms. Scarcely forty years later, simple faith again triumphed over the material might of medieval terror. Again Rome gathered its strength for the kill. The Edict of Fontainebleau (1540) had given fresh impetus to the hatred of heretics. It began when sixteen Waldensians of Merindol were denounced by the bishop and required to appear to answer charges. Knowing what fate awaited them, they did not present themselves. They were thereupon declared outlaws, and their houses, wives and children the property of the state. The little town of Merindol was to be laid waste, all buildings destroyed, all trees chopped down. Should they recant, the king expressed the wish that mildness would prevail. The Waldensians replied, however, that they would only be willing to recant if their errors could be proved to them from scripture.

Now, in 1545, came the severest trial. The soldiers of the secular authority marched into Merindol, strangled everyone they found there, and destroyed the entire little town. Calvieres and the other villages suffered a like fate. Those who had fled into the mountains begged a safe passage to Germany. This being refused, they starved to death in their hiding places. Altogether, over twenty two villages were destroyed, 3,000 people murdered, more than 600 Waldensians condemned to the galleys, and others most horribly tortured. Then false reports were dispatched to Paris concerning the atrocities of the heretics. However, the tortures inflicted by the inflamed soldiery and sadistic monks reached the ears of Francis I, and even on his death bed he urged Henry II to ease the plight of the Waldensians, which the latter, in fact, did.

The Waldensian community, despite its wide dispersal, was not very strong, and consequently lacking in aggressive thrust. Nevertheless, the idea of resistance to monkish degeneracy and spiritual gagging permeated France in a hundred other forms. It was a France which was at that time still Germanic Nordic in character, and well supplemented by a Mediterranean element.

Eventually, all these currents came together in the bold Huguenot movement which, had it been victorious, would have given the history of western Europe another impetus—an upward one.

The numbers of those who fought for a life which would be true to their racial type was extraordinarily large in the France of the time. They were to be found in all classes and all professions, from cardinals and princes of the blood down to the humblest artisan. Hundreds of recorded cases tell us of simple folk, dragged before the clerical and secular courts, who proved to be more learned in the scriptures than those who sat in judgement on them, and who could give more intelligent answers to questions of the creed than the learned Inquisitors.

This knowledge of their own superiority gave them the fortitude to face the torments of the stake. Often enough, it led the judges themselves to professions of support for the heretical idea.

This is hardly surprising if one is aware that the most abysmal ignorance was not only evident among the lower clergy, but that there were even (as Robert Stephanus tells us) professors of theology at the Sorbonne who, in their rage against the heretics, declared that they themselves had reached the age of fifty without knowing anything about the new testament, and therefore a layman had no business to concern himself with it.

About the year 1400, the pope netted some 100,000 gulden from the sale of indulgences in German lands alone. In England, in 1374, parliament estimated that the vicar of Christ pocketed five times the amount of taxes that fell to their own king. The identical complaint, all too justified, was raised throughout France. All classes groaned under the burden of church taxes. Indeed, honest monks, like the Franciscans Vitriarius and Meriot, demanded the abolition of the unworthy trade in indulgences. In the same way as with the holy blood of Wilsnack, so also was the corrupt trade carried on at the holy house of Loreto (which the angels were supposed to have carried to Europe from Palestine) and these miraculous places proved to be veritable gold mines. Church benefices multiplied so profusely that Calvin was made a curate at the age of twelve and a priest at eighteen, although he had never previously undertaken the necessary theological studies. The income from benefices had to be secured regardless of personal qualifications.

Such evils led to much critical reflection and, as a result, a succession of heroic figures experienced the flames of the stake. There was the Archbishop of Arles, Louis Allemand, who, at the Council of Basel, defended the principle of the conciliar movement with his utmost strength against papal dictatorship. There was shrewd old Jacob Lefèvre, who worked toward the education of a free younger generation, and whose work was continued by his pupil Briconnet. There was William Farel, a fiery spirit, who placed himself in the midst of the struggle, and who later became a leading reformer in Neuchatel, Lausanne and Geneva. There were also Casoli and Michael d’Arnande. There were the aristocratic Burgundian Languet and the brilliant Beza and Hotoman. Above all, there towers that courageous and bold nobleman from Artois, Louis de Berquin, amid a mighty band. A man of faith, full of frankness and clarity of vision, he was a superb writer, and has been called, not unjustly, the French Ulrich von Hutten. With him, there was the simple wool carder from Meaux, Jean Leclerc, who preached revolution against the anti Christ in Rome, and who, like Luther, nailed his proclamation to the cathedral doors. There was the heroic Pouvan who suffered a martyr’s death, and Franz Lambert, a Franciscan, and a hundred others who preached the freedom of the gospel and of thought in forests and cellars as the best of the early Christians had once done in the Roman catacombs.

Even before the Huguenot movement had taken a firm hold in France and found some protection under the leadership of Condé and the great Admiral Coligny, the same persecution had spread over the whole land as in the quiet valleys of the Alpes Cottiennes and in Provence. Berquin the Bold was seized and ordered to recant. His tongue was pierced with red hot pincers and he was condemned to life imprisonment. He did not recant and, instead, appealed to the king. It was in vain. He was finally burned at the stake on the 22nd of April, 1527. Even from the flames he spoke to the people, but his speech was drowned out by the howls of the monks and the executioners: they feared him even in death.

It has been reported of Nero that he caused his gardens to be illuminated with burning human torches. In the sixteenth century of our Lord, his most Christian majesty, the King of France, walked in stately procession from saint Germain l’Auxerrois to Notre Dame and thence to his palace. On the squares which he had to traverse, there stood, to the glory and honour of the holy mother church, the stakes and the wood piles whereon unyielding heretics were to suffer death amid the fires. Twenty four heretics died thus on that day in Paris.

The victims of persecution began to flee to Germany for refuge. Among them were Calvin, Roussel, and Marot. Savage edicts for the persecution of heretics followed rapidly one upon the other. In Meaux, the first protestant community in France, an assembly was taken by surprise. When they refused to recant, fourteen suffered death by burning. They died calling out prayers to one another. The day after, a theological scholar from the Sorbonne proved that those who were burned were also consigned to eternal damnation. He added: And if an angel came down from heaven and wished to assure us of the contrary, we would have to reject this; for god would not be god if he did not damn them forever.

Just as in Meaux, so throughout France the fires of the stake flared skyward. But again and again the chronicles attest to the unbroken courage of the condemned. Jean Chapot was carried to the place of execution because the torturers had previously broken his legs. As he continued to proclaim his faith, he was quickly strangled lest his heretical ideas infect the onlookers. After this, because similar cases were occurring all over, it became the practice to cut out the tongues of obdurate heretics before leading them to the stake—AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM!

History not only records a great number of well authenticated stories of the heroism of those burned at the stake, it also reports many conversions among the judges themselves. Such was the case of the courageous Du Bourg, who calmly accepted his sentence of death and was strangled. There were numerous similar cases among other men of the France of those days. The great tragedies of individual heroism and agony were transformed, however, into bold, skilful and joyous counterattack, when the best of the French higher nobility stood as Huguenots at the head of the struggle for freedom of thought. The fight against Romish power was waged in eight bloody wars throughout the length and breadth of France. The dispute over holy communion, which appeared generally as the principal doctrinal conflict, was really only a superficial manifestation of a much deeper spiritual division. Coligny, when he later held power, demonstrated his basic outlook by demanding freedom of belief not only for himself but also for the catholics of Chatillon.

Since, however, the Huguenots found themselves confronted by absolute rigidity, and the representatives of Rome demanded compliance on that basis, the protestants were left no recourse but to institute gradually a similarly sharply defined canon which, quite naturally, because it was essentially unnatural, brought the various protestant sects into conflict with one another. But underlying all these things was the much deeper and primal Germanic idea of inner freedom. New doctrines and new forms became only symbols of resistance to Roman dogmas. Thus the holy mass was opposed by almost all Huguenots.

In the souls of the Huguenot aristocracy, there arose a dichotomy which severely handicapped their cause. While they demanded absolute freedom of conscience and teaching, they were compelled to put their demands to a king to whom they were devoted in a civil and political respect according to the ancient Frankish concept of fealty. The king, however, was not only a catholic, but saw in a uniformity of religion a necessary feature of the security of the body politic. In this way it came about that when later the Huguenot forces gathered at Orleans and La Rochelle against the king, and fought against his armies at Jarnac, saint Denis and Moncontour, they still, with complete sincerity, proclaimed their loyalty and passed resolutions in which they claimed that the king was not free but a captive of the Roman party. This view was confirmed in their eyes after each conclusion of peace.

Even at the zenith of their strength, the Huguenots were still only a minority. Their advantages lay in the skill and energy of their leaders, in the heroism of a new feeling for life, and in the resurgent call of their ancient blood. Their enemies, on the other hand, were weakened by disputes among their leaders and the constant fear of the king that his generals, such as Anjou, would become too powerful.

The massacre at Vassy, where the Duke of Guise had the Huguenots slaughtered as they knelt in prayer, was one of the first indications that it was to be a fight to the bitter end. And so the Huguenots, always prepared for sacrifices, responded when the call to arms came from the great Condé. In spite of some defeats, the Huguenots managed to take more and more fortresses, castles, and cities, and sought now in the north and now in the south to establish their own strongholds.

In these wars the finest of the ancient French blood was spilled on the battlefields by each side. Thus died the old Constable Montmorency, who fought, not from religious hatred like the Guises, but as a loyal vassal of his king. He ended his life on the field of saint Denis at the age of seventy four. Then, one by one, all the protestant leaders fell, with Andelot and Condé at their head. Disdaining his broken thigh, the great prince leaped in front of his army at Jarnac: Well then, you nobles of France, here is the battle we have awaited so long. His horse was wounded and fell. An enemy captain then struck him down from behind.

Even after a favourable peace, a frightful fate awaited the Huguenot troops on coming home. The inflamed catholic majority plundered their houses, drove out their families, and murdered the returning soldiers. After the peace of Longjumeau, for example, such pogroms were deliberately organised by the authorities. Lyons, Amiens, Troyes, Rouen, Socissons and other cities witnessed a bloody frenzy which claimed more victims among the protestants than had the war itself in six whole months. Contemporary writers estimated the number of those slain after the conclusion of peace at 10,000. By contrast, Moncontour, probably the most bloody of the battles fought later, cost only about 6,000. Simultaneously an incessant stream of hatred poured out from Rome demanding the complete annihilation of heretics. Pius V castigated the French king because he had made concessions to the Huguenots, and praised those of his subjects like the Duke of Nemours who continued the slaughter in defiance of the king’s decrees. The pope promised money and soldiers and called for yet more blood to be shed. His biographer, Gabutius, extols Pius V as the instigator of the Third Huguenot War. Not even the victory of Jarnac and the death of Condé satisfied this vicar of Christ. His benedictions were combined with the injunction to exterminate all heretics, even the prisoners of war. He called down the anger of god in advance upon any weakening. He continued in this vein after the peace of saint Germain, and incited the king’s subjects against the court.

Yet it still seemed as though the old Germanic character would triumph in the end. The court had already once been under Huguenot influence, and in place of debauched revels there had entered into the royal palaces a hard, even narrow minded, sobriety. Once more the Huguenots gained acceptance when Charles IX summoned Coligny to his service. To the leader of the heretics he said, I bid you welcome as no nobleman has been welcomed for twenty years! Thus for a brief time a new hand guided the destiny of France—until everything was destroyed in the massacre of saint Bartholomew’s Eve. Vacillating, characterless, given to fits of maniacal rage, the king inclined to the Roman faction, and they pushed him into the murder of Coligny.

Now there was no turning back. The Germanic tide, which had seemed about to sweep triumphantly through France, collapsed. When Coligny’s bloody corpse was thrown before the feet of the Duke of Guise, the latter wiped the blood from Coligny’s face and said contemptuously, Yes indeed, that is he, and proceeded to kick the cadaver. Meanwhile in Rome, at the Castle of saint Angelo, the massacre was celebrated with public holidays, and a special coin was minted in honour of Coligny’s murderer. In Paris, the pious rabble even cut off the hands of France’s great hero and dragged the corpse for three days through the filth of the streets.

The end was fast approaching. The remaining Huguenot leaders who had gathered in Paris for the wedding of Henry of Navarre to Margaret of Valois either perished in the blood bath of saint Bartholomew’s Eve, or were slaughtered after fleeing to other areas. In Orleans, 1,500 men, as well as numerous women and children, were murdered in the course of five days; in Lyons, 1,800 perished. Day after day the cities of Provence witnessed mutilated corpses floating down the rivers. Arles could draw no drinking water from the river for many days. In Rouen, the maddened scoundrels murdered 800 people in two days; in Toulouse, 300.

The tall, blond Huguenot women—distinctive as ever—whose men folk had been treacherously murdered, were frequently subjected to the most obscene indignities at the hands of the rabble which was egged on by foul mouthed monks and priests. The mob, with the blessing of the church, showed no mercy to the heretics. The final results of saint Bartholomew’s Eve were more than 70,000 slain.

When later struggles brought no success, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots preferred to leave a spiritually oppressed France. Prussia, England, and the Netherlands reckon the descendants of these emigres (estimated at almost two million) as among the finest of their fellow citizens.

The decisive fact that emerges from all this bloodletting is, however, the deterioration of the character of the French nation. That true pride, that unbending resolution, that nobility of mind, which the early Huguenot leadership epitomised, was lost. When in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, classical French philosophy undermined church dogma and brought it into disrepute, it was certainly imbued with much acuteness of intellect and scintillating wit. Nevertheless, it is evident with Rousseau and even with Voltaire that it lacked genuine nobility of mind such as distinguished Berquin, Condé, Coligny and Teligny. This intellectualism was abstract and divorced from life, and in this way the 14th of July 1789 was a symbol of impotence of character. The revolution under Coligny had been a true and full blooded one while the events of 1793 were merely bloodthirsty and sterile because they were not sustained by anyone of great character. No geniuses inspired the Girondins and Jacobins—only insane philistines, egomaniacal demagogues and those hyenas of the political battlefields who plunder the forlorn corpses.

Just as in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution the Tartarised subhumans murdered anyone who, by their tall stature and confident carriage, looked suspiciously like an aristocrat, so also did the swart Jacobin rabble drag to the scaffold anyone who was slender and blond. Expressed in terms of racial history, with the destruction of the Huguenots, the Nordic racial strength in France was, if not absolutely eliminated, at least seriously weakened. Classical France displayed only intellect without greatness of soul. This decline of character was instinctively realised by the hungry masses who joined with the rapacious subhuman elements to do away with the last men of quality. Since that time, the mixed Mediterranean Alpine type (not the Celt) has stepped into the foreground. The shopkeepers, lawyers, and speculators have become the masters of public life. Democracy, which is to say the rule of money rather than of character, had arrived. Now it no longer mattered whether France was a monarchy or a republic; the nineteenth century citizenry remained racially uncreative. For that very reason, the Jewish banker was able to push himself to the front, followed by Jewish journalists and Jewish Marxists. Only the tradition of a thousand years of history and the enduring geographical factors still continued to determine the basic thrust of French power politics. But this was manifested in a very different manner than in the period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Whoever was still of noble disposition in France withdrew from the dirty business of politics and lived in conservative seclusion on provincial estates from which their sons left only to serve the fatherland in the army, and especially in the navy. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, observers at naval balls were astonished to discover that all the officers were blond.

This strength, which still existed in northern France (Normandy was always regarded during the time of heresies as Little Germany), was what confronted the German Reich in 1914. It was a strength, however, which was no longer under the direction of leaders of the same race, but under Rothschild bankers and other financial interests of that breed. In addition there were the types of Fallieres or Millerand, and the Alpine inadequacies of many of the Marxist leaders. Today, the very last few drops of the valuable blood are finally trickling away. Over vast stretches of the south, it has entirely disappeared and is now being replaced by African elements, as was once the fate of Rome. The port cities of Toulon and Marseilles transmit unceasingly the germs of bastardisation throughout the land. An ever more degenerate populace circumambulates the Notre Dame. Negroes and mulattos stroll about on arms of white women. An exclusively Jewish quarter has arisen with new synagogues. Arrogant and repulsive bastardlike creatures pollute the race of the still beautiful women who are drawn to Paris from the French provinces. It is a modern repetition of the tragedy which long overtook Persepolis, Athens, and Rome.

This is why a close alliance with France, quite apart from the military and political aspects, would be racially so dangerous. On the contrary, what is needed is a clarion call for defence against African infiltration, for the closing of frontiers on the basis of anthropological considerations, and the establishment of a Nordic European coalition for the object of cleansing Mother Europe of the filth of Africa and the Levant. This would be in the true interests of the French themselves.

Today the history of the kingdom of the Franks is ended. It matters little whether France is governed by clerical power seekers or inane free thinkers; the great creative impulse is moribund. France will henceforth be afflicted by an instinctual racial angst which is the inescapable heritage of the crossbreed, however superficially secure he may appear to be. It is this which accounts for the still obsessive fear of a Germany which was only overcome with the aid of the entire world. Germany, then, has the best of reasons for studying the life courses of its neighbours in order to arouse all its inner strength to avert the same dire fate.

Germany, predominantly protestant, had no need for a Bastille Day. Although pressed back for a time by the spirit of Alpine cum Levantine Rome, a strong ring of resistance based on character was drawn around the Baltic basin, and this thwarted the attempts of Rome to oppress it. Indeed, it directly compelled Rome to reform its moral life in order to survive at all.

But the Teuton has not, unfortunately, kept up his guard. Magnanimously, he conceded to alien blood those same rights which he had gained for himself as a result of his great sacrifices through the centuries. He carried tolerance of religious diversity and scientific speculation into areas where he would have done better to lay down strict limitations; the areas involving the creation of the national state and of the folkish type. Such are the prerequisites for organic life in general. He failed to see that a spirit of tolerance, as between catholic and protestant religious convictions, was not at all the same thing as toleration of anti Germanic racial values. Surely it is obvious that there is no equivalence of rights as between the stock market manipulator and the heroic man; or those who follow the un Germanic laws of the Talmud cannot be accorded equal rights in shaping the national life as a Hanseatic merchant or a German officer.

This failure on the part of the Teuton was a sin against his own blood. From it there sprang that sense of a great national guilt. This, in turn, resulted in the emergence of the two Germanies, which had already been discernible in 1870-1871, and which confronted each other irreconcilably after 1914, finally to fall apart in 1918, and are locked in a life and death struggle ever since. The struggle which was carried on during the wars of the heretics and at the time of Gustavus Adolphus is renewed in our own time but under different symbols. Such symbols are not simply those of an abstract theological nature, but represent with overwhelming clarity an organic antithesis between what is Nordic Germanic and the lesser races imbued with the spiritual nature of the near east.

It was the blood sacrifices of the nations upon the battlefields of the world which gave the democratic men of the east and their bastardised accomplices in the large cities the opportunity to achieve ascendancy. That human type which first began to gain predominance in the France of 150 years ago, has since 1918—financed by the wealth of the Levant—assumed the leadership of democracy in Germany. It is a type to which the older values are incomprehensible and which therefore fights openly and insolently against those values on every street and square. The stupidest of ideals is the ideal of the hero, proclaims the Berlin Daily Newspaper. Honour was accorded to successful speculators. Eastern Jewish bankers became the sources of finance for the parties committed to preserving the state, whereas those who fought against such a mockery of the Germanic character were thrown into prison on the charge of attacking the form of government. This inversion of values is the inevitable accompaniment of the change in the ruling caste. A single glance at the lineup of the Marxist democratic leadership demonstrates in a horrifying way the racial decline which had taken place between the time of Moltke, Roon, Bismarck and William I, and that of those parliamentarians who, until 1933, managed the German stock exchange colony from Berlin.

The dominion of this cast up Alpine Jewish amalgam, at a time when the worthier part of the nation was living in dreadful despair, seemed assured as a result of its immediate and instinctive alliance with those forces governing present day France—a France whose threadbare ideology it used to justify the spiritual poverty of the revolution of 1918. As it had achieved power through these false values, it was incapable of changing its course. German democracy, a form of French politics in Germany, originates in the last analysis from the natural affinity between decadent spirits which see upright character as a living reproach, and thus seek to ally themselves with what is degenerate. This is also the explanation for the sympathy which postrevolutionary Russia calls forth in all centres of Marxist subhumanity. Behind the glittering facade of touted principles, or Realpolitik considerations, there flows a current of subconscious racial power, a surging flood filled with the sewage of racial chaos. As this runs entirely counter to historical tradition and geopolitical legitimacy, it is wholly destructive to the German nation.

Historians who deal with the painful history of the struggles between Rome and the heretics always declare that these events must be viewed on the basis of the world picture and the conditions prevailing at that time. This is argued both by the defenders of Rome and by its accusers. In so doing, they have fallen victims to a fatal error. They have failed to see that, in addition to transitory circumstances, there exist immutable and basic laws which, although they contend in various forms, nevertheless remain constant in the direction of their effect. The struggle of Nordic man against Roman ecumenicalism is a 2000-year-old fact which has simultaneously been a condition of the times. Therefore, an understanding of present events also retains its basic justification in assessing the contending forces of race and racial chaos in times past. But what perished in these conflicts of the past is precisely what has not been treated of by competent historians—the annihilation of racial substance in southern France, the similar extermination of creative blood in the then still strongly Germanic core of Austria by the counterreformation, and other resultant conditions of the times.

Conventional historiography has sought to explain away what is immutable, so that what is really conditioned by the times is generally evaluated from only one aspect, and its characteristics only superficially examined. With this realisation, a new foundation has been laid for the future recorders and researchers of western development through study of the unchanging values of the racial soul which makes possible an ascending progress for the strong of heart.

The foregoing still requires some elaboration so that it does not appear as a superficial judgement of great questions. Consider the history of the Hussites. The protestant movement in Bohemia exhibits a fundamental difference from that of France. In France there was a single language, a single tradition of government, and clear tendencies toward unified nationhood. In Bohemia, on the contrary, German and Czech confronted one another as forces separated in large part by race. The Czechs, for their part, were stratified by race into a Nordic Slavic nobility, and lower orders of an Alpine Dinaric stamp, thus displaying that type which the modern Czech so plainly embodies. Under Anglosaxon influence (Wycliffe), the Slavic Czechs withdrew from Roman ecumenicalism in the same manner as the emerging German nation or the Huguenots in France. This movement produced the so called Utraquist church which, in the Articles of Prague (August 1, 1420), demanded above all free preaching without subordination to higher ecclesiastical authorities. There followed the usual demands for holy communion, the dissolution of church property, and the end of the practice of absolution for deadly sins through atonements prescribed by human authority. The free Czech clergy had to enlist the lower classes of their people in presenting these demands, which were answered with papal bulls. Here was revealed the alien nature of the Alpine Dinaric type which manifested itself in barbarous savagery coupled with the grossest superstition. The one eyed maniacal Ziska of Trocnow, whose head in the Prague National Museum shows him to have been an eastern hither Asiatic type, was the first expression of this totally destructive Taborite movement, which the Czechs must thank for the extermination of the last remaining Germanic powers active within them, as well as the repression of all that was truly Slavic.

As if under the compulsion of near eastern insanity, the Taborite zealots declared: In this time of retaliation, all cities, towns and fortresses must be devastated, razed to the ground and burned. This included Prague (the Babylon of cities). Chiliasm, which has also poisoned many other protestant movements up to the present day, was imbibed from the old testament. It led Czech farmers to abandon their goods and property in imminent anticipation of the kingdom of god on earth and this, in turn, to the looting of German property.

The Taborites declared war upon the Utraquists. By 1420, they had already proclaimed a doctrine which ever since has been echoed by all subhuman rebels against genius and the spirit of inquiry: Every man who studies the liberal arts is frivolous and heathen. The genuine Czech patriots completely lost their senses just as did the Russian intellectuals in 1917 in the face of the rising Bolshevik menace. Here was a clear demonstration of Czech inferiority which wrung from Franz Palacky the admission in 1846 that the Germans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had acquired increasing superiority:

From this we draw the unpleasant and distressing conclusion that something exists in the natures of the two peoples, Czech and German, which, quite apart from political conditions, endows the latter, as opposed to the former, with a greater breadth of mind, and ensures a continuing ascendancy, but that we possess some deep rooted fault that eats like a canker at the core of our life.

And when the Czech national cause triumphed, and Czechs everywhere exulted, a terrible spiritual and moral decline set in for this very reason. The patriot Hassenstein sorrowfully declared: Anyone who tries to live uprightly has to flee our fatherland. Another Czech nationalist, Viktorin von Wischerd, confessed: One can find almost no feature of our state which is not broken or weakened. Hassenstein’s words in 1506 to a friend in Germany anticipate the observation by Palacky about a poison in the Czechs and, in alluding to the Germanic race as a healing force, sound like a yearning for a different kind of Czech. He wrote:

Once, admittedly, under the Ottos, Heinrichs, Friedrichs, when Germany flourished, our power also grew ..... Bohemia was considered the noblest part of the Reich: but now, when your state system is shaken, we not merely tremble but utterly collapse ..... wars harry you; we are consumed by blight.

From the first, the German element, despite much sympathy for the anti Roman cause, found itself driven back by the Hussite Taborite movement, and this naturally led to an accommodation with the papal forces. A simple instinct for self preservation in the face of the rebellion of the Dinaric Alpine people brought about a superficial identification with Rome, but without essential inward harmony. In times of great revolutions, little is spared; Taboritism, however, cost the Czechs virtually everything they possessed in the way of their own cultural strength. Since that time, they have remained uncreative, and have to thank for their eventual cultural recovery the later influx of German formative power. Barbarism coupled with pettiness has, unfortunately, remained a distinguishing characteristic of the Czechs to the present day. Equating the reformation with the Nordic spirit is thus not valid in this context, for in many places the great Nordic ideal of freedom of soul and mind also released from beneficial forms men who possessed neither free souls nor the upward striving of an inquiring spirit.

The study of Czech history is extremely instructive for future research into race history. It teaches one how to distinguish between false and true freedom. Freedom in the Germanic sense means inward independence, the scope for research, the extension of knowledge, and true religious feeling. Freedom for near eastern hybrids and swarthy mongrels means unrestrained license to destroy other cultural values. The first kind had produced in Greece the highest cultural development. However, after the Levantine slave element was admitted to humanity, total destruction of its creations ensued. To grant outward freedom to everyone without distinction is to deliver oneself over to racial chaos. Only freedom as a bond between racial kindred guarantees the highest development. But this requires protection of the racial type. This also emerges from Czech history.

The 300,000 Huguenots who fled to Germany were either of pure Nordic race or were representatives of a type which was conditioned by Germanic character. There was thus no difficulty in assimilating in fraternal harmony with the Germans. When, in 1789, the French revolution inaugurated a new persecution not only of dispossessed courtiers but also of genuinely noble characters, many a Frenchman found a new home in Prussia. Fouque, Chamisso and Fontane are French names, as are the names of a large number of German heroes of the Great War. On the other hand, Kant traced his ancestry to Scotsmen, Beethoven to Hollanders, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman, brought to light from their hidden depths the most beautiful treasures of the German soul. What all this shows is a happy cross fertilisation of men and ideas on the basis of a Germanic perception of life. Something utterly different is demonstrated today in the so called pan Europeanism which is promoted by all internationalists and Jews. This program is not aimed at the assimilation of Germanically conditioned elements in Europe, but at the coalescing of the racially chaotic refuse of megalopolises and a pacifistic business deal between large and petty traders. In the final analysis, it is the repression, at the behest of Jewish finance and enforced by the presence of the French military, of the Germanic forces in Germany—and throughout the world.

The external state form which safeguarded German nationality has been smashed. The pseudostate, until the turning point came in 1933, was controlled by anti German forces. It was threatened in the west by the aggressive French who were, as always, hostile to all that is German. In the east, what is German has been enveloped by violent torrents. Originally Russia was the creation of Vikings. Germanic elements brought order to the chaos of the Russian steppes and formed the inhabitants into a political entity which made possible the development of a culture. When the Viking strain died out, the role was assumed by Germans of the Hanse, and by western immigrants generally. Since Peter the Great, the Baltic Germans guided the state, and this was to be seen even as late as the turn of the twentieth century in the influence of the strongly Germanised peoples of the Baltic littoral. But in Russia under the upper classes bearing culture, there always persisted the yearning for boundless expansion and a powerful impetus to destroy all life forms which might constitute barriers to it. The partially Mongol blood, even if considerably diluted, asserted itself during all the upheavals in Russian history, and impelled men into actions which have often seemed incomprehensible even to those who participated in them. The sudden inversion of all moral and social norms which is a recurring feature in Russian life (and in Russian literature from Chaadayev to Dostoyevsky and Gorki) is a sign that hostile bloodstreams contend with one another, and that this struggle will not be resolved until the strength of one has triumphed over the other. Bolshevism is the revolt of the Mongol strain against the Nordic cultural forms. It is the longing for the steppes and the hatred of the nomad for the roots of personality, signifying an attempt to cast off Europe as a whole. The eastern Baltic race, which has many poetic gifts, shows itself, mixed as it is with a Mongol element, to be pliant clay either in the hands of Nordic leadership or under Jewish and Mongol tyrants. It sings and dances, but as easily murders and ravages. It is capable of true devotion, but once the restraints of discipline are removed it can become uninhibitedly treacherous until it is constrained by the imposition of new forms, even if they are tyrannical in nature.

If anywhere, it is in the east that the profound truths of racially based historical interpretation are to be found. But also revealed is the great hour of peril in which the Nordic essence now finds itself. Forces eating away at the inside of every land, together with the aroused sewage of the lower depths, obligate everyone concerned about the total culture of Europe to create a solid front of Nordic destiny which will cut across the artificial confrontation of victors and vanquished of the Great War. This recognition lays a great duty upon all more deeply inquiring spirits, and demands the development of exceptional strength of character.

At one time, the early Christians found a faith strong enough to enable them to endure all martyrdoms and persecutions. When Rome abused this commitment, hundreds of thousands in Europe arose anew, strong in faith, and continued the fight on the pyres of the stake for freedom of belief and freedom of inquiry. Others allowed themselves to be hounded from place to place and to be chained in the galleys along with negroes and Turks. As Stedingers and Waldenses, they fought to the last man for a life true to their own racial essence. They created all the foundations of western Nordic culture. Without Coligny and Luther there would have been no Bach, no Goethe, no Leibniz, no Kant.

Today a new faith is awakening—the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that MYSTERIVM which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments.

A review of history from the remotest past to the present day presents the manifold forms of Nordic creative power to our gaze. Aryan India gave the world a metaphysic which has never since been equalled; Aryan Persia constructed for us the religious Myth from which we still draw sustenance; Doric Hellas had a dream of earthly beauty which we see in static perfection never again attained; Italic Rome taught us that formal state discipline with which a threatened community must fashion and defend itself. And Germanic Europe gave to mankind its most radiant ideal. It taught the necessity of character as the foundation for all culture, and the highest values of the Nordic nature—the concepts of honour and freedom of conscience. This was fought for on battlefields everywhere as well as in the studies of scholars. If it does not triumph in the great struggle which is coming, the west and its blood will perish, just as India and Hellas are dissolved forever in chaos.

With the recognition that all that is creative in Europe has been the product of character, we have uncovered the essence of European religion, of Germanic science, and of Nordic art. To become fully conscious of this, to experience it with all the passion of an heroic heart, is to create the basis for every rebirth. It is the foundation of a new world view, of a new yet old idea of the state, of the Myth of a new comprehension of life, which alone will give us the strength to throw off the arrogant dominion of the subhumans, and to construct a culture in conformity with our own racial character, permeating all facets of existence.

The purpose of A critique of pure reason is to make us conscious of the formal prerequisites of every possible experience, and to limit the multitudinous options of man’s activities to specific areas exclusively devoted to them. Ignoring perceptive critical insights has led in all areas to the greatest relapses into barbarism. Kant’s critique of knowledge signified clearly a conscious awakening in an era which had begun to weary of the religious scholastic, the aridity of naturalism or the oppressiveness of the sensual. With due recognition, however, of the great achievement of Kant’s critique of reason, it must be added that nothing was determined beyond the formal concerning the inner nature and the manner of employment of rational and spiritual powers. An evaluation of the innermost nature of the various cultures and world views was not attempted. This had been supplied sufficiently by the Roman catholic system, Jewry, and Islamic fanaticism. In its heart, a people of culture permits no one the right to assess its creations as good and bad, true and false. Cultures are not, in fact, things which descend from the empyrean, for no known reason, as formal culture cycles upon one then another region of the earth. They are full blooded creations which are each in their own way (rational and irrational) metaphysically rooted, grouped about an intangible centre, related to a highest value. All possess, even if later distorted, an element of life enhancing truth. Every race has its soul and every soul its race—its own unique internal and external architectonic shape, its characteristic form of appearance and demeanour of lifestyle, and a unique relationship between its forces of will and reason. Every race cultivates its own highest ideal. If, by the massive infiltration of alien blood and alien ideas, this is changed or overthrown, the result of this inner metamorphosis is chaos and, by epochs, catastrophe. For a highest value demands a specific nexus of other precepts of life which are subject to it; that is, it determines the style of existence of a race, a people or a group of peoples within a nation. Its elimination therefore involves the dissolution of the entire inner tension necessary for organic creation.

After such catastrophes, it is possible for the spiritual forces to regroup around the old foci and to generate, under new conditions, a new form of being. This can result either from a final victory over those alien values whose intrusion was merely temporary, or by the toleration of a crystallisation of a second centre alongside the first. A juxtaposition in space and time, however, of two or more world views, each based upon different highest values which are meant to be shared by the same people, is a temporary makeshift which carries within it the seeds of a new collapse. To the extent that the invading ethos succeeds in weakening the original races and peoples and their ideas—even physically undermining them and subjugating them—it signifies the death of a culture soul and its disappearance, even in its external manifestations, from the face of the earth.

The life of a race, of a people, is not a philosophically logical development, nor even a process which unfolds in terms of natural law. It is the formation of a mystical synthesis, of an activity of the soul, which cannot be explained by rational deduction nor made intelligible through analyses of cause and effect. Comprehending the inner heart of a culture consists therefore in elucidating its highest religious, moral, philosophic, scientific, and aesthetic values. These determine its total rhythm and, simultaneously, qualify the reciprocal relationship and arrangements of human powers. A people that is primarily religiously oriented will evolve a different sort of culture from that produced by one for which knowledge or beauty prescribe the form of being. Thus any philosophy which goes beyond formal rational criticism is less a perception than a confession of faith; a spiritual and racial credo and an avowal of character values.

Our present era of chaos is the product of centuries. Peculiar circumstances have permitted outside forces to intrude upon the Nordically conditioned people, and their laws of life have been thereby weakened. In many places our faith in our own set of ultimate values has been taken from us, or modified as subordinate features of a new system. The racial soul of northern Europe stood fast in a continuous resistance to these phenomena of decay until, in spite of all, new and hostile centres of power arose. The nineteenth century revealed the existence of three fully developed and contiguous systems throughout Europe. The first was the original Nordic west, based on freedom of the soul and the concept of honour; the second was the fully matured Roman system which required humble and submissive love in the service of a centrally governed priesthood; the third was the naked harbinger of chaos—limitless materialistic individualism with its goal of world dominion by money as a force, unifying and type forming.

These three forces contended, and still contend, for the soul of every European. Even in the last century, men were still summoned to fight for freedom, honour and nationhood. However, 1918 saw the victory of the powers of plutocracy and of the church of Rome. But even in the midst of the most terrible collapse, the old Nordic racial soul awakened to a heightened consciousness. It has finally grasped the truth that the coexistence of different, and perforce mutually exclusive, highest values cannot also coexist with equal rights, as, to its present detriment, it once believed possible. It understands that what is racially and spiritually akin can be assimilated, but that which is alien must be unflinchingly excised, or if necessary, destroyed. This is not because it is false or bad in itself, but rather because it is racially alien and fatal to the inner structure of our being. Our duty today is to see ourselves with the utmost clarity, and either to acknowledge our own highest values and the ideas which sustain the Germanic west, or to reject our true nature in body and soul ..... forever.

The real struggle of our times does not so much involve external power displacements and inner compromise (as it did in earlier periods) but rather the rebuilding of the spiritual cells of the Nordically conditioned peoples. It concerns the reinstatement to their dominant place of those ideas and values from which everything we understand by culture stems. It concerns the preservation of the racial substance itself. Possibly for a long time to come, the political power situation will continue to our disadvantage. However, if one day we can visualise and create a new, yet very old, type of German somewhere who, conscious of soul, race and history, unhesitatingly proclaims the old, yet new, values; then around this nucleus will gather all who now stumble in darkness though rooted in the ancient soil of the European homeland.

This is stated at this time in order to acknowledge from the very beginning that there is no intention of promoting that delusion of a science without hypotheses, such as academic obscurantists have usually done and continue to do in order to lend their opinions the colour of universally valid propositions. There is no such a thing as a science without hypotheses. A group of assumptions are made, comprising ideas, theories and hypotheses, in order to direct the unorganised powers of inquiry along one course. They are then tested by experiment in order to verify their objective truth. But these presuppositions are just as racially determined as values derived from the will. A unique soul and race confronts the universe with questions of its own unique kind. The questions asked by a Nordic do not appear as problems for Jews or for Chinese. Things which appear as problems to Europeans, seem to other races to be riddles which have already been solved.

At all democratic gatherings today one hears proclaimed the doctrine that art and science are international. The bereft of spirit, whose alienation from life and faceless values brought into disrepute the nineteenth century, can naturally not now be enlightened concerning the limitations of such cosmopolitanism. But a younger generation which is beginning to turn its back on this hothouse creation will discover, after an unbiased study of the variety of this world, that art for art’s sake does not exist, never has existed, and never will exist. Art is always the creation of a specific blood, and the form linked nature of an art will be only truly comprehensible to those of the same blood. To others it will say little or nothing at all.

Science, however, is also a product of the blood. Everything which we commonly regard today as purely abstract science is the product of Germanic creativity. The Nordic European concept of organising sequential events into a framework of universal laws is not simply some idea in itself which might have occurred to any Mongol, Levantine or African. Quite the contrary; this idea (which appeared in another form in Nordic Hellas) was confronted for thousands of years by the most frenetic hostility of the many alien races and their world views. The idea of an inward and personal law was the deepest affront to every world picture constructed on the basis of the capricious tyranny of various systems of magic. A science of our kind could as little emerge from the world picture offered in the old testament as it could from the witchcraft and demonology of the African. It is this eternal antithesis which explains the struggle of the Roman church against Germanic science. And the latter has pursued its brilliant course through streams of its own blood, shed by Rome. Devout Nordic monks who dared to lay more value on the evidence of their own senses than on yellowed Syrian parchments, were met with poison, imprisonment and the knife, as in the cases of Roger Bacon or Scotus Erigena. This Germanic racial creation which we call science is not mere technology. It is the product of a unique method of posing questions to the universe. As Apollo faces Dionysos, so Copernicus, Kant and Goethe stand opposed to Augustinus, Bonifacius VIII and Pius IX. The Maenads and the phallic cults worked to the destruction of ancient Greek culture, and the Etruscan ideas of hell and wizardry blocked in every way they could the rebirth of a Nordic world vision. In the story of how Jesus drove the devils out of the swine, Syrian magic fastened itself onto Christianity even to the present day. Descent to hell and ascent to heaven, the fires and torments of the pit, became the wisdom thereafter of Christian theology. The SVCCVBI and INCVBI became firmly established doctrine. It was not surprising that only in 1827 did Rome finally remove from the INDEX those books which acknowledged Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. For, according to Roman truth, only its own doctrine is true science. It was forced to accept—with much gnashing of teeth—that after two thousand years and all the blood it had shed it could no longer enforce this particular doctrine of Ptolemaic astronomy, but it still continues to debauch the Nordic spirit of inquiry with concepts which are essentially magical in nature. The clearest example of this is the Jesuit order with its scientific departments. The Jesuit Cathrein has declared: When once a truth is firmly fixed by faith (Rome deciding the meaning of firmly fixed), then every contradictory assertion is false, and can therefore never be the product of true science. Doctor J. Donat, the modern theoretician of Jesuit science, says that any doubt concerning religious truths is inadmissible. Things go sadly with a science, he proclaims, which has nothing to offer but endless searching after truth. The profound dichotomy in spiritual attitudes could not be more clearly evident than in these words of an Alpine man who is completely immersed in Levantine Syrian demonry. They signify nothing less than a demand for the total subordination of the Germanic European spirit of inquiry to an arbitrary dogma.

The modern science of economics is yet another example of subverting the recognition of inner law by introducing arbitrary speculation. The European researcher, as soon as he tries to utilise a discovery in a practical way, nevertheless always aims at a genuine achievement which he wishes to see incorporated into the system of cause and effect, motive and result, as something produced and created. He sees work, inventions and possessions as socially formative forces within a racial, national or political community. Even Americans like Edison and Ford have endorsed this spiritual attitude. Even the stock market was originally intended only as a device to make smooth the transition from creation to consequence, and between invention, product and sale. It was an expedient just like money itself. Now, quite another function has developed from this originally useful service. The stock market and the science of finance presently play with fictions. They are a magical legerdemain with figures and a systematic distortion effected by certain circles in the transition from production to marketing. The masters of the modern stock market use mass hypnosis and doctored news to create panics. They deliberately inflame every pathological impulse so that from a healthy activity of exchange in economic life there have developed caprice and universal dissolution. This financial science is not even international; it is simply Jewish. Economic disruption among the Nordic peoples comes from their attempt to fit into their system of life this unnatural Levantine manipulation which is based on purely parasitic instincts. This process, if finally successful, will bring utter destruction to all the natural prerequisites of our life. The science of the Dawes’s plan and the supervision exercised by the bankers and their controlled press over the reporting of political news, is thoroughly anti German. Thus it stands in deadly enmity against the Nordic economic system and its great German philosophers—men like Adam Müller, Adolf Wagner, and Friedrich Lizt. In this, too, the nature of Jewish Marxism manifests itself. It fights capitalism but leaves untouched the heart of capitalism; stock market finance.

The prerequisite of Romish science is compulsory belief in arbitrary church law; the prerequisite of Jewish science is fiction, or more precisely, humbug; the prerequisite of Germanic science is the recognition of universal laws and the human soul which manifest themselves in various effects. Such perceptions are fundamental to the understanding of the totality of life, and even to those phenomena such as clairvoyance and somnambulism which, as yet, cannot be wholly integrated into this scheme.

And this means everything. When today we speak of realisations and acknowledgements, we always start from certain prerequisite assumptions. We examine the various highest values which contend for the souls of all Europeans. We establish the existing architectonics of the forces relating to these highest values and then we accept one of these systems as a belief. A general acknowledgement and acceptance of such a belief can only come from similar and related, but hitherto blinded, souls. Others will, and must, reject it. If they cannot suppress it, then they must dispute it in every possible way.

Such a liberation and release of both the individual and the whole people from the still powerful influences of a dying past is painful, and must cause many deep wounds. But we have only one choice; to go under or to take up the fight for a recovery. To begin this fight with clear understanding and an iron will is the task of our generation. Its final consummation is the concern of the future.

To primitive man, the world appears as a succession without causality of images in space and sensations in time. Subsequently, the mind creates causal connections, and reason establishes unity in diversity by laying down intellectual parameters. The network of these activities we call our experience. Such is the formal basis for all life. However, the latter is employed in basically different ways. An overpreponderance of reason in the formulation of ideas will lead to the various unities being restricted to fewer and fewer comprehensive schemes. The ultimate end of this is a single principle of explanation of the world. This formal monism expresses itself in different ways according to whether one wishes to interpret the world in terms of matter or in terms of force. The logical mechanist accepts molecules, atoms and electrons as primal substances whose diversity of forms and manifold combinations create spirit and soul. The logical energeticist recognises in matter only a concentrated form of latent energy which can discharge itself as electricity, light or heat. Both the materialist and the spiritualist monists are dogmatists because they put aside the last seemingly formal, as well as the seemingly material, primal phenomenon of the world with a single assertion which decides all questions. This is either a philosophic scientific principle or a religious belief. This primal phenomenon, after rejecting multiple pluralism, is the polarity of all phenomena and of all ideation. Polarity shows itself in light and shadow, hot and cold, finite and infinite. Spiritually, it shows itself as true and untrue; morally as good and evil (a dichotomy which can only be disputed in relation to concrete examples); dynamically as motion and rest; as positive and negative; in religion as divine and satanic. Polarity always manifests itself in the simultaneity of opposites, not as chronologically alternating with one another. The concept of good is incomprehensible without that of evil, and only receives its delimitation by it. Negative electricity always appears simultaneously with positive. Both forms are, in fact, positive—only with their signs reversed. No postulates Yes. The idea of the spiritual appears together with the idea of the corporeal. Nor are they to be interpreted as merely alternating with one another chronologically.

All life, however, arises from the continuous antithesis of Yes and No. Everything creative—even the dogmatic monist, whether materialistic or spiritualistic—exists only by reason of the persistence of eternal conflict. Only in the mirror of the body does the spiritualist perceive the spirit; only with the presupposition of differing qualities can the materialist deal with variations in form and changes in substance.

Self and universe, therefore, confront one another as two ultimate polarities, and the emphasis which the soul lays upon one or the other (subconsciously recognising their antithesis) determines the nature, complexion and rhythm of its interpretation of the world and of life. From this primal metaphysical law of being and becoming (polarities which are experientially mutually exclusive at any given instant) there ensue two kinds of life feeling—the dynamic and the static creation of values.

A predominantly static worldview will tend to some kind of monism. It will endeavour to establish a single spiritual synthesis, a single symbol, indeed, a single form of life against every polarity, plurality or multiplicity. In religion, it will insist on a strict monotheism. It will invest this unique god with all features of strength and significance, attributing to him all creation. It will even endeavour to explain away the satanic. Jehovah evolved into this kind of god and then, with the aid of the Christian church, broke into western thought as a rigid and narrow system.

Originally, the Hebrews and Jews had been involved in an entirely pluralistic theology. To be sure, their tribal god looked after their interests and they after his, but none doubted that other gods of other peoples were just as real and effective as Jehovah. It was under the Persian empire that the Jews first learned of a universal, cosmic god, Ahura Mazda (the god of light) and of his enemy, dark Ahriman. They were later taken over as a universal despot—Jehovah—and his rival, Satan. The Jew gradually rid himself of all pluralisms, placing Shaddai Jehovah at the centre of all things, with himself as his authorised servant. Thus he created a focal point for himself, and this has preserved and bred his thinking, his race and his type—even if purely parasitic—up to the present day and despite any marginal racial mixing. Even when recreant Jews abjured Jehovah, they only put in his place what was essentially the same concept under other names. This they called humanism, liberty, liberalism, class. From these there reemerged the same old rigid Jehovah, breeding his offspring under a variety of designations. Since Jehovah is conceived as being materially effective, the rigid Jewish insistence upon one single god is interwoven with practical material concerns—that is, materialism—and the most sterile philosophical superstition, for which the old testament, the Talmud and Karl Marx represent closely related visions. This static self assertion is the metaphysical ground for the strength and tenacity of the Jew, as well as for his cultural sterility and parasitism.

The same static instinct is the central core of the Roman church. It sets up a synthesis, with itself as the successor of the displaced god’s chosen people, and develops the same rigidity and formalism as Judaism, and as the later, also Semitic, Mohammedanism. Such systems recognise only the law, which is to say, arbitrary fiats. They never acknowledge personality. When such a system gains power, it necessarily destroys the organic. It is only thanks to the fact that the system could not attain complete triumph that there still exist peoples and cultures—in short, real life.

The reaction in Europe against the crippling weight of the church was powerful enough to force a lasting spiritual pluralism into the Jewish Roman theology. Thus one can quite justifiably speak of catholicism and its saints as a polytheistic belief. By catholicism we mean, of course, the religious phenomenon, not the political entity. But in spite of this development, the centralised authority of the churches strengthened a static and monistic outlook in Europe and, by way of the attached new testament, smuggled the spirit of the old testament into a protestantism which was originally individualistic.

From the outset, protestantism was spiritually divided. Seen as a defensive reaction, it signified the upsurge of the Germanic will to freedom, to a national life, and to the primacy of the individual conscience. Without question, it blazed a path for all that today we regard as our greatest works of culture and science. Religiously, however, it failed. It stopped half way. It substituted for Rome a Semitic Jerusalem as its centre. The sovereign authority managed to block the emergence of that spirit which had been preached by Meister Eckehart, but which could not prevail against the inquisition and the stake. So it was that, when Luther at Worms laid his hand simultaneously on both the Old and the new testaments, he performed an act which his followers deemed symbolic and holy. The faith and the values of protestants were now to be determined by these books. The standards of our spiritual life again lay outside what is German, even though no longer in a strictly geographical sense as had been the case with Rome and the antichrist. Luther’s encounter with Zwingli showed how much he was still bound by the old chains. Luther’s materially oriented communion doctrine has been a millstone around the protestant creed up to the present day. Much later, Luther did cast aside the Jews and their lies, and declare that he no longer had anything to do with Moses. But by then the bible had become a popular work, and the prophecies of the old testament integral to religion. As a result, the Judaisation and torpidity of our life were pushed a step further, and it is no wonder that thenceforth blond German children were forced every Sunday to sing: To you, to you, O Jehovah, will I sing; for where is such a god as you? .....

The Jews had borrowed (as with so much else) the idea of a universal god from the Persians. In this lies the most telling evidence for the religious philosophical recognition of the polarity of being. The great cosmic struggle between light and darkness endures throughout many world epochs until, after the climactic battle, there comes the world saviour, the Çaoshiahç, to separate the sheep from the goats. This represents the same figure as did Jesus in later times. The drama must naturally reach its climax with victory, but nowhere is the spiritual dynamic portrayed more consciously and more splendidly than in the ancient Persian writings. Today, as we begin to slough off the alien and static influence of all that smacks of Jerusalem, the Persian drama appears to us as primordial and closely related to the sagas of the Nordic peoples. The metaphysical conception is conjoined with a stern moral code and thus fortifies the spiritual community in religion and morality.

When he first appears on the stage of history, the German is not of a philosophical bent. But if anything is characteristic of his nature, then it is an aversion to all kinds of monism, and a distaste for the kind of ecclesiastical rigidity which was forced upon him by Rome’s technical and diplomatic superiority at a time of weakness. It was a time when the pristine youth of the German race was ending, and the old gods were dying while new ones were being sought.

If the struggle between Europe and Rome ended in a compromise which, for all the upheavals, has endured for over 1500 years, nonetheless this compromise has proved impossible in the realms of art, philosophy and science. It is precisely in these areas that the struggle has been most consciously and tenaciously pursued, and it has ended with the defeat of the menace of the INDEX and the terror of the stake. This is true even if the fact has not yet permeated the sluggish minds of the masses or, indeed, those of the superficially educated. In this the entire dynamic of the European spirit stands revealed, together with its clear, analytical grasp of the polarity of being. Yet, at the same time, it shows that a battle for form has stirred the north European less than the inward character value of truthfulness as the prerequisite for science and philosophy.

Consciously or unconsciously, the Nordic spirit distinguishes between two worlds—the world of freedom and the world of nature. With Immanuel Kant, this ancient determinant of our vital thought was brought to the fullest level of conscious apprehension, and can never thereafter be lost to our understanding. But this awakening involved a quite unique view of reality. The late Indian dissolved the entire universe into symbolism. The self became ultimately only an indication of an eternal oneness. For the Indian metaphysician, reality was not a describable fact which could be fitted into the chain of cause and effect or action and consequence, as is the way with our thinking. For him it was a purely subjective postulation in relation to an event or a narrative. Thus the Indian does not demand belief in the fabulous deeds of Rama or Krishna as actual events. For him they become real insofar as they are believed. On the basis of this interpretation of reality, girls transform themselves into flowers in the Indian theatre, their arms change into liana vines. Gods appear in a variety of quasihuman shapes. Since it is dependent on belief as symbolism, the miracle is divested of its material significance.

It is otherwise for the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. There, freedom was injected into nature through magic, and the history of those lands is packed with real miracles which are believed to be literal events. A clear example of the consciousness that he was ruling two different worlds is given to us by the Emperor Hadrianus. In the Germanic northwest of the empire, he was an heroic servant of the state, enduring all the rigours of travel as a simple soldier. He was lord and ruler, but not god and miracle worker. But it was precisely as the latter that this clever judge of men allowed himself to be portrayed during his travels through the African, Levantine and Hellenistic regions. Thus he was worshipped in the south and southeast of the empire as a saviour, and was accepted as the director of the Eleusian mysteries. He blandly permitted himself to be worshipped as Hellos. In Egypt, he introduced Antigonos as a god, whose death and resurrection was taught by the priests, and as truly believed at the time as the death and real resurrection of Jesus. Hadrianus healed the sick and made cripples whole by the laying on of hands. Stories about his miraculous deeds spread through all the lands of the eastern Mediterranean as an indisputable chronicle. In a similar way, the Christian legends are also derived from the superstitions about magic which are characteristic of certain peoples. They are still today solemnly proclaimed to Europeans. There is the doctrine of the virgin birth, the various transfigurations of the catholic saints to whom the virgin Mary appeared, or the report by the Jesuit Mansonius that Jesus appeared in the flesh to the virgin Joanna of Alexandria on June 7, 1598, and expressed his gratification with the work of his Society.

Evidence of just how greatly this magical world of Asia Africa had oppressed Europe and threatened to suffocate all thought, even of the freest, is shown in Luther’s verdict upon Copernicus whom he called a swindler and a cheat just because the magical bible said that things were otherwise than as Copernicus taught. Even today, millions have not yet fully grasped that Copernicus, by replacing the static world picture of the motionless earth disc, and heaven above and hell below with the dynamism of an eternally revolving solar system, put paid once and for all to the church doctrine of blind belief as well as the entire mythology of hell and resurrection. The Nicene creed, which was decided by a majority of the quarrelling priests at the command of the Roman emperor, the dogmas which were formulated at synods where religious questions were settled with vicious brawling and with cudgels, are inwardly false and dead. Nothing reveals more clearly the futility and falseness of our churches than that they prate of things which have nothing to do with religion, and that they still defend doctrines in which they no longer believe. They are entirely correct when they argue that if the old testament or the Nicene creed were pried out of the structure of the church, the corner stones would be lacking and the whole building would collapse. True enough! But the collapse has never been prevented for more than a few decades by a threadbare presence of expediency. And the later the collapse came, the more terrible it would be. Gods who are no longer believed in become mere idols. When life becomes a matter of empty forms, spiritual death or revolution is imminent. There are no alternatives.

I am come not to bring peace but a sword, said the rebel from Nazareth, and I will light a fire on the earth, and I wish that it burned already. His life was one revelation, but the priests, concerned with preserving their authority, announced that this revelation happened only once in history, and supported this claim with ingeniously fulfilled prophecies and allusions to the future, and made strenuous efforts to turn life into death.

It is of the nature of the static ideal that it demands rest. But this denial of all the dynamic demands of life cannot be realised in the face of the eternal flux of nature. It turns therefore to the nontemporal concepts. These are revelations which are proclaimed as long as possible as that which is, as eternal truth. He who is aware of the dynamic, on the other hand, while consciously or unconsciously acknowledging being, concerns himself with becoming as the expression of being, and he does not consider magical or spurious revelations as essential to his spiritual experience. This permanent condition of becoming as a struggle for being is the Germanic religion which still asserts itself even in the midst of mysticism most rejective of the world. Revelation to the Nordic can only be a heightening and crowning of the process of becoming, not a destruction of natural law. But the Jewish concept of god, alike with the Romanist, wills the latter. The severest blow is given to that outlook by Germanic science and Nordic art. The Jehovah of the church is as moribund as Wotan was 1500 years ago. The Nordic spirit gained philosophical consciousness in Immanuel Kant, whose fundamental achievement lies in the separation he established between forces of religion and science. Religion is concerned with the kingdom of heaven within us, true science only with physics, chemistry, biology and mechanics. This distinction is critical as a precondition for a Nordic culture true to its own intrinsic nature. It signifies the overthrow of the Syrian Jewishly inspired dogmas and the freeing of our dynamic polarity as free mysticism and natural mechanics. This alone assures true unity. The historical task of the movement of national renewal which now arises in Germany is to strengthen the foundations of our culture, despite their subsequent perversion by Roman Jewish doctrines and Syrian African world views, and to assist in the victory of Nordic values.

All these racial psychological and perceptively critical considerations and historical references display a great multiplicity of the forces of racial soul or racial chaos struggling with each other for predominance. But they show also a certain consistency in the conduct of the Nordic or mainly Nordically conditioned elements. All the gods of the Indoeuropeans are gods of the heavens, of light and of day. The Indian Varuna, the Greek Uranus, Zeus, father of the gods, and Odin, god of the heavens, Surya (the radiant one) of the Indians, Apollo Helios and Ahura Mazda—they all share the same essence at the same characteristic stage of development. In this religion of light, the patriarchal principle confronted the various chthonically matriarchal oriented racial elements.

At another level, mythology is permeated with the heroic and linked with the inquiring spirit and the yearning for knowledge. In this way the gods became the representatives of various impulses of will and spirit. The sun god of the ancient Indians was prayed to in the early morning not only for fertility but also for wisdom, while Odin sacrificed one of his eyes in the quest of knowledge. At the high point of philosophical problem solving, we find the Upanishads, Platon and Kant who, in spite of profound differences of approach, arrive at identical answers concerning the ideality of space, time and causality.

It was thus perceived that diversity did not mean chaos, nor a perceived unity mean merely an amorphous sameness. This was extremely important because it places us not only in the sharpest opposition to all absolutist and universalist systems (which on the supposition of an ostensible humanity seek to establish a unitarianism of all souls for all time) but also brings us into conflict with genuinely new forces of our own time which have likewise buried their dead, and with whom we often have sympathetic contact. Yet such forces, in justifiable defence against a vile, sterile and suffocating rationalism, now seek refuge in a return to the primal depths, and declare war on the spirit as such in order to find their way back to a unity of body and soul which lumps together under spirit all reason, intellect and will.

One is immediately reminded of the sentimental return to nature and the glorification of the primitive which appeared in the late eighteenth century. But this view is far too moderate and reasonable when confronted with the assertions of people such as Ludwig Klages or Melchior Palàgyi. What depth psychology and character study is striving for lies much deeper. Its demands, in fact, call for a basis in a racial soul in order to provide an organic substructure for the whole concept.

The emergence of a sharply defined consciousness must be seen to have constituted the first alienation of the heroic primitive man from his creative, natural state with its feeling of awe and reverence. This natural state is represented as alone being true life, and as having been corrupted by purely rational ideas and concepts. At once we see how closely yet how totally our racial spiritual world view and the new psychocosmogony confront one another. This intellect is, as it is propounded, only a formal tool, and is thus devoid of content. Its task is simply to establish the sequence of causality. However, once it is enthroned as a legislating sovereign, it signifies the end of a culture, and as a proof—overlooked by the vitalists—of racial poisoning. Up to this point there is much agreement. However, it is quite unnecessary that reason and purpose be inimical to spirit. We have seen how, in contrast to peoples of the Semitic type, the attitudes of soul, will and reason of the Nordics toward the universe were essentially in harmony. We are not, therefore, concerned with the abstraction of primitive man, to whom one might justifiably assign a confidence in worldly existence, but with a clearly defined racial character. The curious fact emerges that the most embittered enemies of modern antilife rationalism have themselves created an unconsciously creative and heroic primitive man. But the nature of primitive man—as far as we can reasonably conjecture—was not particularly heroic. Jewish legends begin with stories about cattle raising, not of heroic deeds. The biblical account of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt is accompanied by the tale of all the treasures which they had stolen from the Egyptians. Even among themselves, their swindling and parasitic behaviour in the promised land is the antithesis of the heroic. Genuine heroism is also lacking among the Phoenicians in spite of their lengthy voyages conducted along the sea coasts. And the pure Semite—the Arab for example—though he is capable of courage and ferocity, is almost wholly uncreative. The Etruscans, to be sure, have left a record of obscene practices and monuments, but nothing which would permit us to assume any creative spiritual faculties.

On the other hand, heroism is basic to the character of the Nordic peoples. This heroism of the ancient mythic period—and this is what is decisive—has never been lost, despite reverses of fortune, so long as the Nordic blood was still alive. Heroism, in fact, took many forms, from the warrior nobility of Siegfried or Hercules to the intellectual nobility of Copernicus and Leonardo, the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck, and its substance has remained the same.

The universal character which has been postulated as existing in antiquity is a fallacious modern abstraction. Even after the conclusion of the age of natural instinct, the reason and the will are not divorced from the living blood unless they are strangled in the spiritual jungle of the near east. Things are not as the new body soul doctrine seeks to represent; namely, that only the earthbound man of instinct is close to nature, more of an integrated being and more vital, while what is spiritual belongs to another sphere. Again, it is not true that the chthonic idea, which (stimulated by the intoxicated poetic imaginings of Bachofen) inspires this new doctrine, testifies to a greater profundity of life and certainty of existence. The peoples who began with the sun and light myth and developed it further are consequently linked to the visible creator and protector of everything organic. Only from the sun impregnated soil arise Aphrodite and Demeter, Isis and Astarte.

The sun myth of the Aryan is not only transcendental but also a universal law of nature and biology. To reject it on behalf of universality of instinct, and even with yearning glances toward the near east, is a regression into spiritual and racial chaos, very similar to the unwholesome conditions of late Rome. Much as our modern characterology and doctrine of body soul unity may differ from the naive naturalism of a Rousseau or Tolstoy, two things are common to both schools—a cultural pessimism, and a touching belief in a world certainty and of man still unspoiled by intellection. The refined lifestyle and the athletics of spiritual equilibrium of the great encyclopaedists of the enlightenment created a spiritual aridity, and called forth an inward and then an outward resistance to all previous religious and social principles. Die Rauber, Faust, Gretchen, are all manifestations of the Storm and stress against restrictions and bonds under the banner of what was new, personal and individualistic. This abandonment by the self of its natural, primal roots led either to catastrophe—from Werther’s Idyll to Werther’s Sorrows—or to a recognition of the ambiguities of a nature conceived of as so natural. In place of cultural pessimism there arose scepticism about a blissful return to nature. And this ultimate phase will not be spared the neovitalists who declare war on the entire present day culture (as well as the culture of tomorrow) in the name of a purely abstract (this is important to note) nature mystique. This movement will only prove fruitful when, from the monolithic concept of universal nature, it releases the organic forms and the races, and recognises their individual life rhythms, studies the conditions which have stimulated creativity, and the conditions under which decay or diminution of the driving spiritual impetus begins. Then the new, naturalistic romanticism will be compelled to take leave of abstract universalism as a reaction to unbridled rationalistic individualism, and also to renounce its basic hostility to the will and the reason.

A deep gulf yawns open between this vegetative vitalism and the essence of consciousness, but the resulting tension is the prerequisite of all creativity. That such a gulf exists is a result of the fact that our whole vegetative animal existence is lived as a continuous stream, while our conscious perception is intermittent. It is due to these discrete perceptions and to the establishment of categories of time and patterns of events that language, art and science are made possible. On the other hand, herein lies the deepest justification for Kant’s argument that idea and experience never completely coincide, that is to say, a culture constructed only upon conscious thought can never be entirely vital. These two realms are thus fundamental to our dual nature. Accordingly, the triumphs of individual genius in all areas are an artistic amalgam of freedom and nature; and the accomplishments of entire peoples represent the half agonised, half rapturous, symbols of the conquest of the unconquerable. National cultures are the great spiritual pulses in the eternal ebb and flow of dying and becoming. Since Nordic man arises from this evolving life and from the light of day, he is by nature a vitalist. But the greatest achievement of his whole history was the Germanic recognition that nature was not to be mastered by magic (as the near east had believed), or by intellectual schemes (as the later Greeks thought), but only by the most conscientious study of nature. In this respect, the devout Albertus Magnus (Albrecht von Bollstedt) approaches Goethe, and the visionary Francis of Assisi comes close to the religious sceptic Leonardo. The Germanic west has not allowed itself to be robbed of this kind of vitalism by the church of Rome in spite of excommunication, poison and the stake. And this vitalism was both cosmic and, at the same time, conversely. Because Germanic man felt in a cosmic solar way, it enabled him to discover the rule of natural law upon the earth. Perhaps it was precisely this very profound feeling which enabled him to shape the patterns of science and to evolve symbolic ideas which alone afforded him the tools, despite the intermittence of continually formative consciousness, to approach so closely to the eternal flux.

That one school today idolises these symbols and patterns signifies an identical condition of decadence, as does the idolisation of vitalism in itself. Germanic science did not arise amid the martyrdom of nine million heretics as if the greatest allegory of inward freedom is either to be condemned along with its essential components and methods, or to be idolatrously worshipped. Those who today rage against technology and heap maledictions upon it forget that its appearance derives from an eternal German impulse which would have to be destroyed along with it. Truly, this would mean a descent into the same barbarism which was the ultimate fate of the Mediterranean cultures. It is not technology which today destroys vitality. It is man himself who has degenerated. He has become inwardly deformed because, at weak moments in his historical experience, alien seductions were dangled before him—world conversion, humanity, universal culture. Today, it is necessary to break the hypnotic spell, and not deepen the sleep of our generation, nor to preach the irreversibility of fate, but to assert those values of the blood which, once understood, can give a new direction to the younger generation and make possible a Renaissance of culture and breeding. From a clear understanding of the nature of the past struggles of the organically determined Indoeuropean peoples against alien forces, and after comprehending the development of our own natural life and our characteristic attitudes to the universe, we feel and understand the longing of our generation to reject the transitory present day, and recognise an eternal now. Thus we can bring reason and will into harmony with our Germanic current of soul and spirit; indeed, if possible, with that true Nordic tradition handed down to us from Hellas and ancient Rome. Philosophically, this means to give the aberrant modern will a noble motivation in accordance with its primal nature.

In heroic conduct, whether of warriors, philosophers or scientists, we see what is of essential nature, and we know that all heroism groups itself around a supreme value. This has always been the idea of honour, spiritual and mental. But the idea of honour, like its corporeal representatives, was and is involved in a war of soul and spirit against the values represented by alien races or the miscegenated offspring of racial chaos.

Many wars during the last 1900 years have borne the stamp of wars of religion. In most cases justifiably, yet not always so. The very fact that struggles of extermination could be carried out at all for a religious conviction shows to what degree the Teutonic peoples had been successfully alienated from their original character. Respect for religious belief was just as natural to the pagan Teutons as to the later Aryans; only the assertion of the claim by the Roman church that it alone offered salvation hardened the European heart and necessarily called forth defensive struggles in the opposing camp which, since likewise conducted for an alien natured form, resulted in spiritual narrow mindedness (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Puritanism).

But in spite of everything, most of the struggles by leading heroes of our history were conducted less for theological principles of belief about Jesus, Mary, the nature of the holy ghost, purgatory and so on, than for character values. The churches of all denominations declared: as the faith, so the man. This was necessary for every church, and promised success, since in this way the value of a man was made dependent on its coercive principles, and men were thus spiritually enchained to the chosen church organisation. On the other hand the Nordic European creed—whether consciously or unconsciously—has always been: as the man, so his belief. More exactly put, as the nature or content of his belief. If the belief protected the highest values of character, then it was real and good, irrespective of what expressions of human longing might otherwise have surrounded it. If it did not do so, if it repressed proud personal values, then it must have been felt in the deepest innermost heart of every Teuton as bringing destruction. There are two values above all others, in which for nearly two thousand years the whole opposition between church and race, theology and belief, coercive doctrine and pride of character, are revealed; two values rooted in will, for which in Europe there has always been a struggle for predominance: love and honour. Both accordingly strove for recognition as highest values; the churches wished—however strange this may sound—to rule through love, the Nordic Europeans wished to live free through honour or to die free in honour. Both ideas found martyrs ready for sacrifice, but this conflict did not always attain the clearest consciousness, however often it revealed itself.

This recognition has persisted into our own days. It is a mythic experience, but nevertheless as clear as daylight. Love and sympathy, honour and duty are spiritual essences which, enveloped by different outward forms, represent driving forces of life for almost all races and nations capable of culture. Depending upon what room was made for love in its most general version or the concept of honour as such, the world outlook and form of the people in question developed in a manner corresponding to this desired goal. One or the other idea formed the yardstick by which the whole of thought and action were measured. But in order to create a determinative characteristic for an epoch, one or other ideal must predominate. The conflict between two ideas can nowhere be followed more tragically than in the disputes between the Nordic race and its allies with the particular racial and ideological environment.

With regard to what motive has above all proven itself as formative for the Nordic race in affairs of soul, state and culture, it is evident that almost everything which has preserved the character of our race, our peoples and nations, has been in the first place the concept of honour and the idea of duty inseparably connected with it, originating from the consciousness of inward freedom. But from the moment at which love and sympathy (or if one wishes: fellow feeling) became predominant, there also began the epochs of racial national and cultural dissolution in the history of all once Nordically determined states.

Today, Hinduism and Buddhism are preached to the point of superfluity. The majority of us possess no other idea of India than as it is presented to us by theosophists and anthroposophists. We speak of India as having a soft hearted philosophy of life merging with the universe, with human love as its highest teaching. Undoubtedly, the late philosophy flowing into infinity, the Vedanta Ãtman Brahman doctrine, Buddhism striving for redemption from the sufferings of this world, along with thousands of proverbs scattered throughout the whole of Indian literature, justify this interpretation: Nothing exists which cannot be accomplished by gentleness. Happy are those who withdraw into the forest after they have fulfilled the hope of the needy, have shown love for their enemies, and so on. And yet into these love and sympathy filled products of the late Indian period, quite different, older views intrude, which do not recognise personal feelings of happiness and absence of sorrow as the only goal worth striving for, but see the latter in the fulfilment of duty and the assertion of honour. In one of the oldest Indian poems, duty is even praised as a sixth inner sense. In the Mahabaratam the entire struggle revolves (in its original form) around this idea. Fima the hero, who only unwillingly participates in war, says he would abandon his ruler,

If my lord did not bind me with the bond of duty of a Chatya, so that I may even strike down without mercy my dear grandsons with its darts.

Karna the Strong says:

Honour, like a mother, provides

Men with life in the world,

Dishonour consumes life,

Even if the body’s well being prospers.

King Durjozana’s downfall is brought about in spite of all the laws of war, and he laments:

Are you not ashamed, that Fimasen

Has dishonourably defeated me?

We have fought honourably enough,

And honour remains to us in defeat.

You have always fought dishonourably

And bear your victory with disgrace.

But I have ruled the earth

As far as the sea’s distant shore,

Have stood courageously before the foe

And die now, as a hero

Wishes to die, in service of duty,

And rise up to the gods accompanied by

A host of friends .....

These are certainly completely different tones to the ones we generally find in the more familiar poems. But these, and a hundred other passages from Indian literature, prove that the ancient Indian—and it was he who created India—did not abandon his life for love, but for the sake of duty and honour. A faithless man was also condemned in Aryan India, not because he was loveless but because he had become to be without honour.

Better to give up life, than to lose honour: the giving of life one feels only for a moment, but the loss of honour day by day says a folkish proverb. It seems to the heart of a hero as if a purpose is attained by heroic behaviour, to a coward as if this can be attained by cowardice

affirms another proverb, and sets up a value. A keen eye will discern these features of ancient Indian nature which can be found until the time of the brave king Poros who, defeated by Alexander in honourable battle on the field, nevertheless remains a complete knight. Although wounded, he still did not flee the field when others ran away. How shall I deal with you? asked Alexander of his defeated foe. In a kingly way, was the answer. Nothing more? asked the Macedonian. In the word kingly lies everything, ran Poros’s answer. So Alexander enlarged the extent of Poros’s rule, who from then on was a true friend to him. Whether this tale be historically true is irrelevant. But it shows the inward standard of honour, loyalty, duty and bravery, which was common to both heroes and clear, indeed self evident, to the historian also.

The ancient Indian kingdom kept to this manly concept of honour, and made it the prerequisite of its social structure. But when this concept of honour was replaced by ritual religious philosophical systems denying all earthly limitations, coupled with racial decomposition, religious and dogmatic, then economic, viewpoints appeared authoritative. With the philosophy of Ãtman Brahman transferred to earthly life—as elaborated earlier—the Aryan denied his race, hence his personality, but as a result also the idea of honour as forming the spiritual backbone of his life.

Love and sympathy—even when they claim to comprise the entire world—nevertheless always direct themselves at the individual loving or suffering creature. But the wish to liberate others or oneself from suffering is a purely personal feeling which contains no element really strongly formative of race or state. The love of what is nearest or what is farthest can produce deeds of supreme self sacrifice, but this is nevertheless a spiritual power related to the individual, and no man has ever in seriousness demanded the sacrifice of an entire state, of an entire people, for the sake of a love unrelated to the latter. And nowhere has an army yet sacrificed itself for this.

Athenian life appears to us as fundamentally milder than the ancient Indian. Admittedly in Greece an heroic epic also speaks of heroic deeds; but these have more of an aesthetic foundation. However, the three hundred Spartans of Thermopyle are regarded by us as a parable for honour and fulfilment of duty. Nothing gives better proof of the influence of the latter than our attempts at a restoration of Greek life. We were unable to conceive things otherwise than that all Hellenes were impelled by honour and duty; only very recently have we been able to convince ourselves of the weakness of Greek life in this respect. The Greek, with his gift for fantasy, in fact did not lay great value upon his word in normal life; he scarcely recognised the sober legal value of an assertion. Here we discover the most vulnerable part of the Greek character, the trapdoor, so to speak, by which the deceitful hither Asiatic trader entered, so that lies and falsehood later formed the constant background of Greek life, which occasioned Lysander to the words that one cheats children with dice, men with oaths. But in spite of this the real Greek was pervaded by a feeling of freedom which one must describe as rooted throughout in consciousness of honour. The killing of wives and the suicide of men defeated in a battle is no rare occurrence. Do not give yourself into slavery, as long as it still remains open to you to die freely, teaches Euripides. The remembrance of the deed by the Phocians who before the battle surrounded those of their people left behind with a wooden wall, with the advice to set fire to this in case of defeat, remains heroic evidence of strong symbolic power. The descendants of Zakynthos preferred to die in the flames rather than to fall into the hands of the Punics. In even later times (B.C. 200) evidence of mythic heroism is provided, for example, in the case of Abydos which, besieged by Philippus the Younger, does not surrender, but whose men stab their wives and children, throw themselves from the walls, and destroy the city through fire. The same valuing of life, of freedom and honour, also passes through ancient womanhood, whenever it was necessary to protect the latter from violation. Thus Eurydice, influenced by her mother, hanged herself; with the overpowering of the ruler of Elis in the 3rd century, the latter’s wife hanged herself with her two daughters.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the static nature of Greek life was conditioned not by character but by beauty which, as mentioned, had political irresponsibility as a fatal consequence.

Through Alexander, a more disciplined idea of late Greek life, primarily aesthetic, once again predominated, and which was also conscious of racial differences. Alexander did not unconditionally pursue the aim of a world monarchy and the mixing of peoples, but wished only to unite the Persians and Greeks, recognised as racial kindred, and to bring them under one rule, so as to avoid further wars. He recognised the driving ideas and character values of the Persian upper stratum as being related to his own Macedonian idea of duty; for this reason he therefore only placed Macedonians or Persians in leading posts, whereas Semites, Babylonians and Syrians were deliberately excluded. After Alexander’s death his successors made efforts to emulate his type of state in their lands and provinces. Like a hero from primeval times stands out one eyed Antigonos who, at the age of eighty, falls in combat on the battlefield against the lawful heirs when he was unable to gain his aim of a united kingdom. The Nordic Macedonian cultural offshoots, however, were not permanent enough. Admittedly, they provided Greek science, art and philosophy, but they did not possess the power to act as typeforming, to set through their idea of honour. The subjugated alien blood triumphed, the time of clever but characterless Hellenism began.

If the concept of honour has anywhere formed the centre of all existence, then it is in the Nordic, Germanic west. With a self reliance unique in history the Viking appears. The unbounded feeling of freedom pushes one Nordic wave after the other out into the unknown, as the population increases. With a squandering of blood and heroic unconcern, the Viking sets up his states in Russia, in Sicily, England and France.

Here primal racial impulses dominated without restraint and discipline, unhampered by reflection of purpose or an exactly determined system of law. The sole emphasis which the Northman carried with him was the concept of personal honour. Honour and freedom drove individuals into the distance in the search for independence, into lands where there was space for masters, or the same urge caused them to fight to the last man on their farms and castles. A happy contentedness with earthly existence, remote from all trading interest, was the basic feature of Nordic man when he appeared in the west as a force, forming history, in spite of all youthful impetuosity. Close followers grouped around individual personalities which then gradually led by necessity to the establishment of laws of social life, and finally after migration a sedentary kind of rural life ensued, (which in the south naturally fell to pieces, and perished in late oriental glittering decay).

Seldom is a second example offered to the observer of history, during which the conduct of a people could be determined so purely and completely by a sole highest value: all power, all property, every bond, every action, is directed to the service of honour, for which life is even offered as a sacrifice if necessary without reflection and without a flicker of the eyelashes. As the law of honour rules life, so it is reflected in poetry and passes as a fundamental principle through the world of sagas: one encounters there no other word so frequently as that of honour. Therefore the Nordic world of heroes with its wild discord, its bubbling over subjectivism, is nevertheless so uniform in its nature and direction of destiny.

— Krieck: Menschenformung, page 154.

It is pleasant to find in advance these recognitions among circles of German scholars who hitherto had been caught up in graceful aestheticism. Here the nerve of destiny in our entire history is touched; our European and German future is decided from the nature of the valuation of the idea of honour. Even if ancient Nordic man acts violently, then the centre, conscious of honour, of his being creates a pure atmosphere even in battle and death. War could be conducted brutally, but to admit to his deed was regarded as the first requirement of the Nordic man (Krieck). This feeling of responsibility demanded of each individual personality was the most effective defence against the moral swamp, against that hypocritical decomposition of values which in the course of European history has come over us as an alien temptation in the different forms of humanity. Sometimes it called itself democracy, sometimes social sympathy, sometimes humility and love. The personal honour of the Northlander demanded courage and self control. He did not gossip for hours like the Greek heroes before every battle; he did not cry out like the latter when wounded, but his consciousness of honour demanded calm and the conserving of strength. Seen from this aspect, the Viking is in fact the man of culture, while the aesthetically perfected late Greek is the barbarian left behind devoid of a centre. The words of Fichte: True culture rests upon disposition, reveals our true Nordic nature when facing other cultures whose highest value is not character—which for us is synonymous with honour and duty—but another sense of value, another idea around which its life revolves.

The destinies of the western peoples have taken on diverse forms in the course of time, conditioned by different circumstances. Everywhere that Nordic blood predominates, the concept of honour is present. However, it is also mixed with other ideals. This is revealed by vernacular sayings. In Russia the idea of a church, of religious feeling, has become dominant, which cloaks even the wildest outbreak with religious fervour (consider, for example, the man in Dostoyevski’s Idiot who commits a murder for the sake of a silver watch, but says a prayer beforehand). The Russian therefore speaks of his motherland as Swjataja Rossija, that is, as holy Russia. The Frenchman approaches life from the formally aesthetic aspect; France is therefore for him La Belle France. Similarly the Italian. The Englishman is proud of his logical historical development, of tradition, firm, typical forms of life. He therefore admires his Old England. But with us, in spite of many displeasing attributes, reference is still always made with identical fervour to German loyalty, which proves that our metaphysical nature still feels the mark of honour as its permanent base.

Around this concept of honour, then, ultimately revolved the lasting struggle over millennia, when Nordic Europe saw itself facing the armed Roman south, and was finally subjugated in the name of religion and Christian love.

It is certainly beyond question that even without the intrusion of armed Roman Syrian Christianity, an epoch of Germanic history—the mythological era—had ended. Nature symbolism would have given way to a new morally metaphysical system, a new form of belief. But this form would undoubtedly have been invested by the same spiritual content, with the idea of honour as its leitmotif and yardstick. However, with Christianity, a different spiritual value penetrated through and laid claim upon first place; love, in the sense of humility, mercy, subjection and asceticism. Today it is clear to every honest German that with this doctrine of love, which included all creatures of the world in equal degree, a sore blow was thrust against the soul of Nordic Europe. Christianity, in the way it took shape as a system, did not recognise the ideas of race and nation, because it represented a violent merging of diverse elements: it also did not recognise the idea of honour, because in pursuing Rome’s later aims of power it proceeded with subjection not only of bodies but also of souls. But it is characteristic that the idea of love was in fact also unable to set itself through in the conduct of church institutions. Both organisationally as well as dogmatically, the structure of the Roman system has been from the first day fundamentally and consciously intolerant and rejecting all other systems, not to say hate filled towards them. Wherever it could, it proceeded to assert itself by excommunication, outlawry, fire, sword and poison. Apart form moral evaluations, we can only confirm this fact which indeed is not even denied by recent Roman catholic writers. But this fact proves more than all others that no typeforming power is inherent in the idea of love. Because even the organisation of the religion of love has been built up without love. And, in fact, with much less love than other typeforming powers. The ancient Goths tolerated—as Döllinger proves—both the catholic as well as other beliefs, and showed a faith felt to be spiritually necessary as such. This toleration vanished everywhere when the spirit of Bonifacius and the compulsory law of love triumphed. In this connection one should compare the conduct of the heathen Frisian Duke Radbod in contrast to the Roman will to persecution. He remained true to the belief of his forefathers, but nevertheless did not persecute the Christian preachers. When several particularly zealous Christian missionaries were brought before him and one of them, despite the Duke’s resultant anger, still courageously represented the new faith, the heathen Duke said: I see that you do not fear our threats and that your words are as your works, and sent the missionaries back with all honours to Pippin, the Duke of the Franks. So reports Alcuin. In nobility of soul this pagan Frisian Duke stands far above the representative of god in Rome who made great efforts to banish this inner freedom and respect from the world. It is not easy for any German to express a negative evaluation in face of the Etruscan Jewish Roman system, for despite the way the latter is constructed, it has nevertheless been ennobled by the sacrifice of millions of German people. They have taken over what is alien in this, together with what is strange but spiritually related; respected the first less, shaped the second lovingly, and asserted many a Nordic value within the whole. Nonetheless, today, at a time of great spiritual change, the truth demands the examination of what emanates from Rome concerning whether it is furthering of life, or harmful to the nature of the Germanic west. This must be undertaken, not from the standpoint of personal ill will, but by surveying the great tensions and detensionings of history over more than two thousand years, and in investigation of the racial soul values conditioning these upheavals. Then we see that fundamentally the same struggle by the Greeks and Romans has fallen to the Germans. They can just as little escape this struggle as the other two great Nordic folkish waves, because the latter in their ebbing backwards carried within themselves the Asiatic spiritual values once overthrown by them, and the human material embodying these values. They carried these with them over Hellas, far over the Alps, beyond the frontiers of German living space, at times into the heart of the Nordic race itself.

But if one traces back the causes why this was so successful, then one will discover that one of the most important factors was the challenge of Germanic greatness of heart, alongside the earlier technical superiority of the older, more experienced south, and at a time of religious crisis in Teutonic life which alone would not have explained such a long lasting victory. This greatness of heart, which is shaped allegorically forever in Siegfried, which presupposes with an opponent the same valuing of honour and open form of battle, indeed whose childlike honesty cannot believe the contrary, has contributed to many a hard defeat for the Germans in the course of their history; once when it began to admire Rome, in recent times when it carried out the emancipation of the Jews and thereby granted poison equal rights with healthy blood. The first took a terrible revenge in the wars of the heretics, in the Thirty Years War which brought Germany close to the abyss; the second has its revenge today when the poisoned German national body is seized by the gravest convulsions. And both these powers, hostile to us, still call upon the greatness of heart found with the gravely sick, call for the latter’s justice, preach love of all humanity, and make efforts to finally gnaw away all remaining resistance of character.

A complete triumph of this humanity would have the same consequences as once the victory of hither Asia over Athens and Rome, so that the latter, once the deadly enemy of the Etruscan Pelasgian Syrian world, became virtually the chief representative of these same forces after the original values of ancient Rome had collapsed; a collapse which was due to physical decomposition and the preaching of the aloneness of humanity and love. But the doctrine of love was not a typeforming power even in its most beautiful form, but a power melting resistance.

In order to preserve itself as a typeforming power and to assert itself further, the church could not and might not recognise any love. But it could certainly pursue power politics with the aid of love. If the consciousness of personality, of defending honour and of manly duty, are transformed into humility and love filled dedication, then the impulse to resistance against the forces organising and directing the belief in the latter is broken. A herd and a shepherd! This is, taken literally as was demanded, what had been the clearest declaration of struggle against the German spirit. If this idea had completely triumphed, then Europe today would consist only of a characterless human horde numbering many millions, ruled with the aid of a highly cultivated fear of purgatory and everlasting tortures of hell, paralysed by love in the struggle for a feeling of honour, its better parts in service of a humanitarian philanthropism represented by CARITAS. This is the condition for which the Roman system was forced to strive, insofar as it wished to exist as such, and as a spiritual and political power.

It is not my intention here to write a history of dogmas, but I wish only to describe a logical system with which (as far as his nature is concerned) an awakening Nordic man must by necessity come permanently into the gravest spiritual conflict. Either he subjects himself to it completely (as at times in the middle ages) or he rejects it according to feeling and consciously in principle. In the first event, an external authority is attained for a brief time which, however, must collapse on account of its organic impossibility, as the great struggles show up to Döllinger; in the second event, the way is free for real organic culture and a true form of belief according to blood and race. The last centuries have stood under the mark of a compromise which did not touch upon any fundamental questions of world outlook but only organisational and political power relationships.

It is characteristic of Roman Christianity that where possible it eliminates the personality of its founder, in order to put in its place the church structure of a rulership by priests. Jesus is admittedly set up as the highest and holiest, as the source of all faith and bliss, but only for the purpose of investing the church representing him with the halo of an eternal and untouchable glory. For between Jesus and man, the church and its representatives intrude with the assertion that the way to Jesus can only lie through the church. Since Jesus does not live upon earth, man is in fact only concerned with this church which is fully authorised to bind or release forever. The utilisation of the belief in Jesus Christ (The ruling Christ as the author of the Heliand poem calls him) for the power politics of a self deifying league of priests forms the essence of Rome in the same way as under other names it formed that of priestly politicians in Egypt, Babylon and Etruria.

To strengthen the power of the doctrines and statutes protecting the priestly male league, a great art of dialectics was used by pious men which traced back all church edicts over 1500 years to the gospels, with the emphasis, however, that the church alone possessed the right to dispense faultless dogmas of universal validity. Church Christianity of catholic form and protestant offshoot appears before us today as an historical phenomenon; the beginning and end allow themselves to be clearly surveyed. The building is completed, every beam has its supports, the dogmatic edicts all find their bases. Now rigidity has appeared; one may thus speak about the building without needing to fear that one is falsely interpreting a living, still growing phenomenon in its driving forces.

Doctor Adam, a leading catholic theoretician, assures us that:

catholicism is not completely identical with early Christianity, or even to be identified with the message of Christ, any more than the fully grown oak tree with the tiny acorn.

Here the sanctified arrogance of the church (the work bears the stamp IMPRIMATVR) concerning Jesus is openly expressed, and all further glorification of Christ serves, as said, only for the purpose of increasing the ruling tyranny of the church, not the message of Christ, of the little acorn. The office of the church rests completely in the hands of the priest who by the laying on of hands becomes the representative of the apostolic power. As a basis for this doctrine, the words of Jesus to Peter are quoted, according to which he calls him the rock upon which he will build his church. The fact that these words were a forgery inserted into the ancient texts much later by a true servant of the church, naturally does not prevent this demonstrably untrue doctrine from being repeated all over the world as the message of Jesus. This passage (Matthew XVI:18) is in fact an exceedingly clumsy one among the many pious forgeries, for a few verses later Jesus calls this same Peter a Satan who should get behind him. Jesus says the same in Mark VIII, 30). Would he have wished to build up a church upon such a man so clearly described, whose betrayal of him Jesus likewise foresaw? Such an assumption approaches an open abusing of the personality of Christ. Merx says in conclusion: Historical research concerning Jesus cannot allow itself to be deceived forever by such forgery; there must be an end of it. (Die vier kanonischen Evangelien, III, 320).

Doctor Adam goes on: When the catholic priest spreads the word of Christ, then it is not a mere man who preaches, but Christ himself. By this, the self deification of the priest has been elevated into a dogma which certainly contains the height of arrogance in the view that if anywhere a leading personality elevated his own poor self into a bearer of Christ’s message the church would at once have to utter its anathema over him: And it would utter this anathema, even if an angel who came from heaven taught otherwise than has been accepted from the apostles.

The last elimination of human self reliance in favour of an unreal office is perfected in the sacraments: The sacramental blessing is not produced by the personal moral and religious efforts of the receiver of them, but far more through the objective completion of the sacramental token itself. With this, the annihilation of the personality is demanded, its valuelessness as religious doctrine is announced. In the midst of a people who had placed honour—personal honour, family honour, race honour, national honour—above all else as the midpoint of life, the open broadcasting of such a demand would never have been able to be carried through. This has only been possible through the skilled replacing of the concept of honour by that of love, followed by humility and devotion. That this sacramental token is represented as having been established by Jesus himself, should be noted only as a small proof of with what lack of concern history is formed and structures of religion are built.

It is self evident that these ideas of a doctrine aiming at magic could not be maintained in such barren representation even after the denial of honour as a guiding idea. The blood related customs of Nordic man and his knightly way of thinking were unable to be completely driven out even with fire and sword. So the church then proceeded to the incorporation of popular pre Christian parables into its system which was apparently ready even before early Christianity. According to Adam, the church was already there, in disposition, in seed—virtually—before Peter and John were converted.

Belief in Wotan was admittedly dying, but the sacred groves in which the god was worshipped remained the goal of Germanic pilgrims. All destruction of the Wotan symbols and the cursing of the old belief did not help. So in place of Wotan, Christian martyrs and saints such as holy Martin were set up. Cloak, sword and horse were his symbols (thus the same symbols as Wotan, Odin); the respected groves of the sword god became in this manner the places of holy Martin, the saint of war, who is still worshipped today by German pilgrims (for example, the Schwertslocher chapel). Saint George and saint Michael also represent the renaming of old Nordic deities who through this baptism arrived in the domain of the Roman church. The she devil Lady Venus has been transformed into saint Pelagia; Donar, the thunderer and the cloud god, became saint Peter guarding heaven; the Wotanlike character of the wild huntsman is imparted to saint Oswald, and on chapters and carvings the redeemer Widar is shown tearing the Fenris Wolf to pieces (for example, at Berchtesgaden). The same Widar, who in trying to save Odin swallowed by the Fenris Wolf, kills the monster. The comparison with Jesus is clear. Even the pious Hrabanus Maurus, the most learned church teacher in Germany at the end of the 8th century, represents god as dwelling in the fortress of heaven, an idea which originates not from the bible, but from the heroic ancient Germanic soul.

On the first of May, old Germania celebrated Walpurgis night, the beginning of the twelve festive nights of the summer solstice. It was the day of Wotan’s (Wodan, Odin) wedding with Freya. Today the sacred Walburg celebrates its name day on the first of May, while all customs have been altered by the church into magic and witchcraft, nature symbolism being thus transformed into oriental diabolism.

In Regensburg a chalice is preserved on a copper gilded stand, which is only drunk from on John’s day. This was the ancient form of festive wine for communion (which was still preached by the church in both forms in the 13th century) on December 27, the post celebration of the winter solstice. In remembrance of very old love potions, wine is still handed around from saint Sebastian’s skull cup even today (for example in Ebersberg, Upper Bavaria). This drinking to love, and drinking for luck to saint John the Baptist, to saint Martin and saint Stephen, are all very old customs. The devout catholic Johann Nepomuk Sepp says: The cup of Christ has been withheld from laymen by Rome, but the folk has not allowed the ancient pagan cup to be taken from it.

Along with customs, songs and images also altered. We see Oswald the holy illustrated in the Book of saints of 1488. He sits upon a throne in royal dress and crown. Around him fly the two ravens of Odin. Only the palms and the shepherd’s crook are Christian additions. Odin is still worshipped today under the name of Oswald and, for example, he has his church in Traunstein, but also sacred places on the Lower Rhine, in Holland, and in Belgium. Even the legend of saint Kuemmernis goes back to the figure of Odin as the Edda describes him to us, when Odin hung on the windy tree for nine nights wounded by a spear. The figure of a bearded, crucified man (Odin, Donar) who throws down a golden shoe to those who pray to him, recurs in many old sculptures and as motif in many songs. The female saint Kuemmernis has developed from this figure in a way still not completely clarified.

The church thus had to accommodate itself, to set its saints upon fiery steeds, to send them swinging sword and spear into battle with dragons and other foes, to acquire honour and fame or to save captured virgins from the clutches of an evildoer. The statues of Roland and saint George are examples of this kind which were only gradually replaced by those of Mary: in place of the symbol of honour the allegory of love appeared.

The Nordic gods were figures of light with spear and radiant cross and swastika, the symbols of the sun, of fertile ascending life. Since long before 3000 B.C., Nordic folkish waves carried these symbols, as can be proved, to Greece, Rome, Troy and India. Minutius Felix is zealous against the pagan cross; until finally the Roman (shaped like a T) gallows upon which Jesus was nailed, had to be recast to this pagan, now Christian, cross, and the pagan sun or cross of heaven appeared as saintly light above the heads of church martyrs or messengers of faith. Today we experience the birth of a new science: that of the interpretation of ancient Germanic symbolism. The circle with the four spokes appears as a cross of heaven, that is, as a projection of the directions of the sky, the sixfold division as points of the summer winter solstice. It is this symbolism of a cosmic kind which passes through all the centuries, taken over mysteriously as the last fragments of a time which laid down its world picture of the father of heaven, birth, death and eternity with symbols instead of with letters. The allegories of the sun are an excerpt from this world picture. The ray of light, the lance, becomes the allegory of ruling. The riding god with the lance therefore appears again and again anew on Christian memorial stones and designs: this was the eternal wanderer Wotan (Odin, Wodan) riding through the history of Christianity. Divided into many figures, this god lived and cast spells as saint Oswald, as saint George, as saint Martin, as a rider with the lance, indeed as saint Kuemmernis in catholic countries, and today as der Wode still passes invisibly through the soul of the people in Lower Saxony. As long as a people lives, its gods are immortal. That was Wotan’s revenge after his decline, until Baldur arose again and called himself the saviour of the world.

In Rome (also in Wittenberg) they were deeply outraged concerning this primal strength of ancient Nordic tradition which even Bonifacius and his successors up to the present day could not completely destroy. But there was nothing left other than to rename the other figures of the gods as Christian saints, and to transform their features in this manner. How this was carried out according to plan, is shown by countless Papal edicts. Thus, for example, Pope Gregorius the Great writes to Augustinus, the missionary to the pagans who begs him for advice on the best way to convert the latter:

For in our time may the holy church certainly turn with glowing zeal towards better men, but others she tolerates, yet in such manner that she often suppresses the evil which she fights, particularly by such tolerance and disregard.

— Bede, I, 27.

And on July 22, 601, the same pope writes to the Abbot Mellitus that if the pagan temples could not be destroyed, one might transform them:

Then if the people does not see its temples destroyed, it may lay aside error from its heart ..... and gladly find its way, according to old custom, to the place familiar to it.

And about allowing offerings:

When some joys are allowed to them outwardly in such measure, then may many accustom their mind easier to the inner joys. For quite certainly it does not happen that one cuts off hard dispositions all at once, indeed because even he who wishes to rise up to the highest peaks, works his way up by stages ..... not at one leap.

— Bede I, 30.

(Compare Thomas Hanlein: The proselytism of the ancient German to Christianity, Leipzig, 1910 and 1914, I, 57 and I, 64).

But the festivals of the Christian church appeared on the same day as the early peoples celebrated them, whether these were the festival of the fertility goddess Ostara, which became the Easter resurrection festival, or the festival of the winter solstice, which became the birthday of Jesus. Thus the catholic church in its fundamental forms in northern Europe has also been conditioned in a Nordic manner. The grotesque thing about this fact is only that it seeks to make a virtue out of necessity, and claims the richness of spiritual life exclusively in favour. The coercive church dogma declares in all seriousness that every national complexion can have a place in the church, that every kind of religiousity is under its protection; nowhere has the personal freedom of religious expression been so protected as in the catholic [!] church. (Adam.) This is naturally a reversal of facts which speak only too clearly. From Bonifacius by way of Ludwig the Pious, who made efforts to exterminate everything Teutonic with fire and sword, and a total of over nine million murdered heretics, we pass to the Vatican council which up to the present represents a unique attempt to assert a merciless uniform spiritual belief: one form, one compulsory dogma, one language, and one rite, identically for Nordics, Levantines, negroes, Chinese and Eskimos. (One should consider, in this connection, the eucharistic congress in Chicago in 1926, where negro bishops celebrated mass). For two thousand years the eternal blood of all races and peoples revolted against this. But just as the idea of a world monarchy has exercised a hypnotising influence on strong personalities from Alexander to Napoleon, so also the idea of one church ruling the entire world. And just as this first idea forced millions under its sway, so also did the second, as an idea, although it did not achieve complete subjection in its effect. Therefore the great men of the early middle ages also regarded the Roman church as an ally, or at least as a helper for the realisation of romantic plans of power. The church on its part saw in a worldly arm equipped with weapons, a means for creating a free path for its intentions. Examination of the inner motives for this, reveals that this struggle was essentially one for predominance, concerning what should be regarded as a supreme metaphysical value, a character value: Love, humility, denial, submission or honour, dignity, self assertion, pride.

Love was only demanded and practised by the supporters and lower grades of the Roman system; in order to have permanence and to stimulate strong natures, the leadership needed glitter, strength, power over the bodies and souls of men. Undoubtedly, a great spiritual readiness for sacrifice has been cultivated through this system: what the catholic church calls with pride its CARITAS. But it is particularly here, in its most beautiful human effect, that an equally powerful difference in the evaluation and consequence of an apparently identical action is shown. As the mercy of god is provided only through the church, so also are good deeds and mercy only a gift of the church to the unfortunate, to the sinner. This represents a cleverly weighed competition for broken men, with the purpose of binding them to a centre of power, and bringing before them both their nothingness in the sight of god, and simultaneously the power represented by the triumphant church. But this thought process also lacks everything which we would describe as knightliness. A Nordic people determined by the concept of honour would assert that someone in need should be supported not in the name of condescending love and mercy but in the name of justice and of duty. This would have had as consequence not a subservient humility but an inward honesty, not the breaking of personality but its strengthening, that is, the reawakening of the consciousness of honour.

To this context belongs pity, of the Christian church kind, which has also appeared in a new form in the humanitarianism of freemasonry, and which led to the greatest desolation of our entire life. From the coercive dogma of unrestricted love and the equality of all mankind before god on the one side, from the teaching of human rights supported by democratic racelessness and without nationally rooted ideas of honour on the other, European society has virtually developed as a protector of the inferior, the sick, crippled, criminal and rotten. Love plus humanitarianism has become a doctrine decomposing all commandments of life and the life forms of people and state, and, as a result, has come into conflict with present day avenging Nature. A nation whose midpoint was represented by honour and duty, would not preserve the corrupt and criminal, but eliminate them. We also see by this example that the faceless scheme in its lust for uniformity, pairs itself with unhealthy subjectivism, while a social and state community welded together by honour and duty must out of justice eliminate material privations and make efforts to increase the consciousness of individual value within this enforced discipline, but in such a way that, likewise through necessity, it would separate those racially and spiritually unfit for Nordic forms of life. The one or other results when honour is set up as the highest value of all actions, and the protection of the Nordic European race is given prime importance.

A typical example of how the Roman system utilised human weaknesses for its purposes, is shown by the compulsory dogma of the selling of indulgences. The church asserts that it possesses a fullness of representative atonement towards the poor sinner on behalf of Jesus and the saints. For releasing and binding, by virtue of their divine trust, it has the approval of Jesus at its disposal in dealing with a particular evildoer (in fact it was the African Tertullianus who extended the doctrine of dealer with much use of legal hair splitting). It has been attempted to surround this doctrine with many mysterious interpretations, and to build up an entire philosophy on this representation of absolution. However, its subbasis of dealing in the sense of trading will not remain concealed from any deeply perceiving man trading in both spiritual as well as material aspect. Fundamentally, the idea of absolution is based upon the keeping of accounts which the church is at convenience to manipulate by choosing convenient figures. This is a cultivation of emptiness of character and spirit, apart from other consequences such as appeared in Luther’s time, when a business representative of the Fuggers always accompanied Tetzel and took away from him all money received, because otherwise the Augsburg traders would never have been paid by Rome. The holy year invented by Bonifacius VIII brought in a huge income from the sale of indulgences. But the jubilee absolution could only be purchased in Rome. At first the ANNVS SANCTVS was to be celebrated every 100 years. Then it was held every 50, every 33, finally every 25 years, to obtain large sums of money more frequently. The first holy year brought the pope 200,000 foreign visitors and 15 million golden guldens. In 1350 the Vatican took in 22 million. One therefore understands why, after the 33 years celebrated in remembrance of Jesus’s years of life (as the festival was called after the second shortening of the interval between holy years), an interval lasting only 25 years was introduced on account of the brevity of human life. One sees that even the martyr’s death of Jesus can be good for furthering the business of his representative. In order to obtain even more gold, the opening and closing of the golden gates was introduced for the holy year: whoever went in there and left behind his offering, could also free his friends from all sins. In 1500, Alexander VI used the income of the jubilee indulgence for the dowry of his daughter Lucrezia. Every crime had its firmly fixed price with which one could buy oneself free: murder of parents, incest, had to be paid for highly. Only protestant criticisms controlled corruption. Thereafter, indulgence was reserved for magical customs (carrying of holy relics, privileged altars, and so on). Similar business was carried on by all lesser church establishments. The monastery of Monte Cassino, for example, had a yearly income of 500,000 ducats, and around the year 1500 comprised 4 bishoprics, 2 principalities, 350 castles, 440 villages, 336 estates, 23 harbour settlements, 33 islands, 200 mills and 1662 churches! One example among thousands. In addition came the transfer of giant sums as dues to the pope, Peter’s pennies, dispensation moneys, and so on. The very worst despots of the earth have not been more greedy than the representatives of the man whose kingdom was not of this world.

The doctrinal principle of absolution was only possible because during its formation the idea of a feeling of personal honour had not taken effect. It had to extend its sway further, to undermine the still existing consciousness of honour, and to give the stamp of piety to slavish thinking. The German rebellion against this disgrace compelled the Roman system to be more cautious in organising the system of indulgences. Fundamentally, however, it is still defended today as a just and pious practice of the church (for example, the general indulgence summons of 1926). It is self evident that this mischief is likewise traced back to ancient biblical practices. A thousand year old redisciplining of countless successive generations around a new pole—Rome—has had such a strong effect on the non Nordic undercurrent of the European peoples that this summons to divided mankind is not even felt by them as a disgrace, but as mutual aid by the limbs of the body of Christ.

The idea of intercession by the church emanates from this same mode of thought which abandons the idea of honour. On the basis of resolutions of the councils at Lyons, Florence and Trent, the condition of purgatory between life on one side and of eternal damnation or eternal purgatory on the other was introduced, and the authority approved for the church to conduct purgatory to a worthwhile end through its intercession. If one strips this doctrine of all its trimmings, that is, takes it just as it is intended, namely not as real intercession and spiritual remembrance of the departed, but as an action which influences the passage of the soul after death, then we have the most ordinary magical belief such as the south sea peoples still practice today. From a philosophical aspect, the dogmas of selling indulgences and of effective intercession (along with several others, such as the doctrine of the scapulary and the holy anointings and miracle working relics) represent the final outcome of a world outlook whose type is the medicine man. The medicine man whose prayer brings or prevents rain, whose curse kills, who has concluded a pact with god or the gods and can force or at least influence him (or them) in every way by some magical practice.

(An event not fitting strictly into this work, but which is of deep inner significance, may be mentioned here as characterising this spiritual attitude. On CORPVS CHRISTI day in 1929 at Munich, the procession was suddenly surprised by a violent thunderstorm. The monks, nuns, ministers, and so on, seized their crucifixes and candles under their arms and ran in all four heavenly directions. Later, Cardinal Faulhaber preached in the Frauenkirche and admonished the faithful not to allow their faith to be shaken by the bad weather, even if Jesus had this time not accepted the offering brought to him ..... Jesus is here represented as a rainmaker, and the rained upon CORPVS CHRISTI procession as an unsuccessful attempt at sorcery! The medicine man philosophy thus exactly characterises the spiritual conduct of the Roman church.)

The medicine man as a demonic figure can utilise independent thought by his supporters just as little as consciously honourable actions. Logically, to secure his position, he must make efforts to eliminate the one as well as the other with all the means at his disposal. He must excessively cultivate all too human anxieties and hysterical tendencies; he must preach witch mania and demonic sorcery; he must suppress with INDEX, fire and sword all inquiry that can lead to other results or even to liberation from the entire world picture taught by the medicine man. The medicine man throws such as Roger Bacon into prison in the same way as Galileo; he must declare the work of Copernicus outlawed and under ban, and make efforts to destroy all systems of thought which wish to assert honour, duty and loyalty between men—teachings in accordance with a personality of high value, as powers shaping life. To describe the attempt to assert the magically demonic world conception of the medicine man in a world political sense, means to write Roman dogma and church history. Rome has thus not only understood how to secure the representation of god in the eyes of millions, but by working on the deliberately cultivated magical belief of certain sections within the different peoples, also kept awake the belief in the universal power of its practices as being only possessed by the priest (such as indulgences, the last anointing, and so on) in contacting the other world. Other devices of similar kind in foreign lands were more logical in this respect. At the same time the pope knew how to escape responsibility for this sorcery. The teacher and headman of a primitive tribe boasting of magical powers will be killed, if his sacrificial ceremonies are fruitless and lead to drought or a universally destructive flood. The emperor of China was equal to god; as the son of heaven he was worshipped as such, but he was responsible for the prosperity of people and state. The pope has rendered impossible the further examination of his assertions by those believing in him as a result of his transferring their effect from this world into the other. However, if healing by hypnosis happens occasionally to be successful, then the catholic papers are filled with news about this, although they tenaciously keep silent about the thousands who leave the places of pilgrimage unaltered. Since nothing is spared in the painting of pictures of hell—an idea unfamiliar to the devout Ulfilas, for which no German word was descriptive—so Rome enchains the hopes of frightened millions to its rites by experiment. This method has also contributed much to the durability of the Roman system.

The attempt to put the world in a state of bewitchment has admittedly misfired, although not completely. The initial technical superiority of southern lands over the Germanic ones, the consequent extermination of those who were free, proud and conscious of honour with the aid of every conceivable alliance, the clever falsification of Nordic customs which remained as such in existence, only under different control ..... all this has not been without disadvantageous effects.

Jesuitism has drawn the last logical conclusions from the Roman system. The final stone in the structure of the medicine man philosophy was laid by the Vatican council. Here the medicine man was declared as god, as infallible god for the duration of exercise of his office. Strictly speaking, Jesus is no longer represented, but deposed; deposed and replaced by the Roman system, crowned by the medicine man invested with all power, who calls himself pope. The new testament is indeed an important but not entirely exhaustive product of this apostolic tradition permeating the entire consciousness of the church, condescendingly writes the afore mentioned modern catholic theoretician, Professor Adam.

Jesus is pushed aside; the Syrian Etruscan superstition which at the beginning enveloped his personality like weeds, appears in his place as apostolic tradition.

In fact, the Roman dogma does not regard the concept of honour as a problem in itself. It had, by necessity, systematically to eliminate the latter from its basic standpoint which demanded only subjection. The training school for the conscious extermination of the defiant appearance of this spiritual power in western life is undoubtedly represented by that body which, as if in mockery, describes itself as the Society of Jesus; the manner in which Ignatius Loyola wished to see the imitators of Jesus perform spiritual exercises thus signifies the uttermost contrast to Germanic thought and feeling. There is still dispute concerning what influences have been most fundamental in the inward and outward shaping of the Basque Loyola. To be true, the pious voices of Maria Laach are of opinion that the supernatural origin of the little book of exercises cannot be doubted by any rational person, but this childish attempt, as well as other fresh products which are attributed to divine dictate are somewhat embarrassing even to the priesthood. It is evident that the writings of Pater Garcia de Cisnero of Manresa, in the form of the Benedictine and Franciscan rules, exercised great influence upon Ignatius, but also the principles of the Moorish religious and political societies which extended over north Africa as far as Spain, must have been known to him since an astonishing resemblance exists between the Musulman order and the principles of the Society of Jesus. The Musulman texts teach:

You shall be under the hands of your sheikh like a corpse in the hands of the watchman of the dead.

Obey your sheikh in everything that he orders, for it is god himself who commands through his voice.

Livre de ses appuis de Scheich

Si Snouissi, Les Origines de la Compagnie

de Jesus, Paris, 1898;

compare also Charabounel: L’Origine Musulmane de Jesuites.)

Ignatius in his famous letter demands the same kind of obedience: blind obedience, corpselike obedience. The lucidity of blind obedience would vanish in the event of one’s posing the question as to good and evil in the face of a command. If it is necessary to fulfil an order by the superior, then:

Whatever it might be, a blind urge to obey will draw us with it, without leaving the slightest room for reflection.

It was on March 26, 1553, when the demand for corpselike obedience was flung as an open challenge into Germanic western spiritual life. Writes Ignatius:

Lay aside, beloved brother, as much as possible your will, and hand over and sacrifice your freedom .....

You must obey with a certain blind urge, allow yourself to drift devoid of will without any kind of investigation, to do whatever your superior says .....

In the Constitutions we read:

Each shall be convinced that whoever lives in obedience shall allow himself to be led by the superior, as if he be a corpse, allowing himself to be carried and laid down here and there in every manner; or as if he be the stick of an old man which serves him who holds it where and ever he will .....

In his Rules, which Loyola added to the Exercises, he again demanded:

Complete removal of personal judgement,

and furthermore:

When something appears white to our eyes which the church has defined as black, then this is likewise to be declared as black.

Subjection is demanded, completely irrespective of whether the servant holds something to be sinful or dishonourable; even the restriction, however threadbare, made earlier is lacking here, that one needs only to disobey when an open sin is demanded.

(A Memorial of the Jesuit college at Munich elaborates the 5th and 6th rules concerning obedience:

He obeys blindly, who like a corpse or the stick of an old man, having no feeling and no judgement, so obeys as if he had chained his own judgement, and to a certain degree completely eliminated this (TOTVM ECLIPSATVM), so that he no longer has a judgement of his own, and is unable to see, but has made the judgement by another completely not his own, namely that of his superior, and in fact so completely and so perfectly that whatever his superior judges and feels, he himself judges and feels exactly the same, and that this judgement by his superior be his own unfalsified and natural judgement. This is the power of true self denial and of truly making oneself blind (EXCAECATIO), to be impelled no longer by personal, but by another’s stimulus.

Reusch, Archival contributions:

Magazine for church history, 1895, XV, 263.)

But even the most zealous western members of the church could not tolerate this openness, this courage of accepting the final logical consequence from the prerequisites of the Roman system. Even the Roman and the Spanish inquisition rebelled against this all too clear language. Protests resounded from all corners of the earth against this demand for dishonourableness and slavishness. A public condemnation of the Jesuit doctrine also nearly occurred; however, the cunning Bellarmin—in the interests of the unity of the church—was successful in avoiding this. (The French Jesuit Julian Vincent, who even in the year 1588 showed the courage to declare Ignatius’s letter heretical, was thrown into prison by the inquisition, then declared to be insane. Thanks to the loving care of the Imitators of Christ he died the year afterwards in prison.)

Whoever wishes to follow a similar case of the brutal enslaving of an upright man within the present Jesuit order, should read the legal reports by the German Jesuit father Bremer concerning his struggle against the Jesuit general, and how the pope protected the latter contrary to all law. Bremer, a revered scholar, represented the old strict ideas concerning morals, which were simply banned as inconvenient. But the little PATER did not merely allow himself to be stifled like thousands of others, and he defended his standpoint on the basis of church law. This had as consequence one brutal act after another, then legal actions against the PATER, then his condemnation in Rome without his being heard. Bremer openly raised the accusation of falsification of ancient documents against the Jesuit general and the pope. Both had to allow this to occur ..... the splendid times of the inquisition are over, otherwise Bremer would long since have rotted in a prison (further details can be found in Doctor F. Ernst: Papst und Jesuitengeneral, Bonn, 1930). The demand by Ignatius to call white black, if the church so commanded, signified the declaring of holy the poisoning of souls, and was a recognition of the right to the destruction of conscience, the open elevation of a lie to a work of piety. The fact that this dogma, sucking away moral backbone, could not be completely carried out, lay once again not in the good will of the church which alone could bring salvation, but only in the strong defence shown by the European spirit, and in the impossibility, even by retrogressive breeding over decades, to burn out the European consciousness of honour. Today they are even compelled to declare that Loyola’s words, dictated by god, are no longer true; it is no longer risked to openly demand corpselike obedience and the abandonment of one’s honour in the Jesuit schools. But the aim and the way of creating a herd of soulless slaves are drawn unmistakably clearly. The slavish practices of the order which inject anxiety into the imaginative power and enslave the personal will, along with the subjection of the spiritual personality under the hypnosis of a strong central will, serve for breaking every feeling of dignity. The fact that the church did not condemn the doctrine of corpselike obedience shows that it strove for the latter, like its tool, the Society of Jesus. And just as the Syrian African order wished to work for the very greatest praise of god, so the Jesuit order worked conscious of its goal, AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, for the disintegration of the Nordic Germanic west, and naturally wormed its way in everywhere that a wound became noticeable in the body of a people.

It is not good and evil which are discussed here, but unchangeable values of character. Loyola was, even if ambitious, nevertheless a courageous man, but his enslaving system is the reversal of all European values. Just as the theoretical materialist can be personally a good and satisfactory man, so also the warlike Loyola became the symbol of the most unscrupulous struggle against the soul of the Nordic race. Nothing is falser than to compare his Exercises with the Prussian educational system, as often happens with the purpose of obscuring the facts, because these two forms of league, training type, of men represent irreconcilable opposites. Loyola abolishes the uniform dress of monks, rejects excessive asceticism, sends his representatives in disguise among the affiliated in all cities, allows them greater freedom in their outward life. In return the Jesuits sacrifice to the order all personal enquiry, personality, human dignity—in the last analysis, their racially spiritual nature. The Prussian soldier was subject outwardly to harsh discipline, but inwardly he was free. The first system does not recognise the idea of honour, and whenever it encounters this, attempts to trample it down; the second revolves solely around the idea of honour. The first was and remains a fungus in the midst of our life, an acid dissolving all the strength and greatness of our ancient past; the second was and remains the primal cell for the structure of our entire existence, as this was operative when it appeared for the first time openly in the light of history with the Vikings and the early Teutons.

After the Basque Ignatius, Lainez—a Jew—was chosen as his successor for the further development of the Roman dogma directed hostilely against us all. Its efficacy, namely at the Tridentine council, and the consequences of the resolutions laid down there, would be worthy of a German doctorate thesis. On July 18, 1870, the Jesuitical Vatican council spoke its final creed:

We teach and declare that according to the will of the lord, the Roman church has predominance of proper authority of office over all others ..... that the judgement of the apostolic chair over which there is no higher power, may be withdrawn by none of a new confession, just as it is permitted none to sit in judgement over its judgement.

The chair of saint Peter remains always unspotted by any error.

We declare it as a principle of faith revealed by god: that the pope in Rome, when he speaks from his doctrinal chair (EX CATHEDRA) ..... decides a doctrine firmly adhered to by the entire church, concerning faith or morality, is capable of the divine support promised him by saint Peter, possesses that infallibility with which the divine redeemer wished to provide his church in deciding a doctrine concerning faith or morality ..... therefore if anyone should risk contradicting this our decision, which god forbid, he is under ban.

With this, the Roman Jesuitical systematic destruction of personality was perfected, Admittedly, millions of true believing catholics vaguely felt the monstrosity of this self deification of an office in itself, and a few men stood up to lay protest against this dishonouring of mankind which is the essence of the Vatican. The catholic rector of Prague university wrote in horror:

One permitted oneself to be killed off, and indeed did it oneself, threw away conviction, belief, priestly and manly honour. That is the result of a development which sees the essence of Christianity in blind obedience towards the Roman hierarchy.

Bishop Strossmeyer declared that the curia regarded the papacy as carrion, and hoped for the death of Pius IX, which would signify a truly good deed for mankind. Ignaz Döllinger rejected the dogma as a Christian, theologian, and historian. Even the proud leader of the Centre party, Windthorst, was nevertheless courageous enough, at least among friends, to reject the new doctrine of infallibility. As the Breslau prebendary Kunzer stated (Norddeutsche Allgemeine, January 11, 1871) he had to make the utmost efforts to calm Windthorst, and he sought to soften his fury against the Jesuits whom he declared guilty of everything and against whose expulsion he would not lift a finger. But what still seemed possible in the 16th century, was now in vain; nothing helped. Pius IX could even declare proudly of himself: I am the way, the truth and the life (Observateur catholique, 1866, page 357) without the spiritually decomposed, enslaved catholic world daring to protest against this presumption.

It is therefore not a question of the pope dispensing any special commands as infallible, but solely the fact that this possibility is permitted him. A fragment of that intangible something which every people feels as centre of its soul, has been broken off. The pope will not, of course, openly demand anything dishonourable, but the fact of the presentation of a complete carte blanche authority on the part of the catholic world alone shows sufficiently that in service of love manly honour has been cast away. The VATICANVM signified the breaking of all men of character in the church. And thus also at the present day: for existing dignitaries are already educated under the rule of this honourless dogma. So called political catholicism is only the necessary external side of the Jesuitical Roman system in general; thus not the misuse, but the logical application, of Roman principles, even if misuse of the real religion. Then every spiritual force free from Rome, every worldly power independent of Rome, appears as falling away from the only legitimate rule, and every means is holy for regaining this spiritual political rule.

This system has known how to force the self sacrifice of men influenced by love into the service of an unmerciful caste. By replacing the inner equilibrium of consciousness by humility and pity, the spiritual dignity of the Nordic peoples was undermined. Wars, revolutions—in part utilised by Rome, in part directly called forth by Rome—brought increased physical and spiritual attrition with them, until with democratically Jewish support it became possible in 1870 to place the final stone in the roof of the building. And this signified: the abandonment of individual honour, of national and racial honour, in favour of demands for government by a priestly society declaring itself to be god.

Seen in this connection, the greatness of Luther’s deed does not consist in merely founding a church, but is much more important than the introduction of a division between two versions of faith. However much Luther may still have been deeply embedded in the middle ages, his deed signifies the great revolution in the history of Europe after the penetration of Roman Christianity. Luther denied the priesthood as a power in itself, that is, denied the right of justification by a caste of men who claimed to be in closer relationship with the godhead than others, and who on the basis of alleged knowledge of god presumed they possessed better insight concerning god’s plans for salvation and conditions in heaven. As a result, Martin Luther hindered the further advance of that magical monstrosity which had come to us from central Asia by way of Syria and Africa. Monasticism is African in origin, so is the tonsure; and the antinatural castrations by means of which one is supposed to be brought nearer to god are central Asiatic in origin. The rosary is Asiatic, and it is still used in present day Tibet where its mechanism has been perfected in the prayer wheel. The kissing of the pope’s feet is Asiatic, the Dalai Lama still demands the same today—and several other things which, however, could not be established in Europe. In this connection it is worth recalling the behaviour of Alexander the Great. When he had conquered the whole of hither Asia, he made the Asiatics kneel down when they greeted him, but with his Macedonians he acted as with comrades; a single attempt also at introducing obeisance from them, but which failed at once. Here Nordic Europe already parted from orientalism, but Lamaism had completed its intrusion in the form of the Roman priest caste, and continued the oriental politics of the Babylonians, Egyptians and Etruscans. Martin Luther declared war on this spiritual collectivity, was victorious, and all catholics still conscious of honour must thank his labour for the fact that the papacy reformed itself and was forced to a purification, in order to continue to exist at all in the awakening cultural world of Europe.

It must now be made clear how things would have proceeded with the Germanic states if that spirit had triumphed which wished to link holiness with dirt and repellent life. Eusebios the holy ran around with 100 kilogram iron weights; saint Macarios purchased holiness for himself by bearing the tortures of an ant hill upon which he sat; saint Francis—admittedly in many ways a very great personality—paid tribute to the spirit of Asia by rolling around on thorns to the pleasure of god. Outstandingly pious nuns drank strangers’ spittle, ate dead mice and rotten eggs, all so as to become holier. The pious Hilarion is praised because he lived only in filth; the holy Athanasios was proud of never having washed his feet; the same is reported of Abraham the holy, of Sylvia the holy. The nunnery of saint Euphrasia had even taken an oath that its nuns might never bathe ..... with unhindered further development of this odour of sanctity. Europe today would have arrived at the same condition as the dirt contemplating saints of India and Tibet, at a condition of the most perfected stupidity, of the most terrible superstition, of poverty and of misery—with a constant enrichment of the priest caste. Europe was saved because of the extent of the anti Roman movements, and the greatest saviour of the west has therefore been Martin Luther because he combated the system from which the conditions described above resulted as a necessary consequence: the priesthood of Rome with its magic power, representing the continuation of the priestly societies of hither and central Asia. This German farmer’s son thus became the axis of a new world development for which all Europeans must be thankful, since he not only made the protestants free, but also saved catholics from spiritual decline. The later return of many fallen centres (Vienna and Munich were once protestant cities) to catholicism thus only became possible through an enforced cleansing of the odour of sanctity. However, it must also never be forgotten that if the protestant spirit were no longer to exist, the Tibetan Etruscan world would reveal itself anew (Spain, which was least protestant, has felt the rule of Rome bitterest of all, and nowhere in Europe was there such backwardness of spirit and soul as in Spain before the revolution of April, 1931). How deeply satanic superstition still prevails even today in the very highest posts, has been revealed to an astonished world by the Leo Taxil swindle which is on the same level as the exorcising of the devil by devout churchmen in all states.

The essence of the conflict between emperor and pope was first of all the struggle for predominance between knightly honour and the enervating doctrine of love. The living allegory of the first is the sword with the hilt in the form of a cross and the bishop riding on a battle charger. Without question, knightly honour predominated at first; even a Charlemagne would laughingly have rejected a Pius IX. But Charlemagne held it as expedient to allow his dignity to be sanctified through religion and to proclaim his rule over the peoples as originating from god’s blessing. Emperor and pope were thus at first political allies against the noble Saxons to whose fame it is—according to Goethe—that they hated Christianity in the form offered. Widukind admittedly fought for himself, but simultaneously for the freedom of all Nordic peoples. At the same time, Charlemagne remains the rugged founder of the German Reich as a political unit. After the reestablishment of the honour of Saxony, which had been derided for 1000 years, both great opponents pass into German history: Charlemagne as the founder of the German Reich, Widukind as defender of the Germanic values of freedom.

Loyalty by vassals and loyalty between men were likewise regarded by the old knights as above possessions and happiness, as with the author of the Edda. The Havamal closes with the words:

Possessions pass away,

Relatives die,

You yourself die as they.

One thing I know

That lives forever:

The famous deeds of the dead.

This is the Nordic form of the Buddhist Karma doctrine. In the Beowulf poem a mingling of the Germanic feeling of honour with the Christian idea of redemption is attempted, namely insofar as Beowulf undertakes to save outraged, tortured humanity; but he does not fight with the aid of the principle resist not evil, but as a hero, the terror of the wicked. (Compare in this connection Vishnu who appears in the world again and again for the destruction of evildoers). But a certain soft undertone already makes itself perceptible in Beowulf. While it was regarded as dishonourable for the ancient Germans to return home from the battlefield without their lord and leader, the miserable behaviour of the disciples of Christ in the garden at Gethsemane (which also seemed very painful to the poet of the Heliand) has already cast a shadow here. With the exception of one loyal man, the followers of Beowulf abandon him when they are seized by forebodings of death! This completely un Nordic, soft hearted feature is in fact again countered by a conscious praise of honour:

No event can weaken the man of noble blood.

And:

The end of this life threatens us all; therefore whoever can, should attain fame before death!

Finally, the dishonourable and disloyally fleeing men have banishment pronounced over them:

Now to all your race be refused

The gift of swords and of bright treasures,

Joys of homeland and of the native hearth:

Bare of the rights of our life

Shall each be, when far away,

The noble learn of your flight,

That infamous deed. Death is better

For each noble man than a disgraceful life.

The Germanic knight also allows unpraiseworthy actions to be placed to his account, actions which result from weakness of will or the breaking through of lower impulses. But when he afterwards accepts them and takes the consequences upon himself, then we understand this more than the cowardly behaviour of the first apostles. A grim figure like Hagen seems to us significantly greater than, for instance, Peter the rock. Hagen throws away his honour in service of his king and at last dies for it proudly and unbroken. The gossip Peter denies his lord at the first test, doubly and trebly; the sole expression of emotion which allows him to appear sympathetically, when he draws his sword (which the poet of Heliand describes with perceptible relief), is very typically overshadowed by his later cowardly lies. Church tradition vainly makes efforts to turn Peter into a hero. But the devout poet of the Heliand poem attempts to excuse the behaviour of the disciples in Gethsemane by their sorrow, for otherwise their sleep would appear dishonourable and therefore incomprehensible to his Saxon audience:

..... The born of the lord

Found them sleeping in sorrow!

Their hearts were heavy

That the dear lord

Was to leave them.

The development from chivalry to knighthood already began under Konrad II, and this was maintained until far into the 14th century. The knights saw themselves as children of the empire, and were thus under obligation to defend emperor and kingdom against external foes. This fact gave them justification for the existence of their order, it led to the actual knightly concept of honour which is its first worldly representation attaining some highest purpose in accordance with social rank. After the almost complete subjectivism of the Vikings and the old Germanic captains with their followers, a large section of the people was consequently adjusted to the spiritual centrepoint of the entire race. The practice of granting a sword, of girding it, finally the knighting ceremony, represented symbolically an inward elevation and ennobling. If the later knight through his becoming ossified and stereotyped represented a fragment of antiquity amidst a new social life, if the plundering raids of idle knights during peace also offer a displeasing picture, then these are things which even the best idea does not escape containing, and the fact remains that up to the present the word knightly is used to describe only a man who greatly protects his fellow men and knows how to safeguard honour.

It is self evident that the Roman system also made efforts to render the knights’ order serviceable to itself which, among other things, found expression in the dedication of the sword. At the very beginning of his oathtaking, the knight obligated himself to serve religion, then to stand by the oppressed, and only lastly to grant the emperor obedience. This was the formal establishment of a Roman influence, such as had already been carried out earlier. Certain pious historians have even attempted to trace back the foundation of the knights’ order to Rome (like their dogmas to Jesus) and in fact Gregorius VII is cited as their founder. This naturally only occurs with the intention of bringing even the representation of this anti Roman idea—by tracing its origin back to the pope—into dependency upon the latter, naturally with different consequences resulting from it for the present. Thus, for example, the historian Gefrorer knows how to relate the manner in which the knightly idea of holy Rome originated, in order to then unveil the latter’s intentions: Only as a result of the powerful influence which the church gained through the office of Gregorius VIII on the warriors’ order of the western Christian kingdoms, and in fact on the Roman first, did the knights’ order attain its full substance as an institution or corporation which laid upon it the task of rendering serviceable by special duties the heroic courage of the soldiers of religion. Fame, honour, race, people, emperor and kingdom, were and are thus regarded by the representatives of the Roman system as mere names and subordinates; as the purpose of such a knights’ order is falsely attributed to the pope, only service for the latter appears. By this the unchangeable politics of the Roman church have also become completely clear, and in fact it has been successful by means of hypnotising sermons to shed torrents of blood for the power hungry church in countless crusades, to make the heroic heart serve religion, to subordinate honour to love. Iper and Arras, cry the Flemings; Husta heya Beyerlant, ran the battlecry of the Bavarians; Rome could not prevent this, but it could sow discord by playing off different interests against each other. And it has regarded this as its life’s task up to today. Out of instinct for self preservation, Rome cannot tolerate any organisation which is conscious of its people and honour, even less a self sufficient, completely honour conscious nation. Therefore it must promote dissension and sow war and racial decomposition. This is inherent in the nature of its faceless system and will not alter, as long as this system exists.

Another, apparently ineradicable, falsification of history dominates even today those circles which give a clear account of Rome and its system, namely that all education and culture which gradually passed over the west was a consequence of church activity. In fact, the exact opposite is the case.

Pressed by the Langobards, Pope Stephanus II (in approximately 755) begs for aid and implores that he might be invited into Franconia. This takes place and Pippin receives the pope on foot, but the latter, conscious of his weak position, shows himself as the poor apostle of Christ, wraps himself and his priests in hair shirts, strews ashes on his head, and on his knees implores the king to help the Roman people. Since this time France has regarded itself as the eldest daughter of Rome (wisely refusing, however, since Hugo Capet, the enticements of a Roman title). The same pope then works against the union of Charlemagne with a Langobard woman. He writes that Charles might not pollute in a disloyal and most stinking manner the high, noble and kingly race of the Franks with the blood of the Langobards, and in such event begs heaven to hand over Charles to the eternal flames. But since this threat made no impression upon the emperor, the holy father later allied himself with this same stinking Langobard king.

After this, the popes alternately overthrow one another, and imprison each other by turns, until Sergius III, his concubine Marozia at his left hand, ascends the chair of Peter. This woman Marozia, along with her mother Theodora, secures herself influential bishops as lovers and props of her rule. When Sergius was disposed of, Marozia, after a brief pause, raised her son to be pope as John XI. Her first son Albrich was highly outraged at this and overthrew the rule of his mother. After his death his son occupied the papal office as John XII. But conditions still did not improve. In 938, the expelled Pope Bonifacius VII was successful in throwing his rival representative of Jesus into prison and leaving him to die there. But Bonifacius also did not enjoy the tiara for long: he was driven out himself by the royal nobility and by the woman Theodora, already mentioned, the famous mother of that very energetic whore Marozia, whose grandson Crescentius became master of Rome, and who now sold the papal chair to willing creatures. In 1024 a man took the papal throne who had previously never been a cleric. He bought himself the representation of god and called himself John XIX. Later a ten year old son of a count was elected as Pope Benedictus IX. But since the latter gave himself up prematurely to every conceivable vice, he became too dissolute even for the Romans; they therefore elected a new representative of Christ, who called himself Sylvester III. But the new pope was soon seized with anxiety at the dangers of his office and preferred to barter the latter for 1,000 pounds of gold to Gregorius VI, at which the expelled Benedictus was morally outraged and raised a renewed claim to the chair of Peter. The honourable cardinal Caesar Baronius openly called these popes whore’s stallions. This scandal only ceased when Emperor Henry III intervened.

These were the conditions in Rome during the 10th and 11th centuries which every German ought to be familiar with, but concerning which silence is wisely kept by a school of historical writing filled with lies on the one side and cowardly silence on the other. At this very time began the national gathering of the Germans under Heinrich I, and the conscious attempt at national recovery and development under Otto I the Great. Thanks to him, a German knight, the bishops obtained great influence, acquired the rank of princes, and provided spiritual knowledge, promoted crafts, trade and farming. Directed and protected by the emperor, not by the pope, the first cultural centres blossomed in Quedlinburg, Reichenau, and Hersfeld. The popes, on the other hand, had honourable men murdered; such popes as Hadrianus IV who ordered Arnold of Brescia to be strangled and burned when he heard of the latter’s sermons of repentance. It should be remarked in passing that the popes had fixed sums paid them by the whore houses, which Paul I (1464-1471) had shaped into a permanent source of income. Sixtus IV drew 20,000 gold ducats yearly form the houses of pleasure. The clergy had to pay fixed taxes for their concubines, while the Vatican rewarded its officials with passes for the brothels. Sixtus IV even permitted pederasty for a fixed payment. Innocentius VIII had 16 children of his own to feed. Alexander VI, however, declared that the pope stood higher than the king, in the same way as man above the beasts. Therefore, he had a dozen bishops and cardinals, who appeared dangerous to him, murdered. For 300,000 gold ducats Pope Alexander VI deposed the Jhem, the Turkish pretender to the throne, and with a clear conscience calmly gathered in the money of the unbeliever, the sultan. In 1501 Alexander VI named his daughter Lucrezia for a time as his representative.

Underlying the efforts of Otto I undoubtedly lay the idea of a German national church which seemed to have died out with the vanished Aryan Goths. For the same reason, he stipulated that the clergy be chosen from land owners, but this also caused him to subordinate himself to the papacy: the Romans had to swear not to elect a pope without the agreement of the Emperor. Otto III autocratically appointed two popes. Similarly Heinrich III purged the papacy. In the great dispute between Archbishop Willigris of Mainz against the antinational Roman centralism, all German bishops, because of their consciously open rejection, found themselves in opposition to the pope, who finally had to give way. One was freer then in Germany than in 1870 and 1930!

However, the papacy received a great strengthening from the Clunyians who wished to create an international structure dependent only on the pope and above the state. This movement admittedly set as its goal a reform of the dissolute monastic system, but very soon showed its un Germanic spiritual outlook. The hitherto customary practices of penance against the sinful devilish flesh, upon which the Teutons had looked with laughter, were divested of their earlier clumsy form and transformed into a cunning martyrdom of the soul (forerunners, as it were, of Jesuitism). For stipulated parts of the Clunylan monasteries, strict commands of silence existed, every gaiety of mind was forbidden, and friendships not tolerated. Informing upon others was given the stamp of pious duty, and those found guilty had to undergo dishonouring punishments. This unnatural form of discipline clearly originates from that Ligurian eastern race which, before the immigration of the Nordics, settled southeast France among other places. This trampling down of the soul, this inward self emasculation and lust for subjugation under alien demons and magical powers, however, shows us the spirit of the Roman church as being in the closest, racially conditioned mutual alliance with all un Aryan blood and decomposed populations. It is therefore also no accident that the reforms of the Clunyians immediately gained a foothold in the eastern racial parts of Lorraine. Archbishop Aribo of Mainz at once made a stand against this spiritual sickness and supported the power conscious Konrad II. In the north the old blood stirred almost simultaneously: Bishop Adalbert von Wettin set a Germanic national church as his goal: the word Deutsch became universal usage for the first time; German monks of the Roman church sought for the still remaining, almost destroyed spiritual treasures of their people.

The German emperor had lifted the pope out of a swamp, restored the church to honour, and ennobled its servants. Roman universalism, strengthened anew as a result, naturally utilised these forces and based itself—as usual—on proven forgeries in order to establish the rule of the papacy over the emperor as willed by god, and to set centralism against episcopalism. This struggle was carried on by every conceivable means: subjects were incited against the emperor, indeed the church ban was announced against unapostolic bishops. That was Rome’s gratitude.

The longevity of the papacy has been praised with particular emphasis by Roman historical writers as proof of its divine appointment. But anyone who knows that Rome has to thank the emperors first and foremost for its position of power, and solely the inner greatness of devout aristocratic spirits like Francis of Assisi, Albertus Magnus and Meister Eckehart for its spiritual influence, will certainly have a different opinion about this. Besides, the permanence of an establishment is not a measure of its inner value. It is solely a question of the forces which have helped it to perpetuate itself. Egyptian culture was much older than the Roman church; the Mandarin can record more known ancestors than the pope; Lao Tse and Confucius lived two thousand five hundred years ago and are still dominant today.

The German Roman Emperors only died out about a hundred years ago. The time approaches at which the pope will also become what he should be: the head of the Italian national church (the disputes between nationalistic Fascism and the Vatican will, it is to be hoped, hasten this). The papacy (irrespective of the fact that a number of really great men have also sat on the so called chair of Peter) had to build up its rule on the prerequisite of spiritual slavery and racial decomposition of the Germanically determined peoples. Out of the great free souls who even in the 11th to 14th centuries devoted themselves to Rome as an idea holy to them, the Vatican created weapons of servitude. Since the strengthening of Jesuitism, since the Tridentine council, Rome has remained under racially inferior influence and has become rigid. The unclean moral theory of Alfons the holy of Liguori on the one side, the dishonourable activity of Jesuitism on the other, has resulted in the fact that since the suffocating of Meister Eckehart’s religion, all really great European culture has sprung from an antichurch spirit, ranging from Dante (who in 1864 was still expressly damned by the papacy because, among other reasons, he had described Rome as a sewer) and Giotto to Copernicus and Luther; not to speak of German classical art and Nordic painting and music. Everything which a slavish mentality called love gathered under Rome, everything which strove for honour and freedom of soul, parted more and more consciously from the Roman spiritual world.

The knights’ order lost its importance in the 15th and 16th centuries. But the concept of honour which it cultivated had awoken in other sections of the people. The townsman commoner freed himself from the dominance of the castle, built his cities and churches, carried on commerce and trade, and joined together into powerful leagues, until finally the thirty years’ war ended an entire culture.

It is demonstrated by the Hansa that the Germanic concept of honour was embodied even in the merchant whenever the latter relied upon himself and could operate without oriental middlemen. Originally a modest merchants’ league with the purpose of safeguarding trade, the Hansa later stretched its arms out far; it not only traded, but built, founded and colonised. The ruins of Novgorod and Wisby speak an equally loud language of moral power as the town halls of Bruges, Lübeck and Bremen. Over 75 cities formed a protective league which, according to its innermost nature, had the task of forming a centre of German power against imperial impotence. But before other similar ideas could take deeper root, the greatest catastrophe of German history intruded. And with the same consequences as had been shown by the Huguenot wars in France: the character of the German people was altered. If Germany at the beginning of the 16th century, in spite of the weak imperial rule, possessed a proud peasantry and a prosperous burgher class, then thirty bloody years (which still did not satisfy Pope Innocentius X) exterminated the best blood of Germany, numerous hordes of alien race from foreign states destroyed the native stock, a whole generation grew up in the midst of robbery and murder. Bavaria alone recorded 5000 abandoned farmsteads, hundreds of flourishing cities lay in ruins, nearly two thirds of the German people were annihilated. There no longer existed any art, any culture, any character. Dishonourable princes plundered a wretched people, and these subjects dully and stupidly allowed everything to happen to them. And yet despite all, Germanic blood stirred itself against the ruination from the Habsburgs and the French threat. The blood of the Lower Saxons which had once advanced to the Duna demonstrated resistance to total decline above and below. Like a promising cry the trumpets of Fehrbellin still resound in our ears today, and the voice of the great Elector with whose deeds Germany’s recovery, salvation and rebirth, had their beginning. One may criticise Prussia however much one likes, but this decisive salvation of the Germanic substance remains forever its deed of renown; without it there would exist no German culture, in fact no real German people; at best millions defenceless to looting by neighbours lusting for booty and by the avaricious princes of the church.

It is no accident of chance, if today in the midst of a terrible new fall into the abyss, the figure of Frederick the Great appears particularly invested with radiant glory, that in him there are concentrated—in spite also of his human sides—all those values of character for whose predominance the best Germans struggle hopefully today, namely, personal boldness, ruthless power of decision, consciousness of responsibility, penetrating cleverness, and an awareness of honour such as had never before been chosen with such mythic greatness as the guiding star of an entire life.

How can a prince outlive his state, the fame of his people and his own honour?

he asks of his sister on September 17, 1757. Misfortune will never make him cowardly, on the contrary:

I will never accept disgrace. The honour which in war made me place my life at stake a hundred times, has allowed me to defy death as an event of lesser importance.

He goes on to emphasise:

One will not be able to say of me, that I have outlived the freedom of my Fatherland or the greatness of my house.

If I had more than one life, I would sacrifice it for the Fatherland

writes Frederick on August 16, 1759, after a terrible defeat.

I do not think of fame, but of the state.

My inalterable loyalty towards the Fatherland and honour allow me to undertake everything, although hope does not guide me,

are his words a few days later. To Luise Dorothea von Gotha he also makes the avowal:

Perhaps Prussia’s hour of destiny has come, perhaps one will experience a new despotic emperorship. I do not know. But I vouch for the fact that it will only come to that after streams of blood have flowed and that I will not look upon my Fatherland in chains and at Germans in the most disgraceful slavery.

And Frederick writes anew to d’Argens:

You should know that it is not necessary that I live but certainly that I do my duty,

and:

Never will I experience the moment which would compel me to conclude a disadvantageous peace.

I will either allow myself to be buried under the ruins of my Fatherland or ..... make an end to my life myself ..... I have allowed myself to be guided by this inner voice and by the demands of honour and I also intend doing this in the future.

If Frederick Wilhelm I was the symbol of civic honourableness and self limiting diplomacy, then Frederick II was the symbol of everything heroic which appeared forgotten and vanished in blood, dirt and misery. His life is the truest, greatest German history, and any German who attempts to falsify with malicious gloss the figure of Frederick must appear to us today as a most despicable rascal.

But it was only a few whom he managed to influence. In spite of his great work for peace, the broad layers of the people were crude, without cultural tradition; the educated were decadent, foppish, un Prussian, un German. They only allowed the disciplining forms of Frederick to take effect upon them against their will and Frederick himself—to whose government Kant had dedicated his Critique of pure reason—found no intellectual independence within the Germans of his day compared with the French, so that his love for French literature also laid the way for the victory of the new French world of thought which in its version of love in the form of the teaching of humanitarianism, crippled the organic powers of Prussia which had still not awoken to full consciousness, and later made it incapable of resisting the armies of the French revolution.

This new doctrine of humanitarianism was the religion of the freemasons. The latter has provided up to the present the spiritual foundations of an abstract universalistic culture, the starting point of all self seeking sermons promising bliss. It also gave (around 1740) the stamp to the political slogans of the last 150 years: liberty, equality and fraternity, and gave birth to chaotic, racially decomposing humane democracy.

At the beginning of the 18th century men gathered at an assembly in London whose conflict with the former religion of love had led in many cases to their exile from people and Fatherland, and who in the midst of a dissolute time founded a league of mankind for the promotion of humanity and brotherhood. Since this league recognised only mankind, no racial or religious difference was made from the start.

Masonry is a humanitarian league for the spreading of tolerant and humane principles, in the striving for which the Jew and Turk can have as great a share as a Christian.

So ran the constitution set up in 1722. The idea of humanitarianism was to form the principle, the purpose and the substance of freemasonry. It is—according to the Freiburg ritual—more far reaching than all churches, states and schools, than all classes, peoples and nationalities; for it extends over the whole of mankind. The German lodge teaches us the same even today. The Roman church and the freemasonic antichurch are thus united in tearing down all barriers which have been erected by spiritual and physical forms. Both call upon their supporters in the name of love or humanity, in the name of a boundless universalism, except that the church demands complete subjection, subordination within its domain (which naturally is to be the entire earth), while the antichurch preaches an unrestricted destruction of frontiers, makes the suffering and joy of the individual man into the measure of its judgement, which must be regarded as the cause of the present situation, namely, that the material well being of the individual has become the highest good for democracy and receives the first place from it in the life of society.

This disintegrating view of the world was and is the prerequisite for the political teaching of democracy and of the coercive dogma of the necessity of the free interplay of forces. Thus all the forces which work for the loosening of state, national and social bonds, necessarily made effort to render themselves of service to this philosophy of freemasonry, consequently also the league of mankind. Here we see international Jewry worming its way from instinct coupled with conscious reflection into the organisation of freemasonry. Admittedly, the racial essence in the league of mankind reacted just as defensively against the attempt by the church to exterminate Germanic nature, but it is nevertheless easily proved that, while Nordic man defended himself against Rome, the blind Hodur unwittingly gave him the death blow from behind. Freemasonry in Italy, France and England, became a political league of men, and led the democratic revolutions of the 19th century. Year by year its world outlook undermined the bases of all Germanic nature. Today we see the busy representatives of the international stock exchange and of world trade moving almost everywhere behind the leadership of the antichurch. All in the name of humanitarianism. The hypocrisy of the present day exploiters of humanity is without question more degrading than those attempts at slavery which in the name of Christian love have so often plunged Europe into unrest and chaos. Thanks to the preaching of humanitarianism and the doctrine of human equality, every Jew, negro and mulatto can become a citizen of equal rights in a European state; thanks to the humanitarian concern for the individual, there are hosts of luxury institutions for the incurably sick and insane in European states; thanks to humanitarianism, the confirmed criminal is regarded as merely an unfortunate without any concern for the interests of the people as a whole, is let loose again into society at the first opportunity, and not hindered in his capacity of reproduction. In the name of humanity and freedom of spirit the pornographic journalist and every dishonourable scoundrel is allowed to trade in every imaginable brothel literature; thanks to humanity negroes and Jews may marry into the Nordic race, indeed even occupy important offices. This humanitarianism, unconnected with any racial concept of honour, has among others, made the indescribably corrupt system of stock exchange swindling into a respected profession; indeed this organised band of criminals in frock coats and top hats today decides at world trade and expert conferences veritably autocratically over the fate of millions of hardworking people.

In the wake of this freemasonic democracy swindle, the entire Marxist movement falsified the beginnings of a healthy protest by the workers, and controlled all social democratic parties in the service of the stock exchange with aid of Jewish finance, Jewish leaders and the Jewish, partly individualistic, partly universalistic, ideology. The industrial worker of the 19th century, cheated of his destiny, suddenly uprooted, robbed of all balanced judgement, fled to the alluring preachments of a proletarian international, believed that by class struggle, that is, by destruction of half his own body, he would be able to become free, intoxicated himself on the power attained, and poured over this the whitewash of humanism. Today this delusion has burst, and the Marxist leadership has been unmasked as perpetrating a frightful swindle of a hard struggling class. (See Alfred Rosenberg: International high-finance as the mistress of the workers’ movement in all lands, München, 1925).

The paradox both of democracy as well as of Marxist doctrine consists in that they both in actuality represent the most brutal, dishonourable materialistic view of the world and consciously foster all impulses which will aid decomposition, but at the same time give assurances of their mercifulness, their love for the subjected and exploited. In a clever way the spiritual readiness for the sacrifice of the proletariat is called upon, to make the latter inwardly dependent on its leaders. We see in Marxism the idea of sacrifice and of love playing the same role as in the Roman catholic system. Blood and honour were likewise mocked and derided by the leaders of Marxism until, however, these indestructible ideas nevertheless revealed themselves in the workers. Today there is at last talk of proletarian honour. If this idea spreads, then everything is still not lost, for with the holding aloft of the idea of honour in general, the German working class will also know how to rid itself once and for all of its Marxist leadership. If this idea of class honour then takes shape into that of national honour, then German freedom will be secured as a result. But this is only possible when all the real workers of the German people form a front against all those who have sold themselves to trade, profit and the stock exchange, irrespective of whether this fact is covered with the cloak of democracy, Christianity, internationalism or humanitarianism.

The spirit of Frederick the Great takes effect today on the German people like an unyielding natural force. Everything which rediscovered itself amidst the confusion of triumphing subhumanity, saw its highest striving embodied in the struggle for freedom conducted by old Fritz, as if a bronze pen has outlined Germanic nature in advance through all veils of time. But then, alongside this greatness, occurred the incomprehensible tragedy that the spiritual freedom possible to a great man became limited to small possessions, and his spirit which had striven to shape itself by a terrible but necessary discipline, was driven into the arms of French democracy brilliant with outward show. Napoleon encountered a Prussia given over to bewigged ostentation and outward show. The latter collapsed because it no longer thought in the manner of Frederick, but as pacifist liberalistic.

We have fallen asleep on the laurels of Frederick the Great,

wrote Queen Luise later to her father. But from this defeat there finally arose the idea of a united Germany; Prussia’s honour became Germany’s concern. Gneisenau and Blücher, Scharnhorst and Jahn, Arndt and Stein, were all the embodiment of the old concept of honour. They have also expressed this all their life long, like Queen Luise herself, who wished to do everything to ease the lot of her people, except what went against her feeling of honour.

We know all this, or should know, in the same way as the student bodies who unrolled their banners and climbed the barricades later, when weak and subservient spirit—those eternally unblessed consequences of the thirty years’ war, still dominant today—had cheated Germany of its supreme efforts during the war of liberation, until the dream of Germans then apparently found fulfilment on the battlefields of Metz, Mars la Tour, Saint Privat and Sedan. For the Versailles of 1871 was a political agreement devoid of any mythical outlook on the world. The unconditionality of the great German idea which made Blücher declare that if kings did not wish the elevation of their people, then they should be driven out; which occasioned Stein to put before the king of Prussia the choice of either signing the proclamation To my people, or going to Spandau; this unconditionality was lacking in the generation after 1871. The latter gave itself up to economics, to world trade, became freemasonic humanistic, became sated, forgot the task of enlarging its living space, and collapsed, disintegrated by democracy, Marxism and humanitarianism. Only today has the hour of rebirth come.

The humility of the Christian church and freemasonic humanitarianism were two forms by which the idea of love was preached as the highest value to human groups which were to be directed from some ambitious centre of power. The fact that many teachers of Christian humility as well as liberal humanism had no such intention did not play any role at all; it is merely a question of how the value proclaimed was utilised. At the end of the 19th century the idea of love appeared in a third form which was presented to us by Bolshevism: in the Russian doctrine of suffering and sympathy, symbolised in the Dostoyevskian man.

In his Diary, Dostoyevski speaks quite openly of an absolute, deeply rooted longing, among Russians, for suffering, for continual suffering; suffering in everything, even in enjoyment. On the basis of this, his characters act and live. Therefore in sympathy also lies the strongpoint of Russian morality. The people know that a criminal acts sinfully, but: There are unexpressed ideas ..... the description of a criminal as an unfortunate must be included in these ideas which are inherent in the Russian people. This idea is a purely Russian one.

Dostoyevski is the magnifying glass of the Russian soul; through his personality one can read the whole of Russia in its often incomprehensible diversity. In fact, the conclusions which he draws from his confession of belief are just as characteristic as his reflections when judging the condition of the Russian soul. He remarked that this idea of suffering is closely linked with traits of the impersonal and subjected. The Russian suicide, for example, has not the shadow of doubt that the self to be killed could be an immortal one. At the same time, he is not an atheist in any way. He has apparently heard nothing at all about this: Consider the earlier atheists: when they had lost faith in one thing, they immediately began to believe passionately in another. Consider the beliefs of Diderot, Voltaire ..... Completely TABVLA RASA with ours; indeed, and why make mention of Voltaire here? There is simply a lack of money to keep a lover to himself, and nothing more.

To find this recognition existing in a man who only wished to live to one day see his people happy and educated, is alarming and is made greater by Dostoyevski’s remark that in Russia there is no one who does not tell lies. In fact, the most honourable people of all can lie. First of all, because truth seems to bore a Russian; but secondly, because we are all ashamed of ourselves, and each makes efforts to unconditionally show himself as something other than he is. And despite all longing for knowledge and truth the Russian is nevertheless badly equipped. But here the reverse side of subjugation is revealed: unbounded arrogance. The Russian:

Perhaps understands nothing at all about the questions which he undertakes to solve, but he does not feel ashamed and his conscience is calm. This lack of conscience gives proof of such an indifference in relation to self criticism, of such a lack of self respect, that one falls into despair and loses hope of the nation ever possessing anything independent or bringing salvation.

Lieutenant Pirogow, in full uniform, is struck by a German on the street. After he has made sure that no one could have witnessed the incident, Pirogow flees into a side alley, in order as hero of the salon to make a proposal of marriage that same evening to an aristocratic lady. The latter knew nothing about the cowardice of her lover. Do you believe that she would have accepted him if she had known? Answer: She would have done so unconditionally.

Several Russians are travelling in a railway train with Justus van Liebig, the great chemist who, however, is recognised by none of them. One of them who understands nothing about chemistry begins to talk with Liebig on this subject. He talks beautifully and at length until reaching his station when he takes his luggage and leaves the compartment proudly and enormously satisfied with himself. But the other Russians never doubted for a moment that the charlatan had triumphed in the debate.

Dostoyevski attributes this self abasement (linked with sudden arrogance) to the cultivation over two hundred years of a total lack of self reliance and to constant spitting into the Russian face during a similar period which brought the Russian conscience into catastrophic subjection. Today we are forced to make another judgement, that there is something unhealthy, sick, bastardised in Russian blood, which again and again frustrates all attempts to reach the heights. Psychologism is not the consequence of a strong spiritual life, but exactly the opposite, a sign of a crippling of soul. Just as a wounded man will again and again feel and look at his wound, so a man sick of soul will examine his inner conditions. In the Russian idea of suffering and subjection, the most powerful tension exists between the values of love and honour. In the entire west the idea of honour and freedom broke through again and again, in spite of burnings at the stake and papal interdicts. With the Russian man, such as he became almost a prophet around the turn of the 20th century—not the slightest role is played by honour as a formative power. Mitya Karamasov, who kicks and ill treats his father, abasing himself again afterwards, is not familiar with the idea, nor the brooding Ivan, nor Stara Sossima (one of the most beautiful figures of Russian literature), not to mention old Karamasov himself. Prince Myshkin plays the sick idiotic role of a man devoid of personality to conclusion with shattering power. Ragoshin is of dissolute passion, a European backbone is also lacking to him. Raskolnikov is inwardly unbalanced, Smerdyakov finally the concentration of everything slavish, devoid of upward longing. To the latter are joined all those gesticulating students and sick revolutionaries who talk with one another entire nights long, debate without knowing in the end about what they actually argued. These are allegories of a sick blood, of a poisoned soul.

Once Turgenev looked around in Russia for a model of power and uprightness for the hero of a novel. He found no one suitable and chose a Bulgarian whom he called Insarov. Gorki descended to the dregs of society, described the tramp devoid of will, without faith, or at most only with such as glimmered like the glow of phosphorus in rotten wood. Andreyev created the man who received boxes on the ear, and as men they all confirm the bitter recognition by Shaadayev, that Russia belongs neither to the west nor to the east, that it is not governed by an organically strong tradition of its own. The Russian is a world exception in that he has not introduced a single new idea into the multitude produced by mankind, and everything which he has received of progress has been distorted by him. The Russian admittedly moves, but on a crooked line, which does not lead to any goal, and he is like a small child which cannot think correctly.

As elaborated, this recognition also slumbered in Dostoyevski; the lack of personality consciousness had clearly been recognised by him. But the torment of longing to nevertheless present the world with something original sprang from his idea of universal mankind, which was apparently to be regarded as synonymous with Russia. It is Russia which has presented in its bosom the true image of Christ, with the ultimate destiny, when the peoples of the west have lost the way, of revealing a new path of salvation to them. Suffering, sorrowing mankind is a prophecy for the coming message of Russia.

Today it is clear that Dostoyevski’s despairing attempt fundamentally resembles the behaviour of the Russian whom he had placed opposite to Justus von Liebig: a broken soul, devoid of personality, who arrogates to himself the position of conqueror of the world.

Dostoyevski had success spiritually among all Europeans who had fallen into a tired weariness, with all bastards of the great city and—disregarding his anti Semitic outlook—with the Jewish literary world, which saw in his characters and in Tolstoy’s barren pacifism a further welcome means for the disintegration of the west. The artistic power of Dostoyevski is not under debate here, but the characters as such, which he created, and the accompanying environment. From now on, everything which was sick, broken and decayed was held to be human. The humbled and persecuted became heroes, epileptics were represented as being problems of deep concern to mankind, as unassailable like the decaying holy beggars of the middle ages or Simon Stylites. By this the conception of Germanic man was transformed into its opposite. What the west regards as human is a hero like Achilles or the creative struggling Faust; human is a power like the untiring Leonardo; human is a struggle such as Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great embodied. A clearing out must be performed once and for all of this Russian disease of representing criminals as unfortunates, and rotten decayed men as symbols of humanity. Even the Indian, upon whom many Russians call (in a false way) accepts his fate as self guilt, as guilt from an earlier life. In whatever manner one interprets this Indian doctrine of the migration of souls, it is aristocratic, and once originated from a courageous heart. But Dostoyevskian lamentation about the power of darkness is the helpless stammering of a poisoned blood. This decayed blood created its highest value in the longing for suffering, in humility, universal human love, and became hostile to nature, as triumphant Rome once did, until Europe managed to a certain extent to shake off this ascetic Egyptian African masochism.

It is ill fated that today ancient Greek love is described by the same word in so called Christian teaching, and Dostoyevski and Platon are even mentioned in the same breath. The Eros of Greece was a spiritual exuberance, linked always with creative feeling for Nature, and the divine Platon is a completely different figure from that presented to us by theologians and professors. From Homeros to Platon, nature and love have been one, just as the highest art in Hellas remained racially connected. But church love set itself up not only against all ideas of race and people, but it even went beyond this. Zeno the holy said in the fourth century A.D.: The greatest renown of Christian virtue is to trample with the feet upon Nature. The church has faithfully followed this dogma wherever it could assert it. The insulting of the body as unclean has lasted uninterrupted into our days, when nationalism and the racial idea are combated as pagan. The Imitation of Jesus—to attain which the devout rolled themselves in ashes, beat themselves with whips, went about in pus and sores, loaded themselves with iron chains, sat on a pillar for thirty years like Simon Stylites, or, like holy Thalelaeos, spent ten years clamped inside a wagon wheel, to pass the remainder of his life in a narrow cage—all this was a parallel to the abstract good of Sokrates, and to later Dostoyevskian man.

It is not unnatural love, not an unrealisable community of the good and faithful, not a universal humanity with decomposed blood, which has always had a creative effect in culture and art, but, as in Hellas, fruitful Eros and racial beauty, in Germania honour and the dynamic of race. Whoever disregards these laws is incapable of showing the way to a strong future for the Germanic west.

With Dostoyevski one can virtually touch with the hand his great holy will in its constant struggle with the forces of decline. While he praises Russian man as the signpost of the European future, he already sees Russia delivered up to demons. He knows in advance who will be master in the play of forces: Unemployed lawyers and insolent Jews. Kerensky and Trotsky are predicted. In the year 1917, Russian Man finally disintegrated. He fell into two parts. The Nordic Russian blood gave up the struggle, the eastern Mongolian, powerfully stirred up, summoned Chinese and desert peoples to its aid, Jews and Armenians pushed forward to leadership, and the Kalmuch Tartar Lenin became master. The demonry of this blood directed itself instinctively against everything which outwardly still had some honest effect, looked manly and Nordic, like a living reproach against a type of man whom Lothrop Stoddard rightly described as the underman. Out of the impotent love of earlier grew an epileptic attack, carried through politically with all the energy of the insane. Smerdyakov ruled over Russia. Irrespective of in whatever way the Russian experiment may develop, Bolshevism as ruler has only been possible as the consequence of a racially and spiritually sick national body which could not decide in favour of honour, but only of bloodless love. Whoever desires a new Germany, will, as a result, also reject the Russian temptation from himself along with its Jewish manipulation. The turning away from the latter is already occurring. The future will record the results.

When the world war broke out, the leading men of national outlook in Germany, who were afflicted with sickness, did not recognise destiny as consisting either in the honour and freedom of the people or in love, but in trade. This poisoning necessarily led to a crisis, to a bursting of the swollen pus. This occurred on November 9, 1918. The ensuing times proved that all the old parties and their leaders were rotten, useless for a new structure of our state. They were forced to talk of the people and yet thought only of economics; they spoke of the unity of the Reich and yet thought of profits; they carried on Christian politics and diligently feathered their own nests. The spiritual and political situation of our times is therefore the following:

The old Syrian Jewish eastern church system has dethroned itself: starting from a dogma which did not correspond to the laws of spiritual structure of the Nordic west, in the effort to push to one side the culture carrying and creating ideas of the Nordic race—honour, freedom and duty—or to become evangelistic, this process of poisoning has led many times to the gravest disasters. Today we recognise that the highest central values of the Roman and protestant churches, as a negative form of Christianity, do not correspond to our soul, that they stand in the way of the organic powers of the peoples determined by the Nordic race, that they have to make way for the latter, must allow themselves to be revalued in the sense of a Germanic Christianity. This is the meaning of the present search after religious truth.

The old nationalism is dead. Once, in 1813, it flared up, but since then it has more and more forfeited its unconditional nature; it became poisoned by bureaucratic dynasticism, industrial politics, stock exchange profit economy, typified, thanks to humanitarian stupidity, in the idealless townsman of the nineteenth century, and finally collapsed on November 9, 1918, when its supporters and representatives ran away before a few hordes of deserters and jail birds.

The concept of honour, with its diverse ties in the earth, can be found embodied in the lives of the Nordic Viking, the Teutonic knight,the Prussian officer, the Baltic Hansa, the German soldier, and the German peasant. Together with inner freedom it is the most important life shaping law. This motif of honour appears as the spiritual base in poetic art, from the ancient epics onward, from Walther von der Vogelweide and the knight’s songs to Kleist and Goethe. But there is still another fine branch on which we can follow the working of Nordic honour, and that is in the German mystic.

The mystic releases himself more and more from the entanglements of the material world. He recognises that the impulsive aspects of our existence, such as pleasure and power, or even so called good works, are not essential for the welfare of the soul. The more he overcomes earthly bonds, all the greater, richer and more godlike does he feel himself inwardly become. He discovers a purely spiritual power and feels that his soul represents a centre of strength to which nothing can be compared. Such freedom and serenity of soul toward everything, even in the face of god, reveals the profoundest depths into which we can follow the Nordic concepts of honour and freedom. It is that mighty fortress of the soul, that spark of which Meister Eckehart speaks again and again with awed admiration; it represents the most inward, the most sensitive and yet the strongest essence of our race and culture. Eckehart does not give this innermost essence a name, since the pure subject of perceiving and willing must be nameless, without essence, and separated from all forms of time and space. However, today we may venture to describe this spark as representing the metaphysical allegory of the ideas of honour and freedom. In the last analysis, honour and freedom are not external qualities but spiritual essences independent of time and space forming the fortress from which the real will and reason undertake their sorties into the world.

Before it could fully blossom, the joyous message of German mysticism was strangled by the anti European church with all the means in its power. Nevertheless, the message has never died. The great sin of protestantism has been that instead of listening to the former, it made the so called old testament into a folkish book, and interpreted the Jewish texts literally. The present period of renewed spiritual readiness will either listen to the message of German mysticism, or end up under the feet of the old forces before it has had time to unfold, like many past attempts at a transformation from Roman Jewish poisoning. A will, as hard as steel, must today be joined to that illuminated mind and elevated spirit which Meister Eckehart demanded of his followers, and which is courageous enough to draw all proper conclusions from its avowal: If you wish to have the kernel, then you must break the shell.

It has been six hundred years since the greatest apostle of the Nordic west gave us our religion, devoting a full life to ridding our being and becoming of poison: to overcoming the Syrian dogma that enslaves body and soul, and which awakens the god within our own bosom; the kingdom of heaven within us.

In the search for a new spiritual link with the past, there are those among the present day movement for renewal in Germany who wish to go back to the Edda and the cycle of Germanic ideas related to it. It is thanks to them that, alongside that which is purely fabulous, the inner richness of our sagas and folkish tales has again become visible from under the rubble and ashes left by the fires of the stake. But, in pursuing this longing to find inner substance with past generations and their religious allegories, the German faith overlooks that Wotan (Wodan, Odin) is dead as a religious form. He did not die at the hands of Bonifacius, but of himself. He completed the decline of the gods during a mythological epoch, a time of serene nature. His fall was already foreseen in the Nordic poems, although hopes were expressed for the coming of the strong one from above, in presentment of the unavoidable twilight of the gods. In place of this, however, to the misfortune of Europe, the Syrian Jehovah appeared in the shape of his representative: the Etruscan Roman pope. Odin was and is dead; but the German mystic discovered the strong one from above in his own soul. The Valhalla of the gods descended from misty infinity into the breasts of men. The discovery and preaching of the indestructible freedom of soul was an act of salvation which has protected us up to the present against all attempts at strangulation. The religious history of the west is therefore almost exclusively the history of interdenominational upheavals. True religion within the church only existed insofar as the Nordic soul could not be hindered from unfolding (as for instance with saint Francis and brother Angelico) when its echo in western man was too powerful.

The reborn German man appeared on the scene for the first time consciously in the German mystic, even if in the garb of his day. The spiritual birth of our culture was not perfected at the time of the so called Renaissance or during the reformation—the latter period was more one of outward collapse and desperate struggles—but in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the idea of the spiritual personality became for the first time the supporting idea of our history, religion and philosophy of life. In this period the essence of our later critical philosophy was also consciously anticipated. In addition, the eternal, metaphysical creed of the Nordic west proclaimed that which had effect on the souls of many ensuing generations but could not generally manifest itself until the time was ripe.

More than three hundred years had to pass until the name of Christ signified anything for the peoples of the Mediterranean; about a thousand had to pass until the entire west was permeated by it. Confucius died, mourned only by a few; his worship began three hundred years after his death. Five hundred years passed before the first temple was built to him. Today, prayers are uttered to Confucius as the perfected holy one. Six hundred years also had to pass over the grave of Meister Eckehart before the German soul could understand him. But, today, a revelation seems to spread through the people like the light of dawn, as if the time had come for the apostle of the German, the holy and blessed master.

Every creature pursues its life with an aim even if it be unknown to it. The human soul also has a destiny, that is, to arrive at a pure knowledge of itself and a consciousness of god. But this soul is scattered and spread out in the world of the senses, of space and time. The senses are active in it and weaken—at first—the power of spiritual concentration. The precondition of inner workings is, therefore, the withdrawal of all exterior powers, the extinguishing of all images and allegories. These inner workings are meant to draw heaven to oneself, as Jesus is said to have testified and demanded of the powerful of soul. This attempt by the mystic thus demands the exclusion of the world as idea, in order to become, where possible, conscious, as pure subject, of the metaphysical essence which lives within us. Since this is not completely possible, the idea of god is created as a new object of this soul in order ultimately to announce the identical value of soul and god.

However, this act is only possible under the prerequisite of spiritual freedom from all dogmas, churches and popes. Meister Eckehart, the Dominican priest, does not shy away from joyfully and openly proclaiming this fundamental creed of every truly Aryan nature. During the course of a long life, he speaks about the light of the soul as being without origin and uncreated, and preaches that god has placed the soul in free self determination, so that he wishes nothing of it beyond its free will nor expects of it what it does not wish. He goes on to oppose the dogma of conformist faith by declaring that there are three things which prove the nobility of the soul. The first relates to the glory of the creature (of heaven); the second, mighty strength; and third, the fruitfulness of its works. Before each going forth into the world, the soul must have been conscious of its own beauty. The inward work of gaining the kingdom of heaven, however, can only be perfected through freedom.

Your soul will bear no fruit until you have accomplished your task, and neither god nor yourself will abandon these if you have brought yours into the world. Otherwise, you will have no peace, and you will bear no fruit. And even then, it is still disquieting enough because it is born of a soul which is bound to the outside world, and whose tasks are controlled, not from a soul born in freedom.

If the question arises why god became man at all, then the heretical Eckehart does not answer: In order that we wretched sinners can record a superfluity of good works. But he says:

I answer that it is for the reason that god might be born in the soul ..... upon which a joyous credo follows: The soul in which god is to be born, must have forsaken time and time have forsaken it, must fly upward and stand completely strong in the kingdom of god; that is width and breadth, yet which is neither wide nor broad. There the soul recognises all things and recognises them in their completeness. Whatever the masters write about how wide heaven is, I say on the contrary that the smallest power which there is in my soul, is wider than all the expense of heaven!

The current exposition of mysticism repeatedly emphasises only the giving up of self, the throwing away of oneself to god, and sees in this abandonment of the essence of mystical experience. This viewpoint is understandable when one knows it arises from the late mysticism falsified by Rome and that it originates from the seemingly ineradicable assumption that self and god are different in essence. But whoever has understood Eckehart will have no difficulty in establishing that his abandonment is in reality the highest self consciousness which cannot, however, be recognised in this world other than through an antithesis in time and space. The doctrine of freedom of the soul is one of freedom from god. The doctrine of detachment signifies the utter rejection of the old testament and its ideas, along with the sickly sweet pseudomysticism of later times.

These words about the capacity of the soul for unlimited expansion are true mystical experience. Simultaneously, they signify the philosophical recognition of the ideality of space, time and causality which Eckehart also asserts in other passages, proving and teaching in even more beautiful language than Kant (who was heavily burdened with natural science and philosophical scholasticism) was able to do four hundred years later.

Heaven is pure and of untroubled clarity; it is touched neither by time nor space. Nothing corporeal has its place therein, and it is also not included in time; its transmutation occurs with incredible quickness. Its course is itself timeless, but from its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul so much in knowing god, as time and space. Thus, if the soul is to perceive god at all, then it perceives him beyond and above space ..... If the eye is to observe colour, then it must first be divested of all colours. If the soul is to see god, then it must have nothing in common with nothingness. God, as the positive expression of religious man, is in the philosophical term the thing in itself.

It is grasped with the deepest reflection, not only as distinct from impulse and image (as a result of which all nature symbolism is destroyed). In another passage Eckehart says:

Everything which has existence in time and space does not belong to god ..... the soul is complete and indivisible simultaneously in foot and in eye and in every limb ..... The ever present now in which god has made the world, the now in which I speak at this moment, is exactly as close as yesterday. And even the day of judgement is exactly as close to him in eternity as yesterday.

A free spirit like Eckehart must necessarily draw the conclusion—hostile to the church teaching—that death is not the wages of sin, as theologians who aim to put us in fear assert, but a natural and fundamentally unimportant event by which our eternal being—which was before and will be afterwards—is in no way touched. With a splendid gesture Eckehart calls to the world:

I am my own self’s cause, according to my eternal and temporal nature. Only on this account am I born. According to my eternal manner of birth I have been here from eternity and am and will remain eternally. Only what I am as a temporal creature will die and become nothing for it belongs to the day, therefore it must, like time, vanish. In my birth all things were also born, I was simultaneously my own and all things’ cause. And if I wished neither I nor anything else would be. And if I were not, neither would god be.

And boldly he adds:

That one understand this, is not demanded.

Never before, not even in India, has there been such a consciously aristocratic spiritual creed that can be compared to that which Eckehart laid down. Yet he was fully aware that he would not be understood by the age in which he lived. Each of his words was an affront to the Roman church. His words were perceived as such. As the most celebrated preacher in Germany, he was dragged before the inquisition. The church, fearing his followers, could not do away with him as it did with other, lesser heretics. But when Eckehart was dead, the church was again able to preach its infallible anathema over even the profoundest German soul. But his teachings have lasted and have exercised a profound influence over the German soul and in German history.

From the unerring consciousness of the freedom of a noble man and of a noble soul, there results a condemnation of so called good works. These are no magical expedients such as Rome teaches, no credit which is booked with Jehovah, but merely a means of binding the impulsive world of the senses. A rein, so Eckehart teaches, must be laid upon the outer man to prevent him running away from himself. A man should perform devout exercises, not merely to do something good for himself but because he honours truth. If a man finds himself given up to true inwardness, preaches the German apostle, then he boldly lets all outwardness fall, even if it be exercises to which he might have bound himself by oath, from which neither pope nor bishop could grant release! For no one can take from him an oath which has been made to god. To my knowledge this is the only passage in which Eckehart openly speaks aggressively of the pope. But it shows his complete and self reliant rejection of the fundamental laws of the Roman church.

This human greatness, uplifting all things, finds its hostile counterpart in priestly arrogance. One of the greatest orators of the 13th century, the lay brother Berthold von Regensburg, in other respects an interesting man, taught that if he saw the virgin Mary alongside the heavenly hosts and a priest also present, then he would fall down before the latter rather than the former. If a priest came to where my dear lady holy Mary and all the heavenly host sat, they would all stand up before the priest ..... Further: Whoever truly receives dedication as a priest, has a power reaching so far and wide that emperor and king never possessed such great power ..... Whoever makes himself subject to the power of the priest—even if he has committed a great sin—then the priest has the power to at once close hell to him and to open up heaven .....

What is this but the most utter Syrian sorcery in which we have been enveloped?

According to Eckehart the noble soul of a man turned toward the eternal is the representative of god upon earth, not the church, bishop or pope. No one here on earth possesses the right to bind or release me—even less the right to do this as god’s representative. These words which every devout man of the Aryan family of peoples could proclaim as his own creed are naturally born of a completely different substance than the medicine man philosophy which Rome has fabricated for its own use, and whose dogmas all follow only the one aim of making mankind dependent on the Roman priest caste and to root out any nobility of soul. In his sermon on the first epistle of John IV, 9, Eckehart says:

I assert decisively that as long as you do your works for the sake of heaven, of god or for your own blessedness, thus outwardly, then you are not really on the right path ..... Whoever imagines that by contemplation, devotion, ecstatic feelings and gross flattery he has more of god than at the fireside or in the cow stall, does the same thing as one who takes god and wraps a cloak around his head and pushes him under a bench. If one asked an honest man who works on a firm foundation: Why are you performing your works? Then he would merely say, if he spoke properly: I perform them to have effect!

The teaching of the righteousness of works is regarded by Eckehart as a veritable whispering in the ear by the devil and, as far as prayer is concerned, he makes a popular appeal:

The people often say to me: Pray to god for us! Whereupon I think to myself: Why do you even go out? Why do you not remain with yourself and reach down into your own treasure? In fact you carry all reality within you according to your nature. So that we must thus remain in ourselves—as the creatures we are—and possess all reality of our own, without mediation and diversity in real blessedness, and may god help us to do this.

Eckehart is thus a priest who would like to see the priesthood abolished; who would like to adjust his entire activity solely towards liberating the way for the man who seeks; who is regarded by him as essentially an equal and of equal birth; who will not enslave the soul by persuading it to eternal dependency upon pope and church, but who wishes to bring its slumbering beauty, its nobility and its freedom into consciousness, that is, wishes to awaken its awareness of honour. For, in the last analysis, honour is nothing other than the free, beautiful and noble soul.

This same striving to elevate man is perceptible when Eckehart rejects the doctrine of human weakness:

Therefore man can certainly imitate our lord, according to the measure of his weakness and needs, and indeed, may not believe he cannot attain this.

Once more, man is elevated, not denigrated, while Eckehart mockingly rejects those who claim to be justified by works:

And, especially, avoid all peculiarity, whether it be in the clothing, in food, speech, use of impressive words or extravagant gestures, with which indeed nothing creative is achieved.

There then follows the clearest assertion of the right of the true personality:

However, you must know that in no way is everything special forbidden to you. There is much that is strange which one must often retain and among many peoples. For whoever is a special man, must also do something special, at many times in diverse manner.

In which respect, no exception is made for authority and priesthood (which is allegedly untouchable even if the holder of the rank is a criminal). Each is to be measured solely by the greatness of his individual soul. Once again we experience the consciously anti Roman, consciously Germanic withdrawal inward. Jesus once caused a sick man to arise on the sabbath and take up his bed, whereupon the pious of the land raised a great outcry. But Jesus answered with superior contempt that the sabbath was there for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the sabbath; consequently, man was also master over the sabbath. The imitators of the Jerusalem Pharisees have also kept to the strict observance of all devout practices, ignoring the fact that the essence of man was a determining factor. Eckehart says to them:

Believe me: it is also a part of perfection that a man exalts himself in his works, so that all his works form one whole. This must happen in the kingdom of god where man is god. There all things will respond to him in a godly manner, there, also, a man is master of all his works.

This relationship to outward action is more than unequivocal. But, equally clear, is Eckehart’s rejection of all those virtues which are held to have a basis in mysticism. Nothing is more characteristic of Eckehart’s outlook than the interpretation which he gives to Christ’s words about Martha and Mary:

Everything finite is only a means. The unavoidable means, without which I cannot reach to god, is my work and my creativity in the here and now. Such things do not influence us at all to be concerned for our eternal salvation.

Here is a characteristic withdrawal by German man from the Indian creed of the Ãtman Brahman doctrine; deeds are unimportant although they are not to be disposed as such. Mary sitting at Jesus’s feet appears to Eckehart as the pupil. Martha, on the other hand, is the superior:

Martha feared that her sister would remain rooted in ecstasy and beautiful feelings, and wished that she might become like herself.

Then Christ answered as follows:

Be content, Martha! She has also chosen the best part which may never be taken from her! This extravagance will soon quiet down.

As one sees, Eckehart’s disinclination toward everything sweet and fluid even goes so far as to give an opposite meaning to the clear sense of Jesus’s words.

With unmistakable irony, Eckehart speaks to the female heretics surrounding him—the Beguines (as the apostates were then called):

But now our good people desire to be perfect in such degree that no kind of love can move us any longer, and we are left untouched by love as by sorrow. They do themselves injustice! I assert that the saint is still to be born who cannot be moved ..... even Christ did not achieve this, as is proved by his words: My soul is sad unto death. Such words caused Christ woe ..... and that was because of his inborn nobility and the holy union of divine and human nature.

He adds:

Now certain people even wish to bring matters to such a pass, that they may be rid of works. I say that this is not important! This we also find evidenced in Christ, from the first moment onward, when god became man and man god, then he also began to work for our blessedness ..... there was no part of his body which was without its special share in this.

What was the reason that Eckehart preached this antichurch doctrine? It was to allow spiritual freedom to prevail. That is, the highest good which Eckehart, and with him Nordic western man, recognises. He expresses this in the following manner:

God is not a destroyer of any kind of works, but a perfecter. God is not a destroyer of nature but its perfecter. If god had destroyed nature even before the beginning, then violence and injustice would have been done to it. He did no such thing! Man has a free will with which he can choose good and evil. God places the choice before him: of evildoing which brings death, of right doing which brings life. Man must be free and a master of all his works, undestroyed and unconstrained.

In these words the eternal, mutually fruitful polarity of nature and freedom have been recognised and expressed in a splendid way. Swept aside with the hand of a religious and philosophic genius, conscious of our intrinsic racial structure, is the barren Phariseeism, the torturing oriental priestly justification by works. The sacred union of god and nature is the primal ground of our being, represented in freedom of the soul, crowned by the fruitfulness of its works. And the driving power behind all is—the will.

According to the new testament, the angel Gabriel came to Mary. But Eckehart smilingly says:

Actually, he was no more called Gabriel than he was a messenger, for Gabriel means power. God was active in this birth and is still active as power.

With this the dynamic of Eckehart’s soul is also revealed in the clearest light.

The freedom of Eckehart’s soul necessarily prompts another evolution, not only of life and of works, but also of the highest ideals of the Roman church, of traditional Christianity in general, and thus of the entire revealed world, then and now.

If one recognises the noble soul as the highest value, as the axis upon which everything is suspended, then the ideas of love, humility, mercy, pity, and so on, form a second and third stage. Here also Eckehart does not shy away from hearing the voice of the little spark, from speaking freely what his soul says to him. Naturally, it does not need to be particularly emphasised that he does not disparage love, humility or mercy. On the contrary, we find in his sermons the most beautiful words about these ideas, though he detests the sweet ecstasy of undisciplined lovely feelings; in short, the lack of spiritual control. His doctrine of love is the representation of love as the power which knows itself to be identical with that divine power for whose victory it fights. Love must break through things, for only a spirit which has become free, compels god to itself. One must consider what it meant for a Dominican, prior to the beginning of the 14th century, to undertake in the face of an intolerant world ruling church, a transvaluation of the values heretofore held to be the highest. Indeed, it was risky to even attempt to communicate a new supreme, positive value to the simple believer. He dared not attack Rome openly; rather, he had to speak in terms of a positive, metaphorical representation of spiritual experience. Bearing this in mind, one should read Eckehart’s sermon on the loneliness of the soul, which is perhaps the most beautiful statement ever made of the awareness of the Germanic essence.

In this, Eckehart deals with the highest values of the Christian church—love, humility and mercy—finds that, in loftiness, depth and greatness, they must give way to a soul which is completely detached. He rejects Paul’s glorification of love in particular, for the best thing about love is its impulsion to love god. But it is far more important that we impel god to us, rather than impelling ourselves toward god. Only in this way can our soul become one with god. Therefore, god cannot avoid giving himself to a lonely heart. Furthermore, the sorrows of this world in pursuing possessive love still relate to the creature which is not the case with mystical detachment. This lessens the compulsion of the world and brings us nearer to god. Eckehart is concerned that the virtue of humility might cause a lowering of man’s self esteem. Such a posture of humility might cause man to lower his self respect. Man’s possession of a sense of inner worth is most important. Man must become detached from material concerns.

Perfect detachment knows no looking down to the creature, no bending of self, and no elevation of self. It will be neither under nor over. It strives neither for equality nor for inequality with any other kind of creature; it does not wish this or that; it wishes only to be one with itself.

The autocratic soul has nowhere expressed itself so sharply and clearly as here. It is the necessary rhythmic countermovement after the recognition of the fruitful work, that which Goethe later praised as the highest of all gospels: Regard for oneself.

Compassion, according to Eckehart, is nothing other than a giving of oneself. It is, for the same reason, not to be valued as highly as detachment. And because god’s essence is also detached from all names, it follows that nothing of lower order can approach him. Here, Eckehart sets a limit to the importance of prayer invested with so much magic.

I maintain that prayers and good works are of little value to man, so great is god’s detachment from man. Therefore, god is no more inclined toward man, than if the prayer or good work had never been performed.

This is more than clear. He completely rejects any intercession based on or approximating magic. He rejects the idea of the church which alone can bring bliss. And then in conclusion there follows a popular creed:

Keep yourself apart from all men, remain untroubled by all outward impressions, make yourself free of all which could give to your essence an alien addition ..... and direct your mind at all times to holy contemplation; with which you bear god in your heart, as the object, from which your eyes never waiver.

This calm, detached greatness of soul, then, expresses itself in the criticism of the Roman and later, protestant, doctrine.

In this world of appearances, a spiritual strengthening as a result of inward concentration cannot be imagined by us otherwise than as a gift of the eternal essence of god. Against this background, Paulinism—and with it all Christian churches—has built up the doctrine of grace as highest mystery of Christianity. The Jewish representation of the slave of god, one who receives mercy from an arbitrary, absolutist god, has thus passed over to Rome and Wittenberg, and can be attributed to Paul. He is the actual creator of this doctrine. It can truly be said that our churches are not Christian but Pauline. Jesus unquestionably praised one being with god. This was his redemption, his goal. He did not preach a condescending granting of mercy from an almighty being in the face of which even the greatest human soul represented a pure nothingness. This doctrine of mercy is naturally very welcome to every church. With such misinterpretation the church and its leaders appear as the representatives of god. Consequently, they could acquire power by granting mercy through their magic hands. A genius like Eckehart had to adopt a position completely different from the concept of compassion. He also finds beautiful words about love and mercy of god: Where compassion is in a soul, then this soul is pure and godlike and god related. Eckehart’s man achieves the fullness of the soul rather than submitting to the depths of subjugation. Man seeks to move inward and to adhere to, and be one with god. That is true mercy, compassion. This compassion is probably not possible through philosophies that teach only god’s universal power and our nothingness. Such is the case with our churches. The truth, on the contrary, is that man’s soul is like unto the spirit of god. Eckehart here refers to Augustinus’s Confessions—works well known to Eckehart—whose teachings about the soul nevertheless led to a complete spiritual breakdown. Augustinus demands the death penalty for heretics. Augustinus’s City of god was written to produce a spiritual slavery in man. But Eckehart assumes a different state of man’s soul: If it did not possess this greatness, then it could not become god even through grace. Here, again, we find the characteristic position of the superior Nordic man in developing his thoughts on the basis of clear, spiritual instinct (Eckehart of Hocheim was of Thuringian nobility) in the face of the assertions of the dissolute, slavish, bastardised Augustinus. By partaking in the lasting vitality of god the soul is elevated to ever higher light:

Then every power of soul becomes the copy of one of the divine persons; the will is the copy of the holy spirit, the perceptive power that of the son, the memory that of the father. Its nature becomes the likeness of nature. And yet the soul remains indivisibly one. That is the ultimate knowledge in this matter of which my self recognition renders me capable.

The supreme avowal then follows:

Now hear, as to how far the soul becomes god, even above grace and mercy! What god had in fact provided you shall not change again, for it has attained a higher position where it no longer has need of grace.

One should compare this splendid aristocratic creed with the touchingly struggling, yet half African, Augustinus, in his assertions about the morality of man and his perpetual sinfulness.

Thoughts are openly expressed here by Eckehart which even Luther—whose ideas were still inhibited by his education under the representative of Christ—still did not dare to think. From this attitude to the idea of grace, there also results with Eckehart a totally different estimation of sin and repentance.

Sin is no longer a sin once we repent, are the words with which Meister Eckehart begins his sermon On the blessings of sin. These are words which lead him miles away from the contrition usually demanded. Naturally, we ought not to sin, but even if the individual action has been directed against god, then the great and splendid god nevertheless knows how the best is to be gained from such an action. Thus god does not add up the past in an accounts books, for god is a god of the present. Eckehart takes another step away from the historical materialism of our churches. Only later did Paul de Lagarde dare to speak so openly as once did this Dominican prior from the 14th century. For this reason Lagarde was condemned by the protestant priests as Eckehart once was by the Roman.

Eckehart distinguishes two types of repentance: That which is of the senses, and that which is godly. The first—which the church clearly understood—remains rooted in misery and does not move from the spot. It thus signifies only unfruitful lamentation; nothing comes of it. Things are otherwise with divine repentance: As soon as inner disapproval arises in a man, he at once elevates himself to god and sets himself with unshakeable will armed securely against every sin. Thus, here, the direction upward is stressed anew and everything evaluated only according to whether it made the soul creative; elevated or not: But whoever may really have come into the will of god, will not wish that the sin into which he had fallen might not have existed. This is the same as Goethe asserted when he declared that a human teacher would also appreciate error: What is fruitful, alone is true.

Seen from Meister Eckehart’s standpoint, that is, from the perspective of one who is detached, godlike, free, beautiful, and has a noble soul, all the traditional highest church values appear to be of a second and third rank. Love, humility, compassion, prayer, good works, mercy, repentance—all these are good and useful but only under the one condition that they strengthen the power of the soul, elevate it, make it become more like god. If they do not, then all these virtues become useless, even harmful.

The freedom of soul is a value in itself. Church values merely signify something in relation to a moment outside them, be it god, soul, or the creature. The nobility of the self reliant soul is the highest of all values. Man must serve the cause of the noble soul alone. We of the present day call it the deepest metaphysical root—this idea of honour—which is likewise an idea in itself, without any relationship to any other value. The idea of freedom is inconceivable without honour just as honour is without freedom. The soul is capable of good in and of itself, even without any relationship to god. Eckehart teaches that the soul is released from all else insofar as this release can be expressed in words at all. As a result, Meister Eckehart shows himself, not as an ecstatic enthusiast, but as the creator of a new religion—our religion—released from that injected alien spirit of Syria, Egypt and Rome.

Eckehart not only provided us with the highest religious and moral value, but as already alluded to, he anticipated from a critical philosophical perspective all the important discoveries made by Kant’s Critique of pure reason, even if he did not become enmeshed in hair splitting arguments. Eckehart discovers three powers by which the soul reaches into the world:

the will which turns towards the object;

reason, which perceives and then orders what is grasped; and

memory, which preserves what is experienced and witnessed.

These three powers are, so to speak, the counterpart of the holy trinity. A whole series of the profoundest discussions are devoted to the theme of reason and will. Both are spiritually free and always dependent upon the mood and occasion during his sermons over many decades.

Reason perceives all things, but it is the will, Eckehart comments, which can do all things.

Thus where reason can go no further, the superior will flies upward into the light and into the power of faith. Then the will wishes to be above all perception. That is its highest achievement. On the other hand, reason, which separates, orders and places, then so perceives that it nevertheless gives the will its first real upward flight. In this respect, reason stands above the will. The will is free: god does not force the will, he sets it free; so that it wishes nothing other than what is god and freedom itself! Then the spirit can wish nothing other than what god wishes. This is not bondage, but rather a peculiar kind of freedom.

Eckehart then quotes Christ’s words:

He has not wished to make us into servants, but to call us friends. For a servant knows not what his master wishes.

This new and constantly repeated emphasis on the idea of freedom is not, however, always matched by experience. Eckehart says:

This is my complaint: This experience is something so profound but also so common, that you may not buy it for a penny or a half penny. Solely, you must have a proper mode of seeking and a free will, then it will immediately become yours.

This is identical to Kant’s teaching concerning the conflict between idea and experience in both the theoretical and practical aspects. At the same time, Eckehart mocks many priests who are highly praised yet wish to be great priests. Kant spoke likewise about the schoolmasters, those philosophers who only repeat thousand year old gossip.

Briefly put, everything that this soul may somehow bring forth must be summarised in the simple unity of the will. The will must be impelled toward the highest good, and then adhere to it unmoved. Properly regarded, the idea of love has a place in Eckehart’s spiritual perceptively critical work. It does not serve the ecstatic power of the imagination, nor does it bring sweet feelings or sexual psychic ecstasy. These perceptions are lies which the church has spread by its cunning use of hypnosis. They impede the progress of the freely creative will which ought to be dominant in the finest sense. Whoever has more will, has also real love, states Eckehart. This represents the opposite of the teachings of the Roman clergy and of the present day, increasingly rigid, protestant churches which would like to exterminate the personal will in order to then place love above will.

Eckehart was conscious of his unique position. Witness his words:

In the best sense, love falls completely and totally into the will ..... But there is a second ..... effect of love, which is perceived by an inner eye as jubilant devotion. But ..... that is in no way the best ..... for it does not originate out of love of god, but from mere naturalness.

From a love subordinate to the free will there awakens the true concept of loyalty. It brings, perhaps, no longer the feelings and experiences and rapture as the faithfulness of the servant, but it is only true when it is paired with a strong will.

We must elevate ourselves with the winged pair of reason and will:

Thus one never comes to folly, but advances without interruption into the might,

not through an uncertain flightiness, but through an awakened consciousness. As Eckehart says,

With each work one must consciously make use of his reason ..... and grasp god in the highest possible sense.

The mastery of the will, of reason, of the memory, relates to the senses mediating the ego and nature. These again are directed to the external world in which man is to be understood as person. This whole multiplicity of manifestations is conditioned by space and time, which—as mentioned—Eckehart likewise linked with this world. Moreover, his entire religious doctrine is without causality because of the comprehension of god as the god of the present. A genetic historically causal process does not interest him at all. This belongs to the external world, not to knowledge of the soul and of god. With this, Eckehart rejects the oriental mixture of freedom and nature and all those fables and miracles without which the churches of the generation of adulterers (as Jesus called them) could not manage today. Whether the earth is a disc or a ball floating in the ether has no bearing on true religion nor on Eckehart’s teaching. But this discovery by Copernicus has significantly affected our two Christian churches because they have deceived themselves as well as the world by their shameful lies on the subject.

Particularly in his teaching on the will wherein Eckehart anticipated and surpassed Schopenhauer, Eckehart reveals himself as a western dynamic philosopher recognising the eternal polarity of existence. The essence of the achievements of reason is a moving up of external things in order to imprint this knowledge on the soul. This same motion is set forth, in the will, which, as a result, likewise never attains rest. Thus, even the incomparable mystic who would separate from everything in order to abide in pure contemplation of god, strives for endless calm in god. He knows that this calm can only last moments, and that this goal can only be reached through the constantly renewed activity of the soul and its powers. Here Meister Eckehart shows himself to be superior to Indian wisdom, and recognises eternal rhythm as the precondition of all fruitfulness. From this theoretical insight he then draws practical conclusions for life. If the heart and the will seek what is eternal:

This man seeks not repose; for no unrest disturbs him. This man stands well recorded with god because he accepts all things as divine, that is, better than they are in themselves! To this belongs diligence and a wakeful, truly effective awareness upon which the mind has to be based despite all things and people. Man cannot learn this by fleeing from the world.

Eckehart believed he discovered a duality in Jesus as a fundamental law of his being:

With Jesus, there is a distinction between man’s higher and his lower powers. There are corresponding levels of deeds. Man’s higher powers are suited to the possessing and enjoying of eternal bliss. Simultaneously the lower powers were confronted by utterly wretched sorrow and respite on earth. One of the powers stood in direct conflict with the other. The longer and stronger the dispute between higher and lower powers, the greater and more praiseworthy the victory and the greater the honour of the victory.

In contrast to the personality of Eckehart, the magical religious system of Rome stands out even more clearly before us. This is the African Syrian chaos of peoples, the religion of possession which, by spreading from the eastern Mediterranean through the aid of magical cults and the Jewish bible, and by misuse of the phenomenon of Jesus, created its western centre. With the progressive awakening of the west, and, after the strangling of mysticism, this midpoint has made every effort to detract from the anti Roman view of the world, to represent the VNA CATHOLICA as satisfying all, even modern, demands. This is the way one goes to work today.

The Roman Jesuit philosopher establishes three principal kinds of spiritual outlooks toward the world:

Imminence, which wishes to rest within itself;

Transcendence, which permits only god to be held as first creator (hence the doctrine of deism): and

Transcendentalism, which represents an attempt at linking the two other spiritual orientations.

For thousands of years philosophical arguments have revolved around these outlooks. The Roman church claims to stand above this struggle as apart from, and yet incorporating, all three types. The conflict between these philosophical types can, in fact, never—says Rome—attain unity. All attempts to overcome the antinomies of life within the three systems are in vain and always arrive at an enforced declaration of the identity of opposites. This occurred because all three typical outlooks formed the same false assumption; as if man were somehow equal to god, as if god, so to speak, were only the boundlessly remote ideal of human striving. As a result, the creature will be regarded as created self dependent, which is identical to an attempt at spiritual destruction of the creative god behind everything. The Roman doctrine now intrudes here with its fundamental outlook, namely, that according to the fourth Lateran council of 1215, god is like and unlike his creature simultaneously. Like, because he has placed in the latter the possibility of restlessness in the face of god; unlike, because as a lowly creature he could only find rest in god. Man thus lives not in his spiritual atmosphere but in the sphere of influence of an absolute, remote, ruling god. The catholic man is thus open upward which results in a true striving tension without convulsions or explosive unity. (Przywara, S. J.) This was the foundation of Rome, the ANALOGIA ENTIS, the analogy of being.

This Roman thought process, which is said to have apparently already existed before Peter’s calling, shows its origin only too clearly. The unapproachable terrifying god enthroned over all; the Jehovah of the so called old testament who is praised in contrition and prayed to in fear. He created us from nothing. When it suited him he performed magical miraculous deeds and shaped the world to his glory. But in spite of fire and sword, this Syrian African belief was not to be forced upon the Europeans. The hereditary, Nordic spiritual values existed in the consciousness not only of the godlikeness but of the identity with god of the human Aryan soul. The Indian doctrine of the identity of Ãtman with Brahman—The universe is being, because itself is the universe—was the first great declaration of this. The Persian doctrine of the common struggle of man and Ahura Mazda the Luminous showed us the unadorned Nordic Iranian outlook. The Greek heaven of the gods sprang from just such a great soul as Platon’s aristocratic doctrine of ideas. The ancient Teutonic idea of god is likewise inconceivable without spiritual freedom. Jesus also spoke of the kingdom of heaven within us. The strength of spiritual search already shows itself in the world wanderer, Odin. It can he seen in the seeker and believer, Eckehart. And we see it in all great men from Luther to Lagarde. This soul also lived within the venerable Thomas of Aquinas and in the majority of the western fathers of the church. The ANALOGIA ENTIS (if one leaves out an assumption of creation of the world from nothing) has been forced on the Nordic European spirit by the old testament. The Roman system has not been perfected since Jesus. Rather, it is a proven compromise between Syria Africa and Europe, for which every possible kind of spiritual synthesis was forged. Roman authorities made the arrogant declaration that there were parts of the catholic doctrine which alone could bring salvation. Thomas and his opponent Duns Scotus could hardly be tolerated by Rome. Such was no longer the case with Eckehart, for the latter’s acceptance would have signalled the dismissal of Jehovah. The dismissal of this tyrant god would have been synonymous with the dethronement of his papal representative. Since then, European spiritual development has gone its way without, while alongside and against, Rome, although the latter, where it could, tried to crush it. If this suppression failed, then the new idea was merely incorporated and defined as, in part, early catholic property.

Essentially, the Roman idea of the demon elevated to god necessitated annihilation of the soul and its capacity for willing: an assassination attempt on the polarity of the spiritual being. Through the ANALOGIA ENTIS the modern Roman Jesuit philosophy of religion attempts to evade its unfortunate consequence.

Rome has made use of the old Platonic idea of being and becoming. We strive in eternal becoming but with the consciousness of a being which becomes. Because of Roman Jewish falsification, this Nordic idea of self realisation received the meaning of a movement of the creature toward god, and with such an effect that from self fulfilment a realisation of god grows in whose hands we nevertheless only represent shapeless clay or a corpse.

These apparent concessions by Roman Jehovahism to the spiritually conscious west—with its capacity for willing—have still not lured many to come under the sway of Rome. Had the true nature of Rome been discovered and laid bare, it would long since have passed away. Whether I bestow myself with spiritual freedom, as Eckehart did, or bow myself slavishly down before the lord, as Ignatius did, is important only within the context of a particular system. Some are kneaded like clay, used like a stick, or turned into a corpselike slave. It is such things that forge the difference between man and man, system and system, and, in the final analysis, between race and bastardism. Roman Jehovah means magical despotism and magical creation out of nothing—ideas which are insane to us. The Nordic west says: god and self are a spiritual polarity. Every perfected union is an act of creation calling up renewed dynamic forces. The real Nordic soul in its highest form always flies toward god. It always moves here from god. Simultaneously it rests in god and reposes in itself. This union, felt simultaneously as a giving away and self consciousness, is called Nordic mysticism. Roman mysticism means, fundamentally, the impossible demand for the abolition of polarity and of what is dynamic; it means the subjection of mankind.

Roman philosophy does not stand, as it asserts, outside the three kinds of spiritual orientation in the form of immanence, transcendence and transcendentalism. It embodies them all, but it represents an attempt at compromise, binding parts within the Jewish Syrian African belief. The Roman doctrine does not flow through the world from one centre in a thousand streams. Rather, it dresses its Syrian foundation with the borrowed and misrepresented teaching of the Nordic man—which he built in his world of ideas—in a wholly different folkish personality. Here is the origin of the problem of our existence in the world, of our being here, of our being as such.

With its assertion of the creation of the world from nothing by a god, the Jewish Roman doctrine proclaims a causal link between creator and creature. It thus transforms an outlook only applicable to this world into the metaphysical realm. Even today, it asserts its position, that it represents the creator. The Germanic spirit has been involved in conflict with this monstrous fundamental principle from the first. Even the oldest Nordic creation myth, the Indian one, does not recognise the idea of nothingness. It speaks only of a fluctuation, change, chaos. It conceives the cosmos as having arisen from an ordering principle working against chaos. It reflects on the idea of one who brings order, but not one who creates something out of an original void. It rejects creation EX NIHILO with the rhetorical question, From whence come creation and creator? Further,

He, who brought forth creation,

Who gazes upon it in heaven’s highest light,

Who has made or not made it,

Who knows it, or does he not know?

Indian monism was actually born of a sharp dualism: the soul alone was regarded as essential: matter, as a delusion which is to be overcome. A creation of matter, even from nothing, would have appeared to every Aryan Indian as blasphemous materialism. In the Indian myth of creation, a similar mood prevails as in Hellas and Germania: chaos orders itself to a will, under a law, but a world never arises from nothing, as the Syrian African desert fathers taught and Rome took over with its demon Jehovah. Schiller’s assertion:

If I think of god, I give up the creator,

signifies in the concisest form the clear rejection by the Aryan Nordic soul of the magical linking of creator and creature, as god and honourless creature. Rome has blended Isis, Horus, Yahweh, Platon, Aristoteles, Jesus, Thomas, and so on. Rome wishes to force this version of being as such onto the empirical existence of races and peoples. Where this is not successful, Rome will cause it to seep in by flattering falsifications: crippling our organic existence. It then gathers all those who are crippled spiritually and racially under the catholic roof.

Until the present, only a little opposition has coalesced which is capable of preventing this massive destruction of peoples. One great man refuted the Roman medicine man philosophy; another fought it on his own; the third turned to other tasks. The systematic securing of Europe from this far reaching attack has nowhere yet begun. In this struggle, Lutheranism is unfortunately an ally with Rome. In spite of its protestings, Lutheranism has shut itself off from life by its oath to the Jewish bible. It likewise preached its view of our being as such without directing itself according to organic existence. Today, an awakening finally begins from this hypnotic state. We do not approach life from a conformistic dogma, especially from that of Jewish Roman African origin. We wish to determine the necessity of our spiritual being as such, just as Meister Eckehart once strove to do. But being of this kind has as its essence the racially linked soul with its necessary supreme values of honour and freedom. These supreme values determine the structure of the other, lesser values. This race soul lives and unfolds itself in nature. It awakens certain qualities and suppresses others. These forces of race, soul and nature are the eternal prerequisites of existence and life, from which culture, belief, art, and so on, result as spiritual being. This is the final inward withdrawal, the new awakening Myth of our life.

Paracelsus was an awakened man living in a world of inflated abstract scholars who were alienated from the people. Self appointed authorities from Greece, Rome and Arabia were poisoning the living human body, making the sick even worse and, despite all mutual quarrels, standing like a wall against the genius Paracelsus who reached down searchingly into the primal grounds of existence.

Theophrastus von Hohenheim was a latter day genius. It was his task to investigate nature in the totality of its laws, and to evaluate medicines as structural means furthering the life process of our body. His investigations were unconnected to magical mixtures. These things drove von Hohenheim through the world of his day. He was hated and feared, for he had the stamp of dissident genius. He did not regard churches and altars, doctrines and words, as things in themselves. Rather, he evaluated them according to how deeply they were rooted in nature and racial blood. Like the great Paracelsus, von Hohenheim became the vocal leader of all German natural scientists and mystics, a great preacher of our existence, our existential being in the world. In order to raise himself up from the earth, von Hohenheim reached for the stars like Meister Eckehart, and masterfully, yet modestly, fitted himself into the great laws of the universe. He was full of bliss with the pure notes of the nightingale, with the unfathomable, overflowing creation of his own heart.

With his anti Roman religion, his moral teachings and his critique of cognition, Eckehart consciously separated himself, indeed abruptly, from all basic tenets of both the Roman and the later Lutheran churches. In place of the static Jewish Roman outlook, he asserts the dynamic of the Nordic western soul; in place of monistic violence he demands the recognition of the duality of all life; in place of the doctrine of subjection and blissful slavery, he preaches belief in freedom of soul and will; in place of ecclesiastical arrogance by the representatives of god, he places the honour and nobility of the spiritual personality; instead of enraptured, self subjecting love, he offers the aristocratic ideal of personal spiritual detachment and loneliness; in place of the violation of nature appears its perfection. And all this means that in place of the Jewish Roman view of the world, the Nordic spiritual creed appears as the inward side of German Teutonic man—of the Nordic race.

Eckehart knew that he spoke only to a few within the church; therefore, he often had dealings with the heretical Beguines and Begardes, preached to and had long table talks with them. They speak of him as Brother Eckehart. While he rejected, piece by piece, the Roman Syrian conformistic dogmas, he spoke against the heretics in not a single one of his sermons. He wished to seek out and unite men who held like views within the church. This was his goal in Erfurt, Straßburg, Köln and Prague. Eckehart flatly rejected the view that there could be doctrines in which one simply must believe merely because this was demanded by his superiors or by tradition. To substantiate this claim he calls on reason and on the doctrine of freedom of the soul. He tells his listeners that if they wished to follow his teachings, they must be prepared to stand, body and soul, with the truth. Those who, as always, try to subvert the truth were there to reject and refute the ideas of the spirit. When Eckehart taught in Cologne, the fires of the inquisition burned at the stake around him. Even within his own order many complained that he spoke too much in the vernacular to the common people concerning things which could lead to heresy. The archbishop of Cologne then complained about Eckehart to the pope. The Roman pontiff would gladly have eliminated him, but he needed the political support of the Dominicans in his struggles with the emperor, and so could not afford to burn their spiritual head. Therefore the Eckehart case was investigated by a member of the order, who absolved him. Such an absolution would not have been possible according to the dogma of infallibility at the beginning of the free 20th century. And then the inquisition proceeded to its work. On 24 January, 1327, Eckehart rejected their intrusion as an arbitrary act, and invited his enemies to appear before the pope in May, 1327. A similar declaration by Eckehart at the Dominican church at Cologne closed with the words:

Without, in consequence, abandoning a single one of my principles, I will improve or withdraw ..... all those concerning which it can be proved that they are based upon faulty use of reason.

In accordance with their logic, Eckehart’s declaration was completely rejected by the devout inquisitors as frivolous. But before he could travel to the pope he died. In any event, the great power which could have made a German church out of the Roman was broken. His German religion was afterward officially condemned by Rome. Initially, according to established method, to deceive his supporters, Eckehart’s recantation was broadcast as a general apology, although Eckehart, on the contrary, had been ready to defend his teachings with the utmost vehemence. It is characteristic of his freedom of spirit that he did not summon up church dogmas; indeed, not even the bible, as Luther did later, but based his arguments solely on free rational perception. After this first forgery, the devout followers of Rome corrected Meister Eckehart, and ranked him as a spiritual pupil of Thomas of Aquinas.

From the 13th century onward there was a general dissolution of the catholic centre with a corresponding degeneration of church and clergy in all nations. The masses would have lost their false faith also had it not been for a few leading personalities who, by devoting all their energies, saved the situation over and again. As a reaction against this degeneration, in the 13th century, the Societies of the brothers and sisters of the free spirit were formed in which the forerunners of mysticism can be seen. The Beguines and Begards worked with them in the same circles in which Meister Eckehart had also maintained close contact. This pious, but unchurchly, movement passed outside and inside the church like a broad stream through the German lands. Above all else these movements seized upon a basic principle of the nearly defunct Aryan system as a tool to teach religion in the vernacular. This is the point at which the enduring struggle began between folkish ideas and the Roman Jewish church. Pope Gregorius VII had described as arrogant the use of the vernacular in holy worship. The true folkish feeling rejected the alien Latin tongue, which was thought to be unintelligible, and a mechanically repetitive magical formula. The religious German movement around the middle of the 13th century defied folkish hostile Rome, and proceeded to the vernacular in worship. Sermons and doctrinal addresses were no longer spoken in Latin but in German. And the greatest pioneer of this innovation was Eckehart, whom his pupils and imitators—among others, Suso and Tauler—always called the blessed and holy master. Eckehart, even if he had to write much in Latin, also made the German language into a language of science. He struggled with great effort for this, to replace the Latin sentence formation with German word imprints. In this he was also a heretic whose work—trodden underfoot and half strangled through the Roman church—Martin Luther continued. Thus the prerequisites for folkdom were created.

Today catholic priests preach in German, but the entire liturgy, the utterances, and also the hymns and prayer formulas must still be murmured by the catholics among our people in the Latin tongue. The church cannot give this up, because it must preserve its unnational character, but the peoples may soon no longer tolerate this alien heathen relic. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the Tibetan who turns his prayer wheel and the German peasant who prays in Latin. Both signify only a mechanical practice in contrast to real religious absorption.

The real Eckehart vanished then, thanks to the Roman forgeries, from the eyes of the German people. True, the religious wave passed over the land of Widukind, down the Rhine, and everywhere there arose believers in the freedom of the soul: Suso and Tauler, Ruysbrök and Grootes, Böhme and Angelus Silesius. But the greatest power of soul, the most beautiful dream of the German people had died too early; everything later is only—regarded objectively—a reflection of Eckehart’s great soul. Out of his manliness developed popular enthusiasm: from his powerful love grew sweet ecstasy. Supported by the church in this attitude, the current of effeminate mysticism flowed again into the lap of the Roman church. Luther’s deed finally broke through the alien crust, but, in spite of his longing, he never found his way back to the spiritual depth of Meister Eckehart, never returned to his spiritual freedom. His church, unfree from the first day onward, dried up in one place and turned barren in another. The German soul had to seek a path other than that of the church. It struck upon this in art. When the spirit of Eckehart grew silent, Germanic painting arose. The soul of J. S. Bach resounded; Goethe’s Faust was composed, Beethoven’s Ninth, Kant’s philosophy ..... What was deepest and strongest still came from Eckehart’s teaching; something which more than all else seems clairvoyantly directed at the men of our times.

Eckehart ends the sermon On the kingdom of god with the following words:

This address is only for those who have already found its message in their own lives, or at least long for it in their hearts. That this may be revealed to us, help us god.

Thus his words are directed only at those spiritually related. His teaching extends to all inward or noble men, and a mystery is revealed here which is only today born again to new life. In a sermon on 2 Corinthians I, 2, Eckehart differentiates between blood and flesh. By blood, he understands—and so he believes with saint John—everything which in man is not subject to his will. Thus, what is taking effect in the unconscious is a counterpart to the soul. And, in another passage, Eckehart says—concerning Matthew X, 28—The noblest that is in men is the blood—when it wishes what is right. But the most wicked which is in man is the blood—when it wishes evil.

With this, the last supplementary word has been spoken: Alongside the Myth of the eternal free soul stands the Myth, the religion of the blood. The one corresponds to the other without us knowing that here cause and effect are at hand. Race and self, blood and soul, stand in the closest connection. Meister Eckehart’s teaching is not fit for scoundrels, nor for that racial mixture of alien type which has seeped into the heart of Europe from the east and forms the most subservient element of Rome. Eckehart’s teaching of the soul is directed at the carriers of the same or related blood, persons who have similar lives or possess vision as a longing of their heart—not to the spiritually alien and the hostile of blood.

Meister Eckehart then speaks the folkish credo:

No vessel can hold two kinds of drink in itself: if it is to hold wine, one must pour out the water so that not a drop remains.

And further:

One should respect the manners of other people, and scorn no one’s manners.

Again:

It is impossible that all men should follow two paths simultaneously.

And, then again:

For often, what is life to the one, is death to the other.

That is the complete opposite of what the church of Rome—and ultimately also, Wittenberg—teaches us. These Christian churches wish to force us all—whether white, yellow or black—upon one path, into one form, and under one dogma. These things have poisoned our souls, our European racial heritage. What was its life was our death. We have not died because we have the power of the Germanic soul which thus far has prevented the final victory of Rome and Jerusalem. In Meister Eckehart, the Nordic soul came to self consciousness for the first time. All latter day great men walk in imitation of Eckehart. From the teachings of this great soul can—and will—the German faith be reborn.

Eckehart shares a spiritual relationship with Goethe, whose entire work was also rooted in freedom of the soul and in a commitment to the creative life. The artist has naturally stressed this in a much more definite way than the religious mystic. Goethe spent his life suspended between two worlds. If the one threatened to take him captive, then he fled passionately into the other. Meister Eckehart spoke, on the one side, of solitude, and work on the other, while Goethe called these two conditions mind and deed. Mind signifies the stripping of the cares of the world, the extension of soul passing into infinity, and deed was directed at a creation in this world. Like Meister Eckehart, Goethe has stressed again and again the law of our existence: That mind and deed are rhythmically alternating, self conditioning and mutually enhancing essences of man; that one alludes to the other, allowing it to be recognised and become creative. To withdraw from the world and live for self contemplation does not further our self knowledge: One can actually only observe and listen to oneself when actively engaged. Whoever has made it a habit to test action on thinking and thinking on action could not err, and, if he erred, then he would soon find himself back upon the right path. The mind, which has always been a governing organ in us Indoeuropeans, needs no constant spurring on, and so we also find, with Goethe, few incitements to action. He is concerned with restricting action.

I must confess that the great significant sounding task—know yourself—has always appeared suspicious to me from the beginning, as a cunning device fabricated out of whole cloth by priests who would confuse men by demanding the impossible of men. Such false prophets wish to lead men astray, away from activity directed at the outer world and into a false inward contemplation. Man only knows himself only insofar as he knows the world within which he becomes aware of himself. Every new object which is properly surveyed opens up a new possibility in us. Understanding can do nothing to heal sufferings of soul and reason can do less, but resolute activity on the other hand can do everything.

Goethe spent much of his creative energy in promoting the virtues of intellectual activity. The greatest hymn to human activity is his Faust. After the exploration and penetration of all science, of all love and suffering, Faust is liberated through the deed, that is, action. To his powerful spirit which sought always to comprehend the infinite, the finite deed, the damming of a water torrent, thought was the most useful faculty of man, the final stone of life, the tool to conquer the unknown. The noble action finds its pinnacle in works of art. As Goethe wrote:

The true artist opens up the mind, for where words fail, deeds speak.

And again:

Who experiences the essence of things at an early age, arrives conveniently at freedom.

Further, the master wrote:

A man need only declare himself to be free, to feel the moment. If he dares to declare himself to be finite then he feels himself free. A master is whoever has the insight that limitation is also a necessary stage to the highest development even for the greatest spirit.

Goethe asks:

How can one learn to know oneself? One does not know himself through introspection, but by action. Attempt to do your duty and you know at once what is in you. Duty is the demand of the day.

In another place Goethe wrote:

For man it is a misfortune when any kind of idea takes firm root within him which has no influence upon active life, or which draws him away from the latter.

He also wrote that:

In my opinion, determination is the thing most worthy of respect in man ..... It is always a misfortune when a man is occasioned to strive for something with which he cannot discipline himself by regular self activity.

Therefore even the smallest man can be complete if he:

Moves within the limits of his capacities. A material world is ready for us to create. On the spiritual path involvement and free activity regulated by love are always found. To move these two worlds reciprocally, to manifest their mutual qualities in the transitory shape of life, that is the highest form to which man has to mould himself.

When Goethe had sated all his senses in Rome, he wrote:

I wish to know nothing more at all other than how to create something and exercise my mind rightly.

But immediately afterward he says:

A new epoch is beginning with me. My mind is now so broadened through seeing and observing so much that I must restrict myself to some new kind of work.

In another passage he says by way of summary:

I had spent my whole life composing and observing, synthetically and analytically. The systole and diastole of the human spirit was, for me, a second drawing of breath.

When Schiller died, he said, to control his despair:

When I had regained control of myself, I looked around for active diversions.

And again, when in 1823 he was plagued by severe suffering after he had lost his son, he called back to his mind that which already seemed to have lost itself in the beyond, and proclaimed:

And now forward—over graves!

Essentially Goethe’s spiritual condition resembles the real lives of all great men of the Nordic west. Da Vinci conjured up an incomprehensible transcendental world in his holy Anna, in the eyes of his John the baptist and in the face of his Christ. Simultaneously he was an engineer, a cool headed technician who could not devise enough to make nature serviceable to man. One could offer the opinion about the many words of Da Vinci, that they might have sprung from the mouth of Goethe. With Beethoven, a sparkling scherzo suddenly appears after the deepest mystical rapture, and his Symphony to joy (9th symphony) is a most touching song of solitude. Beethoven, who seemed to vanish in his dreams, at the same time uttered the words of dynamic western man:

Strength is the morality of men who distinguish themselves before others. It is also mine.

Also:

To grasp destiny by the throat,

was how he represented his goal. Similar deep expressions also formed Michael Angelo’s personality. One should read his Sonnets to Vittoria Colonna, and then stand before his Sibyls and his world condemning Christ. It also becomes clear to us that western mysticism does not exclude life but, on the contrary, it has chosen creative existence as a partner. To enhance itself, it has need of antithesis. The more heroic the soul, all the mightier the outward works; the more detached the personality, the more radiant the deeds.

The dynamic Germanic nature never expresses itself in flight from the world, but in overcoming it, in struggle with it. This occurs in a twofold manner: in the godly religious artistic metaphysical, and in the Luciferian empirical.

No other race has, in the same way, sent over the globe explorer after explorer—men who were not mere innovators but discoverers in the real sense. It was the Nordic west and its heroes who reshaped the chaos of what they found into a cosmos—an ordered world. Nordic men have visited the dark continents, the cold polar regions, tropical forests, bare steppes, the remote seas, inaccessible rivers and lakes and high mountains. Men at all times and in many places have dreamed of flying through space, but only in the Nordic man did this longing become a force which led to invention. He who has never felt the power of forcefully overcoming time and space, he who has not felt, in the midst of machines and ironworks, in the midst of the interworking of a thousand wheels, the pulsebeat of material conquest of the world, he has not understood this one side of the Germanic European soul, and he will not understand the other mystical side. Recall the sudden outburst by hundred year old Faust:

The few trees not my own

spoil possession of the world for me.

It is not mere greed for riches and high living that is shown here, but the urge of the master who feels bliss in commanding.

One must differentiate between what is of Lucifer and what belongs to Satan. Satanic describes the moral side of the mechanistic conquest of the world. It is dictated by purely instinctive motives. It is seen in the Jewish attitude toward the world. Luciferan describes the struggle for the subjugation of matter without having the prerequisite of subjective interest as a driving motive. The first springs from an uncreative character, and will consequently never find anything, never discover, never really invent, while the second compels natural laws with the aid of natural laws, follows their track, and builds works to make matter useful.

It is easy to understand that the Luciferan conquest of the world can easily become Satanic. For this reason, in a principally Luciferan era, such as that which vanished in the world war, Jewry necessarily finds it doubly easy to infiltrate and seek its possibilities for profit.

Repose is superior to motion, the weak overcome the strong; softness overcomes rigidity: These words contain the mood of an entire culture. They are the soul of the Chinese race whose ideas are embodied in the teachings of Lao Tse, who lived 2,500 years ago, and who speaks to us like some tired sage of today. No one will read the writings of Lao Tse without feeling himself enveloped by a wreath of essential truth. As one reads Lao Tse, he realises that this message is one of the most beautiful experiences wherein one can buoy up his frame of mind. Man should not strive to fathom the nature of man. He should know only one thing: The destruction of the body is no loss. This is immortality. One must guard oneself against every excess while peacefully and calmly going one’s mysterious, predestined way.

The joy of Lao Tse’s wisdom is the longing for polarity between soul and spirit. But this is not in harmony with us and nothing is falser than to believe that the wisdom of the east is in accord with our own beliefs. Eastern thought must never be regarded as something superior to our own, in the way that Europeans, grown tired and inwardly devoid of rhythm, like to do today.

There exists a further contrast. In studying the history and literature of the Jews, one finds almost nothing but energetic, endlessly busy activity, a completely one sided concentration of all energies upon material well being. From this veritable amoral disposition of spirit, a moral code originates which recognises only one thing: The personal advantage of the Jew. This, in turn, results in religiously and morally permitted perjury, the Talmudic religion of the legal lie. All naturally egotistic dispositions receive a boost in energy provided by the morality which is permitted to them. But, as is the case among almost all peoples of the world where religious and moral ideas and values are placed in the path of purely instinctive whims and lack of control, with the Jews it is the reverse. So, for 2,500 years we see eternally the same picture. Greedy for the goods of this world, the Jew moves from city to city, from land to land, and remains where he finds the least resistance to his parasitical business activity. He is driven away but comes back again. One generation is destroyed and the other begins unalterably the same game. Jugglerlike and half demonic, laughable and tragic at the same time, despising everything superior while nevertheless feeling himself innocent, we see that he is devoid of the capacity of being able to understand anything other than himself. Eternally he operates under the Satanic name, and remains always the same, always fervently believing in his mission, and yet forever a barren and condemned parasite. The eternal Jew forms a complete contrast to Buddha, to Lao Tse. With the one, repose, with the other, activity; on the one side, goodness, on the other, slyness; with the one, peace, with the other, abysmal hatred toward all peoples of the world, with the one, an understanding of everything, with the other, total incapacity and lack of understanding.

Equally far removed from both antitheses stands the Nordic idea. It is a new universe unto itself. The peace of Goethe, the repose of Lao Tse, the deeds of Bismarck are not in the same league as the activities of a Rothschild. The Germanic has neither the Chinese calm nor the Jewish activity in the sense of the personality, not the person. Our goals, our methods and our thoughts are totally different from those of the Chinese and the Jew.

Nordic man believes deeply in an eternal law of nature: he knows that he is manifestly linked to it. He does not despise nature but accepts it as the allegory of something supernatural. But he sees in nonnature something other than mere arbitrariness. He does not satisfy himself in believing in immortality as such as he is astounded at every self observation concerning the uniqueness of his nonnatural self. He also finds an essentially different nature with every other person, likewise concealing within itself an equally rich microcosm with many references. If Lao Tse says that the perfected man does not come into conflict with others because they all have the same direction, then, as compared with Nordic feeling, an attitude of indifference is seen here which leaves a traveller unheeding, wishing only silently to pursue his own course. Here, then, we face the question as to whether this apparently great and beautiful calm of the Chinese does not in fact signify an inner lack of motion of soul; the obverse side of an inwardness virtually devoid of life.

The Indian mystic also taught that others followed the same path to the end. He believed he could speak the great words: That you are, to every creature of this world; but the emphasis of his metaphysical outlook is remote from the logical conclusions of the Chinese. Lao Tse devoted himself to the moral side of our nature and allowed the metaphysical to rest within itself. He preached a doctrine of honour toward the honourable and dishonourable alike, and love for friend and foe. This is proper goodness, equally directed toward noble men. The Indian is absorbed completely in the metaphysical side of man. He lays such great weight upon this that he arrives, ultimately, at the view that action as such could not do harm to a participant sharing in Ãtman Brahman. He will not be defiled by works, by evil. All that is material is only deceit and appearance; what happens to him is a matter of indifference. Man’s individuality has no long term existence. That is the ultimate conclusion of India.

Lao Tse teaches inactivity because the path and the right way are predestined for every man and, by acting, seeking and investigating, only discord and misfortune will follow.

Indian philosophy is fundamentally different from our own. Different souls and spirits are manifest in the two cultures. It becomes a crime to discuss the equality of good men. The Indian believes that it is a thousand times more beautiful and sublime to see with what richness of soul each of us has come into this world. Both he and the Nordic man know how at different places upon earth different souls are at work struggling to express themselves. It is a great mistake to try to intrude here as strangers and to attempt to efface these contrasts. It is rare that a combination and merging of different souls and races has accomplished anything beautiful. Usually only misery appears following racial mixing. High intentions inspired missionaries who went to India and China where they only disturbed native racial developments. But we run the same risk today when men come and laugh at the great men of the west, while alluding to India and China as the great examples of the development of the soul which Europeans should emulate. As beautifully as Jajnavalkya speaks, as flattering as Lao Tse’s words are, they are for the east. If we try to adopt these ideas, then we are spiritually lost. Either we go our own way or we fall into chaos, into the abyss of madness.

We know that we all have one longing; to emerge from darkness into light, to move from our earthly bonds into an eternal unknown. But we confess that we are by no means content with knowing that we have, morally or metaphysically, struck out upon the same path with others. We are also interested in the reasoning behind our feeling and thinking. The Chinese have a thousand volume history, which is not really a history but a chronicle; everything down to the smallest detail seems important to the narrator. The Indian devoted no real attention to such profane history. He has no real chronicle, no secular history. He has only his myths, songs and hymns. Neither race sought to walk the other’s path of development. The one had not understood the outward effect of the personality, whether it be of a man or a people in general; the other saw it as mere appearance and therefore unimportant.

Germanic man appeared in world history as creator. He sailed around the entire earth. He discovered millions of worlds. In the heat of a tropical sun he excavated prehistoric, long forgotten cities. He researched poems and myths. He sought after legendary fortresses. With indescribable effort he deciphered papyrus rolls, hieroglyphics and inscriptions on clay fragments. He investigated thousand year old mortar and stone. He learned all the languages of the world. He lived among Bushmen, Indians, Chinese, and formed for himself a varied picture of the souls of the peoples. He saw technology, morals, art and religion grow up from beginnings of the most diverse kinds of works of a different nature. He comprehended personality because he was himself one. He grasped the activity of peoples as action, as shaped spiritual power, as an expression of a uniquely personal inwardness. He not only had interest in the fact that men thought and acted in such and such a way, but he did not rest until he had learned to grasp the inner forces—whether rational or intuitive—which shaped the destiny of civilisations. It was popular for a long time to compare the Chinese and the Germans, because both peoples have been possessed by a mania for collecting and by a veritable disease for registering everything. This comparison remains completely superficial. One cannot measure the soul of a people by individual characteristics but only by achievements. Thus the Chinaman remains a cataloguer; the German, however, became a master of historical science. He built his collections of facts and deeds with a strong sense of both purpose and direction. With one, the ultimate end was mechanical coordination; with the other, a view of the world. That is the difference.

The German’s talent for researching and writing history is deeper than just having a sense of what to save or discard. He brings true philosophical overview to his study. He knows what things serve man, civilisation and race. The Teuton—especially the German—feels in his heart the value and dignity of personality. He is filled with a conscious intuition of it, knowing that it must be felt as well as known. He is driven by a vital feeling, by the greatest activity of soul, to observe, investigate and fathom his fellow men. Therefore, he has understood history as the development of a people’s personality. He has sought under thousand year old ashes and ruins evidence of human power. Here we have arrived, then, at one of the primordial phenomena which can neither be explained nor investigated.

Because the Germanic spirit instinctively feels the eternity and immortality of personality, because it does not dispute the intuitive awareness expressed as:

That you are,

so there lives within it the longing to investigate what can be learned of alien personalities. The Greek did not concern himself with his prehistory because he regards time, development and personality as illusions. The Chinese collected all the data of his past, even recording the bowel motions of the mandarin. He collected data about the person but did not indicate the realities of personalities. The conscious interpretation of any kind of culture as the expression of something never previously existing and never recurring, of something mysteriously unique—that is the fundamental mood of the Nordic Germanic spirit with its mystique of action. This is the reason why Europeans were able to decipher hieroglyphics and Babylonian clay fragments. For this same reason, entire generations devoted their creative power in excavations in Greece and Egypt and on the Ganges and the Euphrates. They sought to recapture and interpret that spirit. If the European spirit had signified only a shaping of the outward person, then this organic widening and concentration would never have occurred. This is called the Faustian soul; the striving for infinity in every domain. But at the basis of this lies the uniqueness of personality felt nowhere else in the world with like strength and dignity.

From this feeling of respect for other cultures and races Herder was driven to collect the folk songs of peoples ranging from India to Iceland. To this end Goethe conjured up Persia for us in an enchanting way. Germanic scholars were able to present before us the realisations of the utterly remote—and yet often very close—Indian soul. They gave us a picture of the world rich in every respect, sharp in contrasts. History is therefore felt with great awareness; it unrolls before our mind’s eye. Everything stands uniquely coloured and shaped, portentous and alien at the same time. In the midst the Nordic man stands as the embodiment of the attainment of personal consciousness—that last mystery of existence. This inner frame of mind is the ultimate basis of what is broken down, fragmentary, abandoned, infinitely remote in all of European culture. Don Quixote, Hamlet, Parsifal, Faust, Rembrandt, Beethoven, Goethe, Wagner and Nietzsche, all lived, spoke and created. They are the witnesses to this experience. Here also the Nordic concept of action grows into something completely different from what Lao Tse understood by doing, or what appeared to Buddha as harmful because of its bringing suffering. One must differentiate even more this idea of action from that energetic Jewish activity which has always revealed a purely materialistic purpose. The motivating force of Judaism is always material gain. Action for western man is the expression of an inner essence in a development of soul without earthly purpose. Thus it is a form of our spiritual activity. By following this, we really live here on earth for the first time and for a higher purpose. We attribute a dignity to action which alone can lead us to knowledge of ourselves. Here, I recall those profound words of Goethe:

Every well considered deed releases a new capacity within us.

A completely different soul speaks here than in the writings of Lao Tse. It is fundamentally different from the ideas of he who taught the fourfold holy path. Lao Tse rejects action alone because it must always be accompanied by doing. Buddha likewise fears suffering. But Goethe accepts suffering, even sees it as necessary, as elevating:

Whoever cannot despair, should not live.

Like the great Meister Eckehart, he frequently finds soul expanding bliss in one single moment. In the experience of a creative deed, the whole of suffering is made worthwhile and thus overcome. Nothing can be compared with this power of the soul. It is primarily power, not at all silent and reconciled with abandonment; rather, it soars with broad wings over all that is earthly.

It is noteworthy to see how great men viewed the vital, inner feelings of a race—as opposed to mere externals. Briefly, to the Chinese, repose is the overcoming of action, a way to achieve one’s destiny without conscious action. To the Indian, inactivity signifies the conquest of life, the first stage of passing over into eternity. To the Jew, repose signifies the prying out of an opportunity which promises material success. The calm of the Nordic man is self reflection before action; it is mysticism and life simultaneously. China and India wish, in different manners, to overcome the pulsebeat of life. To the Jew, inactivity is only a consequence of external circumstances. The Northlander, on the contrary, wishes for inwardly conditioned, organically creative rhythm. There are naturally only a few who are capable of carrying this Nordic rhythm throughout their entire life, through their entire works. But because of this they are the greatest of our spirit, our race.

In some of our great men this rhythm is active—in individuals with consuming passion—with a powerful intake of breath, such as in the works of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Bach and Goethe. With others, this pulsebeat proceeded more violently, suddenly, dramatically. This is revealed to us in the works of Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. Immanuel Kant, who appears to many as the embodiment of moderation itself, emphasised as his deepest conviction that only by enthusiasm, by the highest spiritual readiness for action, can a great work be created. This was a sensitive self confession. From the work of the sage of Königsberg one hears the mighty beating of wings of the Nordic soul: Never is anything great in the world achieved without enthusiasm.

Therefore, also, in what concerns our relationship to action, the spiritual attitudes of different people stand before our eyes. The otherwise different Chinese and Indians are on one side; the Jew, as antithesis and contradiction (not as spiritual antipode), is on the other. And, beyond them, the Nordic Germanic man is the antipode of both directions, grasping for both poles of our existence, combining mysticism and a life of action, being borne up by a dynamic vital feeling, being uplifted by the belief in the free creative will and the noble soul. Meister Eckehart wished to become one with himself. This is certainly our own ultimate desire.

Book II: Nature of Germanic Art

Book III: The Coming Reich