Title: Germanic Mythology and the Fate of Europe

Record: 20

96072602040275693519900601

Title: Germanic mythology and the fate of Europe.

Subject(s): MYTHOLOGY, Germanic -- Social aspects; EUROPE -- Social

life & customs

Source: ReVision, Summer90, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p16, 12p

Author(s): Metzner, Ralph

Abstract: Investigates the relationship of Germanic mythology to

European consciousness. Odin-Wotan and the Germanic psyche; Aesir and

Vanir; Wotan's warriors and the transformed berserkers; Odin's three

ways of knowledge; Significance.

AN: 9607260204

ISSN: 0275-6935

Full Text Word Count: 8702

Database: Academic Search Premier

GERMANIC MYTHOLOGY AND THE FATE OF EUROPE

The relationship of Germanic mythology to European consciousness is of

interest not only to those of us who trace our direct ancestry to the

Germanic people, but to anyone who seeks to understand the close

connection between the American culture and its ancestry in the

European historical experience. The mythology of a given culture may

be regarded as the stories of the ancestors, the stories our

forefathers and -mothers told that gave meaning to life, the

protohistorical story of our life in nature and in human society.

This particular line of investigation began for me several years ago

when I had a dream in which I saw one of the giant stone-carved heads

of the Olmec or Maya. I had at that time no knowledge whatsoever of

these ancient Meso-American cultures, or their mythology or art, nor

any feeling of resonance with them. As I looked at the massive stone

head in the dream, I realized to my amazement that the head was alive.

I saw that it was breathing, and I sensed some kind of flickering

behind the closed eyelids. This thought appeared in my mind, very

distinctly: "The old gods are awakening again." That dream began a

series of unexpected synchronistic events, through which I was led to

a deep interest in the culture of the Maya, their language, their

mythology, and their art. Over the next few years, I continued to

receive various pieces of information, from ordinary and nonordinary

reality, that were dike clues leading me to a deeper appreciation of

the Maya, along similar lines though not as extensively as Jose

Arguelles (1987) has described in his writings. What was particularly

intriguing for me was that I had absolutely no connection to the

Mayans, nor ancient Mexicans, in my ancestry.

Simultaneously with this line of research, through my work with

shamanic and therapeutic practices involving expanded states of

consciousness as an intentional part of such practice, I had been

gradually coming to a deeper realization of the importance of

connecting with one's ancestors. As my ancestors were Germanic and

Celtic, my father being German and my mother Scottish, I turned my

attention to Germanic, Celtic, and Old European mythology and asked

myself the question, What is the mythology and shamanism of the

ancient Germanic/ European people? What remains of these shamanic

traditions and what can we learn from the mythology of these our

ancestors that is relevant to our situation today?

Inspired by the work of two of the wise elders of the planetary

culture in our time, C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell, we have come to

appreciate how the myths of any culture are the spiritual teaching

stories passed down the generations by the ancestors: the stories of

their life journeys, their wilderness journeys, their shamanic

explorations, their vision quests, and also their battles and wars,

their triumphs and tragedies, their discoveries and their failures. My

own awareness of the ancestral mythology of the Europeans has expanded

in the last five or six years to include not only the Greco-Roman and

Mesopotamian mythology I was brought up with as a child, but also the

Egyptian, the Semitic, the Germanic, and the Celtic. Furthermore, the

new discoveries by Marija Gimbutas (1982) in European prehistory and

archaeology (combined with new scientific dating techniques that have

changed the paleontological time-frames) have revolutionized our

understanding about the highly interesting cultures of the

pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Europe: those agriculture'.,

matrifocal, Earth-Goddess-worshiping cultures that flourished for tens

of thousands of years prior to the invasions of the nomadicpastoral,

patriarchal, sky-god-worshiping warrior tribes who, starting around

4000 B.C., invaded India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and

Europe. The archaeological remains of these prepatriarchal cultures

are significantly without any signs of warfare. These peaceloving,

artistic people are also our ancestors: their religion, their

mythology, their social structure, and their art are important for us

to understand and appreciate.

Germanic mythology is a delicate subject to broach on account of its

well-known bad reputation. In many people's minds, a mythology that

interested Nietzsche. Wagner, and the Nazis is automatically suspect.

In Germany, as well as other countries, there are many who refuse to,

or are afraid to, have anything to do with Germanic mythology; some of

these same people also feel uneasy about Wagner, since his music dealt

with themes from Germanic mythology and he was Hitler's favorite

composer. However, the view that would see in Germanic myth, as

expounded in Nietzsche's philosophy and dramatized in Wagner's operas,

the mass-psychological motivational impetus for the genocidal

Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis, cannot stand up to closer

examination. As the Swiss writer Margrit Burri has pointed out

regarding Germanic mythology (which she describes as currently being

caught "between repression and distortion"), an unbiased examination

of the record shows that Nietzsche had only superficial acquaintance

with Germanic myth and was much more influenced by classical than by

Nordic literature, and that Wagner introduced into his version of

Germanic myth the Christian eschatological themes of guilt and

self-destruction that may have appealed to Hitler, but which cannot by

any means be found in the original myths (Burr) 1982).

Hitler and his followers basically appropriated certain themes that

they claimed to have found in Germanic myth for their own ideological,

propagandistic purposes. One will search in vain among the Eddas--the

old Icelandic collections of texts that are the source for Norse

mythology--for any traces of concepts of "racial purity," "master

race" (Herrenvolk), "blood and soil" (Blut und Boden), or even

"superman." Rather, these slogans, products of a twisted, pathological

mentality, were given a kind of pseudoreligious veneer by Hitler and

have led to the continuing demonization of the Germanic gods ("these

myths are the source of the evil"). My response to friends in Germany

who have expressed uneasiness about engaging with Germanic myth has

been the following: If we don't confront what the Nazis did with their

perverse misuse of this mythic complex, we are cut off from our

connection with our ancestors and their rich and beautiful mythology.

It is perhaps too obvious to state that if we cannot communicate with

our parents, we cannot connect with any ancestors further back. In

Germany, however, there exists a kind of barrier, a peculiarly

exacerbated form of the generation gap, between those born during or

after the war and their parents, those who survived, as adults, the

Nazi era and the Holocaust that was inflicted on Germany and all of

Europe. The postwar generation is outraged at what their parents and

elders countenanced, and traumatized by their parents' silence and

evasiveness about their role in or knowledge of this genocidal

catastrophe. The older generation, in the words of a sixty-year-old

German army veteran who attended one of my talks in Munchen, are

reluctant to talk about their experiences because they "feel already

judged by you, before we say anything."

Occurring now in Germany are several hopeful signs that the issues

involved in this communication barrier are beginning to be addressed.

Two books of note have appeared in recent years, edited by Peter

Sichrovsky (1985, 1987), one of which contains interviews with Jews

who were children in Germany during the Nazi era and the other,

interviews with children of Nazi families. In more academic circles,

there has been an acrimonious debate among German historians

(Historikerstreit) about the appropriate and accurate portrayal of the

Nazi regime's excesses. I have been in contact with some groups who

have occupied themselves intensively with the questions of collective

guilt and individual responsibility that are raised in this context

and who have developed a kind of psychotherapeutic process called

"ritual of reconciliation" (Versohnungsritual). The reconciliation is

meant to occur not only between Germans and Jews (as well as other

victims), but also between the Nazis and other "ordinary" Germans and,

most important, between the older and younger generation. The

significance of these developments for non-Germans also seems evident,

in that similar reconciliation processes could be of great value in

many other areas of the world in which ongoing conflict has been

inherited from the preceding generations (e.g., Palestine, Northern

Ireland, and South Africa, to name only the most obvious examples).

The religion of the ancient Germanic peoples was an animistic, pagan,

and panentheistic worldview. Animistic means all natural phenomena

were seen as animated by vital force and sentience; no distinction is

made between the realms we call animate and inanimate. Pagan means it

was the religion of country-dwellers (Latin pagan)); heathen were

those who lived on the heath, that is, not in the towns. The people

living in the country, in the woods, and small villages preserved the

Earthwisdom, the knowledge of animals and healing and nutritious

plants, as well as an awareness of alive, subtle beings (nature

spirits, "little people," elves, dwarves, and the like), much longer

than the city-folk who surrounded themselves with stone walls and

worshiped abstract, imperceptible deities. Panentheistic means the

belief that all of creation is sacred: the Creator Spirit is present

(immanent) within the totality of creation, and the creation is

contained within the Creator.

So the religion of the Germanic peoples of old Europe, as indeed of

all the early Indo-Europeans, as well as of aboriginal peoples in all

parts of the world, was a religion that venerated the spirits of

nature: their gods and goddesses lived in rivers, sky, and wind, in

mountains, trees, and animals. Their holy places, their places of

healing and power, were sacred groves and circles of standing stones.

We hear of four great classes of beings in the legends and sagas of

the Germanic and Nordic tribes: the gods, the humans, the giants, and

the dwarves. Odin-Wotan, god of shamans, poets, and warriors, whom we

shall discuss further, was said to have conversations, seeking

knowledge, with each of these classes of beings. Giants were beings of

superhuman power and energy, who possessed the awesome forces of

mountains and storms, of sea and ice, who lived in far-off areas

(primarily to the east and north), where humans could not go. Although

sometimes hostile and dangerous, they were more often neutral:

inaccessible to humans and uninterested in human prayers, devotions,

or sacrifices (unlike the gods), they also did not intervene in human

affairs. They represented the wild, implacable forces of Nature over

which man has no control. Dwarves were spirit-beings that lived under

the ground, inside the rocks and mountains; they were masters of fire,

metal, and stonework and could fashion supernaturally powerful tools

and weapons, as well as exquisite jewelry with magical properties.

They represented the natural forces of the subterranean world, the

elemental powers of the mineral realm; they were the spirits who

inspired the human miners, smiths, and metalworkers, the alchemists of

"forge and crucible" (Eliade 1962), and their modern descendants, the

physical scientists and engineers.

In this animistic, panentheistic religion of the ancient Germanic

tribes, in which the nonhuman world of Nature is acknowledged and

respected, we can see the ecological relevance of connecting with our

pagan ancestors. The inhabitants of Europe, prior to the coming of

Christianity, had a worldview--in its awareness of the

interconnectedness and sacredness of all life--that resembled the

worldview of shamanic cultures in the Americas, Asia, and Australia.

Historian Lynn White published a much-discussed paper, "The Historical

Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" (1967), in which he argued that

Christian theology, as it developed in the Middle Ages, had certain

features that at least condoned, if not actively encouraged, a

domineering and exploitative attitude of man toward the natural world.

Likewise, historian Arnold Toynbee, in a paper entitled "The Religious

Background of the Present Environmental Crisis" (1972), laid the blame

on the monotheistic religions in general, claiming that "they have

removed the constraints on man's greed and overthrown the traditional

balance between man and nature." Whereas Toynbee argued that the Asian

religions and the pantheism of ancient times had a much more balanced

and respectful attitude toward nature, it has been pointed out by

Philip Novak (1987) that in terms of actual practice and policy, the

Asian societies do not have a better environmental record than the

Western monotheistic cultures.

In Europe, the animistic religion of the Germanic and Celtic peoples

did not survive the dual onslaught of Christianity and mechanistic

science. The old gods and goddesses were de-sacralized and demonized:

Odin was equated to Satan; Freya, the goddess of love, beauty, and

fertility, was turned into the chief witch. Other deities were

replaced by Christian saints with similar names. The Christian

calendar was superimposed on the old calendar that had been attuned to

the cycles of the sun and the moon (e.g., the winter solstice

celebration became Christmas). Songs, prayers, and rituals of the old

religion were forbidden. Sacred groves and natural shrines were

desecrated, and Christian churches were put in their place. The

symbolic climax of this brutal, forced conversion of an entire people

occurred in the year A.D. 772, when Charlemagne had the Irminsul, the

sacred ash, representing the mythic world-tree Yggdrasil, the central

holy axis of the Germanic-Scandinavian religion, cut down.

As Christianity increasingly imposed its prescription for a spiritual

life separate from (even in opposition to) the living energies of

Nature, the old nature deities retreated. The vibrant archetypes that

supported our ancestors' sense of living connectedness with all of

Nature were submerged into the dark, unconscious underworld of the

collective psyche. Witches, gypsies, artists, or poets who wanted to

preserve the old ways were forced to go underground, or to retreat to

the country, and be branded as "pagans." The furthest removed people,

in the Baltic lands, in Northern Scandinavia and in Iceland, managed

to hold on to the old religion and to resist the Christianizing

influence the longest. Eventually, in the fourteenth to eighteenth

centuries, the Christian annihilation of the old animistic pagan

religion culminated in the Inquisition and extermination of the

witches. In these actions we see how the paranoid mentality of the

Church combined with the envy of the rising patriarchal medical

establishment vis-a-vis the "wise ones" (who maintained the

traditional herbal medicinal lore and shamanic practices) to produce a

biophobic, necrophiliac holocaust that matches the genocide of the

Jews in the twentieth century.

ODIN-WOTAN AND THE GERMANIC PSYCHE

The figure of Odin, father-god of the Germanic pantheon, can in many

ways be regarded as the key to the understanding of the Germanic, and

perhaps European, psyche. Interestingly enough, Hitler and the Nazis

did not concern themselves with this god--a highly individualistic

deity and protector and teacher of shamans, poets, and seers. There is

no perceptible affinity between this god of truth-seeking eccentrics

and the kinds of mass movement and racial purity concerns of the

Nazis. It is true that in 1936, as the Nazi expansion was getting

under way, C. G. Jung published an essay on Wotan in which he invoked

the later myths of Wotan as the stormgod, the god of the wild

nocturnal hunt (whose name is related to the German wut (fury) and who

was known as the Wanderer) as an explanation of the passionate

fanaticism of the Nazis. Jung spoke of Rausch (intoxication) and

Ergriffenheit (being seized) in order to link the Nazi phenomenon with

the mythology of Wotan. Yet I believe that Jung here misunderstood

both Wotan and Nazism, and it is noteworthy that he did not mention

this association again in his postwar writings on the German

situation. Despite Jung's assertion, there is little in common between

the kind of wandering in search of knowledge, or wisdom, that

Odin-Wotan represents and the kind of hopeless wanderings of the

masses of the unemployed, much less the lock-step marches and parades

of troops of uniformed soldiers.

Odin (or Odinn) is the name given to this deity among the Northern

Scandinavian tribes; it means something like "gracious" (huldreich)

god, but the word root is also connected to words meaning inspiration,

prophetic trance, ecstasy/seizure, divine madness, intoxication, and

rage. He is the god of shamans, poets (skalds), prophetic seers, and

warriors--all of whom might describe themselves as seized (ergriffen)

by Odin, when in their special state of inspiration. Wotan (or Wodan,

Woden) was his name among the Southern tribes, including the Saxons,