Le dieu cornu des Indo-Européens

Le dieu cornu des Indo-Européens

par Thomas Ferrier

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com

De toutes les figures divines du panthéon proto-indo-européen, celle du dieu « cornu » est la plus complexe et la moins analysée. Elle est pourtant essentielle, même si son importance n’est pas comparable à celle du dieu de l’orage, dont il est souvent le compagnon de lutte mais parfois aussi l’adversaire. On le retrouve chez presque tous les peuples indo-européens, à l’exception notable des Germains même si, on le verra, il est possible d’y retrouver sa trace. Son nom originel était sans doute *Pauson, « celui qui guide ». Représenté avec deux cornes, il fut alors surnommé chez certains peuples le dieu « cornu ».

Chez les Grecs, l’équivalent en toutes choses de *Pauson était le dieu Pan. Son nom, qui ne signifiait pas « tout », comme une étymologie populaire le proposait, dérive directement de son ancêtre indo-européen. Pan est justement représenté cornu avec des pieds de bouc. Il était le dieu des troupeaux, qu’il protégeait contre les loups. C’est là un de ses rôles les plus anciens. On le dit natif d’Arcadie, une région de collines où il était très sollicité par les bergers du Péloponnèse. Son nom a également donné celui de « panique », car on dotait Pan de la capacité d’effrayer les ennemis.

Pan n’était pas le fils de n’importe quel dieu. Il était celui d’Hermès avec lequel il se confond. Comme souvent chez les Grecs, un même dieu indo-européen pouvait prendre plusieurs formes. On confondait ainsi Eôs et Aphrodite ou encore Hélios et Apollon. Le premier portait le nom originel, le second celui d’une épiclèse devenue indépendante. Pan et Hermès étaient dans le même cas de figure. Hermès disposait de la plupart des rôles auparavant dévolus à celui dont les Grecs feront paradoxalement le fils. Il était le dieu des chemins et lui aussi conducteur des troupeaux. On raconte que dans ses premières années il déroba le troupeau dont Apollon avait la garde. C’était le dieu des voleurs et le dieu qui protégeait en même temps contre le vol. Il était aussi le gardien des frontières, d’où sa représentation sous forme d’une borne, tout comme le dieu latin Terminus. Il était également le dieu du commerce et de l’échange, le protecteur des marchands. Enfin, Hermès était un dieu psychopompe, conduisant les âmes des morts aux Champs Elyséens ou dans le sombre royaume d’Hadès.

En Inde, l’homologue de Pan était le dieu Pusan. A la différence de Pan, Pusan avait conservé l’intégralité de ses prérogatives. Il était dieu psychopompe, emmenant les âmes chez Yama. Il protégeait les voyageurs contre les brigands et les animaux sauvages. Ce dieu offrait à ceux qu’il appréciait sa protection et la richesse symbolisée par la possession de troupeaux. Son chariot était conduit par des boucs, là encore un animal associé au Pan grec.

Le dieu latin Faunus, qui fut associé par la suite non sans raison avec Pan, se limitait à protéger les troupeaux contre les loups, d’où son surnom de Lupercus (sans doute « tueur de loup »), alors que Mars était au contraire le protecteur de ces prédateurs. Son rôle était donc mineur. Le dieu des chemins était Terminus et le dieu du commerce, lorsque les Romains s’y adonnèrent, fut Mercure, un néologisme à base de la racine *merk-. Faunus était également le dieu des animaux sauvages auprès de Silvanus, dieu des forêts.

Enfin, le dieu lituanien Pus(k)aitis était le dieu protecteur du pays et le roi des créatures souterraines, avatar déchu d’une grande divinité indo-européenne mais qui avait conservé son rôle de gardien des routes et donc des frontières.

Les autres peuples indo-européens, tout en conservant la fonction de ce dieu, oublièrent en revanche son nom. Les Celtes ne le désignèrent plus que par le nom de Cernunnos, le dieu « cornu ». En tant que tel, il était le dieu de la richesse de la nature, le maître des animaux sauvages comme d’élevage, le dieu conducteur des morts et un dieu magicien. Il avait enseigné aux druides son art sacré, d’où son abondante représentation en Gaule notamment. Sous le nom d’Hernè, il a pu s’imposer également chez les Germains voisins. Représenté avec des bois de cerf et non des cornes au sens strict, il était le dieu le plus important après Taranis et Lugus. En revanche, en Bretagne et en Irlande, il était absent. Son culte n’a pas pu traverser la Manche. Chez les Hittites, le dieu cornu Kahruhas était son strict équivalent mais notre connaissance à son sujet est des plus limités.

Dans le panthéon slave, les deux divinités les plus fondamentales était Perun, maître de l’orage et dieu de la guerre, et Volos, dieu des troupeaux. Même si Volos est absent du panthéon officiel de Kiev établi par Vladimir en 980, son rôle demeura sous les traits de Saint Basile (Vlasios) lorsque la Rous passa au christianisme. Il était notamment le dieu honoré sur les marchés, un lieu central de la vie collective, d’où le fait que la Place Rouge de Moscou est jusqu’à nos jours dédiée à Basile. Volos n’était pas que le dieu des troupeaux. Il était le dieu des morts, ne se contentant pas de les conduire en Nav, le royaume des morts, même si la tradition slave évoque éventuellement un dieu infernal du nom de Viy. Il apportait la richesse et la prospérité en même temps que la fertilité aux femmes. Dieu magicien, il était le dieu spécifique des prêtres slaves, les Volkhvy, même si ces derniers avaient charge d’honorer tous les dieux. Perun et Volos s’opposaient souvent, le dieu du tonnerre n’hésitant pas à le foudroyer car Volos n’était pas nécessairement un dieu bon, et la tradition l’accusait d’avoir volé le troupeau de Perun. Une certaine confusion fit qu’on vit en lui un avatar du serpent maléfique retenant les eaux célestes, qui était Zmiya dans le monde slave, un dragon vaincu par la hache de Perun, tout comme Jormungandr fut terrassé par Thor dans la mythologie scandinave.

Dans le monde germanique, aucun dieu ne correspond vraiment au *Pauson indo-européen. La société germano-scandinave n’était pas une civilisation de l’élevage, et les fonctions commerciales relevaient du dieu Odin. Wotan-Odhinn, le grand dieu germanique, s’était en effet emparé de fonctions relevant de Tiu-Tyr (en tant que dieu du ciel et roi des dieux), de Donar-Thor (en tant que dieu de la guerre). Il existait certes un Hermod, dont le nom est à rapprocher de celui d’Hermès, mais qui avait comme seul et unique rôle celui de messager des dieux. Mais c’est sans doute Freyr, dont l’animal sacré était le sanglier, qui peut être considéré comme le moins éloigné de *Pauson. Frère jumeau de Freyja, la déesse de l’amour, il incarnait la fertilité sous toutes ses formes mais était aussi un dieu magicien. On ne le connaît néanmoins pas psychopompe, pas spécialement dédié non plus au commerce, ni à conduire des troupeaux. Wotan-Odhinn là encore était sans doute le conducteur des morts, soit en Helheimr, pour les hommes du commun, soit au Valhöll, pour les héros morts au combat. Le *Pauson proto-germanique a probablement disparu de bonne date, remplacé dans tous ses rôles par plusieurs divinités.

*Pauson était donc un dieu polyvalent. En tant que dieu des chemins, dieu « guide », ce que son nom semble signifier, il patronnait toutes les formes de déplacement, les routes mais aussi les frontières et les échanges. Il était en outre le dieu des animaux sauvages et des troupeaux, qu’il conduisait dans les verts pâturages. Il conduisait même les âmes morts aux Enfers et délivrait aux hommes les messages des dieux, même si ce rôle de dieu messager était partagé avec la déesse de l’arc-en-ciel *Wiris (lituanienne Vaivora, grecque Iris). C’était un dieu qui maîtrisait parfaitement les chemins de la pensée humaine. Les Grecs firent ainsi d’Hermès un dieu créateur et même celui de l’intelligence théorique aux côtés d’Athéna et d’Héphaïstos. Ils lui attribuèrent l’invention de l’écriture et même de la musique. Il est logique d’en avoir fait un magicien, capable de tous les tours et de tous les plans, y compris de s’introduire chez Typhon pour récupérer les chevilles divines de Zeus ou de libérer Arès, prisonnier d’un tonneau gardé par les deux géants Aloades. Sous les traits du romain Mercure, main dans la main avec Mars, il finit par incarner la puissance générée par le commerce, facteur de paix et de prospérité pour la cité autant que les légions à ses frontières.

Son importance était telle que les chrétiens annoncèrent sa mort, « le grand Pan est mort », pour signifier que le temps du paganisme était révolu. Pourtant il ne disparut pas, alors ils en firent leur Diable cornu et aux pieds de bouc. Il conserva ainsi son rôle de dieu des morts mais uniquement pour les pêcheurs, les vertueux accédant au paradis de Dieu.

Thomas FERRIER (PSUNE/LBTF)

Múdspelli

Múdspelli

 

by Olivier van Renswoude

Ex: http://taaldacht.nl

Also available in English.

In de Germaanse letterkunde van de vroege Middeleeuwen bestaat een zeer geheimzinnig woord dat telkenmale in één adem wordt genoemd met vuur en verwoesting en het einde van de wereld, te weten Múdspelli. Het is onduidelijk wat het letterlijk betekent en de vraag is bovendien of het oorspronkelijk een christelijk begrip is of dat het uit het oude Germaanse heidendom stamt. Er zijn al vele voorstellen gedaan, maar geen ervan is echt overtuigend. Valt er dan wellicht een nieuwe duiding te bedenken?

Saksen

Aan het begin van de negende eeuw is de kerstening van de Saksen –woonachtig in wat nu Noordwest-Duitsland en Noordoost-Nederland is– in volle gang. Als onderdeel van deze inspanningen verschijnt er tussen 825 en 850 een bijzonder werk: een Oudsaksisch heldendicht van wel zesduizend verzen, geheel in Germaans stafrijm, dat het verhaal van Jezus vertelt als ware hij een hoofdman die krijgers onder zich heeft en door de onmetelijke wouden van Middilgard reist. Het is niets minder dan de Germaanse uitgave van de blijde boodschap. De dichter is onbekend en hij heeft zijn werk geen naam gegeven, maar hij noemt Jezus onder meer de Hêliand (‘Heiland, Verlosser’) en onder die naam staat het thans bekend.

In verzen 2589b-2592a komen wij het geheimzinnige woord dan tegen (vertaling Van Vredendaal):

Tot wasdom komen ze samen;
de verdoemden groeien met de goeden op,
totdat Múdspelli’s macht over de mensen komt
bij het einde der tijden.

En een flink eind later, in verzen 4352a–64, andermaal (vertaling Van Vredendaal):

Wees waakzaam! Gewis komt voor jullie
de schitterende doemdag: dan verschijnt de heer
met zijn onmetelijke macht en het vermaarde uur,
de wending van de wereld. Wacht je er dus voor
dat hij je niet besluipt als je slaapt op je rustbed,
je bij verrassing overvalt bij je verraderlijke werken,
bij misdaad en zonde. Múdspelli komt
in duistere nacht. Zoals een dief zich beweegt
in het diepste geheim, zo zal de dag komen,
de laatste van dit licht, en de levenden overvallen,
gelijk de vloed deed in vroeger dagen:
de zwalpende zee verzwolg de mensen
in Noachs tijden.

Hoewel de Hêliand geen regelrechte Bijbelvertaling is komt het een en ander uiteraard zeer bekend voor: “Want gij weet zelven zeer wel, dat de dag des Heeren alzo zal komen, gelijk een dief in den nacht” (1 Thessalonicensen 5:2). Maar wie of wat Múdspelli nu genauw is blijft onduidelijk, al zal het voor de Saksische toehoorder een bekend begrip zijn geweest, wat erop duidt dat het oud is. De Hêliand is overigens het voornaamste van slechts enkele waarlijk letterkundige werken in het Oudsaksisch, dus het zal niet verbazen dat het verder niet voorkomt in Oudsaksische geschriften.

Beieren

Omstreeks 870 na Christus verschijnt verder naar het zuiden –in Beieren– een Oudhoogduits gedicht dat vertelt over de strijd tussen Elias en de Antichrist, als waren zij de keurstrijders van God en de grote Vijand. Elias verslaat de Antichrist, maar is zelf ook gewond en zodra zijn bloed de Aarde raakt ontbrandt zij op geweldige wijze. Regels 55b-60b (eigen vertaling):

De doemdag gaat dan te lande,
gaat met het vuur mannen bezoeken.
Daar kan een verwante een ander niet helpen tegenover het Múspilli.
Want de wijde aarde verbrandt geheel,
en vuur en lucht vagen alles weg;
waar is dan die beschikte grond waar een man immer met zijn verwanten voor vocht?

Het gedicht vertelt voorts dat heel Mittilgart zal branden: geen berg of boom wordt gespaard. Water droogt op, zeeën worden verzwolgen, de hemelen vlammen en de maan valt. Niets weerstaat het Múspilli. Men merke dan op dat de vorm van het woord iets anders is: in vergelijking met Oudsaksisch Múdspelli lijkt Oudhoogduits Múspilli wat meer verbasterd. Het blijft onduidelijk wat diens genauwe betekenis is, maar ook hier zal het voor de toehoorder van die tijd een bekend begrip zijn geweest.

IJsland

De laatste plekken waar het woord verschijnt –deze keer in de vorm Múspell– zijn in de Oudijslandse letterkunde. Een van de belangrijkste schriftelijke bronnen aangaande het Germaans-heidense wereldbeeld is een bundel van gedichten die thans bekend staat als de Poëtische Edda. De belangrijkste van deze is de Vǫluspá (‘voorspelling van de zienster’). Dit gedicht, dat waarschijnlijk in de 10e eeuw na Christus is opgesteld door een heiden die daarmee oeroude overlevering doorgaf, verhaalt van de schepping van de wereld en van het einde van de wereld – elders de Ragnarǫk genoemd. Wij lezen dan tegen het einde ervan, in verzen 44 en 45 (vertaling De Vries):

Een kiel uit het oosten
komt met de mannen
van Múspell beladen
en Loki aan’t roer.
Tezaam met de reuzen
rent nu de wolf,
en hen begeleidt
de broer van Byleist.

Uit het zuiden komt Surtr [‘Zwart’]
met vlammend zwaard
en gensters fonkelen
van dit godenwapen.
Rotsen barsten,
reuzen vallen,
de helweg gaan mannen,
de hemel splijt.

Elders in de Oudijslandse letterkunde krijgen wij meer te lezen over Múspell, en wel in de zogenaamde Proza-Edda, een soort dichtershandboek vol verhalen dat omstreeks 1220 door de christelijke geschiedkundige Snorri Sturluson is geschreven. Hij putte hiervoor uit de heidense overlevering, zoals de reeds genoemde gedichten hierboven, maar het is vaak niet te achterhalen in hoeverre hij er een eigen invulling aan gaf, waardoor voorzichtig lezen geboden is. In hoofdstuk 4 van het deel dat de Gylfaginning heet, meldt Snorri het volgende (eigen vertaling):

Toen sprak Derde: ‘Doch eerst was er in het zuiden de wereld die Múspell heet. Deze is licht en heet. Zó dat hij vlammend en brandend is. En hij is onbegaanbaar voor degenen die daar vreemdelingen zijn en daar niet hun vaderland hebben. Daar is een genaamd Surtr, die daar bij de grens ter verdediging zit. Hij heeft een vlammend zwaard, en bij het einde der wereld zal hij oorlog gaan voeren en alle goden verslaan en de hele wereld met vuur verbranden.’

Verderop in het verhaal wordt verteld dat Múspellsheimr (‘Múspells heem’) in de oertijd gesmolten deeltjes en vonken uitschoot en dat de goden en de dwergen hiervan de zon en de sterren hebben gemaakt. En er wordt meerdere malen verhaald van hoe Múspellsmegir (‘Múspells knapen’) en Múspellssynir (‘Múspells zonen’) op het laatst zullen uitrijden en oorlog zullen voeren, opdat Miðgarðr wordt verwoest.

Duiding

Dat het woord een samenstelling is staat vast, maar wat betekent het nu werkelijk en hoe oud is het? Is het een christelijk begrip dat zelfs IJsland wist te bereiken toen dat nog grotendeels heidens was –hetgeen op zichzelf niet ondenkbaar is– of is het oud genoeg om uit heidense tijden te stammen? Zoals gezegd is het waarschijnlijk tamelijk ouder dan zijn eerste verschijning op schrift, daar het woord al vrij bekend zal zijn geweest voor de toehoorders destijds, en lijkt het dus van heidense oorsprong.

Er is al in elk geval al aardig wat voorgesteld en het gesprek is nog steeds gaande. Een goede opsomming hiervan is te vinden in de onderaan vermelde verhandeling van Hans Jeske uit 2006. In het kort: voor het eerste lid is verband gezocht met o.a. Oudsaksisch múð ‘mond’ en Latijn mundus ‘wereld’, voor het tweede lid met o.a. Oudhoogduits spell ‘vertelling’ en spildan ‘vernietigen’, waardoor we uitkomen met duidingen als ‘mondelinge vernietiging’ (door God), ‘mondelinge vertelling’ (als onbeholpen vertaling van Latijn ōrāculum ‘goddelijke uitspraak’) of ‘wereldvernietiging’. Maar allen stuiten op vormelijke, inhoudelijke en/of geschiedkundige bezwaren, waardoor geen ervan echt weet te overtuigen. Het is dan ook de hoogste tijd voor een geheel nieuwe duiding.

Allereerst: het Oudgermaans erfde van zijn voorloper –het Proto-Indo-Europees– meerdere wijzen van samenstellingen maken. Bij één daarvan reeg men twee woorden én een achtervoegsel aan elkaar tot één onzijdig zelfstandig naamwoord. Het achtervoegsel gaf de samenstelling een lading van veelheid en verzameling. Een bekend voorbeeld hiervan is de samenstelling van *alja- ‘ander, vreemd’ + *landa- ‘land’ + *-jaⁿ (achtervoegsel) tot *aljalandjaⁿ (o.) ‘het geheel van andere landen’ oftewel ‘het buitenland’. Het woord is o.a. als Oudsaksisch elilendi, Oudhoogduits elilenti en Nederlands ellende overgeleverd. Deze wijze van samenstellen lijkt na de Oudgermaanse tijd niet meer in gebruik te zijn geweest, dus als wij zo’n samenstelling tegenkomen in de dochtertalen is zij waarschijnlijk vrij oud, namelijk van voor de kerstening der Germanen.

Welnu, Oudsaksisch Múdspelli, Oudhoogduits Múspilli en Oudnoords Múspell hebben er alles van weg genauw zo’n soort oude samenstelling te zijn. Onder meer omdat ze onzijdig zijn en een spoor van het genoemde achtervoegsel tonen. Dat wil zeggen, ze lijken terug te gaan op Oudgermaans *Mūdaspalljaⁿ (o.), een samenstelling van *mūda- + *spalla- + *-jaⁿ (achtervoegsel). De vraag is vervolgens: wat zijn *mūda- en *spalla-?

Over *spalla- kunnen we bondig zijn. Hoewel het anderszins niet is overgeleverd in de Germaanse talen is dit woord goed te verbinden met de Proto-Indo-Europese wortel *(s)pel-, *(s)pol-, die wij verder kennen van onder meer Oudkerkslavisch poljǫ, polĕti ‘branden, vlammen’ en Russisch pólomja ‘vlam’. Dan zou Oudgermaans *spalla- ook iets als ‘vuur’ of ‘vlam’ hebben betekend.

Over *mūda- valt meer te vertellen. Dit woord is, weliswaar verlengd met verschillende achtervoegsels, namelijk wél overgeleverd in de Germaanse talen. Enerzijds zijn er –met een achtervoegsel dat vertrouwdheid en verkleining aangeeft– Middelnederduits mudeke, 16e eeuws Nederlands muydick, streektalig Duits Muttich, Mutch, Mautch en Oostvlaams muik, die allen ongeveer ‘bewaarplaats of voorraad van ooft of geld’ betekenen, maar soms meer algemeen en oorspronkelijk ‘opeenhoping’. Anderszijds zijn er Oudhoogduits múttun (mv.) ‘voorraadschuren’, Silezisch Maute ‘bergplaats van ooft’ en Beiers Mauten ‘voorraad van ooft’.

Vervolgens kunnen wij dit *mūda- verbinden met de Proto-Indo-Europese wortel *meuH- ‘overvloedig, krachtig in vermenigvuldiging’ (voorgelegd door Michael Weiss in 1996), die anderszins ten grondslag ligt aan Grieks mūríos ‘talloos, onmetelijk’, Hettitisch mūri- ‘tros ooft’, Luwisch-Hettitisch mūwa- ‘een ontzagwekkende eigenschap, van bijvoorbeeld een koning of god’, Hiërogliefisch Luwisch mūwa- ‘overweldigen (o.i.d.)’ en ten slotte Latijn mūtō en Oudiers moth, beide ‘mannelijk geslachtsdeel’. Mogelijk horen hierbij ook Oudgermaans *mūhō ‘grote hoop’ (vanwaar o.a. Oudengels múha en Oudnoords múgi) en *meurjōn (vanwaar o.a. Nederlands mier).

Hieruit valt op te maken dat Oudgermaans *mūda- waarschijnlijk zoveel betekende als ‘opeenhoping, veelheid, overvloed e.d.’ of anders in bijvoeglijke zin ‘overvloedig’.

Besluit

*Mūdaspalljaⁿ is dan een zeer oud, heidens begrip dat het beste is op te vatten als het ‘Overvloedige Gevlamte’ of het ‘Vuur des Overvloeds’ en bij uitbreiding het ‘Vurige Wereldeinde’. En dat is een betekenis die uitstekend past in de zinsverbanden waarin we het woord in de dochtertalen tegenkomen. Men leze hen boven maar eens terug. Een mogelijk bezwaar is evenwel dat het woord dan uit tamelijk zeldzame woordstof is opgebouwd. Maar zoiets zouden we juist verwachten van een oud, mythologisch geladen woord. Germaanse dichters gebruikten vaak woorden die in de algemene taal niet of nauwelijks (meer) voorkwamen om zo een stijl van verheven ernst te scheppen.

Op grond van de Oudijslandse benamingen Múspellsmegir (‘Múspells knapen’) en Múspellssynir (‘Múspells zonen’) is wel betoogd dat Múspell een reus of iets dergelijks is. Maar het woord is zoals gezegd onzijdig en diens ‘knapen’ en ‘zonen’ zijn volgens de hier voorgesteld duiding goed te begrijpen als een dichterlijke voorstelling van de afzonderlijke vlammen die voortrazen als heel de wereld wordt verzwolgen.

De Vǫluspá verhaalt dat na deze eindstrijd de Aarde herrijst –groen en fris– en dat mensen een zorgeloos leven in vreugde zullen leiden. De overeenkomsten met de christelijke leer over het hiernamaals op een Nieuwe Aarde zijn opvallend en vaak wordt er aan ontlening gedacht. Doch als we beseffen dat er in de Oudgermaanse tijd menig langhuis en medehal in vlammen moet zijn opgegaan, wouden konden branden door ongelukkige blikseminslagen, en menig akker door vijanden ware verschroeid, en er niets anders opzat dan te herbouwen en herzaaien, dan is het goed mogelijk dat de heidenen van weleer dachten dat ooit heel Middilgard in het Múdspelli zou eindigen, dat de wereld der mannen zou branden in een Alverzengend Vuur, vooraleer het weer zou herrijzen – groen en fris.

Verwijzingen

Faulkes, A., Edda (Londen, 1995)

Jeske, H., “Zur Etymologie des Wortes muspilli”, in Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, Bd. 135, H. 4 (2006), pp. 425-434

Krahe, H. & W. Meid, Germanische Sprachwissenschaft III: Wortbildungslehre (Berlijn, 1969)

Philippa, M., e.a., Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (webuitgave)

Rix, H., Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben, 2. Auflage (Wiesbaden, 2001)

Simek, R., Lexikon der germanischen Mythologie, 3. Auflage (Stuttgart, 2006)

Vaan, M. de, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden, 2008)

Vredendaal, J. van, Heliand (Amsterdam, 2006)

Vries, J. de, Nederlands etymologisch woordenboek (Leiden, 1971)

Vries, J. de, Edda: Goden- en heldenliederen uit de Germaanse oudheid, 10e druk (Deventer, 1999)

Weiss, M., “Greek μυϱίος ‘countless’, Hittite mūri- ‘bunch (of fruit)’”, in Historische Sprachforschung, 109. Bd., 2. H. (1996), pp. 199-214

MYTHS AND MENDACITIES: THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS

MYTHS AND MENDACITIES:  THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS

Tomislav Sunic
(The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 4, Winter 2014–2015)

When discussing the myths of ancient Greece one must first define their meaning and locate their historical settings. The word “myth” has a specific meaning when one reads the ancient Greek tragedies or when one studies the theogony or cosmogony of the early Greeks. By contrast, the fashionable expression today such as “political mythology” is often laden with value judgments and derisory interpretations. Thus, a verbal construct such as “the myth of modernity” may be interpreted as an insult by proponents of modern liberalism. To a modern, self-proclaimed supporter of liberal democracy, enamored with his own system-supporting myths of permanent economic progress and the like, phrases, such as “the myth of economic progress” or “the myth of democracy,” may appear as egregious political insults.

For many contemporaries, democracy is not just a doctrine that could be discussed; it is not a “fact” that experience could contradict; it is the truth of faith beyond any dispute. (1)

Criticizing, therefore, the myth of modern democracy may be often interpreted as a sign of pathological behavior. Given this modern liberal dispensation, how does one dare use such locutions as “the myth of modern democracy,” or “the myth of contemporary historiography,” or “the myth of progress” without being punished?

Ancient European myths, legends and folk tales are viewed by some scholars, including some Christian theologians, as gross re-enactments of European barbarism, superstition, and sexual promiscuity. (2)  However, if a reader or a researcher immerses himself in the symbolism of the European myths, let alone attempts to decipher the allegorical meaning of the diverse creatures in those myths, such as, for instance, the scenes from the Orphic rituals, the hellhole of Tartarus, the carnage in the Iliad or in the Nibelungenlied, or the final divine battle in Ragnarök, then those mythical scenes take on a different, albeit often a self-serving meaning. (3) After all, in our modern so-called enlightened and freedom-loving liberal societies, citizens are also entangled in a profusion of bizarre infra-political myths, in a myriad of hagiographic tales, especially those dealing with World War II victimhoods, as well as countless trans-political legends which are often enforced under penalty of law. There-fore, understanding ancient and modern European myths and myth-makers, means, first and foremost, reading between the lines and strengthening one’s sense of the metaphor.

In hindsight when one studies the ancient Greek myths with their surreal settings and hyperreal creatures, few will accord them historical veracity or any empirical or scientific value. However, few will reject them as outright fabrications. Why is that? In fact, citizens in Europe and America, both young and old, still enjoy reading the ancient Greek myths because most of them are aware not only of their strong symbolic nature, but also of their didactic message. This is the main reason why those ancient European myths and sagas are still popular. Ancient European myths and legends thrive in timelessness; they are meant to go beyond any historical time frame; they defy any historicity. They are open to anybody’s “historical revisionism” or interpretation. This is why ancient European myths or sagas can never be dogmatic; they never re-quire the intervention of the thought police or a politically correct enforcer in order to make themselves readable or credible.

The prose of Homer or Hesiod is not just a part of the European cultural heritage, but could be interpreted also as a mirror of the pre-Christian European subconscious. In fact, one could describe ancient European myths as primal allegories where every stone, every creature, every god or demigod, let alone each monster, acts as a role model representing a symbol of good or evil. (4) Whether Hercules historically existed or not is beside the point. He still lives in our memory. When we were young and when we were reading Homer, who among us did not dream about making love to the goddess Aphrodite? Or at least make some furtive passes at Daphne? Apollo, a god with a sense of moderation and beauty was our hero, as was the pesky Titan Prometheus, al-ways trying to surpass himself with his boundless intellectual curiosity. Prometheus unbound is the prime symbol of White man’s irresistible drive toward the unknown and toward the truth irrespective of the name he carries in ancient sagas, modern novels, or political treatises. The English and the German poets of the early nineteenth century, the so -called Romanticists, frequently invoked the Greek gods and especially the Titan Prometheus. The expression “Romanticism” is probably not adequate for that literary time period in Europe because there was nothing romantic about that epoch or for that matter about the prose of authors such as Coleridge, Byron, or Schiller, who often referred to the ancient Greek deities:

Whilst the smiling earth ye governed still,
And with rapture’s soft and guiding hand
Led the happy nations at your will,
Beauteous beings from the fable-land!
Whilst your blissful worship smiled around,
Ah! how different was it in that day!
When the people still thy temples crowned,
Venus Amathusia!  (5)

Many English and German Romanticists were political realists and not daydreamers, as modern textbooks are trying to depict them. All of them had a fine foreboding of the coming dark ages. Most of them can be described as thinkers of the tragic, all the more as many of them end-ed their lives tragically. Many, who wanted to arrest the merciless flow of time, ended up using drugs. A poetic drug of choice among those “pagan” Romanticists in the early nineteenth-century Europe was opi-um and its derivative, the sleeping beauty laudanum. (6)

Myth and religion are not synonymous, although they are often used synonymously—depending again on the mood and political beliefs of the storyteller, the interpreter, or the word abuser. There is a difference between religion and myth—a difference, as stated above, depending more on the interpreter and less on the etymological differences between these two words. Some will persuasively argue that the miracles per-formed by Jesus Christ were a series of Levantine myths, a kind of Oriental hocus-pocus designed by an obscure Galilean drifter in order to fool the rootless, homeless, raceless, and multicultural masses in the dying days of Rome.(7)

Some of our Christian contemporaries will, of course, reject such statements. If such anti-Christian remarks were uttered loudly today in front of a large church congregation, or in front of devout Christians, it may lead to public rebuke.

In the modern liberal system, the expression “the religion of liberalism” can have a derisory effect, even if not intended. The word “religion” derives from the Latin word religare, which means to bind together or to tie together. In the same vein some modern writers and historians use the expression “the religion of the Holocaust” without necessarily assigning to the noun “religion” a pejorative or abusive meaning and without wishing to denigrate Jews. (8)

However, the expression “the religion of the Holocaust” definitely raises eyebrows among the scribes of the modern liberal system given that the memory of the Holocaust is not meant to enter the realm of religious or mythical transcendence, but instead remain in the realm of secular, rational belief. It must be viewed as an undisputed historical fact. The memory of the Holocaust, however, has ironically acquired quasi-transcendental features going well beyond a simple historical narrative. It has become a didactic message stretching well beyond a given historical time period or a given people or civilization, thus escaping any time frame and any scientific measurement. The notion of its “uniqueness” seems to be the trait of all monotheistic religions which are hardly in need of historical proof, let alone of forensic or material documentation in order to assert themselves as universally credible.

The ancestors of modern Europeans, the ancient polytheist Greeks, were never tempted to export their gods or myths to distant foreign peoples. By contrast, Judeo -Christianity and Islam have a universal message, just like their secular modalities, liberalism and communism. Failure to accept these Islamic or Christian beliefs or, for that matter, deriding the modern secular myths embedded today in the liberal system, may result in the persecution or banishment of modern heretics, often under the legal verbiage of protecting “human rights” or “protecting the memory of the dead,” or “fighting against intolerance.” (9).

There is, however, a difference between “myth” and “religion,” although these words are often used synonymously. Each religion is history-bound; it has a historical beginning and it contains the projection of its goals into a distant future. After all, we all measure the flow of time from the real or the alleged birth of Jesus Christ. We no longer measure the flow of time from the fall of Troy, ab urbem condita, as our Roman ancestors did. The same Christian frame of time measurement is true not just for the Catholic Vatican today, or the Christian-inspired, yet very secular European Union, but also for an overtly atheist state such as North Korea. So do Muslims count their time differently—since the Hegira (i.e., the flight of Muhammad from Mecca), and they still spiritually dwell in the fifth century, despite the fact that most states where Muslims form a majority use modern Western calendars. We can observe that all religions, including the secular ones, unlike myths, are located in a historical time frame, with well-marked beginnings and with clear projections of historical end-times.

On a secular level, for contemporary dedicated liberals, the true un-disputed “religion” (which they, of course, never call “religion”) started in 1776, with the day of the American Declaration of Independence, whereas the Bolsheviks began enforcing their “religion” in 1917. For all of them, all historical events prior to those fateful years are considered symbols of “the dark ages.”

What myth and religion do have in common, however, is that they both rest on powerful symbolism, on allegories, on proverbs, on rituals, on initiating labors, such as the ones the mythical Hercules endured, or the riddles Jason had to solve with his Argonauts in his search for the Golden Fleece. (10) In a similar manner, the modern ideology of liberalism, having become a quasi-secular religion, consists also of a whole set and subsets of myths where modern heroes and anti-heroes appear to be quite active. Undoubtedly, modern liberals sternly reject expressions such as “the liberal religion,” “the liberal myth,” or “the liberal cult.” By contrast, they readily resort to the expressions such as “the fascist myth” or “the communist myth,” or “the Islamo-fascist myth” whenever they wish to denigrate or criminalize their political opponents. The modern liberal system possesses also its own canons and its own sets of rituals and incantations that need to be observed by contemporary believers— particularly when it comes to the removal of political heretics.

Myths are generally held to be able to thrive in primitive societies only. Yet based on the above descriptions, this is not always the case. Ancient Greece had a fully developed language of mythology, yet on the spiritual and scientific level it was a rather advanced society. Ancient Greek mythology had little in common with the mythology of today’s Polynesia whose inhabitants also cherish their own myths, but whose level of philosophical or scientific inquiry is not on a par with that of the ancient Greeks.

Did Socrates or Plato or Aristotle believe in the existence of harpies, Cyclops, Giants, or Titans? Did they believe in their gods or were their gods only the personified projects of their rituals? Very likely they did believe in their gods, but not in the way we think they did. Some modern scholars of the ancient Greek mythology support this thesis: “The dominant modern view is the exact opposite. For modern ritualists and indeed for most students of Greek religion in the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century, rituals are social agendas that are in conception and origin prior to the gods, who are regarded as mere human constructs that have no reality outside the religious belief system that created them.” (11).

One can argue that the symbolism in the myths of ancient Greece had an entirely different significance for the ancient Greeks than it does for our contemporaries. The main reason lies in the desperate effort of the moderns to rationally explain away the mythical world of their ancestors by using rationalist concepts and symbols. Such an ultrarational drive for the comprehension of the distant and the unknown is largely due to the unilinear, monotheist mindset inherited from Judaism and from its offshoot Christianity and later on from the Enlightenment. In the same vein, the widespread modern political belief in progress, as Georges Sorel wrote a century ago, can also be observed as a secularization of the biblical paradise myth. “The theory of progress was adopted as a dogma at the time when the bourgeoisie was the conquering class; thus one must see it as a bourgeois doctrine.” (12)

The Western liberal system sincerely believes in the myth of perpetual progress. Or to put it somewhat crudely, its disciples argue that the purchasing power of citizens must grow indefinitely. Such a linear and optimistic mindset, directly inherited from the Enlightenment, prevents modern citizens in the European Union and America from gaining a full insight into the mental world of their ancestors, thereby depriving them of the ability to conceive of other social and political realities. Undoubtedly, White Americans and Europeans have been considerably affected by the monotheistic mindset of Judaism and its less dogmatic offshoot, Christianity, to the extent that they have now considerable difficulties in conceptualizing other truths and other levels of knowledge.

It needs to be stressed, though, that ancient European myths have a strong component of the tragic bordering on outright nihilism. Due to the onslaught of the modern myth of progress, the quasi-inborn sense of the tragic, which was until recently a unique character trait of the White European heritage, has fallen into oblivion. In the modern liberal system the notion of the tragic is often viewed as a social aberration among individuals professing skepticism or voicing pessimism about the future of the modern liberal system. Nothing remains static in the notion of the tragic. The sheer exuberance of a hero can lead a moment later to his catastrophe. The tragic trait is most visible in the legendary Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus at Colonus when Oedipus realizes that he is doomed forever for having unknowingly killed his father and for having un-knowingly had an incestuous relationship with his mother. Yet he struggles in vain to the very end in order to escape his destiny. Here is the often quoted line Nr. 1225, i.e., the refrain of the Chorus:

Not to be born is past all prizing best; but when a man has seen the light this is next best by far, that with all speed he should go thither whence he has come. (13)
The tragic consists in the fact that insofar as one strives to avoid a catastrophe, one actually brings a catastrophe upon himself. Such a tragic state of mind is largely rejected by the proponents of the liberal myth of progress.

MYTHS AND THE TRAGIC: THE COMING OF THE TITANIC AGE

Without myths there is no tragic, just like without the Titans there can be no Gods. It was the twelve Titans who gave birth to the Gods and not the other way around. It was the titanesque Kronos who gave birth to Zeus, and then, after being dethroned by his son Zeus, forced to dwell with his fellow Titans in the underworld. But one cannot rule out that the resurrection of the head Titan Kronos, along with the other Titans, may reoccur again, perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps in an upcoming eon, thus enabling the recommencement of the new titanic age. After all Prometheus was himself a Titan, although, as a dissident Titan, he had decided to be on the side of the Gods and combat his own fellow Titans. Here is how Friedrich Georg Jünger, an avid student of the ancient Greek myths and the younger brother of the famous contemporary essayist Ernst Jünger, sees it:

Neither are the Titans unrestrained power-hungry beings, nor do they scorn the law; rather, they are the rulers over a legal system whose necessity must never be put into doubt. In an awe -inspiring fashion, it is the flux of primordial elements over which they rule, holding bridle and reins in their hands, as seen in Helios. They are the guardians, custodians, supervisors, and the guides of order. They are the founders unfolding beyond chaos, as pointed out by Homer in his remarks about Atlas who shoulders the long columns holding the heavens and the Earth. Their rule rules out any confusion, any disorderly power performance. Rather, they constitute a powerful deterrent against chaos. (14)

Nothing remains new for the locked-up Titans: they know every-thing. They are the central feature in the cosmic eternal return. The Titans are not the creators of chaos, although they reside closer to chaos and are, therefore, better than the Gods—more aware of possible chaotic times. They can be called telluric deities, and it remains to be seen whether in the near future they may side up with some chthonic monsters, such as those described by the novelist H. P. Lovecraft.

It seems that the Titans are the necessary element in the cosmic balance, although they have not received due acknowledgment by contemporary students of ancient and modern mythologies. The Titans are the central feature in the study of the will to power and each White man who demonstrates this will has a good ingredient of the Titanic spirit:

What is Titanic about man? The Titanic trait occurs everywhere and it can be described in many ways. Titanic is a man who completely relies only upon himself and has boundless confidence in his own powers. This confidence absolves him, but at the same time it isolates him in a Promethean mode. It gives him a feeling of independence, albeit not devoid of arrogance, violence, and defiance. (15)

Today, in our disenchanted world, from which all gods have departed, the resurgence of the Titans may be an option for a dying Western civilization. The Titans and the titanic humans are known to be out-spoken about their supreme independence, their aversion to cutting deals, and their uncompromising, impenitent attitude. What they need in addition is a good portion of luck, or fortuna.
 
Notes:

1. Louis Rougier, La mystique démocratique (Paris: Albatros, 1983), p. 13.
2. Nicole Belmont, Paroles païennes: mythe et folklore (Paris: Imago, 1986) quotes on page 106 the German-born English Orientalist and philologist Max Müller who sees in ancient myths “a disease of language,” an approach criticized by the anthropological school of thought. His critic Andrew Lang writes: “The general problem is this: Has language—especially language in a state of ‘disease,’ been the great source of the mythology of the world? Or does mythology, on the whole, represent the survival of an old stage of thought—not caused by language—from which civilised men have slowly emancipated themselves? Mr. Max Müller is of the former, anthropologists are of the latter, opinion.” Cf. Andrew Lang, Modern Mythology (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897), p.x.
3. Thomas Bullfinch, The Golden Age of Myth and Legend (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1993).
4.See the German classicist, Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, trans. Moses Hadas (North Stratford, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 2001). Otto is quite critical of Christian epistemology. Some excerpts from this work appeared in French translation also in his article, “Les Grecs et leurs dieux,” in the quarterly Krisis (Paris), no. 23 (January 2000).
5. Friedrich Schiller, The Gods of Greece, trans. E. A. Bowring.  ttp://www.bartleby.com/270/9/2.html
6. Tomislav Sunic, “The Right Stuff,” Chronicles (October 1996), 21–22; Tomislav Sunic, “The Party Is Over,” The Occidental Observer (November 5, 2009).  http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Sunic-Drugs.html
7.Tomislav Sunic, “Marx, Moses, and the Pagans in the Secular City,” CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 24, no. 2 (Winter 1995).
8.Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011), 148–49.
9. Alain de Benoist, “Die Methoden der Neuen Inquisition,” in Schöne vernetzte Welt (Tübingen: Hohenrain Verlag, 2001), p. 190–205.
10. Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans (London: Phoenix, 1989), p. 289–303.
11. Albert Henrichs, “What Is a Greek God?,” in The Gods of Ancient Greece, ed. Jan Bremmer and Andrew Erskine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p- 26.
12. Georges Sorel, Les Illusions du progrès (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1911), p. 5–6.
13. Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, in The Complete Plays of Sophocles, ed. and trans. R. C. Jebb (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), p. 250.
14. Friedrich Georg Jünger, Die Titanen (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1944), p. 89–90.
15. Ibid., 105.

Kairós, the brief moment in which things are possible…

Ex: http://hellenismo.wordpress.com

“Running swiftly, balancing on the razor’s edge, bald but with a lock of hair on his forehead, He wears no clothes; if you grasp him from the front, you might be able to hold him, but once He has moved on not even Zeus Himself can pull him back: this is a symbol of Kairós, the brief moment in which things are possible.”

 

 

10) Know opportunity (Καιρον γνωθι)

“Kairós” is a very important and interesting word, that has a plurality of meanings. First, it means “the right measure, what is convenient, what is suitable and right”, as in the expression “kairós charitos”, right measure in honoring. It has also a strong temporal value,  and as such, it means often “the right/appropriate moment, the good occasion, the propitious moment”. Thus the expression “kairòn echei” is “it is the propitious time/moment”, “kairoŷ tycheîn” means “meet the favorable occasion, to succeed at the right time”. In a extensive way, it means generally the occasion, the circumstance, as in “ho paròn kairós”, present time or present occasion- “hoi kairoí” are the present circumstances. It has a positive character, because it can indicate all that is useful, helpful and convenient. The two Hellenic words to indicate time are chronos and kairós: the first has a quantitative nature, while the second has a qualitative nature and is employed when something special happens. Kairós is indeed a God, the youngest child of Zeus, and He brings about what is convenient, appropriate, and comes in the right moment. He is  represented as a young and beautiful God; there was a bronze statue of Him in Sikyon on which a epigram was carved:

“Who and whence was the sculptor? From Sikyon.

And his name? Lysippo.

And who are you? Time who subdues all things.

Why do you stand on tip-toe? I am ever running.

And why you have a pair of wings on your feet? I fly with the wind.

And why do you hold a razor in your right hand? As a sign to men that I am sharper than any sharp edge.

And why does your hair hang over your face? For him who meets me to take me by the forelock.

And why, in Heaven’s name, is the back of your head bald? Because none whom I have once raced by on my winged feet will now, though he wishes it sore, take hold of me from behind.

Why did the artist fashion you? For your sake, stranger, and he set me up in the porch as a lesson.”

About this statue, here follows the description of Callistratus, Descriptions 6:

“Kairos was represented in a statue of bronze, in which art vied with nature. Kairos was a youth, from head to foot resplendent with the bloom of youth. He was beautiful to look upon as he waved his downy beard and left his hair unconfined for the south wind to toss wherever it would; and he had a blooming complexion, showing by its brilliancy the bloom of his body. He closely resembled Dionysos; for his forehead glistened with graces and his cheeks, reddening to youthful bloom, were radiantly beautiful, conveying to the beholder’s eye a delicate blush. And he stood poised on the tips of his toes on a sphere, and his feet were winged. His hair did not grow in the customary way, but its locks, creeping down over the eyebrows, let the curl fall upon his cheeks, while the back of the head of Kairos was without tresses, showing only the first indications of sprouting hair.

We stood speechless at the sight when we saw the bronze accomplishing the deeds of nature and departing from its own proper province. For though it was bronze it blushed; and though it was hard by nature, it melted into softness, yielding to all the purposes of art; and though it was void of living sensation, it inspired the belief that it had sensation dwelling within it; and it really was stationary, resting its foot firmly on the ground, but though it was standing, it nevertheless gave evidence of possessing the power of rapid motion; and it deceived your eyes into thinking that it not only was capable of advancing forward, but that it had received from the artist even the power to cleave with its winged, if it so wished, the aerial domain.

Such was the marvel, as it seemed to us; but a man who was skilled in the arts and who, with a deeper perception of art, knew how to track down the marvels of craftsmen, applied reasoning to the artist’s creation, explaining the significance of Kairos as faithfully portrayed in the statue: the wings on his feet, he told us, suggested his swiftness, and that, borne by the seasons, he goes rolling on through all eternity; and as to his youthful beauty, that beauty is always opportune and that Kairos is the only artificer of beauty, whereas that of which the beauty has withered has no part in the nature of Kairos; he also explained that the lock of hair on his forehead indicated that while he is easy to catch as he approaches, yet, when he has passed by, the moment of action has likewise expired, and that, if opportunity is neglected, it cannot be recovered.”

La tradition indo-européenne chez les Germains

La tradition indo-européenne chez les Germains

Autore: Jean Haudry

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it

Les Germains du début de la période historique étaient assez proches des Gaulois, avec lesquels certains auteurs anciens les confondent, et l’appartenance ethnique de certaines tribus frontalières est incertaine. Pourtant, la forme de leurs sociétés diffère, et leur rapport à la tradition indo-européenne plus encore.

Contrairement aux Celtes, les Germains ont conservé une part non négligeable du formulaire hérité. La poésie germanique ancienne, notamment le Chant de Hildebrand allemand, le Beowulf anglais (dont la matière vient du Danemark et de Suède), les poèmes eddiques islandais et même, en dépit de son sujet chrétien, le Heliand saxon conservent nombre de formules traditionnelles héritées qui proviennent des «antiques poèmes» des anciens Germains, «la seule forme de tradition et d’histoire qu’ils connaissent», selon Tacite, La Germanie, 2,3. Ainsi la kenning de l’or «feu des eaux» et le personnage mythologique du Rejeton des eaux. L’expression anglaise frēo nama glosée cognomen «surnom» se superpose exactement à l’expression védique priyám nāma «nom propre». Un poème eddique, les Dits d’Alviss, est fondé sur la notion traditionnelle de «langue des dieux» représentée chez Homère et dans le monde indo-iranien, étendue aux autres classes d’êtres surnaturels, alfes, géants et nains: le soleil y est dit «belle roue», comme dans l’image védique et grecque de la «roue solaire»; la terre y est nommée «la large», comme dans son nom védique. La triade pensée, parole, action est bien représentée dans le monde germanique ancien. Si, dans Heliand, elle provient du Confiteor qui la tient lui-même de l’Avesta, ses attestations dans Beowulf et dans les poèmes eddiques semblent directement héritées. La triade des fonctions structure le panthéon: les principales divinités, dont le noms ont été conservés dans ceux de jours de la semaine, sont les deux dieux souverains *Wōdanaz «furieux» et *Teiwaz «divin», le dieu guerrier *Thunaraz «tonnerre» et le couple *Frawjaz *Frawjō «maître» et «maîtresse» qui préside à l’amour. La triade est directement attestée au temple de Vieil-Upsal. De plus, avec la guerre des Ases (les trois premiers) et des Vanes (les deux derniers) le monde germanique a l’équivalent de la guerre sabine de l’histoire légendaire de Rome: une «guerre de fondation» dans laquelle s’affrontent les représentants des deux premières fonctions et ceux de la troisième avant de se réconcilier pour former ici le panthéon, là un peuple. Innovation commune latino-germanique, ce mythe ne semble pas très ancien; il paraît lié à la dernière période de la tradition, celle où la société lignagère est ébranlée par l’émergence de la société héroïque, dans laquelle la notion de «corps social» est remise en cause par les conflits internes. Il en va de même pour sa contrepartie, la «guerre de dissolution» : la discorde familiale qui provoque une guerre mondiale et la fin de la société lignagère, sujet du Mahābhārata et de la bataille de Brávellir; mais cette concordance indo-scandinave suggère un point de départ plus ancien.

La société héroïque est clairement évoquée aux chapitres 13 et 14 de la Germanie de Tacite:

«Affaires publiques ou affaires privées, il ne font rien sans être en armes. Mais la coutume veut que nul ne prenne les armes avant que la cité ne l’en ait reconnu capable. Alors, dans l’assemblée même, un des chefs ou le père ou ses proches décorent le jeune homme du bouclier et de la framée: c’est là leur toge, ce sont là les premiers honneurs de leur jeunesse; auparavant ils sont censés appartenir à une maison, ensuite à l’État. Une insigne noblesse ou les grands mérites de leurs pères obtiennent la faveur d’un chef à de tout jeunes gens; ils s’agrègent aux autres plus forts et depuis long temps déjà éprouvés, et l’on ne rougit pas de figurer parmi les compagnons. Bien plus, ce compagnonnage lui-même comporte des degrés, à la discrétion de celui à qui on s’est attaché; il y a aussi une grande émulation entre les compagnons à qui aura la première place auprès du chef, et entre les chefs à qui aura les compagnons les plus nombreux et les plus ardents. C’est la grandeur, c’est la force d’être entouré toujours d’un groupe important de jeunes gens d’élite, ornement dans la paix, garde dans la guerre. Et ce n’est pas seulement dans sa nation, c’est encore auprès des cités voisines que la réputation, que la gloire est acquise à quiconque se distingue par le nombre et la valeur de ses compagnons: on les sollicite par des ambassades, on leur offre des présents et souvent leur nom seul décide de l’issue de la guerre. Sur le champ de bataille, il est honteux pour le chef d’être vaincu en courage, il est honteux pour les compagnons de ne pas égaler le courage du chef. Mais surtout c’est une flétrissure pour toute la vie et un opprobre d’être revenu d’un combat où son chef a péri; le défendre, le sauver, rapporter à sa gloire ses propres exploits, voilà l’essence de leur engagement: les chefs combattent pour la victoire, les compagnons pour leur chef. Si la cité où ils sont nés s’engourdit dans l’oisiveté d’une longue paix, la plupart des jeunes nobles s’en vont d’eux-mêmes chez des peuples voisins qui ont alors quelque guerre car cette nation déteste l’état de paix, puis il leur est plus facile de s’illustrer dans les hasards et l’on ne peut entretenir de nombreux compagnons que par la violence et la guerre; ils exigent en effet de la libéralité de leur chef ce cheval de bataille, cette sanglante et victorieuse framée; la table du chef avec ses apprêts grossiers, mais abondante, leur tient lieu de solde; la source de la munificence est dans la guerre et le pillage».

Quand le jeune noble quitte sa famille pour un compagnonnage qui peut être extérieur à sa «nation», son obligation de fidélité, trustem et fidelitatem, selon les termes de la Loi salique, change complètement: il ne la doit plus à sa famille, mais à son seigneur. En cas de conflit, c’est à lui qu’il doit être fidèle. Ce qui peut aboutir à ce que des proches parents combattent dans des camps opposés, et parfois s’affrontent: des cousins, comme dans un passage célèbre de la Chronique anglo-saxonne, à l’année 755, ou même un père et un fils comme dans le récit traditionnel typique de la société héroïque sur lequel se fonde le Chant de Hildebrand. Les premiers mots du chapitre, «affaires publiques ou affaires privées, ils ne font rien sans être en armes» souligne le lien entre la société héroïque et la fonction guerrière devenue prédominante à l’époque des migrations. Thucydide donne une indication similaire pour les Grecs de la période protohistorique, 1,6: «Car toute la Grèce portait les armes, faute d’habitations protégées et de communications sûres: vivre sous les armes était une habitude constante, comme chez les barbares». Il semble pourtant que cet usage ait été accepté et intégré par la société lignagère. Paul le diacre rapporte que le prince langobard Alboin n’avait été admis à la table de son père Audoin qu’après être entré pour un temps dans le compagnonnage d’un roi étranger. Il ne s’agit pas, dans ce cas, d’un engagement définitif, impliquant une rupture avec sa famille, mais d’un stage.

De fait, la société lignagère traditionnelle est bien vivante dans le monde germanique décrit par Tacite. C’est une société tribale dont l’unité supérieure, qu’il nomme «cité», civitas, est la tribu, *thewdō, de *tewtā, dont le chef, *thewdanaz, est le roi. Vient ensuite le lignage, dont le nom, *kindiz, correspond exactement au latin gens. Sur les institutions du village, *thurpaz, Tacite nous rapporte les relations d’hospitalité entre voisins; sur la famille, *haimaz, les usages matrimoniaux, les règles successorales et l’obligation de solidarité: on est tenu d’embrasser les inimitiés soit d’un père, soit d’un proche, aussi bien que ses amitiés». Cette solidarité a pu s’étendre au lignage. La société comporte également trois statuts: noble, *erilaz, homme libre, *karlaz, serf, *thragilaz, *thrāhilaz. Comme chez les Grecs et les Romains, et contrairement aux Celtes et aux Indo-Iraniens, les castes ne sont pas fonctionnelles: le noble est plus guerrier que prêtre, l’homme libre a son culte domestique à côté de ses occupations pacifiques et guerrières. Mais elles ont conservé le lien traditionnel avec la triade des couleurs: dans le Chant de Ríg eddique, qui relate la genèse des trois castes de la société, le serf naît «noiraud», l’homme libre «roux, auteint vermeil», le noble a la chevelure blonde, les joues claires et les yeux vifs, «terrifiants comme ceux d’un jeune serpent»: une indication qui rappelle le qualificatif védique «au regard de maître».

La société germanique conserve des vestiges de l’état le plus ancien de la société indo-européenne. L’un est l’importance de l’oncle maternel, que signale Tacite, La Germanie, 20,5: «Le fils d’une sœur ne trouve pas moins d’égards auprès de son oncle que chez son père; certains pensent que cette parenté du sang est plus sainte et plus étroite». Cette dernière indication donne à penser que la conception n’est pas empruntée à un peuple étranger, mais qu’elle représente une tradition antique et vénérable. Comme elle est en contradiction avec la patrilinéarité qui est la règle dans l’ensemble du monde indo-européen ancien, y compris chez les Germains, et avec l’image de la semence et du champ qui en est indissociable, ce doit être un archaïsme remontant à la période la plus ancienne. A cette même période se rattachent les nombreuses légendes de peuples migrants conduits par deux jumeaux accompagnés de leur mère. Ces légendes, comparables à celle de la fondation de Rome par une bande conduite par Romulus, Remus et leur mère Rhea Silvia, ne sont explicables que dans une culture où la femme qui donne naissance à des jumeaux est expulsée avec sa progéniture, en raison de la dangerosité qui s’attache aux naissances gémellaires, et où les jumeaux sont considérés comme doués d’une puissance surnaturelle. Ce qui n’est le cas chez aucun des peuples indo-européens connus. Ici encore, une innovation est exclue, et un archaïsme est plus vraisemblable qu’un emprunt. Apparentée à celle de la première destruction de Troie, la légende du géant bâtisseur dont on connaît de nombreuses variantes dans les contes populaires rappelle la crainte ancestrale d’une nuit hivernal e qui n’aurait pas de fin: le géant demande pour salaire le soleil, la lune et Freyja. Le personnage de l’Aurore annuelle, Ostara, est au centre de la mythologie du cycle annuel des régions circumpolaires; c’est surtout vrai de son pluriel représenté par le nom allemand de Pâques, Ostern, qui correspond aux Aurores plurielles des hymnes védiques. Le mythe de l’Aurore annuelle enlevée et ramenée pas ses frères les jumeaux divins est à la base de diverses légendes, dont celle de Hilde Gudrun et celle de Finnsburh. Rappelons aussi que les Jumeaux divins sont mentionnés dans la Germanie de Tacite, qui les identifie aux Dioscures. Mais leur nom, Alces, prouve leur haute antiquité: alors qu’ailleurs ils sont liés au cheval, comme les Aśvin védiques, Hengest et Horsa, etc., les Alces sont des élans, ce qui renvoie à une période antérieure à la domestication du cheval, et donc à la période commune des Indo-Européens.

* * 

De Les peuples indo-européens d’Europe.

Alain Daniélou’s Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation

Alain Daniélou’s Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation

By Collin Cleary 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Alain Daniélou
Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India ^[2]
Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1993.

One hears a great deal today about “multiculturalism,” and the multicultural society. We (i.e., we Americans) are told that ours is a multicultural society. But, curiously, multiculturalism is also spoken of as a goal. What this reveals is that multiculturalism is not simply the recognition and affirmation of the fact that the U.S.A. is made up of different people from different cultural backgrounds. Instead, multiculturalism is an ideology which is predicated on cultural relativism. Its proponents want to convince people that (a) all cultures are equally good, rich, interesting, and wholesome, and that (b) a multicultural society can exist in which no one culture is dominant. The first idea is absurd, the second is impossible.

The apostles of multiculturalism are moved less by a genuine desire to “celebrate diversity” than by a hatred for Northern European culture, which is the semi-official, dominant culture of America. Indeed, multiculturalists generally nurture the most naive and simplistic ideas of what a culture is. Their conception of “culture” is fixated at the perceptual level: culture is costume,music, dance, decoration, food. What is essential to culture, however, is a certain Weltanschauung: a view of the world, and of human nature. It is in their response to these world views that multiculturalists reveal their true colors, for they tolerate and permit only those elements of a culture’s world view that do not conflict with liberal ideology.

Out of one side of their mouths, the multiculturalists tell us that one cannot judge a culture, that morality is culturally relative, that cultures are not better or worse, just “different,” and that we must revel in these differences. Thus, the English do not drive on the “wrong” side of the road, merely the left side. But when it’s not a matter of traffic laws, but a matter of severed clitorises, then the other, louder side of the multiculturalists’ mouths open, and they tell us that this sort of thing isn’t just different, it’s evil. In addition to this, one also sees that multiculturalism involves a relentless trivialization of important cultural differences. Thus, college students are encouraged to see religion almost as a matter of “local color.” Isn’t it wonderful that the Indians cook such spicy food, and worship such colorful gods! Isn’t it all terribly charming? They are further encouraged to view religion as a thoroughly irrational affair. Rather than encouraging an appreciation for different faiths, what this produces is a condescending attitude, and resistance to taking the claims of religion seriously when they conflict with the “rational” agenda of modern liberalism.

Indeed, multiculturalism is so anti-cultural that one is tempted to see behind it an even deeper, more sinister agenda. Perhaps the whole idea is to deliberately gut the world’s cultures, reducing their differences to matters of dress and cuisine, and to replace those earthborn guts with a plastic, Naugahyde culture of secularism, scientism, and egalitarianism. Why? Because real, significant cultural differences make it very hard for our corporations to do business overseas and to sell their wares. Solution: homogenization masquerading as “celebration of diversity.” The multiculturalists are right when they declare that de facto, the United States is a multicultural society. But there has never been a multicultural society in the history of the world in which there was not one dominant culture which provided a framework allowing the others to co-exist. To the multiculturalist, the unacknowledged framework is modern liberalism. I will assume that I do not have to rehearse for my readers the many arguments for why modern liberalism is untenable as a long-term societal framework.Where should we look, then, for a framework for a multicultural society? Why not look to the Indian caste system? It was the caste system that allowed Aryan and non-Aryan to co-exist peacefully in India for centuries.

The liberals will immediately object that the caste system is oppressive and unjust. In Virtue, Success, Pleasure and Liberation, however, Alain Daniélou argues that the caste system is actually a supremely just and peaceful arrangement. It is just because it is built on a recognition of real human difference; a “celebration of diversity,” if you will. Aristotle held that justice is treating equals equally, and unequals unequally. If people are not the same, then it is a mistake to treat them as if they are. The caste system is built on the idea that some human beings are born to work, others to fight and lead, and others to pray. The caste system gives to each human being a place, a community, a code of ethics, and a sense of identity and pride. Daniélou points out that although the system involves hierarchy, each level of the hierarchy is regarded as intrinsically valuable and as essential. Each plays a role that is regarded as important and indispensable. Thus, it is the caste system which truly affirms that different groups are merely different, not better or worse.

Is Daniélou whitewashing the caste system? Consider the words he quotes from the Mahabharata: “There is no superior caste. The Universe is the work of the Immense Being. The beings created by him were only divided into castes according to their aptitude.” But what of individuals born to the wrong caste? For example, what of a child born to the merchant class who shows aptitude to be a priest or scholar? Such things happen. Daniélou tells us that exceptional individuals are allowed to live “outside” the caste system, and are accepted as valuable members of the society as a whole. Modern society is structured on the premise that everyone is exceptional and can make up his mind what he wants to do. Given that sort of freedom, most people get lost — as witness the modern phenomenon of the “slacker,” or the flotsam and jetsam going in and out of psychiatrists’ offices every day.

Despite what I have said, this book is not a treatise on the caste system, but on the four things that all human lives must possess or achieve in order to be complete. In discussing virtue, success, pleasure, and liberation, Daniélou quotes extensively from ancient Indian texts, offering us an abundance of excellent advice about how to understand life and to live well. Indeed, this is really a book about how to lead a truly human life. Daniélou places the four aims in a cosmic context, showing how the same fourfold division is present in all levels of reality. It is present, of course, in the four castes (worker/artisan, producer/merchant, warrior/aristocrat, priest/scholar), and in the four stages of biological development (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), the four seasons, the four elements, the four races of humanity (black, yellow, red, white), the cycle of ages (yugas), the four bodily functions (digestion, assimilation, circulation, excretion), and the four points of the compass (in this order, significantly: south, east, west, north).

This is an excellent companion volume to Daniélou’s The Myths and Gods of India ^[3].

Source: Tyr, vol.. 1 (Atlanta: Ultra, 2002).

 

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Alain Daniélou’s The Myths & Gods of India

Alain Daniélou’s The Myths & Gods of India

By Collin Cleary

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Alain Daniélou
The Myths and Gods of India ^[2]
Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1991.
(Originally published as Hindu Polytheism by Bollingen Foundation, New York, 1964.)

Typically, those who profess an interest in what might be called “Indo-European spirituality” gravitate toward either the Celtic or Germanic traditions. The Indian tradition tends to be ignored. In part, this is because present-day Indians seem so different from us. We think of their culture and philosophy as “Eastern,” as alien. Physically, the Indians look very different from those of European descent (though higher caste Indians tend to look very European, right down to lighter skin and hair, and sometimes blue eyes). But if we wish to rediscover the religion and traditions of our ancestors, what better place is there to begin than with India? The oldest Indo-European texts are the Vedas, after all. To be sure, it is hard to separate what comes from the ancient Aryans in Indian religion, myth, and mysticism, and what was contributed by the indigenous peoples conquered by the Aryans. But the same problem exists with respect to the Celtic and Germanic traditions. In addition, we know far more about the culture and religion of the ancient Aryans who invaded India, than we do about the culture and religion of the Celts and the Vikings. For one thing, more ancient texts survive in India. Therefore, anyone wishing to re-construct the “old ways” must become deeply immersed in all things Indian.

It is a cliche to state this in a review, but I write the following with total sincerity: if you read only one book on Hinduism, it must be Daniélou’s Myths and Gods of India. Indeed, it is hard to imagine why one would need to read any other. Danielou’s account of Hinduism is exhaustive, profound, and detailed. The book contains, first of all, cogent arguments on behalf of polytheism.

It details the Indian cosmogony and cosmology; the nature of Space, Time, and Thought; the nature of Brahman and Maya. Daniélou gives a complete description of every major Hindu divinity in terms of his or her function, myths, and symbolism. He details the minor gods and genii. He discusses the theory behind Mantras and Yantras. There is even extensive coverage of ritual, and the manner in which the gods must be worshiped. Alain Daniélou was born in 1907 in Paris. He was a true Renaissance man, trained in music, painting, and dance. He gave recitals and exhibited his paintings. Daniélou was also an avid sportsman: a canoeing champion, and an expert race-car driver.

He was also homosexual. Daniélou and his gay lover ventured to India, traveling around in a deluxe, Silverstream camper imported from southern California, photographing erotic sculpture. They later settled down in a Maharajah’s estate on the banks of the Ganges and devoted themselves to Sanskrit, Hinduism, music, and entertaining. Daniélou gradually “went native” and stayed in India many years. In time, he became known throughout the world as an authority on Indian music and culture. He published works dealing with Hindu religion, society, music, sculpture, architecture, and other topics. It was Daniélou, more than anyone else, who was responsible for popularizing Indian music in the West (among other things, he was the “discoverer” of Ravi Shankar). Daniélou died in 1994.

The Myths and Gods of India is a delight to read, but it can also be treated as a reference work for those needing a clear and accurate account of various gods or Hindu religious concepts. For the student of Inda-European culture, the book is a treasure trove. Indeed, those who are familiar with the Inda-European comparativist school of Georges Dumézil, Jaan Puhvel, and others, will get the most out of this book. I will offer a few brief examples here.

Daniélou writes on page 27 that “Human beings, according to their nature and stage of development, are inclined toward . . . different aspects of the Cosmic Being. Those in whom consciousness is predominant worship the gods (deva); those in whom action or existence predominates worship genii (yaksha) and antigods (asura); and those in whom enjoyment or sensation predominates worship ghosts and spirits (bhuta and preta).” This suggests, of course, the Inda-European tripartition identified by Dumézil. On page 66 we learn that Soma was “brought to earth by a large hawk,” just as Odin, in the form of an eagle, brought mead to the JEsir. On page 87 we are told that “The earth is also represented as a goddess, or as a cow that feeds everyone with her milk. She is the mother of life, the substance of all things.” What can this remind us of, except the Norse Audumla?

There also seem to be parallels between Agni (the god of fire) and Loki. Like Loki, Agni is an outcast among the gods. Daniélou tells us further that, “The fire of destruction, Agni’s most fearful form, was born of the primeval waters and remains hidden under the sea, ever ready to destroy the world” (p. 89). This is reminiscent of the Midgard Serpent, the progeny of Loki. Page 151:
“When Vishnu sleeps, the universe dissolves into its formless state, represented as the causal ocean. The remnants of manifestation are represented as the serpent Remainder (Sesa) coiled upon itself and floating upon the abysmal waters.”

Daniélou tells us (p. 92) that “the sun . . . is envisaged [by the Hindus] under two aspects. As one of the spheres, one of the Vasus, the physical sun is the celestial form of fire, of agni. As the source of light, of warmth, of life, of knowledge, the solar energy is the source of all life, represented in the twelve sons-of-the-Primordial-Vastness (Adityas), the twelve sovereign principles.” In Futhark (pp. 51-52), Edred Thorsson tells us that “The sun was known by two special names in the North . . . Sol represents the phenomenon, while sunna is the noumenon, the spiritual power residing in the concept.” Also, the “twelve sons-of-the-Primordial-Vastness” immanent within the solar energy must remind us of the twelve sig-runes that make up the Wewelsburg “sun-wheel” of Karl Maria Wiligut.

Page 99: “When the gods were receiving the ambrosia of immortality, the Moon [Soma; equivalent to Mead] detected the anti-god Rahu disguised as a god. Because of the Moon Rahu had to die, but although his head was severed from his body, he could not truly die, for he had tasted the ambrosia. His head remained alive.” Mimir?

Page 103: “Rudra, the lord of tears, is said to have sprung from the forehead of the Immense-Being (Brahma) and, at the command of that god, to have divided himself into a male form and a female form . . . “Athena?

Page 103: “The Maruts (immortals) are a restless, warlike troupe of flashy young men, transposition in space of the hordes of young warriors called the marya (mortals). . . . They are the embodiment of moral and heroic deeds and of the exuberance of youth.” Maruts = Einherjar; Marya = Indo-European Männerbünde. Page 104: “The Maruts are the friends of Indra, the wielder of the thunderbolt . . .” Thor? Page 110: Indra’s thunderbolt is “shaped like a mace … ”

Page 111: “Indra had been the deity worshiped among the pastoral people of Vraja.” Again, just as Thor was.

Page 118: Varuna “is the ruler of the ‘other side,’ of the invisible world.” He is “said to be an antigod, a magician.” Odin? Page 119: “He catches the evildoers and binds them with his noose.” Criminals sacrificed to Odin were hung. Varuna also “knows the track of birds in the sky,” just as Odin knows the track of Huginn and Muninn.

Page 132: The god of death is named Yama, which means “Twin” (Ymir). “Yama’s brother is the lawgiver, Manu, who shares with him the title of progenitor of mankind.” Yama “owns two four-eyed dogs with wide nostrils . . . They watch the path of the dead.” What can this remind us of except the Greek hellhound, Cerberus?

Page 138: “In contrast to the gods, the antigods [asura] are the inclinations of the senses which, by their nature, belong to the obscuring tendency, and which delight in life, that is, in the activities of the life energies in all the fields of sensation.” This is an accurate description of the Norse Vanir. Asura is cognate with Aesir, so, oddly enough, the term shifts meaning either in the Norse or the Indian tradition.

Page 159: The four ages (yugas) are represented as white (the golden age), red, yellow, and black (the dark age). The stages of the alchemical process (as represented in the West) are black, white, yellow, and red.

Pages 243-45 detail the Upanishadic account of creation out of the primal man Purusha: “He desired a second. He became as large as a woman and man in close embrace. He divided himself into two. From him arose a husband and a wife. Hence it is that everyone is but half a being. The vacant space is filled by a wife.” This is extraordinarily similar to the account of the creation of
men and woman given by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium. The world is then created out of Purusha’s body-just as the world is created out of Ymir’s body in Norse myth. “The virile member was separated; from this virile member came forth semen and from semen the earthly waters.” This is identical to the account of the creation of the ocean in the Greek myth of the sacrifice of Ouranos by Kronos.

The account of the hero Kumara/Skana (pp. 297-300) is strikingly like the saga of Sigurd, and also similar in some respects to the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The “essences” (apsaras; pp. 304-305) are “water nymphs, eternally young women who are the courtesans and dancers of heaven.” Rhine Maidens? “They are depicted as uncommonly beautiful, with lotus eyes, slender waists, and large hips. By their languid postures and sweet words they rob those who see them of their wisdom and their intellect.” Sirens? “One can master them by stealing their clothes while they bathe. They choose lovers among the dead fallen on the battlefield.” Valkyries?

The above merely scratches the surface of this immensely rich text, which demands careful study and multiple readings.

 

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*Tiwaz, His Antiquity as a Germanic and Aryan Deity

*Tiwaz, His Antiquity as a Germanic and Aryan Deity

Ex: http://aryan-myth-and-metahistory.blogspot.com

If there is one deity present in Germanic mythology which can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European times, not just in type as with *Thunaraz but in name then it is *Tiwaz. Although He does not feature prominently in the Eddas we must remember that by the time of the close of the Viking age He had been pushed very much into the background by both *Thunaraz and *Wodanaz who took over many of His original functions. If it were not for etymology we would be much more in the dark about this enigmatic God than we currently are.

"Tyr (ON). The Old Scandinavian name for the Germanic god of the sky, war and council >*Tiwaz (OHG Ziu), who is the only Germanic god who was already important in Indo-European times: Old Indian Dyaus, Greek Zeus, Latin Jupiter, as well as Old Indian deva, Old Irish dia, Latin dei, ON tivar (plural to Tyr) 'gods' are all closely related etymologically to each other." (Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Rudolf Simek)

 

"But the name of Zeus is not confined to Greeks and Hindus. The Zeus Pater of the former and the Dyaus-pitar of the latter represent the Jupiter of the Latins, and the Tuisco, Zio, Tyr and Tiw of the German nations. The etymological changes of the word are indeed almost numberless. The brightness of the heaven reappears in the Latin dies, the Sanskrit dyu, and our day: and from the same root spring the Greek Theos, the Latin Deus, and the Lithuanian Diewas." (The Mythology of the Aryan Nations Volume 1, George William Cox)

To the Anglo-Saxons *Tiwaz was Tiw or Tig and He is remembered in the 3rd day of the week, Tuesday from the Anglo-Saxon tiwesdaeg or tiswesdag. Each time we say this day we invoke His name. The ON equivalent for Tuesday is tysdagr and the OHG dingesdag, a variant of His name as Thingsus.

"Some of the variations of the names of the various Germanic languages are also of interest. German Dienstag and Dutch dinsdag, 'Tuesday', are based on an adjective thingsus, 'protector of the thing or assembly', used to describe the war god, and this suggests that the predecessor of Tyr had a connection with lawful assembly that is hardly to be seen in the god as we know him." (Handbook of Norse Mythology, John Lindow)

 He was equated with the Roman God Mars as He became relegated to being a war God from His once lofty position as supreme deity of both the Germanic and Aryan peoples. *Thunaraz and *Tiwaz are in fact older deities than *Wodanaz but the Eddas relegate both of these Gods to being sons of Odin. Thus the role and nature of *Wodanaz may have been much different from the Odin that is left to us in the rather late Eddas.

"We see that Tyr has lost most of the glory implied by the etymology of his name, which derives from the same Indo-European root as the names of Zeus and Jupiter and of our word 'deity' (compare Latis deus), his predecessor may once have been a far greater warrior than Tyr seems to be in the extant mythology.We surmise that the original Odin is seen in his fickle and cunning aspects, not in his role as lord of hosts and ruler of the pantheon. Similarly, we surmise that the predecessor of Thor might possibly once have been the head of the pantheon, and that the predecessor of Frigg may once have been inspired love the way Freyja does in the texts that have come down to us." (Lindow)

The eclipse of the glory of this ancient God is emphasised in Jaan Puhvel's Comparative Mythology:

"In Scandinavia he is a sunken god in the heyday of the Odinic death cult, but his intrinsic eminence is not in question; witness the lingering importance of the Continental Tiw-Saxnot (in a ninth century Old Saxon baptismal vow the convert renounces allegiance to Thunaer, Woden, and Saxnote).

Puhvel draws a comparison with the Irish Nuada who like *Tiwaz was once the leader of the Celtic family of Gods until eclipsed by Lugh, the equivalent of *Wodanaz:

"The ascendancy of Lug over Nuada parallels the eclipsing of Tyr by Odin in Norse tradition."

Like Tyr, Nuada also lost His arm but it was later replaced by a false silver one:

"Their king was Nuada, who lost his arm in the battle against the Fir Bolg." (Puhvel)

After the fitting of His silver arm He became known as Nuada Argatlam (Nuada of the Silver Hand). Shortly after this Nuada loses his sovereignity over the Tuatha De Danann to Lugh. It is conjectured that the reason for this is that He became blemished due to His physical maiming.

In previous articles I have speculated that the God who the Semnones worshipped in their sacred central grove was none other than *Tiwaz. They were also called Ziuwari. Ziu is remembered in many place names and mountain names in Germany and Switzerland. Even plants were named after Him:

"The names of plants also confess the god: ON. Tysfiola, I dare say after the Lat. viola Martis, march-violet; Tyrhialm (aconitum), otherwise Thorhialm, Thorhat (helmet, hat), conf. Germ. sturmhut, eisenhut, Dan. troldhat, a herb endowed with magic power, whose helmet-like shape might suggest either of those warlike gods Tyr and Thorr; Tyvidr, Ty's wood, Dan. Tyved, Tysved (daphne mezereum), in the Helsing. dial. tis, tistbast, the mezereon, a beautiful poison flower." ( Teutonic Mythology Volume 1, Jacob Grimm)

Grimm also points out that the rune Tiwaz is the only rune which specifically names a Germanic deity:

"How comes it that no rune has taken its name from Wuotan or Odinn, the inventor of writing itself? 'R=reid, rad, ' i.e., waggon, may indirectly at least be referred to the god of the Thunder-car; and F according to one interpretation signifies Freyr. Anyhow, T=Tyr appears to have been a supremely honoured symbol, and the name of this god to have been specially sacred: in scratching the runes of victory on the sword, the name of Tyr had to be twice inserted, Saem. 194b. The shape of the rune ᛏ has an obvious resemblance to the old-established symbol of the planet Mars when set upright ♂ , and an AS. poem on the runes expressly says: tir bid tacna sum (tir is one of the tokens, is a certain sign); where again the derivative form tir is employed to explain the simple Tiw or Ti."

Interestingly Grimm goes on to analyse the Anglo-Saxon Ear rune ᛠ which does resemble the Tir rune. This rune is the final rune of the Anglo-Saxon Futhork but the 29th rune of the 33 rune Northumbrian Futhork. It is taken to signify the grave, dust. However Gimm associates this rune with Tyr/Tiw/Zio and discusses how its name Ear is linked to the Irminsul:

"Evidence as regards Low Germany is found both in the rune Ear occurring in Anglo-Saxon, and in the remarkable name of Eresburg, Aeresburg being given to a notable seat of pagan worship in a district of Westphalia, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Irminsul (v. supra, p 116). That it was strictly Eresberg (as Siegburg was originally Sigberg, p. 198), follows both from the Latin rendering mons Martis, and from its later name Mersberg, whose initial M could be explained by the contraction of the words 'in dem Eresberge, Aresberge', or it may be an imitation of the Latin name. There was a downright Marsberg in another district of Westphalia. This Eresberc then is a Ziesberc, a Sig-tiwes-berg, and yet more closely an Arreopagus, Mars' hill."

This association between *Tiwaz and Irmin (the high God of the Arya, know also as Eremon, Aryaman, Airyaman and Ariomanus amongst the various Aryan peoples) is further demonstrated in the names of the days of the week amongst High German tribes:

"Still more plainly are High German races, especially the Bavarian (Marcomannic) pointed to by that singular name for the third day of the week, Ertag, Iertag, Irtag, Eritag, Erchtag, Erichtag, which answers to the rune Eor, and up to this moment lives to part off the Bavarians, Austrians and Tyrolese from the Swabians and Swiss (who, as former Ziowari, stick to Ziestag); along the boundary line of these races must also have run formerly the frontier between Eor-worship and Zio-worship.

Grimm then goes on to make the bold claim that Eor, who is presumably Irmin is to be regarded as the son of Zio:

" As Zio is identical with Zeus as director of wars, we see at a glance that Eor, Er, Ear, is one with Ares the son of Zeus; and as the Germans had given the rank of Zeus to their Wotan, Tyr and consequently Eor appears as the son of the highest god."

In a previous article I have discussed how the Cheruscans were named after a God Cheru or Heru, a sword God who is none other than Saxnot. http://celto-germanic.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/heru-god-of-cherusci.html

"Another naked sword flashes on the wooded heights  in the land of the Cherusci; it is the weapon of the sword-god Heru, Cheru or Saxnot, who some think is no other than Tyr. Of this weapon Saga tells us that it causes the destruction of its possessor, should he be unworthy of owning it; but that in the hand of a hero  it brings victory and sovereignty."(Asgard and the Gods, Wilhelm Waegner, 1886)

The great legendary hero of the Cherusci was Arminius or Hermann who although historical was in my opinion an Avatar of Irmin sent to rescue and to unite the German Volk. Grimm makes the same connection between the Cherusci and Cheru/Heru:

"The AS. genealogies preserve the name of Saxneat as the son of Woden, and it is in perfect accordance with it, that Tyr was the son of Odinn, and Ares the son of Zeus (see Suppl.). But further, as the Saxons were so called, either because they wielded the sword of stone (saxum), or placed this god at the head of their race, so I think the Cheruscans of Tacitus, a people synonymous, nay identical with them, were named Cheru, Heru=Eor, from whom their name can be derived."

He even draws  a connection with the Gallic deity Esus:

"After this weighty consonance of facts, which open to us the meaning of the old national name, and at the same time teaches us that 'heru' was first of all pronounced 'cheru', and last of all 'eru, er', I think we may also bring in the Gallic war-god Hesus or Esus (Lucan 1 ,440), and state, that the metal iron is indicated by the planetary sign of Mars, the AS. 'tires tacen', and consequently that the name Zio and Eor may be the picture of a sword with its handle, or of a spear. The Scythian and Alanic legends dwell still more emphatically on the god's sword, and their agreement with Teutonic ways of thinking may safely be assumed, as Mars was equally prominent in the faith of the Scythians and that of the Goths.

 

"The impressive personification of the sword matches well with that of the hammer, and to my way of thinking each confirms the other. Both idea and name of two of the greatest gods pass over into the instrument by which they display their might.

 

"Herodotis 4, 62 informs us, that the Scythians worshipped Ares under the semblance or symbol of an ancient iron sword, which was elevated on an enormous stack of brushwood ['three furlongs in length and breadth, but less in height'].

Tyr has become a general name for God and examples such as Hangatyr (God of the Hanged) and Hertyr (God of Armies) exist as Odinsheiti or bynames for Odin.  This is just another example of how ancient and revered the name of Tyr is.

MIRCEA ELIADE'S 'TRADITIONALISM': APPEARANCE AND REALITY

 

MIRCEA ELIADE'S 'TRADITIONALISM': APPEARANCE AND REALITY

 

Timotheus Lutz

Ex: http://www.hyperion-journal.net
 

Relatively recently, certain academics with an interest in those who admit a perennial tradition and expound esoteric doctrines have profiled what they call the ‘traditionalist school’. In their characterization, some individuals have been assimilated wrongly to this category, most notably the famous scholar of ‘comparative religion’, Mircea Eliade. Others, who should be aware of the fundamental differences in outlook between Eliade and modern exponents of traditional metaphysics, have seen him as a sort of sympathetic ‘Trojan horse’ who would subtly alter the course of his field of study in academia, by way of a ‘phenomenological’ view of spirituality in human history, contrasted with the sterile, purely analytical outlook that predominates in the universities.  
 
Eliade’s encounter with the works of René Guénon and Julius Evola certainly had a significant, or perhaps even a primary influence on his methods of research and ways of interpreting what he called ‘archaic’ systems, but, as he himself stated frankly in his journals, he always kept his distance and was apprehensive about endorsing the views of the latter.
 
It should be made clear that clarifying Eliade’s position is not necessarily a condemnation, as, obviously, one can accept some ideas of a given thinker without accepting all. However, given the importance and the rarity of the ideas of Guénon and Evola, and the incomprehension of some major ones displayed by Eliade, a firm appraisal is called for, since some are eager to assume an identity of substance in the thought of the former and the latter, where it is really only an appearance.
 
He states his position most directly in a journal entry on 11 November 1966:
 
What Guénon and the other ‘hermetists’ say of the tradition should not be understood on the level of historical reality (as they claim). These speculations constitute a universe of systematically articulated meanings: they are to be compared to a great poem or a novel. It is the same with Marxist or Freudian ‘explanations’: they are true if they are considered imaginary universes. The ‘proofs’ are few and uncertain – they correspond to the historical, social, psychological ‘realities’ of a novel or of a poem.
 
All these global and systematic interpretations, in reality, constitute mythological creations, highly useful for understanding the world; but they are not, as their authors think, ‘scientific explanations’. [1]
 
The classification of Guénon as a ‘hermetist’ is rather strange since, in his writings, he rarely discussed the hermetic doctrines. Since his main focus was metaphysics (a domain not subject to becoming), it is incorrect to classify him with a title pertaining to cosmological doctrines (which pertain to the domain of becoming). Comparing the formulations of Guénon and those similar in outlook to poems and novels is completely wrong: in poetic creations the subjective is primary, while in Guénon’s writings (as in those of Aristotle, Plotinus or Proclus) a precise objectivity is evident. As far as proofs, in this domain there cannot be empirical demonstration, only support by way of logic and analogy on one end, and identifying principles within oneself on the other. One either understands or does not. That this is a major obstacle for many is apparent. We assume the term ‘scientific explanations’ was not taken from Guénon or another’s writing, but used to imply erroneously that they would describe their interpretations as scientific; this is also an error since none of them would claim their interpretations could be explained scientifically.
 
We can assume this is Eliade’s basic view, since by 1966 his outlook was more or less fully developed, and since he shows similar opinions later on. This was also an opinion he had long held, as shown in an entry from 1947:
 
Only after you’ve studied Coomaraswamy’s writings in detail do you discover, suddenly, the poverty, the ‘elementarism’ [rom. primarism], of René Guénon’s œuvre. And the insufferable self-importance with which he hides, so often, his ignorance! [2]
 
We are not sure what he means here by ‘elementarism’, but perhaps it is Guénon’s focus on principial reality, which is the whole point of his works, contrasted with Ananda Coomaraswamy’s much greater emphasis on factual analysis and use of citations and academic sources. Although Coomaraswamy was indeed a (celebrated) academic, he was in agreement with nearly all of Guénon’s fundamental positions. If this is what Eliade means, it is simply another instance of his incomprehension of the primacy of metaphysics over confirming individual facts. We have found that Coomaraswamy’s writings do not reveal any significant ‘poverty’ in Guénon’s works, but instead complement them nicely.
 
Incomprehension of some major ideas is also apparent much later. In the early 1980s he writes: ‘Like René Guénon, Evola presumed a ‘primordial tradition’, in the existence of which I could not believe; I was suspicious of its artificial, ahistorical character’ [3]. To modern ears, the term ‘primordial tradition’ is likely to evoke visions of some perfect civilization in the sky, but first and foremost it is to be understood as atemporal (and thus, also, correctly described by Eliade as ahistorical) principles on which all genuinely traditional cultures are based. These principles are superior to, but are as immutable, in a similar manner, as the laws of logic or mathematics. To call them artificial is to demand that they be intelligible only as a particular, empirical example, and so displays, again, his incomprehension.
 
Worth quoting is his admission of a use for these authors:
 
I try once again, but I don’t succeed: Yeats’ ‘occultism’, over which so much fuss is made, doesn’t interest me. It’s cheap, ‘literary’, suspect – and, ultimately, uninteresting. Out of all the modern occultist authors whom I have read, only R. Guénon and J. Evola are worthy of being taken into consideration. I’m not discussing here to what extent their assertions are ‘true’. But what they write makes sense. [4]
 
And another, a response to a student of his interested in occultism: ‘. . . if one is truly attracted to hermetism, he ought to read the ‘authorized’, if not Cardanus, at least Coomaraswamy and René Guénon’ [5]. Clearly he still thought highly of some of their formulations, if only as comprehensible reference points for what is often and wrongly passed off as ‘esotericism’.
 
The critical attitude appears again in his dismissive appraisal of Evola’s intellectual autobiography. Eliade’s instinct to privilege academic authorities and those who have received wide acceptance is revealed clearly here:
 

I’m reading the intellectual autobiography of J. Evola, Il Cammino del mercurio [the title written is wrong: it is cinabro (cinnabar), not mercurio –ed.], with much melancholy. The chapter in which he presents and discusses the idealistic ‘university philosophy’, represented by Croce and Gentile: he speaks about his two theoretical volumes in which he supposedly destroyed those ‘professors,’ etc. etc. The naïveté (full of resentment) with which he situates himself in the history of contemporary thought – even though he states repeatedly that his volumes have not been reviewed and have not evoked any response . . .
 
There must be, indeed, several tons of printed paper in Italy alone on which the philosophy of Croce and Gentile has been discussed. Of what use, then, has Evola’s ‘radical criticism’ and ‘destruction’ been? And abroad, poor J. Evola is viewed as an ultra-fascist. The copy of the English translation of his book on Buddhism in Swift Library is disfigured with polemical annotations (written in indelible lead!): they say (even on the cover) that Evola is a fascist and a ‘racist’, that his theories about ‘Aryans’ were borrowed from A. Rosenberg, etc. I remember the brief, harsh review in Journal asiatique written by J. Filliozat in the same vein: J. E. is a racist, ultra-fascist, etc.
 
Evola tries to appear indifferent to such criticisms, although he prefers them to the ‘conspiracy of silence’ of which he claims he has suffered all his life. And yet, what a melancholic spectacle to see him talking about what he has done, how he has ‘destroyed’ and ‘surpassed’ everyone, even Nietzsche and Heidegger (whom he claims, moreover, to have anticipated . . .). [6]
 
Eliade does not admit that the soundness and truth of arguments are more important than how widely read, received and reviewed they are. The quantity of inferior and false ideas that are celebrated in the universities, then and now, is very high. Many are unable to comprehend, nevertheless, how curtly and effectively false ideas, however celebrated they are or however voluminously they are presented, can be dismissed. Of the mass of writings discussing the thought of Croce and Gentile, only Evola’s had looked at these philosophies from the traditional perspective, which is of use, simply, because it is the only one not subject to the movement of opinion and history. Mention of the idiotic slurs applied to him by those who have misunderstood his perspective are not relevant; if one does not take the time to adequately understand a given idea or formulation, his opinion does not matter. It is clear that Eliade is displaying a historicist prejudice; because his writings have been ignored (apparently, at least) and since no admission of the soundness of his criticisms has manifested visibly, the value of the writings in themselves, as formulations to be judged solely by their truth-value, is ignored, and Evola’s observation of this is considered a ‘spectacle’, the judgment of the history of ideas being obviously the decisive factor for Eliade. We might also add, like Eliade did when he compared Coomaraswamy and Guénon vis-à-vis other ‘occultists’ above, that, unlike Heidegger’s and much of Nietzsche’s writing, what Evola writes makes sense.
 
Despite praise of some aspects of his work, on at least one occasion he engaged in rather irresponsible gossip about Evola. In 1958, in a letter to the poet and former Iron Guard member Vasile Posteucă, regarding a request for information about Evola’s encounter with Corneliu Codreanu, Eliade warned him that Evola was a ‘racist’ and a ‘Nazi’, and liable to generate confusion if used as a source [7]. Never mind that he made it clear that his ‘racism’ was of a type quite different from that of the National Socialists, from whom he explicitly distanced himself ideologically, even during the war, and that several mainstream and semi-mainstream publishers in Europe found his works fit to print! A man of Eliade’s sophistication should have known better than to describe Evola so falsely and simplistically. One would not have thought that, being himself the target of similar slurs by certain elements in academia, he would engage in this kind of rumor-mongering. If the account of the exchange is not a fabrication or an exaggeration, then our opinion of Eliade is lowered considerably.
 
Evola demonstrated quite well the limits of Eliade’s formulations in a review of the latter’s book on Yoga:
 
Our fundamental opinion of Eliade’s work on Yoga may be expressed by saying that it is the most complete of all those that have been written on this subject in the domain of the history of religions and of Orientalism. One cannot mention another that for wealth of information, for comparisons, for philological accuracy, for the examination and utilization of all previous contributions, stands on the same level. But when once this has been admitted, some reservations have to be made. In the first place it would seem that the material he handles has often got the better of the writer. I mean to say that in his anxiety to make use of all, really all, that is known on the several varieties of Yoga and on what is directly or indirectly connected therewith, he has neglected the need of discriminating and selecting so as to give importance only to those parts of Yoga that are standard and typical, avoiding the danger that the reader lose track of the essential features by confusing them with the mass of information on secondary matters, variations, and side products. Looking at it from this standpoint, we are even led to wonder whether Eliade’s previous book Yoga, essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne (Paris, 1936), is not in some respects superior to this last one, which is a reconstruction of the former. In the first book the essential points of reference were more clearly outlined, they were less smothered by the mass of information brought together, and the references to less-known forms of Yoga, such as the Tantric and others, were more clearly pointed out [ . . . ]
 
After this glance at the contents of Eliade’s new book we are tempted to inquire of him a somewhat prejudicial question: to whom is the book addressed? As we have openly declared, it is a fundamental work for specialists in the field not only of Oriental research, but also in that of the history of religions. But in his introduction Eliade states that the book is addressed also to a wider public and he speaks of the importance that a knowledge of a doctrine such as that of Yoga may have for the solution of the existential problems of the modern Westerner, confirmed as that doctrine is by immemorial experience.
 
Here complications arise. To meet such a purpose it would be necessary to follow a different plan and to treat the matter in a different way. A Westerner who reads Eliade’s book may be able to acquire an idea of Yoga as ‘la science intégrale de l’homme [the integral science of man]’, he may acquire knowledge of a teaching that has faced in practice as well as in theory the problem of ‘deconditioning’ man; he will thus add yet one other panorama to the list of the many modern culture has provided him with. His interest will perhaps be more lively than the ‘neutral’ interest of the specialist; he may flirt with the aspects of a ‘spiritualite virante’. But on the existential plane the situation will be pretty much the same as it was before, even if the information available be deeper, more accurate, better documented. The possibility of exercising a more direct influence could only be looked for from a book addressed to those who have shown an interest in Yoga and similar sciences not because they seek for information but because they are seeking for a path; a book that in this special field would remove the misunderstandings, the popular notions, the deviations, and the delusions spread by a certain kind of literature to which we referred at the beginning of this article; a book displaying the accuracy and knowledge that we find in this work of Eliade, in as far as it is an exposition kept within the limits of the history of religions. Such a book has perhaps still to be written. But even so the essential need would not be met, for it is the unanimous opinion of the true masters of Yoga that the key to their science cannot be handed on by the written word. [8]
 
It could be said figuratively that if one who comprehends and adopts the traditional perspective can be said to have a view from the peaks that allows the most complete survey, then Eliade could be described as not having completed the ascent, his vision being obscured by clouds above or enamored by objects on the path to the summit. If he could see individual rocks on the path more closely, we must remember that the view from summit is still the most important one.
 
SOURCES
 
[1] Eliade, Mircea. No Souvenirs: Journal 1957-1969, p. 291.
 
[2] Eliade. Jurnal, 26 August 1947, M.E.P., box 15/2 (trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts). *
 
[3] Eliade. Autobiography, Volume II, p. 152.
 
[4] Eliade. Jurnal, 5 September 1964, M.E.P., box. 16/6 *
 
[5] Ibid., 4 March 1969, box 15/4 *
 
[6] Ibid., 20 December 1964, box. 16/6, pp. 2640-2641 *
 
[7] Posteucă, Vasile. Jurnal, in: Gabriel Stănescu (ed.), Mircea Eliade în conştiinna contemporanilor săi din exil, Norcross: Criterion, [2001], pp. 272-277 (275 – entry of 28 October 1958). *
 
[8] Evola, Julius. Yoga, Immortality & Freedom. East and West, vol. 6, no. 3, 1955.

* Quotes and citations from: Bordas, Liviu. The difficult encounter in Rome: Mircea Eliade’s post-war relation with Julius Evola – new letters and data. International Journal on Humanistic Ideology, IV, no. 2, Autumn-Winter 2011, pp. 125-158. Retrieved from: Academia.edu

Hercule, un Jésus européen ?

Hercule, un Jésus européen?

par Thomas Ferrier

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com

« Hercules, the legend begins » est enfin sorti sur les écrans français après avoir connu un terrible échec commercial, il y a deux mois, aux Etats-Unis. On pouvait donc craindre le pire, malgré une bande annonce des plus alléchantes. Après avoir vu ce film, que j’ai pour ma part beaucoup apprécié, je m’interroge sur le pourquoi de cette descente en flammes et de ce qui a déplu à la critique.

Bien sûr, dans cette Grèce du XIIIème siècle avant notre ère, il y a de nombreux anachronismes comme des combats de gladiateurs ou encore la conquête de l’Egypte. Si de beaux efforts graphiques ont été faits, on se trouve dans une Grèce de légende, à mi-chemin entre la Grèce mycénienne et la Grèce classique. Et de même, la légende du héros, avec les douze travaux, est absente ou malmenée, alors que de nouveaux éléments s’ajoutent, comme une rivalité entre Héraclès et son frère Iphiclès. Tout cela a pu surprendre un public habitué à ces classiques.

Et pourtant de nombreuses idées audacieuses se sont glissées dans ce film et le rendent passionnant. Ainsi, la vie d’Hercule s’apparente par certains aspects à celle de Jésus. De nombreux films américains, à l’instar de Man of Steel, la comparaison implicite est patente. Dans « Hercules », elle est voulue mais détournée. Alcmène s’unit à Zeus sans que le dieu apparaisse, se manifestant par une tempête accompagnée d’éclairs. Cela ne vous rappelle rien ? De même, Hercule est fouetté et attaché par les deux bras dans une scène rappelant la crucifixion. Mais il en sort vainqueur, brisant ses liens, et écrasant grâce à deux énormes blocs de pierre attachés par des chaînes à ses bras tous ses ennemis. Enfin, il devient concrètement roi à la fin de son aventure, ne se revendiquant pas simplement « roi de son peuple » mais roi véritable.

Bien sûr, ce « Jésus » aux muscles imposants mais sobres, à la pigmentation claire et aux cheveux blonds, n’a pas la même morale. Fils du maître de l’univers, dont il finit par accepter la paternité, Zeus en personne, il tue ses ennemis, jusqu’à son propre père adoptif, combat avec une férocité qui en ferait l’émule d’Arès, et semble quasi insensible à la douleur. Une scène le présente même recevant sur son épée la foudre de Zeus qu’il utilise ensuite comme une sorte de fouet électrique pour terrasser les combattants qui lui font face.

Par ailleurs, la « diversité » est réduite à sa plus petite expression, limitée à des mercenaires égyptiens, crédibles dans leur rôle. Les Grecs en revanche sont tous bien européens, avec des traits parfois nordiques. Il n’est pas question comme dans « Les Immortels » ou « Alexandre » de voir des afro-américains en armure ou jouant les Roxanes. En revanche, on retrouve davantage l’esprit de Troie, l’impiété en moins. En effet, cette fois les athées ont le mauvais rôle à l’instar du roi de Tirynthe Amphitryon. Hercule lui-même, qui ne croit pas dans l’existence des dieux pendant une bonne partie du film, finit par se revendiquer explicitement de la filiation de Zeus et la prouver. En outre, Hercules rappelle par certains côtés le premier Conan, puisque le héros est trahi et fait prisonnier, puis s’illustre dans des combats dans l’arène d’une grande intensité, bondissant tel un fauve pour fracasser le crâne d’un ennemi, mais il reste toujours chevaleresque, protégeant les femmes et les enfants.

A certains moments, le film semble même s’inspirer des traits guerriers qu’un Breker donnait à ses statues. Kellan Lutz n’est sans doute pas un acteur d’une expression théâtrale saisissante mais il est parfaitement dans son rôle. Si les douze travaux se résument à étrangler le lion de Némée, à vaincre de puissants ennemis mais qui demeurent humains, et à reconquérir sa cité, son caractère semi-divin, même si le personnage refuse tout hybris, est non seulement respecté mais amplifié. En ce sens, Hercule apparaît comme un Jésus païen et nordique, mais aussi un Jésus guerrier et vengeur, donc très loin bien sûr du Jésus chrétien. Fils de Dieu, sa morale est celle des Européens, une morale héroïque.

Toutefois, bien sûr, certains aspects modernes apparaissent, comme la relation romantique entre Hercule et Hébé, déesse de la jeunesse qu’il épousera après sa mort dans le mythe grec, et le triomphe de l’amour sur le mariage politique. C’est bien sûr anachronique. Mais « la légende d’Hercule » ne se veut pas un film historique.

Enfin, la morale est sauve puisque dans le film, Héra autorise Zeus à la tromper, alors que dans le mythe classique elle met le héros à l’épreuve par jalousie, afin de faire naître un sauveur. Zeus ne peut donc être « adultère ». Cela donne du sens au nom du héros, expliqué comme « le don d’Héra », alors qu’il signifie précisément « la gloire d’Héra », expression énigmatique quand on connaît la haine de la déesse envers le héros. Pour s’exprimer, Héra pratique l’enthousiasme sur une de ses prêtresses, habitant son corps pour transmettre ses messages. C’est conforme à la tradition religieuse grecque.

Les défauts du film sont mineurs par rapport à ses qualités, graphiques comme scénaristiques, mais ce qui a dû nécessairement déranger c’est qu’il est trop païen, trop européen, trop héroïque, qu’il singe le christianisme pour mieux s’y opposer. Le fils de Dieu est marié et a un enfant (à la fin du film). Le fils de Dieu n’accepte pas d’être emmené à la mort mais triomphe de ses bourreaux. Le fils de Dieu devient « roi des Grecs ». Enfin le fils de Dieu apparaît comme tel aux yeux de tous et n’est pas rejeté par son propre peuple. Ce film ne pouvait donc que déranger une société américaine qui va voir des films où Thor lance la foudre, où Léonidas et ses « 300 » combattent jusqu’à la mort avec une ironie mordante, mais qui reste très chrétienne, très puritaine et hypocrite.

Thomas FERRIER (LBTF/PSUNE)

Friedrich Georg Jünger: The Titans and the Coming of the Titanic Age

Friedrich Georg Jünger:

 

The Titans and the Coming of the Titanic Age

 

 

Tom Sunic

 Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Tom Sunic

Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977)

Introduction: Titans, Gods and Pagans by Tom Sunic

Below is my translation of several passages from the last two chapters from Friedrich Georg Jünger’s little known book, Die Titanen, 1943, 1944 (The Titans). Only the subtitles are mine. F.G. Jünger was the younger brother of Ernst Jünger who wrote extensively about ancient Greek gods and goddesses. His studies on the meaning of Prometheism and Titanism are unavoidable for obtaining a better understanding of the devastating effects of the modern belief in progress and the role of “high-tech” in our postmodern societies. Outside the German-speaking countries, F.G. Jünger’s literary work remains largely unknown, although he had a decisive influence on his renowned brother, the essayist Ernst Jünger. Some parts of F.G Jünger’s other book,Griechische Götter (1943) (Greek Gods), with a similar, if not same topic, and containing also some passages from Die Titanen, were recently translated into French (Les Titans et les dieux, 2013).

In the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche and along with hundreds of German philosophers, novelists, poets and scientists, such as M. Heidegger, O. Spengler, C. Schmitt, L. Clauss, Gottfried Benn, etc., whose work became the object of criminalization by cultural Bolsheviks and by the Frankfurt School in the aftermath of WWII, F. G. Jünger can also be tentatively put in the category of “cultural conservative revolutionaries” who characterized the political, spiritual and cultural climate in Europe between the two world wars.

Ancient European myths, legends and folk tales are often derided by some scholars, including some Christian theologians who claim to see in them gross reenactments of European barbarism, superstition and sexual promiscuity. However, if a reader or a researcher immerses himself in the symbolism of the European myths, let alone if he tries to decipher the allegorical meaning of diverse creatures in the myths, such as for instance the scenes from the Orphic rituals, the hellhole of Tartarus, or the carnage in the Nibelungen saga, or the final divine battle in Ragnarök, then those mythical scenes take on an entirely different meaning. After all, in our modern so-called enlightened and freedom-loving liberal societies, citizens are also entangled in a profusion of bizarre infra-political myths, in a myriad of weird hagiographic tales, especially those dealing with World War II vicitmhoods, as well as countless trans-political, multicultural hoaxes enforced under penalty of law. Therefore, understanding the ancient European myths means, first and foremost, reading between the lines and strengthening one’s sense of the metaphor.

There persists a dangerous misunderstanding between White nationalists professing paganism vs. White nationalists professing Christian beliefs. The word “paganism” has acquired a pejorative meaning, often associated with childish behavior of some obscure New Age individuals carrying burning torches or reading the entrails of dead animals. This is a fundamentally false conception of the original meaning of paganism. “Pagans,” or better yet polytheists, included scores of thinkers from antiquity, such as Seneca, Heraclites, Plato, etc. who were not at all like many modern self-styled and self-proclaimed “pagans” worshipping dogs or gazing at the setting sun. Being a “pagan” denotes a method of conceptualizing the world beyond the dualism of “either-or.” The pagan outlook focuses on the rejection of all dogmas and looks instead at the notion of the political or the historical from diverse and conflicting perspectives. Figuratively speaking, the plurality of gods means also the plurality of different beliefs and different truths.  One can be a good Christian but also a good “pagan.”  For that matter even the “pagan” Ernst Jünger, F.G. Jünger’s older brother, had a very Catholic burial in 1998.

When F.G Jünger’s published his books on the Titans and the gods, in 1943 and in 1944, Germany lay in ruins, thus ominously reflecting F.G. Jünger’s earlier premonitions about the imminent clash of the Titans. With gods now having departed from our disenchanted and desacralized White Europe and White America, we might just as well have another look at the slumbering Titans who had once successfully fought against Chaos, only to be later forcefully dislodged by their own divine progeny.

Are the dozing Titans our political option today? F.G. Jünger’s book is important insofar as it offers a reader a handy manual for understanding a likely reawakening of the Titans and for decoding the meaning of the new and fast approaching chaos.

*    *    *

THE TITANS: CUSTODIANS OF LAW AND ORDER

….The Titans are not the Gods even though they generate the Gods and relish divine reverence in the kingdom of Zeus. The world in which the Titans rule is a world without the Gods. Whoever desires to imagine a kosmos atheos, i.e. a godless cosmos, that is, a cosmos not as such as depicted by natural sciences, will find it there. The Titans and the Gods differ, and, given that their differences are visible in their behavior toward man and in view of the fact that man himself experiences on his own as to how they rule, man, by virtue of his own experience, is able to make a distinction between them.

Neither are the Titans unrestrained power hungry beings, nor do they scorn the law; rather, they are the rulers over a legal system whose necessity must never be put in doubt. In an awe-inspiring fashion, it is the flux of primordial elements over which they rule, holding bridle and reins in their hands, as seen inHelios. They are the guardians, custodians, supervisors and the guides of the order. They are the founders unfolding beyond chaos, as pointed out by Homer in his remarks about Atlas who shoulders the long columns holding the heavens and the Earth. Their rule rules out any confusion, any disorderly power performance. Rather, they constitute a powerful deterrent against chaos.

The Titans and the Gods match with each other. Just as Zeus stands in forKronos, so does Poseidon stand in opposition to Oceanus, or for that matterHyperion and his son Helios in opposition to Apollo, or Coeus and Phoebe in opposition to Apollo and Artemis, or Selene in opposition to Artemis.

THE TITANS AGAINST THE GODS

What distinguishes the kingdom of Kronos from the kingdom of Zeus? One thing is for certain; the kingdom of Kronos is not a kingdom of the son. The sons are hidden in Kronos, who devoured those he himself had generated, the sons being now hidden in his dominion, whereas Zeus is kept away from Kronos by Rhea, who hides and raises Zeus in the caverns. And given that Kronos comports himself in such a manner his kingdom will never be a kingdom of the father. Kronos does not want to be a father because fatherhood is equivalent with a constant menace to his rule. To him fatherhood signifies an endeavor and prearrangement aimed at his downfall.

What does Kronos want, anyway? He wants to preserve the cycle of the status quo over which he presides; he wants to keep it unchanged. He wants to toss and turn it within himself from one eon to another eon. Preservation and perseverance were already the hallmark of his father. Although his father Uranusdid not strive toward the Titanic becoming, he did, however, desire to continue his reign in the realm of spaciousness. Uranus was old, unimaginably old, as old as metal and stones. He was of iron-like strength that ran counter to the process of becoming. But Kronos is also old. Why is he so old? Can this fluctuation of the Titanic forces take on at the same time traits of the immovable and unchangeable? Yes, of course it can, if one observes it from the perspective of the return, or from the point of view of the return of the same. If one attempts it, one can uncover the mechanical side in this ceaseless flux of the movement. The movement unveils itself as a rigid and inviolable law.

THE INFINITE SADNESS OF THE TITANS

How can we describe the sufferings of the Titans? How much do they suffer anyway, and what do they suffer from? The sound of grief uttered by the chainedPrometheus induces Hermes to derisive remarks about the same behavior which is unknown to Zeus. In so far as the Titans are in the process of moving, we must therefore also conceive of them as the objects of removal. Their struggle is onerous; it is filled with anxiety of becoming. And their anxiety means suffering. Grandiose things are being accomplished by the Titans, but grandiose things are being imposed on them too. And because the Titans are closer to chaos than Gods are, chaotic elements reveal themselves amidst them more saliently. No necessity appears as yet in chaos because chaos has not yet been measured off by any legal system. The necessity springs up only when it can be gauged by virtue of some lawfulness. This is shown in the case of Uranus and Kronos. The necessary keeps increasing insofar as lawfulness increases; it gets stronger when the lawful movements occur, that is, when the movements start reoccurring over and over again.

Mnemosyne (The Titaness of Memory) (mosaic, 2nd century AD)

Among the Titanesses the sadness is most visible in the grief of Rhea whose motherhood was harmed.  Also in the mourning ofMnemosyne who ceaselessly conjures up the past. The suffering of this Titaness carries something of sublime magnificence. In her inaccessible solitude, no solace can be found. Alone, she must muse about herself — a dark image of the sorrow of life. The suffering of the Titans, after their downfall, reveals itself in all its might. The vanquished Titan represents one of the greatest images of suffering. Toppled, thrown down under into the ravines beneath the earth, sentenced to passivity, the Titan knows only how to carry, how to heave and how to struggle with the burden — similar to the burden carried by the Caryatids.

THE SELF-SUFFICIENT GODS

The Olympian Gods, however, do not suffer like the Titans. They are happy with themselves; they are self-sufficient. They do not ignore the pain and sufferings of man. They in fact conjure up these sufferings, but they also heal them. In Epicurean thought, in the Epicurean  world of happiness, we observe the Gods dwelling in-between-the-worlds, divorced from the life of the earth and separated from the life of men, to a degree that nothing can ever reach out to them and nothing can ever come from them. They enjoy themselves in an eternal halcyon bliss that cannot be conveyed by words.

The idea of the Gods being devoid of destiny is brought out here insofar as it goes well beyond all power and all powerlessness; it is as if the Gods had been placed in a deepest sleep, as if they were not there for us. Man, therefore, has no need to think of them. He must only leave them alone in their blissful slumber. But this is a philosophical thought, alien to the myth.

Under Kronos, man is part of the Titanic order. He does not stand yet in the opposition to the order — an opposition founded in the reign of Zeus. He experiences now the forces of the Titans; he lives alongside them. The fisherman and boatman venturing out on the sea are in their Titanic element. The same happens with the shepherd, the farmer, the hunter in their realm. Hyperion, Helios and Eos determine their days, Selene regulates their nights. They observe the running Iris, they see the Horae dancing and spinning around throughout the year. They observe the walk of the nymphs Pleiades and Hyadesin the skies. They recognize the rule of the great Titanic mothers, Gaia, Rhea, Mnemosyne and that of Gaia-Themis. Above all of them rules and reigns the old Kronos, who keeps a record of what happens in the skies, on the earth, and in the waters.

TITANIC NECESSITY VS. DIVINE DESTINY

The course of human life is inextricably linked to the Titanic order. Life makes one whole with it; the course of life cannot be divorced from this order. It is the flow of time, the year’s course, the day’s course. The tides and the stars are on the move. The process resembles a ceaseless flow of the river. Kronos reigns over it and makes sure it keeps returning. Everything returns and everything repeats itself — everything is the same. This is the law of the Titans; this is their necessity. In their motion a strict cyclical order manifests itself. In this order there is a regular cyclical return that no man can escape. Man’s life is a reflection of this cyclic order; it turns around in a Titanic cycle of Kronos.

Man has no destiny here, in contrast to the demigods and the heroes who all have it. The kingdom of Zeus is teeming with life and deeds of heroes, offering an inexhaustible material to the songs, to the epics and to the tragedies. In the kingdom of Kronos, however, there are no heroes; there is no Heroic Age. For man, Kronos, and the Titans have no destiny; they are themselves devoid of destiny. Does Helios, does Selene, does Eos have a destiny? Wherever the Titanic necessity rules, there cannot be a destiny. But the Gods are also deprived of destiny wherever divine necessity prevails, wherever man grasps the Gods in a fashion that is not in opposition to them. But a man whom the Gods confront has a destiny. A man whom the Titans confront perishes; he succumbs to a catastrophe.

We can say, however, that whatever happens to man under the rule of the Titans is a lot easier than under the rule of the Gods. The burden imposed on man is much lighter.

*   *   *

What happens when the Gods turn away from man and when they leave him on his own? Wherever they make themselves unrecognizable to man, wherever their care for man fades away, wherever man’s fate begins and ends without them, there always happens the same thing. The Titanic forces return and they validate their claims to power. Where no Gods are, there are the Titans. This is a relationship of a legal order which no man can escape wherever he may turn to. The Titans are immortal. They are always there. They always strive to reestablish their old dominion of their foregone might. This is the dream of the Titanic race of the lapetos, and all the Iapetides who dream about it. The earth is penetrated and filled up with the Titanic forces. The Titans sit in ambush, on the lookout, ready to break out and break up their chains and restore the empire of Kronos.

TITANIC MAN

What is Titanic about man? The Titanic trait occurs everywhere and it can be described in many ways. Titanic is a man who completely relies only upon himself and has boundless confidence in his own powers. This confidence absolves him, but at the same time it isolates him in a Promethean mode. It gives him a feeling of independence, albeit not devoid of arrogance, violence, and defiance. Titanic is a quest for unfettered freedom and independence. However, wherever this quest is to be seen there appears a regulatory factor, a mechanically operating necessity that emerges as a correction to such a quest. This is the end of all the Promethean striving, which is well known to Zeus only. The new world created by Prometheus is not.

Dr. Tom Sunic is a former political science professor, author and a Board member of the American Freedom Party. He is the author of Against Democracy and Equality; The European New Right.

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur?

Ce que les mythes disaient, il y a 20.000 ans...

 

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur?

Julien d'Huy*
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

Certains récits complexes se retrouvent dans de vastes régions du monde. Ils auraient traversé le temps, sous une forme presque inchangée, et proviendraient, pour quelques uns, du Paléolithique supérieur.

Peut-on reconstituer les mythes du Paléolithique supérieur ? Une nouvelle méthode propose de s'appuyer sur les mythes recueillis à l'époque moderne et, en s'appuyant sur la grande stabilité de ce type de récits à travers le temps, de leur appliquer des algorithmes phylogénétiques, autrement dit, des équations utilisées les biologistes pour reconstruire les arbres de la vie.

De façon surprenante, les arbres ainsi obtenus semblent suivre la route des premières migrations de l'humanité, ce qui permet de dater certains mythes du Paléolithique supérieur. La modélisation de leur évolution tend à montrer qu'ils seraient essentiellement hérités d'une génération à l'autre et qu'ils évolueraient par « équilibre ponctué », autrement dit, qu'ils resteraient stables pendant très longtemps avant d'évoluer fortement sur une brève période de temps, à l'occasion de migrations ou de tensions territoriales, par exemple. Notons que cette formalisation est en accord avec les données ethnologiques.

Une méthode appliquée avec succès à trois grandes familles de mythes  

1/ Pygmalion, où un créateur tombe amoureux d'une image qu'il a lui-même créée, et où celle-ci finit par s'animer ; 

2/ Polyphème, où un homme se retrouve piégé dans une grotte en compagnie d'un monstre et ne parvient à s'échapper qu'en se glissant sous une peau d'animal ou un animal vivant, échappant ainsi à la surveillance du monstre ; 

3/ la Chasse cosmique, où un animal, pourchassé, s'enfuit jusqu'au ciel et se transforme en constellation. Les deux derniers récits remonteraient au Paléolithique supérieur.

Un des acquis les plus intéressants de cette méthode est la possibilité de reconstruire, d'un point de vue statistique, le proto-mythe, ou du moins, une des premières versions du mythe étudié. Il devient alors possible de reconstituer certaines croyances des hommes du Paléolithique. 

Deux exemples

Le proto-mythe de Polyphème, tel qu'il a été statistiquement reconstruit, raconte comment un homme s'introduit dans une grotte où sont enfermés des animaux. Il s'y trouve bloqué par un monstre qui l'empêche de s'enfuir en fermant la grotte par une énorme pierre. Le monstre tente ensuite de tuer l'intrus, en se postant près de l'entrée et en faisant sortir tour à tour les animaux de la caverne. L'homme parvient pourtant à s'échapper, en se cachant sous le ventre d'un animal, et à ainsi passe au nez et à la barbe du monstre.

 

Quant à la première version reconstruite de la Chasse cosmique, elle expliquerait l'apparition de la constellation de la Grande Ourse : un grand herbivore cornu – probablement un élan – est pourchassé par un chasseur. Il court jusqu'au ciel et il s'y transforme en amas d'étoiles.

*publié sur Hominides.com

L'hiver chez les anciens scandinaves

L'hiver chez les anciens scandinaves

Joëlle Delacroix *
Ex: http://www.metamag.fr

L'année viking se découpe en deux saisons ou misseri : le misseri d'été commence mi-avril et dure jusqu'à mi-septembre. Le misseri d'hiver correspond à l'autre semestre. L'hiver s'installe mi-novembre et les mois qui le constituent (ýlir, jólmánađr, þorri, gói) sont durs. La neige, la glace, le vent et la nuit étreignent l'univers des Vikings. Ull, dieu de l'hiver, tient le monde entre ses mains. C'est un dieu Ase, fils de Sif, adopté par Þórr. Excellent chasseur, adepte des sports d'hiver, il habite Ydalir, la vallée des Ifs, un pays de montagnes enneigées. Son épouse Skadi est une géante du froid et de la montagne. C'est un dieu important de la mythologie scandinave dans les temps anciens, mais son rôle a été amoindri au profit d'Óđinn.

 

La grande fête du solstice d'hiver, Jól, coupe heureusement cette période. Elle célèbre l'allongement des jours et l'espérance en la saison nouvelle. Elle est entourée de tout un ensemble de croyances liées au panthéon des dieux scandinaves. Lors de la christianisation des Vikings, l'église a remplacé cette fête par les fêtes de Noël.

La saison de l'hiver chez les anciens Scandinaves.

A l'approche de la mauvaise saison, le bóndi, homme libre de la société viking, a pris soin de rentrer du bois et de la tourbe qui serviront à chauffer sa maison. Il a veillé également à remettre en état les différents bâtiments de sa ferme. Le foin est rentré ; les animaux, notamment les moutons, ont été rassemblés ; les réserves de viande salée et de poissons séchés sont constituées. Maintenant que l'hiver est venu, l'activité se concentre dans la skáli, bâtiment principal de la ferme scandinave.

Les femmes se consacrent aux travaux de tapisserie, de broderie et de tissage, qui font partie de leurs prérogatives. Frigg, la femme d'Óđinn, file elle-même. Elle connaît le destin de chaque homme et chaque dieu, mais elle ne partage ce savoir avec personne. A ce titre, elle tisse le fil utilisé par les Nornes (Urd - le passé -, Verdande - le présent - Skuld - l'avenir) pour construire la destinée des mortels.

Les hommes veillent à réparer les outils endommagés. Ils s'adonnent aux travaux de sculpture du bois ou de forge qui permettront de construire et parer bateaux, traîneaux ou chariots. Ils s'occupent des bêtes, rentrées dans la bâtisse adjacente. Pour se détendre, la maisonnée joue à des jeux de tables ou aux dés. Hommes et femmes racontent des histoires, des contes, les histoires des dieux ou évoquent les souvenirs de leurs expéditions. Dans la demeure du chef viking, le scalde récite les poésies qui louent les exploits de son maître.

S'il doit sortir, le Viking chausse ses skis ou ses patins. Il peut aller chasser ou pêcher, ceci en creusant un simple trou dans la glace. Ces sports d'hiver donnent lieu également à des jeux voire à des compétitions.

La fête de Jól.

La fête de Jól, qui dure plusieurs jours, survient pour rompre l'isolement et fêter le solstice d'hiver. Cette réjouissance est l'occasion d'un sacrifice, le blót, au cours duquel un porc engraissé pour l'occasion ou un cheval est sacrifié. Le sang de l'animal sacrifié est recueilli dans un récipient spécial, le hlautbolli, et sert ensuite à la consultation des augures. Plus spécialement, le blót permet au Viking, non pas d'influencer son destin en le connaissant par avance, car il sait que « nul ne survit d'un soir à la sentence des Nornes », mais plutôt à capter des forces bénéfices. En l'occurrence, lors du sacrifice de Jól, il s'agit de forces bénéfiques liées aux puissances de la fertilité et du renouveau, les forces des Alfes.

Un grand festin est apprêté au cours duquel on boit la bière brassée spécifiquement pour cette fête – la jólaöl -, et l'on mange la chair bouillie de l'animal sacrifié. Des toasts sont portés en l'honneur des ancêtres et des dieux. On boit beaucoup ; on mange copieusement. Sans doute, au tout début du banquet, les invités se sont-ils juré de ne pas tenir compte des paroles prononcées sous l'emprise de l'ivresse, comme le veut la coutume. Toutes sortes de divertissements, poèmes, danses, chants, jeux se succèdent. La fête de Jól, à l'instar des fêtes dédiées au solstice d'hiver, est donc liée aux puissances de la fertilité et du renouveau, représentées dans le panthéon scandinave par les Alfes, des divinités anciennes, énigmatiques, placées apparemment au même rang que les Vanes et les Ases. Ces divinités régissent les forces de la fertilité, de la végétation et du renouveau. Elles sont également liées au culte des ancêtres.

Grímnismá - les dits de Grímnir - l'un des poèmes mythologiques de l'Edda poétique présente Freyr comme le seigneur du Álfheimr, la demeure des Alfes. C'est un dieu Vane, le frère de Freyja, la déesse de l'amour. Il est lui-même dieu de la fertilité et l'un des dieux les plus populaires, avec Þórr. Il a reçu Álfheimr et le royaume associé en cadeau, lorsqu'en enfant, il a perdu sa première dent. Il possède un sanglier magique aux soies d'or, qu'il peut chevaucher ou atteler à son chariot. Ainsi, le porc ou sanglier et encore le cheval sont les animaux qui lui sont les plus couramment associés. C'est en son honneur qu'ils sont donc sacrifiés lors des fêtes de Jól. De nos jours, d'ailleurs, le jambon traditionnellement servi à Noël en Suède rappelle ces offrandes faites à Freyr. Dans les campagnes, on continue de brasser la bière spécifiquement pour Noël.

 

La fête de Jól est aussi liée au culte des ancêtres, culte que véhiculent également les Alfes. A cette occasion, Óđinn traverse le ciel, suivi de sa Chasse Sauvage, assemblée composée des guerriers morts au combat qui, la nuit venue, retournent à la Vallhöll, le palais du dieu, pour festoyer. Óđinn, lui-même, chevauche Sleipnirr, son cheval à huit pattes ; des chiens et des chevaux noirs l'escortent. Curieux banquet, auquel assistent toutes les nuits les Einherjar, les guerriers morts au combat et choisis par les Valkyries, filles d'Óđinn, pour gagner la Valhöll. Ils ne manquent ni d'hydromel ni de viande. La boisson est fournie en abondance par la chèvre Heiđrún, qui, juchée sur le toit de la Vallhöll, broute les jeunes feuilles du frêne Yggdrasil. Le cuisinier fait bouillir chaque nuit la chair du sanglier Sæhrímnir qui ressuscite ensuite.

Dans cette Chasse Sauvage du solstice d'hiver, Óđinn est parfois décrit comme étant accompagné par Dame Hölle ou Holda, qui tire avec elle un chariot peuplé d'enfants en bas âge. Ce personnage, parfois associé à Frigg l'épouse d'Óđinn en raison de son activité de filage ou à Hel, la déesse de la mort, à cause de son aspect effroyable, dispose chez elle d'un lac dans lequel elle dépose les âmes des enfants morts.

En savoir plus :

• Boyer Régis, La vie quotidienne des Vikings (800-1050), Editions Hachette

• Boyer Régis, Les Vikings, Editions Plon

• Marillier Bernard, BA.BA Vikings, Pardès

• Anne-Laure d'Apremont, BA.BA Tradition Nordique, volume 2

• Jean Renaud, Les dieux des Vikings, Ouest France Editions

* article paru sur le site Histoire pour tous

Les Argonautes sont un exemple pour le monde d'aujourd'hui

«Les Argonautes
sont un exemple pour le monde d’aujourd’hui,
perdu dans ses calculs mesquins»

Qui n’a entendu parler des 50 héros, menés par Jason, partis pour retrouver la Toison d’or ? Ils sont passés à la postérité sous le nom d’Argonautes (du nom de leur navire L’Argo)…

Entretien avec Dimitris Michalopoulos auteur deLes Argonautes

 

(Propos recueillis par Fabrice Dutilleul)

Pourquoi les Argonautes fascinent-ils toujours autant ?

Ils nous éblouissent même aujourd’hui, car ils étaient des héros au sens vrai du terme. Ils ont fait l’impossible : ils arrivèrent, en effet, au bout de la Mer noire, enlevèrent la Toison d’or en dépit des monstres qui y veillaient, échappèrent à leurs ennemis farouches, firent le périple de l’Europe et regagnèrent la Grèce via l’océan Atlantique. Autrement dit, ils sont un exemple pour le monde d’aujourd’hui, perdu dans ses calculs mesquins.

Comment êtes-vous parvenus à séparer ce qui appartient à la légende et ce qui appartient à l'histoire ?

En fouillant les sources grecques et latines ainsi que presque l’ensemble de la littérature contemporaine. À mon avis, il suffit de lire attentivement les textes anciens, pour comprendre très bien ce qu’il était vraiment passé pendant le voyage, voire la campagne, des Argonautes. 

Pensez-vous avoir fait un livre exhaustif ou y a-t-il encore, d'après vous, des choses à découvrir pour d'autres chercheurs ?

En ce qui concerne les Argonautes, non ! Je ne crois pas qu’il y a des choses à découvrir. En ce qui concerne toutefois les voyages des Anciens dans les océans et leurs campagnes en Amérique, oui… il y a toute une épopée à étudier et à écrire.

Y a-t-il encore un impact du voyage des Argonautes sur la Grèce actuelle… ou sur d'autres pays ?

Impact du voyage des Argonautes sur la Grèce actuelle ? Non, pas du tout (à l’exception, bien sûr, de quelques rares amateurs de l’Antiquité). À vrai dire, la Grèce d’aujourd’hui est plutôt hostile aux sciences de l’Homme, parmi lesquelles l’Histoire est toujours la prima inter pares. Or, c’est différent dans d’autres pays, oui ! En France et en Espagne, mais aussi dans des pays du Caucase, on m’a souvent posé la question : « Pourquoi a-t-on oublié les Argonautes, qui avaient parcouru l’Europe de l’est et laissé des traces presque  partout sur les côtes de notre continent ? » Je ne savais quoi répondre, car il me fallait faire toute une conférence sur la situation actuelle de la Grèce, ses liens brisés avec les Hellènes et les Pélasges  de l’antiquité etc. Voilà donc pourquoi je me suis mis au travail… et j’ai écrit mon livre sur les Argonautes et leur voyage.

Les Argonautes, Dimitris Michalopoulos, préface de Christian Bouchet, Éditions Dualpha, collection « Vérités pour l’Histoire », dirigée par Philippe Randa, 194 pages, 21 euros. 

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Nietzsche e o Mundo Homérico

Nietzsche e o Mundo Homérico

Por Carolina Figueroa León*

Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com

 

 

Nietzsche desde o princípio apresentou um apego ao mundo grego, uma idealização deste como estrutura social, ideológica e intelectual. Esta aproximação não é especificamente com a época clássica, mas com a época arcaica que é representada através dos poemas homéricos.

 

Tomando em conta que o ideal que surge neste período se baseia na luta de poder, na excelência de uma classe aristocrática que é representada através dos heróis e através da areté. Neste período em que o filósofo encontra a essência do grego, porque é o momento em que se desenvolve da melhor forma a condição inerente ao ser humano: o instinto e a vontade de poder. Portanto, ao tomar esta leitura deixamos de lado a visão de que estes poemas remetem necessariamente à época micênica, senão que por sua vez estão carregados de elementos ideológicos, morais e sociais correspondentes à época em que escreve Homero.

 

Para compreender como este ideal guerreiro baseado em uma moral agonística se encontra na sociedade aristocrática arcaica é necessário analisar a obra homérica, a qual se deve relacionar com o contexto do século VIII a.c. e desde aí contrastar com as posturas de Nietzsche, as quais se encontram em seus primeiros escritos mais filológicos como O Estado grego e A luta de Homero.

 

Portanto, é importante analisar o contexto histórico de enunciação destas epopeias, ver se este realmente se vê representado em ditas obras e finalmente analisar o problema a partir da leitura nietzschiana da cultura grega.

 

O mundo homérico e a moral agonística

 

O chamado mundo homérico é o que historicamente corresponde à época arcaica da cultura grega, em que se assentam as bases do crescimento e surgimento das grandes polis. Para Nietzsche é neste momento específico em que se daria o apogeu da cultura grega, não o mundo clássico que foi modificado pelo Romantismo e os filólogos classicistas: “Mas os gregos aparecem ante nós, já que a priori, precisamente pela grandeza de sua arte, como os homens políticos por excelência (...) Tão excessivo era nos gregos tal instinto (...) a expressão triunfal de tigres que mostravam ante o cadáver do inimigo; em suma, a incessante renovação daquelas cenas da guerra de Tróia, em cuja contemplação se embriagava Homero como puro heleno”[1].

 

Para começar esta análise é necessário nos remeter à época arcaica em si, para logo trabalha-la em comparação à homérica. A época arcaica é quando se destaca a imagem de um governo aristocrático precedente à democracia. Para autores como Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, este período é denominado a sociedade homérica, já que se baseia na mesma estruturação social que dão conta os poemas homéricos, posto que na cabeça da sociedade está o rei (Basileus) e este é secundado por aristocracia que na épica é representada na imagem dos heróis. Portanto, os pontos de reconstrução do ideal aristocrático se dão em Homero, quem logra encarná-los em seus poemas. Para Rodríguez Adrados isto se deveria a que o pensamento racional em que foi constituído esta aristocracia se baseia no mito principalmente.  Portanto, Homero plasma através de suas obras tal realidade, a qual se mescla com a mitologia existente de Micenas, mas por sua vez e com maior força aludindo a seu século [2].

 

Frente à utilização dos mitos como reconstrução de identidade e histórica, Rodríguez Adrados refere: “Se trata de uma sabedoria tradicional, de um espelho de conduta posto no passado e no aceitado tradicionalmente, que não tem porque ter uma coerência absolutamente rigorosa” [3].

 

Dentro deste tipo de sociedade vemos a imagem do homem que é similar aos deuses, com a única diferença que é mortal. Esta aristocracia por sua vez se caracteriza por uma moral agonística que se assenta nos valores como honra (time) e virtude ou excelência (aretê). Estes se encontram presentes já em grande medida na epopeia grega: “A moral da aristocracia grega é na epopeia essencialmente competitiva ou agonística” [4].

 

Esta imagem podemos percebê-la já que na maior parte do pensamento dos heróis, no caso da Ilíada, por exemplo: Glauco narra como seu pai Hipóloco o manda lutar a Tróia, o dizendo que é preferível que regresse morto, antes que derrotado e sem lograr ser o primeiro em batalha: “Me insto muitas vezes a ser o primeiro e me destacar entre os outros e a não desonrar a linhagem de meus pais que foram os primeiros em Feira e na vasta Licia” [5].

 

Frente a esta imagem da desonra da linhagem surge a noção de que o herói sempre deve ser virtuoso e é a partir deste elemento que surge o conceito de aretê. Esta excelência em primeiro momento se dá a nível de linhagem, já que sempre o herói é de uma família nobre. Esta traz o prêmio e a fama, o qual se demonstra através das botinhas que se recebia (Geras) logo depois da façanha.

 

A aretê que surge no ideal heroico é o que conforma a excelência da nobreza da sociedade arcaica, já que neste ideal assentam suas bases, que resgatam esses reis e heróis, porque são a representação de sua classe.

 

Finley também se refere á idéia que a aretê heroica é símbolo da nobreza quando nos afirma que isto se faz patente em Odisséia: “Particularmente na Odisséia, a palavra “herói” é uma expressão de classe para toda a aristocracia, e as vezes até parece compreender todos os homens livres”[6].

 

Podemos tomar o afirmado por Finley no seguinte fragmento da Odisséia: “Amanhã – indicou Atena a Telêmaco – convoca no ágora os heróis aqueus” [7]. É nesse sentido que a aretê se converte em um valor de ensinamento frente a esta sociedade. O que já é afirmado por Jeager em A Paideia [8] Para ele, o ideal de aretê é exemplificado através dos mitos heroicos. Precisamente neste sentido a educação do século VIII se baseia nas epopeias. Os cantos épicos se convertem em uma educação moral, em que se ensina que a aristocracia possui uma excelência que é natural. Mas apesar de ser uma condição imanente ao nobre, a aretê se deve demonstrar individualmente. Portanto, há que esforçar-se para conseguí-la, o que se vê na Ilíada quando nos narra que Aquiles foi treinado para vencer na arte da guerra por Fênix. O que nos apresente no canto IX quando Fênix trata de persuadir Aquiles para que volte a lutar com os aqueus: “O ancião cavaleiro Peleo quis que eu te acompanhasse no dia em que te enviar de Ptía a Agamenon. Todavia criança e sem experiência da funesta guerra nem do ágora (...) e me mandou que te ensinará a falar e a realizar grandes feitos (...) te criei até fazer-te o que és”[9].

 

Neste ponto vemos que não só importa a natureza especial do nobre, mas que há que desenvolvê-la e a partir disto é que se reconhece seu mérito.

 

Seguindo com as características desta excelência, surge a imagem da doxa, que se relaciona com a opinião que o resto possui do herói, é esta a que da posteridade e transcendência encarnada na Fama. Portanto, como antes mencionei, tal valor se representa através dos objetos materiais como os despojos de guerra. Portanto, a culminação desta doxa é a Glória ou kleos. Neste sentido ocorre a disputa entre Aquiles e Agamenon, já que ninguém dos dois pôde ficar sem uma escrava, que seja o exemplo tangível de seu triunfo. É por isso que a única forma para que Agamenon não perca sua honra ao entregar sua escrava a Apolo é remover a de Aquiles, posto que este é um igual.

 

Ao revistar este exemplo de Ilíada vemos que no mundo aristocrático não há uma diferença entre o parecer e o ser, ambos elementos são a mesma coisa, portanto, o que prima é a aparência principalmente. Devido a esta visão do homem é que surgiria a antes mencionada doxa que é a opinião, a que afirma o reconhecimento por parte do outro. Ao conseguir tal aceitação o herói pode chegar a tal (euphrosyne), que se representa através do despojo e do banquete “ O agathós ou homem destacado tem alguns meios de fortuna proporcionados. Isto se deduz do paralelismo que se estabelece entre a time ou honra de cada chefe e a parte de despojo que recebe”[10].

 

Outro ponto importante é o das riquezas, que também é outro componente da excelência. O qual se representa através das pertenças do oikos, tais como terras, gado, criados, escravos, etc. Todos estes bens se transmitem diretamente por via de herança. Daqui podemos desprender como nos afirma Rodríguez Adrados que, quando o nobre não pratica a guerra, desfruta da riqueza em seu lugar. Isto nos fica bastante claro na imagem do Banquete em Odisséia [11].

 

Para concluir este imaginário do mundo homérico me parece importante ressaltar que: “É uma sociedade voltada para o mundo, não a outra vida nem ao homem interior; mas com um ideal de heroísmo ao próprio tempo. O ideal se encarna no nobre, o homem superior ou excelente, cuja aretê é fundamentalmente competitiva, mas pode desembocar no sacrifício ou na alegria de um viver refinado” [12].

 

Tomando esta citação compreendemos que a aristocracia se conforma a partir de sua riqueza, e devido a isto é fundamental entre os nobres fomentar vínculos com seus iguais, o qual se dá através da hospitalidade, já que se atende a alguém do mesmo valor moral e social. Neste sentido também se volta importante uma espécie de relação de parentesco dentro da que surge certo intercâmbio econômico representado em presentes (hedna). Na Odisséia se faz patente esta relação de hospitalidade através da narração da viagem de Telêmaco pelas cortes gregas, onde é bem recebido e por sua vez se atende tal como se formara parte da família, sem importar de onde venha, nem as fronteiras que os separam. Outro exemplo chave é o fato que conduz à Guerra de Tróia, a falta da hospitalidade de Paris (Alexandre) frente a Menelau ao raptar Helena.

 

A luta de Nietzsche

 

 O fascínio do filósofo pelo grego parte já de sua infância, na época em que vive com seu avô materno, quem o aproximará ao grego a partir das leituras de Homero que realiza. É neste ponto que o grego se converte em um refúgio para Nietzsche, quem detesta a educação petista na que cresceu, já que o grego se converte na antítese e anti-utopia frente á miséria de sua existência cotidiana cristã-protestante. A partir deste fascínio surge uma imagem do grego que irá contra o pensamento filológico de sua época, para quem a essência do grego se daria no século V ateniense, em pleno Classicismo. Para Nietzsche isto não é o grego, mas o pré-clássico, principalmente assentado no pré-socrático e em Homero.

 

O que se relaciona com as afirmações de Arsênio Ginzo em seu artigo “Nietzsche e os gregos”: “Nietzsche havia chegado cedo à conclusão de que a visão da Grécia transmitida pelo Classicismo alemão era instatisfatória. Já com anterioridade à publicação de O nascimento da tragédia, Nietzsche havia distanciado da imagem da Grécia dos clássicos alemães (...) A partir de 1869, quando começa sua atividade como professor em Basiléia, Nietzsche mostra claramente que resulta insatisfatória essa imagem da Grécia (...) A razão do rechaço nietzschiano consistia em que primeiro os clássicos e depois seus epígonos nos haviam transmitido uma imagem falsa da Antiguidade, uma <<falsa Antiguidade>>, idealizada, unilateral, domesticada” [13].

 

Este distanciamente o leva a afirmar que o centro de gravidade do grego já não é o século de Péricles, como afirmava o resto dos filósofos alemães de sua época, mas antes o século VI ou talvez antes: “Aqui se encontrariam a seu juízo os verdadeiros gregos, uma cultura grega todavia não falsificada nem debilitada, aqui residiria a <<origem criadora>> de uma cultura ocidental, a modo de referente paradigmático que lamentavelmente havia caído em esquecimento ou bem havia diluído seus perfis”[14].

 

Partindo desta imagem do grego contextualizada na época arcaica vemos que Nietzsche descobre neste o melhor exemplo da vontade de poder, a idéia de luta, de sobrepor-se ao outro, que define ao ser humano, o que estaria representado em Homero. E é neste contexto que se percebe a crueldade, a inveja, um gosto pela destruição, dando conta que a destruição é algo próprio do ser humano. Os gregos não forma deshumanos, mas os homems mais humanos dos tempos antigos. Aceitam, não inventam nada papra criar outra humanidade alternativa. A luta para Nietzsche é antes o fim da cultura e educação. E isto é o que afirma em seu texto A luta de Homero, onde a força do agon é o valor mais transcendente dentro da sociedade homérica. Esta imagem apontaria no pensamento do filósofo à noção de um grande desenvolvimento cultural, que só se havia logrado em tal sociedade. Ele não queria pensar na humanidade da antiga Grécia sem sua selvageria, na cultura em sua vigorosa natureza, nem na beleza de seu mundo sem todo o terrível e feio que formavam parte dele:

 

“Assim vemos que os gregos, os homens mais humanos da antiguidade, apresentam certos traços de crueldade, de frieza destrutiva; traço que se reflete de uma maneira muito visível no grotesco espelho de aumento dos helenos (...) Quando Alexandre perfurou os pés de Batis, o valente defensor de Gaza, e atou seu corpo vivo ás rodas de seu carro para arrastá-lo entre as provocações de seus soldados, esta soberba nos parece como uma caricatura de Aquiles, que tratou o cadáver de Heitor de uma maneira semelhante (...)” [15]

 

Ao afirmar isto vai contra o otimismo do progresso que foi instaurado a partir do Iluminismo. Para Nietzsche o grego é a antítese do que odeia de sua época. Para ele os gregos seguem sendo o que haviam sido para os clássicos: paradigmas da humanidade, cultura do homem político, mas a imagem que tinha começou a oscilar entre a simplicidade da concepção clássico e o vigor, inclusive a atrocidade de uma cultura pagã, cujos valores representavam a antítese da história cristã.

 

É em meio a este ideal que começa a afirmar seu projeto de desmascaramento da cultura ocidental como uma luta, uma conquista e a partir disto se homologa com a sociedade homérica. Para ele tudo é visto como uma missão, os gregos eram construtores de cultura, de sua cidade, este não era um agon pessoal. De aí que Nietzsche não entenda o conceito de fama só como um reconhecimento egoísta que se comprova através dos bens materiais. E sim antes é outorgada pela coletividade. Por exemplo, a fama à que apela Aquiles tem que ver antes com a doxa, o que nos fica clarro através da idéia que os aqueus veem possível triunfo em Tróia se Aquiles não decide voltar a lutar. A partir deste exemplo podemos situar a idéia da individualidade que representa o herói para Nietzsche:

 

“Cada ateniense, por exemplo, devia desenvolver sua individualidade naquela medida que podia ser mais útil a Atenas e que menos pudesse prejudica-la (...) cada jovem pensava no bem-estar de sua cidade natal, quando se lançava, bem à carreira, ou a tirar ou cantar; queria aumentar sua fama entre os seus; sua infância ardia em desejos de mostrar-se nas lutas civis como um instrumento de salvação para sua pátria (...)” [16] 

 

Analisando o texto O Estado grego de Nietzsche se visualiza seu ideal de um Estado orientado para a cultura, mas que deve ser fundamentalmente hierarquizado e fundamentado em base à escravidão. Nietzsche glorifica a pólis grega antiga como um arquétipo anti-socialista e anti-liberal. Uma sociedade hierarquicamente estruturada, cruelmente opressiva, cuja excelência cultural provém da implacável exploração dos escravos. Este ideal iria contra a organização burguesa da modernidade. Finalmente, quando conclui seu ensaio louva Platão como o grande teórico do Estado, mas o critica por ser o artífice da Idéia, que será o que ficará na criação do Cristianismo e uma filosofia metafísica. [17]

 

Outro dos pontos que resgata neste texto em relação á sociedade homérica é a noção de indivíduo excepcional que de desprende da imagem do herói, que possui virtude (aretê) e que é quem logra levar a cabo a culminaçãp da grande cultura e determinam o curso da história.

 

Em relação a esta idéia do homem excepcional podemos tomar em contra a noção do herói homérico seguindo as afirmações de Moses Finley em seu texto O mundo de Odisseu: “A idade dos heróis, tal como entendia Homero, foi, pois, uma época em que os homens superavam os padrões sucessivos de um grupo de qualidades específicas e severamente limitadas” [18].

 

A partir dessa noção de Finley podemos relacionar a visão do termo da individuação e por sua vez a imagem do gênio excepcional afirmada por Burckhardt.

 

Burckhardt em seus estudos relacionados com o Renascimento começa a afirmar que esta é a época em que surge a imagem do gênio, a idéia do desenvolvimento da individualidade do artista, elemento que romperia com o anonimato presente na arte da Idade Média. O que para ele se entenderia a partir do descobrimento do homem como homem. O artista agora aspira à fama terrestre, já não à espiritual tal como se via na Idade Média. Seu móvel é a glória, ser reconhecido por seus logros artísticos. Se perde totalmente a idéia medievalista do homem que vê a atividade terrestre como um passo ou preparação à vida celestial. O homem moderno ou renascentista para Burckhardt vê antes que a atividade que realiza  recai em seu presente e em suas glórias futuras, é antes um benefício imediato ao que pode ascender. É assim como Burckhardt afirma que este novo homem já não é passivo e receptivo, mas que antes se transforma em um grande criador. Um produtor de cultura. [19].

 

Esta idéia logo é aplicada por Nietzsche, quem entende a este gênio como um indivíduo excepcional que surge em toda sociedade como o artista ou militar. Tomando esta idéia, Nietzsche afirma o princípio de individuação que estará presente em sua obra O nascimento da tragédia. Este princípio se relaciona com a vontade individual que propõe Schopenhauer, a qual se relaciona com a denominada volição individual que é antes uma maniestação limitada da vontade que se daria a nível do mundo objetivo. Portanto, a vontade seria algo inconsciente que se manifesta no amor à vida de cada um dos indivíduos. A partir destas idéias afirma que o mais importante é entender que todos os fins que persegue o homem estão impulsionados por uma vontade que é original. A essência do mundo é a vontade, levada à vida mesma, sendo esta algo íntimo do ser, o que relacionamos com a noção do núcleo do indivíduo, com sua natureza humana [20].

 

E é neste sentido que se afirma que o Estado deve preocupar-se deste indivíduo excepcional, que afirma uma vontade natural de aspirar à glória, seguindo as afirmações de Burckhardt. Devido a sua genialidade, Nietzsche afirma que o resto do povo (laos) deve se submeter, já que graças a esta escravidão estes gênios podem ter o tempo suficiente para o ofício e em meio dele criar cultura:

 

“Com o fim de que haja um terreno amplo, profundo e fértil para o desenvolvimento da arte, a imensa maioria, ao serviço de uma minoria e mais além de suas necessidades individuais, há de submeter-se como escrava à necessidade da vida a seus gastos, por seu plus de trabalho, a classe privilegiada há de ser subtraída à luta pela existência, par que crê e satisfaça um novo mundo de necessidades” [21].

 

Ao ofício a que se refere Nietzsche não é o que atualmente entendemos como Estado de não atividade, senão que pelo contrário tomando a noção de ofício grega em que os artistas só se dedicavam a produzir cultura. É a partir desta idéia que Nietzsche nos propõe que para os gregos o trabalho era vergonhoso e frente a isto os disse:

 

“O trabalho é uma vergonha porque a existência não tem nenhum valor em si: mas se adornamos esta existência por meio de ilusões artísticas sedutoras, e lhe conferimos deste modo um valor aparente, ainda assim podemos repetir nossa afirmação de que o trabalho é uma vergonha, e por certo na segurança de que o homem que se esforça unicamente por conservar a existência não pode ser um artista” [22].

 

Neste texto também podemos ver que se desprende esta defesa da moral agonística grega, da luta, o uso da violência para poder criar cultura, de aqui que para ele a escravidão se converta em uma horrível necessidade:

 

“Os gregos se revelaram com seu certeiro instinto político, que ainda nos estágios mais elevados de sua civilização e humanidade não cessou de advertir-lhes com acento bronzeado: “o vencido pertence ao vencedor, com sua mulher e seus filhos, com seus bens e com seu sangue. A força se impõe ao direito, e não há direito que em sua origem não seja demasia, usurpação violenta” [23]. 

 

Por sua vez através desta visão violenta, de destruição e força, Nietzsche nos afirma como exemplo Iliáda: “a expressão triunfal de tigres que mostravam ante o cadáver do inimigo; em suma, a incessante renovação daquelas cenas da guerra de Tróia, em cuja contemplação se embriagava Homero como puro heleno” [24].

 

Em relação à imagem do gênio extraordinário, Nietzsche toma Homero, o qual se afirma em seu texto Homero e a filologia clássica. Neste trabalho, apresentado na inauguração de sua cátedra de filologia em Basiléia, não se mete na questão homérica, senão que antes interessa o que este como figura em si simboliza. Deste ponto de vista para o filósofo, Homero se converte em um modo de viver, uma política, um ideal religioso e na criação de um panteão de deuses.

 

Resgata Homero como o indivíduo excepcional que logra sublimar  a tradição, posto que já não é o poeta quem possui uma vontade racional, portanto, nega o conceito de tradição homérica. Há para Nietzsche o desenvolvimento dinâmico de um poeta que se eterniza em um futuro. Para os filólogos da época, Homero recolhe uma tradição de muitos séculos, a concretiza e a escreve. Mas Nietzsche disse que Homero não é isso, que não há uma vontade, e sim uma dinâmica. Para ele a única forma de abordar Homero é através da arte, não da razão, escrevê-lo através da experiência: “a possibilidade de um Homero se faz cada vez mais necessária. Se desde aquele ponto culminante voltamos atrás, encontramos logo a concepção aristotélica do problema homérico. Para Aristóteles é o artista imaculado e infalível que tem perfeita consciência de seus meios e de seus fins; com isto se revela também com a ingênua inclinação a aceitar a opinião do povo que adjudicava Homero a origem de todos os poemas cômicos, um ponto de vista contrário á tradição oral na crítica histórica (...) é necessário perguntar-se se existe uma diferença característica entre as manifestações do indivíduo genial e a alma poética de um povo” [25].

 

A excelência da alma individual que não inventa nada, que eleva a outra categoria à alma popular. O que nos leva a entender que personagens como Homero não são mais uns, senão que sublimam, que são excepcionais e que levam a outra categoria a uma tradição, dado por sua individualidade, seu caráter excepcional: “Agora se compreende pela primeira vez o poder sentido das grandes individualidades e das manifestações de vontade que constituem o mínimo evanescente da Humanidade; agora se compreende que toda verdadeira grandeza e transcendência no reino da vontade não pode ter suas raízes no fenômeno efímero e passageiro de uma vontade particular; se concebem os instintos da massa, o impulso inconsciente do povo como a única primavera, como o único palanque da chamada história do mundo” [26].

 

Para Nietzsche. Homero não só recompilou a poesia oral, visto que sem a figura do bardo não existiria Ilíada Odisséia: “Nós acreditamos em um grande poeta autor da Ilídia e Odisséia; sem embargo, não acreditamos que este poeta seja Homero” [27]. Esta é uma visão muito distinta da que afirmam os estudiosos da questão homérica. Nietzsche afirma uma terceira visão, diferente da noção que foi afirmado, em que se vê Homero como um personagem qualquer. Nietzsche ao invés disso disse que suas obras são produto de uma excepcionalidade, o que se relacionaria com o princípio de individualidade que aparece em o nascimento da tragédia. De onde se desprende a idéia que os personagens individuais determinam o curso da história.

 

Como temos visto, Nietzsche é muito certeiro ao realizar uma leitura do mundo homérico, e tomar deste aquela idéia que através do ideal guerreiro se pode lograr antes de tudo produzir cultura, portanto, não é tão azaroso que em Grécia se tenha dado a grande formação da cultura de Ocidenten, o qual claramente só se pode conseguir a partir da guerra, a que eles chamavam polemos. Daqui que a educação que se recebera aludira exatamente a um ideal guerreiro baseado na noção de aretê, a qual se lograva tanto a nível de trabalho individual como por sua vez pelo simples fato de nascer nobre. Portanto, os gregos foram uma cultura que se educou e conformou na base da noção de uma moral agonística, em que sempre há um que é superior ao outro. Mas ambos heróis estão na mesma altura, já que ambos possuem as mesmas características de nobreza, entendida através do termo aristoi. Daqui que se repete potentemente a imagem de Heitor, quem Homero nos apresenta como o único herói que poderia competir com a potencialidade de Aquiles. Desde este ponto me parece interessante o resgate que realiza Nietzsche frente ao que o resto de seus contemporâneos haviam considerado dentro dos estudos filológicos o menos importante, o mais bestial, que não teria comparação com ao nível artístico do século V. E é neste sentido que depois da conclusão que se a sociedade arcaica não tivesse sido constituída a partir desta noção de agon, não se tivesse logrado mais adiante tais manifestações culturais tão magnânimas que nos tem deixado o século V ateniense.

 

***

 

*Carolina Figueroa León é bacharel em Humanidades e Ciências Sociais. Licenciada em Literatura Criativa da Universidade Diego Portais com um Menor em menção em Cultura Clássica. Estudante do Programa de Magíster em Estudos Clássicos da Universidade Metropolitana de Ciências na Educação (UMCE).

 

[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich, O Estado grego. (Obra Póstuma) Prólogo de um livro que não foi escrito, 1871, p. 6

 

[2] Ver Rodríguez Adrados, Francisco, La democracia ateniense, Editorial Alianza, España, 1998.

 

[3] Ibíd., p. 32

 

[4] Ibíd., p. 36

 

[5] Homero, La Ilíada, Canto VI, Editorial Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 1961, p. 154

 

[6] Finley, M.I., El mundo de Odiseo, Fondo de Cultura Económica, España, 1995, p. 30

 

[7] Ibíd., p. 20

 

[8] Ver Jaeger, Werner. “Capítulo II: Cultura y educación de la nobleza homérica” en Paideia: los ideales de la cultura griega, Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica. México, 2001, pp. 32-47.

 

[9] Homero, Op. cit., pp.226-228

 

[10] Rodríguez Adrados, Op. cit., p.39

 

[11] Ver Homero, La Odisea, Canto XVII. Se menciona um banquete no cual se encontram os pretendentes de Penélope.

 

[12] Rodríguez Adrados, Op.cit., p.38

 

[13] Ginzo, Arsenio, “Nietzsche y los griegos”, Polis. Revista de ideas y formas políticas de la Antigüedad Clásica, núm. 12, 2000, p.103

 

[14] Ibíd., p.106

 

[15] Nietzsche, Friedrich, La lucha de Homero. Prólogo para um libro que não foi escrito (Obra póstuma) (1871-72).

 

[16] Ibíd.

 

[17] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Op. cit., pp.1-9

 

[18] Finley, M. I., Op.cit., p.30

 

[19] Burckhardt, Jacob, La Civilización del Renacimiento en Italia, Vol. I (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958), pp.143-174

 

[20] Véase Schopenhauer, Arthur, El mundo como voluntad y representación, 1844 (2º Edición, con los Suplementos).

 

[21] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Op. cit., 1871.

 

[22] Ibíd.

 

[23] Ibíd.

 

[24] Ibíd.

 

[25] Nietzsche, Friedrich, Homero y la filología clásica. Trabalho apresentado em Basilea no ano de 1869.

 

[26] Ibíd.

 

[27] Ibíd.

Quel rôle les dieux grecs ont-ils joué dans la guerre de Troie ?

Quel rôle les dieux grecs ont-ils joué dans la guerre de Troie ?

Pierre Sineux

Ex: http://linformationnationaliste.hautetfort.com/

Au chant III de l'Iliade, Priam s'adresse à Hélène : "Tu n'es, pour moi, cause de rien, les dieux seuls sont cause de tout : ce sont eux qui ont déchaîné cette guerre" (III, 164-165). Les vieux Troyens, au demeurant, quand ils voient Hélène marcher sur les remparts, sont prêts à excuser tout à la fois Troyens et Achéens "si pour telle femme, ils souffrent si longs maux. Elle a terriblement l'air, quand on l'a devant soi, des déesses immortelles" (III, 156158). Hélène n'y serait pour rien ou plutôt, quand bien même y serait-elle pour quelque chose, ce serait la faute de cette part "divine" qui est en elle, cette beauté qui, précisément, la met du côté des dieux et matérialise une destinée de nature divine. Voyons les faits. Dans l'Iliade, il faut se rendre au chant XXIV pour trouver une allusion à l'événement qui déclencha la guerre de Troie alors que les dieux délibèrent au sujet du cadavre d'Hector, Héra, Poséidon et Athéna conservent leur rancune à l'égard de Troie et de Priam : "ils pensent à l'affront qu'en son aveuglement Pâris à ces déesses autrefois infligea : lors, dans sa bergerie elles étaient venues, mais il leur préféra celle qui lui fit don d'un objet de douloureux désir" (XXIV, 28-30). À Héra et à Athéna Pâris-Alexandre préféra Aphrodite qui lui fit don d'Hélène. Mais Pâris n'était en fait que l'instrument d'une querelle qu'aux noces de Thétis et de Pélée, Éris avait suscitée entre les trois déesses pour savoir laquelle des trois était la plus belle.

L'épisode figure dans les Chants Cypriens, une épopée perdue qui racontait les événements antérieurs à ceux qui sont évoqués dans l'Iliade, depuis les noces de Thétis et de Pélée jusqu'à la capture de Chryséis, la fille d'un prêtre d'Apollon, par Agamemnon. La guerre de Troie y apparaît en définitive comme le fruit d'un complot ourdi par Zeus et par Thémis. Zeus cherchait, en effet, à délivrer la terre du poids de tant de mortels ; Gaia, accablée par le nombre des hommes et par leur impiété, s'était plainte auprès de lui qui, d'abord, provoqua la guerre des Sept contre Thèbes puis qui, sur les conseils de Mômos ("Sarcasme"), maria Thétis à un mortel (ce sera Pélée et de l'union naîtra Achille) et engendra lui-même une fille très belle (de son union avec Léda naîtra Hélène). C'est ce qu'Euripide rappellera en faisant d'Hélène un instrument dont les dieux se sont servi pour dresser Grecs et Phrygiens les uns contre les autres "et provoquer des morts afin d'alléger la Terre outragée par les mortels sans nombre qui la couvraient" (Hélène, 1639-1642).

De l'origine de la guerre à l'histoire des batailles, tout, en apparence, dépend d'eux, l'idée même qui fait naître l'action puis le résultat d'une entreprise. D'emblée, à propos de la querelle entre Achille et Agamemnon, le poète le dit : "Qui des dieux les mit donc aux prises en telle querelle et bataille ? Le fils de Létô et de Zeus" (I, 8-9) : Apollon a vu l'un de ses prêtres, Chrysès, méprisé par Agamemnon (à qui il a refusé de rendre sa fille) et il descend des cimes de l'Olympe décocher, neuf jours durant, ses traits à travers l'armée jusqu'à ce qu'Achille appelle les gens à l'assemblée et que Calchas révèle l'origine de son courroux. On le sait, Agamemnon contraint de rendre sa captive, fera enlever Briséis, la "part d'honneur" d'Achille qui s'en va alors implorer sa mère. C'est précisément au moment où Zeus répond à la plainte de Thétis outragée en la personne de son fils qu'il fait parvenir un message à Agamemnon sous la forme d'un songe mensonger qui vient, alors que celui-ci est endormi, se poster au-dessus de son front : "Je suis, sache-le, messager de Zeus... Il t'enjoint d'appeler aux armes tous les Achéens chevelus – vite, en masse. L'heure est venue où tu peux prendre la vaste cité des Troyens. Les Immortels, habitants de l'Olympe, n'ont plus sur ce point d'avis qui divergent. Tous se sont laissé fléchir à la prière d'Héra. Les Troyens désormais sont voués aux chagrins. Zeus le veut" (Iliade, II, 26-33). Et puisqu'Agamemnon croit qu'il va le jour même prendre la cité de Priam, ignorant l'oeuvre que médite Zeus, il relance l'affrontement... Le monde homérique est donc peuplé de divinités en relation pour ainsi dire permanente avec les humains. Le dieu peut être favorable, défavorable, hostile ou bienveillant mais dans tous les cas de figures, il va de soi que son intervention est normale. On peut même aller jusqu'à dire que l'intervention des dieux est au coeur de la psychologie des héros d'Homère (Chantraine, 1952 : 48), ce que deux vers de l'Odyssée résument : "les dieux peuvent rendre fou l'homme le plus sage, tout comme ils savent inspirer la sagesse au moins raisonnable" (XXIII, 11-13).  

Si le dieu inspire la crainte ou la colère, donne l'élan de l'action, cela ne signifie pas que les héros sont dépourvus d'une volonté et d'un caractère qui leur sont propres. Causalité divine et causalité humaine coexistent, se doublent et se combinent comme le montre particulièrement la collaboration, voire la symbiose, qui se manifeste entre Athéna et Ulysse. Et lorsqu'à la fin de l'Iliade, Achille s'entend dire par Thétis que, selon la volonté de Zeus, il faut rendre le corps d'Hector, lui-même se laisse toucher par la pensée de son père que lui rappelle Priam, manque de se fâcher à nouveau, puis accepte... Dans de nombreux cas, au demeurant, ce sont les décisions prises par les héros et leurs actions qui poussent les dieux à intervenir : ainsi, quand Achille se bat avec Memnon, les deux mères divines, Thétis et Éos, entrent en scène. 

Ce rapprochement du divin et de l'humain commande en définitive la place des dieux dans l'épopée où le seuil que constitue l'immortalité tend à être sans cesse franchi. Achille est le fils de Thétis, Énée est le fils d'Aphrodite, Hélène est la fille de Zeus... Ces liens de parenté ne sont qu'un élément qui explique l'intérêt que les dieux manifestent à l'égard des hommes. Leur acharnement dans la lutte vient d'une façon générale de leur attachement pour certains mortels, leurs mérites ou leur piété – ou, inversement de leur aversion – et de la nécessité qu'il y a pour eux à exiger des honneurs de la part des hommes. Prenant parti pour les uns ou pour les autres – Héra, Athéna, Poséidon sont de tout coeur avec les Achéens, Apollon est tout entier du côté des Troyens, Aphrodite n'a d'yeux que pour Énée... – les dieux se retrouvent combattant les uns contre les autres.  

Or, précisément, tout à leur passion pour les affaires des hommes les dieux agissent et réagissent comme des hommes. Zeus a beau y faire, lui, le roi, l'aîné, le père souverain, il doit constamment rappeler à l'ordre sa famille prête à désobéir et à en découdre, ce qui ne manque pas de donner à l'épopée ici et là des allures de comédie. Et chacun de se quereller, de venir se plaindre à lui, de se moquer des uns et des autres. Et lui d'interdire aux dieux de se mêler de la guerre, de menacer de ses coups, de promettre le "Tartare brumeux" à ceux qui désobéissent. Lui-même craint sa femme, Héra, toujours prompte à le tancer : "... même sans cause, elle est toujours là à me chercher querelle en présence des dieux immortels, prétendant que je porte aide aux Troyens dans les combats" (Iliade, I, 518-521). Celle-ci peut le berner, en éveillant son désir puis en l'endormant (Iliade, XIV, 158-350) pour laisser Poséidon donner toute sa mesure dans le secours qu'il apporte aux Achéens. Ces histoires tout humaines dont l'épopée regorge mettent en lumière le caractère anthropomorphique des dieux et les limites de leurs pouvoirs.

On comprend alors que lorsque les dieux descendent de l'Olympe pour intervenir directement dans la mêlée, c'est sous une forme humaine, en prenant, le plus souvent, l'aspect d'un proche de la personne à qui ils veulent apparaître. Ce type d'épiphanie est fréquent : Aphrodite apparaît à Hélène sous les traits d'une ancienne servante mais elle est reconnue : sa gorge splendide, sa belle poitrine, ses yeux fulgurants sont ceux d'une déesse (Iliade, III, 396-398). Athéna vient au secours de Diomède qui la reconnaît et s'installe sur son char, saisissant le fouet et les rênes pour conduire les chevaux contre... le dieu Arès (Iliade, V, 839-842). Souvent, le dieu se cache dans une nuée aux yeux de la foule et ne se laisse voir que par le personnage à qui il veut se manifester : Apollon se fait reconnaître auprès d'Hector (Iliade, XV, 247-266) mais, au milieu des Troyens, il s'enveloppe d'un nuage (307). Parfois, lorsque le dieu apparaît sous les traits d'un proche, il peut laisser les mortels dans l'illusion : Apollon apparaît à Hector sous les traits de son oncle maternel, le vieil Asios, l'encourage à repartir au combat mais reste incognito (Iliade, XVI, 718). Les personnages d'Homère s'attendent à tout moment à rencontrer un dieu sous une forme humaine ; d'où la crainte, dans la bataille, de se trouver face à face avec un dieu : "Serais-tu quelque Immortel descendu des cieux ? Je ne saurais combattre une des divinités célestes" crie Diomède à Glaucos (Iliade, VI, 128). S'il arrive parfois que les dieux interviennent dissimulés, par une métamorphose, dans le corps d'un animal par exemple, la norme est bien une représentation anthropomorphique des dieux.  

On peut donc dire qu'en jouant leur rôle dans la guerre de Troie, les dieux révèlent, par la grâce du poète, leur anthropomorphisme, non seulement plastique mais fondamental : les dieux agissent et se conduisent comme des hommes. Autrement dit, la poésie épique donne une forme organique et visible à la sphère du divin et, en faisant des dieux les protagonistes d'un récit, elle leur attribue les qualités spécifiques aux individus : ils ont un nom, une "personnalité" et un caractère particuliers (Vegetti, 1993 : 388). Et pourtant... Les dieux sont bien différents. D'une certaine façon, ils apparaissent comme des héros dont l'areté (la valeur) aurait été poussée jusqu'à ses extrêmes limites : ils les surpassent par la beauté, la force, l'intelligence. L'éclat surgit dès qu'il est question d'un dieu. Laissons parler Thétis : "Zeus à la grande voix, assis à l'écart, sur le plus haut sommet de l'Olympe aux cimes sans nombre" (Iliade, I, 498-499). À cette image de la majesté divine, il faut ajouter ce trait qui change tout : les dieux sont immortels. Après avoir donné à Pélée des chevaux immortels qui pleurent la mort imminente de leur jeune maître Achille, Zeus se lamente : "Pauvres bêtes ! Pourquoi vous ai-je donc données à Sire Pélée - un mortel ! – vous que ne touche ni l'âge ni la mort ? Est-ce donc pour que vous ayez votre part de douleurs avec les malheurs humains ? Rien n'est plus misérable que l'homme entre tous les êtres qui respirent et marchent sur la terre" (Iliade, XVII, 443-447). Affirmation d'une supériorité qui fait des dieux des maîtres fondamentalement séparés des hommes.  

Nul doute que lorsqu'elle prend forme, l'épopée a pour toile de fond quantité de récits mythiques traditionnels sur les divinités et les puissances naturelles qui habitent et dominent le monde. Mais le plus remarquable est que pour faire le récit des derniers jours de la guerre de Troie, le poète, en sélectionnant, en mettant en œuvre et en réélaborant un immense matériau, a esquissé pour les siècles à venir la figure de ce qu'est un dieu grec.

Pierre SINEUX http://www.theatrum-belli.com

In Qu'est-ce qu'un dieu grec ?

Editions Klincksieck

W. B. Yeats, Ireland and the Modern World

Professor Ronan McDonald

Freyja: Señora de la Magia

Freyja: Señora de la Magia

 

Por Phil Hine

 

Ex: http://imaginacionalpoder.blogspot.com/


Según Snorri Sturluson, el autor de la prosa "Edda", Freyja fue la más renombrada de todas las diosas, y era la única todavía con vida. Esta declaración significa que el culto de Freyja había sobrevivido en el siglo doce en Escandinavia. Este ensayo sirve como breve introducción al estudio de Freyja, su linaje, atributos y dominio, ambos exotérico y esotérico. Freyja como Odín, tiene muchos títulos por los cuales es conocida. El nombre Freyja (pronunciar Freia) quiere decir "la señora". Sus otros títulos son: Vanadis (la Diosa de los Vanir), Vanabrudhr (la Prometida de los Vanir), H ö rn (la Amante de Lino), Gefn (la dadora), Syr (la cerda), Mard ö ll (la brillante) y Gullveig (la ávida). Freyja forma parte (quizá la más prominente) de los Vanir, una raza de dioses de la fertilidad que al principio lucharon con, y más tarde se unieron a los Aesir. Frejya es comúnmente conocida como una diosa de la fertilidad.
Como diosa del amor, ella es presentada comor sexualmente atractiva y disponible en sus favores. Ella también tenía autoridad sobre los muertos; algo que compartía con Odín, y cada día se decidía quién entraba a su recinto Sessrumnir, el cual quedaba en Folkvang, 'La Montaña de Gente.' Freyja también fue la Señora de la Magia. Ella poseía una piel de halcón que se ponía para viajar al bajo mundo, trayendo las ulteriores profecías y el conocimiento del destino. Además de cambiar de forma, ella también era la diosa de la magia seidhr y podría controlar el fuego mágicamente .
Ella conducía una carroza jalada por gatos, y su animal totémico era la cerda. Freyja forma parte de los Vanir, un panteón de deidades que son generalmente descritas como dioses de 'la fertilidad'.
Ha habido algunas especulaciones de que los Vanir representaban a un pueblo centrado en una cultura agrícola y matriarcal, que fue invadido, y más tarde asimilado por la tribu cuyos dioses fueron los Aesir. Hay muchas prueba dentro de los Mitos Escandinavos que demuestran que los Aesir no aprobaban la intimidad de Freyja con su hermano, Freyr - y también que Freyja y Freyr fuesen los hijos de Njord y su hermana anónima. Snorri nos dice que los matrimonios entre hermanos eran comunes entre los Vanir, y esto bien podría indicar un choque con las costumbres tribales.
Según H. R. Ellis Davidson (Myths & Gods of Northern Europe), los Vanir eran los dioses del crecimiento en los campos, entre los animales, y en la casa, y también entregaban a los hombres el poder de conectarse con el mundo de lo invisible. Esta autora indica que es probable que el culto a los Vanir incluyera rituales orgiásticos y sacrificatorios.
En The Norse Myths, Kevin Crossley-Hollland nos dice que a la Edad Dorada que le siguió a Odín y sus hermanos ' la creación de los mundos, se le dio fin con la guerra entre los Vanir y los Aesir - la primera guerra. Freyja parece jugar un papel esencial en causar estos acontecimientos. Crossley-Holland relata la historia de que Gullveig la bruja" visitó a los Aesir, y "los lleno de aversión" por la manera lujuriosa en que ella hablaba acerca del oro. La apresaron y atravesaron su cuerpo con lanzas". Tres veces la arrojaron a las llamas, pero en cada ocasión salía, intacta y renacida. Con temor, los Aesir la nombraron Heidh (la Brillante). Cuando los Vanir oyeron acerca del trato que los Aesir le dieron a Gullveig, se prepararon para la guerra, y así lo hicieron también los Aesir. La batalla se enardeció sin que ninguno de los bandos pudiera obtener la victoria, así que los dioses demandaron que se establezca la paz, y quedaron de acuerdo en intercambiar a los líderes como prueba de su buena voluntad. Como parte del acuerdo, los dioses Vanir Njord y Freyr lograron llegar por medio de astucias a Asgard, y Freyja viajó con ellos. Los Aesir nombraron a Njord y Freyr como sumos sacerdotes para presidir los sacrificios, y Freyja fue consagrada como suma sacerdotisa sacrificatoria. Edred Thorsson, en Runelore identifica a Gullveig (la anterior nombrada bruja) como un aspecto, o título, de Freyja, como lo hace Crossley-Holland. Esto ciertamente concordaría con el amor de Freyja por el oro, y con las vestimentas doradas con las que ella se adornaba. Además, es reconocido que Freyja introdujo a los Aesir en las prácticas Seidhr, actuando como instructora de Odín a este respecto. El que Crossley-Holland relate del mito Gullveig confirma que esta ' bruja ' era una profetiza - " ella encantaba varitas de madera; Ella entraba en Trances y lanzaba hechizos ".
Es bien sabido que el culto a Freyja implicaba la práctica de la magia Seidhr. Es interesante notar que probablemente no fue, la pasión de Freyja por el oro mismo lo que tanto enardeció a los Aesir, pero quizá la vehemencia de su avaricia, o deseo. Dioses o actos de deseo y transgresión parecen ser de fundamental importancia en los mitos de la caída, o el final de las edades 'primitivas' o doradas. Es posible que Freyja, como una diosa del deseo erótico y el éxtasis, haya podido ser vista tanto como poderosa, digna de respeto, y al mismo tiempo, alguien de quien desconfiar. Thorsson apunta, en Runelore, que Freyja es una deidad de tres niveles. Ella forma parte de los Vanir, es diosa de la Magia, y diosa de los guerreros. Davidson comenta que es posible ver a Freyja como una Triple Diosa, en conjunto con Frigg y Skadi. En The North Myths, Crossley-Holland relata el cuento del Collar de los Brisings, el mito principal en el cual Freyja juega el papel 'estelar'. La historia básica es que Freyja salió furtivamente de su vestíbulo una noche y en silencio abandonó Asgard, seguida, sin saberlo ella, por Loki. Encontró el camino a la herrería de los cuatro enanos - Alfrigg, Dvalin, Berling y Grerr. Codició un collar de oro labrado con patrones maravillosos, el cual era obra de los enanos. Se ofreció a comprar el collar, pero el precio que pusieron los enanos era que ella se debía acostar con ellos una noche. Freyja aceptó esto, y luego, regresó a su habitación al amparo de la oscuridad. Loki partió directamente rumbo a la habitación de Odín y le dijo al soberano lo que Freyja había hecho. Odín, furioso, ordenó a Loki a conseguir el collar de Freyja, Loki fue convertido en una mosca, pudiendo entrar a Sessrumnir, y así robarle el collar a Freyja mientras dormía. Cuando Freyja se despertó a la mañana siguiente y se dio cuenta que el collar había sido robado, sabía que sólo Loki podría haber sido capaz de algo semejante y que además, sólo lo habría hecho bajo el mandato de Odín. Ella se dirigió apresuradamente hacia Odín y le preguntó por el collar, el soberano dijo que sólo podría volver a verlo otra vez bajo una condición - que promoviera la guerra entre dos reyes humanos en Midgard, y que use sus hechizos para traer a la vida a los caídos en batalla, a fin de que pudiesen pelear nuevamente. Freyja accedió a esto y su collar fue devuelto. Crossley-Holland, en sus notas sobre esta narración, dice que dado el papel de Frejya como una diosa de la guerra y la muerte, es posible que la última exigencia de Odín bien pudo haber sido para la complacencia de ella. Usualmente los estudiosos están de acuerdo de que con el ' collar de los Brisings ' se refiere a la antigua palabra Nórdica brisingr, que significa fuego - en relación a su brillo. Ellis Davisdson registra que el collar es un símbolo a menudo atribuido a las diosas madres. Por lo que respecta a interpretaciones esotéricas de este relato, Freya Aswynn, en "Leaves of Yggdrasil", dice que los enanos representan los cuatro elementos y el collar, la quinta parte, lo cual sólo puede provenir de la integración de los otros cuatro. Thorsson, en Runelore, aporta la explicación que el collar representa el ciclo cósmico de cuatro niveles de generación y regeneración. Thorsson nota que ella pudo haberse acostado con un enano una noche, o con los cuatro simultáneamente. Los Mitos Nórdicos, tal como han sido relatados por Crossley-Holland, nos dan algunas pistas importantes acerca de las habilidades mágicas de Freyja. En el mito de Gullveig, ella exhibe sus poderes ante los Aesir, sobreviviendo todos sus intentos de deshacerse de ella. En el Poema de Hyndla, ella rodea a la gigante Hyndla con un anillo de fuego. Dado su carácter erótico y su amor por el oro, se llegaría a la conclusión de que la magia de Freyja también incluiría poderes de encantamiento - el echar encantos y fascinaciones. Yo señalaría dos instancias en The Norse Myths que parecerían darle soporte a esta idea: En primer lugar, en "El Edificio de la Pared de Asgard", el albañil gigante pide tomar a Freyja por su esposa, a cambio de reconstruir las paredes de Asgard. A estas alturas, Freyja es asi descrita: La bella diosa se levantó de golpe desde su asiento y cuando ella se movió el collar de los Brisings, sus brazaletes, prendedores dorados y el hilo de oro de su ropa centelleó y brilló intensamente. Nadie excepto Odin la pudo mirar directamente. En segundo lugar, en el Duelo de Thor con Hrungnir, ella intenta engañar al gigante que otra vez, amenaza con secuestrarla: Odin inclinó la cabeza y Freyja se movió furtivamente hacia adelante. Cuando ella se movió, todas las joyas que llevaba puesta brillaron intensamente y Hrungnir se restregó los ojos. Bebe otra vez, ' dijo Freya. La capa de plumas de Freyja, la cual ella usó para entrar en el inframundo es dada a Loki en un par de ocasiones - para que este demuestre sus poderes de cambiar de forma por propia descición. Pero el manto de plumas como un arquetipo de traje de pájaro por lo general, parece ser un ingrediente muy importante en una gran cantidad de tradiciones chamánicas, como Mircea Eliade nota en su monumental trabajo "Chamanismo", en el que cuenta de los Tungus de Siberia a los Filidh irlandéses. Snorri dice que Freyja llora ' lágrimas de oro ' cuando vá en busca de su marido perdido, Odhr. Porqué ella hace esto no está muy claro. Davidson, en Gods and Myths of Northern Europe sugiere que éste es otro ejemplo del mito de "la diosa buscando al dios de la fertilidad asesinado". A primera vista, al menos, esto sugiere un enlace entre Freyja y los cultos de Isis o Cibeles. Sin embargo, Thorsson, en Runelore, da una interpretación alternativa de este tema. "El nombre Odh-r simplemente indica la fuerza del éxtasis, de la mente inspirada mágicamente. Por eso, la diosa Freyja se casó con Odhr, y (al igual que Odín) es la meta principal de sus esfuerzos. Freyja vagó buscando a Odhr, derramando lágrimas de oro". Esto, dice Thorsson, no tiene nada que ver con los mitos de Ishtar (o Isis) - esa Freyja busca "la inspiración deífica" contenida en el dios. Freyja es la figura principal del conjunto de prácticas conocido como Seidhr. Como Thorsson explica en "The Nine Doors of Midgard", hubo dos formas de magia practicada en el antiguo norte: Galdor, la cual da énfasis al desarrollo de la voluntad y el ejercer control sobre las circunstancias de la vida de uno, y Seidhr - la magia de inmersión en la cual los estados de Trance jugaron el papel principal. De lo que realmente las prácticas Seidhr consistieron se ha convertido en un asunto de debate estos últimos tiempos. Jan Fries por ejemplo, en Helrunar, usa el término de dos maneras - en primer lugar él dice que la palabra seidhr tiene relación a la fermentación de pociones y medicamentos herbarios, en particular aquellos que tenían como propósito el causar una alteración de la conciencia, y en segundo lugar, él hace referencia al cuerpo ' hirviente ' del chamán, entrando en trance temblando y bamboleándose con espasmos en todo el cuerpo. Davidson, aborda el tema de la Volva, una sacerdotisa en la mitología escandinava y entre las tribus germanas, quien entraba en trance adivinatorio en festivales, y podía contestar las preguntas que los presentes le hacían . La volva estaría sentada sobre una plataforma o asiento elevado, los hechizos eran cantados - la volva sería algunas veces apoyada por un gran grupo que actuaba como coro y proveía música - la pitonisa entraba en un estado de éxtasis. Según Davidson, la volva era consultada sobre asuntos relacionados con el crecimiento de los cultivos, la prosperidad de la comunidad y el matrimonio de personas jóvenes - todos temas relacionados e incluidos en el área de influencia de Freyja. Thorsson, en Nine Doors, brevemente describe tres formas de poder seidhr: Adivinación, Viajes a otros reinos y amor seidhr (magia sexual). Él también menciona a la metamorfosis mágica como una característica seidhr. Randy P. Connor, en Blossom of Bone, dice que los practicantes masculinos de magia seidhr tenían la reputación de poder: "Otorgar y quitar riqueza y fama. Podían traer lo necesario durante tiempos de carestía o podían causar la ruina de la tierra. Podrían causar que las personas enfermen, asi como que los podrían sanar con hierbas y encantos. Podrían reunir amantes y romper relaciones. En tiempos posteriores , auxiliaron a los guerreros mágicamente desafilando las espadas de los enemigos, deteniendo las flechas en el vuelo, creando tormentas en el mar, y desatando las cadenas de los prisioneros ". Todo esto debería servir como ejemplo del posible alcance de la practica seidhr . El tema de la magia seidhr mismo merece un profundo estudio. En conclusión, ofreceré algunos conceptos sobre las posibilidades que el trabajo mágico con Freyja nos ofrece. Freyja es una bruja arquetípica. Ella por consiguiente podría ser invocada por aquellos que quieran aprender métodos de brujería, adivinación, y encanto. Ciertamente Thorsson, en Nine Doors describe una Invocación a Freyja cuyo propósito es un trabajo de bendición ' para adquirir los poderes seidhr. Las invocaciones de Thorsson dan un buen ejemplo de cómo acercarse a Freyja apropiadamente:

"He venido a este lugar para honrar a Freyja, para hablar de mis lujurias por su cuerpo encantador, y de mi avaricia por sus fuerzas poderosas de seidr. Con estas palabras deseo con todo mi corazón que ella venga a mí y permanezca conmigo en cuerpo y alma."

Y....

A ti te invoco y te invito a venir desde Folkvang y de tu asiento en Sessrumnir - y estar aquí conmigo ahora. Camina a grandes pasos con la apariencia de Gullveig - la que tiene sed de oro - y da a conocer tu sagrada fuerza con la forma de Heid" - la reluciente y brillante madre del sagrado Seith.

La fuerza de Freyja es conjurada en un cuerno de aguamiel, en el que los participante beben y comparten con la diosa.

También parecería apropiado pedir la bendición de Freyja en cualquier acto de magia seidhr o Magia de Resultados trabajada usando la Tradición del Norte. Los trabajos con una intención de naturaleza erótica podrían especialmente atraer su favor.

Obras Citadas

Freya Aswynn, Leaves of Yggdrasil (Aswynn)

Randy P. Conner, Blossom of Bone (HarperCollins)

Kevin Crossley- Holland, The Norse Myths (Penguin)

H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Penguin)

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy (Penguin Arkana)

Jan Fries, Helrunar (Mandrake of Oxford)

Edred Thorsson, Runelore (Samuel Weiser)

Edred Thorsson, The Nine Doors of Midgard (Llewellyn)


Traducido por Kaosmos

O Retorno do Mito

O Retorno do Mito

por Boris Nad

Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/

Os processos contraditórios de desmitologização e remitologização não são desconhecidos para as civilizações antigas, nas quais os velhos mitos são às vezes destruídos (desmitologização) e substituídos com novos mitos (remitologização). Em outras palavras, aqui os processos de desmitologização e remitologização são processos mutuamente causados e interdependentes. Eles não colocam em questão a própria base da comunidade mítica tradicional; ademais, eles a mantém atual e viva.

O mito, nomeadamente - exceto em casos especiais de degradação extrema e secularização da tradição e cultura - para nós, não é uma ficção de povos primitivos, uma superstição ou uma incompreensão, mas uma expressão assaz concisa das verdades e princípios sagrados mais elevados, que são "traduzidos" a uma linguagem específica da realidade terrena, na medida em que seja praticamente possível. O mito é verdade sacral descrita por linguagem popular. Onde as presunções para sua compreensão estão desaparecendo, o conteúdo mítico deve ser descartado para que se coloque em seu lugar um novo.

As Intuições Perigosas

O mito é, nas culturas tradicionais, também uma grande antítese, onde, como demonstrado na obra capital de J.J. Bachofen Direito Materno: Uma Investigação sobre o Caráter Religioso e Jurídico do Matriarcado no Mundo Antigo, os dois princípios maiores e irreconciliáveis são confrontados: o urânico e o ctônico, patriarcal e matriarcal, e isso é projetado para todas as modalidades secundárias do estado e da ordem social através das artes e da cultura.

Com o advento do indo-europeu, invasores patriarcais no solo da velha Europa matriarcal começou o conflito dos dois princípios opostos que é trabalhado no estudo de Bachofen. No caso em questão, os velhos cultos e mitos matriarcais se tornam patriarcais, através dos processos paralelos e alternados de desmitologização e remitologização, e traços desse conflito também são encontrados em alguns temas míticos, que podem ser compreendidos como uma história político-religiosa bastante breve, como Robert Graves os interpretou, em seu livro Os Mitos Gre

Em contraste, na Grécia, um processo de desmitologização que alcança seu ápice após Xenófanes (565-470) é completo e radical. Isso não é seguido por qualquer processo de remitologização, é uma consequência de um processo total de dessacralização e profanação da cultura, que resulta na extinção do mítico e no despertar de uma consciência história, quando o homem deixa de ser ver como mítico e começa a se compreender como um ser histórico. Este é um fenômeno que possui analogias com dois momentos na história: primeiro, com um processo de desmitologização causado pelo Cristianismo primitivo. Para os primeiros teólogos cristãos, o mito era o oposto do Evangelho, e Jesus era uma figura histórica, cuja historicidade os Pais da Igreja provavam e defendiam para os descrentes. Como contraste há o processo de remitologização da Idade Média, com toda uma série de exemplos de revitalização do antigo conteúdo mítico, muitas vezes conflituoso e irreconciliável, dos mitos do Graal e de Frederico II aos mitos escatológicos na época das Cruzadas e vários mitos milenaristas. É, sem dúvida, uma reatualização bastante antiga de conteúdo mítico e sua "intuição perigosa", que ultrapassa suas causas e serve como uma evidência da presença de forças míticas do mundo histórico, que processo algum de desmitologização é capaz de destruir ou extinguir.

A Mitologia do Consumidor - O Pesadelo da História

Outro exemplo de processo radical de desmitologização é a desmitologização que começa com a época do Iluminismo até seu ápice experimentado no "universo tecnológico". Ela é (como acima) expressão direta de degradação e declínio do homem moderno, que não mais é um ser mítico ou histórico, mas um mero "consumidor" dentro da "civilização consumista e tecnocrática" ou simplesmente um plugue para o universo tecnológico. O impulso heróico do homem como ser mítico e histórico foi esgotado. Forças destrutivas de desmitologização constantemente limpam e removem os ingredientes míticos da área da civilização consumista e da memória humana em geral, exterminando as "intuições perigosas" que estão contidas aí. Dentro do universo tecnológico, que é apenas uma fase final da queda do homem (moderno), o horizonte humano está finalmente se fechando, porque aqui o homem possui apenas um poder e apenas uma liberdade: o poder de gastar e a liberdade de comprar e vender. Essa liberdade e esse poder, testemunham sobre a morte do homem (conhecida pelo mito e pela história), porque dentro do universo da tecnologia e da civilização consumerista, qualquer coisa que transcende esse "animal de consumo" simplesmente não pode existir. "A Morte da Arte" sobre a qual fala a vanguarda histórica é uma simples consequência da morte do homem, primeiro como ser mítico, e finalmente como ser histórico.

É claro, o processo de desmitologização jamais pode se completar, pela simples razão de que a destruição não toca as próprias forças míticas. Elas continuam a aparecer e retornar através da história, seja sob roupagem "histórica", ou como algo que se opõe à história. Isso também é verdadeiro para o universo unidimensional de uma utopia tecnocrática. Como resultado, os verdadeiros conteúdos míticos da civilização de consumo são substituídos pelo simulacro mítico: ideologias e mitos subculturais, ou mitologia consumerista, crescendo sem controle, cujos heróis são figuras como o Super-Homem.

Mas a exaustão de longos e destrutivos processos de desmitologização não significa um retorno ao tempo mítico.

"Nós estamos na meia-noite da história, o ponteiro marcou as doze e nós olhamos adiante para as trevas onde vemos os contornos de coisas futuras. A essa visão se seguem medo e pesada premonição. Coisas que vemos ou pensamos que podemos ver ainda não tem nome, elas são inomináveis. Se as abordamos, não as afetamos com precisão e elas escapam do laço de nosso domínio. Quando falamos paz pode ser guerra. Planos de felicidade se tornam homicidas, não raro ao longo da noite".

Em resumo: "Incursões ríspidas, que em muitos lugares convertem paisagens históricas em elementais, ocultam mudanças sutis porém do tipo mais agressivo" (Ernst Jünger: No Muro do Tempo).

 

Na Aurora da História

O escrito No Muro do Tempo pelo autor alemão Ernst Jünger retrata a transição do mito em história, o momento em que a consciência mítica foi substituída pela histórica. A história, é claro, não existe há tanto tempo quanto o homem: a consciência histórica rejeita como ahistóricos os vastos espaços e épocas ("pré-história"), e povos, civilizações e nações, porque "uma pessoa, um evento deve ter características muito específicas que as tornem históricas". A chave para essa transição, segundo esse autor, fornece a obra de Heródoto, através da qual o homem "passa por um país iluminado pelos raios da aurora".

"Antes dele (Heródoto) havia algo mais, a noite mítica. Aquela noite, porém, não era trevas. Era como um sonho, e ela conhecia um meio diferente de conectar pessoas e eventos de consciência histórica e suas forças seletivas. Isso lança os raios da aurora sobre a obra de Heródoto. Ele se situa no topo da montanha que separa o dia da noite: não apenas as duas épocas, mas também dois tipos de épocas, os dois tipos de luz".

Em outras palavras, é o momento da transição de um modo de existência para algo bastante diferente, que chamamos história. Este é o tempo da transição de dois ciclos, que não podemos identificar com a mudança de épocas históricas - o problema em questão é a mudança profunda na existência do homem. O sagrado na maneira das épocas anteriores recua, cultos antigos desaparecem e em seu lugar vem religiões, que logo após, por si mesmas se tornam históricas ou anti-históricas, mesmo quando iniciam eventos e enredos históricos. As guerras cruzadas, convocadas pela Igreja do Ocidente, aprofundaram divisões e cismas e eventualmente deram origem à Reforma, que começou com entusiasmo religioso e um desejo de retorno "aos primórdios bíblicos", e então findou com o movimento histórico que abre o caminho para o desenvolvimento desimpedido da indústria e da tecnologia - incontida pelas normas da tradição (cristã), e livre de esperanças e desejos humanos.

A Careta de Horror

O Mundo da História, cujos contornos já encontramos em Homero, os quais foram moldados por Tucídides, e que experimentou seu zênite em algum momento ao fim do século XIX e início do século XX, com fronteiras incertas no tempo e no espaço, mas com uma consciência clara de suas leis e regulamentos, começou a entrar em colapso; e o vasto edifício da história se torna instável, como um sinal de penetração de forças estranhas até então desconhecidas. Essas forças possuem caráter titânico, elemental, visto pela primeira vez em desastres técnicos, que afetaram centenas de milhares de vítimas e então, nos eventos cataclísmicos do século XX, nas guerras e revoluções mundiais, com milhões de mortos e aleijados. A liberação da energia nuclear, da radiação e da destruição ambiental às quais áreas enormes foram expostas, a taxa diária paga em sangue, seja sacrificado ao "progresso" em tempos de paz, seja como consequência direta de intervenções e conflitos militares, são algo que emerge da moldura estabelecida pelo mundo histórico. É claro, a história não acaba aí, como esperado, por Marx ou Fukuyama. O que é mais notável é a aceleração do tempo histórico, que concentra eventos e reduz a distância entre os pontos de virada da história. Aquilo de que estamos falando é, porém, que aqui não estão apenas operando forças que chamamos históricas, e que o papel do homem nesses eventos fundamentalmente se modificou: ele não é mais capaz de operar igualmente com os deuses, ou segui-los, resistir contra eles ou mesmo subjugá-los, como era representado pelo mito. Ele (o homem) não é mais um participante ativo na história, guiado pelas paixões ou sua própria vontade, como ocorre na época histórica madura. Ele se torna o joguete de algo desconhecido, envolvido em eventos que o ultrapassam, contra sua vontade e fora de suas idéias.

A expressão de confiança alegre está sendo gradativamente substituída por uma careta de horror. O homem, que até ontem se considerava um soberano e mestre, reconhece sua fraqueza. Os meios que eram confiados são demonstrados como fracos ou na hora de decisão se voltam contra seu criador. Sistemas tecnológicos e ordens sociais possuem seus outros lados, seus esquemas automáticos, que não restringem mas encorajam a destruição, que situam o homem na posição de aprendiz de feiticeiro, que liberou forças incontroláveis. Corrupção, crime, violência e terror são mais resultados do que causas. Respostas políticas, independentemente de cor e signo, não oferecem soluções senão ampliam a desintegração. Se ele não se encontrasse em tempo de pânico, o homem poderia adquirir pelo menos uma consciência de seu próprio declínio.

Tudo isso era impensável na era madura da história porque então, o homem ainda era governado por si mesmo, e assim era a história, e portanto a história não podia ter senso de direção além daquela dada pelo próprio homem, seus próprios feitos e pensamentos.

 

Cada conceito de "sentido da história" é o conceito dos primórdios do homem, enquanto no tempo histórico clássico o homem não é criado, mas ele existe. A questão do "sentido da história" era uma questão sem sentido, e ela de fato não é encontrada nos escritores clássicos, de Heródoto em diante. A questão do "sentido da história", que é sempre encontrado fora do homem, se torna possível apenas quando a história e o foco saem do homem, seja na esfera social, seja na esfera das relações tecnológicas.

 O homem moderno está atrasado demais para revelar sua própria fraqueza, mas sua desintegração não acusa o mito ou a história, senão precisamente a fraqueza e covardia do homem moderno. O mundo dos "valores civilizados", o mundo histórico em geral, que ele próprio havia criado, está se mostrando mais fraco do que costumávamos crer - estruturalmente fraco, espiritualmente e eticamente também. Ao primeiro sinal de alarme, ele começa a desintegrar, expondo, na verdade, a prontidão interna do homem moderno de capitular.

 Essa é uma "meia-noite da história", que logo será substituída por algo diferente, e este momento é marcado pela difusão de forças titânicas, demandando o sacrifício de sangue

Rumo à Pós-História: O Despertar do Mito

A história, nós devemos repetir novamente, não dura tanto quanto o homem na Terra. Mas a consciência sobre isso ocorre tardiamente na história, talvez apenas em seu fim, quando as fronteiras do tempo e do espaço estão mudando: por um lado, pela descoberta do passado distante do homem, com civilizações perdidas, então o passado do planeta e do universo, e por outro lado, com a exploração de espaços cósmicos, profundezas de oceanos, ou o interior da própria Terra, através das camadas arqueológicas e geológicas, quase ao modo de Verne. Novas perspectivas causam vertigem. A pré-história e a pós-história ganham em importância apenas quando a história se torna um edifício em ruínas. Mas passar o homem da história para algo que ele ainda não foi capaz de determinar ainda ou perceber claramente rememora agora o voo. 

 De uma maneira ou de outra, o universo tecnológico e a civilização do consumo chegarão ao fim, da mesma maneira que a época histórica clássica acaba com a tecnocracia e com uma ordem totalitária em sua forma completa, que não emerge nem da coragem ou da força, mas da covardia, fraqueza e medo. É impossível dizer quanto tempo isso vai durar. É irrelevante se isso vai acontecer devido a atrito interno, uma sobretensão ou um desastre, ou tudo isso junto. Mas em cada um desses casos, o colapso é apenas uma consequência da inabilidade do homem de continuar habitando no mundo histórico e governá-lo como ser supremo e soberano.

O retorno do mito, porém, não é possível em termos de um retorno à "pré-história". Forças mitológicas permanecem presentes, como eram durante todo o período histórico, mas elas não podem estabelecer um estado prévio porque carecem das pré-condições, em primeiro lugar, um "substrato" ausente, um terreno fértil. O homem moderno é fraco demais para isso, no sentido espiritual, psicológico e mesmo "fisiológico".

Junto com a história, a cultura gradativamente desaparece também, em seu sentido atual, que é basicamente apenas um instrumento de engenharia social. Em uma utopia tecnocrática (em oposição à cultura no período histórico) a cultura de massa é apenas uma das maneiras de canalizar a energia e impulsionar fantasias utópicas e desejos das massas; a cultura de elite, que constantemente vaga entre conformismo e negação, entre ceticismo e negação, entre ceticismo e ironia, e de volta ao conformismo, essencialmente permanece uma ferramente de desmitologia (ou desconstrução de mitologia) e destruição de instituições perigosas contidas no mito, que permite mais ou menos uma integração fluida no universo tecnológico, com a ilusão do livre arbítrio. O aparecimento e o despertar de intuições perigosas e arquétipos adormecidos, nas margens do mecanismo social tecnocrático, cria uma situação de conflito e leva a atrasos em seu funcionamento.

Na região fora da utopia tecnocrática, a cultura precisará assumir um papel mais tradicional do que aquele que possui na civilização do consumo. A desintegração do mundo histórico em seu estágio tardio, que nós estamos testemunhando, nos permite ver algo disso.

Por boa parte do período histórico, a cultura é uma área privilegiada de poderes sagrados e míticos. Essa é uma das maneiras nas quais forças míticas penetram de novo no mundo historicamente, se realizando na história, diferentemente do universo tecnológico, onde elas usualmente se manifestam através de elementos não-controlados de subculturas folclóricas, e muitas vezes distorcidos ao ponto de serem irreconhecíveis como simulacro do mítico, e não como sua expressão crível.

Eles mais testemunham sobre a necessidade eterna e insaciável do homem por conteúdo mítico, do que representam um signo de sua presença real.

 A cultura na era pós-tecnocrática estará relacionada bem de perto ao restabelecimento da mitologia, em termos de reconhecimento e despertar do conteúdo mítico autêntico, marcado por inovação e revitalização da forma antiga e tradicional, mais do que, como até então, seu exorcismo. O sentido e propósito do processo de desmitologia, por contraste, deve ser limitado ao que possuía nas sociedades tradicionais: a limpeza de formas míticas "folclóricas" degeneradas, de modo a abrir espaço para aquelas que representa com credibilidade a tradição.

Ásatrú & the Political

Ásatrú & the Political

By Collin Cleary 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

This essay is dedicated to George Hocking.

1. Introduction

Is there a connection between Ásatrú and White Nationalism? This has been a controversial issue among Ásatrúar for many years. For me, however, the answer is obvious. I regard Ásatrú and White Nationalism as so inseparably bound to one another that to espouse Ásatrú while rejecting White Nationalism is to involve oneself in a fatal contradiction (fatal, really, in more than just the logical sense).

Before I go any further, let me define my terms. For the uninitiated, Ásatrú refers to the religion of those who believe in the pre-Christian Germanic gods, principally Ódhinn (hence the religion is also sometimes referred to as “Odinism”). I use the term Ásatrú simply because it seems that we need a word to refer to the religion, and this seems as good to me as any.

By “White Nationalism” I mean, very simply, a movement which recognizes White people – people of European stock, in other words – as a distinct nation or race, with its own set of national interests, and that seeks to advance those interests. The principal interests of White people (of any people, actually) are their biological survival and the preservation of their culture. White nationalists believe that White people have as much right to assert and protect their interests as any other people.

Obviously, however, this movement arose because the dominant message communicated to Whites today by the cultural and political establishment is that they have no right to assert their group interests. Other racial and ethnic groups may assert their interests, but when Whites do likewise this is “racism.” This double standard is simply part and parcel of the general anti-White, anti-Western animus that now permeates academia, mainstream media, and politics in Europe and America. White nationalism has become necessary because White interests are genuinely imperiled.

Of course, Whites themselves have done a great deal to bring this peril about. Aside from their remarkably passive, uncomplaining tolerance of persons and ideologies openly hostile to them, Whites have also bought into a vision of the “good life” that emphasizes individualism and hedonism and absolves them of any obligation to bring a new generation into the world. The result is that the White birthrate has declined drastically, and created a situation in which Whites are essentially slated for minority status and dispossession in both Europe and America.

Contrary to how White Nationalism is portrayed by its detractors, it does not spring from hatred of other groups, nor does being a White Nationalist require us to hate non-Whites and wish them ill. It does, however, require us to recognize that our interests may sometimes conflict with those of other groups. And, in such situations, it asks us to choose our own group interests rather than to masochistically sacrifice those interests for the sake of others (something which is expected today of Whites, but not of any other group). White Nationalism, in effect, simply recommends to Whites that they do what we all know other groups are already doing and prioritize their own interests.

To take a familiar example, American Blacks clearly saw the 2008 presidential race in terms of “us vs. them.” Accordingly, 96% of them voted for Barack Obama, a fact which those in the mainstream media found so normal and unremarkable as to be unworthy of comment. On the other hand, when it was revealed that 55% of Whites voted for John McCain this was decried by many as “racism.” White people originated the utopian ideal of a society in which everyone has somehow gotten beyond thinking in terms of their group interests. But it’s time for them to face the harsh reality that this just isn’t going to happen. What this means is that if non-White groups insist on thinking and acting in terms of their group interests, then so must we.

I offer the above as a simple, frank, and accurate encapsulation of the nature of White Nationalism. But why must Ásatrú be linked with it? Why can’t Ásatrú, as a religion, be apolitical?

2. Ásatrú as Ethnic Religion

First of all, let’s begin with a very simple point: Ásatrú is an ethnic, not a creedal religion. Something is an “ethnic religion” if, quite simply, it is the religion of a specific people or ethnic group. Judaism and Hinduism are excellent examples of ethnic religions. One is a member of the religion simply by being born a member of the tribe or the nation.

A creedal religion is one in which membership is defined not by ethnic identity but rather, as the term implies, by profession of a creed. Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism are the three largest creedal religions. Because what counts in creedal religion is belief, not ethnicity, creedal religions are universalistic, accepting adherents from any and all races. On the other hand, because ethnic religions are the religions of a specific people they typically do not admit converts from other ethnic groups. (Both Judaism and Hinduism do admit converts in some cases, but they generally discourage conversion and do not – unlike the Christians and Muslims – proselytize.)

The term “Hinduism” is derived from the Persian word “Hindu,” which actually just denotes the Indian people. The etymology of “Judaism” is similar, deriving ultimately from a word that simply means “Jew.” The words themselves do not distinguish a member of the ethnic group from an adherent to the religion. And this ambiguity exists not just in language but in fact. For most Indians to be Indian is to be a Hindu (which really means, to be Indian is to be an Indian). I have even heard it said that it is possible to be an atheist Hindu. All that this means, of course, is that no matter what an Indian believes he can’t stop being an Indian (just like Karl Marx, who was an atheist, is still referred to as a Jewish, or German-Jewish philosopher). Of course, we might want to qualify this by saying an Indian cannot stop being an Indian in the ethnic sense. But the very identity of a people seems bound up with its religion – often in ways that the people themselves (who may outwardly profess secularism) may not be consciously aware of.  And the identity of an ethnic religion is bound up with its people.

In truth, an ethnic religion flows from the unique nature of a specific people. Culture is a human product, and like all human products it is partially the result of features about us that are innate and unchosen. In recent years, scientists have brought forward overwhelming evidence that proves heredity shapes much about our behavior and personality that we had formerly thought was due to environment or “freedom of choice.” Some of the most impressive evidence – evidence which is quite simply astonishing – comes from studies of identical twins separated at birth.[1] These twins often dress alike, vote alike, have the same hobbies, share the same social attitudes, share the same tastes in art and music, drive the same make and model car, and achieve virtually identical scores on IQ tests.

An ethnic group is essentially a set of genetically similar people. It is more or less a very large extended family. What establishes group identity is relative similarity and relative difference: members of ethnic group X are considered such because, while they are not exactly the same, they are more like one another than they are like the members of group Y. Similarity is founded upon difference (an important point, to which I will return later). At some point in pre-history, members of distinct ethnic groups, made up of genetically-similar members, evolved religions. And these religions are remarkably different from one another. I consider it a truism, at this stage of our knowledge, to assert that these differences flow in part from the genetically distinctive natures of the ethnic groups involved. I say “in part” because obviously other factors were in play: e.g., geographic location, historical circumstances, etc.

We can actually dispense with all this newfangled talk about genetics and boil it down to this: an ethnic religion is a product of the innate, distinctive nature of a people. Differences between ethnic religions are in part attributable to innate, natural differences. And the reason why a particular religion works so well for a given people is quite simply because, individual differences aside, they share the same basic nature (though here again other factors may come into play, such as sharing the same circumstances).

Religions are not floating systems of acontextual abstractions that may be superimposed on any people, willy-nilly. This is true even of creedal religions. Every creedal religion was developed originally by a specific people and only subsequently was membership thrown open to all and sundry. Most famously, Christianity was originally a minor Jewish cult which, in its earliest days, admitted only Jews as adherents. This means that despite whatever universalistic cast it may have, a creedal religion is still shaped by the character of the people that originated it. This is the reason why our Northern European ancestors had to radically reshape Christianity (to “Germanize” it) before they could sign on. This “Germanization of Christianity” was actually a long process, which culminated in the terrific upheaval and bloodshed of the Reformation.[2] A religion forged by one people in one part of the world cannot be imposed upon a completely different people, in a completely different part of the world, without much suffering, violence, and betrayal of conscience.

Ásatrú is the ethnic religion of the Northern European peoples who speak Germanic languages. It is the product of that “ethnic group” (an ethnic group that to a great extent did not and does not to this day see itself as a distinct ethnic group). And it could not be the product of any other group. Oswald Spengler aptly described the soul of Northern European man as “Faustian.” He tells us that the “prime-symbol” of the Faustian is “pure and limitless space”:

Far apart as may seem the Christian hymnology of the south and the Eddas of the still heathen north, they are alike in the implicit space-endlessness of prosody, rhythmic syntax and imagery. Read the Dies Irae together with the Völuspá, which is little earlier; there is the same adamantine will to overcome and break all resistances of the visible.[3]

The Faustian soul is characterized by a solemn inwardness, tending towards solitude and melancholy – but matched by a ceaseless, outward-striving will. European man has always sought to go beyond: to explore, to find adventures in other lands, to conquer, to peer into the mysterious depths of things, to find new ways to control and manipulate his environment. This is not to say that these qualities are never found in other peoples, but – as Spengler recognized – they are most pronounced and developed in Northern European man.

We find the Faustian spirit in our gods. Ódhinn is the ceaseless wanderer, and the leader of the wild hunt. From his throne, called Hlidskjalf, he can survey the entire world. His two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory) fly over the earth, bringing news of all things back to him. But there are secrets concealed even from Ódhinn, and beings (such as the Norns) over which he has no power. Like us, he burns with a desire to know the hidden and to control his fate. So he hung on the windy tree, nights all nine, and won the secret of the runes – the hidden lore that explains all things. He sought wisdom too from Mimir’s well (the well of memory) and sacrificed an eye to drink from it. We are Ódhinn, and he is the embodiment of the Faustian spirit.

Spengler writes:

What is Valhalla? [It] is something beyond all sensible actualities floating in remote, dim, Faustian regions. Olympus rests on the homely Greek soil, the Paradise of the Fathers is a magic garden somewhere in the universe, but Valhalla is nowhere. Lost in the limitless, it appears with its inharmonious gods and heroes the supreme symbol of solitude. Siegfried, Parzeval, Tristan, Hamlet, Faust are the loneliest heroes in all the cultures. The longing for the woods, the mysterious compassion, the ineffable sense of forsakenness – it is all Faustian and only Faustian. Every one of us knows it. The motive returns with all its profundity in the Easter scene of Faust I.

“A longing pure and not to be described
drove me to wander over woods and fields,
and in a mist of hot abundant tears
I felt a world arise and live for me.”[4]

Ásatrú is an expression of the unique spirit of the Germanic peoples. And one could also plausibly claim that the spirit of the Germanic peoples just is Ásatrú, understanding its myth and lore simply as a way in which the people projects its spirit before itself, in concrete form. And this leads me back to where I began, to the “political” point of this essay: to value Ásatrú is to value the people of Ásatrú; to value their survival, their distinctness, and their flourishing. For one cannot have the one without the other.

Ásatrú would have not have been possible without the people who gave rise to it, and it cannot be sustained without that same people. Politically correct Ásatrú organizations like the Troth (formerly the Ring of Troth) essentially reject the idea that Ásatrú is an ethnic religion and treat it more or less on the model of the Unitarian Church, opening their doors to all peoples. But this is simply absurd. Ásatrú is not a trans-national “creed” that may be comfortably “professed” by all peoples. It is the worldview of a specific people, forged in its encounter with a certain part of the earth. The approach of organizations like the Troth does nothing more than demonstrate that their real religion is the civil religion of modern, secular liberalism, to which Ásatrú (and everything else) must be fitted. But no one with any knowledge of the sagas could possibly believe that Ásatrú is compatible with modern liberalism.

I am delighted if non-Whites find the lore of my ancestors fascinating. They may study it all they like – in fact, I would encourage them in this. But it is not their tradition and I would not invite them to consider themselves as “one of us” or to take part in our rituals. I find Shinto fascinating, and in general I am very interested in Japanese culture and have great respect for the Japanese people. But I would never seek to join the Shinto religion, because I am a White Westerner and it is not my tradition. And, by the way, should I seek to join Shinto and should the Japanese politely reject me, no one today would find it the least bit shocking or objectionable. Yet if we Ásatrúar take the same position and declare that our ethnic religion is for those of our ethnicity alone, this is regarded as a hideous form of “racism.” We need to do it anyway, and erect niding poles before the houses of the politically correct.

To repeat: to truly value Ásatrú must involve valuing the people who gave rise to Ásatrú and whose spirit the religion expresses. And valuing our people means seeking to preserve it and our culture, and, in all conflicts of interest between our people and some other, taking the side of our own people.

3. “Us” vs. “Them”

My last statement above reiterates the idea (mentioned early on in this essay) that there are conflicts of interest between human groups. I take this to be a truism, but in fact it is a controversial claim today. The ideal of multiculturalism, after all, is that of a society in which different groups happily coexist and have no fundamental conflicts of interest. But this ideal rests upon a breathtakingly shallow view of what “culture” consists in.

The liberal “celebration of diversity” is in fact a celebration of culture only in its external and superficial forms. In other words, to Western liberals “multiculturalism” winds up amounting simply to such things as the co-existence of different costumes, music, styles of dance, languages, and food. But the real guts of the different cultures consist in such things as how they view nature, how they view the divine, how they view men and women, and how they view the relative importance of their own group in the scheme of things. And it is by no means clear that members of cultures with radically different views on these matters can peacefully co-exist.[5]

It is chiefly affluent, college-educated White people who believe in the possibility of a Star Trek world without conflicts of group interests. Non-Whites typically do not believe that such a world is possible, and do not yearn for it, because they have a much keener sense of group identity than do Whites, and a much keener desire to promote the interests of their own group. White democrats are typically delighted when Black people move into their neighborhoods. When the situation is reversed, Blacks are comparatively less thrilled (the fact that the vast majority of them are also democrats does not seem to make much of a difference). Nor are Asians in Chinatown wringing their hands over why so few Latinos live on their block.

The reason for this is that these groups have a healthy proprietary sense. They believe that their neighborhoods belong to them. If others want to move in, this is perceived as a clear-cut conflict of interests. In fact, conflicts of interest between groups are real and ineradicable. They do not exist merely because individuals think that they exist, thus they cannot be eliminated simply by “changing people’s minds.” Conflicts of interest exist for the simple, metaphysical reason that every individual, and every group is something.

To be always means to be something; to possess a specific identity consisting of certain traits and not others. This is true of all things that exist: rocks, pencils, paramecia, human individuals, and human groups such as races or nations. But every identity is always an identity in difference. In other words, the identity of anything is constituted through the ways in which it is different from other things.

On the table to the left of my computer are two coffee mugs. They possess certain traits in common, in virtue of which I class them both as members of the same kind. But their possession of these traits is marked by difference. Both are ceramic and roughly the same height, but one of the mugs is thicker and heavier. Both can be filled with liquid, but the thin mug (because of its thinness) can contain more liquid. Both are emblazoned with designs, but the designs differ (one is just an image, but the other conveys a “message”: a quote from the agrarian author Wendell Berry).

A coffee mug is what it is by being different from other coffee mugs, but also by being different from everything else. The identity of something can be expressed positively, such as when we say that the mug is thick, four inches high, ceramic, and White. But every positive characteristic is actually a form of “not being”: the mug is thick and not thin, four inches high and not five, ceramic and not metal (or any other material), White and not some other color. The mug, furthermore, is characterized by being incapable of self-generated motion, stopping a bullet, standing for election, and a whole host of other things.

All identity is identity in difference, it does not matter what we are speaking of. And this includes peoples and cultures. The identity of a people is constituted through the ways in which it is not like other peoples. This leads to some peculiar problems that do not occur in the case of coffee mugs. The two mugs on my desk are different, but their differences do not lead to conflict. Only one of them rests on a coaster, but they cannot be said to be in competition for the coaster. With human beings it is quite different. Differences between human groups are always sources of potential conflict. This is also true, of course, of differences between human individuals – and of differences between individual animals, and animal species.

Our different ways of speaking, dressing, eating, practicing religion, making money, doing art, making music, raising children, understanding sex differences, and having sex are all perpetual sources of potential conflict between human groups. As are such things as differences of wealth and geographic location (others may want our land and our loot). To be a distinct human group is to be different from other groups, and where there is difference there is always, of necessity, friction, hostility, conflict, and often war. It is reasonable to see these as negatives, given the suffering they produce. But so long as there are distinct human groups these are ineradicable (which is exactly what some Leftists have realized in advocating miscegenation). Further, if we value the distinctness of our group – which really just amounts to saying if we value our group – then in a sense we have to recognize that friction with other groups is not entirely bad. It is simply a corollary of the fact that our group possesses identity; that it exists at all.

One of the shocking simplicities of multiculturalism is the naiveté with which the word “diversity” is invoked as a kind of feel-good mantra denoting something unqualifiedly positive. Diversity simply means difference, and human differences are not a happy, G-rated, child-friendly parade of colors, sounds, tastes, and scents. Diversity means perpetual conflict, misunderstanding, intolerance, and suspicion. Nevertheless: celebrate diversity! Because without diversity, without difference, we would be nothing at all.

The German political theorist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) is famous for having argued that the “concept of the political” is founded on the distinction between “us vs. them,” or, as he actually puts it, friend and enemy. Do not be thrown by the word “political.” What Schmitt actually means is that human groups define themselves through opposition to an other. What unites a people is the recognition that they and their interests stand opposed to other groups, who have their own interests. From this sense of unity, a structure of power arises – a political order – in response to the opposition of the other. This involves such things as maintaining civil order and maintaining preparedness, so that if the threat of the other becomes acute the group will be ready to act.

Of course, I can easily imagine someone responding to this – quite reasonably – with the following objection: “Why must a group define itself in opposition to an other? Why must a group’s identity be built upon hostility and ill will?” But this objection misunderstands Schmitt’s position, and what the phrase “in opposition” really means. Schmitt’s claim is not specifically that group identity is founded upon hostility to some other group. Rather, what he means is that group identity is founded upon a sense of distinctness from other groups. However, as I have argued above, so long as this distinctness exists there is the ever-present possibility of conflicts of interest and hostility.

Schmitt writes that

The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.[6]

Schmitt goes on to note that all human divisions become political if they are so strong that they result in grouping human beings according to the friend-enemy distinction. This includes religious divisions. I ended the introduction to this essay with the rhetorical question “Why can’t Ásatrú, as a religion, be apolitical?” But even if we were to take the universalistic position of the Troth and regard Ásatrú as merely a set of “beliefs” that anyone can hold, we would still have to make a distinction between those who hold those beliefs and those who don’t; those within Ásatrú and those without. And we would have to recognize that outsiders are always potential “enemies”; that (as history has shown us countless times) doctrinal, religious differences frequently lead to hostilities.

As I have already shown, however, to understand Ásatrú as a creedal religion is to fundamentally distort and deform it. Ásatrú is an ethnic religion. Its identity – its distinctness – consists not just in its “beliefs,” but in the fact that it is a religion of this people not that one; and it is an expression of the nature of this people, not that one. To value and adhere to Ásatrú must therefore involve valuing the people of Ásatrú. However, we have seen that a people only constitutes itself as a people through difference. And where there is difference there is always the possibility of conflict.

To value the people of Ásatrú means, therefore, to recognize that there is no possibility of eliminating conflicts of interest between our people and other peoples. To value the people of Ásatrú means to be constantly vigilant in securing its interests, and always to choose our interests over those of other groups. “Us” vs. “them” is simply not going to go away. Indeed, as I alluded to earlier in this essay, the conflict between us and them has only intensified in recent years. And it is going to get worse. The survival of the people of Ásatrú itself is at stake. And without that people, there will be no Ásatrú.

So far I have offered a philosophical case for believing that adherence to Ásatrú must involve ethnic partisanism, and indeed that it must involve the uncompromising defense of our people’s interests. But let us set philosophical argument aside for the moment and simply ask what position is most in accord with the spirit of Ásatrú. Is it the position I have outlined, which insists on the organic connection between Ásatrú and our people and calls upon us, therefore, to defend our people’s interests even if that means ostracism, condemnation, or death? Or is it the position that disconnects Ásatrú from its people, insists that that people not commit the intolerable “racist” sin of asserting its interests, and enjoins them to cheerfully accept their dispossession and extinction? Which position is more in accord with the spirit of the sagas?

Those who believe that we can (or should) ignore differences and who dream of an end to all conflict are those who – whether they realize it or not – wish for the eradication of distinct identities. But without identity there is . . . nothing. Life – and being itself – is identity, and thus life is difference and strife. Our way – the pagan way of Ásatrú – is the affirmation of this life, red in tooth and claw. Their way is the way of death, extinction, annihilation. A “liberal pagan” is a contradiction in terms.

4. Just who is “our people”?

I now turn to some thorny questions about who it is that constitutes “our people.” I earlier defined the people of Ásatrú as Northern European people who speak Germanic languages. And I made it clear that I am speaking about a distinct ethnic group. Thus, someone whose ancestry is Nigerian or Chinese and happens to live in Denmark and speak Danish does not count. Ancestry is what counts here.

But at this point one might raise a problem with the argument of this essay thus far. I have attempted to make the case that Ásatrú is, or ought to be, inseparable from White Nationalism. But White Nationalism is not exclusively about defending the interests of the Germanic peoples. It’s also about defending the interests of those who are (again, ethnically) Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, etc. These are all “White people.” But not all of them can plausibly be called the people of Ásatrú.

Yes, one can argue that Ásatrú is but one variation of Indo-European spirituality, and that all of these people – in pre-Christian times – were practicing folk religions closely related to Ásatrú. But it would be awfully strained and artificial to argue that just because this is the case, we should therefore care about what happens to non-Germanic, European people. It seems like actually the most one can argue, using the sort of logic I’ve employed in this essay, is that Ásatrúar of genuinely Northern European or Germanic stock should care about the interests of other people of similar stock. But it is going too far to say that they should be “White Nationalists.”

This certainly seems like a major problem, but in fact it is not.

Let’s begin with an obvious point that I have so far not mentioned: it is natural for people to prefer others like themselves, and to feel greater sympathy for others like themselves. This has its basis, again, in genetic similarity. Brothers care more about their sisters, typically, than they care about their second cousins – even if they have all grown up in close proximity. Cousins typically care more about each other than they do about the neighbors, even if the neighbors are members of the same ethnic group. And neighbors of the same ethnic group typically care more about each other, and trust each more, than they do the neighbors down the block who belong to a different ethnic group.

It is quite natural for an Englishman to feel a greater tie to other Englishmen than to the French. And it quite natural for me, whose ancestry is predominantly Germanic (despite my Irish name) to feel closer to an Englishman than to a Frenchman. But there are times when I can feel quite close to a Frenchman. For example, if I happen to run into one while visiting Nigeria. In such circumstances, the cultural, temperamental, and even linguistic differences between us are going to feel very slight. Were a Dane around also, I’m guessing I would form a stronger bond with the Dane than with the Frenchman. But I would bond with the Frenchman as well because, after all, he’s like me too (just, perhaps, not as much like me).

So, who is our people? It is quite natural for me and others like me to feel closest of all to others of Germanic ancestry. But other Europeans are like me as well. By extension, they are my people as well. The analogy to family and extended family is useful here. I will always feel the closest bond with my immediate family. But I also feel a bond, though not as close, with my cousins. To take a hackneyed example, if my cousin Alfred were drowning in a lake and a perfect stranger were drowning as well and I could only save one, I would save my cousin. And no one would fault me.

If a White stranger were drowning in a lake and a black stranger were drowning as well and I could only save one, who would I save? I imagine I would probably act instinctively to save the White man – and I submit that this would be as natural (and unmalicious) a reaction as preferring to save one’s family member. Yet it would no doubt be denounced as “racism.” It would not matter to me if the White person were Danish or Greek. I would act instinctively to help him, just because he’s “like me.” This natural preference for one’s own is something to be cultivated and celebrated. It is thoroughly anathema to Christianity (which only permits preferring Christians to non-Christians, and not even that really), and it is thoroughly “pagan.”

My essay so far seems to be enjoining Ásatrúar to start caring about members of their own group. In fact, I am merely encouraging them to reflect on the ties they already feel with their own group – whether they are consciously aware of those feelings or not – and to affirm them without shame. However, today the truth is that I don’t just feel a tie to other Northern Europeans, but with White people generally.

It is natural for us to think of multiculturalism, massive non-White immigration into Europe and America, and the declining White birth rate as unmitigated disasters. But the “cunning of reason” is at work here, as it always is. The positive effect of all of this is that it can forge a sense of European – or White – identity and unity such as has never existed before. It is sobering to look back over the course of European history and to realize that there was a time (very recently, in fact) when it would have been nearly impossible for members of different European nations to see each other as “like us.” That the English used to be mortal enemies with the Spanish, that the Germans fought the Austrians, and the Austrians fought the Italians, and so on, now seems almost incredible. That some of these innumerable, fratricidal conflicts were (ostensibly) over different inflections of Christianity is positively sickening.

Of course, a liberal might object to my argument by saying that changing historical circumstances have also resulted in our feeling greater ties and greater sympathy with members of other races as well. Just as the English and the French now feel that they are basically more alike than opposed, so multiculturalism has resulted in our feeling natural sentiments of sympathy with the Chinese and the Nigerians as well. The evidence for this includes an increase in interracial marriages. Also, the fact that everyone today (excluding White racists) has at least one friend of another race. Doesn’t my position actually hypocritically enjoin us to ignore the natural sentiments we now feel toward other races? Or, putting it another way, aren’t I arbitrarily encouraging my readers to affirm some of their natural sentiments and to deny others?

The trouble with this argument is that it rests both on false claims, and on an overly narrow understanding of what “natural sentiments” are. First of all, it has always been the case that members of different races have been capable of feeling sympathy for, and bonding with one another. It is also the case that humans – of any race – form bonds with members of other species, as any pet owner can attest.

But the truth is that people of different races typically only form deep bonds with each other in unusual and extraordinary circumstances (e.g. if they happen to share the same foxhole). Otherwise, the bonds tend to be mostly temporary and do not go very deep (as is the case with co-worker “friends” of different races). Yes, interracial marriage is more common than it used to be, but the vast majority of people still prefer to marry within their race. And the divorce rate among interracial couples is significantly greater than that of same-race couples. And yes, it is true that everyone today has at least one friend of a different race – everyone on television, that is. The reality is that most people prefer the company of their own kind, and form the deepest bonds with others like themselves – whether we are talking about married couples, friends, roommates, coworkers, business partners, or what have you.

To return to my earlier example: is it possible that in addition to bonding with the Dane and the Frenchman I might also bond with a Nigerian? Absolutely. But the bond is unlikely to be as strong or as deep. And should strife erupt on my visit to Nigeria, should Nigerians begin killing Whites (as is happening right now to White farmers in Zimbabwe), I would unhesitatingly band together with my Dane and my Frenchman, and probably forget about my Nigerian friend entirely. (Disraeli really was right: “Race is everything. There is no other truth.”)

Finally, we must also keep in mind that “natural sentiments” are not confined to sympathy. Another natural sentiment is antipathy. And antipathy is born of difference; the greater the difference the stronger the likelihood of antipathy. Let us affirm all of our natural sentiments, both the bitter and the sweet.

5. Conclusion: Quo Vadis, Ásatrú?

I turn now to another consideration about who “our people” is. I can imagine a follower of Ásatrú objecting to the argument of this essay by saying “Look, why should I give a damn about ‘my people’? The vast majority of them regard Ásatrú as an absurdity. They are a people thoroughly corrupted by modern individualism and consumerism. They are lemmings passively cooperating in their own destruction. They are Last Men. Men without chests. Hollow men. Men without qualities. Trousered apes. Why should I stick my neck out and be a White Nationalist when it would cause most average White people to want spit in my face and call me names?”

I have heard such sentiments expressed not just by Ásatrúar, but by many Whites with no particular interest in Ásatrú. The trouble with this position, though, is that it simply expects too much of our people. It has always been the case, without exception, that the vast majority of the people of any race are essentially conformists who do as they are told, and are often incapable of perceiving what’s really good for them.

The greatness of our people does not consist in our being individualists who are always ready and willing to break with the crowd. The greatness of our people consists in what they are capable of when they are properly led. Yes, the sagas celebrate the deeds of heroic individuals who often break the rules. But such individuals are celebrated because they are exceptional. It is such men who lead, and command the loyalty of others (which is the virtue most conspicuously celebrated in the Germanic tradition). All peoples need leaders; they seldom if ever liberate or enlighten themselves. If great changes are to be made a vanguard is needed, and in the beginning that vanguard will be feared and despised.

Our people have undergone centuries of brainwashing by Christianity, the Enlightenment, and cultural Marxism (three peas in a pod, actually). It is unreasonable to expect them to overcome this quickly, and without a great deal of assistance. Instead of hating our own people for their degraded condition we must instead learn to pity them. And we must learn to love them as we do errant children.

This is, admittedly, not that easy. Especially given that the modern world does all it can to tear us apart from each other. The rapaciousness of capitalism sets brother against brother and uproots us from the towns our families have called home for generations. It turns marriages into “partnerships” of two upwardly mobile consumers who remain together so long as the arrangement is mutually advantageous. Feminism simply aids and abets this aberration of capitalism, setting men and women against each other. Sons are set against fathers by a culture that insists that youth must rebel against age, and that there is value only in youth. And neighbors are set against each other as well; gone is the trust that allowed us once upon a time to leave our doors unlocked.[7] It is a wonder that we are able to feel anything for each other at all. This is a problem that we must work to overcome, not worsen by abjuring the realm and declaring others like ourselves to be “hopeless.”

The culture of our people has changed radically over the centuries, mainly for the worse. Yes, we have been corrupted and so have our values. But in fact we are still fundamentally the same people. Early on in this essay I spoke of how Ásatrú is a product of the unique nature of our people – a product, if you like, of our genetically distinct nature. That nature has not changed. Genetically, we are the same as we were in the time of Arminius. Underneath the veneer of modern decadence we are still the same people who slaughtered 20,000 Romans in the Teutoburg Forest. We are still the same people who carved the runes and thrilled to stories of Ódhinn and the gods. We are still the same people whose ideal of feminine virtue was the bloodthirsty Gudrun. And we are the people of Shakespeare, Schiller, Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and Wagner.

The bloodline still exists, and the potential still exists within the blood. Our religion, Ásatrú, is obsessed with clan and ancestral identity. And we modern Ásatrúar claim to honor our ancestors. So I ask you: is there a greater way to honor our ancestors than to act to safeguard and revivify their bloodline? We like to posture as Norsemen. But the truth is that our ancestors would never recognize most of us, because most of us have committed sins they would find incomprehensible. We have turned out backs on our own people – and are cheerfully, unashamedly in full retreat.

It is time to ask ourselves just exactly what Ásatrú is to us and where it is going. Is our aim simply that Ásatrú be accepted as yet another “lifestyle choice” in the great multicultural stew of New Age “spirituality”? Is it enough simply that we are able to get together with other oddballs like ourselves and put on silly costumes and perform rituals in dead languages? The only thing that can redeem Ásatrú and raise it above the level of being yet another modern form of isolating, self-indulgent eccentricity is if we come to see Ásatrú as requiring something great of us. And, again, what greater task could there be than the salvation of our people? Again, what task is more worthy of Ásatrú, the religion of epic heroes, of our ancestors, the religion in which blood is everything?

Ásatrú just is the heroic commitment to our people and to its spirit. Compared to this all else – the runes, Old Norse, drinking horns, mead, skaldic verse, and so on – is external and inessential. But it is completely unsurprising that so many would choose the external over the essential. This is the modern way. Especially when the essential involves a commitment to something as fundamentally anti-modern, “irrational,” and dangerous as loyalty to those like oneself, simply because they are like oneself. Nevertheless, this is it. Setting all externals and non-essentials aside, this is our ethnic religion; this is Ásatrú. To defend the people of Ásatrú and its spirit is itself Ásatrú.

It is time to reflect on the ambiguity of the term “ethnic religion,” about which I earlier said only a little. An ethnic religion is a religion “of” a people in more than one way. In the deepest way, an ethnic religion is the spirit of a unique people made manifest to itself. In a sense, it is through their ethnic religion that a people worships itself. The religion is the people, and the people are the religion. This is the most fundamental answer to the question of the connection between Ásatrú and “the political,” or the connection of Ásatrú to “White Nationalism.” There is no problem about connecting these, in fact. They are already together – tied together intimately and inseparably, whether this is recognized by all Ásatrúar (or all White Nationalists) or not.[8]

Notes

[1] See Nancy L. Segal, Born Together—Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twins Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

[2] See James Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

[3] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. I, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 185-86.

[4] Spengler, 185-86.

[5] Unless, of course all cultural differences are eliminated save the purely external, via the transformation of all peoples into homogenized, interchangeable consumers bereft of any deeply-felt convictions. This is, in fact, the hidden global capitalist agenda of multiculturalism, now being cheerfully advanced by useful idiots on the anti-capitalist Left.

[6] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 27.

[7] Studies have shown that in multicultural neighborhoods distrust is high, even among members of the same group.

[8] An interesting implication of all the above – which I cannot develop here – is the other side of the equation: White Nationalism is inseparably connected to Ásatrú. This will be resisted by many White Nationalists. Some are atheists who reject all religion. Others view Ásatrúar (not without some justification) as, at best, eccentrics in funny hats. But if my basic argument is effective, that Ásatrúar should be White Nationalists because Ásatrú is in fact the expression of the spirit of (Northern European) White people, then we must recognize that this also supports the claim that White Nationalists should be Ásatrúar – at least those of Northern European ancestry. There are movements of other European peoples that seek to revive worship of their old gods – such as the Greek organization Thyrsos Hellenes Ethnikoi – and I applaud them.

 

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De la déesse de l’aurore

Thomas FERRIER:

De la déesse de l’aurore

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com/

 

En ce 15 août, il me paraissait intéressant de consacrer un article à une déesse fondamentale au sein des mythologies indo-européennes, déité vierge uniquement lorsqu’elle adopte une dimension guerrière, à l’instar de Pallas Athênê en Grèce.

A l’origine, les divinités indo-européennes patronnent les éléments de la nature, et en particulier le ciel, la terre et les astres, mais aussi les phénomènes atmosphériques. Jean Haudry a notamment démontré que le système trifonctionnel indo-européen était appliqué aux cieux, ceux-ci se partageant entre le ciel de nuit, correspondant aux forces telluriques et infernales, le ciel de jour, correspondant à la lumière des divinités souveraines, et enfin le ciel intermédiaire, le *regwos (ou « érèbe »), ciel auroral et crépusculaire, lié à la couleur rouge, mais aussi ciel d’orage. Les trois couleurs sont donc le blanc de la souveraineté, le rouge de la guerre et le noir de la fonction de production. Dans ce schéma, le ciel nocturne, domaine du dieu *Werunos (« le vaste »), qui donnera Ouranos en grec et Varuna en sanskrit, peut être remplacé par la terre, domaine de la déesse *Dhghom (« Dêmêter »), épouse du dieu céleste *Dyeus (« Zeus ») et en ce sens surnommée *Diwona (« celle de Dyeus »), qu’on retrouve dans le nom de la divinité romaine Dea Dia, probablement aussi dans celui de Diane, et dans la grecque Dionè, mère d’Aphrodite, respectant ainsi ce code de couleurs.

Le ciel intermédiaire est patronné par deux divinités fondamentales des panthéons indo-européens, à savoir le dieu de l’orage, *Maworts (génitif *Mawrtos), et la déesse de l’aurore *Ausōs (génitif *Ausosos), l’un et l’autre formant réunis probablement à l’origine un couple divin, couple qui sous la forme de Mars et de Venus inspirera les artistes depuis Homère. *Ausōs portait plusieurs épiclèses importantes, *bherghenti (« celle qui est élevée ») et *Diwos *dhughater (« fille de Zeus »), mais était également liée à la racine *men-, relative à tout ce qui relève de l’intelligence.

La triple aurore grecque.

Le déesse grecque de l’aurore est Eôs, une déesse mineure du panthéon hellénique, qu’Homère qualifie d’ « aux doigts de rose », et pour laquelle peu de mythes sont associés, à savoir celui des amours d’Arès et d’Eôs d’une part et celui de Tithon d’autre part, amant troyen dont elle avait demandé à Zeus de lui accorder l’immortalité, mais en oubliant de lui faire accorder également la jeunesse éternelle, ce qui en fit de fait le premier zombie de la mythologie.

Si Eôs, déesse pourtant fondamentale des panthéons indo-européens, est si mineure, c’est en fait parce que son rôle a été repris par deux nouvelles divinités, qui étaient probablement à l’origine de simples épiclèses de l’Aurore, à savoir Athéna et Aphrodite. Même si leur étymologie est obscure, on peut émettre quelques hypothèses sérieuses. Athéna est formée de la racine *-nos/a qui désigne une divinité (exemple : Neptu-nus à Rome, Ðiro-na chez les Celtes) et de la base athê[- qui pourrait être liée à l’idée de hauteur. Athéna serait ainsi la déesse protectrice des citadelles, comme l’acropole d’Athènes. Elle incarne l’Aurore guerrière, casquée et armée. Quant à Aphrodite, son nom a été rapproché de celui de la déesse ouest-sémitique Ashtoreth (« Astarté »), déesse tout comme elle honorée à Chypre. S’il est probable que les deux déesses ont été associées dans l’esprit des chypriotes grecs, cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu’Aphrodite serait d’origine sémitique. En fait, son étymologie classique de « née de l’écume des mers » pourrait bien être la bonne, car on peut la comparer avec le nom de petites divinités féminines indiennes, les Apsaras, nymphes érotiques peuplant le Svarga (« paradis indien ») du dieu Indra dans la tradition védique, et elles aussi nées sorties des eaux. Elle incarne l’Aurore amoureuse, symbolisée par la rose.

Enfin, Athéna est la fille de la déesse de la sagesse, Mêtis (p.i.e *Men-tis) dont le nom rappelle très précisément celui de la déesse Minerve, son équivalente latine.

Cela nous amène à constater l’existence de trois déesses de l’aurore, celle du phénomène atmosphérique (Eôs), celle de la guerre défensive (Athêna) et celle du désir amoureux (Aphrodite), déesses par ailleurs toutes liées au dieu de la guerre Arês. Eôs et Aphrodite ont en effet été l’une et l’autre la maîtresse du dieu, alors qu’Athéna est présentée comme sa rivale sur les champs de bataille par Homère mais était souvent honorée aux côtés du dieu, comme dans le temple d’Arès à Athènes. En outre, même s’il existe par ailleurs un Zeus Areios, une version guerrière du dieu suprême, parmi toutes les déesses, seules Athéna et Aphrodite sont qualifiées d’Areia. Arês joue ici son rôle originel, celui de dieu de l’orage et de la guerre, même si, sous l’influence crétoise, les Grecs ont préféré conférer désormais à Zeus cette fonction de dieu foudroyant, qu’en revanche son homologue germano-scandinave Thor conservera.

Déesse de l’amour et de la guerre.

*Ausōs est donc une déesse plutôt complexe, liant deux aspects qui peuvent paraître contradictoires. Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas un phénomène propre aux divinités indo-européennes, puisque la déesse proto-sémitique *Ațtartu associait ces deux rôles, tout comme la déesse sumérienne Inanna, même si en revanche elle n’était pas aurorale. Par ailleurs, comme dans le cas grec, la déesse de l’aurore sous son nom propre a bien souvent perdu de sa superbe au profit de divinités nouvelles. Ce n’est toutefois pas le cas partout.

Dans le monde indo-iranien, la déesse Ushas (sanskrit) ou Ushah (vieux-perse) a conservé ses traits originels, même si elle partage désormais son rôle de déesse de l’amour avec la Venus indienne, la déesse Rati, « le Désir », mère du dieu de l’amour Kama comme Aphrodite est celle d’Erôs. Chez les Lituaniens, la déesse lituanienne Aushrinè reste au premier plan, alors que chez les Lettons, pour une raison inexpliquée, elle a changé de sexe et est devenu le dieu Auseklis et personnifie par ailleurs la planète Venus.

En revanche, chez les Romains, même si Aurora a conservé des éléments de culte plus solides, elle connaîtra une évolution parallèle à celle qu’elle a connue chez les Grecs. Si Aurora est Mater Matuta, « la déesse des matins », attestant de son rôle atmosphérique, elle n’est plus une déesse guerrière, son rôle étant repris par Minerve, et plus non plus déesse de l’amour, car Venus a pris le relai.

Dans le rôle de déesse aurorale guerrière, on trouve les Zoryas slaves (au nombre de trois), les Valkyries germano-scandinaves, toutes casquées et armées comme Athéna. Dans le rôle de déesse aurorale de l’amour, c’est en revanche Lada chez les Slaves et Freya chez les Germano-scandinaves. Cela explique pourquoi une partie des guerriers morts ne va pas au Valhalla pour rejoindre Odin mais au paradis de la déesse Freya, illustrant à l’état de vestige un rôle guerrier plus ancien. Freya, dont le nom signifie sans doute « chérie » (p.i.e *priya), est la Venus scandinave, alors qu’Ostara, déesse de l’aurore fêtée au moment de la Pâques germanique, est restreinte aux questions de fécondité de la nature.

La déesse albanaise Premtë, épouse du dieu de l’orage Perëndi, remplace Agim, « l’aurore », de même que la celte Epona, « celle du cheval », car une des représentations les plus anciennes est celle d’une Aurore cavalière. La Brighid celte, déesse vierge comme Athéna, et qui était appelée Brigantia par les Gaulois, patronnait les affaires guerrières, et apparaissait sous son aspect le plus cruel sous les traits de Morrigain.

Déesse de la planète Venus.

Indo-européens et Sémites ont, pour une raison mystérieuse, sans doute liée à la couleur de l’astre, associé l’Aurore et la planète Venus. En revanche, les Sumériens avaient lié la planète Venus à la déesse Inanna, aucune déesse spécifique de l’aurore n’apparaissant dans leur mythologie. Si les Akkadiens ont simplement remplacé Inanna par leur Ishtar, les peuples ouest-sémitiques ont en revanche associé l’astre à leur propre dieu de l’aurore, Shahar.

Une des particularités du dieu Shahar c’est d’avoir engendré deux frères jumeaux, qui sont Helel, dieu de l’étoile du matin, et Shalem, dieu de l’étoile du soir. On retrouve un phénomène comparable chez Aphrodite, Venus et le dieu letton Auseklis. Il est difficile de savoir si c’est un emprunt des Indo-Européens aux Sémites, ou bien des Sémites aux Indo-Européens, et à quelle époque. Chez les Arabes païens également, deux dieux jumeaux patronnent le matin et le soir, à savoir Aziz et Ruda.

Aphrodite est la mère de Phosphoros, également appelé Eosphoros, « porteur d’aurore », ce qui est significatif, et de son frère Hesperos. De la même façon, probablement par imitation de la déesse grecque, Venus est la mère de Lucifer et de Vesper, l’un et l’autre pouvant s’expliquer par le proto-indo-européen (*leuks-bher, « porteur de lumière » et *wesperos, « soir »). Enfin, les jumeaux divins de la mythologie lettone, fils du dieu du ciel Dievs, à savoir Usins (« Aurore ») et Martins (« Mars ») sont également associés au matin et au soir.

Si la planète Venus semble associée dès l’époque proto-indo-européenne à la déesse *Ausōs, l’introduction de deux fils patronnant le matin et le soir, un dieu du matin et un dieu du soir, semblent résulter d’une influence extérieure, sumérienne ou sémitique. Ainsi, chez les Celtes, les Germains, les Slaves par exemple, mais aussi en Inde et en Lituanie, on ne retrouve pas de « fils de l’aurore » patronnant le matin et le soir. Ce n’est le cas concrètement qu’en Grèce et à Rome, cette dernière ayant été en outre considérablement influencée par son aînée en Méditerranée. En outre, les jumeaux divins ne sont pas non plus « fils de l’Aurore », mais fils du dieu du ciel (Zeus en Grèce, Dievas en Lituanie, Dyaus en Inde), rôle repris à Rome par le dieu de la guerre (Romulus et Rémus sont fils de Mars et non de Jupiter).

Le mythe de la déesse-vierge guerrière.

On a pu constater que lorsqu’une déesse a remplacé l’Aurore dans son rôle guerrier, elle y a pris les traits d’une déesse virginale. C’est notamment le cas d’Athéna et de Minerve, comme si une sexualité accomplie était incompatible avec ce rôle plutôt masculin. Et c’est en raison d’une histoire d’amour que la valkyrie Brynhildr, amoureuse de Siegfried, connaîtra bien des tourments. Cette virginité est aussi l’apanage d’Artémis, déesse de la chasse et de la nature sauvage inviolée.

La déesse-vierge a été remplacée dans la mythologie européenne par la Vierge Marie, privée pourtant de tout rôle militaire. L’ « amazone » est devenue une sorcière, promise à la mort, et d’ailleurs Diane est considérée au moyen-âge comme la déesse par excellence du sabbat. La femme européenne pouvait apparaître comme une guerrière, ou en tout cas avait un rôle pour galvaniser les guerriers, même si elle ne participait pas directement au combat. Ce mythe se retrouve pleinement dans celui de Jeanne d’Arc, mais aussi dans les différentes incarnations patriotiques de la nation. Britannia est totalement calquée sur la Minerve romaine, et Germania ressemble à une valkyrie. La république française, incapable de rompre totalement avec le christianisme, a préféré une déesse-mère, Marianne, « petite Marie ». Elle a aussi choisi toutefois de se représenter en Cérès, déesse du blé, la fameuse semeuse, et non en divinité guerrière. On notera enfin que les Sans Culottes, et notamment Hébert, préféraient la déesse Raison, qui n’était autre que Minerve elle-même.

Venus sans Mars, Mars sans Venus.

De l’Athêna Potnia mycénienne à la déesse Raison, on retrouve une filiation que le christianisme même n’a pas réussi à rompre. Et face au puritanisme, la déesse Aphrodite a vaincu elle aussi. C’est dire si la déesse de l’aurore, en tant qu’Athéna comme en tant qu’Aphrodite, a joué et joue un rôle fondamental dans la psychê européenne. C’est elle qui raisonne Mars lorsqu’il est courroucé et l’occupe aux jeux de l’amour, délaissant alors le champ de bataille. Si Rome connut douze siècles de puissance, c’est parce qu’elle était la cité de Mars et de Venus, l’un et l’autre s’équilibrant, comme le souligna le poète Rutilius Namatianus. Et lorsque le politologue américain Robert Kagan définit l’Europe comme le continent de Venus, il nous rappelle que la puissance résulte de l’union des deux divinités, mais le dieu Mars est mal vu depuis un peu plus d’un demi-siècle en Europe. Lorsque Mars triompha, Venus était encore prisonnière des geôles vaticanes. Lorsque Venus triomphe, aujourd’hui, c’est Mars qui est sous les chaînes. Le déchaîner sauvera l’Europe. Car il n’y a pas de paix sans conflit (Venus sans Mars), et pas de science sans puissance (Minerve sans Mars).

Thomas Ferrier (LBTF/PSUNE)

The Homeric Gods

The Homeric Gods

By Mark Dyal 

Ex. http://www.counter-currents.com

^[1]

Athena

Walter F. Otto
The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion ^[2]
Translated by Moses Hadas
North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer Company Publishers, 2001

“My goal is to create total enmity between our current ‘culture’ and Antiquity. Whoever wants to serve the former must hate the latter.”—Friedrich Nietzsche[1]

“Every religion and every worldview is entitled to be judged not by the levels where it is flattened, coarsened, and, for want of character, is like any other, but by the clear and large contours of its heights. It is only there that it is what it truly is and what others are not.”—Walter F. Otto[2]

Along with Homer, Nietzsche, Evola, and Schmitt, a name with which every New Right thinker should be familiar is Walter F. Otto. Otto (1874–1958) was a German philologist who held positions in Switzerland and Germany, becoming one of National Socialist Germany’s leading scholars of the Classical world. From 1933 to 1945 he was a member, and administrator, of the Scientific Committee of the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar—at the time a sacred site amongst the Nazi “Nietzsche cult.”

Besides writing few books that have been translated in multiple languages, Otto and his blend of Nietzschean and Homeric political philosophy, helped lay the foundation for the contemporary manifestation of the Counter-Enlightenment, which we call the New Right. Indeed, Otto was part of the political evolution of many European New Right thinkers—Guillaume Faye, Alain de Benoist, and Pierre Krebs, to name but three; yet he remains virtually unknown in America, even among scholars.

In Europe, though, the Classical inheritance is lived and understood differently than in America. As Krebs explains, the vitalist natural spirit of the Homeric/Greek religion has stood in continual opposition to Asiatic/Judaic metaphysics since the dawn of the Homeric Age, some 3000 years ago.[3] In America, what we stood to inherit from the Greeks has been, at worst, perverted by Judeo-Christianity’s war on European nobility, and at best, subsumed within the multicultural system of racial and cultural commodity fetishism.

In other words, the Classical world matters to Europeans because they still live in the geographical and geopolitical world of the Greeks and Romans; while in America, bored bourgeois consumers think about Greece and Rome only when Hollywood promotes some democratic and ethically Christian version of a formerly noble tale of heroism and glory.

^[3]Thus, it is to the North American New Right’s credit that the Classics and pre-Christian paganism is discussed at all. But even as we occasionally discuss them, they still seem foreign to the essential discourse of creating and being a new American Right. While there are Nazis, Norse pagans, atheists, and Christians—always quick to de-Jew Jesus—aplenty, Olympian, Roman, or even Augustan reform, pagans are seldom identified. Given the lack of Classical feeling in the American psyche, one must assume that these pagans simply do not exist here. Even in the European New Right’s best explanation of paganism, Alain de Benoist’s On Being a Pagan, Athena and Apollo—the most well developed and useful Homeric deities—are never brought to life.[4] Nor is one given a sense of what one would actually believe and do as a result of associating with these gods.

Collin Cleary sensed the “lack of gods” in Benoist’s On Being a Pagan and took offense with its overtly Nietzschean humanism and “moral relativism.”[5] Although the gods are present in The Homeric Gods, Otto’s project, like Benoist’s, is entirely and inherently Nietzschean. In fact, to properly understand Otto’s book, one should begin with Nietzsche, and not Homer.[6]

But this is understandable, assuming that one comprehends why Nietzsche is so central to how and why we know the Greeks today. As the first epigraph makes clear, Nietzsche uses the Greeks (and Romans) as a counter-valuation to the modern Judeo-Christian world. From his first notebooks and lectures to his last written words, Nietzsche’s ideal human types are Greek, nay, Homeric in origin. For it was these men that fought, struggled, killed, and died in a life-affirming quest for glory.

Nietzsche’s ideal form of life, which glorifies warfare, strife, and beauty, is Greek. Indeed, Nietzsche’s naturalization of morality can be found 2200 years prior in Herodotus’Histories. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra virtually summarizes the first book of Histories when he says that, “No people could live that did not first esteem; but if they want to preserve themselves, then they must not esteem as their neighbor esteems.”[7] For while Herodotus included the narratives that brought war to the barbarian peoples of the east, he did so to show that, while each people is motivated by what is good, the only good that matters is that of the Greeks.[8]

Even if Herodotus understood that each of Greece’s enemies had their own moral and ethical system, these systems did not apply to Greeks. The world beyond Greece simply did not exist in moralistic/altruistic terms. This is similar to the motivational thrust of Nietzsche’s critique of Judeo-Christian morality: it might be good for a certain human type, but not for us.

This “us” is a key to understanding why Nietzsche is often embraced by the Left (and New Right thinker Collin Cleary) as a moral relativist, for it assumes a preexisting knowledge of each of Nietzsche’s “mature” works that the large majority of his postmodern readers simply do not have.[9] Everything from Book Five of The Gay Science to the last notebook of the Nachlass is written for a fictitious audience of like-minded “free thinkers” who already embrace Nietzsche’s transvaluative project.

Thus, he never naturalizes morality “in general” but always in contrast to what is useful for a particular (heroic, strong, courageous, harsh) audience. Ultimately, moralities are important because every form of life has one, or some such system of valuation and evaluation; and each morality is the basis of a particular human type—one of which is democratic, soft, lazy, smug, complacent, flabby, in a word, decadent. But, because that human type is the optimal embodiment of its morality, the form of life’s truth regime also promotes its optimal status.

And again, because Nietzsche explains that truth is unknowable without valuation (thus linking truth and morality), and that there are as many truths as there are forms of life, i.e. perspectives, historically speaking, the Left embraces him as a general relativist;[10] just as it critiques Herodotus (and the Greeks) as ethnocentric and xenophobic, and Homer as a violence-obsessed savage.[11]

Otto’s The Homeric Gods embraces this generalization of Nietzsche and sets the Homeric gods in opposition not only to Judeo-Christianity but also to the bourgeois form of life in general. What makes Otto’s book unique and useful is that he actually uses Homer and other archaic and Classical sources to explain the gods. Thus, Judeo-Christian and modern notions of sin, soul, piety, and redemption are nonexistent.

Writing in the Nietzschean spirit, he celebrates the absence of “the holy” in the Homeric Greek worldview. “The somber religious reverberation, that melody of ineffable exaltation and consecration . . . seems to be wanting . . . This religion is so natural that holiness seems to have no place in it” (p. 3).

What we miss, then, is the “moral earnestness” that Judeo-Christianity, as the paradigm of religion, commands us to expect in a religion. Instead, we have gods that are “too natural and joyous to reckon morality as the supreme value” (p. 3). We have, as well, two key points to understanding how the religion works.

First, there is no communion between the gods and man. There is no sacrifice of the self, no intimacy, no oneness of god and man. Man and the gods are separated by each one’s nature.

Second, there is no promise of redemption in the religion. There is no need or desire to redeem man from his earthy existence because love of life and the natural capacities of man are the basis of Homeric religious feeling. As Faye said, “like Achilles [and Odysseus], the original European man does not prostrate himself before the gods, but stands upright.”[12] But as Otto explains, this is because the gods demand instead that one stands and fights—that one makes oneself worthy of the gods’ attention by courageous and heroic action. Otto brings this point home by reminding his readers that, while in the Old Testament, “Yahweh fights for his people, and without making any defense they are delivered from the pursuing Egyptians,” in Homer, “a god whispers a saving device to a baffled warrior at the right instant, we hear that he rouses spirit and kindles courage, that he makes limbs supple and nimble, and gives a right arm accuracy and strength” (p. 6). Man is not miraculously delivered by his God but is, instead, given the inspiration to command his own destiny.

The interaction between gods and man and between man and nature, then, is not only dependent upon man but upon nature. In other words, there is little to no magic, only the divinity of man in nature.

The faculty which in other religions is constantly being thwarted and inhibited here flowers forth with the admirable assurance of genius—the faculty of seeing the world in the light of the divine, not a world yearned for, aspired to, or mystically present in rare ecstatic experiences, but the world into which we were born, part of which we are, interwoven with it through our senses and, through our minds, obligated to it for all its abundance and vitality. (p. 11)

Speaking of its essence, the divine is a vital force that flows through each living thing. However, it is not “made divine” in the sense of the “holy spirit.” There is no need to feel universally connected to, or prohibited from attacking or devouring, one’s brothers-in man. For in nature, all life consumes and devours, but is still part of the richness of the world—a very Nietzschean naturalism this is! Homeric religion, in sum, dismisses morality, promises no redemption, and makes life itself divine.

It is in the descriptions of the gods, themselves that we find the true “plan” that the Homeric religion holds for man: that our divine nature demands that man act, and often heroically. “The gods belong on the side of life. In order to encounter them the living must move, go forward, be active. Then the gods encompass the living with their strength and majesty and in sudden revelation even show their heavenly countenance” (pp. 265–66). It matters not so much that man be patient, pious, or priestly, but that he not act cowardly, brutishly, or without dignity. “The purpose and goal of the Greeks,” Otto quotes Goethe, “is to deify man, not to humanize deity” (p. 236). Even as man in all of his nature is deified, Homer still presents a perfected vision of this nature.[13]

^[4]Anyone who has read Homer (or Otto) can hardly disagree that Athena is the most extraordinary of the Homeric deities. Her role in the life of Achilles and Odysseus alone is enough to inspire men to war in hopes of garnering her attention. “First of all it is the warriors whose courage she kindles. Before battle begins they sense here inspiriting presence and yearn to perform heroic deeds worthy of her . . . the spirit of the goddess causes all hearts to thrill with battle glee” (p. 45).

Athena’s association with Heracles insured that she was the deity of choice for virile, athletic warriors, and his glory set the standard for Greek (and Roman) heroic endeavor. Remember correctly, though, that Heracles did not succeed through fury alone. Under Athena’s guidance, prudence and dignity are also necessary. Thus do we see her counseling Odysseus in moments which call not only for force but also shrewd calculation.

While her most celebrated recipients are, indeed, warriors and heroes, Athena’s influence can be seen across a wide spectrum of Greek life. She is a warrior, but she is also the goddess of wisdom. Moderns hear this, and their bourgeois form of life immediately informs them of a contradiction; for how can war and wisdom be unified and idealized to the point of divinity? That this unity is no contradiction, however, says all one needs to know of these Greeks and how far we have fallen from their glorious and heroic ideals.

^[5]War and wisdom are related, through Athena, by the type of human perfection needed to be victorious at either. Precision. Precision under pressure. Precision under pressure of death. Precision under pressure of death when only the perfect movement or thought will preserve life and achieve one’s glory. Wisdom can only be gained in similar circumstances—through heroic or precise, pressure-filled, action.

Thoughts gained while sheepishly static and immobile, Nietzsche reminds us, are seldom heroic. Thus warriors in need of the perfect throw of a spear or slice of a sword, in the only instant that will kill their opponent, are united with artisans, artists, precision craftsmen—shipwrights, metalworkers, potters, weavers—and anyone needing intelligence and the will to decisiveness at every moment.

While Athena loves others beside the great heroes and warriors, her spirit and approach does not change circumstantially. She always desires “boldness, the will to victory, and courage,” but these are not fully useful without “directing reason and illuminating clarity” (p. 53). “Whenever in a life of action and heroism great things must be wrought, perfected, and struggled for, there Athena is present. Broad indeed is the spirit of a battle-loving people when it recognizes the same perfection wherever a clear and intelligent glance shows the path to achievement” (p. 53). Broad indeed is the spirit of a battle-loving people when it recognizes the same perfection wherever a clear and intelligent glance shows the path to achievement. Otto has just explained the crux of the Classical inheritance: the will to perfection. Stand alone in postmodern America and ponder the magnitude of a cultural impulse to perfection. Now also consider Otto’s National Socialist audience and one also begins to sense what National Socialism and Fascism were really up to—and how deep was the Fascist critique of modernity.[14]

^[6]

Apollo

The perfection attainable through Athena is immediate. The precision to which she inspires is corporeal. She is “the heavenly presence and direction as illumination and inspiration to victorious comprehension and consummation. To Hermes belongs what is clandestine, twilight, uncanny; Athena is bright as day. Dreaminess, yearning, languishing, are alien to her” (pp. 53–54). Similarly obvious is the contrast between Athena and Apollo:

In Apollo we recognize the wholly masculine man. The aristocratic aloofness, the superiority of cognition, the sense of proportion, these and other related traits in a man, even music in the broadest sense of the word, are, in the last analysis, alien to a woman. Apollo is all these things. But perfection in the living present, untrammelled and victorious action, not in the service of some remote and infinite idea but for mastery over the moment—that is the triumph that has always delighted woman in a man, to which she inspires him, and whose high satisfaction he can learn from her. (p. 55)

Apollo is an archer, thus the will to precision is also present in him. But while Athena is immediate and near, Apollo is rational and distant. “In the figure of Apollo,” Otto explains, “man honors the nobility of serenity and freedom, the rays of the sun, which furnish light not for mysteries of the soul but for virile realization of life and worthy achievement” (p. 252). Once again, Otto makes sure we fully comprehend the cultural impetus of these deities. For like Athena, Apollo promotes a world of meaningful action and a life “capable of freedom, which neither follows impulses blindly nor is subjected to the categorical demands of a moral legislation. It is not to dutifulness or obedience that decision is allowed but to insight and taste; thus everywhere the intelligent is bound up with the beautiful” (p. 253).

It was the genius of the Greeks to promote the most exceptional and exemplary capabilities of man as divine; and not only divine but also natural. Thus man did not supplicate himself to a God, or, as Collin Cleary fears for neo-pagans, merely invoke the name of a deity. Instead he made himself worthy. “Wherever a great heart throbs and rages, wherever a liberating thought flares up, there Athena is present, summoned rather by heroic readiness than by humble supplication. From her own lips we hear that she is attracted by prowess, not by good will or devotion to her person” (pp. 238–239). In this we see that the agonic pulse that ran through the Greek world was more than just a will to prepare for war. It was also a means for men to maintain worthiness of the gods. For a perfect throw, a perfect hull, or a perfect word is still perfection and “for the Greeks, this is the prime meaning of insight and intelligence. Without these the truly divine is inconceivable” (p. 247).

Perhaps nothing separates modern man from the Greeks as much as his aversion to thinking about the human in terms of perfection. The artistic embodiment of the Homeric deities served as an optimal status criterion of the form and content of human perfection. Extremely elevated standards were maintained in physiognomy, creativity, and discernment, always with a view to the interconnectedness of warfare, wisdom, and beauty. Grandeur, prowess, dignity, and nobility seem available for all who act heroically and with nobility. However, this is only so because it is not the mediocrity of the rabble that is being elevated to the pinnacle of human worthiness.

Only a modern would think to celebrate (or even care about) the Helots and slaves that toiled in the shadow of greatness. Indeed, the moderns who glorify the non-victorious and the failures—the majority—at the expense of the heroic and life affirming few, dwell in eternal darkness compared to these Greeks.

Instead this is a religion (and form of life) for masters. This is the religion of those who value glory over justice. And, “for a spirit which craves glory rather than prosperity, the justice of divine sway is a different thing from what the husbandman or commoner intent on possessions and gain might wish it to be” (p. 258). Achilles, the bravest and “most loved by the gods” of the Greeks at Troy, has a short life, but it is a life filled with the greatest imaginable glory. As Otto deftly explains, only a spiritually poor age would think to reduce the human capacity for heroic action to a search for bourgeois comfort, safety, and happiness. Likewise, only a spiritually impoverished religion would feel it necessary to make God an arbiter of justice. While the “history of religions” (i.e., modern theology which makes Asiatic monotheistic religions the paradigm of religiontout court) considers it a deepening of divine providence to give God the power of justice, Otto explains that it as a sign of decadence (p. 257).

The Homeric gods, as mentioned above, are solely deities of life. Death, the only fate of man, is controlled by the furies—the archaic deities more closely related to elemental forces than the more spiritual Olympians. It is not fated that a man does anything but die. What he does with his life is up to him, including meting out justice. (In his Oresteia, Aeschylus presents a dramatic account of Athena and Apollo arguing successfully against the furies for the right of man to justice.) While the gods are powerless against death and care nothing for justice, they often work with a man’s fate to allow a maximum amount of honor and glory. For a form of life that spiritualizes life, honor, and glory, a “call to justice is . . . a sign of the de-deification of the world” and evidence of a mobbish right to prosperity and slavish assumption that someone may be blamed for one’s suffering a lack of prosperity (p. 258).

It is important to remember that Homer was the basis of Classical Greek culture. The deities and heroic men and women he described originated the shared values, mores, and conditions of possibility of the many Greek peoples. Homeric models of heroism and nobility became the boundary marker between the Greek and the barbarian. The metaphors used by the nobility and freemen alike came from Homer, as did the bases of truth, beauty, and good reasoning. The Homeric Gods gives ample reasons why this was so. With its Nietzschean undertones (Nietzsche is only mentioned once in the book) and its clear delineation of what separates the Homeric from the Judaic, Otto’s study must have been intended to bolster the Fascist reawakening of Classical feeling in European man; for it paints a picture of the very type anti-humanist (Nietzschean) humanism that characterizes so much of Fascist political mythology and philosophy. What makes Otto’s The Homeric Gods so important, in this light, is its sheer monumentality. It explains that Greek humanism was anything but secular, and deified the greatest potentials of human life. It places life clearly in the control of man, with the understanding that greatness is only achievable through actions worthy of the gods. The book is designed to inspire—to make Athena’s touch be felt again—and to give notice that bourgeois modern men will be unforgivingly outmatched by those seeking glory rather than comfort.

The Homeric Gods is no substitute for the remarkable experience of reading or hearing Homer’s epics. However, it is a companion that will deepen one’s experience of Homer so much that Dominique Venner’s suggestion that his epics act as a “European bible” will make perfect sense.[15] Of course, heroic men of the Homeric ideal have no need of a bible—just as the Nietzschean ideal would chafe at the blasphemy of suggesting Zarathustra as a bible. If bible is a strong word—intended only for the weakest ears, that is—perhaps Homer can instead act as guidebook of the European peoples’ capacity for greatness.

In any case Homer, and Homeric religion, is exemplary, and demonstrate a system of valuation at extraordinary odds with modern bourgeois man. Perhaps modernity has destroyed man’s ability to act as heroically as the ideals and deities of Homer would expect of their heirs. Certainly it has delimited his freedom to do so. But, “history,” Nietzsche advised in a notebook entry, “must speak only of the great and unique, of the model to be emulated.”[16] That, as Venner explains, is exactly what we have in Homer: “To be noble and brave for a man, to be gentle, loving, and faithful for a woman. [Homer] bequeathed a digest of what Greece offered thereafter to posterity: nature as model, the striving towards beauty, the creative force that strives always to surpass, excellence as the ideal of life.”[17]

Notes

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Writings from the Early Notebooks, ed. Raymond Geuss and Alexander Nehamas. Trans. Ladislaus Löb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 203.

[2] Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, Trans. Moses Hadas. Reprint Edition (North Stratford, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 2001), p.12.

[3] Pierre Krebs, Fighting for the Essence: Western Enthnosuicide or European Renaissance? Trans. Dr. Alexander Jacob (London: Arktos, 2012), pp. 46–47.

[4] Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan, ed. Greg Johnson, trans. Jon Graham (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004).

[5] Collin Cleary, “Paganism Without Gods,” in Summoning The Gods, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2011), pp. 62–80.

[6] I assume everyone has read and re-read both The Iliad and The Odyssey. If not, drop everything, get an audiobook, and listen to these epics.

[7] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. Adrian Del Caro and Robert B. Pippin. Trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 42.

[8] Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, ed. Robert B. Strassler. Trans. Andrea L. Purvis (New York: Pantheon, 2007), pp. 112–15.

[9] There is no distinction to be made between postmodern and Left.

[10] Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990).

[11] Elizabeth Vandiver, Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction of Myth and History (New York: Peter Lang, 1991).

[12] Guillaume Faye, “Mars and Hephaestus: The Return of History,” trans. Greg Johnson, in North American New Right, Volume 1, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012), p. 239.

[13] Space and necessity permit only a focus on Athena and Apollo. The Homeric Gods offers chapter-length examinations of Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Hermes; while Ares, Poseidon, and Hephaestus also feature heavily.

[14] Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, trans. David Maisel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

[15] Dominique Venner, “Homer: The European Bible,” trans. Greg Johnson, in North American New Right, Volume 1, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012), pp. 220–36.

[16] Nietzsche, Early Notebooks, 95.

[17] Venner, 226.

 

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URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/07/the-homeric-gods/

La chevauchée littéraire, devenue mythique d’Artus

La chevauchée littéraire, devenue mythique d’Artus

L'aventure d'une revue racontée par celui qui l'a intensément vécue

Hervé Glot
Ex: http://metamag.fr/

 

Nous avons longtemps hésité avant de classer l'article d'Hervé Glot, issu d'une contribution au magazine des Amis de l'écrivain normando-breton, Jean Mabire . Il avait sa place dans notre rubrique "émotion/réflexion", car l'histoire du magazine Artus relève d'abord de la littérature, de la poésie, de l'image et de l'imaginaire. Mais par la vocation ambitieuse qu'elle s'assignait, au service de la large culture celte, toujours vivante et ardente, par l'enthousiasme  qu'elle a suscité auprès d'artistes, d'intellectuels, du public, par l'impulsion enfin qui continue de nourrir rêves et convictions, elle relève finalement de la rubrique "communautés vivantes". 

Guilhem Kieffer

 

"Difficile de prendre individuellement la parole au sujet d’une aventure qui fut avant tout collective, d’autant que les années ont en partie gommé le contexte qui vit la naissance et l’évolution de la revue Artus, puis, par la suite, des éditions du même nom. Mais soit, je tenterai d’être le chroniqueur concis et néanmoins fidèle d’une chevauchée qui s’est étalée dans le temps et bien sûr, comme tout corps vivant, a initié ou subi ses propres métamorphoses.

 

 

L’affaire est ancienne, puisque c’est en 1979 que fut fondée l’association éditrice de la revue, avec pour dessein d’explorer les voies de la culture celtique d’hier, et d’en faire entendre les voix d’aujourd’hui. Cette association naissait en Bretagne, à Nantes capitale du duché, et Jean-Louis Pressensé en était le directeur et le premier rédacteur. Artus : le nom avait, bien sûr, été choisi en référence au roi de la Table Ronde, dont le royaume légendaire s’étendait sur les deux rives de la Manche. 

 

Il élargissait considérablement le réduit breton auquel nous étions certes attachés… mais à condition d’exercer toute liberté dans les instants où il nous siérait de larguer les amarres, comme en témoignait le sous-titre "pays celtiques et monde nordique". L’association était née d’une réaction contre une certaine vision en vogue dans les années 70, celle d’une Bretagne étroite, suffisante et, pour finir, morte d’un trop plein "de légitimes revendications et de droits imprescriptibles"…

 

Sources et survivances d’un imaginaire celtique

 

Nous souhaitions rechercher, au sein d’un univers plus large, les sources et les survivances d’un imaginaire celtique. Et nous nous interrogions: « Segalen est-il moins celte quand il compose Les Immémoriaux, Kenneth White quand il décrit Hong-Kong, Michel Mohrt quand il rédige "L’ours des Adirondacks ?" »

 

Dès lors se posait le problème du contenu que nous entendions donner au terme « celtique ». Pour ma part, très sensible à l’enseignement que prodiguait (parfois dans la douleur) Christian-J. Guyonvarc’h, l’Irlande, avec sa mythologie miraculeusement transmise, était un des conservatoires et l’un des foyers où aller chercher les brandons encore vivants du grand récit. Des brandons à raviver parce que, sans cette lueur venue de ses franges "barbares’", l’Europe, qui cherchait à s’inventer, faisait l’impasse sur une partie de son âme (elle a fait mieux depuis !). De notre point de vue, c’était pour les artistes, les créateurs, se priver d’une source d’inspiration dont des écrivains majeurs, comme Yeats ou Joyce (bon gré, mal gré), avaient fait le suc de leur œuvre, et dont le cinéma s’emparait désormais avec gourmandise. J’aime toujours rappeler que l’Irlande, un tout petit pays, peut se flatter d’avoir porté, bien au-delà de son nombril, la lumière de ses écrivains et que l’imaginaire est une pensée vivante, une flamme que l’on ravive au contact de la diversité du monde. 

 

Pourtant, la volée de bois vert ne vint pas des Bretons pur beurre : il apparut rapidement que l’usage que nous faisions des termes celte ou celtique, et ce que nous affirmions comme un héritage mésestimé étaient, pour certains, des vocables strictement interdits, des territoires de la pensée absolument prohibés. Passons sur ces polémiques, elles n’en méritent pas davantage.

 

Un sentiment géographique et quasi climatique  

 

Nous cherchions à faire partager un sentiment géographique et quasi climatique : cette Europe du nord-ouest, atlantique et baltique, est (de toute évidence) un mélange de terre et d’eau, un espace terraqué aux limites indécises, aux lumières parfois incertaines et aux origines parfois contradictoires. Nous souhaitions faire naître peu à peu, par les textes des chercheurs, ceux des écrivains et des poètes, les œuvres des photographes, des peintres ou des graveurs, etc, une esthétique, un esprit, qui donneraient à la revue une couleur que j’espérais singulière. 

 

 

Jean-Louis Pressensé avait, au tout début de l’aventure, suggéré cet en-dehors des territoires trop arrimés, en évoquant l’Artusien en devenir : « Etre enfant du granit, de la houle, des forêts et du vent, être pétri de fidélité, de folie et de rêves…» Et, effectivement, les filiations furent de cœur, de consanguinité spirituelle, de générosité, jamais fondées sur l’intérêt ou le conformisme idéologique. 

 

La revue fut, pour bien des rédacteurs, une école pratique et un centre de formation intellectuelle. Nous approfondissions nos compétences techniques, passant de la terrible composphère, fleuron de chez IBM, à l’ordinateur, et la table de la salle à manger, qui servait de table de montage, conserve les ineffaçables stigmates du cutter de mise en page : à ces moments-là, il fallait penser avec les mains, non sans avoir affirmé, quelques instants auparavant, après Rimbaud, que la main à plume valait bien la main à charrue.

 

Nous allions vers les artistes ou les chercheurs par inclination personnelle, aussi bien que par curiosité pour qui nous intriguait. Ainsi, la revue développait son contenu, tandis que les numéros sortaient avec la régularité qu’autorisaient nos occupations professionnelles. Artus a fédéré des énergies, confronté des individualités et surtout nous a conforté dans le sentiment que l’équilibre, le nôtre en tout cas, se trouve où cohabitent le travail des savants et le chant des poètes.

 

Un équilibre où cohabitent le travail des savants et le chant des poètes

 

Peu à peu, nous avons orienté notre publication vers des thèmes plus précis. Parurent ainsi "Le Graal", "A chacun ses Irlande", "Au nord du monde", "Harmonique pour la terre", "L’Amour en mémoire", "Ecosse blanches terres", "Mégalithes", "Archipels, vents et amers", autant de titres qui signaient des affinités électives, des rencontres insolites ou prévisibles. Avec le recul, cette formule éditoriale a eu le grand avantage d’ouvrir un espace accueillant et de permettre la constitution d’un noyau de collaborateurs, qui auront trouvé dans le rythme revuiste, à la fois souplesse, diversité et régularité. 

 

 

Les universitaires Jacques Briard pour l’archéologie, Christian-J. Guyonvac’h pour le domaine celtique, Léon Fleuriot pour les origines de la Bretagne, Philippe Walter pour la littérature arthurienne, Régis Boyer pour le monde nordique, Gilbert Durand pour le vaste champ de l’imaginaire, furent parmi d’autres, nos guides et nos interlocuteurs. Patrick Grainville et Kenneth White nous donnèrent de sérieux coups de main. Philippe Le Guillou a été le compagnon de nos rêveries scoto-hiberniennes. Michel Le Bris a bercé nos songes romantiques au rythme des puissances de la fiction; quant à Pierre Dubois, il a été pour nous tous l’empêcheur de raisonner en rond, le Darby O’Gill des raths et des moors.

 

La revue a permis, en outre, de créer un lectorat qui est naturellement resté fidèle lors du glissement -amorcé en douceur au milieu des années 80- de la revue vers la maison d’édition, ayant ainsi, pour effet, de résoudre partiellement le problème de la diffusion.

 

Après s’être essayé à la publication de textes relativement courts : "Enez Eussa" de Gilles Fournel, "Marna" d’Yvon Le Menn, "la Main à plume" de Philippe Le Guillou, suivront une vingtaine de livres dont "Ys dans la rumeur des vagues" de Michel Le Bris, ou "Les Guerriers de Finn" de Michel Cazenave. Des albums sont consacrés à des peintres, des sculpteurs, des graveurs, des photographes (Yvon Boëlle, Jean Hervoche, Carmelo de la Pinta, Bernard Louedin, Sophie Busson, Jean Lemonnier, Geneviève Gourivaud).  

 

Avec Pierre Joannon, nous éditerons un gros album, "L’Irlande ou les musiques de l’âme", une somme menant de la protohistoire à la genèse de l’Irlande contemporaine, que reprendront les éditions Ouest-France. Toujours à l’affut des méandres de la création, sous la direction de Jacqueline Genêt, de l’université de Caen, nous avons publié les variations des écrivains de la renaissance culturelle irlandaise, autour de la légende de Deirdre. 

 

Pierre Joannon

 

Depuis ces temps de fondation, d’autres livres bien sûr sont parus, parfois en coédition avec Hoëbeke ou Siloë. Citons "Arrée, l’archange et le dragon", "Des Bretagne très intérieures", "Une Rhapsodie irlandaise", plus récemment "Lanval" et ,dernier en date, "Les îles au nord du monde", un texte de Marc Nagels illustré par Didier Graffet, avec des photographies de Vincent Munier.

 

Un numéro spécial avait marqué un tournant dans l’histoire d’Artus. Ce n’était déjà plus le fascicule habituel, mais un véritable album titré "Brocéliande ou l’obscur des forêts". Il allait nous conduire vers une autre direction : une heureuse conjonction permit à Claudine de créer et d’asseoir" au château de Comper" le Centre de l’Imaginaire Arthurien. Mais cela est une autre histoire, et je ne voudrais pas m’approprier abusivement ce qui appartient à une fraternité sûrement plus vaste que la mienne, sinon en rappelant ce que pourrait être… une errance arthurienne.

 

Vagabondage dans l’espace arthurien

 

Histoire des hommes et de leur imaginaire, rêves, foi, mythes, voilà un terrain de pérégrinations assez inépuisable, au milieu duquel l’héritage celtique et la légende arthurienne brillent, aujourd’hui, d’un éclat particulier, avec leur cortège de prouesses et d’enchantements, dont le moindre n’est pas la promesse de la quête.

 

Le roman arthurien n’a pas inventé la quête, mais il lui a donné une couleur et une dimension renouvelées. La quête chevaleresque n’est ni la descente aux Enfers d’Orphée ou de Virgile, la fuite d’Énée ou la dérive involontaire d’Ulysse. À travers d’innombrables épreuves, dont on ne sait dans quelle réalité elles se déroulent, elle unit, à un voyage qui porte ordre et lumière là où règne le chaos, un cheminement intérieur, recherche de perfection ou d’absolu.

 

Au centre de la cour arthurienne, la Table Ronde rassemble les meilleurs chevaliers, venus du monde entier briguer l’honneur de servir. Alors, commencent les expéditions, entreprises sur un signe, une requête, un récit marqué d'étrangeté. Lorsqu’il prend la route, chaque chevalier devient, à lui seul, l’honneur de la Table Ronde et la gloire du roi. Il forme l'essence même de la chevalerie arthurienne, affirmant la nécessité de l'errance, le dédain des communes terreurs, la solitude, qui ne s’accompagne que d’un cheval et d’une épée. Il ne sait ni le chemin à suivre, ni les épreuves qui l'attendent. Un seule règle, absolue, lui dicte de « prendre les aventures comme elles arrivent, bonnes ou mauvaises ». Il ne se perd pas, tant qu’il suit la droite voie, celle de l'honneur, du code la chevalerie.

 

La nécessité de la Quête est partie intégrante du monde arthurien. Au hasard de sa route, le chevalier vient à bout des forces hostiles. Il fait naître l’harmonie, l’âge d’or de la paix arthurienne dans son permanent va et vient entre ce monde-ci et l’Autre Monde, car l’aventure, où il éprouve sa valeur, ne vaut que si elle croise le chemin des merveilles. Sinon elle n’est qu’exploit guerrier, bravoure utilitaire. Seul, le monde surnaturel, qui attend derrière le voile du réel, l’attire, et lui seul est qualifiant.

 

Les poètes recueillent la Matière de Bretagne vers le XIIe siècle, de la bouche même des bardes gallois et, sans doute, bretons. Malgré le prestige du monde antique et des romans qu’il inspire et qui ne manquent pas de prodiges, la société cultivée découvre, fascinée, les légendes des Bretons (aujourd’hui nous parlerions des Celtes), un univers culturel perçu comme tout autre, d’une étrangeté absolue. Le roman, cette forme nouvelle nourrie de mythes anciens, donne naissance à des mythes nouveaux, la Table Ronde, le Graal, l’amour de Tristan pour Iseult, Merlin… Parmi les référents culturels de l’Europe, en train de naître, elle s’impose en quelques dizaines d’années, du Portugal à l’Islande, de la Sicile à l’Écosse.

 

La légende celtique, mêlée d’influences romanes ou germaniques, constitue une composante fondamentale pour l’Europe en quête d’une identité qui transcende les nécessités économiques et politiques. Mais le thème de la quête représente, plus fondamentalement croyons-nous, un itinéraire proprement spirituel, initiatique ou mystique même, pour certains. Elle manifeste, aussi, un besoin d’enracinement, la recherche de valeurs anciennes, prouesse, courtoisie, fidélité, largesse, l’aspiration à l’image idéale de ce que nous pourrions être.

 

Une fois de plus, le roi Arthur revient : non pas la figure royale, mais l’univers de liberté et d’imaginaire qu’il convoie. A qui s’interroge sur cette postérité tenace, sur ces résurrections insistantes, on peut trouver des raisons, dans le désordre, culturelles, patrimoniales, psychanalytique, politiques, artistiques. Pour nous, nous dirons, simplement et très partialement, qu’il s’agit de la plus belle histoire du monde, et qu’il suffit de revenir au récit, à ces mots qui voyagent vers nous, depuis plus de huit siècles, pour comprendre que les enchantements de Bretagne ne sont pas près de prendre fin."

Il mito cosmogonico degli Indoeuropei

Il mito cosmogonico degli Indoeuropei

di Giorgio Locchi

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/

«Ich sagte dir, ich muß hier warten, bis sie mich rufen»

(Oreste, in Elektra di Hugo von Hoffmanstahl)

 

Il Rig-Veda dell’India antica e l’Edda germanico-nordica presentano due grandi miti cosmogonici, che concordano tra loro a tal punto che vi si può vedere a giusto titolo una duplice derivazione di un mito indoeuropeo comune. Di tale mito delle origini è forse possibile trovare qualche eco presso i Greci. Roma, come vedremo, non ha mai perso il ricordo del “protagonista” di questo dramma sacro che era, per i nostri antenati indoeuropei, l’inizio del mondo. Ma il dramma stesso non ci è pervenuto, nella sua integralità, che tramite l’intermediazione dei germani e degli indoari, di cui scopriamo così che essi ebbero, almeno quando entrarono nella “storia scritta”, e più che ogni altro popolo europeo, la “memoria più lunga.

 

Grazie ai suoi ammirevoli lavori sulla ideologia trifunzionale, Georges Dumézil ha da lungo tempo messo in luce un aspetto fondamentale, assolutamente originale, della Weltanschauung e della religione degli indoeuropei. Non meno essenziale, non meno originale ci appare la credenza istintiva nel primato dell’uomo (e dell’umano) che testimonia il mito cosmogonico indoeuropeo “conservato” nel Rig-Veda e nell’Edda. Per l’indoeuropeo, in effetti, l’uomo è all’origine dell’universo. E’ da lui che procedono tutte le cose, gli dèi, la natura, i viventi, lui stesso infine in quanto essere storico. Tuttavia, come rimarca Anne-Marie Esnoul, «questo cominciare non è che un un cominciare relativo: esiste un principio eterno che crea il mondo, ma, dopo un periodo dato, lo riassorbe» (La naissance du monde, Seuil, Parigi 1959). L’uomo, presso gli indoeuropei, non è soltanto all’origine dell’universo: è l’origine dell’universo, in seno al quale l’umanità vive e diviene. Giacché all’inizio, dice il mito, vi era l’Uomo cosmico: Purusha nel Rig-Veda, Ymir nell’Edda, Mannus, citato da Tacito, presso i germani del continente (Manus, in quanto antenato degli uomini, essendo parimenti conosciuto presso gli indiani).

 

Nel decimo libro del Rig-Veda, il racconto dell’inizio del mondo si apre così:

 

«L’Uomo (Purusha) ha mille teste;

ha mille occhi, mille piedi.

Coprendo la terra da parte a parte

la oltrepassa ancora di dieci dita.

Purusha non è altro che quest’universo

Ciò che è passato, ciò che è a venire.

Egli è signore del dominio immortale,

perché cresce al di là del nutrimento».

 

E’ da Ymir, Uno indiviso anche lui, che procede la prima organizzazione del mondo. Il Grimnismál precisa:

 

«Della carne di Ymir fu fatta la terra,

il mare del suo sudore, delle sue ossa le montagne,

gli alberi furono dai suoi capelli,

e il cielo del suo cranio».

 

Le cose avvengono nello stesso modo nel Rig-Veda:

 

«La luna era nata dalla coscienza di Purusha,

dal suo sguardo è nato il sole,

dalla sua bocca Indra e Agni,

dal suo soffio è nato il vento.

Il dominio dell’aere è uscito dal suo ombelico,

dalla sua testa evolse il sole,

dai suoi piedi la terra, dal suo orecchio gli orienti;

così furono regolati i mondi».

 

Purusha è anche Prajapati, il «padre di tutte le creature». Giacché gli dèi stessi non costituiscono che un “quartiere” dell’Uomo cosmico. Ed è da lui solo che in ultima istanza proviene l’umanità. Si legge nel Rig-Veda:

 

«Con tre quartieri l’Uomo (Purusha) s’è elevato là in alto,

il quarto ha ripreso nascita quaggiù».

 

 

Essendo “Uno indiviso”, l’Uomo cosmico è uno Zwitter, uno Zwitterwesen, un essere asessuato o, più esattamente, potenzialmente androgino. Riunisce in sé due sessi, in maniera ancora confusa. La teologia indiana nota d’altronde che il “maschio” e la “femmina” sono nati dalla «suddivisione di Purusha», così come tutti gli altri “opposti complementari”. Ymir, quanto a lui, dormiva nei ghiacci dell’abisso spalancato (Ginungagap) tra il sud e il nord, quando due giganti, uno maschio e l’altro femmina, si sono formati come escrescenze sotto le sue ascelle. E’ parimenti da lui, o dal ghiaccio fecondato da lui, che è nata la prima coppia umana, Bur e Bestla, genitori dei primi Asi (o dèi sovrani), Wotan (Odhinn), Wili e We.

 

Nell’interpretazione di questi grandi miti cosmogonici non bisogna mai dimenticare che per la mentalità indoeuropea la generazione reciproca è un processo assolutamente normale: gli “opposti logici” sono sempre complementari e perfettamente equivalenti: si pongono mutualmente. E’ così che l’uomo dà nascita a, o tira da se stesso, gli dèi, mentre gli dèi a loro volta danno nascita agli uomini (o insufflano loro lo spirito e la vita). Secondo il racconto dell’Edda, più precisamente nella Voluspá:

 

«Tre Asi, forti e generosi,

arrivarono sulla spiaggia:

trovarono Ask e Embla,

(che erano ancora) privi di forza.

Senza destino, non avevano sensi,

né anima, né calor di vita, né un colore chiaro.

Odhinn donò il senso, Hoenir l’anima,

Lodur donò la vita e il colore fresco».

 

In tutta evidenza, in questo racconto, i tre Asi giocano il ruolo dei primi “eroi civilizzatori”. Ask (ovvero “frassino”) e Embla (ovvero “orma”) rappresentano un’umanità ancora “immersa nella natura”, interamente sottomessa alle leggi della specie, testimone di un’era trascorsa, quella di Bur. Se ci si pone al momento della società indoeuropea caratterizzata dalla tripartizione funzionale, ci si accorge d’altronde che le classi che assumono rispettivamente le tre funzioni appaiono come discendenti del dio Heimdal e di tre donne umane. Il Rigsmál racconta come Heimdal, avendo preso le sembianze di Rigr, generò Thrael, capostipite degli schiavi, con Ahne (“antenata”), Kerl, antenato capostipite dei contadini, con Emma (“nutrice”) e Jarl, capostipite dei nobili con “Madre”. Nel Rig-Veda, per contro, gli antenati delle classi sociali sorgono direttamente dall’Uomo cosmico primordiale:

 

«La bocca di Purusha divenne il brahmino,

il guerriero fu il prodotto delle sue braccia,

le sue coscie furono l’artigiano,

dai suoi piedi nacque il servo».

 

Così come la distribuzione delle classi è sufficiente a dimostrare, la “versione” del Rig-Veda è probabilmente la più fedele al racconto originale indoeuropeo. Non è escluso cionostante che la “versione” germanica si riallacci anch’essa ad una fonte molto antica. Heimdal, in effetti, è una figura tra le più misteriose. Dumézil ha messo ben in evidenza la particolarità essenziale di questo dio, corrispondente germanico dello Janus romano e del Vaju indiano. Cronologicamente, Heimdal è il primo degli Asi, il più vecchio degli dèi. E’ anche un dio che vede tutto: «ode l’erba spuntare sul prato, la lana crescere dalla pelle delle pecore, nulla sfugge al suo sguardo acuto», ed è questa la ragione per cui svolge il ruolo di guardiano di Asgard, la «dimora degli Asi». Dalui è proceduto l’inizio, da lui procederà anche la fine, il Ragnarok (o “crepuscolo degli dèi”) che annuncerà lui stesso dando fiato al corno. Heimdal riunisce dunque in sé tutti i caratteri dell’”Essere supremo”, oggetto di una più antica credenza che Raffaele Pestalozzi attribuiva all’umanità primitiva (cioè agli umani della fine del mesolitico), ma corresponde anche al “dio dimenticato” di cui parla Mircea Eliade, oscura reminiscenza in seno alle religioni “evolute” di una preesistente concezione della divinità. Il che lascia supporre che Heimdal non sia che una proiezione dell’”Essere supremo” degli antenati degli indoeuropei in seno alla società dei “nuovi dèi”, nello stesso modo in cui Ymir lo prolunga, in quanto “principio universale, a livello della cosmogonia (1). Una tale interpretazione è suscettibile di gettare una nuova luce sul “problema di Janus”, altra divinità misteriosa, di cui abbiamo detto che corrispondeva a Roma allo Heimdal germanico. Innumerevoli discussioni hanno avuto luogo sull’etimologia del nome “Janus”. Da qualche tempo, sembra che un accordo si stia formando nel senso di ricollegarlo alla radice indoeuropea *ya, che ha a che fare con l’idea di”passare”, di “andare”. Ma tale spiegazione non sembra molto convincente, e ci si può domandare se non vale la pena di mettere il nome “Janus” in relazione con le radici *yeu(m) o *yeu(n) (da cui il latino jungo, “congiungere”, “coniugare”), che esprimono l’idea di “unire”, di “accoppiare ciò che è separato”, dunque di “gemellare i contrari” (gli “opposti logici”). Ciò spiegherebbe bene il carattere ambiguo di questo deus bifrons, che è, come Ymir, uno Zwitter.

 

 

Si sa, del resto, che un antichissimo appellativo di Janus, di cui i romani dell’epoca di Augusto non comprendevano più esattamente il significato, è Cerus Manus, che si traduce come “buon creatore” (da *krer, “far crescere”, e da un ipotetico *man, “buono”). Noi pensiamo piuttosto che “Manus” non è che un fossile alto-indoeuropeo conservato nel latino antico, che rinvia perfettamente a “Mannus” e significa “uomo” come in germanico ed in sancrito. Il latino immanis non significa d’altronde affatto “cattivo”, “malvagio”, bensì “prodigioso”, “smisurato” (inumano: fuori dalla misura umana). Si comprende allora perché Janus, che è come Heimdal il dio dei prima (delle cose “cronologicamente prime”) è considerato, in quanto Cerus Manus, l’antenato delle popolazioni del Lazio, così come Mannus è l’antenato delle popolazioni germaniche.

 

Il rituale vedico, essenzialmente imperniato sulla nozione di sacrificio, fa precisamente dello smembramento, della “suddivisione” dell’Uomo cosmico (Purusha), il prototipo stesso del sacrificio. Ora, nei testi “speculativi”, questo sacrificio di Purusha ci è presentato sotto due aspetti: da un lato Purusha sacrifica se stesso, inventando così il «sacrificio imperituro»; dall’altro, sono gli dèi che sacrificano Purusha e lo “smembrano”. La questione si pone dunque di sapere se gli indiani hanno “interpretato” o se al contrario hanno conservato la tradizione indoeuropea in tutta la sua purezza. Questa ultima eventualità ci sembra la più verosimile, non fosse che per il fatto che all’origine ogni mito è al tempo stesso storia del rito e proiezione del rito stesso. D’altra parte, la medesima doppia immagine si ritrova nell’Edda. Allo “smembramento” di Purusha corrisponde, sotto una forma desacralizzata, ma sempre presente, lo “smembramento” di Ymir da parte degli Asi, figli di Bur. Quanto all’altro aspetto del sacrificio dell’Uomo cosmico, quello dell’autosacrificio, basta riportarsi alla Canzone delle Rune (Runatals-thattr) per trovarne una forma trasposta, quanto Wotan dichiara:

 

«Lo so: durante nove notti

sono rimasto appeso all’albero scosso dai venti

ferito dalla lancia, sacrificato a Wotan,

io stesso a me stesso sacrificato,

appeso al ramo dell’albero di cui non si può

vedere da quale radice cresca»

 

 

Odhinn-Wotan, dio sovrano, non è certo l’Uomo cosmico, e tanto meno ne gioca il ruolo in seno alla società degli dèi (2). Nondimeno, anche se non è all’origine dell’universo, Wotan è all’origine di un nuovo ordine dell’universo. Gli spetta dunque di inaugurare mercè il suo proprio sacrificio su Ygdrasil, l’albero-del-mondo, la “seconda epoca” dell’uomo (l’epoca propriamente storica). Odhinn-Wotan si sacrifica non più, come Purusha, per “suddividersi” e “liberare” così i contrari grazie ai quali l’universo deve acquisire la sua fisionomia, bensì per acquisire il sapere (il “segreto delle rune”) che gli permetterà di organizzare, o più esattamente di riorganizzare, l’universo. A dire il vero, questo “rimaneggiamento” del mito originale non sorprende: la Weltanschauung germanica ha sempre sottolineato e amplificato l’immaginazione storica degli indoeuropei, mettendo l’accento su un divenire ove sia il passato, sia il futuro, sono contenuti nel presente, pur venendone trasfigurati.

 

Per secoli il mito cosmogonico indoeuropeo non ha cessato di ispirare e di nutrire l’immaginazione degli indiani antichi. Forse la sua ricchezza non appare da nessuna parte, in tutto il suo splendore, meglio che nel magnifico poema di Kalidasa, il Kumarasambhava, in cui Purusha è Brahma, divina personificazione del sacrificio:

 

«Che tu sia venerato, o dio dalle tre forme

Tu che eri ancora unità assoluta, prima che la creazione fosse compiuta,

Tu che ti dividevi nei tre gunas, da cui hai ricevuto i tuoi tre appellativi.

O mai nato, il tuo seme non fu sterile allorché fu eietto nell’onda acquosa!

Tuo tramite l’universo sorse, che si agita e che è senza vita,

e di cui tu sei festeggiato nel canto come l’origine.

Tu hai dispiegato la tua potenza sotto tre forme.

Tu solo sei il principio della creazione di questo mondo,

ed anche la causa di ciò che esiste ancora e che alla fine crollerà.

Da te, che hai suddiviso il tuo proprio corpo per poter generare,

derivano l’uomo e la donna in quanto parte di te stesso.

Sono chiamati i genitori della creazione, che va moltiplicandosi.

Se, tu che hai separato il giorno e la notte secondo la misura del tuo proprio tempo,

se tu dormi, allora tutti muoiono, ma se vivi, allora tutti sorgono.

[...]

Con te stesso conosci il tuo proprio essere.

Tu ti crei da te stesso, ma anche ti perdi,

con il tuo te stesso conoscente, nel tuo proprio te stesso.

Sei il liquido, sei ciò che è solido, sei il grande e il piccolo,

il leggero e il pesante, il manifesto e l’occulto.

Ti si chiama Prakriti, ma sei conosciuto anche come Purusha

che in verità vede Prakriti, ma da lei non dipende.

Tu sei il padre dei padri, il dio degli dèi. Sei più alto del supremo.

Tu sei l’offerta in sacrificio, ed anche il signore del sacrificio.

Sei il sacrificato, ma anche il sacrificatore.

Tu sei ciò che si deve sapere, il saggio, il pensatore,

ma anche la cosa più alta che sia possibile pensare».

 

Questo inno di Kalidasa è uno degli apici della “riflessione poetica” indiana sulla tradizione dei Veda. Esplicita a meraviglia tutti i sottintesi del mito cosmogonico indoeuropeo, nello stesso tempo in cui riconduce ad unità le variazioni (successive o meno) del tema originario. L’opposizione di Purusha e Prakriti (che corrisponde, in qualche modo, alla natura naturans) è estremamente rivelatrice, soprattutto se la si mette in parallelo con quella di Purusha e dell’”onda indistinta” rappresentata da Ymir e dall’”abisso spalancato”. E’ per il fatto di «vedere Prakriti senza dipenderne» che l’Uomo cosmico è all’origine dell’universo. Giacché l’universo non è che un caos indistinto, sprovvisto di senso e di significato, da cui solo lo sguardo e la parola dell’uomo fanno sorgere la moltitudine degli esseri e delle cose, ivi compreso l’uomo stesso, alla fine realizzato. Il sacrificio di Purusha, se si preferisce, è il momento apollineo tramite cui si trova affermato il principium individuationis, «causa di ciò che esiste e che ancora esisterà», fino al momento in cui questo mondo «crollerà», ovvero sino al momento dionisiaco di una fine che è anche la condizione di un nuovo inizio.

 

In una Weltanschauung di questo tipo, gli dèi sono essi stessi un “quartiere” dell’Uomo cosmico. “Uomini superiori” nel senso nietzschano del termine, essi perpetuano in un certo modo il ricordo trasfigurato e trasfigurante dei primi “eroi civilizzatori”, di coloro che trassero l’umanità dal suo stato “precedente” (quello di Ask e di Embla), e fondarono davvero, ordinandola per mezzo delle tre funzioni, la società umana, la società degli uomini indoeuropei. Questi dèi non rappresentano il “Bene”. Non rappresentano neppure il Male. Sono al tempo stesso il Bene e il Male. Ciascuno di loro, di per ciò stesso, presenta un aspetto ambiguo (un aspetto umano), il che spiega perché, mano mano che l’immaginazione mitica ne svilupperà la rappresentazione, la loro personalità tenderà a sdoppiarsi: Mitra-Varuna, Jupiter-Dius Fidius, Odhinn/Wotan-Tyr, etc. In rapporto all’umanità presente, che essi hanno istituito in quanto tale, questi dèi corrispondono effettivamente agli “antenati”. Legislatori, inventori della tradizione sociale, e, in quanto tali, sempre presenti, sempre agenti, restano nondimeno assoggettati in ultima istanza al fatum, votati molto umanamente a una “fine”.

 

Si tratta, in conclusione, di dèi non creatori, ma creature; dèi umani, e tuttavia ordinatori del mondo e della società degli uomini; dèi ancestrali per l’”attuale” umanità: dèi, infine, “grandi nel bene come nel male” e che si situano essi stessi al di là di tali nozioni.

 

 

Ciò che chiamiamo il “popolo indoeuropeo” è in effetti una società risalente agli inizi del neolitico, il cui mito si è precisamente costruito a partire dalla nuova prospettiva inaugurata dalla “rivoluzione neolitica”, per mezzo di una riflessione sulle credenze del periodo precedente, riflessione che è alla fine sfociata in una formulazione rivoluzionaria dei temi della vecchia Weltanschauung.

 

Se, come pensa Raffaele Pestalozzi, autore di L’omniscience de dieu, la credenza in un “Essere supremo” (da non confondere con il dio unico dei monoteisti!) era propria all’”umanità primitiva”, cioè ai gruppi umani della fine del mesolitico, allora il mito cosmogonico indoeuropeo può effettivamente essere considerato come una formulazione rivoluzionaria in rapporto a tale credenza (o, se si preferisce, come un discorso che fa scoppiare, superandoli, il linguaggio e la “ragione” del periodo precedente). Giunti a questo punto, siamo in diritto di pensare che, per gli antenati “mesolitici” degli indoeuropei, l’”Essere supremo” non era forse che l’uomo stesso, o più esattamente la “proiezione cosmica” dell’uomo in quanto detentore del potere magico. Ugualmente, possiamo constatare al tempo stesso che questa idea di un Essere supremo, propria agli indoeuropei, non è affatto comune a tutti i gruppi umani usciti dal mesolitico, o, almeno, che essa non appare più tale ad altri gruppi di uomini ugualmente condotti dalla rivoluzione neolitica a “riflettere” sulle credenze antiche.

 

L’Oriente classico, ad esempio, ha “riflesso”, immaginato e interpretato le credenze “mesolitiche” in una direzione diametralmente opposta a quella presa dagli indoeuropei. La Bibbia ebraica, summa della Weltanschauung religiosa levantina, si situa, in effetti, agli antipodi della “visione” indoeuropea. Vi si ritrova purtuttavia, come antico tema offerto alla “riflessione”, l’idea di un Essere supremo confrontato, all’inizio del mondo, ad una «terra deserta e vuota, dalle tenebre plananti sull’abisso» (Genesi, I, 1). Questo “abisso spalancato”, è vero, è immediatamente presentato come risultante da una antecedente creazione di Elohim-Jahvé. Ora, Jahvé non ha tratto l’universo da una suddivisione e “smembramento” di sé. L’ha creato ex nihilo, a partire dal nulla. Non è affatto la coincidentia oppositorum, l’”Uno indiviso”, non è l’Essere e il Non-essere al tempo stesso. E’ l’Essere: «Io sono colui che è». Di conseguenza, e dal momento che l’universo creato non saprebbe essere l’uguale del dio creante, il mondo non ha essenza, ma soltanto un’esistenza, o, più esattamente, una sorta di “essere di grado inferiore”, di imperfezione. Mentre il politeismo degli indoeuropei è il “rovescio” complementare di ciò che si potrebbe chiamare il loro mono-umanismo (equivalente d’altronde a un pan-umanismo), il monoteismo ebraico appare come la conclusione di un processo di riassorbimento, come la riduzione all’unicità di Elohim-Jahvé di una molteplicità di dèi non umani, personificanti forze naturali (3), in breve come lo sbocco di una speculazione che ha anch’essa ricondotto la pluralità delle cose a un principio unico, che in tal caso non è l’uomo ma la materia e l’energia (la “natura”).

 

Per il fatto di essere un dio unico, non ambiguo, che non è per nulla il luogo in cui si risolvono e coincidono gli “opposti logici”, Jahvé rappresenta evidentemente il Bene assoluto. E’ dunque del tutto normale che si mostri sovente crudele, implacabile o geloso: il Bene assoluto non può non essere intransigente rispetto al Male. Ciò che è molto meno logico, per contro, è la concezione biblica del Male. Non potendo derivare dal Bene assoluto, il Male, in effetti, non dovrebbe esistere in un mondo creato, a partire dal nulla, da un dio “di una bontà infinita”. Ora, il Male esiste: il che pone un problema molto serio. La Bibbia prova a risolvere il problema facendo del Male la conseguenza accidentale della rivolta di certe creature, tra cui in primo luogo Lucifero, contro l’autorità di Jahvé. Il Male appare così come come il rifiuto manifestato da una creatura di giocare il ruolo che Jahvé le ha assegnato. La potenza di questo Male è considerevole (poiché deriva dalla ribellione di una creatura angelica, dunque privilegiata), ma, comparata alla potenza del Bene, ovvero di Jahvé, essa è praticamente pari a nulla. L’esito finale della lotta tra il Bene e il Male non è dunque minimamente in dubbio. Tutti i problemi, tutti i conflitti, sono risolti in anticipo. La storia è puro decadimento, effetto dell’accecamento di creature impotenti.

 

Così, sin dall’inizio, la storia si trova privata di qualsiasi senso. Il primo uomo (la prima umanità) ha commesso la colpa di cedere ad una suggestione di Satana. Egli ha, di conseguenza, ricusato il ruolo che Jahvé gli aveva assegnato. Ha voluto toccare il pomo proibito ed entrare nella storia.

 

Creatore dell’universo, Jahvé gioca ugualmente, in rapporto alla società umana “attuale”, un ruolo perfettamente antitetico a quello degli dèi sovrani indoeuropei. Jahvé è non l’”eroe civilizzatore” che inventa una tradizione sociale, ma l’onnipotenza che si oppone alla “colpa” di Adamo, cioè alla vita umana che questi ha voluto gustare, alla civilizzazione urbana, uscita dalla rivoluzione neolitica, a cui rinvia implicitamente il racconto della Genesi. Come sottolinea Paul Chalus in L’homme et la réligion, Jahvé non ha che odio per “coloro che cuociono i mattoni”. Quando li vede costruire Babele e la celebre torre, grida: «Se cominciano a fare ciò, nulla impedirà loro ormai di compiere ciò che avranno in progetto di fare. Andiamo, scendiamo a mettere confusione nel loro linguaggio, di modo che non si comprendano più l’un l’altro» (Genesi, XI, 6-7). Jahvé, aggiunge Paul Chalus, «li disperse da là su tutta la terra, ed essi smisero di costruire città». Ma già ben prima di questo evento Jahvé aveva rifiutato le primizie che gli offriva l’agricoltore Caino, e non aveva “guardato” che la pia offerta d’Abele. Il fatto è che Abele non era un allevatore, ma semplicemente un nomade che aveva abbandonato la caccia per la razzia, che prolungava la tradizione “mesolitica” in seno alla nuova civiltà uscita dalla rivoluzione neolitica, e che ne ricusava il modo di vivere. Ulteriormente, la missione di Abramo, il nomade che aveva disertato la città (Ur), e quella della sua discendenza, sarà di negare e ricusare dal di dentro ogni forma di civiltà “post-neolitica”, la cui esistenza stessa perpetua il ricordo d’una “rivolta” contro Jahvé.

 

L’uomo, in rapporto al “dio” della Bibbia, non è veramente un “figlio”. Non è che una creatura. Jahvé l’ha fabbricato, così come ogni altro essere vivente, nello stesso modo in cui un vasaio modella un vaso. L’ha fatto “a sua immagine e somiglianza” per farne il suo intendente sulla terra, il guardiano del Paradiso. Adamo, sedotto dal demonio, ha ricusato questo ruolo che il Signore voleva fargli giocare. Ma l’uomo resterà sempre il servo di Dio. «La superiorità dell’uomo sulla bestia è nulla, perché tutto è vanità», nota Paul Chalus. «Tutto va verso un identico luogo: tutto viene dalla polvere, e tutto ritorna alla polvere» (Ecclesiaste).

 

L’uomo, secondo l’insegnamento della Bibbia, non ha dunque che da rammentarsi perpetuamente che è polvere, che ogni Giobbe merità il destino che gli riserva il capriccio di Jahvé, e che l’esistenza storica non ha senso, se non quello che implicitamente gli si dà rifiutando attivamente di attribuirgliene uno. Con la loro voce terribile, i profeti di Israele ricorderanno sempre agli eletti di Jahvé la necessità imperiosa di questo rifiuto, così come gli eletti riconosceranno sempre, nelle loro disgrazie, la conseguenza e la giusta sanzione di una trasgressione (o di un semplice oblio) del comandamento supremo di Jahvé.

 

Il cristianesimo “romano”, nato dall’”arrangiamento costantiniano”, corrisponde sin dall’inizio al tentativo di stabilire, in seno al mondo “antico” trasformato da Roma in orbis politica, un compromesso tra le Weltanschauungen indoeuropee e una religione giudaica, che Gesù si sarebbe sforzato di adattare alla civilizzazione imperiale romana (4). Il dio unico è diventato, tramite il gioco di un “mistero” dogmatico, un dio “in tre persone”. Ha “integrato” la vecchia nozione di Trimurti, di “Trinità”, e le sue “persone” hanno grosso modo assunto le tre funzioni delle società indoeuropee, sotto una forma d’altronde “invertita” e spiritualizzata. Pur essendo creatore e sovrano, Jahvé continua nondimeno a ricusare il doppio aspetto: il Male è provincia esclusiva di Satana. Al vecchio nome che gli dà la Bibbia si è sostituito il nuovo nome di “deus pater“, il «padre eterno e divino» riverito dagli indoeuropei. Ma Jahvé non è davvero padre che della sua “seconda persona”, di questo figlio che ha inviato sulla terra per svolgervi un ruolo opposto a quello dell’”eroe fondatore”; di questo figlio che si è alienato a questo mondo per meglio rinviare all’oltremondo, e che, se rende a Cesare ciò che è di Cesare, non lo fa che perché ai suoi occhi ciò che appartiene a Cesare non riveste alcun valore; di questo figlio, infine, la cui funzione non è più di “fare la guerra”, ma di predicare una pace gelosa, di cui soli potranno beneficiare gli uomini “di buona volontà”, gli avversari di questo mondo, coloro a cui è riservato il solo nutrimento d’eternità che vi sia, la grazia amministrata dalla terza “persona”, lo Spirito Santo.

 

L’uomo, creatura e prodotto fabbricato, è il servo dei servi di Dio, «escremento» (stercus), come dirà così bene Agostino. Tuttavia, nello stesso tempo, è ora anche il fratello del figlio incarnato di Jahvé, il che fa di lui un “quasi-figlio” di Dio, a condizione che sappia volerlo e meritarlo, tutte cose che dipendono dalla grazia che amministra il creatore secondo criteri insondabili. Il giorno verrà dunque in cui l’umanità si dividerà definitivamente (per l’eternità) in santi e dannati. Giacché vi è ben un Valhalla biblico, il Paradiso celeste, ma è ormai riservato agli anti-eroi. L’Inferno, quando ad esso, appartiene agli altri.

 

Questo compromesso ha modellato per secoli la storia di ciò che viene chiamata la “civilizzazione occidentale”. Per secoli, secondo le loro affinità profonde, l’uomo “pagano” e l’uomo “levantino” hanno ciascuno potuto vedere nel dio “uno e trino” la loro propria divinità. Ciò spiega idee e confusioni ben numerose: a cominciare dall’assimilazione di Gesù, Sigfrido e Barbarossa da parte di un Wagner, o il “dio bianco delle cattedrali” caro a Drieu La Rochelle, e, d’altra parte, il Gesù di Ignazio di Loyola, il dio del prete-operaio e Jesus Christ Superstar.

 

Constatiamo oggi, e in modo certo, che l’”arrangiamento” costantiniano alla fine non arrangiò proprio nulla, e che la giornata dell’«In hoc signo vinces» fu un imbroglio, le cui conseguenze si esercitarono a detrimento del mondo greco-romano-germanico. Sino ad una data relativamente recente, la Chiesa di Roma e le chiese cristiane sono restate, in quanto potenze secolari organizzate, attaccate a tutte le apparenze del vecchio compromesso. Ma da tempo ormai hanno cominciato a riconoscere l’autentica essenza del cristianesimo. Ed ecco che l’irrappresentabile Jahvé, sbarazzato dalla maschera del Dio-Padre luminoso e celeste, è ritrovato e proclamato. Ben prima che le chiese ci arrivassero, tuttavia, il “cristianesimo profano” (demitizzato e secolarizzato), ovvero l’egualitarismo in tutte le sue forme, aveva a modo suo ritrovato la verità secondo la Bibbia. Il “rifiuto della storia”, la volontà proclamata di “uscire dalla storia” (per ritornarne alla natura), la tendenza riduzionista mirante a “riassorbire l’umano nel fisico-chimico”, tutti i materialismi deterministi, la condanna marcusiana di un’arte che tradirebbe la “verità” integrando l’uomo alla società, l’ideologia egualitaria infine che intende ridurre l’umanità al modello dell’anti-eroe, al modello dell’eletto ostile ad ogni civiltà concreta perché non vi vuole vedere che infelicità, miseria, sfruttamento (Marx); repressione (Freud); o inquinamento: tutto ciò non ha cessato di restituire ai nostri occhi, e continua ancora a restituire – nel momento stesso in cui una nuova rivoluzione tecnica invita a superare le “forme” che aveva imposto la rivoluzione precedente – l’immobile visione jahvaitica, visione “eterna” se mai ve ne furono, poiché se limita ad una negazione senza cessa ripetuta di ogni presente carico d’avvenire.

 

Il “Sì” da parte sua non può essere “eterno”. Essendo un “Sì” al divenire, diviene esso stesso. Nella storia che non cessa di ri-proporsi, per mezzo di nuove fondazioni, questo “Sì” deve a se stesso il fatto di assumere sempre una forma e un contenuto parimenti nuovi. Il “Sì” è creazione, opera d’arte. Il “No” non esiste che negando un valore a tale opera. In un mondo in cui il clamore di voci divenute innumerevoli tende a persuaderci del contrario il mito cosmogonico indoeuropeo ci ricorda che il “Sì” resta sempre possibile: che un nuovo Ymir-Purusha-Janus può ancora risvegliarsi dall’”onda indistinta” in cui giace addormentato; che appena ieri, forse, si è già risvegliato, si è già sacrificato a se stesso, che ha già dato vita a Bur e Bestla, e che presto dei nuovi Asi, dèi luminosi, verranno a loro volta alla vita e intraprenderanno allora, in un mondo differente, sorto dalle rovine caotiche del vecchio, la loro eterna missione di “eroi civilizzatori”, assumendo così, serenamente, lo splendido e tragico destino dell’uomo che crea se stesso, e che avendo dato nascita a se stesso accetta anche, nell’idea della propria fine, la condizione di ogni avventura storica, di ogni vita.

Note

(1) Di Purusha, corrispondente indoario di Ymir, il Rig-Veda del resto dice espressamente che ha «mille teste e mille occhi», cosa che mostra bene che all’origine l’Uomo cosmico era dotato di onniveggenza. Secondo Pestalozzi, l’onniveggenza era precisamente uno degli attributi dell’”Essere supremo” primitivo.

(2) Questo ruolo, come abbiamo visto, si trova parzialmente proiettato nel personaggio di Heimdal.

(3) Jahvé confessa d’altronde di essere «geloso» degli altri dèi. Il termne stesso di Elohim non è forse plurale (plurale storico, e non di maestà)?

(4) Non è evidentemente il caso qui di entrare nei dettagli di tale complessa questione, cui si accenna pertanto unicamente a grandi linee.

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

Le culte solaire chez les peuples germaniques

 

Frithjof HALLMAN:

Le culte solaire chez les peuples germaniques

 

Contrairement aux Grecs et aux Romains, qui adoraient des divinités solaires, les Germains considéraient que la puissance du soleil, qui donnait vie à tous les êtres, était, pour eux, une des puissances les plus sacrées. Les innombrables symboles solaires que l’on découvre sur les parois rupestres du Nord de l’Europe depuis l’âge du bronze, souvent sous la forme de roues solaires, en témoignent de manière fort éloquente. Certains d’entre ces symboles ont plus de 3500 ans. Jusqu’ici, il a été quasiment impossible d’interpréter avec précision ces signes gravés dans les rochers. Par ailleurs, le déchiffrement des signes trouvés, au nombre d’environ 7500, sur un rocher canadien, à Petersborough dans la province d’Ontario, nous donne l’espoir d’un jour pouvoir déchiffrer les milliers de grafittis de l’Ultima Thulé scandinave. C’est un professeur britannique, Barry Fell, qui nous a donné la clef d’un tel déchiffrement. Les deux alphabets de runes primitives, qu’il est parvenu à déchiffrer, il les a appelés “Tifinag” et “Ogham”. Son oeuvre peut se comparer au dévoilement du mystère des hiéroglyphes égyptiens par le Français Champollion et à la découverte du sens des anciens alphabets grecs du “Linéaire A” et du “Linéaire B” par Michael Ventris. Grâce à Champollion et à Ventris des pans entiers de la culture antique et protohistorique nous sont désormais accessibles.

 

Les spécialistes allemands des religions et des mythologies, le Dr. Wolfram Goegginger et le Prof. Gustav Mensching ont, dans un ouvrage reproduit récemment en facsimilé, Volksreligion und Weltreligion im deutschen Brauchtum (= Religion populaire et religion universelle dans les coutumes allemandes; Faksimile-Verlag, Brème, 266 pages, 1996) ont surtout mis en exergue les cultes solaires germaniques et souligné leur grande importance. Le livre, dans sa première édition, date de 1944 et avait été publié auprès d’une maison d’édition de Riga en Lettonie. L’ensemble du stock avait été détruit lors d’un bombardement allié, alors qu’on le transportait vers l’Allemagne. La nouvelle édition fait donc oeuvre utile. On considère désormais ce travail comme un ouvrage standard dans la littérature sur l’histoire des religions.

 

Thèse initiale du travail: au départ de la religion populaire germanique primitive, on peut évoquer diverses fêtes du printemps, du soleil et de l’hiver, assorties de traditions précises, tant et si bien que la pratique de cette religion populaire peut être considérée comme une création purement germanique. On ne s’étonnera pas, dès lors, que l’Eglise, au moment où le christianisme pénétrait dans l’espace germanique et scandinave, ait tout mis en oeuvre pour détruire ces traditions mythiques bien ancrées depuis la nuit des temps, comme d’ailleurs toutes les autres coutumes et monuments “païens” de nos lointains ancêtres.

 

On comprendra aisément que des populations contraintes de vivre dans de sombres forêts pendant près d’une demie année d’obscurité vont adorer l’astre solaire avec une vénération plus forte que les peuples du Sud.

 

En partant d’une présentation de l’essence de la religion chrétienne, pour laquelle, comme pour l’islam et le bouddhisme, l’individu est central, nos deux auteurs montrent, dans leur ouvrage, que la religiosité des anciens Germains est affirmatrice de la vie au contraire de la religion chrétienne qui méprise le monde et s’affirme anti-vitaliste.

 

Nous n’avons pas la place ici d’énumérer, même sommairement, toutes les coutumes principales de la liturgie annuelle pratiquée par nos ancêtres, raison pour laquelle il conviendrait d’acheter et de lire ce livre remarquable, qui comble une formidable lacune dans l’histoire des pratiques religieuses en Europe.

 

Nos auteurs évoquent notamment les combats printaniers contre les dragons, représentant les puissances hivernales et mortifères, des fêtes de la fertilité et des rites liés aux plus anciennes divinités (Odin, Thor, Frigga, etc.), ainsi que les fêtes de l’Ostara et du Huld, qui, elles, évoquent la reprise de parole de Dieu. Parmi les cultes commentés, signalons le “labourage sacré”, au moment où commence le printemps; ces cultes indiquent que ces peuples avaient acquis un degré élevé de culture comme le montrent aussi les nombreux dessins rupestres où figurent des chariots et des nefs à haute étrave ou haut étambot. Ces populations n’étaient donc pas des nomades primitifs en état d’errance perpétuelle, comme le prétendaient les missionnaires chrétiens, en pensant qu’ils leur apportaient les premiers éléments de religion.

 

Les dessins rupestres représentent souvent, dans un contexte religieux, des arbres de vie (apparemment l’Arbre du Monde, le Frêne Yggdrasil), ce qui implique un culte des arbres et de la forêt omniprésente sous ces latitudes. L’arbre de Noël en est un écho, surtout lorsqu’il est décoré d’artifices lumineux, ainsi que la fête qu’il célèbre, celle du Jul. On sait que ces coutumes ne viennent pas d’Orient mais de l’espace germanique et scandinave, à partir duquel elles se sont répandues dans le monde. Ce n’est pas un hasard si le missionnaire Boniface fit abattre le chêne dédié à Thor à Hohengeismar en Hesse dès son arrivée en Germanie en l’an 724! De même, l’Arbre de Mai, dénommé soit “Maistande” (le mât de Mai) ou “Maibaum”/”Meiboom” est le symbole de la nouvelle vie en phase de germination. Les jeux festifs du moment solsticial sont encore considérés en Scandinavie comme la plus importante des fêtes de la Lumière, placée sur le même plan que la Noël. L’Eglise a débaptisé cette fête du solstice d’été en l’appelant “feux de la Saint Jean”.

 

Dans ce livre magnifiquement relié et reproduit en facsimilé sur les cultes et les traditions, la première partie est due à la plume de W. Goegginger, tandis que la seconde, dont l’auteur est G. Mensching, traite de l’opposition qui existe naturellement entre religiosité populaire (ou naturelle) et religiosité universaliste, en assortissant cette distinction de premier ordre de réflexions fort profondes. Mensching oppose donc les religiosités purement naturelles aux religiosités qui se borne à n’exercer qu’un culte. Les religiosités naturelles représentent dès lors l’idéal de communauté, de dimensions tribales ou populaires; les religiosités universalistes, elles, reposent sur une anthropologie strictement individualiste. Dans sa conclusion, Mensching écrit: “La vie, et non pas les dieux, est ce qui est relève réellement du divin dans le domaine de la religiosité germanique... Au-dessus de nous, il y a immanquablement le Dieu éternel, le waltand got, l’incompréhensible, celui qui nous envoie notre destin, qui nous prodigue notre salut, la force originelle de toute religion et de toute force”.

 

Frithjof HALLMANN.

(recension parue dans “Mensch und Mass”, n°2/1998).