Tag: Germanic paganism

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Robert N. Taylor was born in 1945 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. As a member of both the psychedelic underground as well as the anti-Communist paramilitary organization The Minutemen, Taylor participated directly in the violent social upheavals of the 1960s. In 1969 he started the music group Changes with his cousin, Nicholas Tesluk. After its revival in 1996, the group would go on to become a seminal part of the American apocalyptic folk genre. (more…)

Terror Antiquus, L. Bakst (1908)

6,674 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Prologue: Little Pine Lake

The first time I got lost, it was because of a map. It was Easter in my grandparents’ home of Marshall, Texas, and during that golden-age glow that now suffuses the nineties. (more…)

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Like many children, some of my most vivid early memories center on the Christmas season. Preparations always began immediately after Thanksgiving. My mother and I would drag the dusty boxes of decorations down from the attic, while my father ascended onto our rooftop to string up the lights. A few weeks later we would go to the tree farm, ideally on a cold and overcast day, where my sister and I would run around searching for the ideal Christmas tree to be felled by my father’s handsaw. (more…)

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Alexander Jacob
Richard Wagner on Tragedy, Christianity, and the State: Three Essays, Second Edition
Melbourne: Manticore, 2020

“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit.” — Richard Wagner[1]

Counter-Currents readers will welcome another contribution from Alexander Jacob.[2] These essays make a useful companion, or counterpoint (sit venia verbo!), to Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition. (more…)

You can buy Collin Cleary’s Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition here.

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Collin Cleary
Wagner’s Ring and the Germanic Tradition
Wagnerphile Books, 2021

Richard Wagner is a cornerstone of Western culture. He is one of the few composers that still receive mainstream attention in the 21st century, but usually for negative reasons. Hacks can’t resist the temptation to bash him for his alleged proto-Nazism and anti-Semitism. Even if critics see him as a predecessor to Hitler, many of them still enjoy his music. Few doubt he was a great musician. (more…)

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All installments of this series available here

It has been some time since I have published an installment in this series (the last, in fact, was in November 2019). After more than a year of research and reflection, I am ready to return to the story of Sigurd, Fafnir’s Bane. (more…)

Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Fifth Adventure, 1848

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A manuscript containing Hitler’s ideas for an opera entitled Wieland der Schmied, inspired by Wagner’s draft for a libretto of the same name, was recently put on display for the first time at the Museum Niederösterreich. The museum is currently running an exhibit on Hitler’s early life featuring artifacts collected by August Kubizek between 1907 and 1920. (more…)

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Richard Rudgley
The Return of Odin: The Modern Renaissance of Pagan Imagination
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2018

Richard Rudgley is a British author who has published several books offering unconventional interpretations of the ancient and prehistorical eras of Northern European history, as well as works on psychedelics. (more…)

Sigurd and the dwarf Regin forge a sword, from the portal of the stave church of Hylestad, Setesdal, Norway c. 1200.

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Part I here, Part XI here

In our last installment, we saw how Queen Hjordis, pregnant with Sigurd, is taken in by King Alf, son of King Hjalprek of Denmark. Before his death, Sigmund had prophesied that his son “will become the greatest and most famous of our family.” Sigmund also entrusts to Hjordis the fragments of his sword, broken by Odin. “Take good care also of my sword’s fragments,” Sigmund tells her. “A good sword can be made from them, which will be called Gram, and our son will carry that sword and do many great things with it which will never be forgotten. (more…)

Johannes Gehrts, Sigmund’s Sword (1889)

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Part I here, Part X here, Part XII here

After many twists and turns in the story of the Volsungs, Sigurd, the greatest of them all, is about to burst onto the scene.

In our last installment, we saw Sigmund taking a second wife, the beautiful Hjordis, daughter of King Eylimi. But another man desires her, and is enraged when her marriage to Sigmund takes place. (more…)

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After a summer hiatus, John Morgan and Survive the Jive join Fróði Midjord on the latest Guide to Kulchur to discuss Midsommar, a recently-released movie about a group of American anthropology students and a deeply traumatized woman who visit a neo-pagan cult practicing a faith based on the ancient Nordic religion in present-day Hälsingland, Sweden, where they discover that the cult’s interest in them goes far beyond the merely academic. (more…)

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Part I here, Part IX here, Part XI here

Chapter 10. The Death of Sinfjotli

In our last two installments, we explored the fascinating digression – the “saga within the saga” – that is the story of Helgi. (more…)