Ron McVan is an American white nationalist and Wotanist. He has followed a lifelong career in the fine arts as an oil painter, pen & ink illustrator, sculptor, poet, writer, stained glass artisan, jewelry craftsman, and musician. His extended interests have always been wide and varied, ranging foremost in the martial arts, philosophy, the ancient mysteries, mythology, European history and heritage, comparative religions, and spiritual studies, most particularly in Gnostic Wotanism and Druidism. (more…)
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…)
Edred Thorsson is one of a small handful of serious characters I am proud to know. To many, he appears to be an odd combination of “contradictions” (though these are only apparent, as I will explain at the tail end of this essay). First, he is a goði and Runemaster who speaks Old Norse with a Texas twang. (more…)
Dr. Jackson Crawford, a historical linguist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, discusses the (sparse) information we have about worship, ritual, and prayer in pre-Christian Scandinavia. He is an experienced teacher of Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Norwegian.
Snorri Sturluson
Translated by Jesse L. Byock The Prose Edda
London: Penguin, 2005
There is always an air of mystery surrounding the most ancient religious texts. The great bulk were gradually developed through oral traditions, passed down, and then evolved from generation to generation. We typically know little or nothing about their authors, whether the Brahmins who composed the Upanishads or the Greeks’ notoriously elusive “Homer.” (more…)
Part 4 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here)
7. Concluding Reflections
I turn now to some thoughts on how the foregoing treatment of the influence of the past on the present ought to affect our own present, when we finish this essay and return to the real world.
It is a well-known fact that our ancestors acted with awareness of membership in the clan: trying to be worthy of their own ancestors, and not to disgrace them. (more…)
Part 3 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 4 here)
6. The Presence of the Past: A View from the Margins of Science
Some of the above remarks might suggest that we should interpret the Germanic hamingja–fylgja teaching as a mythic, symbolic, or even superstitious way of understanding the phenomenon of inheritance – something our ancestors relied upon because they did not have the modern science of genetics. (more…)
Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
4. Tradition
Having now discussed the clannic being of the individual purely in philosophical terms, I now turn to a consideration of the treatment of this idea in the Germanic tradition.
The first thing we must note is what can be called the “primacy of the past” in that tradition. (more…)
Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here; Part 3 here; Part 4 here)
1. Introduction
This essay presents an “ontology of the individual.” The theory is new, though it has very old roots. “Ontology” is the branch of philosophy that studies being-as-such, or “being as being,” as Aristotle expressed it.[1] My argument is that the being of an individual person is bound up with that individual’s relation to his family or clan. (more…)
Let us return to the story of Mímir’s Well, and Odin’s sacrifice of an eye. What does this loss signify? As Wagner recognized, it means that while Odin gains wisdom, he also becomes half blind.[1] On a literal level, this is obvious. (more…)
The idea that the Odinist must strive not just to become Odin but to surpass him – to seek to realize an ideal of perfect knowledge and supremacy – is obviously a very provocative one. (more…)
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