Tag Archives: Wotan

1,427 words

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. Read more …

Published: February 17, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Asatru, Asatru Folk Assembly, book reviews, C. G. Jung, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, John Morgan, neopaganism, North American New Right, Odin, Odinism, originals | 4 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part X:
The Deaths of Sinfjotli & Sigmund

Collin Cleary

2,519 words

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. Read more …

Published: July 25, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Collin Cleary, death, fylgja, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Helgi, Hunding, Norse mythology, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Sigmund, Sinfjotli, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga, werewolves | Leave a comment

Print this post

Helgi: The Return of the Dead
An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part IX

Collin Cleary

Ernest Wallcousins, Helgi Returns to Valhalla

5,344 words

Part I here, Part VIII here, Part X here

In our last installment, we explored the career of the legendary Norse hero Helgi. Chapter Nine of the Volsung Saga is devoted to Helgi, and it constitutes a rich and entertaining digression from the main story. At one time, Helgi must have been a very important hero. The anonymous author of the Volsung Saga draws on two poems concerning Helgi compiled in the Poetic Edda: Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I (The First Poem of Helgi, Killer of Hunding; henceforth HH I), and Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II (or HH II). Read more …

Published: May 27, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Beowulf, Collin Cleary, death, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Helgi, Hunding, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Poetic Edda, reincarnation, Sigmund, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga, werewolves | Leave a comment

Print this post

Helgi: The Saga Within the Saga
An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part VIII

Collin Cleary

Arthur Rackham, The Valkyrie

3,502 words

Part I here, Part VII here, Part IX here

In our last installment, we saw Sigmund and Sinfjotli (the product of Sigmund’s incestuous union with his sister, Signy) return to the ancestral lands of the Volsungs. Many years have passed since the entire clan left there, and, in the meantime, a pretender has claimed the Volsung kingdom. But Sigmund and Sinfjotli drive him out, and Sigmund becomes a great and powerful king, “both wise and well-advised.”[1] He decides to marry a woman named Borghild, and they have two sons together, Helgi and Hamund.

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part VII

Collin Cleary

2,900 words

Part I here, Part VIII here

Chapter 8. The Vengeance of the Volsungs, Continued

In the last installment of this series, we learned of the life Sigmund leads in the forest with his son Sinfjotli – the product of Sigmund’s incestuous union with his sister, Signy. Read more …

Published: February 8, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Beowulf, Collin Cleary, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, incest, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, shapeshifting, Sigmund, Signy, Sinfjotli, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga, werewolves | 5 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part VI

Collin Cleary

2,829 words

Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here, Part V here, Part VII here

Chapter 8. The Vengeance of the Volsungs

In the last installment of this series, we told of the birth of the hero Sinfjotli, product of the incest of the twins Sigmund and Signy. Read more …

Published: December 10, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, shapeshifting, Sigmund, Signy, Sinfjotli, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga, werewolves | 3 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part V

Collin Cleary

Sigmund & the wolf.

2,559 words

Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here, Part VI here

In our last installment, we saw that after Sigmund pulls the sword from the tree Barnstokk, Siggeir (who has just married Sigmund’s sister, Signy) offers to buy it from him. When Sigmund refuses, Siggeir immediately begins plotting revenge. On a pretext, he takes Signy and leaves the wedding feast early, inviting Volsung and his ten sons to visit him in Götaland. Read more …

Published: November 5, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, incest, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Sigmund, Signy, Sinfjotli, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga | 8 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part IV

Collin Cleary

Willy Pogany, Sigmund & the Wolf (1920)

3,220 words

Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part V here

In our last installment, we saw how King Volsung marries his daughter Signy off to the loathsome King Siggeir of Götaland, a man she “was not eager to marry.” Read more …

Published: October 9, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Friedrich Nietzsche, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Sigmund, Signy, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga | 5 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part III

Collin Cleary

Siegmund the Walsung, Arthur Rackham, 1910.

1,890 words

Part I here, Part II here, Part IV here

Chapter 3. The Marriage of Siggeir to Signy, Volsung’s Daughter

In our last installment, we met Volsung (“stallion phallus”), who becomes a great King and sires eleven children: the twin brother and sister Sigmund and Signy, and nine brothers (who go unnamed). Volsung builds a “magnificent hall” around an immense apple tree whose branches weave about the beams of the roof. Read more …

Published: September 14, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Sigmund, Signy, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga | 2 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part II

Collin Cleary

Arthur Rackham, Siegfried’s Death (1924), from his illustrations for Wagner’s Ring

3,283 words

Part I here, Part III here

Chapter 2. Concerning Rerir and His Son Volsung

In the previous chapter, we saw that Sigi, the son of Odin, is the first step in the god’s master plan: the creation of a new race of super-warriors, who will come to be known as the clan of the Volsungs. In order to become a truly great warrior, Sigi must transgress man’s laws and remove himself from society – entering the wilderness where he will live as his own master and create a world of his own. Read more …

Published: August 13, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Norse sagas, North American New Right, Odin, originals, paganism, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga | 2 Responses

Print this post

An Esoteric Commentary on the Volsung Saga, Part I

Collin Cleary

A carving depicting Sigurd sucking the dragon’s blood off his thumb, from a stave church in Setesdal, Norway.

4,517 words

Part II here

The purpose of this essay is to offer an account of the hidden meaning of the Volsung Saga (Völsunga saga). In drawing out this meaning, I will approach the saga from a Traditionalist standpoint, broadly speaking; i.e., from the standpoint of Guénon and Evola. I will touch on some details concerning the relation of the saga to other sources, but I do not aim to provide anything like the sort of account a historian or philologist might give. Read more …

Published: August 7, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Collin Cleary, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Germanic paganism, Germanic tradition, Julius Evola, Norse sagas, North American New Right, originals, paganism, Rene Guénon, Richard Wagner, Volsung Saga, Volsunga Saga | 8 Responses

Print this post

Wotan as Archetype:
The Carl Jung Essay

Kerry Bolton

Franz von Stuck, The Wild Hunt, 1899

9,822 words

In the denazification atmosphere following World War II Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, found himself accused of having ‘Nazi’ sympathies. While Jung was a man of the ‘Right’[1] his essay explaining Hitlerism as an evocation of Wotan as a repressed archetype of the German collective unconscious put him on the long suspect list of intellectuals who were accused of being apologists for National Socialism.[2] He was fortunate to have been in a neutral nation in the aftermath of World War II.

Print this post

Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition
Part 8: Gelassenheit

Collin Cleary

2,275 words

Part 8 of 8

Gelassenheit

We can say that the plot of the Ring is simply this: Western man, in the person of Wotan, finally awakens to the destructiveness of his thumotic nature, and wills his own end. (See my review of Duchesne’s Uniqueness of Western Civilization for a discussion of how Western man is preeminently thumotic man.) Read more …

Published: July 9, 2013 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Arthur Schopenhauer, articles, Asatru, Brünnhilde, Collin Cleary, Der Ring des Nibelungen, European identity, Faustian man, Ludwig Feuerbach, Martin Heidegger, myth, narcissism, North American New Right, Odin, originals, Richard Wagner, Ring cycle, thumos, vanity, Wagner Bicentennial Symposium, warrior ethics | 5 Responses

Print this post

Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition
Part 7: Siegfried & Götterdämerung

Collin Cleary

3,645 words

Part 7 of 8

Siegfried

If Wotan is the main character of the Ring, Siegfried is its hero. However, in dealing with the character of Siegfried we do not depart from our discussion of Wotan at all. This is because Siegfried, like many of the other characters in the Ring, is a kind of hypostatization of an aspect of Wotan himself. Read more …

Published: July 8, 2013 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Arthur Schopenhauer, articles, Asatru, Brünnhilde, Collin Cleary, Der Ring des Nibelungen, European identity, Faustian man, myth, narcissism, North American New Right, Odin, originals, Richard Wagner, Ring cycle, thumos, vanity, Wagner Bicentennial Symposium | Leave a comment

Print this post

Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition
Part 6: Das Rheingold & Die Walküre

Collin Cleary

2,707 words

Part 6 of 8

Das Rheingold

When the events of Das Rheingold begin, the Wotan-Loge relationship is already well-established, and the primeval crimes described earlier are long past. However, the opera begins with yet another crime against nature: Alberich’s theft of the Rhinegold. Read more …

Published: July 5, 2013 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Arthur Schopenhauer, articles, Asatru, Brünnhilde, Collin Cleary, Der Ring des Nibelungen, European identity, Faustian man, myth, North American New Right, Odin, originals, Richard Wagner, Ring cycle, Wagner Bicentennial Symposium | 1 Response

Print this post

Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition
Part 5: The One-Eyed God

Collin Cleary

2,522 words

Part 5 of 8

The story of the Ring involves four ages, similar to those taught in Tradition.

The Age of Titans is the period represented by figures somehow more primordial than the gods: Erda, the Norns, and possibly the Rhine daughters. Events in this age are not depicted in the Ring; they are merely referred to (primarily in Götterdämmerung).

Print this post

Wagner Bicentennial Symposium
Wagner’s Place in the Germanic Tradition
Part 4: Wotan & the Faustian West

Collin Cleary

2,783 words

Part 4 of 8

Wotan and the Faustian West

As noted in the Introduction to this essay, at the time of the Ring’s conception Wagner was an anarchist revolutionary. Major influences on his thinking included Bakunin, Feuerbach, Hegel, and possibly Marx (though of these only Bakunin was an anarchist). Read more …

Published: July 3, 2013 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Arthur Schopenhauer, articles, Asatru, classical music, Collin Cleary, Der Ring des Nibelungen, European identity, Faustian man, myth, North American New Right, Odin, opera, originals, Oswald Spengler, Richard Wagner, Ring cycle, Wagner Bicentennial Symposium | Leave a comment

Print this post

Hitler & Jung

Miguel Serrano

947 words

Translated by Alex Kurtagic

C. G. Jung Speaking, by Professor William McGuire, has recently been translated into Spanish and published by Trotta, with the title Encuentros con Jung. Reproduced there is Jung’s account of the time he saw Hitler and Mussolini, together, addressing a mass audience.