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TOP | RELIGION | NEO PAGANISM

OTO, GD, Satanism, Asatru and the Volkish Movement

To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan,alt.occult,talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.newage,alt.satanism,alt.religion.asatru
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: (Noll) OTO, GD, Satanism, Asatru and the Volkish Movement (was Crowley ....)
Date: 7 Jan 1999 12:43:02 -0800

49990107 IIIom

jake@kiblah.demon.co.uk (jake stratton-kent):
#>#># Crowley associated the ideas Sun-Male-Phallus with
#>#># each other, and 'Solar-Phallic' is a term he used fairly often.
 
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (333):
#>#> isn't it true that Crowley's esoteric preferences tended to be the
#>#> solar-phallic, however?  and doesn't this coincide rather pointedly
#>#> with the German (cf. Ordo Templi Orientis, whose secret documents
#>#> contain solar-phallic emphases and whose origin is German) mystical
#>#> ideas of race purity, aryan white supremacy, and a general attempt
#>#> to wipe out or appropriate everything Jewish?

catherine yronwode :
# The O. T. O. has "secret documents...whose origin is German"? Can you
# substantiate this or cite a reference? What are these documents? How is
# their German "origin" explained? 

others have substantiated the origins.  the texts about which I
was referring may be found in Francis King's _The Secret Rites
of the O.T.O._, which was apparently pirated from the Order and
published without permission.  it contains secret degree
instructions for the higher degress (Order members contend that
King's version is 'inaccurate' or 'incomplete'), and these are
of obvious solar-phallic character in many places.  some public
libraries have copies of King's text and the serious researcher
can check it out for hirself.


# ...the references Richard Noll makes in "The Cult of
# Jung" are to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (of which Crowley was
# a member) and not to the O. T. O. (which Crowley founded). 

as others have mentioned, Crowley merely inherited the OTO.


# Noll compares
# the agenda and form of the G. D. with a Swiss Volkisch group that
# studied "Aryan" occultism including "Mithraic" solar-phallus worship,
# and then conducted initiatory secret ceremonial magick rites in which
# they used talismans, costumes (including Bishops' miters), and so forth.
# The book also contains a couple of references to W. B. Yeates (a
# colleague of Crowley's in the G. D.) and to the cultural "elitism" of
# the G. D. and the Volkisch Movement in contrast to the inclusiveness of
# other neo-pagan movements. 

my memory is that Yeats and Crowley didn't get along very well.


# There is also much mention made of Blavatsky,
# the Theosophical Society, G. R. S. Meade, and others with whom Crowley
# corresponded or was familiar, but there is no mention of Crowley per se.

I'm unaware of the exact relationship between AC and these people,
though I don't think he thought too highly of HPB.


# The book concludes with an examination of Stephen Flowers and the racist
# elements within Asatru and Satanism, and with Noll's conclusion that
# such neo-pagan racialism is a modern extension of the Volkisch Movement. 
 
here's all of the text I could find on "satanism":

	[Stefan George (1868-1933)] formed an artistic mystery
	cult complete with recitals of prophetic poetry,
	ceremonial talismans and gowns, the wearing of
	bishops' miters, etc. This sort of formal costume
	ceremonialism had long be associated with various
	occult circles in Europe and underwent a revival
	with the decadent "satanist" movement in France
	and later in England in the 1880s among the culturally
	elite members (including W. B. Yeats) of the Hermetic
	Order of the Golden Dawn. The group of young men
	([Alfred Schuler (1865-1923)] was thirty-two, the
	rest in their twenties) met to read and discuss
	mythology, cultural history, and literature. Among
	their favorite authors were three of Jung's most
	powerful influences: Nietzsche, Carus, and Bachofen.
	_________________________________________________
	_The Jung Cult_, Richard Noll, Free Press 
	 Paperbacks; 1997; p. 167.
	-----------------------------------------------

	On French decadent "satanism," see James Laver,
	_The First Decadent: The Strange Life of J. K.
	Huysmans_ (New York: Citadel Press, 1955), pp.
	110-55. Huysmans's famous novel, _La-Bas_ (1891),
	with its graphic descriptions of the satanic
	black mass [there are other types? nagasiva],
	reflected the practices among some of the decadents
	in the French occult underground. On the Golden
	Dawn and its practices, see Ellic Howe, _The
	Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary of a
	Magical Order, 1887-1923_ (London: Routledge and
	Kegan Paul, 1972).
	___________________________________________________
	Ibid., p. 356.
	--------------

it does not appear, from referencing "satanism" in the index,
that he was associating Jung or the Volkish movement directly
with it.  as for Asatruar there appears to be a single batch
of text dealing with it (by index), drawing mainly on Adler
and Flowers, that makes some interesting comments about
Asatruar's relationship with neo-Nazism (nothing certain):

	THE JUNGIAN MOVEMENT AND CONTEMPORARY NEOPAGANISM

	Following the wide dissemination of Jung's writings
	in English translation by the 1960s, Jung's obvious
	fascination with mythology, parapsychological
	phenomena, the _I Ching_, astrology, alchemy, and
	mystical and religious experience of all kinds made
	him a source of inspiration and affirmation for the
	neopagan religious movements that began to proliferate
	in Europe and North America during that period -- a
	true Renaissance of the Asconan ideals. Such
	innovative spiritual seekers -- acutely aware of
	their status as outsiders -- have adopted Jung as
	a prophet whose achievements as a respected
	psychiatrist, physician, philosopher, and associate
	of Freud, have helped to legitimize their movement.

	The role of Jungian ideas in modern American
	paganism (Wicca, "goddess spirituality"), etc.) was
	noted in many places by Margot Adler in her extensive
	volume on the subject. [_Drawing Down the Moon_ --
	nagasiva] This considerable Jungian influence on
	modern witchcraft and neopaganism is seconded in a
	recent volume by M. D. Faber, a literature scholar,
	that offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the
	"witchcraft cult" and furthermore reports to be an
	attempt to "retrieve the theory" from twentieth-
	century occultists who have "hijacked Jungian
	psychoanalytic theory to mystical ends." In a study
	of ritual magic groups in contemporary England,
	anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann notes the early
	adoption of Jung's concept of the collective
	unconscious by occultists in the 1920s and 1930s:
	"In magicians' writings, the collective unconscious
	practically became a place, to which magical ritual
	could be a map which magicians used to travel in the
	collective human soul." Luhrmann demonstrates,
	additionally, that Jung is still widely read and
	invoked by practicing occultists today: "Linked to 
	psychology and its authoritative figures, the 
	metaphor of a separate plane is a magician's 
	intellectual resource that dispenses with ordinary 
	canons of truth." [_Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: 
	Ritual Magic in Contemporary England_ -- nagasiva]

	Perhaps the most ironic -- and potentially the most
	disturbing -- link between Jungism and neopaganism 
	is the prominent inspirational role Jung's writings
	play in the revival of "Germanic Religion" or Norse
	paganism in contemporary continental Europe, England,
	and North America. This phenomenon, at least as it
	appeared in the late 1970s, has been documented in a
	remarkable article by Stephen Flowers. ["Revival of
	Germanic Religion in Contemporary Anglo-American
	Culture" -- nagasiva] According to Flowers, these
	groups do not have a direct historical link with the
	volkisch neopagan groups of Central Europe at the
	turn of the century, nor do all of them have
	connections with the neo-Nazi movement (although
	apparently some individuals and local groups do).
	The first of these organizations seems to have
	originated in Iceland in May 1973 and was called the
	*Asatruarmenn*. A related group, the Odinic Rite,
	was founded in the United Kingdom that same year.
	In the United States, a group called the Viking
	Brotherhood was founded in Texas in 1972 and evolved
	into a much larger group, the Asatru Free Assembly
	in 1978. "Asatru" is alledgely the Icelandic term
	that means "faith in the Asir" (the old Nordic gods).
	The Asatru Free Assembly formally dissolved in 1987
	but apparently many of its members still practice
	Germanic neopagan rituals in smaller groups, read the
	works of Jung, and also read the growing occultist
	literature on Norse paganism -- which includes a 1988
	translation by Flowers of List's _Secret of the Runes_
	of 1908.

	According to Flowers:

		Many of their ideas are drawn from the most
		recent scholarly work concerning the old
		Germanic religion, and traditional religions
		in general, as well as from the psychological
		theories of C.G. Jung.

		The concepts of the *archetypes* and the
		*collective unconscious* have exerted a
		tremendous influence on the formation of
		the ideology of the neo-Germanic religion....
		Divinities in Asatru/Odinism are not seen
		as independent, transcendental beings, but
		rather as exemplary models of consciousness,
		or archetypes, which serve as patterns for
		human development.... A principle feature
		of this view is the idea that humanity is
		almost "biologically" linked to divinity,
		and that there has never been any real break
		in this connection (i.e. there is no concept
		of "original sin").... Jungian psychology
		and old Germanic written sources remain the
		most influential ideas in the formation of
		neo-Germanic concepts concerning the nature
		of man and his place in the cosmos.

	As with the volkisch neopagan groups at the turn of
	the century, the summer solstice is celebrated as one
	of the holidays of the new Nordic paganism movement
	(as it is in the neopagan movement in general).
	Flowers notes, however, that the members of these neo-
	Germanic groups "are more attracted by antiquarian
	interests or racial sentimentalities than by religious
	zeal or interest in self-transformation." This
	observation probably could hav been equally made about
	the many participants in the Volkstumbewegung circa
	1900. What does unite these modern Germanic neopagans,
	however, is a belief in an ideology called "meta-
	genetics": the idea "that the 'biological' and the
	'spiritual' heritage of a person or people are
	ontologically identical, and that through a
	reimmersion into the 'old way' a transforming 'return
	to the whole' may be effected." Despite the
	similarities between the philosophies of other
	neopagan movements, including a deep foundation in
	Jungian thought, the pagan movement in the United
	States has generally shunned the neo-Germanic
	movement for its persistent connection with
	neo-Nazism.
	______________________________________________________
	Ibid., pp. 295-6.
	-----------------

responses?  is this accurate?  I x-post this to the Asatru newsgroup.

	
# However, as i said above, this still leaves me wondering about those
# mysterious O. T. O. "secret documents...whose origin is German": How do
# they relate to the "solar phallic" issue? 

they're like the writings of theologians, mythologists and mystics,
communicating ideals that include phallicism (in its modern sense)
and a solar emphasis.


# How you know they are "German"? Who in Germany gave them to Crowley? 

these questions have been answered by Frater Heidrick and others.
  
nagasiva
-- 
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (emailed replies may be posted); cc me replies;
http://www.abyss.com/tokus; http://www.luckymojo.com/mojocatSPELLS.html

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