Pagan Resurrection: A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality?

Review by Andreas Faust for Pagan Resurrection: A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality?
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This book purports to be the biography of a god: Odin. Its mission statement is further explained on the dust jacket: “Pagan Resurrection is not just about the modern crisis in western spirituality, it also suggests a way forward.” Considering Richard Rudgley’s stated aims, then, this review will address the following two topics: (1) How does Rudgley view Odin (in light of his biographic intent)? and (2) What way(s) forward does he suggest for Western spirituality?

The author, a British television presenter, has drawn heavily from Joscelyn Godwin’s brilliant Arktos and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s not-so-brilliant Black Sun. The book is published by a division of Random House, and thus one must put up with the somewhat patronising reassurances that so-and-so is absolutely, definitely not a Nazi, or that such-and-such had some distant relations who “fought in the Norwegian resistance against the Nazi invaders” etc. etc. But despite this, and despite the highly subjective structure of the ‘biography’ (and lack of an index) the book is worth possessing. If Odinism is to make forays into the mainstream, it could do a lot worse than this book, which is nothing if not engagingly written. In fact the summing up in the last chapter ‘Ragnarok and After’ has the air of being written by someone consciously formulating his ideas for the first time, testing them out in public so to speak. There is nothing wrong with that – it gives the book a direct feel. The author has what he feels is an urgent message to get across. What that message is will be examined in the course of this review.

Before addressing the themes listed above, we should first examine Rudgley’s take on spirituality and the nature of belief. For Rudgley, myths “are like collective waking dreams shared by whole societies – they live in us and we live in them.” He quotes H.R. Ellis Davidson to the effect that myths are an attempt to depict a people’s “perception of inner realities.” Rudgley also follows the theories of Georges Dumézil, who claimed that Indo-European myths form a common legacy, just as Indo-European languages do. Curiously, Rudgley asserts that there is no basis for a common Indo-European racial heritage as well…although he doesn’t say how he arrived at that conclusion.

He notes the importance of the number three in Indo-European belief, and also the story of the truce between the Aesir and the Vanir, which signifies that Northern European culture is a composite of Indo-European and pre-Indo-European elements. He gives an outline of some of the more important aspects of Norse myth and cosmology: the number Nine, the web of Wyrd, the runes, seidr and galdr magic, and so forth. He describes the way in which some heathen practices survived (distorted or disguised) throughout the Christian era.

He mentions the Oseberg figures, which indicate that the Norse may have practiced a form of yoga (útiseta or útilega) – although there is no evidence this was similar to modern ‘rune yoga’ or the Stav martial art. Interestingly, he details how a 5300 year-old body preserved in ice in the Alps reveals that acupuncture was in use in Europe at that time – long before it developed in China. In fact, the Chinese may have originally acquired it from Indo-European peoples, not the other way around.

Rudgley portrays C.G. Jung as the figure of central importance in the modern pagan revival. For Rudgley, Jung was essentially a prophet of Wotan/Odin. Jung saw Hitler as a manifestation of the stormy, restless side of Odin. But there is another side – Wotan’s “ecstatic and mantic qualities”, which will also be revealed in time. Jung himself said, “things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine at present…” But Rudgley fails to note that, for mortals, moments of divine ecstasy are not without their price…and the price often involves those same stormy, restless moments he greatly fears.

Rudgley describes Jungian archetypes as “blueprints for certain workings of the human psyche.” Some of these, he acknowledges, are “specific to certain cultures.” (e.g. Odin is the most important archetype of the Germanic mind). Hyperborea, the land of Indo-European origins, is not a physical plane…it is to be found “not on the map of the earth but the map of the soul.” As a symbol it has many layers of meaning, one of the primary ones being a vertical ascent, or attainment of enlightenment.

But are the gods, then, merely ‘blueprints’, and not objectively real? Rudgley seems to think so, and states that “we do not have to believe in Odin’s actual existence as a god to track his return to the forefront of the Western psyche.” In the same way, Stephen Flowers, noting Jung’s influence, claims that “divinities in Asatrú/Odinism are not seen as independent/transcendental beings, but rather as exemplary models of consciousness, or archetypes, which serve as patterns for human development.” But this doesn’t take into account Jung’s own later view expressed in his Foreword to Miguel Serrano’s book The Visits of the Queen of Sheba, where he stated openly for the first time that his mission was religious rather than scientific – implying that the ‘archetypes’ are, in fact, independently real.

Contrary to Flowers’ assertion, not all self-professed Odinists believe that the gods are merely blueprints. A member of the British-based ‘Circle of Ostara’ says (in Rudgley’s book) that, on the contrary, “we must overcome this tendency to trivialise divinity. The gods are not Vikings…they are spiritual beings, potent forces of numinous power.” And even though I, for one, have a love for, say, Arthur Rackham’s powerful portraits of Odin, Freyja and Thor (from his illustrations for Wagner’s Ring), it is important, of course, to see beyond these timebound surface appearances…

So let us now turn to the first of the book’s central themes, namely, the nature of Odin. Wotan, or Odin, is king of the gods, but he is not all-powerful…he is subject to the fates, and dies in combat with the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarok. He is the god of battle and lord of the hanged and the slain; magician, initiate, wanderer, seeker of forbidden knowledge; also god of poetry and the creative arts. But what is the common thread between all these things – between poetry, warfare, magic and sexual ecstasy? The answer is – divine intoxication. Odin means ‘frenzy’ (or, according to Baron Karl von Reichenbach, ‘all-transcending’). That is the key to understanding the king of the gods.

For Rudgley, Odin “embodies the irrational side of the Western psyche.” But this is somewhat of a simplification. Does not Odin also ’embody’ the search for knowledge and wisdom? Rudgley is right to assert the importance of the irrational/imaginative side of the brain, however – for this side has been constantly downgraded in the modern world. He cites the work of French scholar Henry Corbin on Sufi mystics: “to describe their experiences as ‘imaginary’ seemed to him to degrade what they were experiencing.” For Corbin, the imagination is “a world that is ontologically as real as the world of the senses and that of the intellect. This world requires its own faculty of perception, namely, imaginative power…” Rudgley maintains that imagination and reason are equal, complementary forces – and when one of these forces is exalted at the expense of the other, trouble invariably arises.

Rudgley gives his personal take on the conscious revivification of heathenry in modern times, beginning with the fascinating runic cross of Johannes Bureus (1568-1652). Following Joscelyn Godwin he also traces (somewhat more idiosyncratically) the polar, Hyperborean symbolism, including in its popular culture manifestations, such as Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth (usually seen as a straightforward story, but actually a symbolist work).

One highly interesting snippet involves a poem that Nietzsche wrote called ‘The Unknown God’, a hymn to the patron god whose name eluded him – but who Rudgley sees as having been none other than Odin. Nietzsche also had a powerful and shocking dream when young (which was later to influence his life), about a wild and uncanny huntsman – which Jung interpreted as an encounter with Odin. The German pagan youth movements of the early twentieth century were another Odinic manifestation. But Rudgley also takes Guido von List to task for believing that his own ideas were a revival of “primordial Aryan tradition.” It seems that Rudgley wants to pick and choose who is and isn’t a genuine conduit for tradition or the gods.

In Part One of the book Rudgley traces the history of what he calls the ‘First Odinic Experiment’ via Guido von List, Friedrich Marby, and the seriously disturbed Karl Maria Wiligut, up until the Ragnarok of 1945. Part Two (the ‘Second Odinic Experiment’) is more arbitrary, purporting to deal with the Anglo-American world (although one chapter is devoted to the Chilean Serrano). Both of these ‘cycles’ or ‘experiments’ Rudgley sees as having started benignly, but descending later into violence and madness (the first cycle via the Nazis, the second via serial killers, mass murderers and the like). It will be controversial or disturbing to some that Rudgley describes certain mass murderers as manifestations of Odin

But Odin is not necessarily a god one loves. There is a famous poem in the Icelandic sagas by Egil Skallagrimsson, written after his son had just died, which could be described as a kind of ‘ecstatic curse’ against Odin, who gave him the gift of poetry with one hand, and yet took his son’s life away with the other. Odin can be a dark and dangerous god – and yet he is also the very model of the Hero, in his cosmic struggle against the forces of entropy and chaos. This struggle is mirrored in all higher art and culture.

“Odin is a force which cannot be suppressed and […] he has his own agenda,” notes Rudgley. He also sees Odin’s spirit manifesting in certain literary, or sub-literary works: “Fantasy is more than empty daydreaming; it is a modern, and often debased, version of traditional mythology and as such often the blueprint for action.” Thus a work of fantasy like The Turner Diaries was said to inspire the violent actions of Robert Jay Mathews and Timothy McVeigh.

But if these aforesaid violent actions are to be included in a ‘biography of Odin’ and held to be ‘manifestations of Odin’s spirit’ – then what of the more subtle, more controlled side of Odin’s manifestation? In other words – why aren’t the achievements of Western art, music, literature and science also included? Is Odin not the patron god of poets and explorers? Rudgley’s ‘biography’ seems somewhat incomplete…

But now we come to the second of the two themes I mentioned at the start of the review, namely “which way forward Western Man?” Rudgley is cautiously optimistic, and hopes the ‘Second Experiment’ will enter a “new and more positive phase.” But a danger must first be overcome. For the whole book, in a sense, is an extended commentary on two paragraphs from a letter Jung wrote to Miguel Serrano, to the effect that, if we are not aware of change (when a new orientation is demanded), the archetype (in this case Wotan) will step in: “when an archetype is […] not consciously understood, one is possessed by it and forced to its fatal goal.” This means we are “apt to undergo the risk of a further, but this time, worldwide, Wotanistic experiment. This means mental epidemy and war.”

Rudgley sees this statement of Jung’s as a warning, and that, I suspect, is the real reason he has written this book – in order to raise people’s conscious awareness of these unconscious forces, and thus avert a worldwide conflagration. Jung wrote of the need for a “renewed self-understanding” that we are not purely rational creatures of “free will”, but are also under the influence of numinous, archetypal forces.

Jung (according to Rudgley), believed that “individuals who [unite] the conscious and unconscious within their own psyches, become spiritually resurrected. Each individual who achieves this personal transformation increases the likelihood of others being able to do the same, for the transformation of the individual transforms the collective mind.” This is the völkisch view. As an old Chinese proverb Jung quoted goes, “The right man sitting in his house and thinking the right thought will be heard a hundred miles distant.” Jung also quoted an old alchemist to the same effect: “No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.” Again, “Whoever is capable of such insight, no matter how isolated he is, should be aware of the law of synchronicity: if the archetype is dealt with in one place only it is influenced as a whole, i.e. simultaneously and everywhere.”

Thus Jung believed that societal change can only be effected after change occurs first in the individual. This is similar to the stance of the European New Right, who believe that cultural/spiritual change must precede political change. In the same way, the German rune yoga practicioner Friedrich Marby (1882-1966) believed that, if a certain amount of people practiced his system, society as a whole would be spiritually purifed.

Occurrences of large-scale synchronicity are well attested to. For instance, as Rudgley notes, in the years 1972-73 several Odinist groups suddenly arose, completely independently and without any knowledge of one another, in Iceland, Britain, and the United States. Although Rudgley does not mention it, there was also an Australian Odinist group based around the University of Melbourne which started at the same time.

This pagan concept of synchronicity and the web of wyrd goes beyond that of conventional ecology, which holds that only the natural world is interlinked. As Rudgley puts it: “In the ancient Germanic world contemplation of the past was not a morbid or stagnant refusal to acknowledge present and future possibilities. […] In the pagan world the past was a dynamic concept. […] It is forever expanding and changing […] The past is neither static nor fully formed, as things pass out of the hands of Verdandi (the present) and into the well of Urd.” This is also the basis of ‘radical traditionalism’ and, in turn, of doctrines like National-Anarchism.

To recapitulate, then: Rudgley’s urgent message is that the conscious mind must be harmonised with “the deeper levels of the psyche, which, for Europeans, are buried in the mythology of paganism.” Otherwise, the ‘Second Odinic Experiment’ (currently underway) may turn into a psychotic episode. In seeking to locate the origin of any subsequent global upheaval in the European pagan psyche, however, Rudgley seems to let off the hook those who may in fact be more responsible: the age-old enemies of paganism; namely, the ‘universalists’. Universalists and globalists work actively towards a totalitarian one-world system, be it Muslim, Communist, or some other form. So how is it that the role of these ‘universalists’ in any upcoming global upheaval seems to have passed by without comment from Rudgley?

To be fair he does address these issues briefly in the epilogue, albeit in a cursory manner. He pleads for ‘global awareness’ rather than globalism, but doesn’t define exactly what he means by ‘global awareness’. “Separatism,” he maintains, “can only cut us off from the wider web” – but again doesn’t specify what he means by separatism, nor why it necessarily implies a complete isolation. There is a submerged undercurrent of tension in this epilogue, indicating that he hasn’t really thought his stance on these issues through. Or maybe he was worried that Random House wouldn’t publish ‘Pagan Resurrection’ if he came to certain politically incorrect conclusions. But that was not necessarily the task of the book. Come to think of it, I’ve forgotten what the book’s ‘task’ actually was. It snatches wildly at several diverging currents…but that, of course, doesn’t prevent it from being an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. I recommend it for all heathens…or, for that matter, the merely curious.

Notes, to be appended to the above:

1. The English Odinist known as ‘Stubba’ said: “heathenism [is] the only true international religion. It differs according to each racial group, according to that group’s culture and history. So, we have more in common with Japanese Shinto than with the Methodists or the Anglicans.”

2. Rudgley himself observes that “the refusal to address [the question of white ethnic identity] has left the political far right as almost the only spokesman for the northern European heritage. […] This is a dangerous state of affairs.”

3. Rudgley also notes that “a paganism which is merely a form of escapism into an illusory golden age […] can serve no meaningful purpose. […] The traditional pagans of the northern world respected the past and the accumulated knowledge it represented but they did not wish to live in it. Neither should we.”