Posted on 12/16/2004 11:04:00 AM PST by quidnunc
The sky was already murky at 4 p.m. when I locked my bike outside Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. Inside, it was even murkier: wood-panelled corridors stretched off into the gloom, men in grey suits were wedged together, smoking Bensons and drinking bitter. No one looked even slightly like an Arch Priest of the Council of British Druid Orders. At 4:10 I found a separate little bar near the back of the pub. As I walked in, a big man with round shoulders and grey hair stared at me and I saw the corner of a magazine poking out from inside his coat. As I watched, the whole cover slowly emerged: a yellowy-purple watercolour of a fairy, and the title: The Witchtower. ‘Steve?’ I said. He nodded.
We bought bitter, found somewhere to sit, and began what turned out to be a three-hour crash course in modern paganism, one of the fastest-growing religions in Britain.
-snip-
So, can a modern pagan just pick any god to worship? I asked. Egyptian? Roman? African? Are there any rules? Steve put his hands self-consciously under the table, ‘No rules,’ he said. ‘Being a pagan is about being free from institutional rules. And the gods? Once you start seeking they choose you, really. Everyone has their own path, but we all celebrate the same festivals: the summer and winter solstices, spring and autumn equinoxes and four other festivals: Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasad.’
Pagans, I discovered during our second pint, are also united by their sense of the injustices done them by Christians. The last 2,000 years of history is a heart-wrenching tale of innocent occult revivals squashed by ignorant Christians …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
Not me.
I'm sorry. This is relevant to Blzbba's deliberate mischaracterization of God... how?
Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."
"God didn't try to make Abraham kill Isaac. He tested Abraham's faith. Once God was satisfied that Abraham would obey Him no matter what the task, Isaac was spared. But you knew that already, didn't you? "
Yep!
"You used part of that story to deflect criticism about ancient human sacrifices among druids. That's intellectually dishonest.
But then again, you knew that too."
LOL! Got me again! Here's a question, though (one I truly do not know the answer to, I promise): Why was Abraham so ready to sacrifice his only marital-blood son Isaac to God if human sacrifice was NOT a part of the culture he lived in? Wouldn't one living in an anti-human sacrificial culture be abhorred at such a request?
Frankly, if God told me tonight to sacrifice my only son to Him, I'd tell him to go to hell. What kind of a sick deity would make such a request in the first place?!
Your post disingenuously implies that Hitler's cynical, and above all, political, appeal to Christian doctrine in 1922 was an expression of sincere belief, when he had by that time already embraced the anti-Christian Neitzschean doctrine of the ubermensch, as a careful reading of the text you provided makes plain.
"Blzbba's deliberate mischaracterization of God"
I don't think so. Only a depraved deity would request one of his most faithful worshippers to sacrifice their only blood son and then say "Psyche!!" right as the knife is about to come down.
It seems to me that the 'hard sayings' in the Bible are from historical narratives where God says such-and-such and the hearer (the people of Israel, etc.) then performs some action which would be considered unacceptable today. In the Koran, the 'hard sayings' seem to usually be in the form of general commandments without restriction to a historical context. It's much more difficult to relegate them to history and consider them as not applicable to modern times, though anything is possible.
You're very confused. In theocratic 17th century Massachusetts, there was no distinction between secular and religious authorities. All the laws were based on the established religion, and violations of religious requirements were strictly enforced by the governmental authorities with the full support of the clergy. And if you're trying to claim that Roman Catholic Popes are "secular authorities", you're completely hopeless.
Actually, "we're" more afraid of nut religions, most especially atheism, being tied to some nut cases. Christian nut cases, including some of the darkest years of the Catholic church, only killed about 300,000 whereas other pagan religion nut cases, most especially atheistic, have killed over 14 million in this century alone. 
> were they not joining their eastern brothers in raiding Europe's coasts?
Offhand I don;t know if the Icelanders were; but if so... more power to 'em. Monastaries were loaded with stolen gold. Great targets.
> We have to share some of our credit with the deists perhaps, but not with the wiccans.
Who said anything about Wiccans? I said "pagan." That includes many of the people that the Founders looked to for inspiration, guidance, and legal precedent.
Well, if you're talking about the Greeks and Romans, it's true that technically they were a pagan culture. However, the great Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, etc.) were not looking to their gods for moral inspiration, but looking for some greater God or principle above the Olympians or Titans. Indeed, the Greeks' higher moral yearnings were completely independent of the natures and activities of the gods they worshipped. As one more modern philosopher put it, "The God of the Hebrews left His people because of their immorality; conversely, the Greeks left their gods because of their gods' immorality."
In that respect, you would be hard pressed to demonstrate, especially from first-hand historical documentation, how the pagan worship of the many gods like Zeus, Artemis, etc. contributed to the old republics. One can't say the same for the connection between Christianity and the American Republic--the Founders' writings are so rich with their faith in the One God and Christ that they practically can't be taught in the public schools anymore.
Where are you pulling THAT idea from? The God who revealed Himself to the Israelites is the same God that Christians worship.
> In that respect, you would be hard pressed to demonstrate, especially from first-hand historical documentation, how the pagan worship of the many gods like Zeus, Artemis, etc. contributed to the old republics.
Nice strawman.
> the Founders' writings are so rich with their faith in the One God and Christ that ...
... much of it has been overblown.
Nice dodge, on both counts. Have a nice night.
> Nice dodge, on both counts
It was not a point under debate, thus it's not a dodge. We were not talking about how the Greek societies were set up, but the fact that the *American* society was set up with a serious pagan Greek, Roman, Norse and Saxon influence.
> especially atheistic, have killed over 14 million in this century alone.
You seem to be confusing "Communist" for "atheist." Ain't the same thing. Atheists believe there is no god. Commies believe the State is god, just with a different name.
>>How many cannibalistic pagans do you know?
>They still exist along the Amazon and in New Guinea.
Ah. By that you are thus extending this discussion of pagans to mean everyone in the world not Judeo-Christian. Well, under that logic it would be equally valid for me to point out that "Non-Asatruar are cannibals."
Completely and utterly wrong! Have you any idea whatsoever of what you are talking about? Have you ever read the Turner Diaries, or any of the nutty rantings of George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party and the quintessential "neo-nazi"? The stuff is chock-a-block full of "norse paganism." You clearly have no idea what the Nazis actually believed, what metamyths they meant to promote, and what their plans were for instituting a new religion.
Here's a little something I picked up in a 2 minute google search. Even though the source is the Southern Poverty Law Center, the information contained herein is unimpeachable.
A new book explores the bizarre fringes of National Socialism, past and present
By Martin A. Lee
Black Sun:
Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity
By Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
New York: New York University Press, 2002, 369 pp., $29.95George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party until his violent death in 1967, gushed about having had a mystical experience when he first read Hitler's Mein Kampf. "I realized that National Socialism [was] actually a new religion," said Rockwell, who considered April 20th the holiest day of the calendar year.
That's when neo-Nazis around the world celebrate Hitler's birthday at secretive gatherings with Aryan shrines, devotional rituals, white power regalia, and other racialist kitsch.
These annual conclaves are akin to religious ceremonies where true believers worship Hitler as an infallible diety whose every utterance is gospel.
The bizarre quasi-religious and mythic elements that proliferate in sectors of the contemporary neo-Nazi milieu are explored by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in his important, new book Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity.
Although there has always been a theocratic strain in fascist movements, several factors are contributing to a latter-day, "folkish" (or tribal) revival among white youth who are beset by an acute sense of disenfranchisement in Western societies.
In response to the challenges of globalization, multiculturalism, and large-scale Third World immigration, neo-Nazi racism in the United States, Europe and elsewhere has sometimes morphed into what the author describes as "new folkish religions of white identity."
This neo-folkish resurgence — reminiscent of some early Nazi ideas — encompasses a hodgepodge of anti-Semitic neo-Pagan sects, Christian Identity churches, skewed variants of eastern mysticism, occult influences, New Age conspiracies, and Satanists into the "black metal" music subculture.
Goodrick-Clarke, a British scholar who writes in an engaging and accessible style, has long foraged on the farther shores of right-wing extremist politics.
His first book, The Occult Roots of Nazism, is a masterful study of a much sensationalized subject — racist groups in early 20th century Austria that embraced forms of mystical nationalism and helped incubate Aryan racial ideas.
Building on his previous work, Goodrick-Clarke draws a parallel in Black Sun between folkish ferment in Hitler's Austria and the role of today's marginalized neo-Nazi sects, many of which have repackaged Aryan racism in new forms influenced by eastern religions.
A crucial difference, the author maintains, is the shift from the virulent German nationalism of the Third Reich to a broader racist ideology of global white supremacy.
"It is highly significant that the Aryan cult of white identity is now most marked in the United States," says Goodrick-Clarke, adding that American neo-Nazi groups behave like persecuted religious sects preparing for the final confrontation with a corrupt world.
Although each have their specific eccentricities — ranging from anti-Semitic Christian Identity churches to anti-Christian, racist Odinist groups — almost all of them espouse millenarian visions of a white racial utopia.
Satan Meets the Führer
Early American neo-Nazi James Madole, who rejected Christianity as a degenerate Jewish construct, became a key figure in developing bizarre forms of fascism after he founded the National Renaissance Party, the first U.S. neo-Nazi organization, in 1952.Although he never attracted many followers, Madole became known as "the father of postwar occult fascism" by saturating his ideology with a mish-mash of science-fiction and other notions drawn from eastern traditions and theosophy, a mystical religious movement originating in late 19th century America.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Madole's party cultivated close links with a Church of Satan spin-off — an alliance that anticipated the recent emergence of a violent, international fringe network devoted to Nordic gods, black magic, occultism and devil worship.
David Myatt, chief representative of Nazi Satanism in Great Britain, defends human sacrifice and praises a new wave of satanic black metal Skinhead bands that spout demented lyrics and anti-social rants.
Myatt's "religion of National Socialism" owes much to Savitri Devi, the grand dame of postwar neo-Nazism, who had traveled from her native France to India as a young woman. An admirer of the racist caste system, Devi immersed herself in early Hindu texts.
Noting that the Nazi swastika is also an ancient, mystical Indian symbol, she romanticized the Third Reich as "the Holy Land of the West." Devi was the first Western writer to acclaim Hitler as a spiritual "avatar," a supernatural figure who pointed the way toward a future Aryan paradise.
The Jews, whom Devi blamed for all the world's suffering and alienation, were predictably pegged as the main obstacle on the path to the Golden Age.
Devi's obsession with the pre-Christian origins of Indo-European culture was shared by Julius Evola, an Italian Nazi philosopher whose racial theories were adopted and codified by Mussolini in 1938.
Calling for a "Great Holy War" to battle national and ideological enemies, Evola exerted a significant influence on a generation of militant neofascist youth in postwar Italy.
Among his protégés were leaders of right-wing terrorist organizations linked to numerous bomb attacks from the 1960s to the 1980s. Evola's mystical fascist writings include books on Zen Buddhism, yoga, alchemy, Tantrism (a kind of sexual mysticism), and European paganism.
After he died in 1974, his esoteric musings were rediscovered by New Age publications. Today, many of Evola's books are available in English translation in trendy New Age bookstores in the United States, despite his status as an avowed fascist.
UFOs, Polar Bases and the Black Sun
Another influential figure in the occult-fascist underground is Miguel Serrano, a former Chilean diplomat and Nazi die-hard who touts yoga, meditation, and hallucinogenic drugs as ways of raising consciousness in order to make contact with higher Aryan intelligence.Serrano blends exotic oriental religious themes with dubious lore about secret religious societies. He likens the Nazi SS — which was condemned in its entirety for war crimes — to an order of initiates seeking the Holy Grail.
This notion appealed to Wilhelm Landig, an Austrian SS veteran and postwar Nazi activist who coined the idea of the "Black Sun," a mystical energy source allegedly capable of regenerating the Aryan race.
Goodrick-Clarke credits Landig with reviving the folkish — and far out — Germanic mythology of Thule, the supposed Arctic homeland of the ancient Aryans, in order to prophesy the recovery and resurrection of Nazism as an earth-conquering force.
Landig and other occult-fascist propagandists have circulated wild stories about German Nazi colonies that live and work in secret installations beneath the polar icecaps, where they developed flying saucers and miracle weapons after the demise of the Third Reich.
The abundance of UFO sightings, which began in the early 1950s, is attributed to the amazing prowess of Nazi science and technology.
The fall of the Third Reich is cast merely as a temporary setback; at any moment, a battalion of Nazi extraterrestrials could zoom forth in their magical discs to deliver Aryan folk from the ills of democracy and Judeo-Christian decadence.
A hot item among New Age conspiracy theorists and promoters of Holocaust denial, stories about Nazi UFOs may seem ludicrous to anyone with their feet firmly planted on terra firma. And, certainly, this kind of thinking does not dominate even the contemporary world of the extreme right.
But these sci-fi legends underscore, in the words of Goodrick-Clarke, how "Aryan cults and esoteric Nazism posit powerful mythologies to negate the decline of white power in the world."
Moreover, if the past is any kind of prologue, these bizarre, new religious sects "may be early symptoms of major divisive changes in our present-day Western democracies."
"The risks of race religiosity are great. ... Whenever human groups are interpreted as absolute categories of good and evil, light and darkness," Goodrick-Clarke cautions, "both the human community and humanity itself are diminished."
A timely warning, indeed.
I suggest you do some research before you post again on this subject. You're embarrassing yourself.
Amazing how a little research will shut down a thread!
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