‘Hitler was solely responsible for the Holocaust’.
How far do you agree with this statement?
The Holocaust, run by the Nazi regime during World War II, resulted in the extermination of six million Jews and millions of other victims. Adolf Hitler's influence was prominent, but the genocide's execution involved numerous actors, including high-ranking Nazi officials, bystanders, and the Allied powers. I partially agree with the statement, ‘Hitler was solely responsible for the Holocaust’ as he played a crucial role in initiating the holocaust but it is wrong to deny that there weren’t any other contributors.
One person responsible for the Holocaust was Adolf Hitler, whose ideology, beliefs and orders were fundamental to the genocide. Source A states that in 1922, Hitler remarked, “As soon as I have the power... Then the Jews [in Munich] will be hanged one after another... and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!”. Source A presents a direct quote from Hitler, reflecting his early and explicit intent to exterminate Jews. While the source is reliable in providing insight into Hitler's genocidal intentions, its origin as a speech may raise questions about context and potential audience manipulation. This shows that Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust because his deep anti-Semitism and violent orders set the genocidal policies in motion. While Hitler’s ideology was the driving force, it is critical to recognise that the Holocaust's implementation relied on the cooperation and actions of others within the Nazi regime.
Another group responsible for the Holocaust was the Nazi hierarchy, including key figures such as Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, and organisations like the SS and Einsatzgruppen. In Source B, it states Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, recounted, “The Fuhrer has ordered the Jewish question to be settled once and for all... Every Jew that we can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now, during the war, without exception”. Furthermore, Heydrich established the first Jewish ghetto and was chosen to administer the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference which is stated in source E. Source B is from the memoirs of Rudolf Hoess, providing a firsthand account of orders received from Hitler. While Hoess' account is valuable for its quickness, it should be approached with caution due to potential biases or attempts to remove harshness from guilt. Source E, originating from a historical analysis, offers a researched overview of Heydrich's role, enhancing its reliability as a scholarly source. This shows they were responsible for the Holocaust because their actions and organisational skills were essential in transforming Hitler's genocidal vision into reality. While Hitler provided the ideological framework, the efficiency and dedication of Nazi officials like Himmler and Heydrich were crucial in executing the mass extermination, indicating a shared responsibility.
Another group indirectly responsible for the Holocaust was the bystanders, both within Germany and internationally, whose unbothered attitudes facilitated the genocide. In source C Martin Niemöller, a German pastor, poignantly illustrated this passivity: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew...”. In source D A policeman testified in 1961, “I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminals and subhumans... The thought that one should disobey or evade the order to participate in the extermination of the Jews did not enter my mind at all”. Source C, a poem by Martin Niemöller, reflects personal experiences and serves as a touching critique of society’s lack of empathy. Its reliability lies in Niemöller's firsthand experience, though its emotional tone may influence interpretation. Source D, a testimony from a policeman, offers insight into the mindset of ordinary Germans but should be critically evaluated for potential biases or attempts to shift blame. This shows they were responsible for the Holocaust because their passivity and acceptance of Nazi propaganda allowed the regime to operate without resistance. While bystanders did not actively participate in the genocide, their failure to oppose the Nazis contributed to the environment that made the Holocaust possible.
Another group indirectly responsible for the Holocaust was the Allies, whose delayed intervention and restrictive immigration policies exacerbated the situation for potential Holocaust victims. In source F Alan Farmer notes that the Allies, particularly Britain and the United States, made limited efforts to assist Jews, partly due to fears of a flood of Jewish immigrants and disbelief in the extent of the genocide. Source F, an adaptation from Alan Farmer's historical analysis, offers a scholarly critique of Allied responses to the Holocaust. Its reliability lies in Farmer's research, but interpretations may vary depending on historical context and biases. This shows they were responsible for the Holocaust because their actions and policies failed to lessen or halt the genocide when opportunities existed. While the primary focus of the Allies was defeating Nazi Germany, their insufficient response to the Holocaust underscores a shared responsibility.
In conclusion, while Adolf Hitler’s passion and dictatorial power were central to the Holocaust, the genocide was the result of factors simultaneously contributing by involving high-ranking Nazis, passive bystanders, and delayed actions by the Allies. Therefore, attributing sole responsibility to Hitler hides the broader collective actions that facilitated one of history's most horrific atrocities.

"Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know." Laozi, 56
Heshang Gong's commentary:
• Heshang Gong's commentary (translation by Dan G. Reid)
知者不言，知者貴行不貴言也。 “Those who know do not speak” Those who know, value practice rather than words.
言者不知。駟不及舌，多言多患。 “Those who speak do not know” A team of four horses could not catch up to the tongue. Many words - many worries.
• Heshang Gong's commentary (translation by Edurad Erkes)
The knowing one does not talk. = The knowing one esteems deeds and not words. == Instead of "deeds" v.1 "his doings". The Tao-tsang edition reads: "The knowing one esteems walking in Tao; he does not esteem words."
The talker knows nothing. = A quadriga does not catch the tongue. Who talks much, will have much sorrow.
== The Tao-tsang edition inverts the sequence of the sentences. The sentence "A quadriga does not catch the tongue" is a quotation from Lun-yu 12, 8.
Wang Bi's commentary:
• Wang Bi's commentary (translation by Richard John Lynn)
He who knows does not speak.
= Such a one acts in accordance with the Natural.
He who speaks does not know.
= Such a one forces things to happen.
• Wang Bi's commentary (translation by Rudolf G. Wagner)
56.1 [A ruler] who knows, does not speak.1
He goes by [the entities’] That-which-is-of-itself-what-it-is.
56.2 [A ruler] who speaks, does not know.
He contrives particular government action.
• Wang Bi's commentary (translation by Ariane Rurnp)
He who knows does not speak. This is so because one follows Tzu-jan.
He who speaks does not know. Because he would create trouble.
Cheng Xuanying's commentary (translation by FRIEDERIKE ASSANDRI)
56.1.A. He who knows does not speak. 知者不言。
The gentleman who knows the Dao understands the marvelous principle. He knows that there are no words to speak of the principle, therefore he does not speak. It is for this reason that the Zhuangzi says: “The Way is not to be asked about, and if asked, there is no answer”2— in this Non- action3 can be said to be correct.
56.1.B. He who speaks does not know. 言者不知。
Persistent clinging to names and words [implies] that one is fixated on words when searching for the principle. The principle goes beyond words and images, therefore [such a person who sticks to words] does not know it. For this reason the Zhuangzi says: “He who, when asked about the Way, gives an answer does not understand the Way.”4 [The exchange between] Knowledge and the Yellow Emperor was right in this.5
From Tao Te Ching (translation by Red Pine)
HO-SHANG KUNG says, “Those who know, value deeds not words. A team of horses can’t overtake the tongue. More talk means more problems.”
TS’AO TAO-CH’UNG says, “Those who grasp the truth forget about words. Those who don’t practice what they talk about are no different from those who don’t know.”
SU CH’E says, “The Tao isn’t talk, but it doesn’t exclude talk. Those who know don’t necessarily talk. Those who talk don’t necessarily know.”
TE-CH’ING says, “Those who know transcend the mundane and the superficial, hence they cannot be embraced. Their utter honesty enables others to see. Hence, they cannot be abandoned. They are content and free of desires. Hence, they cannot be helped. They dwell beyond life and death. Hence, they cannot be harmed. They view high position as so much dust. Hence, they cannot be exalted. Beneath their rags they harbor jade. Hence, they cannot be debased. Those who know walk in the world, yet their minds transcend the material realm. Hence, they are exalted by the world.”
From the Zhuangzi (translation by Richard John Lynn)
13.32.3 Therefore, He who knows does not speak; He who speaks does not know.23 But how could the world ever understand this!
Guo Xiang's commentary: It would mean the rejection of learning and the elimination of knowledge.
22.5.1 The Yellow Thearch replied, “Not Conscious of What He Says was undoubtedly right, and Crazy Intractable seemed to get it, but you and I are nowhere near it, for
‘He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.’1
Thus it is that ‘the sage practices the teaching that is not expressed in words.’2
Guo Xiang's commentary: To give oneself over to its spontaneous practice, this is “the teaching that is not expressed in words.”
From the book: The Annotated Critical Laozi With Contemporary Explication and Traditional Commentary by Chen Guying
Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know (知者不 言，言者不知): The Guodian jian 郭店简 [Guodian Bamboo Slips] version reads “those who are wise do not speak, those who speak are not wise (智之者弗言，言之者弗智).”
In his [Jingdian] shiwen [经典] 释文 [Textual Explanations of the Classics], Lu Deming 陆德明 (d. 630) writes: ‘The word “to know (知)” is also read as zhi 智.’ In his commentary on the phrase ‘those who are wise do not speak,’ Heshang Gong 河上公 (1st century CE; dates unknown) notes: ‘Those who know (知者) value actions, and not words.’ Wang Bi 王弼 (d. 249) comments on the same phrase: ‘[It means] to rely on what is self-so.’ Additionally, concerning the phrase ‘those who speak do not know’, Heshang Gong remarks: ‘What has been spoken cannot be unsaid, more words [will only] lead to much anxiety.’ Wang Bi comments: ‘It creates trouble.’
In his book Tao, the Great Luminant (Essays from the Huai Nan Tzu), Evan Morgan (d. 1941) quotes a poem by the Tang poet Bai Juyi 白居易 (d. 846) on the Laozi: ‘I have heard from Laozi that those who speak are not wise, and that the wise remain silent. But if the old gentleman of the Dao was wise (智者), then why did he compose a book of five thousand characters?’ Morgan translates ‘智’ as ‘wise.’ This suffices to prove that in the Tang dynasty (618–907), some ancient editions of the Laozi also read zhi 智 instead of zhi 知.
Furthermore, in a photographic reproduction of a Korean text from the Joseon dynasty entitled Daojia lunbian Mouzi lihuo lun 道家论辩牟子理惑论 [Refutations of Daoism, Mouzi’s (2nd century CE; dates unknown) Treatise on Settling Doubts] the first phrase is quoted as ‘those who are wise do not speak.’ Additionally, in the Japanese Dazangjing Mouzi lihuo lun 大藏经牟子理惑论 [Taishō Tripiṭaka, Mouzi’s Treatise on Settling Doubts], the whole sentence is correctly quoted as ‘those who are wise do not speak, those who speak are not wise.’ ”

One thing that has always defined the study of Norse and overall Germanic myth to me is in how nothing is scared or secure. There is seemingly no status quo, sometimes it feels like there isn’t a single thing you previously considered to be universal truth and relatively common knowledge that hasn’t been questioned, disputed or outright revealed and generally accepted to be an exaggeration or falsehood by tirelessly cynical scholars. Everything purported as facts of Norse myth in pop culture from Óðinn’s title of ‘Allfather’ to the alleged canonical list of ‘Nine Realms’ has its detractos among academics. None of these is more hotly contested or befuddling to myself in recent times than the infamous classification of the so-called ‘Vanir’ as a group of gods, commonly purported as having particular connotations of fertility, distinct from the Æsir but similarly opposed to the Jǫtnar (‘eaters’ or anti-gods, often misleadingly translated as ‘giants’). Most people’s understanding of the topic and the most popular point of exposure may well be the opening of the Wikipedia entry:
>In Norse mythology, the Vanir (/ˈvɑːnɪə;[1] Old Norse:, singular Vanr) are a group of gods associated with fertility, wisdom, and the ability to see the future. The Vanir are one of two groups of gods (the other being the Æsir) and are the namesake of the location Vanaheimr (Old Norse "Home of the Vanir"). After the Æsir–Vanir War, the Vanir became a subgroup of the Æsir. Subsequently, members of the Vanir are sometimes also referred to as members of the Æsir..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanir
This group typically and centrally consists of Njǫrðr and his children Yngvi Freyr and Freyja, whose ‘real’ name is unknown.
Digression 1/2: Freyja is a title, cognate with German ‘Frau’. Whatever her name was, whether it was forgotten by the Viking Age or not, one would expect it to begin with a vowel in order to alliterate with her brothemale counterpart. Like the term Vanr itself, Freyja is not attested outside of a Northern Germanic context, although I personally believe at this point she must date back to early Germanic times, as Freyr has evidence for doing so in being attested in Gothic and I would expect each of a divine sibling pair like this to be integral to the other. Tacitus references ship rituals that may be reflected in her later association with Sessrúmnir, although this may have been originally a facet of Frigg which transplanted to her, like many may have. Regardless, one proposed theoretical name would be ‘Austra’, cognate with the scantly attested Anglo Saxon Ēostre. This is a slim chance and not especially likely, but it’s the most interesting I have come across in what is almost certainly an unanswerable question, like the Frigg/Freyja debacle itself.
The grouping may also include Njǫrðr’s scarcely referenced wife, whom I link to the scantly attested ‘Njǫrun’ (possibly attested by Tactitus as ‘Nerthus’ in the first century). The god Heimdallr is sometimes included due to a dubious written reference I will address, as well as Ullr, who has toponyms in Sweden that sit in the vicinity of toponyms stemming from the members of this familial group which I will refer to as the Njǫrðungar (Credit to Frog, 2021) for the sake of clarity and discernibility from the dubious term in question.
‘What are the Vanir?’ is indeed the premise of this writeup, but we shall start with what they aren’t. There has never been a clear traceable etymology for the term, although a relation with the Old Norse word ‘vinr’ (friend) is tempting. For many years there was little scrutiny applied to the categorisation, until in 2010 Rudolf Simek dropped (by the standards of this sphere) a bombshell in the form of ‘The Vanir: An Obituary’. Building on a publication by Lotte Motz (1996), this article flew in the face of the then, and usually current notion that Norse myth consisted of three groups of deities; Jǫtnar, Æsir and Vanir. Motz had challenged the traditionally interpreted role of the Vanir as fertility gods, challenging in the process Dumézil’s trifunctional hypothesis (we’ll get to that). Frog (2021) says (of Simek’s article): ‘The argument builds on Lotte Motz’s study that contested viewing “Vanir” and “Æsir” through a Dumézilian tripartite model and identifying the former as gods of farmers and fertility and the latter as gods of warriors and kings. Motz found this simple opposition inconsistent with gods identified in the sources, where “Vanir” were more commonly associated with royalty and “Æsir” with generative or creative powers.”
Simek had a bold statement to make: The word Vanr is just an old synonym for god. Like ‘regin’, ‘band' (hypothetical singular form) or ‘goð’, all largely synonymous generic terms for gods, it carries no more specific connotations than those until Snorri Sturluson interprets it as the label for a distinct group of gods. Indeed, it is Snorri whom Simek pins the whole thing on, saying ‘The Vanir were not alive in heathen days, and as a figment of imagination from the 13th to the 20th centuries’ in his closing paragraph. To Simek, it is not just a mistake but a deliberate choice to invent a label for the sake of another euhemerised tale, akin to his other works such as Heimskringla.
Simek’s evidence was based on the fact that every mention of the word ‘Vanir’ or ‘Vanr’ is alliterative, to a degree not even seen by its aforementioned alleged synonyms. Frog and Roper (2011) corroborated this, finding a 100% alliterative usage of the term in eddic poetry and instances where vanir even seems explicitly synonymous with aesir. Aside from eddic poems it has two obscure usages in Skaldic poetry, where even the character it is referring to is uncertain. It possibly refers to Óðinn in one instance, which if it were indeed the intended use would destroy Snorri’s narrative of a group distinct from the aesir.
It would seem to arise that despite being pagans themselves, the composers of many of these poems did not have a consistent notion as to what the word ‘Vanr’ meant, it was simply an archaic, largely defunct and obsolete word that nevertheless could be vaguely invoked in poetry for the sake of maintaining alliterative verse. We almost never use the word ‘lo’ in modern English aside from its preservation the phrase ‘lo and behold’. This is what a suspended archaism looks like. This leads to situations where gods like Heimdallr, elsewhere mentioned as an ǫss, is referred to as a vanr in a stanza of Þrymskviða mentioning his ability of foresight, like that of the ‘other Vanir’. The theory proposed here states that this is solely in order to alliterate with the preceding words ‘vissi’ (knew) and ‘vel’ (well) in eddic verse. This is a prime example of this need for alliterating synonyms creating the false impression of a separate label. We’re not typically used to this kind of repetition as English speakers. Imagine the phrase ‘see my crappy car, the most asinine and awful of automobiles’ for a hasty analogue.

So are there only the Æsir and the Jǫtnar?

Well, seemingly no, and this complicates matters. Medieval Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus would make it sound this way, where he accounted only for a war between builders and giants, which led to a truce and the creation of a third hybrid race. But with all due respect, fuck Saxo. His writings may be heavily reflecting Greco-Roman concepts and his goal with Gesta Danorum was never to convey a faithful depiction of Old Norse polytheistic beliefs. There certainly appears to be *some* group besides the Jǫtnar with which the Æsir had a war and to which Njǫrðr and his direct family belong. Stanza 51 of Vafþrúðnismál makes it unignorable that there is something going on here that cannot be pinned on Snorri, as well as Loki in Lokasenna confirming Njǫrðr’s status as a hostage of war.
Othin spake: “Tenth answer me now, if thou knowest all The fate that is fixed for the gods: Whence came up Njorth to the kin of the gods,— (Rich in temples and shrines he rules,—) Though of gods he was never begot?”
Vafthruthnir spake: “In the home of the Wanes did the wise ones create him, And gave him as pledge to the gods; At the fall of the world shall he fare once more Home to the Wanes so wise.”
Bellows (1923)
And Lokasenna:
“Be silent, Njorth; thou wast eastward sent, To the gods as a hostage given; And the daughters of Hymir their privy had When use did they make of thy mouth.”
Bellows (1923)
So Njǫrðr is almost certainly not considered to be from among the Æsir, but he was sent as a hostage. From whom? The answer on the surface is ‘Vanir’, but as we now know, the semantic meaning of this word is practically void. He is from some group of beings, what that group is remains to be seen. Respondents to Simek’s Obituary have noted that some may as well simply use the word ‘Vanir’ for this group in question, if no better label is available.

What is the trifunctional hypothesis?

It should be noted that only really Motz’s publication, which has been disputed itself, outright denies the trifunctional hypothesis’ relevance to this subject. This idea was coined by French philologist Georges Dumézil in Mythes et dieux des Germains (1939), wherein he drew parallels between Germanic and Indo-Iranian notions of a 3 stage hierarchy of warriors, priests and common folk. Dumézil saw these functions reflected in the attested figures of Norse mythology.
> “Basically, the parallels concern the presence of first-(magico-juridical) and second-(warrior) function representatives on the victorious side of a war that ultimately subdues and incorporates third function characters, for example, the Sabine women or the Norse Vanir. Indeed, the Iliad itself has also been examined in a similar light. The ultimate structure of the myth, then, is that the three estates of Proto-Indo-European society were fused only after a war between the first two against the third.” - Mallory (2005)
On the matter of the Vanir, Dumézil himself fell into the latter of two groups (historicists and structuralists) with opposing theories on the origins of the war between gods as a mythical motif. Historicists (like Motz) favour an origin in real life events, wherein a war between two groups of real-life peoples became referenced through the lens of mythical characters. Lindow (2001) theorises an allegory of an invasion of the Indo Europeans on other peoples, represented as Vanir. Structuralists (like Dumézil and De Vries) propose an origin in older Indo-European myth, conceived from a purely fictional standpoint. The story of the war has also drawn comparison to myths like the rape of the Sabines in Roman mythology. The structuralist view would seem to have more support from the sources and is generally favoured by academics.
To boot, according to Simek, the creation story of Kvasir, which directly follows and indelibly relates to the war, supports a structuralist Indo European context for said war. He gives a 10th century Skaldic kenning and the etymology of Kvasir, relating to berries, as good evidence for it being a native Norse pagan mythic motif (Simek 2007, corroborated with comparison to Slavic myth by Dumézil, 1974). He also points out a crucial parallel to the theft of Soma by Indra in Sanskrit mythology.
This point is where Simek’s contributions largely end as far as I am aware, and where I turn to the writings of another scholar, Dr Alaric Hall.

Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity (2007)

It looks like we’ve arrived at the elf segment of this writeup about elves, a mere 1,945 words in. Alaric Hall is a professor of Medieval studies at the University of Leeds, who in 2007 wrote this publication on Elves in Anglo Saxon England, also the topic of his PhD.
The first section discusses elves in a Scandinavian context, initially covering Snorri’s dichotomy of Ljósálfr and døkkálfar, light and dark elves that suspiciously align with a Christian concept of angels moreso than any old Germanic folklore. ’The categories of døkkálfar ‘dark elves’ and ljósálfar ‘light elves’ are generally accepted as his invention’ – Frog (2021)
Dark/black elves also seem to heavily conflate with dwarves, being used synonymously in the same sentences in places. Snorri’s purported version may at least hold a drop water, if only as a broken clock striking right, in that the elves he likens to dwarves take on a more antagonistic status, as Hall goes on to align dvergar (dwarves) with jǫtnar in the following pages.
Digression 2/2: I use ‘dwarves’ as a plural here, aware that common usage of that largely stems from Tolkien’s popularisation. It helps differentiate from ‘dwarfs’ (people with dwarfism) and is also simply more in line with how I write. I will never get over being marked down on a secondary school paper for using the more archaic ‘rooves’ rather than ‘roofs’. As we go on, I will get into the habit of using the ON ‘dvergr’, plural ‘dvergar’.
Much of one segment of Hall (2007) concerns aligning the Norse Æsir with álfar in contrast to this Jǫtnadvergar association. This is a notion supported by Frog when on the topic of the Old Norse word ǫss (the singular of æsir).
>*The Old English rune name *ōs is commonly accepted as a cognate, as is the plural ēse in ordered parallelism with ælfe ‘elves’ in a metrical charm, where use is consistent with the well-attested ON æsir–álfar ‘æsir –elves’ collocation\* – Frog (2021)
The purpose of this division of sides is to propose that the ‘powers’ (‘regin’) referenced by Vafþrúðnir that make up the mysterious (if we accept that ‘Vanir’ is not a label for this group) collective to whom Njǫrdr belongs - are indeed elves. This then implies a past war between æsir and elves, briefly referenced in Voluspa and ending in the sending of Njǫrðr as a hostage (Lokasenna) and creation of Kvasir, when both sides create him in the vat as a mark of peace and alliance between the two.
>”Finally, it is worth discussing a major division in the mythography of Gylfaginning which ostensibly excludes álfar: Snorri divides the gods into two groups, the æsir and the vanir. This division has been received as axiomatic in most modern mythography, but it is curiously ill-paralleled. Moreover, snorri’s usage of álfr in Skáldskaparmál is much closer to that of his poetic sources than to Gylfaginning. For example, Snorri states that ‘Mann er ok rét at kenna til allra Ása heita. Kent er ok við jǫtna heiti, ok er þat lest háð eða lastmæli. Vel þykkir kent til álfa’ (‘It is also proper to call a person by the names of all the æsir. They are also known by the names of jǫtnar, and that is mostly as satire or criticism. It is thought good to name after (the) álfar’)”
Here Hall begins to delve into parallels between the thematic role of Elves and Snorri’s Vanir within the mythos in relation the æsir. He then makes an observation quite ahead of its time on this matter:
>” This is not the place to reassess our evidence for the vanir and the assumptions which past scholarship has made about it. However, it is worth emphasising that Gylfaginning and Ynglinga saga aside, vanr is a rare word in Norse and unattested elsewhere in the Germanic languages, whereas álfr is well attested, widespread and with a range of clear Indo-European cognates.31 Whereas in Gylfaginning the gods are divided into the æsir and vanir, our other evidence, including Skáldskaparmál, repeatedly prefers to speak of æsir and álfar. The possibility arises that vanr and álfr originally denoted essentially the same mythological construct, their dissimilation in Gylfaginning perhaps reflecting Snorri’s systematising mythography.”
Indeed, the idea is still possible here for Vanir denoting its own category of beings, but it is noted that Gylfaginning is far more keen on the distinction than the primary sources Snorri draws on as we do. A coupling of æsir and álfar would seem to be a more well rooted motif. It is also supported by Hávamál stanza 143, wherein æsir and álfar are mentioned together on the same line, with dvergar and jǫtnar following thereafter. Elves are simply frustratingly rarely named, or even alluded to as individuals. Vǫlundrkviða is addressed near the end of the chapter, an unusual text full of old Norse hapaxes and likely influence from Old English. It is notable for uniquely explicitly distinguishing a character – the titular Vǫlundr – as an elf. However, it gives little insight into this topic and comparisons are largely drawn between he and Óðinn.
Mentions of elves in kennings date all the way back to the earliest attested and available skaldic poetry, including the famous Ragnarsdrápa by Bragi Bodasson sometime in the 9th century. Hall notes the general positive nature of these allusions to elves in conjunction with heroes and kings, as well as an apparent exclusivity to males. Snorri forbids the use of jǫtnar in kennings for people, but not álfar (Remember the purpose of some of his writings amounted an instructional manual in eddic poetry to medieval Icelandic poets, in response to the growing popularity in Iceland of imported continental European poetic styles). In this way, as well as the usages themselves, ‘álfar’ in kennings is quite in line with ‘aesir’. While ‘ǫss’ and ‘álfr’ are fairly regularly used as kennings for people, other beings or supernatural entities within Norse folklore and myth – dvergr, mara, þurs, jǫtunn, are entirely unused. ‘Regin’ and ‘band’ appear rarely. ‘Vanr’ is also entirely absent, maybe surprisingly to those who maintain it as a label for a group of powers on par with the æsir. This inconspicuousness of the term supports the idea of it being a largely redundant and obscure term, possibly an obsolete one by the Viking age, and not the mythos defining boundary Snorri recounts it as. The fact of the matter is that a pagan skald was far more likely to call you an ‘ǫss’ or an ‘álfr’ in praise than any other term denoting a mythic being. A kenning denoting comparison to a dvergr, jǫtunn or þurs would be explicitly mocking, if Snorri is to be believed. On the other side, ǫss, álfr (men), dis and norn (women) opposed the inhuman beings, placing elves alongside gods and humans in contrast to other creatures of lore, and potentially within the categorisation of ‘regin’ if we are to place the Njǫrðungar among them (Vafþrúðnismál st 51).
Again, the word ‘vanir’ is nowhere to be found in this division of groups that nonetheless lines up neatly with what would correspond with a category of beings in alliance with the aesir, comparable to and revered in much the same way as them, but semantically distinct with the distinguished context necessary for, say, a war between themselves and the æsir in the past, since resolved with the creation of Kvasir displaying unity between them, and now only to be brought up in the odd reference to the exchange of hostages that brought Njǫrðr to the æsir. Whether they are reflective of any aspect of the trifunctional hypothesis (fertility, most obviously) is not necessary for the theory to function and not my particular area of focus nor interest, but I would openly encourage users here to further research or look into literature discussing that aspect. As it is, I have no strong leanings on that part as of the time of writing, one way or the other.

So where are Njǫrðr and his family actually referred to as Elves?

Well, first there are possible implications. From Hall (2007):
>the Christian Sigvatr’s travels in the pagan lands east of Norway around 1020, describes a heathen ekkja (‘widow’) refusing Sigvatr board for the night for fear of ‘Óðins . . . reiði’ (‘Óðinn’s wrath’), because an alfa blót (‘álfar’s sacrifice’) is taking place in the house.49 This text implies that álfar might be worshipped in late Swedish paganism, and it is of interest, in view of the association of álfar with Freyr elsewhere, that there is strong evidence for the prominence of Freyr in Swedish paganism
Indeed, Sweden is the most prominent location for toponyms relating to the Njǫrðungar, and in the Icelandic sagas it is gleaned that Freyr and his worshippers are generally associated with Swedes moreso than Icelanders. Freyr is recorded as the ancestor to the lineage of Swedish royalty. It is also to be noted that he was granted ** Álfheimr** by the gods, as a teething gift soon after his birth. When Freyr first sees the jǫtunn woman Gerðr, he laments that ‘no one of æsir or elves will grant that we together be’ (Bellows).
The book continues, reinforcing the link between æsir and álfar and how Hávamál st 159-160 even denotes the terms in association with the word ‘tívar’ (‘gods’, the plural of the generic term directly related to the god Týr’s name). This stanza is also important for showing what appears to be a *semantic* connection between the two groups, as we’ve seen with the ‘vanir’ that poetic formulas are a factor and recurring literarily alone is not necessarily an indication of semantic association, or differentiation.
Lokasenna is then addressed, wherein the interesting conundrum is brought up of ‘æsir ok álfar’ being used to describe the guests at Aegir’s hall in the introduction, and although this poem cycles through more figures of Norse mythology in speaking roles than any other in such a short time, every single character addressed or shown as physically present lies under the traditionally described labels of æsir and Vanir. This is at least according to Snorri and modern conventional educational literature and summaries. Should this theory be true, the likely hard-to-believe notion for some that such a grand and broadly implicating notion as such prominent gods being elves being so ‘under the radar’ so to speak, would be quite soundly addressed by what would seem to be a naked and casually uttered statement of categorisation like this, perhaps largely overlooked for years as there was no reason to believe the Njǫrðungar present there were part of any group not known as vanir.
If an average Norse listener were aware that Njǫrðr and his family come from the elves, no more clarification of that fact would be needed after stating ‘the æsir and elves are at Ægir’s hall’, followed by the Njǫrðungar themselves appearing soon after. The war itself is already a poorly attested and scarcely referenced event for its seeming importance as an event within the context of the mythos. Either it was far less prominent and (for lack of a better term when typing at 1am) popular story than most today would assume, or preservation bias has simply left us with a fraction of the relevant material which otherwise would have greatly elaborated on it. In my opinion, the latter is more likely. Of course, we must also keep in mind the semantic and pragmatic possibility that any literal ‘álfar’ mentioned in the introduction may simply be silent characters, nameless extras relegated to the background. Hall sees this as unlikely, offering:
>Lokasenna is a tightly constructed poem and mythologically well informed. It would be uncharacteristic, then, for it to repeat a formula which within its mythological frame of reference is partly otiose.
He references stanza 30, where Loki accuses Freyja of having slept with every ǫss and álfr in the room, an insult heightened and made personal elsewhere with possible implications of incest, something he overtly accuses her of in his next line after she responds:
>”In the arms of thy brother the bright gods caught thee When Freyja her wind set free." (Bellows)
Incest is also something he levels towards her father Njǫrdr, although in relation to his sister-wife and not Freyja. Overall, it would outwardly appear that Loki’s second statement flows forth from his first as elaboration, and that he opens with an accusation of incest towards Freyja on top of solely promiscuity (ergi, still applicable to women as with men and almost as taboo). Hall also suggests that the obscure heiti ‘álfrǫðull’ (elf of light?) refers to Freyr, corroborating Freyr’s associate Skirnir, whose name explicitly invokes light and brightness.
In summary, there would appear to be a strong possibility that the Norse cosmos consisted somewhat of a trichotomy, mainly on the basis of location. Leaving the messy assortment of synonyms and location names of varying ages and questionable usages, we would appear to have the broad concept a land of æsir, álfar and light, a nefarious outer world of jǫtnar and their aligned associates, and a land of men, stuck in the middle with you. There is obviously a shipload of nuances, exceptions, elaborations and additions beyond that oversimplification, but it stands that the elves were a well cemented god-like phenomenon with every indication as to being viewed similarly to their æsir contemporaries. It stands also that ‘the vanir’ as a concept without Snorri’s assertive fan fiction is one built on a foundation of cardboard and PVC glue, that may be well overdue for an alternative or replacement.
I reached out to Dr Hall himself to ask as to whether his stance on this matter had changed since 2007. He replied to me that he was not following the topic particularly closely but did graciously direct me to the current latest relevant publication, that being Frog (2021). My sincere thanks to him.

References

Simek, R., & Hall, A. (2007). Dictionary of northern mythology. D.S. Brewer.
Frog, M. & Roper, J. (2011) Verses versus the Vanir: Response to Simek’s ‘Vanir Obituary’. RMN Newsletter 2: 29-37
Frog, M. (2021) The Æsir: An Obituary. Res, artes et religio : Essays in Honour of Rudolf Simek
Dumézil, G. (1939). Mythes et Dieux des germains. Leroux.
Dumézil, G. (1974). Gods of the Ancient Northmen. University of California Press. ISBN) 9780520035072
Lindow, J. (2001). Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford University Press. ISBN) 0-19-515382-0
Hall, Alaric (2007). Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity. Anglo-Saxon Studies. Vol. 8. Woodbridge, Suffolk / Rochester, New York: Boydell Press. ISBN) 978-1843832942.
Bellows, H. (1923), "The Poetic Edda: Translated from the Icelandic with an Introduction and Notes", Scandinavian Classics, New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, vol. XXI & XXII
Mallory, J. P. (2005). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Thames & Hudson. ISBN) 0-500-27616-1

this is the entire list with the Slavic/Rus, Britain/Anglo-Saxon and Celtic History and Tradition sections included
excellent translations of the Eddas to start with:
• Poetic Edda by Carolyne Larrington
• Prose Edda by Anthony Faulkes
if you cannot buy books, you may find PDFs somewhere or use free online translations. they are usually in more archaic english though. for example, here is the Poetic Edda on sacred-texts.com
if you want just a book or two to go along with the Eddas, check out "beginner accessible history" below, those books paor fantastically with the eddas and should help you understand a lot. if you want an easy intro before reading the eddas, check out "Modern prose tellings of the myths" below. its not something you can study from as theyre modern retellings, but it can give you a smoother intro to the stories before getting into the eddas. its not necessary but it can help some people.
when youre comfy with the stuff above, heres a book list for further reading. feel free to save it for later :)
feel free to skip the sections that arent relevant to your interests! these are grouped by subject so people can easily navigate to the areas they want to learn about. some things like the Finnish Lore or The Runes may not be relevant to everyone but its there if people want it. if Slavic/Rus, Britain/Anglo-Saxon or Celtic stuff doesnt interest you then be sure not to miss the Polytheist Philosophy section at the bottom!
credit to ocean keltoi for this list!
Reading List
Updating as we go. Ordered loosely by subject and region.
Recommended you buy, but some can be found in PDFs on the internets.
Beginner Accessible History

• Vikings: A Very Short Introduction - Julian D. Richards
  
• Norse Mythology: A guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs - John Lindow
  
• Gods and Myths of Northern Europe - HRE Davidson
  
• Dictionary of Northern Mythology - Rudolf Simek
  

The Runes (optional but a lot of people are into them so theyre included)

• Runes: A Handbook - Michael P. Barnes
  
• An Introduction to English Runes - R.I. Page
  
• The Icelandic Book of Futhark • Rudiments of Runelore - Stephen Pollington (Quick read)
  
• A Handbook of Saxon Sorcery and Magic - Alaric Albertsson (expands beyond academic view)
  

[reddit note: i have a whole other post giving a rundown and some tips about rune divination and research on it over here]
Major Primary History Sources

• Poetic Edda [recommended starting translation: Carolyne Larrington]
  
• Prose Edda - Snorri Sturluson [recommended starting translation: Anthony Faulkes/The Everyman Edda]
  
• Heimskringla - Snorri Sturluson
  
• History of the Danes - Saxo Grammaticus
  
• Land of Darkness - Ahmad Ibn Fadlan
  
• Germania - Tacitus (Much earlier, regarding the Germanic Tribes)
  
• Gallic War - Julius Caesar (Deals with wars against the Germanic Suebi and Celtic Gaul)
  

Sagas / Stories

• Saga of Volsungs (quick read)
  
• The Vinland Sagas (quick read)
  
• Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (quick read)
  
• Hrafnkel's Saga (quick read)
  
• Saga of the Jomsvikings (quick read)
  
• Njal's Saga
  
• Egil's Saga
  
• Saga of Grettir the Strong
  
• Gisli's Saga
  
• Eyrbyggja Saga
  
• Beowulf
  

(There's more Sagas, good lord there are Sagas and they are all worth reading)

• The Wanderer (Christianized, but good information)

Finnish Lore

• Anthology of Finnish Folktales - Helena Henderson (quick read)
  
• The Kalevala (Epic Poetry)
  

Modern Prose Tellings of the Myths

• Norse Myths - Kevin Crossley-Holland

Advanced Reading on History and Background

• Myths and Religion of the North - E.O.G Turnville-Petre
  
• Skaldic Poetry - E.O.G. Turnville-Petre
  
• Children of Ash and Elm - Neil Price
  
• Murder and Vengeance Among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology - John Lindow
  
• Loki in Scandinavian Mythology - Anna Birgitta Rooth
  
• The Viking World - Neil Price
  
• Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend - Reimund Kvideland, Henning K Sehmsdorf
  
• The Witch: A History of Fear - Ronald Hutton
  
• Ancient Scandinavia - Douglas Price
  
• The Road to Hel- HRE Davidson
  
• Old Norse Mythology - John Lindow
  
• Viking Friendship - Jon Vidar Sigurdsson
  
• European Paganism - Ken Dowden
  
• The Well and the Tree - Paul C. Bauschatz (Out of print and expensive) [REDDIT NOTE: i (u/unspecified00000) have a free PDF of this! DM me for it anytime!]
  
• Roles of the Northern Goddess - HRE Davidson
  
• The Elder Gods - Stephen Pollington
  
• Leechcraft - Stephen Pollington
  
• The Meadhall- Stephen Pollington
  

Finnish Lore

• Anthology of Finnish Folktales - Helena Henderson (quick read)
  
• The Kalevala (Epic Poetry)
  

Slavic / Rus Reading

• Russian Folk Belief - Linda J. Ivanits (introductory)
  
• The Bathhouse at Midnight - W.F. Ryan (advanced)
  

Britain / Anglo-Saxon

• The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction - John Blair
  
• Anglo-Saxon England - Frank Stenton (longer history text)
  
• Looking for the Lost Gods of England - Kathleen Herbert (quick read)
  
• The Beowulf Manuscript (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library - has English and Old English) - RD Fulk
  
• Old English Shorter Poems: Wisdom and Lyric (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library) (Volume II) (contains several works valuable to the Anglo-Saxon Heathen, including old spells, rituals, and poems)
  
• The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology - Kevin Crossley-Holland
  
• The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (available online)
  
• Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England - Rev. Cocayne (copies of 7th century Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, including fragments)
  

Celtic History and Tradition

• The Celts: A Very Short Introduction - Barry Cunliffe
  
• Druids: A Very Short Introduction - Barry Cunliffe
  
• An Introduction to Gaelic Polytheism - Marissa Hegarty
  
• Sacred Britannia - Miranda Aldhouse Green
  
• A Wee Guide to the Picts - Duncan Jones
  
• A New History of the Picts - Stuart McHardy
  
• A Brief History of the Druids - Peter Berresford Ellis
  
• The Druids - Ronald Hutton
  
• Pagan Britain - Ronald Hutton
  
• A Historical Atlas of the Celtic World - John Haywood / Barry Cunliffe
  
• Listening For the Heartbeat of God - J. Phillip Newell (Celtic Christianity)
  

Polytheist Philosophy
reddit note: if philosophy books sound a bit daunting to jump straight into, try out Ocean's Polytheist Philosophy playlist on youtube! its very accessible and often pulls from these books

• Principia Discordia: Or How I Found the Goddess and What I Did To Her When I Found Her - Malaclypse The Younger (his magnum opiate)
  
• A World Full of Gods - John Michael Greer (Druid, OBOD) [reddit note: get this secondhand, ignore chapter 11 until the end cause its shitty. honestly chapters 1-6 are the most important and you can easily stop after that and youll have got all you needed from this book]
  
• The Case for Polytheism - Steven Dillon
  
• The Deities are Many - Jordan Paper
  
• Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
  
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - Laura Numeroff
  
• Metaphysics - Aristotle
  
• The Soul - Aristotle
  
• The Satanic Bible - Anton LaVey
  
• On The Nature of the Gods - Cicero
  
• Academics - Cicero
  
• On Old Age - Cicero
  
• On Divination - Cicero
  
• On Fate - Cicero
  
• Outlines of Pyrrhonism - Sextus Empiricus
  

phew thats a long list! theres also a reading list on the longship however i find that it doesnt have many primary sources and instead focuses more on the general religious aspect of it. i followed the beginners list when i was new and found that i had a lot of books on how to worship etc but... no information about the gods themselves to put the books/info to use with, not even an Edda cause thats under Advanced reading for some reason (but there are different translations of the Poetic Edda available which are at different skill levels so theres no reason you cant go from Crossley-Holland to an easier Edda like Larrington's). i really do not recommend the Longship's reading list.
If you want a book on wights I recommend The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux. great book - its also on the longship's list, and its one of the very few decent books the longship has listed.

When I was in primary school, we had this verse/poem we had to say every morning, which was called "Ich schaue in die Welt" by Rudolf Steiner (English: "I look around in the world", here in the Netherlands known as "Ik zie rond in de wereld"), and today I decided to translate it to Toki Pona.
I am still a rookie when it comes to Toki Pona, and I am still not sure about my translation, so if you see mistakes or have suggestions, please leave a comment!
~
mi lukin lon ma.
ni la suno li pana e suno.
ni la mun lili li suno.
ni la kiwen li awen.
ni la kasi li lon li suli.
ni la soweli li pilin li lon.
ni la jan pi kon jan,
li tomo e jan kon.
mi lukin lon kon jan,
ni li lon insa mi.
jan sewi li pali,
lon suno pi suno en kon jan,
en lon ma selo,
en lon kon jan pi insa
jan sewi o,
mi wile sinpin pi toki wile e sina,
la wawa en sewi,
pi sona en pali,
li suli lon mi
~

Master list of post
https://www.reddit.com/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/10q7cht/elden_ring_explained_mythology_and_symbolism
Fenrir is Maliketh as well as all other wolf figures in the game at least symbolically.
*Fenrir is the great wolf in Norse Mythology who breaks free from his chains at Ragnarök, the twilight of the gods, kills Odin, and is then killed by Odin’s son Vidarr.
Fenrir is the son of the trickster god Loki and brother of the World Serpent Jormungandr and the jotunn Hel.*
Fenrir's is the beast of Ragnarök who will kill Odin. His siblings are a enormous snake and a death godesss who is the descended of a giant.
He is the son of Loki so Radagon. This is how we connect Radhan to the obvious Rykard and Ranni characters.
Radhan is the Red Lion "chained to his horse" son of Radagon(see loki post) radagon has red wolves who are Fenrir. Red wolf/Red Lion.
the poem where a prophetess summoned by Odin speaks of the beginning and end of the world, mentions the detail of the escape of Fenrir from his trap in stanza 44 as a sign of the apocalypse.
When we defeate Garraq also Maliketh, (who is Fenrir) breaks free and becomes his true Ragnarök form. Here he is the death of the gods.
He is a double unity symbol as he is gray/white and has black armor.
He also has The Red Rune of Death sealed inside his black moon meteor sword.
The same stanza names one more monster who will howl and cause havoc at Ragnarök, the hound Garm, guardian of the underworld
This is about Blaidd who is Ranni's wolf. Blaidd "breaks free" and his Red shadow attacks us.
Ranni is an Odin figure as I established extensively in my Gloam Eyed Queen post.
had Fenrir chained to a rock.
Blaidd must serve Ranni. Chained
Radhan has to use his horse. Chained
Maliketh is Gurraq and will talk more specifically about his chains below.
Odin is disgusted by Jormungandr and hurls him into the sea. He sends Hel to the dark realm of Niflhel (usually given as Hel) below the icy world of Niflheim where she is given “charge of the Nine Realms”
So all Odin figures are ultimately the Gloam Eyed One (who I'm starting to think had one eyed and one hand but will get there) and doesn't like these kids.
and Hel, a goddess who is half living woman and half a blue, decomposing corpse.
Hello Ranni and Melina the Twinbird
usually understood to mean “creature of expectation” because he was prophesied to participate in the destruction of the gods.
Fenrir is going to cause Ragnarök. It's certain but the underlying truth of this story is it's all the gods fault. By trying to avert prophecy he ensures it. Classic.
Loki’s children had no part in this, however, and seem to have been completely innocent until abused by the gods of Asgard
Radagon's children are ostracized in the Lands Between except for Radhan who is like Fenrir, and Fenrir is a pet to the gods until he starts to get to big and is Chained.
Radhan serves the Golden Order and is huge and chained to his horse"
The Binding of Fenrir begins with the gods learning that Loki’s children are being raised by their mother Angrboda in the giant’s realm of Jotunheim.
A prophecy informs them that these three children will one day cause the gods great distress and so Odin either sends for them or leads the expedition that takes them from their mother.
Radagon took his children with him back to Lyndell at least for a time (probably cast them out when he gets prophetic knowledge somehow he is Marika and she is Odin)
we have references to priest seeing visions of the tree burning. I interpret this as vision of Ragnarök and Radagon most likely had them too as Odin did and they both have one eye and he us Marika who is Odin.
The Nine Realms would exist until the day of Ragnarök when all would be destroyed in a great battle between the gods – the forces of order – and those of chaos which included the god Loki and his children.
Again the implication is the mistreatment of Loki's kids causes Ragnarök and the same seems to be true for Elden Ring.
Skoll and Hati will be covered more in depth in a different post. I will tell you who they are at least in the past.
Maliketh was Sköll and he attacks the Gloam Eyed Queen/the moon
GEQ is Odin so this is Fenrir attacking Odin
Bernahl is both Hati and Surtr he attacks.
Freyja the masculine half of the GEO the Sun God(will discuss this later) who is also Frigg (another time) and Fells the sun.
He has the Beast Champion Set that has 3 wolf men holding a spear. He is also Fenrir
His name is 2 letters away from Burn All. He hangs out in Volcano Manor that has a lot of Hell associations and he burns a Maiden. This guy is fire.
This is the Surtr connection. Surtr kills Freyja.
The burning maiden is a references to Gullvieg who burns herself 3 times and is also most likely Frigg, who is also the male version of Freyja. This connects us back to the sun.
Sköll and Hati are Fenrir
In Norse mythology, Sköll (Old Norse: Skǫll, "Treachery"[1] or "Mockery"[2]) is a wolf that, according to Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, chases the Sun (personified as a goddess, Sól). Hati Hróðvitnisson chases the Moon (personified, see Máni).
Ultimately, however, proposing a definitive genealogical relationship between Fenrir, Skoll, and Hati is futile. The sources themselves give contradictory interpretations, which reflects the lack of systematization or codification in the Norse religion back when it was a living tradition.
According to Rudolf Simek, it is possible that Sköll is another name for Fenrir,
So again all wolves are Fenrir.
The same stanza names one more monster who will howl and cause havoc at Ragnarök, the hound Garm,
So this is Blaidd and Ranni who is a Loki figure.
(Again these figures are all aspects of the same orginal God that was split in two and has been reborn several times. It gets confusing)
Loki is a trickster god who upsets the established order but these types of deities (or spirits), in any culture, encourage change and transformation.
We see how this plays into Ranni's story
Loki, therefore, is not evil; he is only a serious bother to gods and humanity by introducing the unexpected – and almost always unwelcome or even tragic – to the ordered worlds.
Ranni isn't evil. She is ostracized and an agent of chaos but sometimes these things are needed to achieve balance
we find out that Tyr is the only one brave enough to feed the wolf. Due to his strength and wish to brag and achieve fame, Fenrir accepts the gods‘ challenge to bind him
The Gods are tricking Fenrir by appealing to his vanity.
The gods hesitate to give answer, making Fenrir more suspicious, but his friend Tyr volunteers, placing his hand in the wolf’s mouth
Tyr and Fenrir are friends and they trust each other. This should make us think of Blaidd and Ranni by proxy Radagon/Marika and Maliketh
Fenrir is bound by the gods with the fantastic chain Gleipnir, fashioned by the dwarves out of six things: the noise of a cat’s step, the beards of women, the roots of mountains, the nerves of bears, the breath of fishes, and the spittle of birds - all imaginary ingredients, since real ones could not work
So Fenrir's chains are made from things that don't exist, they are imaginary. This is why Maliketh is just staying in Farum Azula without being chained for real.
Then Tyr comes forward and offers his hand, and while the wolf struggles the chain becomes tougher.
The chaining of Fenrir costs the god Tyr his right hand, while the rest of the gods are laughing because they finally manage to catch Fenrir.
Tyr is one handed, Radagon is one handed.
As mentioned before Marika has one eye, Odin has one eye. One of Marika's arms is being ripped off as she hangs. Like Tyr’s hand in Fenrirs mouth being torn (Maliketh hung Marika killing only her body with the Red Rune which only kills the body/life half. Her spirit still lives as Melina)
Radagon has one hand as clearly seen when we fight him.
This all symbolically says that the Gloam Eyed One was Tyr.
Who was split into Odin and Loki. Each if these figures are unity symbols due to gender swapping.
Prometheus is not only chained to the rock
the Norse story of Fenrir echoes this same theme.*
Fenrir is also a Prometheus figure. It's his actions that allow the sun to fall and th Elden Ring to fall to the world below.
Etymology suggests that Tyr might have played a more prominent role before the literary sources and the Viking Age. Týr - proto-Germanic Tiwaz, Old English Tīw, Old High German Ziu - comes from the same Indo-European root as Zeus in Greek, Ju (from Jupiter) in Latin or Dyáus in Sanskrit.
So Tyr is connected to Jupiter. As we discussed in the Fell God post the orginal Oak Tree is heavily connected to Jupiter and when the tree falls it becomes his son Vulcan the forge/volcano.
Radagon is a one eyed giant blacksmith who is the reborn sun. He is Jupiter's sun. Radagon is split out of Tyr.
(He takes part in two adventures, one involving a monster to whom he sacrifices his hand, and one where he joins Thor to retrieve a cauldron. His name, related to Zeus or Jupiter*
Thor is Tyr's brother who is the son of a giant and uses a hammer. Radagon shares these traits. This is to reinforce the idea I've been talking about. Radagon from the GEO. Father, son, brothers. The point is they are linked by blood.
In Norse sources, the word Tyr simply meaning god could also be used generically in combination with other elements so as to describe a god in a certain way.
So this is the crux of all of thus. Tyr is all gods. GEO is the orginal God that has been divided (like Ymir who also had a hand removed to make the sun) All the Gods in game descended from The GEO and the all have symbolic echos that connect all of them back to GEO.
Odin has many such names, enforcing the idea that he might have based some of his attributes on the original Tyr.
This is to reinforce the idea of Odin and Tyrs connection the same way they reinforced Radagons.
Tyr also has a corresponding rune, the t-rune, with possible magical attributes
A T Rune? That seems like Marika's Rune. The Rune of Death is also a T just the cross is turned down. This is a clue.
According to the written sources, Odin clearly emerges at the top of the hierarchy.
At the end of the game Marika is in control. She is Radagons feminine half and therefore the Odin figure.
Again this is amalgamation of mythology/symbolism/allegory
Thanks for reading
https://norse-mythology.org/skoll-hati/
https://www.worldhistory.org/Ty
https://www.worldhistory.org/Fenrir

Master list of post
https://www.reddit.com/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/10q7cht/elden_ring_explained_mythology_and_symbolism
Fenrir is Maliketh as well as all other wolf figures in the game at least symbolically.
*Fenrir is the great wolf in Norse Mythology who breaks free from his chains at Ragnarök, the twilight of the gods, kills Odin, and is then killed by Odin’s son Vidarr.
Fenrir is the son of the trickster god Loki and brother of the World Serpent Jormungandr and the jotunn Hel.*
Fenrir's is the beast of Ragnarök who will kill Odin. His siblings are a enormous snake and a death godesss who is the descended of a giant.
He is the son of Loki so Radagon. This is how we connect Radhan to the obvious Rykard and Ranni characters.
Radhan is the Red Lion "chained to his horse" son of Radagon(see loki post) radagon has red wolves who are Fenrir. Red wolf/Red Lion.
the poem where a prophetess summoned by Odin speaks of the beginning and end of the world, mentions the detail of the escape of Fenrir from his trap in stanza 44 as a sign of the apocalypse.
When we defeate Garraq also Maliketh, (who is Fenrir) breaks free and becomes his true Ragnarök form. Here he is the death of the gods.
He is a double unity symbol as he is gray/white and has black armor.
He also has The Red Rune of Death sealed inside his black moon meteor sword.
The same stanza names one more monster who will howl and cause havoc at Ragnarök, the hound Garm, guardian of the underworld
This is about Blaidd who is Ranni's wolf. Blaidd "breaks free" and his Red shadow attacks us.
Ranni is an Odin figure as I established extensively in my Gloam Eyed Queen post.
had Fenrir chained to a rock.
Blaidd must serve Ranni. Chained
Radhan has to use his horse. Chained
Maliketh is Gurraq and will talk more specifically about his chains below.
Odin is disgusted by Jormungandr and hurls him into the sea. He sends Hel to the dark realm of Niflhel (usually given as Hel) below the icy world of Niflheim where she is given “charge of the Nine Realms”
So all Odin figures are ultimately the Gloam Eyed One (who I'm starting to think had one eyed and one hand but will get there) and doesn't like these kids.
and Hel, a goddess who is half living woman and half a blue, decomposing corpse.
Hello Ranni and Melina the Twinbird
usually understood to mean “creature of expectation” because he was prophesied to participate in the destruction of the gods.
Fenrir is going to cause Ragnarök. It's certain but the underlying truth of this story is it's all the gods fault. By trying to avert prophecy he ensures it. Classic.
Loki’s children had no part in this, however, and seem to have been completely innocent until abused by the gods of Asgard
Radagon's children are ostracized in the Lands Between except for Radhan who is like Fenrir, and Fenrir is a pet to the gods until he starts to get to big and is Chained.
Radhan serves the Golden Order and is huge and chained to his horse"
The Binding of Fenrir begins with the gods learning that Loki’s children are being raised by their mother Angrboda in the giant’s realm of Jotunheim.
A prophecy informs them that these three children will one day cause the gods great distress and so Odin either sends for them or leads the expedition that takes them from their mother.
Radagon took his children with him back to Lyndell at least for a time (probably cast them out when he gets prophetic knowledge somehow he is Marika and she is Odin)
we have references to priest seeing visions of the tree burning. I interpret this as vision of Ragnarök and Radagon most likely had them too as Odin did and they both have one eye and he us Marika who is Odin.
The Nine Realms would exist until the day of Ragnarök when all would be destroyed in a great battle between the gods – the forces of order – and those of chaos which included the god Loki and his children.
Again the implication is the mistreatment of Loki's kids causes Ragnarök and the same seems to be true for Elden Ring.
Skoll and Hati will be covered more in depth in a different post. I will tell you who they are at least in the past.
Maliketh was Sköll and he attacks the Gloam Eyed Queen/the moon
GEQ is Odin so this is Fenrir attacking Odin
Bernahl is both Hati and Surtr he attacks.
Freyja the masculine half of the GEO the Sun God(will discuss this later) who is also Frigg (another time) and Fells the sun.
He has the Beast Champion Set that has 3 wolf men holding a spear. He is also Fenrir
His name is 2 letters away from Burn All. He hangs out in Volcano Manor that has a lot of Hell associations and he burns a Maiden. This guy is fire.
This is the Surtr connection. Surtr kills Freyja.
The burning maiden is a references to Gullvieg who burns herself 3 times and is also most likely Frigg, who is also the male version of Freyja. This connects us back to the sun.
Sköll and Hati are Fenrir
In Norse mythology, Sköll (Old Norse: Skǫll, "Treachery"[1] or "Mockery"[2]) is a wolf that, according to Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, chases the Sun (personified as a goddess, Sól). Hati Hróðvitnisson chases the Moon (personified, see Máni).
Ultimately, however, proposing a definitive genealogical relationship between Fenrir, Skoll, and Hati is futile. The sources themselves give contradictory interpretations, which reflects the lack of systematization or codification in the Norse religion back when it was a living tradition.
According to Rudolf Simek, it is possible that Sköll is another name for Fenrir,
So again all wolves are Fenrir.
The same stanza names one more monster who will howl and cause havoc at Ragnarök, the hound Garm,
So this is Blaidd and Ranni who is a Loki figure.
(Again these figures are all aspects of the same orginal God that was split in two and has been reborn several times. It gets confusing)
Loki is a trickster god who upsets the established order but these types of deities (or spirits), in any culture, encourage change and transformation.
We see how this plays into Ranni's story
Loki, therefore, is not evil; he is only a serious bother to gods and humanity by introducing the unexpected – and almost always unwelcome or even tragic – to the ordered worlds.
Ranni isn't evil. She is ostracized and an agent of chaos but sometimes these things are needed to achieve balance
we find out that Tyr is the only one brave enough to feed the wolf. Due to his strength and wish to brag and achieve fame, Fenrir accepts the gods‘ challenge to bind him
The Gods are tricking Fenrir by appealing to his vanity.
The gods hesitate to give answer, making Fenrir more suspicious, but his friend Tyr volunteers, placing his hand in the wolf’s mouth
Tyr and Fenrir are friends and they trust each other. This should make us think of Blaidd and Ranni by proxy Radagon/Marika and Maliketh
Fenrir is bound by the gods with the fantastic chain Gleipnir, fashioned by the dwarves out of six things: the noise of a cat’s step, the beards of women, the roots of mountains, the nerves of bears, the breath of fishes, and the spittle of birds - all imaginary ingredients, since real ones could not work
So Fenrir's chains are made from things that don't exist, they are imaginary. This is why Maliketh is just staying in Farum Azula without being chained for real.
Then Tyr comes forward and offers his hand, and while the wolf struggles the chain becomes tougher.
The chaining of Fenrir costs the god Tyr his right hand, while the rest of the gods are laughing because they finally manage to catch Fenrir.
Tyr is one handed, Radagon is one handed.
As mentioned before Marika has one eye, Odin has one eye. One of Marika's arms is being ripped off as she hangs. Like Tyr’s hand in Fenrirs mouth being torn (Maliketh hung Marika killing only her body with the Red Rune which only kills the body/life half. Her spirit still lives as Melina)
Radagon has one hand as clearly seen when we fight him.
This all symbolically says that the Gloam Eyed One was Tyr.
Who was split into Odin and Loki. Each if these figures are unity symbols due to gender swapping.
Prometheus is not only chained to the rock
the Norse story of Fenrir echoes this same theme.*
Fenrir is also a Prometheus figure. It's his actions that allow the sun to fall and th Elden Ring to fall to the world below.
Etymology suggests that Tyr might have played a more prominent role before the literary sources and the Viking Age. Týr - proto-Germanic Tiwaz, Old English Tīw, Old High German Ziu - comes from the same Indo-European root as Zeus in Greek, Ju (from Jupiter) in Latin or Dyáus in Sanskrit.
So Tyr is connected to Jupiter. As we discussed in the Fell God post the orginal Oak Tree is heavily connected to Jupiter and when the tree falls it becomes his son Vulcan the forge/volcano.
Radagon is a one eyed giant blacksmith who is the reborn sun. He is Jupiter's sun. Radagon is split out of Tyr.
(He takes part in two adventures, one involving a monster to whom he sacrifices his hand, and one where he joins Thor to retrieve a cauldron. His name, related to Zeus or Jupiter*
Thor is Tyr's brother who is the son of a giant and uses a hammer. Radagon shares these traits. This is to reinforce the idea I've been talking about. Radagon from the GEO. Father, son, brothers. The point is they are linked by blood.
In Norse sources, the word Tyr simply meaning god could also be used generically in combination with other elements so as to describe a god in a certain way.
So this is the crux of all of thus. Tyr is all gods. GEO is the orginal God that has been divided (like Ymir who also had a hand removed to make the sun) All the Gods in game descended from The GEO and the all have symbolic echos that connect all of them back to GEO.
Odin has many such names, enforcing the idea that he might have based some of his attributes on the original Tyr.
This is to reinforce the idea of Odin and Tyrs connection the same way they reinforced Radagons.
Tyr also has a corresponding rune, the t-rune, with possible magical attributes
A T Rune? That seems like Marika's Rune. The Rune of Death is also a T just the cross is turned down. This is a clue.
According to the written sources, Odin clearly emerges at the top of the hierarchy.
At the end of the game Marika is in control. She is Radagons feminine half and therefore the Odin figure.
Again this is amalgamation of mythology/symbolism/allegory
Thanks for reading
https://norse-mythology.org/skoll-hati/
https://www.worldhistory.org/Ty
https://www.worldhistory.org/Fenrir

Introduction by Owen Barfield
​
The first time I heard the word "sexy" used was in a performance of Bernard Shaw's late play The Apple Cart, and I remember the titters it evoked in the audience. It was not long before the neologism had entered into general use; but I think the second World War had intervened before our vocabulary descended even farther to the unlovely, if not positively hideous expression "having sex," ubiquitous now in the media and to be heard even in courts of law. Thus the vulgarization of language reflects, and in doing so helps forward, the decomposition of the human spirit.
The assumption of an emergent evolution, whereby man has merely evolved from the status of an animal, is today built into our language on pretty well all subjects, including notably the subject of sex. It is accordingly taken for granted in most quarters that the sexual instinct is the underlying reality and that what is called 'love' is a late-come embroidery on it. The fact that this word still always denotes sex-love, unless the context otherwise directs, as for instance in its attributive uses - love poems, love tokens, love-sick, love life, etc. - seems at first sight to support this view. The fact that there are nevertheless plenty of contexts in which it means nothing of the sort has led on the one hand to a great deal of confused feeling and confused thinking, and on the other hand to some profound and valuable distinguos, one of the latest being C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves. It is hardly surprising that not a few have reacted to the confusion by insisting on an opposition amounting to incompatibility between Eros and Agape, between the earthly Aphrodite Pandemos of Plato and his sublime Aphrodite Urania. If they had their way, we should cease using the same word for at least two entirely different things.
That is not the conclusion arrived at by Vladimir Solovyov. Where Lewis, with all due allowance for interaction, divides, Solovyov unites. "For good reason," he writes,

• sexual relations are not merely termed love, but are also generally acknowledged to represent love par excellence, being the type and ideal of all other kinds of love (cf. the Songs of Songs and the Apocalypse).

Others, notably Coventry Patmore, have arrived at the same conclusion on the same or similar grounds, but none I think by the same method. We have to extract Patmore's philosophy of love from poems and aphorisms, whereas Solovyov's approach is quietly scientific. Any attempt, he points out, to account for the sexual relation between human beings and to determine its true function, must account for all the phenomena, not only some of them; and yet one very conspicuous phenomenon, left completely out of account in a biologically biased treatment of the subject, is the experience known as being in love.
Not that the other factors are in their turn ignored. Solovyov does not start from the subjective experience of being in love and ingeniously evolve a whole metaphysics from it. He opens with a biological survey, which easily, and to my mind irresistibly, refutes the age-old presumption (based, it would seem, on an unholy alliance between Darwinian theory and a sentence in the Prayer Book marriage service) that the teleology of sexual attraction is the preservation of the species by multiplication. On the contrary, it is apparent from the whole tendency of biological evolution that nature's purpose or goal (or whatever continuity it is that the concept of evolution presupposes) has been the development of more complex and, with that, of more highly individualized and thus more perfect organisms. From the fish to the higher mammals quantity of offspring steadily decreases as subtlety of organic structure increases; reproduction is in inverse proportion to specific quality. On the other hand the factor of sexual attraction in bringing about reproduction is in direct proportion. On the next or sociological level he has little difficulty in showing that the same is true of the factor of romantic passion in sexual attraction. Both history and literature show that it contributes nothing towards the production of either more or better offspring, and may often, as in the case of Romeo and Juliet, actually frustrate any such production at all.
Why then has nature, or the evolutionary process, taken the trouble to bring about this obtrusively conspicuous ingredient in the make-up of homo sapiens? It is in its answer to this question that the originality (which is not the same thing as novelty) of this little book resides. The answer is approached step by step. It would seem, the argument proceeds, that that ingredient must positively have been an end in itself - and not perhaps an unworthy one. This is a long step already out of the Darwin-Freud paradigm, and one might be not unhappy to rest awhile in it. But it turns out to be only the first step. The next, and the most difficult one, constituting therefore the main substance of the book, is to show that even here nature is after all still at her old tricks, developing quality at the expense of quantity. The rarest complex organization of all, human individuality, is an end in itself by contrast with what has gone before; but on a plane now where ends in themselves are also means to an end. It is the plane of what the author calls "the unity-of-the-all idea," or as it was translated in Janet Marshall's earlier English version "the all-one idea."
Being, at the level of human individuality, is characterized above all by a relation between whole and part that is different from the everyday one that is familiar to us. We may catch a glimpse of it if we reflect, in some depth, on the true nature of a great work of art. Recent advocates of 'holism' in philosophy or science seem also to be feeling their way towards it. It is a relation no longer limited by the manacles of space and time, so that interpenetration replaces aggregation; one where the part becomes more specifically and individually a part - and thus pro tanto an end in itself - precisely as it comes more and more to contain and represent the Whole.
Sex-love is for most human beings their first, if not their only, concrete experience of the possibility of such an interpenetration with other parts, and thus potentially with the Whole.

• The meaning and worth of love, as a feeling, is that it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge for another the same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in ourselves. Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the very center of our personal lives.

Love, for Solovyov, is a cross, with both horizontal and vertical co-ordinates. Its horizontal, human, one-one relation is made possible by its other vertical, all-in-one co-ordinate. The light in the shining eyes of an unspoiled boy or girl in love is no merely earthly light. It is a primitive and transient glimpse of the Divine image in another human being, and thus of God's love for man, which is itself the ground of the all-in-unity idea.

• This living ideal of the Divine love, antecedent to our love, contains in itself the secret of the idealization of our love. In it the idealization of the lower being exists together with an incipient realization of the higher, and in this is the truth of love's intense emotion.

Love, our author tells us, is like language. Such significance as the word possesses for the formation of human society and culture, love also possesses in a still greater degree for the creation of true human individuality. Love is "given," as the meanings of words are given, without our co-operation. But, being given, it demands to be used - for the creation of true individuality. The realization of "organic solidarity" does require our co-operation. "The task of love consists in justifying in deed that meaning of love which at first is given only in feeling" - a doctrine that found early and crude expression in the idea of chivalry.
I have said that originality is not the same thing as novelty. Originality takes us forward, not because it thinks what was never thought before, but because it thinks in harmony with the 'origin' of its subject matter. Solovyov's "organic solidarity" is no brand-new invention. I see his book rather as a timely and fruitful blossom on a tree, whose roots are deep in the past. The same sap surely was rising in Thomas Traherne's genius when he wrote

• That violence whereby sometimes a man doteth upon one creature is but a little spark of that love, even towards all, which lurketh in his nature. When we dote upon perfections and beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too much, but other things too little. Never was anything in this world loved too much, but many things have been loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.

But those roots delve much deeper than the seventeenth century. The tree is perhaps as old as Yggdrasil itself. Only it is not just its roots that are hidden from the eyes of most of us in their fruitful soil. The trunk itself is wrapped around by a mass of historical detritus that had its origin elsewhere and has largely shaped the world in which we live. There are two distinct intellectual genealogies: on the one hand, Bacon-Descartes-Newton-Lyell-Darwin-Freud and the reductionism which has finally succeeded in reducing the humanity of gender to the explicit animalism of 'sex'. On the other - what? Pythagoras-Platonism-Sufism-Dante-the Fedeli d'Amore of Renaissance Italy-the Rosa Alchemica-the Rosicrucian impulse-Hermeticism-Romanticism; things we have to dig for rather than having them thrown at our heads. Most significant of all perhaps, if we were to dig assiduously enough, would be the startlingly simultaneous appearance all over Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the complex myth of the Holy Grail.
Can we trace any change or development here? Or is it simply the same wisdom-stream surfacing at intervals along its underground course, like the waters in Ruskin's story The King of the Golden River? I think we can. I think it will be found that its earlier manifestations-with the exception perhaps of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal-concentrated more on the vertical dimension, on the man-God relation rather than the man-man or man-woman one. Emphasis on the horizonal dimension is of course post-Christian and is still perhaps in its infancy. It is audible in the quotation from Traherne. In Solovyov it is well to the fore.

• "This" may become the "all" only together with others, only together with others can an individual realize his absolute significance - become an inseparable and irreplaceable part of the universal whole, an independent living and original organ of absolute life.

It follows naturally from this that the author should, in his closing pages, touch on the sociological aspects of his doctrine. The relation between the individual and his social or civic unit should be "syzygetic" (from the Greek συζυγία, close union).

• As for sexual love (in the sphere of personal existence), the single "other" is at the same time all, so, on its side, the social all, by power of the positive solidarity of all its elements, ought to manifest itself for each of them as a real unity, as the other living being which would fulfill him in a new wider sphere. . . . This bond between the living human source (personal) and the unity-of-the-all idea incarnated in the social spiritual-physical organism, ought to be a living syzygetic relation.

If our social structure is disintegrating, is that not precisely because it has no constitutive spiritual principle, no "idea" in Solovyov's (and Coleridge's) sense of the term, incarnate in it? In the structure that preceded it, namely feudalism, there was such an incarnate idea, the idea of hierarchy; and the true, Dionysian idea of hierarchy is a spiritual principles, involving some measure of interpenetration. It is a mistake to deny its value by looking only at its abuses and its increasing distortion as time went on and accepted hierarchy turned gradually into resentful class-consciousness. But it would equally be a mistake to attempt to restore it. What is needed is a different idea to replace that of hierarchy. And I at least can think of none more suitable, more called for by the Zeitgeist, than this of Solovyov's. It is tragic indeed to reflect how few are aware that, as long as sixty years ago, a social structure incarnating the idea of organic solidarity was adumbrated, even into political and economic detail, by Rudolf Steiner in The Threefold Social Order, World Economy and other books and lectures.
To revert to my metaphor, there can be little doubt that the continued life of human society, if not of the earth itself, will in the long run depend on the life and health of the tree, not on the detritus that is smothering it. We are told that at the age of twelve Solovyov once wrote in a letter to his cousin and one-time fiancée that his idea was the "work of transforming the world." If I can hardly help smiling at this juvenile optimism, neither can I be altogether surprised that he should have felt that way. One might indeed be more inclined to think, in connection with such a far perspective, of other works of his, and notably the apocalyptic War, Progress and the End of History, Including a Short Story of the Anti-Christ. And yet I believe it would be difficult in exaggerate the potential importance of just this little book about love, because it is a subject with which precisely the young among us are, or ought to be, concerned. What, I wonder, are its actual prospects? I should not like to say. Even in the age that is fast coming upon us we may perhaps assume that there will still be found, here or there, one or two of Chaucer's "yonge fresshe folkes he or she" who have not had all finer sensibility thumped out of them by electronic decibels before reaching the age of puberty; so that what Charles Williams called "the Beatrician moment" never even makes its appearance. Fortunate indeed, if so, will be the bewildered adolescent who finds this golden key in his hands before it is too late, before the dead weight of common sense - communis sensus, the share metaphysic of the society around him - has taught hum to abandon the idle fancy of being in love and get down to the serious business of having sex. There will be few enough of them in any case. But then we are told on good authority that "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."
​
Owen Barfield
South Darenth
February 1984

One might reasonably assume that after his death, there would be no completely new controversies involving Dmitri Shostakovich or his music. But the composer’s most disputed work – one which overshadows his life, music, and entire career to the present day – was released posthumously.
There can be little doubt that at the time of his death, Shostakovich was seen in the West as – in a phrase used several times by legendary music scholar Richard Taruskin – “perhaps Soviet Russia’s most loyal musical son.” His obituary in The New York Times described him as “a committed Communist who accepted the sometimes harsh ideological criticism to which his modernistic works were periodically subjected.” It added, “He had been brought up and conditioned by the Soviet ideology, and considered his music an expression of the Russian people, in line with the doctrines espoused by the Central Committee of the U.S.S.R.”
In 1994, Steve Burton summarized the situation in The Michigan Daily, “At the time of his death, Shostakovich was widely viewed in the West as something of an embarrassment – a promising enfant terrible turned reactionary party-line hack, churning out noisy symphonic odes to Stalin and less noisy but no less empty wall-paper style chamber music.”
This view of Shostakovich as loyal Communist and Stalinist toady was – considering the circumstances – understandable. Some of his programmatic work bore blatantly pro-Communist and pro-Soviet subtitles like “The Year 1905,” “The Year 1917,” and “March of the Soviet Militia.” Other compositions, such as “The Song of the Forests” and the score for The Fall of Berlin (1940), were undoubtedly pro-Stalin propaganda, by extension making Shostakovich a pro-Stalin composer.
If that was too subtle, there were always Shostakovich’s own words. He regularly read speeches hailing the policies and guidance of the Communist Party when it came to the culture of the Soviet Union – exactly along Party lines. In print, articles under his name echoed this position. On his first visit to the U.S.A. in 1949, he denounced Stravinsky and Prokofiev for their “formalism” – exactly along Party lines. He also denounced himself and his own works when required – exactly along Party lines. At the General Assembly of Soviet Composers on February 17, 1948 (shortly after having been denounced by the Communist Party for the second time), Shostakovich apologized for his work from the stage, explaining, “...between my subjective intentions and objective results there was an appalling gap. The absence, in my works, of the interpretation of folk art, that great spirit by which our people lives, has been with utmost clarity and definiteness pointed out by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, Bolsheviks.”
Among his many awards, he was a Hero of Socialist Labour (the highest decorative award in the U.S.S.R.) and had won both the Lenin Prize and the Stalin Prize. And, of course, he did actually join the Communist Party and become General Secretary of the Composers’ Union in 1960. His position as a leading figure in Soviet music was well-established.
So, while many of his works were popular and critically successful, until Testimony he does seem to have been perceived by many in the West as something of a coward and political idiot who had written magnificent music (and also some bluster) but was ultimately stained because of his public support for a tyrannical, communist dictatorship.
In 1979, four years after his death, came Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich – As Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov. The book seems to have been not so much published as detonated. Against the accepted view of the composer as loyal Stalinist lackey, his memoirs revealed a half-broken, deeply bitter man who had always held a venomous scorn for Stalin and the murderous Soviet system. Like everyone else, he had been held hostage in a slave state. Most of his existence had been spent in terror along with everyone else in a nation which had been transformed into a cross between an asylum and an abattoir. At the end of his life he saw only “mountains of corpses.” His public speeches and articles published under his name had, of course, meant absolutely nothing and were usually written by the Party. They were all hostage letters. Like everyone else in the Soviet Union, he simply read whatever speeches, signed whatever documents, and completed whatever musical assignments were given to him to try and protect himself and his family. The only way to have even the remotest possibility of avoiding arrest, imprisonment, torture, deportation to a GULAG camp, or execution for himself and/or his family, was to make the speech, sign the document, or write the ode.
His memoirs gave readers insight into how his overwhelming antipathy for this psychotic dictatorship and deep sympathy for his fellow Russians was not just part of his life, but part of his music. Testimony was both a guide to the unbearably cruel reality of Stalin’s rule, but also how some of the author’s music was – in part – a way of expressing his fear and loathing of that hateful nightmare.
For some, this could not help but shift their perception of his work. In some cases, what once was heard simply as Soviet triumphalism now had overtones of being grotesque, sarcastic portraits of Stalin and his bloated, pompous, fascist autocracy. Melancholy movements had, to some, the subtext of being laments for victims of Stalin’s regime or the hopelessness of the era. Such analysis is always fraught with danger, but Shostakovich’s words could hardly be ignored. Regardless of any direct association with his own personal experiences, the sarcasm, satire, and humour became more pronounced, reflecting the sarcastic, satirical, and humorous individual revealed in Testimony. At the very least, after reading the words of one of the century’s most celebrated composers, a re-examination of the work by the West seemed in order.
But just as the music world was dealing with the fallout from the memoirs, another bombshell dropped. Laurel Fay (at the time still a graduate student in musicology at Cornell University with a specific interest in Shostakovich and Volkov’s book) conducted her own investigation into the memoirs and became suspicious, identifying what she believed was recycled material from previously published sources and other inconsistencies.
She examined the available manuscripts of Testimony and in April 1980, presented her findings at a meeting of the Midwest chapter of the American Musicological Society – later publishing an article in the academic journal The Russian Review under the title, “Shostakovich versus Volkov: Whose Testimony?” where her work became more widely known.
She made numerous claims questioning the authenticity of the memoirs, noting that in the available manuscripts, only the first page of each chapter had been signed by the composer. She also identified passages in the book that seemed identical to statements which had previously appeared in print, implying this was a cut-and-paste job from previous works and not strictly the result of conversations with Shostakovich, as Volkov claimed. Her insinuation was that Volkov simply inserted whatever material he felt like after acquiring the composer’s signature. Other discrepancies were noted. Over time, as Fay and others built their case, the accusations became clear: Testimony was a forgery and Solomon Volkov was a fraud.
The book had (of course) prompted predictable denunciations from the Soviets upon its release. According to the KGB, the work was a “pathetic fake,” and denunciations from leading figures in Russian music (exactly along Party lines) were presented to the public. Officially, Testimony was nothing more than a poorly executed volley in the Cultural Cold War between East and West. Complaints from the KGB were one thing, but academic investigations with serious questions about authenticity were something else.
Yet the matter was not so easily decided. Questions about Fay’s own methodology began almost immediately. Others began their own investigations. The debates began. Sides were chosen. Reputations were staked. Arguments ensued. So began The Shostakovich Wars.
The central problem was simply verifying the origin of a work which was clandestine by its very nature. It was created in secret in a totalitarian dictatorship to be published posthumously, secretly smuggled out of the country in pieces to be deposited in a Swiss bank, while the KGB was trying to hunt it down. Some concessions regarding precise genealogy would seem reasonable.
In the ensuing decades(!), the issue of Testimony’s authenticity became (and remains) a phenomenon in the music world. To engage in a gross oversimplification for the sake of brevity, there are the “Revisionists” who believe in the authenticity of Testimony and see Shostakovich as something of a secret dissident, weaving anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist themes into some of his work, and then there are the “Anti-revisionists” who think Testimony a fake, eschew any anti-Stalinist subtext for either Shostakovich or his music, and have a general disdain for historical background or anything other than the notes on the page. (Again, this is a grossly unfair oversimplification.)
So far, the anti-revisionists have been winning. Take a look for yourself. It’s difficult to find a reference to the memoirs that does not insinuate they are controversial, suspect, or simply fraudulent. While not universal, this position is widespread.
Perhaps the single most important voice on the anti-revisionist side was legendary music scholar Richard Taruskin, who passed away in 2022. His position as America’s preeminent musical historian and expert in Russian music meant his opinion carried an extraordinary amount of weight. Many others appear to have simply deferred to his opinion on issues such as Testimony and whether or not it was genuine.
Yet for the other side, the debate was decided conclusively in favour of Volkov and Shostakovich a long time ago. If you’re really interested in the details, you can start with Shostakovich Reconsidered (1998) and then move on to The Shostakovich Wars (2014). With an overwhelming amount of evidence, Volkov’s lawyer Allan Ho, along with Russian-American attorney, pianist, and musicologist Dmitry Feofanov, investigate the claims against Testimony’s authenticity and establish it as the genuine memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich beyond any reasonable doubt. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the authors had access to individuals who could speak more freely, and documents which had hitherto been kept secret. They carefully investigated all of the available evidence that had accumulated over two decades, following virtually every lead imaginable and interviewing as many remaining eyewitnesses as possible to answer the critics and verify the authenticity of the work in question.
Reception to Ho and Feofanov’s conclusions was overwhelmingly positive. A sample of the reviews Shostakovich Reconsidered received upon publication (helpfully assembled on Ian MacDonald’s website, “Shostakovichiana”) reveals effusive praise from the BBC, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, American Record Guide, The Independent, The Washington Post, and many others. Historian Robert Conquest nominated Shostakovich Reconsidered as the International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. All gave extremely positive reviews to the work, hailing it as a literary demolition job on Volkov’s critics and fully achieving its goal of establishing Testimony’s authenticity once and for all. The reviews commend the authors for the meticulous nature of their work and sharp attention to detail. Meanwhile, Fay, Taruskin, and other anti-revisionists repeatedly come up for ridicule as self-deluding, ivory-tower quasi-intellectuals with a poor grasp of the rules of evidence.
Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy was unequivocal in his support, stating, “This book settles the issue once and for all. I am sure that no one in his sane mind, having read the evidence presented by the authors, will ever ask the question of whether Testimony is authentic Shostakovich or not. The answer is that it most definitely is.”
Those previously skeptical of the memoirs were won over. In a 1999 article for Commentary, “The Composer and the Commissars”, Terry Teachout – drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and critic-at-large for Commentary – reviewed the book and reversed his previous position on Testimony. Summarizing the debate as reasonably and equitably as one can expect, he wrote, “...the evidence presented by Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov in Shostakovich Reconsidered, if not absolutely dispositive, still appears sufficiently convincing to ensure that Testimony will henceforth be generally acknowledged as what Volkov has always said it was: the autobiography of Dmitri Shostakovich.”
But while we have Ho and Feofanov’s excellent and conclusive investigations, the recollections of Shostakovich’s family, friends and associates is perhaps the most convincing evidence in favour of Testimony’s genuineness. Virtually every person who actually knew and worked with Shostakovich has come out strongly in favour of the memoirs (even if some had to wait until the fall of the Soviet Union to do so). These endorsements from his family and friends – as well as a plethora of internationally renowned composers, conductors, and musicians with whom the composer had a lifelong relationship – are hard to counter. It doesn’t seem reasonable to simply disregard the sheer quantity and quality of sources who knew Shostakovich personally and wholeheartedly endorse Testimony’s legitimacy.
In 1986, the composer’s son Maxim told the BBC, “It’s true. It’s accurate. Sometimes, for me, there is too much rumour in it, but nothing major. The basis of the book is correct.” It must be noted, Maxim has not been absolute in his praise of Volkov and Testimony. While in the Soviet Union, he had first claimed Testimony was “...a book about my father not by my father.” In 1991, in an interview in Gramophone, he told musicologist David Fanning, “I would still say it’s a book about my father, not by him. The conversations about Glazunov, Meyerhold, Zoshchenko are one thing. But it also contains rumours, and sometimes false rumours.” Yet in the same interview he would add, “...the political tendency, the political opinions of my father are represented correctly.” Maxim also fully endorsed Ian MacDonald’s anti-revisionist biography The New Shostakovich (in which MacDonald firmly takes Volkov’s side), calling it “One of the best biographies of Dmitri Shostakovich I have read.” While Maxim’s endorsement of Testimony may not be as categorical as some would prefer, he is undoubtedly on the revisionist side of the argument.
Others are less equivocal. In an interview with Ho and Feofanov in 1996, Shostakovich’s daughter Galina endorsed the memoirs, stating, “I am an admirer of Solomon Volkov. There is nothing false there. Definitely the style of speech is Shostakovich’s – not only the choice of words, but the way they are put together.” Free from Soviet control after his emigration in 1977, legendary conductor and esteemed Shostakovich interpreter Rudolf Barshai simply told the BBC in 1983, “It’s all true.” Conductor Kirill Kondrashin endorsed the authenticity of the memoirs at a symposium in September 1980, adding, “We may now speak of a renaissance of Shostakovich in the West, since the facts of his life have become known here as well and have forced people to look at his music with new eyes.”
In 1991, Ashkenazy would tell DSCH Journal, “If there are any inaccuracies in Testimony, and I’m not sure that there are, I am sure that they arise out of the normal problems of recording interviews and conversations – just misunderstandings and misinterpretations. As far as the character and image of Shostakovich are concerned, I’m sure it is true to life. I was always sure Shostakovich hated the Soviet system, because we all hated it.”
Detlef Gojow, musicologist and author of Dimitri Shostakovich (1983) wrote, “The book by Solomon Volkov was considered an authentic document without any reservation during the last few years of the Soviet system. The legend that circulated earlier, insinuating that the book was a falsification, was completely disposed of, though it is still disturbing some Western minds.”
To these endorsements, we may also add, conductor Kurt Sanderling, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, novelist Andrei Bitov, and Russian musicologist Daniel Zhitomirsky. There are many others. Elizabeth Wilson’s biography adds a long list of individuals who knew or worked with the composer, endorsing the revisionist view of Shostakovich – and aspects of his music – as anti-Stalinist and anti-fascist.
So, while a few Western minds remain disturbed, to adhere to the anti-revisionist position today is to make Solomon Volkov the greatest fraudster in history. We must believe he was capable of successfully fooling not only Harper & Row (who had published Gulag Archipelago a few years earlier), it’s editors, lawyers, translators, and fact-checkers, but also Shostakovich’s family, his friends, and colleagues...but not Laurel Fay, Richard Taruskin, or the KGB. This is not plausible. Whatever controversy still exists regarding the book’s authorship is solely in the minds of those who refuse to confront a mountain of evidence in its favour.
Yet the myth of Testimony-as-forgery endures. As a rule, it’s difficult to come across any mention of the book that doesn’t describe it as deeply suspect, if not simply dismissing it entirely. Sadly, this is sometimes done by people who should know better. (Unsurprisingly, Laurel Fay, who has built her entire career denouncing Testimony has never wavered from her position.)
As noted, Richard Taruskin’s influence as a leading figure in American musicology appears to have been so widespread that his denunciation of Testimony meant a general denunciation across the board in Western musical academic circles. Professor Taruskin was, by all accounts, the leading musical historian in the United States for decades. He was the author of the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music and specialist in Russian music, among many other titles. Writing in The New York Times and other publications for decades, he repeatedly dismissed Testimony as a fraud and everyone else appears to have simply followed Taruskin’s lead, only referring to the book with derision. While in some earlier essays Taruskin is generally sympathetic to Shostakovich and his plight – and clearly recognizes the duality in his music – his view seems to have hardened in later years, preferring to see Shostakovich as a false martyr and his admirers as dilettantes desperately portraying the composer as the greatest hero in history and hopelessly seeking to uncover anti-Stalinist overtones in every single note he ever wrote. While he never varied in his claim that Testimony was a fraud he never directly addressed the evidence of Shostakovich Reconsidered, preferring to simply dismiss it as “sketchy,” “glancing,” and “far from convincing” rather than actually look at the evidence presented therein. On this precise topic, Taruskin’s reply to Terry Teachout in the pages of Commentary and Teachout’s subsequent response are well worth reading.
Taruskin died in July of 2022. Reading several articles by him, it seemed to me that he was an extremely engaging writer, extraordinarily intelligent, and had forgotten more about Shostakovich than I would ever know. His knowledge, writing skill, and comprehension of the issues he was writing about were astonishing.
However, reading dozens of stories about him after his death, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that although he was an erudite, respected classical music scholar with an exhaustive knowledge of Russian music, many considered him to be quite obnoxious. By many accounts, he was a self-important bully who enjoyed humiliating his adversaries. This is an easily verified claim as such stories are common. The effusive praise for his skills as a brilliant writer and teacher go hand-in-hand with tales of his crass, offensive nature or stories of Taruskin abusing his power to engage in character assassination against those who held opinions different from his own. Again, these stories are commonplace.
Richard Taruskin was wrong. His assessment of Shostakovich’s loyalty and his music is directly contradicted by the composer and all those who knew him. But, apparently, rather than admit his mistake, he ignored the evidence, adhered to his position ever more firmly and insisted everyone else was mistaken. Considering the stories about the man’s character, it does not seem implausible to suggest he adhered to his position out of spite and pride. Such an individual is unlikely to admit error.
Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker, and author of The Rest is Noise, is probably the most prominent of the remaining anti-revisionists. A devoted Taruskin acolyte, he has also repeatedly dismissed the memoirs as fake.
In his 2004 New Yorker article “Unauthorized – The final betrayal of Dmitri Shostakovich,” Ross addressed the memoirs head-on, trotting out the hard-line anti-revisionist position. Hailing the brilliant detective work of Fay and Taruskin, he begins his article by comparing Volkov to Clifford Irving – the man who faked the Howard Hughes diaries – and it goes downhill from there.
In a generally smarmy tone, he portrays the composer as a calculating utilitarian, whose persecution has been exaggerated, was possibly never in any real danger, and who cleverly gamed the system to work his way to the top. According to Ross (via Taruskin), Testimony is simply the attempt of a sad, dying man to rehabilitate his reputation – one ruined by his own hand for taking the easy way out and becoming friends with Stalin.
But worse than this malicious view of the composer are Ross’ sins of omission. Like Taruskin, when faced with the work of Ho and Feofanov, he has little if anything to say. Both Wilson’s biography and Shostakovich Reconsidered had been published years before Ross’ piece, yet he fails to even mention either one of them and the evidence they contain. This indicates Ross had either not done his research or was being selective in his reporting. Either he didn’t know, which is bad, or he knew and failed to mention the opposing side, which is worse. In either case, if he was going to write an article for The New Yorker specifically about this topic, he should have addressed both works.
He did eventually mention Shostakovich Reconsidered in his New Yorker obituary for his leader and teacher in August of 2022, “The Monumental Musicology of Richard Taruskin.” His analysis was short: “Unfortunately, Shostakovich Reconsidered is a pedantic, fanatical mess of a book, a kind of hardbound website, in which fresh information is lost in reams of third-hand factoids and musicological daydreaming.”
Well, I suppose that’s something of a review, although somewhat brief, and plainly at odds with the dozen or so major publications around the world who all found it a conclusive evisceration of the anti-revisionist position. By Ross’ account, they were simply hoodwinked by Volkov, the criminal mastermind, and Conquest made a risible error when he nominated this “hardbound website” as the International Book of the Year.
Alex Ross is wrong. It is too late for Taruskin to make amends. Perhaps Ross will recant at some point, but probably not. Like the fatwa from some dead Ayatollah, Taruskin’s edict on Testimony can never be rescinded. So, Ross – undeterred by facts, witnesses, or documents – forges on.
While the Shostakovich Wars are not quite over, the passing of Taruskin seems to have already had some effect with regard to how Testimony is viewed. Journalist and classical music polemicist Norman Lebrecht noted that after Taruskin’s death, “creditable mentions of Tony Palmer’s film of Testimony, accepting the memoir as authentic” appeared in The New York Times. How significant this turns out to be is unclear, but if The Grey Lady has turned, then perhaps other opinions may change.
After his public excoriation over Lady MacBeth and censoring of his Fourth Symphony – but before his rehabilitation via the Fifth symphony – Shostakovich made no public statements and did not reply to the denunciations in print. He wrote only one major work, Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin. The first movement, “Rebirth,” features words which many have seen as an allusion by Shostakovich to perhaps not only his denounced work, but his entire career, sullied as it was by the shadow of Stalin:
“...an artist-barbarian scrawls over a painting made by a genius / But with the years, these alien colours fall away like decrepit scales / And the creation of that genius appears before us in its former beauty...”
A little vain, but this allusion rings true in many ways when it comes to Shostakovich. Perhaps these lines could be applied to Testimony as well. For too many years, barbarians have scrawled their own illicit sketches over this work, without reason.Perhaps now, sufficient time has passed and enough light has shone upon that work for those decrepit scales to have fallen away. Whether there is genius and beauty to be found may be up to the reader, but at least they will know they are, in fact, reading the authentic memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich.

Following the rise of Adolf Hitler, who discovered the Society after he had been ordered to spy on them, Serbottendorff’s newspaper was bought out by Dietrich Eckart, a Bavarian Catholic who had helped form the German Worker’s Party - and thus the newspaper was now under German rule, for obvious reasons. It was Eckart who introduced Hitler to the more esoteric ways of the world, and it was Eckart who transcribed Mein Kampf. When they came to power, Hitler set up the SS, a secret Order of the Silver Star who went out initiating people into the esoteric mysteries.
Eckart himself was highly influenced by the Eastern mysticism and was a follower of Aleister Crowley’s movement. In fact, some researchers have even claimed that Aleister Crowley influenced the Nazi occult movement to such a degree that it may have been through him that the secret dark brotherhood were working and thereby influencing Hitler and his crew.
The occult was rife within the Nazi Party as Himmler’s Death Head Units were to show with their ritualized murders, harking back to Celtic head cults. Totenkopf (i.e. skull, literally dead's head) is the German word for the skull and crossbones and death's head symbols. The Totenkopf symbol is an old international symbol for death, the defiance of death, danger, or the dead. It consists usually of the human skull and it is commonly associated with 19th- and 20th-century German military use. Himmler's Death Head Units, was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich. While the Totenkopf (skull) was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-death Units wore the Death's Head insignia on the right collar to distinguish itself from other Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) formations.
Himmler’s occult-inspired SS, who were headquartered at the castle of Wewelsburg in Westphalia, where there was a round table with 13 seats. In 1935, Himmler’s SS established the Ahnernerbe (Ancestral Heritage) to seek out occult secrets that would aid the Nazi Party to victory. They traveled across the world to Tibet, South America, Rennes le Chateau and other special places of occult interest.
Hitler's agenda through the Nazi Party was to establish an occult-based theology in a political forum. It was their attempt to reestablish something that they perceived had already been lost. It was nothing new. The same thing had already been done in America, where the Masonic influence had established a Masonic constitution, and the political family of the United States was and, would be forever, based around arcane Masonic and occult secrets.

• Vril Society

The Coming Race is an 1871 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, reprinted as Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Among its readers have been those who have believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" is accurate, to the extent that some theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, William Scott-Elliot, and Rudolf Steiner, accepted the book as being (at least in part) based on occult truth. A popular book, The Morning of the Magicians (1960) suggested that a secret Vril Society existed in pre-Nazi Berlin.
The Vril Society was formed by a group of female psychic mediums led by the Thule Gesellschaft medium Maria Orsitsch (Orsic) of Zagreb, who claimed to have received communication from Aryan aliens living on Alpha Cen Tauri, in the Aldebaran system. Allegedly, these aliens had visited Earth and settled in Sumeria, and the word Vril was formed from the ancient Sumerian word "Vri-Il" ("like god"). A second medium was known only as Sigrun, a name etymologically related to Sigrune, a Valkyrie and one of Wotan's nine daughters in Norse legend.
The Vril Society merged the political ideals of the Illuminati with Hindu mysticism, theosophy and Kabbalah. This is the first German nationalist group to use the swastika as a symbol connecting Western and Eastern occultism. Followers of Vril believed they possessed secret knowledge which would allow them to alter their race and become equal to a godlike race living in the depths of the Earth. The Vril Society presented the idea of a subterranean matriarchal, socialist utopia ruled by superior beings who had mastered the mysterious energy called the Vril Force.
The Society allegedly taught concentration exercises designed to awaken the forces of Vril, and their main goal was to achieve Raumflug (Spaceflight) to reach Aldebaran. To achieve this, the Vril Society joined the Thule Gesellschaft to fund an ambitious program involving an inter-dimensional flight machine based on psychic revelations from the Aldebaran aliens.
Members of the Vril Society are said to have included Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell. These were original members of the Thule Society which supposedly joined Vril in 1919. The NSDAP (NationalSozialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei) was created by Thule in 1920, one year later. Dr. Krohn, who helped to create the Nazi flag, was also a Thulist.
With Hitler in power in 1933, both Thule and Vril Gesellschafts allegedly received official state backing for continued disc development programs aimed at both spaceflight and possibly a war machine.

• Thule Society

The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer. However, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke contends that Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess had been Thule members, but other leading Nazis had only been invited to speak at Thule meetings or were entirely unconnected with it.
A primary focus of Thule-Gesellschaft was a claim concerning the origins of the Aryan race. Thule was a land located by Greco-Roman geographers in the furthest north. The society was named after "Ultima Thule" — (Latin: most distant North) mentioned by the Roman poet Virgil in his epic poem Aeneid, which was the far northern segment of Thule and is generally understood to mean Scandinavia. Said by Nazi mystics to be the capital of ancient Hyperborea, they placed Ultima Thule in the extreme north near Greenland or Iceland. The Thulists believed in the hollow earth theory. The Thule Society counted among its goals the desire to prove that the Aryan race came from a lost continent, perhaps Atlantis. The Thule-Gesellschaft maintained close contacts with followers of Theosophy and the followers of Helena Blavatsky, a famous Occultist during the second part of the 19th century. Anthroposophical themes were common too, as the motto Der Weg ist in Dir - 'The Way is present in You', expresses. Self-realization and the supreme position of the human person were essential to the Thulists. The Thule Society attracted about 250 followers in Munich and about 1,500 in greater Bavaria. Its meetings were often held in the still existent Munich luxury hotel Vier Jahreszeiten ("The Four Seasons").
In 1919, the Thule Society's Anton Drexler, who had developed links between the Society and various extreme right workers' organizations in Munich, together with Karl Harrer established the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), or German Workers Party. Adolf Hitler joined this party in 1919. By April 1, 1920, the DAP had been reconstituted as the National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or National Socialist German Workers Party generally known as the "Nazi Party".
The inner core of the Thule society were Satanists that were practicing Black Magic. The sole intent was for them to, with help from magic rituals, bring Consciousness to a level where they could perceive the evil of the world and stay in telepathic communication with Negative Aliens who communicate on that level. With the help of this dark energy, the goal of the initiated would be to create a race of Supermen of Aryan stock, who would exterminate all “lower” races.

• Black Sun Society

The term Black Sun (German Schwarze Sonne), also referred to as the Sonnenrad (German for "Sun Wheel"), is a symbol of esoteric and occult significance. Its design is based on a sun wheel mosaic incorporated into a floor of Wewelsburg Castle during the Nazi era. Today, it may also be used in occult currents of Germanic neopaganism, and in Irminenschaft or Armanenschaft—inspired esotericism—but not necessarily in a racial or neo-Nazi context. Despite its contemporary use, the Black Sun had not been identified with the ornament in Wewelsburg before 1991, although it had been discussed as an esoteric concept in neo-Nazi circles since the 1950s.
The shape of the symbol as it is used within Germanic mysticist esotericism and Neo-Nazism today is based primarily on the design of a floor mosaic at the castle of Wewelsburg (built 1603), a Renaissance castle located in the northwest of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. During the Third Reich the castle became the representative and ideological center of the order of the SS. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, wanted to establish the "Center of the New World". A focus of the actual SS-activities at the castle were archaeological excavations in the surrounding region and studies on Germanic early history.
The former SS member Wilhelm Landig of the Vienna Lodge "coined the idea of the Black Sun, a substitute swastika and mystical source of energy capable of regenerating the Aryan race". Rudolf J. Mund (also a former SS member and later also member of the Vienna Lodge) discusses a relationship of the Black Sun with alchemy. The visible sun is described as a symbol of an invisible anti-sun: "Everything that can be comprehended by human senses is material, the shadow of the invisible spiritual light."
Heinrich Himmler – the German Reichführer and the head of the SS – had a clear intention to create a secret society. Heinrich Himmler had been in contact with all esoteric knowledge, and he used it as dark as possible. He was especially interested in Rune-magic. It was Himmler who created the infamous SS and like the Swastika, he used another magic symbol, the two sig-runes, which looked like two flashes. Within the SS all the esoteric knowledge in the Third Reich finally was gathered. SS was ruled by Black Magic, and Satanism through the Black Sun Program. Their rituals were borrowed from other similar orders, like the Jesuit Order and the Templar Order. The highest ranking “priests” of this order were the 13 members of the “Knight’s Great Council”, which was ruled by Grandmaster Heinrich Himmler. The Black Rituals were practiced in the old castle Wewelsberg in Westfalen. Here they obeyed Lucifer, Satan or Set, the consciousness which then inspired the Nazis, and today the Illuminati.

REFLEXIVE RELIGIOUS STUDIES: THE ENTANGLED FORMATION OF RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND MAGIC
In general terms, this book is a case study in what I have been calling "reflexive religious studies." Contemporary sociologists such as Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash have begun to work out the way that sociology itself reflexively shapes society. Similarly, the French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant articulated a "reflexive sociology" capable of studying sociology itself in sociological terms. This is by far the most interesting insight to come out of these movements, and it is probably best to phrase it dynamically. Sociology suffers from a certain problem: any social knowledge it produces gets fed back into the system, which is thereby changed. This means that sociology is always describing the social field the way it was before sociology described it.
Beck, Giddens, and Lash point to two distinct kinds of problems. The first is in the domain of information theory. Their observation might seem to fit easily into a Weberian notion of rationalization; that is, it might initially appear that academic social science produces feedback in culture in such a way that it produces greater coherence in the social sphere that it then studies. But in fact, it also introduces a new element: the sociological study of society adds a new incalculability. It is as though the thing that information gathering cannot properly reckon with is the effect of information gathering on the system. Thus, it would appear to be an analogue to the observer effect in quantum mechanics and needs to be factored in. In other words, a reflexive sociology becomes necessary as sociologists try to reckon with the project of gathering sociological information about and within a society that has taken on the insights of sociology.
The second problem cuts deeper, and for our purposes is more important. As Beck and Giddens are both aware, sociology contributes to the production of certain kinds of societies. They do not just mean professional bodies like the American Sociological Association. Instead, sociology as a discipline authorizes certain kinds of information gathering or surveillance (or censuses), which then produce new kinds of social locations and new kinds of collective organizations and institutions. Sociological surveys, for instance, influence their subjects producing a new kinds of social identities. Reflexive sociology, therefore, is needed to be able to theorize the kind of societies sociology produces.
Sociology is not the only discipline that has this problem. Anthropologists have had to deal with the way that anthropological theory changes the peoples that they study; for example, producing new tribes and authenticating some forms of indigenous culture over others. The analogue of this issues for literary theorists becomes how to interpret the vast volume of novels and poems that have been written with literary theory in mind. As Christian Thorne has observed, queer theory has gained a sufficient purchase in American education that it has now begun to shape the sexuality of undergraduates. There is thus a need for reflexive queer theory to theorize the effect that queer theory has on constructing the interpretation of different sexual acts and identities.
In what follows, I aim to extend this insight to formulate a reflexive religious studies. For some time, scholars in the field have been engaged in interrogating the relationship between their own personal faiths and their object of study. This has been useful, but what I am calling for in the name of reflexivity is not so much autobiographical reflections as a reflexivity addressing the discipline as such. As I conceive it, reflexive religious studies would reckon with ways that the academic study of religion - in a range of disciplinary formations - is porous and tends to seep into the cultures that it purports to study. Moreover, as I have been arguing for some time now, the category "religion" is itself transformative, such that importing it as a second-order category (in scholastic, legal, and other discourses) transforms the society in which it has been introduced, effectively transforming other cultural systems into "religions." "Reflexive religious studies" would examine those societies in which the category "religion" and its entangled differentiations (e.g., the distinction between religion and the secular) have begun to function as concepts. It would trace the continuities and disruptions that this category produces in older conceptual orders and aim for precision. And it would also necessarily take into account how the disciplines of religious studies shapes and produces religions.
While to my knowledge there has never been a serious previous attempt to work out a reflexive religious studies, scholars have spent some time thinking about the way in which the higher criticism of the Bible produces different kinds of religious projects. The old fashioned version of this trope is to read the Protestant Reformation, for example, as inspired by Erasmus's humanism. To the degree that there is a version of this narrative about religious studies today, it is often to imagine that the discipline is secularizing, that the act of comparison between religions tends to relativize and therefore extinguish religious beliefs. But this is far from the whole picture. The first insight of reflexive religious studies is that the religious field, reverberates in the religious field, revitalizing and even producing religions. Examples are easy to find. One does not have to look hard to see that the study of shamanism, for instance, has actually worked to produce contemporary neo-shamanic movements.
*
There is another way that taking this meta-level view of the category religion will help our current inquiry. It is my contention that tracing the genealogy of the notion of a conflict between religion and science will give us clues to both the appearance and occlusion of enchantment. While I will explain disenchantment on many levels, I will argue that one **of the mechanisms that both makes magic appealing and motivates its suppression is a the reification of a putative binary opposition between religion and science, and the production of a "third term" (**superstition, magic, and so on) that signifies repeated attempts to stage or prevent reconciliation between these opposed discursive terrains. Let me explain.
Many accounts of modernity have been undergirded by the legend of a titanic struggle between two opposing forces - religion and science - in which the latter is often declared victor. The myth that these two powers had always been in contestation was formed in the nineteenth century; and then, like many other myths we'll explore, it was projected backward in a series of dramatized confrontations. Today many nonspecialists mistakenly believe that Galileo was really tortured by the Inquisition for promoting heliocentrism or that medieval Europeans thought that the world was flat before Columbus proved them wrong.
Nonetheless, religious studies and science studies have now spent decades relativizing their respective objects. Scholars of religion now know that "religion" is not a universal part of human nature, but is a culturally specific category that initially took shape in Western Christendom at the end of the seventeenth century and then was radically transformed through a globalization process over the course of the long nineteenth century, producing both "world religions" and discourses around "religion" as an autonomous domain of human experience. Although the issue more controversial, philosophers of science also know that there is no single universal scientific method, and that "modern science" emerged in the long nineteenth century with a radical reformulation of European natural philosophy and expanded through globalization and the selective absorption and disintegration of local knowledge systems.
By combining these two critiques, the contemporary historian Peter Harrison has delineated how religion and science emerged together in European thought through a parallel process of mutual distinction and reification. In broadest of strokes, Harrison demonstrates that science and religion come into being with a common epistemic basis that if anything made possible the birth of modern science. But eventually they came to be understood as separate systems with their own spheres. Hence this initial cooperation collapsed as the sciences gained part of their respective notion of coherence in contradistinction to religion as an irrational belief system, while religion became "a kind of negative image of science, and this contrast has become important for the integrity of the boundaries of science." In effect, both discursive systems gained coherence through a purification process in which they came to be distinguished from each other.
Harrison's account is only part of the picture. While he describes the history of a binary opposition between religion and science, Serge Margel has emphasized an earlier dialectic between religion and superstition that have each term its meaning; moreover, Michel de Certeau has noted that science was formulated through rhetorical opposition to superstition. More recently, Wouter Hanegraaff has argued that the broader enterprise of the European academy was predicated on excluding forms of pagan knowledge it marked as superstitious, magic, or occult. Both concepts of religion and science came into existence by being distinguished from "superstition," understood as the false double of religion and later as the false double of science or scientific knowledge (in both humanistic and naturalistic modes.) Accordingly, instead of binaries, I see a trinary formation in which religion is negated by science, which is in turn negated by superstition or magic.
Put differently, the concept of true or orthodox "religion" was in some sense constructed by being distinguished from the false religion of "superstition" (we can hear echoes of Protestant anti-Catholicism and earlier Christian anti-paganism). Similarly, true "science" or proper scholarship was formulated in opposition to "superstition" (often understood as occult or fake science). Moreover, from both vantages, the prototypical superstitions were belief in spirits and "magic." In this respect, terms like superstition and magic, while fluid, open ended, and constantly changing, nevertheless were not completely empty signifiers because they inherited these older polemics. Superstition went from "wrong" because it was diabolical or pagan to "mistaken" because it was antiscientific.
Overlaps between "religion" and "science" were often described as "superstition" or pseudosciences. Policing "superstitions" became part of the way that the categories of "religion" and "science" were formed in differentiation. Furthermore, it is worth emphasizing that the rejection of "superstition" was necessarily incomplete, and hence it was always possible to partially transform it into a site of resistance. I am fascinated by a kind of sublation or occlusion that functions by suppressing something at the same moment that another aspect of the suppressed is being reincorporated. Treating esotericism or magic as predominantly "rejected knowledge" only captures part of the picture. It explains how categories like "superstition" were produced to exclude certain beliefs or knowledges, but it doesn't explain what makes those forms of knowledge appealing in the first place. My intuition is that while this type of negation is basically disempowering, it also represents a location from which one can criticize the original position.
Approached differently, the construction of science and religion as antagonists implied a third position representing where the categories both convene and collapse. In my last book I deployed this trinary in a genealogy of the category "religion," but here I want to follow the third term. Negatively valenced, it is understood to be superstition and in this respect appears as the double of either religion or science. Hence, a certain cross-section of scientists trumpeted the power of their respective domain by suggesting that all of religion was a superstition. Positively valenced, the third term is magic, which was often supposed to take the best elements of religion and science together or to recover things suppressed by "modern" science or religion. Indeed, most of what gets classified as contemporary esotericism or occultism came into being as an attempt to repair the rupture between religion and science.
Restated in broad terms, once "religion" and "science" are formulated as opposing discursive terrains, religion-science hybrids become both threatening and appealing. They are threatening because they risk destabilizing the system's points of closure and because they suggest pre-hybrid and therefore supposedly premodern systems. But also they are appealing because they promise to heal the split between the two notionally opposed terrains. Moreover, the more "magic" becomes marked as antimodern, the more it becomes potentially attractive as a site from which to criticize "modernity." Finally, for all the polemical attacks against superstition and magic, disenchanting efforts were only sporadically enforced within the disciplines, such that notions of magic and spirits keep resurfacing as redemptive possibilities.
All told, this triadic structure is not the only reason that European thinkers came up with the theory of disenchantment and put it into place as a regulative ideal (the chapters that follow will explore other entangled issues). But, as I will demonstrate, looked at from the reverse vantage point, the myth of disenchantment has two divergent effects - first, it functions as a regime of truth, embedding the paradigm of modernity in the core of the sciences and giving energy to various projects aiming to eliminate superstition; and second, it is self-refuting, giving life to the very thing it characterizes as expiring, stimulating magical revivals, paranormal research, and new attempts to spiritualize the science.
In sum, in the binary operation between religion and science, superstition/magic functions as the third term in a Derridean sense. "Magic" is the point where the system does not close. Like all of these terms, it has a dynamic function. Its role emerges from a position as the negation of the negation; and therefore, looked at from one perspective, it is the conjunction from which the system emerges. From another perspective, magic is either an imitation of science or an imitation of religion; the origin of the religion or the origin of science; or the excluded middle.
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OVERVIEW OF THE WORK: EUROPE IS NOT EUROPE
Although the God of monotheism may have taken a few knocks - if not actually "died" - in the nineteenth-century European story of "the disenchantment of the world," the gods and other agents inhabiting practices of so-called "superstition" have never died anywhere.
- DIPESH CHAKRABARTY, Provincializing Europe, 2000
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Throughout the academy there continues to be a massive and ongoing investment in the modernization thesis, which when not take for granted is alternately celebrated or condemned. Fortunately, two small but significant groups of dissenter have rejected this grand narrative: first, the cluster of postcolonial thinkers has worked to shatter the reflexive linkage between Eurocentrism and modernization; and second, a handful of historians working on Europe and America have come to emphasize contemporary enchantments therein. The first group has demonstrated how the claim that disenchanted modernity was the distinctive feature of the West was used to justify colonization and violence. The second group of scholars has argued that magic is everywhere in Euro-American "modernity" - in the religious world, the secular world, popular culture, literature, the scientific academy, and so on. In what follows I build on the insights of both movements and in so doing I aim to historicize - or we might say, following Dipesh Chakrabarty, to "provincialize"- the myth of modernity and its various incarnations in European social theory.
The first implication of taking both movements together, however, is a seeming paradox - postcolonialist have demonstrated that modernity is just another name for Europe. Meanwhile, historians have shown that European history does not really fit the classic trajectory of modernity. Accordingly, if rejection of the supernatural is supposed to be the defining feature of both European culture and modernity, then in this respect - Europe is not Europe.
Let me approach this differently. In the first volume of Histoire de la sexualité, Michel Foucault set out to challenge what he called the "repressive hypothesis"; namely, the widespread belief in the twentieth century that earlier generations were sexually repressed. In doing so, Foucault expressed a set of doubts that I want to loosely adapt here to address what we might call the "myth of disenchantment," the "modernity hypothesis," or the "modernity paradigm." First doubt: Is the disenchantment of the world truly an established historical pattern? Was there actually a historical rupture between the epoch of magic and the critique of disenchantment? Does modernity really define a singular breach, or is it a mythic epoch? Call this the historical doubt.
Once this doubt begins to take hold, it leads to new doubts whose resolution will be of interest to postcolonialists and historians of enchantment alike - if we reject the old European story of the "disenchantment of the world" (and I think there are plenty of good reasons to do so), we still have the second doubt: Why did European societies come to think of themselves as disenchanted? How did Europe come to imagine - even to the extent of taking it as the central feature of its civilization - that it did not believe in spirits, despite persistent evidence to the contrary? Why were social scientists drawn irrevocably to the very beliefs they decried as primitive superstitions? How in the face of widespread belief in spirits and magic did disenchantment come to function as a regime of truth or disciplinary norm in the human sciences? In other words, how did Europeans come to end up with a society that both represses magic and in which magic proliferates? When and how did the myth of disenchantment emerge? As I address these issues in what follows, the phrase occult disavowal will be my shorthand for the regulative function of the myth of disenchantment that results in the simultaneous private embrace and public rejection of enchantment. Call this the critical-historical doubt.
This in turn leads to a third and final doubt: Have the workings of domination in Euro-American societies really belonged primarily to the mode of disenchantment? Or is the critique of disenchantment part of the same power mechanism as the thing it criticizes? This is the politico-theoretical doubt.
To respond to these entangled issues, the work that follows is first and foremost therefore a novel history of the human sciences that, having suspended the assumption of disenchantment, shows how their disciplining processes occurred against a background of magic and religious revivals. Doing so should enable us to undercut the modernization thesis by revealing its paradoxical origins in the shared terrain between spiritualists, sorcerers, and scholars.
The argument of the book proceeds as follows:
An initial background chapter, "Enchanted (Post) Modernity," takes as its starting point present-day sociology and anthropology. It shows that today in neither Europe, nor America, nor the rest of the globe can one find the disenchanted world anticipated by the major theorists of modernity. It then uses sociological data to explore the function of enchantment today. Moreover, it unlinks traditional accounts of secularization and disenchantment to show that in many cases ghosts and spirits come to full the space evacuated by the putative death of God. Significantly, it begins to excavate one of the logics of occult disavowal by showing how belief in one form of enchantment often comes at the cost of another, such that supernatural beliefs can actively function in the service of disenchantment.
Part 1, "God's Shadow," begins with chapter 2, "Revenge of the Magicians," which is historical in scope. It takes as its starting point various figures - from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton - who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it demonstrates their respective magical projects. It then recovers two moments often seen as the watershed of modernity - Francis Bacon's formulation of the scientific method and the French philosophes' publication of the Encyclopédie - to demonstrate that neither embody the disenchantment usually attributed to them. In so doing, it separates the putative "birth of science" from the death of magic, and shows that the enlightenment project was initially articulated not in terms of a conflict between religion and science or faith and reason, but as a divine science. Nevertheless, it sees in both movements the roots of occult disavowal in the myth of modernity as the end of superstition.
The third chapter, "The Myth of Absence," traces the myth that the philosophes and the mechanistic cosmology had eliminated the divine. It demonstrates that several key mythemes - the mythless age, the de-divination of nature, nihilism, and the death of God - had a conjoined genesis in German philosophical circles several decades before Nietzsche. Focusing on the writings of G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Jacobi, and Friedrich Schiller, it shows how a generation of German philosophers came to believe that they lived in a uniquely mythless epoch and then transmitted this particular lament to later generations, including our own. Turning to Jacob Burckhardt, it shows how the myth-of-the-end-of-myth was projected backward, producing the historiography of other epochs, such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Chapter 4, "The Shadow of God," highlights a crucially important dialectical movement. It shows how a putative opposition between religion and science, combined with fears of despiritualization and mourning for the death of God, motivated the rise of spiritualism and occult movements, and contributed to the birth of religious studies as a discipline. Looking at Edward Burnett Tylor, Friedrich Max Müller, Éliphas Lévi, and Helena Blavatsky it demonstrates how scholars, spiritualists, and magicians not only moved in common social circles, but also shared an engagement with spirits, mysticism, and "Oriental" mysteries. The chapter maps out the messy intermediate terrain between two spheres that considered themselves to be different and were sometimes opposed, but nevertheless exhibited the same basic habits of thought - including a myth of lost magic.
Chapter 5, "The Decline of Magic," and 6, "The Revival of Magick," turn to the birth of the classical disenchantment narrative, noting that while it is often attributed to Max Weber, one of its earliest significant formulations is in the second edition of The Golden Bough, by the Scottish folklorist James Frazer. Chapter 5 argues that Frazer came late to the narrative of magical decline, and that he did so within a context of psychical research and in the face of a folkloric narrative itself about the departure of fairies and the decline of magic. It shows how Frazer formulated an influential trinary opposition between religion, magic, and science while encoding this typology within a disenchantment narrative. The following chapter turns to the infamous British magician Aleister Crowley, who overlapped with Frazer at Trinity College, Cambridge. This chapter shows that Crowley drew on the very text in which Frazer worked out disenchantment to stage his revival of modern "magick" [sic]. Hence, the narrative of disenchantment was self-refuting insofar as it reinvigorated the very thing it described as endangered.
In part 2, "The Horrors of Metaphysics," the seventh chapter, "The Black Tide: Mysticism, Rationality, and the German Occult Revival," shifts the focus back to the German-speaking world. It begins with Sigmund Freud's references in The Interpretation of Dreams to a "brilliant mystic" named Carl du Prel. It explores one of Freud's interlocutors, the German-Jewish physician Max Nordau, who theorized his own conception of degeneration alongside a broader contention that modernity led to irrationalization and mysticism. The chapter then shows how conceptions magic and spirits haunted the German reception of Immanuel Kant and became entangled with the history of academic philosophy and psychoanalysis, and their counterpart construction of noumena and the unconscious. It explains how Arthur Schopenhauer came to theorize the efficacy of magic and demonstrates the importance of "mysticism" as a vanishing mediator between a philosophy dedicated to exploring reason's limits, and a psychoanalysis focused on the roots of irrationality. It then explains why Freud polished Frazer's narrative of disenchantment into a developmental theory even as he began his own exploration of an occult terrain. Thus, it explores how Freud projected his own taboo desires onto the figure of the savage.
The next two chapters look to the places where the myth of the absence of myth has established its most systematic philosophical purchase: critical theory and Vienna Circle positivism. Chapter 8, "Dialectic of Darkness: The Magical Foundation of Critical Theory, "focuses on the German neo-pagan poet and philosopher Ludwig Klages, who formulated much of the terminology and critique of modernity as the "domination of nature" that would later become associated with the Frankfurt School. It then looks at Klages's influence on German-Jewish philosopher and literary theorist Walter Benjamin, demonstrating that much of the terminology that seems so peculiar to Benjamin - the aura, constellations, correspondences, angels, and Ur-images - all were current in German esoteric circles while Benjamin was coming to his most important ideas.
Having shown that the Enlightenment critique has roots in an esoteric milieu, critical theory's putative enemies - the positivists - would seem to be the worst candidates for closet magicians. "The Ghosts of Metaphysics: Logical Positivism and Disenchantment," Chapter 9, explores the connections between the Vienna School of positivism and the esoteric milieu. It shows how the founders of logical positivism, such as Otto Neurath, presented their philosophy as a kind of magical revival. It also demonstrates that other positivists - such as Rudolf Carnap, Hans Hahn, and Kurt Gödel - had a profound preoccupation with ghosts and the paranormal. Taken as a whole, the book demonstrates how magic, like metaphysics, also haunts the beginnings of analytic philosophy.
The final chapter, "The World of Enchantment; or Max Weber at the End of History," focuses on Max Weber's preoccupation with "disenchantment" (Entzauberung) in the same period that Freud was formulating his own version of that myth. It complexifies conventional readings of disenchantment by showing how the term fit into Weber's theory of rationalization. Examining a set of Weber's letters that have only recently been made available to scholars, the chapter argues that despite Weber's reputation for being deaf to religion, "mysticism" was not wholly negative, but perhaps a positive reaction to the "iron cage" of modernity. It demonstrates that Weber came to theorize "the disenchanting of the world" (die Entzauberung der Welt) not out of frustration with Prussian bureaucracy, but rather in reaction to a Swiss neo-pagan commune.
To foreshadow the complexity of the argument that follows, I am not merely complicating Weber's master narrative, but also examining those historical moments or knots in which enchantment and disenchantment turn into each other, or are indistinguishable. In other words, I want to show that what appears to be a binary opposition - enchantment versus disenchantment (Verzauberung gegen Entzauberung) - fails to match up.
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Arts
God Over Money
The Suprasensory Origin of the Arts
In order to meet the requirements of evolution, humankind must achieve an expansion of consciousness in all area of life. People today relate their actions only to events that occur between birth and death; events between birth and death is all we wonder about. Before our life can become healthy again, however, we will need to take an active interest in more than just his particular period of life, which in any case we spend under exceptional circumstances. Our life encompasses not just what we are and do between birth and death, but also what we are and do between death and rebirth. In the present age of materialism, we are relatively unaware of the influence of the life we spent between death and rebirth prior to the present life we entered by way of conception and birth. We are equally unaware of how things that occur during our present life in the physical body point toward the life we will lead after death. Here we will point to a number of processes that show how certain cultural areas will acquire a new relationship to the whole of human life because human consciousness must and will also extend to embrace our life in the suprasensory worlds.
I believe that a certain question may arise in our minds if we consider the entire scope of our artistic life. Let us take a look at suprasensory life from this viewpoint. This will lead us to something we will be able to put to good use later when we turn our attention toward social life.
The generally recognized "fine arts" are sculpture, architecture, painting, poetry, and music. Based on our anthroposophic life and knowledge, we are currently [1920] in the process of adding to these the art of eurythmy. The question I have in mind, which might occur in connection to our artistic life, is this: What is the actual positive reason for introducing art into our lives? It is only during our materialistic age that art has come to deal with the immediate reality of life between birth and death. Of course, we have forgotten the suprasensory origin of art, so our aim now is to copy more or less, what our senses see out in nature. Those who have a deeper feeling for nature, on the one hand, and for art on the other will certainly not be able to agree with such naturalism, whereby art copies nature. We must question repeatedly whether even the best landscape painter, for example, can in any way conjure the beauty of a natural landscape on canvas. Faced with even a very well executed, naturalistic landscape painting, anyone of sound taste must have the feeling I expressed in the prologue of my first mystery drama The Portal of Initiation: no copy of nature will ever equal nature itself. People of refined feeling will inevitably find something repellent in naturalism. They will surely see in the aspect of art that transcends nature in some way and attempts (at least in the way the subject is portrayed) only justification to supply something other than what nature itself can present to us. But how do we come to create art in the first place? Why do we transcend nature in sculpture or poetry?
If we develop a sense of connectedness with all things, we see how in sculpture, for instance, artists work to capture the human form in a very particular way. Through the way they mold the form, they attempt to express something specifically human. We see that their statues cannot simply incorporate the natural human form as it stands before them, imbued with the soul and with the breath and flush of life, with everything we can see in the human being in addition to the form itself. However, I think that sculptors of human figures will gradually achieve an elevated and very particular way of feeling. There is no doubt in my mind that the Greek sculptors had this; it has simply been lost in today's naturalistic age.
<Dear Prudence>
It seems to me that sculptors who work on the human form have a different feeling while shaping the head than they do while forming the rest of the body. In the sculptor's work, sculpting the head and sculpting the rest of the body are very different. To exaggerate, I might say that, in working to sculpt the human head, sculptors have the feeling of being constantly drawn in by the medium, as if it were trying to absorb them; in fashioning the rest of the body, however, they have the feeling of pushing into it from outside, of pressing and poking it everywhere without justification. They have the feeling that they are fashioning the body and modeling its shapes from the outside. In shaping the body, they feel that they are working from the outside in, whereas in fashioning the head they feel that they are working from the inside out. It seems to me that this feeling is specific to sculpture. It was certainly still felt by the Greek artists and has been lost only in our naturalistic age, now that we have become enslaved by the model. If we direct ourselves towards the suprasensory in our intention to sculpt the human form, we must wonder where such a feeling comes from.
Much deeper questions are connected to all this, but before I go into it any further, there is something else I would like to mention. Consider the strong feeling of inwardness we get when experiencing sculpture and architecture, despite the fact that they appear to be fashioned outwardly from physical materials. In architecture, we have an inner experience of dynamics, of how a pillar supports a beam or leads in the form of its capital. We have an inner experience of outer form. In the case of sculpture, our experience is similar.
This is not true of music, however, and especially not with poetry. In the case of prose, we can just about manage to retain the words in our larynx, but in the case of poetry it seems very clear to me (to put it rather drastically again) that words cast in iambic or trochaic rhythms and put into rhyme soar, so that we have to chase them. They populate the atmosphere around us more than that within us. We experience poetry much more externally than, for example, architecture or sculpture. The same is probably true of music when we apply our feeling to it. Musical tones also enliven our entire surroundings. We forget space and time, or at least space, and are lifted out of ourselves in a moral experience. We do not have the urge to chase the figures we create, as we do poetry; rather, we have the feeling we must swim out into an indeterminate element spread out everywhere, and that in the process we are dissolving.
You see how we begin to distinguish certain nuances of feeling in connection with the whole essence of art. These feelings are specific in character. I believe that what I have just described to you can be appreciated by those who have a subtle appreciation of art. However, this is not true when we view a crystal or some other natural mineral, or plant, an animal, or even an actual physical human being. Our feelings and sensations with regard to the whole outer world of physical nature as perceived by our senses are very different from the feelings and sensations that arise in relation to our experiences of various types of art as described.
Suprasensory knowledge can be described as a transformation of ordinary abstract knowledge into seeing knowledge that points to experiential knowledge. It is nonsense to require the same sort of logical, pedantic, narrow-minded proof of matters in higher realms that is desirable in the coarser realms of science, math, and so on. If you "live into" the feelings that arise when you enter the world of art, you gradually come to remarkable inner states of soul. Specific and subtle states of soul arise when you inwardly experience tracing the dynamics and mechanics in architecture or the rounded forms of sculpture. One's inner feeling life follows a remarkable path. As you move along it, you are confronted by a soul experience similar to memory. When you experience recall or memory, you notice how much your inner sensing of architecture and sculpture resembles the inner process of memory, although remembering happens on a higher level. In other words, by way of your feeling for architecture and sculpture, you gradually approach the soul experience known to spiritual research as remembering prebirth conditions. In fact, the way you live in relationship to the entire cosmos between death and a new birth - feeling yourself move as soul-spirit, or spirit-soul, in directions that intersect the paths of certain beings and maintain an equilibrium with others - such experiences are remembered subconsciously for the time being, and architecture and sculpture reproduce this.
<Te Doy una Canción>
If we reexperience this singular situation in sculpture and architecture and do so with inner presence of mind, we discover that our real purpose in sculpture and architecture is simply to conjure, in the physical, sensory world experiences we had in the spiritual world before conception and birth. When we do not build houses merely according to utilitarian principles, but make them architecturally beautiful, we fashion their dynamic proportions as they arise from our recollections of the experiences of equilibrium and rhythmically moving forms that we had in the time between death and our new birth.
Thus, we discover how human beings came to develop architecture and sculpture as forms of art. Our experiences between death and rebirth were floating around in our soul. We wanted somehow to bring them forth and have them stand visibly before us, and so we created architecture and sculpture. We can attribute the fact that humanity brought forth architecture and sculpture in the course of cultural evolution to the fact that life between death and rebirth continues to work and that, within us, we will it to be so. Just as a spider spins, human beings desire to reproduce and give form to their experience between death and a new birth. Prenatal experiences are carried into the world of the physical senses. What we see when we survey the architecture and sculptural works of art created by humanity is simply an embodiment of unconscious recollections of our life between death and rebirth.
Now we have a realistic answer to the question of why human beings create art. If we were not suprasensory beings who enter this life through conception and birth, we would surely not engage in either sculpture or architecture.
And we know what singular connections exist between two (or, say, three) successive lives on Earth. In its formative forces, what is now your head is a transformation of the body (not including the head) that you had in your previous incarnation, while your present body will transform itself into your head in your next incarnation. The human head, however, has a completely different meaning. The head is old; it is the former body transformed. The forces experienced between a person's most recent death and present birth shaped this external form of the head, but the body is the carrier of forces that are now brewing and will take on form in the next incarnation.
This is why sculptors have a different feeling about the head that they do about the rest of the body. In the case of the head, sculptors feel somewhat as if it were trying to pull them into itself, because it is formed from the previous incarnation by forces embedded in its present form. In the case of the body, sculptors feel more as if they would like to press themselves into it while modeling it, because the body contains the spiritual forces that lead beyond death and into the next incarnation. Sculptors have a keen sense of this radical difference in the human form between what belongs to the future. The art of sculpture expresses the formative forces of the physical body and how they carry over from one incarnation to the next. On the other hand, what lies more deeply (in the ether body, which is the bearer of our equilibrium and of our dynamic forces) manifests more strongly in the art of architecture.
Mozart: Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K.623 - 1a. Coro - "Laute verkünde unsre Freude"
You see, it is impossible to grasp human life as a whole without looking at suprasensory life and without seriously answering the question of how we come to develop architecture and sculpture. The unwillingness of people to look at the suprasensory world stems from the fact that they also do not try to look at the things of this world in the right way.
Generally speaking: how do people feel about the arts that reveal a spiritual world? It is much like a dog's attitude toward human speech. A dog hears human speech and seems to hear it as barking. Except for particularly intelligent performing animals (such as the one that excited a lot of interest a while ago among people concerned with such useless tricks), a dog does not understand the meaning in the sounds. This illustrates people's attitude toward the arts that speak of the suprasensory world we once experienced. We do not see what they actually reveal.
Consider poetry, which emerges clearly for those who can feel their way into it. Keep in mind, however, that ninety-nine percent of the poetry written is unnecessary for human happiness on this globe and is not true art. The real art of poetry emerges from the whole human being. And what does poetry do? It is not content to stop at prose, but shapes it by bringing meter and rhythm into it. It does something that ordinary prosaic people consider superfluous to their way of life, adding form to something that would convey the intended meaning even without the form. If you listen to a truly artistic recitation of poetry and begin to sense what the poet has made out of the prose content, you will rediscover the remarkable character of this sensation. We cannot experience the mere content of a poem, its prose, as poetry.
<Mozart: Zur Eröffnung der Freimaurerloge: Zerfliesset heut', geliebte Brüder, K.483>
What we experience as poetry is how the words sweep along in iambus, trochee, or anapest, and how the sounds are repeated in alliteration, assonance , or other forms of rhyme. We experience many other qualities in the ways that prosaic content has been given form. This is what we must bring out in recitation. However, when people today recite in a way that brings out only the prose, however profound, they imagine they are being artistic.
Now, if you can really look at this special nuance of feeling that comprises your feeling for poetry, you will reach the point of saying that this does indeed go beyond ordinary feeling, because ordinary feeling adheres to things in the world of the senses, whereas shaping things poetically does not. I expressed this earlier by saying that, when words have been given poetic form, they live more in the atmosphere around us, or that we want to rush outside of ourselves to really experience the poet's words.
This happens because in poetry we are giving form to something that cannot to be experienced between birth and death. We are giving form to something that is of the soul, something we can do without if we only want to live between birth and death. It's quite easy to live your entire life with only a dry prosaic content. But why do we feel the need to add rhythm, assonance, alliteration, and rhyme to this dry prosaic content? Because we have more within us than we need to make it to our death, and we want to provide a form for this excess while we are still living.
Thus we anticipate the life that will follow death. Because we already carry within us what is to follow after death, we feel the urge not only to speak but to speak poetically. Therefor, just as sculpture and architecture are connected with life before birth, with the forces that we carry with us from our prebirth life, so poetry is connected with life after death, with the forces that are already present in us for our life after death.
<Tank!>
It is primarily the "I" being, as it lives this life between birth and death and then passes through the gates of death and continues to live, that already carries within it the forces that give expression to the art of poetry. And the astral body, already alive here in the world of sound, is what shapes the world of sound in melody and harmony, which we do not find in life in the external physical world. This astral body already contains within it what it will experience after death. You know that the astral body we carry within us lives on only for a while after death before we lay it aside. Nevertheless, this astral body contains the actual element of music. It contains it in the way it experiences music in its life-element, the air, between birth and death. We need air if we are to have a medium for experiencing music.
After death, when we reach the point of laying aside the astral body, we also lay aside everything of a musical nature that reminds us of this life on Earth. But at this cosmic moment music is transformed into the music of the spheres. We become independent of what we formerly experienced as music through the medium of the air; we lift ourselves up and live our way into the music of the spheres. What we experience here as music in the air is the music of the spheres up there. The reflection of this higher music makes its way into the element of air, condensing into what we experience as earthly music. We imprint it on our astral body, on what we give form to and reexperience as long as we have an astral body. When we lay aside our astral body at death, the musical experience in us switches to the music of the spheres. In music and poetry we anticipate what our world and our existence will be after death. We experience the suprasensory world in two directions. This is how these four forms of art present themselves to us.
What about painting? There is another spiritual world that lies behind the world of our sense. Materialistic physicists and biologists claim that atoms and molecules are behind the world of the senses. It is not molecules and atoms, however, but spiritual beings. It is a world of spirit, the reality we pass through between falling asleep and waking up. That world, which we bring with us out of sleep, was what really inspires us as we paint, giving us the ability to depict on canvas or murals the spiritual reality surrounding us spatially. For this reason, we must take great care to paint out of color rather than out of line, because the line is a lie in painting. The line always belongs to the memory of life before birth. If we are to paint in a state of consciousness that has expanded into the world of spirit, we must paint what comes from color. And we know that color is experienced in the astral world. When we enter the world we pass through between falling asleep and waking up, we experience this element of color. And when we want to create color harmonies and put color on canvas, what urges us on is the experience of pushing what we have gone through between falling asleep and waking up into our waking physical bodies, allowing it to flow into our waking physical bodies. This is what we attempt to paint on our canvases.
<Hey>
Here again, what appears in painting is a depiction of something suprasensory. In each case, the arts point to the suprasensory. To anyone with an appropriate sense of it, painting reveals the spiritual world that borders and permeates us spatially. This is the reality in which we find ourselves between going to sleep and waking. Sculpture and architecture bear witness to the spiritual reality in which we live between death and a new birth, music and poetry of the life we will go through after death. This is how our participation in the spiritual world makes its way into our ordinary earthly life.
If we have a narrow-minded view of the arts we create during life and see them as being connected only to the period between birth and death, we actually deprive artistic creativity of all meaning. For artistic creativity most certainly means carrying suprasensory spiritual worlds into the physical world of the senses. We bring architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry into the world of physical experience simply because we feel the pressure of what we carry within us from pre-earthly existence, because when awake we feel the pressure of something already in us that will shape us after death. That people usually do not speak about suprasensory worlds simply stems from the fact that they do not understand the world of the senses, either. And above all, they do not understand something that was once known to the spiritual culture of humanity before it was lost and became an external phenomenon, namely art.
If we learn to understand art, it becomes a real proof of human immortality and of life before birth. This is what we need in order to expand our consciousness beyond the horizon of birth and death, so that we can link what we have during life on the physical Earth to the life that transcends the physical plane.
If we work creatively out of such knowledge as the spirit science of Anthroposophy, which aims to understand the spiritual world and to receive it in our ideas and thoughts, into our feelings, perceptions, and will, it will prepare the ground for an art that synthesizes in some way what precedes birth and what follows death.
Consider the art of eurythmy, through which we move the human body. What exactly are we moving? We are moving the human organism by making its limbs move. The limbs, more than any other part of the human body, pass into the life of the next incarnation. They point to the future, to what comes after death. But how do we shape the limb movements we bring forth in eurythmy? In the sense realm and in the suprasensory realm we study how the larynx and all the speech organs have been brought over from the previous life and shaped by the intellectual potentials of the head and the feeling potentials of the chest. We directly link what precedes birth with what follows death. In a certain sense, we take from earthly life only the physical medium, the actual human being who is the tool or instrument for eurythmy. But we allow this human being to make manifest what we study inwardly, what is already prepared in us as a result of previous lives. We transfer this to our limbs, which are the part of us where life after death is being shaped in advance. Eurythmy shapes and moves the human organism in a way that furnishes direct external proof of our participation in the suprasensory world. In having people do eurythmy, we link them directly to the suprasensory world.
Wherever art is developed on the basis of a truly artistic attitude, it bears witness to our connection to the suprasensory worlds. And if in our time we human beings are called upon to take the gods into our own soul forces, so to speak, so that we no longer wait in pious faith for the gods to give us one thing or another, but try instead to take action as though the gods were living in our active will, then the time has indeed come, if humankind will only experience it, when we must take the step from external, objectively formed arts to an art that will assume different dimensions and forms in the future, an art that portrays the suprasensory would directly. How could it be otherwise? Spiritual science itself wants to present the suprasensory directly, so it is bound to use its resources to create an art of this kind.
<Nightmare (Tarot One)>
As for its educational applications, people who are educated along these lines will gradually come to find it quite natural to believe that they are suprasensory beings, because they move their hands, arms, and legs in such a way that the forces of the suprasensory world are active in them. It is the soul of the human being, the suprasensory soul, that begins to move in eurythmy. It is the living expression of the suprasensory that comes to light in eurythmy movements.
Everything spiritual science brings us is really in inner harmony with itself. On the one hand, it brings us these things so that we may more deeply and intensely comprehend the life we are engaged in, so that we may learn to turn our gaze to the living proof of the reality of existence before birth and after death. On the other hand, it introduces our suprasensory element into the will. This is the inner cohesiveness behind anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific striving. This is how spiritual science will expand human consciousness. It will no longer be possible for people to make their way through the world as they have been doing in the age of materialism, when they have been able to survey only what takes place between birth and death. Although they may also believe in something else that promises bliss and redemption, they can form no concept of this "something else." They can only listen to sentimental sermons about it; in actuality it is empty of content. Through spiritual science, human beings are meant to receive real content from the spiritual world once again. We are meant to be released from the life of abstraction, from the life that refuses to go beyond the perceptions and thoughts that lie between birth and death, from a life that at most takes in some indefinite verbal indications of the spiritual world. Spiritual science will infuse us with a consciousness that will widen our horizon and enable us to be aware of the suprasensory world even as we live and work in the physical world.
<Vyvanse Study>
It is true enough that we go through the world today knowing at, say, the age of thirty that the foundation for what we are now was laid in us when were ten or fifteen. This much we can remember. If we read something at age thirty, we remember that the present moment is linked to the time twenty-two or twenty-three years ago when we were learning to read. But what we do not notice is that between birth and death we constantly have pulsing within us the experiences we underwent between our last death and our present birth. Let's look at what has been born out of these forces in architecture and in sculpture. If we understand this correctly, we will also be able to apply it to our lives in the right way and to achieve once again a sense of how prose is fashioned into the rhythm, meter, alliteration, and assonance of poetry, even though this may be considered superfluous to ordinary prosaic life. Then we will form the right link between this special nuance of feeling and the immortal kernel of our being which we carry with us through death. We will say that it would be impossible for anyone to become a poet unless all human beings possessed the actual creative element of the poet, namely the force that already resides within us but does not become outwardly alive until after death.
This draws the suprasensory into our ordinary consciousness, which must expand again if humanity does not intend to sink further into the depths we have plunged into as a result of a contracted consciousness that makes us live only in what happens between birth and death, allowing us at most to hear preaching about what is present in the suprasensory world.
You see, we encounter spiritual science everywhere, whenever we speak about the most important cultural needs of our time.
​
From Rudolf Steiner, Art as Spiritual Activity
​
I don't want to set the world on fire

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Continuation
Chapter Three
THE MASONIC PHASE
45-58
<Static Doesn't Exist>
With an understanding of the complex jigsaw puzzle that constitutes German 18th-century Freemasonry, it will now be possible to examine how Rosicrucianism became a part of the jigsaw and how it fitted into the picture.
As we have seen, the name Gold- und Rosenkreuz, or variations of it, had been appearing in various texts since 1710, in ways that suggested, without actually proving, the existence of some kind of brotherhood of that name. This is what I have called the pre-masonic phase of the Rosicrucian revival, as distinct from the very tangible order that came to flourish later on, with its masonic connection and rituals of masonic character.
When and how this latter phase began is still a matter of speculation. According to Arnold Marx, the available evidence regarding its inception seem to point to one Hermann Fictuld, author of a number of alchemical and magical-kabbalistic works, including Aureum Vellus (Leipzig, 1749), in which he twice refers to a "Societät der goldenen Rosenkreuzer", who were the inheritors of the Golden Fleece.
Antoine Faivre, in an essay entitled "Miles redivivus", sees Fictuld as part of an 18th-century wave of nostalgia for the age of chivalry, which manifested itself in such works as Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1774). He writes:
We find, firmly entrenched in the midst of the century of Enlightenment, the image of the knight. What was it doing there? And to what needs was it responding? At the moment when the Encyclopaedia was beginning to be published, when the Aufklärung was celebrating its first great triumphs, this image stood out in contrast to arid rationalism ... diversifying itself and taking on a new garb. Hence the name miles redivivus which I venture to use in following the figure of the knight up to around 1815, through the three domains in which he chose to manifest himself: alchemical literature, Freemasonry and literature in general (novels, drama, epic poems). ***This applies to Europe as a whole, but especially to Germany, which from the Renaissance to our own time, has remained, more than any other country, the conservator of symbolic and initiatory traditions. <"***Germans Thought, what other Nations did">
...
The Order of the Golden Fleece was a Chivalric order, founded by Duke Philip III of Burgundy in 1429. Fictuld, however, claims that the original fleece was made by Phrixus, son of the king of Thebes, and was passed down via Jason to Duke Philip. Fictuld's interpretation of the order is alchemical. The word Vliess, he says, is cognate with flieBen, meaning "to flow", and the Golden Fleece is therefore a symbol for the philosophical gold, a liquid fiery substance, which flows down from the planetary spheres and constitutes the divine soul permeating the world and giving rise to all life and growth. The Golden Fleece, according to Fictuld, was therefore essentially an alchemical order, which, after the death of Philip's successor, Charles the Bold, went underground and eventually became the order of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz.
Fictuld's preface to Aureum Vellus is interesting, since it shows him to be out of sympathy with his age. He writes that the old ways, statutes and ceremonies are far more sensible and natural than those of his own day, for they have as their basis "the veneration and fear of God, the law of love and justice, freedom, and the protection and upholding of rights." He continues:
In summa the old laws and ceremonies represent the veneration of God and the welfare of humankind. All these statutes, however, are to the world of today merely an old, unknown fashion. They are no longer loved or respected but have been replaced by quite new ones that serve no other purpose than ostentation and arrogance. Thus there is also no longer any fear of God in the land, for the world makes do with shells and husks instead of with the kernel.
...
Although little is known about Fictuld himself, one significant recorded fact is that he corresponded with the famous Peitist writer F.C. Oetinger, so here again is a link, albeit a tenuous one, between Pietism and the Rosicrucian-alchemical tradition. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to suggest a possible parallel between, on the one hand, Fictuld's search for a pristine chivalric order and, on the other, Pietism's search for a pristine Christianity. Possibly the omission of chivalric titles from the grades of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz arose from a desire to avoid the empty pomposity which Fictuld laments in the ceremonial practices of his own day.
To what extent Fictuld was responsible for creating the Gold- und Rosenkreuz order, as it was in the second half of the 18th century, is a matter of speculation. Marx writes: "Probably Fictuld came into contact with the brotherhood, which up to that point had worked entirely in secret, in about the year 1747, giving it for the first time a definite organization, if not actually creating a new fraternity under the old name."
The earliest solid evidence regarding this new fraternity is a document, dated 1761, discovered in Hungary by the masonic historian Ludwig Abafi (alias Aigner) in the archives of the Festetics family, which he described in an article in Die Bauhütte of 18 March 1893. This document, the work of a member of the "Prager Assemblée" (evidently a local branch of the order), was entitled Aureum Vellus sea Iunioratus Fratrum Rosae Crucis and contained rituals of the order as well as a list of members. The leaders, and possibly also the founders, of this order are listen by Abafi as follows. The Oberster Vorsteher (supreme head) was one von Schwartz, a merchant of Frankfurt-am-Main. The remaining leaders were: von RieB of Darmstadt (no occupation given); von Stiller, an artillery captain of Frankfurt-am-Main; Rudolf Baron Nitzky. The second Nitzky, Abafi believes, was also the local leader of the Prague "Assemblée".
<Flying Floor for U.S. Airways>
The account in this manuscript of the order's founding was taken almost word for word from Fictuld's Aureum Vellus, while statutes of the order set out in the manuscript correspond almost exactly to those of a French order called the Philosophes Inconnus, as described in Baron Henry de Tschoudy's L'Etoile Flamboyante (this appeared in French in 1766 and in German in 1779 and therefore could not have been the source of the Prague statutes; both must have stemmed from a common source).
What do we know of the nature of the Rosicrucian order during this phase? The Prague document reveals some significant differences from the earlier phase. First, the order was now more emphatically hierarchical than it was presented in the pre-masonic phase. Whereas Frisau's order, for example, has simply 77 members and an Imperator, this order had seven grades of membership. From the bottom up, these were as follows: Neophytes (jüngst Aufgenommene), Juniores, Adepti exempti, Philosophi minores, Philosophi majores, Philosophi majores primarii, and Magi. Secondly, the order had evidently greatly expanded in size. The Magi alone were now said to number 77.
There are also doctrinal differences revealed in the statutes. What is interesting is that these statutes were not based on those of Sincerus Renatus, which are distinctly different from Tschoudy's, although there are points of similarity. It is rather surprising that this Prague organization should have taken its rules from a French source when the obvious source would have been the set of statutes that appear in Sincerus Renatus, the "Testamentum" and elsewhere.
When we examine the substance of the statutes we find that, as in the case of the "Testamentum", they are by no means always contrary to the Enlightenment spirit. The first article sets a cosmopolitan tone. Tschoudy's version reads:
This company should not be bounded by one country, nation, kingdom or province or, in a word, by any particular place; but should be spread throughout the whole inhabitable world illuminated by a holy religion, where virtue is known and reason followed: for a universal good should not be confined to a small, enclosed place but, on the contrary, should be carried wherever it encounters people suitable to receive it.
....
The corresponding article in the Prague document is as follows: "Members can be masons from all lands and nations; for the universal Good knows no boundaries but must benefit those who are worthy of it wherever it finds them." Interestingly, the second version, unlike the first, says that members must be masons. Otherwise the sentiment is the same.
Article 4 in Tschoudy states that people of all conditions and religions can be admitted, whereas the author of the Prague document, evidently misreading the French states: "All members of a company [i.e. a division of the order] must be of one and the same condition, profession and religion." This must be a mistranslation, as he goes on to say that they must "at least" be convinced Christians - the phrase "at least" does not make sense if the first sentence is correct. He goes on, however, to say that an exception can sometimes be made for Jews "on account of the ancient Jewish law". This rule was changed in the later manifestations of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, and Jews were prohibited, although, as we shall see, they were admitted in to the Rosicrucian off-shoot called the Asiatic Brethren.
<A wish made while burning onions will come true>
In so far as the statues reveal a religious standpoint, it is, curiously enough, a Catholic one. Whereas the original manifestos had been decidedly anti-papal in tone, and Sincerus Renatus's order had been marked by confessional tolerance, the Prague statutes state, in article 14, that, before being received, a candidate must have a mass celebrated. This again is a mis-translation or deliberate modification of the equivalent article in Tschoudy, which says that the candidate should "invoke the light of the Eternal by causing to be celebrated a solemn and religious public ceremony in a consecrated place . . . according to the religion of the person who is to be received."
<Civil Sunset>
At the same time, article 5 of both documents states that members of religious orders can only be admitted with difficulty. This corresponds to a similar article in Sincerus Renatus. Both documents also agree, in article 6, in saying that kings and princes can seldom be admitted - a stipulation which runs strikingly counter to the theocratic notions of much Counter-Enlightenment thought and which was to be ignored in later versions of the order . The two documents also concur, in articles 21-23 in enjoining members to practise alchemy.
Arnold Marx points out that, as the order was supposed to be reformed every ten years, and as such reforms took place in 1767 and 1777, it can be assumed that 1757 was the true date for the founding of the order. For convenience, I shall call this phase of the order the 1757-67 phase.
A crucial feature of this phase is that the order was now linked with Freemasonry. The prague circle bore the masonic lodge name Zu den drei gekrönten Sternen. With an anti-masonic policy developing under Maria Theresa's rule, the circle was dissolved in 1761, and three of its members were sentenced to six years in prison. This was a foretaste of two general decrees banning Freemasonry in the Habsburg lands. The papal bull against Masonry (the second of two such bulls, the first having been issued in 1738). From this time, until the death of Maria Theresa in 1781, lodges in those territories were obliged to work in secret.
Marx points out that initially Prague, Regensburg and Frankfurt-am-Main were the centres of the neo-Rosicrucian movement. Later the movement spread to Silesia - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "returned" since the whole revival had begun in Silesia with the publication of Sincerus Renatus's book. Silesia , with its tradition of mystical piety, may have played a pivotal role in the neo-Rosicrucian movement and will be referred to again (Chapter 7). Subsequently the movement gained a strong foothold in Vienna and also spread to Saxony, Hungary, Russia and Poland. Berlin also became an important Rosicrucian centre. Thus, interestingly, the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, in the direction of its dispersal, followed approximately the opposite pattern to that of Freemasonry in general and that of the Aufklärung itself, both of which tended to spread from north to south.
In the 1760s and 70s one of the most conspicuous apologists for the order was a certain Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm Schröder (1733-1778), a professor of medicine at Marburg. Santing gives the following account of Schröder's Rosicrucian activities. In 1766 he was giving himself out as a Rosicrucian (without yet being a member of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz) and initiating Freemasons who so desired into Rosicrucianism. As a keen devotee of alchemy, he carried on a wide correspondence with other alchemists. As a result a plan was evidently formed by the order to recruit him. At first he received anonymous letters of cryptic content in order to arouse his curiosity, then he was visited by an adept of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz who told him that he had been selected for the great work. He became director of a Rosicrucian circle but after a time apparently fell foul of the order, for he suddenly ceased to receive replies to his communications to his superiors. That Schröder came to be regarded with suspicion by the Gold- und Rosenkreuz is confirmed by a letter from G.C. von Röpert (whom we shall meet again shortly), dated 19 October 1785 and reproduced in I.A. FeBler's Kritische Geschchte der Freimaurerei. Röpert refers to a certain "Brother von Waldenfels, currently Minister at Cologne" who had been "of the sect of the blessed Schröder of Marburg". Röpert states that he too had been a member of this sect but had found that Schröder also had "a connection in France which seemed to me to be suspicious and hindered me from giving credence to his assertions before I had verified them with my own eyes". How long Schröder remained in the Gold- und Rosenkreuz is not known, but, whether in or out of the order, he remained an active publicist for alchemy and in the years 1772-74 brought out a work entitled Nueue alchymistische Bibliothek, a collection of alchemical writings whose intention was to keep alchemy alive in the face of the threat from Enlightenment science. This book became one of the most widely read sources on alchemy during the last quarter of the 18th century. The second part of the book contained a contribution from "W. Schott. T.R. und Br. des G.R.C. in Deutschland" (Scottish Knight Templar and Brother of the Golden and Rosy Cross in Germany). In the copy of this work in the copy of this work in the library of the Grand Lodge of the Netherlands the same Waldenfels with a question mark written in pencil beside the "W".
<Years of This>
Another, somewhat notorious, figure associated with the early Rosicrucian revival was Johann Georg Schrepfer (1739-1774), a former Prussian hussar turned coffee house proprietor in Leipzig where he was active in masonic circles and carried out spiritualistic seances. Like Cagliostro, with whom he has been compared, he had a penchant for inventing grandiose occult credentials for himself and an ability to make people believe in them. The anti-masonic edicts of 1764 and 1766 had little long-term effect in the Habsburg lands and, as Marx points out, Vienna soon became once again an important base for the Rosicrucians. In 1767 the first recorded reform of the order took place. A document from this period reveals that it now had nine grades. In ascending order, these were: Junior, Theoreticus, Practicus, Philosophus, Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major, Adeptus exemptus, Magister, Magus. The document in question lists each of these grades with its number of members, badge, colour, password, kabbalistic name of its leader, country where they are found, residence of the leader, place of assembly, number of circles (i.e. the number of the grade in the hierarchy), the science studied by the members, and the cost of admission. The entry for the grade of Junior reads as follows:
...
Erster Grad, Junior. Anzahl, 909. Zeichen, ein Ring mit Charakteren, Farbe, Gold wrot, Aesch, Name d. V., Pereclinus de Faustis. Land, sie sind überall zerstreut. Residenz der Vorsteher, zu Inspruk. Ort der Zusammenkunft, unbestimmi; sie werden all zwei Jahre versammelt. Kreise, sie haven derer neune. Wissenschaft, sie sind Lehrlinge. Aufnahmekosten, drei Mark Gold.
...
The same document gives the impression that the order was very widespread. The places of residence of the grade leaders allegedly include, besides Innsbruck: Zürich, Dresden, Prag, Vienna, Naples, Venice, Madrid, London and Amsterdam. And the places of assembly include: Leipzig, Breslau, Krakow, Königsberg, Danzig, Hamburg, Lisbon, Malta and Smyrna. It is fairly clear, however, that the details of the grades were intended more to impress prospective members than to represent the true state of affairs. The members of the ninth grade, for example, are presented as being superhuman: "...from them nothing is concealed. They are masters of everything, like Moses, Aaron, Hermes and Hiram Abiff."
Marx points out that, in the order's new form, the theme of a chivalric inheritance was excluded from the legend "and the Bible became the sole guiding principle". At the same time, however, the order continued to claim possession of a wisdom tradition going back to ancient Egypt.
The years following the 1767 reform were years when many different tendencies were vying for possession of the soul of German Freemasonry and when many self-appointed sages were heard proclaiming the validity of this or that rite. In 1775, 26 German nobles gathered for a masonic congress in Braunschweig, the last one at which the Strict Observance enjoyed its full prestige before its collapse in 1782. In the year following the Braunschweig congress leading German members of the Strict Observance gathered at Wiesbaden at the invitation of one Baron von Gugomos , who gave himself out as the "emissary of the true Superiors of the Order". He claimed that these Superiors had their headquarters at Nicosia in Cyprus and said that he was ready to go to Cyprus and obtain secret writings from them. Much excitement was caused by this. During or soon after the Wiesbaden congress, however, Gugomos was exposed as being a charlatan who titles and charters were a fabrication. From this point on, according to Marx, confidence in the prevailing high-degree masonic systems (that is to say, those based on the Templar legend) began to collapse, leaving the way open for the Gold- und Rosenkreuz and the Illuminati, the former representing the Christian and mystical path, the latter the radical and enlightened path.
<Dear Prudence>
In 1777, following the ten-year pattern, the Gold- und Rosenkreuz once again underwent a reform. The descriptions of the grades were now more cautiously worded. For example, in the 1767 grade list it was claimed that members of the seventh grade "have knowledge of the stone of the wise, the Kabbalah, and natural magic", whereas in 1777 this was modified to read: "Some, it is true, also have knowledge of the stone of the wise, Kabbalah and natural magic but they are destined for a very different task and hitherto have not discovered everything with regard to projection." Evidently more sophisticated minds were now behind the order, minds that knew how to appeal to the yearning for higher knowledge, without promising too explicitly to deliver it. A certain sophistication was also required to create the elaborate series of rituals that went with the grades . Whether these changed substantially in 1777 is not known since none survive from before that date. They will be described in greater detail later on.
The identities of the people behind this renewed order remain a matter of some speculation, but certain clues do exist. Johannes Schultze, in his essay Die Rosenkreuzer und Friedrich Wilhelm II, states that "the origin of this new Rosicrucian order is to be sought in the Berlin circle of Duke Friedrich August of Braunschweig [1740-1805]". Certainly Berlin was a major centre of high-degree Masonry. Before the Gugomos affair there had been high expectations of the promised Templar dispensation - expectations which appear to have concentrated around the figure of the Duke. Bischoffswerder (see Chapter 7), for example, wrote to Friedrich August expressing the hope of accompanying Gugomos to Cyprus and "lifting the veil which conceals our happiness from us". Another would-be Templar, von Lestwitz, as a delegate to the Wiesbaden congress, spoke of the role of the Duke in the following words:
...
Prophetically, I can see Your Grace, invested with the sacred unction, standing in the Holy of Holies, with the forces of nature obeying you and the whole assembly of brothers, who are subject to the best of monarchs, gathering under your banner to receive from you the highest commands of the order, to follow your illustrious example of religiosity and virtue, and, united with you, to work with tireless efforts for the happiness of the world . . .
...
All this was, as Schultze points out, very contrary to the spirit of the Aufklärung. Here, as the reign of the enlightened despot Frederick the Great drew to a close, was a group of men hoping to find some ancient esoteric order to which they could ally themselves and looking for a leader who would be a combination of monarch, sage and hierophant. Although Lestwitz saw Duke Friedrich August as such a leader, these hopes were soon to focus on the heir to the Prussian throne, as we shall see in due course.
After the exposure of Gugomos the Berlin circle of Friedrich August became increasingly desperate in their search for the true "Superiors". Thus at the beginning of 1777 Wöllner wrote to Bischoffswerder: "Oh, you Brothers who are able to see, will you not have pity on us blind men who stand in the road and beg?" It was at this point, whether by coincidence or not, that the 1777 reform of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz order took place. By 1779 the members of the Friedrich August circle in Berlin - the Duke himself, Wöllner, Bischoffswerder and others - were professing themselves to be Rosicrucians. Others, such as Johann August Starck, founder of the Clerks Templar, were not pleased by the growth of the Rosicrucian order. On 24 October 1779 Starck wrote to one von Röpert (see below, Chapter 4) complaining: "In Silesia knights are appearing whose chief is said to reside in Sulzbach. Elsewhere a new system is being created which the Prince of Prussia is already said to have joined and which gives us a different bible instead of the hitherto sacred Scripture." Starck clearly knew very little about the order or he would have been aware of its highly Christian emphasis.
Mozart: Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K. 623 - 3/4: Recit/Duo: "Wohlan, ihr Brüder... Lange...
What, therefore, had happened in the year or two immediately following Wiesbaden? It seems likely that after the exposure of Gugomos the Berlin seekers established a link with the Rosicrucians of southern Germany and accepted their version of the true masonic tradition. In this process Wöllmer appears to have played a key role as an intermediary between the Berlin group and the "Superiors" in the south. As to the identity of these superiors, there are some clues in Wöllner's NachlaB, as Schultze points out. In one of his last instructions, Wöllner communicated to his successors as head of the Order in Berlin, namely Duke Friedrich August, the names of these Superiors, written on three envelopes, one inside the other. The innermost envelope, which bore (in German) the words "To the most worthy Brother Geronni", was enclosed in a second envelope addressed "To the most worthy Brother Effarius", and this in turn was placed in a third envelope addressed (in French) "To Mr. Untersteiner, distinguished merchant, Augsburg". Schultze explains:
...
In fact there was living in Augsburg around 1770 a merchant named Johann Georg Untersteiner from Rovereto near Trent. Thus the trail of the mysterious Superiors leads to South Germany and Austria and possibly to Italy. However, behind Untersteiner in Augsburg stands the figure of the cloth merchant and Circle Director Franz Xaver Arbauer, who also attained prominence in the order as its Secretary and had contact with the order's circle in Bozen. Behind him, according to Aigner (Ludwig Aigner, alias Abafi), stood a triumvirate consisting of SchleiB von Löwenfeld, physician-in-ordinary from the Upper Palatinate, the legation secretary Karl Rudolf Ignaz von Keller in Regensburg, who was particularly active in Austria, and Christian Erdmann Franz Xaver von Jägern in the neighbourhood of Regensburg. The last-named is identified by Aigner as the "Prior of the Grand Priory", Geronni, the last addressee.
...
It would appear, therefore, that when Wöllner wished to communicate with the Grand Prior, who presumably was the supreme head of the order, he did so by enclosing the message in the way described above as a precaution in maintaining the secrecy of the Prior's identity.
Marx's list of the leading triumvirate is the same as that given by Schultze. He adds that Keller was "perhaps an Austrian; at any rate he was already active in 1764 as a Rosicrucian in Prague and Vienna. After the prohibition there worked in Regensburg and succeeded in reorganizing the order in Austria after it has been discredited by the first set of Superiors." And von Jägern he describes as "an authority on alchemy who was also active in Regensburg". SchlieB von Löwenfeld we shall encounter again shortly. As we shall see, in his writings he made distinctly anti-Aufklärung pronouncements on a number of issues.
As for Keller, some interesting remarks about him and about the Rosicrucians in general are given in the correspondence of Friedrich Tieman (1743-1802) whom Antoine Faivre, in an article on Tieman, describes as "a typical example of the world-view of symbolic Freemasonry in the latter part of the 18th century". Tieman, the son of a pastor, was a man of mystical temperament. Like so many people who moved in the world of Illuminism and high-degree Masonry, he was profoundly anti-Enlightenment in his views, as is revealed by a letter from him to another counter-Enlightenment figure, the Zürich pastor Johann Caspar Lavater, in which he describes how, at an earlier stage in his life he "following only the light of nature, failed to see the light that has come into the world and, being blinded by the conclusions of the seductive new philosophy, took it for a foolish superstition. ..." Tieman was on friendly terms with French illuminés such as Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, and it was to the latter that he wrote in 1781 the following remarks about the Rosicrucians:
The Rosicrucians are, at the present moment, certainly the secret society in Germany that most merits attention. They are difficult to find and to know; for those who adopt the name merely because they wish to win proselytes, and of whom many parts of Germany are inundated, are merely bastard children not recognized by their fathers. The true Rosicrucians have false brothers, especially at Munich, who have published libellous accusations against them [the true Rosicrucians], making them appear cunning deceivers whose plan is to appropriate the light permeating higher Masonry and the other secret societies.
...
Tieman explains that he entertained the same conception of the Rosicrucians until he happened to meet one of the true members of the brotherhood, "Monsieur Keller of Regensburg", an "illuminated man" who have him a different conception of the order. Tieman continues:
I subsequently learned that he is one of their superiors and that he enjoys the greatest esteem in the order. After several interesting conversations with him he led me to hope that I might become a member, but in order to join a circle it would first be necessary for me to have a fixed residence somewhere. I have since seen some very estimable and very illuminated ones at Vienna.
...
The order was now in its maturity, and the neo-Rosicrucianism that it represented contained the following main ingredients:

1. The original Rosicrucian tradition stemming from the manifestos, albeit markedly altered.
2. A new emphasis on alchemy.
3. An austere kind of Christian piety.
4. Freemasonry in general and the French and Swedish high-degree systems in particular, with their colourful grades, but now shorn of the chivalric mythology - possibly, as I have speculated, in deference to the pietistic element.

It may have been this curious combination of austere Christianity with an elaborate system of ritual and symbolism that helped the order to flourish in both Catholic and Protestant areas.
At this stage, where we see the Gold- und Rosenkreuz in its maturity, it is appropriate to attempt a numerical estimate of the strength of the Rosicrucian revival in Germany. We can divide those involved into three groups: first, the members of the Gold- und Rosenkreuz itself; second, rival groups and self-appointed Rosicrucian sages and their followers; third, people not actively involved in any Rosicrucian group but interested in Rosicrucianism, perhaps because they were practitioners of alchemy or through the considerable published literature on the subject.
<Mozart: Laut verkünde unsre Freude, K.623 - 2ab: Recit: "Zum ersten Male"; Aria: "Dieser Gottheit">
As a starting point let us take an estimate from someone writing as a member of the order. Chrysophiron, in a passage that I shall quote later on (see below, chapter 5), says that he could name well over a hundred true Rosicrucians in his own district and that there are more than a thousand in the whole of "the German fatherland". We can also approach the question by considering the number of places that were Rosicrucian centres. In the various manuscripts I have examined relating to the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, and in previous writings on the subject by scholars such as Marx, Beyer, Santing, Frick and Steiner, mention is made of at least the following places as being the homes of Gold- und Rosenkreuz groups: Aachen, Augsburg, Berlin, Bozen, Braunschweig, Breslau, Brunn, Burghausen, Chemnitz, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Hildesheim, Kessel, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Prague, Regensburg, Munich, Salzburg, Sulzbach, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Vienna. Even this very rough and undoubtedly incomplete list, leaving out the centres in Hungary, Poland and Russia, gives 27 centres. Given that each circle always had nine members, and assuming there was only one circle in each of these places, this would give a minimum of 243 members. But there must have been many other towns where the order was active, and many would have had more than one circle. Wöllner, as Oberhauptdirektor for his region, is reported to have been in charge of 26 circles, indicating a membership of 234 in that part of Germany alone; and according to Abafi the Regensburg centre had 120 circles under its aegis, making 1,080 members. Thus Chrysophiron's estimate of well over 1,000 members begins to look plausible. In 1785 J.E. Biester, writing in the Berlinische Monatsschrift (see Chapter 8), estimated the number at 8000, but this has the ring of exaggeration.
As for the second group, those whom Tieman calls the "false brothers", it is impossible to estimate their number, but it must have been substantial if he was able to say that certain parts of Germany were "inundated" by them. It is equally difficult to estimate the extent of the third group, those interested in Rosicrucianism in a less active way, whose interest might have been around by reading or through contact with alchemy, but Wolfstieg's bibliography reveals that between 1710 and the end of the century 60 books on the subject of Rosicrucianism were published in German. In addition Rosicrucianism was discussed in the press and had its echoes in literature, as for example in Goethe's unfinished poem Die Geheimnisse.
It was largely the Gold- und Rosenkreuz order and its polemicists that kept the Rosicrucian issue alive. Furthermore, as we shall see, many of its members were highly-placed men who gave the order an influence out of proportion to its numerical strength.
​
French Lick

This is Part 1 of 2 due to reddit's character limit. For Part 2: click here
Firstly here's a more general anarchist reading list: click here
This is just an exercise in creating a counter reading list of essays and books critiquing post-left anarchy from the perspective of desiring that those individualist anarchists who consider themselves post-left might come back to acknowledging the benefits of working on big tent leftist campaigns, as well as solely anarchist campaigns and direct actions.
If you're unaware of what post-left anarchy is, the main thing you need to know is that it's primarily a skepticism of the utility of mass-movements. Here's a post comparing & contrasting the different values in summary: click here
The post-left reading list is taken from this poster: click here
The essays in each section of each column offer a contrast to each other already, but I feel the need to make special mention of the issues with 4 types of listed items:

• Eco-extremists defend misanthropic and fascistic mass murder: click here
• Hakim Bay is an advocate of paedophilic rape: click here
• Dr. Bones was credibly accused of abusing a fan of his: click here
• One of the authors of Black Flame called Schmidt has since been outed as a racist. Although the main author of the book was Van der Walt, not Schmidt.
• Kropotkin was an imperialist: click here
• & Bakunin was a racist: click here

Finally, if you have any suggestions on additions and formatting please let me know and I'll continue to update this post.
-

LEFT-ANARCHIST READING LIST	POST-LEFT ANARCHY READING LIST
.
The Regrettable Argument that Created the Post-Left	The Argument that Created the Post-Left
(overly critical) -----	1996 Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm by Murray Bookchin (critical)
(overly defensive) -----	Anarchy After Leftism by Bob Black
(overly defensive) -----	Withered Anarchism by Bob Black
(overly critical) -----	Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics by Murray Bookchin (critical)
.
Left-Anarchist General	Post-Left General
Click - Anarchists in Wonderland; Against post-left anarchism and for an anarchism that does not shed the left	Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind by Jason McQuinn
Click - The Left-Overs: How Fascists Court the Post-Left	The Incredible Lameness of Left-Anarchism by Jason McQuinn
Click - Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! by David Graeber	On the Radical Virtues of Being Left Alone; Deconstructing Staudenmaier by Lawrence Jarach
Click - Exercise: What Would an Anarchist Program Look Like? by Crimethinc	Anarchists, Don’t Let the Left(overs) Ruin Your Appetite by Lawrence Jarach
Click - An Anarchist Programme by Errico Malatesta	Whatever You Do, Get Away With It by Jason McQuinn
Click - Anarchy! by Errico Malatesta	Critical Analysis of the Left: Let’s Clean House by Joaquin Cienfuegos
Click - At the Cafe by Errico Malatesta	From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone by Wolfi Landstreicher
Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein	Notes on “Post-Left Anarchism” by Bob Black
Click - No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guerin	Bolo’bolo
Click - Volumes 1-3 of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas by Robert Graham	Abolish Work by Bob Black
Debating Anarchism: A History of Action, Ideas and Movements by Mike Finn	Instead of Work by Bob Black
Click - Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century by Vadim Damier	Defacing the Currency by Bob Black
Click - Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism by Schmidt, Michael & Lucien Van der Walt Hirsch	Modern Slavery [journal]
Click - Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World 1870-1940 by Steven and Lucian van der Walt	Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed [journal]
Click - The Tyranny of Structurelessness	Click - The Tyranny of Tyranny
	Click - A Review of The “Tyranny of Structurelessness”: An organizationalist repudiation of anarchism
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Saul Newman (Because it’s more valuable to spread modern theorists referencing present political realities)	Max Stirner
Click - Saul Newman On Anarchism Today	The Unique and It’s Property by Max Stirner
Click - Stirner and the Politics of the Ego (Saul Newman)	Stirner’s Critics by Max Stirner
Click - The Politics of Post-Anarchism by Saul Newman	The False Principles of Our Education by Max Stirner
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Social Anarchism (Not because individualism is bad, but because both are useful)	Anarcho-Individualism
Click - Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism	The Anarchists by John Henry Mackay
Click - Social Anarchism and Organization by Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janerio	Enemies of Society by various
Click - The Formation of Local Councils by Omar Aziz	Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism by Vincent Stone
Click - Role of the Revolutionary Organisation by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Novatore by Renzo Novatore
Click - Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin	The Rebel’s Dark Laughter: The Writings of Bruno Filippi
Click - Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle by Solidarity Federation	Individualist Anarchism and Revolutionary Sexualism by Emile Armand
Click - Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber	Anarchism & Violence: Severino Di Giovanni In Argentina, by Osvaldo Bayer
Click - A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers by Errico Malatesta	Alexandre Jacob: Sailor, Thief, Anarchist, Convict by Bernard Thomas
Click - The Conquest of Bread by Pëtr Kropotkin	The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists by Richard Parry
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Critical Thinking (Because why be pretentious about it)	Self-Theory
-----	Click - The Minimum Definition of Intelligence: Theses on the Construction of One’s Own Self-Theory by For Ourselfs
-----	Click - Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon by Wolfi Landstreicher
-----	Click - Critical Self-Theory: Towards an Anarchist Critical Theory of the Self and Society by Jason McQuinn
-----	Click - Critical Self-Theory and the Non-Ideological Critique of Ideology by Jason McQuinn
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Pragmatic Left-Anarchism (Not because insurrectionary anarchism is bad, but because a diversity of tactics are needed)	Insurrectionary Anarchism
Click - On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence	Armed Joy (1977) by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Click - AFed statement on kneecapping of nuclear executive by Informal Anarchist Federation by The Anarchist Federation	The Insurrectional Project (1998) by Alfredo Bonanno
Click - The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence	Let’s Destroy Work, Let’s Destroy the Economy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Click - Say You Want an Insurrection by Crimethinc	A Critique of Syndicalist Methods by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber	Worker’s Autonomy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber	Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism by Sasha K
Click - Means and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power by Zoe Baker	Feral Revolution by Feral Faun
Click - Towards an Anarchism in the Philippine Archipelago by Simoun Magsalin	Willful Disobedience by Wolfi Landstreicher
Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? Anarchy in Action Around the World by Francis Dupuis-Deri	A Crime Called Freedom by Os Cangaceiros
Click - Basic Bakunin	Killing King Abacus Anthology by various
	‘Anarchy – Civil or Subversive?’ A Collection of Texts Against Civil Anarchism by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
	‘The Sun Still Rises’ by The Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell
	Beyond Right and Wrong by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	LET’S BECOME DANGEROUS for the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell
	Individuality and the Anarchist Group by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	A Conversation Between Anarchists by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell and Mexican Anarchists
	Never Again Unarmed by Harris Hatzimichelakis
	Lone Wolves are Not Alone by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	Articles from “Canenero” by various
	It’s Time for Anarchists to Pick Up A Gun by Dr. Bones
	Stop Protesting and Become a Revolutionary: How to Join the FAI by Dr. Bones
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Eco-Centrism (Because we can still carry out direct actions, just without the misanthropy and celebrating of fascist mass-murder)	Eco-Extremism
Click - Why Ecocentrism Is Essential	Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore j. Kaczynski a.k.a The Unabomber
Click - A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought	The Flower Growing Out of The Underworld: An introduction to Eco-Extremism
Click - A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More	Regresion Magazine [journal]
Click - The Unabomber’s Ethics	ECO-EXTREMIST RELECTIONS
Click - There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS	Atassa 1 and 2 by various
Click - Not Our Comrades: ITS Attacks on Anarchists	Toward Savagery
Click - Eco-extremism and the indiscriminate attack – The Church of ITS Mexico” by L (UK)	INCORRECT: An Interview with Wild Reaction
Click - Of Indiscriminate Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics	The Calusa: A Savage Kingdom?
Click - Eco-Extremism or Extinctionism by John Jacobi	ATLTLACHINOLLI: ECO-EXTREMIST DIALOGUES
Click - The Philosophy of the Unabomber	Ash and Ruin (Subversive Nihilist Periodical) [journal]
Click - A brother lost, a brotherhood found	MICTLANXOCHITL: THE FLOWER FROM THE UNDERWORLD THAT GREW IN OUR TIME
Click - From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus - Eileen Pollack Considers Their Rage and Our Responsibility	Collateral Damage: An Eco-Extremist Defense of Indiscriminate Violence
Click - Unabomber has become an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes. By John H. Richardson	The Anarchist Myth
Click - The New Wave of Eco-Terrorism and Nihilist Militancy by Popular Front	“Confronting your Domestication” and “Rewilding”
	Wild Reaction: Some Answers About the Present and NOT About the Future
	Mexico: Indirect Response from the Individualists Tending toward the Wild
	Against the World-Builders: Eco-Extremists Respond to Critics
.
Gender Existentialism	Gender Nihilism
Click - The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lord	Toward the Queerest Insurrection by Unknown
Click - The Revolution is Female by Abdullah Öcalan	Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto by Alyson Escalante
	What is Gender Nihilism? A Reader by various
	Baedan [journal]
	Queer UltraViolence Bash Back! Anthology by Fray Baroque
	Communization and the Abolition of Gender by Unknown
	The Coloniality of Gender by Maria Lugones
	The Gender Rift in Communisation by P. Valentine
.
Afro-Pragmatism / Black-Existentialism	Afro-Pessimism / Black-Nihilism
Click - Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin	Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction (Raked and Dispatched)
Click - What is Pan-Africanism? by Saint Andrew	No Solves to Abolish: Afro-Pessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World by K. Aarons
Click - Black Anarchism: A Reader by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
	Being or Nothingness: Indigeneity, Anti-Blackness, and the Settler Colonial Critique by Iyko Day
	Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope by Calvin Warren
	Onticide: Afro-Pessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics by Calvin Warren
	“We’re Trying to Destroy the World” Anti-Blackness & Police Violence After Ferguson by Unknown
	BLACKNESS BY HOSTIS
.
Feminism	Feminism
-----	LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism [journal]
Click - Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue	BLOODLUST: A Feminist Journal Against Civilization [journal]
-----	Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation by Laboria Cuboniks
-----	The Intersection Between Feminism and Stirner Egoism by Abissonichilista
.

This is Part 1 of 2 due to reddit's character limit. For Part 2: click here
Firstly here's a more general anarchist reading list: click here
This is just an exercise in creating a counter reading list of essays and books critiquing post-left anarchy from the perspective of desiring that those individualist anarchists who consider themselves post-left might come back to acknowledging the benefits of working on big tent leftist campaigns, as well as solely anarchist campaigns and direct actions.
If you're unaware of what post-left anarchy is, the main thing you need to know is that it's primarily a skepticism of the utility of mass-movements. Here's a post comparing & contrasting the different values in summary: click here
The post-left reading list is taken from this poster: click here
The essays in each section of each column offer a contrast to each other already, but I feel the need to make special mention of the issues with 4 types of listed items:

• Eco-extremists defend misanthropic and fascistic mass murder: click here
• Hakim Bay is an advocate of paedophilic rape: click here
• Dr. Bones was credibly accused of abusing a fan of his: click here
• One of the authors of Black Flame called Schmidt has since been outed as a racist. Although the main author of the book was Van der Walt, not Schmidt.

Finally, if you have any suggestions on additions and formatting please let me know and I'll continue to update this post.
-

LEFT-ANARCHIST READING LIST	POST-LEFT ANARCHY READING LIST
.
The Regrettable Argument that Created the Post-Left	The Argument that Created the Post-Left
(overly critical) -----	1996 Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm by Murray Bookchin (critical)
(overly defensive) -----	Anarchy After Leftism by Bob Black
(overly defensive) -----	Withered Anarchism by Bob Black
(overly critical) -----	Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics by Murray Bookchin (critical)
.
Left-Anarchist General	Post-Left General
Click - Anarchists in Wonderland; Against post-left anarchism and for an anarchism that does not shed the left	Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind by Jason McQuinn
Click - The Left-Overs: How Fascists Court the Post-Left	The Incredible Lameness of Left-Anarchism by Jason McQuinn
Click - Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! by David Graeber	On the Radical Virtues of Being Left Alone; Deconstructing Staudenmaier by Lawrence Jarach
Click - Exercise: What Would an Anarchist Program Look Like? by Crimethinc	Anarchists, Don’t Let the Left(overs) Ruin Your Appetite by Lawrence Jarach
Click - An Anarchist Programme by Errico Malatesta	Whatever You Do, Get Away With It by Jason McQuinn
Click - Anarchy! by Errico Malatesta	Critical Analysis of the Left: Let’s Clean House by Joaquin Cienfuegos
Click - At the Cafe by Errico Malatesta	From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone by Wolfi Landstreicher
Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein	Notes on “Post-Left Anarchism” by Bob Black
Click - No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guerin	Bolo’bolo
Click - Volumes 1-3 of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas by Robert Graham	Abolish Work by Bob Black
Debating Anarchism: A History of Action, Ideas and Movements by Mike Finn	Instead of Work by Bob Black
Click - Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20th Century by Vadim Damier	Defacing the Currency by Bob Black
Click - Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism by Schmidt, Michael & Lucien Van der Walt Hirsch	Modern Slavery [journal]
Click - Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World 1870-1940 by Steven and Lucian van der Walt	Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed [journal]
Click - The Tyranny of Structurelessness	Click - The Tyranny of Tyranny
	Click - A Review of The “Tyranny of Structurelessness”: An organizationalist repudiation of anarchism
.
Saul Newman (Because it’s more valuable to spread modern theorists referencing present political realities)	Max Stirner
Click - Saul Newman On Anarchism Today	The Unique and It’s Property by Max Stirner
Click - Stirner and the Politics of the Ego (Saul Newman)	Stirner’s Critics by Max Stirner
Click - The Politics of Post-Anarchism by Saul Newman	The False Principles of Our Education by Max Stirner
.
Social Anarchism (Not because individualism is bad, but because both are useful)	Anarcho-Individualism
Click - Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism	The Anarchists by John Henry Mackay
Click - Social Anarchism and Organization by Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janerio	Enemies of Society by various
Click - The Formation of Local Councils by Omar Aziz	Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism by Vincent Stone
Click - Role of the Revolutionary Organisation by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Novatore by Renzo Novatore
Click - Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin	The Rebel’s Dark Laughter: The Writings of Bruno Filippi
Click - Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle by Solidarity Federation	Individualist Anarchism and Revolutionary Sexualism by Emile Armand
Click - Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber	Anarchism & Violence: Severino Di Giovanni In Argentina, by Osvaldo Bayer
Click - A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers by Errico Malatesta	Alexandre Jacob: Sailor, Thief, Anarchist, Convict by Bernard Thomas
Click - The Conquest of Bread by Pëtr Kropotkin	The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists by Richard Parry
.
Critical Thinking (Because why be pretentious about it)	Self-Theory
-----	Click - The Minimum Definition of Intelligence: Theses on the Construction of One’s Own Self-Theory by For Ourselfs
-----	Click - Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon by Wolfi Landstreicher
-----	Click - Critical Self-Theory: Towards an Anarchist Critical Theory of the Self and Society by Jason McQuinn
-----	Click - Critical Self-Theory and the Non-Ideological Critique of Ideology by Jason McQuinn
.
Pragmatic Left-Anarchism (Not because insurrectionary anarchism is bad, but because a diversity of tactics are needed)	Insurrectionary Anarchism
Click - On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence	Armed Joy (1977) by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Click - AFed statement on kneecapping of nuclear executive by Informal Anarchist Federation by The Anarchist Federation	The Insurrectional Project (1998) by Alfredo Bonanno
Click - The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence	Let’s Destroy Work, Let’s Destroy the Economy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Click - Say You Want an Insurrection by Crimethinc	A Critique of Syndicalist Methods by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber	Worker’s Autonomy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber	Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism by Sasha K
Click - Means and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power by Zoe Baker	Feral Revolution by Feral Faun
Click - Towards an Anarchism in the Philippine Archipelago by Simoun Magsalin	Willful Disobedience by Wolfi Landstreicher
Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? Anarchy in Action Around the World by Francis Dupuis-Deri	A Crime Called Freedom by Os Cangaceiros
	Killing King Abacus Anthology by various
	‘Anarchy – Civil or Subversive?’ A Collection of Texts Against Civil Anarchism by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
	‘The Sun Still Rises’ by The Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell
	Beyond Right and Wrong by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	LET’S BECOME DANGEROUS for the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell
	Individuality and the Anarchist Group by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	A Conversation Between Anarchists by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell and Mexican Anarchists
	Never Again Unarmed by Harris Hatzimichelakis
	Lone Wolves are Not Alone by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
	Articles from “Canenero” by various
	It’s Time for Anarchists to Pick Up A Gun by Dr. Bones
	Stop Protesting and Become a Revolutionary: How to Join the FAI by Dr. Bones
.
Eco-Centrism (Because we can still carry out direct actions, just without the misanthropy and celebrating of fascist mass-murder)	Eco-Extremism
Click - Why Ecocentrism Is Essential	Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore j. Kaczynski a.k.a The Unabomber
Click - A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought	The Flower Growing Out of The Underworld: An introduction to Eco-Extremism
Click - A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More	Regresion Magazine [journal]
Click - The Unabomber’s Ethics	ECO-EXTREMIST RELECTIONS
Click - There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS	Atassa 1 and 2 by various
Click - Not Our Comrades: ITS Attacks on Anarchists	Toward Savagery
Click - Eco-extremism and the indiscriminate attack – The Church of ITS Mexico” by L (UK)	INCORRECT: An Interview with Wild Reaction
Click - Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics	The Calusa: A Savage Kingdom?
Click - Eco-Extremism or Extinctionism by John Jacobi	ATLTLACHINOLLI: ECO-EXTREMIST DIALOGUES
Click - The Philosophy of the Unabomber	Ash and Ruin (Subversive Nihilist Periodical) [journal]
Click - A brother lost, a brotherhood found	MICTLANXOCHITL: THE FLOWER FROM THE UNDERWORLD THAT GREW IN OUR TIME
Click - From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus - Eileen Pollack Considers Their Rage and Our Responsibility	Collateral Damage: An Eco-Extremist Defense of Indiscriminate Violence
Click - Unabomber has become an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes. By John H. Richardson	The Anarchist Myth
Click - The New Wave of Eco-Terrorism and Nihilist Militancy by Popular Front	“Confronting your Domestication” and “Rewilding”
	Wild Reaction: Some Answers About the Present and NOT About the Future
	Mexico: Indirect Response from the Individualists Tending toward the Wild
	Against the World-Builders: Eco-Extremists Respond to Critics
.
Gender Existentialism	Gender Nihilism
Click - The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lord	Toward the Queerest Insurrection by Unknown
Click - The Revolution is Female by Abdullah Öcalan	Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto by Alyson Escalante
	What is Gender Nihilism? A Reader by various
	Baedan [journal]
	Queer UltraViolence Bash Back! Anthology by Fray Baroque
	Communization and the Abolition of Gender by Unknown
	The Coloniality of Gender by Maria Lugones
	The Gender Rift in Communisation by P. Valentine
.
Afro-Pragmatism / Black-Existentialism	Afro-Pessimism / Black-Nihilism
Click - Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin	Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction (Raked and Dispatched)
Click - What is Pan-Africanism? by Saint Andrew	No Solves to Abolish: Afro-Pessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World by K. Aarons
Click - Black Anarchism: A Reader by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
	Being or Nothingness: Indigeneity, Anti-Blackness, and the Settler Colonial Critique by Iyko Day
	Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope by Calvin Warren
	Onticide: Afro-Pessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics by Calvin Warren
	“We’re Trying to Destroy the World” Anti-Blackness & Police Violence After Ferguson by Unknown
	BLACKNESS BY HOSTIS
.
Feminism	Feminism
-----	LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism [journal]
Click - Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue	BLOODLUST: A Feminist Journal Against Civilization [journal]
-----	Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation by Laboria Cuboniks
-----	The Intersection Between Feminism and Stirner Egoism by Abissonichilista
.

In which a short passage about a dude in Scotland having a vision about a battle in Ireland as part of a much larger saga from Iceland influences a video game from Japan to reference Scandinavia.
Refined philologists, it is time to examine the weapon of Brave Camilla: Sanngriðr! As ever, please peruse previous entries in this series: Alondite/Ettard, Thoron, Yewfelle, Thyrsus, Gae Bolg, Gurgurant, Spear of Assal/AreadbhaLuin, Hauteclere, Gleipnir, Cymbeline, Forseti, Gjallrbru/Thokk/Gjoll/LeiptSylgr, Armads, Naglfar, Peshkatz/Kard, Excalibur, Caduceus Staff, Ginnungagap, Mystletainn, and Thani.

Sanngriðr

Unlike other weapons I have covered in my etymological studies, Sanngriðr is completely original to Heroes. Despite belonging to Brave Camilla, a character from Fates, Sanngriðr itself does not exist in Fates. Nevertheless, Sanngriðr fits the naming convention Fates established. The Nohrian legendary weapons, Siegfried (sometimes known as Sigurd, but not to be confused with Sigmund) and Brynhildr (who pops up in Kriemhild's story), are of Norse origin just like Sanngriðr.
Among other things, Sanngriðr gives Camilla a bonus to her attack and speed when initiating combat. With her refine, she gets an additional bonus to those stats and also lowers the defense and resistance of enemies within a wide range.

Weaving a Grisly Tale

Our story begins in 13th Century Iceland with a story known as Njáls saga. This very long tale depicts an intricate series of blood feuds in Iceland between AD 960 and 1020 that would make even George R. R. Martin think there was a lot of gratuitous killing. The content of Njáls saga itself is largely irrelevant here, though I recommend reading through the Wikipedia synopsis for an idea of how complex and interesting it is.
Buried somewhere in Njáls saga is a brief passage called Darraðarljóð. This passage is a skaldic poem in the Old Norse language; it is a story within a story. Darraðarljóð recounts the experience of a man named Darrað, who happens to be out for a stroll in his town of Caithness, Scotland. Darrað notices a dozen people ride by and head to a cottage. Curious, Darrað follows them to the cottage where he beholds quite a sight. The twelve people who rode to the cottage are in fact Valkyries, and they are weaving. They are not weaving just anything, either. Their loom is, well...how about you read it for yourselves?

This woof is woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our war-winning woof.

Yes, their loom is constructed out of bloody spears, swords, arrows, decapitated heads, and human penetralia, because what could be a better way to spend a Friday? Anyway, of the twelve Valkyries in this poem, only half of them are named. The third of them is Sanngriðr.
Now, here is the dilemma: language does not have fixed truths in the same way that math does. 1 + 1 = 2 universally, but language is a wild creature all its own. This becomes especially problematic when we deal with dead languages. Even well-preserved dead languages, such as Latin, have a threshold of reaching into obscurity if you go back far enough into their histories. It is fun to study, but is hardly useful for clarity.
With that caveat in mind, there are two competing interpretations of the name Sanngriðr. One, provided by Austrian scholar Dr. Rudolf Simek, is "very violent" or "very cruel." The other, for which I cannot find a particular attribution, is "swift-stroke." Many translations of Darraðarljóð I have found insist on "swift-stroke" despite there being no translation notes to explain this name. So the question becomes: which one is right? Or can they both be right? For the purposes of Heroes, perhaps both are applicable.

Conclusion

Sanngriðr probably makes sense only in the context of Brave Camilla. Remember, Camilla has no unique weapon in Fates. Recall, too, that in Birthright, Camilla deliberately steps aside at the end to let Leo become the next king, even though she is the heir to the throne. Brave Camilla poses the question, "What if Camilla did ascend to the throne?" Also, consider that Leo's tome, Brynhildr, is the name of another Valkyrie.
"Very violent/cruel" may well be relevant to Brave Camilla. All depictions of Camilla show her as being incredibly doting on her siblings and retainers, and having an alarming predisposition to murder toward anyone who even remotely upsets her loved ones. The Sanngriðr staff itself gives Brave Camilla a considerable amount of attack power and her base kit includes Wrathful Staff, making her a true, "I'm a healer, but..."
But what about "swift-stroke?" We cannot know unless Intelligent Systems confirms or denies this, but perhaps "swift-stroke" is a reference to the fact that the Sanngriðr staff has a built-in Swift Sparrow effect. The fact that this effect was magnified for her refine lends a small degree of credibility to this hypothesis.
I find it interesting that Intelligent Systems chose the name Sanngriðr because it is so otherwise obscure; the name only ever appears in Darraðarljóð. Already obscure on its own, Darraðarljóð also is possibly a reference to the historical Cath Chluain Tarbh, the Battle of Clontarf in AD 1014. High King Brian Boru broke the power of the Gaelic Norse in Ireland in this battle and reduced the power of the Kingdom of Dublin, though it came at the cost of his own life. Scholars disagree to some extent if Darraðarljóð is really alluding to the Battle of Clontarf, but for us, it does not matter. Except for the highly tenuous link between the succession crisis that followed the Battle of Clontarf and the suggestion that there might be a succession crisis in Fates, probably none of this connects to Brave Camilla's staff.
I also find interesting the fact that the Valkyries refer to themselves as "weird sisters" in Darraðarljóð. For those of you not keeping up with your Shakespeare, "weird sisters" is the name given to the three witches who occasionally pop in to stir things up in Macbeth; even if you don't know the play, you have probably heard their famous incantation in Act IV, Scene i: "Double, double toil and trouble; fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble." We do know that Camilla can use magic. I think this might only be a reference by happenstance, but it is still fascinating.
That's all on Sanngriðr. What do you think?