The belief in a predetermined fate (part II) by F.E. Farwerck

The all-encompassing influence of fate meant that, with a few exceptions that will be discussed later, people generally did not resist it. In the Vatnsdæla saga, someone asked Grim what he thought of a particular journey. Grim responded that it would be futile to fight against a decree determined by fate. He accepted fate as something inevitable. In the same saga, Thorstein says: "After your death, there will hardly be anyone who will honor me, but everyone must seek their path according to the fate assigned to them." A phrase we frequently encounter in this context is also found in the Saga of the People of Kjalarnes, where it is said: "But now it must go as it is destined." When Thorarin, in the Njal Saga (ch. 13), wishes to marry a woman who had driven her first husband to his death, he is warned against it, but his response is: "There will likely be nothing to be done about it: it will have to come as it is destined."

Vatnsdæla Saga on a tapestry

This acceptance of fate, however, should not be interpreted as a kind of fatalism. The acceptance of fate shares with fatalism only the recognition of the inescapable nature of fate. However, while the fatalist simply gives up and allows fate to take its course, the attitude meant here is one of someone who, despite fate being determined, still does what must be done under the given circumstances. This difference in attitude depends not only on philosophical reflection but even more so on the character of the individual involved. The Oriental person is naturally a fatalist; the Germanic person is not. This is repeatedly evident in the Nordic sagas. For instance, in the Saga of King Sverrir Sigurdsson (ch. 16), we read the following: A farmer spoke as he accompanied his son to the warship and gave him good advice. He told him to be tough and brave in his trial as a man. "For a good name outlasts people by far," he added, "or tell me, how would you act if you went into battle and knew in advance that you were going to fall?" The son answered: "What else could I do but strike all around me with both hands?" The farmer continued: "But what if someone could tell you with certainty that you would not fall?"

The son answered: "How could I not give it my all to move forward?" The farmer then said: "In any battle in which you are involved, only one of two things can happen: either you fall, or you survive. Therefore, be brave, for everything is determined by fate. He for whom it is not determined that he must die, will not go to Hel (the ruler of the realm of the dead), and he who is destined to go there cannot escape it. But the worst thing is: to flee."

This conversation gives us a clear picture of the mindset that was apparently common in that time. Everything was determined by fate, but even if one knew that death was imminent and would strike in all circumstances, it was still not a reason to refrain from acting. The father, at the end, provides a rational argument for this: avoiding the fight would be dishonorable; but the son already intuitively responds from the beginning that he would fight to the utmost, even if there was no way out. However, the most remarkable thing is that we are not dealing here with ideas nurtured by a small circle of philosophers, but with a worldview that had permeated the entire society and was fully embraced even by the ordinary farmer.

People saw others as collaborators and executors of fate, but they also recognized themselves in this role. In the Laxdæla saga (ch. 58), Thorkel is attacked and defeated by Grim. Grim then says: "Things have turned out differently than you probably thought, for now your life is in my hands." Thorkel said he would not beg for mercy, "for fortune has been against me." Grim said: "I have caused enough misfortune, even if I leave this undone; a different fate is laid out for you than to die at this encounter of ours, and I will spare your life; reward me as you see fit." Grim apparently did not feel that it was he who granted Thorkel his life, but considered himself only the executor of Thorkel's, here favorable, fate. But the reverse also occurred, namely, that one allowed an unfavorable fate for someone else to be fulfilled by not intervening. In the same saga (ch. 49), Thorkel and his shepherd boy saw several men laying an ambush for Kjartan. The boy wanted to warn Kjartan, but Thorkel held him back, saying: "You fool, do you want to give someone life if death is destined for him?"

As mentioned, the inescapability of fate was felt most strongly at the hour of death, and for the state in which someone found themselves shortly before their death, there was an expression that has been passed down in Dutch with the word "veeg," which, although rarely used, still means "near death."

In the ancient North, the condition preceding death was called feigd. During this period, just before the moment when fate, which deeply influenced a person's life, became most apparent, powers of fate, such as the fylgjen (guardian spirits) and the valkyries, visibly appeared to people. This was a direct intervention of fate in human life, and although our ancestors did not have the widespread fear of the afterlife that is common today, the word feigd still had a sinister connotation. The one doomed to die lived in a peculiar intermediate state. It was believed that such a person was deprived of the guardian spirit that had accompanied them throughout their life and lived in a state of blindness, causing them to overlook all impending dangers. This blindness was also a clear sign by which someone destined to die could be recognized. Here we are apparently dealing again with an Indo-European concept, as the ancient Romans also had a proverb: "Whom Jupiter (the god of fate) wishes to destroy, he first blinds."

The belief that a vege (doomed) man must soon die is repeatedly found in the sagas. In the Reykdæla Saga (ch. 6), Askel says that things have turned out as he thought, and that the journey would have been better left undone. However, Vemund remarked that everyone must follow their fate; everyone could be content with their lot, and each must die if they were feigd. In Njal's Saga, Thord, the son of a freedman and the foster father of Njal's sons, kills Atli's murderer. When this becomes known, his foster son Skarphedin says: "He was surely already doomed to die, the one who fell at the hands of our foster father, who has never seen human blood before." We also find examples of the belief that a veeg (doomed) man no longer has a clear perspective on things. In the same saga (ch. 129), Njal and his sons are standing in front of their house as enemies approach for an ambush. The enemies consider that they will face a difficult fight if these three await them in front of the house, and Njal's sons also believe that it would be better to meet the enemy in open field. Njal, blinded by his veegness, prefers to defend against the enemy from behind the walls of his homestead. When his sons disagree with him, he laments: "Now it will happen that my sons will overrule me and no longer heed me. When you were younger, you did not do that, and you fared better for it." Helgi does not realize that his father is wrong and says, "Let us do as our father wishes; that will be best for us." But Skarphedin doubts it and replies: "I'm not so sure about that, for he is indeed veeg. But I would gladly give my father the satisfaction of burning with him, for I am not afraid of death." They then go inside, and the leader of the enemies remarks: "Now they are doomed, now that they have gone inside." Indeed, most of them perished in the burning homestead.

We also hear of other attitudes. There were people who tried to escape the influence of fate, and there are various indications that they sought to achieve this through magical means. These individuals apparently saw fate as an impersonal power standing above and beyond humans, and they evidently believed that they could become a counterforce to fate through magic. They likely thought that by invoking a law of cause and effect, even if not fully realized, they could introduce new causes that would cancel out the consequences of fate.

But outside of this exceptional group, people generally accepted fate as an untouchable force that, through its decrees, fulfilled the sacred order. They were so convinced of this that many statements in the North, as seen from the examples above, simply say: "It is determined," without mentioning the cause of this determination. These statements appear so frequently that we may regard them as expressions of a widespread belief.

The magical attitude towards fate undoubtedly stemmed from the often-felt tension between a fixed destiny and free will. But there are many indications that people sought the solution in a different direction as well.

Many apparently held the belief that what fate bestowed upon people belonged to them, that it was, by virtue of their nature, their share in the world's destiny. It was not a random fate striking them from the outside, but in every sense of the word, their own personal fate. Those who thought this way did not desire any other fate than the one that was theirs, as expressed in the words of Gisli in the Saga of Gisli the Outlaw, when he says: "A warrior seeks counsel, but nevertheless, I want what fate has allotted to me." And when Gisli must flee and leave his wife Ingjald behind, he composes (ch. 25):

Nevertheless, I gladly endure

the fate that comes to me...

...fear is entirely absent from me.

This willing acceptance of fate and the readiness to cooperate voluntarily in its fulfillment is also evident in the Frisian saga of Heriald Beroald, where it is said: "When matters stood thus, the sick Heriald suddenly noticed strength return to his arm. He rose from his bed, knowing that his time had come. He buckled on his armor, mounted his fiery steed, and entered the fray." The consequence of this was that he fell in battle. Here again, we see no attempt to escape the fate that was coming, but on the contrary, complete cooperation to fulfill it, even if it meant his own death.

This cooperation in carrying out fate was perhaps less a result of philosophical contemplation and more of a particular religious belief: that it was the duty of the gods and right-minded people to contribute to the unfolding of the sacred order of things. This, of course, also meant assisting in the execution of fate's decrees, and therefore cooperating in the fulfillment of one's own fate, regardless of how it might turn out.

In order to know how to act in certain circumstances to align one's actions with fate, a standard was naturally required, one by which actions could be judged. From the wealth of information available to us, especially from the saga era, it becomes clear that in the Old Germanic period, this standard was honor, though this concept did not fully align with our modern understanding. Honor commanded a specific attitude in all actions in life and was a factor that gave people significant influence in shaping their fate.

How important the concept of "honor" was in the old North is evident from the fact that the Old Norse language had more words for honor and its opposites, such as shame, than any other language in the world. For the concept of honor alone, there were no fewer than eleven synonyms; for the concept of shame, there were nine different words, and for concepts such as mockery, insult, and dishonor, there were no fewer than nineteen words available. Honor in the North, and likely among other Germanic tribes before Christianity, was not an abstract concept. It was not a factor that was sometimes considered and sometimes not; it had unconditional demands that were fulfilled to their utmost consequences. Even the death of the individual and their descendants was subordinate to honor, as evidenced by examples from Iceland and the Hildebrandslied.

The same compelling force of honor can be seen in Njal's Saga (ch. 129). When Njal had gone inside his house, the leader of the enemies asked to speak to him and his wife, Bergthora, offering them a safe escape. Njal's response was: "I do not want a safe escape, for I am an old man and barely capable of avenging my sons, and I do not wish to live in shame." When the leader then said to Bergthora, "Go outside, housemother, for I would not for anything let you burn inside," she replied: "I was given to Njal when I was young; then I promised that one fate would befall us." They both went back inside and perished in the flames.

Thus, honor was in all cases the standard for action, because a firm connection was seen between fate and honor. In addition to this, there were other means to determine what fate had in store for the future—not to escape it, but to consciously cooperate in its fulfillment. When in the Nibelungenlied, the river nymphs predict that none of the Burgundians will return from their journey, except the priest accompanying them, Hagen throws the priest overboard. But when he sees the man swim back to shore, Hagen realizes that the prediction will come true and that they are all headed for death. He does not turn back but, after crossing the river, destroys the ship to make any thought of retreat impossible, and rides with his comrades to their death.

Although over the last thousand years the concept of an all-encompassing, impersonal necessity has almost completely disappeared, the old view still occasionally surfaces even in modern times. Especially among poets, who live more from their inner selves than the average person, the connection between fate and the individual is often expressed. For instance, in Schiller's Wallenstein, we read the words: "The stars of fate are in your breast." In Hölderlin's Hyperion, the line appears: "To those whom fate speaks so loudly, they may also speak loudly back to fate." The heroic stance towards fate is evident in Geibel's words: "If there is anything greater than fate, it is the man who bears it unshakably."

F.E. Farwerck in Nehalennia, December 1956

Eternally Living Symbols by Nico de Haas

The ancient sacred signs of our ancestors, the symbols of our original worldview, were already opposed centuries ago: during the Christianization. Boniface issued prohibitions against the use of certain signs, and Emperor Charlemagne even instituted the death penalty for carving "demon"-repelling signs into the beams of houses.

A whole series of folk customs, which involved symbols, were declared to be superstition, witchcraft, and witch mania—a charge that all too often brought persistent practitioners to ruin and loss of life.

Thus, church and state, both fully convinced of the superiority of their ideas originating from the South and East, collaborated in the eradication of the original customs, practices, and religious assets of the Germanic North.

For they saw this North as barbaric, dark, rough, and unrefined, without its own laws, style, or order of life. They believed that this entire greater Germanic life area and whatever lay around it was inherently incapable of true culture and thought that the arrival of their soldiers and priests could only lead to an ultimate victory for these "wild areas." They were also convinced that breaking the native and original, unchristian life was a useful and beautiful, "God-pleasing" work. And so, they destroyed much.

The Ancient Symbols

It is remarkable, however, that a large number of the original sacred symbols have nevertheless been preserved to this day. Some of them have been incorporated into the church’s collection of forms, some re-emerged and were saved in early Germanic, so-called "Romanesque" art and Gothic art, while others were demonized and then Christianized. However, the meaning of the majority has been lost.

It goes without saying that the new faith could never accept these old signs positively unless they could be assimilated into Christian symbolism. In those cases, the signs were often declared to be devilish signs, satanized, like the mermaid, the serpent, and many runes.

However, some were positively adopted: the tree of life, the sun wheel, the cross, the mill cross, the rooster, the eagle, the heart, and many others. Sometimes old pagan figures appeared in Christian garb: Saint Nicholas and the Three Maidens are striking examples of this. And the horse? Saint Martin and Saint Nicholas ride it, and as a gable sign, it carries a Christian cross on its head.

The ancient symbols still live here and there—but in the shadows.

Horsehead gable with crosses on top

Truth and realism compel us to face the fact that most—if not all—symbols died out long ago. What has continued to live on is their sign, their external decorative form. And if any meaning is still attached to them, it is a corrupted, degenerate significance that no longer has any connection with the ancient Germanic worldview. Such a sign has indeed become an expression of childish superstition, an attempt to favorably influence Providence. This is evident among farmers who carve an "hourglass" to ward off livestock diseases or sailors who paint the same figure to prevent accidents.

Hourglass carved on the "stiepel" of a barn door

Tradition and Technique

How have these signs managed to survive? Partly because, although the original meaning was lost, folk belief still clung to the mysterious forms for their "new," degenerate function. But also out of persistence, out of tradition, because "grandfather did it that way too." Another significant factor is certainly that many symbols, seen purely as ornaments, were easy to create, obvious, geometrically simple forms.

Consider the six-pointed star, the diamond, the circle, the swirl, the eight-pointed star, etc. The use of a pair of compasses and a ruler naturally leads even the simplest worker—especially him—to these figures.

Moreover, as mentioned, many figures were adopted by the church and thus—carried by other sentiments—continued to live on.

Humanistic Prejudices

These are given circumstances that must be taken into account. Often, it is only through the combination of various signs that the meaning of the individual ones can be determined. Frequently, one must be familiar with the folk art of an entire region to understand the significance of the figures on a single piece of household furniture. Not seldom, the key to a certain group of representations lies hidden in some folk custom, legend, saga, or fairy tale. Sometimes, a song leads us to the right track. Therefore, the path to understanding the symbol is not so simple, although it has sometimes been thoughtlessly underestimated.

And even in scientific circles, there has been much debate about this.

As early as the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to decipher the symbols of the North. But without much success, because these humanistic researchers were very learned but still completely captivated by the doctrine of "Ex Oriente Lux" ("Light from the East"). They were archaeologically more familiar with the Mediterranean, with classical cultures, than with the Germanic area, and completely ignorant of the high culture that had once flourished there—long before the beginning of our era.

They, therefore, always measured with the wrong standards and foreign moral norms. No wonder they did not get much further here.

Degenerated Science

By the 1880s, symbolism had become completely misunderstood. Even science was then absorbed in the liberal mindset and believed that the art and culture of all peoples on earth were essentially the same.

Since this science considered all people equal and did not recognize racial differences as significant, it saw nothing absurd in equating the art and symbols of Africans, Mongols, and Germanic farmers.

Thus, through "ethnopsychological research," completely foreign and lower meanings were attributed to Germanic symbols. In fact, eventually, any deeper significance of these symbols was denied, and all these "ornaments" from folk art were "explained" as a kind of innate playful primal urge, an irresistible "need to decorate." Where a deeper meaning was acknowledged, it was the well-known "warding off of demons," because this science found it impossible to view our ancestors as anything other than primitive savages who scribbled and carved "magical signs" on all their possessions, their house and yard, because they saw ghosts and devils lurking everywhere, aiming at their soul and salvation—just as the church had done centuries earlier.

However, it is difficult to explain how such a harried horde of anxiety-ridden individuals could have ever created such beautiful and serene things, as is evident in Germanic folk art seen everywhere in abundance.

This unsolvable puzzle rarely troubled the "folklorists." They preferred to search for "vegetation demons" and other shadowy creatures.

The Essence of Symbols

Only very recently has a clearer understanding emerged about the essence of folk art and its symbols. In fact, it was not until 1925 that Karl von Spiess published his work, "Bauernkunst ihre Art, ihr Sinn" ("Peasant Art: Its Nature, Its Meaning"), in which he realized that the so-called "ornament" in Germanic folk art is not merely decoration, but has symbolic meaning. Moreover, these symbols are expressions of an original, nature- and soil-bound peasant worldview that dates back to pre-Christian times.

Thus, it was finally understood that there is nothing meaningless in this "primitive" art.

In folk art, the things depicted are always more symbolic than realistic: the representations stem more from emotional life than from what is observed, and are created more from inner experience than through intellectual imitation of nature.

After von Spiess established the uniquely Nordic symbolic character of many motifs in folk art, using the traditions of the Nordic race to arrive at a preliminary interpretation, Konrad Hahm in 1928, in his work "Deutsche Volkskunst" ("German Folk Art"), drew attention to the nature-connectedness of the creators of this art.

He demonstrated the symbols of the peasant year cycle, the festivals, and the milestones in peasant life, showing how birth, marriage, fertility, and death are recurring motifs in this art.

The customs and traditions of rural life were thus highlighted for their importance to the symbols in folk art, and much excellent work has been done in this area, especially by laypeople.

The role these symbols play in the annual festivals was illustrated by Hans Strobel in his beautiful book "Bauernbrauch im Jahreslauf" ("Peasant Customs Throughout the Year").

Despite a Thousand Years of Servitude

The essence of folk art and the origin of its symbolic content originated so long ago that it is more generally prehistorically Nordic rather than historically Germanic. In other words, the roots of folk art reach back to the great flourishing period of Indo-Germanic culture.

The fact that this folk art continued to be produced well into the 19th century can be explained by the fact that, despite 1,000 years of feudal servitude, despite the social rise of the liberal bourgeoisie and the dominance of the capitalist production system, the Germanic farmer, due to his connection to the soil and nature, remained the bearer of a completely distinct worldview and way of life.

In folk art, this worldview is expressed through symbolic representations of the course and influence of the sun, the eternal movement in creation, the drama of the sun's death and the resurrection of the light, the fertility of Mother Earth—in short, everything that constitutes the well-being of his kin and the meaning of his life for the nature- and soil-bound farmer.

This positive worldview, which fully accepts life and labor, is also reflected in countless ways in Dutch folk art.

The Northern Cradle

While Spiess and Hahm made us understand folk art as a peasant art of deep connection to nature and the soil, Hermann Wirth carried out pioneering work in symbolism with his highly controversial works: "Aufgang der Menschheit" ("The Rise of Mankind") and "Die heilige Urschrift der Menschheit" ("The Sacred Original Script of Mankind"). Hermann Wirth stirred up a tremendous amount of controversy and was attacked and reviled with more than ordinary fury. Parts of his work have proven untenable, and some of his conclusions and assertions have remained unprovable or have been refuted. Certainly, we do not wish to equate our insights with those of Wirth.

Nevertheless, after all the criticism, an enormous pioneering effort remains, along with a collection of materials of astonishing scope, which, however, must be handled very cautiously.

It is certain that in a distant past there must have been a singular primordial culture in which simple signs symbolized the solar cycle and simultaneously expressed a religious experience of time and space and an awareness of a moral world order. This unity of cosmic and inner life must have been experienced in a strong Northern cultural area because the solar cycle symbols are also symbols of firm belief in an infinite rebirth and resurrection. This assurance of salvation, most sublimely expressed in the solar cycle of the divine year, this "Stirb und Werde" ("Die and Become") as a guiding principle for life, can only be meaningfully expressed in a sun symbolism if the sun (the "Sun Hero") itself dies, sets, and rises again. This is only strikingly the case near the polar circle.

This northern cradle is confirmed by the traditions of all Northern races, for example, by the ancient legends of Persian and Hindu literature. In these, the year is divided into one day and one night. The resurrection idea of being born, blooming, withering, dying, decaying, and rising again in an eternal cycle is found in the solar symbols of the North: the ringed sun and the wheel cross.

The Northern man saw in the quartered sun wheel both the cycle of the seasons—winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice, and autumn equinox—and the daily cycle: midnight, sunrise, noon, and sunset or night, morning, day, evening and winter, spring, summer, autumn or child, youth, man, and elder.

The Runic Calendar

The Northern division of the year into a dark and a light half also carried strong symbolic significance. The year, divided into two parts by the two solstices—split along the North-South axis—symbolizes both the rise and fall in nature and in human life.

Furthermore, the character of the runes has become clearer with the understanding that these signs were originally symbolic calendar markers. They originated in the North and spread over a large part of the earth, only later becoming writing symbols or degenerating into magical signs. The runes were not only symbols for the course of the sun through the year and day but also for the cycle of all matter and life according to the worldview of "Stirb und Werde" ("Die and Become").

The 16-character alphabet is corresponding to an eightfold division of the year, with various symbols like the eight-spoked sun wheel testifying to this alongside the 16-part rune series. Charlemagne introduced the southern 24-hour day, but the free sailors maintained the eightfold division, as seen in the wind rose, for example.

New Roads

In Germany, a few years ago, a "Teaching Institute for Script and Symbol Research" was established with the task of providing documentation for symbol research and then proceeding to systematic processing and interpretation. Karl Theodor Weigel was entrusted with its leadership.

Weigel began by coordinating data from anthropology, folklore, and prehistory, integrating them into his symbol research. His initial work, "Lebendige Vorzeit rechts und links der Landstrasse," ("Living Prehistory on Both Sides of the Road") examines the general occurrence of symbols. Following this, in "Runen und Sinnbilder," ("Runes and Symbols") he presented evidence for the prehistoric origins of symbols, building on the work of figures like Wirth. Subsequently, he published three city descriptions: "Goslar," "Quedlinburg," and "Nürnberg," which demonstrate the faithful transmission of traditions by Germanic farmers and craftsmen. Later, "Germanisches Glaubensgut in Runen und Sinnbilder" ("Germanic Beliefs in Runes and Symbols") was published, containing excellent source material for combating what Weigel terms the "Demon Myth."

Eternally Living Symbols

Years ago, in continuation of this great developmental path of symbol research, efforts were also initiated in the Netherlands to compile comprehensive documentation in this field.

One of those who exerted much effort in this regard was Mr. W. F. van Heemskerck-Düker. Recently, in collaboration with Mr. H. J. van Houten, he published the picture book "Symbols in the Netherlands" with the publisher Hammer. Building on this longstanding work, the Folkish Working Community was now able to proceed, in cooperation with the Department of Public Information, with the major exhibition 'Eternal Living Signs' at the Municipal Museum in The Hague — a vast and impressive display of folk symbols spanning no less than 24 rooms!

What is the purpose of this exhibition? This becomes immediately clear from the central motto, which calls out to us in large letters:

WHAT ONCE WAS KNOWN, AWAKENS!

And so it is. In the symbols of our people, we possess a precious creed, a testimony that, misunderstood over the course of centuries, has been carried forth in ever-weakening tradition, but is now being rescued by the awakening of the folk from the grasp of rationalism and foreign influences. Not to revive ancient pagan thoughts in a burlesque manner, but to reflect on the timeless, eternal values that these symbols also express for the present. Thus, these Dutch symbols have finally been restored to honor as the records of what our ancestors understood and felt of the mythical Eternal; they depict the most beautiful that can blossom from our own souls—the original Germanic worldview! 

This exhibition is intended for our entire people, but particularly for those already becoming aware of their essence. These compatriots can see here how unnamed workers used their patience and skill to create something beautiful and meaningful. The distinctive practical character and unique beauty of folk art partly lie in simple tools, limited choices of dyes (each carefully tested), and the fact that money played no role, even if winter evenings were spent on a single piece for years. Moreover, joy in labor and love often motivated the work. 

These conditions were destroyed by capitalist economy, thereby killing folk art. The farmer was removed from his isolation by radio and transportation technology, and there is no scenario where money does not play a role—whether someone, somewhere, practices a branch of folk art in complete solitude. 

Therefore, we hope that the ever-searching "designers" of interior design and furniture factories will not plunder this folk treasure too much to fill their sketchbooks with sun birds, runes, and wheel crosses.

 Some of these symbols may well rise again with contemporary meanings and a strong, militant content, as some already have: think only of the Odal, Yr, and Man runes, the swastika, and so many other ancient symbols. 

One may be for or against these symbols—but—they are not the appropriate figures to serve as bed covers, sofa cushions, or sideboard decorations in a bourgeois living room. They do not belong on tobacco jars or fruit bowls, on bookends or bedside lamps, any more than one should reduce a Twente clothes chest to a bar cabinet or a wagon block to a hearth bench. Therefore, I hope that artisans will exercise restraint and that unsuspecting compatriots will not become complicit in the creation of a pitiful "Germanic kitsch" through foolish purchases. 

Just as our ancestors did not live off the achievements of the past, neither should we. We must know, understand, and honor them—but we must not exploit them. We must be strong and imprint our own formative will of today on our own time—that is life. This too is a message of the eternal living symbols—just as our ancestors did.

Nico de Haas in Hamer (November 1941)

Torture of a Witch by J. C. Nachenius:

 

Here we take a look into a torture chamber. The executioner's assistant is in the midst of hoisting a woman up on the torture rope, her arms pulled back, lifted upwards. To the left sits her daughter. On the ground lie a rod, torture stones, and a rope.

We have a report from 1577 concerning this case, which helps us better understand this image from the same era. It reads:

"The mother steadfastly declared her innocence and that of her daughter under torture, to the extent that they both perished and passed away at the hands of the torture rope."

Thus, this courageous woman did not admit to being a witch, nor did she admit her daughter, who was also accused of witchcraft, was one. It was against the law to carry out torture to the point of death, but the judge did so nonetheless. Then it was the daughter's turn, and she was lifted up on the torture rope in the same gruesome manner. After witnessing and experiencing everything she did, she lacked the strength her mother had shown and confessed that she and her mother had practiced witchcraft. Consequently, she was burned at the stake.

The report is brief, one among thousands, a common occurrence in the centuries when Germanic peoples had come to believe in witches, when Germanic judges permitted the torture of Germanic women and children based on foolish rumors.

Like an illness, like a spiritual epidemic, it seized them. How many did not believe, we don't know. It was perilous not to believe, and the enterprise was even profitable for magistrate and church, as estates were confiscated. But there were those who did not believe, who knew that many witches were innocently tortured and burned, that is certain. The driving force was the church. Will we ever forgive a church that not only tolerated these things but introduced and propagated them, never having the courage to admit that this was a cruel superstition?

Many believe that belief in witches originated in pagan times, that the church had inherited this superstition and eventually overcame it. But that is not the history!

We know society from pre-Christian times only partially. Only from Iceland do we have extensive reports. Whatever superstitions there may have been, belief in witches as the church believed and formulated it was unknown to the Germanic peoples, and never do we hear of anything comparable to witch trials. Scholars agree — as far as they are unbiased — that this was imported from the South. The focal point of all witchcraft has always been "whoring with the devil." Now we know that the pagan Germanic peoples did not know the devil and certainly did not believe in a devil who maintained unseemly habits with "witches." This devil, too, was imported from the South, just as the command to convert by force, the duty to make heathens into Christians, and to eradicate everything associated with pagan practices.

The imported devil, however, "whored" with Germanic women, which was proof enough of how pagan they truly were. Therefore, the church was fully within its rights to instruct the secular authorities to extract confessions of witchcraft through torture, to roast them, and burn them, during which events the choir boys would come to sing in honor of God.

You will say that all of this is long past. Certainly, the Germanic people have recovered from this spiritual epidemic and no longer believe in witches.

But let us remember that the church does believe in them. Even in this century, there are dignitaries who believe that torture was abolished far too soon, and there are devout textbooks for children — also in this century — that teach them that there is a "holy inquisition" that rightly fought disbelief with torture methods.

Belief in witches and inquisition are un-Germanic, so un-Germanic that we cannot believe that there are people who believe in them; that there can be a church that does not brand them and teach abhorrence. We believe that these are outdated notions because we, as healthy Germanics, have overcome them, but we forget too easily that there is a church that introduced them here and still covers the actions of the inquisition.

Our women were never witches; we never believed in them ourselves, but we learned to believe in them, and we do not count it as a virtue that this was possible.

However, it shows us how dangerous such spiritual epidemics can become, how they can intoxicate entire peoples, and lead them to the craziest things, even to suicide and self-destruction. Because it was nothing but suicide.

There were villages where hardly any women remained; no one was safe from this mad possession, and those who possessed us were not ourselves, but representations of a foreign race and culture, which did not fit our nature and led to phenomena that we would now consider impossible if history did not prove that it was possible and could indeed happen.

It is necessary for us, as men of the SS, to know such things. Firstly, we must know that all this witchcraft superstition was not Germanic pagan belief but was introduced here by the church, and secondly, we must know that the church still covers these things up and does not admit that it failed here.

Are we therefore enemies of religion? — Does all this horror and madness have something to do with religion after all? Or can these things not be called by their name without cries of "atheists"? This has nothing to do with religion or trust in God; it is superstition and lack of trust, it is foreign to us and arouses our disgust.

J. C. Nachenius in SS Vormingsbladen, February 1944

Soul and Symbol by Nico de Haas

ON PSYCHOLOGY AS AN AUXILIARY SCIENCE IN THE INTERPRETATION OF SYMBOLS

In recent times, various more or less serious attempts have been made here and there to bring the ancient Germanic symbols closer to the contemporary Germanic people. Generally, even the best-intentioned publications in this area cannot be considered particularly convincing. The easiest way is to let these symbols speak for themselves with many illustrations and as little text as possible. However, this presupposes a "receiver," an audience that is still attuned to the inner radiance of these symbols. It assumes resonance in the soul of the viewer. However, practice shows that this resonance usually does not exist, and when it does occur, it is often completely false.

Symbols on the Flyhof rocks (West-Gotland, Sweden). 

No wonder: the contemporary person — and especially the city dweller — is completely estranged from the old symbols. And not just now, but generally has been for generations, even centuries.

The danger that lies in this type of "bringing closer" is that the folk forms are misused due to this misunderstanding for completely irresponsible imitation and senseless combination of the inherited motifs and signs. The "kitsch" that is emerging everywhere proves that this danger is anything but imaginary.

More important, therefore, are the serious, thoroughly researched books on the study of symbols, which, in addition to illustrations, also provide explanatory text, but they generally fail to be very convincing. While they often offer a far-reaching systematization and compete in giving precise content definitions of all kinds of symbolic representations, an impression of arbitrariness and chaotic mingling of various significant factors cannot be avoided.

WHAT SEPARATES US FROM THE SYMBOL

When interpreting symbols from the Germanic ancient times and the "timeless" peasant art, it must never be forgotten that these symbols, although they emerged from our racial soul, do not necessarily correspond with the spirit of this time and therefore cannot simply be "understood" by the contemporary person. On the contrary: the fact that we feel so attracted to ancient Germanic and peasant life today is more due to the feeling that we can perceive in it the spontaneous expression of a truly nature-connected way of life, which has been lost to us since the Christianization and for which we passionately long to return. But our thinking is no longer wholly nature-connected, no longer unbiased and all-encompassing. Consciousness has sharpened, concentrated — certainly, but also narrowed to a new schooled logic, to a systematization that has particularized itself in the sense of superficial civilization and turned away from nature. Therefore, with reason, we cannot encompass the symbolic primal values; they were originally deeper, more general, and more comprehensive than we can reasonably perceive today.

If we do not find a way to revise or supplement our "modern" mindset with the values that have been pushed out of our current consciousness, we have the certainty that we will inextricably mix contemporary thoughts with the heritage of our ancestors. Such unconscious falsifications are currently rampant in the study of symbols.

PURIFICATION OF THE METHOD

P. E. Schramm, in his introduction to the study by Berent Schweinekoper, "Der Handschuh im Recht, Amterwesen, Brauch und Volksglauben" (1938), has set some conditions for first achieving a reliable method of symbol research.

It is not only sufficient to distinguish between symbolic objects (symbols in a narrower sense) and symbolic actions — a distinction that is usually recognized — but also the origin of a symbol (folkdom, space), the century in which it is found, the developmental course of its content and representation, and the possible changes or reversals it underwent over time are of utmost importance.

Furthermore, a clear distinction must be made between true symbols and externally (almost) similar representations or signs of a different nature.

It makes no sense at all to consider a motif or sign on its own without examining its binding and origin in relation to people, time, and culture.

To begin with, we must therefore not only distinguish between different types of symbols but also investigate from which space a symbol originates, what role it played in that space and specifically with that people or tribe, what changes this symbol underwent over the centuries, and how its content developed or changed. If we do the same for all the symbols from a specific ethnographically defined area, we get an overview of the symbolism in its binding to people and land, i.e., an insight into the specific local significance of generally used symbolic representations and signs in the Germanic world.

The best approach for this research starts from entire series of studies on individual symbols in their spatial and temporal binding. In the field of legal symbolism, excellent work has already been done in this manner (e.g., by Von Schwerin on the sword symbol).

Bronze Age European Swords

However, more significant than the research into the particular meaning of a Germanic symbol tied to place, time, and people is currently the research into the general, original meaning of ancient Germanic symbols, that is, the content that we may consider the primordial value of a symbol. Namely, that initial and undivided meaning that the symbol had before the described diversity arose.

For that diversity necessarily represents a further advancing particularization, delimitation, restriction, and derivation of the primordial value. An increasing concentration and consciousness, thereby a significant loss of scope and depth. It is a gain in clarity and rationality, but a loss in cosmic connectedness, in onconscious divinity. It is a path from the sacred to the profane.

MODERN AND FOREIGN HINDRANCES

We must therefore reach back to the primordial values that have been hidden behind these symbols, but which were once unmistakably conveyed by them.

We cannot rely on what "one" on the countryside today might say about a certain symbol. On the contrary, we can be sure that in many cases, a completely subjective interpretation is given, a series of coincidences or a local historical peculiarity that has very little to do with the ancient Germanic meaning. Furthermore, since the Christianization, many new meanings have been attributed to old and original things by various cultural currents, and surely some of this has also passed onto the symbols of the rural land.

Thus, the study of symbols is extraordinarily difficult.

In the first place, we are now obliged to consciously articulate and express in contemporary words feelings that once lived almost unconsciously in the folk soul and were understood without the almost always misleading use of words. After all, if a symbol truly lives, it speaks for itself and neither needs nor tolerates an "explanation," which can never be anything other than an arbitrary restriction and can never give more than the intellectual description of what lives a thousand times richer and deeper in the heart.

To dress the meaning of a symbol in words means inevitably to obscure the symbol, to violate it, to strangle it in misplaced concepts that are inseparably connected to our words as contemporary thought associations.

The symbol is primarily a matter of the soul, indeed, exclusively a matter of the soul, both of the individual soul and of the folk soul and racial soul. But it is precisely from this side, from the psychological science side, that the symbol has been the hardest to approach. For the science of the soul has, especially in the last few decades, in which prehistory, folklore, and racial studies have developed, completely lost its way to the soul of the Northern race.

The path to understanding the soul life of our own ancestors was blocked in 1927 by the sensational and noisy publication of the book "L'Âme primitive" by the researcher L. Levy-Bruhl. His alien thinking influenced an entire school of ethnologists, making it natural to deny the "primitive man" any rationality.

L'Ame primitive.

ETHNOLOGICAL ERRORS

This perspective — according to which Hottentots, Papuans, and the ancient Germans are "equal," namely uncivilized, irrational, and superstitious beings plagued by fears and trapped in black magic — was inherently blind to all cultural values that cannot be "understood" according to contemporary logic. These ethnologists completely overlooked the fact that it does not mean the same thing when two different groups do the same thing. They recognized only the savage, the barbarian, the heathen. What kind of heathens they were did not matter; red, black, yellow, or white played no role: these beings were alike in backwardness and thus "all" did the same things. They worshipped trees and springs, carved rough idol images, made sacrifices, kept sacred animals, and practiced solemn ancestor worship.

And since many black tribes still live in the Stone Age, one only needed to study their customs to know how our ancestors acted and thought during our Stone Age. And if stone axes, fire drills, and sacred stones from the South Seas could be shown, whose forms greatly resembled similar items from our cold North, then the essence of the "primitive soul" was clearly proven! At least, that was the assertion of the "Parisian" school of Levy-Bruhl.

It has been very difficult to overcome this line of thought, which was indeed seductive. But racial science has taught us that "race" does not only mean "body," but also "soul." Rosenberg succinctly put it: "Soul means race seen from within, race is the outside of the soul." Body and soul are both expressions of the same blueprint determined by race (i.e., hereditary traits). Therefore, Nachenius repeatedly emphasizes that race is "style," meaning attitude. And no "attitude" is conceivable without harmony and unity of both body and soul.

Thus, it follows that it is not so important what two people anywhere in the world do, but rather what ensouls them, what they feel, think, and intend when they do it. This entirely depends on their attitude towards life, i.e., on their worldview that is inseparably connected with their blood and inherited from generation to generation.

So, when examining what someone does, it is about their blood, their race, because the decisive factor is the manner in which and the purpose for which they do something.

We must therefore take the inspiration, the soul of a race, a people, a person as the starting point for our conclusions and not consider and compare an external action, an object, or an art form in isolation and compare it with other forms that may outwardly resemble it somewhat (or even very much)!

PSYCHOLOGICAL ERRORS

The disastrous confusion in folk studies about the "primitive" soul was already preceded by an even greater deviation within psychology itself. The psychological science, barely fifty years old at the time, had been preoccupied with the "psychoanalysis" of Sigmund Freud since 1900.

Sigmund Freud

This is not the place to delve much deeper into it, but it should be noted that for Freud, all psychic energy that did not serve the drive for self-preservation always and everywhere had a sexual character. From cradle to grave, the soul is tormented by sexual inclinations and "repressed complexes." Faith, art, culture are expressions of sexual drive just like all human relationships, even those of the child to the parents. Repressed sexuality constantly threatens to overwhelm the soul by disturbing it from the unconscious and making the nerves sick. However, dreams allow the soul analyst to gauge these impending dangers. They are, as it were, messages expressed in symbols from the unconscious to the conscious about what is happening and living in the depths of the soul.

It all comes down to being able to "interpret" these dreams, i.e., to decipher the symbols rising from the depths of the soul in order to understand what is happening deep within us beyond the reach of consciousness and influencing our lives and actions unnoticed.

It hardly needs to be stated that this "interpretation" could not succeed in the embittered, sex-obsessed mind of Freud — and certainly not regarding the soul of the Nordic race. His entire theory was more a literary form of speculative thinking than a scientific method, a fact of which he himself was well aware, so much so that he ultimately showed little confidence in his own theory.

For the study of symbols, it is of the utmost importance that this Freudian way of thinking has been overcome and refuted, allowing us today to talk about the unconscious, about dream symbols and the life of the soul, without immediately triggering a flood of sexual insinuations!

Carl Gustav Jung

In this regard, the work of Prof. C. G. Jung, the founder of "depth psychology," is of groundbreaking significance. Not only did Jung break the fatal circle of eternal sexuality, but he also brought to light some highly important properties of the unconscious life of the soul for the study of symbols. His teachings have thus become significant both for the psychology of race and for prehistory and folk studies. Hans Burkhardt repeatedly refers to Jung in "Die seelischen Anlagen des Nordischen Menschen" (— Eine rassenpsychologische Untersuchung, 1941), as does Fr. Adama van Scheltema in his "Symbolik der germanischen Völker" (Handbuch der Symbolforschung II, 1941).

JUNG'S DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY

It is very encouraging that the somewhat stalled research into symbols has found new possibilities through the science of depth psychology, which were urgently needed. This need was by no means obscured by the increasingly fantastical and unmotivated elaborations on the few scientifically responsible certainties of the object-collecting and classifying symbol research. The psychologist Jung is a strong personality and a healthy mind. He took a stand against "the dark greats from the East" (Blavatsky, Besant, Krishnamurti, etc.) whose thoughts gripped the instincts of the masses and, "from below," besieged the universities, from which they were expelled three centuries ago.

He sees our inner life threatened and undermined by the perversity of Havelock Ellis and Freud and our reality made suspect by Einstein's theory of relativity. He saw through the "comedy" of Christian "moral mist" and established that superstition, in essence, is nothing but perversity. Therefore, he wants to make the European person know themselves by rejecting all dogmas and opening the soul to the "Primeval Experience," without letting them fall into the hands of Western charlatans with astrology, theosophy, and spiritualism.

In doing so, he wants to replace the sickly modernist interest in the dark and unhealthy expressions of contemporary inner life with a healthy interest in the deeply hidden precious heritage that has been preserved intact through thousands of years. The treasure of the soul instead of the sediment, as he himself puts it. This soul is primarily safe among the people, among "the quiet ones in the land, who are often laughed at, who, less corrupted by academic prejudices than the dazzling peaks of society, let themselves be carried along by the unconscious urge of the soul." Great renewals never come from above, but always from below, just as trees never grow down from the sky, but always up from the earth, although their seeds once fell from above to below." (Jung: "Problems of the Soul of Our Time").

REDEMPTION FROM MATERIALISM

The greatest merit of C. G. Jung is, however, that he was the first to oppose the metaphysics-of-matter produced by the 19th century with the reality of the soul. Materialism understood "soul" to be a product of "matter," a chemical reaction. Soul, mind, psyche were phenomena of the brain or hormones. Others preferred to speak of instincts or drives, but to attribute an independent existence to the soul was simply ridiculous nonsense for materialism.

Just as in the Middle Ages it would have been madness to deny the substantial uniqueness of the soul, or to doubt that all matter essentially originated from a divine, matter-independent spirit. However, Jung reminds us that we do not ultimately know what matter or spirit truly are.

He also does not deny the close connection between spirit and matter, body and soul, and he does not deny that the content of our consciousness is largely governed by the perceptions of our senses. He admits that the soul first appears to us as a faithful reflection of everything we call material, tangible, and earthly. He is not blind to the power of drives and instincts — but he takes a strong stand against the modern materialistic belief that the physical is ultimately the only reality and cause of everything.

He found the courage for a new "psychology with soul," that is, with the soul as a reality closely connected to matter, but still autonomous and inherently unique.

THE SOUL AS REALITY

Jung refers to the Old Germanic origin of the word soul (Gothic: saiwala, Proto-Germanic: saiwald). The word means: moving force, life force. An original symbol for this was fire or flame, as a source of movable warmth. Warmth and breath (wind) are also signs of life.

The name of someone is also a symbol of the soul, namely the recognition of the awareness of the self. Originally, someone's name was indeed their essence. Hence, the Germanic custom of inheriting ancestral names.

This already shows how much in the old conceptions the soul was understood as a source of life, as an objective reality. For the "primitive" ancestor, i.e., for the spirit of our forefathers still entirely connected to nature and not constrained by "civilization," the soul was not something totally subjective and personal, as it is for us today, but something impersonal, living by itself, whom one could listen to and speak with.

This original conception is not at all narrow-minded, foolish, or backward, but is essentially confirmed by modern experience, even if we act as if we do not know this.

Just think about it: we cannot suppress most of our feelings, we cannot control our own moods, we cannot order or prevent dreams. Our thoughts can make the wildest leaps without us being able to prevent it. Ideas occur to us that we never sought or asked for.

Indeed: soul and consciousness are very different things. In reality, we are very much dependent on our unconscious soul life working healthily and not letting us down or obstructing us. For then our nerves would soon be in disarray. Where do all good or bad "inspirations" come from? Where do our inspiration, our enthusiasm, our ecstasy come from? They well up from the unconscious, which already lives in the smallest child long before it has even the slightest demonstrable self-awareness. (Hence the absence of memories of the first years of life.)

Therefore, the primitive (nature-connected) person feels in the depths of his soul the source of life, the divine breath of life. He is not as arrogantly foolish as we are and does not believe himself to be the lord and master of life, but feels his dependence on the unconscious-living-in-him. This feeling is his faith in the deeper and higher, which he believed he had to honor as an eternal value.

Dolmen near Rolde, Netherlands.
The entire landscape here acts as a symbol.

SUPRAPERSONAL WISDOM

And not without reason, for although the idea of the immortality of the soul may sound like medieval nonsense to modern, materialistic ears, it is essentially a primitive truth whose original meaning still applies today. So, what about this immortal soul?

Where does it reside? Even if it were more than a mere chemical reaction, this has never been explained, as we feel our thoughts in our head, our feelings in the heart area, and other emotions in the abdominal cavity.

In other cultures, these things are very different, as countless researchers have established. Does the soul occupy a mathematical point or an entire starry world? We do not know. We only know that all ancient cultures attributed higher knowledge to the soul than to our human understanding. The soul participated in eternity, as opposed to our self-consciousness, which remained trapped in the temporal, everyday, and material.

Thus, in all ancient cultures, certain dreams were perceived as symbolic messages from the unconscious soul to the conscious soul life, to the self. As divine tidings, laden with a wisdom drawn from the experiences of eternity.

A primitive foolishness? Psychology teaches otherwise. That the nature-connected person attached so much value to the unconscious soul life is not as fanciful as Western rationalism would like to believe. Because today, we know from an abundance of experimental material that the unconscious soul life holds information (contents) that—if it could be made conscious—would mean an immeasurable increase in our knowledge.

The human unconscious also contains the inherited forms of the life functions of the ancestors, so that even in the child there is an adaptive readiness for the functions of the soul long before any "consciousness" or conscious soul life is present. But even in adult, conscious life, that unconscious instinctual function of the soul is constantly present and active. One should not regard the teaching of the unconscious soul life as a modernistic deviation. The ancient cultures have been working practically with it for thousands of years, just as the East still does today.

But it is nothing new in the science of the West either. 

Leibnitz spoke two centuries ago of an "unbewusst Seelisches," a hundred years later, Kant dealt with "the immeasurable field of dark representations." Janet, Flournoy, Breuer, and Carus further developed the concept of the unconscious. Contemporary psychology builds upon their work.

THE UNCONSCIOUS

The difference between the conscious and the unconscious soul life is primarily that consciousness, although intensive and concentrated, is also superficial and focused on the present and the surrounding environment. Additionally, it only possesses personally acquired experiences, meaning at most a few decades of a human life. The rest is artificial and consists of our well-known "paper memory" with all its alarming errors and falsehoods.

The unconscious, on the other hand, is entirely different. Jung describes it approximately like this: The unconscious is not concentrated and intensive, but dim to dark. It is extremely extensive and can juxtapose the most disparate elements in the most paradoxical ways. Alongside an indefinite multitude of perceptions that remain below the threshold of consciousness, it holds a tremendous treasure trove of deposits from the life of the ancestors, which have contributed to the "diversity of species" merely by their presence.

If one were to imagine this unconscious as a person, it would be someone beyond gender or age, possessing the experience of one or two million years, thus practically the insight of an immortal.

He would have lived through the lives of individuals, kin, tribes, and peoples countless times, and the rhythm of becoming, flourishing, and perishing would be one of his most vivid feelings...

This personality, however, is not self-aware; it merely dreams within us. It is also not a "person," but something like an endless stream, a sea of images and life forms that occasionally come to our consciousness through our dreams.

To dismiss this unconscious as an illusion would be as grotesque as considering comparative anatomy or physiology nonsense, because our tangible body still shows various traces of ancient development.

It is only an illusion to try to explain this unconscious solely from the outside and only through consciousness, as Freud attempted.

THE ESSENCE OF THE DREAM

The personal consciousness floats like a ship on the endless, dark sea of the unconscious soul life. This ocean can, at times, be very threatening, even life-threatening. In the case of the mentally ill, the small ship of the ego, of consciousness, is tossed around aimlessly and sometimes completely engulfed. Occasionally, the waves of the unconscious crash high over the ship. In such cases, depending on the severity of the symptoms, one speaks of "losing oneself," "going mad," "being possessed," or "losing one's soul."

For this reason, it is beneficial to understand the messages that rise from the fathomless depths to the surface of the sea and thereby to the boundary of our consciousness.

Making these comprehensible is the task of the scientific interpretation of dreams. "Dreams are deceiving," preached rationalism. "Dreams are merely the fulfillments of unfulfilled and repressed desires," taught Freud's metaphysical materialism. These convenient excuses have long been outdated.

We now know that we actually know very little. What is the unconscious, really? We do not know — and precisely because of this, we call it by the grand name "The Unconscious." We know it just as little as the physicist knows what matter really is. We have only theories, concepts, word constructions. One day our theory collapses. Our words become meaningless — but matter and soul exist as always, they are no less real for it.

So it is with the value, with the symbolic content of our dreams. Dream interpretations and dream interpretation theories perish, but for centuries, indeed thousands of years, dreams have continually shown the same unchanging ancient motifs, leading forms, or symbols, derived from the inherited experience of thousands of generations before us.

"Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious soul life, beyond the control of our consciousness. They are pure nature — and thus unadulterated truth. Therefore, they are particularly suited to giving us back our natural and original attitude towards life if our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundation," says Jung. "Engaging with one's dreams is a form of reflection on one's own essence."

DREAM AND SYMBOL

Unfortunately, there is not yet an absolutely reliable method to interpret all dreams, and the remark that one cannot rely on speculations and fantasies is quite justified.

However, there is at least a useful method that leads to practically usable and striking results, disregarding special cases.

A dream should be examined entirely without bias, without modern superstition, as an "unknown object." It should be turned over and over, discussed, and approached from all sides through emerging thought associations.

In ancient cultures, this was done with significant, so-called "great dreams" in a public assembly. Ancient accounts of this practice have been preserved.

From the insights gained in such gatherings, the meaning of the dream was usually more or less approximated. Psychology has elaborated and refined this method in very ingenious ways, building on the comparative study of an extensive amount of dream material from antiquity to the present and using the information provided by ethnology, folklore, mythology, and archaeology.

For the research of symbols, not all dreams are naturally useful. On the contrary.

Here, only those dreams are considered that the primitives regard as "great dreams," namely, those dreams that rise from great depths and thus originate from an ancient past. This is in contrast to the dreams that float more or less on the surface of the unconscious and mostly consist of pieces that have fallen down from consciousness, thus made up of fragments of personal experience. Just with the "great dreams," an intuitive "guessing" of the meaning is pointless.

Modern thought associations cannot help here. The specialist must work here, who completely masters the treasure of symbols and motifs, mythology, and comparative ethnology.

Therefore, says Jung, these dreams cannot be learned to interpret from books. Methods and rules are useful for those who cannot work without these aids. What matters is mastering the level of the dream completely as a personality with heart and mind; one must be literally "up to the mark" in those depths.

Only years of preparatory study and comprehensive practical work can create the conditions to achieve reliable results here.

Jung has been accused of undermining culture with his teachings and delivering our highest values to a primitive soul life. He has rightly responded that this fear stems from a fear of nature and primal reality.

Freud had turned the unconscious into a sexual monster, a destructive demon. But, says Jung, the unconscious is not a demonic beast, but a morally, aesthetically, and intellectually insensitive natural being, which only becomes dangerous if our consciousness's relationship with it is hopelessly wrong. On this basis alone, there can be no question of a demonic character of ancient symbols. They are always positive life and health signs.

But even to the most general, ancient, and thus relatively "fixed" symbols, Jung still attributes a somewhat indefinite character regarding their content. If the content were not indefinite, they would not be symbols but signs or symptoms, he writes in his "Reality of the Soul."

The "great dreams" and general symbols cannot be explained from the "personal unconscious," which contains everything forgotten or repressed in personal existence, as well as perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that remained below the threshold of consciousness.

Besides these "personal" elements, the unconscious contains the aforementioned inherited contents from the life of ancestors, including mythological representations and motifs and various unconscious connections that our logic no longer recognizes. But they arise within us everywhere and at all times, even without historical tradition or any other bridging aid.

MYTHOLOGICAL ARCHETYPES

These ancient mythological connections, these original representations and motifs, upon close examination, turned out to consist of a multitude of characteristic images or figures that continually reappear. Examples include: heroic figures, monsters, father, mother, the old wise man, etc.

Jung calls these figures "primitive images or archetypes." They are general forms stemming from timeless primordial depths and have become ideas.

Repeatedly, one encounters religious representations among these messengers that alert the consciousness. No wonder, says Jung: the strongest and most original activity of the spirit, namely the religious, has been more than any other spiritual experience, suppressed from conscious life and banished to the primordial depths of the soul in modern humans.

When these archetypes resurface, they thus contain fresh, unadulterated, and most universal primal values in symbolic form. This is especially true since the process of bringing these images to consciousness happens so quickly and automatically that practically no distortion occurs. Understanding them entirely depends on the scientific training, talent, and intuitive ability of the researcher.

For no person can derive more from a symbol than they are capable of imbuing it with themselves, and no person can sense what is not inherently present in their own soul as an inheritance from their ancestors.

Therefore, the study of symbols can never be undertaken by anyone other than trained, racially conscious Germanic researchers.

SYMBOLISM OF THE GERMANIC PEOPLES

Professor Jung has not entirely become aware of the necessity of the racial standpoint. Nevertheless, being predominantly of Nordic spirit, he has solved the problems he posed in accordance with that spirit, which naturally makes his teachings so valuable. However, he did not specifically feel drawn to the ancient Germanic symbols, which is undoubtedly very unfortunate.

On the other hand, the excellent researcher and renowned describer of ancient Nordic art, Adama van Scheltema, has indeed engaged very intensively with these symbols, using Professor Jung's insights in the process. In his latest work, "Symbolik der germanischen Völker" (1941), he supplemented his art and style-theoretical findings and his ethnological research with some results from Jung's depth psychology.

However, in my opinion, he did not sufficiently distinguish between ancient Germanic and pre-Germanic concepts, so a revision is needed here as well. I will elaborate on this further in a separate article.

Nico de Haas in Hamer (September 1942).