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To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan,alt.occult,talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.newage,alt.satanism,alt.religion.asatru From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Subject: (Noll) OTO, GD, Satanism, Asatru and the Volkish Movement (was Crowley ....) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:42:51 -0800 49990107 IIIom jake@kiblah.demon.co.uk (jake stratton-kent): #>#># Crowley associated the ideas Sun-Male-Phallus with #>#># each other, and 'Solar-Phallic' is a term he used fairly often. tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (333): #>#> isn't it true that Crowley's esoteric preferences tended to be the #>#> solar-phallic, however? and doesn't this coincide rather pointedly #>#> with the German (cf. Ordo Templi Orientis, whose secret documents #>#> contain solar-phallic emphases and whose origin is German) mystical #>#> ideas of race purity, aryan white supremacy, and a general attempt #>#> to wipe out or appropriate everything Jewish? catherine yronwode: # The O. T. O. has "secret documents...whose origin is German"? Can you # substantiate this or cite a reference? What are these documents? How is # their German "origin" explained? others have substantiated the origins. the texts about which I was referring may be found in Francis King's _The Secret Rites of the O.T.O._, which was apparently pirated from the Order and published without permission. it contains secret degree instructions for the higher degress (Order members contend that King's version is 'inaccurate' or 'incomplete'), and these are of obvious solar-phallic character in many places. some public libraries have copies of King's text and the serious researcher can check it out for hirself. # ...the references Richard Noll makes in "The Cult of # Jung" are to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (of which Crowley was # a member) and not to the O. T. O. (which Crowley founded). as others have mentioned, Crowley merely inherited the OTO. # Noll compares # the agenda and form of the G. D. with a Swiss Volkisch group that # studied "Aryan" occultism including "Mithraic" solar-phallus worship, # and then conducted initiatory secret ceremonial magick rites in which # they used talismans, costumes (including Bishops' miters), and so forth. # The book also contains a couple of references to W. B. Yeates (a # colleague of Crowley's in the G. D.) and to the cultural "elitism" of # the G. D. and the Volkisch Movement in contrast to the inclusiveness of # other neo-pagan movements. my memory is that Yeats and Crowley didn't get along very well. # There is also much mention made of Blavatsky, # the Theosophical Society, G. R. S. Meade, and others with whom Crowley # corresponded or was familiar, but there is no mention of Crowley per se. I'm unaware of the exact relationship between AC and these people, though I don't think he thought too highly of HPB. # The book concludes with an examination of Stephen Flowers and the racist # elements within Asatru and Satanism, and with Noll's conclusion that # such neo-pagan racialism is a modern extension of the Volkisch Movement. here's all of the text I could find on "satanism": [Stefan George (1868-1933)] formed an artistic mystery cult complete with recitals of prophetic poetry, ceremonial talismans and gowns, the wearing of bishops' miters, etc. This sort of formal costume ceremonialism had long be associated with various occult circles in Europe and underwent a revival with the decadent "satanist" movement in France and later in England in the 1880s among the culturally elite members (including W. B. Yeats) of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The group of young men ([Alfred Schuler (1865-1923)] was thirty-two, the rest in their twenties) met to read and discuss mythology, cultural history, and literature. Among their favorite authors were three of Jung's most powerful influences: Nietzsche, Carus, and Bachofen. _________________________________________________ _The Jung Cult_, Richard Noll, Free Press Paperbacks; 1997; p. 167. ----------------------------------------------- On French decadent "satanism," see James Laver, _The First Decadent: The Strange Life of J. K. Huysmans_ (New York: Citadel Press, 1955), pp. 110-55. Huysmans's famous novel, _La-Bas_ (1891), with its graphic descriptions of the satanic black mass [there are other types? nagasiva], reflected the practices among some of the decadents in the French occult underground. On the Golden Dawn and its practices, see Ellic Howe, _The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary of a Magical Order, 1887-1923_ (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). ___________________________________________________ Ibid., p. 356. -------------- it does not appear, from referencing "satanism" in the index, that he was associating Jung or the Volkish movement directly with it. as for Asatruar there appears to be a single batch of text dealing with it (by index), drawing mainly on Adler and Flowers, that makes some interesting comments about Asatruar's relationship with neo-Nazism (nothing certain): THE JUNGIAN MOVEMENT AND CONTEMPORARY NEOPAGANISM Following the wide dissemination of Jung's writings in English translation by the 1960s, Jung's obvious fascination with mythology, parapsychological phenomena, the _I Ching_, astrology, alchemy, and mystical and religious experience of all kinds made him a source of inspiration and affirmation for the neopagan religious movements that began to proliferate in Europe and North America during that period -- a true Renaissance of the Asconan ideals. Such innovative spiritual seekers -- acutely aware of their status as outsiders -- have adopted Jung as a prophet whose achievements as a respected psychiatrist, physician, philosopher, and associate of Freud, have helped to legitimize their movement. The role of Jungian ideas in modern American paganism (Wicca, "goddess spirituality"), etc.) was noted in many places by Margot Adler in her extensive volume on the subject. [_Drawing Down the Moon_ -- nagasiva] This considerable Jungian influence on modern witchcraft and neopaganism is seconded in a recent volume by M. D. Faber, a literature scholar, that offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the "witchcraft cult" and furthermore reports to be an attempt to "retrieve the theory" from twentieth- century occultists who have "hijacked Jungian psychoanalytic theory to mystical ends." In a study of ritual magic groups in contemporary England, anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann notes the early adoption of Jung's concept of the collective unconscious by occultists in the 1920s and 1930s: "In magicians' writings, the collective unconscious practically became a place, to which magical ritual could be a map which magicians used to travel in the collective human soul." Luhrmann demonstrates, additionally, that Jung is still widely read and invoked by practicing occultists today: "Linked to psychology and its authoritative figures, the metaphor of a separate plane is a magician's intellectual resource that dispenses with ordinary canons of truth." [_Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England_ -- nagasiva] Perhaps the most ironic -- and potentially the most disturbing -- link between Jungism and neopaganism is the prominent inspirational role Jung's writings play in the revival of "Germanic Religion" or Norse paganism in contemporary continental Europe, England, and North America. This phenomenon, at least as it appeared in the late 1970s, has been documented in a remarkable article by Stephen Flowers. ["Revival of Germanic Religion in Contemporary Anglo-American Culture" -- nagasiva] According to Flowers, these groups do not have a direct historical link with the volkisch neopagan groups of Central Europe at the turn of the century, nor do all of them have connections with the neo-Nazi movement (although apparently some individuals and local groups do). The first of these organizations seems to have originated in Iceland in May 1973 and was called the *Asatruarmenn*. A related group, the Odinic Rite, was founded in the United Kingdom that same year. In the United States, a group called the Viking Brotherhood was founded in Texas in 1972 and evolved into a much larger group, the Asatru Free Assembly in 1978. "Asatru" is alledgely the Icelandic term that means "faith in the Asir" (the old Nordic gods). The Asatru Free Assembly formally dissolved in 1987 but apparently many of its members still practice Germanic neopagan rituals in smaller groups, read the works of Jung, and also read the growing occultist literature on Norse paganism -- which includes a 1988 translation by Flowers of List's _Secret of the Runes_ of 1908. According to Flowers: Many of their ideas are drawn from the most recent scholarly work concerning the old Germanic religion, and traditional religions in general, as well as from the psychological theories of C.G. Jung. The concepts of the *archetypes* and the *collective unconscious* have exerted a tremendous influence on the formation of the ideology of the neo-Germanic religion.... Divinities in Asatru/Odinism are not seen as independent, transcendental beings, but rather as exemplary models of consciousness, or archetypes, which serve as patterns for human development.... A principle feature of this view is the idea that humanity is almost "biologically" linked to divinity, and that there has never been any real break in this connection (i.e. there is no concept of "original sin").... Jungian psychology and old Germanic written sources remain the most influential ideas in the formation of neo-Germanic concepts concerning the nature of man and his place in the cosmos. As with the volkisch neopagan groups at the turn of the century, the summer solstice is celebrated as one of the holidays of the new Nordic paganism movement (as it is in the neopagan movement in general). Flowers notes, however, that the members of these neo- Germanic groups "are more attracted by antiquarian interests or racial sentimentalities than by religious zeal or interest in self-transformation." This observation probably could hav been equally made about the many participants in the Volkstumbewegung circa 1900. What does unite these modern Germanic neopagans, however, is a belief in an ideology called "meta- genetics": the idea "that the 'biological' and the 'spiritual' heritage of a person or people are ontologically identical, and that through a reimmersion into the 'old way' a transforming 'return to the whole' may be effected." Despite the similarities between the philosophies of other neopagan movements, including a deep foundation in Jungian thought, the pagan movement in the United States has generally shunned the neo-Germanic movement for its persistent connection with neo-Nazism. ______________________________________________________ Ibid., pp. 295-6. ----------------- responses? is this accurate? I x-post this to the Asatru newsgroup. # However, as i said above, this still leaves me wondering about those # mysterious O. T. O. "secret documents...whose origin is German": How do # they relate to the "solar phallic" issue? they're like the writings of theologians, mythologists and mystics, communicating ideals that include phallicism (in its modern sense) and a solar emphasis. # How you know they are "German"? Who in Germany gave them to Crowley? these questions have been answered by Frater Heidrick and others. nagasiva ------ This is a Cc: of an article on USENET sent to you for your convenience. ------
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