Further Reflections on the Aryan Doctrine of Awakening

This article was prompted by a discussion I had the other day with someone on the subject of Buddhism.
Buddhism is allegedly a philosophy not a religion or at least that is what its adherents, particularly its western ones allege. Some may go so far as to term it a `philosophy of religion` or a `religious philosophy`. To me this sounds disingenuous. We know that originally Gautama Buddha conceived this system as a practical philosophy and not as a religion and yet effectively this is what it has become in the East. Many countries regard themselves as being mainly or in part Buddhist by religion, ie China, Japan, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea etc. The vast majority of these so-called Buddhists are merely culturally Buddhist just as the majority of people in England today are not really Christian by belief or practice but merely culturally so-and this is a thin veneer at best! Thus we cannot obtain a true appreciation of Buddhism just on the basis of the observation of the beliefs or practices of the majority-and this is the mistake that many westerners today make.

As Baron Julius Evola makes clear in his The Doctrine of Awakening[1943] Buddhism according to its earliest texts of the Pali Canon is a system by which the Ariya may obtain physical and mental detachment from the masses. It is most surely a Left-Hand Path and is not intended for the masses but for the spiritual elite, for the would be Master. To be a Master one must first learn mastery over one`s body and thoughts.
The very fact that the masses treat it as a religion where they offer worship to images of the Buddha demonstrates most clearly that it has become degenerate. Some of the practices of Buddhism are useful to the Ariya and may complement whatever Aryan spiritual path the initiate is undertaking. For this reason Evola`s book should be regarded as a useful textbook. The sub title of the book is The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts and this should be the defining motivation for its study. 

In chatper 2 of the book Evola stresses the Aryan-ness of the Doctrine of Awakening. He emphasises that the earliest written texts repeatedly call the teaching Aryan and imply this in a racial and aristocratic sense.
Buddha himself, Prince Siddhattha was the blue-eyed son of a king of Sakiya, a people who claimed to be a `solar race.` The Aryan peoples who built civilisation in both the West and the East belonged to this Nordic Aryan racial caste and one still sees this caste surviving even today amongst the darker-skinned alien hordes in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

"We have to remember that behind the various caprices of modern historical theories, and as a more profound and primordial reality, there stands the unity of blood and spirit of the white races who created the greatest civilizations both of the East and West, the Iranian and Hindu as well as the ancient Greek and Roman and the Germanic."[Evola, 1943]

He states that it is right that Buddhism call itself `Aryan` as it has in part preserved a heritage that is common to all the Aryan peoples but of which western man has largely forgotten. He points out that due to intermarriage between the racial Aryan elite of the East and the indigenous masses much of the tradition has become obscured and has degenerated-as many things have in the Kali Yuga but it is the task of the Arya, the Sonnenmensch to uncover and teach the essential primordial Hyperborean teachings of and to worthy members of our own race. 

The Black Sun and The Golden Sun: the Task of the Arya

It is no coincidence that since the end of WWII Die Schwarze Sonne [the Black Sun] has emerged as the primary symbol of esoteric National Socialism. Some would argue that on a superficial basis the Black Sun appears to have eclipsed the Swastika as the symbol of Aryan man.One reason for this may be that the Black Sun, unlike the Swastika is not generally known to the uninitiated wider world and so the wearing or display of this symbol meets little if any opposition. This is of course to our advantage. The Unconscious does not reason; it feels, it remembers. As I have said many many times before, a "symbol is worth 1,000 words" for it speaks directly to the Racial Collective Unconscious. Thus a favourable response is more likely than that which one would receive if displaying the Swastika for the masses have not been conditioned-yet to respond negatively to the Black Sun; thus the Unconscious presents no barrier, no resistance to the reception of this symbol. Likewise to those who are initiated, who have understanding it is a sign of brotherhood.

There is another and deeper reason why the Black Sun has eclipsed the Swastika. That reason is elaborated on in my The Black Sun [Die Schwarze Sonne] in Eddic Mythology and Fairytale article published on my Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen blog on 26/12/13. Put quite simply the current active Sun, the Golden Sun is in the process of being `eclipsed` by the Black Sun, the currently passive Sun which will become active again after Ragnarok. It will become the active Sun of the new Golden Age of the Arya. The Eddic mythology from both the Elder and Younger Eddas makes this abundantly clear. At the time of the seeding of our race at the North Pole this ancient Sol Niger was visible in the sky and exerted a psychological and physiological influence upon our race. That influence will be felt again in its full power after Ragnarok. We know that the Arya will be purified through the fires of Ragnarok and the earth will be cleansed from its physical, biological and spiritual impurities due to the sacrifices of the Einheriar. The rejuvenated Arya will emerge from the safety of Odainsaker to replenish the earth. To meet them will be the rejuvenated Gods who will walk hand in hand with the Arya to accomplish the next phase of Aryan existence. Thus we must welcome Ragnarok. It cannot be avoided. The Gods know this and so do we.
However before the new can come the old order must be destroyed. The signs of its decay are already present and the end is in sight.

We know from the ancient Aryan science of Alchemy that the initial stage of the process of transformation is the nigredo stage, the darkening,  representing all that is decaying and dying and that the initiate must proceed from this stage to the ultimate goal of attaining the internal Golden Sun. What will happen in the heavens, in the Macrocosmos must be achieved internally, in the Microcosmos, the Sun Initiate, the Sonnenmensch. Partly for this reason we currently wear black for we are the inheritors of the Lords of the Black Stone, Die Herren vom Schwarzen Stein [DHvSS], the SS, the Schwarze Sonne!

Langridge`s ROH Parsifal-a Review by Wotans Krieger

On 18/12/13 I sat through and endured the latest modernistic interpretation of Wagner`s Parsifal by the Royal Opera House under the directorship of Stephen Langridge. I say "endured" because this was as modernistic as you can make it. The worst part of the work was Act I where Langridge had all the Grail knights dressed as bespectacled bank clerks. Some of these knights or squires were obviously female which is not what Wagner intended. If this were not bad enough one of these females was an oriental and one of the male singers,dressed as an American hospital porter[or was it as an ice cream salesman?] was a negro. He also sang  as well as performed like a negro. Clearly the timbre of his voice was not appropriate for a work of this nature. The other obvious negro in the cast was Willard White who I must admit pulled off a breathtaking Klingsor. There are some Wagnerian roles which I have no objection to being given to negroes, particularly if like him they have a good and powerful voice. His acting unlike the other one was convincing. However he should never have been given the role of Wotan just as a European should never be expected to play Nelson Mandela! Wagner is not merely opera: it is MUSIC DRAMA and as such the people must be believeable in the role they portray. Wagner is a Teutonic God: our Gods should never be portayed by people who are of non-Europid race. That is common sense! Equally as ridiculous is the playing of Heimdall in the Thor film[which I have no intention of seeing] by an oriental.

To compound things further Langridge`s version of the Grail was in Act I a prebuscent boy dressed in a nappy whose side was pierced and from which `blood` flowed.  This was wrong on so many different levels and indeed I found it sick, immoral and an absolute disgrace. Goodness knows what Langridge was thinking of when he introduced this shameful spectacle. I get the impression that he was appealing to an audience unversed in Wagner and behving like a second rate Hollywood film director wanted to introduce a shock value to pull the punters in. I see no other logical or artistic reason for substituting a Grail, which should be either a chalice or a stone for a bleeding young boy in a nappy! It is insanity! In Act III the boy in a nappy becomes a young man in a nappy!

Acts II and III were marginally better. At least they were shorter and one could focus more on the powerful singing of Kundry, sang extremely well and acted brilliantly by Angela Denoka. One needs to remember that with Wagner on stage the acting is almost as important as the singing and Denoka was exceptional. Also of note was Rene Pape as Gurnemanz-shame about the clothing!

One thing I could not understand was the presence of a ridiculous cube in the centre of the stage. Again it made no logical or artistic sense. The flower maidens in Act II were a pleasant diversion from the lunacy of the stage set. I noticed that the more attractive and younger flower maidens took centre stage whilst the older and less attractive ones looked on from the sides. I am not sure what the intention was there unless Langridge was particularly short of young ladies who could also sing well, thus hiding away the more matronly ones as vocal support?

Somon O`Neill as Parsifal for me was not very believeable. His singing was adequate for the most part, his acting rather limited in expression. For him to be a believable Parsifal he needs to shed a few stone in weight. This is a common problem with opera singers and there is no excuse for being fat. These things would not matter if this was just a sound performance but it is a music drama and there needs to be more realism in this respect.

Finally there is the matter of Parsifal being blinded by Klingsor in Act II. This does not actually happen in Wagner`s Parsifal but in LANGRIDGE`S Parsifal everything is fair game! Again this toying with and distortion by directors of Wagner`s very clear and precise stage direction notes must not be tolerated. This was neither Wagner, nor was it art!

You may be wondering why I went to see this production and the simple answer is it is not often that a Wagner production is screened in the small country town in which I live, so good or bad I had to see it! I would recommend that if this charade is ever released on DVD that you do not buy it. Instead purchase the more realistic and very traditional Wolfgang Wagner production, filmed at Bayreuth in July 1998, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli and starring the very Nordic Poul Elming as Parsifal. You will not regret the investment.

Five Examples of Famous Wotan Initiates

In the 19th and 20th centuries 5 rather different Germans were touched by the spirit of Wotan and in effect became Wotan initiates; Wilhelm Richard Wagner[1813-1883], Friedrich Nietzsche[1844-1900], Guido von List[1848-1919], Carl Gustav Jung[1875-1961] and Adolf Hitler[1889-1945]. It should be noted that in the case of Jung he was a Swiss-German and in Hitler an Austrian-German but Germans nonetheless for it is blood that matters, not state boundaries and passports!

All five in some way changed history within their respective fields; music, philosophy, religion, psychology and politics. They were pioneers in their fields, each of them embarked upon their own individual quest. In certain ways the paths of some of them crossed, either literally or metaphysically. In the case of Wagner and Nietzsche they were of course friends. Hitler, an avid devotee of Wagner was a close family friend of the Wagners. Houston Stewart Chamberlain[1855-1927], Wagner`s English son in law  and author of the groundbreaking 2 volume Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts [1899] [ The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,1911] regarded Hitler as Germany`s coming saviour. It is is he who thus provides the link between Wagner and Hitler. Hitler became close friends with Wagner`s daughter in law, Winifred Wagner, born in Hastings, England[1897-1980]. The philosopher of the Third Reich, Alfred Rosenberg[1893-1946], author of  Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts[1930] [The Myth of the Twentieth Century] was greatly influenced by Chamberlain`s work as was Hitler and Kaiser Wilhem. He appears to have been of mixed European heritage, being Latvian and Estonian on his father`s side and German and French on his mother`s. He is generally known as a `Baltic German`. He suffered martyrdom by the zionists at Nuernberg for thought crime.

Although Nietzsche did not refer to Wotan in his works, preferring instead to make use of classical mythology nonetheless he did experience Wotan and this consequently affected his subsequent work and ideas. In either 1863 or 1864 Nietzsche composed the following poem :

" To the Unknown God

I shall and will know thee, Unknown One,
Who searchest out the depths of my soul,
And blowest through my life like a storm,
Ungraspable, and yet my kinsman!
I shall and will know thee, and serve thee."

 Twenty years later he wrote:

"The Mistral Song

Mistral wind, chaser of clouds,
Killer of gloom, sweeper of the skies,
Raging storm-wind, how I love thee!
Are we both not the first-fruits
Of the same womb, forever predestined
To the same fate?"

 And from Thus Spake Zarathustra we have:

 "Ariadne`s Lament

Stretched out, shuddering,
Like a half-dead thing whose feet are warmed,
Shaken by unknown fevers,
Shivering with piercing icy frost arrows,
Hunted by thee, O thought,
Unutterable! Veiled! horrible one!
Thou huntsman behind the clouds.
Struck down by thy lightning bolt,
Thou mocking eye that stares at me from the dark!
Thus I lie,
Writhing, twisting, tormented
With all eternal tortures,
Smitten
By thee, cruel huntsman,
Thou unknown-God!

Jung of course wrote several essays both before and after the war on the subject of National Socialism being an experience of the God Wotan, the most well known essay being from 1936, Wotan. Jung was the founder of Analytical Psychology, the Aryan alternative to the very Jewish Sigmund Freud`s[birth name Sigismund Schlomo Freud] Psychoanalysis. It should be noted that Jungian Analytical Psychology provided a spiritual explanation for the workings of the mind. In effect it should be called Soul Lore, to borrow a phrase from Edred Thorsson, whilst Psychoanalysis is obsessed with sexual explanations for the most innocent of things. This shows the difference between the Aryan and the Jewish mind, the one being a spiritual driven being, the other purely material and materialistic. Christianity and Islam are both of course the daughters of Judaism and this is reflected in the material nature of both religions and their fanatical desire to obliterate all opposition to their desired hegemony. Capitalism and Bolshevism are the illegitimate daughters of Judaism. All of these isms have had a disastrous effect upon the Aryan peoples and it is global capitalism which is the driving force now for mass wide-scale immigration in order to provide a cheap labour force of work slaves that will travel hundreds and thousands of miles for a cleaning job. Part of the task that we face is to awaken people to the dangers of capitalism. Jung also gave a scientific explanation for the Blood Memory which he called the Racial Collective Unconscious.

Jung also experienced Wotan in a dream regarding his mother`s coming death. 

"The night before her death I had a frightening dream. I was in a dense, gloomy forest: fantastic, gigantic boulders lay about among huge jungle-like trees. It was a heroic, primeval landscape. Suddenly I heard a piercing whistle that seemed to resound through the whole universe. My knees shook. Then there were crashings in the underbrush, and a gigantic wolfhound with a fearful, gaping maw burst forth. At the sight of it, the blood froze in my veins. It tore past me, and I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carry away a human soul. I awoke in deadly terror, and the next morning I received news of my mother`s passing.

"Seldom has a dream so shaken me, for upon superficial consideration it seemed to say that the devil had fetched her. But to be accurate the dream said that it was the Wild Huntsman, the `Gruenhuetl`, or Wearer of the Green Hat, who hunted with his wolves that night-it was the season of  Foehn storms in January. It was Wotan, the god of my Alemannic forefathers, who had gathered my mother to her ancestors-negatively to the `wild horde`, but positively to the `saelig Luet`, the blessed folk. It was the Christian missionaries who made Wotan into a devil. In himself he is an important god-a Mercury or Hermes, as the Romans correctly realised, a nature spirit who returned to life again in the Merlin of the Grail legend and became, as the spiritus Mercurialis, the sought after aracanum of the alchemists. Thus the dream says that the soul of my mother was taken into that greater territory of the self which lies beyond the segment of Christian morality, taken into that wholeness of nature and spirit in which conflicts and contradictions are resolved."[Memories, Dreams and Reflections, 1963]

In 1915 Hitler composed a poem devoted to Wotan whilst serving as a brave front-line soldier in WWI :

Sometimes, in the bitter nights I go to Oak Wotan.
Surrounded by silent glare,
To forge an alliance with the powers at night.
The runic letters that makes the moon with his magic spell
and all those who during the day are full of impudence,
They become small before the magic formula!
They cast steel spears, but instead of hitting the target,
Solidify into stalagmites.
Thus, the false are separated from the real.
I came to a nest of swords and then give my formula
Blessings and prosperity for the good and the fair.

The production of Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner fed into the emerging German rediscovery of the ancient past and Germanic Gods, who never died but simply faded into the background. Wotan features in the first three of Der Ring cycle music dramas. Wagner explores the psyche of Wotan in a way that nobody before or since has ever done.

Guido von List should be regarded as the father of Armanism and at an early age he oathed himself to Wotan to rebuild His religion. History tells us that he has succeeded!

"It was in the year 1862 - I was then in my fourteenth year of life - when I, after much asking, received permission from my father to accompany him and his party who were planning to visit the catacombs [under St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna] which were at that time still in their original condition. We climbed down, and everything I saw and felt excited me with a kind of power that today I am no longer able to experience. Then we came - it was, if I remember correctly, in the third or fourth level - to a ruined altar. The guide said that we were now situated beneath the old post office (today the Wohlzeile House No. 8). At that point my excitement was raised to fever pitch, and before this altar I proclaimed out loud this ceremonial vow: "Whenever I get big, I will build a Temple to Wotan!" I was, of course, laughed at, as a few members of the party said that a child did not belong in such a place… I knew nothing more about Wuotan than that which I had read about him in Vollmer's Woterbuch der Mythologie."[Deutsch-Mythologische Landschaftsbilder, 1891, Guido von List]

One thing that unites three of these men is that they became blind. Guido von List and Adolf Hitler experienced an episode of temporary blindness which resulted in internal illumination whilst Nietzsche became blind at the end of his life. This is a sign of being a Wotan initiate. It usually is an indication of possession of the initiate by Wotan which in turn leads to a deepening of the spiritual quest and clearer spiritual in-sight.

Further Reflections on the 432,000 Einheriar

My readers will be aware that Walhalla is said to have 540 doors through which 800 warriors pass through each one, making a total of 432,000 Einheriar.

"Five hundred doors and forty

          I think there are in Valhall;
          eight hundreds of warriors will go together from one
          door
          when they go to fight the wolf."[Grimnismal 23, Elder Edda, Larrington translation]

In the very next verse we are told that Thunor`s hall Bilskirnir[which means `the one striking lightning with rays of light`-Simek or `suddenly illuminated by lightning`-Lindow] also contain 540 rooms.

"Five hundred daises and forty,

          so I think Bilskirnir has in all;
          of all those halls which I know to be roofed,
          my son`s I think is the greatest."[Grimnismal 24, Larrington translation]

Benjamin Thorpe translates `daises` as floors in his translation. John Lindow in his Handbook of Norse Mythology using the Clarendon translation refers to 540 `rooms`. The general scholarly consensus seems to be that it is rooms not daises nor floors that Grimnismal is meant to convey. Snorri Stturluson in Gylfaginning in the Younger Edda quotes from Grimnismal and refers to `apartments`:

"Five hundred apartments and yet forty more I think are in

           Bilskirnir in all. Of the buildings whose roofs I know, I
           know my son`s is the greatest."

Significantly then the number 540 is associated with both Woden[Walhalla] and Thunor[Bilskirnir]. The repetition of this number may be important as the ancients may have wished to emphasise some great teaching to us. It also could signify that despite who may be the reigning God of the Aesir at the time, whether it be [originally] Thunor or [latterly] Woden it is the number which is significant.

I cannot but help think of the words of the Nazarene in John 14:2: "In my father`s house are many mansions."
This is not a Jewish but an Aryan concept. One could just as easily say: "In All-Father`s house are many mansions."

Viktor Rydberg in Our Fathers` Godsaga states that the "Prose Edda perpetuates many errors" in referring to Bilskirnir as Thunor`s residence and that instead it is another name for Walhalla.

At the time of Ragnarok the 432,000 Einheriar[540 x 800] will march forth to do battle against the enemies of the Gods and men. Interestingly  the number 432,000 is the number of years that the Kali Yuga will last according to Hindu mythology. In Sumerian mythology 10 great kings lived a total of 432,000 years. In Mesopotamian belief 432,000 years lapsed between the crowning of the first earthly king and the coming of the deluge. Ragnarok therefore will be both the conclusion of the Wolf Age and the beginning of a new Golden Age.

"Valhalla presents yet another aspect which links it with Eastern scriptures of remote antiquity: Odin in Grimnismal tells his pupil that there are `five hundred doors and forty more` to Valhalla; and that eight hundred warriors issue from each when Odin emerges to war with the wolf. Further we are told that there are five hundred and forty halls in bulging Bilskirner (the shining abode), the largest being `my son`s`- the solar deity`s. Multiplying 540 x 800 we get 432,000 warriors and the same number of halls. In both Babylonian and Indian chronologies this figure occurrs in numerous ways. Multiples of it define specific astronomical cycles while, divided by various numbers, it applies to terrestrial events of greater frequency, even down to the pulse beat of the human heart, generally reckoned as 72 beats per minute. It is itself the length in human years assigned to the Iron Age, in Sanskrit the kali yuga, when the forces of darkness are most challenging."[The Masks of Odin. Wisdom of the Ancient Norse, Elsa-Brita Titchnell]

Hinting at a common Aryan source for this wisdom she states:

"Curious that this should be the number assigned to Odin`s champions. It certainly hints vigorously at some common source from which these widely separated traditions have descended and at some hidden meaning which makes this figure recur in them."  

The Aesir and the Vanir, a Reflection of the Megalithic and Battle Ax Peoples and Their Fusion

It is my contention that the megaliths of northern Europe were constructed by the forefathers of the Germanic peoples who are themselves a fusion of the Northern European Megalithic culture and the Corded Ware/Single Burial/Battle Ax Culture.

The controversy of where to locate the historic Urheimat of the Aryan peoples may never be conclusively decided. Using different scientific disciplines such as comparative linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology and more recently DNA studies we can at least throw some light upon the subject.
One thing is more or less certain and that the Out of Asia theory is no longer popular and indeed even in the 19th century was not universally accepted. My personal view is that the undivided Aryan people, what scholars would call the Proto-Indo-Europeans originally lived as one people somewhere in Northern Europe. Apart from my own biased sentiments this location best fits the known available evidence. There will be many people who will read this and fervently disagree with me but they are welcome to do so.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans-I shall now instead use the shorter and more convenient term of Aryans are associated with three material cultures which are usually closely linked by scholars: the Corded Ware, Single Grave Burial and Battle Ax cultures. For convenience sake and out of personal preference I will use the term `Battle Ax people` as a collective noun.

We must be careful and not make the simple equation that language = race. Sometimes it does but more often than not it is not a reliable indicator of ethnic and racial origins. Prior to the arrival of the Battle Axe people there already dwellt a Nordic population in northern Europe.

"The arrival in the North of people of the Corded Ware-Single Grave culture made very little change in the physical characteristics of the inhabitants, since the bearers of this culture were Nordic, as were those of the Megalithic culture in the North. Chemical analysis of the preserved hair of the Bronze Age tree-trunk burials show depigmented, that is, blond hair." [The Germanic People. Their Origin Expansion & Culture, Francis Owen, 1960]. 

What therefore changed were not the racial characteristics of Northern Europe but their physical cultures.
Not only were the speakers of Germanic Nordic but so were the bearers of Proto-Indo-European.

"The original speakers of Indo-European must have been Nordic."[Owen]

 "At the same time the fact that the first Aryans were Nordics was not without importance. The physical qualities of that stock did enable them by the bare fact of superior strength to conquer even more advanced peoples and so to impose their language on areas from which the bodily type has almost completely vanished. This is the truth underlying the panegyrics of the Germanists: the Nordics` superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language."[The Aryans, V. Gordon Childe,

The dominant physical type in Europe has always been Nordic and even today scholars are not in disagreement with this fact. The only physical culture that can be associated  with the Aryans in Northern Europe has its location in Saxony and Thuringia.

"This leaves only the Corded Ware culture of Upper Saxony and Thuringia to be associated with the original Indo-Europeans."[Owen]

 "On the basis of the archaeological and anthropological evidence the conclusion must be that the people of the Single Grave-Corded Ware-Battle Ax culture were the original Indo-Europeans."[Owen]

The bearers of this original Aryan culture expanded from the area of Saxony further north and towards the east into Russia. Many today speculate that the Aryan homeland is to be located in Russia but I contend that this is where the Aryans expanded into on their way to India, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan etc. The direction of movement was always to the east-Der Drang nach Osten!

"It is difficult to see how the bearers of this culture could have originated in Southern Russia. It is true that the kurgans in that region were Single Graves and certain examples of the Corded Ware pottery, but many of them belong to the Bronze and even to the Iron Age. The older graves would be the result of the expansion of the Single Grave-Corded Ware people into Southern Russia from the West as part of the general expansion described above."[Owen]

Professor Owen points out that in the Central Asiatic steppes "There is no evidence of the use of such a device as the Corded Ware technique, nor is there any indication of the presence of anything like the Single Grave, the facetted battle-ax or the boat-ax. This explanation is a survival of the traditional belief of ex oriente lux."

The dogma of ex oriente lux or light comes from the east survives to the present day and there is a prejudice amongst many scholars against any idea of civilisation coming from the north or the west. Thankfully these blind book worms are being proved wrong every day as new evidence continues to emerge of the northern origins of civilisation-an Aryan civilisation at that!

This Aryan culture of Single Grave burial can be traced right back to the Mesolithic and even the Upper Paleolithic and may have influenced the development of the Northern Megalithic culture.

"That the people of the Single Grave-Corded Ware culture in their original home in Upper Saxony and Thuringia were physically of the Nordic type can scarcely be disputed, and this is equally true of all the areas into which these colonizers carried this culture, either by peaceful expansion or military conquest."[Owen]

The Aryan Nordic Battle Ax people emerging from the Saxon heartlands merged with the Nordic Northern Megalithic people to create what we now know today as the Germanic or Teutonic peoples. This actual prehistoric event is reflected in Germanic mythology in the war between the Aesir and the Vanir, the Aesir being the Battle Ax people who worshipped the Sky God whose symbol is the ax, later to become the hammer of Thunor, and the earth deities of the Vanir of which Nerthus is an early example.

"The amalgamation of the peoples and cultures of the Northern Megalithic and the Single Grave-Corded Ware-Battle Ax cultures which resulted in the formation of the Germanic people, was followed by a relatively long period of internal development before the first phase of Germanic expansion began."[Owen]

"The religion of the Sky God was introduced into Northern Europe by the Indo-European bearers of the Corded Ware culture."[Owens]

The union of the Aesir and Vanir reflects the intermarrying that took place between these two Nordic peoples to create the Germanic peoples.

"Thus Othin[Woden], who in the early developments of Teutonic religion probably was a Sky-god, was the husband of Jord, the Earth-goddess and mother of Thor, the thunder-god."[The Rites of Old Europe 12,000-3,500 BC, E.O. James]   

Founding wars between two opposing pantheons of Gods may of course be found amongst other Indo-European peoples of course, reflecting similar prehistorical events but it is in the Eddas that we gain valuable literary primary evidence for the origins of the Germanic peoples which is supported by archaeology and other disciplines. The supreme meeting between the Battle Ax and Northern Megalithic cultures is best represented in England`s Stonehenge with its numerous Bronze Age axe carvings in the sarcens. Thus these two symbols: the ax and the megalith are sacred to the Aryan Germanic peoples today just as they were thousands of years ago.

"The new Temple of the God of the Sky stands where the festivals of the Great Goddess used to be held before the warriors with their battle-axes came across the sea from the east with their new god whom we could see was more to be feared."[Stonehenge of the Kings, Patrick Crampton, 1967]

 "And these battle-axe users seem to have played a powerful role in the fusion of cultures which led to the extraordinary upsurge at the time of the final building of Stonehenge."[Crampton]

It is interesting that the author of Atlantis of the North, Juergen Spanuth also comes to a similar conclusion and points out that the oldest dolmens are to found in Schleswig-Holstein, the "heartland of the Nordic Megalithic" culture which he says spread eastwards and sounthwards. He also points out that the oldest axes in the world are to be found in northern Europe and draws a connection between the axe and the megalithic culture. Like other scholars Spanuth believes that the war between the Aesir and the Vanir referred to in the Younger Edda and the Heimskringla[both works by Snorri] is a mythologising of an actual event that took place in northern Europe; a clash between invading Battle Ax people and the more indigenous Megalithic people which ultimately led to their fusion into a single people: the Germanic people. This is reflected in the fusion of the Aesir and the Vanir, the Vanir being subsumed to the the Aesir who were clearly more dominant.

"The gods of the two peoples, the Vanir of the megalith builders and the Aesir of the Corded-ware People, also amalgamated with one another."[Spanuth]

Polar Symbolism and the Immoveable Centre in Aryan Tradition

The idea of the sacred centre in an important feature in Germanic, Celtic and other Indo-European spiritual systems. This is most clearly evidenced in Ireland and Iceland, both of which are islands in the outer perimeter of the Aryan European centre. This may be significant, the idea of an island in the middle of the sea.

In Iceland shortly after its colonisation from Norway the island was split into four quadrants, each governed by a Thing, the Germanic legal assembly in which laws were made and recited and cases brought before the law for settlement. The centre of the four Things is where the annual All-Thing was held at Thingvellir where the most important cases were settled. In Ireland we also have a similar sacred centre at Tara which was surrounded by the four Irish kingdoms of Ulster, Connact, Leinster and Munster. This centre like Thingvellir in Iceland had both a sacral and legal aspect. This was the symbolic centre of Ireland and the residence of the High King.

Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson in Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe[1988] states:

"The pattern of four divisions round a central point is found in both Iceland and Ireland, and Mueller claims that this is a fundamental pattern in both Germanic and Celtic tradition."

 This fourfold division reminds one of the fourfold division of the year and the four cardinal directions. Indeed one can see this same division in the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc with its 4 aetts of 32 Runes and its 33rd Rune Gar[the spear of Woden] placed at the centre of the 4 aetts when arranged in a circle. At the centre of both Tara and Uisnech sacred stones were erected: at Tara the Stone of Knowledge[Lia Fail] and at Uisnech the Stone of Division. An example of what these stones may have looked like is the Turoe Stone in County Galloway in Ireland. The stone is curiously dome shaped and its curious patterns are divided into four parts. The stone is said to resemble the Omphalos at Delphi, reckoned also by the ancient Greeks to be the centre of the world.

One of the principal sacred sites of the continental Germans was Eresburg, the location of the Irmunsul, a wooden column held sacred by the Saxons which corresponded with the mythical Scandinavian world tree Yggdrasil, the centre of the nine worlds of the Eddas. The Irmunsul was cut down by Charlemagne in 772. Irmin is considered by some scholars to be an alternative name for the ancient Germanic sky deity Tiw. The Elder Germanic Rune stave Teiwaz is dedicated to this God and is shaped like a tree. Irmunsul like Yggdrasil supported the entire cosmos. In the Volsungasaga a tree is said to have supported the hall of Sigurd`s grandfather Volsung. Significantly beneath Yggdrasil the Gods held assembly and so the link between a symbolically central site and divine communication and judgement is paralleled.

The location of a stone, mountain or tree at the sacred centre  reminds me of the polestar around which the milky way in the form of the flyfot circulates. The pole is immoveable, only the outer arms of the fylfot rotate.
Polar symbolism is an integral aspect of Aryan Hyperborean tradition:

"Its motionless centre signifies the spiritual stability inherent in those who are not affected by the stream and who can organise and subject to a higher principle the energies and the activities connected to the inferior nature. Then the cakravartin appears as the dhamaraja, the `Lord of the Law`, or the `Lord of the Wheel of the Law.` According to Confucius: `The practice of government by means of virtue may be compared to the polestar, which the multitudinous stars pay homage to while it stays in its place.` Hence the meaning of the concept of `revolution`, which is the motion occurring around an `unmoved mover`, though in our modern day and age it has become synonymous with subversion.

"In this sense royalty assumes the value of a `pole`, by referring to a general traditional symbolism. We may recall here, besides Midgard(the heavenly `middle abode` described in the Nordic traditions), Plato`s reference to the place where Zeus holds counsel with the gods in order to reach a decision concerning the fate of Atlantis: `He accordingly summoned all the gods to his own most glorious abode, which stands at the centre of the universe and looks out over the whole realm of change.`"[Revolt Against the Modern World, Julius Evola, 1934]

Evola goes on to discuss some of the symbols of  regality and their polar connections, eg the sceptre which is symbolically related to the `axis of the world` and the throne which like the mountain is an elevated place. In Germanic mythology the sword of Tiw, the spear of Woden and the club of Donar would of course represent the royal sceptre. At various times these Gods represented the highest of the Northern Gods: first Tiw, then Thunor and latterly Woden. Likewise in Celtic mythology the sceptre symbolism is found in the sword of Nuada, the spear of Lugh and the club of the Dagda. In turn these Celtic counterparts for the Germanic high Gods also represented the chiefs of the Gods.

Tiw is a more remote deity from Thunor and Woden. This may in part be the result of the distance in time since Tiw was regarded as the highest God. In historical times this honour was accorded to Woden and prior to that, Thunor. Tiw is thus transcendent, immoveable and His laws are fixed. He is the centre around which all else revolves. He is the `unmoved mover`. This symbolism is also reflected in the Indo-Aryan myth of  Shakti and Shiva, Shiva representing the divine male who is still and unmoving. His function is action via non-action. This is discussed in some detail in Julius Evola`s Eros and the Mysteries of Love[1958]