The Baltic Origins of Homer`s Epic Tales

Felice Vinci,a nuclear engineer with an extensive background in Latin and Greek studies in his ground-breaking work, `The Baltic Origins of Homer`s Epic Tales. The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Migration of Myth` puts forward the theory that the Homeric tales have their origins in real historic events in the Baltic area of northern Europe, not in the Mediterranean as scholars for centuries have presumed.
Vinci uses the tools of myth, literary criticism, etymology and topography to build an argument that the events of the Odyssey and Iliad could not have taken place in the Mediterranean.
For one thing the topography of Greece and Asia Minor does not lend itself to the geographical locations and climate outlined in the two tales.
The only place in Europe where the climate and the topography seems to fit is in northern Europe. The present day etymology of many of the places referred to in Homer`s work are to be found in present day Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and neighbouring northern countries.
Clearly the adventures and battles described in the Odyssey and the Iliad where there are frequent references to stormy,wet and cold weather, short days and long nights point to a climate radically different to anything known in southern Europe but rather typical of the very northern areas of Europe. He has found that places names referred to in Homer`s works can be found almost unchanged in the far north. Furthermore the distances between these places and their descriptions fit perfectly his northern scenario. He uses Homer`s `Catalogue of Ships` to convicingly show that the events of the Iliad could not have taken place in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean but only in the Baltic.
The nature of the Homeric heroes, their dress, customs, manners, behaviour and physical characteristics fit better with a Nordic and Germanic culture than a Mediterranean one.
Vinci not only provides page after page of evidence to support his theory from place name, climate and geographical/topographical evidence but also comparisons from Hyperborean myths and comparative Indo-European mythology.
He uses the same methedology to establish that the events of the Iliad could not have taken place on the site of Heinrich Schliemann`s Troy.
Homer`s tales are tales of a migrating northern European people who took their myths and history with them when they migrated south, probably as the result of climate change. Their influence on classical myth and culture is to be felt to this day.
The only discipline which has not been used to establish his theory is archaeology. Final and definitive evidence for his theory will only be found when the necessary archaeological excavations are eventually[if ever] carried out.
In the meantime his book gives us all food for thought!

The Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula

JG von Hahn, a 19th century scholar outlined in his 1876 work, `Sagwissenschaftliche Studien` a concept known as `Arische Aussetzungs-und-Rueck-kehr Formel`[Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula].
Von Hahn identified 14 cases of mythical or legendary characters from different Aryan nations of instances where a principal hero more or less conformed to his concept. Examples from Aryan myth that conform to the formula include Perseus, Romulus and Remus, Siegfried and Parsifal.
Alfred Nutt added 8 more characters to von Hahn`s list from Celtic myth and legend in an article in `Folk-Lore Record,volume IV`. In his `Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail`[chapter VI] he tabulates the formula as follows:-

I. Hero born

a] Out of wedlock.
b] Posthumously.
c] Supernaturally.
d] One of twins.

II. Mother, princess residing in her own country.

III. Father.

a] God. }
...............} from afar.
b] Hero. }

IV. Tokens and warnings of hero`s future greatness.

V. He is in consequence driven forth from home.

VI. Is suckled by wild beasts.

VII. Is brought up by a childless couple, or shepherd, or widow.

VIII. Is of passionate and violent disposition.

IX. Seeks service in foreign lands.

a] Attacks and slays monsters.
b] Acquires supernatural knowledge through eating a fish or other magic animal.

X. Returns to his own country, retreats, and again returns.

XI. Overcomes his enemies, frees his mother, seats himself on the throne.

Jessie L. Weston in her `Legends of the Wagner Drama` states:

"It seems, therefore, practically certain that, whatever the cause which led to the first moulding of the legend into such a shape, the sequence of incident is of extreme antiquity; and the nations who possess the story, by whatever name they may elect to call its hero, really hold it as part of their original Aryan inheritance."

Nietzsche and the unknown god

Did the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche[1844-1900] have an encounter with the Germanic god Wotan?
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!


According to the Swiss-German father of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung in his 1936 essay "Wotan" Nietzsche had an experience of meeting the hunter god Wotan at the age of 15 in Pforta. This is described in a book by Nietzsche`s sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, "Der werdende Nietzsche"
Jung goes on to say: "As he was wandering about in a gloomy wood at night, he was terrified by a "blood-curdling shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum", and soon afterwards he came face to face with a huntsman whose "features were wild and uncanny".
Setting his whistle to his lips "in a valley surrounded by wild scrub", the huntsman "blew such a shrill blast" that Nietzsche lost consciousness-but woke up again in Pforta. It was a nightmare.
It is significant that in his dream Nietzsche, who in reality intended to go to Eisleben, Luther`s town, discussed with the huntsman the question of going instead to "Teutschenthal"[Valley of the Germans]. No one with ears can misunderstand the shrill whistling of the storm-god in the nocturnal wood."

Did Nietzsche have an actual encounter with Wotan? And if so what effect did that have on his philosophy ,especially his concept of the Aryan Superman and his rejection of Christianity?
Is the choice between Eisleben and the Teutschenthal symbolic of an inner struggle in Nietzsche`s Unconscious at such a formative age? A struggle between Christianity and the ancient pre-Christian religion of his Germanic ancestors?
Did this encounter or inner struggle with Wotan determine the path that his life was to take thereafter?

Richard Wagner, Aryan Prophet of Bayreuth

Wilhelm Richard Wagner[1813-1883], born in Leipzig, the ninth child and son of Carl Friedrich and Johanna Rosine Wagner. His father was a Police actuary of some social standing and it is rumoured that his mother was the illegitimate daughter of Prince Constantin of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.
Significantly Wagner was born during the war of liberation against Napoleon. He enjoyed a close friendship with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the composer Franz Liszt and Liszt`s daughter, Cosima eventually became Wagner`s second wife. Wagner is frequently villified over his numerous affairs with other women and his misuse of his friendships over the years. However much one may find cause to criticise or condemn Wagner for his profligate lifestyle and alleged anti-Semitism I believe that it is faulty to judge great men, men of genius such as Wagner by the petit-bourgeois morals of the the `Underman`. Different `rules`, different standards must apply.
As Nietzsche wrote, "the demand for one morality for all is detrimental to precisely the higher men, in short that there exists an order of rank between man and man, consequently also between morality and morality".[`Beyond Good and Evil`]
Adolf Hitler in `Mein Kampf` wrote, "World history is made by minorities......it is never the masses or the majority who create but always the individual....."
And was not Wagner just such an example of the `higher man`, the Overman, der Uebermensch?
Wagner at a crucial time of German history during the early days of the 2nd German Reich created a myth for Germany, and not only for Germany but the entire Aryan race.
Through his music dramas he resurrected old Germanic and Celtic myths which were replete with Aryan archetypes. Through his music Aryan man can spiritually connect with the Volksgeist[the race soul] and commune with the archetypes, the gods in other words.
Close study of his music dramas, especially Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal reveal prophetically the course of Aryan history for the centuries ahead.
We will make these individual works the object of a close study in the coming days and weeks.

Prometheus the Archetypal Aryan

Prometheus was the son of Iapetus who was one of the Titans. He tricked the gods into eating bare bones instead of good meat. He stole the sacred fire from Zeus and the gods. Prometheus did not tell Zeus the prophecy that one of Zeus's sons will overthrow him. In punishment, Zeus commanded that Prometheus be chained for eternity in the Caucasus. There, an eagle (or, according to other sources, a vulture) would eat his liver, and each day the liver would be renewed. So the punishment was endless, until Heracles finally killed the bird.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche in `The Birth of Tragedy`:

The Prometheus saga is a primordial possession of the Aryan population collectively and documentary evidence of their talent for the profoundly tragic. In fact, it could be the case that for the Aryan being this myth has the same defining meaning as the myth of the Fall has for the Semitic peoples, and that both myths are, to some degree, related, as brother and sister.

The pre-condition of this Prometheus myth is the extraordinary value which a naïve humanity associates with fire as the true divine protector of that rising culture. But the fact that man freely controls fire and does not receive it merely as a gift from heaven, as a stirring lightning flash or warming rays of the sun, appeared to these contemplative primitive men as an outrage, a crime against divine nature. And so right there the first philosophical problem posed an awkward insoluble contradiction between man and god and pushed it right up to the door of that culture, like a boulder. The best and loftiest thing which mankind can share is achieved through a crime, and people must now accept the further consequences, namely, the entire flood of suffering and troubles with which the offended divine presences afflict the nobly ambitious human race. Such things must happen — an austere notion which, through the value which it gives to a crime, stands in a curious contrast to the Semitic myth of the Fall, in which curiosity, lying falsehoods, temptation, lust, in short, a row of predominantly female emotions are look upon as the origin of evil.

What distinguishes the Aryan conception is the lofty view of an active transgression as the essentially Promethean virtue. With this, the ethical basis of pessimistic tragedy is established together with the justification of human evil, that is, human guilt as the penalty for that sin. The impiety in the essence of things — that’s what the thinking Aryan is not inclined to quibble away. The contradiction in the heart of the world reveals itself to him as the interpenetration of different worlds, for example, a divine and human world, each one of which is right in its separate way but which must suffer for its individuality as the two worlds come close together.

Parsifal, the Aryan `Christ`

Some of us involved in voelkisch Wotanism believe in the concept of avataras, human beings possessed by a deity who descend upon the earth in order to accomplish a mission amongst humanity.
This concept is deeply rooted in the ancient Aryan Hindu scriptures.The Bhagavad Gita has this to say about the returning Aryan Avatar: "When righteousness is weak and faints and unrighteousness exults in pride, the my Spirit arises on earth.
For the salvation of those who are good, for the destruction of evil in men, for the fulfilment of the kingdom of unrighteousness, I come to this world in the ages that pass."[4:7-8]
The Kalki Avatara will bring an end to the age of the Kali Yuga in which we are presently living through and usher in a new Aryan Golden Age.
For those who want to understand this avatara figure I suggest you follow the libretto of Wagners last and greatest music drama-Parsifal.
To many this is another christian passion play but to those who understand the sub text it is anything but. It is entirely heathen in nature and the figure of Parsifal is a type of Aryan christ or more correctly-avatara.
He is sent to the kingdom of Monsalvat to redeem the land, the Knights and the people from the curse of miscegenation which has poisoned the blood of the people and their king, Amfortas.
By rejecting the advances of the seductive Kundry who represents both a fallen woman and the wandering Jew he is able to bring racial salvation to the kingdom.
The real message of Parsifal had to be concealed from the wider public due to the times-the 1880s and the inevitable hostile public reaction. Wagner was not undergoing a spiritual conversion in his old age. On the contrary he was perfecting his art and the voelkisch message that he intended to convey. This was left for Parsifal, the most voelkischly overt of all his music dramas.

Nietzsche contra Evola

I realise that this subject has been touched upon before but I wish to explore this using primarily the writings and thoughts of Julius Evola and Friedrich Nietzsche, although hopefully not exclusively.
It is common knowledge that Nietzsche held in disdain the idea of "god" and sought the deification of a certain type of man into a new being, the Superman.
"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead![Zarathustras Prologue, part 2, Thus Spake Zarathustra]
Nietzsches conclusion that God is dead inevitably leads to the conclusion that man and man alone is the pinnacle of earthly existence. However within the species of man it is necessary to differentiate by both race to race and man to man. In short a hierarchy is called for.
"God hath died: now we do desire-the superman to live."[Chapter 73, Thus Spake Zarathustra].
Nietzsche saw the Superman as the meaning of the earth and everything accordingly must be subordinated to his awakening and arrival.
In essence he is the function of the Will to Power and domination.
Evola criticises this approach. "One can see from this that Nietzsches nihilism stops halfway. It sets up a new table of values, including a good and an evil."[Ride The Tiger]. There is the dichotomy. In the elimination of "god" and the affirmation of the Superman concept Nietzsche far from going "beyond good and evil" creates a new Weltanschauung with its own set of values, in essence a form of "good and evil".
Evola added "A true nihilism does not spare even the doctrine of the Superman."[Ride The Tiger].
Yet Evola in his way was proposing his own form of "Superman" through his "Doctrine of Awakening". Yet Evola did not reject the concept of "god" at all but through his Awakened One sought a synthesis between the human and the divine.
Are both doctrines of the Superman irreconcilable?
Is the concept of the Superman something to be desired, rejected or something that we should dread?