Holy wrath, 11

by Evropa Soberana

 
Germanism and the advent of Ragnarök

According to the concept of the ancient German pagans, the final storm, at the apex of the Ragnarök, will be a hunt against the forces of evil. Odin, brandishing his spear and riding his eight-legged horse, will descend on Earth. Thor, wielding his war hammer and mounted on his chariot pulled by goats, will appear in the sky roaring furious and surrounded by lightning, causing an overwhelming roar. The Wildes Heer (furious horde), the Oskorei (army of thunder), the army of the fallen, will overwhelm the enemies of the gods, making the ground rumble with the hooves of their horses and the air with their battle cries.

The shadowy Valkyries will ride serenely, paying attention to the development of the battles to choose the new fallen. The crows of Odin, their wolves and all kinds of supernatural beings, will proliferate in the thick of the sorcerous storm, shaking the forces of materialistic slavery, agonisingly shaking the souls of the enemies of the gods, and ominously collapsing the walls that separate the Earth from the Hereafter.

All that was a metaphorical, symbolic and poetic explanation of the end of an era, when heaven finally becomes enraged and falls on Earth, and the apocalyptic combat of the superior against the inferior, the good against evil, is freed.

Perhaps one day, the forgetful apostles of financial civilisation and usury will once again know with horror the thirst for battle of European man, the foaming and anguished rage of the inspired warrior, the instinct of the worker, the conqueror, the pioneer, the explorer, the artist, the soldier, the lord and the destroyer that Europe carries in itself, and whose last example was perhaps, in distant days, the Scandinavian berserker.

Below, a passage from Heinrich Heine in Heine’s prose writings (Walter Scott, London, 1887):

Christianity—and this is its fairest service—has to a certain degree moderated that brutal lust of battle, such as we find it among the ancient Germanic races, who fought, not to destroy, not yet to conquer, but merely from a fierce, demoniac love of battle itself; but it could not altogether eradicate it.

And when once that restraining talisman, the cross, is broken, then the smouldering ferocity of those ancient warriors will again blaze up; then will again be heard the deadly clang of that frantic Berserkir wrath, of which the Norse poets say and sing so much. The talisman is rotten with decay, and the day will surely come when it will crumble and fall. Then the ancient stone gods will arise from out the ashes of dismantled ruins, and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes; and finally Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up, and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic Cathedrals.

And when ye hear the rumbling and the crumbling, take heed, ye neighbours of France, and meddle not with what we do in Germany. It might bring harm on you. Take heed not to kindle the fire; take heed not to quench it. Ye might easily burn your fingers in the flame.

Smile not at my advice as the counsel of a visionary warning you against Kantians, Fichteans, and natural philosophers. Scoff not at the dreamer who expects in the material world a revolution similar to that which has already taken place in the domains of thought. The thought goes before the deed, as the lightning precedes the thunder.

German thunder is certainly German, and is rather awkward, and it comes rolling along tardily; but come it surely will, and when ye once hear a crash the like of which in the world’s history was never heard before, then know that the German thunderbolt has reached its mark.

At this crash the eagles will fall dead in mid air, and the lions in Afric’s most distant deserts will cower and sneak into their royal dens. A drama will be enacted in Germany in comparison with which the French Revolution will appear a harmless idyl. To be sure, matters are at present rather quiet, and if occasionally this one or the other rants and gesticulates somewhat violently, do not believe that these are the real actors. These are only little puppies, that run around in the empty arena, barking and snarling at one another, until the hour shall arrive when appear the gladiators, who are to battle unto death.

And that hour will come.