Report on Two Guido von List Books

book-report for the Gentileman's Book Club

Meister Guido von List

Guido von List was a German esotercist and philosopher born in the mid-1800s, who lived until 1919, finally meeting death just a year after the ending of World War One (how auspicious!). His impact on the revival and continuance of Germanic and Nordic paganism is nearly unrivaled among other esoteric philosophers of his era. If not for Guido von List, folkism might still be in its early throes of reclaiming the European spirit from Abrahamic universalism. Guido von List is somewhat famous for influencing certain National Socialists, and his interactions with them is disparaged by Abrahamics of all stripes, some of whom were even National Socialists. This is because Guido von List was intent on re-awakening the Aryan spirit, which ultimately goes against the Abrahamic religions which have dominated Europe since the advent of Christianity.

Guido von List created a study of religious doctrine known as “Armanism” which was loosely connected to the Catholic priest Lanz von Liebenfels and his “Theozoology” both of which were esoteric studies on the Western occult falling into the school of “Ariosophy”. Both of these men were later denounced by other scholars for “creating elaborate pseudoscience” but their works have nonetheless permeated throughout the esoteric field of Western occultism and religious studies. The works of Guido von List, although highly controversial among certain sects of scholars, are filled to the brim with accurate esoteric and exoteric knowledge concerning the Germanic people and their ancestral folk religion. These texts will remain within the esoteric philosophical study of Germanic paganism strictly due to the kernels of truth held within the pages.

Personally, I have found great benefit in reading his works and was glad to continue with the book-club this month. Sadly, I truly must take time away from the book-club to work on future projects, which require more time and study than these book-reports. Hail victory! o///

*** Full disclosure: I am a heathen, and therefore I am a more than a little biased towards the Armanist doctrine. ***

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Report on “The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk”

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Simply put, this book expounds on the esoteric wisdom Meister von List garnered through his studies on Germanic paganism. Admittedly he partakes in a wild degree of folk etymology which can be absolutely picked apart by modern linguistic studies - however this folk etymology serves to show the inner world of mythological interpretation born through the folk spirit. I do not agree with everything said in this book, yet I was deeply moved through my inner spirit which is directly tied to the content, and the source material. My racial spirit was enlarged through this folk etymology and esoteric interpretation, which is different and disconnected from true linguistic understanding. If you are looking for linguistic studies rather than esotericist interpretation, then do not read Guido von List, instead read “Teutonic Mythology” by Jacob Grimm.

Meister von List begins the text with an excerpt from the Introduction to “the Nibelungenlied” and I want to repeat this quote since it is a hard truth most Christians cannot accept or try to understand in a holistic way:

As Christianity was making its inroads, Heathenry did not cease; the old religion only disappeared in relation to the new one insofar as it had to yield to its public excercise of heathen practices, which in no way means that it also had to cease in its inner sense, in the characteristic life of the folk.

Simply put: folkish paganism never disappeared, it was only supressed.

“The Song of the Nibelungs” is an epic poem written down in 1200 A.D. and it captured the oral stories told in Germany concerning certain folk heroes, pagan traditions, and other terribly heretical things. I highly highly highly suggest people read the poem which can be found here, and was accurately expressed in song by Richard Wagner. If you are a Christian and have not delved into pagan mythology, then you really do not have any clue what you are missing. The deep roots from our ancestral past are what causes us to become more and more folkish as we wake up to the ails of immigration, judaization, and so on, we must do our due diligence when it comes to our ancestors. Do not remain in the dark concerning the truth of our people, do not remain in a judaized worldview where all our heroes are jewish fishermen and jewish carpenters.

Most pro-White Christians have not read any high poetry which contains pagan traditions within them, and this is a real spiritual tragedy. As the above quote said, Christianity did not destroy the inner spirit of the folk right away, and this spirit continually expressed itself through art, story, architecture, politics, and so on. This is because culture is downstream from genetics. Europeans have been judaized and this started first in our religion, now finally showing its final form, its ugly face in universal liberal morality and racial miscegenation. A universalist religion will eventually try to erase the immanence of the blood - Christianity would eventually give way to liberalism, and yet both will eventually give way to folkism. Underneath all of this judaization exists the pagan folk spirit, which cannot be so easily muddled.

Imagine for a moment a river with a spring for its source. The river is European civilization, the spring is ancestral folkism. The lower parts of the river are polluted with judaization, liberalism, universalism, miscegenation, and so on. The spring is still flowing, still pushing clean water down the river, washing away the grime and muck placed in the river by foreign influence. The spring remains untouched, being higher up the mountain so to speak, being more pure and based in a deeper natural source. This analogy serves to explain this process wherein folkism will always override other influences, given enough time. Nature will always defeat textual dogma.

Many Christians claim that pagans do not have a working mythology or cosmology or moral system. This book proves them wrong, as far as it concerns Germans and Nordics. I should note that Grecian, Baltic, and Celtic paganisms also contain similar moral systems as expressed by the Germans, but that is not the purpose of this report. Simply put: most Christians are familiar with Israeli lore, but they have no real conception of actual European lore, therefore they cannot speak on the moral system outlined by the myths and folktales.

Meister von List describes this in wonderful linguistic terms, often mentioning “Wihinei” which he considers to be the ancient Germanic concept of religion. Wihinei is like the folkish spiritual wisdom, the underlying foundation to ritual, mythology, and other religious concepts. Wihinei is the root of the racial tree, the stories and the concepts are the trunk and branches. Wihinei is the spiritual language, and Meister von List explains how this wihinei cannot be overwritten with a new language because it is written into our very souls, it is handed down to us in genetic memory encoded into our very DNA. From his own words:

those who converted the heathens were unable to create any other language.

This wihinei was preserved in countless holy words which we use today: Tuesday (Tyw’s Day), Wednesday (Woden’s Day), Thursday (Thor’s Day), and Friday (Freya’s Day); instead of Sheol or Gehanna (jewish conceptions of the underworld) we use Hell which comes from Germanic Hel; instead of Pasha like the rest of the Christian world, we say Easter (from English Ostara, a fertility dawn goddess). We even call Yahweh “God” which is a Germanic word. This wihinei cannot be erased so easily, ye pesky judaizers. Ye will have to become more creative!

However, this wihinei was split into two expressions due to the Christian suppression against the pagans by the Christians, these two expressions being the esoteric (Armanist) and the exoteric (Woutanism), and Meister von List spends the rest of the book explaining the differences between these two expressions. I should note that I do not always agree with his examination concerning the differences between the esoteric and the exoteric. I will not make this report all about my disagreements with Armanism, but I should note that his views on Loki, the moon and the root races, and sometimes even the All-Father are quite controversial within folkish pagan communities. Many of us folkish pagans have a very low opinion on Loki, and very few among us believe in this idea of “five root races” with our race being from the moon. These ideas are not found in ancient source material, and are likely Armanist in origin, born from Meister von List’s own perspectives.

The Armanist esotericism teaches that “the spirit is eternal and immutable Being, As solidified spirit is eternal, for it is one with this spirit.” and Meister von List expands on this to explain that at the root of Germanic paganism was a form of monotheistic panentheism, where the Spirit is the One, and the Spirit exists within all things, therefore Life itself is an emanation of the One. He goes on to express how the various polytheistic gods and beings are truly just different emanations of the Spirit. This emanation falls through a series of hierarchies and differentiation, which create the various expressions of the All-Father, the various expressions of the dawn goddess Freya, and the various expressions of worlds such as Asgard and Midgard, and so on and so on until there are various expressions of races and tribes. This is due to the “Armanist law of homogeneity” as Meister von List explains.

from the text, showing the homogeneity through gradations of the divine

Armanist doctrine teaches that our Aryan race formed around the North Pole (Hyperborea?) then spread out through the world, and was the foundation of mythological concepts such as holy trinities, karma, natural sciences, and natural morality. Perhaps some would question the Northern origin, but these folk must then be unaware that the two most common European haplogroups (R1a and R1b) have their ultimate origin in R haplogroup males from the Ancient North Eurasians who dwelt in Siberia.

Perhaps some would question the holy trinities being Indo-European in origin, but these folk would be unaware of the multiple Indo-European trinities. Just to name a few: the Indo-Aryan Trimurti, the pan-European Three Matres, the Gaelic Morrigana, the Gaelic Three High-Kings of the Tuatha de Danaan, the Celtic Three-Faced Lugus of Gaul, the Celtic tricephalic (three-headed) Cerunnos, the Nordic/Germanic Norns, and the three founding gods of Nordic/Germanic myth - Odin, Vile, and Ve. This list is by no means all-encompassing, there are many many many more trinities within Indo-European mythologies. It was by no means semitic, but was adopted into Christianity due to influence from European pagans.

Armanist doctrine teaches that this holy triumvirate expressed:

1. Arising, coming into being, creator/generator/provider.

2. Becoming, fulfilling being, viking/carrier/bearer.

3. Passing away, towards new arising, death/destiny/target end.

I am writing an article on the “Importance of Three” which will go into greater detail on this ancient Indo-European concept. Stay tuned!

As for the assertions that Aryans were the foundations of natural morality and sciences, we only need to examine European society from the ancient past compared to the progress of other civilizations. We were more advanced before any African or Dravidian even learned how to preserve fire. Perhaps the only other comparable race in this regard would be Central and Northern Asians. To quote from Meister von List:

The Armanic Wihinei knew neither dogmas nor commandments, it also did not support blind faith, but rather it required knowledge.

We will all face the Gods one day, and the excuse “I just didn’t know,” will not suffice when they know we could have known, or that we once knew but rejected truth for foreign interpretations. We were given the tools to understand the cosmos long ago, and our ancestors knew this and started the process of uncovering material and spiritual truths, and we must continue this process. We cannot sit on the sidelines. Life requires interaction, and the gods expect us to seek true knowledge.

Genetics are proving more and more about the ancient past which shows that our ancestors, although far from perfect, had encoded much ancient truth concerning herbal medicine, ancient wars and migrations, divinity, and the cosmos, just to name a few things. Our ancestors formulated amazing moral systems which protected classes, sexes, and communities, whilst also propelling them to higher and higher heights. We take their accomplishments for granted and assume most of them came from Christians, when in fact the worst parts were from semitic influence (usury and universalism) whilst the best were from us (morality and science).

From the text:

They did not fear death, as they knew that it was merely a brief span of time - similar to an invigorating sleep during the night - meant to impart renewed life once more. They knew they would be their own descendants. For this reason they established families and estates for, by preparing for the future, they were actually providing for themselves. Therefore they exercised loyalty and maintained this loyalty to the death, for they knew what they were creating for themselves through this loyalty both in the primeval state (Urstand) and the next incarnate life. Ultimately it is for this reason that they held women and marriage in such high, divine reverence and issued such strict laws against mixed marriages and bastardization, since they also recognized that the strength of the race was founded only on its unity and purity.

As Guido von List says at the very end of the text, “dark times have come” but the fight is not over for the folkish tradition. The chain has not been broken like the judaizers would like to believe. The links have not been lost like the liberals have so desperately hoped. Return to your actual roots, and reawaken the lumbering folkish spirit that exists within your very DNA. There is no religion in existence even comparable to folkism, no other religion is objectively seeking to understand the cosmos through the expression of the racial spirit and the gifts found therein - no other religion has a dogma that is based within nature. If you are Germanic in genetic origin, then you must seek deeper knowledge on these mythologies and the spiritual concepts born from the ancestral racial spirit lest you find yourself lost when you reach the Otherworld.

A scene from one of the Merseburg Incantations: gods Wodan and Balder stand before the goddesses Sunna, Sinthgunt, Volla, and Friia (Emil Doepler, 1905)

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Report on “The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity”

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Meister von List begins the text with a fascinating display of his knowledge concerning the Germanic folkish spirit, then continues to breakdown the language and faith conversion that occurred when Christianity swept over northern Europe. This book is a really good follow-up to “the Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk” since it explains how this Germanic folk religion was preserved throughout history due to its genetic foundation in our ancestral spirit, and due to the actions of the old pagan priests and early Christian converts.

As a follow-up to my final comments on “the Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk” here is a quote from the beginning of the text of “the Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity”:

Armanism itself had to undergo a demise after it had reached its zenith - all according to the law of arising, becoming, transformation and passing away towards a new arising in order to rejuvenate itself that it could shine forth anew after its transitional darkening…it already bore within itself the seed of its death in its original germination, as well as the rejuvenating primeval seed of future arising, becoming, etc..

The folkish spirit will arise again, I am evidence of this. The multiple hofs (temples/churches) of the Asatru Folk Assembly are also proof of this new arising. From the text:

Soon the Armanic knowledge will be revealed with perfect clarity that in nature there exists a fully conscious directive and not only merely an unconscious impulse towards beauty, as well as towards happiness.

This sentiment is followed up a few pages later with:

It is the intention of the conscious guidance of the All that during the time when religion is being eclipsed, the equally eclipsed and hidden doctrines and knowledge of Armanism is being made openly available, because these same things are being provided in the service of humanity, which to a certain extent indicates a kind of preparatory, apparent, materialization for these idealized concepts.

This eclipsing of religion is happening today, and thus the return of folkish paganism is arising again. The snake is eating its tail. The cycle is nearing its end, only to begin again. In the words of Meister von List these changes are “merely the birthpangs of the coming epoch, in the convulsions of which those chasms will be closed once more.” He goes on to say that this knowledge will be abused due to a lack of deeper spiritual knowledge - just look at genetic science which could truly help us understand the grand mystery of human existence, but which is used by evil men to create false paradigms of liberal universalism.

As Thomas Rousseau said: “The arts of civilization serve only to cast garlands over the chains men bore.”

Christianity came into Germany and attemted to sweep away all of the deep traditions passed down from successive generations of ancestors, doing so with glittering gifts and bloody threats. In the words of the Meister “the folk slowly lost its trust in its gods, and so in themselves as well.”

Meister von List explains that the ancient Germanics had three castes or classes:

1. The Ingfonen, the settled families and elder.

2. The Armanen/Semanen, the learned elders, priests, and judges.

3. The Istfonen, the excess population who had to emigrate, colonists.

The Istfonen are described in a similar way to how I describe the mannerbunds and the creation of new social contracts. I said “let us send our young men out to create a new polis, and create a new social contract under their own households.” This would be much better than the current standard created by liberalism and even Christianity to an extent. When Europeans emigrate to new lands, they tend to drop their tribal identities and assimilate into the new culture. Meister von List agrees that this is not the ideal form of emigration. From the text:

They do not form new colonies but rather perish in individualistic struggles for their existence in foreign nations, strengthening these with their Aryo-Germanic blood in a common struggle against the Aryo-Germanic folk.

Meister von List goes on to explain how Germanic priests from the Armanen class were forced to find ways to preserve the folkish traditions in the face of Christianization. When Christianization occurred, the princes and kings converted first, while rural folk remained folkish (hence the terms pagan and heathen, both denoting the rural nature of the folkish practitioners). This preservation occurred due to the pagan priests pretending to convert only to retain folkish views and then meld them with the new religion. This happened with every single people group the Christians converted, from jews, to africans, to asians, to amerinoids. Christians need to realize that you cannot erase the folkish spirit.

According to Meister von List, the Armanen became the kalander-brotherhoods: groups of priests and monks who meddled with Christian stories through implanting pagan ideas and concepts into the stories and policies. Kalandar comes from kalun, meaning “word-play by turning the meaning around” which is the basis of Armanism itself. These brotherhoods were the “preservers and protectors of mysterious truths by means of alterations of words and meanings, that is true to their names: Kalenbergs.”

From the text:

The transition from Wuotanism to Christianity was no sudden thing and in no way can it be seen to be concluded by the mere common baptism of the inhabitants of a certain strip of land, but rather it proceeded very slowly and nowhere was it brought to a complete conclusion, but rather it usually fell into a faltering pattern and solidified in incomplete stages.

Meister von List directly quotes this letter from Pope Gregory the Great to Abbot Millittus concerning what should be done to pagan temples: the temples were to be utilized, reused, and converted to Christian spaces. This process occurred all over the pagan world as Christianization swept across the continent. Nothing could be fully subverted outright - it had to be subverted subtly, which allowed for the Armanen to disclose hidden truths and sacred spaces and concepts. From the letter:

Tell Augustine that he should be no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God. Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting. They will sacrifice and eat the animals not any more as an offering to the devil, but for the glory of God to whom, as the giver of all things, they will give thanks for having been satiated. Thus, if they are not deprived of all exterior joys, they will more easily taste the interior ones. For surely it is impossible to efface all at once everything from their strong minds, just as, when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds....

Ah, so cunning! It reminds me of the bread and circuses, to just appease the folk with simple things they are comfortable with so they will accept other larger changes. Indeed, if you just inch closer and closer without going for the end target right away, then you will have a better chance to convert the folk, which we all know well from the liberalization of the West, which truly started back in the Axial Age and took over two-thousand years to reach its modern zenith. This letter also shows Christians had no solid conception of the pagan gods, because Indo-Europeans did not worship the semitic devil, which was born from a semitic mind, but instead worshipped natural emanations of divinity first percieved by their ancient ancestors.

Meister von List goes on to explain how the kalandar-brothers preserved countless pagan concepts and names through the festivals and holidays of Europe. This was a rather long section and I will not go into great detail here, all I will point out is that countless pagan festivals and holidays are still practiced today, albiet with shoddy Christian and liberal overtures placed on them, such as May Day, Easter, Yule, and Hexennacht.

Just to show that I am correct, watch these videos from Survive the Jive (Thomas Rowsell) covering modern English festivals with Christian or patriotic veneers which all come from pagan festivals:

As for Hexennacht and witchcraft, Meister von List has this to say:

Witchcraft was originally nothing other than the secret cultivated feminine priesthood of the holy female advisors.

I cover similar material in my “Berserkers and Folkmothers” article, attempting to show that this womanly priesthood did truly exist and is well-attested to in the ancient world. Mentioned by Tacitus, immortalized in the modern folkmother Else Christenson, no one can deny that European women are much closer to divinity compared to foreign women.

I should note that I personally am wary of these claims that Germanic priests became Christian priests only for the purpose of continuing the religion. I think that it may be true in some cases, but that in most cases the Christian priests were forced to work within the framework of the pagan folk they were attempting to convert. This seems to me to be more logical, but with characters such as the Catholic priest Lanz von Liebenfels perhaps there are kernels of truth to what Meister von List says concering the kalandar-brotherhoods.

A possible example of a kalandar-brother would be the writer of the Heliand which is an Anglo-Saxon poem immortalizing Jesus and the Apostles in a very pagan light - Jesus is a warrior-savior with a mannerbund of elite warriors, coming to defeat the great serpent and free damned souls from the pits of Hel. This is both endearing and ridiculous on its face. When I was a racialist Christian, I liked to imagine Jesus as a badass Aryan warrior, but that conception is not true to form. He was a pacifist who had no children. He said to deny yourself for universal transcendence. He said to deny family, tribe, and ancestors for the jewish god. I did still enjoy reading the poem.

painting depicting Armanen priests overseeing a ritual to Nerthus, an earth-goddess

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Essentially, even though I disagree with Meister von List concerning Loki being Logos, and men coming from the moon, or humans being a fifth root race, or even some other folk etymologies, I think these works are incredibly useful for modern Aryans to better understand the esoteric truths of our forefathers. These works are not to be taken dogmatically - they are to be logically broken apart and understood in their entirety. Meister von List was basically a reverse-kalandar-brother: he was seeking to unravel the raveled mysteries encoded into mythology by the ancient pagans.

Hail victory, and good-end! o///