Please read the previous part in the series: The Divine Fury of The White Devil
Of all the gods and religions I’ve examined, none perhaps fit the needs of a new warrior religion more than The Hanged God, Odin. I’ve attacked Norse paganism — as well as Christianity — before as being conquered religions and how conquered religions won’t win in this new age. The only way they can return is as a NEW denomination. You can’t expect to paint your faces and worship Wotan in the forest to beat the deranged lunatics of our time. You can’t worry about the old rites, they are already lost to us. What can you do however, is recognize a fallen god may extend his hand to a fallen people who follow his path and take on his crusade. But he warned: Odin is a god of untrustworthy dealings.
There are many stories about Odin. Many different origins. He’s a bit of an enigma, but not in a way you can’t understand. His name carries the meanings of Fury/Frenzy, Divine Madness, and Inspiration. James LaFond makes the observation that he’s almost like a fallen Zeus. Pagans believed their fates were set and there was no escaping them. I’ve also seen YouTubes claiming he’s a solar god, Christ is an interpretation of Odin, and he’s been around since mankind’s recovery from the great deluge. He’s a seeker of wisdom and knowledge.
Odin takes action, seeks forbidden knowledge, and untrustworthy dealings to escape his fate. He knows he dies at Ragnarok and seems to believe he can change that fate. Many Indo-European peoples worship sky fathers and while the Germans believed Odin controlled the storm, Odin’s son Thor most matches the sky father archetype. Odin is a god of war, victory, magic, wisdom, the esoteric knowledge of the runes, divine madness, and frenzy. His Valkyries gather those who die in battle to train in Valhalla. There is a feeling of doom that follows the Norse religion. They’re marching towards Ragnarok, knowing that it marks their end. But does Odin believe this?
The actions of Odin don’t appear as a god resigned to his fate.
One cannot read about Odin and get the impression that he’s stoically marching to his doom. Instead, he’s searching for a way to change his fate. A way to prevent Ragnarok. This is shown in the tales left to us about Odin. You must be wary of what’s left behind of the Norse religion as much of it is recorded by Christians, but there’s enough there to get an idea about the nature of Odin. He plays multiple roles in the Eddas. He is a wanderer, a huntsman, an ascendant king, and the king of the gods.
In one origin of Odin, he was once a man who becomes king and upon his death, is made into a god. This tale may derive from Christians trying to convert pagans by downgrading their gods to great men. In another, he creates the world with his brothers by slaying the devourer Ymir. The meaning of the names of Odin and his brothers is important to remember. It’s the necessary traits required to create your own order: Fury - Will - Sanctity. The Hanged God is known by over fifty names and is known by his ability to disguise himself. He is a god on a mission to do what none can: change fate.
He hung himself from the world tree for nine days, a sacrifice of “himself to himself” in order to learn the secret of the runes. The runes being esoteric knowledge. In another, he sacrifices his eye to Mimir’s Well to gain wisdom and knowledge. After the death of Mimir, he carries his head to use for council. There are other tales of Odin infiltrating places in search of wisdom and knowledge. He’s looking for the path to victory, to escape his fate. Odin is a god working in the shadows, not afraid to disguise himself as some lowly peasant if it gets him what he wants.
The Nature of Odin
There are many interpretations of Odin and many of which have become warped by the mainstream. The idea of him being the “Allfather” for example, is something that he might not have been called. It could have been a mistranslation. How should a warrior religion interpret Odin? I enjoy James LaFond’s observation of Odin as a fallen Zeus. As we are today, he’s a dethroned god, much like we — Real Americans — are a dethroned/dispossessed people. Odin to a warrior religion is a fallen god looking for vengeance, chasing the Nietzschean Will to Power, and choosing a warrior people to be his instrument for vengeance. He was always a god of the noble and warrior castes.
He is a god of war, which imparts to us not only divine fury, but his strategic nature. As a fallen god, he operates in the shadows as the wanderer or huntsman. One of the best examples of his influence comes through the painting which I use as picture for this post. It’s a painting by Franz von Stuck in 1889 of Wotan titled The Wild Chase. Who does Wotan look like in this painting? Yes, he looks like a certain Austrian who would take power in Germany after the fall of the Weimar Republic. Did this painter receive a vision from Wotan?
This Austrian saw the painting when he was thirteen and the rest was history. Perhaps, the Austrian himself was Wotan in disguise? Remember what I said about Esoteric Hitlerism being the right wing warrior religion of the future? Perhaps, the Second World War was Odin’s latest attempt to forestall Ragnarok as well as get millions of slain warriors into Valhalla. Another interesting essay is The Essay on Wotan by Carl Jung. In this essay, Jung makes bold claim that the Germans to the world seemed to be worshipping the Christian god, but they were really worshipping Wotan. He also has stunning revelation about Nietzsche.
If you’ve read Nietzsche, you know he speaks much about the Dionysus and in his Zarathustra, the character of Zarathustra very much has qualities of Wotan. His sister claimed when Nietzsche was fifteen, he had a vision or nightmare where he heard a horrifying scream from a nearby asylum at night while he was in the woods. He then encountered a huntsman with “wild and uncanny” features. The huntsman than blew a “shrill blast” which made Nietzsche lose consciousness which is the moment he awakened from the dream. There are a couple theories beyond this article that try to explain why Nietzsche went with Dionysus when the vision seemed much more like Wotan, but read Jung’s essay if interested.
There are too many coincidences connecting Wotan with many of the thinkers we on the right look to today for divine inspiration. Has Odin been there all along?
There is more to be said about this in time. A friend, @Lauhaz0 on twatter recommended book I’m working through right now called The One-Eyed God and the Indo-European Mannerbunde by Kris Kershaw that has valuable knowledge about Odin and about how our ancestors formed war bands.