Interview With Robert Taylor

Below is an excerpt from the longer interview with Robert found here

What is Your belief/religion/worldview?

A heathen Asatruar. I am a traditionalist in my social philosophy. On America, I would hope for a return to a traditional republican form of government. My own beliefs correspond with those of Thomas Jefferson and I am a Libertarian in most ways.

How did you come across the Asatru religion and what was it about this spiritual path that attracted you more than, for example, Christianity?

I’m not sure the word attraction is exactly applicable. I was one of the three main people to begin Asatru groups in North America. Elsa Christenson was the founder of the Odinist Fellowship, Steve McNallen was the founder of the Asatru Free Assembly, and my former wife (Karen) and I founded the Northernway. All three groups differed in the main. The Odinist Fellowship was primarily philosophic with a leaning toward the political. The AFA was more of a true spiritual organization which strove to organize nationally. The Northernway was less of a mail-order organization and was centered in the Midwest. Eventually the Northernway split into two groups. We then changed our name to the Wulfing Kindred. Not long after this change, we threw in with the AFA and became a member group of that organization until its demise. Then the Wulfings and the Arizona Kindred (of Valgard Murray), along with the Vinland Kindred, formed the Asatru Alliance of Independent Kindreds. It was formed as a result of the AFA disbanding. About ten years ago, the Wulfings voted to withdraw from the Asatru Alliance over differences and have been independent since that time.

Of the three founders, it is worth mentioning that Steve McNallen had the greatest effect in generating the movement and setting its course.

The Wulfings are no longer very active in the general sense as an organization. We still do marriages, name fastenings and other rites of passage, but the members have largely taken off on their own projects. Music, writing and such. Tyr is an outgrowth of that process, as are a number of musical projects and other creative activities. As for Christianity, I was never raised as a Christian but as a heathen, so that is a moot point. In my early teens I recognized that the primary problem facing the Western world was indeed a spiritual crisis and that Christianity was no answer to that crisis but was, instead, a big part of the problem leading to that crisis.

Can you tell me how you discovered it, are you more folkish or universalist in your views? Also why would you back universalism or folkish ideals?

Absolutely folkish. It is an Indo-European spiritual path and nothing else in that sense. All this universalism stuff was the product of those who wished to cripple the movement, to pull its teeth and distort its meaning. I am sure there are those who followed the original introduction of this nonsense who have actually fallen for this line innocently enough. I recall one of the first proponents of this distortion later checked out to be a very active member of a Masonic lodge, and others of his ilk joined into Asatru and formed the core of this so-called Universalist creed. All of the real founders and early adherents are folkish. The Universalists all came into it after it was already firmly established. I feel their actions to be entirely subversive, divisive, and contrary to that which Asatru stands for.

Do you think it is realistic for Europe to go through a revival of ancient traditions considering over a thousand years of Christianity or Islam in many European countries, the loss of many religious practices and ceremonies as well and industrialization?

Yes, I do think it is very realistic. One might have equally stated, “After 500 years of Buddhism, do you really think it was realistic to return to the Hindu faith in India?”  That is what largely occurred, you know. There are no Buddhists to speak of in India. It came and it went elsewhere, but the true native faith of India remains, despite the fact that Buddhism had supplanted it for a longtime. As for rituals and beliefs, we are our ancestors in reality. There is no reason we cannot reconstruct what was lost out of the crucibles of our own souls and spirits. It’s always been there, if only in a nascent state, if only waiting to emerge once again. And it has. So mote it be.

I have heard that you managed to build an Asatru temple and are planning to build others which I consider to be good. The Icelanders have been attempting to build a temple for years but seem to be restricted by the Catholic church.

Yes, I did and so have several other parties in North America. I can’t imagine why the Icelanders have not built one. My advice is that they purchase some land, get the necessary lumber and hammers and nails and start building. I say this partly in jest. They are probably asking the state to pick up the tab for it and provide the land or something. They also might entertain grandiose plans of some huge building. I don’t know this for certain, but these would be reasons why the Lutheran church (which is the primary Christian religion there) would have anything to say about it.

My own vision on Hofs (a name we adopted in North America for Asatru temples, or more precisely, Giest Hof, meaning “spirit house”) was that we should built small chapel-like buildings, not grandiose cathedrals.  I was thinking of something more akin to the many small temples that dot the landscape of Japan. Each one being unique and worthy of pilgrimage or travel from one temple to another, not intended to impress with grandeur but more to impress with the spiritual place and fact that they were built by individuals or small groups of individuals whose spirituality was so great that they expressed it in the humble resources available to them as common folk. What is of greater spiritual import: a monster cathedral built by hired workers and paid for by masses of people, or something that is the expression of truly spiritual individuals paying for it out of their own pockets?…

Is our civilization still going down and down? Do You believe in any possible end of it? What could that be?

My personal opinion is that our civilization died, for all practical purposes, in and about 1945 with the conclusion of World War 2. What we are witnessing today is not its death but its post-mortem decomposition. The two world wars were, in effect, the Peloponnesian wars of our civilization, wars of mutual annihilation. Everyone involved in those wars, all the nations, lost. There was no real victory – just a superficial one for America and its allies. The final results are evident in our present circumstances. What evolves out of this end is yet to be seen. At the heart of our problems is the spiritual malaise, the materialism and subsequent nihilism. The West is not only bankrupted economically, but, more seriously, spiritually bankrupt.

With these things in mind, I set out to attend to the spiritual matters of our folk. As previously mentioned, I was one of the three independent founders in North America of what is known as Odinism or Asatru, the resurrected spiritual path and religion of the Germanic pre-Christian people. The other two were Elsa Christiansen who founded the Odinic Fellowship and Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly. When and if this resurrection really becomes rooted, then we will see all of the other problems begin to resolve themselves: political, cultural, social and economic. It will not be an overnight thing. We will still have to go through some trying and difficult times to be sure before these positive factors will evolve.

I and my cousin/partner, Nicholas Tesluk, began the cultural task with the music we made in the late sixties and early seventies (now known variously as Neo-Folk, Folk Noir, Apocolyptic Folk or Uber-Folk). This form of music has become a major vehicle as a cultural appendage to the spiritual resurrection of heathenry, one of the chief voices of this spiritual outlook and insight. There are still many areas that must be attended to in our culture before this task is completed. Those of us in this current must all become doers, makers and shapers of the present and future if this task is to be finalized. That means hard work, creativity and all things on the imaginative plane of life. I think of this overall movement as the Uberground. This distinguishes what we are doing from being underground culture, though the paths of each sometimes cross and coalesce. Uberground implies not below the pop-culture of top forty music and Hollywood, but something higher, more refined and intelligent and rooted within us. This is my vision and goal for the present and future.

Religion is the hub of the axis. All other facets of a culture and civilization are the spokes that extend out from it and express its vision and views in other areas of life.

Thanks a lot for taking part in this interview. Anything else you wish to add?

And thank you for this opportunity to address all these questions.

Know thyself, be true to thyself, and though the world turn into Hell on earth, transcend and maintain thyself. Stay Free!