Men Of Vision

Clarity.

In political-philosophical discussions about the Germanic German faith history, the Christian side still operates with a concept such as the spiritual primitiveness and dark superstitions of our fathers. The untenability of such a claim should have long since been confirmed with the recent history and cultural research, and it may well now be well placed to put things in its proper light.

The facts speak the following language: For the original religious experience within the Nordic-Germanic area the magical and totemistic is less visible. So where there is talk of witchcraft spells and the like, these things always play a subordinate role. They never intervene decisively in life as it is characteristic of a magical mindset. It really just means a means among other means of hastening certain events, which are already determined by fate. In this case, the effect of sorcery was not primarily described as magical in a supernatural sense, but portrayed in a way that comes close to a natural psychological-physiological explanation.

Yes, our ancestors did not at all know the modern division of our immediate, nature-bound life experience in a rational and irrational part. Depth psychological depictions such as hypnosis and suggestion counted for as natural and self-evident as the rational and purely bodily functions.

This completely unreflective attitude, sprung out from an unbroken, whole way of experience becomes especially clear when we come to premonitions and divinations.

Being far-sighted had nothing to do with sorcery. Foresight, on the contrary, applied as a distinctive leader trait.

In addition to the clear sense and the superior life experience, the inner foresight was considered the chief’s supreme ability. The old leaders acted, so to speak, with sleep-rendered certainty.

Typically, the term foreboding was used to describe both of the two spiritual phenomena that our modern science distinguishes between. Firstly, ordinary human insight, wise calculation due to the given circumstances, – in our way of expression a logical conclusion.

Secondly, a cognition gained through visions or dreams, an inner indefinable certainty of immediate revelatory power, that is, an irrational premonition. As stated before, no significant difference was seen here, only a coherent unit naturally connected to the fully developed human being.

Such foresight in the form of an intuitive common view of character, personal destiny and the deeper laws of life was thus the most natural thing in the world. Especially when it appeared spontaneously, without the participation of the will. It could be a personal intense sense of fate, a wife and mother who predicted the future of the children or the death of the spouse, or it could be an ingenious single man’s ability or Vardøger.

But also of the deliberately willed foresight, two types are found: The natural-organic way by way of seeking out particularly sensory places in self-immersion. The second was supernatural truthfulness using more or less unhealthy means, i.e. sorcery and magic in the actual sense. 

But, however, the latter method was most likely generally rejected and despised, especially when it came to professional practice in schematic forms.

Gehl here assumes with full right influence from foreign races, something that has never gained a proper foothold in Nordic Germanic religious life. Thus the importance of the wise and rune-learned, the far-sighted, in no way corresponded to the wizard’s role in primitive-magical meaning.

With our ancestors, it was rather an unreflected, immediately experienced experience – what  we call the power of knowledge. The ability to control the forces by carefully knowing their nature and legality. Precisely for this reason – I emphasize again this crucial point – no distinction was made between the rational knowledge gained through careful research on a purely logical basis and the irrational seerer ability of an intuitive nature. Both ways were considered equal and basically identical.

– Hans Endres

Source: SS-Heftet, nr. 2, 1944 p. 44-45, Translated by Karl Jægerlund