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did not find particular favour with the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, which
returned without comment a thesis he had sent. Nevertheless, the anti-Semitic
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elements in German and Austrian society began to take note, and in 1907 a List Society
was formed to provide financial aid in his researches. List's spurious historiography and
archaeology provided a pseudo-scientific basis for both racism and extreme nationalism,
and enabled the German Volk to trace their ancestry back to the splendour and racial
purity of the ancient Teutons and their cult of Wotanism.
The cult of Wotan arose primarily from List's beliefs regarding the religious practices of
the ancient Teutons, whom he considered to have been persecuted by Christians in early
medieval Germany. In List's view, the Old Norse poems of Iceland, Norway, Denmark and
Sweden, the Eddas, were actually chronicles of the myths of the ancient Germans. The
Eddas were composed of songs, manuals of poetry and works of history telling the story
of the ancient Teutonic pantheon of gods and the numerous secondary divinities who
were their cohorts. In fact, we have almost no record of the myths and beliefs of the
ancestors of the Germans and Anglo-Saxons. According to conventional studies of
mythology:
For the Germanic tribes of the West, the ancestors of the Germans and Anglo-Saxons,
documentary sources of information are sparse. Latin historians like Caesar and Tacitus
had at their disposal only second-hand information and they attempted to explain
Teutonic religion in terms of Roman religion. For instance, Donar, the thunder-god,
became for them Jupiter tonans. Woden received the name Mercury and Tiw [the sky-
god] was called Mars. The missionaries, monks and clerks who, from the eighth century,
pursued their work of conversion and were at the same time the first to write the
German language could, had they wished to, have given us a complete picture of
German mythology in the early centuries. But their chief concern was to save souls.
Hence they scarcely alluded to pagan myths except to condemn them. We should know
practically
nothing of the old German beliefs if 'popular' tales and epics had not preserved much
that pertains to secondary divinities, demons, giants and spirits of all sorts. (37)
[Original emphasis.]
In the Eddas, Wotan (whose name derives from the word in all Germanic languages
meaning fury, and which in modern German is wuten, to rage) was the god of war,
whom dead heroes met in Valhalla. It was Wotan who gained an understanding of the
runes after being wounded by a spear and hanging from a tree for nine nights, and who
related the eighteen runic spells that held the secrets of immortality, invincibility in
battle, healing abilities and control of the elements. In Norse legend, the runes are not
only a system of writing but also possess an inherent magical power. Goodrick-Clarke
describes List as 'the pioneer of volkisch rune occultism', (38) since he was the first to
link the runes of a certain written series with Wotan's runic spells. 'List attributed a
specific individual rune to each of Wotan's verses, adding occult meanings and a
summary motto of the spell. These occult meanings and mottoes were supposed to
represent the doctrine and maxims of the rediscovered religion of Wotanism. Typical
mottoes were: "Know yourself, then you know everything!" ... and "Man is one with
God!" ' (39)
The central tenet of Wotanism was the cyclical nature of the Universe, which proceeded
through a series of transformations: 'birth', 'being', 'death' and 'rebirth'. This cyclical
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cosmology was a primal law and represented the presence of God in Nature. Since Man
was part of the cosmos, he was bound by its laws and thus required to live in harmony
with the natural world. 'A close identity with one's folk and race was reckoned a logical
consequence of this closeness to Nature.' (40)
List also utilised Theosophical concepts in his development of Wotanism, in particular
those of Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth who wrote extensively on Aryan sexuality and
racial purity. Sebaldt believed that the Universe was whisked into being by the god
Mundelfori, and that its fundamental nature was one of the interaction of opposites,
such as matter and spirit, and male and female. Aryan superiority could therefore only
be achieved through a union of racially 'pure opposites'. In September 1903, List
published an article in the Viennese occult periodical Die Gnosis that drew heavily on
this idea, referring to ancient Aryan cosmology and sexuality. The phases of this
cosmology were illustrated with variations on the swastika, the Hindu symbol of the Sun,
that List appropriated and corrupted to denote the unconquerable and racially pure
Germanic hero. (41)
List was also heavily influenced by legends of lost civilisations and sunken continents,
such as the fabled lands of Atlantis and Lemuria, and by the theosophical writings of
Madame Blavatsky. He went so far as to compare the Wotanist priesthood with the
hierophants of Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine. Theosophical concepts also formed the
basis of his Die Religion der Ario-Germanen (1910), in which he devoted considerable
space to the Hindu cosmic cycles which had inspired Blavatsky's concept of 'rounds' or
cosmological cycles. List identified the four rounds of fire, air, water and earth with 'the
mythological Teutonic realms of Muspilheim, Asgard, Wanenheim and Midgard, which
were tenanted respectively by fire-dragons, air-gods, water-giants and mankind'. (42)
These realms lie at the centre of the Nordic creation myth. At the dawn of time, there
was nothing but a vast, yawning abyss. Niflheim, a realm of clouds and shadows, formed
to the north of the abyss, while to the south formed the land of fire called Muspilheim.
When Ymir, the first living being and the father of all the giants, was slain in battle, his
body was raised from the sea and formed the earth, Midgard. (43) According to List, the
Ario-Germans were the fifth race in the present round, the preceding four corresponding
to the mythical Teutonic giants.
Wotanist doctrine held that the natural evolutionary cycle of the Universe was from
unity to multiplicity and back to unity. The first stage of this evolution (unity to
multiplicity) was represented symbolically by anticlockwise triskelions and swastikas and
inverted triangles. The second stage (multiplicity back to the unity of the godhead) was
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