Günther Hans Friedrich Karl - The Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans.pdf

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The
R
ELIGIOUS
A
TTITUDES
of the
I
NDO-
E
UROPEANS
Translated from the German of
P
ROFESSOR
H
ANS
F
.
K
.
G
ÜNTHER
by
Vivian Bird
in collaboration with
R o g e r P e a r s o n, M.Sc. (Econ).
LONDON
CLAIR PRESS
MCMLXVII
“The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.”
Euripides
“Courage leads to heaven, fear to death.”
Seneca
“There they stood . . . the immortals who are the source of all our blessings.”
Homer: Odyssey
T
HE
R
ELIGIOUS
A
TTITUDES OF THE
I
NDO-
E
UROPEANS
CONTENTS
A
UTHOR’S
F
OREWORD
C
HAPTER
O
NE
C
HAPTER
T
WO
C
HAPTER
T
HREE
C
HAPTER
F
OUR
C
HAPTER
F
IVE
C
HAPTER
S
IX
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
R
EFERENCES
I
NDEX
F
OREWORD
TO THE
S
IXTH
G
ERMAN
E
DITION
I HOPE
that the re-appearance of this work after almost thirty years, may help the
younger generation to give more attention to the religious history of the whole of the
Indo-European area, in contrast to previous generations, for a better knowledge of the
Indo-European world will lead the West (to which North America belongs), towards self-
realisation. Heraclitus, as Aristotle reported (Concerning
the Parts of Animals,
I, 5, 645),
instructed strangers visiting him, who hesitated on his threshold, to draw closer to him
with the words: “Enter, for here the Gods also dwell!” May this work, in its present
edition, express a similar invitation.
If, in our era of the “Decline of the West”, the last remnants of the Western Indo-
European peoples are submerged due to the dearth of true-blooded Nordics, then
nevertheless the last few survivors will retain that same Indo-European conviction which
supported and inspired the “last Romans” (Romanorum
ultimi),
who witnessed the
conversion of the aristocratic Roman republic into the “de-Romanised” empire — the
proud belief in inflexible and unyielding courage before destiny, which will be portrayed
in this work as characteristically Indo-European, and above all Nordic — an ideal which
Horace also described in the words:
Quocirca vivite fortes,
Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus!
(Sermones, II, 2, 135/36)
H
ANS
F
.
K
.
G
ÜNTHER
Bad Heilbrunn; Early Spring 1963.
C
HAPTER
O
NE
Freedom is where you can live, as pleases a brave heart; where you can live
according to the customs and laws of your fathers; where you are made
happy by that which made your most distant ancestors happy.
E. M. Arndt,
Catechism for the Teutonic Soldier and Warrior,
1813.
IN
this work I want to advance some reflections on the religiosity of the Indo-Europeans
— that is to say, the Indo-European speaking peoples originating from a common Bronze
Age nucleus — who have always exerted a significant influence on the government and
spirit of predominantly Nordic races.
1
Just as by comparing the structure of the Indian,
Persian, Sacaean, Armenian, Slavic and Baltic languages, and of the Greek, Italian, Celtic
and Teutonic dialects, we can reach a conclusion as to a common or primal Indo-
European language, approximating to the latter part of the early Stone Age, in the same
way, an examination of the laws and legal customs of the different peoples of Indo-
European language reveals a primal Indo-European feeling for law.
2
Similarly, from a
comparison of the religious forms of these peoples we can identify a particular religious
attitude emanating from the Indo-European nature — a distinctive behaviour of Indo-
European men and people towards the divine powers.
So it is that certain common religious attitudes, which originally were peculiar to all
peoples of Indo-European language, reveal the identity of an Indo-European religiosity.
But since in fact all Indo-European nations represented different types moulded on the
spiritual pattern of the Nordic race, the origin of these common religious attitudes may be
identified in a religiosity which is characteristically Nordic, emanating from the spiritual
nature of the Nordic race.
3
It is fortunate that for our knowledge of this Nordic religiosity, we do not have to rely
solely upon Teutonic religious forms,
4
for the information we possess about the Teutonic
forms of belief is regrettably inadequate. It is all the more incomplete as it is derived
from a late period in the development of these forms, which had already been influenced
by religious ideas from Hither-Asia, from the Mediterranean basin and from the Celtic
west of Europe, where the Druids had begun to distort the ancient Indo-European
religiosity of the Celts so that they no longer bore a purely Nordic stamp. The Teutonic
Gods, the Aesir (cf. Oslo, Osnabruck, in High German:
Ansen,
cf. Anshelm, Ansbach),
had already absorbed the Vanir who had spread from south-east Europe (F. R. Schröder:
Germanentum und Alteuropa,
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, XXII, 1934, p.
187), without thoroughly re-interpreting them in a purely Teutonic spirit. Likewise, from
south-east Europe and Hither-Asia, the God Dionysos had been accepted among the
Olympian Gods without being fully re-interpreted, even being found in Homer, and only
later becoming a native blond God instead of an alien, dark-haired one. The pre-Christian

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