|
| |
Ideology
Guido von List in 1878 from the book Guido v. List. Der Wiederentdecker uralter
arischer Weisheit by Johannes Balzli published in 1917.(See Germanic mysticism
for the controversy over List's alleged influence on the Nazis.)
Guido von List was strongly influenced by the Theosophical thought of Madame
Blavatsky, which he blended with his own racial religious beliefs, founded upon
Germanic paganism.
List called his doctrine “Armanism” (after the Armanen, supposedly the heirs of
the sun-king, a body of priest-kings in the ancient Ario-Germanic nation).
Armanism was concerned with the esoteric doctrines of the gnosis (distinct from
the exoteric doctrine intended for the lower social classes, Wotanism).
List claimed that the tribal name Herminones mentioned in Tacitus was a
Latinized version of the German Armanen, and named his religion the
Armanenschaft, which he claimed to be the original religion of the Germanic
tribes. His conception of that religion was a form of sun worship, with its
priest-kings (similar to the Icelandic goši) as legendary rulers of ancient
Germany.
List claimed that the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary
constituted a continuing occupation of the Germanic tribes by the Roman empire,
albeit now in a religious form, and a continuing persecution of the ancient
religion of the Germanic peoples and Celts.
An 'Armanist pilgrimage' to the Heidentor (pagan gate), Carnuntum, June 1911
from the book by Guido von List called Deutsch-Mythologische Landschaftsbilder.
List is third from left.This conception bears strong resemblance to many other
19th century romanticised ideas of ancient polytheistic religions in Europe; a
comparatively similar text in the thematic elements and overall textual bias is
the famous Oera Linda forgery from the Lowlands region of western Europe.
He also believed in magical powers of the old runes. In 1891 he claimed that
heraldry was based on the magic of the runes. In April 1903, he had sent an
article concerning the alleged Aryan proto-language to the Imperial Academy of
Sciences in Vienna. Its highlight was a mystical and occult interpretation of
the runic alphabet. Although the article was rejected by the academy, it would
later be expanded by List and become the basis for his entire ideology.
Among his ideological followers was Lanz von Liebenfels. More controversially,
some allege that, in his pagan-Theosophical synthesis, List developed the direct
precursor of occult Nazism. His defenders counter that any influence was
indirect and inconsequential; in Nazi Germany the strongest occult influence
upon Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, was Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut
who believed List's Armanism to be a heresy from his own ancestral religion of
Irminism and had various of List's followers interned in concentration camps.
List's concept of renouncing Christianity, a Semitic religion intertwined with
Judaism, and returning to the pagan religions of the ancient Europeans did
nevertheless find some supporters within the Nazi party and is favoured by some
advocates of Neo-Nazism and White Nationalism in their turn. Germanic paganism
has, as a result, been linked to Nazism since the early twentieth century —
unfairly, in the eyes of many pagan revivalists.
| |
|
