The Essential Unity (* or... The unity of Essence)

Chapter 13. The Essential Unity

If a people cannot discover its unity, it is lost as a nation; it is all but dead. If, in surveying its history and in testing its will to the future, it cannot find this unity, it is dead. No matter what forms the past may have taken in its course, when a nation arrives at the point of truly denying the allegorical images that stem from its first awakening, then it has denied its roots its being and its becoming, and it has condemned itself to unfruitfulness. History is not a development from nothing to something, nor from something insignificant to something great. It is not even the transformation of an essence into something completely different. Rather, the first racial-folkish awakening brought about by heroes, gods and poets is the ultimate achievement for all times.

This first great, supreme, mythic achievement cannot, in essence, be "perfected." It can merely take on other new forms. The value breathed into a god or hero is what is eternal in good and evil. Homer represented the highest enhancement of what was Greek and he guarded this even in decline. Jehovah (Jahwe) is the symbol of unbridled Jewry. The belief in Jehovah is the strength of even the lowest Jewish haggler in Poland.

This unity also holds for German history-- for its people, its values, for the very old and new Myth, and for the supporting ideas of German folkhood. One form of Odin is dead: that is, the Odin who was the highest of many gods and who appeared as the embodiment of a generation still given up to natural symbolisms. But, Odin as the eternal mirror-image of the primal spiritual powers of the Nordic man lives today, just as he did over 5,000 years ago. The true German embodies himself in honor and heroism, in the creation of song and/or art, in the protection of law, and in the eternal search for wisdom. Odin learned that, through the guilt of the gods, through the breaking of the bond to the builders of Valhalla, the race of the gods must perish.

Despite this decline, he nevertheless commanded Heimdall to summon the Aesir with his horn for the final decisive battle. Dissatisfied, eternally searching, the god wandered through the universe to try to fathom his destiny and the nature of his being. He sacrificed an eye so that he might participate in the deepest wisdom. As as eternal wanderer, he is a symbol of the eternally-searching and eternally-becoming Nordic Soul that cannot withdraw self-confidently back to Jehovah and his representatives. The headstrong activity of the Will, which, at first drives so roughly through the Nordic lands in the battle songs about Thor, showed directly at their first appearance the innate, striving, wisdom-seeking, metaphysical side in Odin the Wanderer.

But the same spirit is revealed once again with the great, free Ostrogoths and the devout Ulfilas (an early Gothic Christian Bishop, 311-383 AD). It is also revealed, in accordance with the times, in the strengthened Knights Order and in the great Nordic Western mystics as seen in their greatest spirit, Meister Eckhart. When in Frederick's Prussia, the soul that once gave birth to Odin was revived at Hohenfriedberg and Leuthen, it was also reborn in the souls of the Thomaskantor (Bach) and Goethe. From this viewpoint, our assertion is deeply justified: that a heroic Nordic saga, a Prussian march, a composition by Bach, a sermon by Eckhart, and a monologue by Faust, are all only varied experiences of one and the same Soul. They are creations of the same Will. They are eternal powers that were first united under the name Odin and which later gained form in Frederick the Great and Bismarck. As long as these powers are operative, as long as Nordic blood mixes a Nordic Soul and Will, Nordic humanity will be active and work in mystic union. This is the prerequisite of every true-to-type creation.

Only the Myth and its forms are truly alive. This is the thing for which men are ready to die. When the Franks left the groves of their ancient homeland, and their bodies and souls became restless, their strength gradually vanished to resist the more firmly-structured lives of the inhabitants of Gaul. In vain Theodoric sought to convert Clovis, King of the Franks, to liberated Arianism (ca. 500 AD). The Arian heresy, named after its first teacher, Arius, was based on the idea that Christ, having been created by God, was therefore less divine than God the Father.

Thus Theodoric tried to establish nationalism over the internationalism of Rome. Unfortunately, he was himself overruled by his hysterical wife. The leader of the strongest Germanic tribe thus made a spiritual move over to the Roman camp. To be sure, neither he nor the other Franks thought of giving up their characteristic heroism. They only placed it alongside Christianity in order to fight under the latter's banner for their fame and power. Conditioned through the first step, the Roman Myth then overgrew the ancient Germanic ideas of blood, so that it was able to take over the German soul.

All wars now took place under the sign of the cross. And when this cross had triumphed everywhere, the struggle began within the converted world against the heretics. The Protestants, on their side, likewise bore the sign of the cross into the field. Then the Myth of the martyr's cross died. Present-day churches strive to conceal that faction the same way the Teutons once concealed the death of the old gods. Today, it is impossible to lead a North European army to war for the Christian cross-- not even a Spanish or Italian army. Today, men admittedly die for ideas, but none of these bears the sign that overcame the devout Theodoric. It no longer fills our lives in such a passionate manner that we are ready to give our lives for it. It is dead, and no power can bring it back to life.

In order to be able to work effectively for the cross today, the churches are forced to hide behind the ideas ans symbols of our newly-awakened Myth. But these are actually the signs of a strength whose destruction St. Boniface (ca. 700 AD) and St. Willibald once planned. The signs of that blood that once created Odin and Baldur, that once produced Meister Eckhart, finally rose to self-consciousness -- especially when the word Alldeutschland (pan-Germania) is uttered. Goethe once saw the task of our people in breaking the Roman Reich and in forming a new world.