- Red,
- Rad - Wheel,
- Rita - Right Order, Right, Ritual,
- Rod - Rod of Justice,
- Rood - Gallows of Justice = The 'Wolf-Tree',
This is where those who are involved in Heathen work and have not taken up this struggle (and there are many of these) will not be able to recreate such Cultic-Warrior Brotherhoods, since they will have no Ancestral Heroes to honour, and although we should honour the 'Mythical Heroes' (of myth and legend) this can in no way be the same as honouring those who have taken up the Sacred Blood Struggle in our own times. This goes for those who cannot recognise the true nature of this struggle, and how the Folkish Movement arose to hold back the Dark Forces at the 'turn of the Great Year'.
The Way of the Gods is the period between the Winter Sunstead and the Summer Sunstead, whilst the Way of the Ancestors is the period between the Summer Sunstead and the Winter Sunstead. The latter is the period in which Halloween and Yuletide fall. For the whole of this period of the year (the Dark Time) the Forefathers and Ancestors should be honoured, though the emphasis is usually from the Winter Evennight to the Winter Sunstead.
The colours of the Cultic-Warrior Brotherhood has always been associated with Black, and sometimes the Red (of youth and war). The Cultic-Warriors were black and gather under the Black Flag. One of the main symbols of these Kults is that of the Belt worn around the waist - one belt for the Cultic-Warrior Fury-Leader and two belts for the Cultic-Warriors. These could also be the Sacred Cord worn around the waist.
In these Cultic Warrior Brotherhoods we find the use of Ritual Dances, weapon-dances undertaken by the cultic-warriors led by a Fuhrer who represents Woden as the Leader of the Bund. We find such dances still alive today (just) in various parts of England, though some of the more martial forms have been watered down into 'Morris Dancing', though the staffs/clubs are still present. However, the meaning is lost and the energy and ecstatic power has been lost with it. It would be very difficult to get young people involved in this today, for obvious reasons.
However, there is a method that can be used to achieve the same ends - Kata or Form. Using the Japanese term to make it clear, and with the English 'form' with it to try to bring this into an English context, kata is a form of Martial Dance, and it can also be used with weapons. Kata is in essence a means to learn basic warrior-moves, fusing a number of moves into a full 'Form'. Some martial artists have dropped the idea of forms, but there is a very ancient meaning to these, and one that is important to a Warrior Cult. There are many uses for this -
The theme of a group of outlaws living wild in the English Forests is connected to the Cultic Warrior Brotherhoods. Robin Hood and his Merry Men was one of these Cultic War-Bands - English Freedom Fighters - who roamed the area of Sherwood Forest. What we know of them is sparse, and the film industry does little to clear up any confusion, and Robin Hood was certainly not a champion of the 'meek and weak', but a bringer of justice. In one of the tales he is said to have held a Mete-Wand which is a staff used for measurement, in this case symbolic of the bringing of justice and right in a time of tyranny and injustice.
Folkish Wodenism uses the theme of Robin i' the Hood as the 'Son' of Herne the Hunter, an aspect of Woden as the One-Eyed Hunter God. In this he is, in line with the Myth of Herne the Hunter, adorned with Stag's Horns on his head, and is the Lord of the Trees, Lord of the Forests, and Lord of the Animals. This is a very ancient Aryan Archetype that is the basis for the Forest God. Of course, Wid-Ar the Avenger is also the 'Forest Warrior' - the 'Forest God'.
The Hooded One is Woden, and running through the theme of Robin Hood and his Outlaw Band is the need for secrecy and to be hidden away from the rest of society as Wolf's Heads. There is something important in this idea, since the time will come when those opposed to this sick, rotten, degenerate society will be forced to get out of it somehow, or forced to move 'underground', much as the secret orders and secret societies had to do in the past.
One such Secret Order was the Geheimgericht (Secret Tribunal) or Tugendbund (Alliance for the Promotion of Virtue), better known as the Fehm-, Behm- or Vehmgericht. It is very difficult to sift fact from fiction when dealing with secret societies, and most start off as something far different than they end up, because these can easily be taken up and used by an oppressive state as a kind of 'secret police'. The Fehm was supposedly started in the time of Charlemagne to suppress the Heathen Saxons; when it was revived in the fourteenth century the members of the Vehm were known as Die Wissenden - The Illuminati.
There are doubts as to what we have been left of this subject, since Guido von List has nothing bad to say of the Vehm. They summarily executed their 'victims' by hanging them on a tree, which may suggest that the term Vehm, in its alternative Behm, derives from Baeume Gericht (Tree Law). Generally, they hung them using a rope of willow twigs, since hemp was forbidden in ancient law, and on a Lime Tree (Linden Tree). The German sacred geographer Joseph Heinsche stated that these were sited on geomantic-points or power-points of the Earth. This suggests something more ancient that the Christianity of Charlemagne.
They used a ritual dagger stuck into the ground to show who was doing the hanging, and to warn others not to interfere, under penalty of the same fate. This dagger bore the letters S.S.G.G. which were said to stand for Strick (Noose), Stein (Stone), Gras (Fear), Grein (Quarrel). This was an Initiation Cult, and most likely developed from the same roots as the Germanic Mannerbund, since the aim was to enforce Justice and Order on society. Their rules were enshrined in The Red Tower which is an Arthurian allegory because in the Forest of the Red Tower Parsifal discovered two knights hanging from a tree.
The act of hanging from a tree as a punishment, and that these took place in the forests of Westphalia, Saxony, suggest some connection to Woden in the very early times. There is no doubt that this idea was taken up and used by Charlemagne and the Christian Franks, but that does not mean that it was invented at this time. The revival and the link to King Arthur also suggest that this was again used for a specific purpose by the state. There have been other examples of this type of secret order arising in times of tyranny, in Germany prior to World War II, the other in the USA.
The importance to us here is that there may come a time when secrecy is indeed needed, and in times of tyranny, though of course using different methods, there is a need to create a balance through the bringing of justice and order. One of the most important things is to revive the symbolism that was used by such orders, since they will be firmly impressed into the Blood Memory, and that will be enough to make people know what is being done to right wrong, even if they do not know consciously.
"Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage, and those with a modicum of physical courage have no intellect. If things are to alter in the next fifty years then we must embrace Byron's ideal - the Cultured Thug." Jonathon Bowden.
Unfortunately, Jonathon Bowden died before he could see the onslaught that befell us with the 'covid crisis', so we do not have fifty years to achieve this aim, which I see as being the right way to go. I have said before that in my own view we need to go a step further with this, through a three-fold 'New Man' -
The whole idea of research and study into the ancient Germanic Mannerbunde is not merely to look back into the past but to take stock of the past and how we can, in our own time, revive some of the most useful concepts of our forefathers. The Mannerbunde was made up of young aethlinga warriors who were sent out as Lone-Wolves or Wolfish Bands into the wilds to hunt and fight for their survival in the most harsh conditions. If young people today were subjected to such rigorous training the social services would seen get involved. And here lies the problem, since young men need to go through some forms of hardship and training in order to become strong men. This is denied them, although parents can, in some small degree, help by not bringing young boys up in totally soft conditions - martial arts, strength-training and survivalism are some ways to do this.
Woden's role in this Warrior Cult is as the Heerfuhrer or 'Leader of the War-Band'; but using the term 'Fuhrer' is not an arbitrary one, since this title links him to the Teuton Fury or Wolf-Fury which is the basis of the Wod-Force, and Woden is the 'Master of Wod'. The word here, here, heri is usually translated as 'army' but its origins lie in the idea of a war-band, a Cultic-Warrior Band. We find this term in the rod for the 'Single Combatants' or Einheriar.
Here we should look at the idea of the Einheriar since they are the Chosen Warriors of Woden who ride out of Valhalla to fight the Last Battle at Ragnarok. They are thus the Warriors of Valhalla in this sense, but in another sense they could be seen as the Lone Wolves who are the last to stand here in Middle-Earth against the Forces of Darkness. They are the One-Harriers who stand alone and isolated in an alien world but who are ready and willing to stand behind the Heerfuhrer when he arises to lead them into the Last Battle.
The Old English hergian, herigan means 'to make a predatory raid, to destroy, to lay waste, to plunder, to despoil, commit ravages', and the modern English 'to harry' and 'harrow' stem from this too. War was razzia, the theft of cattle and the abduction of women; this seems clear from much later times when the Americas were being settled by pioneers, and cattle-rustling was one of the 'pastimes' of this era. In later times, such a the Viking era, we find much the same thing, but at this time it was mainly gold and not cattle, since gold had replaced cattle as a means of barter. This is shown in the rune-poems where the Old English Poem has 'cattle' for Feoh, and later substitute 'gold'. This was called by the PIE *koryo-no-s and the troop were the *koryos; we shall refer here to the war-band as the heri since this is the Germanic title.
These were Cultic Warrior Brotherhoods and Thunor was chided by Loki as being an einheri which tells us that Thunor is the Archetypal Cultic-Warrior. These Cultic-Warriors upheld the Totenkult (Cult of the Dead) and the Ahnenkult (Cult of the Ancestors). Woden its the Totenfuhrer im Totenheer who leads the Army of the Dead, and the dead are the honoured ancestors - the Immortals - whose life force, that divine spark, is far more potent after death than before they died. It matters little whether they died in battle or of old age, it was their life's work that counted. Believing that one has to die on battle to go to Valhalla could mean that the individual only has to fight one fatal battle to do so; this is like the Christian view that it only needs a death-bed 'conversion' to do the trick. The secret lies in a Heroic Life that ends in death, where the Life-Force lives on, but it lives on in its own Immortal Body which cannot die again.
The whole theme of 'Halloween' or 'All-Hallows Eve' is that of an Ancestral Cult and Cult of the Dead. The skeletal dress, the weapons, the ghostly aspect of the dead, the point of the year when the Veils of the World are thinnest, even the 'Trick and Treat' which is supposed to be a modern addition, but which has its roots in the Cultic-Warrior Cults. Between October 31st (Halloween), November 5th (Fire-Festival) and November 11th (Einheriar Day) we have a long ritual period dedicated to the Totenkult and to the Ahnenkult.
Both the Wild Host or Wild Army and the Wild Hunt are connected to these Cultic Brotherhoods, hunting being a kind of practice for warfare at this time. In blackening their faces and body, and wearing masks, these Cultic-Warriors are Woden's Daemonic Warriors - they are the Dead! This is a concept that arises anew in Lord of the Rings where Aragorn leads an 'Army of the Dead' into the Battle of Pelinor Fields.