Journal Review:
TYR: Myth Culture Tradition, vol. 1 (2002)
Published by Ultra, P.O. Box 11736, Atlanta, GA 30355
Price: $16.00Reviewed by Rorik. S. Radford
There will undoubtedly be a lot of controversy stirred up by the new journal, TYR, but that can wait. First I want to say that this is a superbly produced piece of work. The layout, printing, graphics, and production values are far superior to all but a handful of scholarly journals, all of which cost considerably more than TYR's $16.00. Michael Moynihan, one of TYR's three young editors and an occasional Asatru_Studies (elist) contributor, is credited with the typesetting. He and everyone else who had a hand in the production process should take a bow.
The cover bears an attractive full-color reproduction of Wilhelm Petersen's 1938 painting of Tyr with his hand in the wolf's mouth. This choice symbolizes more about TYR, the journal, than may immediately meet the eye. The gods in the scene (two others are shown binding the wolf) are sturdy, beardless Germanic peasants, dressed in generic medieval work clothes. There are no gold torques or arm rings in evidence, no inlaid helmets or crafted brooches or adornment of any kind, not even a band of tablet-woven trim. Only Tyr wears a sword, and it is a common weapon in a plain leather scabbard hanging from an equally plain belt. As the god languidly extends his arm to the fantastic beast whose gaping jaws and gigantic fangs envelop his hand, his expression is blank, almost disinterested. Tyr's body language reveals no particular nobility of bearing or purpose he's just there, doing his duty under unpleasant circumstances.
These are pretty clearly the gods of Germanic working men, not of Scandinavian kings. The artist's portrayal of the myth of the binding of Fenrir is one that would have fit comfortably into the German völkisch milieu of the 1930s. And in fact, although Petersen was Danish, at the time he created this work he was a personal favorite of Alfred Rosenberg's; he produced a whole series of paintings glorifying German peasant life and the mythical past at the latter's behest. The same völkisch milieu forms the backdrop to TYR, showing through with more or less clarity on almost every page. And not coincidentally, to the extent the cover scene relates to specifically Norse mythology, this is nearly the last reference to it that will be found in this volume.
A three-page editorial preface, which sets forth TYR's themes and objectives clearly and without equivocation, makes no mention of the gods or religion of the sagas and Eddas. To be sure, there are scattered references to "neo-paganism," "pre-Christian spirituality," and the "contemporary heathen `counter-culture,'" but even these seem to be peripheral to the editors' main focus. That focus is a vigorous critique of modernity in all its manifestations, a rejection of Enlightenment values, and a glorification of folk/ traditional culture. If this sounds a lot like the philosophy of "Deep Ecology," it's because it is. In fact, Earth First! founder Dave Foreman is cited by the editors for his insights into sustainable lifestyles, and the Unabomber Manifesto is touted as "articulate and well-reasoned."
Now, it may be that whether you see the Unabomber's text as articulate and well-reasoned, or as the self-justificatory platitudes of a homicidal misfit, can serve as a litmus test of your deep greenness or even your general rage against the modern world. But, you might ask, what does it have to do with the Æsir? Not much, actually. But then, neither did the original völkisch ideology. The most prominent features of that movement were its intense anti-Semitism and German nationalism, although its romantic glorification of nature also contained the seeds of modern environmentalism. With the exception of a handful of academicians, when völkisch writers looked to the mythical prehistory of the German race they were more likely to espouse the fantasies of Guido von List, H. P. Blavatsky, or the Oera Linda Book than the actual religio-historical traditions of the Eddas and sagas. And indeed, for all the talk of völkisch paganism, the largest part of the völkisch movement was always solidly Christian, even giving birth to a new denomination of German Protestantism. See, e.g., Uwe Puschner, "`One People, One Reich, One God': The Völkische Weltanschauung and Movement," Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, vol. 24:1 (May, 2002), pp. 5-28.
So what's going on here? What TYR seems to be doing is stripping völkisch ideology of its explicitly anti-Semitic and nationalistic content and spinning it as a religion of nature. One is tempted to say the ideology has been updated to the 21st century, but it's probably not sensible to speak of an updated antimodernism. This is a 19th century worldview to its core, and if its adherents hope it will ultimately lead to something different and better than it did last time around, they bear some burden of explaining how it might do so. (The frequent allusions of mainstream Deep Ecologists to the need to implement their program via a rigidly authoritarian regime capable of overriding any inconvenient concerns for personal rights or liberties in the interests of planetary harmony are not encouraging in this regard.) Such an explanation is not forthcoming in this initial volume of TYR, although the editors may plan to elucidate on that point in future issues.
Stephen Edred Flowers does little to resolve these concerns in his lead essay, "The Idea of Integral Culture: A Model for a Revolt Against the Modern World." Flowers' antimodernism is comprehensive: he is against atomized individualism, the Enlightenment, reason, rootlessness, freedom (in its modern sense) and individual rights. What he advocates is an "integral" or organic culture marked by a harmonization of four cultural categories: ethnic, ethical, linguistic, and material culture. None of this is new, but Flowers has not gone out of his way to identify his sources. He includes no footnotes or bibliography, offering only a few vague references to the sources he draws on. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Fitche, and Herder echo fairly distinctly through these pages, but other muffled voices may be heard (or imagined?) in particular turns of phrase. Flowers' circumspection as to the intellectual origins of his argument may well have been intentional a reminder that these insights must spring from the blood, rather than the intellect. Or perhaps he thought his sources to be obvious. In any case, I have an inherent skepticism of anyone who tells me "true" freedom really means subordinating the "appetites" of the individual to the "eternal good" of the social collective, unless he can explain how this means something different than when the same sort of words were uttered by Stalin, or Himmler, or Pol Pot.
TYR editor Colin Cleary follows Flowers with a somewhat more explicit dose of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Evola. His topic is "Knowing the Gods," and his conclusion -- that openness to the gods requires acceptance of the fact that their existence transcends our power of explanation -- seem unexceptionable, perhaps even obvious. However, he chooses to get there by arguing that recovering a lost openness to the being of things requires the rejection of modernity, and specifically of "modern humanism." Like Flowers, Cleary has little but contempt for such artifacts of the Enlightenment as individual rights and reliance on reason. Perhaps more surprisingly, he also finds that we cut ourselves off from the gods by our exercise of individual Will. Cleary sees the "modern humanist project" as an expression of infantile, self-regarding Will, but it would be simpler to just identify it with Ludwig von Mises' fundamental axiom: Man acts. All purposive human behavior, in ancient times no less than in the modern era, has been motivated by individuals seeking to improve their perceived well-being by imposing their Will on their environment, both cultural and natural. Why does such behavior close us off from the gods now, but not previously? Whenever Cleary confronts this difficulty he seems to back off, qualifying his thesis to the effect that it is only the complete elevation of man to the status of supreme being -- "the cancellation of all limits on man" -- that closes us off from the gods. The problem with that move, of course, is that it's hard to find examples of anyone who actually elevates the individual Will to such an extreme. The only obvious candidate is Ayn Rand and in fact Cleary offers a passage from The Fountainhead early on to illustrate the antithesis of his position. But saying Objectivists have closed themselves off from the gods does not really require a very keen insight; yet Cleary avoids adopting a sliding-scale argument, so he's not saying exercising little bit of Will closes you off from the gods a little, while exercising a lot of it closes you off completely. One gets the feeling Cleary's unsatisfying engagement with the problem of Will was just a diversion from what he really wanted to write about, which was to castigate modernity in general. This impression is solidified by his rather abrupt segue into practical recommendations aimed at eliminating our reliance on technology and increasing our daily contact with nature in order to facilitate the reestablishment of openness to the divine.
Not all of TYR reads like this, but after the first 40 pages it's questionable if anyone but die-hard antimodernists will still be turning the leaves. Which is a shame, because there is much of interest here even for those who do not resonate to the antimodernist project or to Deep Ecology or the Unabomber, for that matter.
Steve Pollington contributes a very nice piece on the changing role of Òðinn/Woden over time, and Nigel Pennick offers an informative essay on the central European goddess, Zisa. Markus Wolff checks in with both a biographical sketch on the völkisch writer, Hermann Löns, and an original translation of one of Löns' poems. There is the first English translation of an interview with Georges Dumézil from the 1970s, and a 2001 interview with the musician and heathen publisher, Ian Read. Annabel Lee and Michael Moynihan are represented by insightful examinations of the sacred aspects of mountains and the Nibelungenlied, respectively. The issue is rounded out with a biographical sketch on Julius Evola, a critique of the 1960s television series, The Prisoner (interpreting it as an indictment of individualism), another piece by Pennick on "spiritual arts and crafts," and some 90 pages of book and music reviews.
Although I have some issues with much of the content of TYR, ultimately I have to return to my original comments: these guys have produced a quality product that fills an important, heretofore empty niche in the American market for scholarly or quasi-scholarly literature. For any who find TYR objectionable, the proper response is obvious: let's see what you can do. I would like nothing better than to see TYR prompt the founding of a whole cluster of Asatru-related journals, elevating the religion's intellectual manifestation beyond the amateur newsletters and general-circulation magazines that have existed up till now. In that sense, the appearance of this volume can be regarded as a thrown gauntlet. Let those who think our scholarly literature should take a different direction pick it up if they dare.
Rorik Radford
<rorik@yolo.com>