Ode to Namantius

Namantius I understand. I finally understand you, your kind and ilk. Pro patria et familia, Gloria et in secula et seculorum! Namantius: breathe across the span of your forgotten grave and lend me your strength! You who saw the glory of the Eternal City, who felt the pulse of the Pagan heart in your chest, may you and all your kind breathe life into our limbs! You who heralded the ancestors as the bridge to the Gods, let us do as Romans did! Let us see glory as you would have us see, harden our resolve, and sharpen the spears of insight that we might pierce the heart of ignorance.

Let that blood be oblation enough for now, as we call upon our ancestors and bridge the gaps in the chain of being. Let us pray on our feet and see our labours as offerings to the Gods of Glory. Let our hands work their might upon the Earth, let our tongues usher in their language that the minds of man again might understand. What is gone is never lost, for all that is, is as it ever was – the eternal city, the eternal return, the eternal now.

Namantius, I understand you. I feel and empathise. I see the glories, and I have seen them fade. Yet again, who am I to judge? One who sees. Obligated by duty to realise, to realise what gifts I have been given. There comes a time to end your questioning, there comes a time to begin your living. For the trial of the questioner is and shall always be to define the answer. Who better than dead philosophers and poets to understand the travails of wisdom sought? One way or another, death is an answer, but the greater of these was life. Life itself and those who serve life.

Namantius: lend us your spirit, that we may move our brothers with words so crafted. Let us inspire and revitalise, that glory again can breathe – freed from her bondage, the gag ripped from her mouth, let Gloria unchained invite her eldest sister into the fray: Dignitas, Dignity – we seek you, too. For too long the sacred cornerstones of honour have been raped and bled by the recalcitrance of masses. For too long the Goddesses have been spat on out of hand, maligned at the hands of unwelcome suitors from lands that could never understand. Virtus, Dignitas, Fidelitas, Auctoritas – Gloria, like Mousa and Moirai, like Nornir and Fylgjur, should be handles as lovers are in steadfast hands for these are what made our people great. Cornerstones to the temple, built to honour, must never be betrayed.

More than archetype, more than theory – we seek the restoration of what was known as right. Unconcerned with the ill counsel of our appointed sages, let us hearken in a better age. Virtus, Auctoritas, Dignitas, Fidelitas – Gloria. Virtue, Authority, Dignity and Faith shall lead us to glory. Cornerstones to an everlasting church, hallmarks to an unmourned Aryan Spirit. Let us see, Namantius, for I know and have faith that were you to rise again and stand with us that you and all your kin would see our cause is just.

When days are long and nights are short, a man forgets the sun. Shackled by dwarven cord hewn in bureaucracy, we labour under the Golden Sun, having forgotten the sky. Inheritors of a proud legacy, inherited by a lie. We have forgotten you, mighty men of old: you Sons of God who went with daughters of Earth to make the heroes of our songs. We have forgotten you, Gods of our Race. We have forgotten ourselves, Gods of our Blood. From Shrine to Laré, the holy of holies is silent, silently watching. Waiting.

Sparta’s glory dimly lit the distant mountains, Athens’ wisdom lifted the fog that swallowed the foothills, Rome’s glory made straight the way of the Lord, the thousand year empire of Magna Germania crumbled in a day. Prophets foretold the fall of greatness, yet the peasant never fell. Greatness was never meant for him, but it always fell to his hands. The age of heroes is over, but nothing that dies is ever gone. Here we are, the peasants of the new day have inherited the Sun. Some see the Golden Sun, some look deeper, they stare into the sky until their vision fades to black.

Somewhere in the æther, the Black Sun pulses. Yet we, we do not see it. Not even the chosen few who claim it. Ours is a Sun that neither rises nor sets, ours is a Sun that speaks from ancient languages now forgotten. Greeks knew but could not see, Romans heard but could not understand, and the last of all that one would expect tried to take the reins. We have been told that they all failed, but this is a lie, one of many. Their blood flowed into us, as it flowed into the earth before. As we rise from the Earth in the beginning to return there in the end, nothing has been lost – only states of matter have been changed. Our soul carries on, the Black Sun shines. Reality is a veil, truth is deep.

The Black Sun is the space between. In the scheme of all things it is the unseen that gives credence to the seen. The Golden Sun bears the weight of glory, the Golden Sun brings life. Who watches the watchers, and who breathes life to the lifegivers? Lif and Lifthrasir were so named in the Nordic Ragnarök. Life and life’s servant escaped into Mimir’s Holt as the fires washed overhead. So named because they carried the seed. When all the Earth had failed, they returned to the forest, the forest which gave our Race our breath and colour and good hew.

Do you know? Do you recall the way in which it was read? Odin, Vili and Ve, or if you like, Woden, Wili and Weh brought life to primitive man. We were like clay in the hands of a sculptor. Woden gave breath, Wili gave mind and Weh gave good colour. It is the life of the Gods that enforces the actions of Man. As the Black Sun illumines the Gold, so do the Gods inform the Men. In the beginning of things man was named for the trees, and in the end, he had become life itself – worthy to succeed Ragnarök, the Kali Yuga. We rise, we grow – evolve. Not as some mindless mechanism devised in brilliance but stolen by Epimetheus as an altarpiece to alien faith.

`You should know when it seizes you. Alone, you will feel it in your neck, the howling of animals: not a joyful noise, but a frustrated roar. A silent scream that gives shape to all that follows. Your body, your essence, like gold, stands on the precipice of the forge. Every muscle in your body tenses and brims with the strength you have given it. The abyss you have looked into has deigned look back, but you, oh you, what shall you do? Overwhelmed by the magnanimity of choice, of freedom, of will, the will to power and the power of will – you lose that freedom. You can feel the breath of the Gods, the promise of another world that by right is yours. Your inheritance, your treasure – all the gold in Andvari’s hoard could never hold you back from this. You taste it, you smell it, and if you close your eyes, you might also see.

If you were to throw yourself into the forge, you don’t know what would come out. When the Great Sage Väinämöinen saw the great smith Lemmikainen tear ore from the three daughters of Earth, did he know the horrors that Iron would yield? A fearsome God this force had made, and odes were sung to his terror. The Finns, they knew and heard, and they began to see and tried to understand. Animate in all, the world breathes as one, but there was always a light apart.

Silent, omnipresent, source of all splendour – the Black Sun shines but none can see the light. Science is a prophet for our time, complete with her own truths and lies, yet she could say much. And so it goes with the philosopher’s riddle: the scientist climbs the mountain of glory to find that the theologian had been there all along.

Wheels turn inside wheels and songs erupt from poetry, poems exist in verse and verse is found in motion, motion gives us life, and life shall offer death. With all the power in our blood and bones, let us drive the devils and battle daemons. Away with malaise, with the ill counsel of nihilism – whispers of serpent’s brood like rotten spit coats our inner ears. Let us cast away the prayer shawls of the alien and look to the forge.

Alien voices have told us that our myths, our customs, our past is a void. That is the lie. The lie we have been induced to believe is that if we take the leap of faith and seize our birthright, that we shall be disappointed. We shall find nothing there if we leave the decadence of modernity. This is the void, and it looks back – full of promise.

It is empty, so goes the lie. A void, abyss, the accidental Prophet Nietzsche called it: but his void is our forge. The abyss looks back, it is never empty. Fear has gripped us, held us back. But for every fear, our Gods have supplied an answer. Ginunngagap was empty, the yawning void. Nothingness is nothing more than potential unrealised. Out of the Nothingness of the Beginning sprang Everything. Nothingness is a lie, what stands in its place is the power and potential to begin anew. In the beginning, Ginunngagap gave us a solar system – nine worlds, and while the fires of Ragnarök scourged the world of men – what can be said of the other realities? In passing away, new life is begotten. Wheels within wheels, subliminal motion on wavelengths too multitudinous to comprehend. Life is beauty in motion, sublime in comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, bravery and failure. The servants of life seek the best of this axiomatic proposition and usher evolution in, the enemy of life reviles their effort and clings to vapid concepts as ‘silliness’, he scorns and scoffs but makes nothing. Indeed this is because he is nothing more than a cut below, less than a man, the half men of the oldest myths. The chthonic enslaving the celestial.

So the wheels within wheels turned, the rotation of ages inside epochs, the subliminal verses of destruction inside creation. All overshadowed by the truth that BEING marches on. Yet even the new is shaped by the old, for those with eyes, let them see, and those with ears, let us hear. Khaos was ordered, Ginunngagap was sculpted. Life is the painted canvas upon which our will is exercised. Always changing, always shifting. All a part of a broader whole, Wyrd, destiny, life itself, a unity of being, a chain of existence. Holistic, beautiful.

No matter the state of decay, we carry our Gods inside us. Archetypes, and more than that, a solid truth that speaks to Nature’s transcendent being. Becoming, being, fading – triplicated in the eternal tension that springs reality. We embody the insight to make something of it, the everlasting promise of every God – the power to seek, ennoble, enlighten. We begin as empty vessels, empty as a lie, and are filled with glory: at first by breath of Gods, and then by force of Destiny (Wyrd), and at the last by Force of Will. At the end, we see, as fire haunts the iron forests, that we are life and the layers peel away.

Infinite complexities can be reduced, and at the centre is the nothingness we have sought – the Black Sun that neither rises nor falls, absolute being, existence. Infinitely mutable, yet remarkably stable. Surface layers peel away, Hamingja and Fylgjur – we see the Nornir move, we feel the pull of Wyrd. The unseen strings of being, force in action, levers.

If we will it, there shall be more. So it went with Prometheus, our saint and hero, stealing fire from jealous Zeus. Before the man was an animal, by the God he sought wisdom. So it went with Odin who stole the mead of poetry, from whose flight the poetaster’s portion comes. Trails and breadcrumbs, whispers and snippets for the patient, for the faithful – for those with strength of heart to cast away the nihilism of the age and realise that this too is a holy lie designed to keep us in our place. A lie told by the priests of a hostile alien god, the true god of the abyss.

Like the men of old, before they were mighty, the mortals enslaved by the Babylonian devil Gods of the Enuma Elish we must realise at last our destiny is to grow, to follow in the godly footsteps, or die. For now we are slaves, half men who must seek Prometheus and Woden. We have seen death all around us in the states of decay, shattered ambition and unrequited apathy. The slavery has been that we have drank the draught of our own free will and believed the lie that we had no choice. We were slaves because we chose not to see. We decided we were above such things, we believed the lie that the divinity in us was “silly.” We believed that seeking higher things was the purview of children, that God and Gods, transcendence and glory were the tools of the ignorant. We were slaves because we were compelled to turn this lie into truth. The divine mandate is there, we make the kingdom of heaven on earth. So above, so below. Our Gods left their maps in the stars, and our ancestors built this world along their borders and so it went until the way was forgotten. Our faith is in the nature our Gods have given us, the power to transcend boundaries, to establish new realities. To seize and channel nature’s glory, to live in accordance with life itself. Everything we have done has followed this drive. And this, this was borne of ignorance! Impulse imbued with the gifts of the first of all trinities! A gift was perverted, and a glory inverted has inherited us, as we have bartered our inheritance. But nothing that is lost is ever gone, where nothingness is a lie, hope must become a truth, and will must become a duty.

So let us pray. Let us seek our ancestors, reconnect the chain. Namantius, last of the Roman Pagans, spiritual fathers to the physical world, the last man of an era: be a guide post. Like a beacon in the storm, guide us back, see us through as we reconnect the chain. Let us hear the song of the Muses once again, steer free of the Siren’s course and follow the beck of the Nornir as they with the Moirai point to the Gods of our kind, in whose image we were made, in whose likeness we have harnessed gifts that they themselves had prized. Let us be what we are, as we are, meant to be.