Doom Laden

Julian Cope: Odin's Ode

"Rock 'n' roll is a perfect Odinist form, because it's so motivated by the female, it has that element of cross-dressing, and yet it's totally fierce."

[Julian Cope interview, The Wire #309 November 2009 p. 44]

"Being an Odinist is being a fierce warrior poet, because Odin gave his name to the ode ...

"Being an Odinist is being singular, but knowing that you're enacting a thing that is the law because tradition deems it the law - therefore it can't change..."

"Odin is a blood brother of Loki. Loki's often called the trickster, but he's far more extreme. And in the Lokasenna, where Loki goes off on one in the mead hall, he accuses odin of practising female magic, dressing like a woman and acting like a woman. And Odin hushes him up very quickly..."

"We're lucky that Norse myths haven't been picked clean by the scholars, because there's too much of the lager lout in them ...

"The Odin of the Norse myths is fierce, singular, poetic and has a really rich female side. That's why I think rock 'n' roll is perfectly placed as an Odinist form ..."

[ib. p. 45]

As well as the Eddas, Julian recommends Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship, First Lecture - The Hero as divinity: Odin.

 

"You need someone to validate the locality."

[ib. p. 40]

"We play Folk with an umlaut over the 'O'."

[ib. p. 45]

  "For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe; given assurance to them of their own destiny there? By him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, melodious by him; he first has made Life alive!
"We may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there.
In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world!"
[Carlyle ib.]

Thomas Carlyle

***

Winter Solace

No more than a single thimble full,

I drank from the flow of mighty Fimbulthul,

Yet, soon the world of men did disappear,

Replaced by a thousand blazing worlds so rare,

That, in my greed, my need to habit them all,

My consciousness ascended so -

Never again to fall.

[Julian Cope, The Mead of Fimbulthul 2009]

http://www.braindonor.org/

Cope's Brain Donor music is drenched in wet weather - just as 'Black Sabbath' opens with the sound of a rainstorm, so do Brain Donor records. Even more so the torrential rain persists on Drain'd Boner's first track - we are outside - Sitting-Out - magic needs to be done outside.
Like the seething Siedhr Magic of the Norse, usually practiced by hedge-witches ... and by Odin too!

Think of Blue Cheer's Inside-Outside.

The First Doom Metal Power Trio

***

Greek Origins of Doom Metal

Back to Bacchus

It is said that Doom Metal begins with Black Sabbath's eponymous first album.

Surely Doom Metal begins - as song - with the Doors 'The End'.

Therefore, Doom Metal commences amongst the Chthonic gods of the Greeks.

***

Doom Ring

Julian Cope takes it back to the Doomsday Book:

"One of the reasons I got obsessed with Doom Music was because a heavy study of Doom is part of my book of the ancient law. As in the idea of free-dom, king-dom, 'dom' and 'doom' was always to do with judgement.

"So Doomsday Book didn't originally mean we were all going to kill ourselves - it means you are going to meet your judgement. It's a ledger, and we're going to put in everything that you own. Which is why in Moscow the judgement seat is still called the Duma; in Iceland they don't kill people at Doom Rings, they judge people at Doom Rings. If you go to the centre of the Orkneys - again controlled by Northern Tribes - right at the centre of the island is a loch, Loch Dooming, and that's where they used to sit and make their judgements."

[ib. pp. 45-6]

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/

Julian Cope
Striding Out

***

A Fierce Odinism

A wild, mad

stillness and

solitude.

A belligerent

watching and

waiting.

***

Odin's Runes

Runes dyed deep red by Odin

[Havamal 80]

***

Justification for the 'Race Soul'

Harrison [Themis p. 471-2] suggests that the 'soul' was originally a collective concept, rather than an individual one.

***

Race Fate

For Nietzsche, race is a kind of a fate, a destiny.

'Biology is destiny', said Freud.

But there is more to destiny than biology.

***

White's White

"In the white orbit of a sword."

[Ted Hughes The Ancient Heroes 1957]

'White' is a curiously non-racial race term - and appropriately so in view of what I am going to say.

Whites today rarely 'race' themselves, although still 'race' the Other - although this on the basis of self-deprecation.

Therefore Whites today are de-race-inated and regard themselves as only 'human'.

Whites have killed off their Race-Soul ... their God.

As Nietzsche says, the slave is he who is without Race.

Race-less-ness is the mark of the Chandala.

Race-consciousness is the mark of the Aryan.

Thought creates the Race.

And the Race is the God.
Odinson.

***

The Down-Going

The loss of race-consciousness amongst European Aryans is a recent thing.

The first step for any kind of European cultural renaissance is the re-assertion of this consciousness. Perhaps they will have to pass through the underdoggery of absolute racial-nihilism before they can re-emerge.

***

Inwit

The question is not one of 'nationalism', but one of consciousness.

***

God's Shadow

"There is no god but Death."

[Ferlinghetti Assassination Raga 1968]

He is dead, but He still casts a shadow.

Such is the atavism of God.

***

Dead Gods

The Hidden God

The Strange God

The Unknown God

The Dead Pan

A Desert of

Dry

God

Bones

***

Death Smiles

I carressed Dionysos ...

Draw your picture of Dionysos, from Mad God to Mahayanian Void

***
^^^
annointed
Dionysos

naked, alone

Grey eye

lake

glistening

marmoreal

pork

The death-ravished slab; death-birds circle

cross-nailed

Christ's dove

Wine

 pain

numb

empty

still-

-ness

Im-

-per-

-cep-

-ti-

-ble

de-

-cay

..

.

Then I took up the Runes ... Screaming!

***

The Dionysian Danger

Southwell [A Beginner's Guide to BGE p.5] makes the point that Nietzsche championed the Dionysian as he felt that he lived in an overtly Apollonian age and therefore desired to bring them back into balance. Orage entitled one of his books on Nietzsche 'The Dionysian Age' [1911] suggesting that the turn of the 20th century was such an age. Were we today to be living in a Dionysian Age would we then - even as Nietzscheans - desire the Apolline?

Today, we are in the middle of a debased Dionysian maelstrom that is the death of Aryan culture.

The only hope is to re-affirm
the Apolline,
the White,
the Aryan.

***

Dionysian Transformations

The importance of Dionysos is that his worship becomes theatre, becomes art, becomes philosophy ...

***

Disease called 'Man'

Music, poetry, song, theatre, philosophy,

are all forms of madness utilised by the sane.

Why madness?

Because man is a disease - even the sanest man is a specimen of this disease.

Madness is a symptom of this disease as well as being its cure.

It destroys in order to cure.

Saying a poem, humming a tune, chanting a phrase - are all mild forms of madness, and attempts at a self-cure of the disease called 'humanity'.

***

The Mystic Nietzsche

Being the Moon to your Sun

Remaining Eternally True to the Earth-Sense

***

A Hammer, Not a Mirror

Looking at Crivelli - the other-worldly realism - colour and line - a dream more real than any awakening - no debased muddy colour that creeps into art later. This produces wonder ...   *** rolling in generation on the flowery couch as on a bank in Arden - [Ginsberg An Asphodel 1953] *** The mind works over long periods of rumination. Going in and out. 'A thinker thinks only one thing' - for this reason: he dwells his whole life-long on the question; gathering ... *** The Strong Man is both ridiculously outspoken and determinedly censorious according to his own Will. *** Philosophy begins with a sense of wonder says the ancient one. Does it seek to wonder at this one ad infinitum? Bafflement - wonder-monger We want to dwell in the wonderment, to expand it, deepen it, heighten it: we do not want to 'explain it away'. Philosophy wants to increase and to add to this sense of wonder. Astonish me! *** "Music for me is a very Godly thing ... "My musical outlets are pagan ... "It's the Earth that's important ... "And from the skies comes your inspiration ..." [Marc Bolan 1968]   *** 'Socrates, practise music' Absolute Music produces pure wonder ... It strains all whys and wherefores ... The most 'abstract' of the arts, it is said. Hence the music of the spheres, music as pure Schopenhauerian Will. 'Music gives wings to thought'. Scruton says there has been no philosophy of music [disregarding Schopenhauer and Wagner!?] Music is the matter of philosophy ... Silence: does 'silence' exist? Or is silence non-existence? Is 'sound' ubiquitous? The antithesis is noise/music; music is sound that is not noise. Tacit "The goal of the raga is to create a trance-like state, to project a mood of ecstasy ..." [Indian Classical Music] ***   "Music is the very depths of my being ,,, "Music just is, it's fundamental ... "Your soul sings its song ... whether you are aware of it or not ... "Who really plays?.. "My own personal experience is that 'someone else' - other than me - is the real player, and when I step away and let him take over then I'm just a witness ... "This someone else is ultimately God ... "We are all musicians but there's really only one musician and that's God and he sings through us ... "I believe in reincarnation ... "Some of us have been musicians before ... "When we're playing we're expressing the truth of our own being ... "The most important thing for any musician is to get the music of the inner world into the outer world ..." [Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, 1970]   McLaughlin's primary spiritual influences:   Karen Armstrong [especially Islam and Sufi] Carlos Castenada [Don Juan/Don Gennaro] Tao [The way of Chuang Tzu, trans. Fr Merton] Zen writings of D.T. Suzuki/Alan Watts Douglas Edison Harding [philosopher of Consciousness/Universe] Aldous Huxley [on religion and politics] Chan poetry[from China from the 6th to the 17th centuries] Ramana Maharshi Sri Ramakrishna Fritjof Capra [The Tao of Physics] Between 1970-5 McLaughlin was a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. *** NOBILIS - Known, noted, famous, notorious; noble, high-born; excellent. Latin (g)nobilis, from *gno-, know Aryan root *gn- That which is 'known' in the superlative sense.   *** The tactician looks at the immediate situation - at his immediate sphere of influence. The strategist looks at 'the bigger picture' - at the long term. The former, then, goes for the periphery to the centre, while the latter does the opposite. The former looks at the closest things, the latter at the farthest. But in both cases, to get too emotionally involved presents difficulties. One cannot be a good tactician or a good strategist if one is over-emotional. Because as Greene says, emotions *distort*. They may, in some cases, distort in a 'good' way; but distort they do. Yes - distortion can be pleasing; reality in its undistorted state may be unpalatable. But for the tactician or strategist he can work efficiently only if things are undistorted. *** "Art is not a mirror - It is a hammer!" [John Grierson] *** Emotions are a disease - but imaginations are health *** "Hopefully we shall one day also achieve a pure European race and culture." [Nietzsche D 272] *** Take Nietzsche's declaration that he "is a disciple of the philosopher Dionysos" seriously. *** "All art must stamp the mark of beauty on its work ... "Every correct and natural thing is beautiful ..." [Adolf Hitler 1938] *** The Dionysian fills the pot with wine, drinks to the lees [sediment], then smashes the pot to smithereens - where is the empty pot then? *** "In religious matters Europe has not yet attained to the free-minded naivety of the ancient Brahmins." [Nietzsche D 96] *** Divination as a form of 'Peak Experience'. Jung's 'synchronicity' *** Colin Wilson's Outsider Sequence: The Outsider 1956 Religion and the Rebel 1957 The Age of Defeat 1959 The Strength to Dream 1962 Origins of the Sexual Impulse 1963 Beyond the Outsider 1965 The New Existentialism 1966 Wilson says that all Western Philosophy has been largely pessimistic, from the Greeks onwards. Rare exceptions are Hegel and most prominently, Nietzsche. He says that Nietzsche was probably the greatest philosopher who ever lived. Wilson then proposes an affirmative existentialism, and by implication, an affirmative romanticism. And that the argument against the latter - that it is brooding, negative, etc., can be overcome. Of course, the early romantics were tragic figures for the reasons Wilson gives. But the modern romantics can now overcome their pessimism, their death-drive. And we can now claw back the romantic positives, such as the belief in unique inner realms, the private self and the genius. If we are all unique as the romantic evaluation has it, then it becomes a moral imperative that the private self be protected. Levelling is destructive to that evolutionary urge towards individuality and private realms. The struggle for privacy on all levels is a noble. Nietzschean Solitude, the school of genius. *** ***  Dionysian Aphorisms "Dionysos, as is well known, is also the God of Darkness." [Nietzsche EH p. 79] Compare Dionysos and Wotan from the perspectives of Nietzsche and Jung Dionysos as a model for Wotan Nietzsche's Dionysos and Wagner's Wotan. After treating the Dionysian in the metaphysical and aesthetic realms in BT, Nietzsche goes on to treat it in the ethical and psychological realms. In the ethical everything is permitted - this is because the Dionysian is the Primal Unity - the Totality. In psychological terms the Dionysian affirms everything: the Dionysian man has the psychology of the Yea-Sayer - he says 'Yes' to everything in life - amor fati - So he shifts from the metaphysical to the psychological [he persists in the aesthetic, and the ethical is immoral: the Dionysian is beyond good and bad. And here we should note that the Dionysian is not noble. He is pre-noble, pre-Aryan. The Apollonian introduces Aryan blood. Nietzsche's use of Dionysos strikes us in two ways: 1) it chimes with Nietzsche's own personal life [his female-dominated up-bringing, life-long entanglement with sister and mother] [a triangle he invents of Theseus/Ariadne/Dionysos - i.e., Wagner/Cosima/Self] 2) as Jung points out, the rather un-Dionysian features of his Dionysianism which more resembles Wotan. Bertram makes much of this, showing how Nietzsche ultimately blends the Apollonian version he creates of Goethe with Dionysos. Otto's book on Dionysos appeared in 1933-4. At the end of section I he says "our chosen leaders must no longer be petty men of limited vision from whom we have previously taken our orientation, but the greatest intellects." [p. 46] !933-45 Otto was at the Nietzsche Archive which headed from 1935. He was also associated with Heidegger in the 1930s. Otto castigates Rhode for comparing the Dionysian with the shamanic (1925) For Otto it is madness that characterises Dionysos: his followers may become mad like him, but he is mad. Dionysos is the principle of madness. *** To Otto Dionysos is not only the god of madness, he is also the god of Duality. ***   Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you. [Hölderlin] *** "We believe that it is now possible to derive from the actual evidence in the world some idea of the pattern of God." [Oswald Mosley The Alternative 1947] *** A thinker, a poet, an artist etc. can only go to the Classical sources if he wants to enrich his mind. But do we want to 'enrich the mind'? *** Viking mail shirts - the slightly larger mail neck ring sometimes had runes hammered into it - usually the 'F' rune: a circle of them. The edges of the mail coat were gilded to prevent rust from sweat etc., A viking era sword will not stay still in the swordsman's hand - it quivers like a dowser. Runes for protection etc. - whole villages would make the mail coats - massive outlay of work hours and technical craftsmanship. "Auden asked me what I thought of Tolkien. I said I thought The Lord of the Rings was one of the great novels of the 20th Century and that i had read it twice." [Wilson  2004 p. 245] "Tolkien's LOTR bubbles with peak experience." [Wilson 2001 p. 28] *** Runes and Master Morality *** The criminal and the artist. Dissonance rather than Harmony: That's what excites the Beast. *** "Anarchy leads to perfect discipline." [McClure] *** A pagan Beowulf? *** Life is lived forwards - to think forwards you throw everything towards the future; but the future is *now* *** "Breton said about poetry, that its dreaming with your eyes open." [Jeremy Reed 2006] *** A Dionysian Culture Music and dance - spontaneous and authentic utterance: improvisational unique - one-off of the pure moment. Such a Culture rejects all 'recording'. Socrates refused to write down his philosophy as he thought that this would kill his ideas. In this at least he was Dionysian. The Dionysian body is always in spontaneous movement. The Apollonian impulse freezes the body into sculpture or line. The living moment captured on film is nothing but a hostage; a dead hostage incapable of envincing a ransom from the public. Nietzsche says that architecture is neither Dionysian nor Apollonian, but that it expresses the will to power. But surely the Dionysian man is a vagabond while the Apollonian is a city-dweller. The latter therefore creates architecture [but Nietzsche was thinking of architecture in the Grand Style, no doubt]. Film is the leading modern Apollonian art-form. It is completely disconnected from all Dionysian impulses. It is a mechanical simulacrum. And yet it is oddly ephemeral [a non-Apollonian feature, of course] and collective [a Dionysian feature]. And what of this? The Dionysian Collective! The throng of Orgiastic Bodies in close proximity. But is it only the kindred collective - not the anonymous collective of the city or the megapolis of the 'global village'. Music, vocal utterance - the ranting poet - dance, orgy - all these are vital, pure expressions amongst the kindred. All else is dilution. Recording music wrenches it out of the moment and is a kind of aesthetic necrophilia - film takes this to the nth degree with its phantoms of sound and vision. The dream is only remembered and so is the most primal form of this Apolline dilution of experience and a recording - Intoxication is of the Moment and experienced there and then. It is followed by Oblivion: it is therefore Dionysian. Writing down one's thoughts immediately is Dionysian, but the reading back is Apollonian - The Dionysian is Illiterate. *** The sexual ambiguity of Dionysos. The modern 's/he' seems to fit well. *** "Poet is priest". [Ginsberg 1967] *** Intoxication must be handled very carefully. Only a god can afford to be entirely intoxicated - but we who are not gods, but only worshippers of the gods, cannot. The drunken are hubristic. Worshippers are sober in their imitations of the gods: thus they show the deities reverence and respect. Those that ignore this are taken into Hel very quickly leaving only their mouldering monuments here on this middle-earth. Such are sacrifices to the gods. The heroes of tragedy. The old sage nods his head. The will of youth is thus a tragic one. *** Dionysos, the Mad God. 'Mad', from Anglo-Saxon ge-maed, ge-maad ... Old Saxon ge-med, foolish; Icelandic meidha, to maim, hurt; Gothic ga-maids, maimed ... The original sense seems to be 'severly injured'." [Skeat p.264] "Madness as the term of denegration used by the herd against the genius." [Harsh Reality p. 23] Genius or madman ... the excess of consciousness as a form of madness ... *** "All that I ma converges in black riffs, in black riffs. I raise my hand to the dark woman. I cry stop! to the deep repetitions ..." [McClure 1969] *** Universalising, levelling etc., shouldn't be confused with the ability to achieve a 'bird's eye' consciousness - i.e. where one can grasp 'everything' in one swoop. Usually we use a blinkered consciousness - and sometimes even a 'worm's eye' consciousness. The latter is necessary when we need to comcentrate on something particular. Problem is, when we rarely go beyond this and the blinkered sort. This 'bird's eye' view [cf.WM 1004] is what Nietzsche describes as viewing from a great height. This is god-like perception, and has nothing to do with universalising or self-negating - it is just as intentional as any other perception. All these 'modes' of perception are of course false. One cannot expect perception to give us the truth. They are necessary modes of interpretation. *** Wilson's intentionality. The thing is, we all have different intentions and perspectives. Why would we want to see the world as total bliss? Why not see it as total pain? To Schopenhauer it is pain that is positive: bliss is a mere temporary respite from pain. And this is why the peak experience is momentary and elusive - it only comes when it wants to come because pain is the all-powerful. Pain provides respite when it wants to. The negative outlook then is the most realistic and the most powerful. Just as death is more powerful than life ... Concetrate on death and pain if thou would know the truth. *** So if the world for us is our own representation, our intention, then madness presents us with a particular problem which the ancient solved by distinguishing between madness as disease and madness as divine. But they didn't see things as 'intentional'. Rather, in both cases one was possessed by a divinity. One could say that one's intentions depend on the divinity which possesses one. One can try to worship a divinity of one's choosing in order to alter the state of possession. So intentionality is really the same concept, but without the [seemingly] superfluous content of the divine.  ***   Absolute Affirmation. For Nietzsche's philosophy, 'affirmation' is a better word than 'optimism' [as an antonym to 'pessimism']. He doesn't think 'the best' of everything, he rather affirms everything - is this the same thing? Affirmative/Negative Negation as Nihilism. Affirmation is meant to affirm everything in life, good, bad and indifferent. But how can a view which sees the will to power as fundamental be 'optimistic'? War is the eternal condition. The basis is still pessimisitc a la Schopenhauer; but the response is different: it says Yes rather than No. To this world of suffering Schopenhauer responds with denial of this life, while Nietzsche responds with affirming this life: but this is still pretty grim. There is no utopian programme to change the world etc. *** Pessimising. Pessimism - Schopenhauer, Gobineau, Darwin, Goeth, Byron, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Wagner, Hitler, Rosenberg, Pound, Morrison, Redbeard, Crowley, Spare, Boyd Rice, Savitri Devi, Revilo Oliver, Spengler etc., - all pessimists who are yet able to create. In general, the Ancient Greeks, the Germans of the "old stamp" [cf. 'Daybreak' Preface]. The Romans of the imperious days who found the Greeks too effeminate - Elizabethan pessimists - This is important: everywhere one looks in these key areas/periods of culture one seeks out the pessimists. One seeks out those who reject any kind of complacency; One seeks out those who will have no truck with morality: Those who always think the worst - those who always prepare for the flood. Camus' absurd is just another form of pessimism which has that element of irony found in all good pessimism. If life is the worst thing, and it would better to be dead, then why go on living? Especially if there is no hope of an after-life. If all there is is this, and this is the worst of all possible worlds - why go on? And to go on creating etc. What?! Schopenhauer is the model here, pessimising at a well-stocked table. But what is it that makes the pessimist so productive? Clearly, they love pessimising. All that is against the ideal; All that shuns the light; All that thinks the worst - this is beloved. Only here does one kind of man, one kind of race, think clearly. This is why the pessimist lives - he can only live under these existential conditions. He is only happy when pessimising. Pessimism as a severe test of strength: to live under such conditions - to court depression and the suicidal [hence Camus' obsession with suicide in 'Sisyphus']. This is Nietzsche's 'absolute affirmation';- saying 'Yes' even to the deepest pessimistic thoughts. To 'Deny with Joy' - this is the formula of Germanic Pessimism, which Nietzsche took further than Schopenhauer as Hitler rightly noted.