On the Syncretic System I've Created Between Thelema and Asatru. Part One: My Spiritual Journey

In the last several decades we’ve seen a revival of the Indo-European Pagan Traditions in the West.  This is happening in both Europe and America and is manifesting itself in several currents.  These include, Thelema, Asàtru, “Wicca,” the Celtic religion, and Druidism along with a handful of people practicing the Hellenistic Traditions.  Also, there has been an influx of Hindu migration into the West which is also part of the Pagan Revival as the Hindu religion shares a primordial source with other Indo-European Traditions.  This revival has become a formidable spiritual force as the West and the main religion of the West, Christianity, declines.  The invasion of Islam, the most virulent and destructive of the Abrahamic religions, is another cause of the decline of the West.  It is imperative that the ancient European Traditions return, for religion and ethnicity are irrevocably intertwined.  This has been one of the main causes of the current crisis in the West as Christianity is a religion that is associated with the Jewish Messianic Tradition which is hostile to the European consciousness and has been a Foreign Installation for the last 2,000 years.

               My spiritual journey has been a long and circuitous one.  I was raised Lutheran, but moved on from this early on.  Throughout my childhood I questioned the theology of the church, especially the concept of Biblical literalism and creationism.  I’ve been a staunch evolutionist (although with opposing theories to the approved narrative) since I was 8 years old and was introduced to ancient proto-humans through books on evolution and paleontology given to me as a child.  As I left home for art school, I left the Christian religion behind and developed a hostility toward it.  I still appreciated certain aspects of it, but its core theology of Original Sin, Vicarious Atonement, and redemption did not make sense to me. 

While in college I looked Eastward and I discovered Taoism and took an interest in Mahayana and Pali Buddhism.  In these spiritual paths there was no external person or gods to pray to or ask forgiveness.  There was just the Universal Essence, but it was more abstract and less anthropomorphized.  In Mahayana Buddhism the concept of the Great Void made sense.  Everything had an emptiness to it, a non-reality.  This coincided with some of the quantum theory I was reading at the time.  

The Buddhist view worked for me at the time.   There was no “savior.”  You had to save yourself through mystical attainment.  Buddhism and Taoism required discipline and a complete reevaluation of my world-view.  In the West we view time as a series of linear events with a final resolution (Christ’s return.)  Even if we are not Christian, this thinking is so ingrained that it affects the entire population subconsciously.  What these Eastern Traditions revealed to me regarding time was that it was not linear.  It moved in cycles.  Also, there was no “predestination” but multiple destinies, different time frames.  In order to balance oneself in the Cycles of Time, one had to practice meditation and self-discipline in word and action.  This was much different than the Protestantism I was raised with, which was in essence a force of Anti-Tradition.  Most Christians in the modern West, especially in America, rarely embody the teachings of Christ, which were about asceticism and leaving your belongings and the material world behind.  The message of Christ called “The Way” was similar to that of Buddhism and many scholars of religion think that the ancient followers of this rabbi were influenced by Eastern thought.  Christians seemed to behave like atheist, bourgeois materialists six days a week and then repent on Sunday and then starting the process all over again.  Meditation and divination of course were explicitly verboten.  During art school I started using the I-Ching, and by understanding its elliptical nature and how the situations described in the hexagrams were applicable to moments of decision in one’s life, I found that the Tao was real and that by centering oneself in it, one could achieve real power.  I also began mediation very poorly and infrequently at the time, and even during this time of experimentation I felt that the Universe was guiding me.  This was much different than the theology of sin and punishment that I was raised with.  (Later on, I developed an appreciation of Gnostic Christianity and its conception of Sophia and its belief in reincarnation.)

In Taoism the Initiate is told to let the world form around him.  In the West, we follow the path of endless striving, always living in the future.  The Tao is the energy current that moves through all the Universe.  It is the essence of sign, coincidence, omen, and synchronicity guiding the consciousness of the Initiate.  Instead of flitting about and wasting energy, the Initiate allows these serendipitous moments of sign and coincidence to guide him on his path while he remains spiritually balanced.  Rene Guenon calls this way of viewing the world and life Intellectual Intuition.  These concepts are foreign to the modern West.

I was a Buddhist and Taoist for a number of years.  In 2004, I finally started reading Crowley, Blavatsky, Agrippa, Levi etc.  I had also taken a nascent interest in the Norse runes and a deeper interest in Greek and Roman philosophy.  In undergrad I read Plato and Aristotle along with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Descartes and the postmoderns along with libertarians like Camille Paglia.  This informed by burgeoning libertarian worldview   I had but I had not delved into Western Occultism as I associated the West still with Christianity and had not explored the Pagan Traditions other than various Neo-Folk, Metal, Goth, and Industrial music I was listening to. 

In 2005 I also discovered the writings of Julius Evola.  During this time, I decided to initiate myself into the Western Occult Tradition and became a Thelemite.  In 2007 I considered joining the O.T.O. while my wife and I lived in Los Angeles.  However, upon meeting members, I realized that this organization had devolved into dogma and spiritual exploration and experimentation was frowned upon.  They weren’t interested in writers such as Kenneth Grant or Evola so we decided not to join.

During this time, I’d taken two different Pagan spiritual paths, Thelema and Asàtru and using techniques I’d learned with Chaos Magick, began combining them in a syncretic way.  There was something that spoke to me with the Nordic-Germanic godforms in the way I found the godforms of Thelema, Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit true and compelling.  Thelema had always seemed to me a revival of the Hellenistic religion that was syncretized between the Egyptian and Greek religions.  Rome also syncretized the Greek and Egyptian godforms into their system.  The Romans had the term Interpretatio Romana which was a sort of comparative religion where they would match up different gods in the Egyptian, Greek, and Nordic-Germanic cultures with their own.  Freyja was Minerva, Wotan was Hermes, Tyr was Mars, etc.  I used this same concept in matching the system of Asàtru with Thelema.  These two Traditions had become my main sources of magickal work and spiritual wisdom.

Of course, these ideas are frowned upon by the “approved” Ordo Templi Orientis.  However, I follow the ideas of Kenneth Grant and the Typhonian O.T.O. which is more open to syncretism.  Over the last 22 years I’ve built a system of attainment that uses both the Nordic-Germanic godforms and the godforms of Thelema.  In addition, the transmissions from Aiwass and Babalon “Liber 69: The Book of Laylah” and “Liber 2317: The Book of Zain” occasionally reference Nordic-Germanic godforms.  In “The Book of the Breath of the Feather” one of the smaller books of “Liber 69”, Aiwass identifies with Wotan.  It is my understanding at this time that Aiwass and Babalon intend for those of Nordic-Germanic descent to revive their ancient ethnic folk religions. 

The 24 runes of the Elder Futhark are some of the most powerful magickal ciphers and tools available to the Initiates of the West.  In “The Chaos Aeon” volume 1 and 2, I’ve constructed a workable “Qabalah” of the Yggdrasil Tree, assigning runes and realms to the Sephiroth and Navitoth of the Tree of Life.  This is a workable system of attainment utilizing the various godforms and runes of the Nordic-Germanic spiritual systems of the Troth and the Seith.  In part 2 of this essay, I will explore my syncretism between Thelema and Asàtru further.