What is a Rune

by Collin Cleary

  This could happen in various ways. It could occur as the result of a people’s displacement from its original home, and subsequent rootless migration. It could also occur through the rise of cities, in which the inhabitants are largely cut off from direct confrontation with nature, and exposed to the influence of immigrants from other cultures (i.e., cosmopolitanism). Major cultural shifts could contribute to this process: e.g., the rise of democracy in ancient Athens, and the consequent, gradual erosion of tradition through individualism, relativism, and hedonism; the rise of Christianity, etc.

  These observations will inevitably call to mind our present predicament. We are not mytho-poetic thinkers, and the lifeworld of our ancestors, from which sprang the runes, is not our own. Therefore, though we may grant that philosophical interpretation of the runes is a poor substitute for possessing the mentality of our ancestors, is it perhaps the best that we can do?

  The last recorded aurochs died in Poland in 1627. We no longer feel the numinous property of earth and sky. Birch and yew are just birch and yew to us. This inevitably means that though we strive as Germanic neo-pagans to revive the traditions of our ancestors, we do not participate in those traditions exactly as they did—simply because we do not live in the same world. This gulf between us and our ancestors and their ways is painful to us, but it is not clear how it can be overcome. For us, paganism always remains, in a real sense, an ideal we are striving for. (Though I hasten to say that it is as legitimate for us to call ourselves pagans as it is for Christians today to call themselves Christians—since they too are striving, in effect, to live in a world that has also been lost.)

  Eventually someone is going to suggest that we invent a new set of runes derived from our own lifeworld. But I cannot accept such a thing. I cannot accept a Futhark with such runes as “Facebook,” “UPS,” “thugz,” “Amazon,” “Redbox,” and “Kmart.” And I’m sure my readers feel the same way. Why? Because all of us are convinced that our society and our way of life are debased; that there is nothing natural and wholesome about what passes for our lifeworld. Our only alternative, therefore, is to attempt to reconstruct the traditions of our ancestors, and to reawaken their spirit in ourselves.

  But the only way to return truly and fully to those traditions would be by the restoration of their lifeworld: a return to the natural environment in which our ancestors lived and to their way of life. There’s still a lot of wilderness out there, but it would not be enough to simply purchase a good portion of it and set up a kind of re-created Germanic settlement. The participants would have to be completely innocent of modern life: they would have to have no memory of modern attitudes, modern inventions, and pop culture; they could not even have any memory of modern history.

  They would need to see the world around them with fresh and uncorrupted eyes. If such a situation could be created, I believe that the old forms, the old ways, would reconstitute themselves among our people, in their interaction with their natural environment. The sky and earth would again be perceived in their numinous aspect. Birch and yew would again be more than just varieties of wood. And Odin’s presence would be felt once more, deep in the darkness of the forests.

  Of course, such a situation could only come about through the complete destruction of the modern world and the memory of it.

  In short, our hope lies in Ragnarok.

  Counter-Currents/North American New Right,

  November 15, 2011

  THE FOURFOLD

  1. INTRODUCTION

  This is the first of two essays dealing with the Germanic cosmology. Only in the second essay (“The Ninefold”) will I actually discuss the details of that cosmology, as presented in the Eddas and other sources, and offer an interpretation of it.

  The present essay is an attempt to provide a “way into” that cosmology. Why do we need such a way? Because my aim is not simply to inform my readers about the Germanic worldview; there are countless books that summarize it in greater detail than I will. My aim is actually to believe in that worldview as far as I possibly can. In other worlds, my aim is to see the world as my ancestors did. Needless to say, the way our ancestors saw the world is radically different from how we moderns do—to the point where it is tempting to say that, in a certain sense, we live in different worlds entirely. A way into (or back into) the Germanic cosmology is a way back into the world of our ancestors. But the first step in this is to understand what a world is.

  “World” is, in fact, not the same thing as “cosmos,” from which we derive “cosmology.” Kosmos is a Greek word that simply means “order.” It refers to the totality of what is, understanding it as an orderly arrangement. (The Latin mundus—meaning roughly “elegant”—is simply a translation of kosmos.) “World,” however, comes from the Old English weorold. It is a compound of wer, which means “man” (as in “werewolf”), and eald, which means “age.” So that, oddly, “world” literally means “age of man” or “man age.”6

  What are we to make of this strange, literal meaning of our common term “world”? First of all, the meaning of the term has clearly shifted over time. “World” is used today to denote the planet earth, as when we say that the world contains no more than seven continents. It is also sometimes used to mean the same thing as “universe” (a Latin-derived term). But the first usage is much more common. You don’t often hear people say “the world is infinite.” We tend to use “world” to mean what we ourselves are living in (or on), and “universe” to mean the larger context that contains our world, and other worlds. This is implicit in the language used to refer to space travel, whether what is being discussed is science fact or fiction: “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations . . .” The universe is thought to contain worlds. At least superficially, this certainly seems in keeping with how our ancestors spoke of “nine worlds.”

  But if we keep thinking about how “world” is used, we will realize that while most people would insist that it is simply a synonym for “planet earth,” there is actually more to it than this. Consider the following. Someone confronts an unrealistic person with the question “What world are you living in?” Or responds to their unreasonable expectations with “not in this world.” Or prefaces a comment with “in the real world . . .” In these cases “world” is essentially being used as a synonym for “reality.” But consider the subtle difference in the following cases. An adult tries to teach a child a lesson by saying, “In this world you don’t get something for nothing,” or “In this world it’s every man for himself,” or “It’s a man’s world.” Here “world” is really being used to mean “human world,” or “human reality.”

  Clearly, these sorts of cases show that there is more to the meaning of “world” than our big, blue ball hurtling through space. And we begin to get some glimmer of what “world” originally meant for our ancestors. The world is not the earth. It is the earth as encountered and interpreted by us. Our world is not merely our physical surroundings, for what surrounds us is not merely “the physical.” What surrounds us is the physical earth and its features (including its flora and fauna) as understood, interpreted, valued, and disvalued by us. As a simple example, consider gold. If we ask what gold is, it would be quite wrong to say, “Gold is simply a chemical element with the atomic number 79.” Gold is much more to us than that. In fact it has tremendous significance in our lives. We value it for its beauty and its scarcity. Men have died for gold, and whole civilizations have been conquered in order to acquire it. We associate gold with royalty, and with popes.

  Of course, gold has this significance for us because of certain social conventions we have established. Gold is not valuable “in itself,” but only for us. If all human beings were wiped away tomorrow, gold would have absolutely no value at all. But so long as we are around, the value that gold has is as real to us as its atomic number. That value is part of “the world.” And the “social conventions” that establish such values are part of the world also. They are quite re
al to us, and they stem from unalterable qualities of the human species. “The world” is a human world, in human time. We live in “man age.” Things never present themselves to us “as they are in themselves,” but only as interpreted by us in relation to ourselves, within the total context of human biological and social reality.7

  “World” is therefore an intersection of various factors, some tangible and others intangible, some existing independently of human knowers and some not. Now, as I said earlier, it is plausible up to a point to say that we live in a different world from that of our ancestors. However, these worlds overlap. For instance, the natural world has not completely changed since the time of our ancestors. To be sure, some species (including, for example, the aurochs) have gone extinct, and global temperatures are rising. But in many ways we still live in the same basic physical surroundings. However, our interpretation of those surroundings and how we locate ourselves within them has changed radically.

  The only way, therefore, to truly understand the cosmology of our ancestors is to attempt to enter back into their world: their way of interpreting what surrounded them. My ultimate aim here is to be able to stand on the earth and see it and feel it as my ancestors did. In order to accomplish this, we need to enter more deeply into the concept of a world and achieve a profound understanding of the most basic factors that intersect in order to create a world for us. For this purpose, Martin Heidegger will prove to be our most valuable guide.

  After the Second World War, Heidegger began to produce a series of essays setting forth a phenomenological description of human “dwelling” (a technical term in Heidegger’s philosophy, to which we will return in a moment).8 This description involves four inseparable moments or aspects: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. The essays that deal with this “fourfold” include “What are Poets For?” (“Wozu Dichter?,” 1946), “The Thing” (“Das Ding,” 1950), “Language” (“Die Sprache,” 1950), “Building Dwelling Thinking” (“Bauen Wohnen Denken,” 1951), and “Poetically Man Dwells” (“. . . dichterisch wohnet der Mensch . . . ,” 1951). An earlier essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (“Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” 1935–1936), discussed the opposition of earth to world. As we shall see, “world” is constituted through the fourfold of earth (die Erde), sky (der Himmel), divinities (die Göttlichen), and mortals (die Sterblichen). All these essays have been translated into English and are anthologized in the volume Poetry, Language, Thought (1971).

  Implicitly, Heidegger’s analysis of dwelling is anti-modern. Although he never says this, in fact he is not describing the way in which men dwell upon the earth today. He is describing a way of being that is traditional and, for all intents and purposes, pre-modern. But he does not make this plain. Thus, while Heidegger never offers his discussion of dwelling as anything more than purely descriptive, it is implicitly normative and constitutes a clear rebuke to modern life.

  Heidegger’s discussion of the fourfold also has a pagan subtext. As he does elsewhere, Heidegger (who was raised a Catholic) employs the language of polytheism, referring to “divinities” and “gods.” I am not actually suggesting that Heidegger was some kind of pagan. Like Nietzsche, he believes that a return to older forms is impossible. But also like Nietzsche his nostalgia for those older forms is readily apparent. Thus, while Heidegger’s account of the fourfold should not be described as in any way “neo-pagan,” it certainly lends itself to neo-pagan purposes. And it is useful for our purpose here: trying to find our way back into the world of our ancestors.

  In what follows I will be drawing upon Heidegger’s account of the fourfold, but freely adapting and expanding it for my own purposes. (Those interested in knowing where Heidegger’s ideas end and mine begin should read Poetry, Language, Thought.)

  2. EARTH & SKY

  Let’s begin with the concept of dwelling (Wohnen). In “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Heidegger points out that the verb bauen (to build) is a development of the Old High German buan. (A cognate word buan also exists in Old English.) However, what buan originally meant was “to remain, to stay in a place.” “The real meaning of the verb bauen, namely, to dwell, has been lost to us,” Heidegger writes.9 Further, Heidegger links buan to the verb “to be.” Buan derives from the Indo-European root bheu, as do a number of words that denote being in English and German (and other Indo-European languages). Examples include German bin (I am), bist (you are), and English be, been (and Old English beo, bið, beoð).

  “To be” is thus “to dwell.” Heidegger writes: “ich bin, du bist means: I dwell, you dwell. The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is buan, dwelling. To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell” (PLT, 147). And later in the same essay: “Dwelling . . . is the basic character of Being in keeping with which mortals exist” (PLT, 160).

  So what is dwelling? To put it simply, dwelling is what mortals do on earth, under the sky, and in relation to the gods. And in dwelling, they bring forth a world. Of course, this only makes matters more enigmatic, so let us take each element in turn. First, let us consider the meaning of the earth.

  Mortals (and we will turn to exactly what that means in a moment) dwell on earth. But the earth is not a “planet.” We do not experience ourselves as dwelling on a ball. The earth is the ground beneath our feet, spreading out about us as far as the eye can see or the foot can tread, without limit. The earth is that from which all the things around us have emerged. Plant life is obviously earth-born, but so in some sense are the animals and ourselves. All are tied to earth, and all are sheltered and nourished by it. Heidegger writes:

  The Greeks early called [the] emerging and arising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation. In the things that arise, earth is present as the sheltering agent. (PLT, 42)

  And I would add: we feel ourselves tied to the earth in the deepest part of ourselves. The part we call “the biological,” which we do not choose and over which we have only limited control. It connects us physically and psychologically to the earth, and to its flora, fauna, and cycles of generation and corruption.

  But to speak of man living on earth is to speak simultaneously of his living under the sky. (Heidegger again and again emphasizes the inseparability of the moments earth, sky, divinities, mortals, and insists that each implies the others.) Heidegger describes the sky as follows:

  The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year’s seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of the day, the gloom and glow of the night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and the blue depth of the ether. When we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four. (PLT, 149)

  The earth shelters us, whereas the sky looms over us and, in a sense, subjects us. But there is a further, still more important contrast between earth and sky. The earth shelters, but it also conceals. The earth is full of mystery, hidden in dark secluded places. And this mystery, as I have suggested, is akin to the mystery in us: the terrifying facticity of our genetic makeup, our inexplicable drives and urges, the irresistible call of the nature within us.

  When we wish to know the things of this earth (and the things in us), we bring them out into the light of the sky—literally and figuratively. The sky reveals. The earth is always holding things within, always concealing. When the light moves over the things we have brought from the earth, they are revealed. When the night comes, the earth achieves a temporary victory in its efforts at concealing—and the things of the earth, in their concealment, reveal themselves as uncanny.

 
; We find a rock in the depths of a cave and bring it out under the daylight sky in order to know it. And when we come to better understand, say, our genetic makeup we call this “shedding light” on things, and ourselves as becoming “enlightened” on the matter. To “know things” at the most basic, sensory level is to bring them under the light of the sun (vision, for which we require light, has always been the paradigm of sensory awareness). But the sun has also always represented for us the ideal, as it does in Plato. And to truly know things one must go beyond the level of bare sensory awareness and understand them in light of the ideal: ideas, patterns, models, laws, theories, and so forth.

  As I noted in my essay “What is a Rune?,” sky and earth do not appear to us in the same way that objects in the sky or on the earth appear. Though sky and earth are perceptible, in a sense they are not “objects” at all because we never see their limits: from our position on the earth we perceive the limits neither of the sky nor of the earth. Everything appears for us within the sky and the earth, but they do not themselves appear as objects within any larger context or horizon. This gives sky and earth a very special sort of fundamentality: they are ultimate contexts or horizons for everything else. And they are, in one way or another, our ultimate horizons of meaning in terms of which all else is understood. It is this opposition between sky and earth that founds the traditional distinction between the uranic and the chthonic (a distinction Heidegger himself does not discuss).

  In the act of bringing things from the earth into the light of the sky (in whatever way), we find a dichotomy within ourselves that mirrors that between earth and sky. Within me there is, first of all, the “biological” or “natural” part referred to earlier. This is the ground within me, the bedrock of unchosen and fixed identity. But then there is that other part of me that emerges at a certain point from this bedrock and soars above it. This is the part that seeks to understand—to bring what is concealed into the light. This could be something concealed in the earth at my feet, or concealed in the “earth” that is within me; in the depths of the mysterious, unchosen biological ground that is there before the formation of my conscious sense of identity.