"In Germany shall divers sects arise,
coming very near to happy paganism.
The heart captivated and small receivings
Shall open the gate to pay the truth tithe."
-- Prophecies of the Master Nostradamus, 1555
In his groundbreaking work, Civilization in Transition, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Carl Jung has a whole section on the Wotan archetype and its relationship to the German collective unconscious.
Wotan, or Odin as he's commonly known, is one of the main gods of Norse Mythology. Wotan is the god of knowledge, the runes, magic and poetry and also the overseer of Valhalla, which in the Nordic pagan tradition is a place in the afterlife where the warriors who died in battle reside. For Jung, Wotan is an essential part of the German psyche, which helps to explain a lot of the attributes and developments of Germany and the German people in general. The interesting link here is to Christianity, because of the emergence of the Christian faith and the consequent conversion of the Germanic people to Christianity, the Wotan archetype long got suppressed and eventually declared the Devil.
From there, Wotan disappeared for centuries and worked only indirectly and anonymously. Carl Jung writes:
"Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell, and appeared again when the Christian god proved too weak to save Christendom."
-- Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition
He writes:
An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel, the sooner or later it is that the water will return to its old bed.
It is also important to mention that this specific German peculiarity is difficult to understand for people who exist outside this racial and cultural sphere, even when they are formally part of it.
Jung talks specifically about psychologists like Sigmund Freud who, because of their Jewish background have problems grasping the German soul, which has a very Earthy quality to it, with an Inner Barbarian, so-to-speak, that wants to be unleashed. This is by no means an anti-semitic statement, Jung is very clear on this, but rather a factual observation between Jewish culture and its heritage, and the ancient Germanic people.
Wotan is a Restless God. He's the God of Storm and Frenzy. A restless wanderer creates unrest and steers up strife. An unleasher of passions with a lust for battle, but he's also a supreme magician and master of the occult. Like every archetype, Wotan has a dual nature and trickster-like qualities. Initially, the Romans when they first came in contact with this god, identified him with Mercury, but Jung rightfully detects, Wotan doesn't correspond to any Roman or Greek god. Also, the similarity to the Greek god Dionysos isn't really accurate, cause while it is true that there are certain parallels, Wotan is closer to the warrior sphere whereas Dionysos was more influential with women.
But how did the Wotan archetype actually manifest itself in Germany? Well, there are a couple of historical and collective happenings which, for Jung, signified the resurrection of Wotan. One of them would be the emergence of the German Youth Movement which started in 1896. It consisted of young people, mostly boys, who were wandering around Germany and Europe with a rucksack on their back. These blonde youths are being described by Carl Jung as faithful coteries of the roving god. It is interesting to mention that these boys celebrated the solstice with animal sacrifices, which shows a clear pagan link.
During the later period of the Weimar Republic, this wandering activity was being joined by many unemployed people who were aimlessly wandering around. When Hitler came into power, the wandering turned into marching because the Hitler movement, in the words of Jung "brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from 5 year olds to veterans."
Wotan the Wanderer was on the move.
In this context of wandering, he makes another intriguing observation. That is, the myth of the Wandering Jew who didn't accept Jesus Christ was a projection of the European Christians on the Jews.
The German word ergriffenheit describes a state of being possessed. This indicates there's both someone who is being seized, but also someone or something who seizes. The German word for that would be ergriffen. Wotan as a psychic force is an ergriffen of the German people and of particular German figures like Adolf Hitler.
For psychological/mythical thinkers like Jung, the gods are personifications of psychic forces. He doesn't necessarily deny that they are actual entities, but he also doesn't propose it. Jung is an empiricist who's influenced by Kant's skepticism of metaphysical claims.
But let us continue with the concept of ergiffenheit.
Jung claims that Adolf Hitler was being possessed by the Wotan archetype and has, in turn, affected the whole German nation. Other manifestations of this state of ergriffenheit of the German people by the Wotan archetype are the Blood and Soil ideology, the depiction of Jesus as a blonde and blue-eyed hero, the image of the Devil as a dwarf in Jewish or Masonic guise, the supposed inferiority of the Mediterranean races, and the Northern Lights as the light of civilization.
It would be very fascinating to observe how the Wotan archetype will continue to influence the German psyche. It is difficult to predict because of the trickster-like qualities of Wotan and his tendency to move under the radar. In this respect, he's very much like an inactive volcano which can break out anytime. However, one sign of the Wotan archetype could be the emergence of neopaganism not only in Germany, but in many other western countries. Groups like Ásatrú try to restablish pagan traditions from the past and are generally, more or less, antichristian.
Thus, the activity of such groups indicate the workings of the Wotan archetype. While it is difficult to tell, but it will definitely be an interesting phenomenon to observe in the near future.
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