Dr. Christopher McIntosh | Occult Germany: Investigating the Old Gods, Mystics & Magicians
Dr. Christopher McIntosh joins InnerVerse to discuss his new book, Occult Germany, a work inspired by his love and fascination for the mystical secrets of this ancient nation. Tune in to walk the line between history and myth, as we discover Parzival and the Holy Grail and other sacred Germanic relics, consider Abraxas & the alchemical union of opposites, search for the Roman roots of Germanophobia, and find synchronicity with Saxon beliefs and the universal religion.
In the Plus+ Extension, you'll hear about the Irminsul, sacred trees, and the crucified savior, mystical water rites of Easter, the Odic force and Orgone energy, Rosicrucian mirror magic technology, Wagner and sacred festival dramas, the ups & downs of German Neo-Paganism, and universal vs. local truths. All that and much more!
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In this episode
Core themes
Sleeping Emperors and Mythic Ancestors
McIntosh describes the interface between history and myth as a lifelong fascination, noting how national heroes turn into mythical figures almost at once. His German example is the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, said to sleep in a cave in the Kyffhauser range in Thuringia, waking every hundred years to ask a dwarf whether the ravens still circle the mountain. When Bismarck unified Germany in 1871, a huge monument to Wilhelm the First went up there with Barbarossa and a raven at its base. He also traces the older lineage back to Tuisto, cognate with the Sanskrit sky god Dyaus, whose son Mannus fathered three German tribes and gave Mannheim its name.
A Country That Forgot Its Own Grail
Teaching English at the University of Bremen, McIntosh asked a class what the Holy Grail was, and only one young man ventured that it had something to do with rejuvenation and the quest for eternal life. He calls that a pity, since Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is one of the great medieval epics and Wagner returned to the Grail in Parsifal and Lohengrin. Chance reads the passage where the Grail is not a Christian relic but a stone whose name a heathen read clearly in the constellations. McIntosh offers one speculative theory that the Grail recalls an ancient asteroid crater in what is now the Czech Republic.
Vulture Bone Flutes and Golden Cone Hats
Against the idea that prehistoric northern Europeans were primitive people without culture, McIntosh points to the Nebra sky disc, which he describes as essentially a lunar calendar probably used for agriculture, and to far older finds: the Venus of Willendorf, a large breasted statuette some 30,000 years old found in Austria in the early twentieth century, and a flute carved from a vulture's bone roughly 35,000 years old. He notes the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas argued such figures evidence an early matriarchal culture in Europe. Chance raises the golden conical hats; McIntosh suggests the cone may serve a purpose similar to a bishop's mitre.
Spirituality Brought Down Through the Hands
The thread McIntosh calls distinctly German is the marriage of the spiritual with the material. Hildegard of Bingen was an abbess, physician, herbalist, composer and painter whose remedies, he says, were imparted to her in visions, and who repeatedly got into trouble with the church yet argued her way out. Paracelsus wrote as much theology as medicine, Jacob Boehme wrote in alchemical metaphor, and the poet Novalis worked as a mining engineer. Rudolf Steiner, who placed himself in the Rosicrucian line, insisted spirituality be brought into the physical world, yielding homeopathic remedies, biodynamic agriculture, Waldorf schools and eurythmy.
Abraxas, Loki and the Union of Opposites
Chance argues the deepest thread in Occult Germany is the union of opposites, contending that the church's split of an authorized god of light from a devil produced a sterilizing, anti life force. He cites Hermann Hesse's novel Demian, where Abraxas is both god and devil, and Jung's Seven Sermons to the Dead, where Abraxas is effectiveness itself, a power that non power cannot cancel out. McIntosh agrees that element is suppressed in the Christian scheme and offers Loki, the Nordic trickster who is still part of the universe, the grain of sand in the oyster.
Quotes
“Amongst the modern trend towards soul suffocating scientific materialism, there remained sparks and embers of a time when our ancestral mind had not yet been forcibly amputated.”
“One of the ways in which this happens is on the level of national heroes, who very quickly turn into figures of mythology.”
“That's one of the things about astro theology and mysticism in general, the notion that word play and punning represent divine revelation for the seeker.”
“Seidr is the ancient magical technique of the Nordic peoples, and it was actually reserved for women.”
“One has to be aware of the particular nature of German spirituality, which has a strong tradition of combining the spiritual and the material.”
“I think it's the perfect way to conceive of God that puts it beyond the idea of good or evil.”
“One of the things he said was that the soul is identical with God.”
“Odin's two ravens are called Huginn and Muninn, meaning thought and memory, and that is so similar to Prometheus and Epimetheus, who are forethought and afterthought.”
Dr. Christopher McIntosh is a historian of Western esotericism and author of Occult Germany, which examines German mysticism, paganism, Rosicrucianism, and secret societies.
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