ROOTS OF RAGNAROK

“Midgard is the cradle that rocks above the abyss---our existence is but a
brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

The great Solar-myth underlies all the ancient mythologies. It commemorates the death and resurrection of the sun. It signifies the destruction of the light by the clouds, the darkness and the eventual return of the great luminary of the world. That which was most instrumental in conforming mankind to adopt the solar based religions took place in a time long before our written history. It was a thing so terrible, so incomprehensible, pitiless and destructive, that even today its dreadful aftermath still lingers deep in the genetic memory of all mankind.
In the Northern European pagan religion of Wotanism, this dreadful End of Days cataclysm is symbolized by three ominous specters known as: Fenris Wolf, the giant world Midgard Serpent Jormungand and Garm the Dog. The Southern Europeans knew them as: Python and Typhaon and Cacus, which is the same as Vritra in the Indo-European Sanskrit. The Christian bible referred to them as Satan, Behemoth and Leviathan. Yet, there is simply one name to describe the most terrible and unstoppable monster serpent of all, "The Great Comet."
All the winged beasts, breathing fire are a symbolic recollection of the comet; with its fearful head and long tail it captures the semblance of a great serpent traversing the heavens. Modern science confirms that comets often travel in groups of two or three, as reflected in world mythologies. In the second millennium B.C.E. the planet Venus made a surprise appearance as a threatening comet with a rather close approach to Earth and was a cause of much alarm and planetary repercussions, causing volcanoes to explode, giant sea waves, and other forms of destruction; The asteroid that sunk the entire continent of Atlantis and caused so much devastation from its impact was only about six miles wide, a mere grain of sand in comparison to the size of the planet Venus. The backlash from that asteroid upon striking the Sargasso Sea
splashed the ocean water up into the air half way to the moon! Consider a comet the size of Venus a near twin in volume and mass of Earth colliding directly into our planet. Venus comes closer to Earth than any other planet, approaching to within about 24,800,000 miles. One thing is for sure, there is no destruction so utterly complete to planet Earth and equally destructive to all life forms than that black moment when a great comet actually strikes the Earth. This is the End of Days for planet Earth and all of Mankind that our most distant ancestors knew at some future dark hour will surely and inevitably happen.

"That the moon and Mars and Mercury are devastated and biologically dead, that
Venus is rotating "backwards" and burning hot, that a ghost planet which should
perhaps be called "Apollo" is represented by a host of asteroids flying between
Mars and Jupiter----all these give one to suspect that the Earth has also suffered,
but escaped the worst."......................Alfred de Grazia

The Great Comets are not only named after monstrous beasts but often become the names of our ethnic Gods fighting their mighty battles above in the heavens. The planet Mars became a horror and a great god to the peoples of 2700 years ago. Mesopotamians would be known to chant respectful reverence's in awesome remembrance of those black days such as: "Shine of horror, god Nergal, prince of battle, Thy face is glare; thy mouth is fire, Raging flame-god, god Nergal." Nergal is god-Mars and planet Mars. Only a god could fearlessly assault a god. And that is what Pallas Athene, goddess of the planet Venus, did to Mars-Ares-Nergal. It is the famous scene of the battle of the gods in Homer's Iliad. Athene, with the blessing of Zeus, drove her chariot towards Ares, "the bane of mortals," and drove her spear "mightily against his nethermost belly." A great black cloud arose from him, he "bellowed like ten thousand warriors," and fled into the high heavens. The last encounter that planet Earth has had with a large planet body in space was during the Holocene epoch during the time around the founding of Rome. Mars approached on several occasions, at 15-year intervals. Venus also intruded upon the Earth's sphere then and before then, at least several times, on a half-century cycle. It is to mankind’s great fortune that we have miraculously had enough distance between our planet and other large moving bodies in space. Neither Venus nor the Moon nor any other large body could actually pass through the Earth's near atmosphere without the total annihilation of both bodies.
Our planet bears the telltale scars of meteor and asteroid collisions all over its surface. Though far smaller in size than a comet, the devastation of even just an asteroid is such that one would be fortunate to first die of fright before the actual impact occurred. The after-effects of even just a very minor passing of a large-body encounter would cause hurricanes on Earth of speeds of up to 200 miles an hour. Such a hurricane would be capable of scraping the Earth's surface down to bedrock, eradicating all trace of biosphere and human settlement. The Norse Edda list's five life cycles, or eons, as the Greek Hesiod also listed, which some depict as Thule, Hyperborea, Mu, Atlantis and our own current age. In another book of the Edda, the Volupsa, is depicted the cataclysmic destruction of Atlantis, starting with Stanza 55: "Fire fares from south with flaring flares. The Embattled Gods' sun is skewered on the sword, Mountains hurry hence. Men tread Hel's road; the heavens are sundered. Nine steps only away from the monster, Staggers the son of Earth. The sun grows dim; Earth sinks in waters; The sparkling stars fall from the firmament. Fire entwines the life-supporter, Heat rises high to the heavens."
In the story from the Norse Edda, the Grottasonger (Song of the Mill), two giant maidens are forced to take turns grinding out material pleasures on a "magic mill" called Grotte, meaning "growth" or "evolution". They are made to work ceaselessly by the increasingly greedy King Frode (meaning "prosperity). Eventually, the maidens---seemingly representing earthly ages--- grind out a revenge for the greed of material prosperity: their singing and the creak of the millstones grind forth an army which, commanded by the Sea-King Mysing, overruns and conquers Frode's lands. King Mysing then takes the mill of growth or evolution and, eventually falling into the same materialistic greed as King Frode, causes his continent to sink beneath the waters---a tale complete with the classic flood myth which is told worldwide. The hero Bargalmer, at the end of the cycle, is saved on a boat keel to begin a new cycle. The Finns have a similar myth known as the Sampo, or "Magic Mill" that grinds out both creation and destruction, as did the Mayans.
Mankind has been an intelligent audience to outer space, watching the long unfolding developments of the cosmic drama. However, let us try to imagine the tremendous impact of a great comet striking the earth's surface at ever increasing impetuosity, carrying with it a heat that is so strong that it can melt granite rock and evaporate waters of whole oceans in its approach. The tail of debris which follows such a massive comet is incredible in its length. A distant passing great comet, witnessed in 1843, possessed a tail 150 million miles long; such a length would reach from the sun to the earth and have over 50 million miles of tail to spare. Debris from a comet's tail, should it pass through our atmosphere, creates what is known as the "Drift Age", showering the earth with a heavy layer of rocks, boulders and dust. Many of the ancient legends tell of how this cosmic dust would completely blot out the sun and stars, causing darkness and gloom for long periods of time. The passing of both night and day under such circumstances, it has been told, would become almost indistinguishable.
The ancient legends also describe the aftermath of the Great Comet's contact with Earth, thusly: "Instead of the fair face of the world as they have known it, bright with sunlight, green with the magnificent foliage of the forest, or the gentle verdure of the plain, they go forth upon a wasted, and unknown land, covered with oceans of mud and stones; the very face of the country changed---lakes, rivers, hills, all swept away and lost. They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, under the shadow of an awful darkness, a darkness which knows no morning, no stars, no moon, a darkness palpable and visible, lighted only by electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars of thunder, which we in this day of harmonious Nature, can form no conception of. It is, indeed, 'chaos' and ancient night. All the forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling against each other and multiplied a thousand-fold in power; the winds are cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling. The world is more desolate than the caves from which they have escaped. The forests are gone; the fruit-trees are swept away; the beasts of the chase have perished; the domestic animals, gentle ministers to man, have disappeared; the cultivated fields are buried deep in drifts of mud and gravel; the people stagger in the darkness against each other, they fall into the chasms of the earth; within them are the two great oppressors of humanity, hunger and terror; hunger that knows not where to turn; fear that shrinks before the whirling blasts, the rolling thunder, the shocks of blinding lightning; that knows not what moment the heavens may again open and rain fire and stones and dust upon them. God has withdrawn his face; his children are deserted; all the kindly adjustments of generous Nature are gone. God has left man in the midst of a material world without law; he is a wreck, a fragment, a lost particle, in the midst of an illimitable and endless warfare of giants. Some lie down to die, hopeless, cursing their helpless Gods; some die by their own hands; some gather around the fires of volcanoes for warmth and light-stars that attract them from afar; some feast on such decaying remnants of the great animals (dinosaurs) as they may find projecting above the debris, running to them, as we shall see, with outcries and fighting over fragments."
The Earth's existing geological strata, along with the artifacts of man and other life form remnants and fossils, read like an open book through the eons of time, dispelling so many unsubstantial theories that we still contend with today. Aryan man was never an unintelligent, hairy, simian brute who lived in caves like a common animal. There has never been one single piece of substantial evidence nor missing link to support such a claim. Yet there is an abundance of sound evidence to prove otherwise and very good reason to believe that our capacity for intelligence was much higher in the far distant times. Civilizations have been discovered dating back to before the Dinosaur Age. For instance, in the state of Louisiana on Petite Anse Island, remarkable discoveries have been unearthed, showing in many cases the bones of the Mastodon found buried well above layers of earth strata which contain pottery, woven baskets and jewelry. Highly intelligent civilizations and whole continents have been ever changing since man first walked upon the Earth. Digging through geological history, we find that what did in fact drive man into caves in certain periods of time was the need to escape the deluge of the great comets and asteroids. The larger animals, such as dinosaurs which could not escape initial impact, the pummeling of rocks, prolonged frigid cold, scorching heat, wind storms, poisonous gas and flooding, were to vanish forever.
The traditions of the following cultures reveal to us that the Earth's surface was once drastically altered by a great comet:

(a) The ancient Britons, as narrated in the mythology of the Druids.
(b) The ancient Greeks, as told by Hesiod
(c) The Teutonic Elder Edda and Younger Edda
(d) The ancient Romans, as narrated by Ovid
(e) The ancient Toltec’s of Central America, as told in their sacred books
(f) The ancient Aztecs of Mexico
(g) The ancient Persians, as recorded in the Zend Avesta
(h) The sacred records in Tibet
(i) The ancient Indo-European Hindus, as told in their holy books

These along with dozens of aboriginal legends around the world all relate the same descriptive catastrophe. Christians will find a detailed account of the event explained in the book of Job. The above religions all agree upon the following distinct points:

(1) The Golden Age; the Paradise
(2) The universal, moral degeneracy of mankind, the age of crime and violence
(3) God's vengeance
(4) The Serpent (flaming comet); the fire from heaven
(5) The cave-life and the darkness
(6) The cold; the struggle to survive
(7) The "fall of man" from virtue to vice; from plenty to poverty; from civilization to barbarism; from the tertiary to the drift; from paradise to the gravel
(8) Reconstruction and regeneration

From what has been thus revealed through geological findings and the diverse religions of the world.... can all of this be an accident? Can all of this mean nothing? In Aryan Wotanism Ragnarok marks the day of the Great Comet's return. Heimdall sounds the warning on his Gjallarhorn, as Wotan and the Gods of Asgard, along with his elite warriors (the Einherjar) arm themselves and speed forth to the battle of all battles. Wotan rides first with his golden helmet, resplendent 'Byrnie' and his spear Gungnir; he advances against the Fenris Wolf (the first comet). Thor stands by his side, but can give him no assistance, for he has his hands full in his struggle with the Midgard Serpent, (the second comet). Frey encounters the fiery fiend Surt, who is associated with the comet and heavy blows are exchanged ere Frey falls. The cause of his death is that he had previously relinquished his sword to Skirner, even The Dog Garm (the third comet), that was bound before the Gnipa Cave gets loose. He is the greatest plague. He contends with Tyr, and they kill each other. Thor gets great renown by slaying the Midgard Serpent, but retreats only nine places when he falls to the earth dead, poisoned by the venom that the serpent blows upon him. He has breathed the carbonated-hydrogen gas of the comet. Surt then casts darkness and raging fire upon the universe, blotting out sun and stars and the earth becomes engulfed by the sea---chaos reigns. This is a time known as the "Twilight of the Gods", "Gotterdammerung", until Vali, the new sun, is born of the frost and kills the darkness. It is light again. Baldur, son of Wotan, now the new Aryan Allfather, returns after Ragnarok. Once again the Gods, the Earth and its people are born anew and the whole world rejoices with regenerated life.
Today pagans still celebrate the last death and rebirth of the sun with the May Day fertility ceremony, the May Pole and the May Queen. In the full tradition of the ceremony, a man clad in green leaves represents summer; another clad in straw represents winter (fittingly symbolic of the emptiness and misery of the Great Comet Drift Age). In the Teutonic legends it is stated that three severe winters followed the great cataclysm, followed by three more, which are known in Wotanism as the "Fimbul Winter". A Fimbul Winter would also occur with the aftermath of Atomic bomb warfare.

"Grim Fimbal raged, and o'er the world, Tempestuous winds and snow
storms whirled; The roaring ocean icebergs ground, And flung its frozen
foam around, E'en to the top of mountain height; No warning air....No
radiance fair Of gentle Summer’s soft'ning light, Tempered this dreadful
glacial night." ..............J.C.Jones

Classical scholars laughed at Heinrich Schliemann when he set out with Homer's writings of Greek legend in one hand and a spade in the other. But he succeeded in digging up the legendary civilization of Troy, and thereby demonstrated that it is ignorant as well as rash to underestimate the historical value of the race memory within our D.N.A.. Today NASA satellites can see remnants of long-forgotten civilizations, lying in ruin on the ocean floor of both the Atlantic and Pacific. We must always remind ourselves that all myths and legends start somewhere in the real life of man's long ongoing history. That which does not derive from actual fact in our ethnic mythologies serves as a language that speaks to us symbolically. For instance; From the Volupsa saga we learn that when Yggdrasil (tree of life) trembles at the approach of Ragnarok, the ship of the dead, Nagelfar, lies so that the liberated sinister deity Loki can go aboard it. That it has long lain moored in its harbor is evident from the fact that, according to Vulupsa, it then "becomes loose." Unknown hands are its builders. The material out of which it is constructed is the nail-parings of dead men. This description is all to say, that evil, no matter how great the catastrophe, can never be destroyed. All things throughout the extended universe operate by law of polarity. 'Good' would not, could not, exist without its negative opposite. "Unknown hands are its builders" is to say that no one will ever know just where evil began. The seeds of our destiny are nourished by the rich legacy of our past. What we do in the now of the present will determine our own future, and all life upon the planet.

"Religion is fossil mythology; mythology is fossil history; and this
disguised history takes us into ages so remote that they border upon,
and partly indeed coincide with, the ages of geology."

RonMcVan

Posted in: Editorial