Irminenschaft

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this article is about the concept in Nazi mysticism; see Irminen-Gesellschaft for the US neopagan group.

Irminenschaft (or, Irminism, Irminenreligion) is a current of Nazi mysticism based on a hypothetical Germanic deity Irmin (a backformation from Irminsul "great pillar" and informed by Tacitus' Hermiones; The Old Saxon adjective irmin "great, strong" may also have been an epithet of Ziu or Wodan).

Notably Karl Maria Wiligut claimed a historical Irminism, established in 12,500 BC, later ousted by Wotanism

[edit] Wiligut's Irminenschaft

Wiligut claimed that the Bible had originally been written in Germanic, and testified to an "Irminic" religion (Irminenreligion) that contrasted with Wotanism. He claimed to worship a Germanic god "Krist" -- Christianity was supposed to have later bootlegged as their own saviour Christ. Germanic culture and history according to Wiligut would reach back to 228,000 BC. At this time, there were three suns, and Earth was inhabited by giants, dwarfs and other mythical creatures. By 12,500 BC, The Irminic religion of Krist was revealed and from that time became the religion of all Germanic peoples, until the schismatic adherents of Wotanism gained the upper hand. In 1200 BC, the Wotanists succeeded to destroy the Irminic religious center at Goslar, following which the Irminists erected a new temple at the Externsteine, which was in turn appropriated by the Wotanists in AD 460. Wiliguts own ancestors are protagonists in this setting: the Wiligotis were Ueiskunings "Ice kings" descending from a union of Aesir and Vanir. They founded the city of Vilna as the center of their Germanic empire and always remained true to their Irminic faith. Wiligut's convictions assumed a paranoid trait in the 1920s as he became convinced that his family was the victim of a continuing persecution of Irminists, at present conducted by the Catholic Church, the Jews and the Freemasons, on which groups he also blamed the lost World War I and the downfall of the Habsburg empire.

During the 1920s, Wiligut had written down 38 (out of a number claimed to excess 1000) verses, the so-called Halgarita Sprüche, that Willigut said he had memorized as a child, taught by his father. Wiligut had designed his own "runic alphabet" for this purpose.

Werner von Bülow and Emil Rüdiger of the Eddagesellschaft translated and annotated these verses. They claimed that numbers 27 and 1818 are connected with the Black Sun,

Verse number 27 according to Willigut is a "solar blessing" aged 20,000 years:

Sunur saga santur toe Syntir peri fuir sprueh Wilugoti haga tharn Halga fuir santur toe

Werner von Bülow translates

"Legend tells, that two Suns, two wholesome in change-rule UR and SUN, alike to the hourglass which turned upside down ever gives one of these the victory / The meaning of the divine errant wandering way / dross star in fire's sphere became in fire-tongue revealed to the Earth-I-course of the race of Paradise / godwilling leaders lead to the weal through their care in universal course, what is visible and soon hidden, whence they led the imagination of mankind / polar in change-play, from UR to SUN in sacrifical service of waxing and waning, in holy fire Santur is ambiguously spent in sparks, but turns victorious to blessing"

Santur is interpreted as a burnt-out Sun that was still visible at the time of Homer. Rüdiger speculates that this was the center of the solar system hundreds of millennia ago, and he imagines a fight between the new and the old Suns that was decided 330,000 years ago. Santur is seen as the source of power of the Hyperboreans.

In some esoteric currents of Neo-Nazism, Neofolk, National Socialist Black Metal and Neopaganism, Willigut's writings enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1990s.

[edit] References

• Wiligut, Karl Maria (2001). The Secret King: Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's Lord of the Runes. Dominion. ISBN 1-885972-21-0. 
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Gardners Books. ISBN 1-86064-973-4. ; originally published as Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (1992). The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology; The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3060-4.