Neo-paganism
The Office for National Statistics says there are now 17,000 more pagans in Britain than since the previous census, with the total now 74,000. Here is a thought: you know the ayahuasca cults that are popular in the jungle—organic DMT trips? These are equivalent to neo-paganism in the West: it is generally held that these tribes are the degenerate remnants from once-great civilisations or societies—and that their rites are also degenerate and profane, hence to partake in their rituals is to engage in something genuinely demonic. Well, the rise in Western “neo-paganism” represents the same movement in the West, although it is not yet demonic.
It’s what Spengler called “the second mysticism”: as a civilisation dies, encased in its high rationalism, it returns to the mysticism found at its virile cultural dawn in a decadent way. So, since the 1960s, we have seen a mystical profusion in the West—yet it is not naïve genuine religiosity, usually it is syncretic and mixed in with foreign religions and science; it’s where you get ideas like: “I micro-dosed LSD, sat zazen for fifteen minutes, and here’s how it changed me at the quantum level.” You could make a YouTube video about that—mysticism, foreign religions, and yet all justified in pseudo-scientific terms.
Neo-paganism is the same—actual paganism is now so distant from us, especially in England, the first industrialised country, where the folk traditions are almost completely extirpated, that it is effectively a “foreign” religion. So neo-paganism is a cosmopolitan novelty to help decadent people feel special. They are not interested in Christianity because it is prosaic and local, it doesn’t make them feel special. I saw a video about a “pagan” church in the Midwest: all they had done was remove the Christian cross and put Thor there instead—now, perhaps you prefer the Thor statue but these people were just Protestants with a different statue; as “Christians” they were modern, effectively atheists—now they were the same, albeit with a “cooler” statue. You can see that these fragmentary neo-pagan groups will turn into the Amazon ayahuasca cults of Northern Europe in the end—half-remembered parodies of what was once great and profound.
Now, people like to get on their high-horse, if they are residual Christians, and lecture neo-pagans about their “Satanism” and “demon-worship”. I’m not about to do that, not least since, as stated, I think Europeans prefer paganism really; and, in fact, the people who get on their high-horse about such issues are egomaniacs and are functionally atheists themselves, being modern—really, almost everyone is modern today, not least smug church-attenders; personally, I think the birds are literally angels—yet the number of people, even church-attenders, who would agree with my view is tiny; and a number would say I needed psychiatric examination—and that’s because they’re modern. In fact, what you will find is that neo-paganism, even if engaged in for right-wing reasons connected to racial preservation, will be more easily subverted by the left than the Christian remnants—this is because it has been founded with no traditions, from scratch, by completely modern people.
The Odinist Fellowship in Britain, for example, is just an atheist organisation—they let anybody serve as a priest by election, so have no initiation; and they think the gods are metaphors for nature, to judge by how they write about them—in fact, the gods are real. As with so many organisations, they are feminist—they allow women to become priests with equal standing to men. They speak about how paganism is for “this world”—and they speak that way because they do not think there is a metaphysical reality. It’s similar to the Hitlerites; they’d say that Western man is rational and Olympian, so he sees through Oriental cults, like Christianity and Islam, and that these are not true. Hence he enjoys the this-earthly life, reserves the gods as a nice metaphor for nature—it owes a debt to Nietzsche; and yet it is modern and atheistic.
The Christian churches, though subverted to a great extent, retain considerable pre-modern and traditional elements—the Catholic Church above all, since it is an actual continuation of the Roman Empire and in its veneration of saints carries on something like polytheism (the saints just being city gods, really). Although subverted—especially by the Jesuits—the Church is notably hated by the current regime; and that should tell you something significant. Protestants and neo-pagans are not despised by the current regime, so we know they are not a threat (the regime is keen to accommodate neo-pagans, in fact—provide pagan chaplains in the military, for example)—the Catholic Church, however, is despised.
The gods are real—literally—as is the godhead. Evola and Heidegger were correct in their conclusion that Hitler’s Germany was too modern, for Hitler’s Germany paganism was a device to restore the race; it wasn’t “real”—and it is the same for neo-pagans, in leftist and rightist iterations, today.
The actual solution to the West’s spiritual crisis is to venerate the Holy Grail: the Grail is a pre-Christian Indo-Aryan myth written in the stars—and it is entirely masculine, with its Roundtable and knights on a quest. It has been fully Christianised—so there is no need for Christians and pagans to bicker; pagans can concentrate on the Grail, Christians on Christ while they also honour the Grail. This solution retains the integral unity in European civilisation without the need to jettison Christianity or demonise pagans—and it is underpinned by a vast extant tradition around the Grail knights, it is indisputably masculine, and it is real. In time, the Grail will come to predominate—it was here before Christ and he seems to be on the wane now, he is sleepy and has gone behind the black sun to recover. Yet that is by the by, if he just needs to rest he can come back. This is forever: the Grail is European—Europe is the Grail.