Odinic Rite Australia

Odinism and Monarchy

Australians recently voted to decide whether Elizabeth II remains Queen of Australia or whether the nation should become a republic.

On the face of it, that referendum (lost overwhelmingly by the republicans) seems to have very little to do with religion. Yet some conservative Christians tried to put a religious slant on the issue by arguing that the Queen was invested with something like sacred trust at her coronation – which did, indeed feature various Christian symbols, or at least symbols that have acquired a Christian significance.

Yet the Bible certainly doesn’t support the notion of monarchy.

The most famous passages relating to kings in the Old Testament occur in 1 Samuel 8:10. The Israelites ask Samuel to find them a king. He discusses this with his God, who is highly offended, and tells Samuel to warn the people about the dangers of monarchies. In the end a very peeved and jealous God helps Samuel to choose Saul as king.

The most famous passages relating to kings in the New Testament occur when mobs of fans try to make Jesus a "king". He refuses. Later Pontius Pilate asks "Are you a king then?", to which Jesus replies "My kingdom is not of this world". (Or so, at least, the story goes.)

It is therefore hard to see how Christians can be enthusiastic about any form of monarchy. On the other hand, most varieties of paganism are, or have been, supportive of a strong and deeply spiritual form of monarchy known as "sacral kingship".

Perhaps the best-known and most extreme example is that of ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh was regarded as both the earthly embodiment and, literally, the child of the sun-god. And, as H.W. Fairman has explained, "… the dominant element in the Egyptian conception of kingship was that the king was a god – not merely godlike, but very god".

Egypt may have been an extreme case, but some form of sacral kingship was also common to almost all the pagan Indo-European tribes and cultures.

Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough (1911-15) argued that ancient civilizations believed their kings physically embodied the spirit of fertility by which the gods sustain all nature. Frazer’s argument is now seen as somewhat crude, but it was enormously influential. In 1955, for instance, the Eighth International Congress for the History of Religions was dedicated to the concept of sacral kingship.

The phrase is evocative but difficult to define. Rory McTurk is one scholar who has attempted to do so over several decades. His most recent definition is that "a sacral king is one who is marked off from his fellow men by an aura of specialness which has its origins in more or less direct associations with the supernatural".

The great Australian scholar of Germanic studies, John Stanley Martin, complaining that an earlier McTurk definition was somewhat vague, listed five aspects of kingship that may be involved in this concept:

1. The king is descended from a god

2. The king is an incarnation of a god

3. The king is an instrument of a god’s activity

4. The king is a celebrant of cults

5. The king is the object of a cult

Martin added that "Any individual king could contain one of these attributes or several of them in combination, but not all of them".

The Roman writer Cicero tells us that the first of Dr Martin's criteria applied in Sparta, whose kings had to be of divine descent. (De republica II, 12:23). Tacitus claimed that the entire Germanic peoples were collectively descended from the god Tuisto, but this was evidently insufficient to launch a claim to kingship among the early Franks, whose rulers had to come from the family known as Merovings.

Maartje Draak has drawn attention to the duties of sacral kings among the pagan Irish, shedding light on Dr Martin’s criterion of the king "as an instrument of a god’s activity".

She writes that "… numerous texts insist on the king bringing about or being responsible for the fertility of the soil, the fairness of weather, the absence of disaster. If the king is a real king there are prosperity in nature and peace in the people during his reign. … If there is no fertility, no abundance, no fair weather, the king is no true King – or he has done wrong."

Patrick Wormald has argued convincingly that early Irish and Germanic kingships are not dissimilar. The evidence supports him. What can be said of sacral kingship among the Irish tends to be true also of the Germanic peoples.

Despite some dissenting scholarship, it can be said with certainty that the early Germanic peoples believed in sacral kingship. So much has been written on this subject that even a brief survey cannot be given here. A short list at the end of this article will point readers in the general direction. Rather than describing the entire pool, let us jump in at the deep end.

In Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Snorri Sturlusson tells us that Earl Hákon re-established heathenism in his region, as a consequence of which the land prospered again, having previously been blighted by the temporary adoption of Christianity.

The 10th century poem on which Snorri based his account runs:

"And the man-seeding sons of the gods
turn to the sacrifices;
the powerful shield-bearer
forwarded himself by this.
Now the earth grows as before.
The glorious prince lets
warriors inhabit again,
glad, the gods’ sanctuaries.

Snorri adds to this: "The first winter when Hákon ruled over the land there was a run of herring in the rivers all over the country, and corn had grown earlier in the autumn, wherever it had been sown".

There are many other surviving examples of how good pagan sacral kings made the land fruitful, whereas bad pagan kings and Christian kings in general brought a curse on the land. Thus, Óláf trételgja in Värmland failed to perform the necessary sacrifices, leading to a series of bad seasons after which his subjects sacrificed Óláf himself by burning him in his own dwelling. In Haralds saga gráfeldar we learn that Eirík’s sons destroyed the temples, and "It happened in their days that the seasons became bad in the land".

The heathen Anglo-Saxon kings were of the same Germanic culture, and we can assume that they performed similar duties. Certainly they were sacral, specifically claiming divine descent. The royal families of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex and numerous other kingdoms all proclaimed that their first ancestor was Woden – just as the Ynglingar kings of Scandinavia claimed descent from Yngvi-Freyr.

As long ago as 1867, E.A. Freeman noted that "The ancient English kingship was elective. It was elective in the same sense in which all the old Teutonic kingdoms were elective. Among a people in whose eyes birth was highly valued, it was deemed desirable that the king should be the descendant of illustrious and royal ancestors. In the days of heathendom it was held that the king should come of the supposed stock of the Gods. These feelings everywhere pointed to some particular house as the royal house, the house whose members had a special claim on the suffrages of the electors. In every kingdom there was a royal family, out of which alone, under all ordinary circumstances, kings were chosen; but within that royal family the Witan of the land had a free choice".

Freeman perhaps overstated the clarity of the heathen English law, but his argument particularly bears repetition today, when we are so used to the concept of "constitutional monarchy" with its clear-cut order of royal succession. To re-state it in simple terms: The heathen Anglo-Saxons recognised that the blood of Woden flowed in certain families, and it was from these families that the Witan could appoint the king.

If things became messier, and a "strong man" usurped the kingdom, he at least had to show that he had some sort of hereditary claim. This condition applied even in Christian times. It underpins the maneuverings of William the Conqueror.

William could not claim descent from Woden, so he asserted that Edward the Confessor, a king whose official genealogy began with Woden, had anointed him. Well aware of the dubiousness of his own right to reign, William married his youngest son, Henry I, to the niece of Edgar the Ætheling, thereby bringing the blood of Woden back into the English royal house. It is there still, even if much diluted.

But then, who can say whether divine blood can be diluted? Perhaps, like certain genes, it can instead be recessive, so that it is manifest in only a few individuals of any given family.

The heathen Scandinavians appear to have thought along these lines. Óláf trételgja was of Ynglingar blood, and therefore descended from Yngvi-Freyr, but as we have seen his subjects killed him. They decided that divine descent was not enough: Óláf was not considered a genuine sacral king, so he was sacrificed.

These thoughts began with the recent referendum on the Australian monarchy. Some readers may think they have travelled a long way from that starting point. Perhaps it is time to tie a few arguments together.

As we have seen, our heathen ancestors believed in the idea of sacral kingship, while in contrast the Christians’ sacred texts are opposed to the idea of monarchy.

Furthermore, an overgrown but still discernable ancestral trail leads from Woden directly to the early English royal families and, through various meanderings, right through to the present day royals.

This is not to say that Elizabeth II shows any signs of divine ancestry – she clearly doesn’t, although her earlier namesake probably did. From what is known of Prince Charles it can be said with confidence that Woden’s blood has had no impact whatsoever. (It is almost sacrilege to link the name of the High One with a royal fool who once expressed his desire to be reincarnated as Camilla Parker-Bowles’ tampon!)

But does that mean that we – heathen Australians of Germanic origin – should cut the tangible monarchical link with our main god, and install instead a politicians’ lapdog or a rich showbiz type as our head of state?

In this writer’s view, the acceptance of a republic would have amounted to a complete surrender to Christian values. It wouldhave taken us all the way back to the anti-monarchist arguments of Samuel (and his petty-minded God). The last vestiges of our uniquely heathen concepts of social and natural order would have disappeared, to be replaced by something far more acceptable and amenable to the New World Order.

Not that there is much – if anything – to say for either a constitutional monarchy or the leading lights of the House of Windsor. Still and all, the concept of monarchy is entirely heathen and the House of Windsor can trace its descent to Woden. Perhaps, in a few decades, a true sacral king or queen will emerge – one in whom the heritage of Woden’s blood is manifest, and who will therefore bring blessings on his or her people.

At present we are rather lucky. The conventions of a constitutional monarchy prevent time-servers like Elizabeth and clowns like Charles from having any real influence, while at the same time denying a locus of power to those who would dearly like to replace them – the most clamorous of whom seem to come from Roman Catholic backgrounds, to judge from their surnames. In this sense we can perhaps thank the current royals for keeping the throne warm for the genuinely sacral monarch who will inevitably succeed them in due course.

One last point. It is interesting that the so-called "monarchists" in the Australian referendum debate shied away from defending our current lame "monarchy", preferring instead to focus on possible weaknesses in any new republican system. No-one seems to have come out plainly and said we should retain what presently passes for a monarchy until a future sacral king or queen can restore the true monarchy that is part of our spiritual heritage – so that once again, in the words of the 1981 John Boorman film, Excalibur, "The king and the land are one".

- Osred