Nightside of the Runes by Thomas Karlsson

Author:Thomas Karlsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: occult
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2018-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

INTRODUCTION TO PART 2

Gothicism is associated by many people mainly with the Swedish fantasies of great power expressed in Olof Rudbeck’s Atlantica, where it is maintained that Atlantis was situated in Sweden, or with the Götiska Förbund (Gothic League) and the bombastic nationalistic and Romantic poetry of the 1800s. Gothicism is a cultural movement that projects its origin back to the Goths, whose legendary great deeds the movement’s followers wanted to ascribe to their own history. In Sweden the Goths were connected with the Geats, or in exceptional cases to the inhabitants of the island of Gotland, while in Denmark it was thought that the Goths and Jutes were related. Gothicism was characterized by grand fantasies and speculations and came to be meaningful in both cultural life and propaganda. Gothicism in general, and Swedish Gothicism in particular, lived in a close relationship with the esoteric currents that thrived throughout Europe. Ideas of Paracelsus and later the Rosicrucian awakening would influence Gothicism as much as anything. From this quarter came along apocalyptic predictions and prophecies that were useful in Gothic propaganda, but with this intellectual material also came Hermetic speculations of a significantly more individualistic character that emphasized humanity’s gradual ascent toward a higher state of being. The foremost representative for the meeting between Gothicism and esotericism was the antiquarian Johannes Bureus, who was the teacher of King Gustavus Adolphus. Bureus was a pioneer in runology and Swedish linguistics and is acknowledged as the father of Swedish grammar, but Bureus himself thought that it was within the sphere of mysticism that he made his most important contribution.1

Bureus represents what we would call an esoteric Gothicism. In him the motif of Gothicism coalesces with the esotericism of his age, with such things as alchemy, Cabbala, Hermeticism, astrology, and magic. Bureus himself called his esoteric system for Nordic Cabbala a notaricon suethia or a Cabala Upsalica.2 Bureus also applied the methods of the Cabbala to his runological research.3 In speaking of an esoteric Gothicism we can differentiate this tendency in Gothicism from the nationalistic chauvinism that we normally associate with it. With Bureus the Gothic themes with runes and ancient Nordic themes appear in an equally imaginative way as with Rudbeck, but what is particular to Bureus is that he utilizes these themes to describe a highly individualistic initiatory path that leads to an alchemical and cabbalistic coalescence with God. Usually Gothicism, both the older and younger, is restricted to using the theme of the mystical Goths to support the kingdom or nation in a mythologized version of history. Esoteric Gothicism utilizes Gothic themes for individual initiatory purposes. In speaking of an exoteric Gothicism we can also include persons and groups that, in a way partially independent of Bureus’s “Gothic Cabbala,” incorporate elements in their Gothicism (or Gothic elements in their esotericism). That this is not merely to be thought of as esotericism in the most general sense is due to the importance placed on the myth of the Goths in the esoteric speculations.

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