Armanen-Orden

Armanen-Orden
Formation	1976
Type	Arman Heathenism
Founder	Adolf Schleipfer, Sigrun von Schlichting
Website	http://armanen-orden.blogspot.com/

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The Armanen-Orden (acronym: AO; German for "Armanen Order", "Order of the Armanen") is an Arman Heathen organisation active in the German countries. It was founded in 1976 by Adolf Schleipfer and his then-wife Sigrun von Schlichting as the reorganisation of the Ariosophical Guido von List Society, though its doctrine is not limited to List's teachings. Other reference figures of the Armanen-Orden are Julius Evola, Johann von Leers^[1] and Alain de Benoist.

History

The Guido von List Society was founded by the Ariosophist Guido von List, the initiator of the doctrine of Armanism, on the Summer solstice of 1911. A circle of inner adepts of higher initiatory degree within the society formed the Hohen-Armanen-Orden ("High Arman Order")^[2], including List himself. In the ideology of the group the Armanen were, in ancient times, the highest priestly class of the Germanic populations, descending from the primordial stock of the White race.

The Armanen-Orden was founded in 1976 as the re-activated Guido von List Society,^[3] after contacts in 1967 between Adolf Schleipfer (born 1947) and the still living last president of the society, Hanns Bierbach.

Schleipfer founded the Armanen-Orden with his then-wife, Sigrun Schleipfer, née Hammerbacher^[4] (1940–2009), after the divorce known with her noble titles of "Sigrun, Baroness von Schlichting" or simply "Sigrun von Schlichting" (daughter of the Völkisch writer Hans Wilhelm Hammerbacher).^[5] Despite the divorce Adolf and Sigrun served together as the "Grandmasters" of the Armanen-Orden.^[6]

Doctrine

The Armanen-Orden aim as formulated in its publications can be synthesized as the reawakening of the true soul of the Germanic peoples and lands, through the re-establishment of the German ethnic religion and the fight against the subversive and destructive forces of the modern world. The Armanen-Orden is organised as an elitist, hierarchical and initiatory society (with nine grades of initiation). The Order is openly ethnonationalist, ethnicist and racialist, and rejects race-mixing as a modern degeneration.

Activities

A view of the Schloss Rothenhorn of Sigrun von Schlichting, under restoration, in Jędrzychowice.

In 1977 Sigrun von Schlichting founded the Gemeinschaft zur Erhaltung der Burgen (Society for the Conservation of Castles), which proclaims castles to be among the "last paradises of the romantic era" in this cold modern age. Since 1995 the society has been restoring a then run-down castle Sigrun acquired — the 12th century Feenschloss Rothenhorn — in Jędrzychowice, near Szlichtyngowa, in Silesia, Poland, which will serve as the main center of the Armanen-Orden and one of the main religious centers for Heathens in Germanic Europe.^[7] The Order has a public arm organisation, the Association of European Natural Religion Tribes which publishes a magazine named Irminsul.^[8] The Armanen-Orden is a member of the European Congress of Ethnic Religions.

Over many years, Adolf and Sigrun Schleipfer have republished all of Guido von List's works (and many others relating to the Armanen runes) in their original German. Adolf Schleipfer has also contributed an article to The Secret King, a study of Karl Maria Wiligut by Stephen Flowers and Michael Moynihan, in which he points out the differences between Wiligut's beliefs and those which are accepted within Odinism and Armanism.^[9]

Celebrations

The Armanen-Orden celebrates seasonal festivities in a similar fashion as Odinist groups do and invites interested peopole to these events. The highlightened ones are three "things" (assemblies) at the Heathen holidays of Ostara, Midsummer and Fallfest (Wotan's sacrificial death), which are mostly celebrated at castles close or in sacred places, such as Externsteine.

The author Stefanie von Schnurbein attended a Fall Thing in 1990 and gives the following report in Religion als Kulturkritik (Religion as Cultural Criticism):^[10]

"The participants meet in a room decorated with hand-woven wall hangings and pictures of Germanic gods, Odin and Frigga in this case. [...] At one end of the room is a tablecovered with black cloth. On this a 4 feet high wooden Irminsul, a spear, a sword, a replica of a sun disc chariot, a leather-bound copy of the Edda as well as ritual bowls and candles are placed. The participants are seated in a semi-circle in front of the table, the front row being occupied by Order members clothed in their ritual garb (black suits for the men and long white dresses for the women; both have the Armanen-Orden emblem sewn on them). [...] After several invocations the 'spirit flame,' symbolising Odin in the spirit world, is lit in a bowl filled with lamp oil. The purpose of this cultic celebration is the portrayel of Odin's concentration from spirit into matter. After a recital of the first part of Odin's rune poem from the Edda, the "blood sacrifice" commences, in which a bowl with animal blood is raised to the beat of a gong and an invocation of sacrifice. Then Odin is called into the realm by the participants who assume the Othala rune stance, whisper 'Wodan' nine times and finally sing an ode to Odin with the following words: 'Wodan come to us, od-uod, uod.' Odin's sacrifice to himself is symbolised by extinguishing the flame."

Notes

1. ^ Leers publizierte 1933 in einem Sammelband im "Armanen-Verlag" in Leipzig: Deutschland fordert Gleichberechtigung. Eine Sammlung von Aufsätzen und Rundfunkreden über die Fragen der Gleichberechtigung, Sicherheit und Abrüstung. Hg. Hans Weberstedt. Weberstedt stand ausweislich seiner sonstigen Publikationen den Ludendorffern nahe. Im Sammelband vertreten waren u. a. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Wilhelm Ziegler, Kuno Graf Westarp, Max Graf Montgelas, Otto Voelckers und Werner von Rheinbaben.
2. ^ Zum HAO siehe Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus. Stocker, Graz 1997.
3. ^ Stefanie von Schnurbein. Religion als Kulturkritik, 1995. p. 25
4. ^ Handbuch Deutscher Rechtsextremismus (1996).
5. ^ Stefanie von Schnurbein. Religion als Kulturkritik, 1995. pp. 27ff
6. ^ Felix Wiedemann: Rassenmutter und Rebellin. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3679-8, Seite 209.
7. ^ Photos of Sigrun, her funeral and the castle
8. ^ Irminsul in the German National Library.
9. ^ Adolf Schleipfer. "The Wiligut Saga". In The Secret King by Flowers and Moynihan. Originally published in Irminsul 5 (1982).
10. ^ Stefanie von Schnurbein. Religion als Kulturkritik, 1995.

Bibliography

• Sünner,Rüdiger (1997). Schwarze Sonne: Entfesselung und Missbrauch der Mythen in Nationalsozialismus und rechter Esoterik. 
• Balzli, Johannes - ‘Guido v. List - Der Wiederentdecker uralter arischer Weisheit (Leipzig and Vienna, 1917)’
• 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. 
• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4. 
• Flowers Ph.D., Stephen (aka Edred Thorsson) (1988). The Secret of the Runes. Destiny Books. ISBN 0-89281-207-9. 
• Franziska Hundseder: Wotans Jünger. Neuheidnische Gruppen zwischen Esoterik und Rechtsradikalismus. Heyne, München 1998, ISBN 3-453-13191-6, (Heyne Sachbuch), S. 126–132.

See also

• Armanism
• Ariosophy
• Heathenism
• Paganism
• European Congress of Ethnic Religions

External links

• Official website