The Wild Hunt: Symbolisms, Meanings, and Folklore (Part 2)

Part 2: Frau Holle and Perchta; seasonal symbolisms of the Wild Hunt

by Sean Jobst

31 December 2020

"Frau Gode" by the German painter
Ludwig Pietsch (1824-1911)

   Continuing from Part 1 concerning the Wild Hunt, special attention should be made about the Germanic goddess variously known under her regional names as Perchta/Berchta in Southern Germany, Frau Holle in Central Germany, and Frau Herke/Freke/Gode/Wode in Northern Germany (Heath, 5). She is Vrouw Holle in Flanders and the Netherlands. All share such close associations with Frija, the wife of Wodan, that we can hypothesize they're one and the same - as is most pronounced with the Wild Hunt: "Frau Holle, elsewhere called Perchta, rushes through the airs at the head of her procession, and the people below either put some food on their roofs, or set a special place at the table"(GardenStone, 110). She is mentioned in many fairy tales and folklore. Jacob Grimm conceived of Holle as originally a sky goddess associated with weather forces, highlighting patterns with other mythologies:

   "Frau Holle is represented as a being of the sky, begirdling the earth: when it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers of it fly. She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain: the Greeks ascribe the production of snow and rain to their Zeus; so that Holda comes before us a goddess of no mean rank. The comparison of snowflakes to feathers is very old; the Scythians pronounced the regions north of them inaccessible, because they were filled with feathers. Holda then must be able to move through the air, like dame Herke. Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Berhta, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land. Not otherwise does 'Derk with the boar,' that Freyr of the Netherlands, appear to go his rounds and look after the ploughs. At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the 'wutende heer'"(Grimm, 267-268).

   Whereas Mutter Erde (Mother Earth) personifies the landscape, Frau Holle is that aspect which is the seasonal and weather change. For Paganism knew the deities as allegories for various forces of Nature, the Cosmos, and the Psyche, but also very real entities since there is a power and consciousness within everything. Frau Holle unites both the upperworld and underworld, the weather being an interplay of both upon the landscape. She is said to live in a cave, which represents inside the earth. She was a goddess of healing, much like the healing connotations of Wodan in the continental sources (such as the Merseburg Charms). Her close link to Wodan can be seen in her names of Frau Gode or Wode, as there was a time when "G" and "W" were used interchangeably. Another variation is Frau Herke, a female version of the Old English Herla whose own named derived from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "host leader" and thus referred to Wodan: "This would place Frau Herke in the same category as Frau Gode/Wode, as being names that appear to have come from the custom of married women being known by their husband's first name. However in the case of Herke, not only does she potentially take Wodan's name, but in some places she's also believed to take his role as leader of the Wild Hunt"(Heath, 6).

"Perchta" by contemporary American
artist Scott M. Fischer

   Who is Perchta? Her name means "the bright one", deriving from Old High German beraht, bereht -> Proto-Germanic *brehtaz. The feast of Epiphany is called Berchtentag in her honor. The Austrian mythologist Lotte Motz saw Perchta as the South Germanic equivalent of Holle, while Grimm notes Perchta was known "precisely in those Upper Germa regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria"(Grimm, 272). Both share the role of "guardian of the beasts" and oversee spinning during the Raunächte, which connect them with goddesses of fate, the Norns - and the act of spinning an allegory for both "weaving" ones deeds into the Web of Wurt and magical-shamanic qualities: "That a godhead visits humans and intervenes in their concerns is indeed a rare and characteristic phenomenon. Just such a divinity is encountered, even in modern times, in the regions of German speech. Folk traditions have preserved the features of this female deity so that, with minor variations, she emerges as a well defined and vivid creature. Though she belongs to widely separated geographic areas and is designated by many names we cannot doubt that the many individual spirits had arisen from one basic form"(Motz, 1992, 11).

   She would receive flax from shepherds in the Summer and bless their flocks. She traveled through the countryside, inspecting for any signs of laziness in spinning; failure to fulfill this task in a timely manner would lead to Perchta cursing with bad luck for the next year. "People also say that Dame Holle begins to move about during the Christmas period. This is why serving women replenish their spindles or roll large amounts of yarn or fabric around them, and leave them there over night. They say if Dame Holla sees this she will say, 'For every thread there will be a good year'"(Praetorius, 403). Folklore identifies snow as occurring whenever Frau Holle or Perchta makes her bed. Even the clouds were taken as symbolic: White, fluffy clouds were her hanging her clothes out to dry in the sun; more elaborate clouds were her "weaving" - its not for nothing that Grimm noted the Wild Hunt being "perceptible in cloudy shapes". A Munich manuscript from the Alderspach Monastery alludes to those who "garnish their table for Percht"(Lecoteux, 18), a remnant of the ancient Pagan practice of libations and setting aside food for one's ancestors at the table.

   Perchta is dual-natured, alternately appearing as a young maiden or an old "hag" depending on what is reflected back at you through your own deeds. The term "hag" was a Christianized term used to describe an old woman, often in the medieval context of accusing her of "witchcraft", often being the herbalists and midwives with knowledge of natural lore and herbalism. Even in the term "hag" Perchta's ancient healing abilities were evident: The Hagal Rune meant "all-protecting" and Germanic  warriors would inscribe it upon their shields. Conversely, her violent qualities include cutting open the stomachs of those not using their time wisely and the symbolism of those standing in the way of her Wild Hunt with their entrails trailing behind them is a visceral allegory for what we can call Shadow Work or a profound examination of the self. In their fairy tale, the Grimm Brothers stress Frau Holle's dual role as benevolent to the girl who willingly helped and as a "hag" to the girl's lazy half-sister. This represents the Yuletide rewarding those who have been good and punishing those who have been bad, later Christianized as Saint Nicholas giving either gifts or coal in a child's stocking. Perchta is thus an example of syncretism and survivals of pre-Christian Alpine Paganism within ostensibly Catholic traditions.

"Berchtengehen", Illustrierte Chronik der Zeit (1890)

   Celtic Origins. Noting the distinct differences between Perchta and her more northern cousins, German linguist Erika Timm made a compelling case that Perchta arose from an amalgamation of Alpine Celtic traditions with the Germanic Migration Period. Among other qualities, her association with iron, including in her "eiserne nase" (iron nose), could harken back to the advanced iron works of the Alpine Celtic cultures such as Hallstatt that the Suebi, Alemanni and Bavarii absorbed. Rather than just from Germanic Beraht, Timm proposes a Celtic etymology for Perchta's name in Brixta, a Celtic goddess linked to healing wells (Timm, 317-318), which would lend further relevance to Perchta's healing qualities and her association with wells and other water sources. Such water sources as wells, springs and swamps could be seen as "cauldrons" of Frau Holle or Perchta, betraying Celtic imagery: "The Celtic gods who emulated the Great Goddess Cerridwen also had cauldrons, including Dagda, the benevolent Sky God, and the Lover of Dana (Dea Ana), the Earth Goddess, who had a cauldron 'that would never empty and go dry'"(Storl, 46). The latter is especially tantalizing if we recall the Wild Hunt in Asturias was led by a goddess named Dianu.

   Conflation with Diana. We have already seen how medieval authors tended to conflate all the Pagan goddesses to the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana. This was due both to their own Roman bias and their associating all with what they defined as "devilish" qualities - celebration of the female form, the primal power of the forests, and practicing witchcraft. Written between 788 and 800, the Passio Minor describes Irish "Saint" Killian's attempts to convert the people of Franconia to Christianity. Locals told him about the worship of a "Diana of Würzburg": "We want to serve the great Diana, as our fathers did and in doing so, have prospered well to this day"(Timm, 208). Noting how the Roman cult of Diana had never appeared in that region, Grimm suggests this "Diana" was Frau Holle: "As it is principally in Thuringia, Franconia and Hessen that Frau Holda survives, it is not incredible that by 'Diana' in the neighbourhood of Würzburg, so far back as the 7th century, was meant none other than she"(Grimm, 286). Timm further identified her with Frija.

   Remnants into the Christian era. Horrified by her beloved place within the Germanic memory, Christian missionaries lamented continued reverance for Frau Holle. In his Dictionary of Superstitions (Aberglaubensverzeichnis), written sometime between 1236 and 1250, the Cistercian monk Rudolf observed: "In the night of Christ's nativity, they set the table for the Queen of Heaven, whom the people call Frau Holda, so that she might help them"(Heath, 11). Even the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, warned in his Exposition of the Epistles at Basel (1522): "Here cometh up Fraw Hulde with the snout, to wit, nature, and goeth about to gainstay her God", a phrase that Martin Bucer translated into Latin as "verenda nostra hera" (Our Venerated Lady), a term confined to the Virgin Mary (ibid., 12). The Church tried to stamp out the folklore about "Frawen Percht", complaining about locals who preferred to chant "Domina Perchta" than say prayers to Mary. People would also leave food out for Perchta during these nights leading up to Epiphany, seeking her blessings for the next year.

   As was common for various goddesses elsewhere, with the coming of Christianity the figure of Mary often took on the roles and qualities of Frau Holle or Perchta. We know at least two that were not in original Christian tradition: Her association with snow and overseeing spinning and sewing. "If, independently of the christian calendar, there was a Holda, then neither can Perahta be purely a product of it; on the contrary, both of these adjective names lead up to a heathen deity, who made her peregrination at that very season of yule, and whom therefore the christians readily connected with the sacredness of Christmas and New Year"(Grimm, 282). There remained festive days honoring Holle, alongside the Christian ones (Motz, 1984, 152-153). Finally, there is evidence from the 6th century that Holda was also given the title "Queen of Heaven" alongside Mary (Timm, 23) during that century defined by syncretism as a step towards Christianization.

   Ostara and the Coming Spring. Just as Frau Holle or Perchta seemed to personify Winter, the Spring season was associated with the Germanic goddess Ostara, who represents "the transition from the death of winter to vernal life, and the Christian celebration integrated many pagan rites, such as the din intended to drive off the demons of winter"(Lecouteux, 197). The 19th century German folklorists Wilhelm Mannhardt and Friedrich Liebrecht both expressed the view that the Wild Hunt was connected to rituals for expelling Winter (ibid., 178). The Romanian scholar of comparative mythology, Mircea Eliade, cited an 8th-century text that spoke of how "the Alamans sought to expel winter during the month of February"(Eliade, 268-271). Ancient Alemanni lore has survived in Fastnacht traditions, with the various masked "witches" and "forest spirits" in processions symbolic of either Winter itself or forces of Nature seeking to drive Winter out with their presence while ushering in Spring.

This motif can variously be seen in the Perchta masquerades of Germanic Alpine lands, the Calends of March masquerades in French areas of Switzerland, and the parades of Lombardy, Venice and Piedmont to "burn the old one" (brusar la veccia), the "one" meaning the "year", "which can be likened to the ancient Roman festival of Anna Perenna that fell during the Ides of March"(Lecouteux, 178). The Lithuanian-American anthropologist Marija Gimbutas identified the goddess Holle with the duality of Winter/death and Spring/life: "[Holle] holds dominion over death, the cold darkness of winter, caves, graves and tombs in the earth....but also receives the fertile seed, the light of midwinter, the fertilized egg, which transforms the tomb into a womb for the gestation of new life"(Gimbutas).

   Cycle of Death and Life. Even in the darkness of Winter there would be symbolic expressions of Spring, such as in the Wild Hunt candlelight processions of the Spanish Campaña. Here we see another lesson of the Wild Hunt: the boundary between death and life is not always clear, both operating as part of a cycle. There was the idea of the dead forming a processon and reentering their old villages for warmth and food, guided by a fire left specifically for them. This liminal time between Winter and Spring was taken as symbolic of the dead, such as in the Roman cult of the Lares. "In France and the Germanic countries this setting took the form of the fairy feast, the table set for Dame Abundia, Percht, or the Parcae"(ibid., 179), the "fairies" perhaps being a loose allegory for Ancestors and not the Sidhe of Ireland. The Wild Hunt in Asturias was associated with the buena genta, "the good folk", similar to the Sidhe. The theme here was expelling the "demonic" dead spirits and inviting the "good" ancestors. The Dutch fairy tale of "The Legend of the Wooden Shoe" contains interesting Druidic themes:

   "In years long gone millions of good fairies came down from the sun and went into the earth. There, they changed themselves into roots and leaves, and became trees. There were many kinds of these, as they covered the earth, but the pine and birch, ash and oak, were the chief ones   The fairies that lived in the trees bore the name of Moss Maidens, or Tree 'Trintjes'. The oak was the favourite tree. Under its branches, near the trunk, people laid their sick, hoping for help from the gods. Even more wonderful, as medicine for the country itself, the oak had power to heal   the oak, with its mighty roots, held the soil firm"(Griffis).

   Frau Holle represents the motherly, love-energy the nurturing aspect of the atmosphere. She and her Wild Hunt brings forth life as much as death. Fertility depends on precipitation from the sky, hence the link between storms, Wild Hunt, and fertility. The dead also have power over the elements. Georges Dumézil identified these legions of the dead roaming the earth under the guidance of their leader as connected to the third function of fertility. "The passage of the Wild Hunt, which, in the traditions after the Middle Ages, was closely connected to food and drink, is perfectly logical to us once we grasp the role played by the dead. They presided over the fertility of the soil and the fecundity of livestock. Thus it was necessary to propitiate them if they were regarded as neutral or well-intentioned or to drive them away and send them fleeing if they were seen as wicked. In one way or another, the Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods"(Lecouteux, 199). Eliade makes a similar point:

   "Agriculture as a profane skill and as a cult touches the world of the dead on two quite different levels. The first is solidarity with the earth; the dead are buried like seeds and enter a dimension of the earth accessible to them alone. Then, too, agriculture is preeminently a handling of fertility, of life reproducing itself by growth. The dead are especially drawn to this mystery of rebirth, to the cycle of creation, and to inexhaustible fertility. Like seeds buried in the womb of the earth, the dead wait for their return to life in their new form. That is why they draw close to the living, particularly at those times when the vital tension of the whole community is at its height - that is, during the fertility festival, when the generative powers of nature and of mankind are evoked, unleashed, and stirred to frenzy by rites and orgies....As long as seeds remain buried, they also fall under the jurisdiction of the dead. The Earth Mother, or Great Goddess of Fertility governs the fate of seeds and that of the dead in the same way. But the dead are sometimes closer to man, and it is to them that the husbandsman turns to bless and sustain his work"(Eliade, 295).

[To be continued in Part 3, about the role of Wotan and the Wild Huntsman archetype, as well as other aspects of the Wild Hunt....]

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Eliade, Mircea. Traité d'histoire des religions. Paris: Payot, 1949; Patterns of Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

GardenStone. Goddess Holle: In search of a Germanic goddess, trans. Michelle Lina Marie Hitchcock. Norderstadt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand GmbH, 2011.

Gimbutas, Marija. Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.

Griffis, William Elliot. Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1918.

Grimm, Jakob. Teutonic Mythology, trans. James Steven Stallybrass. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.  

Heath, Catherine. "From Fairytale to Goddess: Frau Holle and the Scholars that try to reveal her origins." 2013.

Lecouteux, Claude. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.

Motz, Lotte, "The Winter Goddess: Percht, Holda, And Related Figures," Folklore, Vol. 95, No. 2, 1984, pp. 151-166.

Motz, Lotte, "The Goddess Nerthus: A New Approach," Amsterdamer Beiträge zur Älteren Germanistik, Vol. 36, 1992, pp. 1-20.

Praetorius, Johannes. Saturnalia. Leipzig: 1663.

Storl, Wolf-Dieter. The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017.

Timm, Erika, and Gustav Adolf Beckmann. Frau Holle, Frau Percht Und Verwandte Gestalten: 160 Jahre Nach Jacob Grimm Aus Germanischer Sicht Betrachtet. Stuttgart: Hinzel, 2003. 

The Wild Hunt: Symbolisms, Meanings, and Folklore (Part 1)

Part 1: Introduction; various cosmic and natural symbolisms; timing and relation to holidays

by Sean Jobst

29 December 2020

"The Ride of Asgard" (1872) by Norwegian painter
Peter Nicolai Arbo, portraying the Wild Hunt

   There is an undercurrent of ancient wisdom deeply embedded in folklore and traditions. This is a basic truth I have come to recognize these past few years, leading me on a journey I can only describe as enlightening. It was a task I took up in my past examinations of folklore, identifying remnants of the ancient Germanic goddesses Zisa and Ostara, and the various traditions and legends around the auspicious time of Walpurgisnacht. Using that same basic format, I will now examine traditions, folklore, and legends about the Wild Hunt - a pan-European motif with its regional variants. I will focus more on the Swabian and Alemannic, Flemish, and Iberian traditions of my ancestral lands, with parallels in nearby cultures so as to gain a deeper picture of what this mysterious Hunt symbolizes. As I have examined with those other three articles, there are many layers of meaning - each one has lessons for us about our ancestors, our selves, our psyche, our environment, and the cosmos.

   The Wild Hunt gradually evolved from a mythological theme with obvious roots in the Pagan European past, to a mysterious Christianized folkloric trope filled with dark imagery. Common themes remained throughout, including a balance of various forces - the unseen with the seen, the "good" with the "bad", the living with the dead, natural and cosmic. The great German folklorist Jakob Grimm described it as a "solemn march of gods" who visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" but also floated "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon." It was degenerated by the Christians into "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients"(Grimm, 947).

   Such an "infernal host" is a departure from the original Pagan lore where it involved individuals with actual bodies rather than incorporeal ghosts, as well as traveling more over the ground than the air. Perhaps this is part of the Christian (and Abrahamic) drawing away of spiritual forces from the Natural world into a distant Cosmos - yet there is a place for a balance of the two within the original folklore. Yet even the Infernal Hunt has an ancient origin: "This is the sign of an imminent death, and this motif has a long history"(Lecouteux, 102). Its a rite binding together the perceivable realm of Nature with its darker, more esoteric aspects that are as real but less quantifiable. The Wild Hunt "primarily concerns an initiation into the wild, untamed forces of nature in its dark and chthonic aspects"(Greenwood, 195), hence we "Wild" is combined with "Host, Hunt, Army" in its regional names. 

   I perceive it as a "host" of supernatural elements which simply means a mysterious realm that coexists within our own but is the matter of legends; a "hunt" involving an "army" insofar as what is "hunted" is either an impending death, trying to "ride" the chaotic forces within Nature or the Psyche so as to facilitate the ultimate self-growth, or seasonal connotations involving the liminal times when the most changes occur on all those levels. In its most ancient roots, the French scholar Claude Lecouteux saw the Wild Hunt as a merger of fertility and agricultural rites and ancestor veneration, with Georges Dumézil's third function of common folk within Indo-European societies: "That this kind of kinship appears from the northern to southern extremes of the Germanic area and poses a challenge to the law of ecotypes cannot be a coincidence. Instead it shows that what we find here are beliefs of a venerable antiquity, from a time before the various Germanic ethnic groups went their separate ways. What we have here supports the hypothesis of an Indo-European origin for the Wild Hunt"(Lecouteux, 192).

Mistress of the Wild Hunt: Our Continental
Germanic goddess Frau Holle, by the German
illustrator Ludwig Pietsch, circa 1860

   Who leads this mysterious Wild Hunt? Given the regional variations as well as the multiple layers of meaning, its not surprising there are various figures given. The two most common ones though are the Germanic god Wotan (Wodan) - seen for example in the Alemannic name Wuotis Heer (Wuodan's Army) of Schwaben and Schweiz - and his wife/consort, the continental goddess Frau Holle, whose name varies in more northerly regions to direct correlations to Wotan's name (i.e. Frau Holda, Frau Gode, etc.) to the Perchta or Berchta "bright one" of Alpine regions. Her qualities are multifaceted, to be unraveled as our story continues, but suffice to say the two aspects - masculine and feminine - balance these natural forces: "not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Woden into frau Gaude"(Grimm, 932).

   Its no accident the common theme of Wild Hunt folk traditions are "constantly driven by continuous natural processes"(Bächtold-Stäubli, 632), invested with supernatural qualities to symbolize the mysteries inherent within Nature, that remain regardless of the social changes occurring in the life of a people: "Another class of spectres will prove more fruitful for our investigation: they, like the ignes fatui [will-o'-the-wisps], include unchristened babes, but instead of straggling singly on the earth as fires, they sweep through forest and air in whole companies with a horrible din. This is the widely spread legend of the furious host, the furious hunt, which is of high antiquity, and interweaves itself, now with gods, and now with heroes. Look where you will, it betrays its connexion with heathenism"(Grimm, 918).

   Throughout Europe's Wild Hunt traditions, there is the leadership of either a masculine or feminine figure, both combining airy and earthly qualities. The masculine usually personifies wind or ecstasy, and is a psychopomp who has specific relations to death. The feminine usually personifies the earth's fertility, and has a more general relation to the Otherworld. A Flemish fairy tale associates the Wild Hunt with an old woman who has a large eye on her forehead and lives in a castle with her souls (Bächtold-Stäubli, 635), which calls to mind some Alpine lore about Perchta or Slavic tales of the Baba Yaga. Given the common use of an eye symbol to ward off the "evil eye", it could be that she not only ushers souls into the Underworld but also wards off death from the living. We will see this same meaning later with the Wild Hunt's association with liminal times between the Winter Solstice (midwinter) and leading up to Spring, with all the seasonal and esoteric connotations that entails. Perchta holds healing qualities as much as her deathly connotations.

   Frau Holle and Wotan had their parallels in Celtic lands like Gaul and Celtiberia, with similar imagery of hunter and otherworld archetypes. Aside from a horned wild huntsman, there is a female figure who rides across the night skies. The Wild Hunt is known in various Spanish regions as the Galician Estantiga or Hoste Antiga "the old army", the Asturian Güestia "host", Leónese Hueste de Ánimas "troop of ghosts", Castilian Estantigua, and Extremaduran Hueste de Guerra "war company" or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte "deadly retinue" (Risco, 389-395). Its no accident the folklore survived most in those regions with the strongest Celtiberian connection. Here too we find a goddess who joins the fertile earth with the deadly realm. In the sixth century, archbishop Martin of Braga described legends among the peasants of northwest Iberia about a goddess "Diana" at the head of a troop traversing the night skies. Rather than being the Roman goddess of the hunt - medieval missionaries conflated all Indo-European goddesses with her given their own Roman bias - "commingled here are Diana of antiquity and Di Ana, a Celtic goddess who is also called Anu. The existence of a god Dianum speaks to this hypothesis. This deity, who was perhaps the Asturian Dianu, no doubt came from Di Anu, who was taken to be a masculine figure"(Lecouteux, 11).

"Nerthus" (1905) by the German illustrator
Emil Doepler (1855-1922)

   Sea connotations. Could this Asturian goddess Di Anu relate to the Irish river goddess Danu? The common element of "dan" relating to rivers, such as in the Danube which nurtured many of the earliest Proto-Celtic cultures. At first glance this appears unrelated to the Wild Hunt with its airy, forest, and underworld qualities. Yet all are connected to the interplay of forces within the rich animistic tapestry of ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes, as we can see in the etymology of related words. Nebulous which describes the airy, esoteric and mysterious, has this pedigree: Latin nebulosus "full of mist, foggy cloudy, Old High German nebul "cloud, fog", Proto-Germanic *nebulaz "fog, mist, darkness" -> Proto-Indo-European *nebhos "cloud, vapor, fog, moisture, sky". Water being seen as conscious, containing a spiritual essence, can be seen in the water-sprites (neck, nixe - literally "to cleanse") of Germanic mythology, for example in the great Neckar River of Swabia, which itself comes from the Celtic nikros "wild water, wild fellow" and Proto-Germanic *nikwus -> Proto-Indo-European *neig "to wash". All conjure up images of not only a physical but also a spiritual cleansing.

   As part of the animism at the heart of their worldview, Celtic and Germanic tribes saw water as living consciousness, many containing sprites while more prominent bodies of water were often personified as goddesses. In Celtic cosmology, the Otherworld contains a celestial, middle, and underworld realm. Ours is the middle, equivalent to the Germanic middle-earth. The underworld is the lower realm, associated with water, minerals, and fire - like the distant southerly realm of fire called Mudspelli or Muspilli in continental Germanic sources. Water, mist and fog were viewed as liminal places, where the veils between worlds was very thin. Mist itself resulted from a mixture of the sky (cosmos) with water, and one perceives the mist as encompassing one's vision upon the earth and can seemingly walk into mist to "disappear" into another world (i.e. outside our immediate realm of vision). No surprise then that Celtic peoples would invest such places with the mysterious - the Iberians saw Finisterre "end of land" overlooking the Atlantic as the conduit through which souls entered into the Otherworld to ultimately be reincarnated back into the middle realm. For the Irish, the Otherworld of Tír na nÓg "land of the young" could be arrived at through one or two ways - one was through water, beneath a lake or the ocean west of Ireland; and the other through an underground passage, such as a sidhe (mound) or cave. 

   Both elements are contained within the Germanic folklore about Frau Holle, who appears in the Grimm fairy-tales as a figure whose realm is reached by descending down a well. The link to the ancestors can also be seen in her association with mounds. Its been my contention that our southern Germanic tribes absorbed much from previous Neolithic people and Celtic cultures of the Alpine regions, seen in our cosmology compared to the later conceptions of the Norse. South Germanic tribes believed "the souls of the dead returned to certain sacred lakes from which they were incorporated into new human beings. This is strongly suggested at least by the derivation of the word soul (from proto-Germanic *saiwa-lo, 'belonging to the lake, deriving from the lake') from a term for 'lake,' or 'inland sea' (*saiwaz), together with the fact that the word soul is indigenous only to the South and East Germanic linguistic areas, whereas in the north there were originally other designations for it"(Hasenfratz, 72). The "sea" here refers to a landlocked water source, not the open ocean.

   Relation to Nerthus and the Meadow. Could Holle be linked to the mysterious goddess Nerthus described by the Roman Tacitus in Chapter 40 of Germania? Holle travels on a wagon accompanied by a man, while an image of Nerthus is described as wheeled on a wagon by a priestly figure to a sacred grove on an island somewhere around the North Sea. A sea goddess like her would have little relevance to our southern tribes, so she was simply given more land qualities - but the symbols remained the same. Rather than the Valhalla of Norse sources, continental Germanic sources refer to an otherworldly realm alongside that of Hel, called "the Meadow". Whereas Hel was closely tied to mounds and just chthonic forces, the "Meadow" - known as Waggs to the Goths, Uuaga in Old Saxon, and Vangr to the Norse -> all stemming from Proto-Germanic *Wangaz - was given forest imagery and thus related to more primal forces on the earth, exactly those active most on the Wild Hunt. It survived in the Alemannic topographical names Wangen "green field, meadow", a realm for the "glorious dead" (ibid., 73) first chosen by Frija rather than Wodan. 

   Cosmic connotations. This link of the Meadow with a celestial deadly troop can be seen in the cosmic symbolisms given to the goddess Frau Hulde or Frigg in the Low Countries. A Middle Dutch term for the Milky Way was Vroneldenstraet "the highway of Frau Hulde". As noted by the pioneering work of the Flemish-French scholar Louis De Baecker (1814-1896), the Flemish knew Orion's Belt as Friggiarocken "Frigg's Distaff", later Christianized as Marienspinrokken "Mary's Distaff". Many Germanic goddesses were portrayed holding a distaff, and many were Christianized as the Virgin Mary so as to appropriate their worship into the Christian fold, such as I found when I studied traditions about Zisa and Ostara. The Norse also associated Orion's Belt with the goddess Freyja, who appears to be the same goddess known to our continental tribes as Frija, Frigg, Holle, Hulda and other regional names. The distaff also relates to the spinning connotation, as we will see more later in relation to Perchta. De Baecker also noted how the Flemish name for Ursa Major was de Woenswaghen "the Chariot of Wodan", thus the close association of Wotan with this Goddess. In Galicia, the Camino contains cosmic symbolisms such as following the pilgrimage routes to the Campus Stellae (Star Field): "Santiago is associated with the Milky Way as the road of the dead"(Lecouteux, 138), perhaps remnants from the ancient Celtic traditions of Galicia.

"The Wolves Pursuing Sol and Mani" (1909), by the
English illustrator John Charles Dollman (1851-1934)
 

   Dates of the Wild Hunt. There is no set date for the Wild Hunt across all areas, because these "corresponded to a pre-Christian cycle of movable feasts, which depended on lunar phases. Furthermore, the Celtic and Germanic calendars were most likely superimposed on two ancient apportionments of the year: two large seasons - summer, which runs from May 1 to November 1, and winter, which runs from November 1 to May 1"(Lecouteux, 199). As noted by Philippe Walter, a professor of medieval French literature at the University of Grenoble, notes these apportionments "have undergone a more or less marked Christianization by virtue of being fixed to specific periods in the calendar," original movable feasts fixed so as to be "integrated in to the Christian calendar"(Walter, 74). 

   Contrary to the fixed celebrations of the Roman calendar and later Christianity, Celtic and Germanic calendars were lunisolar, harmonizing the phases of the sun with those of the moon. Both had two seasons - Summer and Winter - each divided in a quarter. Celtic months began with each full moon, and the Germanic on each new moon. Celtic and Germanic holidays were both marked by full moons. There is evidence the Celts celebrated the Winter Solstice - unlike the Germanic tribes - although not the Equinoxes or Summer Solstice. Wild Hunt traditions in Celtic and Germanic lands were connected to Winter, beginning sometime in mid-late October. For the Germanic, it was the full moon that was called Winter Nights; for the Celts, it was Lughnasa, either the ninth or tenth moon of the year dependent on a lunar leap year.

   The dates generally appear between Martin's Day (November 11), to Advent (the four Sundays before Christmas), Winter Solstice, the Twelve Days of Christmas, Epiphany, and leading up to the end of Winter. "In the Palatinate, for example, the Wild Hunt was abroad during Advent, but in Swabia it appeared precisely on the day of St. Thomas (December 21)"(Lecouteux, 193). Even the Christianized days were taken as personifications of previous deities: "The Westphalian name for the Wild Hunt leader [Goi] could quite conceivably be a recollection of the past. This would not be the first time that the name for an important festival was anthropomorphized - for example, the Befana is the personification of Epiphany and Perchta personifies Christmas"(ibid., 195).

   Samhain. The recurring theme throughout all these differing dates are their liminal and transitory nature: "All the year's transitional passages have the distinctive feature of permitting communication between the otherworld and our world, evidence for which is provided by the invasion of the undead and spirits during these times"(ibid., 197). These include Celtic Samhain, a time when the boundaries between worlds was at its thinnest and the Army of the Sidhe left the Underworld to roam the earth: "In the Intoxication of the Ulstermen, several festivals were organized for Samhain. Following the feast arranged by Fintan, all the nobles, who were already fairly intoxicated, engaged in a wild race across Ireland, following Cuchulain, and at the passing of this furious troop, hills were flattened , trees were uprooted, and the fords and streams were emptied of their water"(Jouet, 104). Around Hallweijn in the Netherlands, there is a corpus of ballads that are connected to Samhain and the ancient Celts of the Low Countries (Smedes, 70-94). Not exactly our modern fixed Halloween, Samhain was marked the tenth or eleventh full moon of the year, dependent on a lunar leap year and usually sometime in November.

   11/11. Christianized as St. Martin's Day, November 11th marks the beginning of the Carnival season throughout Germany and the Low Countries. That social norms would be "released" during this time harkens back to the Roman Saturnalia more than an actual Christian day, so its not surprising there would be supernatural legends associated with the Wild Hunt: "Some experienced hauntings on all of these days. St. Martin's Day (November 11) was the occasion for the passage of the bird of St. Martin, a kind of fire dragon; the wild herdsman; and the Kasermandl (Alps), a kind of demon that took possession of chalets after the livestock had been taken down to the lower valleys for the winter and that often bore the features of dead cowherds who were condemned to return, because they abused the livestock in their keeping. In Burgenland, Austria, Lutzl (Lucy) passed at this time. She was the woman of the solstice, who roamed with veiled face. She was also armed with a kitchen spoon that she used to beat people in their houses and a knife for opening their bellies (the gastronomy motif, which is also common in traditions concerning Percht). Clad in black and white, she was accompanied by monstrous figures, and her trajectory was a quest in which she begged for the deceased foodstuffs, the 'bread of all souls'"(Lecouteux, 198).

Yule illustration from "Die Gartenlaube" (1880)

   Other auspicious times before Christmas. In Silesia and Austria, the twelve days spanning the time from St. Lucia (December 13th) to Christmas "prefigured what would take place in the twelve months of the new year, and numerous divinatory practices took place at this time"(ibid., 198), including various prohibitions related to spinning - a symbolism that figures prominently within stories about Frau Holle and Perchta, as we will see later. In Switzerland, the three days before Christmas were called bolster nächt "noisy night" and "hunt of the sträggele": "The sträggele was the equivalent of the Howler (Schrat), a kind of dwarf that was sometimes combined with a nightmare (mar)"(ibid., 194). This term is also used for the masks used in Carnival processions, and this time roughly coincides with the Winter Solstice. 

   Midwinter and the Winter Solstice. Despite contrary belief, including held many modern Pagans, Yule is not the same time as either the Winter Solstice or Christmas. As noted by the Swedish ethnographer Andreas Nordberg, backed up by early medieval sources describing the actual traditions of Germania, Scandinavia and England, Yule was originally three full moons after Winter Nights (mid-late October), thus usually sometime in January. It was only fixed to the Winter Solstice and Christmas to align it with the Roman Christian calendar under converted kings such as Hakon of Norway. It was also a three-day celebration and not the "12 Days of Christmas" some link it to. Likewise, according to the Julian calendar then prevalent the Winter Solstice itself was around 14-15 December, coinciding with the Christianized feast of St. Lucia, which Scandinavian folklore still considers the longest, darkest night of the year. Midwinter, midpoint between Winter and Summer, would have been around 14 January in the Julian and 20 January in the Gregorian calendar (Nordberg, 102, 148-150). The timing of Christmas has more to do with Roman Saturnalia than Germanic Yule.

   Nevertheless, as a season this time represents something auspicious so its no surprise Wild Hunt traditions abound. They looked at the winds and storms "howling" over the land and sweeping through the forests, the darkness and cold reigning supreme during this time, as a symbolic playing out of spiritual forces in the physical realm - the Wild Hunt. Being outside during this time might lead to being swept up in this cavalcade, while others of a more magical and shamanic inclination openly sought it out (Lecouteux, 187-188). It was naturally a more contemplative time, as one prepared to survive the winter one would also reflect more on the ancestors. The realms of the living and dead were especially permeable during midwinter according to the ancient Germanic peoples (Simek, 373), while many traditions describe the riders as resembling the land spirits, who were themselves often linked to the dead (Lecouteux, 191-192), such as the link of the sidhe in the Irish Wild Hunt, or the buena gente "good folk" of Asturias. "The Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods"(ibid., p. 199).

"Der wilde Jägd" by the German painter
Johann Wilhelm Cordes (1824-1869)

   Raunächte. Also known as "between the years", these are the Twelve Nights between Christmas and 6th January (Epiphany). It seems to be remnant of a memory before the lunisolar conception of time was overturned and the Church/Imperial successors of Rome forced a fixed calendar upon Germanic tribes to more easily control them; when the "missing" twelve nights were added to the end of the lunar year to reconcile it with the solar, making these transitory days outside of normal time. Just as with other auspicious times, laws of Nature are temporarily suspended, so various divinatory practices were common. There were folk legends throughout Europe of people engaging in magic who then "turned" into werewolves around this time. Aside from the "shape-shifting" Perchten of Alpine regions, there were also legends in the Ardennes (Wolf, 615-616), a forested region of eastern Belgium whose name comes from Arduinna, the ancient Belgae goddess of the Hunt. More on this later in a section about the shamanism within the Wild Hunt, but suffice it to say these were allegorical not literal transformations.

   In Switzerland and Alsace, a mysterious figure named Hutata - who receives his name from the scream he unleashes - is on the move during the twelve days of Christmas (Lecouteux, 194). Throughout the Balkans, Anatolia, and Greek lands, the Kalikanzari are goblins residing in the underworld who come to the surface for two weeks after the Winter Solstice to wreck havoc (Puchner), their name coming from kalos-kentauros (centaur) conveying the same idea about a shamanic transformation (Ginzburg, 169). They thus resemble the Perchtenlauf processions of people dress in costumes and goat and other animal masks, around this same time in the Alpine regions. There is a tradition of ushering in the New Year with noise and clamor, seen in our own modern fireworks and general celebratory atmosphere for New Year's. It was believed that the Wild Hunt should start in the exact middle of the Raunächte - New Year's Eve - so that the Wild Hunt with its symbolism sets the tone for the next year. 

   The Twelfth Night (5th January) was associated with Frau Holle/Perchta, which Grimm traced in its Old High German name Perahtun naht "the luminous night". This time would coincide more or less with the actual historically-attested Germanic Yule than the Winter Solstice or Christmas. Grimm further writes in his Teutonic Mythology (Volume 1, Chapter 13): "Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Bertha, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land....At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the 'wutende heer'. From this arose the fancy, that witches ride in Holla's company; it was already known to Burchard, and now in Upper Hesse and the Westerwald, Holle-riding, to ride with Holle, is equivalent to a witches' ride. Into the same 'furious host', according to a wide-spread popular belief, were adopted the souls of infants dying unbaptized; not having been christain'd, they remained heathen, and fell to heathen gods, to Wuotan or to Hulda."

   These Nights finally culminated on January 6th in the day known to Christians as the Epiphany - but here too there were deep remnants of ancient Celtic and Germanic heritage - joined as the two were in the Alpine regions of Swabia, Bavaria, Switzerland, Austria, Piedmont, Tyrol and Northern Italy. Closely associated with Epiphany was Perchta as a mother goddess ruling over "the fairy women who enter houses on certain nights to grant their inhabitants prosperity if they find a meal prepared for them"(Lecouteux, 150). The night troop of Corteo della Berta traveled on the night of Epiphany in the Haut-Adige region, and the Redodesa passed through midnight on Epiphany accompanied by her twelve children in the Cadorino and Belluno regions, although they were more silent than the Wild Hunt (ibid., 150-151). In South Tyrol, a child's dragging shirt tails are tied and he is called Zuserbeutlein, "a made-up term of endearment that is possibly a compound word of zuserl, meaning 'waxwing,' which is considered a nuisance bird in Schwabia, and beutlein, meaning 'little sack.' The bird reference likely refers to the cries uttered by the child as it stumbles in his large shirt, falling farther and farther behind, and the little sack is likely his clothing"(ibid., 151).

[To be continued in Part 2, beginning with the qualities of Frau Holle/Perchta and how those qualities relate to various symbolisms of the Wild Hunt. In honor of these liminal times, I will focus on the Wild Hunt both sides of the New Year]....

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns, and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer, eds. Handwörterbücher Zur Deutschen Volkskunde. Berlin: Walter de Gruyber & Co., 1941.

Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 

Greenwood, Susan. "The Wild Hunt: A Mythological Language of Magic," in James R. Lewis and Murphy Pizza, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Paganism. Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 195-222. 

Grimm, Jakob. Teutonic Mythology, III, 1883, trans. James Steven Stallybrass. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004.

Hasenfratz, Hans-Peter. Barbarian Rites: The Spiritual World of the Vikings and the Germanic Tribes. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.

Jouet, Philippe. L'Aurore celtique. Fouesnant, Bretogne: Yoran Embanner, 2006.

Kershaw, Priscilla K. The One-eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde. Washington, D.C.: Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2000.

Lecouteux, Claude. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011.

Nordberg, Andreas. Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning: Kalendrar och Kalendariska riter i det förkristna Norden. Uppsala: Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Svensk folkkultur, 2006.

Puchner, Walter. Die Folklore Südosteuropas: Eine komparative Übersicht. Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2016.

Risco, Vincente, "Creencias Gallegas. La procession de las animas y las premoniciones de muerte," Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares, No. 2, Madrid, 1946, pp. 389-395.

Simek, Rudolf. A Dictionary of Northern Mythology, trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993.

Smedes, E. "De keltische achtergrond van het lied van Heer Hallewijn," De Giids, August 1946, pp. 70-94.

Walter, Philippe. Christianity: Origins of a Pagan Religion. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2006.

Wolf, Johann Wilhelm. Niederländische Sagen. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1843; reprint, 2017.

John Kerry declares Biden's allegiance to the Great Reset

by Sean Jobst

6 December 2020

   The Great Rigging is an important step towards the Great Reset. Assuming that the AP Ministry of Truth is correct despite massive evidence of fraud, the Great Reset's demented handmaid will make his "President-Elect" anointing a reality with their full blessing. Not only has he parroted the World Economic Forum's marketing slogan of "Build Back Better", but more recently a member of his staff publicly admitted Biden's allegiance to that authoritarian Reset. Career Establishment politician and diplomat, John Kerry, was tapped as Biden's "Climate Czar," with a guaranteed seat on the National Security Council overseeing issues of "climate change". On 17 November, Kerry appeared before the WEF panel discussion on "The Great Reset: Building Future Resilience to Global Risks", hosted by WEF President Børge Brende. The resulting dialogue is worth quoting in full, given his brazen admissions:

   Host Borge Brende: "Are we expecting too much too soon from the new president, or is he going to deliver first day on this [sic] topics?"

   John Kerry: "The answer to your question is, no, you’re not expecting too much. And yes, it [the Great Reset] will happen. And I think it will happen with greater speed and with greater intensity than a lot of people might imagine. In effect, the citizens of the United States have just done a Great Reset. We’ve done a Great Reset. And it was a record level of voting. What astounds me is that as many people still voted for the level of chaos and breach of law and order and breaking the standards.

   "And I think the underlying reason for that, Borge, is something that everyone has to examine. I think Europe has to look at that, with Brexit, and the rising nationalist populism, nationalistic populism—which is really one of the priorities we all have to address. You can’t dismiss it. It has to be listened to. It has to be understood. We have just had it manifested. And Europe has it too, in various countries, to a greater or lesser degree. It’s a reflection of the inability of democratic governments in many parts of the world to deliver. And I just have to put it bluntly. We’re certainly the primary exhibit. We’re exhibit number one.

   "Government just has to find a way to move faster, and to address more of the real concerns of its citizens. Or there will be an increasing backlash. What I think we’ve won is a reprieve. And I think, therefore, that the notion of a ‘reset’ is more important than ever before. I personally believe, Borge, that we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time. And if you can get away from the craziness of the politics of chaos that have consumed so many, and the politics of identity politics, I think that there’s a real opportunity here to look and see that even as all this craziness has been going on around us, there are really amazingly positive things happening. And one of them is in the private sector.

   "I believe no government is fundamentally going to make the climate crisis go away. Government’s best effort is going to be to create a structure which will make it possible for certain things to happen. And the next opportunity for that structure to be fully defined is Glasgow. Now, I don’t believe—and I think Joe Biden, I know Joe Biden believes this—it’s not enough just to rejoin Paris [Climate Accords] for the United States. It’s not enough for us to just do the minimum of what Paris requires.

   "The best that we’ve [the signatories] done [by signing the Paris Agreement] is send a message to the marketplace that 190 countries plus are all going to move in the same direction to try to deal with the climate crisis. And that means that people who allocate capital have an opportunity to look at the largest market the world has ever had—196 countries all doing the same thing, all trying to move to change their energy policy and deal with the climate crisis. And that’s the biggest market the world has ever known, folks. And the private sector now is beginning to really see this. Borge, yours was the stage where the letter from Larry Fink of Black Rock came out, and it put squarely in front of a lot of these CEOs the issue of stakeholder versus shareholder—which is really at the bottom of what I was talking about, about the dysfunctionality of government and the reaction of citizens. It’s shareholder versus stakeholder. And the issue is whether or not we’re going to move fast enough to provide for what people need at this moment. I think the greatest opportunity we have to do that is in dealing with the climate crisis.

   "Now, all the effects we’re seeing today of glaciers melting and fires raging and floods inundating and so forth … so any of you involved in risk analysis know exactly where we’re heading here. And, therefore, we have to move faster. That’s what has to happen. And the entities that can move the fastest, I believe, is the private sector. ESG [environment, social, and governance standards] is now in every discussion in every board room. Many, many more financial institutions are looking for what was fashionably called ‘impact investing,’ but everybody is now considering how do we have an impact that’s positive and meet ESGs. The global development standards, the SDGs [U.N. Sustainable Development Goals] are being talked about more."

   Not merely repeating Great Reset and Agenda 2030 buzzwords, his words reveal the actual policies the Biden regime would take as part of the Great Reset - with power being centralized at this Globalist institution and the assorted corporatist, banker cronies staffing the various governments being their local Managers. Kerry boasted how this Reset "will happen with greater speed and with greater intensity than a lot of people might imagine." Indeed, various literature of the WEF and UN - on their own websites - successively describe climate change, Coronavirus, and "social justice" as their great opportunities for what's nothing less than the greatest transfer of wealth and power. The euphemism now used by these Globalist institutions is a "new social contract". 

   As if to underscore what this "social contract" would entail, Kerry shames the 74 million people he portrays as having voted for "chaos and breach of law and order and breaking the standards". Clearly they haven't been re-educated enough to deliver the effects this elitist wanted. The main threat he cited for both the American and European Managers of the Great Reset is the spectre of "rising nationalist populism", because for such crony corporatists/bankers, national sovereignty combined with trade deals that benefit workers rather than the multinational corporations is a threat to their power and profits. They want to push the trend towards Globalist institutions managed by centralized super-regions, so they want to transcend the nation-state as stated by certain "World Federalist" think-tanks and NGOs.

   Government's job would be to manage and "create a structure which will make it possible for certain things to happen". This structure is the merger of bureaucracy (public) and corporate lobbyists and bankers (private) heading these agencies, as legitimized by the Great Reset's "public-private partnership". Its interesting he specifically cited the private investment firm BlackRock as the archetypal "climate conscious" business firm. Larry Fink, the billionaire CEO and chairman of BlackRock, is Biden's Treasury Secretary prospect. The Deputy Treasury Secretary would be Wally Adeyamo, a senior advisor at BlackRock and Fink's interim Chief of Staff before being appointed President of the Obama Foundation. Biden's National Economic Council director at the White House would be BlackRock executive Brian Deese.

   With their trillions of dollars worth of profits, we can expect these three (probably more to come) BlackRock executives to remain committed to their power and wealth with their roles in government, alongside their cronies from various other firms and think-tanks. BlackRock's past activities reads like a policy incubation. The Chinese Communist government's regulators gave Fink special permission to start a mutual fund business in Shanghai in August 2020, while Biden was already planning to appoint Fink to an economic role. BlackRock is the largest investor in weapon manufacturers through its U.S. Aerospace and Defense ETF. We can thus expect their leading roles in a prospective Biden regime's war-profiteering and subservient trade policies towards Communist China - subservience in the sense of the U.S. economy; their profits would actually rise in partnership with CCP oligarchs.

   The likes of Kerry, Fink, Adeyemo and Deese would be the architects of Biden's plan to rejoin the renamed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). As an Obama economic advisor, Adeyemo was chief negotiator of the TPP's provisions on macroeconomic policy, before taking up his revolving-door positions at the duopoly's Center for Strategic & International Studies and Obama Foundation. (Other CSIS alumni surrounding Biden include his foreign policy advisors, Blinken and Flournoy; and a Board of Trustees that includes Kissinger.) Just as interventionists are toying with the idea of climate change as an excuse for war (and thus their profits and power), so too can such Big Business firms profit through assuming a "conscious" voice. In his 2020 annual open letter, Fink announced "environmental sustainability" (the same phrase used in Agenda 2030) would be a key goal for his investment decisions, selling $500 million worth of coal-related assets, and creating funds that would avoid fossil-fuel stocks.

   Elite Globalist institutions such as the WEF and Multinational firms see trendy Leftist causes as the perfect opportunity for their power and profits. BlackRock and its revolving door with the Obama and the aspiring Biden administrations is the perfect expression of this. They take advantage of the economic ignorance of Leftists who want to enlarge a government that is closely tied in with Big Business. For example, the push for raising the Corporate tax rate will only hurt smaller businesses (and thus workers and business owners) since the majority of Big Corporations already have their operations overseas, so can ship back to the U.S. for free with the trade deals favored by the Biden cronies and not have to worry about those taxes anyway. Big Corporations like monopolies so there is a natural tendency towards a Corporate Socialism. Yet another area where this ignoble alliance of Corporatists and Communists is converging in a common authoritarian vision.

   Biden's policies (as seen by those surrounding him as well) would be a direct return to the wars of the Bush and Obama administrations, who combine it with their domestic policies such as the Police State. Clinton associate Neera Tanden, whom Biden wants for the important position of heading the Office of Management and Budget, is President of the Big Corporate-funded Center for American Progress think-tank. In an October 2011 email ultimately leaked to The Intercept, Tanden saw Obama and Hillary's Libya war as the perfect opportunity for an enlarged Welfare State: "We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil. Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich nations partially pay us back doesn't seem crazy to me. Do we prefer cuts to Head Start? Or WIC? Or Medicaid? Because we live in deficit politics, and that's what is happening and will be happening even more." Just as they couch their wars in humanitarianism, these authoritarians couch their domestic policies as "social" programs, but one merely has to look at the bankers and corporatists in these circles to know who really benefits.

   This is the reality behind the "private sector" Kerry appealed to at Davos. These "social" and "green" underpinnings are part of the "transformation" envisioned by Klaus Schwab, architect of both the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, who similarly saw certain "industries" as key to implementing those plans. Kerry earlier appeared at the WEF on 24 June to speak on "the new social contract post-COVID." He gave a clue into why the mass-media society was suddenly trying to get us conditioned to what they defined as "the new normal": "Normal was a crisis; normal wasn’t working. We must not think of it in terms of pushing a button and going back to the way things were. We’re a long way off from being able to go back to any kind of normal." He saw governments as the "great convener" on behalf of these Globalist institutions: "This is a big moment. The World Economic Forum - the CEO capacity of the Forum - is really going to have to play a front and centre role in refining the Great Reset to deal with climate change and inequity - all of which is being laid bare as a consequence of COVID-19." Normalization is actually about changing the perception of reality so that society can be conditioned to accepting this massive transfer of their wealth and power into these institutions.

Emboldened Biden Neocons and War Lobbyists Triggered by "America-First"; Want to Put Israel and China First

by Sean Jobst

30 November 2020

Enabled by 'Woke' cultists, who prefer
their wars couched in "social justice"

   If the recent shake-up at the Pentagon's highest positions wasn't enough, on November 25th the Pentagon's White House liaison sent a directive from President Trump, firing an eleven-member policy board that included such interventionists as Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. While opposing Biden as the most authoritarian and warmongering by far, one of the blight spots upon Trump in my opinion was his strange inclusion of Palpatine Kissinger who is a Swamp creature if there ever was one. Also fired was Rudy De Leon, who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense under Clinton and then two months of the Bush administration, epitomizing the continuity of such bureaucrats regardless of the duopoly. De Leon was senior vice president of Boeing from 2001 to 2006, and has been foreign policy expert for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank founded by John Podesta. Why he was hired to begin with only makes sense in light of what Douglas Macgregor and others have noted about the appointment process.

   These advisors were associates of former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who apparently wielded influence at the Pentagon long after his own firing by Trump on New Year's Day 2019. De Leon was "once considered for a high-level policy role" by Mattis, according to the Foreign Policy article that broke the news. "Also booted in today's sweep of the board, which is effective immediately, were former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and David McCormick, a former Treasury Department undersecretary during the George W. Bush administration. Both had been added to the board by Mattis in 2017." The members of this policy board personify the duopoly that is the Republican and Democratic Establishment, it being business as usual for them whenever it comes to interventionism and the profits that come with it. Despite being a military man, Mattis epitomizes this nexus of a corporatized Pentagon, the Military-Industrial-Complex, lobbyists and war-profiteers. Its no surprise then he has been hailed as a hero by the Legacy Media and the Duopoly Establishment.

Mattis with CFR President Richard Haass

   Mattis agreed with their consensus opposing U.S. withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan now being carried out in spite of their invectives. The same Corporate Media that helped Neocons lie the U.S. into Iraq and applauded bombings under the Obama/Biden administration, and ran propaganda for American meddling in Libya and Syria, is now fear-mongering that ending a 20-year war is a "hasty withdrawal". Mattis has long advocated arming Syrian rebels and American involvement with the Saudi war in Yemen. Ever the Corporatist, Mattis has served on the Boards of Directors for disgraced health technology firm Theranos and defense-contractor firm General Dynamics, earning a $900,000 profit with the latter. He also serves as senior counselor with the Cohen Group, a lobbying firm with ties to China founded by Clinton's Defense Secretary William Cohen. The aspiring Biden/Harris regime has expressed its plan to hire what it termed "Mattis people" at the Pentagon, perhaps Mattis himself or several of the Swamp creatures recently purged.

   While not Neocon, Mattis has long cultivated close ties with them. In the 2016 campaign, Bill Kristol and other Neocon strategists tried to persuade Mattis to run as an Independent against Trump. Even while there was no love lost between Trump and himself, John "Bomb Iran" McCain supported Mattis' appointment as Defense Secretary. As a self-professed "internationalist" with a long association with war-profiting firms, its no surprise Mattis would oppose a peaceful, non-interventionist foreign policy. The Neocons themselves have their origins in the old Trotskyite Left, moving to take over the Republican Party after breaking with many Leftists over Israel. But its still internationalist, replacing "international revolution" with wars to spread "democracy" or "human rights". This pedigree was recently on full display in an op-ed Mattis co-wrote with Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, and two of Mattis' colleagues at the establishment Hoover Institution, Jim Ellis and Joe Felter.

   Entitled "Defense in Depth", it was published in the CFR magazine Foreign Affairs on 23 November. The authors were triggered by the phrase "America-First", misrepresenting it vis a vis their own internationalism: "In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate 'America first' from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades." Their "cooperative security" is really a euphemism for the endless wars that have been our reality these decades. Given the links these think-tank figures have to defense contractor firms, its clear what's really beyond Mattis' and his co-author's platitudes about "cooperation" and "alliances": A repudiation of George Washington's famous warning about avoiding entangling alliances and John Adam's admonishment to not go in search of "monsters to destroy". Indeed, their piece of war apologia decried the tendency "to dismiss U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere as 'endless' or 'forever' wars" because it "misses the point." 

   Such interventionists always fear an "isolationist" bogeyman lurking, ready to disrupt their status quo of dual loyalties, Globalist connections and war-profiting in a world where America-First would mean avoiding entangling alliances, endless foreign wars, and peaceful trade deals benefiting workers instead of their own power networks. In his op-ed "The Republican Party Is Dead" (Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2016), neocon Max Boot, a participant in the Transition Integrity Project "war-game" that simulated force to replace Trump with Biden, said he preferred Hillary's policies over Trump's "isolationism and protectionism".  His fellow neocon Eliot Cohen declared the prospects of Trump "A Really Bad Deal for America" (New York Times, May 17, 2016). Cohen linked America First with the "notorious movement before World War II that included not only traditional isolationists but also Nazi sympathizers": "Trumpism in foreign policy is dangerous because of its belligerent nationalism, self-absorption, disdain for allies and comfort with the authoritarian leaders of the day." In an interview with CBNC in January 2018, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol defined his neocon ideology as "pro-American leadership in the world. Anti-America First. Pro-free trade, pretty much." 

   The hubris and projection behind these neocon slogans is astounding - "self-absorption" is condemned and "leadership" hailed because they want to maintain America as the policeman of the world, carrying out their own narrow ideological and economic interests. The "comfort with the authoritarian leaders" never bothered them before when they would ally with some while overthrowing others who had run afoul of their interests. They betray their Trotskyite internationalism in their fear of "belligerent nationalism", which aligns them closely with Liberal internationalists who want more power consolidated into Globalist institutions.  Although Trump has unfortunately maintained the pro-Israel status quo, even that is not enough for such Neocons. In an op-ed dated Nov. 21, 2019, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a neocon former editor of the Jerusalem Post, bluntly said: "Israel will not be safe in an America First World." 

   One of the most noticeable results of the Trump administration has been the realignment within American politics, with assorted Neocons and old-style "Never Trump" Republicans aligning with and coalescing around the Biden/Harris campaign. George W. Bush has openly supported and congratulated Biden. Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, has been a public critic of Trump, while Biden has praised the legacy of her father. Among the Bush cronies to support and endorse Biden were Colin Powell, the Secretary of State who pushed the Iraq WMD lie; Tom Ridge, first secretary of the Homeland Security department created by that same administration that brought us the bipartisan Patriot Act; William H. Webster, former CIA Director and chief of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Dov Zakheim, staunchly-Zionist Under Secretary of Defense; John Negroponte, the career diplomat with a decades-long warmonger record across the world; Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission that rubber-stamped the official story; and Bush's Neocon speechwriter David Frum. They also include Bill Kristol, the "godfather" of Neoconservatism, and both founders of the neocon think-tank Project for the New American Century, Eliot Cohen and Robert Kagan.

Tony Blinken, Biden's aspiring Kissinger?

   Aside from these Neocon links, Biden primarily surrounds himself with Liberal interventionists whose only difference is the slogans used to couch their wars. Perhaps as a virtue signal to the Left, Mattis cited climate change to argue against decreasing the defense budget (which is merely a euphemism for profits of the contractor firms dominating the the Pentagon and not actual "defense") and expressed his hope to use American troops to "fight climate change". How they would be used to fight such a broad concept he failed to explain, but one thing is clear - it would be yet another boon for these war-profiteer networks. Spearheading those efforts under a Biden/Harris administration would be three of Biden's longtime corporatist-lobbyist cronies, already appointed to positions by that demented one the media has anointed "President-Elect". 

   Named Secretary of State, former Biden speechwriter Tony Blinken served as a member of Bill Clinton's National Security Council from 1994 to 2001, then as staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008, when Biden was the ranking Democrat on that committee. He then served as Vice-President Biden's national security advisor (2009-2013) and deputy Secretary of State from 2014 to 2016. According to his official bio, Blinken then served as managing director of the University of Pennsylvania's Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, from its establishment in 2017 until he left to join his crony's latest presidential campaign in 2019. A May 2020 complaint filed by conservative watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) cited official financial documents revealing the University's donations by anonymous Chinese donors increased to $22 million after the Biden Center was established, further accelerating when it opened a separate location in Washington, D.C. "This center was an incubation for Biden's foreign policy team and it's a natural place for his choice of secretary of state," as NLPC public integrity project director Tom Anderson told Fox News. "Every person in this center will likely have some role in a Biden administration. Chinese contributors knew Joe Biden might run for president, and if Biden won, they would have connections to the future administration officials. Corruption isn't always about money. Sometimes it's about access." 

   Lest these be dismissed as partisan conservative sources, some leftist outlets have also put out good exposes on these cronies. Along with Biden's apparent Secretary of Defense, Michèle Flournoy, Blinken founded the consulting firm WestExec Advisors, whose objective Flournoy defined as "building bridges between Silicon Valley and the U.S. government." Thus revealed are the continued links between this network of Bureaucrats' lobbying firms and think-tanks, with the same Big Tech that worked overtime this year to favor the Biden/Harris campaign. As noted by Lee Fang for The Intercept, WestExec worked with Big Tech firms and an Israeli A.I. firm in a venture for Pentagon defense contractors called Project Maven. An expose by Jonathan Guyer for The American Prospect reveals more about this A.I. firm and WestExec's other clients: "The Prospect can confirm that one of those clients is the Israeli artificial-intelligence company Windward. With surveillance software that tracks ships in real time, two former Israeli naval intelligence officers established the company in 2010. Gabi Ashkenazi, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, serves on its board. Windward also claims former CIA director David Petraeus as an investor, as well as a Hong Kong billionaire (most U.S. military-tech companies avoid money from China, experts told me, so they turn to investing in Israel)."

Flournoy at the Orwellian-named Institute for Peace

   These connections reveal what we could expect with Blinken and Flournoy controlling the State and Defense Departments. Windward is staffed with members of Israeli military intelligence's Unit 8200 and military officers, and received awards from Israel's cybersecurity establishment. That a former CIA director would invest in such a firm with deep links to Israeli intelligence is similar to those of Carbyne - its all business. Blinken would now cash in on what the Prospect article called his "international connections, years of face time with Saudi, Israeli, and Chinese leaders". Flournoy was policy undersecretary at the Defense Department in Obama's first term, earning the support of pro-Israel hawks according to Haaretz. She is a "humanitarian" interventionist who wanted U.S. military involvement in Libya. As a fellow opponent of withdrawal from Afghanistan, its no surprise that Mattis wanted to hire Flournoy as his deputy but she preferred her lucrative career outside government.

   Flournoy founded the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), whose contributors includes various Big Corporations, especially defense contractor firms. As noted in a recent Politico report, CNAS "gets a significant amount of funding from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, according to a study published last month [October] by the Center for International Policy." She has been awarded "Care Global Leader" by the orwellian-named Institute for Peace, a semi-governmental Establishment institute whose members included former Defense Secretary Mike Esper and academic Maria Stephen, who appeared as one of the ringleaders of a Zoom call "coup" discussion of subversive bureaucrats with ties to far-left groups. Always looking for an excuse for wars, CNAS used the climate change issue to create a new interventionist theory called "natural security". One of CNAS' leading board members is futurist Peter Schwartz, a former activist with the marxist Students for a Democratic Society who co-authored a climate change report for the Pentagon and moderated a panel at the World Economic Forum.

   "Many of the people who work closely with Biden are enmeshed in the opaque world of strategic consultancies and by extension a network of the world’s biggest businesses," writes Guyer in The Prospect article cited earlier. "In addition to Blinken, advisers include Nicholas Burns (The Cohen Group), Kurt Campbell (The Asia Group), Tom Donilon (BlackRock Investment Institute), Wendy Sherman (Albright Stonebridge Group), Julianne Smith (WestExec Advisors), and Jake Sullivan (Macro Advisory Partners). They rarely discuss their connections to corporate power, defense contractors, private equity, and hedge funds, let alone disclose them." The Wall Street Journal noted on November 11th: "At least 40 people serving on President-elect Joe Biden's transition team are or were once registered lobbyists." The third corporatist crony (in addition to Flournoy and Blinken) in relation to Biden's foreign policy is Steve Ricchetti, named Biden's counselor and liaison with Congress.

   Ricchetti began as a lobbyist for the medical insurance industry before working for the Clinton administration, on whose behalf he lobbied Congress to support trade deals that harmed American workers and industries. "At the Clinton White House in 1993, Ricchetti was the point man for muscling NAFTA through a very skeptical Democratic Congress," Robert Kuttner notes for The Prospect. In 2000, Clinton used him as White House deputy chief of staff to "ensure that we have as strong and responsive an effort as possible in both parties in Congress" in relation to China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), as reported by CNN at the time. He then partnered with his brother to form the Ricchetti and Associates lobbying firm, followed by Ricchetti Inc., whose clients included various defense contractor and big communications firms. He became then-Vice President Biden's chief of staff in 2013 and succeeded Blinken as managing director of the Biden Center in 2019. Ricchetti Inc.'s profits picked up steam after Ricchetti became involved with Biden's campaign this year, according to both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC. One of their clients is Applied Materials, which has supplied semiconductor equipment for the Chinese military.

   We can expect these cronies to benefit Israel and Communist China with their policies as any pretense of America-First falls to the wayside of their Globalist virtue-signaling. The Unit 8200-directed subversion of American hi-tech will benefit even more with their tech firm lobbyists at the helm of the State and Defense Departments. In his Nov. 24th call congratulating Biden, Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping said he hoped "the two sides will uphold the spirit of win-win cooperation," using the exact same phrase he used to "advance the Belt and Road". Nor is it any coincidence that with the "climate change" interventionists surrounding him or the Green New Deal Socialists representing his activist wing, Biden's express intent to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement would benefit China while not only harming American workers and energy prices, but sets one standard for Western countries while ignoring the CCP's environmental abuses. 

   "But Biden has promised to go further, entirely eliminating carbon emissions from the electric sector by 2035 and imposing strict gas-mileage standards to reach zero emissions by 2050," notes New York Post columnist Miranda Devine. "In terms of American decline, the Paris climate treaty is this decade's version of China's entry into the WTO." Its no coincidence Clinton's WTO and NAFTA point-man Ricchetti is now Biden's counselor. And as I have frequently observed, waiting in the wake of this decline are other "multipolar" power forces cashing in on the latest Globalist talking-points. Expect any criticism of the CCP to be construed as "racist" by the elites, who ignore that such a narrative is actually rejected by most Asian-Americans, but allows the cronies to continue business. Enabled by the low-information activists who have obediently consumed such well-funded trends, these cronies recognize their personal power and profits would actually increase in such a world - and we can expect that principle would guide their trade deals and foreign policies. As we wait to see how the rigging unfolds.