It is November 2004. I am standing in a circle at the main ritual of Between the Worlds, a Wilmington, Delaware conference organized by Ivo Dominguez Jr. and his Assembly of the Sacred Wheel.  Inner Traditions recently purchased the manuscript which will become The Haitian Vodou Handbook. I have begun sketching out another book on trance possession, but am not sure how well it will  work for the greater Pagan community.  Within African and African Diaspora traditions worshippers often become vessels for their Gods: the conventional wisdom holds that Europe’s technicians of the sacred most frequently traveled to theirs via spirit journeys.

Various Elders within different traditions have offered their blessings and their hopes for the future. Now it is Nybor‘s turn: he steps forward, a grey cloak over his shoulders and a floppy sky-blue hat covering his head and one of his eyes.

“I have been walking between worlds…”

I spoke to Nybor earlier at his booth: we talked of his artwork and the history of berserking.  This is not Nybor’s voice.  The temperature in the hall drops like someone opening a window in wintertime. Everything is calm and clear and cold as the ice-blue eye scanning the participants.

“From the north comes ice. From the south comes fire. There will be war.”

I have seen the possessed eat fire, swallow gasoline and throw big men around like ragdolls. Never before this have I grit my teeth in their presence to choke down my screams.  He’s saying something else now, but I can’t make it out, all I can hear my heart beating out Adam of Bremen’s words in my ears, Woden, id est furor, Odin who is frenzy. Grimnir lowers his head and Nybor steps backward: with Him go any doubts I ever had about the book that Raven Kaldera and I will later release as Drawing Down the Spirits.

* * * * *

Wotan stole the Mead of Poetry..   Now he scatters droplets that will leave you a Poet or a lunatic: you may never know which landed on you.   He sacrificed an eye so that He might drink from Mimir’s Well and gain wisdom thereby: He will expect no less in exchange for anything He gives you.  As one of the most powerful Gods of Europe, Wotan embodies what Oswald Spengler called the “Faustian Soul” of Europa’s children. The One who gave us breath also gave us a ravenous hunger for knowledge and a ferocious Will to Power.  Wotan sent our Ancestors across steppes and oceans: He drove them unarmored and snarling in defense of their Folk.  Centuries after Christ rose and fell again Wotan still rides in the Oskerei, the Wutungis Her, the Furious Host, the Wild Hunt, the Ghost Riders in the Sky.  As Grutte Greybeard drives the Dead, so too does He drive the living:  as he rides the wind, so does he ride in the blood and sinews of his Folk.

Anime and Manga have done for Shinto what Marvel and Disney did for Norse mythology.  “Abrahamic” faiths have taken inspiration from YHVH and his scriptures, for better and (often) for worse.  But despite all this the Kami have a special relationship with the Japanese; the God of Abraham and Isaac has a special relationship with the Jews; and Wotan has a special relationship with the people of Northern Europe and the European Diaspora where they are called “Whites.”

Nine days and nine nights Wotan hung on Yggdrasil till He took up the Runes and fell screaming.  With those Runes He taught us how to mark speech that it might be heard beyond the speaker: he taught us the power of the Word and the Name.  We can give up our Whiteness in the interest of humanity. We can own our White privilege and castigate our Ancestors as dead White tools of Colonialist Oppression.  We can even claim Whiteness doesn’t exist. But identity isn’t just what you think you are: it’s also the words the world uses to describe you.  When the world looks at Europa’s Children it sees White people.  And right now we are a dying People.

“We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population,”

Jose Angel Gutierrez, political science professor, University of Texas at Arlington

In 1970 California was 80% White; in 2000 less than half of all Californians were White; by 2014 Latinos outnumbered Whites in California.  Ethnic Swedes may be a minority in Sweden within a few generations or less.  Within a century Europe may be majority Muslim thanks largely to the drop in White birth rates.    Yet we are expected to cheer our demise and abase ourselves for things we never did in hopes of an absolution that will never come.  When we talk about the ongoing attacks against South African Whites we are told “Payback is a bitch,” when we worry about our children’s future they say the same thing.

On November 28, 2011 my wife and I welcomed our daughter, Annamaria Sigyn Estelle Filan, into our lives.  She is our greatest treasure and our greatest blessing. Should it prove necessary I would die for her and I would just as quickly kill for her. Were I forced to choose between your life and hers I would spend the rest of my life haunted by what I did. But I would never regret it.

Europa’s Children have always had a gift for self-analysis and confession. Americans did not invent slavery, but White Abolitionists condemned it and over 600,000 White men died in a bloody war that ended it.   We are uncommonly willing to address our past and present mistakes.  (Don’t believe me? Wave a “FREE KURDISTAN AND REMEMBER THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE” banner in Istanbul or a “FREE TIBET AND REMEMBER TIANANMEN SQUARE” sign in Beijing and you’ll find out soon enough). Annamaria will know herself a Child of Europa like her mother and her father and like all the long generations before her.  She will know that our people did horrible things, but she will also know that they did glorious things as well.  She will not be ashamed of her Ancestors and she will not be ashamed of herself.

I have trembled in Wotan’s presence. I have lived like Him as a woman that I might learn Mysteries.  I have sang to Him in a closet with tears on my face and a noose around my neck: the love of my daughter was all that kept me from hanging beside Him on the gallows.  Yet for all that the Old Man still remains a stranger to me. Galina Krasskova and Stephen McNallen have forgotten more about the Grim Traveler than I will ever know.  The Allfather does not ask me to understand Him but only to serve His purpose.  If His mad wind whistles through my daughter’s head as it has whistled through mine since I was a child, I can only pray that she learns to value the whispered wisdom as I do and finds the visions worth the price.