Wotan operates in situations which cannot be dealt with in familiar ways. Archetypes are innate images in the collective unconscious, for example grandma and the wolf and the moral of wandering off of the beaten path in the story Little red riding hood. These images refer to groups which are very old. The race takes on a specific behaviour and is directly influenced by the archetype. The shadow an archetype, which is produced by constraints on the personality are the negative feelings such as jealousy which can incite behaviour. The shadow can hide good and evil. The feelings form the needs, musts and aughts parts of the person being symbolised as Wotan. Wotan gives conscious expression tothe collective unconscious through group behaviour and gives rise to the emergence of racial memories. It has had far reaching consequences for our culture today. It is a tribal god and became manifest in Germaany as National socialism by removing factions and uniting a nation hence the word national.
Trevor Ravenscroft believes that the hard core of Nazis were satanists. Supporting Hitler in the black arts were Eckart, Haushofer and Heilscher. Luciferic principality inhabiting Hitler's mind saught by racist doctrine to lead man away from the recognition of the individual human spirit. Another reference to the collective and nationalism again.
As Wotan is an archetype which comes into play during mass movement this facilitated the expression of the god of the collective unconscious still further.In the abscence of a leader or a recognised behaviour pattern for members of a crowd to enact, chaos and confusion ensue. There are contagion theories to cover crowdbehaviour. According to Le Bon (1897) 'Isolated man may be a cultured individual; in crowds he is a barbarian. Crowd behaviour is an irrational and uncritical response to the psychological temptations of the crowd. If suggestion is made in an authorative manner, people may be led to react readily and uncritically (lang& Lang 1961.The conscious personality vanishes and the racial or collective unconscious such as Wotan takes over. Crowds permit the expression of behaviour that would otherwise be repressed. Heightened suggestibility does make rumour an importantan factor in collective bhaviour.
Apart from other horrors of World War ii, the catastrophic events of the holocaust were caused by the Germans identifying with a a super race, the Aryians.
In 1909 Hitler made contact with Jorg Lanz Liebenfels, a former Cistercian monk who in 1907 had opened a temple of the 'Order of New Templars' at Werfenstein castle near GRein in Austria. Liebenfels was a disciple of Guido Von List who had used a Swastika as his emblem. Guido Von List was a son of a leaather trader in boots and goods. At the age of fourteen he renounced his Catholicism and vowed to build a wooden temple to Odin.
Later the Thule society was formed and took over the organisation of Guido Von List. This society took its name from Ultima Thule, a mythological paradise. Viking helmets and swords were used in ritual ceremonies. The Thule society, a Nordic occult based freemasonry was employed to counter an imagined Jewish conspiracybacked by occult practices.
Decadent traditions were destroyed aand aspects of a true past were employed to herald a new dawn.
