Mysticism, Wolves & Indo-Europeans (2024)

Männerbünde Culture, Mythical Artifacts and Conclusions

Since the collective of young Indo-European men has been well-treated by a long lineage of scholars including Kris Kershaw, Kim McCone, David Anthony, and Georges Dumézil, we will refrain from extensively outlining an already catalogued history. We will instead confine the proceeding details to certain fundamentals, and signature of the inner culture.

The bellicose bands referred to collectively as the Männerbünde hail from pastoralists who broadly descended from the Caucasus to roam the ancient steppes. The group’s stock animals required copious amounts of vegetation to feed, forcing select populations to range riparian areas and mountain paths for pasture. As such these men took their food, kit, and primary source of wealth—and cause for nomadism—in the form of either cattle or horse with them. The storied bond between man and animal for these ancient roamers transcended a mistakenly superficial totemism, and was codified by language, and war; the PIE root for “wealth” *peku, from which we can trace “pecuniary,” original referred to “livestock,” or “cattle,” and some of the oldest myths of their canon attest to cattle-theft or great conflicts over livestock. Living ruggedly and consuming nutrient dense animal products ensured that the individual of these bands were comparatively hale, hearty, and considerably more physically imposing than early agrarians according to skeletal analyses. Holders of a rich oral cultus, they eschewed sedentary practices and declined to develop the written word—horsemanship, the wheel, and metallurgy were to comprise their legacy.

Filled with strength, and fortified by arcane secrets wrested from the bosom of the world did these men set forth from their mountains. In pursuit of survival, they left as tantamount predators: As warriors.

To the members of these bands, any manner of acquisition was ratified—sanctified even, according to Walter Burkert—long ago by the eponymous first men who themselves, roused from tree-tops and stony-earth, awakened to the reality of hunting, and to the consequences of force. Though the basis behind a primitive notion of entropy needs little explanation, it still bears such weight as to be discussed by tacticians throughout time—Sun Tzu once remarked that, “One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store.” At the root of it all lies a singular reality, that through the aged crucible of conflict and consumption did man come to realize the potential of his sweat and blood; that with the exchange of life bound to the passage of time, he may birth something greater than what his own two hands could ever possibly render alone.

Foremost in Indo-European religious practices, then, was the warrior initiation. Through initiation, one emulated the lives of their forefathers, affirming their way of being and cosmology through a lived tradition which could only be totally conveyed through exile, and combat. This rite of passage for warrior-kin has been attested to in the Vedas wherein the men were known as the Maruts; among the Germanics they manifested as the berserkers; while the Celts cultivated fianna, and the Spartan, their kryptai. Despite many variations of the practice, the essential structure is simple. Under the auspices of a solstitial cycle the young man, or cohort, was taken to the border of clan lands. There, ritual slaughter commenced and the newly initiated pledged fealty to their god, and a fated leader of the warband who carried the now banished youths into the wild. Faced with the hardships of the world the young exiles were transmitted to a primordial point of existence. They must fight, steal, and cheat to make their way—and in doing so, became literal dogs bound in service to their leader and god. Upon return to civilized society, should they weather their initiation, the boys would be recognized as men ready to take their rightful places alongside the clan fathers.

While the hostile realities of life beyond familiar walls were more than sufficient enough to coax forth ancient epiphanies, the young men in exilio would’ve also likely been presented with cultic, ancestral, secrets by certain members of the gens who filled the role of sponsor, or hierophant. The presence of mythological initiatrixes, dream-visions or shamanic interferences seem to preserve the kernel of such a lineage. Take the initiate’s oath and bond, which were immediately signified by his silhouette: An animal’s hide lashed about the waist with girdle, and a weapon, always at hand. The Cretan philetor afforded his ward a military tunic, an ox, and a cup; while the Arcadians were known to have fought chiefly adorned in little more than goat, or bear skins. Though the core of the scheme remained, necessity often dictated degrees of varied conveyance. Youths may not always have had access to metallic weaponry. Likely, if they were in possession of such accoutrement, it was procured only after having been successfully taken from another. Recall that the hero Lykourgous was reported to have stripped the arms and armor of another famous warrior after overpowering them in an ambush. Clubs, spears and simple ranged weaponry, on the contrary, could be procured as long as they had the means to fashion them from the land itself. The fundamental premise of such scenarios being, that one was only as limited as to the measure of what they could make, or take for themselves. To this end, the huntsman’s cunning of snares, nets, and various traps would also prove effective. If one did not have access to cordage, the initiate could always bind another with their own body through wrestling.

Consequently, the art of wrestling is one of the most persistent practices throughout the Indo-European world. In the mythological canon, monster slaying is a common initiatory theme, and many of the horrible creatures were borne of hides that deflect spear, sword, or arrow alike—they must be defeated through other means. Their bodies must be turned against them; they must be dominated. Numerous heroes are depicted having subjugated monstrous creatures through brute strangulation, or having bound the beasts with fetters. Heracles’ conquest of the Nemean Lion, Fenrir’s binding, and even the biblical Penuel—whence Jacob earned his name—display such a mentality. On the art of wrestling, Jack R. Parnell offered:

“Anything which strives is divine, but wrestling and similar contests are definitive, intuitive and immediate. One’s progress and victories are apparent and undeniable but even to struggle and fail is rewarded with a knowledge of a complete attempt … To overpower a man is titanic, to outwit his technique is heroic, and to do both is divine.”

Symbolic Artifacts, Myth, and Ascetism

With further comment to equipment, helmets and masks were among some of the most iconic emblems of warriors throughout antiquity. Primal head pieces would have often just been the pelt of a slain animal wrapped about the skull. The repurposed body effectively masked the identities of the wearers. The cultic scheme reports that when the young men, or religious adherents, occluded their faces through costume, they became bestial, as if possessed by spirits of yore. Here, the potency of the theurgical mode is undeniable. In one sense, the helmets and masks augmented the already ferocious attributes of their wearers, since horns, grimaces, fangs, or other stylistic alterations require scant interpretation from an onlooker. Earlier, we examined the importance of visibility, light-eyedness and facial perceptions in human development. In a metaphysical sense, then, by masking the adherent fundamentally alters his persona and his being. It is not just to say that he simply looks different, but that he is something else entirely because he has forcibly altered the onlooker’s vision. Through facial adornment, the adherent invoked a special sort of perception and communicability which is categorically transcendent. At the point of masking, he is known to those few who are familiar with the cultic principles of the world—only the initiated would have been capable of fully recognizing the signature before them.

Of particular interest in the discussion of canid clad zealots, is the Ἅϊδος κυνέη, Hades’ mystical dog-skin helmet. Crafted by the same cyclops who fashioned Zeus’ smiting fulmen, and Poseidon’s earth-shaking trident, Hades’ cap was imbued by the creature to confer invisibility. The god of the underworld frequently loaned its power to others—Athena, Perseus, and Hermes all succeeded in difficult trials with its assistance. Considering that the word kyneê was applied by Homer to generally mean helmets, its usage provokes a wide range of speculation as to the helm’s actual form. Some artists fashioned it as nothing more than a diadem-esque crown, while others assumed the liberty of styling it after a Corinthian closed-face helm. We are only to understand that the object is connected to the cranium, and dogs—being either literally fashioned from their hide, or connected through a symbolic notion.

In truth there seems to be more than a few probable morphemes. The first being of roughly Phrygian design as an elongated cone. But to the ancient mystagogues the helm could have been as rudimentary as a peasant’s skull cap—not unlike the petasos or pileus—being nothing more than a leather or fiber cover to protect against the elements, and whose symbolic virtue remained nevertheless. Serious warriors, conversely, were known to don stouter helms to which they would later attach cheek plates sporting various motifs. Beardedness or hairiness were the most common. The hairy aspect has long been symbolically linked to both bestial qualities and virility, in short: original power. Iterations which adhered to the symbolism of hair, or canines, are the only consistent factors when discussing the artefact. Therefore, given the relation of Hades and Zeus to canines, that before Homer, kyneê originally referred to caps explicitly rendered from dogs, and in conjunction with the ambiguity as to the helm’s degree of processing and treatment; it stands to reason that the mythological item seems to hold fast not to any specific style of Hellenic armament, but rather, belongs to a much larger tradition as an approximation of the cultic headdress so often worn by members of the Indo-European warbands—a true ‘wolf’s head.’

The fabled dog-skin helmet is yet even further linked to Athena-Zeus through their mastery of the Aegis. The mythological Aegis follows a nearly identical scheme of possession, loaning, and powerful conference. Again, the artefact’s appearance is contested, despite it being a popular subject: It occasioned to be a ward slung about the body or codified as a helm fashioned from goatskin, gilded, adorned in serpents— or, more famously, affixed with the head of a gorgon. The Aegis, a name which etymological hearkened to the ‘violence of a storm,’ was seemingly impenetrable, and attested to be so ‘awful’ to behold as to paralyze any onlooker. In sum, the item happens to stress some of the same cultic variations regarding animalistic theurgy, attention paid to the head, and the exploitation of vision.

These curious artefacts of the mythical canon bridge a connection toward some of the earliest serpent slaying motifs and cultic, wolfish, heroes of the Indo-European world. The Thracians were known to fly a banner that depicted the chimeric body of a serpent-dragon, which had the leering maw of a wolf for a head. Certain ancient students of astrology conceived celestial Draco as being wolfish: Either his head or claws were called the ‘wolf’s.’ The hero Sigurd took a helmet from the dragon Fafnir’s hoard, Ægishjálmur, which granted superhuman strength, invisibility, or dualistically the ability to instill fear. In the Nibelungenlied, the hero Siegfried bathed in the draconic blood of Fafnir, affording him near total immunity to weapons. Siegfried also doubly possessed a cloak-helm, the Tarnkappe, that granted him the strength of numerous men, as well as invisibility. The presence of mythical belts, rings, weapons, or masques are the signature of a persistent cultural memory. These occult items in Greek, Teutonic or Oriental traditions invoke a vision—not yet totally forgotten—of a life once lived, and oaths maintained or broken. Their forms are necessarily mutable, and serve as a fixed point for remembrance. Many of the heroes in the traditional cycles were granted these boons by a patron in order to commit heroic or heinous transgressions so that they may complete their initiatory cycle.

We ought to strongly consider the extent to which valorous or malicious themes apply, considering that ingroup preference notes that one rarely considers those of our own ‘tribe’ villainous or criminal. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, we find Zeus demanding that each god bestow certain qualities to Pandora. Athena offers her the gift of craft, Aphrodite, charm and the pangs of desire, while the son of the sky-father, Hermes, “the messenger and Argos-killer,” was ordered, “to put inside her an intent that is doglike and a temperament that is stealthy.” The scheme is plain: The deity only imparts that which is already held deep in themselves. Clearly, Hermes overwhelmingly uses his dogged traits to gird the wanderer and to ferry signs—he only ever plies them toward murder at the express command of his father as a consequence of divine hierarchy. Walter Burkert suggested that the earliest notions of morality, religion and culture were predicated chiefly by the establishment of ‘sanctified killing.’ At the point in which a man identifies his own potential and capabilities, he must determine how best to utilize them.

In many cases the extent of the rapacious or padfoot qualities levied against the cult warriors comes down to a matter of perspective, and, more importantly a matter of right pursuit. In a world successfully upheld and delineated by the sky-deity, his commands form the only real binding oaths that a man of antiquity ought to adhere to; his soul descends in agnatic fashion and must, eventually, return to the father.

Consider Lykourgos, whose name meant “wolf-killer,” an epithet shared by chief deities like Odin, and also the nomination of the favored roll in the Indo-European dice game. In an antiquated setting populated by cult-warriors clad in animal skins, to be known as the wolf-killer, or a derivative, would also have indicated great fame, cunning, strength and perhaps, even favor. To don the mantle of wolf-killer is to signify that you were a warrior capable of subjugating another. A separate interpretation of the linguistic symbol is that of mastery. To be considered a master in a field is to have demonstrated a specific form of transcendence gained through an intimate familiarity—proof that you have dominated the subject matter. Recall that the chief patron commanded wolves, they themselves were rarely wolves.

Truthfully, there is an oddly ascetic element to the cultic warriors of the Männerbünde. The Chatti’s well attested to cult practices and elite cadres of ‘berserker’ types in the greater Germanic world show that there were some men who elected to give up the ability to hold lands and wealth in order to engage with the ecstatic, religious, mode through combat. Cultic wolf-warriors normally only underwent such tribulations as rite of passage, and were reintegrated into the civil world after a set period. To stay in the cult longer than needed was an anomaly. The willing embodied the classical model of puer aeternus—the eternally youthful, and ecstatic mode. Deep in the woods away from the village, the wild men functioned as borderers and keepers of the oral coda. In other words, they were men free, yet unswervingly bound to the natural hierarchy not unlike an honor guard to the representative, or god of the first function. Harald Finehair is one such example, as were Aeneas, the brothers Romulus and Remus, and in the later grail cycles, ancient and wounded kings who await replacement. In Gautrek’s Saga, we find an exchange between Odin and Thor. The two gods say of the hero Starkader:

“Thor: I ordain that he shall have neither land nor estates.

Odin: I give him this, that he shall have great riches.

Thor: I lay this curse on him, that he shall never be satisfied with what he has.

Odin: I give him victory and fame in every battle.

Thor: I lay this curse on him, that in every battle he shall be sorely wounded.

Odin: I give him the art of poetry, so that he shall compose verses as fast as he can speak.

Thor: He shall never remember afterwards what he composes.

Odin: I ordain that he shall be most highly thought of by all the noblest and the best.

Thor: The common people shall hate him every one.”

Ritual exile and dedication to the first function of sovereignty, as practiced by Indo-Europeans, partially established the archetypal wandering bastard-prince motif. Relatedly, the quasi-ascetic element is why many of the antiquated tribal lore keepers existed in the liminal spaces away from the settlements. With their disappearance, or slaughter, the customs and histories were degraded until they were nearly completely lost. Confusion reigned as the waters of memory seemingly dried up.

Concluding Remarks

Desiring to ensure the heritability of the divine way of living, the rapport of the Männerbünde existed above all else to translate cosmology and the position of man as a “social predator.” The unique, prehistoric, station ratified man’s existence; it simultaneously elevated his belonging in the world and further bound him to the cosmic principles established by the all-father. The entire cult scheme repeatedly illustrated the sanctified way of becoming through rituals, aided as they were by outside signs and iterative conjunctions. Through hunting and socio-biological similitudes, the domestication of dogs explicated an analogous master-servant relationship between the cultic warriors of antiquity, and the sky-father. The exiled youths sent to serve in ritual bands learned of these traditions firsthand, embodying the various primordial pacts through a period of time in order to reintegrate, and understand, the constituent parts of a civilized experience.

As we ponder the recollection of these degraded myths and images, we find ourselves renewing the same aged initiatory cycles of our predecessors. Considering that an overwhelming number of ancient doctrines espouse a ‘return’ to a primordial, paradisiacal state, ancient man must have realized the jeopardy of involution facing humanity. At some point the great poets and conquerors of history committed to preserving, as best they could, the various realities and cycles as they came to know them. They immortalized their revelations through monumental architecture, written language, and especially, myth. Elsewhere we have suggested that myth is not so much rote history or fantastic fable as it is a mode of memory—and this much is evident in the mythography concerning wolves, warriors, and gods throughout the Indo-European world.

While the thought of lost knowledge or ancestral traditions is rightly lamentable, it is of little consequence given their inherently organic nature. The traditional modalities will remain as long as man maintains himself. Manly P. Hall once commented to similar effect that, “Man is given by Nature, a gift, and that gift is the privilege of labor. Through labor he learns all things.” It is precisely the labor of recollection that causes man to ‘relive’ and align himself once more to his past. In a way, the pursuit of understanding is intrinsically transcendental. The only real danger is not that man has already lost the knowledge, but that man may lose himself.

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