Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Günther Hans Friedrich Karl
Title : The Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans
Year : 1967

Link download : Gunther_Hans_Friedrich_Karl_-_The_Religious_Attitudes_of_the_Indo-Europeans.zip

FOREWORD TO THE SIXTH GERMAN EDITION. I HOPE that the re-appearance of this work after almost thirty years, may help the younger generation to give more attention to the religious history of the whole of the Indo-European area, in contrast to previous generations, for a better knowledge of the Indo-European world will lead the West (to which North America belongs), towards selfrealisation. Heraclitus, as Aristotle reported (Concerning the Parts of Animals, I, 5, 645), instructed strangers visiting him, who hesitated on his threshold, to draw closer to him with the words: “Enter, for here the Gods also dwell!” May this work, in its present edition, express a similar invitation. If, in our era of the “Decline of the West”, the last remnants of the Western Indo- European peoples are submerged due to the dearth of true-blooded Nordics, then nevertheless the last few survivors will retain that same Indo-European conviction which supported and inspired the “last Romans” (Romanorum ultimi), who witnessed the conversion of the aristocratic Roman republic into the “de-Romanised” empire — the proud belief in inflexible and unyielding courage before destiny, which will be portrayed in this work as characteristically Indo-European, and above all Nordic — an ideal which Horace also described in the words: Quocirca vivite fortes, Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus! (Sermones, II, 2, 135/36) HANS F. K. GÜNTHER Bad Heilbrunn; Early Spring 1963. ...