Wihinei: List’s Secret Doctrine

This short essay was composed on 8 July 2022. It represents my initial thoughts after reading Stephen E. Flowers' translation of Guido von List's, The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity. List has long been maligned by his detractors for the völkisch writings of his youth. It is important to acknowledge that his most influential works were all published when he was aged 60 years or greater. These range from his 1908, Das Geheimnis Der Runes (The Secret of the Runes) to his final unpublished work, Armanismus und Kabbala (Armandom and Kabbalah). It is certainly noteworthy that at age 63 he identified the Armanen as the keepers of an esoteric world-religion - Wihinei.

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One of the key concepts that Guido von List (1848-1919) uses throughout his writings is that of “Wihinei.” The recent translation by Stephen Flowers of List’s 1911 work, Die Übergang von Wuotanismus zum Christentum (The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity[1]) goes a long way in clarifying what List intended by this otherwise obscure word. From the outset of Die Übergang, List refers to Wihinei as the “religion,” seemingly of the “Aryo-Germanic folk.” This latter term is also used frequently throughout List’s works and demonstrates his primary focus which is the ancient pan-Germanic people.[2] A more thorough reading of Die Übergang reveals that such a definition, while true, does not convey the entirety of what List intended.

It becomes clear that List recognized, in his time, that a gulf had long since been created between religion and science. In antiquity such a division did not exist. He postulates,

“As soon as this ‘faithless knowledge’ discovers the first threads of connection which lead back to the secret doctrine it is powerfully struck by fear and shortsightedly attempts to claim these advances (which are actually ancient traditions) by providing new names for the newly discovered truths while becoming suspicious of the secret doctrine as belonging to superstition.”[3]

List goes on to suggest that modern science is moving step-by-step to embrace primeval knowledge and the ancient traditions of the secret doctrine. Eventually, he suggests:

“…the gulf between faith and knowledge will be eliminated, at which moment the hour of the birth of a renewed religion will dawn, which will then come more to believe what it knows, and therefore by the same token will activate this elevated faith-knowledge in our lives.”[4]

List’s Wihinei and his fusion of faith and knowledge can only be understood by considering his frequent references to “the secret doctrine.” Helena P. Blavatsky published her defining work of Theosophy, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy in 1888. Blavatsky’s work was translated into German in 1901. Blavatsky's work greatly influenced List's thoughts and ideas. Blavatsky demonstrated, at great length in The Secret Doctrine, that once stripped of their outward appearances, that “the root of [each religion is] identical with that of every other great religion.”[5] Blavatsky goes on to explain:

“The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all its great adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries being to the Occult Fraternity.”[6]

In short, Blavatsky argues that the appearance of various religions on the world stage were only new forms or new interpretations of ancient truths — truths which are as old as mankind itself.

Returning to List, we see him following Blavatsky’s idea when he asserts:

“If up to now there has only been talk of ‘the religion’ and never of ‘the religions,’ this has been done consciously, for there is only one religion, the Wihinei, that is, the ‘secret doctrine of Armanism,” which is the origin of all other religions that ever existed, do now exist or that ever will exist in the future, therefore all of these ‘religions’ are nothing other than merely ‘systems of religions.’”[7]

Here he makes it quite clear that Wihinei represents a primal or Ur-religion not of any particular people or folk, but rather of all religion. Wihinei, then, is Blavatsky’s ancient root religion. List goes on to criticize such “systems of religions” largely refusing to even acknowledge them as religions:

“Such systems of religion, falsely called religions, have always been established by contemporaries for contemporaries, by people of the same kind for people of the same kind, as they correspond to the requirements of the age and kind of people, and never had the aim—according to the intention of the founders involve—of forming a common world-religion, which in any case could only exist in the esoteric sense, but never in an exoteric arrangement of details.”[8]

List goes on to imagine a distant future when an esoteric world-religion could become possible. Such an esoteric world-religion is his Wihinei. He laments that with the exception of the abilities and insights of a few isolated individuals, that exoteric religions will remain necessary for many years to come. They will only be able to pass away when they are able to develop to the level of his esoteric Wihinei.

Much like Blavatsky, he notes that Wihinei is “actually as ancient as humanity itself.”[9] He refers to Wihinei as “the secret doctrine of Armanism.” Therefore Wihinei is only understood by some small, elite group, the Armanen. It is of little surprise that List applies his formula of Entstehen - Sein - Vergehen zum neuen Entstehen (“Arising - Being - Passing Away to new arising”) to his vision of Wihinei. Wihinei is the ancient Ur-religion, the esoteric root of all religions. Over time it passed away and was largely replaced by exoteric religious forms that represented specific times, places, and peoples. The present day however sees the beginning of the new arising of Wihinei back to its rightful place as a universal religion or wisdom shared by all people.

Central to List’s dream of reconciliation between science and faith is those he has identified as the Armanen (those possessing the knowledge). The Armanen are best understood, not as a tribe, but rather as a function within society. With this concept List predates Georges Dumézil’s trifunctional hypothesis of Indo-European culture. It is to the first function —that which Dumézil associates with the priests, judges, and kings—that we should think of the Armanen. Throughout Die Übergang, List makes the point that within the larger Armanendom, there is a subset of people who maintain the secret doctrine through a holy secret language — in which its principles are imbedded. This specialized group was known as the Kalanders —their secret language and symbolism was called Kala.[10]

It is therefore through the efforts of the Armanen generally, and the Kalanders specifically, that the ancient secret doctrine of Wihinei was preserved. In the lands populated by the Aryo-Germanic folk, it was first embedded into Wuotanism and later into Christianity itself. For those who know how to interpret such veiled language and hidden symbols, the evidence is all around. We find it in the pages of the thirteenth century heroic epic The Nibelungenlied. We find other clues in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and the Old Saxon recounting of the life of Jesus, The Heliand. Such secret symbolism is contained in a wide-range of objects from the Maltese Cross of the Knights Templar to symbols of heraldry and even architecture.[11]

Wihinei may properly be said to be all around us. It is a synthesis that rejoins concepts that have become separated in our lives. It is at once religion and science but also art and magic. It represents the re-spiritualization of life itself. It is at once as old as mankind itself and a promise to future generations. Importantly List makes it clear that this promise is not limited to any one folk-group but rather to all mankind.

Notes:

1. Guido von List, The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity, trans. and ed. Stephen E. Flowers (Lodestar, 2022). 

2. List commonly uses the term “Aryo” or “Aryan” in his writings. While in the post-World War II world, these terms come charged with associations with National Socialism, these terms were commonplace and broadly accepted at the time List was writing. Today, the more acceptable term is “Indo-European.” 

3. List, 15. 

4. Ibid. 

5. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine Vol. I - Cosmogenesis: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (Norfolk: Theosophy Trust Books, 2015), 2. 

6. Blavatsky, 12. 

7. List, 19. 

8. Ibid. 

9. Ibid. 

10. Ibid, 26. 

11. Guido von List, The Secret of the Runes, trans. Stephen E. Flowers (Rochester, VT: Destiny Book, 1988), 81.