Rocks of the SunSavitri Devi |
The Externsteine, 23rd of October
1953, in the evening.
We rolled through and past Horn, without stopping, turned to our right as we reached the outskirts of the town and then, after another five hundred yards, to our left, and followed a beautiful asphalted road bordered with trees and meadows beyond which more trees -- that same, unending Teutoburg Forest in autumn garb, that I was never tired of admiring -- could be seen. I looked right and left, and ahead, and did not speak. I was watching the approach of evening upon the fiery red and yellow and brown of the leaves ready to fall, and thinking of the captive eagles and of enslaved Germany, and longing for the Day of Revenge -- "der Tag der Rache" -- as steadily as I had been, as a matter of fact, for the last eight and half years. Then, suddenly barring the road,
a row of vertical rocks about a hundred feet high -- but looking much higher,
specially from a short distance -- appeared, evenly grey against the bright
background of the sunset sky. I recognised them at once for having seen
pictures of them, and exclaimed in a low voice, with ravishment: "Die Externsteine!"
We stepped out of the car. I stood, automatically, apart from the other travellers, as though I were aware of the fact that we belonged to two different worlds; that they, even though they were Germans, were, here, but tourists, while I, even though a foreigner, was already a pilgrim. I looked up to the irregular stone
shapes that stood between me and the further forest, into which the motorable
road leads. The familiar outlines fascinated me. Not that I was, for the
first time in my life, visiting a place stamped with the prestige of immemorial
Sun-worship: it was anything but the first time! I had seen Delphi
and Delos, and the ruins of Upper and Lower Egypt: Karnak and the Pyramids.
And I had, in India, visited the celebrated "Black Pagoda" built in the
shape of a Sun-chariot resting upon twelve enormous wheels, each of which
corresponds to a sign of the Zodiac, and presenting in sculpture the most
splendid illustration of Life at all its stages -- in all its fullness
-- from the wildest erotic scenes that adorn most of the surface of the
lower walls, to the serene stillness of lonely medication --: the meditation
of the Sun-god Himself, whose seated statue dominates the whole structure.
And I had visited the extraordinary temple of Sringeri, every one of the
twelve columns of which is struck in turn by the first Sun-rays, on the
day the Sun enters a new constellation.
But I had never yet (save once, in Sweden) found myself upon a spot sanctified by the Worship of our Parent Star -- the old worship of Light and Life -- in a Germanic country. And these Rocks, I knew, had been the centre of Germanic solar rites in time without beginning. I felt like a person who has walked a long way and a long time -- who has come from a very, very distant country -- with a definite purpose, and who, at last, reaches the goal. I had now attained, if not the end (for there is no end), at least the culminating point of my pilgrimage through Germany and through life. And I was happy. I had reached the Source where I could replenish my spiritual forces for the eternal Struggle in its modern form: the Struggle of the Powers of Light against the Powers of Gloom, experienced by me as that of the National Socialist values against those both of Christianity and of Marxism -- of the oldest and of the latest Jewish doctrine for Aryan consumption, which I had fought and would continue fighting untiringly. |