WHY I HATE BUDDHISTS:
Back to the old religion

by BEN KNIGHT

My country was never properly Christianised. Our hearts aren’t in it – it’s kind of a tea ritual to us Germans, or a way for your parents to make friends. It’s like the European Union - a lot of well-meaning abstract rules that no-one likes. The secret passion of the German people lies under the Harz mountains and the Lüneberger Heide, the great mountains and plains that make up the centre of Germany. Here the German heart beats like a hammer on an anvil. The old gods live here, and they are strong brown gods with big bodies, who sit in a circle smoking and fighting. It’s difficult to get them to admit it, but the German disposition is deeply heathen. We are aesthetes and hedonists.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 13:15, BELZIG
My first pagan is a large man with a short beard and glasses. We drive in his truck for 20 minutes, and Herr Camphausen explains why he has chosen to mortgage his house and live in the country. “15 years, that’s all, then this country will go to pieces.” He earns his living by renting out his little truck, which has a crane, his edge over the competition.

Democracy, pagans like to point out, was invented by pagans. Paganism is the religion mushrooming among the German liberals. It stands to reason - what do you do if you’re old, good-natured, disillusioned and cynical? At some point, pasty and dissolute as you are, you seek refuge in spiritual justification. The Germans are still working off an ecology trip that stretches back to the late sixties. Now that it’s clear that the environment is fucked in more ways than a Hamburg fishmonger, a sense of futility has set in, and ancient Germanic gods provide shelter. Pray enough, lose yourself, and it all goes away.

16:30, HOHER FLÄMING
But such hopeless hippies are nothing but day trippers, amateurs, generational castaways, because real pagans stay unmolested by the real world. I’m in a village beyond even the reach of Germany’s public transport. I’ve been talking to Langkona (chief -witch) Catrin Wildgrube and Allsherjargode (head-priest) Géza von Neményi of the Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft for nearly three hours.

Catrin earns a living as a tarot reader and astrologist, not as a witch. (“Being a witch is a way of life, not a job.”) She also runs a forum that responds to the anxieties of young girls with potions (“Drink wine from his shoe, and you’ll learn to love each other.”) Géza commits his life to his studies of ancient Germanic cultures and administering to his infidel flock. He’s written a lot of books, some of them published by mainstream publishers. They live in a quiet house with an outside toilet in the middle of a misty field.

I was told, almost as a warning, that these are the hardcore pagans. This just means they are serious about it. But Géza was nice. He had cake and herbal tea (no side-effects) and we spoke endlessly about the beliefs, the history, the political implications of their faith. I tried to steer the conversation towards the edges – “What about the drugs?” “Just to aid meditation, most of us don’t do them.” “What about the Nazis who want to join up?” “We don’t let them.” “Don’t you hate that Christianity has usurped your religion and holy places, dominating the world with its totalitarian repression?” “Not really.” By this time I was too discouraged to ask about solstice sex rites. Fuck! Group sex is probably just another legend invented by hippies to get their end away.

But then we all calmed down and the gates opened. They talked about rain-magic and that ducks are Wotan’s messengers. They told me a story how, while they were in Iceland, an earthquake protected them from forest rangers. They also mentioned a rabbit-shaped cloud that looked down on them while they were burying their dead bunny.

They believe in superstitions that no church would dare test the credulity of its disciples with. But they like to talk about how reasonable they are. One thorny nutshell: Jesus. He brought someone back to life – fair enough, but anyone can imagine this trick of physics. Energy and matter is the same anyway. But Jesus never said that elves follow you around the forest looking after you or that “dogs and horses can see ghosts, but cats can only hear them.” Jesus also never mentioned dwarves, force fields, or hallucinogenic herbs, or thunder gods summoned by lutes either. This is because Jesus was, basically, a totalitarian. Whatever else you say about Jesus, he was definitely no hippy. He had no time for imaginative ramblings and he didn’t give a fuck about the environment. He can’t have been all that bad.

NEXT SATURDAY AFTERNOON, 13:30, HANOVER.
The only internet café in the whole of Hanover railway station is in a windowless casino full of commuting no-hopers. This place has armchairs in front of the fruit machines. Wasted scowls turn to look as I walk in. People pray that one day God vengeful will wash this place with its sticky carpets and misery-mongering stooges into the sea. Except He won’t! It’s all a lie. Here’s one reason I disapprove of Christianity and Judaism – the myth of a purging apocalypse. What an obvious ruse!

I have problems with all the big religions. Here, for example, are the reasons I hate Buddhism: first, because wisdom is an illusion - all that counts in this frenetic life is the yarn you spin getting what you want or the yarn you spin while fantasising about why you didn’t get it. Second, because I was molested by a Buddhist once (Lower Manhattan, blackout, despair, I hope your pot-bellied wisdom chokes you, you cunt.) It wasn’t just a sexual trauma that has warped me, it was an insight – no religion is free of dogma and repression. A Buddhist can be just as repressed and perverse as any Catholic priest. We live in times of sexual and spiritual chaos, that’s for sure.

THE SAME SATURDAY 14:45, UELZEN. A young very drunk guy with a giant back pack starts talking to me for no reason. It looks like he’s been up all night. His eyes swimming in and out of focus, he tells me he’s been looking after his mother for three months, who is recovering from cancer. He’s back in Uelzen to see to his cats. He says they’re only 11 months old and probably need him. His friends miss him too. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. All this I find out in the five minutes it takes for him to show me where the bus station is. He tells me that Bergen / Dumme, the village I’m headed, is a “kuhdorf.” Yeah, cows with horns of fire and bellies full of babies, mate. He gives me a hug goodbye and I hug him back.

I missed the bus, and have to wait two hours for the next one.

Exiled religions are a different game, though. I’ll go to those rituals. I won’t take part, mind, but I’ll take it all in, repressing media-ridden paranoia long enough for the goat to be bled, or for me to imagine that a goat is being bled. No-one can really cope with minor religious sects. They are deeply mistrusted, an easy target for bored tabloids, and fair game for the liberal press. But here’s the thing: nine-tenths of the human race never have and never will think for themselves, about anything. Whether it’s religion or TV or fucking iPODS, almost everybody prefers to sit and wait til somebody who seems to have some kind of authority even if it’s not clear where they got it to come along and inform them one and all what their position on the matter should be. At least these people have shown some intellectual curiosity about life. And they’ve found a faith in the middle of their cynicism about mainstream life. No mean feat.

15:35; CAFÉ IN UELZEN. A comfortable, pretty town. Tourists. Someone made fun of my clothes as I came in. I take this as a sign that I’m edging closer to centre of Germany.

17:10 – ON THE BUS TO BERGEN AN DER DUMME.
It’s pitch dark outside. Out in the country, the glowing santas that people decorate their houses with look like armies of bright red pixies swarming the villages. In the headlights I see a rabbit nailed to a post by the roadside. Joking.

17:31: BERGEN AN DER DUMME.
I am there, and small-town fear and oppression and a sudden loneliness immediately sets in. What am I doing here? I never made any formal deal with VICE. I might not get paid for this, in which case it looks like I’ve decided to spend a day riding into the countryside at night with a vague, personal mission to find visionaries and prophets. Grotesque, possessed people or something. A feeling takes over that I’m not psychologically prepared. For example: what do I do if end up witnessing an exorcism drunk? Sit in the corner and look politely away, probably. What the hell am I going to write about?

The Thelema Society has been relentlessly demonised by the press. If you Google them you get around 20 years of articles about abuse and rape and people eating shit in meditation workshops. Michael D. Eschner, the Society’s founder, was imprisoned for rape and GBH in 1992. Apart from some ideas about Nietzsche, who I keep meaning to read, this is all the context I have. They’ve had TV crews breaking into their house to film themselves being kicked out. Everyone thinks they are Satanists. Anyone who has attracted this much hysterical abuse from the general public must be doing something right.

18:45:
I’ve been talking to Harald. He’s a little suspicious of people like me, but is still talking to me after three hours, explaining this complex, vaguely subjective hierarchy they have formed. (“Everyone chooses their own status, but must, by example, prove the responsibility.) He refuses to let me take his picture, but tells me enough about himself – he’s married, lives with his wife in the village, and earns a living exporting Indian merchandise.

The Thelemites sees itself more as a path than a religion. Apparently they are at the crossroads between religion, philosophy and art. Religion is finding your will, philosophy is analysing your will, and art is expressing your will. The individual meditates and follows this path.

Photos are banned. I decide to take a picture of the coffee machine, the notice board, some handicrafts, and the radiator, which is yet to be attached.

20:00:
Finally meet Eschner himself. The inner sanctum, and the climax of my journey. Like Catrin, he’s been cleverly backlit for the occasion, and all I can see is the yellow light in the crescent of white hair that wreathes his whole head, so he looks a bit like a solar eclipse. We talk for a while about philosophy, and I do my best stay in his ballpark, trying to get him to say something to make him sound insane and his Society like a bunch of frenzied people. I fail – it’s all along the lines of “we’re just people joined by an analytical approach to our spirits.” All dangerous aspects of the group are neatly rounded off before I get to them, “every individual has absolute control over his will.” All their beliefs – immortality, telepathy, magic, are just more intensely realised elements of what most people think about anyway, is the jist.

I end up resorting to amusing trivia: Eschner, apart from being the reincarnation of Alistair Crowley, is a gamer. He plays a lot. (current favourite: Aftershock. All-time favourite: Civilisation (maybe)).

He is one of around 16 people who claim they are the reincarnation of Crowley in Germany alone. He has a dream of inviting them all to a party. The German Crowley party. I try to secure an invitation for VICE. He wants to play dance, electro and wave, and maybe have a cold, Italian buffet.

So how the hell are you different from other sects and groups and people generally? The Ultimate to it all: “We don’t try to be different.” Fuck.

NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT, SPANDAU
I feel like I need to get some perspective on these people, so I set out to find a Nazi pagan. Sure enough, I think I’ve struck gold when I make contact with Thilo Kabus, the press spokesman for the Deutsche Volksunion, and 20 years a member of the NPD. Not just any member either, but a committee man – someone who helped form the politics of the much-maligned nationalists. He sees himself as independent of all political parties now, calling himself an anarcho-nationalist.

But it turns out he’s not a Nazi. He’s pretty proud of the term anarcho-nationalist, mainly because it pisses off left-wing anarchists who are offended by his term.

So I meet Thilo for a drink in Spandau. He gives me horn of beer, and I can taste saliva in it. Also sharing the horn is Thilo’s sidekick Johannes, a taxi-driver with an encyclopaedic knowledge of German history, who is thinking about becoming a pagan. We drink for a while, me increasingly the worse for it, and consequently asking Thilo less and less about being a pagan and more about being a Nazi. He’s not a Nazi though, is the thing, and not into racial purity. And there is the break with paganism, because if there is one thing that you’d think pagans would believe in, it’s races. But no, they don’t. Only in America, where everyone’s racist.

But surely paganism is the great meeting point of the left and the right? Wasn’t Hitler obsessed with the occult. Goddamnit, I need some evil people!