iv. When Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590–604) received a number of Anglian prisoners, he was struck by their fair complexions and beautiful hair, which led him to remark that the name of their nation is appropriate for their angelic appearance.8
Francis Parker Yockey has remarked that the peoples which appeared in Europe under various names between around 500 B.C. and A.D. 1000 were all of similar stock, of which the physical characteristics correspond with the examples mentioned above. (It should be noted that Yockey rejected any rigid classification of races, arguing instead that race is something fluid due to the interaction between a population and the soil on which it lives; this mutability applies to humans, animals, and plants). These Indo-European peoples include the Celts, Franks, Angles, Goths, Saxons, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Belgae, Norsemen, Vikings, Danes, Varangians, Germani, Alemani, and Teutones. They eventually formed the ruling strata in the countries now known as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and England (with Scandinavia added to this list elsewhere in the same work), from which the Western Culture arose around A.D. 1000.9
Religion and Spiritual Philosophy
Having established this anthropological reality, let us consider the religion of these people. The evidence shows that the Sun, together with the Day-sky, was the highest god of Indo-European religion in its oldest form.10 It has further been suggested that at an early stage, possibly before their migrations into Europe, the western branch of the Indo-Europeans became divided into northern and southern groups, called the Proto-Nordics and Proto-Mediterraneans, respectively. The religious beliefs of both groups were apparently based on the worship of a benign Father-god, with whom it was possible to be reunited in the afterlife. This paternal God was evidently conceived in two different though related aspects: while the Proto-Mediterraneans worshipped a Sun-god whose symbol was the Sun, the Proto-Nordics worshipped a Sky-god whose symbol was the thunderbolt. Regarding the former, it should be noted that it was probably not the physical Sun that was worshipped, but rather the Spirit that created the Sun with its heat and light, and of which the Sun was the physical symbol.11
Among the ancient Akkadians and Babylonians this Sun-god was called Bel, the memory of which has been preserved among some of the Celtic peoples in the annual fire-festival known as Beltane. This festival was mostly held on the first day of May, and used to be widely observed across Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Also found among the Celts was a Druidic prayer in which God was entreated to grant his supplicants the love of the right, the love of all things, and the love of God.12 This Indo-European notion of a benign, paternal Divinity is also encountered in a prayer ascribed by Plato to Socrates: “King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us; what is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it” (Second Alcibiades, 143a). Such a prayer is evidence of a lofty spirituality indeed.
As the Indo-European cultures developed in their respective abodes, it was only a matter of time before intellectual reflection, i.e., philosophizing, began walking hand in hand with religious beliefs and practices. The spiritual-intellectual tradition (Sanskrit, sanatana dharma; Greek and Latin, sophia perennis, ‘eternal wisdom’) of the Indo-Europeans came to be expressed above all in classical Indian and Hellenic philosophy, the combination of which remains unsurpassed in the profundity of its thought and the brilliance of its exposition. However, this does not imply that metaphysical thought has been limited to the Indo-European worlds, since major contributions in this regard also came from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. The eminent Traditionalist author Frithjof Schuon affirmed that this perennial wisdom is of Aryan (i.e., Indo-European) origin and is typologically close to the Celtic, Germanic, Iranian, and Brahmanic spiritual philosophies.13
Contrary to the prevailing rationalistic paradigm in Western academic circles, it must be emphasised that Indo-Hellenic thought is primarily rooted in spiritual experience. We could say that the mystical vision (Greek, theōria) of the Reality that surpasses and underlies the world of empirical phenomena preceded the philosophising of the Vedantic, Presocratic, and Platonic thinkers. This mystical vision of the One and all found its earliest literary expression in the Upanishads and the works of early Hellenic thinkers such as Heraclitus and Parmenides. It is therefore not surprising that the Hellenic metaphysical tradition of Orphism, Pythagoras, and Plato is akin to the mysticism of the Upanishads. In both traditions one encounters a shift of emphasis from the physical to the spiritual and from the temporal to the eternal. The salient dictum of this Indo-Hellenic mystical vision is the recognition that ultimate Reality (variously called Brahman, God, or the One) lies beyond sense perception.14 In other words, reality is not limited to the physical world, contrary to the claims by those who reject transcendent reality, such as atheists and materialists.
Socio-political Organization
Having touched upon aspects of Indo-European religion and philosophy, let us briefly look at some socio-political aspects of these trailblazing people. In his informative book The Indo-Europeans, the French linguist Jean Haudry writes that the Indo-European people is identified by its name, as is the case with the individual. He adds, “We might even say that it [the people] identifies with its name, as is demonstrated by the formulaic parallelism of Latin nomen Latinum, ‘the Latin people’ and Vedic aryam nama, ‘the Aryan people’ and Indo-Iranian aryaman.”15
Furthermore, the Indo-European people is not an undifferentiated mass of individuals, but a structured community articulated by functions. Accordingly, Aryan society was divided into three function-classes in both India and Iran, each class associated with a symbolic color (it is relevant to note that the Sanskrit word Varna means type, order, color or class). In India, a fourth class came to be added to accommodate the manual laborers (drawn from the native Dravidians). Arranged from highest to lowest, the Indo-Aryan function-classes and their symbolic colors were the following (with names in Sanskrit): Brahmins, i.e., priests (white); Kshatriyas, i.e., warriors and rulers (red); Vaishyas, i.e., artisans, merchants, and farmers (yellow); and Shudras, i.e., peasants and other laborers (black).16
The Traditionalist author Frithjof Schuon has remarked that these castes are related to fundamental tendencies of human nature, which are different ways of envisaging an empirical reality. Thus, for the Brahmin, it is the changeless and transcendent which is real; for the Kshatriya, it is action which is real; for the Vaishya, it is material values such as security and prosperity which are real; and for the Shudra, it is bodily things such as eating and drinking which are real. Interestingly, even the outcast, or Chandala, is related to a basic human tendency, namely an inclination to transgression due to a chaotic character. Psychologically speaking, a natural caste is a world, and people live in different worlds according to the reality on which they are centred. On the relation between caste and race, Schuon writes that race is a form [or formal reality] while caste is a spirit [or spiritual reality]. Therefore, caste takes precedence over race because spirit has priority over form.17
It has been pointed out by Hans Günther that the caste system in India corresponded to the universal order of life, as conceived by the Indo-Europeans. In this understanding, the whole cosmos, including divine rule and responsible human life, comprises a divine order. The Indians called it rita, of which the gods Mitra