AN INTRODUCTION TO METAHISTORY
by Bill White
Karl Marx, the Jewish founder of Communism, told the world that history was scientific, that its course could be objectively studied, and that it would end at a point where the world ceased to change. Despite building on 5000+ years of thought about time and its nature, he presented his apocalyptic view of a world ending in world communism as original thought. It was not, and neither was his inept reduction of Aryan notions of the process of change to mere duality contained within the opposition of the two lower castes – the merchant and the worker. The effort to understand the mechanism by which society changes is ancient, and is known as the study of metahistory – the study of “historical change”.
Fundamental to metahistory are notions of divinity, archetype, and myth. In understanding how human society changes, it is as important, if not more important, to understand how the events of history are perceived as it is to understand what the events of history are. History and the real events humans experienced are almost instantly mythologized and interpreted in the context of the stories and archetypes – idealized notions of things – prevalent in society. The effort to steer the course of human events is, in its most essential part, an effort to utilize or control the governing myths of society. The forces that direct these changes are generally hidden, or occult, and their conflict is often equally hidden, giving rise to the notion of the occult, or hidden, war.
Mythologizing of history is almost the only means by which preliterate, or proto-linguistic, societies understand the past. In the proto-linguistic society, where language is non-permanent and word usage changes generationally, not only are the stories a reflection of the ideals and principles the teller wishes to convey, but also the language itself is a reflection of personal whim. In the preliterate society, where history is oral but the language is changing much more slowly, the objective of the storyteller is still the driving force behind the structure of the story. Thus, we see schools of oral poetry develop, often involving extensive memorization, under the guidance of a usually religious body. In a fully literate society objective factors become more important, but, again, the ability to mass communicate those factors and the objectives of those mass communicating those factors is key.
The tribal chief who tells a story to justify war against another tribe; the religious leader telling a story to justify a taboo; the modern “historian” telling a story t justify a social policy; the modern reporter broadcasting their selected version of the news – all of these are metahistorical forces. When we look behind them to the clan elders who want their neighbor’s cattle; to the Temple structure who wants control of the fields their devotees work; to the University the historian depends on for his living; or to the billionaires who own the shares of the media company – we see the occult forces who are shaping historical change.
These forces, though, are not arbitrary. They are rooted in the historical changes that preceded them and are, in many ways, limited by both the past and the objective reality they must interpret. Of the two, reality is the easiest aspect to ignore, as any particular person can only experience a tiny portion directly. Consensus among the taletellers, or the preserve of a “larger megaphone”, can negate actual events. More important are the notions of how things are and should be which are brought into the experience and shape its interpretation.
For instance, most of the late mythical period of the German, Nordic, and English peoples occurred within historical time. Much of what we know of these peoples through the Sixth Century is from Roman writers; from the Sixth through the Twelfth we have a variety of sources. Yet historical events of these periods – from the Hun-Gothic wars to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, were largely understood in that time through lenses of Nordic, Classical and Hebrew mythology. Thus the Church fathers could say that the religious practices Christianity imitated were actually anticipations and preparations of the Christian faith. Theodoric the Great, born a few years after Attila the Hun’s death, could be placed at Attila’s court to live out the myths of Nordic gods. And the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Roman Britain could be understood as a replay of a migration saga at least 700 years its antecedent.
Even in a literate society, actual observation of historical change could be recorded and believed to have occurred in manners that suited the ideological needs of the persons recording them and the institutions and persons directing them, whose own ideology was derived from the ideologies that preceded them.
A good modern example is the “Holocaust” and the modern understanding of the Second World War. The Second World War was essentially lost by Britain when the Soviet Union entered it, and Germany was primarily defeated by the Soviet Union, not the United States – whose greatest role was to roll back an inevitably defeated Germany and limit Soviet Communism’s takeover of Europe.
During this war, the battle between Germany and the Soviet Union was essentially genocidal. The Soviet Union was a largely Jewish power and Germany had a deep hatred for the Jewish system of communism. The Germans exterminated the Communist bureaucracy – which was largely Jewish – and the Jewish commanders of the Soviet Army exterminated German civilians. The mass slaughter of the ethnic Russian soldiery by its own side and its German opponents contributed to the deaths.
During the war, the Soviets manufactured the idea of a general slaughter of Jewry in Germany. World Jewry, tapping into mythical archetypes of slaughter and persecution deep-seated in the Jewish people, latched on to the idea – both to manipulate and control their people, manipulate and control the victorious populations, and to profit personally. The actual effects of the war – Soviet-led genocide, a world-wide shift towards communism, the dissolution of the British Empire – were ignored or justified by the need to fight “fascism” and the equally artificial construct of “racism”, both covers for the advance of internationalist forces.
Or, one can look at archetypes as they are made in the emergence of the religion of Islam. The Koran, was largely revealed to Muhammed to settle petty disputes between his adherents. The actual practice of Islam is largely derivative of Arab paganism – the worship of the Qaaba, the belief certain statues in Mecca are divine “anticipations” of Islam, et cetera. On a foundation of Roman and Persian scholarship, Arab paganism, strong feelings in the conflict around the Trinity (root of the Islamic idea that god is one) and the tribal desert cultures of Mecca and Medinah came a religion which presented new social archetypes – first in support of a global Caliphate, then in support of the factions it produced. An understanding of Islam involves an understanding of those peoples who embraced it who demanded a Mahdi, and those who didn’t, and the material factors that led to the ascendancy of the one party or the other. The archetypes and mythology are the products of metahistory; the individuals handing gold over to the sons of Ali and Omar are the occult forces.
This analysis applies to all history at all times. Who were the Roman initiates who created the Bible and why did they choose that portrayal of Christ? What was the real reason the Greeks attacked Troy, and how did prior invasions color their account of it? Who led the American Revolution and why did they build the peculiar monuments they did? All of human history is the battle of men and women who adhere to ideas with antecedents and who create ideas from those antecedents to manipulate and control the actions of other humans. Success is not a factor in testing the validity of these notions. Metahistory is the study of these influences, which are “occult” when they are not readily presented for public viewing.
Nothing here implicates the depth to which people believe these archetypes or myths. No one doubts the majority of Jews seriously believe their recent ancestors were exterminated on an ethnic basis. Similarly, Evangelical Christians today certainly believe the literal truth of the Bible. Neither does the study of metahistory implicate actual historical truth – history is at its finest when it conforms to the ideal. Even those who create myths deliberately for practical reasons often do so in adherence to an underlying view of right and wrong that justifies their deeds.
What metahistory does do, though, is admit that all historical influences are not objective. Mere economic and environmental and biological circumstance does not dictate change, and one cannot predict from economic and environmental and biological variables the precise nature social changes can take. Black African Nubians, for instance, were able to run Egypt, which had governed them for 2000 years. A Negro communist has achieved the presidency of the United States. Aryan Germany was defeated by an alliance of Jewish communism and Anglo-American capitalism. All these changes emerged during periods of economic weakness – though Germany’s defeat came at a period of great economic strength. All of these changes can be explained in the context of myth and archetype – none can be predicted from pure economics or other objective data.
Such is metahistory – the study of the stories people tell themselves and the storytellers who shape them – of myth and the occult forces that shape [it]. In it we find gods, and men who merely wish to be gods. What we do not find is make-believe, mere fairy tales, or worse, conspiracy theories.
The purpose of much of my work is not to rewrite standard history, but to examine that history to trace the development of the metahistorical and occult within it.
Bill White Blog 