I HOPE that the re-appearance of this work after almost thirty years, may help the younger generation to give more attention to the religious history of the whole of the Indo-European area, in contrast to previous generations, for a better knowledge of the Indo-European world will lead the West (to which North America belongs), towards self-realisation. Heraclitus, as Aristotle reported (Concerning the Parts of Animals, I, 5, 645), instructed strangers visiting him, who hesitated on his threshold, to draw closer to him with the words: “Enter, for here the Gods also dwell!” May this work, in its present edition, express a similar invitation.

If, in our era of the “Decline of the West”, the last remnants of the Western Indo-European peoples are submerged due to the dearth of true-blooded Nordics, then nevertheless the last few survivors will retain that same Indo-European conviction which supported and inspired the “last Romans” (Romanorum ultimi), who witnessed the conversion of the aristocratic Roman republic into the “de-Romanised” empire — the proud belief in inflexible and unyielding courage before destiny, which will be portrayed in this work as characteristically Indo-European, and above all Nordic — an ideal which Horace also described in the words:

Quocirca vivite fortes, Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus! (Sermones, II, 2, 135/36)

HANS F. K. GÜNTHER
Bad Heilbrunn
Early Spring 1963.

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