Dr William Pierce: Cosmotheism: A Nietzschean Doctrine of Power

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[I love the work of National Vanguard. Jan]

by Ryan Cavallius

After the National Alliance achieves its first major sociopolitical breakthrough and establishes a racial state, Cosmotheism will be diffused throughout the culture. Perhaps many volumes will be written about different aspects of the doctrine, with great minds answering any theoretical questions that might remain. Such exercises can be beneficial, so long as they are not superfluous. In the meantime, however, we can add to the existing literature a little at a time, even if doing so means mostly just expounding further upon some of the important fundamentals, as is the case with the present article.

LET US BEGIN by noting that the Cosmotheist religion – or “Path,” if one prefers – as conceived by Dr. William Pierce is a high manifestation of Aryan spirituality. (The word “high” is used here in a specifically Nietzschean sense.) And not just high, but staggeringly elevated this doctrine is, as one sees who takes the time to come to grips with it. It is elevated not only in its ethics, its evaluation of man’s nature, and its unparalleled racial orientation, but also with regard to its metaphysics, epistemology, eschatology, etc.

In terms of its metaphysics, Cosmotheism advances a materialistic, monistic view of life which recognizes both “unity and diversity in Nature, but never equality.”1 Those familiar with such matters will quickly notice here an intriguing contrast with most other Aryan religions, which tend towards metaphysical idealism.

Cosmotheism is unique also in its propensity to harden its adherents – at least the more stringent ones. This involves a gradual steeling of one’s entire psyche, including the intellect, and is not limited to just the lower emotional centers. Even the intuition is heightened by Cosmotheism, for its emphasis on a more natural style of living increases one’s sensitivity and situational awareness.

One reason people follow life-negating religions like Christianity and Buddhism is that they receive emotional comfort from them. Fairy-tale-like promises are employed as diversions, pulling practitioners’ thoughts away from life’s inherent sufferings and steering them instead to totally fabricated – even shockingly infantile – fantasies of “salvation.” Those opiate-like teachings offer a glimmer of otherworldly release to individuals who would otherwise find little solace living in the cold, hard world. That is the chief cause of these religions’ success. Such faiths survive and grow, not because God has assured it, but rather because their inventors carefully factored the naïve psychology of the masses into their development.

Yet, Dr. William Pierce was a psychologist in his own way, too – and likely a much sharper one than the priests. In developing our Path (or maybe it is more correct to say he discovered it), Dr. Pierce succeeded in creating something which appeals to the psychological dispositions of a type of man quite different from the mass-man: the healthy, self-assured man of good stock who instinctively reaches right over so-called “comforts” and a false sense of security in his attempt to gain an increase of power. William Pierce’s revolutionary clarion call is a message to masters and soon-to-be masters; a trumpet echoing through valleys, across fields, and over mountain tops. It is for the ears of those courageous enough to take what is rightly theirs in the world.

The men and women for whom Dr. Pierce formulated his scientific philosophy are often deep thinkers, sensitive in the utmost degree. Harnessing the Life Force in whichever way they can, they channel it in the direction of the Superman. Whether they do so consciously or unconsciously; whether they take some steps backwards along the way or even slip and fall a time or two is not important. What matters is that they do it, and because they do it, a higher form of man can be foreseen. This means that since Cosmotheism appeals to a natural elite (much like the sociopolitical doctrine of the National Alliance appeals to an elite in a more mundane sense), it constitutes an extremely powerful ideology; the best and highest, and possibly the only, way to actualize Zarathustra’s trek in the here and now.

Cosmotheism is vastly underrated partly because the majority of our folk – including those individuals who call themselves racially-aware – simply cannot grasp its long-term significance. It is not their fault; they just do not have the capacity. William Pierce was too far ahead of his time for the average person, as was Adolf Hitler whose movement in Germany laid the cultural and intellectual groundwork for Cosmotheism’s inception.

Perhaps this doctrine seems dry on the outside, but it is a gestating, untapped current of raw potential. It only needs additional intelligent direction to take root. For some, Cosmotheism is that which takes hold of us and throws us forward, then bids us carry ourselves to higher planes. Like Nietzschean philosophy, Cosmotheist doctrine challenges our preconceived notions, particularly in the area of metaphysics. One either grasps it or he does not; perhaps he grasps it only after long deliberation. Either way, Cosmotheism can catapult us over even the steepest ideological hurdles. It demands that we do so, if we are to go where Dr. Pierce commanded. The highest man is tossed onto the sharpest crag and cut upon intellectually treacherous peaks, from which the slightest slip and fall could lead to, not death, but something worse: the grasping for a crutch.

But, so what? “Slip,” “fall,” “cut”? Those words mean nothing to the born Piercean, who knows hardship and setbacks like he knows every mark on his body. Every great man of our race learned how to turn even the most crushing blow into a fresh opportunity to evolve. Perhaps even Adolf Hitler reached a new spiritual height during his final days in the bunker.

Some Cosmotheists come to this Path with a background in indigenous Aryan religions. For a few of them at least, one of the most difficult elements of Cosmotheism must be in the way it views the nature of Reality. For Cosmotheism remains here, as elsewhere, Nietzschean to the core, embracing metaphysical materialism. Materialistic and monistic: These two terms, inadequate as they probably are when discussing Dr. Pierce’s grand conception of the world, nevertheless provide the best definitional starting points for grasping the Cosmotheist conception of Reality.

Materialism in this sense means conceiving the world and all life in fundamentally natural rather than supernatural terms. Monism is the conception of the world as a unitary, undivided Whole. Where the idealist might view Source in terms of consciousness or an omnipotent God, Cosmotheists see it simply as Nature. And while metaphysical dualists (Immanuel Kant is an example) argue that man and the world are each fundamentally split into separate parts, Cosmotheism posits the opposite:

There is but one reality.
That reality is the Whole.
It is the Creator, the Self-Created.
I am of the Whole.
I am of the Creator, of the Self-Created.
My Purpose is the Creator’s Purpose.
My path is the path of the Creator’s Self-Realization.
My path is the path of Divine Consciousness.
My destiny is godhood.2

The above Affirmation is taken from a landmark collection of essential writings which should be read by anybody interested in this subject. The principles summarized in that Affirmation are discussed in greater detail throughout the whole body of work, serving as an excellent introduction to the whole religion.

In Nietzsche’s published notes,3 one can follow his thoughts for themselves to see how the philosopher’s metaphysical outlook underlies that of Cosmotheism today. Despite the fact that he apparently never finished formulating his philosophy of the will to power, Nietzsche’s writings on the subject clearly point in a Cosmotheist direction. He described the world and everything belonging to it as a unitary Whole, not a collection of separate realms or a duality of oppositional forces vying for supremacy in Nature. Of course, manifestations of the One Reality are often multifaceted, variegated, and may even give the appearance of being distinct and equal Powers — but only until we take a deeper look. From the ultimate standpoint, everything is an emanation of the Whole and springs forth from what Dr. Pierce called the Creator.4

That springing-forth is impelled by the will to power, a term Nietzsche coined to describe that impersonal force which gives rise to the wind, the waves, the sexual urge in reproductive beings, and every heartbeat in pulsating Nature. Whether the will to power is, from the ultimate standpoint, the fundamental Force described by Dr. Pierce in his early work is not certain. At the very least, it is the more immediate motivating current in the world and it certainly pushes us forward on our quest for the advancement of our people.

The Reality-based and downright demanding nature of our Path can harden the serious practitioner in a fashion reminiscent of Zarathustra’s quest. This takes time, of course. Most of us are only at the foot of the mountain today. Completely uncompromising, and loving truth at any cost, with a refusal to grant the spineless any ground, Cosmotheism laughs in the face of danger and walks right on past those in need of an existential cushion. It hardens us not only emotionally, but intellectually, for Cosmotheism has no room for those who try to wriggle away from the hard realities of life or pray for a savior to do for them what they are too impotent to do themselves.

To paraphrase Zarathustra:
Why so soft, so submissive and yielding?
Why is there so little fate in your looks?
If you will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can you one day conquer with me?
And if your hardness will not glance and cut to pieces, how can you one day create with me?
For creators are hard.
Entirely hard is only the noblest.
This new table, my brethren, I put over you:
Become hard!

Cosmotheism strips away all longings for petty comforts and gets to business straight away. The future is an eternal Now, certainly, but the time to begin is also now and hence there is no excuse for wasting time. If the National Alliance is a lightning bolt from above which sets fire to the long-overgrown field of the pro-White “movement,” its philosophical basis is the green, new life which follows the flames. It subdues to precisely the right degree the wild, individual spirit which characterizes every strong White man, and it will enlist the spirit and power of our entire race in years to come. As an Aryan religion in a world controlled by Jews, it is a warrior’s creed and its 21st century practitioners are modern-day Kshatriyas.

This is no path for the faint of heart. To be a Cosmotheist is to take on a burden that would crush Atlas if he shouldered just a portion of it.

Being largely a science- and reality-oriented form of Nietzschean philosophy applied in a modern context, Cosmotheism is the most natural religion for Alliance members to practice (though it must be emphasized that this is not required). Beyond that, it is a perfect religion for those who aspire in some way to serve as bridges to the Superman, if they practice any religion at all.

The lower religions of non-Aryan or negative Aryan origin are not for us. They are for the weak who can neither create high culture nor stand on their own without support. In order to move forward, we must scale the heights. We must set our eyes toward the stars and force ourselves to climb upward, regardless of how strenuous such a task may be.

Adolf Hitler, William Pierce, and many others provided inspiration, direction, and advancement; it was Nietzsche who laid the essential foundation. His work in the area of metaphysics was probably his most important contribution to philosophy, though few realize it. His ethics along with everything else, vital though they were and remain, constitute only a leading-up to his doctrine of the will to power and thence his revolutionary conception of life. This is so whether his metaphysical ideas are foolproof or not. For evolution was never a linear process and it is not a few errors which really matter – not in the long run. What matters is the overall progression of Life and the Race.

Therefore: warriors of the National Alliance, harden yourselves. Embrace not only the will to survive, but the will to power, for it is the latter which really counts. The survival of our race is not the ultimate goal, nor is the survival of the individual. We must do more than merely survive, we must conquer everything around us or perish in the fight. For what does it matter whether we survive, if we are not masters of ourselves and our destiny and everything which makes that destiny possible? What kind of life is the life of a slave? A master race with a master morality, which is master of the world: that is what we strive for, at least today.

What will we strive for tomorrow? We will see. Cosmotheism is a Nietzschean doctrine of power, so I have no doubt that we will discover the answer.

Notes

1. William Pierce, “Who We Are: A Series of Articles on the History of the White Race (Part 1 – Introduction),” National Vanguard, June 25th, 2017, https://nationalvanguard.org/2017/06/who-we-are-a-series-of-articles-on-the-history-of-the-white-race-part-1/. Accessed April 13th, 2023.

2. William Pierce, “The Cosmotheist Affirmation,” Cosmotheism: Religion of the Future, ed. Kevin Alfred Strom (Mountain City, TN: Cosmotheist Books, 2021), 34.

3. The Will to Power, Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1968).

4. “Book One: The Path,” Cosmotheism: Religion of the Future, ed. Kevin Alfred Strom (Mountain City, TN: Cosmotheist Books, 2021), 9-15.

5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common (Digireads Publishing, 2016), 166.

Source: https://nationalvanguard.org/2023/04/cosmotheism-a-nietzschean-doctrine-of-power/