Pictured: one of my notebooks
In the introduction to Ernst Jünger's 'The Forest Passage', Russell Berman notes "religion — not enlightenment — defines Jünger's account of freedom, as does myth."
Elliot Neaman expands on this in 'A Dubious Past': “Both the Waldgang and Heidegger's Lichtung (clearing) are forest metaphors that elicit, in a reader informed by German literature, romantic and mythological associations of premodern peasants, pagan Arcadia, or Germanic forest-dwellers.” (p. 185).
Jünger highlights this ancient connection in 'The Forest Passage '(p. 46): "The teaching of the forest is as ancient as human history, and even older... It constitutes the great theme of fairy tales, of sagas, of the sacred texts and mysteries."
He adds (p. 48) that the secret forest represents an "intimate, well-protected home", yet also “approaches the unheimlich, that which is uncanny or eerie."
Forests, trees and sacred groves were hugely important to ancient Germanic people. In the essay “Pagan Survivals and Syncretism in the Conversion of Saxony” (Catholic Historical Review, 1986) it mentions Charlemagne's legal code 'Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae' from 785. In it, Charlemagne references trees, stating that one of the crimes was "If someone at springs or trees or groves should make a vow or sacrifice something in the pagan manner and eat in honor of demons" -- the demons of course being pagan gods Odin, Thor.
The essay goes on to state that "The connection of pagan sacrifice with trees, as mentioned in the Capitulatio, is definitely found in Saxony. The Indiculus mentions 'the rites of the woods which they call nimidas.' The sacred oak of Geismar in Hesse, destroyed by Boniface, is a Saxon example of the veneration of trees practiced by many Germanic peoples.”
Interestingly, the poet Friedrich Georg Jünger (Ernst’s brother) spoke of St. Boniface regarding an event during his youth. As noted in the book 'A Thematic Approach to the Works of F.G. Jünger', Friedrich was deeply pained by a particular oak tree being cut down near his parent’s home. He compared it to St. Boniface cutting down the sacred Donar's Oak during the 8th century.
