Sunday, September 30, 2012

Partitioning Amerika

This is most American's attitude towards Reality:
"America is a great nation because it is just a matter of time before we become so again...."

Optimism!


The reality of our "diversity" can be grasped here.
Obviously, after reading this (and other liberal columns) one sees that it will be the despair of liberals that destroy us - they've had it their way for SO LONG they are unused to watching their nation be destroyed (in their view). They are like little kids who were fine as long as they were winning - now that it is clear that their policies have fundamentally divided the nation, they shrink from the consequences. On the other end are "conservatives" who are not even remotely so, and who eagerly anticipate a partition that will end America's greatness. Some are just bitter, although understandably so. Others are "neo-cons" - a misnomer if ever there was one. The liberals have presided over the greatest colonization in man's history - the Third World is now our back yard. At least they won't have to go overseas on missionary trips anymore to find a favela.

Dmitri Orlov thinks we're headed that way as well.

It's sad.

Everyone will get what they want - the death of America. And the shock will reverberate the globe.


Thursday, September 27, 2012

Logos Tomeus

Source
Ananda Coomaraswamy mentions the Logos Tomeus (Separating Word) of Plato in his letters. I am not sure why the writer of Hebrews would have had to read Plato - in that culture, Plato was part of the air that was being breathed by the soul.

Justin the Martyr:
"I shall give you another testimony, my friends, from the Scriptures, that God begot before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos..."

Monday, September 24, 2012

There will not be a Third Creation


Consider the diversity of the Middle Ages: on the one hand, there is the razing of cities, the fall of empires, the struggle between races, the confusion of peoples, violence and lamentations; there is corruption, barbarianism; institutions fall and institutions rise, Men disperse and make nations, whole peoples are led to unknown destinations, and yet still, enough light remains to know that everything is out of place and there is no place for anything: Europe is chaos itself.

“But amidst this chaos, something stands; it is the Immaculate Spouse of Our Lord; and one great success never before seen by mankind prevails: it is a second creation worked by the Church. During the Middle Ages, only one thing seems astounding to me and that is this second creation, and only one thing seems adorable to me and that is the Church. In order to work this great prodigy God chose these obscure times, eternally infamous both for the explosion of all brutal forces and the manifestation of human impotence.

Nothing exalts the Divine Majesty and Grandeur more than to have worked in this world while no one acted where men, peoples and races struggled in confusion. On two solemn occasions, God willed to show that corruption is sterile and that only virginity is fertile. God Our Lord willed to be born of Mary and He desired to espouse Himself to the Holy Church, thus was the Church the mother of nations just as Mary was His mother.

“Then that Immaculate Virgin, His Church, sharing the solicitude of her Divine Spouse to do good, lifted the spirits of the fallen and moderated the impetus of the violent. Giving to some a taste of the bread of the strong and to others the bread of the meek. Those fierce children of the North, who had humiliated and mocked Roman majesty, fell conquered by love at the feet of this defenseless Virgin, and for many centuries the whole world watched in astonishment and wonder as the Church renewed the prodigy of Daniel who suffered no harm in the lions’ den.
“After having lovingly soothed those great wraths and after having calmed those furious tempests with her gaze alone, the Church raised a monument from a ruin, an institution from a custom, a principle from an event, a law from an experience; to say it in a word, order from chaos, harmony from confusion.

Undoubtedly, all the instruments used for Her creation, like chaos itself, were taken from that chaos; Hers was only the enlivening and creating force. There was an embryonic form in that chaos, bereft of everything, from which would be born and live the Church who possessed the being and the life. She brought everything into being and everything came alive when the world lent an attentive ear to Her loving words and fixed its gaze on Her resplendent beauty.
Painting by Jean Fouquet of medieval men building a Cathedral.

“No, men had not seen anything like it because they had not seen the first creation, neither will they see it again, for there will not be three creations. One might say that God, regretting that He had not made man a witness of the first, allowed His Church a second creation just so man could behold it. ” — Donoso Cortes







See also this outline of the Bible as it revolves around Christ. 

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Ananda Coomaraswamy


I have, at the recommendation of Cologero at Gornahoor (to another reader/questioner) picked up AKC's collection of letters. The old excitement returns; the passion comes back. What is this glorious, transcendent world which is both made of adamantine, but grows, like the mountain in Daniel's dream, until its foundation and capstone is a tower dominating the world of the Cross?

Initial impressions:
AKC is on the side of the rigid traditionalists. This is to say, he is against nonsense. It is not a question of saying that "all religions are equals", but of recognizing that Christ's words are not primarily about moralistic "service" (which reduces God to "Patripassianism") or a Pharisee-like recognition of "Jesus Uber-All" or "Jesus Alone" (which essentially encourages the masses to reify their own understanding of what Christianity is with God, and ends up decaying into "all religions are roads to God, anyway", through Jesus), but rather about Truth in its exclusivity against error. Wasn't it Jesus who said not only "he who is not against us is with us", as well as the opposite? The difficulty is in recognizing Jesus, and we know from the Bible how difficult this is. AKC is far from being a relativist, quite the opposite; it is only the man who has traveled the straight and narrow path (wherever it may find him) who can look back and claim that God might have brought him by a different road, anyhow.


Friday, September 21, 2012

Techniques of Prayer

Guest Post at Gornahoor

Prayer....

With the initial disclaimer that (in the Christian religion) one must beware of “over-systematizing” the grace of God into specific techniques, the following is shared for the possible benefit of readers who are interested in esoteric Christianity.

Boris Mouravieff claims that there is a collection of “scripts” called the Golden Book in Orthodoxy, which is the oral tradition (or parallel to it, or a key, or fragments of it), which contain detailed teachings and instructions in the “secrets” of Christianity. I have been unable to locate references to it on the Internet, other than in Gnosis. This was the “teaching of Christ to the inner disciples”.

As I was reading Unseen Warfare by Scupoli, a Venetian priest who had his book adopted into Orthodoxy and added to by Theophan the recluse, I came across some advice to follow during prayer. Keep in mind that no prayer life will likely be effective without other ascetic practices (eg., one can’t neglect fasting and expect prayer to come swiftly and easily). That said, and other advice followed (such as maintaining “a spirit of prayer” at all times), Theophan/Scupoli advise the following:

1.Pray in short prayers; these are lightning bolts which move swiftly to heaven, before the mental apparatus can intervene and subordinate the prayer to its own machinations.

2.Learn them by heart. This, contrary to popular belief, does the exact opposite of what opponents claim it does – it protects it from the vain repetitions of the discursive intellect, which stem from the gray matter, and not the body or the heart centers.

3. Focus attention on both the left nipple (the heart) and the throat chakra. This may seem odd, but perhaps some insight from Western alchemy can help here (and others may have more to add from the East):

According to Sri Aurobindo, the throat center is associated with the externalization of mental forces, and the link between the higher and lower mental spheres. Like in some color scales of kabbalah, grey is associated with this center. In Serpent of Fire: A Modern View of Kundalini, Darrel Irving points out that the Vissudha chakra is presided over by the dual deities of Shakini and Shiva. Each is five faced, representing the five Elements, and three eyes, showing physical and psychic perception, or knowledge. Shakini is seen as Light itself, and Shiva, like the Hermetic ideal, is androgynous, half white and half gold. The center is associated with the purification of intelligence, the psychic substratum or ether (akasha), and hearing. The color given is smoky-purple. As with Sri Aurobindo’s color, purple is also sometimes given as associated with the throat center in modern kabbalistic works. Along with the remaining upper two psychic centers, these three constitute the only centers whereby direct psychic perception is possible. In the West, the Throat center is less well defined, although it shares in all of the above named characteristics. In Kabbalah of the Golden Dawn, Pat Zalewski states that the throat center is associated with the thyroid gland and controls respiration. As with yoga, each of the preceding centers is associated with an Elements, starting with Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. While not stated, it might be presumed that the Throat center is then the first center to be associated with Spirit, or Quintessence, as in yoga.

Since Christianity focuses upon “the Son” at the heart of the worlds, it is appropriate that the tradition of prayer associated with it would focus upon the two “linking chakras” between the lower and higher worlds. This is something Tomberg points out in Meditations.

Julian Lee, who is a “heretic” outside the Church, nonetheless has some very interesting considerations about prayer, Churches, and how Christianity is bhakti-yoga exotericized into a religion for the Western peoples.

Why did my ancestors build their churches this way? Because men and women who think about God a lot get instincts about God’s nature. Thus my grandfathers and grandmothers of Europe designed their Sacred Places (churches) to evoke the thought of infinite space. They may not have done it consciously always, but they did it because they received instinctive knowledge of God through thinking of God. The White Europeans thought about the Transcendental Principle a great deal. They even had a special day reserved — every 7th day — for the thought of God alone. (What an amazing and cosmic-minded people our grandfathers and grandmothers were!) It was natural then that their churches evolved to evoke Akasa, one of the Creator-God’s first evolutes. Just as it was natural for them to build tall steeples representing the rectitude and straightness of the spine when aspiring for God, and the sublimated sexual energy made sacred by placing it in sacred limits (procreation and family), with the rest sublimated in aspiration for God.

And yet, the neo-pagan crowd in America (many of whom attend services each Sunday and talk a lot of God-talk) are trying to get away from the heritage of church bells, spires, folded or uplifted hands, and any kind of “weird” traditions in Christianity as fast as they can, desperately hoping to modernize and become up-to-date enough to slickly survive the end times. Even if Christianity survives what is coming, what will it look like?

I hope that some reading this can determine to hold onto the riches that God has already dumped in our laps, even at this late hour.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Mystery of the Faith


Guest post

I will make this note - if Christianity does not assist in preventing the rise of the Sudra class to global dominance (ie., the dominance of the outcasts and the degenerates, whether "elite" or not), and the mitigation of bourgeois values with transcendental power at the same time, then they deserve what is coming. One way to do this is to "re-mystify" the Faith. See the following....(they could do this instead of engaging in so much "positive thinking")....





"We have reached the end of our research into the document found in the Ante Nicene Father collection, known as the Clement Journal. It is impossible to sum up so many posts in detail, but one thing is clear – the early Christian religion, as given by Peter to Clement in a traditional kind of initiation, resembles more a “mystery” faith or an esoteric philosophy than it does a Sunday School lesson. The ending of the Journal, which includes several letters of Clement and James the Just concerning the episcopacy of Peter being passed to Clement, is even more explicit.

Peter gives the reasoning for having secret doctrine openly & clearly:

Knowing, my brother, your eager desire after that which is for the advantage of us all, I beg and beseech you not to communicate to any one of the Goyim the scrolls of my preachings which I sent to you, nor to any one of our own tribe before trial; but if any one has been proved and found worthy, then to commit them to him, after the manner in which Moshe delivered His scrolls to the Seventy who succeeded to his throne…

All it takes for Peter to argue this is common sense, although even the Scripture teaches that not one “jot” or “tittle” should pass from Torah, either, reinforcing natural law:

give the scrolls of my preachings to our brethren,with the like mystery of initiation, that they may indoctrinate those who wish to take part in teaching; for if it be not so done, our word of truth will be rent into many opinions…

James the Just approves this, and gives orders to make it so:

And these are not all to be committed to him at once; that, if he be found injudicious in the first, the others may not be entrusted to him. Wherefore let him be proved not less than six years. And then according to the initiation of Moshe, he that is to deliver the scrolls should bring him to a river or a fountain, which is living water, where the new birth of the zaddikim takes place…

Furthermore, an oath was to be taken in the name of the elements to keep the scrolls sacred, even from one’s own posterity and friends (if found unworthy, after a 6 year trial, to have them), and they were to be returned to the bishop at their death. They were to be returned also in case of finding “another way”, on pain of the universe being hostile, the ether angry, and Elohim displeased enough to send one to “endless punishment”. This was so that those who truly seek Truth might not have to be seduced or turned aside by false teachers (who are warned against in the Bible constantly). Even in the apostle’s lifetimes they existed; how much more, after death?

To me, therefore, keeping this covenant, there shall be a part with the devoted ones; but to me doing anything contrary to what I have covenanted, may the universe be hostile to me, and the all-pervading ether, and the Elohim who is over all, to whom none is superior, than whom none is greater…

Clement writes back that the Messiah was sent to the darkest part of the world, called “the West”. This is an interesting way of looking at things…the West is the place of Water and Chaos, but also, the “first comings” of “new birth” and Baptism, as well. Thus, the best and the worst, if looked at from point of view of Advent. In Old Europe, the ether had begun to be cleaned and cleared so that elemental powers now served holy means. This was the inner secret of Old Europe’s existence.

As in the fashion of other mysteries, Peter annoints Clement on his deathbed (although Clement declines it, which makes Peter more determined; Peter cites Clement as “the best man he knows”):

I lay hands upon this Clement as your Mebakker (bishop); and to him I entrust my throne of discourse, even to him who has journeyed with me from the beginning to the end, and thus has heard all my discourses who, in a word, having had a share in all my trials, has been found steadfast in the faith; whom I have found,above all others, obedient, philanthropic, pure, learned, chaste, good,upright, large-hearted, and striving generously to bear the ingratitude of some of the talmidim. Wherefore I communicate to him the power of binding and loosing, so that with respect to everything which he shall decree in the earth, it shall be decreed in the skies. For he shall bind what ought to be bound, and loose what ought to be loosed, as knowing the role of the kahal. Therefore hear him, as knowing that he who grieves the Nagid of the truth sins against Moshiach and offends YHWH the Father of all. Wherefore he shall not live; and therefore it becomes him who presides to hold the place of a physician, and not to cherish the rage of an irrational beast

Peter urged Clement (by Clement’s relation) that it was sin not for him to accept, and that although it is dangerous (for the Evil One has sworn a war to be waged on the bride of Jesus), he ought to serve “this good King”. “Monarchy” is a phrase even James the Just uses to describe the Torah and God’s reign, and there is room for more thought here. Ought not the earth to be governed by a King, as heaven is? And who better to stand in the “way” of the Evil One, till the time when the Adversary shall, in the name of destroying all idols, destroy that King and himself take the name, not of the servant-King, but of God Himself (see Thessalonians)?

But you shall bind what ought to be bound, and loose what ought to be loosed…

Somewhat contrary to Cromwell’s sarcophagic inscription, Bishops and Kings are the path of the secret Christian mystery. The bishop is to present the local assembly as a miniature Bride. If he fails through negligence, he will suffer “loss”. An interesting insight is given on adultery – it is the second worst sin, the foremost being those who (though chaste) are still mislead into Heresy.

Wherefore love all your brethren with sober and compassionate eyes, performing to orphans the part of parents, to widows that of husbands, affording them sustenance with all kindliness, arranging marriages for those who are in their prime,and for those who are without a profession, the means of necessary support through employment; giving work to the capable, and alms to the incapable…

The bishop’s helpers are to ascertain who is “about to sin” and this will allow the Bishop to check them, for the Assembly, without his words, will soon fall prey to the anxieties of this world and become as “tinder” for the fire of passions. Only the bishop is strong enough to stand firm, or to stand at all, alone, and that is because he is not alone. The Church is likened to a ship trying to reach harbor (pirates are hypocrites, whirlpools are sins, wild places are unbelievers, etc.)

But prayers become audible by good deeds….

So much for Luther. As this Orthodox post points out, St. Paul doesn’t contradict James, he goes further than James does, in speaking of faith and works. Love is greater (and more necessary) than either faith OR works (although they, too, are necessary).

Concluding thoughts: Luther did have a valid spiritual experience of some sort. However, the experience itself and its subsequent interpretation are not the same thing. Luther represented a tremendous will to exteriorize the Christian message – of course, this is salutary in some respects, but it is mingled with such a high degree of error, lies, and illusions (such as Sola Scriptura as commonly understood) that it renders the teaching dangerous (because one must bear in mind to whom one teaches, as well as the source of the teaching, and not just the external trappings, whether in robes or between the covers of a Bible). Luther brought immense comfort to many people, however, at a terrible price. In this sense, he is like General Pyrhhus. On the contrary, the early Fathers did not think like Reformers – they were preserving what they could of the ancient world that was handed to them, with the exception of demonic taints (at least in their perception). They “spoiled the Egyptians”, as Augustine recommended. They were adding to the classical balance of Good to achieve what was Full, or Perfect. In addition, they followed the same type of practices (probations, trials, apprenticeship, oral/secret Tradition, etc.) followed by Druids, mystery schools, etc. Their concern was not to rationalize every Tom, Dick and Harry into heaven through a work ethic, but to actually bring down divine energies through an earthly hierarchy that depended upon “the One” (locally, this was the Bishop). So, Christianity was Divine Distributism and Local Anarchy (in one sense), but also Monarchy and Imperium in another. Modern Christianity may well turn out to have the worst of both sides, because even Protestant and Anglo societies covertly appeal to authority and Tradition, in this case, their own, as draped in delusion. One day, this will be used against them. This may very well occur in conjunction with the rise of the Sudra class to global dominance, if such goes unchecked.

The Christian faith will have a tremendous karmic burden to prevent or mitigate this."

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Merlin's Dawn



"Who would walk the stony roads of Merlin’s time,
And keep the watch along the borderline?
And who would hear the legends passed in song and rhyme
Upon the shepherd pipes of Merlin’s time?"
Source

Time to study...

Monday, September 10, 2012

Faith & Works Reconciled - Bad News

Actually, St. Paul goes even farther than St. James does -

Without Love, you can have Faith AND Works, and still not get into the Kingdom of God.

Source


The Coming "Good Society" of Obama in Amerika

"Civil society, as a phrase, has been receiving attention lately as well: Yuval Levin, in the recent issue of National Review, for example, has an article[ii] outlining the Obama administration’s contribution to the hollowing out thereof. The president’s vision, as Levin describes it, is of a society where the longest-term exclusive relationship that exists is that between the individual and the government...."
Source

Also,
"I am not the stuff of which reformers are made; rather than indulge in that variety of meddlesomeness I would sweep a crossing. Nine-tenths of the reformers of humanity have been mischief-makers or humbugs. I have no desire to be added to the list. A man who reforms himself has contributed his full share towards the reformation of his neighbour...."
Source

So, "Progress" = The Destruction of Civil Society, the Past, and our Souls. When that word is used, this is what it means. It COULD mean an improvement on all these, but then, it would have to be creative and build, rather than merely being dialectical and destructive.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Moralism Always Without Heart




By Fr. John Romanides

"The biblical tradition as preserved by the Fathers cannot be identified with or reduced to a system of moral precepts or Christian ethics. It is rather a therapeutical asceticism which is not daunted by any degree of malady of the heart or noetic faculty short of its complete hardening. To take the shape of this asceticism without its heart and core and to apply it to a system of moral precepts for personal and social ethics is to produce a society of puritanical hypocrites who believe they have a special claim on God's love because of their morality, or predestination, or both. The commandments of Christ cannot be fulfilled by any simple decision to do so or by any confidence in having been elected. A person with broken legs cannot run in the race no matter how much he wants to. One can do so only when one's legs have healed and have been restored to a competitive degree of power. In the same way, one cannot fulfill the commandments unless he undergoes the cleansing and illumination of his noetic faculty and reaches the threshold of glorification...."

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Slaves Who Consider Themselves Cursed

"But our commonalities are not looking so good at this time. I think of Nietzsche's comments about how there is nothing more powerful than when a slave class has learned to consider its existence an injustice and sets about taking revenge, not only on its own behalf but on behalf of past generations. ...
Source,

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

The Inner Meaning of Revolution

"Carvalho's study of the revolutionary mind has been well regarded in Brazil by people such as Roberto de Oliveira Campos,[11] Paulo Francis,[12] and Bruno Tolentino.[13]

He sees a characteristic of the revolutionary mind in the inversion of the perception of time. He says normal individuals, based on common sense, view the past as something immutable and the future as something that can be changed (it is contingent, as de Carvalho puts it). However, the leftist revolutionary sees the utopian future as a goal that eventually will be reached no matter what and the past as something that can be changed, through reinterpretation, to accommodate it.[14]

Carvalho also points out that because the revolutionary believes implicitly in a future utopia where there will be no evil, this same leftist revolutionary believes that no holds should be barred in achieving that utopia. Thus, his own criminal activities in achieving that goal are above reproach.[14]"

Wiki, Carvalho


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Shields of the Earth, Arise.

"According to Tradition doctrine, the certain angel, the celestial being is appointed to look after each nation of the Earth. This angel is the given nation’s history sense, being out of the time and the space, but being constantly present in all nation’s historical peripetias. The mysticism of a nation is based on this. Nation’s angel isn’t anything vague or sentimental, indistinctly dim. This is an intellectual, lighting being, “God’s thought”, as Gerder said. Its structure one can see in nation’s historical achievements, in social and religious institutes, which characterize the nation, in the national culture. All gist of the national history is just the text of narration about quality and form of that lighting national angel. In traditional society the national angel used to have the personified expression, in “divine” kings, great heroes, pastors and saints. But being the over-human reality, this angel itself does not depend on the human bearer. Therfore after the monarchical dynasties fall it can be incarnated in a collective form, for instance, an order, a class, or even a party."

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Coming Long Descent

"Learning and practicing such skills can't be left until the first wave of crises hits, however. An astonishing number of people in the industrial world, especially in the educated middle class, have no practical skills whatsoever when it comes to growing and preparing food, making clothing, and providing other basic necessities. An equally astonishing number are unable to travel any distance at all by any means that doesn't involve burning fossil fuels. Most can't even light a fire to keep warm or cook food without matches or butane lighters from a distant factory. Critical skills such as practical ecology, organic gardening, low-tech medicine, basic hand crafts, and the like need to be learned and practiced now, while there's time and leisure to make beginner's mistakes."
Source

This reminds me that Ortega y Gasset regarded America as a nation of barbarians covered over with a thin hyper-technical veneer (see Revolt of the Masses).

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Inventing Alchemy


“DAAS (sic), the shadowy Sephirah, which develops in the course of evolution as we learn the domination of our mental and emotional propensities, is situated at the nape of the neck. Its position is at a point on the spine just below the occiput, about one or two inches above the larynx, and its diameter may be imagined to be about four inches in extent. It is conceived to be a symbolic link, self-induced, and self-devised, between the higher Genius on the one hand, and on the other, the ego, the consciousness self referred to that group of characteristics clustered around TIPHARAS (sic).”[vii]
Source


This reminds me of a comment made in the UR Group essays on magic that final success in real alchemy is achieved by a technique the magus will invent him or herself. It also reminds of the Bible's words on the tongue: "Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth." (James' Epistle)

Baptism and the Heart, Druids and Celtic Rite

I have some remarks on baptism over at Gornahoor, under the Clement series, but I'd like to note an interesting article which, along with Clement's journals, proves at the least that early Christians thought that baptism was more than a mere sign. Note Calvin and Luther's rejection of the ability of the finite to "bear the infinite"; they intended to defend the super-essence and pleroma of God over against the Baroque Uber-Kultur (which thought that God could be classicalized and painted pink, at its worst), but they ended up throwing out the baby of sacramental theology with the bathwater of excess and error.

I'll also note, in a related digression, that this article on Druidic invoking the elements reminds me a great deal of the Celtic rite in the Western Church. My question for John Michael Greer would be, if you are invoking the universal cross along with the triple spheres, how is this different from the Cross and the Trinity?

Saturday Remarks




The inner meaning of the Terminator movie series dawned on me:

European uber-male starts as a brainwashed, preprogrammed bad-guy who is a robot, but comes back as the underdog good-guy who is becoming more human in order to defeat their newer counterpart. Pretty weird, no? Arnold as "Modern Man", destined for Salvation and Reachieving his humanity?

Also, Ben Bernanke said we would have no uncertainty in the markets, back in 2004. Who says it isn't witchcraft?