Who Pleases God?

Two men please God--who serves Him with all his heart because he knows Him; who seeks Him with all his heart because he knows Him not.
--Nikita Ivanovich Panin
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Keats & Alchemy

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This is not surprising - I found this because I knew to look for it - Keats has always struck me as the "best" of the Romantics, someone who, had he lived, might have been a guiding spirit greater than Wordsworth. Unfortunately, he obtained his influence via the Freemasons, who had already begun to dabble in the darker currents. They had lost the integral medieval tradition that was dealt a death blow by Luther in his effort to Teutonize and stabilize and reform the corruptions of his own day. Like all revolutionary efforts (including our own Founding Fathers), an initial burst of energy and light and truth gave way to an even deeper despair, as another avenue was exhausted and proved a dead end. This can be likened to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, one of whose ominous signs in any patient is a sudden "improvement" & lucidity - the body has deployed all of its intercranial compensating measures and systemic countermeasures in a last ditch effort to lower intercranial pressure from the leaking vasculature. It is a bad sign. In & of itself, a good, but ominous for long term survival. The body's "ace" is a sign that it has its back to the wall. Likewise, many efforts today are doomed for the same reason - good in and of themselves, they nevertheless (if they do not work, and they usually do not, if the underlying problem goes untreated) ultimately place the patient in an even worse position, from which no recovery can be expected. It is telling that Keats died of love - his disease claimed two family members before him, both of whom he cared for. He was a better man than Byron, Shelley, or a host of other "poets". And a better poet. Had he lived (and he does live) he might have hymned a higher note.

In honor of Keats, may he rest in peace, one of the sainted dead, and one who found his way through Purgatory, safe to that far shore.

And Has He Died?

Came he among the whispering wood, or in the golden meads,

Still he holds the cypress crown, which gold Apollo gave.

Walked he in stormy wind about or in the laze of noon,

Yet still he sings the song around, eternal end too soon.

He rose above the blue sky wild and stopped beneath the sun,

The eagle grew his pinions strong yet earth does not outrun.

Others voyaged the ether out or wandered into space,

The psychonauts, dead stars about, are lost unto our race.

False gods may fly like crimson sparks thrown out of Eden’s heat,

Though one took wing, in faithful gyre, halfway the sun to meet.

He melted not, nor smitten blind, but sorrowed in his mind,

His weakened corse you cannot find, in England, green and kind.

In water writ, in Rome bestowed, a man between two worlds,

Forever twixt the sun and sky, his ruddy heart unfurled.

For us, he loved and lost his mind, for us did name our vale,

For us the mansions traced in fate, and young, faced Death’s black gale.

I prayed his soul last Good to find, to early love yet keep,

The answer came the Moon around “long yet so shall I sleep”.

“Until the fickle Fortune bows and Fame is quite forgot,

Until my unconsummate Love unto the Phoenix, wrought.”

“Each upward shines in golden Love who holds what they were gift,

And dances in God’s hearth, a Dove of flame to sing, to sift.”

“The change will come upon a day, the change I won in pain,

To come again a second Self, like sunshine in the rain.”

“But still the special color min that welled from in my heart,

Remains forever changeless dyed, as in that vase of art.”

“Unbroken yet and still and bright I yet remain as them,

Alone for ages in the rest, and dreaming on the wind.”

A Consideration of Christian Mysteries

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Link. This is a discussion of Phillip Sherrad, now deceased, an Eastern Orthodox writer and thinker. Chiefly interesting are the remarks on Guenon, worth quoting in full:

The late Philip Sherrard, a Perennialist and member of the Greek Orthodox Church, devotes a long chapter in his last book, Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, to the “Logic of Metaphysics in René Guénon” – although the points he makes are just as applicable to Schuon, as we shall see. Guénon did more than anyone else to reawaken metaphysical perception in our century, Sherrard says. But he made two important assumptions that predisposed him against Christianity and towards Vedanta (and which help to explain his own conversion from Catholicism to Islam). The first of these assumptions was that a strict correlation must be preserved between the metaphysical and the logical order – thus ruling out in advance the more paradoxical Christian relationship between Unity and Trinity in the Godhead. The second assumption was that every “determination” of the Absolute must be some form of limitation, and is therefore incompatible with the divine nature. These two assumptions led Guénon into an apophaticism so radical that he could affirm nothing at all of the Absolute, except by way of negation – including, obviously, a negation of the Christian Trinity.

Before his death, then, Sherrard had come to the conclusion that a Christian thinker who accepts Revelation must start from an entirely different point of view – must begin, in fact, from the knowledge that the supreme Principle is the Trinity, and furthermore that “personality” (indeed, triple Personality) in God is not necessarily a limitation. Without it, in fact, the Absolute has no actual freedom to determine itself or create a world: the freedom of God becomes merely the absence of external constraint. Although Sherrard assumes Schuon’s “transcendental unity” approach throughout his book, this insight calls into question one of Schuon’s core teachings: that a personal (or Tri-Personal) deity derives from an impersonal Godhead and will be “dissolved” in the gnosis which transcends Being. (As Sherrard writes, “This view thus involves a total denial of the ultimate value and reality of the personal. It demands as a condition of metaphysical knowledge a total impersonalism – the annulment and alienation of the person.”)

Sherrard’s insight leaves the other religions intact. It even leaves open the possibility that the perennialists have correctly understood them. But it separates Christianity, and perhaps even raises Christianity above them, in a way that seems to me incompatible (more so than he himself realized) with the theory of “transcendental unity” as stated by Schuon. Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, for one, believes that what Christians have to say is not something less than, say, Vedanta or Sufism, but more. In fact “the Christian is called to be the guardian of metaphysics for our time”. Of one exemplary Christian mystic he writes: “Looking into his own ground, Jan van Ruysbroeck sees beyond it into the eternal I, which for man is both the source of his own I as well as his eternal Thou, and in the final analysis this is because the eternal I is already in itself I and Thou in the unity of the Holy Spirit” [Glory of the Lord, V, p. 70]. The encounter with God in this “ground” is a nuptial encounter, a spiritual marriage. Thus “The pantheistic tat tvam asi, which identifies subject and object in their depths, can be resolved only by virtue of the unity between God and man in the Son, who is both the ars divina mundi and the quintessence of actual creation (see Book III of Nicolas of Cusa’s Doctor Ignorantia), and by virtue of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from this incarnate Son in his unity with the Father” [GL, I, 195].

Please refer to Tomberg's remarks on the "sheep" of the personality & the "Self beyond the Self" in Meditations!

Christianity is called upon to rise to this challenge - to transcend its own doctrines, & thus, to come into its very own.

The Wisdom of God

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Sighs of the Saints, the Cries of the Fay

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I am the twilight – the widow – the unconsoled,
Nobility in whose towers the weeds now bloom;

My only star dead and all the strings sold
From my lute inscribed with the dark sun’s Gloom.

You who consoled me in the graveyard night,
Give me Pausillippo, Italy’s seas,
The flower to be my sad heart’s delight,
And the trellis whose vines the roses seize.

Apollo or Eros? … Arthur or Henry?
Still I blush from the kiss of the queen;
I have dreamt in the grotto where sirens are seen…

And I have crossed Hell twice to victory:
As Orpheus playing, now loud now faint,
The cries of the fairy, the sighs of the saint.

Translated by James Harriman-Smith

The Black Stage of Alchemy:

"After this terrible experience, Dante recovers a little, but realises that he cannot proceed alone: he is prevented from doing so by the three beasts that represent the three poisons of the ego (lust, pride, greed). Only with the help of a Master can he go on, and in fact the meeting with Virgil takes place (when the disciple is ready, the Master arrives). With Virgil’s guidance, Dante enters the Inferno, in other words, he begins his journey to the centre of the Earth, experiencing what the alchemists called VITRIOLVM (visit the inside of the Earth, by rectifying you will find the hidden stone, true medicine) [a Latin acronym – Tr.].This is the hermetic black phase, a dangerous operation whereby the structure of the individual, the personality, must dissolve, the soul-essence must cut loose from the individual body, tied to time and space (the world). In order for this work to succeed, it must be undertaken with a pure heart, with the right intention and accompanied by a guide.In this phase of the work on himself, the searcher must face up to his own shadows, his inner demons, the infernal side of his passions. The historical characters that Dante meets during his descent through the infernal rings symbolically represent these aspects. The damned are completely absorbed in the dimension of their own sin, blocked in that one single sentiment and psychological disposition, in an endless repetition of that same situation."

Saint Alban, protector the Islands of the West, pray for me. May I cross the river of Hell, twice, & with the aid and comfort of the angel.

The Rta, the Logos, the Moira - the Orders of Creation, will triumph over Darkness, within, without. Christ will come again.

All Saints Day in the Cemetery

One night I fled, beyond the dread,
And looked for place to lay my head,
So thought upon the sainted dead,
Yea, how it was if they were gone.
Oh, wished it well, for such a spell,
As would sure the truth to tell,
How when at tripping heart's last knell,
My sun chimed the ice at dawn.
If by hap some ghost was true,
Or Aiken Drum feared hallowed dew,
Nor even if the haunted folk grew few,
This chanting sunrise would last long.
All dead are holy, even they,
Who perished in that loathsome way,
Yet never life could have these fey,
'Lest saint could sing their song.
They rise again, no doubt gone by,
The fated ones with only sighs,
Who perished e'er they ever die,
To rise again in a dun saint's eye,
Who gleams to right a wrong.
Perish then who doubts this rune,
Until your angel finds your tune,
And plucks the strings unslung at doom,
When Good makes one with Strong.

Colors, Metaphysics, Races

Another good post at Unurthed. Using a Greek skyphos (I didn't know what this was, but it needs to have a good mystery novel written about it), excerpts from Benson's Inner Color of Nature are used to explain the four elements in relation to the colors white, yellow, red, and black (which are used much in Greek painting, leading one to reconsider the meanings of icons and their colors). I need hardly point to an obvious fact here : mankind is divided into white, red, yellow, and black races (roughly). Are these arbitrary? According to many, yes. If one believes in the Logos of John (the Christ) then this is nonsense. The various skin colors of man symbolize their inner, spiritual nature. Black is always more solid/physical, white is always the least physical (most subtle), and yellow and red exchange places (depending upon the cycle of the stars). Of course, within the various races there is the fact of various subgroups - for example, the white race has a "black component". Naturally (as well), we could say that all of the races undergo a continual movement or dance between or amongst themselves.

“Having established a structured visual paradigm for the relationship of the four elements among themselves [see previous post], we can now consider the associated colors when the paradigms are repeated to show the effects of the respective dominant process… [As] Empedokles himself envisioned: ‘Those elements and forces are to be understood as equally strong and coeval, yet each of them has a different function, each has its own characteristic and in the rounds of time they take their turn being dominant” (p46).

This is hardly to say (practically) that all races are different species, or that all races are One (this would be to take one of two modern positions). What it tells us is that everything we see means something, even the color of our skin.

Spiritual Fatherhood, Magnetism, the Matrix

Another good post at Unurthed.

The A arrows represent the blind forces of Fate, which drive man in misery from birth to death. If he succeeds in absorbing magnetic impulses (Wordsworth's "vernal wood" impulses?) from the Divine, which flow from Center E, outside or transcendent from profane Life as man begins it, he will develop a small clear center which is magnetized to the Good. This provokes conflict in himself and around him (Jesus' "sword" which divides man from himself and crucifies the "old man"). Man, at this point, must survive, because to lose this center and fight would be to end up worse than before. But now he has help - he will be linked magnetically to stronger men or women with stronger centers, in a chain which leads closer and closer to the Divine. This was the old Catholic ideal of spiritual fatherhood and obedience.

Logos & Alchemy

For modern minds, Logos & Being are not inseparable, but, rather, both optional. The modern mind prefers plastic arbitrariness to order, and Chaos or illusion/appearance. This is hardly surprising, because modern minds (even very Catholic ones) view theological debates such as Arianism as essentially a tempest in a teapot. If Arius was right, and Logos was created, then God could have created the world one way, or another.

Calvinism (and Islam), we will note, essentially think this. In their worldviews, God's will (rather than His nature) is paramount - God decided to create the world according to His choice, or predestination (which is dependent on nothing else, even in God).

On the contrary, the world could have come to be in no other way than it did. God created after His nature, His heart, therefore, Reality is neither optional, nor arbitrary. Just because revolutionaries imagine or wish or deeply pine for things to be one way, and not the way they are, is only slightly less irrelevant than they are.

For instance, at Unurthed, we see that even the Four Elements reflect God. Thus, properly practiced, any metaphysical experience leads to God. Theology and revelation (ideally) make this process much easier and bring clarity and speed and illumination to what is already there. This is consistent (by the way) with the relation of the Old and New Testaments:
"The New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New Revealed".
Not that many Christians have noticed.

When the King Enjoys His Own Again

Posted to Gornahoor

Post Ghaddafi Chaos

American crusade for democracy and love produces huge swath of Islamic sharia chaos, refugees of around 250000, and more "death to Satan" government. But don't worry, I'm sure they thought of this when they instigated the brutal and degrading murder of Momar at the hands of a surly mob of free-wheeling opportunists.

Present Day Amerika

Note who or what is the spiritual authority at any moment, or how it has changed over time. The spiritual authority is whatever cannot be publicly doubted or challenged. This is the legitimate task of a lawful spiritual authority, whose job is to maintain spiritual unity of the whole. However, an illegitimate spiritual authority will be enforcing palpable untruths for the benefit of a subgroup. As Guido de Giorgio pointed out, the true light of God is faceted into a multiplicity through a hierarchy of spiritual beings. Each nation is under the guardianship of certain beings. However, it a state of disorder, an alien spirit may be (mis)guiding a nation. This requires keen discernment. Note that by nation, here, we mean fundamentally a group that is spiritually united before any other considerations, as we have described in the several posts on the Ancient City. These nations can be related vertically in a hierarchal way without destroying their individual characteristics.
from Gornahoor, Cologero

Can you say, the Beast of Ephesus, or the Prince of Persia?

Clearly, America is under the domination of a dark power, as "outcasts" routinely run for and achieve high office. The "unthinkable" is now a reality - America could "go socialist" voluntarily. America was discovered by stone Age Europeans, colonized by Phoenicians and Celts (this is why American Indians on the East Coast are non-Oriental), and later settled by the Northern Europeans. It was founded as an extension of old Europe's principles, but cleaned up and universalized so that the internecine wars between those powers would not be perpetuated. That was its angelic intention. It was a land where everyone who was loyal to this, down to the lowest serf, could unite in a fuller expression of God's universal reign of peace, while remaining loyal to old Europe's best.

Now, however, it is a land where victimhood and self-pity are the moral requirements for being part of the ruling class, where the "world is turned upside down", except in a perverse and dark way. Above all, it is a land where old Europe is not only forgotten, but attacked and hated openly by the new and obscene self-pitiers who hate everything about that world.