Americanism

Farewell, conservatives - you have nothing to conserve; the liberals are already dead, and the progressives are doomed. Only the heroes can awaken:

The distinctive character of Americanism is that the attack against quality and personality is not put into effect by the brute force of a Marxist dictator and the mind of the State, but it happens almost spontaneously, by the ways of a civilization ignorant of ideals higher than wealth, consumption, productivity, production without brakes. Therefore, through a worsening and a reduction to the absurd of what Europe herself chose, the same patterns have taken, or are taking, form there. But primitivism, mechanism, and brutality remain so much more on one side than the other. In a certain sense, Americanism is more dangerous for us than communism, because it is a type of Trojan horse. When the attack against the residual values of European tradition is effectuated in the direct and naked forms characteristic of Bolshevik ideology or Stalinism, some reactions still reawaken, certain lines of resistance, even if ephemeral, can be maintained. Things are different when the same evil acts in a more subtle way and the transformations take place on the plane of the general customs and visions of life, as is the case for Americanism. Enduring this influence with a light heart in the name of democracy, Europe is already predisposed for the final abdication, so that it could even happen without even the need for a military disaster, but it will arrive, through “progressive” path, after a final social crisis, at more or less at the same point. Again, it doesn’t stop here halfway. Americanism, willing it or not, works for its apparent enemy, for collectivism.

Source

Usury Condemned in Poetry

They had the coins before the council.
Kay, the king's steward, wise in economies, said:
"Good; these cover the years and the miles
and talk one style's dialects to London and Omsk.
Traffic can hold now and treasure be held,
streams are bridged and mountains of ridged space
tunnelled; gold dances deftly across frontiers.
The poor have choice of purchase, the rich of rents,
and events move now in a smoother control
than the swords of lords or the orisons of nuns.
Money is the medium of exchange."

Charles Williams

Belloc would be proud

Source

I am currently reading David Brown’s Palmerston; A Biography.

In 1846 Palmerston had threatened the government of Spain with military intervention if it defaulted on its bond interest payments. Palmerston faced a Chartist candidate, George Harney, at the general election in his Tiverton constituency. At the hustings debate, Harney said Palmerston’s threat to Spain was unjustifiable:

“These Spanish bondholders are English capitalists, who lent some millions of money to the government of Spain, not, as has been represented, because they were anxious to help the people of that country to obtain “Liberal institutions”, but because they were promised a higher rate of interest than they could get at home. That money had been derived from the labour of the English people.”

Harney argued that Palmerston’s foreign policy was simply to deploy the resources of the state to defend the interests of the rich.

The Tiverton crowd greeted this assertion with “immense cheering” and Harney had a clear majority at the show of hands at the hustings, which was attended by most of the adult population of Tiverton. He withdrew from the actual ballot, however, in protest at the extremely limited franchise – only about 600 people in the constituency had the vote.

George Harney, forgotten hero. We could do with him today.

Barren Fig Tree

Interesting folklore.

If Jesus was really God, wouldn't He know how to talk to trees, as well as to people (from the greater, to the lesser)?

Mystery of Death

Very good thoughts.
Two very good points:
1. Those who "see God" in this life do not have to wait for a Last Judgement. So there is some huge reward for being saintly or mystical or magical enough in this life to behold the Creator.
2. Heavenly life is just a continuation of this one. This is not purely Orthodox dogma - Bo Yin Ra teaches this as well :

Overall, we must experience daily, as St. John Chrysostom says, that the present life is an “inn”. We entered this inn, we live, but we must take care to depart in good hope, without leaving anything here in order not to lose what is there. Furthermore, all of us Christians should realize that death has been defeated by the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ, that communion with Christ is a continuous transcendence of death and of the fear of death, that the exit of the soul from the body is a course towards the heavenly Church and the encounter with Christ, the Panagia and the saints, that the soul will return to the body, and the body will be resurrected and live eternally, according to the way it lived on this earth.

3. Saints do not "sleep" but are actively praying for earth in the Divine Liturgy, until they reunite with the body. There are (therefore) two kinds of saints - those who are already "judged" and see God and are in their new bodies, and those who await the Last Judgement but are "saved".


Live the way you want to, in the next life, now.

Who Looks Out With My Eyes?

"We have all heard this music in Paradise. Although the water and clay of our bodies have cast doubt over us, something of this music drifts back into our memory." Rumi.
Source

Cute Nihilists

Now the nihilists are just getting cute - this one committed suicide and left his thesis on the web as a note. But don't laugh - this is what Harvard is up to - the guy looks like James Franco, superstar. Is this what being a real WASP means?

"The modern notion of egalitarian progress preceded Darwin, and the full implications of this progress looked quite different after Darwin. Just as some whites once considered blacks so racially distinct that sexual intercourse was considered bestiality, progress would now demand that
this stigmatization of bestiality be deemed uncivilized altogether. Bestiality emerges as the cutting edge of civilization. Discrimination against bestiality is thus barbarism. Marriage between human animals and nonhuman animals should be legalized and normalized. Despised animals of all species should emerge from their hiding corners. Ugly creatures of all species unite! At some point, the collective accumulation of rights would seem to snowball into a gargantuan interspecies orgy.
Heterosexual bestiality between humans and other animals
would be followed by the acceptance of homosexual
bestiality. The nascent gay, lesbian, transgender chimpanzee
rights movement would be followed by the liberation of
queer koalas and bestial butterflies."

Source

Sad waste of intellect - obviously "smarts" doesn't correlate to much, if it comes to this. I have more faith in the Chevalier de Sangrael. But don't laugh, these are our "elites" of America - perhaps the Slavic world can raise the banner of the suffering Christ Victor against it?

Crucem Sanctem Subiit

CRUCEM sanctam subiit,

qui infernum confregit,

accinctus est potentia,

surrexit die tertia. Alleluia.

Don Colacho

The Gospels and the Communist Manifesto are on the wane; the world’s future lies in the power of Coca-Cola and pornography."

Source

The Parties are Over

Even the conservatives are waking up to what has happened (when liberals "wake up", they either convert to traditional men, or else go into a deeper dream state worse than the first, so I hold no hope of their "grouping", but this is a promising trend, because conservatives still have some good instincts).

As I explained to my boss recently, I disagree vehemently with either liberals or conservatives - but here is a difference. If the Left lived up to its own standards, I would still be obligated to oppose them, come what may (and I'll note here that I might even include the "classical liberal" of old times in this boat of the Left, as much as I love Lord Acton). However, if the conservative party lived up to its own standards, I would be proud to denote myself a factional party man. Except of course, they can't, because factions and parties are doomed by their false foundation, which is collective, rather than built upon individual enlightenment.

In this vein of thought, I think a reworking of classical liberalism is in order - there is much to be harvested out and explained and kept, but the fundamental idea that "man is born free" is totally skewed. In fact, it is a relatively new propaganda item to even claim that this is what "classical liberals" (even men like John Adams) ever taught to begin with. Jefferson and Paine, maybe & yes, but even the Founding Father revolutionaries knew a mob-man when they saw one, or a vulgar couchpotarian.

Classical liberals were generally men of aristocratic leaning (or else they openly sided with revolutionaries like Garibaldi), who believed in the maximum amount of freedom that was possible, feasible, desirable, and useful (in Baron Ledhin's description). In an expanding world of European chivalry with industrial benefits and centuries of Christian education behind it, this may have had a rather artificially large scope. Unless we are willing to go back to the medieval village, our Empire will have to be governed by mandarins. The question is, will we qualify them by forcing them to master virtue and "useless knowledge" (read, metaphysics and a capacity for noetic appreciation of supersensible truths), or will we allow them to be the "bright and shiny calculators and self-made opportunists" which they have evolved of late?

It's quite true to say today that Democracy has become Kakistocracy (as it had to, were we to read the Greeks and Romans). There is no such thing as Large Scale Direct Democracy, except in Hell. Hell is the perfect democracy.

The entire Western process has degraded the spiritual castes (estates or levels of being) and its order into mush, all in the guise of Sweetness and Light. There will be no answer, until the virtuous defeat evil by converting it to good. Then we will have rule by those who are annointed, rather than self-annointed.

Do you want to be ruled by bankers and career opportunists, or a wise man who reluctantly rules "in the path of heaven"?

Supernaturally Natural - the Pneumatic

"{…in the language of gnosis he was what is called a “pneumatic”, namely a being who is attracted by Heaven in a “supernaturally natural” manner…The “pneumatic” lives on the memory of a lost paradise: he seeks only one thing, a return to his origin, and having himself a quasi-angelic nature, he is to a large extent unaware of the average nature of men. Incapable of knowing in advance that the general run of men are wild beasts, Celestine V, with a holy naivety, believed them to be similar to - or even better than - himself……the imprescriptible vocation of the contemplative - of the “pneumatic” whose spiritual ascent results from his very substance and not from a choice or conversion as in the case of the “psychic” - may possibly be reconcilable with activity in the world, but there are cases - and this is more probable - where it is not so.}"
— Frithjof Schuon, "Esoterism as Principle and as Way"

General Law

Post at Gornahoor. Please note that General Law properly understood (as both Hammer and Doorway) will provide the rationally minded individual with a lifetime of wisdom as they navigate a dangerous Life. In fact, Life will no longer be so dangerous.

Russia and the Coming Dawn of the New Era

Since I notice I have a lot of readers in Russia, I thought I would post something of an encouragement for them, as I doubt anyone reading this would not be interested. It's from Max Heindel's Rosicrucian Cosmoconception. According to Heindel, the last stage of the current wave of human civilization will awaken in the Slavic homelands, which have been given a large share of suffering, and which will correspondingly (by the laws of Karma) reap a large reward in the future. The epoch will be brief, because it will be followed by a cosmic cycle in which the new man will awaken in America, but the epoch will be marked (several hundred years from now) by huge spiritual gains for all of mankind, and will be associated with music. Any Russians or Slavs who are reading this are welcome to comment, and if they do, I will post more information as I am able to condense it and make it useful.

Napoleon & Christ

‘Well, then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I myself have founded great empires; but on what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him.

‘. . .I think I understand something of human nature, and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man; none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would die for me . . . but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, of my words, of my voice.

‘When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts . . . Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man towards the Unseen that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space.

‘Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy. He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother.

‘He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself; He demands it unconditionally ; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the Empire of Christ.

“All who sincerely believe in Him experience that remarkable supernatural love towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers.

‘Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This it is which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the divinity of Jesus Christ.’”
Source
Thanks to my sister, for source

Advice for Spiritual Combat

"When, therefore, you find yourself Oppressed with Dryness and Distaste for spiritual things, ascertain whether or not it is to be attributed to any Fault of your own, and if so, Amend it Instantly, not so much with a view to regaining that Sensible, but in order to banish everything that is the least Displeasing to God. If, however, after Careful Scrutiny, you can discover no such Fault, be not concerned about recovering your Sensible; rather exert yourself in the Acquisition of that Perfect Devotion which consists in Perfect Conformity to the Will of God. However Barren and Insipid your usual Exercises may seem, be Resolute and Persevering in your execution of them, drinking Cheerfully the Bitter Cup the Heavenly Father has presented to you"
Lorenzo de Scopoli