tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34099904225587683122024-03-05T05:53:48.178-08:00ARGUS & PHOENIXDedicated to the red and the white rose, to the eyes and the flame, to a more perfect unity...
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cathasach71854@gmail.comMatthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.comBlogger535125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-92218423337270001702018-10-24T19:27:00.003-07:002018-10-24T19:29:11.623-07:00Ars Poetica as Ars Rhetorica: The Third Sacred Art, in War Poetry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQdqLUJIixr7ztcOWifd2s0GJisQKQ9A5x5s3YK8qMhBNxWyhWylndStvA3Ve36baaoOzN8-vxqbwxw6tGmAxpvGrULek8sS8VxOoS9HI9BA422B2f7Rw_M5fiEExUeOfKPsj1xwYPcaQ/s1600/Scotland_Forever%2521.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="811" data-original-width="1600" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQdqLUJIixr7ztcOWifd2s0GJisQKQ9A5x5s3YK8qMhBNxWyhWylndStvA3Ve36baaoOzN8-vxqbwxw6tGmAxpvGrULek8sS8VxOoS9HI9BA422B2f7Rw_M5fiEExUeOfKPsj1xwYPcaQ/s640/Scotland_Forever%2521.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a class="leftAlignedImage" href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1606.John_Ruskin"> </a>
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<div class="quoteText">
<h1 class="quoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is
to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can
talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see
clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.” - John Ruskin</span></span></h1>
<div class="quoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As civilization collapses, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WG0CBGWhSc">the Long Descent</a> get under way, the Liberal Arts will need to be preserved within a new form: the old forms will disintegrate like worn out clothes along with the civilization and culture which re-embodied them from the Greco-Roman era; people will be too busy surviving to be bothered as a group by paying homage to things directly associated with the current unfolding debacle. Since Poetry is the preeminent art of the common man, we will embody the third sacred discipline in an ark of poetry. Actually, it is already present there, embedded in the form - we only need to uncover and discover it. There are other options, but this one is calculated to survive the very worst: even the Dark Ages honored and revered their bards and poets and <i>vates</i>. </span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rhetoric, even poetic rhetoric, has lately<b> already come in for a very bad name and reputation</b>. "Rhetoric" is a dirty word on most lips. <i>Yet strangely enough (for all that), propaganda, memes, and group-think are more powerful than ever</i>. The old progressive saying:<i> <b>I am principled, you are stubborn, he is bull headed</b></i>, applies nowhere more powerfully than in rhetoric: it's all right when we do it, and we don't see our own self manipulation like we see it in others. So the word Rhetoric is quite tainted. And yet...it is still avidly practiced. For humans cannot do entirely without the (seven) elements of style:<i> clarity, grandeur, beauty, rapidity, character, sincerity and force</i> (see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermogenes_of_Tarsus">Hermogenes</a>). This is all the more true, as the darkness deepens, and the hypocrisy thickens. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://vajrin.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/for-the-ashes-of-their-fathers-and-the-temples-of-their-gods-the-hindus-of-armenia/"><i>Then out spoke brave Horatius</i></a><i>, the Captain of the Gate:</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>“To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late;<br /> And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,<br /> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHKtN9jPK1w">For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods</a>?"</i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In order to even better study the rhetoric of poetry, we have selected the genre of "war poetry". The stark contrast it will provide between images of life and death, and also in the positive or negative ways it handles the realities of war, should allow us to test the inherent fluidity, ambiguity, and mercenary nature of our elusive prey: true Rhetoric. Is there any such thing? We will endeavor to put it to an utmost test, and see. And if there is, can it be shown to participate in what is sacred? And how? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We begin our journey through the huge "Zodiac" of war poetry. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here is a prophecy from GK Chesterton, phrased in simple, homely, Anglo-Saxon "rhetoric", from the end of <i>The Ballad of the White Horse</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/theballadofthewh01719gut/botwh10.txt">In some far century, sad and slow,</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I have a vision, and I know</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The heathen shall return.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "They shall not come with warships,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> They shall not waste with brands,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> But books be all their eating,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And ink be on their hands.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "Not with the humour of hunters</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Or savage skill in war,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> But ordering all things with dead words,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Strings shall they make of beasts and birds,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And wheels of wind and star.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "They shall come mild as monkish clerks,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> With many a scroll and pen;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And backward shall ye turn and gaze,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Desiring one of Alfred's days,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> When pagans still were men.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Like fiercer flowers on stalk,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Earth lost and little like a pea</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> In high heaven's towering forestry,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> --These be the small weeds ye shall see</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Crawl, covering the chalk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "But though they bridge St. Mary's sea,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Or steal St. Michael's wing--</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Though they rear marvels over us,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Greater than great Vergilius</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Wrought for the Roman king;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "By this sign you shall know them,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The breaking of the sword,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And man no more a free knight,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> That loves or hates his lord.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "Yea, this shall be the sign of them,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The sign of the dying fire;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And Man made like a half-wit,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> That knows not of his sire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "What though they come with scroll and pen,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And grave as a shaven clerk,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By this sign you shall know them,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> That they ruin and make dark;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "By all men bond to Nothing,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Being slaves without a lord,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By one blind idiot world obeyed,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Too blind to be abhorred;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "By terror and the cruel tales</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Of curse in bone and kin,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By weird and weakness winning,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Accursed from the beginning,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By detail of the sinning,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And denial of the sin;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "By thought a crawling ruin,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By life a leaping mire,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By a broken heart in the breast of the world,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And the end of the world's desire;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> "By God and man dishonoured,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> By death and life made vain,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Know ye the old barbarian,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The barbarian come again--</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Almost everyone loves <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, but few would mine it for "prophecy" or "transcendental insight". But can it be done? Better, could we do it with the material from our own history, rather than a sub-creation? Can we take the epic and the tragic and the dramatic within fantastical war poetry (for war truly is "fantastic" and disorienting, the source of annihilation and regeneration), and derive something that leads towards <i>Gnosis</i>? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have found an argument for this, and well made - when the poet is farthest from mystic knowledge, his product in poetry is most capable of drawing us precisely to that mystical knowledge, denied to the poet. Conversely, the more mystical he is, the less capable his poetry is of inspiring us to higher knowledge. St John of the Cross is not remembered for his poetry. The poet sacrifices his own experience, and embeds it within his craft. This is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Br%C3%A9mond">Abbe Bremond</a>'s argument concerning mysticism and poetry, cited in Brockington's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism-poetry-experience-Alfred-Brockington/dp/B00086A9C0"><i>Mysticism and Poetry</i></a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism-poetry-experience-Alfred-Brockington/dp/B00086A9C0"><i> on the Basis of Experience</i></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Il y a une autre pensee que la pansee abstraite et discursive; une autre connaissance que la connaissance conceptuelle et rationelle; ni la connaissance reelle, ni la rationelle, lesquelles, d'ailleurs, ne se developpent pas l'une sans l'autre, n s'achevent sans impliquer l'exercise des facultes que met divinement en oeuvre la vie mystique. D'ou l'excellence, et tout ensemble l'imperfection essentialle de l'experience poetique: pierre d'attente d'une experience plus haute, qu'elle appelle, en quelque sorte, mais ou d'elle-meme elle ne saurait conduire, qu'elle empecherait plutot. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Poetry calls out for mysticism, but is a rock, which cannot summon it, except second hand, by pointing us towards mysticism, while blocking the path of the poet. As a working amateur poet, I will second this thesis - my poetry was a "residue" which I produced of a missing or missed experience, which comforted me in the absence of mystic achievement, and turned me aside from finding such.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We can define poetry as rhetoric par excellence, even more than grammar or logic par excellence - rhetoric is the peak of poetry, vivid grammar and mature logic, raised to a height or pitch of intensity. At this height or peak, it cannot reach true <i>Gnosis</i>, but rather substitutes for it, crystallizing the failure as a symbol or relic of what might be possible. Poetry is a record of both the fall and the ongoing (but not completed) redemption of man. What else is the apotheosis of war, but a recognition that man lacks neither the will, nor the desire, but rather <i>a certain level of being</i>? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, ideally (and in an older time), even this poetic impasse was resolved by the reconciliation of mysticism with verse. See <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820303674/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0">Harold Weatherby</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Poets-Used-Know-Mythopoesis/dp/1597311715/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1540423395&sr=1-1&keywords=what+poets+used+to+know">Charles Upton</a> on this subject. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This stark contrast between Life and Death, and between Heroism and Failure, and Mortality and Aspiration, is immediately apparent when one approaches the passions and realities of war. Here, more than anywhere, we can see "the quick and the dead". The greatest of all mystical war poems (of course) is to be found in the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Text-Translation-Commentary/dp/8186510044"><i>Bhagavad-Gita</i></a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One might be tempted to believe that all war poetry is actually anti-war poetry; but such is not the case. In fact, <a href="https://interestingliterature.com/2016/02/22/a-short-analysis-of-john-mccraes-in-flanders-fields/">one of the most famous of all war poems</a>, is both patriotic and could be construed as "pro-War". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> In Flanders fields the poppies blow</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Between the crosses, row on row,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> That mark our place; and in the sky</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The larks, still bravely singing, fly</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Scarce heard amid the guns below.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> We are the Dead. Short days ago</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Loved and were loved, and now we lie</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> In Flanders fields.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Take up our quarrel with the foe:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> To you from failing hands we throw</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The torch; be yours to hold it high.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> If ye break faith with us who die</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> We shall not sleep, though poppies grow</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> In Flanders fields.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The desire for resolution or "closure" is so powerful with humans, that we short circuit the genuine article, <a href="https://mcduffee.wordpress.com/2012/08/">before its time</a>. We want to be either Pro _________ or Anti _________ (fill in the blank). Poetry offers closure, but not of a kind that short circuits the knowing process - that sacrifice has often already been made by the poet. Rather, we are drawn deeper into the tension through the manner in which he or she handles the language, the subject matter, the background experience of the poem. When it is done close to right, an effect or impulse is transmitted to the sympathetic reader, like an electric current, which makes possible a "touching" of Transcendence. In this realm, it is simply not enough to be Pro or Anti, to engage in the <a href="http://jkalb.freeshell.org/more/absolute.html">Demon of Dialectics</a>. For every evocative "pro-war" poem, there are many which are "anti-war": the counter argument can always be powerfully evoked. We keep the tension of one poem when we read another, heightening and extending the effect even further - this creates a Zodiac circle of poetry, whose rotation can show us what must be true about human nature.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"<span style="font-size: small;">Take the belief in immortality, which, according to some men, is a matter of mild indifference. It is really a belief which affects our whole conception of the human race. Consider the carnage of war, with its pile of unnumbered corpses. It must mae some matter to us whether, according to our serious belief, each man has died like a dog, and left nothing in the way of a personal existence behind him, or whether out of every Christian-named portion of that ruinous heap there has gone forth into the air and the dead fallen smoke of battle some astonished condition of soul unwillingly released." John Ruskin</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">To tighten the tension, we take for example, <a href="https://allpoetry.com/Ultima-Ratio-Regum">Stephen Spender,</a> who shows us the winds from another quarter:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="poem_body">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Ultima Ratio Regum</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The guns spell money's ultimate reason</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In letters of lead on the spring hillside.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the boy lying dead under the olive trees</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Was too young and too silly</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">To have been notable to their important eye.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">He was a better target for a kiss.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When he lived, tall factory hooters never summoned him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nor did restaurant plate-glass doors revolve to wave him in.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His name never appeared in the papers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The world maintained its traditional wall</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour, drifted outside.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">O too lightly he threw down his cap</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One day when the breeze threw petals from the trees.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The unflowering wall sprouted with guns,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Machine-gun anger quickly scythed the grasses;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flags and leaves fell from hands and branches;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The tweed cap rotted in the nettles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider his life which was valueless</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ask. Was so much expenditure justified</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the death of one so young and so silly</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And if this is not evocative enough, I give you Wilfred Owen: </span></div>
<h2 class="subtitle">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"<a href="https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Dulce-et-Decorum-Est-by-Wilfred-Owen">Dulce et Decorum Est</a>" </span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, </i></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, </i></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>And towards our distant rest began to trudge. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots </i></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. </i></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>But someone still was yelling out and stumbling </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>In all my dreams before my helpless sight, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. </i></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Behind the wagon that we flung him in, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>My friend, you would not tell with such high zest </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>To children ardent for some desperate glory, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The old Lie: </i>Dulce et decorum est </span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pro patria mori.</span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is truth in this - ancestors, land, gods, even God...can become an idol. </span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If Grammar is only the beginning of Wisdom, if Logic lacks placement emotionally, and Rhetoric lacks logical resolution, then what is the point of studying these arts? What do they positively contribute to the devout and serious aspirant of royal Wisdom? Are we merely perfecting certain art forms? Or just articulating them, often beyond the regenerative power of their inherent DNA? This is certainly the conclusion the modern Academy has come to - the "liberal arts" are just artistic ways of "being human"...whatever that means...to you...today...tomorrow will come and it will mean something totally different. No wonder serious students shy away from the Trivium and the Quadrivium - at best, archaic niceties of a simpler, more homely, less knowledgeable era - useful for trivia games and party tricks. </span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The inducement of enough tension within these art forms, through their consistent and careful exploration, and their integration or reading with the background of Traditional studies, recapitulates the spiritual history of mankind, driving man into a kind of elevated frenzy; it awakens a thirst for what is real, true, beautiful, and good, by refusing to allow the human spirit to rest, either in the fragmentariness of Grammar, the easiness of any kind of Logic, or the passion of a particular Rhetoric. By contradicting itself in the "<a href="https://www.litkicks.com/Blake">madness</a> <a href="https://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/platos-phaedrus-four-types-of-divine-madness/">of the poets</a>", Poetry (at its most constrictive) becomes a permanent "stone" which is a stumbling block to any cheap and easy answers, pointing upwards towards a vertical descent, lifting upwards for an ascent, of something that is beyond itself. </span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="txtd">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When we read Rupert Brooke, we are "almost convinced" to be a patriot: </span></div>
<h1 class="page__title title" id="page-title">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/soldier">The Soldier</a></span></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="field-content"> </span></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="field-content">
</span></span> </div>
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<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.</span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">
And then we are confronted by Randall Jarrell: </span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner</i>
<a href="https://www.poets.org/node/44373">Randall Jarrell</a>, 1914 - 1965
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.</span>
</pre>
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<div class="page__title title" id="page-title">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or I give you Thomas Hardy, in between, who eschews a "position" at all:</span></span> </div>
<h1 class="page__title title">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Drummer Hodge</span></span> </h1>
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<div class="field-item even">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Uncoffined—just as found:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His landmark is a kopje-crest</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> That breaks the veldt around;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And foreign constellations west</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Each night above his mound.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">II</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Young Hodge the Drummer never knew—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Fresh from his Wessex home—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The meaning of the broad Karoo,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The Bush, the dusty loam,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And why uprose to nightly view</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Strange stars amid the gloam.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">III</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet portion of that unknown plain</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Will Hodge for ever be;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His homely Northern breast and brain</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Grow up a Southern tree,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And strange-eyed constellations reign</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> His stars eternally</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or just as poignantly, if somewhat homely, Yeats: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bigreaders/roman-wall-blues-by-w-h-auden-t1345.html">ROMAN WALL BLUES</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Over the heather the wet wind blows,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've lice in my tunic, a cold in my nose.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The rain comes pattering out of the sky,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The mist creeeps over the hard grey stone,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aulus goes hanging around her place,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There'd be be no kissing if he had his wish. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">She gave me a ring but I diced it away;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I want my girl and I want my pay. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I'm a veteran with only one eye</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I shall do nothing but look at the sky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> W.H. Auden</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="poem">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Back again, to the inherent nobility of the soldier, particularly of a certain type: </span><br />
<h1 class="title vcard item">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a class="nocolor fn" href="https://allpoetry.com/Aristocrats:--I-Think-I-Am-Becoming-A-God-">Aristocrats:<wbr></wbr> "I Think I Am Becoming A God"</a></span></span></h1>
<div class="poem_body">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The noble horse with courage in his eye, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">away fly the images of the shires </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">but he puts the pipe back in his mouth. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I saw him crawling on the sand, he said </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's most unfair, they've shot my foot off. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">How can I live among this gentle </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unicorns, almost, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">for they are fading into two legends </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">in which their stupidity and chivalry </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">are celebrated. Each, fool and hero, will be an immortal. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">These plains were their cricket pitch </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">and in the mountains the tremendous drop fences </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">brought down some of the runners. Here then </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">under the stones and earth they dispose themselves, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think with their famous unconcern. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is not gunfire I hear, but a hunting horn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The potential lordliness of the soldier makes it impossible to be "Anti-War". Or at least, "anti-soldier". The soldier is the man, above all, of duty. And duty is transcendent. He can wear this as a helmet and a crown. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><i><a href="http://notyourmamasbookshelf2.blogspot.com/2010/05/poem-of-week-mcmxiv-by-philip-larkin.html">MCMXIV</a></i>, by Philip Larkin</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Those
long uneven lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standing as patiently</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As if they were stretched
outside</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Oval or Villa Park,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The crowns of hats, the sun</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On
moustached archaic faces</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Grinning as if it were all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">An August Bank Holiday
lark;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the shut shops, the bleached</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Established names on the
sunblinds,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The farthings and sovereigns,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And dark-clothed children at
play</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Called after kings and queens,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The tin advertisements</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For cocoa
and twist, and the pubs</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wide open all day;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the countryside not
caring:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The place-names all hazed over</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">With flowering grasses, and
fields</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Shadowing Domesday lines</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Under wheat's restless silence;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
differently-dressed servants</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">With tiny rooms in huge houses,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The dust
behind limousines;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Never such innocence,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Never before or since,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As
changed itself to past</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Without a word - the men</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Leaving the gardens
tidy,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The thousands of marriages</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lasting a little while longer:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Never
such innocence again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ted Hughes gives us the spectacle of a soldier who can still lose himself, dressed in full gear, in reading a book:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><a href="https://tmargett.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/platform-one-ted-hughes/">Platform One</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Holiday squeals, as if all were scrambling for their lives,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Panting aboard the “Cornish Riviera”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then overflow of relief and luggage and children,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then duckling to smile out as the station moves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Out there on the platform, under the rain,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Under his rain-cape, helmet and full pack,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Somebody, head bowed reading something,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Doesn’t know he’s missing his train.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">He’s completely buried in that book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">He’s forgotten utterly where he is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">He’s forgotten Paddington, forgotten</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Timetables, forgotten the long, rocking</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cradle of a journey into the golden West,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The coach’s soft wingbeat – as light</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And straight as a dove’s flight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like a graveyard statue sentry cast</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In blackened bronze. Is he reading poems?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A letter? The burial service? The raindrops</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Beaded along his helmet rim are bronze.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The words on his page are bronze. Their meanings bronze.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sunk in his bronze world he stands, enchanted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">His bronze mind is deep among the dead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sunk so deep among the dead that, much</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As he would like to remember us all, he cannot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or, more tragically, by Seamus Heaney:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">“<a href="https://pulpteacher.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/a-quick-reading-of-seamus-heaneys-requiem-for-the-croppies/">Requiem for the Croppies</a>”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We moved quick and sudden in our own country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A people hardly marching… on the hike…</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We found new tactics happening each day:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And stampede cattle into infantry,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They buried us without shroud or coffin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of the above is true, although it is also true enough that people will forget everything that was done: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The Battle of Blenheim</b><a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/warpoetry/1800/1800_1.html">[1]</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Robert Southey</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Annual Anthology</i>, II (1800), 34-37</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> XI.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And every body praised the Duke</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Who such a fight did win.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But what good came of it at last?—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Quoth little Peterkin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Why that I cannot tell, said he,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But 'twas a famous victory. <a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/warpoetry/1800/1800_1.html#2">[2]</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which is why the warrior will always assume the poise and the pose of Arjuna from the <i>Bhagavad-Gita</i>, with which we began this story: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://resanskrit.com/right-mindset-war-bhagavad-gita-quote/">Source</a>:</span> Bhagavad Gita Quote 2.38<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br />Sanskrit transcript:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>सुखदुःखे समे कृत्वा लाभालाभौ जयाजयौ।</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि॥</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Transliteration:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">sukhaduḥkhe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau।</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivaṃ pāpamavāpsyasi॥</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">English translation:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fight for the sake of duty, treating alike happiness and distress, loss and gain, victory and defeat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fulfilling your responsibility in this way, you will never incur sin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Hindi translation:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">जयपराजय लाभहानि और सुखदुःखको समान करके फिर युद्धमें लग जा।</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">इस प्रकार युद्ध करनेसे तू पापको प्राप्त नहीं होगा।</span><br />
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Finally, we give the requiem for the dead, who are not dead, and ever live - their memory melds into the eternal one of the human race: </span><br />
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<h1 align="left">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "times"; font-size: small;"><b>Merlin's Time</b></span></span></h1>
<h3 align="left">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">Al Stewart </span></span></h3>
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</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">And I think of you now<br /> As a dream that I had long ago<br /> In a kingdom lost to time<br /> In the forest of evening<br /> The archer is bending a bow<br /> And I see you bring him bread and wine</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">Down the legions of years<br /> The invaders have taken this land<br /> And bent you to their will<br /> And the memories fade of the ancients<br /> And all that they had<br /> Though the magic lingers round you still</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , serif;">Oh who would walk the stoney roads<br /> Of Merlin's time<br /> And keep the watch along the borderline<br /> And who would hear the legends passed<br /> In song and rhyme<br /> Upon the shepherd pipes of Merlin's time</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is always Merlin's time, if we only have the eyes to see. Always a border to defend, always a people to save, always a memory to keep alive. He who accepts that call, he it is that will be called a confederate of Merlin, a friend and a brother. This struggle is always real, always seemingly hopeless, always blessed. One of the world's greatest films, not just war films, is about precisely this: <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai">The Seven Samurai</a></i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It may be that the gulfs will wash them down, those who stand up for the path - certainly those gray ghosts who served in the Confederate armies went down in ignominy, shame, and total defeat: at least that is how the history stands now. We do not know what the true history written in the Akashic records says concerning "lost causes" or misunderstood ones, but we can pick up hints of what it may scribe in Allen Tate's elegy to those dead: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span class="date-display-single"><a href="https://owlcation.com/humanities/Allen-Tates-Ode-on-the-Confederate-Dead">Ode to the Confederate Dead</a></span></span><br />
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<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.
Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!--
Ambitious November with the humors of the year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel’s stare
Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.
Dazed by the wind, only the wind
The leaves flying, plunge
You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know--the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision--
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.
Seeing, seeing only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire
Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick and fast
You will curse the setting sun.
Cursing only the leaves crying
Like an old man in a storm
You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.
The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.
Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,
What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl’s tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.
We shall say only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire
We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing:
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.
What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?
Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush--
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!</span></pre>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This knowledge "carried to the heart" is something different than the attention to the mechanical side of war, which is juxtaposed below by Henry Reed with the poignant and natural aspect of the soldier underneath the uniform. </span><br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Naming of Parts (1942)</span></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Vixi duellis nuper idoneus<br />Et militavi non sine gloria</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Links <span class="state-text">On</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today we have naming of parts. <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/100787#eid40586651" target="_blank">Japonica</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Glistens like <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/41365#eid8359915" target="_blank">coral</a> in all of the neighbouring gardens,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And today we have naming of parts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the lower sling swivel. And this</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When you are given your slings. And this is the <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/143885#eid30179239" target="_blank">piling</a> swivel,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which in your case you have not got. The branches</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which in our case we have not got.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the safety-catch, which is always released</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Any of them using their finger.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And this you can see is the <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/21142#eid16863850" target="_blank">bolt</a>. The purpose of this</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Is to open the <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/23009#eid14292248" target="_blank">breech</a>, as you see. We can slide it</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They call it easing the Spring.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For today we have naming of parts.</span></div>
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<h4 class="notesWorks">
</h4>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We can close with two very, very different "anti-war" poems, neither of which, strictly speaking, is necessarily against war, but against self-deception and hypocrisy, and unnecessary war ("an unjust peace is better than a just war" - Russian proverb). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/shield-achilles">The Shield of Achilles</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="field-content"><span class="node-title"><a href="https://www.poets.org/node/45593" target="_top"><span itemprop="name">W. H. Auden</span></a></span>, <span class="date-display-single">1907</span> - <span class="date-display-single">1973</span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="field-content">
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<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.</span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or the Anglo Saxon equivalent: </span></pre>
<pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="color: #3c605b; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_betjeman/poems/788">In Westminster Abbey</a> <span style="color: black;">by John Betjeman</span></span></span></pre>
</pre>
<div style="font-size: 13px; padding-left: 14px; padding-top: 20px;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let me take this other glove off </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the vox humana swells, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the beauteous fields of Eden </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bask beneath the Abbey bells. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here, where England's statesmen lie,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Listen to a lady's cry. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Spare their women for Thy Sake, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And if that is not too easy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We will pardon Thy Mistake. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Don't let anyone bomb me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Keep our Empire undismembered </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Guide our Forces by Thy Hand, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gallant blacks from far Jamaica, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Honduras and Togoland; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Protect them Lord in all their fights,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> And, even more, protect the whites. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Think of what our Nation stands for, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Books from Boots' and country lanes, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Free speech, free passes, class distinction,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Democracy and proper drains. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lord, put beneath Thy special care </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Although dear Lord I am a sinner, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have done no major crime; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I'll come to Evening Service </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whensoever I have the time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, Lord, reserve for me a crown, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And do not let my shares go down. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I will labour for Thy Kingdom, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Help our lads to win the war, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Send white feathers to the cowards </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Join the Women's Army Corps, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then wash the steps around Thy Throne </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the Eternal Safety Zone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I feel a little better, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What a treat to hear Thy Word, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Where the bones of leading statesmen </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Have so often been interr'd. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because I have a luncheon date.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We
have traveled through a literal zodiac, around the great circle and
back again, to bear the horn of plenty to the sons of men. In each of
their hues, colors, perspective, and message, these poems vary, like
each constellation in the sky. Together, they tell a story, with
peculiar brightness, as each poem is powerful in its own right. Each one
grasps something of what is true about the nature of war and the nature
of man. But what boots this tour de force? Is it not one huge, self-canceling Circle? Haven't we just
gone around the mundane block? Have you felt their circling power,
deeply and intensely, and in the depths of your being? For "God is a
circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere" -
Allan of Lille</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Far
more than either with grammar in its elemental sparkling embers, or
logic with its cunning grasp of the signatures that run through
Creation, in rhetoric multiform man speaks out, circumnavigating in
his spirit, moving through the dangers and high beauty of the Cosmos. In
Grammar he learned to "name the parts". With Logic he grasps what came
before and anticipates what might come after. But in Rhetoric, the "Man"
speaks out full and bold. It is only in simultaneously holding this
zodiac of tensed, poised Truth (each part as a whole, but yet a part to
go with a part) that an edifice is built for the final step, an altar
for the fire from heaven. In completing the Trivium, Man declares his
willingness to lay hold upon Reality, to not accept a final or partial
substitute, or at the least, be lay held upon by something that is Infinite, and which compels him in a way to banish all</span><span style="font-size: small;"> lesser compulsions.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fate leads the willing, drags the unwilling. </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
is no accident that in Revelation, God the Supreme makes final war upon
Evil, until the dead are raised and all tears are gone. Or that Arjuna
is bidden to "strike" with impunity in the <i>Bhagavad-Gita</i>. The path of
the warrior, through the Zodiac of his passions and impressions, if it
holds true to the circle, creates a zone of influence for something
higher to come down, and/or for himself to ascend. This is the reason
that the Lord Christ, it is remarked, had such a fondness for Roman
soldiers.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
Rhetoric is
sharpened and honed on the poetry of War (the most galvanizing force on
the physical plane known to man), it will be well placed to poise the
serious student towards achieving the Gnosis of
self-knowledge. </span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.</span><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Matthew 11: 13</span></span><br />
<pre><pre><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></pre>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-76701670139024340952018-10-19T20:44:00.000-07:002018-10-19T20:44:15.415-07:00Ars Poetica Inside the Logic of the Logos <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp03jyLhgeuRjVEUu6aFy7I091dlY0NcwuYwQT4Krbxp6R6CJ9pPy9178_Qz2S-xprclbW6uZWaQ9t3a9KdJIbDlO1Bfo6U7ug9ovvfKbmBHT5h66kAFyEF1DkCWaXs9rtIesSBg_2HBT4/s1600/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent_Monastery_of_St_Catherine_Sinai_12th_century.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp03jyLhgeuRjVEUu6aFy7I091dlY0NcwuYwQT4Krbxp6R6CJ9pPy9178_Qz2S-xprclbW6uZWaQ9t3a9KdJIbDlO1Bfo6U7ug9ovvfKbmBHT5h66kAFyEF1DkCWaXs9rtIesSBg_2HBT4/s400/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent_Monastery_of_St_Catherine_Sinai_12th_century.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
We start with a modern antiphony: </div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<b><i>Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service</i></b><br />
<br />
POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE <br />
The sapient sutlers of the Lord <br />
Drift across the window-panes. <br />
In the beginning was the Word. <br />
In the beginning was the Word. 5<br />
Superfetation of <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhgxqg9ChOFQnPkr61tulM69qhmHCNWrqW9-u0ImwlmN3DaNzW7izkQhnEJIgRjNBQqDRIKp7txr6hZ_MjiF6ELZm9nP5pMmSC0qJ_zpIrbDmaDpiNEmdgin5Gry_8SDVxzV0BDpQBJ=s0-d-e1-ft" />, <br />
And at the mensual turn of time <br />
Produced enervate Origen. <br />
A painter of the Umbrian school <br />
Designed upon a gesso ground 10<br />
The nimbus of the Baptized God. <br />
The wilderness is cracked and browned <br />
But through the water pale and thin <br />
Still shine the unoffending feet <br />
And there above the painter set 15<br />
The Father and the Paraclete.<br />
The sable presbyters approach <br />
The avenue of penitence; <br />
The young are red and pustular <br />
Clutching piaculative pence. 20<br />
Under the penitential gates <br />
Sustained by staring Seraphim <br />
Where the souls of the devout <br />
Burn invisible and dim. <br />
Along the garden-wall the bees 25<br />
With hairy bellies pass between <br />
The staminate and pistilate, <br />
Blest office of the epicene. <br />
Sweeney shifts from ham to ham <br />
Stirring the water in his bath. 30<br />
The masters of the subtle schools <br />
Are controversial, polymath.</blockquote>
<br />
Can
you feel the inner pulse and logic of this poem? TS Eliot's poem given
here is perhaps as good an introduction to "inner logic" in poetry as
any other candidates (<i>without prejudice to a better one known to the reader</i>). And we catch him doing something similar (and in similar grammatical rhythm) in this poem: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<b><i> Whispers of Immortality</i></b> <br />
WEBSTER was much possessed by death <br />
And saw the skull beneath the skin; <br />
And breastless creatures under ground <br />
Leaned backward with a lipless grin. <br />
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls 5<br />
Stared from the sockets of the eyes! <br />
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs <br />
Tightening its lusts and luxuries. <br />
Donne, I suppose, was such another <br />
Who found no substitute for sense; 10<br />
To seize and clutch and penetrate, <br />
Expert beyond experience, <br />
He knew the anguish of the marrow <br />
The ague of the skeleton; <br />
No contact possible to flesh 15<br />
Allayed the fever of the bone.<br />
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye <br />
Is underlined for emphasis; <br />
Uncorseted, her friendly bust <br />
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss. 20<br />
The couched Brazilian jaguar <br />
Compels the scampering marmoset <br />
With subtle effluence of cat; <br />
Grishkin has a maisonette; <br />
The sleek Brazilian jaguar 25<br />
Does not in its arboreal gloom <br />
Distil so rank a feline smell <br />
As Grishkin in a drawing-room. <br />
And even the Abstract Entities <br />
Circumambulate her charm; 30<br />
But our lot crawls between dry ribs <br />
To keep our metaphysics warm.</blockquote>
<br />
Lastly, for our three examples to begin, Yeats is not to be left out: <br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Sailing to Byzantium</i></b><br />
That is no country for old men. The young<br />
In one another's arms, birds in the trees<br />
– Those dying generations – at their song,<br />
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,<br />
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long<br />
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.<br />
Caught in that sensual music all neglect<br />
Monuments of unageing intellect.<br />
An aged man is but a paltry thing,<br />
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless<br />
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing<br />
For every tatter in its mortal dress,<br />
Nor is there singing school but studying<br />
Monuments of its own magnificence;<br />
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come<br />
To the holy city of Byzantium.<br />
O sages standing in God's holy fire<br />
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,<br />
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,<br />
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.<br />
Consume my heart away; sick with desire<br />
And fastened to a dying animal<br />
It knows not what it is; and gather me<br />
Into the artifice of eternity.<br />
Once out of nature I shall never take<br />
My bodily form from any natural thing,<br />
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make<br />
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling<br />
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;<br />
Or set upon a golden bough to sing<br />
To lords and ladies of Byzantium<br />
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. </blockquote>
<br />
He himself said of this poem directly: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
I
am trying to write about the state of my soul, for it is right for an
old man to make his soul, and some of my thoughts about that subject I
have put into a poem called 'Sailing to Byzantium'. When Irishmen were
illuminating the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells">Book of Kells</a>, and making the jeweled croziers in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Ireland">National Museum</a>,
Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its
spiritual philosophy, so I symbolize the search for the spiritual life
by a journey to that city [Jeffares, Alexander Norman, A Commentary on
the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford: Stanford University Press
1968) p. 217] </blockquote>
<br />
Perhaps
the choice of poetry here betrays some predilections of the author. Yet
other pieces of poetry offer logic as well, and one can get a "feel"
for them. Having a feel for these, I am able to explain something of
their inner logic, or interior Logos. <br />
<br />
<br />
Unlike
the shock of grammar, "inner logic" does not restrict itself to the
initial explosions of contours that strikes into perception, with the
stamp of something more than just impressions or passions: it does a
good deal more with them, and more deftly or subtly. However, very much
like grammar, it is rooted in the startled perceptions of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous">Nous</a> or noetic faculty; it represents an extension of that wonder, or prolongation, in many cases by the reasoning of analogy. <br />
<br />
<br />
The
guiding thought or principle is that (here inside the interior space of
the poem and the poet), if I can imagine something, it is a remembering
of something, and therefore, a creation of something or restoration. In
other words, and by valid (if, as we shall see, somewhat complicated) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens">modus tollens</a>,
the power to evoke something, by logical extension, is also the power
to create it, and then extend it logically back into the world's
dimensions. It is the power to creatively extend the implications of the
metaphysical realities captured in the poem, like a dreamweaver that
takes and tames its quarry. <br />
<br />
<br />
The
intellect works in this by the doctrine of signatures: A is to B, as C
is to D. This implies that the A/C level and the B/D levels are, and
that they are to each other, and that there may be other levels or
connections discoverable by the noetic faculty of the artist. If more
connections are made, or re-made, then more levels become available for
those who are aware enough for them. One a pair of analogies is set up
as follows: A is to B as C is to D, then a second mirror is created, at
the least? How are A and C related? And does A also have a connection to
D? <br />
<br />
<br />
If God exists,
then sub-worlds also might exist, made by us in imitation of His
creative act. Sub-worlds do exist, but we cannot affirm the consequent,
this is fallacious. So they might exist for some other reason than God.
However, we could also say that sub-worlds cannot NOT exist. And this
might imply rather strongly, or tend to imply, that sub-worlds cannot
exist for any other reason other than God (hence, it would not be a
"sub"-world, and God is the only adequate explanation). Since sub-worlds
are indisputable and necessary, one cannot say "No sub-worlds". And it
is hard to imagine any other reason they would have to exist, without
positing concretely the link between world and sub-world (and men and
other men), which is God. <br />
<br />
<br />
At
this point, there is a theological dispute over whether the argument
runs, A: If God, then Sub-Worlds, or B: if Sub-Worlds, then God. The
rub, or the poetic rub, seems to be (and this would include the majority
of powerful poets, classically theist or not) that BOTH forms of this
argument are considered equally valid by the stronger poets, although
they may show a penchant for one or the other. To affirm either term is
to imply the other, and although "affirming the consequent" is a
fallacy, it is not a fallacy if once can reverse P and Q in the initial
equation, as a starting point. And this, as we shall see precisely, is
exactly what Mythopoeia and Poetry tends to do. It postulates P
therefore Q, and also Q, therefore P. It passes through a looking
glass.Science and Logic claim it is reasoning in a circle: Poetry claims
to be able to see both propositions simultaneously, and to understand
how they imply each other. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kukai/">Kukai</a> would say, "The Mind (God) and the World Co-Arise." <br />
<br />
So,
we could reason non fallaciously and justly: If there are no
Sub-Worlds, then there is no God. This is, I think, a correct form of
argument based on a sound premise, the <i>modus tollens</i> of A. But what if
we merely have fragmented and meaningless Sub-Worlds? If we don't
actually know or accept the logic of either A or B, let alone both? If
we deny everything? Well, this is precisely what consistent
reductionists do. Not only is God a fallacy, so are Sub-Worlds. So is
human nature (and the divine image). So is everything. Things just are.
They are there. And yet they are not. <br />
This is not a Zen<i> koan</i> - it is a flat contradiction, and meant to be taken as such. <br />
<br />
<br />
This is why, more and more, it appears that if the
sacred Seven Liberal Arts endure, they will be saved by Christians (as
they have been before, in the Dark Ages,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-Scottish_mission"> in Ireland</a>).
Christians embrace the humanism of both the reality of God, and the
reality of the World (and Sub-Worlds). Tolkien has more to do with Kukai
than with Darwin and Huxley:<br />
<br />
<br />
The heart of man is not compound of lies, <br />
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, <br />
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged, <br />
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. <br />
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned, <br />
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned, <br />
his world-dominion by creative act: <br />
not his to worship the great Artefact, <br />
man, sub-creator, the refracted light <br />
through whom is splintered from a single White <br />
to many hues, and endlessly combined <br />
in living shapes that move from mind to mind. <br />
Though all the crannies of the world we filled <br />
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build <br />
gods and their houses out of dark and light, <br />
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right <br />
(used or misused). The right has not decayed. <br />
We make still by the law in which we're made. <br />
<a href="http://home.agh.edu.pl/~evermind/jrrtolkien/mythopoeia.htm">Link</a><br />
<br />
<br />
But
if we pretend it's only "As If", as if all fantasy was mere fancy, and
all imagination had no image, then what can we do? In this case, all
that poetry can do is to try to set up logical harmonic relationships
between hypothetical God and equally hypothetical Sub-worlds, and hope that the right chord
is struck which can induce a meaningless epiphany, or at least the suspicion that
there is something "vaguely out there" in the Logos of the Cosmos, which
is structured in such a way that we get glimpses of it in the poem.
This is the current state of the English department and of Analytical
Philosophy in the Anglo world. But
following Tolkien (and the poets), it is clear that some version of
house ruled logic must be accepted, within the mythopoeic realm. <br />
<br />
<br />
Our preferred logic runs more like this: <br />
If there is no God, then Sub-Worlds would not have the evocative power they possess. <br />
They DO have this evocatory power, THEREFORE, God most certainly exists (<i>Modus Tollens</i>)<br />
If God exists, perhaps Sub-Worlds have even more evocatory power than meets the eye (which is already quite a lot). More evocatory power might imply that God has layers of deeper and deeper meaning. This sets up harmonic deepening and resonance between the two levels of reality, once a real link if accepted and established. It is then easy to extend the range and the complexity of what is being "done" in mythopoeic art. This art becomes a form of sight or vision, with which one watches the creation of the world, and/or its re-creation. <br />
<br />
<br />
"Sweeney",
in TS Eliot's poem, cannot follow this "subtle" logic, and shifts from
butt cheek to butt cheek in the bath. But yet it is a simple syllogism,
when analyzed according to logical categories. Nevertheless, to the
animal man, these conclusions are "controversial" and "polymath". But
the conclusions follow quite simply and logically from the
"superfetation" of Being - God overflows His nature, into Nature. It
does not require spiritual genius, merely spiritual honesty, to accept
that. In fact, so mighty is the evocatory power of Creation and
sub-Creation, that even the "Abstract Entities" are drawn to the
concrete beauty of Grishkin. This, of course, raises questions about the
Incarnation, and what it means to exist, and what is this Chain of
Being in the first place? When Yeats writes about Byzantium, he is
evoking or conjuring a spiritual place and space where he is "gathered
into the 'artifice' of eternity". In that place, there is "holy fire
from God" and things that are beyond "Nature". His evocation (if we are
to believe the logic implicit in poetry) does not merely recall to
memory the place where this occurs, but actually functions to create
another identical place (either greater, lesser, or perhaps a duplicate)
by functioning as that link in memory. That is to say, Remembering
heaven actually duplicates it, in some place, and on some scale. This is
the uncomfortable logic of poetry: that all of us, in high poetic
imagination, are actually creating or helping to finish create the
world, right alongside of God. <br />
<br />
<br />
This
is not a special kind of Logic: it is Logic pure and simple, and it is
supremely or quintessentially logical. You might say that it is Logic
that is alive, or organically fruitful and vivified. Furthermore, it is
merely Logic's natural and healthy consequences, Logic made alive by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_(poem)">Mythopoeia</a>.
This does it mean, in the vulgar English, that it is a special kind of
Logic (as if it wasn't really real Logic, or as if different things only had
different Logics, so that there wasn't any kind of connection between
things at all, save by meaningless fiat). It is Logic first and
foremost, and it develops its own traditions of special kinds of Logic,
afterwards. But we can, as we shall see, work in both directions at
once, which will synergize the process. This is a lot of what goes on in
an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objet_d%27art">Objet d'Arte</a>. Something along these lines must have been meant in these words:<br />
<br />
<b><i>Ars Poetica</i></b> <br />
By <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/archibald-macleish">Archibald MacLeish</a> <br />
A poem should be palpable and mute <br />
As a globed fruit,<br />
Dumb<br />
As old medallions to the thumb,<br />
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone<br />
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—<br />
A poem should be wordless <br />
As the flight of birds.<br />
A poem should be motionless in time <br />
As the moon climbs,<br />
Leaving, as the moon releases<br />
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,<br />
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, <br />
Memory by memory the mind—<br />
A poem should be motionless in time <br />
As the moon climbs.<br />
A poem should be equal to:<br />
Not true.<br />
For all the history of grief<br />
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.<br />
For love<br />
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—<br />
A poem should not mean <br />
But be.<br />
Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. Source: Collected <br />
Poems 1917-1952 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1952) <br />
<br />
<br />
This "Being" and this "extension" of Being in the created "Object of Art" are not, or should not be, at odds: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A poem doesn't do everything for you.<br />
You are supposed to go on with your thinking.<br />
You are supposed to enrich<br />
the other person's poem with your extensions,<br />
Your uniquely personal understandings,<br />
Thus making the poem serve you. <br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_Brooks">Gwendolyn Brooks</a></blockquote>
<br />
Now
in our time there is a personalistic and subjective limitation
understood in this, as if our personhood counted for nothing (and you
can see some of this creeping into the modern poet G. Brooks).
Ironically, often enough, the bad faith personality of some individual
still gets immortalized, and the personhood or latent image of God
(which actually does have reality of the deepest sort) gets thrown out
as "purely preferential" or "entirely subjective". The <i>Imago Dei</i>
becomes a sort of philosophical scapegoat, and is sacrificed. And isn't
this what happens with "Pop Culture"? Of Cosmos Kardashian, and before
her, of Madonna? It is almost as if Pop Culture tried to remedy the
intellectual dead end of Modernity, by deifying the worst aspects of
what it entails (partially) in being human. <br />
<br />
<br />
The
intellectual story of how this ironical inversion between True and
False occurred is fascinating, a "chiasm of absurdity". Rather than
opening this enormous mare's nest of investigative philosophy, we are
looking (in the sacred, seven Liberal Arts) for a popularism which is
perennial (Folk Wisdom, with the eye of Faith). We are seeking, not a
shortcut, but a more direct and participatory approach to the lack of
knowledge, wisdom, beauty, truth and goodness. We are bypassing the
quagmire of Modernism by taking seriously the art of poetry from the
start, and seeing where that leads. This should provide us some
armaments against the subjective fallacy, the fallacy of treating
everything reductively, so that "heart" is "only the cardiac muscle",
"soul" is made up of oxytocin and dopamine release, or adrenaline, etc.,
etc. This old saw has been banging around like Aunt Gertrude's ghost in
the basement, since the first materialist bastardized the poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura">Lucretius</a>, down to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner">BF Skinner's </a>shameless promotion of man as bundle of programmable tissues (and pigeons as guiders of missiles), and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins">R. Dawkin's </a>incessant
quest to rip out the "God gene" from our programming ("Turn It Off!").
It is baffling how anyone could not take poetry as a path to knowledge
seriously, and instead play only "as if" it (and everything else) is
true, like H. Vaihinger did on a grand scale in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_%27As_if%27">Die Philosophie des Als Ob</a>. Instead, we are going to dig around in the logic, analogies, and the prisms of Poesis, and see if it leads to Mythopoesis. <br />
<br />
<br />
By
elucidating and teasing out how this concretely works, we hope to make
the process itself more powerful, lucid, and reasonable, or else what is
Logic for? We are going to pack, unpack, and re-pack some choice and
varied passages from several more authors, and we will tear them down to
put them back together. If Logic means anything, it should help us to
do this, and we will further our quest through the "Sacred Seven". Let
us start in on acquiring and enhancing this metaphysical power, if we
can, this time in a selection from the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Drunk_Man_Looks_at_the_Thistle">The Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle</a>.
A very drunken and loquacious man is out on the heather, contemplating
the moon and a particular thistle he is sprawled beside (the dialect is
Lowland Scots): <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Feedan on the munelicht and transforman it<br />
To this wanrestfu growth that winna let me be.<br />
The munelicht is the freedom that I'd hae<br />
But for this cursed Conscience thou has set in me. <br />
It is morality, the knowledge of Guid and Ill,<br />
Fear, shame, pity, like a will and wilyart growth,<br />
That kills aa else wi-in its reach and craves<br />
Nae less at least than aa the warld to gie it scouth. <br />
The need o wark, the need to think, the need to be,<br />
And aathing that twists Life into a certain shape<br />
And interferes wi perfect liberty-<br />
These feed this Frankenstein that nae man can escape.<br />
For ilka thing a man can be or think or dae<br />
Aye leaves a million mair unbeen, unthocht, undune,<br />
Till his puir warped performance is,<br />
To all that micht hae been, a thistle to the mune. <br />
It is Mortality itself- the mortal coil,<br />
Mockan Perfection, Man afore the Throne o God<br />
He yet has bigged himself, Man torn in twa<br />
And glorious in the life and grisly on the sod. <br />
I dinna ken and nae man ever can.<br />
I micht be in my ain bed after aa.<br />
The hail damned thing's a dream for ocht we ken,<br />
-The Warld and Life and Daith, Heaven, Hell, anaa.<br />
We maun juist tak things as we find them then,<br />
And mak a kirck or mill of them as we can,<br />
-And yet I feel this muckle thistle's staundan<br />
Atween me and the mune as pairt of a Plan.<br />
It isnat there - nor me - by accident.<br />
We're brocht thegither for a certain reason,<br />
E'en gin it's anething mair than juist to gie<br />
My jaded soul a necessary frisson. <br />
I never saw afore a thistle quite<br />
Sae intimately, or at sic an hour.<br />
There's something in the fickle licht that gies <br />
A different life to't and an unco pouer. (253-305)</blockquote>
<br />
Right
away, we can see in this poem many of the same yearning and
"demi-transcendent" characteristics we saw in TS Eliot and Yeat's poems.
A definite type of correspondence (never mind precisely what it is
yet) is set up between the thistle and man (on the one hand) and the
thistle and God (on the other), between various parts of the thistle
with various parts of man, and various aspects of God (on the other),
and finally with the thistle as a kind of mediator and then Prime
Symbol, or symbol of Everything, with all relationships subsumed within
the thistle. In all of the poems, an object within an object, becomes a
symbol: a jaguar and the beautiful woman Grishkin, a fresco from the
Umbrian school, the beehive of Byzantium, and the Thistle in the
moonlight. The skill and beauty with which this is handled is aimed to
give power to the "suspension of disbelief". <br />
<br />
<br />
If
we accept the purpose of the art work or poem, if we are drawn into it,
we have to ask if there is a magical correspondence between a Prime
Symbol within a Symbol (the Thistle inside the poem), and our own Image
(which contemplates that same Image within the art, inside the art)
which is of course set "inside" the Cosmos. By "doing" poetry, the "law
of correspondences" is automatically invoked, because the entire
existence of the Poem and its Prime Symbol(s) raises the question, or
begs it to be raised: Is the Universe a Poem? Is it a "made thing" or an
"art object"? And are there magical links (in a powerful poem) that are
awakened and evoked between it as a sub-Creation and the World as a
whole? If so, can they be identified and intensified, through artifice
and inspiration or intuition? This gets close to the heart of poetry, or
the "madness" of the poets. Because, there are more than one possible
line of correspondences: it is not merely looking in one mirror - there
are at least two involved, and if the mirror itself is "alive", and you
align them...thusly...what would happen? How many mirrors, or doorways,
or correspondences, can we create?<br />
<br />
<br />
This
kind of magic is what most mature poets, at some point, play at. If
there are micro and macrocosms, and a Cosmos as a whole, and man as a
miniature Cosmos as a whole, then what kind of poetry can "map" the
relationships involved between various wholes and parts, which stand for
other various wholes and parts? The poet is the man who aspires to be
able, by thinking of something with a certain intensity or clarity or in
a beautiful way, to actually influence the object, because of course,
every poet knows in his rhapsody that his mind is actually in contact
with the thing. And his little exercise, not fully self conscious of
course, but verging upon it, is precisely what we find in Hugh
MacDiarmid's long poem.<br />
<br />
<br />
The
thistle is standing between Me and the Moon as some part of a plan,
chants the poet. This is the highly logical conclusion of the drunken
man's reasoning. The drunkenness is philosophical in a poetic way, but
in this same way that Hegel remarks: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The
true is thus the bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunken;
and because each, as soon as it detaches itself, dissolves immediately —
the whirl is just as much transparent and simple repose.” <br />
― Hegel, G. W. H. </blockquote>
<br />
A similar thought, perhaps, to Plato's statement that "Time is a moving image of Eternity" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue)" target="_blank">Timaeus</a>).
With the thistle invoked and also evoked or even summoned, the poet
(read the whole work for yourself!) proceeds to inquire into the mystery
of the Universe and the mystery of the heart through the lowly symbol
of the Scottish thistle. It is as if, from the vantage point of
drunkenness, certain inhibitions are removed which prevent the
thoroughly modern man from seeing the real meaning of the ordinary
reality which surrounds him. Having summoned the Thistle, he is then
helpless before the revelation which it makes, including (among other
things) how there is a thistle that grows out of man's heart and with
bristly grotesqueness, can be used<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Climacus"> as a ladder into heaven</a>.
This ladder is also a "silken lady", his wife, a symbol for man or God,
the world, etc. etc. It is also (at times) 'just a thistle". That is,
the hiddenness or recondite power and beauty of the simple thistle is
the disguise of a very humble Omnipotence indeed. God is "shy" in this
sense - He can retreat into the thistle. But the poet can detect Him. <br />
<br />
<br />
Realists
or scientists would say the thistle is "just" there. But where is
"there"? This "just a" is a magic circle which traps the modern man.
Because he lacks poetic insight, he cannot see that: <br />
<br />
<br />
"Rain symbolizes mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better than mercy and<br />
charity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize."<br />
<br />
He
would have to "go and learn" what the above might mean. Apparently,
once God "hides" in something lowly and small, even when He can be got
out, He never leaves. This is a kind of divine quantum entanglement. He
can always retreat into the abode and quiet of "nothing but" or "just a"
lowly thistle. Modern man is always proceeding in the opposite
direction. For the modern man, a good theory is one that cannot be
(currently) falsified. That is, if it has greater explanatory power, can
be reduplicated or tested, and cannot be disproven, then it must be
"true". It has a provisional texture to it, even if it claims to be
"advancing realistically". <i>But in the world of poetry, one knows something for certain, or not at all</i>:
philosophical (or scientific) probability does not enter into the
matter. Poetry cannot be provisional. It proceeds in the opposite
direction: if one can doubt something, then it cannot be true. One
accepts only what one knows, from experience and texture, is
indubitable. This alone ensures that the mind is in contact with "the
Real". <br />
<br />
<br />
And for the modern man, this way of
proceeding is pure madness: for what else can that be but pure
subjectivity? For the modern mind, <i>This Way Madness Lies</i>. It
prefers the provisional models of its own empirical and reductive
materialism, and even its Poetry is "suggestive", at best. Yet strangely
enough, it is the "objective" modern within the magic circle that ends
up in this purest of pure subjectivity: our age could not be called an
Age of Faith nor an Age of Certitude. Although this modern trap is not
merely an intellectual one, we can dissect it from that angle. For it
certainly does operate detectably at the intellectual level, and can be
apprehended and cut open there. Because returning to the law of
analogies and correspondences, we note (with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Buchanan" target="_blank">Scott Buchanan</a>)
that Science exists by definition, by annihilating correspondence and
analogy. It discovers that A is to B as C is to D, and then it shoves
A,B,C,D on one side of the balance sheet (empirical reality), and works
to find another analogy. Which it then shoves onto the same side of the
balance sheet, jumbled up in a sack, with all the other "facts" of
matter. The point here is that it cannot contemplate the meaning of any
analogy of correspondence: for example, <a href="http://totalhealthmethod.com/the-secret-of-the-law-of-signatures/" target="_blank">why are kidney beans</a>
good for your kidneys? In many cases, it cannot even contemplate the
meaning of the original link that lead to a scientific discovery, let
alone any objective symbolism. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medieval_Islam" target="_blank">Alchemy lead to chemistry</a>
(which is "nothing like" alchemy, we are told). Science compulsively
plows ahead, shoving everything under the "nothing but" or "just a" side
of the balance sheet. <br />
<br />
<br />
Powerful poetry
works in the exactly opposite direction. Working our way, in depth,
through the "logic of the thistle", we can see that there is a "Logic of
Logic", and even a "Logic of Logos", that the world is an ordered
whole, and that attentive and perceptive grammar and logic at the
phenomenal level lead us in the opposite direction from reductive and
materialistic sciences, towards a <i>Scientia </i>that goes beyond empirical Science. <br />
<br />
Logic is one of the preparatory seven, sacred Arts in the antechamber of true Wisdom, or <i>Gnosis</i>. <br />
<br />
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Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-34047187997928114212018-08-22T20:09:00.000-07:002018-08-22T20:09:16.692-07:00Ars Poetica as Sacred Grammar<br />
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<span class="im"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Mowgli-1895-illustration.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Mowgli-1895-illustration.png" width="212" /></a></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="im">I placed a jar in Tennessee,</span><br />
<span class="im">And round it was, upon a hill.</span><br />
<span class="im">It made the slovenly wilderness</span><br />
<span class="im">Surround that hill.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="im">The wilderness rose up to it,</span><br />
<span class="im">And sprawled around, no longer wild.</span><br />
<span class="im">The jar was round upon the ground</span><br />
<span class="im">And tall and of a port in air.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="im">It took dominion everywhere.</span><br />
<span class="im">The jar was gray and bare.</span><br />
<span class="im">It did not give of bird or bush,</span><br />
<span class="im">Like nothing else in Tennessee.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="im"><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14575/anecdote-of-the-jar"> Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of a Jar" from Collected Poems</a>. </span></blockquote>
<span class="im">
</span>
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<span class="im"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-brief"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-show-for-small-only"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-descript">
</span></span></span></span>
<br />
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<span class="im"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-brief"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-show-for-small-only"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-descript">Because
mankind (or a potter's clay jar) arrives in the world on a "preject",
and is "trajected" by Fate onward, careening his course, he finds
himself "in Middle Earth", and "in the middle of things". The old poet
Masters would say <i>In Media Res</i>. Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy (from whom I borrowed the terminology "<i>preject/traject</i>") convincingly argues that Locke's "<i>tabula rasa</i>" (blank slate) and Descartes' "<i>Cogito ergo sum</i>" (I think, therefore I am), are inadequate to explain the existential human situation. Human life is centaur-like: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_piece_of_work_is_a_man" target="_blank">half beast, half angel</a>. <span class="text Ps-8-3" id="en-KJV-14016"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="im"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-brief"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-show-for-small-only"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-m_-4702871810276692544m_-8687791463563528108m_-7883426413436082926m_7273003263771725806gmail-m_3695838508297070822gmail-title-descript">3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; <br />4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?<br />5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="im"><span class="text Ps-8-3"><span class="text Ps-8-3">Of
all the arts, what is left of the liberal arts anyway, poetry and
literature have remembered that man's position under the sun is <i>In Media Res</i>
: cast (or "prejected") into the "middle of things". The art form of
poetic diction and grammar and structure, the rhythms of speech and
accent, reflect or mirror this condition, thereby achieving the kind of
control and consciousness of which man is uniquely capable, to the
extent it is possible for that individual. <br /><br />The first liberal
art, therefore, is not in essence Latin grammar, or "common core"
English, or revolutionary theology with radical politics, but a grammar
that enables man<i> to actually speak creatively</i>, to glow like the
filament of a light bulb when electricity passes through it
(Rosenstock-Huessy's metaphor). This is not the natural state of man,
but an in between state of Nature and Super Nature. <br /><br />From the
time we are a baby, it is the "voice" which we look for, first, from a
story: not style, not narrative, not the yarn, not even characters. </span></span></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know
them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (<span style="font-size: x-small;">John 10:27-28 King James Version (KJV))</span></blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span class="text Ps-8-3">Why
is it that we tune in to a certain voice? And why is it, that certain
sacred notes or music or speech or writing cuts us to the quick,
dividing the soul in half? Voice is the quality we experience when we
are plunged "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res">in media res</a>" - in the middle of things. When deprived of "voice", we resist learning that is by rote, <i>ab avo</i> (from the egg), chapter 1/verse 1 through infinity, dry-as-dust <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradgrind">Gradgrindism</a>.
We call this pedantry and scholiasm, and react against it
instinctively, whether encountered on the street, in the Cathedral, at
school, or in the marketplace. Instead, humans naturally prefer that
which immediately appeals to a certain inner direction in the soul
(whether for good or evil). Our addiction to propaganda and advertising
is simple a degradation or perversion of our tendency to select
intuitively based upon voice. We instinctively or intuitively discern,
more or less well, what is "cool", and what is "not cool". All of us are
doing a better or a worse job of this, drifting down or rising up. The
Middle Ages called this sixth sense <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rDhjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT87&lpg=PT87&dq=estimation+middle+ages+sense&source=bl&ots=wVwW9hnBAm&sig=TdkQd7qP6npWguGt9bcjqWRKFio&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjmj8jm4NvcAhXpRd8KHdYnBOIQ6AEwDnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=estimation%20middle%20ages%20sense&f=false">estimation</a> (see Avicenna).<br /><br />
The first sacred "art which makes free" (Grammar) is designed to begin
the process of "leading out" or education of the sixth sense. Grammar is
not diagramming sentences or learning parts of speech: at best, these
are the lowest efficient cause of high Grammar, and at worst, the old
discarded husks of dead outer bodies of Grammar, the detritus or old
clothes of misunderstood earlier ages. </span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span class="text Ps-8-3">Grammar
is a grasp upon deep intuitive level of spiritual perception, for
though it is neither speech nor thought alone (both depending upon the
other), it is deeper than both: and it enters into meaning. It is both
that which puts the pieces together into meaning, and that which is
pointed to by those puzzling clues put back together. It is that without
which there are no "pieces" to reconstruct at all, leaving us in a
Humpty-Dumpty parody of the deep truth. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">“The
water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small
truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.”
(R. Tagore) And, "Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is
silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is
of Time, Silence is of Eternity." (T. Carlyle).</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<span class="text Ps-8-3">Grammar
at the sacred level is where paradoxes are resolved in the alchemical
union of opposites: speech/thought, time/eternity, sound/silence,
meaning/ground of being. It is the fountain of silence where speech and
being commune. How can there be a Grammar of Silence? asks the cynic.
Isn't it true that children raised without human speech can never, even
when grown, learn to talk? Actually, this is not true, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments">and is an urban myth</a>. But these cynics wish to seek all causes in the smaller material, out of which larger "material" cause(s) supposedly grow. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Thus,
"Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors of our
Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, <i>it
has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a
World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling</i>." (Thomas Carlyle)</blockquote>
<br />
<span class="text Ps-8-3">To
these cynics, we reply that it is not our job to make sure that
theories "make sense" (to some pre-selected arbitration by a randomly
assumed intellectual stance), <i>but rather that they fit the facts of perceptual experience</i>.
It is always a matter of what we can unify and perceive out of
perceptive experience, at whatever high levels we are capable. The
sacred art of Grammar assists in that process, and is not pre-limited by
insistence that it cannot venture into the synthetic task of unifying
the paradoxical opposites we experience: Man is both animal and angel.
Ergo, he can unite the worlds. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="text Ps-8-3">Therefore,
Grammar tries to articulate this. Man is both profane and sacred:
Grammar stammers, confesses, articulates it. By summoning spirits from
the vasty deep, it returns us to the beginning, to review what we
thought we already knew. We will not bother (for now) to confront
Scientism and Reductionism head on, as there is no apology needed for
embracing Life. Rather, Grammar appeals to a certain something in man
that matches its own divine origin. It brings man "into tune" with the
pulsation of an inner life. Let us plunge in - here is William
Wordsworth:</span><br />
<div class="im">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"And I have felt <br />
A presence that disturbs me with the joy<br />
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime<br />
Of something far more deeply interfused"</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="im">
Grammar makes us a glowing filament of lightning or fiery electricity, between the two poles: of the outer World (<i>Gott und die Welt</i>) and the inner Mind. An old African saying was that good language "<i>talks like the rain</i>".
And unless that element of life enthuses and suffuses the language that
is used, it will not convince us that Life is the giver of that speech.
It may be true that rhetoric alone is worthless, as is logic, and as is
grammar (since then we would have demagoguery, propaganda, and thought <i>memes</i>).
However, without living power, all grammar becomes wordy, dry, and
echoing. Listen to a great thinker declare what living speech is like: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Language
is not speech, it is a full circle from word to sound to perception to
understanding to feeling, to memorizing, to acting and back to the word
about the act thus achieved. And before the listener can become a
listener, something has to happen: he or she must expect.”</blockquote>
Grammar
has been much abused, because so much undue weight has been loaded onto
it, in too narrow a focus, subject to too many misconceptions. Rather
than choking on the concept that it (Grammar) <i>has</i> to entail
Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, English, Spanish, or any other of a dozen
languages we might select out of the pantheon, and forcing our students
down a particular linguistic path, we might acknowledge Grammar as the
ground of meaning, or the genesis of articulated meaning itself. If we
did this, we could see that Grammar is therefore <i>not </i>linguistics, it is not classical Latin, it is not grammar exercises. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="im">
<br />
At
the least, it is not merely that. For example, an enormous aura of
mystification has come to surround Latin. By coterminously identifying
core, eternal values with the Greco-Latin heritage, the downturn or even
modulation or modification of that heritage has been equated with "the
death of God" and the "transvaluation of all values" (Nietzsche).
Without the zone of creative silence at the fountain of meaning, which
zone underlies speech and thought, too much strain enters the Western
intellectual architecture. Latin grammar should be "free" to be (merely)
the chosen vehicle of expression (<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upaya" target="_blank">upaya</a></i>)
at a particular point in time. This would delimit and unchain Latin
from being a hostage on a Neoclassical pedestal, or a Bull's Eye Target
in a postmodern shooting gallery. </div>
<div class="im">
<br /></div>
<div class="im">
What can we learn from this? What follows? How should we then live? What does any of it, what <i>could</i> any of it, mean? <i>Any </i>writing, literature, speech, <span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-il">art</span>, invention, or artifice <i>whatsoever</i>
that places man into that nexus between speech and thought, and
advances him back up the chain of Being, in the direction of the ground
of meaning, and even further, to the very source of Being, reveals
itself as<i> </i>good Grammar. It bears witness to itself. These "letters" and "numbers" are an initiation into the sacred seven <span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-il">Liberal</span> <span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-il">Arts</span>. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="im">
This is the entire point of <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martianus_Capella&source=gmail&ust=1535037781999000&usg=AFQjCNEDyQngQzIp-6mP4sQpXHDziiho0A" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martianus_Capella" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">the book </span></a><b><i>De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii</i></b> ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury"/<i>De septem disciplinis</i> (<i>On the seven disciplines</i>). Grammar happens when there is <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogony&source=gmail&ust=1535037781999000&usg=AFQjCNHXQaGVEviGEInVgoQVOC45p_UHew" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogony" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Theogony</span></a> in the intellectual world of a student, when a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view&source=gmail&ust=1535037781999000&usg=AFQjCNGUP7FqepG1pT4kITqwjQfYjd_YpA" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Weltenschauung</span></a> is being forged, overthrown, enhanced, if it is for the better. I would add the slogan, <i>No Worldview without Theogony!</i> By which I mean to paraphrase Carlyle's saying, <i>Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe!</i>
Worldview without inner expectation, wonder, and discovery is Ideology,
Propaganda, or Memes. This cannot happen without spiritual perception,
and there is no lawnmower manual that gives us an exact blueprint. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="im">
We
can see this in literature, the way that the very first sentences of
great art works (varied in form and meaning and language) pass the
sacred flame from person to person in an undeniably powerful way. This
is learning the sacred first <span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-il">art</span>
of Grammar from poetry. We commence our initiation into sacred Grammar
by diving into some of these sentences, and invoking the power of the
entire art force behind them. <br />
<br />
<br />
As an
exercise, see if you can sense how these lines evoke or invoke,
summoning a world that is both inner and outer, which corresponds to
something already in you, the reader. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” <i>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone</i>, JK Rowling</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.” <i>Metamorphoses</i>, F. Kafka </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, by Jane Austen </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
"Into
the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel
Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the
shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk
French." —<i>The Luck of the Bodkins</i> by PG Wodehouse</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Call
me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
the world."<br />
—<i>Moby Dick</i> by Herman Melville</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."<br />
—<i>Murphy</i> by Samuel Beckett</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were
all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in
short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for
evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."<br />
<br />
—<i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> by Charles Dickens</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: <br />
England hath need of thee: she is a fen <br />
Of stagnant waters..."<br />
<i>London 1802</i>, Wordsworth</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
WARS worse than civil on Emathian <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Luc.#note1">1</a> plains,<br />
And crime let loose we sing: how <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/entityvote?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0134:book=1:card=1&auth=perseus,Rome&n=1&type=place">Rome</a>'s high race<br />
Plunged in her vitals her victorious sword;<br />
Armies akin embattled, with the force<br />
Of all the shaken earth bent on the fray;<br />
And burst asunder, to the common guilt,<br />
A kingdom's compact; eagle with eagle met,<br />
Standard to standard, spear opposed to spear.<br />
<i>Pharsalia</i>, Lucan</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Arms and the man I sing of Troy, who first from its seashores,<br />
Italy-bound, fate’s refugee, arrived at Lavinia’s<br />
Coastlands. How he was battered about over land, over high deep<br />
Seas by the powers above! Savage Juno’s anger remembered<br />
Him, and he suffered profoundly in war to establish a city,<br />
Settle his gods into Latium, making this land of the Latins<br />
Future home to the Elders of Alba and Rome’s mighty ramparts.<br />
Muse, let the memories spill through me. What divine will was wounded,<br />
What deep hurt made the queen of the gods thrust a famously righteous<br />
Man into so many spirals of chance to face so many labours?<br />
Anger so great: can it really reside in the spirits of heaven?” <br />
—<i>Aeneid</i> I.1-11</blockquote>
<br />
The
alternative to studying fake Grammar is learning how to learn real
Grammar. Initially, this involves exposure to powerful and noble texts
(for the modern world it is enough for it to be powerful). And in this,
poetry is a better initial guide (for the recovering, the addicted, or
the perplexed) than the textbook manuals. <br />
<br />
If you've
come this far, I hope you have a more intense and heightened feel for
how powerful first lines reveal their voice, plunging us In Media Res,
thereby generating <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief">the suspension of disbelief </a>and
drawing us into the creative and cooperative process of world-creation
in the art object. Once we recognize the kind of "feel" that this
spiritual process has, both in the inner and the outer worlds (and there
is no denying that one often has to Ask, Seek, Knock in order to begin
to get good at recognizing it), we can speed this process up. We can
begin to actually wrestle with and see certain contours of experience in
more stark relief, or at least, outline. <br />
<div class="im">
</div>
<div class="im">
"What?" yowps the modern <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_(Gulliver%27s_Travels)" target="_blank">Yahoo</a>. "High brow culture is passé, at best! Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture's got to go!" Or, "when I hear the word <i>culture</i>, I reach for my Browning (gun)". But why let slobs and louts make the enemy's case? In <span lang="fr"><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wretched_of_the_Earth" target="_blank">Les Damnés de la Terre</a> 1961 </i>(Frantz Fanon) refers to <i>"the Graeco-Latin pedestal". </i>Fanon argued that all of Western culture was simply a mind trick that <i>"</i>implanted
in the minds of the colonized intellectual that the essential qualities
remain eternal in spite of the blunders men may make: the essential
qualities of the West, of course”. This cynical strategy implied that
behind Western culture lay...truly nothing at all. </span></div>
<div class="im">
<span lang="fr"><br /></span></div>
<div class="im">
<span lang="fr">And, oh yeah, doesn't a lot of Western literature inveigh against Western literature? </span></div>
<div class="im">
<br /></div>
<div class="im">
Again
we supply these insectoid-souled critics with a more persuasive grammar
than they can appreciate, which is more than they deserve: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; <br />
<br />
Or surely you'll grow double: <br />
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; <br />
Why all this toil and trouble? <br />
The sun above the mountain's head, <br />
A freshening lustre mellow <br />
Through all the long green fields has spread, <br />
His first sweet evening yellow. <br />
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: <br />
Come, hear the woodland linnet, <br />
How sweet his music! on my life, <br />
There's more of wisdom in it. <br />
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! <br />
He, too, is no mean preacher: <br />
Come forth into the light of things, <br />
Let Nature be your teacher. <br />
She has a world of ready wealth, <br />
Our minds and hearts to bless— <br />
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, <br />
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. <br />
One impulse from a vernal wood <br />
May teach you more of man, <br />
Of moral evil and of good, <br />
Than all the sages can. <br />
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; <br />
Our meddling intellect <br />
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— <br />
We murder to dissect. <br />
Enough of Science and of Art; <br />
Close up those barren leaves; <br />
Come forth, and bring with you a heart <br />
That watches and receives. (<i>The Tables Turned</i>, By <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth">William Wordsworth</a>) </blockquote>
<br />
<div class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-o-poem m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_3995307270978443001gmail-isActive" style="padding-left: 1em;">
Wordsworth
was no Frantz Fanon. He forsook the cause of the 1789 Revolution when
he saw its fruit in the Purges and the Terror, while Fanon embraced <i>by any means necessary</i>. Wordsworth
did not think it right to "murder to dissect", opening up the bodies
and veins of The Other. He wanted (instead) his readers to open the
great Book of Nature. The aptly named Wordsworth wrote reams of poetry
about this Book of Nature, and published them in collections of books.
This creative tension is juxtaposed with tension from other canonical
writers, whose beautiful handling of language compels attention. Here is
Emily Dickinson: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away, <br />
Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – <br />
This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – <br />
How frugal is the Chariot That bears a Human soul. </blockquote>
Or Dylan Thomas-<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Notes on the Art of Poetry</i><br />
<br />
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,,
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter,
such and so many blinding bright lights,, ,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.
</blockquote>
<i>Where My Books Go</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.</blockquote>
<br />
Or John Keats-
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>On First Looking into Chapman's Homer </i><br />
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, <br />
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; <br />
Round many western islands have I been <br />
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. <br />
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told <br />
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; <br />
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene <br />
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: <br />
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies <br />
When a new planet swims into his ken; <br />
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes <br />
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men <br />
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— <br />
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. </blockquote>
<br />
As
one can see, paying close attention to any of these texts, especially
together, raises questions, questions, questions. And questions are more
fundamental than answers. You have to learn to ask the right questions.
Don't you? And who can tell you what these are? I think that the answer
is no one, and anyone. Anyone who knows. No one who does not. The
sacred liberal art of Grammar aimed to teach the lisping aspirant by
provoking the layer of deeper meaning within him; this is why Socrates
calls himself "only a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method">midwife</a>".
Education is ex (out of) + ducare (to lead). It is a leading out of
one's self. When deeper layers of meaning come into conflict, there is
interior discomfort and movement. The soul is midwifed, or birthed, out
of the student. They learn how to learn, and we aren't just talking
about diagrams and paradigms, memes or worldviews. <br />
<br />
<br />
This process can be begun by wrestling with the texts, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_wrestling_with_the_angel">like Jacob wrestled with his angel</a>.
On the one hand, you have Wordsworth ironically, within the leaves and
pages of his collected poetry, telling you to shut the book and go back
out of doors. It's not downtown where things are happening, but in the
vales and the glades. He also states that they send out "impulses" when
they are in their summer verdure. Is this right? Have you ever felt an
impulse from a wood? <br />
<br />
<br />
And yet, on the other
hand, there are several very powerful pieces of poetry which celebrate
the Book. Jonathan Swift even wrote philosophical satires, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Books">The Battle of the Books</a>,
in which he defended the supremacy of ancient learning, its right to at
least parity with what is novel and "modern". One also, of course,
thinks about all the nameless monks who scribbled their lives away, in
the process, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Irish-Saved-Civilization-Irelands/dp/0385418493">saving ancient learning during the Dark Ages</a>.
John Keats lyrically exclaimed "never did I breath its pure serene"
(Homer's spirit) "I heard Chapman speak out, loud and bold". That's
getting pretty specific about who should translate The Odyssey! The
reading of this work opened an obvious doorway of the soul for him,
perhaps one of those <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansion_of_Many_Apartments">mansions of the soul</a>
he talked about. Is it the same kind of doorway that Wordsworth
promises to you when you spend an afternoon nestled in the heart of an
old hundred acre wood, or gazing at the daffodils? <br />
<div>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For oft, when on my couch I lie<br />
<br />
In vacant or in pensive mood,<br />
<br />
They flash upon that inward eye<br />
<br />
Which is the bliss of solitude;<br />
<br />
And then my heart with pleasure fills,<br />
<br />
And dances with the daffodils.</blockquote>
Are
these men just coming to the same place, by different avenues, based on
the predilections and temperament of their souls, just as various
routes lead back to the center of a circle? These are not easy questions
to answer, when approached dialectically and with "the critical
faculty" only, seeking answers as one might seek dictionary definitions
or configuration schematics from a manual. Many people seem to think
that if you can't recreate it all in a test tube, or turn yourself into
one, "it's all in your mind". Others want their answers handed to them
like de-encrypted cheat computer codes. One might be disposed to wonder
if different people, at different times and places, need different
influences to awaken their inner layers of meaning. Keeping that in
mind, we proceed to ask the question, or two questions: Is Nature "like a
Book"? and "Do books contain their own nature or world?" <br />
<br />
If
the answers to both of these are yes, we are looking at a phenomenon
that is a continuum. Gott und die Welt (or the Book and Nature) as the
outer pole, and <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innerlichkeit">innerlichkeit</a>
or inwardness, as the other pole. Nature and the book, like God and the
World, form a biological and geological deposit of the strata of human
consciousness, among other things. They can either one be the other. And
they both reflect the place <br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="im"><i>Beyond where the waters are moving,</i></span><br />
<span class="im"><i>Storm-darken’d or starry bright.</i></span></blockquote>
<span class="im"><i>
</i></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<span class="im">
</span>
<br />
<div>
The shards of creation are there: </div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="im"><i>And each of which were alive forever</i></span><br />
<span class="im"><i>in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.</i></span></blockquote>
<span class="im"><i>
</i></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<br />
<span class="im">
</span>
And the "frugal chariot" which bears the human soul is frugal, and
spare, and fits within a book, because the soul bears itself, with a
minimum of trappings. It both bares, and bears, itself through the
generation and exploration of meaning, which simultaneously occurs both
inside and outside. The synchronicity of their union gives witness and
stamp of the living Truth. In this journey, one cannot say either "God
alone is great" or "Only God knows", nor can one confess "God is dead",
or "Man is the measure of all things". Living truth requires an additive
process of synthesizing, or building up. When we walk around inside
this artful and divine maze, created by the human spirit, it may seem
that various rooms are at war with each other. <br />
<br />
<br />
But
this is what we would expect if we are plunged In Media Res. If the
soul is "terribly surprised" (Emily Dickinson) it can feel its "terrible
life". Depending on the flux of that life, different means and methods
and ways lead back to the circle. This used to be widely known in the
Western cultural project, since the entire Western liberal arts, as they
evolved out of the humane and spiritual experience of the West,
actively confessed that the arts were both liberal and conservational,
scientific and artistic, secular and spiritual. They were unashamedly In
Media Res - plunging into the living stream of the arts that make free,
aware of the surface contradictions, overcoming this with spiritual
courage. <br />
<br />
<br />
This is how and why we can have
Kafka so beautifully say that "books are the axe for the frozen sea
within us", and yet place him in the same tradition that insists (pace
Kafka) that <br />
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<br /></div>
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<div>
<span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt_attribution"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt_attribution"><span class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-c-txt_attribution"><wbr></wbr></span></span></span></div>
</div>
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<div class="m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-o-poem m_2451474474515616112gmail-m_-443567800835922913gmail-m_-8268810941834088555m_4377209927512387169gmail-m_-3816879780383044546gmail-m_-2329943171639964580gmail-m_6841083095166275512gmail-m_1242941039563720723gmail-m_-7771391531127318373gmail-m_1630001663295316562gmail-m_8611268875963812031gmail-isActive">
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>I think that I shall never see </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>A poem lovely as a tree. </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>A tree whose hungry mouth is prest </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>A tree that looks at God all day, </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>And lifts her leafy arms to pray; </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>A tree that may in Summer wear </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>A nest of robins in her hair; </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>Upon whose bosom snow has lain; </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>Who intimately lives with rain. </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>Poems are made by fools like me, </i></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em;">
<i>But only God can make a tree.</i></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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Or even more directly, bluntly as a meat axe - </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Don’t read books!<br />
Don’t chant poems!<br />
When you read books your eyeballs wither away<br />
leaving the bare sockets.<br />
When you chant poems your heart leaks out slowly<br />
with each word.<br />
People say reading books is enjoyable.<br />
People say chanting poems is fun.<br />
But if your lips constantly make a sound<br />
like an insect chirping in autumn,<br />
you will only turn into a haggard old man.<br />
And even if you don’t turn into a haggard old man,<br />
it’s annoying for others to have to hear you.<br />
It’s so much better<br />
to close your eyes, sit in your study,<br />
lower the curtains, sweep the floor,<br />
burn incense.<br />
It’s beautiful to listen to the wind,<br />
listen to the rain,<br />
take a walk when you feel energetic,<br />
and when you’re tired go to sleep.<br />
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Wanli" target="_blank">Yang Wan-Li</a>)</blockquote>
<br />
Now
the above is a Chinese poet, not part of the Western Tradition. Yet
even "The Book of Books" says that "And further, by these, my son, be
admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a
weariness of the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Isn't this what Yang
Wan-Li is saying? <br />
<br />
Our liberal arts need a return to
this kind of beautiful, tensed synthesis, the reconciling of opposites
which does not sacrifice (in the Hegelian dialectic mode) the force of
either the thesis or the antithesis. This is not Hegelian synthesis; it
is the alchemical marriage and union of the full force and range of the
aspects of living truth. In Hegelian synthesis, one interprets the
vector of the proposed synthesis, usually the thrusting force of the
antithesis. In fact, to go further, we are not even sure Hegel himself
has been <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Hermetic-Tradition-Glenn-Alexander/dp/0801474507/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534270837&sr=8-1&keywords=hegel+hermetic+tradition">accurately represented</a>
by his modern pseudo-affirmers. Regardless, there is a vast abyss of
difference between historical dialectical materialism (and all of its
kin), and the method which poetry charts out for knowing. Poetry
attempts to preserve the entire range, height, depth, and width of the
aspects of Truth, in all of its nuances, in its most basic, frightening,
wonderful outlines. It is the "first sketch" of what we are excitedly
trying to convey that we "saw". For that reason, it is a good paradigm,
and method, for re-teaching the sacred seven liberal arts. Poetry
reminds us that Grammar is fundamental, and that Grammar is holy. Also,
that Grammar is not primarily or even mostly diagrams of past
participles, perhaps not even at all. <br />
<br />
<br />
Returning
to a grammar of Grammar, or primordial Poetry, man can nourish the
roots he has to depend upon to confront existence, which unfolds along
the entire range and aspects of a Truth that is "terribly alive". We are
examining method here, not dogmatic content. It is very true to say
that poetry is a poor ersatz for religion, yet we remember (for
instance) that it was <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/mill/crisis.html">the reading of Wordsworth </a>which saved JS Mill from a deep and incurable depression. <br />
<br />
<br />
It
is the way that someone handles words, or their "voice", which can
convince us of the veracity and usefulness of his or her spiritual
insight. The modern liberal arts themselves are in a deep and incurable
depression. They are, in fact, in terminal decline, and require the
re-application of sacred and real "arts which make free" in order to
restore their health and vigor. Certainly, super-charging Grammar with
the desire that it deliver facts, facts, facts will only further force
us into bad and unconscious Grammar, by convincing us that real Grammar
is superfluous dilettantism and word snobbery. The liberal arts should
not share the same methodologies as the natural sciences, for the very
good reason that they are handling aspects of the soul. <br />
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Eugene<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rosenstock-huessy/"> Rosenstock-Huessy</a>
suggests that we look to language. Speech is the basic social reality.
Grammar, in turn, is the science which describes and analyzes the
structures of language. Hence grammar is the foundation for developing a
methodology for the social sciences. It must be added at once that it
is not conventional grammar that the author has in mind. The grammar we
learn in school and which enables us to reel off conjugations and the
like is a grammar which has killed the drama and dignity of living
speech. Rosenstock-Huessy has in mind a renewed grammar, a “higher
grammar,” as he sometimes calls it, which will attend to the nuances of
tense and mood, and will see in these the structures of the social
reality…. (This book) could make very helpful contributions toward
working out a more human approach to the study of the human
phenomenon.”L<a href="http://www.erhfund.org/erh_book/speech-and-reality/">ink</a></blockquote>
</div>
Even
those who favor a very precise, dictionary definition (in this case
Thomistic) of Grammar are clearly insistent on this very point: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So
any consideration of particular languages ordered merely to obtaining
the habits of speaking, reading, or writing that language without
attention to the principles by which it is an instrument of the
intellect shares little or not at all in the liberal character of this
art.<br />
<a href="http://www.artsofliberty.org.vhost.zerolag.com/liberal-art-grammar">Link</a></blockquote>
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Taking our cue from poetry obviously surcharged with a great and living Grammar, we instead begin In Media Res, and we <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief">can suspend our disbelief</a>
(Truth is stranger than fiction): we embrace the dimensions of the
universe when we open ourselves to the possibility of the full range of
Truth, rather than the rather narrow corners and walls which buffer us
both from what is "out there" and what is "in there". This
re-orientation to the sacred seven Liberal Arts (or "Arts which make
free") cannot be attained by embracing the reigning methodologies of the
Twentieth Century. A retreat into boutique cultural Liberalism, or
historicist "critical thinking", reductive historical materialism, or
scientific reductionism: all of these methodologies have been tried, and
all of them rely heavily upon framing real knowledge in terms of "fact"
versus "value". All of them share the feeling that deep down, behind
Western culture, is...nothing. They do not accept the sacral nature of
"Grammar". <br />
<br />
<br />
This primer is an antidote. In
it, we restore the Liberal Arts by the power of the Liberal Arts, and
she will take the medicine from her own hand, the first of which is
Grammar. By attention to word (and deed), by wonder, by awareness and
perception, by the careful and honest refusal to truncate any the
fullness of man on a Procrustean bed (even if it is a scientific one),
and by the innate capacity which spiritually alert mortals have shown in
locating honest guides, one can find a "higher Grammar" <i>which is actually True, Beautiful, Good, and More</i>.
For the first art, this involves attention to the forms, nuances,
subtleties of speech and language, particularly in the heightened
tension of poetry. </div>
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<br />
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<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum&source=gmail&ust=1535037782000000&usg=AFQjCNFCmwQiromb5R9hfx-VLHOs_od8oQ" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimae_rerum" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Like Aeneas</span></a>, looking upon the Carthaginian carvings, we can say "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangent": <i>There are tears for things, and mortal things touch the mind</i>.
Immortal things, too. Or maybe the Mind already touches us, and we it?
Whether we get it from a book, or out in the openness under the blue of
heaven, so long as we get it, we will learn new songs, new grammar of
something which is not New, but only new to us, lost as we often are, in
the dark wood. We, I...will learn to talk like the rain. <br />
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-92182500207549587532018-05-27T15:17:00.000-07:002018-05-27T21:52:14.500-07:00The Eighth Victory of Hercules Over the Mares of Diomedes<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span class="im" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span class="im" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA30wMSAWYiaoE0pj1PbyTu3E_gbN8l5nTkYPhLJqhKoTvJ7ByAU0wGFnb8NvrOc6ehzpiV5Gc8cfHXE3Iiy0GiCoPwFl1-y1Yjfy7hMo3s2Ul0pETEqeD-U4RoohoeHdB-cN-BRdQTTs/s1600/15am149.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="260" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA30wMSAWYiaoE0pj1PbyTu3E_gbN8l5nTkYPhLJqhKoTvJ7ByAU0wGFnb8NvrOc6ehzpiV5Gc8cfHXE3Iiy0GiCoPwFl1-y1Yjfy7hMo3s2Ul0pETEqeD-U4RoohoeHdB-cN-BRdQTTs/s400/15am149.jpg" width="151" /></a><span class="im" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> Hercules is sent against another tyrant, Diomedes, who owns man-eating horses in barbarous Thrace, as king of the warlike Bistonians, descended from Mars. Since the myth teaches us that these horses to be fetched are mares, we can identify them as the female psychological side of the male, that is to say, the region of the subconscious psyche, where the Anima dwells, unawakened, and therefore unable to unify with the male psyche and heal its division. Diomedes is the apex of this condition, and represents the false Ego, which is oh-so-certain that it can control the subconscious forces of the mind, riding them to tyranny, and feeding their inordinate passion on the flesh of the innocent. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> This condition represents <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightmare">a wide awake nightmare</a>, and the visual embodiment of such can be pictured here. Moderns are fond today of reinstating The Matriarchy. This represents a re-descent into the group, collective trajectory of mankind. It is of no more use to return to Matriarchy, and perhaps a great deal less, than it would be to reinstitute earlier phases of what is called "the Patriarchy": the Patriarchy was actually a step up in the struggle of man, and created the preconditions for the Age of Courtly Love, for it is only in eternal and infinite Love that man and woman can find qualitative equality. It was Love that summoned Abraham out of the tribes of Chaldea, that built the limes and roads of ancient Roma which lead to the sacred seven hills, and that raised the towers of the Gothic arches over Europe. Christ Himself said He came to earth not to bring peace, but a sword. To quote an old Internet acquaintance, when the man puts on his hat, and comes around, there is conflict. It is a difficult truth to face, but wars, plagues, devastation, and human suffering (the four horseman of the Apocalypse), are servants to the Living Word of God, who is brighter than the Sun and has a sword coming out of His mouth. This is not the Jesus that the Episcopal Church in America (our unofficial national liberal denomination along with Zionism) likes to paint from the pulpit every Sunday. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Because mankind is "behind the level of the Times" (unequal to the Cosmic Law's progression), there are periodic upheavals and convulsions on the earth. This is why Jesus comforted His followers: "Fear not, for greater am I that are in you, than He that is in the world". The prince of this world is Satan, and he is a deputy of Cosmic Law, fulfilling a very specific role in the economy of the fallen and fractured universe, ruling man with fear, hunger, and libido dominandi. It is he that will drag man, willy-nilly, collectively toward a final confrontation with the truth about human nature. Do not mistake this Zeitgeist for the Holy Spirit. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Unintegrated man cannot reassimilate to God and overcome the fractured condition of the Fall because he has lost his sleeping queen. He cannot respond in freedom towards God - he is alienated, not just from God, but from the truth, from his true self, and from Reality. He is a thrall to Satan. Every single one of his one-sided reactions flow out of this fundamental aversion to coming to grips with Love. This is expressed poetically in Francis Thompson's <span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/hound_of_heaven_flyer.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1527545009968000&usg=AFQjCNEoZOgxza4bvAQbpCEq5pQmnaT1MQ" href="http://www.maryhillmuseum.org/2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/hound_of_heaven_flyer.pdf" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><i>The Hound of Heaven</i>.</a> :</span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.8px; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_61" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_62" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Let me greet you lip to lip,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_63" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Let me twine with you caresses,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_64" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Wantoning</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_65" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 65</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_66" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Banqueting</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_67" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> With her in her wind-walled palace,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_68" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Underneath her azured daïs,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_69" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Quaffing, as your taintless way is,</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_70" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 70</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> From a chalice</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_71" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_72" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> So it was done:</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_73" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I in their delicate fellowship was one—</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_74" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_75" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 75</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <i>I</i> knew all the swift importings</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_76" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> On the wilful face of skies;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_77" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I knew how the clouds arise</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_78" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_79" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> All that’s born or dies</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_80" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 80</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Rose and drooped with; made them shapers</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_81" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_82" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> With them joyed and was bereaven.</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_83" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I was heavy with the even,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_84" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> When she lit her glimmering tapers</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_85" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 85</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Round the day’s dead sanctities.</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_86" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I laughed in the morning’s eyes.</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_87" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_88" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Heaven and I wept together,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_89" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_90" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 90</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Against the red throb of its sunset-heart</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_91" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> I laid my own to beat,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_92" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> And share commingling heat;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_93" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_94" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_95" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 95</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">For ah! we know not what each other says,</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_96" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> These things and I; in sound <i>I</i> speak—</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_97" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Their</i> sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_98" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_99" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Let her, if she would owe me,</span></span></td><td align="right" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;" valign="top"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_100" style="color: #222222;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> 100</span></i></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_101" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The breasts o’ her tenderness:</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_102" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Never did any milk of hers once bless</span></span></td><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="m_-8304972338349980210_m_5955091706804815792_m_-1426108566839460217_m_-4234433038738725016_m_-2782796304035828688_103" style="color: #222222;"></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> My thirsting mouth.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> If you were told that every single one of "the world's problems" has its ugly root in the darkest recesses of your own soul, would you give it serious energy and investigation? Or would you flee into deeper projections of your shadow? Some have even decided to join the shadow, and meld themselves as much as possible into that projection, to deepen the illusion past repair in this life, saving the extraordinary grace of God. "</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />"You are as spiritual as you desire to be, that is all." They were somewhat annoyed at the abruptness of his words, and turned away. At once he spoke to them in a loving tone. "My dear children, I said your spirituality was what you wish it to be so that you would understand that your spirituality is entirely in proportion to your good will. Then enter into yourselves: don't ask other about your progress. Examine your good will, and from that alone you will discover the measure of your spirituality." (John Ruysbroeck, speaking to pilgrims, in <i>European Mystics</i>, by Rudolf Steiner, p44.)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> It doesn't matter what happens to the world, if you lose your own soul. This Anima is asleep deep within, the pearl of great price, an analogy for the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within you. It is Hercules, the deputy of the true self from the human aspect and the true self from the aspect of his immortal descent, who must tame the Mares of Diomedes. He and only he can can bring them to heel. This is part of the process of purification proceeding illumination and theosis. The personal unconscious has to be overcome before the subconscious can be reintegrated, and Hercules embodies a more or less purified consciousness who can face the subconscious. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Do not be deceived. The Mares of Diomedes do not feed on other horses. They feed on human flesh, and Hercules will turn them against the Satanic ego that is so hubristic as to think that they can wield them as a weapon against others. This motif, for those who are too modern for Greek myths, can be found in<span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D2tuLYG9sv68&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNGoBxtXEIAyZqSdwuFeYu1aR0L9Hg" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tuLYG9sv68" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"> the Game of Thrones</a> as well. One way or the other, as we will see below, the un-purified personal consciousness will be unable to tame, or even keep locked up, the forces of the subconscious. Carl Jung remarked that men over 40 are either religious, or they are neurotic. Confucius gave the age of 40 as important, holding out hope for anyone that was straying, until they reached at least that age. A man ought to have a few things figured out by then. There is an old African proverb as well : "After the age of forty, a man is responsible for his own face". But for those who do make the choice of some higher path, and attain personal results, and embark on the labors, there is great reward and consolation for their struggle and sacrifice. They are able to begin the real work. We shouldn't think it is just a matter of "getting saved", or "getting our act together philosophically". There is a point beyond the point. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> The Mares submit to Hercules (naturally), but he (for the time being) leaves them in the hands of his companion Abderis. One cannot try to tame the subconscious, or face it, or even behold it, with anything less than the highest sum of all that is true, beautiful, and best in one's self (the Soul), and so this leads to the death of his companion. The lesson here is that nothing can be held back, that full commitment is necessary, in order to journey into the shadow realm. Hercules turns back to face Diomedes, and his companion dies. One could also say that the old personality has to "die" in order for the Soul to complete the Labor. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Hercules is always getting sidetracked, albeit in an understandable and sympathetic way. There is an inevitable human sanguinity about him, whether using a river to wash out the stables, or going berserk and killing everyone he can get his hands on. We have seen this several times in the myths. People get hurt when this happens. Inevitably. Perhaps the best lesson one could draw from this is to not get sidetracked. Have you considered that wavering on the goal, although perhaps not fatal to yourself in the long run, may very well prove fatal to important parts of yourself, and incur karmic debt? Or to other, important people in your life story? Hercules will have to found a town in honor of his friend, which is another sidetrack, of a more forgivable kind. Although he is always "in the right" and "doing something good", it is not always, in every exactitude, the <i>unum necessarium</i>. Be careful about pursuing sideline goals, and postponing your spiritual journey. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> It is as if the entire story of Creation, all of written and unwritten human history, stretching back the flickering fire light of caves or even the time of proto-genesis, is a progressive tightening of focus around the ever-more-definable question of <i>What does it mean to be Human?</i> In the fullest sense of that word, Man must encompass all of Creation: its lowest depths as surely as its highest heights. But the moral movement is upward, Without the upward moral and spiritual movement, all is chaos, an analogy for what will be more defined in Hades, which takes its meaning precisely from that upward moral movement. Without an upward movement, there is no "Down" either. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Modern man has at his beck and call all the primordial tradition of the past, scattered about like the body of Osiris, in the form of vast potential knowledge and development in many sciences which were not available to the ancient world in total form. What use are we making of those resources? And yet, <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Cologero has noted that ancient man (enviable in many ways compared to the modern version) </span><span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.gornahoor.net/?p%3D2577&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNElpbZ5J1BijAvKnE3X8TL856ayGQ" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=2577" style="font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">was nonetheless degenerate</a>, that they were circumscribed by Fate just as we are<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">. Everywhere and at all times, "History is a crime" (Nicholas Berdyaev). Those times of ignorance have past. The guardians and tutors have withdrawn, and the winter of the world has come, for there is a spiritual evolutionary test being administered, to see who can stand (in popular parlance, we might call this the "Matrix"). Since "now is the day of salvation", this time period was the best time for you to appear. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-passage-display-bcv" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding-right: 6px;"><br /></span><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-passage-display-bcv" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding-right: 6px;">Acts 17:30-31</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"> 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: </span><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; vertical-align: top;">31 </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "verdana" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;"> There are "cracks in the great wall",</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.amazon.com/Cracks-Great-Wall-Traditional-Metaphysics/dp/1597310247&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNETsbA_y_GbMRVtoXpKItwtIDqeyg" href="https://www.amazon.com/Cracks-Great-Wall-Traditional-Metaphysics/dp/1597310247" style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;" target="_blank">as one author puts it.</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">For those who can read the signs of the Times,<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reign_of_Quantity_and_the_Signs_of_the_Times&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNEs0fn8yZ5AJD1BQFNJQJaorlj0Gg" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reign_of_Quantity_and_the_Signs_of_the_Times" style="font-style: normal;" target="_blank"> the Reign of Quantity</a> symbolizes both the "best of times" and the "worst of times". Man will have to make progress, individually most of all,<i> but he will be forced to it by the heavenly and the infernal powers, all the same, in an outer sense</i>. That is why Darwin, Marx, and Freud were given domination over the Modern Era. T<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheron&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNHJ24Yb5_Vqz82uMIoxt1M08zkcCQ" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheron" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">he motto of Freud </a>was <i style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo</i><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">: 'If I cannot bend the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.</span> This is why we inhabit, simultaneously, the most important of times (the present is always the scene of the struggle), and the least enviable of times (karmic debts have mounted). The Scriptures promise that God would not destroy the world with water again; the day of judgement will be a day of Fire (</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/2_peter/3-10.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNFoiq831N7dYgR3Ke7vi04xGkp9EQ" href="http://biblehub.com/2_peter/3-10.htm" style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;" target="_blank">2 Peter</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;">). This Fire will either be experienced as Love, or as terrible Fire, depending upon the spiritual condition. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-reftext" style="font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1px; margin-right: 2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: text-top; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">9</span><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. </span><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-reftext" style="font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1px; margin-right: 2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: text-top; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">10</span><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-highl" style="font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/1161.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNEE2wBOkhkVuLsXqeaQmuc53_U1IQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/1161.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="1161: de (Conj) -- A weak adversative particle, generally placed second in its clause; but, on the other hand, and.">But</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2250.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNEfIhx4jvhD2pLUxQ4TQAbe5B-UAw" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2250.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2250: hemera (N-NFS) -- A day, the period from sunrise to sunset.">the day</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2962.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNE0lU5EFOXX8m4qpqNCZyCsQItU5A" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2962.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2962: Kyriou (N-GMS) -- Lord, master, sir; the Lord.">of the Lord</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2240.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNE5trh6423MosavNe7vCPgwab5XhQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2240.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2240: Hexei (V-FIA-3S) -- To have come, to be present, have arrived.">will come</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/5613.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009969000&usg=AFQjCNFzLva3-LPMYwmZXcF17BIs40pK-A" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/5613.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="5613: hos (Adv) -- As, like as, about, as it were, according as, how, when, while, as soon as, so that.">like</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2812.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGyRaqbofQua1IRWCYHax6T_tgtHQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2812.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2812: kleptes (N-NMS) -- A thief.">a thief.</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/3588.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNG_uBfsUgoSe3iS8x2cEXK77DiXxw" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3588.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="3588: hoi (Art-NMP) -- The, the definite article.">The</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/3772.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNFmOUwEVtaYj57PuFitSDY1fufUaQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3772.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="3772: ouranoi (N-NMP) -- Heaven, (a) the visible heavens: the atmosphere, the sky, the starry heavens, (b) the spiritual heavens.">heavens</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/3928.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNH8LHrTR_qe0hoaDuXfX-w5QWZp_w" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3928.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="3928: pareleusontai (V-FIM-3P) -- To pass by, pass away, pass out of sight; to be rendered void, become vain, neglect, disregard.">will disappear</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/4500.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGwGzGV8jCaGRHUnOxqaSgyUNe-EQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/4500.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="4500: rhoizedon (Adv) -- With a great noise, with a rushing sound.">with a roar,</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/4747.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNH31yViUaxp2QmGveU1TNaskNH6-A" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/4747.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="4747: stoicheia (N-NNP) -- (a) plural: the heavenly bodies, (b) a rudiment, an element, a rudimentary principle, an elementary rule.">the elements</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/3089.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGr-7ioMsTuWxstpfC6p0ODwVBCjg" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3089.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="3089: lythesetai (V-FIP-3S) -- (a) to loose, untie, release, (b) to break, destroy, set at naught, contravene; to break up a meeting, annul.">will be dissolved</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2741.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGkGhC7fA280poKqJYNZ1pr7IZLLQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2741.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2741: kausoumena (V-PPM/P-NNP) -- To burn with great heat.">in the fire,</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNHncA-oPAN2g6sULbJqRpxeD3mZ9Q" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2532: kai (Conj) -- And, even, also, namely.">and</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/1093.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNFiH0gK21zvk4CIgyJ2Zx7vyhRRVw" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/1093.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="1093: ge (N-NFS) -- The earth, soil, land, region, country, inhabitants of a region.">the earth</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNHncA-oPAN2g6sULbJqRpxeD3mZ9Q" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2532: kai (Conj) -- And, even, also, namely.">and</a><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/846.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGw-S39gHm6OvuYbIJyoBhWnBnovQ" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/846.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="846: aute (PPro-DF3S) -- He, she, it, they, them, same.">its</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2041.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGg4ge41ohvmK3YxSru3Ys1BfjTuA" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2041.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2041: erga (N-NNP) -- Work, task, employment; a deed, action; that which is wrought or made, a work.">works</a> <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://biblehub.com/greek/2147.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNHfOtupHPsRGFuKjB1heCRNs4ri4A" href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2147.htm" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="2147: heurethesetai (V-FIP-3S) -- To find, learn, discover, especially after searching.">will not be found.</a> </span><span class="m_-8304972338349980210m_5955091706804815792gmail-m_-1426108566839460217gmail-m_-4234433038738725016m_-2782796304035828688gmail-reftext" style="font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1px; margin-right: 2px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: text-top; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">11</span><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Since everything will be dissolved in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness…</span> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> We have behind us birth and baptism (Water) and in front of us Fire (the energetic state of Love that is destiny, and also the consequences for falling short). <span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.jacobboehmeonline.com/&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNHA39EBiRs2DJzzqguu1EofNaMJOQ" href="http://www.jacobboehmeonline.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">The entire metaphysics of Jacob Boehme</a> explain the workings of the four elements in man and in Creation, which are combining to create and purify the spirit of Man, and they can be related to these ideas and patterns of God allowing (in the fallen state), Nature to urge and constrain itself to find a way out "further in". This perfect and theotic state (<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.krotov.info/library/02_b/berdyaev/1941__038_0_eng.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNGmiW43_nQZjmXvktdkJhB9PTE5Ig" href="http://www.krotov.info/library/02_b/berdyaev/1941__038_0_eng.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">N Berdyaev</a> terms man a "theocosm" and not just a "microcosm") will not come without struggle and effort, and we will continue to see this conflict waged in the projected, externalized world, which groans for redemption. This is why <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kukai/&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNFhytEgplMMDoP6DuE6Junkwx8Yjw" href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kukai/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Kukai </a>could say, "The Mind and the World Co-Arise". </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Hercules will have more labors to accomplish. Defeating one enemy, and completing one labor, is not enough. <span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.bailey.it/files/Labours-of-Hercules.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1527545009970000&usg=AFQjCNFIwaeN3N_8QN9XOtJ6WVUwvTzPJA" href="http://www.bailey.it/files/Labours-of-Hercules.pdf" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">He must work through the entire Zodiac circle</a>, for this is the Cosmic Law. But in the process, He will be refined, until the day when "heaven and earth kiss", when the double oath of God, on earth as it is in heaven, is complete. Every time, every age, starts afresh in a sense - God has set eternity in our hearts. The answer will not be found in one outer battle or triumph, which may just turn out to be a diversion or distraction. Do not foolishly ask "why is this time so much worse than other times?" The good old ways, the paths of the Lord, are found within you, for it is in the lines of the human heart that the meaning, the purpose, and the answer will be found. Along that path will you find the answers to all the other questions. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His Righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">It is a matter of winning the Greater War and the Inner Struggle. It always was. And it always will be, until it is done. Beware of seeking your true self - you might find God. Beware of seeking God - it may be that you will find your true self. This was vividly illustrated in the story o</span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007d/110907/110907a.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009971000&usg=AFQjCNEbAvy4YP4tVQ6uhqn02IIrfi_p0g" href="http://www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007d/110907/110907a.htm" style="font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">f a Catholic martyr</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> during WWII, when the self and God no longer had need even for the Scriptures or outer forms. </span></span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "arial", sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">She said that Jochmann entered Jägerstätter’s cell the night before the execution. He was the priest who said the prisoner refused to sign the document that could have spared his life. He said Jägerstätter had already received the last sacraments in the afternoon. Jochmann offered to bring Jägerstätter devotional reading material but the prisoner declined and he also declined to hear readings from scripture. According to the priest, Jägerstätter explained, “I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord, and any reading would only interrupt my communication with my God.”</span></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> The labors of Hercules contain the keys to unlocking the fairy tale, and awakening the sleeping beauty, transforming Cinderella, or winning the favor of the Valkyries. This eighth labor is particularly notable for the devouring presence of the unintegrated parts of consciousness (the "mares" of <span style="color: black;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="color: #222222;">the Anima</a>), because "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". The overt tyrant or stereotypical, over-compensated "male" will not be able to control these forces, and in fact, not even a plain "good man" can control them either, hence the death of Hercules' companion. Only the presence of the true man on the quest can hope to quell and tame these forces, which later go on to serve usefully as bloodlines for great steeds for Alexander the Great. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> To quote <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7351">Cologero</a>: </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="display: inline; float: none; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Man is self-sufficient, since in him the anima is the passive element. To give birth to the True Self, the anima must be pacified so that it can receive the imprint of a higher source. That is why Jung says that a physical woman is not absolutely necessary for the individuation process. Rather, she is a privation, so the energy of the anima exists in the man and can be claimed in an act of self-possession.</span> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> You may also notice that Hercules is not a sage or an intellectual: he is a warrior and an ascetic. We live in an era dominated by the Lunar influence of Intellect, and under its thrall. The age to come will not be one of Philosophy, Religion, or Science, but of Art, the Fourth Age, which is the unity of the preceding three. This is symbolized in John's Gospel, the fourth Gospel, which speaks the entire and full truth of the divinity of the Logos. But of the three kinds of men (natural, religious, and intellectual), it is the religious "knights" who will be most needed and called upon to undertake the artful transformation and balancing of man into the higher form. Natural or pagan man has no "path", and intellectuals today think only with their tongues. The men of "heart" cannot consent to either path, and are forced into transformation. You can find more teaching on this in Mouravieff's <span style="color: black;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_mouravieff.htm&source=gmail&ust=1527545009971000&usg=AFQjCNGhuMTm41Mp7T5moWbfquAMSdQ4lQ" href="https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_mouravieff.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Gnosis</a>, which is part of the basis of the Gornahoor web seminars started by Cologero. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Knowing things with the mind will help clear cobwebs away, but it isn't the same thing as beginning the journey. And it is interesting that Alice Bailey places the "Eighth" labor of Hercules, by rotation of the Zodiac, in the place of the First Labor. We could relate this to the First Arcanum of the Tarot, the Magician, which is the foundation for practicing the others. This would make sense, given that experientially knowing the Anima places a "knight" in a position of potency and power for accomplishing all of the subsequent Labors. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"> Follow your clues and commence the Quest. </span></div>
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Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-51735920174339279542017-10-28T19:14:00.000-07:002017-10-28T19:18:24.975-07:00The Trivium Prism – Part II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja57j7nrvZZlGg6r2w5MYI3fByy86zlaEPwGuVy6aFJminVBLrp7ehC9ltSICCzLei1xqN3E3PjJ8R3AhgHdhNatZo1tUIES0e3cOHQ1dkZFkU3TdvPnYFo1Jp2d54rgL0hxMkmIsr8L4/s1600/Hildegard_von_Bingen-_%2527Werk_Gottes%2527%252C_12._Jh..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja57j7nrvZZlGg6r2w5MYI3fByy86zlaEPwGuVy6aFJminVBLrp7ehC9ltSICCzLei1xqN3E3PjJ8R3AhgHdhNatZo1tUIES0e3cOHQ1dkZFkU3TdvPnYFo1Jp2d54rgL0hxMkmIsr8L4/s320/Hildegard_von_Bingen-_%2527Werk_Gottes%2527%252C_12._Jh..jpg" width="272" /></a></div>
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<br />
First published <a href="http://www.bernardoption.com/trivium-ii-prism-of-the-artes-liberales/">here</a><br />
Part I is also there.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's a hard sell to convince
anyone that the Liberal Arts are “relevant” <i>today</i>. Most
people picture endless stacks of provocative, great novels or reams
of modernist poetry. And what's the big deal with the Number Seven?
And what (in the name of God, take heed) is a <i>Quadrivium</i>? A
better updating of the phrase might help: the Liberating Arts would
be better, but that carries connotations of Catholic priests with
machine guns. Defense against the Dark Arts might almost work, but
the phrase is taken. We don't have a good word for it, and since the
human brain at its lower, natural level can't think of something it
doesn't have a word for, this makes discussing them difficult. The
Japanese have a word for killing yourself by working too much,
suggesting that they are familiar with the phenomena. They also have
a word for the beauty that comes to dignified ladies in old age, and
we do not. Presumably, we notice and experience it, but not very
self-consciously. Russians <a href="http://russia-insider.com/en/culture/10-russian-words-impossible-translate-english/ri21171">have
a great many nuanced words</a> for spiritual states or moods which
might help us. What shall we call the great tradition of the Liberal
Arts? </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Latins and medievals called
them <i>Artes Liberales,</i> and I don't think the connotations were
the same. Possibly, <i>The Arts Which Set One Free</i>. In absence of
a good English translation, reverting to the Latin might be of some
use, if done with understanding. It would distinguish the Tradition
of studying the Logos (the revealed pattern of God's nature) from
self-stimulating and gratifying exercises in deliberate decadence,
which passes for “liberal arts” in the Academy. It would also
prevent endless invention of new names, such as what occurred in
esoteric studies with Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Palamidessi">Archaeosophy</a>
(to name a few – nothing against those movements just because of
the name). I think of the Artes Liberales as the Science and Art of
the Logos – the Wisdom (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paideia"><i>Paedeia</i></a>)
of God for the study of man. <i>Paedeia </i>is a term re-proposed by
Douglas Wilson, based on Scriptures. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In order to train in the Tradition
of “the arts which make worthy of being free”, we are going to
have to re-condense the diffuseness of the term as it has unraveled
and dissipated down to modern times, not in order to avoid what is
modern (our own ambient <i>milieu</i>) but to become worthy of being
set free from it. The DNA of the <i>Artes Liberales</i> has
considerable decay in the arts that wear the mantle of the name.
Fortunately, you don't have to lay supine in the mud of the modern
lower circles of Hades and submit to endless James Joyce seminars in
the name of liberal arts. Most, if not all, of the basic hard work has been
done. We just have to identify the form and practice it. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The pattern Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric
is basic to the tradition. Even the modern liberal arts mimic this
form. First, you learn the grammar of Revolution, with terms like
post-colonialism, gender study, oppression, liberation, etc.,
proceeding onwards to “critical thinking”, or Logic, which
consists of long diatribes by consummate word-smiths like Edward Said
or the <i>soi disant</i> heirs of Karl Marx, culminating in a Logic
of Revolution (they put political Rhetoric prior to social “action”
or logical extension) which we currently see operating at light
speed, like the mutual discharge of sheet lightning, all over the
globe. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The first correction I would make
(and this would do much good by itself), is to place Logic after Grammar. Other than the subject
of Geography, there is no discipline so little studied or aptly
learned today (in America) as basic Logic. It is probably impossible
to get too much of it in today's climate, and there is a reason that
the modern Academy neglects it in high school, and then places it
last (after formation of the soul in Grammar and Rhetoric), which
facilitates turning the subject into an exercise in political will to
direct action and extension of pre-programmed memes, twitters, and
sound bites. Euclid (or something similarly difficult) <a href="http://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2017/09/meta-fancies-and-mega-fallacies.html"><i>along
with extensive study of fallacies</i></a>, should be a major portion
of one's education. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
How many times have you heard (or
discerned) this line of thought?
</div>
<ol><ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All authoritarians are Nazis.</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
All Nazis are traditionalists.
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Therefore, all traditionalists
are authoritarian Nazis.</div>
</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The fallacy count in this one is
pretty high, because to make it you have to assume anyone can
actually define any of those terms in an accurate and subtle way,
using history, primary texts, literature of the period, and
philosophical acumen. Which is a big assumption. Leaving this
whopping monster aside, the two big ones are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause">Oversimplification</a>
and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicit_minor">Illicit
Minor</a>. But of course, you have to commit the Mother of All
Fallacies to even torture your mind enough to begin to think in this
mode to begin with: you have to read one book (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality"><i>The
Authoritarian Personality</i></a>) and derive from that one
experience (which, after all, is contingent like everything else in
the domain of mundane existence) the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ux-8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=false+but+clear+idea&source=bl&ots=O8AdulfF6T&sig=NVa1kwRPhqMojItevrhgw_Xj434&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE98by4d3WAhXqgVQKHV-ZCNoQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=false%20but%20clear%20idea&f=false">False,
But Clear Idea</a> that all Authority is false Authority. You assume
this because even prior to this, Authority is assumed to always
commit a mega-fallacy in forcing its own mind to crush fallacies in
itself and others. But torturing your mind this way is “destroying
the village in order to save it”. Authority (<i>auctoritas</i>)
does exist as legitimate, or it could not be “false” and objected
to. Saying that it is always a fallacy because it commits fallacies
all the time puts one in the position of pseudo-authority, which of
course is always arguing and running after fallacies in one's
opponents, but never removing the beam from its own eye. Which in
this case, means dethroning a false, but clear, authority in favor of
a <i>false and unclear one</i>. Such is the modern world <i>in toto</i>,
and this is basically all that is taught in the University today.
Hence, Logic is denied, and even Grammar changes its terms
deceitfully, while Rhetoric becomes a mask for power. The
mega-fallacy greases all the following ones<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And this is perhaps a very good
time to point out the necessity of the dreaded “Quadrivium”. A
naked Grammar-Logic-Rhetoric is a powerful tool in the creation of
earthly orders of dignity, power, and wealth. Athens, for instance,
abounded in great orators, was proficient in Greek grammar, familiar
with Euclid and logical forms, but that didn't prevent a disastrous
experiment in war and political chaos from weakening the entire
Hellenic world to the point of near exhaustion. The <a href="http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2016/07/016-age-of-tyranny.html">age
of tyrants</a> succeeded the “Golden Age” of Periclean Athens<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>.
Maybe they should have cultivated rhetoric less, and studied poetry
more often. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Understanding this sequence
(<i>cyklos</i>) intellectually (as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyklos">Polybius
</a>did) does not make undergoing these things that much easier, and
certainly (by itself) does little to mitigate them. For this reason,
the sequence of <i>Artes Liberales</i> does not stop in the mere
contemplation of the negative examples of fallacies. If it did, we
could very justly be termed merely Counter-Revolutionary, or even
snubbed eternally as Reactionaries (although it is fair to say that
any order on the Right by logical necessity is going to be allergic,
and logically so, to pervasive modern fallacies of the mind). We
might even risk falling into the errors of a kind of absolutely rigid
spirit of inquisition, which was always seeking to ferret out hidden
Leftism (always involving a favorite pet fallacy of some sort) in the
opponent. This would be a poor environment (by itself) to inculcate
self-awareness, consciousness, and confidence, and to incubate the
new birth. By itself, it would only be a “No”: necessary, but not
sufficient, for the achievement of the True, Beautiful, and Good. The
normal necessary first step, saying No to the world, it would be
lacking in subtlety to deal <i>with</i> <i>the flesh and the devil</i>
were we not rescued by the living powers that flow through the
Quadrivium. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Quadrivium is the spiritual
supply center for the positive emotional center, which can
successfully oppose or counter-weight, the natural cycles of the
human passions. Purity of the emotional center is most effective,
initially, against “the lie in the mouth of the beast” (the
kingdoms of the world). If the Trivium is the high-octane welder,
forger, and shaper of the swift and accurate workings of dialectical
reasoning (as the middle term, based in grammar, proceeding by
reasoning to high rhetoric), it can assist man to name discrete
objects, distinguish them, and sort them, primarily by the process of
avoiding fallacies and logical or systemic traps in the way the
fallen human mind can tend to move. It is the eternal No, sifting and
sorting, saying “this also is not I”. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Not so with the Quadrivium – as
we move into its territory we are in the arena where religion, and
not philosophy, is triumphant. The Quadrivium deals with the products
of man's higher emotional center; even though it utilizes logic and
grammar and rhetoric, it's center of gracity remains in the realm of
the aspirational, what the Middle Ages called the “sixth sense”
or “estimation”. It is based upon what man esteems in his soul,
what he aspires to, what he yearns and longs for. One can instantly
see, surveying the 20<sup>th</sup> century, how damaging a false
orientation of this center can be. A long train of usurpations, wars,
famines, civil disorder, revolution, and world cataclysms follows in
the wake of a false emotional orientation in the higher arenas of the
soul forces offered to man, like Promethean fire. When the sailors
aboard the Potemkin mutinied, they were courageous, idealistic, and
intelligent, and they wanted good things. Their motivations were
often good, their goal was praiseworthy. But their standard (being
based in Revolutionary or Modernist dogma), was utterly warped.
Consequently, Russia entered a hundred year period of intense
suffering and horror beyond almost belief. It is extremely important
to correctly stabilize and root the medieval power of
estimation/aspiration in positive emotional forces from legitimately
higher planes. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So even though Arithmetic,
Geometry, Music, and Cosmology have a strong dialectical component
that connects with the Trivium, the power and desire and
contemplation of these forms flows purely out of the purity of the
emotional center. Although one can intellectually “come” to the
Quadrivium based upon logic, the penetration of these orders of
beauty is only accomplished through the power of estimation. As I've
noted in other essays, the Quadrivium is the “content” of the
Trivium in a deeper sense, the actual substance within the “form”
of definition, dialectic, and manifestation. People don't drive or
walk hundreds of miles to see schematic plans of nuclear reactors,
impressive though they are. They want to see something beautiful
which consoles, elevates, and sustains them, or hear music that
transports them to “the higher spheres”, or taste an elegant meal
which brings back childhood memories, thus restoring the power of the
eternal in their life.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The power of the Quadrivium is so
potent that what is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy">Pathetic
fallacy</a> in one context is, raised to a sufficiently high power,
undeniably a transcendent truth. If I say that the “sea is angry”
that is a pathetic fallacy, but if Homer personifies mother-earth, it
grasps a truth: “So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving
earth possessed, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear fatherland.” Even
Ruskin, in his famous and powerful attack on aspects of our higher
emotions, acknowledges that at a higher level, with sufficient
poetry, “it is so”. This should give you some idea of the
tremendous power of the subject matter contained and dealt with on
the interior of the Quadrivium. As CS Lewis so beautifully put it,
“he who is writing a sonnet must both be in love with his Beloved,
and also the sonnet”. The form may be arithemetical (based in the
“counting” of the Trivium), but emotional tension and aspiration
is what generates the beauty of the poem “out of nothing”, not
the “outline” of the form. Even the Trivial arts of Rhetoric,
Dialectic, and Grammar involve the careful selection of a certain
emotional content, tendency, and style, which is operative at a very
subtle level in the apparently more precise and logical Trivial arts.
For instance, <a href="https://www.mmisi.org/ma/20_01/bradford.pdf">ME
Bradford</a> has an extraordinary piece which analyzes Abraham
Lincoln's evolution of emotions in his speeches. Regardless of what
you think of his conclusions, the light is illuminating – Lincoln
was not operating in an emotional void of pure Logic. He, too,
depended upon the estimation/aspiration of the emotional center. It
would be extremely advantageous for a Templar order to become more
adept at understanding the ways in which this center operates, to see
if there are ways to avoid being manipulated by it without
understanding why (which is at least half the misery of the world). </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our choice, to put it
rhetorically, is between having a Prism of <i>Gnosis </i>and true
Knowledge, or accepting the Prison of bondage to the world, the flesh
and the devil. The <i>Artes Liberales</i> are truly the Defense
Against the Dark Arts, the Arts Which Can Set One Free, the
Liberating Art. Admittedly, the white light of pure Knowledge is
viewed through the “Prism” of the <i>Artes Liberales</i>, and is
thus not a perfect end goal for human evolution. However, it is
available to even the most common of men, accessible to even weaker
minds who have sufficient aspiration, and is a vast improvement on
the modern condition of living at the level of animals <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=DDVkNj97dMoC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=sorcerer+state&source=bl&ots=RW9W-naGYn&sig=c8Oq3PgJpYrF5FKVloF7w9Y7NGY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk8cjP6ZPXAhVB8WMKHf4KC6cQ6AEIPjAE#v=onepage&q=sorcerer%20state&f=false">in
a Sorcerer-State</a>, manipulated by powers that course and pulse
through us, which we do not understand or even sense. It offers the
possibility of cooperation with the Logos at the level of the psyche
and intellect, and thus, keeps open the door to something “More”
beyond even Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>To
get a feel for how this plays out concretely in absurd irony, read a
history of the 1905 Russian Revolution, or the mutiny on the
battleship Potemkin: the revolutionaries were constantly having to
resort to ad hoc committees with total power, and to somehow salvage
their new authority, despite the fact that the basis of their revolt
was rejection of all authority.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>Some
of this can be blamed on “cycles”, but what is a cycle if not
the natural alteration in human nature between misplaced allegiances
based on passions? Are humans unable to understand, and
understanding them, artfully fend off a “natural” progression
until more favorable times begin to work in a better condition?
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-55224051612819472822017-09-16T23:08:00.001-07:002017-09-16T23:12:05.139-07:00Wishing North America Better Times<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
No country today is as relevant to the West as is Russia. Russia is the miraculously-back-from-the-dead ex-alcoholic who had a terrible car crash that he wasn't expected to survive. John Howard Kunstler is quite right to insist that the current suppression of free thought on college campuses is something paradigmatically new, almost a kind of "<a href="http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2017-wheels-finally-come-off/">Red Maoist Guard</a>".<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Red Guard-like action on campus may continue, though it’s hard to
imagine the “Snowflakes” besting their infantile hijinks of 2016. What
they are demonstrating now is that coercive identity politics is just a
new form of leisure-time recreation on campus, like Ultimate Frisbee and
the beer blasts of old! Have fun wrecking faculty careers and basking
in the Facebook feed! A few still-sane people of all political
persuasions are sick of their censorious attacks, reckless persecutions,
and insults to reality — such as the mandatory “white privilege”
trainings and gender identity personal pronoun crusades. I predict that
there will be a revolt among the university trustees and boards of
directors against college presidents and deans who pander to the Maoist
hysteria, as the damage to higher education and intellectual freedom
more generally finally manifests in dropping enrollments and the loss of
public funding.</blockquote>
<br />
A good term for the University Nexus is "<a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html">The Cathedral</a>". Harvard has been ruling the USA since the Civil War, and the world since 1945. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_of_1968">But The Old Liberal Guard is out</a>. The Red Guard is "in", thanks to the Second Civil War, which was fought "peacefully" during the 1960s. The radicals of the 1960s cleaned up, went to college, and then seized power as professors. They will not extend the same courtesy of free association and thought which was given to them - they know how they used it, and they don't want that done to them. So they are "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDBCiZKZi_g">removing all the safeties</a>" on their torpedoes: Conservatives are blackballed at the least, and humiliated and ruined at the worst. And most of them are actually just very conservative old school liberals. If they're willing to do this to their old party affiliates, imagine how they view their actual political enemies. Free Speech? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5tveO2nRSk">Don't You Believe It!</a>" Fee Spreech. <i>Sprechen Sie Communismus</i>. <br />
Russia has the advantage of having actually done Communism "up right" : they weren't play acting when they <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Cavalry">rode through Poland</a>, created the Gulags, cooperated with and then fought the Nazis to the death, and then hung on through a Cold War with the entire free West. At the cost of only a quarter of their population or so, not to mention all the misery and suffering. They are, in this area, every way our superior, having done it whole hog, and then managed to survive and repudiate it. The rise of Putin can be entirely explained in terms of Russia's search for a stable and just ruler who will throw them back to the trajectory of their spiritual destiny. Putin may be a nasty guy (I can't really know this one way or the other) but he makes good decisions for Russia, and that is good for the whole world.<br />
Why is Russia hated? Well, besides the fact that they are living testifying drop dead eat your hat proof that Communism doesn't work, and will swear on a stack of Slavonic Bibles by the ghost of Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm">embarrassed Harvard </a>with his piety, erudition, and dignity), that we are in a heap of trouble if we keep up all this keeping on, they are also European, Western, very White (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness">Oh the horror, the horro</a>r!), and Christian to boot. They are into a double hat-trick of penalties in the SJW rule book. And, AND, they have nuclear weapons and apparently aren't going to be lectured to by the <i>Faux Liberaux</i> intellectual giants who have masterminded the eradication of separate restrooms for Ladies and Gents. <br />
One can only hope that, out there, somewhere in the troubled streets of our gigantic eyesore <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ">Metropoli</a>, which exist as giant cancers all across the Western World, or hidden deep in the hills of the Appalachian mountains or the endless rolling plains of the prairies, are a few heroes, saints, or even martyrs left, who with unspoiled eye and untainted heart, look upon the rest of the North American hominids with love, bravery, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=29PWL8S9fQsC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=thomas+merton+love+must+be+prudent&source=bl&ots=boUJqk8yt-&sig=ynYenV3ShSse8hAnqmXPpx0jMaM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjV1-awxKvWAhWnsVQKHZz_DXEQ6AEIOzAH#v=onepage&q=thomas%20merton%20love%20must%20be%20prudent&f=false">prudence</a>, and firmness. It will take all of our cunning, all of our virtue, all of our bravery, and all of our strength to face the appalling harvest of apathy and despair which threatens to overwhelm the increasingly desperate North American continent, to re-organize it, stabilize it, and turn it back from the brink of wrack and ruin. But for that, we need leadership. Men of good will abound, and are perhaps even a slight majority. But that is not enough. No other country on earth is better suited to empathize, understand, and provide an example for us as Russia is today. That is why "Russia-gate" is such a primal, deep fear among our feckless elites. They are beginning to doubt their own narrative, just on the eve of their total triumph - What if it is all a Lie? What if this way, madness lies? <br />
Because the sky is dark with chickens coming home to roost. A multi-dimensional vortex of economic, financial, political, cultural, religious, and sociological factors is brewing up a perfect storm for us here Stateside. If we can face it manfully and in all truth, it will be a magnificent opportunity, as it was for Russia, to recapture what is best in Life, to find ourselves again as a polity, as citizens, as Christians, as men of the West. If we run from it, it will swallow us whole anyway.<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kol%C3%ADn">Who wants to live forever</a>? Physically, no. Because that would mean an eternal lack of perfection. Spiritually? Hell, yes. There are worse things than dying. After all, gentleman, (and gentle ladies), we live in an ordered and hierarchical world, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/">subject to Cosmic Law</a>, with "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies". We are bearers of the Christ, emissaries of the Creator, the mediators of heaven and earth. What could be better than discovering the meaning of that? Who knows, it might be a lot more exciting than one more Net Flix (TM) binge.<br />
By the powers, I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhrvGwlmr9Q">cannot forget the beauty,</a> truth, and goodness in the world, or cease to seek it's meaning. Because he who finds that, "finds more" (Dr. Michael Bauman). To die would be a great adventure, so die before you die. Second star to the right. Let's rebuild America. Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-21283230188128029762017-09-15T21:53:00.000-07:002017-09-15T21:57:27.623-07:00Jesus is the Red Right Hand of God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_SSYCyZuCodKmColCc9wMoQ1wyB3XQAT1pFABuAaQIAUpPh4sNSGm-PtOG24Hg9ZtWfLwpw0DicD5q0QOoBObVgNZDayt1nz0zF9IlZNsuMYZ4u6_L2tuo4Affjt28w-CFtZq6a-YoFE/s1600/RedHandOfUlster_DexterHand.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_SSYCyZuCodKmColCc9wMoQ1wyB3XQAT1pFABuAaQIAUpPh4sNSGm-PtOG24Hg9ZtWfLwpw0DicD5q0QOoBObVgNZDayt1nz0zF9IlZNsuMYZ4u6_L2tuo4Affjt28w-CFtZq6a-YoFE/s320/RedHandOfUlster_DexterHand.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><b>Rubente Dextra</b></i></span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Paradise Lost</i> (<a class="extiw" href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost_%281674%29/Book_II" title="wikisource:Paradise Lost (1674)/Book II">Book II, 170-174</a>) : "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should
blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from
above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to
plague us?".</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> A lot of Christians say that Jesus sits on the right hand of God, and while (as a believing Christian) I affirm this is true, it is also true <i>that Christ IS the red, right hand of God</i>. It was Justin Martyr's conclusion that "<a href="http://biblelight.net/michael.htm">the angel of the Lord</a>" was the pre-incarnate Christ. This means that Michael, leader of the hosts of angels, is the risen Lord. Hence, Jesus' words that He could call a host of angels to minister to him, for He is their captain. Christ is the stigmata of God. He is the double-oath that God will fight to save His world. Hence the sword coming out of his mouth to devour his enemies, in the book of Revelation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> This is difficult to understand, because we tend to picture God anthropomorphically, sitting up there in the sky, remote and distant, like a Deistic watch-maker for all practical intents and purposes, lacquered over with a mask of highly emotional and personal preferences having to do with whatever we like or love. Perhaps He is a great liberal sentimentalist, or a budding Leftist SJW, or a conservative liberal old codger who likes to play golf? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> This hollowing out of Christianity by Theism <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Domestication-Transcendence-Modern-Thinking-about/dp/066425635X">has been well documented</a>. Whether it began with William of Ockham (thesis of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_Have_Consequences">Richard Weaver</a>), Duns Scotus (thesis of Benedict XVI), or with the Reformation-Puritan strain which eviscerated Christianity of all magic, miracles, sacraments, and European <i>cultus</i>, what happened definitely happened. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Modern Theism itself shares a lot of similarities <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Toland">with Deism</a>, which had virtually nothing in common except for the name with authentic Christianity. Theism provided a conduit for Deism and Enlightenment to acculturate and grow and ferment within the Christian Church. So much so that now, the Yale Divinity School thinks it's more than While there is nothing inherently wrong with thinking of God in certain ways, this externalizing of God into the distant Sky-Father has tended to sweep away all its competitors, largely because He delivered the goods in the form of modern Science, and was capable of widespread acceptance among the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Religion">cultured despisers of religion</a>". Additionally, it served a valuable purpose in locating God totally outside of man, so that man's fallen nature was rationalized and to a degree justified, in that it left all initiative and guilt for this schism in the hands of an unaccountably hidden God, Who was either sitting on His hands, or working so crazily it was hard to get on the same page with Him. The Deists leaned towards sitting on His hands, and the Theists had the huge problem of explaining the existence of radical evil, reversals in Fortune among the Christian peoples of Europe, and also the arbitrary and narrative-dependent nature of constructing a coherent "full counsel of God" out of the chaos of modern industrial civilization. The best work Voltaire ever did was on this very difficulty, in the hilarious and vulgar satire <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide">Candide</a>. I am not despising the sophistication of either of these camps: <a href="https://www.giffordlectures.org/">the Gifford Lectures</a> would not exist without a strong tradition of speculative philosophy in both of these camps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The problem is not that Theism or Liberalism exist (in a bare naked pragmatic sense): the problem is that people have fetishized these schools of thought as substitutes for the Kingdom of God. So much so that it is difficult to even <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/1993/an-overdue-exodus-breaking-the-bonds-of-liberalism">convince</a> the Liberals <a href="http://dailysignal.com/2017/09/12/leftism-not-liberalism-differences/">that the Left is their enemy</a>, because, frankly, the Liberals are an alternate (<a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/road-revolution/essays/lockean-liberalism-and-american-revolution"><i>American ersatz</i></a>) religion, just not as up-to-date and consistent as full Monty Leftism. But they are (nonetheless) very different, and actually quite opposed. Despite all the obvious motives to understand this, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=2377">people trapped within "worldview arguments</a>" have trouble differentiating between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire">blue-on-blue incidents </a>and Broken Arrow <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ia_Drang#2nd.2F7th_Cav_and_the_ambush_by_PAVN_near_LZ_Albany">scenarios</a>. Part of what makes our Kali Yuga times so difficult is precisely that no one really knows, in the fog of metaphysical war, what the Hell is going on out there. Because this is simply reflecting the state of their inner man. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Meanwhile, the Kingdom of God moves in the actual cosmos, not necessarily bound by what is "dreamt of in your philosophies". Western rational theology has neglected the immanent and the intuitive and the mystical side of the Divine, and subordinated this to the "enlightened and rational" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idola_tribus">pieties of the day</a>. These Leftist Mega-Fallacies (like Mega Fauna and Flora) are so big they are hard to see; for example, <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/">the Non-Central Fallacy</a> is constantly combined with Idolus Triba (or "rape by the Zeitgeist") gets you Antifa and the Leftist Witch Hunt we are witnessing forming up around us, everywhere, today. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> All of this is <i>kindergartener</i> stuff, child's play, fighting with mud pies (at best). A colossal waste of human time and energy. And it misses what is most important about what is really going on in the Modern World - Man is running very far behind the Cosmic Time, and we need to catch up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Thanks to <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/">Cologero Salvo at Gornahoor</a>, we have an interesting quote from Rudolf Steiner: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span class="im"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 12pt;">There
is in man an inclination, a proclivity, to know what may be called in a
general sense, the Divine. The second inclination in him — that is, in
the man of today — is to know the Christ. The third inclination in man
is to know what is usually called the Spirit or also the Holy Spirit.</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span class="im"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <b><i>This perfectly encapsulates the challenge of modern Times, which stem from being downstream of the Incarnation</i></b>.Although representing the middle term, the Incarnation actualizes and energizes (rooting and fermenting the energies of the Divine within human history, perception, and experience. God reparsed the ancient Narrative through the living tongues of flame on Pentecost, thanks to the Incarnation. </span></span></span><br />
<span class="im"><span style="color: #0a0a0a; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> We will examine more implications of this in Part II. Suffice it to note that, when one is not in synchronization with God's "deep time", or "cosmological-ecological Time", the power of the Logos operative in Creation begins to appear as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA">The Red Right Hand of God</a>, compelling, coercing, dictating to man with necessities and through privations. Thus, the Left is continually obsessed with rooting this out, because the spiritual experience is one of waste and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia">acedia</a>. And they will only make it worse. In order to have peace, leave the Left Behind. And develop these inner tendencies which Steiner talks about, operative in the deep recesses of man's being, to bring man into sync with God's good and gracious timing.When this happens, Necessity becomes Freedom: the Logos becomes, not the Red Right Hand, but the beating heart of God's numinous Love for Creation. Christianity is utterly antithetical in spiritual actuality from anything which is compromised by Leftism, even the "modern Right". Anything else will leave us as "damned devils" who believe, but tremble. </span></span></span><br />
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<br />Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-54280293425201672552017-09-08T20:54:00.001-07:002017-09-08T20:54:52.421-07:00Support Your Local Dollar Despot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJGKSdKianujWzgQaH4pnzS3SNAVgFD7uHd-70OYM3ZIA1DrSEBmShVwOMfrUQT_7bx8rDBzJleX13_u_4EKmllhWUWbMLVYiPTzkX0SySZCrVLrzO0nIy12rxbD_Z95NW3yfwxKZoRc/s1600/800px-Tenantless_farm_Texas_panhandle_1938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="800" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJGKSdKianujWzgQaH4pnzS3SNAVgFD7uHd-70OYM3ZIA1DrSEBmShVwOMfrUQT_7bx8rDBzJleX13_u_4EKmllhWUWbMLVYiPTzkX0SySZCrVLrzO0nIy12rxbD_Z95NW3yfwxKZoRc/s400/800px-Tenantless_farm_Texas_panhandle_1938.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It is no longer possible to use words like "capitalism" and "socialism" in a derogatory manner - nobody knows what the most precise definition is, and can't be bothered to clear that up anyway. Instead, the word <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy"><i>oligarchy</i></a> is more promising. Even that adjectival noun doesn't do America justice. What we have is <i>plutocracy</i>. Aristotle defined aristocracy as rule by the better few, while oligarchy would simply be rule by the few: the unjust form of aristocracy. If aristocracy (as embodied most of all in the <i>ancien regime</i> in France) fell because of the revolt among the many in the "Folk" or Volk, our republic today is failing because of the revolt of the "many" elites against the remaining healthy "many". The elites are using "majority-minorities" to bludgeon their populist political opponents, who (barely) can still constitute the "Many". If one weighs the NAACP, SPLC, the ACLU and all of the many arms of the liberal elite associations, its very numbers and sophistication amplifies its power to the point of constituting a rival "Many", and gives them control over Media, Education, Government, Entertainment, and (now) most of the main-line Churches. <br />
In other words, the Western world has entered a downward spiral of degeneration in which each group launches revolutions in<i> mores </i>and laws against the more conservative elements in the other groups. There is no longer a "commonwealth". The main issue here is not class or social justice, but Justice. Neither is the issue which class or caste should rule. <i>The issue is whether the American people can secure just rule by any group or person</i>. Monarchy having been excluded from the outset, America had left to choose between the natural <i>aristoi</i> or the body of commoners. This dynamic played itself out (for instance) in the struggle of Jackson against the old parties and entrenched leadership.<br />
However, the disappearance of Christianity as a cultural force has opened up more possibilities. Instead of being ruled by (relatively) sound and sane natural aristocrats or populist leaders at the head of a (relatively) normal movement, w<i>e</i> are now confronted with the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/20699/nyc-mayor-bill-de-blasio-goes-full-communist-elliott-hamilton">proletariat</a>, the<i> lumpen-proleteriat</i>, the huddled mobs and masses, and actual dissidents who range from the bizarre and macabre to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztl%C3%A1n">suddenly-weirdly-possible (if current population trends continue)</a>. These forces exist in any society, but are normally held in check by just and sound rule or statecraft; the fact that they are no longer creeping when out in the open means that they sense their time is nigh. <br />
The new leaders which have emerged to manage these possibilities are either demagogues or plutocrats. Donald Trump is arguably both, while Hillary was certainly both, but in much cleverer disguise. The human mind desperately wants to think in terms of simplistic binaries (eg., Us vs. the 1%), but as the bottom drops out of what was left of once-great America, a multitude of insane options present themselves. John Howard Kunstler argues that America will eventually accept "<a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-14/jim-kunstler-rages-against-everything-one-really-has-wonder-how-long-nonsense-goes">corn-pone Nazis</a>" if that means <a href="https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/406/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-suburban-empire">it can keep Suburbia</a>. The Left apparently actually believes we are in danger of fascism coming to power, and they are pioneering fascistic methods on our streets in order to prevent Fascism with a capital F (<a href="http://www.nhe.net/BenTreVietnam/">you have to destroy the village in order to save it</a>). This despite the fact that George Orwell already noted long ago that the word <a href="http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc">has lost any objective meaning</a>. Corn-pone fascism comes in a leftist dipping sauce and spices if that's your poison.<br />
Why is it, that year after year, America's debt goes up and up, living arrangements seem more temporary, life feels more hectic, and the whole nation feels like a moonscape settlement in a dystopian science fiction novel? Because America no longer has any morals or even <i>mores </i>left. Carthage, too, once the world's greatest trading empire, possibly possessing ships that were seaworthy to cross the Atlantic, believed that money alone could defeat and rule the rest of the world, and seemed invincible. The British Empire itself went broke trying to keep its coffers ringing with tribute from around the globe. The love of money is the root of all evil. And America loves money. Not just a lot, but almost the exclusion of everything else. Money is the only language degraded intellects can parse. <br />
In America,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIw22XXSso"> the dollar is King</a> - "<a href="http://www.historycentral.com/Bio/presidents/coolidge.html">The business of America is business</a>.". We will not get Russian oligarchs, at least not yet. We will get the "soft" version of a melting-pot mob presided over by gluttonous plutocrats, all squabbling over the enormous carcass of what was once the wealthiest nation on earth. This is because as times worsen, people turn to what they know and understand, something simply, something denominated in binary Ones and Zeros - the Almighty Dollar. If illegal immigration pays for Tyson and the rich and Democratic hereditary legacy-bureaucrats, then illegal immigration we will get. If pollution and drug trafficking generate revenue streams, then we will get mountains of waste dumps, dirty lakes, and plenty of cheap heroin and meth. America has been schooled, almost from infancy, to value the "main chance". Even the Civil Rights Era could not escape this legacy, keeping their "eyes on the prize", which was access to all the power, glitz, and money afforded by inroads made into "white America". North America has become the center of a global banking Empire which wants to wrap tentacles around the entire globe, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-History-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0374292884">until the world is flat again</a>, with no walls or borders</i>.<br />
The poor don't know any better, and generally can be halfway forgiven for not being able to overcome their cupidity and ignorance, but their number is swelling by the day, and in a "Democracy", numbers matter. They are also engaging in inexcusable violence and shameful displays of hatred and stupidity. And "poor" is a relative term - financially, they still enjoy enviable slices of the Imperial Pie, compared to global counterparts. Their greatest poverty is primarily in cultural capital, like mores and traditions, and they give away what little they have to embrace anyone who is willing to lie to them.<br />
I am not sure what excuse the rich would use for their short-sighted idiocy in allowing this trend to gain ground, or even adding accelerants to the mixture in the form of Third World immigration, but they will live to regret it. The middle class is shrinking from both sides, either selling out as middle managers for the bozos who are masterminding one of Dante's circles in hell, or else falling abjectly into the seething mass below them. The ones that are left are woefully short more on brains than actual virile manpower, and that is not good either. The middle class still thinks <b><i>America Can Be Made Great Again, </i></b>if we just return to 1950s nationalism, or something close to it. My sympathies, but not loyalties, are with them. At least they still remember a time in which ordinary Americans had more in common with each other than not. Their instincts are good and right, but they are hopelessly outclassed by the enormitude of the problems confronting this country, which are not primarily of their design, and will not submit to their belated objections in the form of The Donald. The Donald cannot fix America, even if he knew how. <br />
Everyone in America wants to get rich quick, even the <i>lumpen-proleteriat</i>, who faithfully and religiously purchase lottery tickets each week or sue their local Walmart because the floors were too slick for their flip-flops. Minorities can barely wait to have their own local power structures, replete with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/3725976/Chicago-Americas-most-theatrically-corrupt-city.html">Byzantine levels</a> of corruption and greed. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine">The Italians and Irish gave us our first really gigantic big city political machines</a>, and other minority groups will continue this time-hallowed conservative tradition of money and power being marks of God's divine election in the promised land of the kingdom of God. But maybe this was there from the start, implicit in industrial civilization, as pioneered by <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6ZL0-hg2owC&pg=PA403&lpg=PA403&dq=puritan+political+machines&source=bl&ots=4sOL0bQD9r&sig=rjRBNkdRRyJ89-mnpcX8C0IoUkw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIwf3y7ZTWAhUHslQKHRt1BPsQ6AEIOzAD#v=onepage&q=puritan%20political%20machines&f=false">the Puritans</a>. Certainly the Abolitionist movement can be viewed as a very effective version of a political machine, if judged by the attainment of goals and aims. Even the Allies during WW2 engaged in <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2010/03/world-war-ii-primary-sourcebook.html">effective juggernaut propaganda</a>, all in the name of Freedom, Justice, and (above all) the Dollar.<br />
It's hard to tell where it all started anymore, but start it did. Western Civilization is (today) for the most part concerned with making money.This means that, in the end, money is all we will have left, and that in name only, because money is not the same as economic wealth or resilience, let alone culture or civilization. We will have to buy everything, including loyalty and the air we breath, and we burn worthless derivative bundles in our potbelly stoves to keep warm during the winters. American resourcefulness, hard work, and tech-savvy go a long way, especially when the world is awash in cheap oil. But macro and micro-economics are not enough to prevent the human tragedy we see unfolding. Man doesn't wish to, and indeed cannot even if he did, live in a world in which he is <i>just another brick in the wall</i>.<br />
Our global elites have tried to create this world, imagined in countless fantasies, of one unified mankind living in the peace and harmony of an economic paradise. But they tried to build it with manipulation, lies, and promises printed on paper. America is being run like a gigantic corporation, which wishes to take over, or at least control, all the other little corporations it created in its own image in the name of Democracy. Instead of a light on a shining hill, we would be the capital city of a New World Order. God may intend something like this to happen, but it will be built by the Spirit, with the wisdom and power of God, and not according to the dictates of a secular humanism run rampant on cheap (and now declining) fossil fuels.<br />
God's plan involves re-integrating Time (including Past-Present-Future) in one narrative, and dividing (and thus stabilizing) Space into many diversities which are united in the deeper love of the Spirit, the "shields of the earth". Our rulers want to fragment time (by splitting everything into nanoseconds and re-inventing natural law as if the past could be ignored and the future averted), and crushing space into one uniform order. This way lies the cindery plains of hell. The very people who are most self-righteously pushing for the will of a God they no longer believe in, are doing the most to ruin any chance that this generation can ever begin to glimpse something of the beauty and majesty of God. This is the definition of hypocrisy, Phariseeism, and tyrannically unjust social orders.<br />
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But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in <i>yourselves</i>, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.<span class="p"><br /></span></blockquote>
This is the legacy of 1789. It is time to go backwards, in order to go forward again. For those who wish to, here is a great place to start, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7498">at Gornahoor</a>. Failing that, or even in addition, you might need to start planting a Victory Garden. <br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-50090152452266983112017-09-02T10:26:00.002-07:002017-09-04T20:44:58.077-07:00The Taboo and a Formulation of a Conservative Idealism <br />
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The Left likes to portray itself as the party of ultimate freedom, of unbridled acceptance and tolerance, of final liberation. And certainly, if one's biggest fear is that you will die one day without every last chemical receptor in your brain and body being stimulated in Pavlovian fashion, it is conceivable that they make a modest point. Call it the "Left", or the "Progressives", or "Liberals", or whatever you like. The term itself is relatively unimportant, deriving from the seating of the radical Jacobins within the French National Assembly. A more accurate word might be <i>Revolutionists</i>. This term would allow us to differentiate between those who are accidentally "Left" (in the sense of being stuck within their <a href="http://www.ukemonde.com/news/usefulidiot.html"><i>milieu</i></a>) and those who are deliberately and violently situated within the internally coherent and radioactive core of Leftism, for whom "<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tFifkWzTapoC&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=alfred+jarry+we+have+not+done+anything+destroy+everything&source=bl&ots=knEiNDu6dR&sig=F8E_-7wv7YSFQS45Xs_dbHG0oLk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfpIfA1IbWAhWorVQKHR5KAHwQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=alfred%20jarry%20we%20have%20not%20done%20anything%20destroy%20everything&f=false">nothing has been done unless we destroy everything</a>" (<a href="https://thedissectedfrog.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/25-reasons-alfred-jarry-is-the-merdre/">Alfred Jarry</a>). Those who head up this list are perfectly aware, intellectually, what they are doing (noetically, of course, they are even blinder than everyone else). But on the intellectual plane, they are perfectly and lucidly aware that they are playing fast and loose with the facts. They are fully aware that there is more than just cognitive dissonance <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/01/matt-labash-tried-something-new-with-patriot-prayer-talking-to-them/">in their methods</a>. But an auto-tranquilizer of "<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UNkev4PJX5AC&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=break+eggs+make+omelet+lenin&source=bl&ots=ixVryRKM1M&sig=i-mnuIyxi3v7shGJ1YyIFaf16o4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvv-Gv14bWAhVDl1QKHVigChY4ChDoAQhGMAY#v=onepage&q=break%20eggs%20make%20omelet%20lenin&f=false">it's all for the best</a>" reconciles them to the hypocrisy and hatred and hunger for power that activates this pulsating neutron star of Leftism, which wanders through the void of the abyss. Leftism is the lie in the mouth of the Beast.<br />
A frequent question one comes across is, <b>to what extent is "Rightism" <i>any</i> different from Leftism? Don't Rightists use the ends to justify means, too? Doesn't the Right rely on coercive methods? Is it not so that the Right is just as ideological, merely from a different spot in the spectrum?</b> This small paper is a brief effort to differentiate between the two positions.<br />
First, "Rightism" is not the goal of a true conservative. His goal is to be "the opposite of a Revolution". That is, he is not reactionary or reactive in that sense (although reactionary or counter-revolutionary as a label can be more or less useful as a label). To the true conservative, it's not so much that the revolutionists are wrong, as that they do not matter and, in fact, represent a complete nullity. <i>They don't exist</i>. That is, everything that would necessitate so-called Revolution is essentially an illusion. Think of it as the political equivalent of Saint Augustine's dictum that evil does not have existence: <i>evil is just privation of the Good</i>. Thus, Revolution represents an extreme form of complexity, or Chaos. It is an "opportunity": stable societies do not require armies of SJWs and political commissars, bureaucrats and managers. For the Left, more revolution means more job security. By contrast, it is only in the Conservative State that Marx's goal of the state "withering away" has any chance of succeeding, as indeed it did to a huge degree in the libertarian USA, circa 1950. Thus, a Conservative doesn't so much stand for what is Right-Wing, as he attempts to transcend the dichotomy or binary thought which necessitated the invention of Left versus Right in the Jacobin political climate of 1789. His true nexus flows from Above.<br />
We might expand this to say that Conservatism's most important distinction is Above-Below, rather than "Left-Right". The Left moved the debate to Left-Right because they denied that there was a verticality at all. The danger of Conservatism is precisely in its refined ability to make this distinction, since degenerate Conservatism can sometimes (literally) confuse Below-Above. The first point to make is that the Left is already (by default) in the Below-Above position of confusion: by denying the Vertical, it ensures that it will sink to the lowest plane of existence, with zero transcendence. At that point, it's all sentimental claptrap and passionate self-delusion, combined with reductive materialism, in which it's more important to Seem than to Be. Thus, every minority<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=657BAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT202&lpg=PT202&dq=beaumarchais+mariage+figaro+voltaire+immortal&source=bl&ots=bCisOkF91j&sig=MuwO2m7SYGWFVI6ypUZiIsLhSCk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTjdCx3obWAhVDwlQKHflaB5AQ6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=beaumarchais%20mariage%20figaro%20voltaire%20immortal&f=false"> is aggrieved and sacred</a>, by virtue of merely being born. I call this the "Only Voltaire is Immortal" fallacy, a meta-fallacy the Left has invented. That is, the same arguments which were used against the sacred kings and monarchs, can now be applied to the "individuals" and "communities" and "minorities" which constitute the source of sacredness in government. The air is so thick with irony on this one that it begs an explanation!<br />
This brings us to the concept of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=657BAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT202&lpg=PT202&dq=beaumarchais+mariage+figaro+voltaire+immortal&source=bl&ots=bCisOkF91j&sig=MuwO2m7SYGWFVI6ypUZiIsLhSCk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTjdCx3obWAhVDwlQKHflaB5AQ6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=beaumarchais%20mariage%20figaro%20voltaire%20immortal&f=false">the Taboo</a>. Precisely because the Left claims that "the Right" is the party of the irrational and racist Taboo (of dead white European males), one should look under that rock for the truth (since the Left usually if not always projects onto others). In Conservative thought something is Taboo because it is presupposed that such things represent an upper and perhaps lower limit to individual human ability - that is, if one doesn't understand the reason for a rule, one should study it more and not act upon the rule until full comprehension is reached. Often full comprehension resolves the dilemma. This is expressed in Burke's <a href="http://www.kirkcenter.org/detail/how-dead-is-burke-1950">old dictum</a>: "Never, without the strongest necessity, disturb that which is at rest". Another maxim Conservatives employ is "don't tear down the old house, until the new one is finished". Thus, Conservatives <i>tend to reject</i> Leftism simply for prudential and pragmatic reasons alone. For instance, there is the thought of "not killing the goose that laid the golden egg" - homogeneous societies tend to be stable ones. White Europe gave us the triangle of London-Paris-Berlin, which generated modern Science. Do we want to obliterate the formula through sorcerer-apprentice experimentation? Leftists tend to think that these are dull Polonius-like platitudes. What is not understood sufficiently is that there is an actual Idea and Critical Theory which lies behind these Taboos. We <i>tend to reject</i> Leftist for pragmatic reasons, but when we stop to think about, we have to reject it utterly for purely intellectual reasons.<br />
This is because one cannot be Taboo-free. The Left has constructed <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=D62IhtCtYkQC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=taboo+leftism&source=bl&ots=O_Jq-zfjWj&sig=Bh_ZcicGSX0rrkATAIom2kaIcj0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjltO_w4YbWAhXHw1QKHcd4CrEQ6AEIKzAB#v=onepage&q=taboo%20leftism&f=false">an entire panoply of new Taboos</a>. The old Taboos had the air of a comfortable ghost, and perhaps a mystery about them. This was because it was recognized that a certain amount of Law and Order had to exist in order for the good Life to be rendered possible.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="reftext">1</span>First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be offered on behalf of all men <span class="reftext">2</span><span class="highl"><a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/5228.htm" title="5228: hyper (Prep) -- Genitive: in behalf of; accusative: above.">for</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/935.htm" title="935: basileon (N-GMP) -- A king, ruler, but in some passages clearly to be translated: emperor.">kings</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm" title="2532: kai (Conj) -- And, even, also, namely.">and</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3956.htm" title="3956: panton (Adj-GMP) -- All, the whole, every kind of.">all</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3588.htm" title="3588: ton (Art-GMP) -- The, the definite article.">those</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/1722.htm" title="1722: en (Prep) -- In, on, among.">in</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/5247.htm" title="5247: hyperoche (N-DFS) -- Superiority, excellence, preeminence, authority.">authority,</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2443.htm" title="2443: hina (Conj) -- In order that, so that.">so that</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/1236.htm" title="1236: diagomen (V-PSA-1P) -- to spend time, pass time, live.">we may lead</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2263.htm" title="2263: eremon (Adj-AMS) -- Quiet, tranquil.">tranquil</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm" title="2532: kai (Conj) -- And, even, also, namely.">and</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2272.htm" title="2272: hesychion (Adj-AMS) -- Quiet, tranquil, peaceful.">quiet</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/979.htm" title="979: bion (N-AMS) -- (a) life, (b) manner of life; livelihood.">lives</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/1722.htm" title="1722: en (Prep) -- In, on, among.">in</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/3956.htm" title="3956: pase (Adj-DFS) -- All, the whole, every kind of.">all</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2150.htm" title="2150: eusebeia (N-DFS) -- Piety (towards God), godliness, devotion, godliness.">godliness</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/2532.htm" title="2532: kai (Conj) -- And, even, also, namely.">and</a> <a href="http://biblehub.com/greek/4587.htm" title="4587: semnoteti (N-DFS) -- Dignity, honor, gravity, seriousness.">dignity.</a> </span> <span class="reftext">3</span>This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior...I Timothy 2:2</blockquote>
From this perspective, Leftism doesn't represent the generation of a new order of Myth, or a mere modality change (in the sense of "everything changes, but stays the same"), but actual Chaos or Entropy - a privation of possibilities, and reduction to a cold energy state. This might seem counter-intuitive - doesn't the Left radiate a lot of Energy? Certainly it does - like a roaring Blaze that will soon burn itself up and out, and to no purpose. It is progressing from the high-energy state of a conservative old Order, to the low energy state of Degeneration, through the radiant convective forces of Revolution.<br />
Conservatism (then) strives to eventually understand and control its own Taboos. This is stable-energy State. The Taboo moves from it's caricature (in Leftism) towards Mystery, resolving into the higher energy state of what we might call stable equilibrium at a higher level shell of energy. All Conservatives society exhibit this trend. If they do not become trapped and confused and temporarily descend downwards on the Above-Below continuum, they move or oscillate gently along the vertical equilibrium. Thus, the Old South (for instance) had a budding anti-Slave movement, until the South became needlessly rigid and defensive, when under attack by Abolitionism. In an even worse sense, Germany illustrated <a href="https://deconstructingleftism.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/some-thoughts-on-german-national-socialism-on-hitlers-birthday/">a large move down</a> the vertical pole. <br />
This cycle is usually broken by Revolution. In fact, revolutionary forces disturbed steady-state oscillation of both the above examples (in the case of the Old South, it created a new kind of white nationalism out of the local organic counties and states of the South). The creation of new (and arbitrary) Taboos require actual mystification: Is there anyone who can explain why Antifa is<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre"> destroying the village in order to save it</a>? The Nazis (in this example) essentially placed technology at the service of nationalism, including the Leftist technologies of revolution and agitation. Germany began moving down the vertical pole, becoming a failed conservative state (down is up). Electrified by the radiant energies of Leftism, which to some degree interrupted and confused attempts to hold the equilibrium, the conservative state slid into perhaps the penultimate modern example of political tragedy.<br />
The Conservative response to all of this is that there are two necessary conditions of good government: first, Verticality has to be acknowledged. Thus, Leftism <i>prima facie</i> disqualifies itself, and deliberately so: their desire to destroy old Taboos is merely a brand new Taboo (old Taboos MUST be destroyed!) masquerading as Reason. This effectively ensures that one cannot pass through the Taboo state into Mystery, progressing into steady-State higher energy shell (which allows accumulation and possible movement to even higher states). One wastes colossal amounts of time and energy thrashing about, dispersing energy, and falling to lower levels. This is what one could expect given the Ideology of 1789.<br />
One does not try to create Taboos - Taboos represent man's mortality and privation: in a word, they are the marks of the presence of Evil. But they are not Evil themselves, for they perform (and conserve) a function. One <i>overcomes</i> them spiritually. This allows real Progress, in the only possible sense. So the second condition of good government is Purity. That is, one has to maintain enough tension to hold steady-state and avoid a downward slide, mistaking Down for Up, or forgetting one's relative position on the hierarchy. One also has to avoid the temptation of trying to mingle revolutionary methods with conservative goals. The important distinction is Up-Down, not Left and Right - that way lies binary thought, with consequent self-justification. To combat the Left, we have to go beyond Right-Left (itself a new Taboo generated by Revolution).<br />
Conservatism (then) is unpopular both because it admits that Man is Not God, and also, that he must become One with God. These are both unpopular truths. One presupposes Verticality, the other sets the preconditions for moving up rather than down.<br />
But there is one more critical and theoretical insight to be posited. Conservatism is on the side of both God and the devil (The Up-Down). This is the final subtle realization, and doesn't the Left scream this at every turn? Whereas Revolution and Leftism almost inherently depend upon the demonization of both Spirituality and Morality (by any means necessary), because they require a morally self-righteous Crusade, Conservative Thought does not attempt to deny that both the Demi-Urge and the Devil have a place within the hierarchical Order, nor that God is its <i>summum bonum</i>. That is, it is not committed to a Gnostic obsession or illusion that man is endlessly plastic, and that Nature as such is evil. Nature is evil when it is denied the benefits of its Taboos, which exist as necessaries to create the possibility of transcendence and individual Good. Thus, the Left's rage against Taboos-as-such is both hypocritical and also an enormous loss of energy which ought to be <i>conserved</i>. This leads to all sorts of practical critiques of the Left, eg., To what extent has the Cost of "Progress" been too high for the "Return on Investment"?, etc., which are perfectly valid in their own sphere, but are not the main issue.<br />
One can certainly quibble that Equality of Result is simply too big of a goal to be micro-managed by the State, or question whether the costs are inherently too high, etc., etc. But these are lower-plane disagreements, valid within their own sphere only. Conservatism (unlike Leftism) does not deny the place of either the Devil, the Flesh, or the World. In fact, it fully acknowledges them, and insists on putting them "in their place" in the hierarchy: "There is a time for war, and a time for peace...." It is based not on Gnostic desires to obliterate Nature, but rather a belief that the way forward is for those who possess Gnosis (as opposed to ideological pistis or doxa/dogma) ought to rule - the Just should be King.<br />
That this is an Ideal, rather than a perfect reality, is of course granted ("The perfect is the enemy of the good" - Russian proverb). If it was instantly and totally achievable <i>now</i>, <u>it would not be Ideal</u>, and this would betray the second principle of Purity. Purity must always be maintained, because without it, the tension slackens and a Conservative State can easily go from the Weimar Republic into the hands of a Chancellor who wants to "save" Germany from the Jews. This Purity, however, can only be truly Vertical or Transcendental - that is, it is beyond or sourced beyond, politics. It flows through politics (Liberalism imagines that it should not, for it is a lower order Leftist heresy), but it cannot originate in politics. The only way to maintain purity is to ruthlessly agree with your enemy against you, lest he take you before the judge. That is to say, the South should have freed the slaves first, and then fired on Fort Sumter. One cannot <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-God-That-Failed-Constructing/dp/1621380068">embrace the tactics of Revolution</a>. The patchwork of variegated English and Brittanic ordered liberty in the Old South would have been destroyed by either the success or the failure of the Confederacy: the way to defend the self-governing liberties of the Anglo-Saxon order(s) would have been to grant justice to the slaves, and then secure a variety-in-unity across the South. This is exactly what Europe failed to achieve as well, and the European Union only represents another compromise with Revolution and a slide down the vertical pole, to something worse than nationalism.<br />
The goal is an Ideal, but not the immediate or immanent grasp of that Ideal. Within that tension of Verticality, Purity, and full Hierarchy (even for Devil and Demi-Urge, so that no Absolute Crusades or Puritanism are allowed), the critical and theoretical perspective of Conservatism is infinitely subtle, much more so than Leftism, as it embraces both the horizontal and the vertical, and allows for a fully textured hierarchical world in which even the existence of that Great Arch-Conservative the Devil finds a place in the ontology of Beings constituting all Reality. This affirms the possibility of Evil which exists, but only as privation as Good. Thus, Revolution by itself can have no positive meaning, except as Entropy State, as denial of the mortal and not-entirely-plastic nature of Man, and also as sheer Hypocrisy and love of violence for the sake of that violence (Nihilism). It can have only relative value, and must be paid for in blood with full awareness of the dynamite inherent in it: the Devil is given his due, but no absolute Idealism is possible from the Leftward axis, because the Vertical doesn't exist, and also because all karmic debt has to be paid in kind, since Evil can only be spiritually transcended and overcome, rather than attacked head on.<br />
Thus, it is not enough to define what we "want" from the world: we have to be sure first of all that we are in contact with a real world in the first place, and that our wants are proportioned to reality. Then we have to weigh means and ends, etc. And in order to remain open to questioning and probing by the light of Wisdom, we cannot demonically assert dogma/doxa/ideology along the horizontal plane. "Good" cannot be defined as being reactive or non-hatred, non-racism, non-hierarchy, etc. This is true "reactionary" thinking, because it has no view of the <i>Summum Bonum</i>. Liberalism, Progressivism, Leftism, and Revolutionism do not accept or even admit the possibility of there being a transcendental Good.<br />
To them, this transcendence will always take the guise of being the Moral "Other", and wear the mask of Fascism/Racism. But this is projection, and shows that they fear what they are. True Order is the opposite of Revolution, Hatred, War, etc. For the only defense against what happened to Germany in 1938 is actually to embrace All that we can understand about the nature of reality, rather than opening ourselves to assymetrical compromises with Revolution/Entropy. Over time, this additive picture of Reality can expand to become more subtle, but we are at the early stages of understanding (for instance) <a href="http://www.ponerology.com/">Ponerology </a>and how being Left is likely an eternal temptation with many masks. The "Right's" insistence on ritual, repetition is actually a way of keeping a flame burning with a certain tension which allows the radiant buildup and expanse of energy, of opposing the creep of Darkness. As usual, the Darkness doesn't understand at all, and creates new and futile Taboos to destroy perceived Taboos (or at least, Taboos which aren't being "overcome"). <br />
At this point, Conservative Idealism has immensely more explanatory power than Leftism, in that it is capable of accounting for a wider range of fact, both vertical and horizontal, and a richer texture of nuances and subtleties, both from political and religious philosophy. Above all, the account it can give of Leftism is coherent and rich, whereas the opposite is incoherent and paltry. The Left has to scream Fascism at every moment, if they see something on their right hand side, no matter how close. This is preoccupation with the horizontal plane.<br />
As we have said, this is entirely a waste of time. Without Up-Down, there is no Left-Right (or Center). Up-Down doesn't annihilate the secular, but rather, perfects it. This is the unfinished business of the West, and the sooner we embrace Ordered Liberty (or Conservative Idealism) the sooner individuals can get back to the business of finding what is important in Life, instead of wasting time trying to survive Revolutions. Of course, this will also entail the rejection of much of what passes as "Right wing" today, and this can be the subject of another post. <br />
<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-44927099099520949352017-06-19T08:50:00.000-07:002017-06-19T08:50:04.313-07:00Reforming the Reformation with Transcendental Calvinism
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<b>TRANSCENDENTAL
CALVINISM</b></div>
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<i>“As for Christianity in its less popular forms, it presents an
aspect of the tragic doctrine of salvation, which to some extent
preserves an echo of the ancient truth: the idea–pushed to extremes
by Luther and Calvin—that man on earth stands at the crossroads
between Salvation and eternal damnation. This point of view, if lived
intensely and coherently, could create the conditions for liberation
at the moment of death or in post-mortem states.”</i><br />
<i>
</i><em><em>Note 2, page 96, The Hermetic Tradition, </em>Julius
Evola</em><br />
<i>
</i><br /><br />
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-style: normal;"> What, if anything,
remains of the meaning of Calvinism and Reformation theology, in the
modern arena and world, after all these years? Gutted, as it were, by
its own practitioners, whether hard-shell Baptists or so called
emergent theologians, it has submitted basely to the wisdom,
practice, and interpretation of the very world into which it had
entered as a sharp and stunning rebuke. I have come across a few
faithful Reformed men over the years, who sprang from the old stock,
and can honestly say that had they ruled in the dark days of
decision, things may have gone differently with the post-Puritanical
West. Alas, modern Calvinism appears drawn to the secular world as a
moth to the flame, and everywhere it has dominated, it has left
behind a spiritual vacuum rapidly filled with atheism or liberalism,
if not revolution.I wrote an older article<a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=2194"> about this</a>, but it's been awhile. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Let us explore what may
be done with the Reformation, even at this last gasp, the flickering flame
of the dying West, before it succumbs to delusions of <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html">perfect earthlyutopia embodied in the Progressive Movement (Revolution)</a>. The
Reformation began, not out of issues (which provided a mere pretext,
and were ongoing) but a movement of the northern Germanic peoples. It
was Luther's trip to Rome in 1511 which guaranteed that the Teutonic
races would vomit up Catholicism and the Baroque.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The
city, which he had greeted as holy, was a sink of iniquity; its very
priests were openly infidel, and scoffed at the services they
performed; the papal courtiers were men of the most shameless lives;
he was accustomed to repeat the Italian proverb, “If there is a
hell, Rome is built over it.”</span></span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
(T. M. Lindsay, </span></em><em><i>Luther</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></em><em><i>and</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></em><em><i>the</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></em><em><i>German</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></em><em><i>Reformation</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
(Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1900), p. 44, cited on
<a href="http://martinluther.ccws.org/footnotes/index.html#11">http://martinluther.ccws.org/footnotes/index.html#11</a>
6-16-2017</span></em></div>
<em><span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="https://citadelfoundations.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/schuon-luther-and-the-eternal-calvinist/">Convinced (as we are)</a> that
Luther had some fundamental misunderstandings about Catholic
doctrine, it is still true to say that the Roman Catholic Latin
Church had doubled down on its particular and exclusive heritage,
neglecting to preserve a strong stream of spiritual influence capable
of drawing in the lately converted Northern spheres of influence (the
Prussians were heathens as late as the 13</span></em><em><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
century), not to mention becoming increasingly juridical and
“exoteric” in its doctrines and practices, as witnessed by
indulgences and the cult of relics. If someone in 1500 had been told
that in thirty years, all of Europe would be in flames in a religious
civil war, even the most sanguine might have had pause or the most
melancholic laughed out loud.</span></em><br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">The story of Europe's
nightmare descent is incredibly complex, and we refer the reader to
such works as Charles Williams' </span></em><em><i>The Descent of the
Dove</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">, for example, in
defending the “sins” of the Catholic Church: “Some sins do bear
their privilege on earth” (Philip the bastard, in Shakespeare's
</span></em><em><i>King John</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">).
Or perhaps </span></em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stripping_of_the_Altars"><em><i>The Stripping of the Altars</i></em></a><em><span style="font-style: normal;">,
by Eamon Duffy, or anything written concerning the iconoclasm in the
Low Countries, or Peter Brown's work on the cult of the saints, in
order to gain a rational perspective on indulgences, popular
Catholicism, and relics. Whether or not the popes killed the medieval
world order, it was certainly in a lot of trouble when Luther came
along, and there are no shortage of villains to blame: Francis Bacon,
Duns Scotus or William of Ockham, Jean Buridan and Rene Descartes,
Rousseau...the list could go on and on. Owen Barfield (and by
extension Rudolf Steiner) in fact argue that the Reformation and the
modern scientific revolution is a necessary step in the necessary
de-sacralizing of the world, which (surprisingly), is destined for
re-sacralization at the hands of a conscious spiritual elite (see the
works of Boris Mouravieff, in </span></em><a href="http://www.venerabilisopus.org/en/books-samael-aun-weor-gnostic-sacred-esoteric-spiritual/pdf/200/212_mouravieff-gnosis-book-i.pdf"><em><i>Gnosis</i></em></a><em><span style="font-style: normal;">).
</span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">This movement to
despiritualize the universe and collapse it into a fideistic
“Reformation” with an “Islamic” character of civilization was
occuring as part of a broad upswelling of humanity's soul in Europe,
even outside the Northern European perimeter, and involved general
laws of a deep complexity and scope which can be observed (see Oswald
Spenger or Toynbee) in other world-civilizations, such as the Magian
civilization in Arabia or the ancient Chinese civilization also. To
seek to blame one particular man or sect is futile and
counter-productive. What we want to do is understand what was at work
behind the field of force in history, and discern what to do next. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Although this will be
quick and skimming, it is hoped the reader can follow up any rabbit
trails deemed important to him or herself. To sum up, Jean Calvin
placed all the responsibility and glory upon God alone (thus denying
the </span></em><em><i>theomorphic</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
nature and mediatorial aspect of primordial man), while Luther's
emphasis on faith tended to obscure the necessity for individual
struggle and effort (also on the human side). It was not so much what
they taught, as what they did not, and where the tendencies of what
they did get right, would lead, at that historical moment. Together,
</span></em><em><i>however legitimate in spiritual truth</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">,
these two tendencies added up to placing man in a highly negative and
disadvantageous position versus the new secular tendencies emerging,
which tended to isolate and physicalize man to such a degree that the
only kind of God conceivable was a rationalistic watch-maker
operating as a first cause, a kind of absentee Deist Omnipotence who
left Creation without Love, magic, or any active Providence. If God
is restlessly ordering in some kind of abstract and almost
dementia-like manner, every fact in the universe, then if everything
is important, nothing is, because hierarchy is absent. If hierarchy
and mediation (human, divine, or otherwise) is absent, then
rationalism quickly fills the vacuum: a world of magic and dark gods
is far more likely to be converted than a clockwork world which
operates like a machine – men who sacrificed to Odin could believe
in Baldur re-born, but men who conceive of the world as empty space
and dead matter find no meaning in the Cross. A world with no magic
and no centers of conscious in higher tutelary powers (see the
epistle of Galatians) is not a world in which the Incarnate Logos can
make any sense, except in some kind of diminishing private sense with
no public relevance or spiritual power. Look around you to see how
that went. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">The medieval world
struggled (for instance) with witchcraft, and how to make sense out
of it, because it believed in the subtle, non-physical universe. When
you look at a flat medieval picture, you are (in a real sense) not
looking at a child's drawing, but a spiritual portrait of how they
actually experienced (and could not help but experience) the world
around them. Those Books of Hours, the Book of Kells, the ancient
manuscripts – all testify that medieval man felt at least, and
sometimes actually saw, numinous power peering through the world at
them. They felt it because they were more perceptive than we are, and
had more of their higher emotional centers and even intellectual
centers intact, no matter how undeveloped their lower intellectual
centers may have been. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Luther himself used to
pick up the crumbs of the Eucharist off the floor, because it was
Christ's body. Even Jean Calvin touches upon theomorphism in his
opening to the Institutes (would that he had remembered it!): </span></em>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Our
wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom,
consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of
ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is
not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to
the other. </span></span></em>
</div>
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;"> Calvin went on to
all-too-easily solve this dilemma in favor of a very voluntaristic
image of God Almighty, who did not move the stars and hearts through
Omnipotent Love, but through sheer restless and arbitrary power.
However, his instinct was correct: man is the microcosm of the
universe. The universe itself, is man writ large. And if Christianity
is even remotely true, the destiny of both are tied together through
the first born of them all: Christ Jesus the Pantocrator. </span></em>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">He
who is the image of the invisible God,</span></span></span></em></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Firstborn
before all creation,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">because</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">in Him all things were created —</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">things</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">in heaven and things on earth,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">things</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">visible and invisible,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">whether</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">thrones or dominions,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">whether</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">principalities or powers —</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">they</span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">have all been created through Him and
for Him</span></span></div>
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">We are living through
the re-creation of the Cosmos, in Christ, and it matters how we
think, what we think, and why we think. As Owen Barfield noted in his
many writings, it makes a difference what images the poet and the
artist or thinker conjures before his mind, and what thoughts we
allow to root inside our head, since man is not merely the measure of
all things in Christ, but has the power to share in re-making a new
world after the image of the Logos, discerned in Love, through the
power of the Holy Spirit, in this final Age. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">The Reformation, then,
is what we make of it (provided we keep an eye on “the iron clad
laws of history”). Will we allow a too-strict concern with rules
and traditions of men to determine how we interpret Luther and
Calvin, damning us to go down the road of secularization and finally
nihilism, or will we (like bees) take the pollen from what they have
to offer and make a honey to cure the wounds which idolators have
caused in the world? John Milton once said “the Reformation must be
Reformed”. How might one go about doing this?</span></em><br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">In the first place,
there are a great many wonderful Reformational legacies, too numerous
to name in detail: the practicing Protestant who is devout can no
doubt name many of these. Just as important are the
spiritual-theological threads we find among the Reformational
faithful, for example in Hermann Dooyeweerd. He is by no means the
only one (we could cite several “mystical” Protestant authors by
specific passage, including William Law and Jacob Boehme), but
interests us as a specifically theological interpreter of the
“possibilities”. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Dooyeweerd touches upon
the very topic which interests us: that our imagination is a gateway
to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit, and provide clues about our
future spiritual destiny, which is rooted in a primordial Being and
will return with what we harvested in the prime material plane of our
own </span></em><em><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">histories.
</span></span></span></em>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1in;">
<em><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dooyeweerd’s
</span></span></span></em><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">understanding
of perception is one of his most astounding ways of overcoming
dualism. He rejects the empirical and phenomenological assumptions of
a dualism between an independent observing subject and an independent
object. </span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Our
experience is not of independent things, but of “individuality
structures”</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
that depend on man for their full realization and individuality. And
the process of perception is a subject-object relation that occurs
within the modal aspects of temporal reality, in a nondual act of
perception....</span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Dooyeweerd’s
ideas on imagination emphasize the importance of seeing and
intuitively imaging God, self and cosmos in a different way. In
Dooyeweerd’s words, when our heart is opened to the transcendent
reality, we see things as they really are</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">.
The transcendent light of eternity then shines through, illuminating
even the trivial in our lives. Our theory itself becomes an act of
worship, where we ascend from sphere to sphere, until we are left in
apophatic wonder. But along the way, we help to redeem the sparks of
God within his creation. For if temporal reality fell because of
humanity, it is only through redeemed humanity that the world will be
redeemed. Our imagination is an act that proceeds from out of our
supratemporal selfhood. It is expressed within time, both within the
temporal functions of our body or mantle of functions, and in the
world outside of our body. We are simultaneously supratemporal and
temporal beings. There is therefore a need to relate our
supratemporal selfhood to our temporal functions. This relation
between inner and outer is given by our intuition, both
(pre-theoretical and theoretical). Imagination is an inner,
intentional act, in which we form images. Our imagination is more
than just fantasy, disconnected to reality. Rather , in imagination,
we seek the “figure” within temporal reality. This is an
anticipation of what reality may become, but which is presently only
a potential reality. In finding the figure within reality, and in
realizing it, we form history and fulfill the reality of temporal
structures.”
<a href="https://jgfriesen.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/imagination.pdf">https://jgfriesen.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/imagination.pdf</a>
Accessed 6-15-2017</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">If
I am reading Van Friesen on Dooyeweerd correctly, our intuition,
specifically our imagination, is a potential higher link to higher
emotional centers, which whisper to us of what the world-to-come is,
and invite our participation. To use Charles William's language, it
speaks to us of how we may be privileged to begin to “co-inhere”
in the Co-Inherence web that already exists, established through the
Love of the Absolute, expressed in the Incarnation of the Second
Person of the Trinity. </span></em>
</div>
<em> <i>So that this is the very project which the Inklings
(Lewis, Barfield, Williams, Tolkien) had engaged in: making a
sub-creation out of the material world, which would be “baptized”
and help to lead modern man back to the unutterable and quiet and
homely mysteries of “the deeper Law”. It is the “pearl” of
great price, spun inside the oyster shell of our short time here</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">.
</span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Instead of seeing
ourselves at odds with Rome and Constantinople, faithful Protestants
should joyfully insist on hanging on to what they have gathered in
their “fall” from grace, and re-uniting it with the fullness of
the glory of God. This, after all, is exactly the boat we are all in
since the fall from grace in Adam & Eve anyway. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">I propose a new term for
an old movement in the Faith: Transcendental Calvinism. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">To return to the quote
that introduced the essay, we will note that Calvinism, rightly
understood, clears the ground for a re-valuation of man's being in
light of God's free choice and high calling, which is to summon
knights and their ladies from the dead bones and stones of the world,
in free grace, surely, but also </span></em><em><i>in all</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
possible help and aid, prevenient or </span></em><em><i>ex opere
operato</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"> or otherwise,
to create and restore a Free Will in man that was once there, in the
Beginning. </span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>Calvinism,
if embraced existentially, rather than aesthetically or
ontologically, will burn down the weeds in the garden of the heart,
and make things ready for the rain</b></span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Calvinism is a kind of short hand, which is true </span></em><em><i>as
</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">a short hand, and
therefore, quite readily, as an existential stance and response to
its own temporary nihilism, which holds the believer in a kind of
terrible but blessed tension and readiness, awaiting the legitimate
return of the Lord, whether in the physical death and post-mortem
state of the believer, or in this life, if spiritual sight should
return in time. We believe that this is faithful to the intent, if
not the letter, of the best of what Jean Calvin wrote. <i><b>Thus we can define useful and true Calvinism as a kind of deliberately temporary Christian existentialism, designed to let the user function in a desacralized world for a period of time, provided that they are consciously seeking to phase out a fully literal Calvinism by (this is important) fleshing out what is inherently true in Calvinism at a literal level. </b></i></span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Dooyeweerd also
advocates (in his theological writings, in which he developed
Kuyper's idea of sphere sovereignty) a kind of spiritual
“multiplicity in unity”. This is consistent with a perichoretic
understanding of what the inner meaning of the Trinity's Love is.
Although Dooyeweerd applied this to different “spheres” of law
(eg., family, church, local community), we can put our point in his
language and terms: </span></em><em><i>God's grace and free
sovereignty does not destroy man's sphere, but rather perfects it</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
(Dooyeweerd would not, in fairness, acquiesce entirely to this, as he
would regard the analogy as misplaced and medieval, but whether he
recognizes it or not, it is the same analogy). Even the Westminster
Confession confesses that God as first cause establishes, rather than
destroying, the secondary cause of man's free will (this, of course,
is the same medieval “Grace perfects Nature” analogy which
Dooyeweerd rejects or thinks he rejects in a different context, but
Dooyeweerd can be forgiven for believing that post WWII Holland would
continue to have the sphere-sovereignty of its Christian bones,
rather than succumbing to the Enlightenment's monadism of One Secular
World). God's sphere of influence at the higher level is mediated
through to us in a web of co-inherences, which (frankly) it is
possible only to delineate in general outline or possibility, as they
are actually experienced, or known theologically through the
repository of the Church's doctrine and speculative “imaginings”.
This web begins and ends in Christ Jesus, of whom not all the books
in the cosmos (as Saint John put it), could hold all that could (and
will) be written. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">God and man are polar
beings, of a special sort. God is the “Self Beyond the Self”
(contra Eastern mysticism). The sovereignty of a God who moves (as
Dante said) the stars with Love does not destroy the free will of
man's heart, who is eternally allured and tempted into following the
calling to join freely with Love in re-creating the fallen Universe.
Since man in his fallen state is immeasurably distant from that Love
(in a sense), and yet still united with it, </span></em><em><i>he
finds himself existentially riven</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">.
This </span></em><em><i>Anfechtung</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
is precisely what Luther described psychologically in his legitimate
experience of saving faith, and what Calvin is at pains to defend in
the concept of “God alone is Great” (as Islamic as this may
sound). </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">It goes without saying
that we can naturally and rightly embrace Luther and Calvin's great
gifts to the Church, while throwing far away from us their tendencies
and other opinions, such as the denial of the sacredness of the
world, the reality of sacred and high magic, their political views
(which tend towards Republicanism or democracy), their individualism
and stubbornness, or heresies which crop into their polemics. There
is still much to be learned from the magisterial Reformers, for we
have fallen a long way down since then. God's high transcendent power
and will, acting towards the Church in the gift of saving faith,
alongside that of the magical and liturgical reality of the natural
world, and a host of other ancient teachings from the Middle Ages
besides, are all very real and (therefore) necessary to our time and
place. What has been revealed, found to be true, bears good fruit,
and is beautiful, is so for a reason. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">What does it matter if
certain spiritual practices appear irreconciliable within a modern
mindset? If they are True, then that is enough, and a way must be
found to bring them together in a fruitful spirituality which can
overcome the modern spirit of the Times. No one has to learn
everything, except charity, which covers everything. Indeed, nothing
less than all the gifts of the holy Church will aid us in the fight
(eternal it would seem) against the wiles of the Enemy, who is adept
(as Luther would say) at pressing upon every side, particularly that
one which is most advantageous to our loss. God is free and all the
glory is His, but man must make use of what he can, with the mind of
Christ, to stretch out that one hand or take that first step. For
some, this will involve a very different path than for others, but
the center holds: it always holds, and we will find ourselves
together again, if we each slay the enemy in front of us, our false
self, which holds us back from a world that is yearning to go with us
to our immortal and deathless God for redemption. </span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">Transcendental Calvinism
would be temporary – and being so, it would live forever, for it
would be one very important chapter in the re-unification of the
suffering Church, and that final point, upon the holy mountain, where
all those who are capable of standing in these dark days, would stand
together, a motley crew, to be sure, by human reckoning, but in God's
wisdom, just the band of brothers to overcome the world. A
transcendental Calvinist confesses that, just as God's choice is
free, so is His choice of means, be they icons, saints, prayers to
the dead, high magic, philosophy, meditation, or whatever skillful
means (</span></em><em><i>upaya</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">)
leads to good fruit (judge a tree by its fruit, ya'll). The very
insistence on God's sovereignty, election, and grace would guarantee
a clean conscience and clear the air for the employment of what means
lie at hand for the reconquest of Paradise. It is precisely in the
recognition that </span></em><em><i>Non Nobis, Domine</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
(not unto us) be the glory, that man would gain a clean and unseared
conscience to reclaim all the ancient techniques of re-imagining and
re-creating the world, which would be judged solely upon their fruit,
rather than upon the Protestant Reformers somewhat skewed and
polemical “takes” on practices from the Middle Ages which they
could not possibly appreciate or understand at the time that they
delivered their </span></em><em><i>doxa </i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">(opinions).
</span></em>
<br />
<em> <span style="font-style: normal;">This would help lead to a
re-unified Church and to </span></em><em><i>gnosis </i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">(knowledge),
rather than dogmatics. And </span></em><em><i>Gnosis</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">
is the only thing that will save the Church which our grandchildren
will inherit, in an impoverished but still very dominant secular
world which reduces everything to dead matter, empty space, and the
rule of ones and zeros through the power of Money. All around us, the
ancient practices and teachings of the Church are asphyixiated in the
modern air. Faith (</span></em><em><i>pistis</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">)
only makes sense in a sacramental universe, and the universe,
</span></em><em><i>precisely because man is sacramental</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">,
increasingly resembles a gigantic hologram dominated purely by
physical causes and effects. Secular thinking creates a more secular
world, in the sense of a legitimate illusion (</span></em><em><i>maya</i></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;">),
which must be overcome. And nothing but God and His deathless Love
can uphold it against the forces which the modern world has
unleashed. But with this, we can begin to re-imagine the World, as
God first thought it, and even (perhaps) with a little bit of
ourselves </span></em><em><i>in the corner of the painting. </i></em>
<br />
<em> </em>
<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-11920398932164132902017-02-21T18:59:00.000-08:002017-02-21T18:59:02.241-08:00 The Mind and the World Co-AriseNewer <a href="http://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/#!/2017/02/the-mind-and-world-co-arise.html">site</a><br />
<br /><br /><b><i>"Your life a construction, one day you will see, through the illusion, and into the dream." - Damh the Bard, The Cauldron Born</i></b><br /><br /> It is a trite common place in PostMo society that "we create our own reality". You can see it in phrases like "re-inventing yourself" or "attracting wealth". Very complex, nuanced ideas from thinkers like Immanuel Kant filter down into pop culture and end up being used by charlatans and politicians to make themselves more popular and/or richer, or more successful with the opposite sex. Entire university study programs are dominated by a moral and cultural relativism which insists vehemently that people are simply too magical and complex to be pigeon-holed with stereotypes or laws or rules of any kind (unless you happen to be a white Christian male, in which case, you are cast in the role of villain-oppressor-enforcer; having this done to you gives you an evolutionary advantage, in that your instincts for self preservation are enlisted and directed toward thinking more critically about the new system of thought). <br /> Luckily, we don't have to spend aeons re-inventing wheels to get us out of this hell, given that it is obvious that the Leftist compulsion to purge the West of its spiritual foundations will, like cancer, eventually "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre"><span style="color: #2b256f;">kill the village in order to save it</span></a>". If Plato's <i>Timaeus</i> is a rip off of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Athena"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Black Athena</span></a>, or Jane Austen is actually (<a href="http://www.jasna.org/bookrev/br201p19.html"><span style="color: #2b256f;">didn't you get it?)</span></a> the foremost critic of Victorian spiritual culture, or if (hey, hey!) Alexander Hamilton is <a href="https://abiasedperspective.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/lukes-log-hamiltons-multiracial-cast-is-an-america-beyond-multiculturalism/"><span style="color: #2b256f;">one cool multicultural dude</span></a>, and if these realizations are supposed to regenerate a "New America", I guess it is just the natural consequences of generations (now) of indoctrination by the likes of John Dewey in "theories of truth". This is what happens when deep spiritual truths or philosophical reflections become "popularized" among the masses - something, perhaps anything worth knowing in those reflections, becomes "lost in translation" and ends up furthering processes which can only be described as diametrically opposite and opposed to their supposed spiritual progenitors. Can any thinking person possibly imagine that, insane as they were, our Founding Fathers would have endorsed (say) open immigration? <br /><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the <i>English</i>, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All <i>Africa</i> is black or tawny. <i>Asia</i> chiefly tawny. <i>America</i> (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in <i>Europe</i>, the <i>Spaniards</i>, Italians, <i>French</i>, <i>Russians</i> and <i>Swedes</i>, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the <i>Germans</i> also, the <i>Saxons</i> only excepted, who with the <i>English</i>, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, <i>Scouring</i> our Planet, by clearing <i>America</i> of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or <i>Venus</i>, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of <i>Africa</i>, by Planting them in <i>America</i>, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. </blockquote>
<br /><br /> Or that Socrates was a card-carrying Democrat, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Buchanan"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Scott Buchanan</span></a> (that old arch liberal) seemed to think? <br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike."</blockquote>
<br /><br /><i>NOTE: I like Scott Buchanan, and may be being unfair to him, but he was (as all "persons of importance" generally then were, of the highly liberal persuasion). He did, however, liken Science to the "black arts": science is "the greatest body of uncriticized dogma we have today". So he is forgiven simply for having written this sentence, a very brave and bold move indeed for a liberal, intellectually, and one almost unimaginable for a "liberal" today.</i> <br /><br /> It should be noted that the deleterious effect on American from immigration, both of the Irish (big city corruption machines), the Italians (the mob), and the Germans (left wing intelligentsia), has never been thoroughly probed or examined by our universities, for obvious reasons. Socrates was likely put to death, not for "corrupting the youth", but for inspiring young, elite men to critically evaluate the "democratic revolution" that threw the Greek world into such turmoil. And if Plato really got all his wisdom from Africa via Egypt, it is strange indeed that no one digs up any statues in Africa of ancient wise men, saints, sages, and heroes, at least none that resembled anything other than totems or idols. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidias"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Phidias</span></a>, they knew nothing of. It goes without saying that Jane Austen was a woman, presumably with considerably more wit and intelligence than the average or even superior man, and while she may have seen better than almost anyone the standard limitations of your average Queen Anne-era male protagonist, and may even have had a critical and cranky and materialistic streak in her character and makeup, <i>her morality tales are practically sweeping indictments of almost everything the modern Left stands for, including "moral relativism" and superficiality most of all</i>. <br /> <b>If this is the cure for cancer, <i>more cancer</i>, then perhaps we may safely render ourselves of a second opinion.</b> If the cure for the West involves ripping out the only healthy organs it has left, and maximizing the unhealthy "progressive growths", then it's time to consult a shaman. In this case, if you have read your Immanuel Kant and your Nietzsche, your David Hume and your Wittgenstein, and are thoroughly convinced that Western Man "cannot go back" to that shameful time in which men built cathedrals to honor to the Creator (as if we could actually have adequate knowledge of something supposedly so recondite as the absent Sky-Father-God, who is really, since you've read your Freud, just a projection of infantile or juvenile wish-fulfillment), it is time to dust off a copy of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Barfield"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Owen Barfield's</span></a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_the_Appearances:_A_Study_in_Idolatry"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Saving_the_Appearances:_A_Study_in_Idolatry</span></a>. <br /> You don't have to spend three decades of your adult life figuring out what the meaning of life is, that's the good news. We already have a way to speed that up considerably, if you have the requisite character and/or intelligence (enough of either one is usually sufficient to jump start the other) and discipline (you have to supply that on your own): you can do what thousands of noble and virtuous young lads and ladies did in bygone eras of unimaginable brutality and barbarism did - you can read the classics. And by the classics, I don't mean titillating French novels or decadent diatribes against the people who make your employment possible (Karl Marx?). I mean serious works of philosophy and religion. <br /> Owen Barfield's little treatise, even considered abstractly, has to rank as one of the top hundred serious philosophical books written <i>in the last four hundred years by anyone</i>. If you are going to "go modern", he is even more important, because he understands the postmodern situation from the inside out, and has passed beyond it. Along with George Parkin Grant's neglected collected works, including his thoroughly brilliant <i>English Speaking Justice</i> and <i>Technology and Empire</i>, I can think of no Anglo thinker who is more useful or necessary to our present situation. I say this because these works are not merely theoretical, but practical and germane to the current existential crisis in the West. Reading Plato's <i>Timaeus</i> is fantastically wonderful (you will suddenly "get" the Middle Ages); so is picking through Evola's <i>Revolt Against the Modern World</i> (where you will be treated to an evisceration or vivisection of almost all modern sentiments on Justice), or perhaps Aurobindo's treatise on the Bhagavad-Gita is more to your taste (want to know how God's revealing act hides, in that very act, the knowledge of the Creator through the "fall" of man?). Wait, you may think. These are religious questions. Worse, they are theological. No exegesis, just Jesus! No Justice, Just Us! I don't have time to involve myself in cultic activities. There are tenure tracks to be gained, promotions at work for virtue-signaling & political correctness, Almighty dollars to be captured in the global marketplace! <br /> <b>But you don't have to be religious or even "pious" to understand Grant or Barfield.</b> You simply are asked to follow a train of argument, and to think for yourself. No questions asked, nothing assumed, whereas many of the other "great works" of the modern and classical or pre-classical canon require a massive amount of preparatory work, like studying Dante, or an avid interest in some branch of esoteric wisdom which relies on personal perception and experience, like Eliphas Levi. I also include Valentine Tomberg's <i>Meditations on the Tarot</i> in this list, but some of the things treated in such works are so holy and profound that there is a great danger of being a child with a sharp sword in their hand. With Barfield (or with EF Shumacher's <i>Guide for the Perplexed</i>), there is no such danger. <b>But you will have to think about it, and the work of thinking is primarily in following the obvious inferences<i> in our own sciences</i>, but simultaneously being able to separate yourself from your ordinary presuppositions about where those investigations should lead. </b><br /> Owen Barfield, to put it quite simply, dismantles the modern worldview in two hundred pages of easily understandable prose, using the tools which the modern worldview itself provides, combined with a mind that is willing to follow the clues where they lead after asking pertinent questions. And, in my opinion, Barfield does this better than anyone else, saving perhaps his teacher, Rudolf Steiner (who, once again, belongs in a different and more difficult category requiring more intense preparation and inward effort). <br /> <b>Would it interest you to understand and actually know, to literally see, how the modern worldview of Science, Technology, and Progress<i> literally eats itself up</i>?</b> Barfield catches it at the crime scene, in the very act of devouring its murdered victim, which is what he calls the "original participation" of primitive man in the Divine process of creating the mind and the world together. And how, pray tell, would he manage to pull that rabbit out of his hat? How could one possibly "prove" this from the evidence, given that amazingly progressed and evolved homo sapiens like ourselves weren't around to take accurate notes and conduct double-blind placebo controlled studies of the said events? <br /> All anthropology, especially English branches, approach the study of the evolution of language from the position that primitive people <i>were just like we are</i>, except that they "fell back" from the consequences of their thought and embraced superstition, "peopling the world with gods and goddesses", filling in the gaps of their naturally but nonetheless limited knowledge. By "just like we are", Barfield means that modern men assume one of two things: either than primitive peoples were animals or pre-human (which is difficult to hold as one moves into the dawn of history and the classical historical period) who had not yet evolved a sufficient cortex (but if they had, they would have immediately begun to "progress" like we have - they were "like us" in that they were the seed, and we the flower), or that they had adequate computing cortex power, and could represent the world in front of them and manipulate it abstractly, but that superstition or ignorance, prejudice or bias was too strong for them (or morality too weak), and that they therefore shied away from drawing the logically necessary conclusions which must be adduced from the evidence of perceiving the same world which we see, which obeys logically necessary scientific laws, easily discoverable (given the right conditions or sufficient time/effort) through empirical study of these phenomenon. Sound familiar? About right? This is what you have been taught since you were old enough to make words, through Sesame Street and kindergarten, Sunday School, youth camp and scouting, all the way through to the modern university. It's in every movie, from <i>Jurassic World</i> to <i>Mississipi Burning</i>. Modern people believe that they have evolved, and they equate that evolution with the whole panoply of modern political correctness. Think of PC as representing the watered down popularization of a mulligan-witches brew of an amazingly nasty range of origin, everything from Frantz Fanon and Marcuse and the Weathermen, to Richard Rorty and Karl Popper and Susan Sontag. In some cases the variety of poison is not an absolute indication of its worth, as a lot of partially useful stuff gets thrown in the pot. However, the odd good ingredient, or useful insight, is generally lost in the welter of conflicting and poisonous goo. All in all, the purpose of this melting pot seems to be either as a sedative (something for everyone) or as an acid (no one is immune to every poison in the pot). As a failsafe, the smell alone can kill you (if you can still smell), or one can simply be drowned alive in the pot like a rat, and go into the ingredient list. What survives, or floats on the surface of this scum, is an oozy, unctuous fake religion, an ersatz neo-Puritan modern morality play, in which the entire world can simply be comprehended as a kind of Aesop's fable. <i>The universe, in this brew, is no more mysterious (as Thomas Carlyle once put it) than the "cooking of a dumpling".</i> The sacred spell of the Past is gone, gone with the wind, dying the death of a thousand cuts from critics, who have proven that our hominid ancestors were incurable racists and sexists who undoubtedly would repent if they had a chance to do so, and whose metaphysical views have either nothing to do with their perverse character (if they can be co-opted) or can be dismissed as irrelevant (if they can't be used to augment modern power narratives). <br /> Just live your life, be nice, be politically correct; advance and continue to evolve. There, that's it! Even easier than reading a two hundred page book by some unknown Welsh barrister associated (suspiciously) with the reactionary and probably fascist group at Oxford known as the Inklings. <br /> Barfield doesn't bother with political stuff in his work - I simply use this as a net to point out that political scenes in the modern world are built on the superstructure of something larger, which lies underneath <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle"><span style="color: #2b256f;">like a giant turtle that holds up their world</span></a>. This superstructure, Barfield argues, is actually nothing but abstract ideas codified in modern ideas (which is exactly, as it turns out, what modern philosophy claims about all possible philosophy in all possible worlds, so no surprise it is no exception). Barfield has a very clever scholarly and empirical method for demonstrating this. But he manages to go down to the root, which is another very clever trick. He doesn't (for instance) spend his scholarly time attacking the British Labor Party or atheists or the 1968 Paris riots. Nor does he try to undermine science in any way. <br /> Quite the contrary, as to the latter point. Barfield believed that Science was part of the Providential purpose to clear the field of "original participation", and to make room for creative participation. Science provided an acid bath, which scoured the mirror of the soul clean from paganism; however, in a real sense, Science is "the last and greatest Paganism". Because even Science cannot confess God as He is, since it regards God as an object, who is to be filtered through the lens of Science. Nothing transcendent or numinous can come out on the other side, and thus, Science is left (as it were) standing alone on the field, the greatest of all earthly idols, and the only thing remaining. It is an idol, precisely because it takes as the totality of what is unrepresented, its own abstractions concerning that unrepresented, and this (specifically) while even being totally aware that this is precisely what it is doing on its own terms (thanks to quantum science).<br /> Science knows that what "is there" (if the question has any meaning whatsoever) is actually "dust" or "particles", which our eye represents to us a certain way thanks to our abstractions and the feedback loop between the eye, our abstractions, and our representations of "what is" to our selves as "the real world". A tree is not just a tree: it is an energy web which we cannot see, made up of particles which emit even finer energy particles and reflect light, both of which are even more mysterious. It is only by assuming our assumptions, and agreeing to treat things as if all we already thought we knew was true, that we can "go forward" and begin to run experiments on this reality we represent to ourselves, and draw conclusions. We suspend disbelief (a disbelief, moreover, which is demanded by strict Scientific calculation), and then proceed to "know" matter by manipulating as being "dead" and inhabiting empty space (which, also, we know is not empty, through Science). <br /> Science is an idol that "knows" itself to be such (on its own terms), but is helpless to stop pretending that it is such anyway, being unconscious of this in a deeper sense, as it does not "participate" in the numinosity of Creation. Its only function (besides providing us with acres of corn and anesthetics, very useful functions on its own level) metaphysically is to give man an opportunity to exercise independent and creative participation, which is the Recreation of the world in Christ, a return to the primordial state of original participation, and surpassing it. <br /> As hard as this is for modern minds to accept, Barfield demonstrates lucidly from textual evidence (direct quotes) and anthropology itself that primitive or ancient man did not see the same world visually, nor experience it inwardly, in the way which we do. When he perceived the "particles" or "dust", his soul had inner motions which revealed things directly to him as representations of what was unrepresentable: this made him create "idols" to represent what could not completely be represented, the One Being behind all Creation and all of perception of creation. Additionally, because of the inner motions of the soul, and because of the lack of genetic training caused by experience in the gymnasium of Creation, he did not even see the same thing visually which we see. Thus, he did not "people" the world with divine beings out of superstition, refusing to follow abstract concepts which we have bravely pursued, but rather, described what he knew was there, and what he saw. He did not have the option to abstract from the sense world, mediate the world through that abstraction, and then manipulate it logically: he knew it, numinously, and the experience was credulous and undoubting in the same sense that we credulously and undoubting and with good reason "know" the law of gravity is there. <i><b>When Homer writes of the "wine dark sea" and the "tumbling sky", these are not superstitious metaphors or allegories, but what he actually saw and additionally, "knew" inwardly</b></i>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes"><span style="color: #2b256f;">Julian Jaynes</span></a> makes this last and similar points, and with similar scholarly acumen as Barfield (who approaches things from anthropology and etymology), from a slightly different angle in his magisterial <i>The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind</i>. <br /> What we call "consciousness" is just the absence of original participation, and the power to perceive the world this way germinated and grew very slowly in man - it was still alive in the Middle Ages, although this was a turning point. It was necessary to achieve full independence from original participation, because it was not voluntary, in order that man might grow from a slave into a son. Still, the possibility remains that man may become "stuck" in the teenage years. Liberated from original participation, and confident that this is unreal and never existed to begin with, he is ignorant that the world is a gift or <i>symbolon</i> or <i>eidola</i> of God, and so constructs his own Idol, the last Idol, which is false consciousness of a world of empty space and dead matter, with only man's appetites and desire for more power over a helpless Nature to guard and guide him from destroying himself. <br /> What the ancients knew was "consciousness" was in fact the remains of the primordial state, dwindling slowly under the steady tutelage of genetic and cultural growth in the arena of the Fall, of dense matter, helped (perhaps) by the very tutelary powers which would be denied and cast out by the tutored new man: <br /><br /> Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world <br /> (Galatians 4:2)<br /><br /> Man cannot go back to original participation, but has to move forward into creative participation, in which Grace will perfect Nature, for nothing is lost, nothing is ever forgotten. The modern PostMo movement to paganism is still born, assuming it would even work, because the very "elementary spirits" themselves have changed under the Creation drama. Instead, man must clear away, with Reason, every Idol, and then destroy the last as he creatively learns to use even Reason to re-experience participation in and through the Christ, thus not only reclaiming all of his original birth right, but transcending it into that which is more. <br /> Owen Barfield assumes, along with Rudolf Steiner, that man will learn to judge the angels, and "see through" Science. How is all of what Barfield doing different from what the modern PostMo culture is doing when it "re-interprets" <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Postmodern-Fairy-Tales-Narrative-Strategies/dp/0812216830"><span style="color: #2b256f;">fairy tales</span></a>? That is the subject of a second post, but to get it started, and to end this one, I will say that Barfield 1) believes something is there (the "particles" and behind them, God) 2) believes it is knowable by man, and 3) points the way towards doing so, not through rewriting "narrative" of abstract concepts, but through handling evidence at a meta-narrative level (what he calls beta-thinking, beyond abstract alpha thinking). Post Modernism is essentially either alpha thinking that thinks it is beta (but can't move beyond concepts or abstractions, albeit anti-concept and anti-abstractions), or else it is immature beta-thinking which prefers to wallow in florid inventions (Gnosticism) as opposed to handling in a mature way the subject matter of Creation. Barfield would say that magic is real, and that the world is a mystery, even though (temporarily) we have to learn to experience the world as exactly the opposite, in order to prepare, in the darkness, for the final participation. In this way, man uses Reason as a tool, rather than letting rational abstractions compel him to think and perceive in ways inimical to his true nature. This is not Post Modernism, but a restoration, regeneration, and transcending of Pre Modernism. <br /><sup></sup><br /><sup></sup></div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-2409397468792226462016-05-29T14:43:00.000-07:002016-05-29T14:43:04.938-07:00Cassiodorus Blog Spot, Higher EducationI am going to be switching most of my work over to this site:<br />
<a href="http://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/">Cassiodorus</a><br />
<br />
This is in keeping with my life goals, at this point, which include starting up my own classical, latently-Christian, pro-Tradition college prep service (both online and in person). I had considered going into the tutoring business (like Wes Callihan and others), but am ultimately opting for something a little different, which falls in between psychological counseling & career guidance on the one hand, and Battle of Worldviews on the other. This arena is, I believe, a critical one, and not currently addressed on the Right, particularly in the field of education. <br />
<br />
<br />
<h1 class="title entry-title" itemprop="name">
<a data-id="1640457560802584549" data-item-type="post" href="https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2016/05/why-higher-education-is-anything-but.html" itemprop="url" rel="bookmark">
Why Higher Education is Anything But, & Why it's Doomed</a>
</h1>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfudtxvby42hSbCQj1GDBXld322ejf8bWCrVAORCHsRyNnRO0iHhZ2K71vOBshfe-cvZvP74wIgJiT44AEFda7J15sYQqN9pOAoVhSs9fH7ZKHNoNdVhedjCsVyA33imz_68B3-IZ5jww/s1600/Keats_urn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfudtxvby42hSbCQj1GDBXld322ejf8bWCrVAORCHsRyNnRO0iHhZ2K71vOBshfe-cvZvP74wIgJiT44AEFda7J15sYQqN9pOAoVhSs9fH7ZKHNoNdVhedjCsVyA33imz_68B3-IZ5jww/s320/Keats_urn.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<h2>
<b> </b></h2>
<h2>
<b>Here are the facts:</b></h2>
Public universities are slowly<a href="http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150815/ISSUE01/308159989/are-illinois-public-universities-doomed"> going bankrupt</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Illinois has another looming financial crisis on its hands: the state's
regional public universities, a door to upward mobility for tens of
thousands of teens every year and the last reliable economic engine in
parts of the state.</blockquote>
Some youngsters are already proposing the equivalent of "Guild-education" (with a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-colleges-universities-doomed-disappear-future-espinal">degree based</a> thereon). <br />
<br />
<span style="color: magenta;"><a href="https://www.edx.org/">Meanwhile, high name brand colleges are testing out better ways of offering education today: Online College Courses.</a></span><br />
<br />
The liberal arts died out around 1950 (in the aftermath of World War II), but until recently, you were still expected<a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/052226_economics_education_university_graduates_lowered_standards.html"> to know basic subjects</a>
like economics, mathematics, and civic theory. I guess these are too
"traditional", even though they are by-and-large taught from a
progressive point of view. <a href="http://www.goacta.org/news/acta_releases_national_rating_of_over_1100_colleges_and_universities">Source</a>. The very idea of having a <i>Tradition</i>
(even if it is a Progressive "New Deal" One, based in consummate
Lockean Liberalism) is now offensive or irrelevant. At what point does
the war against "Mind-Control" <i><u>itself</u></i> become a much more insidious form of Psy-Ops?<br />
<br />
Now,
of course the dying Behemoth called the American Empire still
discriminates in favor of its "Higher Education" model: a Harvard,
Vassar, or Vanderbilt degree will get you a very long way, much farther,
in fact than you could go without it (even being "the brightest and
best"). And many job opportunities are denied to those without that
"slip of paper" - this will continue to be this way for some time: until
the wheels pop off & angry populations waiting in line take out
their frustration however they are able.<br />
<br />
Naturally, those esconced in the Ivory Towers <a href="https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/vp-principal/deep-thoughts/university-degree-really-doomed">disagree</a>. This is hardly surprising. But what bland disagreement. <br />
<br />
University
education made sense in the Golden Age of Massed, Industrial Democracy
(1850-1950). I guess. The Internet (along with continued deterioration
of standards in the culture), has rendered the proposition of a
certified 4-year bona fide increasingly <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/don_tapscott-the-impending-demise-of-the-university">suspect</a>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is
the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of
information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion.
The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning
process. The formula goes like this: "I'm a professor and I have
knowledge. You're a student, you're an empty vessel and you don't. Get
ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your
short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper
cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you."... The
definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of
the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the
brains of either.</i></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://selfmadescholar.com/b/2009/05/19/great-thinkers-on-self-education-ivan-illich/">Ivan Ilyich</a>
(who has impeccably "Leftist" credentials) argued that Higher Education
is inherently the opposite of what it claims to be. Now, while I don't
buy his premises or conclusions <i>in toto</i> (Oxford with its dreaming
spires arguably has not been accounted for by his ideology), he is
certainly correct that the very idea of disseminating standardized, mass
education (which leads upwards in a pyramid for those of "merit") is
inherently stultifying to the Mind. Not even the Catholic, Apostolic,
and Holy See of Rome attempted to do this in the darkest of the Dark
Ages. Instead, the Western rite was modified and attenuated to various
cultural circumstances, with different levels of participation, many of
which were popular rites or cults (eg., the saints). <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“All over the world the school has an anti-educational effect on
society: school is recognized as the institution which specializes in
education. The failures of school are taken by most people as a proof
that education is a very costly, very complex, always arcane, and
frequently almost impossible task.”</blockquote>
<br />
Dear
Reader, ask yourself : what is a Harvard degree really worth? On the one
hand, sure, most of the smart set goes to an elite school like Harvard.
But would they have failed financially and philosophically had they
gone elsewhere, or just not gone? Of course not. They are going to do
well wherever they go, because of their IQ (or maybe they wouldn't,
without this last step, which is even more frightening). Because the<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/books/excellent-sheep-william-deresiewiczs-manifesto.html"> <b>HYPsters</b></a> aren't getting educated at Yale and Princeton: they're being indoctrinated in the proper <i>shibboleths</i>
they will need to get along with the new contacts they are making in
the business and cultural landscape. You're paying your club dues when
you attend these places. These are your credentials for being
politically correct and culturally savvy. They also receive armament
training in dialectics and proper revolutionary documents, so they can
make themselves impervious to Reality. It's a kind of Neo-Marxist Good
Ole Boys' Club, where "every-person" shares the same bathroom & the
same Dogma.This has been the case since at least the 1960s<a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-University-Runs-Where-Going/dp/0226038459"> student revolts</a>
at places like Columbia: "Under the paving stones, The Beach!". But a
true liberal arts education had been ailing and faltering since at least
the turn of the century, around 1900, when John Dewey and the
Progressivists began to get good hold of the apparatus of instruction. <br />
<br />
Today the entire educational system is part of <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_%28US_politics%29">an Iron Triangle</a></span> called <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html">the Cathedral</a></span>,
designed to prop up the United States Government (USG) all across the
globe. Sending your kid to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton (<i>unless they get
in free and are a chameleon</i>), is an automatic waste of their soul. <b><i>Without
the moral and emotional equivalent of higher education to balance the
hyper-trophy of the dialectical (and agnostic) intellectual center in a
human being</i></b> (aka, Tradition), the modern "intellectual" will end up just like a Soviet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik">apparatchik</a>.
Insofar as this emotional/moral center exists in the university, it is
simply an arm of the governing powers and ideologies, rather than an
independent actor with access to "Higher Truth". So instead of balancing
your child's soul-growth, it enhances the damage the intellectual
studies are designed to do. Your child will not read Plato, they will
study Nietzsche, and if they read Plato, they will read him with their
brain, and analyze him into dissection in terms of the categories of
Nietzsche. And this is the best-case scenario. <br />
<br />
In fact, if
you want your child to have a traditional liberal arts education in the
Trivium & the Quadrivium, your best bet is to avoid <span style="color: orange;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_%28US_politics%29">the top-tier schools</a></span>
altogether. If you send them anywhere at all, get it paid for with scholarships
or free grants, and go somewhere where the student will be free to
quietly learn on their own, taking the classes which they need or wish.
Better yet, commit yourself and your children (insofar as they will be
inspired by your example) to a lifelong quest for Wisdom, and do
whatever follows and flows from that. That's how the medievals founded
the Universities<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university"> <span style="color: red;">in the first place</span></a><span style="color: red;">.</span><br />
<br />
Otherwise, instead of being <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/7932061/Roald-Dahls-schooldays.html">whipped</a>
and shamed in front of the class for not knowing your Latin
declensions, your child will be financially and/or socially
discriminated against, for not knowing the proper Marxist categories of
ultra-elite thought, and publicly shamed if they question them. We've
come a long way Baby!<br />
<br />
For those who wonder, with Chernychevsky, <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_%28novel%29">What is to be Done?</a></b>, I suggest the following:<br />
<br />
1. Support Christian Classical Education. It's not perfect, and has a
long way to go, but it's a damn sight better than its competition.<br />
2. Support your local Waldorf School. Rudolf Steiner is regarded as
"weird" in America, but maybe we need more real "weird", and a little
less of the actually bizarre. Favor the weird over the "new normal",
which is bizarre. <br />
3. Support Homeschoolers, even when they fail. Like England in 1940, they had the courage to go it alone.<br />
4. Support private schools of almost any stripe, unless they are madrassahs. <br />
5. Educate yourself about The Quadrivium.<br />
6. Keep your brain turned on, your Mind alert, and your Soul perceptive.<br />
7. Support private and/or Christian scholars.<br />
8. Defer to Tradition, as a general rule.<br />
9. Share Knowledge<br />
10. Hoard Wisdom<br />
11. Don't worry too much about the coming fall of the Leaning Ivory Tower of Orthanc: some things are just going to happen. <br />
12. Put thought into what should replace The University. <br />
<br />
<br />Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-52863962316264115212016-03-16T23:55:00.000-07:002016-03-16T23:55:17.125-07:00The Music of the Spheres : the Third Quadrivial Art
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhsQnvkhHTmMuU6R8HTzij25Bf5UbqRH7BDt6vBRKxpsBLML9Ubc8hkc7OF0QvGR_17DsZL-cbv6oJmpc8sHqgAGW0iIGnk_hi81aZHHE2YSjzj9Y0zzLpB9uLLzxZvAeR4E3miuaE0s/s1600/800px-RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhsQnvkhHTmMuU6R8HTzij25Bf5UbqRH7BDt6vBRKxpsBLML9Ubc8hkc7OF0QvGR_17DsZL-cbv6oJmpc8sHqgAGW0iIGnk_hi81aZHHE2YSjzj9Y0zzLpB9uLLzxZvAeR4E3miuaE0s/s320/800px-RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png" width="220" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="background: #ffffff;">Chapter
Nine: The Music of the Spheres</span></b></span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Modern
physics has definitely decided in favour of Plato. In fact the
smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary
sense; they are forms and ideas which can be expressed unambiguously
only in mathematical language.” Werner Heisenberg </b></span></span></span></span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Beethoven
tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what
it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the
universe.” Douglas Adams</b></span></span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Music
is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible
delights of the soul.” JS Bach</b></span></span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>You [God] have arranged
all things by measure and number and weight. (<i>Wisdom of Solomon</i>
11<i>)</i></b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo</i><i>
(If I cannot bend heaven, then I will move Hades) – </i><i>The
Aeneid</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and motto of Sigmund
Freud</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Without music there can
be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even
the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain
harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of
harmony. - Isidore of Seville. </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It has been our intention, in the
procession of the Quadrivium, to discern whatsoever was possible of
the unseen world that lies around us, accessible to us (if at all)
only to man's mind and spirit and body together, in our human
condition. In both chapters on arithmetic & geometry, we have
attempted to thoroughly unveil the modern bias, & to understand
why it must force itself to attack, deface, and bury all traces of
the Quadrivium, which is the standardized medieval protocol for
investigating a sacramental & orderly world, in tandem with
Faith. As we turn our inward gaze to music, it would be fitting to
cease to give negative proofs for the Quadrivium's truth, & to
move towards a more positive, beautiful and orderly defense of the
living Wisdom<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The usual prejudice of scientific
thought for beauty in a mathematical equation, even when there is
conflicting data, clues us in that the "Music of the Spheres"
is a real force and entity which can take precedence over the
appearances. As Paul Dirac once said, "It is more important to
have beauty in one's equations than to have a fitting experiment"<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>.
This expresses the emphasis and preference, which insists that
appearances do not have to “saved”, but can be suspended until
harmonized with what the equation seems to want to say. This <em>Musica
Mundana</em> (Boethius' term for it)<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
became a very important emphasis of the Medieval Period, beginning
with Saint Augustine, who only composed one book of his projected
seven on the liberal arts - the one on Music<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If the antique pagan world of
Greece & Rome gave proper expression to their budding genius in
the discipline of arithmetic and geometry (summed up on Euclid's
<em>Elements</em>), the Medieval period made these geometric
proportions sing, & longed to listen to them. We know next to
nothing (and almost less than nothing has been preserved) of Roman
and Greek music. The ancient <i>polis</i>, like one of Euclid's
defined points, circumscribed from itself lines of influence and
power, de-limiting itself and limiting Nature, making it
rational and well ordered. But it required the Medieval period to
bequeath an emphasis and heritage of music, which eventually
culminated in classical music. If the modern world can be
characterized as Arithmetical logic gone berserk, the ancient world
can be viewed as frozen <i>geometrical</i> Arithmetic: it does not
sing, although it does recognize (unlike our day) the depth-dimension
of meaning and spirituality behind politics, groups, and states (the
world of the <i>polis</i>)<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is entirely in keeping with
the rotational genius of each Age: the ancient world was one of
Philosophy, the medieval world was one of Religion, & the modern
world is one of Science. The next rotation, in this movement, is that
of <i>Art</i>. We can say with certainty that these great "Ages"
correspond to the progression Arithmetic-Geometry-Music-Cosmology. It
could be said this way: the ancient world is Arithmetic, the Medieval
world is Music, the modern world is Geometry, and the future world to
come is one of Art (Cosmology)<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
While the "mode" of
knowing in the modern world is Arithmetical logic, the expression of
that is in the form of Geometry, which inter-relates all things by
axiom and definition, but without the "depth" or philosophy
of the ancient world. The "mode" of knowing in the ancient
world is geometrical Arithmetic, with a corresponding expression and
delight in pure Arithmetic, without either the quantitative
elaboration or reductionism of the modern world. The "mode"
of knowing in the Middle Ages is musical Cosmology or "Faith",
because its expression of Music seeks the harmony of various levels
of Being and the dance which moves them all. It is difficult to see
in detail what the future may bring, but the emphasis will be in Art.
The mode of knowing of that future could very well be either musical
logic as a middle form between excesses, or a return to a cosmology
that gives precedence to Logic over Music, or recognizes the inherent
music of logic and logic of music. This mode of knowing would take
all previous history as a kind of grammar-arithmetic, and then would
begin to reconcile the other portions of the Quadrivium. It would
concern itself with the proportions of the whole of human history.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Why did the medieval world turn to
Music? The prime progenitors of the Middle Ages can be regarded as
Plato (especially in <em>The Timaeus</em>), Saint Augustine, and
Boethius. Augustine and Boethius were both especially devoted and
concerned with the theory of music, and this concern was deliberately
inherited by the Dark Ages<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a>.
At the same time, the contribution of the Middle Ages to mathematics
was considerable. By the end of the twelfth century, following
translation of the Greco-Arabic learning, the best math came from
Europe<span style="font-family: serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
</span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
progress in mathematics was important because it shows the omnivorous
scope of Medieval learning, which embraced practically all
disciplines. How was this explosion of exploration coordinated? I
maintain that it was t</span></span>he “music” of the Faith which
gave Christian Europe the drive and confidence to unravel the
mysteries mathematical of the physical world, just as the confidence
to colonize the Western hemisphere can (in part) be related to the
confidence of the Christian laity<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a>.
If we take the sign of the Middle Ages to be a Rhetoric (or even
Logic) of Music that expressed Faith, we can set up a useful analogy
between Faith and Music on the one hand, and the Middle Ages' piety
and their omnivorous delight in cataloging all known knowledge on the
other<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a>.
We suspect that the balance of Freedom and Form in the Middle Ages
was very similar to that found in Mozart, for instance.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A closer look at the discipline of
Music will help us understand why this must be so. Music and
cosmology are the proper fruit or ending points of a mature
worldview. While every culture has a music suited to its outlook, not
every culture pursues that development to a simultaneously beautiful
and logical apex. And not every culture has the ability to see what
it is doing self consciously.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Daniel P Goldman puts it this way:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">In </span><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">De
Musica</span></em><span style="font-size: x-small;">, Augustine presents a hierarchy of
rhythm that begins with “sounding numbers”—the rhythm we
actually hear—followed by “memorized rhythms,” that is, the
mind’s recognition and remembrance of a pattern. Rising above all
such numbers is what Augustine calls “consideration,” the </span><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">numeri
iudiciales</span></em><span style="font-size: x-small;">. These “numbers of judgment”
bridge eternity and mortal time; they are eternal in character and
lie outside of rhythm itself but act as an ordering principle for all
other rhythms. Only they are immortal, for the others pass away
instantly as they sound, or fade gradually from our memory.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>.</span>
</div>
This higher number is not identical with our sense perception
(John Locke) or even with our memory. They are not reducible to our
Pavlovian responses to sense stimulation. In some sense which is not
clearly understood, we “hear” the music of the spheres all the
time, and the origin of this harmony is from the bosom of the
Absolute, identified by Saint Augustine as the personal God of
revelation who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Saint
Bonaventura wrote an entire treatise called <i>Itinerarium Mentis ad
Deum</i> that endeavored to describe the steps the Mind make take to
unite itself to God. Goldman links Augustine's ideas with Bonaventura
as follows:<br />
<blockquote style="margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 0.39in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Some
are abstracted from these and received into our senses, and these he
calls “heard.” Some proceed from the soul into the body, as
appears in gestures and bodily movements, and these he calls
“uttered.” Some are in the pleasures of the senses which arise
from attending to the species which have been received, and these he
calls “sensual.” Some are retained in the memory, and these he
calls “remembered.” Some are the bases of our judgments about all
these, and these he calls “<i>judicial</i>,” which, as has been
said above, necessarily transcend our minds because they are
infallible and incontrovertible. These imprint on our minds the
“numbers of artifice,” which Augustine had not included in this
classification because “they are connected with the judicial number
from which flow the uttered numbers out of which are created the
numerical forms of those things made by art. Hence, from the highest
through the middle to the lowest, there is an ordered descent. Thence
do we ascend step by step from the sonorous numbers by means of the
uttered, the sensual, and the remembered.” </span>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;">Here we see the enormous importance of
distinctions made on the basis of intuition, or introspection of the
human consciousness, when we “</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>include the
knower with the known</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">”. The entire
enterprise of objective Science excludes the consciousness from what
is knowable<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>,
although it tends to re-include it perversely when it concludes that
consciousness is “just” this or that. On the contrary,
consciousness is fundamental to what “is there”.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>
It cannot be excluded from the knowing process, without thereby
limiting what is “known” to something that is incomplete. This is
what we meant by stating that </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>the physical can
unmask the spiritual, yet the spiritual can shape the physical</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">.
Another way to say this is that “the subtle rules the dense”. </span>
<br />
<br />
Contrary to the picture painted by Andrew Dickson White in
his <em>Warfare of Science & Religion<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote14sym" name="sdfootnote14anc"><sup>14</sup></a>,</em>
the Medieval Era was (especially after the reintroduction of
Latin-Greek texts via Arabic civilization) preeminent in both musical
innovation & mathematics: once Europe emerged and stabilized from
the Dark Ages, it easily overtook its cultural competition in the
Near and Far East<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote15sym" name="sdfootnote15anc"><sup>15</sup></a>.
Part of this celerity and comprehensiveness can be attributed to the
<i>harmonic</i> balance of the Quadrivium – the people of the
Middle Ages were culturally attentive to the “Numbers of Judgment”:
they were listening to God, however imperfectly. With the caveats
noted in the opening essays, the Middle Ages instituted and defended
more of the Quadrivium than any other period, <i>including the
Renaissance</i>. This original purity did not last long at a perfect
height or zenith, but quickly gave way to compromise:<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">But by the 14th century the
spirit of Liberal Arts had been lost to the letter of the
prescriptive instrumentalism of Scholastic </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>compendia</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">.
These were opposed in the Renaissance by Petrarch and others, and a
new humanistic form of Liberal Arts emerged which included the whole
range of the arts<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote16sym" name="sdfootnote16anc"><sup>16</sup></a>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yet the Renaissance did not
shatter the brittle Medieval heritage in the areas of music &
mathematics – instead, it built solidly upon them, in the polyphony
that would eventually culminate in the explosion of classical Western
music – Augustine's <i>judicial Numbers</i> writ large and played
for all of the universe to hear. It is easy to contrast Scholastic
philosophy with the Enlightenment; it is more difficult to argue that
Medieval music is irrelevant to Renaissance polyphony or the
Classical flowering in Germany: rhetoric allows stronger claims to be
made in a purely linguistic discipline, whereas Music resists the
tendency to divide things into armed camps – the unity of the whole
is the more easily seen, because the subject matter is invisible,
auditory. Greco-Roman music very likely is preserved, partially,
within the Gregorian chants, although that is not something we can
conclusively prove, empirically.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Renaissance & Reformation
together destroyed the scholastic synthesis in religion (this
reaction was particularly acute against the <i>compendia</i> of
Logic, like Peter of Spain's), opened up humanism as a permanent
resting place and possibility for man's knowledge, destroyed the
cosmology of the Medieval period absolutely, embraced the plastic &
fine arts as a vehicle for sensual exploration, & in general
exploited various disconnected possibilities available to it, all of
this unchained from the concerns of the official ecclesiastical
<i>clerisy</i><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote17sym" name="sdfootnote17anc"><sup>17</sup></a>.
The continuity remained very large in all disciplines<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote18sym" name="sdfootnote18anc"><sup>18</sup></a>,
despite the attack on Scholasticism, particularly so in mathematics
and in music. Even the Quadrivium and Trivium were re-attempted in
revival, as it was perceived that the Church had subordinated these
to practical Church matters, reducing Grammar to “Latin” &
Arithmetic to the calculation of Easter (or the design of church
architecture). Yet as we have noted, the Seven Liberal Arts were
engulfed in the humanistic explosion – the pendulum swung too far
in the other direction<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote19sym" name="sdfootnote19anc"><sup>19</sup></a>.
It was not well understood that there was an actual theory and
architecture behind the seven Liberal Arts, even by the Renaissance,
and they tended to supplement or supplant medieval rigor with
humanistic studies, without bothering with the theory. In the case of
the Quadrivium, this was disruptive of the entire purpose behind its
existence, which was lead the student through an orderly succession
out in the final synthesis of Cosmology.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The bifurcation of the Middle Ages
into scholastic <i>compendia<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote20sym" name="sdfootnote20anc"><sup>20</sup></a></i>
and then (as a reaction) Renaissance humanism destroyed the inner
meaning of arithmetic, the outer cogency of logic, the purpose of
rhetoric, and the rational coherency of a cosmology, which was split
into secular and speculative. In the realm of Music, however, Freedom
and Form remained balanced, & neither the sensualism of the
Renaissance nor the violence of the Enlightenment (or the Scientific
Revolution or the Reformation) could stop the inevitable progression
of musical genius in the West: Bach and Mozart were the end result
and flower of the Gregorian chantings<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote21sym" name="sdfootnote21anc"><sup>21</sup></a>.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<blockquote style="margin-left: 1in; margin-right: 0.39in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;">The
renowned </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Haydn
was often moved to tears at listening to the children of the London
charity schools sing the psalms together in unison according to the
Gregorian style; and the great master of musicians and composers,
Mozart, </span></span><span style="color: black;">went so far as to say
that he would rather be the author of the Preface and Pater Noster,
according to the same style, than of anything he had ever written.
</span>These are but a few of the numerous encomiums passed upon this
sacred chant by men who were so eminently qualified to constitute
themselves judges.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote22sym" name="sdfootnote22anc"><sup>22</sup></a></span></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another author goes even farther:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
fact, the Gregorian chant does not cure, it saves. We can cure thanks
to some therapeutic methods, but to save requires the concourse of an
inspiration directly given by the creation. A soul attuned to the
chant starts to vibrate to the first and essential rhythms. Gregorian
chant allows us to perceive this vibration of the soul when it
reaches the register of serenity. Then, man is involved in a timeless
communication and regains his natural breathing, that is, unstressed
and without gasping. Through the Gregorian modulations, he discovers
a privileged space where his being momentarily can rest, aloof from
the daily trials. To tell the truth, Gregorian chant gives a glimpse
of paradise to those who wish it. <a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote23sym" name="sdfootnote23anc"><sup>23</sup></a></span></span></span><b>
</b></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
is a very strong claim for music, but it is also made for
mathematics, although lately, we are seeing it made for the
conclusions of physical science in its agnostic form. This is a
confusion of style over method, and of content over substance.
Nevertheless, what is not true for materialistic, reductionist modern
Science is certainly the case for both music and mathematics – it
is not too much to assert and defend the idea that the universality
inherent in Gregorian chanting and medieval music would eventually
lead to its elaboration in the same universality, found in Bach and
Handel and Mozart. Bernard Chazelle had this to say of Bach: </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">...the
only way to understand him is to listen to him, and there is no need
to understand him – you can just listen to him, over and over
again, and it will come... </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ode
to Joy</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
if Beethoven didn't tell us it was about joy, could be about
hamburgers, for all we know, it's just music...but there is another
dimension to Bach. Bach the most human of composers, gets to your
soul through your body..It's not like I'm not gifted enough (to
understand it), but it's another dimension...it's a paradox, because
he is the most human of composers...Bach viewed himself as a
discoverer, not a maker, of music...these are pre-Enlightenment
dispositions. Bach saw himself as a discoverer of the laws of the
musical universe, of aesthetics. He had no interest that his cantatas
and passions survived, because God will know. He had no interest in
posterity.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote24sym" name="sdfootnote24anc"><sup>24</sup></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">I
have defended the idea that the Middle Ages was inherently focused on
musical Cosmology – the last two steps of the Trivium. Of course,
we have seen that the enormous Logical endeavors (Scholasticism)
engaged in by its </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">clerisy</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
were the ostensible cause of a break with Tradition by the
Renaissance. How do we square this circle? I have paired Rhetoric
with Music, and therefore, Cosmology with Faith, since the seven
Liberal Arts are the anteroom of the Temple of living Wisdom. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Let
us try to say it in this way- </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">if
the ancient world was the world of the beasts, and the modern world
is the world of the machine, the Middle Ages were the world of men:
Middle Earth. The Middle Ages was the last time period, known to man,
in which a proper balancing point was reached (however imperfect)
which situated Man in the middle of a vast cosmos, attentive to the
heavenly spheres' music, logically alert and discriminating, and
focused on a grammar which employed the doctrine of signatures to
draw out the meaning of natural analogies. </span></i></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
(too) are seeking analogies here, in order to make fruitful
intellectual connections. The concern of the Middle Ages with Logic
was to set up, identify, and pursue proper analogies which were
logical (and therefore valid), as a prelude to defining the
signatures of the Holy, leading to praise in Rhetoric and expression
in Music, and out into the Cosmology of the Faith. It was not that
Arithmetic or Grammar did not interest them, & yet I certainly
would admit that the modern world is more copious in arithmetical
style and more geometrical in logical method than the Medieval world,
just as the ancient world was perhaps more original in its collection
of </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">topoi</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
or discussion topics (a fact recognized by the Medieval worship of
Aristotle). </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If
the Middle Ages swept from barbarism to the Rhetoric-Music of the
Faith-Cosmology “too swiftly”, the Modern World has taken the
liberty of stepping back to the Geometry-Logic of the Scholastics,
and emphasizing it in such a way as to destroy Faith-Cosmology. This
movement from the arithmetic </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">topoi</span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of the ancients (eg., what is a human soul?), skipping over Logic
into Rhetoric-Music, and then going back to Logic as a pendulum
swings too far to “correct” itself, shows the cycle of Epochs:
Philosophy, Faith, Science. In the Future, it will be seen that
philosophy is consummated by Art, science is perfected in Art, and
religion is sublimated in Art: the future Era will be one of Art.
This “Art” or “Harmony” reflects the Cosmology of the
universe, which is One and Infinite, created in the image of God. The
chiasm, or “two steps forward, one back” will be completed in the
final step towards Art – four intervals which make a cross over the
world. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">All
of human knowledge will be summed and balanced and perfected in the
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Musica
Mundana</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
judged by the Numbers of God.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
should be needless to point out that there are seven notes in a
musical scale, seven visible planets, and seven </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">chakras</span></i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
in the human nervous system. The ancient Tradition affirmed the
principle “as above, so below” - the Microcosm and the Macrocosm
were analogs of each other. Even the medieval obsession with
scholastic Logic was based on the understanding that the various
“signatures” found in Creation (This is to That, as That is to
This) could be reversed and exploited for insights, if the Logic was
sound enough. If (for instance), the herb comfrey was to tooth decay
what foxglove was to heart trouble, then someone who was clever and
subtle enough (eg., wise) could see a relation between tooth decay
and heart trouble, then a third analogy could be built between the
plant-herb comfrey and the flower foxglove based upon the first two
analogies. This strange preoccupation is the reason behind all the
medieval bestiaries and herbals which seem so alien today to us –
they were following the signatures of God.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote25sym" name="sdfootnote25anc"><sup>25</sup></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Was
the Rhetoric-Music of the Middle Ages fully conscious? It is hard to
see how they could not have known a great deal of what they were
doing. F. Dorminique Bourmand thought that subconscious respiration
and cardiac rhythm effect each other, & are also affected by
music. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">For
the masters of "Solesmes," Gregorian chant is the very
expression of the movements of the soul. It is permanently sustained
and controlled by a specific attitude. In fact, every cadence, every
rhythm is the translation of a response corresponding to the
capabilities of the entire nervous system. <a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote26sym" name="sdfootnote26anc"><sup>26</sup></a></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The
Middle Ages would have immediately set up an analogy: Music is to the
nervous system as The Music of the Spheres is to the Whole Man –
what Beethoven's </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>Moonlight
Sonata</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> does to our pulse is
what certain celestial harmonies (mediated through angels and
planets) do to our soul. If we listen closely, perhaps all four items
in the analogy begin to reveal their common “signature”. Modern
Science (of course) would shove all four terms to one side of the
balance sheet, reduce them to the lowest common denominator, and go
hunting for another analogy (which would then be liquidated in the
same fashion). Scott Buchanan goes so far as to claim that this
hatred and fear of rationality was the essence of the “the black
arts”. </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Medieval
civilization was a vast “therapy of the soul”, conducted by
consensual agreement and popular consent (at various levels<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote27sym" name="sdfootnote27anc"><sup>27</sup></a>),
aimed </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>at restoring the image
of God in man</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">. Heir to
Greece, Rome, and the Northern civilizations, it simply could not
envision a private “faith”-space which was segregated from the
public sphere. The Reformational emphasis on conscience and the
Renaissance emphasis on genius were ultimately too individualistic
for the civilized and public-spirited Middle Ages; their deep
religious awe and reverence did not permit either unfettered
conscience or unbridled genius to operate without check upon either
the public sphere, or within the religious or personal spheres. This
itself is an embodiment of the “Classical” principle that the
“whole needs to be more than the sum of its parts”. </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It
is in the realm of classical music (and close behind that, of
mathematics) where the civilizing, unifying, and universal impulse of
the Middle Ages found a permanent spiritual home. The grand cycles of
operas with Northern atmosphere and stories nonetheless were cast
into the Latin and Greek forms of dramatic plays, set to stylized
music. The German super generation of composers, Protestant more
often than not, enshrined the </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>Numbers
of Judgement</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> in works which
(frankly) will be remembered longer than Joyce's </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>Ulysses</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
or the art of Jackson Pollock<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote28sym" name="sdfootnote28anc"><sup>28</sup></a>.
</span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">If
a soul is life able express itself, we cannot but attribute to it a
complete tonal language. In long connected stretches of sound – as
in larger, smaller, or even the smallest fragments – his music
became the vowels, syllables, words and phrases of a language in
which something hitherto </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">unheard,
unspeakable, could find voice. Every letter of this language was of
infinite intensity, and in the joining of these elements there was
unlimited freedom of judgement...”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote29sym" name="sdfootnote29anc"><sup>29</sup></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Huessy
estimated the number of German Protestant hymns at one hundred
thousand, one thousand of which he thought could be regarded as
immortal. The German Reformation was in large measure the protest of
Northern Europe against the excesses of a Latin and Baroque
Christianity – there were legitimate aspirations and differences in
the Teutonic regions of Europe which unfortunately were allowed to
split the Church. The yearning of the “Norther spirit”, its
individualized yet orderly striving after perfection, finds solace in
that which comes so close to capturing that perfection – classical
Music. The inner world of classical music has by no means been
exhausted – there are (for instance) very subtle differences
between the various composers – Beethoven is for someone already
trained to listen, whereas Mozart teaches a non-listener how to
listen. Mozart's prattling is actually so talented that he is doing
something which Bach had to learn, painstakingly, to build as an
ordered structure. Mozart teaches the uninitiated that the music of
the spheres lies latent within him, and awakens his nervous system in
such a way as to accommodate it.</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote30sym" name="sdfootnote30anc"><sup>30</sup></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
subtle problem arises in trying to sort through the classical
“canon”, and we may as well address it here. If we are holding up
Classical Music as the apex of spiritual “Western” civilization,
the question may well confront even the most intrepid defender: which
composer? In quoting extensively from these works, I realize that I
am highlighting a perennial problem with addressing a subject as
large as the Canon or the Seven Liberal Arts. If I was a medieval
writer, I would defend that by saying that I was “letting authority
speak for itself” on the subject, and that this explained the
extensive quotations and long excerpts in this chapter. I might also
add that the best defense of Bach's <i>Messe B Moll</i> would simply
be to listen to it. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;">Since
I am also a “modern man”, I will add my own two cents worth of
thought on the subject of “which composer?” or “what is 'the
Canon'?”. I have labored through a good deal of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>
in the German original, and I have also read Imre Madach's <i>The
Tragedy of Man</i> (although not in Hungarian). Academic specialists
like Matthew Arnold or practicing poets such as Ezra Pound will
always debate (and often disagree) about how worthwhile the poetry of
someone like John Milton really is.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote31sym" name="sdfootnote31anc"><sup>31</sup></a>
I do not believe that it really matters to the questing intellect or
searching soul or lover of beauty whether they read Madach's version
of the Faust legend, or Goethe's. If either or both were destroyed,
the story and legend of Faust would remain in the memory of man. What
seems incomparably more important than distinctions at that level
(which are valid) is the necessity for man to avail himself of the
intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources which he finds at
hand, and to begin to perceive them as something resembling a “Path”.
If Beethoven moves you more than Bach, well and good, so long as one
understands why that it is so, in the deepest recesses of your being,
and why the one or other is still needed by the self, and if
possible, to overcome that need, to sublimate it to something higher.
</span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> “<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Canon” (therefore) is flexible: it is a heavenly city, in which not
everyone knows everyone else. There will be minor authors who assume
a major importance in the life of a single person, and perhaps for
whom that author could be said to have written at all. Some
“heavy-hitters” will simply leave certain people as cold as ice.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote32sym" name="sdfootnote32anc"><sup>32</sup></a>
Some may prefer Vergil over Homer, others may simply read Louis
L'Amour their whole life, and nothing else<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote33sym" name="sdfootnote33anc"><sup>33</sup></a>.
One very fine church lady who loved literature simply could not read
anything done by a Russian – too gloomy. The edifice of the Canon
is a living structure, whose existence and account is settled and
measured in not merely centuries, but millenia – the Bible as a
work of literature is proof of that. While we can definitely judge of
certain “works of art” almost immediately that they are either 1)
vulgar, 2) ephemeral, 3) specialized or 4) “pop” (to name a few
categories off hand), it is not always at first glance apparent what
sort of category or status a “classic” ought to enjoy. In fact,
that might be one of the defining characteristics of that which is
classic – an inability to immediately judge of its worth, or a
continual revelation of spiritual “depth” within the work,
depending on time and context and place. Classics do not have a
milieu identical to the one they sprang from. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
(too) points us towards the study of Music as of profound importance
within the Quadrivium. If you are doing Arithmetic, you have great
choice of subject matter, but little of how to quantify it: you may
study sea shells or ceiling wax, but eventually, someone will want to
know what the statistics of the said group is. When one moves to
Logic-Geometry, there is a tightening of rigor as to method –
affirming the consequent is always a logical fallacy, period, with a
corresponding freedom of using the Logic, or the designs, to support
this or that cause or movement, or to arrange novel logical patterns
or analogies. Karl Marx was a rigorous analytical thinker in some
regards, but his basic assumptions were bleedingly erroneous.
Nevertheless, he still passes muster with vast groups as “logical”.
When one reaches Rhetoric-Music, the balance between Form &
Freedom is almost perfect – ideally, one should be oriented towards
what is Good, and striving with powerful tools to reach that Good,
moving heaven and earth (if need be) to reach the summit. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;">Within
Music at its peak, as in Rhetoric at its most sublime, there is
experienced the final balancing of the freedom of arithmetic-grammar
and the form of logic-geometry: the thinker knows where he is headed,
& has no inner doubt or grave flaws which would ruin the
composition. Therefore, I would affirm that the most perfect kind of
Music is one that achieves the most total identification of a higher
object worthy of worship with the listener. In fact, this is
recognized perversely in our culture today – one is not to dispute
the taste buds or the inner cochlea of someone else. This is because
food, like Music, is capable of transforming the one who “partakes”
of it into something or someone else, at least temporarily, and
exercises an amazing formative capacity on the imbiber. We literally
“become” what we eat, and what we “listen” to. Logic is more
objective, and “facts” are objective (albeit in a different way).
Music has the potential to be most supremely objective, but only if
it fulfills the requirements of the first two stages of the
Quadrivial discipline. If it does not, it becomes passionate,
overwhelming, powerful, and remains transformative, but not in a
necessarily good sense. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Music
points (more than the other disciplines) towards the ancient Greek
requirement to Know Thyself: </span></span></span></span></span></span><i>Gnothi
seauton</i> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">or
</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Nosce
te ipsum</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">.
This was the Delphic injunction, whose esoteric meaning was taken
over, assimilated, and baptized by the young Christian religion –
as a church father said, he who can “see himself” is greater than
him who can “see angels”. Jesus Himself argued that the “Kingdom
is within you”, and Saint Paul is filled with warnings against
“thinking more highly of one's self than one ought”. The spirit
is made flesh, and the flesh can become spirit, in the rhythms and
forms of music. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
listener of music may become aware, therefore, that what he is
hearing (and practicing) upon himself, is literally a picture of what
occurs in the higher realm of Cosmology: the creation of the true
self (the self without lies) and the real I (the united personality)
and the absolute will (oriented solely towards an objectively
perceived Good) is the actual work of Creation on the cosmic level in
the </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Musica
Mundana</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">,
or harmony of the spheres. Christianity offers the possibility of
speeding up this process, of cooperating in synergy with that
objective Logos-Pattern, through the sacrifice of Christ. It is in
the work of the man-God Christ that the higher worlds (of which this
world is a pale shadow) is incarnated into the processes at work in
the besieged and darkened earth, the realm of the Cross. Through the
impregnation of that impulse into the darkness and deep void of the
earth, mankind has received the possibility of reversing the effects
of the Fall, individually & even collectively. Such a process
safeguards the objective work of the Cosmos, which has always served
the Lord in seeking to deliver earth, slowly and fitfully and over
painstaking aeons, from the spiritual bondage into which we had
fallen. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
music, then, is a heavy and joyful choice. The end result, we know
from Revelation, is complete and total union with the energies of
God, and the re-assimilation of man's soul to the Divine. A</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">s
we debate or choose our own Canon, leaning here or there on
</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Auctoritas</span></span></i></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
when we cannot see, and finding Truth, Beauty, & Goodness
wherever we may, treasuring it up and contemplating it in the heart,
we should keep before our soul's eyes the fact that we are (in a
sense) re-creating ourselves, and that our poor choices or wrongful
goals are likely to have consequences which outlast our ability to
pay for them. </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Music stands
ready at hand to help us, offering us her finest treasures of harmony
and beauty and even concrete higher Truth. Even a very passing
interest in music, chosen along sound lines, can contribute to the
physical health, emotional soundness, and spiritual insight of a
human being. Someone who enjoys bluegrass or Celtic modal music may
find that, after a long journey and faithfulness, they begin to
perceive the spiritual idea behind that class of music, and what it
means for their own soul. I cannot speak for Rock and Roll – it
seems, to me, at best, a music suited for children, or for a child's
mood. Has anyone else ever noticed that so many Rock songs have an
electric beginning and a <i>passe</i> ending? Or is it just my
imagination that not even Def Leppard or AC/DC seem able to pull that
off? All of the joy is at the start, but the music does not satisfy
or deliver. It simply enraptures or cocoons the listener, insulating
a certain mood or feeling. Rap music is based upon a kind of
Assyrian, brazen Titanism<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote34sym" name="sdfootnote34anc"><sup>34</sup></a>
which does not, and cannot, appeal to someone who has ever tasted
deeply of something like Arvo Part's <i>Te Deum</i>. New South
Country music songs all sound the same, happy or sad. A lot of “old
time Church music” sounds like a German drinking songs. Modern
Christian music is virtually indistinguishable from pop culture<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote35sym" name="sdfootnote35anc"><sup>35</sup></a>.
People ought to be aware, if they embrace that destiny through music,
programming their soul over and over again with the music that has
the most immediate access and appeal, that they may be shaping
themselves into something that has eternal ramifications, whatever
that means for them. I am not against pop music, only for seeing it
for what it is, and valuing it accordingly. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Music chords and
harmonies can, by a process of analogical signature or
correspondence, resonate with the spinning of the soul inside of us,
affecting us for good or ill. Our souls have a particular density or
gravity or “weight”, according to their content, and particular
“frequencies”. These metaphors should not be dismissed entirely
as mere similitudes, not to be taken literally. At the higher levels
of Truth, where mystery enshrouds what is “really there”, the
language of Music is both mathematical and also artistic, thereby
uniting both the analytical Quadrivium and the linguistic Trivium
into a kind of super-human or angelic balance. Indeed, at the deepest
moments of crisis in human history, it is music which most accurately
conveys the most of what humans experience. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="background: #ffffff;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
the Russians took Berlin in the waning weeks of World War II, the
Nazi </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">glitterati</span></span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
gathered for a performance of Wagner's opera, with helpful ushers
passing out suicide pills in the aisles. The trumpets brought down
the walls of Jericho on a single note. The shepherd David drove an
evil demon from the heart of Saul by playing upon his harp. In the
</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Silmarillion</span></span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">,
Tolkien had the All Creator sing the worlds into existence. I am sure
many other instances of the power of music, historical or personal,
could be adduced. Michael Card, a modern Christian singer, notes that
</span></span></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">S</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ocrates
once said, "' the soul hears music, it drops its' best guard.'
That, for me, is one of the best descriptions of the power that music
has. With music it is possible to open a door in the heart of the
listener. Once inside, the musician can either beautify the interior
of that soul, or desecrate that most holy of places. Often if you can
get someone to sing something, you can get them to believe it. This
has been used both for good as well evil throughout history. All this
is to say that music is a powerful key<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote36sym" name="sdfootnote36anc"><sup>36</sup></a>.
</span></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps the
inability of Logic and arithmetical-facts to sway people from their
passions leaves, as the most powerful argument, sacred Music, which
appeals to the soul before its last passage out into the iron clad
universe of Cosmological reality, where God's Law inexorably
separates wheat from chaff. <i>In the temple of Music, we are given
the final and greatest argument for choosing the reality of God over
the lies of the world</i>: hearing is the last sense to depart the
body, if common testimony is to be believed, and music is heavily
emphasized in the rites of the dead, the world over. Classical music
was the bringing into self-consciousness what was experienced
subconsciously. </span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Webster
Young argues that“Classicism” requires the use of all of its
principles in unity, because the integration is more important than
the “parts”. But this one principle is not enough, because the
subject matter has to be beautiful as well. Anything too shocking or
clashing stuns the spectator and throws him back on himself, and on
his own perceptions. This alienates the beholder from the work of
art.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote37sym" name="sdfootnote37anc"><sup>37</sup></a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Before we
depart the temple of Music, to enter the last precinct of the Holy –
the wide open spaces of the Cosmos where the Universe </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">mightily
enforces the holy and eternal plan of the Name which can not be
uttered by angels – we might consider what it is that holds us back
from seeing, or at least, hearing, the </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Musica
Mundana<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote38sym" name="sdfootnote38anc"><sup>38</sup></a></i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
and the harmony of the spheres which is said to emanate from the
living organism that comprises the Universe, which is destined to be
the bride and body of God. Why is it so difficult for man to become
unified in his being and to achieve one will and to find his deeper
self? What good is the Quadrivium, if it cannot help us do this? And
has this been invented as a means to socially control those who don't
understand puffery & and the subtleties of the wise?<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote39sym" name="sdfootnote39anc"><sup>39</sup></a>
</span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">We have mentioned the Cartesian spirit of
thought in man, which places an emphasis on that which is empirically
detectable at the lowest level of quantity – this is a formidable
barrier for many people, particularly those who are “thinkers”.
There is, of course, the added confusion of Christianity, which has
degenerated to a lower and lower level, along with the ebb and flow
of the intellectual culture. Very few people have the opportunity in
Church to experience the Traditional teaching that the Cosmos is a
vast, unified living Temple, & that scientific discovery is
beneath & integral to a mystery which is older than the Universe,
or that the Son of Man and God recapitulated all things, heaven and
earth, within His Being. Instead, the Church defends a moralistic and
sentimental version of attenuated private Faith, with no connection
to the real world or the Logos. If History were a movie, our time
would be the nadir, or low ebb, of the story of man: the heroes would
be bedraggled, beaten, and in despair, with sad melodies playing
softly in the background. Another obstacle is that Quantity itself
floods the world, to the detriment of Quantity – Information drowns
Wisdom, Style trumps Substance, and Appearances rule Reality. </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Now, more than ever, the spadework of the seven
Liberal Arts actually makes sense, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>if and only
if </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">it is done with a (I do not say rigid) but
rigorous exclusivity which tests every spirit, probes every piece of
ground, and investigates every question mark. It is precisely in the
darkest hour, with the most odds, which is the right time to revive
that which (in any case) was ideal, but had received only a partial
adherence. It is not a matter of reviving something which “didn't
work” : as Gandhi famously said when asked about “Western
civilization”, he said “I think it's a good idea, they should try
it.” Nor is it a matter of looking to a system for salvation, as it
is quite clear that a living, active path has to be followed for it
to “work” to begin with. </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Men will follow the categories of thought
outlined in the seven Liberal Arts – the only question is, will it
be done unconsciously to very unintended ends, or </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>consciously</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
for rational ones? It is hard not to notice that an entire “Liberal
Arts” has grown up today, which is the precise inversion of its own
professed goals and outcomes. Grammar today means political
correctness; this is free speech, to be constrained to tell lies.
Freedom from Truth, compulsion to Lies: this is what modern grammar
entails. In other disciplines, the story is equally dismal, although
not so grossly outrageous. For a modern artist, even in music, to be
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>revolutionary </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">is the
highest aspiration, and they have taken as their rhetorical motto
that of Sigmund Freud, taken from the Aeneid: </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Flectere
si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> (If I
cannot bend heaven, then I will move Hades). </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The recondite esoteric teaching of Christianity,
hidden within the Orthodox and Catholic and even Protestant faiths<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote40sym" name="sdfootnote40anc"><sup>40</sup></a>,
is that Cosmic Law is supreme, and that man can either serve it
willingly or unwillingly: if willingly, then his “soul” may be
saved – an excess is left over, his talents, which the Master will
then use to make the servant a true son; if unwillingly, then his
“soul” will lost, and man will be forced into a servitude
following his earthly life, a servitude which is embodied in the
lower regions, those same lower regions which (ironically enough)
modern man's art delights to “move”. </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">This Cosmic Law was fulfilled, every jot and
tittle in it, by the Logos Incarnate, and since Grace perfects rather
than abolishing Nature, man is now called to avail himself of that
Supreme Gift. Even the Puritans, no slighters of God's free gift,
were known to write “if our disease cannot be remedied by God's
Son, it is incurable, and cannot be saved”. This service starts as
a duty or labor, and ends with the fullness of adoption, with
variations in intensity, pace, and how much of the final goal is
glimpsed in the early stages. The anti-nomian and revolutionary
position that God permanently abandoned the Logos pattern with the
death of Christ is really a theology or wish of Satan: maybe God
really did die on that cross – maybe there is no such thing as as a
Cosmos, a divine Law, or a Logos-pattern which was vindicated –
maybe man can stop worrying so much about becoming more than merely
potentially divine – maybe God's image really is obliterated. </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Paradoxically, those who are in the greatest
need or despair are often the ones who end up seeing most clearly
that the first step of a thousand mile journey is the hardest – it
is the ex-atheists, the ex-communists, the ex-secularists who
experience a crisis or moral collapse who often end up defending the
orthodox and deeply Christian truths, and expressing them in modern
language. Them, and the mysterious “just”, who seem to stay close
to the Lord as if by instinct. From them, we can learn that the
spadework of the seven Liberal Arts are a spiritual journey and
labor, in which no task is too small or menial, if it helps to polish
the mirror of the soul. </span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The first step of a journey, any journey, and
Music reminds us of this, is the ability to stop and look up and to
truly see or listen, to become perceptively aware of our situation,
and how dire and desperate it truly is. This is what is meant by “he
who sees himself is greater than he who sees angels”. Rock and
roll, for all its faults, did perverse damage to the Iron Curtain
during the years of the Cold War<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote41sym" name="sdfootnote41anc"><sup>41</sup></a>.
Music draw us out of the playing around in the environment which
arithmetic and even logic are prone to – it even corrects and heals
rhetoric twisted by the human tongue. Through the ear, man can see
what is hidden to the organ of the eye, at least </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">the
possibility</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>. If this Beauty can exist,
then I am “other” to it, for I am not yet like it, but yet, I can
hear it. </i></span>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Music, like
poetry and literature (which is a “music” in print), statue and
painting (which is music in shape and color), opens up and activates
immediate links to parts of us which are normally inaccessible, and
which are usually believed to be unimportant or actually lower than
they truly are.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote42sym" name="sdfootnote42anc"><sup>42</sup></a>
Some of these things are attributed to the subconscious, but actually
have a higher source.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote43sym" name="sdfootnote43anc"><sup>43</sup></a>
It is by attunement to these, and regularization with the external
harmony of the Cosmos, that man saves enough energy to have something
left over of his talents, something which is “worthy of his hire”,
enabling him to begin to transform into a “true son”.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote44sym" name="sdfootnote44anc"><sup>44</sup></a>
</span></span>
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There is an allusion
in a Christian hymn to this Celestial Harmony (which corresponds to a
human harmony within the human being): </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This is
my Father's world,<br />And to my listening ears<br />All nature sings,
and round me rings</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The music of the
spheres</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Normally we are
accustomed (or programmed) to believe that this is a pure metaphor.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote45sym" name="sdfootnote45anc"><sup>45</sup></a>
Yet since consciousness itself is a metaphor<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote46sym" name="sdfootnote46anc"><sup>46</sup></a>,
as well as the “I”, or a great many other things we think very
concrete or factual, we turn to examine this Music. In fact, during
the early Scientific era, there was a sharp controversy between
Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd over this very issue – in what did
the </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Harmony of the Spheres</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
consist? Kepler was no stranger to mysticism or religion. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Accordingly
you won’t wonder any more that a very excellent order of sounds or
pitches in a musical system or scale has been set up by men, since
you see that they are doing nothing else in this business except to
play the apes of God the Creator and to act out, as it were, a
certain drama of the ordination of the celestial movements.
(<i>Harmonice Mundi</i>, Book V) </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="firstHeading"></a> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In
this work, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en"><i>Harmonices Mundi,</i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en">
Kepler made the claim that the earth has an actual soul, because it
is subjected to astrological harmony – the various planets sing
notes based on the ratios of their orbits and their tilt. Yet Kepler
and Fludd had a very bitter quarrel, which interests us here
(chiefly) because of the commentary made upon that quarrel, in our
own day, by a pioneer quantum physicist, Wolfgang Pauli<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote47sym" name="sdfootnote47anc"><sup>47</sup></a>.
You might have expected a scientist to side with the more empirical
and mathematical Kepler, rather than the mystic Fludd<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote48sym" name="sdfootnote48anc"><sup>48</sup></a>,
who (frankly) disdained empirical and mathematical proofs. Instead,
these are the comments which Pauli makes:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="en">To
us, unlike Kepler and Fludd, the only acceptable pont of view appears
to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality – the
quantitative and qualitative, the physical and the psychical – as
compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously.
Since the discovery of the quantum of action, physics has been
gradually forced to relinquish its proud claim to understand the
</span><span lang="en"><i>whole </i></span><span lang="en">world.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote49sym" name="sdfootnote49anc"><sup>49</sup></a>
</span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en">This
is not the version of modern science which atheistic propagandizers
like to put forward. Nor, should it be said, is it the version of
modern science which most Christians accept – most Christians are
content to let science have “fact”, and God lay claim to
“belief”. Modern scientific atheists wish to cleanse science of
all mystical residue, but there have been a startling number of great
men in Science who were either religious, mystical, or both. Modern
Christians want to immediately concede the superiority of Science in
the realm of “fact”, but seem oblivious to new developments in
Science which demonstrate measurably that the world cannot be
measured in a metaphysical sense, and that measurement itself raises
(on its own terms) metaphysical questions. </span></span>
</div>
<div lang="en" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
<div lang="en" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">But we are
getting ahead of ourselves. It is time to leave a pure consideration
of music, & taking with us the harmony we have gained, progress
to the final step of the Quadrivium, that of sacred Cosmology. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
</div>
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</div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>
We have to clearly state that the medieval world at least suspected
and investigated the possibility that there was a path to God which
was mental, in a higher sense, that one could literally approach and
touch God with the higher Mind. This idea lies behind works like
Bonaventura's <i>Journey of the Mind Into God</i>. Modern
Christianity calls this Platonism, but it is actually the Tradition,
of which Plato is the spokesperson and transmitter into the Western
cultures. To be clear, the lower discursive reason cannot reach God:
it cannot “think” God. However, the higher Mind is not bound by
such constraints, nor is it opposed to the “heart”, as the lower
mind always is.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>
(quoted in <i>The Liberal Arts Tradition</i>, Clark and Jain, Camp
Hill PA Classical Tradition Press, 2013. p. 78.</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>
The world is <em>harmochthe</em> - harmoniously composed. -
Philolaus</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>
John Martineau makes this point in his lecture on the Quadrivium: it
is in music that the significance of the Number 7 is most clearly
seen, as all tunings in the world tend to default to a seven note
scale, which the ear wishes to hear.
http://www.triviumeducation.com/interviews/john-martineau-interview-quadrivium-number-geometry-music-cosmology-103/</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a>
It was the task of the Greco-Roman period, unique in human history,
to establish the concept of <i>civitas, cives</i>, and the idea of
the <i>polis</i>: the political community which had a duty to orient
itself collectively to the Good. See Oswald Spengler's <i>The
Decline of the West</i>, also, for how the <i>polis </i>shaped the
forms of knowledge in the antique period.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote6">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>
The patter is 1:3:2:4, a chiasm, or Cross. This pattern expresses
the rotation of spiritual influence over the earth in the form of
epochs, and causes the realization that the Medieval and the Modern
world are deeply inter-related, as there is a very hidden “Logic”
implicit in medieval Scholasticism, and a very hidden “Rhetoric”
obeyed by modern Science. When these two periods are reconciled in a
way consistent with the beginning in the ancient world (Philosophy),
the progression towards the age of Art will be complete, and the
Cross will be finished. This also reconciles Buchanan's insight that
Logic and Rhetoric often switch places in the progression of the
Trivium.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote7">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>
It is a question of emphasis, not fact, for in Werner Herzog’s
documentary <em>Cave of Forgotten Dreams</em>, a paleontologist
toots “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a reproduction of a
35,000-year-old flute carved from vulture bone, unearthed in 2009 in
a South German cave. (cited by Daniel P Goldman).
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote8">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>
<a href="http://www.math.tamu.edu/%7Edallen/masters/medieval/medieval.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/masters/medieval/medieval.pdf</a></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote9">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>
What is regarded as “imperialism” still constitutes one of the
most amazing migratory movements of all time – the reduplication
of an entire civilization across the sea on a large scale. It would
not have been possible had not Christianity thoroughly percolated
through the entire fabric of social society. Before America could be
founded, the idea had to exist in the minds and hearts of the
culture at a very broad level.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote10">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>
The drive towards the universal is not unique to the Middle Ages –
what is unique, however, is the degree of success and the endurance
behind that drive. It is still not certain that it will be destroyed
as totally or degenerated as finally as Greco-Roman or Magian-Arabic
culture was. The totality of the synthesis was carried much further
in the West.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote11">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>
<a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/the-divine-music-of-mathematics" target="_blank">http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/the-divine-music-of-mathematics</a></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote12">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>
This is entirely proper as a “mode”, within its proper limits.
But how else would we judge what is proper, if we leave out
consciousness? It is not appreciated how dependent humanity is upon
ideas which come to them sub-consciously, from either higher or
lower sources, and simply “arise” or appear as “self-evident”.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>
Only a science of the Spirit could do justice to both religion and
Science at the same time, by transcending either. I hate to agree
with Deepak Chopra, but he is right that consciousness is the
starting point. Even corrupted consciousness has determining power
to affect our life and knowledge, in this world and the next.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote14">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote14anc" name="sdfootnote14sym">14</a>
He is right that there has been “warfare”, but White thinks this
is an unequivocally good thing, which is obviously absurd, and that
it is necessary, which is even more absurd, if possible.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote15">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote15anc" name="sdfootnote15sym">15</a>
Christian culture gained in complexity and power, at the same time
Islamic culture was losing complexity and power: the peak of Islamic
civilization was in the Baghdad of Haroun Al Raschid, who reigned in
in the 700s, roughly contemporaneous with Charlemagne. The first
“Renaissance” was lead by Charlemagne.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote16">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote16anc" name="sdfootnote16sym">16</a>
<a href="http://mla.winchester.ac.uk/?page_id=92">http://mla.winchester.ac.uk/?page_id=92</a>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote17">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote17anc" name="sdfootnote17sym">17</a>
To use Coleridge's term <i>clerisy,</i> the Renaissance was far less
“radical” than we suppose: it was actually more of a break with
the official clergy, & the creation (or annointing) of a new
“clergy” - the term <i>clerisy</i> denotes whatever dominant
elite controls the terms of debate. After the Renaissance &
Reformation, it was no longer the ecclesiastics.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote18">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote18anc" name="sdfootnote18sym">18</a>
The Enlightenment <i>philosophes</i> owe more to the traveling
medieval scholars (like Abelard) than they would care to admit.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote19">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote19anc" name="sdfootnote19sym">19</a>
Admittedly, this is a shorthand way of viewing the problem: counter
examples would also be abundant. However, in general, it is fair to
say that neither Scholasticism nor the Renaissance were entirely
fair, or entirely complete, in their exploration of the elements of
the seven Liberal Arts which they emphasized and understood. It is
unfortunate that such a conflict between them ever ensued. We can,
however, take the partial aspect each saw clearly, and begin to
reconstruct the possibilities between them.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote20">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="title"></a><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote20anc" name="sdfootnote20sym">20</a>
It must never be forgotten that Scholasticism gave us the
University. “In 1300 there were only 23 universities in Europe.
During the fourteenth century, an additional 22 were founded, and in
the fifteenth century 34 new institutions appeared. This growth was
strongest in Germany, Eastern Europe, and Spain. As new universities
appeared throughout the continent, the number of individual colleges
within these institutions also grew, as nobles, wealthy burghers,
kings, and princes moved to endow new schools within the framework
of existing universities. Medieval universities also specialized, as
universities do today, in particular areas of expertise. Until the
sixteenth century, Paris remained Europe's premier theological
university, while Bologna in Italy was known for its legal studies.
It trained many of the lawyers who practiced in the church's courts.
Salerno, in Sicily, was Europe's first medical school.” From the
online Gale database, “Scholasticism in the Later Middle Ages
Arts and Humanities Through the Eras, 2005 From World History in
Context. Scholasticism's potential was not exhausted, but instead,
broken up – in fact, the entire rhetoric against Scholasticism may
have been a partly legitimate but elaborate cover for a rebellion
against Tradition and the Faith.
</div>
<div class="sdfootnote">
<br />
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote21">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote21anc" name="sdfootnote21sym">21</a>
It is quite fair to say that the “purity” of music in both the
Middle Ages, the Renaissance, & the Reformation remained much
truer to the naked possibility of Form than did the other
disciplines of each period. Or perhaps, the evidence presented by
music to the ear is easier to recognize and harder to deny.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote22">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote22anc" name="sdfootnote22sym">22</a>
from O’Brien, J. (1881). <a href="https://archive.org/details/ahistorymassand00obrgoog"><i>A
History of the Mass and Its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western
Church</i></a> (p. 80). New York: The Catholic Publication Society
Co.</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote23">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote23anc" name="sdfootnote23sym">23</a>
<a href="https://www.olrl.org/misc/mozart.shtml"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span style="background: #ffffff;">https://www.olrl.org/misc/mozart.shtml</span></b></span></span></span></span></a></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote24">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote24anc" name="sdfootnote24sym">24</a>
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/bernard-chazelle-discovering-the-cosmology-of-bach?in=onbeing/sets/bernard-chazelle-discovering-the-cosmology-of-bach" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/bernard-chazelle-discovering-the-cosmology-of-bach?in=onbeing/sets/bernard-chazelle-discovering-the-cosmology-of-bach</span></span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote25">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote25anc" name="sdfootnote25sym">25</a>
Digoxin is still extracted from the live root of foxglove today.
Scott Buchanan's <i>Doctrine of Signatures</i> correctly points out
that the “black arts” of Science today (a black art is an
science without Reason) consistently refuse to set up analogies –
when they find one, they always push the analogies to the same side,
and start looking for new ones, new ones which will also be pushed
aside into a conglomeration of unrelated “facts”, and so on, <i>ad
infinitum</i>. The medieval genius lay in precisely the opposite
direction: they reveled (to a fault perhaps) in analogies and their
implications. Hence, medieval science always had a “magical”
feel to it.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote26">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote26anc" name="sdfootnote26sym">26</a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">https://www.olrl.org/misc/mozart.shtml</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote27">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote27anc" name="sdfootnote27sym">27</a>
Obviously, the “folk cultures” retained their own music, herbal
lore, and to some extent, religious practice, but all of the
medieval “castes” shared an orderly, hierarchical view of the
Cosmos, as a whole.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote28">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote28anc" name="sdfootnote28sym">28</a>
Although it is nice to know that Marc Chagall did a “Jesse Tree”
stained glass window for a church in Switzerland. Even modern art
has mental reservations.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote29">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote29anc" name="sdfootnote29sym">29</a>
Rosenstock-Huessy, <i>Out of Revolution</i>. Argo Books, Providence
RI : 1993. 417, 419.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote30">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote30anc" name="sdfootnote30sym">30</a>
https://www.olrl.org/misc/mozart.shtml</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote31">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote31anc" name="sdfootnote31sym">31</a>
Pound, no hater of Tradition, regarded Milton's poetry as an
“abominable dog's biscuit”. Arnold thought Milton was second
only to Shakespeare or perhaps Wordsworth in the English tongue. And
both Pound and Arnold are worth reading. You will always find things
to disagree with in what you read or discuss with others; the point
is to reach a knowledge of the self about which there can be no
doubt.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote32">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote32anc" name="sdfootnote32sym">32</a>
Dante springs to mind as a possible example, here. I have a good
friend who is very well read who claims he simply cannot read Dante.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote33">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote33anc" name="sdfootnote33sym">33</a>
CS Lewis, in an essay from <i>An Experiment in Criticism</i>,
defends life long readers of “genre” works by appealing to the
1. act of reading itself 2. the possible need which is being
unconsciously sought or fulfilled in certain pronounced cases.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote34">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote34anc" name="sdfootnote34sym">34</a>
The kind of masculine over reaction to corruption in Lunar or
Matriarchal civilizations, which Rap engages in, ought to be seen
clearly for what it is: please see Julius Evola's foreword to <i>Revolt
Against the Modern World</i>.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote35">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote35anc" name="sdfootnote35sym">35</a>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The music of unbelief and despair has been very popular
lately; it is the ineluctable outcome of a grammar and logic rooted
in “the downward integration into the void”, for man must sing,
even if it be of his sorrow and his fear and his hunger and his
passion. The decline of Christian art form is a species of despair:
when the Newsboys sing </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Shine</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
it is a protest against that despair, filled with talent and
legitimate art – the problem is that the despair is to some extent
deepened, since the song can only engage certain levels of our
being, & the entire work does not so much end as just “fade
out”. The song begins really well, and is very catchy, but it has
nowhere to “go”: it is shallow, repetitive, breathless, and
sentimental. It has nothing like the emotional integrity and power
as (for example) the opening march from </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Aida</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
or the overture of the </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Makropoulous Affair,</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
or even a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. If AC/DC's </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Thunderstruck
</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">is more exciting and electric than </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Shine</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">,
then isn't the Christianity of the Newsboys optional? At best,
something added on to the main course? </span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote36">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote36anc" name="sdfootnote36sym">36</a>
http://www.ivpress.com/michaelcard/fromthestudy/fts018.pdf</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote37">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote37anc" name="sdfootnote37sym">37</a>
<a href="https://isistatic.org/journal-archive/ir/43_01/young.pdf">https://isistatic.org/journal-archive/ir/43_01/young.pdf</a>
This (of course) is the very hermeneutic of the modern, in which
shock and assault is used to induce a kind of inner transformation,
supposedly, or at least lucidity. Classicism regards this as a sign
that the artist himself does not understand what he is doing.
Therefore, his “art” cannot be self conscious, and at the
highest level of art. A self conscious artist knows precisely what
his piece means, and seeks to impress it upon the world. Modern art
has sophisticated theories of “levels” of meaning and
unintentional meaning, but one has to wonder if these are actually
covers for simple confusion on the part of the “artist”.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote38">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote38anc" name="sdfootnote38sym">38</a>
The twentieth century will go down as the century where no one was
listening to the conductor.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote39">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote39anc" name="sdfootnote39sym">39</a>
There is no doubt that the Seven Liberal Arts can be used for
coercive means: anything good can be perverted. That is beside the
point. But many condemn them on that basis.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote40">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote40anc" name="sdfootnote40sym">40</a>
The Protestant Church has its quiet share of mystics : Luther
himself consulted a work called <i>Theologica Germanica</i>, which
contains some of them. Jacob Boehme is an example that springs to
mind.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote41">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote41anc" name="sdfootnote41sym">41</a>
The Paul McCartney concert in Red Square after 1989's events were of
immense symbolic significance, not all of it healthy.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote42">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote42anc" name="sdfootnote42sym">42</a>
This is not always true: sometimes, Music (and Art) can be used to
actually seduce and draw down the human being into what is beneath
them.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote43">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote43anc" name="sdfootnote43sym">43</a>
Things that flow from the subconscious are often misinterpreted: it
may be that what is regarded as “lower” or accidental is
actually higher, and vice versa. The old patristic emphasis on
ceaseless watchlessness was designed to discriminate within the
subconscious.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote44">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote44anc" name="sdfootnote44sym">44</a>
This is consistent with many of the stranger parables of Jesus,
which indicate that God has invested in man's development, and seeks
fruit from the trees which he has planted, or talents for talents,
or waiting virgins with trimmed lamps.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote45">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote45anc" name="sdfootnote45sym">45</a>
After reading Buchanan's <i>Doctrine of Signatures</i>, I am not
sure there is any such thing as a pure metaphor – there is always
some actual connection which suggests the metaphor.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote46">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote46anc" name="sdfootnote46sym">46</a>
Julian Jaynes notes this in his <i>The Breakdown of the Bicameral
Consciousness</i>: we say that the mind “sees” or the
consciousness “grasps it”, but these are physical metaphors. We
don't actually know what the mind or consciousness does – we are
using a metaphor to describe something we don't “see” clearly.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote47">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote47anc" name="sdfootnote47sym">47</a>
Incidentally, Wolfgang Pauli died in a hospital room numbered 137:
“In 1958, Pauli was awarded the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_medal">Max
Planck medal</a>. In that same year, he fell ill with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_cancer">pancreatic
cancer</a>. When his last assistant, Charles Enz, visited him at the
Rotkreuz hospital in Zurich, Pauli asked him: "Did you see the
room number?" It was number 137. Throughout his life, Pauli had
been preoccupied with the question of why the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_structure_constant">fine
structure constant</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_analysis">dimensionless</a>
fundamental constant, has a value nearly equal to 1/137. Pauli died
in that room on 15 December 1958.” Pauli was enough of a mystic to
have appreciated this coincidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote48">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote48anc" name="sdfootnote48sym">48</a>
Robert Fludd was a very interesting figure – a Renaissance
Neo-Platonic Christian alchemist, much like Marsilio Ficino. We will
discuss Fludd and Ficino in the next chapter.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote49">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312&pli=1#sdfootnote49anc" name="sdfootnote49sym">49</a>
Robert Fludd: The Scientific Theories of Kepler. Wolfgang Pauli.
Page 129. North Atlantic Books – Berkely CA 1001.
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-41690746872683061582016-03-10T10:00:00.000-08:002016-03-10T10:00:03.656-08:00Mannerbund & FamilyOne of the nice things about being in the vanguard of the Future, is that you can watch that Future shaped in discussions which will eventually dominate consciousness and shape the terms of debate in the age to come. One of those debates today in the Reaction-Sphere is whether civilization is rooted in the Warband-(Mannerbund), or the Family.<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://froudesociety.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/hrx-takes-its-exit/">Froude Society</a> has some interesting remarks:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In conclusion, illiberal Reaction is taking our leave from quisling
revisionists. They are materialists who wish to govern by protocol,
philosophically and spiritually joined to our enemies, at the foot if
not at the hip.<b> Any man of faith, be him Abrahamic or Pagan</b>, must
realize support of these leaders is a sin. They are deceivers who will
stab us in the back the second our fight threatens their avarice, if
they even take up arms when the time comes… They reject the hero, they
reject the sublime, and thus any exoteric link to the Holy on High.
Moreover, they do not even pretend to have any solutions for non
anglo-civilizations, we speak truths that ring true for all peoples by
historical precedent, that good governance and order is always Good.</blockquote>
<br />
The Reaction-Sphere still tends to sit on the fence when it comes to Monotheism: there seems a clear tendency of "pagan" reactionaries to prefer <a href="http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/04/brian-de-palmas-the-untouchables/">Mannerbunds</a>, and for monotheistic ones to be clear that Family is the essence of civilization. <br />
<br />
I tend to think that arguing about this issue in a dichotomous manner is obviously futile - Men and their "ages" go through historical periods with greater or lesser emphasis on either Family/Mannerbund, but this is to look at the animal side of things. During a "Dark Age", the warband achieves notable prominence, but families do not go away, for all that. During a comfortable age of Plenty (eg., the Victorian?), families achieve dominant sway, yet fraternal and patriarchal alliances are still quite notable.<br />
<br />
Considered from the principle, it is clear that the Family has precedence in origin: around the Family cluster the sanctities which separate us from the bees or the ants. Even so, the Warband itself, once acknowledged as secondary or derivative, has its own primacy & sphere, in which the family life is only admitted in the brotherly bond, which is through the nature of the mothers. The warrior caste is feminine in regard to the brahmin caste, and has to achieve the divine through a kind of passionate rending of the flesh, expressed in the martial ethos. It is masculine in regards to all else below it, but in its nature, considered to what is above it, it is feminine. This feminine bond is expressed in the fraternal band of brothers, & in order for it to be healthy (eg., non-homosexual, disciplined and regulated in violence, etc.), this bond flows from pre-existing familial structures. The Warband, by itself, cannot be a microcosm of the cosmos, but only represents the victory of the male principles over itself & its enemies: in order to achieve the Grail, the introduction of feminine figures will be required to complete the tale.<br />
<br />
The health of the Mannerbund depends upon the health of its fraternal-paternal bonds, which have their origin in the family. I do not deny the importance of the Mannerbund: quite the contrary, I welcome back talk of its resurrection.<br />
<br />
Ultimately, real authority is One, & can only stem from an invisible, male, transcendent principle, which nonetheless creates room/diversity for all other forms of existence. The family father or the imperial crown prince, or the war band leader of the Mannerbund (eg., Lancelot) are the foundation of civilization. It is the sanctity of the families clustering around these figures which betray their legitimate and divine nature.<br />
<br />
The attempt to oppose family vs. Mannerbund is a moribund and futile distinction, which is unfertile. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-25341191493581885212015-10-07T20:50:00.000-07:002015-10-07T20:50:12.962-07:00Our Thesis in a Nutshell: Christian Education
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<br /><br />
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<br /><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Put Another Way: Our
Thesis in a Nutshell</b></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Contra</i>
the modern tendency in Christian apologetic movements, we desire that
human letters and science be made <i>perspicacious, pellucid, and
integral with what is known of the nature of God.</i> Anything less
would be to cripple the possibility of developing a specifically
Christian worldview, for what good is a world view that cannot
account for itself, or remain true to itself, at all possible levels,
and in all possible situations? At the same time, we wish to do this
consciously, that it may be criticized, improved upon, or clarified
in important points. In this sense, the effort to develop the
Quadrivium and the Trivium can be called <i>Christian Humanism</i>.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>
We agree with R. Scott Clark at <i>Heidelblog</i> that a Christian,
or even a Reformed, humanism is quite possible: he refers us to other
sources as well- </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
“<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">On this see the massive work of Richard
Muller, e.g., </span><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Post-Reformation-Reformed-Dogmatics-Development-Orthodoxy/dp/0801026180" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Post-Reformation
Reformed Dogmatics</span></a></em><span style="font-size: x-small;"> or Carl R.
Trueman and R. Scott Clark, eds.</span><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Scholasticism-Reassessment-Studies-Christian/dp/1597527882" target="_blank">Protestant
Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment</a> </span></em><span style="font-size: x-small;">or
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Reformed-Scholasticism-Historical-Theological-Studies/dp/1601781210" target="_blank">Willem
van Asselt, </a></span><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Reformed-Scholasticism-Historical-Theological-Studies/dp/1601781210" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Introduction
to Reformed Scholasticism</span></a></em><span style="font-size: x-small;">.” </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
It appears to this writer that
the anti-classical movement (while making good points, generating
sound insights, and clarifying some topics) actually requires more of
man than God does, & says worse things about him than the Creator
does, and that this is because they believe that man's reason is
completely extinguished, and that the image of God in man is
obliterated. Apparently, this theory does not extend to their own
reasoning on the subject, nor (presumably) to that which they appeal
to in their listener. I include the Biblical scholar Gary North in
this category, and to a lesser extent, James Jordan. Rush Limbaugh
has also joined the attack on “liberal studies”, bizarrely. Here
is Lisa Van Damme, of the Ayn Rand Objectivist Standard, attacking
“classical education”- she objects to this idea of a higher
Wisdom with a capital W:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="SPELLING_ERROR_25"></a>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Like Hirsch’s Core Knowledge catalogue, </span><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">The
Well-Trained Mind</span></em><span style="font-size: x-small;"> fails to differentiate
facts at various levels of abstraction. Facts are simply the
automatically given raw material from which logical conclusions are
drawn and impassioned arguments made. In the first years of
schooling, the child is supplied with all the facts known to man—no
matter how these facts actually came to be known, and thus regardless
of how these facts can be truly understood firsthand. In the logic
stage, he learns how to relate and interconnect the facts to form
arguments. In the rhetoric stage, he learns to use his catalogue of
facts and skill at argument to create new ideas and present them in a
compelling manner. How is he to know that the said facts are facts?
The answer is that he simply does not know; he is to accept them as
facts because an authority says so....Nothing is more destructive to
a child’s (or an adult’s) ability to reason than to be fed dogma
and to swallow it. Reason functions by logically integrating
observable facts of reality into a non-contradictory whole. In regard
to every idea, a reasoning mind must ask: Is this supported by the
facts of reality? And: How does this integrate with my other factual
knowledge of reality? When a rational person spots a contradiction,
he knows that at least one of his premises is wrong. But what is he
to do with the Bible—which, if taken literally, provides him with
an endless stream of absurd falsehoods and unscientific assertions?
Can a bush talk, as is claimed in the Old Testament? Can a man walk
on water or turn it to wine, as Jesus is purported to have done? Was
everything created </span><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">ex nihilo</span></em><span style="font-size: x-small;">
in six days? Was man created in his current form? Have Christians not
caused major atrocities throughout history—and are these atrocities
not sanctioned by the Bible? An education that places primacy on the
observable, provable facts of reality can teach a child how to think
and integrate; one that does not, short-circuits his mind by telling
him to accept that which makes no sense and contradicts that which he
knows.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Can the mind actually create
ideas on its own, like a mushroom creates spores? Isn't it dogmatic
to assert that “nothing is more destructive....to a mind than to
be fed dogma and swallow it”? Also, is that true? <i>Nothing</i>?
What about lying to yourself? What is meant by “observable” and
provable”? “Facts” and “reality”?
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Contrary to Van
Damme's wishful thinking, there isn't an obervable, provable
“reality” which everyone can easily agree on. Even worse, there
isn't a consistent “method” that those who disagree on what
“reality” is, can agree on either. The closest thing we have to
this, which is the scientific method, is an agreement on procedure in
certain instances, rather than “method” strictly speaking, since
“method” implies (in addition to procedure) the tinctures of the
contents and ambiance of the Mind. Yes, we all tend to agree that we
experience reality, we hypothesize, we “test” or observe that
hypothesis, and then we refine our theories. After that initial
consensus, everything <i>diverges</i> into infinity, unless we are
discussing the lowest mineral or chemical levels of reality, about
which there is usually an easy agreement. This is true even among
scientists.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
The classical world
had derived a rather careful and conservative, but effective, remedy
for this confusion. By using the <i>locus</i> of common texts (eg.,
Homer's <i>Odyssey</i>, Euclidean geometry, etc.) it became possible
to <i>awaken</i> the possibilities inherent in the student.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
In the ancient tradition of the liberal arts, it was recognized that
“only like can know like”. Although many Christians today deride
this as “Platonism”, it was simply a recognized epistemological
maxim of the older world that was shared in common, by and large.
Stoics would also have accepted it, as would have Pythagoreans, the
mystery schools, and a variety of other philosophical schools. Jesus
put the same truth in its purest form: “Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God”. If we accept that maxim, we can see
why humans will never experience identical “reality” on the
inside – the interior of men is different, and some people are
incapable of understanding what others do. At the same time, there is
a kind of basic similarity in all men – their “noetic” faculty
is divided into the image and the likeness of God: we all share God's
image, but we participate in His likeness to the degree which we are
able, according to our talents. It was the common, shared “image”
of God which created Mediterranean, classical “humanism”, later
baptized and furthered by the Christian community of the Dark Ages.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
It was a firm belief
in the continuity between Grace and Nature that lead (to some degree)
the ancient, and (to a greater degree) the medieval, worlds to
canonize what they called the seven Liberal Arts. True, Grace doesn't
merely restore the primordial state, but neither does it obliterate
it by something entirely Other or alien. One is tempted to express
the difference between Greece/Rome on the one hand, and medieval
Europe on the other this way: the ancient world possessed
transcendence and immanence, but it had no stable or sane way to
bring them together – it was the coming of Christ that reconciled
the interior worlds with the exterior cosmos. From then on, humanism
made sense, but only as Christian humanism.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Francis Schaeffer in
his magisterial work <i>How Shall We Then Live</i> stated that
towards the end of the Middle Ages there happened</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">an
increasing distortion of the teaching of the Bible and the early
church. Humanist elements had entered. For example, the authority of
the church took precedence over the teachings of the Bible; fallen
man was considered able to return to God by meriting the merit of
Christ; and there was a mixture of Christian and ancient
non-Christian thought (as Aquinas' emphasis on Aristotle). This
opened the way for people to think of themselves as autonomous and
the center of all things.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a>
</span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
With enormous respect
to Schaeffer (to whom I owe very much), there is a lack of subtlety
in this sweeping approach. While it is true that the Middle Ages gave
birth to the “numeracy” and <i>computus</i> of modern Science, a
tendency that was certainly exaggerated and reached its peak in the
Deistic period of 18<sup>th</sup> century humanism and the
Enlightenment, there were competing tendencies within the sharpening
of the Western intellect which lost out (over time) to the
quantitative approaches to both Nature and God. “Reason” in the
Middle Ages stood for the <i>noetic</i> faculty, rightly used
(including in inquiry into Nature), so it was not until the great
nominalist debate and William of Ockham, that the West decisively
turned towards the dark side of reductionism and determinism<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>.
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
To give just one
example of the survival and continuity of the older view, Jean Calvin
quotes with approval Saint Bernard of Clarivaux in his <i>Institutes</i>,
on the righteousness of Christ. So that if we return to that high
point of the medieval period, during the 10th-13<sup>th</sup>
centuries, we find a very different kind of “humanism” than
existed in either ancient Rome or the Renaissance, or (for that
matter), the Reformation. Looking past the label, what we encounter
is a deliberate attempt to work out the cultural implications of the
doctrine of <i>theosis</i>, which Athanasius championed:
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">God
became man, that man might become God. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Hugh of St. Victor
says it even better, this way:</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This,
then, is what the arts are concerned with, this is what they intend,
namely, to restore within us the divine likeness, a likeness which to
us is a form but to God is his nature. The more we are conformed to
the divine nature, the more do we possess Wisdom, for then there
begins to shine forth again in us what has forever existed in the
divine Image or Pattern, <i>coming and going in us</i>, but standing
changeless in God.” - Hugh of St. Victor, <i>Didascalion</i>. <a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
When Christendom rose
up out of the Dark Ages, it arose in Northwest Europe, rather than in
Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, precisely because the ancient world
beyond the Rhine retained enough cultural “paganism” in a certain
form to render it susceptible to the preaching of the Gospel. <span style="font-style: normal;">Since
you cannot convert someone who believes in nothing, & you cannot
convert someone who believes in everything, i</span>t took the world
of the barbarian tribes to be balanced at the right enough point to
culturally implement the Gospel, so that European man could have been
said (with all his faults, and they were many) to have Christian
“bones”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
These preconditions meant that
it was in the Western world that Christianity was able to take
shape.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>The
Germanic peoples who accepted Christ did so because they already
understood, latently, the chivalric ideal proclaimed in Christ's
passion:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"If
I had been there with my Franks I would have revenged his wrongs!"
(Clovis the Frankish king). </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
This was no mere jest – time
and again, with far lesser reason, and against outrageous odds, the
barbarians of the West stood on the day of battle for as little a
thing (as Hamlet says) “as an eggshell” - it was to be expected
that the baptism of this Gospel would produce a society which would
be extremely brave and high-minded, which it did. So a culture (of
chivalry in this case) matters, because culture is part of God's
given world, His already given gift to us<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a>.
If God was not a “Gifter”, but a pretender or a scrooge, then we
could say that Mozart, Goethe, and Milton do not matter.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
So does politics and language
and learning: all these are “matter” and they matter. To list a
few instances, when Rome fell, the various Christological heresies
dominated Church and politics. When Spain was occupied by the the
Visigoths, the Church there became Arian. When Byzantium conquered
the remains of the Empire and split it with Charlemagne and his
Franks, the Church was fractured. When Rome persecuted the Church,
the Church became permanently impressed with an underground and
impoverished character. When the Founding Fathers subordinated
Christendom to the Enlightenment (and the Church to “freedom of
religion”), classical secular liberalism came into existence and
stamped the Church with a sectarian and “second hand” character.
Time and time again, in the history of the West, the “Empire” or
secular arm's lack of health has caused the Church to catch a cold
from its sneezing; in our day, it is “culture” itself which
infects the Church, the Church having let it go to seed. We now have
a vicious cycle of Church and culture influencing (and neglecting)
one another to the detriment of each.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
So a defense of Christendom is
not out of order, but in fact represents an essential element of
health, <span style="font-style: normal;">without which the </span><i>Ekklesia</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
has immense difficulty in ordering its own soul and the souls of its
sheep. It is highly in the interests of Christians, thinking or not,
whether the secular arm is dominated by a democracy, Caesar, or a
demagogue or a tyrant (to name a few)<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>.
Or whether we live in a world lead by Brittney Spears and the
Kardashians, or one dedicated more to Brahms or Wagner. Even if
culture were purely neutral or even negative, it would still be true
that sustaining it with some forms of beauty, truth, and goodness was
a valuable way of making it stable and holding certain forces at bay
outside the Church, until the Church could regain its health. Even if
it were a negligible non-entity, it would still serve as a buffer or
a nursery: better still, it could be transformed, intentionally, by
the Church for express and spiritual reasons, to make something
better than itself alone. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
To be even
more precise, we do not make the claim that goodness is either
guaranteed by high culture, or that high culture is a precondition
for any goodness, especially one that will save. It is not too much,
even given this, to say that
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">the
Greeks and the Romans taught us, by edict and example, the dangers of
cultural complacency. Culture does not breathe on its own; it is
preserved by those convinced of its value. This is not a new gospel.
It is simply true. The classical vision has been renewed, time and
again down the long centuries after being threatened with extinction
by prophets touting their New Jerusalem. But for students of history,
the burden of proof must lie on the shoulders of those who would deny
that vision's value...the case for classical education is not
airtight, nor can it be; it contains too many provisos. But...homage
has been paid to it before our time, and by finer minds...anyone
trained at least for a time to view the world as the Greeks and
Romans saw it may learn to ask pregnant questions. And even if the
ancient answers be rejected, the student – of whatever age – will
know what they are, and approach his own world with freshened vision,
one no longer blinkered by ideology and the reigning fashion. He
would have a liberal, because liberating, education indeed. No longer
would he be imprisoned exclusively within the velvet walls of his own
world's preoccupations and fetishes. No longer would he be just and
only a child of his own time. He might even partake of the divine.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc"><sup>9</sup></a></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">So
we are </span><i>not</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> maintaining
a high argument that high culture is inevitably and uniquely
Christian (although I have a suspicion that this might be very
possible); rather, the aim of the argument is to show that
Christianity can be more true to its Maker, and thereby, itself, by
receiving as a gift the “shields of the earth” from the hand of
the Giver<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a></span>.
<i>We conclude, therefore, that both high culture and Christianity
will be better together, than they could have been, separately.</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
How much better, or in what way, is a story that will be left up to
those willing to be mastered by both the high culture of the West, as
well as the Master Himself.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>
Nothing else is worthy of free men who possess any form of memory,
and not to know the Mediterranean tradition is to have a form of
higher amnesia. To reject it consciously is a form of madness, or
deliberate surrender. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Thus,
a defense of the Quadrivium (in education) is tantamount to defending
the reality and health of Christendom, because the </span><i>mores</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
and worldview of a society are formed in the nursery, the
kindergarten, and the high schools & colleges<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>.
The “soul of the university” is just as important as the “soul
of the body politic” in maintaining the health and well being of
the Church of our Lord. The liberal arts, as both Luther and Erasmus
acknowledged, in their own separate ways, are a kind of </span><i>pre-sanctum
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">or preparatory study for the
knowledge of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good (again, the
archetypal Father, the embodied Son, and the end or Summation of all
Things in the Spirit).</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
So it is
un-apologetically and boldly that we do advance the thesis of this
work, which we intend to defend as that which was normative “at all
times, in all places, and by all”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>,
and present this fully, replete with scholarly detail and exegesis
for those who wish to dig further.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
This thesis
is that the Quadrivium (and indeed the entire seven Liberal Arts by
implication) are in fact the necessary framework for a full and
healthy Christendom of the mind, without which neither the State, the
Church, nor even the family can hope to plainly and clearly see where
the true Good is found, beyond the “strife of race and clan” and
the noise of the “maddening crowd”. The true seven Liberal arts
are the enemy sworn of the world, the flesh, and the devil – we may
call them the red right hand of God in the war on the dragon, for it
is by ideas, forged with passions, that men are swayed, governed, and
formed into an eternity, for either good or ill. <i>As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he</i>. Therefore, <i>the kingdoms of the world
are become the kingdoms of our Lord, the Christ, </i>since<i>, by
faith he looked for a different city, whose builder and architect was
God. </i>Jesus did not receive the kingdoms at the hand of Satan, but
at the hand of God, to deliver them back at the end of all times to
the One who made them. This is what classical Christian education is,
or can and should be, all about.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<br /><br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<br /><br />
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a><a href="http://heidelblog.net/2014/04/is-humanism-evil-2/">http://heidelblog.net/2014/04/is-humanism-evil-2/</a></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>The
common body of texts was not a “matrix” in the sense of Obama's
“common core”, but was (rather) a rough, general, but flexible
canon of texts recognized as superior and helpful by previous
learners. You could displace a text, but only by superseding it with
something recognizably superior. Thus, the Stoics would not study
the same texts as Pythagoreans or Platonists – but there
differences were rational, known, and capable of being demonstrated
for the inquirer. In modern terms, one might substitute Imre
Madach's <i>The Tragedy of Man</i> for Goethe's <i>Faust</i>. I am
not sure if it makes that much difference in the canon.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote3">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym">3</a>p.56</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote4">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote4anc" name="sdfootnote4sym">4</a>Richard
Weaver fingered William of Ockham for this in <i>Ideas Have
Consequences</i>. The roots go back much farther, but in terms of
accepted philosophy, they reach a crescendo in Ockham's nominalism.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote5">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote5anc" name="sdfootnote5sym">5</a><i>Didascalion</i>.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote6">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote6anc" name="sdfootnote6sym">6</a>GK
Chesterton makes this point at length, vis a vis Rome and Carthage,
in <i>The Everlasting Man</i>.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote7">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote7anc" name="sdfootnote7sym">7</a>Jesus
puts it this way – You didn't listen to the prophets, but stoned
them and put them to death. What makes you think God should send you
anything better? In fact, He does, but (naturally) because they
don't “get it”, they end up doing the same thing to Jesus as
well. In these essays, I argue this of Nature, as well: if you won't
listen to Nature, then what right have you to expect Grace? You will
get Grace, but it will only make you destroy yourself even more
efficiently and finally. Appreciation of Nature is a prelude to
appreciation of Grace.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote8">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote8anc" name="sdfootnote8sym">8</a>Please
read TS Eliot on <i>Christianity and Culture</i>, or Peter
Leithart's <i>Against Christianity</i>. Christ and culture are only
at war because our culture is so <b>degenerate</b>. Culture ought to
operate against the world (Empire), just as Empire should operate
against culture (degenerate culture & false religion – the
flesh and the devil). Or, to put it differently, could everyone just
focus on doing their own jobs well?
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote9">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote9anc" name="sdfootnote9sym">9</a>Tracy
Lee Simons, <i>Climbing Parnassus</i>. P 22 & 24 2002 ISI
Delaware.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote10">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote10anc" name="sdfootnote10sym">10</a>When
Daniel was captive in Babylon, he and his friends were schooled and
disciplined in the best and finest arts which the Babylonians
possessed, and they are in no way censured for this by Scripture –
quite the opposite – it was an occasion for great power and grace.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote11">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote11anc" name="sdfootnote11sym">11</a>Phillip
Rieff, <i>Fellow Teachers</i>. “High culture belongs to whomever
will be mastered by it.”
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote12">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote12anc" name="sdfootnote12sym">12</a>Karl
Marx's tenth proposition for a socialist society included the power
of dictating what type of education the young would receive.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote13anc" name="sdfootnote13sym">13</a>St.
Vincent of Lerins used this motto to describe Christian orthodoxy,
which would include an orthodoxy of the mind, a philosophy of
education, and a method and theory of training/learning. RJ
Rushdoony goes so far as to claim in <i>The Foundations of Social
Order</i> that the roots of Western civilization in fact lie within
the ecumenical councils of the Church and her creeds. I would
endorse this line of thinking, but not all of his conclusions,
adding (at the least) that the Hellenistic world provided at least
half of the framework of the creeds.
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-83696033469449463872015-10-02T19:00:00.002-07:002015-10-02T19:00:42.495-07:00De Quadriformisratio
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: 32pt;"><b>On
The Quadrivium</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<img border="0" height="488" name="graphics11" src="http://www.lisakaborycha.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/quadrivium.jpg" width="651" />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Preface </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>"For what
avails a golden key if it cannot give access to the object<br />which
we wish to reach, and why find fault with a wooden key if it<br />serves
our purpose?" (De Doctr. Christ., IV, 11, 26). - Augustine</b></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
book is an extended argument for the utility, beauty, and subtle
necessity of an ancient discipline and practice known as the
Quadrivium. As we</span><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
discuss the Quadrivium in detail in the following chapters, we will
see that it is higher Number, as manifested by itself (Mathematics),
in space (Geometry), in time (Music), and in Space plus Time
(Cosmology). If the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) is the
means whereby the Egyptians are spoiled of their treasure, then the
Quadrivium is the design for the tabernacle of the Lord, which was
built with attention to mathematics, order, detail, and according to
a design which was divinely inspired, according to the archetype of
the true Jerusalem, which is from above and heavenly. The Trivium
properly is the glory or the spirit of the Faith, but the Quadrivium
properly represents the body or wisdom of the Faith, </span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
matter</span></span></i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of what is made known. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I say this as a generalization, since it is quite
equally true to assert that the matter or content of the Quadrivium
generates a style or form all of its own, just as the style and flair
derived from the Trivium is capable of generating content or
substance. Yet this, all the more, should inform us that the Trivium
and the Quadrivium go properly together – they are indivisible at
the highest level of human knowledge, and each is indispensable to
the other. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In order to put
this case at length, I will start</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
in media res (in the middle of things) </span></span></i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">with
the Trivium, its better known twin sister. All too often, both the
Trivium and the Quadrivium have been allowed to rest in the hands of
the enemies of the Faith, but lately, we have made progress in
recovering one of them. It is a start, and a beginning. But there is
more to the story, and much more to even that part of the story. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
20th century witnessed the unexpected resurgence of something called
the classical Christian school movement. Inspired by the famous 1947
Oxford essay by Dorothy Sayers, the movement took (as its hallmark)
not only a return to God-centered education, but a focus on the
ancient Trivium. In Sayers' words, she retrieved what she called a
"modern Trivium – with modifications", from the dusty
shelves of Oxford and the medieval period, and dusted it off to show
it in a new light. Although she said her views were “neither
orthodox nor enlightened", Sayers had the interesting and
admittedly personal insight that there are roughly three stages of
learning that you naturally see in the development of the human
psyche, and that these three stages can roughly be correlated to the
grammar, logic, and rhetoric of the old Trivium. She identified a
poll-parrot stage elementary school stage, followed by a “difficult”
stage of argument in the junior high years, and finally a rhetorical
stage of expression in the late teen years, and beyond. This essay
was republished in </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
Lost Tools of Learning</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
by Douglas Wilson, and became a set-piece for the classical Christian
school movement. <br /> Regardless of the possible critiques,
objections, and second thoughts one may proffer to and about Sayers,
her essay inspired the movers and shakers of the late 20th century in
what may justly be called (along with homeschooling) a massive
rebirth of Christian education. It is not too much to say that her
essay was the efficient means of sparking a revival, of Christian
education in America. Whether she was right or misguided, can be
debated – those who began the movement were inspired by her essay,
although it remains to be seen whether the revival will result in
renaissance and restoration. Certainly, recovering the Trivium
tradition was on the whole immensely important. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Dorothy
Sayers, in her essay, asks if you've ever watched and wondered why it
is that modern literate people cannot seem to define their terms,
distinguish first principles, respond to arguments appropriately, or
follow a highly complex chain of reasoning. She wishes us to see that
it is the neglect of the Trivium disciplines which are indirectly
responsible for the slobbish and retarded condition of our public
discourse, & I for one am inclined to agree with her line of
thought. It is certainly true that the medieval ancestors would have
never tolerated such sloppy public discourse in their dialectic </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">quod
libetas</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> or university
debates. Whether Sayers was right or not in her theories of human
learning and development, it is certainly true that restoring the
Trivium to a central position would add lucidity to modern thought.
Even her staunchest opponents would have to admit that it was a
“happy blunder”, in that sense. It is not too much to expect, of
a high school graduate, that they can define their terms (grammar),
reason soundly and recognize confused reasoning (logic), and express
themselves clearly (rhetoric). </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sayers,
in her essay mentions the Quadrivium but skips over it for the time.
She also concludes her essay with this striking paragraph: </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
“<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
combined folly of a </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">civilization
that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the
tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon sand.
They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves
ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to
teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails
to do this is effort spent in vain.” </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
would like to raise a question, at this point, one which she might
(perhaps) have answered had she discussed the Quadrivium in more
depth. Is there not a difference between Learning (on the one hand)
and (Wisdom) on the other? The medieval idea (and the ancient one)
was that education's goal was Wisdom, and not Learning <i>per se</i>
at all, as much as it was cherished. The modern idea that education's
purpose was the “shoring up of civilization” was only one aspect
of their aims in instruction. Perhaps her choice of words was
dictated by the audience she spoke to, and that is certainly the
charitable point of view. Yet I would ask the reader to go with me a
little deeper, into the Quadrivium, and the quest for Wisdom with a
capital W, beyond the statistics of the US Dept. of Education, beyond
the degrees and the dollars, beyond even the scholars, and certainly
beyond what today is called “higher education”. To bring lucidity
to modern thought is certainly desirable, but not if the assumptions
of modern thought go unchallenged: it is certainly possible (for
example) to hold a purely material view of the world, and defend it
with grammar, logic, and rhetoric. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
may well go on to ask then (as she does not), why it may be that even
were our collective discourse to become </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">sharp</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">
and </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">precise</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
it would still be lacking both elevation and sublimity. That is,
having addressed the method of “</span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">how
do we learn</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">” and
offered a strong correction, there still persists the question “</span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">what
shall we learn about</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">?”.
What is the content and the form and the goal of Education?
Originally the Trivium's whole point was to create a fortress and
weapon of the Mind (in the service of Wisdom, and later, “the
Faith”). Now along the way and incidentally, it certainly does
manage a great deal of this, for in order to study the Trivium,
students read a great deal in the classic humanities. It is hard to
read Cicero and Virgil and Milton without acquiring some elevation
and also some profound sublimity. Contact with the “classics”
often imparted some of the tone and moral style in them to the mind
of the student. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Nonetheless,
reintroducing the Trivium will not formally or substantially solve
the horrifying problem of the lack of </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">substance,
sublimity, and richness</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
By itself, the Trivium gives us comprehensiveness, efficiency and
clarity, and style: but it can only </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">borrow</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">
substance from the humanities which it uses to cut its teeth on -
Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy. This is done
indirectly, as the Trivium student works through the humanities. The
humanities proper are to be considered as principle subjects, as
opposed to the tool disciplines of the Liberal Arts (the Trivium +
Quadrivium). Now it is true that Christian education addresses the
issue of content directly through the confessions of Faith which
over-arch the classical Christian movement. New Saint Andrews makes
it clear that the context of the Faith defines the context which the
Trivium works upon: </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are our
only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Lord Jesus Christ
committed these inspired Scriptures to His Church (1 Tim. 3 :15). We
therefore defer to the witness of the historic Christian Church as a
genuine but fallible authority, subordinate to the Scriptures
themselves, in discerning what the Scriptures teach. Because they
faithfully witness what is taught in the Word of God, we receive the
great creedal statements the Church has affirmed throughout the ages:
The Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed, and the Definition of
Chalcedon. Moreover, we believe that the reformational confessions of
the 16th and 17th centuries (including the Westminster Confession of
Faith of 1646, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and
the Canons of Dort), of all historic statements, most fully and
accurately summarize the system of orthodox Christian doctrine
revealed in Scripture. Therefore, the specific headings below do not
exhaust our doctrinal understanding, but rather identify those
doctrines that merit greater attention today. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">NSA
(New St. Andrews is the college which Douglas Wilson started and an
intellectual headquarters of the movement in Moscow, Idaho) mentions
the Quadrivium as something people can “go on to study” as part
of more “advanced study”. So hasn't this settled the issue? Isn't
this the way to “enhance the Trivium”? To do more than just
impart lucidity to the conditions of modern thought, but to begin to
challenge its core assumptions as well? </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Their
argument might run as follows - Christ Himself is the Substance of
what the Trivium studies, and provides the treasure which the well
trained classical Mind defends by attacking every thought hostile to
Christ and taking it captive. So why cannot we say that the Faith, or
Christ Himself, is the beauty, truth, and goodness which we seek? The
“more” which the Trivium helps us to learn how to learn about?
Can't we just weave the Greco-Roman (Hellenistic) world into a
narrative which dovetails with the narrative of God's redemption in
His people? And content ourselves with the history, literature, art,
and philosophy of the classical era, spoiling its riches (to use
Augustine's phrase) to adorn the tabernacle of the Faith of God?
Can't we just <span style="text-decoration: none;">develop a grammar,
logic, and rhetoric of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, as summed up in
Jesus Christ? Why would we have to make things more difficult by
adding canonical subjects which can handled electively? For that
matter, why is music or geometry anymore important than pre-medical
studies or foreign languages for high school students, or
anthropology or nano-technology for our collegiates? In short, aren't
we hunting snipes here? Or maybe just cow-tipping? Finally, doesn't
the Quadrivium have a funny name? Just what is the Quadrivium,
anyway? Doesn't it have something to do with mathematics? </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Just as we define our method in the Trivium, a
method for the mind, so we can call Christ our goal and content, the
treasure chest of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. So we seem to already
have an answer of sorts, ready made, within the classical Christian
movement – the sovereignty and majesty of the King becomes the
material which the mind exercises itself upon. The Faith is the body
of knowledge and belief which the Trivium uses and meditates upon,
and even as students read about the wars of Caesar or savor the
poetry of Homer, they are being taught to look through the lens of
that earthly beauty, toward something “more”. By faith, we know
what that “more” is. It is a sound argument, both cogent and well
constructed, and the conclusions follow from the given premises; it
can be beautifully expressed, and often is; it is capable of defining
its terms, and it is an improvement on just adding Bible class to a
public school education. This much, this far, is very sound.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The corollary to the above is that we really don't
need the “Quadrivium”; not as Tradition defines it, or at least
not the Quadrivium </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">per
se</span></i><span style="text-decoration: none;">. Students can
supplement the Trivium training, the theology and the philosophy of
the Faith, and the exercises in the humanities, with courses in
practical art, music, perhaps a foreign language other than Latin,
maybe some athletics. We have our method, and we have our standard,
goal, and our motive, which points us to the great body of truth -
Christ. We seem to have it all, here. All that remains is the
carrying it out. Go forth, we tell our young students, and take every
thought captive to Christ! The Quadrivium is optional, but certainly
not necessary or even extremely useful. At the very least, it is the
mysterious younger sister of the pair, and by far the least
important. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Now while the recovery of principal subjects (under
the eye of the confessions of the Faith) does constitute a direct
address to the problem of content, it still remains true that it
fails to address the issue of the innate form of the content, by
neglecting the tool disciplines of the Quadrivium, which impart a
certain form or structure (a discipline) to the content indirectly
preserved in the principle subjects and indirectly recovered through
texts encountered in work with the Trivium. This includes, but goes
beyond, mathematical Form in general, just as the Trivium includes,
but goes beyond, linguistic Form in general. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;">If the Faith points us towards God, and the
Trivium helps us sharpen our Mind, then the Quadrivium tells us
something about the body and scope of Nature, considered in and of
itself. Faith reaches the summit of the Divine (Super-Nature or the
Lord God), and the Trivium teaches the Mind to reach its own summit
in lucid self-reflection. But the Quadrivium investigates that which
is <i>Logos</i> – that is, the specific and real union between God
& Man. All three (confessional, linguistic, and mathematical)
forms have a proper center of gravity, but all three include (or
touch) each other. Remove one of the legs, and it weakens the
structure of the whole, a structure which we express in the principal
subjects like History, Literature, and even Philosophy and Theology. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We
might go even further to illustrate this hunch. If the Trivium helps
us "learn how to learn" (in Sayers arresting and concluding
turn of phrase), the Quadrivium helps teach us what to teach, and
how to teach it. The Quadrivium demonstrates intuitively how the
Logos knits together the world of all that is, <i>including </i><span style="font-style: normal;">God
Himself</span><i>. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">The
Quadrivium tells us about the actual pattern God uses to draw Nature
up into Super-Nature, transforming it and sublimating, making it One
with Him. It teaches us to discern the method whereby God
incorporates Nature (or the world) into Himself. It is a bridge
between the Trivium and the Faith, just as it is a bridge between the
Mind and Super-Nature. It considers all things as part of a whole,
which is God. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Perhaps
this is why the Quadrivium is not more discussed – it involves very
old and deep theological realities which have been forgotten or
distorted. We follow CS Lewis on this point – God is that which is
</span><i>most</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Real. In </span><i>The
Great Divorce</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, Lewis makes the
case that the reality of God is the source of “reality”, and is
therefore, more “real” than mundane reality. We become real by
restoring His image and being transformed into His likeness. God
created the world by an act of Love, withdrawing or “wounding”
Himself, and then speaking the Creation into existence with the power
of His word, out of the “Void” or “Nothing” which was created
by His wounding. We do not live in a world of </span><i>dead matter
and empty space,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> but a world
that is groaning and trembling as it works through the process of
Redemption. Now, each of the theological confessions of the Church
differ as to the details of how this works, but they all agree (at
least in principle) that the end reality is that God will be “All
in All”. Against the modern worldview of “atoms in motion” in a
permanently cold and lifeless space, the Christian confesses that the
world is being </span><i>born again</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(however slowly this may happen). Indeed, the Christian confesses
that God is already “all in all”, and that we work with Him
(however slowly) to manifest this in time and space, which is not
empty or dead. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The Quadrivium is important because it gives us
very vivid and detailed hints and clues (often in mathematical form)
how that “all in all” began, and towards what it is tending.
While the Trivium may anticipate the final destination, showing us
the foundations of grammar-Logos in the “Word”, giving us a peak
at the inter-relations of the Logos between various entities and in
certain processes, and revealing the beauty of the Logos through the
highest flights the human mind and imagination is capable of, it is
the Quadrivium which deals with the very concrete details of Creation
and Redemption. As we shall see later on, the last of the Quadrivial
sciences is cosmology, and this science actually unifies the Trivium
with the Quadrivium, as well as linking it with the principal
subjects and with the religion and reality of the Christian Faith. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">If
the Trivium i</span>s the energy which saturates knowledge and makes
it lucid, allowing the mind and the subject to become one in order to
“hit the mark”, the Quadrivium is the technique of the archer as
he aims the arrow at the goal. The goal or aim is the Logos, that
through which the worlds were spoken, and that towards which the
worlds return. The Logos is the re-unified world restored to its
original state and then glorified, as seen in the Logos-Incarnate,
the first fruit of this redemption. Christian education (then) is not
merely becoming useful or skilled in manipulating data or objects in
a plastic, passive, dead Nature. Nature is not a supine and
mechanical Artifice that can be assigned a “spiritual” direction,
arbitrarily. This Nature is something which, eventually, will become
the body of God, when the marriage of Heaven and Earth takes place,
just as man and woman become One on their wedding night. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">When
this is clearly understood (and it is often not understood at all),
the ancient Quadrivium appears in an entirely different light. Rather
than being the “weak sister” of the Trivium, it is the
disciplined inquiry into the Pattern of Patterns, the supra-rational
Order which has order (Number), structure (Geometry), harmony
(Music), and is becoming a Body (Cosmology) – the four paths of the
Quadrivium. The medievals and the ancients, however imperfectly, had
gotten this far, and in this respect, were far more advanced than we
are today. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
Quadrivium is the science of the Logos, understood in its
relationship to Nature. Nature is here used as a term to encompass
what is both human and Divine. Since the worlds were created through
the second person of the Trinity, and since Christ is fully man, and
totally God, Nature itself partakes of this totality in a derivative
manner. When this is applied to history, it readily and explicitly
shows us how the Hellenistic world was part of the “fullness of
times” mentioned in Galatians:</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">So also we, while we were children, were
held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. <a href="http://biblehub.com/galatians/4-4.htm">4</a>But
when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a
woman, born under the Law, <a href="http://biblehub.com/galatians/4-5.htm">5</a>so
that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might
receive the adoption as sons.… </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">God
was using the Mediterranean basin (the cradle of Western
civilization) to incubate a culture which dared to give full scope to
man's rational powers (weak though they were) in the context of
aiming for something “more” (Beauty, Truth, Goodness). It is for
this reason that the Gospel of John opens with the words, “In the
beginning was the <i><b>Logos</b></i>.” This is why the New
Testament was written in <i>koine </i>Greek. It is why Paul quotes
Aratus and Epimenides. It is why Christ refused to take up the mantle
of the Messiah made in the image of Jewish nationalism. He was the
“light of the World”. It is why Caesar came across the Rubicon
with his soldiers to save a dying Rome. It is why Alexander was born
to conquer the world. All of this was foreseen in the vision of
Daniel, in which the dying Empires which prepared the way and
inevitably fell short of the mark are replaced by an enormous boulder
which covers the Earth and becomes the Holy Mountain. In Acts, Paul
addresses the king:</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"I am not out of my mind, most
excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. <a href="http://biblehub.com/acts/26-26.htm">26</a>"For
the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with
confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his
notice; for this has not been done in a corner. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
mighty acts of God were both grounded in Creation from the beginning,
and yet were culminating in a holy purpose. While the Trivium may
analyze the contents of Revelation in the Scripture (as well as the
natural revelation in the spiritual and humane writings of the most
noble and notable humans of the ancient world), it is the Quadrivium
which shows us the full extent to which Creation remained faithful to
the patterns of God, and how those patterns were achieving a subtle
and wise purpose through God's Providence. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
Quadrivium is the missing arch in the classical Christian movement.
It is the link between the Faith and the Trivium, a link which so
many have questioned, impugning its integrity, sincerity, and
holiness. It has the potential to energize the movement with a
fullness of purpose that is impossible without its moorings and
underpinnings. If the Trivium is a flying buttress of a Gothic
cathedral, transferring the soaring weight of the vaulted roof safely
to the ground, then the Quadrivium is the stained glass of the Rose
window, which admits, tinctures, and filters the overwhelming
brilliance of the sun. The Quadrivium is the architecture of the
temple of God, the pattern and the design of the stained glass. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
Quadrivium course of study is what keeps the sharpness and efficiency
of the Trivium from veering away from the stated aims of the Faith,
by indissolubly linking it closely to the Logos, Who is the express
image of the Father, source of Creation <i>and </i>Re-creation. It is
the the link between Reason and Faith, in the context of Christian
education; it is the making explicit of what should already be known
and understood, but too often, sadly, is not. Without it, the Trivium
risks attack from those who see in it an unholy alliance between the
“world” and Christ, or perhaps just a slick marketing strategy
designed to churn out good Christian rhetoricians who can be culture
warriors, even just another smuggling in of anti-Christian doctrines
in the form of humanistic reason. Without the Quadrivium, the Trivium
is more exposed to charges that it is humanism, paganism, and
anti-Christianity, since the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome can easily be mistaken for the City of God, and indeed
was, by people more noble, wiser, and virtuous than many of our day.
It is the Quadrivium which argues for a supra-rational Order or
divine Reason which is antecedent to the brain and even the mind of
Man, but towards which Man's destiny is tending. And it not only
argues, it argues by the persuasion of concretely showing, or
demonstrating, how that supra-rational Order has moved and is moving
through the interstices of Nature to accomplish the divine plan of
God. </span>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-14060127225213452452014-12-26T21:10:00.000-08:002014-12-26T21:10:23.738-08:00The Emperor<header class="entry-header">
<h1 class="entry-title">
The Emperor</h1>
<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7750" rel="bookmark" title="22:16"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-12-26T22:16:29+00:00" pubdate="">2014-12-26</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
</header>
<blockquote>
<div>
<a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/johnbaptist.jpg"><img alt="johnbaptist" class="alignright wp-image-7755" height="205" src="http://www.gornahoor.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/johnbaptist-150x150.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<div>
“The ones who truly love their traditions don’t take them too
seriously. They march to get their heads shot off with a joke on their
lips. And the reason is that they know they’re going to die for
something intangible, something sprung from their fancy, half humor,
half humbug. Or perhaps it’s a little more subtle. Perhaps hidden away
in their fancy is that pride of the blueblood, who refuses to look
foolish by fighting for an idea, and so he cloaks it with bugle calls
that tug at the heart, with empty mottoes and useless gold trim, and
allows himself the supreme delight of giving his life for an utter
masquerade. That’s something the Left has never understood, and that’s
why its contempt is so heavy with hate. When it spits on the flag, or
tries to piss out the eternal flame, when it hoots at the old farts
loping by in their berets, or yells “Women’s Lib!” outside the church,
at an old-fashioned wedding (to cite just some basic examples), it does
so in such a grim, serious manner — like such “pompous assholes,” as the
Left would put it, if only it could judge. The true Right is never so
grim. That’s why the Left hates its guts, the way a hangman must hate
the victim who laughs and jokes on his way to the gallows. The Left is a
conflagration. It devours and consumes in deadly dull earnest. (Even
its revels, appearances notwithstanding, are as grisly an affair as one
of those puppet parades out of Peking or Nuremberg.)The Right is
different. It’s a flickering flame, a will-o’-the-wisp in the petrified
forest, flitting through the darkness…”</div>
<i>The Camp of the Saints</i>,<i> </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail">Jean Raspail</a> (1925–) a French author, and explorer.</blockquote>
The Number of the Emperor is Four; this is the sign of Earth’s four
elements, and also the procession of the movement of Being out of the
perfect triangle-circle of One-Two-Three, into the world of material
creation, the union of spirit and matter. The Emperor has authority
because he has achieved existence, he knows something, & he is
capable of acting (1-2-3): he can therefore assume the post of emperor
because he is “earth of earth”, “the most human of humans”, King David –
a shepherd, a hero, a champion, a warrior, an outlaw, a king, a sinner,
a saint. He is the manifestation of the Divine in the form of he who
bears the sceptre, and is (therefore) the wielder of the sword not in
vain.<br />
<br />
The rise of the emperor to the post appointed for him by God occurs
in the topsy-turvy world: for this reason, the emperor is “out on the
green grass”, under the skies. His authority originated in the fact that
the power of his being is such that he can hold court in the
wilderness, and indeed (most likely) this may be where he plants the
seeds that lead to his rule. As Rosenstock-Huessy argues in <em>Out of Revolution</em>,
real political authority is worth nothing unless it is so powerful that
it first begins “under the stars” or the clear blue skies. We reject
the “whiff of Hegelianism” that wafts from <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rosenstock-huessy/">Huessy’s</a>
work; however, he is correct to say that political authority changes
with the revolution of the stars, and that even the secular revolutions
(which aped legitimate procession of government) adhere to this change
that which falls from the skies first (particularly when government is
corrupt and asleep at the wheel). <em>Auctoritas</em> comes from the one
who is self-restrained and crucified: that is, the emperor does not
need the outer symbols to rule – they come to him like gravity draws
smaller objects: he is comfortable at first, not with worldy power, but
with naked Being. Like the sage on the mountaintop, the emperor sits by
the river banks, or in the woody dells, or out in a cow pasture. He
dwells outside the “city”, when the city is falling apart and
degenerate. He is at home within his own skin, and <a href="http://unurthed.com/2009/10/21/mouravieffs-correction/">is free from worldly A influences</a>
which dominate the “kingdom of this world”. He is King Alfred living in
the swamps, awaiting his chance to reconquer England from the Vikings.<br />
<br />
This is the opposite of the career politician, the demagogue, or the
opportunist. His power comes from power over self, not over other
people. He holds sway over others, and carries or embodies real
authority over them, and as a result, he exercises legitimate power.
Tomberg makes the strong case that compulsion is superfluous for those
with real authority: “where there is authority, there is present the
breath of sacred magic filled by the rays of light of gnosis emanated
from the profound fire of mysticism, there compulsion is superfluous”.
Viewed this way, Leftism or revolutionary thought is basically like a
mental disease, which is healed by true action on the body politic
through the esoteric organs. This is consistent with the doctrine of the
Gnostic Church as the “heart” of the organized Petrine and Pauline
Churches.<br />
<br />
“The Emperor has renounced movement by means of his legs (they are
crossed) and action by means of his arms (one hitches the belt, the
other holds the sceptre).” The “instinctive and impulsive” nature of the
Emperor is restrained, by self-restraint acting under Divine influence.
It is this, and this alone, which allows him to hold the post of
guardian of the office of Empire. When King Alfred made peace with the
Danes, but had Guthrum baptized, he secured the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
England and the Danelaw as a united realm, bringing peace to the land.
He could have hid vengeance in his heart, but instead, he converted his
enemy, quite literally, to a friend. It is this type of action which the
Holy Roman Emperor aimed at, being king of kings and lord of lords, the
means by which the petty rivalries of monarchs (which would later
destroy Europe in repeated conflagrations) were brought to heel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Kings-Bodies-Ernst-Kantorowicz/product-reviews/0691017042">before the sacred body of the King</a>.
Tomberg remarks that the Middle Ages contain a wealth of political
theory (which is unique, even from classical Greece and Rome) on the
post of the Emperor: under this list, we include Dante (who sided with
the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGDRYQd-uQ&feature=related">White Guelphs</a> in the Ghibelline controversy) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Paris">John of Paris</a>.<br />
<br />
“The emperor has renounced personal opinion to receive revelation of
Truth, personal action in order to become a vehicle of sacred magic, the
way of personal development in order to be guided by the Master of the
Way, and his own personal mission in order to be charged with a mission
from above.” This makes him the “source of Law and Order”.<br />
<br />
I think I have quoted Bonaventura <a href="http://noxrpm.com/post/2609941502/non-coerceri-maximo-contineri-minimo-divinum">before</a>:
That which is not confined by the Great, but is contained by even the
smallest, it is that which is Divine. God (the Self beyond Self) becomes
King in respect of those who freely worship Him, and He is crucified in
relation to those who choose to fight or struggle with that freedom
against the Font of Freedom. In both cases, a withdrawal is accomplished
in order to establish a realm of freedom. Hitler and Napoleon, both,
attempted to occupy the post of the shadow of the Emperor, but they took
up the sword to do it. That is, they placed their trust in worldly
machinations: power and the grapeshot or Panzers that were seen to
produce such.<br />
<br />
There is an Emperor of Europe, of Christendom. The post is occupied.
It in our day is occult, in shadow, but God does not allow a vacuum in
Nature: the man who has a vacuum of Ego and Pride will be courted by the
Spirit for the post of Emperor, and there is undoubtedly an occulted
Emperor today, in 2014. The complete synthesis of mysticism-gnosis-magic
which is effected in the Emperor is also, Tomberg states, the
definition of <strong><em>initiation</em></strong>, where eternity and the present moment meet together.<br />
<br />
Mysticism becomes true without falsehood (Gnosis), and most certain
(magic), and then absolutely certain in the light of pure thought as
both subjective and objective experience (Hermetic philosophy): the
Emperor is the hermetic synthesis of the emanations of God’s light upon
the world, though he may be unappreciated, unknown, hidden, or occulted.<br />
<br />
“Presumption? It would be a monstrous presumption if it were a matter of human invention instead of revelation from above.”<br />
<br />
“Ask” (mysticism or touch), “seek” (gnosis or hearing), “knock” (magic or sight/vision) – Luke 11:9. These become <em>comprehension</em>. This is <em>initiation</em>. The goal of initiation is <em>depth</em>,
or “niveau”. For the post of emperor, the aim is the realization of
patriarchy, the “father-man”, the most human of all men, the heir of
David. It is the four wounds spoken of which mark the Emperor, and
provide him with the concrete experience to fulfill his destiny, to be
anonymous, or (rather) synonymous with the post of Emperor itself :
hence it is said, King Arthur only sleeps, as does the “King under the
Mountain” (the Holy Roman Emperor). If the king sleeps, he shall return.<br />
<br />
Indeed he is already here.<br />
<br />
This bears reflection upon in the present day, for those who want to
rebuild the monarchies. It was the Empire which gave birth to kings, the
Holy Empire, and not the kings who built up the Empire. Rather than
seeking to restore a particular pedigree or bloodline, thus exposing
these men and the movement to an undoubted reaction which will be most
violent, more thought should be put into finding the occulted Emperor,
and also, collating and honing the methods and practices which will
produce divine candidates of this quality. There is a lot of synthesis
to be done in esoteric studies, and it can only be done rightly by those
who have experienced it. The Emperor will require men of depth around
him to respond to his authority, & also to embody emperorship in
their little field of influence. Has anyone given thought to joining the
Gnosis seminar? Mouravieff gives a practical method for recovering the
initiation of Christendom.<br />
<br />
One ought to try to recognize Emperor within one’s self, by seeking
that which is truly Just. As Cologero has outlined, justice is the
synthesis of moderation (the man of the senses), courage (the man of the
emotions) and wisdom (the man of the intellect). You can see the same
symbolism of numeric progression: what does Courage have to do with
Gnosis? This is surprising, as one would expect Intellect to correlate
with Gnosis, and Courage with Magic. When such a deliberate
contradiction to our “everyday” wisdom or literalness is generated,
there is an opportunity to look more deeply. The man of Gnosis needs
courage as the primary virtue because it goes so strongly against the
“naive realism” which dominates worldly thinking. The man of Magic
requires intellect, because he has already mastered courage (or courage
has mastered him) and he requires mastery of the science and art, since
Magic is potentially quite dangerous. Fast (senses), Watch (master
passions), and Pray (effect the use of Magic under the name of God
alone).Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-55251015273844895972014-12-21T10:51:00.002-08:002014-12-21T10:51:53.042-08:00The Curious Case of the Missing Latin Inscription: James Jordan's view of Classical Education
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James Jordan's position is somewhat between that of North and
Wilson:<br />
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
I submit that to far too
great a degree, Bible-believing Christians are allowing Roman
Catholics and secular conservatives to do their thinking for them.
Both of these groups advocate a return to the synthetic culture
called “Western Civilization,” an unholy (and unstable) mixture
of Greco-Roman paganism and Biblical religion. Many writers in these
groups are brilliant and sometimes have penetrating insights, but
this does not change the fact that what they advocate is basically a
mixture of Baal and Christ. The so-called “canon” of Western
literature is such a mixture, often including far more non-Christian
work than Christian work. The situation as regards political
philosophy in Western Civilization is, if anything, worse.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<sup> </sup>
</div>
Aha. Here we have the old charge of syncretism. Like the
words fascism or sexism or racism, it has increasingly come to mean
merely “whatever I don't think is Biblical” or (worse) “whatever
I don't like” in polite circles of debate and conversation.
Actually any word with an -ism on the end is essentially a short
circuit for thought. Thus, Puritans could denounce Christmas as
“paganism” without actually bothering to deal with the spirit of
Christmas. As a kind of shorthand, which one is willing to define at
the drop of a hat, and in detail, we may perhaps forgive the use of
the term. But Jordan uses the term, here, moralistically. That is,
you are already supposed to know exactly what he is talking about,
and to agree with it.
<br />
He continues:<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
These men and the many
others like them have much good to say, but essentially they want to
turn back the clock to a situation where pagan and Christian thinking
is merged into the “Western” synthesis. To be sure, they tend to
read the pagan Greeks and Romans through Christian eyes, creating
imaginary Platos and Ciceros who did not ever really exist. But also,
they do not take a high view of the Scripture, especially of the
societal directives God spoke to Israel at Mount Sinai, and thus are
much influenced by pagan ways, often without realizing it. As
mentioned above, Western Civilization is over. That is to say, the
tradition of that civilization has been broken now by two generations
of ignorance and apostasy, extending from the “Sixties” to today.
Therefore, the question before us as Bible Christians is this: Do we
strive to restore that tradition, or should we look to the Bible and
strive to create something better?</div>
<br /><br />
<br />
Again, he is describing something he takes as a given, and
appealing to a moral evaluation in common with the reader. But what,
really, is the “merged synthesis with a Plato that never existed”?
What does Baal plus Christ look like? I would imagine he would
cheerfully chirp, “a classical Christian school, of course!”. The
lack of a high view of the Deuteronomic social objectives, he cites,
specifically characterizes the syncretizers.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The early post-Apostolic Church was engaged in spiritual warfare
with the Greco-Roman civilization, and was not interested in forming
any kind of synthesis with it. Even in this time, however, many of
the leading thinkers of Christianity were adult converts from
philosophy, and they brought with them a great deal of pagan baggage.
With the conversion of Constantine and the recognition of
Christianity as true religion, things changed. Many people came into
the orbit of the Church who were only scantily discipled, and with
them came a host of pagan concepts and practices. </blockquote>
<br />
This is demonstrably incorrect. Clement of Alexandria (to
mention a notable an unusual example) headed the catechetical school
at the old Greek city-state of Alexandria in modern day Egypt. This
“mystery” school actually initiated new converts in two stages
into the Christian religion. Their philosophy was based, not merely
on Greek categories of thought, but Egyptian myths. At one and the
same time, they gave full authority to Scripture. Where people like
Jordan see a rift or dichotomy, they insist there is full harmony.
Clement and James Jordan cannot both be right. And Clement was no
exception. Virtually without exception (Tertullian is the raccoon in
the pantry) every single patristic early Church father that we have
any written record of was a “syncretizer”. So we know exactly
what this syncretism looked like. It wasn't Baal plus Christ (you can
thank Rome for that, as Chesterton argues in The Eternal Man), it was
truth plus Christ. Or, truth plus Truth. Some Christians may have
gone so far as to argue it was Truth plus Truth. They thought this
way because (unlike the modern man who specializes in binary
dichotomies, or what he calls “logical antitheses) they thought
that the culmination of Truth illuminated that which preceded it, and
so to them, the truth of the Moon “lit up” with the truth of Sun.
So Jordan needn't be vague in his terminology here: he has a wealth
of things to choose from. Bonaventura, for instance, explained that
the “intellect” or “heart” (this is the Scriptural word) has
stages of contemplative illumination which can actually lead to the
vision of God. By “explained”, I do not mean in the same sense
Jordan takes the Old Testament: as a kind of lawnmower manual or
schematic diagram which we can re-apply to human condition.
Bonaventura is unfolding symbols that which actually have objective
existence in the subconscious structure of the human mind, and the
method he uses for this can be fairly described as Platonism. Has
Jordan actually read <i>Itenerarium Mentis ad Deum</i>?<br />
<br />
<br />
Here is how Douglas Wilson characterizes Jordan:<br />
<br />
God interrupted the Hebraic world, moving to Hellenistic
thought forms, argues Douglas Wilson, where God grafts in wild olive
branches, so that we would have to deal with new issues, new
categories. Wilson, in his comments on Jordan, thinks that we have to
assimilate without capitulating, not by syncretizing, but combining
and interacting in a way that is faithful to Scripture. In addition,
you “play cards with the hand you are dealt”: this means being
familiar with Roman categories and language and thought which is more
accessible, and doable, than recovering Greek and Hebrew, right away.
He thinks that the Hebrew contribution to local democracy, for
instance, is much too often minimized, and that a “false dichotomy”
is being set up between academics and character. His college, New St.
Andrews, does in fact teach Hebrew. Your brain is not like a shoebox
that can be filled up, but is more like a muscle, which can be
conditioned. He cites the Reformation, in which scholars learned
Greek and Hebrew, and wrote in Latin. All of this is a ladder, which
we shouldn't kick out from under us, but rather use to try to get to
where we are going.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a><br />
<sup> </sup>
<br />
Jordan almost stumbles over the truth when he says in Part 3:<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
This is the development of
“philosophy,” which came about in pagan lands at about the same
time as the prophetic movement was raised up by God among His people.
Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), Kung Fu-Tsu (Confucius), Lao-Tse, Plato,
and Aristotle were roughly contemporary. Each sought to replace
worship with contemplation, a further step of apostasy from God. Each
of these three was a Cain.</div>
The tendency of the early Church was to see, instead, that
these men came at the same time as the prophets because they
represented the same spiritual development or revelation, from God,
suited to the types and groups of people they were sent to. The
Eastern mind (and body) is not identical to the Hellenistic one
(which is not the same as the Hebraic, for that matter). That being
the case, God's prophetic challenge to the Far East looked a great
deal different than His mission to the Hebrews. Now, yes, it is fair
to say that the mission to the Hebrews was unique and special. This
does not entail that God had no revelation that was parallel or
analogous in other parts of the world. In fact, this contradicts
Romans 1, Psalms 19, and even Pentecost, where everyone heard them
“speaking in their own tongue”. The problem with this “Biblicism”
is that it is so un-Biblical. Even the prophets proclaimed that other
nations would “come up to Jerusalem” for spiritual learning, just
as the Magi came for the Christ child. Listening to Jordan, you'd
think that the Magi were little Cains lead by demons to come and mock
baby Jesus in the manger.
<br />
<br />
Jordan's problem is really larger even than this. What he
wants to do (essentially) is to rip out Greco-Romanism, and plug in
the Old Testament. To his mind, this is “safer” and more
Biblical. Thus, instead of learning about and emulating the
Mediterranean basin peoples, we would learn about and emulate (or not
emulate?) the ancient twelve tribes of Israel. The Old Testament
would become our canon, and (presumably) Old Testament canon law
would become our politics, Old Testament canon literature our light
reading, and Old Testament canon prophecy our philosophy. What's odd
about this is not apparent at first glance. Indeed, there is nothing
wrong with studying <i>Job</i> instead of Euripides: <i>Job</i> is a
very under rated tragedy, and indeed, is more sublime and profound
than Aeschylus or Euripides. What's odd is that the very thing he
objects to in classical education (the syncretism) becomes the very
thing desired in this new form of education. If Christ's coming made
nothing clear, it certainly showed how Biblical culture ended up in
the very opposite condition, so opposite that they crucified God's
son. In other words, they performed the ultimate Satanic and pagan
act. I don't deny that learning and studying this has profoundly
necessary lessons – in fact, that's the same reason Greco-Roman
culture can be studied – what is odd is that Jordan seems to think
that substituting Hebrew for Greek will somehow magically ward off
this end result, which he doesn't (for obvious reasons) talk much
about.
<br />
<br />
While Jordan admits we can and ought to learn artistic or
scientific technique from paganism, he doesn't think this applies to
the “liberal arts”:<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
Second, and more
importantly, political philosophy (law, statecraft, etc.) operates in
a different sphere from music, agriculture, and metallurgy. The
latter operate in the area of dominion, the world beneath man.
Politics operates in the area of man himself, the image of God, the
social arena. And religion operates in the area above man. These
three zones of life have different qualities, different languages,
different psychologies. We can learn statecraft from the Greeks and
Romans <em>only</em> if we start with the assumption that other
people are merely things, like musical instruments.
</div>
<br />
Apparently, we should learn religion and politics from the
ancient Jews. Except this isn't quite right either. But I have to ask
the most obvious question here: if we can learn politics and religion
from God, by paying attention to His corrections of the ancient Jews,
why can't we do the same thing with the Greco-Romans? That is, isn't
God's wisdom principled and profound enough to apply in either case?
If you are going to view the Old Testament as a lawnmower manual,
can't you use the knowledge learned to work on another lawnmower?
Wouldn't the prophetic injunctions apply just as much to ancient
Greece and Rome, as to Jerusalem, perhaps even more so?
<br />
Jordan continues:<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
Because human beings are
images of God, and because human society is to mirror the fellowship
of the blessed Trinity, the Bible contains as much (if not more)
teaching about social matters (man to man) as it does about religious
matters (man to God). Indeed, the Bible says that how men relate to
God is displayed in how they relate to one another (e.g., Matthew
25:31-46). By way of contrast, the Bible says next to nothing about
dominion over the lower creation. The ways to make musical
instruments, the ways to yoke animals, the ways to refine metals,
etc. — all these we can learn from the city of Enoch.
</div>
If the Bible teaches man how to relate to man, then a well
taught and devout Christian young student should be able to relate to
Plato. That is, if, the wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of
man. There is almost a practical atheism at work here, this secret,
gnawing fear that if (gasp!) we let our young people pick up Plato,
they “wont' be able to handle it”, and will be seduced by demons
into deep, deep idolatry, worshiping the God-hating Cain-man in their
own heart.<br />
<br />
If the Old and New Testaments teach anything, it is that you
don't need Plato to become a God-hating, narcissistic, philosophical
Satanist. The Scriptures are full of them, in both Testaments.
<br />
Jordan continues, and begins to really veer off the path:<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
Third, one has to ask what
is the actual content of the political philosophy that we are asked
to borrow from the Greeks and Romans. The answer to that question
shows just how anti-God their thinking was, for the classical
(Greco-Roman — and Buddhist and Confucian) view was that the virtue
of self-control makes us fit to rule and to obey the rule of law.
Education and self-discipline are essential to overcome our natural
tendency toward slavery. Now, what is so wrong with that? The answer
is that it is totally Satanic. It makes man into God. The Biblical
picture is that it is not our control of ourselves, but our
submission to God and His Word that makes us fit to rule and be
ruled. However important and useful education may be, it is not the
avenue by which we overcome sin. Rather, that avenue is faith-filled
obedience. God tells us what to do, and we believe Him and do it, and
that reshapes us. True society is formed not by a group of
self-possessed mini-gods ruling everyone else, but by all people
joining in obeying God’s commonly published and publicly available
Book.</div>
<br /><br />
<br />
Good God, sir. This isn't Biblical at all: this sounds more
like what Sayiid Qutb or a post-modern Muslim terrorist would say
about finding God. It certainly doesn't accord with Jesus' dark
saying: <i>The Kingdom of God is within you</i>. Or, y<i>ou search
the Scriptures because in them you think you have Life, but I am He
who testifies of them</i>. At this point, Jordan is not being
un-Western, but anti-Western: that is, he is embracing a thoroughly
Koranic view, self-consciously poised over against, the Western
theologies of the divine that developed out of the likes of Erigena,
Bonaventura, and Aquinas. He is artificially contra-posing self
restraint and submission to God. The Western view (and it is informed
by the Greco-Roman philosophies) is that these are the same thing.
When a man controls himself and restrains his evil impulses, he is
cooperating with Divine grace which is always speaking to the soul.
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
First, the Bible
teaches that God has clearly revealed Himself and that He clearly
speaks in the Bible, so that there is no need for any quest. Second,
sinful man hates God and is not on a quest for the true God at all,
but is rather on a quest for <em>anything</em> that will block out
his innate knowledge of the true God. Now, just what is all this
“great classical literature” about? Homer is about the sin of man
trying to make himself too big in the eyes of the gods, who then
humble him. There is a truth here, but it is no different from the
truth you’ll hear from any pagan tribesman anywhere in the world.
Moreover, as much as anything else Homer’s gods are actually
jealous of Achilles and Odysseus, and little else is admirable about
these gods either. So, why should Christian children be subjected to
Homer? Or, why Homer rather than the Gilgamesh Epic or the Kalevala?
The sole reason seems to be that Homer is part of “Western
Civilization.” But we are entitled to ask: Who cares? Why keep this
baggage? Let college students studying the ancient world read Homer
as a curiosity, but don’t use him in the attempt to form
fundamental mind of the Christian future.</div>
<br />
I agree with his comments about the <i>Kalevala</i>. JRR
Tolkien took just such an approach, and produced one of the greatest
epics of all time. So we shouldn't get hung up, here. There is no
need for any quest? If sinful man is on a quest away from God, then
the quest is to forsake that quest by undertaking a greater, that of
returning to God. Quoting the Bible at those who are voyaging through
the abyss won't be nearly as effective as opening the <i>Odyssey</i>,
and talking about God.
<br />
So he rejects classicism for “maturing minds”:<br />
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
Such dangerous pagan
literature can be appreciated by mature minds, but is just
intellectual pornography for young minds, continually reinforcing the
notion that man is the only god there is — which brings us back to
pagan political philosophy.
</div>
<br />
I can see a point here, but it is poorly made. Who determines who
is mature enough? What should maturing minds read? Wouldn't the best
approach be to admit that we need teachers who can guide these young
minds through the ancient world? And isn't this exactly the task
classical education sets itself?
<br />
Now, personally, I tend to favor Christian European texts.
That is, read Rosenstock-Huessy's <i>Out of Revolution</i>, rather
than Polybius, or Humboldt or Alexander Vinet or Groen van
Prinsterer, rather than Aristotle's <i>Politics</i>. If you start
from where you're at, it may be advantageous to save Greco-Roman
learning for more mature phases of development, and to concentrate on
Kafka and Camus or something like that. But they're still dangerous
too, maybe more so to some. You see the problem? His objection is
that it is dangerous. Since Life is dangerous, at all times, moments
and places, an <i>emergency </i>(as Rosenstock-Huessy describes) this
objection carries merely rhetorical weight. And while danger can't be
used as an argument to positively engage in something (eg., the
student shouldn't have to read the Marquis de Sade), it is not really
a good negative argument, if that is the only objection against it,
and the person on the other side has positive reasons for selecting
the literature. Maybe classically educated people just like and
prefer Homer more than the <i>Kalevala</i>? Maybe there's just more
scholarship and tradition on that side. And maybe Homer's a better
poet than the Finn who jotted down the epic of the North.<br />
<br />
What texts would he have them read, as punching bags for
their minds? Greco-Roman texts are admirably suited for critical
teenagers. If you give a critical and argumentative person the Bible
as their text, they may end up being needlessly critical of God's
Holy Word. So an argument could be made that to do this is more
dangerous, and more sinful, than to give them Greco-Roman tomes to
shred and tear up and have fun with. I don't give my one year old a
nice book to play with on the floor – I give him a cheap coloring
book he can happily wad up and shred and crumple and sit on. I speak
as if I agreed with his fundamental outlook here, but one can see
that even from his standpoint, he's being arbitrary.<br />
<br />
I agree that man is <i>homo adorans</i>, not <i>homo sapiens</i>
(worshiping, not thinking, man). But what makes Jordan think that
thought and contemplation aren't worship? Again, false dichotomies.
Is false dichotomy the essence of being a “modern man”? I tend to
think so. How very un-Hebraic and very “Greek-like” of him.<br />
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
The full empowerment of
God’s people by the coming of the Holy Spirit meant that they were
sent out into existing cultures to transform them, not that they were
to go to a desert island and set up a “city on a hill.” </div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<br /></div>
But...you've already said, sir, that we aren't to transform
things like Greco-Roman culture, but reject them totally, and go out
into a desert on a hill and refound Hebraic civilization.
<br />
When Jordan gets down diatribing against Greco-Romanism, he
is eminently sensible:<br />
<br />
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
The first is the centrality
of worship. That means a daily chapel service. There is no need for
preaching in this service, since supposedly the child is learning
information all day long. Rather, the focus should be on singing the
psalter and Bible passages, and memory of the proverbs. Do this every
day for 30 to 45 minutes, and by the time the child is out of the
eighth grade, he or she will know the entire Psalter by heart. Why
would we settle for anything less? How <em>dare</em> we settle for
anything less? Yet, though I have read here and there in Christian
school material over the years, I have never seen this advocated
anywhere. Second, we should take our cue from the Bible regarding
what is important. Certain things stand out as very important in
Biblical education: Bible content, music, martial arts. Certain
things are obvious from their absence from Biblical culture: sports.
I suppose most Christian schools do a fairly good job on Bible
content, but what about music? If the second person of God is the
Word of God, the third person is the Music of God, for Breath
(Spirit) means the sounding of words out loud, which involves tone
and timbre and rhythm, etc. It is pretty clear that worship in the
Bible is musical (even if this is not much the case in American
Christianity), and we are told that the Father seeks worshippers. The
first goal of Christian education is to train worshippers, and that
means to train musicians. It is clear in the Bible that the next
thing people learn after they learn the Word of God is how to make
music with it.</div>
<br />
I couldn't agree more with the emphasis on music, martial
training, and sports. John Milton (who knew Latin and Roman
mythology) argued precisely this same approach in the <i>Aeropagita</i>.
Young men should know how to ride a horse and hold a pike and throw a
ball. That's just the way things should be. So no disagreement here.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
Well, then, what about other languages?
The reason why learning a foreign language is regarded as a crucial
part of a liberal education is that learning to view things from the
standpoint of another language and culture sets a person free from
the boundaries of his own. It makes him culturally free, and
“liberal” means free. </div>
<div style="margin-left: 1in;">
<br /></div>
And how can you learn a foreign language, Mr. Jordan, if you
don't read the Literature? It appears that James Jordan has no
quarrel with German or Russian, but only with Greek or Latin. I
suppose he sees them as competing with Hebrew in a way that German
does not. Well, perhaps he is right. Yet Spanish can displace God's
word with man's wisdom as surely as any leather-bound tractacte of
Aristotle. There is nothing magically demonic or especially horrible
about Plato and Aristotle: you can go to hell reading Cervantes and
Octavio Paz just as well, can't you, if you try? It's almost as if he
believes that a knowledge of Hebrew will actually make man more holy.
It perhaps could, but it could also make man more unholy. Nowhere is
the temptation to evil so strong as at the foot of the altar. Surely
that is the lesson of the Old Testament and even the cross, Mr.
Jordan?
<br />
<br />
Classical Christian education doesn't set up a competition
between Greece and Rome on the one side, and Athens and Jerusalem on
the other. Nor does it try to make them into a mush of porridge, the
“same thing” by another name, interpreting the Bible with Greek
concepts. Rather it is being faithful to the idea that “when the
time was right”, Christ came into the world, not “into a corner”,
but into the Hellenistic Mediterranean basin, and that the entire
Levant and all Europe was illuminated by the light of that
Incarnation, which showed the high holy Jerusalem which is in heaven,
as she should have been, and the beauty that was Greece (as she
should have been) with the power that was Rome, as little daughters
and worshippers of that heavenly light. It is illuminating to see how
Athens and Jerusalem differ, and how they are the “same”: they
are both the same in that they both rejected Christ, but remember,
Athens didn't crucify the Lord of glory. Jordan should be more
imaginative, in the Inklings' sense, here. He's seeing false
dichotomies and hunting witches; when he sobers up, his practical
suggestions are very sound.<br />
<br />
It's no surprise that Jordan prefers the rascal Tertullian,
who asked “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”, just as Pascal
was said to have written “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is
not the god of the philosophers”. Just so. There is a point to both
meanings. But if the slogan is taken as absolute truth, and pushed
farther than it will go, we end up contradicting the God of the Bible
Himself, who is the “true Light that lightens every man that comes
into the world”. No matter what categories or language he may
happen to speak. Otherwise, there is no Pentecost.<br />
<br />
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>James
Jordan, Biblical Horizons, The Case Against Western Civilization,
December 2007.
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<div class="sdfootnote">
<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3409990422558768312#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">2</a>Interview
with Douglas Wilson, Canon Wired, 2010.
</div>
</div>
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-23008723022594523342014-12-20T15:04:00.001-08:002014-12-21T10:39:37.739-08:00Athens and Jerusalem: A Reply to Gary North and Douglas Wilson<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Keepers
of the Secret Fire – Reformation, Revival, Renaissance and how they
all can prevent the Restoration</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>"You
cannot pass," he said. … "I am a servant of the Secret
Fire, wielder of the flame of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anor_%28Middle-earth%29#Sun">Anor</a>.
The dark fire will not avail you, flame of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utumno">Udûn</a>.
Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass."</i> - Gandalf at
Khahazadum bridge</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Therefore
Ilúvatar gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void, and
the Secret Fire was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it
was called Eä.</i> </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Preface</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the past hundred years,
American schools have been secularized, dumbed down, and finally
turned into institutions with the very opposite purpose from which
they were created. Every Christian wants to fix the education
problem; this book is designed to help anyone who can read to do just
that. Yet education is not a problem to be fixed, but rather the cure
to ignorance. As Dr. Michael Bauman puts it, those who find truth,
beauty, and goodness, find <i>more</i>. In a more mundane sense, they
“learn how to learn”. Now learning occurs either when someone has
an epiphany, or (more usually), when they work by asking themselves
questions. It also occurs in the background, at a base level: we
“absorb” certain ideas from our environment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
A lot of classical education is
meant to make us aware of that background, because without that
awareness and perception, we usually think we see or understand, but
without actually doing so. This is very easy to see in others. The
modern blue-haired, aging, baby-boomer liberal, for instance, is easy
to spot. In a very spiritual way, he “grasps” that everyone has a
right to practice whatever religion they determine, because democracy
is HIS religion, and is outraged by the very suggestion that reality
might be otherwise. When confronted with the practice of very twisted
and evil religions that impinge on other religions, he ignores the
fact that he has generated a contradiction in one of his moral
platitudes, and immediately switches to another soapbox: the idea
that those who practice evil religions can be re-educated out of it,
& that the only reason they are doing these horrible things is
that someone else has oppressed or otherwise victimized them. When a
contradiction of fact or internal contradiction is generated, he
moves on to another supposedly deeper insight: that this group of
people is entitled to do as they see fit within certain “agreed
upon limits” (eg., no more stoning of homosexuals, for instance),
provided they pay lip service to the original idol of democracy. Of
course, he never notices that this is a very un-democratic ideal, the
idea that one group should be held to a higher standard than another.
So that in the course of the wasted hour or so arguing, a gigantic
vicious circle (with tiny epicycles of smaller vicious circles) is
generated. The person living inside this Ouroboros or Mobius Loop
doesn't “get it”: they can't see the problem, or else they think
that moving inside the Matrix like this is actually sophisticated and
clever, a way of “throwing others off the track”.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
So this is what ideology does to
people. Since we “absorb” ideology like sponges, it is useful,
from time to time, to turn around and look at the train of our
thoughts from a neutral perspective. One might call this the “Crazy
Ivan” maneuver: Soviet nuclear submarine captains used to make a
sudden change of direction in order to “clear their baffles” so
that the sonar array could sweep where the wake used to be. If
someone was following them, they could suddenly see them on the
radar. It was a dangerous maneuver, in that it could lead to
collisions, hence the name “crazy”. A lot of people think
classical education is crazy. In fact, a lot of people think
education all by itself is crazy.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
People who notice things, or
think, or study things of special interest, or remember well, or can
express themselves beautifully and powerfully, are not well liked or
trusted in the North American continent. At least, not in “polite
circles”. Skill and knowledge and power are respected in wilderness
survival circles, athletics, business, and other rareified climates.
However, in corporations/politics, schools, churches, and now even in
the military (the secular-university-ecclesiastical-military polygon
one might call the “Cathedral”), we can see that society hates
the idea of distinction. Rather, the new idea that these nurseries
will be called to incarnate in those under them will be democratic
and egalitarian, and consistently so. This means (simply) that it
will be revolutionary.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
This instinct, I would argue, has
even crept into the Church. It is most obvious in the Social Gospel
Churches that succumbed to Rauschenbusch's false Gospel a century
ago, the “mainline” Protestant churches, which are nothing more
than “finishing schools” for certain sectors of the Anglo-African
elite now governing the country. It's quite clear that the idea that
“everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”, is such
a powerful cliché in these Churches that virtually no fact or
argument can disturb the conviction. A more troubling fact is that
this attitude has begun to seep into the country, Bible churches and
Reformed communities that I have attended in recent years. This kind
of hatred of distinction, or exception (as it is viewed, because it
is resented), is quite obvious in a variety of contexts inside the
Church itself: the idea that Scriptures are plain and perspicaciously
clear to anyone who can read (without subtle teaching to explain it),
the idea that one is getting “airs” if they become interested in
something abstract or different or foreign, the idea that it is
Satanic to point out that Scripture does not interpret itself nor
claim to, or that it is “pagan” to suggest that other religions
are vehicles for the Truth of the Holy Spirit. In recent years, the
Protestant fundamentalism movement has gotten a new leash on life by
moving beyond Sola Scriptura and Grace Alone to “No Neutrality”.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
This catchphrase has enabled the
revitalization of (particularly) Calvinist theology in North America.
Like all good ideas, it started with genuine insight into the
“contradiction” of the Gospel; men like Van Til and Rushdoony
demonstrably proved that there was a worldview war being conducted by
secular-humanism at the expense of Biblical soteriology. They
surveyed the battlefield, and found the enemy gathering at all
points. Benjamin Warfield (for instance) argued that Calvinism was
the most consistent expression of supernaturalism, over against the
idea of humanism. Others like Wilson and North have attempted to
apply this dichotomy to education, with widely disparate results. The
idea has become an institution, and (like all ideas), it has
inevitably come full circle to its opposite.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
At first, this may seem a
fantastic claim. How can “God's Law or Chaos” end up promoting
Chaos? How can Christian Reconstruction be subverted into a smaller
version of humanism? That is what the essays are about, because it
has to be seen with the eye of the intellect to be believed. The
“intellect” is not a man-centered organ; to claim that it is is
actually to give the intellect into the hands of the unbelievers. It
is to concede exactly the contested point of contest. The intellect
or Nous is actually a higher organ in man which is supernatural. The
Scriptures in many places call it the “heart”, and ancient
Christian teaching holds that it uses the word “heart” in order
to shock or draw attention to the teaching hidden in plain sight, the
pearl of great price in the field. St. Paul teaches this in Romans:
all men “know the God”. Psalms 19 clearly teach that the heavens
sing of God's glory. This is taken, by the fundamentalists, in a
metaphorical or poetic way, in order to avoid what they (in their
brain) conceive of an unacceptable truth: that God reveals himself in
the depths of the human Nous, that God is the “soul of the soul”,
and that it is possible to “seek after Him, if happily, they might
find Him”. So that in attacking the idea that there is such a thing
as “Christian humanism” or “supernatural humanism”, they are
actually making the secular-humanistic argument for their enemies,
and proving that God has no relevance to the most important part of
man, his Intellect or right Reason. If this is so, Christianity tends
to become a moralistic religion, focusing on attaining to God through
the “right arguments” which will lead the autonomous Brain back
to the “fundamentals”. The brain <i>ought </i>to agree with
such-and-such phrasing of the Truth and accept a particular rule of
faith and practice. There develops a legalism of the Intellect that
is out of place with the grace of the Saviour. This places right-wing
Christians in the same boat as liberal secular-humanists: they differ
(formally but not actually) only on the content of those
fundamentals. For the Christian, it is the Word of God revealed in
the Bible, which is seen as falling out of the sky, like Athena
springing full grown from the brain of Zeus. For the liberal, the
fundamentals are things like universal health care, democracy, and
tolerant diversity of all groups. In both cases, the reliance is on
the wisdom of man. For Catholics, there is a tendency to think that
if one agrees with the Pope, then all is well. And so on, and so
forth. In America, there is a constant tension and overlap of all
these groups, with many holding contradictory opinions from either
side, divided or walled off in the brain like so many air-tight
rooms. This arrangement in the American landscape is known as the
“Cathedral”, and although it has many rooms, all of which are in
some degree of warfare or rivalry with each other, it is in the end,
a rivalry of mutual contention. Mencius Moldbug defines the ruling
Cathedral polity effect as:
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1in;">
<i>Union
of church and state can foster stable iatrogenic misgovernment as
follows. First, the church fosters and maintains a popular
misconception that the problem exists, and the solution solves it.
Secondly, the state responds by extruding an arm, agency, or other
pseudopod in order to apply the solution. Agency and church are thus
cooperating in the creation of unproductive or counterproductive
jobs, as "doctors." Presumably they can find a way to split
the take. </i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Phillip Rieff calls this
“therapeutic culture” : it is an example of something that <i>has
become its precise opposite. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">The
original theurapeutics were monastics living in the deserts of Egypt,
who became the regenerating force that saved the Roman Empire and
created Europe. The modern therapeutic culture is doing precisely the
opposite. How does this happen? Well, let's look at Christian
Reconstructionism. Originally, it was designed to be the antidote to
secular humanism. As we have seen from the above, the dichotomy of
God versus man actually ends up, when it reaches its logical
conclusions, of agreeing with the secular humanists: there is no way
to bridge the gap, and man is stuck in a plastic world ruled by
technology, governed by bureaucrats, and overseen by the “Cathedral”,
a self-appointed hierarchy of “super-correct” people who ferret
out dissent and anything that inhibits the “machine” from running
on schedule. If man's mind has no connection with the Divine, then
the “Mind is what the brain does”, and we end up as practical
atheists, saying that it isn't possible to actually know God. Some
people remain secular humanists, others become religious
fundamentalists. From a larger perspective, what's the difference?
Both groups think that man's brain is essentially the measure of
reality. One group offers democracy and tolerance as a palliative,
the other the “Word of God” and a set of legalistic rules that
one has to follow to live a moral life. Sometimes, you find those who
do both, and maybe this makes the most sense: if you are going to be
totally wrong, you can at least be grandiosely consistent. The two
propositions only conflict at the existential level: they both follow
logically from the idea that there is nothing divine or supernatural
in man's Reason. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> So
what does this look like in the field of Christian education? You
have a huge argument between those who think that the Bible is our
Constitution, and those who think that we can re-write this
Constitution for modern conditions. Both sides see the other as the
enemy. There are even sub-camps in each group, with various subtle
differences. Douglas Wilson is convinced that reading the </span><i>Iliad</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
makes you more human, which helps with your walk with God. Gary North
thinks exactly the opposite. And both call each other heretic and go
home. Now, certainly, Wilson has more reason on his side than North.
However, like North, he has the idea that classical education is
useful only </span><i>in that it makes someone a better Christian.
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">This is why New Saint Andrews
for instance, requires a confession of faith from its scholars, and
subordinates the goal of education to that of raising godly children.
Both sides assume a kind of written definition of Christian as
“given”. In a practical sense, all well and good: it does seem
that people who actually know and read their Bible are, in general,
more Christian. And it does seem that those who think that the Bible
is actually God's holy Word have a little more urgency to their
spiritual walk. However, since the “Spirit blows where it wills”,
it's not possible to restrict God's agency and presence to what one's
preconceived notions of correctness happen to be, useful as these
rules are in daily practice as guideposts. It is interesting, for
example, that the Rig-Vedas contains many sayings which are almost
identical to those of the Son of God Himself. Coincidence? Well,
without studying them, how could you know? </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Both
actually, in spite of themselves, think that there is a “neutrality”
that exists. North sees it as the enemy in disguise; Wilson wants to
use that neutrality to Christian advantage. Of the two, I would
certainly side with Wilson. However, who wants to pick their way
through dichotomies? I would rather say it this way: there is nothing
neutral, because all of it belongs to God to begin with. Including
the Greek mysteries, the Greek perversions. Why is pederasty (to take
an extreme example) so onerous and disgusting? Because it represented
a perversion of something good. The Greeks understood that young men
needed mentoring and guiding to the Truth. It is unfortunate that
they were deluded into believing that erotic impulses could provide
and sustain such, but the fundamental insight is not incorrect.
English education and high society, down to the recent times, had the
same undercurrent and problem, and so does the Catholic Church.
Rather than descend into hysterics, wouldn't it be better to take
away the whole basis of the practice by co-opting it? What if we
admitted that young men, even more than young women, need art and
spiritual science (in short, discipling) in order to achieve full
manhood? This is precisely what Christian monasticism and early
Christian patristics did. They did not deny that the Greeks were
wrong to have intuited the existence of the Nous and celebrated the
idea of brotherhood. Instead, using revelation, they formulated the
proper basis for it in the first place. They could see that they
needed the libraries and history and tomes and ideas of Rome, but
they took these things captive to Christ. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Sticking
your head in the sand like an ostrich may make you feel better (which
is what North does), and trying to “tidy it up a bit” makes a
little more sense (the Wilson approach), but the only manly,
Christian approach is to aim for the target. Thus, we admit that the
Greek mysteries and the perverted practices had a point. Like the
great general Pyrrhus, the Greeks were content to win costly battles
and lose the war. Just so, they had their enlightenments, through
disgusting and needlessly useless and perverted methods, because they
lacked the fullness of the Logos, which only came with the advent of
the Saviour. This is why Paul did not lambast them on Mars Hill, but
rather (in Wilson's words) “took them down familiar paths to show
them new things”: he proclaimed to them, the very religious, the
identity of the unknown God, fully revealed in Christ Jesus, the
King. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> So
what good is studying the Greeks? If they lacked the fullness, can't
we dispense with them entirely? Isn't there a better vein to mine for
our classicism? Christian Europe, perhaps, even by North's admission,
much less pagan? In short, by a higher path, aren't we forced to take
the Northian route? We can answer this quite confidently and
conclusively: there is, in fact, no absolute need for the classical
canon. A Christian student can just as easily find education in the
volumes and tomes of “classical Christian Europe” as he can in
ancient Greece or Rome. What difference does it make if you read
</span><i>Faust</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> or Imre Madach's
</span><i>The Tragedy of Man</i><span style="font-style: normal;">?
They are the same for the hungry mind. A student who studies Euclid
is no better off than one who works his way through Euler's collected
writings. There is the added advantage that it appears that studying
</span><i>Job </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Faust
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">exposes a student to less
weirdness and confusion than reading (for instance) the collected
works of Euripides. However, an interesting thing happens in the
course of studying Western European culture: there are constant
references and deferences to ancient learning. When the Irish monks
set out to save Western culture, they copied Greek and Latin works.
Hence their learning is sprinkled with the salt and savor of all that
was good, true and beautiful from that eternal city, Rome, and her
heavenly counterpart, Jerusalem. So that in trying to understand the
one, it is useful to spend time on the other, however incidental or
desultory. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> This
is an inconvenient fact: the best minds of Christian Europe were
trained on Latin. Latin proverbs, Latin literature, Latin politics
(the theories of Polybius, for example) formed the raw grist or fiber
of their minds. So that to understand (for example) Dante, one is
forced to know rather more than a small amount of ancient philosophy
and history, in an intuitive way, if nothing else. Therefore, by an
interesting paradox, it becomes unavoidable to “know the Greeks”.
John Keats, for example, was a popular poet who used the vernacular,
but he constantly hearkens back to the Greek myths, and (like a
mirror) sees his own individuality in that mirror. You can't refute
Keats without reading his poetry, and loving Greek myth. You can hate
him, but you can't </span><i>deal</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
with him. And if you ignore him, your precocious son may accidentally
open his volumes, or worse, become a poet just like Keats. And what
will you do then? </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> For
those Christians who will go on to become the heart and soul of the
coming order that will arise on the wrack and ruin of modern USA
civilization, it will be incumbent to know as much as is possible to
know regarding the human condition. For this task, they will turn,
not merely to Christian Europe, but to the great “false idol”
that civilization erected with the purpose of imitating: all that was
best in the Imperium of Rome, the beauty of Greece, and the goodness
of Jerusalem. We assert something even more fantastic than Douglas
Wilson is capable of admitting: that the story of humanity is the
story of Divine action in history. Or, as the Bible puts it, these
“things were not done in a corner, but rather, when the fullness of
time had come”, the Saviour came. GW Hegel perverts this idea by
asserting that the Spirit of God reveals himself in secular history.
I trust the reader can see that what we are saying is somewhat
markedly different: the Spirit of God works within, permeates, and
works to save all of history, which remains (for the time) full of
both darkness and shadow. Hegel instantiated History and the State as
God: we are saying that God providentially </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">uses
in strange circumstances whatever human conditions offer up to point
the way to a transcendence of those very perversions. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> Christian Europe, in its
humility, was content to learn from the ancients, however corrupt and
perverted, anything that would serve the purpose of following the
Lord. Out of that came a thousand years of Christian culture that
made man “Christian in their bones”, and aimed to convert the
heart as well. No doubt it was imperfect. History always is. But to
quote the Russians, “the perfect can be the enemy of the good”.
It is better to be humble, and to learn from our ancestors, than to
spend aeons reinventing the wheel. This is not compromise, but the
divine humility which redeems the years that the locust has eaten, by
digging up and not merely baptizing, but regenerating, ancient forms
that missed the mark (</span><i>hamartia</i><span style="font-style: normal;">).
This is taking all thoughts captive to Christ. Because it was the
Logos who walked on the Aeropagus, and bore with the sins of the
Greeks, who founded the ancient city of Rome and taught them to
prefer Order over chaos. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">This
is not surrender to neutrality, but the pursuit of neutrality deeper,
until the meaning is discerned in the feet of clay. Truly there is
no “neutrality”, but all belongs to God. It is the task of the
human who seeks God to unravel this Gordian knot, in whatever
circumstances he or she finds themselves. If God is a circle without
a circumference, whose center is everywhere, then people travel in
different directions as they move back to that circle. This is a
mystery, but is understood as one travels “the Way”. Because God
calls even the sinful and the Greco-Romans back to the center. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
People like Gary North
misunderstand the idea that there is “no neutrality”. They think
this neutrality or non-neutrality exists as the end result of a
dialectic of discursive reasoning. For them, the truth is
ideological, and not mystical, intuitive, and super-Rational. Thus,
they see “dichotomy” everywhere except in their own point of
view. The result is that rather than support a classical education
(which acknowledges that “we are not God” in our brains), they
want their students to read the King James Bible, Shakespeare, and
learn basic mathematics and sciences. He goes on to assault the idea
of classical education in general, accusing it of being rooted in
pederasty and orgies and idol-worship galore. North is useful because
he does such a massively flamboyant chop-job assassinating “classical
education”. Reading him, you would think that all we need are
Bibles and our multiplication tables, along with an unexplainedly
exempt copy of the Bard's complete works, in which witchcraft,
prostitution, revenge, idol worship, and other cleaned up versions of
“classical education” would survive as a little added color. It's
not surprising that a middle class American Protestant outlook would
gravitate toward the idea of educating the child merely to take their
modest place in the bowels of the gigantic military-industrial
complex that sprawls over North America. After all, as long as we can
keep Raytheon and Tyson going, what else do we need, other than
faithful church-goers each Sunday? This “God, Gold, & Guns”
school of theology is a peculiar sect of late 20<sup>th</sup> century
America which seems to think that the Bible is more like a lawnmower
manual than the revealed Word of God, or (worse) that the Word of God
IS a lawnmower manual. It is not. The Word of God is primarily the
second person of the Trinity; the Bible is His reflection, not His
face.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
These are of course, deep waters.
We are not saying that the Bible isn't holy, or not a written and
inspired record of Jesus, or that (in one sense), it is not
indispensable to the full knowledge of the Logos. What we are saying,
and surely, is that it is not a schematic manual in the same sense a
manual for repairing a 1990 Ford Ranger is definitive and
perspicacious. For that matter, even a lawnmower manual or auto
manual is not the “full story”. As the Bible itself proclaims, if
all was written of this Logos, “not all the books in the world
would contain it”. But this is one of those unquoted Scriptures
that is always overlooked. If the Bible, in short, commands us to
meditate beyond its clear teachings, then “supplementing the Bible”
is the only course of obedience for the faithful Christian. If Jesus
commends the Law and the Prophets, but says that “you search them,
for in them you think you have eternal Life”, but I am He that
testifies of its truth, then Fundamentalism has a problem. If God's
Word tells you that His Word is everywhere, the solution is not to
pretend that He didn't say that.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
Of course, it always surprises
these eminent gentleman scholars of leisure when the stifled
curiosity and imagination of the child gets exercised, one fine day,
on the pages of the Holy Scriptures. If bright children do actually
read their Bibles, and discover more than a moral code book and
record of purely ethereal “spiritual” happenings, they quickly
find out that there is a lot of demonism, witchcraft, and “paganism”
in the Holy Writ. Nothing is more “classical” than Ahab's answer
to the pagan king: “let not him who puts on his armor boast as him
who takes it off”! If they continue to absorb the culture around
them, they quickly discern “errors” in the Bible (eg., the value
of Pi, for instance, in I Kings), as well as gaps or discrepancies in
supposedly literal writ. A child with active intellect is
particularly cursed: no matter how good a Christian he or she is,
they will continue to note oddities in Scriptures which
(unfortunately) do not explain themselves, and are not explained
(typically) to them. Even the Bible warns us: there are “many and
deep things, which the ignorant twist to their own destruction”
(specifically in the epistles of Paul, but I believe, in all of the
Holy Writ).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
The Wilson theory of education is
much more subtle and sound; he understands that we are trying to do
more than just “outfit” someone for life in the missile factory
or as an independent plumber. I am not disparaging honest labor with
hands: everyone especially those with classical educations, need to
learn to work with their hands. But to say that God, work, and
independence are all that exists (and in the most basic form we can
wrangle up), seems to be a bit draconian, even by Northian standards.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Here he is at his finest satire
(satire is almost the only thing he does really well):</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<i>We teach classical
education here -- not the G-rated censored version that our
competitors palm off as classical education. They are pandering to
the little old Christian women of both sexes. We don't pander here.
We provide the real deal. We say that when you teach that classical
culture is the basis of art, liberty, and higher values, you should
teach what the classical masters did and said. Our competitoTrs, with
their G-rated version, refuse to do this.</i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<i>We don't sugar coat
classical culture in order to fool parents who have never studied
classical Greece and Rome, and who have heard about how great a
classical Christian curriculum is. They want to baptize an expurgated
version of classical culture. They say that classical culture was
consistent: religion, sexual mores, slavery, politics, and war. We
agree. It was. But that culture had nothing to do with the G-rated,
expurgated version that is taught in the Christian schools that
advertise a classical Christian education. They want to fuse the
Bible and classical culture. That is because they are unfamiliar with
classical culture. In our school, we teach unadulterated
schizophrenia. Send your children here. We know you want your
children to be taught the truth. That's what we teach here.</i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-left: 1in;">
<i>There is, of course, a
marketing problem. </i>
</div>
<br />
Even blind squirrels find a nut now & then, and North is
no exception. He is right about the sordid details of Greco-Roman
civilization. But then, how would he know this? Presumably he's done
some reading on the sordid subject. But don't trust yourself on the
subject, trust the man who's waded through the slime, and turn away
in horror and disgust from neo-classical education! Those who have
argued with North (like Douglas Wilson, the founder as it were of the
movement) aren't (of course) saying that we should expose our
children to such garbage: North constructs a straw man and has a lot
of fun batting it around. However, it is fair to say that Wilson and
others do try to “clean things up” in a certain sense. There is
nothing wrong with this in one sense: why not “spoil the
Egyptians”, as Augustine argued when he made the case for
Christians preserving classical learning? Wilson wants to enrich the
Christian world with the ornaments of antiquity: why not use the
rhetoric of Cicero, the beauty of Phidias, and the truth of Zeno on
behalf of Scriptural revelation? But Wilson doesn't go far enough.
<br />
<br />
The truth is that Wilson (and the classical movement in
general) does have a problem – the early Church, when they took the
truth, beauty, and goodness of paganism, most certainly did not
intend merely to ornament the insides of their Romanesque cathedrals,
adorn the sides of their Gospel pages, and embellish their political
theories with quotations from Plato. There is a kind of “generic”
feel to a lot of the classical Christian school movement, a kind of
whitewash that has its place, but doesn't get down to the grittiness
of pagan reality in the classical world. I think this is the white
whale that North is hunting, however confusedly, in his periodic
diatribes against the ACCS.
<br />
<br />
When Justin Martyr “baptized” Plato, he wasn't
recognizing that Plato was graceful, witty, insightful, and even
profound. He was claiming that Plato and the Greeks actually
understood the Gospel in a formal sense, even if there was some doubt
as to whether and to what extent this knowledge was salvifically
actualized. They were Christians before Christ, in that they
discerned and followed the Logos, the pattern of God. Augustine
claims that the Christian religion was nothing else other than the
“true religion” which had always existed, just in its fullest and
most perfect form. Keep in mind that, of all people, the early
Christians were aware of just how corrupt and degraded the
Greco-Roman world was – they inhabited it. Despite this intimate
and first hand knowledge, the best minds and hearts of the Christian
world (with notable exceptions like Tertullian), openly taught that
Athens and Jerusalem were the same city, a union that was effected in
the sacred and eternal city of Rome: Rome became both Athens and
Jerusalem to the new Christian Europe that rose, a phoenix from
ashes, out of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
<br />
<br />
What does this mean? It all comes back to St. Paul at
Aeropagus, on Mars Hill. Did the apostle go out and cry “rubbish”
through the forum and agora, indicting them with a litany of their
abuses and heinous sins? Was Jesus a revolutionary, who saw no need
of the Law and the Prophets? Was Augustine an innovator, who hated
the “wisdom of man” in the ancient Greeks? Or did these men in
fact see deeper into the pattern of the Logos in a way that allowed
them to discern that pattern at work in even the darkest corners of
human history? Which view builds more confidence and Christian power?
A view that some things are irredeemably bad and ought to be buried
alive forever, or a view that seeks to understand that “nothing
human is alien to me”, or to God?
<br />
<br />
I can tell you which one will create Christian young people
who can take dominion, and which one will continue to foster a
retreat into a subculture that thinks it can once again become the
dominant culture by Reconstructing a 1950s world in which Protestant
work ethic, church-going, and neo-Calvinism will save us all. I can
tell you which view will be able to withstand the all out assault on
Christian truth and purity in the brave new world dominated by racial
conflict, cybernetics, gigantic corporations and governments, and God
knows what else, and which one will be hiding in the hills or bowling
allies of a decaying and collapsing American Empire. I want the faith
that sustained early Christians through the collapse of their entire
way of life and world, in the face of invasion, plague, famine and
war. How about you?
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-87315008911938301922014-10-31T20:31:00.003-07:002014-10-31T20:31:47.054-07:00The Lutheran Reformation<a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7622">Link</a><br />
<br />
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<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7622" rel="bookmark" title="23:25"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-10-31T23:25:23+00:00" pubdate="">2014-10-31</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Statue_of_Martin_Luther%2C_St._Mary%27s_Church%2C_Mitte%2C_Berlin.jpg" width="220" />It’s
October, and I am thinking, inexorably, of the Protestant Reformation,
where my spiritual roots lie. In order to do those roots justice (it
does no good to saw them in two), I have to understand the contention
made against the Church of the West, the Latin Roman Catholic Church.
Now there are two types of attacks usually made on the Church: one of
these points to specific abuses (in the modern day, these have to do
with altar boys, but I qualified this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report">ever since I found out </a>that
most of the perpetrators were priests the Church let in under pressure
from Vatican II reforms and the Cultural Wars, after the 60s, in the
decade 1970-1980), and the other has to do with the doctrine of Sola
Fide. So that it is important to remember that the RCC was liberalizing
when it got burned: that is, it let in a lot of alternative candidates
who would not ordinarily have been anything but rejects, following the
pressure of the spirit of the Times, and predictably, got what it
deserved. But this is not really an argument against the RCC per se, so
much as it is a cautionary morality tale: better to have stood against
the world and gone under, than to have compromised and then tried to
hide the sorry result. I assume that indulgence sales must have operated
along the same lines: lots of pressure from secular rulers to loosen up
those tight demands, and make things more accessible to the
moneychangers and to Mammon.<br />
<br />
It is easily seen that Sola Fide was an attempt to cut open the
circle of God’s decrees at one proper, precise point, the point where
the energies of God touched the response of man. The circle of God’s
decrees met at this one point, in the response of faith. This was done
so that man could take a minimum of credit (belief, or trust, is a very
responsive, passive, spiritual reaction to the action God had already
objectively accomplished in the finished work of the cross), and so that
God could get a maximum of glory (the faith response only proved that
the Spirit had regenerated a man. From above, God reaches down in
election, but the regeneration operates from below: both are
accomplished through that eternal love that operates from the
foundations of the world. Thus, even in salvation, man is caught in the
pressure of God’s Providence acting from above, and God’s decretal
purposes entering from below (AA Hodge said that regeneration occurs in
the subconscious). The design of this was to preserve second order acts
(Free Will and the apparent synergism of having to “come to Christ” in
an act of Faith), without sacrificing (or at least sacrificing a minimum
of) God’s sovereignty. Of course, inevitably there were theologians and
sectarian leaders who wondered, out loud and in print, that if there
was no mystery in the Eucharist, why should there be any mystery in the <em>Ordo Salutis</em>
either? So their conclusion was that no Law at all was required: if you
were saved, you were saved, and if not, you weren’t. This only pushed
the mystery back to why there was such a “salvation” or Supernature at
all, treating the Incarnation and all its effects like a cancer that
needed shrinking. As we shall see, Revolution does precisely this: it
is, at root, a vast oversimplification (which explains the apparent
emphasis on sophistication in “matters indifferent”, ie., technology).
Luther himself was no Revolutionary, and didn’t anticipate fully where
his ideas lead, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants%27_War">although he saw enough</a>
to smell trouble. Likewise, Calvinism itself is a kind of “shorthand”,
which is true as far as it goes. Here is what Evola said of it:<br />
<blockquote>
“As for Christianity in its less popular forms, it
presents an aspect of the tragic doctrine of salvation, which to some
extent preserves an echo of the ancient truth: the idea–pushed to
extremes by Luther and Calvin—that man on earth stands at the crossroads
between Salvation and eternal damnation. This point of view, if lived
intensely and coherently, could create the conditions for liberation at
the moment of death or in post-mortem states.”</blockquote>
Note 2, page 96, <em>The Hermetic Tradition</em><br />
Note that Evola (unlike Luther or especially Calvin) is not committed
to the idea that this “shorthand” represents a comprehensive treatment
of spiritual matters. In all of this, the intent was flawlessly
impeccable. The Reformation presented itself as a restoration of the
full orbed, original Gospel, over against the new Phariseeism of works
religion that had forgotten what the point was. Indeed, Luther’s <a href="http://www.orlutheran.com/html/anfecht.html">Anfechtung</a>
was actually an experience of moral collapse in the face of the demands
of the Gospel, a collapse so total that only self-despair could provide
the impetus to embrace Christ in an act of flying to the Cross. Luther
was, for instance, interested in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theologia_Germanica"><em>Theologica Germanica</em></a>, which spoke of such spiritual states.<br />
<br />
What could be wrong with this? Well, in a sense, nothing. In fact, it
is true that Calvinism and Lutheranism potentially were Restorations of
the Gospel. That is exactly what Europe needed: not a Renaissance, but a
Restoration. Instead, it got a Revolution. If Lutheranism and Calvinism
had preached the comfortable truth that God calls a man as he is, and
declares him righteous by imputation to begin the process of salvation,
the Church might have been Reformed. Instead, it wasn’t Reformed at all,
and when the Reformers split off from the Church, by definition, they
were admitting that the goal was no longer Reformation. Instead, in
places like England, a minority of nobles decided to use it as a pretext
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stripping-Altars-Traditional-Religion-1400-1580/dp/0300108281/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414554060&sr=1-1&keywords=eamon+duffy+stripping+altars">to rob the Church and strip the altars</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Calvinist-Preaching-Iconoclasm-Netherlands-1544-1569/dp/0521088836">In the Netherlands</a>,
mobs of idiot villagers lead by hedge priests smashed works of art that
they couldn’t even comprehend, let alone create. And in Germany, all
hell broke loose.<br />
<br />
What could have been an opportunity for the Gothic, North-West
European culture to assume its rightful and perhaps even dominant place
within Christendom over against an overly Baroque, ossified and
undoubtedly corrupt leadership emanating from Rome, instead became a
long Deformation and Degeneration of the Church, which has ended in our
day by the secular hyper-Calvinization of the religion of Progress. This
was, to be clear, the fault of all parties in Europe, on either side.<br />
<br />
In addition, the study of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordo_salutis">Ordo Salutis</a> and the doctrines of Grace (<a href="http://www.theopedia.com/TULIP">TULIP</a>)
lead to a conviction on the Protestant side that if you didn’t speak
the precise language of the debate, and agree with the way of framing
the question in a specific and penultimate way, you were a heretic and
anti-Christ. This was partly understandable, given the Catholic
intransigence and stubborn insistence that “surely we have to contribute
something to our salvation!”, which amounted to agreeing with the way
the Protestants framed the debate. In fact, both sides framed the debate
in essentially legalistic terms (right down to words like imputation
and justification), and conducted it like a court room trial. This was
merely a continuation of the Western fascination with innovative
abstract categories (you thought the Greeks were bad?) that had lead to
the East-West split to begin with. The fall of Rome was so damaging in
the West that they had literally lost on a large scale (not totally) the
doctrines of illumination and glorification for instance. It was so bad
that, for awhile, Irish Christians were in closer communion with the
spirit of Egypt than most of the West. Whole provinces (eg., Spain)
remained Arian for extended periods of time.<br />
<br />
So this was partly a hangover from the time of the Invasions, when God was pictured as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae">the just judge</a>
coming to town for the hanging assizes, because this was the day-to-day
experience to begin with, the raw theological data of human experience.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Church acquired a Byzantine varnish that further
confused the newly civilized barbarians. The West never really gotten
over the fall of Rome, and Luther came along to finish the job. This was
a lost opportunity, historically speaking.<br />
<br />
So where does this leave me, contemplating the Reformation? I think
that the theology of the Cross (as opposed to a theology of Glory) paid
some dividends, that the particular way of cutting open the circle of
God’s mysterious decrees that the Reformers preferred yielded priceless
insights, <a href="http://anglicanrose.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/northerness-respondi/#more-2822">and that the Northern European Gothic spirit</a>
was probably going to erupt at some point, unfortunately choosing the
spiritual arm of Society as its main target (later, would come the turn
of the kings). John Ruskin discusses some of this in his Bible of
Amiens, which I have posted on, and readers can refer to Cologero’s
posts on the <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?tag=the-three-orders">Three Orders</a>
as a start. John Romanides’ work is invaluable for illuminating the
debate between East and West but reaches very unhelpful conclusions:
what the West was, it was, and it might have been much more.
Unfortunately, rather than attain spiritual pre-eminence, the Northwest
of Europe chose the path of Empire, which (of course) was no longer
Holy, but based on mercantile and raiding trader powers, the hated
“Anglo-Atlanticism” which Alexander Dugin wishes to bring low. The
Reformation set the stage for this by shattering spiritual unity, and
further muddying the waters in its outcomes. There is still much to be
gained and seen by what it did, both positively and negatively (as we do
not wish to imitate the party spirit).<br />
<br />
However helpful Reformation theology is (and most people don’t know
nearly enough about it), it is not helpful to have a naive belief that a
particular facet of the Truth contains the sum of all Truth. However
true this might be, were men angels, and could they see with angelic
sight, mortals (even with the perspicacious Word of God to guide them)
have to consider ALL facets of God’s truth. Luther wanted to throw out
the book of James, for instance, an “epistle of straw”. And he seemed to
have no knowledge of the ancient, ancient doctrine (both classical and
Catholic) that the “Word of God” was much, much more than merely the
enscripturated text of the Bible, or even the act of Incarnation: it was
everything in between as well, because the worlds were created through a
Living <em>Logos Tomeus</em> (this is in your Bible). Additionally, the
doctrine of Recapitulation raised the question of the archetype of the
Father in relation to the summing up Word or Logos, which means that at
the end, it is not the Word that is Supreme because the Word will return
everything to the Father. Luther hated philosophy, so he couldn’t be
bothered with such trifles.<br />
<br />
What he did know and realize, was that something had gone very, very
wrong in the West. On this account, he was most certainly even more
right than he understood. Luther was living in an era in which the
Church had already distanced itself off from the German mystic tradition
in the North (Tauler, Boehme, Eckhart) and almost cut itself off from
its own tradition in Italy (Italy was prepping for Machiavelli and the
Renaissance). So his legitimate spiritual experience found no outlet,
and he had to formulate the dogmas of the Reformation almost
single-handedly, forging them in the fires of his conscience. This would
have been a difficult task for a man much better prepared than Luther,
and with more help. Like Lenin after Marx, Calvin came after Luther and
ossified the Reformation, guaranteeing that the mystery of the
Incarnation in its full aspect would be viewed through a very narrow
lens, however accurate for purposes of establishing Christian security
and comfort, a lens which would be used to focus the fires that would
engulf Europe in Revolution.<br />
<br />
And this is the tragedy: God had intended a Reformation. However, He
has also revealed that He intends to show every work for what it
ultimately is<em>. In this case, Reformation laid the ground work for Revolution. We have to Reform the Reformation. </em><br />
<br />
To my understanding and knowledge, there is only one Protestant
thinker who has ever made or attempted a conclusive study of this
process of Reformation, which he failed to see was inherent in some of
its doctrines and emphases: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Groen_van_Prinsterer">Groen van Prinsterer</a>.
This is because in most cases, Reformation was accomplished through
Revolutionary tactics, and its bad form to bite the hand that feeds you.
Van Prinsterer is an anomaly, although Alexander Vinet is an
interesting thinker.<br />
<br />
It is, for instance, a Revolutionary tactic to throw out babies with
bathwater. A legitimate grievance is advanced, and then it is used to
justify a comprehensive programme of rebellion. This is precisely the
pattern that we see in the Reformation. It started with legitimate
insights into truth which badly needed to be shared and spread, and
righteous objections to horrific abuses, which badly needed to be
stopped, and ended up by tearing apart the body of Christ, killing a
quarter or third of Germany and other parts of Europe in the process.
The office of pope was tarnished forever, the safety of tradition was
undermined, hierarchy was threatened in any form, and most of all,
Protestantism lost all contact with mystical and ancient traditions,
which resulted in the fomenting of a potent brew of materialism (the
Dutch Empires gave rise to other Empires), secularism (particularly in
England, where sects had their heyday), and revolution in France along
with scepticism and ultimately atheism in Germany (who gave us higher
criticism).<br />
<br />
How can we honor Luther during Reformation October? We can embrace
the truths he so tenaciously clung to, but we won’t really embrace the
spirit of Luther until we learn to see farther than he did, and to
rectify the errors he inevitably set loose. We have to Reform the
Reformation. Luther would surely be the first to proclaim that God must
have other Reformations in mind, that he was not Christ, that if popes
and councils can err, so can Reformers, and that surely his discovery
and recovery of Truth (if real) must of necessity lead to even more
Truth?<br />
<br />
We have slept in Zion. The secularists have claimed Luther as their
own. The revolutionaries are faithful to his spirit. The atheists praise
him for making every man his own priest. The schismatics and lunatics
thank God for Luther’s Bible, which enables any idiocy to take the stand
along with the most venerable and sacred mysteries in God’s Creation.
But we, the possessors of his lineage, do nothing but repeat verbatim
what he said. Luther once said, The Letter Kills. Let us recover and
discover Luther again, and let us find what he was looking for: absolute
certainty in the almighty grace of God to pardon unspeakable sinners,
but let us understand that the mysteries are not thereby done away with,
but rather grown exceedingly great. Let us recover a Theology of both
Glory and the Cross, and eschew the revolutionary tactic of pitting one
thing against the other in the body of the living Christ, the Man-God,
the eternal Word, whose Kingdom shall have no End, and who is coming
again like lightning from East to the West.<br />
<br />
What we need is a Protesting Catholic Western Church; what we are
getting in America, instead, is a late Catholic form of degenerate
Protestantism. Is it too late to Reform the Reformation? Our spiritual
giants and ancestors showed us how to make a beginning. With their
example, we can perhaps avoid the ending.<br />
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This entry was posted in <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?cat=23" rel="category" title="View all posts in Christianity">Christianity</a>, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?cat=53" rel="category" title="View all posts in Civilization">Civilization</a>, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?cat=13" rel="category" title="View all posts in Tradition">Tradition</a> and tagged <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?tag=calvin" rel="tag">Calvin</a>, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?tag=luther" rel="tag">Luther</a>, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?tag=reformation" rel="tag">Reformation</a>, <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?tag=theologica-germanica" rel="tag">Theologica Germanica</a> by <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56">Logres</a>.<span class="bookmark_it">Bookmark the <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7622" rel="bookmark" title="Permalink to The Lutheran Reformation">permalink</a>.</span>Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-29574393647802052652014-05-27T15:21:00.002-07:002014-05-27T15:21:30.705-07:00The High Priestess<br />
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The High Priestess</h1>
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<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7287" rel="bookmark" title="11:51"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-05-10T11:51:17+00:00" pubdate="">2014-05-10</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/RWS_Tarot_02_High_Priestess.jpg" height="562" width="332" /><br />
When God manifested in the created plane, the Two inescapably arose.
First of all, as secondary to God, and secondly as articulations within
itself, to create the pyramid and hierarchy of all Being. There is
nothing wrong with Two: as Cologero notes, the animus within the woman
is necessary for her healthy development. The Two is very good in
itself, but not by itself. This is noted earlier on as<i> it is not good for man to be alone</i>. This would also apply to the feminine part within man’s own interior.<br />
Watch a political debate, read a cutting edge expose of the Gospels,
pick up a history book, or (worse) sample a modern textbook. For that
matter, pick an acquaintance’s brain. What you will inevitably almost
always discover is someone for whom the Two is not merely a good, but is
actually God, subsisting alone. Not only have they made a false god out
of what is created, but (for them) the One and indeed any other
competing Twos simply don’t exist. Thus, those who think the Catholic
Church was part of a vast cosmic conspiracy involving the Demi-Urge
suppressing channellers from the stars simply never get around to asking
themselves the simple question, If God is a fake God (<b>Yahweh is the Demi-urge</b>) then how do I know the One True Light God is not just in on the fix? What if the deception<i> is even more elaborate</i>
than I first believed? No for them what is an important psychological
insight gets distorted into a cosmology, an ideology, and at last, a
madness. They cannot square the circle. This phenomena is common today.<br />
<br />
Psychologically and humanly speaking, people like modern liberals,
civil rights activists, free thinkers and others may certainly possess a
modicum of truth. Yet, what lie does not contain modicums of truth? It
is not hard to be partly right. But this is not what is claimed: it is
claimed that this is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth,
and (most importantly) the only truth which could possibly matter. And
it must be taken<i> as presented</i>, which is to say, in isolation
from the One. It is, at root, a narrative created by the demonic power
of the egocentric mind, which attempts to enslave others to its
dominating will. This is the opposite of the what the Priestess was
created to be: instead of the <i>alma mater</i>, we have the devouring
wrath of the psychotic Lilith, who hates Eve, and attempts to destroy
Adam (this is how salvation comes from the woman, for Eve will oppose
Lilith).<br />
<br />
We see at work here the very power of distortion and twisting which they claim to see in the One. To quote Phillip Dick, “<b>Those who fight the Empire, become the Empire</b>“.
Or to quote Jesus, “resist not evil, but overcome evil with Good”.
Anyone who uses the Ring of Sauron against Sauron is doomed to either
become like him, or to be turned into a slave. God Himself does not
overcome evil with evil, but rather overturns Hell from the inside out.
Good triumphs because it remains unchanged when Evil touches it, and is
capable of changing Evil into its opposite. Evil cannot make this claim,
and therefore, has no true power. Evil can only uncover what is already
Evil, and test what is Good.<br />
<br />
This is not to say one cannot be a warrior and a man of the One.
There are beautiful stories about how to reconcile the two, & many
men have done it extremely well, so well they merit great titles and
honors, and perhaps even more than man can say. <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=6036">Giorgio</a>
has pointed out that the warrior (however) is female in relation to the
brahmin or priest. That is, the warrior has to overcome the flesh to
arrive at the one, he has to fight himself. He has to struggle against
the tendency to carve out a separate kingdom away from the Law of the
One. This is the first temptation faced by man, to divide himself into
Two and to make a kingdom of his own, separate from the aboriginality of
the Self Beyond the Selves.<br />
<br />
How can this be? How can the virile, manly warrior be female? When
the universe is taken hierarchically, we can say that that which is
above something is male in relation to it, and that which is below
something is female in relation to it. Things below revolve around,
cling to, and require for their health and sanity the relation to that
which stems from above. When something is detached, <a href="http://biblehub.com/jude/1-13.htm">it careens off into the outer darkness,</a>
and although it may retain its own hierarchy for a time, there is a
process of decay that sets in immediately. The horizontal cannot sustain
itself by itself. It requires a link to the vertical. Thus, everything
is male/female, and yet we can properly speak of certain things as
“male” or “female” in configuration to each other.<br />
<br />
Neither is privileged. Without the female, the male does not make
itself known. If there is a privilege, it consists of duties. To quote
the Baron,<b> loving,proud obedience and humble command</b> are the duties of respective stations. Since all of Being involves climbing the ladder or the Tree, there is no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALIS">Black Iron Prison </a>of
compartments or boxes, but rather a kind of dance. If you are living in
a Black Iron Prison, it is because your soul (to that extent) is
tainted and evil, and God manifests to you as the oppressor. The eye,
being not single, cannot see the Light. The psychological insight
(however) of this state is correct: you are seeing that the God you made
in your own image is actually a Demi-Urge. Angels appear as demons, men
of good breeding and sound sense are tyrants, Western civilization is
the greatest evil on earth, etc. The only way out is “deeper in”, that
is to say, to pull the beam out of your own Eye.<br />
<br />
The lesson of the second Card is that <b>Two cannot exist alone</b>. Which (put this way) is irrefutable. QED. Or, put another way, <b>Two can only exist together as One</b>.<br />
<br />
Tomberg gives an example of what happens when the Two wants to be alone:<br />
<blockquote>
“Passing on to mysticism which has not given birth to
gnosis, magic and Hermetic philosophy – such a mysticism must, sooner or
later, necessarily degenerate into ‘spiritual enjoyment’ or
‘intoxication’. The mystic who wants only the experience of mystical
states without understanding them, without drawing practical conclusions
from them for life, and without wanting to be useful to others, who
forgets everyone and everything in order to enjoy the mystical
experience, can only be compared to a spiritual drunkard.”</blockquote>
He mentions that those who develop the spiritual sense develop a
“touch” which allows him to apply and understand what he has
experienced. This is analogous to the virginal pool, which more deeply
reflects (until it engenders or creates) what is shining on it from
above : the Sun gives birth over the void, or the waters. One begins to
examine the thoughts that enters one’s mind, to make them pass “tests”
(smell, touch, hearing) before true gnosis (or sight) is finally
engendered, much as a baby learns to see in three dimensions and to
arrange shapes in proper contours to the forms emanating them. This is
the meaning of “become as little children”, who are female/passive at
first as regards that which is already fully grown and solar.<br />
<br />
The Gnostic challenge to the Church is an opportunity to recover what
was Once: an exoteric Church which is sustained by a Life, to reunify
the split between Gnosis and Faith that spiraled out of control in the
early development of the West. Neither the New Age or Gnostics on the
one hand, nor the purely exoteric believer on the other can long subsist
in division. Such a division engenders monsters, more confusion, and
less and less life. We can apply this pattern to the post-colonial
schools of thought in literature, to the revolutionary and reactionary
schools of thoughts in politics, and to the endless culture debates in
sociology and geopolitics.<br />
<blockquote>
“On the part of the human being it is the act of daring
to aspire to the supreme Reality, and this act is real and effective
only when the soul is serene and the body completely relaxed – without
smoke and crackling fire.”</blockquote>
We remember the One, because gnosis and magic and alchemy “do not
dazzle God.” In the eyes of God, their practitioners are “dear sheep to
him: in his consideration of them he desires that they shall never go
astray and that they shall have life increasingly and unceasingly”.<br />
<br />
The yoke is easy, the burden is light. There are more dangers ahead,
but to learn the lesson of the One is to pass into abundant Life.Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-71842643779722335992014-05-27T15:21:00.000-07:002014-05-27T15:21:00.712-07:00Thought-SpeakThe word "racism" has officially lost every shred of possible meaning in modern America. As Orwell noted of the word "fascism", it now means "something bad in the thought and actions of those I don't like".<br />
<br />
Donald Sterling is undoubtedly a very crude public figure, but his remark was made (it would appear) in confidence, & therefore to publicize this remark amounts to (as <a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7272">Gornahoor</a> pointed out) <i>detraction</i>, which in a healthier age would itself have been prosecuted legally. The remark was followed by outrageous other remarks made by semi-public figures, such as calling for the creation of an all black basketball league (presumably, this would mean making the NBA all black, as I doubt they were calling for a separate league of their own that would take a second seat).<br />
<br />
<a href="http://bonald.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/theres-no-such-sin-as-racism/">"Racism"</a> isn't a sin. The Sterling affair was likely cooked up to give a desirable franchise <a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2014/04/donald-sterling-on-shakedown-street.html">into "certain" hands</a>. <br />
<br />
The idea that someone is to have his private property confiscated for having "undesirable attitudes" is an interesting symptom of the coming times we are cooking up for ourselves. Will we eventually have to pass "attitudinal correctness" tests in order to hold jobs? We are halfway there. The State can't enforce it yet, but they can certainly encourage private corporations to enforce it on themselves, thus saving a lot of time and energy in preparing the ground work for a massively corrupt and intimidated society of "free people" who live in fear of being denounced or "discovered". At my Catholic hospital, they hang up posters for "sexual diversity" during certain months of the year - it's important at Christian hospitals to remember that God created some people with problems others don't have. Or something like that....<br />
<br />
Why is it wrong for whites to have a white neighborhood or college, but this is just legitimate aspiration and "community-building" when it comes to other groups? This amounts to a massive failure of nerve and intellect in defining Justice. It is dysfunctional, and if it continues, will become something much uglier, although what exactly, is hard to say. The one thing we should be able to know is that it will be <i>worse</i>.<br />
<br />
Eventually, these kinds of lies and hypocrisy will tear apart the social fabric of America, what is left of it, and there will be nothing left to put in its place, all social good will being exhausted.<br />
<br />
Blacks do have legitimate grievances. Unfortunately, they are not the ones currently being peddled in the public sphere. There are also legitimate grievances against "them" as a group, but no one is allowed to mention them or even to think of this.<br />
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<br />Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-62084096506692132802014-04-26T09:35:00.003-07:002014-04-26T09:35:32.992-07:00Le Bateleur, or Thus Endeth the Lesson<header class="entry-header">
<h1 class="entry-title">
<br /></h1>
<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7264" rel="bookmark" title="22:46"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-04-25T22:46:18+00:00" pubdate="">2014-04-25</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" height="474" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Jean_Dodal_Tarot_trump_01.jpg" width="257" /><br />
I will assume, for this, a basic familiarity with the text, as well
as perhaps some of the items and discussions on the mailing list.
Rather, we will look at several prisms or aphorisms or anecdotes from
this chapter, to help elucidate in precise detail what quarry Tomberg is
hunting.<br />
<strong>First of all, like his master, Tomberg affirms that the “most dangerous spiritual malady” is “self-complacency”</strong>.
This is a huge claim, and we will see later how it is justified in
detail. Tomberg was well aware of the dangers of megalomania and
insanity, & apparently thought worse of this first sin (question:
can we rank the seven deadly sins?). Elsewhere, in a similar spirit, he
remarks that <strong>“vice is oppressive or disgusting and virtue is boring” : it is <em>concentration</em> that matters</strong>.
By this he certainly does not reject the “moral tradition of the
virtues”, but rather is commenting on the legalism or moralism that is
always too busy relating moral principles in concrete hierarchies of
rules to be bothered with attaining <em>the whole purpose</em> of the Law. He (also) elsewhere relates that the Law appears to us as (Phillip Rieff would say) an <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0507/arts03.html">interdict</a>, & that this fact is important (has an esoteric meaning) because what it means is that God is not an <em>egregore</em>,
or reflection of the human mind that responds to corruption and sin.
God is Who He is, & that is Good News. The Law is Good News. So much
for Luther. So the first virtue is “poverty of spirit” (the Beatitudes)
and alack of self-complacency. Angels can fly because they take
themselves lightly. Other sins (like hypocrisy or pride) are lesser: of
course all sins have an element of the first Arcana of Sin, so this is
not a justification of sinning, that grace may abound.<br />
<br />
2, He mentions the perpetual service of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacr%C3%A9-C%C5%93ur,_Paris">Sacre Couer de Montmarte</a>
as a picture of the inner reality of a lack of self-complacency, which
is the one thing needful. This silence, by an ancient law, engenders the
influx of holy forces. As all numbers are multiples of One, so all
spiritual Arcana flow from poverty of spirit. “You will receive power
from on High”: “in Paris one works, one amuses one’s self, one sleeps,
one dies”…all the while, the center of the city holds in the form of a
sacrament in silence. This is an important metaphor, given how much time
Tomberg spent in France. Evidently, he viewed the Church there as
essentially creating the jovial atmosphere of Paris.<br />
<br />
3. The world is not a mosaic. Diversity can only bring us together
once a real, true, beautiful, & good Unity has previously unified
Man. If the world is not One, it is not knowable. So there is a place
for beginning with Dogma or exoteric practice, where a framework is
established in anticipation of the scaffolding being pulled down one day
when the living temple is completed. There is no room here for starting
(as Revolutionaries and binary thinkers do) with the Dyad as the Monad.
First things first.<br />
<br />
4. He draws an enormous amount of attention in the first chapter to
the Emerald Tablet. This tablet teaches us that the phenomenal world is
not nothing, because it is moved (like sand) in the wind: nevertheless,
it must be affirmed that the Wind is not like the patterns in the sand
in a literal way. Wind and sand are not equivalent. Tomberg will affirm
in this and future chapters that the uniqueness of Christianity lay in
its desire and power and calling to sublimate both inner and outer way
(Sand and Wind) into one picture in which nothing was lost of either the
one or the other. The old Greek question of <a href="http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/5855/What_is_POU.pdf">the One-and-The-Many</a> was resolved in perichoresis, Trinity, & Incarnation. “<em>As philosophers, Christians, and scientists</em>,
we embrace the Emerald Tablet”. The line of succession is Enoch/Hermes
Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Philolaus (Divi Platonis nostri
praeceptor), Plato, the NeoPythagoreans (Apollonius), the NeoPlatonists
(Plotinus), continued down (for example) through Ficino (since Ficino is
the one citing the line of succession).<br />
<br />
5. The method of analogy is the only means of apprehending or
beginning to apprehend Truth as the intuition develops; although it is
quite possible to err with this method, it nevertheless is the door to
truth: “it is qualified to lead to the discovery of essential Truths”.
We reason that the Sun sets with glorious colors (it bleeds), Night
falls, but we wait for the Dayspring, which must return, pace Hume. Even
Science heightens probability in order to sharpen analogies to yield
the most to intuitions (the Double Helix code, for instance), notes J.
Maynard Keynes. Tomberg is making a vast and overarching case here.
Nature teaches us that the acorn does not “resemble” the tree (to the
naked eye), unless one is paying attention, that is, intuiting the
process as it unfolds in play. All tree like things have seeds, and all
seed like things contain trees.<br />
<br />
6. He affirms the basic table of correspondences which obtain and
hold between metals and planets, common to all ancient and traditional
Cultures, with minor variants and errors, but notes that the
correspondences with the Tarot are far from agreed upon. Tomberg is no
idiot: he is clearing the ground of objections by showing he has taken
them into consideration. This is the act of a scholar and a man of good
breeding. It is also a clue to his purpose: he will provide the Tarot
with the symbols and arcana which it lacks via the stars, due to
confusion.<br />
<br />
7. He connects this intuition towards play with classical European
ideas as well, such as Schiller’s Speiltrieb (the urge to play)and
Jung’s “individuation” (synthesis of the conscious and unconscious
elements in the personality), <em>in which the perfect vision of the beautiful Good transforms duty into a delight</em>.
Nonetheless, there is Play and there is play. Be careful when you play,
otherwise, you will become a charlatan. Alas, says Tomberg, too many
are both charlatan and genius, so let Le Batteleur be a perpetual
Guardian of the Threshold to always return to! He quotes an anonymous
author:<br />
<blockquote>
To perceive and to know, to try and to be able to, are
all different things. There are mirages above, as there are mirages
below; you only know that which is verified by the agreement of all
forms of experience in its totality – experience of the sense, moral
experience, psychic experience, the collective experience of other
seekers for the truth, and finally the experience of those whose knowing
merits the title of wisdom and whose striving has been crowned by the
title of saint. Academia and the Church stipulate methodical and moral
conditions for one who desires to progress. Carry them out strictly,
before and after each flight into the region beyond the domain of work
and effort. If you do this, you will be a sage and a mage. If you do not
do this – you will only be a charlatan.</blockquote>
The Arcanum of Geniality of Intelligence, analogous but not identical
to the play of a little child, is the First and Final Good, the Monad
and the One, identical to the Archetypal (space) and Mythical (time) of
the Godhead, which is the arena in which souls are exercised in a vast
gymnasium designed to produce “greater than angels”. That is our begging
beginning, and our triumphant End-ividuation.<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-72617938631666777022014-04-12T08:23:00.000-07:002014-04-12T08:23:22.458-07:00Tomberg’s Labor<header class="entry-header">
<h1 class="entry-title">
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<div class="entry-meta">
<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7259" rel="bookmark" title="23:07"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-04-11T23:07:20+00:00" pubdate="">2014-04-11</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" height="465" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Splendor_Solis_-_Portion_of_Plate_3.jpg" width="265" /><br />
Valentin Tomberg (as any reader of this blog by now knows) plays a
not insignificant role in linking Christianity with esotericism, even
paganism (of the older kind). It would be easy to just go through and
cherry pick random quotes from Tomberg: this would actually turn out
much better than one might imagine, since Tomberg manages to stuff every
sentence with profound meaning and an inner direction which helps even
isolated sentences maintain their context.<br />
<br />
There is a particular section of text which helps to elucidate his
purpose more sharply and pointedly than is his wont, as Tomberg usually
manages to hide in plain sight. On my first reading of the text, I
apparently gleaned much less than I missed, and am ashamed to say that
this only jumped out on a second reading.<br />
<blockquote>
The macrocosmic sphere of paradise (St Paul’s third heaven) and the microcosmic layer of Eden are the <em>initia</em>
(beginning) to which one is initiated in the macrocosmic initiation as
well as in the microcosmic initiation. Ecstasy to the heights beyond
one’s self and entasy into the depths within one’s self lead to
knowledge of the same fundamental truth. Christian esotericism unites
these two methods of initiation.</blockquote>
There is his entire program in a nutshell (incidentally we see that the Christian method is more about the union of the <em>modes</em>, rather than emphasis on the division between the two <em>techniques</em>). He is writing a secular “John” for a modern age. This is very like Goethe re-casting Job in <em>Faust</em>,
except thankfully Tomberg actually claims to know what he is doing, and
seems to back this up. In other words, Valentin Tomberg is actually
claiming that a Christian can mingle the exoteric and esoteric modes of
knowing in their own person, without (and this is the important point)
compromising or losing either one individually.<br />
If this claim reminds you of the claims regarding Christ and the <em>homo ouison</em> with or without iotas (made by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea">successive councils</a>)
it should, for that is actually his aim. The Christian is a “little
Christ”, and Tomberg wishes to perfect Nature (exoteric religion) with
Super-Nature (esoteric meaning), without however losing either the Self
or the “Self beyond the Selves”. Jesus is the man-God, and Christians
are also called to be fully God and truly man. He is not splitting
hairs, he is describing or coming to terms with, something <em>he had already fully experienced</em>.<br />
<br />
The figure of the Emperor is the “truest man” (King David), and the
hermit (prophet) is the most like God (fully God), remarks Tomberg in
his chapter on the Pope. The pope (or priest) actually balances earth
with heaven. So an invisible principle of union is here shown to be
concretely uniting two seeming opposites. Here we have Soloviev’s
“Ideas”, with the veil lift by for a moment, Tomberg explaining the
Arcanum that shows even the invisible worlds correspond to Law rather
than Chaos. For here it is not a matter of seeing contrasts, and is
never a matter of contrasts. John Michael Greer <a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/03/american-delusionalism-or-why-history.html">brilliantly points out</a>
that focusing on differences actually obscures them (this is because,
as Iamblichus teaches, you have to start with One, not Two). If you
focus on similarities, the differences are seen truly and starkly for
what they are.<br />
<blockquote>
Any present or future set of events, however unique it
may be in terms of the fine details, has points of similarity with
events in the past, and those points of similarity allow the past events
to be taken as a guide to the present and future. This works best if
you’ve got a series of past events, as different from each other as any
one of them is from the present or future situation you’re trying to
predict; if you can find common patterns in the whole range of past
parallels, it’s usually a safe bet that the same pattern will recur
again. Any time you approach a present or future event, then, you have
two choices: you can look for the features that event has in common with
other events, despite the differences of detail, or you can focus on
the differences and ignore the common features. The first of those
choices, it’s worth noting, allows you to consider both the similarities
and the differences. Once you’ve got the common pattern, it then
becomes possible to modify it as needed to take into account the special
characteristics of the situation you’re trying to understand or
predict: to notice, for example, that the dark age that will follow our
civilization will have to contend with nuclear and chemical pollution on
top of the more ordinary consequences of decline and fall.If you start
from the assumption that the event you’re trying to predict is unlike
anything that’s ever happened before, though, you’ve thrown out your
chance of perceiving the common pattern. What happens instead, with
motononous regularity, is that pop-culture narratives such as the sudden
overnight collapse beloved of Hollywood screenplay writers smuggle
themselves into the picture, and cement themselves in place with the
help of confirmation bias. The result is the endless recycling of
repeatedly failed predictions that plays so central a role in the
collective imagination of our time, and has helped so many people blind
themselves to the unwelcome future closing in on us.<br />
</blockquote>
So the “hermetic” method is actually just <em>sanity</em>, applied in
depth and height, of the common-sense-rule of having a unity-principle
and not forcing apples to be seen as oranges. If one sees sleep follow
work, then awakening follow sleep in Nature, one can assume (by analogy)
that Death follows Life, and then Life supersedes Death. This is the
affirmation of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being">Great Chain of Being</a>, the “Book of Nature”, the Analogia Entis.<br />
<br />
So (too) we can say that it is the inner “priest” in man which
reconciles the manly-earthly King with the God-mad prophet, in the dark
of night, before the black turns to red, white, then gold at the dawning
of the Sun. There is always a balance, and always a “higher level”.
This is because God is always God: “higher up, and further in”. As
Tomberg says, choose spiritual death, and choose hell: choose Life, and
you have chosen God. It’s so simple, children can do it, and so complex,
that even seraphim yearn to be able to see clearly.<br />
<br />
This occurs within Christian esotericism, and within the Christian esotericist, who privileges neither the <em>badge</em> of Christianity nor the <em>heritage</em> or <em>technique</em> of ancient practices <em>which are given new life through baptism</em>.
Does anyone really suppose that it would be “spiritually exciting” to
live under the rule of the tutelary stars in the same sense that the
heathen did? So that an ill omen meant almost certain death? The heathen
are a picture of our natural man, sunk in darkness. Paradoxically, it
is the man who learns that he is under the rule of stars who then begins
to escape that rule of the stars, and the wise man becometh free. This
is why astrology is as much an art as a science, and why the Middle Ages
baptized it, but <em>did not use it to replace</em> the mass and the
organized Christian religion. In any event, men like Pythagoras were not
subject to the stars in the same sense that the local god-fearing
goat-herders were. He learned to judge the angels, & it was this
that made him free. So the “Christian” sees that while there is
“progress” (and man learns to be “free” of powers), yet these things<a href="http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/9-10.htm"> were altogether written for our sakes</a>,
because we have the same process to over go in miniature. So, in a
sense we are more free, in a sense we are less: welcome to the Kali
Yuga. The point is to find God.<br />
<br />
In the same manner, it is the true “Christian” who both grasps
intuitively the power of the antique Tradition, & yet sees it living
through its transformations in Christianity and onto into and despite
the Kali Yuga; he or she it is who can keep the contradictions together
because he approaches from a standpoint of <em>faith</em>, rather than doubt, and thus <em>doesn’t sink into experience</em> through the moving, opening, readying of wavering doubt (like Eve before the apple). This is the man who can keep <em>entasy</em> (unpeeling one’s soul layers) and <em>ecstasy</em>
(voyaging into God) from dissolving together into the slime of muddle
and confusion that tends to stamp those trying to be “spiritual” in the
Dark Ages, using the one to heighten and enhance the other. The same
wind wrecks one vessel, and lifts another one over the waves. The same
wind drives down some birds, and causes the hawk to soar. Jesus the
God-man is the true <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_hoc_signo_vinces"><em>in hoc signo vinces</em> </a>for
the esotericist or exotericist, since both are valid, and both “mean”
the same thing. This is one of the meanings of the hypostatic union:
that there is fully each, without loss of either.<br />
<br />
Faith precedes experience because sense experience alone takes too
long, and tends to lose one in a “dark wood”. Additionally, “faith” is
actually a divine principle which begins to work before it is either
deserved or understood. It thus appears “blind” to the blind, and
“powerless” to the powerless. It is actually the power and potency of
God, Who is willing to act <em>long before man is worthy of it</em>.
Thus, it is power, because man (at that juncture) has no power. In this
way, man is invited to cooperate with God, and that is the price of
ascent and the meaning of the night time, which sees great growth. <em>But this merely accords with the Nature principle of paganism</em>:
a seed has to first fall into the ground and die, before it can have
the life of the tree. Likewise, God’s power is so great, it first has to
die, because it has to “make a little space” for man by withdrawing, or
else man could not be. God is so powerful, He can afford to suffer in
silence. God alone can afford it. Here is the meaning both of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosis"><em>kenosis</em></a> and of grace.<br />
We will be looking at Tomberg’s journey, through the eyes of the <em>Meditations</em>
(and using some of the notes sent out on the mailing list, not to
mention Cologero’s observations and thoughts), however, it will
primarily be an attempt to unfold or unpack some of his meaning, so that
it stands out more clearly, so that others can “meditate” (which was
his whole purpose anyway).<br />
<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3409990422558768312.post-89775511465266463472014-04-04T18:26:00.001-07:002014-04-04T18:26:28.234-07:00La Revolution Devore Ses Infants<header class="entry-header">
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<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7252" rel="bookmark" title="18:28"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2014-04-04T18:28:37+00:00" pubdate="">2014-04-04</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?author=56" rel="author" title="View all posts by Logres">Logres</a></span></span> </div>
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<img alt="" class="alignnone" height="469" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Emperor_Jimmu.jpg" width="308" /><br />
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During the years leading up to 1789, Paris had increasingly become
the exclusive city in France, a city-among-cities, with no peer. One of
the dynamics behind the destruction of the ancien regime was Paris’
desire to subordinate the legitimate and ancient diversity of the <em>pays</em>
(regions) of old France. Paris would become the truly capital city,
rather than the body of the king, since in the medieval world, the city
or seat of sovereignty, was in the actual person of the king, wherever
he happened to be touring. With the Enlightenment justifying its
bourgeois aspirations, and Art turning to the bizarre and degenerate,
the entire city descended from famine into chaos.<br />
<br />
We can see an analogous process at work today. America has decided to
be the “Paris” of a global order which encompasses nothing less than
the world plantation. All of the world’s goods flow into American
territory, just as French produce and goods flowed into the environs of
the burgeoning Parisian enclaves. With a philosophy behind it to justify
its aspirations (multiculturalism, tribalism, and the continuance of
Revolution), the “new American” seems poised to plunge his country into
the same chaos that engulfed France in 1789. This is because, as we all
know, the Revolution must play on.<br />
With notable differences (Paris had a lot more potential to control
the local French countryside than America has to control all of the
world, and Paris was more homogeneous than America is today), it is true
to say that America and its satellites and imitators comprise a global
arrangement increasingly aspiring to universal “values”, which is to
say, global sway. This is what the neo-liberal consensus comes to mean.
When they say “human rights”, what they mean is the “customary rights of
those over whom we hold sway, our serfs”. There are no visible
aristocrats, just beautiful people making large incomes living in good
style, in cosmopolitan centers of “Westerness” all over the world.
Oswald Spengler <a href="https://journals.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/CCR/article/viewFile/12966/12830">points out how the</a> <em>megalopoloi</em>
come to dominate the countryside in late phases of civilization,
reaching their tentacles into the land to suck wealth out of it and
legitimize itself by aggrandizement <em>vis a vis</em> the provinces. In
the final analysis of this cycle, it is the ostentatious display of
arbitrary power and wealth, at the expense of everything else, which
marks the final phase. The outer shell of civilization, precisely as it
grasps power, wastes away.<br />
<br />
In something reminiscient of pyramid schemes and cultic orders, with
perhaps a bit of sheer bee-like and herd-like behaviour thrown in,
everyone’s greatest concern is to escape the smaller town and go “where
something is happening”, which is to say, money, power, and other
attractions.<br />
This phase is operates to help America become a “world city”. More and more people are <a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/09/invade-world-invite-world-gag-american.html">invited; more and more countries are invaded</a>. The entire country, from the Everglades to Gnome, Alaska, becomes a truly diverse <em>cosmopolis</em>.
This befits America’s status as “most advanced region” of the planet,
future home of the “world-city” that turns all other places into
backwaters, from which to draw more staying power and ferment. True,
others imitate us (Europe, most of all), yet half-heartedly. Some
regions even attempt to un-imitate us: witness Putin’s intransigence
over the Ukraine. <strong>And wouldn’t the invasion of the Ukraine make Russia more diverse?</strong><br />
<br />
What happens when 1789 comes round again, & the countryside (this time) is prepared to resist, not just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e">in the Vendee</a>,
but all across the planet, when China and Brazil and Portugal all say
“no” to the unbridled spread of the end of history? Or will they? Will
America be forced to fulminate more Revolution at home, in order both to
project enough power, and to maintain enough solidarity to convince the
other regions to cooperate? What happens when the Revolution <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mallet_du_Pan">begins to devour its own children</a>?
My guess is that the stakes have risen, since America is becoming
divided, and losing its power to project grandiosity and force. So there
is a lot on the table, to lose, at this point, for the Revolution, with
Russia thinking about dusting off the crown of Christ and China
waffling over whether liberal democracy is really a valid replacement
for a civilization<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Needham"> that lasted over 4000 years</a>.<br />
<br />
What ought to be done to prepare, in an outward sense?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=6893">Plinio Correa de Oliveira</a> makes some tantalizing remarks about the Revolution and Counter-Revolution which should help the contemporary “American”.<br />
<br />
1. Those who are “of the Reaction” are, by their very nature, exposed
to ridicule and a feeling of helplessness, sometimes even in their own
eyes, as their ignorance contributes to a lack of realization of who
they are: in this sense, the “wholeness” they partially lack is mimicked
by competing systems of thought which may confuse their soul, providing
a sense that although they can never fit, yet what they cannot fit into
possesses some of the qualities they intuitively seek, such as
legitimacy (in this case, illusory). It forces them to view themselves
in a tragic light. This, of course, is all the better for “the
Revolution”, as it consigns their worst enemies to the outer darkness,
partially self-imposed. We get to pay the upkeep on our own soul-prison.<br />
<br />
2. Many are latent Reactionaries: that is, their upper levels of soul
are dominated by the current thought paradigms, but deeper down, they
are instinctively “men of the Right”. These people simply need firm
guidance, and to be shown strong moral character, coupled with
principled action and depth of soul. They will be drawn, just as
instinctively, to those of the first category who have stabilized
themselves and emerged with the Hyperborean spirit. This second category
could be termed “<a href="http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=7233">Demeterian</a>“,
instinctively drawn to those who can incarnate the power that they seek
and lack. This would be a warrior class, maybe even a priest class, and
in converting these classes, the natural capos or leaders would achieve
a preponderance of force that would allow for an overthrow of the
Revolution, and a change in the balance of power. The Revolution
succeeds by hiding its aims; the Counter Revolution can only succeed<em> by revealing its aims to this class</em>,
but the manifestation has to be multi-dimensional, profound, and
utterly authentic. Nothing less would convince the sturdy, hapless
enforcers of Revolution who unwittingly serve the very forces they hate
at a deeper level.<br />
<br />
3. He compares the Revolution to the vine in the Amazon rain forests called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_aurea">the strangler fig</a>.
I have often made the mistake of thinking (and so have others, I
suppose) that “this couldn’t last”. But in a startling metaphor from the
<a href="http://blog.adw.org/2010/11/the-word-of-god-is-more-than-a-book-a-reflection-from-the-post-synodal-exhortation-verbum-domini/"><em>Liber Naturae</em></a>, (<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buch_der_Natur">Buch der Natu</a>r), our author shows us that the goal of the strangler fig is to kill the host <em>and establish itself as a free standing tree</em>.
Of course, the original tree will not be allowed to live after it has
served its purpose: this is why the Revolution hid and covered its aims.
It wanted “this and that”, or “old and new”, together: tolerance for
the lower castes, that’s all. But the true aim is the annihilation of
the original tree, which suggests that envy and hatred are, in reality,
the real motivating causes of the Revolution after all, rather than
compassion. The two organisms are incompatible, and only one has the
essence of Life. This dissembling is a weak point in the Left, as they
are now the “authentic and legitimate order”, and our author says that
firm and unwavering contradiction in a manly spirit, even against
overwhelming social disapproval, is the only way of unmasking the lie –
as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Veuillot">Veuillot</a> says,<strong><em> the emptiness flees contradiction</em></strong>.
Any real resistance will be met by deceived men of the number two
category, and their involvement in persecution will only serve to
enlighten them as to the real aims of the Revolution and the real worth
of the “rebel” (who is the opposite of one). The Left has been winning
without even trying for so long, that a real dose of suffering of any
kind, at whatever level (including the wallet) would quickly make it
clear that only the men of the Right have the freedom to overcome
circumstances. This is quite clear right now in the crisis over Crimea:
Russians are willing to sacrifice to restore the Third Rome, however
imperfectly, and Americans are too lazy to even understand the issues
involved, let alone drip any blood. Russia wins. America has been
purging herself of the men who are of the mettle to make American force
stick overseas; it remains to be seen whether she can perfectly finish
the Revolution at home, as more and more of the aims come out of the
closet in order to ascend the decayed altars like demons haunting the
throne.<br />
<br />
4. It is imperative to promote the association of men who are truly
of the Right. Cologero has gone to great lengths to do just that, &
it will be up to us to continue this push. By providing a “home” and the
camaraderie that all men need, noble or not, but which we alone tend to
lack, given the circumstances, an important element of morale is
introduced, as well as the opportunity to learn from one another, and no
longer feel “alone”. Many here have voiced how lonely it is out there,
and this is true. But the hearth fire burns, despite the cold winter
night. There are various ways of seeking this kind of fellowship, but it
is fundamental to mental sanity during the apex of Revolution, the
height of its power, just before it begins to turn upon itself. We are
going to need all of our wits and resources in the years ahead, as Chaos
is standing at offstage right, and the raving lunatics of the Left are
congregating at stage left. After all, when Satan is on the throne, what
can he really say about Revolution?<br />
<br />
That’s probably insulting to Satan. What we’ve got on our throne is a
collective demon or elemental force, generated by centuries of passions
and muddled thought. Satan is a man of Law, and wouldn’t dream of
having dinner with revolutionaries. He’d rather joust with a man of the
Right.<br />
Matthew C Smallwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08234878138545287306noreply@blogger.com0