Western Social Order – Part 2

Posted on 2014-02-24 by Logres

A recent comment by John of Salisbury made me think:

“Not only were these scholars unable to drive out the bad scholars, but in combating insanity, they temporarily became insane…”

I thought about this question in relation to other questions or comments relating to the “inner struggle” of the man of Tradition in today’s very untraditional world. I had a good acquaintance on the Internet give up study in that area because he needed something more cheerful. If you will notice, Cologero does not restrict his reading to Guenon and Evola, but also studies a wider range of writers on a diverse array of subjects. It is probably true that a steady diet of Evola and Guenon has the potential to unsettle one. Caleb is planning to put up a post that addresses part of this, in that Tomberg’s Meditations are designed to lay a firm foundation, without which (if you neglect the first card of the Tarot), the rest becomes unstable. Cologero has done a fine job of supplementing Evola and Guenon (whom he terms the “Master of Tradition”), with the meditations on the Meditation. The Tarot discussion list (and Caleb’s article) is designed to assist in this process. In trying to imitate our betters, we often overstep or over-estimate our own capabilities, sometimes not deliberately, as we try to “come up to speed”. Incidentally, much of Phillip Rieff’s thought in Culture and Its Second Death explores the danger of being initiated into our elder’s/better’s debates too swiftly, including the fundamentally erotic desire to criticize those to whom we owe everything. Rosenstock-Huessy called this “Teaching too Early, Learning to Late”, in which the danger is that we learn just enough to be dangerous, to ourselves and others.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing – drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring!

I can certainly relate to this, having passed in and through and back into such phases, over the course of my short 40 years. In the case of Gornahoor, the best possible foundation has been laid down, but it has been made freely and openly available (with no secrets) laying out the Arcanum that must be mastered before entrance into the Mysteries. But the danger is still there, just a necessary one: in our chaotic age, one has to invite everyone, since those who should be ready are not. Jesus gave this in parable form in the tale of the Wedding Feast invitations.

John of Salisbury cites a medieval authority who claimed that there are three types of souls: those who fly, those who crawl, those who walk. Those who fly learn much, and swiftly, but soon forget. They make poor students (I think this is my soul’s danger, for instance). Poetry may be a help to such students. Those who crawl are dull of soul – in Pythagorean circles, they would not be allowed to be initiated, for instance, during the old days. Those who walk, steadily and constantly, those who are pilgrims, make the best students, fit to climb Parnassus and drink from its springs.

There was another recent article on Gornahoor that explained some of this quite well – different types or souls have to be handled differently. MIchel’s comment on this post by Cologero gets to an esoteric root that lies behind a lot of misunderstandings that occur during these confusing times. Different types or differing potentials require completely different spiritual trajectories: in Mouravieff’s words, if the center is God, and we all find ourselves scattered at various circumferences, the trajectory back of necessity takes a variety of angles and forms. And some people don’t necessarily manage to make a straight line, either!

All of this is to say that the “care of souls” remains paramount: even if one is caring for one’s own soul, in which case, even more “care” is required, not less.

In some denominations of Christianity, the cure of souls (Latin: cura animarum), an archaic translation which is better rendered today as “care of souls” is the exercise by priests of their office. This typically embraces instruction, by sermons, admonitions and administration of sacraments, to the congregation over which they have authority from the church. In countries where the Roman Catholic Church acted as the national church, the “cure” was not only over a congregation or congregations, but over a district. The assignment of a priest to a district subdividing a diocese was a process begun in the 4th century AD. The term parish as applied to this district comes from the Greek word for district, ????????. Those who earned their living on a position without cure of souls were known to have a sinecure (hence the expression).

Even when one is taking the “dry path”, and investigating the layers of one’s own soul in an esoteric manner, there is a care or “art” involved, & note merely a science (this may be where the balance between
East and West is reached, as the East approaches spiritual things almost mechanistically).
This pervasive feeling of hopelessness, of fighting against fearful odds, of being doomed, can be viewed and attacked from several angles. Since I’ve been asked several questions lately that pertain to it, I assume it’s relevant, and am relating it back to the conquest or reconquest of Western Social Order. It may relate to the “noonday demon” that attacked the desert monks, a lassitude and despair that could only be overcome with productive work: this is why Cologero has emphasized that practicing one’s caste and craft is as important as becoming “enlightened”. This is in the spirit of the Patristic fathers, who had monks weave baskets, plant gardens, build buildings, etc., because (as the Philokalia teaches) Satan can only attack along one front when we are working, rather than all fronts simultaneously.

First, as noted above, it is paramount to appreciate that simultaneously, Guenon is both the measuring rod (for several reasons, not least of which is that our teacher, Cologero, regards him as such) & also that which is to be transcended. That is, the goal is to not make Guenon’s mistakes. For a Westerner, then, we recognize that Guenon advocates a path away from exoteric form, in favor of an East that (in his day) was less tainted, and a source of hope. Of course, today, we see that the East has imitated the West, and that Coca-Cola and blue jeans have flattened the globe. Cologero has done a huge service in upholding Guenon’s standards, but eschewing some of his conclusions.

Secondly, we avoid the pit of getting caught up in erotic disputations over nothings. We’ve seen a lot of posters come and go – many wanted to dispute with Cologero over various bagatelles or supposed critical mistakes. The Hermetic method (favored by Western thought that is faithful to Plato, Bonaventura, etc.) eschews such disputes, as does St. Paul. Avoid fruitless disputation….

Thirdly, for the above reasons, we should probably avoid a pure diet of Guenon and Evola and traditional thinkers, if for no other reason (this is an additional one) than that those who battle vampires and monsters develop a kind of hardness about them that can be monstrous. It is not natural (and they would have recognized this) to have to spend your whole life in combating insanity, from dusk till dawn. Rejoice over their gift to us, but don’t forget to plant a fig tree. Our times are conditioned by different possibilities; many battles are lost, others are looming, and some new possibilities have deepened or awakened. As our master Goethe says, a man who is not of his own times, can be a man of no other time. Read a mystery novel, watch a movie. Even the medieval thinkers (such as the author of Philobiblikon) says that it is possible to appreciate modern thinkers and writers, along with the ancient ones. Evola and Guenon have modern dimensions to their thinking. The entire Quantity/Quality distinction can become (at times) almost a quantitative category which taints our perception of Quality. The medievals emphasized the value of Estimation, in which the beginner practiced his craft of working by esteeming that which had objective, natural moral value, in their own day. Even in our day, there are people which have dignity, things or activities which have value, etc.

So temper it. If it gets you down so much you can’t function at all, and quenches the inner fire, even down to the last spark, find something more cheerful for awhile. But realize it isn’t Guenon or Evola’s fault – its a privation within ourselves. Luckily, within the Christian esoteric and exoteric tradition, we are allowed holy-days and feast days, in which we can re-create ourselves in the wonder of Creation, which abides, even in our horribly dark days.  As our teacher Wordsworth says, one impulse from a vernal wood, can teach you more of man, of moral evil and of good, than all the sages can. Presumably, Wordsworth didn’t even have access to the sages which we do, so temper this with grateful knowledge, and spend some time learning the constellations, or admiring the wonder of a storm. In the Romance of the Rose, an initiatic text, the writer asks rhetorically, what can be done with someone who doesn’t appreciate the approach of Spring and the gods of Love!

Fourthly, there are other thinkers out there, perhaps secular ones, who can be as circumstantially valuable to us as Evola and Guenon, under certain conditions. I would class Phillip Rieff in this category, at least for those like myself. He gives a feeling of “utter hopelessness”, but this is meant to be curative, in the spirit of Kafka. And it is aimed at the hubris and ignorance of our modern self. Some self-hatred and the cutting off of limbs or eyes is appropriate (symbolically speaking) as most moderns are in a rather unique bind, being cut off from their own soul, which is naturaliter anima Christiana (Tertullian). So a little Theodore Dalrymple, Richard Weaver, Phillip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, or other such notable secular saints is of great value to many – if nothing else, it’s a safer way to process (like the liver) the toxins of our intellectual age, which are in the air we breathe. Just realize that (being creatures) we have to balance our diet intellectually (until we are enlightened, when all things become pure). If you read Rieff, you’ll realize you should probably be listening to Haydn’s classical music (or some other classical composers!). However, the trip is worth it. Rieff shows us (in Culture, Its Second Death) that all of our spiritual states (even the Sartrean hell, which lurks for us today) are manifestations of our soul’s possibilities along the Vertical. There is no escape (or no false escape) from the vertical – we have to face up to the real problems and questions, first. As Solomon says, the house of mourning is more fruitful than the house of laughter, if it is a mourning of repentance. If (however) one is past this, then one is past it.

Christians are “ahead of the times”: we are not immersed in them. So just because this is the Kali Yuga, it (everything) still matters very much. One of my teachers, a Lithuanian who taught literature, once berated me for reading Christianity into Shalamov’s work: the whole point of his story was how small acts had meaning in and of themselves, regardless of a Christian interpretation or outcome! The character (interned in a camp) had found a can of condensed milk. For a short time, this can was God’s grace, without being officially God’s grace! Such is the mighty, eternal, and infinite mercy of God, which mercy endures forever, His chief attribute. This is the lesson Tomberg teaches also – not control, but mercy and Love, which is the Queen of Magic.
This is our burden, this is our time. It is hard, and we have to help each other. We have to show mercy, while remembering Truth. I hope this is encouraging, & look forward to being taught and helped by others on this path.

Phantastes

NOTE: If you like these essays, please visit Gornahoor for better ones by Cologero Salvo): 

 

Posted on 2013-05-24 by Logres (at Gornahoor website)

It must be said (for subscribers to the Sintesi) that the Inkling project manifests a decidedly “Dionysian” accent: that is, it is the spiritual striving of those who do not possess the Truth innately, but are able to aspire, yearn, and perhaps awaken to that Truth through art and particularly the vegetative mystery rites which survive in the Dionysian mysteries.

The other characteristic of solarity is that of a light that arises and fades, that it has death and resurrection and a new death and a new dawn and, in other words, a law of becoming and self-transformation. This is Dionysian solarity as opposed to the Apollonian principle. It is a virility that aspires to the light through a passion that cannot free itself from the sensual and telluric element and even from the ecstatic-orgiastic element typical of the lowest forms of the Demeterian cycle. The association, in myth and symbol, of feminine and lunar figures to Dionysius is, in this regard, rather significant. Dionysius does not accomplish the transition, the change of nature. It is a still earth-bound virility in spite of is luminous and ecstatic nature. The fact that the Dionysian and bacchanal mysteries were associated with the demeterean mystery, instead of with the purely Apollonian mystery, clearly indicates to us the final point of the Dionysian experience: it is a “dying and becoming” in the sign not of the infinite which is above form and the finite, but of that infinite that is fulfilled and delights of itself in the destruction of form and the finite, harking back therefore to the forms of telluric-demeterean promiscuity…

JI Packer, a Protestant theologian, remarks somewhere that the Celt manifests a deeper apprehension of spiritual realities than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, which is bourne out in the history of Puritan theology (think John Owens). Indeed, Evola cites the Celt as specifically prone to the matriarchal side of spirituality, and therefore, the Dionysian path may represent the closest collective approach such a spirituality can make to Tradition. So,when we praise the Inklings, please keep in mind that their approach is in some ways indirect – Williams, Barfield, Lewis, and MacDonald were all to some degree Celts. Everyone but Tolkien, who of course had a Catholic or more Roman approach to spiritual matters. 

Mouravieff comments on racial differences in Gnosis: the Russian (for instance) often has two magnetic poles in his personality, which stymie each other. Since Dionysian striving represents a common situation for the aspiring-noble, modern man of the 19th and 20th century, Mouravieff attempts to explain Tradition as if speaking to Dionysius; that is, he tries to strengthen the longing, and to properly diagnose the poles within the seeker, so as to enable magnetization.

This is precisely what the Inklings, and more specifically MacDonald, are doing in their fiction.

Here is MacDonald on self-knowledge, or introspection:

“Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired, and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

  Renunciation:

 “Joy cannot unfold the deepest truth, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.I wished to be…no longer a man beside myself.”

  Evil:

 “….I was almost glad that I had sinned…”

  Death:

“The hot fever of life had gone by, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I had never dreamed of such blessedness. […] I lay thus for a time, and lived as it were an

 unradiating existence; my soul a motionless lake, that received

 all things and gave nothing back; satisfied in still contemplation,

 and spiritual consciousness. (Phantastes 314)

 Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing mat I had lost my Shadow. If my passions were dead, the souls of the passions, those essential

 mysteries of the spirit which had embodied themselves in the

 passions, and had given to them all their glory and wonderment,

 yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure undying fire. They rose above

 their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angels

of light. But oh, how beautiful beyond the old form! (Phantastes

 314-15)

  Sin:

 “Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain. And life is never the same again. (235)”

Source

 Owen Barfield points out that MacDonald is allusive, but not elusive – he puts his finger on the truth and does not merely have an “inkling” but speaks whereof he knows:

Is there not in this poem a certainty, a grounded knowledge? It is not content to stop in imagination and hint and suggestion. One feels that its meaning, its openly expressed meaning, reaches right down into the solid earth and right up into the empyrean. It is the resurrection of the body—in terms of the body.

Just because MacDonald focuses upon the Phantastes or feelings does not entail a neglect of will and thought:

Anodos is oblivious of any evil menacing his House of Alma, the “fairy palace.” However, this palace contains twelve halls of dancers/statues representing shades of feeling. (These twelve satellite halls reappear as the mood chambers of the wise woman in The Lost Princess.) Presumably it is because MacDonald is describing only the areas of life which are [42] the concern of Phantastes that his fairy palace is solely a palace of the feelings. Anodos, however, does experience “wilful” aspects of feeling when he pursues the marble lady out of the palace, and “intellectual” aspects of feeling in the library of the palace

In one of MacDonald’s letters to his wife, the melding of Christianity with vegetative rites becomes somewhat plainer, breaking out into the clear daylight of his prose:  

Some of the dark closes & entries look most infernal, and in the dim light you could see something swarming, children or grown people perhaps, almost falling away from the outlined definiteness of the human, . . . Dearest, you must come here with me, you would be so interested. It is like no other place . . . You know Edinburgh is built very much up and down hill; and so in some places narrow closes, some so narrow that your little arms could touch both sides, run [22] from top to bottom of the hill through these great, tall houses. Glancing down one of these I was arrested. It was Very narrow and went down, as if to Erebus, and suggested bad and dangerous places, down into the unseen and unknown depths. But across the upper part was barred the liquid hues of the sunset, against which stood the far off hill with some church, tower or something of the sort in relief against the infinite clearness. . . . Dearest, I hope you will not be frightened tonight. God, the Sky God—the Green Earth God be with you, our own God, as David says.

(Letter from MacDonald to his wife, 1855, in Sadler 87-88)

MacDonald seems to be wrestling with reconciling the mystery religions with Christianity (female with male).
Source

Indeed, Anodos himself confesses this to be his own project during his sojourn through Faerie Land:

“Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears…

I won’t unveil every detail of the plot and structure of Phantastes, although in brief it is the story of a man’s quest for the “White Lady” & his renunciation of her in favor of a “better man”, partly due to the fact that the protagonist continually tries to “touch” or “hold” her prematurely, thus destroying the magic that is re-creating them both. Sir Anodos, in this story, is unable to distinguish between legitimate and auspicious impulses which lead to salvation, and those which lead to damnation (eg., the summoning of his shadow in the chapel of darkness wtih the ogress). It is a fugue or dream state: Sir Anodos acts on blind impulses, which are automatic – some are good, others are bad, although, the ending reveals that even the bad is the “shape which the Good was forced to assume” at that time and place to bring greatest help.

MacDonald’s world corresponds to a post-mortem state – the main character has “died” and is journeying through the intermediate worlds, looking for his polar being, and for heaven.

I do not think that the Inklings’ work is for every reader; some will be put off by the “childlike” qualities of Narnia, Middle Earth, or Faerie Land. However, I am maintaining (for all that) that what we have here is not ordinary children’s fantasy, but complex and spiritually subtle allegories which are meant to “land upon the precise and needed point” in order to generate spiritual change. That this change would occur in the Dionysian individual is another, less obvious point, which would explain why their work was largely rejected as the century wore on. Men increasingly dominated the landscape with a sub-Dionysian spiritual state. 

What the Inklings are really doing is charting a course through “Fairie Land” (either in this life, or the next) which is valid for a certain kind of spirituality. As such, those individuals can and should read them to great advantage.

Americanism

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

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

Source

Gornahoor does it again

In the human organism, in fact, we do not have a normal and healthy condition, when by chance the physical element, i.e., the servile stratum, or the vegetative life, i.e., the bourgeoisie, or finally, the uncontrolled and impulsive will, i.e., the warrior caste, assumes the direct and deciding part.

Source (Evola)

On the contrary, it is those who "know" & "are" who represent the "living Law" on earth. It is pointless to discuss sovereignty, legitimacy, authority, or justice, if one does not know who the King is, or at least, where his body is buried...

When the King Enjoys His Own Again

Posted to Gornahoor

Evola and Magic

Here at Argus & Phoenix, we do not shy away from a hard discussion, even of occult ideas or doctrines. On the contrary, we enjoy it. Taking Tomberg's principles of grace enunciated in Meditations on the Tarot as a starting point, we can therefore then begin to deal with the ideas in a work such as this. The danger of the Evolan path is that of nature magic, which is the temptation to TAKE rather than to receive. It should be noted that Grace represents a higher Magic than this, which is not to reduce Grace to magic, yet Grace has a higher magic that is higher than that exemplified by Evola, who did not understand Grace. Submission to "the Lord" (then) is not what it looks like to the "dark magician" - it is (in fact) born out of Love for what is always higher, and a desire to see that that higher is always worshipped. It does not deny that there is a middle path of the Higher self which can effectively initiate forms of magic as described by Evola. It simply says they are not ultimate, as Evola thought.

Cultural Marxism & Evola

"Important forms of cultural Marxism are the collectivization of life and sensibility, mechanization and finally the unleashing of elementary forces. There in certain of its aspect, these tendencies lead to an anarchist liberation of the Self and subjectivity, in other of its forms we see a veritable destruction of the human element, of the feeling of all that is individual and tied to its own proper quality. In a certain measure, it is about the repercussions of an environment in which technique has determined, close to a fatal premise of standardization and leveling, the principle forms of life, sensibility, and taste."