Hercules, Part 3

The Labors of Hercules, Part 3

Posted on 2013-08-24 by Logres

The Third Test, The Ceryneian Hind

For the third labor, Hercules was given a retrieval task instead of a slaying to accomplish. Since Hercules could not be overcome with guile & brute force, it was hoped that he could be made to trespass against a god, & have divine fury invoked upon him. Specifically, Eurystheus hoped that this labor would infuriate Artemis, who would presumably give him the terrible fate that Pentheus met with on the Holy Mountain.The hind, additionally, traveled faster than an arrow. How was it to be supposed that Hercules could conquer both the speed of flight & the jealousy of the female Huntress?

Since deer did not inhabit Greece, this myth carries an echo of Northern Lands. The white or golden stag is not merely a supernatural symbol, but a regal one. Hercules sees the deers antlers’ glinting very far off, & begins the chase, which lasts (some say) an entire year, possibly in the Hyperborean north. At last, either by a ruse or skill of the arrow (possibly shooting one between its legs to trip it, or by using a net) or by direct permission of Artemis herself (who sides with the rugged and manly hero), Hercules comes into possession of the golden deer, on the promise that he will return it to Artemis when he is done.

 

When he brings it to Eurystheus, who intends to keep the deer, Hercules wisely lets the deer go seconds before delivering it up – the deer slips away, & the mighty Herc shrugs it off: “You aren’t fast enough.” Hercules proves himself a man of honor in this task, as he does not slay or injure the deer, but returns it as promised to its rightful owner. Here we should note that, in esoteric action, as in any other portion of Life, there are laws that obtain. Although those who travel in the astral realm encounter far fewer laws than we do, there are strictures that (for all that) may be even more indurate than gravity. One of these, according to Gnosis (Mouravieff) is that a man cannot advance in practice unless he trains or leaves behind a replacement. Karma is another law that obtains; repentance can mitigate or erase it, but still, there is something that holds true & fast – in this case, another bears your sins. Or who did you think paid your trespass?

 

I say this to encourage readers to not set up a dichotomy in their mind between royal liberation and the lesser mysteries. Not until one is set free from Time & Space itself does one become “free of all Law”, not even if one is “awakened” fully into the etheric, astral, and spiritual realms. Besides, the dichotomy itself is deadening. If one is truly free, is one not silent? Hercules is careful to observe piety and honor; it is not forced, out of fear: he speaks and converses with Artemis almost as an equal, as a better, but someone he may speak before, and she grants him favor in her eyes. There is one equal to, and worthy of, capturing the devoted and precious hind. It is the pious warrior, who nevertheless speaks with “Frankness” before the very gods. St. Paul spoke of this when he said, “all things are lawful, not all things are useful”.

 

Hercules is wise enough to insult and belittle his enemy; after all, if one doesn’t add a little salt to the wound, who is going to arrange the rest of the tests? Such a jibe befits the warrior. It is the jibe of the Russian general Kutuzov to the French prisoners of Napoleon’s army, after he has magnanimously spoken of forgiveness. Rallying his own troops, he says to them: “But after all, who asked them to come here, anyway?”. It is Frederick the Great shouting out to his fleeing men, “Ihr wolt, ewige leben?!” It is Brennus before the conquered Romans, speaking very simply back to them something that would become their own watchword- Vae Victis. Forgiveness and detachment are the rocks on which the raging sea breaks, and falls, dashing those who ride it. There should be a kind of sacrosanct danger about sinning against a truly pious man; when defers his own judgement and wrath, the wicked should tremble. Archangel Michael, no doubt in a very great wroth and sorely tempted to pass his bounds, declared to Satan’s impudence, “May the Lord judge between us!”. The wrath of the righteous, the fury of the hero, the anger of the good man pushed too far, should resolve into that ritual and controlled resistance, a detached willingness to see it through bitterly, without bitterness, which heaps coals of fire upon the head of those who take the part of Satan. This is how the enigma of forgiveness & resistance is resolved – in the action of the hero, who must understand both. Could he not forgive, he could not formalize his actions and discipline them to undergo a trial, but would simply “rage out” and go for the throat of his persecutor. Could he not resist, he would forever remain under their feet. This tension drives the warrior, like a bow drives the arrow. To those who cannot see the union of this, they are either not warriors, or do not see that “the insanity of God is greater than the wisdom of man” (Plato).

 

Guided by the wisdom of a Solomon, forgiveness and power are inseparable. Are not detachment and passion reconciled by the warrior? When someone loses their temper and lashes out in anger and injustice against you, the ability to bear the stroke without retributive ire in the same manner is actually an esoteric technique for transferring the energy they are losing to yourself. This is the secret meaning of “heaping coals of fire” upon their head – a person who gives in to the “wrath of man” loses enormous reserves of spiritual energy : especially if some physical scapegoating occurs, those energies often go to the victim, rightfully. Received in the right frame of mind, they become available as a “lost talent”. This is why God invites the “poor” of the world to his banquet : the rich folk turned him down. Their loss, our gain. If Christianity is the religion of the Kali Yuga, do not therefore conceive that it is bound to share its inadequacies: it is made to triumph over the greatest enemy, the last enemy, to devour it inside out.

 

If it wasn’t the Kali Yuga, we wouldn’t be here, reading and talking to each other to determine the fate of the new world. Other, better men would be leading. “The better man” in the end is just the one who does more things that are difficult for him – if that is the test, it is a blessed time to be alive. He who plants a garden in the Kali Yuga, against all odds, stands above he who conquers worlds, with some odds in his favor.
 

“The last shall be first – greater are those who have not seen, yet believed.”

Hercules triumphs by his ruse, his skill, his polity, his innate dignity as a true man, before man, beast, or gods. He is not to be deterred or thwarted. Nor will he stoop, except to make a well-earned jibe to further incite his opponent to useful wrath.

 

He doesn’t show up off the street and demand to be Hercules. He IS Hercules, by virtue and dint of a long process, created in heaven, ratified in the mud of earth. He has conquered mental fog and the physical passions. He has risen above those things which men almost never even begin to subdue. He is already heads and shoulders above all men, and even though, as a god, he could use his liberty and peerage, he does not. “Not counting himself to be equal to God, he humbled himself…” Hercules prefigures the gracious and valiant and terrible true knight Jesus, who is far from the lamentable and tragic figure some neo-pagans think him to be. Hercules is the new Sun.

So, in this third test which seems not so deadly because it was so successful, Hercules wins the affection and protection of Artemis; he is effectively adopted. The gods themselves are beginning to take sides. Heaven is being moved by earth. Hercules has swayed an eternal-feminine power to his side, and a mighty one at that, Artemis-Diana of the Hunt. It is a wild and primeval power that is now declared for the hero, who has presumed nothing, but has simply stood as a man ought to stand.
As Hercules’ divinity grows more obvious, the divinities who favor him, and yet remain worshiped and honored by him, begin to light up. It is as if they are lights which come alive and shine upon the hero, cutting his contours out of the dark, healing and supporting him. He grows greater, as he makes the gods greater than he. Further, he grows greater than the gods.

In the eternal moment at the end of time, when Christ delivers the kingdom of God back to the hands of the Father, the eternal warrior announces the end of all things and annihilates the worlds with the breath of the Father. This is how the warrior becomes God: with the gesture of the true man, who yields fealty, forever indominant, to the rightful and original Lord. This makes Him the destroyer of worlds, for it is this act which is the deeper magic. Our world does not understand or accept this: that is why “the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God”.

If Evil cannot stand in the days of mercy, how shall it stand in the hour of judgement, which comes? What will Eurystheus do? He is running out of labors. Hercules is proving a difficult adversary. Satan himself may have to enter the lists, as there is a “man worth killing“.

Illustration:

[Berlin, Neues Museum Herkules besiegt die goldbekrönte Hirschkuh (Herkules fängt die Hirschkuh von Ceryneia) Maler: Adolf Schmidt]

The Labors of Hercules, Part One

Posted on 2013-08-09 by Logres

Hercules is a picture of the strong man, who binds: in Christ’s parables, he uses the image to refer to Satan, who always imitates God in a perverse manner. Esoterically, we might say that for most people (excluding Tomberg’s mysterious “just man”), “Satan makes the first move in the chess game. A greater than Satan has to come to bind the strong man, and so Hercules is also a picture of “the Lord” or the “true Self”. Since we live “in Middle Earth” & find ourselves “in media res” (in the middle of things), there is work to do. Power comes, not necessarily all at once, but in a series of revelations. As the Western Tradition teaches, God “respects” free will – we have to side with Him, or else the Asuras will bind us in service to Anti-Christ, under the dominion of a sunken Lucifer and an exalted Ahriman, the unholy Trinity.

This teaching even enters the popular imagination, in unexpected ways: in Star Wars, the line is given – “No…there is another.” This is Luke’s “sister” (who, of course, seems more like a bride, at first), with whom the Force is strong. The Self has “another Self”, & also serves the “Self Beyond the Self”.
Hercules is given tasks – he has to attain heaven by storm. Yes, he is already Hercules, who as an infant, strangled the serpents in his crib. Yet, still, there is combat, storm, warfare. As Isaac Watts penned in the hymn, “shall we look to go to heaven, on flowery beds of ease?”. However, it may be closer than we think, if we ride the storm.

His first task is to slay the Nemean Lion. King David had to slay a lion, it is worthy to note.
The Fathers mention, in the Philokalia, several means of slaying demons. Some of the demons can be scorned or ridiculed, & cannot bear focused attention on themselves, & so the basic posture of “awareness”, even letting the mind wander, to see where it goes, can bring fire upon their heads & cause them to flee.

Which demon are we dealing with, here? The demon can change into a wounded damsel in distress, luring men into her cave, & then devouring them. Since  most men’s sins revolve around sexual desire, we should naturally begin to examine this area of our lives? How & why & when are we tempted? In what manner?

The Biblical writers start the sequence with “the lust of the flesh (and the pride of life)” – and this is the first temptation of the wilderness, to desire earthly food rather than God’s Word. Women, for men, represent an appetite and a need, & it is not too much to say that, for most men, they could not live without woman, and that much if not all of their Ego is bound up in psycho-sexual desire for the woman.

Even in popular culture, it is apparent that the “outsider” status & rough wanderings in the wilderness produces, not the Alpha Male, but the Sigma male, who is capable of attracting a beautiful consort, but in many senses, does not “need” or “use” her. This freedom from the woman, inner and outer, is a necessary prelude to true spiritual potency. Hence the medieval ideal of celibacy. If this appetite can be mastered, then one can engage the Nemean Lion. (Note, I am not endorsing, absolutely, these categories, but pointing out primarily that the rigid worship of “Alpha” status by males is misplaced, even as I acknowledge that their virtues are necessary, & could be redeemed. It is they who “set the tone” of society, & they are likely to be of a latent warrior class, who are “masterless samurais”).
Scupoli advises the seeker to treat the lower chakra as a “burning fire” and to flee even the physical proximity of beautiful women, even women who are “family” or “friends”. Since this is all but impossible today, the initiate must be even stronger. He must know, with absolute certitude, that the gravitational pull of beautiful women is a reflection of an inner illusion which must be absolutely put down, with all the ruthless of the Roman generals who sowed Carthage with salt. Carthago delenda est, was the founding of the “Pax Romana”.

This does not disparage woman. Rather, it creates true freedom. What real man & father would ever experience real temptation toward their own flesh and blood? None, if the man is healthy. Even so, the healthy initiate, in spirit, must view all woman, even the most desirable, as someone he must sweep the veil of sexual illusion from, in order to see properly, at all. Paradoxically, this will make him more more attractive to woman, & invite further assault, for which he must be prepared, as a most cunning general. In ancient Christian tradition, the “necessary lie” was even advocated (eg., I am sick, I am mourning, etc.).  Part of what drives the Kali Yuga is the misplaced sexual turmoil of alpha & beta males (and to a lesser degree, everyone else’s failure to not see through the illusion).

I would encourage all the men who read these articles to do whatever it takes to master the tiger of lust, absolutely. It will look differently, in various types and conditions. Chaste marriage to one woman is a form of celibacy, if exalted and properly nurtured. It absolutely constrains the sexual desire in all but one area, &, eventually, in modified form, even that area. The details & circumstances will vary.
The mingling of races and flesh is inevitable in some ways, to some degrees, but in our time, it is actually the new Ideal. The initiate who comes to slay the Lion can take no part in this delusion, regardless of the consequences, personally. He has come to slay the Lion, not to sleep with the Demon. St. Benedict threw himself into thorns and brambles in order to master his lust. What have you done?

The power of the Holy Spirit that resides in the sexual chakra is typically the last center to be mastered by the initiate. It often remains, undisciplined, to the final breath. Along with pride, it is perhaps the most dangerous weakness of men (or women, for that matter). Man’s creative organic power that resides there was meant to issue in the mouth in a word of power that commands and creates a new world (the mouth is the lower third of the head, and corresponds to the waist). It cannot do this if a man gives himself up to Lust, under the guise of “riding the Tiger”, not perceiving that the meaning is twisted.

The foundation of asceticism is a denial of the need to quench our thirst for the female in anything other than God’s sanction and God’s time (which may be after our deaths, and not in the literal “physical way”). It also cannot be accomplished without an invocation to Zeus (made explicit in the story of the Nemean lion, in which a sacrifice to Zeus is involved in the bargain). A higher desire is required to cast out the lower one, to make room for the action of God.

This is the foundation of power. This is Rome, who resisted “Eastern luxury”, Phoenician materialism, & the violent turbulence of the unprepared Northern tribes.. Rome, in the power of Ahriman (at that time, not overly exalted), held the line and upheld the true virtus. Hercules is a warrior and a priest, at once.

Issac the Syrian actually explains how this process of “mortifying the flesh” works:

 ”The effect of the cross is twofold; the duality of its nature divides it into two parts, One consists in enduring sorrows of the flesh which are brought about by the action of the excitable part of the soul, and this part is called activity. The other part lies in the finer workings of the mind and in divine meditation, as well as in attending to prayer, etc.; it is accomplished by means of the desiring part of the soul and is called contemplation. The part of the soul by dint of its zeal, while the second part is the activity of soulful love, in other words, natural desire, which enlightens the rational part of the soul. Every man who, before perfectly mastering the first part, switches to the second, attracted out of weakness–to say nothing of laziness, is overtaken by God’s wrath because he did not first mortify his members which are upon the earth (Col. 3:5). In other words, he did not cure his thoughts of infirmities by patiently bearing the cross, but rather dared in his mind to envision the glory of the cross” (Word 55).

“It is evident from these words of Isaac the Syrian that what we call prelest proper exists when a man starts trying to live above his capabilities. Without having cleansed himself of passions, he strives for a life of contemplation and dreams of the delights of spiritual grace. Thus the wrath of God befalls a man; because he thinks too highly of himself, God’s grace is withdrawn from him and he falls under the influence of the evil one who actively begins to tickle his vainglory with lofty contemplation and [spiritual] delights…” Source

 

St Theophan offers even more detail:

“”In the soul we find three powers: the intellect, the will, the heart, or, as the Holy Fathers say, the intellectual, desiring and incensive powers. Each of them is assigned particular curative exercises by the holy ascetics. These related excercises are both receptive and conducive to grace. They need not be contrived according to some theory, but rather chosen from tested ascetic labors particularly suited to a given power:”

-St. Theophan the Recluse in “The Path To Salvation”

Our wayward, random thoughts are “women” which attract the identification of Self: we chase them, they then transform into a demon, and “slay” us, by drawing us into illusions. It can be a long time before Hercules ever makes it out of the cave.

Esoteric Christianity & the Anti-Christ

Posted on 2013-07-26 by Logres

Part of the problem with standing in the Western ruins involves clearing away the fog of spiritual war, which is deliberate and has the effect of turning the conflict into a free-for-all, in which chaos and confusion deepen demoralization. Rudolf Steiner’s work is important in any history of esoterism, however, his reliance on evolutionary terminology and concepts, and the deterioration of Theosophy/Anthroposophy following the acceptance by those movements on modernist or New Age categories of thought, make this a perilous project. Nevertheless, Steiner potentially gives Western minds the ability to cognitively “discern the spirits” and rightly “divide Thoughts”. Specifically, the work of Gemmdy Bondarev is helpful in accomplishing this.

Bondarev’s magnificent chapter on the Mystery of Good and Eviloffers a platform from which we can see what is happening upon the world stage, in a manner compatible to Christianized minds, given that the Anglo-Saxon & the Romanity blocks of mankind were given the task of developing man’s consciousness in a certain direction, thus giving them the Imperium but also exposing them to unique dangers. Corruptio optima pessimi, so they say.

In a nutshell, the teaching is this:

In this era, for which the Christ was necessary to guide and develop man’s increasing Luciferic impulses in the imagination and the growing Ahrimanic dominance of Number/Measure, the specific danger is that a New Trinity will be formed, not from Christ upholding Lucifer with his left hand (from falling into fantasy) and suppressing Ahriman with his right (from reducing everything to King Whirl and the God Number), but from the Asuric powers which will harmonize Lucifer and Ahriman in their own Anti-Christ, to replace Christ. The issue is as much about Higher vs. Lower, as it is, “Good” versus “Evil”.

The Asuras are demons (archai) of the lowest order of angels, spirits of sub-personal impulse, which will attempt at this moment in history the subversion of the Luciferic gift of the ability to choose between Good & Evil, and will use Ahriman to initiate or incarnate a one-world order or earthly paradise, in which man is made comfortable and easy in all of his animal impulses; thus the spiritual degradation will occur unnoticed, apace.
To those steeped in Tradition, this sounds not only plausible, but familiar.

Christ knew the danger of this moment, and His descent into hell was designed to redeem the possibilities of Lucifer and Ahriman (higher angelic powers) in order to maintain a balance, only accomplished under the higher “I”. The Asuras, by contrast, need man’s spiritual energies to be directed to lower, or sub-personal ends, in which man will become an animal, and eventually, lower than an animal. They are incapable at this time of being redeemed (they are Legion, and Christ sends them into the pigs), and will collapse during Cosmic Ascension into the “eighth sphere”, or the outer darkness, where there will be Aeons of gnashing of teeth and weeping, as no one knows (at this time) how they will be redeemed, or if anything of humanity they have carved out for themselves will survive this outer darkness to be Recapitulated when the Eighth Sphere is regained.

This is “feeding the Moon” on a vast scale, or something even worse. The Fathers dealt with these creatures in the deserts of the Thebaid, because these misguided angels need man’s energies either to survive at all or simply out of envy (no one really knows for sure – their intentions are not “enlightened”, even to the extent that Lucifer’s were). This lower order of fallen angels is purely demonic and sub-lunary. That is, they cannot expect to be mastered by man (as other fallen daemons may be capable of), but actually have to be “killed” or left behind. They are not nature spirits, angelic archons, or even “daemons”, but sub-personal demons who are seriously retarded, and have “evolved” by degeneration. It is their power that is evident and prime during the Kali Yuga. 

The prelude to Anti-Christ is the milieu of a coming earthly utopia in which life is made easy for Shudras and Out-Castes. These peoples identify with the Asuras. They reflect cosmology, by being parasitic, and needing the higher elements to be made lower, so that Life is made easy for them. However, unlike Lucifer or other fallen angels, who were the “gods” of the old myths, they are not “higher” than man in any sense, and it is doubtful whether they can be “taken with us”, so to speak, even on our terms. The Christian Tradition’s solution was to excise them totally, to separate from them. Modern esotericism entertains more hope. This is an interesting question: all agree that they are sub-personal. They may specifically be sub-personal, in particular, to the Western project of generating a sanctified Ego under the direction of Logos, an Ego capable of being “raised up”. This was the basis of the Super-Ego which dominated Western high culture until recently.
Evil acts when Good is exalted (although it appears the other way around to us in the Kali Yuga). Thus, the danger of man as he attempts to redeem his consciousness and integrate his lower and higher I (Alchemy) is that he is exposed to the action of the Asuric forces, in a false Trinity: this is the Reign of Quantity, or the Age of the Anti-Christ, or “Modern Times”. It is a necessary step with laws of its own, one of them being that Man has to be capable of discerning cognitively what is happening in order to clearly resist. 
Here is Bondarev on discerning the times, & it would apply interiorly, as well:

The earthly human ‘I’ arises through the combining of these ingredients: thinking, feeling and willing. They all owe their genesis to the earthly existence of man: the higher nerve activity, the sensations and perceptions and a certain unconscious, instinctive force – the will. All three ingredients have a positive and a negative pole: affirmation is opposed by negation, a positive feeling by a negative one, constructive will is opposed by destructive will or absence of will. All this has long been known to the traditional sciences. Spiritual science completes the picture by adding the knowledge of the personified nature of all psychic and spiritual manifestations of man – his qualities. When physiology speaks of the decay of nerve substance during the thought process, Anthroposophy provides in addition the teaching of ahrimanic beings, of their goals and world-mission. When psychoanalysis describes the ‘sludge’ in the soul and the various confusions arising in the human ‘libido’, Anthroposophy places over against this the teachings of the ‘Doppelgänger’-being dwelling in the sub-nature of man, and of reincarnation and karma. The conditions prevailing in the cosmos require of man that he should attain knowledge of the world-battle waged by the Gods against the luciferic and ahrimanic hordes. In this battle the highest God, who passed through death on earth and pointed the way to the final overcoming of the world-dualism of spirit and matter, is on the side of man. But man can follow Christ only in the ‘I’, for He is the God of the human ‘I’. This means that, in his ‘I’, which he lives out in the combined faculties thinking, feeling and willing, the human being should strive for the ideal of the higher life, which brings not impoverishment and loss but enhancement of self-consciousness and the wealth of individual being.

The spiritual elite will have to sharply “discern spirits” in order to brighten the Light sufficiently to discern the second coming of Christ, both to battle Anti-Christ, but also to accept and know Christ – too many Christians will think that the Anti-Christ is Christ himself, or be demoralized. Likewise, many of the esoteric high initiates in the West are like the misguided spirits, and cannot discern the possibility that they have not “arrived”. They are living in a “false heaven”, and are vulnerable to subversion. In fact, in the West, they have succumbed en masse.

This plays out in history, following the triumph of Christianity, as a second temptation:

The new epoch brings yet another problem. If we disregard mass culture, which is already in a terminal state of decline, and we turn to those who, in the face of all hindrances, have found through their connection with esoteric Christianity the strength and ability to balance the working of Lucifer and Ahriman through the impulse of the Christ – the God of the human ‘I’ who reveals Himself through the Holy Spirit when the human being overcomes everything that is national, tribal, racial – we find these people confronted now by the retarded spirits of time, the Asuras. They lie in wait for those who are striving towards the consciousness-soul and cause them to lower this into the sphere of the instincts. For this reason the Anglo-Saxon and German-speaking peoples, whose task it is to bring to birth the ‘I’ in the threefold soul, and who therefore have to master the consciousness-soul, and also those who turn to Anthroposophy, incur the greatest risk in the new epoch. Dangers have always lurked on the path of development, and this will always be the case. But if we expose ourselves to dangers, we should do so with understanding. It is a purely Asuric idea to want to build an earthly paradise where man is not exposed to any risks. The majority of people will be led in the new epoch to a certain degree of individualization. Intellectualism will increasingly become a possession of the broader masses, but for the sole purpose of harnessing these masses completely to mechanized culture, to the extent that the human being will be incorporated as an element into the various mechanical-cybernetic systems of the future, and also, in part, of the present. The ‘Highest’ to which man can look up will be, instead of the Spirit Self, ahrimanic immortality, while the most varied cybernetic-parapsychological refinements will spread over the earth, which not only prolong human life, but also rob souls of the possibility of passing through a spiritual evolution after death. In the last resort it will be possible to convey a not inconsiderable portion of humanity into the sphere of the electro-magnetic energies, the fallen ethers, in order on this foundation to build up an anti-world, an anti-cosmos, which will be placed over against the divine world creation.  The initiates of the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon race know of this and look upon such a perspective of development as being quite acceptable. But it is not given to them to understand and become conscious of the fact that there is no place in it for the human soul and spirit, as they are subject to the influence of ritual (ceremonial) magic. Already these people are the virtual rulers of the world. Must we keep silent about all this, and wait patiently for the events to unfold? – May every thinking person answer this question for himself. We owe a certain forbearance to the person who simply does not want to believe all this, who thinks that the world is moved by the chance fortuity of events and the play of arbitrary choice or of the noble intentions of human beings standing in isolation to one another. But it is quite different for those who have grown out of the swaddling bands of their social, political and occult infancy. They should on no account underestimate the significance of present events. Rather, they are such that their significance cannot be estimated highly enough. We are the witnesses and participants in a cosmic mystery drama, the course of which has an immediate bearing on our own destiny.

So we are in the middle of a morality/mystery play. Hence the popularity of such works as Harry Potter. Voldemort is coming back.

1. The goal of those who wish to stand should be to master themselves first of all. Guenon, the Church Fathers, traditional Eastern wisdom, and the insights of Western “mystics” all agree on this fundamental point of discerning the origin and arising of spiritual impulses. In the West, the emphasis on Logos was designed to structure and rule the mass of the inner world, providing a way of discrimination. No Western project will be able to do away with Dogma and Logos, both because of prior shaping and because of the unique Western task of integrating the lower I with the higher I, which implies not a retreat from matter, but its spiritualization. I don’t intend to debate or discuss whether the difference with the East is fundamental or a matter of perspective, as others are more qualified. For the beginning Westerner, it hardly matters, except to point out that Christianity is likely a more suitable vehicle for their climbing of the Ladder than anything else. Part of learning to stand is mastering the fear and fog of our currently engineered situation: God’s winds are still blowing; friends and enemies are not easily discerned, but they can be discerned. Use the Logos to help decide.

2. Secondly, the structuring of society in a Traditional order will have to occur, but it will have to be done voluntarily and in full spiritual freedom and insight. Establishing an outright spiritual tyranny, however desirable from the point of view of the alternative, will not work. However, this doesn’t mean that the accusations will not be made, even if Western man “returns”. As Westerners return to the Eternal Fountain, they will have every name in the Book hurled at them: Fascism, Totalitarianism, Elitism, etc. A patient ability to refute and answer and hold fast (Apologia) will be in order. We will be in the same position of the early Christians, who had to be ready at all times to give a gracious and seasoned answer for the hope within us.

3.Thirdly, one can see that the old religions are not irrelevant, since generic “initiation” doesn’t necessarily solve the problem on a grand scale, but rather opens one to the possibilities of subversion on the astral plane. The post-mortem state is still relevant, and indeed, may be a safer mode of spiritual transit (if Reason is allowed to guide the soul) than outright spiritual baptism during the Kali Yuga. In fact, one might even argue that Christianity is the religion par excellence of the Kali Yuga, in that it does not require elite knowledge, but only that a connection to such be vital (through apostolic succession, angelic influence, and/or esoteric Christianity). It may actually be a “shell” to protect a vulnerable and newly born “ego” for the post-mortem transit. Isn’t this precisely Evola’s point in regard to Roman Catholic theology?

4. Regarding Steiner, if Steiner’s “evolution” is seen as prior in Time, but not in logical priority (as Cologero has written is possible), or in terms of Inner Form, then his views of ascension are not necessarily New Age, but rather can describe the trajectory of man’s development during the dark Age of the Kali Yuga. It is unimportant that he has become a “movement” subject to degeneration: the Roman Church endorsed Vatican II, but this doesn’t mean that the war is over, or that all is lost.
The Chaos of the Asuras is allowed because it will deepen the strength and insight of the newly born Western Ego under Logos, to not only freely choose God, but to even pierce to the possibility of discerning Christ and Anti-Christ, which is a different task than discerning Good and Evil. The old liberal mindset sees only cardboard Good and cartoon Evil. In the coming storm, man will definitively be lead to choose between Higher and Lower, and maybe even Good and Best. Man will acquire Sophia, the gift of judging angels, and discerning/commanding demons.

In the Christian Tradition, we would say, God doesn’t want angels, but “sons”. Perhaps the innocent child, the Ego that looks up to the Heavenly Father, the “sheep of the personality” (Tomberg) is the only inner warrior capable of beginning combat in perfect humility against the infernal forces of the Kali Yuga.

The Trivium & Mystery

Posted on 2013-07-19 by Logres

Cologero’s translations have provided this gem, from de Giorgio:

“We could also call it “intuition” although no psychological quality is given to this term: the psyche in fact is below the spirit, the intellect, the heart—these three terms denoting, under three aspects, the same type of integrative activity of the divine. The spirit expresses the direct integration whose absolute type is the divine breath, the intellect expresses the cognitive permeation, the heart expresses radiant receptivity: by means of the first, one is elevated, with the second, absorbed, in the third, one is welcomed and realizes himself. Representing here a vertical axis, the spirit is the peak, the intellect the base, the heart the center that gathers the two extreme points and extends them, prolonging them horizontally, hence the Cross as radiant symbol of universality and unifying centrality.”

The intellect, the heart, and the spirit are One. I would like to relate this to the Trivium, in the Christian Western Tradition. The Trivium consists of grammar (which is emphasized first), then logic (which crops up second, as the pupil reaches puberty, which is age-appropriate), and finally, rhetoric, where the student begins to be the master of his knowledge, rather than being eternally dominated by Facts in a kind of Gradgrindism. Now, none of these occur without the other – even young children learn a form of rhetoric, in the form of songs and poetry and stories. It is merely that the emphasis of the logical progression occurs in an age more suited for it, while the other two categories receive only their due. If we were relating this to a knowledge of castes and Order (including internal order) we would say that the Spirit correlates to Fact, the Heart to Logic, and the Intellect to Rhetoric (for true self-consciousness is consciousness of the Master inside, allowing domination of both Self and Destiny). The Spirit initiates, or factualizes the supernatural; the Heart has its inner logic that we must learn to listen to; the Intellect realizes and epitomizes the power of the Invisible made Visible, the fruit of what has gone before.
This explains, by the way, the strange association of heart & head, the primacy of God’s calling, and the divinization of man within Supernature, becoming God’s equal by Grace.

I did not read this schema – it was obvious to me, latently so, when I read the passage above from de Giorgio. On the contrary, one might choose to say, at times, that the Spirit leads by an inner logic, the Heart creates a vision or rhetoric of the goal, and the Intellect deals with the “facts” the matter. I would reply – the student/pilgrim will at various stages emphasize different portions of their Trivium, and so a change of emphasis or the seeming appearance of a “shuffle” of responsibility in certain circumstances, does not destroy the analogy. The exception, in other words, should strengthen the rule: the analogy fits.
The Trivium was made explicit during the Carolingian period of Western civilization, and is surely cognate in some inner way to the doctrine of Trinity; if nothing else, reflection such as Augustine’s on the tripartite nature of the soul and its relation to the tripartite functions of the persons of God encouraged a numerical attention to Three. Adding this to the Quadrivium produces a perfect number, Seven.  There were, of course, ancient Pythagorean doctrines (derived from Egypt) which taught ruler-ship by the Hebdomads or Sevens. It should be unnecessary to point out that the medievals would have seen significance in Four Gospels, Three Persons of the Trinity, Two Natures in One Christ, and the Divine Unity.

Are the “Three” related to the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood of Saint John?

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

One of the discouraging things I see in Christianity is an inability or unwillingness to reconsider previous meditations in light of new ones. Are the liberals the only ones who are allowed to be daringly adventurous, since the Fathers who wrote the Philokalia have not their like today?

For instance, we might ask ourselves, as Christians, more than just where the revelations to Adam or Enoch went. We could even ask more than whether Guenon was right to argue that Christianity was just one vehicle or aspect of the Tradition, or whether men like Jean Borella are right to criticize Guenon as a “Judaizer” of sorts (the answer to this is mostly irrelevant to the spiritual level that most Christians, or most people, for that matter, would find themselves at in this life). My belief is that, in looking for correspondences in other religions (if done in obedience to the Spirit), Christians will be strengthened and surprised in ways that intensify the experience of their own Tradition, if it is kept rich enough. Who, for instance, is the Sophia in Proverbs? We have an advantage in our Era, in that, certain questions having been tentatively elucidated and put forward, the modern situation is such that no conclusively binding regulation on conscience has been reached by the Faith. Perhaps we are missing great opportunities here?
I will suggest something else for those who are interested in esoteric Christianity. During Pentecost, each person heard the sermon of Peter in their own tongue. Since Pentecost only recapitulates what had already happened  I would like to posit, as a means of reconciling the findings of Nag Hammadi with Orthodoxy, that Jesus’ inner circle of discipulos each heard the Christ speaking in the language of their soul certain secret sayings known only to them. Whether this occured at once, or whether it was done mystically, or one at a time, we take it at face value what the Gospels and other texts confess: that these are the sayings of Jesus given to this or that one of the disciples. In other words, each was given the “One” in a form that they could understand and pass on. The Synoptics look very much the same, book to book, but try reading Mark and then skipping to John.

This presents no problem for Christian theology, in that there may still be preserved four exoteric Gospels, perhaps (also) for that reason kept more accurately and therefore more reliably. This presents no problem for esotericism within Christianity, as it is not dependent on the Letter or written record in any case. But it does reconcile what we know about history and archaeology, in broad enough terms, to declare a peace with Tradition.

If Christians were more attentive to our own Trivium, we would have no need of Traditionalists to teach it to us, today. Or Gnostics, for that matter, real or imagined.

Never the Twain Shall Meet

Posted on 2013-07-12 by Logres

I chose to write on The Dark Cloud of Unknowing to illustrate something that is true that has been discussed here (that East & West are not divergent in Tradition). The author was an anonymous Englishman during the 14th century; ergo, a quintessential “Western” mystic on an isolated island in the West. It is unknown who he was, but it is thought he was in the East Midlands (based on his language). He came after Richard Rolle, and before Walter Hinton, and is roughly contingent with Julian of Norwich. On the Continent, during this time of the Hundred Years War & plague, the great German mystics also appeared. Europe was stirring with heresy, and the Reformation was not far off.

Romanides and Athanasios Bailey (whose Orla.Pubs is off the web now) maintain that the West lost the concept of “energetic” salvation; that is, the West favored a juridical model in which God “reckoned” righteousness or (prior to the Reformation) “declared” or “atoned” man into righteousness. This is the “ransom” theory that developed from Anselm. While we agree that certainly the deviations of Truth in the West have taken the form described by Romanides, we do not concur that the essence of Western Tradition is accurately described: the trend, perhaps, but not the essence or remnant (and there is always a remnant, Romanides should know this).

Specifically, the Frankish and Norman conquests of the West (followed by wars of conquest aimed at the Eastern Empire) are supposed to have caused the entire and widespread loss of genuine Christian understanding (and, given Eastern theology’s emphasis on right wisdom of God and categories of thought, any resultant vital Christianity). However, as we shall see, Western communions made use of negative theology, and were aware of the same dogmas which governed Eastern apophaticism, however much it may be granted that it received less emphasis the farther West one went. As one author points out, the more cataphatic Western theology has (as a safeguard against God-in-man’s-image) the idea that the Logos is the archetype of man’s Image. As an aside, I will note that the Eastern Church considers the 12th or 13th centuries an era in which sensual pleasure and softness enter the Western spirituality; the reply to this would be to note that while this is true, undoubtedly, it also came as part of the Troubadour movement, and could be viewed more positively (as Cologero has suggested) as a particular emphasis on Logos, peculiar to the West.

Additonally, John Scotus Erigena had translated Dionysius from Greek into Latin much, much earlier in the Isles, so the English had access to negative theology, which influenced the author of the Dark Cloud, and bore fruit in his treatise. It should be unnecessary to point out that the age of Cathedral building was founded on Dionysian theology, and had already taken shape.

No one can think of God. Therefore it is my wish to leave everything that I can think of  and choose for my love the thing that I cannot think. For while God may be loved but not thought. God can be taken and held by love but not by thought. Therefore though it is good at times to think of the kindness and worthiness of God in particular, and though this is a light and a part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this exercise, it must be cast down and covered over with a cloud of forgetting. You are to step above it stalwartly but lovingly, with a devout, pleasing, stirring of love and desire to pierce that darkness above you. You are to smite upon the thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love and do not cease no matter what happens. 6:130-131.

This, “For the love of Jesus is very well said.” For in the love of Jesus there is your help. Love is so powerful  that it makes everything one (common). Therefore love Jesus and everything that he has is yours. By his godhead he is the maker and giver of time. By his humanity he is the very keeper of time. And by his Godhead and humanity together he is the truest guide of the choice and use of time. Knit yourself then to him by love and by faith. And by virtue of that knot you shall be a familiar partner with him and with all who are so knitted to him by love… 4:366-373. The example of all this is shown in the life of Christ. PC23:24.170  Mary models the way of contemplative prayer. So she hung her love and her longing desire in this cloud of unknowing, and learned to love what she could not see clearly in this life by the light of understanding in her reason, nor truly feel in the sweetness of love in her affection; so much so that she paid little attention to whether she had been a sinner or not. Yes! And so often I think that she was so deeply affected in the love of the Godhead that she scarcely noticed the beauty of his precious and blessed body as he sat so handsomely speaking and teaching before her. It seems from the gospel that she was oblivious to anything else either bodily or spiritual. XVI: 834-842

The author makes the same energy/essence distinction that the Eastern Church makes: we never become God by nature, but only by grace.
Rather than “the Jesus prayer”, we instead have this:

“Schort preier peersith heven.”

(This, by the way, would even find an echo in the Puritan theology of “Heaven Taken by Storm”).  The use of one syllable words like “God” or “Love” are recommended for unceasing prayer, which builds on confession and regular meditation on revealed mysteries.
It is preferable to meditate on God’s goodness, rather than one’s own sin (contra-Calvinism), since whatever one thinks about “sits between” God & the self, although he does not deny that exoteric or ordinary religious meditation lays a foundation from which to build true contemplation, by God’s grace, later on, which is given regardless of merit or dis-merit, but according to desire.

Thinking may not goodly be getyn withoutyn reding or heryng comyng before…Ne preier may not goodly be getyn in bigynners and profiters withoutyn thinkyng comyng bifore.

How will they believe, if they have not heard? He suggests that many are against contemplation, and have a false humility (thinking that their piety is perfected as high as may go in exoteric meditation) because they are simply unaware of any higher path (they have not heard, and are deceived in imagination). So this is a defense of the esoteric or contemplative way, but he preserves their unity by arguing that the higher active path & the lower contemplative path are actually the same path. Additionally, he links these three paths with the “beginner”, “proficient”, & “perfect” which we see used by Garrigou-Lagrange in his small work on Christian conversions.

I will also note some affinity in this work with later Western development in Pierre-Caussade’s Sacrament of the Present Moment.  I believe that one could take Western manuals such as these (while recognizing legitimate shortcomings and criticism) and build an impressive library of religious contemplation that would bear and stand comparison with modern day Eastern modes or models.

The point is not to say “nu-uh, we have it too” but rather encourage Western readers to look deeper into their own tradition – not without reason is it said (not to our honor) that prophets are not without honor, except in their own country.  But why go so far East? Surely there are far spiritual and physical countries at hand, who have more elective affinities with our background, that remain, yet, Christian?

The author of The Cloud advocates two interesting strategies for overcoming mental “thoughts” and entering into love. Firstly, one can “look over the shoulders” of the daily thoughts which crowd you, focusing on something beyond them, while not obliterating them directly. Secondly, one can “cower down to them and surrender to them”. This last strategy is particularly recommended by him as a means of annihilating the enemies, for God will swiftly come to the rescue of His children who lie helpless before a wild boar. Additionally, this keeps the Ego from getting involved in combat, which only “messes things up” (according to this mystical author).

He is not advocating Quietism (since one continues outward religious observance) but, rather, the attention to thoughts: observing their arrival with discretion and judgement, a practice that is fundamental, say the Fathers of the Philokalia. One surrenders to the interior work of God, while exercising patience and obedience outwardly. Again, we see that Christianity is in this sense, martial, since the soldier maintains discipline in a fight which is not necessarily (even by esoteric standards) appearing to go well. Hope is instead placed in the action of Grace, rather than merely the enhancement of Nature. This is the Christian legacy, both inwardly and outwardly.

The author also translated Dionysius’ Divinitie Hid, & wrote several other treatises, which quote Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle, and Richard St. Victor (placing him within the European stream). Those who will pursue God through “un-thinking” Love will end up grasping many intellectual mysteries along the way, and the Love we have is passive only towards God : it actively overcomes discursive thought (placing all creatures whatsoever in a “cloud” of forgetting) and is naked only towards God, being active in the sense that it moves instinctively back to the source of all Being, God who exists by Nature in the state we must attain through Grace alone.

The same attention to thoughts that is recommended in other Traditions is found here, embedded within the Christian tradition.

…If a man happened to be your deadly enemy and you heard him cry out with such terror, in the fulness of his spirit, this little word “fire!” or this word “out!” you would have no thought for his enmity, but out of the heartfelt compassion, stirred up and excited by the pain expressed in that cry, you would get out of bed even on a night in mid-winter, to help him put out the fire, or to bring him comfort in his distress. O Lord, if a man can be moved by grace to such mercy and compassion for his enemy, his enmity notwithstanding, what compassion and what mercy will God have for the spiritual cry of the soul welling up and issuing forth from the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of his spirit, which contains by nature all that a man has by grace, and much more!.

The Philokalia’s Martial Character

Posted on 2013-07-05 by Logres

“What struck me on the beach–and it struck me indeed, so that I staggered as at a blow–was that if the Eternal Principle had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there, then it might rest in everything, in every thorn in every bush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.” Citadel of the Autarch, Gene Wolfe

We’ve been given, as Christians, and have accepted, as fools, a very impoverished reading of Scripture, one in which Jesus emerges as someone so milquetoast that He wouldn’t dare overturn the money-changing temples and bureaucratic stalls of Liberaldom or secular Democracy, could He by fickle mishap, arrive today. In a perverted sense, this is entirely true, for even this “phase” (degenerative as it may be), must exist entirely and utterly (though not self-consciously) of His will, alone. As Cologero points out, this period of chaos must have Laws which govern it as well, just ones we’re not as used to noticing. Yet, when the man comes around, the rules will get a lot less murky, quickly. There’s a huge difference between God in heaven giving man time, and God descending to sort it out.

As for these difficult-to-discern-patterns of the Kali Yuga, could it be that part of the reason the Bourgeois Period is still alive and kicking is that ignorant men, latently of the brahminic or warrior caste, deliberately and desperately support it, seeing quite clearly the huge gap between the Third Estate epoch & the epoch of the Shudra and the Outcast? After all, the merchant class is still “objective”, at least; the Shudra is neither objective, nor free. Not seeing the huge gap between the Third Estate and that of their own (since it is unrealized), they volunteer to wage the struggle to stave off the tidal wave. This seems to be Mencius Moldbug’s conclusion in this piece of punditry, for instance:

Moreover, the fascist militarists who actually do this job are some of the best men in America.  American communism, for obvious reasons, loves to send America’s best men to Afghanistan to get their private parts Osterized by fertilizer bombs.  This is American war since 1945: State solving the problem of how it can get DoD to stick its d— in a blender.  Solving it rather well, I’d say.  Many of America’s best men are in the Pentagon, and good men know how to obey, and into the blender goes that d—.  Still, much testicle remains.

How long will the warrior caste (even more so those imitating it, either out of malice or virtue) be content with propping up a “country” designed to make life easy for the worst specimens of humanity? Now extending its obligation (and therefore, its power) to the entire planet? We shall see – there are a lot of soldiers returning from the Middle East.

Also, it seems clear to me that the Spirit behind modern culture, for obvious reasons, wants to convince those who are formally, latently, or partially (if not truly) Good that Good and Evil are illusions, and that in the name of some catch-phrases like Equality & Tolerance, Life ought to be made easier for everyone, even those who really aren’t aware of anything above them, even their conscience. Isn’t this what Evil would say to Good? That in reality, the distance between us is an Illusion? Something Jesus said comes to mind:

And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. (Luke 16:8)

Could it be that the Revolutionaries have long known (better than most) that seeing into the Nature of man is pre-requisite to changing things? Granted, they can only imagine that Good exists because of sluggish inertia, that it couldn’t last, except as an inherited accretion and knee-jerk reflex (which of course, sees things backwards, given that most people engage in Evil for precisely this reason). But they have been adept at manipulating the remnants of the castes to achieve their end. Have you taken a literary criticism class, lately? All you read is literature of perversion and revolt. Take Sarah Kane, for instance. Every effort is being made to extend the suffering of our “elites” through the “middle” and to unite that suffering with the lower castes. I saw a sign on a church recently which, against all odds, was actually apropos: “While we play Church, God’s creation becomes more corrupt.” The Bible Belt itself is not as well off as it appears.

What would a Frankish noble have done if confronted with the modern world? Undoubtedly, after a tour through both prison and mental health facilities, he would have emerged much wiser and more cautious of General Law. He would (in fact) lay plans with a prudence and cunning that would complement his innate qualities, and guarantee a larger success in the long run. On the other hand, the qualities he has innately, I lack. What can I learn from him, and where can I learn it? As noted above, there is the possibility of learning from our enemies, in that we see by negative example, how they employ means to ends and discern what is best for their kind.

But there is much more for those who wish to transcend the purely Mephistophelean character of the clever Revolutionary, the spirit who negates, the composting bacteria which works among those whose souls die before they ever learned they had them:

With Faust, the Romantic rebellion breaks out in full force.  At the outset, the poem promises to take the reader “from Heaven through the world to Hell.”  Note the inverse direction.  And still less than Paradise Lost does Faust portray a coherent universe.  A scene in a student hangout, a seduction drama, the spectacles of the first and second Walpurgisnacht, Faust’s adventures as general, artist and civil-engineer-cum-dictator – all this does not add up to a comprehensive portrayal of human life.   The flames of Hell, briefly glimpsed, are taken about as seriously as in a comic strip; while Heaven (complete with a “old guy” Deity at whom the urbane and sophisticated devil thumbs his nose) is but the self-serving reflection of a middle world where the amoral have their way.  Unlike Dante’s journey, Faust’s is the opposite of instructive.  At the end the hero has destroyed the world and learned nothing, the angels confuse his ruthlessness with aspiration; and the author himself seems to have unlearned whatever awareness of right and wrong he may have had at the outset.   The final scene of Faust appears meant to contradict the scene at the summit of Purgatory where Beatrice insists on confronting Dante with his peccadilloes:  “A high law of G-d would be broken if Lethe were passed and such food tasted without some toll of remorse that sheds tears.”  Faust does not have to say he is sorry; enters heaven in the company of unborn children, consciousness and conscience are effaced.   The Israeli scholar Rivkah Schechter is, I believe, right in seeing Faust as the prelude to Auschwitz.  

Hence, we turn to very particular texts, spiritual and literary and political, to nourish the awareness which we lack, which we horn-swoggled ourselves out of by accepting the Devil’s food when we should have been vigilant.

Law: mechanism which should be used in whatever way will generate the preferred result. Old fashioned law did too much to protect individuals from the social will. the mediocratic model avoids bourgeois notions such as principles or liberties. If the community believes someone should be punished, the legal system should not put obstacles in the way. The idea of providing protection for defendants from the state is no longer required, as modern state agents can be presumed to act on behalf of society rather than on behalf of an elite. Mediocracy believes in having as many laws as possible, but enforcing them selectively. This provides maximum flexibility, since harassment can be targeted at appropriate individuals. Fabian Tassano, Mediocracy

Christ the King told Satan to “get thee behind me” during the Temptation, which was the rough equivalent of a medieval king saying “away with you, you varlet!”. Then, and only then, did angels minister to him. One of the traditional Christian’s first tasks will be to learn not to accept a part in the inverted medieval passion play of the Spirit of the Age, but rather to wrestle with the powers and principalities (within himself, foremost) and force them to play the role in his own mystery play. For those “waking up”, seemingly innocuous things take on spiritual significance. They “manifest”. Do we wish to become cardboard characters, doomed to fire, in his play, or force him to step into our own?
Isn’t this the root of the “difficulty with Christianity”? Is it what it appears to be? It may look milquetoast, but this is an illusion. The regal-warrior spirit is carefully hidden in plain sight. Christ becomes a King by rejecting the world, the flesh, and the devil, by repulsing Satan’s attempt to get him to play a part in a play in which his lines were penned by Satan. Isn’t this what the Revolutionary narrative is all about? We may not know all, or even much, but we know enough. Enough to begin to resist the temptation.

Spirituality such as found in the Philokalia nourished the spiritual life of the Eastern Empire, & from them, flowed westward, even if indirectly. The Franks gladly submitted to the High King of Heaven: Chlodovechus exclaimed “Oh, if I had been there with my Franks!”. It’s possible to view this as an aberration and twisting of Aryan spirituality. But then, what do you do with such organizations as this? What about the Templars? Together, the Western tribes and the religion of Christianity created a fuller manifestation of Tradition (and corresponding higher aberrations, at times, when corrupt) than possible otherwise. Corruptio optima pessimi.

Here is practical advice from the Philokalia – it has the smell of authenticity, as it isn’t something one would “make up” on the spur of the moment. If one isn’t a Brahmin, then simply gain the appropriate insight and apply it to your own circumstances. For instance, knowing that some thoughts have a demonic origin is highly useful, no matter what caste you belong to. I think you will see that this corpus of spiritual teaching is anything but “sentimental” and “Semitic”. It is, in fact, triumphant and almost Promethean.

Similarly, anger, whether reasonable or unreasonable, obstructs our spiritual vision. Our incensive power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts. We must not therefore expend all our effort in bodily fasting; we must also give attention to our thoughts and to spiritual meditation, since otherwise we will not be able to advance to the heights of true purity and chastity.
If a man, still enmeshed in sin and anger, dares shamelessly to reach out for knowledge of divine things, or even to embark upon immaterial prayer, he deserves the rebuke given by the Apostle; for it is dangerous for him to pray with head bare and uncovered. Such a soul, he says, ought to ‘have a veil on her head because of the angels’ (cf I Cor. 11:5-7), and to be clothed in due reverence and humility.

Blessed is the monk who regards every man as God after God.

There are times when the demons suggest thoughts to you and then urge you to rebut them with prayer; whereupon they withdraw of their own accord, so as to deceive you into imagining that you have begun to overcome such thoughts and to rout the demons.

You should be aware of this trick: at times the demons split into two groups; and when you call for help against one group, the other will come in the guise of angels and drive away the first, so that you are deceived into believing that they are truly angels.

When the intellect attains prayer that is pure and free from passion, the demons attack no longer with sinister thoughts but with thoughts of what is good. For they suggest to it an illusion of God’s glory in a form pleasing to the senses, so as to make it think that it has realized the final aim of prayer. A man who possesses spiritual knowledge has said that this illusion results from the passion of self-esteem and from the demon’s touch upon a certain area of the brain.

Know that the holy angels encourage us to pray and stand beside us, rejoicing and praying for us (cf Tobit 12:12). Therefore, if we are negligent and admit thoughts from the enemy, we greatly provoke the angels. For while they struggle hard on our behalf we do not even take the trouble to pray to God for ourselves, but we despise their services to us, and, abandoning their Lord and God, we consort with unclean demons.

One who has attained dispassion has not necessarily achieved pure prayer. For he may still be occupied with thoughts which, though dispassionate, distract him and keep him far from God.

Undistracted prayer is the highest intellection of the intellect.

The warfare between us and the demons is waged solely on account of spiritual prayer; for prayer is extremely hateful and offensive to them, whereas it leads us to salvation and peace.

When the intellect has been perfected, it unites wholly with God and is illumined by divine light, and the most hidden mysteries are revealed to it. Then it truly learns where wisdom and power lie… While it is still fighting against the passions it cannot as yet enjoy these things… But once the battle is over and it is found worthy of spiritual gifts, then it becomes wholly luminous, powerfully energized by grace and rooted in the contemplation of spiritual realities. A person in whom this happens is not attached to the things of this world but has passed from death to life.

Ironically, there is a “martial” quality about the Philokalia, which is consonant with the “marching character” of Christianity, itself a religion (in many ways) that was military. The Church, after all, was “militant”. If it was (perhaps dubitably) a religion of the lower castes, nevertheless, it should be remembered that it was through the Roman army & Constantine, ultimately, that the religion won its victory over those, like Julian the Apostate, who wished to endorse Iamblichus and the NeoPlatonists rather than a religion. Christianity “chose sides” because it has a martial quality. I think this is the way to “resolve” the debate with neo-pagans: the Vedantic wing of Christianity wasn’t strong enough to preclude an all-out war against all “paganism”, so perhaps this should be rectified.

Yet Christ is a King, not merely a high priest. And the King is not mocked; He is no sentimentalist, but like a detached general, he awaits the inevitable outcome of His warfare. The King is Dead. Long live the King. The King is Coming. Life itself, the King.

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.”
Gene Wolfe, Shadow and Claw

The “Third Wave” of Christianity will come when Christians themselves reclaim their monarchic legacy, hidden in Scripture, of Christ as the prophet, priest, and king (warrior).  If we apply the insights of the Philokalia quoted above, we would conclude that the history of the West has been a very careful, selective seducement of a predominantly warrior-religion, designed to “set it up” for a final illusion. That is, the glories of the Renaissance and the wonders of Science and the blessed peace of secular humanism are analogous to demonically-induced spiritual states designed to convince the one who undergoes them that they are “favored” and have reached “deliverance”. However, there is still a chance that the victory of Logos in the West can be redeemed. That is, instead of the Divine withdrawing back into the Divine, the human can be drawn up into God (the aim of Christian warfare, which approaches the passions with warfare in an attempt to “possess” them for God). This can only happen if the West uses discernment to see that the Logos presented to it, of which it is most acutely aware, is to be sanctified to God & taken up.

Thus, Western Christians have to see, at one and the same time, both the limitations of its Tradition (a warrior-religion) and the timelessness of it (a true reflection of something Transcendent, which was worth defending, albeit with more wisdom). This will involve restoring the “Vedantic wing” of the Faith, which will include esoteric studies. All resurgencies, ill-fated or blessed, of Christianity have begun with the return to “Christ the King”.

Gleanings about the Field of Pearls

Posted on 2013-06-21 by Logres

I have been reading The Way of a Pilgrim, recently, which is a Russian peasant’s account of his discovery of the prayer of the heart. The anonymous author had lost his father and wife to an illness, and been dispossessed by a worthless brother, who had also crippled him when they were younger. Henceforth, the man becomes a beggar, and then, after hearing in Church St. Paul’s admonition to “pray without ceasing”, a pilgrim to discover what the inner or hidden meaning of this was.
Somehow, he obtains a copy of the Philokalia, and literally learns it by heart from reading it every day. Additionally, his old starets sometimes appears to him in a dream, and offers him guidance, not only spiritual but even to face physical challenges, such as curing an old woman who has been kind to the pilgrim.

“It costs nothing but the effort to sink down in silence into the depths of one’s heart and call more and more upon the radiant name of Jesus. Everyone who does that feels at once the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the kingdom of God. And what depth and light there is in the mystery of a man coming to know that he has this power to plumb the depths of his own being, to see himself from within, to find delight in self-knowledge, to take pity on himself and shed tears of gladness over his fall and his spoiled will!”

It should be instantly apparent to the unbiased reader (whomever they may desire to appear to themselves) that here we have no “life-denying” or purely passive “asceticism. On the contrary, this is spoken of as an active power corresponding to the alchemical stage of rubedo.  You see that they are spoken of as “tears of gladness“.

There is no doubt that “Semitic” spirituality in a purely “exoteric” sense has included many “life-denying” elements in propagating what appeared to it to be truths. However, we need to make a point that the division exoteric-esoteric is itself part of the problem (as Cologero has alluded to). It is to think in terms of division, separation. Well, this is the problem to begin with! Because “esotericism” departs (or is corrupted), the “exoteric” shell attempts to preserve “Christendom” inside of formulations from which Life has departed. Likewise, esotericism without exoteric landmarks can be dark paths indeed. The thing is to unite the two! Or, rather, to see that they are already One.

The pilgrim refers to the Almighty as the “merciful and man-loving God“. This will be too “materialistic” or even “humanistic” for Gnostics, just as the Virgin Mary has always scandalized certain highly spiritual individuals (St. Francis designed the manger creche to confound them).

“Everyone does what he can, as he sees his own path, with the thought that God himself shows the way of his salvation.” This will be not rigid enough for the Pharisees in Christendom, who wish everything to be “made clear”.

“The mysterious sighing of creation, the innate aspiration of every soul toward God, that is exactly what interior prayer is. There is no need to learn it, it is innate in every one of us.” This will irritate the Protestants (who hate Nature) & those who wish (like General Namaan) for mightier tasks than bathing in the Jordan to cure their leprosy.

The volume is not the work of a saint or scholar, but a peasant, who comes to know God through “the Jesus prayer” of hesychasm (which interestingly enough, receives various emphasis or stresses on its syllables, according to the inner spiritual gift of the person praying the prayer). The starets comes to him in a dream, and even points out which portions of the Philokalia to read first, and in what order.
As we wander through the desert of Modernity, a pithy man points out that even in God’s “separation” from the modern world, the spiritual man ought to begin to learn to discern signs of His presence, for He can never be finally absent. No decayed corpus of Christendom can prove the lack of His, the Lord’s, power. No collapse of the West can prove that, after all, God is mocked. The Supreme Lord will not be mocked, no matter how large scale the rebellion is, nor does His mercy fail even in the dark.
I think a reader here recommended (for which I thank him) The Three Conversions of the Spiritual Life, by Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, which my wife bought me for father’s day. There is little doubt that out of the “wreckage” we can salvage, not merely “much”, or even “all” that we need, but abundantly more so. God has littered the landscape with many treasures, and books such as these testify to an inner heart of Christianity which has existed even during the seemingly dead days of being buried under ground. In fact, since the heart is alive, the body remains as well – not the body the Pharisees promulgate, but the body of the Lord. For instance, Garrigou-Lagrange distinguishes, in direct and explicit parallel to Dionysius’ tradition, the three inner stages of purgation, illumination, and union, and what happens when one gets stuck along the way, in between one of the stages. Are any readers here stuck in a spiritual stage they do not understand? He goes on to explain that God the All-Merciful converts a man where he is at. This, by the way, is why the conversion begins in the senses, and doesn’t include the soul or spirit to begin with: God isn’t going to make someone enlightened against their will! He begins with the beginning stage. When they are purged as to senses, then a purgation of the soul commences, but is “illuminated” in this more difficult stage: the person now loves not only with the heart, but with strength. The last conversion is a movement into spirit, in which God is loved with the “soul” (spirit), and finally attains intellectual and perfect and near-continuous (at least) union with God.

As one can see, this involves a “taking up” of each lower part into a higher part, along with a move of consciousness to the higher plane. From the “sensual” plane, soul and spirit are one. Only from the soul plane does one even begin to intuit that there are higher regions still. And what comes after this? The Self Beyond the Self?

Look about you, if not in your tradition, then some tradition fit for you. Seek it, and find it: you will seek what you find anyway. It is ultimately not a concept or even an “ideal” (although it certainly will make use of both along the way), but a path which you already know, as the Russian peasant pilgrim already knew, when he set out on his journey, that he would find his Lord.

By the way, if you have fallen, a repentance equal or greater in fervor than the sin which was committed will re-instate your “talents” and place you back upon the Ladder. The thing is to climb.