State of the Cosmos

As Obama gave his address to the "last, best hope of earth", Egypt is the next fall guy. No one is asking who will replace him, whether or not we were instrumental in keeping him there for so long, or who might have been there in his place. Nor (indeed) is anyone keen to discuss our role in bringing about his fall (the Obama regime is calling for him to be "responsive" to the people), nor to remark that such an "authoritarian strong man" is so easily laid low by the power of the peaceful people. Was Mubarak a despot or strong man at all, that a word from our White House can send him reeling and usher in God only knows what? Speak not the forbidden word "authority"; in a world dominated by chaos perceived only as goodness by those who are bitter for the utopia they can never have and settle (like hogs) for the next best thing (a world in which the illusion of utopia is fed to lust in a world sorcery state), those upon the side of peace & order will have to "ride the tiger". For surely, in the land of fools, the mad one is king.

The West Must be Reborn

The West no longer knows Wisdom: it no longer knows the majestic silence of those who have mastered themselves, the bright calm of the Seers, the superb “solar” reality of those in whom the idea has made itself blood, life, and power. Wisdom has been supplanted by the rhetoric of “philosophy” and “culture”, the realm of professors, journalists, and sportsmen—the plan, the program, the proclamation. It has succumbed to sentimental, religious, humanitarian contamination, and the race of chatterers who run around madly exalting “becoming” and “practice”, because silence and contemplation frighten them.~ Julius Evola, Pagan Imperialism

The brilliant Stephen Tonsor explains:

Molnar views the 'republique des lettres' essentially as a conspiracy of the intellectuals; a kind of Grand Orient of the intellect, capable of deposing kings and emptying churches...the French Revolution (is) a consequence of this great conspiracy...(this) loose yet solid framework of writers and 'philosophes' became the 'invisible power' which commands everywhere, including the king's palace... Moreover, Molnar believes that ' a replica of the intellectuals' republic exists' at the present time in the United States composed of the 'manipulators of ideas and images, writers, professors, artists, journalists' with sufficient power to make revolutionary attitudes 'respectable to the point of gradually being looked upon as legitimate, and more...as the only legitimate thesis...

Thomas Molnar

Federalism

The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) wants a piece of land for its people to govern and call their own, a spokesperson said in Ventersdorp on Tuesday.

"All we want is a piece of land in South Africa where we can settle ourselves and call it our own and govern ourselves with our religion... and our own laws," said organisation leader Pieter Steyn.

Sounds good.

A Sense of Nature

Scire, Potere, Audere, Tacere
Filed under: Hermetism — by Cologero @ 22:38
Tags: Fulcanelli

Scire, Potere, Audere, Tacere
To know, to be able, to dare, to keep silent
~Zoroaster

Fulcanelli

Nature does not open the door of the sanctuary to anyone.

In these pages, the uninitiated will perhaps discover some proof of a genuine and positive science. I do not however, flatter myself that I shall convert them, for I know full well the obstinacy of prejudice and the great strength of preconceived opinions. The disciple will derive greater benefit form this book, provided always that he does not despise the works of the old Philosophers and that he studies with care and penetration the classical text, until he has acquired sufficient perception to understand the obscure points of the practice.

No one may aspire to possess the great secret, if he does not direct his life in accordance with the researches he has undertaken.

It is not enough to be studious, active, and persevering, if one has no firm principles, no solid basis, if immoderate enthusiasm blinds one to reason, if pride overrules judgment, if greed expands before the prospect of a golden future.

The mysterious science requires great precision, accuracy and perspicacity in observing the facts, a healthy, logical and reflective mind, a lively but not over-excitable imagination, a warm and pure heart. It also demands the greatest simplicity and complete indifference with regard to theories, systems and hypotheses, which are generally accepted without question on the testimony of books or the reputation of their authors, it requires its candidates to learn to think more with their own brains and less with those of others. Finally, it insists that they should check the truth of its principles, the knowledge of its doctrine and the practice of its operations from nature, the mother of us all.

By constant exercise of the faculties of observation and reasoning and bu meditation, the novice will climb the steps leading to
Knowledge

A simple imitation of natural processes, skill combined with ingenuity, the insight born of long experience will secure for him
Power

Having obtained that, he will still have need of patience, constancy and unshakeable will. Brave and resolute, he will be enabled by the certainty and confidence born of a strong faith, to
Dare

Finally, when success has crowned so many years of labour, when his desires have been accomplished, the Wise Man, despising the vanities of the world, will draw near to the humble, the disinherited, to all those who work, suffer, struggle and weep here below. As an anonymous and dumb disciple of eternal Nature, he will remain faithful to his vow of silence. In Science, in Goodness, the adept must evermore
Keep Silent

The Idea of the West

Someone else has usually said "it" so much more clearly...this is why I am "traditionalist":

To the profound comprehension of this law of the intellectual generation of ideas, are due the marvels of Catholic civilisation. To that wonderful civilisation is due all that we admire and all that we see. Its theologians, even considered humanly, put to the blush modern and ancient philosophers; her doctors excite wonder by the immensity of their science; its historians by their generalising and comprehensive views, cast those of antiquity into the shade. St Augustine’s “City of God” is, even today, the most profound book of history which genius, illuminated by the rays of Catholicity, has presented to the astonished eyes of men. The acts of her Councils, leaving aside the divine inspiration, are the most finished monuments of human prudence. The Canonical, excel in wisdom the Roman, and the feudal, laws. Who is before St Thomas in science, St Augustine in genius, Bossuet in majesty, St Paul in power? Who is greater as a poet than Dante? Who is equal to Shakespeare? Who surpasses Calderon? Who, like Raphael, infused life and inspiration into the canvas?

Place people in sight of the pyramids of Egypt, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a grand and barbarous civilisation.” Place them in sight of the Grecian statues and temples, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a graceful, ephemeral, and brilliant civilisation.” Place them in sight of a Roman monument, and they will tell you, “Here has passed a great people.” Place them in sight of a cathedral, and on beholding such majesty united to such beauty, such grandeur to such taste, such grace to such delicacy, such severe unity to such rich variety, such measure to such boldness, such heaviness in the stones, with such suavity in their outlines, and such wonderful harmony between silence and light, shade and colour, they will tell you,

Here has passed the greatest people of history, and the most astounding of human civilisations: that people must have taken grandeur from the Egyptian, brilliancy from the Greek, strength from the Roman, and, beyond the strength, the brilliancy, and grandeur, something more valuable than grandeur, strength, and brilliancy—immortality and perfection.

That said, creative genius will have to go beyond this, but not in a "titanic" or grasping manner, in which the past is "overcome". Rather, the past will have to be brought to completion, not evolutionarily (merely) but alchemically and through regeneration.

One Must Approach Without Fear

El Desdichado (The disinherited)
Gérard De Nerval (translation: Richard Sieburth)

I am the man of gloom - widowed - unconsoled
The prince of Aquitaine, his tower in ruin:
My sole star is dead - and my constellated lute
Bears the Black Sun of Melancholia.

In the night of the tomb, you, my consolation,
Give me back Posillipo and the Italian sea,
The flower that so eased my heart's desolation,
And the trellis that twines the rose into the vine.

Am I Eros or Phoebus? Lusignan or Biron?
My brow is still red with the kiss of the queen;
I have dreamt in the grotto where the siren swims. . .

And, twice victorious, I have crossed Acheron:
My Orphic lyre in turn modulating the strains
Of the sighs of the saint and the cries of the fay.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/00050241.pdf

Western Hermeticism + Western Affirmation

A novel suggestion. If somewhat far afield, dear reader...

Did Aquinas create the Golden Rod to Measure God?

Certain scholars (and others) have lately claimed that rationalism began in the Scholastic era, with Aquinas. Here is an article on "The Senses" of the Middle Ages.

According to Aristotle, sensus communis, or common sense, is the one function of the ψυχή that gains perceptions of all objects, a common central organ of perception in which the separate communications received by the proper senses are combined into a unity. Common sense can also display synthetic power by grasping the common properties in he qualities of the common sensibles. In fact, the common sensibles (movement, figure, etc.) are the proper objects of the common sense. In addition, common sense has the power to separate and distinguish among the various sensations, and yet it must preserve the unity of sense perception. In short, it is the common ground, "the fontal principle of all external senses", as Thomas Aquinas puts it in his commentary on Aristotle's De anima, and as Dante himself calls it in the same chapter of Convivio (3.9.9

WH Auden Again...

My English professor once remarked that Auden was a "disgusting" human being physically (I have no idea if he was refering to his slobby demeanour, or to his "queerness"), but a "great" poet. This was the same professor who wrote his dissertation on Graham Greene (a novelist my wife has read more on than myself), and had read Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics through three times, and yet regarded himself (in a personal letter to my father at my graduation) as "lazy" and "slothful".

So I am reading an article on Auden. As is my wont, I like to read a review of a review, or an article, or to take some "indirect" approach into the material.

The Auden-Eliot debate over the nature of "religion" seems intensely interesting. Auden was a natural elite who was anti-elitist. He and Chesterton shared a vision of a democratic God. However problematic this is (as anyone who has read a little of my website knows I believe), Auden was no dummy. He ended up his life in a Russian Orthodox Church, after helping his Anglican parish remodel their liturgy. Utterly Auden.

T.S. Eliot thought of religion as “the still point in the turning world,” “the heart of light,” “the crowned knot of fire,” “the door we never opened”—something that remained inaccessible, perfect, and eternal, whether or not he or anyone else cared about it, something absolutely unlike the sordid transience of human life.

W.H. Auden thought of religion as derived from the commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—an obligation to other human beings despite all their imperfections and his own, and an obligation to the inescapable reality of this world, not a visionary, inaccessible world that might or might not exist somewhere else.

Hegel & Hermeticism

Apparently, Hegel has connections with Hermeticism. This might be an interesting study, as GP Grant claims that Hegel takes two severe ethos (Classicalism and Christianity), combines them, & ends up with an ethos that is neither one nor the other, nor is it severe. However, Hegel might reward another angle of reading, if he were interpreted as concealing portions of the truth which he talked about openly.

The Kernel of Truth in Harry Potter May be as the Pope Fears

This distinguishes Hermetic philosophy from academic philosophy. It is not sufficient to know. One must also will and dare. This is what makes the ideas actual.

Abraxas tells us that it is necessary to firmly and actively establish a new quality, by becoming the master of a part of your life. The path to becoming one among the Solar race involves:

1. Become innerly detached from yourself and from what surrounds you; maintain a sober, effortless, neutral, and well-balanced lifestyle, without excesses. Sleep only as needed and eat little.
2. Let your body be whole, calm, harmonized. Temper your soul with the power that is in you; cleanse it from impulsiveness, passions, restlessness, and then stabilize it and amalgamate it with your body.
3. Other beings do not exist. Do not let their actions, thoughts, or judgments affect you, no matter what they are.
4. Make sure that nothing will secretly creep into you: watch over everything that comes from the outside and that emerges from the unexplored depths of your consciousness. Observe all things in silence with your mind and remain unperturbed, stopping every judgment with a firm hand.
5. If passions bother you, do not react or become perturbed. Bring them deliberately to satisfaction, and then get rid of them.
6. Grow in this direction until you are able to realize the frivolity, uselessness, and the threat of every thought, so that your mind, too, may slowly calm down and silently crouch at your feet.
7. In this way you can slowly build up a strength inside you, similar to a lord whose glance instills silence, respect, or confusion in the servants around him.
THIS IS OUR GOLD.

Advice from Evola, in the Hermetic Tradition


The basic idea here (may or could) seem(s) to be that one cannot assist another (Love Thy Neighbor) until one has a core, inviolable center which is immovable in that which is irresistible. In this way, the yoke becomes easy. One cannot conquer heaven by storm without taking possession of one's self, which allows one to fulfill the Law. Exoteric Christianity (eg., the "Church") will always have difficulty with the esoteric tradition, which attempts to reclaim the wells that have poisoned by Satan. What better way to cripple something than to stunt it, to convince it that that which is "the one thing necessary" is actually part of the Enemy?

Nuclear Presuppositional Apologetics, Centuries Before Van Til

The abovementioned polemical remark against those who think of the world as illusion was obviously aimed at that current of thought whose most extreme expression was represented by the Vedantic doctrine of Shankara. It is not meaningless, at this point, to see how that polemic was conducted. Vedanta claims that the only reality is that of the plain Absolute, in its formless and undetermined aspect, the so-called nirguna-brahman. Everything else, the world and all its manifestations, is "false," a mere product of the imagination (kalpana), a mere appearance (avastu): here is the well-known and much -abused concept of maya, of the world as maya. A hiatus is thus established: nothing unites the real, brahman, with the manifestation, the world. Between them there is not even an antithesis, since one is and the other is not.

In the polemics carried on by the Tantras, their orientation toward concreteness is confirmed. It is true that from the point of view of the Absoute, the manifestation cannot exist in and by itself, since there cannot be a being outside of Being. A question may be asked, however, as to what exactly is one who professes the doctrine of maya: if he is Brahman itself or one of the beings that exist in the realm of maya. As long as one remains a human, namely a finite and conditioned being, one certainly cannot be calle nirguna-brahman, which is the unchanging pure Absolute without determinations and forms. Therefore, such a person cannot be but maya, since outside of nirguna-brahman one finds only maya. But if that person - the extremist Vedantist - in his existential reality, as a human, a jiva, a living being, is maya, then everything that he claims will be but maya (appearance and falsehood), including hs theory according to which only nirguna-brahman is real while everything else is illusion and falsehood.

J. Evola on the Yoga of Power

Direct Knowledge, Immediate Evidence, Real Experience

When he is stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian.

Nicholas Gomez Davila

When will the West return to true power and actual knowledge?

KEEP BACK BUT STAND FIRM.

The word to be used is action: action, not work, is what is performed by the leader, the explorer, the ascetic, the pure scientist, the warrior, the artist, the diplomat, the theologian, the one who makes or breaks a law, the one who is motivated by an elementary passion or guided by a principle.

The Madness of Percival

Having showed that the titanic element is indeed the prime matter out of which the hero is made, it is understandable that Wolfram bestows upon Percival some Luciferian traits, though he makes him successfully complete his adventure, so much so that in the end Percival assumes the luminous form of a restorator and of a king of the Grail. In fact, Percival accuses God of having betrayed him, of not being faithful to him, and of having failed to assist him in the conquest of the Grail. He rebels and in his anger he says:

"I used to serve a being called God before I was ridiculed and covered with shame...I was his humble servant because I believed He would grant me His favor: but from now on I will refuse to serve him. If He persecutes me with his hatred, I will resign myself to that too. Friend [he says to Gawain], when the time for you to fight has come, may the thought of a woman [rather than God] protect you."

Animated by such indignation and pride, Percival, after failing in his first visit to the castle, fulfills his adventures. And thus, being separated from God, avoiding churches and performing "wild" knightly deeds he eventually triumphs, achieving the glory of the king of the Grail. Trevrizent will tell him, "Rarely was a greater miracle seen: by showing your anger you have received from God what you desired most." Also in Wolfram, Percival appears as the one who reaches the castle of the Grail in an exceptional way, without having been designated or called like others before him. His election occurs later on; in a way, it is the very adventures of Percival that bring his election about and almost bestow it upon him. Trevrizent says, "It never happened before that the Grail could be achieved by fighting." This trait too helps us recognize the heroic type, the one who, not by nature (as in the case of the Olympian type, to whom the legitimate king of the Grail may correspond, prior to his getting old, wounded, or falling asleep), but because of the reawakening of a deeper vocation and thatnks to his action, successfully participates in what the Grail symbolizes. This character reaches such heights as to become a knight of the Grail and finally achieves the supreme dignity of the Order of the Grail.



-Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail, Chapter 15

Modern Science

Electromagnetic Frontier

The prevalent alibi of modern science is the claim to power; and that argument, in this context, deserves to be considered, since shakti as power, as well as siddhis (namely, powers), plays an important role in Tantrism and related currents. Modern science offers the proof of its validity through the positive results achieved, particularly by putting at man's disposal such a power that has, so it is claimed, no precedents in previous civilizations.

We are dealing here with a misconception of the term power, since no distinction is made between a relative, external, inorganic, conditioned power and true power. Obviously, all the opportunites offered by science and technology to people of the Kali Yuga are exclusively of the first type. Action produces results only because it conforms itself to given laws, which scientific research has pointed out, laws that action presupposes and obeys to the letter. The effect, therefore, is not directly connected to man, to the Self, or to his free will, as to its cause; between action and result there is a series of intermediaries that do not depend on the Self, and that are necessary in order to achieve what one wants. It is not just a matter of devices and machines, but of laws, of natural determinism that could go this way or that way, unintelligible in its essence; such mechanical power, is, after all, precarious.

In no way does it represent a possession of the Self, nor is it one of the Self's powers. What has been said about scientific knowledge applies as well: it does not change the human condition, the existential situation of an individual, nor does it presuppose or require any transformation of that kind. It is rather something added on, superimposed, which does not imply any self-transformation. No one claims that we show any real superiority when we are capable of doing this or that by availing ourselves of any technical means: we do not cease to be mere humans, not even as lords of atomic weapons who can disintegrate a planet by pushing a button. And worse yet, if as a consequence of any given cataclysm people living in the Kali Yuga were deprived of all their machines, in the greatest majority of cases they would probably find themselves in a worse predicament than uncivilized primitives do when facing the forces of nature and the elements. That is because machines and technology have atrophied their true strength. We may well say that modern man, by virtue of a diabolical mirage, has been seduced by the "power" he has at his disposal, and of which he is so very proud.

Does this mean that Christians can stop arguing with atheists over whether Christianity created or inhibited the rise of Modern Science?

Just as one can use the conscious mind, in a dream, harnessing it's higher reality to alter your dream, so there is a higher reality than Life itself, something greater than Life and more than Life, which can be harnessed to alter Life.

The Tower of Babel and Ham

Of this, I am not so sure:

The historians of the European people such as Bill Cooper (After the Flood) and Mike Gascoigne (Forgotten History of the Western People) tell us that it was the descendants of Ham who built the Tower of Babel.

Perhaps this is the case. Certainly Northern Man (Solar Man of the Ice Age, the Tundra, and the Islands) probably had little to do with indiscriminate mingling and tower building. The spirit of the North was fragile and strong all at once, recessive in its traits (blue eyes, blond hair, etc.), and yet desirous of overcoming the cold which threatened the heart and hearth. It was a spirit of struggle and inwardness, unknown to those who dwelt near the equator.

Heaven's Sturm und Drang

Came across a new graphic novel with Alistair Crowley and Charles Williams in it called Heaven's War. The novel is available here, and promises not to disappoint.

Zeus

Initiation & Religion

The initiate is (apparently) much different from the disciple. It might be preferable if the disciple was also an initiate. This seems to have been the case with the "Original 12". Gene Wolfe deals with some of these themes in his Torturer epos cycle.

"the 'heroic path' (vîra-mârga), which, under the sign of pure transcendence, have as principle a true anomia, and a scorn for the common moral and religious rules, although the ultimate end is not different from that of the 'Right-Hand Path', which instead uses such rules as a support ("the rules which do not chain but sustain those who do not know how to go by themselves"). In general, the recurrence of 'antinomianism' (this word designates the rejection of the rules of the current religion), which almost always indicates connections with the world of Initiation or of esotericism, is well-known in the history of religions."

I will note, however, that this is a different conception of "Anti-Nomos" than most Westerners are familiar with. The main antinomian varieties (in the past) are degenerating elements which have a simple hatred of transcendence, not a committment to it under other forms.