The Ascent of the Ladder

Hermas 22 1 When then I ceased asking her concerning all these things, desirous of beholding, I was greatly rejoiced that I should see it. 2 She looked upon me, and smiled, and she saith to me, Seest thou seven women round the tower? 3 I see them, lady, say I. 4 This tower is supported by them by commandment of the Lord. 5 Hear now their employments. 6 The first of them, the woman with the strong hands, is called Faith; 7 through her are saved the elect of God.

8 And the second, that is girded about and looketh like a man, is called Continence; 9 she is the daughter of Faith. 10 Whosoever then shall follow her, becometh happy in his life, for he shall refrain from all evil deeds, believing that, if he refrain from every evil desire, he shall inherit eternal life.

11 And the others, lady, who be they? 12 They are daughters one of the other. 13 The name of the one is Simplicity, of the next, knowledge, of the next, Guilelessness, of the next, Reverence, of the next, Love. 14 When then thou shalt do all the works of their mother, thou canst live. 15 I would fain know, lady, I say, what power each of them possesseth.

16 Listen then, saith she, to the powers which they have. 17 Their powers are mastered each by the other, and they follow each other, in the order in which they were born. 18 From Faith is born Continence, from Continence Simplicity, from Simplicity Guilelessness, from Guilelessness Reverence, from Reverence knowledge, from knowledge Love. 19 Their works then are pure and reverent and divine.

20 Whosoever therefore shall serve these women, and shall have strength to master their works, shall have his dwelling in the tower with the saints of God.

These remain, but the greatest of these is Love.
Love is a pleroma, or metaphysical state.

Servants of the Secret Fire

This Friday, it's about "riding the tiger" and reconciling Christianity with perennialism. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

William Blake

"Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion
of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the
Synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World, God; and
destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God.”

The Stage of the World

Stand on the trestles of the world,
And mark the humours of the fair,
Where jugglers' flaming knives are hurled,
And God leads round His starry bear.

Here, on the boards, the prince of clowns,
Man, in his motley struts and leers,
And with his mirthless laughter drowns
The humming music of the spheres.

The air grows chill; the farce is played;
His tinsel doffed, in tattered plight
(See how the torches flare and fade!)
He passes out into the night.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Love your ancestors

"You should have seen your ancestors when they did this same thing. You should have seen your generations of grandmothers and grandfathers doing "kirtan" as well. Would you believe they did it in churches especially reserved for this practice instead of gymnasiums and convention rooms? They called it "hymns" instead of bhajans and they called it "congregational singing" instead of "kirtan." But they were just like this. You are getting blissed out. This is good. Do you think your ancestors did not get blissed out in their
churches as they sang their hymns and listened to religious songs? No, they got
just as blissed out as you. Even more. Do you think a religion thrives and lasts
for 20 centuries because it gives them "nothing" every Sunday? No, your ancestors also sought bliss through God-worship and religious singing. They had the advantage, too, of having lyrics in their own language with ideas they actively understood as they sang the words. It made it even better. They also got to evoke their own conditioning going back to childhood and tradition, and feel a connection to their past religious ancestors. But you are exactly like your ancestors -- seeking God like them. They didn't have the word bliss. They used words like "glory" and "rapture" instead, trying to talk about it. Weren't those grand words? And yet you think you are rejecting your heritage. You think that you are separate from your own best people. No, you are trying to approach back to them, just doing it a bit neurotically and blindly. Sorry you are limited to singing now about a monkey figure you don't know much about and have no conditioning for, or a foreign cultural figure like Ram or Radha when you have so many saints in your own traditions and countries. But hey, it's great that the impulse to seek God, so strong in your own ancestors, is still manifesting in you even though you are sadly denying your own bhakti-kirtan
heritage, and separating yourself from your own bhakti-kirtan Christian traditions. I salute you. But I'm sad that you don't know it can be even better than this. Greater bliss. Greater rapture. Greater connection to God and community. It used to happen in your ancestors' churches. They could even slow down or shorten the verses, make them more repetitive, speed up the song later, do more call-and response, and even sing it in a foreign language for you. And maybe they should. Those are musical style and cultural matters. But don't think you are really doing anything different than your great religious ancestors. Embrace them and find out how great was their devotion and how beautiful their music and how fine their bliss in church many Sundays."

Christianity & Chastity

Austerities, charity, and faith.

History of Information

Interesting site.

NWO Analysis

Dugin again.

The USA considers itself to be the logical conclusion and the peak of the
Western civilization. In the ancient terms it was presented as the Manifest
Destiny of USA. Now they speak in the terms of human rights, promotion of the
democracy and of technology, free market institutions and so on. But in the
essence, we deal with a new edition of the Western universalism that passed by
Roman Empire, Medieval Christianity, the Modernity (with the Enlightenment and
colonization) and up to present day postmodernism and ultra-individualism. The
history is considered to be univocal (monotone) process of technological and
social progress, the way of growing liberation of individuals from all kind of
collective identities. The tradition and conservatism are regarded as the
obstacles for the freedom and should be rejected. The USA is in vanguard of this
historical progress and has the right and obligation (mission!) to move the
history further and further. The historical existence of USA coincides with the
course of the human history. So “American” means “universal”. The other cultures
have only an American future or no future at all.

Abstinence

Some excellent ramblings on fasting.

Rosiya

Holy Mother Russia

Is it possible to do for a nation, & then the world, what our spirit and reason can do for our soul? What would the vehicle be?

Do Nations have a divine destiny? What if (like the USA) we have decided to be a commercial corporation, rather than even a commonwealth?

Russia by Dugin

Dugin on Modernity.

Culture

La culture, c'est ce qui reste quand on a tout oublié, c'est ce qui manque quand on a tout appris Édouard Herriot.

Gold, Jupiter, & Wine

Ficino, Plato re-born, Christianized, and given the gift of the Graces.

Interesting distinction between false idolatry and super-celestial worship.

The Holy Spirit

Help us, Holy Spirit, the bond (copula) of Father and Son,
When you rest you are the Father, when you proceed, the Son;
In binding all in one, you are the Holy Spirit.

—Hymn attributed to Victorinus

NeoPlatonism & Other Subjects

Gornahoor, guest post. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

NeoPlatonism is providentially designed to be the "metaphysics" which completes the Faith internally, just as the Faith completes NeoP internally and externally. Too bad the Church ignored Philoponus.

Ficino's "Christianity"

Angela Voss is apparently something of an authority on Ficino, whose work she has edited recently, in his letters. He worked on translating the Orphic hymns, and it is said that one of his letters was composed to accompany the gift of the painting imaged here, which is Botticelli's Primavera. High culture has always been looked at askance by the Puritan, who suspects a hidden agenda that is sinful.

Tennyson's Absolute

"I have never had any revelations through anesthetics, but a kind of waking trance - this for lack of a better word - I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words - where death was an almost laughable impossibility - the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. By God Almighty! There is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Contents of the First Tier (at Dunedain)