Mannerbund & Family

One of the nice things about being in the vanguard of the Future, is that you can watch that Future shaped in discussions which will eventually dominate consciousness and shape the terms of debate in the age to come. One of those debates today in the Reaction-Sphere is whether civilization is rooted in the Warband-(Mannerbund), or the Family.

The Froude Society has some interesting remarks:

 In conclusion, illiberal Reaction is taking our leave from quisling revisionists. They are materialists who wish to govern by protocol, philosophically and spiritually joined to our enemies, at the foot if not at the hip. Any man of faith, be him Abrahamic or Pagan, must realize support of these leaders is a sin. They are deceivers who will stab us in the back the second our fight threatens their avarice, if they even take up arms when the time comes… They reject the hero, they reject the sublime, and thus any exoteric link to the Holy on High. Moreover, they do not even pretend to have any solutions for non anglo-civilizations, we speak truths that ring true for all peoples by historical precedent, that good governance and order is always Good.

The Reaction-Sphere still tends to sit on the fence when it comes to Monotheism: there seems a clear tendency of "pagan" reactionaries to prefer Mannerbunds, and for monotheistic ones to be clear that Family is the essence of civilization. 

I tend to think that arguing about this issue in a dichotomous manner is obviously futile - Men and their "ages" go through historical periods with greater or lesser emphasis on either Family/Mannerbund, but this is to look at the animal side of things. During a "Dark Age", the warband achieves notable prominence, but families do not go away, for all that. During a comfortable age of Plenty (eg., the Victorian?), families achieve dominant sway, yet fraternal and patriarchal alliances are still quite notable.

Considered from the principle, it is clear that the Family has precedence in origin: around the Family cluster the sanctities which separate us from the bees or the ants. Even so, the Warband itself, once acknowledged as secondary or derivative, has its own primacy & sphere, in which the family life is only admitted in the brotherly bond, which is through the nature of the mothers. The warrior caste is feminine in regard to the brahmin caste, and has to achieve the divine through a kind of passionate rending of the flesh, expressed in the martial ethos. It is masculine in regards to all else below it, but in its nature, considered to what is above it, it is feminine. This feminine bond is expressed in the fraternal band of brothers, & in order for it to be healthy (eg., non-homosexual, disciplined and regulated in violence, etc.), this bond flows from pre-existing familial structures. The Warband, by itself, cannot be a microcosm of the cosmos, but only represents the victory of the male principles over itself & its enemies: in order to achieve the Grail, the introduction of feminine figures will be required to complete the tale.

The health of the Mannerbund depends upon the health of its fraternal-paternal bonds, which have their origin in the family. I do not deny the importance of the Mannerbund: quite the contrary, I welcome back talk of its resurrection.

Ultimately, real authority is One, & can only stem from an invisible, male, transcendent principle, which nonetheless creates room/diversity for all other forms of existence. The family father or the imperial crown prince, or the war band leader of the Mannerbund (eg., Lancelot) are the foundation of civilization. It is the sanctity of the families clustering around these figures which betray their legitimate and divine nature.

The attempt to oppose family vs. Mannerbund is a moribund and futile distinction, which is unfertile.