Jesus is the Red Right Hand of God

Rubente Dextra

Paradise Lost (Book II, 170-174) : "What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, / Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, / And plunge us in the flames; or from above / Should intermitted vengeance arm again / His red right hand to plague us?".

     A lot of Christians say that Jesus sits on the right hand of God, and while (as a believing Christian) I affirm this is true, it is also true that Christ IS the red, right hand of God. It was Justin Martyr's conclusion that "the angel of the Lord" was the pre-incarnate Christ. This means that Michael, leader of the hosts of angels, is the risen Lord. Hence, Jesus' words that He could call a host of angels to minister to him, for He is their captain. Christ is the stigmata of God. He is the double-oath that God will fight to save His world. Hence the sword coming out of his mouth to devour his enemies, in the book of Revelation.
     This is difficult to understand, because we tend to picture God anthropomorphically, sitting up there in the sky, remote and distant, like a Deistic watch-maker for all practical intents and purposes, lacquered over with a mask of highly emotional and personal preferences having to do with whatever we like or love. Perhaps He is a great liberal sentimentalist, or a budding Leftist SJW, or a conservative liberal old codger who likes to play golf? 
     This hollowing out of Christianity by Theism has been well documented. Whether it began with William of Ockham (thesis of Richard Weaver), Duns Scotus (thesis of Benedict XVI), or with the Reformation-Puritan strain which eviscerated Christianity of all magic, miracles, sacraments, and European cultus, what happened definitely happened.
     Modern Theism itself shares a lot of similarities with Deism, which had virtually nothing in common except for the name with authentic Christianity. Theism provided a conduit for Deism and Enlightenment to acculturate and grow and ferment within the Christian Church. So much so that now, the Yale Divinity School thinks it's more than While there is nothing inherently wrong with thinking of God in certain ways, this externalizing of God into the distant Sky-Father has tended to sweep away all its competitors, largely because He delivered the goods in the form of modern Science, and was capable of widespread acceptance among the "cultured despisers of religion". Additionally, it served a valuable purpose in locating God totally outside of man, so that man's fallen nature was rationalized and to a degree justified, in that it left all initiative and guilt for this schism in the hands of an unaccountably hidden God, Who was either sitting on His hands, or working so crazily it was hard to get on the same page with Him. The Deists leaned towards sitting on His hands, and the Theists had the huge problem of explaining the existence of radical evil, reversals in Fortune among the Christian peoples of Europe, and also the arbitrary and narrative-dependent nature of constructing a coherent "full counsel of God" out of the chaos of modern industrial civilization. The best work Voltaire ever did was on this very difficulty, in the hilarious and vulgar satire Candide. I am not despising the sophistication of either of these camps: the Gifford Lectures would not exist without a strong tradition of speculative philosophy in both of these camps.
     The problem is not that Theism or Liberalism exist (in a bare naked pragmatic sense): the problem is that people have fetishized these schools of thought as substitutes for the Kingdom of God. So much so that it is difficult to even convince the Liberals that the Left is their enemy, because, frankly, the Liberals are an alternate (American ersatz) religion, just not as up-to-date and consistent as full Monty Leftism. But they are (nonetheless) very different, and actually quite opposed. Despite all the obvious motives to understand this, people trapped within "worldview arguments" have trouble differentiating between blue-on-blue incidents and Broken Arrow scenarios. Part of what makes our Kali Yuga times so difficult is precisely that no one really knows, in the fog of metaphysical war, what the Hell is going on out there. Because this is simply reflecting the state of their inner man.
     Meanwhile, the Kingdom of God moves in the actual cosmos, not necessarily bound by what is "dreamt of in your philosophies". Western rational theology has neglected the immanent and the intuitive and the mystical side of the Divine, and subordinated this to the "enlightened and rational" pieties of the day. These Leftist Mega-Fallacies (like Mega Fauna and Flora) are so big they are hard to see; for example, the Non-Central Fallacy is constantly combined with Idolus Triba (or "rape by the Zeitgeist") gets you Antifa and the Leftist Witch Hunt we are witnessing forming up around us, everywhere, today. 
     All of this is kindergartener stuff, child's play, fighting with mud pies (at best). A colossal waste of human time and energy. And it misses what is most important about what is really going on in the Modern World - Man is running very far behind the Cosmic Time, and we need to catch up.
     Thanks to Cologero Salvo at Gornahoor, we have an interesting quote from Rudolf Steiner: 

 There is in man an inclination, a proclivity, to know what may be called in a general sense, the Divine. The second inclination in him — that is, in the man of today — is to know the Christ. The third inclination in man is to know what is usually called the Spirit or also the Holy Spirit.

     This perfectly encapsulates the challenge of modern Times, which stem from being downstream of the Incarnation.Although representing the middle term, the Incarnation actualizes and energizes (rooting and  fermenting the energies of the Divine within human history, perception, and experience. God reparsed the ancient Narrative through the living tongues of flame on Pentecost, thanks to the Incarnation. 
     We will examine more implications of this in Part II. Suffice it to note that, when one is not in synchronization with God's "deep time", or "cosmological-ecological Time", the power of the Logos operative in Creation begins to appear as The Red Right Hand of God, compelling, coercing, dictating to man with necessities and through privations. Thus, the Left is continually obsessed with rooting this out, because the spiritual experience is one of waste and acedia. And they will only make it worse. In order to have peace, leave the Left Behind. And develop these inner tendencies which Steiner talks about, operative in the deep recesses of man's being, to bring man into sync with God's good and gracious timing.When this happens, Necessity becomes Freedom: the Logos becomes, not the Red Right Hand, but the beating heart of God's numinous Love for Creation. Christianity is utterly antithetical in spiritual actuality from anything which is compromised by Leftism, even the "modern Right". Anything else will leave us as "damned devils" who believe, but tremble.
     
    

Support Your Local Dollar Despot

     It is no longer possible to use words like "capitalism" and "socialism" in a derogatory manner - nobody knows what the most precise definition is, and can't be bothered to clear that up anyway. Instead, the word oligarchy is more promising. Even that adjectival noun doesn't do America justice. What we have is plutocracy. Aristotle defined aristocracy as rule by the better few, while oligarchy would simply be rule by the few: the unjust form of aristocracy. If aristocracy (as embodied most of all in the ancien regime in France) fell because of the revolt among the many in the "Folk" or Volk, our republic today is failing because of the revolt of the "many" elites against the remaining healthy "many". The elites are using "majority-minorities" to bludgeon their populist political opponents, who (barely) can still constitute the "Many". If one weighs the NAACP, SPLC, the ACLU and all of the many arms of the liberal elite associations, its very numbers and sophistication amplifies its power to the point of constituting a rival "Many", and gives them control over Media, Education, Government, Entertainment, and (now) most of the main-line Churches.
     In other words, the Western world has entered a downward spiral of degeneration in which each group launches revolutions in mores and laws against the more conservative elements in the other groups. There is no longer a "commonwealth". The main issue here is not class or social justice, but Justice. Neither is the issue which class or caste should rule. The issue is whether the American people can secure just rule by any group or person. Monarchy having been excluded from the outset, America had left to choose between the natural aristoi or the body of commoners. This dynamic played itself out (for instance) in the struggle of Jackson against the old parties and entrenched leadership.
     However, the disappearance of Christianity as a cultural force has opened up more possibilities. Instead of being ruled by (relatively) sound and sane natural aristocrats or populist leaders at the head of a (relatively) normal movement, we are now confronted with the proletariat, the lumpen-proleteriat, the huddled mobs and masses, and actual dissidents who range from the bizarre and macabre to the suddenly-weirdly-possible (if current population trends continue). These forces exist in any society, but are normally held in check by just and sound rule or statecraft; the fact that they are no longer creeping when out in the open means that they sense their time is nigh.
     The new leaders which have emerged to manage these possibilities are either demagogues or plutocrats. Donald Trump is arguably both, while Hillary was certainly both, but in much cleverer disguise. The human mind desperately wants to think in terms of simplistic binaries (eg., Us vs. the 1%), but as the bottom drops out of what was left of once-great America, a multitude of insane options present themselves. John Howard Kunstler argues that America will eventually accept "corn-pone Nazis" if that means it can keep Suburbia. The Left apparently actually believes we are in danger of fascism coming to power, and they are pioneering fascistic methods on our streets in order to prevent Fascism with a capital F (you have to destroy the village in order to save it). This despite the fact that George Orwell already noted long ago that the word has lost any objective meaning. Corn-pone fascism comes in a leftist dipping sauce and spices if that's your poison.
     Why is it, that year after year, America's debt goes up and up, living arrangements seem more temporary, life feels more hectic, and the whole nation feels like a moonscape settlement in a dystopian science fiction novel? Because America no longer has any morals or even mores left. Carthage, too, once the world's greatest trading empire, possibly possessing ships that were seaworthy to cross the Atlantic, believed that money alone could defeat and rule the rest of the world, and seemed invincible. The British Empire itself went broke trying to keep its coffers ringing with tribute from around the globe. The love of money is the root of all evil. And America loves money. Not just a lot, but almost the exclusion of everything else. Money is the only language degraded intellects can parse.
     In America, the dollar is King - "The business of America is business.". We will not get Russian oligarchs, at least not yet. We will get the "soft" version of a melting-pot mob presided over by gluttonous plutocrats, all squabbling over the enormous carcass of what was once the wealthiest nation on earth. This is because as times worsen, people turn to what they know and understand, something simply, something denominated in binary Ones and Zeros - the Almighty Dollar. If illegal immigration pays for Tyson and the rich and Democratic hereditary legacy-bureaucrats, then illegal immigration we will get. If pollution and drug trafficking generate revenue streams, then we will get mountains of waste dumps, dirty lakes, and plenty of cheap heroin and meth. America has been schooled, almost from infancy, to value the "main chance". Even the Civil Rights Era could not escape this legacy, keeping their "eyes on the prize", which was access to all the power, glitz, and money afforded by inroads made into "white America". North America has become the center of a global banking Empire which wants to wrap tentacles around the entire globe, until the world is flat again, with no walls or borders.
     The poor don't know any better, and generally can be halfway forgiven for not being able to overcome their cupidity and ignorance, but their number is swelling by the day, and in a "Democracy", numbers matter. They are also engaging in inexcusable violence and shameful displays of hatred and stupidity. And "poor" is a relative term - financially, they still enjoy enviable slices of the Imperial Pie, compared to global counterparts. Their greatest poverty is primarily in cultural capital, like mores and traditions, and they give away what little they have to embrace anyone who is willing to lie to them.
     I am not sure what excuse the rich would use for their short-sighted idiocy in allowing this trend to gain ground, or even adding accelerants to the mixture in the form of Third World immigration, but they will live to regret it. The middle class is shrinking from both sides, either selling out as middle managers for the bozos who are masterminding one of Dante's circles in hell, or else falling abjectly into the seething mass below them. The ones that are left are woefully short more on brains than actual virile manpower, and that is not good either. The middle class still thinks America Can Be Made Great Again, if we just return to 1950s nationalism, or something close to it. My sympathies, but not loyalties, are with them. At least they still remember a time in which ordinary Americans had more in common with each other than not. Their instincts are good and right, but they are hopelessly outclassed by the enormitude of the problems confronting this country, which are not primarily of their design, and will not submit to their belated objections in the form of The Donald. The Donald cannot fix America, even if he knew how.
     Everyone in America wants to get rich quick, even the lumpen-proleteriat, who faithfully and religiously purchase lottery tickets each week or sue their local Walmart because the floors were too slick for their flip-flops. Minorities can barely wait to have their own local power structures, replete with Byzantine levels of corruption and greed. The Italians and Irish gave us our first really gigantic big city political machines, and other minority groups will continue this time-hallowed conservative tradition of money and power being marks of God's divine election in the promised land of the kingdom of God. But maybe this was there from the start, implicit in industrial civilization, as pioneered by the Puritans. Certainly the Abolitionist movement can be viewed as a very effective version of a political machine, if judged by the attainment of goals and aims. Even the Allies during WW2 engaged in effective juggernaut propaganda, all in the name of Freedom, Justice, and (above all) the Dollar.
     It's hard to tell where it all started anymore, but start it did. Western Civilization is (today) for the most part concerned with making money.This means that, in the end, money is all we will have left, and that in name only, because money is not the same as economic wealth or resilience, let alone culture or civilization. We will have to buy everything, including loyalty and the air we breath, and we burn worthless derivative bundles in our potbelly stoves to keep warm during the winters. American resourcefulness, hard work, and tech-savvy go a long way, especially when the world is awash in cheap oil. But macro and micro-economics are not enough to prevent the human tragedy we see unfolding. Man doesn't wish to, and indeed cannot even if he did, live in a world in which he is just another brick in the wall.
     Our global elites have tried to create this world, imagined in countless fantasies, of one unified mankind living in the peace and harmony of an economic paradise. But they tried to build it with manipulation, lies, and promises printed on paper. America is being run like a gigantic corporation, which wishes to take over, or at least control, all the other little corporations it created in its own image in the name of Democracy. Instead of a light on a shining hill, we would be the capital city of a New World Order. God may intend something like this to happen, but it will be built by the Spirit, with the wisdom and power of God, and not according to the dictates of a secular humanism run rampant on cheap (and now declining) fossil fuels.
     God's plan involves re-integrating Time (including Past-Present-Future) in one narrative, and dividing (and thus stabilizing) Space into many diversities which are united in the deeper love of the Spirit, the "shields of the earth". Our rulers want to fragment time (by splitting everything into nanoseconds and re-inventing natural law as if the past could be ignored and the future averted), and crushing space into one uniform order. This way lies the cindery plains of hell. The very people who are most self-righteously pushing for the will of a God they no longer believe in, are doing the most to ruin any chance that this generation can ever begin to glimpse something of the beauty and majesty of God. This is the definition of hypocrisy, Phariseeism, and tyrannically unjust social orders.

 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

     This is the legacy of 1789. It is time to go backwards, in order to go forward again. For those who wish to, here is a great place to start, at Gornahoor. Failing that, or even in addition, you might need to start planting a Victory Garden.
    

Liturgy & Logos

Posted on 2012-11-09 by Logres

A popular refrain I hear from fellow Protestants is that “meaningless rituals”, gestures, “smells and bells”, or vain repetitions (a Scriptural phrase) won’t help find favor with God. While I am certain that ritual can (and does) degenerate into “those of darkness” who are fascinated with the dead (Rene Guenon) and their debased conclaves or practices, the pre-existent Logos of the universe that created the world through its pattern entails that relationships between and among “things” exist, even at the lowest level. Anyway, if vain repetitions include all things which repeat themselves, then why do we always prefer beautiful pictures or soothing colors for certain environments, as opposed to the opposite? As Millinerd pointed out, what happens when you “lose the Faith” in a church that used to be a drive-through? Will you be reminded by the stained glass on the wall? The spires? The ringing old church bell? Or the grease stains under the carpet? “Cultural Christianity” is the nave or ante-chamber of the Church – the paintings on the walls of these early Churches were the Greek Philosophers like Heraclitus. It is Justin the Martyr, not Hippolytus, who should guide our thinking here.
The absolute consensus among anyone interested in Tradition is that some patterns are more significant (or more elevated) than others. Some Ideas are more fruitful than others. Some people are better than others, at least in the sense (and no one can disagree with this) that they are truer to their real Self. But what happens when you forget there is a higher Self that is more real? You turn to Revolution. And you hate your patrimony. The worldview of those who reject liturgy per se actually leads to real “vain repetitions”: One damn thing after the other.
The Logos exists, both “in here” and “out there”. It was pursued in olden days all over the face of the earth. Here is Strabo (St. Clement mentions the Hyloboi also):

As for the Garmanes, he [Megasthenes, Indica fragment 41 Schwanbeck] says that the most honourable of them are named Hylobii and that they live in forests, subsisting on leaves and wild fruits, clothed with the bark of trees, and abstaining from wine and the delights of love; and that they communicate with the kings, who through messengers inquire about the causes of things and through the Hylobii worship and supplicate the Divinity.

Here is an example of how various rites and rituals from within a single Tradition coalesce. If one takes the Four Corners of the Earth from the Taoist exercises (Dragon for the east, Tiger for the south, Eagle for the West, and Bear for the North), and matches them to the eight directional exercises, we see that the archery exercise matches the Bear’s stolid pose, the light-scanning exercise goes with the eastern Dragon, the waist spin goes with the southern Tiger, and the adoring wave goes towards the western Eagle.
We can cross-match this against Druidry, and assign the place of yellow or light with the East and the dragon, the place of fire-orange-pink-gold with the Spirit in the south, the place of the limpid and pure water elements that are blue in the West, and the green quarter with the North, from which came life out of the ice.
Further matching this with the Christian tradition, we associate the East with the Father or primal Ur-Spring/archetype, the South with the descending fire of the Holy Spirit’s charisma, the West with water and the elements used in service of the Son/Logos, and the North with the symbol of the green Earth, or the “Amen”, the union of the three higher elements. Is this purely arbitrary? We think not. Even if it was thrown in dispute, it would only be to find a more faithful representation, much as one artist is “greater” than another.
The watches of the day, as well as the organs of the body, could also be related within this scheme. Indeed, when people reject “old Custom”, do they even know anything about what is being thrown out? Who knows, in the Christian West, or even better practices, the Emberdays? While better arrangements than this one occuring to me certainly should exist (I hope someone out there has studied this far more deeply), this configuration suggested itself naturally to my mind while I practiced the exercises, without any mental work. In other words, they arrange themselves this way – symbols teach us themselves, while we do the “work”, because they exist already, independently, and at a higher plain. This pre-existence implies that liturgy, far from being vain repetition, made up or arbitrary, is either given for use, existent as help, or revealed, with even a little attention or effort. I agree with Cologero that “mulligan stew” has no charm, so this exercise is not intended to convince everyone (as Simone Weil rightly warned against) that all religions/Traditions are just various and equal routes to the same path. We already can see vividly where that Idea leads. It is as fruitless as the idea that anyone outside your constellation of thoughts is doomed to Hell inevitably. A Tradition is not arbitrary when you are “called” to it; hence, Christianity has some impact on virtually everyone in the modern West, even if they prefer this not to be the case.
The purer and nobler the supplicant, the better the liturgy. This is what gave the Church its liturgy for thousands of years, and is not “pagan” – it is there, because the Logos is there. The strategy of the Catholic Church (and also the Orthodox, to some degree) was to baptize the natural cultures and human climates they came across, purify it, exalt it, and let Nature be subsumed (and preserved) within Super-Nature. They did not posit an endlessly devouring circle of hermeneutic suspicion, where “Idolatry” became the greatest sin. Actually, the greatest sin is to worship nothing at all, because that would imply that one’s natural state was the highest possible sphere of actualized Existence, and this would imply that the fallen self (or at least the non-perfected self) was the goal of all Creation. Isn’t this exactly what “salvation by faith” among the modern Protestants has come to mean?
I have sketched a very simple symbolic pattern which demonstrates that Taoism, Druidry, and Christianity have a deep resonance at the level of abstract symbolic in the physical world and its connection to the Logos or Pattern. Christianity itself cannot really extricate itself from its decline without re-emphasizing the teachings surrounding the Logos – only this will give a legitimate “common basis” for discussion, practice, and commonality, while also rightly showing Christians how to transcend even that in the fullness of the teachings of the Logos mystery (the preparations, Incarnation, and Second Coming, then Recapitulation).
Vain repetitions? Nothing is more vain than individuals who expect to ignore the Logos, over and over again, and still find cheap grace with a God that they imagine in a vacuum. When the Logos repeats a pattern, it is not vain – nor is it vain when man can see this pattern, and align himself with it, including in the arena of gesture and invocation. All depends upon the discernment of the Spirits.
What the Christian Church needs is not just Reformation and Revival, but Renaissance as well, patterned only upon the Logos, and not upon Luther, Charles Finney, or even Leonardo, who are by definition incomplete at best.
Whatever one can say about the Middle Ages (which we may be living in fairly soon as a purgatory for our arrogance), it was certainly more cheerful even in its high dudgeons, to illustrate which, we close with a story:

The emperor knowing that the bishop, being occupied in a great variety of secular business, was now and then guilty of a barbarism, both in speaking and in reading Latin, with the help of his chaplain effaced the syllable fa from the words famulis and famulabus, which form part of a collect in the service for the defunct, in the missal; and then called on the bishop to say a mass for the souls of his father and mother. Meinwerc, therefore, being unexpectedly called on to perform the service, and hastening to do it, read on as he found written, mulis and mulabus, but, perceiving the mistake, he repeated the words correctly. After mass, the emperor said, in a sarcastic manner, to the bishop, ‘I asked you to say mass for my father and mother, not for my male and female mules.’ But he replied, ‘By the mother of our Lord, you have been at your old tricks, and have made a fool of me again; and now, in no common way, but in the service of our God. This he who is my Judge has declared that he will avenge; for that which is done to him he will not pass by unpunished.’ Thereupon, he immediately convened the canons in the chapter-house of the cathedral, ordered the emperor’s chaplain, who had been a party to the trick, to be most severely flogged; and then, having dressed him in new clothes, sent him back to the emperor to tell him what had happened.

Here's Hoping for a Cold, Dark Christmas

May your Christmas have a bass profundo.

Welcome to the Revolution on Sunday Morning

Sunday Roundup

Viking prayer (learn how to pray like a real Christian man)

Gornahoor post

Luther, Descartes, & Rousseau

The Makropoulous Affair

Gornahoor guest post, on Janacek's famous opera.

Plato and Fool's Gold

"The pursuit of gold (chrematistics) became the all-powerful incentive for action for at least a part of society. This change in the public spirit, according to Plato, gives rise, even in an aristocratic society, to a class of people whose gods are money, which they honor secretly with crude passion. The money chest of the rich, filled with gold soon begins to exert its fascination on the whole community. A substantial competition for material possessions is unleashed which constantly increase the avarice; whereas on the other hand, the ideal goods (the arete) sink in the public esteem. For where one bows down before the riches of the rich one must naturally look with disdain on the virtue of the good." - Plato, quoted on From Egypt to Eire

The Church that was Left Behind

The Ekklesia - Whither? or Wither?

Strong Words about the Medieval Era

A rather bizarre theory, Exit. How can something “imaginary” have such real world effects such as to overturn a great traditional pagan civilization as you describe in your manifesto? Rather than believe that “everyone” else is imagining things, it is much more likely that you are imagining things.

We have made this point before, we have described real events, yet it is something you have been unable to grasp and respond to intelligently. But one last time.

The Middle ages was, in the view of all the writers you consider traditional, a traditional civilization, as a matter of fact, the last one in the West. We can see that it was the creation of the Nordics and Germanic tribes in their confrontation with Rome. They feudal society was created by them and was a reflection of their own tradition. They carried over their warrior ethic into the medieval aristocratic, knightly, chivalric caste. Everything in this account points to a continuation or their own tradition, even if it required a “rectification” as Evola put it. We lately posted a short piece by Aquinas wherein he wrote “we ought to begin with man’s earliest conjectures about the angels’, and proceeded to take account of everything the pagans had written about it.

Dante followed Virgil. You hold Coomaraswamy in high regard. We have pointed out in Vedanta and Western Tradition how he pointed out the native path for Europeans to approach the Vedanta. If you cannot even understand the European Tradition, we are quite skeptical about your accounts of the Veda. We could continue, but there are a few hundred articles on Gornahoor that you could read instead of cramming everything here.

Unfortunately, Exit, the half-educated ideologues of the world will not be the ones to continue the ancient ways. We urge you, if you are sincere, to cast off those unsubstantiated opinions of yours and approach Tradition in reverence and the spirit of Truth.

Cologero defending Christianity and the Middle Ages

Guest Post

Another for Gornahoor.
And this was the week before.

A Guest Post

A guest post over at Gornahoor by myself.

For all of my Christian brothers who happen to read this, let me just say that this is my effort to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - the transformation which the Church is going to have to undergo is going to be incredibly wonderful and incredibly difficult. Lying to ourselves about it won't make it any easier. As someone said, "Being strong and being weak take the same amount of work - be strong."

The Church can be true to itself, to its Saviour, and still change.