COSMODROMIUM

Marina Bychkova Dolls

2012-02-01T07:53:00.000-05:00

Sharon Tate & Mao Tse-tung

2012-01-27T01:26:00.001-05:00

(As originally appearing in Esquire magazine): The little red book which contains hightlights from The thought of Mao Tse-tung is the most influential volume in the world today. It is also extremely dull and entirely unmemorable. To resolve this paradox, we, a handful of editors in authority who follow the capitalist road, thought useful to illustrate certain key passages in such a way that they are more likely to stick in the mind. The visual aid is Sharon Tate and, to give credit where credit, God knows, is due, she will soon be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox motion picture, Valley of the Dolls.

1. Every communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
“Problems of War and Strategy” (November 6, 1938)

2. Our fundamental task is to adjust the use of labor power in an organized way and to encourage women to do farm work.
“Our Economic Policy” (January 23, 1934)

3. How is Marxist-Leninist theory to be linked with the practice of the Chinese revolution? To use a common expression, it is by “shooting the arrow at the target.” As the arrow is to the target, so is Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese revolution. Some comrades, however, are “shooting without a target,” shooting at random, and such people are liable to harm the revolution.
“Rectify the Party’s Style of Work” (February 1, 1942)

4.The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.
Talk at a meeting with Chinese students and trainees in Moscow (November 17, 1957)

5. …the flattery of the bourgeoisie may conquer the weak-willed in our ranks. There may be some Communists, who were not conquered by enemies with guns and were worthy of the name of heroes for standing up to these enemies, but who cannot withstand sugar-coated bullets. We must guard against such a situation.
“Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party Of China.” (March 5, 1949)

6. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. …If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.
“On Practice” (July, 1937)

What am I reading?

2012-01-24T23:39:00.011-05:00

One of the most frequent questions I get in person is "What are you reading?" I hate answering this, especially to people I don't know, because 1) its none of their fucking business, and 2) usually they would have no idea what it is about or why I would be interested in it. I'm also irrationally protective of my privacy, like anyone really gives a rat's ass what I'm into or why, or when. This is the reason I rarely post book reviews even though I'm a voracious reader and typically read several books a week.

So for those who are interested at all, this is the tip of the iceberg, by way of highlights from my backlog/record of dot-com orders from the past two years or so. Remember this barely scratches the surface of what I read. I own an antiquarian/second-hand bookstore and typically bring home SEVERAL BOXES of books every week for my own use. There is no way I'm going to log all that, much less everything I actually read, skim, or browse through for specific pieces of information.

These are in reverse order, most recent first:

Gregorian Chant (A Midland Book)
Willi Apel

Solving in Style
John Nunn

Chess Wizardry: The New ABC of Chess Problems (American Batsford Chess Library)
John Rice

Scratchboard for Illustration
Ruth Lozner

The Art of Scratchboard
Cecile Curtis

Bonatti on Nativities
Guido Bonatti, Benjamin N Dykes

Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq
Michael Scheuer

Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times
Julius Evola

For My Legionaries (The Iron Guard)
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

The Prison Notes
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Julius Evola

The Complete Picatrix: The Occult Classic Of Astrological Magic Liber Atratus Edition
John Michael Greer, Christopher Warnock

Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery: The 1758-1760 Hertel Edition of Ripa's Iconologia with 200 Engraved Illustrations
Cesare Ripa

Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism
John Gage

Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Color & Culture)
John Gage

Syncretism in the West : Pico's 900 Theses (1486) : The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems : With a Revised Text, English Tr
Stephen A. Farmer, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery
Lyndy Abraham

A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635).
George. Introduction by Rosemary Freeman.

The Transcendent Unity of Religions (Quest Book)
Frithjof Schuon, Huston Smith

An International Armorial: The Historical File of the House of Leopardi of Constantinople
Leopardi

The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetical Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World
Kieren Barry

Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression
Vincent Foster Hopper

An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines
Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Studies in Freemasonry and the Compagnonnage
Rene Guenon

Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts
Mircea Eliade, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona

Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art (2 Vol. Set)
Helene E. Roberts

Iconography of Christian art (2 Vol. Set)
Gertrud Schiller

The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future
Robert Darnton

Signs and Symbols in Christian Art: With Illustrations from Paintings from the Renaissance (Galaxy Books)
George Ferguson

Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged
Arthur E. Waite

Master of Death: The Lifeless Art of Pierre Remiet, Illuminator
Michael Camille

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Tim Weiner

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards
Michael Dummett

Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art
Adolf Katzenellenbogen

A Theory of Semiotics (Advances in Semiotics)
Umberto Eco

The Magical Calendar: A Synthesis of Magial Symbolism from the Seventeenth-Century Renaissance of Medieval Occultism (Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourcewo)
Adam McLean

The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Material Texts)
Mary Carruthers, Jan M. Ziolkowski

The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science
A. James Gregor

Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance
Erwin Panofsky, Gerda S. Panofsky

A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World
Nicholas A. Basbanes

D'Annunzio
Tommaso Antongini

Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice (Issues in contemporary civilization)
Renzo De Felice

Mussolini
Anthony James Joes

The First Duce: D'Annunzio at Fiume
Professor Michael Arthur Ledeen

The Book Of Symbols: Reflections On Archetypal Images (The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism)
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, ARAS

Astrology, Magic, and Alchemy in Art (A Guide to Imagery)
Matilde Battistini

"Boney" Fuller: The Intellectual General
Anthony John Trythall

Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance
E.H. Gombrich

The Forty Chapters of al-Kindi
Abu Yusuf al-Kindi

Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations
Joscelyn Godwin

Works of Sahl & Masha'allah
Sahl ibn Bishr, et al

Introductions to Traditional Astrology
Abu Ma'shar, et al

Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies

Persian Nativities I: Masha'allah and Abu 'Ali
Masha'allah, et al

Persian Nativities II: 'Umar al-Tabari and Abu Bakr
Umar al-Tabari, et al

Persian Nativities III: Abu Ma'shar on Solar Revolutions
Abu Ma'shar

Astrological Roots: The Hellenistic Legacy
Joseph Crane

The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology
Vivian E. Robson

The Judgments of Nativities
Abu Ali Al-Khayyat,

Mystical Astrology According to Ibn 'Arabi (The Fons Vitae Titus Burckhardt series)
Titus Burckhardt, et al

Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A History
Anna Bramwell

The Transformist Illusion
Douglas Dewar

The Path of Cinnabar
Julius Evola

Principles of Tantra (Parts 1 and 2 bound in One) The Tantratattva of Sriyukta Siva Candra Vidyarnava Bhattacarya Mahodaya
Arthur Avalon, John Woodroffe

On the Genre and Message of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys
Bruce J. Malina

Book of Instructions in the Elements of the Art of Astrology
et al Al Biruni

The Beginning of Wisdom (Translation From Hebrew)
Avraham Ibn Ezra, et al

Primary Directions: Astrology's Old Master Technique
Martin Gansten

Ancient Astrology Theory and Practice: Matheseos Libri VIII
Julius Firmicus Maternus

Sacred Art of Shakespeare: To Take Upon Us the Mystery of Things
Martin Lings, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales

Classical Music of North India the First Years of Study: The Music of the Baba Allauddin Gharana As Taught by Ali Akbar Khan at the Ali Akbar College
Ali Akbar Khan, George Ruckert

The Raga Guide: Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas
Various Artists

101 Raga-s for the 21st Century and Beyond: A Music Lover's Guide to Hindustani Music
Haresh Bakshi

Ragas of Northern Indian Music
Alain Danielou

Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Music in the Twentieth Century)
Michael Nyman

Stockhausen on Music
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Robin Maconie

Improvisation: Its Nature And Practice In Music
Derek Bailey

Homo americanus:: Child of the Postmodern Age
Tomislav Sunic

Against Democracy and Equality: The New European Right
Tomislav Sunic, et al

New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe
Michael O'Meara

Let me hear your war cry

2012-01-23T23:47:00.000-05:00

100% Cosmodromium Approved...

2012-01-22T00:42:00.003-05:00

Tarot & Chess - Le Pape/Bishop

2012-01-21T01:10:00.000-05:00

Another interesting parallel.

Bishop Chess Piece, 12th century English. Walrus ivory; 3 7/8 x 2 3/8 in. (9.8 x 6 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art: New York image taken from: http://www.metmuseum.org/

32000 year old Idol of Narsimha found in Germany

2012-01-19T00:18:00.007-05:00

This is interesting, even though I don't agree with the interpretation in this article. The artifact is very old (predating the Vedas and artifacts such as the Venus of Willendorf), and Northern. In relation to Traditional studies it is interesting to note artifacts like this, and ruins such as the Goseck Circle, keep turning up older, and in the North. - JDS.

32000 year old Idol of Narsimha (Lord Vishnu’s Avatar) found in Germany
Many news about prehistoric founds and their possible meaning reached the world in the last decades. One of them, found in South Germany, puts scientist around the world in amazement. The centerpiece is the “lion man”, an idol that is made from the tusk of a mammoth in the form of a human body with a lion head. Amazingly it is dated back 32,000 years from now.

This discovery brought a lot of attention in the archaeological circles in Europe. In Excavations around 1930-35 at the Lonetal area near Ulm, German scientist already found an immense cave system with lots of prehistoric artifacts in it.

First, only representations of birds, horses, turtles and even single lions where found but not a morphological combination of men and animal. Naturally the “lion man” was quite outstanding and unique. It became also clear during the later examinations that the “lion-men” was used for ritual purposes, unlike the other items which seemed to have accompanied the dead and so on.

The Idol was found exactly at the place in the cave where day and night meet, about 20 meters away from the entrance and buried 1,20 meter deep under the ground. Many parts of the figure were broken and where found a little away in this area. Therefore it took some time to finish the work of completing and reconstructing the figure and to see it as a whole.

From the viewpoint of Vedic culture of ancient India, Lord Vishnu appeared in a divine human form with a lion face to protect his devotee and to stop religiousness. A description of a standing idol form of this lord is found in the agama silpa shastra and is called “kevala narasimha”. In India still many ancient temples exist, where deities of Sri Narasimha Bhagavan are worshiped, often at special locations like on high mountain peaks or in caves.

Many ancient, highly developed cultures had some kind of idols or pictures of lions with a human face or torso. A purely ritualistic Relic, like for example the Sphinx of gizeh or the Egyptian goddess of war sekhmetm, with a lion head, or Mithra, the Sun god of Persia, with a lion face, the Assyrian Gate Guardians of Babylon or the Etruscan lion with wings at the entrance of the Temple mountain at Troy are well known examples for this.

An now this amazing discovery in Lonetal in a deep cave which is directed to north east towards the little river lone. Extraordinary is also the exact position of the found of the lion-man. It immediately reminded me of the ancient story from the Puranas, known to all devotees of LordVishnu, where Hiranyakashipu, the great demon, achieved nearly immortality by the blessings of Brahma. This demon asked for the boon that he could not be killed by a beast or man, nor in the sky or on earth, not inside or outside a house, not in the day or in the night, not with weapons or by hand and so on. Lord Vishnu then appeared out of a column to kill this demon. But to fulfill the boon Brahma gave, he appeared at dusk and killed him on the doorsteps of his palace with his sharp nails.

It is off course difficult or maybe impossible to finally judge if this idol was a part of a global Vedic civilization but nonetheless our visit of the exhibition, where one can see the figure in a cave like hall, and our later trip to the original place of discovery where very breathtaking and mystical and made us meditate deeply about our predecessors and ancient times long ago where god was present directly on earth, or later in his idol form in many temples all around the world.

SOURCE.

From Wikipedia:

A lion headed figure, first called the lion man (German: Löwenmensch, literally "lion person"), then the lion lady (German: Löwenfrau), is an ivory sculpture that is the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general. The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity. The figurine was determined to be about 32,000 years old[1][2] by carbon dating material from the same layer in which the sculpture was found. It is associated with the archaeological Aurignacian culture.[3] The sculpture is 29.6 cm (11.7 inches) in height, 5.6 cm wide. and 5.9 cm thick. It was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. There are seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges on the left arm. It is now in the museum in Ulm, Germany.

Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave named Stadel-Höhle im Hohlenstein (Stadel cave in Hohlenstein Mountain) in the Lonetal (Lone valley) in the Swabian Alps, Germany. Due to the beginning of the Second World War, it was forgotten and only rediscovered thirty years later. The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head. Between 1997 and 1998 additional pieces of the sculpture were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.

Originally, the figure was classified as male by Joachim Hahn. From examination of some additional parts of the sculpture found later, Elisabeth Schmid decided that the figure was a woman with the head of a "Höhlenlöwin" (female Cave Lion).[4] Both interpretations lack scientific evidence.[4] European cave lions, male and female, lacked the distinctive manes of the African male lion, and so its absence here cannot lead to an interpretation as a 'lioness'.

Recently the ancient figurine has more often been called a lion headed figurine, rather than a 'lion man'. The name currently used in German, Löwenmensch—meaning "lion-human"—similarly, is neutral.

Interpretation is very difficult. The sculpture shares certain similarities with French cave wall paintings, which also show hybrid creatures. The French paintings, however, are several thousand years younger than the German sculpture.

After this artifact was identified, a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found, along with other animal figures and several flutes, in another cave in the same region of Germany. This leads to the possibility that the lion-figure played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic. The sculpture can be seen in the Ulmer Museum in Ulm, Germany, though it may be moved to a planned new museum of the Paleolithic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_man_of_the_Hohlenstein_Stadel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurignacian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Hohle_Fels

Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Signs

2012-01-18T23:38:00.000-05:00

Witchcraft '70

2012-01-18T00:36:00.000-05:00

Nazi-Themed Sports Day Draws Criticism in Thailand

2012-01-18T00:20:00.002-05:00

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011, 11:49 AM SGT

Nazi-Themed Sports Day Draws Criticism in Thailand
By James Hookway

Questions are growing in Thailand about how school students in Chiang Mai were able to adopt a Nazi theme for their school sports-day on Friday, wearing outfits modeled on those of SS guards and waving huge swastika banners.

Children at the Sacred Heart preparatory school traditionally choose their own theme for their annual sports day, school officials have said. The idea is that it’s a surprise for both teachers and parents.

Last week’s event was a shocker, though. Photographs taken at the event show streams of children dressed up in Nazi regalia marching into the school displaying one-armed salutes. At least one girl sported a toothbrush mustache.

News of the sports day quickly spread, and a Jewish human-rights organization has asked Christian leaders in Thailand to condemn the parade. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said in a statement that one youngster even dressed as Adolf Hitler before the march wound its way around the school, bewildering local expatriates, many of them European retirees.

Local honorary consuls from a number of countries visited the school on Monday to ask why the parade was allowed to take place and came back with the answer that the students didn’t realize it would upset anybody. The local private education authority also received the same response from the Roman Catholic school.

“It happened because the students were unaware and I have asked the school to make sure they are more careful in the future,” Chanwit Tuphsuphan, secretary-general of the Office of the Private Education Commission, was reported as saying in the Bangkok Post.

A person reached at the preparatory school said no one was available to discuss the matter.

One theory for the kids’ behavior is that they didn’t necessarily understand the consequences of their actions and merely considered dressing up as super-villains – even Nazis – to be fun. A similar incident occurred at a school in Bangkok four years ago and involved 200 students. And in 2005 Britain’s Prince Harry – then 20 years old – was pictured on the front of The Sun newspaper wearing a swastika armband to a friend’s fancy dress party.

The Swastika, in addition, is an ancient Indo-European symbol depicted in spiritual imagery for thousands of years, and is perceived as symbol of good luck among Buddhists, possibly softening the impact of the Nazi version among locals.

Many residents have ventured that the really didn’t understand the significance of the parade, as their teachers suggest. If that’s the case, though, it could suggest Thailand has more problems with its education system than it realized, even though the school involved is a privately-run, Christian institution.

Foreign investors have consistently pointed to poor education levels as a potential deterrent to plowing further money into the country, especially now that minimum wages are set to rise to 300 baht or around $10 a day – nearly doubling in some areas and not far behind Malaysia, where education levels are much higher and many ordinary people speak English comfortably.

The World Economic Forum recently published its annual competitiveness survey, and the quality of secondary and tertiary education in Thailand was ranked 77th out of 142 countries surveyed, compared with Singapore’s number 2 ranking, 14 for Malaysia and 61 for the Philippines.

Both the main political parties here recognized the problem during a recent national election campaign. The Puea Thai, or For Thais, Party eventually won after pledging, among other things, a tablet computer for every child. Concerned parents may hope they’ll google Nazism – and understand its consequences– the next time they are asked to come up with a theme for a sports-day parade.

SOURCE.

Grisly find reveals Indonesia's fixation with black magic

2012-01-18T00:14:00.001-05:00

One of the faux caves where the flamboyant Ki Joko Bodo weaves his magic.

Grisly find reveals Indonesia's fixation with black magic
Tom Allard
January 14, 2012
ON A Thursday morning last year, Sapari, a cemetery caretaker in Bonasari in East Java, made a disturbing discovery.
Underneath the frangipani trees that stand as sentinels over the graves, he found neatly dug holes. Graves had been robbed.
And on closer examination, the 60-year-old discovered the thieves had a particular target. Fifteen places of burial had been pilfered, all of them for children. Their remains had vanished.
''Everyone was very worried when they found out,'' Sapari said. ''The families were very upset.''
The villagers hatched a plan to stake out the cemetery the following night to catch the perpetrators red-handed if they returned.
But the plot never played out. Word had got around and by afternoon the police had set up a crime scene and TV crews and journalists had descended on Bonasari.
It turned out that Bonasari was not the only victim of the corpse-stealers. Two other burial grounds had been robbed. In all, the graves of 24 children had been exhumed on the same night in a co-ordinated action.
Police have yet to make an arrest and the investigation continues, but few are in doubt about the motivation of the grave robbers.
''It was for black magic,'' Sapari says. ''Maybe for immunity, or strength … or maybe to make yourself disappear.''
Ki Kusumo, anointed by several magazines as Indonesia's most popular paranormal, says: ''There are plenty of cases like this. It's just that they don't always make the media.''
He says deceased virgin teenage girls are particularly sought after and ''families have to guard the tomb for 40 days'' after burial. In Indramayu in West Java, he says he knows of babies born on an auspicious day in the Javanese calendar being kidnapped and beheaded. ''The heads are buried in the front of the person's house. They believe, this way, they will become wealthy.''
To be sure, the case of the missing child corpses in East Java is especially grisly, but it speaks of the enduring fascination of Indonesians for the supernatural. There are regular reports of schoolchildren and factory workers going into mass trances and millions of Indonesians visit tombs of holy men and nationalist heroes on auspicious dates, meditating long into the night, hoping for benevolent guidance.
Across the archipelago, and especially in Java, dukuns, or shamans, still play a central role in many people's lives. Believed to have special abilities to transcend the material world and communicate with spirits, they are consulted on a vast array of matters.
Some are healers, specialising in massage, herbal remedies or acupuncture, tending to ailments that doctors can't seem to fix. Others provide advice on romance, careers, business opportunities, the best times to plant crops or hold a wedding.
Such benign advice is imparted by dukuns who practise white magic, but there are many others - known as dukun santet - who use black magic, and are hired to bring misfortune to rivals in love, business and politics.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono complained during the 2009 election campaign that nefarious mystical forces were being deployed against him and his staff. ''Many are practising black magic. Indeed, I and my family can feel it,'' he was quoted as saying by Antara, the official Indonesian news agency. ''It's extraordinary. Many kinds of methods are used. I have come to the conclusion that only prayers can defeat black magic attacks.''
Yudhoyono's predecessors, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdurrahman Wahid were widely known to consult dukuns. Wahid famously rushed off in a helicopter at short notice to meditate at the tomb of one of Indonesia's Islamic saints after being advised his spirit was unhappy. He was said to have abruptly sacked two ministers on his return.
Suharto, Indonesia's former dictator,was also deeply in thrall to the spirit world, famous for his collection of sacred daggers, or kris, and ancient Javanese manuscripts that many believed were the source of his power.
Even so, the relationship between the belief in the supernatural and Islam in Indonesia is complicated. The country's largest Islamic organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, which has about 30 million members, still endorses the old Javanese mystical traditions - Ilmu Jawa - but the increasing influence of a more austere form of Islam imported from the Middle East means that organisations such as the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the country's peak clerical body, frowns on such practices.
Consultations with mystics by powerful figures are usually discreet, and lengths are taken to keep them from being publicised.
''When they see a dukun or paranormal, it's like they are seeing their mistress. It's always done in secret,'' says Ki Joko Bodo, one of Indonesia's most famous and flamboyant dukuns.
With his long hair and eyes accentuated by kohl, Joko Bodo is a paranormal from central casting. Indeed, he has starred in several Indonesian horror movies. His enormous home in East Jakarta and the Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar parked in the garage are testaments to his success. Complete with an 11-storey Javanese temple, his compound is adorned with huge, garish statues, its walls bedecked in reliefs styled on those of the Borobudur temple.
Many of the reliefs depict Joko Bodo himself, including one where the dukun is leading the rallies that led to Suharto's ousting. Another has him imparting blessings on officials from the tax office, attorney-general's department and ministry of industry.
He says he was seven years old when he realised he had a special gift and began to see jin - supernatural figures - his friends could not. ''Jins are non-physical creatures,'' he explains. ''They are not ghosts, they are not bad. Many are friendly and they can help improve the lives of people.''
He leads me through a labyrinth below his house of faux caves where a young woman is waiting. He sits in front of low black altar, a basket of offerings containing fruit and flowers on one side, a child's doll sitting on the other.
Joko Bodo produces a wooden box and places a bottle of water inside it, covering it with a black satin bag. An incantation is made and the box removed from the bag. The water bottle is empty, transformed into energy which has entered the young woman, he says.
He then douses the teenager from a small pool of water covered in petals and money. The young woman, who asked not to be named, is assured she will have a prosperous future. She seems impressed and grateful.
It's all over within 15 minutes, but Joko Bodo insists these rituals can be done quickly if the dukun, like himself, is particularly attuned to the spirit world. No doubt, it helps with turnover too.
Ki Joko Bodo may come off as more charlatan than shaman but he is immensely popular and demand for his services has never been higher. He says senior figures from the government, military and police are among his most loyal clients.
There are thousands of dukuns across Java. Many make a modest living, never demanding payment, although accepting donations. In some villages, Islamic clerics double as dukuns.
Ki Zukud lives in a modest home in Surabaya, where the paint peels off the walls and children run in and out of his living room. He runs an Islamic boarding school but dabbles in paranormal advice. His collection of kris is his pride and joy. He has 10 adorning his wall and each has a special purpose. One generates prosperity, another repels black magic.
''There is so much black magic everywhere,'' he says solemnly.
He carefully consults the old Javanese calendar, with its complex cycles, to pick the right time for rituals and uses a mix of Koranic verses and Javanese mantras to tap into the supernatural.
He insists a belief in the power of jins is completely in tune with Islamic teachings. The nine saints who brought Islam to Indonesia in the 14th and 15th centuries had used Javanese beliefs and stories to spread the religion. Why should things change?
''Around here, I never have any problems with the other clerics,'' he says. ''In Indonesia, the mystical aura is very thick.''

Read more.

Symbols by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

2012-01-17T03:57:00.000-05:00

Symbols
by
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Source: Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 14, Nos. 1 & 2 (Winter-Spring, 1980). © World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com

Symbols[1] and signs, whether verbal, musical, dramatic or plastic, are means of communication. The references of symbols are to ideas and those of signs to things One and the same term may be symbol or sign according to its context: the cross, for example, is a symbol when it represents the structure of the universe, but a sign when it stands for crossroads. Symbols and signs may be either natural (true, by innate propriety) or conventional (arbitrary and accidental) traditional or private. With the language of signs, employed indicatively in profane language and in realistic and abstracted art, we shall have no further concern in the present connection. By “abstracted art” we mean such modern art as willfully avoids recognizable representation, as distinguished from “principal art”, the naturally symbolic language of tradition.

The language of traditional art—scripture, epic, folklore, ritual, and all the related crafts—is symbolic; and being a language of natural symbols, neither of private invention, nor established by conciliar agreement or mere custom, is a universal language. The symbol is the material embodiment, in sound, shape, color or gesture as the case may be, of the imitable form of an idea to be communicated, which imitable form is the formal cause of the work of art itself. It is for the sake of the idea, and not for its own sake, that the symbol exists: an actual form much be either symbolic—of its reference, or merely an unintelligible shape to be liked or disliked according to taste. The greater part of modern aesthetics assumes (as the words “aesthetic” and “empathy” imply) that art consists or should consist entirely of such unintelligible shapes, and that the appreciation of art consists or should consist in appropriate emotional reactions. It is further assumed that whatever is of permanent value in traditional works of art is of the same kind, and altogether independent of their iconography and meaning. We have, indeed, a right to say that we choose to consider only the aesthetic surfaces of the ancient, oriental, or popular arts; but if we do this, we must not at the same time deceive ourselves so as to suppose that the history of art, meaning by “history” an explanation in terms of the four causes, can be known or written from any such a limited point of view. In order to understand composition, for example, i.e. the sequence of a dance or the arrangement of masses in a cathedral or icon, we much understand the logical relation of the parts: just as in order to understand a sentence, it is not enough to admire the mellifluent sounds, but necessary to be acquainted with the meanings of separate words and the logic of their combinations. The mere “lover of art” is not much better than a magpie, which also decorates its nest with whatever most pleases its fancy, and is contented with a purely “aesthetic” experience. So far from this, it must be recognized that although in modern works of art there may be nothing, or nothing more than the artist’s private person, behind the aesthetic surfaces, the theory in accordance with which works of traditional art were produced and enjoyed takes it for granted that the appeal to beauty is not merely to the senses, but through the senses to the intellect: here “Beauty has to do with cognition”; and what is to be known and understood is an “immaterial idea” (Hermes), a “picture that is not in the colors” (Lankāvatāra Sūtra), “the doctrine that conceals itself behind the veil of the strange verses” (Dante), “the archetype of the image, and not the image itself” (St. Basil). “It is by their ideas that we judge of what things ought to be like” (St. Augustine).

It is evident that symbols and concepts—works of art are things conceived, as St. Thomas says, per verbum in intellectu—can serve no purpose for those who have not yet, in the Platonic sense, “forgotten”. Neither do Zeus nor the stars, as Plotinus says, remember or even learn; “memory is for those that have forgotten”, that is to say, for us, whose “life is a sleep and a forgetting”. The need of symbols, and of symbolic rites, arises only when man is expelled from the Garden of Eden; as means, by which a man can be reminded at later stages of his descent from the intellectual and contemplative to the physical and practical levels of reference. We assuredly have “forgotten” far more than those who first had need of symbols, and far more than they need to infer the immortal by its mortal analogies; and nothing could be greater proof of this than our own claims to be superior to all ritual operations, and to be able to approach the truth directly. It was as signposts of the Way, or as a trace of the Hidden Light, pursued by hunters of a super sensual quarry, that the motifs of traditional art, which have become our “ornaments”, were originally employed. In these abstract forms, the farther one traces them backward, or finds them still extant in popular “superstition”, agricultural rites, and the motifs of folk-art, the more one recognizes in them a polar balance of perceptible shape and imperceptible information; but, as Andrae says (Die ionische Säulle, Schlusswort), they have been more and more voided of content on their way down to us, more and more denatured with the progress of “civilization”, so as to become what we call “art forms”, as if it had been an aesthetic need, like that of our magpie, that had brought them into being. When meaning and purpose have been forgotten, or are remembered only by initiates, the symbol retains only those decorative values that we associate with “art”. More than this, we deny that the art form can ever have had any other than a decorative quality; and before long we begin to take it for granted that the art form must have originated in an “observation of nature”, to criticize it accordingly (“That was before they knew anything about anatomy”, or “understood perspective”) in terms of progress, and to supply its deficiencies, as did the Hellenistic Greeks with the lotus palmette when they made an elegant acanthus of it, or the Renaissance when it imposed an ideal of “truth to nature” upon an older art of formal typology. We interpret myth and epic from the same point of view, seeing in the miracles and the Deus ex machina only a more or less awkward attempt on the part of the poet to enhance the presentation of the facts; we ask for “history”, and endeavor to extract an historical nucleus by the apparently simple and really naive process of eliminating all marvels, never realizing that the myth is a whole, of which the wonders are as much an integral part as are the supposed facts; overlooking that all these marvels have a strict significance altogether independent of their possibility or impossibility as historical events.

NOTES

[1] A derivative of sumballo (Greek) especially in the senses “to correlate”, “to treat things different as though they were similar”, and (passive) “to correspond”, or “tally”.

Värttinä - Äijö

2012-01-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

Finnish folk girl group Värttinä performs their song Äijö, which from what I can gather tells the story of a strange old man driven from a village, by the women who heckle him, into a swamp where he is bitten by a viper. He then lays a curse on the village.

Live version:

Original studio version, featuring the male vocal parts:

I'd like to hear a Diamanda Galas cover version of this.

Vanitas

2011-12-30T00:24:00.000-05:00

Skull with magic quader 16/17th century

2011-12-28T18:55:00.000-05:00

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu: A Few Remarks on Democracy

2011-12-25T17:54:00.002-05:00

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_Zelea_Codreanu

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (Romanian pronunciation: [korˈnelju ˈzele̯a koˈdre̯anu]; born Corneliu Zelinski and commonly known as Corneliu Codreanu;[4] September 13, 1899 – November 30, 1938) was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Legionary Movement), an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period. Generally seen as the main variety of local fascism, and noted for its mystical and Romanian Orthodox-inspired revolutionary message, it grew into an important actor on the Romanian political stage, coming into conflict with the political establishment and the democratic forces, and often resorting to terrorism. The Legionaries traditionally referred to Codreanu as Căpitanul ("The Captain"), and he held absolute authority over the organization until his death. ...On November 30, it was announced that Codreanu, the Nicadori and the Decemviri had been shot after trying to flee custody the previous night.[111] The details were revealed much later: it is most likely that the fourteen persons had been transported from their prison and executed (strangled or garroted and shot) by the Gendarmerie around Tâncăbeşti (near Bucharest), and it was shown that their bodies had been buried in the courtyard of the Jilava prison.[112][113] Their bodies were dissolved in acid, and placed under seven tons of concrete.

From: http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/eehistory/H200Readings/Topic5-R3.html

Selection from: "Man, State and Society in East European History" Stephen Fischer-Galati, ed. pages 327-330 Translated by Stephen Fischer-Galati from Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, "Pentru Legionuri" (Bucharest: Totul Pentru Tara, l937), pp. 385-87, 396-98.

A FEW REMARKS ON DEMOCRACY
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

[The less violent and less visionary solutions proposed by the fascists were more palatable to the East European masses than were the Communist solutions. Among the several brands of fascism that flourished in Eastern Europe between the wars, the most representative of the historical tradition was the Rumanian populist variety expounded by the Iron Guard, which blamed the oppression of the peasant on the Jews and the "Jew-like" ruling establishment. Fascist populism rejected the democratic process and advocated reliance on the "Volk" for the attainment of the fascist revolution in Rumania. The following excerpt from the writings of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Iron Guard, is characteristic of the views of the Rumanian fascists, who attracted a considerable following in the countryside and among industrial workers and intellectuals in the 1930s.]

I should like to make a few remarks, derived from daily experience, in a manner that can be understood by any young legionary or worker.

We wear the clothes and embrace the forms of democracy. Are they worth anything? We don't know yet. But we do know one thing. We know it for sure. That some of the largest and most civilized nations of Europe have discarded those clothes and have acquired new ones. Did they get rid of them forever? Other nations are doing their best to dispose of them and to get new ones also. Why? Have all nations gone mad? Are the Rumanian politicians the only wise men in the world? Somehow I doubt it.

Those who have changed them and those who want to change them must each have their own reasons.

But why should we concern ourselves with other nations' reasons? Let us rather concern ourselves with the reasons that would make us Rumanians ready to change the clothes of democracy.

If we have no reasons to do so, if the reasons are no good, then we shall keep the clothes, even should all of Europe get rid of them.

However, they are no good for us either, because:

1. Democracy destroys the unity of the Rumanian nation, dividing it among political parties, making Rumanians hate one another, and thus exposing a divided people to the united congregation of Jewish power at a difficult time in the nation's history.

This argument alone is so persuasive as to warrant the discarding of democracy in favor of anything that would ensure our unity--or life itself. For disunity means death.

2. Democracy makes Rumanian citizens out of millions of Jews by making them the Rumanians' equals. By giving them the same legal rights. Equality? What for? We have been here for thousands of years. Plow and weapon in hand. With our labors and blood. Why equality with those who have been here for only one hundred, ten, or even five years? Let's look at the past: We created this state. Let's look at the future: We Rumanians are fully responsible for Greater Rumania. They have nothing to do with it. What could be the responsibility of Jews, in the history books, for the disappearance of the Rumanian state?

Thus: no equality in labor, sacrifice, and struggle for the creation of the state and no equal responsibility for its future. Equality? According to an old maxim: Equality is to treat unequally the unequal. What are the reasons for the Jews' demanding equal treatment, equal political rights with the Rumanians?

3. Democracy is incapable of perseverance. Since it is shared by political parties that rule for one, two, or three years, it is unable to conceive and carry out plans of longer duration. One party annuls the plans and efforts of the other. What is conceived and built by one party today is destroyed by another tomorrow.

In a country in which much has to be built, in which building is indeed the primary historical requirement, this disadvantage of democracy constitutes a true danger. It is a situation similar to that which prevails in an establishment where masters are changed every year, each new master bringing in his own plans, ruining what was done by some, and starting new things, which will in turn be destroyed by tomorrow's masters.

4. Democracy prevents the politician's fulfillment of his obligations to the nation. Even the most well-meaning politician becomes, in a democracy, the slave of his supporters, because either he satisfies their personal interests or they destroy his organization. The politician lives under the tyranny and permanent threat of the electoral bosses.

He is placed in a position in which he must choose between the termination of his lifetime work and the satisfaction of the demands of party members. And the politician, given such a choice, opts for the latter. He does so not out of his own pocket, but out of that of the country. He creates jobs, sets up missions, commissions, sinecures--all rostered in the nation's budget--which put increasingly heavy pressures on a tired people.

5. Democracy cannot wield authority, because it cannot enforce its decisions. A party cannot move against itself, against its members who engage in scandalous malfeasance, who rob and steal, because it is afraid of losing its members. Nor can it move against its adversaries, because in so doing it would risk exposure of its own wrongdoings and shady business.

6. Democracy serves big business. Because of the expensive, competitive character of the multiparty system, democracy requires ample funds. It therefore naturally becomes the servant of the big international Jewish financiers, who enslave her by paying her.

In this manner, a nation's fate is placed in the hands of a clique of bankers.

A Letter on Saddam Hussein

2011-12-21T00:27:00.001-05:00

This is another letter I just sent to my friend's private email group, basically backing him up against a handful regurgitating debunked arguments for US intervention in Iraq vs. Saddam Hussein:

Saddam Hussein brought Iraq into the 20th century, created an economic infrastructure, brought in "modern" technology, medicine, etc. and developed a national educational system that drastically increased general literacy in Iraq for adults and children.

Although he had stylistic similarities to Stalin, I see him in terms of his actual achievements more similar to Mussolini, and I think he came into conflict with the "Far West" (mostly the Anglo-American sphere) on much of the same terms as Mussolini and Hitler.

Somewhere there is an actual quote from Churchill to the effect that Hitler's first crime was against the international financial system, by opting out of the international finance networks conducting international trade directly in quantity in bartered materials, and becoming as domestically self-sufficient as possible. There are weird examples of this, such as American gas stations offering free Honer Harmonicas made in Germany for buying a specified amount of gasoline because they came in part of international materials bartering for petroleum with Germany. Hitler was establishing National autonomy that would not be subjected to international financial manipulation or pressures, much like Mussolini had already done in Italy. When the League of Nations enacted trade embargoes against Italy in retaliation for Italy's invasion of Abyssinia/Ethiopia it had little effect in Italy - Mussolini had developed the infrastructure to the point of National self-sufficiency that the embargoes had no substantial effect. Sound familiar with Saddam? If you look up "autarky" on wikipedia it includes a list of just about everyone the USA has considered a villian and gone to war with at some point or another. Apparently if a small state aims toward self-reliance refusing to be milked dry by the usual trans-national financial parasite institutions and networks they get moved to the top of the hit list.

Saddam stopped playing lapdog to the USA, who had been manipulating Iraq and Iran against each other for decades, probably to ensure regional instability in favor of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saddam was and always had been a more "secular" albeit nominally Muslim leader. Anyone who followed information on Al Qaeda or Saddam before 9/11 was aware their relationship was one of overt hostility - al qaeda making several assassination attempts against Saddam and there was an ongoing bloody "shadow war" between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda (as well as other radicalized Islamic groups) for years. The USA didn't invade Iraq because of connections with Al Qaeda, WMDs, or to "Free" the "people" of Iraq any more than they went to war with Hitler to "save" the Jews. There were a number of things bringing the relationship with Saddam to breaking point with the USA - he was on the verge of pegging petroleum to the EURO instead of the Dollar, and other things - basically not being a lapdog, which is unforgivable. That and his bellicose swaggering, lobbing SCUDs at Israel during "Desert Storm" etc.

The so-called "liberation" of Iraq is a train wreck, probably worse than the so-called "liberation" of Italy from Mussolini. Whatever anyone may say against Mussolini, he was a successful and popular leader for over a decade before Hitler even came into power, had he allied with Engand instead of Hitler he probably would have been in power as long or longer than Franco. Mussolini also essentially eliminated the Mafia and Mafia-controlled judges, politicians etc. until they were put back in place after the "liberation" by the USA who collaborated with them in the invasion in the first place. What kind of political stability or integrity has Italy had since Mussolini? Its corruption is the comical section of international news.

The invasion of Iraq by the USA was self-serving only made worse by its own incompetence. Even if a traditional society wanted USA-style free-market "democracy" - which it probably doesn't - democracy requires a middle class, which requires an economic infrastructure, which requires security - which in a country with sharp religious or ethnic divisions can only be maintained by a strongarm leader - which is in such cases better for everyone insofar as he is capable of actually enforcing punishment if they kill each other. The US re-construction of Iraq was a bad joke - you have people without homes, electricity, or running water, much less businesses and any kind of 'status quo' to maintain - being ushered into "voting" for pre-selected and controlled candidates that can't set foot into an open street without being assassinated.

Ironically, if someone wants to argue that the real enemy of the USA was the Afghani Taliban, the best ally the USA could have had against the Taliban was Iran. The USA media maintains the constant portrait of Iran as dangerous paranoid Muslim religious fanatics on the verge of having nuclear weapons, as if Israel and Saudi Arabia aren't dangerous paranoid religious fanatics with nuclear weapons.

Of course Oil is a huge factor in all of this, but it is also worth looking at the opium export of Afghanistan, which is huge. Opium was largely suppressed by the Taliban, since the USA invasion opium production has increased over 200% if I have my numbers right.

The world runs on oil, weapons, and narcotics. Cash is just the wrapping-paper. At least historically Dictators usually know how to fix something they have broken, or at least how to establish order after the fact. What we have is just more mindless short-sighted profiteering disguised as idealistic nonsense leaving disaster and chaos in its wake.

Business as usual.

JDS
9.19.11

A Letter on "Evolution"

2011-12-21T00:14:00.001-05:00

This was written to a good friend of mine of many years, he’s German, in his 80s, and his family left Germany for Chile when the tide shifted against Hitler. I’m on his email list comprised mostly of Germans over 80 years old from various places in Europe, S. America, and the USA. Most of them are from various political stripes, many “liberal”, mostly mainstream. My friend is very well-educated and very thoughtful, but you won’t hear him overtly praising anything like National Socialism. Mostly he comes across as a mainstream European conservative-socialist vs. American-style capitalism/consumerism.He baits his fellow senior citizen friends into debates over various subjects, especially since many of them are religious (which he detests) or have a Pollyanna view of the world, which he also detests. This was an email I sent to his list in the course of their discussion of evolution vs. mainstream Christian objections to Darwin:

H******,
The most amusing part of all this is that the Catholic Church has officially acknowledged evolutionary theory for some time and expanded their doctrine of creation to allow for Darwinian evolutionary theory as working within their theological worldview - that "evolution" is God's handiwork. It is only fundamentalist Islam and Protestant sects (such as dominate the religious element in US politics) that view Darwinian evolutionary theory as a threat.

So the next time you encounter a fundamentalist Christian railing against evolutionary theory, ask them, "How does it feel to be lagging behind the Catholic Church when it comes to science?"

The only thing I find objectionable about a man/ape evolutionary link is the embarrassment I feel on behalf of apes for being linked to the vile human race at any point in evolutionary history.

I'm essentially anti-modernist, highly skeptical of most of what the so-called "enlightenment" contributed to the current of Western intellectual history - such as the idea of "progress", human "equality", "the blank slate", the "noble savage", "democracy", etc., but in reality, as understood and practiced by actual scientists, that "evolution" does not imply "progress" (in the Enlightenment and Victorian sense). Adaptive changes are random. An adaptation that contributed to survival at one stage of "evolution" may contribute to a species extinction at another stage, so there is no real conflict with a doctrine of "the fall", or with the idea of devolving "ages" and cycles of time expressed in mythological terms in most Indo-European traditions - the Vedic "Kali Yuga", Hesiod's "Iron Age" and the "Age of the Wolf" mentioned in the Norse Eddas.

It is entirely likely that quantitive cumulative scientific "progress" is operating alongside an escalating qualitive devolution in human character and general intelligence. What "adaptively" becomes of a species that invents machines to do their "thinking" for them? In the early-modern era there were arguments against the printed book, that it would contribute to the decline of intelligence because men would no longer make the systematic disciplined mental effort to read and remember the contents of manuscripts that they could not keep for themselves, and sometimes had to make long perilous journeys to read. Famous scholars of the ancient and medieval world were known to have memorized long complex historical and philosophical works, being able to quote them exactly and in detail from memory. With the advent of the printed book men became content to know the knowledge was resting on their shelves, they no longer have to "know" it in a committed way, they have it stored at home and can dig it out when needed. Now people have pocket sized computers they carry with them and can look up anything they need to know on the internet, thus they no longer need to "know" anything. What becomes of "memory" for these people, or for the children coming up in a world where this is the norm and nothing is expected of them, intellectually? How does someone "reason" from no knowledge.

One of the weakest ideas that entered the mainstream of western thought in the so-called "enlightenment" of the 18th century is that of "the blank slate" - that humans are born with a mind that is "tabula rasa" - to be filled with knowledge and education like a blank notebook. I think they had it perfectly backwards - people aren't born with a blank slate, but now they are committed to erase what little they are born with, including basic instincts for individual and collective self-preservation, so most of them are walking around with "slates" (minds) that by any other historical and cultural standards are indeed BLANK.

At most times in history it seems the thinking minority observed the degenerate state of the general run of humanity and felt warranted to think they were in the "end times" of a long cycle of devolution. I think this time we may be right.

JDS

Hitler's Economic Revolution

2011-12-14T23:46:00.002-05:00

For some reason I never archived this here. This was originally posted on another list c.2009, and subsequently archived on the IRONLIGHT blog.

Hitler’s Economic Revolution
by James D. Sass

In response to a bulletin in circulation I am posting this small fragment of a much longer article on the 20th century that I wrote in 1992 that I am in the process of rewriting, expanding and updating for a collection of essays on social/political topics. (Another earlier part of this longer essay was adapted for the afterword to the Underworld Amusements reprint of Nietzsche’s The Antichrist.) JDS

{SNIP}….Therefore the media-created picture of the Nazis as abject monsters and the German people either as barbarians or gullible fools and sadists, must be transcended in order to examine the years in which the monetarists emerged as a force in world affairs. Since reason and our knowledge of human nature and history forces us to reject the notion of one set of human beings as the epitome of evil while another set are the epitome of heroic liberators imbued with all the ideal qualities of human justice, there is no escaping the fact that the history of the twentieth century must be reexamined. ...Until the record of the last century, including specifically the distortion of historical events and personages in post-Weimar Germany, is corrected, we will be unable to make sense of our times.

....Once the fictitious layers of histrionic personality attacks have been peeled off to reveal the essential reality, then one must peel off the distortions of motives and events. The whole trajectory is suspect when viewed from a detached perspective. Hitler is a psychopath; Stalin is a sympathetic heavy-drinking avuncular figure, (yet somehow boding ill for the future); Churchill is the heroic archetypal Englishman fighting for freedom with his back to the wall; Roosevelt is the American aristocrat prepared to sacrifice his life for freedom, etc. The current view of Weimar Germany as a glorious Mecca of free artistic expression and culture is a gross distortion of the degradation and anarchic conditions that called out for renovation and renewal, which was just what the National Socialists brought to that cesspool of economic and social chaos, rapidly transforming Germany into the leading industrial nation in Europe with restored self-respect. The current mythology of Hitler as a demonic lunatic bent on world domination is perhaps the most pernicious distortion of facts in the whole spectrum of this time period. The irony of it being that England was in reality the country that had been and continued to be the country of global domination. As Hitler pointed out, “A minority of 45 million Englishmen rule 600 million inhabitants of the British Empire.” Yet according to status quo history Hitler’s alleged desire for “world domination” was a lunatic project that had to be stopped. What in fact did Hitler want? What was his world-view? What was his critique? How far was he right? What went wrong? All these questions must be answered within a framework allowing us to see the crucial matter of how and by what structural and dynamic methods did trans-national financial power come to dominate and control political entities.

It is worth noting that among the famous 20 Points of Hitler’s National Socialist Party was the commitment to “break the bondage of interest.” It is this that lies at the heart of the convulsive tremors that went through middle Europe in the twenties and thirties. It was also the failure of that era to realize what forces were in play, unleashed by the first significant attempt to allow a nationalist state power to control its own wealth system. In his monumental Military History of the Western World, J.F.C. Fuller, (the British Fascist, Major-General in the British Army, and respected military historian), writes, “Among these artists of power were two men possessed of a new philosophy – Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. They challenged the myth of Economic Man, the fundamental factor in Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism, and exalted in its stead the myth of the Heroic Man…. In Hitler’s eyes the aims of international Capitalism and Marxism were one and the same. Both, he said, repudiated ‘the aristocratic principle of Nature’; both were destroyers of quality, not of things but of life…. Unless this struggle between these two myths – Economic Man and Heroic Man – is accepted and understood, the cataclysm which in 1939 submerged the world is almost incomprehensible and the age to which it gave birth little more than the plaything of chance.” Aside from a natural gift for leadership, continues Fuller, “The demons that exalted him were the Treaty of Versailles, which bore no resemblance to Wilson’s Fourteen Points… the invasion of the Ruhr by Poincare in 1923, which debauched the German currency and wiped out the German middle classes; the influx of £750m. in foreign loans between 1924 and 1930, which debauched the German people, and lastly the crash on the American stock exchange, which begat the world-wide monetary depression of 1929-31. In 1930, 17,500,000 Germans were supported by the state, and in 1931 the Communist electorate in Germany rose to over five million. In that year the American journalist H.R. Knickerbocker… estimated that at least 15 million Germans were partially starving; that two-thirds of the voters were hostile to Capitalism, and more than half were hostile to the existing political system called democracy. In the following year these calamities led to Hitler’s triumph… Save by those who witnessed it, the exultation of the masses on Hitler’s advent to power is unbelievable… Whether this extraordinary man was devil or madman, as his enemies proclaimed him to be, in no way belittles the fact that he stamped out Bolshevism in Germany and accomplished astonishing things.”

Fuller further describes Hitler’s financial reforms as of foremost importance among these astonishing accomplishments, “Hitler’s goal was Napoleonic: to establish a German Continental System under the aegis of Germany. Also his means were not far removed from those of the great emperor: to liberate Germany from the shackles of international loan-capitalism, to unite all Germanic peoples into the Third Reich, and to establish in eastern Europe what he called the German Lebensraum (living space) which he considered as essential to the economic security of Germany as Napoleon had considered the confederation of the Rhine essential to the strategic security of France. Hitler held that, as long as the international monetary system was based on gold, a nation which cornered gold could impose its will on those who lacked it. This could be done by drying up their sources of exchange, and thereby compelling them to accept loans on interest in order to distribute their wealth – their production. He said: ‘The community of the nation does not live by the fictitious value of money, but by real production which in its turn gives value to money. This production is the real cover of the currency, and not a bank or a safe full of gold.’”

Fuller continues by outlining Hitler’s reforms, “He decided: (1) To refuse foreign interest-bearing loans, and to base currency on production instead of gold. (2) To obtain imports by direct exchange of goods – barter – and subsidize exports when necessary. (3) to put a stop to what was called ‘freedom of the exchanges’ – that is, license to gamble in currencies and shift private fortunes from one currency to another according to the political situation. And (4) To create money when men and material were available for work instead of running into debt by borrowing it.” This had a tremendous impact on the trans-national financiers, “Because the life of international finance depended upon the issue of interest-bearing loans to nations in economic distress, Hitler’s economics spelt its ruination. If he were allowed to succeed, other nations would certainly follow his example, and should a time come when all non-gold-holding governments exchanged goods for goods, not only would borrowing cease and gold lose its power, but the money-lenders would have to close shop… This financial pistol was pointed more particularly at the United States, because they held the bulk of the world’s supply of gold, and because their mass-production system necessitated the export of about 10 percent of their products in order to avoid unemployment. Further, because the brutalities meted out to German Jews by Hitler understandably had antagonized American Jewish financiers, six months after Hitler became Chancellor, Samuel Untermyer, a wealthy New York attorney, threw down the challenge. He proclaimed ‘holy war’ against National Socialism and called for an economic boycott of German goods, shipping, and services.” Hitler’s reforms also had a tremendous impact on his domestic economy, further arousing international resentment. Fuller continues, “Between 1933 and 1936, Hitler had reduced German unemployment from six millions to one, and prosperity had so far returned that… in 1936 Winston Churchill is reported to have said… ‘Germany is getting too strong and we must smash her.’” Fuller astutely observes of the world situation at this juncture, “When we consider these economic causes of the Second World War it must be borne in mind… that the struggle between the two economic systems is not a question of right and wrong but of survival values.”

Other political events brought the impending conflict to a head; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933, negotiating with Poland to secure the eastern flank, repudiated the arms provision of the Versailles Treaty and reintroduced conscription in 1935; then after dishonorably failing to fulfill treaty agreements with Italy over Abyssinia, the League of Nations was not only discredited but instrumental in driving Mussolini into strategic alliance with Hitler.

These and other crisis, Fuller writes, “…generated a violent propaganda against Hitler. Foreign affairs lost all objectivity and became wrapped in an explosive animosity which so perturbed Dr. Goebbels… that he appealed to the American Ambassador in Berlin, who replied that the ‘most crucial thing that stood between any betterment of American Press relationships was the Jewish question.” The situation deteriorated when a young Polish Jew assassinated the third secretary at the German Embassy in Paris (1938), precipitating an immediate pogrom against the Jews in Berlin, which added fuel to the anti-German propaganda mills in the United states.

Fuller quotes at length the very revealing report to the Polish Foreign Office from Count Jerzy Potoki, the Polish Ambassador to Washington, dated January 12, 1939; “Public opinion in America nowadays… expresses itself in increasing hatred of everything… connected with National Socialism. Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish hands… when bearing public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people here have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe…. It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign – which is conducted primarily against National Socialism – no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of countries. Thanks to the astute propaganda, public sympathy in the USA is entirely on the side of Red Spain. Side by side with this propaganda an artificial war-panic is created…. No effort is spared to impress upon the American mind that in the event of a war the USA must take an active part in a struggle for freedom and democracy. President Roosevelt was first in the field to give expression to his hatred of Fascism. He had a two-fold purpose in mind: firstly, he wanted to divert American public opinion from difficult and complicated domestic problems… Secondly, by creating a war-panic… he wanted to induce Americans to endorse his huge program of armaments…. Furthermore, the brutal treatment meted out to the Jews in Germany as well as the problem of the refugees are both factors which intensify the existing hatred of everything connected with German National Socialism. In this campaign of hatred, individual Jewish intellectuals such as Bernard Baruch, Lehman, Governor of New York State, Felix Frankfurter, the newly appointed Supreme Court Judge, Morgenthau, the Financial Secretary, and other well known personal friends of Roosevelt have taken a prominent part. All of them want the President to become the protagonist of human liberty, religious freedom and the right of free speech…. This particular group of people, who are all in highly placed American official positions and who are desirous of being representatives of ‘true Americanism’, and as ‘Champions of Democracy’, are, in point of fact, linked with international Jewry by ties incapable of being torn asunder. For international Jewry – so intimately concerned with the interests of its own race – President Roosevelt’s ‘ideal’ role as a champion of human rights was indeed a godsend. In this way Jewry was able not only to establish a dangerous center in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity, but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps. The whole problem is being tackled in a most mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been given the power to enable him to enliven American foreign policy and at the same time to create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for.”……..{SNIP}
….(c)2009 JDS.

1592 Geneva Bible (Folio)

2011-12-12T21:26:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile since I've posted any Antiquarian Bibliophilia eye-candy. The beauty of real antiquarian books cannot be simulated, especially the wear and decay. I prefer things to show their age rather than looking as if they have been Hermetically sealed in a time capsule. I have actually handled one of these, although in far worse condition (it was a bookseller's horror story, involving Vaseline and plastic-wrap). This copy looks like it has period hand-copied sections pasted in where the original pages were damaged or missing. This one is currently on ebay for $4K+. A beautiful albeit somewhat distressed Geneva Bible.

Druse/Cluster Quartz Rock Crystal Skull and Snakes

2011-12-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

Nice piece from China; 12.2" Druse/Cluster Quartz Rock Crystal Skull and Snakes w/Ruby Eyes, Red Coral Tongues. Personally I would have opted out of the Coral tongues, verging on too much, but overall a magnificent piece. Now on ebay at $28,900.00

Old mail from James Mason and The Universal Order circa mid-late 80s

2011-12-06T01:42:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Orthodox Gonfaloniers....

2011-12-06T01:36:00.000-05:00

A belated Thank You to a devoted COSMODROMIUM reader from Eastern Europe who sent this generous gift to enhance my crusty bearded-in-black chic in response to my first blog post on The Orthodox Gonfaloniers. Very nice. I thought Medieval Catholic Iconography was the Cat's Pajamas until I discovered Eastern Orthodox Iconography. Very Good!

Orthodox Gonfaloniers vs. Faggotry

2011-12-06T01:27:00.000-05:00

My Lost Tribe is at it again, this time harpooning Tom of Finland, calling the wrath of God down on degenerate homosexuals. These guys know how to make Christianity fun!

Jodorowsky's Psychomagic "Skull March" in Mexico City highlights casualties of Drug Cartel Wars

2011-12-06T01:02:00.000-05:00

I'm more of a fan of Jodorowsky's work with the Tarot de Marseille than I am of his films (with the exception of Sante Sangre), but this is interesting:

Psychomagic is the name of a therapeutic practice used by Alejandro Jodorowsky and combines Buddhism, mysticism and modern psychotherapy to heal patients with emotional problems. The principle relies on the belief that the unconscious mind takes a symbolic act as a fact. So a symbolic act could accordingly help solve some types of non rational conflicts.

With the idea of gathering people with their faces painted as skulls, (representing the victims of the so called "War against drugs") the march started at 9:00 in the middle of a mild rain at the Olympic Stadium of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) stopping at the Fine Arts Palace and then continued to the Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City where the people performed a psychomagic event.

Hundreds march to highlight casualties of War on Drugs - Mexico City
Psychomagical activists march against violence - Mexico City by Marcelo Hernandez in Mexico
'March of the Skulls' aims to regenerate the country against violence by agustin ramos in Mexico
Cult mystic holds 'march of skulls' for Mexico's drug war dead

Vado Mori

2011-11-23T22:48:00.000-05:00

This small ivory carving conveys one of the most profound themes of the late Middle Ages, serving as a memento mori, a reminder of the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death.The repetition of prayers and liturgical texts was an important part of late medieval devotion. The rosary, which became popular by the fourteenth century, is a collection of these texts devoted particularly to the Virgin Mary. Strings of beads to assist those saying the long sequences of recitations also came to be known as rosaries. Such carvings as this one are pierced vertically for suspension, consistent with their original function as pendants to rosaries or chaplets (shorter strings of devotional beads). Dating from the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, there are many surviving memento mori pendants from rosaries. Frequently double-sided, the pendants are often decorated with a skull on one side and a youthful face on the other. This is a rare example of a pendant showing four figures and no close analogue is known. The words inscribed on the fillet encircling the dying man's brow, VADO MORI, may be an allusion to the tradition of 'Vado Mori' poems which had their origin in the thirteenth century. In such poems, or 'carmina de morte', a distich is put into the mouth of each type of individual, young and old, poor and rich, learned and unlearned, layman and cleric, of low and high social grade. Each distich begins and ends with the words 'Vado Mori'.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O92557/rosary-bead/

The Dance of Death from The Sparham Rood Screen

2011-11-23T22:41:00.001-05:00

Dance of death scenes on the southern portion of the dado of the former rood screen at St. Mary Church, Sparham. The eyes were gouged out by Protestant vandals.

http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/sparham/sparham.htm

The Hanged Man Drops In...

2011-11-21T21:59:00.002-05:00

From TARONOMICON.

Ps. Thanks Daniel B!

Kids are Creepy...

2011-11-21T21:57:00.000-05:00

From TARONOMICON.

Ps. Thanks Daniel B!

Accidental Symbolism in Facebook Advertising...

2011-11-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'll pass on the laser spinal surgery thanks.

From TARONOMICON.

Something

2011-11-21T02:18:00.001-05:00

Better You Than Me

2011-11-21T02:17:00.000-05:00

From my Tarot Platter.

U-Ram Choe's 'Guardian of the Hole' at the Asia Society Museum

2011-11-21T02:14:00.002-05:00

The Falling Tower

2011-11-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

"The Land of Plenty. They were always so confident God was on their side. Now, I think they are not so sure."

Wunderkammern by Santiago Caruso

2011-11-14T12:37:00.000-05:00

Wunderkammern by Santiago Caruso

Ex-CIA Agent: America creates its own enemies

2011-11-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

Americans are in the crosshairs of terrorists worldwide purely due to Washington's policy in the Muslim world, not because there is an Islamic enemy whose only aim is to kill Americans for their freedoms and lifestyle, insists a former CIA officer. Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of "Through our enemies' eyes", who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA's 'Bin Laden unit', says America's greatest enemy -- radical Islam -- never existed: neither when Bin Laden was alive, nor now.

"The dress code was rigorously black."

2011-11-08T21:02:00.000-05:00

November 2, 2011
A Dead Dictator Who Draws Tens of Thousands in Italy
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

PREDAPPIO, Italy — The dress code was rigorously black. The chants nostalgic, a medley of Fascist truisms peppered with clipped bursts of “Duce, Duce, Duce” that was sharply shushed when the straggly parade entered the cemetery in this central Italian town late last month to arrive at its mecca: the tomb of the former Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

“Why, why do you come here, who is this man Mussolini?” asked the celebrant, Giulio Tam, a traditionalist Catholic priest.

“We come to thank this man for the most European, most Mediterranean, most original of ideas,” answered Father Tam, a familiar figure in right-wing circles, before he began reciting the rosary.

So it goes in Predappio, three times a year, to commemorate the day of Mussolini’s birth (on July 29, 1883, in a house not far from the cemetery), his death (at the hands of partisans on April, 28, 1945) and the so-called March on Rome, which brought Mussolini’s party to power in Italy in October 1922.

“I’ve been coming here, at least once or twice a year, since Aug. 31, 1957, the day they brought the corpse of the Duce here,” said Marcello, a personable 85-year-old veteran who asked that his last name not be used. “My faith in him has remained intact.”

They came in busloads, from Turin to Palermo, on a pilgrimage of sorts.

“Like Christians going to St. Peter’s, except that here some wear a fez,” said Gianni, a man from Turin, of the black felt hat in the shape of a truncated cone that became part of the uniform of the Fascist black shirts worn here by a handful of meticulously groomed young men. “But we’re not anachronistic; we have credit cards. We don’t want to restore that era, we just don’t want to deny it either.”

Still others came to signify an epoch in which they believe that Italy, in contrast to today, counted for something in the world. “Italy needs a distinct change, we’re in the hands of politicians who are unworthy to have been voted,” said Enrico Cozzani, the owner of a security firm based in Lucca. “We’re the laughingstock of Europe.”

Angelo Aquilani, the Florence-based coordinator for central Italy of the Nuova Destra Sociale, a right-wing group, was more succinct. “We love the Duce,” he said. “He is our faith.”

Such veneration weighed on Italy’s leaders in 1945. After Mussolini was killed, a decision was made to obscure his grave site, much the way military officials in the Transitional National Council of Libya chose to bury Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in a secret location last month and American commandos buried Osama bin Laden at sea in May, to avoid creating a shrine for their supporters.

After Mussolini’s corpse was hung up on meat hooks on April 29, 1945, in Piazzale Loreto in Milan, where citizens vented their fury at their former leader, he was buried in an unmarked grave in a nearby cemetery. A year later, neo-Fascist loyalists dug up his body and hid it in a convent in Lombardy until 1957, when the remains were returned to Mussolini’s widow, who buried them in the family crypt in Predappio.

In fact, Italian authorities’ efforts to hide the burial site backfired on them, as its location rapidly became a matter of intense interest. “The vitality of Mussolini’s afterworld life was great as long as the mausoleum didn’t exist. A corpse that is nowhere is everywhere,” said Sergio Luzzatto, a historian at the University of Turin who wrote “The Body of Il Duce,” about the corpse’s vicissitudes. The documentary “Il Corpo del Duce,” inspired by the book, will be shown at the Turin Film Festival this month.

“Italians lived the absence of the body as a presence, so continuing the love story between Italians and their leader, which was very carnal in many ways,” Mr. Luzzatto said. That story ended when the body was returned to the family and “it became fixed and sepulchral,” primarily in the guest books at the tomb, where visitors can sign and leave comments.

Those books are now archived in a room on the top floor of the House of Memories, the museum of Duce memorabilia opened in 2001 by Domenico Morosini, a successful Lombardy businessman, in what was once a Mussolini summer home. The registers are shelved under a beam inscribed with what Mr. Morosini said was a Mussolini citation: “It is not impossible to govern Italians, merely useless.”

The museum gets between 2,000 and 3,000 people a year and might attract more, but Mr. Morosini has found it hard to advertise. Road signs to the museum “constantly get knocked down by left-wingers,” he said.

On Predappio’s main street, a handful of shops do brisk business in Fascist memorabilia, like the Predappio Tricolore store, which hawks everything from truncheons to Mussolini calendars. The calendars are also distributed through newsstands, “where they sell better than sexy calendars,” said one shop owner, Pierluigi Pompignoli, giving a straight-arm salute to a group of German visitors who replied, “Sieg heil.”

Mussolini’s tomb gets between 80,000 and 100,000 visitors a year, with peaks during the three commemorations, which in recent years have been presided over by Father Tam. On Sunday, during a rosary recital interspersed with commentary, he warned of the imminent Islamic invasion of Europe, accelerated by the events in North Africa this year and abetted by a liberalist political class in Europe and an “Americanized youth” open to heresies like gay marriage.

“Mussolini was right; he’d be crying in his tomb to see that Italy has been reduced to this,” Father Tam said (though gay marriage is in fact illegal in Italy). “We’re proud of the Crusades,” he said, drawing loud cheers and applause from the crowd.

This is just the kind of tourism that Predappio’s center-left mayor, Giorgio Frassineti, would rather avoid.

“We refuse a vision of Predappio of the few, of the people who attend the commemorations, but also of those from the extreme left who want to cancel its history,” Mr. Frassineti said. “These people just keep another kind of tourism at large.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: November 3, 2011
An earlier version of this article gave an outdated affiliation for Giulio Tam, the traditionalist Catholic priest. He is no longer a member of the Society of St. Pius X.

SOURCE

Wolfs Head Drinking Horn

2011-11-07T22:29:00.001-05:00

This is fine work! From the maker, "This is a drinking horn with inlaid bone teeth and Ruby eyes. A very black horn, deeply carved in an early celtic style. There are 6 different sets of teeth that have been inlaid, the upper and lowers are separate inlays ,with a very nice ruby cab. The teeth are NOT real they are carved from cow bone and are made to appear like teeth, they are NOT real teeth."

More Japanese Decomposing Corpse Art c.1790

2011-11-07T00:40:00.001-05:00

Libya: Reality 101

2011-11-06T23:45:00.001-05:00

Of course the lemmings will fall for the empty rhetoric and retarded pipe-dreams about "human rights" and "democracy."

From: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/gaddafi-fall-cost-russia-tens-of-billions-in-arms-deals/101911/
Russia lost tens of billions of dollars in potential revenues from arms deals with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's fall, the official in charge of Russia's arms exports said on Wednesday. Russia, the world's No. 2 arms exporter, has frequently cited losses of $4 billion (2 billion pound) in Libyan arms contracts, reports Reuters.... Russian companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas exploration there, and Russian Railways was building a railway under a 2.2 billion euro (1.8 billion pound) contract. Arms contracts signed under Gaddafi's rule made up 12 percent of Russia's 2010 arms exports, worth a total of $10 billion. An arms embargo imposed in February caused Russia to forfeit $4 billion in new contracts.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/british-delegation-will-visit-libya-in-effort-to-kickstart-arms-deals-6257561.html
As Libya struggles to rebuild, power effectively rests in the hands of the heavily armed militias who ousted the former dictator. But that hasn't stopped the British government from pushing ahead with plans to renew arms sales to the war-torn country. The Independent has learned that a defence industry trade delegation is planning to travel to Libya early next year in the hope the country's new pro-western National Transition Council will become lucrative customers.... Last month Lord Green, minister for Trade and Investment, visited Tripoli to see what role Britain could play in rebuilding Libya's infrastructure and economy. After months of internecine conflict in a country with vast energy reserves, international businesses are well aware of the vast sums of money to be made.Those nations that took part in the Nato airstrikes against Gaddafi's regime – notably Britain and France – are determined to reap the rewards of backing the National Transition Council and claw back some of the money spent on their costly bombing campaign. Some have estimated the value of contracts in oil, infrastructure and education to be worth as much as £200bn.

Night of Samhain

2011-10-31T23:09:00.000-04:00

Thanks to our friends at SOILED SINEMA for this one!

Night of Samhain from Rick Patton on Vimeo.

‎1974. 16mm. 13 min. color.
‎"Night of Samhain is a humorous look at Halloween, the holiday with no redeeming social value. A holiday that values outrageous behaviour. A holiday that has been a thorn in the side of organized religion for centuries and one that many wish would disappear."

Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” - The Bregenzer Festspiele 1999

2011-10-31T11:24:00.001-04:00

Floating stage on Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria. The Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival) has become renowned for its unconventional staging of shows. Verdi’s opera, “A Masked Ball” in 1999, featured a giant book being read by a skeleton.

Salvador Dali - A Soft Self Portrait - Complete

2011-10-30T00:36:00.002-04:00

Originally produced for a French television audience, this portrait of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali details the dreamlike inspiration behind many of his avant-garde creations. Set in Dali's hometown of Lligat, Spain, the artist himself takes the viewer on a tour of the creative process that is behind his remarkable body of work. Journey into the subconscious of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and take a look at the world through Salvador Dali's eyes with this program that he both designed and performed. The documentary is directed by Jean-Christopher Averty, with narration provided by Orson Welles.

Salvador Dali - A Soft Self Portrait - Complete - YouTube

Beginning of Kali Yuga (English Subtitles)

2011-10-23T22:48:00.002-04:00

What's The Real Motive For U.S. Military Deployment In Central Africa?

2011-10-16T21:07:00.000-04:00

A good follow-up to the previous blog post.

http://blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/7709/2011-10-14.html

What's The Real Motive For U.S. Military Deployment In Central Africa?
Ugandans today are more concerned with ejecting the U.S.-backed dictator

Ugandans also fear that the U.S. intervention could extend a lifeline to dictator Museveni, who has been using his own troops --now "partners" with the U.S. military personnel deployed there-- to suppress the opposition.
Black Star News Editorial
10-14-11

Ugandans Today More Concerned With Ejecting Museveni, Than LRA

What are the real reasons behind the announced U.S. "limited" deployment of armed forces in Central Africa today?

The official reason is to assist African countries --Uganda, Congo, Southern Sudan and Central Africa Republic-- to defeat the vicious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Yet, an earlier U.S. military co-involvement with Uganda’s army –operation Lighting Thunder—in December 2008, was a disastrous failure, leading to the massacres of Congolese civilians; both the discredited Uganda Army and the brutal LRA accused each other of the massacres.

More troubling is that there's not a single place in Africa where U.S. military intervention has resulted in a favorable resolution and restoration of peace and stability.

The current involvement in Libya, has turned a country that, while ruled by a strong man who had overstayed in office, was relatively stable and prosperous into a country that now is beginning to resemble Somalia or Afghanistan. The most powerful commander, in Tripoli, Abdul hakim Belhadj, is a former Al-Qaeda fighter.

Also recall that U.S. intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s ended with disastrous consequences, captured in the movie "Black Hawk Down," with the deaths of American servicemen. Meanwhile conditions in Somalia are much worse than during the original U.S. intervention. The U.S. has now outsourced Somalia intervention to Uganda's dictator, Gen. Yoweri Museveni, who faces popular discontent at home, especially since the economy plunged after he printed millions of shillings to buy votes in the February presidential election which he stole.

Recently, the U.S. has been seeking to establish bases for the so-called Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is now based in Germany because every African country has refused to host it. The U.S. hopes to blunt Chinese economic penetration in Africa; the Asian giant continues to gobble up African resources to fuel its dynamic economy.

There was initial speculation that a post-Muammar al-Quathafi Libya would provide haven for AFRICOM. This increasingly appears more uncertain. The NTC government imposed by NATO on Libya does not appear to be popular. The Wall Street Journal reports that the nominally allied militias that make up the NTC have started turning their guns at each other. There's no guarantee that the NTC regime will survive once NATO departs the scene.

Many legitimate questions have to be raised concerning the U.S. deployment in Africa.

Why now? Why is the U.S. suddenly interested in being militarily involved in the pursuit of the LRA's Joseph Kony, when in fact the most vicious period of LRA rampage are years behind?

Why now when in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) worst atrocities occur daily; committed by militias far more brutal than the LRA, which were created and sustained by Uganda's Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame.

These two U.S.-backed dictators have been able to siphon billions of dollars of Congo's wealth by sponsoring mayhem -- massacres, mass rapes, and mutilations-- in the vast country through their allied militias. Rwanda still harbors one of the most sadistic of these killers, Laurent Nkunda.

Uganda's army, with Museveni as commander in chief, was in fact being investigated for possible crimes against humanity and war crimes in Congo, when it occupied parts of the country, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2006. Luis Moreno Ocampo might have halted that probe at some point; The Journal reported that Museveni had called then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and asked that he block the investigation.

The U.S. intervention could also be designed to bolster the newly independent Southern Sudan Republic. The new nation, although oil-rich, is still militarily weak and fears outright invasion from Khartoum, which stands to lose access to the oil wealth which is concentrated in the south.

Ugandans also fear that the U.S. intervention could extend a lifeline to dictator Museveni, who has been using his own troops --now "partners" with the U.S. military personnel deployed there-- to suppress the opposition. As reported in The New York Times today, security agents have even killed people protesting his 25 -years rule, since the bogus February elections.

Now the Obama Administration has provided political capital to Gen. Museveni, amidst the mass Uganda protests, including a popular "walk to work" campaign to protest runaway inflation.

Currently, the Museveni regime is paralyzed as its parliament seeks the ouster of Museveni's closest aide, Amama Mbabazi, over allegations that he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from Tullow Oil company, for favorable access to newly discovered fields. Charges of bribes being paid to Ugandan officials by oil companies were first mentioned by the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, Jerry Lanier, in a memo leaked by Wiki leaks last year.

Once echoed in parliament last week by Ugandan lawmaker Gerald Karuhanga, it lead to the resignation of foreign minister Sam Kutesa; he and former energy minister and current internal affairs minister Hillary Onek, also allegedly accepted bribes, including from ENI. The Uganda member of parliament, Karuhanga, displayed documents he said itemized the up to $25 million paid out in bribes; the ministers, Kutesa and Onek, claimed they were forgeries.

Gen. Museveni himself had to deny last week in a press conference that he too accepted bribes.

Of course the LRA must be quelled and Kony, indicted by the ICC, brought to justice. Yet, given the laundry list of woes, competing regional interests, ongoing Congo atrocities where more than six million people have perished, and political intrigue, the Obama Administration will need to answer many questions about the deployment, and its timing and duration, before well deserved skepticism is dispelled.

US Intervention in Uganda, Why Now?

2011-10-16T03:43:00.006-04:00

Aside from the fact that Obama and Holder are floundering and need as many distractions as possible (phony Iranian conspiracies to bomb Saudi diplomats can only hold up to scrutiny for so long), there are also other motives to intervene in Uganda.

Joseph Kony is an absolute lunatic, even by African standards, but he's been raping, pillaging, and hacking off ears, noses, lips, and limbs for a long time now without anyone in the USA squawking about it. I've been following his "career" since he took over from Alice Auma. She was famous for instructing her fighters to paint themselves with blood because it would make them bullet-proof. She was sane compared with Kony.

The LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) makes the transvestite cannibal guerrillas of Libera's General "Butt Naked" look like a UN peacekeeping force.

Mainstream news commentators, and pres. candidates are all speculating as to why Obama would choose to intervene in Uganda, especially after Kony has been at it for 25 years and is practically played out at this point.

In this context the following articles are of interest:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2011/10/15/uganda-to-expedite-oil-laws-as-key-deal-hangs-in-balance/

KAMPALA Uganda -(Dow Jones)- The Ugandan government will expedite the enactment of laws to regulate its nascent oil sector as a key deal involving U.K.-based Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN, TUWOY), France's Total SA (TOT, FP.FR) and China's Cnooc Ltd. (CEO, 0883.HK) hangs in the balance following a parliamentary resolution to delay its approval earlier this week, Uganda's energy and minerals minister said Saturday.

...After two days of deliberations, Ugandan lawmakers across the political divide voted Tuesday to support a motion to compel the government to halt the approval for Tullow's $2.9 billion sale of two-thirds of its interests in three blocks in the oil-rich Lake Albertine Rift Basin to the larger oil companies, Total and Cnooc, until all the necessary legislation is in place for the country's oil industry.

...According to Muloni, despite the parliamentary resolutions, discussions are continuing over the deal, which is expected to unlock up to $10 oil development projects in the East African nation.

Tullow's attempts to sell part of its stakes in the country have been dogged by a spate of disruptions since early this year, ranging from tax disputes to disagreements with government officials over the oil-development plan for the rift basin.

Tullow had expected to conclude the deal in September before the Ugandan government contested the inclusion of stabilization clauses in the joint-venture-oil-production agreement.

Muloni told reporters that Uganda is now in a better negotiating position since risks have been removed from the Lake Albertine Rift basin following the commercial oil discoveries.

..Uganda has discovered at least 2.5 billion barrels of oil in 20 oil fields in three blocks along its western border with mineral-rich but eastern Congo. The country is expected to start commercial oil production by 2013.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/10/14/uganda-interior-minister-to-resign-amid-oil-probe/

KAMPALA, Uganda -(Dow Jones)- Uganda's internal affairs minister said Friday that he would resign his position to pave the way for a smooth investigation into graft allegations in the oil sector during his tenure as energy and minerals minister.

Friday's resignation of Hilary Onek, who headed the energy and minerals ministry until May, was the latest ripple-effect from a stormy debate in the Ugandan parliament earlier this week during which lawmakers alleged that oil company Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN) had bribed several Ugandan officials. Tullow, which has already denied the allegations, Friday said documents presented in the Ugandan parliament purporting to show the bribery were frauds.

Onek Friday also denied the allegations, but said he was resigning to let the probe proceed.

"I will step aside as soon as the parliamentary adhoc committee starts investigations," Onek told Dow Jones Newswires. "The truth will be established--that's why I am in support of the probe," he said.

During the parliamentary debate earlier this week, ruling party lawmaker Gerald Karuhanga presented a number of documents alleging that london-listed Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN) had bribed several Ugandan ministers with up to $25 million to sway some key decisions regarding its operations in the country. Some of the documents showed alleged payments from Tullow to Ugandan officials from bank accounts at the Bank of Valetta in Malta.

Tullow spokesman George Cazanove said these documents presented to the Parliament as evidence of fraud were forgeries.

"Transaction receipts handed over by the Ugandan authorities for investigation by the Bank and the Maltese authorities were forgeries," Cazanove said. "None of the alleged transactions took place and that none of the individuals or companies named have ever had accounts with the Bank of Valetta."

Officials at the Bank of Valetta and with the Malta police could not be reached Friday.

Lawmakers Tuesday voted in favor of on a motion to slap a moratorium on the execution of any new oil deals, including Tullow's $2.9 billion sale of two thirds of its interests in the country to France's Total SA (TOT) and China's CNOOC (CEO).

The development leaves the key deal in balance as Uganda awaits the commencement of up to $10 billion oil development projects in the oil rich Lake Albertine rift, where at least 20 oil fields have been discovered so far in three oil blocks.

Onek's resignation follows resignations earlier this week of John Nasasira, the government's chief whip; Sam Kutesa, the foreign affairs minister, and Mwesigwa Rukutana, junior labor minister. The three officials resigned ahead of the commencement of their trial over corruption charges in relation to the misappropriation of funds meant for the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The three officials have denied the allegations.

Kutesa was also named in the oil graft allegations during the parliamentary session this week.

Justice & Le Fool

2011-10-12T00:19:00.001-04:00

From Yale University Library Rare Books Blog: http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/rarebooks/default.aspx

Justice as a Sign of the Law: The Fool Blindfolding Justice

Posted Saturday, September 24, 2011 2:19 PM by Mike Widener

The first image, known as "The Fool Blindfolding Justice" from Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, comes from the 1497 Basel edition and is sometimes attributed to Albrecht Dürer. The 1509 London edition offers a close copy. The woodcut was one of a hundred illustrations for this popular book, subsequently printed in many languages.

The scene is one of the earliest known to show a Justice with covered eyes. The deployment is derisive, evident not only from the fool but from the chapter that the illustration accompanied, which was entitled "Quarreling and Going to Court." Brant, a noted lawyer and law professor, prefaced the book with a warning against "folly, blindness, error, and stupidity of all stations and kinds of men." The 1572 version is all the more insistently negative; in this rendition, the fool has pushed Justice off her throne as he covers her eyes.

Brant, Sebastian. Stultifera navis (Basel: Johann Bergmann, de Olpe, 1497). Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Brant, Sebastian. This present boke named the shyp of folys of the worlde (London: Richard Pynson, 1509). Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Brant, Sebastian. Stultifera navis mortalium (Basel: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1572). Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

"The Remarkable Run of a Political Icon: Justice as a Sign of the Law" is curated by Judith Resnik, Dennis Curtis, Allison Tait, and Mike Widener, and is on display Sept. 19-Dec. 16, 2011, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Justice as a Sign of the Law: The Tribunal of Fools
Posted Saturday, September 24, 2011 6:38 PM by Mike Widener

"The Fool Blindfolding Justice" was not the only image of that era deploying a blindfold as a warning against judicial error, as can be seen from the 1508 and 1580 editions of an illustrated volume, Die Bambergische Halsgerichtsordnung. The volume, setting forth the criminal law and municipal ordinances of the city of Bamberg, included some twenty woodcuts.

In the woodcut called "The Tribunal of Fools," a presiding judge (marked by his rod of office, the collar of his robe, and his place of honor on the throne) sits with his four colleagues. All are blindfolded and wear jesters' caps. The legend on the scroll above their heads reads: "Out of bad habit these blind fools spend their lives passing judgments contrary to what is right." Once again blindness is equated with error. Blindfolds could also be found on other readily recognized Renaissance icons -- Synagoga, representing the Old Testament, was bent and blindfolded (blind to the "light" of Christianity), while Ecclesia, standing ramrod straight and clear-eyed, embodied the New Testament. Similarly, Fortuna, and Eros were also shown blindfolded, exemplifying that the loss of sight leads one astray.

Bambergische Halssgerichts Ordenung (Metz: Johann Schöffer, 1508). Lillian Goldman Law Library.

Bambergische peinliche Halszgerichtszordnung (Bamberg: Johann Wagner, 1580). Lillian Goldman Law Library.

From Fritz Lang's Indian Tomb

2011-10-03T11:31:00.002-04:00

Kudos to E.Z. for this one!

Long before the introduction of idolatry into religion...

2011-09-28T22:30:00.001-04:00

"Long before the introduction of idolatry into religion, the early priests caused the statue of a man to be placed in the sanctuary of the temple. This human figure symbolized the Divine Power in all its intricate manifestations. Thus the priests of antiquity accepted man as their textbook, and through the study of him learned to understand the greater and more abstruse mysteries of the celestial scheme of which they were a part. It is not improbable that this mysterious figure standing over the primitive altars was made in the nature of a manikin and, like certain emblematic hands in the Mystery schools, was covered with either carved or painted hieroglyphs. The statue may have opened, thus showing the relative positions of the organs, bones, muscles, nerves, and other parts. After ages of research, the manikin became a mass of intricate hieroglyphs and symbolic figures. Every part had its secret meaning. The measurements formed a basic standard by means of which it was possible to measure all parts of cosmos. It was a glorious composite emblem of all the knowledge possessed by the sages and hierophants." -- Manly P. Hall, "The Human Body in Symbolism", THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES, Chapter XV.

Real Villains prefer Tarot de Marseille

2011-09-27T22:36:00.001-04:00

"Governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world."

2011-09-27T22:20:00.001-04:00

Parasitic (and predominantly Jewish) international finance capital rules the world:

Also: Was the BBC victim of a hoax? No, say the Yes Men | The Cutline - Yahoo! News

"I have no idea why I'm getting this attention," Rastani told Forbes. "I don't think it was news. For someone to say what I said, I thought everybody already knew this kind of stuff. The big players of funds rule the world, I don't think that was news."

Trump XII. "Le Pendu" & The Cabiric Mysteries of Samothrace

2011-09-12T04:20:00.000-04:00

From THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES, Chapter V., Atlantis and the Gods of Antiquity, by Manly P. Hall:

The Cabiric Mysteries of Samothrace were renowned among the ancients, being next to the Eleusinian in public esteem. Herodotus declares that the Samothracians received their doctrines, especially those concerning Mercury, from the Pelasgians. Little is known concerning the Cabiric rituals, for they were enshrouded in the profoundest secrecy. Some regard the Cabiri as seven in number and refer to them as "the Seven Spirits of fire before the throne of Saturn." Others believe the Cabiri to be the seven sacred wanderers, later called the planets.

While a vast number of deities are associated with the Samothracian Mysteries, the ritualistic drama centers around four brothers. The first three--Aschieros, Achiochersus, and Achiochersa--attack and murder the fourth--Cashmala (or Cadmillus). Dionysidorus, however, identifies Aschieros with Demeter, Achiochersus with Pluto, Achiochersa with Persephone, and Cashmala with Hermes. Alexander Wilder notes that in the Samothracian ritual "Cadmillus is made to include the Theban Serpent-god, Cadmus, the Thoth of Egypt, the Hermes of the Greeks, and the Emeph or Æsculapius of the Alexandrians and Phœnicians. " Here again is a repetition of the story of Osiris, Bacchus, Adonis, Balder, and Hiram Abiff. The worship of Atys and Cybele was also involved in the Samothracian Mysteries. In the rituals of the Cabiri is to be traced a form of pine-tree worship, for this tree, sacred to Atys, was first trimmed into the form of a cross and then cut down in honor of the murdered god whose body was discovered at its foot.

"If you wish to inspect the orgies of the Corybantes, " writes Clement, "Then know that, having killed their third brother, they covered the head of the dead body with a purple cloth, crowned it, and carrying it on the point of a spear, buried it under the roots of Olympus. These mysteries are, in short, murders and funerals. [This ante-Nicene Father in his efforts to defame the pagan rites apparently ignores the fact that, like the Cabirian martyr, Jesus Christ was foully betrayed, tortured, and finally murdered!] And the priests Of these rites, who are called kings of the sacred rites by those whose business it is to name them, give additional strangeness to the tragic occurrence, by forbidding parsley with the roots from being placed on the table, for they think that parsley grew from the Corybantic blood that flowed forth; just as the women, in celebrating the Thcsmophoria, abstain from eating the seeds of the pomegranate, which have fallen on the ground, from the idea that pomegranates sprang from the drops of the blood of Dionysus. Those Corybantes also they call Cabiric; and the ceremony itself they announce as the Cabiric mystery."

The Mysteries of the Cabiri were divided into three degrees, the first of which celebrated the death of Cashmala, at the hands of his three brothers; the second, the discovery of his mutilated body, the parts of which had been found and gathered after much labor; and the third--accompanied by great rejoicing and happiness--his resurrection and the consequent salvation of the world. The temple of the Cabiri at Samothrace contained a number of curious divinities, many of them misshapen creatures representing the elemental powers of Nature, possibly the Bacchic Titans. Children were initiated into the Cabirian cult with the same dignity as adults, and criminals who reached the sanctuary were safe from pursuit. The Samothracian rites were particularly concerned with navigation, the Dioscuri--Castor and Pollux, or the gods of navigation--being among those propitiated by members of that cult. The Argonautic expedition, listening to the advice of Orpheus, stopped at the island of Samothrace for the purpose of having its members initiated into the Cabiric rites.

Herodotus relates that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Cabiri he was unable to restrain his mirth at seeing before him the figure of a man standing upright and, facing the man, the figure of a woman standing on her head. Had Cambyses been acquainted with the principles of divine astronomy, he would have realized that he was then in the presence of the key to universal equilibrium. "'I ask,' says Voltaire, 'who were these Hierophants, these sacred Freemasons, who celebrated their Ancient Mysteries of Samothracia, and whence came they and their gods Cabiri?'" (See Mackey's Encyclopædia of Freemasonry.) Clement speaks of the Mysteries of the Cabiri as "the sacred Mystery of a brother slain by his brethren," and the "Cabiric death" was one of the secret symbols of antiquity. Thus the allegory of the Self murdered by the not-self is perpetuated through the religious mysticism of all peoples. The philosophic death and the philosophic resurrection are the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries respectively.

A curious aspect of the dying-god myth is that of the Hanged Man. The most important example of this peculiar conception is found in the Odinic rituals where Odin hangs himself for nine nights from the branches of the World Tree and upon the same occasion also pierces his own side with the sacred spear. As the result of this great sacrifice, Odin, while suspended over the depths of Nifl-heim, discovered by meditation the runes or alphabets by which later the records of his people were preserved. Because of this remarkable experience, Odin is sometimes shown seated on a gallows tree and he became the patron deity of all who died by the noose. Esoterically, the Hanged Man is the human spirit which is suspended from heaven by a single thread. Wisdom, not death, is the reward for this voluntary sacrifice during which the human soul, suspended above the world of illusion, and meditating upon its unreality, is rewarded by the achievement of self-realization.

From a consideration of all these ancient and secret rituals it becomes evident that the mystery of the dying god was universal among the illumined and venerated colleges of the sacred teaching. This mystery has been perpetuated in Christianity in the crucifixion and death of the God-man-Jesus the Christ. The secret import of this world tragedy and the Universal Martyr must be rediscovered if Christianity is to reach the heights attained by the pagans in the days of their philosophic supremacy. The myth of the dying god is the key to both universal and individual redemption and regeneration, and those who do not comprehend the true nature of this supreme allegory are not privileged to consider themselves either wise or truly religious.

"Keep Your Mouth Shut and Get Lawyered Up"

2011-09-12T00:23:00.002-04:00

Evola on Holy War in the Nordic-Aryan Tradition

2011-09-06T01:14:00.001-04:00

Considering that in the traditional view of the world every reality was a symbol and every action a ritual, the same was true in the case of war; since war could take on a sacred character, "holy war" and "the path to God" became one and the same thing. In more or less explicit forms, this concept is found in many traditions: a religious aspect and a transcendent intent were often associated with the bloody and military deeds of traditional humanity....

The Nordic-Aryan mythology conceived Valhalla as the seat of heavenly immortality reserved for the heroes fallen on the battlefield, in addition to nobles and free men of divine origin. This seat was related to the symbolism of "heights" (as Glitnirbjorg, the "resplendent mountain," or Hmninbjorg, the "heavenly mountain," the highest divine mountain on whose peaks an eternal brightness shines beyond the clouds), and was often identified with Asgard, namely, with the Aesir's seat located in the Middle Land (Mitgard); the Lord of this seat was Odin-Wotan, the Nordic god of war and victory. According to a particular myth, Odin was the king who with his sacrifice showed to the heroes the path that leads to the divine dwellings where they will live forever and be transformed into his "sons." Thus, according to the Nordic races, no sacrifice or cult was more cherished by the supreme god and thought to bear more supernatural fruits than the one celebrated by the hero who falls on the battlefield; from a declaration of war to its bloody conclusion, the religious element permeated the Germanic hosts and inspired the individual warrior as well. Moreover, in these traditions we find the idea that by means of a heroic death the warrior shifted from the plane of the material, earthly war to the plane of struggle of a transcendent and universal character. The hosts of heroes were believed to constitute the so-called Wildes Heer, the mounted stormtroopers led by Odin who take off from the peak of Mount Valhalla and then return to rest on it. In the higher forms of this tradition, the host of the dead heroes selected by the Valkyrie for Odin, with whom the Wildes Heer eventually became identified, was the army the god needed in order to fight against the ragna-rokkr, the "twilight of the gods" that has been approaching for a very long time. It is written: “There is a very large number of dead heroes in Valhalla, and many more have yet to come, and yet they will seem too few when the wolf comes."

From Revolt Against the Modern World, p. 116-7.

Julius Evola on the Greater and Lesser Jihad

2011-09-06T00:18:00.000-04:00

From Revolt Against The Modern World, Chapter 17, "The Greater and Lesser Holy War," p. 118-120.

In the Islamic tradition a distinction is made between two holy wars, the “greater holy war” (el-jihadul-akbar) and the “lesser holy war” (el-jihadul-ashgar). This distinction originated from a saying (hadith) of the Prophet, who on the way back from a military expedition said: “You have returned from a lesser holy war to a great holy war.” The greater holy war is of an inner and spiritual nature; the other is the material war waged externally against an enemy population with the particular intent of bringing “infidel” populations under the rule of “God’s Law” (al-Islam). The relationship between the “greater” and “lesser holy war”, however, mirrors the relationship between the soul and the body; in order to understand the heroic asceticism or “path of action”, it is necessary to understand the situation in which the two paths merge, the “lesser holy war” becoming the means through which a “greater holy war” is carried out, and vice versa: the “little holy war”, or the external one, becomes almost a ritual action that expresses and gives witness to the reality of the first. Originally, orthodox Islam conceived of a unitary form of asceticism: that which is connected to the jihad or “holy war”.

The “greater holy war” is man’s struggle against the enemies he carries within. More exactly, it is the struggle of man’s higher principle against everything that is merely human in him, against his inferior nature and against chaotic impulses and all sorts of material attachments. This is expressly outlined in a text of Aryan warrior wisdom: “Know Him therefore who is above reason; and let his peace give thee peace. Be a warrior and kill desire, the powerful enemy of the soul.” (Bhagavad-Gita 3.43)

The “enemy” who resists us and the “infidel” within ourselves must be subdued and put in chains. This enemy is the animalistic yearning and instinct, the disorganized multiplicity of impulses, the limitations imposed on us by a fictitious self, and thus also fear, wickedness, and uncertainty; this subduing of the enemy within is the only way to achieve inner liberation or the rebirth in a state of deeper inner unity and “peace” in the esoteric and triumphal sense of the word.

In the world of traditional warrior asceticism the “lesser holy war”, namely, the external war, is indicated and even prescribed as the means to wage this “greater holy war”; thus in Islam the expressions “holy war” (jihad) and “Allah’s way” are often used interchangeably. In this order of ideas action exercises the rigorous function and task of a sacrificial and purifying ritual. The external vicissitudes experienced during a military campaign cause the inner “enemy” to emerge and put up a fierce resistance and agood fight in the form of the animalistic instincts of self-preservation, fear, inertia, compassion, or other passions; those who engage in battles must overcome these feelings by the time they enter the battlefield if they wish to win and to defeat the outer enemy or “infidel”.

Obviously the spiritual orientation and the “right intention” (niya), that is, the one toward transcendence (the symbols employed to refer to transcendence are “heaven”, “paradise”, “Allah’s garden” and so on), are supposed as the foundations of jihad, lest war lose its sacred character and degenerate into a wild affair in which true heroism is replaced with reckless abandonment and what counts are the unleashed impulses of the animal nature.

It is written in the Qu’ran: “Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the hereafter fight for the cause of Allah; whether they die or conquer, We shall richly reward them.” (Qu’ran, 4:76) The presupposition according to which it is prescribed “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads, and when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly” (Qu’ran 47:4); or, “Do not falter or sue for peace when you have gained the upper hand” (Qu’ran 47:37), is that “the life of this world is but a sport and a past-time” (Qu’an 47:37) and that “whoever is ungenerous to this cause is ungenerous to himself” (Qu’ran 47:38). These statements should be interpreted along the lines of the evangelical saying: “Whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it: but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25). This is confirmed by yet another Koranic passage: “Why is it that when it is said to you: ‘March in the cause of Allah.’ you linger slothfully in the land? Are you content with this life in preference to the life to come?” (Qu’ran, 9:38) “Say: ‘Are you waiting for anything to befall us except victory or martyrdom?’” (Qu’ran, 9:52).

Another passage is relevant as well: “Fighting is obligatory for you, as much as you dislike it. But you may hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not.” (Qu’ran, 2:216). This passage should also be connected with the following one:

“They were content to be with those that stayed behind: a seal was set upon their hearts, leaving them bereft of understanding. But the Apostle and the men who shared his faith fought with their goods and their persons. These shall be rewarded with good things. They shall surely prosper. Allah has prepared them gardens watered by running streams, in which they shall abide forever. That is the supreme triumph.” (Qu’ran, 9:88 – 9:89)

This place of “rest” (paradise) symbolizes the superindividual states of being, the realization of which is not confined to the post-mortem alone,as the following passage indicates: “As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish. he will vouchsafe them guidance and ennoble their state; He will admit them to the paradise He has made known to them.” (Qu’ran, 47:5-7). In the instance of real death in battle, we find the equivalent of the mors triumphalis found in classical traditions. Those who have experienced the “greater holy war” during the “lesser holy war”, have awakened a power that most likely will help them overcome the crisis of death; this power, having already liberated them from the “enemy” and from the “infidel”, will help them avoid the fate of Hades. This is why in classical antiquity the hope of the deceased and the piety of his relatives often caused figures of heroes and of victors to be inscribed on the tombstones. It is possible, however, to go through death and conquer, as well as achieve, the superlife and to ascend to the “heavenly realm” while still alive.

"Liber O" and The Hermetic Tradition

2011-09-05T18:48:00.002-04:00

From THREE BOOKS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, (Cthonios Books), p. 557-558.
Neither can the great reading of books direct you here, since they are but as riddles. How great writings are there made of the irresistible power of the Magical Art, of the prodigious Images of Astrologers, of the monstrous transmutations of Alchymists, of that blessed stone, by which, Mydas like, all metals that were touched are presently transmuted into Gold, or Silver, all which are found vain, fictitious, and false, as often as they are practised according to letter. Yet such things are delivered, and writ by great and grave Philosophers, and holy men, whose traditions, who dare say are false? Nay, it were impious to think that they were lyes. There is therefore another meaning then what is written in letters, and that is vailed with divers mysteries, and as yet clearly explained by none of the Masters, and which I believe no man can attain to by reading of books only, without a skilfull, and faithfull master, unless he be divinely illuminated, as very few are. Therefore it is a vanity for any man that searcheth into the secrets of nature, to give himself to bare reading. For they that thus do, are, being ensnared in the gins of the exterior spirits, to whom it is given to rule, made dangerous slaves, not knowing themselves, and go back into the footsteps of their flocks, seeking without themselves, what they have in themselves. And this is that which I would have you know, because in us is the operator of all wonderfull effects, who knows how to discern, and effect, and that without any sin or offence to God, whatsoever the monstrous Mathematicians, the prodigious Magicians, the envious Alchymists, and bewitching Necromancers can do by spirits. In us I say is the operator of Miracles.

Not the bright stars of th' skie, nor flames of Hell,
But th' spirit that these doth make, doth in us dwell.

****
From THE HERMETIC TRADITION by Julius Evola, p. 194-5.
After a “separation” has taken place…, there follows a control over a “form” or “subtle body” that can be detached from the physical body. Thereupon it becomes possible to project one’s own “double” which, as a regenerated consciousness, has the power to transport itself instantaneously to any given point in space, resulting thereby in a corresponding apparition…. This “form,” being sustained solely by the mind, can assume whatever shape the mind imagines and imposes. Hence not only bilocation, but also the ability, that the Orient attributes to the yogis, to appear simultaneously in several different forms apart from those which (up to this stage) the unity of a single physical body lying in abeyance maintains. If in many popular traditions or among primitive people there are witch doctors said to have the power to manifest themselves and act in the forms of animals, while remaining elsewhere and lying in their human body, there is reason to think there are other phenomena substantially like these. But in the greater part of these cases (if they are authentic), they are not the deliberate acts of the Higher Soul. Such phenomena are the result rather of a dark promiscuity on the part of the sorcerer with one of the occult forces of animality, which erupting in him, dominates the “double” to whom is transmitted the figure of the type that corresponds in the visible animal kingdom (“werewolves,” “leopard-men,” etc.): dissociated projections in which are dramatized the totemic rapports....

****
From BOOK IV, Pt. III, Chapter 18. By Aleister Crowley
Now this fine body perceives a universe which we do not ordinarily perceive. It does not necessarily perceive the universe which we do normally perceive, so although in this body I can pass through the roof, it does not follow that I shall be able to tell what the weather is like. I might do so, or I might not: but if I could not, it would not prove that I was deceiving myself in supposing that I had passed through the roof. This body, which is called by various authors the Astral double, body of Light, body of fire, body of desire, fine body, scin-laeca and numberless other names is naturally fitted to perceive objects of its own class ... in particular, the phantoms of the astral plane…. There is some sort of vague and indeterminate relation between the Astrals and the Materials; and it is possible, with great experience, to deduce facts about material things from the astral aspect which they present to the eyes of the Body of Light.

****
From BOOK IV, Pt. III, Chapter 18, Pt. II. By Aleister Crowley
The spiritual planes are of several types, but are all distinguished by a reality and intensity to be found nowhere else. Their inhabitants are formless, free of space and time, and distinguished by incomparable brilliance. There are also a number of sub-planes, as, for example, the Alchemical. This plane will often appear in the practice of "Rising on the Planes"; its images are usually those of gardens curiously kept, mountains furnished with peculiar symbols, hieroglyphic animals, or such figures as that of the "Hermetic Arcanum", and pictures like the "Goldseekers" and the "Massacre of the Innocents" of Basil Valentine. There is a unique quality about the alchemical Plane which renders its images immediately recognizable.

****
From BOOK IV, Pt. III, Appendix III. By Aleister Crowley
But the fundamental problem of Religion is this: Is there any praeter-human Intelligence, of the same order as our own, which is not dependent on cerebral structures consisting of matter in the vulgar sense of the word? …. It is obviously impossible to communicate with an independent intelligence — the one real object of astral research — if one allows one's imagination to surround one with courtiers of one's own creation…. Now the proof that one is in contact with an independent entity depends on a sensation which ought to be unmistakeable if one is in good health…. The essence of the right sensation consists in recognition of the reality of the other Being. There will be as a rule some element of hostility, even when the reaction is sympathetic. One's "soul-mate" (even) is not thought of as oneself, at first contact…. We must not assert the "reality" or "objectivity" of an Astral Being on no better evidence than the subjective sensation of its independent existence. We must insist on proof patient to all qualified observers if we are to establish the major premise of Religion: that there exists a Conscious Intelligence independent of brain and nerve as we know them.

****
From LIBER O, Part I. by Aleister Crowley.
1. This book is very easy to misunderstand; readers are asked to use the most minute critical care in the study of it, even as we have done in its preparation. 2. In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them. 3. The advantages to be gained from them are chiefly these: ("a") A widening of the horizon of the mind. ("b") An improvement of the control of the mind. 4. The student, if he attains any success in the following practices, will find himself confronted by things (ideas or beings) too glorious or too dreadful to be described. It is essential that he remain the master of all that he beholds, hears or conceives; otherwise he will be the slave of illusion, and the prey of madness. Before entering upon any of these practices, the student should be in good health, and have attained a fair mastery of Asana, Pranayama and Dharana. 5. There is little danger that any student, however idle or stupid, will fail to get some result; but there is great danger that he will be led astray, obsessed and overwhelmed by his results, even though it be by those which it is necessary that he should attain.

****
From BOOK IV, Pt. III, Chapter 18, Pt. I. By Aleister Crowley
The proper method is as follows: — Develop the body of Light until it is just as real to you as your other body, teach it to travel to any desired symbol, and enable it to perform all necessary Rites and Invocations. In short, educate it…. To sum up, the first task is to separate the astral form from the physical body, the second to develop the powers of the astral body, in particular those of sight, travel, and interpretation; third, to unify the two bodies without muddling them. This being accomplished, the magician is fitted to deal with the invisible.

****
From THE HERMETIC TRADITION by Julius Evola, p. 202.
…Zosimos tells us that the “tincture” of Gold… cannot be obtained in the solid state (that is, the material state) of the bodies: “they must first be subtilized and spiritualized,” until “the spiritual forces, which cannot be perceived by the (physical) senses, have been made effective.” It is necessary to “dissolve the substances and what must then be transmuted to obtain the physical transmutation are the celestial natures.” ….for what makes the conversion of the incorporeal into the corporeal…, it is necessary to understand, by analogy with everything that pertains to the purely initiatory experience, that the consciousness must not be the pure “spirit” aspect of the substances but, after being elevated to that aspect, it must be put back in rapport with the same substance as the body in such a way that “the two are made one.” Otherwise the results would be but a step into other forms of consciousness without direct relationship to the physical plane, which is necessary for the alchemical operation. It is necessary then to form “intermediate substances” or “androgynous” substances both “spiritual and corporeal” (perception of the substance and perception of its “psychic” dimension, the one in function of the other): and thus has been established the first conditions for the operations of physical alchemy…. Also important, in this regard, is the reference to a “true and not fantastic imagination” and to an “intellectual vision,” the first being accomplished in the “Light of Nature.”

References
Note: Referring to Crowley for certain specific technical procedures is not to be interpreted as a blanket-endorsement of his philosophy of “Thelema.”
Aleister Crowley by Julius Evola. From Chapter IX, “Il Satanismo” (“Satanism”) of Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo (“Mask and Face of Contemporary Spiritualism”)
Magick in Theory and Practice - Chapter 18
Appendix III: Notes for an Astral Atlas - Magick in Theory and Practice - Aleister Crowley
Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae sub figurâ VI

19th Century German-made Navaja

2011-09-05T00:58:00.001-04:00

Nice 19th century German version of the Spanish Navaja-style knife kicking around on ebay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaja

Stalags: Holocaust Pornography in Israel

2011-09-01T22:43:00.002-04:00

Sally Hemmings Propaganda Debunked

2011-08-31T22:55:00.000-04:00

They should title the book "Lies your Nigger-Loving Marxist Professors Taught You."

New book disputes claim Jefferson fathered children of slave Hemings
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Tuesday, August 30, 2011

In a book due out Thursday, eminent scholars say it's unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children, disputing a decade's worth of conventional wisdom that the author of the Declaration of Independence sired offspring with one of his slaves.

The debate has ensnared historians for years, and many thought the issue was settled when DNA testing in the late 1990s confirmed that a Jefferson male fathered Hemings' youngest son, Eston. But, with one lone dissenter, the panel of 13 scholars doubted the claim and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson's brother Randolph as the father.

The scholars also disputed accounts that said Hemings' children received special treatment from Jefferson, which some saw as evidence of a special bond between the third president and Hemings.

"It is true that Sally's sons Madison and Eston were freed in Jefferson's will, but so were all but two of the sons and grandsons of Sally's mother Betty Hemings who still belonged to Thomas Jefferson at the time of his death. Sally's sons received by far the least favorable treatment of those freed in Thomas Jefferson's will," said Robert F. Turner, a former professor at the University of Virginia who served as chairman of the commission.

Mr. Turner made the remark in a statement announcing the release of the book, "The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission."

The commission, which worked without compensation, was formed at the behest of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, an outside group that seeks to defend Jefferson's image.

Richard Dixon, who edits the newsletter for the Jefferson Heritage Society, which sponsored the scholars panel, said the book will provide academic heft for the ongoing debate.

"The reason that this book is important is that it does address these, we might call them, reasons why Jefferson could have been the father, in a detailed manner, and shows the fallacies in these reasons, and should bring the reader back to a point where the issue is not proven," he said.

The debate has raged for years, fueled in part by the thorny questions of slavery and race in American history and by the paradox of Jefferson himself, whose stirring rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence seemed belied by his ownership of slaves.

At Monticello, Jefferson's home in Albemarle County, Va., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded that the evidence does point toward him as the father. Like the scholars commission, however, the foundation acknowledges there is no way to fully prove or disprove the issue.

"Our evidence is the same as their evidence — our interpretation of it is different," said Leslie G. Bowman, president of the foundation.

She said such a dispute among historians is typical and that an ongoing dialogue is a good thing.

Monticello's website acknowledges the work of the scholars commission, though it says the consensus of historians is that Jefferson "was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records."

The claims about Jefferson date back to at least 1802, when Jefferson was serving his first term as president. A former ally of Jefferson's wrote in a Richmond newspaper that he kept a slave named Sally as a concubine, and had fathered "several children" with her.

Hemings' children, Madison and Eston, kept the story alive. In November 1998, results of DNA testing were released and showed a genetic link between descendants of the Jefferson family and of Eston Hemings.

A committee formed by the Jefferson foundation concluded in 2000 that the weight of evidence suggested Jefferson was most likely the father of Eston, and perhaps the father of all six of Hemings' children recorded at Monticello.

The Heritage Society fought back with its own commission, which issued its report in 2001 disputing the conclusions. The 400-page book being released Thursday is the commission's final product, complete with footnotes and references to rebut the other side's claims.

Among their evidence:

• Claims that the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson started in Paris are unlikely because she was living with his daughters at their boarding school across the city at the time.

• The "Jefferson family" DNA used in the 1998 test came from descendants of his uncle, which the scholars said means any one of two dozen Jefferson men living in Virginia at the time Eston was conceived could have been the father.

• The 1802 rumors centered on Thomas Woodson, who was said to have been one of Hemings' children. But tests of three Woodson descendants failed to show a link to Jefferson family DNA. Also, no documentation supports claims he was Hemings' child.

• Oral tradition from Eston Hemings' family initially said he was not the son of the president, but rather of an "uncle" — which the scholars think is a reference to Randolph Jefferson, the president's brother, who would have been referred to as "uncle" by Jefferson's daughters.

Of the 13 scholars on the panel, one, Paul A. Rahe, a history professor at Hillsdale College, dissented from the conclusions.

Among the dozen others, their belief in Jefferson's parentage ranged from "serious skepticism" to a belief that the paternity argument is "almost certainly false."

In announcing the book's release, Mr. Turner said he is challenging scholars on the other side of the issue to debate the matter publicly. The scholars will hold a news conference Thursday at the National Press Club to discuss the book.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/30/new-book-disputes-claim-jefferson-fathered-childre/print/

The Century Of The Self

2011-08-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

Play "spot the Jews."

Regarding Anything Written on Tarot Symbolism Here

2011-08-25T22:08:00.002-04:00

There is nothing especially “mystical” about the origins of the Tarot, at least no more than Chess, or Lot Books, or allegorical artwork of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in general. I have never asserted otherwise. The late 18th-to-20th century speculations of the occultists on the origins of the Tarot are just that. They do not even qualify as Tradition or authentic folklore, any more than the most bizarre excesses of the 19th century Theosophical Society literature qualify as authentic Vedic or Hindu teachings.

The most substantial research into the actual history and development of the Tarot deck has been done by Michael Dummett, better known to the world as an analytical philosopher. Dummett has written that the various forms of early tarot packs developed since the 15th century range in number from 97 to 42 cards, but with reason to believe they sprung from a more-or-less standard model of the 78 card deck of which the Visconti-Sforza pack is a good example. While this may not have been the exact form of the deck initially, it quickly became the standard. This is the form of the 56 suit cards and 22 trump cards. The suit cards are divided into groups as batons, cups, swords, and coins. The court cards are divided according to type (baton, cup, sword, and coin) and rank (king, queen, knight, page).

The word “Tarot” likewise had no particularly mystical origins, being borrowed from the French “tarau”, which was in turn simply the French adaptation of the Italian “tarocco” (plural, “tarocci”). Throughout the 15th century, the Tarot was known simply as “carte da frionfi” which means nothing more than “cards with trumps.” The word “tarocchi” did not widely apply to the game until the 16th century. The word itself is of unknown origin, and a 16th century writer, Alberto Lollio refers to it as being “without an etymology.”

The names and symbols of the suits have varied over time. The spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds of the familiar card decks were invented by French cardmakers circa 1470s, while the earliest reference to tarot cards comes from a Ferrarese court account book dating 1442. In Italy, Iberia, and most of France, the suit signs were the same as ordinarily used for the regular pack of cards. On Spanish cards, and those used in southern Italy, the appearance of the suit designs differ from other indigenous Italian cards, notably by the separate placement of swords and batons rather than intersected as in the Italian type. Dummett relates that until c.1750 tarot cards everywhere outside of Italy carried the suit signs of the Italian type, therefore an indication that Italy is where they were invented. The four court cards of each suit is also not an anomaly of the tarot. There are regular card decks from 15th century Germany that also include four court cards for each suit. Therefore the outstanding feature setting the tarot, or tarocchi decks apart from regular decks was the additional suit of trumps or “triumphs”.

There is no evidence of the Tarot being used for occult or fortune telling purposes until the 18th century. A 15th century Dominican preacher wrote a vehement condemnation of gambling and gaming, including a mention of tarot cards alongside dice and regular playing cards as instruments of gaming – surely if there were a widespread practice of using the tarot for “occult” purposes, it would have been mentioned and condemned. The Tarot therefore was invented to play specific types of card games, for which a substantial amount of literature exists.

If there is “esoteric” content to the Tarot, it is not automatically intentional in every respect, except insofar as symbolic and allegorical content common to the culture of the time served as the subject matter for the Trump cards. In which case it is as open to interpretation as any other allegorical or symbolic material from any other device of any other culture, as well as is the numerical structure of the deck itself.

The symbolic and allegorical subject matter of the Trump cards led Guenon to recognize the Tarot as a substantial example of vestigial survival of Traditional symbols in mainstream cultural artifacts. If one chooses to take the Traditionalist line of interpretation of the Tarot, as we do here, it should be along the lines outlined by Evola (The Mystery of the Grail, p.9-10), "The characteristic feature of the method that I call 'traditional' (in opposition to the profane, empirical, and critical-intellectual method of modern research), consists in emphasizing the universal character of a symbol or teaching, and in relating it to corresponding symbols found in other traditions, thus establishing the presence of something that is both superior and antecedent to each of these formulations, which are different from and yet equivalent to each other. Since anyone tradition may have given to a common meaning a more complete, typical, and transparent expression than have the others, seeking to establish correspondences is consequently one of the most fruitful ways to understand and integrate what in other cases is found in a more obscure or fragmentary form."

It is the actual pictorial content of the Tarot, its symbolism and allegories, numerical structures, and even its aristocratic origins that validate a Traditionalist line of interpretation (as well as other factors that will be apparent to anyone familiar with the literature), not the absurd latter-day 18th-20th century occultist fabrications regarding its origins in ancient Egypt or among Gypsies, or other fantastical nonsense. A perrenialist or Traditionalist interpretation of the Tarot, along the methodical lines advocated by Evola, or the widely recognized Traditionalist art historian Coomaraswamy for example, is just as valid as the Traditionalist interpretation of any artifact, artistic or religious, of any culture.

JDS

See also: http://cosmodromium.blogspot.com/2010/11/tarot-history-information-sheet.html

Onion: "Overcome Stress By Visualizing It As A Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race Of Creatures"

2011-08-24T17:56:00.000-04:00

Historical Numerology for the Tarot Pips

2011-08-24T01:04:00.000-04:00

I have a backlog of interesting questions received via email regarding the Tarot going back to a blog I posted a few months ago, and a few more pertaining to the photos of my favorite decks in the previous blog entry, that I intend to reply to here eventually, along with some questions on the blog regarding Traditionalism and Western Esotericism/Occultism that I will also reply to in the near future.

In the meantime one reader writes, regarding my focus on the Marseille Tarots, that they have difficulty with the Pip Cards (called "Minor Arcana" by the 19th-20th century occult writers) of the Marseille decks because they lack the explicitly leading visual symbolism of the post-Golden Dawn decks. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is especially over the top in providing allegorical illustrations for every card in the deck, and Crowley is almost nearly as explicit in his designs of the "Lesser Arcana" - the four suit cards numbered 1-10. Paul Foster Case, in his B.O.T.A. deck returns to the minimalist representations of the Marseille-style decks, even though all of the above decks basically follow the Golden Dawn schema of attributions to the four elements (aces) and 36 decanants of the Roman Zodiac in addition to the 10 Sephiroth of Athanasius Kircher's Cabalistic Tree of Life diagram as used by the Golden Dawn. This is one area where the Golden Dawn architects were not too far "out to lunch". Overall, with only a few exceptions, the Golden Dawn attributions for the "Minor Arcana" are not too far out of line in terms of historical (and Traditional) attributions and qualitive numerological associations. But in general it is best to question and second-guess the Golden Dawn (and most 19th-20th century "occultists") on just about every point.

For reading into the symbolism and qualitive numerical structure of the Marseille decks, we might ask ourselves what materials a contemporary might be working from in the period in which they were created (lets say from the Tarot of Jean Noblet to that of Nicholas Conver, 1650-1780). I would suggest familiarity with Platonism, Neo-Platonism, the surviving elements of Pythagoras, numerical symbolism (explicit and latent) in The Bible, and the works of late medieval and early renaissance thinkers such as Agrippa, Pico, Paracelsus, etc.

Of course there is too much material to post in one simple blog entry, but as an introductory example here we can pull passages from Agrippa's foundational Three Books of Occult Philosophy and Manly P. Hall's excellent paraphrase of the writings of Nicomachus, Theon of Smyrna, Proclus, Porphyry, Plutarch, Clement of Alexandria, Aristotle, and other early authorities in chapter 16 of his monumental Secret Teachings of All Ages. W.W. Westcott's monograph on Numbers is also a useful compendium of historical symbolism.

First, the Golden Dawn attribution of the four elements to the four suits of the Tarot are commonsense. I have laid out the four aces to complete novices who instinctively worked out the same attribution of elemental fire to the wands/batons, water to cups, air to swords, and earth to disks/coins.

The Tarot contrasts to the interesting Minchate decks that include trump cards for the four elements proper (albeit in a different order - Fire, Water, Earth, and Air):

Perhaps the best historical (and Traditional) outline and summary of the symbolism of the four elements and their nature can be found in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, Chap. iii. "Of the four Elements, their qualities, and mutuall mixtions."

There are four Elements, and originall grounds of all corporeall things, Fire, Earth, Water, Aire, of which all elementated inferiour bodies are compounded; not by way of heaping them up together, but by transmutation, and union; and when they are destroyed, they are resolved into Elements. For there is none of the sensible Elements that is pure, but they are more or less mixed, and apt to be changed one into the other: Even as Earth becoming dirty, and being dissolved, becomes Water, and the same being made thick and hard, becometh Earth again; but being evaporated through heat, passeth into Aire, and that being kindled, passeth into Fire, and this being extinguished, returns back again into Aire, but being cooled again after its burning, becometh Earth, or Stone, or Sulphur, and this is manifested by Lightening [lightning]: Plato also was of that opinion, that Earth was wholly changeable, and that the rest of the Elements are changed, as into this, so into one another successively. But it is the opinion of the subtiller sort of Philosophers, that Earth is not changed, but relented and mixed with other Elements, which do dissolve it, and that it returns back into it self again. Now, every one of the Elements hath two specificall qualities, the former whereof it retains as proper to it self, in the other, as a mean, it agrees with that which comes next after it. For Fire is hot and dry, the Earth dry and cold, the Water cold and moist, the Aire moist and ot. And so after this manner the Elements, according to two contrary qualities, are contrary one to the other, as Fire to Water, and Earth to Aire. Moreover, the Elements are upon another account opposite one to the other: For some are heavy, as Earth and Water, and others are light, as Aire and Fire. Wherefore the Stoicks called the former passives, but the latter actives. And yet once again Plato distinguished them after another manner, and assigns to every one of them three qualities, viz. to the Fire brightness, thinness and motion, but to the Earth darkness, thickness and quietness. And according to these qualities the Elements of Fire and Earth are contrary. But the other Elements borrow their qualities from these, so that the Aire receives two qualities of the Fire, thinness and motion; and one of the Earth, viz. darkness. In like manner Water receives two qualities of the Earth, darkness and thickness, and one of Fire, viz. motion. But Fire is twice more thin then Aire, thrice more movable, and four times more bright: and the Aire is twice more bright, thrice more thin, and four times more moveable then Water. Wherefore Water is twice more bright then Earth, thrice more thin, and four times more movable. As therefore the Fire is to the Aire, so Aire is to the Water, and Water to the Earth; and again, as the Earth is to the Water, so is the Water to the Aire, and the Aire to the Fire. And this is the root and foundation of all bodies, natures, vertues, and wonderfull works; and he which shall know these qualities of the Elements, and their mixtions, shall easily bring to pass such things that are wonderfull, and astonishing, and shall be perfect in Magick.

Also See:
Chap. 4. Of a Three-fold Consideration of the Elements.
Chap. 5. Of the Wonderful Natures of Fire and Earth.
Chap. 6. Of the Wonderful Natures of Water, Air and Winds.

For the historical Tarot suits we must fall back on Traditional practice of correspondence rather than direct obvious representation such as found in the Minchiate trumps. Here we have the Tarot suits: Batons (Fire); Cups (Water); Swords/Daggers (Air); and Discs/Coins (Earth):

Above we have picture the four aces, attributed to the monad, unitary concept, the numeral 1. In Manly P. Hall's summary of classical sources we read:

Monad--1--is so called because it remains always in the same condition--that is, separate from multitude. Its attributes are as follows: It is called mind, because the mind is stable and has preeminence; hermaphrodism, because it is both male and female; odd and even, for being added to the even it makes odd, and to the odd, even; God, because it is the beginning and end of all, but itself has neither beginning nor end; good, for such is the nature of God; the receptacle of matter, because it produces the duad, which is essentially material.

By the Pythagoreans monad was called chaos, obscurity, chasm, Tartarus, Styx, abyss, Lethe, Atlas, Axis, Morpho (a name for Venus), and Tower or Throne of Jupiter, because of the great power which abides in the center of the universe and controls the circular motion of the planers about itself. Monad is also called germinal reason, because it is the origin of all the thoughts in the universe. Other names given to it were: Apollo, because of its relation to the sun; Prometheus, because he brought man light; Pyralios, one who exists in fire; geniture, because without it no number can exist; substance, because substance is primary; cause of truth; and constitution of symphony: all these because it is the primordial one.

Between greater and lesser the monad is equal; between intention and remission it is middle; in multitude it is mean; and in time it is now, because eternity knows neither past nor future. It is called Jupiter, because he is Father and head of the gods; Vesta, the fire of the home, because it is located in the midst of the universe and remains there inclining to no side as a dot in a circle; form, because it circumscribes, comprehends, and terminates; love, concord, and piety, because it is indivisible. Other symbolic names for the monad are ship, chariot, Proteus (a god capable of changing his form), Mnemosyne, and Polyonymous (having many names).

See also:
Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book II, Chap. iv. Of Unity, and the Scale thereof
W.W. Westcott's Numbers, Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues, The Monad. 1.

Above are pictured the four deuces, reflecting duality and the number 2. Again, from Hall:

The following symbolic names were given to the duad--2--because it has been divided, and is two rather than one; and when there are two, each is opposed to the other: genius, evil, darkness, inequality, instability, movability, boldness, fortitude, contention, matter, dissimilarity, partition between multitude and monad, defect, shapelessness, indefiniteness, indeterminate ness, harmony, tolerance, root, feet of fountain-abounding idea, top, Phanes, opinion, fallacy, alterity, diffidence, impulse, death, motion, generation, mutation, division, longitude, augmentation, composition, communion, misfortune, sustentation, imposition, marriage, soul, and science.

In his book, Numbers, W. Wynn Westcott says of the duad: "it was called 'Audacity,' from its being the earliest number to separate itself from the Divine One; from the 'Adytum of God-nourished Silence,' as the Chaldean oracles say."
As the monad is the father, so the duad is the mother; therefore, the duad has certain points in common with the goddesses Isis, Rhea (Jove's mother), Phrygia, Lydia, Dindymene (Cybele), and Ceres; Erato (one of the Muses); Diana, because the moon is forked; Dictynna, Venus, Dione, Cytherea; Juno, because she is both wife and sister of Jupiter; and Maia, the mother of Mercury.

While the monad is the symbol of wisdom, the duad is the symbol of ignorance, for in it exists the sense of separateness--which sense is the beginning of ignorance. The duad, however, is also the mother of wisdom, for ignorance--out of the nature of itself--invariably gives birth to wisdom.

The Pythagoreans revered the monad but despised the duad, because it was the symbol of polarity. By the power of the duad the deep was created in contradistinction to the heavens. The deep mirrored the heavens and became the symbol of illusion, for the below was merely a reflection of the above. The below was called maya, the illusion, the sea, the Great Void, and to symbolize it the Magi of Persia carried mirrors. From the duad arose disputes and contentions, until by bringing the monad between the duad, equilibrium was reestablished by the Savior-God, who took upon Himself the form of a number and was crucified between two thieves for the sins of men.

See also:
Agrippa, Book II, Chap. v. Of the Number of Two, and the Scale thereof.
Westcott, The Dyad. 2. http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/nop/nop08.htm

M.P. Hall's summary:

The triad--3--is the first number actually odd (monad not always being considered a number). It is the first equilibrium of unities; therefore, Pythagoras said that Apollo gave oracles from a tripod, and advised offer of libation three times. The keywords to the qualities of the triad are friendship, peace, justice, prudence, piety, temperance, and virtue. The following deities partake of the principles of the triad: Saturn (ruler of time), Latona, Cornucopiæ, Ophion (the great serpent), Thetis, Hecate, Polyhymnia (a Muse), Pluto, Triton, President of the Sea, Tritogenia, Achelous, and the Faces, Furies, and Graces. This number is called wisdom, because men organize the present, foresee the future, and benefit by the experiences of the fast. It is cause of wisdom and understanding. The triad is the number of knowledge--music, geometry, and astronomy, and the science of the celestials and terrestrials. Pythagoras taught that the cube of this number had the power of the lunar circle.

The sacredness of the triad and its symbol--the triangle--is derived from the fact that it is made up of the monad and the duad. The monad is the symbol of the Divine Father and the duad of the Great Mother. The triad being made of these two is therefore androgynous and is symbolic of the fact that God gave birth to His worlds out of Himself, who in His creative aspect is always symbolized by the triangle. The monad passing into the duad was thus capable of becoming the parent of progeny, for the duad was the womb of Meru, within which the world was incubated and within which it still exists in embryo.

See also:
Agrippa: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa2.htm#chap6
Westcott: http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/nop/nop09.htm

Manly P. Hall's summary:

The tetrad--4--was esteemed by the Pythagoreans as the primogenial number, the root of all things, the fountain of Nature and the most perfect number. All tetrads are intellectual; they have an emergent order and encircle the world as the Empyreum passes through it. Why the Pythagoreans expressed God as a tetrad is explained in a sacred discourse ascribed to Pythagoras, wherein God is called the Number of Numbers. This is because the decad, or 10, is composed of 1, 2, 3, and 4. The number 4 is symbolic of God because it is symbolic of the first four numbers. Moreover, the tetrad is the center of the week, being halfway between 1 and 7. The tetrad is also the first geometric solid.

Pythagoras maintained that the soul of man consists of a tetrad, the four powers of the soul being mind, science, opinion, and sense. The tetrad connects all beings, elements, numbers, and seasons; nor can anything be named which does not depend upon the tetractys. It is the Cause and Maker of all things, the intelligible God, Author of celestial and sensible good, Plutarch interprets this tetractys, which he said was also called the world, to be 36, consisting of the first four odd numbers added to the first four even numbers, thus:

1 + 3 +5 +7 = 16
2 + 4 + 6 + 8= 20
16+20 = 36

Keywords given to the tetrad are impetuosity, strength, virility, two-mothered, and the key keeper of Nature, because the universal constitution cannot be without it. It is also called harmony and the first profundity. The following deities partook of the nature of the tetrad: Hercules, Mercury, Vulcan, Bacchus, and Urania (one of the Muses).

The triad represents the primary colors and the major planets, while the tetrad represents the secondary colors and the minor planets. From the first triangle come forth the seven spirits, symbolized by a triangle and a square. These together form the Masonic apron.

See also:
Agrippa: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa2.htm#chap7
Westcott: http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/nop/nop11.htm

From M.P. Hall:

The pentad--5--is the union of an odd and an even number (3 and 2). Among the Greeks, the pentagram was a sacred symbol of light, health, and vitality. It also symbolized the fifth element--ether--because it is free from the disturbances of the four lower elements. It is called equilibrium, because it divides the perfect number 10 into two equal parts.

The pentad is symbolic of Nature, for, when multiplied by itself it returns into itself, just as grains of wheat, starting in the form of seed, pass through Nature's processes and reproduce the seed of the wheat as the ultimate form of their own growth. Other numbers multiplied by themselves produce other numbers, but only 5 and 6 multiplied by themselves represent and retain their original number as the last figure in their products.

The pentad represents all the superior and inferior beings. It is sometimes referred to as the hierophant, or the priest of the Mysteries, because of its connection with the spiritual ethers, by means of which mystic development is attained. Keywords of the pentad are reconciliation, alternation, marriage, immortality, cordiality, Providence, and sound. Among the deities who partook of the nature of the pentad were Pallas, Nemesis, Bubastia (Bast), Venus, Androgynia, Cytherea, and the messengers of Jupiter.

The tetrad (the elements) plus the monad equals the pentad. The Pythagoreans taught that the elements of earth, fire, air, and water were permeated by a substance called ether--the basis of vitality and life. Therefore, they chose the five-pointed star, or pentagram, as the symbol of vitality, health, and interpenetration.

It was customary for the philosophers to conceal the element of earth under the symbol of a dragon, and many of the heroes of antiquity were told to go forth and slay the dragon. Hence, they drove their sword (the monad) into the body of the dragon (the tetrad). This resulted in the formation of the pentad, a symbol of the victory of the spiritual nature over the material nature. The four elements are symbolized in the early Biblical writings as the four rivers that poured out of Garden of Eden. The elements themselves are under the control of the composite Cherubim of Ezekiel.

From M.P. Hall:

The Pythagoreans held the hexad--6--to represent, as Clement of Alexandria conceived, the creation of the world according to both the prophets and the ancient Mysteries. It was called by the Pythagoreans the perfection of all the parts. This number was particularly sacred to Orpheus, and also to the Fate, Lachesis, and the Muse, Thalia. It was called the form of forms, the articulation of the universe, and the maker of the soul.

Among the Greeks, harmony and the soul were considered to be similar in nature, because all souls are harmonic. The hexad is also the symbol of marriage, because it is formed by the union of two triangles, one masculine and the other feminine. Among the keywords given to the hexad are: time, for it is the measure of duration; panacea, because health is equilibrium, and the hexad is a balance number; the world, because the world, like the hexad, is often seen to consist of contraries by harmony; omnisufficient, because its parts are sufficient for totality (3 +2 + 1 = 6); unwearied, because it contains the elements of immortality.

Manly P. Hall:

By the Pythagoreans the heptad--7--was called "worthy of veneration." It was held to be the number of religion, because man is controlled by seven celestial spirits to whom it is proper for him to make offerings. It was called the number of life, because it was believed that human creatures born in the seventh month of embryonic life usually lived, but those born in the eighth month often died. One author called it the Motherless Virgin, Minerva, because it was nor born of a mother but out of the crown, or the head of the Father, the monad. Keywords of the heptad are fortune, occasion, custody, control, government, judgment, dreams, voices, sounds, and that which leads all things to their end. Deities whose attributes were expressed by the heptad were Ægis, Osiris, Mars, and Cleo (one of the Muses).

Among many ancient nations the heptad is a sacred number. The Elohim of the Jews were supposedly seven in number. They were the Spirits of the Dawn, more commonly known as the Archangels controlling the planets. The seven Archangels, with the three spirits controlling the sun in its threefold aspect, constitute the 10, the sacred Pythagorean decad. The mysterious Pythagorean tetractys, or four rows of dots, increasing from 1 to 4, was symbolic of the stages of creation. The great Pythagorean truth that all things in Nature are regenerated through the decad, or 10, is subtly preserved in Freemasonry through these grips being effected by the uniting of 10 fingers, five on the hand of each person.

The 3 (spirit, mind, and soul) descend into the 4 (the world), the sum being the 7, or the mystic nature of man, consisting of a threefold spiritual body and a fourfold material form. These are symbolized by the cube, which has six surfaces and a mysterious seventh point within. The six surfaces are the directions: north, east, south, west, up, and down; or, front, back, right, left, above, and below; or again, earth, fire, air, water, spirit, and matter. In the midst of these stands the 1, which is the upright figure of man, from whose center in the cube radiate six pyramids. From this comes the great occult axiom: "The center is the father of the directions, the dimensions, and the distances."

The heptad is the number of the law, because it is the number of the Makers of Cosmic law, the Seven Spirits before the Throne.

M.P. Hall:

The ogdoad--8--was sacred because it was the number of the first cube, which form had eight corners, and was the only evenly-even number under 10 (1-2-4-8-4-2-1). Thus, the 8 is divided into two 4's, each 4 is divided into two 2's, and each 2 is divided into two 1's, thereby reestablishing the monad. Among the keywords of the ogdoad are love, counsel, prudence, law, and convenience. Among the divinities partaking of its nature were Panarmonia, Rhea, Cibele, Cadmæa, Dindymene, Orcia, Neptune, Themis, and Euterpe (a Muse).

The ogdoad was a mysterious number associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece and the Cabiri. It was called the little holy number. It derived its form partly from the twisted snakes on the Caduceus of Hermes and partly from the serpentine motion of the celestial bodies; possibly also from the moon's nodes.

M.P. Hall's summary:

The ennead--9--was the first square of an odd number (3x3). It was associated with failure and shortcoming because it fell short of the perfect number 10 by one. It was called the called the number of man, because of the nine months of his embryonic life. Among its keywords are ocean and horizon, because to the ancients these were boundless. The ennead is the limitless number because there is nothing beyond it but the infinite 10. It was called boundary and limitation, because it gathered all numbers within itself. It was called the sphere of the air, because it surrounded the numbers as air surrounds the earth, Among the gods and goddesses who partook in greater or less degree of its nature were Prometheus, Vulcan, Juno, the sister and wife of Jupiter, Pæan, and Aglaia, Tritogenia, Curetes, Proserpine, Hyperion, and Terpsichore (a Muse).

The 9 was looked upon as evil, because it was an inverted 6. According to the Eleusinian Mysteries, it was the number of the spheres through which the consciousness passed on its way to birth. Because of its close resemblance to the spermatozoon, the 9 has been associated with germinal life.

From M.P. Hall:

The decad--10--according to the Pythagoreans, is the greatest of numbers, not only because it is the tetractys (the 10 dots) but because it comprehends all arithmetic and harmonic proportions. Pythagoras said that 10 is the nature of number, because all nations reckon to it and when they arrive at it they return to the monad. The decad was called both heaven and the world, because the former includes the latter. Being a perfect number, the decad was applied by the Pythagoreans to those things relating to age, power, faith, necessity, and the power of memory. It was also called unwearied, because, like God, it was tireless. The Pythagoreans divided the heavenly bodies into ten orders. They also stated that the decad perfected all numbers and comprehended within itself the nature of odd and even, moved and unmoved, good and ill. They associated its power with the following deities: Atlas (for it carried the numbers on its shoulders), Urania, Mnemosyne, the Sun, Phanes, and the One God.

Hall concludes his summary with the comment, "The decimal system can probably be traced back to the time when it was customary to reckon on the fingers, these being among the most primitive of calculating devices and still in use among many aboriginal peoples." This hints at one of the diverse ways the Tarot reflects directly the primordial symbolism of human anatomy and how it relates from Microcosm to Macrocosm in the Traditional Hermetic sense.

The foundational symbolism of the four elements combined with the traditional meanings of the numbers 1-10 are just two factors in the potential interpretation of the 40 minor suit cards of the Tarot. There are also Cabalistic and Astrological attributions worth considering insofar as they coherently align with the underlying numerical structure of the Tarot, which will probably be the subject of future blog entries. There is also a substantial body of material derived from the Bible bearing on the interpretation of the numbers 1-10, enough to warrant a separate essay.

None of this is fluidly self-evident at first encounter, only through prolonged consideration and personal elaboration does any of this become meaningful or coherent. In any event, this traditional method of correlating the various manifestations of these symbolic structures is rewarding in itself to anyone inclined to the study of symbols even at the superficial level of humanistic "psychology", and building from the ground up, by way of working from the ancient and traditional sources is much deeper and substantial than the pre-masticated over-cooked "what does it mean" quick-fix offered in the pulp paper mill of mainstream "occult" and "spiritual" books on the Tarot. Just this quick blog post drawing on publicly available material online offers something more substantial than the contents of most books on the subject, at least for anyone of intelligence willing to work through the arcane and archaic original source materials on their own.

A few Tarot decks from my collection.

2011-08-22T23:05:00.000-04:00

I keep some of my favorite decks in this antique reliquary given to me by a friend. The decks pictured here are mostly Marseille-style Tarots. The cards in the upper right of the open case with XIII. LA MORT on top are the trumps from my first deck, The "Swiss" Deck, that I've had since I was probably 7 or 8 years old. Somewhere back then I read that the trumps were the only cards needed so I discarded the others. The decks pictured here constitute probably one-fifth of my Tarot collection.

Pictured above, right to left from top to bottom: The B.O.T.A. Deck, spare cards from the Flornoy restoration of the Jean Dodal deck, trumps from the IJJ Swiss Deck (all of the above are resting on a box containing the reproduction of the original Rider-Waite-Smith deck and the Hermetic Tarot deck, beneath that (unseen in photo) is the Giant Rider-Waite deck, below these are the mini-deck of Claude Burdel, the mini-deck of the Camoin-Jodorowsky "restoration" Marseille deck, in the brown paper envelope is a reproduction of the Nicholas Conver Marseille deck and the Angelo Valla Marseille deck (both 18th century), below that in the burgundy bag is the 1930's Paul Marteau Marseille Tarot published by Grimaud from the early 1960's with the thick card stock, the Aleister Crowley "Book of Thoth" deck, a Spanish reproduction of another 18th century Marseille deck, the Golden Dawn Tarot deck, a reproduction of the Tarot Besancon (18th century) deck, a poorly-recolored version of the 18th century Claude Burdel Marseille deck, the University Books printing of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck from the 60's (that I have also had since I was a child, below that are the Kris Hadar Marseille restoration deck, the Flornoy restoration of the 18th century Jean Dodal Marseille deck, the very interesting and unusual 18th century Jacques Veiville deck (one of my all-time favorites), the Flornoy restoration of the 17th century Jean Noblet Marseille Tarot, the full-size Camoin-Jodorowsky Marseille Tarot (probably my favorite modern "restoration" effort), and the 18th century Ignaz Krebs Marseille deck (another favorite).

Cosmodromium, Traditionalism, and Western Esotericism

2011-08-14T00:20:00.001-04:00

As Nietzsche was the most important reading experience and philosophical encounter of my teens and twenties, Heidegger and Spengler in my twenties and thirties, so Julius Evola and René Guénon are proving to be in my forties. Although a lifelong student of Western Esotericism, it fascinates me that my interest in politics, specifically Italian Fascism (and the esoteric undercurrents of international Fascism and German National Socialism in general) led me to a close study of Evola, and therefore Guénon (and a select few other “Traditionalists”), and thereby back to a close study of Western Esotericism, particularly older material, alongside the primary texts of the various ancient world religions (particularly of the east – although not excluding the Bible and esoteric Islam).

Things come full circle. I still have books from my pre-teen and early teen years on various aspects of Western Occultism – so I could say without contradiction that it was the “religion” of my childhood (Christianity certainly was not) – So Evola and Guénon have brought me into intensive re-engagement with material I’ve been immersed in for most of my life, though having second-shelved it for quite awhile out of disgust with the mainstream squalor of “occultism” wallowed in by those who have relegated themselves to the intellectual ghetto of masturbatory post-Crowley Golden Dawn/OTO re-enactment. Not only was I prepared for Evola and René Guénon by having read Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Spengler – I found, especially when reading Evola, that his works consistently footnoted works almost completely represented in my private library – such as John Woodroffe, Evans-Wentz, the 51 volumes of The Sacred Books of the East, Agrippa, primary texts on ceremonial magic, astrology, alchemy, the Tarot, Holy Grail literature, mythology, etc. accumulated over the last three decades working in the field of antiquarian books engaged with an active interest in this specific subject matter.

Although Evola, and even René Guénon, concede in some respects that the 19th and early 20th century Anglophone “esoteric” orders adopted and retained some authentic shreds of Tradition – mostly in the form of symbolism, although jumbled into a pastiche of Victorian Egyptomania, Theosophy, and erroneous evolutionary and “New Age” ideas – it is safe to say that (with few exceptions) the post-Crowley “magicians” and “occultists” have drowned face-down in their own shallow incestuous excrement. My experience directly interacting with these types in nearly thirty years of dealing in esoteric books only confirms my bias. How many times have the various publishers of pulp-occultism – Llewellyn, Weiser, Falcon Press, etc. – republished basically the same information merely reformatted by unimaginative parrots regurgitating the material put out by Mathers, Westcott, Crowley, Fortune, etc., now over a century ago? Even worse, they repackage and re-sell the even later degeneration, cobbled together from the hideously contaminated backwash of late-1960’s American counterculture (read Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson), arguably the single worst thing to happen to Western Esotericism in its long history (essentially outward signs of its rotting from the inside). Anton LaVey was entirely warranted in exorcising the worthless hippy counterculture elements that had engulfed and polluted the study of Western Occultism and Eastern Religions in the 1960’s – although that is not to paint LaVey into unconditional sympathy with the primary material even when deloused of its insipid American countercultural refuse.

As I wrote in my book (very superficially, in “Satanism vs. Traditionalism”), the transcendent element is absolutely foundational to any “school” of authentic Traditionalism, therefore Satanism and Traditionalism are fundamentally irreconcilable (even though they may find certain points in common, especially with Evola, such as a contempt for egalitarianism) unless one is willing to question crude concepts of “materialism” (of relatively recent provenance in the history of ideas) and the assumed bifurcation of “spiritual” vs. “carnal” (which Evola deals with admirably in his Yoga of Power), but this does not address other areas of conflict such as reconciliation with “modernity”, heavily conflicting evaluations of “progress” and “evolution” etc. Traditionalism does not recognize any permutation of a “New Age” idea (however camouflaged in black) much less embracing devolved aspects of “culture” and human society.

This is not material for anyone lacking intellectual stamina, for those wearing ideas to impress others without doing the actual work required for authentic comprehension. At its best, this material demands a high level of comprehension and engagement, it does not lend itself to “popularization” (for very specific reasons) and is not remotely egalitarian or “for everyone.” My interest and enthusiasm does not extend to the expression of Americanized “Radical Traditionalism” manifest in various music and fashion-statement subcultures – a case of direct devolution in action – and arguably so from a Traditionalist perspective. Especially within the corrosive American sphere, it is a given that most elements huddled under the umbrella of “Tradition” – as another “ism” – are operating in complete or partial ignorance, or in direct conflict with Tradition. There is nothing safe or half-way about the René Guénon of Crisis of the Modern World or The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times and there is certainly nothing safe about Julius Evola, but they are only two, albeit foundational, figures of what is now called “The Traditionalist School.” Even the publishers of René Guénon’s works in English stoop to appeal by quoting popular Jazz singers to make a point. I had the recent misfortune to witness a discussion of so-called “Traditionalists” in which a consensus was reached that they were all in favor of it insofar as it recognized a kind of ecumenical egalitarian “truth” in “all” creeds, but stopped short where it veers into “creepy politics” – obviously a reference to Evola – so in other words they are only “Traditionalists” insofar as it is warm and comforting, with all the scary parts taken out, and only so long as it doesn’t threaten their precious ideals of democracy and equality.

Arguably the most important event in Western Esotericism over the last two-to-three decades, from the Anglo-American perspective, is the translation of the writings of Julius Evola and René Guénon into English, alongside the rise of serious (even when hostile) scholarly treatment of historical Western Esotericism by the likes of Jocelyn Godwin, Antoine Faivre, etc. embodied in various centers for the scholarly study of Esotericism at the University of Amsterdam, Sussex, etc., and scholarly publishing ventures such as the State University of New York press series in Western Esoteric Traditions, and the Mythos and Bollingen Series published by Princeton University Press (although some of these have been in print longer than the past 30 years), even where devoid of “insider” perspective most of this material is of use.

I intend to write more from this perspective in the future.

JDS
Secretum Templi

Magic and War by Major-General J.F.C. Fuller

2011-08-13T22:51:00.004-04:00

The name of Major-General J.F.C. Fuller should already be well-known to most readers of this blog. Aside from being one of the pre-eminent military historians in the English language, a well known occultist, occult artist, and associate of Aleister Crowley, Fuller was also “left hand man” and tactical advisor to British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, and member of the Nordic League. If there was an occult faction within the BUF, without a doubt Major-General Fuller is the figure most indicative of their methods and ideas.

I would like to thank “Falcon” – a New Right ally in Britain – for sending photocopies of the rare original via regular post.

From The Occult Review, April 1942
MAGIC AND WAR
By Major-General J.F.C. Fuller

BOTH magic and war are coercive, propitiary and dynamic. Their purpose is to influence events, and though the means employed differ the end is identical – namely, transformation. When in his Manuals the soldier states that his object in war is to impose his will on his enemy, he enters into the realm of magic; and when the magician sets out to impose his will on his victim he steps into the kingdom of war.

Duality is the father of both. Not duality in harmony as depicted by the Yang and the Yin of the Taoists, or by the positive and negative poles of an electrical battery, but instead by the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Magian religion, and more so still by the Light and Darkness of the Manichean. These cults of conflicting opposites are, among ourselves, symbolized in our patron saint – St. George and the Dragon: He represents light and the dragon darkness. Indra, the war god of the Aryans, was also a dragon-slayer.

“Here Ormuzd, there Ahriman!” is the beginning of all magic and of all war: the I and the You in contradistinction to the Taoist Us, or the Divine Us of Genesis I, 26.

Us is neither peace nor war: it represents harmony – that is duality in unity. Yet between I and You – the separated Yang and Yin of Us – there is everlasting conflict. The Us is real, as are day and night, light and darkness, male and female. They are real because they are relative and complementary, and they only become unreal when they are separated into unrelated absolutes. There is no such thing as absolute right and wrong or absolute peace and war, for only the relative is real. Therefore our true enemy is not what we consider evil; instead it is the fixing of what we call “good” in an imagined and non-existing absolute.

What we should realize is that perpetual peace can no more be gained through the elimination of war than perpetual war can be gained through the elimination of peace. Further, that these two terms are but synonyms of the I and the You, because life is the Us. It embraces and includes both. When Mars and Venus are united, life becomes creative, but when they are separated, sterility – that is, destruction – follows.

Lack of harmony or balance turns men into inert saints and active sinners. It creates a separation between the I and You; next strain and finally quarrel. Then emanate the magicians, whether equipped with want, pentacle and sword, or with cannon, tank and aeroplane. Madmen arise in high places, and impose their wills on their followers by forcing their heads not under the sands but into the newspapers. Such is propaganda, or the propitiatory magic, intellect is sacrificed on the altar of perverted imagination. Circe takes control, lycanthropy comes into play and men are changed into swine or wild animals. The wolf-man is no myth; in wartime he may be smelt in nearly every headline.

Coercion next follows, not only through the clash of arms but of ideas. In order morally to destroy the enemy an image is first made of him, not of wax but of words, into which nails of burning hatred are driven. He is Anti-Christ, Satan, Belial. He is smothered in verbal dirt until in image form he appears a monster. Thus is Ahriman invoked into being, and to keep the lie bright all truth is turned upside-down. Then a whole nation marches widdershins, and he who fails to keep in step is termed a traitor.

Is this an exaggeration? I do not think so. Look at the world as it is at this moment and at the war as it is being fought. What is it about?

We live in an age in which the main causes of war are economic, because the wealth of the world has been divided between the I and the You instead of having been allotted to the Us. There is sufficiency for all, more than enough for each separate nation; yet the more prosperous of the world has grown the more discontented it has become. Why is this? Is it because the nations are too many? No - the stars in the heavens are many, yet there is harmony between them. The reason is that their fundamental needs are so few. Deprive them of any one and at once their lives are imperiled.

What do the masses of mankind require? Food, shelter and warmth. Give them these and the foundations of their creative life are laid. Add to these truth, and intellectual freedom is granted to them; add to these justice, and a moral sense of security follows. Deprive them of these simple needs, and at once they are thrown back into the jungle.

Unless this triple path is followed, all nation planning can be nothing other than the magic of I and You – of Man and the Plan. It is not a monstrous blue-print of a new world that we are in need of; instead a return to the simple way – God’s way. He fashioned man out of the dust of the earth, and He breathed into that dust not peace and war but the spirit of life. As the perfect man is he who is fit in body, mind and soul, so is the perfect nation a people balanced economically, politically and culturally. So also is a perfect human world.

Magic may accomplish many things but it cannot master magic. War may accomplish many things, but war cannot end war. To believe that it can is to turn reason upside-down, and inverted reason is madness.

On the Tablet of Cebes may be read these words:

“There is only one Real Road to be Desired, and this is Wisdom; there is but One Evil to Fear, and it is Madness.”

The problem which faces the nations today is cloaked in these words. Nations who create in order to destroy, cultivate in order to starve and beget in order to slay, are nations entangled in the blackest magic. Their problem is to invert the Beast that is within them. For as St. James said: “From whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” This, indeed, is wisdom.

The Legacy of Dr. William Pierce

2011-08-08T21:49:00.003-04:00

An excellent archive of writings and recorded speeches by William L. Pierce, founder of the original National Alliance, author of Hunter and The Turner Diaries: The Legacy of Dr. William Pierce

René Guénon - The Crisis of the Modern World

2011-08-08T17:53:00.002-04:00

Norway: Lessons from a Successful Lone Wolf Attacker

2011-07-28T09:16:00.000-04:00

Another "Lone Wolf" attack at the very least proving quality over quantity. An interesting/useful analysis from Stratfor.com:

Norway: Lessons from a Successful Lone Wolf Attacker
Created Jul 28 2011 - 03:42
By Scott Stewart

On the afternoon of July 22, a powerful explosion ripped through the streets of Oslo, Norway, as a large improvised explosive device (IED) in a rented van detonated between the government building housing the prime minister’s office and Norway’s Oil and Energy Department building. According to the diary of Anders Breivik, the man arrested in the case who has confessed to fabricating and placing the device, the van had been filled with 950 kilograms (about 2,100 pounds) of homemade ammonium nitrate-based explosives.

After lighting the fuse on his IED, Breivik left the scene in a rented car and traveled to the island of Utoya, located about 32 kilometers (20 miles) outside of Oslo. The island was the site of a youth campout organized by Norway’s ruling Labor Party. Before taking a boat to the island, Breivik donned body armor and tactical gear bearing police insignia (intended to afford him the element of tactical surprise). Once on the island he opened fire on the attendees at the youth camp with his firearms, a semiautomatic 5.56-caliber Ruger Mini-14 rifle and a 9 mm Glock pistol. Due to the location of the camp on a remote island, Breivik had time to kill 68 people and wound another 60 before police responded to the scene.

Shortly before the attack, Breivik posted a manifesto on the Internet that includes his lengthy operational diary. He wrote the diary in English under the Anglicized pen name Andrew Berwick, though a careful reading shows he also posted his true identity in the document. The document also shows that he was a lone wolf attacker who conducted his assault specifically against the Labor Party’s current and future leadership. Breivik targeted the Labor Party because of his belief that the party is Marxist-oriented and is responsible for encouraging multiculturalism, Muslim immigration into Norway and, acting with other similar European governments, the coming destruction of European culture. Although the Labor Party members are members of his own race, he considers them traitors and holds them in more contempt than he does Muslims. In fact, in the manifesto, Breivik urged others not to target Muslims because it would elicit sympathy for them.

Breivik put most of his time and effort into the creation of the vehicle-borne IED (VBIED) that he used to attack his primary target, the current government, which is housed in the government building. It appears that he believed the device would be sufficient to destroy that building. It was indeed a powerful device, but the explosion killed only eight people. This was because the device did not bring down the building as Breivik had planned and many of the government employees who normally work in the area were on summer break. In the end, the government building was damaged but not destroyed in the attack, and no senior government officials were killed. Most of the deaths occurred at the youth camp, which Breivik described as his secondary target.

While Breivik’s manifesto indicated he planned and executed the attack as a lone wolf, it also suggests that he is part of a larger organization that he calls the “Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici (PCCTS, also known as the Knights Templar,) which seeks to encourage other lone wolves (which Brevik refers to as “Justiciar Knights”) and small cells in other parts of Europe to carry out a plan to “save” Europe and European culture from destruction.

Because of the possibility that there are other self-appointed Justiciar Knights in Norway or in other parts of Europe and that Breivik’s actions, ideology and manifesto could spawn copycats, we thought it useful to examine the Justiciar Knights concept as Breivik explains it to see how it fits into lone wolf theory and how similar actors might be detected in the future.

An Opening Salvo?
From reading his manifesto, it is clear that Breivik, much like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, believes that his attack is the opening salvo in a wider campaign, in this case to liberate Europeans from what Breivik views as malevolent, Marxist-oriented governments. These beliefs are what drove Breivik to attack the Norwegian Labor Party. As noted above, it is also clear that Breivik planned and executed his attack alone.

However, he also discusses how he was radicalized and influenced by a Serbian living in Liberia whom he visited there. And Breivik claims to have attended a meeting in London in 2002 to “re-found the Knights Templar.” This organization, PCCTS, which was founded in 2002, is not related to the much older official and public chivalric order also known as the Knights Templar. According to Breivik, the PCCTS was formed with the stated purpose of fighting back against “European Jihad” and to defend the “free indigenous peoples of Europe.” To achieve this goal, the PCCTS would implement a three-phase plan designed to seize political and military power in Europe. In his manifesto Breivik outlines the plan as follows:

•Phase 1 (1999-2030): Cell-based shock attacks, sabotage attacks, etc.
•Phase 2 (2030-2070): Same as above but bigger cells/networks, armed militias.
•Phase 3 (2070-2100): Pan-European coup d’etats, deportation of Muslims and execution of traitors.

As outlined in Breivik’s manifesto, the 2002 meeting was attended by seven other individuals, two from England and one each from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece and Russia. He also asserts that the organization has members from Serbia (his contact living in Liberia), Sweden, Belgium and the United States who were unable to attend the meeting. Brevik states that all the members of the PCCTS were given code names for security, that his code name was “Sigurd,” and that he was mentored by a member with the code name “Richard the Lionhearted” (presumably a Briton). Breivik claims that after meeting these individuals via the Internet he was carefully vetted before being allowed to join the group.

The diary section of Breivik’s manifesto reveals that during the planning process for the attack Breivik traveled to Prague to obtain firearms and grenades from Balkan organized-crime groups there (he had hoped to obtain a fully-automatic AK-47). Breivik was not able to procure weapons in Prague and instead was forced to use weapons he was able to obtain in Norway by legal means. It is interesting that he did not contact the Serbian member of the PCCTS for assistance in making contact with Balkan arms dealers. Breivik’s lawyer told the media July 26 that although Breivik acted alone in conducting his attack, he had been in contact with two terror cells in Norway and other cells abroad. Certainly, Norway and its partners in EUROPOL and the United States will try to identify these other individuals, if they do in fact exist.

In phase one of the PCCTS plan, shock attacks were to be carried out by individuals operating as lone wolves or small cells of Breivik’s so-called Justiciar Knights, which are self-appointed guardians who decide to follow the PCCTS code outlined in Breivik’s manifesto and who are granted the authority to act as “a judge, jury and executioner until the free, indigenous peoples of Europe are no longer threatened by cultural genocide, subject to cultural Marxist/Islamic tyranny or territorial or existential threats through Islamic demographic warfare.”

Breivik’s manifesto notes that he does not know how many Justiciar Knights there are in Western Europe but estimates their number to be from 15 to 80. It is unclear if this is a delusion on his part and there are no other Justiciar Knights or if Breivik has some factual basis for his belief that there are more individuals like him planning attacks.

While some observers have noted that the idea of Justiciar Knights operating as lone wolves and in small cells is similar to the calls in recent years for grassroots jihadists to adopt lone wolf tactics, it is important to understand that leaderless resistance has been a central theme of white supremacist groups in the United States since the early 1990s. While Breivik did not express any anti-Semitism in his manifesto (something he has been heavily criticized for on U.S. anti-Semitic websites), clearly the anti-immigration and anti-Marxist ideology of the PCCTS has been influenced more by white hate groups than by al Qaeda.

Moreover, the concept of a self-identified Justiciar Knight is quite similar to the idea of a “Phineas Priest” in the leaderless resistance model propagated by some white supremacists in the United States who adhere to “Christian Identity” ideology. In this model, Phineas Priests see themselves as lone wolf militants chosen by God and set apart to be his “agents of vengeance” upon the earth. Phineas Priests also believe that their attacks will serve to ignite a wider “racial holy war” that will ultimately lead to the salvation of the white race.

Leaderless resistance has also been advocated by militant anarchists as well as animal rights and environmentalist activists who belong to such groups as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. So it is not correct to think of leaderless resistance merely as a jihadist construct — it has long been used by a variety of militant actors.

Lone Wolf Challenges
One of the great strengths of our enemies, the Western European cultural Marxist/multiculturalist regimes is their vast resources and their advanced investigation/forensic capabilities. There are thousands of video cameras all over European major cities and you will always risk leaving behind dna, finger prints, witnesses or other evidence that will eventually lead to your arrest. They are overwhelmingly superior in almost every aspect. But every 7 headed monster has an Achilles heel. This Achilles heel is their vulnerability against single/duo martyr cells. — Anders Breivik

As STRATFOR has long discussed, the lone wolf operational model presents a number of challenges for law enforcement, intelligence and security officers. The primary challenge is that, by definition, lone wolves are solitary actors and it can be very difficult to determine their intentions before they act because they do not work with anyone else. When militants are operating in a cell consisting of more than one person, there is a larger chance that one of them will get cold feet and reveal the plot to authorities, that law enforcement and intelligence personnel will intercept a communication between conspirators, or that the authorities will be able to insert an informant into the group.

This ability to fly solo and under the radar of law enforcement has meant that some lone wolf militants such as Joseph Paul Franklin, Theodore Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph were able to operate for years before being identified and captured. Indeed, from Breivik’s diary, we know he took several years to plan and execute his attack without detection.

As the Breivik case illustrates, lone wolves also pose problems because they can come from a variety of backgrounds with a wide range of motivations. While some lone wolves are politically motivated, others are religiously motivated and some are mentally unstable.

In addition to the wide spectrum of ideologies and motivations among lone wolves, there is also the issue of geographic dispersal. As we’ve seen from past cases, their plots and attacks have occurred in many different locations and are not confined just to Manhattan, London or Washington. Lone wolf attacks can occur anywhere.

Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to differentiate between those extremists who intend to commit attacks from those who simply preach hate or hold radical beliefs (things that are not in themselves illegal in many countries). Therefore, to single out likely lone wolves before they strike, authorities must spend a great deal of time and resources looking at individuals who might be moving from radical beliefs to radical actions. This is a daunting task given the large universe of potential suspects.

Vulnerabilities
In spite of the challenges presented by lone wolf operatives, they are vulnerable to detection at several different stages of their attack cycle. One of these vulnerabilities comes during the planning stage when weapons are acquired. From reading Breivik’s diary, it is clear that he felt exposed as he tried to purchase the chemicals he needed to build his IED. Because of this vulnerability, Breivik created an extensive cover story that included renting a farm in order to explain his purchase of a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The farm also provided a private, spacious place for him to construct his IED.

Breivik also exposed himself to potential detection when he traveled to Prague to attempt to purchase weapons. One of the criminals he contacted could have turned him in to authorities. (In June 2011 we saw a jihadist cell in Seattle detected and arrested while attempting to buy guns from a criminal acquaintance. Another small cell was arrested in New York in May 2011, also while attempting to obtain weapons.) Even if Breivik had succeeded in purchasing weapons in Prague, he would still have been vulnerable as he smuggled the weapons back into Norway in his car (though it is important to remember that EU countries have open borders so security checks would not have been too stringent).

Breivik also exposed himself to detection as he conducted surveillance on his targets. Interestingly, in his diary, Breivik goes into excruciating detail discussing how he manufactured his device based on information he was able to obtain from the Internet, but he mentions very little about how he selected specific targets or how he conducted surveillance on them. He mentions only that he visited the sites and programmed the locations into his GPS. He also discusses using a video camera to record his attack but does not mention if he used still or video cameras in his target surveillance. How Breivik specifically chose his targets and how he conducted surveillance on them will be important for the Norwegian authorities to examine.

Finally, Breivik mentions several times in his diary that the steps he was taking would be far more difficult if he were a foreign-born Muslim instead of a Caucasian Norwegian. This underscores a problem we have discussed with profiling suspects based on their ethnicity or nationality. In an environment where potential threats are hard to identify, it is doubly important to profile individuals based on their behavior rather than their ethnicity or nationality — what we refer to as focusing on the “how” rather than the “who.”

Not All Lone Wolves are Equal
Finally, in the Breivik case we need to recognize that Norwegian authorities were dealing with a very capable lone wolf operator. While lone wolf theory has been propagated for many years now, there have been relatively few successful lone wolf attacks. This is because it takes a special individual to be a successful lone wolf assailant. Unlike many lone wolves, Breivik demonstrated that he possessed the intelligence and discipline to plan and carry out an attack that spanned several years of preparation. For example, he joined a pistol club in 2005 just in case he ever needed to buy a gun through legal means in Norway, and was able to rely on that alternate plan when his efforts to purchase firearms in Prague failed. Breivik was also driven, detail-oriented and meticulous in his planning. His diary documents that he was also extremely patient and careful during the dangerous trial-and-error process of manufacturing explosives.

It is rare to find a lone wolf militant who possesses all those traits, and Breivik stands in stark contrast to other European grassroots operatives like Nick Reilly or Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed, who made amateurish attempts at attacks. Breivik appears to have been a hard worker who claims to have amassed some 500,000 euros by working a variety of jobs and selling a communications company. After some unsuccessful speculation on the stock market he still had enough money and credit to rent the farm and the vehicles he used in the attack and to buy the required bomb components, weapons and body armor. In his diary he says that he began his two tasks — writing the manifesto and conducting the attack — with a war chest of 250,000 euros and several credit cards.

Breivik also is somewhat unique in that he did not attempt to escape after his attacks or become a martyr by his own hand or that of the authorities. Instead, as outlined in his manifesto, he sought to be tried so that he could turn his trial into a grandstand for promoting his ideology beyond what he did with his manifesto and video. He was willing to risk a long prison sentence in order to communicate his principles to the public. This means that the authorities have to be concerned not only about other existing Justiciar Knights but also anyone who may be influenced by Breivik’s message and follow his example.

There is also the possibility that individuals who do not adhere to Breivik’s ideology will seek to exploit the loopholes and security lapses highlighted by this incident to conduct their own attacks. Breivik’s diary provides a detailed step-by-step guide to manufacturing a successful VBIED, and the authorities will be scrutinizing it carefully to address the vulnerabilities Breivik exposed before those instructions can be used again.

Source URL: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110727-norway-lessons-successful-lone-wolf-attacker

Anti-"Scene": Russian Orthodox Music and Vestments

2011-07-26T23:18:00.000-04:00

Anders Behring Breivik and the Oslo incident

2011-07-25T12:45:00.003-04:00

I honestly have not been following all the details and only read about the first 150 pages or so of his manifesto. (Kudos to Kevin I. Slaughter for beating all the journalists in the world in finding Breivik's manifesto). From what I read most of his pro-Israel anti-Islam spiel was identifiably derived from Bernard Lewis and Robert Spencer - in other words straight from the Regnery/Conservative Book Club catalog.

Ideologically he left a lot to be desired. He was basically a Norwegian Fox News Conservative, which means Zionist/Christian Flake. He had more in common with the US "Tea Party" ideology than he did with anything having actual merit along the lines of the European "New Right", which I am far more in sympathy with, but that is good because they can tangibly distance themselves from his actions.

Even with his intellectual handicap (mainstream Kosher conservatism) he had the wit to target the actual agents of decline - Left/Labor Party - where they hurt, namely their youth, which is making a point about the future. Makes far more sense to target people effectively opening the doors to illegal immigration than to target the immigrants themselves. Here anyone with half a brain would be hard pressed to choose between Liberal Democrats vs. Conservative Republicans. (Obama has actually done more vs. illegal immigration than Bush ever did, which is saying almost nothing).

More recent news claims Breivik intended to target the PM. There is a lot to be said for targeted killing of politicians. The worst thing about the Kennedy assassinations (JFK/RFK) is that they didn't also assassinate Ted Kennedy. Following the damage trail of his political career is like following a plague bacillus that should have been quarantined and eliminated before it had a chance to proliferate.

His position is probably a no-win situation at this point and his actions are tailor made to be spun into any number of agendas by his "enemies" that will be more effective for their ends than his. But if he acted alone he gets high marks for damage inflicted, especially in the 90 minute shooting spree.

JDS
Secretum Templi

Whatever it is, it is not democracy...

2011-07-23T23:39:00.001-04:00

‎"Most people, presumably, would agree that democracy, despite its faults, is the best political system on offer. But I have lived in Predappio for five years, where Mussolini was born, and is buried like a minor deity. And when I see a beautiful young woman doing the Roman salute in front of Mussolini's tomb I realise that she is yearning for something. And I know whatever it is, it is not democracy." -- Nicholas Farrell

Corporatism vs. Corporatocracy

2011-07-23T23:04:00.001-04:00

"Thanks for taking part in the Huffington Post Community! Your account has been activated and is ready to use. Here is your username below for your records. UserName: DVX"

...Of course a sludge-pit of mediocrity such as "huffingtonpost" or "fox news" will never approve my comments to their historically illiterate, poorly informed, and poorly-reasoned sing-to-the-choir journalistic performances. But in case you ever have the opportunity to get through to anyone who matters (rare), whenever you encounter this routine piece of misinformation:

"In the buildup to the bloodiest war of the 20th century, Benito Mussolini said, 'Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.' He is one of history's most reviled characters for good reason."

.... which I have seen propagated by mediocrity-pundits as diverse as Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, and Thom Hartmann.... counter it with this, which surprisingly comes from a left-wing website:

http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html

Mussolini on the Corporate State
by Chip Berlet
A Google(tm) search on January 12, 2005 turned up some 5,000 hits on the following quote:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

It is generally attrributed to an article written by Mussolini in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana with the assistance of Giovanni Gentile, the editor. The quote, however, does not appear in the Enciclopedia Italiana in the original Italian. It does not appear in the official English translation of that article:

Benito Mussolini, 1935, "The Doctrine of Fascism," Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

And it does not appear in the longer treatment of the subject by Mussolini in:

Benito Mussolini, 1935, "Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions," Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.

Where the quote comes from remains a mystery, and while it is possible Mussolini said it someplace at some time, a number of researchers have been unable to find it after months of research.

(If you have a source for the quote based on an actual original document that you copy and mail us, please let us know, and you will receive a free 3-year subscription to the Public Eye magazine)

It is unlikely that Mussolini ever made this statement because it contradicts most of the other writing he did on the subject of corporatism and corporations. When Mussolini wrote about corporatism, he was not writing about modern commercial corporations. He was writing about a form of vertical syndicalist corporatism based on early guilds. The article on Wikipedia on Corporatism explains this rather well.

Here are some typical Mussolini quotes from original documents:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State--a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values--interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (p. 14)

Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which diverent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State. (p.15)

Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers… (p. 23)

"It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism." (p. 24)

Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere. (p. 32)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. (p. 41).

Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

The Labour Charter (Promulgated by the Grand Council ofr Fascism on April 21, 1927)—(published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, April 3, 1927) [sic] (p. 133)

The Corporate State and its Organization (p. 133)

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and usefu [sic] [typo-should be: useful] instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136)

Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.

The above-average Wikipedia entry on Corporatism can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

The term most people are looking for when they misuse the term Corporatism is "Corporatocracy", a good definition of which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

Corporatocracy, in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.

A good prototype/example of true Corporatism is this excerpt from The Charter of Carnero (1920) co-written by Gabrielle D'Annunzio, and is what could be called the epitome of "UR-Fascism":

The Corporations
The State represents the aspiration and effort of the people, as a community, towards material and spiritual advancement.

Those only are full citizens who give their best endeavour to add to the wealth and strength of the State; these truly are one with her in her growth and development. Whatever be the kind of work a man does, whether of hand or brain, art or industry, design or execution, he must he a member of one of the ten Corporations who receive from the commune a general direction as to the scope of their activities, hut are free to develop them in their own way and to decide among themselves as to their mutual duties and responsibilities.

The first Corporation comprises the wage-earners of industry, agriculture and commerce, small artisans, and small landholders who work their own farms, employing little other labour and that only occasionally.

The second Corporation includes all members of the technical or managerial staff in any private business, industrial or rural, with the exception of the proprietors or partners in the business.

In the third, are united all persons employed in commercial undertakings who are not actually operatives. Here again proprietors are excluded.

In the fourth, are associated together all employers engaged in industrial, agricultural, or commercial undertakings, so long as they are not merely owners of the business but — according to the spirit of the new constitution —prudent and sagacious masters of industry.

The fifth comprises all public servants, State and Communal employees of every rank.

In the sixth are to be found the intellectual section of the people; studious youth and its leaders; teachers in the public schools and students in colleges and polytechnics; sculptors, painters, decorators, architects, musicians, all those who practise the Arts, scenic or ornamental.

The seventh includes all persons belonging to the liberal professions who are not included in the former categories.

The eighth is made up of the Co-operative Societies of production and consumption, industrial and agricultural, and can only he represented by the self-chosen administrators of the Societies.

The ninth comprises all workers on the sea.

The tenth has no special trade or register or title. It is reserved for the mysterious forces of progress and adventure. It is a sort of votive offering to the genius of the unknown, to the man of the future, to the hoped-for idealization of daily work, to the liberation of the spirit of man beyond the panting effort and bloody sweat of to-day.

It is represented in the civic sanctuary by a kindled lamp bearing an ancient Tuscan inscription of the epoch of the communes, that calls up an ideal vision of human labour: ‘Fatica senza fatica.’

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Carnaro
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Fiume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Regency_of_Carnaro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio

The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers

2011-07-12T23:21:00.001-04:00

The Lost Tools of Learning
Dorothy Sayers

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided the the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing--perhaps in particular if we learnt nothing--our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value.

However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges, nor the examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries of education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.

Before you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase--reactionary, romantic, mediaevalist, laudator temporis acti (praiser of times past), or whatever tag comes first to hand--I will ask you to consider one or two miscellaneous questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of all our minds, and occasionally pop out to worry us.

When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society. The stock argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving age and prolonging the period of education generally is there there is now so much more to learn than there was in the Middle Ages. This is partly true, but not wholly. The modern boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects--but does that always mean that they actually know more?

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?

Have you ever followed a discussion in the newspapers or elsewhere and noticed how frequently writers fail to define the terms they use? Or how often, if one man does define his terms, another will assume in his reply that he was using the terms in precisely the opposite sense to that in which he has already defined them? Have you ever been faintly troubled by the amount of slipshod syntax going about? And, if so, are you troubled because it is inelegant or because it may lead to dangerous misunderstanding?

Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly, and properly documented, and one that is, to any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?

Do you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a "subject" remains a "subject," divided by watertight bulkheads from all other "subjects," so that they experience very great difficulty in making an immediate mental connection between let us say, algebra and detective fiction, sewage disposal and the price of salmon--or, more generally, between such spheres of knowledge as philosophy and economics, or chemistry and art?

Are you occasionally perturbed by the things written by adult men and women for adult men and women to read? We find a well-known biologist writing in a weekly paper to the effect that: "It is an argument against the existence of a Creator" (I think he put it more strongly; but since I have, most unfortunately, mislaid the reference, I will put his claim at its lowest)--"an argument against the existence of a Creator that the same kind of variations which are produced by natural selection can be produced at will by stock breeders." One might feel tempted to say that it is rather an argument for the existence of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither; all it proves is that the same material causes (recombination of the chromosomes, by crossbreeding, and so forth) are sufficient to account for all observed variations--just as the various combinations of the same dozen tones are materially sufficient to account for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the noise the cat makes by walking on the keys. But the cat's performance neither proves nor disproves the existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the biologist's argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material and a final cause.

Here is a sentence from no less academic a source than a front- page article in the Times Literary Supplement: "The Frenchman, Alfred Epinas, pointed out that certain species (e.g., ants and wasps) can only face the horrors of life and death in association." I do not know what the Frenchman actually did say; what the Englishman says he said is patently meaningless. We cannot know whether life holds any horror for the ant, nor in what sense the isolated wasp which you kill upon the window-pane can be said to "face" or not to "face" the horrors of death. The subject of the article is mass behavior in man; and the human motives have been unobtrusively transferred from the main proposition to the supporting instance. Thus the argument, in effect, assumes what it set out to prove--a fact which would become immediately apparent if it were presented in a formal syllogism. This is only a small and haphazard example of a vice which pervades whole books--particularly books written by men of science on metaphysical subjects.

Another quotation from the same issue of the TLS comes in fittingly here to wind up this random collection of disquieting thoughts--this time from a review of Sir Richard Livingstone's "Some Tasks for Education": "More than once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study of at least one subject, so as to learn Tthe meaning of knowledge' and what precision and persistence is needed to attain it. Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a man may be master in one field and show no better judgement than his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it."

I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the "distressing fact" that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired them: "he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it."

Is not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play "The Harmonious Blacksmith" upon the piano, but had never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized "The Harmonious Blacksmith," he still had not the faintest notion how to proceed from that to tackle "The Last Rose of Summer." Why do I say, "as though"? In certain of the arts and crafts, we sometimes do precisely this--requiring a child to "express himself" in paint before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the right end, will start off by doodling about on an odd piece of material, in order to "give himself the feel of the tool."

Let us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education--the syllabus of the Schools. It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it. What matters is the light it throws upon what the men of the Middle Ages supposed to be the object and the right order of the educative process.

The syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and Quadrivium. The second part--the Quadrivium--consisted of "subjects," and need not for the moment concern us. The interesting thing for us is the composition of the Trivium, which preceded the Quadrivium and was the preliminary discipline for it. It consisted of three parts: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.

Now the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these "subjects" are not what we should call "subjects" at all: they are only methods of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a "subject" in the sense that it does mean definitely learning a language--at that period it meant learning Latin. But language itself is simply the medium in which thought is expressed. The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to "subjects" at all. First, he learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign language, but the structure of a language, and hence of language itself--what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked. Secondly, he learned how to use language; how to define his terms and make accurate statements; how to construct an argument and how to detect fallacies in argument. Dialectic, that is to say, embraced Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he learned to express himself in language-- how to say what he had to say elegantly and persuasively.

At the end of his course, he was required to compose a thesis upon some theme set by his masters or chosen by himself, and afterwards to defend his thesis against the criticism of the faculty. By this time, he would have learned--or woe betide him-- not merely to write an essay on paper, but to speak audibly and intelligibly from a platform, and to use his wits quickly when heckled. There would also be questions, cogent and shrewd, from those who had already run the gauntlet of debate.

It is, of course, quite true that bits and pieces of the mediaeval tradition still linger, or have been revived, in the ordinary school syllabus of today. Some knowledge of grammar is still required when learning a foreign language--perhaps I should say, "is again required," for during my own lifetime, we passed through a phase when the teaching of declensions and conjugations was considered rather reprehensible, and it was considered better to pick these things up as we went along. School debating societies flourish; essays are written; the necessity for "self- expression" is stressed, and perhaps even over-stressed. But these activities are cultivated more or less in detachment, as belonging to the special subjects in which they are pigeon-holed rather than as forming one coherent scheme of mental training to which all "subjects"stand in a subordinate relation. "Grammar" belongs especially to the "subject" of foreign languages, and essay-writing to the "subject" called "English"; while Dialectic has become almost entirely divorced from the rest of the curriculum, and is frequently practiced unsystematically and out of school hours as a separate exercise, only very loosely related to the main business of learning. Taken by and large, the great difference of emphasis between the two conceptions holds good: modern education concentrates on "teaching subjects," leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along' mediaeval education concentrated on first forging and learning to handle the tools of learning, using whatever subject came handy as a piece of material on which to doodle until the use of the tool became second nature.

"Subjects" of some kind there must be, of course. One cannot learn the theory of grammar without learning an actual language, or learn to argue and orate without speaking about something in particular. The debating subjects of the Middle Ages were drawn largely from theology, or from the ethics and history of antiquity. Often, indeed, they became stereotyped, especially towards the end of the period, and the far-fetched and wire-drawn absurdities of Scholastic argument fretted Milton and provide food for merriment even to this day. Whether they were in themselves any more hackneyed and trivial then the usual subjects set nowadays for "essay writing" I should not like to say: we may ourselves grow a little weary of "A Day in My Holidays" and all the rest of it. But most of the merriment is misplaced, because the aim and object of the debating thesis has by now been lost sight of.

A glib speaker in the Brains Trust once entertained his audience (and reduced the late Charles Williams to helpless rageb by asserting that in the Middle Ages it was a matter of faith to know how many archangels could dance on the point of a needle. I need not say, I hope, that it never was a "matter of faith"; it was simply a debating exercise, whose set subject was the nature of angelic substance: were angels material, and if so, did they occupy space? The answer usually adjudged correct is, I believe, that angels are pure intelligences; not material, but limited, so that they may have location in space but not extension. An analogy might be drawn from human thought, which is similarly non-material and similarly limited. Thus, if your thought is concentrated upon one thing--say, the point of a needle--it is located there in the sense that it is not elsewhere; but although it is "there," it occupies no space there, and there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of different people's thoughts being concentrated upon the same needle-point at the same time. The proper subject of the argument is thus seen to be the distinction between location and extension in space; the matter on which the argument is exercised happens to be the nature of angels (although, as we have seen, it might equally well have been something else; the practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is not to use words like "there" in a loose and unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean "located there" or "occupying space there."

Scorn in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for hair-splitting; but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in print and on the platform, of controversial expressions with shifting and ambiguous connotations, we may feel it in our hearts to wish that every reader and hearer had been so defensively armored by his education as to be able to cry: "Distinguo."

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.

What, then, are we to do? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages. That is a cry to which we have become accustomed. We cannot go back--or can we? Distinguo. I should like every term in that proposition defined. Does "go back" mean a retrogression in time, or the revision of an error? The first is clearly impossible per se; the second is a thing which wise men do every day. "Cannot"-- does this mean that our behavior is determined irreversibly, or merely that such an action would be very difficult in view of the opposition it would provoke? Obviously the twentieth century is not and cannot be the fourteenth; but if "the Middle Ages" is, in this context, simply a picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory, there seems to be no a priori reason why we should not "go back" to it--with modifications--as we have already "gone back" with modifications, to, let us say, the idea of playing Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, and not in the "modernized" versions of Cibber and Garrick, which once seemed to be the latest thing in theatrical progress.

Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.

But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.

My views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened. Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the only child I can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic--the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.

Let us begin, then, with Grammar. This, in practice, means the grammar of some language in particular; and it must be an inflected language. The grammatical structure of an uninflected language is far too analytical to be tackled by any one without previous practice in Dialectic. Moreover, the inflected languages interpret the uninflected, whereas the uninflected are of little use in interpreting the inflected. I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical documents.

Those whose pedantic preference for a living language persuades them to deprive their pupils of all these advantages might substitute Russian, whose grammar is still more primitive. Russian is, of course, helpful with the other Slav dialects. There is something also to be said for Classical Greek. But my own choice is Latin. Having thus pleased the Classicists among you, I will proceed to horrify them by adding that I do not think it either wise or necessary to cramp the ordinary pupil upon the Procrustean bed of the Augustan Age, with its highly elaborate and artificial verse forms and oratory. Post-classical and mediaeval Latin, which was a living language right down to the end of the Renaissance, is easier and in some ways livelier; a study of it helps to dispel the widespread notion that learning and literature came to a full stop when Christ was born and only woke up again at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Latin should be begun as early as possible--at a time when inflected speech seems no more astonishing than any other phenomenon in an astonishing world; and when the chanting of "Amo, amas, amat" is as ritually agreeable to the feelings as the chanting of "eeny, meeny, miney, moe."

During this age we must, of course, exercise the mind on other things besides Latin grammar. Observation and memory are the faculties most lively at this period; and if we are to learn a contemporary foreign language we should begin now, before the facial and mental muscles become rebellious to strange intonations. Spoken French or German can be practiced alongside the grammatical discipline of the Latin.

In English, meanwhile, verse and prose can be learned by heart, and the pupil's memory should be stored with stories of every kind--classical myth, European legend, and so forth. I do not think that the classical stories and masterpieces of ancient literature should be made the vile bodies on which to practice the techniques of Grammar--that was a fault of mediaeval education which we need not perpetuate. The stories can be enjoyed and remembered in English, and related to their origin at a subsequent stage. Recitation aloud should be practiced, individually or in chorus; for we must not forget that we are laying the groundwork for Disputation and Rhetoric.

The grammar of History should consist, I think, of dates, events, anecdotes, and personalities. A set of dates to which one can peg all later historical knowledge is of enormous help later on in establishing the perspective of history. It does not greatly matter which dates: those of the Kings of England will do very nicely, provided that they are accompanied by pictures of costumes, architecture, and other everyday things, so that the mere mention of a date calls up a very strong visual presentment of the whole period.

Geography will similarly be presented in its factual aspect, with maps, natural features, and visual presentment of customs, costumes, flora, fauna, and so on; and I believe myself that the discredited and old-fashioned memorizing of a few capitol cities, rivers, mountain ranges, etc., does no harm. Stamp collecting may be encouraged.

Science, in the Poll-Parrot period, arranges itself naturally and easily around collections--the identifying and naming of specimens and, in general, the kind of thing that used to be called "natural philosophy." To know the name and properties of things is, at this age, a satisfaction in itself; to recognize a devil's coach-horse at sight, and assure one's foolish elders, that, in spite of its appearance, it does not sting; to be able to pick out Cassiopeia and the Pleiades, and perhaps even to know who Cassiopeia and the Pleiades were; to be aware that a whale is not a fish, and a bat not a bird--all these things give a pleasant sensation of superiority; while to know a ring snake from an adder or a poisonous from an edible toadstool is a kind of knowledge that also has practical value.

The grammar of Mathematics begins, of course, with the multiplication table, which, if not learnt now, will never be learnt with pleasure; and with the recognition of geometrical shapes and the grouping of numbers. These exercises lead naturally to the doing of simple sums in arithmetic. More complicated mathematical processes may, and perhaps should, be postponed, for the reasons which will presently appear.

So far (except, of course, for the Latin), our curriculum contains nothing that departs very far from common practice. The difference will be felt rather in the attitude of the teachers, who must look upon all these activities less as "subjects" in themselves than as a gathering-together of material for use in the next part of the Trivium. What that material is, is only of secondary importance; but it is as well that anything and everything which can be usefully committed to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is immediately intelligible or not. The modern tendency is to try and force rational explanations on a child's mind at too early an age. Intelligent questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and rational answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot readily enjoy and remember things that are beyond his power to analyze--particularly if those things have a strong imaginative appeal (as, for example, "Kubla Kahn"), an attractive jingle (like some of the memory-rhymes for Latin genders), or an abundance of rich, resounding polysyllables (like the Quicunque vult).

This reminds me of the grammar of Theology. I shall add it to the curriculum, because theology is the mistress-science without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis. Those who disagree about this will remain content to leave their pupil's education still full of loose ends. This will matter rather less than it might, since by the time that the tools of learning have been forged the student will be able to tackle theology for himself, and will probably insist upon doing so and making sense of it. Still, it is as well to have this matter also handy and ready for the reason to work upon. At the grammatical age, therefore, we should become acquainted with the story of God and Man in outline--i.e., the Old and New Testaments presented as parts of a single narrative of Creation, Rebellion, and Redemption--and also with the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. At this early stage, it does not matter nearly so much that these things should be fully understood as that they should be known and remembered.

It is difficult to say at what age, precisely, we should pass from the first to the second part of the Trivium. Generally speaking, the answer is: so soon as the pupil shows himself disposed to pertness and interminable argument. For as, in the first part, the master faculties are Observation and Memory, so, in the second, the master faculty is the Discursive Reason. In the first, the exercise to which the rest of the material was, as it were, keyed, was the Latin grammar; in the second, the key- exercise will be Formal Logic. It is here that our curriculum shows its first sharp divergence from modern standards. The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting symptoms which we have noted in the modern intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited, partly because we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely by the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether this is true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training of the reason is the best possible way to make it true. Another cause for the disfavor into which Logic has fallen is the belief that it is entirely based upon universal assumptions that are either unprovable or tautological. This is not true. Not all universal propositions are of this kind. But even if they were, it would make no difference, since every syllogism whose major premise is in the form "All A is B" can be recast in hypothetical form. Logic is the art of arguing correctly: "If A, then B." The method is not invalidated by the hypothetical nature of A. Indeed, the practical utility of Formal Logic today lies not so much in the establishment of positive conclusions as in the prompt detection and exposure of invalid inference.

Let us now quickly review our material and see how it is to be related to Dialectic. On the Language side, we shall now have our vocabulary and morphology at our fingertips; henceforward we can concentrate on syntax and analysis (i.e., the logical construction of speech) and the history of language (i.e., how we came to arrange our speech as we do in order to convey our thoughts).

Our Reading will proceed from narrative and lyric to essays, argument and criticism, and the pupil will learn to try his own hand at writing this kind of thing. Many lessons--on whatever subject--will take the form of debates; and the place of individual or choral recitation will be taken by dramatic performances, with special attention to plays in which an argument is stated in dramatic form.

Mathematics--algebra, geometry, and the more advanced kinds of arithmetic--will now enter into the syllabus and take its place as what it really is: not a separate "subject" but a sub- department of Logic. It is neither more nor less than the rule of the syllogism in its particular application to number and measurement, and should be taught as such, instead of being, for some, a dark mystery, and, for others, a special revelation, neither illuminating nor illuminated by any other part of knowledge.

History, aided by a simple system of ethics derived from the grammar of theology, will provide much suitable material for discussion: Was the behavior of this statesman justified? What was the effect of such an enactment? What are the arguments for and against this or that form of government? We shall thus get an introduction to constitutional history--a subject meaningless to the young child, but of absorbing interest to those who are prepared to argue and debate. Theology itself will furnish material for argument about conduct and morals; and should have its scope extended by a simplified course of dogmatic theology (i.e., the rational structure of Christian thought), clarifying the relations between the dogma and the ethics, and lending itself to that application of ethical principles in particular instances which is properly called casuistry. Geography and the Sciences will likewise provide material for Dialectic.

But above all, we must not neglect the material which is so abundant in the pupils' own daily life.

There is a delightful passage in Leslie Paul's "The Living Hedge" which tells how a number of small boys enjoyed themselves for days arguing about an extraordinary shower of rain which had fallen in their town--a shower so localized that it left one half of the main street wet and the other dry. Could one, they argued, properly say that it had rained that day on or over the town or only in the town? How many drops of water were required to constitute rain? And so on. Argument about this led on to a host of similar problems about rest and motion, sleep and waking, est and non est, and the infinitesimal division of time. The whole passage is an admirable example of the spontaneous development of the ratiocinative faculty and the natural and proper thirst of the awakening reason for the definition of terms and exactness of statement. All events are food for such an appetite.

An umpire's decision; the degree to which one may transgress the spirit of a regulation without being trapped by the letter: on such questions as these, children are born casuists, and their natural propensity only needs to be developed and trained--and especially, brought into an intelligible relationship with the events in the grown-up world. The newspapers are full of good material for such exercises: legal decisions, on the one hand, in cases where the cause at issue is not too abstruse; on the other, fallacious reasoning and muddleheaded arguments, with which the correspondence columns of certain papers one could name are abundantly stocked.

Wherever the matter for Dialectic is found, it is, of course, highly important that attention should be focused upon the beauty and economy of a fine demonstration or a well-turned argument, lest veneration should wholly die. Criticism must not be merely destructive; though at the same time both teacher and pupils must be ready to detect fallacy, slipshod reasoning, ambiguity, irrelevance, and redundancy, and to pounce upon them like rats. This is the moment when precis-writing may be usefully undertaken; together with such exercises as the writing of an essay, and the reduction of it, when written, by 25 or 50 percent.

It will, doubtless, be objected that to encourage young persons at the Pert age to browbeat, correct, and argue with their elders will render them perfectly intolerable. My answer is that children of that age are intolerable anyhow; and that their natural argumentativeness may just as well be canalized to good purpose as allowed to run away into the sands. It may, indeed, be rather less obtrusive at home if it is disciplined in school; and anyhow, elders who have abandoned the wholesome principle that children should be seen and not heard have no one to blame but themselves.

Once again, the contents of the syllabus at this stage may be anything you like. The "subjects" supply material; but they are all to be regarded as mere grist for the mental mill to work upon. The pupils should be encouraged to go and forage for their own information, and so guided towards the proper use of libraries and books for reference, and shown how to tell which sources are authoritative and which are not.

Towards the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be beginning to discover for themselves that their knowledge and experience are insufficient, and that their trained intelligences need a great deal more material to chew upon. The imagination-- usually dormant during the Pert age--will reawaken, and prompt them to suspect the limitations of logic and reason. This means that they are passing into the Poetic age and are ready to embark on the study of Rhetoric. The doors of the storehouse of knowledge should now be thrown open for them to browse about as they will. The things once learned by rote will be seen in new contexts; the things once coldly analyzed can now be brought together to form a new synthesis; here and there a sudden insight will bring about that most exciting of all discoveries: the realization that truism is true.

It is difficult to map out any general syllabus for the study of Rhetoric: a certain freedom is demanded. In literature, appreciation should be again allowed to take the lead over destructive criticism; and self-expression in writing can go forward, with its tools now sharpened to cut clean and observe proportion. Any child who already shows a disposition to specialize should be given his head: for, when the use of the tools has been well and truly learned, it is available for any study whatever. It would be well, I think, that each pupil should learn to do one, or two, subjects really well, while taking a few classes in subsidiary subjects so as to keep his mind open to the inter-relations of all knowledge. Indeed, at this stage, our difficulty will be to keep "subjects" apart; for Dialectic will have shown all branches of learning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will tend to show that all knowledge is one. To show this, and show why it is so, is pre-eminently the task of the mistress science. But whether theology is studied or not, we should at least insist that children who seem inclined to specialize on the mathematical and scientific side should be obliged to attend some lessons in the humanities and vice versa. At this stage, also, the Latin grammar, having done its work, may be dropped for those who prefer to carry on their language studies on the modern side; while those who are likely never to have any great use or aptitude for mathematics might also be allowed to rest, more or less, upon their oars. Generally speaking, whatsoever is mere apparatus may now be allowed to fall into the background, while the trained mind is gradually prepared for specialization in the "subjects" which, when the Trivium is completed, it should be perfectly will equipped to tackle on its own. The final synthesis of the Trivium--the presentation and public defense of the thesis--should be restored in some form; perhaps as a kind of "leaving examination" during the last term at school.

The scope of Rhetoric depends also on whether the pupil is to be turned out into the world at the age of 16 or whether he is to proceed to the university. Since, really, Rhetoric should be taken at about 14, the first category of pupil should study Grammar from about 9 to 11, and Dialectic from 12 to 14; his last two school years would then be devoted to Rhetoric, which, in this case, would be of a fairly specialized and vocational kind, suiting him to enter immediately upon some practical career. A pupil of the second category would finish his Dialectical course in his preparatory school, and take Rhetoric during his first two years at his public school. At 16, he would be ready to start upon those "subjects" which are proposed for his later study at the university: and this part of his education will correspond to the mediaeval Quadrivium. What this amounts to is that the ordinary pupil, whose formal education ends at 16, will take the Trivium only; whereas scholars will take both the Trivium and the Quadrivium.

Is the Trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I believe that it should be. At the end of the Dialectic, the children will probably seem to be far behind their coevals brought up on old-fashioned "modern" methods, so far as detailed knowledge of specific subjects is concerned. But after the age of 14 they should be able to overhaul the others hand over fist. Indeed, I am not at all sure that a pupil thoroughly proficient in the Trivium would not be fit to proceed immediately to the university at the age of 16, thus proving himself the equal of his mediaeval counterpart, whose precocity astonished us at the beginning of this discussion. This, to be sure, would make hay of the English public-school system, and disconcert the universities very much. It would, for example, make quite a different thing of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.

But I am not here to consider the feelings of academic bodies: I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command. To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door.

Before concluding these necessarily very sketchy suggestions, I ought to say why I think it necessary, in these days, to go back to a discipline which we had discarded. The truth is that for the last three hundred years or so we have been living upon our educational capital. The post-Renaissance world, bewildered and excited by the profusion of new "subjects" offered to it, broke away from the old discipline (which had, indeed, become sadly dull and stereotyped in its practical application) and imagined that henceforward it could, as it were, disport itself happily in its new and extended Quadrivium without passing through the Trivium. But the Scholastic tradition, though broken and maimed, still lingered in the public schools and universities: Milton, however much he protested against it, was formed by it--the debate of the Fallen Angels and the disputation of Abdiel with Satan have the tool-marks of the Schools upon them, and might, incidentally, profitably figure as set passages for our Dialectical studies. Right down to the nineteenth century, our public affairs were mostly managed, and our books and journals were for the most part written, by people brought up in homes, and trained in places, where that tradition was still alive in the memory and almost in the blood. Just so, many people today who are atheist or agnostic in religion, are governed in their conduct by a code of Christian ethics which is so rooted that it never occurs to them to question it.

But one cannot live on capital forever. However firmly a tradition is rooted, if it is never watered, though it dies hard, yet in the end it dies. And today a great number--perhaps the majority--of the men and women who handle our affairs, write our books and our newspapers, carry out our research, present our plays and our films, speak from our platforms and pulpits--yes, and who educate our young people--have never, even in a lingering traditional memory, undergone the Scholastic discipline. Less and less do the children who come to be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We have lost the tools of learning--the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the plane-- that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a whole or "looks to the end of the work."

What use is it to pile task on task and prolong the days of labor, if at the close the chief object is left unattained? It is not the fault of the teachers--they work only too hard already. The combined folly of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

Allegory of Public Happiness

2011-07-12T21:51:00.001-04:00

Note the many figures common to Tarot and Minchiate Trumps in The Allegory of Public Happiness by Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino.

Allegory of the Five Obstinate Monsters (c.15th Century)

2011-07-12T21:22:00.001-04:00

Allegory of the Transcendence of Life (1480)

2011-07-12T21:18:00.002-04:00

Revival of the de-bunked alleged Nazi "Borghild Project" Sex Doll story

2011-07-11T10:37:00.004-04:00

Over the past 24 hours this blog has been hit by people running keyword searches for "The Borghild Project", which I posted a blog about here: http://cosmodromium.blogspot.com/2008/07/borghild-project.html

A Cosmodromium reader kindly posted a link to an article debunking the "Borghild Project" story, which can still be read online here: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/22/nazi-sex-doll-story-.html

Best guess is the recent interest, and traffic here, can be attributed to the recent article entitled "Hitler ordered sex dolls for Nazi troops: Report" syndicated by the Indo-Asian News Service and appearing here: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/hitler-ordered-sex-dolls-for-nazi-troops-report-118449

The recent article states "Author Graeme Donald uncovered the sex doll "Borghild Project" while researching the history of the Barbie doll. He wrote the sex doll story in his book, Mussolini's Barber, a compilation of bizarre tales."

I'm wagering Graeme Donald's book, which sounds like yet another prurient hack-job, is based entirely on Nash's stories without subsequent research into his reliability. I wonder if Donald found a way to include some spine-tingling "Holocau$t" stories in with the weird "Nazi sex doll" stories.

JDS

Cthulhu Mythos, As Imagined By Kids

2011-07-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Most Excellent: Cthulhu Mythos, As Imagined By Kids:

"This time I wanted to try something more structured so I pitched the idea to them that since it was getting on to Halloween how ’bout drawing some monsters? And not just any monsters but creatures from the writing of H.P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulhu Mythos. Now, only two of the kids (the older ones) had any knowledge of who Lovecraft was or had read some of his stories. So, I was able to introduce the kids to these creatures pretty much fresh with no previous imagining of what these monsters look like... I put on some creepy Lovecraft inspired music and over the course of about and hour I told them synopsis versions of three of Lovecraft’s tales (The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu) getting quickly through the set up and on to the descriptions of the monsters."

Allegory of Philosophy - School of Albrecht Dürer (1504)

2011-06-30T18:01:00.002-04:00

Here we have the Allegory of Philosophy engraving from Conradus Celtes, Quatuor libri amorum (1502). Sophia of course being the central figure, the laurel garland and vines shoots crowning her represent the different branches of knowledge she personifies. The four winds depicted in each corner are equated with the four elements and four humors; Eurus/Fire/Choleric, Zephir/Air/Sanguine, Auster/Water/Phlegmatic, Boreas/Earth/Melancholic. The medallions surrounding her represent the principal Hermetic traditions from antiquity to the time of the figure; Egypt & Chaldea, Greek, Latin, and Germanic. The letters inscribed or represented in the ray emanating from the heart are in all the languages of the wisdom tradition; Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hebrew characters, and Greek and Latin letters. The central figure of wisdom depicted as a mature woman holding the scepter and book may be iconographically derived from De consolatione Philosophiae of Severinus Boethius. She is surrounded by a wreath in the shape of the vesica piscies or mandorla, akin to that appearing in various iconographic representations of Phanes and Christ. It is easy to see the confluence of iconology and symbolism reflected in Trumps II. La Papesse, and XXI. Le Monde, in the Traditional Tarots of Marseille, as well as earlier Tarots emerging from a similar milieu. -- JDS.

Allegory of Philosophy - School of Albrecht Dürer (1504)

Nicholas Conver Tarot (c. 1760)