- Hi
I have some interrogations on the views which seem to have been held by Evola on the subject of the Jewish subversive turn (twist) of mind, on one particular field: abstraction and mathematics.
It seems that he reproaches the Jews a certain inclination to "reduce" reality to a canvas of mathematical formulae and abstractions. That would be illustrated by the links between mathematics and Kabbalah, as well as the great number of Jewish mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
The tendancy towards mathematics, and mathematicization of the universe, is also condemned as typical of the "lunar" spirituality, for instance in babylonian astrology but also in Pythagora.
But... Guenon uses frequently mathematics and geometry in his explanations, and I remember vaguely several times where he recognizes mathematics as a way to approach metaphysics. We know he disagreed Evola on the latter's defiancy about the pythagorean tradition. Plato, whose "Republic" seemed to have remained a reference to Evola, got also more and more close to the pythagorean school and highly praised geometry, as a mandatory prerequisite to his Academy...
Furthemore, mathematics seem to me -but that's "subjective" and as such not an argument in itself - a way of discipline and ascesis of the mind, close to the "spirit" by the intellectual intuition it can trigger, which is not so frankly incompatible with an aryan mind.
SO: Where are we to draw the line between the rightful use of mathematics and its "subversive", judaic way of understanding it?
Thanks to all contributors who'd like to help me on this point. These interrogations of yours come at the right moment, as we are about to make the final touches to the third part of ‘La liberté: un concept d’esclaves’, to be published – in French - at https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com. It is based on ‘Some phases in the development of the subjective point of view during the post-Aristotelian period’ (http://archive.org/stream/somephasesindeve00sunniala/somephasesindeve00sunniala_djvu.txt), building mainly on it to lay the foundations of a thesis that was implicitly put forward in a post called ‘From Freedom to Feedom’ in this forum : that of the subversive character of philosophy.
Let us note first of all that, when philosophy began its investigations into the underlying principles of ethics, metaphysics, and the special sciences, mathematics furnished the ideal of ‘certainty’ and of ‘method’. Now, the foundations of mathematics in the antiquity in Europe were laid by the Pythagorean school, which derived its knowledge from sources which were not ours. Hermippus, according to Josephus, wrote that Pythagoras “imitated the Jews and Thracians and appropriated their science.” He reportedly added :”It is said that he transferred many Jewish laws in his philosophy.” Whether or not this is the case, “the spread in the ancient world of Jewish traditions and doctrines, the sojourns of the [so-called ‘Greek] philosophers in countries where these doctrines and traditions were widespread, their contact with the Jews and with these doctrines, the influence of these on some parts of their systems seem indubitable. » (V. Hébert-Duperron, Essai sur la polémique et la philosophie de Clément d'Alexandrie, 1865. p. 111) More generally, it makes no doubt that these systems owed a lot to Middle-Eastern doctrines ; besides, most of them were produced by non Greeks. Not only Jews, but Semitic peoples in general, show a “lunar and mathematical spirit, an abstract and, basically, fatalistic contemplativeness, devoid of any interest in the heroic and supernatural affirmation of the personality”, as stated in ‘Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem’ (whose second edition will be available this month) - “this can be considered as the best part of the ancient Semitic heredity”…
To come back to the Pythagorean school, “In Greece Pythagoreanism represented in many ways a return of the Pelasgic spirit. Despite its astral and solar symbols (including a Hyperborean trace), the Pythagorean doctrine was essentially characterized by the Demetrian and pantheistic theme. After all, the lunar spirit of the Chaldean or Mayan priestly science was reflected in its view of the world in terms of numbers and of harmony ; the dark, pessimistic, and fatalistic motif of tellurism was retained in the Pythagorean notion of birth on this earth as a punishment and as a sentence, and also in the teaching concerning reincarnation, which I have previously described as a symptom of spiritual disease. The soul that repeatedly reincarnates is the sould subjected to the chthonic law. The doctrine of reincarnation exemplifies the emphasis Pythagoreanism and Orphism gave to the principle that is tellurically subjected to rebirth, as well as the truth proper to the civilization of the Mother. Pythagoras's nostalgia for ideas of a Demetrian type (after his death his home became a sanctuary for the goddess Demeter) including the dignity that women enjoyed in Pythagorean sects where they presided over initiations and where the ritual cremation of the dead was forbidden, as well as the sect's horror of blood - are features that can easily be explained on this basis. In this kind of context even the escape from the "cycle of rebirths" has a dubious character (it is significant that in Orphism the dwelling of the blessed is not above, as in the Achaean symbol of the Elysian Fields, but rather under the earth, in the company of infernal gods), in comparison to the ideal of immortality that was proper of ‘Zeus's path’ ; at the end of this path there was a heavenly region or a Uranian world dominated by the ‘spiritual virility of the light’ and inhabited by ‘those who are,’ namely, beings who are detached and inaccessible in their perfection and purity." (RATMW) None of the sources used by J. Evola to assess Pythagorianism have been rebuked. One of the invaluable strengths of the thought of the Italian author is to bring back theories, doctrines, and concepts to the racial stocks in which they originate, to the racial forces of which they are an expression, and to acknowledge the intrinsic, organic, relation which exists between race and cultural, intellectual, spiritual, expressions. A mistake made by R. Guénon was to introduce and to stick, in a dualistic fashion, to an opposition between a “traditional spirit” and a “modern spirit”, he could not see that each race has a spirit, a soul, of its own, and that the spirit, or rather the mentality, he called ‘modern’ was already present in the traditional world, and, more precisely, in some stocks.
As for Plato, J. Evola was mainly interested in ‘The Republic’. Is ‘The Republic’ influenced by the Pythagorean doctrine in any way ? There are, from an Aryan standpoint, more than a few serious shortcomings in Plato’s, at any rate.
It is worth noting that the study of the Pythagorean Theorem, and, more generally, of theorems (Euclid's 47th proposition is used as the symbol of a Master Mason), most probably in their most practical applications, is basal to Freemasonry (https://www.grandlodgeofvirginia.org/education/programs/monthly_talks/47th_Problem_of_Euclid.pdf) This is an anecdote which illustrates what we mean here by practical applications: once asked by a student what profit he might gain from studying geometry, Euclid did not reply, but contemptuously ordered his slave to give him a tip so that he could make a profit out of geometry.
- Thanks for your diligent and lengthy answer. I'll meditate on that. Maybe I should also study more deeply the history of ancient mathematics whenever I have time for it; if someone knows of valuable sources on this aspect...
Having just received a paper version (there also seems to be a "kindle" one) of the last italian version (2010, Edizioni Mediterranee) of Evola's commentary on his translation of the Golden Verses of Pythagora, I read in Claudio Mutti's presentation (p.12) that the same commentary raised a somewhat energic answer by a specialist of Pythagora, Vincenzo Capparelli, apparently "italo-albanese" says Mutti, and who violently denied the semitic origins of pythagorianism. That Capparelli is the author of at least two bulky books, La Sapienza di Pitagora and Il messaggio di Pitagora, both republished by Mediterranee in the 80's.
Capparelli accuses Evola of a superficial approach. But unfortunately I can't gather much about Capparelli's own interpretation. Of course it came in the debate about a so-called national tradition in Italy, influenced amongst others by Arturo Reghini.
Concerning the link between racial stocks and spiritual tendancies, if it can effectively easily be aknowledged in a relative way, it is maybe valuable to remind some who are reading this that for Evola it can't be absolute (due to possible inadequacy of "spiritual" and "soul" race with the mere physical one) and the only cause of spiritual and cultural decay; in his late text where he strongly criticizes the overemphasizing on Nordicism in Gunther's depiction of the indo-european religiosity ( here in spanish http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/religiosidad-indoeuropea.html) ) as well as in many other places (in L'arco e la clava for instance), he mocked the "purely" nordic people of Scandinavia or Germany as having been and still being among the first to succumb to the modern spirit, even in its quasi-judaic form (notably the Reformation, or social-democracy). Also see the citation (if not truncated, I have not the original article "Scienza, razza e scientismo" of 1942) of Evola in Dr Hansen's intro to "Men among the ruins" Inner Traditions 2002 p.81: "For example, can an 'Aryan' have a Jewish soul or inner race and vice versa? Yes, it is possible...".
Of course in this respect a more deterministic -in the naturalistic way- position can be taken and defended, like that of Gunther or Adriano Romualdi, young friend of Evola. But in this it wouldn't be a strictly "evolian" position - as Evola himself has felt the need to dissociate his views from that position in the above-mentioned text.
Cordially The connexion between racial stocks and spiritual and related psychic tendencies and that of the possible presence of a spirit and/or a soul typical of a given race in a body which does not correspond to this race, are two separate questions, and, in any way, the latter is an historically conditioned one ; historical conditioned, since cases of racial contradiction, or even opposition, within given individuals, between the spirit and/or the soul on one hand and the body on the other hand cannot but date back to times when racial mixing had already occurred. The fact that a spirit or/and soul of a given race incarnates in the body of another race does not change anything to the fact that the influences of which the individual in question is the bearer are to be brought back to the race in which his spirit or/and his soul originates, and not to the race whose physical form this spirit and/or soul takes on to incarnate.
The link between racial stocks and spiritual and psychic tendencies is absolute. What is relative, since the times it was perverted by racial mixing, is the link between a race of the spirit or/and the soul and a race of the body.
It has not escaped your attention that one of the aims of this forum is to present as objectively as possible J. Evola’s views, and then to discuss them. When you state that “he mocked the "purely" nordic people of Scandinavia or Germany as having been and still being among the first to succumb to the modern spirit, even in its quasi-judaic form”, you present his views on the matter objectively – let alone that he did not “mock” them: he only noted that the German(ic) people and the Scandinavians were no longer up to the heroic and solar spirit which, according to him, used to be theirs. If these views of his are to be discussed, evidence has been brought to light in a study posted onto this forum (‘The Jewels of the Papacy’) that shows that those tribes who migrated from Southern Scandinavia to Central Europe from 400 to 800 AD were far from being racially pure, to begin with.
We happen to have "Scienza, razza e scientismo", and not to have made a selective reading of the writings of J. Evola on the matter. For a comprehensive account, see http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id2.html. As is made clear to every person who wishes to subscribe to this forum, the reading of the various studies we have published as well as, precisely, that of http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id2.html, is a prerequisite for any further discussion of J. Evola’s views on race here.
- I present the following remarks only to provoke further reflections and contributions on the subject; I don't care about polemics, I only care about the truth, and what to do with it.
About the introduction of "Three aspects.." by BK:
Very well put in every aspects; I'm glad to know more about the context from which Hansen's quotation is drawn; indeed the context is quite clear on the heredity theme, and opposed to Hansen's presentation of it.
About The Jewels of Papacy:
1-Racial views: the theses in the final section, the only that can be said to be really original in the essay, about the mixing issues in the Nordic stock, are indeed interesting and stimulating.
2-About the rest of the historical sketch: a good reminder, through a patchwork of quotations, of some of the main lines of fight of the temporal versus spiritual fight in Christiandom. Without nothing new though, except maybe the fact that the incarnations of the Empire and of the Church can well be both guilty of serious antitraditional deviations, and are both in several aspects "parodies".
But the account is almost exclusively based on a vehemently protestant book ("the papal drama") whose aim is to present the papacy as an evil antichristian institution of greed and corruption...
So no surprises when some of the positions, caricatural in portraiting the evil ugly popes plotting to extend their temporal dominion over the proud legitimate tenants of the State (and without any discussion of something above the temporal plane, notably as regards to the field of esotericism) fit perfectly with the most dated Protestant and Jewish French republican anticatholic historiography.
See for instance the positive views on Philippe le Bel in the classical school manual "Mallet et Isaac" : Philippe le Bel as one of the precursor of the modern laicist State; his fight against papacy, supported by "the French" as a nation in the modern sense, against nobility and feudalism, to invent new structures of power and push forward the bourgeoisie and their legists...
If we are to correct the views of Evola on some points, a mere suggestion which may be dug into: in what measure the very foundation of the Roman Empire in itself could not be considered, not so much a reinstauration of a spiritual-temporal unity of power, but, by contrast with Ancient republican (but hierarchic, aristocratic) Rome or with archaic Greece, a produce of the influence of Southern civilizations (a mesopotamian, semitic model, as opposed to the view of the king as only "primum inter pares", the first of the kshatriyas...)?
About Capparelli, I found this (on SCRIBD) in Quaderni del Gruppo di Ur I IL PITAGORISMO E GLI AUREI DETTI I Ediz. Novembre 2003; II Ediz. Giugno 2007:
"Di quarantanni più giovane di E. Caporali, toccò al calabrese Vincenzo Capparelli
(1878-1958) additare al nazionalismo fascista il modello culturale pitagorico, quale forma
e mezzo di superamento di "una duratura ed umiliante tutela straniera", e perciò in
funzione anti-hegeliana.
Sull'argomento si può vedere in particolare V. Capparelli, Il Messaggio di Pitagora, Cedam,
Padova, I ediz. 1941. E' il seguito di La Sapienza di Pitagora, pubblicata da Capparelli nel
medesimo anno. Le Edizioni Mediterranee hanno ristampato entrambe le opere (nel 1988 La
Sapienza e nel 1990 il Messaggio), in anastatica, ma hanno scritto erroneamente che la I
edizione è del 1944.
Capparelli non condivideva, ovviamente, le "ombre" che Evola scorgeva sul Pitagorismo
ed è probabile che la seguente stroncatura (1), rivolta ad un autore anonimo, sia indirizzata
proprio ad Evola:
"Così vi è chi, mentre per le dottrine da lui risolutamente professate, sembrerebbe dovesse aver
trovato nel pitagorismo una delle migliori espressioni di un certo tipo di umanità e di civiltà da lui
auspicato, invece, valutando solo alcuni aspetti secondari, fa del pitagorismo come una
espressione di una di quelle due civiltà che, secondo una dottrina venuta dalla Germania, si
contendono con varia vicenda nel corso delle evoluzioni cosmiche, il primato; quella a cui
dobbiamo la decadenza dell'umanità.
Secondo questo autore il pitagorismo segnerebbe un ritorno allo spirito pelasgico, un ritorno
offensivo del mistero demetrico-lunare-pelasgico, di origine matriarcale, ginecocratico ecc. che
si manifesta coll'afroditismo, il sensualismo, il dionisismo, l'estetismo, col virus della
democrazia, dell'antitradizionalismo ecc. Purtroppo anche questo autore conosce il pitagorismo
così bene come tutti gli italiani: per sentito dire".
(1) Vedi Il Messaggio di Pitagora, p.9.
In other words, Capparelli criticized above all the conception of Bachofen about his typology of civilization. In doing so, as is well known, he is in tune with René Guénon, who said about La Torre "Il est fâcheux que, d’autre part, on accorde, dans cette revue, aux fantaisies pseudo-historiques de Bachofen une importance bien exagérée."
This point of course can be discussed. But he also seems to claim the knowledge of a deeper understanding of the pythagorician doctrine than Evola; which I can't verify by myself.
May be noted that Guénon explicitly dismissed the rapprochement between the Greek use of mathematics, as in Pythagore, which would have been one based on geometry, and the Semitic one, based on calculus and correspondence between numbers and letters. See Kabbale et science des nombres , in Formes traditionnelles et Cycles cosmiques, René Guénon, éd. Gallimard, 1970.
Of course no need to accept Guénon's interpretation.
As for Evola's hypothesis of a mathematicization of Occident made possible only with the help of Arab (i.e. semitic and anti-aryan) numbers, those where in fact hindus and the fruit of a long maturation in India; and lately transmitted through Persian muslims...And it would remain to prove, if we were to link them to a "Southern" civilization, that they come from the dravidian peoples! ...
Cordially.
Originality is the last thing on our mind. Besides, we do not feel the need to reword or rewrite what appears to us as being very well expressed.We were not aware that Gill was a Protestant author, or rather an author with Protestant sympathies. For those interested in digging into this subject, see ‘The Power of the Popes During the Middle Ages’ (1839 ; the original version is available at https://archive.org/details/a583585502gossuoft), a classic study by the Very Catholic writer M. Gosselin, which proves beyond doubt that the popes exercised temporal power over sovereigns during the Middle Ages. Since we could not get hold of the English translation of this book, we used the closest work to it that has been published in English.
‘The Papal Drama’, it is quite obvious, only provided the historical thread that was needed to make it clear, first; that, as any school boy should be able to gather from the content of a typical Carolingian king’s prayer, Ghibellinism and the Church both had the same point of reference : the Old Testament’s – their ultima ratio was the God of the Old Testament ; the fact that none of those who have studied the relationship between the Church and the Empire have made this simple observation remains a mystery to us: had it already been made explicitly, it would have save us a great deal of time, as we would not have had to write ‘The Jewels of the Papacy’ ; to make it clear, then, that, as a result, there was no way Ghibellinism could have brought about a restoration of the actual Roman Imperium in the way J. Evola understood the latter (M. Weber, C. Schmidt, among others, might have supported your view, in so far as they equated ‘imperium’ with universalism ; it should be noted that the Italian writer almost exclusively focused on the original meaning of the word ‘Imperium’, ‘power’ - ‘sacred power’, since it could not be exercised without the approbation of the gods through ‘auspicia’). J. Evola explained why, historically, this restoration was not possible, without however ever clearly seeing, or at least acknowledging, that the endeavour was doomed from the start for the reason which has just been recalled. Nor does Evolian exegesis.
The issue of the systematic desecration of the State by the Church, which is hardly mentioned outside academic circles, needs to be tackled at a time when the assumption that the Church would be the only bulwark against internationalism and Globalisation resurfaces with increased inanity. Being rooted in the Semitic ideology of the Old Testament, it is not surprising that the Church, to quote you, “can well be… guilty of serious antitraditional deviations. ».
So-called Anti-Catholic historiography means liberal or Communist historiography. It has its own reasons for attacking Catholicism, which are certainly not those of those who oppose as strongly Catholicism, Liberalism and Communism, from a racial standpoint. It has every reason for being thankful to the figure of Philip IV of France. We still stick to what we wrote about him in ‘The Jewels of the Papacy’ :
“It is clear that Philip the Fair cannot possibly be held responsible for initiating such a process, as argued by R. Guenon and, later, by J. Evola, who went so far as to call the French king a "sinister" character and as to apply to him, following indiscriminately in the footsteps of generations of misinformed historians, the nickname of "Counterfeiter" the bishop of Palmiers once saddled him and Boniface VIII echoed, infuriated as the pope was with the anti-papal policy of the French king. Having been debased by Philip, the papacy found nothing better than to accuse him - the fair - of abasement. In substituting clerics for laymen in the French government and administration in order to break the dependence of the kingdom on the clergy for legal and accounting services, he only followed the example of Frederick II, who had founded the University of Naples to train lawyers, accountants, and civil servants for Sicily, following in this a trend set by the Roman Curia during the late twelfth century ; in France, Louis IX was actually the first to introduce legists into the parliament, which he set up as a court of justice. It was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. The bishops, who were the officials and the counsellors of the Carolingian kings, the clerics, with whom these filled their chancellery, were gradually replaced under the Capetians by subordinates who, if they were laymen, helped nonetheless disseminating more or less consciously a law which was only nominally `Roman', bearing instead the brand mark of a Christian worldview. To Carolingian kings, to impregnate their subjects with Christian morality was the main goal of administration: the so-called revival of classical Roman law in the twelve century was part of the plan to transform and shape society thoroughly and totalistically according to Christian standards. Just as the Holy Roman empire was a caricature of the Augustean empire, grounded as it was on Christian dogmas, so the law that was spread by the legists in western Europe under the label of `Roman law' originated in a Biblical view of law, whose foundations are at odds with the governing principles of classical Roman law. Without going into detail, theology absorbed law in the beginning of the Christian era, degrading it to the level of morality. The ius, as defined by Aristotle as fair sharing, just due, `juste partage', `suum ius cuique tribuere', was boiled down to the Torah's notion of `Law' as a code of conduct, thus opening the door to the notion of `individual rights' in Europe. Given their Christian background, it is not surprising that the doctrine of the early legists focused on the three following points: the emancipation of the individual, the full equality in the family, the liberation of the land.”
Our aim, here, was to put in perspective the part he had in the ‘anti-traditional’ process as well as R. Guénon and J. Evola’s assessment of it. His treatment of the Templars was the main reason he attracted their wrath.
What you found at scribd.com is a short review of Caparelli’s book, and it is the reviewer who points out that, according to Evola, Pythagoreanism marked a reversion to the Pelasgic spirit – not, pending further information, Caparelli. Bachofen’s typology of civilisation is built, not, as incautiously suggested by Guénon, on history, but on myths and symbols. His claim that Pythagoreanism was based on geometry alone is about as serious as the preposterous claim he made in ‘East and West’ that Japanese are “not really a Yellow people” (http://www.wa-pedia.com/history/origins_japanese_people.shtml), and, speaking of ‘pseudo’, the French author should really have used one to write and publish such things. The ‘science of numbers’ is one of the two branches of Pythagoreanism (see, for instance, W. Wynn Westcott, ‘Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues).
The hypothesis of a mathematisation of the ‘West’ through, so to speak, Arabic numbers is not Evola’s. See https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/evola_as_he_is/conversations/messages/1158
- You're perfectly right: originality is not an aim, nor a positive quality. I only wanted to highlight what was for me new material.I can see how clumsy the expression was.
The essay on the zero is very interesting, I'm glad you point it to me; I'm quite new to forums and groups.I'll try to use more the search engine for this group to dig up what you previously published on it before bothering you again with a subject you already treated.
Concerning the Protestant "Papal drama", the book covers indeed the theme and the period you wanted, is well written, and you had all right to use it. I was just surprised that you didn't mention his bias, when it comes to a book dedicated to Reverend which is thanked for his "spiritual insights" and whose preface is quite explicit on that matter.For my part, I don't seek to defend the Church or Christianity, and I agree they can be of little use in a "restoration" and above all one on racial grounds.But in the modern ages, in spite of the antitraditional germs they carried, I am forced to remark that it is fight for the destruction of what remained traditional about them which opened the door to democracy, Jewish influence, and the like. I think we can hardly find nowadays anything traditional left about them, but it wasn't always the case.
It is not possible to reduce the analysis of Guénon on Philippe le Bel to the destruction of the Templars, as if he were a random occultist or free-mason.And even if Guénon mentioned the accusations of having counterfeited the money, he viewed it more as a symbol of overstepping of its role from the temporal power. It is right that he insists on the fall of the Order of the Temple as symbolic of beginning of the decline of the medieval order. But he points out Philippe le Bel's reign is characterized by the sudden rise of a bourgeois elite as pillar of a kingdom which prefigurated the modern State, and an ebb of the nobility's power and of the feudal order. Only one quotation: " nous voyons aussi, à partir de Philippe le Bel précisément, les rois de France s’entourer presque constamment de bourgeois, surtout ceux qui, comme Louis XI et Louis XIV, ont poussé le plus loin le travail de « centralisation », dont la bourgeoisie devait du reste recueillir ensuite le bénéfice lorsqu’elle s’empara du pouvoir par la Révolution." Autorité Spirituelle et Pouvoir Temporel, René Guénon, éd. Guy Trédaniel, Éditions Véga, 1964 p.86.
This perspective of the reign of Philippe le Bel as the first reign supported by and oriented towards the bourgeoisie is well documented in the work of the catholic historian Regine Pernoud, Histoire de la Bourgeoisie en France, Editions du Seuil, 1960 and 1981.After this reign, the whole history of the kingship in France is one of alliance with the bourgeoisie against the nobility, creating by this way the modern State.
For Capparelli, even if this is of very little importance, it seems you read too quickly: the reviewer does cite a passage from Capparelli, adressed as the reviewer says to an anonymous author in which it is easy to recognize Evola through the use of the latter's specific terminology.
With regards. We had not noticed the dedication, nor had we read the preface. What is it that you find “biased” about it ? He’s quite straightworward : “While striving after strict accuracy in the statement, of facts and perfect fairness in the estimate of character, I lay no claim to the impartiality of religious indifference.” His judgment is balanced : “While in no wise blind, I trust, to intellectual greatness or moral worth in a pope, I look upon the popedom as the supreme corruption of Christianity », a statement which, as far as its last part, you should approve of. Besides, there are tons of Catholic authors, starting with Dante, who were just as critical of Catholicism as Protestant authors were of it.
The Church is an entity which has always carried, right from the start, the most traditional values, that is, traditional Semitic values. What would be so ‘Aryan’ about primitive Christianity, or, for that matter, about the primitive Church ?
In France, Philip II (1165-1223) was the first king to surround himself with advisors of bourgeois, and even of low, extraction, and the transformation of the feudal realm into a modern state was really initiated by him ; he created a bureaucracy and a quite complex administrative system in the process. Louis IX (1220-1270) - for whom, in the words of a current French political schemer, “The East precedes the West because it is the East that spawned the West. The East is the cradle of Christianity, the sacred place of the Incarnation, the dwelling place of the Risen Christ, the first communities of apostles, of the first Pentecost. Eastern Christians are the first Christians. Quite naturally, Saint Louis turns his kingdom to Golgotha, where the Holy Grail is kept. He wants his kingdom to be ‘oriented’” (http://www.libertepolitique.com/Actualite/Decryptage/Philippe-de-Villiers-Saint-Louis-tire-sa-surhumanite-du-plus-profond-de-son-humanite) – continued his work, and so did Philip IV. Yet, R. Guénon and, following in his footsteps, J. Evola made him responsible for all the evils of the time. We simply wondered why ; and it appeared to us that the Templars’s affair must have been the main reason he attracted their wrath. – Ironically enough, Philip IV (admittedly, Gill is quite far from putting him on pedestal, as he writes that “Philip the Fair [was] ever in need of money, and jealous of the prerogatives of his crown”] was the only Capetian king who did something to mitigate the rise of the bourgeoisie (“in 1287 Philip IV issued an ordinance intended to curb abuses and regulate the ‘droit de bourgeoisie’… This ordinance… reduced the attractiveness of letters of bourgeoisie, and they seem not to have become as widespread as some 19th century historians believed” - William W. Kible, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, p. 264). One does not need to be a Freemason or an occultist to be biased in favour of the Templars against Philip IV. Incidentally, in ‘Scritti sulla Massoneria’, J. Evola mentions – in passing - the fact that Templars were involved in banking.
“And, you say, even if Guénon mentioned the accusations of having counterfeited the money, he viewed it more as a symbol of overstepping of its role from the temporal power.” Well, it is a very poor ‘symbol’, since it has been showed that Philip IV was not a counterfeiter (once again, Col. L. Borelli de Serres, in ‘Les Variations monetaires sous Philippe le Bel et les sources de leur histoire’, Paris, Picard et fils, 1902, the first and the only work to date which examine exhaustively all the available sources on the monetary policy of Philip IV, demonstrates conclusively, with a Swiss precision and the metronomic rigour of a Scottish accountant, that “there is no indication, nor any material evidence, of counterfeiting as such in the documents, quite the opposite.”
http://members.multimania.nl/Numis10/PDF/Borrelli.pdf). To return to an issue which has just been touched on, of course, Philip IV was “ever in need of money”: on his ascension to the throne, he found the coffers empty. Could the cost of the crusades, to which the Templars, the then armed and ‘speculative’ wing of the Church, were closely tied, possibly have had something to do with this state of affairs ?While we are at it, it should be noted that the genesis of the modern state, if it meant the (gradual) end of feudalism, which, as has been showed in ‘The Jewels of the Papacy’, was not as pristine as J. Evola would have had it, did not mean a tabula rasa. As a matter of fact, it is through feudalism and religion that Capetian kings secured their supreme authority. The Capetian king is characteristically elected by the archbishop of Reims, with consent of the Church and of the feudal lords. The Capetian king is a sacred character. By the anointing, the king became a religious figure, above other men, king by the will of God, with a divine mission of peace and justice and a miraculous healing power. Let us bear in mind that the vanishing of the concept of ‘primus inter pares’ is contemporary with the emergence of the notion of “king by the will of God”.
Another interesting thing about the genesis of the modern state is that, quite often, ecclesiastics were at the head of the state, especially in England (Stafford, Laud, Wykeham, Wolsey, among many others), but also in France. There was a clear overlap between the Church and the state.
(indeed, we were mistaken about that excerpt)
(despite the few shortcomings and misunderstandings to which we have called attention with respect to the racial issue, ‘The Hour of Decision’ (at https://archive.org/details/TheHourOfDecision ; this English translation does not always do justice to the original text - there are even a few typos) turns out to be a tremendously potent work, when it comes to the destructive criticism of the various alien twin political, economical, social, cultural ideologies, systems, currents of thought, the exotic influences at work in the modern ‘Western’ world, and of the mindset of so-called ‘Westerners’ - it is simply vitriolic)
- The explanation of the bias in "the Papal drama" is quite clear from the dedication and the preface: the author is protestant and think of the papacy as an abomination; but the bias itself is not in the preface but in the text itself, in the obviously one-sided presentation of the facts, with constant insistance on the innocence and benevolence of the kings and lords, while the popes are constantly depicted as greedy and only interested in wordly matters. But you had every right in taking this well-written and sufficiently clear text as a frame; for that matter a soviet textbook would have also perfectly done the job. This being said impartially and without irony.
As for the rise of the bourgeoisie; the limitation of the "droit de bourgeoisie" is not by any means an anti-bourgeois measure -it was supported not only by the nobles who thought of it this way, but also by the rich bourgeois themselves, but a legalization of certain privileges of the rich people in the city -those who will indeed become the kernel of what will be then called "bourgeoisie" as opposed to the lower people of the city who never obtained the "lettres de bourgeoisie", expensive and only useful when you had to travel outside of the city; and a form of protection of those already recognized as "bourgeois" against the competitors.
"L'ordonnance de 1287, relative aux "bourgeois du roi", précise leur condition.[...] Le bourgeois avait été jusqu'alors l'homme d'une ville, comme le serf l'homme d'un domaine. L'institution des "bourgeois du roi" et d'autres similaires, vont rendre sa condition personnelle et non plus réelle, attachée à un lieu déterminé. Ces bourgeois obtiennent de se faire inscrire dans une ville royale et d'avoir des lettres de bourgeoisie, sans être astreints à y résider.
Ainsi, dans certaines villes qui ne sont pas du domaine royal, des bourgeois forains peuvent se réclamer de la justice du roi en démontrant leur qualité de bourgeois d'une ville royale dont ils restent sujets."
Régine Pernoud. Histoire de la Bourgeoisie en France. Paris: Seuil; 1981. Tome I p.122.
For the accusations of "couterfeiting the money", the debate is more complex and you can't sum it up in absolving Philippe le Bel of a "crime". Indeed, Philippe Le Bel had every right, from a modern point of view, to lead whatever monetary policy he wished, including every mutation of the metallic composition of the money, or every new emission of money. But he was in fact the first king of France to dare to do it on this scale, because there was a belief at the time in the immutability of money, save in situation of absolute necessity. And this is why is monetary policy is symbolic of a change of times. This is well explained here http://www.sacra-moneta.com/Numismatique-medievale/La-politique-monetaire-trouble-de-Philippe-le-Bel.html from which I draw the following:
With regards
---In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, <evola_as_he_is@...> wrote :We had not noticed the dedication, nor had we read the preface. What is it that you find “biased” about it ? He’s quite straightworward : “While striving after strict accuracy in the statement, of facts and perfect fairness in the estimate of character, I lay no claim to the impartiality of religious indifference.” His judgment is balanced : “While in no wise blind, I trust, to intellectual greatness or moral worth in a pope, I look upon the popedom as the supreme corruption of Christianity », a statement which, as far as its last part, you should approve of. Besides, there are tons of Catholic authors, starting with Dante, who were just as critical of Catholicism as Protestant authors were of it.
The Church is an entity which has always carried, right from the start, the most traditional values, that is, traditional Semitic values. What would be so ‘Aryan’ about primitive Christianity, or, for that matter, about the primitive Church ?
In France, Philip II (1165-1223) was the first king to surround himself with advisors of bourgeois, and even of low, extraction, and the transformation of the feudal realm into a modern state was really initiated by him ; he created a bureaucracy and a quite complex administrative system in the process. Louis IX (1220-1270) - for whom, in the words of a current French political schemer, “The East precedes the West because it is the East that spawned the West. The East is the cradle of Christianity, the sacred place of the Incarnation, the dwelling place of the Risen Christ, the first communities of apostles, of the first Pentecost. Eastern Christians are the first Christians. Quite naturally, Saint Louis turns his kingdom to Golgotha, where the Holy Grail is kept. He wants his kingdom to be ‘oriented’” (http://www.libertepolitique.com/Actualite/Decryptage/Philippe-de-Villiers-Saint-Louis-tire-sa-surhumanite-du-plus-profond-de-son-humanite) – continued his work, and so did Philip IV. Yet, R. Guénon and, following in his footsteps, J. Evola made him responsible for all the evils of the time. We simply wondered why ; and it appeared to us that the Templars’s affair must have been the main reason he attracted their wrath. – Ironically enough, Philip IV (admittedly, Gill is quite far from putting him on pedestal, as he writes that “Philip the Fair [was] ever in need of money, and jealous of the prerogatives of his crown”] was the only Capetian king who did something to mitigate the rise of the bourgeoisie (“in 1287 Philip IV issued an ordinance intended to curb abuses and regulate the ‘droit de bourgeoisie’… This ordinance… reduced the attractiveness of letters of bourgeoisie, and they seem not to have become as widespread as some 19th century historians believed” - William W. Kible, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, p. 264). One does not need to be a Freemason or an occultist to be biased in favour of the Templars against Philip IV. Incidentally, in ‘Scritti sulla Massoneria’, J. Evola mentions – in passing - the fact that Templars were involved in banking.
“And, you say, even if Guénon mentioned the accusations of having counterfeited the money, he viewed it more as a symbol of overstepping of its role from the temporal power.” Well, it is a very poor ‘symbol’, since it has been showed that Philip IV was not a counterfeiter (once again, Col. L. Borelli de Serres, in ‘Les Variations monetaires sous Philippe le Bel et les sources de leur histoire’, Paris, Picard et fils, 1902, the first and the only work to date which examine exhaustively all the available sources on the monetary policy of Philip IV, demonstrates conclusively, with a Swiss precision and the metronomic rigour of a Scottish accountant, that “there is no indication, nor any material evidence, of counterfeiting as such in the documents, quite the opposite.”
http://members.multimania.nl/Numis10/PDF/Borrelli.pdf). To return to an issue which has just been touched on, of course, Philip IV was “ever in need of money”: on his ascension to the throne, he found the coffers empty. Could the cost of the crusades, to which the Templars, the then armed and ‘speculative’ wing of the Church, were closely tied, possibly have had something to do with this state of affairs ?While we are at it, it should be noted that the genesis of the modern state, if it meant the (gradual) end of feudalism, which, as has been showed in ‘The Jewels of the Papacy’, was not as pristine as J. Evola would have had it, did not mean a tabula rasa. As a matter of fact, it is through feudalism and religion that Capetian kings secured their supreme authority. The Capetian king is characteristically elected by the archbishop of Reims, with consent of the Church and of the feudal lords. The Capetian king is a sacred character. By the anointing, the king became a religious figure, above other men, king by the will of God, with a divine mission of peace and justice and a miraculous healing power. Let us bear in mind that the vanishing of the concept of ‘primus inter pares’ is contemporary with the emergence of the notion of “king by the will of God”.
Another interesting thing about the genesis of the modern state is that, quite often, ecclesiastics were at the head of the state, especially in England (Stafford, Laud, Wykeham, Wolsey, among many others), but also in France. There was a clear overlap between the Church and the state.
(indeed, we were mistaken about that excerpt)
(despite the few shortcomings and misunderstandings to which we have called attention with respect to the racial issue, ‘The Hour of Decision’ (at https://archive.org/details/TheHourOfDecision ; this English translation does not always do justice to the original text - there are even a few typos) turns out to be a tremendously potent work, when it comes to the destructive criticism of the various alien twin political, economical, social, cultural ideologies, systems, currents of thought, the exotic influences at work in the modern ‘Western’ world, and of the mindset of so-called ‘Westerners’ - it is simply vitriolic)
There is some kind of drifting away here – remember, the – well, your - starting point was mathematics -, and there is also the impression that you do not really take into account our observations.
For example, we have already pointed out that the Church has been depicted as an abomination by both Protestant and Catholic authors for centuries, and you keep reminding us that the author of the book is a protestant and that it is because of its protestant background that his work would be biased. At this point, a suggestion would be that you read again, for example, Dante Alighieri. Another suggestion is that you quote excerpts from ‘The Papal Drama’ that would show that the author insists on “the innocence and benevolence of the kings and lord”. Speaking of suggestions, are you suggesting that Canossa came straight out of Gill’s imagination ? While we are at it, what exactly make you think that the Church was not interested exclusively in worldly matters ?
Where did we say that the limitation of the “droit de bourgeoisie” by Philp IV of France was “an anti-bourgeois measure” ? Since you refer to Soviet textbooks – we could not use any of them, since we cannot read Russian – no do we wish to -, you might be aware that the expression “anti-bourgeois” is one that belongs to the Marxist cant, which was unknown to Philip IV - but maybe not to the ‘middle-age’ bourgeois.
http://www.sacra-moneta.com/Numismatique-medievale/La-politique-monetaire-trouble-de-Philippe-le-Bel.html is an excellent popularising article, whose conclusion is at one with http://members.multimania.nl/Numis10/PDF/Borrelli.pdf.
P.s : since it was you brought the matter up - once again : What would be so ‘Aryan’ about primitive Christianity, or, for that matter, about the primitive Church ?
- I agree about the drifting away, I apologize about that. I recognize the dispute about "The papal drama" and its bias is sterile.
The point I wanted to put is: Primitive christianism wasn't aryan, I give you that easily (which I never said it was). But catholicism was a traditional form, adapted to the aryan mind if of alien origin, and protestantism wasn't. On that I may be closer to Guenon and Di Giorgio (superb "La Tradizione Romana") than to some of Evola's positions; I don't pretend either my position is original.
I do understand pefectly you disagree about that and I respect it; but an endless polemics isn't my aim; and so I'll get back to mutually beneficial topics.
With regards J. Evola’s views on Protestantism are closely akin to R. Guénon’s (to be found in ‘Temporal Power and Spiritual Authority’).
In a nutshell, what they both criticised in Protestantism was its individualistic tendencies and the fact that these would have directly paved the way to egalitarian and democratic conceptions, the emphasis put on the principle of pure faith as opposed to any hierarchical organisation and mediation, the rise against “the traditional, hierarchical, and ritual component that existed within the Catholic compromise.”
None of these arguments are convincing, to say the least. Faith is at the heart of both Catholicism and Protestantism, the only difference between these two Christians sects in this regard being the part faith plays or not in the salvation process. Protestantism did not exactly do away with rituals: it has two sacraments ; Catholicism, seven. Protestants hold that sacraments are signs of something sacred (‘grace’ and ‘faith’ is what they mean by ‘sacred’), while denying that they cause Divine grace – however, Episcopalians and Anglicans hold with Catholics that the sacraments are “effectual signs” of grace, etc. The mediation between the believer and God is a notion that is unknown, not only to Protestantism – except through Jesus-Christ -, but also to a religion both authors, especially R. Guénon, had some sympathies for and whose influence in the Reformation is increasingly acknowledged : Islam. Nor was it known to ancient Romans, ancient Nordics or ancient Greeks, in whose culture, to come back to the previous point, there was nothing sentimental about the rite (http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id69.html). The hierarchical component of Catholicism, which is closely linked with the mediating role it claimed for itself, does mean anything as such : mafias, banks, are also strongly hierarchical.
In ‘Revolt against the Modern World”, J. Evola writes : “By rigidly upholding the principle of authority and dogma, by defending the transcendent and superrational character of ‘revelation’ in the domain of knowledge and the principle of the transcendence of grace in the domain of action, the Church defended from any heresy - almost desperately - the nonhuman character of its deposit”. Now, “revelation”, “grace”, are concepts which are directly linked to the Semitic conception of the sacred, and have nothing to do with the Aryan experience of the sacred. As already stressed, the Church is a most traditional institution: it’ just that the tradition it upholds is of Semitic origin. As to the principle of authority, the Church was not the only one institution which, together with emperors, claimed to embody and defend it in the ‘Middle-Ages’: Saxons like Widukind, too, fought for it.
“we, J. Evola adds, must acknowledge a certain traditional character to the Church that lifted it above what had been mere Christianity, because it established a system of dogmas, symbols, myths, rituals, and sacred institutions…” Now, in ‘The meaning and Context of Zen’ (http://www.amerika.org/texts/the-meaning-and-context-of-zen-julius-evola/), these turn out to be more or less the elements whose introduction into Buddhism is considered as a drop in level (“So, in a further development of Buddhism, what occurred again, mutatis mutandi, was exactly the situation against which Buddha had reacted; Buddhism became a religion, complete with dogmas, rituals, scholasticism and mythology”).
As to the accusation levelled against Protestantism for having directly paved the way to egalitarianism and democracy, let us quote de Tocqueville: “America is the most democratic country in the world, and it is at the same time (according to reports worthy of belief) the country in which the Roman Catholic religion makes most progress.” “I think that the catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Among the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favourable to the equality of conditions. In the Catholic Church, the religious community is composed of only two elements, the priest and the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and all below him are equal.
On doctrinal points the catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level ; it subjects the wise and the ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed ; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak, it listens to no compromises with mortal man, but reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality ; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them equal.” To be sure, R. Guénon, Protestantism was not so much a starting point as a point of arrival (see ‘Temporal Power and Spiritual Authority’), and, to J. Evola, a further step towards dissolution. Stripped of their respective dogma and credo, and thus brought back to their fundamentals, Catholicism and Protestantism reveal their common root.
As with any argument, we took account of R. Guénon’s and J. Evola’s arguments on the topic of Catholicism versus Protestantism, and, more particularly, on the assumed traditional character of the former, assessed them against primary and secondary sources of all types and material from various origins, to reach the conclusion that they were not well-grounded, nor quite consistent, while never losing sight of the point of reference, which is constituted by the Aryan spirit in its political, cultic, cultural, economic manifestations. The anti-Aryan character of all the by-products of Christianity makes no doubt to us, and this character, in its main aspects, has been shown in a series of well-documented studies. Each of these aspects could be deepened and expanded upon. The stage of the working hypothesis is long past. From there, what may contribute constructively to our deepening of the question would be your answer to questions such as: in what way was Catholicism “adapted to the aryan mind”?
What would be so ‘Aryan’ about primitive Christianity, or, for that matter, about the primitive Church ?
Petitiones principii are the best recipe to endless polemics.
- Amen to your last sentence: I totally agree to that.
Before interrupting this theme, which evidently doesn't go nowhere, just a few precisions.
Indeed, for those who by temperament find christianism unfitting, they are perfectly free to stay away from it. But this can not be an historical perspective.
For those who are interested in the point of view following which christianism was the only alternative to mere materialism after the inevitable demise of the greco-roman tradition (whatever may have been the role of racial chaos in it); i.e. the only way possible for Europe to have, in this new phase of the Kali Yuga, any link whatsoever with the original Tradition -however indirect this link is in the case of the Abrahamic monotheisms- we can only advise the reading of René Guénon. Especially "Christianisme et inititation" (all his texts- in French at least- being available online, http://oeuvre-de-rene-guenon.blogspot.fr/). A good exposition of this point of view is the little book of Daniel Cologne "Julius Evola, René Guénon et le christianisme".
As I said, your perspective lacks mention of spirituality (this term being taken in René Guénon's meaning, as a synonym of intellectuality, again in Guénon's meaning, and not in a vague romantic rosenbergian sense) and esotericism. You stay in a merely exoteric perspective, when not in a merely material plane (your essay about papacy says nothing about anything above the terrestrial struggle for power). Protestantism is unfit to any kind of esotericism, and THIS is the main reproach to do. Catholicism nowadays as degenerated in a way such that esotericism is quite impossible in it; and that's the problem nowadays.
Regards. The terminology you use surely indicates that you are quite familiar with R. Guénon’s work, and yet your familiarity with it should not make you fancy that this work – nor its sources - is completely unknown to us, nor to our membership. Do you intend to keep on rehashing for a long time R. Guénon’s and to a certain extent J. Evola’s views on Christianity, which we know perfectly well, without doing what anyone should do, provided one has the ability to do it : without actually examining their validity, both historically and intellectually, against non guénonian and non evolian sources ?
It is truly a shame that none of those who interviewed the Italian author thought of questioning his views on the instrumental role of Christianity, and, later, of Catholicism in the undermining of what was left of the Aryan civilisation in Europe, merely asking him ‘formulaic questions’. Indeed, as we have shown, it does not take much to explode the claim that Christianity was a bulwark against materialism. When understood as a desire for wealth and material possessions with little interest in ethical or spiritual matters, materialism certainly characterises Christianity ; in this, the popes and the high clergy set an example. In ‘Money and the Kingdom of God’, M. A. Fetty seeks to identify the reasons behind the claim of Archbishop William Temple that “Christianity is one of the most materialistic religion”, and he does so quite jejunely. As has already been pointed out, the call to a reign of quantity was launched in Genesis: “Be fruitful, multiply, and populate the earth.” As a doctrine rejecting the existence of a spiritual principle, and reducing all reality to matter and its changes, materialism seems to be foreign to Christianity, until one wonders whether an actual spiritual principle is present in this religion. Wasn’t it R. Guénon who, in ‘The Great Triad’, refused to acknowledge that the theistic God has a spiritual nature ? Obviously, this does not prevent D. Cologne from qualifying Christianity as a religion of transcendence.
There is no mention in our study of anything that would go beyond a struggle for world power in the attitude of the Church in the ‘middle-ages’ because there is no indication whatsoever that the Church had something else than world power on her mind, and, far from lacking references to spirituality, quoting Evola, we point to “the merely religious spirituality of the Church and her hegemonic claims” – that woolly, abstract, conceptual spirituality which the Italian author described, in its purely Semitic form, as being “on other hand, an affirmation of the virile principle that is coarsely material, sensual, or uncouth and ferociously warlike (Assyria), and, on the other hand, an emasculated spirituality, a ‘lunar’ and predominantly sacerdotal relation with the divine, the pathos of sin and expiation, a whole impure and reckless romanticism, combined, as a sort of escapism, with a naturalistic and mathematically-based contemplativeness.” (‘Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem’), not to mention the “devout and imploring servility,” which is found towards the divinity among Semitic peoples, instead of “the rite, conceived, let us repeat, as a pure compelling operation regarding the divine.” (ibid.)
Our perspective is neither ‘exoteric’, nor ‘esoteric’. These terms are not relevant in the Aryan context. This distinction made by Guénon only applies to the non Aryan world of mystery, initiatory, religions, such as that which was practised by the Pythagorean sect. Following in R. Guénon’s footsteps – J. Evola never took position on this - D. Cologne argues that the criterion of religion is the presence of an esoteric legacy and of an initiatory transmission, and again, this applies only to mystery religions. As has already been explained in a message which we cannot locate because of groups.yahoo’s improvements, initiation, in an Aryan context, does not have the ontological meaning R. Guénon and J. Evola ascribed to it, and which it has in other ethnic or racial contexts. Even in an Aryan-like context, in the case of the Dvija (‘twice-born’), it is true that the first birth is considered as physical, and the second birth as ‘spiritual’, but, once again, ‘spiritual’, here, is not to be understood in the way the modern man does. Since we cannot find again the abovementioned message, let us quote wikipedia’s entry on ‘dvija’: ‘The second ‘birth’ occurs when one uptakes fulfilling a role in society, at the time of Upanayanam initiation ceremony. For example, a Brahmin is initiated into the ultimate pursuit of life Brahmopadesam (Preaching/Advising in the matter of the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality). Traditionally, a Kshatriya would start learning the use of arms, while a Vaishya would start a trade apprenticeship. Only the Dvijas were allowed to perform certain sacred rites and rituals in the traditional Brahmanical society. Dvija Bandhu is the term for a person born to Dvija parents but not formally initiated into the Dvija fold (i.e. someone for whom no sacred thread ceremony was performed).” Exactly when and in what part of the world, whether in Europe or in India, this term acquired the spiritualist content and meaning it is vested with in both author’s work, we do not know. To a surprising degree, the Italian author attached great importance, especially in the years following his encounter with the French author’s work, to this spiritualistic concept of ‘initiation’. How come he did not realise that there was no such thing as exotericism or exotericism in the ancient European cultures of Aryan origin, to which ‘initiation’ in the guénonian sense of the word was also unknown ?
‘The Years of Decision’ had not been published in Germany that it was banned by the Nationalist-Socialist authorities, and rightfully so, owing to the many nonsensical considerations that are developed in it about race, and which could only find an echo in half-breeds and raceless persons ; banned, until people, after having been detoxified from certain Semitic substances, when possible, could taste ithese considerations at their fair value. Had it been published in German at that time, a writing such as ‘Christianity and Initiation’ should have been suppressed in that country - to prevent it from falling into the hands of simple minds - for stating that “If we consider the state of the Western world in the age in question (that is, of the territories comprised in the Roman Empire), it is easy to see that, had Christianity not ‘descended’ into the exoteric domain, this world would soon have been deprived of all tradition, for the traditions that had existed until that time, especially the Greco-Roman tradition, which naturally was predominant, had reached an advanced state of degeneration heralding the imminent end of their cycle of existence. This ‘descent’ therefore, let us insist again, was neither an accident nor a deviation but should on the contrary be regarded as having a truly ‘providential’ character since it prevented the West from falling at that time into a state comparable to that in which it now finds itself.” It should have been suppressed because, in the truly fine tradition of Christian propaganda, R. Guénon tried to redefine the ‘destroyer’ as a ‘saviour’, by conveniently failing to notice that Christianity and its philosophical forerunners (https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/la-liberte-un-concept-desclaves-2/ ) were one of the main factors of the fall of the Roman civilisation.
No wonder R. Guénon, according to his personnal secretary, J. Reyor, felt exhilarated by Schuon’s plan to islamise Europe. (cretrg.free.fr/Hp13j5n6/DCI.pdf). Christianity, the first offspring of Judaism, had run its course, it was for Islam, the second offspring of Judaism, to finish the destructive work it had begun. L. Dumont’s ‘Essays on Individualism’ (available at google.books) is quite enlightening when it comes to understanding by what channels both individualism and universalism were introduced in the culture of White peoples.
Here, a matter is closed when we decide it is, if you don't mind.
A message was sent by jayce1921 was approved yesterday, but, for some unknown reasons, it did not show up, so here it is (our reply can be read below): « My intention in my last message was only to clarify what was my perspective, and essentially that it was rooted in Guénon, even if I am at the moment opening to Evola and to an awareness about the racial question -which is why I decided to participate in your forum (and accessorily to learn Italian).
Never did I try to suggest an ignorance of Guénon on your part, nor on the part of members of this forum. I only wanted to underscore an opposition, and maybe an incompatibilty, in our points of view that would create a vicious circle in the discussion if not made explicit. And indeed if those antagonisms weren't clarified, the discussion would have been endless and unfruitful. In other words somewhat democratic...
Indeed, I'm glad you answered ; and especially that you made clear your rejection of what you call "spiritualism" and of the dichotomy eso-exotericism. I do better understand your position now; as you acknowledge it yourself, the form in which are organized the forums of yahoo is rather unpractical when you try to go back through the past discussions; that's why some of your positions weren't so clear for me; and I can imagine how annoying it may be.
But I'll try to dig deeper in the past of this forum to avoid bothering you with questions you already take for answered, and I'll take the time to think about them. Of course if I do think them to be at bottom simply unconvincing to me, I won't bother you more on this forum. In the opposite case, I'll try to assimilate them and to come back to a more constructive participation here.
Your indications about "The Jewels of Papacy" and the introduction to "Three Aspects" were precious in helping me to grasp some bits of your views on things. Would it be possible for you to indicate which of your other texts or interventions, and which of the texts by other authors, you consider as fundamentals and bases for future debate? For instance, does all the blog "éléments d'éducation raciale" express your point of view or is there other contributors with different perspectives, and in it what to read first? I understood your essay on liberty belongs to those fundamentals.
With regards »
When subscribing to this forum, you are required to give some of the reasons why you are interested in joining it. Not many people care to write more than a line or two. It would have been a good idea to tell us right from the start where you come from, so as to avoid some misunderstandings.
Most people have been in your shoes. It takes some time before a young man is able to digest a dazzling masterpiece like ‘The Reign of Quantity”, and to regain his sight, and even more time before he is able to start thinking critically about it from a White traditional perspective. No matter one’s spiritual qualities, one’s mental strength, one’s ‘detachment’ towards the environment where one lives, one cannot be completely unaffected by outer influences, the French author and the Italian author are no exception, especially since their time was saturated with spiritualist concepts and orientalist representations of all kinds. Over them, in terms of opportunities of‘deconditionning’, racially aware Whites have a major advantage, which is at the same time a major inconvenient on the material plane: the occupation of our countries by what Yockey called the ‘cultural distorter’ and by the millions of coloured people it has imported on this continent, which, socially, economically, politically, culturally, but also psychically, are a growing threat to what little may be left of its culture : turn the TV on, and you’ll virtually find yourself at the Caliph’s court, and, unless one lives in an ivory tower, the ‘Yellow peril’ is no longer a mere expression out of which it sounded well to make a mockery in the XXth century bourgeoisie. Speaking of ‘immigration’, now a euphemism for ‘invasion’, it would be constructive to dig into some of the aspects of the burning issues which have been raised and considered here, aspects such as the figure of the stranger in the Bible, both in the Old and in the New Testament, since, from what we have gathered from a preliminary examination, the way the stranger is viewed in the Bible, especially in the New testament, is closely akin to the way it is now idealised by more than one European. In the shortened version published at https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/les-racines-asiatiques-du-mondialisme/ of a work by an ecclesiastic about the proto-Communist spirit of early and Medieval Christianity, there is a very interesting paragraph about the link between monastic orders and religious congregations, on one hand, and lay communities, on the other hand. It would be constructive to study this link, as a mechanism of communicating vessels. The finishing touches are being put to the third part of ‘La Liberté: un concept d’esclaves’. Freedom as a plebeian concept could hardly have emerged before the subjective standpoint, unknown to ancient Hellenes, developed. The object of this study is precisely to trace the genesis of the subjective standpoint within the context of philosophy, to show that it lies at the basis of most philosophical theories (etymologically, ‘theory’ means ’I see (orao) the divine (masc. theion)’ or ‘divine things’ (fem. theia), and, in fact, the goddess theia, which is not quite the same thing ; Heidegger preferred the second reading, and rightfully linked it to the English word ‘theatre’, from ‘theatron’, ‘theatre ; the people in the theatre ; a show, a spectacle,’ literally ‘place for viewing’ ; in this respect, see also our messages on Shakespeare and ‘An Eye Is Not Always an Eye’, as well as members’ momentous contribution to that thread), that it lies at the very basis of most philosophical theories, that is to say, at the heart of the subversive concepts which were to act, on the political and social plane, as major factors in the undermining of the ancient traditional Greco-Roman world, waiting for Christianity to put the final nail to it. Its object is also to show how the sentient subject, increasingly losing itself in the contemplation of itself, created within itself the so-called “inner kingdom”, whose existence was sensed by the Sophists, conceptualised by the Stoics, ‘exotericised’ by Marcus Aurelius, brought to a new level by Augustine, and into which, since then, it has never ceased to entomb itself.
All the texts published at https://elementsdeducationraciale.wordpress.com have a more or less direct relation to race. On the whole, all of them express our point of view. Where required, this or that view is corrected in a related foot note. Any constructive contribution to this blog would be most welcome.
Besides ‘The Jewels of the papacy’, messages on Shakespeare and ‘An Eye Is Not Always an Eye’, it is advisable to read ‘A Jewel of the Papacy’, ‘From Freedom to Feedom’, and ‘Zero’. Due to the meandering navigation caused by groups.yahoo’s new interface, we are thinking of putting all of them in the files section. As for a reading list, as far as race is concerned, Evola’s books are a must. You’ll find more at http://www.histoireebook.com/index.php?tag/Racialisme (please note that we have not read them all)
- We have recalled that Protestants have not been the only Christians to criticise vehemently the Church, that some Catholic authors, too, came down strongly against it. Martin McCabe (1867 – 1955), an English writer and a former Roman Catholic, belong to those who exposed the Church for what it is, in particular in 'The Popes and Their Church' (at http://infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/popes_and_church/) Joseph Cesare Baronio (1538 – 1607), an Italian Cardinal and ecclesiastical historian, called the papacy, not without reason, a 'Pornocacry'. He said : "Evil desire, leaning on the arm of the state, raging with ambition and lust of power stretched out her hands to control all things." (in 'History of the Church through the Ages', p. 86)
- The link provided for Guénon's reaction to Schuon's plan doesn't work. I would like to know more about this.
---In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, <evola_as_he_is@...> wrote :No wonder R. Guénon, according to his personnal secretary, J. Reyor, felt exhilarated by Schuon’s plan to islamise Europe. (cretrg.free.fr/Hp13j5n6/DCI.pdf).
- Just as a reminder, this file contains the memoirs of Jean Reyor, secretary of Les Etudes traditionnelles from 1932 to 1960. Among other edifying things, we are told that Schuon, back from Northern Africa, where he had just been initiated, told him right up front: "Je suis Moqaddem. Il faut islamiser l'Europe". It is still available at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M6IU7Hs2_EoJ:cretrg.free.fr/Hp13j5n6/DCI.pdf+&cd=2&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr
This text by J. Reyor tells us that Guénon’s environment was always masonic, occultist, christian and islamic.
His prolonged collaboration with Schuon, a dubious character who seems to have wished to establish a sect, does not plead in his favour. Also, Guénon’s own intentions of having groups devoted to him are suspect.
How to explain his contradictions? That he was a mason who, at times, wrote in antimasonic papers. That he passed as a christian whereas he had been for a long time a muslim and, also, the member of a gnostic church.
Overall, this account by Reyor casts doubts on the validity of the whole concept of “initation” as defined by Guénon. The blindness of the latter toward the nature of masonry is problematic. It is difficult to conceive that, suddenly in the early eighteenth century, it would have adopted an antitraditional nature.
- These memoirs also discuss in detail the reasons for Guénon's falling out with Schuon. These details are not found anywhere in English, as far as I am aware. Their separation is never mentioned by followers of Schuon today, who include them, along with Coomaraswamy, in an invented, arbitrary triumvirate.A typical instance of this negligent omission is this widely circulated article:Martin Lings: Frithjof Schuon and René Guénon
---In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, <evola_as_he_is@...> wrote :Just as a reminder, this file contains the memoirs of Jean Reyor, secretary of Les Etudes traditionnelles from 1932 to 1960. Among other edifying things, we are told that Schuon, back from Northern Africa, where he had just been initiated, told him right up front: "Je suis Moqaddem. Il faut islamiser l'Europe". It is still available at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M6IU7Hs2_EoJ:cretrg.free.fr/Hp13j5n6/DCI.pdf+&cd=2&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr The main problem with Guénon's work in general, besides that which has already been pointed out here, namely that which consists in confusing, so to speak, the geographical birthplace of the “modern world” (the 'West') with its intellectual birthplace (the East), is its propensity to disguise as parodies of ancient traditional doctrines and institutions, concepts and societies, unilaterally posited as typically modern, which represent on the contrary their continuation, their extension, if not their culmination. There is then a parodical use and abuse of the notion of parody. With respect to freemasonry, even if one was to support his views on initiation and on freemasonry, one could not but acknowledge that, as an emanation of craftsmen, of representatives of a human type belonging to the third caste, freemasonry cannot possibly play the leading role Guénon ascribed to it.
Speaking of which, almost everything is brought back to arts and crafts, including, in a peremptory manner, the symbolism of theatre, regardless of the evidence pointing overwhelmingly to the Dyonisian root of theatre – it must be recalled that Dionysos is “a god who dissolves identity in general, and gender in particular” (in Retelling the Nicaraguan Revolution as a Dionysian Ritual, p. 28). A connection is then hypothesised between the mysteries of antiquity and the medieval mystery plays, without, once again, any hint at the clearly oriental nature of the former. We can agree with Guénon that, “if… one considers that analogous symbolic representations occurred in the 'mysteries' of antiquity, as in Greece and probably also in Egypt, it is tempting to see here something going back much further in time, a sign of the continuity of an esoteric and initiatic tradition that has been outwardly affirmed at more or less”, -without, unlike the French author, seeing anything positive about this 'current', from a white standpoint.
'The Symbolism of the Theatre' is a rather poor essay at any rate.
A study we have undertaken last January on the theatrification of life, in particular of political life, a theatrification defined as the "formal identity between the theatrical and the political stages" (Paul Friedland), has not enabled us to dedicate as much time and effort to this forum as we would have wished. This study, as all those we have carried out, is meant to dig below the surface. This has turned out to be quite time-consuming, due to the large amount of historical material available for scrutiny and the scarcity of studies upon which to draw on.
The part on clothes is as edifying as the fact it exposes is obvious : so obvious that no one thinks about it, no one sees it : the most worn garment today, both a male and female garment, that is, a unisex garment, takes its name, in various Indo-European languages, from one of the main characters found in the Commedia dell'arte : Pantalone, an ithyphallic character ; indeed, the unmistakably phallic codpiece attached to the front of his trousers makes him a Dionysian manifestation, a figure of a physical, almost bestial, virility, and his stage presence, so to speak, miniature phallophoria. It is worth recalling that the cult of the phallus emerged in and is peculiar to matriarcal civilisations and the worship of the Great Mother ; it constitutes an anti-virile cult: it required his priests to be eunuchs and to wear feminine attire (there might therefore be something not entirely irrationnal about the fear which, according to fearless psycho-analysists, a woman dressed in trousers causes to men). It is also worth mentioning, since it brings us back to a related symbolism (the marine one) that the story goes that pantaloons were worn by the plebeians of the Republic of Venice, who, because they professed devotion to some St. Pantaleon, one of the patrons of Venice, were nicknamed “pantaloni” (the story does not say why they were not nicknamed “pantaleoni”, as, in all logic, they should have been). St Pantaleon was actually the patron of fishermen and sailors. “Trousers in the fashion of sailors, that is long and wide, which cover the whole leg...” is precisely how 'pantaloni' were defined in Italian, when the word first appeared in its modern sense (Giulio C. Lepschy, Mother Tongues and Other Reflections on the Italian Language, p. 60).
The obvious fact we have just remembered is all the more important as 'pantaloni', since they went down into history in 1789, have become an emblem of virility and, at the same time, a totem of egalitarian claims. Descriptive language witnesses to the fact that men have come to identify manliness with pantaloons. "Il faut sauver notre pantalon, a French popular anti-feminist song ("Il faut leur rentrer d’dans !") during WWI went, Car c’est notre honneur" : "We must save our trousers, Since they are our pride." No comprehensive study has been published on the origin of trousers, leaving aside that of a certain Doctor Faust, at Bickeburg, who, for some (Wolfgang Menzel, The History of Germany, vol. 3, p. 172), sent a learned treatise upon it « to the national convention at Paris, by which Sansculottism had been introduced », a « profound threatise » which, for others, « was read in Paris as a sort of historical endorsement of the great democratic party that gloried in the equality, not to say liberty, exhibited by casting trousers aside » (John Hubert Greusel, Blood and Iron, 1915, p. 95), and which is not listed in any catalogue, at any rate. As surprising as it may seem, none of the short studies dealing with this issue can provide evidence that pantaloons were originally an article of clothing peculiar to men. Rather, some of those who have investigated the question (see 'Drafting trousers for men, boys, women' and W.M. Webb, The Heritage of Dress) claim that they were first worn by women, Asian women ; their arguments, without being completely conclusive, are clearly relevant. According to Jacques Laurent in L'Histoire imprévue des dessous féminins (published in English as A History of Ladies underwear, as far as we can judge from the very limited preview available on line, it provides a wealth of information on the origin and the evolution of various garments, and puts forward a few interesting theses, of which that of the infantilisation and the subsequent proletarisation of clothes over the XIXth century ; for instance: "… les pères à partir de 1830 avaient quitté la culotte à la française pour adopter un pantalon que les petits garçons portaient depuis l’avénement de Louis XVI" (French ed., p. 113), pantaloons were "as much disliked round the Mediterranean as it was dear to the tradition of the steppes and the plains" (p. 46). Figurines from Upper Paleoplithic have been found at the archeological sites of Malta and Buret, in Siberia, "which appear to be clothed in trousers" (Sarah M. Nelson, Gender in Archaeology, p. 85 ; see also http://www.proza.ru/2010/12/22/1475). These are Venus figurines. Let us note that, if what we are dealing with here are indeed pant(aloon)s, they are, more or less as those worn by Pantalone, close-fitting knit pants. of the same type as the skin-tight, or rather the second skin, now most popular among teenage girls.
A lot has surprised us as we were researching on the question of the theatrification of life and discovering one after the other unsuspected aspects of it. As far as pantaloons and their hypothetical feminine origin are concerned, the following clarification, unfortunately unsusbstantiated, but made in a well-researched work, about the "sans culottes" is certainly worthy of mention : "Used as a noun, the hyphenated word sans-culottes has a straightforward literal meaning. It means, as Moore wrote, someone not wearing breeches, and who was, therefore, sans culottes. In this sense, anyone not wearing the breeches and stockings worn by men in public or professional life in eighteenth-century France could be described as sans culottes. Oddly, however, the words were never joined together by a hyphen to form a simple substantive noun (as, for example, was done with the words gagne-deniers, meaning a casual worker). Although most men in rural France, and many of the ordinary male inhabitants of towns and cities, usually wore trousers for going about their daily lives, and wore breeches and stockings only on more formal or festive public occasions, it was never the case that they were described as sans-culottes. The noun cannot be found in any seventeenth- or eighteenth-century French dictionary. But this does not mean that the term sans-culottes was purely a product of the French Revolution and, in particular, of the part played by artisans and shopkeepers in the sequence of Parisian insurrections that led, first, to the fall of the French monarchy on 10 August 1792 and then to the period of intense political conflict that culminated in the Terror in 1793 and 1794 — although this, of course, is the meaning that the noun now has. The term did exist before the French Revolution, but it did not have a hyphen, and it meant something else. Before the French Revolution someone who was sans culottes was a writer without a patron. The writer was usually male; the patron was usually female. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, and Paris in particular, there was said to be a New Year's Day custom among some of the ladies who presided over salons to give the men of letters whom they protected a piece of silk or velvet cloth to be made into a pair of breeches. A man of letters who did not frequent a salon and who had, instead, to rely on his wit, talent, and industry to earn his keep was, therefore, sans culottes." (the emphasis is ours)
It may be put forward as a working hypothesis that the adoption of pantaloons by females in modern times is not so much a "progress", a "conquest", to use the terminology of the feminists of the XIXth and XXth centuries, who, for that matter, may very well have been persuaded that it was so and pantaloons were a typical male garment, as a return to their roots.
The last informal remark to be made here on pantaloons in relation with their appeal to women is that they are a closed garnment, an important detail whose emblematic meaning, as put by Sophie Bard in a book (Le Féminisme au-delà des idées reçues) stuffed with clichés and, precisely, idées reçues, "will escape no one".
- Along with trousers, the shoe and the glove seem to be linked to woman:"We understand from that point of view the meaning of the shoe fetishism wchich Krafft-Ebing has noticed in male masochists. In fact Hirschfeld states that every male shoe fetishist is a masochist.To the masochist, the shoe, especially the high buttoned shoe is symbolical of woman's power, of her ruthless cruelty. He sees himself trod on by that shoe, he imagines that shoe pressing on his neck, pinning his head to the ground.Curiously enough, long gloves seem to arouse the same ideas in the mind of the male masochist. Both shoes and gloves are found the dreams or visions of neurotics, symbolyzing the female organs.The gloved hand of a woman, although liker her foot, smaller and prettier than a man's, can wield the whip powerfully over her slave whose greatest joy consists then in kissing his mistress's shoes while submitting to that punishment."A. Tridon, Psychoanalysis of Love, 1922
- Huizinga mentions that tournaments and jousts of the chivalry were dramas by themselves:"Litterature did not suffice for the almost insatiable needs of the romantic imagination of the age. Some more active forms of expression was required. Dramatic art might have supplied it, but the medieval drama in the real sense of the world treated love matters only exceptionally; sacred subjects were its substance. There was, however, another form of representation, namely, noble sports, tourneys and jousts. Sportive struggles always and everywhere contain a strong romantic element and an erotic element. In the medieval tournament these two elements had so much got the upper hand, that its character of a contest of force and courage had been almost obliterated by its romantic purport. With its bizarre accoutrements and pompous staging, its poetical illusion and pathisn it filled the place of the drama of a later age."
Cypriot knights were described by De Mas-Latrié (Recherches sur la domination des Lusignan dans l'île de Chypre, t.II, in A.-C. Gidel, Études sur la Littérature Grecque Moderne, p. 48) as fighting in tournaments while dressed as women. Those entertainments, Gidel points out, had become a true passion for French lords.
Huizinga fully supports the extensive research we have been conducting for quite some time on transvestism in the world of chivalry, whether literary or actual, within the framework of a study on the theatralisation of life and politics. Huizinga is not just anybody.
Male transvestism implies emasculation. As paradoxical as it might seem to those who assume chivalry to have been a breeding ground for virile qualities, many aspects of the code of chivalry betray a feminine outlook as well as an « ethics of emasculation ».
An edifying example of chivalrous depravity is that of the 13th century knight Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who, in his « Frauendienst » (In the Service of Ladies), believed to be partly fictional, partly biographical, tells that « As a page he commenced his glorious career by drinking the water in which his lady had washed her hands; later on he caused his upper lip to be amputated because it displeased his mistress, for "whatever she dislikes in me, I, too, hate." On another occasion he cut off one of his fingers and used it, set in gold, as a clasp for a volume of his poems which he sent to her. One of his most famous exploits was a journey through nearly the whole of Austria, disguised as Venus, jousting, dressed in women's clothes, with every knight he met. », who, all except one, praise, as much as the women he encounters do, his womanly look. « The same spirit animated Guilhem of Balaun [a troubadour from Montpellier]. At the command of his lady he had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he was re-admitted to her favour ». (E. Lucka, The Evolution of Love, p. 139-40) By no means do we lose sight of the considerations developed in 'Metaphysics of Sex' on courtly love, which, however, deal not so much with its impact on knighthood as with the poets who exalted it - in languid verses thematically reminiscent of Arabic poetry. Quite simply, the current « gravitation towards woman and love » on a large scale in 'Western' countries is not a spontaneus generation ; a psychic and psychological ground had to be prepared for this phenomenon to occur and to take on the pandemic proportions it has now acquired, and the major factors for its dissemination undoubtdly lies in the ethics and practice of courtly love.
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