Beyond Politics: Defining the True Right
Beyond Politics: Defining the True Right
Metaphysical Tradition, Civilizational Semantics, Ontologically Proper Praxis, & The Degeneration of Ideology
Latest revision: October 22nd, 2024.
Objective
The goal of this essay is fourfold: 1.) It will outline the metaphysics that serve as the basis of a Traditionalist understanding of Reality as it is. This approach will emphasize monism and employ a framework adapted from Platonism known as “Quintessential Metaphysics”. Such a framework will be critical to establishing the dichotomy of civilizational semantics based on the ordering of “Essence and Substance” or of “Principles and Symbols”, and for providing the “principial pyramid” analogy which can, as a “Quintessential Paradigm” for Reality, be translated over to that which is descriptive or analogically correspondent of Reality in the humanly sphere: society and its caste stratification in the Traditional setting. 2.) This essay will use the aforementioned ontological framework to define “ontologically proper praxis” and “ontologically improper praxis” according to an “alignment” or “skewing” (respectively) of all symbols with their archetypes. This will also be relevant to discussions on ritual, which concerns action or praxis with respect to communication between the “microcosm” and “macrocosm”. 3.) In utilizing civilizational semantics, as well as in introducing Lionel’s “chain and anchor analogy” for its merits in tracing the genealogies of ideas, and in examining the “relativistic, temporal, and historically limited” follies of modern and Anti-Traditional philosophy and politick, this essay seeks to undermine the basis of all modern ideologies and to demonstrate their error in being culpable of “ontologically improper praxis”. In the opposite light, it will demonstrate how Traditional philosophy and politick is “universal, timeless, and essential”, and how it upholds a truly right view anchored in Eternity and which is conducive to “ontologically proper praxis”. 4.) This essay will then examine the incremental degeneration of views from the “upwardly oriented” “True Right” to those of the “horizontal” and “inverted” modern ideologies. An invocation of esoteric prehistory and relevant subtopics such as bifurcation of the Primordial Man, the decay of Consciousness, the trifunctional hypothesis with respect to Varna or caste in the Indian subcontinent, and involution versus evolution, will be employed to assist in the stated goal.
Note that the goal of this essay is only to provide the philosophical framework or blueprints for a Traditionalist movement. It is by no means exhaustive, nor does it explicitly embrace a singular political model (though, the case is made that a clerical monarchy is the most Traditional system, and the implication is thus that clerical monarchy is the most desirable and original system).
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Introduction Part A: The Three Positions & The “Zeroth Position”
Introduction Part A - Segment I: The Three Positions
Introduction Part B - Segment II: The Zeroth Position
Introduction Part B: Principality & Symbology, and the Preordination of Reality.
Introduction Part B - Segment I: Quintessential Metaphysics
Introduction Part B - Segment II: Essential Skewing, and the Preordination & Predestination of God’s Plan
Introduction Part B - Segment III: The Fulfillment of God’s Plan Applied to Cyclical Time
Introduction Part B - Segment IV: The Principial Pyramid as an Analogy for “Pyramidal Societies” & Caste
Introduction Part B - Segment IV, Subsegment A: Why the Castes Are Stratified in Quality & Quantity
Introduction Part B - Segment IV, Subsegment B: Varna & Caste or Civilizational Function & Sacred Occupation in Traditional & Anti-Traditional Society
Introduction Part C: The Proper Praxis of Ritual, & Ritual as a Communication between the Microcosm & Macrocosm
Introduction Part D: Monism vs Relativistic Atomism & The Duality of Civilizational Semantics
Introduction Part D - Segment I: The Hourglass Analogy
Introduction Part D - Segment II: Semantics in Terms of Ordered Functions
Introduction Part D - Segment III: The Axial Age Upheaval
CHAPTER 1: VIEWS AND THE TRUE AND RIGHT & LEFT
Ch.1 Part A: Modern Discourse
Ch.1 Part A - Segment I: On Modern Ideologies
Ch.1 Part A - Segment II: “If only”
Ch.1 Part A - Segment III: Quintessential Ideology?
Ch.1 Part B: The Traceability of Ideas: Lionel’s Chain & Anchor Analogy
Ch.1 Part C: Defining the True Right & True Left
Ch.1 Part C - Segment I: An Appeal to Existence, & The Quintessential Paradigm
Ch.1 Part C - Segment II: A Position of Total Universality, Eternality, & Quintessentiality
Ch.1 Part C - Segment III: Degeneration from the True Right
Ch.1 Part D: Of Wings & Hands
Ch.1 Part D - Segment I: The Link Between Right & Left-Wing with Right & Left-Handism
Ch.1 Part D - Segment II: The Luciferian Left & Inverted Semantics
Ch.1 Part E: The “Ahuman” Approach: A Middle Way Between Humanism & Anti-Humanism
CHAPTER 2: TRIPARTITE DEVOLUTIONS OF VIEWS
Ch.2 Part A: On the Human Condition & Caste
Ch.2 Part A - Segment I: Vertical Integrationism
Ch.2 Part A - Segment II: Horizontal Darwinian Functionalism
Ch2. Part A- Segment II, Subsegment A: Darwin, Persecution, & “Might is Right”
Ch2. Part A- Segment II, Subsegment B: Bifurcation of the Primordial Man vs Evolutionary Circumstance as the Basis of Caste
Ch2. Part A- Segment II, Subsegment C: A Teleological Rebuke of the Darwinian “Might is Right” Attitude
Ch.2 Part A - Segment III: Inverted Original Transcendentalism
Ch2. Part A- Segment III, Subsegment A: The Left’s Downward Orientation & Seeking of an Inverted Transcendence
Ch2. Part A- Segment III, Subsegment B: Dark Enlightenment
Ch.2 Part B: On the Use and Abuse of Time
Ch.2 Part B - Segment I: Cyclical & Qualitative Time, and Eternalism
Ch.2 Part B - Segment II: Linear, Quantitative, & Entropic Time
Ch2. Part B - Segment II, Subsegment A: The Semantics of Linear Time
Ch2. Part B - Segment II, Subsegment B: A Rebuke of the False Traditionalists and the Luddites & Primitivists
Ch.2 Part B - Segment III: Finalism & “End of History” Theory
Ch2. Part B - Segment III, Subsegment A: Gross Finalism
Ch2. Part B - Segment III, Subsegment B: Gross Finalism vs Abrahamic Finalism
Ch.2 Part C: The Scope of the Common People
Ch.2 Part C - Segment I: Children of the First Man & Traditionalist Universalism
Ch2. Part C - Segment I, Subsegment A: Ancestral Lineages & The Proximity of Our Ancestors to the Divine or First Man
Ch2. Part C - Segment I, Subsegment B: Involution & Repeated Bifurcation
Ch2. Part C - Segment I, Subsegment C: Value & Treatment of the Castes in Traditionalism vs Fascism
Ch.2 Part C - Segment II: The Racial Unconscious, National Populism, & Ethnic Nationalism
Ch2. Part C - Segment II, Subsegment A: Fascism & Populism
Ch2. Part C - Segment II, Subsegment B: The Incompatibility of Traditionalism & Populism, and Revolutions from Above & Below
Ch2. Part C - Segment II, Subsegment C: Imperium vs Nationalism
Ch.2 Part C - Segment III: Cosmopolitanism & Globalism
Ch2. Part C - Segment III, Subsegment A: Liberalism & “The People”
Ch2. Part C - Segment III, Subsegment B: Imperium vs Cosmopolitanism
Ch2. Part C - Segment III, Subsegment C: A Penultimate Critique - Leftism’s Exaltation of the Untermensch
Ch2. Part C - Segment III, Subsegment D: A Final Critique - Leftism’s Strive to Undo the Bifurcation of the Primordial Man
END NOTE
Introduction
Introduction, Part A: The Three Positions & The “Zeroth Position”
(This introduction will invoke the idea of the “four castes”—a theme of recurring importance throughout this essay. For those unaware, there are said to be four spiritual modes: Priest/Clerical, Warrior-Aristocrat, Merchant/Producer/Artisan, and Laborer/Commoner/Peasant. The first two constitute what we might call the “greater mode” of Man: the Aristocracy or Patricia. The latter two constitute the “lesser mode” of Man: the Plebians. The Priestly caste teaches, guides the nation, and curates its relics; the Warrior-Aristocrat caste fights for the nation, safeguards its traditions, administrates high offices wisely, and enjoys high privileges; the Merchant caste is responsible for engaging in most “white collar” professions and trades—especially those of an economic, managerial, or low-administrative orientation, as well as those concerned with some mode of production, specialized service, or artisanal and creative output; and the Laborer caste is comprised of those who can only toil, taking on the brunt of “blue collar” trades. Caste will be discussed more in Parts A and C of the second chapter.)
>Introduction Part A - Segment I: The Three Positions
The modern political landscape is painted by three ideological categories which find their reference point in the humanism of the Enlightenment, and which arose to replace the old aristocratic order of the tribal and feudal world. I say “humanism”, not only as they derive in part from the ideology of humanism, but because by extension their point of focus is on the human element: the vitalistic forces of the people and their present contexts. “The people”, these humanistic ideologies hold, is primary, and they each advocate for the supposed “liberation” or “popular voice” of the common masses. These three ideological positions are described as the First Position, Second Position, and Third Position, associated with Liberalism, Marxism, and Fascism, respectively. Let us then define them:
Liberalism can be defined as an ideology which concerns itself with an emphasis on ideas of liberty and equality and which is associated with such frameworks as democracy, capitalism, and mercantilism. The vast majority of political parties in the West may be defined according to this position, such that even “conservativism” is a position found under the umbrella of Western Liberalism, but one which is concerned with gradual change as opposed to a runaway progressivism, having a slightly more “traditionalist” sentiment to it than the progressive wing of Liberalism, yet nonetheless is far removed from true Traditionalism and often fails to live up to its own namesake of “conserving” anything other than the current point of slippage in the Overton Window (and even then it gradually fails). Esoterically, Liberalism might be said to be rule by the Merchant caste (a feature it shares with its ideological enemies, as we will see), such that today we find that the politicians of Liberal nations are driven by the interests of their coffers and maintain the persuasive swagger of salesmen. Moreover, we might say that Liberalism is the ideological successor to the mercantile republicanism found in Enlightenment era Europe from Genoa to Venice. Such merchant republics sought to replace the old order of noble-led feudalism. We might also note that there is a similarity between the economic and social systems present in these classically mercantile forms of government: Mercantilism and capitalism redistribute wealth from the Aristocracy to the Merchants, while democracy and republicanism restore power in the same manner. Marxism goes a step further, in that it attempts to redistribute wealth and power into the hands of the Laborer caste. (Caste as it relates to politics will be expanded upon later.)
Speaking of: Marxism encompasses all socialistic ideologies which find initial reference point in Karl Marx, and thus Marxism in a broad sense “contains” all “Marxian” (or Marxist-derivative) ideologies. True Marxism borders on anarchic, calling for the dissolution of state, class, and money; though in practice the result is often an autocratic state which bears the same stately and hierarchical elements of bureaucracy and wealth stratification as its counterparts do. Like Liberalism, it has a rigid obsession with the “liberation” of the masses, which it calls the Proletariat, and which contains primarily members of the Laborer caste. Marxian dialectics spin this caste as perennially in conflict with the Merchant and Aristocratic castes, which is calls the Bourgeoisie, precipitously finalizing this conflict into a state of revolutionary “class warfare”. Marxism is thus an ideology of rule by the Laborer caste, as implied in the previous paragraph.
Fascism, meanwhile, is the most “traditional” of the three post-Enlightenment positions, and yet it is still a far cry from true Traditionalism with a capital T, as we will see. Fascism, like its chief enemy Marxism, asserts the primacy of the Laborer caste.
Liberalism asserts that the enemy of the Laborers and Merchants together are the Aristocracy, as Liberalism’s prescriptive context was one responsive to grievances held with immoral or ineffectual monarchies. And while Liberalism promises power to the Laborer caste, it merely grants the illusion of this power indirectly through the institution of republicanism—as system designed by those of a “Merchant caste soul”, which consequentially favors those of said caste. That is, it is a self-serving system, one designed by Merchants for Merchants. It is a system to be gamed, to be exploited for all its loopholes, superficially permitting entry to all but implicitly supplying barriers which ensure success only to those with the finances and cunning to seize it. These Merchants then pretend to speak for the Laborers, but rarely have they known their struggle. Liberalism is thus rule by the Merchant caste, sold to the Laborer caste.
In contrast, Marxism asserts that the enemy of the Laborers is both the Merchants and the Aristocracy, and first arose with success under the context of the impoverishing Tsarist regime. Marxism is rule by the Laborer caste in theory, yet the ineffectuality of the Laborer caste in establishing any sense of coherency or order, and the inherit desire for leadership among them, lends them to rule by the same politicians of a mercantile disposition who triumph elsewhere. Thus, in practice Marxism is ruled by the very Merchant caste it ideologically opposes, once again sold to the Laborer Caste.
Fascism is arguably a response to Marxism, noted by the number of Fascist thinkers who formerly considered themselves Marxists and whose ideas continued to be influenced by such. We see this in that where Marxism has the Proletariat, Fascism has the similarly collectivist notion of the Racial Unconscious. It is clear that in spite of the universalism exercised by Marxism (“Workers of the world, unite!”), that the notion of a Proletariat is in actuality uniquely endemic to the identity of each people of each nation which finds itself at the center of a socialist revolution. The Racial Unconscious of Fascism, which invokes the idea of a given national people’s racial and ethnic heritage, is not dissimilar in this regard. The Racial Unconscious is only more explicitly endemic to a particular people and nation—a “race”—and equally asserts the rights of a common mass against their oppressors who are said to hold positions of power over them and whom disregard the interests of such a collective body. Liberalism also attempts this, but its common mass is an undefined and amorphous cosmopolitan body, which it only vaguely refers to as “the people” when it is not otherwise trying to disavow certain modes of populism.
Fascism nonetheless diverges from Liberalism and Marxism in that it appeals to the traditions and rituals of old, and yet it forsakes the meaning of these traditions and rituals by emphasizing elements of their symbology (their aesthetics and materiality) rather than the principles behind these traditions and rituals (the eternal reasons for which they were performed in the first place). We see this clearly demonstrated in Fascism’s typical obsession with Roman symbology and extinct European paganism, such that Fascists might desire to resurrect the Roman Empire and revive ancient folkish religion. (Even the symbol of Fascism itself, the fasces, derives from Rome Depicting a bound bundle of sticks, it signifies labor, and therefore the working class, hence the “branding” of Fascism as an ideology of the Laborer caste.) Moreover, this fixation on symbols lends Fascism to a position of relativism as opposed to universalism, in that Fascism asserts the primacy of the nation and its corresponding race’s local historicity, cultural practices, and religious views over all others, viewing all others as inferior in both practice and view. Were Fascism truly interested in principality and the proper praxis of Tradition, Fascism would embrace a perennialism which holds that all traditions and religious beliefs are cognates derived from a shared understanding of the Divine preordination of Reality, Man’s integration into the vertical plane of that preordination, and Man’s participation in the Highest Reality. Most simply, all traditions derive from a more quintessential notion of Tradition. This will be elaborated on throughout the essay.
Finally, Fascism embraces secularity, adopting such materialistic doctrines as Darwinism to justify its racial and economic positions. It is secular, because in forsaking universalism and principality, it is spiritually empty as a doctrine (though Fascists might be personally religious or promoting of religion, the application of religious consciousness in law is undertaken superficially). The error of secularism is one it ironically shares with its enemies, Liberalism and Marxism. Where this secularity is most peculiarly manifest, in the context of Tradition, is in how Fascists handle the notion of caste. Caste, most simply, is descriptive of Reality, such that when reified it is said to be “divinely ordained”, as will be elaborated later on. Rather than assenting to this spiritual reality, Fascists will hold that caste is merely prescriptive, having evolved in Darwinian fashion among early human tribes who found that an instituted division of labor was necessary to satisfy the various niches of their members. At the very least, it is the case that both are true: Caste is both descriptive and prescriptive. Because the Fascists refuse to acknowledge the importance of caste, Fascism embraces the same bureaucracy found in Liberalism and Marxism, wherein this bureaucracy substitutes proper Aristocracy for a sprawl of administrative channels conducted by the Merchant caste. Fascism may romanticize the aesthetics of the old aristocracy, but it is in both theory and practice a rule by the Merchants, sold to the Laborers, just as its twain enemies are.
>Introduction Part A - Segment II: The Zeroth Position
In contrast to the “three positions”, for which the Second World War was fought, is the very ruling essence of that bespoke Aristocratic order which Fascism pretends to, and which Fascism has, with its enemies, rejected. This Aristocratic essence has defined the disposition of tribal chiefdom, theocracy, and feudal kingdom alike, across geography and across history, and is that which might, in reference to the “three positions”, be called the “Zeroth Position”, for it is the original position. More simply, it is the Truly Right way, an “alignment with the default mode of Being”. Its “Orthopraxis”, by which I mean the ritual exoterism and expressed sociological mode or “Quintessential Paradigm”, is the proper praxis of Tradition. And its “Orthodoxy”, by which I mean its esoteric basis from which it derives its governing ideology and ritual Orthopraxis, is the essence of good religion and proper philosophy. Coupled together, this Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis amount to what Praxius has called “Praxism”. He explains:
“We believe in a monistic and singular Divine Principle and unifying Quintessential Truth to Reality, which becomes translated into lesser and more relative truths and active principles in various spheres. Now the word ‘Praxism’ is a term that we’ve coined which derives from the English word ‘praxis’, which is defined as the method through which a principle is enacted, embodied, or realized. And we've added the suffix of ‘-ism’ to combine the denotation of a process of a principle, with the denotation of a principle itself, which means that when we refer to Praxism, we’re referring to a union of two different notions, both active and passive. In a passive form, we define Praxism as that aforementioned Quintessential Truth, along with its related set of principles and various derivatives; and in an active form, we define it as the active translation of this Truth into those aforementioned relative spheres, or as the way in which the Quintessential Truth is carried out.”
The “Zeroth Position” is perennial or universal in that it transcends borders, having been the basis of nearly every human society since time immemorial. In this regard, it is also timeless in that it is not confined by context or reference to a particular point or era in history, but has conquered time itself without contest. This is seen in that where modern empires can only conquer space, Traditional empires conquered time, leaving behind monuments, fortresses, temples, aqueducts, observatories, and even peasant houses which stand tall and firm millennia after their founders have passed away into oblivescence. The so-called “Zeroth Position” does not derive its legitimacy from a particular reference point, but stretches so endlessly far back into the forgotten annals of history and prehistory that none may say whence it began—for it was simply eternal; it simply always was, as it was the default mode of Being. Its call that it beckons then is thus: “That which has always been, continues to be”, or “Things which have always been true, are still true”, or better still, to pull a page from the Foreword of Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World: “These did not just happen once, but they have always been” (pg. xxxiii), or even: “quod ubique, quod ab omnibus et quod semper” (“What is everywhere, what is always, what is by all people believed”) (pg. xxxv). Finally, the Zeroth Position is essential or fundamental in that it served as the default and axiomatic basis for a proper ordering of society, naturally suiting Man’s tribalistic and spiritual propensities. But beyond this “microcosmic” humanistic or materialistic concern, the “Zeroth Position” is essential in that it concerns itself with a certain “verticality”—a hierarchical mode which accorded each man not merely to just his “niche”, but to the station of his spiritual caste. Furthermore, in pursuit of this verticality, the Zeroth Position subordinates the very microcosm of human society to the macrocosm of Principial Reality—a subordination which is itself emulated in the organization and structure of the caste system, whereby it was the subordination of the inferior Laborer and Merchants castes to the superior Warrior-Aristocrat and Priestly castes. All such is that which the truest Traditionalists, the True Right, comes to restore. “The ultimate and secret goal of Evola’s theories and projects is most likely an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world,” claims the SS’ Heinrich Himmler, in dossier AR-126.
So let me be clear: We Traditionalists are not reactionaries as the Fascists are, for to “react” implies that one derives their legitimacy upon the face of a preexisting opposition, yet we come as heralds of the “old aristocracy”, the Oldest Order which stood as the one and only way—the default mode of Being—since time immemorial. That is, all others have fallen from the True Way, strayed from its narrow path, and now these degenerations which constitute the New Order (the modern world) make themselves our opposition. We do find ourselves contingent upon the inequities of the Liberals, the Marxists, the Fascists, or any others, for our ideology is self-subsistent, needing to make reference to no others in order to legitimize its mission. Our position is “Zeroth”, it is default—again, the default mode of Being, a source of original action and not reaction. We are the Agonist, not an antagonist. We are not reactionaries, but restorationists, and what we seek to restore shall not be conducted through mere protest, through mere reaction, nor through countering and opposing and antagonizing, but through the insurrection of that old aristocracy, that Old Order against the New. (At the end of Chapter 1, Part C, we will circle back to this thought and supplied after will be the paragraph from Evola’s work which inspired such of me.)
This “Zeroth Position” has thus manifested in historicity as theocracies, which emphasized the primacy of the Priestly caste; tribal chiefdoms, which emphasized the primacy of the Warrior caste; or monarchies, which perhaps express a compromise between these two bifurcations of the Aristocracy. And yet, regardless of the Zeroth Position’s praxis or form—even that it might have been practiced this way in ancient China by those who believed one way, or that it might have been practiced that way in ancient Persia by those who believed another way, and still third way in ancient Europe—each instantiation of its orthopraxis appeals always to a certain orthodoxy—an orthodoxy, which, as the abstractions hidden behind the formalisms of every good religion and proper philosophy, points toward the same abstract Quintessential Truth, which is Ultimate Reality, and which concerns the relationship between the humanely microcosm and Divine macrocosm. And thus, all such traditions, in appealing to the quintessential Orthodoxy, appeal also to the quintessential Orthopraxis. All such matters will be discussed throughout this essay.
Thought the Zeroth Position is most chiefly concerned with the primacy of the Aristocracy, it might be conceded that even Warrior-led governments are a degeneration of the most original and proper form of government, that being the Priestly theocracy or clerical monarchy. To quote Praxius on the matter:
“At the point where the Priestly caste lost its primacy at the first stage of decline was precisely when the questioning of the structure of civilization around an understanding of Law as a transcendent Truth began to be seen as legitimate. The Right-Wing structure was questioned and eventually overturned with what was now considered an equally legitimate opposition favored first by the Warrior caste, then by the Merchant caste, and then by the Peasant caste. While we may now look today at the rule by Warriors as something Right-Wing, it is because we have come so far Leftwards that even what is principially Left of what is truly proper seems to us a legitimate goal. This is to say that when the Priestly caste lost its primacy, we took a step towards the Left; then when the Warrior caste lost its primacy we took another; and when the Merchant loses its primacy we will be progressing further in that direction; but all of these, symbolically and archetypally speaking, are improper and incorrect, and allow for the illegitimate questioning of what is truly correct and proper at the ontological level.
Interestingly enough, however, the reason why the margin for the Right has become so wide, and the term so debatable, is precisely because where once certain forces were in favor of this regression, they are now in favor of a restoration. To go back to a purely mercantile civilizational structure is to go in a Rightward direction, and to return to a martial status quo would be to go even further Righward. This does not make these forces Right Wing by definition, but it does act as a force in favor of the Right at present because of how far we've progressed Leftward.
Therefore, for the purposes of our historiography, it is necessary to make a distinction between the forces that work in favor of the Right, and the forces that are definitionally of the Right.”
Thus, the most Traditional, the most Aristocratic, and the most Truly Right-wing forms of government, are that of the Priestly theocracy and the clerical monarchy. The Warrior-led feudal systems of the medieval world and the tribal chiefdoms of the world’s nomadic peoples would be the first degeneration from such. The Merchant-led republics of the Fascists, Marxists, and Liberals—the latter twain which still exist today—represent the second degeneration. And I shiver to think just how grotesque the final degeneration—the birth of the Shudra’s age—will be. Perhaps such a rule by the Laborer caste will spell the end of formal government altogether. After all, the “three positions” are each a usurpation of Laborer caste’s desire for empowerment by the cleverer Merchant caste, and so it may be the case that the Laborers can only dominate when formal government itself has been abolished. We have seen the first seed of this planted already, in the barbarism and anarchy of Marxist revolutions, and therefore ought to be terrified to consider a possible future scenario in which a Laborer revolution is not interim but permanent—like the “dream” of Lenin’s “permanent revolution” (though I find it to be more of a nightmare than a dream).
Introduction, Part B: Principality & Symbology, and the Preordination of Reality
>Introduction Part B - Segment I: Quintessential Metaphysics
The preordination and predestination of Reality is a topic which has been discussed elsewhere in my own writings and in the writings and dialogues of my friend and teacher, Praxius, whom I often cite, and is a critical basis which must be established before any insightful discussions can be held on the following interlinked topics: on Tradition and ritual, on the microcosm and macrocosm, and on principality and symbology. To discuss the preordination of Reality, which is the metaphysical organization of Reality, commonly reified as “God’s Design”, we will need to of course establish a metaphysical foundation. I will be invoking terminology used by Praxius in his Quintessential Metaphysics model, which is primarily derived from Plato’s philosophy, but which aims to be universal and inclusive of ideas found perennially across a multitude of frameworks. To keep this chapter part short, yet accessible to those unfamiliar with metaphysics, I will keep this discussion simple, providing only a brief overview. For those already familiar and well-versed in the type of metaphysics which Praxius and I regularly speak on, this chapter part will merely serve as a brief review and you may even find it inconsequential to skip it. For those unfamiliar, I recommend readers to more fully explore this topic by visiting the following three essays: Finding God in the Void, The Verticality of God’s Plan, and The Hourglass Analogy.
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Plato held that the material or particular world is one of “symbols”, or what Praxius refers to as “conditioned manifestations”. These refer to the physical and material things and acts of the world, such as humans, trees, or events and phenomena. In Nietzschean terminology, these are called “atomic facts”. They may also be referred to as “substances”, or collectively as “substance”, in that they are of a tangible and “substantial” nature. Symbols are contrasted with “perfect forms”, wherein the symbolic world is said to be a “projection” or “shadow” of the “real” world, which is one of “perfect forms” or “archetypes” that are formless, ideal, abstract, and immaterial. For instance, every imperfect sphere found in the world, whether it be a baseball or a star in outer space, is a “shadow” or “projection” of a truly perfect archetypal sphere which is not and cannot be represented in the world as it truly is. So, succinctly, symbols are projections or shadows of archetypes or pure forms. However, if we prefer to use Praxius’ vocabulary instead, this could be phrased instead by saying that “conditioned manifestations” are instantiations or manifestations of “principles”.
In the Quintessential Metaphysics model, we would say, for instance, that every unique tree is a manifestation of a “quintessential tree principle” (akin to the archetypal tree), and that the defining principial qualities which make each instantiation of a tree unique are “transposed” onto that quintessential tree principle in something called the “transpositive degree” at each instance manifestation. We can relate this to the Ship of Theseus, wherein each instantiation of that ship over time derives from the same “quintessential Ship of Theseus principle” and has its new material conditions transposed upon it at each unique point in time where it is manifested, such that time itself might even be said to be transposed upon the ship. (We call “quintessential principles” as such because each is the most essential or abstract version of a given thing that can be conceptualized.)
Moving on, the term “substance” is used in contrast with “essence”. Those familiar with Aristotle might be aware that Aristotle held that “essences” are contained by substantial things, such that “treeness” would be contained by a tree. The Platonic view inverts this, asserting that bespoke “treeness” is equated with what Praxius would call the “quintessential tree principle”, and that this principle acts as a container over manifested trees. (Really, the only difference is semantics, but any proper philosophy interested in upholding a “right view” will assert that Essence always precedes and contains or conditions Substance.) Similar to how principles contain and condition manifestations, principles also contain and condition other principles. When one thinks of the brownness of a tree’s trunk, we might say that brownness is contained and conditioned by colorness, then colorness perhaps by opaqueness, then opaqueness by total visibility, and so forth. The idea is that we can trace principles or essences (other names include “universals” or “qualities”) up a “vertical ladder” of sorts until we reach degrees as abstract as “Total Possibility” or “Total Existence”, and finally “Total Universality”, the principle which contains the totality of “universals”. It can also be called the “Universal Principle”.
The higher up the ladder one draws their gaze, the more abstract universals or principles become, leading us away from that which is more familiar, such as notions of treeness, woodiness, or brownness, to notions of plantness, carbonness, and colorness, then onto bioticness, elementalness, and opaqueness, and so on, becoming increasingly harder to visualize or conceptualize. These higher degrees of principality are not only more abstract, but also become less “relative” and more “universal” or “essential”. The loss in relativity can be seen in the inability of us to imagine and thus relate to more abstract principles, while the gain in universality or essentiality can be seen in that higher principles contain and condition a greater number of principles and thus are more universally present and fundamental/essential to the order of things. We say that these higher principles are more “universally present” or simply “universal” since they contain under their domains a greater number of lower principles, and thus they are also represented or embodied by a greater number of lower principles and conditioned manifestations. Likewise, we say that these higher principles are more “fundamental or essential to the order of things” since they are the basis for a greater number of lower principles and conditioned manifestations. In this way, we find that the “upper strata”, which contain the higher principles, also contain fewer principles than the “lower strata” which contain a greater number of lower principles. Think for instance how many principles it takes to condition a given tree—that number would have to be at least uncountably large, but arguably infinite. By contrast, the number of principles it takes to condition the principle of treeness is a lesser number than that. And if treeness is conditioned by trunkness and branchness, then we will find that conditioning each of two principle requires even fewer principles. And if we then examine the principles of brownness or woodiness which condition the trunk, still even fewer principles are required to condition each of those.
Thus, if all known principles were to be properly graphed (though there is an infinite number of them), we would perhaps wind up with a triangular model—a pyramid, if you will. The tip of this pyramid would be Total Universality, while the base of the pyramid (which is called the “horizontal plane”) would be lined with conditioned manifestations. Conditioned manifestations, at this lowest point, are said to be maximally relative, concrete, and substantial, rather than essential. Meanwhile, all other principles beside Total Universality can be located by drawing horizontal lines at different altitudes through the pyramid (and these are called “degrees”), establishing rows which decrease in width as one draws their gaze upward, such that there are always fewer higher principles and more lower principles. (And if we were to draw a vertical line bisecting the pyramid, this line would be called the “vertical plane”.) There is also the domain of “All Things”, which can be thought of as the totality of the pyramid, and it is the actualization of Total Universality. This is because Total Universality is the “cumulative” principle which contains all other principles as a universality, it is yet still a singularity—the singular notion of “universality”, “universeness”, or “universe-like”; whereas All Things is “summative”, being the aggregation of all principles and manifestations (all beings, or literally “all things”) which are contingent upon Total Universality and which emanate from Total Universality or “fall out of it”. The reason that All Things is the actualization of Total Universality is because whereas Total Universality is the essence of the universe, All Things is the actual contents of the universe. As Praxius explains: “I would specify that All Things are contained by Total Universality, considering that Total Universality includes the containment of All Things, Total Universality being a unicity and All Things being differentiated to a certain degree.”
Beyond Total Universality, we reach a point which is so high that it is not even a principle or a degree. This we call Total Unicity, the Absolute, or the Monad. It is the quality-lacking vacuous emptiness, from which even Total Universality arises. Whereas Total Universality is the First Principle at the tip of the pyramid, Total Unicity is the very Context that permits the pyramid to exist—the space around the pyramid. (Again, we might also comment that while Total Universality is viewed from the “top-down” as a singularity, that it can also be viewed from the “bottom-up” as an aggregate of all beings. When viewed from the latter position, it is called the domain of “All Things” and considered to be the actualization of Total Universality. Total Universality, in this respect, is viewed as the tip of the pyramid which all inferior layers emanate down from, while All Things is viewed as the totality of the pyramid.) And Total Unicity is indeterminate, such that no distinction can be made between principles or essences, hence why we say it is beyond principality, and hence why we say it is “empty” or “without quality”. This Absolute is the Ultimate Essence with a capital E, out of which all other essences and substances are derived. With this, we can make a simple binary distinction between Essence and Substance, or between the “Principial Domain” and the “Symbolic Domain”, or between “Principial Realities” and “Relative Realities”. All such nominal dualities are “vertical” or hierarchical, such that the former element is always superior to the latter; or simply put, and as mentioned earlier, Essence precedes, contains, and conditions Substance.
In every religion and in many ancient philosophical traditions, the Absolute or Monad is the purest understanding of God. Traditions that make this understanding of the Monad explicit can be classified as “monist” or “monadic”. Such traditions are also emanationist, since they hold that all essence and substance derive from the Ultimate Essence. In this light, all essences and substances are only “provisionally real” in that they derive their very status of being from pure Being with a capital B, or are endowed existence by pure Existence with a capital E (here using “Existence” with a capital E in the Thomistic sense, which is synonymous with “Essence”). (In such traditions adhering to this line of thought, it is not a question of whether God is real, but a recognition that only God is ultimately real. The Highest or Ultimate Reality is just God. We say “ultimate”, because pure Essence or “Spirit” is as far back as we can get in our deductive examination of reality. The conclusion of monism is thus that all of Reality is reducible to the unqualified emptiness or singularity that is The One—pure Essence or Spirit.) Because of this acknowledgment that all which is inferior to the Monad is only provisionally real, we find in a variety of traditions that provisionally real things are likened to “illusions”, since an illusion is that which is only afforded truth on condition, such as how a mirage of a ship over the horizon is afforded its illusory truth on the condition that it is derived from the superior truth that there is a real ship out there on the horizon. In the Dharmic traditions, this understanding is even mystified and called “Maya” (meaning “dream”), wherein the creator aspect of the Supreme God, Vishnu, is depicted dreaming of the universe (Maya) while sleeping atop His lotus pond. I discuss this more in the third chapter of my essay, Finding God in the Void.
With all this in mind, we see that the holistic Ultimate Essence is the basis for all things. One might say that Total Universality or the Universal Principle is also authentically God, but that it is the “Relative-Absolute” or “God with quality”, as opposed to the “Absolute-Absolute” or “God without quality”—the latter terms describing the Monad or Total Unicity. (In recognition that another valid name for principles or universal is archetypes, Total Universality might also be called the First Archetype. Yet another alternative name is First Derivation, as all other principles derive from it.)
>Introduction Part B - Segment II: Essential Skewing, and the Preordination & Predestination of Reality
With all this in mind, let us discuss “skewing”. In light of our analogy of the “principial pyramid”, wherein we might imagine that each principial degree is a horizontal line or “axis” intersecting the pyramid at differing altitudes, we again note that in such an analogy that the degrees increase in width as we move from the top of the pyramid to its base, and therefore the number of principles occupying each degree also increases. At the lower degrees, there is therefore more “wiggle room”, so to speak, since there are increasingly many principles acting beside one another, thus producing an opportunity for beings to “skew” from proper alignment with the “tip” of the pyramid—the tip again being where we find Total Universality or the First Archetype. This is such that we might draw a vertical axis running from the tip straight down, and notice that in this pyramid model, that proportionally more lower principles skew from alignment from the vertical axis compared to the number of higher principles that skew from it. At the same time, as we move down, beings also acquire more “relative properties” (lower principles) in proportion to “essential properties” (higher principles), therefore becoming more composite, more relative in character overall, and less essential—that is, less representative of Essence with a capital E. Since the being in question is less essential, it is a far cry from pure Essence, in that it is an improper representation of pure Essence—a symbol which does not most faithfully and accurately portray or fulfill its archetype. This is to say that lower principles and symbols (again, symbols are found at the pyramid’s base) no longer properly “emulate” or “look like” their preceding principles or archetypes. The idea here is that when beings are more accurately portraying or fulfilling their archetypes all the way up the pyramid to the First Archetype, then these beings have “fulfilled” “God’s Plan” for “God’s Design” and thus are qualitatively “good”.
Here, the phrase “God’s Design” is a reification which refers to the manner in which Reality is “preordained”—which is to mean the manner in which the principles of Reality are organized or “ordained” according to Metaphysical Law (or what the Vedic traditions call “Dharma” or “Ṛta”), wherein Metaphysical Law is the internal “structure” or “ontology” of Reality. The phrase “God’s Plan” is similar, but concerns how this Design is “fulfilled” or restored over time in a predestined fashion. This idea that God’s Design is restored over time, invokes the doctrine of Cyclical Time, in which the qualitative goodness of a coveted Golden Age skews or “decays”, only to be restored at the end of a Cycle. If all beings are fulfilling God’s Plan, which means that at the desired time, all beings are “in alignment” with their preceding principles or archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype, then the current time is said to be qualitatively good, and symbols are said to fulfill their archetypes in a mode of “ontological propriety”—a metaphysically normative state, or a description of Reality in its “default mode of Being”. When translated into human practice, such an ontological propriety is said to be “ontologically proper praxis”. (We can also refer to this as “archetypal fulfillment”.) However, if alignment is not present and there is a “dysphoria” between symbols and archetypes, then they are “skewed”, such that we might imagine that bricks or perhaps even entire layers of the pyramid become warped out of proper alignment. Such a condition is qualitatively “defiant”, “improper”, “unfulfilled, or “evil”.
To summarize: What is ontologically “good” or “proper praxis” pertains to the objective and “vertical” preordination of “God’s Design”, whereas what is ontologically “evil” or “improper praxis” is a subjective or relativistic “skewing” of essences which occurs “horizontally”. And: The more relative a being is, the less essential or absolute it is. The being has “fallen further out” from its Source in the First Principle. It has “slipped down” the vertical axis, so to speak. And thus, the being has become a far cry from the First Archetype and can no longer symbolize, portray, fulfill, or emulate it properly, failing to do “what it is truly made to do”. As Praxius explains in his The Verticality of God’s Plan essay:
“If ‘beings’ are understood in this case as a thing which retains the property of being outside of manifestation, by simply being a potential or a possibility, or having an essential character, or as the result of an actualization of a potential, this means that the more contingent that a being is, the more relative properties it has when compared to its essential properties, or ‘what it is truly made to do’. These relative properties may skew the being one way or another outside the realm of its essential nature, and delineate it from its proper praxis.”
Or to conclude more succinctly: “The fulfillment of God’s Plan itself is when all things have achieved ontological propriety through the realization of their respective archetypes.”
>Introduction Part B - Segment III: The Fulfilment of God’s Plan Applied to Cyclical Time
To follow up on my point that, “This idea that God’s Design is restored over time, invokes the doctrine of Cyclical Time, in which the qualitative goodness of a coveted Golden Age skews or ‘decays’, only to be restored at the end of a cycle. If all beings are fulfilling God’s Plan, which means that all beings are ‘in alignment’ with their preceding principles or archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype, then the current time is said to be qualitatively good,…” allow me to provide a more specific overview of the connection between “God’s Plan” and Cyclical Time, as will be more thoroughly examined in Part B of the second chapter:
The ontological propriety of God’s Design is one which is not only preordained, but is predestined. That is, the propriety is self-correcting, such that it will revert to its original or default mode of Being after having been severely skewed. The idea here is that as time progresses, the skewing of essences worsens, with the alignment between symbols and their archetypes becoming increasingly distorted until the “principial pyramid” is a state of near-total disarray, after which point the original Design is restored. Such a restoration is predestined, occurring periodically after a set amount of time has passed, without fail. When the restoration of God’s Design is fulfilled according to this predestination, we say that it is God’s Plan which has been fulfilled, and thus the phrase “God’s Plan” is synonymous with the predestination of All Things, just as “God’s Design” is with the preordination of All Things.
What I speak to here is the idea that there is a qualitative decay of the total praxiological proprietary or “goodness” between these ages, and it can be charted according to a rule of ten units of time: The first four units constitute a “Golden Age” in which the qualitative or praxiological goodness begins with a total fulfillment of God’s Plan and precipitously decays to a state which is three-fourths fulfilled and one-fourth skewed. The following “Silver Age” constitutes three units and decays from three-fourths fulfillment to two-fourths or one-half. Then “Bronze Age” is two units and decays to one-fourth. Finally, the “Iron Age” lasts for only one unit and decays to a state of near-total disarray.
>Introduction Part B – Segment IV: The Principial Pyramid as an Analogy for “Pyramidal Societies” & Caste
>>Introduction Part B – Segment IV, Subsegment A: Why the Castes Are Stratified in Quality & Quantity
In keeping in mind that a Traditional society is one whose model or framework is descriptive of Reality as opposed to prescriptive, it should come at no surprise that the principial pyramid analogy can be used as a parallel or analogy for Traditional social hierarchy. (In fact, a proper model of both Reality itself and of Traditional society can be ascribed a singular consistent name: the “Quintessential Paradigm”.) That is, we can exchange the labels on the pyramid, so to speak: Total Universality becomes the king or monarch, and hence is why kings are said to be ordained by God: They are analogs for God in their respective societies—the “God” of their society, if you will. The higher principles or “essential properties”, in theology, represent the “Henads”, who are the more timeless, universal, essential, and immortal deities; while the lower principles or “relative properties” represent the “Daemons” (as in the Greek usage of the word, not to be confused with chthonic “demons” in the Abrahamic sense), who are the more transient gods of local or ordinary things. In a Traditional society, however, standing pro for the higher principles or Henads are the Priestly and Warrior-Aristocrat castes—the two “greater modes of Man”; while standing pro for the lower principles or Daemons are the Merchant and Laborer castes—the two “lesser modes of Man”. This analogy is useful in understanding why it is that the castes comprising a society are stratified in both quality and quantity. That is, they are stratified in quality such that we find that the Priests have a more “essential fullness” to them, so to speak, in that they possess the abilities of all four castes, having the capacity and innate skill to carry out the stations of all four castes, such that they might both teach, fight, administrate or trade or craft, and toil. By contrast, the Warrior-Aristocrats only possess the abilities of the bottom three castes, the Merchants only possess the abilities of the bottom two castes, and the Laborers only possess their own caste’s ability. Thus, we might say that the Laborers are of a more “relative” status, principially speaking, since their character far less emulates or “looks like” the character of the Priestly king/monarch who heads the society, just as relative properties and conditioned manifestations hardly emulate or “look like” Total Universality (God). We also observe here that intellect and wisdom, especially with regards to an esoteric and “pure” understanding of God and Reality, is more exclusive to the consciousness of the higher castes, and thus the Priests are closest or most resembling of God in their consciousness—a critical fact to consider if we take the monadic cosmoconsciousness or idealist monist stance that God is pure Consciousness with a capital C (the strands of monism will be expounded on in Part D of this introduction). The castes are also stratified by number, with there being noticeably very few men born of a Priestly soul, but an overwhelming abundance of men born of a Laborer soul. This is again for the same reason that there are more lesser principles or Daemons than there are higher principles or Henads, and it can be explained by the nature of “bifurcation”:
Bifurcation refers to the way in which The One transitions from a state of Oneness to manyness, and follows a very basic mathematical reality, which tells us that the increase from Oneness to manyness is simply that: an increase. The more that Brahman (God) expands or emanates (the etymology of “Brahman” is literally “to expand” or “to unfold”), the more layers of Reality there are to “fall out” from Him, and thus we end up with a pyramidal model of Reality, where the singularity-Source is at the tip, and all which “falls down” from this Source “spreads out” and expands from that singularity-Source. The reason that I have used the word “bifurcation”, meaning a splitting of One into two, is twofold: Firstly, this term helps us to understand the origin of “duality” in our Reality, since duality is the first mathematical state attained after a departure from Unicity. Secondly, it pertains to the “Purusha-Sukta, a hymn within the Rig Veda—the earliest book of Hinduism—detailing the death of Purusha and the creation of the world and humanity from his corpse.” Purusha or the Primordial Man is understood to be God in early Vedic religion, and he undergoes a willing self-sacrifice to transition from Oneness to manyness, resulting in the creation of the world. At the same time, however, He is the Primordial Man, and as a man, His bifurcation or partitioning must result in the various castes: “The division of the Primordial Man into the different aspects of the world, such as the material aspects like the physical Earth and sky, and the social, with the partitioning of the Primordial Man into the different classes within society, expresses the concept of Oneness becoming manyness—that, for there to be many, there needs to be a basis of a Primordial One.” | “His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Kshatriya, his thighs the Vaishya, from his feet the Sudra were born.” (These excerpts are taken from an essay called Departure written by my anonymous teacher, who is referenced in my other works.)
Caste and the bifurcation of the Primordial Man will be recurring topics in this essay, namely in the second chapter, and primarily in Part A of that chapter. The above excerpts and their analysis will also be featured again, but with an extended cultural context and additional discussion supplied.
>>Introduction Part B – Segment IV, Subsegment B: Varna & Caste or Civilizational Function & Sacred Occupation in Traditional & Anti-Traditional Society
Just an additional observation to make here is that, curiously, even “Anti-Traditional” societies have a “pyramidal” framework despite their rejection of caste as a social institution—the result of this rejection being that the pyramid, with regards to caste stratification, is hierarchically “flattened” in some sense. Think of the republic, for instance. While republics are an Anti-Traditional reaction to Traditionalist monarchies, they hold on to its general structure, anointing a singular leader at the top to be president, prime minister, or chairman, filling his executive departments and legislature with a protected class of administrators, and still exalting warriors (soldiers) and corporate merchants in terms of social value. The only problem is that the republic’s executive and other politicians are most often of Merchant caste soul, and their military leadership is usually picked from the ranks of Merchants as well rather than true Warrior-Aristocrats. Meanwhile, the “priests” of such an inverted society are Merchants and Laborers entrenched in the scientific and media apparatuses who espouse their own monopoly on “truth”, and the “warrior-aristocrats” of such a society are also Merchants. In totality, the Merchants dominate the Anti-Traditional civilizational paradigm as it currently exists.
This occupying of certain stations of society by those of the “wrong caste” not only serves to “flatten out” the societal pyramid, but is a clear demonstration of ontological impropriety, as there is a misalignment of symbols from their archetypes. In this case, the “symbols” are individual persons and the roles and tasks that they actually carry out (the class they occupy in society), while the “archetypes” are the functional stations ordained to them from Above (their spiritual caste) but which they fail to perform in an Anti-Traditional society. In other words, there is a divorce between what functions the members of society are performing versus what functions they ought to be performing. Thus, we must realize that caste is not reducible to just a “functional station” but is a “spiritual archetype” and “sacred occupation”, as one’s caste is not just a matter of social prescription, but a spiritual description—a literal preordainment of one’s soul and the duties they ought to carry out, assigned at birth from Above.
I say that this occupation is “sacred”, and that one “ought” to do that which is preordained of them, not only out of observance of ontological propriety, but in observance of Traditional declarative superstition. In the traditional Vedic text, the Bhagavad Gita, we find Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu, who is an aspect of God) declaring that he prefers a Shudra (Laborer) who does his duty (even if imperfectly) over a Warrior who neglects his own duties for the duties of another caste: “Besides, considering your duty as a warrior, you should not waver. Indeed, for a warrior, there is no better engagement than fighting for upholding of righteousness” (BG 2:31). | “It is better to do one’s own dharma even if imperfectly, than to do another’s dharma perfectly. It is better to die in one’s own dharma; the dharma of another is fraught with danger. One should perform one’s own duty even if it is devoid of merit; for doing the duty prescribed by one’s own nature, one does not incur sin” (BG 18:47-48). (These verses will come up again in the second chapter.)
Performance of a functional station is merely the symbolic praxis of the corresponding spiritual archetype and predisposition. Thus, it is important to differentiate between caste as a “temporal invocation” or “civilizational function” (the tradition of “Varna” system of the Indian subcontinent being an example) versus caste as a spiritual archetype. For ontological propriety to be achieved, such that the “Varnic symbol” and “Caste archetype” are aligned, there must be a synthesis of the two. Only spiritual Priests ought to fulfill the Priest Occupation, and so forth. Praxius has a more clear and concise manner of explaining all these points:
“It is appropriate now to lineate the mathematical worldview with that of the person, and it follows that the functions of Priest, Warrior, Merchant, and Laborer don’t exist as types in their own right, but as manifestations of a numeration. It is therefore fitting that in Europe they are noted as the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Estates, that manifest their priority in the symbol of civilizational function. … More to the point, Varna corresponds to Caste as its temporal invocation; the Castes exist as spiritual archetypes, but these archetypes correspond to temporal and civilizational functions, almost as a kind of synthesis. There is a Priest Caste (spiritual), and there is a Priest Occupation (temporal/civilizational), and it follows as such for Warrior and Merchant and Laborer. In a properly structured Traditional society, the Priest Occupation is fulfilled by those of the Priest Caste, and as such it would follow for Warrior, Merchant, and Laborer, satisfying two archetypes at once. But in an improperly structured society, the Priest Occupation still exists as an occupational type, only it is fulfilled by one who is not of the Priest Caste. In our modern context, it would be appropriate to say that the scientific/ideological media apparatus possesses the Priestly Occupation as the interpreters of symbology, meaning that the First Estate function is fulfilled by those of a Fourth Estate spirit. The political/business class possesses the Warrior Occupation, meaning that the Second Estate function is fulfilled by those of a Third Estate spirit. For the other two castes, the example is moot, because the superior two castes are fewer in number than the inferior two, but this is the difference. The functions of the castes still exist and are fulfilled, just not properly. It’s not that they stop existing altogether.”
Introduction, Part C: The Proper Praxis of Ritual, & Ritual as a Communication between the Microcosm & Macrocosm
Ritual, in the broadest since, can be considered as encompassing of all action, practice, or praxis, such that all actions are considered rituals. This is in recognition that all actions possess to them a metaphysical or principial significance. That is to say, every ritual is a symbol, and such symbolic rituals are committed with a principle in mind, such that they symbolize that principle. After all, all actions—all phenomena—are manifestations of metaphysical principles. This is in the same way that we might say that every “relative reality” is a symbol of the metaphysical archetypes which constitute “principial reality”. However, what I have introduced here is only the first half of the picture, as here we are only recognizing the significance of ritual as it comes from the “top-down”—as it is bestowed upon the “microcosm” or Symbolic Domain by the “macrocosm” or Principial Domain. The other half of the picture comes in recognizing how microcosmic rituals confer something back upon the macrocosm: By fulfilling their respective archetypes back up the First Archetype, rituals which are of a proper praxis fulfill the whole of God’s Design. Conversely, if they fail to properly fulfill their archetypes, then a “dysphoria” between symbols and archetypes is at hand, which results in a failure to signify to the macrocosm that God’s Design has been fulfilled. One might think of this as like a computer program, in which a communication is sent from a high-level field to a low-level field, and the low-level field is then tasked with affirming that communication in the form of ritual. If the ritual is completed or “fulfilled” properly, then the signal is sent back up to the high-level field to confirm as such. Otherwise, in the case that the ritual is not properly completed, the high-level field will reject the signal and send it back down for a second attempt.
(For those unfamiliar with the terms “microcosm” and “macrocosm”: The microcosm is, most simply, a “part” or “degree” of the world which is inferior to the whole, wherein the whole is the macrocosm. The microcosm, in the contexts in which it is used in esoterism, typically (as in my usage here) refers to the “relative realities” or the Symbolic Domain, as implied above. Applied here in the context of “ritual”, it more precisely refers to the domain of humanely affairs. By contrast, the “macrocosm” refers to “principial realities” or the Principial Domain—the whole of Reality or “that which is Above”.)
What I am thus speaking to here is the idea that there is a two-way “communication” between the microcosm and macrocosm. In fact, Praxius defines ritual as “the vertical communication of principles from lower to higher planes”, and goes on to explain, more articulately and succinctly than myself, that “…by this definition, regardless of whether or not this communication is ontologically proper, we can say that every action is a ritual just as every reality is a symbol.” He further explains in our dialogues:
“To answer your question though, you might recall my essay on esotericism and symbolism, and the ultimate conclusion that: physical reality is the symbol, composite principles are the substance, the more conditioned degrees of reality are the domain, and the interaction between metaphysical principles is the priority. Now, also, we might define ‘ritual’ as the vertical communication of principles from lower to higher planes, and by this definition, regardless of whether or not this communication is ontologically proper, we can say that ‘every’ action is a ritual just as every reality is a symbol. When one performs an action, whatever it be, it has certain metaphysical implications, and it sends a communication of information ‘upwards’, and this communication is one of two things: either, it is the affirmation to a given principle that the proper information has been transferred, and the criteria that fulfills the design of reality has, in that instance, been satisfied, or, it is the negation or absence of proper information, which would signify that the correct action has been left unperformed, and the request is then sent ‘downwards’ again. In this regard, the action that sends the proper information upwards is a proper ritual, and any action that negates proper information is an improper ritual. Why are we calling them rituals then and not just actions? Because action signifies the particular communication between two symbols on the horizontal plane, and ritual signifies the communication between principles on the vertical plane.”
To approach this idea of metaphysical communication from a more rigorous angle, we might look at the relationship between the microcosm and macrocosm as such: On the one hand, the macrocosm “communications” to the microcosm by seeking the “actualization” of principles into conditioned manifestations, essence into substance, or archetypes into symbols. On the other hand, the microcosm fulfills this Design by responding accordingly, ensuring that symbols properly emulate their archetypes. Though, the microcosm may fail to achieve this desired propriety, in which case the macrocosm’s request must be repeated.
The point here is that while ritual may appear as purely a materialistic and “exoteric” practice on the surface, this is only the symbolic side. The ritual, when performed properly and mindfully, is being performed not for the superficial sake of its own aesthetic quality or cultural symbology (i.e.., not for purely material ends) but to fulfill a greater esoteric purpose, which again, when abstracted back to the First Archetype, fulfills the ontological propriety of God’s Design. Thus, in rituals or actions abiding in a way which fulfills the “intent” or desired ends of this two-way communication, such that propriety is achieved and dysphoria is averted; and by participating in the alignment of all symbols with their respective archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype; proper rituals achieve “ontologically proper praxis” or a directive which is or in “alignment with the default mode of Being”.
It thus follows that the phrase “alignment with the default mode of Being” is a statement of ontological propriety, and when contextualized by practice or ritual, again, refers to an activity of proper praxis or proper ritual. Again, it is the practice of an exoteric and symbolic tradition for an esoteric and principial purpose. It is the practical and humanely alignment of symbols with their archetypes such that the archetypes might confer something back upon their symbols and those handling such ritualistic symbols. This can be seen in how “alignment” affects the ritual practitioner: The alignment becomes “…the passive modality or status that is brought upon the individual through the active modality of proper praxis,” as Praxius puts it. That is to say, the merit afforded by the proper praxis of ritual is reciprocal: When one is actively doing proper praxis, then they will find that their mode of existence is satisfactory. When one lives traditionally, and according to the principles of true Tradition, practicing tradition mindfully and through the vehicle of ritual, then they find themself generally content, prosperous, and unperturbed by life. In this respect, they have been “blessed”. That is, because proper communication with the higher degrees of Reality has been successfully executed through ritual, the “Wheel of Karma” has come back around, delivering this goodness back to the individual in reciprocal fashion. However, if the ritual is improper and Tradition is not respected, then negative action will return negative consequences. It is Dharma for Dharma, Karma for Karma, good fortune for wholesome actions, disaster for sinful reactions. “You reap what you sow,” as the old adage goes. As I have said in my dialogues with Praxius: “To be morally good, to be traditional, and to be of orthopraxis, we must in our actions demonstrate a faithful symbology of the higher principles and archetypes characteristic of Reality’s preordination. The proper praxis of symbols and archetypes, leading all the way back to the First Archetype, and a stalwart resistance to any skewing of the relative degrees, is critical.”
When examining traditions then, it is imperative not to practice tradition for the sake of tradition, but to understand whence Tradition comes, to ask, “What are the principles behind these symbolic rituals?” For the Aristocrat who is the shepherd and gatekeep of his culture—for the Warrior who fights to preserve, for the Priest who is the curator of icons—this is a question always worth examination, and it is moreover their responsibility to know its answers. But for the Laborer and the Merchant, this is not a question which they are typically capable of asking or truly understanding. The Fascist clings to the specific symbols and rituals of former times and of predecessor cultures, because he is propelling an ideology advertised to Laborers and directed by Merchants. Though Fascist thinkers may find among their ranks brilliant men and esotericists, their esotericists are often literalists who reconstruct bizarre prehistories and promulgate unwholesome and cryptic spiritualities. The Fascists are right to admire the aesthetic glory of the Aristocratic state which has long since passed, yet they lack epistemic access to what made that state glorious and Aristocratic to begin with. (Though, this speaks not so much on Fascism as it does the presently decayed state of human consciousness.) They seek to resurrect the cadaver of imperial Rome, but rarely has a Fascist paused to ask himself questions such as these: “What made the rituals of Rome important? For what reasons were they performed? What is their significance, both symbolic and principial?”, nevertheless: “Where these rituals necessarily ‘Traditional’ just because a former society practiced them, or is it possible that they might have been motivated by bad ideals and improper praxis, principially speaking?” It is, as Evola asks in the Foreword of Revolt Against the Modern World, “How low has mankind gone if it is ready and willing to apotheosize a cadaverous wisdom?” Is our world so decayed, so degenerate, that we can only turn back to former ages in search of wisdom, because this wisdom has gone extinct in the present age and few men are capable of reseeding it?
So let us not make the mistake of practicing traditions for the sake of tradition or glorifying symbols for the sake of symbology. We must be principled; we must contemplate whence the symbols come. History is merely the play of the microcosm in the macrocosm, and those who fail to look out from the microscope will surely miss the grander picture. The Fascist who echoes Nietzsche declares, “Will-to-Power!”, and his Liberal opponent criticizes this, calling it “Action for the sake of action!” And while the Liberal is right to criticize action which is not performed purposefully and mindfully, the Liberals expose their own self-hatred and lethargy in expressing disdain for those who still yet have enough spirit to manifest their Wills. So let us then be wiser than either and declare our own mantra: “Let us be principled, mindful, and spirited, so that we may always manifest our Wills for fulfillment in the goodness—the orthopraxis—of God’s Glory!”
Introduction, Part D: Monism vs Relativistic Atomism & The Duality of Civilizational Semantics
>Introduction Part D - Segment I: The Hourglass Analogy
In Praxius’ essay, The Hourglass Analogy, he references the metaphysical framework presented in Part B of my Introduction (and which is also discussed in Finding God in the Void and in The Verticality of God’s Plan) but in a much more abstracted fashion which I had simplified in Part B and broken down for those uninitiated. Here, I will once again give you the privilege of breaking down Praxius’ high-brow espousing, as it is my duty to make these topics more accessible to those who have come to learn.
The view we are expressing in Part B of my Introduction (and in the three essays mentioned above) is spiritual monism. For your benefit, I will here restate that spiritual monism holds that Ultimate Reality is God, that all of Reality is contained within God (the Monad), and thus that Essence or Spirit is the basis for Substance or Existence (such that the latter is reducible to the former). Essence or Spirit is that overflowing, formless, omnipotent Context out of which all materiality is conditioned and manifests. Total Unicity is the unqualified Absolute out of which Total Universality is afforded its being, and from there individual principles are continuously isolated and removed from Total Universality, descending down the “principial pyramid”, becoming less universal in their scope and more relative, until finally they are so relative and contingent that they become fully realized and materialized as condition manifestations residing in the domain of substance or existence. This simple notion, that “Essence is a priori to Existence”, is the foundation of a Traditional civilization’s semantics. (Here, “Existence” is taken to be synonymous with “Substance”, though in other usages it may be synonymous with “Essence”, the latter being the case in the theology of Thomas Aquinas.) Praxius explains:
“According to this understanding, the supreme Total Unicity is Universal and Absolute; it is the a priori Total Universality by which all individuated principles and beings are provided their existence, and into which these principles and beings are incorporated in a particular way. Therefore, each individuation should be understood as a particular aspect of this Total Universality, necessitating a particular way in which it must become manifest in its existential mode. In other words, Total Universality exists first, and, in proper sequence, aspects of this Universality are isolated and subsequently removed from it, and from this process of removal results individual principles and beings, from which are removed even more relative and less universal principles and beings. The more universal and fundamental principle is, therefore, incorporative of the less universal and fundamental principle, including all of its properties, and thus it determines the way in which the lesser principle must be. In other words, the essence of a thing is produced from an ontologically superior position to that position in which the thing itself becomes manifest or is provided existence; Essence is a priori to Existence.”
While that presented above is the basis for “Traditional semantics”, the inverse, which suggests that Substance or Existence precedes Essence, is then the foundation of “Anti-Traditional semantics”. The philosophies borne of such a notion are varied, and include materialism, physicalism; and in the context of consciousness, they include eliminativism and panpsychism (all of which I rebuke in the third chapter of my essay, Finding God in the Void). All of these are radically opposed to spiritual monism.
(Specifically, there are two strands of spiritual monism: Monadic cosmoconsciousness (also called “idealist monism”) and neutral monism. The former holds that the Monad is pure unconditioned Awareness, and the result is a conclusion that Divine Awareness is the default axiom of existence, that Consciousness is the content and function of all matter, and that materiality is nothing more than condensed consciousness—a prescriptive context for Awareness. Hence is why my anonymous teacher, who subscribes to this view, asserts that Matter is particular of Spirit and not vice versa. By contrast, neutral monism holds that both Mind and Matter are subject to an even prior substrate which is so unqualified that even us being aware is itself an attempt to qualify and thus disfigure the Absolute, such that even beginning with Awareness as an assumption by the very act of us being aware does not grant us epistemic access to the acataleptic Absolute, which might only be called the “Subsistent Act”. I align with monadic cosmoconsciousness, Praxius with neutral monism. Both are arguably valid perspectives, but that is derailing from the point.)
The philosophical blunder of Anti-Traditional semantics is that it holds that the properties of matter and things, which we might call principles or universals or essences or qualities, are but “illusions” of matter which do not emanate from or appeal to a higher modality. Thus, everything is isolated, atomized, relativistic, and particularized—each conditioned manifestation or instantiation entirely unique and without relation to a holistic Universality or Unicity. That is, the Anti-Traditionalists reject an underlying unicity to all things! “They are a production of a rejection of holism...” Having denied that there is a notion of “Essence” or “Spirit” which all existing things are particularized of, and having denied that there is a vertical axis by which all things are aligned—a Metaphysical Law which preordains All Things—it leaves no room to substantiate Existence itself: What is existence contingent upon, or where does it come from? They have no answer! Their semantics have no ultimate basis upon which to substantiate the phenomenal world. Praxius thus supplies a critique of the Anti-Traditional semantics:
“On the other hand, when Existence is understood to precede Essence, then Essence does not exist but as a purely psychological notion produced by the human necessity to categorize subjects. According to this understanding of Reality, things exist to which we provide a purpose or function, and their existence outside of that is rather coincidental or accidental. There is no Total Universality, but rather different physical bodies that happen to exist at the same time as one another. Therefore, there is no proper way of being, according to these terms. Leaving aside the self-contradicting nature of the non-existence of a source of existence, everything in this consideration is relegated to subjectivity, and no true conception of objective propriety even exists. Therefore, under this paradigm, there is not simply a negative affirmation to the question of ontological propriety, but a total negation of a valid objective standpoint from which to observe such a propriety.”
Following a monadic world view, is the conclusion that Reality is self-contained, such that All Things are within God, beholden to a “specific internal operation” or “formula” which we call Metaphysical Law or the preordination of “God’s Design”. This is because the Monad is boundless, such that there is nothing greater that it can reference itself against, and nothing superior which it can “emerge” out into. As such, the Monad is self-subsistent and can only self-reference and self-reflect, producing the illusion of multiplicity within, like a hall of mirrors. In this way, All Things are preordained within the framework of Reality, and are made to align with an infinite series of principles or archetypes which leads all the way back up to the First Archetype. It is the abiding in and conformity to such a preordination that is ontological propriety or the ontologically proper praxis of All Things—of all symbols and archetypes. The Anti-Traditional world view, by contrast, is that of a “relativistic atomism”, seeing all things as particulars, as stated above. The tragedy of such a worldview is that it cannot speak to a cosmic objective morality, and so all actions are amoral and equally valid. How folly! Without any sense of metaphysically preordained Order—without an original Design and a proper praxis to follow, anything goes! It is chaos! Praxius explains:
“The superior type of universalism is what we call Holistic Monism, a consideration of Reality in its entirety as a singular unit that possesses a specific internal operation and corresponding formula to which all things must adhere. This is that same worldview by which all things are understood to be the result of a particular part of the Total Unicity of all things, metaphysically preordained to partake of existence according to a preestablished formula, and it is therefore the type of universalism from which Essence is determined to sequentially precede Existence. It is a consideration of All Things as they exist as Total Universality, in an a priori and essential state, prior to their existential state. Conversely, the subordinated type of universalism, which we may call Relativistic Atomism, is entirely focused on temporal Reality, and it relegates all metaphysics to the level of a purely notional or even merely mental significance. This is the type of universalism according to which all things partake of the same ‘ontological level’ or ‘plane of existence’, independent from any unicity, as this type is lacking the conception of any true Total Unicity to begin with. According to this type, as has been said, there is no truly proper way of being, and therefore all things are considered to be proper from their own particular point of view, equally valid, in an ontological sense, in a strife for hegemony among everything else; the quiddity of a thing does not manifest from an archetype, but instead represents the agency of a thing as a being that is independent of any ontological hierarchy of necessity or contingency, rendering any relationships it has with other things as accidental.
However, this conception of Relativistic Atomism, properly speaking, exists within the conception of Holistic Monism, at the existential, temporal, and quantitative degree; that is, the level at which existence is no longer eternal or archetypal, but cyclical and manifest. As long as the civilizational reference points are in that which is most fundamental, universal, and absolute, and as long as Reality itself is understood according to the conception of Holistic Monism, as a singular unit in which these various relativistic conceptions have a proper place, such conceptions pose no issue. The issue arises when those relativistic conceptions themselves become the key reference points themselves.”
Following what I had mentioned in part A of the Introduction, the “Zeroth Position”, or “Tradition”, does not need to prostrate itself in opposition to another ideology in order to define, substantiate, and legitimize itself. Like the Monad it reveres, it is self-subsistent. It is the “default mode of Being”—that which has always been, and that which concedes itself to ontologically proper praxis, such that it is the proper praxis of aligning all symbols with their archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype. It is an observance and respect for Metaphysical Law and the preordination of All Things. Or as Praxius puts it, “Traditional semantics are the product of the type of universalism we have called Holistic Monism. They revolve around the notion of a ‘proper way of being’, which is understood as the activity necessary for a being to align correctly with its ontologically superior archetype.” In contrast, “Anti-Traditional semantics are characterized by a relative quality: the rejection and repudiation of Traditional semantics. They are a product of a rejection of holism, and the adoption of the conception of Relativistic Atomism as the sole point of reference.” That is, Anti-Traditional positions, including the “three positions” (though Fascism retains traditional elements, it only does so symbolically and not principially, as is noted throughout this essay), are part of a “New Order”, the modern world, which arose as a response to the “Old Order”, the ancient world. Anti-Traditional semantics are a degeneration of Traditional semantics, and when taken to their maxim through the simple inversion of the relationship between Essence and Substance, Anti-Traditional semantics become precisely that: an inversion. And moreover, in rejecting this simple notion of Essence preceding Substance, they come to reject everything else which flows from a monadic and right view, relegating all to the domains of Man’s law, social constructs, accidents, and psychological happenstance:
“Anti-Traditional semantics are characterized by a relative quality: the rejection and repudiation of Traditional semantics. They are a product of a rejection of holism, and the adoption of the conception of Relativistic Atomism as the sole point of reference. The most important thing about Anti-Tradition is that it does not stand on its own; it lacks any substantial understanding of Reality, and is based in empirical observation and human reason alone, not only disregarding metaphysics entirely, but actively opposing them in conception. Thus, according to these semantics, there is no Absolute quality, and as an extension, there is no archetype necessitating fulfillment. The source of legitimacy cannot be identified, because it is completely relative, everything there-within is a psychological or social construct.”
So, what is the solution to all this? Praxius holds that we can treat civilizations like the sand within an hourglass, with the two bulbs of the hourglass representing the two modes of semantics. When one sets the hourglass (the semantics), the ordinations of its corresponding civilization will follow, gradually morphing over time to match the true essence of these semantics. We must therefore begin by making monism—the core of Traditional semantics—the principial foundation for our present civilization’s semantics once again, reasserting an objective morality and compelling the citizenry to submit to a classically understood definition of Good and Evil:
“For most of human civilization, the hourglass was set upon the Traditional side. The sand fell towards it, and civilization remained the embodiment of Traditional semantics. At some point, whether it be the 8th Century BC, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, the hourglass was flipped, and Anti-Tradition became the base of the hourglass. In due fashion, the sand fell from the Traditional half of the hourglass to the Anti-Traditional one, as society gradually transformed into the embodiment of its new orientation.
…
Our goal must therefore be to flip the hourglass, not to move the sand. We must act upon different semantics, redefine ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ as they stand to us, not attempt to embody them as they stand to our opponents. As long as we attempt to reason with or pander to those with whom we fundamentally disagree, we may as well not be doing anything. This is the first and most necessary step to establishing a Traditional order on a civilizational scale.”
This is since:
“The general trajectory of a given civilization can be determined at its inception by the semantics upon which it was founded; these are the formative and defining principles that lie at the heart of a civilization, and determine its fundamental reference points and source of legitimacy. The semantics of a given civilization are the principles by which that civilization defines itself, and whereby it acquires the distinct combination of morals and ethics that determine its identity. They are those values upon which a civilization places an unyielding emphasis as being central to its character, regardless of how well it adheres to them in any substantial form; they are found and can be identified in the social maxims and in the common axiomatic proclamations that a civilization deems integral to its righteousness, the transgression of which is seen by its citizens and moral authorities as a betrayal of Truth itself, regardless of the true validity of this viewpoint. Regardless of whether or not they are commonly upheld in routine activity, these semantics are what legitimize all civilizational activity, and determine the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ from the point of view of a particular civilization.”
And therefore:
“Eventually the civilization directly reflects its semantics, and all of the contradictions in its moral or ethical standards are remedied accordingly. In other words, the semantics are the general philosophic principles that underpin the worldview of a particular civilization, established at the inception of that civilization, and supersede any preexisting standard, regardless of whether or not they are truly proper in any ontological sense.”
Hopefully Praxius can forgive me for virtually plagiarizing half his essay here. All credit for these ideas is to him, and I advise you to read his essay.
>Introduction Part D - Segment II: Semantics in Terms of Ordered Functions
Given that, as was well established in above segment, the contrast between Traditional and Anti-Traditional semantics is signicated upon the ordering of Essence of Substance, another way in which we might characterize the relationship is to say that Traditional semantics bestow primacy upon the Principial Domain, while Anti-Traditional semantics bestow primacy upon the Symbolic Domain. As a practical example, we might consider institutions of higher education, such as colleges and universities. Their “inspired idea” or “ideal original intent”, so to speak, is to educate. Yet, as Stafford Beer’s heuristic tells, “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Education is the principle of educational institutions and thus can be counted as its “primary” function or purpose. The “secondary” purpose in establishing such an institution would be that which follows from this prerogative and enables or abets it: the generation of profit. If this secondary purpose overtakes the primary purpose, such a shift is accompanied by a transition in internal semantics—a transition which reprioritizes symbols over principles. This is such that we could say of a degenerate or Anti-Traditional university which is solely driven by profit, that the symbolic and demonstrable purpose of said university is firstly to profit—and perhaps secondly to curtail any activities which could invite liability or stir controversy (the latter so as to not hinder the former motive)—, while the original and principial motivation to educate “takes a back seat”, so to speak.
One could just as easily critique Anti-Traditional government in this regard, examining how the principial purpose of administrating has been substituted by the symbolic profit-seeking endeavors of the occupying Merchant caste who benefit from their positions in government. One could also extend into the personal moral sphere, examining how those who indulge in what we colloquially refer to as the “seven deadly sins” have reprioritized secondary and symbolic motivations over primary and principial ones: Pleasure over reproduction and marital love in Lust, craving and appetite over sustenance in Gluttony, frugality or prodigality over financial stability in Greed, and so forth. All such activities have “lost sight” of their original preordaining principles. All such have put the symbol over the principle—Substance over Essence—and thus have “turned over” the semantic hourglass.
>Introduction Part D - Segment III: The Axial Age Upheaval
Since Time will be a later theme of this essay, namely in Part B of the second chapter, it is worth asking when the flipping of the civilizational hourglass began. According to Evola, it occurred between the 6th and 8th centuries BC, in which we see a universal “upheaval” of Axial age civilizations, with the rise of a feminine, lunar, or Dionysian spirituality with a human-centered focus and a newfound emphasis on symbolism and exoteric ritual, which replaced the old order of masculine, solar, or Apollonian spirituality and its emphasis on the subordination of Man and his principial or esoteric participation in the Highest Reality. Evola explains in Revolt: “In an antitraditional sense, the first forces of decadence began to be tangibly manifested between the eighth and the sixth centuries B.C., as can be concluded from the sporadic and characteristic alterations in the forms of the social and spiritual life of many peoples that occurred during this time” (pg. xxxi). In his book, we find three prominent examples of this shift, for which I will provide the excerpts:
Concerning the Israelite civilization and its spiritual ethos:
“For Judaism, as in the case of other civilizations, the time frame between the seventh and the sixth century B.C. was characterized by upheaval. Once the military fortunes of Israel declined, defeat came to be understood as a punishment for ‘sins’ committed, and thus an expectation developed that after a dutiful expiation Jehovah would once again assist his people and restore their power. This theme was dealt with in Jeremiah and in Isaiah. But since this did not happen, the prophetic expectations degenerated into an apocalyptic, messianic myth and in the fantastic eschatological vision of a Savior who will redeem Israel; this marked the beginning of a process of disintegration. What derived from the traditional component eventually turned into a ritualistic formalism and thus became increasingly abstract and separated from real life” (pg. 242).
Concerning the Greeks:
“Post-Homeric Greece shows many signs of the reemergence and rebellion of the original subjugated strata against the properly Hellenic element. Chthonic themes typical of an older civilization reappeared, because of contacts with neighboring civilizations, which contributed to their revival. The peak of the crisis occurred between the seventh and the sixth century B.C. During this time, Dionysian spirituality became prevalent—a very significant phenomenon, considering that the feminine element prepared its way. I have already discussed the universal meaning of this phenomenon; therefore, in this context I will only point out that this meaning was preserved even in the passage from the wild Thracian forms to the Hellenized Orphic Dionysus, who was still regarded as an underground god and as a being associated with the chthonic Gaea and Zeus. Moreover, while in the frenzies and in the ecstasies of Thracian Dionysism the real experience of transcendence could occur in a flash, in Orphism we witness the slow but gradual predominance of a pathos similar to that shared by the ‘all-too-human’ religions based on redemption” (pg. 257).
This critique of “all-too-human” religiosity—a human-centered spirituality, is particularly telling of the decline from a focus centered on the unseen and macrocosmic esoteric world of Spirit, to the microcosmic and exoteric Symbolic Domain where humanity exists. Here, humanity has forgotten that our utility—that our sole ontological value— is to be in service to that which precedes us: to that Supreme Spirit or Cosmic Oversoul (Paramatma) which ensouls us. (This idea will be explored more in Part E or this essay’s first official chapter.) Such a folly can also be witnessed even earlier in Ancient Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty, with what Evola characterizes as the “democratization of the notion of immortality”, along with the clear usurpation of the masculine solar element by the feminine lunar one:
“The crisis that was initially overcome by the ancient Egyptians, however, must have reemerged later on with disaggregating results. One of the indications of this crisis is the democratization of the notion of immortality, which can be observed as early as the end of the Ancient Empire (Sixth Dynasty); another sign of this crisis is the alteration in the character of spiritual centrality and in the ‘immanent transcendence’ of the pharaoh, who tends to become a mere representative of the deity. In later times we can witness in Egypt, in addition to the presence of the solar theme, the emergence of the chthonic, lunar theme, which was connected with the figure of Isis, the ‘Mother of all things,’ or the ‘Lady of the elements, who was born at the beginning of time.’ In this regard, the legend in which Isis, who is conceived as an enchantress, wants to become herself ‘the Ruler of the world and a deity similar to the Sun (Ra) both in heaven and on earth,’ is highly significant. For this purpose, Isis ambushed Ra as he sat on the ‘throne of the two horizons’; she caused a poisonous snake to bite him and thus the god allowed his ‘name’ to pass on to her” (pg. 237).
Chapter 1: Views and the True Right & True Left
Chapter 1, Part A: Modern Discourse
>Ch.1 Part A - Segment I: On Modern Ideologies
In modern political discourse, views are adopted superficially, symbolically, and with respect to an arbitrary reference point. Such an arbitrary reference point may be as semi-mindful as one vested in a set of principles foundational to their country, or the ideals promulgated by some political philosopher from the prior century. Others may be as shallowly rooted as a reaction to a recent development or a casual sway in the general attitudes of one’s peers. The latter will most surely sway with the times, like a fish born at sea and lost in a tide: It has never seen the shore where the waters end, nor will it ever. The former may be less resistant to this relativism, yet the anchor at the bottom of their ship’s chain is hollow, yet also pristine—for it has never grazed the sandy bottom of the ocean which it was sent to plant itself in, yet the sailors are unaware of this.
Encounter a self-identified “conservative”, “progressive”, or any other subscriber to a modern ideology, and you will find that they have rarely come to embrace such an ideology holistically (it is a rare miracle if they do), for this they deride as “toeing the party line”, and such ideological adherence to them is seen as a “blind dogmatic loyalty” of sorts. Ironically, you will find that they denigrate politicians who fail to stick by their “principles”, yet I am astonished at the notion that these critics believe themselves to have immutable principles.
The irony here is that in forgoing “holistic ideology”, they have “split the hairs” on how relativistic they desire the political landscape to be. That is, rather than participating in a landscape in which there are a multitude of ideologies treated as equally valid (which is already a very relativist starting point), they would rather us go so far as to abandon any semblance of ideological coherence and thus reduce each of ourselves to possessing a mere “list” of disconcerted views which we can exchange on a whim. This is a clear demonstration of a “Substance precedes Essence” attitude, as these disconnected ideas are held as particulars, and only later is a unifying ideology which acts as the sum of these parts shoehorned in. In this way, the principial foundation (the ideology) is dependent upon a set of particulars (the individual views) in eliminativist fashion. (I say “eliminativist” in that the ideology only exists transiently as a shoehorn and is thus “eliminative” or will cease to be know upon the dissolution of its associated views or particulars.) Really though, what we should desire is the application of an “Essence precedes Substance” attitude. That is, we ought to begin first with a philosophical foundation which serves as a grounding point and as an underlying principial unicity, out of which ideals flow or out of which ideas are signicated upon. But alas, it has become increasingly common to find those who have “forgone” any sense of an essential foundation or even conventional politics, identifying as supposed “independents”. And how telling is that name, that they would seek to be independent of essential principles?
While it is understandable to desire freedom from the dogma of established ideology, the identification (or better, misidentification) of one as an “independent” is made in naïve error, as this titular “independence” becomes an ideology in itself, wherein the person adopting this label is their own quasi-“ideologue” or “source”, so to speak. That is, the underlying unicity of their ideas becomes their own self. (And could you ever think of a more relativistic environment for discourse than one in which all men are expected to be their own ideological authorities, without any greater basis? To be an independent is to advocate for the political equivalent of particularism.) But if we trace the origin of their ideas even a step further, we quickly collapse the curtain and reveal the façade: Nothing about their opinions is authentically “independent”; their ideas all derive from a very local cosmopolitan source: the context of other ideologies prevalent in their time and specific to their region’s political culture, such that we find that the so-called independent’s ideals do often not escape the general sphere in which we could expect to “map” all other ideals common to their nation’s discourse. That is, you would be incredibly unlikely to find an “independent” in the United States whose ideals do not immediately stem from popular political parties and affiliations such as “Republican”, “Democrat”, or “Libertarian”. In reality, “independents” have only obtained the illusion of freedom from ideological dogma, for the true enlightenment on the issue is this: To be free of dogma and ideology, one must take the Buddhists’ advice on the matter, whereby we are cautioned against having any “views” in the first place.
Nonetheless, all modern political affiliates seem to be entirely nescient as to the ultimate origin of their ideas. They may claim to have certain “principles”, but ask any of them what the shared foundation or unifying essence—the unicity—of all their beliefs is, and you will rarely find them able to supply a meaningful answer, for their ideas are merely a collection of weightless symbols! Or ask them more plainly “where” it is that their ideas hail from, and if you are lucky, you may receive a response pointing back only marginally to some prior ideas—yet should you then ask them where those ideas come from, the very question might be confusing to them.
(Perhaps though, a rather hilarious outcome of this—if we might break and have a laugh—is that in the absence of any principial foundation, the modern political affiliate might take to assuming a slurry of views whose essences or derivations contradict one another, resulting in a “philosophical blender” of sorts, where one acquires positions hailing from opposing ideologies without demonstrating any awareness over the resulting dissonance. Here, we might be tempted to grasp at the low hanging fruit of the American “centrist”, lauding at how the centrist tosses a mismatch of fruits from different trees into his philosophical blender to brew a most sinister gruel, but the mainstream ideological alignments of today are not so different in this regard: Conservatism blends together its own contradicting assortment of traditional spices with post-Enlightenment liberal flavors, while progressivism waits for the liberal fruits to most thoroughly spoil and rot before tossing them in.)
Thus invokes the concept of the “reference point”, mentioned at the beginning of this segment. A socialist will point to some “red” revolutionary figure and then onto Karl Marx, an American libertarian or “classical liberal” perhaps to John Locke and then onto perhaps Thomas Paine, a Fascist to his choice of a 20th century European dictator and then perhaps onto Frederick Nietzsche or Julius Evola (though any Fascist worth his wits will vehemently disagree with both these men, as Fascism has in reality perverted their ideals), but how many among their numbers can go further? In the rare instance that we have encountered an investigatory spirit, they might point us back as far as the French Revolution, and then perhaps an additional step onto the humanism of the European Enlightenment. While we can certainly go further (no idea is born out of thin air, after all), Enlightenment-era humanism seems to at least be the last ideological “common ancestor” of all modern political ideologies.
But can we trust that which is rooted ultimately even in a few recent centuries’ memory, when compared to the bottomless well of human history? Can we trust ideologies which are derived from an immediate referential predecessor as opposed to ideals which are properly deduced from a perennial and quintessential Truth? The landscape has, for quite some time (to speak vaguely, so as to not incite controversy on precisely when this trend began), appeared as such: Each new thinker or generation salvages together what they, in their subjective view, find to be the most desirable components of the former ideology, reimagines them in his own image, adapts them to a new derivative framework, and then touts that he has solved the problems of the former condition. How arrogant and deluded! These men would rather credit themselves as the saviors of their own time—a time which they suppose without their genius would erode into decadence or tyranny or ignorance—yet they are banefully unaware that they themselves are both symptoms and agents of a greater decay which they cannot step outside of and see, lost like a naïve fish which does not know unto where the river’s current carries it, nor how far down the stream it has already drifted! If only these men would plant their feet in the eternalism of Tradition instead of in the temporal ideas of their age—temporal ideas which are rooted not in “that which has always been and which is constant and immutable”, but instead which are rooted in that which is only contextualized by the fleeting and provisional conditions of their own time.
>Ch.1 Part A - Segment II: “If only”
Ask yourself, how often have you heard the likes of such?: “If only we could go back to the 1950s,” cries the “conservative”. Or, “If only we could go back to 1776,” cries the American libertarian. “If only we could go back to the Fascist regimes of Europe,” cries the modern neo-fascist. “If only we could go back to the feudal monarchies of medieval Europe,” cries the neo-reactionary. “If only we could return to imperial Rome,” cried the actual Fascists of the 20th century, and cried every preceding European monarch who pretended to the glory of Cesar. “If only…” is the cry of men who live for the age, who can only speak to what is “good” by the disintegrating monuments of long-dormant empires and the memories of their tarnished relics—or more often now, by the state of their nation as it was merely some fifty, twenty, or even ten years ago, when it was only marginally less rotten. “If only…” is the cry of men who are like animals caught up in the casualty of the moment, who simultaneously are engulfed by historicity and who live unhistorically like the beasts of Nietzsche’s On the Use and Abuse of History.
How often have you heard from a conservative infuriated with transgenderism say, “If only we could just repeal gay marriage!”, as if that is the point from which this degeneration began. He is unable to see that he is a fish caught up in current barreling downstream, and that that which he wishes to repeal is nowhere near the source of the river’s mouth. His predecessors might have forewarned that the legalization of gay marriage would have followed from the legalization of interracial marriage and of such quasi-tolerant policies as “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. And their predecessors might have foreseen the latter policies to follow likewise such policies as racial integration and the legalization of abortion and divorce. And older opponents of these might have traced them back to racial equality and women’s suffrage, then onto the abolition of slavery and the notion of “inalienable rights” that America was founded on, and so on and so forth. It is, as the Buddhists describe it, a series of dependent originations: “If this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist.” It is never one thing which arises without the other; every idea is contingent upon another which logically precedes and contains it. Without the doctrine of “inalienable rights”, what context would have been present to give rise to everything from the abolition of slavery to the establishment of gay rights? It is impossible to dam up the downward flowing stream and order the fish to “Stop following gravity!” The fish does not listen but keeps descending with the current, and the weight of the water always collapses the dam. You cannot decide that “The current extent of this policy is enough; no more should come”, for what slope so slippery can a rider pause himself midway through? “Stop following gravity!”, as if causality is a choice. Trace your chain back to its beginning, and maybe you will know how it comes from the anchor!
“The reason efforts to conserve a traditional viewpoint fail in the modern age is due much to the fact that the orientation of these ‘conservatives’ is the same as the times in which they live, they hold and value the same semantics and try somehow to convince people to operate their way within them. Conservatism, in the American sense especially, does not want to flip the hourglass back to the Traditional side, but instead to put the sand back in the top half and attempt to hold it there. Liberty, individualism, human rights, equality, these are still the primary values of most ‘conservatives’, not religiosity, noble aristocracy, authority, conformity, and most importantly, archetype and the total submission thereto, in both a biological and spiritual sense. While these semantics are still in use, conservative efforts will always be fighting on the back foot, virtue signaling the same way as its opponent, and failing at it, because they are attempting to defy their source of legitimacy while still retaining it, using the same terms and arguments.” – The Hourglass Analogy
>Ch.1 Part A - Segment III: Quintessential Ideology?
Quintessence: While there is certainly no shortage of those appealing a proprio to other thinkers, movements, or shallowly rooted principles, some when asked what the principial basis for their ideals is, will only supply some contrite and vague appeal to the namesake of their held ideology itself. The modern conservative, for instance, if asked what the commonality underlying all his individual positions is, might answer “conservative principles”, and likewise the progressive might answer “progressive ideals”, yet neither can define what precisely makes these principles or ideals this or that. What defines conservatism? What does it truly mean to be conservative? What defines progressivism? They do not know. They fail to trace the origin of their symbolic positions any further than the notion of an archetypal/quintessential conservatism or an archetypal/quintessential progressivism, perhaps in the same way that most people have never contemplated what conditions a tree beyond the notion of an archetypal or quintessential tree.
This is but a common example of how modern political discourse is largely of a “symbolic nature” as opposed to a more principial one, such that even the self-described “traditionalists” of the right-wing today, ranging from conservatives to Fascists, appeal merely to provisional traditions or the idea of tradition rather than to the foundational notion of a universal, timeless, and essential Tradition with a capital T. They are concerned not with the principles of Tradition, but merely with the aesthetics of cultural customs and ritual folkways practiced at one time by one people or at a different time by another people. They have no regard for that which motivates this diversity of traditions in the first place, nor from that Source of Traditions whence new traditions might be developed for an emerging culture or a people of a new age. That is, they have no regard for Quintessential Tradition, but only each instantiation or conditioned manifestation of Tradition at some time or place or another. In this regard, the praxis of politics becomes, as we have covered, a purely relative and provisional matter rather than a truly essential matter.
Chapter 1, Part B: Traceability of Ideas: Lionel’s Chain & Anchor Analogy
Having previously derided though who cannot say whence their ideas come, you may charge me to answer that same question: Where do ideas come from? After all, to trace ideas, from symbols up through a “principial chain” of sorts, is imperative to understanding their origin and to then formulating a coherent ideology which is free of any contradictory, extraneous, or “weird” ideas which do not belong. Lionel provides the perfect analogy for this in his short essay, Ideas and Where They Come From:
“One way to figure out which weird ideas are valid or not is to trace them back as far as you can. Imagine the history of our ideas as a long chain that goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years, and at the end of that chain rests an anchor. Above, on the surface of the waves is a storm-pounded vessel that is our civilization. Thank God we have this anchor, and this ridiculously long chain. It keeps our fragile ship from being plunged into the dark ocean, from being a sad tale told by sailors and recovered by brave divers. But if one day you went out, when the storm is rocking your ship, and found that the chain to the bottom felt too light, panicked, you would know that your anchor is gone. You and your ship will soon be gone too. To wrap up my analogy, if our ideas are a chain fastened to an anchor, it's probably a good idea to make sure the chain is unbroken. If you have a broken chain of ideas, that spells disaster. In this way, what I mean by weird ideas are actually ideas that don't connect to the chain. Weird ideas are therefore dangerous ideas.”
We know through our metaphysical model that all symbols and principles can be traced back to the same anchor: Total Universality, and then onto the Absolute—which is perhaps the metaphorical seabed in which the anchor embeds. The implication we reach in this is that the only way to formulate a truly coherent ideology is to ensure that the chain we draw leads all the way back to the anchor, which is God, the Absolute, pure Essence, pure Being, or the source of Reality’s entire preordination. Every idea which exists as a link on that chain, connected to the anchor, ought to then logically succeed one another, beginning from the anchor and ending with the ship. Here, the ship represents the symbolic positions we hold which are the face-value basis for our societies. This chain ought to lead from the anchor back to the ship in a manner which is perfectly straight and uninterrupted such that there is no relativistic skewing between links in the chain (ideas), so that the chain will remain strong and coherent; no room for breaks between links, so that the chain does not depart from the anchor; and no presence of “weird” links inserted into the chain, which would disrupt the tension held between the links. But such an ideology, in which all symbols are perfectly aligned with their preceding archetypes, and all lower archetypes are perfectly aligned with their preceding higher archetypes, each fulfilling their archetypes without fail all the way back to the First Archetype, could only be one. That is, there is only one possible ideology of this kind, and it would have to be archetypal of the First Archetype since we have excluded any and all possibility for principial or archetypal skewing. Thus, it would be descriptive of the preordination of Reality itself.
Such an ideology would also be “beyond ideology” in the conventional sense, and thus to have a “right view”, one must also in some sense be “beyond politics” or “metapolitical”. This is not to say that we should reject participation in politics. On the contrary, orchestrating political direction is of chief necessity to the ordering of any society, and has always been the responsibility of those of Aristocratic soul who have the wisdom and expertise to do so. While there are those metaphysicians who find themselves uninterested in the domain of politics, who only care about orthodoxy and not orthopraxis, I am not one such who has passion for one but not the other. To only care for principles and not symbols is just as unskillful as to only care for symbols but not principles. For that matter, I would argue that one who only cares for principles is of greater foul, as they have an innate Aristocratic talent which they refuse to exercise for the benefit of their fellow man. How wasteful and destructive! “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis,” as the old adage famously warns!
Moreover, such an ideology, being descriptive of the preordination of Reality itself, would be completely and utterly foundational in its ability to describe both human and cosmic affairs symptomatically in all contexts, and thus could be the basis for any society at any place and at any time. It would be not merely ideology, but proper philosophy and the basis for proper praxis. It would be the Orthodoxy and the Orthopraxis, both descriptive and prescriptive of Reality and the human condition. It would be universal, timeless, and essential in its application.
Chapter 1, Part C: Defining the True Right & True Left
>Ch.1 Part C - Segment I: An Appeal to Existence, & The Quintessential Paradigm
Continuing directly from the previous segment: As proper philosophy funneled through the lens of political ideology, what I am describing is Tradition itself, the “Zeroth Position”, or the “True Right”, and it is the political appeal to and political application of Tradition, which is the practical vehicle of alignment with the preordination of Reality. True Right or Traditional philosophy thus can be surmised as follows: “political praxis accorded with a faithful alignment to the default mode of Being”, or “political praxis which aims for the strict conformity of all symbolic policies and practices with their parent archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype”. This idea of appealing to the default mode of Being in political praxis, is mundanely what the modern right-wing appeals to when they seek to legislate against that which is immoral, grotesque, or abominable. They will call such things “unnatural”—and this state of being “unnatural” is found to be so intolerable, unwholesome, and undesirable, that it must be legally forbade. Their critics will lambast them, proclaiming that an “appeal to nature” is a fallacy, but what these critics miss is that by appealing to nature with a lowercase “n”, they are incidentally appealing to Nature with a capital “N”, and by extension Existence with a capital “E” and Being with a capital “B” (here using “Existence” with a capital E in the Thomistic sense, which is synonymous with “Essence”). This alignment with Nature, with Existence, with Being, is the Orthopraxis of the True Right, and the belief in such sovereign and supreme principles is the Orthodoxy of the True Right.
Because the True Right is universal, in that it appeals to Total Universality, which contains under its domain the infinitude of All Things, the universal ideology of the True Right can be faithfully implemented in an infinite number of ways. In humanity, this infinitude is expressed or “actualized” as the uncountable traditions which have prevailed since prehistory, which all find at their root a common principial reality as instantiations of Tradition. This great multitude of symbolic implementations of the principles of Tradition across human cultures, are all valid expressions of the proper praxis of Tradition—synonymous with what I have called the “Orthopraxis” of the True Right. And seeing as these historical and Traditional societies have practiced such an Orthopraxis in their social structure, such that their social structures are “pyramidal” and mimic Reality’s preordination or “Design”—with a king at the tip of the pyramid serving as an analog for Total Universality or God, and the Priests and Warriors standing as the most Essential Properties of the pyramid—we can conclude that what describes the social “shape” of all these societies is that which can be again called the “Quintessential Paradigm”.
>Ch.1 Part C - Segment II: A Position of Total Universality, Eternality, & Quintessentiality
Part of the reason that I have called Tradition, the Zeroth Position, or the True Right “universal, essential, and timeless”, is not merely for the historically perennial reasons which I have enumerated earlier, but in light of a connection to Quintessential Metaphysics. In QM, the three descriptors of “universal, essential, and timeless” are precisely what describes metaphysical principles, or “universal principles” in the first place. As Praxius explains in our dialogues: “Each of these principles are still timeless as they exist outside of time and regardless of it, they are essential in that they possess a certain fundamentality to them that manifested beings do not, and they are universal insofar as they possess a domain under them in which it is possible to find a derivative multiplicity.” However, he makes the distinction between those principles which are merely “quasi-universal” as opposed to totally universal. Most principles can only be properly called “quasi-universal principles” in that they are “particularly universal to a given instance, like treeness to the tree”, since such (as in this example) only “encompasses all treelike things”. That is to say, quasi-universal principles may be “universal” in that they contain other principles under their domain, but what they contain is limited and they are themselves contained by at least one other higher principle, and thus they are only deserving of the title “quasi-universal”. The only principle which is truly universal in the most pluperfect sense, which may be described as timeless, essential, and universal in the pluperfection of those words: Eternality, Quintessentiality, and Total Universality, and which is authentically deserving of being called a “universal principle” with regard to the literality of such phraseology—would be the Universal Principle with a capital U and P, which is God.
The link here is that to be truly Traditional or Truly Right, to align all symbols with their archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype; to uphold principles; to embody the very metaphysical qualities of principles; to be in the truest sense of the word, principial—requires us to adhere to the discussed three qualities, to treat all applications of Tradition as having a universal, timeless, and essential basis—and to go beyond these even and strive for the true modes of Total Universality, Eternality, and Quintessentiality, which place us closest to God, is so that we might most earnestly claim alignment with God, Spirit, Essence, or Being Itself.
>Ch.1 Part C - Segment III: Degeneration from the True Right
All other supposedly right-wing philosophies which fall from this perfect standard are not truly deserving of being called “right-wing”, but are in fact degenerations of True Right philosophy. Though we might say that they are lesser degenerations than those philosophies which describe themselves as “left-wing”, in that the latter tend not merely toward a simple degeneration of True Right philosophy, but toward an outright inversion of such. Nonetheless, the moment that the entails of a philosophy stray, to any degree, from the mission to faithfully align with the default mode of Being, they have strayed from proper praxis to improper praxis. As Praxius explains in his essay, The Hourglass Analogy:
“Anything other than the complete and total alignment of a being with its essence or design is, in Traditional terms, and using this logic, considered improper. To adhere to its design is to properly participate, according to its mode, in the total design of Reality, and to transpose its archetype from the higher to the lower plane. Therefore, in the Traditional understanding, the Archetype is the Real, and the being itself is merely a momentary manifestation or incarnation of the Archetype. Everything that exists has a proper function, is integrated some way into the total design of Reality itself, and has a way in which it may access, through its own archetypal fulfillment, the highest mode of being: in other words, the Monad. This type of activity is what we would consider to be a being’s proper praxis.”
More specifically, these “improper” or “degenerative” ideologies are no longer universal, essential, or timeless, but have become in some capacity the opposite: relative, contingent, and temporally or historically limited. I say “relative” in that such degenerative philosophies concern themselves only with the humanely and vitalistic forces, placing Man as the center of importance rather than subordinating Man to his role and participation in the macrocosm; contingent in that they rest upon a preestablished set of historical conditions and reference points, at best only reaching back as far as the Enlightenment or the French Revolution; and temporally or historically limited in that they handle time quantitatively rather than qualitatively, such that they will forsake eternal Tradition or even past modes of tradition in favor of what modality is current or will be constructed next (hence “progressivism”). By contrast, the True Right is universal in that it is the default mode of Being which has formerly served as the basis for all modes of being across geography and history; it is essential in that it appeals to the inescapable and fundamental reality of Metaphysical Law (the preorientation of Reality); and it is timeless in that its proper praxis is the very practice of Tradition, wherein Tradition is the “answer to problems which have existed forever”, as Lionel puts it in a short untitled work of his. As such, we can say that Tradition upholds what can be called the “Quintessential Paradigm”—an exhaustive paradigm which is descriptive of Reality in an ontological sense (its preordination or “Design”), and which translates from the principial macrocosm down to the humanely microcosm where it becomes the definitive basis of society—the sociological framework of society—in its default mode of Being.
In speaking of such contingence, relativity, and of being temporally limited, a notable advantage of the “Zeroth Position” is in the essence of its namesake. (Here we return from a paragraph in part A of the Introduction.) That is, it is not a position which derives its legitimacy from prostrating itself against other positions. While the Fascists and the Marxists rebel against the Liberals, the Marxists and the Liberals against the Fascists, the Fascists and the Liberals against the Marxists; all three stand posed against the Old Order, seeking to redress what they perceive to be the inequities of the timeless monarchies, chiefdoms, and theocracies. But the Old Order was abundantly stable, having dominated since before the children of the earliest recorded men took their first steps, and having recurred in all places and in all contexts, and having always been succeeded by and replaced by more incarnations of the Old Order without change—a qualitative expression of Eternity. The Old Order had no opposition with which to define itself against, for it was the lone default, and hence it is called the default mode of Being. It was monadic, self-subsistent, the one Way, the proper praxis of the one Truth, the humanely participation in the Highest Reality which Praxius has defined as Tradition. It is “Zeroth” because it is not even a position; it simply is that which has always been. It is not reactionary. Let me be clear with that: It has nothing to react against, because it is the actualization of the first action, the Agonist and not an antagonist; it is the deepest root at the bottom of our ideological tree out of which all others have diverged as branches, losing sight of the roots. So, will we react? Will we protest? Will we revolt? Or will we come to restore the Oldest Order? Evola had much to say of this:
“Thus, no matter how sincere the intention animating those who today attempt to revolt and to sound the alarm may be, we should not cherish false hopes concerning the outcome. It is not easy to realize how deep we must dig before we hit the only root from which the contemporary, negative forms have sprung as natural and necessary consequences. The same holds true for those forms that even the boldest spirits do not cease to presuppose and to employ in their ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Some people ‘react’; others ‘protest.’ How could it be otherwise considering the hopeless features of contemporary society, morality, politics, and culture? And yet these are only ‘reactions’ and not actions, or positive movements, that originate from the inner dimension and testify to the possession of a foundation, a principle, or a center. In the West, too many adaptations and ‘reactions’ have taken place. Experience has shown that nothing that truly matters can be achieved in this way. What is really needed is not to toss back and forth in a bed of agony, but to awaken and get up.” – Revolt Against the Modern World, pg. xxix
Chapter 1, Part D: Of Wings & Hands
>Ch.1 Part D – Segment I: The Link Between Right & Left-Wing with Right & Left-Handism
The terms “right-wing” and “left-wing”, ironically, date back to the French Revolution, where in the French National Assembly, deputies divided themselves according to their position on the monarchy: Those in favor sat to the right of the Assembly’s president, and those of a revolutionary vigor sat to the left. Now, to avoid charges of hypocrisy, I must make clear that my usage of the term “True Right” as the Totally Universal, Quintessential, and Eternal position, is merely a colloquialism. After all, “While we may now look today at…” in this case, the French monarchists, “…as something Right-Wing, it is because we have come so far Leftwards that even what is principially Left of what is truly proper seems to us a legitimate goal.”
Just as the French revolutionaries today are undoubtably toiling in the depths of some Hellish realm, it is a rather poetic synchronicity that the original bearers of the moniker “left” have much in common, principially speaking, with the practitioners of a similarly-named path in esoterism, and vice versa. That is, the right-wing and left-wing are perhaps the “political cognates”, so to speak, of the right-hand and left-hand paths in spirituality. For those unfamiliar, I shall explain:
The right-hand path is the path of “vertical integration”, as Praxius has repeated in numerous exchanges (and thus I refer to it as “vertical integrationism”). The right-hand worshipper and practitioner seeks to subordinate himself to the macrocosm in hopes that he can be incorporated into the principial realities. He seeks to emulate superior archetypes so that he might abide in their glory as their faithfully aligned symbol—that he may honor the First Archetype by way of his very existence. And he seeks to affirm the Highest Reality by participating in all that issues from it. In all such manners, his gaze is tilted upward toward the Heavens, his focus is locked on God, and his path is set on a mission of gradual transcendence from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane—from the earthly or telluric life to a higher context for consciousness. (Such transcendentalism will be a theme of focus in the second chapter of this essay.) In all this, hence, is the notion of a “vertical integration”, as well as that of an “upward orientation”. That is, the right-hand practitioner has drawn his gaze up not only in submission and reverence to the glory which emanates from above, but in search of a meritorious and principial unification with the Absolute—to be integrated holistically into the vertical plane. Such a unification takes form in both the microcosm and macrocosm: the former in that he fashions himself as a very icon of God (or as a symbol of the First Archetype) (and in the Christian tradition, he might say that he is a “living temple” for the Holy Spirit); the latter in that through his merits he achieves a salvation, a favorable afterlife—And if he is of an especially Aristocratic soul, or has gone beyond caste itself, having cultivated a perfected wisdom and an unconditioned existence, then he may be one of the fortunate few to achieve “liberation”. Such a liberation, when achieved in life, might be called High Contemplation or Enlightenment, and in death yields Theosis, Henosis, Moksha, or Nirvana. The foremost of these terms, “Theosis”, implies an “infinite closeness” to God, and all others imply that one “becomes God” by dissolving back into the Absolute—a perfect unification with the Total Unicity of Reality.
But while the goal of the right-hander is vertical integration and the symbolic emulation of the First Archetype, how does one go about achieving this? Praxius explains in our dialogues: “The right-hand path is the most common path of hierarchical integration; whether this be through the fulfillment of vocation related to caste, or through participating in a religious hierarchy like, for example, the Church, it is quite simply following some kind of exoteric hierarchy and experiencing the esoterism within.” In other words, one who conforms to the traditional routes provided by exoteric religion, who participates in its rituals, and who fulfills their moral and material duties (such as the station of their caste, the station of their sex, or the stations imposed upon them by righteous earthly authorities), is a right-hander. They are those who abide in and study the doctrines of their faith without leaning upon their own understanding, such that it is always the learned priests and elders of one’s religion whom they will consult and never their own self. While left-handers might scorn such men at times as ignorant, blind, or bound by dogma, right-handers can achieve just as much spiritual growth and accrue just as much spiritual insight and merit as them, such that the possibly of Enlightenment for a right-hander is never off the table.
Meanwhile, the left-hand path is the path of “direct access” and is dominated by the most disgraced and wicked men. Nonetheless, not all left-handers are this way. Some are morally righteous in an objective sense; others may occupy a moral grey zone. Those whose intentions and outcomes are qualitatively good would most surely include monks and hermits—among other ascetics and perhaps even some stoics—who adopt a heavily world-denying lifestyle, living subsistently, without great material concern, in denial of the self, without experiencing mundane pleasures or indulgences, and separated from society. Their goal is an unconditioned existence, absent of any perturbation, confusion, or addictive emotions, and with minimal opportunity to sin. They enslave their bodies to the will of a disciplined spirit, and their final goal is a highest salvation or liberation. These men I have no quarrel with, but only immense respect.
Regarding those left-handers whose lifestyle is morally grey, however, we might examine the followers of Tantrayana (Tantric Buddhism), who attempt to induce Enlightenment or otherwise accelerate their spiritual journey towards it through unconventional, extreme, and aesthetically unappealing means, such as drug use, subjecting themselves to extreme cold, sickness, pain, pleasure, a combination of extreme pleasure and pain, and so forth. In myth, one might think of Odin, who gouges out his eye, hangs himself from a tree, and studies the runes in intense contemplation for days before achieving a type of Enlightenment. Other morally grey left-handers might include the Shaivites—Hindus who worship the destroyer aspect of the Supreme God. They live in filth, devour corpses, and are hated for their inequity. Their source of worship, in focusing on God the Destroyer, is thus to the side of Reality associated with the provisionality of the world: its death, decay, and entropy. These principles and the rituals undertaken in reverence of them are certainly unappealing aesthetically, but one may argue they are not truly “evil”, in that the revulsion we experience toward them is not of a morally motivated origin, but of an egoic one. That is, death, decay, and entropy are ultimately facts of life, preordained and predestined by God, and our hatred of these facts comes in that they threaten our egos and destroy the people and objects to which we are attached, reminding us that all is temporary but God. Shaivism is thus merely the “other side” of Creation, if you will; only the ego is threatened by the destructive fate of all things, yet God’s Plan for the entire universe is still fulfilled.
Now for those left-handers to whom I compare the left-wing: Black magicians and all those who worship the ego and seek only their own self-empowerment. These folks we would say are “downward oriented”, in that rather than gazing “up” to the Source from which all things are derived, tilt their heads down and look firstly to the self. Now, for those of us abiding in good religion and proper philosophy, the true enlightenment on this matter is that there is no real “self”—the “I” or “me” that we identify with. Ego is illusion; it is the delusion that there is anything apart from the Ultimate Reality, that there is a “self” apart from the Supreme Self—that there is any “Atman” apart from the “Paramatma”—that there is any being apart from pure Being. The notion that the self is supreme is an inversion of the proper understanding of the Hindu phrase “I am Brahman” (“I am God”). In the East, one grasping the nuances of Sanskrit takes this phrase as a mere recognition “that the ultimate self of a being is synonymous in quality to the Ultimate Reality” (to quote my anonymous teacher); while in the West, one will run with the literal translation upon which the nuance is lost, taking it to mean that they are literally God in quantity or magnitude, and lending them to “a philosophical understanding that would feed a narcissistic, myopic mind and serve instrumentally to fulfill delusional and reckless activities in the world.” In this is precisely the error that unwholesome left-handers make. In Christian lore, this error describes the fall of Lucifer, who pretended to the throne of God, and in Western occultism it underpins the philosophy of Luciferians.
Lucifer is an example of the Antagonist motif expressed throughout many religions. In other faiths, the Antagonist might be called Prometheus, Ahriman, Lord Mara, Kali-Purusha, etc. It is perhaps a share of the Divine Consciousness of the Universal Principle condensed, relegated, and actualized into a “supreme evil principle”, resulting in a disembodied and degenerated facet of the Supreme Intellect that seeks only to skew all symbols and archetypes from ontologically proper praxis. The Antagonist then the dualistic antipode to the Universal Principle or “Agonist”. As my anonymous teacher explains: “[Given God’s] infinite all-pervading nature or reality—any opposition to the Godhead is still itself God, just in a degenerate form. Such that even Satan himself is not a separate substance, but a deluded creation or feature of the Divine.” Hence, Lucifer is not truly separate from God, yet he is conceited by his ego and believes that he is, and rather than submitting to the inevitable and all-pervading boundlessness of God, he wishes to make himself God in the literal sense, to impossibly usurp the throne. It is as if a bone or a muscle desired to rebel against the whole person and sought to take over the whole body, not realizing that it is but a smaller part of the whole body which cannot exist without the body, for the body is the context of its existence in the first place. Like any “self” or “Atman”, Lucifer is but an infinitesimal part of the infinite Whole. (Though really, we should not say that he or any other Atman is a “part” of Paramatma, since Paramatma is “partless”. My anonymous teacher explains: “That which is infinite, if it is considered purely, wouldn’t be a unity [aggregation] of anything because that which is infinite has no proper parts. It would be part-less or whole. Thus, Ultimate Reality is not an aggregate of actuality or a totality of things, and is not a ‘thing’ remotely at all.” And: “It’s not that Atman is a part of the Ultimate Atman. Atman, Paramatman, and Brahman are all synonymous. If we are being honest, only Brahman is real. That reality is partless.”) And like any tumor, it would have nothing to pervert and corrupt if not for the healthy body out of which it has metastasized. (In this way, we can see how at the root of moral evil is egoism, or the conceit of “self”. The Supreme Paramatma or Cosmic Oversoul is just one “Supreme Self” which all other “selves” or “Atma” partake in. Though the true enlightenment is that even this idea of a “Supreme Self” is only pointing toward what we call Total Universality or the “total and first Consciousness” of the universe. The Ultimate Reality, Total Unicity, is “non-self” or “anatman”, such that Brahman is said to be “barren of ego”. The conclusion here is that selfishness aims at that which is illusory and seeks to make the illusory and ignorant the center of focus, while that which is selfless is concerned with that pure unadulterated Awareness that is Ultimate Reality. The former makes self equal to God in focus, while the latter acknowledges the primacy of God. Thus, we might equate moral goodness with selflessness and moral evil with selfishness.)
At this point, we can now reflect back on the previous quote which I introduced from Praxius, but this time in its fullness, for summarization:
“Yes, the proper ‘left-hand’ path is the path of the ascetic, but again it is very difficult to properly achieve this, and so the left-hand path has a greater association with those occultists who practice chthonic or Luciferian traditions. The bipartition into ‘left’ and ‘right’ hand paths really have to do, principially speaking, with direct access vs hierarchical integration. The right-hand path is the most common path of hierarchical integration; whether this be through the fulfillment of vocation related to caste, or through participating in a religious hierarchy like, for example, the Church, it is quite simply following some kind of exoteric hierarchy and experiencing the esoterism within. The left-hand path is the lesser practiced path of direct access, and among those who practice it, fewer do it properly, or even well. This is typically the path of ‘pure asceticism’, focusing on the pure principle from which the forms proceed, as opposed to integration within the forms to experience the principle within. When done correctly, this produces a truly ‘enlightening’ experience of the Divine and provides a Gnosis. When done incorrectly, this leads a person to fall victim to chthonic and demonic forces commonly associated with the left-hand path for this reason. In my opinion the only left handers who truly succeed possess the left-hand path in their spirit as a king of ‘caste’ in and among themselves, as though ‘ascetic’ is its own vocation almost, weaving in and out among the others. For example, it might be said that Plotinus is a prominent example of a left-hander, with his attitude of ‘the Gods must come to me’, as opposed to the right-handers of the temples he was urged to attend.”
Put more succinctly: “Philosophically, Tradition can most easily be defined as ‘the humanly participation in the Quintessential Reality’; this participation is principial, and is achieved through one of many paths all leading to the same destination. For those with the capacity to do so, a direct access is possible, for those without, participation in a temporal hierarchy and fulfilling a metaphysical and pre-ordained archetype is required.” (Here, “Quintessential Reality” is a term for “principial reality”, or the domain of principles.)
In this way we see that left-handers do not conform to traditional parameters; they are self-guided—an elite few who can find their way to the Divine on their own, and thus have no need for such realties or institutions as participation in caste or subordination into a spiritual hierarchy. Yet, it is easy for them to falter in this way, to become consumed by their own ego. As my anonymous teacher states: “A left-handed individual is one who forgoes traditional warning and advice and sees for himself.” As we discussed above, it is easy for the left-hander to, in essence, “dig their way to the bottom of Reality” and discover that all is God—that “I am Brahman”—and then to ontologically fail to grasp “that their soul is God in quality, not quantity or magnitude” (again quoting my anonymous teacher). Explaining further, “Basically, esoteric and especially Eastern traditions teach that Reality is fundamentally mental, that it is primarily consciousness or awareness. Many people who come into contact with these teachings become delusional and otherwise mishandle them, believing that their bodies, tastes and preferences, feelings, desires, etc., are divine in a literal and exhaustive way. In that way they become enemies of the world and cause harm to others.” Thus, “practically speaking, only a few can practice left-handism without this goal of elevating their own ego to the level of God and, in a sense, ‘creating’ a new reality for themselves,” as Praxius notes.
>Ch.1 Part D – Segment II: The Luciferian Left & Inverted Semantics
To return to the point, any ideology which departs from that which is “aligned with default mode of Being” is degenerate in that it has fallen victim to symbolic and archetypal skewing, even if only partially. And more importantly, such an ideology contains “Luciferian” elements in that such an ideology has been motivated by the ego if its author, such that it consigns to what the author’s individual self has determined is proper praxis, as opposed what is objectively proper praxis. In this regard, such ideology is purely subjective or relativistic in that it departs from concern with objectivity and settles upon a skewed reference point. How then can we trust such an ideology if it merely subjective and is motivated by a deluded ego? That which is driven by the imperfect self can only obfuscate proper praxis, rather than orient itself upward towards it. And yet this is precisely the error of all ideologies besides that which we have dubbed the “True Right” or the “Zeroth Position”. It is only that the left-wing ideologies depart from the course of the True Right in a way which is much more exacerbated than those ideologies which call themselves “right-wing” (but which are not Truly Right). Whereas the latter are minor degenerations of the True Right, the former are outright inversions of the True Right, such that we might imagine the ideology of Lucifer to be the “True Left”—a point of perfection inversion, in which its semantics hold that Essence does not precede Substance, but that Substance precedes Essence. This is such that its adherents would hold not only that the self is supreme and almighty, but that God is a humanely construct, that consciousness and universals are but illusions of matter (eliminativism), and possibly even that there is no underlying unicity to the universe by which we are integrally subject (physicalism). (Although, if they do concede that there is an underlying unicity to the universe—a Universal Principle which they hold is the notion of a singular prevailing matter-energy, then they would be materialists, or “materialist monists”. Such a position is only marginally more respectable than physicalism, yet is still inverted, placing primacy on Substance as opposed to Essence.)
Undoubtably, you will find countless left-handers (of the unwholesome variety) and left-wingers who agree on such tenants as enumerated above. By contrast, we recall that the Traditional position is that Consciousness or an ineffable neutral substrate of pure Essence is exhaustive of Reality, that Divine Awareness or pure Essence is the Total Unicity of All Things, and that matter is particular of Spirit and not vice versa—or simply, that Essence precedes Substance.
Thus, let us return to The Hourglass Analogy, revisit how Praxius discerns the difference between these two semantic modes (the semantic modes again being “the general philosophic principles that underpin the worldview of a particular civilization”):
“The fundamental difference at the center of this dichotomy is the way in which they answer the question of what we may call ‘True Ontological Propriety’: the question of Essence and Existence, and which of these precede or derive from the other in an ontological sequence. It is this divide that determines whether or not that which is centrifugal to a given civilization is the Absolute or the Relative, the Universal or the Conditioned, Truth or Untruth, and whether or not their understanding of Reality is that of hierarchical integrity or of disassociated coincidence. Traditional semantics are those by which Essence is understood as ontologically precedent and qualitatively superior to Existence, and Anti-Traditional semantics are those by which Existence, understood in this sense as the temporal domain of physical bodies, precedes any type of Essential principle.”
Now, would you believe me if I told you that the final goal of Luciferianism is a “Dark Enlightenment” which impossibly seeks the separation of the individual’s soul from the universe and the maximal elevation of one’s status to a transcendent godhood, such that their mantra is “Become their own god”? It is the pinnacle of arrogance to think that one can achieve direct access to the Divine by becoming the Divine. Keep all this in mind, as it will be of continuing relevance in the following chapter.
Chapter 1, Part E: The “Ahuman” Approach: A Middle Way Between Humanism & Anti-Humanism
“The Right is the civilizational mode of Tradition, uniquely superior to the Left because it does not get caught up in orthodoxical ideology, and because it concerns itself with proper praxis and archetypal fulfillment over all else. Therefore, it is a-humanist; not anti-human, but ahuman, as though the human element does not matter and is only valuable to the extent that it actualizes its archetype correctly, not for what it is. Therefore, the Right is not at all concerned with the desires or the wills of men, much less lesser men, who are the majority of the population of any nation.” - Praxius
In the previous chapter part, I made clear the reason for which Traditionalism and the True Right do not place emphasis or primacy upon the humanly principle. In understanding that the microcosm is contained within the macrocosm, or the Symbolic Reality within the Principial Reality; we must assent that humanity, occupying what can be called this microcosm or Symbolic Reality, cannot be the principal or total or whole focus, logically speaking. Rather, humanity is merely an aspect of the greater picture—the grander Whole of Reality. That is to say, this is not a human-centric reality; it is God’s and God’s alone. After all, we recall that Ultimate Reality is just God; only God is real. Subordinating the humanly microcosm to the principial or divine macrocosm is thus the only logical imperative available to us. To act as if we are the center of the universe is to be conceited by the notion of “self”. It is, once again, “…as if a bone or a muscle desired to rebel against the whole person and sought to take over the whole body, not realizing that it is but a smaller part of the whole body which cannot exist without the body, for the body is the context of its existence in the first place.” Human-centrism is nothing more than a collectivized form of egoism, and thus it is inherently delusional behavior, and moreover it is Luciferian in essence, as has been previously established. In acknowledgement of such, Traditionalism rejects the human-centric philosophy of humanism. However, this is not to say that Traditionalism is anti-human either, as one of our core motivations is not to harm humanity, but to restore it. Instead, we uphold the middle-path: that which can be called “a-humanism” (“a” as in “without”), since it is neither for nor against humanity in the sense of the “grand picture”. That is, Traditionalism aims to restore humanity not strictly for humanity’s sake. Instead, this effort is driven by the higher motive of re-subordinating humanity to the macrocosm in order to appease the Divine, with the understanding that humanity will be restored to a better state once it is vertically integrated and allowed to participate again in the Highest Reality. After all, the “humanely participation in the Highest Reality” is one of the ways in which Praxius has defined Tradition itself.
The ahuman outlook is one which is wrought with nuance, toting the line between life-affirmation and nihilism. This is because as Traditionalists, the default axiom of our semantics is, once again, that Essence precedes Substance; and our ultimate philosophy is that of immaterial (either idealist or neutral) monism. With the understanding that the Ultimate Reality, Monad, Absolute, or Total Unicity is empty of content or quality, we must assent that all notions of “value” or “purpose” are ultimately signicated on emptiness in the same way that all provisional realities are grounded in the emptiness of Ultimate Reality. That is to say, the ultimate reality of all things is indeterminate, acataleptic, content-lacking Non-Being. This naturally leads us into a position of what the Buddhists call “two truths”, in which we must make a distinction between that which is provisionally true and that which is ultimately true. This is such that while it is true that all contents are signicated on that Ultimate Reality which is barren of them, we still find in the provisional world an ontology or preordination and predestination of All Things, and a Divine Consciousness which exhibits volition and intent. Thus, there is still a conventionally objective morality and attestable teleology to the inner workings of Reality, even if it is null from an absolute or ultimate perspective.
With this in mind, I prepare you for that which controversially defines the essence of the ahuman perspective: Human life has no intrinsic value, yet human life possesses sanctity. “How can this be”, you ask? In understanding that the ultimate value of all principles or qualities is signicated on the emptiness of the Ultimate, and thus is nil, one must then approach the value of the humanly principle in terms of its practical utility rather than any notion of inherit or “intrinsic” quality, since a self-referential quality is not actually signicated on anything and thus is ultimately empty. Specifically, the utility I refer to would be in regards to the ontological structure of Reality in which humanity participates. That is, one might recall the chapter part on ritual, in which it was established that all actions can be classified as rituals, and that all rituals are conducted with the effect of either affirming or failing to affirm the ontological propriety of God’s Design. The point being made here is that humanity is a tool for the Divine, a utility meant to serve the Divine for the sole sake of affirming the ontological propriety of God’s Design through the vehicles of proper ritual and proper praxis. Humanity is thus made to be the Symbol of the Principial Divine, hence “made in God’s image”. Recall earlier, “He seeks to emulate superior archetypes so that he might abide in their glory as their faithfully aligned symbol—that he may honor the First Archetype by way of his very existence.” To emulate all archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype, is to be a symbol—an icon or “image”—of God and all that which is ontologically superior to humanity in precession. (I say “icon”, as the Greek translation of Genesis uses the word “eikon” (εἰκών) for “image”.) To fulfill this end is for humanity to do “what it is truly made to do”, to quote Praxius’ Verticality essay.
Thus, it is in our participation in Quintessential Reality that humanity finds what can be called its “ontological value” or “sanctity”, signicated on our status as a “Divine utility”, so to speak. Or to put it another way, humanity has only an ontological value as a symbolic utility to the Divine. Yet, humanity’s quality is not one which is “possessed in isolation”, as again, it is contingent upon the conduction of proper ritual and praxis. Praxius puts is succinctly: “…the humanly principle has an ontological value as a utility, not as a quality. The qualities which inhere in humanity have value as qualities, but humanity itself does not possess this quality in isolation. Thus, the necessity for proper praxis.”
In our dialogues, he applies this utilitarian mindset to a specific application, demonstrating how the termination of innocent life (such as in abortion) may be regarded as immoral, not because it involves the destruction of something with some supposed intrinsic value or quality, but because the purpose or ends fulfilled in killing that innocent life may be driven by improper praxis, such as the avoidance of duty or responsibility:
“It is on this basis that Tradition rejects abortion. It has nothing to do with killing human life; it has everything to do with it promoting improper praxis among those who already have human life and of whom certain responsibilities are required. It is about the potential for those of subordinate human types dictating the fate of superior human types. The human life aspect of this argument is inconsequential and sensational. [That] babies are cute and innocent, means it would be sad to kill the cute and innocent thing, but this argument doesn’t have any ontological weight to it, thus it is sensational. In an abortion, nothing of ontological value is lost, because the baby itself was born in the Kali Yuga and is uninitiated at best. In the worst of cases, what was lost is a potential, which will condense in the next possible instantiation (reincarnation) in the next baby. My major point of this: The taking or giving of human life is not what matters. What matters is which life was taken and for what purpose, or to what ends. It sounds utilitarian, and indeed there is a certain utilitarian aspect to Traditional morality, but the anchor of the debate is not the aspect of human life.”
This utilitarian sense that “the humanly principle has an ontological value as a utility, not as a quality” is precisely why Praxius had remarked in this chapter part’s header quote that, “the human element does not matter and is only valuable to the extent that it actualizes its archetype correctly, not for what it is. Therefore, the Right is not at all concerned with the desires or the wills of men, much less lesser men, who are the majority of the population of any nation.” Again, humanity is a tool for the Divine, a utility meant to serve the Divine for the sole sake of affirming the ontological propriety of God’s Design through the vehicles of proper ritual and proper praxis.
To summarize: Traditionalism is neither humanistic nor anti-human, but “ahuman”, prioritizing the subordination of the humanly microcosm to the Divine macrocosm, and seeking the vertical integration of the former into the latter. The humanly principle has value, but only ontologically speaking as a utility, rather than as a self-subsistent quality on its own. Its purpose rests in serving as a symbol of the Divine, affirming God’s Design through the practice of proper ritual and praxis.
Chapter 2: The Degeneration of Ideology: Tripartite Devolutions of Views
The degeneration from “right view” and proper praxis can be examined in various tripartite sets, the general formula for all which are as follows: The first view in each set is of a right view, which is universal, timeless, and essential, and which is “upward oriented”. The second view is a skewed or “horizontal view”, which has remnant features of the former but has forgotten its core essence—its principial values. It is earthly, telluric, and materialistic, being “horizontally oriented” as opposed to transcendent and spiritual. The third view is an inversion of the first and a further degeneration from the second, having adopted inverted semantics rooted in the “Substance precedes Essence” mentality as discussed at the end of the previous chapter. It is thus “downward oriented”.
Chapter 2, Part A: On the Human Condition & Caste
One could theoretically generate an unlimited number of tripartite sets of view degeneration, but I have narrowed it down to what I consider to be the three most principal: The first of these three tripartite sets, which we will discuss in this chapter part, is the degeneration in how the human condition is understood:
>Ch.2 Part A – Segment I: Vertical Integrationism
Vertical integrationism is that view which I have expressed primarily in Part D of the first chapter, where I first ascribed it this moniker. In short, it holds that Essence precedes Substance, that it is the predisposition of righteous men to participate in the Highest Reality, and the ultimate goal of Aristocrats to be integrated into the vertical plane holistically. It is, in sum, the “vertical participation and integration of Man into the Highest Reality”. (In fact, Praxius defines Tradition as the “humanely participation in the Highest Reality”.) In this regard, we speak to the idea of proper transcendentalism, such that Man subordinates himself to macrocosmic forces which transcend the material plane, orienting himself with these transcendent forces, and seeking to both embody them symbolically and to be assumed by them incorporatively. (Keep this base word, “transcend”, in mind for further discussion in this chapter.) But this “vertical integrationism” encompasses not merely the mindful actions of men participating in the world, but in the proper philosophy which motivates these actions (the orthodoxy of the orthopraxis), and thus is incorporated of the Traditional views of caste, the duties of the castes, gender roles, the duties of a gentleman and a lady, virtue, objective morality, and both religious and lay life.
>Ch.2 Part A – Segment II: Horizontal Darwinian Functionalism
>>Ch.2 Part A – Segment II, Subsegment A: Darwin, Persecution, & “Might is Right”
In the modern age comes the first substantial degeneration from vertical integrationism, which is that of the secular, Darwinian, and materialistic view. To reiterate the introduction to this chapter, we might say that a view of this kind is “horizontally oriented”, in that its holders only look beside themselves, at the base of the “principial pyramid”, to other material causes and conditioned manifestations in the physical world. This view thus makes the error of dismissing the spiritual element behind the predestination of All Things, reducing all things to but material ends, and negating the notions of higher purpose or Providential teleology in favor of a dull functionalism. For instance, a Traditional view of caste and gender, wherein caste and gender are seen as descriptive of Man’s spiritual bifurcation into greater and lesser modes, is forsaken in favor of a “scientific” one which is concerned only with the tribal division of labor and which is offered prescriptively to fulfill the niches of said laborers. In other words, rather than taking Man as a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic Supreme Self who was divided into the varying modes of Man, Man is instead reduced to the offspring of monkeys—“ape-men” caught up in causality and subject purely to naturalistic forces. Let us call this view “horizontal Darwinian functionalism”.
Fascism is one such ideology that, while retaining some semblance of Traditional elements (though in a purely symbolic manner as opposed to a principial manner), appeals to the modern thinker Charles Darwin and his living disciples. Where Fascism diverges from Liberalism in its worship of Darwin, however, is that Fascism is at least consistent in its application of Darwin’s principles. To the Fascist, Man is still an animal, divided into breeds, with fit and unfit individuals who must prove their fitness through their might, such that those who triumph deserved to triumph while those who were conquered or fell short deserved to falter. Hence is the notion of “Social Darwinism”. (The more right-leaning factions of Liberalism, such as “classical liberalism”, right-libertarianism, and perhaps even paleo-conservatism, are inclined to the derivative philosophy of Social Darwinism as well, but only in an economic sense. The default example of this is the American Gilded Age, where the “elites” maintained that those who succeed financially earned it, deserved it, and were perhaps even predestined it, and the same to those who failed or wound up on the bottom of the social-economic totem pole. Yet the right-leaning Liberalism still reject Social Darwinism’s physical evolutionary elements (its racial implications), and thus no strand of Liberalism can claim to be consistent in the way that Fascism is when approaching it.)
Fascism thus is a society built around the exceptional individual. In this sense, Fascism is admirable in that it prefers a society based around the triumphant, the strong, the exceptional, and the victorious, as opposed to Liberal societies which enable willfully weak and effeminate men by exalting a society’s underlings and outcasts, making virtuous the plight of its “victims”. (In fact, let us make this quote-worthy: Whereas the right-wing society is built around the exceptional man, the left-wing society is built around the underling.) However, this does nothing to discount that Fascism remains spiritually hollow. That a Fascist society is built around the exceptional overclass is merely incidental, for it is led to this state by wrong view—a view limited to a microcosmic understanding. Moreover, when Fascism’s “exalted overclass” mentality is pursued to its maximum, it can come to rather egregious conclusions that yield horrendous results, since Fascism lacks the spiritual insight of morality necessary to disavow the unwholesome barbarism of the ape-man. Such conclusions might be that an inferior race or reduced subset of society (such as the disabled or mentally ill) must be eradicated in the name of strength and social-evolutionary progress, resulting in the systematic extermination of human life without just cause (i.e., genocide). By contrast, a Traditional society only finds it fitting to deprive human life either for the purpose of punishing intolerable crimes or during the waging of war. Yet even still, the Traditionalist understanding is that such justified acts of homicide are only undertaken out of necessity to reduce opportunity for further suffering and to expel sin, wickedness, or adharma from the world. The means are aesthetically unappealing, and no soul of good honor should truly desire them.
Fascism thus is a society built around the exceptional individual. In this sense, Fascism is admirable in that it prefers a society based around the triumphant, the strong, the exceptional, and the victorious, as opposed to Liberal societies which enable willfully weak and effeminate men by exalting a society’s underlings and outcasts, making virtuous the plight of its “victims”. (In fact, let us make this quote-worthy: Whereas the right-wing society is built around the exceptional man, the left-wing society is built around the underling.) However, this does nothing to discount that Fascism remains spiritually hollow. That a Fascist society is built around the exceptional overclass is merely incidental, for it is led to this state by wrong view—a view limited to a microcosmic understanding. Moreover, when Fascism’s “exalted overclass” mentality is pursued to its maximum, it can come to rather egregious conclusions that yield horrendous results, since Fascism lacks the spiritual insight of morality necessary to disavow the unwholesome barbarism of the ape-man. Such conclusions might be that an inferior race or reduced subset of society (such as the disabled or mentally ill) must be eradicated in the name of strength and social-evolutionary progress, resulting in the systematic extermination of human life without just cause (i.e., genocide). By contrast, a Traditional society only finds it fitting to deprive human life either for the purpose of punishing intolerable crimes or during the waging of war. Yet even still, the Traditionalist understanding is that such justified acts of homicide are only undertaken out of necessity to reduce opportunity for further suffering and to expel sin, wickedness, or adharma from the world. The means are aesthetically unappealing, and no soul of good honor should truly desire them.
It should be noted that I praise, on condition, Fascism’s exaltation of a society based around the exceptional man, calling it “admiral”, because in truth this is proper praxis for a Traditional society. However, where Fascism and true Traditionalism differ on this is that a Traditional society acknowledges that not every underling ought to be persecuted. The Traditionalist chooses the “middle way” between tolerance and persecution, using careful scrutiny and evaluation to discriminate those who are weak by choice from those who are weak by no fault of their own. In Nazi Germany, women were put to work in factories, and Jews, the disabled, and the mentally handicapped were encamped or put to death. Most would instinctively recognize such as cruel and immoral. Equally reprehensible, however, is the progressive society, where victimhood and disability are celebrated, such that there is no shortage of individuals turning their racial minority status, inverted sexual orientation, willful poverty, or mental illness, into a cause of celebration. It is to the extent that we even find “transabled” individuals appropriating the struggles of those who have lost their limbs, alongside a roaring “body positivity” movement in which those who lack the impulse control to put down the fork steal the spotlight from injured first responders and mutilated veterans. At the same time, those who choose to be poor, and those aliens who immigrate illegally, are sustained on government welfare, while those who are poor due to uncontrollable or unforeseen circumstances are left to bite the dust. What we find here is that the progressive society does not have enough resources to accommodate both real victims and usurpers, and so the former often suffer for the latter’s sake. The Fascist society, meanwhile, despite typically boasting a more robust economy, generally refuses to allocate its resources toward the bulk of its desperate. Yet we must recognize that we no longer live in the world of scarcity that defined ancient bronze and pre-axial age societies, who sacrificed their deformed children and sent the elderly into the woods to perish. As such, there is no need to starve out and eliminate the desperate as the Fascists do. Such cruelty was undertaken in a time in which societies could not afford to lend a charitable hand; their apathetic actions constituted a necessary evil, but such conditions of scarcity are no longer present. We must recognize that a society which is both healthy and prosperous is one in which the majority of its citizenry is strong and well-abled, since impoverishment and weakness are feared conditions rather than celebrated conditions. The healthy and prosperous society loses nothing by extending its charitable grace to those actually deserving it—those whose lowly status exists by no fault of their own. This is since such an upright society elects for the struggle of those genuinely and blamelessly suffering over usurpers, the latter of whom are permitted nothing and whose plight it spat upon and shamed rather than pitied.
A wise man I know who goes by the alias, “Vercingetorix” puts it best: “A society where everyone who can be strong, is strong, is a society that is not hindered by its own kindness and so it loses nothing by caring for the weak. However, it is unnatural for most of a society to be weak, and its kindness is hollow because if it ever stopped caring for the weak, it would no longer be able to perpetuate itself. Comfort without sacrifice and charity without gratitude is what created the ‘bugman’.” (For those unfamiliar, “bugman” is a slur referring to those living in over-populated urban conditions, often growing weak and sickly as a result of pollution, bad diet, and isolation from natural pressures.)
Speaking further on Fascism’s adoration of the triumphant: While Fascism is honorable to revere the heroes of old—men whose great feats, endurance, integrity, virtue, and unconquerable resolve in the face of evil, secured their place into historical memory—it will nonetheless find itself unable to erect monuments to new heroes in its own time. The Fascist knows the symbols, which are the statues and names he pays homage to, but he does not fully comprehend the symbols which should enable him to foster a new generation of heroes which might serve as the new archetypes of a new people who will erect new symbols in their honor. (The exaltation of “might is right” and of strength as supposedly the sole virtue out of which all other virtues fall, is ultimately a superficial notion, as we will see.)
>>Ch.2 Part A – Segment II, Subsegment B: Bifurcation of the Primordial Man vs Evolutionary Circumstance as the Basis of Caste
So let us rebuke this “horizontal Darwinian functionalism” then by bringing together the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. The following will reference extracts from an unpublished essay titled “Departure”, written by my friend and anonymous teacher whom I had often referenced in my essay, Finding God in the Void, as well as in Part D of this essay’s first chapter.
In various Indo-European traditions (which are of particular relevance to Western Fascists), there is a tale of a “cosmogenesis via the dismemberment of the divine personhood”. In early Vedic religion this is expressed in the “Purusha-Sukta, a hymn within the Rig Veda—the earliest book of Hinduism—detailing the death of Purusha and the creation of the world and humanity from his corpse,” and similarly in the “Bundahishn, a middle Persian Zoroastrian text, which details the creation of humanity via the death of the Primordial Man, Gayomard.” The Purusha-Sukta in particular depicts the partitioning of the Supreme Self or Primordial Man (Purusha) into the different castes as he is dissected: “His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Kshatriya, his thighs the Vaishya, from his feet the Sudra were born.” My teacher goes on: “The creation of the Vedic classes and their roles correspond to the roles of the figures within the Yasht; that being the tripartite functions of Indo-European society as put forth by George Dumezil. The Brahmins fulfill the same function as Mithra as both are priestly figures, the Kshatriyas fulfill the same warrior role as Thraetaona, and the Vaishyas correspond to Keresaspa with the function of commoners. The outlier was the presence of the Sudras or servants which were likely created to include non-Indo-Aryans into the society of the early Vedic civilization.”
Moreover, this partitioning of the Supreme Self or Primordial Man is not limited to the social division of Man, but even to the world in which he lives. The Purusha-Sukta explains: “From his navel the middle realm of space arose; from his head the sky evolved. From his two feet came the Earth, and the quarters of the sky from his ear. Thus, they set the worlds in order.” Similarly, in the Poetic Edda of Germanic myth: “Odin said: ‘Tell me this first, if your wits serve you well, if you know it, Riddle-Weaver: How did this Earth come to be, or Heaven; which one was first, giant?’ Riddle-Weaver said: ‘The Earth was made from Ymir's flesh; the rocks were made from his bones. The sky was made from his skull of that ice-cold giant; the sea was made from his blood.’”
From this, my teacher concludes: “The division of the Primordial Man into the different aspects of the world, such as the material aspects like the physical Earth and sky, and the social, with the partitioning of the Primordial Man into the different classes within society, expresses the concept of Oneness becoming manyness—that, for there to be many, there needs to be a basis of a Primordial One.”
This gets into the understanding of, as Praxius explains in our dialogues, that “Everything is bifurcated into a Greater and a Lesser mode or type: Reality into Greater and Lesser (Quintessential Reality and Temporal Reality), Humanity into Greater and Lesser (Patrician and Plebian), Patrician into Greater and Lesser (Priest and Warrior), Plebian into Greater and Lesser (Merchant and Peasant). Everything has an indefinitude of further bifurcations from which a Greater and Lesser mode or quality can be distinguished among it.” This stratification of the greater and lesser can be explained by recalling that those principles which are closer to Total Universality are more essential, whereas those which are more conditioned have acquired more relative properties. Simply put: essentiality is superior to relativity.
Thus, for the Traditionalist, the correct view is not that Paleolithic or Neolithic Man found his tribes in need of a variety of different niches of workers and thus divided the labor according to the ability of each type of man and woman. Rather, the Traditionalist view is that there is found in Man a series of “greater and lesser” bifurcations which exist to fulfill certain roles in the first place. Here, the former (Darwinian) position is materialistic and prescriptive, whereas the latter (Traditional) position is spiritual and descriptive. I say this because the Darwinian view holds that the material dispositions of Man dispensed the natural variety of men and women toward the fulfillment of a division of labor, and that these labor roles are assigned for the efficacy of the tribe; whereas the Traditional view holds that a genuine spiritual reality is directly expressed through the labor division present in such modes as caste and gender roles. (Bifurcation and caste will be discussed more in Part C of this chapter.)
>>Ch.2 Part A – Segment II, Subsegment C: A Teleological Rebuke of the Darwinian “Might is Right” Attitude
The Darwinian view we might say, in being Darwinian, is devoid of teleology; it is accidentalist, holding that the division of labor present in human civilizations arose only haphazardly, again that the niches of Man incidentally evolved in such a way that they were able to fill various tribal roles. Yet, if they evolved to fill these roles, is that not invoking teleology, unconsciously? Teleology is unavoidable; it is presumed the moment we ask toward what ends does something tend: To what final cause is it predisposed? It is the moving from “how” (the vehicle, or efficient cause) to “why” (the destination, or final cause). So then, why not adopt a view which is mindful of teleology in the first place? The Traditional view satisfies such a need for telos mindfully, holding, again, that Man was bifurcated numerous times and that these bifurcations are expressed in the form of Traditional gender roles and castes. (For more discussion on the teleology of evolution and a rebuke of naturalist accidentalism, see my essay, The Teleology of Evolution.)
From the Darwinian view of course comes the classically touted Fascist mantra of “might is right”, which we only briefly criticized earlier. Let us now examine it more closely: The Fascist appeals to “might is right” in the same sense that he might maintain the Darwinian notion of “survival of the fittest”, but such phrases, as we demonstrated, are teleologically void or “non-mindful of teleology”, so to speak. What are the actual ends of evolution? To say who or what survives because of its relative fitness to others, is merely an appeal to the efficient cause of evolution, but not to its final causes—its ends or telos. With teleology (as an inevitable fact of all things) not properly considered, any ideology put under the pretext of secularism will have to incorrectly construe its own pseudo-teleology to compensate. This is precisely what occurs when Fascism touts its mantra of “might is right”. This phrase in particular is, without realizing it, making a moral claim, and thus it is self-empowered in a skewed ontological and teleological sense. It is ontologically empowered in that it appeals to pseudo-macrocosm to find its justification, and it is teleologically empowered in that it begs the question, “What is good?”, which means to ask, “What is inherently good about these ends such that it tends toward them?” The error being made here is that Fascism has no actual spiritual or principial capacity to answer to ontological or teleological questions, and so the phrase “might is right” is taken to mean, in the crudest and most dispassionate sense, that all which triumphs is “good” and all which falter is “evil”, without regard for nuance or the macrocosm.
So then, all we must do to challenge this notion of “might is right” is to ask the Fascist, “Would the triumph of Christianity over Roman paganism, the triumph of the Germanic barbarians over the Romans, the triumph of the Huns over the Germanics, or the triumph of Liberalism and Marxism over Fascism in the Second World War, not all be examples of might which has overcome its enemies and therefore has proven itself right?” The Fascist may attempt to avoid answering this question by arguing that subversion was at play in these historical triumphs, creating some pithy excuse for the loss of that which he considers “right” independent of his mantra. Or perhaps he will argue that there is beauty in destruction and beauty in barbarism—a diversion he will surrender as soon as one invokes the destructive capacity of inferior races within/upon his homeland.
Ditching this pitiful mantra, the more appropriate conclusion we reach, exercising mindfulness, is that “might” is amoral; it is neither good nor evil, but is simply the efficient cause, the tool or the vehicle, which delivers one to either morally positive or immoral ends. Macrocosmically, we Traditionalists understand that history is cyclical, and there will be periods inevitably in which good is triumphant and in which evil is triumphant. It is simply our duty to preserve that goodness in the best times and to fight for its restoration it in the worst.
>Ch.2 Part A – Segment III: Inverted Original Transcendentalism
>>Ch.2 Part A – Segment III, Subsegment A: The Left’s Downward Orientation & Seeking of an Inverted Transcendence
The final degeneration, following the degeneration of horizontal Darwinian functionalism from vertical integrationism, is what can be called “inverted original transcendentalism”, the naming for which shall be explained toward the end of this subsegment.
Liberalism (particularly its most decrepit degeneration, progressivism) and Marxism (I shall here refer to progressivism and Marxism collectively as “the left” or “leftism”) both turn the vertical axis on its head, inverting it. The leftist is only a Darwinist insofar as he holds that Man evolved from the beasts, and that he secular, denying that there is a “vertical axis” to begin with. By contrast, Fascists, even if somewhat secular, still have a propensity for esotericism (even if of a grotesque and literalist kind, in light of their principial superficiality), restoring old religion, and appeal to tradition even if they lack full epistemic access to its principles. The leftist, however, not only denies entirely the notion of principial domains and the usefulness of good religion and tradition. The leftist, however, despite rejecting the vertical plane and the macrocosm, cannot escape the desire to access such through his own manmade vehicle.
As such, the leftist yet seeks a kind of transcendentalism as a philosophy. But without recognition of the Source of All Things, the leftist’s search for a transcendentalism is one which causes him to turn his head downward instead of up. Thus, his philosophy is of a “downward oriented” kind, aiming at the ego or self, as opposed to upwards toward Heaven. We see this when leftists speak of overcoming the humanly inclinations that purportedly constrain us. The leftist is so arrogant as to believe that humanity can expel its primal instincts and tribal niches—that we can expel implicit bias and tribalism (which manifests as racism, sexism, classism, and so forth), and that we can expel our violent and carnal tendencies. Yet no matter how hard he tries, the leftist finds this an impossible task to accomplish—an order too tall for the human species to fulfill—such that he will admit that humans possess “inherit bias”, that we (even babies) are “inherently racist”, or that “men are sexual predators”. Modern day “conservatives” would like to believe that these accusations against the nature of mankind are slanderous and untrue, but the reality is that they are very true. Tribalism, and all the fowl that it comes with, is an inextinguishable part of the unconscious mind. What separates the Liberal from the Fascist and the twain from the Traditionalist, is that the Fascist embraces Man’s animalistic or beastly side, the leftist rejects it, and the Traditionalist seeks to subordinate it to our spiritual nature.
I have often said that “Man is the synthesis of God and beast—the fusion of the Pneuma into the telluric husk”, and that how one approaches this synthesis is key. Some Traditionalists might believe that men once were gods and deteriorated from an immaterial status to a material one (though this view is quite esoteric and not palatable to most), while other Traditionalists might simply hold, as in the Christian tradition, that Man is the fusion of the “Divine breath” or “Pneuma” into the dust of the Earth: Essence taking form in Substance, Purusha shaping Prakriti. The Essence or Spirit is the Will, the body of substance is its representation to command, and thus the substantial body must be subordinated to the boundless Will of Spirit.
Meanwhile, the Fascist and leftist each typically believe that Man is only beast, and so the former does not fear to apply the dogma of Darwin to Man (while the latter is too cowardly to do so). “Embrace your racism,” the Fascist declares! “All other nations and races are inferior, for we are the fittest and we shall conquer them through our righteous might!” The leftist, however, is much further gone, in that he believes that Man can impossibly transcend his beastly aside and attain an artificially ascended status. This of course parallels the Luciferian’s Dark Enlightenment (i.e., “Become your own god”), hence the link between the left-wing and left-hand. Leftism inverts the right view of Traditionalism in the same way that Luciferianism or other forms of egoic and Antagonistic worship are inversions of good religion.
Leftism also runs with this idea that we can transcend our beastly side in that the leftist believes humans can transcend not just our beastly instincts, but all of our material conditions. This is the root of transgenderism, transracialism, transableism, transageism, transhumanism, and so forth. The common root “trans”—as in to transcend, to translate one’s status—gives this reality away: “Let us transcend gender, race, ability, age, and our very humanity,” they declare! Such nonsensical notions are the result of leftism’s arrogance and rejection of the vertical plane coming together. Having rejected the vertical plane, the leftist, yet desiring a philosophical transcendentalism, becomes confused and is forced to compensate for this confusion and patch together an iota of ontological consistency by “reinventing the wheel”, so to speak. That is, by constructing his own false vertical axis inside the horizontal axis. Unlike Traditionalism, which seeks the to propel Man up the vertical axis properly, leftism seeks the humanely introduction of the vertical axis from inside the horizontal axis so that Man can transcend within the context of his own secular world, and thus I call this view “inverted original transcendentalism”. This is the essence of the unwholesome side of the left-hand path. The political leftist implicitly believes Man can author his own divinity and ascend to it on his own terms—to achieve the equivalent of the “Dark Enlightenment”.
>>Ch.2 Part A – Segment III, Subsegment B: Dark Enlightenment
In speaking of the Dark Enlightenment and transcendence from our material conditions, I mentioned in my essay, The Paradox of Transgenderism, how Michael Knowles, said in a podcast episode titled I’m Pansexual on The Daily Wire’s Snapchat page, “This is one of these really insidious errors of modernity: The notion that your true self has nothing to do with what you look like, where you come from, any of your attributes, or what you do, your habits, your virtues, your vices, your inclinations, your desires—that’s not really you. Those are all just accidents: your sex, your race, your geography, your behavior. ‘I want the real person, man!’ By denying the importance of all those attributes, you have just erased the person. What else is a person, what else makes up his personality? All those things and a whole host of other things.”
Drawing the connection here: In Traditional religion, the notion of salvation or liberation is a transcendence of the individual from the material causes and conditions which contextualize their consciousness in the earthly life. We surrender our bodies and attachments to become either one with God, infinitely close to Him, or otherwise emersed in His raw presence. This would necessarily cause a dissolution of our egos and individual personhood, either partially or completely. The leftist, however, in denying the vertical plane, seeks to achieve this salvation or liberation in the material world, again supplanting an artificial vertical axis into the horizontal axis. Where the Traditionalist seeks to return to the Absolute in actuality, the leftist seeks to do so only symbolically. The conclusion here is that the leftist is in all likelihood motivated to pursue salvation or liberation by the same macrocosmic and spiritual forces that motivate the Traditionalist, but is too blinded by his secularity to pursue such liberation and transcendence via the proper routes.
Chapter 2, Part B: On the Use and Abuse of Time
The degeneration from proper view and proper praxis can be examined in various tripartite sets. In the previous chapter part, we discussed the three views of the human condition, which I have called vertical integrationism, horizontal Darwinian functionalism, and inverted original transcendentalism. The second tripartite set which we will discuss in this chapter part, is the degeneration in how history is evaluated and how the flow and quality of time is understood:
>Ch.2 Part B – Segment I: Cyclical & Qualitative Time, and Eternalism
The Traditional view of time is one which is qualitative and recurring. Such a view is qualitative as opposed to quantitative: In the earliest recorded chapters of history, years were only demarcated posthumously, but were not calendrically tracked in an observer’s own lifetime. One did not appeal to the “current year”—as it was not named—nor did one draw much distinction between the years which passed in their own lifetime except in cases of personal reference. One could live their entire life in an apparent stagnation, as if time was static, always rising in the morning to repeat the same day’s routine without fail, accompanied by little change in the events, identity, or folkways of one’s community and environment. But time did not just recur in the observer’s day-to-day, nor was such recurrence limited to the phases of the moon, the motion of the constellations, or the transitions between the seasons; rather, entire eras spanning mere tens to thousands of years were thought to “come back around”.
Examples of cyclical recurrence range from the symbolic repetition of short periods such as the Zodiacal months or the Chinese years of animals, to the grander era-defining “wheels of time” and their division. Initiations of such “wheels of time” are found in places across the globe, whether it be in the Greek Hesiodic ages, the beastly Nordic ages, the Vedic Yugas, or even in the Xiuhpōhualli or Tonalpohualli sacred to the Nahua and Maya in Mesoamerica. Each of these cultures treated history as like a wheel barreling down an endlessly high hill, which one could never hope to drive a spoke into. The latter most mention here, the Mesoamericans, gave their homage to this principle in perhaps the most pronounced manner, having totemically represented this principle in their Xiuhpōhualli or Tonalpohualli—literal stone calendars constructed in the shape of a circle with incremental markers used to track both the days of the microcosmic year and the years of the greater macrocosmic eras akin to the Vedic Yugas.
However, the Vedic model of time is perhaps the most detailed and sophisticated of them all, as it articulates a coverage spanning the most substantial reach of time and is inclusive of units whose range of sizes rivals that of the modern SI system—though the precise amount of time that these units represent is subject to debate. In the most liberal calculations, the Vedic model possesses units of time ranging in measurement from approximately 30 microseconds, a truti, to 311 trillion years, a maha-kalpa, or “Life of Brahman” (God), which represents time from the universe’s birth or “unfolding” (“Brahman” means “to expand” or “to unfold”) until its death or “refolding” back into the oneness of Brahman. Brahman’s Life is divided in 100 “Years of Brahman”, and a mere Day of Brahman is divided into 14 Manvantaras, and each Manvantara then into 71 Mahayuga. Each Mahayuga, depending on the calculation cited, lasts either 26 thousand, 60 thousand, or four million years, and consists of four Yugas of unequal length. We can best express this fact by dividing each Mahayuga into ten units, where the first four units of a given Mahayuga represent the Satya Yuga, the next three the Treta Yuga, the two after that the Dwapara Yuga, and the final unit the Kali Yuga. The Satya Yuga is equivalent to the Greek Hesiodic “Golden Age” or the Nordic “Age of Aesir”. Lasting the longest, it marks a period of complete virtue, spiritual consciousness, and prosperity inconceivable to us, which has been lost to the forgotten annuls of prehistory. The people of this time are said to have abided in perfected wisdom, possessed near-immortality, and lacked the need for social organization. (The etymology of “Satya” is “Truth” or “Reality”.) The Treta Yuga, equivalent to the Greek “Silver Age” or the Nordic “Age of Men”, is a degeneration from former era, in which a quarter of the qualitative goodness (one of the four legs of the table of Dharma) from the Satya Yuga has diminished. (The etymology of “Treta” is “three”, as three legs of Dharma remain.) In the Dwapara Yuga, equivalent to the Greek “Bronze Age” or Nordic “Age of Decline” (Fimbulwinter), half of said goodness has diminished. (The etymology of “Dwapara” is “beyond two” or “second”, implying two legs of Dharma remain.) And in the Kali Yuga, equivalent to the Greek “Iron Age” or Nordic “Age of Wolf” (Ragnarök), three quarters have diminished. (The etymology of “Kali” is “strife” or “discord”.) By the end of the Kali Yuga, the last leg of Dharma is presumably lost, with humanity having degenerated both physically and spiritually. Human life expectancies have waned short; the Earth has been despoiled of its resources and defiled with pollution, disease, and famine; the integrity of wildlife and crops withers; kings are thieves; good religion is forgotten; and all men quarrel with pointless war, sexual immorality, and hatred for their own kin.
The Kali Yuga, Iron Age, or Age of Wolf ends in violent catastrophe. According to the Vedas, Kali (the last avatar of Vishnu) comes and destroys all those who are not loyal to Vishnu (God). For the Norse, the gods wage a final battle against the forces of chaos, plunging the Earth into ruin. And though not mentioned, we see a similar scenario to both these traditions represented in Christianity, where Christ (the Son of God, and arguably the avatar of God) returns to cast Satan into the “Lake of Fire”, along with all those who have rejected Christ. In all traditions, restoration follows, whether it be by Kali who restores order (as all avatars of Vishnu do), by Lif and Lifthrasir who repopulate the Earth, or in the settling of a new Heaven upon the Earth. Such restoration marks the end of the current Mahayuga and the beginning of the next Mahayuga, and with it the initiation of a new Satya Yuga. And so, the cycle repeats, as it always has.
Noticeably, each successive age in the four-age Mahayuga cycle is one-fourth shorter than the previous age, and this signifies what can be described as the “acceleration of time”. This idea holds that time is perceived to be “compressed” the longer it goes on for—an observation many recount as they grow older: “Time flies by so quickly now, compared to when I was young!” In a collective sense, it signifies the decay of the “collective conscious” of “the people”, referring to the decline in virtue, morality, social values, and cultural fabric of a nation or civilization, which appears to grow worse more rapidly with time.
At play in the Yuga cycles, however, is a theme much more principial than just the symbolic effects of each age as they are observed at the microcosmic or humanly level. Let us thus examine the macrocosmic play: That is, in the macrocosmic, the “acceleration of time” refers to the decay of Consciousness with a capital C, wherein the Divine Mind condenses into increasingly “denser mental states”, such as ignorance, selfishness, anger, greed, lust, gluttony, and so forth, again, this occurring more rapidly with the progression of time. Recall that the conclusion of the position of “monadic cosmoconsciousness” or “idealist monism” is that the ultimate substrate of Reality is Mind. This is such that in the Hindu tradition, we find that Brahman as Awareness is the default axiom of existence, that Consciousness is the content and function of all matter—that which condenses into denser and denser states as time progresses, wherein time is the transformative evolution of the Divine Mind. For humans, who each take a share in Supreme Person (Paramatma), this shared Mind condenses into denser states, the result of which is more potent and worldly emotions, attachments, and misidentification, expressed as carnal desire, material greed, violent hatred, and other modes of egoic and spiritual delusion. We become caught up in the casualties of the world—its comings and goings—like animals, forsaking spiritual enlightenment for telluric indulgences. The result is that human suffering is heightened amidst our destructive wake, the Earth is despoiled by our fowl deeds, and our ignobility conditions us into more carnal and despicable rebirths. In the end, only those who have still held on to paths of spiritual elevation and who have sought virtue and wisdom will be spared and left to participate in the coming new order of all things. Whether such an era is settled by a class of Heroes who come to forge a new Golden Age, as the Greeks predict; or by a new chapter of mankind’s lineage, as the Norse predict; or by an incarnation from Heaven, as the Dharmics and Christians predict in the form of Krishna or Christ; the result is the same. The preordination of All Things will be reset from its distortions, the Divine Mind of Brahman will unfold once more, and God’s Plan shall be fulfilled and restored.
Praxius summarizes this common motif in his essay, The Verticality of God’s Plan:
“Even in the most rudimentary understandings, which result only from dogmatic interpretations of certain scriptures, there are already common themes: in the Abrahamic traditions, there is significant overlap in the symbols associated with end times that having to do with the fulfillment of prophecies which lead to Eternal Salvation and reveal the Divine Mind. There is to be a final ‘Golden Age’ or a paradisal millennium on Earth, after which the Last Judgment will be issued, and the familiar structure of Reality will be dismantled and replaced with a better ‘world to come’. In many cases it is also thought that there will be a generation of strife, hardship, decadence, or war prior to this paradisal age. Similar themes are found in the Zoroastrian tradition regarding the ‘destruction of evil’ at the end of time; however, in the Zoroastrian tradition in particular we find the beginnings of an even broader notion: a sequential set of thousand year periods, each with a similar ending in a climactic catastrophe of popular heresy and decay, after which the world is said to be returned to the state of Pure Goodness in which it was initially created.”
(Note that although the Abrahamic faiths believe in an eternal “ever-after” once the cycle of Abraham and his descendants and traditions has expired, that the Abrahamic faiths still qualify as assenting to cyclical time in that they yet believe there is at least one cycle of time to consider in-between two periods of eternity. This will be expanded upon later.)
The overarching theme in all Traditional frameworks of time is subsequently explained:
“In the esoteric sects of these traditions, whose primary focus is Gnosis and true universal knowledge as opposed to dogma, there is an emphasis on similar cycles: a beginning period of true Goodness, a decay from this initial state, and a subsequent return to the initial state as this Goodness prevails over various forms of Evil; this Goodness is often defined as the ‘unity with God’, and its triumph over Evil - which, in this case, means disharmony with God - along with the fulfillment of the aforementioned prophecies, is attributed to the fruition of a temporal scheme that was established at the beginning of time - in other words, God’s Plan.”
Cyclical time is thus a view which goes part and parcel with the Traditionalist mission to align with the predestination of All Things, or what we call God’s Plan. The return to a state of pure qualitative goodness at the end of a cycle of decay, is in fact a restoration from a world polluted by principial or archetypal skewing to one in which all symbols fulfill their archetypes through ontological propriety—and this ontological propriety, which is the default mode of Being, is again synonymous with God’s Design, for it is the original design, the original way of Being. Moreover, the triumph of God’s Plan and its fulfillment in the restoration of His original Design is inevitable, for it cannot be averted or thwarted by any power; God is Supreme. Either the goodness of God’s Plan will reign victorious in its triumph over evil once and for all, as the Abrahamic faiths tell us, or it will come back to defeat evil again and again, time after time, forever, as all the other formalisms tell us. Even the entire universe, as it decays through entropic forces—such that whether its demise be through some mundane “heat death”, “Big Crunch”, or “false vacuum collapse”—the universe will be reborn anew, either as a Heaven on Earth, or as a new Maya (dream) within the Godhead. In the Hindu tradition, after a Life of Brahman has passed, Vishnu transforms into Shiva (these three are triune aspects of the Supreme God in Hindu), performs His Tandava dance, and stomps the universe into nothingness in an event known as Pralaya, only for Vishnu to then dream of a new universe as Brahman open His eyes and unfolds from Oneness into manyness yet again.
So why dread the decay? Not merely this age, but all of Creation shall be recycled! The rot perishes tomorrow, but God’s Plan is fulfilled eternally! The true essence of cyclical time then is that history is eternal, either surviving through endless recurrences or a in a grand finalistic eternality after an interim cycle has passed. Thus, history has neither a definable beginning nor an end; only God is Alpha and Omega. And so, the true Traditionalist then must be an eternalist, and must certainly not be conceited into hoping that he might ever pause time at some desired point, for the nature of time is to be ever-transformative and ever-lived.
>Ch.2 Part B – Segment II: Linear, Quantitative, & Entropic Time
“It should tell you everything you need to know about a man, if he thinks the desire to be better is the same thing as a wanting to go backwards. It shows that he can see that the world around him is wrong, but he lacks the hope that anything can get better. The entire history of humanity is shaped by the men who never stop trying to make the world around them better, and to lose hope is to surrender your place in determining what the future looks like.” – a wise man I know who goes by the alias, “Vercingetorix”
>>Ch.2 Part B – Segment II, Subsegment A: The Semantics of Linear Time
“Linear time” is the counter to cyclical time. Rather than imagining that time recurs cyclically, even if for only one cycle (as the Abrahamic traditions do), those viewing time as linear follow history like a line, either ascending from an indignant past to an enlightened future (as the progressives believe), or descending from an ideal past to an unsalvageable future (as the “false traditionalists” believe).
Formerly, as we have noted, time was treated qualitatively, and for most of recorded history it was experienced almost statically, with little variation in the content of the day-to-day living experience for the average person. In the most primitive of cultures, time was not even formally measured; its only quantitatively ascribed divisions were still ultimately of a qualitative kind, referring to obvious and substantial changes in the natural environment, such as those—as previously noted—pertaining to the cycles of the moon, constellations, and seasons. The most primitive of these cultures even lacked the concept and vocabulary with which to articulate such notions as “past”, “present”, or “future”, since the only conscious reality is, most viscerally, here and now—an eternally evolving present, the point in which we are aware and in which that awareness is forever evolving.
Time as a concept only began to take on a more quantified nature in the last two millennia, where we have made its measurement a science and sought to divide every cycle into arbitrary and discrete units which can be tracked—units which have little substantive quality to them: seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, decades—What visceral or substantive contents do these point to? They do not aim at the moon and the waning or waxing of its visage, neither at the comings and goings of the constellations, and neither at the climatic transitions between the seasons or harvest periods. This breaking of time into quantifiable units, while not inherently improper praxis, happens to be in its current employment a demonstration of mankind’s attempts to capture and control the essences of all that is around us, to assert the power of our egos over natural forces. In the latest age, this has led to a fundamental change in how we understand the very principle of time. Time is no longer the visceral and transformative reality of Awareness, but has been relegated to the domain of the dull and empirical, as has likewise happened to the principle of space, the force of gravity, and other such principial realities: They are all gathered into the grasp of Man’s hubris, not experienced holistically, but boxed into our articulated parameters such that they satisfy our desire for mastery over the elements and our envy of the Divine for ultimate knowledge.
And this is not to say that it is unseeming or unbecoming that a civilization ought to acquire a scientific understanding of the principles which define the ordination of their environment and the causations within. On the contrary, such a development comes with myriad advantages and can express, in its initial stages (especially the early European Enlightenment and all era preceding), a profound appreciation of the world’s wonders and a wholesome curiosity of its intricate inner workings. In the most abstract sense, it is Consciousness taking joy in its own contextualization. Or more plainly, it is God’s creations admiring the work of the Divine Architect. In fact, men of faith who were participating in the European Enlightenment were motivated by a “religious rationalism”. That is, they trusted that God had fashioned a rational world which could be understood through investigation conducted by our inner logos, which comes from the Logos (a name for Christ).
Our quarrel then is not with the rationalists, and the error in how time is presently perceived is not in the fault of empiricism as an adopted practice. Rather, the error lays in the adoption of a dualism between the physical and metaphysical. A right view of the physical and metaphysical domains is that of the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm: a recognition that the former is merely a “zoomed-in” perspective of the latter. A linear understanding of time, then, is one which arises when the physical is detached from the metaphysical, when dualism is adopted at the cost of proper monism and its metaphysical insights.
The consequence of this “empirical dualism” is that the principle of time, in a physics sense, has found itself residing in conjunction with the scientific understanding of entropy. The result is that that time is seen as uni-directional, always graduating or tending toward one end and in one fashion, as if time is an arrow, and either evolving (as in Darwinian evolution) or devolving (as in thermodynamics). But if the focus of such evolutions and devolutions is on systems, whether that be the naturalism of Darwin or the entropy of thermodynamics, why is it that time itself is seen as the culprit, as if intertangled with entropy? I would argue a right view is that it is only systems which change, while time is merely the lens or vehicle enabling such change. Time itself does not literally evolve or devolve; such is a reification. What is worse, however, is that in the modern view, time has become not simply quantified but commodified—particularly in the West, where, in the entropic sense, it is thought that each man tangibly possesses a limited quantity of time in his hands which is rapidly expelling like heat from objects shut in a freezer, such that he must utilize this time before it has all dissipated! The irony of course is that time cannot be commodified. No man can buy or sell it, nor can he actually use it as if it is a resource akin to raw materials, currency, services, or performative abilities. (Even one’s charm has more resource, substantially speaking, than time!) All he can do is abide in it and act accordingly.
>>Ch.2 Part B – Segment II, Subsegment B: A Rebuke of the False Traditionalists and the Luddites & Primitivists
Having earlier mentioned that the intertwining of time and entropy as concepts might be taken in either the evolutionary or devolutionary senses, let us first confront those who apply the latter (the devolutionary sense) in their historicity and politick: the self-proclaimed “traditionalists” (who are not true Traditionalists). They promulgate an unhistorical view which posits that the qualitative goodness of the ages can only decline forever, and that our only recompense is to dial back the clock and restore former conditions. If this viewpoint is to hold true to the empiricism that it stems from, then it is laughable, as it is a fruitless plight against the unstoppable march of entropy. “Time halts for no man,” we are warned! This is precisely why leftists deride the modern right-wing. However, if leftists adhere to this same doctrine of linear time, then they are not merely also fools, but naively suicidal: For the leftists are trying to accelerate entropy, all while being blissfully in denial that conditions are qualitatively decaying! Somehow, things can only evolve, they believe! Again, both are fools: The modern right-wing is in a battle against the endless march of time, while the left-wing is trying to hasten its march! Yet I will concede that it is seemingly easier to accelerate entropy than to reverse it—though both are nonsensical endeavors.
Nonetheless, the macrocosmic error that the false traditionalists of the modern right-wing make is that they fail to see beyond the current age or cycle that we are in. They are correct that for millennia now, humanity has been in moral decline, while the magnitude of human suffering and destruction caused to the Earth only increases. Some even admit the uncomfortable reality that we are currently living in a Kali Yuga, Iron Age, or Abrahamic “End Times”. But what they do not realize is that this is a cause not for sorrow, but for anticipatory celebration: “Behold the good news, for if this is the Iron Age, then the next Golden Age is nearly upon us!” We know that the qualitative goodness of time is not condemned to decline forever, so why fret? The goodness is destined to be restored.
Yet we must be careful with the use of this term, “restored”. As mentioned, the qualities of the former Golden Age or the “ever-before” are inconceivable to us, and with the arrival of a new Golden Age or “paradisal millennium” (as in Christianity), “the familiar structure of Reality will be dismantled and replaced with a better ‘world to come’.” Whatever comes in the next age will be beyond any historical reference which we have epistemic access to. Nothing which we have known in the past and called “traditional” can or should be restored, for all which is formerly known is a degeneration of some former qualitatively superior age beyond our reach to know. “If only we could go back to X!”, the false traditionalists cry, yet every point in recorded history which the false traditionalists yearn to return to has decayed from something prior and is a symptom of that decay. The most extreme among these false traditionalists are the Luddites and the primitivists, who seek to cast us all back to preindustrial times or even the stone age. (As we will see, they make the same error as the progressives, in confusing technological advancement with societal and ideological change.) Yet, whether it is the previous century, the medieval era, classic antiquity, or the Paleolithic era, that any of the false traditionalists seek to return us to, none of them can answer how it is that they would somehow “freeze” time in their chosen era, never allowing it to advance an inch further. The false traditionalists are like fish caught in a downward flowing stream who desire only to swim against the current until they have reached a certain point. But who has ever seen a fish miraculously hold itself in place against the tide of gravity? Moreover, this fish has never known the mountaintop lake from which this stream is sourced. If it did, it would swim far beyond the highest point that it has yet summited!
I call out the Luddites and the primitivists in particular as they make a grave error—an error which—as Guillaume Faye writes in a short essay, Le traditionalisme: voilà l’ennemi (Tradition: this is the enemy)—manifests as the “confusion between the ‘modernity’ of European technological-industrial civilization and the ‘modern spirit’ of egalitarian and Western ideologies”. In truth, the advancement of humanity—technological or otherwise—is inevitable; it is in our nature: Wherever there is a cunning man who faces himself a problem, he will devise a tool to solve it or render its ease. Wherever there is a man who has suffered and found inspiration, he will issue forth that which is valuable and unseen before. And wherever there is a man who looks around and witnesses a suffering among his people, he glorifies them in casting new light onto the shade. So let us dispel this myth that technological advancement is to blame for the rot of this age—this myth that the two are inextricably linked with one another:
While the Luddites and the primitivists certainly offer valuable criticisms regarding how such technological revolutions as the foundation of agriculture, the rise of manufacturing, urbanization, industrialization, and digitization, have all negatively impacted the quality of human existence and Earth’s ecosystems, they neglect to speak on the undeniable advantages and benefits that these revolutions have enabled in those same capacities: ranging from the erection of city planning and transit systems which readily unite tribes and shield humanity from the elements, to the coordinated eradication of pests which threaten harvests, to the breakthroughs in medicine which saves good men from common ailments. Nor do the Luddites and primitivists speak about the non-technological secondary developments which these technological advancements have enabled as a side-effect—cultural achievements which the false traditionalists odal over in their lust for aesthetics: those in the visual arts, in architecture, in music, in literature, in historiography, in philosophy, in religion, in science, and so forth. A technologically-enabled civilization is one which has greater capacity to solve problems and to advance the expression of its traditions through the arts as it gains insights both material and spiritual through the studious development of its various disciplines. Thus, to condemn those periods in which the developed or industrialized world made its well-deserving contributions, which symbolically enshrine and pay homage to its traditions in the erection of magnificent monuments, in the construction of humbling cathedrals, in the harboring of imposing ships, in the smithing of iron cannons, in the pen-stroking of thoughtful literature, in the orchestration of wonderous brass symphonies, in the rational investigation of natural wonders, in the curious exploration of distant lands, in the humble contemplation of religious dogmas—to condemn that which endowed all these the privilege to come about, is to condemn the very acting spirit of Tradition itself, to devalue it. It is to be Anti-Traditional by all accounts. And certainly, to accuse that acting spirit of Traditionalism found in the industrialized European hegemony as being “progressive” or “degenerate”, simply because it happens to incline with the moral decay and ideological decline of the age, is to disfigure that spirit of Tradition. And moreover, to turn one’s back in this regard on the pinnacle of European hegemony, is to dishonor and abandon Tradition. How demoralizing, to shame one’s heritage and to condemn all its possible futures! Is there not hope for that indominable European spirit?
Providing now Faye’s full quote: “At the heart of its discourse, traditionalism maintains an absurd confusion between the ‘modernity’ of European technological-industrial civilization and the ‘modern spirit’ of egalitarian and Western ideologies (which are arbitrarily linked to each other). Thus traditionalism disfigures, devalues (sometimes to the profit of an idealized ‘traditional’ Third World), and abandons the Western and American spirit, the very genius of European civilization.”
Rebuking them further:
“Only, contrary to the progressivist doctrines, traditionalism cultivates a profoundly demoralizing pessimism toward the world. This pessimism is of exactly the same type as the naive optimism of the progressivists. It proceeds from the same mentality and incorporates the same type of vanity, namely a propensity to verbose prophecies and to set oneself up as a judge of society, history, and the like.
This type of traditionalism, in its tendency to hate and denigrate everything in the ‘present day,’ does not only lead its authors to bitterness and an often unjustifiable self-conceit, but reveals serious contradictions that make its discourse incoherent and unbelievable.”
As Faye tells us, the false traditionalists adhere to these two notions: “1. Social life must be governed by ‘Tradition,’ the forgetting of which brings about decadence. 2. All that relates to our time is darkened by this decadence. The further back one goes in the past, the less decadence there is, and vice versa.” But the real Tradition of European spirit is such: “The European spirit, or that in it which is the greatest and the most civilizing, was optimistic and not pessimistic, exteriorized and not interiorized, constructivist and not spiritualistic, philosophical and not theological, open to change not settled and complacent, creator of its own traditions and forms or immutable ideas, conquering and not contemplative, technical and urban and not pastoral, attached to cities, ports, palaces, and temples and not to the countryside (the domain of necessity), etc.”
We must then make, as Faye does, the distinction between the false traditionalist and the “constructivist” who is the true Traditionalist—the one who is optimistic for the future even in the darkest times, and who, inspired by this optimism, labors for the good times to come again. It was not the pessimists who guided Europe out of the Dark Ages, but the monks and abbots who devoted their lives to chronicling Europe’s history and myths so that they would not be lost, the nobles who carved new empires from the withering carcass of Rome, the daring minds of the Renaissance who sought to glorify the works of their precursors and who brought forth a new chapter of European glory in their honor. When there was famine, the peasants still toiled the fields so that there would yet be bread. When there was disorder, brave knights rose to quell the insurrection of invaders and put down the plunderers. And when in the lands there was godlessness, Godly men labored for generations to erect their own stone towers to Heaven, each man unable to foresee the end product of his own efforts, but knowing their cause would be fruitful in the end.
I leave you with this: Time cannot be frozen, the past cannot be resurrected, and our salvation does not lay extinct in the slumbering annuls of history. Accepting this is the first step in moving away from false traditionalism and views of linear time. So let us condemn those pessimists who believe, in the linearly historic sense, that history only qualitatively decays forever, and who confuse the triumphant advancements of civilization as being synonymous with this decay. Yet let us be somewhat forgiving, for this naivety is at least partially forgivable as a light-ignorance, in that the false traditionalists have as their only scope of reference the last six thousand years of recorded civilization, from the Axial Age onwards. The progressives, however, deserve no forgiveness in this regard, as they are most profoundly ignorant—perhaps to the point of active malice—as they are utterly blind to the decay of their own time, whether supposed provisional or eternal. Nonetheless, that humanity has been changing its conditions for all of history, is a testament that time is fluous—an ever-transformative evolution of the omnipresent Divine Awareness and its humanly contexts in the microcosm. So let us look toward the future, not as the progressives who seek to plunge us deeper into the muck of the Kali Yuga, but as those hopeful that the Golden Age is just over the horizon, waiting to be embraced like the morning sun!
>>Ch.2 Part B – Segment II, Subsegment B: A Rebuke of the Progressives
And speaking of those so-called “progressives”, the most degenerated residue of the Liberals—they, as previously mentioned, likewise maintain a linear view of time, but theirs is of an incline instead of a decline, an optimism instead of a pessimism, a sort of “temporal Darwinism” that holds that the condition of humanity can only evolve and improve forever, that our salvation always lays in the future of tomorrow, and that the current age is always qualitatively better than the former. While we true Traditionalists are also enthusiastic about the future, knowing that the Golden Age is on the horizon, we are still cognizant, as the false traditionalists are, of the rot in human civilization which has been slowly infesting and devouring the world for thousands of years and which will still be with us tomorrow. Hope does not summon miraculously at the next day’s dawn as with the croak of the morning rooster, but must be toiled for! It is a hope to come, one which is ushered in by the Heroes of the next age, brought about on the back of much great suffering and an apocalyptic restoration of the order of all things.
But this is something that the progressive cannot conceive of. Tell a progressive that we are in the Kali Yuga, that there is much work to be done before paradise can be at hand, and he will either be shocked or in abject denial. He will say, “Nonsense, this is already the Golden Age of humanity! And the gold of tomorrow will bear twice the shimmer! Just look at all the science, technology, and equality we have achieved!” And this reveals his mind all too well: His assessment of the quality of an age is purely quantitative (a trait of the linearly historical mind), measured in terms of how many discoveries we have made, how many inventions have been produced, how many bills enumerated with “rights” were legislated. Not only do the progressives make the same error as the false traditionalists, assuming that social and technological advancements are inextricably linked with qualitative goodness of the age, but moreover, if we were to play the game of the progressives ourselves, it would undo the fantasy they have painted: By the numbers, there are more slaves today than in any other recorded time. There likewise is more poverty, more famine, more hunger, more murder, more racial strife, more rape, more theft, more pollution, more extinction of wildlife, and we are consuming resources most rapidly than ever before. How’s that for “progress”? What has all this science and legislation truly achieved?
But the progressive will not hear this. To him, those who lived in former times, having had a better grip on their heritage, values, and culture—to the progressive, they are ignorant peasants, oppressed victims, unruly tyrants, and brutish barbarians. The progressive, following his religion of Conflict Theory, comes to believe that all of humanity up until the Liberal age was defined on the basis of violence and oppression alone and that all former men were “bigoted”, yet he cannot say why any of this was as it was. The positive function or purpose of this violence or “bigotry” does not concern him, only that it is an uncomfortable notion to him and therefore must be admonished. From the present he sits atop the kingly saddle of his high horse and judges all the pages of the history books with a smug arrogance. His virtues are hollow, in that he cannot see good in men whose values or actions he personally disagrees with. His ethics by which he appeals to judge all the former world are unfounded; he will admit that he is a moral relativist and then in that same breath lambasts and persecutes the “bigots” with the zealotry of an inquisitor casting out heretics—the heretics being those who have not confessed their faith for the Liberal religion. His mantra is thus: “Formerly, all the world was insane! But I am enlightened.”
The relativism of the progressive’s value framework is of peculiar note and one which acts in conjunction with their quantitative assessment of time. How many times have you heard one exclaim the likes of, “It’s the current year; isn’t it time we did X?”? What we gather from this statement is that the progressive’s value relativism is also subject to a linear temporality, wherein the necessity and urgency of adopting some new, unhistorical, invented value from their ideology’s ever-increasing repertoire of values, increases with time. Those Liberals who refuse to continuously shift their ideals leftward and adopt the newest progressive values, with the passage of time, are left behind and then scolded by the latest iteration of the progressives, accused of “not being progressive enough”. It would seem the mantra, “Formerly, all the world was insane!”, also applies to the older phases of their own kind!
Lionel, a great thinker and friend of mine—though an adherer to linear time himself—outlines the runaway train that is the progressive’s temporal value shift and the abandonment of all those who cannot keep pace. First, he quotes Pierre Joseph Proudhon: “I dream of a society in which I would be guillotined as a conservative.” Then some commentary. (I omitted the parts where Lionel expresses a sympathy for linear history, as they would disrupt the narrative.) I will leave you to reflect on this:
“Proudhon was cunning enough to wish for the inevitable. It’s a great way to look intelligent, but I suppose there is some intelligence in predicting the future. Proudhon would have been walked along the scaffolding, and his reactionary head would have been lopped off, just as he thought.
…
Even the most radical revolutionaries will one day be marched to the wall for betraying the spirit of the revolution. It is the tragedy of the TERF. They’re already being blown over by the winds of history, soon to be considered just another old fogey. They’ll be buried in the same historical graveyard as de Maistre. If you’re marching towards progress, you better keep marching, and certainly never admit you’re tired. Or else the hounds will nip at your heels.
The TERFs will lose, inevitably. They planted their feet. They admitted they were tired. The gravest sin. I hope you’re ok with the term ‘birthing person’ and I really hope you’re fond of ‘people with penises’ being allowed into women’s prisons. I think it’s hysterical, all of the things fought for in the name of women’s rights, suddenly under threat. Womanhood is such a big tent now that it includes men, and that is beyond funny to me. I like laughing at [a] clown world. Unfortunately, there are some who falsely believe that laughing at the clowns will reveal the absurdity of it all. They are under the assumption that if we point out the unreasonableness of clown world, all the clowns will suddenly take off their red rubber noses. They think that it is useful to point out the hilarity of allowing men to enter battered women’s shelters under the guise of women’s rights. It is pretty funny; they’re right. But it doesn't matter that it’s laughable. It being absurd doesn’t mean it won’t succeed. It will….
It’s funny that the leviathan you’ve created will inevitably consume you, but it’s tragic that pointing it out won’t stop it from consuming you.”
>Ch.2 Part B – Segment III: Finalism & “End of History” Theory
>>Ch.2 Part B – Segment III, Subsegment A: Gross Finalism
Finalism is the logical endpoint of doctrines invested in linear time. If cyclical time promotes eternalism, linear time is where that sense of uncountably long and qualitative eternity begins to decline as the infinite becomes quantified—as it becomes countably finite. And what then is the conclusion of that which is finite, if not to have an end to commence at—a point of finality to terminate in?
For the false traditionalist, it is that arbitrarily chosen and desired point in historical memory which he seeks to return to and to restore the conditions of in the present era, forever. The false traditionalist, should he have his way, would plant his feet like the roots of a tree into the alluvial hill of rolling history and say, “The ground erodes no more!” Yet at best he only staves off the decay a little longer, slowing it down, and at worst he contributes to the decay, for he does not understand that the forces responsible for decay have been with him all along—that he is a system of this decay, and that even the historical era of yore which he romanticizes was tainted with the same essence of this decay as that which stenches his nostrils today. For if today our yards are filled with king cobras and pythons, then yesterday it was the infants of these terrible serpents, and the day before that it was the eggs! How far must one look back to find the yard barren of pests?
For the progressive, finalism is an unrealized point at which the march of “progress” has exhausted itself entirely. It lays, as with the false traditionalist’s conception of finality, in the domain of fantasy—but perhaps more so in that it more recently appeals to childish dreams of a utopian sci-fi future where every problem has been magically solved by technocracy, globalism, and diversity. Formerly, the Liberal was not so insane as this. His “End of History” theory was at least somewhat respectable, having just emerged from a global war and finding a new ideology reigning supreme amidst a world where borders have seemingly become forever locked and diplomacy has forbidden all war. Yet even the mere decades following have proven him wrong, where new wars and insurgencies spring up here and there. (Will he ever accept the timeless constant of conflict and strife?) All the serious Liberal scholars have now abandoned this ridiculous theory, which is so historically limited, contingent upon a single world event! But now what occupies this finalistic desire is a most hysterical, feminine, and childish notion strung up by the most deluded residue of the Liberals: The progressives dream of a world where men no longer have struggles, where there is no longer scarcity and therefore no longer an economy—a world in which there is no conflict between men, where men cannot have enemies. The progressive will never achieve this finality for two reasons: Firstly, his feminine utopianism disregards the beastly side of human nature. It seeks to transcend humanity to a state beyond our natural conditions, beyond the vitalistic forces which have always invigorated us—beyond our nature as tribesmen and predators. It is, as I have said, the path of direct-access, a false transcendence into a false godhood. Would it not be more sensible to subordinate this beastly craving for conflict to a spiritual calling for the vanquishment of evil, the expelling of adharma, the annihilation of sin—as is our macrocosmic designation? (If only he recognized the macrocosm and the Divine Pneuma within!) But secondly, the progressive cannot reach his finality for the same reason that the false traditionalist cannot: They are both running out of time. The Kali Yuga or Iron Age will potentially expire soon (Robert Bolton supposed the year 2082), and with it the same rot which has enabled them both!
>>Ch.2 Part B – Segment III, Subsegment B: Gross Finalism vs Abrahamic Finalism
Yet, let us be clear to distinguish this degenerated finalism of the modern ideologues from that finalism which is present in the Abrahamic faiths. While it is true that the latter has hope for an eternal “ever-after” and might be called finalistic or even fatalistic in this regard, it is this very notion of an eternal “ever-after”, as well as an eternal “beginning” or “ever-before”, which separates Abrahamism from the finite doctrines of the modern ideologues. Moreover, Abrahamism does not reject cyclical time, but makes its focus of temporality a single cycle—that of Abraham. Moreover, if both this cycle and the ever-before and the ever-after are more rigorously examined, we come to the conclusion that the cycle of Abraham is itself divided into smaller cycles, and when taken as a whole “illustrate the quintessential archetype of a complete cycle, which is transposed onto the principle of time itself, creating an eternal sequence of consecutive cycles with more or less the same qualitative structure.”
As Praxius explains in his essay, The Verticality of God’s Plan:
“The notion of cyclical history and the division of eras into particular archetypes is a significant theme among the various proper Traditions. In some cases, these eras signify different stages of a finite transient period between two eternals: the beginning and the ever-after. This interpretation, however, we can safely say, is simply the application of an eternal verity onto a precise window of time as opposed to the principle of time itself; the "beginning" and "ever-after", as we have put it, rather than being eternal verities in themselves, are simply beyond the frame of reference applied in this interpretation. This is to say that the state of Reality, in the time of the beginning and the time of the ever-after, is either not important to those to whom this interpretation applies, or are completely unidentifiable when compared to the specified eras in this interpretation. When the totality is considered, however, it becomes clear that the eras themselves, of this apparent transient period, are mere incarnations of a cyclical archetype as opposed to unique instances in themselves. The value we must extract from them, therefore, cannot be in the specific events that transpire in these eras, but instead in their respective qualitative states of which these events are indicative. These qualitative states correspond in turn to their respective cyclical archetypes, which, when considered in their totality, illustrate the quintessential archetype of a complete cycle, which is transposed onto the principle of time itself, creating an eternal sequence of consecutive cycles with more or less the same qualitative structure. There is no temporal beginning, only a cyclical one, and likewise this applies to the end of a cycle, or the ever-after, which is, in reality, only the beginning of a new cycle altogether.”
In our dialogues, he expands on the meaning of the phrase “eternal verity” and gives further insight to the support that the Abrahamic faiths still support cyclical time, even if they do so in an improper way:
“An ‘eternal verity’ is synonymous with an ‘eternal non-variable’, the eternal verity here being alluded to is the principle of cyclical time. The Abrahamic view of cyclical time is that such a cycle occurs once, preceded and succeeded by two temporally eternal statuses of non-cyclicality, namely, what I have referenced as ‘the beginning’ and the ‘ever-after’, respectively. Prior to the creation of the world, there was one eternal status, and then after all the temporal events have played out, there will be another eternal status, according to Abrahamic cosmogony, and the temporal events themselves inhabit the "space" in between these two eternals. According to this view, there is only one cycle, meaning that the principle of cyclism is not applied to the principle of time, but to a certain window of time between two eternals, meaning that there is no eternal verity applied to time, which is a logical inconsistency. Either there is eternality, such as in principial reality, or there is cyclicality, such as we know to be in temporal reality, as we have discussed, and because in Abrahamism we find the principle of the cycle applied to this specific window of time, we can safely conclude that Abrahamic cosmogonists do not reject cyclical time, but they do not integrate it at the level of principiality and are unconcerned with any time period outside of the cycle of Abraham and his traditions. They make the more or less unsupported assumption, through such a narrow focus, that any time outside of their point of focus, through its irrelevance to Abrahamism, must be of a different eternal quality altogether, instead of a repetition of an even broader cycle.”
Chapter 2, Part C: The Scope of the Common People
The third tripartite set which we will discuss in this chapter part, is the degeneration in how the collective social body is viewed. This discussion will circle back to points on caste.
>Ch.2 Part C – Segment I: Children of the First Man & Traditionalist Universalism
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment I, Subsegment A: Ancestral Lineages & The Proximity of Our Ancestors to the Divine or First Man
(As a warning, this segment will veer off course from its original direction. This is intentional, providing unique insights into secondary Traditional beliefs regarding historicity and spirituality. Discussion on the political implications of the Traditionalist view, however, will be delayed until the end of the next subsegment, where I will contrast Traditionalism’s “imperium” with Fascism’s nationalism, and again in the last subsegment of this segment where this classical imperialism of Traditionalism will be contrasted with the leftist conceptions of cosmopolitanism and globalism.)
There are various means by which a society can interpret the underlying unicity of its people—the “quintessential humanely principle”, if you will. Traditional models typically appeal to the idea that all men are descendant from a source of Divinity. This ranges from tribal superstitions which posit that all men are the creation of an animalistic spirit, to those holding that men are the literal descendants of gods, and even those simply positing a common ancestor in an archetypal “first man” who was the direct creation of the Divine. The latter is found in Vedic myth with the first man, Manu; in Norse myth with the first man-woman pair, Ask and Embla, who were created by three gods from washed-up wood; and in Christianity with Adam and Eve, who were created by God from soil and a rib bone. Other myths might more narrowly point to a mystical homeland—an origin story which is symbolic of a specific tribe or nation’s common identity, such as is the case for the Nahua tribe, the Mexica, better knowns as the Aztecs, who tell of their struggles as they emerged from forgotten lands of “Aztlan” in the northwest, migrating south into Mexico’s central valley.
The principial theme of all such mythical narratives is that each man, quite literally, is not an island. That is, each man does not exist on his own in a particularized, disconnected, or purely individuated manner, as if he were a “separate creation”, but owes his existence to a common lineage which he shares with all other men—or at least with all men of the same ethnic identity. We might then call this view “Traditionalist universalism”, so as to distinguish it from the cosmopolitan globalism prevalent in modern Liberalism. Now I will diverge and examine some interesting implications of this notion, starting with the esoteric “decay of consciousness” theory of history:
In such a foundational lineage, a man reveres a long line of ancestors, wherein each former generation is valued more greatly than their younger counterparts, and with the “first man” or the earliest generations in such a line being valued most greatly of all.
We often find that this greatness is exemplified symbolically—literally, with numbers. That is, in Abrahamism for instance, the eldest patriarchs of the Old Testament or Torah, who lived before the time of the great Flood or Deluge, dwelt for 777 years (Lamech, Genesis 5:31) at the briefest, to 950 years (Noah, Genesis 9:29) at the longest. (I excluded Enoch’s less impressive 365 years since his life was cut short by God; he did not die naturally.) Following the Flood, life expectancies only declined between father and son, beginning with Shem who lived 600 years (Genesis 11:10-11) and ending with Abraham at just 175 years (Genesis 25:7). Thereafter, life expectancy was capped at 120 years (Genesis 6:3) and then later to just 70 years (Psalms 90:10). We find a similar decline in age expressed in the Vedic tradition: The Srimad Bhagavatam or Bhagavatam Purana tell us that in the Satya Yuga, the duration of one’s life could climb as high as 100,000 years, dropping to a tenth of this at 10,000 in the Tetra Yuga, again to 1,000 in the Dwapara Yuga, and then once more in the Kali Yuga to just 100 (SR canto 12, chapter 12, verse 2), before plummeting to a mere 30 years toward the Kali Yuga’s end (SR 12:3:37). Returning to the Near East, the Sumerian King List records the reigns of Sumer’s legendary rulers. Corroborating with Abrahamic tradition, it is in the antediluvian (pre-Flood) period that we find implausibly long life expectancies, with En-men-lu-ana having reigned the longest at 43,200 years, while the shortest reigns we find are those of En-men-gal-ana and Alulim, tied at a still exceptionally impressive 28,800 years.
In all this, ancestors are not merely revered for their wisdom and accomplishments, but because they were temporally closer to the Divine or to some other mystical origin, such that they were permitted their longevity because of this para-human proximity. To put it most plainly, the eldest and earliest generations are greater not for the dull and symbolic reason of “just because they are older”, but because men in their time, having been more proximal to the Divine or mystical, were qualitatively superior in every conceivable way: in intellectual capacity, in wisdom, in virtue, in health, and in the timeless memorial of accomplishment. Their longevity, whether possessed in actuality as a consequence of their greatness, or demarcated posthumously in commemoration of their legendary status, the result is the same: Men have always known that it is rare that one should surpass their own father. As the Roman poet Horace observed, “Evil our grandsires were, our sires worse. And we unmatched in ill, must leave descendants more corrupted still.”
Macrocosmically, what I am getting at here is the “decay of Consciousness”, the notion that the very Divine Consciousness we partake in as conscious beings, is decaying in the humanly microcosm, precipitously through generations between the advent and commencement of a whole Cycle or Mahayuga. If we recall that Awareness is the default axiom of existence, such that consciousness is just the content and function of all matter (such that matter is more or less “condensed consciousness”), then the indication here is that as human consciousness precipitously decays between the generations, that the condition of men—in both mind, body, and spirit—degrades in ability, performance, and overall constitution. The esoteric view of history is this: We scrounge up technology and complex modes of social organization in attempt to compensate for that which we do not innately possess but which our predecessors did: We have pioneered advancements in medical care to compensate for our lack of semi-immortality, and are left to question how those even two centuries ago surpassed 90 years without the assistance walking sticks, nor having suffered any dulling of their minds, and how it is that they were seemingly impervious to diseases such that they climbed to these ages without so much as antibiotics at their disposal. We have engineered heavy machinery and fashioned electric tools with which to build new bridges and towers, yet within a year they are leaking, riddled with holes, falling apart at the seams—this we call an engineering model but tear down within 50 years. Meanwhile, former men required neither an education nor anything but their hands in order to erect stone marvels which outlived their civilizations by 20-fold the age of ours, such as the Roman aqueducts still in use today in Spain and Croatia. And the pyramids of Egypt—Can any archaeologist suppose how it was that men stranded in a desert with naught but levers and pulleys could cut and move a million tons of limestone, without invoking such fantastical nonsense as “aliens”? Look at our societies, even! We draft outlining documents, generate an endless multiplicity of bureaucratic departments, and develop endless novels of laws and codes, yield increasingly complex modes of social stratification—all just to achieve a level of output far reduced from that of those before us who required naught more than a king and his servants to run a country most efficiently. Of course, these calibers of accomplishment are only symptom of the status of their bodies, Wills, and minds. They traversed continents in but ten years for a trade, they sprinted miles in complete suits of metal armor to spear to death their opponent on a distant field, they maintained focus through wars of succession lasting a century, and they recounted thousand-page volumes of oral tradition to the very last iota.
Just as we seek the alignment of all symbols and archetypes, leading back to the First Archetype; let us be the symbols of our archetypal ancestors, leading back to the First Man! The archetype is always superior to the symbol, and though the symbol may be fallen or disfigured, it can yet revere that which precedes it! Let the son honor the life of his father by way of his own life, for what else is there to aspire to?
(I have introduced such a topic, the esoteric “decay of Consciousness” theory of history, in order to demonstrate that there is much that the “three positions” make no mention of and do not account for. One could argue that this discussion would have better belonged in the “On the Use and Abuse of Time” chapter part, but I did not wish to inject more esoterism into that already-dense discussion than necessary.)
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment I, Subsegment B: Involution & Repeated Bifurcation
(In this subsegment and the next, I will discuss the topic of caste hierarchy. This discussion takes place here, as opposed to in the “On the Human Condition & Caste” chapter part, since this will link to a discussion on populism to follow.)
While the true origin of Man is too far behind us for any to concretely deduce beyond the myths of the various formalisms, there yet may be clues: As I discuss in the fourth chapter of my essay, Finding God in the Void, behind every mystification is a more abstract and quintessential truth—a principial understanding shrouded by the palatable and digestible surrogate of formalism. By examining proper philosophy and the cultural motifs behind each narrative—through the vehicles of anthropology, exegesis, and hermeneutics—it may be possible to reconstruct what might have been the true origin of Man long ago. Such attempts at a prehistorical reconstruction of Mankind’s origins, however, often lead to ideas that are rather esoteric and speculative, and as such I will decline to detail any here. However, a common theme we find in all such esoteric reconstructions is the idea of an “involution” which closely aligns with that which I have ranted about above: Namely, that humanity has “devolved” over time from a perhaps once-immaterial and purely principial existence to one severely conditioned into the physical world, repeatedly bifurcated, and engrossed into addictive emotions.
This “involution” also fits well with the Purusha-Sukta narrative discussed earlier, which, as I mentioned, tells that the divisions of mankind were born out of the partitioning of the Supreme Person (Purusha) into various “greater” and “lesser” modes, expressed as the bifurcation of caste and sex. What I present to you now is a connection: Given that the decay of Consciousness in Man is a continuous decline progressing precipitously from generation to generation, as opposed to a singular event, we can see how it is that Man has experienced a series of bifurcations. That is, Man has been bifurcated not once, but repeatedly, such that there were not originally four castes, but two, and before that there was only the Supreme Person or the First Man who was one. (Even gender has experienced repeated bifurcations, yielding greater and lesser modes of the masculine archetype: the [greater] Hyperborean/Virile man versus the lesser Titanic and Effeminate modes of men; and yielding greater and lesser modes of the feminine archetype: the [greater] Demetrian woman versus the [lesser] Amazonian and Aphrodisic modes of woman. Though, the bifurcation of gender is beyond the scope of this essay.)
Earlier, when discussing the Purusha-Sukta hymn, we noted that the Shudras (Laborer caste) did not appear in the earliest iterations of the narrative. This pertains to the “trifunctional hypothesis”, which holds that the earliest recorded Indo-European societies (including that of the Vedic Aryans), stratified only into three castes: A sovereign caste, a military caste, and a producer-commoner caste. The Vedic Aryans acquired the “fourth rung”, creating the division between Vaishya (Merchant/Producer caste) and Shudras (Laborer caste) after subjugating the Mlecchas and Dravidians of India, who the Vedic Aryans found to be inferior. This same transition can be observed in Europe, wherein Roman society was originally divided into three castes: Patricians (elites), Equites (land-owning soldiers), and Plebians (commoners). (Roman slaves are not counted here, as they are akin to the Vedic Varna system’s Dalits (“untouchables”), who are seen as caste-less. Though, both Shudras and Dalits have historically been slaves.) By the medieval ages, European society could be argued as having been divided into four castes: Clergy, Nobility, Merchants & Artisans, and Peasants. Following the involution theory, we could reasonably conclude that if we had epistemic access to more prior conditions, then perhaps we would find that the earliest complex social systems were only divided into two castes, and that it was the original upper caste which bifurcated into the sovereign-clerical and warrior-aristocratic modes, while the original lower caste bifurcated into the merchant-artisanal and peasant-commoner modes.
The Fascists, Marxists, and Liberals, however, would be appalled at this notion that there are “greater and lesser modes” implicit to humanity. All such ideologies assert the primacy of the Laborer caste and ultimately confer power upon the Merchant caste—the two bifurcations of Man’s original “lesser mode”. The latter of the three positions, Liberalism, practically religiousizes its opposition to the idea of implicit spiritual hierarchy, declaring that “all men are created equal”. Marxism similarly seeks to equalize all men, but with this focus aiming more toward economic and symbolic or aesthetic equality. Even the Fascists, in as much as they recognize natural hierarchies, reduce such hierarchies to mundane qualities like strength or intellect, rather than peeling back this veil and examining the true principial constitution of a man. This puts the Fascists in stark contrast against true Traditionalists, such that we find that even Hitler had agitated the German traditionalists with his revolutionary take on class. The reality is that ancient peoples were always superstitious about caste hierarchies, believing in “folk essences”, and held that the higher castes were spiritually superior to the lower castes. My anonymous teacher supplies gravitas to this thought: “The Sudras in India are in fact quite fortunate, as every other Aryan people aside from the Anatolian/ME Iranians such as the Mitanni, just flat out genocided and mass murdered any foreign people.” As much as the three positions seek to deny the notion spiritual hierarchy, such an anti-elitist mindset is never translated into practice. This is such that we find in the societies that the three position create, that the values placed on the lives of politicians, generals, and corporate executives are always greater than the values placed on the lives of the average man or the common soldier.
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment I, Subsegment C: Value & Treatment of the Castes in Traditionalism vs Fascism
One acquaintance of mine, who goes by the pseudonym “Polk” as an homage to the eponymous US president, and who is a self-identified Fascist, makes the case in his essay, Sui Generis | Elitism, Caste Confusion, and Nietzsche, that we should not look down upon the lower castes. Polk speaks with a rather informal and even crass prose in this essay (which is quite warranted, seeing the unwholesome crypto-fascists whom he is rebuking), and states quite plainly, “Yes, perhaps the peasant farmer is stupid and smells weird. But you know what? If you killed him then YOU would have to be the peasant farmer, or else you would have no food. So yeah, treat your peasants right, folks. You can’t discuss the virtues of the caste system and then turn around and say that all poor people should be blown up or something. If you believe in the caste system due to religious reasons, which many right-wing pagans do (at least partially), then you have to admit that the local peasant is being noble by fulfilling his duty as a farmer.” One might say this is a very Fascist sentiment, in that Fascism seeks to redress the plight of the common people, and I am inclined to sympathize with it. To corroborate his point about caste: We find in ancient history, for example, the transition in Vedic society from a pure disdain of the Shudras, where even being so much as touched by one was seen as a great demerit to one’s social and spiritual worth, to a time when the Vedic Aryans had acquired the Bhagavad Gita (particularly the Itihasa or “fifth” Veda), wherein we find such pronouncements as Krishna declaring that he prefers a Shudra who does his duty (even if imperfectly) over a warrior who neglects his own duties for the duties of another caste. Polk actually provides us with one such verse from this work which expresses this: “Besides, considering your duty as a warrior, you should not waver. Indeed, for a warrior, there is no better engagement than fighting for upholding of righteousness” (BG 2:31). We can also find an additional pair of verses that more closely express this sentiment: “It is better to do one’s own dharma even if imperfectly, than to do another’s dharma perfectly. It is better to die in one’s own dharma; the dharma of another is fraught with danger. One should perform one’s own duty even if it is devoid of merit; for doing the duty prescribed by one’s own nature, one does not incur sin” (BG 18:47-48).
(Interrupting the point here, I would like to call attention to a side-connection: Firstly, recall the chapter part on ahumanism and the discussion on human value as being strictly of an ontological kind as a utility to the Divine. Now, in the above paragraph, we see that Vedic religious texts stress the importance of the fulfillment of caste-specific duties. The connection here is that each caste possesses an ontological value in regards to its “caste-ness”, such that a Brahmin’s only value is its “Brahmin-ness” and a Shudra’s only value is its “Shudra-ness”, but neither has an independent intrinsic value simply for being human. That is to say, the quality of human-ness is not possessed “in isolation”, but with respect to the ritual duties or praxis assigned to each caste, that each caste might fulfill the station of their caste according to the Quintessential Paradigm which is the caste society—this caste society being called the Quintessential Paradigm since it is an analog of Reality or descriptive of Reality (Divinely “preordained”, so to speak). Thus, any violation of one’s assigned duties serves to nullify their only value, which is ontological.)
Yet where Polk and I, as a Fascist and a “Zeroth Position” Traditionalist, respectively, would diverge, depends upon how one interprets Polk’s sentiment of “You are not ‘better’ than the average person”. In the context of his essay, this sentiment was meant to follow that of Krishna’s: that one is not inherently better simply on account of belonging to a higher caste, but that it is that person’s merits which count. This of course is absolutely true. In the Laws of Manu or Manusmriti, we find examples of Brahmins and Kshatriyas (the two upper castes) condemning themselves to Hell through great demerit in committing violence for sport: “Those Kshatriyas and Brahmins who, in their arrogance, kill animals merely for sport, after death shall themselves be hunted and killed by the animals in Hell” (Manusmriti 12:55). At the same time, a Shudra may be reborn into a higher caste by virtue of their laborious merits: “Those whose conduct here has been good will quickly attain a good birth, the birth of a Brahmin, the birth of a Kshatriya, or the birth of a Vaisya…” (Chandogya Upanishad 5:10:7).
In speaking of things which are absolutely true, we might also address the crass pragmatism which we find in his line, “If you killed him then YOU would have to be the peasant farmer, or else you would have no food.” The obvious point being made here is that peasants are useful, and without them, the nobles for whom they toil will either be condemned to starvation or must otherwise give up their noble duties and take to toiling the fields themselves. This of course would be undesirable, not just for the noble who would have to surrender his less burdensome lifestyle and sense of higher calling, but for the society whom the nobles play a vital role in as capable leaders—leaders who can raise armies from their fiefdoms, as well as aggregate agricultural yields with which to stock the church as reserve for famine. Anybody can toil fields, it is sooth, but the peasant lacks the innate talent and expertise needed to fill the station of the noble. Likewise, neither the peasant nor the noble could perform the duties of a cleric. And so, it stands to reason that each caste ought to fulfill the role of only the highest station available to them. This is why Krishna has pronounced that it is (as we would say) proper praxis to perform your own duties to the best of your ability—even if imperfectly—as opposed to attempting the duties of another. If you are a Brahmin, a Kshatriya, or a Vaisya, then you have a certain skill set that others are not capable of. If you are of any caste, even a Shudra, then others are dependent upon the works produced of your station. Just as the lord of the manor depends upon his serfs to eat, so too do the peasants working these fields require a skillful lord who can supply them with land, tools, and protection as an exchange for their service. Thus, rigid hierarchy is not an inhibitor of reciprocation. Even in oppression, there is something received by the oppressed which they cannot afford to live without. Fear is not the only factor deterring the serf from rebellion.
So, where I and “Zeroth Position” Traditionalists diverge from Polk and the Fascists, is in that I would say that inasmuch as these hierarchical relationships afford reciprocation, I find it impossible to believe that this is not descriptive of an underlying spiritual reality. True as it may be that one caste cannot live without the others, this is not an argument for spiritual equality. Quite to the contrary, each caste, in being a greater mode than those beneath it, likewise possesses the capabilities of all those beneath it in addition to its own: The Brahmin can teach as only a Brahmin should, can fight and administrate as only a Kshatriya should, can sell and produce as only a Vaisya should, and can toil as only a Shudra should. The Kshatriya can fight and administrate as only a Kshatriya should, can sell and produce as only a Vaisya should, and can toil as only a Shudra should. The Vaisya can sell and produce as only a Vaisya should, and can toil as only a Shudra should. And the Shudra can toil as only a Shudra should.
Once again invoking the idea that human value is signicated only its ontological value as a utility, Praxius explains:
“There is a law according to which that which is ontologically superior takes precedence and priority over that which is ontologically inferior or subordinate. As has been said, according to Tradition, human life is nil. There is no sanctity of human life on its own, and whether a person lives or dies, in a general sense, ontologically, does not matter. In fact, all provisional vitality is nil—humans and animals alike. There is, however, a sanctity (ontological value) of certain humans, or certain human types, because beyond simple vitality there are other significant principles which inhere in these types. Those who are initiated do inherently possess a certain level of value, not for being human, but for being initiated, for possessing qualities that are beyond human that are utilizing the humanly principle as the vehicle for their actualization. This is the reason for certain humans being more valuable than other humans. Brahmins are more valuable for their being Brahmins, not for their being human. They are also superior to all other castes, and thus they have dominion over all other castes. It is a uni-directional authority.”
>Ch.2 Part C – Segment II: The Racial Unconscious, National Populism, & Ethnic Nationalism
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment II, Subsegment A: Populism & Fascism
Populism is one of the forces which those of the “three positions” employ to redress perceived injustices by those in power against the common man. Motivating the populists is a sense that the underlying values of the common people have been disregarded by the charlatans who have risen above them, that the integrity of their nation is held in jeopardy by those seeking to plunder what they can from its vibrant lands, and above all—and in recent memory—that there is a conspiracy by a self-interested “elite” to usurp all public institutions and erode away the affluence of intermediary institutions which have wedged a protective gap of autonomy between cohesive communities and the governing state which is their distant suzerain. (I will perhaps speak on the power struggle between intermediary institutions and bureaucracy in another essay.)
The unfortunate reality is that while most kings, clerics, aristocrats, nobles, and so forth were ultimately benevolent toward their stewards, respecting the vital and reciprocal relationships between themselves and those beneath them upon whom they acknowledged their mutual dependence—such that the best among these leaders viewed themselves as servants to their people with a moral obligation to ensure their prosperity; there have been those few kleptocrats who scoffed at these obligations and exploited their country’s people and resources for the worst. Tragically, it is the Nero’s whom such reaction is against, but the Aurelius’s which are the scapegoat—to reference a quote by French loyalist, Antoine de Rivarol, who warns, “The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius.” Hence is the relevance of the prior discussion on caste: Should we be so eager to forsake the king for fear he might be a Nero if only the people are at much greater risk of ruling as Nero? Where before have peasants made good government without their lords present? Even nobles have enough sense to install a capable gentleman on the thrown!
However, bearing in mind the destructive capacities of an elite-turned-Nero, it is understandable to have a growing sense of concern for the common people. Not only do the common people enable their superiors, but they are the very body of the nation itself, and what good is a head which thinks only in terms of its own shallow gratification as opposed to in terms of the very body to which it is attached? Will the nobles then be so short of sight as to adopt gluttonous appetites if it means the body should give way to the spoils of the mouth’s gluttony today but starve tomorrow? How foolish! Populism in its purest form is not an ideology, nor even an activism, but a basic sensibility for the preservation of both the body and the head of the nation. Yet it is this uncommitted ambiguity of populism which often lends it to trouble, finding itself appropriated by ideologies who have lost sight of its true merit and proper utility. As Polk points out in his essay, Populism Is Based!, “It’s just about siding with ‘the people’ over ‘the elite’, and it doesn’t even specify what either of those groups are.”
For Fascism, this populism is employed somewhat responsibly, being tailored to the most reified humanely and vitalistic component of the authentic nation: the “Racial Unconscious”. The Fascists uphold that a people who are the very defining body of a nation—a “folk” who share together a heritage, a homeland, a religion, a culture, a mother tongue, and a history—consequentially possess also a shared value set defined by these features constituting a sense of shared consciousness and identity. Such a populace, such a folk need not even be an “ethnicity”. “Germany for the Germans…America for the Americans,” Hitler declared, knowing well that the American identity is young and no ethnogenesis has yet taken root among her people. Instead, what Americans do possess—or at least formerly possessed—is yet that notion of a racial unconscious. As the children of the English, the French, the Scots, the Germans, the Irish, the Italians—there is a notion of a “founding stock”, an authentic breed of “Anglo-Americans” who are simultaneously many and one. The Anglo-Americans carry with them what we might call a “conservative diversity”, melding together a variety of backgrounds into one—but a variety which has been, by tradition, safeguarded and gatekept so as to only incorporate the adjacent lineages—the “brother cultures”—of the familiar Western European sphere. And as such, the Anglo-American stock finds no conflict between its partitions. Thus, what unites the Anglo-Americans is not a narrow “ethnicity”, but Western European heritage broadly. What we have here is a fine example of racial unity—a racial unconscious. We say “unconscious” as the values of such a unitary people need not be stated aloud in order to establish a sense of shared consciousness or identity; it is implicit, a mental alignment of untaught values and uninstructed customs which finds itself dwelling in every mind of a racially united people, such that any among them will always turn their heads first toward the beauty of their own people’s ways and creations before giving credence to others. Such a people cannot be easily divided. Even if such a people are afforded a kind of Liberal democracy, they will hardly have use for it, finding they will more often agree on principles than naught, and thus are rarely found to wage petty wars of politics to any devastating scope.
In speaking of democracy, this sense of a unity—both conscious and unconscious—gives rise to what Hitler describes as a form of democracy which needs not to be explicitly defined, as it is implied by a system of government established to accommodate the needs of a monolithic populace. Fascism thus champions the one-party system, which is to Fascism “one party for all”. The Fascist correctly critiques that the multi-party nation only consumes itself through a contest of competing values, and what good is a nation with all its borders if it should draw them again from within? Moreover, should the very earth upon which the houses of the state are built be synonymous with the soil that hosts the roots from which its people sprout, then there can be no dysphoria between the provisions of the state and its ability to faithfully fulfill the needs of the people who call the lands of this state their native home. It is a synergy of the three G’s: geography, genetics, and government!
At face value, this is a tremendous proposal! A cohesive nation in all respects—who would not desire that? Yet the Fascists have unwittingly made a critical blunder here: In making populism integral to their ideology, they have transformed populism from a basic sensibility in their advocacy into an ideology itself. Such a populism is then easy victim to becoming tainted by the two most regrettable features of Fascism: its symbology and its humanism. That is, its populism often becomes a strict ethno-nationalism, which in certain contexts quickly reduces itself in subject to a petty state of “purity spiraling”, constantly seeking to uproot from the common folk those denizens whose mere existence might even begin to, in the most extreme relegations of the imagination, threaten the symbology of the nation’s ethno-unitary stature: It persecutes racial minorities even when they number the fewest and farthest between, it finds itself becoming increasingly scrutinous among its own racial preface as to who is a “pure” member of the race, and it disavows those citizens who cling to a competing native tradition not embraced by the state. This is such that we might recall the Nazi Germans becoming suspicious of fellow Germans who may have possessed an unsavory foreign heritage, even if those citizens had been loyal to the Nazi cause. We might recall the endless empiricizing of race, such as in the measuring of skull dimensions to determine who was the most “Aryan”. And we might recall the persecution and even execution of outspoken members of the German Catholic clergy who took issue with the state’s secular ideology. The second article mentioned—the scientific obsession with race—is perhaps the most prominent way in which Fascism demonstrates that it is ultimately an ideology “caught up in symbols”, so to speak.
And this is why I have pointed out that Fascism, despite its traditional elements, is at the end of the day quite easily reducible to “rule by the Merchant caste”, as all three of the “three positions” are. It is never the Brahmins or Kshatriyas who find themselves caught up in symbols; they understand the principles behind the symbols. For fear of sounding like an elitist, this is more or less a Vaishya and Shudra problem almost exclusively: to be caught up in symbols. So, what then is the more principial take on race and the nation? While no sensible Traditionalist will deny the benefits of preserving the common substrate of a nation and retaining a sense of “unity in unity” as opposed to the façade of “unity in diversity”, one must recognize that the spirit of a nation is not strictly limited to the material domains of genetics and geography, but is found in that very “spirit” itself. This is such that Evola believed even a Jew could have the spirit of an Aryan—that whether one is Arya or anarya, is at its core a question beyond material manifestation—it is essential, it is a spiritual preordination, a Karma conditioned before birth. To Evola, one of Indo-European descent could be declared “anarya” if they had betrayed the Aryan spirit; and to the ancient Aryans of Iran (the land of their namesake), a foreigner who took to the perfect emulation of Aryan rituals, who could honor Aryan gods in the Aryan tongues—they would be counted as Arya.
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment II, Subsegment B: The Incompatibility of Traditionalism & Populism, and Revolutions from Above & Below
I should perhaps clarify at this point that my position is not that populism is necessarily undesirable, but that there is simply no need for it in a properly-run Traditional civilization in which the ruling caste is compelled by Traditional values. This is such that we might compare the “principial pyramid” to the social hierarchy pyramid: The monarch at the tip of the “social pyramid” is an analogue for Total Universality—God, and it is thus the king’s divine duty to ensure the ontological propriety of all that which is—and all those who are—contingent upon him, and to love his servants and countrymen with the same devotion by which God expresses love for all mankind. Thus, we ask, what need is there for popular advocacy when the nation’s head is patriarchal, defending with passion the interests of his subjects like a father to his children? Moreover, an Aristocracy which is attuned to the same Traditional values as its undercaste, shares with them the same collective unconscious (without the need to invoke the mundane symbol of “race”), and thus the Aristocracy is the safeguard of its people’s cultural values. Populism is ultimately a tool: It is amoral by default, and capable of weaponization—for better or for worse—by kind-spirited shepherds with right intent, by deceitful charlatans with selfish endeavors, and by meritless fools and cowards who will misguide or bankrupt the people, alike. That any good is produced of populist momentum is incidental, rather than a rule.
In speaking of, and if we are being honest, the only context in which populism produces in any good is when that good—which can only be temporal or provisional—is furthering a quasi-traditional end in contrast to the Anti-Traditional backdrop in which a Fascist, Liberal, or Marxist society finds itself in. Yet, such populism cannot be exhaustive or final; it is not an ultimate solution or cure to Anti-Traditionalism, because populism by nature is not truly Traditional. This is because populism necessarily implies what Evola refers to as a “revolution from below”; it is led by the lesser bifurcation of Man—the Laborer and Merchant castes—whose understanding of Tradition is relegated to the Symbolic Domain of exoteric ritual, as opposed to a truly principial understanding of the essential basis for Tradition and “Quintessential Law”—the Metaphysical Law and proper way of Being. As such, any populist movement cannot flip the hourglass of civilizational semantics; it can only move some of the sand back into the top bulb and let it run down again. As such, a truly Traditional revolution must be Aristocratic or Patrician, not Plebeian; it must be a “revolution from above” and not from below. And a Traditionalist society is one in which the prescriptive reality of caste is law—in which Quintessential Law as a principle is expressed through the symbol of Man’s law—and thus a Traditionalist movement is inherently anti-populist. Put simply, Traditionalism and populism are not ultimately compatible. That any honest Traditionalist ever supports a populist movement is merely to push the Overton Window back slightly to the Right, through the vehicle of transient quasi-traditional semantics, in a last-ditch effort to slow down the precipitous decay of his society.
Praxius expands upon each of these ideas in our dialogues. Below, I will first provide his elaboration on the distinction between a revolution from below versus above, and what each specifically entails or “looks like”:
“Populism is inherently degenerative for the reason that policy and law are legitimized by the will of the people, instead of deriving their form from the semantic dimension of Quintessential Law. Often, ‘traditional populists’ such as the 3Ps [Third Positionists; i.e., Fascists] of the 20s-40s, or the ‘conservative dictators’ of South America, or Trump in the US, are at odds with a true Traditional civilizational form, unless they ‘pull up the ladder’, so to speak, once they achieve power, and use their power to ensure that a Traditional civilizational mode is reinstated, or at least orient civilization in that direction. The reason for this opposition is because the ‘will of the people’ is often downwards oriented or ‘flattening’…. Thus, when a politician or even an entire polity is legitimized solely by the ‘will of the people’, they either become easy to dismantle once popular support is lost, or they deviate from a Traditional orientation once popular support for Tradition declines. Thus, only can populists of these sorts campaign on ‘tradition’ as rhetoric, because if they were to say what their true intentions were—assuming their intentions are truly Traditional, which they often are not—then they would effectively be saying, ‘Many of you are Shudras and will not amount to more than a Shudra status, and should not be offered opportunities offered even to Merchants, let alone Warriors and Priests.’
These sorts of populists are useful only if they attempt to partake in what’s called a ‘revolution from above’, which is the only way a Traditional order can be reinstated. A revolution from above is just as it sounds. Fighting the power from below usually gets Traditional movements squashed because they are just not popular; in fact, they are anti-popular by design. This does not mean that we cannot use subversive tactics to achieve positions of power in preexisting institutions and use that power to assist in the revolution from above; it doesn’t require a blatant presentation, but it does require change from a position of power.
If a populist politician successfully aids in this meta-campaign, then they are a net positive….”
…
“‘Revolution from below’ has a twofold meaning, in which, when one component is invoked to produce an effect, the other produces an effect as a consequence: (1) Revolution that originates from a position which is principially subordinate or inferior, for the sake of that which is principially subordinate or inferior; (2) Revolution that originates from a position which is temporally subordinate or inferior, for the sake of that which is temporally subordinate or inferior. Every time the masses successfully organize and revolt against an existing order, it always further subordinates the existing structures to the notion of the ‘will of the people’ and invalidates any attempt at restructuring it to resemble the Quintessential Paradigm [default mode of Being]. Additionally, when the lower castes revolt against the higher castes, a similar effect is produced. What is more, it does not matter if a revolution from below possesses even a Traditional character, because it is willed in and legitimized from the populous.”
He then substantiates his commentary with a couple of excerpts from Evola’s essay, Revolution From Above:
“The revolt against all these features of a society presenting so many problematic aspects may be seen as legitimate. But what distinguishes the final times is the lack of any rectifying, liberating, or restoring action from above: the fact that the often-necessary initiative and action towards radical change is allowed to be carried out from below—from below, that is, in terms of both lower social strata and lower values. The almost inevitable consequence of this is the shifting of the center of gravity to a level that is even further down than that of the structures which have entered into crisis and lost their vital content.”
“This extremely organized, systematic, and almost unrestrainable action from below is often associated with the Rousseauesque lie that the natural, healthy, generous man is only to be found among the lower classes, and hence that the ultimate aim of the subversive movement is a new and effective ‘humanism’. There is almost no one capable of countering this action with a vigorous reaction. Besides, the principle of reaction ought to consist of this: the possibility to denounce the fallacies, defects, and degeneration of a system—for instance, the possibility of taking a hard stance against the bourgeoisie and a certain kind of capitalism—starting from a level that is situated above rather than below it, in the name not of petty socialist or proletarian values, but of qualitative, aristocratic, and spiritual ones. Such values should inspire a rectifying action of an even more radical sort, provided truly worthy men and groups are to be found with enough authority and power to prevent or quash any ambition or attempt to carry out a revolution from below. ‘Revolution from above’ is actually a formula which was already used and partially applied by Bismarck (‘the only revolution we know is revolution from above’).”
In this quote, we see a compelling demonstration of the difference between revolutions led from below and led from above. The undercaste often desires to substitute the existing failed societal framework with an even more indignant one, while the overcaste proposes that which preceded it entirely. The undercaste pushes Marxian socialism or corporate Fascism as a prescription to capitalist Liberalism; the overcaste proposes a restoration of the Old Order—of a spiritual state which is analogous in structure with preordination of All Things, having a divine king to top the pyramid, and exalted Priests and Warriors to fill the ranks of the upper strata Praxius then finishes:
“A revolution from above is a revolution that occurs from a temporal and principial position that is at the very least at the same level as the existing authoritative structures, if not a superior one. It is imposed rather than willed in, and it derives its authority and legitimacy at the very least from its own position (if not already from a superior one), in which case a superior order and paradigm may be later applied as the source of legitimacy for such a revolution. This is why it is important not for us to take political action, but metapolitical action, infiltrating existing structures and hierarchies which already have power and legitimacy withstanding and turning them on their head, or using them to our own goals.”
Concerning the notion that a quasi-traditional movement, such as those exhibited by Fascists, is equivalent only to moving the sand rather than turning over the whole hourglass:
“It would be nearly impossible through Fascism to return to a Traditional civilizational mode, even if it is the closest to it in attitude, for the very reason that Fascism is overtly authoritarian. To go to Fascism would be to effectively put the sand in the top half of the hourglass again, as opposed to flipping it entirely, except it would be even more difficult to flip because we would have the illusion that the sand is already where we want it to be. The issues here would be that the civilizational semantics would remain the same, and so any push further to the right would be impossible unless they were to be uprooted entirely, but this uprooting itself would be impossible because the state apparatus, the military, and the media would overtly be one centralized and powerful institutional entity (which, in principle, in a Traditional civilization, I would say is a good thing, but not in this case), more powerful than it is in modern society, and it would actively oppose its own semantic uprooting. Evola had to walk around with bodyguards in Mussolini’s domain because of his opposition only to certain ideals of his. If we lived in a Fascist society, we would be less able to freely discourse about these ideas than we’re able to now. We have a utilitarian positive in the state we live under today. Our way of flipping the hourglass cannot be overt, and Fascists are vehemently overt; they know no subtlety. What we must do instead is operate with the level of freedom we have these days to subvert the hourglass back to its traditional side. You’d never be able to overtly convince a populace of Shudras that outnumber Brahmins 10k to 1 to remain in the fields.”
That last line particularly sinks in: You cannot convince the lesser castes, who outnumber you, to fall in line as your subordinates when proposing a revolution; their collective herd mentality will not allow it. Thus, it is impossible to lead a conventional revolution on their behalf. No monarchy was ever restored via bloodshed; the most effective revolutions come from the ideological infiltration of institutions. Even the Merchant caste elites are clever enough to realize this, which is why they have seized the bureaucracies, academia, and media of nearly every modern nation in order to have their way. Now, they sit more securely and better entrenched than any king or despot could ever dream. They have virtually made a revolution from below impossible, which now only emphasizes the urgency and necessity to seize upon them from above.
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment II, Subsegment C: Imperium vs Nationalism
Given the “Traditionalist universalism” that comes from a view of all mankind as descendent from a First Man or supernatural origin, a nationalist might ask what then separates the Traditionalists from those Liberals who would seek to be inclusive of all men in their cosmopolitan, globalistic, and “diverse” society. To that I answer, we Traditionalists uphold the pre-nationalistic model—the model which predates the idea of ethnic nation-states. That is, we uphold classical imperialism. (While Fascists will not themselves shy away from classically imperialistic endeavors, they taint it with the “purity spiraling” earlier mentioned, which comes part-and-parcel with extreme ethno-nationalism and produces a nasty strand of brutality and hatred for subjugated peoples.) I say “pre-nationalistic”, as the ethno-nationalism of Fascism was an ideal born out of the French Revolution. However, throughout history, the norm was not nationalism, but imperium—great sprawling empires which conquered and subjugated other peoples, but within which all peoples found solace in clinging to their tribes. Quite the opposite of being nationalists, people in former times were localists, and one’s loyalty to their extended family and kinfolk came first before any loyalty expressed to their suzerain overlord. There was no “Italia”, but Romans and Sabines and Samnites; no “Germany”, but Saxons and Frisians and Franks; no Salvia or Russia, but Venedi and Antes and Sorbs. Even in the great Asian subcontinents of antiquity, there was at best expressed a “proto-nationalism” or “pseudo-nationalism”, such as in ancient Persia, where we find the tomb of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II), founder of the Achaemenid Empire, inscribed by various Iranic ethnic groups in solidarity of the unity of these adjacent peoples. Yet it must be conceded that such a solidarity among ancient Iranic peoples was rare, that this region has laid in power struggle between the Persians, Parthians, and Medians for most of antiquity, and that in its earliest recorded days it was the case that all Aryan tribes despised one another as barbarians. The solidarity brought by Cyrus II is, at the end of the day, nothing more than the result of a pre-modern policy of “tolerance and diversity”, if you will. One might also be tempted to look toward the long history of China, where the Han confederacies of the Yellow River valley distinguished themselves as “Huaxia” from their primitive neighbors. But an examination of the etymology behind this term reveals its provisionality: “Hua” means “splendid” or “magnificent”, and is an homage to the cultural refinement of the Huabei in northern China; while “Xia” refers to the legendary Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in China, symbolizing the idea of a stable and organized state. In this respect, “Huaxia” is not like other endonyms which typically serve as a reference to one’s own kind, wherein such endonyms are commonly found to carry the meaning of “person”, “human”, or “kin”. Instead, “Huaxia” is exterior; it is a link to a refined culture in one part of China and a desire for governance and statehood which sprouted from another. In sooth, that the Chinese were ever united under one banner (the Qin Dynasty) was incidental—a mere product of the ambitions of power-hungry feuding warlords and nothing more. There was no racial consciousness among these people. Their warlords did not care how many millions of Chinese’ blood had to shed to achieve their ends, so long as it was done. While this may have changed for the Chinese only after enduring strife together for thousands of years, the Iranians today have yet to express a proper nationalism: Their Kurds once ruled with the Safavid Dynasty, and now are subject to brutal oppression; the Azeris likewise; and where can any find a Lur or Bakhtiari or Qohistani who will tolerate being called a “Persian”, despite the efforts of archeologists to prove that undoubtedly these tribes are as authentically “Persian” as the Farsi themselves?
Thus, what we Traditionalists offer instead of ethno-nationalism, is what one might call a “universalist nationalism”, which both promotes a sense of imperium, the glory of conquest, and the disposition of men to expand for said glory’s sake, whilst not succumbing to the taint of “tolerance” or the atrocity of the progressive’s “diversity”. How? Classically, it was the partitioning of a kingdom or imperial domain between its many lords, provinces, duchies, and vassals, which ensured that the rights of conquered minorities were respected and that they received fair treatment. At the same time, however, there was no question that the fate of the provinces occupied by these minorities were held at the sole discretion of their imperial suzerain, to whom their regional status was undoubtedly subject. That is, the boot of the empire was always found to be at least gently pressed onto their necks, its watchful eye like a panopticon, and its hardened hands always sweeping through to collect taxes and conscripts, all while stationing troops there to keep the peace.
While the Fascists are justified in being disgusted by the nonsensical borders created by the late European monarchs, the miscegenation taking place in their dynasties for diplomacy’s sake, and the cacophony of corralling and accommodating ten major ethnicities under the Hapsburgs’ domain (an empire which was held together by a thread in face of its resultant internal ethnic tensions)—we Traditionalists would say such is not the result of an ideological fault in the Old Order, but rather comes of an improper praxis in the administration of these kingdoms. Perhaps today the Russian Federation can be looked to as a shining example of how an empire ought to be organized: It designates its conquered minorities to vassal ethnic-republics which control their own resources, permits these internal powers to elect their own leaders, to hoist their own flags, to sing their own anthems, to preserve and maintain their mother tongues and styles of dress, and even enter into contracts freely with sovereign countries. Yet these subject-republics know that their autonomy can be stripped away in an instant the moment they dare turn on their master, as it was with the rebelling republic of Chechnya. Since Chechnya’s second act of rebellion, Russia installed a puppet to be Chechnya’s de facto autocrat—a bargain proposed by the former Chechen head, Akhmad Kadyrov, wherein he offered to betray his people’s independence movement and pledge loyalty to the Kremlin in exchange for being made the leader of the Chechens. An iron-fist empire has no trouble asserting the primacy of its founding stock and making cowards out of its minorities whom it keeps in line. While Russia’s critics in the West decry its supposed “diversity”, the reality is that Russia maintains a population which is overall four-fifths Slavic Rus’, and which has relegated twenty-one ethnic republics into its farthest reaches, sequestered such that one would be hard-pressed to uncover an Alan or Dagestani or Kazani or Yakut in Moscow or in Novgorod or in Yaroslavl or in Saint Petersburg. Overall, we see that in Russia, there is no question of who runs the domain; all answer to the Kremlin and give their sons to her in war. Even the defeated Chechens now serve as lackeys in the Donbas.
But of course, we must answer why it is that imperium is the established norm. The simplest way we might answer this is to appeal to that which the notion of Tradition itself implies: the default way of being. Imperium is the norm simply because it is more or less a perennial description of human tendencies—the way which things have always been. However, it is more than just a humanely default; it is a spiritual default with spiritual benefits. My anonymous teacher is not a Fascist; however, he does sympathize with notions of racial consciousness and ethnic nationalism. I will share an excerpt from one of his dialogues here, bold those phrases worth emphasizing, and respond to him:
“The predicament of Kali Yuga is that the Western sphere has invested in its industrious, material, and activity-driven imaginative consciousness. The original Greek religion is present in the Western world so potently in modernity that we can even see it in economic language and considerations of fate. The ancient Hindus were similar, such they believed that there was no ending to Karma and no ending to fate—both cultures being principally obsessed with it as opposed to the mystical aspects of Greek and Indo-Aryan religion which suggest freedom from fate or material consequence. The aspect of Asian asceticism is really not their own, as the Buddha and Sages of Vedic times were of an archaic Indo-European kind, likely Iranic. What East Asians have been able to do is maintain its immaterial aspects such that it was the Greeks who first materialized statues of the noble ones. I think the barbaric nature of the Greek consciousness is in fact why they were so quick to adopt Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and eventually Christianity. Aryan people are a creative and industrious people that are responsible for much of the technological and material advancements of humanity, even the first debut of the Indo-Europeans was in respect to the fact that they had domesticated the horse and had bronze weapons and chariots. The shamanic or ancient aspects of their priestly orders were the governing and adjudicating aspect of their society, from the Brahmins to the Druids—each of which had elements of contemplation and renunciation. Historical process and decay has separated or otherwise obfuscated this hierarchy and when this is realized, we see clearly why the Wolf Age or Kali Yuga is occurring. In true reality, the Aryan races are ‘suffering from success’, and this is why we have birth rate problems and the unshackling of the woman (her independence both materially and spiritually from patriarchy has also been disastrous). The reason for the supremacy of the Aryans is that no other people are commanded to rule other than the beautiful and strong. The Aryans are those who have created and seeded the doctrines of Hinduism, Platonism, Mazdaism, and maintained them. They were the first people to develop a system of welfare for animal life, adopting vegetarianism or anti-cruelty measures even before antiquity began. They are a heroic people, usually obsessed with justice, proper living—such is the nature of the word ‘Dharma’. The Scythians were a people of noble poverty who resided in the cheeses and curds of their cattle, gathered jewels and gold for their gods alone, and would never fathom theft, patricide, or other kinds of cruelties. These virtues and practices still exist in iron age religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, most potently and profoundly. I will also add that Hindu society was the longest lasting caste society the world has ever seen, and this was maintained by a superstitious consideration of racial hygiene; Brahmins and priests would lose their caste by merely touching another caste member or native, just as an example.
Aryan collectivism is merely instrumental, unlike the collectivism of the Muslim. The Ummah exists for nothing other than their material satisfaction, the Aryavarta or living space exists for their transcendence. Hence why it’s the case that Hitler in particular taught German Youth variations of Hinduism and Germanic paganism. The entire point of an ethnically homogeneous society and culture is for that peoples benefit spiritually, not just materially.”
In these bolded segments, we can see where he clearly demonstrates the spiritual benefits of a Traditionally “homogenous” society. However, what he qualifies as “homogenous” in past historical contexts has less in common with Fascism and ethnic nationalism than he would seem to let on. I overall agree with his arguments regarding the necessity and benefit of a homogenous society, but it is worth pointing out that classically, homogeneity was practiced within the context of “imperium”. Ancient societies were neither mono-racial in the hyper-vulgar nationalistic sense, nor were they multi-ethnic in the modern liberal sense. There was a dominant group, such as the Vedic Aryans, who conquered and subordinated foreign peoples and relegated or sequestered them such that the latter’s influence was limited. The Vedic Aryans in particular had been particularly brutal in their mass enslavement and eradication of the Indian subcontinent’s alien races, but even amidst this brutality do we find Dravidians and the like taking part in Vedic society—only with the caveat that the former’s position is relegated to the subcontinental south and their social status to the lowest rungs in the Varna caste system.
Really, the type of extreme racial purity dialogue that we have seen with the rise of Fascism, carries with it a semantic fervor which is detached from the classical understanding of race and caste separation. This is such that Fascists are typically “caught up merely in symbols”, often falling victim to “purity spiraling” and a dull scientification of race—even embracing secular Darwinian/evolutionist ideology. In contrast, ancient peoples were not scientific but superstitious in their approach to these matters. To them, it was never about forging a “master race” or an entirely homogenous society, but merely demonstrating their implicit supremacy over all the alien nations which they conquered and absorbed, and exploiting such for their utility.
(Regarding my point on the Fascists’ embracement of Darwinian evolutionism here, I will defer to Praxius: “We should also take note not to entertain or employ the evolutionist theory of history. Esoteric prehistory would suggest, first of all, the notion of the Yugas. But the principial aspect of the Yugas does not always correlate with the actual historicity of it, which would suggest that each Cycle is related to a given people. The previous Cycle is generally agreed to be the Lemurian one, this one the Hyperborean one, which would suggest the qualitative primacy in this cycle of any peoples deriving from the Hyperborean stock, and this is the real reason for Indo-European/Aryan success and supremacy, among whom we should also consider the upper castes of Ancient Egypt by virtue of invoking esoteric prehistory as well.” In other words, the “Aryan race” that Fascists champion for its supremacy, is not a product of evolutionary advantage, but instead derives its legitimacy from the macrocosmic cycles of time, being ordained in this day and age for its spiritual virtues, but not persisting in its role forever. That is, there will come a day in which the Indo-European race is no longer dominant in influence nor supreme in quality, just as there was a time before its rise when the Lemurian race dominated. All things which rise, fall. And it is in this day and age that we begin to see that decline already: viscerally with plummeting birthrates and the erosion of the masculine and feminine spirits, psychologically with the rise of mental illness, environmentally with increasing sedentary cosmopolitanism and urbanism, spiritually with the rise of atheism, nationally and globally with replacement migration, and ideologically with the abandonment of Traditional values and Dharma. All this is to say that we cannot be temporal finalists who believe that time shall “freeze” for any man—or race.)
Detaching ourselves from Hitler and the likes is necessary in this regard. Fascism, no matter how esoteric, is not Traditional. It is symbolic rather than principial, vulgar rather than organic, and scientific rather than superstitious. It is a degenerate post-Enlightenment ideology which exerts the primacy of the Merchant caste as opposed to Evola’s call for a revolt of the old Aristocracy against the modern system. Praxius adds: “It’s only claim to being esoteric is the employment and invoking of previous Traditional symbols; Fascists are just as mystified with these symbols as the moderns.” Fascism may be more desirable than the alternative choices present in this age, as it finds itself better preserving certain aspects of Tradition, but these preservations are largely superficial and a mere product of aesthetic infatuation. The Fascists could never rebirth the glory and virtue possessed by Rome or any of the subsequent European monarchies, because the Fascists lack insight into what produced such outwardly expressions of glory and virtue. Fascism is, quite literally, only the lesser of three evils between itself, Liberalism, and Marxism.
>Ch.2 Part C – Segment III: Cosmopolitanism & Globalism
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment III, Subsegment A: Liberalism & “The People”
The Fascist’s populism is yet more redeemable than that of the Marxist’s or the Liberal’s populism: Fascism’s populism at least defines “the people” and “the nation” in terms which bear respect to the classical understanding of what a nation actually is: That is, a nation is properly understood to be a people who have settled a land and who subsequently have been integrally shaped by it—and who have in turn shaped it. The Fascist here is thinking in evolutionary terms so potent that even we Traditionalists cannot deny the truth of this point: A group of humans, like animals, if driven to settle a new land, will adapt to the unique environment if offers, and will do so in such a way that they will come to reflect the demands and conditions of this environment—they will learn to live in harmony with it, to carve its features into their own image, and they will establish a culture which pertains to the resources and traditional modes of living implicit to this environment. With enough time, the local earth will shape their features just as much as they have shaped it, and it is with this that a new people are born, that a new tongue is spoken, that a new manner of dress never before seen is presented. In this way, the people and their land integrally become one together, thus is the birth of a nation, its essence in both the borders provided by its topography and in the people who define these borders by their presence.
(Marxism is interesting in that it simultaneously attempts to appropriate this strand of organic nationalism while echoing a globalist message (“Workers of the world, unite!”). One might draw the connection between Hitler’s “National Socialism” and Stalin’s response to this, “socialism in one country”. Of course, the nuance here is that said “one country” seeks to engulf the entire world. There is simultaneously in Marxism an invigoration of the nation, but a desire to make this nation boundless and all-encompassing. We see this in how the Soviets were fiercely distrustful of the West—their enemy tribe—yet the Bolshevik “indigenization program” did bring a certain legitimacy to the various non-Russia-proper localisms and fringe peoples the federation who did not enjoy such a privileged existence under the Tsarist regime, seeking to elevate all peoples to an equal status rather than concede strictly a “food-chain” scenario in which Russia proper was the alpha-predator—all the while paradoxically subjugating more sovereign republics to the Iron Curtain of the Kremlin. Marxism is…complicated to the say the least, hence why I have only addressed its approach to the “scope of the people” parenthetically. Ideologically, it is quite too inconsistent to really nail down: It is both nationalist and globalist, making the globe the nation in itself; it is both hierarchal and egalitarian; it is both tribalist and cosmopolitan.)
By contrast, the Liberal, typically fearing the application of Darwin upon mankind, rejects this notion. The Liberal is intimidated by notions of tribalism which come part and parcel with both nationalism and localism, for tribalism can be disparaging to the underlings, the weaklings, the outcasts, and the foreigners, whom Liberalism seeks to exalt. They fear the oppression of the indigenous (unless those indigenous have formerly enjoyed a global-historical position of power), yet they seek to erase the bounds of ethnicity and tribal allegiance. The Liberal’s populism thus becomes a common appeal to all men, regardless of whether they represent in any capacity—whether material or spiritual—the essence of the nation in which they dwell. As Polk, in his usual crass but humorous demeaner, puts it: “To the Leftist Populist, ‘the people’ is a cacophony of cosmopolitan (mulatto) dysgenic freaks, and ‘the elites’ are the ‘evil conservatives’ (or whites) who ruin everything with things like ‘system racism’ and ‘the patriarchy’. Not only is their view on the elites utterly delusional, but their description of ‘the people’ is so broad that ‘the people’ are usually too busy trying to kill each other to accomplish anything.”
That last line particularly hones in on the inefficiency problem that plagues progressive Liberalism: Lacking the coherence which would otherwise be afforded to it by a singular people, Liberalism—ironically, given its mission erase ethno-tribal boundaries and achieve unity in diversity—creates conflict through its degenerated mode of “democracy” (which is a far cry from proper Athenian democracy or the pseudo-democracy of tribal chiefdoms), pitting together a “diverse” contest of values and ideals held by people with no belonging to the land upon which they plant their feet and neither a connection to the founding stock of the nation to which they have been invited. (This plague extends to the so-called “civil nationalism” of the “conservative”, which might be seen as internally reactive to the more degenerated cosmopolitanism of the far-leftist (bearing in mind that conservatism is only a more moderate strand of modern Liberalism).) Such a diversity is a swirling raucous—a genuine “cacophony”—of voices struggling to out-shout each other so that they might be heard the loudest in the room.
All this conflict and division which progressivism insights between its citizenry—all this “diversity” which by its very essence gives way to culture clashes and competing values…The Liberal society can be surmised as thus: The Liberal society is one in which everyone is welcome, but no one belongs.
It is easy to see with the cacophony, the caliber of a polity’s internal conflict—such conflict extending into the sphere of political participation—that a Liberal society might generate, precisely why it is that Fascism touts the one-party system. Again: “In speaking of democracy, this sense of a unity—both conscious and unconscious—gives rise to what Hitler describes as a form of democracy which needs not to be explicitly defined, as it is implied by a system of government established to accommodate the needs of a monolithic populace. Fascism thus champions the one-party system, which is to Fascism ‘one party for all’.” What Fascism seeks to solve, as a reaction to Liberalism, is the division of a nation. (Fascists, again, desire true “unity in unity” as opposed to the façade of “unity in diversity”.) The Fascist empires of the 20th century were thus ruthlessly efficient in cleaning up the social and economic strife of their respective nations, restoring the local traditional values of the “racial unconscious” and invigorating the national spirit with a fiercely imbued pride. Yet, Fascism misses the ball: It is, with its appropriation of the “party system”, merely reacting to Liberalism as opposed to revolting against the very essence of its failures. (Again, we find that Fascism is “caught up in symbols”—in this case, political symbols.) Let us ask, why is a party even required in the first place? Why is a national ideology required? If democracy needs not to be explicitly defined, according to Hitler, then why does the national party’s ideological platform need to be defined? True Tradition is beyond politics, beyond ideology, for it is simply the default mode of Being—it is unconsciously assented to and acknowledged (quod ubique, quod ab omnibus et quod semper), so quintessential that it cannot be qualified into articulation, lest we defile its ineffable Quintessence. Traditional societies had no need for “parties”; they were above petty political squabble.
—
When writing this essay, Praxius actually responded to the above paragraph with the following input on Fascism:
“There are a few points in this worth expanding upon. 1 - Overall, this is why the Right is qualitatively superior to the Left, when speaking in terms related to broad political philosophy. The Right is the civilizational mode of Tradition, uniquely superior to the Left because it does not get caught up in orthodoxical ideology, and because it concerns itself with proper praxis and archetypal fulfillment over all else. Therefore, it is a-humanist; not anti-human, but ahuman, as though the human element does not matter and is only valuable to the extent that it actualizes its archetype correctly, not for what it is. Therefore, the Right is not at all concerned with the desires or the wills of men, much less lesser men, who are the majority of the population of any nation. 2 - If Fascism were truly ‘Right Wing’ in any sense, it would therefore consider itself Aristocratic and it would consider Aristocracy good, under the pretense that the Aristocracy is the barrier of the Divine Will against the human will, or the will of the people. The fact that it repudiates Aristocracy and reinforces itself as ‘unitarily democratic’ and even ‘nationalist’ to consider the opinions and approvals of the demos and the nation as the necessary input to legitimize a given policy or even a given civilizational mode solidifies its position not just on the Left, but effectively on the Far Left, as the only thing that separates this ideology from true Socialism is anti-globalism and the enforcement of borders and the national identity, bound in nothing but the general customs of the people and their biological makeup. 3 - We are able to conclude that the Right-Wingness of Fascism is exemplified only in attitude and not in action. It is easy to tell that the Fascist leaders wanted their civilizations to resemble Tradition, but also wanted to remain uniquely progressive and participate in modern political paradigms, which, I must stress is a possibility, but in this instance was poorly executed.”
While I am hesitant to accept his characterization of Fascism as “Far Left”, it is understandable how it is that he comes to this conclusion when considering a sample from his quote in the Introduction: “While we may now look today at the rule by Warriors as something Right-Wing, it is because we have come so far Leftwards that even what is principially Left of what is truly proper seems to us a legitimate goal. This is to say that when the Priestly caste lost its primacy, we took a step towards the Left; then when the Warrior caste lost its primacy we took another; and when the Merchant loses its primacy we will be progressing further in that direction”. Fascism, being a Merchant caste ideology, is much closer to its enemies Liberalism and Communism than to the Warrior-led feudal states of the previous age, and further more from the clerical states whose historical reach precedes them. Fascism embraces the concept of “democracy” and the activity of party politics which follows, just as Liberalism does—though in a reactionary context and with a different spin—and in doing such, Fascism embraces a humanist or human-centered approach, as opposed to a Traditional “ahuman” approach which concerns the humanly element only insomuch as it subordinates this element as a symbol to the superior ontological macrocosm, wherein the human element is made to symbolize the archetypes of the macrocosm faithfully through proper praxis. Specifically, it is in adhering to populism and democracy that Fascism, like Liberalism, engrosses itself in concern with the will of the popular majority, but without regard for the nature of this majority, which is that of men who are of a lesser spiritual mode (the lesser bifurcation of Man; the Laborer and Merchant castes) and who are thus without valuable insight. It is in the exaltation of the lesser modes of Man that we see why Fascism does not embrace Aristocracy principially, but instead appropriates its symbology while “repudiating” the true essence of Aristocracy.)
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment III, Subsegment B: Imperium vs Cosmopolitanism
As the inversions found in leftist doctrines are a recurring theme in this essay, let us examine how cosmopolitanism turns classical imperialism on its head: While the classical empire encompassed many races, the question of which race ruled was undoubted, and it was either the case that this dominate race presided over autonomous minorities loyal to the empire, or that the dominate race enforced their customs upon these minorities in attempt to assimilate them. By contrast, the progressive cosmopolitan society embraces the very antonym of the nation: the globe. In their hatred for the tribe and nation, and in their mission to abolish national identity which follows, they seek to invite in the whole globe! That is, progressivism assumes all the world’s peoples as one—as equals, and embraces a horizontal or egalitarian structure as opposed to a vertical or hierarchical one in which the nation’s founding stocks triumphs. Additionally, where the classical empire may seek to assimilate its foreign subjects, the progressive cosmopolitan society seeks to assimilate all peoples both native and foreign into a “melting pot”—a unicity where cultures effectively cancel one another out. Cultures, as we know, can only survive if permitted to exist independently of one another, such that they might contrast with one another, each being born out of a unique people as a product of their genes and environment. (Here, we must agree with the nationalists that culture is downstream of race.) However, in the progressive “melting pot”, all uniqueness is therein extinguished.
Following such anti-nationalistic or pro-globalistic attitudes, where we find a peculiar—and terrifying—shared vestige in end-goals between the first and second positions (Liberalism & Marxism) in in this: You will find that the twain often fantasize of a one world government. Whether in the form of a United Nations empowered with global authority, or in the form of a monstrously expansive Soviet Union, their ideal country is more boundless and all-encompassing than any historical empire could ever boast. Perhaps in an esoteric sense, this global conquest of land is not merely fueled by a hatred of the tribe and nation, but is how they compensate for their inability to conquer time and leave behind a visceral legacy of thousand-year-old monuments, statues, temples, aqueducts, and coliseums like their Traditionalist counterparts did long before them.
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment III, Subsegment C: A Penultimate Critique - Leftism’s Exaltation of the Untermensch
As a penultimate and tangentially-related critique which circles back to a discussion from Part A of this chapter under the “Horizontal Darwinian Functionalism” segment: While Fascism’s championing of the strong and exceptional might be traced to its Darwinism (as was discussed in the aforementioned segment), it is hard to say why progressivism seeks to exalt the weak, the underly, the outcasts, and the foreigners who constitute all the voices in the bespoke cacophony. Perhaps it pertains to that inverted sense of Luciferian “false transcendence” that I spoke of in the Part A of this chapter in the “Inverted Original Transcendentalism” segment, in that leftism feels it can, in a sympathetic-yet-misguided tone, elevate the status of the underlings such that they “transcend” their oppressed status or limited condition. Perhaps, in the same sense, it is not just Lucifer’s pride which they appropriate in believing that a manufactured transcendence of mankind is achievable, but too Lucifer’s envy or jealousy: Just as Lucifer’s pride caused him to view himself as a god, his jealousy subsequently led him to believing he deserved the throne of God and thus he set out to usurp it. Drawing the parallel, is it not the case that the underlings are first pridefully exalted by the leftist, led into a false sense of transcendence, and then are left to envy those whose superiority (whether actual or normative) has always been? That they are jealous of those whose superiority is real and substantial rather than imagined or aspired? As my anonymous teacher puts it, “…those that are weak manifest their envy and seek to undermine the strong.” And how this envy manifests into undermining efforts, is through the vehicles of usurpation, subversion, and above all: revolution. This is such that one way we might define leftism is as follows: Leftism is an ideology of revenge—an uprising of the underclass against the overclass whom they have envied, a usurpation of the Übermensch by the Untermensch. However, regardless of whether this uprising is fought with sword or blood (a conventional “revolution from below”), or through means of ideology and narrative as they penetrate the social mediums and institutions (in effect, a false “revolution from above”), their efforts always amount to a “revolution” in some sense of the word or another. In fact, the vehicle of revolution has drifted away from catastrophically violent tendencies in more recent times, emphasizing instead how it can further actualize the “peaceful” institution of democracy—the unhistorical and revolutionary notion that every man ought to be empowered such that the weak, the sniveling, the depraved, the immoral, the criminal, the alien, the failing—they are all held equal. Revolution needs not to take the form of a violent effort. In truth, the most progressive leftist believes in a “peaceful” revolution by those who cannot even muster the strength to carry arms, or by those whose only reprieve is firearms due to their frail bodies’ inability to conduct primal combat. Thus, they seek to subvert the established institutions and to levy what is at once a popular “revolution from below”, in that it is led by the lowest Shudras and Vaishyas, but also to appropriate the vigor of a “revolution from above” in this very character of subversion wherein they impose themselves as the unelected administrators of state and as the puppeteers of the new social morality.
(While this assessment is made in light of leftism, it is at least partially translatable over to Fascism. That is, a common fault exhibited by both leftism and Fascism is that what either of their modes of populism propose is more or less a revolution of the underclass—or more specifically, the undercaste. While Fascism is still traditional enough to believe in the utility and necessity of strong autocrats who can command the populace, it is nonetheless in some capacity a usurpation of power, wherein the voices of the common folk are empowered at a national level—an empowerment made possible through Fascism’s “corporate voting” system. (Corporate voting is a system where “corporates”, similar to “syndicates”, representing bodies of laborers across the nation, exercise collective voting power.) While Fascism is right to identify a shared “collective unconscious” in the people which requires actualization, the specific political empowerment of the Shudras is not required to achieve the actualization of the collective unconscious. The ruling Aristocrats of any monarchial or theocratic state of old always made it a point to educate themselves on matters of high culture and to revere and embody these in all that they did, living through the very principles of a nation’s spirit as its waking symbols. It was their duty to safeguard the their people’s collective heritage, finding themselves not only documenting their history, but rigorously studying, adopting, and living through all the high symbols of their culture—taking themselves to deep infatuation with coats of heraldry, stooping themselves into long bouts of admiration and contemplation of the people’s literature and philosophy, and dining upon only the finest samples of the local cuisine and in the finest wares of the local dress. Any Laborer, commoner, or peasant, at any point in history, could rest assured that the Aristocrats would not only preserve the integrity of their shared collective unconscious, but that the Warrior nobles would fight to defend and administrate it, and that the Merchants would skillfully navigate to franchise it and invigorate it with their artisanal prowess. But most importantly, priests and high-ranking clerics who professed the Word would immortalize and guide this collective unconscious with their invaluable wisdom. Thus, we must be wise not to succumb to Merchant-caste populism. Our salvation is in the hands of the Brahmins and Kshatriyas, not the Vaishyas and Shudras.)
>>Ch.2 Part C – Segment III, Subsegment D: A Final Critique - Leftism’s Strive to Undo The Bifurcation of the Primordial Man
In speaking of inversion and false transcendence, one final observation and critique which might be noted of the progressive’s cosmopolitan model is that in its aims to eliminate tribalism and the boundaries between all categories of people, whether those boundaries be defined in terms of race, sex, class, age, etc., the progressive cosmopolitan is unwittingly seeking a homogenous society—hence their mantra of “unity in diversity”, with an emphasis on “unity”. The progressive does not desire a truly diverse society, which is in fact a segregated or partitioned society—or what they would call “divided”. No, the progressive will actively protest any measure to segregate, whether such segregation is enforced by the law or is a purely voluntary social custom. The progressive opposes the de facto biracialism found in some parts of the rural southern United States (such as eastern Texas), and opposes the “freedom of association” policy in South Africa which enables white minority communities to isolate themselves—even though this “freedom of association” is enshrined in the South African Constitution (Bill of Rights, Section 18). The progressive does not want a society which boasts “diversity in diversity”, but one which is a “melting pot”—with a citizenry compelled (whether they like it or not) to be one unitary substance. Not only is this practice homogeneity turned on its head—an inversion of homogeneity—but such a practice perhaps speaks to a spiritual end: You see, in the macrocosm, we monists recognize that the Mond or Absolute, is One Ontic Essence residing as a non-dual singularity and as a point of non-distinction. That is to say, Ultimate Reality is monolithic, or “homogenous”, such that from the ultimate perspective there is no “this” or “that”. Both the imperium and the racially conscious society—that is, both the Traditional and the Fascist society—seek out a type of homogeneity in their own ways, perhaps so as to emulate the macrocosm in the microcosm—to be a symbol for the First Archetype. The Fascist’s society is homogenous in that there is only one race, and the Traditionalist’s is homogeneous in that each unit of the empire is typically mono-racial. The progressives, however, might be seen as extremists in this regard. They seek to impossibly dissolve the boundaries of race, sex, class, and age, so as to undo the bifurcation of the Primordial Man, such that Purusha is no longer partitioned into white and black, man and woman, Brahmin and Shudra, or young and old. You will notice that the progressive cosmopolitan’s modern posterchild is ambiguous and amorphous in all ways: It is racially mixed, androgenous or “genderless”, has no unique sense of culture or heritage but participates in a “melting pot”, is neither poor nor wealthy, and modifies their appearance whether young or old so as to conceal both the curses of immaturity and geriatric decay. “It”—the poster child—will seldom allow you to identify it as white or black, but often takes offense to any notion of racial pride. It will not allow you to identify it as male or female, but as something transitory or interim between these. It finds itself in the center of a metroplex surrounded by all cultures’ houses of cuisine, dress, and worship, but has none it to call its own, and so stitches together aspects of these in a most hideous collage or patchwork. It is poor, but has much material wealth; severely indebted, but boasts a prestigious career. When young, it will dress maturely and dawn its parents’ jewelry and cosmetics, so to deceive others into finding it advanced a decade more; when elderly, it will dress youthfully and undergo surgical procedures to rid itself of its life’s marks, so to boast to others that it is a decade behind. In all ways, it is a creature of non-distinction, of complete homogenous ambiguity—the re-un-partitioned man, the undoing of the Primordial Man’s bifurcation, the undoing of Purusha’s self-sacrifice.
(For reference regarding that last clause, Purusha as the Primordial Man is said to have engaged in a self-sacrifice, vicariously through the gods whom he is present in such that they are instantiations of Him, to give birth to Creation: “The Purusha-Sukta lacks any chthonic elements and depicts the death of the primordial man as a willing sacrifice to create the world.” | “In the broader Indo-European versions of the myth, the Primordial Man is said to simply be in the presence of the gods, whereas Purusha had absorbed them too. The absorption of the gods into Purusha adds a new layer to the nature of his sacrifice, making it a self-sacrifice. The self-sacrificing nature of Purusha is an expression that creation was done through the willing participation of the Godhead,…” – Departure)
Yet we must understand that this aim of the progressives is wrong because it contradicts the future of God’s Plan. That is, Purusha’s bifurcation cannot be undone until the death of the cosmos when Ishvara (God) reassumes all of creation back into Himself in the destructive universe-ending event known as Pralaya. It is as if the progressives implicitly seek out Enlightenment—a return to the amorphous homogeneity of the formless Absolute, by making the substance of their society as monolithic and non-distinct as the Ontic Essence itself. (Here I intend for the terms “amorphous”, “formless”, and “non-distinct” to be taken together, as the Absolute, preceding all substance or form, is amorphous. And it is from the Ultimate perspective that there is no distinction between forms, as the only Ultimate Reality is the unqualified Absolute.) This aim is a false transcendence, a Dark Enlightenment, the humanely origination of the vertical axis within the horizontal plane. That is, the progressives seek to dissolve back into the Absolute just as deeply religious persons do, but physically rather than spiritually, since the secular progressives deny that there is an essential or spiritual element to this world. To summarize: The progressive seeks a cosmopolitan society, or “unity in diversity”, via an unconscious understanding that Ultimate Reality is a “homogenous” Essence. Thus, they go on to symbolize the First Archetype improperly. It is an improper praxis born out of the secularist’s unconscious desire for transcendence and a dissolution back into the Absolute, but conducted through the humanely origination of the vertical axis from inside the horizontal plane.
End Note
I hope I have been successful in satisfying the four goals that this essay set out to accomplish. Thank you for reading.
3 hours nigga... 3 HOURS???? *vine sound effect ooooh my goood*
Sat my phone down after pausing the AI reader thing and now it doesn't want to pick up where I left off. Sigh.