By Kemal
“The sun is high up in the sky and I’m in my car
Drifting down into the abattoir
Do you see what I see, dear?
..I wanted to be your Superman but I turned out such a jerk
I got the abattoir blues
I got the abattoir blues…”– Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Abattoir Blues
of Hinnom – the trucks
from the abattoir
skidding their loads,
the shameless body parts.
Ezekiel’s wheel
shall encompass all..” –Geoffrey Hill, in Ezekiel’s Wheel
The answer, my friend, is certainly not just “blowing with the wind” – unless you’re a leaf.
The answer is to know your hour, and what is due from you to it, and what it is giving to you; and to take what that hour offers you, and then to do what the hour demands. Being appropriate, in other words. Like, do you brush your teeth out a toilet bowl?
?
Consider the following:
I contend that you can tell a lot about the true greatness of a civilization by how noble, or insipid, they are in their decadence – right before the fall into senility. I contend, further, that a mistake people make, out of nostalgia, is to hearken back to that specific point; not realizing in their sincere, naive, and dangerous delusion that what they yearn for, out of nostalgia, was that civilization’s extreme illness. I contend, further, that one who is truly perceptive can discern the proper measure of a civilization’s true inner greatness by looking at its earlier, less grand, and primitive stages. The least sexy and glamorous parts of its history. I fear, however, that many people lack the imagination, insight, or discernment to do so, frankly.
Dead civilizations are best left moldering in their graves. Attempts to resurrect them simply creates revenants.
What in the world am I babbling ’bout here, you ask? Well consider the following.
I believe this – and you are free to listen or reject – that there is an inherent tragedy in all types of neo-Paganism, and it lies in a correct intuition of these points. From the most banal teen witch pop-Wicca, to more intellectually rigorous thoughts of men like John Mitchel, Julius Evola, Eldred Thorson (S. Flowers) or Alain Benoist (who in spite of having been a knowing political agent and provocateur at various points in his life, is an excellent and cogent writer), a tragic twist is seen. It is a romantic, terribly romantic, tragic twist.
The tragic twist lies in the fact that all of these men are essentially necromancers of a sort; intelligent, romantic, and in a certain sense pious necromancers. But necromancers yet still, and their trade is in shades and ghosts.
It’s been said that the true Sufi is “Ibn Waqtuhu” – the “Son of his moment“.
This is to say, the one who knows what is to be done, and not to be done. What is to be saved, and what is not to be saved, and who acts to each moment with the appropriate “adab“. That is the appropriate etiquette, withholding what should be withheld, giving what should be given, and not resisting the inevitable.
For the Muslim Sufi, this is done while conforming to it, to the moment’s needs, in accordance to the Sharia (the broader road of the law) with his inner state upon the Tariqa (the narrower path of inner attainment) to reach the Haqiqa (that which is essentially the Reality and entelechy) of that moment.
So, “in other freaking words”, you give a moment what’s due to it. To do otherwise is to probably risk being, or becoming, a numb-skull. Yet you give the moment it’s true due, on sound principles. You don’t go “blowing with the wind” – you maintain discernment and act.
Let’s not be numb-skulls here.
There is a problem of mistaking illusory glamour for substantive reality. If you want to consider a metaphysical perspective, imagine that the subtle world, the lowest Alam al-Amthal, is actually – in a sense – an illusionist’s tent. There is more to it, if we look at it here, for it has a vital intermediary role in matters, but at its lower levels consider the possibility that it does have properties much like a fun-house tent.
Imagine it filled with mirrors with varying degrees of distortion. What is it reflecting back, in various ways?
What’s being reflected may seem profound for a while, until you realize you are locked inside, and utterly lost in a wilderness of mirrors. Some do not mind being in Doctor Parnassus’s mirror for the rest of their lives. I view this as a tragic waste of human potential.
That I disagree with certain ultimate social-political aspirations held dear by many (many, not all) of the fellow-travelers of the men I mentioned is besides the point (e.g. the whole old neo-Rome, European neo-Imperium idea. Typically held while being clueless to the fact that such a beast, itself, is just a stepping stone to further consolidation by world federalists and globalists, etc., the whole matter being rather boring and transparent to dwell on..)
What is the point here, is that you cannot go back to the past and rebuild what has died. There are profound metaphysical reasons for this. But we can skip through all that and just consider what Jim Morrison – in a bit of lucidity – once shouted:
“Nobody gets out of here alive!”
_EOF
MRAs idealize the 1950s but there were more OOW births in the 50s than now. Only difference is guys were FORCED to marry their pregnant girlfriends OR the girls were forced to give them up for adoption.
MRAs also complain about nagging women but what kind of woman nags you for throwing socks on the floor? A women who is heavily emotionally invested in “homemaking”.
Modern women like myself are not going to nag a man over socks on the floor. We are too busy to be concerned about such trivial b.s. and we know that when he runs out of clean socks, he will pick them up and wash them.
Men: give up the wrongly informed fantasy about the 50s and submissive wives. Thank the gods you are living in the here and now.
Most Men typically don’t take kindly to orders, so telling them to give up something is probably less effective than suggesting and insinuating.
Nostalgia is always through rose colored glasses.
The fantasy of the 50’s, like every nostalgia induced fantasy, is wrongly informed but also has a basis in face in that for some people the 50’s sucked, but for other people the 50’s were a paradise. This is the case for both some men and some women. I’ve found many older women who felt that era one of suffocation and repression, but others who felt their society and culture were at a better place then. Obviously nostalgia for the 50s is found most among middle class folk or people with money and social agency due to their race, class, ethnicity.
The 50’s were a wonderful decade for certain groups, indifferent for others, and a horrible nightmare for still others – economically socially sexually and otherwise.
Every age has its benefits and its disadvantages, the trick is having an open eye to seeing both, and an engaged mind to weighing both. There are many disadvantages to our era, and also many advantages. It depends on who you are, what your resources, and what side of the bread your butter happens to be on.
The same with the 50’s. My dad often used to point out that the 50s were a very harsh decade in many ways for many people. Nostalgia is always built on partially constructed memories.
Many MRA’s and many feminists (allowing for a spectrum of complexity with each) really are mirrors of each other, and it’s a dialectic I’d rather transcend or evade totally.
Even for neo-Traditionalists, if they really look at the era, in many ways the 50’s were a nightmare for “family values” in their most real and deep sense since it’s in the 1950’s that the generational breakdown of affective bonds between the layers of the White Middle Class and Upper Class American family really became manifest. Carol Quigley in his Tragedy and Hope has a quite lucid analysis of these social processes. Most people probably skim over this stuff and never bother reflecting on it.
http://kali-yuga.org/wp-admin/edit-comments.php#comments-form
Black families were at their strongest in the late 40’s to 50’s, I’ve heard this from so many people male and female who were alive then that I don’t question it. At the same time, , the slide of the Black family began in the early 60s for a number of reasons, some obvious, some less so.
What to speak of all the prejudices, injustices and even lynchings that Black people suffered in the 1950s!
More on brushing your teeth from the right bowl…
Is Chivalry Dead?
More than 70 years ago, Denis de Rougemont, the late Swiss scholar, wrote a fascinating book called Love in the Western World. In it he theorizes that Tantra, which ignited in India some time before 800 C.E. from much older roots, traveled west via the Muslim world under the umbrella of divine passion, or fana (the passing away of the self). Fana was the theme of mystical Arab love poetry and song. It infected the Spanish Moors within a few centuries. When it crossed the Pyrenees into what is now southern France – in the refrains of wandering minstrels – it encountered a version of Gnosticism, which had migrated westward from Bulgaria, or beyond…
Continue reading here;
http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/courtly_love_chivalry_cortezia_cathars_gnostics
You know, I should apologize for the delay in responding, for you made a very interesting comment.
There’s truth to this, the history of chivalry is fascinating.
It’s necessary to avoid reductionism though, Romantic Chivalric Love can’t be reduced to one element, a sort of Indian Tantric transmission from Hindus through Muslims to Europe. Doubtlessly, though, I take very seriously the idea that a good deal of the ideas of Chivalric love do ultimately have an Indian origin. It’s a synthesis of many elements, but among them are elements I’m certain originated in India, a direct Indian influence is demonstrable, as for a specifically Tantric influence, it’s not exactly easily demonstrated – but personally I have no problem accepting it since many of the Indian ideas on Romantic love that ended up as part of the wider Islamic, and then European, synthesis of Courtly Chivalric love, do bear a specifically “Tantric flavor” – the scent and taste is there, so I don’t doubt it’s influence.
I’ll write a bit about this shortly.