“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

Image: Guild Ships Over The Basin by Sam Weber

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”
― C.S. Lewis

Image: God Speed by Edmund Blair Leighton

“Being real doesn't mean being reckless, it means allowing La Voz Mitologica, The Mythological Voice, to speak. One does that by shutting off the ego for a while and letting that which wishes to speak, speak.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Image: Patchwork in the Silence by Lucy Campbell

“Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

Image: The Riders of the Sidhe by John Duncan

Notes: The people known as “The Sidhe" or the people of the mounds were said to be descended from the Tuatha de Danann (the folk of the goddess Danu) who settled in Ireland millennia ago.

After being defeated by an invading force (or ideology), the two groups agreed to divide Ireland between them; the victors would take the world above, while the Tuath Dé take the world below (the underworld and perhaps the subconscious mind).

The Sidhe can only be perceived in visionary states of mind and at liminal places such as stone circles, sacred groves, wells and ‘fairy hills' or 'fairy glens'. Through the ages they have said to have been in contact with mortals giving protection, healing and even teaching some of their skills such as smith-crafting and the working of metals.

“Most people are surprised to learn that the early cultures of Europe even practiced shamanism. Mircea Eliade's books brush over shamanism in Europe with a few passing remarks, and he was, and still is, considered an authority on the subject. The reason for this silence may be that so very little of the shamanistic practices were allowed to remain after the Christian domination of European countries. Undoubtedly it became a crime to practice or teach shamanism, as happened with many other Pagan beliefs. The only remaining denoscriptions of Celtic shamanism are clothed in myths and legends.”
―D.J Conway, By Oak, Ash & Thorn: Modern Celtic Shamanism

Image: The Seer by Will Worthington

“The Sophia mythos does not belong in the past or to the past. It is a once and future myth, the timeless and insuperable alterative to the salvation narrative. It is a myth that nurtures and sustains those who embrace it, and fosters authenticity through direct experience of its subject matter: the passion of the Goddess.”
―John Lamb Lash, Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief

Image: The Grail of Summer Stars by Kinuko Y. Craft

“This is perhaps one of the most important things I learned during this investigation: We see what we believe, and not just the contrary; and to change what we see, it is sometimes necessary to change what we believe.”
― Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Image: Illustration from 'The Red Book: Liber Novus' by Carl Gustav Jung

“Myths serve as source patterns originating in the ground of our being. While they appear to exist solely in the transpersonal realm, they are the key to our personal and historical existence, the DNA of the human psyche.”
―Jean Houston, The Hero and the Goddess

Image: Idun and the Apples by James Doyle Penrose

The True Meaning of ‘Peace’

Maimonides AKA ‘the Rambam’ the most prolific and influential Jewish philosopher points out that the commandment for ‘righteous deceit’ from the off-planet father god Yahweh is clear within the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible).

“When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labour and shall work for you.”
-Deuteronomy 20:10-12

Chabad Lubavitch, the most influential and best-known Hasidic group give instruction on when it is permissible to lie. Telling the Truth...and When It Is Permissible to Be Less Than Honest

From the article - “And we are told that a lie told to promote peace is not included at all in the prohibition of telling lies. It seems then that since the ultimate goal of this lie is a positive one, it is not prohibited.”

Chabad indicates that a lie is permissible if it’s in the service of ‘peace’. The commonly known Hebrew greeting of ‘shalom’ means ‘peace’. However, we should ask ourselves what is meant by ‘peace’. According to Maimonides ‘peace’ means acceptance of and following the 7 Noahide Laws (currently being promoted to the UN) which is absolute submission to the rules of Yahweh. Therefore with this understanding, the true meaning of ‘peace’ in this context would be ‘submit or die’.

“For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.”
― Angela Carter

Image: Robin Hood Meets Maid Marian by Newell Convers Wyeth

“Greek philosophers were inspired by Sophia, and through her divine wisdom human beings could begin to form a new relationship with Sophia through the use of the power of thought. This is what gave birth to philosophy. When we consider the original meaning of the word philosophy, philo-sophia, love of Sophia, we can see it was really love for the Divine Sophia, who was present from the beginning as the divine plan of creation, that gave birth to philosophy.”
― Martin Rowe, Sophia Teachings: The Emergence of the Divine Feminine in Our Time

Image: The Banquet after Plato (extract) by Anselm Feuerbach

“Although the earliest Mesolithic and Megalithic sites of the world prove to be more sophisticated in design and construction than those of later date, most people continue to accept the unsustainable fiction concerning the world of the past. Ancient man was primitive and modern man is civilized. That is what the vast majority of people believe. It is, however, one of the most egregious fallacies conceivable.”
― Michael Tsarion

Image: Gates of Atlantis By Pierre-Alain D

“Animism has traditionally been considered backward and lacking in objective validity by Western scholars, but today philosophers, psychologists and scientists in our culture are beginning to realise that animistic peoples, far from being ‘primitive’, have been living a reality which holds many important insights for our own relationships with each other and with the Earth. One such insight is that animistic perception is archetypal, ancient, and primordial; that the human organism is inherently predisposed to seeing nature as alive and full of soul, and that we repress this fundamental mode of perception at the expense of our own health, and that of the natural world.”
―Stephen Harding, Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia

Image: Visionary Journey by Emma Lucy Shaw

Notes: If you would like to learn more about ethnic healing and returning to indigenous roots, check out the latest Fyrgen podcast interview with visionary artist Emma Lucy Shaw here. View more of her art and other services here.

“Prehistory is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with more than half its pieces destroyed or lost. It is impossible to reconstruct completely. But the greatest obstacle to the accurate reconstruction of prehistory is not that we are lacking so many pieces; it is that the prevailing paradigm makes it so hard to accurately interpret the pieces we have and to project the real pattern into which they fit.”
―Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade

Image: Font de Gaume by Charles R. Knight

“Who were the Gnostics? Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, most of our knowledge about them came from prejudiced sources, the church fathers who railed against and condemned them as the first “heretics”, a word that derives from the Greek hairetikos, which means “able to choose.” Heretics are those who choose something other than the received church dogma. What the Gnostics chose was gnosis over belief and experience over faith.”
―Gary Lachman, The Secret Teachers of the Western World

Image: Damnation by Daniel Valaisis

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
― Robert Jordan

Image: The Path of Daggers by Darrell K Sweet

“Yaldabaoth himself chose a certain man named Abraham…and made a covenant with him that if his seed would continue to serve him he would give to him the earth as an inheritance. Later through Moses, he brought forth from Egypt the descendants of Abraham, gave them the law, and made them Jews.”
―Irenaeus, Against Heresies: On the Section & Overthrow of the So-Called Gnostics, 120 AD

Notes: Due to the Abrahamic eradication of the mysteries until the discovery of the Library of Nag Hammadi in 1945, Against Heresies was the best surviving denoscription of Gnosticism despite it being the case of the prosecution. In the passage above; the Abrahamic deity, Yahweh, is identified as being the Lord Archon Yaldabaoth; a delusional extraterrestrial entity who believes he created all that he beholds. By pointing out this fact and the nature of the Mosaic covenant in which the Earth is promised as an ‘inheritance' we can begin to see why these teachings were annihilated.

Image: Moses receives Commandments by Giora Eshkol

"The university intellectuals play an important role in carrying out the System's trick. Though they like to fancy themselves independent thinkers, the intellectuals are the most oversocialized, the most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated, the most pampered, dependent, and spineless group today. As a result, their impulse to rebel is particularly strong. But, because they are incapable of independent thought, real rebellion is impossible for them. Consequently, they are suckers for the System's trick, which allows them to irritate people and enjoy the illusion of rebelling without ever having to challenge the System's basic values."
—Ted Kaczynski

Image: Jordan Peterson, Lobster Dominance Hierarchy by Skai

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
― H.L. Mencken

Image: Sick Media by Bob Moran

"The majority of men ‘without religion’ still hold to pseudo religions and degenerated mythologies. There is nothing surprising in this, for, as we saw, profane man is the descendant of homo religiosus and he cannot wipe out his own history—that is, the behavior of his religious ancestors which has made him what he is today. This is all the more true because a great part of his existence is fed by impulses that come to him from the depths of his being, from the zone that has been called the "unconscious," A purely rational man is an abstraction; he is never found in real life. Every human being is made up at once of his conscious activity and his irrational experiences.”
― Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

Image: Sacred Love and Profane Love by Giovanni Baglione

“A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed. If it works, that is, if it forces us to change our minds and hearts, gives us new hope, and compels us to live more fully, it is a valid myth. Mythology will only transform us if we follow its directives. A myth is essentially a guide; it tells us what we must do in order to live more richly. If we do not apply it to our own situation and make the myth a reality in our own lives, it will remain as incomprehensible and remote as the rules of a board game, which often seem confusing and boring until we start to play.”
― Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

Image: Lawrence Alma-Tadema by A Reading from Homer