As the darkness of night, even were it to last 1,000 years - could not conceal the rising sun - so countless ages of conflict and suffering cannot conceal the innate radiance of mind.

Although philosophers explain the transparent openness of appearances as empty of permanent characteristics and completely indeterminatable, this universal indeterminacy can itself never be determined.

Although sages report the nature of awareness to be luminosity, this limitless radiance cannot be contained within any language or sacramental system.

Although the very essence of mind is to be void of either subjects or objects, it tenderly embraces all life within its womb.

To realize this inexpressible truth, do not manipulate mind or body, but simply open into transparency with relaxed, natural grace. Intellect at ease, in silence. Limbs at rest, in stillness, like hollow bamboos. Neither breathing in, nor breathing out, with the breath of habitual thinking.

Allow the mind to be at peace; in brilliant wakefulness.

" You must sacrifice every thought, every ideology for the good of the nation and for the serenity of our fatherhood. "

"The peoples who rest on their laurels, who only want to be bourgeois, are condemned to death. "

Francisco Franco.

As for the famous judgment of the goddesses that the myths say was performed by Paris, following the ancient account, it is not to be believed that there was truly strife among the goddesses themselves and that they were judged by a [particular] barbarian. Rather, this is to be interpreted as meaning that the choices of lives – to which Plato testifies in many passages – are likewise carried out under the watchful eye of the gods who supervise souls.

Plato himself indeed clearly teaches the same thing in the Phaedrus, saying that the regal life belongs to Hera, the philosophical to Zeus, and the erotic to Aphrodite. Thus souls, when many kinds of lives are offered them out of the universe, accept some and reject others, following their own judgment, while the myths, transferring to the gods themselves the specific qualities of the lives, say that those who preside over the variation in them, form by form, are "judged" by those choosing the lives.

This is the sense in which Paris is said to have been made the judge of Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite: three lives were offered him, and he chose the erotic, not after due thought, but rushing after the beauty of the world of appearances and pursuing the phantom of the beauty grasped by the mind. He whose life is truly devoted to Eros sets intelligence and wisdom before him and contemplates the true and the apparent beauty through these and has no less to do with Athena than with Aphrodite. But he who pursues only the erotic form of life, in and for itself and through the passions, departs from true beauty and goodness and out of stupidity and greed leaps upon the phantom of the beautiful and lies there on it, failing to attain that balanced perfection commensurate with the erotic. The truly erotic individual, who is the concern of Aphrodite, is drawn up to the divine beauty itself, looking beyond the beauties of the senses, but since there are Aphrodisian daemons presiding over the beauty that is visible and has its existence in matter, for this reason, of course, even he who pursues the phantom is said to have Aphrodite as his helper.

- Proclus, On the Republic 6

" In the other schools - thus claim the Tantras - one excludes the other, but in the path we follow these opposites meet."

In other words, a discipline is developed that allows one to be free and invulnerable even while enjoying the world, or anything the world may offer. In the meantime, the world ceases to be seen in terms of maya - that is, pure appearance, illusion, or mirage - as is the case in Vedantic philosophy. The world is not maya but power. This paradoxical coexistence of freedom, or of the dimension of transcendence in one's self, and enjoyment of the world, of freely experimenting with the world's pleasures, carries the strictest relation with Tantrism's formula and main goal: the union of the impassive Shiva with the ardent Shakti in one's being and at all levels of reality.

In this substratum, corresponding to India's Dravidian populations and, in part, to strata and cycles of older civilizations, such as that which was brought to light in various excavation sites at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (dating from 3000 B.C.), the cult of a Great Mother or Universal Mother (magna mater) was a central motif, and it recovered an importance practically unknown to the Aryan-Vedic tradition and to its essentially virile and patriarchical spirituality. This cult, which during the Aryan (Indo-European) conquest and colonization survived by going underground, reemerged in Tantrism, in the manifold variety of Shaktic Hindu and Tibetan divinities. The result was, on the one hand, the revivifying of what had been latent in popular classes and, on the other hand, the outlining of a Tantric worldview.

Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power

In 1996 mosaics were accidentally uncovered during highway construction in the modern Israeli town of Lod. Lod is ancient Lydda, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 66 during the Jewish War. Refounded by Hadrian as Diospolis, Lydda was awarded the rank of a Roman colony under Septimius Severus in A.D. 200. It remained in Roman hands until becoming a Christian city and eventually succumbing to Arab conquerors in A.D. 636.

The discovery of the mosaics immediately prompted a rescue excavation, which revealed a series of mosaic floors that measured approximately fifty by twenty-seven feet. Debris covering the floors contained pottery and coins of the third and fourth centuries A.D., suggesting that the mosaics had been laid about A.D. 300. The large rooms in which the mosaics were found probably belonged to a private house and served as a series of reception or audience halls where visitors were met and entertained. The mud-brick walls, once covered with frescoes, had collapsed and preserved the mosaics.

Many Roman mosaics have been found in Israel, but the discovery at Lod has attracted considerable attention because the mosaics are of exceptional quality and in an excellent state of preservation.

The main panel, measuring thirteen feet square and set in the center of one of the floors, is divided into a series of smaller squares and triangles by an interlocking cable pattern, forming an outer polygon of twelve sides and sixteen square and triangular segments in which various birds, fish, and animals are depicted. These surround a larger octagonal space populated by ferocious wild animals—a lion and lioness, an elephant, a giraffe, a rhinoceros, a tiger, and a wild bull—with a mountainous landscape flanking a ketos, or mythical sea creature. 

The juxtaposition of animal hunting scenes and a marine scene, combined with the lack of human figures on any of the floors, makes the Lod Mosaic very unusual. Because the mosaic's imagery has no overt religious content, it cannot be determined whether the owner was a pagan, a Jew, or even a Christian. It is certain, however, that he was a wealthy local resident who wished to have his home decorated in the finest Roman style.

The depiction on the Lod Mosaic of solitary or paired groups of creatures, such as a large feline hunting a grazing animal, forms part of the common stock of genre subjects. Nevertheless, the composition reveals essential differences from other known mosaics, implying that the choice of subjects was deliberate and specific. For example, the central panel with the assortment of African and other animals defies immediate interpretation.

When your strategy is deep and far-reaching, then what you gain by your calculations is much, so you can win before you even fight.

When your strategic thinking is shallow and nearsighted, then what you gain by your calculations is little, so you lose before you do battle.

Much strategy prevails over little strategy, so those with no strategy cannot but be defeated. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘯.

~ Zhang Yu

He who knows is others is clever;
He who knows himself has discernment;
He who overcomes others has force;
He who overcomes himself is strong;
He who knows contentment is rich;
He who perseveres is a man of purpose;
He who does not lose his station will endure;
He who lives out his days has had a long life.

Tao Te Ching XXXIII

The most important thing is not life, but the good life.

Plato, Crito 48b

"The poem of Dante is not allegorical in the sense that its figures merely mean something different without existing independently of such meaning in and for themselves. On the other hand, none of them is independent of that meaning such that it simultaneously would be the idea itself and more than merely an allegory of it. His poem thus contains a totally unique medium between allegory and symbolic-objective configuration. There is no doubt, and the poet explains it himself elsewhere, that Beatrice, for example, is an allegory, namely, of theology. The same holds true of her companions and many other characters. Yet they also count for something by themselves and enter as historical characters without for that reason being symbols."

- 𝑭𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝑺𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈, "𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑨𝒓𝒕"

"Lewis’s view of the relationship of mythology to Christianity is in broad outlines identical to Schelling’s. Lewis argues that primitive religions gave mythic expression to the primordial yearning in human consciousness for an intimate personal contact with the transcendent God, an encounter which would restore the fallen world’s lost immediacy with the divine. Rather than one myth among others, Christianity fulfils the mythological impulse in history; it is “myth become fact” (Lewis, 1970: 63–68)."

- - 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝑮𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕, 𝑺𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑼𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒄𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔, 𝒃𝒚 𝑺𝒆𝒂𝒏 𝑱. 𝑴𝒄𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒉

https://odysee.com/@gtk:4/Deconstructing-Dugin:2?r=7GMWxWe1ScWv4XQqzrNsN8vHVFAPv6YS

A good talk about one of the most polarizing intellectuals within 'Traditionalism.' It adds some context and nuance to his thought that is sorely lacking in most discussion of his ideas.

“Shame on life here in this world! It is better for me to die in battle than to live defeated.”

Buddha Shakyamuni, Padhana Sutta