Apollo, Glorious golden haired Lord of the Sun who brings light and healing upon the Earth, tending to your herd with gentle hands and open arms.

The same hands that string an opaline bow with unrivaled skill and let loose a hundred gleaming arrows with ease, piercing the hearts of arrogant and wicked and setting them aflame with the heat of passionate righteousness.

The same hands that weave bandages like tapestries upon the flesh of the wounded, warding off pestilence and decay.

The same arms that embrace those who hold you within their heart, protecting and cradling them like a newborn babe, their devotion to you never going unheard or unanswered.

"More recently, the surprising parallel that has been established between some plastic investigations and a number of scientific discoveries, for exam­ple, of microscopic phenomena. This is an indication, if not a proof, of the unity of knowledge as well as its universality. Each truly original and thus unusual production in the domain of graphic or pictorial creation can put forward the case for its unforeseen but undeniable resemblance with some document brought to light by fundamental research and receive some type of validation from it. Kandinsky was thus overwhelmed by becoming aware of Bohr's theories about the atom. He saw in them a dissolution of objective reality or at least a deconstruction of what was taken to be the nature of things until then. He thereby found a powerful motif that gave full devel­opment to some of his intuitions. This resulted in what would come to be called 'abstract painting.'"

- Michel Henry, Barbarism

Image: Wassily Kandinsky, In Grey (1919)

"Why does art necessarily emerge in the human experience as one of the fundamental forms of all culture? That is one of our questions, and we are already able to provide some answer to it. Nature is essentially a sensible nature, because the relation to the object and ultimately the ek-stasis of being where all nature and this relation itself are based, is auto-affective in its own transcendence, such that seeing, for example, is a sensible seeing.
That is why Kant, who sought the conditions of all possible experience, or in his terms, of every possible world, began his investigation with a Tran­scendental Aesthetic - with the analysis of sensibility. Without a doubt, this analysis unfolds on a plane that is still the plane of factuality. It encounters sensibility at the birth of the world, without truly understanding the reason for the sensible character of this birth. But this reason is available to us: the world is a sensible world because it is a lifeworld and not a pure conscious­ness. It is affective in its basis, according to the innermost possibility of its ek-static display.
Sensibility not only is the a priori essence of every possible world but also defines the possibility of art. 'It is only through sensibility that one can reach the truth in art,' declares Kandinsky. And he adds: 'Art acting on sen­sibility, it can also only act through sensibility.' This is how the famous laws of beauty, as laws of sensibility, only appear to be mathematical, ideal, and objective laws. Even when one would be able to give forms, the relations between them, and the various plastic elements of a composition, a rigorous mathematical formulation, this would only ever be the ideal approximation of proportion and balance that are at play in sensibility. They find their pos­sibility, the demands to which they respond, and their ultimate reason in sensibility. That is why, as Kandinsky says, 'Balance and proportion cannot be found outside of the artist but within him.'"

- Michel Henry, Barbarism

Perhaps the antithesis between the initiatic notion of “awakening” and the religious and more especially Christian notion of “salvation” or “redemption” has not yet been adequately stressed. The religious conception is based on the assumption that man is a being existentially detached from the sacred and the supernatural; because of his ontological status of creature, or as the result of an original sin, he belongs to the natural order; only by the intervention of a transcendent power, only on the assumption of his “conversion,” of his faith and of his renunciation of his own will, only by Divine action, can he be “saved” and attain to life in “paradise.”

The implications of the notion of “awakening” are entirely different; man is not a fallen or guilty being, nor is he a creature separated by an ontological hiatus from a Creator. He is a being who has fallen into a state of sleep, of intoxication and of “ignorance.” His natural status is that of a Buddha. It is for him to acquire consciousness of this by “awakening.” In opposition to the ideas of conversion, redemption, and action of grace, the leading motive is the destruction of “ignorance,” of avijja. Decisive here is a fact of an essentially “noetic,” viz. intellectual, and not emotional nature. This confers an indisputable aristocratic character on the doctrine of Buddhism. It ignores the “sin”-complex, self-abasement, and self-mortification. Its askesis is clear and “dry”; it is alien to the features of auto-sadism or masochism which are always present in the forms of the asceticism more known to the West, and which have often given rise as to a reaction among Westerners to anti-ascetic prejudice and a distorted exaltation of life.

This character of loftiness, which is due to Buddhist ontology, is matched by the Buddhist doctrine of autonomy: man is the free master of his own destiny. He alone is responsible for what he is. Thus in conformity with his vocation, he can confirm the state in which he is, or he can change it. There are no penalties and no rewards; therefore there is nothing to hope for and nothing to fear; the only things that must be taken into consideration are objective, unsentimental, extra-moral connection of cause and effect. If a Buddha sets himself free, it is by his own efforts alone. On the path leading to awakening no external aid is to be looked for. This conception, on which already pivoted the traditional Hindu notion of karma, is particularly stressed by Buddhism. The historical Buddha, as is well known, did not present himself as a divine savior, but as a man who, after attaining by himself enlightenment and the Great Liberation, points out to those having a like vocation the path to follow. All this refers to early Buddhism. With Mahayanic Buddhism in its prevailing and popular aspects, we descend once more to the level of the soteriological religions; myriads of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas busy themselves to assure the salvation and happiness of all living beings.

Julius Evola

"Next, we should distinguish the world of religion from that of Initiation. Here a certain schematisation cannot be avoided. Basically, there are religions in which an Initiation is present, and from the point of view of the history of religion it is a fact that some religions have developed from a domain which originally had an initiatory character, through a process of popularisation, of flattening, and of externalisation of the original teachings and practices. Buddhism is characteristic of this: there is a real gulf between what can be called the pure ‘doctrine of awakening’ and the related practices at the origin of Buddhism, and the religion which spread subsequently.

It can be stated, however, that, in a complete Traditional system, Religion and Initiation are two hierarchically ordered degrees, whose relation in the doctrinal field is expressed by the following binaries: exoterism and esotericism; mere faith and gnosis; devotion and spiritual accomplishment; plane of the dogmas and myths and plane of metaphysics. The present history of religions hardly brings out, or does not bring out at all, this essential articulation, and the way of conceiving religion which has come to predominate in the West, to the suggestive power of which many independent scholars are subject without realising it, shows that ‘religion’ can in fact become a category in itself, quite precisely determined and defined in opposition to everything which is initiatory and metaphysical.

This conception derives to a large extent from the beliefs of the Semitic peoples, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, characterised, in their positive forms, by theism, creationism and the concept of man as generated per iatum (i.e., generated by the deity as a detached being). Islam indeed possesses an esoteric and initiatory tradition in the contexts of Shi’ism and Sufism; Judaism has a related tradition, in the Kabbala; but these currents are in a certain manner separated from orthodoxy. In Catholicism, their equivalent is completely lacking, since, instead of esotericism and initiatory experience, there is on the one hand mere mysticism, and on the other, as we shall note below, the curious phenomenon of structures which, in form, are of the initiatory type, but which are applied in a non-initiatic manner."
https://counter-currents.com/2013/03/the-concept-of-initiation/

"From the practical point of view, the metaphysical principle of identity leads to the replacement of relations of a moral and devotional character with relations of knowledge. This finds its main expression in the idea that what defines the human state with all its conditionalities is not an ontological distance, but only ‘ignorance’ or ‘oblivion’. This truth has sometimes been sensed also by high mysticism (Meister Eckhart: man is God, but ‘does not know’ he is such – which corresponds precisely to the Hindu theory of avidya, or ‘ignorance’). The concept of salvation or redemption is thus replaced by that of awakening and metaphysical awareness of the dimension of transcendence as such. It is in these terms that the specific attainment of the Initiate should be defined. Its essential character is that of a ‘centrality’. Thus, some have opposed to the concept of ecstasy that of en-stasy, indicative of the opposite direction, not of a ‘going out’, but of a reconvergence towards the centre – besides, mysticism itself has known the saying: “You have not found Me because you have sought Me outside of yourself, while I (the deity) was within you”. Another formula is that of the centre which unites with the Centre, of the one which unites with the One."

“O my son Yudhishthira, you should always exert yourself with diligence, for without diligence of exertion mere destiny never accomplishes the objects cherished by kings. These two - exertion and destiny - are equal in their operation. Of them, however, I regard exertion to be superior, for destiny is ascertained from the results of what is begun with exertion. Do not indulge in grief if what is commenced ends disastrously, for you should then exert yourself in the same act with redoubled attention. This is the high duty of kings."

(Mahabharata, Book 12; Shanti Parva; Rajadharma-anushasana Parva; 56)

Christianity understands 'that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.' (James 2:24) This is because actions are the actualization and fulfillment of inner faith. Justification by faith is a poison, a spiritual hyper-rationalization, a hijacking of the entire soul by a lazy and egoic nous. What you believe is worthless, what you do with it has the potential to be priceless.

have this egg

"As a starting point, we need to emphasize that the individuality of the overwhelming majority of people is a fiction, their very unity being a fictitious and precarious unity of a mere aggregate of forces and influences that in no way can be said to belong to them.

The forces on which man depends are first of all of a psychic order, and second of an organic order. To the first is connected everything that is related to passions, feelings, beliefs, natural affections, traditions, blood ties, and so on.

Ordinary man should never say, "I love," but, "Love loves through me." As the fire manifests itself in individual flames when the necessary conditions are present, likewise love (or better said, the being of love) manifests itself in individual beings who love with a love that transcends and transports them, in relation to which they are more or less passive. The same applies to hatred, fear, piety, etc.

Nor is that all: every nation, every religion or traditional institution has its own "being"; the instinctive and deep reaction against an insult to one's country, faith, or customs is the reaction of such beings and not, as it is commonly assumed, an individual reaction, proper to a distinct and autonomous Self.

Much less so is one truly a real individual as we descend into the depths of the organic being: circulatory, endocrine, and nervous systems, sleep, hunger, and so on. All this, in individuals, represents a transcendent and collective element, of which it is obvious that others, rather than the single Self, are the active and leading principle. The Self leans on all this, and neither is it nor dominates it.

Thus its individual life is a mirage that endures until the dissolution of the contingent nexus of equilibrium that gives a relative stability and unity to its psychophysical being, and until the various aggregated forces are reabsorbed into their respective "beings."

These beings are not to be found just anywhere: they exist in thoughts, actions, passions, creations, bodily functions, and organs of human beings. They invisibly permeate and direct most of what is called ordinary life.

This is why he who really wants to live must first die, separating himself from this mêlée of influences and dependencies, and making his own the principle of a life that is of itself, and, thus, immortal." - Ea, Introduction to Magic I.

My son found his death on November 29, 1944; he was 18 years old.
A bullet hit him in the head in a collision with a patrol detachment in the Marble Mountains of Carrara, in Central Italy, and death, as his comrades write, was instantaneous. They could not take him with them right away, but soon returned for him in an armored personnel carrier. In the cemetery of Turigliano near Carrara, he found his final resting place.

My cute boy.
Since childhood, he tried to imitate his father.
And now, from the first time, he has surpassed him immeasurably.

Today I went into a small basement room, which I gave to him and in which his aura still lived. I entered quietly, as if into a shrine.

There, among his papers, I found a small diary that began with the phrase: "The one who does not know where to go goes furthest of all."

~ Ernst Jünger, Diary, Kirchhorst, January 13, 1945

Heroism--that is the disposition of a man who aspires to a goal compared to which he himself is wholly insignificant. Heroism is the good will to self-destruction.

Nietzsche

"There is a doctrine which says that after our nature fell into sin, God did not disregard our fall and withhold his providence. No, on the one hand, he appointed an angel with an incorporeal nature to help in the life of each person and, on the other hand, he also appointed the corruptor who, by an evil and maleficent demon, afflicts the life of man and contrives against our nature." - St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

"I have seen that every man receives at his birth two spirits, one good, the other evil. The good one is heavenly by nature and belongs to the lowest hierarchy; the evil one is not a devil, not yet in torments, though deprived of the vision of God." - Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

It must be said: few if any teachings are so ancient, so widespread, and remain so plainly true, as those attributed to Hermes-Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus). There is little reason to doubt their mythical Atlantean origins.

From the land of the Ganges many advanced occultists wandered to the land of Egypt, and sat at the feet of the Master. From him they obtained the Master-Key which explained and reconciled their divergent views, and thus the Secret Doctrine was firmly established...

I: The All is Mind, the universe is mental.

II: As above, so below; as below, so above.

III: Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

IV: Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

V: Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.

VI: Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to law; chance is but a name for law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.

VII: Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.

From the comments: https://youtu.be/7rCF6vSeZ3k

I will listen to this when I have the chance, but I trust that whatever it contains will be insightful. I'm certainly not a true Hermeticist myself and I will concede to the genuine expert where he is superior.

It turns out that the Kybalion is degenerate Theosophical garbage. Those sneaky bastards are everywhere. I should have educated myself before using any of the book's content.

"It might be objected that in so far as concerns Hermetism, Hermes takes the place of the Egyptian Thoth with whom he has been identified, and that Thoth represents Wisdom, which is related to the priesthood as guardian and transmitter of the tradition; that is true, but since this identification cannot have been made without some reason, it must be admitted that it concerns more especially a certain aspect of Thoth which corresponds to a certain part of the tradition, the part that comprises those branches of knowledge which are related to the 'intermediary world'; and the remains that the ancient Egyptian civilization has left behind do in fact show that the sciences of this order were much more developed there and had taken on an importance far more considerable than anywhere else. There is moreover another comparison, we might even say another equivalence, which shows clearly that this objection would have no real bearing: in India the planet Mercury (or Hermes) is called Budha, a name of which the root letters mean Wisdom; here again, it is enough to specify the domain in which this Wisdom (in its essence the inspiring principle of all knowledge) is to find its more particular application when it is related to this specialized function.

Strange though it may seem, the name Budha is in fact identical with that of the Scandinavian Odin, Woden or Wotan; there was thus nothing arbitrary in the Roman assimilation of Odin to Mercury, and in some Germanic languages the day of Mercury (in French mercredi) is still called the day of Odin, which is precisely what the word Wednesday means.

Still more remarkable, perhaps, is the fact that this same name is to be found exactly in the Votan of the ancient traditions of central America who has moreover the attributes of Hermes, for he is Quetzal cohuatl [Quetzalcoatl], the 'bird-serpent,' and the union of these two symbolic animals (corresponding respectively to the two elements air and fire) is also figured by the wings and the serpents of the Caduceus. One must indeed be blind not to see, in such facts, a sign of the fundamental unity of all traditional doctrines."

- Rene Guénon, Hermes

The Cain and Abel chapter in René Guénon's The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times

A riveting read