The Savage State (1)

No. 1., which may be called the ‘Savage State,' or ‘the Commencement of Empire,' represents a wild scene of rocks, mountains, woods, and a bay of the ocean. The sun is rising from the sea, and the stormy clouds of night are dissipating before his rays. On the farthest side of the bay rises a precipitous hill, crowned by a singular isolated rock, which, to the mariner, would ever be a striking land-mark. As the same locality is represented in each picture of the series, this rock identifies it, although the observer's situation varies in the several pictures. The chase being the most characteristic occupation of savage life, in the fore-ground we see a man attired in skins, in pursuit of a deer, which, stricken by his arrow, is bounding down a water-course. On the rocks in the middle ground are to be seen savages, with dogs, in pursuit of deer. On the water below may be seen several canoes, and on the promontory beyond, are several huts, and a number of figures dancing round a fire. In this picture, we have the first rudiments of society. Men are banded together for mutual aid in the chase, etc. The useful arts have commenced in the construction of canoes, huts, and weapons. Two of the fine arts, music and poetry, have their germs, as we may suppose, in the singing which usually accompanies the dance of savages. The empire is asserted, although to a limited degree, over sea, land, and the animal kingdom. The season represented is Spring.

– Thomas Cole

The Arcadian or Pastoral State (2)

No. 2. — The Simple or Arcadian State, represents the scene after ages have passed. The gradual advancement of society has wrought a change in its aspect. The ‘untracked and rude' has been tamed and softened. Shepherds are tending their flocks; the ploughman, with his oxen, is upturning the soil, and Commerce begins to stretch her wings. A village is growing by the shore, and on the summit of a hill a rude temple has been erected, from which the smoke of sacrifice is now ascending. In the fore-ground, on the left, is seated an old man, who, by describing lines in the sand, seems to have made some geometrical discovery. On the right of the picture, is a female with a distaff, about to cross a rude stone bridge. On the stone is a boy, who appears, to be making a drawing of a man with a sword, and ascending the road, a soldier is partly seen. Under the trees, beyond the female figure, may be seen a group of peasants; some are dancing, while one plays on a pipe. In this picture, we have agriculture, commerce, and religion. In the old man who describes the mathematical figure — in the rude attempt of the boy in drawing — in the female figure with the distaff—in the vessel on the stocks, and in the primitive temple on the hill, it is evident that the useful arts, the fine arts, and the sciences, have made considerable progress. The scene is supposed to be viewed a few hours after sunrise, and in the early Summer.

– Thomas Cole

The Consummation of Empire (3)

In the picture No. 3, we suppose other ages have passed, and the rude village has become a magnificent city. The part seen occupies both sides of the bay, which the observer has now crossed. It has been converted into a capacious harbor, at whose entrance, toward the sea, stand two phari. From the water on each hand, piles of architecture ascend — temples, colonnades and domes. It is a day of rejoicing. A triumphal procession moves over the bridge near the fore-ground. The conqueror, robed in purple, is mounted in a car drawn by an elephant, and surrounded by captives on foot, and a numerous train of guards, senators, etc. — pictures and golden treasures are carried before him. He is about to pass beneath the triumphal arch, while girls strew flowers around. Gay festoons of drapery hang from the clustered columns. Golden trophies glitter above in the sun, and incense rises from silver censers. The harbor is alive with numerous vessels – war galleys, and barks with silken sails. Before the doric temple on the left, the smoke of incense and of the altar rise, and a multitude of white-robed priests stand around on the marble steps. The statue of Minerva, with a victory in her hand, stands above the building of the Caryatides, on a columned pedestal, near which is a band with trumpets, cymbals, etc. On the right, near a bronze fountain and in the shadow of lofty buildings, is an imperial personage viewing the procession, surrounded by her children, attendants, and guard. In this scene is depicted the summit of human glory. The architecture, the ornamental embellishments, etc., show that wealth, power, knowledge, and taste have worked together, and accomplished the highest meed of human achievement and empire. As the triumphal fete would indicate, man has conquered man — nations have been subjugated. This scene is represented as near mid-day, in the early Autumn.

– Thomas Cole

Destruction (4)

No. 4.— The picture represents the Vicious State, or State of Destruction. Ages may have passed since the scene of glory — though the decline of nations is generally more rapid than their rise. Luxury has weakened and debased. A savage enemy has entered the city. A fierce tempest is raging. Walls and colonnades have been thrown down. Temples and palaces are burning. An arch of the bridge, over which the triumphal procession was passing in the former scene, has been battered down, and the broken pillars, and ruins of war engines, and the temporary bridge that has been thrown over, indicate that this has been the scene of fierce contention. Now there is a mingled multitude battling on the narrow bridge, whose insecurity makes the conflict doubly fearful. Horses and men are precipitated into the foaming waters beneath; war galleys are contending: one vessel is in flames, and another is sinking beneath the prow of a superior foe. In the more distant part of the harbor, the contending vessels are dashed by the furious waves, and some are burning. Along the battlements, among the ruined Caryatides, the contention is fierce; and the combatants fight amid the smoke and flame of prostrate edifices. In the fore-ground are several dead and dying; some bodies have fallen in the basin of a fountain, tinging the waters with their blood. A female is seen sitting in mute despair over the dead body of her son, and a young woman is escaping from the ruffian grasp of a soldier, by leaping over the battlement; another soldier drags a woman by the hair down the steps that form part of the pedestal of a mutilated colossal statue, whose shattered head lies on the pavement below. A barbarous and destroying enemy conquers and sacks the city. Denoscription of this picture is perhaps needless; carnage and destruction are its elements.

– Thomas Cole

Desolation (5)

The fifth picture is the scene of Desolation. The sun has just set, the moon ascends the twilight sky over the ocean, near the place where the sun rose in the first picture. Day-light fades away, and the shades of evening steal over the shattered and ivy-grown ruins of that once proud city. A lonely column stands near the fore ground, on whose capitol, which is illumined by the last rays of the departed sun, a heron has built her nest. The doric temple and the triumphal bridge, may still be recognised among the ruins. But, though man and his works have perished, the steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky unmoved, unchanged. Violence and time have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature. The gorgeous pageant has passed — the roar of battle has ceased — the multitude has sunk in the dust — the empire is extinct.

– Thomas Cole

It is chiefly the East which this traditional world brings to mind. Generally speaking, the further back we go in time, the more vital, universal and powerful we find this kind of civilisation to be;

so much so that the East alone must be regarded as that part of the world in which, traditional civilisation survived longer and developed better than anywhere else.

It is as though the rule of time were partly suspended in civilisations of this sort. They seem to have been born not so much in time, as in 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦. They possess an ‘atemporal’ character.

~ Julius Evola, Bow and the Club

"Except thou first hate thy body, O Son, thou canst not love thyself, but loving thyself, thou shalt have the Mind, and having the Mind, thou shalt also partake the Knowledge or Science... Because it is impossible, O Son, to be conversant about things Mortal and Divine. For the things that are, being two Bodies, and things incorporeal, wherein is the Mortal and the Divine, the Election or Choice of either is left to him that will choose: For no man can choose both. And of which soever the choice is made, the other being diminished or overcome, magnifieth the act or operation of the other. The choice of the better, therefore, is not only best for him that chooseth it, by deifying man, but it also shewth Piety and Religion towards God."
- Hermes Trismegistus, The Divine Pymander XII.26-31

"Of course, not to appear one-sided, far broader considerations should be set out here, however that is impossible for reasons of space. Let us just mention that the negative elements we have referred to can be found, not only among Semites, but also in other originally great Indo-Germanic civilisations.

However, in the latter, until a certain time, compared to a different prevailing type of spirituality, they appeared as secondary and subordinate elements, which are almost always effects of decay and influences of the substratum of lower races that had been subjugated or had infiltrated into them. It is from the 8 th to the 9 th century BC that, almost simultaneously, a sort of crisis or climacteric can be witnessed in the greatest ancient civilisations, together with an increasing ascendency of these lower elements.

It can be said that in the East, from China to India and Iran, the crisis was overcome by a series of congruous reactions and reforms (Lao-tse, Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster). In the West, the dam seems to have broken, the wave seems not to have found any important obstacles to its progressive advance. In Egypt, it is the upsurge of the popular cult of Isis and similar divinities, with their reckless popular mysticism, as opposed to the ancient royal, virile and solar cult of the first dynasties. In Greece, it is the decline of the Achaeo-Dorian civilisation with its heroic and Olympian ideals, the advent of secular, anti-traditional and naturalistic thinking on the one hand and of the Orphic and Orphic-Pythagorean mysticism on the other hand. However, the centre from which the ferment of decomposition above all spread actually seems to have been the group of Eastern Mediterranean Semitic peoples and, ultimately, the Jewish people." - Julius C. Evola, Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem.

"Jean Charet, “above the polar circle there are no Frenchmen, no Germans, or Englishmen—there are only men.” The yearning for the north and south poles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is analogous to the search for the philosopher’s stone: They are magical sites, endpoints that create a planetary consciousness. They are also seminal poles, fructified by the eyes of their discoverers. The nations of the Old World are changed by these new dimensions. The polar circle is the absolute state where no differentiated energies can exist except the primal force. Compare that to the narrow view of Schubart, who envisaged eternally separate heavens and homelands for the nations. That’s one of the passages I read that harmed me; it also contradicts Germanic sensibility. For our fathers, the enemies that had just hacked each other to pieces entered the gates of eternity as shades, arm in arm, and proceeded to Glasor, the grove with the golden leaves, where they were united at the banquet table."
~ Ernst Jünger

According to the legend, Alexander, as the crowning accomplishment of his conquests, after heading toward India on the path once travelled by Heracles and Dionysus, asked the deity the supreme pledge of victory. He reached not only the fountain of youth but also the two trees [compare this with the Orphic tablets, along with the Arthurian theme of "not forgetting"] (symbolizing the masculine and feminine principles) of the sun and the moon, which announce him his destiny and his imperium.* In the legends of this cycle we find several mentions of the "Tree of the Center;' of the "Solar Tree;' of the tree that confers victory and the Empire, and of the "Tree of Seth:'

*This legend of Alexander, which develops some elements of Callistenes' and Julius Valerio's narratives, corresponds somewhat to another saga of the twelfth century, according to which Alexander, upon reaching the place "where the souls of the just await the day of the resurrection of the body;' namely, earthly paradise, obtains a stone that is the facsimile of Frederick II's and Prester John's. Of this stone it is said: "If you learn to discern its nature and power, you will be free of every mundane ambition."

...The Grail reveals its meaning of "central stone;' and thus also of the Empire (lapis erilis), in the close association it has with the various themes and legends I have previously discussed. As a way of concluding this order of comparisons, I will recall that Alexander, like Seth, allegedly came close to the primordial center here on earth, to the earthly paradise, bringing back from it a stone with the same characteristics as those of the Grail, which Seth had previously taken from the same place: the stone is as bright as the sun, bestows an eternal youth, and grants victory. It is shaped like an eye (an allusion to the frontal eye?) or like an apple (the Hesperides?) or like a sphere.*

*In Wolfram von Eschenbach, Alexander is portrayed as the one who, more than others, since Adam, knew the virtues of magical stones like the ones found in the armor of Feirefiz, Percival's stepbrother.

Like Alexander's imperialness, however, Rome's too seems to have been enigmatically characterized by the legend with the same symbols that reemerge in the Grail cycle. As a pignus imperii, in order to ensure Rome's eternity, Numa allegedly received from the Olympian god a bowl forged out of a meteorite, that is, a "stone of heaven"; at the same time, it allegedly corresponded to an ancient bowl containing ambrosia, which was the nectar of the immortals. The bowl was guarded by the college of the Salii, who also guarded the hasta (lance). The Salii were twelve in number, the solar number that also appears in the Order of the Round Table and of the Grail itself. The heavenly stone, the bowl that provides supernatural nourishment, and the lance are three essential objects of the Nordic-medieval legend that can be found again as prophetic "signs" foretelling the mystery of Rome's origins and its destiny as a universal imperial center. There is an almost magical concordance of meanings among all these traditions, which are so removed from each other both in space and time.

Meditations on the Dawn-Sun God

Dellingr is the God of the dawn, The Shining One. There are numerous mentions of Dellingr throughout Norse literature. In the Hávamál, for example, there is a mention of Delling's door:

For the fifteenth I know what the dwarf Thiodreyrir
sang before Delling's doors.
Strength he sang to the Æsir, and to the Alfar prosperity,
wisdom to Hroptatyr

Savitṛ, the God of the dawn, is the name provided in the Vedas for he who brings the transformative new light. He is the secret Sun at midnight that brings light into the darkest recesses. He is the cosmic light of intelligence, as well as the principle that guides the Sun through its journey into the mystic night, where it transforms all that his light touches.

The Dawn-Sun God of the ancients was an impeller, a rouser, and a vivifier, guiding his people to self-realization:

First, for well-being I invoke the Fire. I invoke the Divine Lord and Friend here for grace. I invoke the Night that brings the world to rest. I invoke the Divine transforming Sun for aid. - Rig Veda

The Dawn-Sun God is described in the Rig Veda as riding "two radiant stallions" and "comes riding from the Beyond, driving away all evil." He comes from the Beyond, from the Absolute, and his stallions are his capacity to see unity in duality, and his power to resolve all contradictions. Inwardly, the Dawn-Sun God brings unity to the person, bringing us to perfection.

Seers of the vast illuminated [Sun] control their minds and their intelligence. The One knower of the ways of wisdom, he ordains the invocations of the gods. Great is the affirmative being of the Divine transforming Sun. - Rig Veda

1. Indra, who breaks the cities open, overcame the Destroyer with sunlight chants. Shattering his opponents he found the treasure. Impelled by the Word, flourishing in his Self, the abundant giver filled both Heaven and Earth.

2. I energize the impulse of your supreme power, attending the Word for immortality. Indra, you are the foremost of the peoples of men and of the races of the Gods.

Rig Veda III.34

Another translation of this is:

Who won swift horses and won the Sun, Indra won the all-providing cow. Gold and enjoyment he conquered. Having slain the destroyers, he furthered the color of noble men.

Indra wins enlightenment for us when we, as the ancient seers did, energize the impulse of his supreme power.

Indra is the "tamer of the arrogant" (III.34.10). May he tame the destroyers that are our own Self ignorance and the arrogance that is the false ego.

At dawn, when you're reluctant to get up, have this thought readily available: I have work to do as a human being, and that's why I'm getting up. Do I still resent it if I'm on my way to do the work for which I was born and for the sake of which I was brought into the world? Or is this what I was made for, to lie in bed and keep myself warm?

"But it's really nice."

So is pleasure what you were born for? And, in general, was it for feeling, not for doing? Can't you see plants, sparrows, ants, spiders, and bees all doing their own work and playing their part in the world's order? And are you then reluctant to do human work? Why aren't you eager to do what comes naturally to you?

"But rest is important too."

Yes, I agree. Nature has set limits on rest, however, as it has on eating and drinking as well; but aren't you overstepping those limits and taking more than suffices for your needs? It's only when it comes to action that you haven't yet reached the limits of your abilities. And the reason is that you don't love yourself. If you did, you'd love your nature and its purpose.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1