20 June 451: Roman and Visigoths forces defeat Attila the Hun in north east France at the Battle of the Catalaunian plains, halting the Hun invasion of Roman Gaul.

It should never be forgotten that in the summer of 451 and again in 452, the whole fate of western civilization hung in the balance. Had the Hunnish army not been halted in these two successive campaigns, had its leader toppled Valentinian from his throne and set up his own capital at Ravenna or Rome, there is little doubt that both Gaul and Italy would have been reduced to spiritual and cultural deserts. - John Julius Cooper

It is interesting that Muslims thought of the Mongols as Yagog and Magog until they were defeated in Ain Jalut. The war with the Mongols took on severe metaphysical symbolism in the Islamic world. The destruction of the heart of the caliphate only served as an inward awakening and sacred purification. The call to jihad to defend Jerusalem and the two holy cities from the Mongols made it a sacred symbolic act. The victory of Islam over mongol hordes is still seen as a divine act no less significant to Muslims that the victory over the crusades.

Notice the parallel between the Theseus and Arthur archetypes.

Both successfully retrieve a sword from a rock/stone as a symbol of their worth for their succession of their kingdom. Theseus lifts the rock to find his father’s sword and sandals while Arthur pulls the sword from the stone. Having done so, they are deemed worthy to rule over others.

In the case of Theseus, physical strength (as being a reflection of mental strength as well) is regarded as the ultimate criterion of masculine virtue.

In the case of Arthur, moral virtue and character are the ultimate criteria for nobility, as divine providence thus appoints Arthur as the chosen one.

The roof of the world. The Dalai Lama, the highest priest of Buddhism, is in Lhasa. Kutuktu occupies the third tier in the hierarchy compared to him. The center of Asia is not in Mongolia. Mongolia is only the outer circle, the Shield. We should go to Tibet.

There, among the peaks, we will find people who have not forgotten their Aryan ancestors. On the dizzying border of India and China, my empire will be reborn. We will speak Sanskrit and live according to the principles of the Rig Veda. We will gain the law that Europe has lost. And once again the light of the North will shine. The eternal law, dissolved in the waters of the Ganges and Mediterranean, will prevail.

~ Ungern von Sternberg

"By presenting itself essentially as a theological-ritualistic system on the one hand, and on the other as a devotional and moralizing practice, it seems to offer very little to the need for the supernatural, as has been sensed by many persons in recent times, who for this reason have been attracted to other doctrines which seemed to promise something more."

"Naturally, in such a case one views the supernatural as an experience; Catholicism is without doubt characterized by the claim of having, more than any other religion, its own true theology of the supernatural, with reference to the conception of a personal God detached from all the natural world, standing over this world. But it was not for any theology that these individuals went searching, and the theistic Catholic conception of God-person seemed to be inadequate already from the start, since it admitted, in principle, only a “dual” relation, between “I” and “You,” between the creature and the Creator.

"It is true that there exists also a Christian mysticism and that Catholicism has had its monastic Orders, which intended to cultivate a life of pure contemplation. But apart from the fact that these presupposed extremely specific vocations, and that moreover in its removal of the distance deriving from the conception of the God-person, Orthodoxy sees a dangerous heresy in the mystic life itself (thus strictly limiting the concept of a unio mystica or a “unitary life”), Catholicism of modern times, practically speaking, has emphasized all of this to an ever lesser degree."

"The so-called “pastoral cure of the soul” has become its principal preoccupation — not to speak of certain recent postCouncil revolutions toward “modernization” and “opening to the left,” which have brought to the foreground mere social or socializing claims intermixed with well-known and squalid humanitarian, pacifist, and democratic ingredients. All that which might have had a character of true transcendence has thus been sidelined, or at least has not been encouraged in the least. From here, the emptiness which, along with the crises of the modern world, has pressed many to seek elsewhere, more or less along the lines of contemporary neo-spiritualism, exposing themselves to the danger that dark forces might pervert their highest aspirations."

"But in an objective analysis certain recognitions must be made.
If we are referring to early Christianity, this religion presents itself as a typical religion of the kali-yuga, of the “dark age,” which in the Western formulation of the same teaching corresponds to the “iron age,” in which Hesiod believed that the destiny of the many would be “to extinguish themselves without glory in Hades.” Christian preaching, addressed originally above all to the masses of the dispossessed, and to those lacking the tradition of the Roman ecumene, took as their presupposition a type of human much different from that which traditions of a higher level had in mind: a type who, so far as access to the divine went, was in desperate straits.

Thus this Christianity took the form of a tragic doctrine of salvation. The myth of “original sin” was affirmed, and the alternative between eternal salvation or eternal perdition was indicated — an alternative which was to be decided once and for all for everyone on this Earth, and which was sharpened by awesome depictions of the afterlife and with apocalyptic visions. This was a way of arousing in certain natures an extreme tension, which, especially if it was associated to the myth of Jesus as “Redeemer,” might also bear its fruit — if not in this life, at least at the brink of death or in the afterlife, whenever these indirect means, working on human emotionality, succeeded in profoundly modifying the basic forces of the human being."

"In addressing itself to the broadest masses, later Catholicism concealed, to a certain degree, the extremistic crudeness of these views, preoccupying itself with furnishing certain supports for the human personality, of him who had recognized the supernatural destination, and to exercise a subtle action on his deepest being by means of the power of rite and sacrament."

"In this context, one might indicate the possible pragmatic, practical raison d’être for several aspects of Catholicism.

Already certain principles of the Catholic-Christian morality, such as that of humility, caritas and the renunciation of one’s will, if understood in the right way and in the right place, might have been formulated as a corrective teaching, in light of the closure and the individualistic self-affirmation toward which Western man often inclined.

In view of the same limitation on the intellectual plane, and of the corresponding “humanization” of every capacity of vision, it might have been desirable to present in the form of a dogma, and through an authority, that which is situated above the common intellect, but which, at a higher level and at least for an elite might rather become knowledge, direct evidence, gnosi.

It is possible that for a similar reason it was thought desirable to speak of “revelation” and of “grace”: to underline the character of relative transcendence of the true supernatural with respect to the possibilities of a more or less fallen human type which would demonstrate itself ever more prone to every kind of rationalistic and humanistic abuse.

In the end we have already mentioned that the relations of simple “faith” in a theistic framework, with the distance that these allow, while they are certainly limiting (for which in more complete traditions they have always been addressed to the inferior strata of a civilization), might be such as to guarantee the integrity of the person — that individual who, amidst pantheistic mysticisms and forays into the supersensible, as has been said various times, can no longer find any solid ground."

"These are the limitations of the Catholic doctrine, which have potentially positive aspects, useful with respect to the great mass of men, in light — let us repeat it — of the negative conditions of the latest epoch, of the “dark age.” Given that one holds to this level, ideas like those of the Catholics, such as H. Massis and also A. Cuttat, might also be justified: Catholicism represents a defense of Western man — while every no longer dualistic-theistic form of spirituality (and in this connection one often delights in referring to the Orient) might represent a danger for him.

But when one no longer keeps to that level, the question alters, and significantly. If one aims at positive openings to the supernatural, and one has in sight, as an end, that which might be called the superpersonality, which is to say the integrated personality beyond common human conditionalities, then Catholicism (we are not speaking, however, of the Catholicism of our days) is no longer a limitation which protects and preserves, but a petrifying factor which destroys itself for the reactions which its intolerance and sectarianism might provoke and have provoked in whomever aims toward that other realization of self, whomever has brought attention to non-Western and non-Christian traditions or doctrines in which the metaphysical or initiatic content is more visible than its religious, dogmatic or ritualistic reduction in the form of a rigid theistic mythology."

"Today, it is highly unlikely that the potential of original Christianity, the “tragic doctrine of salvation” of which we have spoken, might be re-actualized, save exceptionally in certain men and through dangerous existential crises. For whomever has long been such a one, the problem does not present itself at all, and we shall furthermore state that if individuals, who have known nothing else than the exceedingly vain constructions of philosophy and of the profane plebeian-university culture, or the contaminations of various contemporary individualisms, aestheticisms, and romanticisms, were to “convert” to Catholicism and to live truly at least in faith, with a total devotion and if possible in a “sacrificial” attitude, this would signify not an abdication but already, despite everything, a progress."

So are we reminded, through these anecdotes on Plato, Milo, and Polydamas, that physical and mental strength carry with them the obligations of modesty and humility.  As Fontenelle counsels, we offer our brows to laurel wreaths, and our noses to blows to be endured with equanimity and patience...

https://qcurtius.com/2022/07/09/ancient-greek-athleticism-and-the-idea-of-virtue/

This sense of wonder is the mark of the Philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin... Then just take a look around and make sure that none of the uninitiated overhears us. I mean by uninitiated the people who believe that nothing is real save what they can grasp with their hands and do not admit that actions and processes or anything invisible can count as real.

Theaetetus, Plato

“Let man and woman, united in marriage, constantly strive in themselves, that they may not be disunited and may not violate their mutual true-heartedness.” (Manava Dharma Shastra, 9.102)