Forwarded from Traditionalism & Metaphysics
Traditionalism & Metaphysics
There is an idea that constantly recurs, in one form or another, in the traditions of many peoples: that of a mighty “Lord of the World” and of a mysterious realm above any visible one, a residence serving as a pole or axis, in the higher sense; an immutable…
…Moreover, the old Grail king has become impotent and unable to reign, due to a fatal wound from a poisoned lance while he was in the service of Orgeluse. It is obvious enough that this Orgeluse is a female personification of the principle of “pride.” However, other Grail knights such as Gawan (Gawain) are tested in Orgeluse’s own castle, but they do not succumb. They win and marry—“possess”—her. The meaning of this trial is the realization of a pure force, a spiritual virility; it transposes the heroic qualification onto a plane aloof from everything chaotic and violent. “The earthly chivalry must become a heavenly chivalry,” says the Quêste du Graal. This is the condition for opening the path to the Grail, for occupying the Siege Perilous without being thunderstruck—as the titans were struck by the Olympian god.
However, the fundamental theme of the whole Grail cycle is as follows: the hero of all these trials is given a final and decisive task. Once admitted to the Grail castle, he must feel the tragedy of the wounded Grail King, paralyzed or only seemingly alive, and he must take the initiative for an action of absolute restoration. The texts express this in various enigmatic forms: the Grail hero must “ask the question.” What question? It seems that the authors have chosen to remain silent. One has the impression that something prevents them from speaking, and that a banal explanation would hide the true one. But if we follow the inner logic of them all, it is not hard to understand what is really at stake: the question to be asked is the question of the Empire. It is not a matter of knowing —reading the texts literally—what certain objects in the Grail castle mean, but a matter of understanding the tragedy of decadence, and, having “seen” the Grail, to pose the problem of restoration. Only on that basis can the miraculous virtue of this enigmatic question become comprehensible: since the hero has not been indifferent and has “asked the question,” he thereby redeems the realm. He who only seemed to be alive dies; he who was wounded is healed. In every case the hero becomes the new and true king of the Grail, succeeding the last one. A new cycle begins.
According to some texts, the dead knight who seems to summon the hero to his mission and to vengeance appears in a coffin drawn on the sea by swans. Now, the swan is the bird of Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans, in the primordial Nordic land. Drawn by swans, the knights depart from the supreme center, in which Arthur is king: from Avalon.
In other sources the Grail hero is called the knight of the two swords. In the theological-political literature of the time, especially on the Ghibelline side, the two swords signify no less than the double power, temporal and supranatural. In one Grail text the sword that is reforged has a guardian, whose name is memoria del sangue (memory of the blood).
The inaccessible and intangible realm of the Grail is also a reality in its form, in that it is not bound to any one place, to any visible organization, or to any earthly realm. It represents a native land to which one belongs in a different way from physical birth, by having the sense of a spiritual and initiatic dignity. This land unites, in an unbreakable chain, men who may seem scattered in the world, in space, in time, in nations, to the point of appearing isolated and unknown to each other. In this sense the realm of the Grail—like that of Arthur and Prester John, like Thule, Midgard, Avalon, and so on—is ever present. Following its “polar” nature, it is immobile. Consequently, it is not sometimes closer and sometimes further from the current of history; it is rather the current of history itself, which men and their realms may approach more or less closely.
However, the fundamental theme of the whole Grail cycle is as follows: the hero of all these trials is given a final and decisive task. Once admitted to the Grail castle, he must feel the tragedy of the wounded Grail King, paralyzed or only seemingly alive, and he must take the initiative for an action of absolute restoration. The texts express this in various enigmatic forms: the Grail hero must “ask the question.” What question? It seems that the authors have chosen to remain silent. One has the impression that something prevents them from speaking, and that a banal explanation would hide the true one. But if we follow the inner logic of them all, it is not hard to understand what is really at stake: the question to be asked is the question of the Empire. It is not a matter of knowing —reading the texts literally—what certain objects in the Grail castle mean, but a matter of understanding the tragedy of decadence, and, having “seen” the Grail, to pose the problem of restoration. Only on that basis can the miraculous virtue of this enigmatic question become comprehensible: since the hero has not been indifferent and has “asked the question,” he thereby redeems the realm. He who only seemed to be alive dies; he who was wounded is healed. In every case the hero becomes the new and true king of the Grail, succeeding the last one. A new cycle begins.
According to some texts, the dead knight who seems to summon the hero to his mission and to vengeance appears in a coffin drawn on the sea by swans. Now, the swan is the bird of Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans, in the primordial Nordic land. Drawn by swans, the knights depart from the supreme center, in which Arthur is king: from Avalon.
In other sources the Grail hero is called the knight of the two swords. In the theological-political literature of the time, especially on the Ghibelline side, the two swords signify no less than the double power, temporal and supranatural. In one Grail text the sword that is reforged has a guardian, whose name is memoria del sangue (memory of the blood).
The inaccessible and intangible realm of the Grail is also a reality in its form, in that it is not bound to any one place, to any visible organization, or to any earthly realm. It represents a native land to which one belongs in a different way from physical birth, by having the sense of a spiritual and initiatic dignity. This land unites, in an unbreakable chain, men who may seem scattered in the world, in space, in time, in nations, to the point of appearing isolated and unknown to each other. In this sense the realm of the Grail—like that of Arthur and Prester John, like Thule, Midgard, Avalon, and so on—is ever present. Following its “polar” nature, it is immobile. Consequently, it is not sometimes closer and sometimes further from the current of history; it is rather the current of history itself, which men and their realms may approach more or less closely.
Forwarded from Traditionalism & Metaphysics
Traditionalism & Metaphysics
…Moreover, the old Grail king has become impotent and unable to reign, due to a fatal wound from a poisoned lance while he was in the service of Orgeluse. It is obvious enough that this Orgeluse is a female personification of the principle of “pride.” However…
…The whole Grail literature seems to be compressed into a relatively short period: no text seems to predate the last quarter of the twelfth century, and none to postdate the first quarter of the thirteenth century. After the latter period, mention of the Grail suddenly stops, as though on command. Writing about it only resumes many years later, and then in a different spirit. It seems (as Jessie Weston says) that at a certain moment an underground current surfaced, then as suddenly vanished again. The epoch of this sudden disappearance of the first Grail tradition coincides more or less with the tragedy of the Templars. Perhaps that was the beginning of the fracture.
…Like scattered channels, secret organizations seem to have preserved the ancient symbols and the Grail traditions even after the fall of the ecumenical imperial civilization. The Ghibelline “Fedeli d’Amore,” the troubadours of the later period, the Hermetists. Finally, we come to the Rosicrucians. There again the same myth appears: the solar citadel; the Imperator as “Lord of the Fourth Empire” and destroyer of every usurpation; an invisible fraternity of transcendent personalities, uniquely united by their essence and their intention; and, finally, the strange mystery of the resurrection of the King, a mystery that turns into the realization that the King to be resuscitated was already alive and awake. He who assists in this process bears the sign of the Templars: a white standard with a red cross. The Grail bird, the dove, is also present.
But a watchword seems to have been given in this case, too. Suddenly no one is talking about the Rosicrucians. Tradition tells that in the period when absolutism, rationalism, individualism, and illuminism were preparing the way for the French Revolution, and the Treaty of Westphalia sealed the definitive collapse of the autonomy of the Holy Roman Empire, the last Rosicrucians abandoned the West to retire to “India.”
“India” here is a symbol, equivalent to the home of Prester John, of the King of the World. It is Avalon; it is Thule. According to the Titurel, dark times have come for Salva Terra, where reside the knights of Monsalvat. The Grail can no longer stay there. It is transported to “India,” to the realm of Prester John, which is “near Paradise.” Once the Grail knights have arrived yonder, Monsalvat and its citadel appear there, magically transported, because “none of that must remain among the sinful peoples.”
— EA, Introduction to Magic III, The Legend of the Grail and the “Mystery” of the Empire
…Like scattered channels, secret organizations seem to have preserved the ancient symbols and the Grail traditions even after the fall of the ecumenical imperial civilization. The Ghibelline “Fedeli d’Amore,” the troubadours of the later period, the Hermetists. Finally, we come to the Rosicrucians. There again the same myth appears: the solar citadel; the Imperator as “Lord of the Fourth Empire” and destroyer of every usurpation; an invisible fraternity of transcendent personalities, uniquely united by their essence and their intention; and, finally, the strange mystery of the resurrection of the King, a mystery that turns into the realization that the King to be resuscitated was already alive and awake. He who assists in this process bears the sign of the Templars: a white standard with a red cross. The Grail bird, the dove, is also present.
But a watchword seems to have been given in this case, too. Suddenly no one is talking about the Rosicrucians. Tradition tells that in the period when absolutism, rationalism, individualism, and illuminism were preparing the way for the French Revolution, and the Treaty of Westphalia sealed the definitive collapse of the autonomy of the Holy Roman Empire, the last Rosicrucians abandoned the West to retire to “India.”
“India” here is a symbol, equivalent to the home of Prester John, of the King of the World. It is Avalon; it is Thule. According to the Titurel, dark times have come for Salva Terra, where reside the knights of Monsalvat. The Grail can no longer stay there. It is transported to “India,” to the realm of Prester John, which is “near Paradise.” Once the Grail knights have arrived yonder, Monsalvat and its citadel appear there, magically transported, because “none of that must remain among the sinful peoples.”
— EA, Introduction to Magic III, The Legend of the Grail and the “Mystery” of the Empire
Forwarded from Tafelrunde (David Korb)
After the Hittite two-headed eagles there is a gap of almost two millennia to be filled. In the meantime the emblem of the supreme commander in the Hellenistic world was a monstruous head, being the head of the army personified by Medusa, Nike or Victoria. After the introduction of Christianity in the Roman Empire the cypher of Christ consisting of the greek letters XP (chi-rho) became the emblem under which the army would conquer (In Hoc Signo Vinces). The supreme commanders attached this cypher to their shields, sometimes surrounded by a bordure set with precious stones, sometimes with a garland of laurel.
The XP-cypher as a symbol of the armed forces was maintained in the West by the Carolingians but seems to have been abandoned afterwards. It is striking that the two-headed eagle appeared for the first time at the borders of the Christian world and thus may have been of pagan or muslim origin, later also adopted by Christian commanders. The first pieces showing a two-headed eagle may have been booty, captured by Christian commanders in the Reconquista in Spain and may have been the emblems of the Umayyad supreme commanders.
Early European two-headed eagles date from the early time of the Renovatio Imperii of the House of Saxony in Germany, from Umayyad Spain and from Bulgaria.
The XP-cypher as a symbol of the armed forces was maintained in the West by the Carolingians but seems to have been abandoned afterwards. It is striking that the two-headed eagle appeared for the first time at the borders of the Christian world and thus may have been of pagan or muslim origin, later also adopted by Christian commanders. The first pieces showing a two-headed eagle may have been booty, captured by Christian commanders in the Reconquista in Spain and may have been the emblems of the Umayyad supreme commanders.
Early European two-headed eagles date from the early time of the Renovatio Imperii of the House of Saxony in Germany, from Umayyad Spain and from Bulgaria.
"Some omens of his future greatness appeared at [Alexander's] birth. Two eagles sat the whole of the day on which he was born on the top of his father's palace, giving indication of his double empire over Europe and Asia [East and West]."
- Justinus, Epitome of the Phillipic History of Pompeius Trogus
- Justinus, Epitome of the Phillipic History of Pompeius Trogus
Forwarded from Morgoth's Review
C.S Lewis on the problem of the conformist midwit:
“Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
“Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Forwarded from Halls of the Hyperboreads
Forwarded from Der Schattige Wald 🇬🇱
"The mummies reveal that the figure of the Egyptians was not beautiful; and as the human form appeared to them, such would necessarily be their imitations of it. Wrapped up in their own land, as in their religion and their constitution, they did not care for the foreign; and since, in keeping with their character, fidelity and precision were their principal objects in the imitative arts, and since all of their art was handicraft, the religious craft of a particular class, resting therefore largely upon religious concepts, inconceivable are any deviations into that realm of beautiful ideals, which in any event without a natural prototype remains a mere phantom. In recompense, they turned their attention more to the solid, the enduring, and the monumental, or to a perfection based on the most exact and artful industry."
Forwarded from Traditionalism & Metaphysics (☀️🏛H M🌫🌬.)
It was there that men, long before others, discovered various religions in what may be called their cradle, and now carefully preserve the origins of worship in their esoteric noscriptures. Training in this sphere taught Pythagoras to worship the gods in secret, gave unquestioned authority to whatever he said or ordained, and caused him often to exhibit his golden thigh at Olympia and to be frequently seen in colloquy with an eagle. Egypt taught Anaxagoras to foretell a rain of meteorites and to predict earthquakes by the feel of mud in a well. Solon too was helped by the dicta of the priests of Egypt in framing his legal code, which has given Roman law its strongest support. Plato drew on this source, and it was after a visit to Egypt that he achieved his highest flights in language whose sublimity rivalled Jove himself, and served with glory on the field of wisdom.
— Ammianus Marcellinus (XXII.16)
— Ammianus Marcellinus (XXII.16)
"In these legends, no matter how free of religious overtones, we find again the connection of the Grail, conceived as a heavenly stone, with a mysterious legacy and power associated with a primordial state that was somehow preserved during a period of exile. The reference to Lucifer, beyond a Christian and theistic context, may be seen as a variation on the theme of an aborted or deviated attempt at a heroic reattainment of this state. The theme of the host of angels descending from heaven with the Grail resembles the theme of the race of the Tuatha dé Danaan, which was believed to be composed of divine beings. This race came to Ireland from heaven, carrying a supernatural stone (the stone of the legitimate kings) and other objects...
Generally speaking, owing to its prevalently 'lunar' view of the sacred, Christianity has often stigmatized as Luciferian and diabolical not only that which is truly such, but also any attempt at heroic reintegration and any spirituality that does not foster a relationship of devotion and of creaturely dependence on the divine, theistically conceived. Thus we often come across mixtures of motifs analogous to that of the Tuatha dé Danaan in certain Siriac-Hebrew literature, in which the fallen angels eventually become one and the same with 'those who are awake' (the ἐγρήγοροι). Tertullian did not hesitate to attribute to the fallen angels the body of magico-hermetic doctrines, namely, those doctrines that helped Flegetanis penetrate the original texts of the Grail and that Le Morte D'Arthur attributed to Solomon, conceived as a forefather of the heroes of the Grail, in the same terms as Tertullian's: 'This Solomon was wise and knew all the virtues of stones and trees, and so he knew the course of the stars and many other diverse things.' When Innocent III accused the Knights Templar of 'following doctrines of demons' (utentes doctrinis dae-monorum), he no doubt had in mind the anti-Christolatric mysteries of the Knights Templar; this pope instinctively proceeded to the same assimilation, through which the primordial 'divine race' was represented as the guilty or Luciferian race of the fallen angels."
- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail
Generally speaking, owing to its prevalently 'lunar' view of the sacred, Christianity has often stigmatized as Luciferian and diabolical not only that which is truly such, but also any attempt at heroic reintegration and any spirituality that does not foster a relationship of devotion and of creaturely dependence on the divine, theistically conceived. Thus we often come across mixtures of motifs analogous to that of the Tuatha dé Danaan in certain Siriac-Hebrew literature, in which the fallen angels eventually become one and the same with 'those who are awake' (the ἐγρήγοροι). Tertullian did not hesitate to attribute to the fallen angels the body of magico-hermetic doctrines, namely, those doctrines that helped Flegetanis penetrate the original texts of the Grail and that Le Morte D'Arthur attributed to Solomon, conceived as a forefather of the heroes of the Grail, in the same terms as Tertullian's: 'This Solomon was wise and knew all the virtues of stones and trees, and so he knew the course of the stars and many other diverse things.' When Innocent III accused the Knights Templar of 'following doctrines of demons' (utentes doctrinis dae-monorum), he no doubt had in mind the anti-Christolatric mysteries of the Knights Templar; this pope instinctively proceeded to the same assimilation, through which the primordial 'divine race' was represented as the guilty or Luciferian race of the fallen angels."
- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail
"I believe I have already supplied sufficiently precise reference points to help the readers orient themselves before similar distortions and establish both the limit that separates the Luciferian spirit from that which is not and the Christian perspective from the point of view of a higher spirituality. Thus it will be easy to distinguish the individual elements that we encounter in the Grail cycle, which were mixed with many interpolations and deformations.
Having showed that the titanic element is indeed the prime matter out of which the hero is made, it is understandable that Wolfram bestows upon Percival some Luciferian traits, though he makes him successfully complete his adventure, so much so that in the end Percival assumes the luminous form of a restorator and of a king of the Grail. In fact, Percival accuses God of having betrayed him, of not being faithful to him, and of having failed to assist him in the conquest of the Grail. He rebels and in his anger he says:
I used to serve a being called God before I was ridiculed and covered with shame .... I was His humble servant because I believed He would grant me His favor: but from now on I will refuse to serve Him. If He persecutes me with His hatred, I will resign myself to that too. Friend [he says to Gawain], when the time for you to fight has come, may the thought of a woman [rather than of God] protect you.
Animated by such indignation and pride, Percival, after failing in his first visit to the castle, fulfills his adventures. And thus, being separated from God, avoiding churches and performing 'wild' knightly deeds (wilden Aventure; wilden, ferren Ritterschaft) he eventually triumphs, achieving the glory of the king of the Grail. Trevrizent will tell him, 'Rarely was a greater miracle seen: by showing your anger you have received from God what you desired the most.' Also in Wolfram, Percival appears as the one who reaches the castle of the Grail in an exceptional way, without having been designated or called like others before him. His election occurs later on; in a way, it is the very adventures of Percival that bring his election about and almost bestow it upon him. Trevrizent says, 'It never happened before that the Grail could be achieved by fighting.' This trait too helps us recognize the heroic type, the one who, not by nature (as in the case of the Olympian type, to whom the legitimate king of the Grail may correspond, prior to his getting old, wounded, or falling asleep), but because of the reawakening of a deeper vocation and thanks to his action, successfully participates in what the Grail symbolizes. This character reaches such heights as to become a knight of the Grail and finally achieves the supreme dignity of the Order of the Grail."
- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail
Having showed that the titanic element is indeed the prime matter out of which the hero is made, it is understandable that Wolfram bestows upon Percival some Luciferian traits, though he makes him successfully complete his adventure, so much so that in the end Percival assumes the luminous form of a restorator and of a king of the Grail. In fact, Percival accuses God of having betrayed him, of not being faithful to him, and of having failed to assist him in the conquest of the Grail. He rebels and in his anger he says:
I used to serve a being called God before I was ridiculed and covered with shame .... I was His humble servant because I believed He would grant me His favor: but from now on I will refuse to serve Him. If He persecutes me with His hatred, I will resign myself to that too. Friend [he says to Gawain], when the time for you to fight has come, may the thought of a woman [rather than of God] protect you.
Animated by such indignation and pride, Percival, after failing in his first visit to the castle, fulfills his adventures. And thus, being separated from God, avoiding churches and performing 'wild' knightly deeds (wilden Aventure; wilden, ferren Ritterschaft) he eventually triumphs, achieving the glory of the king of the Grail. Trevrizent will tell him, 'Rarely was a greater miracle seen: by showing your anger you have received from God what you desired the most.' Also in Wolfram, Percival appears as the one who reaches the castle of the Grail in an exceptional way, without having been designated or called like others before him. His election occurs later on; in a way, it is the very adventures of Percival that bring his election about and almost bestow it upon him. Trevrizent says, 'It never happened before that the Grail could be achieved by fighting.' This trait too helps us recognize the heroic type, the one who, not by nature (as in the case of the Olympian type, to whom the legitimate king of the Grail may correspond, prior to his getting old, wounded, or falling asleep), but because of the reawakening of a deeper vocation and thanks to his action, successfully participates in what the Grail symbolizes. This character reaches such heights as to become a knight of the Grail and finally achieves the supreme dignity of the Order of the Grail."
- Julius Evola, The Mystery of the Grail