Forwarded from The Exaltation of Beauty
Head of King David, ca. 1145, French, The Met
Because it was thought they represented the ancient rulers of France, all of the monumental kings decorating the portals of the famed Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris were decapitated and presumably destroyed during the French Revolution. Until recently, this head of King David was the only known surviving head from this rich decorative program. Carved of a fine-grained limestone from the Paris region, the highly expressive face was originally more emphatic, as the eyes were inlaid with lead. The head comes from the right-hand portal of the west façade dedicated to themes of the life of Saint Anne and to the genealogy and early life of Jesus. David was regarded as an ancestor of Jesus. Carved about the middle of the twelfth century, the portal was not installed until the early years of the thirteenth century.
Because it was thought they represented the ancient rulers of France, all of the monumental kings decorating the portals of the famed Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris were decapitated and presumably destroyed during the French Revolution. Until recently, this head of King David was the only known surviving head from this rich decorative program. Carved of a fine-grained limestone from the Paris region, the highly expressive face was originally more emphatic, as the eyes were inlaid with lead. The head comes from the right-hand portal of the west façade dedicated to themes of the life of Saint Anne and to the genealogy and early life of Jesus. David was regarded as an ancestor of Jesus. Carved about the middle of the twelfth century, the portal was not installed until the early years of the thirteenth century.
Forwarded from Der Schattige Wald 🇬🇱
"If you reject ethnonationalism I dont think its possible to provide a coherent explanation of how a state's sovereignty is justified as without an ethnic basis for citizenship, citizenship just becomes whatever the state defines it as, and where does the state get the right to define who is and isn't a citizen from?"
This makes no sense. Sovereign justification has nothing to do with race or citizenship, except in very rare circumstances like an occupation. And even then it is questionable what power biological race alone could have. Even in Interwar Germany race wasn't central, but rather a result of the attempt to restore will and dominion, particularly for front-line soldiers. This is easily confirmed by looking at the questions posed by the Conservative Revolution. A race can have no justification if it has no will to struggle, that its rank must be determined is a sign of its being a secondary quality. Race is a stratum formed of the will.
That restoring the "mere accident of birth" now seems significant suggests how far modern men are from understanding sovereignty. For Carl Schmitt, the sovereign decides upon the friend and enemy as an existential distinction, as the utmost intensity of struggle. Here we see to what extent race is a condition, an achievement born of the state's exceptional power. Volk has a dynamic character, it is formed of culture, will, blood, language, and identity – unlike biological race which is a static and passive concept. This was always true, as scientific race arose as a type of pessimism and determinism following the French Revolution.
The argument given here is not only that racialised popular sovereignty is the basis of justice, but that no other sovereign type is even possible. Interesting however, since it proves that the theories of race taken up by the dissident right are part of liberal historicism. Although even liberalism has a higher sense of sovereign justification.
https://news.1rj.ru/str/joeldavisx/623
This makes no sense. Sovereign justification has nothing to do with race or citizenship, except in very rare circumstances like an occupation. And even then it is questionable what power biological race alone could have. Even in Interwar Germany race wasn't central, but rather a result of the attempt to restore will and dominion, particularly for front-line soldiers. This is easily confirmed by looking at the questions posed by the Conservative Revolution. A race can have no justification if it has no will to struggle, that its rank must be determined is a sign of its being a secondary quality. Race is a stratum formed of the will.
That restoring the "mere accident of birth" now seems significant suggests how far modern men are from understanding sovereignty. For Carl Schmitt, the sovereign decides upon the friend and enemy as an existential distinction, as the utmost intensity of struggle. Here we see to what extent race is a condition, an achievement born of the state's exceptional power. Volk has a dynamic character, it is formed of culture, will, blood, language, and identity – unlike biological race which is a static and passive concept. This was always true, as scientific race arose as a type of pessimism and determinism following the French Revolution.
The argument given here is not only that racialised popular sovereignty is the basis of justice, but that no other sovereign type is even possible. Interesting however, since it proves that the theories of race taken up by the dissident right are part of liberal historicism. Although even liberalism has a higher sense of sovereign justification.
https://news.1rj.ru/str/joeldavisx/623
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If you reject ethnonationalism I dont think its possible to provide a coherent explanation of how a state's sovereignty is justified as without an ethnic basis for citizenship, citizenship just becomes whatever the state defines it as, and where does the…
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Forwarded from The Apollonian
Modern scholars, deprived of all theurgic imagination and grace, may still insist on their rejection of Egyptian philosophy, but the fact remains that Pythagoras and Plato brought something important from Egypt, connected with the theory of Ideas, the divine Archetypes and their images or symbols, the mathematical sciences, regarded in a mystical sense, and the conception of the immortal winged soul (ba) wandering in search of her true identity and thereby following the precept of Horus-Ra (Apollo): Know Thyself.
Algis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth. From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism, 2008, p21
Algis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth. From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism, 2008, p21
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Forwarded from Ghost of de Maistre
“ “Pray and work” cannot be replaced by any other formula. For one cannot live either without contemplation or without action. This is what Krishna made Arjuna understand in the Bhagavad-Gita: “...performing all actions, always depending on me, he (man), through my favour, obtains the imperishable and eternal seat” (Bhagavad- Gita xviii, 56; trsl. K. T. Telang, Sacred Books of the East viii, Oxford, 1882, p. 128).
And, equally, this is what St. Bernard showed to advantage through his monastic reform, where contemplation and work were united, as also through his affirmation of Christian chivalry in his sermon on the second Crusade and in the rules that he gave to the Templar Order. Nowadays many criticise the saint for his intervention sanctioning and encouraging the Crusade, but what he did was simply to make an appeal to “Christian Arjunas” on the new field of Kurukshetra, where the two armies of Islam and Christianity had already been assembled for a battle without mercy some centuries before him. The battle had commenced in the seventh century of our era, when the Arabs invaded the eastern Christian countries. Charles Martel repulsed them at Poitiers in France, and through this victory (in 732) saved Christian civilisation and the West from Mohammedan conquest. Should one have been content with having saved the kernel of the West and have taken only a defensive attitude—in the manner of the Byzantine empire, which subsequently, little by little, became entirely conquered by the Mohammedans? The great battle of the twelfth century was still not achieved; it was always in process. Can one demand of St. Bernard that he should have preached the necessity of abandoning the Holy Land to the Mohammedans and of beginning a “peaceful co-existence”, at the expense of the country where the cradle of Christianity is to be found?
Be that as it may concerning the crusades, St. Bernard advanced not only active contemplation for the monks but also contemplative activity for the knights—just as Krishna did more than fifteen centuries before him. The one and the other did so because they knew that man is at one and the same time a contemplative and an active being, that “faith without works is death”—and that, equally, works without faith are death. All this as theory is as clear as the day. But with respect to practice, it is not thus so. Practice entails an arcanum—an intimate savoir-faire—which is the fourteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot, Temperance.” - Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIV: Temperance
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4dcda630-c7d9-4930-be3a-75927ba2a10c_786x1080.jpeg
And, equally, this is what St. Bernard showed to advantage through his monastic reform, where contemplation and work were united, as also through his affirmation of Christian chivalry in his sermon on the second Crusade and in the rules that he gave to the Templar Order. Nowadays many criticise the saint for his intervention sanctioning and encouraging the Crusade, but what he did was simply to make an appeal to “Christian Arjunas” on the new field of Kurukshetra, where the two armies of Islam and Christianity had already been assembled for a battle without mercy some centuries before him. The battle had commenced in the seventh century of our era, when the Arabs invaded the eastern Christian countries. Charles Martel repulsed them at Poitiers in France, and through this victory (in 732) saved Christian civilisation and the West from Mohammedan conquest. Should one have been content with having saved the kernel of the West and have taken only a defensive attitude—in the manner of the Byzantine empire, which subsequently, little by little, became entirely conquered by the Mohammedans? The great battle of the twelfth century was still not achieved; it was always in process. Can one demand of St. Bernard that he should have preached the necessity of abandoning the Holy Land to the Mohammedans and of beginning a “peaceful co-existence”, at the expense of the country where the cradle of Christianity is to be found?
Be that as it may concerning the crusades, St. Bernard advanced not only active contemplation for the monks but also contemplative activity for the knights—just as Krishna did more than fifteen centuries before him. The one and the other did so because they knew that man is at one and the same time a contemplative and an active being, that “faith without works is death”—and that, equally, works without faith are death. All this as theory is as clear as the day. But with respect to practice, it is not thus so. Practice entails an arcanum—an intimate savoir-faire—which is the fourteenth Major Arcanum of the Tarot, Temperance.” - Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIV: Temperance
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4dcda630-c7d9-4930-be3a-75927ba2a10c_786x1080.jpeg
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Forwarded from The Exaltation of Beauty
Apotheosis of the Arts, 1597, by Jan Muller
In 1597, while the army of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was engaged in a drawn- out war with the Ottoman empire, Jan Muller engraved this astonishing, monumental allegory of Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. The three sister arts are shown as impossibly long-limbed, elegant female nudes, lifted up by the figure of Fame, and carried along a twisting ladder of clouds to reach the court of Zeus on Mount Olympus. In the lower, terrestrial portion of the composition is a troop of soldiers from the Rudolf’s imperial army, whose banners are visible above the billowing clouds. They are the defender of the Arts against the Ottoman troops, seen in the lower right corner. To further reinforce idea of a civilized and cultured European society, noble men and women and Christian church figures are pictured together at the lower left observing artists from the three fields at work.
In 1597, while the army of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was engaged in a drawn- out war with the Ottoman empire, Jan Muller engraved this astonishing, monumental allegory of Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. The three sister arts are shown as impossibly long-limbed, elegant female nudes, lifted up by the figure of Fame, and carried along a twisting ladder of clouds to reach the court of Zeus on Mount Olympus. In the lower, terrestrial portion of the composition is a troop of soldiers from the Rudolf’s imperial army, whose banners are visible above the billowing clouds. They are the defender of the Arts against the Ottoman troops, seen in the lower right corner. To further reinforce idea of a civilized and cultured European society, noble men and women and Christian church figures are pictured together at the lower left observing artists from the three fields at work.
Forwarded from Goat’s Milk and Honey
"In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates argues paradoxically that ‘our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness’ […]. The four kinds of divine inspiration, or madness, are viewed as a divine gift provided by the Muses, Dionysus, Apollo, and Aphrodite (or Eros) respectively. In the same dialogue, the “divine banquet” is depicted as a metaphysical place of contemplation and vision. For Plato, the contemplation (theoria) of the eternal Ideas transcends our rational ability to comprehend and analyse these Ideas discursively."
Algis Uzdavinys, Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism
Algis Uzdavinys, Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism
Forwarded from Voice of Tradition
“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
—Teddy Roosevelt, Man in The Arena
—Teddy Roosevelt, Man in The Arena