Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

Seneca

"I undertook to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than change the order of the world, and to accustom myself to believe that nothing is entirely in our power except our own thoughts.

Here, I think is the secret of those ancient philosophers who were able to free themselves from the tyranny of fortune, or, despite suffering and poverty, to rival the gods in happiness."

Epictetus

But the tyrant will chain — what? the leg. He will take away — what? the neck. What then will he not chain and not take away? the will. This is why the ancients taught the maxim, “Know thyself”.

Discourses, 1.18

"Those whom you love and those whom you despise will both be made equal in the same ashes. This is the meaning of that command, “Know thyself”, which is written on the shrine of the Pythian oracle."

Moral Letters, 11

In this short 10 minute video, I will make clear how a generation of failed artists can only produce a generation of lost souls stuck in a spiritual purgatory. As long as a pile of bricks on the floor is considered art, and as long as our movies are more often than not cash grabbing reboots, then it will remain such that art will fail to guide us to higher ideals as it once did perhaps because it was we who have failed art.

What we need is, now more than ever, art that speaks to the transcendent and the eternal, as it had done for countless centuries. It is time to once again create the very art that can in fact, not only get us through life but guide us all the way, if not beyond.

Proudly presented by Ex Non Grata:

https://youtu.be/WI5NbynJ-BA

This video raises some powerful questions.

Was the Renaissance really a great resurgence of art, or did its classicism merely remove ancient art from its context and thus strip it of its true value? What do we really get from filling our eyes with the innumerable simulacra of traditional paintings, sculptures, and architecture that pervade these online spaces? Does this not in reality separate art from Life, turning it into vain entertainment and a mere commodity; would we not honor art far more by instead seeking and creating new art that really expresses ourselves and lives among us, where it will actually serve its highest purpose?

I am the child of the Earth and starry Heaven, but my origin is of Heaven alone.

- Orphic Gold Tablet

One "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is seized by the sacred, exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted. "Living" a myth implies a genuinely "religious" experience, since it differs from the ordinary experience of everyday life.

The "religiousness" of this experience is due to the fact that one re-enacts fabulous, exalting, significant events, one again witnesses the creative deeds of the Supernaturals;

one ceases to exist in the everyday world and enters a transfigured, auroral world impregnated with the Supernaturals presence. What is involved is not a commemoration of mythical events but a reiteration of them.

~ Mircea Eliade

“I felt at home in Egypt. I could happily have been a priest. In truth I am a warrior-priest, who marches where the Deity directs, in the service of Necessity and Fate. Nor is such a notion vain or self-infatuated. Consider: Persia’s time has passed. In the Invisible World, Darius’s empire has already fallen. Who am I, except the agent of that end, which already exists in the Other Realm and at whose birth I assist in this one?” —The Virtues of War, A Novel of Alexander the Great, by Steven Pressfield

"A thoughtful sage, even while living within a material body, should understand himself to be pure spirit soul. Similarly, one should see that the spirit soul enters within all forms of life, both moving and nonmoving, and that the individual souls are thus all-pervading. The sage should further observe that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, as the Supersoul, is simultaneously present within all things.

Both the individual soul and the Supersoul can be understood by comparing them to the nature of the sky: although the sky extends everywhere and everything rests within the sky, the sky does not mix with anything, nor can it be divided by anything."

- Srimad Bhagavatam, 11.7.42

Schwerpunkt goes off on a fantastic rant on traditional man, spiritual forces, and of course history, this time focusing on the Franks. He states that all history is fundamentally incomprehensible to the modern perspective, which holds no concept of the sacred. It is necessary to understand basic historical phenomena in order to even understand modern history. He also makes the case that from the traditional viewpoint, the ancient pagan society and the Roman-Germanic Christian society were not very different at all. At the very least both cultures were much greater men than those of today; each were victim to and dealt out brutal violence, but also lived in incredibly harsh conditions that modern man could not comprehend and would never survive.

https://youtu.be/VUz0EpgMcEQ

"the temple of the wise, lit by the sun and moon, stands on seven stages, surmounted by the phoenix. The temple is hidden in the mountain - a hint that the philosophers’ stone (supreme object of alchemy) lies buried in the earth and must be extracted and cleansed. The zodiac in the background symbolizes the duration of the opus, while the four elements indicate wholeness. In the foreground are a blindfolded man and the investigator who follows his natural instinct.”

Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

"What distinguishes the kingdom of Cronus from the kingdom of Zeus? One thing is for certain; the kingdom of Cronus is not a kingdom of the son. The sons are hidden within Cronus, who devoured those he himself had generated, the sons being now hidden in his dominion, whereas Zeus is kept away from Cronus by Rhea, who hides and raises Zeus in the caverns. And given that Cronus comports himself in such a manner, his kingdom will never be a kingdom of the father. Cronus does not want to be a father because fatherhood is equivalent with a constant menace to his rule. To him fatherhood signifies an endeavor and prearrangement aimed at his downfall."
~ Friedrich Georg Jünger