To be healthy without trying to contemplate deeper depths and greater abstractions, or to sharpen one's focus, is to squander a chance to be more than one is; to miss the unique joy of thinking, however painful.

This is a reminder to not get tied to ideology, and associate with it only when and where it is a practical means to our higher end. This is a positive end; it is not reactionary except that it happens to be diametrically opposed in form to the current paradigm; it is not a negative and base 'traditionalism' that only tries to revive dead and irrelevant ideologies or mimic idealized appearances of specific historical times and places. Always stay focused on what is true and eternal and do not get distracted by fleeting illusions.

"In a dramatic ritual action, Squin de Florian, the alleged accuser of the Templars, is made to say as his justification: "The Church is above freedom!" This is countered by the Master of the Great Lodge, who says: "Freedom is above the Church!" Obviously, the first statement is correct if we are dealing with the claim to freedom on the part of any individual; the second statement is true if we are dealing with a person who has the required qualification to put himself beyond the inevitable limitations proper of a particular historical form of spiritual authority." — Julius C. Evola, The Mystery of the Grail.

This engraving by Albrecht Dürer, acquired by Josef Glimer Gallery from a private collection in Austria, marks one of the artist’s many explorations of the world’s end. It was created in 1499, the year all Jews ... were expelled from Dürer’s hometown of Nuremberg.

The engraving is inspired by this caption from Petrus Berchoius’ Repertorium Morale, a Biblical-moral reflective text intended for preachers, given to Dürer by his godfather:

The Sun and Righteousness shall appear ablaze when he will judge mankind on the day of doom, and he shall be burning and grim. For, as the sun burns herbs and flowers in the summertime when he is the Lion, so shall Christ appear as a fierce and lion-like man in the heat of Judgement and shall wither the sinners.

Dürer’s engraving creatively combines pagan, astrological and Biblical symbols. The central figure sitting on a lion is at once Christ, the Roman goddess of justice Justitia, and the ancient sun god, called Helios by the Greeks and Sol by the Romans. He holds Justitia’s scales and a double edged sword, but unlike the traditionally blindfolded goddess, his eyes—wide and confrontational—see all. ... His mask is composed of three prongs of flame. While this number suggests the Christian Trinity, its beaming rays are a strong gesture toward Sol.

The duality of the Christ figure in this piece may also be influenced by ancient Roman coins, which sometimes featured overlapping profiles of emperors and gods to convey the idea that the emperor could become geminatapersona—'human by nature and divine by grace.'

Taken from: https://josefglimergallery.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/behind-the-picture-sol-justitiae-by-albrecht-durer/

"The era of the ‘Sacred King’ — of the natures that are simultaneously imperial and sacerdotal — already stands on the threshold of ‘mythic’ times. the peak disappears, power passes to the step immediately below — to the Warrior caste: monarchs of the lay type, military leaders, or lords of temporal justice.

Second collapse: the sunset of the great European monarchies, the decay of the aristocracies. Through revolutions (in England and France) and constitutions, they become empty remnants in respect of the ‘nation’s will.’ Along with the parliamentary, republican, and bourgeois democracies, the rise of the capitalist oligarchies express the inevitable passage of political power from the second caste to the modern equivalent of the third caste — the merchants’ caste.

Finally, the crisis of bourgeois society, the proletarian revolt, and the despotism of the masses that is established as purely collective, economic, and international entities forecast the final collapse, through which power passes to the last caste — the caste of those without names or faces, with the resulting reduction of every standard of living to the level of matter and number.

Another view: just like people who can no longer support the tension of the spirit, and then not even the tension of the will, of the force that moves the body — and they let themselves go — and then rise magnetically, almost like a soulless body, under the impulse of another force, which is barely seen, out of the shadows of pure vitality.

It is time to acknowledge the illusory character of all the myths of ‘progress’ and to open our eyes to reality. It is time to recognise the harsh destiny of spiritual destruction that has weighed on the West and that today is ripening its last fruits." - Julius C. Evola, Selected Essays "A Traditionallist Confronts Fascism".

Two part review of Christian Gnosis by Wolfgang Smith.
https://www.gornahoor.net/?p=8651