Perhaps a good test of race and nation would be how well one is able to tell stories of ancestors at least three generations back.

Your race is your very family. Do you know who your great-grandparents were, or anybody before them? Have you inherited any of their traditions? You will not find race in vague genetic categories, but in your own house. Your nation is not a faceless collective and its popular will, but your own extended family.

"I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked. . . . [For] if the body of God has become God unchangeably through the hypostatic union, what gives anointing remains, and what was by nature flesh animated with a rational and intellectual soul is formed, it is not uncreated. Therefore I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace."

— John of Damascus, De imaginibus, Oratio I

If the race is the family writ large, then there must be a racial father. Nationalism of the vulgar variety is fraternal, not paternal, a body of citizens, not a communion of fathers. Nationalism can become fruitful - mystical - only if the fraternity is patriarchal - the unknown son's cult of dead fathers and grieving mothers, a form for those unworthy of observing the Kingship. From this follows - for example - the evils of eugenic euthanasia. There is no such thing as a family of only brothers and sisters.

We will expound on the nature of these family traditions that one must carry on if one is to honor one's heritage. They can be as dignified as being active in same old church for generations, or as mundane as cooking Great-Grandmother's recipes in your kitchen. They can be as simple as continuing an old family Christmastime custom or as complex as practicing a generational family trade if only as a hobby, if not outright becoming the next generation to run a family enterprise. Or, another might take the time to listen to and embody the wisdom of one's elders who are still among the living, also taking the opportunity to record their stories of family history, traditions, and origins for posterity. Certainly reconnecting with or maintaining ties with distant relatives for its own sake is a good pursuit. Even if ties are thin one may very well rekinder an old bond that may have been about to disappear forever.

One's family may have unsavory characters and generational bad habits, perhaps even be in a sad and broken state. One does not need to drink and smoke like Grandpa and go to a seedy denomination of rundown church simply in the name of maintaining the family tradition, to give examples. One should be seeking the living spirit of one's family instead of simple literal imitation. What is alive in the family—stewardship over land and roots? Fellowship with the branches of the tree, even neighboring trees? Tender cultivation of the next generation of fruits? An unquenchable adventurousness, a particular tasteful curation of the arts, a indomitable faith in the face of hard times, etc., etc.?

For personal development one looks within oneself; for racial development one looks within one's family, which is the racial self.

"We need to have faith that when our capacity of will is exceeded, whatever course things take they still work towards that supreme purpose, i.e. that they are bound into this purpose by a wise and holy being whose power goes beyond ours."
~ Hölderlin

"[In the Golden Age] Kronos gave our communities as their kings and rulers, not men but Daimones, beings of diviner and superior kind just as we still do the same with our flocks of sheep and herds of other domesticated animals. We do not set oxen to manage oxen, or goats to manage goats; we, their betters in kind, act as masters ourselves. So, the god, in his kindness to man, did the same; he set over us the superior race of Daimones."

— Plato, Laws
Hans von Aachen, Allegory Of Rulership: The Return Of The Golden Age Under Saturn

"We can reasonably affirm that a true Right without the monarchy ends up deprived of its natural centre of gravity and crystallisation, because in almost all traditional states the principal reference point for realising the independent and stable principle of pure political authority has been the crown."

- Julius Evola

Like a child raised without a father, a people without a monarch is incomplete: unwell on the whole. A bad monarch is no refutation of monarchy, but the very exception which proves its rule. In negating its own principle, the rotten monarch only highlights the moral value of the good and proper crown that has temporarily forsaken its people. The pathologies between a poor monarch and the total lack of a crown seem similar on the surface, but a regrettable monarch is a far lesser disease to cure than a democracy is.

Aristotle's maxim is very fitting on the question of monarchy: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A people is not complete without its crown—that is, its mandate from Heaven.

"The Song of Zazen" by Hakuin:

All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
And search for truth afar:
Like someone in the midst of water
Crying out in thirst,
Like a child of a wealthy home
Wandering among the poor.
Lost on dark paths of ignorance,
We wander through the Six Worlds,
From dark path to dark path--
When shall we be freed from birth and death?
Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!
To this the highest praise!
Devotion, repentance, training,
The many paramitas--
All have their source in zazen.
Those who try zazen even once
Wipe away beginning-less crimes.
Where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.
Those who hear this truth even once
And listen with a grateful heart,
Treasuring it, revering it,
Gain blessings without end.
Much more, those who turn about
And bear witness to self-nature,
Self-nature that is no-nature,
Go far beyond mere doctrine.
Here, effect and cause are the same,
The Way is neither two nor three.
With form that is no-form,
Going and coming, we are never astray,
With thought that is no-thought,
Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.
Boundless and free is the sky of Samádhi!
Bright the full moon of wisdom!
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha.

Jupiter took the shape of an eagle and abducted Ganymede, first king of Troy to serve as a cup bearer to the gods in Olympus.  Jupiter granted him eternal youth and immortality and to honor these events it is said that Jupiter placed Aquila (the eagle) and Aquarius (the water bearer) as constellations in the heavens.
Mosaic from 3rd Century AD Tyre.

"Saturn", Jan Collaert II (ca. 1561 - 1620), Flemish

"Jupiter, the greater benefic, is a much more popular fellow than his dour compeer Saturn... The jolliness of his nature is much too stressed today, for he is more than just the planet of parties and ice-cream. The word 'jovial', derived from the Latin name of the planet, has become increasingly trivialized in our language until it describes just someone who has been at the sherry. True, a common manifestation of Jupiter's expansive nature involves unbuckling one's belt, but his real nature is as a spiritual guide, and in this he does not work alone, but hand in hand with Saturn. They are the carrot and the stick, 'Thy rod and Thy staff' which comfort me though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Saturn is the rod, that beats me onto the straight path; Jupiter the staff that pulls me out of the thorns. They are expansion and contraction, mercy and justice. We like mercy — or at least, we think we do: we like it until it is shown to the man who has wronged us."

- John Frawley