I will not post much until the new year to focus on celebrating with the family and all. The only OC I might post is my thoughts on Evola's Metaphysics of War which I've just started reading. I hope to share a lot more thoughts on readings in the future.

I wish all of you and yours a merry Christmas, Juletide, or whatever your holy-day is, and a happy new year!

There is no one way to salvation, whatever the manner in which a man may proceed. All forms and variations are governed by the eternal intelligence of the Universe that enables a man to approach perfection. It may be in the arts of music and painting or it may be in commerce, law, or medicine. It may be in the study of war or the study of peace. Each is as important as any other. Spiritual enlightenment through religious meditation such as Zen or in any other way is as viable and functional as any "Way."... A person should study as they see fit.

Miyamoto Musashi

"We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret."

• Symmachus

Someone recently asked me who was more upset, the Anglos or the Gaels, by the recent discovery that "Celtic" DNA in the British Isles is limited mainly to South East England. I said they are both upset.

It will soon be published and used as a way to disrupt national identities in the British Isles. It turns out the people who spread "Celtic" language and culture into these islands were not an Alpine population from the Halstatt region, but rather, in genetic terms, Frenchmen. Their arrival in Britain in the early Iron Age resulted in limited but significant population turnover in the region adjacent to France - while regions like Scotland and Ireland seem unaffected.

This jars with the regional identities of the Isles in which the Southern English are seen as the least Celtic and the recently Gaelic speaking regions as the most Celtic. The reverse is true in genetic terms. However the Celtic identity of Ireland and Scotland should really be a Gaelic identity and Gaelic should not be seen as Celtic in genetic terms but only in linguistic terms. Genetically the Gaels are pure blooded Bell Beaker folk of the Bronze age and ought to be proud of that. England naturally is always the most connected to the continent of any British nation due to its location - so it is the most Germanic for the same reason it is the most Celtic.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, pt. 2

13. Let Justice be practiced in words as in deeds;

14. Then make the habit, never inconsiderately to act;

15. Neither forget that death is appointed to all;

16. That possessions here gladly gathered, here must be left;

17. Whatever sorrow the fate of the Gods may here send us,

18. Bear, whatever may strike you, with patience unmurmuring.

19. To relieve it, so far as you can, is permitted,  

20. But reflect that not much misfortune has Fate given to the good.  

21. The speech of the people is various, now good, and now evil;

22. So let them not frighten you, nor keep you from your purpose.

23. If false calumnies come to your ear, support it in patience;
 
24. Yet that which I now am declaring, fulfill it faithfully:

25. Let no one with speech or with deeds ever deceive you

26. To do or to say what is not the best.

We shall create a spiritual atmosphere, a moral atmosphere, in which the heroic man may be born and on which he can thrive. This hero will lead our people on the road of its greatness.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

"The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death."

~Joseph de Maistre

Legionary life is beautiful, not because of riches, partying, or the acquisition of luxury, but because of the noble comradeship which binds all Legionnaires in the sacred brotherhood of struggle.

May God accept my suffering, for the well-being and prosperity of our Nation. Pain upon pain, suffering upon suffering, agony upon agony, wound upon wound in our bodies and in our souls, fall after fall: in this way shall we conquer.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Finished the first three essays in Metaphysics of War. The main theme is heroism, used as a lens through which Evola describes war and the societies which wage them. He starts intriguingly with heroism as the justification for war;
"The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. ... War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a ‘more-than-life’, and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value."
Evola asserts this silences any liberal 'humanitarian' complaints about war, and to explain this precious sacrality of war, begins by envoking the eternal quadernity.
"This quadripartition – it must be recalled – is what, in all traditional civilisations, gave rise to four different castes: the slaves, the bourgeois middle-class, the warrior aristocracy, and bearers of a pure, spiritual authority. Here, ‘caste’ does not mean – as most assume – something artificial and arbitrary, but rather the ‘place’ where individuals, sharing the same nature, the same type of interest and vocation, the same primordial qualification, gather. A specific ‘truth’, a specific function, defines the castes
...
Only such cases, in which this straight and normal relationship of subordination and co-operation exists are healthy, as is made clear by the analogy of the human organism, which is unsound if, by some chance, the physical element (slaves) or the element of vegetative life (bourgeoisie) or that of the uncontrolled animal will (warriors) takes the primary and guiding place in the life of a man, and is sound only when spirit constitutes the central and ultimate point of reference for the remaining faculties – which, however, are not denied a partial autonomy
...
This process is paralleled by transitions from one type of civilisation to another, from one fundamental meaning of life to another. In each phase, every concept, every principle, every institution assumes a different meaning, reflecting the world-view of the predominant caste."

Therefore in the next essay Evola establishes the profound piety of Roman society and the religious foundation of their militarism, one likewise shared by the other Indo-European cultures of the Greeks, Nordics, and Persians as well as the Christianity they influenced. The extent to which the highest form of heroism is exhibited within the spiritually-focused societies transcends race which has "a secondary, contingent place to it."

The next essay then ties everything together:
"It was necessary to examine these traditions before considering the medieval world, since, as is generally recognised, the Middle Ages, as a culture, arose from the synthesis of three elements; firstly, Roman; secondly, Nordic; and thirdly, Christian.
...
In fact, the man of the Crusades was able to rise, to fight and to die for a purpose which, in its essence, was supra-political and supra-human, and to serve on a front defined no longer by what is particularistic, but rather by what is universal. This remains a value, an unshakeable point of reference.
Naturally, this must not be misunderstood to mean that the transcendent motive may be used as an excuse for the warrior to become indifferent, to forget the duties inherent in his belonging to a race and to a fatherland.
...
Secondly, the one who fights according to the sense of ‘sacred war’ is spontaneously beyond every particularism and exists in a spiritual climate which, at any given moment, may very well give rise and life to a supra-national unity of action. This is precisely what occurred in the Crusades when princes and dukes of every land gathered in the heroic and sacred enterprise, regardless of their particular utilitarian interests or political divisions, bringing about for the first time a great European unity, true to the common civilisation and to the very principle of the Holy Roman Empire."

We see in Evola's words a path towards the transcendent and universal within the 'sacred war.' This is not just any war but a war of High Cultures; a healthy society ultimately directed by the piety of its priest caste - by Tradition itself. Without this complete hierarchy a war waged by such a corrupted society loses a great deal of its sacred worth, simply because its warriors are no longer driven by transcendent principles.

Race, Evola reminds us, is not part of this Truth. Not that it is not real, but that it is material and therefore secondary to the supra-human realm. The man of the Crusades did not fight for his race, his nation, or his state; the Crusader fought as a holy warrior against the forces of evil itself. He did indeed end up fighting for his race, for his culture, for a united Europe, not because he had any conceptions of these ideas at all, but because his society was capable of calling him into a brotherhood to fight for everything that was Good and Right. There was no hotheaded pride or aggressive violence for violence's sake; only the righteous fury of pious men who sought salvation via heroism.

It is my opinion that we are ALL pagan and Christian at the same time, and there's nothing we can do about it, but find ways to embrace it.

Priest and Warriors:
Something that must be recognized is the fact that Evola does NOT claim that the priestly nature is subordinate to the warrior nature. Neither does Guenon claim that the priestly nature should rule, in the real sense sense of the word, the warrior nature.

The preist is in a true hierarchy emboding the spiritual or contemplative principle, corresponding to the head or brain, whereas the warrior represents the virile or active principle, or the chest and heart.

In his natural state the warrior needs the priest in order to direct his actions towards spiritually benefitial results (holy war, victory/death), however, what Evola does say is that the ordering principle of this hierarchy, the regal nature, is OF the warrior nature, through a "purification", a heroic attainment , and a reintegration with those qualities that belong to the priest as well as retaining those of the warrior. The king becomes both priest and warrior, both temporally and spiritually superior, and thus the only principle fit to order everyone else inferior to him.

In the Islamic tradition a distinction is made between two holy wars, the "greater holy war" (el-jihadul-akbar) and the "lesser holy war" (el-jihadul-ashgar). This distinction originated from a saying (hadith) of the Prophet, who on the way back from a military expedition said: "You have returned from a lesser holy war to a great holy war." The greater holy war is of an inner and spiritual nature; the other is the material war waged externally against an enemy population with the particular intent of bringing "infidel" populations under the rule of "God's Law" (al-Islam). The relationship between the "greater" and "lesser holy war", however, mirrors the relationship between the soul and the body; in order to understand the heroic asceticism or "path of action", it is necessary to understand the situation in which the two paths merge, the "lesser holy war" becoming the means through which a "greater holy war" is carried out, and vice versa: the "little holy war", or the external one, becomes almost a ritual action that expresses and gives witness to the reality of the first. Originally, orthodox Islam conceived of a unitary form of asceticism: that which is connected to the jihad or "holy war".

Julius Evola

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, pt. 3

27. Think, before you act, that nothing stupid results;

28. To act inconsiderately is part of a fool;

29. Yet whatever later will not bring you repentance, that you should carry through.

30. Do nothing beyond what you know,

31. Yet learn what you may need; thus shall your life grow happy.

32. Do not neglect the health of the body;

33. Keep measure in eating and drinking, and every exercise of the body;

34. By measure, I mean what later will not induce pain;

35. Follow clean habits of life, but not the luxurious;

36. Avoid all things which will arouse envy.

37. At the wrong time, never be prodigal, as if you did not know what was proper;

38. Nor show yourself stingy, for a due measure is ever the best.  

39. Do only those things which will not harm thee, and deliberate before you act.