Knowledge-a form of asceticism

[caption id="attachment_5199" align="aligncenter" width="540"] James Arthur O'Connor (1792-1841) A Moonlit Landscape[/caption]

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Serrano: My Comrade

“In this turn of the wheel, I have dedicated myself to explaining a Myth and a Legend, embodying them in my life. I have gone through life singing a certain obsessive melody, whose key was given me in the land of my birth. I don’t remember if it was here, or in another place which is even farther away, in a remote, polar region. It seems to me that none of this is new, but that I have repeated it thousands of times.

I was orphaned as a child and was brought up by a widow called Fresia or Freyja, my paternal grandmother. I grew up in the forests of this southern land like a ‘pure madman’. Nothing more. Very soon I rebelled against the Great Widow, entering upon this combat with no other weapons than the memory of the face in the flower in the garden of my childhood. Without God, because I also lost him very early on.

As I narrate this ‘hermetic biography’ which is not accessible to everyone, this legend, and as I sing my melody softly, I thought to describe - with difficulty, enveloped in the mists of passing years and turns of the wheel - my meeting with and loss of a companion of my youth, whom I believe I called Jason, although his name was really Hector. Together we lived solar times, in a midday which was a midnight, dreaming of and searching for the City of Dawn.

Jason died young, He wanted to remain pure and upright so as to continue the search in a new turn of the wheel, in times which would be more propitious for him. He would continue his search through all the turns of the wheel, in those to come and those that came before.

At his graveside, I sang the Song of the Comrade:

‘If you doubt,
I laugh joyfully. 
If you sleep,
I keep watch for you.
If you leave, 
I shall fight for both of us.
Because to each warrior 
The Gods have
Given a comrade.’

And if I return to life, you will also return to life in me. And if you have a dog, I will look after it. And I will enter the city with it. Thus there will be a dog in the sky with us.”

Nos, Book of Resurrection, page 54

Free Ursula Haverbeck!

Fascist mysticism

"In this sense "mystical fascism" means belief in the absolute truth of the doctrine established by the Duce and the same belief in the necessity of this doctrine, as a way of greatness and power of the nation (...). With this fascist mysticism is called the preparation for more energetic action and more on which the ideals of Fascist statements tend to translate into reality ... The mystical fascism ... can best be described as the Fascist action determined by a stronger faith in the absolute truth of Fascist propositions. In this sense we can understand how one can speak of a mystical part of the Fascist doctrine or the best of the doctrine of Fascism, and how to prepare a school that is appropriate and addresses the best part of the Italian youth towards this mysticism, that is, towards this "more fascist" action."

— From the Dictionary of Politics, edited by the National Fascist Party, Vol III, p. 185 to 186, Rome 1940

Greece by by J.A. McClymont (Introductory)

[caption id="attachment_5156" align="alignnone" width="1000"] INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT BASSÆ IN ARCADIA. On the left of the picture are shown some of the columns of the eastern side of the Temple, together with the attached columns of the cella, a peculiar architectural feature of this Temple. The front (north) part of the cella was hypæthral, so the floor below the opening in the roof was slightly hollowed out—as shown in the drawing—to collect the rain-water. Mount Ithome appears between the columns of the southern end of the Temple.[/caption]

Paintings by John Fulleylove

MORE perhaps than any other country in Europe, Greece owes its charm to the traditions of a remote past. It has no lack of fine scenery, and there is much that is interesting in its modern life; but what chiefly distinguishes it from other countries is the rich and beautiful mythology which is reflected in its poetry, its art, and its philosophy, and was to a large extent the inspiration of its glorious history.

It will not be expected that any attempt should be made in these pages to give an adequate account of the artistic and architectural creations which, even in their ruins, form the chief attraction of the country. For detailed information on these matters, the reader must be left to consult such guide-books as Baedeker and Murray, or works specially devoted to archæology or art. The object of the present writer will be attained if he succeed in providing a congenial intellectual atmosphere for the scenes and objects to be presented by the artist. For this purpose it will be necessary, among other things, to recall many of the ancient legends, as well as the historical events associated with the places referred to. The history cannot be understood apart from the mythology, for the latter is a key to the religious faith as well as to the patriotic sentiment of the nation.

Opinions may differ as to the right interpretation of many of the myths, but whatever explanation we may be disposed to give of them, whether we regard them as allegorical, semi-historical, or purely poetical, they are generally full of human interest, and they were very dear to the Greeks as the embodiment of their earliest thoughts and cherished memories. Embalmed in their poetry, consecrated by their temples, and signalised by many other monuments, the Greek mythology formed for centuries the chief intellectual wealth of the nation. Even when history and philosophy had begun to make their influence felt, the old stories, dramatised by the tragic poets, still continued to fill the imagination and to occupy the attention of all classes of the people. Though Plato had a good deal to say against some of them from an ethical point of view, he did not propose in his ideal Republic to do away with them altogether, he only wished them to be so corrected and purified as to promote the interests of a sound morality and a reasonable theology.

[caption id="attachment_5160" align="alignnone" width="1000"] THE WESTERN END OF THE ACROPOLIS SEEN FROM BELOW THE PNYX. The position of the Propylæa, the magnificent gatehouse of Pentelic marble designed by the architect Mnesicles, is admirably shown in this drawing. All the five doorways, which were closed by doors of bronze, are seen against the sky. Immediately to the left is the north wing (the Pinacotheca); to the right the bastion surmounted by the little Niké Temple. High above all rises the Parthenon. Coming down to the foreground, we may note, on the right, the great supporting wall of the Theatre of Herodes Atticus with the blue Hymettos behind it; and, to the left, the pinkish coloured rock of the Areopagus, with Lycabettos above.[/caption]

An important feature of Greek mythology was its close connection with the received genealogies. These nearly always terminated, at the upper end, in a god or a hero, after whom a family or a group of families was named, with the curious result, to our modern mind, that the shorter the pedigree the more honour it conferred upon its living representative. The public genealogies were thus an incentive both to the piety and the pride of the more influential classes, and they help to account for the reverence in which the ancient mythology was so long held by such an enlightened nation as the Greeks.

With the exception of Palestine, there is probably no country that can compare with Greece for the influence it has exerted on the life and thought of the world, in proportion to its size and population. In area it was never so large as Scotland, and its population, which is now under two millions and a half, was probably never much greater.

How far the influence of ancient Greece was due to the racial characteristics of its inhabitants, which they brought with them from other parts of the world, and how far to the peculiarities of the country itself, is a question which it is not easy to determine. To some extent, no doubt, both causes operated. The inhabitants belonged to a good stock, the Indo-Germanic, while their geographical position and surroundings were well fitted to develop a high type of manhood. The beauty of the scenery, the purity of the atmosphere, the geniality of the climate, the fertility of the plains and valleys, the grandeur of the mountains,—more numerous and widespread than in any other part of Europe of similar extent except Montenegro,—the bracing influence of the sea, and the commercial advantages afforded by its coasts, which are more extensive than those of any other country in proportion to its size, looking in the direction of Europe, Asia, and Africa—all these things no doubt helped to make the ancient Greeks the great nation that they were, though their comparative obscurity in modern times shows that something more is needed to produce a similar effect.

[caption id="attachment_5165" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] THE TEMPLE OF THESEUS FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. The mountain dominating the Temple, to the right (east), is Lycabettos; the distant mountain to the left is Pentelikon.[/caption]

If we would form an adequate conception of the nation’s influence, we must take into account the numerous Greek colonies which were planted in Asia Minor and on the southern shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of Macedonia, along the Hellespont and Bosporus, and also in Sicily and Italy, where a new Greek world sprang up, which received the name of Magna Græcia. Hundreds of years before Athens reached the height of its glory, there was a Greek city in Italy, Cumæ (founded by colonists from Chalcis and Cymæ in Asia Minor), which held the first place in the peninsula for wealth and civilisation; while another Greek settlement was to be found as far west as Marseilles, which had been colonised from Phocæa in Asia Minor about 600 B.C.

The inhabitants of Greece in this wider sense not only spoke the same language (whose preservation was largely due to the influence of Homer), but were also bound together by fellowship in blood, in religion, and in manners. They were hardly more distinguishable from the rude and ignorant tribes of Europe than from the more civilised Orientals who practised human sacrifice, polygamy, and the mutilation of enemies. But perhaps the most marked characteristic of the Greeks was their love of local autonomy, and their rooted aversion to anything like imperial rule, such as prevailed so widely in Asia. Their attachment to an individual city, as the capital of a small district, was doubtless due in great measure to the divided nature of the country, which is broken up by mountains and rivers and arms of the sea into numberless plains and valleys only a few miles in extent. While this had the effect of fostering a spirit of independence, combined with a sense of civic obligation, which helped to develop the energies and capacities of the individual, the proximity to each other of so many rival states bred a great amount of jealousy and strife, which frequently led to bloody and destructive wars. Such disintegrating tendencies were too much even for the consolidating force of a common language and literature, or of voluntary confederations for the purpose of worship or amusement. Occasionally a great national emergency, such as the Persian invasion, might force the Greeks to join together for the resistance of a common foe, but it was almost inevitable that sooner or later they should fall into the hands of a great military power, such as Macedonia, and lose the civic liberties of which they were so proud. The political decay of Greece, however, only widened the scope of its influence. As the dissolution of the Jewish polity was followed by the rapid spread of a religion which had its roots in the Jewish Scriptures, so the national degradation of the Greeks led to a still wider diffusion of their language, their literature, and their civilisation.

[caption id="attachment_5169" align="alignnone" width="1000"] THE STREET OF TOMBS OUTSIDE THE DIPYLON (GATE) AT ATHENS. One of the most remarkable tombs is that surmounted by a colossal bull in the act of charging. This statue has undergone a good deal of restoration, but it is a singularly effective piece of work when seen relieved against the sky in such a climate as that of Athens. Between this tomb and the tall shaft (stelé) surmounted by an acroterion we get a view of the Parthenon, with a storm approaching from the East.[/caption]

From the book: Greece: Painted by John Fulleylove; described by J.A. McClymont 1906

Read the whole book and see the illustrations here: here

Note: this blog doesn’t necessarily agree with everything written in this article.

Men cannot exist without Roots

[caption id="attachment_5125" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Franz Stassen (1869-1949) “Der Ring Des Nibelungen- Das Rheingold”[/caption]

"Men exist only by what distinguishes them: clan, lineage, history, culture, tradition. There are no universal answers to the questions of existence and behavior. Every civilization has its truths and its gods . . . . Every civilization creates its own answers, without which the individual, man or woman, lacking identity and archetypes, is thrown into a world of chaos. Like plants, men cannot exist without roots. Every individual must discover his own."

Dominique Venner

Ascending Asceticism

[caption id="attachment_5091" align="alignnone" width="960"] Mikhail Nesterov - On Aksakovs Native Land - 1923.[/caption]

"Asceticism is not a woeful and painful stifling of unlived passion, but simply a ‘technique’ for setting the self free, a conscious step undertaken because one is aware of the Higher. One does not trust in grace and waiting, but wants to liberate himself through his own power. Consciousness therefor precedes unconsciousness, differentiated are the ideas of higher consciousness and lower consciousness. A crystal-clear wakefulness characterizes the first, and surrender and self-sacrifice the latter."

paraphrased from h.t. hansen; “a short introduction to julius evola”

Mihai Eminescu - Lucifer

[caption id="attachment_5078" align="alignnone" width="300"] Octavian Smigelschi's vision of the Morning Star, with lyrics from the 13th stanza; 1904 print in the eponymous magazine[/caption]

Come down, good Lucifer and kind ,
O lord of my aspire,
And flood my chamber and my mind
With your sweetest fire !"

And Lucifer beams still more bright
To hear her word's emotion ;
Then like a comet in its flight
Dives down into the ocean.

And where his bolt is lost to view
The sea in whirlpool surges,
Till out of the unfathomed blue
A handsome youth emerges,

Who, leaping off the fretful wave,
Lightly through her casement passes ;
And in his hand he holds a stave
Crowned with a wreath of grasses.

A prince indeed of royal stock,
With heavy hanging golden hair ;
A purple winding-sheet his smock,
Hung round his shoulders bare.

A starry glow shines from his eyes,
His cheeks are deathly white ;
A lifeless thing in living guise,
A youth born of the night.

"Down from the spheres do I come
Though dreadful the commotion,
My father is the vaulted dome,
My mother is the ocean.

For I have left my realm to keep
Obedience to your command ;
Born of the zenith and the deep
Before you here I stand.

O come, fair child of royal birth,
Cast this your world aside,
For Lucifer has flown to earth
To claim you as his bride.

Read the full poem: here

[caption id="attachment_5081" align="alignnone" width="400"] The Morning Star as a sword-bearing youth, 1904 lithograph by Lascăr Vorel[/caption]

Mihai Eminescu on Jews

Mihai Eminescu Eminovici (15 January 1850 – 15 June 1889) was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. 

"If today, when they do not yet have full civil rights or political ones, they have taken over all commerce and all small industry in Moldavia; if today they have flaunted themselves frightfully over Romanian plains; if today they are nesting in the hearth of the industrious Oltenians; what will it be like tomorrow when they will be granted equal rights, when they will be able to call themselves Romanians, when they will have inscribed into laws the formal right that this fatherland is theirs just as much as it is ours!"

(Complete works, The Israelite Question, p. 489, Iasi, the lonescu-Georgescu Bookstore, 1914. Quoted by Alex Naum).

And on page 48:

"By what labors or sacrifices have they won for themselves the right, to aspire to equality with the Romanian people? Was it they who fought the Turks, Tartars, Poles and Hungarians? Was it they who were punished when the old treaties were broken? Was it through their efforts that the fame of this country spread, that this language was disinterred from the veilings of the past? Was it through one of them that the Romanian people won its right to sunlight?"

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu "For My Legionaries"

[caption id="attachment_5067" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Mihai Eminescu bronze bust by Ion Georgescu (1856 - 1898) - Cluj-Napoca Bánffy Palace (picture taken by me)[/caption]

 

 

Vasile Conta

Vasile Conta - November 15, 1845 – April 21, 1882) was a Romanian philosopher, poet, and politician.

He was born in Ghindăoani, a village in Bălțătești commune, Neamţ County.

He died in Bucharest.

Antisemitism

He was the true founder of the Romanian ideological antisemitism. His criteria were no longer those of a socioeconomic nature; they were derived from the “nationalities principle,” nationalities as units of race and religion, forming the basis of existence of a state and a homogeneous nation.

The following text about Vasile Conta is taken from Corneliu Codreanu's "For My Legionaries" (chapter "The Great Men of Romania of 1879 - The Veil of Forgetfulness") 

VASILE CONTA

Consider the attitude our great Conta held in the Chamber in 1879.

Fifty years earlier the Romanian philosopher demonstrated with unshakeable scientific arguments, framed in a system of impeccable logic, the soundness of racial truths that must lie at the foundation of the national state; a theory adopted fifty years later by the same Berlin which had imposed on us the granting of civil rights to the Jews in 1879.

From this, one can see the frailty of the arguments of those who attack the, national movement as being inspired by the new German ideology, when in reality, after so many years, it is Berlin that has taken up the line of Vasile Conta, Mihail Emineseu and the others. We, if we will not fight against the Jewish element, will perish as a nation.

It is a recognized fact, even by those attacking us today, that the first condition for a State to exist and prosper, is that the citizens of that State be of the same race, same blood, and this is easy to understand. First, individuals of like race usually marry only among themselves, for only thus can they retain the unity of race; then marriage creates the family feelings which are the strongest and the most lasting ties between individuals; and when we consider that these family ties spread out until they take in all the citizens of the State we see that the latter are attracted to one another by a general feeling of love, by what is called racial sympathy. Moreover, bearing in mind that the same blood flows through the veins of all the members of a people, one understands that all these members will have through heredity, about the same feelings, about the same tendencies, and even about the same ideas; so that in perilous times, on unique occasions, their hearts will beat as one, their minds will adopt one opinion, the action of all will seek the same purpose; in other words the nation made up of a single race will have only one center of gravity; and the State made up of such a nation, that and only that one will be in the best condition of strength, durability and progress. In consequence, just as in the maintenance of a species, the first requisite for the existence of a State is that its people be of like race, Well, this is the truth on which the principle of nationalities is based, on which so much is being said in the civilized world. This principle of nationalities, naturally, refers only to race and not at all to what is called 'the subjects of the State regardless of race for then the principle would have no application whatever.

Well, this principle is today so deeply rooted in the conscience of all people, be they statesmen or simple citizens, that nowadays all States in the civilized world come into being or are reconstituted only on this basis.

Then let the Jewish publicists or the jew-lovers no longer say that the basis of the State is only a common material interest of its citizens, because, on the contrary, we see that it is exactly this, our century, that gave birth to the principle of nationalities; that prevails today more and more... True, this does not prevent foreigners from acquiring the citizenship of a State, provided they assimilate into the dominant nation; namely, to mix totally so that ultimately the State remain of the same single blood. "These are the only scientific principles of naturalization. For naturalization to be useful, rational and conforming to scientific criteria, it must be granted only to those foreigners who assimilate or are inclined to do so by marriage to the indigenous. Otherwise, one can easily comprehend that granting citizenship to individuals who lack, or cannot have, this inclination of assimilation into the blood of the dominant race, would result in a country subject to perpetual struggles between opposite tendencies.

I am not saying it is impossible for various races that would exist in some country to have sometimes a common interest, that the hereditary tendencies of one race be just as favored as those of another by the same circumstances. As long as this state of affairs lasted, both indigenous and naturalized would certainly live peacefully. But circumstances change and with them the interest of the various races could also change; and if not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow then day after tomorrow the tendencies of the naturalized will be in conflict with those of the natives, and then the interest of some will beat odds with that of the others, and then the interests of some could not be satisfied without sacrificing those of the others; and then we would have a fight for existence between two races, with fierce battles that could only be ended either by the total abolishment of the State, or when one of the races is totally crushed so that again only one dominant race remain in the State.... Well, our national history and everyday experience have proved to us that from among all foreigners who come to us, the Turks and particularly the Jews are the ones who never intermarry with us, while other foreigners: Russians, Greeks, Italians, Germans intermarry and fuse with us, if not on the first then during the second or third generation, but finally there comes a time when there is no distinction between these foreigners and ourselves, either as regards blood or love of country. But it is not the same with the Jews....

"...No matter how this question would be posed, or how it would be interpreted, we, if we will not fight against the Jewish element, will perish as a nation. "

(From the discourse against the revision of the Art. of the Constitution, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, Extraordinary Session, held on September 4, 1879 and published in the Official Monitor No. 201 dated Wednesday, September 17, 1879, pp. 5755-6)

[caption id="attachment_5041" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The tomb of Vasile Conta from the Eternity Cemetery in Iasi.[/caption]