"A large part of the world is currently possessed by demons..." - by William Wildblood

Thus begins an extremely important post at Albion Awakening - and on this topic, which is one prone to so much misunderstanding, it is especially important to Read The Whole Thing...

If it's too late - then it's too late...

I remember some 15-plus years ago realising that if such-and-such did not happen Now, then it would be Too Late. It did not happen - and so I stopped trying to make it happen; because even if it did happen it was, by now, Too Late.

This is a real thing - and those who don't recognise the fact are being unrealistic - perhaps by wishful thinking, or perhaps because they are pursuing a different covert agenda.

The people who stated 20 years ago that Global Warming would cause havoc UNLESS we acted immediately and radically to slash world CO2 levels; still have not withdrawn their demands, nor changed their policy - even though, by their own reasoning, it is Now Too Late...

The reasons is that the demand to reduce CO2 is merely a stalking horse for global totalitarianism - and it was really the mechanism for mass surveillance and micro-control that was wanted, and which CO2 control provided. It is seldom 'too late' for evil, since Good is susceptible to damage in this mortal life.

On the side of Good; it is never too late for a person to repent and be saved; but when it comes to human institutions, it is often too late to save them. I think this applies to many or most of the institutions of Western nations, and perhaps to most of the nations themselves, and perhaps also to the society of growth in production - which has been going since the industrial revolution.

Think of some of the Christian churches... it is obviously several generations too late to save Unitarians and Quakers; but it is surely, by now, at least several decades too late to save the other mainstream Western churches. If warnings had been heeded, and the right things had been done then - yes, they could have been saved; but warnings were ignored, and matters were made worse instead of better - and so Now it is Too Late...

There are many, and powerful, reasons to suggest that it is Now Too Late for these entities to be saved... not least because, overall, they have no effective desire to be saved; but indeed the opposite: their revealed preferences indicate a covert-but-active desire for self-extinction.

When an institutions is so corrupted that the entirely of its senior leadership and the bulk of its mid-level managers, and many of its low level employees are corrupt (that is: not even trying to prioritise the institution's specific functionality, or despising that functionality - and instead pursuing either some general ideology and/or short-term selfishness) - then the organisation is un-reformable, un-saveable - especially when that organisation is large.

There is a point of no return, a critical mass or tipping point, at which an institution or organisation is so thoroughly corrupted that it cannot find enough people within-itself to save-itself and must rely on external intervention; however, when the society as-a-whole is also corrupt; then there is nobody and nothing external to Do the saving...

If we regard Christianity as essential to the saving of The West; then - when it comes to institutions, organisations and nations - we long ago reached the point of no return.

That is the current situation. We can save souls, because for that it is never too late. But we cannot save that which does not want to be saved, and which will indeed fight against its own salvation and which wills its own extinction.

It is Just Too Late.

Note added: To be honest, I don't think the above is controversial. If you look around at the people who are pursuing Good goals (i.e. at least compatible with Direct Christian aims) in the worldly, materialist realm or on the fringe of mainstream public discourse; they are not trying to 'save' 'Western Civilisation', or any of the Western Nation States, or any of the major social institutions. Implicitly, they seem to recognise that this would be a waste of time at best - or more likely counter-productive (by strengthening groups that are net-evil). Those 'Christian entrepreneurs' etc. who are having a significant (measurable) impact on things, are doing so by trying to revive minority (relatively less-corrupted) segments of the rotten whole (e.g. forming 'breakaway' groups); or else are starting new and minority institutions, organisations, businesses, churches - with hope or intention to grow. 

The unavoidable problem of salvation

The traditional thing to do in such times as these is to Look For Signs - to look towards signs of spiritual awakening, the fulfilment of prophecy, the next stage emerging... But it is likely that this activity will not apply this time around.

The idea of such signs is related to a passive understanding of the nature of the world, in which the world (including our-selves) is swept-along a path - is compelled. Yet it seems that this era is absolutely dependent on human choice; that there can be no compulsion of human agency... and indeed it is his insight which is crucial.

For example, mainstream modern people tend to be very keen to regard Reality as some-thing that compels; whereas a message of the Fourth Gospel of Jesus is that each Man chooses... that there is never 'enough evidence' to compel, and therefore we have an absolute responsibility for our own beliefs, our faith, our understanding.

In our hearts we know (or rather, we need to acknowledge) that each person sets-up assumptions which dictate 'what counts as evidence', and when evidence is found to be sufficient and compelling.

We know that the human mind, your mind and my mind, is therefore an indispensable part-of objective reality; and, at the same time, reality really is objective: it is not something each mind makes-up arbitrarily. So, our experience is one which depends on human thinking, and also depends on the world being different-from human thinking.

Explaining this philosophically is not usually possible, because most philosophy includes assumptions which prevent such truth from being expressed. But we can understand things by regarding relations, relationships, as the primary and best 'true metaphor' for describing and explaining the world.

In our hearts we know that this is a world where everything is alive and also everything is a part of a universal consciousness - yet we also know that our own self stands apart from all this. So, we do not need to connect-up the world - the world already is connected, and always has been since God's creation.

Everything created is alive, purpose, conscious in some way... so this is our baseline; a reality of entities in relationship; and also a reality in which we are set apart, self-conscious. It is this unavoidable self-consciousness that leads to the matter (the problem) of salvation.

Because we each are also set apart; we each have an unavoidable role, decision, choices. For all the difference in size and power between our-self and everything-else (including God) - we cannot escape from the fact that each self has an unavoidable part to play in the great interconnected whole.

This means that life is not wholly 'given', but to a vital extent is a participation-between the individual self and everything-else. The problem of salvation; and the answer to this problem just-is provided by each individual person - he cannot avoid it.

You and I cannot avoid the problem of salvation; but we can - of course - deny it! We can deny that it exists as a problem, or we can deny that we each have any real choice in the matter. But these are de facto choices, in and of themselves, and we cannot hide from ourselves that such choices-have-been-made.

Coleridge as a high-Psychoticism Christian

Some years ago I wrote about the high-Psychoticism Christian: the 'good Christian' who was not nice,  not sociable, conscientious, organised - who was impulsive, easily bored, bad at sustained endeavour; a man who nearly-always failed to follow-through on his resolutions.

And I later wrote about how such high-Psychoticism persons potentially have a vital role to play in Christianity - because for all its disadvantages; high-P is needed for creativity, and that integrity which depends on immunity to social conformity. 

I now realise that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is a great example of exactly what I meant.

Coleridge was a deep and devoted Christian, and had a wide and deep influence through his life and beyond - affecting Anglican practice and theology (via disciples) all through the nineteenth century. 

Coleridge was also a long term opium addict, a frequent drunkard; he all-but abandoned his wife (luckily she and the children were well looked after in the house of her brother in law, Coleridge's friend Robert Southey); and he passionately loved another woman (but entirely chastely).

His life was chaotic in the extreme, he was moody in the extreme, short-tempered, impulsive, inconsistent; he missed appointments and broke arrangements; he failed to finish (or even begin) nearly all of his large projects.

But Coleridge acknowledged and repented his sins; he regretted the way he was, he tried to reform but couldn't. He was what he was - he was made that way.

While what he did was nearly all flawed (requiring tremendous and sustained concentration - or else scattered notes, hints, scraps), and was far less in amount then he was capable of doing; nonetheless Coleridge was perhaps the most significant philosophical thinker of his time. As a conversationalist (or rather monologist) he was apparently supreme; and sometimes he was a lecturer of astonishing power - and thus sufficient of his great potential was somehow made available.     

Christianity has this great strength - and we must never forget it - that repentance is more important than behaviour; and by Jesus Christ repentance is available to everybody at ever time and in an inexhaustible supply.

Much of Coleridge's life needed repenting every hour of every day for decades - but that was not a problem - that well can never run dry. 

And thus Coleridge was a truly great Christian, although in many ways a bad man.

In this age, these end times, when institutions are corrupt and obedience and hard work are turned to evil ends; it is possible that only someone of the Coleridge type has the creativity, independence and courage to provide what is needed.

Not as a Christian leader, of course! That would be a disaster. But as an educator, clarifier, explainer, encourager, and as an inspirer.

The decline from Wordsworth to Byron; from Coleridge to Shelley

Coleridge writing Kubla Khan under the influence? Mad Poet by Michael Whelan

In a post at Albion Awakening, I tackle a subject close to my heart and causal of the deep malaise of the modern condition - namely the rapid corruption of Romanticism from its Christian beginnings to a combination of radical politics, sexual revolution and make-believe.

Since Romanticism was the divinely destined direction for Western Man; this has been catastrophic over the past two centuries - with (on one side) serious mainstream Christianity rejecting imagination, inspiration and intuition - hardening into materialism; and (on the other side) mainstream culture diverging into the instinct-driven sexual revolution and the iron cage of pseudo-rational totalitarian bureaucracy.

As Owen Barfield first understood; one answer is for us to return to the source of true Romanticism - such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, and pick up the threads - and carry forward the Romantic project. And this is no hardship - but a delightsome task!

And it will succeed; because Rudolf Steiner - in his early works, culminating in the Philosophy of Freedom - has done all the heavy lifting for us (with Barfield's later assistance).

The answer is there, waiting; the answer is coherent, beautiful and fruitful; and a world of wonders beckons! - if we want it; and assuming we each make the effort to know it intuitively: for our-selves...

The knowledge, and sin, of the Holy Ghost

Reality is universal and accessible - ultimately, in the fullness of eternity - to every single person directly; but only to individual persons... So that if or when a person insists that they personally cannot do this, and that he must therefore get his knowledge secondhand and indirectly by means of communications... well, this is a species of self-damnation.

Such is all-too-often seen among 'traditionalist' Christians of this age; their primary intuition is that they cannot intuit the truth; and therefore must receive truth only by communication from external authority.

Of course, here and now we have at best only a sliver of direct truth; and in the meanwhile must get most of it secondhand - but we must subject all significant knowledge to the test of direct apprehension. And only when we can get the question boiled-down to that which can be held in mind and apprehended as a single and simple whole; then can clear knowledge be available... so long as the mind may (at least momentarily) be stilled and focused.

Thus direct knowing. Thus the knowledge of the Holy Ghost.

And the sin of the Holy Ghost is to deny it.

All too many Christians are in exactly this state of sin. How?

Having once known some-thing directly, clearly and with intuitive apprehension by the Holy Ghost; they then deny and over-rule this knowledge; by favouring some lesser, secondary, communicated, complex information - whether derived from church authority, secular scholarship or mores, tradition, logic, or scripture.

Demonic fingerprints on the RCC

I feel that it should not be necessary to spell everything out... indeed, the very fact that it has become necessary to state the obvious means that the obvious is not going to be accepted. But here goes anyway...

There are sins, and there is wickedness, and these are human universals and the only vital difference between people is whether a person repents or not.

But there are sins and wickedness - and then there is the work of demonic evil as it is manifested in human society; and that is often hard to distinguish; but sometimes it isn't hard to distinguish...

And when we are talking about systematic, organised paedophilia - then there it is, unambiguous, and absolutely characteristic - just the same phenomenon as we see linking and motivating the upper levels of the global establishment in politics, business, the mass media... and now the Roman Catholic Church.

This is not ordinary human weakness we are dealing-with, this is not a temptation that the vast mass of ordinary people experience; it is a demonic takeover and redirection of human institutions.

Where we find it, where we find evidence consistent with it, where the ideological links are in-place - there (and this we ought to know without having specifically to be told) we are dealing with the demonic in human affairs.

This isn't a matter for argument; and if argument is needed or demanded - then (so far as I can tell) you are on the wrong side already.

These are the End Times; and this is how things work in the end times. Things aren't complicated; they are all-too-simple, but so appalling that we refuse to believe them... and thus we are caught.

Supposing that we are the verge of repressive totalitarianism...

The spiritual Christian perspective is often sharply different from the mainstream hedonic materialism that generally (sometimes exclusively) dominates most people's everyday thoughts and behaviours - including my own.

But they often lead to opposite conclusions. For example, there is a very real and realistic belief that Britain is very close to becoming an overtly repressive totalitarian nation - since all the social institutions are working together to enforce conformity and repress any public expression of opposition.

For example, it has become almost impossible to speak in an advertised public forum for anyone who is regarded as of being against the leftist agenda. It is now a normal daily occurrence for such events to be refused by venues, or cancelled if they are initially accepted; and this is done with the cooperation of local government and the police. At a national level, those against the establishment agenda are refused permission to enter Britain - this has been happening for several years.

My point is that we are already living in a totalitarian country; but most people do not realise it. However, if (or when) things go further - then people will realise it. It will become impossible for many or most people not to realise, on an hour by hour basis, that they are under a repressive system of monitoring and control. 

Now, from a spiritual Christian Perspective, such a realisation would be invaluable! It would be at least half-way to an awakening. So, this is something to be welcomed - in and of itself.

But from a secular, 'right wing' anti-leftist perspective - such an awakening is only of value IF it leads to effective political action to resist and overthrow the prevailing socio-political Leftism.

A greater divergence than this is hard to imagine! However, repressive totalitarianism is - for exactly this reason - a test case of our seriousness about spiritual Christianity.

If we are serious that this is essentially a spiritual war we live in; and if overt and severe repression awakens more people to reality - then it would have to be - overall - if not actually a good thing; then, at least, better than what we currently have...

You and whose army?

This was a schoolboy taunt directed at people who made extreme but vague aggressive statements of intent with no plan and nothing to back them up. The implication was that such threats were empty...

I feel much the same about the pseudonymous chickenhawk culture warriors who are always encouraging other people to start "fighting" the mainstream culture of materialist atheist leftism.

Because the essence of the situation is precisely that there is no army on our side, nobody to fight With. And so no point in encouraging others to Join-In, because we are each on our own - or, if lucky, having a handful of family or close friends.

That is the fact of the current situation, it's where we start from.

This makes matters simple. We simply need to decide what we personally should do.

And Then Do It.

Inequality is a fact, it is Good, and it is more pervasive than previously realised

Inequality is a dishonest word - because it merely means difference; but by calling difference inequality, a path is opened towards a moral inversion.

Because difference is a fact - no two things are the same (not even snowflakes or grains of sand - leave aside human beings or social situations). By relabelling difference as inequality - that which is a fact, is inevitable, and is Good - is instead made into an ineradicable problem...

It is a 'discovery' of modernity that difference is everywhere (except in abstraction! - such as mathematics... and of course that is one source of error) - and the change in human conscious of modernity has shown more and more differences; but this knowledge has been poisoned by moral inversion.

The fact is that we should expect differences wherever we make a comparison - and should regard it positively.

And this includes religion - in the sense that we are all God's children, and all children are different - and a good and loving parent loves the differences between his children (and does not, therefore, try to shape them all into identical outcomes; but rather to encourage each to develop into his or her unique good-ness - his or her unique (and uniquely contributing harmony) with God's creation and plans of salvation and theosis.

Not all differences are the same in nature - e.g. the difference between men and women is of a different nature than the difference between brothers - but these differences are real and ineradicable and Good.

The Robin Hood (not Benedict) Option

At Albion Awakening; John Fitzgerald has some thoughts on Robin Hood as a model for how modern 'SaxonChristians' might survive and thrive under the yoke of the vile Norman-Leftists.

As a kid, I found RH and his merry men an inspiring model; and in my mind they were associated with the Hiawatha type forest Indians of North America - it was mostly that free, woodland, Arcadian lifestyle I yearned for. There is also a political aspect; in the Robin is the real English folk hero, the people's choice - as contrasted with Arthur, who has a rather more upper class and mixed appeal.

Of course, such characters are prone to be hijacked, and turned against their proper meanings. For example, Robin Hood is made into a proto-socialist; or else the Sheriff is made the 'goodie'...

Anyway, John has something new and true to say about this vital myth of Albion.

Temporary logistical arrangements commencing...

There will be a brief hiatus in my attention to this blog - during which commenting is suspended, and comments temporarily hidden.

Why are so few women expressing profound dissatisfaction with materialist Leftist bureaucratic totalitarian anti-Christian modernity?

William Wildblood wrestles with this question at Albion Awakening - and makes some constructive suggestions.

My own angle is that the whole human being is only to be found in the ideality of permanent, indeed eternal, marriage between a man and a woman; in a complementary dyad: each couple being an unique perfection of growth in love.

That perfection needs to be recognised as the ideal, even though (very) seldom (or never) fully attainable in mortal life.

It is our divine destiny as Men - but, of course, must ultimately be embraced only in the full freedom of choice, and with knowledge; hence at an advanced stage of post-mortal life. 

"Everyday consciousness is a liar" - forty years of Colin Wilson

It was forty years ago that Colin Wilson made me recognise explicitly something I had unconsciously felt for about five years; which was that ordinary everyday human consciousness is essentially worthless. A life spent at that level was not really being lived - it was a mere automatic behaviour. From then onwards my main and recurring focus in life was attaining a higher consciousness.

But in this I was hampered, thwarted, by my irreligion. I believed that reality had just-happened, was not 'created'; therefore reality had no purpose... and this deep nihilism always unravelled any attempt I made to find meaning in my experiences of higher consciousness.

I might often respond with intense happiness and aliveness to beautiful countryside, and after Wilson I might acknowledge that this kind of 'peak experience' was what life was about; but ultimately I regarded this as something that happened only in my mind - and that the countryside was just a stimulus to this pleasurable state (and  this stimulus was contingent - just an accidental product of my makeup and experiences).

(And when my mind ended, with disease or death, so did the reality and significance of this experience.)

If only - I now think - I could have gone on and read A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle; the foreword to which was my introduction to Wilson. Yet that book is very difficult. And I was immune to anything which I felt was an attempt to prove the reality of God to me - that raised all resistances.

If only I had read Arkle's Letter from a Father, perhaps things would have been different? (and this was nearly included as an Appendix to GoC, as Wilson's introduction explains...) - Because there Arkle doesn't argue but just assumes the reality of God, and has him explain what he is trying to do with creation.

But very likely I needed to go the long way round to this insight...

JRR Tolkien's nervous breakdown

I believe that JRR Tolkien suffered what could be termed a 'nervous breakdown' in 1945-6; after taking-up the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature in June of 1945, and at exactly the time when he was writing the Notion Club Papers (NCPs). The Notion Club Papers is therefore itself an indirect source of evidence about Tolkien's state of mind.

This period of 1945-6 was also associated with an apparent marital crisis, during which Tolkien (with his son Christopher) and his wife separated for some weeks. The evidence suggests Tolkien's psychological problems were building-up to become severe by December 1945, peaking in March and April of 1946, and resolving in July of 1946.

My impression is that this breakdown was mostly a matter of anxiety and depression brought-on by overwork and stress.

My guess is that the nervous breakdown experience of late 1945-1946 had a permanent effect on Tolkien - and that the effect was beneficial to his writing. On the one hand he was able to write with increased emotional depth. More speculatively; it is possible that the experience of his 'self-therapy' in writing the Notion Club Papers was able to give him surer access to altered states of consciousness, especially dreams, and these provided a source of other-worldly sub-creative reality to the Lord of the Rings.

Without the nervous breakdown of 1945-6, and without the experience of writing the Notion Club Papers - The Lord of the Rings would have been a different, and probably lesser, book.

Read the evidence at The Notion Club Papers blog...

What kind of spiritual threat are we facing? - And how might it be 'defeated'?

Some metaphysical reflections after re-reading Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion.

...We are confronted by a reality which we must apprehend each for himself by intuition; and in which our individual salvation depends on a directly attained knowledge; and personal freedom, agency, choice...

The reason (as I understand it) for this necessity is that Man's divine destiny is linear, sequential, non-repeating - although with some cyclical aspects; so that history resembles a spiral.

Salvation is individual - we are Not converging onto a single 'type' but rather we ultimately are aimed-at becoming our-unique-selves And fully-harmonised with the divine purposes.

To make this possible, God has taken care that every specific place, hour, day, lunar month, year, and era are different - so that each individual human life may be provided with the experiences best-suited to its spiritual progression (then; it is up to each of us to learn from these experiences).

On the other hand, it is only from the repetitions and regularities of life that we are able to learn. So we get both...


Read the whole thing at The Notion Club Papers...

The mystery of the moon

By Abraham Pether (English painter) - 1756-1812

Modern Man regards the moon as trivial - except for its gravitational effect upon tides - which I personally regard as mysterious, since I have failed to understand the 'explanations' of how a gravitational pull can cause a high tide on the opposite side of the earth.

Of course, I personally regard the Moon as a living and conscious being; and have done so for a very long time, although in the past I would vehemently have denied it!

Astronomically it is very mysterious - why is the Moon the same size as the Sun (when seen from earth)? Why does it rotate on its axis at the same rate as it orbits, such that it always has the same face towards us? Why is our moon The Moon) so big, relative to the earth - compared with other planets? How did it get there at all (assuming that the current explanations are indeed the arrant nonsense they seem to be).

A mystery indeed.

It is implausible, impossible, that the Moon could have no effect other than its tides - yet what is that effect? What is the effect that moon light (and its lack) has upon our minds? What is the significance of the Moon's phases?

In sum, what is the Moon's role in human salvation and theosis; why was it placed, and made as it is?

I have a feeling that I already know the answers to such questions, as inbuilt but unconscious knowledge - and I would very much like to make this knowledge explicit and conscious!

Corruption through loyalty, in the Christian churches

Loyalty is a virtue, is indeed the primary virtue in many societies - but it is a minor virtue for a Christian. Therefore, when a Christian finds that loyalty is becoming his primary motivation - he can be sure that he is being corrupted away from Christ.

The original, traditional and ancient, loyalty was properly to an individual person (the the 'liege lord'); and the idea of loyalty to an abstraction - such as an organisation, the personnel of which are completely replaceable - is a development, and a weakening of the original.

Too many Christians have been more loyal to their church, abstractly conceived, than to their faith - but this loyalty is being tested more and more strongly with every passing year and the corruption of large and powerful Western Christian churches is being revealed as more and more extreme.

This is a test of Christian faith, and a necessary test. We ought not to 'complain' about it - because it reveals our own lack of faith.

It used to be possible (in many times and places) to be a passive Christian, and treat a church as if it was itself the abstract and incorruptible perfection of faith. The church was regarded as intrinsically and necessarily and essentially pure, regardless of the people in it.

(Because it is assumed that the one absolutely reliable area of direct divine intervention in this mortal world, is for God to ensure that the leaders of this church are always and under every circumstance essentially pure and true; never corrupt and false...)

An organisation was thereby regarded as better than actual people. This is a common modern belief, associated - in the twentieth century - with bureaucratic totalitarianism; on the tacitly-assumed basis that individuals are always corrupt; but when Committees follow Procedures, then Good can be made routine, reliable and objective. 

The falseness of this hope should have been obvious - but is not obvious, it is very far from obvious to many or most people - including most Christians; and therefore the test continues, and continues to become more extreme.

It seems to me that, so pervasive is this test, that it is a high priority for our God to confront us each with the choice; to put us into a position where faith and loyalty are in stark conflict so that we are compelled to choose.

This seems to be a lesson that we must learn, hence cannot avoid (although we can, of course, continue to deny it - and to insist that there cannot ever be a real conflict between loyalty and faith - but that is also to choose).


Note added: If corruption has not yet come to the leadership of your church, then it must be that that church is distinct from the current mainstream. In future, purity and strength of faith will only be maintained insofar as a church is pretty-much cut-off from communications with the social systems of politics, the economy, education, employment law etc - because the bureaucratic requirements for participation in the mainstream are corrupting - ever more comprehensively and intrusively, and by design. Benefits are available only with strings attached; these strings bind to the mainstream; and the mainstream is ever-more-explicitly anti-Christian, pro-evil. 

William Wildblood and The Masters

My Albion Awakening co-blogger and penfriend William Wildblood has an interesting post at his Meeting the Masters web pages, reflecting on the period of his early life when he experienced communications with these Masters.

Assuming that, like me, you accept and believe Williams account of his experiences - these raise very interesting questions.

At one level, William can provide us with some basic but solid experience-based information about spiritual matters, about how 'things' are organised in mortal life on earth.  For example, his Masters were once Men like us, and this should be an inspiring and encouraging thought.

This 'structural' aspect is, perhaps, the most valuable aspect for us - because much of the information was very specifically directed to helping William and his friend Michael. William was 'naturally', from an early age, a far more spiritually inclined person than is usual in the modern West (and certainly far more so than I am) - and he dedicated himself to this as a priority. Only later in life did William become more integrated to the mainstream, mundane, workaday world. Whereas my life path has been almost the opposite; and I have never detached myself from 'the world' - nor do I have plans ever to do so. 

But the way that help was given is also of interest - in that there was a clear requirement for William's individual choice and effort. As described in his book Meeting the Masters (2012) and on the blog, there was a fair bit of him trying, failing, acknowledging failure, learning from the experience...

All this fits with the general nature of the way things are 'set-up' in human life; and helps confirm that this is the basic model for mortality - that we live to learn, that we learn by experience, there is no end to this learning... But we are watched-over, we do have divine help available.

Was Spengler (broadly) correct? The limitations of biological models of cultural development

Spengler responding to an improper suggestion...

I was certainly stimulated by Oswald Spengler's 'Decline of the West (1918) when I read it; and found the book to be rich in insights. It is indeed seminal.

But I would have to say that I regard is as essentially wrong.

The wrongness is of two types: the use of biological growth and development as the primary metaphor for cultural change; and the model of civilisational change being cyclical.

The biological metaphor is essentially wrong because it leaves-out the religious element - which I regard as primary among cultural drivers (nothing is more powerful for human cultures than religion, nothing more lethal than the lack of religion).

Once religion has been omitted, then biology - in the form, mainly, of sex and sexuality - does indeed become primary; but only in the context of a terminally doomed situation.

The cyclical model is essentially wrong because human history is primarily linear - and in its most vital aspects never repeats. So the most vital thing to consider is the linearity; and it is only against this unidirectional-unfolding that small cycles may be observed.

Christianity recognises this directionality and purposiveness to human history - and all Christians really ought to have this as a built-in metaphysical assumption - Time is linear, sequential, and without exact repetition.

(However, many Christians have-been and are confused by their metaphysical assumptions that God is outside Time as well as Space. But at any rate, the sequential linearity of Time certainly applies to mortal life on earth - bounded at each end by the first and last Men; by creation and the end of things.)

In sum - Spengler is certainly worth reading; and some of his successors and emulators likewise; so long as it is borne in mind that they are all, basically, wrong!

The mythic-true history of Albion should be taught in primary schools

 An historical recreation of everyday life for an ancient Celtic princess, c100 BC

In which I develop an idea from John Michell about how and why we Britons ought to be taught about our deep history, at a formative age, in an intuitive narrative form, when it might ground and shape our imagination.

What happens after death is - overall - what people sincerely desire to happen to them

Every faithful Methodist that has lived up to and faithfully followed the requirements of his religion,... will have as great a heaven as he ever anticipated in the flesh, and far greater. Every Presbyterian, and every Quaker, and every Baptist, and every Roman Catholic member, - ... that lives according to the best light they have,... will have and enjoy all they live for... This is the situation of Christendom after death.

You may go among the Pagans, or among all the nations there are... and if they have lived according to what they did posses, so they will receive hereafter.

And will it be glory? you may inquire. Yes. Glory, glory, glory.

Brigham Young - President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 1847-77. Quoted in Wrestling the Angel by Terryl Givens, 2015, p253.

Givens goes on to cite Wilford Woodruff saying 'there will be few, very few, if any, who will not accept the Gospel'; meaning at some point in the endless time of post-mortal life. And Lorenzo Snow stating: 'very, very few of those who die without the Gospel will reject it on the other side of the veil' - meaning the veil of mortal death. 


I was very pleased to see these, and other, endorsements of my own inferences about salvation (several times posted in this blog ever the past years) cited by Terryl Givens as typical of the Mormon Apostles and Prophets from the years up to the early 20th century (perhaps especially related to the Presidencies of Lorenzo Snow, and that of Joseph Fielding Smith who, in 1909, published an article called Salvation Universal); after which such near-universalist ideas of salvation became less often  articulated, or contradicted.

But it is, from our perspective more than a century later, to notice that near-universalism with respect to salvation is Not universalism; not all are saved, because always there has to be the exception of the 'unpardonable sin' of the 'sons of perdition' - which recognises that human agency (or 'free will') means that a choice in favour of damnation may be made by a person; 'in perfect clarity and understanding' (p252).

As Givens says: 'It is unforgivable not because [the sin] is so grievous or offensive, but because it is the only sin a human can make with no mitigating circumstances that could be the basis of re-choosing under different conditions... Only the choice of evil made in the most absolute and perfect light of understanding admits of no imaginable basis for reconsideration or regret.'

Such a sin is comparable to that of Lucifer's, and as such there is no possibility of repentance. Hell has been chosen.  


What we need to recognise is that the average Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Baptist or Roman Catholic of 2018 would not want the heaven that was desired by their namesakes of the middle 1800s - indeed, the modern adherents probably would not be considered Christians at all, by the men of the past.

And that brings us back to the Sons of Perdition and the strategy of the powers of evil for damning as many Men as possible...

If you accept (as I do) that Hell is ultimately only for those who want it, who actively-choose it (and all others will go to a degree of glory in accordance with their own deepest wishes - bearing in mind that apparently many or most people do not aspire to any very high degree of glory, if the promises of their religions are regarded as a guide) - then the task of the demons is a difficult one...

The demons must bring a Man to the point where he clearly understands what Heaven is, and that (thanks to the work of Jesus Christ) Heaven can be his dwelling at an astonishingly cheap price - And Yet, at this point of clarity and understanding; that Man will permanently reject this gift of Heaven and Glory; and instead choose Hell.  

Let us suppose that that is the difficult task of the demons; then, for the powers of evil to win a human soul for Hell is, in most cases, not going to be easy...

Such was one of key, repeated, messages of CS Lewis in both The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. And Lewis gave many hints towards an accurate prediction of what seems to have been the demons' answer in Screwtape Proposes a Toast - which is: to work gradually towards the inversion of Good. So that a Man will (overall) regard Good as evil, and evil as Good. Such a Man will regard Heaven as Hell; and by choosing his-personal-Good, he will in fact be choosing Hell. 

This was, Lewis implies, a major strategic shift requiring great restraint on behalf of the demons; because it required them to set-aside the short-term gratifications of Men suffering and dying (as with the world wars of the early twentieth century); and instead to be contented with progress (decade by decade since the 1950s) towards a long-term goal of mass moral-, aesthetic- and truth-inversion among Western Men.

Men were to be corrupted by comfort, prosperity, materialism; by irony, hedonism and despair. By a pride so absolute and individual and cut-off; that it attained to solipsism: in doubt of its own existence, cynical of its own capacity for knowledge; and denying of external reality...

And the tremendous success of that demonic strategy explains the strange - unprecedented - nature of the modern condition, the way in which it resembles a self-chosen and cure-rejecting insanity. The average condition of modern Man is, in fact, the precise state of soul required to make someone actively choose Hell - in perfect clarity and understanding.


Note: I was not so clear or solidly confident as I am now; but I first made this kind of argument in Thought Prison (2011) and Addicted to Distraction (2014). 

If Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, then Newton wasn't Newton...

I have heard people argue that Shakespeare could not have written the great plays attributed to him because the Stratford man was too ignorant, uneducated, inexperienced. But that is to make two errors: to discount genius, and to neglect the fact that nobody else could have written them - because Shakespeare's work is far above that of any of his contemporaries.

There is indeed a mystery about Shakespeare, because so very little reference to him is made in documents - some have (plausibly) suggested that Shakespeare deliberately 'kept low' because if his family connections with notorious Roman Catholic counter-revolutionary traitors against the Queen. Whatever its cause; the paucity of contemporary reference to Shakespeare has left a vacuum into-which rushed the idea that he did not author 'his' plays.

By contrast, a great deal is known about Isaac Newton. Yet - by the standards of arguments against Shakespeare - there is even stronger evidence that Newton could not have made the mathematical discoveries with which he launched his international career.

In his biography of Newton, Never At Rest, Richard S Westfall shows meticulously that Newton was almost ignorant of mathematics until less than 2 years before he began publishing major breakthroughs in the subject. Clearly, this is impossible - so Newton couldn't have done it - especially as Newton had pretty much failed his degree exam, and only passed by an irregular 'back door' route. So he was clearly 'a duffer'.

Of course, I am joking! It is precisely the fact that Newton did the impossible, and learned mathematics so rapidly and thoroughly that within a couple of years he surpassed everybody in the world, which demonstrates his supreme genius even in an age of genius. He then went on and did much the same with physics.

Newton was not a 'front' because there was nobody - and no combination of people - who could have done what he had attributed to him.

Shakespeare likewise, in his plays apparently demonstrated more wide-ranging and detailed knowledge than it was plausible for him to have acquired by normal means - but then, he was not a normal man...


Note: My book on genius - The Genius Famine - is available free online. 

It is now Too Late for 'normal' political activity to be beneficial - act accordingly

I'm not one to say 'I told you so' - But I told you so.

Even before I was a Christian, and very actively from about 30-15 years ago I used to be active (in journalism, in professional 'politics', giving lectures etc) against all these trends for New Leftism (identity politics), Political Correctness, Bureaucracy - the politicisation of science, medicine, academic, education.

(This is a matter of public record, which can be inspected by anyone interested-enough; much of it is available or referenced at hedweb.com/bgcharlton ).

I was active then because I realised that then was the last time such measure might be effective - and could be undertaken without much risk of any serious adverse sanctions.

When that time was passed, when it was too late, I stopped politicking and polemicking...

Now it is too late for 'normal politics' to stand much or any chance - and the obedient drones, the dishonest and careerist, the timid and unprincipled are far more numerous and more powerful - and even more fearful and compliant...

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening

The search for Truth will fail

Because Truth is not the primary value in reality; anyone who puts Truth first will fail in their quest.

In sum: epistemology, the quest for certainty, the question for solid, unchangeable, objective, coherent, total knowledge is an impossible quest, ultimately; because it is not the ultimate reality - being at most an aspect of reality.

This is because creation is ongoing, dynamic, unfolding, open-ended... creation really is creat-ive.

So the bottom line is that reality is something develop-ing; not something that stands still to be captured and defined.

Knowledge is constrained by beings, e.g. by the perceptions, experiences, cognitive capacities of beings; and beings are developing, therefore beings may in future come to know more.

Christians should not, therefore, be misled into putting truth first; because for us, first is the situation of God's creation, and the mutual love of those who are co-creating with God. There is no truth outside this creation - only chaos. But within creation we cannot expect static and permanent and complete truths; because the situation is one of development.

Even God (the primary creator being) does not and cannot know everything of truth; insofar as God's creation continues to develop; and the actions of co-creating agents continue to change things.

Note: All the above is a consequence of 'polarity' - which is a more abstract and physics-y way of saying the same thing.  

William Wildblood's "untergang des abendlandes"

William Wildblood has posted a strong essay at Albion Awakening called Sunset in the West (i.e. Albionically echoing the Spengler title "Untergang des abendlandes")

Here are some excerpts:

...There is something in me that says we can't just turn our backs on the world. We have to continue, however fruitlessly it may seem, to point out its many and deep flaws. For if even one person is sustained and encouraged by that, it is worthwhile. If people who know the truth don't speak out against its destruction, how can those who are struggling against the corruptions of the modern world ever find support? We may be shouting into the blast of a mighty gale but to remain silent in the face of such a desecration of what is sacred and true is almost an act of complicity...

The rebellion against nature is one of the signs of a decadent civilisation. How does this manifest in our present age? Firstly, in the toppling of traditional hierarchies, those based on the natural order. Now these hierarchies can certainly be abused and become tyrannical but that does not alter the fact that they are based in reality. A thing cannot be defined by its corruption. So they might need to be reformed but they should not be overturned...

Western civilisation is currently pursuing its own destruction whether through mass immigration and below replacement fertility or through relativising its cultural achievements, easily the greatest of any civilisation ever, or through allowing lower standards to prevail in the name of fairness, diversity and equality. Boundaries, which protect as much as they exclude, are being smashed in the name of a spurious unity with the inevitable consequence of a vulgarisation of taste and culture. These are clear signs of a society that has lost its confidence and become tired of its own existence. 

Most critically of all, it is mindlessly allowing the destruction, both from within and outside, of Christianity which is its primary inspiration and the basic glue that holds it all together.

So this is a call to repentance, both individual and collective. We have to turn away from ourselves and back to God or we are lost...

In these days when the world is burning we have to detach ourselves from the always transient lower worlds of change and decay, and focus our hearts and minds in the higher world of eternal goodness and truth.

We may not like being alive at a time of such spiritual decline but we wouldn't be here unless we were meant to be. It is quite possible that we asked or were, at least, willing to be born in these times so we should learn the lessons that they provide.

Sometimes it's easier to turn to God in a world that turns away from him.

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening...

Love versus unity versus obedience

Christians are not always, or indeed very often, good at expressing what kind of thing we are (or ought to be) aiming at in relation to God.

There have been metaphysical errors from very early in Christian history - and over the centuries they have become hardened into falsehoods; and too often Christians, when pushed, will hold to their metaphysical errors rather than the essence - pushing Christianity either towards Hinduism on the one side, or Islam on the other.

This particularly applies in the matter of God.

Some Christians are misled by the idea of unity, to come to believe that it is their job to become unified with God - which is actually an Eastern, Hindu, kind of belief and goal. To suppose that total unity with God is our proper goal, is implicitly to regard the creation of Man, with an apparently autonomous self, as an error (or evil) that needs undoing. The end-point aimed-at is to cease to be a self, and to be reabsorbed by and into the divine.

Other Christians see their main role in being obedience to the will of God - and they see disobedience as the main sin (which they may term pride - although I would argue that the prime sin of pride is not captured by disobedience). But this goal implicitly regards it as an error (or evil) that Man has free will or 'agency' - except for the single act of choosing to obey God.

This means that humans have no active role in creation, but act only as (dispensible, un-needed) tools of the divine - and it implies that love is Not of fundamental importance in the relationship between God and man (or between Men).

The errors of unity and obedience comes from the same source; which is misunderstanding the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ. The one-ness between the Father and Son is properly to be understood as a perfect harmony of purpose, not of being. The perfect obedience of Jesus to his Father is also a consequence of this one-ness of purpose. And that purpose is the on-going work of creation.

The centrality of love in the teaching of Jesus is mainly revealed in the Fourth Gospel ('of John') - which is the premier Gospel in terms of authority. The one-ness that the Father and Son achieved, and that we Men should aim for, is a unity of love; and love implies permanent differentiation of selves - love is obliterated by any fusion, absorption, assimilation of a Nirvana-like kind.

And it is love that explains why Men are agents -that is, originative centres of consciousness distinct from God; because love must (ultimately) be chosen. (Coerced love is not love, unconscious love is not an act of freedom.)

Much of this can be understood in terms of the relationship between the Father and the Son; but only when that relationship is regarded as one that all Men could and should aim to emulate. God is to be known as our Father, Jesus our elder Brother, all Men as Children of the Father; and the Father, Jesus and Man are all of the same basic kind - different quantitatively, not qualitatively.

So, we need a schema stating that all Men could (and, it is intended should - but by choice) become divine in the sense that Jesus was divine, and that all men could (and should) work towards achieving a one-ness of purpose with the Father that is based in love and by agent-choice (such as Jesus attained).

This one-ness of purpose may be glimpsed in mortal life in a good marriage; where the man and woman are distinct persons, agents, selves; and that distinctness is what makes love possible. We may also imagine that such love could make possible a one-ness of creative purpose; and may further imagine that this situation could be permanent.

So eventually there are two persons, indeed potentially many persons: a 'family' - distinct and unmerged but inseparable, with a one-ness of purpose; and love as the ultimate reality that makes it possible.

Bernard Shaw and Creative Evolution

After Tolkien; George Bernard Shaw was the first grown-up author I read - and I read a great deal of his work, much of it several times. But my favourite was the play Man and Superman (1901-3) - which combined a scintillating comedy with an underlying seriousness about 'life'.

In the 'preface' to M&S,  Shaw described his deepest belief in what he termed Creative Evolution; which was a blind, impersonal Life Force struggling (by trial and error) towards greater self-awareness of Life, higher consciousness... the Superman of the title (from Nietzche's Ubermensch) is the future Man who has evolved-developed to a higher state of consciousness. This theme structures but is hardly visible in the play as it is performed; but may be found in a long interpolated, Platonic dialogue-type, dream sequence sometimes called Don Juan in Hell.


For many years, I would probably have described myself as a believer in Creative Evolution - so it is interesting to look back now and see what it was that appealed to me about the idea; and in what ways it failed. And Creative Evolution eventually did fail for me, comprehensively and wholly; as did the Fabian (gradualist, rationalist, egalitarian) socialism that I also absorbed from Shaw.

It appealed because it started-from the assumption that there was no God, that the whole idea was ridiculous - and that was my own assumption. But then it tries to generate personal meaning and purpose in Life despite there being no God - and this is its failure.

Perceiving the need for a purpose in reality is a good thing, compared with the arbitrary world of deterministic science. But having that purpose as an impersonal one that merely 'uses' individual human lives then casts them aside on the 'scrapheap', means that there is no reason for the Life purpose to be one that would engage my personal efforts. If ultimate reality is abstract, then there is no place for humans, and no place for me personally.

Why should I care about what the Life Force is aiming-at - any more than I care about what gravity or magnetism are aiming-at? I don't dedicate my best creative efforts towards hastening the work of gravity - why then an equally 'physical' and mechanistic Life Force?

Therefore to try and use Creative Evolution as a justification or reason for anything I might do, or not do, is incoherent - hence in practice CE has near zero effect on a person's life.

Insofar as it does have an effect this is due to an implicit but denied theism, the idea that the Life Force is really a god, and that the god is one who care about us and to whom we may choose to show allegiance in pursuing that god's aim. But the CE idea is set up specifically to deny such theism, so one gets stuck in a useless half-way house between theism and atheism.


Shaw's rejection of Christianity was, as is usual, rooted in a lazy and ignorant rejection of the simplifications and distortions of his childhood religion; without making any attempt to modify those simplifications and distortions - but instead throwing it out wholesale.

So, the fact that the religion of Shaw's childhood had at its centre an anthropomorphised god of (mostly) cruelty and the demand for blind obedience led Shaw to reject Christianity - instead of discovering the real nature of God for himself; and discovering that there is no error in personalising God (after all God is, for Christians, a person) - but only in wrongly personalising God - imputing to God characteristics that are covertly designed to serve social expedience.

(Shaw actually favoured inventing a God/ religion to serve social, specifically socialist, expedience; but he denied the real-reality of such a God/ Religion: it was merely a fiction designed by wiser and more intelligent rulers to control the young, ignorant or imbecilic 'little people' for their own - material - benefit.) 

This type of Christianity-rejection is very common, and reveals a pretty deep sin - because people don't behave that way about the many other false or oversimplified things they are taught in childhood. We don't reject science or history wholesale just because the primary teacher told us wrong things about them. We don't become anarchists just because the methods of discipline ('stand in the corner', 'sit on the naughty step') experienced as a child strike us as ridiculously childish. We don't stop eating food because we have have grown to dislike the mashed rusks we were fed as a baby.

Instead, we set out to develop an adult understanding of these things. How few do this with Christianity! (I didn't.) Instead, people take the crudest distortions of Christianity, the greatest abuses; and insist that these are the essence and reality of it.


It is as if people are looking-for-excuses to stop being Christian - and that is indeed the case. Usually, the reason is not far to seek, and it is sexual - as it seems to have been with Shaw himself.

His deletion of God and substitution of Creative Evolution rationalised his preaching against marriage and families - and advocating a kind of eugenic fantasy of unconstrained sex between the most intelligent men (such as himself, and the hero of Man and Superman) and the most beautiful women - on the basis that this may lead to the best hereditary outcomes, and a step toward The Superman. The state would look after the resulting children, to leave the parents unconstrained. The unfit would be allowed to breed, but their children would not be supported, and be allowed to die-out. And so on...

There is thus a horrible clash in M&S between the idealism of the preface and play, and the reductionist materialism of the 'Revolutionist's Handbook' published as an appendix, which is supposed to have been written by the hero of the play. It reveals the essential vacuity of Creative Evolution, because - lacking any idea of God - the socialistic 'rational plan' to encourage The Superman is merely a set of legal and political regulations that might serve to breed stronger and more attractive farm and factory animals; but which can have nothing to do with encouraging a higher form, or species, of Man.


On the other hand, and to give Shaw his due; he did not ever fully succumb to the mainstream materialism of his age; and his best plays (i.e. most of those written up-to and including Major Barbara - before he was fifty years old) have both vitality and also intimations of awareness that there are higher strivings and something better. And the most-idealistic/ least-materialist, the most spiritually striving, characters often are given 'the last word' in the Shavian debates.

The later Shaw (and he lived nearly another fifty productive years) suffered a relative decline of spontaneity and heart; and seemed (with a relatively brief exceptions, and never again at the pre-1905 level of quality) almost to cease genuine engagement with Life - often merely to be seeking public attention and spouting words in colossal quantities.

(Several of his later plays are indeed very good, by normal standards for plays, and have held their place in the repertoire - Doctor's Dilemma, Heartbreak House, Androcles, St Joan, Pygmalion, Apple Cart for instance; but they are none are as good as the best earlier ones - e.g. Arms and the Man, Candida, Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra and - outstanding in its power - John Bull's Other Island.)

But like many of the greatest imaginative writers (such as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis), Shaw's 'fiction' (i.e. his plays) are deeper and more complete than his prose essays. Indeed, his plays reveal the defects of his explicit beliefs. For example Shaw's plays reveal the deficiencies of Shaw's own person - since he often included characters who were - essentially - himself': such as Trefusis in Unsocial Socialist (a novel), Charteris in Philanderer, Caesar, Dick Dudgeon in Devil's Disciple - and John Tanner in Man and Superman. Tanner's limitations, his incoherence, his hypocrisy, his blindness to human nature and motivation... all this is starkly revealed; even as he is also presented as cool, fluent, witty; and dominant over all other stage characters (excepting one).

In sum: Read Man and Superman. It is one of the best plays in English, and - I should say - the best comedy outside of Shakespeare; and far more perfectly-made and continuously-enjoyable than anything by Shakespeare.

In writing the play Shaw was trying for a Mozartian atmosphere - explicitly that of Don Giovanni. Shaw succeeds in being Mozartian, albeit much more like the glittering, exhilarating, supreme-fluency with hints of poignancy of The Marriage of Figaro.

The increasing Leftist censorship of mass and social media - is it a Bad Thing?

In the short term and from where we are - yes it is a bad thing; because the censorship is mainly used to exclude true content and give lies and evil a monopoly.

But in the long term, strategically? Maybe not - because the overwhelming problem with the mass and social media is the mass and social media themselves; not the bias of their content.

99% of the damage done by the mass/ social media is irrespective of their content: even if they were only publishing true, beautiful and virtuous stuff; still the scale, pervasiveness, invasiveness and addictiveness of the media are what does most of the damage.

(Think back a couple of decades to when the internet was 'free' - were things then moving in the right direction? Obviously not.)

I personally will be sad when I am shut-down or compelled move onto a micro-medium (sending-out group e-mails, perhaps?); but the fact is that nowadays there is already so very little of the mass/ social media that interests me (and much less that benefits me), that I wouldn't much miss it too badly - indeed, it would do me good, overall.

Insofar as monitoring, control and censorship inevitably reduces usage; and insofar as once begun, censorship is likely to continue to increase exponentially... then anything which reduces the impact of the mass/ social media is probably a Good Thing.

Indeed, unless the mass/ social media collapse down to a small fraction of their current size - we really have no realistic hope. 

So from where we are now, Leftist censorship is a Bad Thing - but its net effect may well be to begin to move things towards where we ought ultimately to be - which is a world without them. 


(To see this argument in full, read my 2014 mini-book Addicted to Distraction) 

Spiritual signs. How can we, personally, know that this is a purposive and meaningful world?

It is an error to look for 'evidence' of God's activity in this world - this is a mind set that leads to a life trapped in end-less, open-ended 'research' - one will become a seeker, never a finder.

But, if you instead begin with acknowledgement that it is possible that this world was created by a personal God, who loves us as individuals; then there are plenty of events in your life which are consistent-with such an assumption.

Yesterday I mentioned personal-miracles. For example, you pray for something and it happens in such a way that you, privately - by your own standards and nobody else's, regard it as a miracle.

This granted-prayer may be absolutely 'trivial' both in terms of the world at large and your own life-span - but that is not the point. The point is that such miracles are consistent with the vision of this world as purposive and meaning-full.

Another example is synchronicity - phenomena that are oxymoronically described as meaningful-coincidences. Typically these events are also trivial; but the point of them is that synchronicity is exactly what would be expected in a world of divine Providence; a world in which God was 'behind the scenes' and organising things.

Peak experiences are another instance - brief times of transcendent happiness that come (apparently) out of the blue; and in which we powerfully feel life to be meaningful, coherent, purposive, benign.  

I think it is usually an error to try and understand the implications of the content of these spiritual gifts such as miracles, synchronicities, peak experiences. Not all are pregnant with guidance; some really are quite 'trivial'.

Such spiritual gifts are mostly 'signs' of the kind of world we live in. And they are also signs of us living well, living in a proper mode of consciousness - and such spiritual signs will apparently increase when we are in a Good frame of mind; and may well be utterly absent from a life wrongly-lived.

Spiritual signs might be absent from a materialist life that assumed there was no meaning or purpose, that the world was determined and/ or random (not created) - and if such phenomena do happen to occur, they will be regarded as insignificant, lacking importance, merely a species of delusion.

In sum - spiritual gifts are best understood as signs, consistent with the nature of reality; and we need not get too concerned by what the specific-content of each specific-sign specifically-implies for our own specific-life, or beyond...

How to develop faith in 'spiritual processes'

It is clear that even real Christians often lack faith in spiritual processes. In theory we all believe that the visible world of human institutions, the world of communications and media, of power and systems; is only on the surface and that the real stuff goes on behind-the-scenes, imperceptibly, by the spirit...

But how seldom we are able to make this real to ourselves - and how often we pin our hopes, and expend our efforts, on worldly activities... How often we measure our success by public, measurable, 'objective' outcomes (such as statistics and surveys, or government and media reports, or what high status people are saying and doing)...

I think the answer is that we each, as individuals, need to base our understanding solidly on that which we personally know; and know directly by our best and solidest intuitions.

We cannot usually persuade other people of the validity of these personal intuitions - and we should not try to. We should speak, live, work, evaluate, (and especially) think from these intuitions - but not try to 'defend' them using the publicly-acceptable means of 'evidence', 'logic' etc...

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening

In these End Times, there has been a convergence of salvation with theosis

It strikes me that something which distinguishes these End Times is that there is a convergence between salvation and theosis. Salvation is having chosen to align with God's creation - rejecting Hell and embracing Christ's gift of Heaven. And theosis is the process of becoming more divine in our nature, more god-like, Christ-like (or saint-like, when sainthood is understood in this way).

In principle, in theory, and as a first step it is certainly possible to be saved (to attain salvation) just 'as we are' and without any change in our-selves, our behaviour, our thinking. This is - indeed - the great insight of the Reformation, and the core truth of the Evangelical movement.

But in practice, in the modern world, in these End Times; this is insufficient - or, let's say, it is only momentarily sufficient. At the moment it happens, at the born-again moment, it is true. But in the modern West almost-always, soon-or-later, salvation will be repudiated, will be rejected - unless there is theosis.

My point here is that it seems to be a feature of our time and place that salvation must (almost always; almost immediately) be followed by theosis - and theosis is a process. When these have converged, it means that in practice salvation is the process of theosis.


To put it differently, there used to be a possibility of being saved despite zero spiritual progression; but that possibility has been (all-but) closed-off by the pervasiveness of evil.

In these End Times, that which used to unconscious, passive, automatic; must become conscious and actively, explicitly chosen or else it will be lost.

It is not enough to know: we must know that we know. It is not enough to have-chosen Jesus: we must be-choosing Jesus. It is not enough to have-repented: our daily living must be-repenting.

The forces of unconscious manipulation into evil habits of thinking are so pervasive and powerful; that consciousness is the only strong defence.


So, we must do what we (anyway) ought-to do - this is yet another instance of 'things coming to a point'. Even among self-identified, born-again, sincere Christians there is a sorting and separation. The middle ground disappears and the extremes are easily distinguished.

Choices are stark, black and white - and to deny the reality of starkness is to be corrupted: moderate, grey Christians are possible in theory and have existed in some times and places; but in practice now, grey Christians are not Christians, because there are no grey areas or persons: the 'grey' are simply not-white; hence they just-are aligned with the dark powers against Christianity.

Theosis is now necessary. Yet many traditional methods of theosis are collapsing or already corrupted. This is the most urgent question for Western Christians - how can I personally, here and now, without relying on social institutions (because I must act now, yet the actual institutions are corrupt), make overall progresion in my awareness of being Christian; so that life becomes a moment-by-moment process of conscious knowing, choosing, being.


We are promised a wondrous eternal life of love and participation in God's work of creation. Our life therefore should not be mainly 'negative' - not just a defensive war focused on rejection of evil; but needs to be positive, hope-full, faith-full - based on confidence in Good.

Because how can we recognise evil to reject it, unless we already know Good? And when we do know Good, and our knowledge is explicit; then it is easy to recognise evil.

God is the creator of this world, is our father, and loves us - therefore, our trust in God to do what is ultimately right for us, each personally; is always justified. 

The joy of Mormon theology - Terryl Givens's Wrestling the Angel (2015)

As soon as I began learning about Mormon theology, which began before I became a Christian, I have responded to it with a heartfelt joy. This has been renewed over the past days when I have been listening to an audiobook of Wrestling the Angel: the Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity - by Terryl Givens.

I had already bought the paper book, and read parts of it; but found it rather dense and hard-going compared with Givens's usual style, which I like so much. The audible book medium proves ideal in taking me through the book at a measured pace, and maintaining progress the face of any tendency to lose concentration. My response has been powerful, inspiring, en-couraging.

The experience has triggered yet another renewal of my appreciation, and gratitude, for the Mormon awakening; specifically for the way in which Joseph Smith and subsequent theologians of the CJCLDS have restored the gospel spirit - that underlying and defining spirit of Jesus that we get from the accounts of his life and records of his words.

Not many people (including, according to Givens and other Mormon theologians, not many Mormons) recognise how radical is the Mormon recasting of Christian theology, how total and systematic, how radical (i.e. root level) is the transformation.

The observable, explicit superstructure of Christian teaching, worship, ethics, and the ideal life is very little changed (Mormon church members live very similarly to other devout Christians, although they tend to be more devout in their practice); but the underlying metaphysics is altogether different. And this difference goes right down to the metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality, the nature of the universe and the origins of man. So the message and person of Jesus is much the same, but the understanding of that message rests upon qualitatively different foundations.


I am not and never have been a Mormon, and it has become very obvious over the past years that outside the Mormon church almost everybody is strongly prejudiced against the idea that Mormon theology could be good, beautiful; and intellectually deeply satisfying; and that this absolutely blocks the possibility of them learning otherwise.

So be it. But I am very grateful for the work of Terryl Givens - and have found listening to Wrestling the Angel to be a wonderful experience. Many of (what I regard as) the stumbling blocks of 'traditional' Christianity are lucidly explained in their developing historical context, and the Mormon reappraisals and recastings (which I find so satisfying, and for which I am so grateful) set out in their more recent context.

To give specific examples; Mormon theology and metaphysics solves what I personally regard as the most important errors of traditional, mainstream Christian emphasis and explanation - such as the omniscience and nature of God, false doctrine of original sin, the nature of human agency, and the basis of sex and sexuality.

I have often observed that the traditional Christian theological explanations have a tendency to gravitate towards an 'Islamic' understanding of God and the human condition on the one hand; or else towards secularism on the other. This is because of the wrongness of the metaphysics and theology that was imposed upon Christianity in (probably) the early centuries, from approximately 100 AD onwards, presumably after - and allowed by - the death of most of the disciples.

From this time the early theologians, including most of the 'Church Fathers', began to place Christianity within an incompatible set of pre-existing (pre-Christian) basic assumptions about philosophy. Details are lacking concerning this era, but these early and influential intellectuals apparently did not work from Christ's message and teachings, to develop a compatible and supporting set of assumptions; but went in the other direction - shoe-horning Christianity into their prior intellectual frameworks.

The idea of Original Sin is a particularly chilling example. Reading Givens and thinking about the problems created by the false understanding of God's 'omniscience' one can see how this really nasty idea (no hint of which is in the Gospels, and barely at all anywhere in the New Testament - except with the eye of prejudice) emerged to explain the need for Christ when God was supposedly omnipotent. Original sin reached an astonishing degree of prominence with Augustine of Hippo: almost becoming the single most important Christian doctrinal-fact. This was later taken even further with Calvin.

The result was Christianity that, at a deep level, became something that in practice (in terms of the relation between Man and God) was about as strongly against the spirit of the Gospels as it was possible to be. In sum, by Original Sin, Christianity was transformed from a religion of hope and joy at the new possibilities of everlasting and divine life that Jesus brought (clearest and least ambiguous in the Fourth, and most authoritative, Gospel); into a religion in which Jesus was our rescuer from a mortal torture chamber, which all Men justly were born-into, and which all Men inhabited due to their essential and ineradicable depravity; both our torment and our depravity being caused by a mystical complicity in a primal act of sin against Jesus's Father.

In contrast to such monstrous error, misrepresentation, and manipulation; Mormon theology shows us how to be Christian without such interpretations being forced upon us by foundational but not-Christian assumptions; and, so far as I know, Mormonism is the only Christian theology which does this. That is a measure of its scope, originality and importance!*

(And if you don't believe-in the reality of that scope and originality, then you simply don't understand it - and not many do. Whether you agree with Mormon theology is a secondary matter. My point is that very few people are in a position to disagree - since they don't know enough to recognise what they are disagreeing with.)  


Anyway, if you are interested and intrigued by the above; and if you can sufficiently 'trust a Mormon' that you can make a genuine effort to understand and think-though the Mormon perspective, then Terryl Givens would be the place to start; if not with the all-out scholarship and rigour of Wrestling the Angel, then probably with the shorter and more polemical (yet equally, albeit covertly, scholarly and rigorous) The God Who Weeps (with Fiona Givens, 2012).

It is difficult. So you need both to be interested, reasonably well-disposed, and also to be willing (initially) to adopt a different perspective; until such a point that you have learned enough to grasp the coherence of the 'system'.

But if (like most external commentators) you are studying Mormon theology and metaphysics only to prove 'why it is wrong', and without any expectation of finding good in it; then it is very unlikely that you will ever make the 'paradigm shift' required to understand it in the first place.


*Note added: To clarify, my point is that original sin is a monstrous perversion on Christianity but if original sin is dispensed-with in the context of traditional Christian theology, it is nearly-always associated with apostasy - certainly, that has been the historical pattern and trend. Those churches that (correctly) deleted original sin were also those churches that were en route to apostasy, to becoming non-Christian - such as the Unitarians around 1800, or later 19th century Methodists. Thus original sin seems to be necessary to the integrity of traditional Christian theology; yet it is a false and monstrous doctrine in stark opposition to the teaching of the Fourth Gospel (in particular, but all the Gospels and nearly all of the NT). Therefore, original sin is a reductio ad absurdum of traditional theology: with this theology OS needs to be adopted for the sake of coherence and sustainability, but necessarily leads to absurd conclusions. Mormon theology represents a third way, a wholly different theological system, which both rejects original sin and yet is sustainable (for over 190 years so far) without a decline through apostasy, 'liberalism', or laxness. Original sin therefore represents an argument both for the error of traditional Christian theology and an argument for both the radical different-ness and for the coherence and sustainability of Mormon theology. The same type of argument could be constructed for other issues, such as free-will/ agency, the nature of God, the nature of suffering etc.

Spiritual gifts in this modern era

If you agree with me that this world is, at the highest level of global ruling, mostly-controlled by demonic-aligned (rather than divinely-aligned) forces; and if you also agree that God is both the creator of this world, and also stands towards us in the relation of a loving parent; then you may wonder what provision God has made for those who are aligned with the divine goals?

One thing we might expect is that, against such odds, we would probably be assisted with 'spiritual gifts' of some kind. In 1 Corinthians, Paul lists some of these spiritual gifts as miracles, prophecy, speaking and understanding 'in tongues', healing, conversing with angels...

Such things would seem to be especially useful, especially when traditional sources of knowledge are tainted (corrupt priest, ministers and church bureaucracies - of suspect authority, corrupt translations of scripture, dubious conduct of holy communion, worldly focus and false doctrines... Yet, despite their potential usefulness in our era (and probably for a long time) such spiritual gifts now seem to be very rare or (some would say) actually extinct. And those who seek such spiritual abilities often find it difficult or impossible to attain them.

It may be that we have changed, and the modern consciousness is not able to do what was possible for the ancient mode consciousness. Or, it may be that such gifts are blocked by God; because they are a kind of power, and in a corrupt world there are very few who are worthy of such spiritual power; very few who could be trusted to use such power as miracles for Good rather than selfishly.

Yet the need for spiritual gifts remains... Could it be that we have been looking in the wrong place? That we have been seeking power via spiritual gifts, we have been seeking spectacle, we have been seeking to impress-other people; instead of seeking personal discernment, knowledge, faith, hope, love, courage? 

The idea of Direct Christianity suggests that our divine destiny is that human consciousness should move from getting knowledge at secondhand via the senses, and towards getting knowledge directly - by the mind connecting with universal reality.

If so, this would suggest that we ought to be seeking spiritual gifts by direct apprehension; in thought rather than by vision, hearing and the other senses.

This direct knowing would only be possible when we are aligned-with, attuned-to, divine ways of being and thinking; but when we were so aligned, then we would simply know what we needed to know.

So perhaps we really are in an era of great spiritual gifts - if only we could recognise them?

Close-harmony jazz - Boswell Sisters

Today's discovery - although they are apparently well-known: wonderful stuff:

Great singing, great musicality, great arrangement - humour and syncopation!

And it's real jazz.

Here is some more virtuosity:

And some swing...

Why we do Not live in Huxley's Brave New World

It has often been noticed that - of the two great dystopian novels of the mid-20th century - modern Western society more closely resembles Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - where the population is bought-off and tranquillised by drugs, sex and distractions; than George Orwell's 1984 where the population is under 24/7 surveillance and violently repressed by secret police.

In a more nuanced fashion, there are elements of both dystopias - for example, the surveillance is now far more comprehensive than Orwell could have imagined; yet that surveillance is actively sought and paid for by the population - which is much more like BNW...

Anyway, there is a major difference between either, or both, the societies envisaged by Orwell and Huxley and our own society; and that is stability.

Most imaginative dystopias have a leadership class that places social stability as the highest value; whereas our dystopian society here-and-now has a global leadership class that - in so far as they are able - inflicts permanent revolution and circumscribed chaos upon the whole world.

This is observable at almost every level; but perhaps most obviously in the highly successful, colossally ambitious strategy of mass migration that has been imposed upon the world for the past couple of decades. This entails unneccessary and deliberately perpetuated wars forced upon some parts of the planet (eg. the Middle East, Africa, Asia), used to create violent and chaotic displaced populations, that are forced upon the Western nations in vast and open-ended numbers.

On the face of it, such de-stabilisation (at least, up to a point) is a much higher and more urgent priority for the global and Western elites than is stability; and this is a error in pretty much all the dystopias I have come-across.  Much the same applies to the economy - where the great bulk of elite initiatives (such as those rationalised by feminism, antiracism, diversity, environmentalism, equality etc.) massively (and potentially lethally) damage the economy, science, technology, engineering capability - and in general damage social efficiency and effectiveness.

In Western social life, the sexual revolution has been aggressively supported and driven by the ruling elites, is continuous, and accelerating. The result has been half a decade of confusion, as new possibilities emerge, then become taboo; as groups and identities move in and out of favour; as resentments and entitlements are encouraged... Clearly, stability is not the goal. 

The reason for the recurrent dystopian error about stability is simple enough. The dystopias were written by materialists, and non-Christians and they envisage evil as being merely selfish short-termism. Thus their idea of an evil society is one in which there is a selfish-, short-termist elite who run society for their own pleasure, prosperity and power.

Whereas real evil is the opposition to Good, and Good is the objective of God, the creator, and our loving father. So when a society is run by really evil persons (both mortal and supernatural persons), then its long-term goal is not the elite's own selfish interests, but the damnation of the majority.

A really evil elite does not act strategically to sustain the stability of the society which sustains and rewards it; instead, such an elite does whatever best serves the goals of damnation - even when this destroys stability; even when this cumulatively immiserates, disempowers and destroys the elite itself; even when it makes that society un-sustainable.

The need to be twice-born - or, that modern Christian faith must become active and conscious

THE challenge of this time, in this place (the modern West) is that unless our Christian faith is conscious and active; it will not survive.

In the past and in other places, a socially-inculcated, immersive Christianity - just accepted and rejoiced in - was sufficient. Here and now it isn't. Other times and places the Christian could be 'once born' - now he must be twice-born*.

When I became a Christian, declared myself a Christian - I was at first once-born. My Christian faith was a gradual, seamless transition from prior atheism and materialism. It was only after a few months, in response to the challenge of first finding myself in a 'liberal' (ie fake) church and then in a real (in this instance evangelical) church that I was 'born again' and recognised the qualitative break in my perspective on everything that Christianity meant.

(Much credit for this must go to the way that the best protestants emphasise the theme of 'salvation by faith' - it was exactly what I needed at that point.)

It is my belief that our society, England, Albion - The West - was divinely intended to transition between a once-born Christianity (socially implemented and inculcated, passive, unconscious, taking it for granted) to the twice born state. However, the only path from once to twice is via the recognition and inner experience of atheism, doubt, nihilism - and despair.

Ideally, the phase of atheism is a brief transition. But The West, by failing to resist demonic temptation - especially in relation to sex (the second-most powerful human instinct, after religion), but also from pride-resentment and more general this-wordly hedonism, backed by pervasive dishonesty - got stuck in the atheist, materialist, sceptical phase. the phase became 'permanent' - having lasted and increased and accelerated over about nine generations so far - except that it is self-destroying. 

So, our starting point is atheism, materialism, nihilism - fuelled by hedonism and reinforced by dishonesty. That is where we are. That is where we start from - and things are still getting worse.

The fact that many individuals are Not in this state (are once-born Christians) - is fortunate for them (until they get corrupted) but we should not be distracted from the essence of our predicament. We cannot return to the once-born situation, because that depends-upon society being organised such that Christianity is natural, spontaneous, instinctive and pretty much just-happens. Insofar as our Christianity relies upon a Christian milieu, upon passive absorption, it will be corrupted, sooner or later.

From where we are, we can only move forward to a deliberate, conscious, chosen Christianity - such as has never existed in the past except among a few individuals.

That is the special challenge of these times - for individual, not for 'society' because society is lost, gone, destroyed. So, we must rely upon individuals, one at a time, finding their own path. Which includes finding for themselves - with invisible divine help, no doubt, once intent is established - but not being fed, the help they need. 

The key word is agency. It is not about 'individualism' but about agency - which is 'free will', but free will of the real (and divine) self. It is getting our-selves to the situation of recognising the deepest and most important issues and assumptions, and taking personal responsibility for our choices, our faith, our beliefs, our motivations.

We must first become agents (which is not a spontaneous thing - but an achievement) and then exercise our agency. Of course, people may choose wrongly, but where we are now is that people are not even choosing. They are once-born evil! We need to be twice-born - even if we are already once-born Christians.

It is a huge risk; but that risk is unavoidable in going from once- to twice-born; and that is The risk which is characteristic, definitive, of this time and place.


*The distinction of once- versus twice-born comes from William James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience.