Can Christianity escape from the authority of "History"?

The question of "History" - that there is an objectively-true, evidenced account of the past: of how things came to be the way they are now - is one that has been very strong since the subject of History began to emerge as a distinctive discipline, detached (supposedly!) from religious (later ideological) justifications and dishonesties. 

But the idea that true history emerges from "the evidence" turns-out to be as false as the analogous argument for the natural sciences; in both cases coherence and proof is provided by theory, and theory must come prior to evidence.

...Because without a prior theory; how would anyone decide what (from infinite perceptions etc) counted as evidence, its relative value compared with other evidence, or what a piece or collection of evidence meant? 

In mainstream culture this has left us with two false and incoherent alternatives. 

On the one hand, multiple rival blustering and categorical assertions* that This is The Truth about history - assertions that ignore the dependence on prior theory. 

And on the other side the supposedly radical "relativist" subversion that states "everything is ideology" so that objective truth has no meaning, so that truth cannot be known and is just a consequence of power - assertions that ignore their blatant self-subversion. 

For these folk; History is just a story made-up by the winners, and the discipline of History something created to reach the conclusions they have already-decided - and any other story can have equal validity.  

And that is pretty much how things stand. 

The traditionalist, orthodox, religious reactionary side wrongly assert that the evidence for their assertions is objective; and the radical, liberal, "reforming" side of religion asserts that their own take on the world is better than that of the conservatives; despite that they have previously asserted that "better" has no objective meaning and is merely a consequence of power.

Usually, people "pick a side" because they can see no alternative, and in order to join a gang; and stoutly continue to ignore the fatal weakness, the non-objectivity of their own position, its dependence on theoretical assumptions; by relentlessly focusing on the fatal weakness and non-objectivity of their opponents position. 

The choice that culture forces upon us is between "truth is what I say" and "there is no truth" - both based on circular and incoherent arguments!

What should we do when faced with two false alternatives? 

Should we do what most people do when confronted by mainstream electoral politics, or rival sports teams located in your home city: just pick a side then support it fanatically - while demonizing the opposition.

Is that really the best we can do when confronted by the most fundamental problems of our human existence? 

  

People need to recognize that the dilemma is one of our own creation, and rooted in an unexamined assumption that the truth about reality is and must-be a public consensus.

The false modern dilemma of choosing between two falsehoods, arises from our own built-in assumption that truth is either a consensus located externally and communally and with nothing to do with me - my job being only to choose to submit to it or deny it... 

Or else "truth" is nothing-but inside my head... whatever my brain happens to be telling me at this instant. 

What we need is obvious enough - we need to understand how truth both depends on me and my assumptions and thinking; and truth also is about reality, about things (entities) other than myself.

I think the distinction we need is between things existing, and knowledge about them. We must assume - and indeed are born assuming - that other entities exist. 

Doubts about the existence of reality emerge later, and indeed are large distinctive to relatively modern times (the past few centuries). 

These doubts are reinforced by the impossibility of finding "evidence" that other entities exist outside of our own thoughts about them. 

Solipsism (the belief that nothing exists outside myself) cannot be refuted in its own terms, cannot be refuted by "evidence". Solipsism is thus a pathology caused by the choice to deny what we innately know; a choice to explain everything by constructing and entering a circle of subjectivity.  

On the other side; the blustering assertions of the reality of reality, are nearly-always actually assertions about our knowledge of reality. 

For instance, religious people are not content to assume the innate understanding in the objective reality of God as another entity from "me"; but combine the innate with asserting the objectivity of their own claim for knowledge of God's (many and complex!) attributes. 

They conflate the innately understood reality of God, with knowledge of the "theological-God". Thereby re-entering the false-dilemma debate that undermines all such claims...

After which the conservative religious will usually bluster and shout his knowledge-assertions while pouring scorn on those who do not share them...

While the radical-liberal religious will usually adopt a passive aggressive strategy of undermining the possibility of any objective and universal knowledge about reality - to distract from the fact he is making his own assertions concerning reality, and is assuming these assertions are more-true than the conservative's. 

To loop back - how can we take account of History in such a situation; when we assume that there was a real history that led up to the present, but all our specific knowledge of that history is undermined by the subjective-objective distinction!

When History has become Impossible!

Especially this is a problem; in that Christianity is located in History; and happened at a particular past time and place. 

When History has become impossible in the mainstream of public discourse - this must (and does) have a profoundly subversive effect on Christianity.     

Christians can neither depend on "objective History" nor can they allow History to be wholly personal and subjective. 

When it comes to History; there is the choice of two sides for the Christian, yet both sides are lethal to Christianity. 

The answer? Well; because the insoluble problem is located in the domain of public discourse, and the phenomenon of consensus; then the Christian cannot root his religion in public discourse. 

And "cannot" means cannot - because insofar as a Christian does root religion in public discourse, his religion Will Be subverted - as we see all around us**. 

And "public discourse" includes all churches. 

My conclusion is that the historical religion of Christianity now cannot be rooted-in churches, cannot derive-from churches, cannot be "what a church says". 

And that "cannot" means cannot. 

Notes: 

*The blustering and aggressive tone characteristic of many trads is not universal; but the attempt to avoid it with an attitude of personal humility directed at the authority of the chosen-church is undermined by the fact that the church has been personally chosen, as has the attitude adopted to that church. The much more proximate bribes and threats of (for example) mainstream political, bureaucratic and media institutions will easily overcome the scruples of a would-be humble-trad Christian; by interpreting his stance of obedience as instead a personal choice - which indeed it is. The self-identified humbly-obedient therefore gets depicted as an arrogantly individual wilfully-rejecting the consensus of decent people: the social-psychological pressure from such a framing is typically way too much for a self-identified humble-trad to resist, without ceasing to be humble! The choice to obey a chosen church rather than to obey the law or corporate rules, genuinely is ultimately a personal choice - no matter how humbly chosen.   

**There is a strong and chronic and continuing tendency of Christians (as well as other religions and grouping) to assimilate-into the core agenda of atheist-materialist-totalitarianism. And the direction of this tendency - although not the speed by which it operates - applies across the board, to Christians of all denominations and churches, to traditionalists as well as liberals. Liberal Christians have no compelling reason to resist the authority of the secular Western leadership class, and typically embrace all the major totalitarian strategies - since they explicitly share a core ideology. Traditionalists also converge with mainstream atheism over time, having the role of "controlled opposition". This assimilation happens because they strive for socio-political institutional Establishment in actual context of The System; and this project intrinsically entails working-within System constraints, -from System assumptions, and -with System evidence/ facts/ procedures.  

Star-watching - seldom effectively, but worth the wait!

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

From Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1936. 

I look for the moon, planets and stars from my back garden every morning and night, at those times of year when darkness allows (currently, we only get about seven hours of daylight - so that bit is easy!).

I say "look for" because we live nearish the centre of a biggish city, and in England - there is always light pollution and often clouds or mist. So I can only seldom actually get a good view of what I am looking for in the skies. 

However, somewhat as with Emerson's example above, this does make my rare instances of successful star-watching more special.  

Last weekend, I emerged in the evening and saw a shooting star streak across the eastern skies; then on doing later research I discovered this was part of the annual Geminid meteor display - so called because it is centred near Castor and Pollux the heavenly twins in the constellation Gemini - which was due to peak in another day or so. I saw no more that evening. 

Next morning; I walked-out at about six, and immediately saw a brief horizontal streak, then a long vertical meteor, which lasted a "long" time - more than a second - and changed colours as it descended in the south west. I watched it all the way. 

This seemed very special. Indeed, I may have been the only human to have seen it!

A few minutes later I saw another short quick streak, out of the corner of my eye.

So much for the Geminids 2025! Because through the whole of the next two days, the skies were obscured. 

That sustained and multi-coloured, vertical shooting star was my ration.

But all the more precious for its rarity.   

Why politics has become negative - loss of the unconscious, spontaneous, naturalness of communal values

If the verities of our spiritual life are things like our-selves and God and divine creation; then by contrast politics is ultimately arbitrary. In the world as it is now, and ourselves as we are now; wherever and however we draw boundaries around our categories, there is a strong element of arbitrary imposition. 

Nothing is now obvious and spontaneous; everything is contested and a matter of choice. Hence ideology has displaced nature. 

What was once unconscious and happened naturally - isn't any more. 

In the past we found-ourselves and grew up immersed in a communal situation - which became primary. 

Our values were inculcated by mechanisms that were unconscious, spontaneous, natural - this was almost unavoidable. 

Not Any More.

At least from adolescence, if not before - we experience our-selves as individuals in a world of many options. Nothing is "given" because everything can be (and sooner or later is) brought to awareness, consciousness - so that we find ourselves standing outside of questions; questions that once were simply the-way-it-is.  

The problem with all politics as-is; is that it is based upon arbitrary - ideological - categories. 

However we cut-up reality in order to discuss it and make plans - we are confronted with the need for conscious choices about what is valid, what is good, what ought to be the aim. 

Hence ideology; which imposes these top-down, consciously; and then claims that doing-this has been necessary and real. 

Consider the apparently sensible maxim that it is better for us to "mind our own business" and not to meddle in the business of others.

Once we move from the business of our own spiritual life in the context of the everything, we are confronted by intermediate levels of analysis - and questions. 

Is our family our business? Is our street, village city, nation, region, civilization our business? There are arguments for each of these levels as genuinely impacting on our own business - so why stop at our civilization - why not include the world, the planet, the universe? 

Soon it seems that either everything is our business - or else nothing but our selves... and maybe our self isn't primarily our business; since plenty of people assert that our business is to "serve" other-people (or God). 

We might therefore conclude that we our-selves have no business at all; or else that our business is everything - or we may conclude that our business is our race, nation, or ideology!   

My point is that this matter of categories, drawing lines, making qualitative distinctions Just Is a matter requiring discernment, choices, commitments - such that in 2025 and the West the categories can no longer serve as the basis or justification for values...

So, it used to be possible to have one's clan or tribe or (small) nation as the basis for values - but it isn't any more; since before we can be "a nationalist" (or whatever) we have had to decide to make this our business. 

And this also applies to our religion.  

Yet in the past it certainly seems like these categories (clan, place, religion) really did have a primary reality - they were that from-which we argued, from-which our values emerged. 

Indeed; if we assume that our primary loyalties used-to-be unconscious, spontaneous, natural and communal - nowadays, for many people, this is lost - and the opposite is true!

Politics (in its many manifestations) is a reality, but a negative reality. 

In the past xenophobia was unconscious, spontaneous, natural - and (apparently) a necessary part of our natural and unavoidable positive affiliations to peoples, places, religions...

But nowadays xenophilia - love of the "other" is more common, more valued, and apparently more influential. 

And indeed difficult to avoid! Nearly everybody, me included, has a tendency to "idealize" some or another "foreign and hearsay kind of place, religion, grouping... (And often something about which we have only superficial or hearsay knowledge.) 

So; instead of the unconscious and spontaneous values of human history; we find-ourselves in a situation of multiple-choices and chosen-ideologies. 

We therefore ought to embrace and make-the-best-of the inevitable!

We should choose, take responsibility for our choices, and remain aware that we have chosen. 

Good politics is impossible in such situations - since all possible politics entails dishonesty about the nature and implications of its conclusions and assertions; it entails hiding and denying its own roots.  

It is therefore up to each of us, as individuals, to make these choices in the best possible way that we can envisage and attain; or else - since good politics is become impossible - we shall be the ones who suffer the consequences. 

Relationships with the world of spiritual Beings: Characterizing stronger and weaker interactions between people (and other Beings)

Since I understand reality ultimately to consist of Beings (i.e. Beings are the only final and objective categories of reality); and creation to consist of their interactions and relationships* (so that the laws, processes, forces, fields etc) --  naturally, the question of what influences the relationship between Beings is of interest.  

I try to seek such understanding in what we spontaneously know (for example as young children) - or at least seek validation of my ideas in this (because I regard our genuinely innate and spontaneous knowledge as ultimately God-given - because a Good creator God who loves us would - I think - want to build-into us essentially-valid, as well as useful, knowledge). 

On this basis. relationships need to be possible between incarnated people - including those in remote places; and also between us and "the dead", and with un-incarnated spirits (angels, demons, other kinds of spiritual entity) - so we must go beyond the usual materialist ideas of how relationships work. 

So, on the one hand, it seems that there are no absolute physical limits to the possibility of relationships - which is what would be expected given that all Beings are first-and-foremost of a spiritual nature. 

Yet at the same time, I notice that the strength of relationships is influenced by a variety of factors. Most obviously spatio-temporal proximity is a factor that increases the likelihood of a relationship and tends to increase its strength. In other words, Incarnated Beings that are nearby, and are currently "alive", are the easiest to make relationships with, and indeed it may be difficult Not to have relationships with nearby incarnate Beings. 

(Nonetheless, modern city dwellers seem completely to ignore the vast majority of proximate living Beings - so the modern mind seems to block relationships as a default - hence our default state of alienation and isolation.) 

Consciousness also has a positive effect on strength of relationships; such that relationships are more likely, and more likely to be strong, when we are aware of an other Being - than when we are unconscious/ unaware. 

Attention is another positively reinforcing factor on relationships. When we are spiritually orientated-towards another Being, then we are more likely to relate to them, and more strongly. Attention, in turn, may be a product of motivation (and the factors that affect motivation - interest, impulses etc). 

Such a consideration of relationships can be helpful in understanding their strength, or weakness. And it can be helpful in understanding the nature and reason for incarnation - for the material instantiation of spiritual Beings (such as mortal Men) in bodies. 

An embodied Being increases the strength of spatio-temporally close relationships - the relationship between beings her-and-now; at the cost of weakening relationships between incarnate and discarnate (i.e. spirit-) Beings.

In other words; our default insensitivity to spirits that are unincarnated, with non-human and non-biological beings, and with people who are distant in time or space; is the flip-side of our spontaneous social bias in favour of the human beings around us, now. 

This gives insight into why few modern people experience spontaneous and strong relationship with spirits. 

It also explains why consciousness of the reality of spirits (of spirits in general, and also specific spirits - including "dead" humans), and directing attention to spirits, can overcome this default insensitivity. 

...Which fits rather neatly with my oft-expressed conviction that our task as modern Men includes increased conscious and explicit understanding of the ultimate nature of reality (ie. "metaphysics") as including the spiritual as primary; and also that we must make choices, exercise our agency, take responsibility for the bottom-line freedom of our situation in the world. 

In a nutshell: we need to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual world, and choose to engage with it.

But of itself this conscious engagement with the spirit world may be good or evil according to the side with which we affiliate in the spiritual war of this world. 

So, to be Good; all the above should take place in the context of what can briefly be characterized as "Christian Love". 

*NOTE: Relationships between Beings are a primary assumption of this metaphysics, which means that relationships cannot be defined. Relationships can, however, partially be described in terms of attributes - and this is of value in clarifying what is meant by relationships. Just as Beings can be described in terms of attributes such as purpose, life, consciousness, self-sustaining ability, possibilities of growth and transformation... These attributes are open-ended in number, and vary very-widely in quantity between Beings, hence they are not definitive. So relationships can also be described in terms of their attributes. That "description of relationships in terms of some of their attributes" is what this post is attempting. 

Was the British Celtic Church actually "Paganism with a veneer of Christianity" - or the opposite?

Edited from New light on the ancient mystery of Glastonbury, by John Michell, 1990 

Celtic Christianity has been called a mere reformation of Druidry. 

A unique and remarkable feature of the early Church in Britain in Ireland is that it claimed no martyrs through persecution by the religion it supplanted... 

The Druids had no difficulty in accepting the new religion, because it scarcely interfered with the existing religious and social order. 

The system of the early Church "was really Paganism with a veneer of Christianity". 

**

I have often seen this written; however, I think it more likely that the opposite was true*. 

And the reason for such opposite interpretations is due to very different concepts of what Christianity actually is. 

If Christianity is essentially The Church, and Christendom (a Church dominated and permeated society) - then clearly the newly converted pagans must have only a superficial smattering - a veneer - of the new faith over an substructure that can only be Pagan. 

The newly converted Celtic British Christians did not have a trained and ordained hierarchy of priests - these must have been few, and far between. The Britons did not have a comprehensive coverage by churches offering the sacraments. Nor had they experienced Christian teaching, nor did they live under a system of societal laws in conformity with the Church's understanding.

Instead; there inevitably must have been (for many years) mostly the residue of whatever actually was the system of Druidic religion - its sacred places, its Druids, its practices, and the effects of generations of its teaching. 

Furthermore; Christians seem to have had a deliberate policy of taking-over and re-purposing Pagan shrines or gathering-places. This strategy extended to making Pagan gods into Christian Saints - the best evidenced of which is the Irish god Brigit becoming the famous and beloved Saint of the same name. 

Surely (so this argument goes) all this means that for many years the British were still essentially Pagan - surely, their Christianity was, at first, merely a veneer of Christianized language and symbolism (such as a cross inscribed or erected-upon a megalithic standing stone) on-top-of what long-remained a Pagan religion? 

But if Christianity is accepting Jesus as Saviour, desiring resurrection to eternal Heavenly life, and embracing the intent of living by Love... then none of the substructure of Paganism really matters. 

By this argument; what makes someone a Christian is the choice to "follow Jesus Christ" (with what that entails in a "cosmic", eternal, post-mortal sense) - and the rest of religion is, at best, an optional extra. 

 

Of course, there would have been many aspects of Druidic Paganism that conflicted-with and contradicted the basic of Christianity in Love. 

But that applied to the Christian Church as well - much of its actuality contradicts the essence of Christianity, and always has. 

So long as the newly-converted Christian sought resurrection into Heaven by following Jesus Christ; instead of seeking whatever it was that Druidic Paganism had previously promised (generally regarded as having been some kind of reincarnation, perhaps involving metempsychosis) - then I would argue that the new Celtic convert was fully Christian. 

I think there are lessons for Christians here-and-now. 

Any Christian needs to navigate a world - a world including whatever Church he belongs to, and whichever religion or ideology rules his society - that is substantially hostile to his deepest convictions. 

Yet none of this prevents him from being fully a Christian - if that is what he most desires to be.

As Jesus himself said: Christianity is for sinners, not perfect Men; and for this actual sinful world, not some ideal society. 

Society cannot prevent anyone from becoming and being Christian...

Because ultimately Christianity is "not of this world" - and because resurrection and Heaven cones from Jesus, not from this world. 

What we absolutely need to do, and must do, is to want it.

*Note: Certainly, the Celtic Christian era in the British Isles led - over the following centuries - to a greater number and (even more so) concentration of Saints (and great Saints, still remembered as patron Saints, in church and city foundations, and festivals) - like Cuthbert, Patrick, David, Kentigern/ Mungo, and Brigit) than at any other time in the history of these parts. 

This is about as obvious as evil gets

We have now reached the point where those who are motivated by evil (i.e. by their opposition to God, divine creation and The Good) are now being about as obvious and explicit as evil ever gets. 

Whereas in the past those who intended evil would do so under the pretense of doing good (e.g. early socialism); we are now at a stage where the people who intend evil tell us explicitly, and pretty much exactly, what it is they intend to do - before they do it and while doing it. 

They do not do so under the guise of doing good; but instead they now simply tell us that the evil which they intend, is actually Good. 

In other words, we are now in a situation of very pure, very simple, value-inversion. 

The recent wars and mass invasions have been remarkable for the way in which those who have provoked and escalated them (i.e. globalist totalitarians based in The West); have actually "said out loud", have described, the destruction of people, property, nations and land that they intend and regard as acceptable. 

And this intended destruction is sometimes described in terms of near complete annihilation: they want to have no more such people, no such culture or nation, buildings and artefacts will be removed or destroyed, the landscape wrecked and polluted... That's the stated strategy. 

Now, they don't say such  things every time they speak or all at once - but they do make explicit official statements, and say them several times; they incorporate these goals bureaucratically in laws, rules, agenda items, mass/social media policies; they boast about their intentions, and baldly assert that their plans will induce greater human happiness*...  

And they do the same inversion for Goods. 

Any-thing and every-thing which is truly Good (for Christians; and indeed also things recognized as good in all known societies through all of history) is now routinely, systematically, explicitly; stated to be evil, wrong, a threat, the cause of oppression, exclusion, suffering and death. 

The (seven?) classic virtues are now officially vices; common sense realities are treated as wicked hypotheses, basic assumptions of Mankind such as a spiritual world, or continued life beyond death, or a created reality; are now treated as lunatic notions or sinister manipulations. 

 

You may say that things are not so clear as all that... 

That there are many and frequent statements that contradict what I have said above. That the modern world is characterized by inexplicit unclarity, by deliberately induced confusion...

Sure - there is also plenty of that. Evil lies and misleads as its basic mode: habitually and manipulatively. We dwell in a fog of dishonesty. Untruthfulness is the besetting sin of our era. 

All true.

But what is really striking about here-and-now is how very clear, explicit, and detailed the leadership class so-often are; about exactly what they consider is good and necessary, and who they consider is evil and why; about what they intend to do to us (and "for" us) in the near future. 

What this tells us is how deeply corrupted we of the West have become.

"They" baldly, bare-facedly, tell us that good is evil and sin is virtue. They fully expect to get-away-with-it, thereby gaining our implicit consent.

 

And that is exactly why They are so obvious about their evil.

They tell us of their evil intentions. And we hear, but do not listen.  

They get-away-with-it because we give our consent. 

This - here-and-now, on a daily basis - is evil with the gloves-off; as clear, obvious and explicit as it ever will be. 

Have you noticed yet? 

* "The fifteen minute city" is an excellent example. They describe their detailed plan for a world prison in permanent lockdown; then tell us that this is A Good Thing, for our benefit, to make us happy. 

Jesus Christ and the Second Creation - already fully-available, utterly simple; but next-worldly

I'm beginning to think that a proper understanding of the Second Creation, made by the work of Jesus Christ, may be the key to what we most need to understand. 

There has, at least since the Apostle Paul, been a variety of more-or-less complex ideas related to a Second Creation made possible by Jesus; but my sense is that these were all - more or less - this-worldly. All tried to express the Second Creation in terms of possibilities (or duties) for Christians here on earth, in this mortal life. 

There was (for example) the promise or hope that after Jesus' resurrection, "from now" all Christians could participate in the Second Creation in some real sense. That potentially human society and the world itself might be transformed into a Heaven on Earth - either incrementally (via the City of God), or at the Second Coming. 

But what I am suggesting about the reality of the Second Creation is neither complex nor this-worldly; but utterly simple, and next-worldly. 

What I am saying is that the Second Creation is already (and from the time of Jesus) fully-in-existence, that it comes after death and resurrection, and that it is Heaven. 

In different words: Jesus made Heaven, and Heaven is the Second Creation; and all who desire it may follow Jesus to the Second Creation.

But -- this can only happen after death, because Heaven is the realm of the resurrected: the immortally re-incarnated.  

Somerset Spirituality in the late 20th century

Although born in Devon; I spent all my school years living in a village in north Somerset. But, because I was (mostly) a rationalistic atheist, I was almost unaware that during this time, as well as for some time afterwards, Somerset was a centre for some of the best exponents of spiritual (including Christian) thinking - several of whom lay within a bicycle ride of my own house. 

Somerset was indeed the residence of several people who since become some of my most important spiritual mentors.  

Mostly, this Christian spirituality was a subset of the fact that (outside of London) the main place for New Age thinking was (as described by historian of paganism Ronald Hutton - who has himself been at Bristol University since 1981) an isosceles triangle with its base cornered by Bristol and Bath, and its point at Glastonbury. 

My lack of interest in this kind of thing - at the time - is evidenced by the fact that I did not visit Glastonbury until after I had left school, and the family was was just about to move to Scotland!

Nonetheless; I believe that spiritual influences of place do have an effect; sometimes all the more powerful for being latent and unacknowledged; and in later life these influences began to pile-in upon me. 

Terry Pratchett (among other things) wrote superbly on aspects of Southern English folklore; and he was living not far away in in tiny Mendip village of Rowberrow, practicing "self-sufficiency", beginning his publishing career, and absorbing the same Electric Folk influences (especially Steeleye Span with their interest in supernatural ballads) that so much dominated my teenage years. 

John Michell - Christian Platonist and Geomancer - was another inhabitant of this region; living in Bath; which city also housed (for a while) our-very-own William Wildblood. 

Then there was Geoffrey Ashe. He was the only one of these people of whom I was aware at the time; because he was well known as an advocate of South Cadbury Hill Fort as the location of King Arthur's "Camelot". I even visited this impressive earthwork one gloomy Sunday afternoon with my Dad, and felt some of the site's presence. 

William Arkle actually lived in Backwell, the same village as myself ; albeit up on top of Backwell Hill. I knew nothing about him until a few months before I left school, when there was a local BBC TV documentary programme about him. I was intrigued, and tried (without success) to find out more; but was put off making contact by my reflective anti-Christianity (in the programme he talked about God in a manner that I found off-putting). I could very easily have visited and met him - especially since my sister knew the family to talk to, via an interest in ponies - but I didn't...

Another Glastonbury resident in his later life (and a frequent visiter to nearby Winscombe as a child) was Stanley Messenger, an unusually thoughtful and independent-minded Anthroposophist. 

[See note added]

All of the above people have, in different ways and to various degrees, been important to me in my spiritual life and development. All have significant Somerset connections, and all (except Stanley M, I think) overlapped with my residence of the county, and were indeed situated nearby. 

This now strikes me as quite remarkable - because the above names constitute a large proportion of the authors, thinkers, lecturers - learning from whom has led me to where I am now. 

Clearly, Somerset set its mark upon me; and that influence has continued to grow in the 45-plus years since I moved away.  

Note added 5th December 2023: I have just discovered that the folk musician Bob Stewart (expert Psaltery player) and scholar of folk mythology (Where is St George? - recommended!) was living in Bristol and Bath from the late 1960s and into the 1980s. He later went on - renamed RJ Stewart - to become associated with Gareth Knight, a prolific and influential author of books on ritual magic, and workshop leader. 

If God, nowadays, requires us to be active-seekers - this means that the blockages are in-Me

Modern adult Men are not spontaneously religious or (seriously) spiritual - and we are trapped in the alienated state of purposelessness and meaninglessness by our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Any Westerner who is a real Christian, has had to achieve this by his own efforts. 

Whereas, in the past, it seems that God imposed his reality upon most people; and it took effort to reject God; nowadays we must make the effort. 

The same applies to much that is true: it does not come naturally. 

Truth does not overwhelm us, but needs to be sought and won. 

We must not only meet God 'halfway' - but must, indeed, do most of the work! If (for instance) a modern man wants to perceive God in this world, to know God is real, or to know this world as a creation - he will need to work at it: and this work will quite likely be hard and long: he will need to be persistent.

This is the flip-side of our freedom. 

Because we are not spontaneous/ passively-absorptive; we are free to accept or reject, embrace or ignore. 

This applies to knowing God as to our politics and ideology - we Just Are responsible for our beliefs; and responsible in ways that did not apply in the deep past, or even the relatively recent past of a couple of generations ago.

(We may yearn to provide the kind of "good-values environment" for our children that will enable them, passively and spontaneously, to assimilate Christianity as natural - but usually even this is denied us. And even when it is achieved during childhood, and the child grows surrounded by good-influences; the effects seldom survive adolescence, or early adulthood. In 2023 and The West; sooner or later, every real Christian must do it for himself - or else not really be Christian, like the 100s of millions of devout Churchgoers who actively and fundamentally support the agenda of totalitarian evil.)  

The point we need to grasp is that God has not retreated, creation is still as present as ever (even in a modern city) - the blockages are in us. 

We are the problem. What prevents us knowing God is inside ourselves. 

And this is why it is so difficult! When the blockages are in our own basic assumptions about reality (i.e. our 'metaphysics'), our own habits of thinking, our unconsciously absorbed wrong-values etc; then only we can remove these blockages! 

When we are unable to perceive most of reality, are unable to comprehend the obvious, are dedicated to inversions of the truth and goodness - and when all chance of cure is blocked; then nobody can do the job of correcting these problems except ourselves. 

That is what it means to be free. 

It is seldom easy to removes one's own blockages; it usually takes time, effort, and repeated attempts. These blockages, including the most devastating, are hard to discover; because so common, so accepted, such 'common sense', so (apparently) supported by 'science'. 

(Only if you really dig-down to your own deepest assumptions; or maybe notice and take seriously that these blocking ideas are actually modern and local,rather than eternal and universal; are you likely to discover them, and recognize that they are Not necessary-truths.)  

And the process is not only unsupported by other people who are satisfied with a blocked-life; others will often discourage such efforts, and punish the consequences. 

In 2023; to live without a common-blockage is to live in ways that seem stupid, crazy or evil to the majority who choose to remain blocked, and who have decided not to make the significant effort to remove blockages. 

On the other hand - nobody and nothing can stop you removing the blockages, and perceiving real-reality - if you thus choose. 

That also is the nature of freedom. 

  

The Charles Williams attitude to life... Tried and failed

Thinking lately about a way of living (or something aimed-at in living) that I associate with the work and practice of Charles Williams - by which the mundane world is understood as (what I have termed) a palimpsest - as when a new medieval text is written on a secondhand parchment, and the pre-existing manuscript can sometimes be seen shining-through. 

The idea is that we are at first aware only of the mundane 'natural' and surface level of meanings; but underneath these, there is a super-natural reality, of eternal and archetypal forms.  

Thus; for Williams the City of London (or any city) represents the City of God; and its mercantile exchanges of goods and money, represent the Christian spiritual "exchange" between "co-inherent" Men. In his novels and poems, and also apparently in his own life and that of his 'disciples', this seems to have been the daily practice of Charles Williams - anything in the passing show, might be experienced as a symbol of some-thing archetypal and eternal.  

From long before I counted myself a Christian, this had a strong initial appeal to me; as an attitude that seemed to lend depth and meaning to a mundane, everyday world that so-often, so-badly lacked depth and meaning (consisting of dull bureaucracy, transient distractions, the pursuit of low motivations and rejection of high). 

It came naturally too: I suspected, sometimes detected, much going-on beneath the surface; including good things of which people seemed often unconscious, and good influences that were unnoticed, unintended, unsuspected... 

In other words; the reality was largely negative and implicit in in its effects; and my idea was that to make it positive ought to enhance its power to enhance life. 

"Power" was indeed a part of the concept - including Will Power. I was sympathetic to the idea that there could be a collective focusing of will power for Good; and that this kind of activity might do good in ways that were again unnoticed and unconscious. 

(Indeed, such ideas were prevalent a few decades ago, and people would often organize mass activities of 'will power' - such as prayer, meditation, and many varieties of ceremonial activity; with the expressed aim of doing some-Good to the world... In a sense, the underlying idea was that Good could be done-to masses of people - "whether they liked it or not"! 

So there were ideas of a realler-reality beneath the surface; and ideas of the Good-stuff being present and operative without awareness, working-away in all kinds of positive ways, but unknown and unsuspected. And maybe "some way" of tapping into this underlying world by those (relatively  few) who recognized the nature-of-things; and thereby influencing things-in-general for the better - although they probably would never know it. 

And so I continued for many a year. 

And I gained satisfactions by it: both an immediate satisfaction of seeing beyond or below, and the motivation of doing more so. 

Yet, of course, there was no purpose to it. Ultimately, it was hedonic in its intent - a way of making life more enjoyable, but without making life qualitatively different. 

And there were disadvantages - because regarding actuality as a palimpsest devalues it relative to the deep past and the hoped-for future. Indeed, the surface seems ever-thinner, as the mind penetrates to 'eternal verities' beneath; and this life itself - mortal life, full of ephemeral objects and ideas - seems futile. It is going nowhere - but to change, corruption, death; so why do we linger in this vale of mere shadows when there is a bright and pure and flawless world awaiting us on the other side? 

Indeed, why did we ever come here at all - when there exists a world so much better; and a world which we will (apparently) experience as wholly satisfying? 

What is the point, if temporarily incarnating into such a mixed and messy world of temporary stuff; if/when there is an archetypal and timeless reality to which we might in principle have dwelt-within? 

And when we try to abolish time and sequence, and start believing that what is now is always, what was is also now, and what is to come has already-happened - then various terrible implications begin to sink-in. 

We have bought meaningfulness as a terrible cost; the cost of abolishing purpose hence choice - leading to paralysis as we contemplate an essentially tragic state of being. 

So, in the end I found - as, I believe, did Charles Williams - that despite the immediate allure and benefits of regarding this mortal life as a palimpsest written over an eternal and ideal world that can be accessed by the determined adept; when taken seriously and over the long term, such an attitude detracts-from and devalues (rather than enhances and validates) the mundane life.  

Is everybody a "latent" Christian?

When I was an atheist I used to get very annoyed by Christians who would argue that I was "Really" a Christian, whether or not I knew it; and I only needed to acknowledge the "fact". This struck me is untrue; and I sure I was right - not least, because when I did become a Christian it caused a massive change in my mind and life; a far greater change than if conversion had merely been a matter of 'admitting' what I already was. 

However, I think it may in the past have broadly been true that "everybody" (i.e. most people) was a Christian. In other words; perhaps it was once possible to take for granted that people would choose to convert to Christianity if they:

1. Knew what Christianity offered - i.e. resurrection, eternal life, Heaven. (i.e. A "better deal" than any other religion.)

2. Believed these claims were true. 

Thus early Christian missionaries seemed to emphasize that Christianity offered the believer more than their previous religion - so that the potential convert wanted to believe it was true. 

Then the missionary tried to convince the potential convert that the missionary's claims were true.

This 'convincing' was, in the early days, often by miracles, answered prayers, and other 'supernatural' means.

The early days of Mormonism provide a well-documented example of this process, when the first wave off missionaries were sent to England. 

To simplify; the missionaries would describe what was 'on offer' from this new version of Christianity (representing, for many people, an enhancement of the trad-mainstream Christian afterlife); and then (to convince of truth) the missionary would give the potential convert a Book of Mormon (having described its miraculous provenance). 

This was done with instructions to read with a truth-seeking-intent, and while doing-so to ask God in prayer whether the book was true - thus the potential convert was seeking a personal divine revelation of the validity of the Mormon claims (the availability of such personal revelations being a major element of Mormonism, and the Book of Mormon itself). 

This 'method' worked sufficiently well in the middle 1800s that the missionaries would convert a couple of people every day, on average. Most of these converts would be sufficiently convinced and enthused by their new religion to leave their homes and families (forever, potentially); and emigrate thousands of miles over sea and land - to settle permanently in and around Salt Lake City. 

Such experiences with Christian conversion fit with the assumption that if only a person knew what Christianity offered, and believed it; then he or she would become a Christian. 

But that was then; this is now. 

Now it cannot be assumed that people will, in general, want an afterlife at all; and even if they do want an afterlife, that they would desire the kind of afterlife that Christians describe. 

(For instance, it seems that many people want something more like 'Nirvana' - a barely-conscious, depersonalized state of timeless bliss.)

So, even if such people could be convinced of the reality of what Christians claimed, and convinced that they themselves could obtain this outcome - they would not want it, but instead something else.

 

Furthermore, there are many modern people cannot be convinced of the truth of Christianity; and the reason they cannot be convinced is not due to lack of evidence, but because their fundamental assumptions (i.e. metaphysical assumptions) rule out the possibility. 

In other words, they do not believe that miracles are real, or that answered prayers could happen. Any possible evidence is already explained-away by prior exclusion. 

An apparent miracle Must Be due to delusion or fraud; an answered prayer just 'wishful thinking' operating on coincidence etc. 

An excellent example of this mind-set is depicted by CS Lewis in The Last Battle, the final book of the Narnia Chronicles. There are a group of dwarfs who are actually on the threshold of Heaven, surrounded by Good Things - but who have decided that the whole set-up is a malicious trick. 

The dwarfs therefore actually perceive almost everything Good as trash: good food tastes of muck. Any pleasing event is a deception. 

Their whole mind-set is focused on a determination not to be fooled - and therefore a determination that every-possible-thing is (underneath the surface) malign and nasty. 

Such is an accurate allegory of many modern people. 

• They (we) have pre-decided that this is a purposeless, meaningless and impersonal universe. 
• Any suggestion that there is a loving God who created it, is regarded as childish delusion. 
• Such suggestions met with incredulity, and regarded as an attempt at manipulation. 
• Any 'evidence' of a miraculous or supernatural kind, is explained-away as necessarily fraudulent.    

In conclusion; however differently it was in the past; mainstream modern people are Not latent Christians; but indeed are pre-immunized against serious belief in religion generally - but Christianity in particular. 

 

When, in the past, would you like to have lived? (Being who you now are)... Understanding the evolutionary-development of Mankind

I expect that we have all day-dreamed about living in the past - and when the present is acutely miserable, or when we cannot seriously imagine a good future; then such dreams are more insistent.  

If you are like me; then these pleasant day-dreams are almost like 'snapshots' - holiday photos in reverse - whereby some particularly appealing scene is conjured and entered-into. 

For example, just before I went to sleep at night, I would sometimes imagine myself on a sultry summer's afternoon beside the Concord River or Walden Pond in the 'transcendentalist' era of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could feel - physically - an idealized sense of repose against an implicit background of close-knit friends and associates, who shared an opening-out of ideas and possibilities.   

After becoming a Christian; I had a mental picture of Constantinople under a crystalline-blue sky; the city and its streets gleaming white, and with bright and rich colour; the music, painting, statuary, mosaics; and dignified ritual of divine liturgy under the vast dome of Hagia Sophia. 

Behind such pictures lay an imagined sense of what it was like to live, immersively, in a society where Christianity permeated the whole of life - a medium into which one was born, and through which one swam. 

This idea of 'immersion' in life; of life as unselfconscious - of living in the world as given and joyfully embraced - was at the back of most of these pleasant, yearning, day-dreams. 

This bears a more-than-coincidental relationship to similar day-dreams of early childhood; where I can remember some of what it was like to be a happy child in a happy family, in the years before I was five. For instance; Christmas day aged three or four was a total and immersive experience of being swept along in colour, warmth, joy and unfolding excitement. My life in early childhood - when it was good - was good without comparison; it was living in the best possible world. 

When, from the late 1990s, I began to read accounts of the life of 'simple', nomadic, foraging, hunter-gatherer societies; it was impossible to miss the similarity with childhood - which was indeed often pointed-out by anthropologists (before the cancer of leftism utterly destroyed their capacity to experience and think). 

Yet, although there was intense nostalgia for states of being; I could seldom whole-heartedly take the inward step of wanting actually to live in any previous state of society - in the sense that I could not imagine me-as-I-am-now, finding life better in any past society as-it-was-then. 

For the daydream to work properly, I would have to be a different person from the modern Man I had become. 

The problem was 'consciousness' - the problem was my modern self-awareness, my modern knowledge of possibilities and comparisons - and of what happened next. For any fantasy of the imagined past to "work" - I would need to leave-behind a lot of myself-in-the-present. 

This leads onto the next question concerning what I would need to leave-behind. Some of the 'modern' stuff about 'the way I think' that would need to be left-behind is evil - and I would be much better rid of it... not just in order to live in the past, but anyway. I have been corrupted by the evils of modernity - and, like any evil, this needs to be recognized and repented.

But... even when I could imagine being cleansed of characteristically modern corruptions of consciousness; there was a residue of 'me-here-now' compared with people of the past that was different in nature - but not evil; and this made it difficult to want to live in the past except by wanting to be a different person: a fundamentally different person. 

To live 'idyllically' as a simple hunter-gatherer in my fantasy past - or even in Byzantium, or in New England circa 1835 - I had to imagine myself as somebody-else; which really does not make sense, if you think about it...

Indeed; this wishing has the same incoherence as transhumanism - which aims to cure the ills consequent on being a human by abolishing humans!

Or, it resembles the Western oneness spiritualities - which offer a cure of the ills of Modern self-consciousness in the abolition of consciousness of the self.  

Or, it resembles the 'spiritual' strategy of intoxication - whereby consciousness is (pathologically) obliterated by (usually temporary) self-poisoning. A person escapes the miseries of self-consciousness by deliberately causing cerebral dysfunction; such that (e.g.) alertness, self-awareness and memory are rendered physically inoperative. When a drug has euphoriant properties, there may also be a state of pleasure or at least painlessness. 

In a sense; such intoxication - with its obliteration of that which causes and enables angst - implicitly aims at a simulation of earlier (or child-like) consciousness in terms of the experience of here-and-now immersion in the here-and-now. Insofar as it can be achieved, such simulation of unselfconscious immersion is necessarily achieved at the cost of significant dysfunction. 

It was such insights that prepared my mind for understanding the insights of Owen Barfield concerning what he terms 'the evolution of consciousness' - evolution being used in a pre-natural-selection sense of purposive change; much like the psychological aspects of development of a human from baby, through childhood and adolescence to sexual maturity (the purpose ultimately coming from God).  

To regard human history as including a change in the nature of Man's thinking, and relationship with the world - a change analogous to (and sharing similar purposes with)  that of the development of a single Man - is to find meaning in the mental differences between myself and the hunter-gatherer or resident of Constantinople in the middle hundreds AD. 

It is to recognize that for me to live in the past in the same spirit as people did then, would require fundamental changes in my consciousness; but to regard at least some of these changes as on the one hand impossible - in the same sense that an adult cannot really, in essence, become a child again; and also undesirable - in the sense that development is not meant to be reversed. 

This is to assume that when a person develops through adolescence to sexual maturity; this is what God wants - and the 'job' of the adult is to deal with the situation - not to try and reverse it. This is our divinely-appointed task - it is our destiny. 

Likewise; when God has enabled his creation of Mankind to develop from hunter gatherer, through agrarian societies into the industrial revolution - in some broad yet essential sense this is what God wants; and our job is to deal with it - starting from where we are; and not trying to reverse the fundamentals of the later situation in search of recreating the earlier situation. 

Of Course we Modern Men must recognize and repent sin; and insofar (and it is very far) that Modern Man is corrupt, and Modern society not only encourages but increasingly enforces such corruption, we are right to desire that this be changed. 

But the consciousness of Modern Man is unprecedented - and cannot lead-to, nor function-in, any previous type of society. 

Just as the adolescent's consciousness is unprecedented in his own experience - and the only way out is forward; no matter how corrupt an individual he has become, the same applies to Modern Society: that the only way out is forward. 

The only way out is forward; because we cannot find solutions to our unprecedented situation in our past. 

Part of this is due to an increase in sin; but part of it is also due to a change in the nature of Men through time - so that even if past social forms could be re-created, Modern men would not function in them, and they could not be sustained in the same way as they once were - they would be unsustainable, and they would not lead to Good. 

We cannot become unselfconsciously immersed in society again; and even if we could, it would be in defiance of God's expressed creative will - and would therefore lead to demonic outcomes. 

Thus, an understanding and acceptance of the development of human consciousness can make a fundamental difference in how we intend and hope to deal with the evils of modern society. 

These evils are seen, to a significant and crucial degree, as due to a failure to deal-with the development of Man's consciousness. 

An analogy might be when the (common) corruptions of adolescence are seen as a failure to deal with the unfolding inner changes in consciousness. That unfolding was itself a necessary, and a good (God-given) thing. 

But development leads to unavoidable challenges and choices - and if the challenges are avoided and the choices are wrong - then there is a turn towards evil that needs repentance.  

We, here, now are living at the end of innumerable failures to acknowledge challenges, and innumerable bad choices by vast numbers of people - an accumulated legacy of evil which is unrecognized and unrepented.   

But behind all this was a development of consciousness, a growing-up of Mankind, which was divinely-intended; and is irreversible. 

Therefore, although we are not supposed to leave history behind (just as we ought to remember, honour and cherish all which was good in our childhoods); nonetheless, but we ought not to seek to recreate our childhood, nor seek childrens' solutions to adolescent problems: they will not work, and they will do harm - even when well-intended. 

Instead; we must seek solutions appropriate to where we are and what we have become; and the right answers will be unprecedented in fundamental ways.

This quest will almost certainly entail trials and errors; so we need both faith and hope, together with a willingness to discern and repent when things do not work-out. 

But we each have divine guidance (of several kinds) to lead us through the maze of options and alternatives, successes and failures. 

That is the nature of our task.   

Animating the landscape - thirty years experience

The Devil's Beef Tub - a powerfully-evocative hidden valley near Moffat

I was very 'sensitive' to country landscape in my middle and late teens, but this capacity was one of the casualties of my young adulthood - when I became city-orientated. It was in the summer of 1991, thirty years ago, that I began to recover - or re-forge - my capacity to know the mindscape as alive and implicitly conscious and purposive.  

This happened through a series of explorations of the English-Scottish borders - which at that time I was approaching from the Scottish side (I was living in Glasgow). And the medium was a mixture of history and folklore. 

In retrospect, what I seemed to be doing was to view the here-and-now landscape through a lens of a past in which I was personally involved, mainly due to the many ancestors who inhabited this part of the world. I was reading every book on the region I could lay hold of - gleaning whatever ideas and impression fed the magic.

At the same time as this retrospective angle, I felt that there was something occult (hidden but discernable) about this place which pointed to a better future. 

This future was vague, but had to do with a re-integration of life and spontaneous-warm community - a kind of 'neo-pagan' aspiration for a life of more immersive engagement, although I was not initially aware of that term or movement.

At the time, and for long afterwards, I conceptualized this landscape sensitivity in terms of an immersion, an attunement; a lowering of barriers between my-self and that which the landscape contained. 

There was therefore a sense of self-hypnotically reducing my conscious awareness of what was happening - but not too much; enough to 'liberate' the associative powers of the mind, but with enough consciousness retained so that I would be aware of, and then remember, what was happening. 

This was a difficult balancing-act - and could never be retained for long. But such is mortal life...

This may all sound very theoretical, but it was effective - to a significant extent, sometimes. I was sometimes able to be in a kind of magical mood for considerable periods of time (a few minutes usually, up to an hour or two).

That it was objectively effective was evidenced by the synchronicity of these moods - I would move from one such experience to another; would move through the landscape from one discovery to another; discoveries not known, not seen, but with the inevitability of a dream and recurrent deja vu even for places I had certainly never been.   

It was all very encouraging, but of course habituation soon sets-in and repetition of action loses its effectiveness; the experiences became less reliable, less intense, less frequent - and in general I needed to know what (if anything) they meant for me and my life. Or was it just a kind of pleasant delusion, a self-deception...

In retrospect I can see that I was recapitulating the search for Original Participation that was evident in neo-paganism as it developed from the late 19th century, and in the likes of CG Jung and Robert Graves; and indeed that was the direction in which my reading was drawn - for example I recognized the state of mind I sought as being Jung's Active Imagination. 

It was evident that this quest could never be more than partially and dwindlingly effective and very intermittent. An activity for holidays, essentially. And an expensive one - meaning that I had to work at alienating jobs in order to achieve these moments of brief engagement and fulfilment. 

Plus, they were solitary; and yet I was prone to loneliness and boredom.  

And - most decisively - I recognized how much of this was me, was brought by me to the situation; and this undercut the experience, reduced and invalidated it significantly. 

It was a paradox: one part of myself sought to engage in self-examination to try and exploit my own disposition and sensitivities of another part of myself! This splitting was sustaining the alienating divisions that I was (supposedly) trying to overcome. 

It was a psychological equivalent of the split between work - needed to get the money (and car) needed to pursue these Border explorations; and the bought-leisure in which such explorations could proceed.    

This struck me as not just a practical limitation, but a fault in the whole project; the whole idea. It was ultimately incoherent - and therefore not a valid basis for life.

I have now conceptualized this experience as Final Participation. It is not a 'recovery' of ancient ways of being or thinking; it is a moving forward to a new way of being and thinking, that exists in a new kind of thinking. 

I recognize that I bring my-self not only this these magical moments; but to all moments - all meaning, and lack of meaning, comes from me; yet is not merely-subjective, because of God and because this is a creation.

All meanings, purposes, and relationships in God's creation always-have-been the consequence of 'minds', of consciousness - thus the integration of all things is a fact, not an aspiration. 

What is an aspiration is the awareness; from which comes the magic, the enchantment. 

 

Another three decades of atheism... A fork in the road, summer 1978, reading William Arkle

A key moment in my life - a fork in the road - seems to have happened in the high summer of 1978; on a day when I was lolling on the bed and reading William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness, which I had borrowed from the Edinburgh City Library. 

I had read, and been really gripped by, the Foreword - which is a kind of prose poem concerning the various phases of consciousness, how it changes (and in many ways declines) from childhood to adulthood; and what may be hoped from future developments in consciousness. I assumed this Foreword reflected the views of Arkle, but I now believe this Foreword to have been significantly revised and edited by Colin Wilson.

I was also very interested by the Introduction by Colin Wilson, in which he described Arkle's 'lifestyle' (which very much appealed to me), and interpreted Arkle's views; but primarily (as I now see) in terms of Wilson's own vocabulary and intellectual project.  

In other words, this Foreword presented an a-theistic (non-God) perspective on the modern problem (my problem) of alienation, and how it might be tackled. It presented and continued and this was exactly the approach Colin Wilson himself had taken from The Age of Defeat (1959) onwards; and I found myself optimistic that it might provide exactly the answers I sought. 

Within a few days I had borrowed and read Wilson's The Outsider (1956) - and had the strong feeling that this was what I has been waiting for! 

This, then, was The Road Taken - the decision to follow Colin Wilson. But The Road Not Taken was to fully engage with William Arkle himself, to accept Arkle's primary assumptions... and this (as I retrospectively realize) was the fork in the road. 

As I read on into A Geography of Consciousness, beyond the Introduction and Foreword, I realized thta Arkle believed in God. That was an immediate block - since I would not take such an idea seriously, regarding it as an obvious error. Then again, Arkle was explicit that human life had transcendent meaning; that the specifcis our our actual lives were entwined with divine purposes and meanings...

In other words, Arkle struck me (and - it was implied in the Introduction - also Colin Wilson) as being a victim of Wishful Thinking; of a constitutional optimism about the significance of life (rooted in God and eternity) that was something that struck me as 'obviously wrong'. 

My interpretation of Arkle's  exemplary (and, to me, enviable) lifestyle was that it was rooted in this wishful-thinking-unrealistic-optimism. And that, while Arkle himself must be 'made that way' (perhaps due to upbringing?), these were ultimately assumptions which were 'nice for him', but could not provide a model for somebody like myself. 

So as I read Arkle talking about things such as God, eternal human purposes, life beyond death; and about getting to know and communicating with God - I just Blocked.   

All such passages were a solid block, I would not (felt I could not) take such things seriously. If I was 'honest' they seemed childish, silly, naïve, self-deluding...

I also thought such 'hypotheses' unnecessary; and that I could (following Colin Wilson) get 'what I wanted' without the absurdity of Believing in God.

As it turns out - I could not and I did not. 

But it was another thirty years before I finally acknowledged my failure and went back to re-examine Arkle's metaphysical assumptions (not 'hypotheses') of a real God; who is creator, and who loves his children in a personal relationship; and who is involved in the minute details and large strategies of every human life. 

Eventually, in the autumn of 2008 (and, inter alia, having rediscovered Arkle online, and especially his Letter from a Father) I then took The Road Not Taken.

The opposing strategies of the two Popes

From a Christian perspective; Pope Francis is either an irrelevance, or the single most dangerous and damaging person in the world. 

Which, depends on one's assumptions about what is the best future for the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Francis leads the largest Christian denomination, and the only one with a centralised world-leader (the second and third largest - Orthodox and Anglican, have national level leadership). And he is leading them into greater confromity with the Globalist secular (and leftist) agenda. 

Insofar as Roman Catholics are led by Francis; that is their primary, overall direction - towards world government along the lines of The Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030.

Towards a world in which CO2 Climate Change dominates the economy; a world of mass and unrestricted first-world immigration, third-world migrations sustained by core antiracism; of (gradually, with increasinly fast) embracing of the sexual revolution as a positive moral gain; and (as of 2020) the birdemic regarded as a great plague compelling the above restructuring. 

 

In total, Francis's strategy could be seen as based on the assumption that the mass majority of self-identified Roman Catholics (both ordained and lay) are correct in their de facto embrace of the above process of secularisation and liberalisation; and therefore the best way forward is for the Pope and Magisterium, the bishops and priests, to conform to that mass-majority.   

In another phrasing; for Francis the short-term tactical expediency of confroming to the Global socio-political trends is also the best long-term strategy for the RCC survival and thriving. Presumably; Francis sees the best future as one in which the RCC has 'a seat at the table' of the other great movers-and-shakers of the world. 

And indeed that has been happening. Francis personally is certainly given much greater approval, publicity and backing from the mass media and major political actors. 

Presumably the strategy is that this would extend through the hierarchy of Cardinals, Bishops and Priests to the laity - who could then lend a Catholic influence to the mainstream. 

But the view of the other, still living - Emeritus - Pope Benedict XVI - is the opposite. 

Benedicts view is that the future of the Roman Catholic Church lies in reforming itself around the most devout of its members - what he called a Creative Minority. 

In other words, Benedict was a kind of elitist - on religious grounds. He apparenty felt that the mass of Roman Catholics were leading the church astray, and into assimilation with secularising socio-political trends. 

 

For Benedict; the way ahead was a tough path; where things got worse before they got better; a path that could only be tackled with considerable faith. 

Because Benedict envisaged, and argued in favour of, a reduction in size of the RCC, a shedding of lax and secular ('corrupted') members - who would, presumably, leave voluntarily when the reformed church demanded from them more, and different, than was compatible with social expedience. 

(And if they were priests who would not join the Creative Minority agenda, they would ultimately need to be expelled from Holy Orders, even against their will; if laity, they would be excommunicated.)

 

So, en route to a future of RCC survival and thriving; for Benedict there must and would be a period of shrinking, contraction - and concentration of members into a coherent and purposive Creative Minority. 

This much smaller, but more devout and correct, RCC would then be a seed for a renewal of growth in the future'; and this future would be one of renewed differentness-from, distinction-from, the secular world. 

I think Benedict saw the best future as a smaller but more-coherent and more-different church; acting as a countervailing power; mostly pushing against the mainstream of dominant socio-political power (such as the bureaucracy, multinational corporations and the mass media). 

Against, that is, the prevalent focus of The World which makes sexuality, healthism, envirnmentalism, race &c - into the prime value-issues of the world. By contrast, Benedict was in favour of maintaining the ancient idea of the Church as a (Holy) City of God; as much as possible distinct from the City of Man - or, indeed, a future unified Megalopolis of Man.   

Thus (by my understanding) the two living Popes have almost exactly opposite strategies from each other. 

And if, as I do, you approve Benedict's strategy; then you cannot (consistently) approve Francis's strategy; and would regard Francis's path as leading - not to church renewal but to church assimilation-into the Global Bureaucracy. 

...Not for the church to be a distinct voice from the tech and finance multi-billionnaires and global media, but to speak with exactly the same voice - at least when it comes to speaking about the core (i.e. socio-political, secular) issues of our time - and making them the tactical priority. 

 

Demonic servant, unconscious dupe and psychotic berserker: three different ways of being wrong about 2020

As I sample the mass of material being written; I have come across three different ways of being wrong about 2020. 

 

1. The demonic servant of Satan - the purposively evil

These people recognise that 2020 has been a world-historical watershed - but they like it; and want more of the same!

These are the people are are pushing the 2020 agenda in one or all of its manifestations - The Great Reset/ Build Back Better and UN Agenda 2020. 

They fail the three current Litmus Test manifestations of being on the dark side in the spiritual war, by actively supporting one or more of: 

1. The birdemic lock/ down/ social/ distancing/ masking 'response to the fake epidemic;  

2. The antiracism/ MLB stuff;

3. Climate/ Change/ Emergency/ Green/ Sustainable stuff. 

(And behind this is their approval of the long term sexual revolution agenda, through its various mutations and continual escalations.) 

 

2. The unconscious dupe - the minions of Satan

These are the people who just haven't noticed anything special about 2020. 

Who carry on with their little burblings and warnings and pleas about society and politics; as if nothing much had happened. 

The tone of their writing (and speech) is unmistakeable, immediately recognisable. These are the smug, 'concerned', nice, compassionate, pragmatic, self-blinded fools. 

At some point, probably repeatedly; these 'useful idiots' have (like everybody) been personally confronted by the horrible reality of the 2020 global totalitarian coup, its psychopathic and deliberate evil; but they have chosen to push this aside, to disregard it. 

Not to 'get carried away', not to 'over-react'; to anticipate a return to normal, soon; so long as 'decent' people remain civil, tolerant, non-judgemental... 

The dupes function as the low-level serfs and slaves of the powers of evil - the orcs-in-lipstick and trolls-with-sharp-suits of the dark lord. 

 

3. The psychotic hallucinators

These delusional characters are less common than the above; but I have seen several instances. 

On the one hand, they recognise that 2020 has been a watershed in history, and they (overall) deplore the changes; but on the other hand, they blame 2020 on the birdemic! 

They really believe that the birdemic is an unprecedented threat to humanity, that rightly demands unprecedented societal response to combat it - all of which is unfortunate but, sadly, necessary. 

These mad-men and -women are seriously focused on the Deep Reasons as to why this terrible viral scourage has happened her and now - and what this tells us about the sorry state of society, medicine, politics, international relations, and our civilization. 

They regard the birdemic as some kind of judgment visited upon mankind... 

In their delirious minds; they perceive positive test results as hundreds of millions of prostrated, near-comatose patients; they vividly visualise besieged hospitals suffocating under an apocalypse of incoming virus-riddled zombies; they can discern virus victims in secret warehouses - in vast heaps, stacked like firewood; dead bodies of children, youths and young adults strewing the city streets...

These are the devil's berserkers: crazed maniacs released upon the world - playing-out their fantasy roles; saving mankind by rampaging against all that is valuable in normal human life and relationships.

 

Athough varying in degrees of corruption; in 2020 all three ways of being wrong indicate the person is on the wrong side in the spiritual war: the side of Satan. 

Because this is a spiritual war which has now come to the point where everybody has taken-sides. 

And if you are not on the side of God, Divine Creation and The Good - then you are working against it. 

Understanding bicycle lanes - What is at the centre of the onion?

For the past decade and more, the road system of my ancient city (with London, the only modern major city in England that has been major since medieval times) is being systematically destroyed by the construction of more and yet-more bicycle lanes. 

(In fact, I should really write "bicycle lanes" in scare quotes - since they are nearly always empty of traffic). 

Recently, The Great North Road - that major artery which has, for hundreds of years, linked London to the south with Edinburgh to the north, has been reduced from two to a single lane of traffic; with predictable consequences. 

But the process is incremental and unrelenting, and affects roads of all kinds and sizes. Because the city is old, and expansion of roads often impossible, this sometimes involves making roads one-way (halving the traffic), blocking with bumps and chicanes, and sometimes removing pedestrian pavements - so cars and walkers are alike affected. Many, many roads of many sizes have been, are-being, closed-off, at great expense, for good reason or none. 

Congestion is worse, journeys are longer, fumes are worse, both driving and walking are more dangerous and less enjoyable. 

 

There are in fact extremely few cyclists, probably fewer than forty years ago; and those that are sighted are mostly sports and recreational bikers, or else people who have substituted cycling for walking. Extremely few people are able consistently to substitute a bike for a car (for many and - one would have thought - obvious reasons). 

And - cyclists being what they are (i.e. supremely entitled) they are more often to be found on the roads or 'sidewalks' than in their specially-contructed and allocated lanes.

So why are billions of pounds being spent on this transformation nationally? Peeling-off the excuses to find the core truth is an interesting exercise (unlike cycling!).

 

The official reason is to encourage cycling instead of motor vehicle usage, and thereby cut-down on CO2 (i.e. the gas of life) and thus 'save the planet'. 

The amount of CO2 actually saved is tiny or non-existent, and of course the entire Global Warming narrative is a Big Lie; but in such matters it is being seen to 'make the effort' that counts above everything.  

Behind this is a raft of legislation (mostly from the European Union) that pays local councils to install cycle lanes; regardless of the opportunity costs from lost time and wasted fuel (which would be even  more billions of pounds, if counted). 

Behind this is the archetypal leftist political activist of our day, those who staff the local councils - for whom Global Warming from CO2 is a religion, cycling is good in itself; and who hate-hate-HATE motor vehicles and will do anything, and spend any amount of other-people's money, to pursue this vendetta. 

 

And behind this? Well, eventually we have the Global Establishment of multi-mega-billionnaires, international and national politicians, and media moguls; who are making trillions from the Green Energy scam - its vast subsidies and the regulations that destroy rivals and centralise power and wealth in ever fewer hands. Their attitude to the planet and its people is expolitative - either they are indifferent to human and environmental destruction and death, or else they actually enjoy inflicting it.

Thus the The System is torn-down and pillaged for its resources. The two activities - deliberate economic collapse (currently by means of birdemic regulations) and the collosal spending on 'cycle lanes' from this rapidly shrinking economy - are merely two sides of the same coin. 

 

But what are these officially-looted resources to be used for? 

Here we approach the point where the noisy, polluting, expensive and misery-inducing destruction of my local roads; links-up with the Grand Strategy of the real rulers of this planet.   

Bad roads means that personal transport becomes more difficult, more expensive and ultimately almost impossible - and this needs to be achieved within the next decade, according to Agenda 2030; explaining the frantic, unprecedented and accelerating rate of destructive activity - even as the rest of the economy is strangled and collapses around it. 

Soon we really will not 'need' these roads, because there will be nothing allowed to drive on them, and anyway driving will not be allowed (except by specific permission for specific and approved reasons - enforced by enormous fines, arbitrarily enforced and without appeal). 

But neither will cycles be allowed, since the population will (again) be confined to their houses. 

(Of course, this was already the case for several months in early 2020, so we know what it will be like; and it will again be the case again soon; and soon permanently.)

 

The destruction of roads/ construction of empty bike-lanes are part of a multi-pronged strategy towards a world where the mass of people are confined to their allocated living quarters; except when a minority of them are (compulsorily) engaged in officially-approved activities - under constant monitoring and psychologically separated by walls, distance, masks, whatever... 

Again we ask why? And now we begin to approach the deep, underlying reason; we begin to cross the line between human and demonic agency. Humans (most of us) need some kind of 'good reason' to do evil - although admittedly, some people don't need very much of a reason. 

But in the end, at the core of the onion, we reach supernatural, demonic evil - for whom evil is the explicit goal, and whose purpose is for Mankind to live in mutual resentment, fear and despair; in accordance with their system of value-inversion - in which bad is good, ugliness beautiful, and lies are truth: all this more-comprehesively and more-extremely so, with every passing day.

(Because there is always more evil work to do in God's creation.)

 

By which point (so the demons intend) the mass of Men - self cut-off from God and the spiritual, communicating only by censored electronic media, fed only demonic propaganda - will choose to reject Christ's salvation, refuse repentance, embrace Satan's goals; and thereby choose damnation. 

Thus can be seen that the proliferating yet empty cycles lanes of Newcastle upon Tyne are a microcosm of the Grand Strategy of evil on this planet; and their unrelenting expansion (with its multiple, layered and ramifying consequences) is an index of the triumph of Satan in the world today.   

Nirvana is Sheol

This suddenly struck me yesterday, when I was considering that time is intrinsic, and creation is therefore irreversible.

We began as eternal spirits; but when we became incarnated (on earth, as mortal Men) this decision meant that we could never return to that pre-mortal state.

What happens 'naturally' (I mean in the absence of following Jesus Christ to resurrection) is that the body dies and the disembodied soul continues in a kind of life that was called Sheol by the Ancient Jews, and Hades by the Ancient Greeks.

Existence continued, but 'the self' was lost; the spirits remained alive, but lost self-consciousness - and therefore the free agency that comes from consciousness. This was seen in qualitative terms of existing as witless, demented ghosts - who were aware on a moment-by-moment basis; but had no memory, no anticipation of future, no sense of eternity.


This is indeed probably what the reality of Nirvana actually is. Since the consequences of incarnation are irreversible; the return to original unconscious passive spiritual life can only be simulated, sibjectively.

I mean, post mortal souls can subjectively experience Nirvana (blissful re-absorption into the abstract divine), they can believe (on a moment by moment basis) that they have re-absorbed into the divine - but the reality will be Sheol.


The experience of Nirvana is that the division between self- and the whole is lost; the individual merges-with, melts-into the divine - where the divine is seen as the totality of everything.

This may be understood to be a state of bliss; and for some people I expect it is - since some people are tormented by their separation from reality, are tormented by consciousness and want it to end.

Whether this unresurrected after-life is regarded as Sheol or Nirvana may depend on the way that the divine is understood: either as an impersonal abstraction (Deism; as with Hinduism and Buddhism) or as a personal God (Theism) - and if personal, further what the nature of the personal God is understood to be.

If the personal God is understood to be a loving Father, and we his children; then the state of souls in Sheol would presumably be pleasant - on a moment-by-moment basis: maybe even blissful. But if God is understood to be otherwise motivated (vengeful, tyrannical etc), then Sheol would be understood as more-or-less miserable.


As for Hell - it is different from Sheol, although Hell is also inhabited by spirits.

My best guess is that Hell is chosen by those souls who wish to retain self-awareness but to work against God's creation. The hellishness of Hell is that of a child of God and a product of creation, eternally in rebellion against these facts.

A parable of Hell (and how it is chosen) is a teenager who hates their loving family; and flees them, and cuts-off all familial relations; in order to live in the worst part of the city as a thief, prostitute, drug addict - and who exploits and is-exploited-by, torments and is-tormented-by, the other denizens.

Such people exist, such things happen; and therefore (by analogy) presumably some have chosen, and will continue to choose, Hell rather than Heaven or Sheol/ Nirvana.


Note added: As is probably obvious - the above is an explanation from my particular Christian perspective. I would not expect those with a different understanding of reality to agree with it!

From only 'Rome' to Not Rome: How much I have changed in eight years

Eight years ago on this blog, in my review of a book about Christopher Dawson; when at the peak of my immersion in Eastern Orthodoxy, I stated: "As Rome dies over the centuries, so civilization-as-such dies, and is not replaced. Rome or nothing or something altogether alien and unChristian - these are the only civilizational alternatives."

I have now changed my understanding so much that I regard a continuation of Rome (its civilisation and religion) and not only un-desirable, but impossible. 

What brought about such a change?

Well, it was a sequence. First of all, from around the turn of 2012-2013, I began properly to understand Mormon theology, and soon became convinced of its superiority, its rightness. Then, about a year later  I got to grips with William Arkle. And soon afterwards, began my encounter with Owen Barfield. So, within a year of writing the following, I had begun the transformation of my understanding - and within a couple of years it was complete in its main features; after which there have been only relatively minor tweaks. 

**

Wednesday, 19 September 2012 - Christopher Dawson and the Byzantine blindspot

Christopher Dawson - 1889-1970. Once very famous Roman Catholic historian of ideas, now all-but forgotten. Admired by Tolkien, C.S Lewis (who knew him) and TS Eliot.

See Sanctifying the World: The Augustianian mind of Christopher Dawson by Bradley J Birzer.

Excerpts from Progress and Religion, 1929 pp 157-166.

Dawson in italics - my comments [in square brackets].



It cannot be too strongly insisted that the victory of the Church in the 4th century was not... the natural culmination of the religious evolution of the ancient world, It was, on the contrary, a violent interruption of that process which forced European civilization out of its old orbit into a path which it would never have followed by its own momentum.

It is true that the classical culture and the religion of the city state ... were losing their vitality, and that nothing could have arrested the movement of orientalization which ultimately conquered the Roman world. But this movement found its normal expression either in the undiluted form which is represented by the different Gnostic and Manichaean sects, or in a bastard Hellenic syncretism.

[So, 'a bastard Hellenic syncretism', or 'orientalism' is how Dawson characterizes the millennium of the Byzantine continuation of the Christian Roman Empire! The coherence of Byzantium - as I see it by far the most coherent Christian society which ever existed on earth - is dismissed as a weird or exotic (yet centuries-long) suspension of crudely-mixed Judueo-Christian an Greek elements in asolvent of 'orientalism'.]



...the Byzantine culture does not simply represent the fusion of the Hellensitic-Roman tradition with Christianity. It contains a third element of oriental origin which is, in fact, the preponderant influence in Byzantine civilization. It is to be seen in the social and political organization of the Empire which borrowed from Sassanian Persia all the external forms of the oriental sacred monarchy.

The rigid hierarchy of the Byzantine state which centres in the Sacred Palace and the quasi-divine person of the Holy Emperor is neither Roman nor Christian, but purely oriental.

[This is just name-calling! For Dawson, 'Oriental' is clearly a bad thing in and of itself, and 'rigid' added as a meaningless adjective to 'hierarchy'; 'quasi-divine' as a sniping and inaccurate characterization of the concept of the Emperor. The ideal Emperor was actually conceived as an Apostle, God's representative on earth, and an intermediary with Christ Pantocrator (that is Christ as active and Heavenly ruler of all, ruling Earth via his intermediary). But actual Emperors were judged against this ideal, and deposed when their behaviour showed they were not the real Emperor and a mistake had been made in choosing them. Anyway, Dawson doesn't like this kind of thing, and he needs to distinguish The West from it. But in doing so he is actually taking a pro-modernizing stance. Because 'orientalism' is the ideal of unity, fusion or harmony of church and state - and in attacking this, Dawson introduces - not just as a pragmatic reality but as an alternative ideal - a distinction between the realm of God - the Church, or City of God; and the secular realm of the state - politics, military and economic activity. In other words, functional specialization: modernity. Once begun, unstoppable.]



And the same influence is to be seen in Byzantine religion in its tendency to neglect the historical and dynamic elements in the Christian tradition, and to become absorbed in theological speculations regarding the nature of the Godhead.

This tendency reaches its climax in the writings of the so called Dionysius the Aeropagite, which probably date from the close of the 5th century, and have exerted and incalculable influence on the religious life of the Byzantine world. Here we may see the most extreme assertion of the Divine Transcendence and the negation of all finite modes of being.

In fact, Byzantine 'theological speculations' were mostly reactive to heresy and criticism from Western Christianity - and were not core to Christian life. Byzantine Holiness was not 'absorbed' in theological speculations, its purpose was for the human spirit to be 'absorbed' with (in communion with) the Godhead itself: so that man becomes Saint, who lives partly in Heaven in communion with God, partly on this earth to learn, teach, and act as intermediary. The 'neglect' of historical and dynamic elements actually meant that for Byzantium at its best, Christianity was a living presence in daily life, which tried to create (by ritual, arts, ascetic practices, devotions, prayer) model itself upon and emulate Heavenly life. A moment-by-moment earthly copy of the permanent Heavenly ideal. Naturally, historical and 'dynamic' elements were subordinated to this timeless task (not 'neglected'). Dawson accepts the modern secular revisionist history that Dionysius is the work of a late author ('Pseudo' Dionysius) - when for many centuries the ancients accepted the identity of the originator of these teachings as the disciple of St Paul. I believe the ancients.



Thus abstract mysticism [of Dionysius] is linked up with a fixed ritual and ceremonial order which is its earthly and sensible counterpart...

Again this harping on Byzantium as fixed, ritual, ceremonial!... yet ultimate reality is fixed, surely? So why should not earthly copies be fixed? If the Byzantine fixity was unreal then the Empire could not have endured as it did! And why does Dawson, a pre-Vatican II ultramontane Roman Catholic, criticize Byzantium for its use of devotional ritual and ceremony? In seeking to distinguish, positively, Western from Eastern Christianity - he has drifted into anti-Catholic sentiment.



...the moral ideal of the Byzantine world found its expression in the uncompromizing other-worldliness of the monks of the desert which represents the extreme development of the oriental spirit of asceticism and world-denial within the boundaries of orthodox Christianity.

[But elsewhere, and rightly, Dawson is unstinting in his praise of the Irish, later Scottish and Northumbrian ascetic monks and hermits who maintained the last Western outpost of Christianity in the remote 'deserts' of the British Isles. St Boniface - who Dawson regards as perhaps the most important figure in the whole of European Christian History - was a Lindisfarne product of this non-Latin tradition. What were these if not example of uncompromizing other-worldliness of precisely the type that Dawson brands as 'oriental'? The 'Celtic Christian' church of Anglo Saxon times was precisely Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox - albiet not 'Greek'!) in all its distinctive respects. The whole Synod of Whitby dispute was a prefiguring of the Great Schism in terms of the Latin Christians (Pope as supreme bishop, a church led by priests) versus Byzantine Christian (Emperor as supreme authority, the bishop of Rome as having precedence but not authority over other Patriarchs, and led by monks)]



Nevertheless, even this radically oriental version of Christianity did not satisfy the Eastern world. With the coming of Islam it reverted to a simpler type of religion (etc)  

The drawn-out and bitter conquest of the Byzantine Empire by Islam is represented as having happened merely because the 'orientals' were not 'satisfied' by Eastern Orthodoxy, and wanted something 'simpler'... I wonder why so many Byzantines bothered fighting to the death to resist something that supposedly satisfied them more than what they had? And why so many of the conquered over the next centuries, even until now, continued to practice Byzantine Christianity despite its entailing subordinate status?]



In the Roman West, in spite of its lower standard of civilization, the conditions were more favourable to the development of an original and creative Christian culture.

[This is true: Western Catholic Christianity is indeed much more original and creative than Eastern Orthodoxy, and thus much more satisfying to creative geniuses. Unfortunately, being creative and original does not imply or entail its being more true, or more Holy. Indeed, if ancient Christianity during its first millennium had as much Christian truth as was available in the fallen world; then everything that came since - no matter how original and creative - has been deviation from that truth.]



In his Byzantine blindspot, Dawson is typical of most historians.

Indeed, I believe that our whole understanding of the modern world, the nature of civilization, and the human condition is distorted and perverted by a vast and pervasive Byzantine blindspot.



Constaninople was the second Rome, the capital of the Byzantine Empire was the Christian Roman Empire.

The core, essence, and highest manifestation of Christian Rome was Byzantium; of which the Latin West was - spiritually speaking - a pale and fragmented outgrowth. Rome was (in its variants and descendents), the only model and pattern of Christian civilization we can ever know.

As Rome dies over the centuries, so civilization-as-such dies, and is not replaced.

Rome or nothing or something altogether alien and unChristian - these are the only civilizational alternatives.



The Third Rome was Moscow - and Orthodox Russia was the lineal descendent of Byzantium: the Tsar (in ideal) was the continuation of the Byzantine Emperor. The Russion revolution a century ago was therefore the end of Rome as a cohesive spiritual-political organization; the fragmented Holy Roman Empire in the West ended about at the same time. It was the end of Rome which marked the qualitative rift with the Christian past - the Great War was only a mechanism. The twentieth century was then unleashed in all its various horrors. The end times began.