3,605 words

The sounds are strange to the Western ear, but undeniably, humanly compelling — a fact borne out by the hundreds of people who flock to Seattle from far flung locales just to hear these instruments.[1] (more…)

548 words

Gwendolyn Taunton
Tantric Traditions: Gods, Rituals, & Esoteric Teachings in the Kali Yuga
Manticore Press, 2018

Mention “tantra” and almost any Westerner, no matter how sophisticated, thinks of weekend seminars on how to improve your sex life, with endorsements from the likes of Sting. (more…)

3,302 words

Alain Daniélou
Sacred Music: Its Origins, Powers, and Future — Traditional Music in Today’s World
Ed. Jean-Louis Gabin
Varanasi, India: Indica Books, 2002

“People who lose their language and their music cease to exist as a cultural and national entity and have no further contribution to make to world culture.” — Alain Daniélou  (more…)

1,661 words

Alain Daniélou
The Myths and Gods of India
Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1991.
(Originally published as Hindu Polytheism by Bollingen Foundation, New York, 1964.)

Typically, those who profess an interest in what might be called “Indo-European spirituality” gravitate toward either the Celtic or Germanic traditions. The Indian tradition tends to be ignored. In part, this is because present-day Indians seem so different from us. (more…)

1,175 words

Alain Daniélou
Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India
Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1993.

One hears a great deal today about “multiculturalism,” and the multicultural society. We (i.e., we Americans) are told that ours is a multicultural society. But, curiously, multiculturalism is also spoken of as a goal. (more…)

Georgia O’Keeffe, “D. H. Lawrence Pine Tree,” 1929

4,925 words

D. H. Lawrence is best known to the general public as a writer of sexy books. In his own time, his treatment of sex made him notorious and caused him to run afoul of the authorities on a number of occasions. I have no desire to rehearse in detail the well-known history of Lawrence’s troubles with censorship, (more…)

4,566 words

Part 3 of 3

Lacking the notion of radical traditionalism, Partch’s audiences tended to misunderstand him, by assimilating him to either of two reassuringly familiar roles: as either an “Orientalist” or some kind of “avant-garde” radical.

These were two things that infuriated Partch as failures to understand what he was doing. The first, beloved of lazy though positive reviewers and polite guests, was to say something like “It’s very Oriental, isn’t it?”[1] In a very superficial sense, it is—it seems mostly gongs and mallets, with nary a string instrument to be found— (more…)

Harry Partch, June 24, 1901–September 3, 1974

4,834 words

Part 2 of 3

Rejecting the equal temperament and concert traditions that have dominated western music, Harry Partch adopted the pure intervals of just intonation and devised a 43-tone-to-the-octave scale, (more…)

5,476 words

Harry Partch, June 24, 1901–September 3, 1974

Part 1 of 3

“In a healthy culture differing musical philosophies would be coexistent, not mutually exclusive; and they would build from Archean granite, and not, as our one musical system of today builds, from the frame of an inherited keyboard, and from the inherited forms and instruments of Europe’s 18th century. And yet anyone who even toys with the idea of looking beyond these legacies for materials and insight is generally considered foolhardy if not actually a publicity-seeking mountebank.” – Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music  (more…)

1,880 words

“Your themes — they almost always consist of even values, of half, quarter, eighth notes; they are syncopated and tied, to be sure, but nonetheless persevere in what is often a machinelike, stamping, hammering inflexibility and inelegance. (more…)

59:04 / 223 words

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Robert Stark interviews James J. O’Meara about his new Counter-Currents title The Homo and the Negro: Masculinist Meditations on Politics and Popular Culture. (more…)

1,600 words

« Lorsque les rites enseignés par les textes traditionnels et lorsque les institutions établies par la loi seront sur le point de disparaître, lorsque le terme de l’âge sombre sera proche, une partie de l’être divin existant par sa propre nature spirituelle selon le caractère du Brahman, qui est le Commencement et la Fin (…) descendra sur la terre (…). (more…)