“Death found an author writing his life. . .” from Edward Hull’s Danse Macabre, 1827.
1,180 words
It always sounds silly to me when people tell the dead to “rest in peace.”
Practically speaking, don’t you have to disturb their rest to tell them that? It makes about as much sense as nudging someone who’s snoring to say, “Hey — HEY! Wake up and go to sleep.” (more…)
1,232 words
As a white man in the modern world, you are programmed to self-destruct. As dissident artist Owen Cyclops puts it, “our people have been taught that they’re bad, so they’re killing themselves in record numbers.” Of course, suicide is the most extreme expression of this, but the same basic spiritual sickness can be seen in a variety of phenomena, from the opioid crisis to alcoholism to many whites’ embrace of the constant attacks on white identity. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, but there is a more productive way out of suffering. (more…)
Mr. Gurdjieff
7,589 words
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born on this day in 1866, 1872, or 1877 — depending on whom you ask. [1] Much else about his biography is equally uncertain. We do know that his father was Greek, his mother Armenian, and that he was born in Alexandropol which was then part of the Russian Empire (it is now in Armenia and is called Gyumri). (more…)
1,980 words
Emil Cioran
Apologie de la Barbarie: Berlin – Bucharest (1932-1941)
Paris: L’Herne, 2015
This is a very interesting book released by the superior publishing house L’Herne: a collection of Emil Cioran’s articles published in Romanian newspapers, mostly from before the war. (more…)
2,446 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note:
This text is drawn from Dominique Venner, Un samouraï d’Occident: Le Bréviaire des insoumis (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013), 101-15.. I have previously reviewed this work at The Occidental Observer.
1,605 words
We are all faced with the challenge of speaking, and living, truths which are felt to be offensive by a great many of our countrymen, not to mention the powers that be. This is not a new problem. By definition, the natural diversity of men means that knowledge of the truth is highly unequally distributed and those who know most about the truth are necessarily a tiny minority. This minority must alone face the prejudices and ignorance of the masses and the violence of the state. (more…)
2,382 words
Asceticism often has a bad reputation in vitalist circles. The idea of the sexless, passionless, passive, world-rejecting monk seems self-evidently maladaptive, an evolutionary dead end, as Nietzsche and Savitri Devi surmised. Yet the fact is that monks have often been warriors, and the monarchs of ascetic religions, such as Christianity and Buddhism, have often been great conquerors. (more…)
2,062 words
Editor’s Note:
We are presenting the following excerpts from Savitri Devi’s And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews in honor of the birthday of the great Swedish explorer, travel writer, and critical supporter of German National Socialism, Sven Anders Hedin (February 19, 1865–November 26, 1952). For a brief account of his life and work, see his Wikipedia article. (more…)
9,927 words
Part 2 of 2. Part 1 here.
Partings II – Watts and The Church Today: Real Presence or Real Estate?
Watts was quite successful in his attempt to express the religio perennis in the language of Christian theology; not just in my opinion today, but among his Episcopal peers at the time (one bishop even called it “the most important book on religion in this century”[1]), (more…)
9,403 words
Part 1 of 2
Alan W. Watts
Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
New York: Pantheon, 1947; reissued with a new Preface, 1971
Kindle, 2016
“For God is not niggardly in his self-revelation; he exposes himself right before our eyes.” — Alan Watts (more…)
1,567 words
A discussion on a recent episode of The Daily Shoah brought up a topic on which everyone has an opinion but that rarely ends well: Christianity and the Alt Right. The discussion unearthed what I suspect many in this metapolitical struggle think about religion. (more…)
3,476 words
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) is commonly found on lists of the world’s greatest movies, and deservedly so. Rashomon features avant-garde narrative techniques (flashbacks, multiple points of view), dynamic black-and-white cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa, compelling Ravel-like music by Fumio Hayasaka, subtle and intensely dramatic performances, and a complex but tightly edited script, all combined into a fast-paced 88-minute masterpiece with an emotionally devastating climax. (more…)
4,893 words
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: When did you first . . . become . . . well, develop this theory? (more…)
3,870 words
Sayings of the Buddha
Rupert Gethin, translator
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008
Anyone who wishes to promote certain values is faced with the challenge of how to maintain those values over time: throughout one’s life, from one generation to the next, and across the centuries. A people’s adherence to values is likely to wane over time, overcome by lower drives, such as the desires for material comfort and personal self-indulgence. (more…)
2,062 words
Editor’s Note:
We are presenting the following excerpts from Savitri Devi’s And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews in honor of the birthday of the great Swedish explorer, travel writer, and critical supporter of German National Socialism, Sven Anders Hedin (February 19, 1865–November 26, 1952). For a brief account of his life and work, see his Wikipedia article. (more…)
Arthur Schopenhauer
2,373 words
Part 1 of 3
I recently came across a collection of Arthur Schopenhauer’s writings entitled Essays & Aphorisms.[1] It really is wonderful stuff, ruthlessly realistic, insightful, and often very droll. (more…)
7,833 words
Alan Watts–Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion
Ed. Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice
Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012
“It is the peculiar nature of my adolescent explorings of the Devon countryside . . . that made me what I am—and in many other ways besides writing. . . . I have never gained any taste for what lies beyond the experience of solitary discovery. . . . (more…)
2,615 words
English original here
Alan Watts
Does It Matter?: Essays on Man’s Relation to Materiality
New York: Vintage, 1971
B. J. O. Nordfeldt, “D. H. Lawrence and the Three Fates”
4,086 words
The Origin of Evil
D. H. Lawrence believed in the reality of evil, but he believed that its source lay in the human soul. “Abstraction is the only evil,” he wrote.[1] By abstraction he does not refer to the process of making generalizations or forming concepts. Instead, he means the tendency of human beings to abstract themselves from feeling, from intuition, from nature, and from the present. Abstraction is fundamentally evil, for Lawrence, because it makes most of humanity’s crimes possible. (more…)
4,045 words
Part 1 of 2
On first receiving Karlfried Graf Dürckheim’s book, Hara: Man’s Terrestrial Center,[1] we had thought of writing one of the usual reviews, calling attention to it as an interesting contribution to our knowledge of the psychology, the behavior, and the “existential morphology” of the Far Eastern, or rather of the Japanese, man; (more…)
3,188 words
The theme of an original duality or polarity related to that of the sexes occurs in the traditions of almost all cultures. This duality is sometimes expressed in purely metaphysical terms, sometimes in that of divine or mythological figures, cosmic elements, principles, gods, and goddesses.
It seemed evident to the early historians of religion of recent times that this was due to anthropomorphism. In their opinion, as man had created his gods in his own image, (more…)
4,415 words
It is the fate of almost all religions to become, so to say, denatured; as they spread and develop, they gradually recede from their original spirit, and their more popular and spurious elements come to the fore, their less severe and essential features, those furthest removed from the metaphysical plane. While hardly any of the major historical religions have escaped this destiny, it would seem that it is particularly true of Buddhism. (more…)
Crow Screen, Japan, 17th century, Seattle Art Museum
3,639 words
Translator anonymous, ed. by Greg Johnson
Zen may be regarded as the last discovery of Western spiritualistic circles in sympathy with Oriental wisdom. (more…)
Peter Paul Rubens, “The Death of Seneca,” c. 1615, Museo del Prado, Madrid
3,577 words
Translation anonymous, ed. Greg Johnson
In these short notes I shall not attempt to deal with the question of the right to life in general, but with the right to one’s own life, which corresponds to the ancient formula of jus vitae necisque; it is the right to accept human existence or to put an end to it voluntarily. I intend to compare certain characteristic points of view which have been formulated in this connection in the East and in the West. However, the problem will not be considered from a social point of view, but rather from an interior spiritual one, whence it appears in the shape of a problem of responsibility only to our own selves. (more…)
2,963 words
Part 1 of 2
Translation anonymous, edited by Greg Johnson
Editor’s Note:
The following essay was originally published in English in East and West, vol. 9, no. 4 (1958): 349–55. This is chapter 15 of Julius Evola, East and West: Comparative Studies in Pursuit of Tradition, ed. Greg Johnson, (more…)
Nicholas Roerich, “Tibet, Himalayas,” 1933
2,150 words
Translated by Cologero Salvo
Given the confusions that abound in this area, it is opportune to clarify first what we mean, in general, by “initiatic centers” and “initiatic organizations.” (more…)
2,071 words
Editor’s Note:
We are presenting the following excerpts from Savitri Devi’s And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews in honor of the birthday of the great Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hedin (February 19, 1865–November 26, 1952). For a brief account of his life and work, see his Wikipedia article.
1,076 words
English original here
V polední době se objevila spousta spisů o postavě, o níž se, i přes její mimořádný význam ve vřavách první světové války, ví jen málo: mluvím o Romanu Mikolaji Maximilianu von Ungern-Sternbergovi.
Ferdinand Ossendowski byl prvním, kdo o něm, s využitím patřičných dramatizačních efektů, psal ve svém slavném a docela kontroverzním díle Bestie, lidé a bohové. (more…)
