Tag: J. R. R. Tolkien

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The editors of Counter-Currents have recently shared their findings that, among other interesting facts, females make up about one-third of the readership here. There are apparently quite a few Dissident-Right women who swim in our waters, and therefore a need exists for some un-feminist, but “woman-positive” readings that mine our traditional canon and seek to shape the future of femininity.

I don’t usually write about “female things,” and that’s not really on purpose. I find history, war, and a mostly male cast of authors interesting, and I always have. (more…)

6,299 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Dante’s Inferno

Dante Alighieri’s conceptual map of Hell also lay at the intersection where biblical and classical ideas about the afterlife crossed. Virgil, fellow Italian poet and ancient Roman author of the Æneid, accompanied him during much of his journey, for Virgil was someone who had imagined his own hero Aeneas successfully navigating the underworld. (more…)

Terror Antiquus, L. Bakst (1908)

6,674 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Prologue: Little Pine Lake

The first time I got lost, it was because of a map. It was Easter in my grandparents’ home of Marshall, Texas, and during that golden-age glow that now suffuses the nineties. (more…)

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“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)

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The year was 939 AD, the setting near the city of Simancas. Count Fernán Gonzalez, a commander of free Spain, rode at the head of an army whose mission was to strike a blow against the Saracen invaders of Al-Andalus. Still, they were outnumbered and desperate. Fortune, it seemed, would favor the Moors on this day. But as the Count’s troops prepared to clash with their foe, a miracle occurred. (more…)

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As recent American political events have demonstrated, the modern political Left can no longer be seen as making any legitimate contribution to philosophy, culture, politics, society, and so on. (more…)

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The singer Édith Piaf famously, and throatily, regretted nothing about anything. But the poet John Betjeman wished that he’d had more sex. And the economist John Maynard Keynes that he’d drunk more champagne. Me? I regret two things much more important than recreational sex or champagne. (more…)

“Off with her head!” An original illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1864)

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The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree.

— D. H. Lawrence

A question, readers: what is the most profound of all human activities? With the previous sentence, I’ve already provided the answer, for it is the question itself — the thing that drives all exploration and philosophy. How can philosophy (or any knowledge) exist without first the riddle, the profound need for the answer? (more…)

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“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)

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En af mine foretrukne dele af Ringenes Herre er Sjette Bog, kapitel 8, ”Rengøring i Herredet”, det næstsidste kapitel i Kongen vender Tilbage. (more…)

Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page (right), Chicago, 1977.

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Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

— “Going to California”

Led Zeppelin’s back catalog already includes songs like “Ramble On” from the rocky Led Zeppelin II and the melancholic classic “Tangerine” from the flower-powered III. (more…)

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Owen Barfield
History in English Words
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1926

In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.

— Owen Barfield (more…)