Illustration of a firebird by Kay Nielsen in Hansel and Gretel & Other Stories (1925)
6,744 words
Yet more and greater ills by land remain.
The coast, so long desir’d . . .
Thy troops shall reach, but, having reach’d, repent.
Wars, horrid wars, I view a field of blood,
And Tiber rolling with a purple flood.
— The Æneid [1]
I hope Counter-Currents readers are enjoying the first flush of spring and continue to find moments of happiness despite all the petty Javerts in our midst. (more…)
Vasily Surikov, A God’s Fool Sitting on the Snow, 1885.
2,124 words
Before the American general election, my friends kept asking me who’d be the likely winner, Trump or Biden. My response, which infuriated everyone who got it, was usually some variation of “define winning.”
Do you mean who’ll win the most votes? Do you mean who’ll win the elections, presuming no shenanigans, which was a laughable proposition even before the evidence started pouring in for America’s advanced banana republicanism? (more…)
1,543 words
David Lynch’s 1992 movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is his prequel to the Twin Peaks series, which ran on ABC from 1990 to 1991. Fire Walk with Me was a flop with critics and moviegoers, except in Japan. This is unjust, because Fire Walk with Me is a very fine movie. I won’t say it is Lynch’s best work. That praise belongs to Blue Velvet alone. But the music to Fire Walk with Me is composer Angelo Badalamenti’s best work ever. (more…)
2,425 words
I feel like I grew up in Twin Peaks, the fictional Washington logging town that gave its name to David Lynch’s iconic TV series, which aired on ABC from the spring of 1990 to the spring of 1991. Twin Peaks has one of the best pilots in television history, which was followed by an abbreviated first season of seven episodes. (more…)
Winslow Homer, The Woodcutter, 1891.
6,121 words
I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods sometime in college. I found it more Flannery O’Connor than Marvel Studios, but it’s hardly surprising that the latter interpretation seems to have driven the new television series’ production team (but I haven’t watched). (more…)
Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: a modern take on the motifs of the weird nineteenth century.
5,476 words
It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie. [1]
Even below the Missouri-Compromise Line, the mornings now have a delicious coolness, faltering on the edge of a “chill,” and I found myself yearning for an old-fashioned, nineteenth-century ghost story. (more…)
Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page (right), Chicago, 1977.
2,100 words
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…)
5,583 words
Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels
Ostara and the New Templars
Translated by George Klanderud
GermanenOrden Series, vol. 4
The 55 Club, 2019
Deep-sea fish, bats, clairvoyant Frisians in foggy country, the saurian with the electrical central eye in an equally dim, misty world, the wise Nibelung-dwarves have a strange and conspicuous connection to the results of the most recent natural scientific research. (more…)
1,746 words
“My favorite singer out of all the British girls that ever were.”
— Robert Plant
I first came across the name Sandy Denny on the liner notes of the classic Led Zeppelin IV. (more…)
3,323 words
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…)
2,035 words
Sol Invictus, fronted by Tony Wakeford, is one of the “neofolk” scene’s best-known groups, alongside Death in June and Current 93. Sol Invictus emerged following Wakeford’s departure from Death in June — and later departure from controversial Above the Ruins — with a sound that progressively became lighter and more classically-inspired than most of what can be considered “neofolk.” (more…)
1,784 words
Released 12 years ago yesterday, March 3rd, 2008, Death in June’s The Rule of Thirds is a somber and introspective record that tussles with the concepts of aging and death, love lost, and the decay of the surrounding world. It’s recorded in the characteristic stripped-back, solemn, guitar-centric style of Douglas Pearce, Death in June’s sole constant member, (more…)
905 words
I recently went with a friend to deliver some groceries to a guy who had a medical problem and couldn’t get to the store. We went to this person’s house and found him on his couch, watching The Breakfast Club on video. (more…)
Eckhart Tolle
4,752 words
It would be no exaggeration to say that Eckhart Tolle is now the most popular “spiritual teacher” in the United States – and possibly the world. The New York Times and The Watkins Review have declared as such. And he has been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey. The actor Jim Carrey is also a big fan. Normally, this would be enough for me to completely dismiss someone, but in this case I cannot. (more…)
Hildegard von Bingen’s “finger of God”
4,074 words
Most people believe they have never had a mystical experience. This includes sceptics, of course – but also those who are quite open to the idea and who wonder, perhaps, why they have never been graced with one. However, the conclusions of both groups are usually based on misconceptions about what a mystical experience must be like. People imagine, for instance, that it involves visions of some kind, in which, perhaps, voices are heard or supernatural beings appear. (more…)
Yama, the Vedic god of death
4,058 words
Part I here, Part III here, Part IV here
The Katha Upanishad tells the story of a boy named Nachiketa whose father, Vajasravasa, decides to curry the favor of the gods by giving away his possessions. However, it seems that he was rather selective in what he gave up, only parting with things that were now useless to him. Nachiketa, who is quite pious, sees through his father’s insincerity: “What merit is there,” the boy asks, “in giving away cows that are too old to give milk?” This question, from a mere child, wounds Vajasravasa’s pride. Foolishly, Nachiketa persists: “To whom will you offer me?” he asks. Vajasravasa ignores the question at first, but when Nachiketa repeats it his father answers angrily, “To death I give you!” (more…)
Lord Vishnu as Vishvarupa, illustrating the three realms: heaven (head to belly), earth (groin), and underworld (legs). Painting c. 1800-50, Jaipur.
2,774 words
Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here
In this series of self-contained essays, I will offer an introduction to Vedanta, the philosophy of the Upanishads, through brief commentaries on individual Upanishads. These essays are geared toward individuals drawn to the path of Traditionalism – and especially the Left-Hand Path of Evolian Traditionalism.They place Vedanta in the context of Tradition. Further, they make clear the relevance of this path for those of us who are not just in revolt against the modern world, but who wish to live the ideal of “self-overcoming” – an ideal for all ages. (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…)
2,520 words
Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish
Jan Assmann
Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997
When I first read Jan Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian in June of 1997, it was a life-changing experience. Moses the Egyptian belongs to the rarest genre of academic books: the bold and exciting ones. (more…)
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…)
Friedrich Schelling, 1775–1854
3,778 words
Translation anonymous, edited by Greg Johnson
Editor’s Note:
The following essay was originally published in English in East and West, vol. 9, nos. 2 & 3 (1960): 182–86. This is chapter 18 of Julius Evola, East and West: Comparative Studies in Pursuit of Tradition, ed. Greg Johnson, forthcoming from Counter-Currents in the summer of 2013.
Great Eleusis Frieze, Eleusis Museum, Greece, late 5th c. BCE
9,609 words
Translated by Bruno Cariou
It is not easy, today, to give an exact idea of what is meant by Initiation and to define the figure of the ‘Initiate’. The main difficulty lies in the necessity of referring to a vision of the world and man, and to structures, which belong essentially to traditional civilisations, distant from the present one, not only from the modern mentality and culture, but also, to a large extent, from the religion which has come to predominate in the West.
7,812 words
Editor’s Note:
What follows are selections from Confessions of an Anti-Feminist: The Autobiography of Anthony M. Ludovici, ed. John V. Day, ch. 4, “My Education, II (1910–1916).” (more…)
7,634 words
1. Une fausse connaissance
Il y a aujourd’hui ceux qui souhaitent faire revenir l’humanité (ou une portion de l’humanité) à une foi plus ancienne, préchrétienne. (more…)
7,911 words
