Paul Christensen's Blog, page 4
February 5, 2021
The Hermetic Circle
C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Book of Two Friendships by Miguel SerranoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is indelibly etched on my soul. Every time I read it I learn something new about myself. The Aureate Chain, the Hermetic Circle, where only the right guests meet, is real and I am part of it.
One of Serrano’s central themes is whether the white man can accept the co-existence of light and shadow, yet without losing his individuality as the Hindu has.
The answer hinted at is a projection of his soul both inward and outward, creating the Total Man, whose role is to illuminate the darkness of the creator.
I explored this idea to some degree in my book ‘The Reveries of the Dreamking.’
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The Principles of Art
The Principles of Art by R.G. CollingwoodMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
'If the Arts should perish
The world that lacked them would be like a woman
That, looking on the cloven lips of a hare,
Brings forth a hare-lipped child.'
- W.B. Yeats
Or as Collingwood has it, ‘art is not a luxury and bad art is not a thing we can afford to tolerate.’
Art is language; language emerged from imagination, the second stage of consciousness, not intellect, the third stage; but unlike everyday language, art don’t tolerate cliches.
To know good art requires an uncorrupt consciousness.
’But no one can know this except a person who possesses one. An insincere mind, so far as it is insincere, has no conception of sincerity.’
No artist is an island, and Collingwood thinks copyright laws are bad. Memes, the most vital form of contemporary art (not saying much), bear this out.
Collingwood thinks the relationship between artist and audience vital, and forms that separates them too much, e.g. cinema as opposed to live theatre, he thinks incapable of creating a truly great art (this is contestable).
Future art should be prophetic, telling the audience the secrets of their own hearts.
‘Art is the community’s medicine for the worst disease of mind, the corruption of consciousness.’
The true artist is in constant warfare against this corruption.
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February 1, 2021
The Metaphysics of Sex
Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex by Julius EvolaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
‘In Indo-Aryan morals, a lie was only allowed for the purpose of saving a human life, or in love…’
Evola’s sex book is ‘a search for the first principles and fundamental meaning of what is signified by the sexes and their interaction.’ Does he penetrate this seemingly bottomless mystery? Well, he does throw some light into the abyss.
Evola believes that only metaphysics can illuminate sex, not psychology or biology (‘eros cannot be explained by biology’); and the metaphysics of sex, he maintains, is bound up with the polarity of the two sexes.
The sexual instinct is not the instinct for reproduction, as shown by primitive peoples who don’t associate birth with coitus. As Klages put it: ‘Reproduction is a possible outcome of sexual activity but is not in any way included in the actual experience of sexual excitement.’
Schopenhauer’s idea of the ‘Genius of the Species’ is dismissed, for often the strongest attraction is between those who shouldn’t breed. Also, primitive races breed more prolifically than refined ones. In a rare moment of humour, Evola suggests that the ‘Genius of the Species’ is in need of an education…
Evola believes in involution (the opposite of evolution) and holds that sexuality in animals is merely ‘the fall and regression of an impulse that does not belong to biology.’ (Additionally, many lifeforms reproduce asexually).
‘Before and besides existing in the body, sex exists in the soul and, to a certain extent, in the spirit itself.’ As sex precedes the physical, thus the division of divinity into gods and goddesses is not mere anthropomorphism.
Females can’t be regarded as either inferior or superior (in a general sense) because ‘water and fire have no common measure’. Feminism degenerates women by forcing them to measure against a false standard, against a nature which is not proper or genuine to them.
The energy of the deeper plane undermines antipathies of character; as the Joker says to Batman (in a non-sexual context): ‘You complete me…’ This is the Hermaphrodite of Plato’s Symposium, the Cosmic Egg of Miguel Serrano. What we call sexual love is the longing for this unity, but how does this differ from lower Hermaphrodites like molluscs? Was the Flood necessary?
Evola differs from Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, because he doesn’t recognise homosexualism as a valid reflection of the cosmic egg. He contends that homosexualism is mere mutual masturbation rather than ‘true union based on the magnetism of their polarly differentiated beings’. (The climax of masturbation is often followed by a depressed state, unlike true coitus).
The male reflects form, the female reflects matter (Evola uses the Greek term for ‘matter’, which means something like ‘potentiality’); under the Seven Veils, the naked woman represents substance freed of all form in its virgin and ultimate state.
‘It is true that the fascination of woman’s nakedness has a dizzying aspect like that caused by emptiness and the bottomless, the raw material of creation, and the ambiguity of its nonbeing. This characteristic belongs to female nakedness alone. The effect of the naked male on woman is not only small in comparison but […] essentially physical and phallic.’
Although the greatest reserves of fresh sexual energy are present in the morning, the night is most common for coupling because profane love contains transcendent phenomena.
Yet the real woman, possessed by the man, fails to yield the absolute.
Consider the case of Don Juan, possessing woman after woman in an endless tormented search for that which will always elude him (in the oldest versions of the legend, he isn’t damned but withdraws to a monastery).
Medieval chivalry, on the other hand (as Evola shows somewhat convincingly) dealt with the imaginal inner woman, not flesh and blood woman.
Man’s truest end purpose, according to Evola, is to ‘surpass in his inner being the form and limit of the individual.’ This is the mystical wedding. ‘Love arises from and dwells in the sky of Mars, not of Venus (who comes from and dwells with Mars).’
Thus the number of love is the male number 3, and its perfect derivatives 9 and 81 recur again and again in the literature of love.
On modern ‘gynocracy’, he notes that ‘modern women is both exhibitionist and frigid,’ and that ‘a universal interest in sex and woman is the mark of every twilight period.’
But, dawn is coming.
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The Ultimate Flower
The Ultimate Flower by Miguel SerranoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Serrano’s most South American work, saturated with the esoteric history of that continent, from the Giants of the Moon and City of the Caesars, to El Caleuche, the ship that sails beneath the surface of the ocean with all its lights on. ‘The Ultimate Flower’ is a beautiful, haunting work, and a crucial key for understanding the rest of Serrano’s oeuvre.
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The Visits of the Queen of Sheba
The Visits of the Queen of Sheba by Miguel SerranoMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Like all Serrano’s work this is not to be merely read once, but absorbed into the blood.
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January 29, 2021
Hogwash and Balderdash
Hogwash & Balderdash by Troy SouthgateMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Troy Southgate is known for co-founding National-Anarchism and thus pissing off a lot of Marxist filth who had infiltrated the anarchist movement. However, he has also written this completely absurd collection of Neo-Victorian rhymes. The blurb cites Edward Lear as an influence, but I would say Roald Dahl's 'Dirty Beasts' and 'Revolting Rhymes' are a better comparison.
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The Wanderings Of Oisin And Other Poems
The Wanderings Of Oisin And Other Poems by W.B. YeatsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Oisin journeys to three islands representing feeling, combat and repose, ‘the three incompatible things man is always seeking.’
(This is also mirrored in Yeats’ three ‘Rose’ poems, ‘The Rose of the World’, ‘The Rose of Battle’ and ‘The Rose of Peace’, and on a more mundane level in the labour movement - eight hours work, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.)
I don’t like the way the rhythm changes dramatically in the third section, like the time change in an ‘80s glam rock song; it makes the poem feel unbalanced. Other than that, an incredible work for a 22 year old scribe.
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January 28, 2021
The Cycle of Nine
The Cycle of Nine by Juleigh Howard-HobsonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
'The Cycle of Nine' is an excellent poetic work dealing with cycles, darkness, rebirth, with its titular cycle of nine poems forming the centrepiece of a riveting collection.
The poetess Juleigh Howard-Hobson has a unique gift for feeling inside nature, evoking its inner essences. This is poetry for a time when secrets long hidden emerge into the light of dawn (as is now starting to happen), and even hints at a return of the gods ('Shield Wall').
Recommended for "those who strain to see the rays of the Black Sun."
Support our folkish poets.
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