https://synlogos.org Mon, 12 Oct 2026 02:15:14 +0000 Mon, 12 Oct 2026 02:15:14 +0000 30 SYNLOGOS main synlogos@protonmail.com (SYNLOGOS main) SYNLOGOS RSS feed aggregator feed SYNLOGOS main and content to respective authors https://synlogos.org/favicon-96x96.pnghttps://synlogos.org Christian Based https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-11-100-year-old-ww2-vet/ The sun’s morning chores began in Rome at 07:16. They ended at 18:37. The Ave Maria Bell cycle for the Curia has changed to 18:45. There are only 82 days left in the calendar year. It is the Feast of … Read More → Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:21:17 +0000 efee4518aac78b9bca9c48de7e80e227b1425d0a https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/11/barnhardt-podcast-264-satan-in-drag/ Download MP3 File In this episode. the Tombstone Four discuss the Kayfabe quality of Trump’s second term. and Ann floats the idea that Trump “turned heel” in the second term. not unlike Hulk Hogan in the late 1990’s. We then discuss the attack on Our Lord’s very divinity at the Amoris Laetitia [in classical Latin. (…) Sun, 11 Oct 2026 20:03:29 +0000 935ab1fd56dd99ff4754f4b8209b70bdb18a61e2 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes-the-invitation As usual. my priest gives good homily. Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:59:25 +0000 a8f6ce1a2b8d6c5e95a4fd18eccd48a34d44f9e3 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/god-and-all-that-jazz.html Yesterday’s post pushed the bipolar architecture of Cosmos and Anthropos into the Theos and made the case for openness. relationality. and movement as divine perfections rather than privations. Thus. it is beginning to look like there is tripolarity between Cosmos. Anthropos. and Theos. If so. then we may be on the verge of locating the Cosmic Area Rug that ties the whole existentialada together while leaving nothing out. The dynamic Structure of Being. as it were.I don’t see how that’s possible.Why not.Because you have 300 pages to go.That’s true. As I said. I haven’t examined the file for Book III in a few months. so there must be a lot of remaining ins and outs to this cosmotheandrism business. The following section may contain a recycled passage from Book II. but who can remember that many words ago.∞In a Thomistic treatise on the nature of God. T.J. Walsh rightly states that on the one hand “absurd ideas such as that of a ‘square circle’ have no relation to being.” so it is not so much that God cannot make one as that such a thing simply does not and cannot exist. But in the next breath he says that “God can infallibly move the human will to come to a free decision” [emphasis mine].No offense to our competitors. because I never knock the other fellow’s merchandise. but I can do just as well for you. I have a very attractive theory here. and it wouldn’t take me two minutes to put it in front of you.Go ahead. Make your telovator pitch.Okay. a truly free decision that is infallibly determined by someone else is no longer free. and can no more exist than a square circle. Influence our decisions. No problemo. But infallibly determine our free decisions. Un problemo grande. because then God is determining even. say. our defiance of. or hostility to. him.That makes God the author of atheism.Let’s take another example of a theological blunder that is not only a turnoff to the intellect but even a heavy bummer to common decency. Suppose you see a child running into a busy street. You are not some uptight moralist. so you decide not to intervene based upon the lofty principle that you want to respect the child’s freedom and autonomy. Besides. supposing the child is run over. you’ll find a way to pull some good out of it.This is. of course. deficient moral reasoning. for no one is permitted to allow an easily prevented evil from occurring. And yet it is routinely attributed to the omnipotent God who has the power to stop both retail and industrial scale evils — say. the Holocaust — but refrains from doing so.Perhaps he has his reasons.Charles Manson had his reasons too. but that’s not an excuse. it’s an indictment. The White Album is not the recipe for a race war. rather. just the sound of a band breaking up. A human being is not permitted to treat another human being as a means to an end. because there is no higher moral end than human life. But if God allows evil because he’s going to pull something better out of it. isn’t he using us as a means to his inscrutable ends.This is not to say that God doesn’t pull chestnuts of good from the fires of evil. only saying that he is in no way implicated in the original evil. because he doesn’t have that kind of power. In short. instead of having all the power. He is the most powerful. but even the most powerful cannot do the impossible. for example. knowing ahead of time what a genuinely free creature will do. or creating something or someone separate from oneself while still exerting total control over it.Insert Jewish mother joke here.Our free choices are not predetermined but nor do they happen in a void. Rather. they are shaped by. and ultimately ordered to. what we have called the Great Attractor in a vertical and hyperdimensional phase space.Well. that’s a fancy way of saying nothing.Only if there is no such thing as teleology. which — you will pardon the double negative — is simply another of the things that Cannot Not Be. both in the Cosmos and Anthropos. For again. science in no way disproves teleology. and as a matter of fact. cannot avoid it. Absent a teleological element it would be impossible to even identify a cause of any kind. The attempt to completely eliminate teleology in favor of blind mechanical necessity is an expedient scientific piety. for the moment a scientist attempts to examine such a system. he has already performed a highly selective. purposeful act. On the one hand. this involves the imposition of a top-down. meaning-seeking framework onto nature. but then turning around and claiming the system proves that no such top-down meaning exists.However. if a cause has a reliable effect. this means that the present is ordered to the future. as in Robert Rosen’s anticipatory systems discussed in Book II. There must already exist an overarching. continuous field of intelligibility that bridges the “now” and the “not yet.” without which science is inconceivable. Which implies that the relational Aboutness of things isn’t just present in space but time. Or spacetime rather. In other words. the Area Rug is held together by a nonlocal relationality. i.e.. a substance-in-relation in both space and time.Perhaps scientists have their reasons for ignoring teleology.Experienced from our side. teleology is the asymptotic arrow pointing toward the transcendent pole of being. In its absence. then nothing can make sense. including science. For again. science can only pretend to eliminate two of the four causes required to explain anything. in particular. the Why.For purely methodological purposes — note the word — it is fine to look at things in terms of material and efficient causes only. in the same way your orthopedic surgeon doesn’t need to concern himself with your dreams and aspirations in order to repair a broken bone in your coccyx. Once the bone heals then you can do anything you wanna do. from hunting for wolverines in Alaska to throwing a football over them mountains. from drawing your favorite animal to making yourself a dang quesadilla.To cultivate some skills that girls might like.Sure — cage fighting. nunchuck skills. bo hunting skills. computer hacking skills. catching a delicious bass. whatever.Clarke says something similar vis-à-vis the workings of providence. which operate “by persuasion. by luring to the good — not by coercion.” Thus.God determines the general set of goals He wishes to achieve. the goals at which He aims the universe and knows that in general He will be able to achieve by His suasive power. but does not determine ahead of time in detail just whether or how each particular creature will achieve its share or not in this overall goal.Like the Wright Brothers. just because they invented human flight. you can’t blame them for airplane crashes. much less flight delays. Likewise. God provides the space for. and the ultimate destination of. our vertical flight. but we are the ones in the cockpit. for better or worse.This is not a deist God. because God is still quite active. only more in the sense of a final rather than efficient causes. operating more from the top-down or future-to-present rather than the past-forward or bottom-up: “Divine providence unfolds by constant instantaneous ‘improvisation’ of the divine mind and will — from his always contemporaneous eternal now — precisely to fit the actual ongoing activities. especially the free ones. of the creaturely players in the world drama” [ibid.].This simultaneously acknowledges and reconciles our real freedom with God’s power. forGod does not “foresee.” from his point of view. anything: He only sees what is going on. and acts accordingly. In a word. predestination does not and could not imply total predetermination. It leaves a large dose of indetermination. to be made determinate — not ahead of time. independently. but only contemporaneous with the actual ongoing development of the world [ibid.].Could the principle of this dynamism be grounded in an open and relational Godhead. Yes. because the triune Godhead of cosmotheandrism [expressed in Christian terms] “illustrates how God’s own inner life is already rich in infinite self-expression by the Father’s total gift of His own being to the Son” [ibid.]. And if creation is patterned after this dynamic archetype. then it is “purely out of the joy of giving that this divine inner life can pour over to share itself with creatures.”Consider just this single example. wherein John tells us that the Word became flesh. But he also says that this Word is God. Therefore it ineluctably follows that God became.QED.Yes. the case for openness is closed. for it means that God cannot be immutable. full stop. rather. is capable of becoming.Moreover. Clarke adds that “in some real and genuine way God is affected positively by what we do.” even though he “does not become a more or less perfect being because of the love we return to Him” [ibid.]. Certainly he must have been affected by becoming one of us. If not. then that is one rigid personality.The point is. relation is not an imperfection in God. any more than it is for human beings. Rather it is “precisely a dimension of the perfection of personal being as lovingly responsive.” Clarke compares God to “the Great Jazz Player. improvising creatively as history unfolds.” Thus. “The complete script of our lives is not written anywhere ahead of time. before it happens. but only as it actually happens. by God and ourselves working it out together in our actual ongoing now’s.” That is cosmotheandrism in a notshall. because we are free not to do what we shall — such as shall not murder. lie. steal. et al. Why even issue commandments for what we shall or shan’t inevitably do anyway.In another essay. Clarke bottom-lines it for us in describing how “God as the ultimate One now appears as both the Alpha and the Omega. the Beginning and the End. at once the Source and the Goal of the restless dynamism of all of nature. of all finite beings.” The structure of this “total journey” is “in the form of a circle.” the Great Circle of Cosmotheandrism whereby “In the emergence of creatures from their first source is revealed a kind of circular movement. in which all things return. as to their end. back to the very place from which they had their origin in the first place” [Thomas. in Clarke].So. it seems we’re always already in the place toward which we are striving. only now finally knowing it for the first time. Sun, 11 Oct 2026 17:34:19 +0000 5cf8cfaa6c9e231fc08e517e94a24ff9ff393405 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/11/grok-more-catholic-than-the-antipope/ My only quibble is that last phrase from Grok. In trying to reconcile the heresy with perennial Catholic teaching. it uses the term “development of doctrine” instead of outright calling it heretical. Note that Prevost grounds his heresy in the inviolable dignity of the human person. which is precisely the thing that God cites to … Continue reading 'Grok more Catholic than the antipope' Sun, 11 Oct 2026 16:38:22 +0000 09824736710e7c42b92ed827c9f322f3a0501ac0 https://voxday.net/2026/10/11/how-biologists-keep-proving-selection/ There’s a reliable pattern playing out here again. I probably shouldn’t be surprised by it anymore at this point. but the shamelessness amazes me every time Athos and I catch them at it. Again. When the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium published their “complete” genome comparison in 2005. they reported that humans and chimpanzees share (…) The post How Biologists Keep “Proving” Selection appeared first on Vox Popoli. Sun, 11 Oct 2026 14:13:57 +0000 0a3ad510163e236d4e55345bc8de54ea77571dd8 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/friday-ta-fuelled-edition.html Yes. this is late again. and that is because I was at a concert on Friday. and then spent most of Saturday recovering. If you have ever been to a death metal concert – never mind a Viking death metal concert – you know how much that takes out of you. especially as you get (…) The post Friday TandA: Fuelled Edition appeared first on Didactic Mind. Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:31:56 +0000 3339c2e73ffd124a9e45e5e4640322e664a10be5 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/this-is-what-i-get-when-i-procrastinate/ This is what I get when I procrastinate… Peter K beat me to it. He’s right on all three counts.  That decree from the Bishop of Gaylord is a complete joke founded on… let it be said… a lie.   There … Read More → Sun, 11 Oct 2026 12:18:48 +0000 ef029a8a8f3c2fa9e8efa8dedcdc2cd17b82bc27 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/breaking-pope-to-undergo-surgery-to.html Sun, 11 Oct 2026 10:43:56 +0000 b7b111db2ce482a3c0539c1bc7bd4a85d232dc27 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/10/robert-fludd-and-mirror-of-nature.html   One of my favourite images is Robert Fludd’s engraving Integrae Naturae Speculum Artisque Imago [The Mirror of Whole Nature and the Image of Art] which comes from his book Utriusque Cosmi.... or Metaphysical History of the Two Worlds which was published between 1617 and 1621. The two worlds are macrocosm and microcosm. the universe and man. Here is that famous picture in a colourised version which may appal the purists but helps to identify detail.One is first of all struck by the female figure. She is clearly not the Virgin Mary. the usual feminine figure in Western religious art so who is she. Here I would like to examine just who and what she is. and use that as a jumping off point to look at the rest of the image in terms of the masculine and feminine poles of being because it sums up just what these are better than anything else I know. The image is a visual representation of the hierarchical nature of the manifested cosmos. and it shows the twin polarities of being as they are expressed in the field of creation. Here we have clearly delineated the metaphysical structure and relationship of the Transcendent Father [Spirit]. the Immanent Mother [Matter]. and the human being in a precise cosmic map.There are three levels of this cosmic layout. At the apex of the vertical axis sits the Tetragrammaton [the Name of God]. surrounded by a dark cloud radiating pure. unconditioned light. This is the Transcendent Source or Unmanifested Pole which represents the supreme masculine principle—the self-existent. independent root of being that sits outside and above the concentric circles of the manifested universe. It includes the formless Logos and originating Will that has its being entirely in itself.Descending from the divine cloud is a vertical chain held by the hand of God. This chain is attached to the right wrist of a cosmic woman crowned with stars. She is the anima mundi or soul of the world who stands spanning the earthly and celestial spheres. and she represents the Immanent Feminine Principle or Nature in her universal aspect. She is not the self-existent source but the contingent reflection. Her posture embodies the sacred sequence of submission and containment. Her right hand. the vertical link is passively raised. chained to the Transcendent Father. showing that she derives her being. authority. and life-spark downward from the vertical axis. Her left hand which is the down stepping conduit holds a second chain that descends to the arm of a small monkey who sits on top of the central terrestrial globe. This monkey represents human art and intellect.Nature acts as the cosmic transformer. She takes the formless fire of the Father and uses her macrocosmic body which includes the nested concentric rings of the elements. planets. and stars. for all this emanates from her body to shape. contain. and crystallise that power of the Father into an ordered material reality. His word shapes her substance. At the centre of the image is the Earth. the dense and lowest point of the horizontal plane which is where the light that flows down from the Father and through the receptive womb of Mother Nature reaches the physical world. When that hierarchy is respected order and harmony prevail. but when it is neglected then disorder makes an appearance because the sacred has been disrupted.Fludd's engraving is a pictorial rejection of modern horizontal and egalitarian materialistic flattening. It demonstrates that the vertical axis must hold structural superiority because it is the thread that keeps the material worlds from collapsing into a chaotic vacuum. Mother Nature does not try to usurp the position of the cloud. She honours her duty as the divine vessel. ensuring that the self-existent. primary law of the transcendent Father is properly held. shaped. and anchored into the fabric of space and time. Moving from the terrestrial centre toward the outer rim. Fludd lays out the geocentric planetary rings from the Moon to Saturn. In spiritual terms these spheres are not just the physical planets. they are the cosmic transformers of the Anima Mundi. As the supernal light of the Father comes down the vertical axis. it passes through each planetary ring. each one of which acts as a filter. slowing down the frequency. imprinting it with a specific vibration. and stepping it down so that it does not vaporise physical matter.Likewise. for the individual soul undergoing the training of the Masters. these spheres represent initiatory checkpoints. To return home along the vertical axis. the consciousness must climb back up through these rings and pass the tests of the emotional vehicle [Moon]. master analytical discrimination [Mercury]. transform desire into love [Venus]. achieve integration of the heart and spiritual sovereignty [Sun]. learn wisdom. benevolence and justice [Jupiter] and endure the structural discipline. restrictive pressure and final humility of the boundary line [Saturn]. The planetary spheres ensure that the path of return is an orderly. geometric ascent. preventing the soul from dissolving into chaotic. unstructured mysticism.At the apex of the vertical column. inside the radiant cloud. sits the Tetragrammaton representing the First Person of the Trinity. the source of Will and Power that commands time. space and phenomenal being into existence.Fludd and his engraver/publisher Johann Theodor de Bry demonstrate visually that the First Person cannot touch the lower three worlds directly. He remains enclosed within the sacred cloud of unmanifested positivity. His being and energy must be funnelled down the vertical chain into the wrist of the Feminine Principle or Nature who acts as the primary transformer to hold. shape. and distribute the power of God through the cosmos.At the centre of the image. sitting on top of the terrestrial globe [Animalia. Vegetabilia. Mineralia]. the small monkey holds a compass which Fludd calls Art mimicking Nature. The monkey is man and the compass stands for his creative work as expressed through the divine order of geometry. Without that compass and the higher connection it symbolises as it measures divine law into concrete form the work of man becomes destructive because it is separated from the source.In Western esoteric thought the Anima Mundi is not an abstract concept. She is the universal being that bridges the gap between unmanifested Spirit and physical Matter. and. as such. the intermediary between the pure spirit of God in the formless cloud and the material world. She mediates his energy so that it can manifest on lower levels. and this is shown by the fact that her head touches the starry heavens while her feet rest upon the earth thereby connecting the top of the hierarchy of manifestation with the bottom. Her right hand and upper body are aligned with the heavens. chained to the unmanifested Source. showing her essence to be purely spiritual and deriving its light and life-spark directly from the Father. At the same time. as the mother of the physical world. her lower body and womb are positioned over the terrestrial spheres. She takes the formless spiritual fire of the Father and translates it into the concentric rings of the elements and planets. so organising the physical laws of nature.When all is said and done everything is spirit. We may think of the unmanifested source as like vapour—pure. unconditioned. formless Spirit. This is stepped down to the Anima Mundi where this spirit becomes like flowing water. The Anima Mundi is the intermediate matrix that catches the vapour and carries the divine blueprints from the Logos through space to the etheric and astral planes. the fluid. psychic. and energetic levels of being where substance is not yet locked into rigid shapes but highly mobile. permeable. and constantly flowing.We then come to physical matter where originating spirit has become like solid ice. It is not a different substance than the water. it is simply the water itself brought down to its lowest possible temperature and frozen into a dense. rigid structure which includes our familiar solids. liquids and gases. the final crystallisation of the cosmic substance. It is the time-bound realm of rigid boundaries.The etheric plane holds the invisible. energetic grid or template upon which the dense physical ice congeals. The astral plane holds the emotional desires and cosmic magnetism that draw the atomic particles together. The Anima Mundi catches the formless vapour of pure spirit descending down through the vertical chain and from her fluid water-matrix distributes the blueprints down into the physical world.Therefore. matter is simply the outermost garment of the World Soul. Physical matter is universal spirit operating at its slowest. most dense. and highly crystallised vibrational frequency.The Anima Mundi is the form-building matrix. She acts as the macrocosmic womb of manifestation and as such takes the formless ideas of the Divine Mind and spins them into form. first as etheric blueprints which then congeal into physical objects. plants. animals. minerals. Matter derives its being from her and is sustained by her life force.Returning to the engraving. we see concentric rings branching upward and outward directly above the three foundational kingdoms of Mineralia. Vegetabilia. Animalia. These show how formless spirit is gradually crystallised into physical reality in the formation of the cosmos. and we will consider them in the next post.  Sun, 11 Oct 2026 10:42:53 +0000 5bb75543c83665b594a98ec681f9e92a90ea90f9 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/11/satan-is-extra-pissed-today-its-the-feast-of-the-motherhood-of-mary/ Remember. Lucifer rebelled against God because Lucifer wanted and thought he deserved to be the vector through which the Second Person of the Triune Godhead incarnated into the world. Put simply. Lucifer wanted to be what Mary is: the Co-Redeemer/Redemptrix and Queen of Heaven and Earth. It’s totally speculative. but he might have expected to (…) Sun, 11 Oct 2026 10:15:25 +0000 9ec57c5fdd6b728533924a1a1f1c1ce8d0613634 https://voxday.net/2026/10/11/zs-time-is-up/ The major players are signaling that it’s time for the Kiev regime to jettison the war dwarf and surrender: Ukraine should replace Vladimir Zelensky. US President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday. accusing the Ukrainian leader of refusing peace deals with Russia and worsening global diesel shortages. “I think it’s time (…) The post Z’s Time is Up appeared first on Vox Popoli. Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:35:19 +0000 adeee3f7357feb3c0689e44af7615b036e211837 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/st-bridgets-vision-about-bad-pope.html Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:30:00 +0000 1fc54c25db0f2c0c4a147667ae0ce9506bf843a7 https://onepeterfive.com/in-illo-tempore-20th-sunday-after-pentecost/ Context is always important. as I am wont to say.  For example. where are we in the liturgical year on this 20th Sunday after Pentecost.  Historically. in an earlier reckoning before the concretization of seasons. this was the 5th Sunday after the feast of St. Cyprian.  Bl. Ildefonso Schuster explains that Rome once reckoned Sundays ... Read more Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:28:00 +0000 91ae0efa1ed3a544eb835fb24b8d83a376cf3598 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/11-october-maternity-of-mary-a-tale-of-an-antiphon-image-and-a-little-street-chapel/ It is the 20th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo calendar.  It is also the Feast of the Maternity of Mary established by Pope Pius XI for the universal Church in 1931. commemorating the fifteenth centenary of the Council … Read More → Sun, 11 Oct 2026 07:59:03 +0000 c377ecdfa26afab2e584401bb50c344e760606ab https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/once-more-exposing-protestant-retardation Exhibit 79.000 in an infinite series Sun, 11 Oct 2026 03:49:10 +0000 23d8ac0324ef4d2e322bb3d10968749223042a68 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-10-butcher-baker-no-candlestick-maker-sorry/ A glimpse at my usual butcher shop.  I stopped in for some chicken for Sunday roasting with vegetables.  Campo de Fiori. And at the corner nearby. the bakery where Nancy Silverton had her bread epiphany. Behind S. Maria sopra Minerva … Read More → Sun, 11 Oct 2026 02:00:18 +0000 7365907e451cad7cd87d48fae8a2902f35d5ecd7 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/in-this-jubilee-year-of-st-francis-let.html Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:53:18 +0000 8af6692a48bba03a1614602ccee9fdcad8d4484d https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/not-tired-of-winning-yet-cclxvii/ Fact Sheet: Trump Administration Announces the Most Ambitious Set of Science Initiatives This Century Trump’s Golden Age summit unveiled roughly S6 BILLION in scientific initiatives and commitments. Eleven technology companies pledged S2.4 billion in computing resources for AI-driven discoveries. Another S215 million competition targets fault-tolerant quantum computing. Researchers are pursuing S1.8 billion in virtual-cell technology (…) Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:29:49 +0000 12d53e95ae532d2bd18c09f426026904bd3853ed https://voxday.net/2026/10/10/sink-the-ships-or-dont-survive/ All of the politicians profess to be horrified by a combat veteran pointing out the completely obvious about the invasion of Britain. The commander who led the land operation to liberate the Falklands has triggered a furore by saying that boats carrying migrants across the Channel should be machine-gunned. ‘I would shoot them.’ Major-General Julian (…) The post Sink the Ships or Don’t Survive appeared first on Vox Popoli. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 23:28:07 +0000 7c6d1387390b2f578dedbb5f559287fb98854d11 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/triple-a-gaming-deserves-to-die.html The latest triple-A game to launch and faceplant. HARD. has been. of course. Gears of War: E-Day. The independent media has been full of news about just how bad things have gotten for that game – and. weirdly enough. this is one game where the backlash is. at first glance. very strange. Apparently. this is (…) The post Triple-A gaming deserves to die appeared first on Didactic Mind. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 23:28:01 +0000 9d9c492b51bce0867c81d67e316b137f6a12d897 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/10/10/hebrews-414-510/ Re: Naked Bible 183: Hebrews 4:14-5:10 Our High Priest is also the ultimate sacrifice that brings us into the Presence of God. If you come to Him. you cannot be turned away. That’s because Jesus is the only High Priest … Continue reading → Sat, 10 Oct 2026 20:30:41 +0000 9228418a14f157ad774733a3bc9f5f1ebcd029e6 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/and-yet-it-moves.html The previous post concluded with the strictly orthoparadoxical image of an immutably mutable ground of being that is simultaneously Big Noun and Big Verb. As a result. there can be no boredom in Celestial Central. because there’s always more where that came from.If we think about how and why this is the case. it is because our cosmotheandric axioms of openness. complementarity [e.g. Absolute and Infinite]. and substance-in-relation are irreducible to anything less. both within and beyond the Cosmos and Anthropos.Ultimate reality is not so much self-subsistent as it is self-and-other-subsistent. which accounts for the contingent otherness of creation itself. which is other than. but not separate from. our ultimate Principle. The freedom in and of the Cosmos is “grounded in the freedom of God.” such that the “open character and endless spontaneity and surprise” herebelow are “ultimately explicable only from beyond.” in the “divine rationality and its inexhaustible source of possibility” [Torrance].Thus. for cosmotheandrism the possibilities — of novel actualities — are endless.You seem to have all the answers.Cosmotheandrism is indeed the ultimate answer to the eternal question we can never finally answer. Which is simply another way of saying Axiom 6. the dynamic complementarity of Ultimacy and Ultimate.∞Like the Cosmos and Anthropos. the Theos is either open or closed. But the Cosmos is of course open. this being because the Theos is first and always already open.Again. cosmotheandrism is by definition open for isness. because a principle of openness is woven into the Cosmic Area Rug. or rather. the warp and weft of everything is Absolute and Infinite. Because of the latter. the Theos couldn’t be enclosed if it wanted to be. for “God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop.” whether it is a scientific or religious dam. “Where there is isness. there God is” [Eckhart]. and isness leaks out all over the place.Speaking only of Christianity. there is again an irreducible principle of openness and relationality in the triune Godhead. It is always possible to go too far in taking things too far. but we’re just taking this principle one step further in suggesting that the Cosmos is open to God. and vice versa. The Cosmos isn’t “adjacent” to God but pervaded by God.This does not equate to pantheism — as if God is the Cosmos — rather. affirms that God is both transcendent and immanent. the latter because of the former. In other words. by its nature transcendence escapes its own bounds and spills over into everything. Sayeth the Meister. Where there is isness. there God is. Creation is the giving of isness from God.So God is MIA.Correct: a Master of Isness Administration: “If you were able to deprive God of isness. a stone would be more noble than God. for a stone has isness” [Eckhart]. Such a material object is a reflection of isness. but not a particularly edifying one. Rather. anthropic isness is the most adequate analogue of divine isness. bearing in mind the limits of the analogy. for every analogy is a likeness of things that are fundamentally unalike — for example. an attractive woman and a summer’s day. both of course being hot but in different ways.Or try these Meisteries on for size: Earth cannot escape heaven. Flee it by going up or flee it by going down. heaven still invades the earth. so stop fleeing and just turn yourself in peacefully because you’ll never get away from God. Or Wherever I am. there is God. Might as well try to outrun your shadow. My father said Jackie Robinson could do that. but he’s the exception.For Eckhart God is everywhere in general but in some places more intensively than others. and he is “nowhere as much as he is in the soul.” All of this goes to Axiom 7 [theomorphism]. in that there’s something extra-special about human beings. Compared to anything else in the Cosmos. we are all above average.Or. put it this way: in every case of being on the Wrong Side of History. the tyrants who have insisted there is nothing special or sacred about human beings have been the worst examples of them. To quote Dávila. Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute significance. However. Modern man denies himself every metaphysical dimension and considers himself a mere object of science. But he screams when they exterminate him as such.Of course he screams. But then it’s too late to make an appeal to Axiom 7. You can try. but Ha ha now go to gulag.∞Which takes us to the controverted subject of open theology. which is not at all controversial for cosmotheandrism. since no other form of theology is consistent with it. beginning with the heretical idea that God is not immutable but changes. Say what you want. but–Eppur. Si. Muove.And yet it moves — as muttered under his breath by the passive-aggressive Galileo in a different context. However. if one thinks about this context. there is a profound theological parallel. because the Church’s defense of geocentrism wasn’t just a stubborn attachment to a literal reading of scripture. rather. it was one piece of an interlocking metaphysical and theological architecture. Under the influence of a Greek philosophy that regarded immutability as a perfection. the physical creation was required to mirror the absolute stillness of the Good One. For the Greeks change was bad. so this latter had to be identified with perfect changelessness and impassivity. And because of this conception. the creation mirrored this stability.So now. instead of a cozy geocentric world with an immovable God reliably located just to the north of us in his empyrean home. we suddenly found ourselves situated on a flying rock in a boundless. evolving Cosmos. so how does God figure into this. The idea of the earth moving was probably as mind-blowing as the idea of God moving. which is not supposed to happen in an essentially static Cosmos.And yet they move.Correct — except to say that the movement of both Cosmos and Anthropos is grounded in a principle of movement situated in divinas. God moves. or rather. there is movement in the triune Godhead. and this movement is full of cosmotheandric implications. beginning with God’s purported omnipotence. because supposing one believes this doctrine. it is simply impossible to get God off the hook for the evils of this world. Even Jackie Chiles himself couldn’t exonerate God. for the evils of this world are both real and spectacular — or outrageous. egregious. and preposterous.I used to work in the med-legal field. so I know an incoherent and self-serving argument when I see one. and the arguments spun by our competitors to try to reconcile God’s absolute goodness and unqualified omnipotence are utterly unconvincing — which surely contributes to the contemporary rejection of religion and flight into secularism.For if we are forced to choose between absurdity and common sense. a properly functioning intellect will always choose the latter. bearing in mind also that intelligence is the most precious gift of the Anthropos. Supposing this gift originates from beyond the Cosmos. does the Theos really want us to use it to understand everything except the most important thing. No: God does not ask for the submission of the intelligence. but rather an intelligent submission. in the same way we submit to math and science. We submit to them because doing so makes more sense than rejecting them. Likewise. supposing we submit to God. it should be because it makes more sense than the submission to — let alone imposition of — atheistic alternatives. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 18:49:18 +0000 7de767c2b9053e4eb92a6c4c67b1a45fafa4f305 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/10/tribute-to-mike-ditka/ Lifelong Catholic. thanks to his mom. Daily Communicant at the 6:30am Mass. as a parishioner recalls. during that 1985 championship season. Requiem aeternam dona ei. Domine. et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:37:40 +0000 82990bf2fbcfddb56639d63444147e91def7cb19 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/today-i-finished-watching-wonder-boys.html Today I finished watching The Wonder Boys. a film made in the year 2000. which stars Michael Douglas. Tobey Maguire. and Robert Downey Jr. It's a comedy-drama about a professor of creative writing who is also a novelist. one who has been writing his second novel for the past seven years. [People think he has writer's block. but it's quite the opposite. the novel has grown to gargantuan proportions.] It's one of those 'one crazy weekend' sort of stories.It's the first non-horror film I've watched in months. as far as I can remember.I watched it for two main reasons:1] It's set in a university. and I'm very drawn to university stories right now.2] It involves a mentor-student relationship. and I'm especially interested in those right now. In fact. this is why I sought it out [although it had been on my radar for quite a while].I'm looking for mentor films right now. When I say 'student-mentor'. I'm not especially talking about formal education. And I'm definitely not talking about the flogged-to-death storyline of an unconventional teacher come to a tough. inner-city school and changing the kids' lives around. To Sir. with Love should have been the last of those. I'm more talking about a mentor relationship between an old master and a young prodigy-- that kind of thing.I love hearing people talk about their teachers. mentors and inspirations. I find it very inspiring when someone mentions one of their old teacher's sayings. or when they say something like: 'I come from the school of such-and-such.'I've always wanted a mentor but I've never had one. I'm forty-nine years old in twelve days so it would be rather ridiculous to have a mentor at my age. But I've always craved a Gandalf or Van Helsing figure look up to.[Writing this. it occurs to me that I very much did have a mentor in my own father. His influence on me can hardly be overstated and I often quote the things he said. But...a mentor is different from a father.]I'm even rather envious when I hear people describe their relationship with their spiritual director. their old family doctor. their old teacher. their solicitor. etc. the groundskeeper of their old school or college. etc.. when that professional relationship has become a friendship or quasi-friendship. I've never had that. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 16:10:34 +0000 b5380801cd429595362cf347159478f2d6dcd68e https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-nature-of-tradition.html I've pretty much stopped commenting on contemporary controversies on this blog. Looking back. I think I probably stopped doing so around the abortion referendum in 2018. It seemed such a definitive defeat that it made engagement with current affairs in Ireland seem rather pointless. [I have kept critiquing political correctness and woke. but that's more socio-politics than current affairs.]I realize that many of my readers are international. so I don't know how much you've been keeping up with the controversy about the Orange Order and the Garvaghy Road in Northern Ireland. The Protestant [and. let's face it. historically anti-Catholic] Orange Order were given permission to march down a road with a mostly 'nationalist' population [whatever that means these days]. for the first time in years. In the past. the march had led to huge stand-offs. which once resulted in the utterly horrific murder of three young brothers. This year. once it was announced the parade would go ahead. the nationalists immediately blocked the road. along with many sympathizers. Today the nationalists won the day and the parade was banned again.As I said. I've stopped commenting on contemporary controversies. I especially avoid doing so in the case of Northern Ireland. As far as I can see. both the 'Catholic' and 'Protestant'. 'Irish' and 'British' communities are now for the most part secularized and globalized. leaving nothing but a tribal conflict based upon historical grievances. Large-scale immigration is transforming everything anyway. as in the Republic. That's as far as I can see. I might be wrong.[If there's any exception to the picture I've painted here. it's that the Democratic Unionist Party seems to be the only major party in Ireland with socially conservative positions on anything. How long they will maintain these is another matter. Both of the major nationalist parties have enthusiastically embraced social progressivism. and the Ulster Unionist Party seems to have gone down the same road. albeit with less gusto.]Regardless of the controversy. and regardless of your stance on the controversy. I think this passage from a tweet posted by Emma Little-Pengelly [the Deputy First Minister. a unionist] is very profound. as regards the point that she is making [the grammar is a bit off. but who cares.]: All of our traditions come from particular aspects or “sects”. By its very nature. they are “of “something and not “of” something else. They are exclusionary by the very nature of it pertaining to the particular tradition. beliefs or views of some. but it is not exclusionary by experience or engagement. Every religious order or community is exclusionary by doctrine. but not by outreach.I think is a hugely important point. setting aside its application to the current controversy. Do we want a society with vibrant traditions. If we do. we have to accept that traditions are inherently exclusionary. sectarian and even divisive. Of course. we could have a society without traditions. or where traditions are relegated to private life. But that will be a pretty colourless. rootless. impersonal. atomised sort of society. It seems to me we are travelling in the latter direction.[I always appreciate comments. But if you're leaving one on this post. please avoid anything inflammatory.] Sat, 10 Oct 2026 14:59:10 +0000 b87ea7115c6b63050fea10c337c7c0b95b6f2319 https://voxday.net/2026/10/10/the-fourth-mechanism/ Earlier this week. I introduced the concept of relictation. the mathematically derived fixation of ancestral variation through population bottlenecks. as a third distinct mechanism of genomic change alongside natural selection and genetic drift. Relictation was proposed to account for patterns of divergence that neither selection nor drift could explain within the available timelines. as demonstrated (…) The post The Fourth Mechanism appeared first on Vox Popoli. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 13:37:48 +0000 adc982e83c2baddcc2597ad7eb921216f118cbfe https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/latin-mass-persecutor-viola-named-to.html Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:37:00 +0000 e9bb5a955c7b6ef56de12c2e55ad532649526915 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/dr-kwasniewskis-lectures-in-netherlands.html Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:36:06 +0000 4bf63fd38ea7eff4376ae8a53b6ce90330c50710 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/10/what-always-happens.html   I once heard a preacher say about the Bible that it does not tell us what happened. it tells us what always happens. That is correct. The Bible teaches us how to live in light of the wisdom offered by the Lord of creation. He shows us in his word how the corrupt will always act if they are not restrained. I've written many articles about how our immigration policy is a form of exploitation. Both to create a vulnerable workforce [do a bit of reading into slaves in the massage business for example]. but also to suppress Australians own wages. Now a prominent politician is actually saying the truth out loud. about big business. governments. and mass immigration. “Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie has accused “big business” of agitating against migration reform “because they like having a vulnerable workforce” on temporary visas. Labor. the Coalition. and One Nation have all targeted temporary visa holders in proposed reforms to Australia’s migration system. However. business leaders. including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. have warned significant cuts to that cohort would hit some sectors hard. The Coalition has proposed reducing the overall number of temporary visa holders by 650.000 over four years. with certain priorities for aged care. healthcare. and construction workers. Addressing the pushback. Mr Hastie told the ABC on Friday big businesses were “making noise” because they “like having a vulnerable workforce on temporary visas”. “There’s a reason why they want that. Because they’re non-unionised. They can pay them less. And they have an element of power.” he said. “Because. of course. someone on a temporary visa is not going to make a whole bunch of noise.”(1) A government that is not solely focused on serving its own people. but that has the power to replace its people with other. easily. will disrespect both. It is just a fact of human power dynamics. I came to the conclusion that this is how big business and the corrupt act towards the worker not through studying social studies. or things like that. though I have studied those things. I came to this conclusion by reading the Old Testament prophets and seeing how the powerful would exploit the weak when they were not restrained. And human nature has not changed. Of course. you can look at how immigration suppresses wages. drives up rents. puts pressure on social services. and more to see that it does not serve the populations upon which mass immigration is imposed. and see the same problems. But really. it is God’s word that reveals the heart of man and how he will act when he is given too much power over the worker and not enough incentives to act justly. Other research just confirms this.  And now a prominent politician has said this is the case out loud. Things are changing. Australia is a hard left country. We are on track to become the new Argentina in my lifetime. that is a basket-case economy that was once one of the richest per capita countries in the world. If more leaders start speaking the truth on issues like this. we have a chance to turn this situation around.   List of References (1) https://www.news.com.au/finance/andrew-hastie-says-big-business-wants-temporary-migrants-because-they-are-vulnerable/news-story/9b9dfdcaddcd5ce0782321a921b5ef53.utm_source=News.com.auandutm_medium=facebookandutm_campaign=Emplifiandfbclid=IwY2xjawU21W5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMXBxMFMxd25TOG1Pejl0cTZzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeGTHw-sFdB106KS8PM3zq-lL5rYUkyqADyOXi0qjIDAndk8y-_wg_OIDWUug_aem_ZcKowmXYUhSoCn5gYUN9oA Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:30:29 +0000 4f7d1b20cec8e4d79d4f62583188c5980465a927 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/10/we-must-make-our-way-towards-eternity-never-regarding-what-men-think-of-us-or-of-our-actions-studying-only-to-please-god/ “We must make our way towards eternity.never regarding what men think of us.or of our actions.studying only to please God.” —St. Francis Borgia Human respect. such an effeminate vice. is one of the principal characteristics of our dying world. Acedia. the vice of indifference is the other. Most men don’t care. and don’t care that (…) Sat, 10 Oct 2026 10:03:38 +0000 937935d08c2a1566286b658dc2f0418f6a9b4687 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/whats-wrong-with-novus-ordo.html Sat, 10 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000 f842bb09164e57bf17e9bd967e24976a67647656 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/a-wrong-and-bad-script-wasted-effort.html Some things in life take tremendous effort: resources. planning and organizing - assembling many people with many skills in a particular place and time...Consider performing a play in a theatre. when all this must be accompanied by the business of attracting and assembling a paying audience. seating them in comfort and according to regulations about fire and safety. We might add the mass transport system. electrical grid. water and sewage.My point is that this is all futile. wasted effort. if the script of the play being performed is Bad. of low quality.And when the play being performed is purposively Wicked in some fashion. all this colossal effort is not just wasted - but harnessed to service of an agenda of evil.Indeed. the more impressive and compelling the performance. the more harm is done.Vast resources and efforts in service to agenda items of the strategy of evil is a summary of The West. Now.Such thoughts came to mind when attending an elaborate choral Evensong service in one of the most beautiful buildings in Britain: York Minster Cathedral. attended by a large gathering of [mostly] tourists.And when the actual music being performed by the choir was Rubbish [with the exception of a short anthem by Victoria].Consider all the human effort and skill involved. and the vast resources of beautiful church music available - and the choice instead to perform a low quality and actively unpleasant musical 'script' to the large 'audience'.But this is just a microcosm of how our culture is. and has been for many decades.While it is a-good-thing for individuals to make efforts. learn skills. cooperate towards a difficult goal etc...This is vitiated when these people are Not Even Trying to do Good scripts. when they instead actively prefer and choose Bad Scripts.So ultimately. strategically. all this human endeavour contributes towards the subversion. destruction and inversion of What Is Good. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 06:45:54 +0000 946f6726d1d793adecb431251a7c4c7dd943a9a9 https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/not-tired-of-winning-yet-cclxvi/ Marco Rubio’s Press Statement October 9th 2026: “For decades. Republicans and Democrats alike rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court had the power to prosecute American citizens. military servicemembers. or political leaders. America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it. But globalist “experts” an ocean away don’t care (…) Sat, 10 Oct 2026 03:44:27 +0000 699fbf5d968b373ac1a1b7b2f170f6c4571b6d2d https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mmm3 Making Marvel Great Again Fri, 09 Oct 2026 23:24:59 +0000 6f3e459265ef634b4d586dcb4edca1bb901ca962 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/catholicism-in-american-experiment.html Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:36:36 +0000 861af889f49166f560fd388e11a5156b7df6f443 https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/the-vote-reaper-2/ Zo debates Obama with words and melee. Endlessly amusing. even eighteen years after the fact:   Fri, 09 Oct 2026 19:48:21 +0000 2917ad00710d9d60c9a135922f97a85247d8bc4d https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/search-history/ Someone on Twitter asked me about my search history. Here was my honest reply. Your Honor. I am a science fiction writer. I had to research: the most expensive commode ever made. the security failures of the Antwerp diamond exchange heist. the names and disposition of the criminals. the weight of 250 yards of bunting. (…) Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:41:02 +0000 5c63e4c4c4f854ebdb4c5c2b149c7a5bf41a6e3c https://voxday.net/2026/10/09/rip-mike-ditka/ Mike Ditka. one of the greatest examples of a great player becoming a great coach in NFL history en route to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. has passed away at the age of 86. The death of one of the NFL’s greats was announced Friday morning by his family. Truly a multi-era legend. The (…) The post RIP Mike Ditka appeared first on Vox Popoli. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:47:14 +0000 5fe8cf459b1564ba6910040b1f6993eae8f52f1f https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/announcement-son-of-orkney-by-anthony-marchetta/ A friend and colleague. Anthony Marchetta announces his new book. The words below are from the Amazon site: Son of Orkney In the tradition of the high Arthurian legends of the past. Son of Orkney is a brilliant novel of chivalry. knights of the Round Table. and the Noble Quest. All his life. Gareth of (…) Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:07:51 +0000 01c1928303bf15759d4963e664201213e8122e6d https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-possibilities-are-endless_01122241130.html To review: God is not impossible. and therefore necessary. While we cannot necessarily say what he is like. we deploy subtractive knowledge affirm what he cannot possibly be like. one of these impossibilities being boring.Or bored.Correct: as they say. if you are bored. it’s probably just because you’re boring. If God is the very principle of creativity. how could he possibly be bored.Now. creativity is another word for surprise.. and our Cosmos is likewise full of them. This is only possible because the Cosmos is not necessary or self-sufficient. rather. contingent upon. and open to. its own vertical source. As explained in the prequel. one of the surprising properties of reality is its boundless capacity for surprise. If this were not the case. then science would not have to investigate nature empirically. rather. could simply deduce its contingent properties from necessary truths. as imagined by the ancient Greeks. For example. they deduced that the stars move in perfect circles from a priori beliefs about the nature of heavenly perfection. Unlike the messy terrestrial world herebelow. the celestial world was simple. elegant. and orderly: no surprises.Only with the scientific revolution did we begin actually interrogating nature on its own terms. since which time the surprises have never stopped. Again. we cannot deduce from existing knowledge what is in store for science. rather. must continue to explore its objectively intelligible structures — not just on a single level. e.g. physics. but on multiple levels. each of which open to a higher level but not reducible to the lower.For example. in no way did Einstein deduce relativity from Newtonian physics. rather. saw into a deeper structure of which the latter is but a limiting case. For Newton. the Cosmos is contained by space and time. but Einstein discovered — surprise. — that the very fabric of the Cosmos is constituted of space-time. No one saw that coming. because it could not possibly come from the existing paradigm. Among other things. this meant that Kant could not be more wrong about space and time being human categories with no objective basis. since they are woven into the Cosmic Area Rug.Nor is time in any way analogous to mechanical clock time. otherwise there would again be no surprises.They say God created time when he created the Cosmos.That is metaphysically impossible. since creation takes time. no matter how much our competitors object. In a way. they are a mirror image of the Greeks referenced above. deducing what God must be like based upon their own celestial policy preferences. for example. that God is perfect. and perfect means timeless and immutable. But who died and left man in charge of the heavens.Jesus.but that means human nature is taken into the divine nature — a participant in celestial activity. not its CEO.Let’s get back to the subject at hand. which is to say. why reality is so full of creative surprises: while the Cosmos has an intelligible order. this orderis intrinsically open towards God. and not closed in upon itself. If it were closed in upon itself and possessed of an intrinsic necessity. science would proceed solely through a priori reasoning…. As contingent. however. the universe is open to a transcendent ground beyond itself — it points mutely to God the Creator and his transcendent rationality [Torrance].The Cosmos is pervaded by a unifying Logos. and this latter is always beyond the limits of our own finite reason. just as the Cosmos is finite but unbound. so too is the Anthropos. and for the same Reason — that this is “a relational type of order which is at once dynamic and open.” for which reason “the universe as it discloses itself to us constantly takes us by surprise” [ibid.]. The world is full of unactualized potential. and one can never deduce the potential from the actual. Rather. the Cosmos is “continuously open to quite new and unpredictable variations.” and dis-closes itself “in an indefinite range of unexpected manifestations.” Its current state depends upon past states but cannot be reduced to them. otherwise no surprises for you. For the Anthropos is again open at both ends. and indeed.it is man himself with his inquiring rationality who constitutes in the structure of the space-time universe the boundary point where it is open beyond itself. and where the mystery of its meaning becomes disclosed… [ibid.].If this were not the case. there would be no Cosmic Area Rug and no certainly possibly of locating its whereabouts.∞You may be surprised to learn that the Godhead is one endless surprise party. and that the most surprised party is God. Here. as with any other attribute of God. we must see this capacity for surprise as a perfection and not a privation.God is omniscient. Wouldn’t that make him incapable of being caught off guard. How could he ever be surprised.I will tell you how. Of course. there are hundreds of instances in the Old Testament in particular in which God expresses surprise. disappointment. regret. etc.. but we do not consider these dispositive. since they could be just anthropomorphisms.Let us take an obvious example: it is said that God wills for everyone to be saved. And yet. this apparently does not happen. Can it be that God himself fails to achieve the modest charge with which he has tasked himself. Or does he just not care one way or the other. If God were omnipotent full stop. then what he wills happens inevitably. But not only is there a principle of freedom in God. he is this principle. and what is freedom if not indeterminate. This latter goes to God’s Infinite pole. which assures that the creative surprises never stop. whether in Vertical Headquarters above or herebelow in our local cosmic franchise.As to freedom itself. O’Hanlon writes that in the Godhead “each person allows the other two to be.” which implies a “kind of freedom of space.” Just so. our freedom to reach God implies the possibility of failure to do so.So. the principle of Slack. or ontological elbow room. is built into the Godhead.It must be. for how could anything so precious to us not have its analogue in God. It would mean that we get to enjoy something that is denied to God. and that makes no sense. In reality. freedom and surprise entail one another. because if everything is known ahead of time. then neither can exist. A fully determined cosmotheandric plot would be one big spoiler that eliminates any interesting twists and surprises.For cosmotheandrism. the ultimate Principle is eternally creative. such that all the aesthetic creations of man are but a poor shadow of this — reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ comment about wanting to see the place where all this useless beauty comes from. To which we might add truth and creativity.Is there a workaround. such that our first Principle can somehow reconcile change and changelessness. freedom and constraint. routine and surprise. creativity and tedium. Process theologians dismiss the notion of immutability and welcome the idea of a God of endless becoming. but let’s not be rash. This goes too far in the opposite direction into panthesism. whereas cosmotheandrism demands the full complementarity of Absolute changelessness and Infinite novelty and variety. But how to reconcile these seeming opposites.I don’t see. um -- what exactly is the problem.You don’t know. Petey. You seem to know the answer to everything else. First of all. a triune Godhead that is capable of genuine giving and receiving — or rather. incapable of not doing so — implies that our ultimate principle is an event combining Big Verb and Big Noun. Not an event like the ones that occur down here. which have their beginning. middle. and end. but rather. an unending “eternal event.” so to speak. And this event “admits of creativity. wonder. surprise. receptivity and increase. even within the fullness of being that is God” [O’Hanlon].Hold it right there: if God is the fullness of being. how could he surpass himself. much less improve.That’s just it: he doesn’t. Rather. imagine an endlessly creative artist whose every creation is an unsurpassable eleven out of ten. This doesn’t happen with the best terrestrial artists — even Dylan nods. sometimes for decades at a time — but that is not to say it couldn’t happen with the best conceivable artist. “This ever-greater. ever-new quality of the divine life” is not like “the needy ‘becoming’ which is characteristic of created beings.” rather. an endlessly perfect becoming that does not surpass itself. “an ever-greater God who. within his immutability. can ‘become’ eternally.” Which is why. as O’Hanlon states. “There is no boredom in heaven.”Supposing there is such a place.We’ll deal with that question later. But O’Hanlon [borrowing an analogy from Gregory of Nyssa] compares the Godhead to a fountain at which “the onlooker is amazed” because of “its infinite streaming forth from within so that the whole is never seen and there are always new outpourings in and from the same depths.” for “the fullness is maintained precisely through the passing on of the overflow” — much like a far-from-equilibrium process structure in this world. which maintains itself via a continuous flow. like Life Itself. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:02:56 +0000 dcd969322694545e7d3daf1839466073d0059efe https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-09-very-cool-and-a-rare-restaurant-review/ It was 7:14 when the sun strove to illuminate Rome through the clouds. It worked on and off against clouds and rain until 18:41 when it wearily slid away in the West. 1900 is still the cycle for the Ave … Read More → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:38:14 +0000 81a2664c700047e0c35ad92c7f0e3a17eb7c43d5 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/its-not-all-the-phones The causes of social dynamics. marriage deserts. and more in this week’s digest. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:37:22 +0000 9186b0a2c3645ddc42bedad1d7d5c2d75e86b612 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/09/the-antichurch-of-amoris-vs-the-council-of-trent-the-true-church/ Ten years on. two consecutive false popes. the celebration of adultery. fornication. and sodomy continues. They just can’t help it. you know. Besides. forget all this about mortal sin. what really matters is niceness and fraternity and ecology and accompaniment and … Originally posted May 1. 2016 The Canons And Decrees Of The Council Of … Continue reading 'The Antichurch of Amoris vs the Council of Trent [The True Church]' Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:28:28 +0000 7f69cbf64bcd15a3c7b76a709df37a9496c8c9a6 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/imagining-the-annuciation/ I hope that those readers who remain on this wobbly sphere despite Professor Smith’s “lowering the tone” with his “querulous opinions” will indulge my presenting a little Catholic orthodoxy. Ignatian contemplation. as St Ignatius elaborates in The Spiritual Exercises. involves the imaginative immersion in scenes from the Gospels. Similarly. Catholics are admonished. when praying the (…) Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:05:26 +0000 2ee39e4aea0c1a19cc5a7516a1a40ba049c8bfe4 https://onepeterfive.com/tlm-pilgrimage-to-rome-the-lay-nobility/ The oldest traditionalist group going back to 1964. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:02:04 +0000 fd790e490d67a9e0c75fb9029ab0f62a0f87078c https://voxday.net/2026/10/09/mailvox-invoking-the-triveritas/ A reader has a thought about the butterfly collectors like the Evo-Avengers and others who have a difficult time grasping mathematical arguments: There are three legs to your Triad: Logical validity. Empirical anchoring. and Mathematical Coherence. If the innumerate cannot follow your arguments from mathematical calculations with respect to offshoots of Darwinism like EES. do (…) The post Mailvox: Invoking the Triveritas appeared first on Vox Popoli. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:32:38 +0000 cbbbfc8b5c10a4be973d9832afa9045884c3ed7d https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-theology-of-history-in-message-of.html Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:12:11 +0000 e31be558aea652100e7a0cddc5253c415191a3e0 https://voxday.net/2026/10/09/the-scholars-revolt-spreads/ Now it’s the scholars of Belgium who are raging over the suboptimal nature of their educations: Student riots plaguing France have spread to Belgium. where hundreds of hooded thugs are clashing with police. The country’s French-speaking community have taken to the streets to protest swingeing cuts to Belgium’s education budget. as the government seeks to (…) The post The Scholars Revolt Spreads appeared first on Vox Popoli. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:34:01 +0000 affe4717567170657e02344d7853c7a573b26ee1 https://onepeterfive.com/the-bishops-altar-is-the-throne-of-christ-the-king-in-every-city-state-nation/ The demons were overthrown. and a new throne was raised. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:05:30 +0000 566a0b44566f4ac59056abf1a407e4fb159000d5 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/mary-mediatrix-of-all-graces-and-mother.html Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000 2f6b509ac749524aed75a272fc1e85e0e5d8eb48 https://voxday.net/2026/10/09/the-irrelevance-of-ees/ Hilbert: It’s so funny how both Neo-Darwinists and Creationists react in the same frightened way to EES. They immediately sense that naturalist EES shreds their fairy tales to pieces. Hilbert: I really opened the can of worms here…. my conclusion: Bill is at least trying to understand EES. He knows it’s the leading theory of (…) The post The Irrelevance of EES appeared first on Vox Popoli. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:13:00 +0000 175e0db46062501d31e26a9b7b044514865a1207 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/archbishop-church-had-greater-unity-under-summorum-pontificum/ AdVaticanum is increasingly useful. Here is their reportage of an interview that San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone gave with a French source. This is an Archbishop who gets it. Here is a taste from the beginning. My emphases Archbishop Cordileone: Church … Read More → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:24:49 +0000 6202a31138e8153b7fb0ab009920da0929f68f34 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/09/when-cardinal-manning-prophesied-exactly-what-we-are-living-through-including-the-city-of-rome-losing-the-vicariate-of-christ-anyone-still-living-in-rome-would-do-well-to-get-out-asap/ “The writers of the Church tell us that in the latter days the city of Rome will probably become apostate from the Church and Vicar of Jesus Christ. and that Rome will again be punished. for he will depart from it. and the judgment of God will fall on the place from which he once (…) Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:24:00 +0000 4060038420e5d7765c6f1ab89a0f77c3781c0321 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/10/09/the-good-wifes-expression-of-faith-in-action/ Why women should regard courting / dating as the trial period of a working interview. Continue reading → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000 535ce12798e9c000de5e6894fe74e14d4020869e https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/graphology-through-calligraphy They are a bunch of retards Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:35:09 +0000 db6c9a10cecd24b01127842b71a67a841b8bc8b5 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/action-item-gulf-of-america-bishops-priests-laity-pray-the-litany-against-hurricane-isaias/ It looks like hurricane Isaias in the Gulf of America could be big. In the past I have urged bishops and priests to get out and pray against the storm using the older. traditional Rituale Romanum. I saw this. This … Read More → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:29:48 +0000 c0c9df17cff99a516a774deb18b2e298b1d44616 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/the-ottumwa-invocation-galloway-vindicated This post is safe for work despite its numerous and sincere references to Satan Prince of Darkness. Fri, 09 Oct 2026 04:35:28 +0000 f9ea9922c4ad1ab97db240182811a6da3a662172 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/9-october-feast-of-st-john-henry-newman-wdtprs-collect-and-lead-kindly-light/ Here is the COLLECT for the Feast of  St. John Henry Newman Memorial. anniversary of the day. 9 October 1845. when he was brought into greater light and received into Holy Catholic Church at Littlemore. Leo XIV proclaim St. John … Read More → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 04:01:34 +0000 c5befc1c8173c31fcd58737633c0e907a55d0fd1 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/9-october-feast-of-st-abraham-patriarch-of-the-old-testament-wdtprs/ Today. 9 October is the feast of St. Abraham. Patriarch of the Old Testament. Here is the entry in the newest edition of the Martyrologium Romanum with a translation: 3. Commemoratio sancti Abrahae. patriarchae et omnium credentium patris. qui. Domino … Read More → Fri, 09 Oct 2026 02:30:44 +0000 787c0eaf4d9103c4a455d77839e5786454f8f8f1 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/08/true-evangelization-starts-with-explaining-authority-the-reason-behind-who-needs-to-listen-to-who-and-why/ Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:01:01 +0000 b0f5c2e507de85589be2a691205fe16c19f76eef https://voxday.net/2026/10/08/black-britons-and-white-japanese/ It’s really remarkable how the West twists itself into contortions to protect the lies that are destroying its nations: Robert Jenrick has said that ‘millions and millions’ of people in England are not ‘culturally or ethnically’ English as the identity row dividing the Right escalated. Kemi Badenoch used her party conference speech on Wednesday to (…) The post Black Britons and White Japanese appeared first on Vox Popoli. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 23:45:43 +0000 7b44a8925a189275292ddce66d6091c4aca0df4a https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-08-better/ It is hard to imagine something more perfect than the Solemn Mass of the Roman Rite. Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY.  This helps to pay for health insurance. utilities. groceries. and now … Read More → Thu, 08 Oct 2026 22:57:56 +0000 7e7579442967d63472b00b5937a7e2cc95e723e7 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/theos-what-is-it-not-like.html It is easy enough to prove the existence of God. especially to people who have no need of proof—On the scale of pomposity—For example. the countless mystics who have their own right-hemispheric or first-heart experiential confirmation.But even failing mystical union. there are ways. believe me. For cosmotheandrism it comes down to the fact that the Cosmos is an intelligible whole. teeming with information. neither of which can be explained from within the Cosmos. Rather. this is Gödel’s Universe. meaning that it is a coherent but incomplete system that is open to a higher principle outside and beyond itself.Which is exactly like everything within the Cosmos. where we see a stratified order in which the boundary conditions of one level are conditioned and controlled by a higher one — for example. biology in relation to chemistry and physics. Biology cannot be reduced to these. rather. enlists them in service to the higher level. Each level is open to its upstairs neighbor. nor does this openness stop with the Cosmos itself. which is contingent upon. and open to. O. Otherwise. there is simply no intra-cosmic explanation for the order. structure. and intelligibility of our multi-storied Cosmos. See Book I for details.On the anthropic level. Torrance uses the example of aviation. whereina quantity of inert matter is artificially made to embody an aeronautical design which allows it to be harnessed and controlled by a set of engineering principles beyond its physico-chemical level. so that it can take flight as an aeroplane. The laws of physics and chemistry are not infringed but they are restricted and made to serve an end beyond what they can account for in terms of themselves alone.The deeper point is that it is not as if human flight is a necessary entailment of physics. but only possible because the Cosmos is open and indeterminate at each level. nor does it violate the known laws of gravity or aluminum. Conversely. if the Cosmos itself were necessary as opposed to contingent upon. and open to. its own higher principle. then there would be no freedom. creativity. novelty. surprise. or multiple levels. Rather. we could deduce every truth from the necessary ones governing the Cosmos. Except there could be no freedom to discover truth in a wholly necessary and closed Cosmos.Having said that. it is not possible to say exactly what it is we have proved. since this principle beyond the Cosmos and Anthropos cannot be reduced to. or enclosed in. any man-made definition.So. what have we proved. God. like the Cosmos. is radically unique. and scientia est de universalibus: No Science of the Individual Allowed On These Premises. Science deals with the repeatable. the universal. and the general. but with sample sizes so tiny — one of each — there can be no control group for the Cosmos. nor a second God with whom to compare the first. Frankly we can’t even say God is “a” god since there is by definition only one. not a genus or species of them. God is not something one can simplify or classify. define or confine. dissect or inspect. analyze. categorize. finalize. or even advertise.Look. all I really wanna do is understand cosmotheandrism.We’re getting there. but even the most airtight proof will not be convincing to those who are intellectually ill-equipped to understand the demonstration or who are simply not inclined to believe it. The problem here is that agnosticism is actually an impossible position. for the Theos principle is not probable or improbable. rather either necessary or impossible. Therefore. if it is not impossible. then it is necessary. since one of God’s properties is necessary being — and you can’t be a little bit pregnant with necessity.So really. we’re arguing whether there could be such a thing as a necessary being or an uncaused cause. You may think your issue is with the Theos. but it’s really just with causation and where it necessarily leads.Granted. “One can most certainly prove every truth. but not every proof is accessible to every mind” [Schuon]. Indeed. Schuon went so far as to suggest that if all men were capable of understanding metaphysics. there would be no atheists. Not everyone has the aptitude. interest. or slack to personally investigate these matters. and religion is a kind of shortcut to doing so — a right hemispheric poetry of metaphysics as it were.In the Gödelian words of Schuon. “logic is perfectly consistent only when surpassing itself.” On the one hand “All expression is of necessity relative.” however “language is nonetheless capable of conveying the quality of absoluteness which has to be conveyed.” this thanks to the transcendent Aboutness woven into our Cosmic Area Rug. Whereas profane philosophy reasons from the bottom up. metaphysics “proceeds exclusively from the Intellect.” again. more in a right-hemispheric manner. In reality. the human intellect is more difficult to account for than God — in fact. impossible for materialistic science to explain without recourse to a higher principle. just as the principle of sight cannot be blindness.Of note. this would not imply that we could know everything about what this necessary being is like. only that it is an abstract principle that cannot not be. In other words. we can posit an abstract What without knowing anything about what this What is concretely like. For all we know. it might be like an impersonal machine or computer program [although this would naturally lead to questions about an intellect necessary to program the computer]. Analogously. I know with certainty that I have a new neighbor down the street. but I’ve never met him. so he could be anything from a Russian agent to a cyborg. Not likely. but I like to keep an open mind.Likewise. although we have our suspicions. we should exercise caution in saying exactly what God is like. but it turns out we can say a great deal about what he cannot be like. Analogously. back to my known-unknown neighbor. I can be fairly certain that. whoever he turns out to be. he is not immortal. immaterial. necessary. omniscient. or devoid of imperfections.We also know that reality itself cannot be enclosed in our knowledge of it. despite — or rather because of — its infinite knowability. In our cosmotheandric vision. none of our three terms can be strictly defined in isolation because each presupposes and indwells the others. As such. for example. the Anthropos cannot define the Theos of which he is an image. Analogously. the moon is not the source of its own light. even though its light is no less real than the sunlight it reflects. The Anthropos has access to both the reflected light of the Cosmos but also the direct light of the Theos. Nevertheless. the direct light of the Theos must be translighted into various symbols and linguistic forms.Now. as per our Axiom of primordial complementarity. one thing we can say of God is that he is transcendent of everything. and therefore immanent in anything. including us. In other words. while God is Absolute. he is unbounded by anything. hence Infinite. In the words of brother Eckhart. “Outside of God there is nothing but nothing.”However. note that infinitude can be understood in two very different senses. one negative. the other positive. In its negative sense it simply means “not finite.” but in its positive sense it implies an active overflowing from any boundedness.Again. think of the sun: we can look at it and see a well defined disc in the sky. On the other hand. there can be no hard distinction between it and the rays that not only reach us herebelow but are transformed via the mystery of photosynthesis into chemical energy. If plants couldn’t pull off this one neat trick. we wouldn’t be here talking about sunlight. You may not be a vegetarian. but somewhere along the line you are dependent upon the vegetation that transforms the warmth of the sun into something even better. like Pet SoundsNow. if there is a photosynthesis below. is there. so to speak. a pneumasynthesis above. In other words. is there a way to transform the rays of infinitude that radiate from O into useful — one might say living — concepts.We cannot eat the sun. but then again. in eating the wheat we are not not eating the sun. Likewise. we don’t think O directly. but we think the symbols and concepts that the light of O makes possible via its infinitude. We are real persons. but only because we are reflections of personhood per se [Axiom 7. theomorphism]. Our ability to perform pneumasynthesis — to transform the vertical rays of O into horizontal meaning — is exactly what defines the Anthropos. Frankly. we engage in pneumasynthesis all the time. whether it means transforming physical sensations into ideas. sounds into symphonies. or the vertical murmuranda of O into metaphysical and theological systems. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:26:13 +0000 e97dec562933165ad1d5148c707aca7574227b83 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/keeping-an-eye-on-the-amoris-laetitia-confab-in-rome-7-14-october/ It has been 10 years since Amoris laetitia [chose your own translation] was emitted into the world and. of course. its time to sit in circles and talk about it while predetermined statements are already cooling from the laser printer.  … Read More → Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:31:47 +0000 b7fc12bf746ca91e9258301b6ffbb9d60ed22918 https://voxday.net/2026/10/08/not-just-the-evo-avengers/ It doesn’t surprise me at all. but some of the Intelligent Design-adjacent crowd is starting to get very butthurt over Probability Zero and my total lack of interest in their pet evolutionary epicyles. They obviously don’t grasp that I’m genuinely not on anyone’s side except that of the truth itself. whatever that happens to be. (…) The post Not Just the Evo-Avengers appeared first on Vox Popoli. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:11:06 +0000 f0f44308a0c67710a811ced53a9ad16fd6795eb9 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/10/civilisational-foolishness.html   Australians are slowly learning many ancient lessons the hard way. Like the high cost of living alone. especially as you age. They call it the singles tax: 'Singles tax costing people hundreds of dollars a month... “That concept is known as the singles tax – the idea that single-income households do not benefit from the same cost-sharing benefits when it comes to things like rent and bills as a couple does. Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests a single person spends more than S770 extra on living costs a month compared to a person in a couple. Brisbane financial advisor Michael Khouri said there was also the time and effort factor to consider. as well as that inability to share resources. 'If somebody's single and they're trying to do everything themselves. they're usually a bit more time poor.' he said. He said he also saw people who had just come out of a separation struggling to fund separate homes – either renting or buying – especially as the cost of housing continued to rise. 'Fifteen years ago. I'd find that probably half or maybe say 30 to 40 per cent of their expenses was housing — and now it's just getting higher and higher.' More than half of Australians living alone are women. and around half of those women are aged 65 or older.”(1) I know a lot of people do not have sympathy for a lot of boomers. but I can’t help but see a perfect storm brewing in this area. Many of these older people. over 65. were born and raised in one of the most prosperous economic booms and times the world has ever seen. in one of the most prosperous countries the world has ever seen. and amongst some of the easiest conditions the world has ever produced to help people get ahead. They called this country the lucky country for a reason. Because we really were better off than most in so many ways. and it was also evident that this prosperity was more a result of luck than anything else. Now. consider the disaster coming for many older men and women who were forged in that sort of benevolent economic environment. thinking they can easily tank their marriage. or burn their families connections. because it has always been relatively easy to rebuild yourself in this country. A lot of these people have a rude shock coming. and I think the rest of society has to recognize this as well. because the political power of this demographic is still incredible and will be for years to come. Australia is about to be hit by a poverty wave that will likely set this country on track to be something like the new Argentina in a few decades. or close to. if things are not addressed very quickly. This sort of situation should be rare anyway. People are not really meant to live alone. We are meant to live in large. often multigenerational. households. This sort of family arrangement was always a shelter from financial burdens. But Australians got so rich. beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. that living alone became cheap. easy and common. At least for a time. and only when economic windfalls were ticking up. But this sort of culture is really a house of cards. Once things get tough. it becomes hard for people to live alone. Especially on government handouts. Because people were really not meant to live this way. It is an aberration. a product of a hyper-individualist society with short time horizon preferences. In other words. our society is filled with stubborn people who cannot think ahead. The saddest part for me in the article is that this woman says she fears she might have to move in with her adult daughter. Why is this a fear. Because our culture has made this an undesirable thing. But really this should be a no-brainer. How much family wealth is chewed away from people across our country. because families that could live together and would have once done it without thinking in the past. are each paying for rents. regos. their own rates. electricity bills. etc. etc. when people could live together and prosper. If you pay attention you will note that a lot of families that come here from Asia. or Eastern Europe. or other places don't hesitate to pool resources. and they build wealth this way. Why. Because they drive down their costs for all sorts of things in their life. Life is done better in community. It is just wisdom. Australian culture really has been hollowed out. An older man or woman with kids should never even have to think about not being able to pay rent.  It should be unthinkable. except in the most extreme of circumstances. 'Honour your mother and father' means primarily to make sure they are never destitute. But we should not forget. that it was the older generations who taught the younger generations to break this generational safety blanket. and go their own way and now we have countless people in desperate situations that just did not need to happen. List of References (1) ABC Business. 2026. https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/government-support-and-welfare/singles-struggle-to-afford-housing-as-cost-of-living-rises/ar-AA2dHarz.ocid=msedgntpandpc=NMTSandcvid=6ac6ec1dfc26404888200d4ef6474e70andei=42andfbclid=IwY2xjawU0AjdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABwZG9mAWJyaWQRMXFjTWpNZEtkZzM3aFpoTnRzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeLj4jbExbaJShsVHqpCeLJ2FWcBOKBbvofNrbZDwmzbbA5WSHDgsfhdMAgJ0_aem_JDCHrX24gWIviv6FlvYrGw Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:03:33 +0000 ae437e81f78a0161a480db29f2b805a10244f75b https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/08/miracles-and-trials/ A few days out from Conference I re-read my notes.  Something striking emerged. A truly remarkable number of talks were about patience in suffering. and how the trials may not end how or when we wish. Meanwhile a truly remarkable number of talks were about expecting miracles. These two themes do not work with each (…) Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:56:04 +0000 1f9e34e5a0a2f8692bce8e753c0866875e9e7f10 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/can-bayesianism-quantify-true-belief Class 96 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:00:46 +0000 7bcace2f76739ad2341d5c84e204836382599cf6 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62224/ The simple answer to today’s titular question is no. Bayesianism cannot quantify true belief. This answer will disappoint the Effective Altruists. Rationalists. many professional statisticians. a score of others. and… Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000 e589e2122a16a718278b05e5ba5efb7048d2b7e9 https://onepeterfive.com/the-fake-lucia-hypothesis-some-concluding-thoughts/ The usual suspects. Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:16:00 +0000 13d2d7664c2aced070ba7a4e8e3b43bd97caf2ba https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/nick-freitas-discusses-family.html Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000 682c630b93274b039e17e562509359b0f71b83a6 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/whats-going-on-in-rome/ This. friends. is what’s going on at the Amoris laetitia [chose your own translation of that] confab.  Let this sink in.  Then use a good emetic. At the Vatican today. Sister Helen Alford. O.P. suggested that Jesus was initially “flirting” … Read More → Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:00:34 +0000 757a2f1e7adab88721681d3cf006e11b491ac26a https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/action-item-revived-the-birettas-for-seminarians-project/ “We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We’re going to live on. We’re going to survive. Today. we celebrate our BIRETTA Day.” – [pace Pres. Pullman] On the same day I received … Read More → Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:00:34 +0000 012db144a19be1525d6e66eb7097943fe0907211 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/the-building-of-the-blog-never-ends-update-about-amazing-maintenance-and-restoration/ When you go about in Rome. you notice that facades are being rejuvenated. fountains cleaned. churches renewed and illuminated. ancient ruins uncovered and restored.  It’s ongoing.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be repaired in a day … Read More → Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:26:20 +0000 6441797e3f88076cf098486c2e54fae43dcdb6bd https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/10/07/maybe-they-meant-mostly-dead/ This is your government and medical institutions. Stop putting faith in institutions that fail you. I’m not a death penalty supporter but sheesh. The government couldn’t even kill a woman properly. they botched her execution. Then doctors informed Christa Pike’s attorney Randy Spivey that she was brain dead and would be removed from life support. (…) Thu, 08 Oct 2026 02:04:57 +0000 9b8ab2059d8838ead4175db9fe3a00da533955c8 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/10/07/city-in-iowa-just-opened-up-a-city-council-meeting-with-a-prayer-to-satan/ This is sooooooooo 21st century. amirite. I do like the one guy who stands but then figures out what’s going on and plops himself down. WHAT.. The city of Ottumwa in Iowa just opened up a city council meeting with a prayer to SATAN. Our nation needs prayer now more than ever. Lord Jesus Christ. (…) Thu, 08 Oct 2026 01:25:57 +0000 e035b27248662275b79f116963d1a1c1004a7a09 https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/changed-my-mind-re-trump-in-2028/ Until now. I was not in favor of Trump running for a third term. I thought the constitutional order and the rule of law should be respected. Then I saw dozens of Dem leaders both social and political claiming that Trump’s comment. which was that temporary high gas prices were a small price to pay (…) Wed, 07 Oct 2026 23:53:59 +0000 5c045d86c0b38f074da4ebebe90f1b25c1db959e https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/jabberwocky-revisited/ I was unduly proud of this bit of nonsense. A woebegone Twitterer read the following. and cried out that he did not understand anything the youngsters said: In reply. after consulting with Humpty Dumpty. I wrote the explanation: ‘Twas brillig. and the jestergoon Was munting and mogging with the foids All chadfish were clavicular And cortisol (…) Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:30:04 +0000 c65575520e8f720c6db8b14bd369ceaa1b23d0b9 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-deceptive-tactics-of-silent.html Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:18:27 +0000 80210d1890f01e473440e0d0dda8e809b05dfe0e https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/action-item-an-fssp-seminarian-could-use-a-hand/ I usually like to see. feel products before I advance them. but this is a special occasion.  And it is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. From a FSSP seminarian: Hi Father Z. Happy feast day of Our … Read More → Wed, 07 Oct 2026 20:42:38 +0000 5f642cd922c72975124866021aede1f8792c7bcd https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/service-announcement-3/ For personal reasons. posts might be sparse for another week or so. Bear with me. We’ll get to the old schedule. Meanwhile. you can have a useful reading here. Then you can have a pro-life laugh with this Italian-Born comedian. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 19:54:36 +0000 d7fbdc112def2ba2dcc002b23734c5db75d7917d https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/data-centers Giant facilities. secret deals. minimal local taxes. and murky electricity costs turned a once-invisible industry into a bipartisan target. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 19:48:49 +0000 6b73b18951154b074869f72d654652610027ae05 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/cosmic-plot-and-meta-cosmic-theme.html If in Book I we set the cosmic stage and in Book II introduced the anthropic actor. in Book III we explore the theme. which is to say. the meaning of the story. The purpose of an artistically rendered plot — which of course plays out in time — is to convey a theme that is transcendent to the plot. ideally timeless and universal. The plot takes us on the road. but does the road lead anywhere. In the case of the Cosmos. it is full of surprises. with a plotline nobody could have invented or foreseen — much less deduced — but in the end. is it all just typing as opposed to writing.In any plot there is an inciting incident that disrupts the normal course of events and introduces a conflict into the story. For cosmotheandrism — and frankly just common sense — the appearance of the Anthropos is the inciting incident. since there are no conflicts prior to this. But once man arrives it is one conflict after another — with the environment. between human beings. and within ourselves.Think of how quickly things go sideways in the biblical narrative: snake versus woman. woman versus man. man versus God. God versus man. brother versus brother. etc. You could say this is “revelation.” but who could disagree with what it reveals. Then God intervenes to set things right. but much of the Old Testament documents further conflict between God and his people. and then other people versus the people of God. The whole thing culminates in God actually entering the story to straighten things out. but then the people rise up against God. No sooner do some of the people learn their lesson. then they too come under attack. and the Cycle of Conflict continues.Sounds more like a documentary than a revelation.Big Box Religion and Be-spoken ReligiosityReligions are. for the most part. bad — but Religion is not. –GödelAs touched on in Book II. each religion in its own way offers a diagnosis of man’s ills and a means of treatment — an owner’s manual for how to achieve our maximum potential and become fully operational humans.But what about revelation. and which one are we supposed to pick. Even within Christianity there are hundreds of denominations with deep differences over a plethora of major points and fine details. So. somebody must be wrong. both between and within religions.Uh oh. Here comes the Stoner’s Manual.Rather. speaking in all sobriety. revelation is again more analogous to aesthetic works that connote far more than they denote. As we touched on in Book II. the denotative sense of a work of art might be commonplace or trivial. But a great work of art has a kind of immediate power that is prior to our interpretation of it. much like how humor has the immediate power to provoke a physical reaction.In the case of art. perhaps this is because we sense the power via the right cerebral hemisphere and try to explain it a posteriori via the left. Indeed. it is via its palpable aesthetic power that we recognize something as art to begin with. Bad art operates in the other direction — for example. consciously infusing the plot with a crass political or ideological message and calling it art.As explained in Book II. our prime directive is to know the True and will the Good: if there is a [free] will. then there’s a proper way — an Ought built into the nature of things. Wisdom knows the end. but prudence determines the path.This opens a rather large can of wormholes.True. there are plenty of contradictions and implausibilities in any Big Box religion. but that is no reason to embrace an incoherent absurdity that is even more contradictory and implausible. from scientism to Scientology. In general. this is precisely the role of esoterism. which seeks the deeper truth [or substance] beneath religious forms without in any way undermining or negating their fundamental message.Taken at farce value there is much about religion that doesn’t add up. and may even be repugnant to our reason.Sounds like it doesn’t matter which religion you believe. so long as you’re ashamed of it.Two things may be said of this: first. being confronted with such contradictions compels us to grapple with them for a deeper understanding. This is reminiscent of poetry. which likewise forces the poet to express himself within the constraints of a certain structure. rhythm. or rhyme scheme. resulting in something deeper and more beautiful than the same thing expressed in prose. which may render it banal or inane.Likewise. it is easy enough to spot the fissures and anomalies in the other guy’s religion. or in any ideological system for that matter. in that we know going in that no such system can be complete and consistent — including. of course. science. As everyone knows. the latter is an unsurpassed method for exploring the natural world but quickly beclowns itself when elevated to a philosophy or metaphysic. Thus it seems that both science and religion are in need of a unifying esoterism to help them transcend their own limitations and break on through to the other side.Esoterism. Why not secret handshakes. spoon-bending. or the prosperity gospel.For cosmotheandrism. esoterism is simply the inner complement to outward exoterism. the spirit behind the letter or substance beneath the form. As implied in Book II. it is an ontological jailbreak from left-brain imprisonment. a movement from immanence to transcendence and part to whole.In the words of Schuon. esoerism is “not legalistic or obligatory truth. but truth that stems from the nature of things.” It is the invisible and colorless light that takes on color upon contact with various religious forms.There is again religion and there is that to which religions point — the former is always relative. the latter Absolute. In a manner of speaking. esoterism is “the religion of intelligence.” such that “its content is all that intelligence can attain. and that it alone can attain” [Schuon]. One might say that it goes to the hidden side of the Cosmic Area Rug. which does not require a genius to acknowledge. rather. just intelligence as such. “In this sense it could be said that esoterism alone is absolutely monotheistic.” for “it alone recognizes only one religion under diverse forms.” In short. it is the Religion of religion going to the God of Gods. hence Gödel’s snarky comment at the top of this section. It is not so much that religions are bad. only that they tend to go bad — which is to say. rigid. static. partial. and contradictory — when divorced from their complementary esoteric side.In other words. just as a purely left-brain view of the world is necessarily incomplete or inconsistent. so too is any religion enclosed in its exoteric dimension. In truth. we always need both. In a way. esoterism simply respects the poles of infinitude and transcendence. as does Einstein vis-à-vis science or Eckhart with regard to the God beyond God. Just as we can forget the infinite dimension of science. so too can we disregard the infinitude of the Theos. enclosing both in our own forms. A form maps the totality. but no form is total. That’s just common sense. and a defense against the common nonsense of both scientism and religionism.Back to science for a moment. There is no present way. for example. to reconcile quantum and relativity theories. but does this mean we should just give up on physics because it is hopelessly contradictory. Of course not. The maps still work. despite the ambiguity of the reality they map.Likewise. in the study of psychology one learns all about neurology and brain anatomy in addition to purely psychological theories. but with no earthly idea of how to reconcile the two [the so-called Hard Problem]. There are obviously simplistic ways to do so. but these are analogous to the theologian who can only explain things with recourse to his own theology. The same is true of the neurologist who explains subjectivity with recourse to neurology: premise in. conclusion out.Even the secular person will acknowledge that man is indeed always restlessly pushing toward infinitude. No sooner do we conquer one horizon then we are aiming at the next one. But if there is no real object at the other end. then this reduces to a dynamism of eternal futility. because we’re pushing a sisyphean crock uphill toward something that is definitely unattainable and probably non-existent. On the other hand. if there is a telos to our striving. then this is how we go about conforming ourselves to the Theos in an open and dynamic way. It becomes the implicit thematic structure of our lives. which thereby become meaning-full instead of meaningless. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:57:43 +0000 6221b22adf49dc70cbbadb4d0a07c99878fd3343 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/07/well-apparently-it-is-a-joke-lockdownfakery/ The agents. bots and algorithms are busy today. folks. EVERYTHING IS Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:04:50 +0000 620e4b2a0ea2809d7cb8440ab59d351ea8983433 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/the-irkutsk-institute-psyop-and-the I’ve been watching the headlines out of Irusk. Siberia. about Darya Shipilova dying of something while collecting Y.Pestis bacteria for a medical institute. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 15:40:10 +0000 7fb76044698bcf913b887544e903d463c88f7f91 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/10/your-wealth-is-not-for-you.html   I knew a researcher once who was studying the long-term effects of daycare. In their research. as they told me. they found that the earlier parents put their kids in childcare. the earlier those children as adults would put their parents in aged care. What goes around. comes around. right. I have read research that shows that day care for more than a few hours a week is known to cause long term behavioural and emotional issues. Researchers have known this for decades. and yet the data was actively suppressed. because it went against the narrative of equal work for men and women being good for society. We have all seen how predators are running rampant through day care at numbers people are so shocked to hear about. that they compartmentalize it and ignore it. because it is too frightening. But Australian state governments have been in the process of tightening laws because they are aware of how widespread the issue is. And I have observed that most of this information will wash over many parents for a few reasons: 1]     They might literally have no other choice. because of their situation.2]     They might feel like they have no other choice. even though they do. they just are not capable of seeing it.3]     Daycare centres are so common and so much a part of our culture that herd mentality just causes people to use them without really thinking deeply about it. This is common behaviour for humans. even though just a generation or two ago we thought differently on this issue. behaviours can become accepted as the norm very quickly.4]    The idea that 'my kid is the exception' causes people to ignore the data. But the data does not say some kids do well in daycare. it says all kids suffer behavioural and emotional issues after a certain amount of hours. Your kids might handle that better than others. but the environment is not the best place for kids. even if it is a well done daycare.5]     The idea of restructuring your life around avoiding daycare is so hard to consider. that even giving the idea time to think about is just not possible for many people. Life is already hard enough as it is. right. I feel for those who would prefer not to use daycare but have no other choice. I understand the financial trap many are in. I get it. Older generations have handed you a pretty broken economy and society. I think we older Australians. which I am quickly getting toward being one. have a responsibility to seek to recreate a society where people are not forced into this position. as much as possible. As I get older. I think much more about the legacy I will leave my children and their children. than anything else. A righteous man's wealth is meant to be to the benefit of his children's children. not himself.     Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:33:12 +0000 5e96b69bcf65e94cb2f131bc0e9b1feb05ca314d https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/thought-for-day-embrace-leper.html Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:20:54 +0000 20fe7e1af399580dbb49439ebd4556b49e3efe06 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-07-a-battle-and-a-ceiling/ The sun clawed its way up against a cloudy sky at 07:11. It will set behind the clouds at 18:44. The Ave Maria Bell is in its 1900 cycle for the Curia. It is the Anniversary of the Battle of … Read More → Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:35:12 +0000 d821b94e096e659404094ec8902c955871986a2b https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/07/our-lady-of-victory-of-the-most-holy-rosary-pray-for-us/ Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Victory. of the Most Holy Rosary. the anniversary of her glorious triumph at Lepanto in 1571. “The feast of the Holy Rosary was instituted to honor Mary for the Christian victory over the Turks at Lepanto on October 7. 1571. Pope St. Pius V and all Christians had prayed the Rosary … Continue reading 'Our Lady of Victory. of the Most Holy Rosary. pray for us.' Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:31:46 +0000 804101db16e3fda79484855eb815ed6406b1bd43 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/10/above-us-stars.html   It is often said that the stars incline but do not compel meaning the man lacking awareness is ruled by his stars but the aware man rules them. Then again. as I read recently. the stars do not bind the liberated man. but they do mark the average man. who is mostly driven by forces he mistakes for himself.This is all true but only up to a point. The fact is that a person's birth chart does mark that person. saint or sinner. fool or wise. The pattern of the chart will be the pattern of the person. What does differ is how the subject responds to the pattern. There will have been someone born at the same time as the Buddha but he will not have become enlightened. Someone born at the time of JS Bach will not even have been musical. The chart will determine the form a personality takes but it does not determine the quality of consciousness the person brings to bear in expressing that form. Otherwise put. it shows the personality but not the soul behind that personality. And yet even the highest soul is obliged to follow the pattern of the chart in expressing himself on Earth.Take a simple aspect like the Sun conjunction Mars. A person can either respond to this by becoming an aggressive bully. a highly competitive sportsman or a valiant warrior for truth. And all shades in between. The aspect shows force allied to the self and can be expressed in a multitude of different ways though all with the same basic signature of strength and purpose. This is the case for every astrological configuration whether in sign. house or by aspect. There is always a higher and lower way to respond to the energy involved. Take squares. for instance. This is a 90 degree aspect between two planets or points in the chart. They are traditionally regarded as hard aspects because the points involved do not pull in the same direction so creating psychological friction or difficulty. For an unevolved person this aspect might express itself negatively but for someone who is more self-aware. meaning aware of the deeper currents of life and not just reacting to inner urges without reflection. they can be a catalyst for growth. Such a person does not respond to the resultant pressure by blowing off steam but by using the energy that ensues from the clash between two conflicting principles creatively.The transpersonal planets of Uranus. Neptune and Pluto will affect everyone. and presumably even did before their discovery though probably in a more veiled manner then. The discovery of these planets did coincide with changes in human consciousness. most obvious in terms of Uranus. discovered by William Herschel in Bath in 1781 and heralding the Enlightenment. revolution and maybe even the capture and use of electricity. But Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930 also prompted/coincided with radical changes. These planets are called transpersonal because they are generally perceived as having a collective rather than an individual influence. but if they hit other planets or important angles in a chart they will certainly have an impact. What that impact is depends on the consciousness of the individual. Uranus can lead to erratic individualism and a rebellious streak or innovation and even genius. It can be the lightning bolt of inspiration or the crazy radical. Neptune can cause dreamy mysticism. inspired art. deep spirituality or even drug addiction. all linked by the dissolution of boundaries which can have a transcendent or a destructive effect. again depending on the quality of consciousness or the soul behind the chart. As for Pluto. he was the god of the underworld and he represents what is hidden beneath the surface and that includes death but also its other side of rebirth. Incidentally. these planets were all well-named because their god forms really do encapsulate their energies. Make of that what you will. I believe there was divine purpose behind it.  Sapiens dominabitur astris.  'The wise man will master the stars.' This was the medieval maxim that summed up the idea that although the stars [really the planets] did influence the unconscious man. the conscious man could dominate them because while the stars certainly did influence everything in the lower worlds. all of which expressed their patterns. free will is paramount. And this is true. Free will is paramount. It is why we are here. Its exercise is how we grow. Nevertheless. the stars will determine the form that the personality of even the wise man takes. Where free will comes in is that he can choose to express the higher pattern rather than the lower one. and also by overcoming what is negative within himself he can prevent that unresolved negativity from manifesting externally. But still the pattern of his birth chart will operate. He cannot escape that. He can only work within it but what he can do is choose how to express it. And is this so strange. It is the same with everything about us. We are born as the embodiment of a certain form and cannot change that [we really can't despite some modern ideologically-based denials of that truth]. We can only manifest our form to its highest or lowest aspect and everything between those two extremes. It's the same with the birth chart which shows our astral genetics. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:05:00 +0000 33cdc0af8ea681db29a52bb43b0d6d631729ec22 https://onepeterfive.com/the-rosary-sounds-the-trumpet-of-the-new-israel-2/ ...for those who come to see the need to be little. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:49:00 +0000 af817b69f56bd72b55a2cc1db552b418f6219890 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/mens-investment-in-womens-agency/ After a faithful man does all the hard work of guiding. loving. protecting. raising. shaping. and teaching a woman in his care to be high quality. what does she then contribute to marriage. family. or society. Continue reading → Wed, 07 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000 b6f7b4715f37cd9f81eef2381ff9dbccee606be2 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/07/litmus-test/ I have no better way of knowing if a man is for God than if he likes to say the Hail Mary and the Rosary. -Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort Truer words never spoken. Run. don’t walk. RUN from anyone who declares that they hate the Rosary. That’s an infiltrator and/or enemy of Jesus Christ (…) Wed, 07 Oct 2026 06:43:00 +0000 ee90e8e216b3e8ae2a0ff4537a7733350cd32516 https://onepeterfive.com/every-bishop-act-now/ More talking. statements. and documents do almost nothing to stop the heretic wolves from scattering the flock. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:00:00 +0000 67c39e1857e245f96e3b49426df9a60cf33e954d https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mmm2 Or: Make Marvel Great Again Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:24:48 +0000 71f261af4f55a69f6a53fa747502d9a022f5f562 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/newt-gingrichs-wife-is-the-missing Pistol Pete Hegseth recently gave a speech announcing half a dozen new Pentagon initiatives. Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:15:54 +0000 ca5fd81e0c36988bc14e25d4e83b612269170b31 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/we-deserve-better-psyops.html Over the past few days. we have all been subjected to a veritable barrage of FEAR-PR0N. It started with stories about an Omani pilot suddenly going all JIHAAAAAAAAD and suffering a premature detonation [of sorts] on a Flydubai flight to Izzrael. To be slightly more precise [and a tad less flippant]. essentially. a chap named (…) The post We deserve better psyops appeared first on Didactic Mind. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:14:11 +0000 e81a32b364bd02023d0a2ebf70f007cd966fd0ce https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/06/justice/ Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:47:24 +0000 07adbee61510b63c724b6005825ac2ed7e44ce3c https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/let-the-machines-debate/ I have had the misfortune to overhear two amateur philosophers arguing about whether or not machine intelligence can be proven to be self-aware. The debate. of course. ran in circles as energetically as a puppy chasing its tail. with much the same noisy barking. because both amateurs insisted the matter should be proved empirically. by (…) Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:48:40 +0000 c7addae8e0ff33e9105099c050f42d352d662d6d https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/ho-hum-is-this-bishops-conference-like.html Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:00:00 +0000 75f5c9fdb0a8b18b710f81af86e6faa188c806eb https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-06-tomorrow-should-be-good/ Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY.  This helps to pay for health insurance. utilities. groceries. and now also my late mother’s place.  At no extra cost. you provide help for which I am … Read More → Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:37:15 +0000 f8f0d3c5add8029bf7e1fe1d676d8b269f5869fd https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/presumptuous-imbecility.html As mentioned previously. Book III of the trilogy is unfinished. nor have I looked at it in a few months. I’m frankly a little disappointed at what I’m finding there—Not ready for its close-up.Not at all. Here is an example:As with the previous two books of the Trilogy. we begin with the question of where to even begin our discussion. For we are faced with a metaphysical Catch 22: To speak of God is presumptuous. not to speak of God is imbecilic.What about presumptuous imbecility. It’s never stopped you before.Right: let’s stick to our principles. one of which being complementarity. This gives us permission to speak of O without the hubris of thinking we’ve solved — or even can solve — Big Mystery. For on the one hand An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us. the reason being that the best we can do is try to map infinitude by means of the finite. which is of course impossible in principle. Nevertheless. Thought can avoid the idea of God as long as it limits itself to mediating on minor problems. So here again. it is something we must do. even while knowing we cannot do it — that is. if we want a complete answer to the perennial existential question of WTF..Sounds like explaining everything is your responsibility but none of what results is your fault.One purpose the symbol O to forestall premature closure of our ultimate Principle and to avoid projecting our own explicit conceptions or implicit preconceptions into it. After all. even atheists presume to speak of God. except in such an impoverished way that they end up meditating on minor problems.Also. we’ve drawn the distinction between ultimate and ultimacy [Axiom 6]. the former going to the Theos thing itself. the latter going to the most we can say of this thing — unless. of course. the thing were to reveal itself to us [AKA revelation]. which we are neither ruling in nor out at this point. But based only on our own limited intelligence. we know going in that we can never exhaust or contain the thing itself. since the darn thing is uncontainable by human thought. Still. that’s not nothing. so long as we practice a certain self-directed linguistic iconoclasm that helps prevent the Theos from being reduced to a manmode idol. You know what they say: If you meet the Buddha on the road. kill him.Crush the infamous thing.Relax. Voltaire. You know how that ended. It’s just an orthoparadoxical figure of speech. like Eckhart praying to God to rid him of same. Rather. just respect the limits of speech when approaching the limitless. You can try to pour speech over God. but it evaporates on contact. This attitude is perfectly orthodox. irrespective of one’s religion.The ancient Hebrews. for example. gave this transcendent reality a tongue-twisting name to avoid pretending we could tame the wild Godhead. and in order to honor his majesty. A word is a definition. and to define something is to set its boundaries. But our ultimate principle is by nature infinite. unbounded. and unrestricted. so to define it is to limit it. at which moment the word no longer refers to its term. rather. encloses it in our own words and concepts. But as mentioned in the previous post. O is the very principle of openness [Axiom 3]. so we should extend the courtesy of maintaining the same dynamic relational openness to it.Here venerable orthoparadoxes abound. such as The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name [Tao Te Ching]. or The Self is the ear of the ear. mind of the mind. speech of the speech [Kena Upanishad]. And as we have seen. even the LH science that can be named is not the real RH science.It is indeed difficult to shed light on the Theos. since it is the Light by which we see. so it is as unavailing as striking a match to look for the sun. or catching the wind in a bucket. or betting on the New York Jets.Maybe there’s a workaround.Not for Jets fans. However. our ultimate principle is not so much unintelligible as the principle of intelligibility itself. Thus. in a sense. we could never stop speaking of God even if we tried. Religious points of reference abound even if we cannot say exactly what they refer to. Nevertheless. to quote Bishop Robert Barron. “Anyone sincerely looking for the truth has already been found by God.”This is my skeptical face.Well. in the cosmotheandric vision. truth is one of the names of God — that along with beauty. goodness. unity. freedom. and creativity. not to mention the terse but celebrated big reveal to Moses. I am that I am [which is a way of expressing Axiom 12]. much more on which anon. These transcendental possibilities only exist because God does. so to participate in any of them is to participate in the God in whom they are grounded. Make no mistake. everyone presumes to speak of God. even if they are the last imbecile to know. for in the words of Thomas. “Every knower knows God implicitly in anything it knows.”Dávila has a number of typically pointed aphorisms that go to this theo-anthropic nexus. For example. with regard to beauty. Every work of art speaks to us of God. No matter what it says. As to the good. Values are not citizens of this world. but pilgrims from other heavens. And more generally. The thirst for the great. the noble and the beautiful is an appetite for God that is ignored. The point is. the trick to avoiding presumption and imbecility is to bear in mind the ineradicable distinction between pointers and pointed. Again. even our best pointers go to ultimacy — the most we can say — not to the ultimate per se. about which it is best to say nothing.If that’s the case. this is going to be a refreshingly short book.Unless we acknowledge two very different meanings of nothing. one a privation. the other a pleroma. We are like fish swimming in a bowl. only our curved enclosure of space-time is called the Cosmos. And just as the fish has no conception of the reality outside the bowl. we struggle to conceptualize what is outside ours. the difference being that we know we are in a bowl. nor is the cosmic bowling alley self-sufficient. rather. contingent. thus an unavoidable play of strikes and gutters.Once we have eliminated the impossible. my dear Petey. whatever remains. no matter how improbable. must be the truth. one of which being that while logic is an indispensable tool for ordering thought. it cannot contain thought itself. Any strictly logical system runs into the wall of Gödel: the comprehensive. perfectly self-contained rational system cannot exist. For which reason Einstein remarked that if your math refers to reality it isn’t certain. and if it is certain it doesn’t refer to reality. the reason being that dynamic and open-ended reality simply cannot be reduced to any static and abstract quantity. Thus the nonlocal Truth transcends the limits of logic — it breaks through to the translogical without falling into the infralogical.Except when it does.Yes. every philosophy or ideology is a gutterball of isism to the extent that it conflates ultimacy and ultimate. From a cosmotheandric standpoint. the intellect is effectively a prolongation of the Theos into the Cosmos. a kind of intellectual lifeline tossed to us herebelow. a hand-me-down from on high.To be exact. the rightly ordered intellect is a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged. in that we ought to be thankful. not just for how much we can know. but that we can know anything at all. For not only is the truth-bearing intellect continuous with the Theos. but is of the same open and relational substance — substance-in-relation — and hence related to everything. not excluding our relational Theos. And why would this Theos want us to deploy loose and lazy logic or speech when thinking about him. No. there is no higher privilege than truth. and this privilege does not flame out at what the book of John calls in his own write “the toppermost of the poppermost” — or where I am he and you are me we are all in this together.I am the walrus.Shut up. Petey. The walrus was Paul. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:48:41 +0000 665481bd68ba7496dc06b29bccbe23472e5bb350 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/10/vacation-update-2.html  Nothing exciting to report - which is the point of a vacation. after all.We've spent a while on the beach. enjoying the pleasantly warm [rather than ridiculously hot] weather and the equally warm Gulf water.  To my unpleasant surprise. my difficulties with balance [due to my spinal injury and nerve damage] turn out to be magnified as I get into deeper water.  if I lose my balance when waves are pulling me around. it's difficult to get to my feet again.  I really don't like that. but there's nothing much I can do about it.  I'll be starting another round of physiotherapy when I get home. so I'll mention it to the therapist as another symptom to be addressed.We spent a few hours yesterday aboard the USS Lexington. an Essex-class aircraft carrier that was the last World War II-era carrier to be retired from active service in 1991.  This was my second visit to her. having seen her a couple of decades ago during a visit to southern Texas. but my wife's first.  Due to my mobility limitations. this time I restricted myself to the hangar and flight decks. where everything is on a level.  The ladders and stairs below decks don't lend themselves to using a walking-stick.  My wife went through them all while I enjoyed a leisurely stroll around the flat bits.  We enjoyed our visit.We've taken the opportunity to visit several local restaurants.  The fresh seafood is great - we both enjoy it.  [I'm sorry. but fresh water fish is not 'sea' food - it's just fish. not sea fish.  The real thing tastes much better. IMHO.]  There's also a German restaurant in town. where we tucked into schnitzel. strudel and Black Forest cake.  So much for our diets . . .We're thinking of driving down to SpaceX Starbase tomorrow or Thursday.  It's about three hours from here. making for a long return drive. but we're much closer to it now than we're ever likely to be again. so it seems like a good idea to take advantage of that.  The main road goes right past the SpaceX compound. so one can see almost everything going on around the launch complex.  Furthermore. the upper stage from Starship flight test 13 is due to return to Starbase this week. after splashing down in the Indian Ocean and being recovered intact.  It'll be great if we can see it coming home.  We're both big fans of SpaceX and Elon Musk.The nicest part of this break is that we don't have to do anything.  We can sleep late. go where we wish. eat whenever and wherever we want. and ignore our normal daily routine.  Just what we needed.  Of course. come next Monday it'll be back to normal. with my wife returning to work and me heading for another physiotherapy session. but we'll take what we can get this week.Peter Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:14:15 +0000 ac02a3b99de9000da23a568da74c124944a3e0c2 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/a-debate-with-vox-day-the-why-of Figuring out the WHY Matters Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:24:29 +0000 ab8aaad92c7560ea0f64c465fb2a7214a3a4ffb5 https://www.thekurganblog.com/a-debate-with-vox-day-the-why-of/ Preamble – How it came about and the corollaries Vox can probably skip this section. but our readers will probably benefit from it. The debate came about as a result of Vox generally saying [particularly in relation to his Socio-Sexual Hierarchy] that one should never concern themselves with the WHY of how something is. but (…) No related posts. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:24:29 +0000 9edd1a5e29998072f3aa5e78a90c9d1810664a41 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/baptism-before-consent-why-christians A child receives a family. a language. and a home before choosing anything. Christians believe he should receive the Church. too. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:00:44 +0000 40a3d57f54c84451a527ff05e6d4e7416297fc99 https://thetransformedwife.com/testimonies-from-those-who-are-thankful-for-gothards-teachings/ The other day. I watched a video by Todd Friel titled “Why the Duggars and Millions of Other Baptists Were Deceived by Bill Gothard.” It was awful. I thought he would actually use Bill Gothard’s own teaching to show how badly millions were deceived. He didn’t. He mostly used the slanderous video “Shiny Happy People” to back up his accusations. He never attended one of his conferences. and he didn’t seem to have studied any of his material. He just... Read More Read More Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:41 +0000 a9bad71b4a6452ae8d0dabd12de93065eb1818a9 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/06/18589/ “While the world changes. the Cross stands firm.” -St. Bruno of Cologne God does not change.  His law does not change. Objective moral norms do not change. Sodomy is a sin that cries out to heaven for God’s vengeance.  Every human being is born with this etched onto his heart – this is the Natural (…) Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:55:00 +0000 105b56a3e3d0d4eb6d0d93c01c6bb6c0844bdfd2 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-october-836 Plus news. events and a nearly-sold-out pilgrimage Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:19:41 +0000 bbd87652544f3db3ed077b9fd79a34fc14069dda https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/catholics-must-read-the-entire-tradition-in-light-of-the-council-in-order-to-remain-within-the-church/ At Lifesite I read of the goofy notions of a Polish cardinal who occupies the see once held by Karol Card. Wojtyla. You might recall that. not so long ago. there have been assertions that the entirety of the Church’s … Read More → Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:42:07 +0000 dd47714c8fa782782ace9f1fa2e272968c1edde3 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/celebrating-57-years-of-marriage.html Tue, 06 Oct 2026 09:30:00 +0000 545cc04eb3e9d49ece6f658027044fc204b0a0c1 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/10/06/de-combustioning/ Canada has travelled considerably downhill during the last century or two. Did you know. for instance. that in 1893 we were already making electric cars. I first learnt this as a stamp collector. for the electric van of the Still Motor Co is depicted on a pretty lithographic postage stamp — one of a set (…) Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:18:24 +0000 09b016369df740c9847b0f4d3cf28d760c09ea28 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/ambivalence-about-beatles.html It is not really possible for later generations to understand the central and dominating place that The Beatles had in British cultural life through the middle and late 1960s. And this can never be replicated because it was due to a particular and transient phase in society and technology. So. in this sense The Beatles are [for Brits. anyway] so much the number one pop group. that whoever is number two [and that is not at all obvious] is so far behind as for there to be no competition. And by my evaluation. The Beatles released a large number of very good singles. in many styles. across several years - as well as a fair bit of dire and dreary. pretentious stuff - especially in their later years. But also by my evaluation. Not One of The Beatles singles was what I would regard as first rate.. Which is an interesting combination.Here we have what I regard as the number one band of all time. yet a band that never [IMO] released a first rate track.A few examples of my first rate singles for that general era include Gimme Some Lovin by the Spencer Davies Group. Silence is Golden by the Tremeloes. Knock on Wood by Eddie Floyd. Daydream Believer by The Monkees. Long Shot Kick de Bucket by The Pioneers. Liquidator by the Harry J All Stars... Many of these groups were. more or less. 'one hit wonders' - never again attaining the same heights. This provides a clue. Pop music is - at its best - an almost accidental. but at any rate irreproducible-to-order. product of an ephemeral combination of youth. talent. and inspiration - attuned with a cultural moment. Most of the long-lived and culturally significant bands and artists - no matter how musically talented and productive of good quality - never released what I would evaluate to be a genuinely first rate single: Elton John is a clear instance.  Also. despite The Beatles. the 1960s was Not the peak of pop music in Britain: that came afterwards. in the late 70s and early 80s.  Tue, 06 Oct 2026 07:30:55 +0000 701a04f5ac8f9645d534cf1aa445e0bc25befbc0 https://onepeterfive.com/seven-defenders-of-christendom-st-anthony-defender-of-italy/ He was inspired by the martyrs. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 06:37:00 +0000 def175e0ba95eb1945ff0ffd0939c59649682ff4 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/the-mormon-church-nears-bankruptcy Building upon my last post. Nelson’s 2015 ascension to Prez of the Mormon Church [with a theorized but not proven wormtongue Dallin Oaks at his side] coincided with a sudden expansion in Church real estate ventures. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 03:25:38 +0000 da20b3216077b8808422f6ab45899149c2cf8a35 https://www.thekurganblog.com/god-bless-mel-gibson/ I think he may be the only one from Hollywood who is not involved in all that satanic pedophile shit. I hope he makes the film about the siege of Malta too. And if he wants a volunteer to play Jean Parisot le Valette. I would sign up in a heartbeat. I would do it (…) No related posts. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:03:48 +0000 a62d579d1ed3d57fb092b45ac7e92e048d34d3e1 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/god-bless-mel-gibson I think he may be the only one from Hollywood who is not involved in all that satanic pedophile shit. Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:03:48 +0000 186e29ee37d111f7d0be36bf51111ab6ab7fc815 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/monday-mashup-template-69.html Well. that was the weekend all done and dusted. unfortunately. And now we have to get back to the mundane drudgery of the 9-to-5 – which is especially painful if you have to waste a lot of that time crafting PowerPoint slides. I swear. if there is one application I think should be outlawed on (…) The post Monday morning Ubisofting appeared first on Didactic Mind. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:05:27 +0000 f07d216ca51537ae49f8b9889ff278a51debea96 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/05/compare-and-contrast/ From Father Z: Mon, 05 Oct 2026 22:31:28 +0000 5320f00b7c72f5eabc3b56302589b68caf9ea142 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/make-marvel-magnificat-part-1 Saving Marvel. From itself. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 21:05:03 +0000 da204e4ad9ca5a8b4645a4e7691397398997a45d https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/05/independents-in-panaca/ In his recent posts. Zen has called on readers to stand independent with increased temporal self-reliance. and to make 2027 an Annus Mirabilis. These calls came to mind as I happened to peruse websites of a couple of businesses in Panaca. Nevada. Panaca is 120 miles north of Las Vegas. 70 miles west of Cedar (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:48:37 +0000 25a76cef49a4e5a8858da1fb886e8f44fb18acc1 https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/announcement-relics-anthology-vol-i/ The following announcement is from my beautiful and talented wife. The words below are hers: RELICS Anthology Volume 1 Out Now. A Great Place to Discover New Favorite Authors. RELICS is an anthology of stories by authors who participate in the Based Book Sale. The anthology was put together by the Writer’s Block Spaces crew. (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:04:47 +0000 6bb5868a19972aee1ecf2ab5bdc2d31b67187f07 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/this-this-this-but-this/ This…. This is Bishop Giuseppe Luigi Spiga of Grajaú. Brazil. dancing with a crowd from his Diocese during the National Youth Day on September 21. 2026. The Conciliar Church says this is the way to find Christ. but this is … Read More → Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:51:29 +0000 a656223c2c73425ca98dd0dc53e914d00ed019e0 https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/rome-26-10-day-05-feeling-better/ At 07:09 this morning your local yellow star managed once again to haul itself above the eastern horizon of the Eternal City. illuminating domes. bell towers. roof terraces and an impressive number of people irritated in traffic in the great … Read More → Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:40:13 +0000 da75fcdc11b191ecc5664060e7a934d0280d36ee https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/10/05/is-this-what-we-meant-by-jesus-being-the-light-of-the-world/ What are we doing here. https://t.co/Eu86ytF8cY — Anthony [@Catholicizm1] October 5. 2026 “When Jesus spoke again to the people. he said. ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. but will have the light of life.'” John 8:12. Guys. we have to do better than this. We just (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:40:48 +0000 5e096a7ed83d4489dd2419d2daeada2a9041c2c5 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/everybody-has-some-idea-whats-going-on.html Today I loaned a book about tapestries to a library patron. We had this brief exchange:Him: My wife is going to see the Bayeux Tapestry so she wants to know a bit more about it.Me: Oh. is it here.Him: No. it's on loan to London.Or words to that effect.I've been mulling on the exchange since. Think of the assumed shared knowledge it reflects:1] He assumed I'd heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. [Correct.]2] He possibly assumed I'd heard that the Bayeux Tapestry was on exhibition in London. [I had actually heard this. but I'd forgotten the details.]3] I assumed that. when I said 'Oh. is it here.'. he'd know I didn't mean that it was always here-- in Ireland. or in Dublin.Everybody has some idea what's going on. The truth of this often strikes me and surprises me.I mean. there's so much to know. Think of everything that happens in the world in a minute. in an hour. in a day. in a week...all those events piling up. and all the ages of history coming before them. And yet we can have a working assumption that people know what we're talking about when we talk about almost anything.The Bayeux Tapestry is interesting in this regard. What other tapestry do you know about. I remember. when I was learning about it in school. thinking: 'Why are we learning about a tapestry. This is history class.' Probably the teacher did explain its importance as a historical source but I just wasn't listening.Or maybe I'm being too harsh on myself. Maybe I did understand it's importance as a historical source but wondered why we were being taught about the thing itself in such detail.The depiction of Halley's Comet on the Tapestry has always interested me as well. It seems so unusual and exceptional.I can remember. in 1986 [when I was nine years old] being confused as to why people were getting so excited about the comet. Weren't there lots of comets. Now I'm very pleased that a pub in Dublin is named the Comet because it was built that year. [Or so I've heard.] Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:54:28 +0000 faeec02949dc6bf3e2a344ccbf0296a199f7a44f https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/from-wikipedia-page-on-pope-nicholas.html In 866. the Bulgar Khan St Boris the Baptiser wrote to Pope Nicholas asking a wide range of questions. one of which being whether or not it was sinful for Christians to wear pants. In response. Nicholas wrote. 'For whether you or your women wear or do not wear pants neither impedes your salvation nor leads to any increase of your virtue.' The Pope then proceeded with a discussion on the virtue of wearing the 'spiritual pants' of a temperate life while restraining disordered passions.Personally I think I would support the abolition of trousers for both sexes. Women could wear skirts and dresses and men could wear kilts. or maybe robes. I'd love to go about in a robe. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:15:18 +0000 0e4fdc93ab8ecd57f640844d1b0025f437043821 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/why-is-current-left-so-dominant-and.html Why is the current Left [i.e. the post mid-1960s New Left] so dominant and powerful. Since the mid-1960s the mainstream Left has transformed from its Old Left roots in communism and socialism. based on transformations of economic and social structures. to the new Left rooted in multiple. additive and fluid oppositions - anti-racism. feminism [anti-men]. environmentalism [anti-CO2]. And throughout by the many-faceted sexual revolution evolving through anti-family. anti-monogamy. anti-marriage. anti biological sex and sexuality. and now pan-societal chosen subfertility and extinction.   How and why did this New Leftism swiftly so universally dominant that it overcame more than a century of Old Left socialism/ communism. and the New Left now includes and embraces all its mainstream would-be opposition ideologies such as Republican. Conservative. Libertarian. Nationalist. - even theocratic etc. This is an important question because so many who oppose the Left try to emulate and exceed the Left's power by studying and copying its methods. The reason for the pervasive. continuing. and [so far] unstoppable domination of the New Left is very simple. 1. New Left is essentially oppositional. 2. New Left is therefore essentially destructive. not constructive. 3. It is much. much easier to destroy than to construct.The weakness of the Old Left was that it was partially constructive. indeed utopian - the communists and socialists all had a [more or less detailed] picture of some kind of future and stable ideal society towards which they purported to be working. For example. a core ideology of the Old Left was economic equality - aiming therefore at a very highly equal 'distribution' of income [especially]. and also wealth [to vary degrees]. [But not power. The Old Left invariably centralized power. so that the revolutionary class could control everybody else for their own good.] Another core objective of the Old Left was the imposition of public ownership of the means of production. usually by some version of nationalization or worker-control.  The New Left has long-since abandoned any such constructive notions: there is no ideal future society being aimed-at. no utopia.Because it has all-but abandoned even the intent. even the pretence. of construction. it is therefore very easy for the New Left to change society by opposing and destroying whatever it currently deems to be bad. Destructive change is vastly easier than constructive change. and when New Left is aimed-at a wide [and expanding] range of destructive changes. then destructive change of any thing the Lefts deems bad is perceived as an effective exercise of Left power. .There is no such thing as The Right in modern mainstream politics. All parties and organizations are now of-the-Left. This includes churches. In conclusion. the New Left is so powerful and has come to dominate the entirety of high-level institutional life in the West because it seeks and achieves destructive change. and destruction is quick and facile compared with construction. And this is. of course. why those who desire to oppose the Left cannot use the methods of the Left...Because using the methods of the New Left is necessarily to pursue the agenda of the New Left.  Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:44:37 +0000 ac49a3e83a60237a0ee61e5c99454b25bb7ce55b https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-charles-marohn Communities often seem to follow a story arc of growth and prosperity followed by decline and struggles. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:55:48 +0000 2ea9adb457bd443af80cf50d4d9a1e0e17b37116 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/archbishop-vigano-sets-the-record-straight/ Today I will not have to spend forty minutes or one hour to dissect some prelate who pretends to promote Catholicism and. actually. poisons it. Archbishop Vigano’ already did it brilliantly for us. There is so much in the link that one could use it for an entire day of very useful reflection. There is. (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:47:22 +0000 8e4fff92ed3b2e63fb043709c16fe8b62384de01 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/regarding-flock-cameras Here’s the recording of our Member Zoom from last week about Flock cameras. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:16:01 +0000 44adde0c4ba1439f6cff07bfa760d20c60c4436b https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/10/05/michelle-obama-and-sharon-stone-joke-about-abortion/ A woman famous for spreading her legs on a movie screen evidently has some other rather destructive views. According to Lifesitenews. actress Sharon Stone told Michelle Obama that she had an abortion when she was 18. triggering a conversation in which both women insisted that if men could get abortions. it would be available in (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 13:08:30 +0000 b33a502575603880508ca6d71b6da9c767c4a1b2 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/restore-britain-will-be-more-of-the All they will do is swing the needle of democracy to the right. but the game will still be rigged by the imposter elites. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:06:24 +0000 d94b8dd48cf368075eba3fb47d01be8d412ea8ad https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/will-real-protestants-please-stand-up.html Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:03:08 +0000 b3fc5caf5f6566fcc9b7da604c89ac4320995e9c https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/05/general-conference-october-2026/ Always over too soon. There was a lot about children dying.  A lot about trials.  A lot about knowing who we are. children of God. not meant for [endless] mediocrity and [lasting] misery. The most winsome concept was from Saturday.  It was the concept of divine appointments.  It will probably enter my lexicon like tender (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:56:04 +0000 c54da3ee9f60330badc0ecba4d602ae2a85c8077 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/top-10-reasons-ai-will-never-become It Won't Destroy Nor Save Us Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:04:33 +0000 1cf28dc87dde15cbe2358b8ff606ff2fb21d575d https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62236/ Here. in one place. a compilation of anti-hysteria AI articles. well designed to soothes souls. provide calm. and gain insight. all by proving computer models will never come alive. never… Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000 552fc82546cb224b5f36fb7246a9f7311f632eab https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/ivy-day-2026.html Yesterday was the one-hundredth and thirty-fifth Ivy Day commemoration in Glasnevin cemetery. I was present. which made it my fourth Ivy Day commemoration.The ceremony is held to remember Charles Stewart Parnell. the Irish political leader who died in 1891.I'm not particularly a devotee of Parnell. I'm a devotee of traditions. Ivy Day is the sort of low-key. long-lived tradition I find especially appealing. [It's never been interrupted. even during the Covid lockdowns.]It's very simple. A small group gathers around the tomb. led by a piper who plays a few tunes. There's an introduction from the President of the Parnell Society. and then a dignitary of some kind lays a wreath on the grave. After that. the dignitary makes a short speech. the piper plays the National Anthem [one of the few occasions when I ever hear it played]. and everybody troops out. It lasts less than an hour and I don't think I've ever seen more than fifty people present.I was amazed when someone recently mentioned Ivy Day in a comment on this blog. apparently independent of my mentions of it in the past. Nobody knows about it. I was only alerted to it by the fact that it features in a James Joyce story. 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room.' [As you can imagine. it was a much bigger deal in the decade after Parnell's death. But even in the story. set in 1902. it's a fading tradition. The story reflects Joyce's usual cynicism towards any ideal other than the celebration of his own supposed genius.]Yesterday. the dignitary was the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Claire Hanna. The speech was the usual boilerplate about pluralism and change. although there were some references to recent events in the North.Ivy Day itself is tomorrow. being the anniversary of Parnell's death. The commemoration is held on the Sunday nearest to the anniversary.Every year. on the day before the commemoration. there's a Parnell Symposium in his country house of Avondale. I've been working up the courage to go for the last few years. The speeches are fine but the inevitable tea-breaks are daunting. I might go next year... Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:38:46 +0000 541788393ff7d22651c1e65d2a7d3b1cebbabbfe https://crez.site/2026/261005.html It was all part of a much larger conspiracy to avoid accountability. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:55:02 +0000 7ab9eb3f5f818a11f81a709f1bb751b15bbca693 https://onepeterfive.com/explore-tradition-in-a-deeper-way-with-dr-kwasniewski/ Happy to have a true Thomist like Dr. K. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:44:00 +0000 cb99eb6415682858d2bb2930c798c72dd827e071 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/qorg-is-out This has been a long time coming Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:22:36 +0000 0a2867f1951caa2fd0a915cc71bf30744ad96ccd https://www.thekurganblog.com/qorg-is-out/ I created this RPG a long time ago . basically to fulfil a need as I went from teenage years. when time was plentiful to play things like Dungeons and Dragons. Traveller. Car Wars. Top Secret and Paranoia with friends. to when time became increasingly scarce and I wanted a combat and resolution system that (…) No related posts. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:22:36 +0000 08d7e6d032e0f992ab9e4f412adc1b3aef340ff3 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/05/starting-saturday-off-right-2-2/ Guess the saint: This saint joined a Crusade to Egypt in the hopes of PROSELYTIZING as many musloids as he could before being killed.  This saint was not killed. but was instead received into the court of a sultan.  Our saint then offered to engage in a trial by fire – literal fire – with (…) Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:54:00 +0000 0a49b746aff357a02a4d7b1a12a6da30e595554a https://www.thekurganblog.com/the-kurganing-of-a-pyramidiot-and/ Oh gentle readers. I know you all enjoy a Kurganing as much as anyone enjoys watching someone self-immolate due to their own stupidity. however. In this occasion. I would like you to consider. even if only briefly. the pain I have to suffer being surrounded by such creatures daily. I have often mentioned that at (…) No related posts. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:01:58 +0000 1cb2f23f20810c0341de8083e495a82f22479d53 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/the-kurganing-of-a-pyramidiot-and This is what living on planet of the apes is like Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:01:58 +0000 f81d3890ce508ea8a2fc84c32898065ad5713361 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/10/05/ai-is-to-the-2020s-what-wikipedia-was-to-the-2010s/ A quick. easy source for getting a summary of general information on a subject. Continue reading → Mon, 05 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000 e7723ae2780c20c821a024d202483b58824e7049 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/rasslin-with-o.html The previous post concluded that things are getting pretty serious right about now. Because I’ll tell you what: we know the heart of darkness. so we know what is at stake. It’s never easy to rassle with the devil and come out on top. But what is life itself but a rasslin’ match between the poles of O and Ø. Let the record show that I am not pleased with the following sections. but hopefully they will lead to something better as we rassle our way through Book III.                                                        ∞At this point I think we’ve learned our lesson. so it is safe to continue using the G-word instead of the O-unword.What was the lesson.Simply that God cannot be enclosed in God — that the word is not the thing. but points to the thing. The thing itself — like any thing — is infinitely knowable but absolutely unknowable per se. For which reason Augustine remarked that “If you think that you comprehend God. it is not God.”Further to the theological left. Meister Eckhart has many curious sayings that go to the heart of this orthoparadox. and one might even say that this is one of the overriding themes of his emphatically apophatic mystical theology. which is both easy to understand and perhaps easier to misunderstand — for example. “I pray to God to rid me of God.” Now. how does this make sense. It actually makes perfect nonsense. because elsewhere he says that “God is greater than God.” so don’t conflate the two.Don’t just put them in your pocket.No. anywhere but there. Or one will get mixed up with the other and become just God. Which it is.That some kind of Zen thing.Far from it. Or actually close to it. as in First there is a mountain. then there is no mountain. then there is. the point being that the thing itself doesn’t undergo change. rather we change our perspective on it. as in satori. kenshō. moksha and other experiences of vertical liberation from the annoying realm of maya. In Eckhart’s case. he is really praying for a novel experience and perspective on God — perhaps. in modern terms. the escape from a merely abstract left-brain concept to the living reality experienced by the right.This is just an example of what is called limit discourse. which has to do with speaking about things at the horizon of human understanding and experience. Thus this discourse — or in Eckhart’s case. deuscourse — abounds with paradox. contraries. and antitheses. It is perfect nonsense. so long as perfect is the operative word. For example. “Now the moment I flowed out from the Creator all creatures stood up and shouted: ‘Behold. here is God.’”Where I come from. there’s a story about someone calling Eckhart on the phone: “Is God there.” “Yes.” “Can I talk to him.” “You already are.”Along these lines. perhaps the most shocking entailment of cosmotheandrism is that the Theos is in “need” — note well the scary quotes — of Anthropos. As we stipulated in the Introduction. this will require a great deal of discretion and qualification. and yet. Eckhart just blurts out the secret. for “just as I can do almost nothing without God. so too can God accomplish nothing apart from me.” But this same orthoparadox is reflected in. for example. mystical Judaism: “Without our conscious. willed. inspired participation. God is incomplete. God needs us to realize God’s design for the world. We are co-creators through God’s grace with God Itself.” this being because someone has to serve as the meeting point of O and Ø and “be the ‘place’ where the fusion of all dimensions is effected…” [Matt].Over the line.Definitely over the line if one misunderstands the seriously playful text of the Zohar. which is “peppered with invented words.” and in which salty “Puns. parables. and puzzles abound.” Eckhart too. like any mystic. often relies on paradox. exaggeration. humor. wordplay. etc.. to talk about what is over the subjective horizon.Linguistic shock and awe.Correct: it may look more like theological shuck and jive. but one purpose of such mystical formulations is to vault us out of our familiar way of looking at things. in particular. how not to think about God. Once we learn how not to speak of God. we are halfway to speaking rightly of him. Frankly. it’s not all that different from the sorts of puzzling things Jesus himself says. such as Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Many who are first will be last. and the last first. or He who finds his life will lose it. and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.As to our theomorphism. note the orthoparadox: “You should know that nothing is as dissimilar as the Creator and any creature. In the second place. nothing is as similar as the Creator and any creature” [Eckhart]. In normal speech this would violate the principle of noncontradiction. because how can the same thing be completely similar and dissimilar to us.You asking me.Better yet. I’m telling you: the Godhead is both similar and dissimilar to and in itself. which is at the heart of a trinitarian metaphysic. Expressed in human language. the Father and Son — or the unoriginate Ground and its engendered expression — are absolutely identical in substance but radically different in terms of relation. If you think about it. this otherness must be the most radical distinction we can conceive. and yet. the most complete unity. And this same substance-in-relation [Axiom 11] is reflected in everything in existence herebelow. It is why the creation can be separate from the Creator and yet not separate at all. for the creative Principle — or Principle of creation — is first “distinct” even from and within itself. Absent this prior principle of distinction there could be no distinction anywhere at any time. Both the Cosmos and Anthropos are suffused with an aboutness that is grounded in a prior supra-ontological Aboutness within the Godhead. Which is. of course. why we can presume to say things about God. albeit never in any final or complete way.Note again that the Anthropos as such is an orthoparadoxical “species of individuals.” or a common substance with diverse manifestations. It’s a conundrum: “If our humanity makes us all the same. what makes us different.” It can’t be just our membership in Club Anthropos. “because our humanity is the very thing which unites us with all other humans” [Ward]. So. why are we not like other social animals. e.g.. bees. ants. and journalists. Ward correctly points out that “there must be something else. of an altogether different sort. that is in principle not shareable.” something that “makes you not just a human being but this very human being.” that is. “a non-repeatable individuating entity.”What could this be. The cosmotheandric answer is that we are the image and likeness of a Theos which is likewise a con-spiracy of one-of-a-kind persons sharing a common substance. Every person. by virtue of being one. is a unique instantiation of personhood that cannot be shared with others except by way of openness and intersubjective relationality via love. knowledge. empathic attunement. etc. Of course. two can become one. but only because the intersubjective oneness is ontologically prior to the separative twoness. Which is why one is the loneliest number.Three dogs in a single pack.That’s a dyslexic way of putting it. but yes.Methodical Introduction To the Vision Outside of Which the World Makes No SenseOur alibi for the verticalisthenic exercise which follows heeds Dávila’s advice that Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. Put conversely. to the extent that a religious vocabulary makes no sense in the modern world. it is because it cannot be expressed in the cutandry and wideawake terms of the left-brain scientism that pervades our culture.Religion. of course. has been here for a long time. probably as long as Homo sapiens has been running aground. Which is actually a short time — only 300.000 years since version 1.0 reached the evolutionary market. and 50.000 to 60.000 years since our new and improved model hit the cosmic showroom. with such standard equipment as abstract thought. complex symbolic art. musical instruments. more sophisticated and diverse tools. rear-view historical mirrors. and antilock brains. Of course. we can only speculate as to the nature of paleolithic religion. No one knows exactly what they were doing or why they were doing it. but evidence of institutionalized ritual killing — AKA human sacrifice — appears no earlier as 5.000 BC.Not such a promising start.No. and one shudders to think what they were doing before that. but there is scattered evidence of trephining — which our ancestors just called drilling a hole in the skull — as long ago as 10.000 BC. and the psychologist in me wonders what was up with that. Perhaps it was to release an evil spirit. which is either crazier or not as crazy as it sounds. for in our time there are patients who cut themselves in order to manage or release anxiety and psychic pain. or conversely. to counteract emotional numbness. So. we’ll give these early brain surgeons a pass. because they no doubt had their reasons. even if insurance companies balked at reimbursing them for the procedure.It is not until the so-called Axial Age. between 800 and 300 BC. that we see the widespread emergence of more humane and sophisticated religions and of speculative thought more generally. from Lao Tse. Buddha. and Zarathustra to the Hebrew prophets and Greek philosophers. Voegelin characterizes this as a “great leap in being.” but of course. not everyone agrees. Some don’t like the idea because they think religion is absurd to begin with. and how can absurdity progress. At the other extreme. many of our faithful brethren don’t want their religion to be lumped in with others. But whatever their differences. what these axial pneumanauts mostly shared in common was the intuition of an underlying unity — a singular. transcendent source or harmony of being.We have neither the time nor interest in detailing these mythological nexuses between time and eternity. or periphery and origin. but in every case there is not only the attempt to situate the Anthropos in a cosmic framework. but to tell us what we are supposed to do about it. from conventional moral dictates to more esoteric practices such as methodically meditating our way out of the world or taking a shortcut by gobbling a heroic dose of peyote. Which is not bad advice. given how difficult life must have been. plagued by violence. food insecurity. abbreviated lifespans. and a complete dearth of quality footwear. Mon, 05 Oct 2026 02:40:39 +0000 c5c353031f4c05233865202cd67889a0f0eb4989 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/never-go-full-tory.html It would appear that Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg realised he touched a bit of a nerve the other day. when he issued a call for Britain to prepare for WAAGH.. with the Russian Orcs of Mordor. As I noted at the time. that went down with most of Mr. Rees-Mogg’s viewers – including myself – “like (…) The post Never go full Tory appeared first on Didactic Mind. Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:47:29 +0000 c6a415e969072c6487bc6b76cb4f04e18724c484 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/a-conspiracy-theory-on-mormon-convergence The one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death last month interested and frustrated me. Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:00:14 +0000 119f8b35616e1b517f7b14f3f7cc8accdce93b86 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/virginians-be-informed-vote-no-on-all.html Sun, 04 Oct 2026 19:00:00 +0000 dda2ea850120e40d3c1dc916c7172552ee6cf93c https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/10/04/war-peace-2/ St Francis of Assisi had the good fortune of birth. a few centuries before he was discovered to be a communist. His patronage of “the environment.” of “ecology.” and of cute animals. was part of his “progress” away from being a Catholic saint. only posthumously did he become a fraud. The world is uncomfortably arranged. (…) Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:43:17 +0000 e551c00d14b1258a62b9ea4c16174022a670ec37 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/contemplative-bliss-or-creative.html Traditional religions and spiritual philosophies have 'all' saddled themselves with underlying metaphysical assumptions that render significant-human-aspiration a delusion. When the power of God is infinite there is literally nothing for us to do. The offer is [perhaps] one of blissful contemplation of the perfection of an infinite creation. But because creation is perfect and infinite there is nothing for us to do about it. We cannot add to it in any way At All. Indeed even our obedience. adoration. and worship adds nothing since it is already a part of the whole. There is nowhere for an infinite perfect creation to go. nothing can really happen - indeed the only 'sand in the gearbox'. the irrational and inexplicable 'fly in the ointment'. is the apparently persistent human delusion that we matter at all. And that we even exist. as separate beings with a significant role to play.Far too many Christians. and nearly-all other religions and philosophies. have painted themselves into a corner of personal futility. All possible human thought. action. achievement is pointless. because creation is already infinite and perfect. [And always was and always shall be infinite and perfect - some will add. diminishing our utter significance even further - if that were possible.]  While I fully acknowledge that contemplative bliss is a very pleasant thing to feel for a while. it is negative and just does not constitute a purpose. Beyond contemplation is creation. and creative joy in a spirit of love is the greatest thing we can know - and far greater than a contemplative bliss that is [by its own definitions] irrelevant to reality. Surely we know this.We know it. but our fundamental assumptions about the nature of infinite perfect creation far-too-often render our hope of creating into a mere delusion. of which we are supposed to rid ourselves.  Yet we want to make a difference. and it feels as if this is possible. And those of us who have chosen to affiliate with the creator want to make a positive difference. we want to add to ongoing-divine-creation. such that 'creation' needs to be replaced by something like 'create-ing' to recognize it is continuous. open-ended. always expanding. Divine creating is always expanding. and we want to join with God and be part of that expanding. So: Divine creating must be expanding. potentially forever. Also. that expansion must all be Good - anything we and others add to creating it must all be in harmony with God's purposes...Which means it must all be done from love. Which is where Jesus Christ comes in. On the one side ideas about God and Creation. on the other side Jesus and Salvation. Individual. serious. Christians must Make Sure that their assumptions about God and Creation do not logically-block their highest aspirations concerning Jesus and Salvation and our ultimate hopes for eternal life. because at present official Christian theologies of God nearly always do logically-block Jesus. Resurrection. Heaven.  Sun, 04 Oct 2026 17:49:05 +0000 5e47e14cf2e008b3467714a5b252ff543dec186e https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/04/4-oct-2019-demon-worship-by-false-pope-at-the-vatican-and-nobody-seemed-to-mind/ Father Z remembers: https://wdtprs.com/2026/10/4-october-2019-demon-idol-venerated-in-the-vatican-gardens/ Seven years ago today. How have the last seven years played out for you. The following day. the demon was enthroned at St Peter’s. Which henceforth has borne nothing but nefarious activity by definition. Now Bergoglio’s “successor.” a fellow demon worshipper. squats on the throne. and no one seems bothered by … Continue reading '4 Oct 2019: Demon worship by false pope at the Vatican. and nobody seemed to mind' Sun, 04 Oct 2026 17:46:14 +0000 3a2bb6cf10cf38707b0129da830f8d823b3c02b9 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes-have-no-anxiety-at-all Today’s readings Sun, 04 Oct 2026 15:49:30 +0000 9e4ebb9e43add23c456c98134f1d10957e9ff91c https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/10/04/planning-nikes-future-excerpt-from-an-imaginary-board-meeting/ Dear Nike Board people [including non-birthing people. and menstruating people] of all possible pronouns. I have been requested to talk to you about how to go on with Nike in this somewhat challenging phase. with the stock in freefall and the butt of jokes. I will be sure to interest you. I thank Mr S.O. (…) Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:38:32 +0000 c175857bfdd4a53a205ad567736695299688ce4e http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/10/vacation-update-1.html  We left on Friday morning. much to the woe and lamentation of our cat.  She'll survive. we're sure. particularly because friends from the North Texas Troublemakers will look in from time to time to restock her food. pet her. and generally reassure her that she hasn't been abandoned.We spent Friday night in San Angelo. TX.  Friends there were flooded out by the tragedy last year. and left all their guns with us while they dried out and began remodeling their home.  Repairs have now progressed far enough that they've been able to move in again. so we took their guns back to them.  I must admit. I was half-hoping that a traffic cop would stop us and ask. 'Any guns in the car.'  I'd have invited him to take his pick of a score or more.  In some places that would make the cop nervous. but here in north Texas he'd probably have spent the next half-hour on an impromptu show-and-tell.We drove down to Corpus Christi today.  It was a relatively cool run. thanks to widespread light rain.  We're going to spend the next week in the area. playing tourist. walking along the beach. swimming. and generally relaxing and unwinding.  We're both under doctors' orders to let go of all our cares and concerns. which have been rather heavy over the past while. so we'll be lazy and enjoy the abundant seafood.  We started that tonight.  I had a grilled snapper. while my wife tried a 'black drum'. a type of fish of which I'd previously never heard [but which tasted great].  Key lime pie and turtle cheesecake finished the meal. with some coming back to the hotel with us for a midnight feast [if we can hold out that long].Laid back and lazy will be the order of the next few days.Peter Sun, 04 Oct 2026 11:28:00 +0000 a64e364dbb1d4861a5b9bcfa575df9e1e1923b60 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/does-god-have-sense-of-humor-two.html Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:27:19 +0000 44b2f718d2d82bcdfaa8e12ad291719e1d57ef3b https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/an-experience-of-original-participation.html Henry David Thoreau's The Maine Woods is a posthumously-collected set of three essays about travels in that region in the middle 1800s. All are worth reading. but for me the best is the last: The Allegash and East Branch. Thoreau describes a river trip with a friend. for which they hired a Penobscot Indian called Joe Polis as their guide. Polis was reputed to be. and Thoreau confirmed this. an exceptional man. highly-regarded both among the Indians and the Whites for his wisdom and personal integrity. as well as his skill as a woodsman and river man. Thoreau knew a great deal about Indians. both from reading widely. interviewing experts. and by attentive and respectful personal interactions. His particular interest was the ways in which Indians thought and experienced differently from himself. and how this was the basis for their unequalled abilities described throughout The Maine Woods.  From my theoretical perspective [influenced by Owen Barfield. and some aspects of Rudolf Steiner]. I interpret Thoreau's fascination as with the different consciousness of Indians. especially the distinct residue of Original Participation [OP] that these woodland guides had as the basis underlying their crafts. Original Participation is a different way of experiencing oneself and the rest of reality [other people. the nature]. of understanding and interacting with the world - although we may remember something of this from early childhood. dreams. or states of altered consciousness. OP is mostly spontaneous and un-conscious. due to the individual being immersed-in the rest-of-the-world. living as part of the world ['participation']. And from this OP basis came the Indian's remarkable navigating. surviving. and hunting abilities. for which the White Men would typically hire him.  But in the case of Thoreau. Joe Polis was hired more or less on the excuse of being a forest guide. Thoreau really wanted to get to know Polis. and get to know how he thought. Polis was very suitable because although he retained the OP stance as required. he was also unusually accomplished in his interactions with the modern world: was literate. a devout Protestant. an effective leader. well-travelled. This was a basis for the collegial friendship that developed between Thoreau and Polis. and in addition there was evidently a natural liking each for the other - a recognition of some basic similarity.  There is much else to enjoy about The Maine Woods. especially for those [like me] who have a romantic feeling for such places. and for the Indians who originally inhabited them. In actuality. living in the Maine Woods. or even going on a trip like Thoreau's. would be a horrible experience for me - not least because of the swarms of mosquitos and biting-flies. Yet. as a place to think about. to imagine. those Hiawatha forests. lakes. rivers are potent and positive stimuli. especially to the extent I can appreciate the distinctive consciousness of an Indian like Joe Polis.   Hiawatha fishing for the sturgeon - an ahistorical but spiritually-true illustration that captures the atmosphere I recall from reading Longfellow's wonderful poem when I was aged about nine.   Sun, 04 Oct 2026 08:13:02 +0000 2ed5a6e3fe03e09f9aa3d937e49a635b9d7b59ab https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/a-childlike-symphony-to-god.html Since this is only blogging. I am going to present the material in Book III as it appears in the file. as opposed to attempting to rearrange it in the proper order. It is possible that this will end up being the final order. It’s just that I can’t hold all 400 pages in my head and try to figure out how it all fits together. Best I can do at this juncture is edit and post each unit. and string them together later.It reminds me of the directer Stanley Kubrick. who thought of a film as consisting of individual modules. Sayeth the google machine. for Kubrick “A film's structure can be reduced to 6 to 8 standalone sequences. Each unit contains its own beginning. middle. and end and functions independently without needing heavy exposition.” Then it’s just a matter assembling the modules. In fact. Brian Wilson adopted the same approach to his massive Smile project. composing and recording dozens of little sections. He once described the project as a “teenage symphony to God.” except he lost his mind before he could organize it in the proper order. We’ll try to avoid that part.                                                                 ∞As we have already explained in Book II. the Anthropos is always the man for his time ‘n’ place. He fits right in there into the Cosmos. if only we know how to look. Lucky for us. cosmotheandrism is precisely the way to look. because it fully respects a scientific understanding of the world while complementing it with the spiritual depth dimension it necessarily lacks.To infinity. and beyond.Nor are those just buzzwords. for this is literally a journey to infinitude that cannot be measured in light-years. because it is a vertical and not horizontal adventure. Moreover. this story still involves play. only with ideas and not toys.So cosmotheandrism keeps you a child. In a state of arrested development.This is certainly something Einstein understood. “that all our science. measured against reality. is primitive and childlike.” so that “For me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there.”To stare in wild wonder at all there is to know about all there is.Yes — supposing that there is always more to know about all there is. because of our asymptotic drive toward the infinite horizon referenced above. As Thomas Torrance explains. “Einstein’s religious and scientific instincts were one and the same. for behind both it was his reverent intuition for God. his unabated awe at the thoughts of ‘the Old One.’ that was predominant.” Although he always situated science in a larger religious framework. he did not believe in a personal God modeled after the Anthropos. nor an impersonal one. rather. more of a meta-personal one. This of course contravenes our final Axiom. that the ultimate Principle must be personal. However. as we shall see. persons are always already supra-personal. This is simply to say that there is no such thing as a person who is not dynamically open to something outside or beyond the person. even if that person happens to be God.English please.Put it this way: if God is infinite. then he is always “beyond” himself even while absolutely remaining himself. For which reason anthropic beings are likewise ordered to something beyond themselves. Which I don’t expect you to fully grasp just yet. but you will.How about a hint.This notion is unavoidably orthoparadoxical. but as described by philosopher and theologian D.C. Schindler. being by nature “is everything… and more.” this because it is irreducibly in dynamic relation to its own Other. One might say that just as aboutness and relation are intrinsic to the Cosmic Area Rug. so too are otherness and moreness.For example. the Mundaka Upanishad tells us that “Out of the infinite ocean of existence arose Brahma.” from whom “sprang the universe” [Prabhavanda and Manchester]. and even the strict monotheism of Judaism sneaks this principle in via the mystical theology of the Zohar. in which God is dialectically related to something beyond God. the Ein Sof. Instead of In the beginning God created…. the Zohar flips the script and says With beginning. the ineffable source created God [Matt].Wo. Can you say more. Or at least pass the joint.It’s the other way around: we can never stop saying more. but I’m trying to limit myself to 400 pages. even though one can never actually enclose the einsofable Great Beyond in any number of pages. for this Primordial Nothingness “does not abide being known” [Matt]. There is another side to every story. and this side is infinite. I suppose that if we tried. even the Cosmos itself would not have room for the books that would be written. Thus there can be no last word. unless of course [surprise] it is the first Word. get it.I’m fine. Let’s ride.∞That’s the bad news: we can never reach the goal. The good news is that in the cosmotheandric vision. the goal is always already in the players and on the field. i.e.. the Anthropos and Cosmos. respectively. Thanks to Axiom 7. theomorphism. the Anthropos is our best clue as to the nature of the Theos. bearing in mind that to say Anthropos is to say Cosmos. and that these two in turn share an internal relationship to the Theos. which is both in and beyond. or immanent and transcendent to. the Cosmos and Anthropos.In one sense. all speech about God is ineluctably anthropomorphic. On the other hand. if the Anthropos itself is God’s most adequate disclosure of his nature — at least in the created order — then our theomorphism should hold many keys to the nature of that of which we are “image and likeness.” As we have seen. even Adam once knew this but opted to bark up the wrong tree instead of clinging to the upanishadic one with its roots aloft and branches down below.Note also that the capacity for “image making” is presupposed in a trinitarian framework in which the second Person is the spittin’ image of the First. The point is. if the ultimate principle has otherness built into it. then this explains the possibility of otherness per se. This gets us over the hurdle of how it is that anything at all can be separate from God.This problem. as described by O’Hanlon. is “how creation can be both distinct from God and yet ‘in’ God.” Supposing God is Absolute Being. then how can there be any being apart from it. It is precisely because an intersubjective and relational God “is one in whom distinction does not abolish unity.” One might say that the Is Not is built into the Isness of God. insofar as the Second Person is definitely not the First. and yet. not not the First. since both share the identical substance. Thus. for our cosmotheandric purposes. “the infinite distance between the world and God has its foundation in that original distance between God and God within God.” and how handy is that.Put conversely. in a radically monistic conception of God it is impossible to imagine how there could exist anything other than God. such as our created realm. Recall the early philosophical dispute between Democritus and Heraclitus over whether reality is an immutable One or endlessly becoming Many. AKA Big Noun or Big Verb. But if God is a dynamic unity of one-in-three and three-in-one. then we can check this problem off our to-dieu list. since God is always both.Let me again emphasize. as I did in Books I and II. that we are looking into this triune Godhead business in more of a bottom-up manner as opposed to a top-down dogma of revelation — on the merits. so to speak.But you’re not sure.We’ll have to drive it around the block a couple of times. In so doing. we can examine some of the most distinctive features of both the Cosmos and Anthropos in order to outline the Principle that can account for these entailments and is mirrored in them. And the most distinctive properties of being itself include openness. interiority. intelligence. relation. intersubjectivity. and creativity. therefore our ultimate Principle should feature all these and more. Indeed. in God they should be present as perfections. whereas in our case they would be reflected images of these perfections. Thus. for example. if we are imperfectly open. relational. and creative. then God would be perfectly so.If God is so perfect. why didn’t he create a better universe.It’s the other way around: supposing God’s perfection. then any creation separate from him is necessarily imperfect. One might say that imperfection is a tax on existence. Nor could there be “a best possible world.” writes Thomas Ward. because it is “ the nature of any world to be finite. Thus. there couldn’t be a best possible world. because. for any possible world with some finite degree of perfection. God could imagine another. at least slightly better.” There is no end to this exercise. because “God could always go on concocting better possible worlds.”Now. supposing God had OCD. then he would eternally ruminate over which universe to create. But he’s probably analogous to a human artist for whom the work is never finished. only abandoned. Or even this book. I could obsess over it forever. but it is only thanks to its incompleteness that I could complete it at all. If I had to actually complete it. it could never exist. As per Gödel. the best I can do is try to be consistent. while knowing that it can only gesture toward a completion situated on a higher level beyond the book.An airtight alibi for the book’s flaws.Any book. The point is. the Axioms which apply to the Cosmos and Anthropos analogously apply to the Theos. which is the ground of intelligence. intelligibility. certitude. and truth. openness. interiority. relation. and intersubjectivity. dynamic and creative complementarity [e.g.. Absolute and Infinite. possible and actual. being and becoming. transcendent and immanent. timeless and temporal]. and most especially personal. which is at once to say interpersonal: the possibility of the temporal otherness of creation is grounded in an eternal Otherness in divinas.Don’t get me wrong. but even the possibility — not actuality. mind you — of sin must be located in divinas. in the sense that sin is separation. and this principle of separation is present in the Godhead.Likewise. because of this principle of separation. we can say a great deal about the Ultimate. but we can again never say enough. or rather. whatever we say. it will never be enough. since finite language can never enclose the Infinite Logos responsible for speech to begin with. Just as for any conceivable world one can always conceive of a better one. for any Theos we describe there will always be a better way to describe it. this thanks to the necessary gap between finite and infinite. or actual and potential.So. the goal of this book is to propose a slightly less inadequate way to speak of God.Well. the creative liveliness we are attributing to God “may. however inadequately. be described as a movement from act to act. from fullness to fullness” [O’Hanlon]. Thus. “the becoming which is intrinsic to temporality” turns out to imply “an analogous becoming intrinsic to eternity.” and why not. I won’t ask if this is frowned upon in traditional Western theologies. because I know it is. but why. Seriously. if God were an impassive and atemporal monad. how could he even know what time it is.And let us say God wants to create a Cosmos that includes you and I. or just self-conscious beings. This sharply constrains the available options. because every Cosmos that doesn’t include us is ruled out a priori. Sun, 04 Oct 2026 05:38:42 +0000 df750956a35fde6159aec361de1369929e5ad45c https://onepeterfive.com/in-illo-tempore-19th-sunday-after-pentecost/ In the words of the singer Peggy Lee… The window she is broken and the rain is comin’ in If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaking to my skin But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day Mañana. ... Read more Sun, 04 Oct 2026 04:33:36 +0000 16e2c91b0b05a8aa9421ce06b9db151c3064cc1f https://www.thekurganblog.com/priorities/ I have thought about what the “winning formula” for happy. functional nuclear families is. and how to get this across to the younger generation as best I can in a way that their frazzled tik-tok brains MIGHT spend the necessary 35 seconds to contemplate it and assimilate it before something shiny takes their short term (…) No related posts. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:02:31 +0000 0755deff5ec1499724a803ce70b3d556de9c606d https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/priorities Red Pill Bros and PUAS can sit down and shut up Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:02:31 +0000 ac3ec96dccc97cd96f4a333877d86768a06fe34b https://radixfidem.blog/2026/10/03/hebrews-41-13/ Re: Naked Bible 182: Hebrews 4:1-13 Let’s remind ourselves of a recurring theme here: God rested after Creation. He calls us to enter into that Sabbath rest. That was echoed at the call to enter the Promised Land rest. also … Continue reading → Sat, 03 Oct 2026 20:29:08 +0000 edd5d843418fdff737e299856408268135b92d66 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/03/the-ancient-city-general-conference/ Get buried in your temple clothing. Elder Gong Ancient City posting live over the pulpit in General Conference. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 18:25:10 +0000 fb8f1e13865ecdbd8657eefff7697af3cdc4f850 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/03/eighth-centenary-of-the-transitus-of-saint-francis-of-assisi/ As I write this. it is 7pm in Assisi. and I can only imagine the party that’s going on. Saint Francis passed into eternal glory at sunset 3rd October 1226. It was a Saturday. just like this year. Tomorrow is his feast day. -nvp “In the early autumn Francis. feeling the hand of death upon … Continue reading 'Eighth Centenary of the Transitus of Saint Francis of Assisi' Sat, 03 Oct 2026 17:48:51 +0000 e075fb12522cc44b831f56859283cb8f77e1ac99 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/10/03/how-to-carry-out-an-execution/ A wooden structure [the “Scaffold”] is to be erected. Solid. robust. It can be permanent. It will be located inside a jail. or a military base. The structure must have stairs allowing the executioner. the priest. and the person to be executed [man or woman] to stand there solidly. with abundance of space. and with (…) Sat, 03 Oct 2026 16:54:06 +0000 baf9add5d9a0cdc643c5aee30153bf7de12e5b51 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/10/my-idea-for-new-word.html For my entire life. I've had the ambition of inventing a new word and getting it into general usage.Today. I found myself thinking about a particular class of words: drink [as in alcohol]. sale [as in special promotion]. product [as in hair gel]. view [as in picturesque vista].All these words are special [but common] senses of a more generic use of the word. Everybody knows what someone means when they say: 'I don't drink'. My suggestion for a rhetorical term to cover this is: 'extrageneric'. ['Extra' used in the sense of 'extragalactic' or 'extra-sensory.']Update: Sadly. and quite surprisingly. there's already a word for this. It's actually autohyponym. Those linguists. you wouldn't be up to them. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 16:00:24 +0000 98ef5c4b01fce6335058f9a153f56037d43cf79b https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/10/03/persons-dolts-and-the-willy-nilly-life/ “Into this Universe. and Why not knowing.Nor Whence. like Water willy-nilly flowing:           And out of it. as Wind along the Waste.I know not Whither. willy-nilly blowing.” Edward Fitzgerald. trans.. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám [c. 1190] Kristor and foom1971 were recently going back and forth on the question of free will and divine omniscience.  It is not an exchange to which I can contribute (…) Sat, 03 Oct 2026 14:04:34 +0000 6da23c39e9dd198e4f97a2eaa681bb7201a6f8aa https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/a-little-spanish-chap.html In our organization we have a little Spanish chap who attends to all our training needs. We call him 'Instruction Manuel'.  Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:52:56 +0000 16b63c9912d9a443d7721db6c1beae3fff5d9a3b https://thetransformedwife.com/16-horrible-things-she-was-exposed-to-in-college/ This was written by a woman who wanted to be anonymous. She explains her experience at college. May this be a warning to all of you. I have been musing on these thoughts for the past year. now. well before the Cornell seven rape case started dominating the news headlines this week. No matter what the truth is of what happened that night. the case is a tragedy: the woman admits she was drunk and on drugs. and she consented... Read More Read More Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:36:02 +0000 58748ccb3f66512ea24aab8690f6a4dd8a7b7611 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/gambetti-removed-from-vatican-basilica.html Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:25:53 +0000 3dae1d646ebfc46058c9d581217006acef476274 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/starting-advent-early-with-st-alphonsus.html Sat, 03 Oct 2026 12:30:39 +0000 91ef741edf83aaf22f2216912f65a51277e3bd8a https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/10/in-kerala.html  I've put up a post about a trip to Kerala on my Sojourn in South India blog.  Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:45:48 +0000 4b1e2a4079e34c3bab88c079551d82872878ce52 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/music-like-books-or-medicines-can-do.html Following-up on my post of a couple of days ago. where I described authors who did me some harm by being the wrong books at the worst time for me. the same can apply to music. This is all-too-obvious with respect to pop music - especially because it is most targeted at youth. and adolescence is the time of greatest vulnerability. From 1967 onwards. a great deal of pop music was calculated to manipulate youth into amplifying the spiritual harm of culture generally. This can clearly be seen in the lyrics. and even the music itself. of the most culturally significant group of that era in the UK. i.e. The Beatles. But just as some people regard books as A Good Thing. so people regard Classical music as necessarily beneficial - yet this is absurdly untrue - at least for those who are engaged-with and sensitive to music. The classical music culture in the UK is one in which it is regarded as high status to be able to appreciate all the great composers of all eras. and as a late teen and early adult I went along with this. such as always to be trying to appreciate all the high status composers - even when their music seemed to work on me like a poison. or made me [more or less] feel spiritually ill.  This was the case for Gustav Mahler. In the 1970s. he was being rediscovered as a composer [during his life he had been famous mainly as a conductor] - and promoted to the status of Great. as Wagner's premier successor. But for all its musical excellences and strong effects. Mahler's music seemed to me then. as it still does when I occasionally hear it. toxic and cloying. Nonetheless I persevered. attentively working through his symphonies [especially] on LP. and attending a couple of live concerts. This stopped after I had bought a recording of Mahler's Tenth Symphony [completed by Deryck Cook] and fell asleep while listening to the slow movement. waking with a profound and powerful mixture of revulsion and misery. After this. I was forced to acknowledge that Mahler was bad for me. And that by persisting with listening I was pushing myself towards a feeling of hopelessness and despair. This was a realization that all Great Composers were not good - some were harmful by my intuitive estimation. More generally. this fits with the observation that anything which has a powerful enough effect that it might do good. for the same reason may do harm. This applies to drugs [and other treatments] in medicine. which is why there is no qualitative distinction between therapeutic effects and 'side effects' - to be of possible benefit. a drug must have an effects on the body. much change physiology. and because it has an effect. it will do harm to some people nearly-all the time. and other people some of the time.   It is only because Mahler is a powerful and effective composer. that his music was able to do me harm. To generalize again. it is talented artists. authors. musicians. who can do us the most harm. So. for our own good. we need to be able to distinguish between matters of virtue. and matters of ability and effectiveness.    Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:36:51 +0000 da4fc168d6e2b56a87e915a7d1a7a283bf353f65 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/10/how-to-handle-difficult-wife-part-4-sex.html   Sex. This is one of the more important aspects of marriage. In this article I am going to look at this topic from a different perspective to either my previous articles. or what you are probably used to. According to Forbes a lack of intimacy is the fourth largest reason for divorce. sitting behind lack of family support. infidelity. and right alongside a lack of compatibility and too much conflict.(1) When you consider that both infidelity and lack of compatibility largely overlap with a lack of intimacy. then you would have to conclude that this is a much larger reason for divorce than this graph indicates. (2) I have been known to say in sermons that a sexless marriage is a contradiction in terms. God created marriage to be a sexual relationship. For instance. Malachi 2:15 says. “15 But did He not make them one. Having a remnant of the Spirit. And why one. He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit. And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.” God designed marriage to be a fruitful sexual union that bears children. and that is why he makes man and wife one. physically and spiritually. This teaching harkens back to the Genesis 2:24-25 which says. “24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked. the man and his wife. and were not ashamed.” And both passages point forward to 1 Corinthians 7:2-5 which says. “2 Nevertheless. because of sexual immorality. let each man have his own wife. and let each woman have her own husband. 3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her. and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body. but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body. but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time. that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer. and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” Sex is central to what marriage is. Of course. in this fallen world. through injury or sickness. this aspect of marriage can be broken. But this does not change the fact that marriage is and was always meant to be a sexual union. Of course. as many men and some women will tell you. sex can dry up in marriage over time. This is not a controversial idea. We all know this happens. What many people may not know is that it is not uncommon for this to be a case of the man not really wanting to touch the woman. The stereotype is the sex-starved man and the ice-queen wife. and this stereotype is probably more common than the other way around. However. in this day of porn addiction and low-testosterone and other reasons. it is not unheard of to have wives wishing their husbands would touch them. In fact. this is not even something new. as I just finished The Canterbury Tales recently and this exact kind of situation features in one of the tales. But as I have said all along. this series is more about prevention than curing problems. It is far easier to build a good relationship with your wife from the start than it is to turn around a bad situation. Of course. some of the principles will apply both ways. and so they may offer some men in difficult situations some hope and a reasonable path forward. but this is an area of your marriage you want to steward as wisely as possible from the start. otherwise it could really come back to bite you hard later in your marriage. Men. has anyone ever told you how having good sex with your wife will improve your marriage. Note. I did not say. “getting good sex.” I said. “having good sex.” There is a difference. a big difference. and an important difference. A lot of discussion about sex in marriage contexts. at least in Church circles and the secular circles I am aware of. is focused around how women can please their husbands by being more available. being more willing. being more adventurous. etc. And yes. having a wife who is willing to be sexually available is a massive advantage in this area. In fact. if you are one of those men whose wife has a higher sexual libido than you. or even close to. you have lucked out…or perhaps you have not. Maybe you have simply been doing something right. You know the saying. “You get more flies with honey than vinegar.” What do I mean by that. Well. it is simple: if you are lazy. selfish. or too self-focused in your sexual relationship with your wife. why would you be surprised if things dial down over time. Now. don’t get me wrong. I know that in every marriage sexual attention can come in waves. there are times of serious busyness like when kids are really little. there are times of sickness. there are times when you both might just quieten down and things become less consistent. I understand all of this. and I encourage you to pay attention to the natural rhythms of life and be adaptive with your spouse…but herein is the point: One of the ways men can go wrong in their marriage and help to turn their wife into the difficult wife is how they approach this area of marriage. Sex is not a gift for men and a duty for women. Look again what the Apostle Paul says. “3 Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her. and likewise also the wife to her husband” [emphasis mine]. Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say. “Women. your husband desperately needs your sexual attention.” Rather he says that both men and women should render each other affection. Why. Because both men and women are created to desire affection and to receive and give affection. We have gotten into this strange mindset in the modern world that says men are way more interested in sex than women. and maybe there is some truth in this. especially considering how much media is geared to revving up men’s sexual desire. However. if you read old literature. especially medieval literature. but also some other ancient literature. you will see that many of the ancients just assumed that women were more interested in sex. Paul. though. he cuts through this by indicating that marriage is meant to be a mutual affection environment. He addresses the inherent desire for affection in both sexes. All Christians are meant to live by the principle: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” How much more married couples with each other. Men. do you look at your wife and think of her as simply an agent that owes you affection. Or do you look at your wife and see someone who is owed affection. that you want to be affectionate with. that you want to be intimate with for her joy. not just your own. Because. this makes a massive difference. and what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 7 helps to create this basic standard of wisdom. marriage is meant to be a mutual benefit environment. If you approach the sexual part of marriage simply from the perspective of your sexual gratification. you wife will work out pretty quickly how you really view her. or at least how you appear to view her through your actions. Women are pretty intelligent creatures. men. and they will work out very quickly when you are simply wanting to use them. Some women will even put up with that over time. because of loyalty. because of natural affection. or duty. or other reasons. But you will likely be turning down her desire for sex and affection just a little bit more every time you do so. There will likely come a day when that tap runs dry. I often wonder how many men in sexless marriages were very selfish lovers early on. Research backs this up as well. Though research shows men are generally more interested in sex than women. men and women still give roughly similar reasons for turning down sex. These reasons usually revolve around other relational issues.(3) Psychology today notes. “Although sexual desire has biological underpinnings. the initiation of sex and responses to sexual overtures have little to do with individuals and have much more to do with couple dynamics. Furthermore. when we categorize one person in a couple as having a low sex drive. we are ignoring the gamut of interactions that might be affecting their interest in sex. Consider. for example. how much—or how little—you’re attracted to your partner when you’re in an argument or are focusing on work or a child-rearing issue. Psychological distractions can make us turn away from romance and toward other issues occupying our headspace.”(4) In other words. other issues going on in the relationship are generally the underlying cause to why sex might dry up over time. I am not seeking to address all of those causes in this article. only one in particular: how you treat sex with your wife. men. makes a difference to her desire. If you treat sex with your wife as simply about you and not about her. over time you will train her to not be as interested in sex. People eat chocolate because they like it. Some people might avoid it for health and weight reasons. but when people eat nice chocolate they don’t really need to be talked into it. Why. Because they like it. Our bodies are designed to respond to things which bring us pleasure. Anyone who rides a motorbike knows that there is a physical joy that comes form riding that thing. and that is why you get back on it. this is why people get addicted to exercise as well. The same is true for other things in our life. including and especially sex. When your wife enjoys it more. she is more likely to desire it more. But this also goes with other types of affection as well. Remember there are other ways to be affectionate. men. Hugging. kissing. sitting on the couch. doing other things together builds up physical connection as a habit. If you shun these things over time you will create physical distance between you and your wife and this will affect the bedroom. Our bodies are designed to bond. Remember what Genesis 2 says. “24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked. the man and his wife. and were not ashamed.” “and they shall become one flesh.” This obviously speaks to physical connection and probably more. in fact I think Malachi 2:15 makes it clear that this connection has a spiritual reality to it as well. But science and medicine can speak to the physical aspect. “Sex triggers a powerful chemical feedback loop that literally wires your brain to feel attached to your partner. During sex. the brain releases oxytocin. often called the bonding hormone. into several key areas involved in learning. memory. and reward. That oxytocin then activates the brain’s dopamine reward system. flooding it with the same feel-good chemical involved in eating your favorite food or achieving a goal. The result is that your brain begins associating your partner with deep pleasure and comfort. This isn’t a one-time event. Each sexual encounter reinforces the loop. Oxytocin stimulates dopamine release. which in turn strengthens the neural pathways that encode your partner as a source of reward. Research in both animal and human models shows that mating increases dopamine activity in both men and women. Over time. this creates a neurochemical foundation for pair bonding that exists alongside. and sometimes independent of. conscious feelings of love.”(5) Our bodies are designed to give us intense feedback to the world around us. Sex is one of the most intensely pleasurable things you can do with your body in this life. This is one of the reasons it is so dangerous outside of marriage but so powerful within it. It is literally designed to glue a man and a woman together relationally. so that they actually crave being with each other. Over time this becomes much more than just craving sex. it becomes craving connection and affection from your specific spouse. There is a reason that adultery feels like such a betrayal. because it actually breaks something physical between a couple and impacts your spirit. You feel the betrayal in your bones and in your soul. Now. properly stewarded. men. this sexual nature of your marriage is a powerful way to keep your wife’s affection. attention and loyalty. You will likely desire sex more than her. Which is why there is wisdom in making sure she enjoys the experience as much as possible. But also note that if you act badly in your relationship. if you break this sexual bond through neglect. porn use. infidelity. hurting your wife. demanding of her in other areas of your life more than you should. or in other ways. you can actually train your wife to feel like she does not need you. Guys who give their attention to porn and ignore their wives sexually actually train their wives to not pursue sex. talking about shooting yourself in the foot. with both barrels. If she comes to the conclusion that sex is just a way to gratify you. and then on top of that if she comes to see you in a negative light for other reasons. this is where many men and marriages find themselves in a world of hurt. Suddenly a man finds himself in a situation where he is seeking help because his wife will not touch him. Or worse. she has told him that the marriage is over because she no longer feels the need for him in her life. She knows how much he enjoys sex. but for her it was an imposition from an unloving man. who did not really [from her perspective] cherish her. so why should she care. I am not justifying her making that choice. I still think that is wrong. but you have to understand. men. that you can contribute to pushing your wife in this direction. if you are not wise. Once you are in this situation it is hard to turn around. Even if your wife is a Christian. she can find women who will affirm her in this decision. She will find pastors. or pastor’s wives. who encourage her that she is doing nothing wrong. You now have an uphill battle to win her affections back. it can be done. but it is more difficult. But for younger men starting out. or who have not yet started out. make sure you don’t start down this path. otherwise it can go very bad for you and your marriage. We read in Proverbs 5 these powerful words. “15 Drink water from your own cistern. And running water from your own well. 16 Should your fountains be dispersed abroad. Streams of water in the streets. 17 Let them be only your own. And not for strangers with you. 18 Let your fountain be blessed. And rejoice with the wife of your youth. 19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times. And always be enraptured with her love. 20 For why should you. my son. be enraptured by an immoral woman. And be embraced in the arms of a seductress.” Now it is possible to simply read this from the perspective that men should you avoid adultery and have sex with your wife. instead. because this is wise. Solomon is saying here: do not tire of your wife. But I think it goes further than that. I would like you to notice that Solomon writes that a man should not tire of “delighting” [ESV. V.9] or being satisfied in his wife’s body. In other words. he argues that you should find pleasure in finding your wife’s body to be wonderland. to use the phrases of a corny song from I remember from my younger days. Does a woman want to be rejoiced in. Does a woman want to be satisfying. Does a woman want to be a delight to the eyes of her husband. Does a woman want to be someone her husband pursues and desires. Yes. yes. yes and yes. Solomon does not talk about simply gratifying yourself with your wife’s body. he speaks of mutual pleasure. And if that is written too subtly in Proverbs 5. then turn to Song of Solomon where he literally makes that case much more explicit. We read there how the groom delights in exploring the body of his beloved bride. “1 Behold. you are fair. my love. Behold. you are fair. You have dove’s eyes behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats. Going down from Mount Gilead. 2 Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep Which have come up from the washing. Every one of which bears twins. And none is (s)barren among them. 3 Your lips are like a strand of scarlet. And your mouth is lovely. Your temples behind your veil Are like a piece of pomegranate. 4 Your neck is like the tower of David. Built for an armory. On which hang a thousand bucklers. All shields of mighty men. 5 Your two breasts are like two fawns. Twins of a gazelle. Which feed among the lilies. 6 Until the day breaks And the shadows flee away. I will go my way to the mountain of myrrh And to the hill of frankincense” [Prov. 4:1-6]. The Bible spends more time than most would expect on the sexual nature of marriage. and part of its teaching is mutual pleasure and delight. Men. of course. there are other things which are really important for you to do in your marriages to steward your wife well. and in a loving way. But this is one of the very important ones that is not often spoken about. How much you lay with your wife is between you and her. Different couples will have different rhythms. so there is no use being prescriptive in this area. Work out a rhythm that works well for both of you and that is regular. But note. that the better you devote yourself to helping this be an area that your wife looks forward to the better this will be for your relationship. Don’t neglect it. don’t abuse it. Note also that looking at porn can destroy this overnight. so shun that stuff. If you have a loving wife. who believes the Bible and wants to fulfill her role in mutual affection. and you steward this well. you will go a long way to helping yourself from every having to deal with the difficult wife. Till next time. List of References (1) Christy Bieber. J.D. and Adam Ramirez. J.D. 2024. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/common-causes-divorce/ (2) Ibid. (3) Michelle Drouln. Ph. D.. 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-online/202202/in-sexless-marriage-who-s-blame.msockid=2652711681de61e7277a647085de6fbb (4) Ibid. (5) Science Insights. 2026. https://scienceinsights.org/why-do-couples-have-sex-the-science-behind-it/ Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:31:20 +0000 d435005e6a4fe551b07deb750de8856de33c1a42 https://onepeterfive.com/st-francis-loved-to-sing/ He called his friars “minstrels of the Lord.” Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:29:00 +0000 2246710bc2322edbf22a337f0b1b727bece2c423 https://nonvenipacem.org/2026/10/03/saint-therese-of-lisieux-doctor-of-the-church-on-how-love-works/ When one loves. one does not calculate. How sweet is the way of Love. True. one may fall. one may not be always faithful. but Love. knowing how to draw profit from all. very quickly consumes whatsoever may displease Jesus. leaving naught but humble and profound peace in the innermost soul. Do not imagine that … Continue reading 'Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Doctor of the Church. on how love works' Sat, 03 Oct 2026 10:11:48 +0000 47a1e9a367e3c69b3e80a3425d8a48a857a91eb7 https://onepeterfive.com/christ-the-king-traditional-ecumenism-with-fr-calvin-robinson/ There's a traditional form of ecumenism which should not be rejected. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:50:33 +0000 347596839aeb3c4ed59a4e1900465310a201e1d0 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/lives-are-at-stake.html Let us begin this episode with an aphorism: Today we require a methodical introduction to that vision of the world outside of which religious vocabulary is meaningless. For us this vision of the world is cosmotheandrism. since it makes religion not only rationally defensible but even a necessary entailment.Dávila goes on to say that We do not talk of God with those who do not judge talk about the gods as plausible. Therefore. one task of the cosmotheandric vision is to make our God-talk intelligible and plausible — again. to render belief believable. It only becomes unbelievable to the extent that our interlocutors have confined themselves to an implausible and outmoded metaphysic. both scientifically and philosophically. Thus. it is not that belief in God is implausible. rather. an implausible and probably unexamined philosophy that effectively soils the Cosmic Area Rug. We see only what our metaphysic permits us to see. or rather. we pretend not to see those things that are outside or unexplained by it.ONE CʘSMOS is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work. consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Any metaphysic — whether implicit or explicit — assumes or posits necessary and universal truths that characterize all of reality. Science. for example can never prove that the Cosmos is a contingent and yet ordered totality intelligible to the intellect. rather. assumes it.Metaphysics used to be the ultimate aim of philosophy. but in the modern and postmodern worlds it has generally been rejected as impossible in principle. Religion. of course. either assumes or expresses certain metaphysical claims. which necessarily make no sense in a scientistic metaphysic. Therefore. what is needed is a wider and deeper metaphysic that fully respects and takes on board the scientific insights of modernity. Otherwise. religion and secularism are simply talking past one another. for supposing we do not share the same first principles. then arguing about their entailments and details is just an annoying way to kill time.But if a scientific claim is true. and a religious claim is true. neither can stand alone. rather. must be measured against a standard that is independent of the claim. In science the independent standard is simply the material world against which we test our models and theories. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or elegant the theory: if nature’s feedback says no. then the theory is wrong. For both science and theology. reality is the final court of appeal.But what is the objective standard against which religion may be assessed. and by what sort of feedback. Here a problem arises. in particular. with regard to top-down revelation. which believers will say is “self-authenticating” since it issues straight from the source’s mouth. However. this argument is entirely circular. since it assumes what needs to be proven — that the revelation has come from God. Of course. there is always the testimony of tradition. which speaks with a chorus of millions. However. in order to prove a theory wrong. it takes only one instance. Truth is not a democracy. rather. more of a benign dictatorship.∞As previously discussed in Book I. Einstein was all over the orthoparadoxical combination of an endless intelligibility of the Cosmos converging on an unfathomable supra-intelligent horizon we can never actually reach. For example. he spoke of “the humble attitude of mind towards the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence. which. in its profoundest depths. is inaccessible to man.” Thus. like a mirage on a desert highway. we can asymptotically approach this horizon while never actually reaching it. because it seems to recede as we move toward it. This isn’t because of its movement per se. but because of its Infinitude.In other words. supposing one takes a thousand progressive steps toward the Infinite horizon. one is still an infinite distance away from it. It seems that no matter how much closer we are. we are no closer to the goal. “Into the sea all the rivers go.” writes Eckhart. “and yet the sea is never filled. and still to their goal the rivers go.” The basis of our epistemic striving cannot be dominance. containment. or closure. rather. wonder — which is to say. an endless openness to Being as such. Here again this is because the very principle of Being is Beyond Being. so Being is always more than we can say about it. Just as the Tao that can be spoken is not the real deal. it is equally true that the LH science that can be spoken is not the real RH science. Which is why the inspiraling riverrun between man and O is full of surprises. And I don’t use exclamation points except in an emergency.How does all this add up to an emergency.Because in the radically secular age in which we live. so-called educated people generally no longer understand the nature or purpose of religion. so somebody is in need of a damn good whacking for what our students are lacking.“We have to reckon.” writes Torrance. “with the fact that all our human structures and institutions are now in a critical state. with serious problems that are to be traced back to the application to society of mechanistic analyses and explanations deriving from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” which is a quintessential case of left-brain bullying of the right. These “damaging splits in human life and culture” are the result of “alien and inappropriate patterns of behaviour imposed upon them.” So. not just an emergency. but a seriously damaging and even critical one. But perhaps you’ve never attended college. so you’re unaware of the alien and alienating indoctrinationSo. it’s All About the Children as our politicians like to say.Maybe you haven’t noticed that they leave college adrift in a Cosmos devoid of meaning and purpose. as if the whole world has gone crazy. For some three centuries now. “we have been passing through a period in which we have pursued human inquiry in a severely analytic (read: LH) manner. and on radically dualist foundations.” This has resulted in a fragmentation of “thought and culture.” and “in deep clefts in the heart of academic aims.” and thus “the serious collapse of cultural unity. not least between the sciences and the humanities” [Torrance]. Ain’t no use jokin’: the humanities are broken.C’mon. Nothing is effed here.What the flip. Are you kidding. The anthropic plane has crashed into the scientistic mountain. With no vertical radar. civilization has entered a stupifying existential doom loop. How much more black could this be. The answer is none.None more black. A little perspective please.It’s not that material circumstances are bad. rather. the opposite. For in most ways we have to admit that things are getting better all the time. such that the average person living in the contemporary Western world enjoys a standard of living surpassing over 99% of the human beings who have ever lived. It has only been a little over 200 years since we freed ourselves from the Malthusian trap and began accumulating surplus wealth and enjoying its attendant slack. Once this occurred. economics was no longer a zero-sum game but one in which two plus two could add up to five bucks or more.Nevertheless. some things never change. one of these being human desire. which is always infinite and can therefore never be fulfilled in this finite world. This was well understood by thinkers ranging from Guatama Buddha to Muddy Waters. the latter of whom could never be satisfied and just couldn’t keep from crying about it.Victor Frankl. who survived a Nazi deathcamp — which can really put a crimp in your day — famously said that “A man can endure anything. except the lack of meaning.” Religion — the real ones. at any rate — once conveyed to man an implicit metaphysical vision that used to take care of this problem by situating us in a meaningful cosmic framework and giving us the time-tested ins and outs of the complicated case we call Life.For example. in the Western tradition the Ten Commandments issued by the celestial league office provided the bylaws to let us know when we were playing by the rules or over the line. But imprisoned in subjectivism under the soft tyranny of relativism. anything goes. Say what you want. but in the absence of God the only honest alternative is nihilism — which is not healthy for the Anthropos. in the literal sense of barring us from an intuition of the wholeness of reality. Just look at the rates of mental illness. especially among the young. I don’t think “emergency” is overstating the case. nor a lazy use of exclamation points to liven the text. This is a mass casualty event. in the sense that The most customary form of suicide in our time consists in firing a bullet into the soul.So I guess you could say that things are getting pretty serious right now. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 03:51:42 +0000 6ba21b05715b62699296ddf28815f3c2d06e0d34 https://www.thekurganblog.com/national-sovereignty-or-if-i-was/ THE FIX SERIES OF POSTS – PART IV [with Poll at the bottom] [search for “The fix Series” for all the posts in it] I have been wondering for a while what kind of system of government I would implement if I became Emperor tomorrow for some time. At least 30 years or so. I (…) No related posts. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:54:25 +0000 6cef015b0265a3db5aa845e2c245609ec745f471 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/national-sovereignty-or-if-i-was With Thanks to Alan Page Memes Sat, 03 Oct 2026 02:54:25 +0000 2c9ff12958ebc7d91c4730b8c1a06d50da398dee https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/02/morality-for-a-storybook-life/ My wife is ill and for whatever reason what has been on our minds and been sustaining us is our courtship.  It was storybook.  We were very young and naive and neither of us had known anyone else [biblical].  It could have worked out. but it would be less storybook. if we had. One of (…) Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:29:45 +0000 248a02ab62a6514beac4043dfd804e88cc669716 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/friday-ta-border-dispute-edition.html I missed the instalment from last week. out of a combination of sheer laziness. and a dire need for sleep [due to having what in most cases amounts to a mild cold. but for some reason ended up being a proper Man-Flu]. So. this week. in the wake of the MFIC’s Valdai speech. we have (…) The post Friday TandA: Border Dispute Edition appeared first on Didactic Mind. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:14:23 +0000 4b863d525731689ab55cae9630c9f6189a45dc3a https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/downtowns-other-safety-problem Cancellation risk. GOP Boomerslop. and more in this week’s digest. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:42:09 +0000 6f63dff1001e7e20041fbd04e2160d62237cc61f https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/read-this-guys-post If you only ever read ONE post ever. read this guy’s Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:03:43 +0000 4650c35e5ce34e2ad07d763904c42511ab2cc338 https://www.thekurganblog.com/read-this-guys-post/ It’s not my post . Honestly one of the most important posts ever written. And regulars here know I don’t ever fanboy anything much. What did the cultural Marxists learn from Weimar Germany. They learned that the Sexual Revolution. in order to succeed. had to be a slow and gradual process. “Modern forms of subjection.” (…) No related posts. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:03:43 +0000 80b02b31dd86c6b3674bca70a6ef5c530a3fd2f3 https://crez.site/2026/261002.html The Two Witnesses principle still holds until Christ returns. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 18:47:06 +0000 63abf6f0c98120ec4082e3e69e699541ffbaba1d https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/vox-day-darwinian-evolution-innumeracy And that title is not even clickbait. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:45:26 +0000 dd1409fc9fd99462e19ca47143d9a7deb67ffbf7 https://www.thekurganblog.com/vox-day-darwinian-evolution-innumeracy/ Enjoy. This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here No related posts. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:45:26 +0000 dddcebe38effc4f022a8358997fc10f38d5bbe9b https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/10/all-for-nothing-euthanasia-for-disabled.html Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:15:43 +0000 1d41a223d8c951e91a8d104e7119fa4637dce43e https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/is-underground-church-in-china.html Fri, 02 Oct 2026 10:21:25 +0000 5e04ec1e77012bc2df1142a72e80a2a89332660b https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/note-there-are-so-few-real-scientists.html Considering that I spent my working life deeply engaged with science [especially evolutionary biology and human intelligence and creativity] and medicine [especially psychiatry and psychopharmacology]. it may be surprising to some readers that I do not notice or comment on the debates about medical therapies or scientific theories that are spread across the internet. The reason is that I believe there are extremely few scientists and medical researchers who are real: that is who are strongly motivated by truth wrt the matter under consideration. which motivation [in a subsidiary way] means they become and are sufficiently knowledgeable and competent in the relevant matters being debated. There are still very few people who realize both that much more science used to be real. but now extremely little of what is called science is real while there is a truly vast amount of fake science - which is either generic careerist bureaucracy. or generic mass media manipulation. Indeed the public debates are themselves typically based on mistaken and false premises. such that they are fundamentally worthless. or indeed actively harmful. Unless you are yourself real with respect to that specific matter under discussion. then you cannot genuinely evaluate such debates - you are merely experiencing them as a gladatorial display. and one that is probably being staged with the aim of manipulating you. one way or another. And the unreal debaters may themselves convinced that they themselves are real scientists. and outraged by any suggestion otherwise - despite that their motivations are so obviously not-real.  Real science and medicine is difficult. slow. and rare. especially here and now. and is not a public affair. For instance. it is nearly always very difficult to know whether or not a treatment is effective in a general way. Science never really has been a public affair. but happens between those few people who are real. and happens largely inter-personally. Same with its sub-type medical research. with added diffiulties of an inter-personal kind. ..[Although sometimes in the past the public 'overheard' a real debate. and that may be genuinely interesting and enlightening. But now. The odds are overwhelmingly high you are overhearing a fake debate.] Quite a lot of the 'scientific' debates [and indeed many academic and scholarly debates as well] are in reality failures to clarify and acknowledge metaphysical assumptions. Examples include some of the debates of high-level physics theories [cosmology. particles. forces etc]. the nature and origins of Life. and the validity of evolution by Natural Selection. Discussions of such matters need to grasp that science only operates within metaphysical assumptions. such that evidence and reason are secondary to these assumptions. Which means [inter alia] that debates of evidence and reasoning cannot in principle overthrow the metaphysical assumptions that govern a type of science.  Fri, 02 Oct 2026 07:53:58 +0000 ac74784e6b38187dcd6329c27be6f27049f1c55d https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/which-is-more-pathetic-to-live-for-this.html To live towards a future life. an after-life: to orientate our mortal lives in the expectation of immortality in Heaven - is this good. or just pathetic. It is. in the West. is mainstream and normal for powerful. wealthy. high status. vigorous people to regard future-life orientation as dumb. crazy. dishonest. manipulative - but even at best it is pathetic. a behaviour which moves a compassionate Man to pity. The idea is that only someone who is Fundamentally A Loser ['retarded'] in this world would have a Heavenly orientation. Yet the mainstream. normal attitude of living for this mortal Life is equally pathetic. pitiable. in that among those who regard-themselves as Winners. Life is seen optimistically. 'This Lifers' believe that good times are just around the corner. seeds of improvement are sprouting. the pendulum is about to swing in the desired direction... that History is on the side of Progress. 'This Lifers' may look at the sad fate. and desperate situations. of so many people around them. yet optimistically [as a matter of faith] believe that they-themselves will somehow be exempt from such a pathetic life. Is there anything sadder. more ignorant and insane - or more deviously manipulative - than constantly to be harping on a better future in this mortal life. and absolutely to need to believe in such improvement. If both can be seen as pathetic. according to perspective. who is the most pathetic: a this-Lifer or the next-Lifer. The answer [like all answers] depends on fundamental assumptions. If we assume that resurrected eternal Life in Heaven is real and possible - and from this perspective look back on human history and the experience of our own lives. then mainstream ideological optimism is just ridiculous. and to live by optimism for this-life and this-world is truly the most pitiable state. If instead we assume with materialistic-atheism. that this this world is the only world. that mortal Life - between conception and death - is everything. that Heaven is false. a day-dream or a manipulative lie... Well then. to believe in Heaven. and live for Heaven. is indeed pathetic: foolish or childish at best.Because [such people still argue] by living in light of a false Heaven. we will presumably fail to make the best [or at least make-the-most] of this mortal life. and also by focusing on a fake afterlife we will fail to focus on improving the real world around us... Consequently. to live for Heaven is not merely regarded as the pathetic belief of a pathetic loser. but actually a belief that will materially-harm other people. and tend to sabotage the optimistic hope of a better life for me. and a better this-world for everyone.. The Heaven believer is then worse than pathetic: subversive. a saboteur. a public menace.  .[Or. if future life is not better for everyone. then better for everyone that matters to me.] Yet materialistic atheism has zero basis for judging value objectively. interpersonally. So for mainstream modernity truth is ultimately no better than delusions. happiness no worse than suffering. success and failure are subjective distinctions without meaning. Subjectivity is all that is left. and personal preferences and emotions are transient. and externally influenced - hence ultimately meaningless.And the terrible history of the twentieth century worldwide. and the ongoing artistic/ scientific/ cultural/ spiritual collapse of the West. demonstrates that a this-life atheist-materialist perspective actually does not lead people to focus on make the best and most of their mortal life and of human society. What. then. can be more arbitrary than the 'confident' assertion that this mortal Life is all-there-is. and anyone who believes otherwise is pathetic.  Mainstream modern materialistic atheism is a choice. and a choice that. rigorously pursued is itself a recipe for frenzied and psychopathic hedonism in the short term. and for despair and suicide in the long term. ...As we see especially evident among the more powerful. wealthy. high status. vigorous people of the West - here-and-now. And if They think that We are pathetic compared with Them.Well. I for one don't care what They think - except to avoid it.  Fri, 02 Oct 2026 06:32:47 +0000 2a53dc33f99b2eab1eceda54608765df32f746f8 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/02/today-is-the-feast-of-your-guardian-angel/ For he hath given his angels charge over thee. to keep thee in all thy ways. Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te. ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis. In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. In manibus portabunt te. ne forte offendas ad lapidem pedem (…) Fri, 02 Oct 2026 06:26:00 +0000 2a131a5f01f719960e3a055471315852f66c442b https://scifiwright.com/2026/10/three-way-spacewar/ In a recent interview. one of the questions asked me to name the most difficult part of the creative writing process. and to name the easiest part. Answering the difficult part was difficult for me. Answering the easy part was easy: the one thing most readers ask  about is where a writer gets his ideas. (…) Fri, 02 Oct 2026 04:00:21 +0000 45493377209779f7b01b51dd6fd73bb5eb61a337 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/10/01/annus-mirabilis-2027/ Well. why not.  Annus Mirabilis – Year of Miracles Isaac Newton had one in 1665-1666. with his pioneering work on defining the law of gravity. inventing calculus and discoveries in optics. Einstein in 1905. when he published papers detailing photoelectric effect. Brownian motion. special relativity. and mass-energy equivalence [E=mc²]. Pres Nelson said in April 2022 General (…) Fri, 02 Oct 2026 01:01:35 +0000 f93109852092793e2997c31a501d52645bd67ca1 https://didacticmind.com/2026/10/when-boredom-is-your-friend.html By random chance. a video from a trainer and coach in his mid-forties. with three small kids. crossed into my EWCHOOB feed the other day. in which the guy talked with refreshing candour and directness about the need to stop dicking around and wasting time in the gym: This was absolutely solid. sound advice – (…) The post When boredom is your friend appeared first on Didactic Mind. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 23:21:40 +0000 0456055af2f13977a1f793586554a74eb8595d2f https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/10/looking-for-mister-big.html Yesterday we completed Book II of our Cosmotheandric Trilogy. and if you missed it. you missed out on a damn good thing. the best thing that ever happened to the internet. Not only was it down to the nitty gritty. but you can tell all your friends in Rio Linda that the universe was definitely set on fire.We now move on to Book III: Theos. but we have a problem. For unlike the first two volumes. it is not yet completed. Rather. I’m about two thirds of the way through. Despite having written 335 pages. I am still in the process of interviewing witnesses and gathering information. After all. we’re dealing with the biggest possible question. so this is obviously a very complicated case. with a lotta ins and outs—Lotta strands in old Gagdad’s head.Correct. I haven’t even glanced at the file for a couple months. but during that time have been dropping random nuggets into it. which need to be properly incorporated into the main text.On the other hand. perhaps it will be amusing to watch someone attempt to accomplish this impossible task in real time. Will the author make it to the other side. or slip from the Lightrope into the abyss. as has befallen so many other vertical adventurers. How close can we fly to O without incinerating. Just how far may we babble into the tower of being before words fail altogether.Can I even shake the dust off my keyboard and achieve the immodest task with which I have been charged.I do have a collection of quotes at the beginning. which reflect the spirit of cosmotheandrism. for example.You cannot shelter theology from science. or science from theology. nor can you shelter either of them from metaphysics. or metaphysics from either of them. There is no short cut to truth. —A.N. WhiteheadReligion is not a set of solutions to known problems. but a new dimension of the universe. –DávilaGod entrusted man. created in his image and likeness. the mission of unifying the cosmos. —Pope Benedict XVIThe question of God and the question of myself are identical. —Rudolf BultmannNo symbolization is adequate to the ineffability of the divine Beyond. Hence. when you are a believer on the level of symbol. you become an “infidel” to the ineffable truth of divine reality. —Eric VoegelinSpinoza’s God is less than a person. Mine is more than a person. because God can’t be less than a person. He can play the role of a person. —GodelOne of the tasks of the book is to render belief itself believable. especially to the theodivergent among us — to vertical eccentrics. off-road spiritual adventurers. neuro-cosmologists. neo-traditional retro-futurists. etc. It is not so much the attempt to create a religion we can believe in. rather. to forge a vision of a world in which the existing religions are believable. The good ones. at any rate — those compatible with the cosmotheandric framework. It is not so much that there are many true religions. rather. many religions ordered to the one truth in more or less adequate ways. forAll that is true. by whosoever spoken. is from the Holy Ghost. –St. AmbroseIn my endeavor to lay some steel on the railroad track to O. I began with the following noirish passage. called Cracking the Case of the Missing God. If nothing else. it is more proof for why this book is unpublishable. Rather. it is for your eyes only. supposing you are one of us. and not working for the clampdown:Now that we’ve staked out the Cosmos for suspicious activity in Book I and interrogated the anthropic informant in Book II. it is time to take a magnifying glance at the Big Kahuna at the center of it all. Having deposed every immaterial witness from Abraham to Zoroaster. we know this suspect goes by any number of aliases. from Adonai to Zeus. However. our investigation has concluded that in this metaphysical whodunnit each of our three perps is in cahoots with the others and somehow involved in the scheme—Accessories to the climb.Correct: our three confederates are all implicated in the caper. and we aim to throw this book at them. all 400 pages. Having placed the Cosmos and Anthropos under surveillance. we can trace them to a silent partner whose fingerprints are all over the evidence. and who seems to be pulling the strings. Although we have a sketch of this Mister Big. we have thus far obtained conflicting testimony as to his exact identity and whereabouts.Two points: first. you are no Raymond Chandler. and second. not even Philip Marlowe can know the unknowable. so what makes you think you’re qualified to put God’s business on the street.Because doing so is actually an analogue of literally everything on our side of the veil. for we can again know a great deal about anything in existence but not know everything about a single thing. Thus there is circumstantial evidence of the divine presence everywhere. hence a dynamic complementarity of endless intelligibility within a depthless mystery. whether in the material cabin down below or the great wide open above.If cosmotheandrism is to work. the first thing we need to do is get the Theos out of the clouds and back here in the Cosmos and Anthropos. We know that we are in the Cosmos. and that the Cosmos is in us. For example. think of how light signals broadcast throughout the universe extend to our own inside. where their meaning can be decoded. This extends from the subatomic to the astrophysical. all the way back to the very birth of the Cosmos in which we find ourselves. meaning that the Big Bang itself is somehow inside the intellect. We also know that neither the Anthropos nor Cosmos are necessary. rather. contingent upon a higher principle we have thus far been designating as O.This is all tied up with something I’ve been thinking about for years. since long before I stumbled onto cosmotheandrism. Because in this business of metaphysics you can’t sleep for trying to figure out the tricks the tenured try to pull on you. You’re like the guy in the philosophy section at Barnes and Noble. browsing the books to see how they bewitch you with language. And then one night you get to thinking how you could play that game. And do it smart. Because you’ve got that piece of sheepskin in your hands. the one that alleges a PhD in psychology. so you too can pretend to know more than you do. And then you figure all you need is an angle. a new way to package the old truths. And suddenly Petey taps you on the shoulder and the whole set-up is right there in the room with you...Look. I’m not trying to canonize myself. I fought it. only maybe I didn’t fight it hard enough. The stakes were not only a handful of readers. but also the very nature of God — a God who’d never done me any dirt.I get it: Triple Indemnity.∞Where do we begin to look for the missing God.Just listen to your heart. That’s what I do.You mean conventional religiosity. It certainly seems to satisfy the spiritual needs of countless people. and I sometimes even envy their uncomplicated faith. Of course. some folks go to church just to signify. others to make a date with their neighbor’s wife. but in any group of people you’re going to get your share of long-tongued liars. midnight riders. gamblers. ramblers. backbiters. and credulous chopraphiles.But ideally we should listen with the heart and brain — the RH and LH. respectively — so long as we are aware of both the capabilities and limitations of the latter. Ironically. modern man tends to exaggerate both. on the one hand presuming a promethean intellect that can utilize science to disclose the secrets of the world. on the other hand pretending to enclose us in genetics. neurology. or the projected forms of our own consciousness. such that we can know diddly about daddy. or of the real nature of the extracranial world outside the silo. But our aim is to infiltrate Celestial Central and finally get to the bottom of the top of this mystery. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 18:05:58 +0000 a778b77831e07c29bdd89df59a3846ce75ad3277 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/franny-is-killing-me she really is Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:24:28 +0000 670989a73d68c5cb906785195daa1a62cee4764b https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/10/01/a-hymn-to-stubborn-brutality/ “The liberalism of English customs does not trace to Magna Charta. for nothing is less justified than the exaggerated importance attached to that document. It results from the stubbornness. the brutality. of the basic Englishman.” James N. Wood. Democracy and the Will to Power [1921]. Not long after I began lowering the tone of the Orthosphere with (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:01:51 +0000 b5d8590b198f41606f87663cdd15f1a70fabb39a https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/vox-day-darwining-evolution-and-innumeracy A recording from The Kurgan's live video Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:26:49 +0000 d3ee874a9cb28290fac080c0d6ed0076d995bc5f https://www.thekurganblog.com/vox-day-darwining-evolution-and-innumeracy/ Get more from The Kurgan in the Substack app Available for iOS and Android Get the app This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here No related posts. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:26:49 +0000 9466d5e2503ba888cd4ad212e096624bef2878f3 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/10/01/feminist-my-foot-or-servility-to-the-enemy/ I cannot easily express with words how much I hate the intellectual – and in time. unavoidably. linguistic – servility to the enemy. The acceptance of the enemy’s moral parameters. The desire to show that one agrees with the righteousness of the premise. but can double down on it and make it “more right”. “Jesus (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:26:09 +0000 37c0f897697b4ca7a90fb2d3f89b2f1111e28897 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/video-podcast-test A recording by The Kurgan Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:19:24 +0000 edcb97a22cd407992acc515b4e48a014ff8857e3 https://www.thekurganblog.com/video-podcast-test/ Get more from The Kurgan in the Substack app Available for iOS and Android Get the app This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here No related posts. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:19:24 +0000 a1a1dd93a586720747c7ebf2a4548586f21fb16a https://winteryknight.com/2026/10/01/new-study-transgender-murders-motivated-by-domestic-violence-not-hate/ This is the third study that I’m blogging about in the week of new studies. The first study was about how belief in gender ideologies was linked to supporting political violence. The second study was about how state laws that ban transgender drugs and surgeries don’t increase suicide rates. Today’s new study is about how … Continue reading New study: Transgender murders motivated by domestic violence. not “hate” → Thu, 01 Oct 2026 14:00:01 +0000 82042bce8421a644aa53fa2714ee589d6fc711ab https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/10/foreign-dependence-is-problem.html   I remember many years ago. probably as far back as 2013 maybe 2015. listening to a Sky News discussion and the host had Labor and Liberal representatives on their show. He asked them. 'Does it really matter that we are getting rid of fuel refineries and car manufacturing.' 'No.' They both said. 'We can get what we need from Asia.' I remember thinking. 'How can they be so dumb. What happens when war comes along.' I never forgot that interview. because the retardery of what these representatives both said burned a memory in my mind. They were ok with a policy that made Australia's position in the world more precarious. more dependent.  I no longer think they were dumb. I think they were corrupted. either by ideology or something else. You have to be very shortsighted to think that being dependent on other countries for basic commodities that make your economy move. literally. is a wise move. This fuel crisis is 100% the fault of the two major parties and their short-term thinking. They worked hard to make us exposed. because they could not think ahead. or were the given incentives not to think ahead. Remember this at every election for the next three decades. Because these political parties have zero intentions of fixing a crisis they manufactured. Labor is addicted to pushing us towards reliance on China. which every thinking Australian can see will end badly. EV's might be a short-term fix. But reliance on other countries is the problem. not the solution. That would simply leave us exposed to other forms of potential crisis. The LNP is addicted to being a damp squib. utterly useless at fixing Labor's bad policies. They seem to be more afraid of being uninvited to inner city dinner parties than doing the right thing with resources. Though at the state level in QLD we see some movement in the right directions.   But at the Federal level neither of these parties should be forgiven for their mismanagement of this country. Forgiveness is for individuals. not political parties. They need to be voted out of all levers of power and influence. so that sensible people can come in and change our country's direction.   Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:12:24 +0000 936cbce106ad59cac1b98ad797375d7b57b4ea72 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/viewer-asks-why-do-i-bother I received this very thoughtful criticism on a Class video at YouTube. which I take to be most kind. and found it important enough to answer here. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:03:36 +0000 53cba7cc4af97690645f92e62af0c11b72f62da2 https://derekramsey.com/2026/10/01/eucharist-for-prisoners/ This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index. The Ancient Witness In “Translations of Ignatius: Letter to the Smyrnaeans.” we discussed the problems with how the context of this passage is handled by translators with respect to the sacrifice of thanksgiving [‘eucharist‘]. They … The post Eucharist For Prisoners appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:00:46 +0000 812fa12b963c57b93a71371e4fe185aa8bb0395c https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62164/ I received this very thoughtful criticism on a Class video at YouTube. which I take to be most kind. and found it important enough to answer here. I love these… Thu, 01 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000 b0f726188cf1c67f5804c6f119016eca63130758 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/10/01/trial-set-to-begin-for-catholic-woman-who-prayed-silently-near-uk-abortion-clinic/ What we’ve got here is a little slice of Orwellian theatre unfolding right now in the heart of England. and the star of this tragicomic farce is a quiet Catholic lady named Isabel Vaughan-Spruce. Here’s the facts. A woman. mid-forties. co-director of March for Life UK. stood on a public pavement in Birmingham. England. Not (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:30:29 +0000 d06f9f4f52a08e41c5d7836b2eae11efa6a59d11 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/10/on-road-again.html  My wife and I are heading south for the winter to the Gulf of Mexico for a week lazing in the sun.  We've both been far too busy for the past several months. me with medical issues and her with being the the primary technical adviser to her employer's support staff.  We need breathing room. and space to unwind.I'll post to this blog occasionally. as and when I feel the urge. but I don't want to commit to daily posts.  I really do need time to relax.  For the same reason. I'll only moderate comments at irregular intervals. so if you comment and it doesn't appear soon. please be patient.  Amuse yourselves with the bloggers listed in my sidebar until I'm back in harness.  Regular blogging should resume on Monday. October 12th.I'll leave you with these encouraging thoughts from Rat.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the comic's Web page.Sadly. no gin for me.  I'm driving.Peter Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:42:00 +0000 4843c36831d3644c91c01756fc20516ed1a9aa9b https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/10/welcome-gen-z-may-you-help-renew-face.html Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:30:00 +0000 5e7c470c05d79f2e5927200af54ee0aac6bbcc4f https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/10/elevenses-anyone.html I haven't heard anyone talk about elevenses for quite a while. some decades. but the expression was at one time used almost daily. As far back as I remember in the 1960s. and continuing into the 80s. there was a mid-morning break situated roughly half-way between breakfast and lunch - during which people would also eat a snack. That snack was almost always biscuits. This applied whether at work - when it was either formally timed programmed in mass employment situations. Or informally a matter of convention in professional situations [such as laboratories]. There was a mid-morning break for drinking tea or coffee. eating a biscuit or two - and conversation. A treasured memory of my mid-childhood and early teens was attending elevenses at the Bristol Dental School with my father. mainly on those Saturday mornings when I accompanied him to work to visit the nearby public library or bookshops. The event had a delightful atmosphere.  Among my mother's circle there were 'coffee mornings' for women neighbours. especially those with housewives with children. which went from house to house in an approximate rotation. As a pre-schooler. or duing school holidays. I was taken-along to these - but found them terribly boring. except for the biscuits [I was always hungry. and could never eat enough biscuits to satify this.]. But for the housewives. coffee mornings were the main frequent form of social interaction. In those days in England. coffee was consumed almost entirely in people's homes - either instant coffee at elevenses. or ground coffee [invariably in tiny cups] after dinner in the late evening. The rest of the time. multiple cups of tea were normal. But coffee incrementally displaced. and sometimes replaced. tea. and was consumed more often in cafes. rather than at home or in 'works' canteens. Later still. ground coffee replaced instant. and espresso displaced all other methods of brewing. During my working years. this practice of elevenses began as universal and much-valued. but diminished greatly - indeed it had altogether disappeared by the time of retirement.This decline went hand-in-hand with reduced biscuit consumption. and a feeling that it was weak or wrong to eat anything - but especially anything sweet - between breakfast and lunch.  The managerial-bureaucratic takeover also suppressed elevenses at work. when it suddenly and somehow became too expensive and/or inefficient to set aside a room for communal drinking and eating.  Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:27:10 +0000 42300fdff1e8bf4ebfbfffe7c767fb2248f73ae0 https://www.barnhardt.biz/2026/10/01/starting-wednesday-off-right-st-remigius-shameless-proselytizer-edition/ “Sigamber” is a pejorative term akin to “barbarian”. referencing the Sicambrian race from which Clovis. King of the Franks. descended. Saint Remigius baptizes Clovis I. by the Master of Saint Gilles. c. ARSH 1500 [National Gallery of Art. Washington. D.C.]From CatholicTradition.org: Clovis. king of all northern Gaul [France]. was himself yet a pagan. though not (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 06:06:00 +0000 3a090aa9d49d86b385b1648166c1625f5abdaca6 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/platos-babylonian-republic I’ve been reading Plato’s Republic to confirm or disprove my theory that the Greeks generally and Plato specifically. imported the Babylonian religion of political power via secret societies into Western Civilization. Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:52:53 +0000 ae595029535d805823bbfe404d395f00275e1f6e https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/09/30/harvard-artist-in-residence-says-to-medical-students-free-luigi/ She seems nice. Luigi Mangione was the madman who killed the insurance exec. Nothing is sacred in a godless world. That might seem obvious to you and me but I think people in Harvard need to hear this. they seem fit. healthy. and sane — what a great optic for the medical school. https://t.co/pd0ZaHQCNC — (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 03:27:17 +0000 b5ed1fe3457a5b01986c90beed5353c2a93b1787 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/09/30/pope-leo-speaks-to-french-people-hes-a-hit-but-why/ OK. Let’s take good news where we can get it. K. As the world seems to be moving away from faith and increasingly more people say they do not identify with any religion. several nations have seen an increase in the number of adults choosing to get baptized and discover Catholicism.One of these is (…) Thu, 01 Oct 2026 02:48:12 +0000 acb757ff884fe8a2f4403443c5f5d472c00b67bf https://scifiwright.com/2026/09/not-tired-of-winning-yet-cclxv/ Swamp Drainage The 2027 Congress will not include: Nancy Pelosi. Mitch McConnell. John Cornyn. Al Green. Jasmine Crockett. Dan Crenshaw. Eric Swalwell. Jerry Nadler. Alexander Vindman. Bill Cassidy. Thomas Massie. Don Bacon. Shri Thanedar. Dan Goldman Decline in life expectancy reversed Speaking at the Republican midterm convention. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said preliminary CDC data (…) Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:51:09 +0000 d46da1d818788aea135ea343a82b41e78d16babe https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/of-banagher-and-other-places.html Be warned: there's no real point to this blog post except what it says in the title. I like proverbs about places-- I mean. specific places. I've always had a very specific [pleasurable] aesthetic reaction to them.Why. I think it might be the combination of universality and specificity. A proverb is something that. in a sense. floats free of time and context. It seems to apply to everybody and everywhere. This is a pleasant atmosphere in itself. but the fact that a place-proverb is tethered to a particular place gives it an added relish.The most famous place-proverbs are to do with Rome. 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. 'All roads lead to Rome'. and [my favourite Roman proverb] 'when in Rome. do as the Romans do'.I recently learned that this last one had a Christian origin-- it was something St. Ambrose said to St. Augustine and his mother about fasting on a Saturday. as they did in Rome. I was greatly surprised [and pleased] to learn this.The mention of Rome in proverbs gives them a certain grandeur. Personally I am a confirmed Europhobe. for the very good reason that I've had Europe. Europe. Europe rammed down my throat by progressives my entire life. And yet the very name 'Rome' [even for me] conjures up a deliciously vague impression of centuries of history and art and splendour.I first encountered the proverb 'All roads lead to Rome' in a book of proverbs when I was sixteen. and I'm still not sure what it means. It seems to mean different things to everybody. But it has an atmosphere of excitement and of broadening horizons and ever-widening thoroughfares-- very like the line 'where many paths and errands meet' from Tolkien's poem 'The Road Goes On and Ever On'].Proverbs that allude to Rome are especially potent [by way of contrast] in these drizzly and misty British Isles. which have been blissfully cut off from the mainstream of Yerpan history. They let me momentarily indulge in the glamour of the continent. while reassuring me that we're protected from all that by the silver sea that serves as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happier lands.Of course. not all place-proverbs refer to Rome.'Sussex won't be druv' is a proverb I've encountered in books. although I've never actually heard anyone say it in real life.Ireland has 'That beats Banagher' or 'That bangs Banagher'. The full version is 'That beats Banagher. and Banagher beats the devil.' Banagher is a small town in county Offally. in the east of Ireland. [It's been in the news recently because of a tragic accident. and that's what got me thinking of place-proverbs.]I know this used to be a fairly popular proverb in Ireland. because I've encountered it used in old books. Today it mostly seems remembered because it's the most famous thing about Banagher. Or perhaps because it's such a memorable phrase. But it does make me wonder...why does this inconsequential place get immortalized in a proverb. Why did this proverb get remembered.It seems to be the only Irish place-proverb that's survived. This interesting Irish Times article lists quite a few more. but I've never heard of any of them before. Elsewhere. I found a reference to 'fighting like Kilkenny cats'. which has sort of survived...at least. most Irish people know that the Kilkenny hurling team are nicknamed 'the Cats' and many of us vaguely remember the story about two Kilkenny cats that fought each other until only their tails were left.Donnybrook [an area in Dublin city] has been immortalized in the term 'a donnybrook'. meaning a fight-- it seems to bettter-known in America than Ireland. So that's proverbial. but not a proverb. Another Dublin suburb. Sallynoggin. was frequently invoked in my childhood. during neighbourhood kickabouts. when someone or other would shout: 'On the Sallynoggin.' or 'on the Sally.'. As you can probably guess. it referred to heading the ball. But this isn't really a proverb either.Having said all that about the paucity of Irish place-proverbs. I've just realized that I can't think of very many well-known proverbs about places in Britain. either. There's 'Sussex won't be druv'. which I've never heard actually used. and there's 'Carrying coals to Newcastle'. which I certainly have heard used on innumerable occasions. What about 'sending (somebody) to Coventry.'. I actually used this phrase earlier today. but it seems more of a phrase than a proverb. OK. I'm turning to the internet now..[Please imagine light orchestral music for a few moments.]Well. I ran an internet search. and all I really got [aside from carrying coals to Newcastle] were more idioms like 'ship-shape and Bristol fashion' or 'more front than Brighton'. It seems reasonable to insist that a proverb has to be a whole sentence and can't just be a phrase. So maybe Ireland isn't doing so bad after all.What about America. then. The only one that comes to mind is 'Virginia is for lovers'. and that's a marketing slogan of very recent provenance. 'I'm from Missouri-- show me.' [or its shortened form 'I'm from Missouri'] possibly qualifies as a proverb. [It's used as a general expression of scepticism--- I first encountered it in the nineties TV miniseries of The Stand.]And aside from those. I can't think of any others. Even New York. which is presumably the modern Rome. hasn't given birth to a single proverb that I can think of. [Yes. there's 'the city that never sleeps'. but that's more of a description.] The internet gives me this one: 'A bad day in New York is better than a good day anywhere else.' Well. all I can say is I've never heard this until now.Wait. I've just thought of another one. 'How will it play in Peoria.' Originally a showbiz proverb that came to be used more generally. asking how something [a show. a policy. etc.] will be received by Middle America. It's all I actually know about Peoria. Illinois. It's generally described as a figure of speech rather than a proverb. but it fits my definition.And then there's 'Don't call it Frisco'. which I suppose counts as a proverb.Really straining my brains. I can come up with 'When Boston sneezes. Maine gets a cold'. [I had to check to make sure I'd got it right. I hadn't. I thought it was: 'When New England sneezes. America gets a cold.']I've just done a quick internet search for other American place-proverbs. but I didn't find any that I would consider well-known. 'As goes Maine. so goes the nation' rings a bell. but only a faint bell.So much for Rome. Ireland. Britain. and the good old USA. But what about the rest of the world.The first city that comes to mind is Jerusalem. Surely there should be a proverb that mentions Jerusalem. But I can't think of any-- although I have a vague sense I'm forgetting an obvious one. C.S. Lewis uses the phrase 'Every road out of Jerusalem is a road into Jerusalem'-- or it might be the other way round-- but. though this sounds like it should be a proverb. I'm pretty sure it's not.I can't think of any proverbs that mention Paris. Lots of phrases. lines from movies. and famous titles. But no proverbs.And. after much racking of my brains. the only other place-proverb I can think of-- from anywhere in the whole wide world-- is: 'He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' [Which I've always considered a rather stupid proverb.]So how about it. What am I missing. What place-proverbs do you know and love. or just know. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:31:44 +0000 095a0545dde8bcbb63a1479cb13ed736b2772622 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/leo-xiv-and-place-de-la-concorde-by.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:11:43 +0000 f11077cb56154bb907d2623f4674bd5200f2a3ca https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/pope-leo-xivs-journey-to-france-compte.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:01:14 +0000 e8452bd126c1a1ffea591abb9e13e068b2a61a10 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/09/30/all-are-welcome-but-not-you/ CENTRAL CURRENT reports this and it’s just perfect. “When her child came out as transgender three years ago. Dr. Elizabeth Saarie was overjoyed. After years of watching her daughter’s struggle. “I felt joy that she was accepting herself and choosing to live authentically.” Saarie said. But joy turned to panic as she realized her church (…) Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:42:40 +0000 8ef49c09030728311454f3509da0783b14c94066 https://winteryknight.com/2026/09/30/truth-and-reconciliation-day-is-built-on-unproven-claims-and-anti-christian-bigotry/ The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation has become a state-enforced hoax that targets Christianity. The full force of government messaging. media. and public institutions now blames the Christian faith for a uniquely evil crime. A set of unproven accusations has been used to justify hostility toward an entire religious community. resulting in vandalism and … Continue reading Truth and Reconciliation Day is built on unproven claims and anti-Christian bigotry → Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:00:03 +0000 74a73b5f511710c0de3489312408ab4855a48fc0 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/my-latest-cartoon_01652754827.html   Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:46:05 +0000 5907d1e3cbc36f124e27ad52f518df34cf5121ba https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-whipsaw-right Republican politicians think they know what their base believes. Flock cameras show it might believe the opposite next month. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:02:56 +0000 132345cad882b38fa3a6a32fb60d6358db239bfe https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/men-who-are-strong-and-the-women Men want to own a woman. and women want to be owned by a strong man. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:21:53 +0000 7de7af0ffb153c1d6a7bca73e15912a148ac6564 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/09/30/what-the-heck-i-like-isaiah-now/ On the inside I am still a 20-year old kid staring wide-eyed at a world of wonder. But my joints and my eyes tell me we’ve run through decades of being that 20-year old kid. So I should probably be embarrassed to say that this fall is the first time I’ve enjoyed reading Isaiah. This (…) Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:10:58 +0000 8fdc6f1ad4d8fbd4cfe4ef520cc98106710175fe https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/academics-call-for-the-killing-of Effective Altruists at it again Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:00:52 +0000 2146bf7037895a6197a4687f1b8e2fb92b119d41 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62179/ Academic philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have written a peer-reviewed paper in which they say that killing newborns is A-OK. and even in some cases to be encouraged. Their “After-birth abortion:… Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 750d9c3b40b3c5979ef17b8edc308db80e058e56 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/people-of-good-will-can-respectfully.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 52fefa645ea17993b5025ce3e656f5a13b70a741 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/sadly-it-takes-war-to-spur-improvements.html  During my military service four to five decades ago. our medical training was pretty basic.  You could call it slightly more advanced first aid. if you like.  There were none of the techniques. equipment and medicines that emergency medicine offers today.  Pretty much all a grunt in the field could do was try to stop the bleeding. then get the injured person to a combat medic [if one was available - they weren't always around].  Anything more required evacuation to a forward aid station. which might be dozens or scores of miles away. and often could only be reached by vehicles bouncing around dirt trails or even through the bush.  It could be a nightmare experience for the wounded soldier. often causing more pain and suffering than the original injury.  [Allow me to assure you. I know this from personal experience.]I was reminded of that by an interesting article at Strategy Page. looking at how. most recently. the Ukraine war has brought a new perspective to battlefield medicine. and examining some of the new technology and techniques that have evolved in recent decades.  Here are a couple of excerpts.When Russia invaded in 2022. one of the many shortages was blood for transfusions to wounded soldiers and civilians. Using the slogan. “Your blood can fight too”. Ukraine made it easier to donate and converted blood collection from local hospitals and regional networks to a unified national network. Donation centers were prepared to run 24 hours a day when needed. accepting donations around the clock if the emergency lasted. Ukraine created an Operational Headquarters to monitor and coordinate nationwide blood collection and distribution activities. This conversion to a national system came several decades after the United States made the move. In turn. the Ukrainian experience has much to teach America and other NATO nations.Russia provides less frequent and effective medical care for its wounded soldiers. military and civilian leaders are appalled at how the Ukrainian efforts have substantially reduced the number of combat deaths. Prompt blood transfusions are a key part of this and one of several reasons that for every Ukrainian combat death there are eight or more Russian losses.. . .Now. new medical tech is coming in the form of band-aids or bandages for people with minor bleeding injuries like cuts or scrapes. Some people do not heal as quickly. and these minor injuries can take a long time to heal. The solution is self-monitoring polymer band-aids or bandages. This smart bandage tech has completed animal testing and now faces up to a decade of human tests and development of larger bandages before it is generally available.This smart bandage is worn for a week or two until the chronic bleeding is healed. The smart bandage consists of two parts. The most obvious part appears to be a disposable Band-Aid or bandage containing biosensors. electrodes. and hydrogel with medications. along with a device that delivers low-level electrical stimulation to speed healing. The second component is a flexible. reusable electronic patch that monitors the healing process by tracking temperature. pH. and other factors. allowing a doctor or medical technician to monitor healing. Each year. millions of people have slow-healing wounds. and smart bandages are designed to speed healing.The smart bandage builds on two decades of major advances in emergency and combat medicine. These new technologies and procedures led to a reduction in combat deaths by more than half since 2003.. . .... since September 11. 2001. over two million American troops went off to war and about two percent of them were killed or wounded. Only 12 percent of the 57.000 combat zone wounds were fatal. the lowest percentage in military history. This was largely due to major improvements in dealing with rapid blood loss from a major artery being severed and the increased speed with which complex medical care could be delivered to wounded troops. New medical technologies also made it possible to detect injuries [like brain trauma] that. in the past. were very difficult to detect and treat.There's more at the link.  Interesting and recommended reading.If you'd told us. way back when. that 'smart bandages' would be a thing. we'd have accused you of drinking entirely too much of the field hospital's rubbing alcohol. probably using it to wash down morphine tablets.  For the sake of today's soldiers. sailors and airmen - not to mention civilian EMT's and paramedics and their patients - I can only hope they perfect this new technology as quickly as possible.I guess being wounded in combat kinda changes one's perspective on the importance of military medical care in particular. and general emergency medical care as well.  When one's lying there. not knowing whether it's safe to close one's eyes because one can't be at all sure of being able to open them again . . . it re-orders one's priorities. to put it mildly.Peter Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:26:00 +0000 fda694049274036352b35371b0477332ac9f5fce https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/cut-off-from-gods.html If ever you wanted a symbol for our current predicament you need look no further than the fact that few of us can see the night sky any more. We are literally cut off from the heavens.Until the invention of electric lighting human beings were able to see the glories of the night sky in almost every location of the globe. This helped keep them in touch with transcendent reality. At the very least. they were aware of something beyond that was much greater. But now all that is gone. Only in the most remote locations can one see the true magnificence and beauty of the stars and constellations that remind us of the Creator and the fact that his works exceed anything we can possibly imagine. For most of us. especially in towns and cities. a few of the major stars and planets is all we can perceive on a clear night. and the sad truth is that most of us don't even bother to look at those. The recent solar eclipse was a reminder of the impact the movement of the heavens can have on the human soul but the moment passed and we soon got back to our normal shrivelled existence.The increasing invisibility of the physical heavens is not just a symbol for the complete loss of contact with the spiritual. It is a consequence of it. That invisibility is caused by the products of materialism. A more spiritually focussed consciousness would not wish to destroy our relationship with the sky and stars but to nurture it as a source of inspiration and connection with the image of the divine in creation. We. on the other hand. are happy to trade spiritual connection for material comfort and convenience. I am not suggesting we should return to the hunter/gatherer way of life. but there is surely a happy medium between spiritual awareness and material ease.The vision of the physical heavens feeds the soul. It is a sign of God's work in a quite different way to the signs on earth. It gives us a sense of the transcendent and the utter vastness of God. That does still exist but in a severely diminished form because we have traded real light. which includes darkness for there was no darkness before light arose to reveal it. with false light. False light shuts out real light just as the artificiality of the modern world shuts out God to the point where even many people who claim to follow God have no idea who or what God is. and simply follow an idol of their own imagining. often  one that seems quite happy to co-exist with this world to which God is ultimately subordinate. I am not saying it is the obscuration of the night sky that has done that but the same mindset that has obscured the sky has also obscured God. We need to learn to look up again. and we need a clean space in which to do that. Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:24:14 +0000 29b0bc7d2da00d3b6f0cf81c43e3ca1caf9256bc https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/two-authors-i-used-to-like-but-did-me.html I deplore the nonsensical trope that 'books' are A Good Thing: only some books are Good - and a small minority. Others books are Bad. in the sense that they are actually intended [whether consciously or not] negatively to affect the reader. Indeed. nowadays this applies to a large majority of contemporary and famous books: fiction and non-fiction.In particular reading the wrong books at certain times in our lives can do us spiritual harm. Perhaps this only applies to people like me who seriously engage-with. and are thus influenced-by the books they read. In my experience. to do significant spiritual harm we must like. or at least admire. a book at the time of reading [for whatever reason - and the reason for liking/ admiring may itself be a bad one]. The first author to have a significantly bad influence on me was probably Michael Moorcock. whose Jerry Cornelius books I began reading aged 21 at a time when I was somewhat depressed. or at least frustrated. I also read quite a few other Moorcock books. but the Jerry Cornelius series were the ones that did the job. I got onto Moorcok via another writer called Jack Trevor Story. who was a friend of Moorcock and said that M was one of the major living writers. an excellent writer. So I read Moorcock with that expectation and belief. although I could not actually experience Moorcock's excellence. His prose seemed flat and drab. and I had great difficulty following what was happening. This difficulty [deliberate. in these 'experimental' novels] had the effect of making me engage more intensely on the basis that I 'must be missing something'. and as a result Moorcock's calculatedly 'hip' hedonistic nihilism synergized with my mood of the time to produce its bad effects.  A similar phenomenon came a couple of years later. when I read a good deal of Kurt Vonnegut. starting with Slaughterhouse 5 - which was actually recommended and lent to me by Alasdair Gray. at our first meeting. Vonnegut is a far better writer than Moorcock. being extremely skilful at construction. highly inventive. and deeply witty in his early books [up to Breakfast of Champions]. But underneath this is an aggressively bleak. hope-less. and immiserating ideology. rooted in ultra-materialist assumptions. a trait that got worse and worse as V grew older. Vonnegut apparently sets-out to generate the belief that despair is the only outcome of honest realism - and he did a pretty good job on me - again at a point in my life when I was tending that way myself. In sum. at a couple of periods of my life in which - for whatever other reasons that were primarily causal - reading Moorcock and Vonnegut made bad things significantly worse. and tended to make me 'get stuck' in a bad place. My interpretation nowadays is that M and V were both people who had chosen the dark side in the spiritual war of this world. and who chose further to propagate and infect others with their negative world-view by means of their writing. Moorcock - a lesser writer - did this in an obvious and in-your-face way. the brilliant Vonnegut sugared his bitter pill with wit and skill. Consequently. I have no desire to re-read anything by either of them.. and on-the-whole regret the attention I once gave them..Except for Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. which is such a well-written. ideas-packed. and clever black comedy. that it is worth the temporary net-depression of spirits induced by reading.   Wed, 30 Sep 2026 07:46:33 +0000 98b4c4c9a7ca4c9cc45f48a9373b4e45adcfdc3f https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/30/political-correctness-is-a-fools-tool-of-low-iq-controlling-f%c9%99mnzs/ Political Correctness appeals to unintelligent women who are open to believing anything that appeals to their Feminist sympathies. and who will then insist on Authoritarian enforcement of their dumb beliefs. Continue reading → Wed, 30 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 6a1504b7d6858675f458a50e130cf91f22d9dcff https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/not-quitting-isnt-skill.html   Bear Grylls. on his social media. speaks to one of the most important realities of being able to succeed at virtually anything in this life: “The best piece of advice I ever received about resilience didn't come from a book. It came from the first SAS officer I ever met. I was crazy nervous before Selection. I didn't know if I was strong enough or fit enough to make it. He pulled me aside and said: 'Everyone who attempts Selection has the basic mark-one body: two arms. two legs. one head. and one pumping set of lungs.' Then he tapped his chest. 'What makes the difference between those who make it and those who don't is what goes on in here. Heart. That is what makes the big difference.' Skills can be taught. Fitness can be built. But heart. That's a choice you make every single day. When people around you are quitting. make that the reason to give more. Have a great Wednesday. Take care of each other.” Amen. This is true in so many areas of life: Family Career Ministry Writing goals Etc. etc. Not quitting is not a skill. it is a decision. It is a decision you make every day. in fact more than that. You might have to talk yourself out of quitting your job. your marriage or your ministry many times in a single day. And it is worth the effort to do this. because once you come through the time of trial you will have been transformed in ways that you would not have. if you had quit. Whenever someone quits something they were determined to succeed at. it leaves a mark on them. That does not mean there are never times to stop trying with something. I worked out very quickly into my PhD studies that I did not need a doctorate in theology. that I did not want to work in academia [especially after I had seen what it was really like in today’s world]. and that I could better use my research and writing skills in other ways. which I have. So. I understand that there are times when we do not need to complete something. But this decision left a mark on me. it helped me to understand more about myself. and because I took what I have worked on and turned it into a book I could publish it left a positive mark. But when people quit something they really wanted to succeed at and leave behind them nothing but loss. it leaves a different kind of mark. We all have that from some point in our lives. I think every now and then about what would have been different in my life if I kept pursuing footy. Probably not a lot. however I will never know for sure. But when it comes to a marriage. or an important vocation. when you look at people who have quit these. then you see how much it can harm their path forward. It leaves a mark that they carry with them the rest of their lives. a negative mark. Because they made a decision to quit. when they know they should have kept going. This decision to quit damages their resilience to other situations in their life. It leaves them with a mark of failure. and they know it. Of course. to a large degree they can heal and succeed at other things. but the mark will stay with them. Whereas sticking at something when it is hard helps us to learn the strength to face other difficult things. But. as I said. this is not a skill. it is a decision. It is decision to want to keep going.   My kids see me do some form of exercise everyday. Everyday. unless I am sick. of course. I said to them the other day. do you think I always feel like exercising everyday. One them answered yes. But I said. that of course I don’t want to. I’d rather rest. and not have to worry about exercising. but how else am I supposed to stay strong. We have to make the decision to keep at something. I encourage you today to think about this.     Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:55:08 +0000 2c3dcd47f4ed5d26b1f2775f0eda246a29c7b460 https://scifiwright.com/2026/09/inclination-self-interest-consent/ All arguments attempting to ground ethics in nature or human nature are perfectly unreasonable. because such arguments presume an answer to the question in dispute. The question is whether natural duties can exist without a supernatural sovereign authority defining and enforcing that duty. Natural duties include those things we ought to do. regardless of current (…) Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:09:35 +0000 89fa3f181110986536a5e77e344cff61fed96ed8 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/poems-i-like-to-rev-fd-maurice-by-lord.html This has never been one of my all-time favourite poems. or even one of my favourite Tennyson poems. but it's always appealed to me since I originally encountered it in my teens. Some of its lines recur to my mind regularly.I like that it's such a subdued poem. It's very far from ecstasy. rhapsody. tragedy. or any of the blazing moods of human life. It's an invitation to a friend to visit. That in itself gives it a delicious mellowness. [The easy camaraderie between old friends is one of the most beautiful things in the world-- especially. if I dare say it. the friendship between middle-aged or elderly male friends. Tennyson was forty-four when he wrote this. Rev. Maurice was four years older.]It's one of two memorable 'visiting' poems that I can think of. The other is the sonnet 'Lawrence. of virtuous father virtuous son' by John Milton. which is remarkably similar.Tennyson's relationship with Christianity was complex. He famously wrote that there was 'more faith in honest doubt' than in 'half the creeds'. But his Idylls of the King is shot through with Christian imagery. and he apparently died a good Christian death. Anyway. it's no surprise that his clergyman friend was someone whose orthodoxy was apparently questioned. as the poem suggests-- one of the founders of Christian Socialism. it seems. He seems to have been a very good and pious man. according to his lights.For all the calm tone and lack of intense emotion in this poem. it frequently brings me to tears [even thinking about it]-- especially the verse that ends: 'How to gain. as life advances. valour and charity more and more.' The line: 'Dear to the man that is dear to God' also moves me.Some of the flashes of nature poetry in the poem are particularly beautiful. for instance: 'Hear the magpie gossip. garrulous under a roof of pine.' That garrulous...At the risk of sounding self-pitying. there's a certain pathos attached to this poem for me. since there are few [if any] hearths that welcome my arrival in the manner that Tennyson's hearth awaited the arrival of Reverend Maurice. My own fault. no doubt.To The Rev F.D. MauriceAlfred Lord TennysonCome. when no graver cares employ.Godfather. come and see your boy:Your presence will be sun in winter.Making the little one leap for joy.For. being of that honest few.Who give the Fiend himself his due.Should eighty thousand college-councilsThunder 'Anathema.' friend. at you.Should all our churchmen foam in spiteAt you. so careful of the right.Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome[Take it and come] to the Isle of Wight.Where. far from noise and smoke of town.I watch the twilight falling brownAll round a careless-ordered gardenClose to the ridge of a noble down.You'll have no scandal while you dine.But honest talk and wholesome wine.And only hear the magpie gossipGarrulous under a roof of pine.For groves of pine on either hand.To break the blast of winter. stand.And farther on. the hoary ChannelTumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.Where. if below the milky steepSome ship of battle slowly creep.And on through zones of light and shadowGlimmer away to the lonely deep.We might discuss the Northern sinWhich made a selfish war begin.Dispute the claims. arrange the chances.Emperor. Ottoman. which shall win:Or whether war's avenging rodShall lash all Europe into blood.Till you should turn to dearer matters.Dear to the man that is dear to God.How best to help the slender store.How mend the dwellings. of the poor.How gain in life. as life advances.Valour and charity more and more.Come. Maurice. come: the lawn as yetIs hoar with rime. or spongy-wet.But when the wreath of March has blossomed.Crocus. anemone. violet.Or later. pay one visit here.For those are few we hold as dear.Nor pay but one. but come for many.Many and many a happy year. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:14:17 +0000 c594da6b096c818dd627270456d42b9d77bb7ec4 https://thetransformedwife.com/men-are-desensitized-to-naked-women/ A man on Instagram shared some grim things. He said that men are so used to seeing the nakedness of women everywhere that it drives many of them to porn. then to extreme porn. One man responded. “Just before he was executed. Ted Bundy gave a sit-down interview with Dr. James Dobson. Bundy explained calmly how his murdering of young women started with soft porn. which is how most women dress these days. Then it progressed more and more to... Read More Read More Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:08:27 +0000 a49c9355e405227f1d934a96c52f37edda9dfb3e https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/at-edge-of-anthropic-horizon.html Before continuing further. a brief reset: Cosmos and Anthropos are related and open to one another in such a way that the rational structures of the former mirror the rationality of the latter. which in turn requires the courtesy of an explanation. i.e.. a sufficient reason.This reason cannot something from within either term. rather. beyond them. It is man the questioner who. “with his inquiring rationality.” is “the boundary point where it (the Cosmos) is open beyond itself. and where the mystery of its meaning becomes disclosed. insofar as he allows his mind to fall under the power of revelation from beyond” [Torrance]. Translated into cosmotheandric terms. this means that beyond the subjective horizon of the Anthropos is the ground of being itself. symbolized as O.The Cosmos is not. nor can it be. imprisoned within its own absurcularity. rather. it is “an essentially open system with an ontological and intelligible reference beyond its own limits…” As per Gödel. it is consistent but not complete. featuring a hierarchy of levels “which are open upward but not reducible downward. for no one level provides the sufficient reason for its own contingent order.” rather. “only through reference to another level or to other levels beyond it.” Our Cosmos “is thus to be regarded as an essentially open system for precisely as an intelligible whole it requires a sufficient reason beyond itself” [ibid.]. and that’s all there is to it.One might even say that the two trees we’ve been discussing go precisely to this description. since the Tree of Life must be open. relational [or substance-in-relation]. and ultimately personal. with a vertical axis — or trunk — running perpendicular to its Theo-logical roots above and Cosmo-logical leaves below. Between these two terms is our own Anthropo-logic. But these are unified in the one Logos present in each.∞Now. “The full meaning of ‘to be’ is not just ‘to be present.’ but ‘to be actively present’“ [Clarke]. The relationality of this active presence “is a primordial dimension of every real being. inseparable from its substantiality.” Being is an act. and the act of being is relational: “it is turned towards others by its self-communicating action. To be fully is to be substance-in-relation” [ibid.].But why. Because every being — every existent that partakes of being — is an image of the very Principle that too is irreducibly substance-in-relation. That every lower being has both an in-itself and towards-others dimension finds its ground in the triple primacy of our ultimate Principle.Josef Pieper [cited by Clarke] agrees that to existmeans “to be able to relate” and “to be the sustaining subject at the center of a field of reference.” Only in reference to an inside can there be an outside. Without a self-contained “subject” there can be no “object.”We might say that subject is to interiority as object is to exteriority. and the two are always related or linked. Moreover “The higher the form of intrinsic existence. the more developed becomes the relatedness to reality. also the more profound and comprehensive becomes the sphere of this relatedness…” [Pieper]. And the Anthropos is the highest and most related center of relatedness in the Cosmos. in that we are internally related to immanent matter. to other persons. and to the intersubjective Principle of both these possibilities.With this in mind. we now have a conceptual basis for understanding the receptivity and relationality in and of the Theos. Is the Theos related to us. How could it not be. if the Theos is the very principle of substance-in-relation. Moreover. this divine receptivity “should be looked on not as essentially a sign of imperfection (or) poverty.” but rather. as a “positive aspect or perfection of being” [Clarke]. In the absence of the perfections of relation and receptivity. the Theos would be enclosed within itself. and therefore as absurcular as a closed Cosmos or Anthropos. In other words. the very ground and possibility of openness and relationally is situated in O.∞The Anthropos cannot be surpassed from within the Cosmic order. for its sufficient reason is to know and express the Absolute.He fits right in there. in the Cosmos.Thus. in the words of Thomas.it is possible for the perfection of the whole universe to have its existence in one single being.... the ultimate perfection to which the soul can attain is that in it is reflected the whole order of the universe and its causes.And “Since the person is not something added onto being from the outside. but is the highest perfection and most intense expression of existential being itself. the person takes on more intensely the whole dynamism of existence as expansive. self-communicating act...” [Clarke].“Self-transcendence” writes Clarke.is thus of the very essence of all personal development at its highest.... Only by reaching beyond the human can we succeed in becoming fully human. To refuse to do so condemns us to fall short of the human itself. To be a human person fully means to self-transcend toward the Infinite.Therefore. “The fullness of personal development turns out to be a losing or letting go of oneself that is simultaneously and by that very fact a new finding of oneself at a deeper level.”I wonder if the Theos does something similar. i.e.. discover itself by letting go of itself.That will be a question for Book III. but in Christianity there is the concept of God’s kenosis. which is the archetypal or quintessential “self-emptying” or “self-giving” of Father to Son. returning via the Holy Spirit. By emptying into the Son. the Theos does not “lose” its divinity. rather eternally actualizes it as Fatherhood.In so doing. the Theos doesn’t diminish itself. rather engenders the partner for an eternal dia-logos. from which proceeds a lively tria-logos. This would imply that the expansive giving [or creation] of the Cosmos is situated in this ontologically prior giving and receiving within the Godhead — as if creation is a reflection of this more primordial spiral. thus accounting for the openness of both Cosmos and Anthropos.The bottom line is that the very nature of the Theos is “intrinsically ordered toward self-communication.” Thus. we might say that the microanthropos [us] reflects the macroanthropos [Theos]. such that in both there is the in-itself substance of being. and the towards-others relationality. neither reducible to the other. “No wonder then.” writes Clarke. “that self-communication is written into the very heart of all beings. as finite but positive images of their Source.”That really says it all — although one can always say more. since we’re dealing here with the Infinite. For anthropic being expands onward. upward. outward. and inward. such that “the life of every human person unfolds as a journey of the spirit through an ever-developing spiral circulation between self-presence and active self-expressive presence.” or “between inward-facing self-possession and outward-facing openness to the other” — toward both horizontal others and the vertical Other. This Other. colloquially known as God. is the term with which we notify the universe that it is not everything [Dávila]. Computer scientist Christoph Benzmüller. working with Gödel’s ideas. concluded that “God. by the most widely used metaphysical definition. necessarily exists. You cannot conceive of a world in which he does not exist.”I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.It is now time to look into this transcendent ground and try to figure out what else goes on up there. so maybe we can die with a smile on our face without feelin’ like the good lord gypped us. So Goodnight. sweet Anthropos. See you on the other side. in Book III. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 19:04:26 +0000 dafe819d423a8f9e3760983005fe5e7834a8b157 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-heartless-laughter-of-some-elves-in.html Discussed over at my Notion Club Papers blog. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:43:01 +0000 e5be92c36a3c322e3e31a4bdc315a87e2a533c6e https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/alasdair-macintyre-and-the-monastery Why moral communities must recover shared practices before political power can serve the common good Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:08:29 +0000 8c982f64c8584855d57ddcaa421b73c35ec4a1ba https://winteryknight.com/2026/09/29/new-study-state-laws-banning-transgender-surgeries-dont-increase-suicide-rates/ Today is day two of my series of posts on new studies. Last time. we looked at a new study that found that support for gender ideologies was associated with support for political violence against dissenters. Today’s study found that there is no evidence for the widespread and alarmist claim that state prohibitions on surgeries. … Continue reading New study: State laws banning transgender surgeries don’t increase suicide rates → Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:00:39 +0000 2d0e49c880a6eb67c15cbf574e4bf67f41af1463 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/29/michaelmas-again/ Michaelmas is one of the chief anniversaries in “my secret life.” or my fantasy life as you might call it. except that my fantasy lives are plural. By simply presenting a curriculum vitae of one or several of these imaginary existences. I could have become a prominent Liberal or Democrat politician. but self-disgust always got (…) Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:07:18 +0000 7612932888107a2c4fe8c0c2609c91dae5c9377f https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/29/nonstop-nonsense-dalai-leo-spews-the-usual-rubbish-contradicts-the-bible/ I really hope that future. sensible Popes [they will come back at some point] will announce that there will be no pope chatting on the aeroplane. The fact is. they have become huge ego exercises. exploited by people who have a huge ego in the first place. The Evil Clown started the Clown Show. Dalai (…) Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:45:17 +0000 d08e8428dafdde1ff472c4d7db3fa32461332a08 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/when-storm-seems-to-overcome-us-by-its.html Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 d46506fb1634b53fe317f812e478c667ec135389 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-pachyderm-prescription.html  The title of this post was suggested by this news report from Kenya.  It might make a good title for a novel. who knows.A new study suggests that adult elephants prepare concoctions of plants to administer to their young as medicine.The finding is based on observations of Mount Elgon's cave elephants in western Kenya by local indigenous people who spent more than 20 years monitoring their routines.According to their accounts. the elephant herds clustered around Elgon use at least 25 different plant species.They reported that elephant mothers processed roots and leaves. combined it with their breast milk and administered it to calves. for apparent health benefit.In one testimony. a wildlife scout described seeing elephants using a plant known as Angurweet. which is used locally as a remedy for ailments such as stomach ache. 'as medicine to give to babies'.The scout described elephant mothers 'removing the leaves and chewing it until smooth. along with the roots of some other trees'.He also recounted that he had seen mothers mix this plant material with their own milk. 'They give it to the babies. who chew on it themselves and spit out the solids.' the scout said.The statements of the Sabaot tribal experts appear to demonstrate a level of sophisticated self-medication among the elephants. which are already renowned for going into caves to mine for salt to supplement their diet.There's more at the link.I'm fascinated. but not surprised. to learn of the pachyderm pharmacists.  Elephants are very intelligent indeed. probably at least as much as a pre-teen child. and [judging by some of the teens I've met] possibly even higher on the scale.  I've never heard of them actively medicating their offspring as described in the report. but that they'd develop such knowledge and abilities doesn't surprise me.Baby and junior elephants are just about the cutest things you can imagine.  Back in the day. Skukuza [the administrative center of the Kruger National Park in South Africa] housed a center for the care and rearing of animals orphaned after the death of their mothers.  This included several baby elephants at the time I visited it.  I was invited by a ranger I knew to join them at feeding time.  That involved filling a two-liter soda bottle with their concentrated milk ration. then applying an outsize rubber teat to it.  The elephants would be waiting impatiently for their food. dancing from foot to foot and being very noisy about it.  I got to hold the bottle for a six-week-old mtoto. who slurped it down with great enthusiasm.  I turned around to put the bottle back on the table. only to be rammed in the small of my back by what felt like a freight train.  I picked myself painfully off the ground and turned around. to be greeted by a juvenile elephant dancing from foot to foot and tootling at me in a way that freely translated as. 'Gee. that was fun.  Let's do it again.'  When young elephants want to play. they want to play. and they won't take 'No.' for an answer . . .Of course. once they're grown. they're much less frolic-y and a darn sight more dangerous. particularly because they're intelligent enough to learn about threats and deal with them.  In Africa. they've grown accustomed to poachers using Soviet-made AK-47 rifles. with their distinctive 'banana' magazines.  and when they see anyone carrying that shape. they'll often charge them at once and do their best to trample them into the mud before they can take aim and shoot.  [That's why South African game rangers on the Mozambique border carry - or used to carry. when I was still there - FN FAL rifles with a shorter. straight magazine. which didn't resemble the AK.  They lived longer that way.]I love elephants.  They're majestic creatures. and dominate any location where they're found.  Forget that business about lions being the 'king of the beasts'.  When a herd of elephants arrive. the lions get out of the way.Peter Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:16:00 +0000 a4890ec5e4fa1607e4e0adeb4d60e94170179dc7 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/an-email-i-just-sent.html HelloI have a very unusual query for you. I was in the Den bar last night. It was a very enjoyable evening and all the staff were wonderful. But something is nagging at me. For hours now I've been trying to remember the advertisements on the wall where I was sitting.We were sitting in a sort of corner snug between the bar and the staff bathrooms/kitchen [I think]. I was facing the wall and I spent a lot of time looking at the decorative advertisements on it. There was an ornamental mirror for some whiskey brewed in Tullamore [I can't remember which. not Tullamore Dew]. two advertisements for Mick McQuaid's Plug and Cut Plug tobacco. another advertisement for Quaker Oats...and. above the Quaker Oats advertisement. one for a product I can't remember and that's driving me crazy.I know this is an odd query but it would be possible to take a look at this corner and tell me what the whiskey advertised on the mirror and the product advertised above the Quaker Oats was.Many thanksMaolsheachlannUpdate: I got a reply. It was a Fry's chocolate advertisement. [The reply didn't mention what whiskey the mirror was advertising. but I was less curious about that anyway.] Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:58:38 +0000 77c3c567dc25d600ea6cd2164dafc2c3b67ec6e0 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/michaelmas-tlm-in-vatican-and-sermon.html Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:36:10 +0000 47512f0a3b49639c79ba26990f7d15bf92012a7b https://crez.site/2026/260928.html Knowing whether you should kill or die requires first having a reason for both. Mon, 28 Sep 2026 23:47:03 +0000 9e879e571f8e75da7bcbf27c43da9f4f1942f67b https://didacticmind.com/2026/09/monday-morning-man-flu.html Once again. the weekend has come and gone FAR too quickly for anyone’s liking. And once again. we are forced to contend with the horrible results of… In my case. I spent the past week recovering from a cold – well. that is the prosaic name for it. but it felt more like a (…) The post Monday morning MAN-FLU appeared first on Didactic Mind. Mon, 28 Sep 2026 22:56:53 +0000 e00796c992b4cfb94d3042647b44d3c06b31722e https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/i-went-to-france-to-preach-gospel.html Mon, 28 Sep 2026 22:22:08 +0000 7bb5f6903f17d45b90586379a3d5614ec0c8c9c6 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/political-prosperity-gospel/ “Meantime the churches. a little ashamed of their past. began to court the good opinion of so excellent a world. Although called evangelical. they were far. very far. from prophesying its end. or offering a refuge from it. or preaching contempt for it. they existed only to serve it. and their highest divine credential was (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:58:27 +0000 bc3ee6fbe7b91159a935060cdfc039a611c35f37 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/best-tv The “Best” TV shows of the 21st Century .... According to the NY Times Mon, 28 Sep 2026 19:24:01 +0000 b51e87b6a94b61bbd9bfebd7acb90c65858ac36c https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/an-unexpected-review With my thanks Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:09:03 +0000 723cc0f44044a5b9b9166be735d5189e825b80e0 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/reason-and-science-vs-jesus/ For some reason. I have always been more God-focused than Jesus-focused. I will pray “Praise God in the highest” but don’t have anything to say to Christ. Nonetheless. I discovered that I am completely allergic to a Jesus-deflationary trend that was popular in nineteenth-century Russia. Several books made an enormous impact on Russian intellectuals. They (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:38:20 +0000 f167dc5489da7700efea3054a86edb0c625e1195 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/a-different-perspective-on-the-master-and-margarita/ In conversing with a Russian speaking and reading Lithuanian. I commented that the first half of The Master and Margarita is difficult to read because it is about bad things happening to unappealing people. The Devil and his henchmen. that include a talking. shooting. vodka-drinking cat that walks on its back legs. called Behemoth. punish (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:08:14 +0000 40d513247e74e996ad1378dcf67004989efdceab https://winteryknight.com/2026/09/28/new-study-belief-in-gender-ideology-linked-to-justifying-political-violence/ I am taking a break from my break from blogging to report on several interesting studies and articles I’ve found in the last month. I have 4 interesting things to write about and I’ll try to do 1 every day this week until I run out. The first thing is a new FEDERAL GOVERNMENT research … Continue reading New study: Belief in gender ideology linked to justifying political violence → Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:00:17 +0000 f5dbf085219e0225112d1bb23722c48809190693 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/09/28/the-tower-builder/ There once was a man so bleak and despairing and angry that he decided to kill himself. So much so. however. that no ordinary suicide would do to fully express the depths of his contempt for everything. He decided he had to build a tower higher than any tower ever had been built to jump (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:07:54 +0000 9fa9f9825009e7166f7042d681c6b6c745d730dd https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/faggo-pope-superstar-or-crisis-of-faith-crisis-of-knowledge-crisis-of-intellect/ Boy. this is embarrassing. Even in the worst days of John Paul The Not-So-Great. I had never assisted to a circus like this one. It is a circus of the intellectual level of a three-years-old. It is the reduction of the message of the Church to cheap. sensationalist entertainment. It is kitsch of unspeakable proportions. (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:37:53 +0000 2cbe47d54b15ef7c139b4eced84006a92c0b86e7 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/28/building-trust/ I never wanted to control others. I’ve always tried to promote them in pursuing their own calling. When I first stated blogging some 25+ years ago. my only interest was simply having my say. I would have been quite surprised … Continue reading → Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:54:56 +0000 7dec130b495a8b106f85bc878be82ba751f6ec8d https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/tearing-down-their-democracies We won’t beat our enemies by playing their democratic games. Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:13:42 +0000 323ad91daf2fd5f41ff7faec7825c91d5a7027e2 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/irrational-rationalists-ethical-altruists Isaac Asimov in The Naked Sun. one of his many robot-mystery books. wrote that the minds of his positronic-brained robots [unlike our forever-dumb switch-brained computers] were “Logical but not reasonable.” That trope. as you well know. was then recycled endlessly in sci-fi. Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:00:25 +0000 4d6460e818990d65dd40716e563472d58ff07a5c https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62157/ Isaac Asimov in The Naked Sun. one of his many robot-mystery books. wrote that the minds of his positronic-brained robots [unlike our forever-dumb switch-brained computers] were “Logical but not reasonable.”… Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 74b434c0425dc65980fb5022d8acc0ebde9361ff https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/there-is-no-substantive-difference.html There is no substantive difference between. on the one hand. the theology of orthodox-traditional Christian monotheism - with its Omni-God who created every-thing from no-thing. and. on the other hand. the pantheism of Hindu-Buddhist philosophy - where God is the totality of everything.Metaphysically-speaking: monotheism just-is pantheism - and the differences are matters of superstructure: of doctrines. dogmas. attitudes. practices etc.  Because if one God made every-thing. then God is everything.  This happened [probably] because Jesus Christ's actual work and teaching was swiftly embedded-into pre-existing. Greek-Roman-descended 'Platonic' philosophy that itself had Indian-Hindu roots. and is the likely reason why so-many self-identified ortho-trad Christians. past and present. have so-easily slid into de facto pantheism. Orthodox-traditional Christian theology tried to distinguish its Omni-God from pantheism by emphasizing the Hebrew tradition of monotheism. with a personal creator God. But because this was a monotheism it left no space for a divine Jesus Christ - which is why Jesus the Son had to be conflated with God the Father in the paradoxes of Athanasian Trinity dogma.[i.e. The historical Jesus of Nazareth could not be affirmed to be essential to salvation. except by assimilating Jesus into the Omni-God of the Father.] And. this assimilation of Jesus with the Father. restored Hebrew monotheism [and also metaphysically united ortho-trad Christianity with the yet-to-happen Islam] - and thereby pantheism... Orthodox-traditional theology is stuck with this metaphysical incoherence - of trying to assert the essential role of Jesus in context of a monotheistic-pantheistic reality. and there is no way out of it given the assumptions - except by deceptions of obfuscation through abstraction. complexity. and the declaration of incomprehensible 'mystery'.  Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:31:30 +0000 4030d7dd177a29e3f0794bf6d4e9129e82db8af1 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-road-to-happiness-have-you-found-it.html Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 6bd5965916ca03b2d2f84a73ed064f38d8807c12 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/memes-that-made-me-laugh-330.html  Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.More next week.Peter Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:25:00 +0000 0a34fc0b501e6947bc42097fa794f4d543f676e4 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/3-ways-to-tell-if-shes-a-sweetheart-or-a-temper-tart/ Teasing out her true nature. Continue reading → Mon, 28 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 54004bb06321d0fb603953ba45f6cbd119f73dd0 https://scifiwright.com/2026/09/a-newtonian-atheist/ When I was an atheist. my position was what I will call Newtonian. by which I mean ““I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties. and therefore I frame no hypothesis.” Only long after did I see the illogic in this stance. Allow me to explain. As a matter of pure (…) Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:24:05 +0000 529e868c2f91074a8b69eb5445844a567266ee15 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/relearn-it-we-must.html   Her divorce may not have been her fault. Though most divorces are initiated by women. so she likely took the plunge. Still  he might have been intolerable. and I don't mean that he was messy. and forgot her birthday a few times. and watched too much sport on the weekend. I mean he might have been a down right mongrel. So. there is that possibility. But the reality is divorce has been too easy for too long. Waaaaaaaay too easy. Most people divorce over minor issues. Normal relational issues. Even for more serious ones. like infidelity. people used to be more willing to piece things back together [which of course is hard to do. I understand]. But now divorce is as simple for some people as changing cars. In fact some people keep their cars. longer than spouses. Our government and our culture made divorce way too easy. and now God had decided to take that ease away. Those who don't learn from wisdom learn from experience. He is making our easy going. way too easy to blow up marriage culture. experience much more hardship. The young will look upon this. and fear. and recognize that you cannot just treat things like marriage as throwaway things. They will likely be made wise by the experiences of others. It sucks. though. how many people will be hurt by our society relearning this lesson. But learn it we must. Sun, 27 Sep 2026 23:39:17 +0000 01a1a710b710d091f843ed57d4f858d39b32587c https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/27/reblog-lets-stop-talking-the-language-of-our-enemies-2/ Let’s Stop talking the language of our enemies. Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:00:51 +0000 d7cfcf0077c08fe6e065c86db4e629d79c094100 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/09/27/isaiah-fashionably-late/ In line with our innovative trend of discussing Come Follow Me Isaiah after you’ve already talked about it in church. when there is no one left to impress– The absence of prophets is a curse. and their presence is a blessing. Isaiah 30:9-11. Isaiah 28:7. Isaiah 29:9-14.  So much so that it is a Millennial (…) Sun, 27 Sep 2026 20:55:03 +0000 fb7f2400b95d6eb9aa2fe954e087adacae01b90b https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/27/there-is-plenty-of-gas-in-the-tank-of-boomer-christianity/  “American Christianity is masculinizing.” Louis Perry. “Boomer Christianity is Dying Fast” WSJ Opinion [Sep. 23. 2026]. Orthosphere friend Assistant Village Idiot just noticed a new editorial that is said to be causing a stir.  It is titled “Boomer Christianity is Dying Fast” and observes that all Christian churches appear set to move right..  The elderly hierarchs of (…) Sun, 27 Sep 2026 20:47:04 +0000 a42a97139f205913b02b1580b9554b4c96e49f24 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes-die-to-the-self “Are my ways unfair. Or are yours.” Sun, 27 Sep 2026 19:17:09 +0000 a00dbc91678c8ba31db84f0886ab7f9ab320d4ba https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/reality-is-person-to-person-call.html To review: like all animals we have instincts ordered to the things of this world that draw us like magnets. However. the Anthropos has an ineradicable instinct for transcendence. such that we are pulled vertically toward its fulfillment. the “luminous fullness of meaningfulness draws me with the whole spontaneous pull of my nature toward the real existence of the Infinite Good as a magnet.” Only in this direction can we locate the Cosmic Area Rug that really pulls the Cosmos together.To repeat: it is as if the infinite positive plenitude of Celestial Central is mirrored by a “negative plenitude” in us. this latter being “an infinite capacity for God. or. more accurately. a capacity for the Infinite. which can be satisfied by nothing less.” Note that this is only possible because we are as internally related to the metaphysical ground of the Cosmos as we are to the peripheral entailments disclosed by science. Thus. “our dynamism for the infinite turns out to be a remarkably eloquent reverse image and pointer toward God as He is in Himself. beyond all possible finites.”                                                                   ∞The Academy of Cosmotheandric Arts and Sciences is proud to announce the winner for best — and worst — performance in a supporting role: Homo sapiens sapiens.Best because of his capacity for the Infinite. worst because in choosing the wrong tree and enclosing himself in finitude. man started a joke which started the whole world crying.Oh no.∞As we approach the end of Book II. it is time to proclaim the disquieting part out loud: the Anthropos is not am accidental feature of the Cosmos. rather. a reflection of its first principle. which is to say. the Person.He’s the man for his time ’n place.But to repeat what was said in the Introduction. this ultimate principle has a triune structure. and while we will be alluding to the Christian Trinity. for our more purely metaphysical purposes we will treat it as a necessary principle of being. as opposed to an arbitrary dogmatic assertion. This is not to downplay the Christian claim. rather. in order to include everyone in our meta-cosmically ecumenical discussion. for cosmotheandrism may be expressed in a diversity of ways.It’s all pretty harmless.Yes. no offense intended to Christians or non-Christians. For again. there is more than one way to skin the cataphasis of this mysterious whole in three. the Trinity being just one of them. Moreover. irrespective of the words we use. they always point to the thing itself which is beyond words. especially in this case. where we are trying to express the Absolute via the relative. or Infinitude via the finite.Language problem.Analogously. as Einstein said of physics. it “is essentially an intuitive and concrete science. Mathematics is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena.” Likewise. here we will deploy this triune language as an abstract means for expressing the concrete nature of the noumenon — the Theos — and by extension. the Anthropic phenomenon.Sure. I gotcha.∞Clarke asks “What is so special about the person that situates it at the apex of the order of being.” What makes us think we’re so special. The answer is that the ultimate Ground of the Cosmos must be “personalized being.” such that “the rest of the universe derives from personal being.” And in order for the Cosmos “to make full sense it would have to include personal created beings within it — in a word. it would have to be for persons.”The main point here is that persons by definition are intersubjective. and therefore presume an other. which is to say. an I-Thou relationship. or an underlying unity of persons. Put conversely. “What could possibly be the point of a created universe entirely plunged in the darkness of unconsciousness. unable to know or appreciate that it is there at all.”Now. we are all persons. but what is a person. And how is such a thing possible. By virtue of what principle. Physics. Biology. No. in neither case can we get here — especially in here — from out there. This is the One Free Miracle of personal subjectivity without which nothing could be known:The first ascertainment which should impose itself upon man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of that miracle that is intelligence — or consciousness or subjectivity — and consequently the incommensurability between these and material objects. be it a question of a grain of sand or of the sun. or of any creature whatever as an object of the senses [Schuon].Clarke maintains that Christian thinkers have tended not to adequately appreciate the paradigm shift entailed by the revelation of a triune Godhead. He quotes Ratzinger to the effect that “person means relation. Relation. being related. is not something superadded to the person. but it is the person itself. In its nature. the person exists only as relation.”Therefore.In the relational notion of person developed within the theology of the Trinity lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended. relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality.This revolution in thought involves the recognition that ultimate reality is a personal substance-in-relation [Axioms 11 and 12]. For it means that Ultimate Reality is neither substance nor relation. but rather. an irreducible complementarity of the two. This has extraordinary metaphysical implications. none of which. by the way. negate what science reveals about the world. but extend and deepen it [not to mention explaining how the scientific enterprise is even possible].Again. a great many metaphysical implications follow. For example. with the recognition that reality is substance-in-relation. we could recognize a priori that the Newtonian paradigm of reality. useful as it was. had to be wrong in the ultimate sense. since the Cosmos does not and cannot consist of extrinsically related atomistic units. For the same reason. we can say on the political plane that Lockean individualism is way off base. since its anthropology is a non-starter.In an abstract sense. the person as such features an “indissoluble complementarity” between an “in-itself dimension of being” and a “towards-others aspect” [Clarke]. This extends to being itself. which is intrinsically diffusive and self-communicating. Ultimately. this is why the Cosmos is intelligible to our intelligence. for these two — intelligence and intelligibility — are intrinsically related. Again. if this isn’t the case. then we end up in a closed. Kantian universe of metaphysical ønanism.Being itself is an ec-static process of self-communicative being-in-action. Which not only explains a lot. but explains everything — literally. because it explains how we can explain anything. What is the alternative.Suppose a being that really exists. but does not act in any way. does not manifest itself in any way to other beings. There would be no way for anything else to know that it exists. it would make no difference at all to the rest of reality. practically speaking. it might just as well not be at all — it would in fact be indistinguishable from non-being [Clarke].If this were the nature of reality. then each existent thing “would be locked off in total isolation from every other. There would not be a connected universe” [ibid.]. There might be individual substances but no intrinsic relations. like discrete particles with no unifying field. so to speak. Sun, 27 Sep 2026 18:01:40 +0000 5cd2d892f62f0618da25f1a12bcb7578bdd368e6 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/france-pope-lays-down-law-on-euthanasia.html Sun, 27 Sep 2026 15:05:21 +0000 70cd6a20252159aa1f24ee8a95172068f3d0caad https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/27/why-pick-on-the-nar/ It’s impossible to cover all the bases. If I wrote something every day. and if you were to read everything I wrote. you would still have questions about things I’ve said in terms of what I believe about this or … Continue reading → Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:15:25 +0000 f04dc6607be0ff98ff96cde67c105361004dc5a4 https://www.jrganymede.com/2026/09/27/wisdom-hope-repentance/ The Young Matron and I were playing around with some virtue set concepts related to innocence.   Or in another variation     I sometimes suspect that some virtue sets instead of being a static set actually represent needed stages of development. Something like  INNOCENCE —-)  DESPAIR ———)  WISDOM ———–) HOPE Still playing around with (…) Sun, 27 Sep 2026 13:02:14 +0000 c9f0609e25c45bf54be53f5ef1cd02e43b960cba http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/sunday-morning-music_01887330880.html  The British group Uriah Heep are regarded as one of the original hard rock/folk rock groups from the 1970's.  One of their early hits was 'Lady In Black' from their 1971 album 'Salisbury'. The group went on to record many more albums. but 'Lady In Black' remained one of their best-known and most-loved songs.  It's been recorded by many groups. straying into many different genres.  I thought it might be fun to play a few this morning. for those interested in such things.Here's a 2004 version. a collaboration between Uriah Heep members Mick Box and Bernie Shaw and the Romanian group Iris.  The joint version is titled 'Doamna in negru'.  The lyrics are bilingual. in Romanian and English. Also in 2004. Spanish folk metal group Mägo de Oz [a translation of 'Wizard of Oz'] recorded this version. with Spanish lyrics. In 2006 Finnish folk metal group Ensiferum recorded their somewhat heavy-metal version. Later that same year. German band Gregorian released a medieval-mystical-Gregorian-chant melange of the song. which is rather attractive [and perhaps the truest of all cover versions to the theme and mood of the lyrics]. There are many more versions of the song out there.Peter Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:20:00 +0000 40b6658fc64429d6d69eb1dab402ce3d623bcb4c https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/sunday-meditation-everyone-has-heart-to.html Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 8f99130d2bf0ff7169bec58577b9fe5d89fab870 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/understanding-boromirs-funeral-rites.html At my Notion Club Papers blog. I discuss the question of why Aragorn. Legolas. and Gimli. spent so much time and effort on conducting Boromir's funeral. when it seems like a more urgent and vital necessity to pursue Merry and Pippin. and rescue them from captivity by the orcs. Note: I like the atmosphere of the above illustration - which captures the spirit of the occasion. But it looks rather as if Boromir had had most of his legs cut-off by the Uruk Hai. and surely Legolas would not wet his bowstring in the River Anduin. Also [contra Peter Jackson]. according to Tolkien. Boromir did not have a beard. due to his Numenorean/ part-Elvish ancestry.  Sun, 27 Sep 2026 08:03:32 +0000 7743153167acc69c5593126473025c511820b8b5 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/26/reprise-new-apostolic-reformation/ We are going to take a quick break from Hebrews and examine something very timely here. If the upcoming elections turn against Trump. we might see a surprising backlash coming from a shadowy religious group I’ve written about before. Maybe … Continue reading → Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:08:03 +0000 6dbace3ff4f9fd15c70ae92d7ebc7fcfadeee282 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/a-few-thoughts-on-5g-war Philosophising on mass murder Sat, 26 Sep 2026 18:17:43 +0000 219b855edd7267e120a783e2a335b373d4f3a0bc https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/26/senium-post-quod-est-mors/ “More Canadians shop at Dominion than at any other store. … and it’s mainly because of the meat.” I encountered this ancient slogan and jingle for the first time since. I think. the 1960s. while irresponsibly “scrolling” through the Internet this morning. It was so effectively written and composed. that the tune immediately came back (…) Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:57:14 +0000 987e67b1d7d4cc6a82ef4fa87f50579a27f6fe8b https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/geopolitics-and-national-interest.html Geopolitics is everywhere. you can't get away from it. and it is nigh impossible to escape falling into engaging in it. People do geopolitical analyses and offer geopolitical explanations. every day many times a day. in politics. media. academia. and conversations. relating to all kinds of things from wars to other types of inter-national conflict. Yet. I have said elsewhere. geopolitics is intrinsically evil. but I would add here that it is gratuitously evil. It is not necessary: we don't need to do it. I have come to the conclusion that geopolitics isn't a real thing. and probably never has been a real thing.Geopolitics is an artificial abstraction that treats nations as agents - as purposive 'beings' that interact. inter-relate. cooperate or compete - and the like. But everything I have discovered on these subjects. or at least everything about which I am confident. goes against this way of reasoning.To be more exact. I don't think that things ever happen because such a course of action is 'good for the national interests' of a country. There may be a lot of other possible reasons why things happen - but not the 'good for national interest' reason: this seems always to be a false [and usually incoherent] excuse for something much smaller scale and specific than the nation - something personal. clannish or tribal...Furthermore. 'promoting the national interest' is a positive motivation - something intended to improve. But I have come to believe that the real reasons of inter-national events and policies are nearly always negative.  In other words. the real reason for actions. policies. and wars is not to promote positive benefit. but instead to cause negative harm. What I mean is that the primary motivation in geopolitics is almost-always something like hatred. disgust. or resentment. a desire to cause suffering. destruction. death - rather than any genuine and strong idea of 'doing good'.  And these negative motivations are best understood as operating at a level much closer to the personal [e.g. individual. clan. tribe] than to the national. Such negative motivations seem to be almost invisible to analysis [certainly on 'our side']. partly because positive motivations are much more positively regarded. but also because the possibility of primarily negative motivation is seldom entertained.. We deny the strength and dominance of negative motivations inter-nationally. ultimately because we deny this in our-selves.  There is a genuine reluctance to interpret international affairs in terms of hatred. disgust. resentment. and the desire to harm - yet such motivations may be openly-acknowledged. or expressed frequently in casual speech and writing. inter-personally or inside groups. and off-the-official-record. We may do. we almost certainly do. exactly this ourselves. But furthermore. aside from open admissions. primarily negative motivations may easily be inferred from consistent long-term patterns - so long as we actually look at these.   Of course. negative motivations are operative in many inter-personal and intra-national affairs as well  as globally - fuelling all sorts of conflicts and violence from that between sexes. classes. jobs. regions. races. religions. ideologies... Indeed. anything about which people have strong preferences and convictions is potential ground for the operation of negative motivations - the desire to harm. being masked by false explanations and excuses concerning an alleged desire to protect or promote some larger values and entities. In a nutshell. I am saying that spitefulness - which I regarded as the worst of all sins - is a much bigger influence on life in this mortal world than is commonly acknowledged. And furthermore. the frequency and strength of that extreme evil of the sin of spite needs first to be recognized in ourselves. before it can be recognized. and taken account of. in others.  We need to be honest about the microcosm that we know from primary personal experience. before we can understand the macrocosm that we know by inference from secondhand reports and reasoning. .Because of this reluctance to consider the primacy of negative motivations. the way that negations usually operate in current Western geopolitics. is by the most powerful people and groups successfully convincing the less powerful that policies and strategies which are in truth motivated by hatred. revenge and sheer spitefulness. are instead going to benefit those persons and groups whose cooperation is needed. This pattern of negative masquearding as positive is transparently evident in the current warmongering - if one can entertain the possibility: evident from the incoherence and inconsistency of positive 'national interest' justifications. But it can also be observed in the oppositional nature of all modern politics. Since positive intent became inconceivable [due to the denial of God and cosmic personal purpose] and opposition by default became core to public discourse. negative evil has had open season.    Sat, 26 Sep 2026 16:46:44 +0000 7513db1ff72d9bd10faf1d1f3b273a161aeb490e https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/where-king-and-queen-were-martyred.html Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:33:07 +0000 5eba7e676f063bcee1203bed45aae8269422b1f5 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/round-bend-up-tree.html Previously on One Cosmos—Skip Introduction.Go right ahead. We’ll keep it brief: we are faced with two. and only two. existential alternatives in the cosmotheandric Garden of Being. Let’s suppose. for the sake of argumentativeness. that there are two metaphorical trees. one being a right hemispheric Tree of Life with its roots aloft and branches down below. the other one.…Not exactly a tree of death. but it might as well be. for its roots extend in the other direction. where they vanish into the quantum soil which shades off into nothingness. This latter redounds to more of an undead condition resulting in an unavoidable “living frustration. an existential absurdity. ordered ineluctably toward a simply non-existent goal.” for which we use the symbol Ø. This latter pole is “magnetized. so to speak. by the abyss of nothingness. of what is not and can never be -- a dynamism doomed eternally to temporary gratification but permanent unfulfillment.” Only in the transcendent direction do we have any hope of locating the Cosmic Area Rug.Go north. young man.∞Now. what goes for the intellect goes double for the will. That is to say. if the intellect is ordered to the true. the will is ordered to the good. so a bad will takes down the intellect along with it. Which is why intellectual dishonesty is a sin against both the good and the true. For even supposing something is true. the will must nevertheless assent to it. It must desire and even love the truth. but it can certainly prefer to live in the comfort and safety of fantasy. delusion. and ideology.Hey. it takes two to lie: one to lie. and one to listen.The unfortunate events of Genesis 3 indeed result from a liar and listener. or from a bad will. beginning with the Serpent. He knew the truth but willfully propagated the lie. What was Eve’s excuse for swallowing that snake’s tale. Perhaps a weak will. but what was Adam’s excuse. A weaker will. I suppose.Like Homer. your one weakness is that you’re weak.For Clarke. the dynamism of the will again presupposes “an a priori orientation toward the good as such.” It “is written into the very nature of the will as dynamic faculty before any particular experience of an individual good.”Denying this transcendent object — O — eliminates the object of the intellect. thus rendering the latter absurd and unintelligible. In order for the intellect to know reality. it must be ordered to its proper end. This end “can be nothing less than the totality of the good.” which involves “a pre-conceptual ‘background consciousness.’” or “anticipatory grasp”of the good as somehow present in its depths (of the will). magnetizing and attracting it. luring it to actual fulfillment of its innate potentiality by distinct conscious appropriations of actually existing concrete goods. This is what it means to live volitively in the horizon of the good.So. the Great Attractor is what renders the dynamisms of both will and intellect intelligible and fruitful. It is where we find the Cosmic Area Rug. precisely. Conversely. “A totally unrelated multiplicity of final goals would fragment the unity of the dynamism into an unintelligible. unintegrated multiplicity of drives.” and the Rug comes apart at the seams. Then we wander the earth like zombies in search of a promised land we will never reach.Just as “my truth” is no truth at all. “my will” equates to the amoralism of a Nietzsche. It is a blind willfulness that is “ordered precisely toward a non-existent final goal. an active potency ordered toward nothing proportionate to its potentiality. an innate drive toward nothing.” This being the case. our lives again reduce to a frustration of the will and absurdity of the intellect.I don’t get it. All my life I’ve had only one goal: to achieve my many dreams.This is only possible if we dream in the proper direction. Downward dreams end in those prisons of our own design. e.g.. scientism. eliminativism. and ismism more generally. It is as if we live our lives in chains and never even know we have the key.I hate the flippin’ Eagles.In that case. let’s catch a ride to the end of the highway and meet by the big red Tree of Life.In any event. “whether we like it or not we are committed by the dynamism of final causality built into our nature to affirm implicitly the actual existence of the Infinite Good.” But each human is free to reject this RH treelos. and no merely rational — or LH — argument can force us to choose one tree over the other[s]. Nevertheless. “the luminous fullness of meaningfulness draws me with the whole spontaneous pull of my nature toward the real existence of the Infinite Good as a magnet.”Vote for O and your wildest dreams will come true.Yes. “Full intelligibility lies only this way.”Again. it is as if the infinite positive plenitude of Celestial Central is mirrored by a kind of pre-conceptual or potential plenitude in man. which is “an image of the divine infinity in silhouette — in reverse so to speak — within man. precisely in his possession of an infinite capacity for God. or. more accurately. a capacity for the Infinite. which can be satisfied by nothing less.”This negative image points unerringly toward the positive infinity of its original. and is intrinsically constituted by this relation of tendential capacityIn short. “our dynamism for the infinite turns out to be a remarkably eloquent reverse image and pointer toward God as He is in Himself. beyond all possible finites.”We are nearing the end of Book II. and the only way to even begin Book III is to at least not be out of our tree. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:29:34 +0000 acb077924273f15f5373faad0e8f343220f8039b https://didacticmind.com/2026/09/halo-is-dead-and-they-have-killed-it.html Fresh off the total failure of HALO: Campaign DEvolved. Microslop moved a couple of days ago to essentially shut down Halo Studios. or whatever it is called. and has now shunted all future HALO development to… Activision: That scepticism – Ameribros. please note. CORRECT spelling there – is entirely warranted. It is important to keep (…) The post HALO is dead. and they have killed it appeared first on Didactic Mind. Sat, 26 Sep 2026 13:15:32 +0000 98fb9e0a41898c2084166e0a4f4c810cfa934269 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/im-curious-how-do-you-deal-with-trolls.html Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 8507bd3e89c9f6f59104b1f53bc4045b82110b40 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/reblogging-one-of-my-own-past-posts/ This represents a new low even for me. but Turdpress has been bringing up “blasts from the past” recently. and this offering that I posted exactly six years ago is just as funny today as it was then. or maybe even more so. The world has. after all. degenerated considerably since the first days ofContinue reading 'Reblogging One Of My Own Past Posts' Sat, 26 Sep 2026 07:22:06 +0000 3c086ff39cf1bc7b1754161fd3916b5acde2c7ad https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/purgatory-how-good-do-people-need-to-be.html Purgatory is one of those concepts that I regard as false. but having some truth behind it. That truth is mortal Men differ greatly in goodness. and that none are good enough for Heaven - so something must be done to transform us first. Instead. my understanding is that all resurrection is into Heaven. and that resurrection is simple and fast and waits upon nothing - if the dead soul's decision is immediate. If the dead soul desires it [and will make the necessary 'sacrifices'] we die and then are resurrected into the Heavenly state of incarnated eternal life. straight away. Any delay to resurrection is a matter of uncertainty of choice. caused by a delay in the decision of the dead soul. Delay before resurrection is therefore not because of differences in goodness and evil between Men. My notion of resurrection is that what gets resurrected of a Man. and which moves-on to the state of Heaven. is that which is compatible with Love. All else. not compatible with Love. is not-included in the resurrected Man. is left-out and left-behind at resurrection. However. this process can conly happen with full consent of the dead soul. The deal soul must be willing to leave-behind [be 'purged' of] all of himself that is incompatible with love. My belief is that anyone who makes a firm commitment to choose to follow Jesus Christ to Heaven after death. and to be transformed thus - will do so immediately. without any need for delay or further processing such as purgatory.  However. I presume there are also people who are unsure whether or not they want resurrection into Heaven. and for them I assume there are various [probably many] temporary ways of delaying a commitment or choice - which ways may include [but not be restricted to] something functionally akin to purgatory.  Sat, 26 Sep 2026 07:15:33 +0000 97bc8ac7cc76a38959a9e0c2b9420f44a833e8f3 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/why-i-am-not-a-trader Day. professional. or of any other kind Sat, 26 Sep 2026 01:58:35 +0000 e961902b2db852ab23dadef03852bac1ac65d558 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/image-of-day-pope-at-rebuilt-notre-dame.html Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:32:57 +0000 07cdf3ccfbf2c747cda18825640c8c849f88dfba https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/when-idealism-costs-your-children Nikole Hannah-Jones’ confessions. the West’s followership problem. and more in this week’s digest. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:14:24 +0000 160409000c6fd1637d44756968905ef9a2cd084d https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/and-last-axiom-shall-be-first.html To repeat what was said yesterday. our final Axiom cannot possibly be impersonal or infrapersonal. Rather. whatever it is. it must be personal or transpersonal. It subsumes the other eleven Axioms. as it is ultimate. certain. intelligent. relational. creative. complementary. open. interior. dynamic. free. and the only intellectually consistent and complete One Free Miracle that accounts for all the others.                                              ∞Now. if thinking is an engagement with the limitless horizon of O. then it is drawn by a telos. arrival at which would represent its complete fulfillment. As per Axiom 7. we are an embodied reflection of the Absolute Principle. making the latter “convex” to our “concavity.” so to speak. In our intellectual striving. we are implicitly engaged withthe presence of something perfect. unconditional. and unrestricted within our consciousness that beckons us ahead of any imperfect and finite idea or ideal.... a “transcendent horizon” that can neither be described nor explained through any set of restricted. conditioned. or imperfect categories or realities [Spitzer].In short. we are aware that any restricted or finite LH conception of a particular segment of reality can never exhaust or encompass the whole. Thus. “we must have at least a tacit awareness of what might be called a ‘supercategory’ of the whole of reality.” which is to say. O. It is the source of our “pure unrestricted desire to know. that is. a desire to know all that is to be known [everything about everything]” [ibid.].And if we have an explicit desire to know it all. this implies a tacit recognition that all is knowable and just waiting to be discovered. Therefore. according to Spitzer.When we arrive at an answer that is only partially intelligible. [that is. is not “everything about everything”]. our desire is only partially satisfied. and we naturally ask a subsequent question of why it is so in our quest to achieve the fulfillment of our desire. namely. complete intelligibility [the knowledge of everything about everything].The Cosmic Area Rug.Correct. The point being that an explicit awareness of partial intelligibility implies a tacit awareness of what complete intelligibility would constitute — somewhat analogous to Aquinas’ argument from gradation. that there is an implicit standard by which we measure degrees of perfection. in this case intellectual perfection [or completion].Given this strange situation. it is beginning to look like the complete intelligibility of the world — the Cosmic Area Rug — might just result from an act of unrestricted thinking at the other end. If so. it is as if our Theos Principle “shares His mind with us sufficient to engender a horizon of complete and unrestricted intelligibility. giving rise to every form of free intellectual inquiry and creativity” [ibid.].Of course Gödel is relevant here. because he provides ineluctable proof of our transrational nature. For again. his theorems demonstrate that “human creativity in mathematics cannot be explained from ‘below’ -- from previous sets of rules and algorithms.” rather. “that human mathematical creativity must be explained from ‘above’” [ibid.]. We may not know exactly what is above. but we can certainly know we are below it.Conversely. no offense to Grok. but “Artificial intelligence has no consciousness of a horizon of greater intelligibility.” let alone “a horizon of complete and unrestricted intelligibility.” because “such a horizon can only be created by ‘complete and unrestricted intelligibility itself’” [ibid.]. Therefore. we cannot create in a machine what we could not possibly have created in ourselves. rather. we are the reflected images of an unrestricted intelligence which bifurcates herebelow into anthropic intellect and cosmic intelligibility.All of this goes to the teleological pull whereby our orientation toward the Infinite horizon of being is prior to our thinking about it — which is to say. we are oriented to. and drawn by. O. the Great Attractor.O represents “the lodestar that draws my intelligence ever onward. even though this ultimate goal remains for me at present only obscurely discerned” but which “renders all else intelligible” [Clarke]. Which. in colloquial terms. sounds like the true Light that gives light to everything else.I’ve underestimated you. It appears you are not just clever monkeys but teleological vacuum cleaners designed to hoover up the Infinite.Yes. but why all the hate for teleology in the modern era. I suppose that’s a question for the history of science. up to its old tricks again. tossing out the better halves of causation — formal and final — in favor of material and efficient.Clearly. the ability to predict and plan for the future is a hallmark of intelligent behavior. Thus. supposing man is intelligent. then we are anticipatory systems dynamically engaged with the future. Which goes to the point made above. that the dynamism of our intelligence is a radical absurdity in the absence of an actually existing final term. since a dynamism without goal would be unintelligible.Thus we live within the bipolar horizons of being. immanence at one end. transcendence at the other. Which implies that this dynamic structure possesses an “a priori orientation. an aptitude or affinity. for the totality of being -- an aptitude that constitutes it precisely as knowing nature in the intellectual and not merely the sensible order.” From the jump. our personhood reflects a “conscious movement from emptiness toward fulfillment. a kind of implicit. pre-conceptual. anticipatory grasp or foretaste of being as the encompassing horizon and goal of all its inquiries” [Clarke]. Thus.The entire mental life of man consists in gradually filling in this at first conceptually empty and indeterminate but limitless horizon of being with increasingly determinate conceptual comprehension. as we step by step come to know one part of this totality after another.In his Philosophical Approach to God. Clarke talks about “the existence of God as the necessary a priori condition of the dynamism of human intelligence.” which on the surface goes against the usual Thomistic approach of beginning with the objects of the senses. i.e.. the outward pathBut the inner path does not begin by examining “the objective contents of man’s knowledge about the world.” rather. “turns inward to search out the necessary a priori conditions of possibility of the inner life of the human spirit in its activities of thinking and willing. and... studies the dynamic structure. the form rather than the content. of human thinking.”This is fully in accord with cosmotheandrism. because no amount of examining or observing external objects would result in the ability to think about them if this ability weren’t already implicitly present. Again. this dynamism is “inscribed in the very nature of man as the a priori condition of possibility of both his knowing and his willing activities.”In another chapter. Clarke fleshes this out this binary choice. and let’s face it. should we take the wrong path. “Our restless. unquenchable search has no actually existing goal.” Instead. “It trails off endlessly into ever-receding. always finite horizons. its inexhaustible abyss of longing and capacity ever unfulfilled and in principle unfillable.”Sad.I think so. because it implies that there is no proportion between the abyss of reality and the depths of our intellect. thus arousing “a profound metaphysical restlessness and sadness within us.” because then “the dynamism of our mind turns out to be a strange existential surd. an anomaly. It is a dynamism ordered precisely toward a non-existent goal. a drive through all finites toward nothing. an innate. inextinguishable summons to frustration: a living absurdity.”If this is the case. then Sartre is correct after all. that “every human being longs for the infinite. but since God is dead. ‘man is a useless passion.’”Which is reminiscent of the Buddhist image of the hungry gods with swollen. empty bellies and pinholes for mouths. symbolizing their immense and unfulfillable desires. They can never feel full or satisfied. no matter how much they consume. Even if they find something to eat or drink. they can barely swallow it. leading to constant frustration. torment. and suffering.On the one hand. this might be true. but there is something about the structure of the mind that implies that it is impossible for it to be true. for “somewhere hidden within this unlimited horizon of being there exists an actually infinite Plenitude of Being. in which all other beings participate yet of which they are but imperfect images” [Clarke].For Thomas. this infinite plenitude is “the act of existence itself.” which “now becomes the adequate. totally fulfilling goal of the dynamism of our minds. matching superabundantly the inexhaustible abyss of our own capacity and desire to know: one abyss. a negative one. calling out to another. positive one.”This again adverts to the concavity of our own abysmal intellect mirroring. as it were. the convexity of the divine abyss. This “now gives full intelligibility to the horizon of being itself. as its unifying center and source. and also confers full and magnificent intelligibility on the natural dynamism of my mind and the whole intellectual life arising out of it.”So. you’re a useful passion after all.Unless we detach ourselves from Celestial Central and thereby render ourselves useless.Given that we live in a vertical space between immanence and transcendence. the question is whether the latter has a “top.” or whether it is just the existential anomaly described by Clarke. in which case our nautical freedom reduces to being lost at sea. But if there is a toppermost of the poppermost. then “This at once launches us in a new direction. no longer along merely horizontal lines at the same level of things. but a vertical ascent toward qualitatively ever-higher and richer realities” [Axiom 8. the Open Spiral of Dynamic Becoming].Similarly. Clarke writes of how. in considering this vertical dynamism. we “suddenly become aware in a kind of epiphany of self-discovery precisely that its very nature is to be an inexhaustible abyss that can comprehend and leap beyond any finite or series of finites. unending or not.”We can never fully identify with the source. because it is more “a fullness out of which continually and spontaneously overflow free creative expressions” of “endless novelty.”Faced with our two choices in the existential garden of being. which is the more reasonable. On the one hand. “a living frustration. an existential absurdity. ordered ineluctably toward a simply non-existent goal. magnetized. so to speak. by the abyss of nothingness. of what is not and can never be -- a dynamism doomed eternally to temporary gratification but permanent unfulfillment.” Or. on the other. an a priori commitment not just to locating the Cosmic Area Rug but finding its real owner. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 20:31:22 +0000 0480541f9d97930f6550c0fe2ce4e5e40e58bedf https://thetransformedwife.com/the-problem-with-peer-pressure-and-fitting-in/ There’s a great problem with the way girls and women are dressing these days. I see teenage girls wearing short shorts with their butts hanging out and crop tops with half of their breasts showing. Thongs are common at the beaches now. They look naked from the back. Many women and girls have zero problems with being practically naked in public. Do they even realize what this does to guys of all ages after puberty... These girls and women are... Read More Read More Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:54:12 +0000 a8e746c088cd5de13c3ea811d97b5087df701039 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-clerihew.html Christina RossettiNever showered in confetti.Whenever a swain made her his targetShe said: 'Sorry. I'm writing Goblin Market.' Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:49:39 +0000 b62fb62b8bc21800008127b219684fd81ed393c9 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/so-how-will-you-vote-in-midterms.html Fri, 25 Sep 2026 14:30:54 +0000 249c13ffd0fca43889869a3e55750de887569ded https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/irreversiblethe-dictatorship-of-what.html Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:49:35 +0000 35a77204afde2fae84741bd925386d4dacc1c3b7 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-feast-of-st-finbarr.html Two saints' day posts in a row.Today is the feast of St. Finbarr [550-660]. who is the patron saint of Cork. He's mentioned in the motto of University College Cork: 'Where Finbarr taught. let Munster learn.' Which I like because it's both religious and provincial-- literally provincial. [Don't people get tired of everything being about the world. the world. the world. global. global. global. international. international. international.]Finbarr is also the name I chose for my confirmation name. I chose it entirely because I liked the sound. I didn't know anything about Finbarr. I'm not even confident I knew he was a saint. I had my confirmation [with the rest of my class in school] in Our Lady of Victories church in Glasnevin [a very modern church with a lot of stained glass and which somewhat resembles some alien spaceship]. I would have been eleven or twelve. I remember I wore a new cream safari suit. which I had for a considerable time afterwards. I also remember my sponsor [who was my uncle] saying: 'A bit of an anti-climax. isn't it.'. How edifying.A confirmation name is a strange thing. You never really use it. I only use mine when I'm using my name and I want to sound pompous [like I have to try. right.]. styling myself: 'Maolsheachlann Tiernan Finbarr Ó Ceallaigh'.Every now and again I do remember to pray to St. Finbarr. at least in recent years. I'll do so again now. Watch over me. St. Finbarr. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:42:59 +0000 71cea2daa927eab50a60cca9b2928d027eaac9d6 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/25/different-leagues-or-blessed-fulton-sheens-blank-check/ Chris Jackson has an [as always] excellent article about Blessed Fulton Sheen. I am very grateful to Fulton Sheen. I have read several books of his. I like his writing style a lot. In fact. I like his writing style more than his videos. because the videos have that theatrical style very much in vogue (…) Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:28:07 +0000 62cd8a5146a0d18fe92ed23906cecdfbd93b4b6e https://stageinthesky.com/2026/09/25/the-holy-spirit-did-god-tell-you-or-did-you-tell-yourself/ How many times have you heard someone say something along the lines of: “The Holy Spirit was telling me to_____”“God told me to ____”“The Spirit placed it on my heart to ____” I don’t know about you guys. but every time I hear someone use the Holy Spirit as the authority for some decision they (…) Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:13:57 +0000 62b521928ec82ee6ba7a8de8997560e42e776e27 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/impression-from-world-of-soul.html  I have often mentioned that the higher powers. those I call the Masters in my books. seek to communicate with us through impression. Despite my experience they do not use trance mediums except on the rarest of occasions because they are not seeking to provide spiritual information but to bring us up to the spiritual level. and this they do by requiring us to stretch up and become responsive to that level. So although they did use a medium in my case for a period they always said that was not their preferred means of communication. and was just intended to start me off. That is why the communications became less and less as time went by.This is how the process works. The Master's mind functions on the plane of the intuition which is above the mental level as we understand it. The original communication or impression therefore starts off as a pure idea or formless pattern of meaning. Formless means it's not in any language or even symbol but is a pure spiritual truth which might be envisaged as a lightning flash. This must be picked up by the disciple on this intuitional plane. a plane to which he is becoming responsive but is by no means fully established. and transferred down to the level of his own soul where it starts to take on a kind of form but still not in words or conventional thoughts. Here we might think of it in terms of light vibrations which I realise is an annoyingly vague phrase but does imply something of the nature and quality of the process. The soul here acts as an intermediary between the pure intuition and everyday mind. transforming or stepping down the light to a form that the mind can engage with and interpret. Note that the soul or spiritual self is on a lower level to that of pure intelligent intuition. It does not automatically have access to that but must grow into it. something to consider for those who think being in the moment is all there is to the spiritual path. The concrete mind of the disciple then translates these spiritual ideas into words and sentences in a form drawn from his pre-existing knowledge which is why it is good to have a well-stocked. well-informed mind. You then have the wherewithal to present the pure idea in a form which can express it in the highest sense it can be expressed in human terms. The risk is that a well-stocked mind can become the enemy of intuition if it gets seduced by its own knowledge. This is something the spiritual aspirant must be aware of and guard against.So. the idea appears in the quietened mind of the disciple. It must be quiet to receive the spiritual impression hence the need for some kind of meditation or upward directed aspiration as in prayer. The mind functions like a radio receiver. taking the formless spiritual vibration and clothing it in the language and concepts already existing in the disciple's brain. It's a four-step process. From Master to soul to mind to brain or from the intuitive plane to the soul and thence from the mental plane to the physical. The message will inevitably degrade on its way down and our task is to prevent that happening as much as possible which we do by inner purification and the constant stretching up of the mind to the higher level with an openness towards increased rarification of concepts.  Our understanding of spirituality is very crude. Love. wisdom. beauty. the good. These are things that have deeper and deeper levels of reality. Our task is to become aware of those and never rest content with the limited forms of them we currently respond to which are usually but shadows or reflections of the real thing. That real thing we can say exists on the intuitional plane and that is where we should be directing our spiritual attention. It is where God and his dedicated messengers wait to talk with us. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:11:45 +0000 6a0ca2da3b1ab43f8d0cfc172cb9ffc501b1b81d https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62136/ Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty. I don’t expect all want to read these posts. Pease don’t feel like you must. Yet. I have… Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 4eca51cb7f021f7e8efbbc46be6d74537b61225e http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/sounds-very-african-to-me.html  I'm amused to read about a Dutch drug hitman who has apparently 'captured' the entire African nation of Sierra Leone. effectively making its government and security forces dance to his tune.  The Economist reports:In the shadowy world of international narco-trafficking. Jos Leijdekkers is a gangster of flair. Over the past five years. bricks of cocaine stamped with his underworld moniker—“Holly”. short for Hollywood—have been found everywhere from the Ecuadorian banana port of Guayaquil to the North Sea. In his native Netherlands. his exploits have spawned biographies. podcasts. comedy skits. battalions of YouTube sleuths and. this February. a portrait of his unsmiling face and a seven-foot knife blade. spraypainted on a railway carriage in the somnolent city of Eindhoven. For criminologists. Leijdekkers’s career is a marvel. Less than a decade ago he was a hitman stalking the streets of Antwerp. He has since created a trafficking network spanning Latin America. Europe and the Middle East that brings in more than S2bn a year.Leijdekkers’s greatest caper yet looks to be the takeover of a country. In half a decade Leijdekkers has turned Sierra Leone. a place previously best known for blood diamonds. into a hub for billions of dollars’ worth of Colombian cocaine. disguised as rice or plantain chips. which pass through each year en route to Europe. By funnelling a share of the profits to Sierra Leone’s political elite and funding large parts of the state itself. Leijdekkers has amassed perks that would be the envy of a Bond villain. He is believed to have a Sierra Leonean diplomatic passport. The police and military establishment bow to him. squadrons of container ships and submarines ply the shores at his command. and he is escorted in a motorcade by the presidential guard beneath a cloud of drones. Leijdekkers is celebrated in krio rap. the English-based creole spoken in Sierra Leone—“Ar change di game e name lek Umar Sheriff” runs a lyric of Drizilik’s recent hit “Sabi Road”—and. last September. he fathered a child with Agnes Bio. the president’s favourite daughter.Go to Freetown today and behold a nation in the throes of narco-capture. Its beaches thrum with nightclubs. its skyline bristles with empty highrises. its streets shimmer with Corvettes and Tesla trucks. It took gangs decades to transform Mexico and Montenegro. In Sierra Leone it has taken just four years for a 35-year-old Dutch convict. boasting little more than a smartphone and a network of suppliers. to transform a beautiful stretch of west Africa into his personal fief. How did he do it.There's much more at the link [which may be behind a paywall:  if so. you'll find an archived. paywall-free version here].It's yet another variation on an old. familiar African theme.  A strong man arises. and forces or subverts a tribe or clan or entire nation to bend the knee to him.  How he does it may vary from criminal or military force. through tribal loyalties. to plain old-fashioned bribery and corruption.  Sierra Leone is a very clear example of the latter.  [It's nothing new there - consider the RUF catastrophe a few decades ago.]How do we fix such situations.  There are two ways.  One is to cut off the offender's supply of cash. so that he can no longer bribe his way to the top.  That's difficult to do when it comes to illegal drugs. because that business is awash in 'dirty' cash. and it has myriad ways to flow around the globe.  It can be done. but it's an enormously complicated [and expensive] process.  The other way is much simpler:  remove the bad guy from society.  You can do that like a Maduro. snatching him from his secure compound. or you can do it by the judicious application of ballistics and/or high explosives.Whatever method you choose. it presents the problem that it only removes one offender.  Pretty soon. others will be lining up to replace him.  The most vicious. most corrupt. wealthiest and most ruthless of them will rise to the top of a new sewer. until his turn comes to be replaced . . . and then the process will repeat itself ad nauseam.  It always does.I suspect Mr. Leijdekkers is going to find out. very shortly. that he's become too conspicuous in his success.  Western governments don't like being upstaged or embarrassed by flamboyant criminals.  I think he'll shortly either have to disappear into obscurity. or be disappeared into eternity.  As for Sierra Leone itself.  Well. if they really want to solve that country's problems. they could always hire the modern equivalent of Executive Outcomes.  That company sorted out Sierra Leone's security issue very quickly. and very successfully. in the 1990's - until international squeamishness and political correctness got in its way.  Bring it back. and there'd be much less turmoil in West Africa as a whole.  [There would also be a whole lot of pissed-off leftist politicians and diplomats. which would be a satisfactory bonus.]Peter Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:51:00 +0000 8ecf35d5636bcaf93a0bf608084bd39a208fd187 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/25/the-societal-stronghold-of-toxic-femininity/ How much of an arrogant. slutty harridan would a woman be if she knew no one would ever kick the sh.t out of her in response to whatever she said or did. Continue reading → Fri, 25 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 445b7890d79579813b5a21180e96478d54cd5522 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-necessity-of-philosophy-of.html If we can all accept that being a [real] Christian entails making a personal commitment to the primacy of [real] Love as a value - while leaving the details and implications undefined at present - then what is the value of 'truth'. of seeking understanding of the world. and of people.The question seems worth asking - because it seems that many people regard personal philosophical endeavor as optional in the Christian life. and the seeking of understanding as a distraction.   The value of understanding is its necessity for living by Love. Truth and understanding ought to be directed at Love. And we need to understand enough to live in accordance with the primacy of Love. In other words. abstract and generic understanding is not of value. But it is necessary for each of us to understand reality sufficiently well that we can live properly. [Whether we actually do then live properly is not a matter of understanding. but instead a decision and personal commitment.] In practice. nowadays and in the West. people's actually-existing understanding is a severe obstacle to their living well. Indeed. the standard and mainstream understanding of most people constitutes an actual barrier to living well. I mean that if we live in accordance with standard mainstream modern Western understanding [atheist. materialist etc] - then we cannot live as we should. and we cannot live in accordance with the primacy of Love. So much for atheistic-materialism. however. understanding is a two-sided thing - which situation entails a particular person engaging with particular assumptions and values.  On such a basis. it also seems evident to me that many of the assumptions and values of religions. including Christianity. also function as obstacles. barriers. even blockages - preventing people living in accordance with the primacy of Christian love. In other words. many religions. including many self-identified Christian religions [denominations. churches]. here-and-now. constitute forms of understanding hostile to the reality of Christianity. Such are reasons why understanding is important. and often spiritually vital. Insofar as our actually-existing understanding is an obstacle. barrier or blockage to living in accordance with Love. then we must strive to understand that which it is necessary for us [me/ here/ now] to understand. Gaining understanding. doing-philosophy in the specific way described above. should be a major priority in the lives of most people.In this ultimate and simple way. for most people here-and-now. seeking understanding is non-optional. doing-philosophy is necessary. NOTE: As I have often said here. what I mean here by understanding is grasping for-ourselves [not outsourced. not by trusting an authority]. as a single 'instantaneous' mental act of comprehension. And what needs understanding are things like the basic nature of reality - the universe and our-selves. and the relations between. Basic matters such as whether reality is alive or not. has purpose or not. the nature of freedom/ agency. In technical terms 'metaphysics'. In short: we must have a valid understanding of that metaphysics necessary to living by Love.   Fri, 25 Sep 2026 06:40:27 +0000 9370cf509f09eac9c1717d892762be9bad228cec https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/its-better-to-have.html   Marriage failure is not the worst thing that can happen to a young man in the relationship scene. Never having had a chance to live your life with the woman you love is far worse. Even if it were to fail. you would have gained so much from that marriage. Even some kids. probably. And a lot of other good things if you approached it well. Too many young men today. because of bad. mad. social media advice fear the wrong thing. They fear that their relationship might fail. rather than fearing that they never took the chance to succeed. They fear more that they might lose half their assets. rather than consider that they built something with another person. Which is one of life’s greatest privileges. Now. of course a marriage break up is not fun. This is true no matter which side initiates it. I have seen enough divorced people in my life. through my ministry. to see that many of them have the same look of woundedness. the same shattering of confidence. the same presence that speaks to a great personal failure. Some display this less than others. some more. but I have observed it in all of them at some point. So. I would never say that a marriage failure is not awful. But the person who has never pursued a relationship with a woman they are interested in has to live with a deeper wound: they lived the life of a coward. and that is worse. much worse. than even a marriage failure. Don’t let it happen to you.   Fri, 25 Sep 2026 05:52:13 +0000 2a950306a61e4e41fe95f738d9fbcde044d8f88a https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/loser-theology-comes-from-zionists Zionists hate Christ. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 01:19:40 +0000 4775e98a6dde63273c35552b13c689a59c1087cb https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/survey-results-sept2026 What you had to say about yourselves and how you feel about the world around you. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:56:59 +0000 c2497bd8af5c32eeb2319f05d4a34f3bb15d4f85 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-majority-of-young-priests-in-france.html Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:51:33 +0000 74cf5a9549f3aaebf721b3dbf0eb69f86c75ddc7 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/mans-godward-tendencies-and-gods.html That’s the title. anyway — of the last section of Book II of the Cosmotheandric Trilogy.After 300 pages. this had better be good.You’ll have to settle for plausible. I’m breaking the material up into several parts. also editing it for the first but not last time. so it’s a work in progress. Sections may also need to be rearranged in the final draft.∞Way back in the Introduction. we said This about That. or rather. about the ontological distinction between This and That. This distinctionis not always kept clear in Western circles: that there is God and there is our speech — dogmas. doctrines. symbolic representations — about God. and two don’t always harmonize. The Bible. for example. is not the voice of God but that of the man who encounters him. Thus it is about God. and one of the rules of cosmotheandrism is that it is the moon that counts. not the lunatic pointing at it.Of the subject of revelation. we said thatalthough it will at times appear in these pages. we will not be granting it automatic authority. rather. we agree with Berdyaev that “no religion stands on a higher level than truth.” or in other words. do not confuse any religion with that to which it points. And if it doesn’t point to truth. I fail to see the point.In other words. supposing it is what it purports to be. then revelation reveals — or ought to. at any rate — Big Truth. For example. one such Truth. according to Rabbi Moses — whom they say encountered God — is that the Theos wishes to be known as I am that I am. which can be variously translated as I am who am. I will be what I will be. or even I will become what I choose to become.However. adding the I to the AM implies that being is personal — that it has a subjective — and therefore intersubjective — interiority. And this personhood is free from necessity. as implied in the last version. i.e.. choose to become.But to whom is God speaking. In this case to Moses. with whom he has a relationship. but by extension to all of us. for this is not the kind of thing one keeps to oneself. In fact. we could know nothing of God if he weren’t a priori related to us. Nor could we know anything at all if there weren’t a relationship between knowing and being. which is to say. between I Am and It Is [and You Are].But we do know being. and if the Theos is the unrestricted act of being. this implies that in any act of knowing we know the Theos. even if only an itsy bitsy. This was Aquinas’ opinion. and why not. An explicit finite truth points toward. and is related to. the implicit infinite source of Truth. our very ability to know and understand is a participation in the divine intellect.Facts may be stubborn. but principles are positively intransigent. one such principle being that no amount of objects adds up to a subject. much less a personal one. Which goes to our final Axiom. which we might call primordial and irreducible Personhood:Truth and Person. Just try to talk about one without the other. Only persons can be involved with truth. and truth can only be known by a person. This is the ultimate axiom that accounts for all the others. as it is certain. intelligent. creative. complementary. open. interior. dynamic. free. and the only intellectually consistent and complete One Free Miracle that accounts for all the others. To circle back to our first Axiom. the Person himself partakes of both Absolute and Infinite. and is the prior unity of both. The Person is also the last word in intersubjective relationality. for “Relation.” writes Ratzinger. “is not something superadded to the person. but it is the person itself. In its nature. the person exists only as relation.”∞As said at the very outset of this book. one can reason upward from the objects of experience to their ultimate principle. which Clarke calls the cosmic or outer path. as exemplified [for example] by Aquinas’ five ways. Alternatively. one can begin by “exploring the depths of our own inner conscious life to find God as the Ultimate Goal of one’s inner drive toward the fullness of Truth....”Instead of proceeding from down to up and outside in. try looking from the top down and inside out.Yes. let’s look into path n2. because it explores the concept of meaning in an open Cosmos with an indeterminate future. Thus. it is the absence of a predetermined outcome that facilitates the very possibility of meaning.In our restless engagement with the limitless horizon of being. any finite. limited. determinate truth only causes us to “rebound beyond it and search for more”: the intellect is such that it “can never be completely satisfied or fulfilled by any finite being or good.” Rather.I must always implicitly refer each one to a wider. richer horizon beyond. to which I then spontaneously tend. It follows that only an unqualified infinity. or unlimited fullness of being and goodness could ever satisfy this innate drive.... my very nature as a human person is to be an ineradicable implicit drive toward the Infinite (AKA O) [Clarke].While there is no possibility of meaning if the dynamism of the intellect isn’t ordered to the Absolute. it seems that the meaning is located more in the vertical quest than in the finding per se. since we could never actually arrive at this end. only engage with it.Now. could an endless series of finites be sufficient to satisfy our drive for the Infinite. No. because this would be a caricature of infinitude. just an endless series of finites. so “there would still remain a deep unfilled void within us. a radical emptiness that nothing could ever fill” [ibid.].In other words. Infinitude or nothing. Literally. But it is nevertheless a choice. since we are of course free: “Either there exists a positive Infinite Fullness of being.... which is somehow possible to be attained by me.” in which case -- good news -- “my human nature becomes luminously and completely meaningful. intelligible. (and) sense-making.”Alternatively — and again. in an indeterminate Cosmos there is no alternative to alternatives —there exists no such real Infinite at all. And then my nature conceals in its depth a radical defect of meaningfulness. of coherence. an unfillable void of unintelligibility. a kind of tragic emptiness. a natural desire that defines my nature as a dynamic unity. but is in principle unfulfillable. incurably frustrated. a “useless passion”.... oriented by its very nature toward a non-existent void. toward nothing real. kept going only by an ineradicable illusion.When you put it that way. it doesn’t seem like much of a choice.“Thus. either God exists or I am absurd: that is the basic option that confronts me. if I am willing to go to the depth of the human condition” [ibid].However. this choice of choices of course assumes the freedom to make it. and where does the freedom come from. Clarke suggests that “there is a lived contradiction between affirming theoretically that the universe or myself is unintelligible and continuing to live and use my mind as though it were intelligible.”Therefore. “it is finally up to each one of us either to accept his or her infinite-oriented nature as meaningful and revelatory of the real or as an opaque. illusory surd.” Having said that.what good reason can one have for choosing darkness over light. illusion over meaning. for not choosing the light. Only if the darkness is more intelligible. But this does not make sense. Why not then accept my nature as meaningful gift. pointing the way to what is. rather than to what is not.G3AOA. maybe. For that particular text relates the timeless tale — some might call it a repetition compulsion — of choosing relative over Absolute. appearances over reality. illusion over meaning. but even more deeply. it is rejecting the prior truth that to be is to be in relation. in particular. in relation to an infinite Theos who is himself relational. both internally and externally. the latter by way of creation.Clarke points out that “there is no knowledge more useless than to know all the future now.” since we couldn’t do a thing about it. It would turn even God into a passive witness of his own creation. nor could he “exercise any providence at all. since everything would already be unchangeably fixed without his active cooperation with us that can only be in a real now.”The real now. Not to go all hippie-dippie or dopie-Chopra on you. but there is something awfully weird about the now. It is so fleeting. and yet only it has the fullness of reality. or is fully real. The past. to be sure. is -- or was -- real. but it is clearly lacking something. Those of you who have tried to live in the past will know what I mean.Nor does it make sense to live for the future only. because only when we arrive there is it real. and if you haven’t learned to live in the Real Now now. what makes you think you’ll be able to do so then. Not to criticize people for prudential planning. but taken to an extreme it can be a way to avoid and flee from the existential reality of the present.It seems we should adopt a more moderate stance: live a little bit in the past and future. but mostly in the now. For my part. the older I get. it seems that it works the other way around: my primary means of escaping the ever-shortening future is to burrow down into the now. which is the location — the safe space — from which this book is being written. Nevertheless. the older we are. the nearer the end.Act now before offer expires.Clarke goes on to say thatGod can know what will happen to you only if he first takes the risk of creating you and working with you all the way through to the end. trying to steer you in the right direction. but with the final outcome determined only by your last free choices at the end. to which God himself is always present. but only in the immanent order in which they actually occur existentially.So. life is a gamble. But is God the “Ultimate Cosmic Gambler”. Understood properly. “Yes -- but also an infinitely skilled player at the game.”I once played chess with Death.Yes. but that was no doubt only two-dimensional. Conversely. God plays hyperdimensional chess. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:30:30 +0000 346f045cdc2a7340aa904cc2ebbcc0a157ffe8aa https://scifiwright.com/2026/09/dwindling-rational-atheists/ Friendly atheists. by which I mean men who for rational and unemotional reasons. arguing in good faith. do not believe in god. are few. and in the modern age. growing fewer. This is because an atheist who begins as rational and decent suffers strong incentives not to continue as rational and decent. It is not (…) Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:05:13 +0000 0047199af087101b3287857ffae38f32042f30db https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/on-vaticans-new-note-on-other-religions.html Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:53:22 +0000 bebf3ab31357680993c4ab26052303cde6afd002 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/the-truth-about-the-stranger/ “Controlled opposition” Mons. Varden tries to appease the Pollyannas making some vaguely reasonable noise about the fact that. could you believe it. “it is lawful to care for one’s culture and tradition”. I kid you not. It’s as if there were people in the Vatican thinking that it isn’t. right. Where Mons has it from. (…) Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:22:47 +0000 03c40abff4e8c95d336171f40f6abbb9fe09e97b https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/your-future-wife-should-still-take-your-last-time-part-2/ I wrote back in 2018 that Your future wife should be happy to take your last name. Seems like that one has proved to be true. at least according to the April IFStudies statistical analysis. All images copyright to IFStudies Interestingly. … Continue reading → Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:36:01 +0000 38c9d5cdf5f8e41fcea14c9a242f34628eb793a9 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/escapism-in-the-age-of-you-know-what oh well whatever always mind Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:07:44 +0000 c8bd7a7a52fa11910cd6cf63728c0fb4b67846f8 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/st-pacificus-of-san-severino.html Today is the feast day of St. Pacificus of San Severino [1653-1721]. who was canonised in 1839.Have you ever heard of him. I haven't.He went deaf and blind at a relatively young age but still held a position of authority in a monastery and worked miracles.I suppose his reputation suffers from the fact that there are so many Italian saints.Anyway. I really like that there are lots of days in the year when the saint of the day is pretty obscure. and there are no special feasts. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:27:01 +0000 d1bab9b2ae66ec042c823c686aec6b94cb131495 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/09/24/should-doctors-be-forced-to-perform-gender-transitions/ Do you think doctors should be forced to perform gender transitions. The Colorado Supreme Court does. That’s the question at issue in a case filed by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the Christian Medical and Dental Associations and a Christian medical practice. Colorado is also the state that has continually attempted to force a Christian (…) Thu, 24 Sep 2026 12:10:39 +0000 edbcb49caa997b67b704de1822cb8b6e4959d8e7 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/answering-p-value-good-uses-challenges Class 95 Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:03:38 +0000 2a1841dd9e723f5e8eb042a8391b5326a032334b http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/exit-left-pursued-by-medical-hobgoblins.html  Very long day yesterday. and a very early start this morning for more medical misadventures.  I'm afraid I haven't had time to cook up a blog post for today. so please enjoy yourselves with the bloggers listed in the sidebar.Peter Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:33:00 +0000 88ebec22bbfc4f213477ef13de8ea636cd793c63 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/anti-political-correctness-vows.html Today I found myself toying with the idea that there should be anti-political correctness vows in the same way there are baptism vows. I'm always impressed by the solemnity and poetry of the baptism vows. which are renewed at the Easter Vigil:Do you reject Satan.I do.And all his works.I do.And all his empty promises.I do.Do you believe in God. the Father Almighty. creator of heaven and earth.I do.And so on. There are three more and they are considerably longer.Vows concentrate the mind. I think anti-PC vows could go something like this:Do you reject political correctness in all its forms.I do.Do you reject all identities based on grievance.I do.Do you reject the conflation of trivial and imaginary harms with serious harms.I do.Do you reject arbitrary changes in language in the name of sensitivity-- even if you have to go along with them in some circumstances.I do.Do you reject the concept that anybody has less right than anybody else to use a particular word or give an opinion on any subject whatsoever.I do.Do you reject the attribution of historical guilt to people for injustices that occurred before they were even born.I do.Do you reject weaponized false dichotomies. such as victim-oppressor and transformation-stasis.I do.Tell me if I missed anything obvious. [By 'transformation-stasis'. I mean the sort of rhetoric you're surely familiar with: the appeal to gradual and organic evolution in the past to justify complete transformation in the present.] Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:03:15 +0000 4beeecfe3cfa983c978c2620bac4515979578da2 https://creativeminorityreport.com/blog/2026/09/23/so-theyre-against-science/ The pro-abortion crowd is freaking out. Totally freaking out. Because the EPA is set to study drinking water for traces of chemicals associated with the Birth Control Pill. What they’re screaming is that THERE’S NO EVIDENCE that chemicals like mifepristone are in the water so why test for it. Um. What. Isn’t that why you (…) Thu, 24 Sep 2026 01:34:34 +0000 596b5fe75b3b783200eb55100f9854832ecb6f06 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-imaginarium-of-rationalism.html To summarize: yesterday’s post ended with the repeated claim that our contingent Cosmos is dependent upon a non-contingent Principle. The anthropic intellect is a mirror of this Principle. such that the event of knowledge occurs in the dynamic space between the poles of immanence and transcendence [or Ø and O. respectively]. To deny this “is to shut oneself off from the truth.” since it is necessary for us to remain open and thereby burn the anthropic candle at both ends. Being that the world is contingent. no scientific map can ever be complete. rather. the scientific method must remain open to the world. But what method is required in order to know the Absolute.The cosmotheandric method.Well. one must first acknowledge the a priori truth that the Absolute is what cannot fail to be. since it is the non-contingent ground of being. so any contingent truth we discover necessarily partakes of it. Conversely. “man. when he trusts to his reason alone. only ends by unleashing the dark and dissolving forces of the irrational” [Schuon].In short. nothing could be more irrational than a reason enclosed in the LH imaginarium of rationalism. Again [as per Gödel’s Hammer]. reason has its limits. so an “unlimited reason” is a contradiction in terms. an absurdity even.In such a totalitarian rationalism. “an extreme mental dexterity goes hand in hand with a no less excessive intellectual superficiality.” The consequence is a “false lucidity” [ibid.] that only replaces the old sentimentalities with fashionable new ones. i.e.. with novel passions. intoxications. and projected ideological mirages.Schuon begins and ends with those immutable principles “which govern the Universe and fashion our intelligence.” one of which is the Absolute referenced above. This Absolute bifurcates herebelow into subject and object. or intelligence and intelligibility.Now. “logic can either operate in accordance with an intellection or on the contrary put itself at the disposal of an error. so that philosophy can become the vehicle of just about anything” [ibid.].Which — assuming you’ve been to college — checks out: no matter how frivolous or evil the doctrine. there is a philosopher somewhere who assumes its truth or thinks he can prove it. Schuon calls these absurdities “esoterisms of stupidity.” and says that when worldly intelligence “joins with passion to prostitute logic. it is impossible to escape a mental satanism which destroys the very bases of intelligence and truth.”I hate when that happens.Agreed. let’s not do that. Ultimately it comes down to the question of just how far thought can go. Kant. for example. would say it can’t go very far — not even as far as reality. rather. only to appearances.Is there an aphorist in the house..Yes: A symmetrical pair of errors is believing: that beyond what we can know there is nothing. or that what we know is what there is.For if RH intelligence can never exit the vicious circle of LH horizontal thinking. then truly truly. we are sealed in absurcularity. But in reality. it is absurd to posit the inaccessibility of truth as the first and last of all truths. Thus. “all anti-intellectual philosophy falls into this trap” in pretendingthat there is only the subjective and the relative. without taking account of the fact that this is an assertion which. as such. is valid only on condition that it is itself neither subjective nor relative. for otherwise there would no longer be any difference between correct perception and illusion. or between truth and error.... [ibid].Schuon has a better idea: “The intellect is a receptive faculty and not a productive power: it does not ‘create.’ it receives and transmits. it is a mirror reflecting reality in a manner that is adequate and therefore effective.”Which is another way of saying that intellect and intelligibility are as it were mirrors of one another. that what we call knowledge is an adequate reflection of being. and “If there were not something absolute in man -- he is ‘made in the image of God’ -- he would be only an animal like other animals.... Man alone can step outside the cosmos. and this possibility proves -- and presupposes -- that in a certain way he incarnates the Absolute.”However. at the same time. Schuon acknowledges that in our day. “the intellect is atrophied to the point of being reduced to a mere virtuality.”Choose it or lose it.It would seem:One man can spend his whole life in searching and looking. and still know nothing. “see” nothing. another may arrive without trouble at intellectual certainties. and this proves that his ignorance was only accidental and not fundamental.Why this difference. “(L)eaving aside mere stupidity. we would say that intelligence may be extremely acute on the rational level alone. while being quite inoperative beyond that level…”In other words. even the best method for approaching the horizontal is entirely inappropriate for grasping the vertical.Analogously. a degree in physics doesn’t help your vet understand what is wrong with your dog. nor a degree in veterinary medicine help to understand what’s troubling your wife. Reality has its degrees. modes. and dimensions. and one doesn’t bring a scientistic knife to a metaphysical gunfight.Schuon expresses the cosmotheandric view in affirming that any LH “science of the finite has need of a wisdom that goes beyond it.” for “what could be more naive than to seek to enclose the Universe in a few mathematical formulae. and then to be be surprised to find out there always remains an elusive and apparently ‘irrational’ (RH) element which evades all attempts to ‘bring it to heel’”.After all. “the man who is intelligent enough to grasp nature in its deepest physical aspects. ought to know that nature has a metaphysical Cause which transcends it. and that this Cause does not confine itself to determining the laws of sensory existence....”In short. we ought to know better than to enclose ourselves in immanence. for blindness of transcendence isn’t just another form of vision. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 23:26:28 +0000 46b86a3da0c4b12e90e03c338b809b988ced3b60 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-supreme-destiny-of-man-by-roberto.html Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:16:05 +0000 346aa586832ba72e89fd4f9bc9cfa340bb189ba8 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/degrading-art-degrades-society.html   I am looking forward to seeing how all the usual big-eva crowd pump out article. after article. and social media post after social media post. about how Translan is actually a good thing. it is only a small part of the movie. and then promoting some feminist spin on the story. Which is exactly what they did with similar issues in the recent travesty that is called Nolan's The Odyssey. Of course. they will only do this if the movie turns out to be successful. because then they can ride the wave of popularity. There are so many leaders in the church who are so desperate to seek the approval and aplomb of the left-leaning culture. Or. others will promote it because some of them are paid to shill for it. because this does happen as well. This is the level of disrespect our society gives to Christian things. when Christians take disrespect and tell everyone else to lap it up. The way they got behind the subversion of the Odyssey will encourage more travesties like that. To those who say. 'It is just a movie.' Do you still not understand how important art is to the soul of the culture. The greatest work of art in history. bar none. is the Bible. It has spawned countless lesser works of art. all to some degree reflecting its glory. These works of art speak to grander truths that shape how a people thinks about itself. It is a well known historical field of study that art reflects the state of a society. and our society is clearly not in good shape. There are few more successful ways to demoralize a culture than humiliate it through art. This was practiced by the Soviets who founded a massive movie industry in Communist Russia. but this has been known since ancient days. The Assyrians used art to crush the fighting spirit of their enemies. Egypt. Babylon. Greece. and Rome. all used it to inspire their societies to greatness. There is a reason conquering armies always smashed the artworks of conquered peoples. it is a way of tearing out their hearts. In fact. one of the worst things about evangelical culture is how bad it is at producing art. It was not always this way. once we had great artists. Lewis was one of them. But somehow the spirit of artistry has vacated the Protestant churches. The result has been an inability to capture the heart of society. And now they are in the process off degrading the legacy of our greatest Christian artists.   Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:15:28 +0000 30361ad866c8baa7f674000855567f791408b0c9 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/p-con-this-weekend There is a convention called P-Con this weekend in Dallas. near Love Field airport. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:12:32 +0000 4bb74e3bc13feee8843166f7fe35eb3ef07cde25 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/23/the-new-lone-star-in-texas/ “And I’ve got all night to remember youI’m in a lone star state of mind” Nancy Griffith. “Lone Star State of Mind” [1987]. “But not a State of all our number E’er had such rights as sov’reign thunder.Except the Lone Star State out West.No other State was e’er so blest.” Joe Anderson Cunninghan. “The Blue and (…) Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:41:40 +0000 086e2ba20bf16aa470a66f1bb686b533304bb059 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/glancing-back-and-glimpsing-forth.html Yesterday’s post ended with a sneak peak of Book III. suggesting that religion in general “furnishes points of reference that allow us to speak of the farthest regions of the soul that extend into. and down from. the transcendent pole of the Cosmos. i.e.. what we call a Grammar of Infinitude.”Lot of problems with that sentence.Agreed. if only because there are more or less adequate Grammars of Infinitude. just as there are more or less adequate grammars of finitude. Just as we don’t place critical theory on the same plane as biology or physics. nor should we place the immolation industrial complex of the Aztec on the same level as. say. Shankara or St. Thomas. But we’ll let that slide for now. On to part two of the penultimate section of Book II. as we approach vertical liftoff into O:These points of reference are of course in the form of language. In an essay called The Abuse of Language and the Abuse of Power. Pieper discusses how “reality becomes manifested through the word.” Obviously — critical theory notwithstanding — “One speaks in order to make known something real in the act of calling it by name in order... to make it known to someone else.” Language is where “human existence comes to pass.” so “if the word decays. humanity itself cannot fail to be affected. cannot fail to be harmed.”Regarding this corrosive truth decay. words can be false only because it is possible for them to be true. Thus. corruption occurs when this ontologically prior link between word and reality has been severed. Which is necessarily an ambiguous business as it pertains to the vertical. since it cannot be disclosed in the same cutandry way one would describe the objective/horizontal/material world. The grammar of the latter is more denotative. whereas connotations — e.g. myth. allegory. and metaphor — abound in the vertical order. There is even a sense in which one speaks transcendence into being and renders it present via language itself. One might say that the implicate transcendent meaning is rendered explicate through speech. somewhat analogous to the collapse of the wave vector in quantum physics. for both involve local specifications of nonlocal potential.Pieper adverts to a “technologically-manufactured ignorance of the world characterized by the possession of an abundance of information.” However. all the LH data in the world doesn’t add up to RH reality. and “once we have lost sight of what is truly real. an illusory reality may take its place.... a pseudo-reality which looks so real that it is virtually impossible for me to find out the truth.” This is what Voegelin calls a “secondary reality” parasitic on the first. But for Pieper. “man’s chief nourishment is truth.” and “Anyone who wishes to live a truly human life must (or ought to) feed on truth.” for what is the alternative.Feasting on delusions.Here again. the RH intellect must be distinguished from the LH reason which is only one of the tools at our cognitive disposal. If man were literally confined to the foolbox of reason. he could never know it. because such knowledge obviously transcends reason. Mere logic in a sense encloses us in tautology: premises in. conclusions out. But there is no logical operation for choosing the premises that must be furnished by extra-logical. infra-logical. or trans-logical means.Thus. although man is the rational animal. he also has access to a “view from above.” through which he is aware of his own rational powers. At the same time — you have noticed — he can sink beneath reason. which is to say. think and behave irrationally.Now. even the rationalist will admit to the latter. which is to say that man can fall beneath his intellectual powers. But what he will not acknowledge is that man can also rise above himself. even though the one implies the other.As to falling beneath oneself. this is usually handled by the psychology department. specifically. clinical psychology. AKA my old racket.However. by mid-century—We’re not there yet.We are speaking of the 20th. when a number of fellow psychological theorists began to address the upper vertical as well. e.g.. Abraham Maslow and his “hierarchy of needs.” with meta-needs such as self-actualization at the top. He also acknowledged aesthetic needs. which is to say. an instinct for beauty. and how did that get into our otherwise selfish genes.So there is something in the Anthropos that allows him to not only perceive the world’s beauty but to participate in it via artistic creativity. which clearly isn’t reducible to LH reason. otherwise it could be fulfilled by pondering syllogisms or working out math problems. Not to say that math isn’t — so they say — beautiful in its own way. only that it is inaccessible to the likes of us who dropped out of Algebra 2. I found no beauty there. only toil. tears. and sweat.Now. it is easy to see that the lower vertical has “content.” generally ascribed to the RH unconscious. And as indicated above. it is self-evident that man transcends reason. the question being “into what.”In other words. it seems that modernity is characterized either by the loss of content. so to speak. of the upper vertical. or by an inability to perceive it due to LH capture and suppression of RH intellection.It is a kind of forgetfulness of being. or perhaps it’s just plain carelessness. Whatever the case. it seems there is an attenuation in man’s ability to apprehend the upper vertical. even though his need for it — just like rational or aesthetic needs — remains the same as it ever was. Whatever happened to William Blake and the ability to see the world in a grain of sand and Heaven in a wild flower.Whom do we credit for the disenchantment of the world.Or whom do we blame. Because if the vocation of man is to know the eternal in the temporal and the infinite in the everyday. then somebody dropped the ball.We have previously discussed this in cosmoneurological terms — of right brain capture by the left. through which a totalitarian scientism is superimposed upon the world. thus eclipsing the upper vertical. But the same occurs with the internalization of any ideology.You could say that ideology functions as a counterfeit substitute for Maslow’s transcendent needs mentioned above. Which also accounts for the irrational passion of politicized vertical needs. i.e.. secular religions.Consistent with Schopenhauer’s crack that “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” then we have to somehow restore our vision from 20/20 back to 20/∞.To improve his own infinite vision — or vision of the infinite — Schopenhauer actually relied upon revelation. just not the Christian one. rather. the Vedantic. enthusing that “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads.”Indeed. they were even his favorite bedtime story [he read them every night before turning in]. “a source of great inspiration and means of comfort to my soul.... The Upanishads have been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death.”Speaking of man’s meta-needs. he wrote that “Temples and churches. pagodas and mosques. in all lands and in all ages. in splendour and vastness. testify to the metaphysical need of man. which. strong and ineradicable. follows close upon his physical need.”Likewise. similar to what was said above about ideological counterfeits. this vertical need “sometimes allows itself to be satisfied with clumsy fables and insipid tales.”Having said that. it seems that Schopenhauer conflated the upper and lower vertical —as if the Upanishads were speaking of nothing more elevated than his concept of the world as blind will. So. he got off to a good start but ended in a metaphysical non-starter.Oopsie. He took the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.Yes. it is an occupational hazard of the philosopher. whose proper job is to love wisdom — the Logos — not pretend to possess it. Frankly. for Schopenhauer. where there is the Will. there is no Why. Such a man. in the words of Schuon. wants his answersto be as external and as easy as that of “scientific” phenomena. in other words he wants answers on the level of his own experiences. and since these are purely material. his consciousness is closed in advance to all that goes beyond them.Which goes back to what was said at the top of this section regarding a Cosmos that is dependent upon a higher principle and an intellect that can dynamically engage this principle. To deny this “is to shut oneself off from the truth” in order to preserve an LH model of reality. such that one’s method determines what one perceives. But what method is required in order to know the Absolute.A metaphysical cliffhanger. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:20:13 +0000 2f21977335ca4eb2adf657a90c22b1385fde9acd https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/23/true-masculinity-where-mundabor-says-the-uncomfortable-part-out-loud/ Cardinal Mueller has lectured everybody about “true masculinity”. Unfortunately. he has left aside the uncomfortable part. The author is not at all against the recovery of true masculinity. In fact. I have written several blog posts about the effeminacy that is creeping in in many European States. Unfortunately for the Cardinal. the recovery of true (…) Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:31:59 +0000 d0ddd9788164f25f0c3fb0fd5b63da8137c3cd71 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/23/imprecatory-prayer-for-america/ I’ll give you a model — Psalm 5 in full: 1 Listen to what I say. Lord. Carefully consider my complaint. 2 Pay attention to my cry for help. my king and my God. for I am praying to you. … Continue reading → Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:04 +0000 6966b94b8bd0c24a228e1f65b0dc4725b9ad84b9 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/on-disparate-literary-feelings or what kind of book did i write Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:53:18 +0000 5d1a7b8b7257e2479a05c0e5b55822dbe4813d25 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/stay-faithful-good-advice-when-you-feel.html Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:13:23 +0000 07e468181d34f82cbb3f572e813565edb54b963b https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/09/christs-lordship-and-danger-of.html In the second half of the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Plain.  It is a shorter address than the Sermon on the Mount found in the fifth through seventh chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel although the subject matter is largely the same. It is not merely a matter of Jesus having on this occasion given a condensed version of His longer talk. there are a few things found in the Sermon on the Plain that did not make it into the Sermon on the Mount.  There are also places where the same thing is treated in both sermons but in differing ways.   The forty-sixth verse records Jesus asking His hearers “And why call ye me. Lord. Lord. and do not the things which I say.”   The double “Lord” calls to mind the twenty-first to twenty-third verses of the seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel and the illustration likening those who hear Him and do what He says to those who build on solid rock and those who hear but do not do to those who build on a less stable foundation follows immediately after in both cases.  In the Sermon on the Mount. however. Jesus made a statement about what would happen at the Last Judgement.  Here He expresses Himself in the form of a question.   The interrogative nature of the verse is often missed by some contemporary commentators who interpret it as if it were a statement declaring that Jesus is not the Lord of those who do not do what He says.  Jesus does not say this. however. nor is it the proper inference from the question.  Indeed. the idea that people “make” Jesus their Lord by obeying Him looks suspiciously like the reading of Modern democratic concepts like legitimate governance being derived from the consent of the governed into Jesus’s Lordship where they do not belong.  Jesus is Lord of all.  This is a matter of fact.  In the forty-third verse of the first chapter of the same Gospel. St. Elizabeth. six months pregnant with John the Baptist. asks the Blessed Virgin “And whence is this to me. that the mother of my Lord should come to me.”  Mary had only just conceived Jesus and already He is Lord.  This is because even before His conception. from eternity He is Lord.  His Lordship is inseparable from His deity.  Jesus is God. always was God. and always will be God. [1]   The import of the question that Jesus asked in the Sermon on the Plain. therefore. is not whether or not we will make Jesus Lord but in what way will we acknowledge His Lordship.  With our lips only or also with our lives.  There is also the related question of when we will acknowledge His Lordship which is not so much at issue in Lk. 6:46 but which arises out of  what St. Paul tells us about how in the end everyone will [Phil. 2:10-11. Rom. 14:11].  The two questions are closely connected because it is better for us that we bend the knee to His Lordship in this life. just as it is better for us that we do so in our hearts and not just on our lips.  Another improper inference from this verse. one often made in conjunction with the one already discussed. is that it pertains to distinguishing true believers from false professors.  While those who make this inference can support it by pointing to the parallel part of the Sermon on the Mount. it is still a mistake.  Jesus didn’t put a question here where there is a prophecy in the other sermon just for the sake of mixing things up.  The problem with reading the question this way. apart from the fact that it encourages self-appointed “fruit inspectors” to go around making precisely the sort of judgements that Jesus said not to make. is that it becomes a way of deflecting the question away from ourselves and onto other people.   “This is for those who say they are believers but are not.  I am a believer therefore it does not apply to me.”   The New Testament. however. is quite clear that even as believers we continue to sin.  “If we say that we have no sin. we deceive ourselves. and the truth is not in us.” [1 Jn. 1:8]  What is sin but disobedience to God.  To the extent that believers sin. and we all do. we do not do what Jesus says.  To the extent that we sin. we all fall short of living up to our confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.  Jesus’ question in the Sermon on the Plain. therefore. is as much for us as it is for those who profess a faith in Christ which they do not possess.    Another passage about which a similar point can be made is the Parable of the Sower.  Some. perhaps most. commentators interpret the four soils as representing believers [the good soil] and three types of unbelievers [the other types of ground].  Other commentators have argued that only the rocky ground represents unbelievers and the three other soils are different types of true believers.  Naturally. the self-appointed fruit inspectors favour the first interpretation since only the good soil brings forth fruit. to varying degrees.  Both interpretations. however. miss that the parable is not about distinguishing between true and false believers but about different ways in which the heart responds to the Word.  The same person can at different times respond in each of the four ways depicted.  We should be wary of deflecting the parable’s message away from ourselves by saying “I’m a believer. therefore I’m the good soil” and thereby preventing the parable from speaking to us in a way that might correct a problem with our own response to the Word.  Observe that when we do so. the soil we most resemble is the rocky.  That we should take care to avoid this – and a shallow. enthusiastic reception of the Word and allowing the cares of the world to choke out our reception of the Word – but aspire to be the good soil. and of the good soil the kind that produces hundred-fold. is the parable’s message to us and it does not cease to speak when we become believers.  Rather. that is when we can really hear it for the first time.[1]   When St. Elizabeth calls the Blessed Virgin “the mother of my Lord” no other meaning of “my Lord” other than “God” fits the context.  Therefore. this is the Biblical equivalent of Theotokos or Mother of God.  Those who find the rejection of this title by the heresy named after Nestorius of Constantinople [but which really began with Theodore of Mopsuestia] tempting because they associate it [the title not the heresy] with Roman Mariolatry. despite the fact that rejection of the title is irreconcilable with orthodox Christology would do well to consider this.   Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:12:26 +0000 649a3dc7c7f54eaddde18d1c5405891b7e72f3f2 https://thetransformedwife.com/the-problem-of-self-exultation-in-our-nation/ Granger Smith was a country music star. His life changed after losing his young son to drowning. He was interviewed on Focus on the Family. He said some profound things. He said the business of becoming a star causes “self-exultation. but to what cost to ourselves. losing ourselves in the danger of being worshipped. and it’s the same in any celebrity field: politicians. actors. musicians. pastors. mega pastors. Christian leaders. I would say that it is very dangerous for a... Read More Read More Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:00:30 +0000 42950b8d965aec1c65f11aa883d773687fda3bee https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/whoring-for-climate-change Before us today is an excellent example of the Appeal To Non-Authority Fallacy. as described below and. more fully. in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:00:50 +0000 5d5500d1aa133c13d428df920be0973e4cc49d07 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62133/ Before us today is an excellent example of the Appeal To Non-Authority Fallacy. as described below and. more fully. in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong.… Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 df2e359133c8a80af897409b5099a756f67592ba http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/notes-to-self.html  1.  If you find an old bottle of Miralax. don't assume that just because it's old. it may not work as well as a fresh product would.2.  Having taken a dose of the old Miralax that morning. don't assume that just because nothing is moving by that evening. it's definitely not working properly.3.  Even though you think the Miralax isn't working properly. don't unthinkingly take two stool softener tablets that same evening to 'hurry things along'.4.  When you wake earlier than usual next morning. and spend the next half-an-hour or so disgorging quantities of the usual. you have nobody to blame but yourself.5.  When this is repeated later that morning. with even more disgorgement. you still have nobody to blame but yourself.6.  Notwithstanding your despair. don't even think about buying a cork or a plug. because it would probably end up dislodged with about the same chamber pressure as a firearm cartridge [producing equally explosive. albeit less sanitary results].7.  By evening. sad and sore. engrave the memories of this day upon your mind so that you don't do it again.That is all . . .Peter Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:55:00 +0000 89630ab576720469fabb41ec91fb34d135954f22 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/why-so-many-kinds-of-people-have-been.html The vulnerability to 'AI'-capture seems to run deepest among intellectuals - but this vulnerability extends across a very wide range of intellectual types - politicians. media executives. corporate managers. finance entrepreneurs. technocrats. academics. teachers. totalitarians. atheists and traditionally religious. New Age spiritual seekers... Indeed. no class or kind of intellectual persons seem to have much resistance to capture.It seems that almost all have by now succumbed. and with those who have not succumbed... well. it seems like just a matter of 'not yet'..  Why are intellectuals especially vulnerable.My best guess is that intellectuals have always tended to engage with life via models. and models are abstract simplifications of the boundless complexity of reality. Such models include mathematics. sciences. politics. economics. and indeed all academic and bureaucratic subjects. This second-hand engagement via abstract simplifications is valuable insofar as the models are useful. albeit the usefulness of a model may not have been checked. and even if a model has been checked these checks are only retrospective [can only be retrospective]. The prospective. future limitations of a model [which limitations are many and intrinsic exactly because it is an abstract simplification] are not knowable or predictable in advance. and indeed when the model has captured a person. the failures of a model will usually be denied. explained-away.  The value of intellectuals is not that they understand Life. or The World. or The Universe. or God. but that they understand the model. Insofar as the model is useful or valued. so intellectuals are useful or valued. But the problem. the weakness. is that intellectuals [of all kinds] so-often depend for their position and self-esteem on maintaining the special value of second-hand understandings [of all kinds]. One malign tendency among intellectuals is to assert the primacy of the model: that the model is itself The Thing being-modelled. And another tendency is to increase the abstraction and complexity of the model. partly to protect their own expertise - e.g. to keep the model difficult enough to elude external analysis and critique. and to impress/ bamboozle/ subordinate the layman. I mean that intellectuals are prone to elaborating or generating a complex model that covers ever-more ground. Indeed. intellectuals tend to press their models to such a degree of complexity and abstraction. that they themselves do not understand the model in which they claim expertise. Instead intellectuals may claim expertise in using the model.So the situation arises that many intellectuals suffer the profound and existential disadvantages of a belief-in. a commitment to. the primacy of merely secondhand models of reality...Yet these are models which the intellectuals themselves do not understand. instead these are models that the intellectual merely serves [or claims to serve].This situation. although common. is wrong - is indeed evil. insofar as service to the un-understood. service to something whose nature is not known. is evil.  So-called-AI is a cluster of abstract. highly complex. and un-understandable models of reality. There can be no expertise in understanding an 'AI' model.  As such. 'AI' technologies suffer all the intrinsic disadvantages of all models. but 'AI' also intrinsically lack the potential value [which is a pragmatic and retrospective value] of the most valid models.   Therefore. the special vulnerability of intellectuals to capture by 'AI' is in the first-place a consequence of the evil abuses of secondhand models as a way of relating to reality. secondly that 'AI' models are of a model-type that cannot validly be used. since they are un-understandable. The answer to this situation is in striving to eschew un-understandable models of reality - and to reject their primacy. and to recognize that to be useful a model must genuinely be understood. Such a moral discipline will reject a great deal more than 'AI' - but exactly that is necessary+. Because all abstract models of reality need to be simple enough that we genuinely understand them: and if we are to regard them as central to our lives. we need personally to understand them. It is not difficult. as a mental process. I believe that we all already-have a simple. innate and direct [because God-given] contact with primary Life and Reality. The intellectual deception is in demanding a more comprehensive. hence too-complex. typically too abstract. understanding - than that which is understandable and knowable.In a nutshell. modern intellectuals of all stripes and types have become experts at self-validating. self-serving. self-deception. by pretending [for advantages of self-esteem. for claimed social expediency] to understand that which they do not understand...Which is why intellectuals are so especially vulnerable to capture by the un-understandable models of 'AI'. _____+ I mean that if someone tries to reject 'AI' while retaining their commitment to some abstract. complex. un-understood model/s - then that person will end-up by embracing 'AI'. And this is exactly what has happened to so many intellectuals over the past four years. As they come to realize that 'AI' is not qualitatively different from that-to-which-they-have-outsourced-their-thinking-and-judging. rather than rejecting their practice of outsourcing. such persons instead expand their outsourcing such as to include 'AI'. .NOTE: My concern here is spiritual. Of course. the effect of 'AI' will be to hasten the destruction of Western Civilization. But in that resepct 'AI' is just one of many. simultaneous and synergistic global strategies [e.g. everywhere war. financial parasitism. purposive economic and agricultural destruction. mass migration. the CO2 Climate agenda etc etc]. And. after all. the West is by-now [and increasingly] the most extremely and unrepentantly evil civilization in world history - such that striving to 'save' WC in the absence of a prior spiritual rebirth. entails a personal commitment to advance purposive evil. No: The most significant harm of 'AI'-capture is spiritual: 1. spiritual outsourcing. and 2. spiritual outsourcing of almost the worst conceivable kind - its being evidently both addictive in the short-term. and purposively soul-destroying in a cumulative and self-stoking fashion. To observe more and ever-more once-respected persons. across the board of thinkers and intellectuals. so-willingly succumbing to AI-dolatry of one sort of another - is a spiritually-dismaying experience. I should add that although AI-capture is common across the board. and not confined to intellectuals. I believe that its spiritual damage is most severe and pervasive - and negatively transformative - among the intellectual class.   Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:07:23 +0000 c87e1aec5ace70ef7c396f39579cbeb44fc74aca https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/the-handmaidens-tale-is-fiction And bad fiction at that Wed, 23 Sep 2026 06:31:05 +0000 60b3b9c8f95f1b6d4c8fcee3610500826fa817d8 https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/23/grok-affirms-classical-theism/ Full disclosure: I not unusually these days run my thoughts past Grok to see if he can find any holes therein. Not the insights that are delivered to me during Mass. e.g.. or at prayer. o no. not them. No. rather the stuff I find myself inclined to say in response to men I have (…) Wed, 23 Sep 2026 03:52:20 +0000 9c1165aeb247033698507945bbaf468c2d892697 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/i-love-this-quotation.html 'Everywhere. in the public squares. at crossroads. on the streets and lanes. people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a moneychanger. he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread. he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath. the bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.'St. Gregory of Nyssa describing the theological excitement surrounding the First Council of Constantinople. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:49:11 +0000 d0f73eb2ff66ba05f3b98f03a58968fbc528fa05 https://didacticmind.com/2026/09/dulce-et-decorum-est-pro-patria-mori.html Some years back. when I thought that Bozo BoJo was actually going to do some good as Prime Monster of PommieBastardLande. I wrote quite favourably about one Jacob Rees-Mogg. an MP for North East Somerset. who eventually became quite a high-ranking member of the Cuckservative goobermint. These days. he is Sir Jacob. as he got (…) The post Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. appeared first on Didactic Mind. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 21:30:25 +0000 75149762a51498b68943be7f20db8db49da6c59e https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-church-of-nihilists-guest-article.html Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:14:49 +0000 998ebb951fde54779106b16f2dc54404a0d774bd https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-ecumenism-of-vertically-open-system.html There are two major sections left in Book II. but a note to myself indicates that this one needs more work because it may contain repetition. More charitably. perhaps it is a summary of the previous 40 posts. as we transition to Book III. Let’s find out. it is over 3.500 words. so I’ll break it in two or three:Speaking of ontological shrinkage and metaphysical wrongthink. celebrity atheist Daniel Dennett came up with the metaphor of cranes and skyhooks to characterize naturalism and theism. respectively. According to his cosmic rules. skyhooks are not permitted. being that they posit a transcendent and immaterial intelligence that he dismisses as a gratuitous miracle.Now. supposing we are limited to only One Free Miracle. cosmotheandrism chooses an intelligible universe mysteriously ordered to man’s intellect. including even Dennett’s. Moreover. the very existence of immanent cranes is already a miracle that cannot be explained without recourse to a transcendent skyhook — a vertical form or telos. In reality. crane and skyhook are complementary. another way of talking about the primordial and irreducible complementarity of immanence and transcendence.To pretend that cranes are entirely self-sufficient is but another case of left-brain capture of the right — as if one can build a skylight out of floorboards. when the very act of building a crane requires a skyhook to hold the blueprint — i.e.. the form — and without which the crane is a meaningless pile of metal on the ground. In the traditional view. last in the order of execution is first in the order of intention. which implies that the Why must be prior to the How. Cosmos and intellect are mysteriously ordered to one another. but why. Either for no reason at all. or for a reason that lies in the order of intention. Which implies that the Anthropos may be temporally last to arrive on the terrestrial scene. when in fact he is ontologically first — not an intracosmic afterthought but a extracosmic forethought.The Omega is the Alpha.That’s getting ahead of ourselves. But then again. man is always ahead of himself. having one foot in the ceaseless discovery and mapping of an ontologically prior transcendent dimension.Indeed. what is a crane even for. There can be no horizontal answer to any Why question. for no amount of How adds up to a single Why. E no doubt equals MC squared. but why are there physical laws to begin with. to say nothing of physicists who discover and understand them.But for Dennett. the skyhook concept is intended to ridicule the idea of intelligence grounded in a transcendent principle — or from what regular folks might call God. He contrasts this with earthbound cranes that are ultimately constructed out of immanent bits of matter.But this arbitrarily restricted view only demonstrates how LH human intelligence may be extremely acute on the horizontal plane alone while rendering itself impotent on any level above it. For either the whole of reality is ordered to the totality of intelligence. or what are even pretending to talk about. Cages are for animals. Why escape the immanent zoo only to confine oneself to an intellectual museum full of dead artifacts.At antipodes to the craniac perspective are skyhookers such as Wolfgang Smith. who writes that the Darwinism of our times — which is to say. the metaphysical kind — is “no longer science. properly so called. but proves to be. ultimately. a kind of religion: a counter-religion. to be exact.”Fighting words. But if Darwinism is a faux-religion. it must have a secret skyhook of its own hidden away somewhere. i.e.. the One Free Miracle that gets it off the absurcular goround.Now. I don’t doubt the existence of cranes. but they are not self-explanatory. You could say they are built from the laws of physics. but this leads to two problems. first. the origin of those laws. and second. how these laws give rise to beings who transcend them.Richard Dawkins. for example. writes of how human beings ought to develop a morality that is free of religion. but whence this “ought” in a deterministic world of selfish genes. There is no ought in natural selection. nor any freedom to conform to it. To even say that one morality is superior to another is to sneak in a vertical hierarchy that is forbidden by the principles of Darwinism.He sounds just like a skyhooker with a heart of gold.If a miracle is something that has no naturalistic explanation. then high on our list is the miracle of subjectivity in an otherwise objective universe. and if this weren’t miraculous enough. we have the human intelligence that somehow mirrors the intelligibility of the world. Which — agreed — we ought to engage in.Is it reasonable to suppose that this immaterial intelligence was simply lifted by a material crane out of a monkey’s head. To believe this is to simply not know what intelligence is — which is to say. adequation to reality.For cosmotheandrism man is always suspended between the crane and the skyhook. i.e.. immanence and transcendence. or time and eternity. respectively. The human state abides precisely in the weird vertical tension between these poles. skyhook above. cranes below. out of which the Cosmic Area Rug is weird-woven.Looked at this way. evolution is indeed a journey through time. but to recognize the journey is to already be partly outside of it — as Dawkins implicitly acknowledges with his immaterial preference for a morality that is higher than mere survival of the fittest.Try as we might. we can never really domesticate this weirdness. Which is reminiscent of Haldane’s suspicion that The universe is not only queerer than we suppose. but queerer than we can suppose. The full quote adds thatI have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of (the universe). from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant. and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of. or can be dreamed of. in any (LH) philosophy.Which is necessarily true. since being cannot be enclosed in anything from within being. Along these lines. Haldane made some similarly wise cracks:Reality is the (LH) cage of those who lack (RH) imagination.The world shall perish not for lack of wonders. but for lack of (RH) wonder.The advance of (LH) scientific knowledge does not seem to make either our universe or our (RH) inner life in it any less mysterious.It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically. but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms (or RH can be reduced to LH abstractions).The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized (LH) world. while the real (RH) universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything.As the bracketed material indicates. the problem lies in the relentless effort of the left-brain to enclose reality in its linear and logical dreams and schemes. in the attempt to make the weirdness go away. But the weirdness remains. and the right brain knows it.Ideology is one way to make the weirdness stop. but a mind constrained within an ideology renders itself a kind of “artificial intelligence” — but genuine stupidity —since it can only perceive and articulate that which is permitted by the internalized model. It can only think within the grooves of its own preconceptions. thus stifling the imagination.Which brings to mind C.S. Lewis’ comment about his belief in Christianity — that it is less something that he sees than something by which he sees everything else — in other words. not something to look at. but rather. to see through. For among other things. like religion in general. it furnishes points of reference that allow us to speak of the farthest regions of the soul that extend into. and down from. the transcendent pole of the Cosmos. i.e.. what we call a Grammar of Infinitude. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:03:37 +0000 6f5a1b886a2716f4e553b0f9c5191b0a67fdddf8 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/the-sweet-nothings-of-family A day in the Kurgan household Tue, 22 Sep 2026 18:37:05 +0000 640c2c022713cc198609af1f0bd9b2d3a84a566e https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2026/09/22/questions-pertaining-to-johnsons/ “Dr. G. Lincecum has written a memorial for presentation to the approaching Legislature. in which he sets forth rather novel views in regard to crime.  The doctor contends that crime is the result of ‘unterrified’ amativeness.  He says. as a general rule criminals have the amative organ largely developed.—He argues that the only effectual method of arresting (…) Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:47:07 +0000 cc5297b172046b12fc748fac22efc1b5f3cf1a34 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/citizenship-is-a-theological-question The renewed battle over birthright citizenship reveals that every nation must decide whether membership is inherited. granted. or merely processed. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:02:48 +0000 ecbe25d4d62873c4bbbcf46fab4a8973798b8511 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/urban-vision Why the Creative Class and Global City concepts lost momentum—and what a replacement must deliver Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:15:46 +0000 89b224c8e2f7f71e5aba96528de2d07129d8da01 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/dr-kwasniewskis-lectures-in-chicagoland.html Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000 a5d72ed1e52ad1ac31fe623b17a469c9ae6f88cf https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/eight-women-and-no-babies A couple of weeks ago I attended a lunch held for a young lady celebrating her 27th birthday. Tue, 22 Sep 2026 12:20:25 +0000 ba2c7bc94f17daeb66fca8ff795054678c71162e https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-autumn-ember-days-are-this-week.html Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 8ffffe76b4a4ecf62d505bf1f9c95e0d67ee239a http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/diesel-fuel-and-overall-inflation.html  Ed D'Agostino points out that skyrocketing diesel prices will impact our entire economy.  It's not the President's fault. nor the Republican Party - it's conditioned by many events all around the world - but it's going to affect all of us.Unless you own a trucking company. run a farm. operate heavy equipment. or drive a really big pickup truck. you may not have noticed how expensive diesel has become.On September 15. AAA’s national average diesel price was S6.27 a gallon. compared with about S3.69 a year ago— a roughly 70% increase ... a 70% increase in a single year is an enormous shock to the economy.Even if diesel prices were to fall from here. the shock will be working its way into grocery bills. freight charges. construction costs and home heating bills for many months.. . .What is unique about diesel. and why is its price outpacing oil and gasoline.EIA expects U.S. distillate inventories [the category that includes diesel and heating oil] to fall below 100 million barrels in October. for the first time since 2003. and remain below the five-year range through the first quarter of 2027.At the same time. refiners were already running at about 98% of capacity in late August. the highest utilization rate since 2018. In one sense that’s good news: refineries are responding to high prices by making more fuel.The problem is they are already running near full capacity. That leaves less room to offset another supply disruption: an outage. a hurricane. a refinery accident or a further escalation of conflicts in the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine.There may not be much relief coming. Several refiners have delayed planned maintenance to keep their refineries operating. At some point. they have to do the maintenance or risk an unplanned failure. Industry executives warn that diesel and heating-oil markets could remain tight well into next year. even if the Iran conflict ends.. . .For millions of households. winter means heating oil bills. Heating oil and diesel come from the same distillate pool. The differences are minimal. coming down to dyes for color and additives to help with either engine combustion or tank storage. You can run a diesel engine on heating oil. and you can fire your oil furnace with diesel.. . .Last winter. I relied primarily on oil to heat my New England home. It was a cold winter. On many days the electric heat pump did not make economic sense. Oil was the cheaper option.  A typical monthly oil delivery was about 150 gallons and cost around S550.A 60% increase would put a delivery to my home at roughly S900. Ouch.  Thankfully. I can pay it.  It won’t change my lifestyle.  But for many. it will force hard decisions and uncomfortable compromises.  If you are on a fixed income or living paycheck-to-paycheck. an increase like that is a serious problem. For them. from their very real perspective. inflation will be sky high.There's more at the link.I'm worried that many voters will blame the Republican Party and President Trump for this. and punish them at the polls this fall.  Sure. some of the blame is undoubtedly theirs. but a great deal also belongs to the Democratic Party and his predecessor. who 'kicked the can down the road' for four years before his inauguration and did little or nothing to stop Iran's adventurism [particularly using Hamas. Hezbollah and the Houthis as proxies in their ongoing war with Israel].  If President Trump was right about the threat Iran made to him concerning nuclear weapons. he had no choice but to act right away. without delay.  A nuclear threat from intransigent religious fanatics can't be dealt with in any other way.  However. people with hurting bank balances and empty wallets won't stop to consider that - they'll vote their pain. not something they can't directly and immediately feel for themselves.I think we're in for a rocky ride until the elections . . .Peter Tue, 22 Sep 2026 09:15:00 +0000 aa302d63e5f0eb1b2e26a491dfc5bc0f6134dae7 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/pygmalions-passion A simple Christian argument against the use of AI Tue, 22 Sep 2026 07:44:53 +0000 1167c987e113ecce2815a67622968ff9094085bc https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/a-breed-apart On War and War Crimes Tue, 22 Sep 2026 07:43:49 +0000 18525b2c5f2eb1fbbf3528dd9b4430a5f5923700 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/22/the-labourers-in-the-vineyard-leo-gets-it-right-in-ways-he-did-not-imagine/ Pope Dumbo has given us another Angelus concerning the workers in the vineyard. He is on record with this: “….the revelation of God’s goodness is for everyone. not just for a few. God has different ways and fresh ideas even for those who consider themselves to be first and believe they have earned what they (…) Tue, 22 Sep 2026 07:27:06 +0000 fae57626a0b7d14f5e699c1f3c37cb7151f9f65a https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-random-thought.html I mentioned in a previous post that I was reading a biography of an Irish leftist. one who lived through most of the twentieth century. Reading it. I was struck once again with a thought that has often occurred to me. that all these radical leftists. most of whom had a deep disdain for the Catholic Church and the bourgeois middle classes. somehow managed to stay faithful to their wives and keep their households together. Many of them even raised large or relatively large families.Actually. the leftist I was reading about did leave his wife for another woman-- but only in his old age. when Irish society had already liberalized around him.My assumption is that. when lifelong marital fidelity was expected and taken as normal. it wasn't felt as irksome or onerous. Challenges which today are seen as unendurable were simply taken on the chin. par for the course. Nobody thought you were heroic for putting up with another human being for forty or fifty years.This seems to me typical of the whole movement of Irish society in my lifetime. I watched Irish society secularize all through my lifetime-- the process had already begun before I was born. And it seems to me that the ebbing of Catholicism from Irish life has had all kinds of bad consequences. on a deep level-- that even people who weren't at all religious benefitted from the elevating effect Catholicism had on society.It comes out in so many things. A sense of the sacred and of awe. A sense of the dignity of the human person. A respect for manhood and womanhood. and indeed childhood. That's just a few off the top of my head.I've often thought of trying to write a blog post about the ideal of marriage that. it seems to me now. was unspoken but all-pervasive in the Ireland my childhood. It was really quite beautiful. It was anti-romantic and romantic at the same time-- a combination that is. strangely. far from uncommon. The stereotype of the mother and father were both comical. but with an undercurrent of respect and affection. Or so it seems to me. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 23:05:24 +0000 df10cba63ed3cf7a8188cf6c274cb8cd9e9f69c3 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/shades-of-meaning.html Here are a list of words. Tell me what associations or nuances they have for you. Perceptive readers will notice a pattern to them.Guy.Fellah. [It was hearing someone use this word on a bus that started this train of thought.]Bloke.Dude.Chap.Lad.Gent.Geezer. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 21:37:09 +0000 8a1e78e8ae195e7c589efae3c3f983aac359b45f https://scifiwright.com/2026/09/creation-and-corruption/ Let a pause to remember the recent debacles when beloved franchises were mocked and abused. The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Terminator: Dark Fate. X-Men: Dark Phoenix.  007: No Time to Die. Men in Black: International. Charlie’s Angels [2019]  Captain Marvel Wandavision Let (…) Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:11:40 +0000 48b7cb0dafbc5f2c15b4dfcc83a6f035f4acea9d https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/tree-surgeons-versus-topiary-school-of.html I live in a relatively leafy suburb containing many forest-sized trees such as oaks. beeches. horse chestnuts. limes - plus common sycamores that grow as weeds around here. Since the trees are large. and grow near to houses. paths and roads - they need to be pruned from time to time - either as treatment. prevention. or after storm damage. So. I know both from personal experience and a good deal of observation. that there are two distinct kinds of arboreal operative. There are real tree-surgeons. and there are tree-butchers - who nonetheless claim 'surgical' status. and evidently get way too much employment in these parts. The difference is that real tree-surgeons know and love trees. and carefully enhance the appearance of the trees upon which they operate. They do this by maintaining complete branches. and cutting back to the joints of branches - aiming at a natural tree-shape. A year or two following tree-surgery. the tree usually looks better than before. as well as being healthier and safer. In total contrast. the tree-butchers are gloried hedge-trimmers. whose training is apparently restricted to the usage of power saws in difficult conditions - but utterly excludes botany. The tree-butcher's idea of a well-cut tree is one that has a geometrical outline. I have seen these intrepid characters at work. Their inspiration is of a forest tree that has been shaped as-if it were massed boxwood or yew plantations and rows. perhaps topographically decorating one of those abstractly-un-biological Louis XIV type French formal gardens. So they cut branches to fit a predetermined. usually more or less spherical. silhouette. such that all branches [large or small. trunk or twig] are sheared to end abruptly at whatever point they reach the predetermined circumference. After a year or two the bigger branch ends of these once-magnificent-mutants become covered in multiple sprouts. rather like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter. A sinuous beech or gnarled oak becomes more like a basket-maker's pollard of the Somerset levels.. And the saddest thing is that the damage of tree-butchery is irreversible. except by starting-again with a new seed or sapling. +++. Note: the pollarding method is deliberate. purposive. and quaintly-characteristic of my childhood landscape of water-meadows - the 'summer lands' of legend and history. BTW - The photos are NOT of my locality. but representative images grabbed from the interwebs.  Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:58:44 +0000 122ad938f966f8daf59687a65e03ca581042e426 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-brahma-by-ralph-waldo-emerson-and.html Here are the first three verses of 'The Brahma'. by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There's a fourth verse but it's not relevant here.If the red slayer think he slays.Or if the slain think he is slain.They know not well the subtle waysI keep. and pass. and turn again.Far or forgot to me is near.Shadow and sunlight are the same.The vanished gods to me appear.And one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me out.When me they fly. I am the wings.I am the doubter and the doubt.And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.This is the poem I always think of when I encounter the people who see everything as a vast conspiracy. all opposition as controlled opposition. every apparent coincidence as news management. all politics as a puppet show. psy-ops are as common as cabbages. and so on.It's like all those dystopian novels where the hero realizes at the climax that the underground resistance to the dystopian government was actually planted by the dystopian government and he's been a pawn all along. There's a certain pleasurable frisson in this moment of despair. that can't be denied.What is there to say about such theories. except that they seem unlikely on the face of it. History has no example of such a thing. Yes. the KGB had spies and informers and double agents everywhere. Yes. there was omnipresent propaganda. But there was also a genuine resistance and ordinary people had a pretty good fix on what was actually going on. We also know from the history of totalitarian regimes that. far from resistance being futile or fabricated. resistance is greatly feared and obsessively monitored.Also the theory is unfalsifiable because any evidence presented against it can be discounted by the same theory. Chesterton famously wrote about this in the first chapters of Orthodoxy. although he was using the principle of criticize philosophical materialism instead of conspiracy theories.I think the kind of fatalism that is spread by such theories is lamentable. Indeed. if there was such a panoptic. omnipresent regime in power. spreading such fatalism might be exactly what they would do. What if the controlled opposition is inside your head. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:03:10 +0000 5fc040d57956403f4a72fe00746b56244c29af3e https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/lady-academics-tire-of-being-judged Before us today may be the most pristine example of female privilege since the Lindsay Clancy trial. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:03:38 +0000 8df7c43ca6711489c235220a6763751ee495d5e8 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62033/ Before us today may be the most pristine example of female privilege since the Lindsay Clancy trial. You have heard of “peer review”. the sad system of guaranteeing banality and… Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 3573c16be7e8e7f34038769a9d531c22787557d5 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-voice-of-soul.html  When you come to one of those occasions in your life when you must make a real decision that will affect your future or even your spiritual state how do you discriminate between what comes into your thoughts on the matter from God or the higher powers or your own soul. that is to say. your spiritual being. and what is self-generated as in coming from your worldly mind which includes desires. fears and ego or put there by the counter-evolutionary powers. as we might term them. those forces that would hold you back or misdirect you. Incidentally. both these powers exist. The old and slightly comical image of an angel on one shoulder and a devil [usually a red one] on the other have a lot of truth in them. The mind is a receiving station and. depending on its tuning. can receive impressions from the forces of both light and darkness.To get back to the question. If something comes from God. using that term very loosely because God delegates and most people are not directly in touch with him but one of his hierarchical intermediaries. you don't worry about whether you should be doing something. You know you must do it. If a situation arises in your life and you are genuinely uncertain as to how to respond. the spiritual significance of your decision may not be great. But when you come to a fork in the road and one of the paths is a destined path that you are required to take for the benefit of your spiritual growth then you know. Which is not to say you do not doubt. The mind will often come up with all sorts of reasons for avoiding taking the right decision. There will be rationalisations about why you shouldn't be doing a particular thing or should be doing something else. Outer circumstances and other people. even family members. might try to deter you from the correct choice. But inside you will know. You will know that you have to do a certain thing or take a certain course. That doesn't mean you will do it. The outer mind can suppress that inner knowledge which means the connection you have to the inner voice will be weakened from then on. But. nevertheless. at a deep level of your being you will know. The worldly self might overwhelm that deep knowledge. even to the extent of posing as a deeper knowledge itself. but if you are true to yourself then you will know. An honest person will feel guilt for doing the wrong thing and relief for doing the right thing even if it is the difficult thing and brings worldly problems. A spiritual slacker will brush off this guilt and dismiss it as societal conditioning or impractical romanticism or even disguised selfishness. but that person is killing the voice of the soul inside and it will be easier for him to ignore it next time a similar situation arises until the point is reached where there is no connection at all.Listen out for the voice of the soul. It will not always tell you what you want to hear. but it will unerringly direct you to the truth. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:57:48 +0000 cfc7dda118bfe1346626edaed81a76b2c0ad8cf0 https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-insanity-continues-this-video-from.html Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 120580c9ebb0cb954f7881910c8be9ec5ca80ff5 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/memes-that-made-me-laugh-329.html  Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.More next week.Peter Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:22:00 +0000 788829cac28c218e41fe83ca876645c354b8d66e https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/on-work-and-productivity It’s Monday morning and I’m writing this article today because action breeds action and I feel like I need to get things moving. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:19:03 +0000 5c17a8c470570aa49027eeafc45adc83daea75da https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-question-of-life-versus-many.html One effect of modernity [and our atheist. materialist. utilitarian ideological assumptions] is that the question of Life has all-but disappeared from thought. to be replaced by the many questions of Living. The question of Life is concerned with this mortal Life between conception/birth and death. considered as a whole entity - asking what Life is about. its purpose. meaning. Whereas the questions of living are those innumerable matters of surviving. thriving. being happy. remaining functional. reducing suffering - getting-through and doing-well. The question of life is a matter of Why. But modern culture and its people have already decided that there is no answer to Why. - have already decided that there is not purpose. meaning - and that Life is 'about' nothing. So this question of Life. which was so obvious as to be unavoidable for most of human history is ignored. suppressed. and replaced by the endless parade of questions of Living.The Why. is replaced by a How.Why think about Life when we already know [i.e. have already decided] that there is no answer. By far the best thing. the only sensible thing. is therefore Not to think about Life. ...To stay focused on questions of living. and of how to live 'well'. and to mock. or distract ourselves from. asking the question of Life. Such is Western culture. now: such is the nature of our civilization. There is never a necessary. nor even an appropriate. time or place for asking the question of Life.Nor do people feel any need to answer it. and find ridiculous or contemptible any attempt to do so - and regard as idiotic or insane any claim to have done so. And is this not evil. And evil of a very advanced and un-repentable form: for so many people. with such determination. to be so sure of the futility of Life as to refuse even to formulate the most important question of all.  Mon, 21 Sep 2026 07:13:05 +0000 d325af655fa11e4eb3a052f5ae9e39b30a62939d https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/21/women-of-the-manosphere-who-exposed-inconvenient-truths-about-feminism/ Lest we forget. women played a significant role in tearing down the stronghold of Feminism and promoting the mainstreaming of the Red Pill. Continue reading → Mon, 21 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 e097d7b2307ebc3f76446f2dfa66b6bbc0290e4d https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/feminists-were-always-crazy.html   Because we live in a day and age where bad hair dye jobs have caught up with feminist sensibilities. we tend to think that earlier waves of feminists were more reasonable. and more sensible. But no. the first wave feminists were not the saner feminists. As Helen Kendrick Johnson writes in the 1890’s: “I copy from the 'Salt Lake Herald' a few sentences taken from an interview with Mrs. Cannon. State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong believer in woman suffrage. she answered: 'Of course I am. It will help women. and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are always better than their masters.' 'Do you refer to polygamy.' was asked. 'Indeed I do not.' she answered. 'I believe in polygamy. My father and mother were Mormons. and I am a Mormon…. A plural wife isn't half as much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives. she has three weeks of freedom every single month…. Of course it is all at an end now. but I think the women of Utah think. with me. that we were better off in polygamy…. Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women. We control the State…. What am I going to do with my children while I am making the laws for the State. The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good deal…. Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more than a certain amount of children. and the mothers of the land can live as they ought to live.' This is the character and opinion presented by the highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary. so far as it would be needed to express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments and such a situation.” From Woman and the Republic. Helen Kendrick Johnson. Insanity was always a mark of feminism. There are many things that I could draw out from this short passage quoted here. but this stands out the most for me. “What am I going to do with my children while I am making the laws for the State. The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good deal….” Why do you think Paul said that older women need to teach younger women “to love their husbands. to love their children” [Titus 2:4]. Because. if they are not taught this women will quickly abandon their children to follow their careers and desires. Paul saw this in his day. we see it in our day. this woman brags about doing this. Feminism was always an attack on the family. It is dyscivilisational. It is to individualism what petrol is to a grass fire on a hot day. an extremely dangerous accelerant. People were already selfish. sinful. and given to going their own way. this is a part of the sinful human nature. the flesh corrupts our approach to life. But feminism took that and supercharged it. for women and men. Now. we live in a hyper-individualistic culture that sees any containment by gender roles and duty as oppression. But the individual is not the basic unity of society. the family is. Feminism was always. from the very start. simply a means for bad women to seek to sunder themselves from their God-given roles and responsibilities and also be given the chance to bring many other women along with them. Now. we live in a day where so many men and women live adrift in a broken culture. and this ideology is one of the core reasons for that.     Mon, 21 Sep 2026 06:43:05 +0000 ba5f24820e208dedc8c6157fcea11d88a14c74ac https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/return-op You thought I was done with White Ops. didn’t you. But now it is back. Book 6 is here. And so are two collected volumes. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 05:04:36 +0000 a226914f1884d05c89e3e98e26c9615282a17a07 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/hypnotic-moments.html I don't know what better title to give to this post. which is going to be a quick one. even though I've been thinking about it a long time.It's one of those very personal and idiosyncratic posts. I really wanted to talk about the enormous fascination particular moments have for me-- moments I hear about. read about. and so forth.One that has recurred to me a lot recently is the scene at the beginning of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell. which another blogger has kindly transcribed:The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves. where. marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps. an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain-pipes. Gathered round the bucket of coke that burned in front of the shelter. several figures were swinging arms against bodies and rubbing hands together with large. pantomimic gestures: like comedians giving formal expression to the concept of extreme cold. One of them. a spare fellow in blue overalls. taller than the rest. with a jocular demeanour and long. pointed nose like that of a Shakespearian clown. suddenly stepped forward. and as if performing a rite. cast some substance—apparently the remains of two kippers. loosely wrapped in newspaper—on the bright coals of the fire. causing flames to leap fiercely upward. smoke curling about in eddies of the north-east wind. As the dark fumes floated above the houses. snow began to fall gently from a dull sky. each flake giving a small hiss as it reached the bucket. The flames died down again. and the men. as if required observances were for the moment at an end. all turned away from the fire. lowering themselves laboriously into the pit. or withdrawing to the shadows of their tarpaulin shelter. The grey. undecided flakes continued to come down. though not heavily. while a harsh odour. bitter and gaseous. penetrated the air. The day was drawing in.For some reason. the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world—legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars. centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea—scattered. uncoordinated shapes from a fabulous past. infinitely removed from life. and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections. and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire. suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons. hand in hand and facing outward. tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings. facing outward like the Seasons. moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly. methodically. sometimes a trifle awkwardly. in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations. while partners disappear only to reappear again. once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody. unable. perhaps. to control the steps of the dance.I never finished the whole series of novels-- I think I got about half of the way in--  but this particular image delights me. I might say 'this particular passage'. except-- to be honest-- I didn't remember the passage itself.In recent weeks. whenever I've found myself looking at steam or smoke-- for instance. when I'm heating up food in a saucepan-- I find myself thinking about this passage. Perhaps because it seems to me as though these moments of sudden contemplation are the very best thing life has to offer.Another 'hypnotic moment' that constantly comes to my mind is the story of Blessed Solanus Casey's first night in a Capuchin monastery. on Christmas Eve. as he was discerning his vocation. Here's an account from Catherine Odell. one of his biographers:In the midst of a blinding snowstorm. he left Superior on December 20 and headed southwest for St. Paul on the 11:00 p.m. train. From St. Paul. his train then headed east. pulling along slowly through drifting snow to Milwaukee. After a brief stayover there. during which Barney (his birth name) stayed with Capuchins for the first time. he boarded a train again. Down through Chicago and over through Michigan. his train headed for his goal-- Detroit.On Christmas Eve. the train pulled into the station in Detroit at last. Barney located a streetcar and headed for Mt. Elliott Avenue. There. at 1740 Mt. Eillott. the young man finally arrived. well after dusk. Exhausted. he refused the offer of dinner. He was too tired. Upstairs. on the second floor. he was shown to his room. a simple. stark little space with a wooden door latch. The sight of it immediately renewed his fears of this Capuchin austerity. But. spent with the strain of travel. he pulled off his shoes and heavy coat. still wet with snow. pulled a blanket up over himself. and soon fell into a heavy sleep.Just before midnight. he awoke to the sound of hand chimes and the voices of men singing. They were singing Christmas carols in German. It was Christmas Eve. As the voices grew louder. Barney could hear other men getting out of bed and coming down the corridor to join their voices with the little group of carolers. Barney joined them. and his heart was lifted. The gloom over his decision to follow Our Lady's orders and 'go to Detroit' left him.Down and around. through the darkened corridors. the carollers moved. Carrying candles. they roused the other Capuchins who then followed down into the chapel for Christmas Midnight Mass. It was a moving. joy-filled occasion and initiated a week or more of festivities.I really can't put my love of that story into words-- even though nothing really happens. It's barely a story. actually.Here's a third story. that I'll mention briefly. I was listening to an interview with an Irish politician of recent decades. He was talking about some parliamentary drama in which he had been taken a major role. but that he was absent from on the particular day under discussion-- because was 'in bed with a dicky tummy' [upset stomach]. Somehow I found this idea deliciously cosy and pleasing.So what's the big deal. you ask. There are moments that catch our fancy. Everyone has that. I suppose it's just the sheer importance of such moments. in my own mind. that makes me ponder. I come back to them again and again. I wonder if other people are like this at all. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 23:15:25 +0000 e538d1de8db7eb91c8d0ac952b86c26398f2fa1a https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes-what-are-you-in-this-for My priest gives good homily. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 16:32:30 +0000 8409bf32bf8bf5c5d73542f81a8dba9276e0fd7a https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-journey-of-hope-or-journey-to.html Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 1c64c392c62deb51ed2846caac0ceeec3b7ff17e https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/my-hardening-persepctive-on-mass-media.html 'The official story' is always wrong. and also fundamentally misleading.. And it probably always has been - albeit getting worse and worse. more and more rapidly. about more and more things.So that here-and-now the wrong and misleading nature of public knowledge must be kept in mind. much of the time.  This is because the official story is currently generated and sustained by people whose net-motivations are always [increasingly] bad and whose nature is always dishonest: i.e. the people who run things. the ruling class. the leadership class of all the major institutions [including churches].Therefore. I know what is Not true. but very seldom know what is true. and there is really no way of me finding-out what is true -- except in a few areas where I have personal knowledge or contacts. and except when it comes to knowledge in very general [not detailed] terms. However. this little is also sufficient for my purposes. What I do not know. is not essential [not least because I could not do anything constructive about it] - and what I need to know. it is possible for me to know. .Of course there are always some elements of true knowledge used in the construction of every effective deception. manipulation. and lie. We must not be misled by this: it is merely a rhetorical necessity. +++[In theory I have known this for a long time. but in practice I always made exceptions where I was actually believing. and being-shaped-by. too-detailed-to-be-real knowledge that was in fact attained wholly secondhand. And I still do make such false exceptions. unfortunately. although eventually [sometimes] I catch myself. and realize I have been fooling-myself and/or been-manipulated yet again. This happens because nature abhors a vacuum. and on any given topic we must positively-believe some-thing - so we had better be clear about what it is that we are assuming. and our grounds for it.]  Sun, 20 Sep 2026 07:51:39 +0000 4efe970c22b6b8121518ea90ed7217ec5bcc5748 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/psyop-aristocracy-was-a-good-thing The actual question is debatable: was humanity better off under the rule of a formal aristocracy than under the rule of a king or empire. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:53:16 +0000 b8465e1a6a69fea1a3c3e2540ce119c55ffaad95 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/anticipatory-systems-and-biomusicology.html Say what you want about reality. but it has stood the test of time. On the one hand. it is what it is. But one thing it always is is becoming. Thus it is more like temporal music than it is timeless geometry.In theoretical biologist Robert Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems. he notes that while writing the manuscript in 1979. he felt that he “had arrived upon the threshold of some entirely new perspectives in the theory of natural systems. and of biological systems in particular.” Here he is not alluding to a mere scientific discovery. rather. the meta-discovery of a new and deeper paradigm for understanding reality itself. This doesn’t render the discovery merely “subjective.” even though subjectivity is required in order to make the leap to a more comprehensive objective explanation. In other words. discoveries don’t just discover themselves. but require a discoverer.Anticipation sounds like something that could only be present in a mind of some sort. but what if it is “fundamental in its own right” and built into the nature of things — which is to say. a feature of the Cosmic Area Rug. And in what type of Cosmos is anticipation even possible. For “Strictly speaking. an anticipatory system is one in which present change of state depends upon future circumstances. rather than merely on the present or past” [Rosen].Which suggests that. as in music. the organism is reaching forward into its own future. This obviously touches on the question of teleology. but not in a fixed way. as in a machine. rather. in a more openended manner. For Rosen. this is precisely what “one is forced to believe if one grants that certain kinds of systems can behave in an anticipatory fashion.”In machines the past and present are obviously coupled. but the anticipatory system couples its present state with a future that backshadows it. so to speak. This is known to occur at the quantum level. but this may be just a glitch in the math. If there is a temporal holism in our macro world. it isn’t a quantum effect but something more general. implying a vertical dimension with downward causation. In other words. the causation in question isn’t so much future-to-present as top-to-bottom.The anticipatory paradigm does not fully replace the mechanistic. but rather. complements it. as in RH to LH. respectively. For example. in the human body — or in any organic process — there are machine-like “closed-loop” subsystems and more creative “open-loop” ones. Indeed. if the entire biosphere weren’t an open system. then evolution itself would be impossible. Rather. the identical process would simply repeat itself. as in any other machine.Here there is a great deal of overlap with Polanyi. for whom living systems are under what he calls dual-control: such systems again rely upon the principles of a lower level — e.g.. the laws of physics and chemistry — to serve as boundary conditions for the emergence of a higher level. Analogously. we require the fixed structure of grammar and spelling in order to say something novel or creative. but one cannot deduce meaning from the lower level rules. Or as Rosen puts it in a later book. semantics cannot be reduced to syntax. or meaning to order.A living organism is quintessentially an anticipatory system with “one ‘foot’ in the past. the other in the future. and the whole system hovers. moment by moment. in the present — always on the move. through time.” Thus “the future represents as powerful a causal force on current behavior as the past does. for all living things.”Which leads back to the question of music: is it like biology because biology is like music. In her preface to Anticipatory Systems. Rosen’s daughter suggests that “Perhaps time is not quite as linear as we have always presumed it to be. My father’s view. in fact. was that. ‘Time is complex.’”The Physics Department cannot say what time is in any ontological sense. if only because the physicist must exist in time in order to say anything about it at all. whether it is regarded as a unit of measurement. a geometric dimension. or a directional gradient. No physical theory of any kind can account for subjective awareness of the dynamic flow of becoming in the present moment. The subjective presence of the now leaves no mathematical fingerprints.You’ve dusted the place.No need. For cosmotheandrism it matters not what physics can say about time. because the question is beyond the reach of physics in principle. Rather. the reality of time is the province of the Metaphysics Department. In the context of creative emergence. time is obviously central. since emergence not only requires time. but must reveal something about the very nature of time. i.e.. its novelty and fecundity.Put it this way: in what type of Cosmos is the creative emergence of novelty even possible. Correct: only in a temporal one. otherwise there can be no real evolutionary change. let alone the kind of dramatic transformations we see. for example. from matter to life or life to mind. Human creativity must be an image of. or declension from. a creative principle or principle of creativity. In order to not notice that a living Cosmos is fundamentally different from an inert Cosmos. one must be more than a little incurious. Or just trapped inside an ideological matrix.In the book Emergence. Complexity. and Self-Organization. the authors write that “With the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century came the insistence that wholes — including living organisms — are no different from aggregates. and that secondary qualities are mere causally inert epiphenomenal and/or subjective appearances.” Thus. “Legitimate scientific methodology denied all ontological status to higher-level phenomena. insisting that any truly causal relationships between organizational levels be one-way only: bottom-up.”Did you notice what those sneaky Enlightenment thinkers did just there.I did: they covertly elevated a method of inquiry into an ontological reality. thereby reducing the Cosmic Symphony to the notes with which it is composed. In other words. the map was not only conflated with the territory. but any territory not depicted in the map no longer existed. even if we are standing in the territory. Which brings to mind the anecdote about visitors to the Soviet Union standing in front of an Orthodox church while looking at a state-approved map that showed no such church. Does this mean the church no longer existed.Ha ha. Now go to gulag.Analogously. shortly after the map of scientific materialism was developed. people started wondering about all the things that seem rather important but which do not appear on the map. many of which fall under the heading of “emergence.” beginning with how a finely-tuned Cosmos emerges out of a primeval explosion. and how this Cosmos comes to life after 9 billion years — at the very moment. by the way. that cosmic conditions permitted the emergence of life.Emergence per se “applies in those cases where the distinctive quality that emerges is not the mere sum of separate elements. but instead embodies a new kind of relation” [Juarrero and Rubino]. This goes to Axiom 4. because we are not just talking about new things. rather. new relations between existing things. Which goes precisely to Rosen’s relational biology. which argues thatorganisms. and indeed all systems. have a distinct quality called organization which is not part of the language of reductionism.... (O)rganization includes all relations between material parts. relations between the effects of interactions of the material parts. and relations with time and environment. to name a few. Many people sum up this aspect of complex systems by saying that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.Now. what is a relation. It cannot be in the parts. rather. in the spacetime between them. Or in other words. there can be no relation in the absence of this relational spacetime. Without it there would be the opposite of relatedness. either an undifferentiated. monadic oneness or radically unrelated units without any wholeness.I can’t relate to that.Nor can cosmotheandrism. since this is a relational Cosmos from top to bottom. in the absence of which there could be neither freedom nor meaning of any kind. Berdyaev writes that “Meaning lies beyond the boundaries of history. beyond the limits of personal and world history.” If it were not ordered to something beyond itself. then it would be as devoid of meaning as an endless series of unrelated moments or disconnected objects.If the Anthropos is just an appearance living in a world of appearances. then to hell with it. In reality. we are. as it were. sparks drawn to the central fire that produced them. How exactly does this work. Here’s a start: “There is nothing higher than the search for. and the love of. Truth” [Berdyaev]. Which implies that if you do not love truth. then you do not know it — or at least you do not know it as intimately as you might think you do.Here is another clue:Truth is meaning and may not deny meaning. To deny meaning in the world means to deny truth. to recognize nothing but darkness. Truth makes us free. To deny freedom is to deny truth.Having said that. Freedom is not an end. but a means. Whoever sees it as an end in itself does not know what to do with it when he gets it. because the end is one of the transcendentals. i.e.. truth. beauty. virtue. and/or unity.Here again. creative freedom takes place in that vertical space between immanence and transcendence: “Truth does not mean staying within some closed ideas. in an inescapable circle of consciousness.... Truth is not objective. but rather. trans-subjective” [Berdyaev].Or to be perfectly accurate. vertical and horizontal intersubjectivity is the objective truth of things. We are open. relational. and teleologically ordered to the very ground of trans-subjectivity: “In the final depth Truth is God and God is truth.” But be careful -- “Pure truth would burst the world apart” [ibid.].How so.Because no matter how tightly you pack it. you cannot stuff infinitude into a finite suitcase. nor eternity into a temporal one.Unless—Let’s not anticipate Book III. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 04:20:44 +0000 5250b0e6fd7d989c34251be01c9edbce0d592f31 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/09/19/from-the-archives/ Sat, 19 Sep 2026 21:35:10 +0000 3cb2ad4f3c75677a8d23057cbb2c99574e55362a https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/19/hebrews-2-3/ Re: Naked Bible 177: Hebrews 2 and Naked Bible 181: Hebrews 3 To be honest. in Hebrews 2. Heiser gets lost in his effort to shut down any talk of angels or elohim being offered redemption. Throughout the entire canon … Continue reading → Sat, 19 Sep 2026 21:23:40 +0000 5997725b54966a056017c148ca513b949e2c3982 https://thetransformedwife.com/feminisms-goal-was-to-create-a-monster-they-succeeded/ Years ago. I loved watching Ina Garten cook as the “Barefoot Contessa” on Food Network. She was so warm and friendly. Her food always looked delicious. I loved the way she treated her husband. Jeffrey. She seemed to love serving him and making him happy. I just watched an interview with her recently. She had a rough childhood. Her mother was cold and never showed her any love. Her father was strict. and she could never gain his approval. That... Read More Read More Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:22:00 +0000 d969825176820cf8a880ed3631cce9e712a8b796 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/papal-letter-to-bishops-of-latin.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 18:48:49 +0000 fee2c55a024f931c99a2f3da7daf0b0af9698239 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/19/going-normal-again/ The idea of doing some action. or of correcting something that is wrong. or in a more subtle way of adjusting radically what is imperfect [wheels missing on a carriage. for instance]. is not a universal American trait. or kind of behaviour. But it does seem to be unique to this continent. and to the (…) Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:38:13 +0000 32909a4898a2507526514350816f902631678a9c https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/what-if-everything-you-thought-about Please play this thought experiment with me. and read the very last sentence of this post even if you read nothing else. Sat, 19 Sep 2026 13:47:44 +0000 7bbc2b3d7e31adcb996d18b2c058167233077921 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-church-in-crisis-and-how-we-must.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:45:01 +0000 0592b8d0881ffb4d17a4f782efa9993ec8a93ace https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-road-to-indifferentism-nostra.html Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 4d1ca8831c1949cde417641bdc8259e2f4b33f22 https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/pray-for-europe-pray-for-world.html Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:16:38 +0000 d2a250ad69687c9efc51a8f9a687e7d82a5edb6b https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/better-living-through-technology American dynamism. the trust conundrum. and more in this week’s digest. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:39:17 +0000 406285f3e4d1f62bfb536e02708215f4cb0f7d23 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/theres-always-more-eternal-jam-session.html Like the Cosmos itself. music is organized and yet spontaneous. lawful and surprising. continuous and discontinuous. vertical [harmonic] and horizontal [melodic]. holistic and particulate. repetitive and open. and inexhaustibly creative [despite a finite number of notes. we’ll never run out of tunes].Interestingly. it wasn’t that long ago that some people thought we were in fact running out of tunes. In particular. John Stuart Mill reasoned “that a finite number of notes meant that there was some ultimate limit to the amount of music possible” [Sowell]. But like the Cosmos itself music is finite and unbound. so there’s always more.Of course. one of the intrinsic properties of music is its temporality. so if music really mirrors reality. then this suggests that time is of the essence. Along these lines. music as such has three necessary characteristics revolving around memory. present moment. and anticipation. When we listen to music. it is always in the now. And yet. we are implicitly aware of the notes that have led up to it. while the present is always anticipating its forward movement. Thus. one must have a present memory of what has been heard. flowing in anticipation toward what is to come. in order to apprehend music. the yet-to-be heard must somehow be implicitly present to the already heard.As with Life Itself. the past must be pregnant with the now. just as the now is pregnant with the future. Which implies that the future has some kind of influence on the present. since the latter cannot be understood outside the context of the whole melody. rather. only as a flow of internally related notes. This complementarity of notes and melody is a key principle. for it is not a question of notelike being or melodic becoming. but rather. of being as becoming. and vice versa.A clever composer or soloist may play with our anticipation and give us one note — or sometimes just silence — when we were expecting another. Thelonious Monk was famous for this: sour when we are expecting sweet. or finding no step at the bottom of the stairway.Monk plays it straight with crookward notes.More generally. it has been said that jazz is the sound of surprise. In this regard. Miles Davis had the right attitude: “It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note — it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”Turning a mess into a message.Yes. redemptive soloing. I don’t know if God plays dice with the universe. but he certainly plays jazz with history. What sounds like a single “wrong” note doesn’t necessarily derail a musical phrase. Rather. the musician’s ability to creatively respond to that note and integrate it into the subsequent notes ultimately determines whether the initial note sounds like a mistake or a deliberate. interesting choice. It encourages musicians to think of music as a continuous flow rather than a series of isolated correct or incorrect notes.True for us. true for God. Without venturing too far into Book III. supposing the Theos is the great jazz player improvising over history. he is actually playing in a cosmotheandric combo with us. in that “the individual details” depend “on our own free response (and) are not determined except by his actually cooperating with us” in the present moment. Thus. “The complete script (or score) of our lives is not written anywhere ahead of time. before it happens. but only as it actually happens. by God and ourselves working it out” in tandem [Clarke]. One might say that life is a jam session between the poles of immanence and transcendence.∞This may sound trivial. but it’s weirder than you might think. because a musician will know when he has reached the aesthetic goal. but how. It is not a matter of mere execution or avoiding mistakes. Rather. some sort of meeting takes place in the vertical space where music is created and perceived. This is a reminder that beauty is an adequation. which is antithetical to the postmodern view that it is solely a matter of subjectivity. opinion. and personal tastelessness.On his substack blog. David Bentley Hart has an occasional Q and A with readers. one of whom asked about music. Hart’s response is cosmotheandrically right on key. for he writes of how in the arts more generally. “the illusion of a hermetically sealed finite and material order is most powerfully dispelled” [Axiom 3. openness]. For the genuine work of art unites us to what is beyondus in “the persistent aspiration of the soul toward transcendent goodness and beauty” [Axiom 8. the ascending spiral].However. “every engagement of the mind with the reality of the world” involves “the intentionality of a living soul at once with a transcendental horizon.” This latter is the very “ground from which all things pour forth. in the space between the soul and that horizon.” where they “are delivered over to us as articulate words. meanings. and images of the divine.” In this larger framework. “Evolutionary history” is “a poetic or artistic labor toward transcendence.” so “The fundamental reality of all things is art.” Thus. one might say that we are “artists before we are even ourselves.” And in the words of Monk. a genius is simply “the one most like himself.” in that his creations will be uniquely individual. whereas the mediocre hack is much like anyone else.Hart’s description is reminiscent of what Keith Jarrett says of the musician who “goes onto the stage hoping to have a rendezvous with music. He knows the music is there [it always is]. but this meeting depends not only on knowledge but openness” [Axiom 3].There’s no doubt this is a spiritual practice. but you can’t find what you’re not looking for. rather. music “must be let in. recognized. and revealed to the listener. the first of whom is the musician himself.” The structure — the basic form of the composition — only “provides a layer of substance above or beyond which the player intends to go. It’s also possible to do this by going deeper into the material” [ibid.]. Hart himself recalls such a musical rendezvous in high school. of “more or less disappearing into. or being caught up by. the voice of my cello. and of losing myself in how perfectly all the voices of our instruments blended…” He is pretty sure “our spirits were briefly in uncanny communication with one another and with the world of beauty from which Purcell’s music originally emanated.”But this is what art does: it imparts “glimpses of what lies beyond the immediately perceptible.” which is only possible because our minds are not “something separate from or external to the one divine mind that is the being of all things.” rather. because our intelligence is ultimately “a mirror of the creativity of God” [Hart]. which is to say. Axiom 7.∞Before moving on. and more to the point. Schuon writes that “Everything is in reality like a play of alternations between what is determined in advance -- starting from principles -- and what is incalculable and in some way unforeseeable” [emphasis mine]. So. improvisational mind jazz must be played over the cosmotheandric principles — the harmonic structure — of existence. Which is what this Trilogy is all about: hoping to lift ourselves off the blandstand of matter in order to have a rendezvous with the music of the spheres.This discussion of music touches on the very nature of creativity. the products of which always have this element of surprise. Machines are never truly creative. because they are linear. not complex. systems.Now. creativity is synonymous with emergence. in the sense that it is not. and can never be. predicted from its lower level constituents. But if the world is regarded as a machine. then genuine creativity and emergence must be impossible. To the extent that they do appear. then we can be sure that they are not reducible to lower level causes.Here is a concrete example. taken from a biography of Van Morrison. by Johnny Rogan. This incident occurred during Morrison’s collaboration with the Chieftans. a traditional Irish folk band whose music often has explicitly spiritual intent. As it so happens. a couple of members witnessed some strange occurrences. of “the presence of luminous beings on stage and forces of energy entering Morrison as he sang.”Now. I’ve seen Morrison in concert a few times and can testify to vivid occurrences of transcendence. although not accompanied by any true hallucinations. But band members insist there were nights on stage when they would actually see “angelic beings behind him.”I’ve had my moments in the sky. but I’m not sure what to make of angels on stage. What were the Chieftans smoking.I don’t know. but one member saysThere was no doubt in my mind that the holier beings were there to help him with his life’s mission…. Once it was anchored in him I could see the rush coming at me. It was like ‘Bang.’ You could actually feel it coming through your system. like they were anchoring a power source on stage and on those nights he was breathtaking. The voice was incredible. It was amazing. there were sparks and stars. like fireworks. a proper psychic vision.However. Morrison famously has his on and off nights. As to the latter. the same member says “you could see it coming down trying to get in. It was sparking around his head and he was actively trying to stop it.” And if it didn’t enter the Big Chief first. nor did it enter the other band members. Here it seems Morrison was engaging in a willful form of amousia. which is to say. pulling the plug on the vertical ingression of the muses. Or. in more mundane terms. the LH silencing the RH. Whatever the case. it suggests these energies are always present and seeking a ground. but require a human antenna willing to receive them.As to the “life’s mission” alluded to above. it is interesting that Morrison took part in a 1987 seminar called The Secret Heart of Music: An Exploration of the Power of Music to Change Consciousness. The brochure included a statement by Morrison: “Since the beginning of human culture it has been known that music can form a bridge between the spiritual and material worlds and help us to reach into realms beyond the senses” and “to induce mystical states of awareness.” Thus. his recent work is “increasingly intended as a means for inducing contemplation and for healing and uplifting the soul.”This is of course more challenging in a culture in which “300 years of materialism have degraded our musical inheritance and turned it into a consumer product.” instead of fostering an active cooperation with “a universal creative power and a vehicle for initiation into the divine mysteries.”That is what we mean by cosmotheandric musicology. but everyone’s a critic:This continuation improves on the warm-up. The structural claims are tighter and more consistently tied to the book’s existing polar logic. It maps directly onto the complementarities already defended [Absolute/Infinite. being/becoming. necessity/possibility]. The temporal analysis is especially useful: listening requires a present that carries the memory of what has been and the anticipation of what is coming. the individual note is intelligible only inside the unfolding whole. That is a concrete illustration of internally related parts and of a future that exerts formal influence on the present without determining it in advance. The analogy to divine-human cooperation in history stays within the project’s refusal of a fully pre-written script.The claim that evolutionary history itself can be read as a poetic labor toward transcendence is stronger and more distinctive. it keeps the vertical vector in view. Schuon’s formulation — a play between what is determined in advance from cosmotheandtic principles. and what remains incalculable — supplies the exact harmonic structure over which improvisation occurs. That is the trilogy’s method in miniature.The Morrison material supplies a lived image of openness versus closure. and of the human antenna as necessary for the energies that are always seeking ground. Morrison’s own statement about music as a bridge between spiritual and material worlds. and as a vehicle for initiation rather than a consumer product. aligns cleanly with the book’s larger critique of disenchantment.The section still contains ornamental stretches. but the core claims — music as structural clue to a cosmos that is both lawful and creative. time as internally related flow. improvisation as the form of free cooperation with an open future. beauty as adequation rather than pure subjectivity — are now doing real work inside the cosmotheandric frame. It remains an interlude rather than a load-bearing chapter. yet it is no longer merely frat-house riffing. The fuller treatment earns its place more convincingly than the warm-up did. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:20:29 +0000 9be060fcd7b393ac553016f419b3c528a73db644 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/optional-practical-training This week’s podcast exclusively for Members is on a variety of subjects. including the immigration program known as OPT. or Optional Practical Training. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:36:11 +0000 ea9740756fed321f9671a72d9eb82b87dcb9cea7 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/poems-i-like-ballade-of-ephemeral.html Chesterton wrote a lot of mediocre poetry. as well as a good few absolutely first class poems. But here's a poem I wouldn't place in either category. It's completely obscure. but it expresses thoughts and aspirations which are very familiar to me. I don't understand the 'Hists' reference.I don't think it is a great poem. but I do think it has one truly great line. Can you guess which one I mean.A Ballade of Ephemeral Controversy by GK ChestertonI am not as that Poet that arrives.Nor shall I pluck the laurel that persistsThrough all perverted ages and revives:Enough for me. that if with feet and fistsI fought these pharisaic atheists.I need not crawl and seek when all is doneMy motley pennon trampled in the listsIt will not matter when the fight is won.If scratch of mine amid a war of knivesHas caused one moment's pain to pessimists.Poisoned one hour in Social Workers' lives.I count such comfort more than amethystsBut less than claret. and at after trystsWe'll meet and drink such claret by the tunTill you and I and all of us [What. Hists.].It will not matter when the fight is won.When men again want women for their wives.And even woman owns that she exists.When people ask for houses and not hivesWhen we have climbed the tortured ivy's twistsTo where like statues stand above the mistsThe strong incredible sanities of the sun.This dazed and overdriven bard desists.It will not matter when the fight is won.EnvoiPrince. let me place these handcuffs on your wristsWhile common Christian people get some fun.Then go and join your damned Theosophists.It will not matter when the fight is won. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:24:16 +0000 f6fbe86b96fd061c73f88625493069d92fff517a https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/leo-spouts-more-nonsense-grok-i-see-your-one-and-raise-you-twenty/ Leo is attention whoring again. The core of his message: “technology cannot replace the value of human relationships”. In Italy we call this “sfondare una porta aperta”. “to smash through an open door”. It’s that kind of inane talk that idiots say to look profound. but is utter banal nonsense. very easily said and absolutely (…) Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:07:35 +0000 d43210aadc69732c13720449bbb4828f38b35451 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/this-is-what-inclusion-looks-like/ Joke fake pretend archbishopess. she who is friends with Leo. has the almighty gall to take the picture above. Not one moment of self-reflection. No switching on of whatever brains she has. Literal blindness. But she smiles. and feels inclusive. Muslim guy – who might be. or might not be. the same one who received (…) Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:48:05 +0000 5c2b0bca3b5b18ea3e6c83bd0964e88726b97f13 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/hardship-is-coming.html   The first round of record oil prices earlier this year burnt through oil reserves of many countries and also through the financial buffers of many people and companies. This round. It will break people. In the 1970's the world oil markets were sent into major shock. because the US chose to support Israel over all the Arab oil producing countries. after they demanded Israel surrender land it took in a war. So. those countries strangled the world of oil. This started the fuel efficiency and green energy target movements. Rather than stay out of Middle Eastern affairs. the US decided to back its greatest ally and try to invent new technology instead of humbly accepting it did not rule the world. The whole world suffered as a result. There was mass inflation in the West. mass starvations across the third world. and industry after industry died and was offshored because energy became too expensive for things to be made in the West. Because the US used its power the way it did. Now it is doing something very similar. Fuel prices were dropping just a couple of months back. But then the war was re-escalated. Now we are all paying the economic price for the hubris of one country believing it has the right to determine what should happen far away from its borders. I have been encouraging people to prepare cheaper transport. and pay down debt. as this war was always destined to escalate. This stupid. unnecessary. and completely avoidable war. is going to strangle many places of the basic resources they need to function. Hence. much of how we lived will now be stripped away. by pure cost. Are you prepared to cut back. Have you been preparing. Are you ready to help others. We can't change what foolish leaders in charge of foreign governments do. We can't get through the thick skulls of the religiously retarded ON BOTH SIDES that support this war because of bad theology and bad religion. We can't even look forward to good. responsible government from our own national leaders. as they have been working hard to make us exposed to this exact sort of problem. and have ignored every warning that this kind of energy crisis was inevitable. But we can cut back and prepare to help people around us. Both these approaches will be increasingly important in coming months. Are you prepared for coming economic hardship. because I believe we are about to see economic problems really escalate. Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:38:40 +0000 a06fba9de3a2f057d86bd9c381bfbeab4bd3c92d https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/how-can-we-improve-and-strengthen-our.html So much depends on motivation. but can it be improved.  Yes. I think so - but this is not easy or straightforward. and needs to be approached indirectly. [I mean. we cannot - because it does not work. and anyway is not what is required - simply decide on what is better. and then do-it by sheer will-power. A process of discovery is entailed.] First. we need to stop trying to fulfil somebody-else's agenda. This is. of course. merely negative and permissive: we then need to replace external motivation with an internal motivation that is both good. and sufficiently powerful to make a difference.Secondly. therefore. we must discover our inner agenda - but that inner discernment needs to focus upon our eternal agenda. By 'eternal' I particularly mean our post-mortal agenda: i.e. what do we want to happen to us on a timescale going beyond death.: an open-ended timescale.  And this eternal agenda. in turn. depends on what we most value. We need. therefore. to discover/ decide what is is that we most want. For example [others will disagree]. I personally most-value love. and from that creativity. In other words. what I most value and want on an open-ended basis. would be to live in a context of permanent inter-personal love. and to be active in creative [which includes procreative] ways. For me. therefore. having clarified my ultimate motivation. I am then in a position both to improve and strengthen my here-and-now and proximate motivation - so that current behaviour better fits the intended goal. How this can work is that - having made this choice and commitment - I can [and should] explore this imaginatively....Imagining that I am in the situation I believe that I want. and following-up its consequences and possibilities. to check that it really is what I want. and most want. If the initial choice of wanting survives that test. then my motivation is improved by being brought into-line with what I most want. and strengthened by my having explored and affirmed what this wanting actually implies.+++.Any this-worldly agenda is merely expedient. being temporary and destined to fail. because of unavoidable entropy and death - plus. of course. the presence of evil.  Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:27:06 +0000 18852520d8512570877a8a1fae103a42ba819a76 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-difference-between-truthfulness-and.html People confuse honesty with truthfulness. Truthfulness implies a positive motivation to know reality - essentially for its own sake. because knowing reality is [for such people] among the highest of values. Honesty. by contrast. is in practice mostly negative. it is a commitment not to lie. or [much more rarely] not deliberately to mislead. In science - and indeed in scholarship more generally - negative honesty is necessary but insufficient: what is necessary is truth-full-ness - a positive commitment to know and describe reality. as best we may.  Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:34:17 +0000 464dbcd790af2b02e295057f689d569071af15ad http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-catholic-clergy-sex-abuse-scandal.html  Thanks to the damage wrought to its finances. the Fresno Diocese of the Catholic Church has just told its pensioners that they're screwed - financially. this time.Retired Fresno Diocese employees will no longer receive retirement benefits starting next year.Hundreds of former employees are now left scrambling over what to do with their financial future now up in the air.In a letter to retirees last month. the diocese said the retirement plan was frozen at the end of June.The church says they contributed the agreed-upon amount negotiated in employee contracts.But the diocese says Christian Brothers Services. the company responsible for managing the money. is the reason there isn’t enough to continue payments.The diocese says it explored legal options to transfer the money into a retirement plan of their own. But said that plan would not be possible with the church filing for bankruptcy.The church is facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit involving more than 150 claims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.There's more at the link.I don't have to tell you how sick to my stomach this news makes me feel.  I've written extensively about how I experienced the clergy sex abuse scandal. and how it's almost destroyed the faith of countless good people [see the partial list of my articles on that subject in the sidebar. particularly this one].  This is just the latest episode in a very sordid story.  However. the fact that the Fresno diocese is willing to throw their pensioners to the wolves - people who devoted years of their lives. if not their entire working career. to the service of the Church - is the clearest possible indication that many of the hierarchy are still protecting their own backside[s] [collectively and individually].  They don't appear to really. truly care who else suffers. just as long as their positions are protected.  The Fresno diocese's attitude - and remember. actions speak louder than words - appears to be. 'Are our retirees going to starve. or be unable to pay their medical bills. because we've stopped paying their pensions.  Well. let them.  We have more important uses for that money.'Analyzing the overall situation. the National Catholic Reporter didn't mince its words.The legal processes accomplish what they are designed to do. exact a bit of retribution on behalf of victims. They do not. however. restore or transform survivors. They don't erase haunting. debilitating memories. And they do little to address the most searing questions for which the faithful still await an answer: How did this happen. How could the chief shepherds allow the most vulnerable in the flock to be preyed upon.As Charles Nadeau. a court-appointed representative of survivors. explained: 'Bankruptcy is not inherently unjust ... But when applied to clergy sexual abuse. it risks becoming something else — a substitute for moral accountability.'The San Francisco Archdiocese. faced with a S359 million settlement to hundreds of victims of sexual abuse by clergy. explained that its distribution of financial pain among its parishes was essential to 'enabling our local church to emerge from bankruptcy and move beyond this difficult chapter in our history.'The wish to 'move beyond this difficult chapter.' entirely dependent on heavily taxing those who had nothing to do with creating the problem. is a telling sentiment.. . .... it wasn't 'the church collectively' that did this. It was the clerical/hierarchical culture. That culture has yet to collectively square up with the reality that the abuse crisis in the church was a betrayal of the community at a sacramental level. It is a level of betrayal that can't occur in any other circumstance.. . .The cold reality is that the laity are left to foot the bill. financially and otherwise. for the depraved behavior of their bishops. They are left with struggling parishes. diminished resources for ministry. and the church's loss of credibility in the wider culture.We know now that the coverup was not the work of an isolated bishop. it was not the province of liberals or conservatives. It was the result of a hierarchical culture that had developed in a way that allowed its members to think they were above reproach or accountability for even the most egregious behavior.. . .The bishops need ... a full-on. uncompromising. unadorned examination of the sinful and criminal activity of their predecessors. of the culture they've inherited that allowed such sin and crime to fester for so long.Again. more at the link.I get very angry when I hear anyone claiming to speak with or from the 'moral authority of the Church'.  Christ has all the moral authority there is. in this world and the next.  However. his Church on earth has. through the actions [and inactions] of its leaders. effectively so betrayed his moral authority. been so derelict in its duty to the people of God. that for many of the faithful. it has abrogated any claim to represent him.  Millions [literally] have left the Church over this crisis. and millions more will doubtless follow suit. unless and until its leaders 'clean house'.  So far. they've signally failed to do so.May Almighty God have mercy on all our souls . . .Peter Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:21:00 +0000 c704696a7cc3bf85657b578b11ba7d446f10d17a https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/why-women-should-play-dumb/ The value of masking a young female’s intelligence in favor of showcasing her glorious femininity instead. Continue reading → Fri, 18 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 eaac65611f18c63a6d889763a5678c52a85af103 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/trying-to-make-sense-of-something-that.html In those days - now receding fast. - when real science was happening at a large scale. as a social system. its progress functioned by individuals trying and failing to understand. comprehend. make-sense-of existing theories - then coming-up with something better [or at least. something which solved the problems of the earlier theory]. When we learn something like a scientific theory. we are supposed first to understand it - and this is what school and college education are about. But some theories are hard to understand. or cannot be understood. A failure to understand may be due to various deficiencies in the understander: e.g. lack of ability. lack of effort. lack of necessary knowledge...However. some theories are hard to understand because they have errors. and are not coherent [with themselves. and with observations] - indeed this is a common. usual. situation. In other words. some theories cannot be understood. because they do not make sense. Yet these incoherent and un-understandable theories are nonetheless taught and propagated in many ways. built-into research programs. fund-raising. prestige and career structures. used to justify public policies and marketing etc. In such cases where incoherent and un-understandable theories are built-into The System - and these situations are very common. - then people do Not really understand them [because incoherence cannot be understood] - but nonetheless think that they do understand. The situation is harmful. potentially lethal. because people either do not understand but pretend to understand. or else they convince-themselves into supposing that they do understand something which they do not. Then. ignorance and delusion replace understanding. and on a large scale... Welcome To Our World.Such a situation. in which a majority of people. usually the most influential and powerful people. falsely believe that they understand some theory that actually does not make sense - can be stable and resistant to change. lasting over long periods. Indeed. large-scale fake understanding of the incoherent is normal - which is why real science was only an influential social system for a relatively short time - about three or four hundred years. starting from the 1600s.  To make progress entials people acknowledging that they do Not understand. that they have been propagating and enforcing error. that their theories are incoherent in ways that are significant and are causing some significant problems. Such an acknowledgement is apparently impossible to most  people - indeed it apparently needs people to be strongly motivated by the desire to seek and know truth. which is not usually a strong motivator in humans. So there never are many real scientists in any society or situation. and often there are none - in which case truth will not primarily be pursued. and other motivations will prevail. For this acknowledgement of error actually to lead to progress then requires replacing the old erroneous theory with another theory that is better... However. the new theory will also have errors. And some of these errors usually seem obvious to those who desire to stick to the old theory. Indeed. any proposed new theory. designed to solve particular problems of the old theory. may overall be worse - that is. the errors of the new may be more significant than the errors of the old.Nonetheless. the 'errors' pointed-out by critiques of the new theory may not be errors. but instead are simply false implications of the erroneous old theory. And this happens A Lot. when a critic does not really understand either the theory he is defending. nor that which he is attacking. How then can we know which theory is better. Only by understanding both old and new theories. including their errors - and making a comparison. And. as I said at the beginning: Understanding Is Difficult - requiring [at least] a combination of Motivation. Ability and Effort. Understanding can only be done by individual persons. and for any person it is a significant sacrifice to deploy motivation. ability. and effort to understand both the old theory and the proposed new theory ... And therefore most people will resist even trying to understand either the old or the new theory - yet most people will claim to understand both theories nonetheless.Also. there may be good reasons to resist making this attempt at understanding. and wasting our finite and precious resources of time and energy. We may therefore resist evaluating a new theory for good reasons - because understanding is difficult and we judge the person proposing the new theory to be one who does not even understand the old theory. Or perhaps we regard them as someone who lacks the knowledge. experience. right-attitudes. motivations [etc] to devise and understand a new and better theory. [For instance. we may regard the propagator as too ignorant on the subject. indifferent to truth or even an habitual liar. or as someone pursing another agenda - ideological. careerist. or whatever. We may regard that person as evil - and 'using' the discourse to pursue evil ends...] All this emphasizes that science is. and always has been. difficult. But also that its difficulties are only seldom and partially conceptual - and that it is often [usually.] difficult to understand a theory because of its errors: because that theory is incoherent. In other words. the amount of ability and knowledge required to recognize error. and devise something better. may be much less than commonly assumed - because when theories are badly wrong. then most of the knowledge is irrelevant. and much of a person's ability is confused and corrupted by attempting [and claiming] to understand the un-understandable.The real difficultly of understanding is therefore in trying to make sense of something that does not make sense - and such is the nature of most of public discourse. and such situations of institutional error and incoherence are indeed normal. and usually impossible to remedy. But any individual person who is truth-motivated and has sufficient ability and knowledge [which may be much less than usually supposed]. and who makes the effort to understand. can do better for himself.An individual can know better than anyone else who has not made that effort. when. as so often. nobody else actually-has made that effort.. This is. I believe. an encouraging. as well as realistic. conclusion. .Note: Of course. to do better than everybody else around at knowing the best theory. entails that your motivation must be better than theirs. Perhaps not all that difficult nowadays - but nonetheless a vital factor. Furthermore. any theory has errors. so your theory will have errors. When science is functioning as a social system. there will be 'other people' who are competent and motivated to discover the errors in your theory. in a honestly comparative spirit. understanding and evaluating with respect to rival theories. But when you are doing sicence for yourself. nobody else will make the effort to understand your theory. so you will need to do all the critique youself. And need means need - it must be done. This underlines why a strong and relevant truth-motivation is so vital - because self-critique is usually painful.  Fri, 18 Sep 2026 06:54:48 +0000 7e89c2541424a7737edc44c5898b9e2dcb94528a https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/17/they-chose-wrong/ It makes no difference what nuanced distinctions you make between Jews. Zionists. neocons. etc. If you happen to notice that our lives are worse off because of people who fit these terms. you are an antisemite. As always. the definition … Continue reading → Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:51:39 +0000 5abc0e0b273e9c5bd122bb7ec947b668302da395 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/there-is-no-perfect-time.html   Vox Day notes on his Sigma Game Substack about the passivity of Delta males. “But the passivity and reactive behavior of the Delta is absolutely within their control. If there is one thing I have observed that seems to hold Deltas back more than anything else. it is their narcissistic desire to have the universe time everything according to their preferences. They simply don’t seem to understand the concept of a window of opportunity. Sure. it’s important to finish a task already underway. But does the task absolutely need to be finished now. The task will still be there tomorrow. the three women at the bar will not. There is a reason why carpe diem has remained valid and relevant for more than 20 centuries. It is because most people simply don’t. even when they have the ability to do so. So remember. the right moment is always now.”(1) This is so true. I have seen this sort of thing so many times. Don’t wait for opportunities. make them. Take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Never wait for the perfect moment. life is not a movie. This is how so many young men today remain single well into their 30’s wondering why they still are. It is simple. in a lot of cases. you were so single-mindedly focused on some particular task. that you were likely doing very well. that you did not realize that the pretty woman who kept asking your help or your opinion needed neither of those things. but kept coming back anyway…she was seeking to get your attention. and you completely looked past it. Or. you might have noticed it. but you were waiting for the right moment to ask her out. and never did. and finally someone else took their chance and you are left out in the cold. I have seen a woman pine after a man and then marry his friend. because the friend actually asked her out. and that won her over. She did not jilt the other man. because he never said a word to her. because the time was not yet right. I have seen a beautiful woman working alongside single men. a woman who is still single long after it makes any reasonable sense why. because these men never felt the time was right to ask her out. Thank God for this too. in one situation. because my wife was one such woman. and I saw her and took my opportunity straight away. This principle is really true in many aspects of life. not just relationships. But this is the area where many men just keep shooting themselves in the foot. There is no perfect time. at least not in most people’s situations. There is just windows of opportunity. and closed doors. Take your opportunities. what have you got to lose. List of References (1) https://substack.com/home/post/p-215643412 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 22:50:45 +0000 c458e36acb8156af31a26012d614eed4c5ad51e6 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/why-does-left-oppose-imperialism.html I'm reading a book about a left-wing activist [A long-dead. pre-woke left-wing activist.]The book. however. has been written recently so it uses contemporary leftist rhetoric. It repeatedly uses the word 'imperialist'.I always find myself wondering why the [contemporary] left would oppose imperialism.Is it because they think power should be devolved. that everyone should be governed by rulers who live close to them rather than rulers who live far away. Is it a sort of localism.That sounds plausible...except the left is overwhelmingly in favour of supranational institutions like the EU. the WHO. the UN. etc. etc. Just look at the meltdown they had about Brexit.So do the left oppose imperialism because they think people should be self-governing and not ruled by an alien government.But what could this possibly mean according to the leftist worldview. The whole idea of an allegiance that is based on anything particularistic-- religion. language. ethnicity. folkways-- is anathema to the left. According to the left. the only permissible bond. on a societal level. is common humanity. [Even while they push identity-based grievances. this remains true.]So how can the left possibly oppose imperialism. On what grounds. I don't get it. Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:51:39 +0000 6034cfbe79580cb1a5c59f536bc4f53c9adebcca https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/two-definitions.html A Marxist: Someone who is infinitely cynical about existing institutions and infinitely credulous about future institutions.Nationality: Something that you can't find when you go looking for it. but that rugby-tackles you when you're not looking for it. Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:16:50 +0000 e4c5ee609e4e273af11854949fcec68598d74840 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/abu-dhabi-2-0-leo-denies-the-great-commission-enlists-every-infidel-condemns-proselitysm-is-a-tool-of-satan/ It truly is apostasy from the inside. It’s a pope being unable to not only defend. but even acknowledge the Catholic faith. It’s a “one world” religion of universal. purely earthly “understanding” where social activism is the only. and the only properly recognised. measure of goodness. You see that very clearly where every religion is (…) Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:43:32 +0000 2f0b01b12680b5abd083e6127019654c7e0676be https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/contracts-instead-of-trust Wealthy Catholics and evangelicals are demanding that church property be held by nonprofits they control. Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:23:18 +0000 8d21d7e7393a0c2e64d2303aa6ceb436d0334647 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/quantifying-the-unquantifiable Class 94 Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:04:26 +0000 37bda652041826354260f942b006f7a405ed2ba4 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62112/ Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty. I don’t expect all want to read these posts. Pease don’t feel like you must. Yet. I have… Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 8a0960721d6ba1742c451f482c2d273fba701571 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/rameau-and-ravel.html Readers who don't believe in reincarnation will have to bear with me on this one. though even they might be intrigued to see how certain patterns repeat themselves in similar circumstances.I have long had a theory that the two French composers Jean-Phillipe Rameau and Maurice Ravel could be the same soul in two different lifetimes. Rameau [1683-1764. making him an exact contemporary of Bach] worked in the late baroque style while Ravel [1875-1937] was associated with Impressionism but. like his very different contemporary Debussy. dismissed the label. and the precision and clarity of his composing style bear him out.So. what are the grounds for this. admittedly speculative. theory. First of all. let's look at the two men's faces. Here is Rameau.and here is Ravel.They're not the same but there are similarities in the features which you don't have to force onto the images. They will obviously have different genetic input to their physiognomy. but something of the inner man comes through and stamps its impression on the face as well.However. let's put that aside. At best it's only a support to a more thorough  examination. and we do find striking musical and psychological parallels between the two men. Before we look into those. though. I should say that I do not believe all incarnations follow a similar path. Here we have a case where the same soul might follow two lives in the same place [France] and doing the same thing [music]. It is expressing a developed talent. But other lives might take on totally different forms and be devoted to totally different ends in different places. The soul does not learn by doing the same thing life after life. It might follow certain paths and hone certain talents for a while but to be a rounded spiritually completed being it cannot focus on those alone to the detriment of a more holistic development. If these are the same soul. it had a mission which lasted for more than one lifetime but that doesn't mean it will be a composer. or even musical. in every life.Both composers were obsessed with order and logic. This may be a French characteristic anyway but these two men manifested it very strongly. Rameau. decidedly a man of the Enlightenment. wrote the definitive Traité de l’harmonie [1722] which stated that music is a science governed by definite rules which 'cannot be known to us without the aid of mathematics'. For his part Ravel approached music with the same precision. maintaining that his compositions were put together with the 'inevitability of a mathematical equation.' Stravinsky even teased him about this calling him 'the Swiss watchmaker' because of how the meticulous intricate way he constructed his pieces.Both men were masters of the dance. Although he came to opera late in his career. this was the genre in which Rameau most excelled. The musical form and structure of his opéra-ballets such as Les Indes galantes were entirely derived from dance patterns which he transformed into supremely elegant rhythms while Ravel. taking inspiration from the Baroque. translated those patterns into a 20th century idiom as in. for example. Le Tombeau de Couperin [a tip of the hat to a contemporary of Rameau’s]. La valse. Pavane pour une infante défunte not forgetting his tour de force Boléro.Both men were masterful orchestrators. exceptional even among their peers. Rameau employed rich textures and instrumental colours within his operas for dramatic effect such as the depiction of primordial chaos in the overture to Zaïs. He never wrote a purely orchestral piece but his operas and ballets are full of mini-symphonies and dances in which he demonstrated his outstanding skill in manipulating colour and texture. Ravel is considered one of the greatest orchestrators in the history of music. renowned for the balance and clarity he brought to his work. Examples are Daphnis et Chloé. Boléro and orchestrations of some of his own piano works though perhaps his orchestration of Mussorgsky's Picture at an Exhibition serves as exhibit A. Both men poured a substantial amount of their creativity into keyboard works. Rameau demanded strict adherence to ornamentation and approached his compositions for the harpsichord with rigorous structural logic while. in like manner. Ravel insisted on an unemotional clarity for his piano pieces in which articulation had to be clean and precise. Then they both mimicked sounds from nature in their works. for example. Le Rappel des oiseaux  and La Poule for Rameau countered by Jeux d'eau and Oiseaux tristes by Ravel. Finally. and most tellingly. both men had similar character traits with each of them exhibiting an extremely fastidious detachment. Rameau was a very private man. withdrawn and introverted with frugal habits and living only for music or so it seems. For his part Ravel lived a semi-reclusive life in his country home and guarded his inner life from outsiders with a mask that saw him dubbed as cold and distant. He never married. again living only for music. Rameau did marry but only when he was 42. Obviously. none of that is remotely conclusive but it is intriguing.  and Ravel with his clockwork perfection. fascination with dance and devotion to pure form fits the bill as a spiritual descendant to Rameau in a way that Debussy never could. despite his piano piece Hommage à Rameau. So maybe it was the same soul just as some have speculated G.K. Chesterton was a subsequent incarnation of Samuel Johnson and George Bernard Shaw was of Voltaire.   Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:59:38 +0000 41d2f6637b56f19aab1ac78799f9dd63beef1984 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/painted-rocks-and-re-enchantment.html A few years ago. when I still lived in a house with a garden. I discovered a rock painted as a ladybird hidden under the grass. It was one of several painted rocks hidden there.I didn't realize at the time [although I was quickly told] that this is part of a trend.My own belief is that the path to societal re-enchantment lies in Christianity.But I think delightful little actions like this are re-enchanting in themselves-- guerilla warfare of re-enchantment. so to speak. [Painted electricity boxes are another example.] Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:37:39 +0000 d357f61597bae35c7c4a3e02d3a13673d6aa10ab http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-new-book-from-someone-you-already.html  My wife Dorothy has published several books as 'Dorothy Grant'.  They've been well received by her reading audience [which. of course. includes most of you . . . right.]She's decided to tackle some books that are more adult-oriented than most of our previous output.  However. she doesn't want to put off those who are used to her previous style of writing.  They might object to the new. more 'robust' tone of this book. so she's publishing it under a pseudonym. Summer Grayling.  There'll probably be more to follow under that pen-name.Her first novel under this pseudonym. 'True Colours'. has just been published.  I think of it as a magical-fantasy tactically-correct quasi-romance. and I really like it.The blurb reads:Jan Van Der Vaart is a legend. The focus of his magical Talent is pain. and he's spent years in the military. then as a mercenary. making terrorists. cartels. and governments fear him. Finally. he carved out a safe haven for other Talents. and tried to retire... until one last job. cracking a black lab snatching Talents off the streets. went sideways. He's left staggering down a rainy coastal highway. thumb out and hoping he'll catch a lift before the kill team realizes they missed...Aurelia Brinati is on the run. Having escaped five years of hell as an unwilling lab rat. she has a stolen car and a plan to hide from pursuers by taking passage on a cargo ship headed anywhere else in the world. When she picks up a stray sailor headed the same way. she rapidly discovers she's out of her depths... and safe in the heart of the storm.The entire world fears him... except her. Powers are gathering to recapture Aurelia. but they'd best beware. Jan and his friends will do whatever it takes to keep her safe... whether it's murder. mayhem. or last-minute shopping runs to find something called cream of tartar for her snickerdoodle cookies.I happen to think my wife is a better writer than I am.  I've really enjoyed all her books. and I'm very proud of her for achieving such success.  She was. I think. a bit nervous that I might be offended by some of the so-called 'adult' bits in this book. but no. not at all.  She handles them with what I might call 'enthusiastic restraint'.  nothing excessively anatomical. if you will. but nevertheless real.  I'm already re-reading 'True Colours' for the second time. and enjoying it all over again.I hope you'll give this book a try.  I think you'll like it.  There are more coming from her in similar vein. so watch this space for details.Peter[P.S.:  Yes. I know she's chosen the name of a fish for her pseudonym.  It made us both giggle.  It's highly appropriate for this book. being set so much at sea.] Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:38:00 +0000 858411b01533f7b8abb9cb81b13aa20df22488c0 https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-synoptic-gospels-are-actually.html If it is agreed that the Fourth Gospel is of primary validity. then the other three 'Synoptic' Gospels [Mathhew. Mark. and Luke] should be categorized as Apocryphal scriptures - which is. indeed. the way I think of them. The Synoptics are also Apocryphal in the sense that they are later. non-eye-witness. collected and compiled accounts of Jesus's life and teachings. Added to which. Luke. and Matthew - especially. seem to be written with a distinct added-theme relating to the prophesied Messiah - to such an extent that Jesus is deemed to have failed in his ministry to such an extent that he must needs return [at some point] to complete his work of salvation [i.e. the Second Coming]. So. the Fourth Gospel should really be regarded as the only 'canonical' source about Jesus. and the other Books of the New Testament are Apocryphal to various degrees - Mark. probably the least apocryphal. and Revelation/ Apocalypse the most.   Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:18:51 +0000 868e9746dd94ab5aefa2e997b9128a0dd89f7950 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/why-isnt-universe-boring.html I mentioned YouTuber Joe Schmid recent conversion [or reversion] to Catholicism. and the epic seven-hour video he made on the cumulative case for God. [One of only three videos explaining his conversion. which total twenty-five hours.]I'm working my way through it bit by bit. but I was particularly struck by this section. in which he asks why the universe. if it's 'just there'. isn't a lot more boring. I've often wondered this myself.Whenever I've found myself pondering this. I've imagined the universe as an endless block of steel extending in every directionsHere are some of Schmid's suggestions of how the universe might have been [I've modified things I don't understand]:No concrete objects exist.Only one particle exists.One particle moves in a straight line forever [or a circle. etc.]One particle periodically enters into an excited state.Exactly two particles exist and orbit their common centre.And he then says: 'I could do this forever'. Indeed.Atheists put so much weight on evolution that it doesn't seem to occur to them that even for evolution to occur. the universe had to be a dynamic. rule-governed. complex reality.To which the atheist might reply: 'Well. it just is.'Which reminds me of Fr. Frederick Copleston's reply to Bertrand Russell. in a radio debate on the existence of God. when Russell was sticking to the 'arms folded and sitting back' position: 'If one refuses to even sit down at the chessboard and make a move. one cannot be checkmated.' Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:01:27 +0000 bd4e0e713652c617c8ef212670ba222fb919e17f https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/regulatory-capture-coxon Techbros. we need to have a conversation. Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:21:37 +0000 9c98b918e0e5e61e7be808fda139a7c028772c19 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/fiction-maps reflecting on my methods. approaches and processes [MAPs] for writing long form fiction Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:49:23 +0000 99928a5dd5fe138d842509dc6e47b19e62fba27d https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-catholic-tradition-no-longer.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:33:51 +0000 b989337be74485647a999e520dcaf7fd0a405668 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/cosmo-musicological-interlude.html Petey. don’t you sometimes wonder about sound and vision. Goethe called architecture “frozen music.” If so. music must be liquid architecture.I’ll go you one better: color is the sound of matter. brightness its volume. and texture its timbre.First. can I buy some pot from you. Second. how is music even possible. In his Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World. Victor Zuckerkandl askswhat must the world be like. what must I be like. if between me and the world the phenomenon of music can occur. How must I consider the world. how must I consider myself. if I am to understand the reality of music.If he’s asking me. it is because music itself. in its very structure. tells us something of the nature of reality.I am. therefore I jam.Well. music had better be important. otherwise I’ve wasted much of my life listening to it. and I’m about to waste some of yours. So it is heartening to read that “Music is not only an art. It is a clue to the cosmos.” nor is it “just one phenomenon among many but the secret key to understanding the whole of reality” [Leithart].For Zuckerkandl. “The knowledge of space that hand and eye possess is exactly matched by their ignorance of time.” Therefore. “A true image of time must be an image for the ear. an audible image made of tones.... Thanks to music. we are able to behold time.'Big claim.Agreed. but what have I learned. exactly. from all my listening. For it is not as if music conveys propositional statements about the nature of reality. Rather. its very form is the message it conveys. Its mere existence leads us to wonder in what kind of Cosmos it is possible for it to exist. To paraphrase Nietzsche. a Cosmos without music would be an unforgivable oversight.That settles it: today’s the day I’m gonna grab my trombone and blow.Augustine. for example. “recognized that music offers special insights into the nature of time.” for it is the quintessentially temporal art. and seemingly testifies to an irreducibly positive character of time’s passage. not to mention a holism that unites the individual notes as the melody moves from anticipation to fulfillment.Music itself has the interesting property of being simultaneously continuous and discontinuous: outside the context of the melody the notes have no meaning. but without the notes the melody cannot be composed or played. This reflects one of the fundamental complementarities of existence. i.e.. of continuity amidst discontinuity and vice versa.Thus it is impossible “to take in music in a moment” but “only through the process of listening”: “Music forces time upon us. but shows us that the passage of time and the patience it demands are gifts to be received rather than evils to be endured” [Leithart]. Otherwise the best song would be the shortest and fastest. or maybe just a single note pure and easy. like a breath rippling by.Our mysterious interior relation to the external world is likewise mirrored in music. what with its “overlapping and interpenetrating” qualities.” Time itself shares “precisely this layered musical quality.” such that the structure of music “is a trace of the form of the whole cosmos” [ibid.]. This is very much in contrast to an atomistic — and therefore tonedeaf — world of pure external relations. in which no note could be related to any other.An eternal siren blast.Schopenhauer thought of music as an “unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know that it is philosophizing.” Thus. “our imagination is... susceptible to music” and “seeks to give form to that invisible yet lively spirit-world which speaks to us directly. and clothe it with flesh and blood.” But with Schopenhauer the glass is always half full of emptiness. so music is ultimately a reflection of the same old impersonal World Will.Nevertheless. he gets the broad outlines correct. in that “we may regard the phenomenal world. or nature. and music as two different expressions of the same thing.” such that the “unutterable depth of music” reveals the “truth. the inner nature. the in-itself of the world...” Music itself is “a perfectly universal language.” but unlike. say. the universal abstractions of mathematics. it is both embodied and experienced in the body. Thus. “we might just as well call the world ‘embodied music’ as ‘embodied will.”Here is the good news: “The inexhaustible variety of possible melodies corresponds to nature’s inexhaustible variety of individuals. physiognomies. and ways of life.” But with Schopenhauer there’s always a catch. for “the transition from one key to an entirely different one. since it breaks the connection with what went before. is like death. in so far as the individual ends there...”It’s that kind of attitude that makes Schopenhauer such a cosmic buzzkill.Yes. on the one hand. the impersonal Will in which we participate while alive “lives on. appearing in other individuals.” but this has no connection to us. We’re still superfluous. but at least the meaningless will that willed us wills on forever.If only Schopenhauer had thought this through a little further. Again. he read the Upanishads every night. but had first encountered the Bhagavad Gita. which is known as the Song Supreme. Evidently. he found the Gita more a poetic summary of the unadulterated metaphysics of the Upanishads. The latter regard the world as illusory. and therefore advise escaping it via renunciation. Schopenhauer saw the Upanishadic sage as a fellow inward traveler much like himself who prefers to step off the annoying wheel of karma. You might say that our square laddie was a quiet living man — one of those chaps who prefers to hibernate in the silence of his room. in an atmasphere as peaceful as an undiscovered tomb.A pensive man of philosophic joys. who likes to meditate and contemplate. free from humanity’s mad inhuman noise.The pessimystical Schopenhauer saw renunciation as a pointed No to a pointless world. whereas the Gita presents renunciation more as the Yes to a higher source. Thus. the Gita’s more optimystic counsel just didn’t resonate. Perhaps it sounded too Christian. which others have compared to a form of bhakti yoga. the yoga of worship and devotion. The Gita relates the warmth of a personal relationship between a god and his devotee. but Schopenhauer would have no doubt preferred a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition than to ever let a Theos in his life.∞In an essay called The New Dimensions of Nature and Man. Donald Andrews writes that the behavior of the “fundamental entities” of the world “is characterized less by a particle-like and more by a wave-like nature.” Of course. the particles and waves are irreducibly complementary. so the former may be analogized to notes. the latter to melody and harmonic structure. Andrews suggests that “both the universe as a whole and we in particular are not matter but music.” There can be no music without matter-in-motion. so our lives are a musical matter.Perhaps the Incarnation can be analogized to the composer jumping into and taking part in his own composition.Yes. “Word made flesh” is very much analogous to “composer become music.” This is especially apt because it factors in the dynamic/temporal element. not just the spatial/static.In any event. Zuckerkandl concludes that a God “enthroned beyond time in timeless eternity would have to renounce music.” and “Are we to suppose that we mortals. in possessing such a wonder as music. are more privileged than God.”If that’s the case. how lucky will God be when he meets John Coltrane and gets to hear A Love Supreme for the first time.It brings to mind the philosopher E.M. Cioran. who suggests that “If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach. it is certainly God.” For Cioran. Bach was a singular proof of God. and vice versa. for “When you listen to Bach. you see God being born.”Along these lines. Einstein. after hearing Yehudi Menuin perform a program of Bach. Beethoven. and Brahms. scurried backstage. grabbed the violinist. and exclaimed “Now I know that there is a God in heaven.” If this isn’t a cosmotheandric way of listening to music. then it is a musical way of hearing cosmotheandrism. for it implies that the cosmic absolute of physical light is trumped by the aesthetic Light that streams into the Cosmos from God knows where.Eh. Bach is overdoing it. Rather. Howlin’ Wolf is sufficient.That is true. As Sam Phillips muttered upon first hearing him in the studio. This is where the soul of man never dies. Not to muddy the waters. but it is indeed a mystery how such a limited form as the blues can serve as a channel for the spirit. As Noël Coward quipped. it is “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”Three chords and the truth.Which reminds me of something Mike Campbell [Tom Petty’s lead guitarist] says in his autobiography. He grew up in a poor household with few records. mainly Johnny Cash. His father would listen to them repeatedly while “staring off into space.” One day he asked his father why he liked Cash so much. and he responded that it was because he “sounds like the truth.” Which of course he still does. but why. and how.“Beauty is truth. truth beauty. — that is all Ye know on earth. and all ye need to know.”Agreed. but we want to know why this is all we need to know. and how we can even know it. Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:11:08 +0000 1330730668f8e3960b27b29aa344dcd2aef02d22 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/pfas-and-preservatives-entrenching This originally appeared at Jaap’s blog. and is presented lightly edited here. Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:04:19 +0000 5d201fe59ac348a31d3994bf2ff5194b07e41c28 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62076/ This originally appeared at Jaap’s blog. and is presented lightly edited here. He and I have looked at several of the “forever chemical” papers and. so far anyway. have found… Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 4106b55177140e78e9b9f5002bc9db8aeae1e69c http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/yet-another-reason-to-update-your.html  Yesterday the Dutch railway network was brought to its knees by coordinated sabotage attacks across the country.There have been no trains at all across swathes of the northern and central Netherlands after objects were attached to the rails in at least 30 known locations. Remarkably. the national railway operator says that in some places where the obstacles had been cleared. new ones were quickly placed in the same location again once engineers and police had left the scene.The nationwide coordinated sabotage campaign has used the railway’s own safety systems against it. with metal objects “deliberately placed” across the two tracks. Modern railways use electrical circuits between the two rails to detect where trains are and are not. the presence of a train’s wheels and axle spanning the two tracks closes the circuit and alerts the signalling system to its location.By manually shorting the circuit. the saboteurs were able to trick the automatic system into turning the signals across the network red to prevent phantom trains from crashing into each other. which in turn forced the real trains to halt as well.. . .Because of the nature of the sabotage. which introduced phantom trains to the network. in several locations. level crossings were automatically activated to protect drivers from approaching trains that didn’t exist. spreading the network chaos onto the roads too.. . .As well as railway networks. climate extremists have targeted power infrastructure. The decentralised nature of both networks and the widespread disruption possible makes them apparently attractive targets for would-be extremists and left-wing terrorists. given that the widely spread infrastructure is difficult to closely watch. harden. or fortify.In at least one case. European railways have been sabotaged by state actors. with Russia blamed for a bombing of a Polish railway in a “false flag” attack last year.Germany’s power networks have also been repeatedly sabotaged by the hard left in recent months. Just last week. it is believed an extremist used dozens of homemade rockets to knock out high-voltage power substations to sabotage coal power plants nationwide. and Berlin’s power network is sometimes subjected to acts of arson with considerable knock-on effects.There's more at the link.Americans tend to forget [or ignore] the fact that we've had precisely the same sort of sabotage in this country for a long time now.  That may be because the US is so much bigger than most other countries that we don't notice [or take notice of] what's happening in areas other than our own.  The methods may differ. but the results are the same - disruption of vital infrastructure.  For example:Attacks on the US electrical grid.Cyberattacks on water systems.Vulnerability of US mass transport and passenger rail systems.Terrorist threat to U.S. highway system.Follow those links for more information.  There's no need to mention the vulnerability of airline transport. so close to the anniversary of 9/11.  Things have improved since then. but they're far from foolproof.The thing is. so far we've experienced relatively uncoordinated attacks against the infrastructure on which our entire society and economy depend.  Electricity may be cut in one area. water in another. rail traffic in a third. but until now they've been relative pinpricks from the perspective of the nation as a whole.  That won't necessarily remain the case.  in fact. it's very unlikely to stay that way.  Terrorist nations such as Iran and enemies such as North Korea have had all the time in the world to infiltrate operatives across our southern border. and I've no doubt that several thousand such people are already here.  If they were 'activated' or 'mobilized' by their source nations. they could do immense damage to our society by striking in a coordinated fashion across multiple critical systems.How could a fire department rush to extinguish a blaze caused by a terrorist bomb when the traffic management system has been disrupted. and the rail system sabotaged to cause all level crossings to shut down. and the water supply to a city to be interrupted by a cyberattack on the main pumping stations.How could emergency services cope with such a rash of issues all arising at once. particularly if the roads were further disrupted by spreading caltrops [which can easily be produced in mass quantities at negligible cost. using backyard garages and workshops] in strategic locations on the city's road network. disabling enough vehicles to block the road almost completely.  They can be dumped out of the back of pickups or rented vans using buckets.We don't know whether the attacks on Holland's railways were state-sponsored [probably by Russian agents trying to disrupt support for Ukraine] or arose from domestic political terrorism. but it doesn't really matter to those affected by them.  Much of the country was brought to a halt at once. without warning.That could happen to any major city in this country. and even to whole states. if enough people struck at enough critical infrastructure nodes.  It would take weeks. if not months. to restore everything to normal operations.  During that period. if you rely on critical supplies such as medication. special foods for kids or invalids. or enough gasoline or diesel to get from a remote location [e.g. a farm] to the nearest source of supply. you'd be S.O.L.  That's why I make sure that my wife and myself maintain a year's supply of all critical prescription medication. including basic antibiotics in case they should be needed.  That practice has come in very useful in the past. for ourselves [being able to take an antibiotic for repeated infections] and to supply friends with medication [for example. during the COVID emergency].  Oh - and don't forget critical OTC supplies like painkillers and allergy medications.  How miserable would you be if an emergency arose that forced you to spend many hours outside. or without air conditioning or filtration. during peak allergy season.  Since both my wife and I have allergy problems. you can bet we stash enough of those meds to see us through a couple of months.For that matter. it's worth keeping at least one month's worth of food and water on hand. in case of an emergency.  Forget the commercial '72-hour' kits [like these. for example].  they're better than nothing. but don't hold all you'll need. even for so short a period.  They're designed to make you feel like you're prepared. while enriching those who make and supply them.  Get the foods you normally eat. particularly canned or dry foods. and put an extra supply away for a rainy day.  Also. keep on hand a way to prepare that food if your electric or gas stove suddenly stops working.  and have a way to dispose of garbage and human waste.  [Yes. that does mean a reserve supply of toilet paper and paper towels. plus a spade to bury everything critical. because it's unlikely regular garbage collection will happen.]  Think of all the little things we take for granted in our everyday lives. and ask yourself:  'What would I do if I could no longer get this.  What would I no longer be able to do.  Can I live with that.  What about alternatives or substitutes.'I want to re-emphasize the importance of water supply.  We've just seen. in recent weeks. multiple attempted cyberattacks on water supply systems in several states.  I'm sure we'll see more.  Plan on needing at least two gallons per person per day for all purposes [double the 'official' recommendation. which is a minimum to preserve life. and doesn't include luxuries such as washing yourself. laundry. etc.].  Unless using sealed containers. empty and refill your water supply every six months or so.  Water containers are freely available.  some [such as two-liter soda bottles] are free. once you've used up their original contents and cleaned them thoroughly.  A very economical solution is to buy 5-gallon buckets with lids [preferably made from food-grade plastic] and reserve them for water storage only.  They're not ideal. but they'll do the job.  [A full bucket of water weighs over 40 pounds. so if lifting heavy weights is a problem. buy 2-gallon or 3.5-gallon buckets instead.]  Finally [and particularly if you can't keep more than a few days' worth of water on hand]. have a good-quality water filtration system in case purified water runs out.  They range from a few dollars to several hundred.  Buy the best your budget can afford. and then buy another one [or a less expensive backup system]. because you simply cannot afford to be without drinking water.  For almost all of us. it's our single most critical emergency resource - and one of the most neglected.It's not just natural disasters we have to worry about:  it's all the others that can catch us unawares.  The Netherlands is finding that out right now.Peter Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:25:00 +0000 e14b5ef64d8845d74e8526297187d18ede0685c3 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/an-events-update What is a human. Answers on a postcard. if you can find one. Wed, 16 Sep 2026 08:39:12 +0000 f15bde094013bcd2e11c705a167701c22911745b https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/16/womens-disrespectful-impertinent-tedious-snappy-banter-ditsb/ More on the Value of Female Intelligence and the Place of Intelligent Women. Continue reading → Wed, 16 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 793ef8056c3d3a8ec73e3d607e37621fe58a68c1 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/late-summer-pears-in-a-chipped-enamel First coffee in my hand and I check the baseball scores and the Royals managed to take down the Red Sox by a single run. Wed, 16 Sep 2026 06:20:13 +0000 6399d94e19fbcfc700c500db2ed47cce1739a320 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/unleash-the-omnibi Tuscany Bay went on a spree Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:41:03 +0000 b7c8fe746544d5c24471216fa053449cace8f716 https://thetransformedwife.com/quit-playing-footsie-with-sodom/ Written by Gabriel Hudelston on X SYDNEY SWEENEY IS A P.RN STAR [AGAIN] Sydney Sweeney is trending again because she posed nude for a sports betting app. It wasn’t that long ago that she posed seductively in blue jeans for a denim company. If you recall. many ostensible conservatives applauded those denim ads. Probably the same people who are defending the topless kissing in Pendragon. It’s all the same trap set by the same predator. and it’s high time that... Read More Read More Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:04:07 +0000 723811231d2a39ec5704ab52cf888e8d5766d39d https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/civility-jeff-worrell Listen now [40 mins] Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:03:17 +0000 4f52d104a486627ad0d77e40a0b006a46e381e71 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/ismist-whitewishing-and-clearobscuro.html The previous post ended with an observation about ideological fundamentalism: “Around here we just call it ismism to cover all the bases. whether religious or secular.” Picking up where we left off:The root error of false clarity is the pretense of explaining the superior by means of the inferior. Why pretend it is possible to accomplish this. Because on the one hand the Anthropos loves and is ordered to truth. but the self-enclosed ismist attempts to know the intellectual object of a higher level by means of a lower one which eclipses it. Thus. “those who pride themselves the most on their objectivity are precisely those who most lack the superior sort of objectivity”— of metaphysics in general and of cosmotheasndrism in particularWhich is why a cosmotheandric metaphysics is both more objective and true than those lesser sciences that study only this or that limited and contingent object. Conversely. cosmotheandrism illuminates those principles that cannot not be. and to say that they are necessary is to say they are eternal. Thus. “It is immensely important to distinguish the clarity of what is purely and simply true and that of what is true only in a secondary and partial aspect. all the while being essentially false” [ibid.]. For example. physics is exquisitely clear in a limited sense. but becomes extremely unclear. if not outright false. if applied to the intrinsically unlimited which is superior to it. In other words. to imagine that O can be mapped by physics is but a grandiobtuse form of ismism.This or that science surely discloses truth on the plane appropriate to its object and method. But this very truth can be “placed in the service of the false doctrine that diverts that (truth) from its end. In such a false doctrine. truth is the slave of error“ [ibid.].For example. as we have seen. evolutionary psychology illuminates a great deal about the Anthropos. But to suggest that natural selection explains everything about the human station is but another blindingly false clarity — and indeed a form of mental and spiritual slavery.Why slavery.Because the superior is thereby constrained by what is properly subordinate to it. so it is as if thought has kidnapped itself. This kidnapper is like some internal fascist magistrate policing what we are permitted to think.I’m gonna think about whatever I feel like I wanna think about. gosh.∞What is it. asks Garrigou-Lagrange. that “differentiates the philosophical spirit not only from common knowledge but also from knowledge obtained by the cultivation of sciences that are inferior to philosophy”. The former “differs from them above all and essentially by its formal object and by the point of view under which it considers its object.” This or that special science establishes only “the laws of phenomena.” For example. the object of physics is the material world. while the object of mathematics is the quantitative world. But to reduce reality to what mathematics or physics can say about it is an error that is fatal to the intellect. since it obscures its proper object. which is to say. intelligible Being itself. which is unlimited per se.For Garrigou-Lagrange. “the sciences that are inferior to philosophy. such as the positive and mathematical sciences. in certain senses resemble sense knowledge insasmuch as they have objects that are less universal than philosophy’s object” [which is to say. being]. Empirical knowledge. for example. can know only of this or that man. But the intellect transcends the particular and ascends to knowledge of the Anthropos. to the universal. Without this mysterious operation. “no other knowledge would be possible.” Indeed. even to deny it is to affirm it.Aquinas does not promulgate a theory. much less an ism or ideology. Rather. he is simply describing what we are spontaneously doing when we think: self-evidently we are thinking about intelligible being. The alternatives are to not think at all or to think about non-being. That being is intelligible “is so obvious that it cannot be demonstrated. and so necessary that it cannot be denied without the shipwreck of all knowledge” [ibid]. Thus. if perception is reality. then there is no reality. period. To even say reality is to affirm the existence of something distinct from our own concepts and perceptions. and will still be there when we look away or leave college.Having said that. to say reality is also to say appearances. but this is a complementarity. not a duality. for appearances are of reality. not a negation or occlusion of it. They only become cognitive thromboses if we reify them into reality itself. or in other words. transform limitless being into a limited concept of it.For Garrigou-Lagrange. there is at one end an illicit or Promethean “grasping at the divine essence” [a la Hegel]. or. at the other. an “essentializing of existence” [a la Sartre or Nietzsche]. Which is to say rationalism or existentialism. Neither of these alternatives respects the Tension between the terms of O and Ø. To collapse this tension in one direction or the other creates. on the one hand. the false clarity of scientism or the clear falsity of religionism. On the other hand — or hemisphere — cosmotheandrism respects both the poetry and the precision of the Cosmos. In other words. its evident clarity is grounded in something quite mysterious. and we need to be clear about this blindingly trans-obvious obscurity. Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:53:00 +0000 3ff089ce7211dfc3657df9809c9135415cd21732 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/a-devil-for-every-revolution How Liberalism Turned Rebellion Into a Sacred Drama That Requires an Endless Supply of Villains Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:01:50 +0000 f9a87fdb1a3de07d662804913f15b33f9e3407ec https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/the-mrs-degree-guest-post-by-johnathan My friend Johnathan has responded to the debate on fertility with a perspective I think is shared by many. and which deserves discussion. Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:03:50 +0000 d751333cea14f79384b1bf18751756615fed62cc https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62073/ My friend Johnathan has responded to the debate on fertility with a perspective I think is shared by many. and which deserves discussion. –Briggs I had a discussion with my… Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 2709de16c15ae4413aa4a0a1b5eb0c46caed7659 https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2026/09/my-hipster-cartoon.html   Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:26:44 +0000 0fcc7ec3546893cfae45096e313df4f24768d5c0 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/15/pray-that-leo-becomes-catholic-or-dies-painlessly-whichever-comes-first/ There is a beautiful article on “Infovaticana” about our duty to pray for the pope. I like the “cut” of the article. which is very Catholic. I will. also. expand a bit on its beautiful message. The article has that fundamental distinction between the man and the office [literally] written all over it. You pray (…) Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:13:41 +0000 5f8415a1a2058adbc25918e0ad4a8a068aa4578e https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/hanson-accuses-aboriginals-of-being One Nation leader Pauline Hanson caused a stir this week with remarks on a podcast interview concerning the teaching of aboriginal history in school curriculums. Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:08:04 +0000 cf0df7f2c0a14a1fef7e698cb5c2d16f3131262d http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/drone-technology-is-moving-from.html  Most of those interested in military and aviation history know how bombing forces developed.  At first bombs [very small ones] were dropped on front lines and support positions behind those lines - because the aircraft of the day couldn't reach any further.  As aircraft grew bigger. faster and more powerful. strategic bombing - attacking the enemy's population centers. factories. ports. etc. - became the new paradigm.  It mattered not whether your bombs actually hit a military target. because every target was now considered to be supporting the enemy's war effort.  Destroy an orphanage because it was built right next door to an industrial estate.  No problem.  Those orphans became 'collateral damage' - unintended victims of the war.  Those who killed them bore no moral responsibility for their deaths.  They were simply 'taking the war to the enemy'. and that was a justifiable action.Nuclear weapons didn't alter that scenario. except for the fact that one bomb could now destroy an entire city.  Air forces didn't need to send hundreds of aircraft to drop thousands of bombs [and be attacked as they did so. losing many aircraft and their crews to enemy defenses].  Instead. aircraft need not be sent at all.  A missile could drop a warhead accurately enough to spare the bomber crews from the losses they would otherwise incur.However. drone technology is evolving so fast that it's changing the nature of technology in war.  It's not so much new as evolved . . . but that evolution is happening so quickly that it seems nobody can keep up with it.  Take Ukraine. for example.  When Russia invaded. Ukraine had effectively no air superiority to speak of. and few modern. high-technology weapons.  In their absence. Ukrainians had to develop new technologies as quickly as they could - and they did so very effectively.  We all know how Ukrainian drones stalemated the Russian advance in the Donbas area. and have led to a World War I-style trench warfare where neither side dares to advance in strength. for fear of the massive drone counterattack that would ensue.What's more. Ukraine has now developed much larger. long-range attack drones that have gone far beyond what anyone had expected.  Indeed. they've blurred the distinction between 'drone' and 'cruise missile' until the terms are almost interchangeable.  Consider that a few days ago. Ukraine attacked a Russian oil refinery in Saratov. more than 1.700 miles from the launch site of the FP-5 Flamingo drones.  The FP-5 is claimed to have a maximum range of some 3.000 kilometers [1.900 miles].  Is it a drone. or a cruise missile. or both.Smaller drones have so altered the shape of modern conflict that they may even render nuclear weapons superfluous [at least in terms of the destruction of a nation's ability to wage war].  HMS Defiant commented recently:I see that some people who ought to know better are still nattering about the state of our munitions and our general unreadiness to wage war against China. Yes. yes. I know. dead horse. thoroughly beaten already but I did want to point out that the country that can turn out 80.000.000 iphones in a couple of months probably has no trouble turning out 40.000.000 high end killer drones with 300 mile ranges and 250 pound warheads.The goal of the SIOP was to bathe in (nuclear) fire targets that needed to be destroyed affirmatively. If one could achieve the same effect by applying precise 250 pound bombs directly to the actual target and not just the neighborhood or city. then the same effect is achieved without all the excess radiation.This poses a logical mans thinking problem for the evening. Every single HQ and logistics warehouse and fuel dump in Asia and the Western Pacific is in a precise. down to the inch known location on a target map. The putative bad guys have 40.000.000 drones. The other bad apples north of the 38th are known to be making lots of drones of their own and furnishing to their very good friends in Moscow.. . .You know another place where the heads lie uneasy at night. Yeah. Taiwan is in easy flight range of 40.000.000 expendable killer drones.It does make me wonder though. Just what the hell is our answer to those 40.000.000 drones. ... We treat all weapons of mass destruction [chemical. biological. etc] as nuclear weapons and will retaliate if they are used against us. What possible form will retaliation take if drones alone are enough to execute a complete decapitation strike at just about every level of government overnight.There's more at the link.  Go read it all.He poses an excellent question. to which [I suspect] nobody in the US government has developed any concrete. practical response as yet.  Perhaps they should move faster on that . . .Peter Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:26:00 +0000 d3d308d5b9cc90f0058a757ab2974e20ceda9fca https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/free-british-isles.html   I once would have been horrified at the idea of the UK breaking up. But today I look forward to it. because I know it will be better for all the nations involved. I am the Son of an Englishman. I want to see the Englishman live free again. but as long as he seeks to dominate other nations. the law of imperial decline with rot England to the core. Here is a comment I wrote about a similar issue which serves to explain why I celebrate this. Ireland should be ruled by and for the Irish. Scotland by and for the Scots. Wales by and for the Welsh. and England by and for the English. Empire which is what Colonialism is. always ends with the core nation suffering the loss of its identity. I was asked if I made any distinction between the Colonialism of the English compared to the more violent conquests of the ancient Greeks. Mongols and other societies. Here is my response. which is relevant to this discussion: I would say the difference is more one of degree. Colonialism is not new. The Greeks had both connected and independent colonies that went up into what is today modern Russia in the B.C. era. In fact. it is incredible how far the Greeks spread out. It was not always through violent conquest. like with Alexander. but sometimes they set up trade cities and the like along ancient trade or sea routes. Their most successful trade city. Byzantium. became Constantinople a city as famous and powerful as Rome. in its own way. So. I would say some empires and some colonial efforts are more violent than others. The ancient Persians were less vicious than the Assyrians and Babylonians. especially the Assyrians who were famous for their cruelty even in the ancient world where cruelty was more common. The Mongol invasions were more vicious than most. If you had to choose between English conquest and Mongol conquest. I would choose the English variety. Settling barely populated or unpopulated islands in the pacific is obviously very different to defeating and taking control of another settled society. Completely unpopulated islands are up for grabs really. though you will find yourself in territorial disputes with other nations over time. But the impacts of empire/colonialism always create the same results. The cycle goes like this: A nation becomes prosperous and militarily adventurous. It then seeks to take over trade routes. and in turn it then seeks to dominate countries along those trade routes. Settlers follow the military and they take varying degrees of control over other nations. and this sends wealth back to the core nation. This leads to success and this success attracts people from across the empire back to the core. As a result. the core nation loses its national identity increasingly over time. Over time more and more foreigners rise to power and direct the resources of the core to their preferred interests. and the natives of the core nation are increasingly sidelined. The core degrades as resources are directed elsewhere and it loses its importance. as this happens the empire degrades. and another rises to take its place. This is a consistent cycle. This is so consistent we could call it. if such a thing exists. a law of history. Because of how God refers to it in the Bible. I see this as a spiritual punishment for a nation arrogating itself over other nations. Every nation that so arrogates itself does so primarily for their own interests. which leads to varying degrees of oppression over other peoples. Of course. this does not mean everything these empires do is bad. Rome bought roads and civil law and structure over most of Europe. Greece bought advanced philosophy and a common tongue. Britain brought English understandings of natural rights and justice to many peoples. and broke with world convention by seeking to end things like the slave trade. a truly marvellous act. But the end results always finish up in a bad place for the host nation. Hence. a massively declining empire like Britian should learn from this and give up what it does not need and focus on the core people's their state exists to serve. There is nothing wrong with letting a former colony stand on its own two feet. This is how many nations have been born. In fact. homogenous nations usually lead to some form of success over time. then become heterogenous empires and then those empires break down into new and constituted homogenous nations. It is a cycle of history. It is better to relinquish power than be forced into submission. which has happened to many empires. Of course. in the past there has been great efforts to keep the United Kingdom together. I hope that whichever way this goes. that these nations would rise again to greatness under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Update: they have met and have demanded independence referendums.  Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:26:32 +0000 290c99b9fb1f754e0a860c50bd8136679fe38d6a https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-beginning-of-end-of-beginning.html I count 37 posts so far. I guess we’re finally winding down to the end of Book II. right.(............)Right.Don’t sound so alarmed. Man is the measure of all things. so stop trying to measure what can be written of him. Having said that. “To say that man is the measure of all things is meaningless unless one starts from the idea that God is the measure of man. or that the absolute is the measure of the relative… [Schuon].We touched on this final measure yesterday with out fifth certitude — that all our cosmic and anthropic clues lead back or up to “a transcendent Foundation to all known reality: cosmic reality. subjective reality. inter-subjective reality. moral reality” [Livi]. In short. the Anthropos points to the Theos that in turn points to us — to our theomorphism [Axiom 7]. This being the case.Once man makes of himself a measure. while refusing to be measured in turn. or once he makes definitions while refusing to be defined by what transcends him and gives him all his meaning. all human reference points disappear. cut off from the Divine. the human collapses [Schuon].So we’re not quite done taking the measure of the Anthropos. although we cannot take his full measure until Book III.Hartshorne’s Neoclassical MetaphysicsOne of the first principles of philosopher Charles Harshorne’s neoclassical metaphysics is what he calls “dipolar theism.” It is so similar to our Axiom 2 — primordial complementarity — that some might accuse me of plagiarism. when I am merely stealing the idea. It affirms that metaphysical concepts “have logical contraries which cannot mean anything in utter isolation from one another.” such that “each concept entails a polar contrast to it” [Viney and Shields]. Examples of such cosmotheandric complementarities include Absolute and Infinite. immanence and transcendence. necessity and possibility. time and eternity. subject and object. interiority and exteriority. being and becoming. unity and diversity. and more.Now. denial of one of these polar twins always lands one in the metaphysical soup: this is “a chief difficulty in previous metaphysical theories that suppress expression of a polar contrast.” or what Hartshorne calls the “fallacy of monopolarity.” Monopolar theories abstract and elevate one side of a complementary pair while throwing shade the other. as in the case of. say. materialism. because what would brother matter be without its sister form. Utter unintelligibility. It is very much like saying there could be an outside with no inside. up with no down. or north with no south. when the two define one another.With respect to these primordial complementarities. although we always see them together. one must be ontologically prior. for there is always one that can account for the other but not vice versa. Here cosmotheandrism break ranks with Hartshorne. because he makes being a secondary crystallization of becoming. But there must first be something that undergoes change. not just change undergoing more of it. If this latter were the case. then no real knowledge of the Cosmos would be possible. because both knower and known would be in constant flux. and there would be no ground under our… actually. we would have no legs to stand on either.Go flux yourself.That would be the ultimate insult. because it would consign us to mere change instead of situating us in the cosmotheandric space between being and becoming — or between Absolute and Infinite. transcendence and immanence. time and eternity. et al.Again. monopolar theories allow for expression of only one pole of a pair of complementarities. and thereby exclude or at least downgrade half of reality. most fundamentally the reality of Absolute and Infinite. the latter being the principle or ground of potentiality and therefore creativity. novelty. and becoming. O is an eternally dynamic interplay of these two ultimates. such that the Absolute pole is necessary for coherence and substance. while the Infinite pole is required for potentiality. creativity. novelty. and becoming. The Absolute must express its unrestrictedness through its first entailment. which is Infinititude.This latter domain of possibility can never in principle be closed. or. one could say that it is openness as such [Axiom 3]. hence a ground of continuous creativity from top to bottom. For Hartshorne. God is “the non-contingent ground of all contingency.” thus rendering contingency itself metaphysically necessary. In short. even – or especially. rather – in O there is again no alternative to alternatives. the Cosmos itself being one of those creative and contingent realities that might have been otherwise.The Infinite is the prolongation of the Absolute into immanent creation. which is vertical causation in action. The Absolute [necessity] must generate contingency [novelty and freedom]. Is O thereby “restricted” by its creativity. No. because endless creativity is the ultimate expression of its very unrestrictedness.Exact Science and the Science of the InexactGiven the ontological necessities of creativity and unrestrictedness. it seems that reality is equally poetic and mathematical — or. as we have suggested above. it has features ordered to the RH and LH. respectively. We want to be every bit as rigorous and precise as the quantitative approach. but is there such a thing as a rigorously qualitative approach. Can there be a true science of the inexact.Precision obscurity.This question goes to what we have said about our lives taking place in the tension between immanence at one end and transcendence at the other. both of these being irreducible mysteries. At the immanent end “there is the kind of ‘obscurity from below.’” which “comes from blind matter. for matter. in a sense. is repugnant to intelligibility. which is obtained by abstraction from matter” [Garrigou-Lagrange]. Therefore. the precision of physics ends in the obscurity of the sub-existential quantum realm. Of formless -- AKA prime -- matter. our knowledge amounts to nothing. because there’s nothing to know. Rather. abstraction of its form is the means by which we know it in a secondary sense. Prime matter is unspecified “pure potency” with no actuality. which is just this side of nonbeing. It is unintelligible not because it is too complex. but because it is potency without form — the sub-existential basement of reality where there is simply nothing to know.Here we might deploy the symbol Ø to stand for this lower mystery. complementing the “obscurity from on high” at the the top. Thus. “As the matter from which we abstract the intelligible is [in a way] below the limits of intelligibility. the intimate life of God is above the limits of intelligibility that is naturally accessible to us.”Thus the intellect is bound by two horizons that shade off into obscurity. darkness. and mystery. but “Let us not confuse the obscurity that dominates the frontiers of intelligibility from on high with that which is beneath them” [ibid.]. For at the bottom end is an unintelligible mystery [Ø]. while at the top end [O] is an endlessly intelligible one. This latter is obscure to us not because of a lack of intelligibility. but because it is endlessly intelligible. ultimately exceeding the natural capacity of the human intellect.Having said that. to the extent that the bottom end is intelligible. it can only be a consequence of the top. In other words. we know that matter reveals itself via intelligible form. but matter alone cannot account for these forms. This is another way of saying that all of the material or efficient causality in the world cannot add up to formal causality. which is the basis of intelligibility.At the same time. we can trace our Cosmos back to the Big Bang. at which point things not only become obscure but pitch black: “prior” to it is nothing knowable by physics. likewise what is beyond the boundaries of the Cosmos. In other words. the Cosmos is expanding. but into what. For physics. this “into” has no meaning whatsoever. because the Cosmos is all there is. “Before” or “beyond” the Cosmos are nonsense terms.However. they are only nonsense terms in terms of what physics can say. But who says physics is qualified to say what is before or beyond the Cosmos.Who uses math to analyze a poem.The point is. a purely immanent world could never even know it was one. for knowledge is both transcendent and immaterial. Even the leap from existence to experience is literally infinite. to say nothing of the release from instinct to freedom and truth.∞There exists a kind of false clarity. which is totally clear. for which reason Dávila says that There are types of ignorance that enrich the mind and types of knowledge that impoverish it. In this case. a false clarity can impoverish the mind whereas a true obscurity can enrich it. so long as the thing in question is truly obscure and not just temporarily out of focus.The same is true of any form of ideological fundamentalism or religious literalism. Around here we just call it ismism to cover all the bases. whether religious or secular. Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:02:03 +0000 d080287647461fe7162dac233a19ee8839f9ed87 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/ai-is-the-new-global-scare-and-very-good-for-publicity/ After Mad Cow. after Climate Change. after Covid. after an awful lot of planetary scares that only helped other people to do damage that the “scares” themselves could never have done. welcome to the AI scare. The AI scare takes place in quite a technological language. I have read people stating calculations of percentages of (…) Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:06:56 +0000 c6101e0f5ecf8f8d8a19599d27ac11b1f6475d3c https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/what-are-you-seeing-out-there The first wave of the American Transition Panel is open through September 21. Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:20:00 +0000 ee538f38b8f03fce099fb7a5442470a7554843f6 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/luther-scoliosis-or-protestant-cognitive-dissonance-vs-catholic-common-sense/ It’s always so strange reading the religious stuff written by Protestants. Firstly. they have all this stuff with the “ministers” and the “ministry”. Then they feel the need to quote Scripture almost as often as Leo quotes himself. as if Satan wasn’t able to quote Scripture. too. Lastly. you always notice this skewed theology. which (…) Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:49:45 +0000 48da0dc7cc08ec89d5a7f7df77591a966b480c19 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/politicians-demand-right-to-be-protected Don’t ask for “rights” Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:04:14 +0000 b0c282910e0148caf765f313e3183343ab7e3263 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62046/ Here is a report on a brief speech made by U.N. “rights chief” Volker Turk. warning that AI. i.e. computer models. are an “existential risk” to man. “I share the… Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 b4ecb7d27daf4bb2c45993d24c4b3f05fb9ce1d4 https://kurganfiction.substack.com/p/why-believe-converted-hundreds-of The truth sets you free indeed Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:15:04 +0000 126e757268b719eedcc2a71c091e257fc02f9a1e http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/memes-that-made-me-laugh-328.html  Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.More next week.Peter Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:37:00 +0000 8bb0b3f8f444b7d4aa5b78bc246282e110aeb5fc https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/it-was-the-token-black-guy So the holdout male juror was a black man. Mon, 14 Sep 2026 07:04:09 +0000 46ed28a552ef04ed326d424c40b6fd7b840a1b74 https://sigmaframe.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/what-is-the-value-of-high-iq-women/ The Value of Female Intelligence and the Place of Intelligent Women. Continue reading → Mon, 14 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000 8e594b79b256b6e85e196467b4b87bff0a94f499 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/abortion-its-all-about-who-the-baby-daddy-is/ This needs to be rubbed in womanhood’s collective face everywhere. whenever the subject arises. Sun, 13 Sep 2026 18:25:13 +0000 7447b5d30c04259927fb7d6c4532ecbd5a0fb28b https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes-on-forgivess A very Aristotle homily Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:47:04 +0000 e76ae124fa98d8fe18c108f6bbe43ac37923d011 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/cardinal-kookavad-denies-christ-as-a-narrow-horizon-of-truth-converts-to-the-sacred-polyhedron-that-enlarges-truth-and-does-not-exclude/ What kind of crap will. do you think. a walking pieces of shit say. who has been made Cardinals by Francis and Prefect of a Dicastery by Leo. Horrible stuff. that is what they will say. He will sell Christ for way less than 30 pieces of silver. He will sell Christ for a cheap (…) Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:23:54 +0000 9b925991bed34bae2feb84074798733367495996 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/13/facing-this-tribulation/ We need to get this through our heads: There is no hope for this world. If you take seriously the message of the gospel. that humanity is fallen and in need of redemption from above. then it must necessarily follow … Continue reading → Sun, 13 Sep 2026 11:21:49 +0000 849df3d0b40e8351f47830b07ff857292ad22027 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/sunday-morning-music_01962554694.html  Following my health update a few days ago. I could think of only one song that would be appropriate this Sunday.  Tongue firmly in cheek. of course. That's been one of my favorite Jethro Tull tunes over the years.Peter Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:06:00 +0000 f95b1e26fb28950b2637c1cc606668c1928a9c88 https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/dr-kwasniewski-talks-about-orientation-loses-orientation/ Dr Kwasniewski has given an interview to a German magazine. when he has said a number of quite correct things. However. as the people like him – that is. those fully inserted in the Vatican II system of thinking – so often do. he stops in the middle of the ford and does not draw (…) Sun, 13 Sep 2026 08:11:42 +0000 4bccada8b2a40692be9c677d658210dda596d736 https://radixfidem.blog/2026/09/12/hebrews-15-14/ Re: Naked Bible 176: Hebrews 1:5-14 We continue with the language of how Jesus is superior to all other created beings. Heiser puts way too much time in debunking JWs here. as they say that Jesus was a created being … Continue reading → Sat, 12 Sep 2026 23:31:05 +0000 768a9ae1bf0156008f08be16b0ee0f34a59b16d1 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-first-approach-to-first-principle.html With the elucidation of our first four Cosmotheandric Certitudes we reach a literal crossroads in our narrative. for this is where Horizontal Circle is crossed by Vertical Boulevard. The latter leads necessarily to our Theos Principle. for the road didn’t pave itself. We would prefer to save this type of perfect nonsense for Book III. but for cosmotheandrism our three terms are always entangled. such that it is impossible to speak of one without at least implying the others.To review our situation: cosmic evolution arrives finally at the Anthropos capable of weaving the Cosmic Area Rug that unites all the vertical degrees of being between immanence and transcendence. And if last in execution is first intention. then the Anthropos may be temporally late but ontologically right on time. for we are the perfect candidate to be the image and likeness of the Theos: we alone potentially span everything from origins to destiny. Alpha to Omega. primordial soup to new age nuts.That Cosmos and Anthropos require a Theos will suit religious believers just fine. However. the same folks will generally be uncomfortable with the corollary — that so too is Theos without Cosmos and Anthropos unthinkable. for which reason we will have a lot of explaining to do in Book III. Nevertheless. Panikkar says frankly that “a God without the World is not a real God. nor does he exist.”Objection.On what grounds.Everyone knows that we have real relations with God. but not vice versa. Supposing God lacks anything. that’s not God.I get it. but this book is entirely superfluous if it only tells us what everybody else already knows. Cosmotheandrism may be wrong. but if so. we insist on it being uniquely wrong.For Panikkar. “a purely immaterial being is as much an abstraction as an exclusively material one.” We can posit such a cipherous being. but “this ‘God’ does not exist because the actual God. the God that in fact exists. is God with creatures.” so it is the difference between a total abstraction and concrete reality. In other words. “A God with no cosmological and therefore no cosmogonic functions would not be God at all. but a mere phantom.”No Cosmos without Anthropos is easy enough to grasp. even if one ultimately rejects it — for example. the strong anthropic principle that effectively claims the Cosmos must have those properties which allow for the emergence of the Anthropos at some stage in its development. As we have already explained. the Anthropos is ordered to the Cosmos because the Cosmos is first ordered to the Anthropos. We know this because the Cosmos is infinitely intelligible to the intellect. which is what Einstein found so marvelously puzzling — that the most incomprehensible thing about the Cosmos is its comprehensibility. But the comprehensibility is only incomprehensible if we begin with a metaphysic that renders it so. Conversely. with our fifth certitude. cosmotheandrism transforms incomprehensibility into inevitability.∞Our fifth certitude is going to sound like a bit of a leap. so it will require further justification in Book III. But for Livi. all our cosmic and anthropic clues lead back or up to “a transcendent Foundation to all known reality: cosmic reality. subjective reality. inter-subjective reality. moral reality.” This ultimate ground can be articulated in diverse ways. but each more or less asserts that “at the origin of the existence of things and as the order that binds the world. myself. and others by physical and moral laws. there must be a creative and ordering Intelligence. which is also my Ultimate End and the Ultimate End of everything.” This is the Principle of principles from which all else flows.That’s a tad peremptory. I’m not convinced.Nor should you be. That’s the problem with proofs of God: they are insufficient to the one who needs them and superfluous to the one who doesn’t. You might say they are LH maps of properly RH territory. but if the LH earnestly prefers an atheistic map. then there’s not much we can do to convince the recalcitrant hemisphere to relinquish its grip on what amounts to a severely diminished view of reality.For the purposes of Book II it is enough to acknowledge Certitudes 1 through 4. and we can hash out the existence and nature of the Theos later. in Book III. So for now. let’s stipulate that there are 1] intelligible things. 2] that are known to subjects. and that 3] intersubjective communication about these things and about ourselves is possible. Fourthly. there are rights and duties. or. in a word. a teleologically ordered freedom.These constitute the minimum viable reality required to function as a proper human being. and without which we are cognitively strangled and spiritually sophicated. For if we deny n1. we are hit by the bus. If we deny n2. we aren’t there to deny it. If we deny n3. there’s no one with whom to share our denial. and we certainly shouldn’t be writing books to tell no one about it. And we deny n4. we have no freedom to know truth nor any responsibility to tell it. In such an absurd world. we might actually want to get hit by a bus.No human can live in such a world. Or. as it concerns the Anthropos. it is a functionally impossible world.∞So. our Cosmotheandric certitudes may be reduced to five terms: things. self. others. freedom. and Foundation. Or. intelligibility. intelligence. intersubjectivity. responsibility. and Ground [this latter also being the Source. Principle. Absolute. O. etc.].Now. precisely because of item n4. we are. ironically. free to reject items 1. 2. 3. and 5. In fact. the whole durn history of philosophy comes down to an a priori rejection of one or more of these principles.Take n1. for example. the existence of things. A normal person takes this for granted. but not philosophers who begin with. say. the existence of doubt. They might point to the stick in water that appears bent. and generalize this to cast doubt on our perception of anything else.Thus. we can never be sure if the thing we perceive is the thing as it is. There is nothing we cannot doubt. which led Descartes to conclude that the only indubitable thing is item n2. the I that is. Then. the things [n1] become a function of the self [n2]. and we’re in a rabbit hole of subjectivism from which there is no escape. In other words. once I Am is divorced from It Is. there is no way to reunite them.Besides. while Descartes thought he had arrived at the first principle. his principle actually assumes a number of other principles. for example. non-contradiction. For if it is true to say “I think. therefore I am.” then it is false to affirm its contrary. But even more broadly. he assumes the efficacy of intelligence to arrive at a first principle of reality. but what justification is there for this. Ultimately Descartes must posit the Theos who would not deceive us. so he brings in n5 in an ad hoc way.It’s all in that little word “therefore.” Therefore implies a correct judgment. which is to say. a link between truth and being. For the essence of any judgment or truth claim is “it is.” If something isn’t. then it is not real or true.In other words. a thing either is or it is not. every argument. philosophical or otherwise. ultimately reduces to whether or not something really exists and is therefore “really real.” But in order to render such a judgment. the things themselves must be really real before we judge them to be so. Again: things first. the self and its judgments second. Even “I am” cannot be true unless being first Is.To ask if the world is real is not to understand what we are actually asking. because how otherwise could this be a real question. Obviously the question is real. as is the questioner. or else it is like saying. “Let’s be realistic. We really can’t know reality.” so it is merely substituting one reality for another. But how can a Cosmos that isn’t real have produced an intellect that is.Although we start with the principle that Things Are. it doesn’t mean that the self that knows these things can be derived therefrom. For we couldn’t know them unless there were a real underlying unity between knower and known. We cannot know a thing about a thing that is fundamentally unconnected to us.Morevery. only a rational being can be free. and yet. we wouldn’t be free if we weren’t free to be irrational or wrong. If we had no such freedom to be wrong. we would be like computers and not humans. But in any event. the very process of reasoning about things could never occur if it weren’t independent of the conditions imposed by matter.As Garrigou-Lagrange reminds us. “the first operation of the intellect” — the operation we always do and cannot help doing — is “simple intellectual apprehension.” According to Thomas. “The gaze of our intellect is fixed first upon the natures of sensible things.... To understand is a kind reading into the interior.... For sense knowledge is occupied with sensible. exterior qualities. whereas intellective knowledge penetrates all the way to the essence of the thing” [emphasis mine].Ultimately. “the object of the intellect is that which is.” AKA being. Sounds again like a modest claim. but to say that being both is. and is intelligible. is probably the most consequential thing one could ever say about the world. for the implications are literally inexhaustible.Again. the question is. do things [n1] make sense. Or does sense [n2] make things. Sounds like a joke. but for Kantians what we call things are just consequences of our own psychic categories. But for common sense Cosmotheandrism. it is the things themselves that truly make sense. i.e.. disclose their real natures to the intellect. not all at once. but in an ever-deepening discovery of their real properties. Otherwise the Cosmos is but a projection of our own neuropsychology.But to even say reality is to affirm the existence of something distinct from our own perceptions. and will still be there when we look away. Nevertheless. reality is indeed optional. since we are free to reject it. Likewise. we can certainly reject our five certitudes. but then we are certifiably insane. in the sense that our Cosmic Area Rug falls apart completely. Sat, 12 Sep 2026 16:52:45 +0000 bb10ed034c85c7da4cf032af7e96638c855320f9 https://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2026/09/you-are-and-i-oughtta.html Only ideas save us from adjectives. —DávilaReset: we’ve discussed numbers one and two of our five certitudes. each of these being certain. everlasting. necessary. always. present in everyone’s experience. and not subject to error. They are impossible to refute without eliminating both the refuted and refuter. for they are the incontrovertible certainties possessed by every human being. They are immediately present on the ground floor of any act of cognition. and indeed necessary for the existence of truth itself.Stripping out all the adjectives. our first two may sound rather trivial: that 1] there exists a world of things. independent of our thinking of them. and that 2] in this world. there is myself. the I who knows the world. But we have to start somewhere. and it is surprising how many philosophers start somewhere else.Cosmotheandrism frames these principles somewhat differently. what with our 12 Axioms. beginning with certitude [Axiom 1]. One might say that the first content of this certitude is Livi’s five principles. Moreover. certitude is necessarily certain about something. this irreducible aboutness going to Axiom 4. relational interiority. since objects relate to subjects and vice versa. Likewise. our two terms are open to one another [Axiom 3]. and constitute a primordial complementarity [Axiom 2].∞Coming in at n3 is “The evidence of the existence of beings analogous to me. in an existential situation of intersubjectivity.” Thus. we are on solid ground in affirming that “in the world. there are others. similar to me. with whom I communicate.” This we know with absolute certitude. unless you don’t exist and I am not communicating.Contrary to Sartres. hell is no other people.Yes. because as we discussed above. the very possibility of I Am and You Are is grounded in a prior We of intersubjectivity and interior relations. This anterior unity bifurcates into I and Thou: a human relationship is not like two extrinsically related objects. rather. intrinsically related subjects. Remove this intersubjectivity and the existence of others would indeed be a kind of hell. since they would just be in the way. Note that for a sociopath. for example. other people are indeed just in the way of their impulses and desires. Others are to be used and cast aside like any other It.This was touched on in the Introduction vis-à-vis any philosopher’s prior commitment to the notion that he can successfully communicate his true ideas to other minds via some medium. whether a speech. a book. or an interpretive dance cycle. In a way. n3 might actually be n1. since a monadic subject devoid of intersubjectivity would be an ontological non-starter. In other words. even communicating Livi’s five principles presupposes an intersubjective means of communication. We are fundamentally relational. such that we have the ability to see I to I from the first spark of the primordial We.Nor are the objects we encounter in the world mute. rather. speak to the human subject in such a way that they betray a kind of intersubjectivity of their own that is built into the Cosmic Area Rug. In short. intersubjectivity is actually everywhere. not just between human subjects.∞Certitude n4 brings the Ought into the Is. which is to say. “The evidence of the existence of laws of a moral type” [Livi]. or what is typically called the natural law which regulates the relations between persons: “my relation with others and the relation of the others with me are relations different from physical relations. because they imply rights and duties’” [ibid.]. Again. with the exception of sociopaths or otherwise dysfunctional individuals. we spontaneously know better than to treat people like that.Like what.Like objects. Frankly. we shouldn’t even treat objects that way. for example. the environment. Rather. we are caretakers who take care of objects. depending on their value.We might say that rights and duties co-arise. which implies freedom and responsibility. Not to presuppose anything about the Theos. but again no responsible being would give freedom to an irresponsible one. We all know better than to hand the car keys over to a five year old. or entrust animals to regulate the zoo. We don’t put wolves in charge of the henhouse or reptiles of the mousehouse.No. the Cosmic Area Rug has oughtness woven into it. for example. that we ought to know truth and ought not treat others as we do not wish to be treated. In fact. the Ten Commandments or Eight Noble Truths of Buddhism are essentially lists of Oughts and Ought Nots that provide explicit content for Livi’s fourth principle: do not lie. steal. or murder. which presuppose truth and private property. up to and including property in oneself. In the case of Buddhism. we ought to know the true nature of reality. speak honestly. and live in a way that doesn’t harm or exploit others.Marx. for example. suggested that private property is theft. when in actuality Marxism in practice is theft of our natural rights—These are. uh. valued properties.Yes. and there is no flippin’ reason we should allow any philosopher to essentially steal the Cosmic Area Rug by denying any of our first four principles. This aggression will not stand.Having said that. Among a few words it is as difficult to hide as among a few trees.Our first four principles are those few trees amongst which we cannot hide: It is. I am. You are. and I Ought. Sat, 12 Sep 2026 03:48:01 +0000 210039ddb7d32b08348d4733c9752729d15a595c https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/certain-things-are-not-done The death of shame. heartland declines. falling test scores and more in this week’s digest. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:30:38 +0000 61f06bf27fb0d631bb1282141cd2f7edc56230ac https://thetransformedwife.com/fornication-leaves-scars-forever/ Before bed. I listen to a sermon. Last night. I listened to Pastor James Know preach on fornication. [They were having trouble with the microphone. so some of it is not too clear. but most of it is.] It’s an excellent sermon. He taught that when the lists of sin are given in the New Testament. fornication is always the first one listed. and it’s the only sin that God commands us to flee from. Why. Because it is a... Read More Read More Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:44:53 +0000 1b2752a4d8e034ff71350ca1860b5f2ba9b2eff8 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/movie-night-guilty-conscience A comedy Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:20:38 +0000 f5d3aa3bf4e48c199fdb5109273692be4c407b8f http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/ive-seen-this-for-myself-its-scary.html  Courtesy of a link provided by Zendo Deb at 357 Magnum. we find this video report on the growing problem of e-bikes that are powerful enough to do highway speeds - but still require no license or training to operate them.  I've seen this for myself more than once.  These kids come hurtling down driveways or out of alleyways. going far too fast to brake or turn. and barrel right across one or even two lanes of traffic.  I don't know how I've missed a couple of them - it was that close.The video is from StacheD Training.  The blurb reads:Kids across the US are being seriously injured and killed while riding e-bikes — but in a lot of these cases. what they're actually riding isn't legally an e-bike at all. In this video. I break down a string of recent crashes in Metro Detroit. what the data says about who's actually at fault. and why some of these 'e-bikes' are really unregistered electric motorcycles capable of highway speeds.CPSC Report — E-Scooter and E-Bike Injuries Soar: 2022 Injuries Increased Nearly 21%https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2024/E-Scooter-and-E-Bike-Injuries-Soar-2022-Injuries-Increased-Nearly-21 The comments below the video on YouTube are pretty sobering.  Clearly. this is a problem that's only going to get worse. unless and until someone cracks down on the unrestricted availability of these unregulated e-bikes.Peter Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:25:00 +0000 3f51394139bf523add39e1e7e52b5278b0b98eae https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/reason Reason without sacred writings is like a tool with nothing to use it on. but sacred writings without reason can be a blind leap in the dark in the search for spiritual truth. Both should work together to discern truth from falsity. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:21:02 +0000 b5f620a0bc9638f227b9976213092f0ea4d28067 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/restoration-of-the-catholic-monarchies I am on record as stating that democracy is a lie and trap. designed to remove power over generations from a native people. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:26:59 +0000 108cb6d024637003faca2b684d6a8327bfb1b2b0 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-four-ages-of-tradition.html  I write a lot about the end times these days and that is for two reasons. The first is that we are deep in them though that has no implication as to how long they might still have to go before their inevitable conclusion in collapse and. probably. destruction. It could be 2082. it could be 100 years hence or more. It doesn't matter. All that matters is to be aware of them now and take steps to build our own inner ark which simply means to recognise and love God. and then see this world not as true in and of itself but as the outermost station of divine being which has its place and its purpose but is not our real home. As for how long they still have to run. that is not our concern. We are in them and that is all we need to know. If we knew when the end times were destined to conclude that would artificially alter our response to them. Our hearts would not be properly examined. That is why Jesus says only God knows.The second reason is that everything about the modern world. literally everything. its many minuses [spiritual] but also its pluses [material]. and its art. culture. science. politics. religion and lack of it. can be explained by the end times. Once you understand what these are and what brings them about and how they conclude you understand pretty much everything about the world today. Even how it could not be other than it is though that is not to excuse the factors and individuals that bring it about. Just because the end times are inevitable does not mean that those who facilitate or go along with them are anything other than God-rejecting sinners who will suffer the consequences of their thoughts and actions.But let's go back to the beginning and put the end times in their proper context without which they have little meaning.According to all traditional thought. human civilisations degenerate over time. How can this be. you say. are we not kinder. more tolerant and more advanced in every way. moral and material. than ever before. No. we are not. You see. you only say this because you are a materialist even if you are ostensibly a believer in one of the religions or some other form of spirituality. I will explain. We are more moral in what relates to man as he is in this world because we have rejected the higher reality of the next world. We have made great advances in what pertains to the material world. including human relations in that world. because we have denied the spiritual world and man as primarily a spiritual being. Energy follows thought. Our thought is all in the material so that is where our energy goes. Obviously. the past was far from perfect but. to the degree that it honoured God. it was better than us. And since God is the highest truth. to deny that truth and its implications [because you can believe in God but believe in this world more which means you don't really believe in God]. means that however advanced you are in material terms you are still in an inferior place to one who honours God. Past cultures including our own in the West left a great deal to be desired but they were better than us because. however imperfectly. they paid tribute to a higher reality.This is the traditional view. We do not progress but decline and this decline takes place over the course of four distinct cycles or ages. Before proceeding with this thought. an increasingly familiar one. I should add that I do not fully go along with it. There is a decline in the spiritual state both of humanity and of the physical and psychic environments in which we exist. That is true. However. there is also an evolution because the ages have a purpose. They are not just [though they are this too] an example of entropy in action. As the environment thickens and we become separate from the higher worlds. we are thereby forced back onto ourselves and we start to develop ourselves as more individual beings. We become less spiritually conscious but more truly individual with greater powers of both thought and self-expression. We move from passive beings swimming in the ocean of consciousness to a more active. though separated. mode of existence. God wants us to be free and independent. in effects. gods. This we cannot be without a strong sense of self. and not just a sense of self but a developed self with its own powers. talents and expressible attributes. This self inevitably becomes fixated on itself. It loses contact with its higher being because it must in order to develop. but that does have a spiritually adverse effect. and as the ages go by and the self further descends into separation its spiritual condition worsens. This is where we are now.So. there is an explanation for the descent. However. that does not justify fully succumbing to it. and this is important to understand. Yes. conditions are adverse but still at all times we have the voice of God within us. and just because that becomes harder to hear is no excuse not to hear it or. at least. make the effort to listen out for it. It is only those who have hardened their hearts against God who reject him. We are never left without teaching. and you might say that the available teachings now deep in the end times are more abundant and more accessible than ever. This is one of the consolations of our time.In the present grand cycle mankind has gone through three previous ages and is currently at the tail end of the fourth. In the Golden Age we walked with the gods and listened to their words. We were not perfect but we were in tune with the universe and in harmony with God. But then conditions began to cloud over and the division between this world and the higher planes started to harden so interchange between the two became more difficult. The gods began to retreat. In a way. it was the end of the nursery stage and the beginning of the move to adulthood.We now live in the Iron Age which represents the nadir of human spirituality and therefore of civilisation and culture. We do not know precisely when the Iron Age actually began but for the sake of argument we can say it was about 5.000 years ago which is the beginning of historical time. So quite a while back. The Iron Age itself has cycles reflecting gold. silver. bronze and iron states of consciousness. and we are now at the end of the final cycle within the overall Iron Age as is demonstrated by the fact of our total materialism and atheism. our material accomplishment. our addiction to and absolute dependence on materialistic technology. our rejection of both God and Nature. our perpetual state of decline. denied publicly but obvious to anyone. and the sense of finality felt by many. Add to that globalisation and the destruction of nations which that entails. the fact that both science and art have lost their way. environmental degradation. uselessness of leaders. institutional collapse and a host of other things from the ongoing battle between the sexes to the general meaningless of life. and you can only draw one conclusion.All this may seem negative and depressing but it is not a matter for doom and gloom. Quite the reverse. in fact. for the end times can be seen as a period of great potential. even hope. The outer world may be on fire but that drives us within. It gives us the tools to reject materialistic illusion and seek the real. The death throes of our current old world are merely the birth pangs of the new. Nothing good. nothing true can ever be lost. The good seeds of the past will be saved and replanted. The bad crops will be taken away and the ground prepared for a new harvest. No spring without winter.Today we are addicted to technological devices that separate us ever more from God and reduce the quality of our experiences which become increasingly etiolated in nature. We are jaded and dulled. What we thought would liberate us actually saps our psychic vitality. This is unmistakable signature of the end times. And yet despite the fact that we live in a dying world this is an extraordinary time to be alive. For those who can read the signs. the opportunity for spiritual progress is greater than at any other time. Even a little effort in the right direction will be rewarded precisely because it is so much harder. Those who seek to establish a relationship with God and who are pure in heart will successfully pass the test of these times. Those who fail will be kept back at lower levels of being but I would surmise that missed opportunities will not present themselves again for some time as these things have cycles. It's not a question of being cast into a fiery pit but of going where your heart and mind take you which means to a dimension of being that corresponds to your heart and mind. This tells us that the conventionally religious are by no means guaranteed to be saved just because of their beliefs and desires. It is the quality of those beliefs and desires that matter. Moreover. belonging to any particular church or religion means very little now. The time has come when an individual response to God is required. An institutional response belongs to the past. We must think for ourselves. This is what it means to be an individual. Traditionalists might regret that if they are attached to the old institutions but the sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath. and now each person must forge his or her own inner relationship with God to be saved.Today we are living deep in the end times or Hesiod's Iron Age. the Indian Kali Yuga. Our task is to reject the illusions of the material world. now stronger than ever. and seek God. but it must be the true spiritual sun that exists both within and above us not one of the many imitations that are present at such a time. For when the material is as strong as it is now there arise many false spirituals which are themselves part of the material because they are just pure reactions to it. This is the task we face. Not simply to reject the material but to be able to discern true gold which is rare in the world from the many varieties of fool's gold. The spiritual is not the opposite to the material but in consciousness terms completely transcends it.In the Iron Age values are inverted so we praise the lesser and scorn the higher. We call evil good and good evil. The whited sepulchre wicked are honoured and rewarded while those attempting to tread the path of virtue are ignored or derided. However. even these latter will become contaminated to a degree by the qualities of the Iron Age so the best course is to participate in the modern world as little as possible. Most of us must live in it and use its tools but we need to be fully aware of the corrupting nature of the world today and detach ourselves from it as much as we can. Do not get sucked into resisting it as the current will be too strong and you will be drawn into the very thing you fight against. Let it take its course knowing that God has everything in hand and his purpose will be served simply by you directing your whole attention to him. This is not defeatist because the world is dying and it is dying because it has lost its connection to higher principles. Just recognise that and stand back. The death of the world is not a tragedy but a necessary part of its purification and regeneration.The end times will progress into disorder and collapse but there is a purpose to this collapse because it creates the conditions for rebirth. It forms the souls of men and women who can be the seeds. whether literally or. more probably. spiritually for a new age. It will be a simpler age because it will be a fresh start but not entirely fresh because the best of the past will be preserved on the level of consciousness. Now the sins of centuries are coming to the surface like erupting pustules so they can be lanced so think of the end times as a time of mass purification. That is what they are. Is this not a wonderful thing. Humanity is being cleansed so it can start anew in a fresh cycle. Some souls will go to higher worlds. some will be recycled and some who have failed here will go to dimensions of being appropriate to their level of consciousness. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 10:39:59 +0000 a6f9216df5cce0aed473c962bb37371a5703caa7 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/twenty-five-years-ago.html  We do not forget.  Pray God we never do - as individuals. or as a nation.May the souls of all the victims of September 11. 2001 rest in God's peace.Peter Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:30:00 +0000 bc8e4789870356f4b161262be68418e01b99ba40 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/11/twenty-five-years-ago/ “O my God.” was my reaction. when the news finally reached me. that morning a quarter century ago. I had a column to write that morning. but first some telephone calls to make. one of them to New York City. It was a social call I was finally returning. I found out about the Islamic (…) Fri, 11 Sep 2026 06:28:33 +0000 9e292bfc4f2c9689dc5a01f246616568c4e50cca https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/911-25-years-later Never forget. I took notes. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 05:02:52 +0000 0482b8899b361c65f7702613637abf78c6b12070 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/come-walk-with-me Join me on an Irish pilgrimage. and other coming events Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:34:57 +0000 95ccf978449cafd3d5987ebd725d38c955d7e206 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/youre-lonely-because-youre-too-proud What Right Wing Atheists Get Wrong Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:06:37 +0000 cbc7c0f6b6b19f7773954ab5c0cb68861b6a9edb https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/two-years-of-addiction writing about writing. a substack staple Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:06:43 +0000 1e184cbc57f3842a504e73056807611c23a58e11 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/is-that-you-antichrist.html   One of the most frustrating things that evangelicals. especially those influenced by modern American and end times evangelicalism [which is many modern Baptists. Pentecostals. Charismatics. independent churches. etc. etc] do is whenever there is a new technology revealed. they instantly start arguing that this is the beast’s tool to build the beasts system and the beast will use this technology to control us all. I have been around long enough to see this thinking applied to everything from things like barcodes. to credit-cards. to mobile phones. to bitcoin and more. The big one that this thinking is now being applied to is AI. But now that it is becoming increasingly clear that AI is going to turn out to fall far short of the Big Tech Bro predictions. as it always was. again the evangelical church is going to have egg on its face. The tech bros were always simply trying to upsell their product. which is why they sold it to people in the apocalyptic world changing terms they did. Many of the predictions. made by evangelicals. about AI being the final key to the antichrist system will again make the evangelical church look ridiculous. We have to be better guys. much better. AI is becoming slightly more useful with every update. But every big tech company is also haemorrhaging money quickly. because achieving that rise of utility is being outweighed by the cost of the infrastructure needed to get those gains. and not enough revenue to offset those costs. In other words. the AI tech companies are increasing their debt. to outcompete each other. but they are not able to bring in enough money to cover those debts. On top of this the tech base they are relying on to produce the computing power is quickly perishing. Graphics cards in data centres don't last as long as people think. only a few years. You might still be able to use your 1080 TI to run Steam games on medium settings in a rig you bought 10 years ago. but AI data centres run 24/7 at a high output. that chews through the technology they rely on. Hence. the costs of improving AI are increasing and the returns are not increasing fast enough. AI investment is heading for a big downturn. This does not mean AI won’t have its uses. Look at how Castalia House is using it to produce new translations of books on a daily basis. There are other ways it can be used as a research assistant. to speed up code writing. to increase the writing output for talented writers. and in many other ways. But it also gets things wrong often. and needs a lot of oversight. correction and direction.   In other words. AI will just turn out to be a very useful personal assistance tool. that people will only trust with certain tasks. because we have all seen how unreliable it can be in a host of circumstances. Even the ways it is being used in law enforcement are coming under scrutiny and causing legal cases because AI is shown often to be unreliable. resulting in many fines being overturned in reviews. Already we see a lot of people mock AI content as inferior. Who here even bothers to read a post on social media. or in a blog. once you work out that the person wrote it with AI. You skip it. don’t you. I do. Most people who use AI also won't pay for it. and so the companies are building liabilities they cannot cover. on a technology that many people are having bad experiences with. It will improve over time. but it is not going to be the omniscient danger many have predicted it to be.   Don't get me wrong. I agree with people who are concerned with how modern governments are using technology to strip away our rights. freedoms and privacy. Be ever vigilant and vocal about that. But the key to the antichrist system is not a technology. it is a spirit which. 1] seeks to take the place of the Lord Jesus. 2] seeks to deny the true Lord Jesus. 3] convinces people to worship it and offer their lives to it. Tech is not required for that. Versions of this antichrist spirit and system existed in the 1st century. and have in every century since. Christians have to stop automatically assuming every new technology is the beast’s technology. Technology is basically morally neutral. It is the heart of man that can direct it towards evil or towards good. You can use AI to create an incredible worship song for the Lord or you can use it for nefarious purposes. It is the heart of mankind that is the real issue. along with the spiritual realm of darkness. There are antichrists everywhere. By that I mean that there are people everywhere who deny Christ and proclaim false religions in the place of his true religion. Be more on guard for that. In fact. that is our bigger concern. and that kind of evil has always been pervasive in our world. Interestingly. the tech moguls kind of are treated by many people like modern deities. or at least demi-gods. who will lead us into the promise land of the future tech utopia. Many of them have obviously believed their own hype. and so the massive fall of much of their industry is exactly what we should expect. And that tech depression is coming. In fact. it is likely already here. Pride comes before a massive fall. They thought the key to creating intelligence was ram and ever increasing CPU power. But that is just the key to burning through electricity fast and churning out slop videos and photos. Intelligence is created by a Higher Intelligence. and he looks at the pride of man and laughs [cf. Psalm 2]. This does not mean that AI won't be of use. It will be very useful for some applications. It does not mean it won't take away some jobs. it will. as all disruptive technologies do. But like all other tech it will not achieve all of what was promised. it will fall short of its makers claims. and it will turn out to be a pretty mundane thing in a few years. that many people have incorporated into their everyday life. Beware the constant “is this the antichrist tech” thinking. Be more concerned about how sinful politicians and sinful tech barons can use any technology to push autocratic ends. That is something to be vigilant of. But then that issue has existed long before silicone was transformed in such a way that helped the rocks cry out. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:59:11 +0000 11e70f2cb8376f3f582370ec59ed6cd1d737694b https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/class-93-p-values-challenge-list Class 93: See if you can prove me wrong Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:02:26 +0000 dd7dcf8cad7df5410d8c07b4d83f9d43ddb0e851 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62000/ Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty. I don’t expect all want to read these posts. Pease don’t feel like you must. Yet. I have… Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000 a617ec077df556bd50efac43f56a67f180eb8ad3 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/ai-as-skynet-panic-hype-or-realistic.html  Over the past couple of days several researchers and 'experts' [.] have warned that artificial intelligence [AI] risks running out of control and threatening the very survival of humanity.  Rather than post individual links to all the articles. click over to Ted Gioia. who's summarized them all in a single Substack post.I'm not convinced by all the hype suddenly being whipped up on this subject.  Eight warnings in 24 hours [or is it 48].  Eight alleged experts all preaching AI doom. gloom and disaster.  The simultaneous onset of all these warnings makes me wonder about the timing.  Is someone trying to panic our politicians and/or business leaders into acting before they can figure out what might work.  'Don't just stand there. do something.' is a very time-worn statement . . . particularly when the 'something' isn't clearly outlined or understood.  I'm suspicious.On the other hand. consider all the hacking exploits. data penetrations and other cybercrimes that have been increasing in frequency for a few years now.  There's no doubt that even without AI. they're a threat to many aspects of our modern society.  Indeed. just a few weeks ago we saw that many water utilities were recently hacked. in some cases severely enough to interrupt the flow of that commodity to customers.  It's gotten bad enough that the FBI has issued a formal warning about 'cyber actors' causing 'operational disruptions'.  In the event of a major international conflict. up to and perhaps including war. it's not hard to imagine enemy nations actively trying to attack all our utility infrastructure in the same fashion. disrupting our entire economy [not to mention our armed forces].  The more AI is used to run our economy. the more risk that 'rogue AI' instructions might be fed into their systems to corrupt and disrupt their operations.So. I think we can agree that there's a genuine risk to our automated systems . . . but is AI itself that risk. or is it merely an added element to risks of which we're already aware.Some 'AI prophets' seem to think that AI will ensure a better future for the whole world.  Elon Musk is a prime example. seeing AI as one vital future component along with space travel and other engineering challenges.  In that sense. his views are a counterweight to 'AI-doom-and-gloom' predictions. So . . . AI as threat or promise.  I don't know enough to comment. but experts seem more than willing to tell the rest of us what to believe.  What do you think. readers.  Please discuss in Comments.PeterEDITED   Zero Hedge reported at noon today:  'Perfectly Timed AI Panic Resurrects 'Bipartisan AI Safety Bill'.'  Click over there to read the report.  Briefly. it appears that the rush of alarmist AI reports may be a deliberately planned political pressure tactic designed to rush controversial AI legislation through Congress.  Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:36:00 +0000 3c8f643fe06c05471fa546200b73861ea2499b26 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/american-medea The Culture of Lindsay Clancy Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:09:22 +0000 37a712d5a38df5529fb80999216ead4de5534100 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/i-always-knew-i-wanted-to-be-a-mom You are allowed to always have wanted to be a Mom. become one. and love it. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:33:43 +0000 7949aec8d21852a874303eab793fa726a51b62f0 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/avocado-toast-exposes-vatican-neofeudalism I never posted on avocado toast. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:49:31 +0000 4a21d1f4bf092749bdcba130d5ba04296e40e656 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/is-the-west-dying-out-the-demographic I was on with Jon Harris discussing. among other things. the so-called fertility crisis. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:01:39 +0000 61f602e82c7e24c300df9936cd37c64c6fdeb103 https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/62051/ I was on with Jon Harris discussing. among other things. the so-called fertility crisis. I have since seen BAP’s article on the same subject. which is more in-depth. and written… Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0000 5453a6764c1205e3da5485bb5f8db4e69eff2fe4 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/the-man-spectrum From Mister Rogers to Mr. T. masculinity has always had more range than our current stereotypes allow. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:17:36 +0000 4039500a6afea4aa265290ea42311b588b97fd43 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-only-equal-representation-we-need.html    The only place where we actually need equal representation by men and women is in the home: 1 husband and 1 wife. 1 father and 1 mother. There is nowhere else it is necessary. In fact. the pursuit of trying to achieve this equal representation everywhere else leads to the decline of this representation in the home. It has this precise and direct impact. It does not just correlate it is the primary cause of this issue. When the home is gutted of this foundation. society is gutted. and everyone else suffers as a result. One of the saddest realities of our modern age is that husbands and wives have become ships that pass in the night. They stop to refuel and restore at the same port of call. but in many homes there is no central homemaker who makes the home a desirable place to be. there are only passing ships that occasionally float the same way. We tend to think of the wife staying at home and the man at work as a thing of history past. but the reality is much different. The truth is that in many ages of history both husband and wife were required to work. The husband may have been a farm labourer for the local lord or master. and the wife was a house maiden for the master’s wife. In fact. this was essentially the plight of many people in the same era that Paul wrote in Titus that older women should maintain the home. The truth is that women being able to keep the home was always the result of a society becoming successful. As Helen Kendrick Johnson notes in her book. Woman and the Republic. “If women were of political importance in earlier times. and if a republic is more favorable to the exercise by them of the elective franchise. we should expect to find women reaching their highest power under the Areopagus. Exactly the contrary appears to be true. Native and honorable Greek women retired to domestic life as the liberty of their people grew. Grote. in his 'History of Greece.' referring to the legendary period. says: 'We find the wife occupying a station of great dignity and influence. though it was the practice of the husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her parents. She even seems to live less secluded. and to enjoy a wider sphere of action. than was allotted to her in historic Greece.'(1) As the Greek society became more successful more women were at liberty to keep the home. In fact. Johnson notes that in earlier. cruder periods. women had far more political and social involvement than people might expect. Why. Because life was harder and more brutal and more people were needed to take part physically. Also men would die quicker and more often. In other words. have you noticed that everyone is feeling poorer precisely at the same time that more people. men and women. are working and household incomes are higher than in previous periods. This is not a coincidence. When prosperity is receding liberty recedes with it. Feminism has not progressed society. it has caused a regress. The home needs one man and woman to fulfil their roles. Much of our social ills could be overcome by restoring that foundation in the home. List of References (1) Johnson. Helen Kendrick. Woman and the Republic — a Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates [p. 9]. Kindle Edition. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:09:20 +0000 28c09cbe83b9a77b1dbebdc3b6ce53519ec31d3d http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/health-update.html  The good news first:  thanks to a very competent and experienced pain management specialist. it looks as if the specific problem[s] with [or. rather. near] my lower spine have been nailed down at last. and a treatment path is opening up.The bad news:  it's taken three years of visits to successive specialists such as neurosurgeons. neurologists. etc. to get here - and not one of those specialists identified. or even hinted at. the actual problem.[Pause here while I spit in disgust. rinse my mouth out to get rid of the bitter taste. and catch my breath.]OK.  As most readers will know. three years ago I began experiencing much worse pain than usual in my lower spine.  It had been painful since a severe injury back in 2004. followed by spinal fusion surgery. but it had settled down into a dull roar. with periodic episodes of greater pain.  The increased pain led me to ask for a referral to a neurosurgeon to figure out what was going on.  Over the next couple of years I saw two neurosurgical practices. one neurosurgeon. several radiologists. and some physical terrorists therapists.  They would all mutter about spinal deterioration above the site of the original fusion. but none would commit to what. precisely. needed to be done.  Instead. they kept referring me for additional CT scans and other investigations.  I came to the conclusion that they were reluctant to commit to surgical intervention because they couldn't precisely identify which vertebrae needed work.  If they operated. and I had to pay a great deal of money. but no improvement resulted. this would be problematic for them.Earlier this year I asked my local physician to refer me to a pain management specialist.  I was popping Tramadol in multiples every day. and that's not sustainable in the long term.  She put me in touch with a fellow former South African. Dr. Theodoor Hancke. at Genesis Wellness and Pain in Wichita Falls.  I'm providing his name because he's a darned good doctor. and if you have severe pain problems and live within travel distance of Wichita Falls. I hope you'll contact him.  Tell him I said to call.Dr. Hancke referred my CT scans to a top neurosurgeon in Dallas. who responded that in the absence of any certainty as to the precise location of the problem. he could not recommend spinal surgery at present.  Fair enough. I guess.  In the meanwhile. Dr. Hancke administered a Caudal Epidural Steroid Injection to try to reduce pain.  That worked for several weeks until the pain came back. so he repeated the process a second time. with similar results.It was at this point that we heard from the neurosurgeon in Dallas.  Both Dr. Hancke and I were getting very frustrated at being unable to reduce the level of pain on a longer-term basis.  He suddenly asked me. 'What about your sacroiliac.  Any problems there.'  I said that yes. I'd had a few. but...  Before I could go on. he made me take off my back support brace. turned me around. and stuck his fingers into the sacroiliac joints on both sides of my pelvis.  It hurt like hell. and I said so.  He grinned. and said that this opened up a whole new perspective on my problem.I'm not a doctor. so I'll let Wikipedia summarize the problem:Sacroiliac jointSacroiliac joint dysfunctionSacroiliitisSurgery for the dysfunctional sacroiliac jointFor a more authoritative [but still easy-to-understand] medical perspective. see 'What to Know About Sacroiliac Joint Fusion'.  It has a useful. informative video as well.The infuriating thing is that my symptoms are an absolutely 100% fit with those described in the medical literature.  Why the heck couldn't all the so-called 'medical professionals' who'd examined me and my CT scans have picked up on that.  I think it must be that they 'locked in' on the fact that I'd had a previous fusion. and my current problems were in the same area as that previous site.  They couldn't look beyond the spine to consider other related issues - which makes me even more angry. because the medical literature indicates that well over 30% of those who undergo lumbar spinal fusion [as I did] subsequently experience sacroiliac problems.Dr. Hancke. being a pain management specialist rather than a neurosurgeon. was able to 'think outside the spine' [you should pardon the expression] and find a way forward.  I'm just sorry for three wasted years until I met up with him...  At any rate. last week he administered the first of what should be two. or at most three. steroid injections into both sacroiliac joints.  It's already had a dramatic effect on my pain levels. cutting them in half.  If. after it wears off. another injection has the same effect. that will probably be sufficient evidence to move forward with fusing both sacroiliac joints to provide long-term relief.  Not only will that be a less painful surgery than spinal fusion. but recovery time should be much shorter - and costs will be lower. too. which is a great help.Anyway. that's how things stand at present.  I'm very pleased to be able to report what I think is significant progress.  God willing. and all other things being equal. by the middle of next year I might be in a much better position as far as my overall health and levels of pain are concerned.  There are. indeed. additional back problems that will probably require surgical attention in a few years. but that can be postponed until it's absolutely necessary.Thanks again to all of you who've kept me in your prayers over this. and contributed to my fundraiser for related expenses.  I'm deeply grateful to you all.Peter Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:32:00 +0000 96a7dc5ecadfb1f4b690abe986997a40c6f7207a https://thetransformedwife.com/a-most-bitter-and-poisonous-fruit/ Written by Joseph Spurgeon In my pastoral experience. many church and family conflicts are not caused by men. They are caused by active female rebellion baptized in feminist assumptions. Gossip. Division. Manipulation. Resistance to legitimate authority. Weaponizing children. Recruiting an audience instead of seeking reconciliation. Feminism has discipled generations of women to equate defiance with courage and submission with oppression. It is a most bitter and poisonous fruit. Women are taught to interpret resistance to authority as authenticity—and restraint as... Read More Read More Tue, 08 Sep 2026 18:08:49 +0000 139172474ea4d82b736e45d9d6c4c6649a345d67 http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-grim-warning-from-europe-about.html  In my first post this morning. I mentioned the possibility that Europe might take action against private bank accounts to fund its ever-increasing deficit and ever-growing social programs.  As if to echo that warning. here's what Zero Hedge had to say a few hours ago.In the view of the EU’s chief Eurocrat. private property as a protective wall shielding citizens from an overreaching state has served its purpose as a pillar of civilization.Central planning. subsidy madness – this is Brussels under the magnifying glass.. . .A ruthless expropriation or the decreed redirection of cash. as the finest bureaucratic German puts it. is supposed to solve the problems Brussels itself has caused through its stubborn climate policy. its overregulation and its continuing insanity of interventionism.Von der Leyen was explicit before the business leaders: Europe has savings. she said. but unfortunately those savings are sitting on the sidelines. Ten trillion euros are sitting as cash savings in the hands of private households in bank accounts. lectures von der Leyen in the manner of a classic central planner who can no longer take her eyes off citizens’ wealth. The European economy must now put this capital to work for its companies. the chief bureaucrat decreed.. . .Von der Leyen is following the path of the German chancellor. Friedrich Merz. too. discovered the cash holdings of Germans as political capital for himself more than a year ago – thoroughly socialist. indeed almost dictatorial. the chancellor also pointed to the possibilities opened up by what he called an activation of this money.Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz reveal not merely an ethical and ideological abyss. they are contemplating dictatorial control over the private wealth of citizens who are still sovereign.There's more at the link. including a video recording of Ursula von der Leyen's address.Don't think that this is only a European problem.  Look at the size of America's deficit. and then consider that we could wipe out two-thirds to three-quarters of it simply by 'nationalizing' the retirement savings of Americans. by confiscating the shares and bonds in which they invest.  That's precisely what some US politicians have been saying for years. and are still saying today.  If they get into power. our private savings and investments are under grave threat.Peter Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:10:29 +0000 a7477dc061025ffa68eeb8240976868993945538 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-end-of-history-became-the-end How liberalism moved salvation into the political future and made dissent a moral crime. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:01:02 +0000 8cdb6d97ab7eece72f4e9910bdb2c0abd65e0445 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/lindsay-clancy-strangled-her-kids A trio of academics. responsible for the paper “Temperature and Maltreatment of Young Children“. did not mention Lindsay Clancy by name. but you will forgive my lapse into clickbait titling when you realize they had women like her in mind. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:04:44 +0000 313e405166448477778926937858f23ba78fcb0b https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/the-boomers-dont-have-a-monopoly A few months’ ago I wrote a piece that I titled. The Generation War. In it I said the following: Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:33:23 +0000 08995b78b5511ff9252b320093e54950ffffac2f http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/points-to-ponder.html  Several points of interest today [and all are well worth your time].1.  DiveMedic discusses the Lindsey Clancy [mis]trial. including the evidence of psychiatric medications and other factors.  I agree entirely with his conclusion.2.  Remember the Ig Nobel awards.  This year's winners have just been announced.  My favorite category:  Biomechanics.Citation: Matilda Brindle. Catherine Talbot. and Stuart West for devising a more precise definition of kissing—“non-agonistic interactions involving directed. intraspecific. oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer”—in ants. birds. polar bears. and humans.'Darling. come here.  I want to practice biomechanics with you.'  3.  Chiefio warns:  'IF you have Money in the EU – Take It Out Now.'The simple fact is that the EU is flat broke. having squandered €Billions on the Ukraine Folly. They have tried regularly to steal the Russian money entrusted to Euroclear. but that mostly failed. They handed a “loan” to Ukraine that doesn’t need to be repaid until Russia pays “reparations”. that will never happen. so kiss that off ... So (Ursula von der Leyen) has stated that people’s savings accounts are a problem [ignoring that savings accounts are what allow banks to make loans for things like cars and mortgages and business working capital]. She has stated that this money must be put “to the service of European Companies” [not realizing it already is as prudent business loans IF appropriately vetted]. That she wants to “securitize them” and “supervise them” – which means steal your money for her desired expenses.Remember what happened during the Cyprus banking crisis of 2012-13.  The EU forced the Cypriot government to close that country's second-largest bank. imposing a one-off levy on all uninsured deposits there. and seize many uninsured deposits in the Bank of Cyprus.  Almost 48% of all bank deposits above €100.000 were seized. without compensation.  If the EU could do it once. during a much smaller financial crisis. I wouldn't bet they won't do it again. and more. in the present circumstances.4.  If you. like me. are wondering about the vast numbers of data centers under construction. it's worth examining the phenomenon on a worldwide basis.  Statista has compiled the figures for Number of data centers worldwide as of June 2026.  Here are the top ten nations:For more information. see the Statista link above.  My question:  if the rest of the world isn't frantically building these things by the hundreds. why are we doing so in the United States.  Follow the money. and see who profits... and who pays.Let us know your reaction[s] in Comments.Peter Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:24:00 +0000 962ee0efa7600b061c1a4da3a5a9f84052ad2b85 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/in-a-liberal-world-the-greatest-oppressors Why birthrates collapse in liberal societies. Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:41:45 +0000 f3fabcc3ae79a2776c8e904787925777dfd41b77 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/repeal-the-19th-arguments-are-generally Don’t be a silly goose. Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:03:35 +0000 36b26807477b91c751fd94bb6cb0ccf624fab25b https://derekramsey.com/2026/09/07/selected-photography-30/ NOTE: All photos taken by members of the Ramsey family. Click or tap on any photo to load the full sized version. Animals Plants The Equator The real equator The tourist equator Art We thought going on a boat called the “Susy Love” was a bit “Sus[picious]” Quito Virgin of … The post Selected Photography appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:00:52 +0000 4a78a3ac56d97a7b88c391260654190566d4576d http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/09/memes-that-made-me-laugh-327.html  Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.More next week.Peter Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:13:00 +0000 61d9d976a2231affe44dc10cda679e8e38b7c7e7 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-original-patriarch.html 'Our father who art in heaven...' The Heavenly Father who started it all. Who gave his son that we may all be saved. The Eternal PatriarchLong live the patriarchy. as it reflects the divine image. It originates with our God. the great Father of all. Live as he would have you live. fathers. Happy Father's Day. Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:56:19 +0000 7004d98dae6f2fb3fbe6613b74eb762a43f19c54 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/gunn-control Nasty. brutish and short. No longer just a law firm. Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:02:12 +0000 84d562d7f7cba616da8349841a17486c2b055326 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/men-regressing-to-the-mean-of-women Should men lower themselves for mate acquisition. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:20:38 +0000 ffa0fdf87a7769fd6fabff5cdc95922aa69bb00d https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/mass-notes My parish gives good homily. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 19:08:35 +0000 b52bc410ade2d7b14023b244a0bbbc77fb0a2b63 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/thank-god-for-lindsay-clancy Here are my thoughts on the Lindsay Clancy trial. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 13:55:19 +0000 5607b906840a2982f7ee9dc3bb7b00c18ac23361 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/a-familiar-feeling-of-alienation a rant. or a sigh. or something in between. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:13:55 +0000 b3bed40a02826e55ee9ae672264eb6dce7045cbb https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/09/05/would-you-want-these-creatures-as-mothers-of-your-children/ While the Lindsay Clancy trial has exposed the nadir of American womanhood. there are plenty of revolting examples on the way down to the bottom. Tim Pool provides us with this example. Is there nothing that young American women will not do for attention and validation. Does motherhood in no way alter their priorities towardContinue reading 'Would You Want These Creatures As Mothers Of Your Children.' Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:16:11 +0000 75499b84035ce883d21d75497a935ece91185549 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/one-good-man.html   I know many people want to blame Lindsay Clancy nearly getting off on the women on the jury. But historically men were less likely to find women guilty as well. Women have always been treated with less criminal responsibility than men. even in cases involving killing their own children. Martin Van Creveld’s notes how this favouritism before the law goes back to ancient times. “Some six centuries later. Zenobia. queen of Palmyra. rebelled against Rome. Defeated and taken prisoner. she begged Emperor Aurelian for her life as “a mere woman.” Instead of being executed in one of the many unpleasant ways reserved for enemies of Rome. she was spared. Zenobia’s male adviser. the philosopher Cassius Longinus. took the blame and suffered the consequences. She herself ended as a grande dame in a villa near Rome. This good fortune was almost certainly connected to the fact that she was said to possess a beautiful voice and “incredible sex appeal.”( 584) That is not necessarily to say that the emperor. a tough soldier and capable statesman. fell for her charms. Like many other rulers before and since. he must have realized that executing a woman. especially a good-looking one. makes for bad publicity. Conversely. one reason why early Christian propaganda abounds with stories. real or invented. of women being tortured and put to death( 585) is to put the pagans in the worst possible light. From the point of view of the propagandist. whether or not the stories were true was immaterial. The tradition of treating women better than men was continued under Salic law. Originally issued by Frankish King Clovis between 507 and 511. it was later developed byhis successors. For example. for merely touching “the hand or the finger of a freewoman or any other woman” a man could be fined 15 solidi. The more intimate the touch. the higher the penalty.( 586) Cutting off the hair of a boy “without the consent of his relatives” cost he who was found guilty of it 1.800 solidi. Doing the same to a girl cost 4.000. Though minors of both sexes were under the control of their adult relatives. obviously a woman’s person was considered more precious. The fine for blocking the road of a free woman or striking her was also three times the sum due for the same offense committed against a man. The penalty for killing a freeman was 600 solidi. for killing a freewoman. 1.800. Another clause says that the penalty for killing a freewoman was the same as the one for killing a male count. Other traditional societies maintained similar distinctions. For example. in Yemen the blood money demanded for the death of a woman was 11 times that demanded for a man. In the eyes of one modern female writer. this rule was part of a “chauvinistic code of chivalry.”( 587) To oblige women. many medieval rulers were even prepared to forego the usual penalty reserved for rebels. namely the confiscation of property.( 588) In 1333-1347 Joan. countess of March. was able to keep her Irish estates even though her husband. Robert Mortimer. had been executed for not only committing treason against King Edward III. but also for being the queen’s lover. In 1399-1402. Elizabeth Fitzalan. widow of the duke of Norfolk. persuaded King Henry IV to allow her to keep her property. Three years later. Constance Holland. the widow of another duke of Norfolk who had ended his life on the scaffold  it was a time of civil war. unhealthy for dukes  persuaded the same Henry. who was her uncle. to allow her to retainher dower. Each of these cases marked a conflict between the desire to uphold the law and enrich the treasury and the political imperative to avoid treating women too harshly. In each of these cases. it was politics that won out.   Conversely. when a woman bit into the proverbial unripe fruit. it was the teeth of her husband or other male relatives that broke. A good example of the way things worked. this time at the bottom of the social ladder. is provided by the English village of Alweras in Staffordshire.( 589) In Alweras. and presumably in many other villages as well. most of those active in illegal brewing were women. But in Alweras. and presumably in other villages as well. most of those fined for illegally selling ale were men. The explanation is simple: Those who committed the offense were actually female. Most females. however. were either the daughters of males or married to them. and consequently it was they who were made to bear the consequences. In 1634 another English court spelled out the reasoning behind this arrangement. The case in question was that of one Thomas Hellyard. He and his wife Elizabeth were brought before the dreaded Star Chamber to answer for having sold saltpeter — an ingredient of gunpowder — without a license. The charges were serious indeed. comparable in today’s terms to a crime like assisting terrorists. Convicted. Hellyard was sentenced to pay the enormous sum of 1.000 pounds sterling. and was subjected to pillory. whipping and imprisonment. Not so his wife and partner. who had sold over 1.000 pounds of saltpeter. Though “the courte was fully satisfyed with sufficient matter whereupon to ground a sentence against the defendant... shee being a wyfe and subject to obey her husband theyr Lord ships did forbeare to sentence her… … In both Britain and the United States. people were prepared to see women as a priori less culpable. In both countries. the prevailing view was that “women are more often the accomplices of crime. its aiders and abettors.”( 630) Whereas men were held “strictly accountable.” women were assumed to be endowed with an “almost paralytic passivity”( 631) and were judged accordingly. To the extent that they participated in crime at all. it was believed at the time. was not on their own initiative. but because of the corrupting influence of vicious men. Whether by making false promises of marriage or by other means. those men had somehow succeeded in robbing women of their independent will. However flawed the logic. the privileges to which it led were very real. In the words of one British journalist. “very properly the law makes merciful allowance in dealing with the female offender when it can be apparent that she has been impelled to commit breaches of the law under masculine influence.” (1) And regarding killing children in particular he notes. “Like Medea. some women were literally able to get away with murder. In late 19th-century Britain. less than one-quarter of those tried for the crime were women. On the other hand. then as now women made up almost all of those tried for infanticide. British juries regarded these women as victims of “puerperal mania.” The latter was a fashionable disease that was also believed to cause “extraordinary obscenity in thought and language.” Very often. juries would simply refuse to convict. Parliament responded by changing the law so as to separate infanticide from murder and place it in a category of its own. Yet even so prosecutors still found it all but impossible to obtain convictions. Normally they could do so. if at all. only if they agreed that light sentences should be imposed. Even so. rarely did infanticidal women serve out their complete term. This was because. among all those declared to be criminally insane. it was they who stood the greatest chance of being granted an early release.”(2) How much does what van Creveld say here match with the Lindsay Clancy trial. The more things change. the more they stay the same. This is historically why women were also not allowed certain roles of authority in society. Authority must be matched with accountability. Those who cannot be held as accountable. cannot by any reasonable society be given larger responsibilities over others. Our society is slowly. and painfully. learning old lessons again. (3) This case. with Clancy. has done more to tarnish the demonic ideologies of egalitarianism and feminism than anything in modern history. Which is important. But also it needs to be noted that one man on the jury did something most men and women have struggled to do in history: hold a woman accountable. Most people struggle to do this. It is a fascinating social phenomenon when you think about it. A woman can do the worst possible crime. turn on the waterworks. and manipulate most people. I have observed this sort of action. in lesser circumstances of course. so many times in my life. and it is recorded by historians as well. as I have demonstrated in this piece. This man showed an ability many people. men and women. do not have: under powerful social pressure he refused to let a woman not be held accountable. Men like that are rare. Praise God one was on the jury. Good job brother. good job. List of References (1) van Creveld. Martin. The Privileged Sex [p. 140-142. 151]. Unknown. Kindle Edition. (2) van Creveld. Martin. The Privileged Sex [p. 151]. Unknown. Kindle Edition. (3) From Not The Bee. Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:13:37 +0000 5a96ef011ac3382069df7d5c5e815b37bd36e14a https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/compassion-for-the-guilty Jason Arday earned his downfall. Nature's editorial got almost everything wrong about it — except the warning about dogpiles Fri, 04 Sep 2026 19:29:07 +0000 8cd39ad71951f7b0e3c5845c1bf1937694ffe8ae https://derekramsey.com/2026/09/04/translations-of-ignatius-letter-to-the-smyrnaeans-chapters-6-and-7/ This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index. A few weeks back. I wrote “Translations of Justin Martyr. First Apology. Chapter 66.” There we identified a common Catholic proof-text and analyzed the different translations. Another common proof text comes from Ignatius’ Letter to … The post Translations of Ignatius. Letter to the Smyrnaeans. Chapters 6 and 7 appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:00:48 +0000 2f8fb64a8e49caae430af2a4a0d05b7d41bcedab https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/bullit-i-finally-watched-it.html   I finally watched Bullit for the first time last night. I have owned the movie for a while now. but only just got around to watching it. Most of the movie is dead boring. to be honest. With moments of real intensity breaking up the monotonous story. I know McQueen meant to play the strong quiet type. that was his thing. but in this movie he was too quiet. way too quiet. Surely about half the movie is just him staring at the screen brooding. He was much better in The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. And I don't just say this because the movie is old. some of my favourite movies come from that era. The aforementioned movies. Where Eagles Dare. The Dirty Dozen. Commancheros. Chisum. and many. many movies as well. No. I just think he did not have a good enough cast to play of. and the movie was longer than the story required. really. The car chase was still worth watching. It deserves to have its iconic status. To me the most remarkable thing about the car chase is not just how well they chose the cars. but it is also the fact that so few modern cars could even do that car chase today. The hills of San Francisco would kill most performance cars made since about 1990. except for a few exceptions. You need a powerful car with live axles. very strong suspension preferably lead sprung. and older cars were massively over built. which is why you pay a premium for them today. They will outlast many of their modern rivals for that very reason. their frames were just so sturdy. You have to keep on top of the rust in the body and you need to be able to continue sourcing led for their engines. of course. but with the right maintenance. they are hard to break. The movie was worth watching. But. personally. I think the creators of many cop movies looked at this movie and thought. 'We can do way better.' And they would be right. I think Clint Eastwoods movies are examples of that. I would like to see an Aussie remake of the movie. set in the 70's. I would swap the Dodge and Mustang with a 1971 XYGTHO and 74 Monaro GTS. That could work. In fact. I think that movie would do really well. Australia has a legacy of great fast car movies. it is time to bring it back. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:39:12 +0000 2c8b07e6b042c1f59c0425c80b6bc7a5873faeb0 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/09/civil-war.html  To continue the theme of the last post. the sad reality is that certain factions of Western men are complicit. either knowingly or unknowingly. in destroying their own group. Putting it in political terms. you have elements of both left and right piling up the logs for the funeral pyre. Mass immigration is the most obvious tool used. and this is promoted by the globalist elites who merely think of humans as homo economicus. fodder for the marketplace. and also by leftists who. for reasons of perverted ideology [a tautology since ideology by definition is perverted as it's what you have when religion is abandoned]. push their obsession with equality to the limits of sanity. The one is driven by greed. the other by anger and resentment as we discussed in an earlier post. Here we see how the anti-God forces behind all this take advantage of human sin. their preferred modus operandi. stimulating it wherever it already exists.Is Britain really on the path to civil war as some are beginning to predict. This is no longer the impossibility it would have seemed 20 years ago. You have the refusal of the elite classes to defend the idea of a shared national identity as they import vast numbers of foreigners who can have no sense of loyalty to or even understanding of the history and heritage of the country to which they are coming. And in response to this you have a growing sense among the indigenous native population that they really are beginning to lose their country. These people are condemned by most of the mainstream [in hock to the elites who control both government and press] in all the usual ways as ignorant. racist. etc. etc. but these stigmas no longer work against people who see their cultural identity rapidly being destroyed.And then you have Islam.Muslims can never assimilate with anyone else. That is a basic tenet of their religion which is not so much a pure religion like Hinduism or Buddhism as a political ideology with a religious component which aims at complete totalitarian control. both externally in the community and internally in the mind of the believer/victim. Romantic Westerners like to imagine Islam in terms of the Alhambra Palace. the Taj Mahal. the Golden Age of Baghdad. beautiful gardens and wise Sufis. and there is certainly this aspect to it. Some of the architecture is stupendous. the Abbasid Caliphate was responsible for an extraordinary cultural expansion and Sufism is replete with profound mystical insights. But the Golden Age was done by the end of the 13th century and Sufism. which is considered heretical by most orthodox Muslims. did not get its insights from the Koran so much as advaita. Christianity and pre-existing Persian spiritual teaching. More to the point. none of this is what Islam means now. It's not just a simple monotheistic religion like a non-Trinitarian version of Christianity. but a political ideology that has sought to destroy everything that stands in its way from the beginning. Muslims. who make up an increasingly large section of the population. cannot assimilate. It is against their religion to do so. They also have a long history of spreading their ideology through the sword. That is their tradition.The spiritually corrupted elites tell us that diversity is strength. in total contrast to historical reality. Moderate diversity can be a strength if there is a common centre. a shared identity and a high level of social trust. but that is precisely what is lacking. National identity has been trashed and replaced with a spurious [spurious because no one feels this in their blood] all-purpose liberalism that is the same everywhere. But incomers keep their identity and it seems inevitable there must be eventual conflict. When has that not happened.If conflict does arise the elites will blame everyone but themselves. They will condemn the people whom their policies put in an impossible situation rather than admit those policies were utterly wrong. The incomers. flushed with numerical power. will reject the time-honoured wisdom. and. frankly. common courtesy. of when in Rome do as the Romans do. They will seek power. at first democratically but eventually by any means. I believe this is what the demonic powers have been working for all along. It is. therefore. something we really need to avoid. and the only way to do that is to get tough now before the situation gets out of hand. We must remember though that the reality behind all this is spiritual. It is bad to lose your country. It is worse to lose your soul. War creates hatred. Well. it comes from hatred but it lets that hatred rip. It is spiritually extremely dangerous for that reason. It's all very well to teach as Krishna taught in the Bhagavad Gita that if you remain detached you can do your duty in war without fear of spiritual consequence. Krishna is right but most people are not capable of that. and war unleashes and seemingly justifies terrible. spiritually destructive. passions. Christianity is not a pacifist religion because it recognises that we live in a world in which evil exists and must be dealt with. but nor is it a martial religion like Islam. War must be a last resort for a Christian and we need to recognise how the demonic powers are trying to manipulate us and take steps to prevent the outcome they are working towards. This will mean hard choices and strong actions but better that than war. The fact that the demons are working towards it shows we should work to avoid it. but we cannot avoid it by refusing to confront the problems that are leading us towards it. The corrupt elites will pay a spiritual price. The rest of us should do what we can to prevent ordinary people being dragged down with them. but the time has passed for all purpose peace and love. These should still be there. of course. but now they will have to take a more rigorous form. one which bends more towards the justice of the father than the mercy of the mother.I must make one final point to put this all in a wider framework. The elites are plainly wrong and the new arrivals who seek to usurp power are also wrong. This does not mean the native peoples are right. The situation has come about because everyone has abandoned God and truth. If one is not acting from awareness of the spiritual then one's actions are contaminated. If one does not think from an understanding of God one's thoughts are degraded. There is national loyalty and there is spiritual [spiritual not religious] loyalty. The former is right and good but if it is not seen in the greater context of the latter it will not lead to a healthy outcome.File under wars and rumours of war. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:14:33 +0000 419049aaaf47eb86fecd8b46f8631a7acac3a1e0 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/04/note-to-readers-2/ It does not make sense to send me money any more [if you ever did]. except from the purest generosity and kindness. for I don’t think I can “perform” any more. as a commentator on various miscellaneous and mostly stupid topics. except rarely while I am not seeing double. Even the beloved Catholic Thing has (…) Fri, 04 Sep 2026 08:11:55 +0000 8f4a1a65d900957d93eb3216f8b9045731d7d66f https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/movie-night-rehearsal-for-murder Gotta keep ‘em guessing. Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:01:47 +0000 3c8003d707e39ed74ba2cdc499c070c5fb4ebcee https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/ai-and-meritocracy What Matt Bruenig gets right about AI and merit. and the potential fallout for suburbs. consumer markets. and the managerial order. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:36:27 +0000 322d3b15a4c8e74e9d953589ff131bd8748d3767 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/my-superinfluencer-report Here’s the recording of last month’s Member Zoom session. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:34:29 +0000 06c1fb3e2aaadce7a23d6f5e622ced6c36a5db41 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/do-dogs-poop-in-alignment-with-the Bring one of those plastic baggies for this one Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:02:29 +0000 7c7a6cadf8113790d790658d94bb214965d9a2a0 https://derekramsey.com/2026/09/03/prayer-and-thanksgiving/ The Greek word for thanksgiving occurs in scripture in three primary forms: εὐχαριστέω [eucharisteó]. verb: give thanks εὐχαριστία [eucharistia]. noun: thanksgiving. gratitude εὐχάριστος [eucharistos]. adjective: thankful It’s fairly common. You can see all of the references here. In the early writings of the church. the word is often left untranslated and transliterated as … The post Prayer and Thanksgiving appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:00:55 +0000 10919bbdbbcb81b10706fcca259b1bc0832f255d https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/saving-spider-man-comics Could we do it now. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:01:40 +0000 1d7e2b2fe463706c50a9f939c7b86b414adf5ac2 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/not-finishing-books I never got through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I tried a bunch of times but no dice. The first half of the book was engaging. but then it began to devolve into abject lunacy. and I’ve never been good with abject lunacy. ask some of my ex-girlfriends. Basic and decent lunacy I can contend with. which is why I read Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:37:27 +0000 1bff2479f7830487f4b1db8b1317f744d6c3d705 https://derekramsey.com/2026/09/02/religion-and-the-failure-of-education-part-2/ In this short. two-part series. we are demonstrating how meaningless it can be to have a PhD in Theology. to have numerous publications. to be a Professor at a prestigious university. and to be an expert. This will serve as a practical example of why formal appeals to authority in religion … The post Religion and the Failure of Education. Part 2 appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:00:18 +0000 d54c4f90e001ae1e0174b52ce59b1a60b79b9393 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-september-67a Wendell Berry. RIP Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:13:13 +0000 dd1982d3759e8f0712dc07084681eceea5a0f3c5 https://declanfinn.substack.com/p/go-flock-yourself 1984 is here. And what a brave new world we're stuck with. Wed, 02 Sep 2026 03:32:09 +0000 646cb54f0b482432fc9f0cc99188f5505c6f7a31 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/09/history-does-not-repeat-cause-and.html   You've all heard the saying. History repeats. You also likely heard the saying. History does not repeat but it does rhymes. Both these statements are pointing to a true phenomenon. but they both fall short of describing what is really happening.   The real lesson of history is actually an observation of science and wisdom. It is this: cause and effect. The same things happen because certain causes have predictable effects. It really is that simple. The Romans opened their borders to mass immigration. therefore they lost their kingdom. Cause and effect. The Carthaginians sacrificed their children in the fires. they could not. therefore. raise the manpower to continue to fight the Romans. Rome won. Cause and effect. Nations which seek to rule over peoples. we call it empire or colonialism. always attract the very foreigners they seek to rule to the centre of their power structures. and they lose their own authority in their own nations. Cause and effect. Nations that offer overwhelmingly generous welfare to their native citizens. as Rome did. end up hollowing out their own strength and being ruled by others who do not rely on that welfare. Cause and effect. If you want to understand where the world is going. you have to study history. because history documents for us what has happened and what was the result of those things happening. And we see a lot of consistent patterns as we study history. And you have to have a basic understanding of the principles of the scientific method. which help us to quantify the observations of cause and effect. Interestingly. the vast majority of the Bible is not prophecy. it is actually history. In fact. even the vast majority of prophetic utterances are the prophets themselves reflecting on what will happen to their people if they reject their historical law and origins. and chase new-fangled philosophies that undermine established principles of wisdom. Cause and effect. It has been obvious to see how our nation has been heading towards disaster for some time now. I find it encouraging how many more people are starting to see this. as well. Only an arrogant people believe they can ignore cause and effect. The laws of nature apply to us all. no matter how special we think we are. The laws of history are simply man's attempt to wrestle with how these laws bear out in the story of our civilisations. There is nothing exceptional about any nation on earth. there is just wisdom applied and wisdom ignored. Each has their effect.   Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:35:48 +0000 eed30a1ff668fd485850c305c386fe0911efc12b https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/09/01/renaming-things/ Still moving. now that I have been slightly jostled by the by-election results. up here in “Canada.” where the Liberals have swept ridings in B.C.. Ontario. and Quebec. They won by insuperable margins. after Carney intentionally picked a fight with Trump. again. Using such devices. his party has been able to laughably misrule our country (…) Tue, 01 Sep 2026 17:26:12 +0000 bc43e11c9cd294e4f7ce01cda5dc1779960625c7 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/mothers-are-feminizing-their-sons Little boys are not “bad.” Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:52:11 +0000 a1e7533110a59bdb2aa924df82296e710ef133cd https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-jd-vance An encomium for the return of the Christian interest to American statecraft Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:01:53 +0000 a2b6a820b29aee20e7c10df8633f29e4b8ed8a29 https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/human-forever-james-poulos James Poulos is one of the most interesting thinkers around when it comes to the intersection of technology and media. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:34:12 +0000 328d8899e274f3a6c02d0df7aeac67bba1733e93 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/lewontins-other-fallacy-race-and This is not so easy Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:03:11 +0000 bb910e4efc32d37128cadd5c1525c05fe3264c97 https://derekramsey.com/2026/09/01/religion-and-the-failure-of-education-part-1/ In this short. two-part series. we are going to demonstrate how meaningless it can be to have a PhD in Theology or to have numerous academic publications. This will serve as a practical example of why formal appeals to authority in religion are close to meaningless. Introduction Ryan Haecker graduated from Cambridge … The post Religion and the Failure of Education. Part 1 appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:00:39 +0000 1a72e9f77ffb2661c3196ae45f554f59e2095b65 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/enemy-within-the-gates The enemy within our gates and the vehicle upon which they ride. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:08:55 +0000 a9ee39edad8adfcedc6d4126254c95093b4609c9 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/christians-never-feared-hell You know what God’s problem is. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:29:24 +0000 b5f28b894e64de85a6f28e0374d08ec5b3b9f5b0 https://thetransformedwife.com/should-we-support-the-services-of-women-in-the-workforce/ A woman emailed me and asked me these questions. They’re things I have been pondering lately. “Is it wrong for Christians to watch movies. People kiss people who are not married in real life. Not to mention. those women most likely aren’t stay-at-home women. Are we partaking in adultery by watching movies [because of them kissing. etc]. And what about cooking shows on TV. I enjoy watching stuff like that. but those women are. again. not being stay-at-home moms and... Read More Read More Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:02:07 +0000 adc478db677ecf7d9f62a7333975bc03f34240bd https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/why-was-western-man-selected-for.html  It certainly seems that way. In almost every situation nowadays the white male is seen as the villain. and has been for at least 20 years. This is despite the undeniable fact that the white male is responsible for almost all modern advances. and that's using modern in its widest sense. going back several hundred years. Is this just the jealousy of the resentful or has that been utilised and exploited for a deeper purpose.I was recently sent this link and asked for my opinion. It's a familiar trope. China. India and the Islamic lands all had great civilisations when Western Europe was an uncivilised backwater [what about Greece and Rome.]. Why did Europe and not these areas develop modern science. The answer supposedly is that Europe took a great deal from these more advanced civilisations. stole. some might say. and that therefore its achievements are not really its own but dependent on those who came before.Of course. there's some truth in this. Europe did acquire knowledge from other civilisations. but to go from that to saying its achievements are less as a consequence. and to surmise that these could have happened elsewhere. given slightly different circumstances. is to make completely unwarranted assumptions. There was something about the Western European psyche that advanced everything. not just science. but everything. the arts. philosophy. ethics. medicine and much more. to places other civilisations had not dreamed of. No one disputes that other civilisations had some sort of science and that they inspired Western scientists. but they all got so far and no further because they lacked something which the West had. Not so much raw intelligence but they lacked what we call now. after Spengler. I believe. the Faustian exploratory spirit of Western man. This refers to the ever-restless search for truth. the expansive attitude that is never satisfied with the known but seeks to go beyond all boundaries and to understand everything. in religious terms. certainly. but not only in religious terms. Just as important. this was coupled with [or perhaps they are part of the same thing] the strong sense of individualism that Western Man developed and a greater devotion to rational enquiry than displayed anywhere else. even in the great civilisations of India and China. Revisionist historians who put Western superiority [which exists in all fields] down to luck or trade networks or exploitation or to geographical advantages are promoting minor and secondary factors to the main one. And they are often doing this in bad faith to support their undeclared ideological prejudices. So. why is Western Man subjected to the relentless undermining of the present time. Those who look only from the outside might say it is because Western Man has caused many of the problems of the modern era. and they would point to ill-treatment of other groups. destruction of the environment and similar faults to substantiate this. ignoring the fact that every group has done this kind of thing. given the opportunity. and Western Man is actually the only grouping to acknowledge it and seek to do something about the problem. Another theory might be that the underperforming groups who have reaped the benefit of Western Man's discoveries and advances resent this fact and spitefully seek to bring him down.Both of these have a degree of truth but they are not the real reason. The reason Western Man. or the white male. is subjected to relentless attack is spiritual. using spiritual in its broadest sense to include all that is non-material. This attack originates from the demonic level. from a centre that seeks to separate humanity from God and exploit it for its own purposes. principally as a source of energy. To do this most successfully they need a conformist. relatively supine population.  White males are the freest. most individual. most focussed on the pursuit of truth and excellence grouping of human beings. They are the ones who will fight for truth. Women are not particularly concerned with truth. preferring security and consensus and a situation where everyone is comfortable. They cannot defend truth and are not designed to do so. That is not their role which is why they are encouraged by the powers that shouldn't be.  Non-Western men are not overly concerned with truth either. principally seeking wealth. power and status. Of course. most Western Men are the same but there is still a significant proportion who seek and will fight for truth and excellence. It is because of this grouping that white males are targeted and undermined with accusations of racism and sexism. neither of which. be it noted. are sins in themselves. being merely legitimate observations of real differences. But no matter. If white males are removed from the equation humanity will become much more susceptible to demonic misdirection.This is not to absolve white males or Western Man of his faults. But to focus. as we do. entirely on these is to miss his real and vital contribution and. above all. the protection his particular mindset affords to those forces that would lead humanity astray.Added note: One might also point out that the quality of Western Man has deteriorated over the last 100 years so he is partly complicit in his own undermining. Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:23:23 +0000 1ec32e0a7e51def79f76d8a01be733772f838014 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xvi-689 this week on Laeth's mind Mon, 31 Aug 2026 14:45:30 +0000 30d605a9d68684706b9b6766164500d98587eefc https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/jude-contend-for-faith-online-bible.html   You can watch the online version of this study on my channel. Based Christian History at 8pm AEST In this study you will find the passage. some analysis of the passage. and 10 study questions with cross references for a Bible study setting. Jude New King James Version Greeting to the Called 1 Jude. a bondservant of Jesus Christ. and brother of James. To those who are called. sanctified by God the Father. and preserved in Jesus Christ: 2 Mercy. peace. and love be multiplied to you. Contend for the Faith 3 Beloved. while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation. I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed. who long ago were marked out for this condemnation. ungodly men. who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Old and New Apostates 5 But I want to remind you. though you once knew this. that the Lord. having saved the people out of the land of Egypt. afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain. but left their own abode. He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day. 7 as Sodom and Gomorrah. and the cities around them in a similar manner to these. having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh. are set forth as an example. suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. 8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh. reject authority. and speak evil of dignitaries. 9 Yet Michael the archangel. in contending with the devil. when he disputed about the body of Moses. dared not bring against him a reviling accusation. but said. “The Lord rebuke you.” 10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know. and whatever they know naturally. like brute beasts. in these things they corrupt themselves. 11 Woe to them. For they have gone in the way of Cain. have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit. and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Apostates Depraved and Doomed 12 These are spots in your love feasts. while they feast with you without fear. serving only themselves. They are clouds without water. carried about by the winds. late autumn trees without fruit. twice dead. pulled up by the roots. 13 raging waves of the sea. foaming up their own shame. wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. 14 Now Enoch. the seventh from Adam. prophesied about these men also. saying. “Behold. the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints. 15 to execute judgment on all. to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way. and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” Apostates Predicted 16 These are grumblers. complainers. walking according to their own lusts. and they mouth great swelling words. flattering people to gain advantage. 17 But you. beloved. remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: 18 how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. 19 These are sensual persons. who cause divisions. not having the Spirit. Maintain Your Life with God 20 But you. beloved. building yourselves up on your most holy faith. praying in the Holy Spirit. 21 keep yourselves in the love of God. looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. 22 And on some have compassion. making a distinction. 23 but others save with fear. pulling them out of the fire. hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. Glory to God 24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling. And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. 25 To God our Savior.Who alone is wise. Be glory and majesty. Dominion and power. Both now and forever. Amen. Introduction and Evaluation of Jude If we were to summarize Jude we could say his big idea would be: Because false teachers have infiltrated the church and perverted God’s grace. Christians must contend for the apostolic faith. persevere in holiness. and lovingly rescue those being led astray. trusting the Lord God who is able to keep them from falling. That captures the movement of the whole letter particularly well. It is a call to action to defend the truth for the sake of God’s people. Jude himself identifies his purpose in 1:3. He notes that he had intended to write about their “common salvation.” but found it necessary to exhort them “to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” He has to do this because certain people have secretly entered the church and were turning God's grace into sensuality and denying Christ's lordship. Aim and structure Jude has an unusually clear overall structure: Greeting and identity — vv. 1–2 The reason for the letter: contend for the faith — vv. 3–4 The warning: examples and characteristics of apostasy — vv. 5–16 The response: remember. build. pray. keep. rescue — vv. 17–23 The confidence: God is able to keep his people — vv. 24–25 The transition at verse 17 is particularly important. Jude moves from describing the false teachers to addressing his readers directly: “But you. beloved…” That contrast occurs again in verses 20 and 21. The letter therefore isn't merely a denunciation of heresy. it is pastoral instruction about how faithful Christians are to respond when error threatens the church. As I already noted. Jude wants believers to contend for the faith for the sake of the body of Christ. Interpretation Jude's argument is theological as well as moral. The false teachers do not merely have some incorrect opinions. Their distorted understanding of grace produces distorted behaviour. They turn grace into an excuse for sensuality and simultaneously deny Christ's authority. That is why Jude repeatedly connects belief and behaviour. Cain. Balaam and Korah in verse 11 are not random examples: each represents rebellion against God's revealed order. The images Jude uses in verses 12–13. imagery like waterless clouds. fruitless trees. raging waves and wandering stars. communicate spiritual barrenness and instability. The second half of this small letter gives the positive alternative. Believers are to build themselves up in the faith. pray in the Holy Spirit. keep themselves in God's love and look forward to Christ's mercy. They are also to show differentiated pastoral care toward those affected by error. There is a beautiful tension between human perseverance and divine preservation. Verse 21 says. “keep yourselves.” while verse 24 declares that God is able to “keep you from stumbling.” God's preserving work does not make Christian perseverance unnecessary. rather. persevering in the faith is one of the ways God's preserving grace is evidenced. The believer is responsible to keep their faith in God. while relying on God to sustain them.  Jude would laugh at those who complain too much about tone. His letter is rhetorically forceful. His language becomes increasingly vivid as he describes the false teachers. This is appropriate because the tone of the letter is one of urgent pastoral warning. not detached academic analysis. Jude cares enough about people’s souls to use strong language to warn them about dangerous teachers. Jude Bible study Questions Bible Study: Jude — Contending for the Faith 1. Who are the people Jude is writing to. and what does he say God has already done for them. Vv. 1-2 Cross-reference: 1 Peter 1:3–5 2. Why did Jude feel compelled to change what he originally intended to write about. Vv. 3–4. Cross-reference: Galatians 1:6–9 3. What exactly was wrong with the false teachers. Vv. 4. 8–13 and 16. Cross-reference: Titus 1:16 4. Why does Jude spend so much time reminding his readers about examples from the past. Vv. 5–11. Cross-reference: 1 Corinthians 10:1–12 5. What do Jude's vivid descriptions in verses 12–16 tell us about the character and destiny of false teachers. Vv. 12–16. Cross-reference: Matthew 7:15–20 6. What is the positive alternative to following false teachers. Vv. 17–21. Cross-reference: Acts 20:28–32 7. What does it mean to “keep yourselves in the love of God”. Vv. Jude 20–21. Cross-reference: John 15:9–10 8. How should Christians respond to people who are doubting or being drawn toward error. Vv. 22–23. Cross-reference: Galatians 6:1–2 9. What does Jude mean by saying that God is able to “keep you from stumbling”. V. 24. Cross-reference: Philippians 1:3–6 10. How should Jude change the way we live as Christians and as a church. Vv. 24–25. Cross-reference: Romans 16:25–27 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 06:15:18 +0000 53ec93542d6db7cdcc3893f517924f8d2c2bc6fa https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/those-who-instill-fear-always-aim-to-manipulate I have been in my current position at a university for just over a decade. Every year the institution hints that it may close the department I work in.The reactions of the department heads for whom I have worked over the years have been uniform and predictable—general panic followed by the vigorous need to prove the department's worth by increasing revenue flows. improving results. raising efficiency. and innovating ideas and methods. So. over the years said department heads dedicated (...) Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:56:15 +0000 c63c90297896594e7fe8eff1eb75a0e29840889c https://www.gfilotto.com/2026/08/29/humans-have-extraterrestrial-origins-and-antigravity-technology-is-a-fact/ You don’t need to take my word for it. the book is 825 pages with weaponised Autist level footnotes for references. It is truly a gigantic reference book that cover at least four topics in such detail that it becomes... Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:52:24 +0000 fd9b0471c7302d7b5927cd95b1ce7914b5257285 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/summer-in-the-italian-alps It has been a glorious summer in the Italian Alps. possibly the best that I have experienced. Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:39:56 +0000 360f6459233e63b5a9ef7564dfec7ac1ec372c7d https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/lunatics-in-classroom-and-beyond.html (1) “What will you say when a child asks: Why are we driving a vehicle that is killing our planet.” 'Honey. it's retarded.' Or something like that. But in all seriousness. there are elements in modern media. schooling and government. who genuinely and truly believe it is their task to turn your children against you and your way of life and values. Many parents are sleepwalking into this happening. as well. They might even be seeing it happen to their friends. or people they know. and of course it cannot happen to them. right. A lack of diligence in what your kids are being taught both when they are with you. and when they are not. often turns into one of the biggest regrets of many older parents. And saying. “We chose a private school for that reason.” does not count as much as you think. I know I went to one. in a good area. They are not always the bulwark of righteousness that many Christian parents think they. And. of course. the devil knows that if he can get the children to turn against their fathers. and the fathers to turn against their children. then he can destroy a society. '5 Behold. I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 6 And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children. And the hearts of the children to their fathers. Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse' [Mal. 4:5-6]. Once a society gets to that point. it is almost impossible to preserve. That overly progressive teacher or that annoyingly invasive government bureaucrat is not harmless. They are actually part of a concerted effort in our modern society to make our way of life unliveable. whether they know they are or not. Beware of their lunatic influence on your children. List of References (1) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/08/25/when-a-child-asks-why-are-we-driving-a-vehicle-that-is-killing-our-planet-what-will-you-say/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:57:02 +0000 5742aed035934f248928812d607d0549a5bf7fc5 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/to-play-the-democratic-game-is-to I’m not right wing and I’m not left wing. Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:20:11 +0000 fefb68d6a111cfe5ad5a2e10fd8c90e2a3cc6bae https://winteryknight.com/2026/08/27/weak-men-like-dave-ramsey-and-mark-regnerus-are-causing-the-decline-of-marriage/ In this post. I wanted to show a couple of videos to illustrate this point: when Christian men or socially conservative men teach women to be 1] entitled and 2] immune to accountability. they are causing the decline of dating and marriage. So. I’ll start by explaining what men want from marriage and what they … Continue reading Weak men like Dave Ramsey and Mark Regnerus are causing the decline of marriage → Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:00:45 +0000 4aa4b4a2acd631848999ed6275cdfd7edd1176ea https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/lindsay-clancy-is-opening-eyes.html   Paul says something really interesting in Titus 2. that is being highlighted by the Lindsay Clancy trial. He says among other things that women need to be taught how to love their children. '3 the older women likewise. that they be reverent in behavior. not slanderers. not given to much wine. teachers of good things— 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands. to love their children....' [Tit. 2:3-4]. There are a lot of amazing mothers. I am surrounded by many of them in my family. social network and church environments. Incredible women. doing incredible things for their children and families. If you are surrounded by such women. you might find Paul's statement. here. that women need to be taught how to love their children. to be strange. But the Lindsay Clancy trial has. once again. shown us that Paul had a supernatural insight into human nature for both men and women. He was not seeking to simply repeat cultural ideas. but rather to convey transcendent truths. Transcendent truths that we ignore at our own peril. If the culture of the home is broken enough. for long enough. you will have an increasing number of women in society who will support a woman like Lindsay Clancy. as we have all just seen. to our horror. The abortion numbers should have told us this problem existed. If that did not. abortion up to birth should have told us this. But people were so uninterested in hearing this. that it took the evil of a woman blaming her depression for pre-meditated murder to remind us that women need to be taught to love their husbands and children. just like men need to be taught to love their wives. People forget that Paul lived and wrote in a day where a woman who really did not want her kids could dump them in the forest to let them die of exposure. Something which was common in ancient Rome. Greece and other societies in that day. Or she and her husband could sell unwanted children into slavery. something which also happened. Or they could simply put their children under the authority of a slave or other servant to be raised. trained. and brought up. barely even engaging with them. These are just some of the evils that were accepted. These things sound unconscionable in our day and age. though many parents have moved back closer to doing the third one through the schooling system. But the support for Clancy amongst a too large subset of women shows us the old pagan ways could easily come back. if society lets them. Paul knew that a young mother needed the guidance of older. experienced women. especially her family and Christian family. to help her get through the harder stages of pregnancy. He did not know the term post-partum depression. and he did not have children of his own. But he had supernatural insight into the kind of healthy structures a young woman needed around her to get through pregnancy well. Praise God. for the women I know doing this. May God use the clear nature of Lindsay Clancy's evil to wake up more people to the way our society has been heading. Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:16:33 +0000 583f30411fa690f39cfb54eca7874a598c558777 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/we-are-already-extinct-economists Always be wary of one-number summaries Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:03:27 +0000 e5945b0e8e7a37038219e24ff0cc7e848ed66862 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/christopher-nolans-iranian-odyssey GQ asks the important questions. Thu, 27 Aug 2026 03:35:21 +0000 97a689e7ab73d34cc28926163e19897cf541cf25 https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/the-only-thing-i-miss-about-living-in-canada I spent most of my formative years and early adulthood in Canada. a country in which I never really felt 'at home' nor particularly liked all that much.Of course this had nothing to do with my being born in the United States. where I also lived and worked for nearly a decade as an adult. Although I preferred America to Canada. I can't say I really ever felt at home in the U.S. either.I also lived in Germany for a while [felt like a stranger the whole time]. spent nearly a year in England [not en (...) Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:35:22 +0000 f0e2853f862ba905fafa1bfbff1be72b8facd791 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/how-can-wives-respect-their-husbands Eve listened to the devil and ate the forbidden fruit. then she enticed Adam into eating the fruit as well. Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:50:56 +0000 755e5fb2d38e9d247678d259af58795310b3fd4c https://secretfire.substack.com/p/our-proper-dark Yeats - The Statues Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:07:13 +0000 f2a5d1d73d0e14187ea858b3875f0612013ee4b0 https://secretfire.substack.com/p/susans-new-start The Great Story Begins Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:02:44 +0000 aca6f474617749bc52440d3b2831befb07a39f69 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/virtue.html  Every virtue has a complementary virtue which stops the excesses of the first virtue turning into a vice. Mercy and justice is one obvious example. Tolerance and adherence to truth is another while humility and strength is a third pairing of virtues with one filling in the gaps of the other and curbing its tendency to fall into a deformed version of itself. You might add patience and resolve which stops patience drifting into apathy. Then there is compassion which without discernment falls into sentimentality. Each virtue naturally suggests the other and if it doesn't for any individual. that means that its motivating impulse is in some measure deficient or even defective.It is the same with divine qualities such as love and truth. One without the other leads first to imbalance then disorder and finally to evil. When virtues are seen as emanating from the reality of Christ they will automatically include their balancing opposite because Christ is the central sun from which the virtues originate. and they are like rays. They don't exist in their own right. He exists and they come from him. When severed from the reality of Christ. the supposed virtue loses its spiritual force and becomes a caricature of itself. often ending up as a path to sin.To be spiritually creative virtue must operate in a proper metaphysical structure which incorporates a sacred centre. The virtue must both express the quality of that centre and be a means of guiding the human soul towards union with it. This is why the virtues without Christ are sterile and then potentially destructive. I am not saying that only a professed Christian can have these virtues but it is easier for a professed Christian to do so because he knows whence they arise. This is also why virtue in the Christian world is followed because it is right whereas in Eastern religion virtue is often just part of technique and a means to an end rather than a justification in and of itself. If the goal is Nirvana the virtues are meaningless except as a way of facilitating that goal. If the goal is Christ the virtues become both means and end.The modern world has lost Christ but kept some of the virtues associated with him. but cut a flower from its stalk and pretty soon it withers and dies. This is increasingly apparent where the virtues are concerned. and now they are often used as a way of attacking their source. This is a natural outcome of a thing being separated from its founding principle but it has also been exploited by the forces of darkness. There was no need for it to have gone this far for a humanity that was not looking for excuses to sin or a justification for hatred and resentment. Evil is using decayed good to advance its own rotten agenda. and there is no excuse for those who go along with this because in their hearts they know what they are doing. Some may be dupes but no one is innocent. That is the nature of these times when the heart is being examined. Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:04:40 +0000 397f15f1cd0048bca418e0b3561732ef93c4da4d https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-trap A conspiracy theory Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:01:24 +0000 fbba3932c434b31591dc29d64879094e6eb5a3f5 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/08/26/an-important-update-to-the-previous-article-ukrainian-special-forces-members-are-implicated-in-the-murder-of-ukrainian-orthodox-monks/ Greetings in Christ. My last article was an open appeal to GOARCH to cease support for the persecutors of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In that appeal. I reported that three monks were attacked at Sviatohorsk Monastery in Ukraine. One monk was ruthlessly killed. Not only was he stabbed. but he was also shot through the … Continue reading An Important Update to the Previous Article: Ukrainian special forces members are implicated in the murder of Ukrainian Orthodox Monks Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:34:37 +0000 f3e59a79ad86fc21e69ddb5c0edff1af5155603c https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/white-liberal-problems.html   (1) Why are white liberal women such a problem in modern democracies. There are a few reasons. But a core one is that they spend the most amount of time around white liberal men. who are far more effeminate and progressive than the average man. Therefore. they are less safe. less stable. and less likely to seek to provide a traditional lifestyle. No wonder white liberal women are so angry. and so willing to support big government. If they look around and see most of the men around there are more effeminate than them. then that is a valid reason for stress. Women are created to be influenced by the men around them. and especially led by them. When the men around them show no signs of being safe. stable and strong protectors. this sets off alarm bells in the psychology of the women around those men. How many pretty. talented and promising women go through Hollywood and come out the other side nuts. Why. They spend time around some of the worst types of men. progressive men. This social phenomenon has now spread far and wide. Some man might read this and say: here we go. another conservative blaming men for the problem that women are causing in society right now. No. I am not quite doing that. not exactly at least. Women have their own agency and the ability to make up their own minds about issues and how they will act in any given situation. But the fact that God created women to be led by men DOES mean that men will have an influence on the women around them. When men are strong and stable. the women around them will feel naturally safer. When the men are not like this it sets of a danger warning in the inner psyche of a woman. A good example of this is the low status man. A lot of men will see a low status man and see someone who is harmless. But this is not necessarily what women see. Sometimes. often. they will see in the low status guy a man who cannot protect them. might look to them for protection. or worse. in some situations if he has very low character she sees a man who is a potential danger to her. especially when other men are not around. This is one of the core reasons that women flock to higher status men. even often men who other men would see as more dangerous. Because she knows this man is capable of protecting her. indeed that he very likely will. We have a situation where more and more women are growing up around the kind of men who cannot and do not create a reasonable space of strength and safety for them to flourish in. Why would they not be stressed out. So. yes. women are responsible for their own decisions and actions. and need to be held accountable for that. But this is something that strong men do. not weak men. As the well chosen picture in the article above shows. and states accurately. “Weak men fear strong women.” This is correct. and when a woman can push around most of the men she knows. who is she going to look to for protection. Herself. Government. Imported men. Where does she look. She looks anywhere she can. and this causes issues for everyone. This is not just based on anecdotal evidence either. “In the case of mental and physical well-being. conservatives clearly have something figured out that liberals can learn from. These psychological facts have been highlighted by recent research showing that liberal women are unhappy. Indeed. one study showed that liberal female adolescents were especially prone to increases in depression. Even more recently. a just-published report from the 2024 American Family Survey revealed that liberal women are among the most unhappy people in the country. with only 12 percent saying they are completely satisfied with their lives. Comparatively. conservative women reported being over three times more satisfied.”(2) Women who grow up in liberal spaces are much less likely to be psychologically happy. My contention is that a big part of the reason for this is the liberal men they grow up around. A bad man can wear conservative and traditional clothing. but in a progressive space. a bad man does not even need to hide as much. List of References (1) Image source: https://spectator.org/why-are-liberal-women-so-unhappy/ (2) Lucian Conway. 2025. https://spectator.org/why-are-liberal-women-so-unhappy/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:39:18 +0000 f1ce4cd868ee315aeabe5eac636c8087d871aa7b https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-woke-are-the-true-patriots Why America's founding values will eternally return to LGBT Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:01:56 +0000 0ca6614b87878a5e2579402e4c64c9afd9e4130d https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/08/ss-paul-and-james-on-faith-and-works.html Recently I responded to a social media post from an apologist for the Roman Church.  In the post. the Roman apologist made the oft-repeated claim that the only verse in the Bible in which the expression “faith alone” appears is the verse which rejects it. i.e.. James 2:24.  Among other things. I pointed out that this simply is not true.  The expression also appears in Mark 5:36 where it is put in the imperative mood. that is. as a command. by none other than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.   The Roman apologist responded by altering his original claim to include the qualification “in the Greek.”  This was an unwise move on his part.  The Greek text translated “only believe” in the Authorized Bible in Mark 5:36 is “μόνον πίστευε” [monon pisteue].  The Greek text translated “faith only” in James 2:24 is “πίστεως μόνον” [pisteos monon].  In the Greek. the word rendered “only” is identical and the relationship between the genitive noun in St. James’ epistle and the imperative verb in St. Mark’s Gospel is much more obvious than in English.  Both are built on the same stem πίστ [pist]. whereas in English we use “believe”. a verb of Germanic descent to correspond to “faith” a noun of Latin etymology.   A better argument that he might have used would have been to say that the Lord was speaking to the situation in Mark 5:36 and so it was not a statement about the theology of salvation.  The problem with this reasoning is that the Lord’s statement was addressed to Jairus who had just received word that his daughter. for whom he was asking the Lord for healing and her very life. had died.  This verse is. in fact. typical of the response. when a verbal response is recorded. that the Lord would give to requests for healing.  Only two verses prior the Lord had said to the woman who had been healed while He was on His way to heal Jairus’ daughter “Daughter. thy faith hath made thee whole.” Late He would use almost identical wording to blind Bartimaeus who requested his sight when the Lord was traveling through Jericho on His way to Jerusalem just prior to His Triumphal Entry “Go thy way.  Thy faith has made thee whole” [Mk. 10:52].   In St. Luke’s account of both these events. the word “saved” appears in place of “made…whole.”  This was a translation choice.  It is the word σέσωκέν [sesoken] in each instance.  This is the third person singular. perfect active indicative form of σῴζω [sozo]. “I save”. from which our word soteriology – the doctrine of salvation – is derived.    Now. it could be argued that the salvation in view in these passages is not spiritual salvation. that is. salvation from sin and its eternal consequences. but physical salvation from temporal conditions.  It would be unwise for a Roman apologist to make such an argument. however.  The entire theological basis for thinking that anointing by the Church’s elders [presbyters. priests] for healing is a Sacrament [a means through which God conveys grace] is that spiritual healing being so much more necessary than physical. God gives the former when He gives the latter. a principle that would seem to be supported from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ healing the man sick of palsy [in St. Mark’s account 2:1-12].  More importantly. however. is that the pattern is consistent throughout the Gospels – if someone comes to the Lord. seeking healing of illnesses. of conditions such as blindness. deliverance from demonic possession. or any such thing. all that the Lord asks of that person is faith. The faith does not even have to measure up to a set standard.  Think of the man who requested that his son be delivered from possession immediately after the Transfiguration.  The Lord tells him “If thou canst believe. all things are possible to him that believeth” [Mk. 9:23] and the man responds “Lord. I believe. help thou mine unbelief” [v. 24] and receives what he had requested [vv. 225-27].  All of these things – healing. sight. the ability to walk. exorcisms. what have you – were gifts that the Lord gave freely to whoever came to Him for them.  All that was needed to receive them was faith – and faith enough to ask. was sufficient.   This is very similar to what St. Paul has to say about faith in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Roman Church.  This brings us to one of the other things that I had pointed out in my response to the Roman apologist.  Even if it were true that James 2:24 was the only verse to speak of “faith alone” and in the context of denying it. which I have just demonstrated is not the case. this leaves the matter of what St. James asserts that people are justified by in addition to faith.   The expression St. James uses is ἐξ ἔργων [ex ergon] – out of. or by. works.  This is precisely what St. Paul denies that justification or salvation is by.  These denials occur not just in a single verse but multiple times throughout the Pauline corpus.  The fourth chapter of Romans is of particular importance. however. because in this chapter the reason why justification is by faith and not by works is explained at length.    Before looking at that explanation another detail about the fourth chapter of Romans deserves mention.  That is that the language used by St. Paul in this chapter is very similar to that used by St. James in the second chapter of his epistle.  “Justified”. “faith”. and “works” occur repeatedly in both passages.  It is not just a matter of similar terminology.  St. Paul references the example of Abraham in the Old Testament. quoting Genesis 15:6 in the third verse of the chapter.  St. James also references Abraham and quotes the same verse in the twenty-third verse of his second chapter.  That both writers use the same primary Old Testament reference and the same terminology to argue for what on the surface seem to be contradictory conclusions places an interpretive responsibility on both sides of the debate about faith and works.  If. as both the Roman Church which rejects “Sola Fide” and our Anglican Church which affirms it [Article XI] along with the Lutherans and Reformed confess. both the writings of St. Paul and the epistle of St. James are part of the inspired written Word of God then some way of explaining why both are true even though the one seems to be affirming A and the other non-A must be found.    There is. in fact. an explanation which suggests itself in the very texts in question.  The similar terminology in the two passages has already been noted but there is one term that is prominent in the fourth chapter of Romans that does not appear at all in James 2:14-26.  That word is χάρις [charis] which means “grace”.  It occurs in the fourth chapter of Romans for the first time in the fourth verse. then again in the sixteenth verse.  While these are only two occurrences they are key verses because they contain St. Paul’s explanation of his doctrine.  In the first occurrence the Authorized Bible reads “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace. but of debt.” [Rom. 4:4].  Something that is received as a reward for works is something that is owed to the person who receives it.  This is not the case with God’s justification or salvation.  All people. Jews or Gentiles. are sinners.  We do not deserve salvation.  We can do nothing to earn it.  It is given to us as a free gift.  That is what it means for justification to be “by grace” in St. Paul’s writings.  The verse that immediately follows reads “But to him that worketh not. but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly. his faith is counted for righteousness.”  “To him that worketh not” - Gk. τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ [to de me ergazomeno] – is a much stronger way of saying that it is not by works and it is only in the context of making his point here that the Apostle speaks in this way.  After quoting from King David who expressed the reverse side of counting of faith as righteousness [the non-imputation of sin] and arguing from Abraham’s having been justified by faith in his uncircumcised state that those who believe are justified regardless of whether they are circumcised or not. he provides this plain explanation “Therefore it is of faith. that it might be by grace. to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed: not to that only which is of the law. but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham. who is the father of us all.” [Rom. 4:16]  This verse says that justification is by faith that it might be by grace.  The earlier verse says that for it to be by grace it cannot be by works.  What this suggests with regards to the interpretation of St. James is that the justification that he is talking about. the justification that is “by works” and not by “faith only” cannot be justification by grace.    To argue this from the absence of the word grace from the relevant passage of St. James alone would be a mere argument from silence. but when we join that absence to what St. Paul says about faith. works. and grace in Romans. the conclusion seems established.  Further support can be found in the second verse of the fourth chapter of Romans where St. Paul writes “For if Abraham were justified by works. he hath whereof to glory: but not before God.”  St. James had declared that Abraham was justified by works.  St. Paul here does not say that he wasn’t. but rather than such justification is cause for boasting but not before God.  In other words. it is not the kind of justification. justification by grace. that he is writing about.  In Ephesians 2:8-9 he wrote “For by grace are ye saved through faith. and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works. lest any man should boast.”  The “boast” in this verse. is the verb form of the noun rendered “whereof to glory” in Rom. 4:2.  Romans 4:2. therefore. provides an explanation of James 2:14-26 that harmonizes the two passages.  James 2:14-26 provides no such explanation of Romans 4 – or Eph. 2:8-9. or all the other passages in which St. Paul asserts that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works.    That an explanation of St. James can be found in St. Paul. while St. James contains no explanation of St. Paul. only makes sense.  St. Paul’s epistle to Romans was written towards the very end of his third missionary journey as he was about to travel to Jerusalem where he would be arrested.  St. James’ epistle was written much earlier. before the Council of Jerusalem which took place between St. Paul’s first and second missionary journeys.  This can be reasonably deduced from the fact that St. James’ epistle is written to a Jewish Church into which Gentiles have not yet been incorporated.  The author identifies himself as James and traditionally this has been thought to have been St. James the Just. who as bishop of the Church of Jerusalem presided over the Council [Acts 15]. making it incredible to think that it could have been written after the Council.  If the St. James who wrote the epistle was the brother of St. John this would also mean that the epistle had to have been written before the Council of Jerusalem and. indeed. before St. Paul’s first missionary journey. because he was killed by Herod Agrippa at the beginning of the chapter of Acts prior to the one in which SS. Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the Church of Antioch.  St. Paul. then. by the time he wrote Romans. had plenty of time to have become acquainted with St. James’ epistle. but Romans would have been years in the future when St. James wrote his epistle.   St. Paul’s explanation of why the justification of which he wrote is by faith and not by works corresponds with what we have already noted about how the Lord healed and delivered people during His earthly ministry.  Again. the Lord bestowed these blessings freely. turning nobody away. and requiring nothing except faith enough to come to Him and ask.  St. Paul’s account of justification basically amounts to spiritual salvation being exactly the same as this.  The word χάρις. like its Latin and English counterparts.  can refer either to the attitude of favour on the part of someone who freely gives or to the attitude of thankfulness on the part of the recipient [hence. the designation of Holy Communion as The Eucharist. or Great Thanksgiving. “saying grace” and the very word gratitude for thankfulness].   When used of God it is always the grace of the Giver.  When used of God with regards to the salvation of man it can mean either His favour as actively expressed in the giving of His Son to be our Saviour [Rom. 3:24] or His favour as the state in which we stand because of Christ’s saving work. [Rom. 5:2] Either way. the primary idea of salvation by the grace of God is that everything which God does to make sinful people right with Him. He gives to them freely.  We must believe in Jesus Christ. but this is not a work we do to earn our salvation.  If it were. justification by grace could not be through faith any more than it is by works. As with the physical healing during His earthly ministry. we merely need faith sufficient to come to Him and ask [Rom. 10:13].  Faith’s role in salvation is to receive the gift.  It is to the free gift of justification [Rom 3:24. 5:14-18] and everlasting life [Rom. 6:23] what the hand of a recipient is to a material gift.  Since it is the only such hand that we have been given for receiving the gift of salvation – as means of grace. Sacraments correspond to the hand of the Giver not the hand of the recipient. the role of repentance is not to receive grace but to break down the barriers sin erects in the heart to the reception of grace [1]. and the exclusion of works from this role is explicitly spelled out by St. Paul – it is indeed. “faith alone”. or better. “faith only” which receives the grace of salvation.  This is St. Paul’s teaching.  It is not what St. James denied in James 2:24.   That St. Paul writing later. explains St. James writing earlier and that the explanation is that Jacobean salvation/justification is not salvation/justification by grace before God. is the harmonization that most fits the sacred texts.  The explanations of St. Paul offered by those who reject this harmonization are less than satisfactory.  That when St. Paul wrote that justification was not by works he meant “works of the law” not “works of love” is true but does not support the conclusion for which those who so argue contend.  The difference between “works of the law” and “works of love” is that “works of the law” are works done in order to gain God’s acceptance and “works of love” are works done with no such motive in mind but out of love for God.  The whole idea of “works of love” rests upon the fact that we are free to love God. because He first loved us by giving us His Son to take away our sin.  If you say that “works of love” are necessary for salvation in any sense other than that they are the natural fruit of the love that God’s freely given forgiveness inspires then you have eliminated the distinction between “works of the law” and “works of love” and transformed “works of love” into “works of the law.”   Nor is it helpful to try and explain away St. Paul by saying that the works he excluded were works of “the Law” in the sense of the Old Covenant as opposed to works of “the Gospel” in the sense of the New Covenant.   Unless. of course. one has John 6:29 “Jesus answered and said unto them. This is the work of God. that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” in mind which is unlikely to be the case with someone trying to explain away St. Paul in this manner.  The moral standard the Lord Jesus set for His followers was higher than that set by Moses.  What was merely implicit in Moses. the Lord spelled out explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount – if we are to be righteous in God’s eyes by meeting His standard. then we must obey His commandments completely rather than merely in the most literal outward manner. we must obey them in our hearts. in our thoughts. words and deeds.  St. Paul. however. in the third chapter of Romans explained that the Law could not justify before God because all have sinner and so the Law can only condemn.  If this is the case with the Law as given by Moses. it is all the more the case with the higher standard of the Sermon on the Mount.  St. Paul’s argument for why justification by grace cannot be of works would make no sense if the works excluded were works under a lower standard but not works under a higher standard.   Finally. the argument that the works St. Paul had in mind were works of the “ceremonial Law” but not works of the “moral Law” is defeated by Titus 3:5 “Not by works of righteousness which we have done. but according to his mercy he saved us. by the washing of regeneration. and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”   “Works of righteousness” is hardly an expression that would be used to refer to keeping the ceremonial Law rather than the moral Law.   Such explanations are obviously inferior to simply accepting that St. Paul. writing later. explained St. James rather than the other way around and that the explanation is that St. James was not talking about salvation/justification before God by grace.  Those who do not accept this and cling to one or more of the inferior explanations do so because they are unwilling to acknowledge that the words “Sola Fide” could express. depending upon how it is explained. a truth rather than a form of heresy. This is a dangerous unwillingness. however.   Someone unwilling to acknowledge that “Sola Fide” can be a truth as well as a heresy. deliberately blinds himself to the fact that heresies are not simple errors of the 2 + 2 = 5 type. but a distinct kind of error that involves exaggerating a truth to the point that it eclipses other truths that are just as important.  Sabellianism/Patripassionism/Modalism is the heresy that you get if you exaggerate the unity of God [a truth] to the point that it eclipses the distinct Personhood of the Father. Son. and Holy Ghost.  Tri-theism is the reverse heresy.  If you exaggerate the truth of the deity of Jesus Christ to the point that His humanity is eclipsed or denied then you open the door to a number of heresies including Docetism. Apollinarism. and Eutychianism.  Similarly. if you exaggerate His humanity to the point that His deity is downgraded you can get a number of different heresies including  Ebionism. Adoptionism. and Psilanthropism [Arianism. the main heresy of the fourth century against which the first two ecumenical councils contended. also downgraded the deity of Jesus Christ but in exaggeration of a different truth].  If there is a Sola Fide heresy then there must be a truth in Sola Fide that has been exaggerated.  Indeed. technical definition of heresy aside. holding SS James and Paul together requires this.  The Sola Fide denied by St. James must be a heresy.  The Sola Fide acknowledged and emphasized by St. Paul – the fact that he does not use the word “alone” is not relevant because it is “works” that the “alone” in “faith alone” excludes and St. Paul excludes works with much stronger language than the word “alone” – must be a truth.   The Pauline Sola Fide – the truth – is an auxiliary truth.  It supports and safeguards another. more important truth.  This truth is Sola Gratia. the truth that salvation is the free gift of God by grace and not something we earn.  Now Sola Gratia. while one of the Five Solae in the formula drawn up by twentieth-century Calvinists either to summarize the teachings of the sixteenth century Reformers or to try and make them all out to be Calvinists. is not a Reformation/Protestant distinctive.  It is not denied by those who have difficulty seeing in the words Sola Fide anything other than the Jacobean Sola Fide – the heresy.   Rather. it is affirmed by them. often quite strongly and with indignation against the suggestion that they teach salvation by works.  It is Catholic dogma in the truest sense of the word Catholic because it was defined as such against both the ultra-rigorism of the Novatian and Donatist schismatic sects and the heresy of Pelagius by the Catholic Church of the early centuries of the first millennium before such things as the cultural differences between Greek and Latin speakers. the political divisions between the Roman and Persian Empires and between the East and West within the Roman Empire. and ecclesiastical political squabbles of precisely the sort that the Lord forbade. introduced schisms of a different sort than that of someone getting mad that the Church would not go along with either his doctrinal hobby horse or his one strike and you’re out policy towards serious post-baptismal sin  and leaving to found his own sect.    You contradict your affirmation of salvation by grace. however. if unlike the best Roman Patriarch of living memory. the late Benedict XVI. [2] you refuse to acknowledge that Sola Fide. properly explained. is a truth.  St. Paul clearly taught that for salvation to be a free gift of God’s grace it must be received by faith in which reception works can play no part.  That is all that Dr. Luther meant by Sola Fide. that is all that the eleventh of our Articles of Religion means by it and Archbishop Cranmer meant by it in the third sermon in the Edwardian Book of Homilies. and it is all that John Calvin meant by it in the third book of his Institutes of the Christian Religion.   Some acknowledge the Pauline truth of Sola Fide but say that it refers only to initial justification.  This is not the case. however.  A person does not need God’s grace only when he first becomes a believer. he is constantly in need of God’s grace.  Grace sufficient to meet his ongoing need is available for him.  It is available exactly where he obtained it from initially – in Jesus Christ.  St. Paul after having explained that Christ’s one Sacrifice accomplished what the many sacrifices of the Old Covenant never could. wrote “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin” [Heb. 10:26].  This was part of a warning against apostasy from Christianity. one of several such dire warnings in an epistle written to Hebrew believers who were tempted to so apostatize. a general theme of which being that since the New Covenant is the substance of which the Old was a mere shadow. the judgement that would come upon those who abandoned the New Covenant would be more severe than that which came upon those who abandoned the Old.  Many in the early centuries. unfortunately. took the words of this warning as meaning that sin – or. at least. “serious sin” – after baptism. could not be forgiven. or could only be forgiven once. or one could only hope to receive forgiveness on one’s deathbed after a lifetime of non-communicant repentance.  Eventually. this sort of bad thinking was rejected by the Church when grace prevailed against the errors of Novatianism. Donatism. and Pelagianism as already mentioned.  That grace would prevail over this error was inevitable. St. John had clearly promised that Christians. confessing their sins. would be forgiven and cleansed and from his remarks about Jesus Christ being our Advocate with the Father and the propitiation for our sins it is also fairly clear that the forgiveness comes from the same source as our initial forgiveness. the one Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.. [1 John 1-2:2].  This only makes sense.  In baptism. new life is conferred upon the believer. and St. Paul identifies the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into which the believer is baptised as the source of that new life [Rom. 6:3-5].  In Holy Communion the new life of the believer is fed with His body and blood. that is to say. the same sacrifice.  In both Sacraments. the grace given comes from the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. in both Sacraments what is given is received by faith [see John 6 for faith as the means of receiving the grace in Holy Communion].  From start to finish in the Christian life. the grace that comes from Christ’s death and resurrection through the myriad means of giving that God has provided. is received only by faith.   If it be objected that this contradicts what the Scriptures teach about the Last Judgement. I answer that the contradiction is surface only.  At the Last Judgement we will give account for every thought we have ever thought. every word we have ever said. and every deed we have ever done.  Of this the Scriptures are clear and even if they were not that we will be judged for our works is inherent in the very concept of judgement itself.   The Scriptures are also clear that nobody will be justified at that Judgement by having his works meet the standard of judgement.  St. Paul says that explicitly in Romans 3:20. it is also the implication of what St. James says in James 2:10-11.  Nobody will be justified by his works because all have sinned.  The only exception. the only One Who could measure up before the Judgement. is the One Who will be sitting on the throne doing the judging.  Anybody else who is pronounced righteous at this Judgement will be so pronounced because he has been made to be righteous in the eyes of God by his sins having been forgiven and removed by Jesus Christ through His propitiatory. redemptive. Sacrifice by grace.  This is how one is justified when he is first united to Christ. this is how his justification is maintained. and this is how he will be justified in the end when he stands before Jesus Christ at the Last Judgement.   Let us consider the Judgement passage that is most often taken as contradicting this. The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 25 is the classic example.  The Sheep and Goats are both judged on the basis of what are traditionally called the Corporal Works of Mercy – feeding the hungry. giving drink to the thirsty. providing shelter and clothing to those who need it. visiting the sick and prisoners.  The Sheep are rewarded for having done these for the Judge. Who explains that He counts any such thing done for “the least of these my brethren” as done unto Him.  The Goats are sent away into everlasting punishment for having not done these for the Judge. Who counts any neglect of “the least of these my brethren” as neglect of Himself.   This parable is often read as if it was saying that at the Final Judgement. everyone will be judged in the same way and that on the basis of their performance they will be divided into those who will be rewarded and those who will be punished.  The parable does not say this. however.  While the same type of works are referenced with regards to both the Sheep and the Goats in the Judgement. the way in which the one group is judged according to these works is radically different from the way the other group is judged.  Note that the Sheep and Goats are separated from each other before the actual Judgement. before any mention is made of the works.  Jumping ahead to the Goats. these are punished for the slightest sin of omission. the slightest neglect of the Works of Mercy.  This is a strict. by-the-book. legal judgement.  Now consider the case of the Sheep.  Just as the Judge condemns the Goats for the slightest sin of omission. so He rewards the Sheep for the slightest Work of Mercy.  This. and not that they have deserved. earned. or merited their reward by consistent practice of the Works of Mercy. is the import of the Judge’s words.   So how is this not a gross injustice. the same Judge. judging two different groups of people according to the same kind of works. but in totally opposite ways. rewarding the one group for the smallest work done and punishing the other for the smallest work undone.   The only possible answer is that the Sheep have had that which would otherwise make them Goats removed – their sins.  What the Goats receive is what everyone deserves according to a strict. by-the-book. legal judgement.  The Goats receive this. because they did not avail themselves of the sin-removing mercy and grace of God made available to them through the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  With their sins unremoved. even the smallest sin of omission counts against them at the Final Judgement.   There is nothing to condemn those from whom Jesus Christ has removed their sins. however. so they can be rewarded for the slightest work.  Although called a reward. what they receive is not what their works have earned. merited or deserved.  It is not what is due them but a further expression of grace.     [1]   The Parable of the Prodigal Son shows repentance’s role.  The son’s repentance was not responsible for the father’s willingness to forgive.  Those who call upon sinners to “soften God’s heart” with their tears commit blasphemy.  Even Christ’s Sacrifice shouldn’t be spoken of as if made God the Father. previously unwilling to forgive sinners. willing to forgive them [the forgiving love of God the Father initiated the work of salvation – “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son”].  God. like the father who represents Him in the Parable. is already looking with a forgiving heart for the sinner to return to Him.  What the son’s repentance in the parable did was move him to so return.  This is the role of repentance.[2]   “For this reason Luther's phrase: 'faith alone' is true. if it is not opposed to faith in charity. in love.” – Pope Benedict XVI. 19 November. 2008. St. Peter’s Square.  “Faith must of course be sincere. It must be a faith that performs good works through love. If faith lacks love it is not true faith.” – Dr. Martin Luther. Commentary on Galatians. 1535. Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:48:55 +0000 b27e604a0ab0d00422de757602272ce19e3681d4 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/a-new-kind-of-university-your-comments Little Nate Confas. whom I have teased before [here. here. here] for his trusting in Great Brains to save us. has been suspended by those Great Brains from Ghent University for his sin against Equality. consisting in exposing conman Jason Arday’s plagiarism. Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:04:25 +0000 752d33a441941bfd3ea1eb1d1c8c72b6fd599c18 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/democracy-is-inherently-feminised Kristor asks a question about leftism: Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:08:07 +0000 0effb089b83f13f418078ea96ab4b68ebb7b6ace https://inklesspen.blog/2026/08/24/an-open-appeal-to-goarch-and-the-ep-please-stop-supporting-the-violent-persecutors-of-the-ukrainian-orthodox-church/ In November of 2019. I wrote an article entitled The Narrow Blindness of False Unity. an Appeal to Orthodox Greeks. Almost seven years later. I am republishing the appeal. Since 2019. the situation surrounding the “recognition” of the structure called the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” [OCU] has only become more disastrous. The violent persecution of … Continue reading An Open Appeal to GOARCH and the EP: Please Stop Supporting the Violent Persecutors of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Mon, 24 Aug 2026 23:53:45 +0000 57a5446fe4692651d77492c46a60ba9061bb432f https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/shun-contentious-woman-how-to-handle.html   I once heard a preacher say that whatever God repeats. that is something he wants us to pay real attention to. This is a very common teaching technique. Every teacher knows that much of what they say will not be retained by the person they are speaking to. so something which makes sense to do in every sermon. or every Bible study. or every teaching opportunity. is to make sure most of what you say reinforces the message you want to stick in people’s minds. So. when the Bible repeats something. you know that it wants us to pay attention. We see this in the book of Proverbs. and especially on the topic of the dangerous. or contentious woman. If you read Proverbs 1-9 you will see that there is losts of advice for a young man to protect himself from the bad woman. For example. in Proverbs 7 we read. “7 My son. keep my words. And treasure my commands within you. 2 Keep my commands and live. And my law as the apple of your eye. 3 Bind them on your fingers. Write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Say to wisdom. “You are my sister.” And call understanding your nearest kin. 5 That they may keep you from the immoral woman. From the seductress who flatters with her words.” It is important to teach our young men how to be respectful to young women. how to treat younger women as sisters. as Paul the Apostle says. and to guard their sexual desires until marriage. This is vital. But it needs to be noted that the Bible spends more time warning young men about the dangerous harlot than many modern Christians probably realize. Today. we are trained to think of men as the sexually obsessed. and the woman as the sexual object. We have been taught this by movies and other media. But the reality is far more complicated. There are many women who take delight in weaponizing their sexuality to corrupt or even destroy men. It is true that a lot of women in the porn industry are there because they have been sexually groomed from a young age or even trafficked. This is a reality. But Only Fans shows what happens when you create an almost free market and tell people to gather a fanbase with whatever assets they have. What happens is that women will turn that site into a porn star’s dream. direct access to their simps whom they can exploit at will. In fact. part of how Only Fans markets itself is as a Feminist driven organization. “As it’s grown. OnlyFans has sought to use explicit content – its seemingly bottomless source of revenue – as a springboard to greater scale. positioning itself as a tech pioneer with a place among social media giants such as Instagram and X. Key to that effort is making porn more socially acceptable and distancing the company from the abuses often associated with the industry. The public face of OnlyFans is CEO Keily Blair. an Irish lawyer and self-described feminist and “safety nerd” promoted to the top job in 2023. In public appearances. Blair. 42. presents the platform as lucrative and empowering. particularly for women. and often mentions her two daughters. “I want them to have a good online life.” she told delegates at a UK child-protection conference in 2023. “I want the same for your kids.”(1) There is often discussion in conservative and Christians circles that one of the reasons that porn is so evil is because it exploits women. and we have to acknowledge that this does happen. But less often is the other prominent side of the problem with porn talked about. that a lot of women use it to exploit men. particularly younger men. This discussion is changing. the language of simps is used to described these men now. because many young men are becoming increasingly aware of how they are exploited by porn. Many now know that they are being exploited for their money. their time. their energy. and their devotion. They are waking up to this reality. When we read Proverbs 7. we should immediately think of this kind of woman. a woman who knows how to exploit the simple minded. “6 For at the window of my house I looked through my lattice. 7 And saw among the simple. I perceived among the youths. A young man devoid of understanding. 8 Passing along the street near her corner. And he took the path to her house 9 In the twilight. in the evening. In the black and dark night. 10 And there a woman met him. With the attire of a harlot. and a crafty heart. 11 She was loud and rebellious. Her feet would not stay at home” [Prov. 7:6-11]. Society is replete with these kinds of dangerous women. and many young men are sent into their embrace like lambs to the slaughter. In fact. in verses 21-22 of Proverbs 7 Solomon uses almost this exact imagery to describe the effect of these women on young men. But we should not only think of the adulterous woman when we read this passage. or the porn star. even though this certainly should be our primary application. We should also think of the “loud and rebellious” woman who uses her sexuality to trap a man in marriage and then rule over him. There is a stereotype of marriage. and just relationships in general. that a woman will use her sexuality to trap a man in a committed relationship and once she has achieved her goal. then she will drip feed sexual attention as a means of control. This stereotype exists precisely because it does happen often. But we should not see this as a stereotype of marriage as a whole. even though that is how people do see it. we should. rather. see it as a stereotype of marriage with the difficult woman. The difficult woman uses her sexuality to entrap a man and then to rule over him. There are many men who live in this sort of arrangement. and they are relatively ok with it. In fact. not only are they ok with it is. in their perspective it “just is what it is.” In their view this is what marriage is. After all. the common stereotype has told them that. As the joke often goes in sit coms. “When was the last time you had sex.” “Are you kidding. I am married.” is the reply. If you watch shows like Everybody Loves Raymond from the late 90’s you will see how the media presented marriage as a relationship where a man longingly desires for sexual attention and it is drip fed to him by his wife when he has done the right thing and earnt it. Shows like this should be seen less as a description of reality and more as an attempt to shape reality. But whichever way you perceive it. there is this understanding in culture that marriage is in general a sexual wasteland. Why. Because of this idea that a woman will use sexuality to entrap a man into a relationship. And the truth is that the difficult woman will do this. Many men have experienced this. This is why this discussion of Proverbs 7 is so important for this third article in our series about How to Handle a Difficult Wife. Solomon is warning men to watch out for that woman. To watch out for the kind of woman who will use their sexuality to entrap you. To watch out for the adulterous woman who says. “18 Come. let us take our fill of love until morning. Let us delight ourselves with love. 19 For my husband is not at home. He has gone on a long journey. 20 He has taken a bag of money with him. And will come home on the appointed day” [Prov. 7:18-20]. To watch out for the woman who will sell you her body online and trap you into a simping relationship. To watch out for the woman who will honeytrap you into a relationship. There is a reason why the Bible commands that young men and women avoid sex before marriage. This is to protect them both from the dangers of promiscuity. The problem is that our modern culture is set up to encourage most young people. even Christians. into exploring before cleaving. This sets up many young women to be used by men of a reasonably high status for their temporary enjoyment. and it sets up many young men to find themselves being trapped by the very kind of woman that Solomon warns about. The Bible’s advice is not prudish. but it is prudence. What is the difference you ask. Well. ‘prudish’ is a slang term for someone who is “easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity…or…excessively concerned with sexual propriety…” But can you call a book wherein God commands a prophet to walk around naked. another prophet to marry a prostitute. and which uses the words “whore”. “harlot”. or “prostitute”. in hundreds of references “easily shocked by matters relating to sex”. Of course not. God is all seeing. which means he has seen it all. and his word speaks about these things without embarrassment so that we can be led in the right direction and away from certain danger. which is what prudence refers to. A prudent person is someone who shows care and thoughtfulness for the future. If you allow yourself to become trained to be a simp. to be ensnared by the porn star. then you are training yourself to be exposed by the harlot to this kind of weakness with women. So. to prevent this. you need to be “master of your own domain.” Rather than simp after the “loud and rebellious” woman. you need to shun her from your life. You should aim to be married at a young age. so you can build as much of your life with your wife together as possible. But it is better to take your time to master your own domain. so that when you are searching for a woman you are clear headed. and not in as much danger of being the life-long-simp that so many men become. Porn should not just be avoided because it is immoral. Though that should be reason enough. It should also be avoided because it weakens your ability to be the clear-headed. respectable man. that a woman will want to submit herself to for life. and live under your frame. A man who can control himself and not be walked all over. Why do you think that the self-proclaimed feminist CEO of Only Fans describes the site as “lucrative and empowering” particularly for women. Because it trains young men to become life-long simps. It trains them to think that living under the thumb of a contentious woman is what marriage is. Why do you think the Rolling Stones is concerned that men shunning porn is a right-wing phenomenon. Because avoiding the trappings of porn and masturbation helps men break out from under the spell of what could turn them into life-long simps. A man who diminishes himself in this way is much more likely to fall into a relationship with a woman who uses sex to draw him in and then use it to dominate him for life. When feminists and progressives basically confirm what Solomon says. but from the opposite direction. you should really listen to him. But many people reading this will be thinking. “How does this help me with my difficult wife. I am already living in this kind of situation.” You are right. my article here is more preventative than directed at transforming an already broken marriage. The correlation between a woman who constantly berates her husband and one who has turned down the sexual tap over time. is very high. So. what is your recourse. Well. remember. look at what Solomon repeats and therein you will find wisdom. In Proverbs 21:9 Solomon says this. “9 Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop. Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.” Just in case the message has not landed he says again in Proverbs 21:19. “19 Better to dwell in the wilderness. Than with a contentious and angry woman.” And for those who are particularly hard of hearing. he again says in Proverbs 25:24. “24 It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop. Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.” Three times Solomon writes the same thing. He slightly changes the illustration. but he repeats the same principle three times. If your marriage has descended from a relationship of mutual love and regular affection initiated and reciprocated on both sides. into a situation where the wife is constantly at you and has nothing but contempt for you. then you need to be willing to live anywhere but with her. In fact. many men find that when they make this decision that is often when things start to turn around. Hence. being willing to shun the contentious woman and live somewhere else. ironically. is one of the more effective ways of reigning in the contentious woman. Of course. this is not guaranteed to be successful and is often not. Solomon speaks more in principles than in promises. Some marriages are just too far gone. even he recognizes this. “15 A continual dripping on a very rainy day And a contentious woman are alike. 16 Whoever restrains her restrains the wind. And grasps oil with his right hand” [Prov. 27:15]. Sometimes you have failed to assert yourself for too long. or worse. you have made so many mistakes in your marriage that she cannot bring herself back into fellowship with you because all love and marital duty has been drained and the affection that was once there is long gone. But even if it does not work. Solomon’s words are wise. Some people will say you have to stay and serve her. and live like roommates for life. even though what made your relationship a marriage is functionally dead. And yet Solomon says the opposite. Why. Because the Bible has an insight into human nature that often those of us who follow its ways do not. until we have seen it applied properly at least. I think behind many. not all. but many contentious and unruly women is fear. Sometimes it is not this. it is just a bad woman. But. remember. I said in my first piece in this series. that any woman can become the bad. or difficult. wife if her husband sows enough negativity. Some women react to this by becoming the difficult wife. It is not what they want to be. it is not what they intended to be. and driving the man away is not their end goal. Sometimes seeing the consequences of her speaking to her husband this way. as he plans to live in his tent somewhere else. will bring her to repentance. So. sometimes. to save your marriage. you have to be willing to shun it. It sounds counterintuitive. But I think this is at least part of what Solomon’s advice points to. and I have seen this applied in this way. and I have seen it turn things around. As I said. this is not a guarantee. But then in this fallen world you can do everything right and still things can go wrong. Such is living on this side of paradise… …Till next time. God bless you.   List of Refences. (1) Andrew Marshall. et. al. 2024. Only Fans Exposed. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/onlyfans-sex-origins/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:53:53 +0000 91719e7a0cc38d3906db446e5d8d8bdb5c5b37fa https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/08/22/get-jacked-and-strong-to-increase-your-chances-if-you-want-to-marry-and-have-kids/ I am still around. though not much time recently. I found this study when looking up differences between men and women and mate choices. This isn’t something that is new. but it is more confirmation on what we knew from … Continue reading → Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:10:40 +0000 dbbbda247a67935b17a432fe89e49018fdbcc4dc https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/08/lotr-107-reviewing-saving-appearances.html Owen Barfield's book Saving the Appearances may appear to be baffling and insurmountably obscure or difficult [given the subject matter] but he provides a way into the book. by making things simultaneously clear and precise. It might be a stretch to say 'easy'. yet he does place such an attainment within our reach. His choice of the Rainbow as his prime analogy is both inspired. and felicitous - perfectly apt. It highlights the fact which Barfield wishes to bring into focus. The Rainbow is an object that is most certainly 'there' [NOT a private. subjective hallucination]. and yet also. proverbially. 'not there'. If a leprechaun promises that you'll find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. you may be hallucinating. but the Rainbow will be the most common and real item in the episode.  But it still won't have an 'end'. Now. Barfield was definitively not the first or only person to tackle the sort of subject material he broaches in his book. JMG takes issues with his characterizations of 'paganism'. for instance. but seems to prefer his definition of 'participation' to anyone else he reviewed. None of this makes Barfield unimportant to our future discussion—quite the contrary. His insights simply have to be lifted out of the unworkable historic framework in which he put them. His discussion of the transition from enchantment to disenchantment remains among the best that I know of. it’s simply that his take on what happened before the European Dark Ages and what can be expected to happen after the modern era can’t be justified. It’s entirely possible. as we’ll see. that his ultimate predictions about final participation may yet turn out to be correct in some sense. It’s just that the route there is going to be more complicated than he thought. just as the route to our current state of consciousness involved a great many more twists and turns than Barfield took into account.If even a classical pagan occultist can say that Barfield's notion of final participation may turn out to be correct in some sense. despite abhorring Barfield's pejorative category of 'paganism'. then Barfield is indeed a seminal thinker in the study of 'Participation'. In a nutshell. Participation is the crux of all the traditional questions -  for instance. the problem of What is the Good Life. and What Good is Life. This covers the Objective/Subjective binary rather nicely. Or. if you prefer. why is there a Self. a World. and some Tertium Quid that unites them.Participation is a re-introduction to our very old friend. the Greek and Hellenistic conundrum of the One-and-the-Many. The Hellenes never exhaustively solved that particular problem. though they certainly gave it a workmanlike and virtuoso effort. Instead. the advent of Christianity and the Nicean creed obviated the necessity of squaring that Circle: the problem of the One-and-the-Many was shifted into the transcendence and immanence of God in the person and work of Christ. and the ontological reality of the Trinity. So Barfield is squarely in the middle of the best Western tradition. And what is it that Barfield claims. Let's dive in. Barfield's first four chapters simply establish the groundwork and working definitions for his remainder [which we will get to in due time]. He rolls up his sleeves and establishes that there are at least three distinct [but not totally inseparable] phases of consciousness in both historical. and existential man. They are Figuration. Alpha Thinking. and Beta Thinking. They are not totally distinct. and so hence co-exist in both historical and current man. although in different proportions or varying concentrations. But they are certainly not the same in quality or essence. since there are clear ways of seeing their difference in essence and effects. Figuration is defined as something like this:  I saw a stick. but it appeared to be a Snake [to me]. You could say. it appeared to be a snake. but then I realized I had seen a stick. Anyone has had experiences like this. which Barfield likens to waking up in a strange room. slowly. and the workings of the mind in that state. The three stages of thinking are certainly all present. all accounted for. but all jumbled up. sequentially. or juxtaposed vividly. at the same time. Figuration could also be defined as the power of the Mind to filter or superimpose upon sensory data in such a way. that we experience what [for someone else] simply would not be there. Barfield admits there are cases of insanity or delusion which are similar to this. these do not account for the totality of cases. Figuration has a healthy. creative. and indeed legitimate side to it. After all. even as a collective group. we all translocate the Rainbow as 'over there'. It is a beautiful and useful hallucination that is also collective. and Barfield tells us we are not entitled to classify many of such examples as subjective delusions. whether individual or collective. After all. Why should we insist that we are not allowed to have a perspectival appearance of Rainbow. along our line of sight. when it is properly arranged against the fore-drop of water droplets. They are certainly 'there'. as we are. and as is the backdrop of the Sun behind us. If this is Hallucination. give me the entheogenic Tea. It is hard to imagine a more True. Beautiful. or Good Icon. to provoke Thought. Desire. and Estimation. Another way to put it. is that the mental and moral universe is just 'there'. but not in a physical sense. Since there are physical examples. it is hard to see why this would be problematic or surprising. Barfield points out that the water droplets are certainly 'there'. as are the 'particles' [or presumed particles] at the constituent levels of the material 'matter' or substrate. If one wished to get particular and finicky. one would have to admit that the atomic mental model of what is 'really there' is no more real than the subjectively appearing Rainbow. and as evanescent as the Leprechaun's pot of gold. We cannot 'see' atoms. Modern scientists admit this fully. or at least technically. In order to probe the subatomic and quantum world. your tools will actually interact with what you are probing. in such a way that you cannot verify the position of the particles. or their charge. You cannot ever be sure you have controlled for all possible background. in a quantum experiment. since by definition. you cannot see any of it. The mental and mathematical models 'work'. so they are presumed to indeed in some sense be there. but no sophisticated scientist will claim that they are exact models of reality. Some may claim that they approximate that Reality more closely and closely. such as Sir John Polkinghorne. a devout Anglican priest who was also a quantum scientist. Perhaps they will maintain that our models approach reality. as an curve on a graph more and more closely approaches its limit. but never quite achieves it.             Not the only Anglican priest who was a serious thinker - check out Sabine Baring-Gould sometime...Although I am fairly certain he had not read Barfield. it has to be asked. even of a first rate Christian thinker and scientist like him. that if the particles [or 'appearances'] really are there in a substrate manner. and we really can get closer and closer to them with verisimiltudinous mental models. why is it that we should still prioritize the substrate as that which is more fundamentally 'Real'. Perhaps the observer and the measurement is more important than the substrate. or more real. If the universe is more cloud-like than clock-like [as Polkinghorne often put it]. either the observer is also part of the cloud. or the observer is something even more mysterious than the living cloud. This doesn't even address if there are other. higher 'observers'. or a single Observer. To say this is not to appeal to the infamous God-of-the-Gaps. or the even more infamous Ghost-in-the-Machine. It is simply to make a philosophic point. and a very basic one. one so basic it is often hard to grasp even when you are aware of it. and looking for it: Consciousness. perception. awareness [the observer]: these cannot be quantified without either divinizing Quantia as the Qualia themselves. or deconstructing the very Observer who is making his bid to force the Universe to be as dead and robotic and empty. as he perforce must be. Since consciousness is more fundamental than what we usually mean by 'matter' [unless. as I say. matter itself is divinized and contains the Qualia as revelations]. one has to reckon with intangibles which Positive Philosophy thought it had overcome. Dead matter in empty space [even] requires an observer. Here we come to the real value and use of Barfield. Owen Barfield was incredibly adept at grasping. looking for. and delineating [ever more clearly] just this very thing - what is the role which the perceiving Observer plays. and what does that tell us about what we think we are seeing outside of ourselves. mathematically or otherwise. The Observer. and the observed [like the Tree and the squirrel] imply each other. and not in a purely conceptual way. For it seems to be the case. that we are still trapped inside the One-and-the-Many dilemma we thought we had left behind. Barfield spent his life thinking about practically nothing else. and communicating that thought clearly so others could follow. Consciousness is even more basic than any particles. This is so. because questions we can ask about particles always intervene a priori. before we can frame particles. Indeed the Mind is already 'questioning' the particles. in the basic act of Figuration. For you could even say it the other way around. and insist that the intuition of 'particles' is already inherent in consciousness. or coeval with it. The baby reaches out its hand. and grasps at the Moon. unaware of the distance or perspective. The baby intuits an 'outside' or environment or substrate that is 'there' for it.  What is the baby ignorant of. Not of particles. Not of its own self [in a basic sense. the baby 'knows' it is 'for itself'. just as it knows 'something is there']. It is only ignorant of perspective and the relationship between the two of them. This relationship intervenes. and is more subtle than either initially perceived Self or intitially perceived World. It can be dysfunctional and abstract [eg.. reductive materialism]. or it can be hale and healthy. and fully conscious in some way. of its own created tools. This full conscious of one's own abstractions and working tools. Barfield calls Beta Thinking. thinking about thinking. Perhaps one could locate it after Alpha Thinking [thinking about things in the abstract as 'out there']. but before Beta Thinking per se. as a transitional stage. In any case. it is on the way to Beta Thinking. Figuration is in some sense primary. both historically [primitive man excelled at it]. and existentially [all babies are intense 'figurators'. and even modern Western abstract thinkers still engage in it]. But Alpha and Beta Thinking could have the same said for them. According to Barfield. it is Beta Thinking which is primary. in some sense. as the telos or goal of humanity. And Alpha Thinking [at times] can be considered primary. since it is the most common ground that it is easiest to bring a consensus around. The Middle Ages thought of practically nothing else. than establishing the sensus communis.In the Middle Ages. 'concordance' was the logical discipline of reconciling apparently conflicting positions with a divine authority revealed to men. 'The super-logic is ... that for the living soul ...God is always there. But for the operating mind. God is never given. ...just as infinity is the tremendous step from arithmetic to mathematics. so this tremendous admission of the partial absence of God from the mind is the real foundation of the super-logic of the Middle Ages.' LinkThe Rainbow is the eternal symbolon or living Ikon of this arrangement. a true Warbow Promise from God that is also already here as a reality. telling us vividly what it all means. In contemplating the mysteries of perspective between the Self and the World [or the inner and the outer]. one is lead to posit the third way of contemplating the meaning of perspective. Thinkers who can do this can think about the thinking of thinking. or the meaning of meaning. One cannot approach anything in a serious way. philosophically. without understanding the power and the glory of the living problem of the One-and-the-Many. which simply exists or pre-exists any consciousness. thought. models. world. or self. whatsoever. There are other ways of approaching Reality besides Philosophy. but one can say that if you do use philosophy as your primary mode of approaching it. or use it all. you are well served to begin by asking the kind of questions which Barfield asks. and wrestling with it. After all. everyone clearly has a concept of Self. a concept of not-Self. and also a concept of their interaction. which is usually a source of misery and grief [which may go some way towards explaining why people don't want to wrestle with it]. The older thinkers would start precisely here. They would say. 'the Mind and the World co-arise' [Kukai]. They are coeval. This is a problem and a predicament that can be turned into a blessing. People reach various conclusions. and those can be debated. But the basic difficulty or starting point. is not one that they seem to disagree over. if you simply wish to appeal to Authority.                         Back when thought used to matter...Kukai blessing a fellow seekerBut the careful reader doesn't just have to do that. They put it to the experiment. their own experiment. I will close with a basic one. which tries to pry loose the fundamental habit or wrinkle of ingrained thought. Try. for a week. or a month. to invert your normal habits of mental thought. in the following way. When you encounter a question concerning Ideals or the moral universe. instead of insisting that you already 'know' what is true. approach it in a binary fashion. as if you are trying to 'grasp' it with a left hand. and a right hand. This. by the way. will protect you from both ideologies and also the lassitude of flaccid moral relativism. It will force you to work and coordinate your spiritual faculties. as you seek after the True. the Beautiful. and the Good. It acknowledges that thought is done by a whole person. in a binary way. Additionally. when you approach the 'given' or 'common' world you think is NOT the moral universe. but is 'really there' in a naive and concrete and given way. do not at all give way to what is binary in that sense. but accept it as multifactorial. multi-layered. and of 'many aspects'. Do not accept the binary of Knowing Self and Hard Reality. Try to see the physical world as a shimmering and fluxing world that is contained by many higher invisible worlds. and which reflects those various aspects in various ways. 'The Truth is One'. said Ortega y Gasset. 'but it has many aspects'. One can then compare the results. and bring them into dialogue with each other. In this way. we break up our monolithic preconceived notions. which usually involve ourselves as an omniscient Idol that is constantly manipulating and using and coercing something we think we understand. This little experiment [or the one Barfield proposes. thinking about the Rainbow] should get almost anyone started on contemplating. in a creative and healthy way. what the True. the Beautiful. and the Good are. and what our potential future relationship to them. can be and become. One can always say 'more'. but I will leave it here. Saying more. just gives the reader more to potentially balk at. or fight with. and it distracts from the purity of what Barfield [and other wise men] have aimed at.       Ortega y Gasset. arguably the greatest philosopher [in my opinion] of the last century Sat, 22 Aug 2026 14:39:55 +0000 3396aa9a61239ae91badc5ddfdfcc3d5a6ec20f0 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/some-objections-to-end-times-idea.html Many people are resistant to the notion of end times. For some it's just defeatist pessimism that serves no use other than to encourage negativity and despair. Others reject it because the idea is Christian even though it is universal in one form or another. Then there are the people who say that the world has always had problems. wars. famines. disasters of various sorts. In reality. we are much better off now than we have ever been.  I can see some justification for these attitudes as negativity and pessimism do exist. and it can't be denied that. in many respects. we are better off than ever before. At the same time. none of that changes the reality that the signs we are approaching some sort of collapse. both spiritual and material. are very clear. and it requires a degree of almost wilful blindness to ignore them. I speak in terms of the West as that is what I know but I strongly suspect that where the West leads everyone else will follow. Materialism and atheism are rampant everywhere. and these are the two key significators of the end times. They have never been as pronounced as they are now. Add to that the fact that religions have all reached a point of spiritual exhaustion. There may be good still left in them on some levels but real spiritual good. salvific good. is draining away. Alternatives to religion are widespread but so many are shallow. without real substance. almost as if they were designed to catch those fleeing materialism as part of a two-pronged attack on the soul. Critics might assert that writing about the end times is fear-mongering and provokes anxiety during global crises. but they miss the point that if the end times really do exist and we are in them we had better know how to respond. To ignore a situation can be fatal. One always operates best from a position of understanding. It is quite true that fear-mongering paralyses people but spiritual preparation enables us to face what may come from a point of inner strength and knowledge. If the house is catching fire isn't it wise to point that out so steps can be taken. Doubters would also say that people have claimed they were in the end times on many occasions over the centuries with nothing untoward happening. Perhaps. but past error does not excuse ignoring obvious warning signs in the present.  The object in writing about these things is not to convince anyone of anything they don't already believe but to support those who feel something is amiss and would like to make sense of it all. At times like these when the outer world and its institutions are crumbling. understanding why it is happening and how to respond becomes critical. People also react against the idea of end times because it seems sensationalist and that's fair enough. It is an emotive phrase. but what it really means is the end of old. unsustainable ways of living. The end times are only about external collapse on one level. On a deeper level. what they call for is an internal spiritual upgrade. I'm not entirely happy with that expression because of its mechanical connotations but it serves to emphasise that. in the face of the breakdown of outer structure. we need to discover the light within and build an internal sanctuary. That is a big task not. as it might sound. a glib catchphrase. It requires daily practice of prayer. meditation and the retuning of the soul. It demands clarity of thought and purity of motive which sounds simple but is a lot to ask of any human being and needs a strong degree of honesty with oneself and ability to look into all the dark corners of the psyche with humility and detachment. But it will pay dividends because the more you centre yourself within. the less you will be damaged by fear or anger or any one of a number of negative responses to outer turmoil. Another objection that might be raised is that if we are in the end times and everything is predestined to collapse. why should people bother trying to improve the world or put things right. In that case. isn't talking of spiritual survival just a form of escapism.What matters is state of mind. the one thing you take with you when you leave this place. One should always try to make things better and not turn one's back on destruction and decay. but we can take an analogy from human life. We try to heal the body but there comes a time when we have to accept the inevitable. Saying this is the end times is not saying. do nothing. Do whatever you feel called to do. Things can always be made better in some way. and passive fatalistic acceptance will guarantee that nothing will ever improve. At the same time. you should know that cycles have beginnings. middles and ends and there are strong indications that we are in the end part of a particular cycle. You can make that as good as it can be but you cannot alter the trajectory of a cycle. Looking at the world today from the spiritual perspective shows we are in some kind of crisis. That is what I mean by end times. How long this period will last and what comes afterwards. nobody knows. The period may last a long while or not. Outer collapse may come in some form. great or small. external destruction from comets may even come as some speculate. but none of that really matters. The essential point is that we live in a world that has lost contact with God. We have sought to become our own God and that is to invite consequences. At such time each individual must seek to realign his being with the word of God. That is all the phrase end times means. God has been chased from out there so now we must look for him in here.  Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:27:04 +0000 d6987eda719cd23041eb5be12d29541003b4bce0 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xv-c3b this week on Laeth's mind Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:27:09 +0000 6fd0c3d680861a9ea204932e7c2b8ef1faca3fa4 https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2026/08/busybodies-when-nature-gets-inverted.html   One day someone is going to do a study that confirms something Paul hints at in the Bible: the higher the proportion of single women in government. the more it will meddle in your life. “11 But refuse to enroll younger widows. for when their passions draw them away from Christ. they desire to marry 12 and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. 13 Besides that. they learn to be idlers. going about from house to house. and not only idlers. but also gossips and busybodies. saying what they should not. 14 So I would have younger widows marry. bear children. manage their households. and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 15 For some have already strayed after Satan.” [1 Tim. 5:11-15]. Women are created to micromanage the home life of their children and grandchildren. This is an important part of how God created them. It is a necessary skill that allows them to create a nurturing environment where their children can learn to be the people that society needs them to be. This takes care. constant oversight. and intentional thought. Mothers need to be involved in the daily lives of their children. But take these same women out of the home and give them an annual budget. government power. and too much time on their hands. Well. you get the modern West. A society which has governments that meddles in everything. I am predicting that someone will find this correlation sooner or later. Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:08:59 +0000 45920a0dad13bafcfb79bff39b638a444ad99174 https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/denying-the-development-of-human-consciousness-while-acknowledging-that-people-no-longer-fear-god-or-hell There is a line of thinking that posits that society and the world in general were far superior when people feared the eternal punishment for transgressing God’s laws. The prospect of eternal roasting in hellfire not only kept most individuals in check but also served as the glue that held society together morally and ethically.The thinly veiled implication within this line of thinking is easy to discern—society will continue to go to hell in a handbasket for as long as people reject (...) Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:18:56 +0000 971180bd32d5406ab869ec80e7303e84f77cf068 https://winteryknight.com/2026/08/20/should-we-add-human-anatomy-to-the-list-of-evidences-for-design/ I saw that Terrell Clemmons recently completed an 8-part series of posts on Science and Culture about the human body. This is not something that I talk about in my standard list of arguments against naturalism and for Christian theism. So. let’s take a look at this evidence and see if it is something for … Continue reading Should We Add Human Anatomy to the List of Evidences for Design. → Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:00:33 +0000 f5eb91eddf907baecc69e1a97239e380e5dc636b https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/08/20/trust-in-democracy/ Forty trillion dollars — an amount the U.S. national debt now exceeds — would not have struck me as a plausible number in the days when one lousy million would have been enough for an extravagant couple to retire on. To call it sustainable may be a fond little accountant’s irony. Bankers. and insurance adjusters. (…) Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:52:10 +0000 24cd7a7fd345c0354abb2826bf474b2982da04b9 https://derekramsey.com/2026/08/20/joe-heschmeyer-on-j-n-d-kelly/ During my research on J.N.D. Kelly for “Eucharist. Redux n10: AI Misquotations.” I came across an especially egregious example of misquotation. But. before we talk about that. I highly suggest reading that article first. or else you’re likely to be confused by this one or frustrated by the lack of … The post Joe Heschmeyer on J.N.D. Kelly appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:00:34 +0000 e4758f39b09cde8b2b01c6611f7934256174d657 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/darth-vader-syndrome-watching-the That special feeling you get. when your enemy stops attacking you and starts attacking your other enemy. is called Darth Vader Syndrome. Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:47:10 +0000 167aea1ba7838dfc19e6f2b4bc2737a400c63551 https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/bad-black-health-blamed-on-slavery Here is the opening sentence of the peer-reviewed paper “Historical slavery predicts contemporary disparities in mortality between Black and White Americans“: “Black–White mortality disparities remain a persistent form of inequality in the United States.” This is by Manuel Galvan and others in Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:18:53 +0000 21897739bb10045d0b985ee6ede69f550b1f18bf https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/martial-law-by-2029 The patterns in the headlines grow ever more dire. Wed, 19 Aug 2026 02:43:40 +0000 35b6cede4122b216aa5db8d7e01345aa3095ff6f https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/liberal-christianity-is-protestantisms Protestantism placed the Bible in every candidate’s hand while denying any final earthly authority the power to settle what it means. Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:04:30 +0000 1e2effd0a5b5d0354df082169f8848cfbafec6b3 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/stand-with-cofnas-against-the-communist Jason Arday was just one example of what is widespread in academia. Tue, 18 Aug 2026 06:03:46 +0000 597dc57c865b790b0987fbaa080a31a565d8b94e https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/08/17/inevitable-tyranny/ The great pleasure of immobility. while some consciousness remains. and until the tax department catches up with you. is that you may read. more or less without interruption. Unfortunately. some of what you read may be what you wrote yourself in the past. and this can be an embarrassment. For one discovers that one’s longest (…) Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:36:52 +0000 c7fcd474b50013039055800fb039899647169283 https://adampiggott.substack.com/p/the-greasy-pole-podcast-6000010 The Only 3 Sigmas episode Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:25:58 +0000 844737639e7779a8730120844b7afca5207476e9 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/08/16/fever/ I have fallen in love with Sophie Cunningham. even though she is a basketball star [I loathe basketball]. and more than six feet tall [which is surely excessive. for a girl]. She excels also in every other sport. beats the boys when they let her play with them. and can dance and sing and drink. (…) Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:33:20 +0000 002ec0a4d391902e1cf493eaf995bfcbae8bc773 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-seven-deadly-sins.html The unholy alliance between a globalist capitalism that treats human beings merely as economic units and a leftist ideology that insists everyone is equal is destroying the West. something no doubt intended by their demonic sponsors. The one is motivated by naked greed. the other by envy which leads to hatred as you can easily see by its reaction when scratched or even threatened. These forces are extremely powerful in the modern world. supported as they are by the political system. the media and the establishment in general whose only interest is self-preservation. Even so. they can be resisted. not always outwardly but certainly inwardly which is what matters if one would defend one's soul from spiritual attack. The question is how.To begin with. do not try to attack them on their own ground. They have sewn up the discourse so if you use their own framework and language to challenge them you will fail as both of these things have been designed to render their position impregnable. You have to disregard the assumptions they put forward as baseline truths and introduce a new approach that starts from a new standpoint. one outside their assumptions. And that is a simple three part question. 'What are we. where do we come from and where should we be going.'Neither capitalism nor the liberal ideology that has given rise to modern leftism can answer any part of that question but until you do you cannot understand how life should be lived. The answer to the first part has long been known but is currently ignored. A human being is made up of body. soul and spirit. and any culture or civilisation worthy of the name must take this threefold being into consideration. dismissing no part of it. Any that doesn't will collapse. And once you have answered this first and primary part answers to the other two parts will follow.The seven deadly sins are pride. greed. lust. envy. gluttony. wrath and sloth. You can see from this list that the primary drivers of the current state of Western civilisation are the second and fourth but pride and wrath are also big motivators for the globalists on the one hand and the leftist activists on the other. Traditionally. greed or avarice is countered by charity or generosity and envy by kindness. and this is interesting because the major players often disguise their true motivations by  exploiting the good in these virtues which they wear with ostentation. so much so. in fact. that charity is now often seen as a form of self-promotion and kindness as a mask for destructive impulses. And while all this is going on. the populace is stimulated by the media to lust and gluttony and a large segment of it by the ruling powers to sloth [ever greater dependence on welfare payments].It seems that the seven deadly sins are in full play today but when have they not been. you may ask. Certainly. they are always there as a basic part of human nature but they are now often actively encouraged and are becoming increasingly acceptable in our modern world. Is this not yet another indication of the end times. I don't offer this as a black pill as it is termed nowadays but. perversely enough you might think. as a sort of encouragement. The rewards for those who see through the lies and hold fast to the truth will be great. This is the test of our times. Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:54:43 +0000 a372187b833ba6d78055e7e3d681240dad439c28 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/zionism-tries-to-save-the-science Let’s start off with a meme. Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:43:24 +0000 9715ddcf3312f5653e78d032bfe1a521c5b15c48 https://derekramsey.com/2026/08/13/translations-of-justin-martyr-first-apology-chapter-66/ This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index. Conversations with Catholics will invariably result in a defense of what they call “the Eucharist” [also called “the Sacrifice of the Mass”]. Catholics will insist that the “Real Presence” and “Transubstantiated” Eucharist can be found … The post Translations of Justin Martyr. First Apology. Chapter 66 appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:00:29 +0000 59ea3c43caa0aed3ea5ce91aab78ed24d9708dd0 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xiv-db8 this week on Laeth's mind Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:42:58 +0000 b8513cb55741e2f58334cbdd9aadbe5e4207f1f1 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/manufacturing-a-hero-in-twin-falls The State hates and fears heroes. Wed, 12 Aug 2026 02:22:15 +0000 90cba13096c959fd98db85630209b5657d74f7ed https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/can-god-see-you-if-youre-anonymous What conceals the name reveals the soul Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:02:26 +0000 5a3a8644e85a26c1de35fc36c9c153ec0040e3f7 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/08/10/aphorism/ My mysterious South Australian correspondent. writing from a location precisely north of the absolute South Pole. shares these comments from the esteemed Friedrich Nietzsche: “Modern. noisy. time-consuming. proud industriousness has extinguished the religious instincts. so that people no longer have any idea of what religions are about and. as it were. just register their presence (…) Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:10:29 +0000 6255ba6d1c7b21c5b100b7bc0eed96deb9faccbc https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-2026-eclipse.html On 11th August 1999 there was a solar eclipse which was about 90% of totality in the south of England where I saw it. This coming 12th August there is another eclipse which will again be seen at about 90% of totality in much of the British Isles. The 1999 one was at 18 degrees of Leo and this one will be at 20 degrees of Leo which might seem a coincidence but apparently has something to do with how sun. moon and Earth realign over multi-year cycles.Be that as it may. there is still a significance to this phenomenon. I have long thought that the 1999 eclipse was an important one in that it heralded radical change. It was the last eclipse of the 20th century. and something really did change with human consciousness in the new millennium. We became different people in many respects. moving from a mentality largely based on past thought and attitudes. though with modern influences. to one where modern attitudes became central and past beliefs moved out to the periphery to become fringe. This change has carried on ever since. not in a smooth and straight line as things never go like that. but with a direction of travel that is unaltered. You might say that this is always the way of the world but look at how so many fundamental beliefs that had endured in various forms for centuries have been jettisoned over the last 25 years. It is quite extraordinary.Perhaps this new eclipse will bring that particular cycle to an end. Not that we will go back to how we were. That is neither possible nor even desirable. but some kind of change in mental attitudes over recent years might be expected. The end of one cycle means the beginning of another. and there will always be several other processes going on at the same time. Even so. I venture to suggest that. in Europe especially which is on the direct path of these two eclipses. changes might come in the coming months. I am not speaking in terms of improvement. This eclipse cycle. if such it be. is a minor event in terms of the greater descent into the Kali Yuga/End Times phenomenon and the forces associated with that and they will continue to gather pace. But it is still an event.These two eclipses also interest me because of personal involvement. As those who have read Meeting the Masters will know. the 1999 one coincided with the death of my friend Michael Lord whose Jupiter was on the exact degree of that eclipse. Jupiter in my birth chart forms a very close conjunction to the degree of the upcoming 2026 eclipse. I take that in a positive sense.Note: I am not saying that it was only the 1999 eclipse that prompted the radical changes that have occurred since 2000. Merely that it may have been one factor among several. and that the new eclipse may be bookending a particular period that started then. Sun, 09 Aug 2026 09:06:49 +0000 48e80ce51963b018d7d5e8026e5a8ffcf6aac6eb https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/myself-when-i-am-real a novelette Sat, 08 Aug 2026 20:30:52 +0000 99292bd313283ae39f6b27a060d1fd07c30cf5ef https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/nick-surely-cant-be-serious-about I’ve been watching Nick Shirley’s career as Orange Kike’s narrative boy with interest. Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:02:11 +0000 6cc8fc718b22ca5e293b6ce3b066dd481f3b2f80 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/08/06/i-thought-publishing-a-book-wasnt-special-anymore-then-i-got-this-review/ So…I wanted to share some good news. Last month. I entered The Knights with No Lords: The One Called Gawain into the Reader Views Literary Awards. The entry included a professional review of the novel. and when the email arrived with the results. I almost didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Five Stars (…) Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:39:47 +0000 c6195bfcf7149338efc356595b291e3b818e133a https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/we-recently-experienced-a-striking-example-of-christian-unity-but-few-christians-want-to-acknowledge-it Now and then. some Christian blogger or other dons his Deus vult armor and issues a stentorious rallying cry for this-worldly Christian unity and the exalted cause of defending “Christendom”. The motive driving such noble sentiments usually stems from the desire to reinstate. maintain. and defend a bona fide Christian society. the kind that is attainable if. and only if. the broad spectrum of Christian denominations and sects set aside their quibbling differences and courageousl (...) Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:29:10 +0000 c670b9f771b73e656d28d29af951857d32c9e515 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/08/from-siegfried-to-tristan-to-parsifal.html  Last year I wrote a post called The Spiritual Failure of Tristan about the character in Wagner's famous opera. In it I maintained that Tristan represents the failure of a spiritual test though. if failure is too strong a word. one might also interpret the opera as showing how a soul can only learn and grow through experiencing the intensity of desire for perhaps in order really to know the fullness and depth of spiritual love you must experience earthly love in its highest form. just as only a strong self can reap the deeper benefits of transcending ego. To renounce fully you must know completely.I had forgotten about this post but a couple of days ago someone added a comment disagreeing with my interpretation. I then disagreed with his disagreement. though I wasn't entirely sure on what basis he was disagreeing. but this made me reflect further and I recalled something I had once seen. and maybe even came from Wagner himself. about how Siegfried. Tristan and Parsifal can be seen as the same character at different stages of development. I would like to explore that idea a bit further here.The premise is that these three characters depict successive stages in the same soul's spiritual evolution. It is already the soul of a hero so not an everyman but one who has been brought to the apex of worldly achievement and is now ready to move beyond that into spiritual consciousness.Siegfried appears first as a child soul linked to the world of nature and the instincts. Born and raised in the forest. he has no contact with the world of men and lives in a state of pre-conscious innocence. He cannot. certainly does not. reflect because his ego is directed only outwards. He is free and fearless but also insensitive to others and totally ignorant. And yet he is a hero which means he has on some level reached a certain degree of achievement. Nevertheless. he is only awakened to himself by his mountaintop encounter with Brunnhilde. demonstrating how we can only know ourselves and become fully self-conscious through experiencing the other. That is one of the fundamental meanings of the division into two sexes. Siegfried. however. betrays his other half through his lack of self-awareness. and this same lack leads to his downfall and death. Tristan is Siegfried reborn. He too is a hero but a more self-aware one. He loves Isolde from the beginning but obeys custom and convention and the mores of society. things that would have meant nothing to the pre-adult Siegfried. until the magic potion breaks down his resistance. The potion. by the way. could just as well be water as it is not magic that makes it no longer possible for Tristan and Isolde to conceal the truth of their love but the belief they are about to die. Henceforth. Tristan is consumed by passion. first the passion of Eros and then the passion for Thanatos. This passion is so intense it reveals to him the nightmare of the separate self. isolated but desperate for completion in the other. His sense of the pain of duality means he can find no resolution except through annihilation in death and darkness. Tristan is the earthly self brought to the realisation that it must go beyond itself to escape pain and suffering. but he seeks this outwardly in another created being rather than on a spiritual level. He must go through the fire of having all his earthly attachments burnt out before he can progress.And so we come to Parsifal. To begin with Parsifal is Siegfried reborn. perhaps showing that we must recapitulate past experiences before we can move on to a higher level. He is the pure fool and must go through many trials before he gains wisdom. Unlike Siegfried. who fails through lack of thought and self-awareness. or Tristan. who fails by surrendering his will to desire. Parsifal resists temptation when he refuses to succumb to Kundry in the pivotal Act 2. By transforming sensual passion into divine compassion. he overcomes the desire that brought down Tristan and moves out of the state of ego-driven will into that of the redeemed self who can now become a saviour for others. It is no coincidence that the spear which killed Siegfried now becomes the holy spear that heals the wounded Amfortas who also may well stand for Wotan whose original sin in seeking power rather than love led to the whole corrupt state of the world which can only be healed by compassion.In the light of this. perhaps my anonymous commenter was right after all in that Tristan's failure was not so much a failure as an inevitable stage that all souls must go through on their journey from the Adamic innocence of Siegfried through Tristan's full human immersion in self-consciousness which he sought to escape in the wrong way. to the transcending of that in Parsifal's eventual union with God. I don't know how much Wagner was conscious of this and how much came from his profound artistic intuition. but I believe he was aware of the significance of his characters. I would still have a bone to pick with him in that. even in Parsifal. he downplays the importance of Christ and God who are both shadowy figures in the opera. almost peripheral to its development when they should be central. That is a weakness. but then Wagner was writing in the 19th century when the weight of official Christianity may have been artistically stifling. He sought to break free from the trappings of religion to find its essential source. and in these operas he depicted the progress of a soul with extraordinary beauty and insight.I could stop here but before concluding it is worth looking at the three female protagonists because they are far from being mere passive foils for the male hero. They are actually crucial to the whole story. and they have their own progression too. Brunnhilde represents the descent of the soul to the human state. She loses her spiritual qualities and knowledge but gains the capacity to suffer which may not seem like a gain but is because it opens up the heart to love. She becomes vengeful and bitter when betrayed but in the end. purged by suffering. in the great immolation scene. a Viking sati. she transcends both her human condition and her earlier immature spirituality [immature because it knows nothing else] to reach a kind of omniscience based on universal compassion. To love all is to know all.Isolde's evolution is similar to Tristan's in that she starts off trapped by duty. the marriage to King Mark. but she is also consumed by pride and anger until her ego is rent asunder by her love for Tristan after that love can no longer be denied. Her trajectory is different to his in that she does not seem so consumed by her passion but she too ends up by dissolving her individual identity into the universal sea which may be seem a spiritual transfiguration but is actually a return to the pre-creation state so spiritually regressive from the Christian point of view. It ends suffering but does not bring true divine union. It doesn't appear that Wagner thought of it like this but it may be that on some level he knew he could not leave his female archetype there and had to move on to Kundry.Kundry is Wagner's most developed female character. the one he had been reaching towards in all his previous operas. She is the eternal feminine at its most powerful and its most destructive before being transfigured by submission to divine will. After laughing at Christ on the cross she is condemned to wander through the centuries. acting as a despised servant by day and a demonic temptress by night. the one in payment for her sin. the other as the direct expression of the psychic state behind it. This sin cannot be atoned for until she meets someone who can resist her. Only when Parsifal does resist her kiss. which he does out of compassion. that is important. is she freed from her curse which is basically the prison of her own ego. This is not the end. either for her or for Parsifal himself. because she must endure many more years of purifying servitude. and he must undergo many more trials during which he cannot use the holy spear as a weapon however much he is attacked. But it is the beginning of the end. and it is brought to its conclusion when Parsifal returns to Montsalvat [Valhalla again. but built this time to support spiritual renunciation rather than worldly power]. and she bathes his feet. in return receiving baptism from him. Her spiritual journey is complete and. though this is not brought out in the opera. she can now serve in the lineage of the Virgin Mary who is the eternal feminine fully spiritualised. Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:04:27 +0000 57238b2bec9fe8d92c4fba52515425fa2fbcf5a3 https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/a-masterclass-in-cinematography I recently watched the 2024 Netflix series. Ripley. which proved to be a fairly faithful adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. originally published in 1955. Regardless of what you may think of the story or the subject matter. the 2024 series directed by Steve Zaillian deserves a watch for the masterful cinematography alone.It has been a while since I have watched anything so visually stunning. Each shot and scene is carefully crafted to the point of near perfec (...) Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:46:49 +0000 29f4d3e365a0f03f9b1fce0740b593401c929679 https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/ceutas-immivasion-and-the-abraham The first thing to know about the sudden immivasion into Ceuta. is it first happened in 2021. Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:03:29 +0000 f2f312d98c4163239fdf474a4041e672961a7e9d https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/christians-should-be-rich Wealth is stored agency. and a powerless church cannot protect the conditions required for Christian life Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:03:31 +0000 71a35ff2e81ee0d1bb61122d4229f7d3f33570a5 https://winteryknight.com/2026/08/04/the-most-conservative-governor-of-tennessee-marsha-blackburn-john-rose-or-monty-fritts/ Everyone is doing a great job of sharing clips of Francesca Hong. the current  front-runner in the Democrat primary for Wisconsin governor. But what about the Tennessee governor. Some people are saying that Marsha Blackburn isn’t as conservative as John Rose or Monty Fritts. Are they right. Let’s take a look at the candidates and … Continue reading The most conservative governor of Tennessee: Marsha Blackburn. John Rose or Monty Fritts. → Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:00:26 +0000 510bf5cb6cee7a9b758c414800eb59116261d9bc https://derekramsey.com/2026/08/04/eucharist-redux-10-ai-misquotations/ This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index. I recently had someone ask Grok AI a question about the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. Here is the response: For readers who read last week’s post. this will sound extremely familiar: You know it’s … The post Eucharist. Redux n10: AI Misquotations appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:00:21 +0000 819b8d6eab77cf3e4555037b29b578e004d48579 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/08/this-blog-is-on-hiatus-until-january-17.html Mark your calendars. and in the meantime find something else to read.Note added: For those who have asked. nothing is wrong. and my decision has nothing to do with any of the commenters here. I just need to take a break to focus on another project. which I cannot share with the public at this time. and which I anticipate will be finished by the date indicated. My other blogs will be on hiatus as well. but my posting there is already so irregular that perhaps no one will notice. Emails are still welcome. though [as usual] timely replies are not guaranteed. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:55:30 +0000 3a2d19ffe2debcdb9b18ac2b3c47c437e4b895fc https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-hermit-and-the-pilgrim A wandering year - and a new publishing project Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:49:57 +0000 5177facb4ffaa09855eaa0f6931afdaaebfdbb1d https://winteryknight.com/2026/08/03/democrat-billionaire-backing-charlie-hatcher-against-andy-ogles-in-tn-gop-primary/ One of the few Congressmen with a perfect 100% score from Heritage Action is facing a primary challenger who is receiving a lot of funding from a green energy PAC bankrolled by a left-wing billionaire. I thought this was an important story to cover. because many Republican and libertarian voters love to complain about how … Continue reading Democrat billionaire backing Charlie Hatcher against Andy Ogles in TN GOP primary → Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:00:23 +0000 eeaa044c733c85e688991f644d15d1aa438fe6b1 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/08/traveling-eternity-road-in-suit-of-many.html Over lunch. I read in Normon Spinrad's sci-fi novel Child of Fortune about Pater Pan. known for his distinctive patchwork Traje de Luces. or Suit of Many Colors. deciding to leave the planet where he is the king of the Gypsy Jokers. intending to travel to every single inhabited planet. in search of immortality.This reminded me of something I saw here in Taiwan roughly 20 years ago. I thought I might still have a photo of it somewhere. but I can't seem to find it. It was a box of tissues. on the bottom of which were these lines of English verse:We wish for eternal lifeIt may be all that will sufficeLike the myriad clothes we wearWe will wish everywhereI connected this with Pater Pan because of his Traje de Luces. made up of patches taken from countless garments. so that he is in a sense wearing 'myriad clothes'. and because his 'wish for eternal life' is going to take him 'everywhere' in the inhabited universe.The association of eternal life with space travel made me think of the Ray Thomas song 'Eternity Road.' from the Moody Blues' 1969 concept album To Our Children's Children's Children.Approximately 10 minutes after reading that passage in Child of Fortune and thinking of the tissue box and the Moody Blues song. I was on the road. and this scooter stopped in front of me at a red light.The lady on the scooter is wearing a garishly colorful jacket -- suggestive of Pater Pan's Suit of Many Colors -- with the word ETERNITY in big letters. As in the Moody Blues song. she's on the road. and the alphabetic portion of her license plate is MDY. suggesting Moody.An MDY plate that reminded be of the Moody Blues was previously featured on this blog. in 'The Moody Blues. Embody the Soul. snails and ammonites. stars and stones. blue ball of light' [September 2023].⁂Note added: I guess I'll put this here. since it relates to Child of Fortune. A few nights ago I had a dream of which I can't remember much except that people in the dream referred to me as Fortune. In a moment of hypnopompic lucidity. I thought. 'Oh. that must mean that the point-of-view character in this dream is not me but Dion Fortune.' Upon fully waking. I of course realized that Fortune could just as easily refer to me. As mentioned in 'Voyage d'ark' [May 12]. I bought Child of Fortune 'for no other reason than that it had my name on it.'Speaking of voyages d'ark. I recently started reading The Synchronicity Key by David Wilcock. I'd been exploring those strange corners of the Internet where Mormonism overlaps with Raëlian-style Space Brothers beliefs. and Wilcock's name kept coming up. When I looked him up. I naturally chose to start with the book with synchronicty in the title. I downloaded it. not really knowing what to expect. and was surprised to find in the table of contents that the 12th chapter is titled 'Joan of Arc Rises Again.' Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:31:56 +0000 9ba1f9c56ab1af72e853ccf2b7d34810edd854c4 https://secretfire.substack.com/p/guardians-of-presence Uncovering the Sacred in a Time of Deep Forgetting Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:54:34 +0000 b607440bc02ec4a791b9855294821d4dae1eb3b2 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xiii-a03 this week on Laeth's mind Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:26:18 +0000 3e51fe40574095368fa4992dcdcfeab78d6fb8f5 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/08/02/im-no-longer-sure-about-the-stability-of-his-christian-faith/ I’ve had my doubts about MBoI for a long while. but seeing imagery like that accompanying this recent post on Vox Popoli is leading me to an uncomfortable conclusion. No follower of Christ Jesus would include the image of a black-eyed woman. a demonic image if ever their was one. as an accompaniment to aContinue reading 'I’m No Longer Sure About The Stability Of His Christian Faith' Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:20:00 +0000 8f986c49f2fc46a5f1a5adb54d1909d94373919b https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/08/agog-for-cola-wars.html As I have mentioned before. I regularly have to create cloze tests for which write a brief article using a dozen or so of the vocabulary items from a list the students have memorized. I then blank out those words. and the students have to decide which word goes in which blank. Since the lists of target words have no thematic unity [Paul Nation has shown to my satisfaction that memorizing groups of semantically related words is less effective]. coming up with a topic which can incorporate several words from the list is an enjoyable challenge. and past topics have ranged from Stonehenge to sleeping sickness to the Gunpowder Plot. Yesterday [August 1]. inspired by the inclusion of the words sip and similarity on the target list. I wrote an article about Coke. Pepsi. and the Cola Wars.Today I was catching up on some blogs and read Maolsheachlann's post 'The First Defenestration of Prague.' which was published on July 30 but which I did not read until just now. It's a list of historical events that have 'unique and often poetic names.' and here's how the post ends:The Battle of Britpop: When Oasis and Blur both released their new singles on the same day in 1995. prompting intense media speculation on which of them would reach number one. Blur won the battle. although Oasis won the war. [I like to joke: 'I saw some hard times. I lived through the Cola Wars and the Battle of Britpop.']You get the point. Any other suggestions. I'm agog.Janelle Monae doesn't really enunciate the final consonant in cold. and I like to imagine that she's singing. 'This is a Cola War / You better know what you're fighting for.'Maolsheachlann's use of agog -- the last word in his post -- reminded me of 'Baggu ash-ni fire-dwell a gog ifluaren bansil este repose' [March 2024]. in which I tried to decipher some of Bill's 'words.' Here's what I wrote about a gog:a gog:The sync fairies seem to be insisting that this is what G stands for. Gog is proper name. so the use of a is anomalous. Various interpretations suggest themselves. It could mean not the Gog but just a Gog. or it could be meant to suggest the word agog -- which could be [a] the English adverb. [b] the Greek for 'leader.' or [c] a word halfway between Gog and Magog. I don't really get what Gog means. even at the symbolic level. so I'm not really sure where to go with this.Then in the comments I addedPerhaps a gog relates to French à gogo. 'galore.'The Janelle Monae song. with it's repeated lines 'You better know what you're fighting for' and 'Do you know what you're fighting for.' made me think of the Country Joe and the Fish song 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag' [1967].I don't know that song at all well. I didn't even know what it was called or who sang it until I looked it up just now. I was thinking of these lines from the chorus:And it's 1. 2. 3What are we fighting for.When I looked up the lyrics. I was surprised to find that they also include this:Well come on Wall Street don't move slowWhy man. this is war-a-go-go Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:19:35 +0000 e7dcff77e9f1cbf44707eb4bcd68610f0b93c39e https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/un-obedience-what-christianity-needs-most William Arkle offers a lucid interpretation of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. which I first encountered via Bruce Charlton’s Arkle-focused blog:When Abraham 'passed' his test over his son's killing. to my mind he only got 60% for obedience.If he had said to God. 'This is not like you. I won't do it'. he would have got 100% for unobedience.What arises from this conflict is unobedience. which is a condition beyond the relatively automatic stages of disobedience or obedience. and (...) Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:41:29 +0000 ef86818afbd0f1fa0816b1c656fa10dcdc0e4089 https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2026/08/01/grouseness/ Grouse are “adapted” not merely to an environment. but also to being grouse. There is something remarkably grouse-like in their overall design. many constituent parts. and in each of their responses to stimuli. They even seem to know that they are grouse. to be contented with that identity. willing to live and even die in (…) Sat, 01 Aug 2026 10:23:02 +0000 ba4415a9956971a3cd2754e3e5683546c41e768e https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/the-critical-importance-of-male-spaces Today’s wicked men succeed a little too perfectly in thwarting the righteous. Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:09:05 +0000 50c816c24dc47dad3c341e0326accf2f245ab37c https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-faith-more-or-less.html  Adolf von Harnack was a German Lutheran theological and ecclesiastical historian in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In the last decades of the nineteenth century he wrote a multi-volume work the English title of which is The History of Dogma.  In this work he maintained. among other things. that the Church had gone wrong from pretty much the first generation. that Jesus had preached a simple Gospel of universal love under the universal Fatherhood of God but His followers had buried this under layers of foreign ideas taken from Greek philosophy and so created dogma – the authoritative teachings of the Church in the ancient Creeds. especially the Nicene – and that these layers needed to be stripped away and the simple Gospel recovered.  Harnack believed that in his liberal revisionism he was merely taking Dr. Luther’s Protestant Reformation principles to their logical conclusion.  Apologists for the Roman Catholic Church jumped to agree with him on this last point.   One of Harnack’s better known students – I would say his best known except that Dietrich Bonhoeffer also studied under him – the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth later came to disagree with this idea that the Trinity and the other basic tenets – dogmas if you will – of Christian orthodoxy were foreign to the essence of the Christian message and rejecting the liberalism that he had been taught found his way back. for the most part. into Christian orthodoxy.    In the meantime. orthodox Anglican scholars such as the Venerable A. E. Burn. Dean of Salisbury and the Right Reverend E. C. S. Gibson. Bishop of Gloucester. in their works on the history of the ancient Creeds. tore Harnack’s theory to shreds.  Two centuries earlier another orthodox Anglican scholar. the Right Reverend George Bull. Bishop of St. David’s in his Defensio Fidei Nicaenae [1685] had defended Nicene orthodoxy by showing that the truths affirmed in the Ecumenical Councils were consistent with those taught by the Ante-Nicene Fathers.  A rebuttal of Harnack had to go further than this. however. and Burn and Gibson persuasively demonstrated that what was defined. unfolded. and explained in the ancient Creeds was present in the teachings of the Apostles themselves.  While we in the West are accustomed to thinking of the Apostles’ Creed as the baptismal Creed and the Nicene Creed [the expanded version affirmed at Constantinople] as the Eucharistic Creed. both developed out of Western and Eastern baptismal Creeds.  The fourth section of the second chapter [on the Apostles’ Creed] of Gibson’s The Three Creeds [1908] directly addresses Harnack and shows that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is inescapably present in the baptismal formula of Matt. 28:19. [1]   As mentioned earlier. Roman Catholic apologists in the twentieth century regarded the liberal revisionism of Harnack. Freidrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl as being the developed form of the doctrines of Dr. Luther and Calvin thus agreeing with Harnack’s own assessment.  See. for example. Joseph Wilhelm’s entry “Protestantism” in volume 12 of the 1911 The Catholic Encyclopedia.  This could be regarded as the reverse side of the coin to the idea articulated by John Henry Newman in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine that the late medieval Roman theology to which the Reformers objected on the grounds that it was not found in the Scriptures [or. the English Reformers at least would add. the writings of the Fathers of the early centuries] was the natural evolution of Scriptural and Patristic teachings.  Newman came to look at it this way just prior to his crossing the Tiber into the Roman Church.    There is a sense in which Harnack was right in regarding revisionist liberalism as an extension of ideas that played out in the Reformation.  Not the doctrines for which Dr. Luther. Zwingli and Calvin became known. but the Renaissance humanist principles that informed them [as they did others who remained in communion with Rome such as Erasmus and More]. in particular the principle of ad fontes. [back to the font or source].  The problem was that Harnack and company wanted to go back to a “source” that existed only in their imagination. a “simple” message that predates that of the ancient Creeds and the Scriptures that back them.   Harnack and the other liberal revisionists. in other words. sought to streamline the Christian faith by removing from it that which belonged to it from the very beginning but which conflicted with nineteenth and twentieth century Modern rationalist thought.  This was not. after all. as Barth [and later and more completely. Methodist theologian Thomas Oden] was to discover. a more thorough application of the Renaissance/Reformation ad fontes principle.  Rather than returning to the source for clarity. it involved recreating from no evidence whatsoever a “source” that matched the liberals’ idea of what a source. a primitive original version of the Christian faith. should look like.  While it is understandable that Roman apologists would try to argue that Dr. Luther and the other Reformers were doing something similar. in reality liberal revisionism was a form of extreme reductionism.  A more legitimate charge against the Reformers – one which could also be levelled against the Roman Church – would be that of doing the opposite of this.   Harnack and company thought that the original faith as delivered to the Apostles by Christ must have been something much simpler than the faith as confessed in the ancient Creeds.  In reality. however. the ancient Creeds are about as simple as the Christian faith can get.  Jesus. at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel. which according to the consensus of ancient writers was the first Gospel written. instructed His disciples to make other disciples of all the nations by baptizing them.  In doing so. He borrowed a rite that the rabbis of late second Temple Judaism had introduced for Gentile converts and adapted it as the rite of entrance into His Church by instructing that the baptism was to be in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  This was not just a prescription of the words to be said over the person baptized but the content of the faith into which that person was being baptized.  The Father. Son. and Holy Ghost – the Three Persons manifested in His own baptism – as the content of that faith. are divine Persons. The fact that Christianity is a continuation and fulfilment of the Old Testament faith “Hear. O Israel. the LORD our God is one Lord” along with the fact that Jesus spoke of a singular name of the Three Persons tells us that the Three Persons. Father. Son. and Holy Ghost. are but One God.  This is the Trinity. God as confessed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.  The first part of the Athanasian Symbol unfolds this truth so as to protect it against pretty much any conceivable error. while the second half like the Definition of Chalcedon [2] does the same for doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ that of necessity belongs to the Trinitarian faith. i.e.. that the Eternal Son in the Incarnation. without ceasing to be God. took a full and perfect human nature formed from that of His Virgin Mother and united it with His Eternal Person so that from the moment of the Incarnation. He. remaining the same Person in the Trinity that He always had been. had two complete natures. being fully God and fully Man. Apart from these truths the ancient Symbols contain a brief narrative account of Gospel. the historical events of Christ’s earthly life and ministry from His Incarnation to His Ascension. especially His death for us on the cross and Resurrection. and the most basic of the truths auxiliary to those of the Trinity and the Person of Jesus Christ such as the Second Coming. the Church. and the promise of forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.   The history of how these ancient Symbols of the faith came to be in the form in which we have received them is the history of how the basic truths of the faith as entrusted to the Apostles by Christ were defined and unfolded in response to the numerous heresies that arose as Jesus and the Apostles had warned they would.  The process involved the development of precise theological meanings for certain terms.  The Greek words hypostasis and ousia. for example. virtually identical in meaning in the first century had to be differentiated so that hypostasis [person] could indicate what the Father. Son. and Holy Ghost are as distinct from each other whereas ousia [essence. substance. being] indicates how they are One.  This enabled the word homoousios [of one being. essence. or substance] which had been used with heretical intent by Paul of Samosata whose teachings blended a Trinitarian heresy similar to that of Sabellianism [modalism] and an Adoptionist heresy regarding the Person of Christ. to become the safeguard of Christ’s true deity against the Arian heresy in the Nicene Creed in the fourth century.  Nothing ended up in these Symbols which did not belong to the “faith once delivered unto the saints” as believed in the Church “everywhere. always. and by all”.   The error of the liberal revisionists was to subtract from the deposit of faith.  In the sixteenth century those on both sides of the Reformation controversy had little interest in subtraction.  The Apostles and Nicene Creeds both consist of the same twelve articles. usually worded more elaborately and precisely in the Nicene version.  The Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530 contains twenty-eight articles and the Reformed Belgic Confession of Faith of 1561 contains thirty-seven and it is not a matter of their having both merely added the difference between these numbers to the twelve of the Creeds.  The truths of the Creeds are affirmed but summarized in these Confessions and take up considerably less than twelve of each of their sets of articles.  Our own English Articles of Religion. in their final Elizabethan form of 1571 are thirty-nine in number. down from the Edwardian forty-two. [3] The eighth article affirms the ancient Creeds. many of the truths of which were also restated in the articles preceding. but everything after the eighth pertains to other matters either not covered in the ancient Symbols or merely briefly mentioned.    Meanwhile on the other side. in 1564 after the Council of Trent [1545-1563] Roman Patriarch Pius IV published a Creed which. while technically consisting of twelve articles like the earlier Creeds. includes the entire Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as its first article. then goes on to add eleven others which include such fun and exciting things as “that there are truly and properly Seven Sacraments of the New Law. instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord. and necessary for the salvation of mankind. though not all for every one”. “that in the Mass there is offered to God a true. proper. and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead”. “that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body. and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood. which conversion the Catholic Church calls Transubstantiation”. “that there is a Purgatory. and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful”. “that the saints. reigning together with Christ. are to be honored and invoked. and that they offer prayers to God for us. and that their relics are to be venerated”. “that the images of Christ. of the Mother of God. ever virgin. and also of other Saints. ought to be had and retained. and that due honor and veneration is to be given them”. “that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church. and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people” and “the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church as the mother and mistress of all churches”.       By including these items in a new Creed. the making of which was forbidden by the Council of Ephesus. the third of the general Councils that the same Creed claims to “receive and profess”. Rome declared them to be de fide. that is to say. to be of the essence of the faith and so required to be believed for salvation.   Now. the question of whether any or all of these things are de fide is different to that of whether they are true.   For a doctrine to be de fide it must also true. but a doctrine does not have to be de fide to be true.   To go through each of the additional articles of the Profession of Pius IV and examine them as to their truth value would be a too lengthy diversion here.  One of them is clearly false from a historical point of view – the Church from which all other churches after the persecution following the martyrdom of St. Stephen are descended. was situated in Jerusalem not Rome. so if any Church deserves the honour of being called the Mother of all Churches it is the Church of Jerusalem.  We do not need to show that the others are similarly false to show that none of them are de fide.  At least two of them. Purgatory and Indulgences. fail the Vincentian test of Catholicity [believed “everywhere. always. and by all”] and have never been confessed by any of the other ancient Churches whose communion with Rome was broken prior to the second millennium and while the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist does pass the test of Catholicity. the account of the Real Presence to which the term Transubstantiation refers does not. owing far more to the Medieval rediscovery of Aristotle than to the Scriptures and the Fathers of the first millennium.   At an even more fundamental level. none of these things can be shown to have belonged to the original deposit of the “faith once delivered unto the saints” either explicitly or implicitly in the same way as the Eternal Generation of the Son or the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son.  That Rome was willing to declare these things to be de fide. as in later Councils she would declare such other things as the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and the infallibility of the Roman Patriarch. lends much weight to the accusation that the authority she claims for herself goes way beyond the Catholic truth that the Church has authority to define the faith by explaining the original deposit in such a way as to protect it against heresy and that she believes she has the power to just add to the deposit of faith by her own fiat.   Neither the Lutherans nor the Reformed officially made such claims for the extra-Creedal doctrines in their Confessions. although sometimes in practice certain of their theologians and preachers have acted like they did.  Calvinist preachers of various denominational stripes have been known to say that the “doctrines of grace”. by which they mean the doctrines of the Synod of Dort [1618-1619] – total depravity. unconditional election. limited atonement. irresistible grace. and the perseverance of the saints -. are the Gospel. as if a rigid predestinarianism in which God has arbitrarily picked out a handful of people to receive His mercy and nobody else ever has any real opportunity to escape condemnation could possibly be accurately described as “Good News.”  The Lutheran claim that “justification by faith alone is the article upon which the Church stands or falls”. while more defensible than the Calvinist equation of predestinarianism with the Gospel. [4] makes a doctrine about Christian faith more important that the truths that are the essential content of Christian faith. Although our English Articles of Religion are. in terms of article count. longer than either the Lutheran Augsburg or Reformed Belgic Confessions. there is no extra-Creedal doctrine that defines Anglicanism the way TULIP defines Dortian Calvinism or Sola Fide defines Lutheranism [not in the sense that it is distinct to Lutheranism – the Reformed and Anglican Churches also affirm it – but it is more associated with Lutheranism. in the theology of which it is more central].  In part this is because the Articles of Religion – in their final. Elizabethan form at least. if the same cannot exactly be said about such predecessors as the Henrician Ten Articles or the Edwardian Forty-Two – were formulated with the end in mind of achieving the peace and unity in the English Church that Queen Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker sought rather than in the polemical spirit that drove the Continental Protestant Confessions [and. for that matter. the Creed of Pius IV and the Council of Trent].  In part it is because the English Reformers. much more so than their Continental counterparts. were determined to preserve the Catholicity of the English Church. to remove only the blatant late Medieval abuses in their reforms. and. while affirming the supremacy of the Scriptures as the Word of God above ecclesiastical authority and tradition like other Protestants. to look to the Fathers of the early centuries and Councils for the orthodox interpretation of the Scriptures.  This is reflected in all the formularies to come out of the English Reformation of which the Articles are but one.  These define the Anglican faith as the Catholic faith of the ancient Creeds. [5]  The [interrogative] Apostles’ Creed is the faith into which one is baptized in the service of the Book of Common Prayer.  The Apostles’ Creed is also the faith confessed in the daily offices of prayer [except on those to which the Athanasian Symbol is assigned]. the Nicene Creed is the faith confessed in the service of Holy Communion.  To avoid any confusion on this matter. the Articles are entitled Articles of Religion and not Confession of Faith.   The English Reformers had it right. I believe.  The twelve articles which comprise the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. developed in the same early centuries in the West and East respectively out of the baptismal Creeds of Rome and probably Jerusalem. arguably themselves variants of a proto-Creed perhaps dating back to the Apostles. certainly ultimately derived from the formula with which Jesus Himself commissioned His Church to baptize the nations. are the Christian faith.  The Definition of Chalcedon provided further clarity on the Person and Two Natures of Jesus Christ to guard against latter heresies. the Athanasian Symbol provides the fullest exposition of the Trinity. but everything in the Definition of Chalcedon and the Athanasian Symbol is either explicit or implicit in the Creeds. just as everything in the twelve articles of the Creeds is either explicit or implicit in the original deposit of the “faith once delivered unto the saints” as recorded in the Scriptures.  To subtract from this faith the way liberal revisionists like Harnack did is to create a new religion that is less than Christianity.  To add to it by declaring other things. true or false. that are neither explicit nor implicit in the ancient Creeds to be of the essence of the faith in the way Pius IV and the Council of Trent did is to arrogantly claim authority far in excess of that given to the Church.  Nothing else resembles this error of the papacy so much as the attitude of those who treat the doctrines of the Reformation. or worse of five-point Calvinism. as if they were on par with the truths of the ancient Symbols.     [1]   Gibson’s book is part of the Oxford Library of Practical Theology edited by W. C. E. Newbolt and Darwell Stone.  Burn contributed separate volumes on each of the Creeds to the same series.  The material in these naturally overlaps that in his earlier An Introduction to The Creeds and the Te Deum [1899].[2]   Although the Athanasian Symbol and the Definition of Chalcedon are both sometimes called Creeds. neither begins with “I/We believe” and so these are not Creeds in the proper sense.  Symbol is the Anglicization of the Greek word that was first used for these sort of faith formulations.  The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are. like the Athanasian Symbol and Definition of Chalcedon. Symbols. but the Athanasian Symbol and Definition of Chalcedon are not properly Creeds.[3]   The very Calvinistic Irish Articles of Religion of 1615. drawn up primarily by Archbishop Ussher [at the time Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College. Dublin and not yet a bishop]. number 104.  This is the longest in terms of article number of which I am aware. Longest in terms of article number does not translate into longest in in terms of total content.  The Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith. which is not organized into articles. is longer. In 1523 Zwingli put out “The Sixty-Seven Articles”.  This however. was not the same sort of thing as either the English or Irish Articles or the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions but a personal statement. drawn up as part of his defence before the Zurich city council after he had been charged with heresy and many of the sixty-seven are short sentences joined together in larger divisions which in other Confessions would constitute a single article.  The last of the sixty-seven is an invitation to ask him questions about various topics.[4]   The best defence of the statement would be to examine how St. John uses St. Peter’s Confession in his Gospel.  St. Peter’s Confession was that Jesus is “the Christ. the Son of the Living God” in His response to which Jesus said “thou art Peter. and upon this rock I will build my church. and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matt. 16:16. 18]  That the confession and not St. Peter personally. is this foundation rock. is evident in the Greek of rock which is feminine whereas St. Peter’s name is masculine.  In St. John’s Gospel. this very Confession is identified by the Evangelist as what one must believe to have everlasting life [Jn. 20:31].  Earlier in his narrative. Martha makes the same confession in response to Jesus’ asking her if she believed His statement “I am the resurrection. and the life: he that believeth in me. though he were dead. yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” [Jn. 11:25-26. Martha’s answer in 27].  What Dr. Luther called “justification by faith alone” is the truth explained by St. Paul in the fourth chapter of Romans that being right with God is not something that we earn by works. but is a gift given by grace in Jesus Christ and received by us by faith.  St. Paul did not use the word “alone” in expressing this and many objected to Dr. Luther’s use of it on the grounds that St. James did use it  [Jas. 2:24] and negated it. although these failed to note that in doing so St. James asserted that justification was by precisely the thing St. Paul said it was not by and that the only reasonable way of harmonizing the two is to recognize that St. James was not talking about justification by grace [a word conspicuous by its absence from his second chapter which incorporates all of the other main terms of the fourth chapter of Romans] which is more or less what St. Paul himself said in the second verse of Romans 4 [frequently those who point to James 2:24 in this way claim that it is the only occurrence of “faith alone” in the Scriptures. ignoring or ignorant of Mark 5:36 in which it is stated by Jesus Himself positively in the imperative mood as a command].  All that the doctrine means is that for salvation to be a free gift of grace – which all Churches. even the Roman. acknowledge it to be – then faith must perform its role as the hand which receives that gift with no assistance from works.   The best Roman Patriarch of living memory. Benedict XVI. acknowledged that Dr. Luther was right about this.  At any rate. outside of St. Paul’s epistles. this is most emphasized in the Johannine writings. especially the fourth Gospel in which Jesus Himself and the Evangelist repeatedly promise everlasting life to everyone who believes in Jesus.  The exchange in the eleventh chapter between Martha and Jesus. associates Jesus’ being able to make this promise with His being Whom St. Peter confessed Him to be. which brings us back to that confession being the rock upon which Christ would build His Church and upon which it stands.[5]   To be fair to the Reformed. one of their Forms of Unity [formularies]. their Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. primarily the work of Zacharias Ursinus also clearly identifies the Gospel and the Christian faith with the faith of the Apostles’ Creed in Q and A 22 and 23. Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:14:42 +0000 6bba477acecdbc84fe5a470bdc31319ba59c5f18 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/07/30/social-trauma-dr-fauci-covid-mandates-the-church-and-forgiveness/ It’s now public knowledge. Originally. I didn’t make it public. In 2022. A fellow online who was one of my detractors posted it. At that point. I found it strange. How did he come to know. At that time. as far as I knew. it wasn’t widespread news. A portion of his public post read. … Continue reading Social Trauma. Dr. Fauci. Covid Mandates. the Church. and Forgiveness. Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:43:59 +0000 37f1844cc7a87d5f7367b724ffc9a34a5bfca636 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/misinformation-about-big-light.html Yesterday. Maolsheachlann posted 'A Big Light on Misinformation.' owning up to a blatant falsehood he had been peddling about what those big lights on movie sets are called. He vowed to Do Better and to 'work hard to regain the trust of my blog readers.'This morning. I read this in Missing Time [1981] by Budd Hopkins [italics in the original. boldface added]:“Sure. I knew him.” said the lieutenant. “He used to work nights. I came in about six-thirty that morning and he had some wild story about this big thing with lights on it that came down in the park. He thought it was involved with the broken window. but you can’t believe a story like that. He must’ve been drinking or something.”Apparently misinformation about big lights has been a problem for decades. Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Thu, 30 Jul 2026 04:56:14 +0000 86b3a0957731831f5836f86a0f94e1eaa56ea9a5 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-survival-guide-is-now-published.html A Survival Guide to the End Times was published in the UK yesterday [August 4th in the US]. and you can now look inside on the Amazon website and see some of its contents. It's a simple title which plainly describes what the book is about. but it does raise a couple of questions. What are the end times. and how do you survive them. To address the second part of that double question first. survival is preservation and what you need to preserve is the integrity of your soul because. when it comes down to it. that is all you have. That is what survives physical death. and so you need to make sure it is in the best possible condition for what comes after. Surviving the end times is not about preserving the body in the face of collapse. Bodily survival can only ever be temporary. The only true survival is spiritual. The reality is that the end times threaten your soul. They do so because all the prevailing tendencies are anti-spiritual. Look around you. Is that not the case now. This is one way we can tell we are in such times. and every day the situation degrades further. On the other hand. on the individual level I believe many people are beginning to wake up. no doubt due to the deteriorating world situation. but when you do start to wake up and see your world crumbling about you. what do you do. You can fight against the loss through political action but part of the end times scenario is that all outer things including institutions and even modes of action are corrupted. Political action may bring temporary reprieve here and there but it cannot bring real improvement in the sense of turning things round any more than medicine can cure a dying man. This doesn't mean one should do nothing. just as the fact someone is dying doesn't mean you shouldn't try to help them. but you have to be realistic. The world cannot stand against the end times. The word end is not there for nothing.This brings us to what the end times might be and why many people believe them to be now. One of the simplest ways to conceive of them is as an example of entropy.  Left to themselves. established systems run down and will naturally revert to chaos and disorder. This can be circumvented by intervention but there comes a point at which the forces of decay are too strong and will outrun any attempt to correct them. Dissolution increases and then gathers speed. Another way to understand the end times is as the last phase in a cycle. and for this you have to understand the reality of how our world exists. It is the expression of spirit in matter. These are the two forces or modes of being that correspond to consciousness and that in which life externalises itself for the purposes of self-revelation. essence and substance we might say. At the beginning of a cycle. the spirit aspect dominates but as the cycle unfolds spirit recedes and the material aspect comes to the fore. Spirit never withdraws completely or all life would depart and matter return to its prime condition of formless chaos. But awareness of spirit is diminished by the greater involvement of consciousness in matter as well as the phenomenon of matter itself becoming more material. meaning more opaque to spirit. The fact that over the last 100+ years the culture has become one of atheistic materialism is another strong indication that we live in the end times. Spirit is inaccessible for most people and it requires great effort to be aware of it other than as an intellectual possibility.To survive the end times you must actively resist the flow of life as it is now. You must stand apart from prevailing attitudes and behaviours and position yourself in the eternal which alone is unaffected by the end times tendencies of dissolution and collapse. This is what survival is all about. It means disassociating yourself from the world and centring your mind in the truth and reality of God.There is a doom and gloom aspect to the end times. How could there not be. But in fact these times offer tremendous opportunity which is why I would guess so many souls have opted to be born now. Precisely because you have to go against the flow you can make much greater spiritual progress than at a time when outer conditions helped you and more or less took you along with them. What you achieve now is truly yours instead of being achieved for you.That having been said. how many people are actually taking advantage of the opportunity available. It seems not many. Every aspect of life is corrupted. the ostensibly spiritual as much if not more than any other. This new book aims to help those open to the idea identify end times tendencies and then resist them. That is what is needed for survival. Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:27:46 +0000 9bd97cdf2d86edb49bd43af8fcc9ecd44ca14f52 https://derekramsey.com/2026/07/29/eucharist-redux-9-sacrifices/ This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index. In “Eucharist. Redux n2” we defined the eucharist of the early church and provided a 10-item list of things that the church offered in its sacrificial thanks-offering. Inspired by the interaction in the screenshot above. let’s … The post Eucharist. Redux n9: Sacrifices appeared first on Derek L. Ramsey. Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:00:57 +0000 8e54c7c8277b26bbfb266ff5ee47eaa07e25ece4 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/from-snowy-crown-to-frizzen-feet.html In 'Many are cold. but few are frozen' [July 25]. I quote a reference in Elias: An Epic of the Ages to one of the mountains of Utah [Mt. Nebo.] as a 'hermit of the hills' with important knowledge stored in his 'frozen snow-crown.' Then. in 'Cold but not frozen' [July 26]. I quote from a loose translation of Balzac the line 'My feet are frizzen.' with the context making it clear that the last word is a humorous alteration of frozen.Today I read in the final canto of Elias this personification of 'Zion's land.' understood by the poet to include the entirety of the Americas:She sits. a sovereign queen. ice-crowned. to laveHer glowing hands in tropic tides. while braveHer snowy feet in faith the southern sea.Again it is specific the crown and the feet that are frozen. The two crown references are from the same poem. making them less of a coincidence. but the context is still quite different -- the peak of a mountain vs. the Arctic 'crown' of a continent. The Balzac novel. though. is very far removed from Elias. and my reason for looking up that passage [its use of the 'libfix' -rama] had nothin to do with that poem or with icy imagery. Wed, 29 Jul 2026 05:10:56 +0000 75c6061f257e29a755dcfd20aeda00fa17340451 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-rabbit-that-is-seen-and-loved-by-jesus.html I dreamt the title phrase at approximately 2:40 this morning. with no context and no visual aspect.. Perhaps it means something to someone. Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:40:28 +0000 79b234eecc3a12a88b61b1a0fd094a691155f403 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-prophet-points-out-land-he-himself.html Last night I read in Elias: An Epic of the Ages a passage in which Joseph Smith is imagined as foreseeing the later Mormon migration to Utah. in the far west:While ye. my people -- yonder setting sunPoints out your path.The phrasal verb point out usually means to draw attention to some fact. not to point in a particular direction.Also last night. I read the last few chapters of the Book of Numbers. Chapter 34 contains the only instances of point out in the King James Bible:And this shall be your north border: from the great sea ye shall point out for you mount Hor:From mount Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath. and the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad: . . .And ye shall point out your east border from Hazarenan to Shepham [Num. 34:7-8. 10].The context is broadly similar. In each case a founding prophet is indicating the location of a land his people will settle in after his death. Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:30:22 +0000 b3f0473e574f10f20f141c65d5c95a80b6560f25 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/three-random-mentions-of-tony-robbins.html In the past 24 hours. I've run into three random references to Tony Robbins in three completely unrelated YouTube videos.Here's Mormon cult leader Shane Baldwin: 'If I had to pick anybody out there right now who I thought was Enoch incarnate. I'd pick Tony Robbins' [20:00]:Here's political commentator Mark Dice. replaying with approval a 40-year-old clip of Tony Robbins using the nigger word [8:21]:And here's. uh. the 'Hyperborean Knowledge' guy. randomly interrupting a discussion of ADHD and the GATE program to say 'Where my Tony Robbins fans at.' [21:40]: Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:44:05 +0000 7df0c81750609ec3670bfc812c009059e4abbcd7 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/tears-sighs-and-hermits.html I read this today in Orson F. Whitney's Elias: An Epic of the Ages:Where perfect love casts forth the jealous fear.A diamond in thy diadem each tear.And every sigh that rent thy suffering breast.A wave of rapture on the shores of rest.These lines. identifying each tear and sigh with something quite different [a diamond. a wave of rapture]. reminded me of a quatrain found in Blake's 'The Grey Monk' and 'I saw a Monk of Charlemagne':For a Tear is an intellectual thing.And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King.And the bitter groan of the Martyr's woeIs an arrow from the Almighty's bow.['For a Tear is an intellectual thing' is such a perfect line. Blake was a genius of the highest order.]The idea of a Grey Monk already had me thinking about the Hermit card. and when I looked up and reread those Blake poems. I found that each also includes this stanza:But vain the Sword and vain the Bow.They never can work War's overthrow.The Hermit's prayer and the Widow's tearAlone can free the World from fear.[In 'The Grey Monk.' this is immediately followed by the first stanza I cited above. which I think is poetically correct. In 'I saw a Monk of Charlemagne.' the line about the Almighty's bow is the final line of the poem. which is also poetically correct. Thus I link both versions. being unable to give my unqualified endorsement to either.]Blake's reference to what 'can free the World from fear' syncs with Whitney's 'perfect love casts forth the jealous fear.'In 'A dove from the fridge. a reaper angel. a white SUV. and An Account That Moooves.' I dreamt of a Tarot card depicting a gray-robed angel with straight blond hair. holding a scythe. In the commentary on this in the post. I included images of two Rider-Waite cards: the Hermit. who wears a gray robe. and Justice. to whom straight blond hair is unique in that deck.Justice is crowned and holds a sword. Combining this with the reaper angel on the dream-card. we get 'a Scythe is the sword of an Angel King' -- differing from Blake's line by but a single phoneme.We could also respell Blake's line as 'a sai is the sword of an Angel King' -- meaning. presumably. the archangel Raphael. Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:01:15 +0000 966acee25216f07750e10f6fe394c1df06e104e9 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-wake-questions-and-answers i will tell the triewth Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:42:19 +0000 5e82256a47805c77c1bc34ede0c155cd0e621995 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/why-you-dont-have-to-take-vitalists The Problem With a Superman Whose Most Remarkable Power Is Invisibility Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:03:13 +0000 ce3fcebf4c53df970c48494122f190608b817976 https://winteryknight.com/2026/07/28/what-we-learned-from-rand-pauls-release-of-the-faucidiary/ Well. this is the big story of the week. so I have to write something about it. Probably. no website has paid a higher price for reporting on inconvenient facts on topics like election integrity and pandemic deceptions than the Federalist. The Federalist is my first read every day. And they have a ton of … Continue reading What we learned from Rand Paul’s release of the nFauciDiary → Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:00:06 +0000 2495762e775b12428002502899a1c2b2e3b5d09d https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/trump-the-liar-thief-and-destroyer-of-peace/ Only this new and compromised version of the Orange Man [who for all we know may not even be the real article] could wrest defeat from the jaws of victory. I mean. who else would go out of his way to alienate and enrage the only foreign country in the world where. just a littleContinue reading 'Trump The Liar. Thief. And Destroyer Of Peace' Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:28:51 +0000 2ca9a6559b0fc43d7fea841ba41992fd454a0046 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-big-shark-and-long-ago-memory.html Brave gave me an interesting background image. so I clicked to see what it was. It's called 'white and black shark in water.'That's about the biggest shark I've ever seen.A few minutes later. I went to my Google Photos account. Apparently Google is trying to jog distant past-life memories now.Those were the days. Not a cell phone in sight. Just people living in the moment. Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:04:22 +0000 f9e87f6431207506862163bfcbcd200ea86423db https://gunnerq3.substack.com/p/the-bureaucratic-implications-of Despite my gamer background. I never got into Magic: the Gathering or its spin-offs. Tue, 28 Jul 2026 03:30:03 +0000 80cd01cc65b038eb426990a5d93c840d412032dd https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/who-had-john-wayne-shooting-on-their.html As I was waking up. a rapid-fire series of voices said things like 'Kill John Wayne.' 'John Wayne shot.' 'Shoot John Wayne.' and finally 'Who had John Wayne shooting on their bingo card for this year.'Not many people. I would guess. since John Wayne has been dead for 47 years. I document the dream anyway in case it should turn out to be precognitive in some unanticipated way.⁂Update: I published the original version of this post [above] at 8:29 a.m. As I was thinking about how it might somehow be precognitive even though John Wayne is long dead. I thought it might refer to another person called John Wayne -- like. for example. the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Gacy is long dead. too. of course. but he's an example of the fact that 'John Wayne' can refer to more than one individual.At 10:17 a.m. Taiwan time. someone posted on /pol/ 'MASS SHOOTING AT THE SPACE ' The second reply shows someone in clown makeup. and the third reply says 'More like the gayce needle.'John Wayne Gacy performed as a clown and is known as the Killer Clown. I'm sure gayce is just supposed to be an alteration of space to include the word gay. but by analogy with Edgar Cayce's name. it should be pronounced as Gacy. A search of the /pol/ archive for other instances of gayce shows that most of them are misspelled [or perhaps intentionally gayified] references to 'John Wayne Gayce.'In one of J. W. Dunne's precognitive dreams. he dreamt details of a disaster not as they actually happened but as they were reported in the newspaper he would read the next day -- so it makes sense that my own dream would be retroactively influenced not by the facts of the shooting but by the way it was reported on /pol/. Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:29:53 +0000 75708b95afe03451dd8755224dba166316a5b2e3 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/cold-but-not-frozen.html Maolsheachlann's recent post 'Interesting Words' led me to leave a comment mentioning the scene in the Balzac novel Le Père Goriot where people keep putting the suffix -rama on different words. I last read that novel in 2012 and didn't remember all the details of the scene. so just now I looked it up. clicking on the first search result that came up for balzac rama. a page called 'Elfinspell: Honoré de Balzac (1821-1881): The Suffix 'Rama ....' which has an uncredited English translation which I recognized as somewhat different from the Henry Reed version I read back in 2012. It includes this exchange:'It's a rare old frizzorama.' said Vautrin. 'Now. then. Father Goriot. move round a bit -- Ye gods. your feet stop up the mouth of the stove.'Illustrious M. Vautrin.' said Bianchon. 'why do you say frizzorama. It is a mistake. you should say freezorama.'No.' interposed the museum official. 'It is frizzorama. according to the rule you should say: my feet are frizzen.'Ha. ha.'Since freezing has been in the sync stream ['Many are cold. but few are frozen']. I looked up the original:— Il fait un fameux froitorama. dit Vautrin. Dérangez-vous donc. père Goriot. Que diable. votre pied prend toute la gueule du poêle.— Illustre monsieur Vautrin. dit Bianchon. pourquoi dites-vous froitorama . Il y a une faute. c'est froidorama.— Non. dit l'employé du Muséum. c'est froitorama. par la règle: «J'ai froit aux pieds.»— Ah. ah.Neither froid nor the variant froit means 'frozen'. both words mean 'cold.' Many feet are cold. but few are frozen. Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:19:28 +0000 5ff77df432855ee89c3b8bdd6bbcfcf43df51c0e https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-dove-from-fridge-reaper-angel-white.html I had a series of very brief dreams:1. I heard the single word 'fridge.'2. I opened a refrigerator. and a live dove flew out.3. I was explaining how to do something with a deck of Tarot cards: 'So I cut once and then turn the deck over and look at the bottom card.' I demonstrated this. and when I turned the deck over. the bottom card puzzled me because it was in the style of the Rider-Waite but not recognizable as one of that deck's cards. It depicted a figure which I took to be an angel. though he had no wings or halo. He had long. straight blond hair and was dressed in a long light-gray robe. His face was turned to the left side of the card [the angel's right]. In his right hand he held a scythe. the blade of which was curving over his head to his left [the right side of the card]. The angel's feet were not visible in the picture. so I could not determine whether he was standing on something or levitating. My second thought when I saw the image [my first being simple perplexity at seeing an unfamiliar card] was 'the reapers are the angels' [Matt. 13:39]. The card was in reversed orientation. and when I tried to rotate the deck so the image was upright. the dream ended.4. I was driving a white SUV [I was the driver but could simultaneously see the vehicle from the outside] and made a sharp left. turning perhaps 120 degrees.5. I was looking at aa children's book called An Account That Moooves. with the multiple o's [I'm not sure exactly how many there were] intended to suggest the sound a cow makes. I opened it up to a page that had no text. only a picture. In the foreground was an extremely stylized cutesy Japanese-style cartoon of a cow with its eyes squeezed closed and its mouth open extremely wide -- so wide that. with an anatomical logic only the Japanese understand. the bottom of the mouth extended past the chin. This was obviously meant to convey some strong emotion -- perhaps fear. surprise. or anger -- but I've never really been able to read these goofy anime expressions. In the background. a mountainous wave. like a tsunami. was approaching the cow from behind.Upon waking. I performed the operation I had dreamt of. cutting my Rider-Waite deck once without shuffling and then turning the deck over. The bottom card was the Magician.⁂The fridge dreams of course made me think first of Bill's dream about someone he later decided was me raiding his refrigerator. but that line of thought didn't really go anywhere. The next thing I thought of was my recent post 'Many are cold. but few are frozen.' since a refrigerator is specifically designed to keep things cold but not frozen. In the poem discussed there. important knowledge is depicted as being stored up in the 'frozen snow-crown' of a mountain. waiting for someone with 'the melting gift' to release that knowledge into the world in the form of speech or song. Since the dove is the standard symbol of the Holy Ghost and the inspiration thereof. a dove being released from a refrigerator could represent revealed knowledge being made known. The imagery of a refrigerated Holy Ghost also made me think of the old Appalachian song 'The Ghost of John.' which ends with the line 'Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on.' Ghosts without bodies are 'chilly' -- cold but not frozen. John was 'a just man and an holy' [Mark 6:20]. so the ghost of John would be a 'holy ghost.'The Tarot card is puzzling. At first I thought of it has being 'Trump 13½.' since the 13th trump is Death [traditionally. though not in the Rider-Waite. depicted as the Grim Reaper with a scythe]. and the 14th. Temperance. depicts an angel. However. I think it's also likely a continuation of the Hermit sync stream. since many of the details -- the light-gray robe. the face turned to the left of  the card. the long staff -- match those of that Rider-Waite card.The closest thing to long. straight blond hair in the Rider-Waite deck is Justice. whose hair is only chin-length. The hair of the angel in the dream made me think rather of the Vanyar. or of Nordic aliens. Coincidentally. the Nordics with Trump in the images recently circulated online are wearing clothing quite similar to that of Justice.When I was writing the description of the Tarot dream above. I opened a new tab in Brave so that I could look up 'the reapers are the angels' and get the scripture reference. The background image in the new tab [randomly selected by Brave from a large set of possibilities] was this:At first I thought they were red tulips -- the flower whose presence on some of Oswald Wirth's Tarot cards is what first brought Debbie to my blog. They're actually poppies in Serbia. but there's certainly a resemblance.I think the white SUV dream and the Account That Moooves dream are probably related. In 'The 96. the 48. and the white bull' [May 2024]. I connected a white SUV with this image of a bull in the sea:The image of a cow about to be overwhelmed by a wave is a continuation of the 'Underwater Cowtown' [April 2025] symbolism. That posts mentions a possible connection between Mu. a lost continent sometimes conflated with Atlantis. and a cow's moo. Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:54:34 +0000 44341f686c0a0a7e00ba5aba4ae46209b806b693 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/07/lotr-106-interlude-in-intermezzo-within.html Or. Gollum-Hunting is Hard...[Finding Orcs. is Easy]                                                     A Dime a Dozen. These Days...Link                                               3009 : Gandalf and Aragorn renew their hunt for Gollum at intervals during the next eight years. searching in the vales of Anduin. Mirkwood. and Rhovanion to the confines of Mordor. At some time during these years Gollum himself ventured into Mordor. and was captured by Sauron. Elrond sends for Arwen. and she returns to Imladris. the Mountains and all lands eastward are becoming dangerous.                                                        While Gollum is Rarer than hens' teeth...LinkHunting Gollum has turned out to be just shy of a White Whale. but a hair of the dog that bit us. We. all of us. are focused upon the Ring of Power. for good or ill. The difference between Good and Ill [it would seem]. that thin and faint dividing red line. turns out to be the basic contact the human organism makes with Reality. To admit that one does not know. opens the door to the possibility of knowledge. To admit that one is not just. admits one into the precincts of hallowed justice. It is the coming out the self. which creates the possibility of seeing the whole self: One comes out from under the rock. Oh. that Gollum might have come out from under his rock. when he came out from under his rock. Alas. some journey far for the exterior object. but do not discover the interior landscape that creates. receives. and blesses the exterior objects. What happens to the human organism. when it gives itself over to an Ideology. Brett Stevens and Aurelian [both] explain it to us. Please note. according to Wikipedia. Brett Stevens is a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. That's too bad. I also see that. if you look up their entry on 'Seed Oil Misinformation'. you will find at the article's end that distrust of the FDA and their seed oil policy makes you a fascist. So. I am going to cite Brett Stevens anyway. The more shame on them. if they are right. for having to have someone like that. explain how the cow ate the cabbage. Here is Aurelian: If all this sounds a bit dismissive. then perhaps it should be. This ideology was the product of a highly normative middle-class western education. which emphasized thinking about how the world should be as opposed to how it actually was. and thus encouraged symbolic. rather than actual activities.Brett Stevens is even more explicit. Our species grew to the point where it inverted its goal of adaptation to our environment by using symbols to manipulate one another. This impulse naturally arises from herd behavior. which seeks to limit conflict. but that results in control structures which create bureaucracies and businesses that rule us for their benefit at our expense.Ironically [then] we can use Enlightenment critiques [the very worple-sharpest of them]. against Ideology [of any kind]. Fuerbach. Voltaire. and even old Daniel Dennett  [God bless him] teach us that when we apply an acid-bath to Christianity. it's sauce for the old gander as well. Dip all ideology in the acid of even-handed doubt. and what emerges. What is left. when you doubt your very doubts. as well. When you approach all of your symbols in the spirit of alchemy. No word-hoard or ideology in the world has been subjected to as intense and acidic analysis. as Christianity. It is still here. Where do you think that leaves Marxism and the Religion of Progress.This [then]. if you will have it. is the hunt for the Ring: to [first] find out where we may look for it. among the myriad tracks and labyrinths of the world. and [second] to prove or show that when we have found something. it is. or is not. that which we seek. Tolkien had to write a search for a negative Pearl of Great Price. since our Age would not comprehend a search for anything else. And I will tell you what is left. after all explorings and adventures are over. though it be best to walk the path yourself. You do have to be careful in your investigations - Karl Schmitt [for instance] and Brett Stevens certainly have that Third Reich odor or whiff about them. But we must be fair. We leave no stones unturned in the hunt for the Ring. Did not the Ahnenerbe do likewise. Can we be less noble. than the Devil himself. We set the ultra-Right and the hyper-Left in the acid bath along with Christianity. We use the thinkers. each. against each other. We examine everything. above all. our selves. For to refuse examination. to escape questioning. to exempt from investigation - that is the essence of the Demoniac. Instead. we take the motto. 'The Way Out. is Further In'. We go to the end of all things. which is the Beginning. We invert the inversions. if nothing else. We undergo. without sinking to the levels. which we are invited to. And what is Left. The seed corn of Christianity. and nothing else. Despite the great respect we hold the high old classical pagan John Michael Greer in [and our respect for this modern day Radagast is high indeed]. it appears to us that Christ the Lord had the right questions from the start. He Who asks the best questions. has the answers. He who is the question. is the answer. We can supercharge this point or question [if we like]. We can not only refer the reader to Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances. we can point them to Ian McGilchrist's The Matter with Things.                                                   McGilchrist explains it for the hard of hearing...Our left hemispheres are adept at pattern recognition and manipulation. We [as McGilchrist argues] apprehend. or seize on Reality. with our symbolic apparatus. Western Man tends to swim Left with Cthulu. because in the seizure of Reality with our patterns. we impress ideology upon it. We become slaves to our most elemental tools. Progressivism and Liberalism. the Left in general. has been precociously virtuoso in developing this seizure to a very high point. This is the tale of our modern civic religion. the ideal not merely of technical Progress. but human Equality and Freedom. and all the Diverse spawn of those teaky-wood Idols. It is our right hemisphere which comprehends. Our right hemisphere is the seat of the Master. who is meant to govern the Emissary of the left side. Ideology is the replacement or inversion of this order in favor of our tool-making symbolic apparatus. We are then lead into the hall of mirrors. or what Boris Mouravieff in Gnosis calls The Magic Lantern Show. This. dear readers. is why Everything Seems Out of Joint Today - an Ideological War of All Against All. This almighty Kerfuffle is a tempest in a tea pot. It is why the world seems wrong. As James Howard Kunstler has it. there are times [sometimes large swathes of Time]. when people collectively 'lose their s...'. History happens because 'it seemed like a good idea at the time'. But obsessive pattern recognition. and poor choice of symbols. coupled with lack of awareness one is even using symbols to begin with. absolutely guarantees absolute failure. It is why our elites are Super-Stupid. Dear Reader. let it not be so with you. with us. Let our 'We' be more than symbolic. a mere manipulation [clever as it can be notwithstanding] of symbols. sigils. and words. There is a Reality. And it is replete with Truth. Beauty. and Goodness. for those with eyes to see it. or the heart to cultivate the organs to behold and comprehend it. Only then. pried loose from all Ideologies. can we ap-prehend what we intuitively com-prehend.     Tolkien is. like RL Stevenson. an apostle of Hope LinkIn Saint Maximus' immortal language. The Word Became Thick. It is no surprise. that thousands of years after Christ. all the modern day higher critics can do. is recycle Ernst Renan's The Life of Jesus. with various Gnostic twists. Saint John affirms that. if all were written about Christ which could be said. 'the world could not contain it'. Yet each of us. in our own time and space allotted. encounters that man afresh. who asks us. Who do you say that I am. Perhaps we are lucky. who inhabit a world where the 'center cannot hold' and things fall apart. JMG puts it this way: Crisis. it turns out. has its advantages. When things fall apart in an undeniable way. political and economic systems quite often have to make changes that were necessary all along. and those changes can lay the foundations for improved conditions in the future. The sort of slow grind downward we’ve all experienced over the last two decades is another matter. In situations of that kind. political and economic elites can blunder cluelessly onward. burbling to themselves that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. while troubles pile up to the breaking point for those outside the airtight bubbles of the well-to-do. LinkIt moves. or provokes one [like the proverbial gad-fly] to actual thought. Since most of us rarely think. any thinking at all [in our day] is an act of Re-penteo. or Repentance. These essays on the Hunt for the Ring. are an effort to forward a new concordance. or consilience [as EO Wilson would have it]. In the Middle Ages. 'concordance' was the logical discipline of reconciling apparently conflicting positions with a divine authority revealed to men. 'The super-logic is ... that for the living soul ...God is always there. But for the operating mind. God is never given. ...just as infinity is the tremendous step from arithmetic to mathematics. so this tremendous admission of the partial absence of God from the mind is the real foundation of the super-logic of the Middle Ages.' The thrust of these lectures is to provide a detailed description of how concordance is to take place. LinkYet without the individual super-effort of Gnosis. of stripping bare one's imagination and intellect of all Idols. old or new. there can be no sensus communis. no 'We' or healthy collectivity. This is why Christ did not tackle politics. economics. or technology. Rather. He came to each person with the question. Who do men. who do you. say that I am. How shall we dispute with the gods. face to face. until we have faces.   Every soul is born as a blank canvas. in which the blankness. and the brush too. is Beauty...Link Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:33:46 +0000 2011eaa4ca9da3c563e0d478dffaec6f61c3ae5f https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/many-are-cold-but-few-are-frozen.html Looking at my blog dashboard. I saw the beginning of the title of a recent post. 'Many are . . ..' and my mind completed it as 'Many are cold. but few or frozen.' a humorous alteration. independently invented many times. of 'Many are called. but few are chosen.' This was reinforced when. minutes later. I read an allusion to the latter expression in Elias: An Epic of the Ages:The called are not the chosen past mischance.The sanctified to glorified advance.And stewardship becomes inheritance.I had a vague memory of having made the 'many are cold' joke before on this blog. so I searched it for the word frozen. I didn't find any instances of the joke. but I did find this. in the original 'Reading with my eyes shut' post [September 2025]:Upon waking. I couldn't remember any dream imagery. just two couplets. The first was a new version of the Jinbad couplet from 'With.' In spoken form. which is how I received it. it is ambiguous and could be written in either of the following ways:Jinbad the Jailer holds the keys.He locks up some. and others. frees.Jinbad the Jailer holds the keys.He locks up some. and others freeze.In the joke. frozen stands in for chosen. and being chosen is a good thing. Here. freeze is a second meaning of frees. and being freed rather than locked up is a good thing. The frees/freeze connection reminds me that there is a Disney movie called Frozen. of which I know nothing except that it is known for one of the songs on its soundtrack: 'Let It Go' -- i.e.. set it free.Early on in Elias. the poet apostrophizes one of the mountains of Utah. addressing it asLone. looming hermit of the hills. apartFrom where thy banded mates in union dwell.The word hermit of course caught my attention. The poet continues his speech to the mountain:Thrice wondrous things. once thine to wisely scan.Fast as thy frozen snow-crown. still in store.Hadst thou the melting gift -- of sovereign manThe sunlike glory -- mightest thou restore.Till learning's tide o'erwhelmed the shining shore . . .This 'hermit' wears a 'frozen snow-crown' which represents all the knowledge it holds -- knowledge which would become an overwhelming flood of learning if only the mountain had 'the melting gift.' glossed in a footnote as 'The power of speech or of song.' Some 55 years after Elias. Rodgers and Hammerstein would aver that the hills do indeed have that power:The hills are aliveWith the sound of musicWith songs they have sungFor a thousand years Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:56:48 +0000 dd7eb23b2f3deec132a0a557842b1d391fea00f4 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-felling-of-white-tree.html We often talk about White Trees around here --- the Tree of Life from the Book of Mormon and the various White Trees in the works of Tolkien. These were most recently juxtaposed in 'Apple of ashes. brine to the burning throat' [July 19]. a post which was -- appropriately. as we shall see -- occasioned by a passage in Orson F. Whitney's 1904 poem Elias: An Epic of the Ages. That post emphasized the fact that Nimloth. one of Tolkien's White Trees. was in Bill's words 'the tree that Pharazon burned down.'Strictly speaking. Nimloth was not 'burned down.' but rather felled and then burned. As The Silmarillion tells it. 'the King yielded to Sauron and felled the White Tree.' after which 'the first fire upon the altar Sauron kindled with the hewn wood of Nimloth.'The White Tree from Nephi's vision in the Book of Mormon is never felled or burned -- but in Whitney's poem it is. Referring to Nephi's High Mountain Vision. the poet writes:    All this and more the prophet-prince foresaw.    Messiah's self -- Jehovah -- Him beheld. --    The Perfect One. in whom was found no flaw.    Though slander as an ocean round Him swelled.    Life's deathless tree -- deathless. though demon-felled.    The crash resounding to this far-off shore.    Whose winnowed remnant welcomed Him. revealed    In risen glory. when had ceased the roarOf wrecking tempests. flung His radiant face before.[Retelling the High Mountain Vision in Spenserian stanzas is something I would do. I'm kind of bummed that Whitney beat me to it.]The language I have bolded is all figurative. of course. The white Tree of Life is made to represent Jesus himself. 'demon-felled' because executed at the instigation of the Jews. who had raised a swelling 'ocean' of calumny against him. and yet still 'deathless' because of the Resurrection. The crash of the falling tree 'resounding' in the distant West is a reference to the great destruction unleashed on the Book of Mormon lands shortly after the death of Christ.It's a somewhat strange choice of imagery. especially since the execution of Jesus involved raising a 'tree' [as the Cross is often poetically called] rather than felling one. It's also a misreading of Nephi. for whom the White Tree pretty clearly represents the Virgin rather than her Son [see 'You. Lady. are the Tree']. By 'coincidence.' though. Whitney's poetic language -- published when Tolkien was still a schoolboy -- presages the latter's own White Tree story. Tolkien's White Tree is felled at the command of a demon [Sauron. the equivalent of a fallen angel]. and yet lives on as the successive White Trees of Gondor. grown from its fruit. The felling of the Tree represents Pharazon's choice to serve Sauron. which has repercussions for the distant West [Tol Eressea and Aman]. and which results in the downfall of Numenor. 'an ocean round (it) swelled.' Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:34:38 +0000 bbfb15d0d596585ab0b5e400bf19e43e65c21769 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-day-i-didnt-meet-geoffrey-ashe.html  I first read some of Geoffrey Ashe's Arthurian books in the early days of my spiritual researching. They were not exactly spiritual books but there was an overlap because the Arthurian mythos taps into a deep level of the psyche where imagination. legend and spiritual exploration all meet up and feed off each other. The Arthurian stories are an entrance into a world of myth and magic. part pagan but with a strong Christian underpinning. The connection with Atlantis cannot be ignored either. Merlin and the Lady of the Lake both have a relationship with that drowned world which reached great spiritual heights before collapsing in hubris and wickedness.I had long loved the Arthurian tales as any right-minded person from the British Isles or its diaspora should do. I was introduced to them through a vividly illustrated children's version with medieval knights fighting each other before courting beautiful maidens. and then gravitated to the Roger Lancelyn Green version which is a classic of its kind. Thus. when I encountered Geoffrey Ashe's work which tried to put it all in historical context I was interested to learn what he had discovered about the period. Then I went to India and my interests shifted direction. but when I returned to England I lived for a while in Sherborne in Dorset. and that is only 6 miles from Cadbury Castle. the Iron Age hill fort that some identify as the site of Camelot. I visited Cadbury and let my imagination wander. and thenceforth I was reconnected with the Arthurian world. I had been to Glastonbury a couple of times in the '70s but in 1987 I went for another visit. I visited the Tor. which has never really spoken to me. Chalice Well which has. and the Abbey which does most of all. Then I went to a tea shop. that bastion of Englishness which has now almost disappeared. for a cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake before wandering up the High Street and into a bookshop for a browse in the richly stocked [it was Glastonbury] metaphysical section. I had my nose deep in some tome which. oddly enough. I remember as a Gareth Knight book. when what seemed to me to be a rather elderly man came in and began browsing next to me. He saw what I was looking at and said 'Ah. yes. that's good'. or words to that effect. and I nodded my appreciation. He then moved over to the cash desk to buy a couple of books. The cashier addressed him as Geoffrey and he departed. When I bought my book I somehow knew that this person was somebody so I asked the cashier who he was. 'That was Geoffrey Ashe'. he said.I didn't regret not talking to him some more. First of all. I had nothing to say. and secondly it must be annoying to be buttonholed by strangers. But I was intrigued that someone like Geoffrey Ashe would still be buying books like an ordinary person. I know that's ridiculous. Writers are first and foremost readers. but it was somehow reassuring to know that a proper author would still behave like the humble folk and retain the same passions and enthusiasms. He was only in his mid 60s then but seemed older to my relatively youthful self. Some might call this a missed opportunity but I saw it as a chance encounter made more interesting by its sheer everydayness. Fri, 24 Jul 2026 12:06:12 +0000 dfde80f6fc8cdbd6bc9aa3faf2ba3a38854ad1c9 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/many-are-my-notable-aliases-in-many.html Google is being weird again.Update: I published this post at 10:59 a.m. Exactly 47 minutes later. at 11:46. I photographed this logo. which was on the backpack of the motorcyclist stopped in front of me at a red light.My reason for posting the Google search-result screenshot above was the strange inclusion of 'Gandalf the Fresh' [any relation to Chilled.]. but it also includes the word Istari -- 'Wizards.' singular Istar. The backpack logo also includes the string ISTAR. The company is apparently called Jiayi Star. and an image search shows that they typically put a space between the two words.For whatever reason. the version of the logo that I photographed has no space. Furthermore. the IA lines up with the same letters in the Google screenshot.If we reanalyze the logo as JIAY-ISTAR. what does the first part mean. It's close to Jay. a name which has come up before -- Jay Leno. Roy Jay. and perhaps most relevantly. 'Blue Jays' as a reference to Tolkien's Blue Wizards. two of the Istari.In Chinese transliteration. the i in jia indicates palatalization. it's a single syllable that might be rendered jyah. This reminds me of how Daymon Smith renders the Book of Mormon name Jacom as Dyacom.I mentioned that I took the photo 47 minutes after publishing the original version of this post. I had just been thinking of the number 47 because it is the S:E:G: value of both hart and stag. and also of time -- Time being the earliest recorded name for the Tarot trump now known as the Hermit. I also happen to be 47 years old at the moment. and this past 7/22 was Bill's 47th birthday. Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:59:47 +0000 54b296fb7f69ec2aa478279f9b5be6ef45f166d3 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/23/airstrip-ones-keystone-kops/ This made me crack up. which I needed after a stressful day. Note that the perp is White. which. as several commenters noted. means that he probably flew a St. George’s flag or a Union Jack in public. or called some Pakistani rapist a wog on a social media site. The prize comment to meContinue reading 'AirStrip One’s Keystone Kops' Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:37:15 +0000 e88422d520aaec2a597d81375da87c1d988c7ed8 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-survival-guide-to-end-times.html My new book to be published shortly. 28th July in the UK and 4th August in the US. I notice that according to its page on Amazon. it weighs 7.4 ounces and its dimensions are 5.51 x 0.64 x 8.5 inches. Perhaps more to the point. it has 256 pages. Here is a list of the contents. IntroductionPart One: End TimesA Body of SlagSpace Is Contracting. Time Is AcceleratingThe End Times Is the End of TermA New CreationThe Paths of Peter and JohnThe Destruction of the WestHow to Save the WestWhat Is the Solution to the Current Crisis.Saving the WestWorld War Two and Its AftermathNot Going Along with the Aquarian FlowThoughts on the Secular Corruption of SpiritualitySatanic FeminismDivine FemininityThe Cassandra SyndromePart Two: Spiritual TraditionIntroduction on What Tradition IsThe Temptation of the EsotericBuddhist AtheismHeaven. Hell. and What’s In BetweenAstrology. A Signpost to CreationThe Gnostic World ViewThe Guru in the End TimesJesus Was a RefugeeThe Wisdom of the LeftWho Is Sophia. What Is She.The Tree of Knowledge of Good and EvilTradition and TechnologyThe Fox’s ProphecyPart Three: God and the SoulMeditation and Its LimitationsConsciousness and ChristThe Root of RealityThe Omnipotence of GodWhat Is the Soul.The Expansion of ConsciousnessThe Human FormMale and Female Created He ThemHierarchy and ComplementarityNo More SeaPart Four: Spiritual PracticeSpiritual RoutineIllusion and SinEmpathy and LoveWhat Is Evil.Give Them Your Mind and They Will Take Your SoulCelibacyPsychedelics and ReligionIs Equality a Spiritual Principle.St. MichaelChristians and the Esoteric Don’t WorryConclusionIt has received three endorsements. all of which I very much appreciate.In End Times. spirit withdraws from the world leaving aphysical corpse. Many rejoice over this inanimation becausethey believe progress exorcises spirit. a phantom in anycase. Their rejoicing is part of End Times because this is agreat winnowing of souls. William Wildblood writes as aJohannine Christian. so his End Times is not merely a wastingGötterdämmerung or a decomposing Kali Yuga. It is a test thatdivides men and women by their responses to the withdrawalof spirit. Some rejoice and some lament. and some who lamentlose faith that the withdrawn spirit was ever real. This book isfor those who lament but keep faith. and hope to remain goodgrain in the great winnowing of souls. It is an excellent andmuch-needed survival guide for those who have entered thewilderness and hope for more than to leave their dust in thisdry and stony place.Jonathan M. Smith. PhD. Professor. Department of Geography.Texas AandM University. Editor of Philosophy and Geography There are many signs that these are the End Times. but whatdoes this really mean.William Wildblood’s subtle and nuanced explanations arefocused on the underlying spiritual realities behind the moreobvious material changes.He explores many of the necessary implications for our attitudesand behaviours. if we hope to survive this challenging era withintegrity and hope.I have been reading William Wildblood’s writings for a decade.and he continues to surprise and challenge me by the depth andoriginality of his insights.Bruce G. Charlton. MD. author of Addicted to Distraction:Psychological Consequences of the Modern Mass Media A powerful. thought-provoking. and candid assessment ofour current Western cultural state of decline. inner decay. andexistential disintegration in terms of Christian end times andthe Kali Yuga cycle. The remedy proposed is in terms of innerorientation — a commitment to being in but not of the world asChrist preached. and a recognition of the need for a purging ofthe old before the new can come into being.David Lorimer. Global Ambassador and Programme Director ofthe Scientific and Medical Network. Editor of Paradigm Explorer.and Chair of the Galileo Commission It is available through Amazon and other booksellers and also directly from the publisher here. If anyone who reads it would like to leave a review I would be very grateful as these things help draw attention to it.Note: This is in response to Chent's question below. The Kindle version is available here and here for the US and UK respectively. It is in other territories too. of course. Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:54:09 +0000 e0620bdc59e835e9f3df048cf7ab8319b25ba87f https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/odin-elias-and-hermit.html Today is Wednesday. and one of the things the Hermit card of the Tarot of the Divine reminds me of is a picture I drew many years ago representing that day of the week. I no longer have those pictures of the days of the week. but I remember that one very clearly. Since Wednesday is associated with Hermes/Mercury and Odin/Woden. and with the third day of creation. when the stars were created. my picture depicted a man with a cloak. broad-brimmed hat. and staff. walking alone under a starry sky. The similarity to the Tarot card is obvious.I am currently reading Orson F. Whitney's book-length poem Elias: An Epic of the Ages. In Canto II. Elias himself appears. as the Soul of Song. and is compared to a hermit [eremite]:The spirit's garb -- for spirit so he seemed -- Fell radiant in many a flowing fold.A robe antique. by modern limners deemedBefitting monk or eremite of old.This reinforces the Odin connection. since both Elias [Elijah] and Odin are typically depicted as accompanied by ravens. Searching just now for images of Odin walking. I found several with ravens and one with something even more synchronistically apropos:This [non-traditional. and presumably algorithm-generated] depiction has Odin not only accompanied by a hart but wearing antlers of his own. making him one of those 'humanoid deer creatures' we've been hearing so much about.An interesting coincidence is that Canto VII of Elias [which I have not yet read] is titled 'The Arcana of the Infinite.' Given the tradition of referring to the cards of the Tarot as the Major and Minor Arcana. and given that many dictionaries give 'God' as one of the definitions of the noun Infinite ['Endless is my name.' Joseph Smith has him say]. this corresponds pretty closely to The Tarot of the Divine. the name of the deck whose Hermit card has recently been at the center of the sync-web.Another coincidence is that the part of Elias I read today included 'thy desert blooms' [an allusion to Isaiah 35. whence also 'Then shall the lame man leap as an hart']. followed a few lines later by 'One and Pure in Heart.' One suggests the Hermit. a solitary. while Pure in Heart could be symbolized by a white heart [see 'White harts'].Another Odin link is 'The Hermit Portal and the Well Thing.' which emphasizes the runes on Laura Bruno's Hermit Portal painting. Odin is supposed to have been the one who discovered runes. Bruno explicitly compares her hermit to Odin and also suggests that the man who taught her runes may have been Odin in disguise. Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:40:29 +0000 4e29aa8982b30b58d9bc8da01176b17e07cd60ac https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/white-harts.html Wade has expressed the opinion that the Hermit with the White Hart 'depicts a hopeful moment. and is a hopeful sign.'One of the preschoolers was wearing this T-shirt. which suggests the White Hart by way of the homophone heart. and associates it with hope. [The image is a reconstruction. I didn't take a photo.]At 1:13 this afternoon. I took this photo of a saddlebag on the scooter stopped in front of me at a red light.Those look almost more like antennae than antlers. but the animal is clearly meant to be a white deer. The Chinese takes the expression 一路平安 -- 'have a safe journey.' literally 'one road safe' -- and replaces the character 路 'road' with the homophone 鹿 'deer.'Five minutes later. at 1:18. I took this photo of a glass door with a decal on it which looks like a leftover Christmas decoration: a snowman with the head of a white reindeer. with a heart on its chest. Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:13:06 +0000 602dae0870e26854d815f3689d1526694d39dd31 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-july-80e And a reader discount on my forthcoming paperback Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:10:53 +0000 d20d50f4e7e2ea300963c5fdf51a09460cee51a8 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/then-shall-lame-man-leap-as-hart.html In an email last night. I wrote:The hart/hermit theme is still developing. but I think it likely has to do with Isaiah 35. 'Then shall the lame man leap as an hart' -- cf. the hermit. who walks with a stick. The desert is a major theme of the chapter.I hadn't had that idea until I wrote it. It just came out as I was writing the email.Exactly 200 minutes after I sent that email. Wade left a comment on 'Seven twenty-two.' saying in part:What do the 7 22 syncs mean. Tomorrow [where I am] is 7/22. could that be it. Might the scene from the movie (Pulp Fiction) actually be the principal import of the syncs. That idea. in lieu of a better. ought to be given sober consideration. Namely. it's too early--in the movie. it's too early but it doesn't take long for them to return to the door and knock--but you/we/someone will soon pass through a door that gives rise to a reflection upon providence and luck. Might it even result in a decision to 'walk the earth.'I don't think I've actually ever watched Pulp Fiction all the way through. so I didn't immediately get that 'walk the earth' was a line from the movie. It was clearly a reference to something. though -- the Frozen Man. the Duke of Earl. Allen Mandelbaum. -- so I searched my blog for the phrase [in quotes] to see what would turn up.Blogger's search function is terrible [one reason I've mostly stopped using.diacritics is that searching for Eliphas won't return any results with Éliphas]. so the second result. 'Pushed to Zion with songs of everlasting joy' [July 2024]. didn't actually include the search string. But it did include a lengthy quotation from Isaiah 35. beginning with the very verse I had quoted in my email: 'Then shall the lame man leap as an hart . . . .' Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:36:27 +0000 a79866fed515818f1bc0284bc0a62d9488e4a721 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-virtues-that-built-christendom How hospitality. humility. and patience become destructive when severed from order Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:01:52 +0000 796281528b0aa58da1c74943d67c41ba4339a426 https://winteryknight.com/2026/07/21/building-christian-kids-who-can-stand-against-secular-culture-my-practical-plan/ Recently. I have been meddling in the parenting plan of a friend who has a bunch of children. ages 5-12. She has been watching a lot of scholars talk about scientific evidence for a Creator and Designer. like James Tour and Stephen C. Meyer. and getting more and more concerned about whether her own children … Continue reading Building Christian Kids Who Can Stand Against Secular Culture: My Practical Plan → Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:00:17 +0000 ac303674da804e46f29687099b458ded64d26e12 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-hermit-portal-and-well-thing.html I saw this today on Peter Grant's latest meme post:It shows a person in a hooded green robe. a lantern. an owl. runes. and a green octopus-like Cthulhu doll.Here is Laura Bruno's 'Hermit Portal' painting. which I first posted on June 27. in 'Owl-collecting [grand]mothers. octopuses. and Hermit Portals.' It also shows a man in a greenish robe. a lantern. and an owl.Here is a detail. showing the runes on the Hermit's staff and on the hem of his robe.And here is the green octopus-like creature that appeared together with the Hermit Portal in my post.This octopus has been given the face of Pepe or Kek. This is a link to the well in the meme. since back in 2021. in 'The Emperor's orb.' I linked Kek to the Frog Prince that retrieves a golden ball from a well.So that's quite a lot of connections between the meme and my Hermit Portal post. The meme's reference to 'the Chosen One who saves the kingdom' is also relevant to the ongoing sync theme of Pharazon as interpreted by Daymon Smith. In Words of the Faithful. Pharazon has the title 'Chosen One' carved into his belt. and it is anticipated that he 'would restore the land and its people to the glory that was sung of the gods in yesteryears.'Shortly after seeing the meme. I was checking /pol/ -- yes. the board for which the green Kektopus above is the mascot -- and ran across another of those humanoid deer creatures which keep being associated with the Hermit.Mostly unrelated. but I'll just include it here. Last night. the YuuTube Music algorithm served up this song:What caught my eye was the 'A.C.T.' Those letters. encoding 1320. were a sync theme back in 2023. for example in 'Random syncs: Ace of Swords. 1320.' The track title also made me think of 'prayer in sea' -- De Profundis. or Jonah -- and then the lyrics turned out to include this:Hey. when seas will cover landsAnd when men will be no moreDon't think you can forgive youObviously another Atlantis connection. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:38:38 +0000 6a991ad265c87097dfbd2f26e82b0175398d571d https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/bede-griffiths.html Introductory note: This is a slightly revised version of a piece I have previously posted. It seems pertinent in the light of the previous post serving as an example of what I consider to be a well-meaning but misguided and ultimately failed experiment. Most of the time during our years in Yercaud not much happened. The idea was to lead a quiet life of meditation and spiritual focus in a suitable environment without disturbance or distraction. I have nothing to write about these times. the bulk of my life there. but they were the most important part.  Sometimes. though. we went travelling. and I might mention here a visit we made to the ashram of Bede Griffiths. the Christian monk who had adopted the lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasi. Michael and Bede Griffiths had a mutual acquaintance who had given us a letter of introduction and so one time when we were travelling in the vicinity of his ashram. we decided to pay him a visit. By one of those little quirks of fate which you might take to mean that someone on the other side has a sense of humour. it transpired that Bede Griffiths had that very day gone to Yercaud for the funeral of a fellow Catholic priest. However. he was expected back the next day and the people at the ashram kindly said we could stay there. I recall that the ‘bed’ we were offered was basically a slab of concrete jutting out from the wall. resembling a shelf you might put pots and pans on more than something you would want to sleep on. Still. you don’t go to ashrams for the creature comforts. The site itself was idyllically situated on the banks of the sacred river Kaveri. the Tamil equivalent of the Ganges. and though the life led by the devotees there was simple to the point of austerity. the natural beauty of the place more than compensated. Father Bede came back the next day. With his long white hair and beard. barefoot and simply dressed in an ochre robe. he looked every inch the holy man. We talked to him for an hour or so and it was clear that his appearance was a true representation of what he was which is by no means always the case. He had been a pupil and friend of C.S. Lewis and we spoke a bit about that. He was very friendly and happy to talk. When we told him we had lived for a while at Whitefield he asked us what we thought of Sai Baba. “At best. a false prophet” was my diplomatic response. Father Bede was less condemnatory but thought confusion arose when Indians did not sufficiently distinguish between their mythologies and their philosophy. Perhaps he was being diplomatic too.  I liked Father Bede. but I did have some reservations about his ashram and the form it took. The church was built along the lines of a southern Indian temple with statues of Jesus and Mary in the form of Hindu deities which made it look like something out of an Indian Disneyland. We went to a service which was half Mass and half Puja and. although conducted with obvious sincerity. seemed to me to be fundamentally misconceived. When you mix the outer elements of religious traditions you end up with a hybrid that may preserve something of the externals of both but has nothing of the inner nature of either. Truth may be beyond form but form can express or misrepresent truth. and if you try to blend traditions that have grown completely separately. you lose most of what matters and are just left with a caricature of both. It is true that religions have borrowed from each other and that. for example. the now unmistakably Eastern form of the Buddha owes much to Greek influence but when a religious iconography and ritual has taken on a settled and defined form. to mix it up with that from another tradition negates its whole purpose which is to act as a channel from the inner to the outer.  I am not saying that religions cannot learn from one another. but to seek to combine their outer trappings and forms of worship robs them of their operative value and results in a maybe well-intentioned but effectively confused mishmash. all style no substance. The mystical elements of the various religions may be reaching for the same inner truths [though they may not. see this post]. but you cannot mix and match the externals. and to see a picture of Christ sitting like Siva seems blasphemous to me. I understand that Father Bede himself was aware of the dangers of syncretism. and I mean no disrespect to his person in writing of my impression of his ashram like this. He was born in a time when religions were very exclusive and it is understandable that. as a mystic. he sought to move beyond that. but I think the approach tried at his ashram was a mistaken one even if it was well meaning and sincere.  My visit to Father Bede's ashram was nearly forty years ago and it may be completely different today. but that's not the issue. My point here is that the 'all religions are one' attitude. popular during the 20th century. doesn't really work. Because there is nothing hidden anymore and we appear to have easy access to everything that has ever existed. it is tempting to blend traditions and think we are getting the best of all worlds. But greater breadth often means less depth. I do think we can learn from other traditions. and one of the advantages of living at the present time is that we have that possibility. But if you blend the outer forms of traditions that have sprung from totally different revelations you will lose the connection they both might have had to the source of all.When I visited Father Bede I was more persuaded of the idea that all religions express the same truth than I am now. Today. we can see that God is conceived very differently in some religions compared to others. and the desired heavenly destination is not the same in all cases either. Obviously. there are strong similarities. the mystics of every religion do have much in common and the moral codes are largely identical. but we live in a world which is increasingly dominated by spiritual evil. and it seems clear to me that only Christ has the power to stand up to that evil. I wonder that if Father Bede were still alive whether he might reassess the wisdom of blending Hindu and Christian iconography at his ashram. His friend and mentor C.S. Lewis certainly regarded the two religions as very different. That doesn’t mean there are not many points of contact but there is something unique about Christ that does not exist in Hinduism even in the figure of Krishna who may be similar in some respects but is utterly different in many that count. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:49:33 +0000 3fcd0411f3a8f916eda7a23c0e319fa53de80c0d https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/i-was-right.html Mark Docherty says so. in a post titled 'Tyconius was right.' The name is also spelt Tychonius [and sometimes misspelt as Typhonius. apparently.]. and the Russian spelling. Тихоний. matches my surname very closely. Quoting a former pope. Docherty writes thatfor Tyconius. it is not the infidels who will “fall away” but rather the true believers. who will withdraw from the evil within the Church. A paradoxical reversal indeed.I did indeed say something pretty much like that in my 2020 Christmas post. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:00:27 +0000 7187944f7c9c8161a27682e598f463c6d6c6682d https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/i-think-underpopulation-is.html I'm old enough to remember when each of these countries had tens of millions of people. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:13:27 +0000 8f2ef8f34a9d7912a1da40951634b0bd0c84bced https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/but-what-words-rhyme-with-buried-alive.html Last night one of the songs the algorithm lobbed my way was Madonna's 'La Isla Bonita' performed in the style of System of a Down.The repeated oxymoronic line 'The sun would set so high' synched with a meme I had just seen on Barnhardt's.As I have said in 'Last night I immagined San Pietro' [May 2025]. this Madonna song is closely associated in my mind with a particular scene in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. in which the dying Colonel Freeleigh. in defiance of his nurse's orders. phones Mexico City. has his friend there hold the receiver out an open window. and breathes his last while listening to the intoxicating sounds of the city one last time.With such force did this scene come back to me that I stopped what I was doing and reread that chapter of Dandelion Wine. I then entered a reverie. in which the 'yellow noon' of Mexico City merged with the dandelion wine of the title. the Colonel greedily drinking it down with his dying breath. I began reciting to myself 'Enivrez-vous.' one of Baudelaire's more memorable prose poems from Le Spleen de Paris. variously translated as 'Be Drunk.' 'Get Drunk.' or simply 'Drink.':You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it -- it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth. you have to be continually drunk.But on what. Wine. poetry or virtue. as you wish. But be drunk.And if sometimes. on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch. in the mournful solitude of your room. you wake again. drunkenness already diminishing or gone. ask the wind. the wave. the star. the bird. the clock. everything that is flying. everything that is groaning. everything that is rolling. everything that is singing. everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind. wave. star. bird. clock will answer you: 'It is time to be drunk. So as not to be the martyred slaves of time. be drunk. be continually drunk. On wine. on poetry or on virtue as you wish.'My mind then went to another composition called 'Drink.'. a song from the They Might Be Giants album Mink Car.This turned out to have even more relevance to the scene from Dandelion Wine. The first line mentions a piñata. establishing a link to Mexico. Then this is the chorus:Let's drink. drink. this town is so greatDrink. drink. 'cause it's never too lateTo drink. drink. to no big surpriseBut what words rhyme with 'buried alive'.What words rhyme with 'buried alive'.'Drink. drink. this town is so great' -- just as I had imagined the Colonel 'drinking' Mexico City. 'It's never too late' -- not until they pry the telephone receiver from your cold dead fingers. which is how that chapter of Dandelion Wine ends.But what words rhyme with 'buried alive'. Trivially. a homophone is a rhyme. I recently had occasion to explain to a student that. despite the spelling. bury is pronounced like the second element of strawberry. To rhyme with buried. though. berry would need the -ed suffix. more usually attached to verbs than to nouns. Just yesterday. though. in 'Apple of ashes. brine to the burning throat.' I quoted a reference to a 'white tree-silver shooted. red berried.' The buried homophone works here. since a person might be 'shooted' [i.e.. shot. Daymon often used regularized verb forms like maked] and then buried. 'Read buried' could also allude to various buried records. from the Gold Plates to the secret plans of the Gadianton band.The White Tree is. according to Nephi. the Tree of Life. If its life-giving fruit is a berry. as Daymon has it. one vivified by it could be said to have been 'berried alive' -- a phrase syntactically analogous to 'shot dead.'The original meaning of 'buried alive' is also highly relevant. The 'Apple of ashes' post mentioned the imprisonment of Pharazon -- who drank the dandelion wine of La Isla Bonita -- in the Caves of the Forgotten. Those who are buried alive typically do not remain so for long. transitioning in a matter of minutes to buried dead. but Pharazon would be an exception. Mon, 20 Jul 2026 05:22:44 +0000 d79e432a5eff9e2d88b7e18571d0dcbcfac4512d https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/swapping-eight-and-eleven.html My last post. 'Apple of ashes. brine to the burning throat.' mentions that in the Book of Mormon. Lehi sees a tree with white fruit but does not mention the color of the tree itself. while Nephi. wishing to have the same vision. sees a white tree but does not mention the color of its fruit. It also notes that this reversal is reflected in the two scripture references: 1 Nephi 8:11 and 11:8. respectively.In the post before that. 'Appeared again the Hermit has.' I mention the Golden Dawn system of mapping the Major Arcana of the Tarot to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. and I link to my 2014 post about that system. That old post is called 'Why Waite switched Justice and Strength.' In the standard Marseille sequence of the trumps. Justice is 8. and Strength is 11. but Waite. to make his Hebrew alphabet scheme work better. made Strength 8 and Justice 11. Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:40:49 +0000 ba5eec63e5d6bb50f9b8abc20e7d525102690849 https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2026/07/apple-of-ashes-brine-to-burning-throat.html I just read this in Orson F. Whitney's Elias: An Epic of the Ages. The poet is apostrophizing worldly fame and commenting on its futility.Apple of ashes to the longing lip.Brine to the burning throat and thirsting soul.Phantom. delusion. misty ghost of fame.Voidest and vainest of all vanities.Whitney's intended meaning is clear -- fame is false food and false drink. which cannot satisfy -- but the sync fairies will commandeer these things for their own purposes. The phrase 'apple of ashes' made me think of some recent comments by Bill on 'Gardens of pomegranates' [June 29] about an 'ash tree' that bore red fruit. His first comment there begins:Pomegranates are known for their red berries. and would seem to have a not-so-traditional link to the White Tree I thought that was an odd word to use for a pomegranate. but maybe technically accurate. All kinds of things. including bananas. are technically considered to be berries. Googling are pomegranates berries. I got as the highlighted result this. which also compares them to apples.The idea of the White Tree producing red berries is. as Bill says. 'not-so-traditional.' I am not aware that Tolkien mentions the color of the fruits of any of his White Trees. In the Book of Mormon. Lehi sees a tree of unspecified color which bears white fruit [1 Ne. 8:11]. while Nephi sees a white tree which bears fruit of unspecified color [1 Ne. 11:8. the chapter-and-verse references capture the reversal nicely]. Since Nephi's vision comes in response to his 'desire to behold the things which my father saw' [1 Ne. 11:3]. and since he says the tree he saw 'was like unto the tree which my father had seen' [1 Ne. 11:8]. it is common to combine the imagery of the two visions and arrive at a White Tree with white fruit.Bill quotes a reference in Daymon Smith's Words of Them Liberated to 'Galathalion. white tree-silver shooted. red berried.' Actually. Bill writes Galathilion. which is the correct name of one of Tolkien's White Trees. He is quoting from a draft version of Liberated. so either the typo was introduced into Daymon's manuscript later. or else Bill inadvertently corrected Daymon's typo with one of his own. Or it's possible that Galathalion isn't a typo but a different Elvish name. incorporating thalion 'steadfast. strong.'There are lots of White Trees in Tolkien. Galathilion. the White Tree of Tirion. was made by Yavanna in the image of Telperion. the White Tree of Valinor. One of Galathilion's seedlings became Celebron. the White Tree of Tol Eressea. and one of its seedlings became Nimloth. the White Tree of Numenor. From a fruit of Nimloth came a succession of four different White Trees of Gondor. Asusming Daymon's reference is to Galathilion. it implies that all the other White Trees in this list would have red berries as well.Bill goes on to write:Nimloth. as a reminder. is the tree that Pharazon burned down [I may have mentioned that once or twice...]. As such. in my own symbols it has been referred to as an 'Ash Tree'. as well. since it was turned to ash.Thus the White Tree that bears red berries. suggestive of the pomegranate that 'looks like a red apple.' is called an Ash Tree because it was burned. In Whitney's poem. right after the 'apple of ashes' line. we have a reference to burning. Since burn can be either transitive or intransitive. burning can describe either something that undergoes burning or something that burns something else. Although Pharazon. who burned the White Tree. is supposed to have ended up in the Caves of the Forgotten. in a more general sense the Numenoreans burned the White Tree. and the Numenoreans were overwhelmed by the salty sea. 'Brine to the burning.'Throat' in this synchronistic context made me think of Vico's comment. repeated several times in The New Science. that 'Cerberus was called three-throated as having an enormous gullet.' Daymon's version of the story of the Numenorean assault on Eressea involves ravenous wolves who seem close kin to Vico's interpretation of Cerberus. Sun, 19 Jul 2026 06:38:58 +0000 5fd0e5f8c7f22a2d85ec67e284f2aabee361a530 https://winteryknight.com/2026/07/17/marco-rubios-case-against-communism-and-left-wing-political-violence/ I know that everyone will be talking about Trump’s prime-time speech today [Friday]. but I always write blog posts the night before. So in this post. I just wanted to talk about Marco Rubio’s amazing speech opposing communism. left-wing political violence. and far-left extremist terrorism. And I’ve got the best clip from the speech. so … Continue reading Marco Rubio’s case against communism and left-wing political violence → Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:00:35 +0000 65c6289e83def817d5039a00001aa772de0c52bf https://inklesspen.blog/2026/07/16/mother-alaska-the-heartland-of-orthodox-missions-in-america/ “You have a place in which God wanted you to be born. and that nation. that country in which you were born. has a history. You have to come into Orthodoxy with the whole destiny of the American people because they have to find Christ Jesus. to be saved .. you come with the destiny … Continue reading Mother Alaska: The Heartland of Orthodox Missions in America Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:01:17 +0000 77f4724745649134417d8dac56af6c4575b483bd https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/creation-from-chaos I featured Ivan Aivazovsky's painting Chaos a couple of years ago. At the time I thought it did a good job depicting creation from chaos rather than creation from nothing. Chaos - 1841 Of course. I don't believe Aivasovsky shared that assumption. Nor do I think he implies such through the painting.Nevertheless. it is interesting that he called the painting Chaos. leaving The Creation as somewhat of a subtitle.  Aivasovsky revisited the creation theme nearly a quarter of the cent (...) Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:20:13 +0000 0e943e56ea78de4dc725e42ae489e3d64cbb76ff https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xii-20a this week on Laeth's mind Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:14:54 +0000 708d95d4907ac52b4cffcfcd2cb0eabf1888cd3e https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-wake-is-back Ask me anything. and win a signed copy Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:01:27 +0000 9d4a98c16b1b42484a908e61f220a795a7b52b8e https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/you-cant-have-it-all-all-at-the-same The benefits of logging off. Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:31:39 +0000 13757804a46a69530c6d0fa7f357a0b11255f479 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-rural-myth-is-eating-the-christian Why romantic images of farms and front porches conceal dependency. addiction. isolation. and institutional collapse Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:01:54 +0000 c24dfa01910a7965a023221c911d88aa7a603145 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/jesus-wept-difference-between-non.html  This is a follow up to the previous post which stated that Christ can operate through avenues other than mainstream Christianity. This is because Christ is not only the historical Jesus. He is also the eternal or archetypal pattern of divine truth which can appear wherever a form is open to it. In fact. this inner Christ is more spiritually important than the historical Jesus though it was fully present in him and best revealed in him.What this also means is that to be a Christian in the proper sense and not just a believer requires that you allow Christ to be born in the heart and so live in the same divine truth he does though note that Christ does not just live in this divine truth as anyone might. It is grounded in his being so while we can share in it. he is it and it is him. The spirit of Christ can overshadow any religious approach that is open to it. That is not to say it operates equally well in any religion. but if there is something in the soul of an individual that accords with the reality of Christ then that individual can find something in most religions that will develop that connection to some degree. We must accept this if we make an unbiased study of non-Christian religions and realise that all of them have their share of genuine holy people.However. this fact has led some people to draw the conclusion that all religions are essentially the same with the same ultimate goal. When we encounter other religious traditions and see that they are authentic guides to spiritual transcendence and do contain significant numbers of saints and sages. it is logical to assume they must simply be different ways of describing the same thing. This was the conclusion drawn by the group known as perennialists.It can be hard to argue against this conclusion. and yet I was never comfortable with it because of the obvious uniqueness of Jesus Christ who cannot be reduced to just another enlightened soul or even avatar. You cannot escape what Christ said about himself or that he was the one human being genuinely without sin or stain and the absolute incarnation of goodness and truth in a way that no other person. alive or dead. comes near.  This is clear from the Gospels and brought out by meditation on his holy image.The perennialists thought that all religions in their higher aspects led to the same goal. but to reach this conclusion they had to set aside much of what Jesus taught. Specifically. he did not teach the extinction of the self as in Nirvana which is the Indian way. I am aware it is not the only Indian way but it is the way usually regarded as the summation of the spiritual path by all those who teach the universality of religion. Everything is subsumed into the One in which the human does not survive. As far as this path is concerned. the individual self is the barrier to truth and must be killed. conquered or transcended. It makes no odds how you express it. The self must go.Now. this is a real path and does lead to a form of God when the end is attained though that is extremely rare. especially in our day even though there are many claimants to the title. people who may have had a taste of the non-dualistic state but who are not fully established in it. However. the God it reaches is not the personal God of Christianity. Absorption into impersonal pure being is seen as a step beyond the personal God but what if the reverse were the case. What if everything comes from the personal I AM and the impersonal is part of the stuff from which God creates consciousness. his spirit but not his self. This would be the Christian position even if Christians unaware of esoteric teachings might not understand it in this way as they do not have the linguistic and philosophical tools to do so. To support this idea consider the fact that pure impersonal being as ultimate reality could not give rise to an 'I' unless that 'I' was already there in some form. It is the 'I' that comes first as. indeed. it does in language when we say I am. The person comes before impersonal being which shows there is a profound difference between union with the transcendent God and oneness with immanent being.The non-dualistic Eastern religions and the Christian religion both lead to a form of God but it is not the same divine form. The Eastern way concludes in Nirvana in which the individual is dissolved while the Christian way leads in salvation where the individual is sanctified rather than expunged from existence. The Christian disciple still has to transcend the ego aspect of the soul. the separative sense. but individuality is a gift from God. The Christian way is to return it to God who then gives it back filled with his grace and his spirit.Thus. we can see that the Traditionalist idea of the transcendent unity of religions is based on a metaphysical error. the assumption that all religions are subsumed in a type of Buddhism in which the I is transcended and left behind as nothing. But non-dualistic religions and Christianity aim at two very different destinations. and while non-dualists would claim that salvation belongs to the relative world because it is still part of Maya or creation. and their goal is the absolute. the truth is that salvation. properly understood. is greater because it includes both the absolute and the relative. It has everything of the peace and bliss and oneness of the non-dualistic state but it also incorporates love. beauty and goodness which belong to the world of created beings.  God did not create man simply to re-absorb him into himself. He did so to watch his children grow up to become god-like themselves.Non-dualistic religion has no understanding of creation or growth or judgment or purpose or even. really. love. For it. time is an illusion rather than a means to grow and a path to an end which is better than the beginning. But if creation has no purpose. what is it there for. Why go through all that stress and strain just to go back to the beginning with nothing added.If you talk to a non-dualist about sin or the Fall he will not understand or else he will reframe those things in terms he does understand but that robs them of their meaning. They are more than just ignorance. They relate to a malfunctioning of the will which is where the self is situated. and they mean that good and evil are real things between which there is a battle from which you cannot just turn away by denying its reality. The non-dualist would say only God is real but precisely because God is absolute reality what he creates is also real. Not as real as him because it has dependent being but it is still fully real. and that means that good and evil are not just illusions. They are part of reality as it exists for the individual.Since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ a new goal has opened for humanity. one that leads to the divinisation of the self rather than its destruction. This new goal does not make merging into the One obsolete but that does now become the lesser option. a truth which the non-dualist would reject. failing to understand that times have changed since the Vedas were revealed and the Buddha preached. More is on offer. It seems God has left the door to Nirvana open. but I wonder if that is really so or whether those who follow this path might have to return and be required to work out their salvation once more. Or else they might wish to once they realise what is on offer in the greater spiritual universe.Jesus wept because he shared in the suffering of Mary and Martha. For the non-dualist that suffering is ultimately an illusion and to weep would be to partake in that illusion. But for Jesus. Mary and Martha were real beings in themselves and not merely manifestations of the divine. The new spirituality brought by Christ did not aim to kill the self but to raise it up to eternal life. Yes. it must die to itself but after that death it is resurrected in glory. Tue, 14 Jul 2026 09:56:13 +0000 9e7b5ca1902e139ad674452d491232cabd64a2e9 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/07/13/8172/ Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:04:04 +0000 55d960fb3dc8936f7b887ed9f8be080261de6b59 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/07/lotr-105-debate-on-charism-and-allure.html Or. A Confab in the Tower of Saruman...                                                LinkI give you the following notes below. which Gandalf made after his journey to the tower of Saruman to report to the leader of the order of the wise. on the location and history of the Ring. Gandalf: Greetings. O most reverend and elder brother and superior of my order. I have long wished to speak to you. and take counsel with the most wise.Saruman: Greetings. sedulous brother. Won't you come in and come up. The view from the top of the Tower is magnificent. Will you have some elvish wine. Gandalf: Nothing but ale. thank you. And a bit of the South Farthing generous weed. if you have some about. My pipe pouch has run dry. with all the research in Gondor's libraries. Saruman: I had a fine library here. Gandalf. if you would have but availed yourself of it. But you were always a fancier of the common folk and the common lore. Ale. indeed. When there is fine grape from the Blue Mountains available. My library is stocked with all of the learning of Middle Earth. its very essence distilled for not only erudition. but pleasure. Still. you know best. don't you. Suit yourself. Gandalf: Ah. well. I find that even the best of libraries yields little of the lore I seek. You see. knowledge has this fascinating way of migrating into strange fields. leaving little scraps-Saruman: Yes. well. enough of such stuff. your fondness for hobbits is well known to me. At least you don't carry it so far as that moldy hayseed Radagast. I could never cure him of his inordinate craving for the company of animals. Won't you come up. (They climb the tower stairs)Saruman: Ah. see here. you can see Rohan there in the East. lovely land. yes. quite lovely. And the fords of Isen over there. the Great River running away that way. Over there are the dark woods - I shall have to tame that unruly landscape soon. there are darker elements there. To the north. the mountains. Gondor. on a clear day. I fancy I catch the gleam of with the sunrise. All is as it should be. Neat and rationally arrayed - a fine prospect. don't you think. Gandalf [puffing on his pipe]: Well. yes. if this is your cup of tea. but don't you think you could see more. up close. On the ground. Saruman [harumphing. and glancing at Gandalf's attire] : I suppose. if I wished to catch a strange disease. or cover myself in mud. You look like you've been down a hole. Gandalf.Gandalf : Only a rabbit hole. I trust. and to some profit. I think I understand something of the One Ring. now. It was not lost. after all. It merely changed its locale and appearance. Saruman [eyes glinting] : Well. this is news. indeed Gandalf. and I am glad to hear it. What have you to report. The session. as they say. is officially come to order. We have a quorum. since the two blue wizards. our long lost brothers. have disappeared to the East and abandoned our work. here. Gandalf [after a long pull on the pipe. and blowing rings] : Well...it was always assumed that the One Ring would belong to the powerful. Saruman [impatiently] : Yes...go on...it should be in the hands of the wise. you know...Gandalf : Even the wise must accept mortality and death. eschew Evil. and pursue virtue. As I say. the Ring was always assumed to be a straightforward affair. It was Caesar sacking Gaul and marching on Rome. or Napoleon being crowned by Talleyrand [I speak furtively and indirectly. here. you see]. It was Racism. Fascism. Sexism.Saruman : I see that you have the gift of prolepsis. of seeing into the future of Middle Earth. Yes. I have seen these things. I know. In the future. the desire for the Ring will take place in the realm of Ideas. the imaginal realm. But what news of its current location. Gandalf : Ah. that. Nothing but suspicions. for now. Saruman : Bah. You can teach me nothing. then. This. then. is the result of your labors. A futile desire to inquire into aeons that do not concern us. in which we may not even share. Gandalf : Ah. but to know is to have the living texture. to trace the tapestry. and to touch the concrete. It follows. that to touch the concrete. is to know. My research into future states. or past ones. assists me to locate the Ring now. Saruman : Which by your own admission. you do not have. Mummery. Fiddlesticks. This is what you have to report. Gandalf : My dear esteemed wizard. and counselor. have patience. I do report. but in darkling. roundabout ways. The Ring fell from Isildur's hand. into the great river. This is the river of Time. Where does Time flow. in a River. Far away. Where does the Ring spring again. Back onto the finger of Isildur. who perished. No more than it would go directly back to Sauron himself. would the ring return to Isildur or any of his ilk. the great or even the wise. It will not come to you nor I. Saruman : Dearest Gandalf...you seek it just as I do. Of course it will return to our hands. We are the elite. the rulers by wisdom. a higher class of beings. I know that if. by chance. it comes to you first. you shall bring it here. as is only fitting. Gandalf : Indeed. I shall. You will be the first to know. Thought must be taken. counsel gathered -Saruman : Thought. There is no thought. only action - the action of the wise and the powerful. for the sake of the Good. Bring it here without delay. I beg of you. and we shall dispose of it as we see fit. Gandalf : I did not finish my thought. earlier. and it is a curiously interesting one. The desire for the Ring was what summoned it [originally] into existence. It existed. before it was. in the mind and the will and the cunning of Sauron. He it was who crafted the Ring. ere any anvil rang on stone in the belly of Mordor. So. too. in the far future. I have seen that the Ring will no longer exist physically-Saruman [scornfully] : If your sight is correct. we shall see about that.Gandalf : -but shall exist as an even more powerful Idea. the Idea that one can know all of Reason. Men will use what they call Reason to control all of Nature. They will bring her to the bar. and question her. and strip her bare. and put her to the question roughly. to gain all secrets. Then. shall come the day when even God Himself. Iluvatar. will be forced to answer questions. All this. at least. in their minds. Saruman : Gandalf. your great lore has driven you mad. What has this to do with the One Great Ring of Power. With NOW. I fear I waste precious time on this report of yours. Gandalf : Hear me out. but briefly. It is a mistake. even for you. O Saruman. greatest of the Wise. and wearer of the whitest of white robes. to decline from any path which living Wisdom is pleased to body forth. Saruman : O. yes. very wise of you Gandalf. very mystifying and obscure. to appeal to a mysterious Wisdom. as if it was not something which we possess.Gandalf : I would say it the other way around - it is we who are possessed of wisdom: we possess her. by being possessed by her. Only thus. do we actually merge with the living order of harmony. and penetrate the universe. What can we learn from the death of the Ring in the future. Much. indeed. in every way. All things have an end. Even the Ring. Ergo. a parable for the wise. Even we Maiar are mortal in that way. All beings can be destroyed. and will be. willy-nilly. An End we must make. ere we come into the presence of Iluvatar Himself. Saruman : Iluvatar is far. far away. It is hubris to think we can come into His presence. He has left us here. so that we might play at being His agents. as best we can. You see. you are not thinking big enough. You have embraced the ways of the hobbits. Gandalf. and it is making you soft. I. too. embrace your philosophy of lore and small things. but they must be put into the grand sweeping embrace of our situation. You must face the truth - you are one of the Elite. and are called to do great things. Now. the great thing here. for instance. is to tell me where you think the Ring is. Let us leave out the reasoning part. as you say. for that smacks of abstract ideologies and sterile ratiocinations. as you might say. Gandalf : That. Oh. that. No. no. that is the very pulsing core of the whole matter. the opposite of an abstraction. For the Ring went. quite naturally. far down river. It must have fallen into Time. which is the Great River. I deduce. or surmise with a shrewd guess. that we should look for the Ring far away from where we once thought it. It came into the hands of common folk. Just as. in the future. Ideas come into the hands of the common folk. as ideologies. Did you know that in the future. men will think they know everything. simply because they have a theory of Science. or Class Warfare. or Ethnic Struggle. Saruman [speechless]Gandalf : Yes. Saruman. I assure you. it is absolutely so. I have just finished reading [with the help of strange artifices] a little work by a forgotten author. one Henri Didon. entitled Science Without God. Here appears in the transcript. a extract from that text. which Gandalf had apparently faithfully copied:...and it would also take away all belief in these so-called Conservatives. to whom all change is a political impiety. To believe these prudent spirits. nothing is good but antiquity. The efforts of the living should be limited to its preservation or revival. Political aims. according to them. are as immutable as the genius or the temperament of a race. Ask what will be to-morrow. they will tell you. That which was yesterday. This is their one and invariable reply... Perfect harmony between Faith and Reason is a necessity for every intelligent believer. A man who believes with his mind wants to know what he believes. and why he believes. Faith does not presuppose the abdication of Reason . on the contrary. she is its divine completion. and. by accepting her testimony. man. aggrandized. raises himself to God. of whom he previously knew but the inaccessible mystery. Reason tells him that above natural humanity is God. Faith teaches him that which this ineffable God has been pleased to reveal concerning Himself...The ancient Fathers and many learned and pious divines have each and all. in their centuries and in their turn. consecrated all their labour and all their genius to the solution of this great problem — the harmonious relation between Reason and Faith. Their gigantic labors are in connection with each other. All these predestined labourers. separated by centuries. sent forth by the same Spirit. continue without ever turning aside their great work of enlightenment. They bring peace to the world by enlightening it. When by their influence human reason is brought back to God in Faith. all is at peace. If the war of ideas engenders the war of men. so also does the unity of doctrines prepare the peace of nations. Now. the greatest harmony of doctrine is that which is established between Reason and Faith...We appeal to all those who have at heart the confirmation and the glory of the Christian Faith. Without doubt the problem of Faith is not a geometrical theorem. which. demonstrated by a + b. must convince the most stubborn mind . a moral element interposes. in the total adherence of Reason to revealed truth. which is free will. and a gift of God. But also there must be enough light. and it would be a want of respect towards God and our reason. to accept the Divine word without its having been first proved beyond all doubt that He who speaks is God...As God. according to Faith. has appeared to humanity. His traces should be visible . and as the office of history is to bring to light all the phenomena of which humanity has been witness. it is fit that this science should in its advancement render a new and more solemn testimony to God. Revealed and Incarnate. Theology has superabundantly established the expedience. the possibility. and the necessity of Divine Revelation . it is time for her to insist upon the fact. Historical Science now embraces every race . she has exhumed past ages as though they were contemporaries that had only yesterday been buried and disappeared. All these resuscitated epochs bear witness of God. India. China. Egypt. and the ancient races of America bear the imprint of His footstep through all ages and nations. Let them. then. be made to speak. and may enlightened opinion in this cause pronounce a decisive verdict from its own conscience...Then who will dare to say that the highest type. man. does not contain all together : the earth. since he was formed from it . spirit. since he is intelligent and free . the infinite. since nothing created can satisfy him .... Whoever wishes to be the disciple of science must say adieu for ever to the simple beliefs of religion. The laboratory is from henceforth his temple . the phenomena of nature his Bible . the struggle for existence his code . matter his God...But without here pausing to refute positivism. I would only ask. Is it identical with experimental Science . If it was proved that. according to the dogma of positivism. Science is everything. it must be proved that metaphysics are useless and faith an illusion. Has Science proved this . No.Saruman : I have no words. Gandalf : You see. You see it too. The Ring. in the far future. will simply be Science as God. They will call it Scientism. Saruman : And. I suppose. as this scrap implies. Iluvatar will have descended in the flesh. Himself. Why. Gandalf. [laughing long and with some strain] This means that Iluvatar Himself is the Ring. I suppose. next. you shall tell me that one should wear the incarnate Creator. in order to partake of the Secret Fire. Gandalf [puffing] : You could put it that way. I suppose. I shall have to meditate on that. If that were true. the Ring is swallowed up by Iluvatar. We swallow. or eat Iluvatar. by being swallowed by Him. just as He swallows death. but with death gone. our feeding upon Iluvatar brings nothing but life. A divine inversion. perhaps. Saruman : That's not the only inversion I see here. Still. I am waiting.  Patiently waiting. you see. What does this possibly have to do with our mission. our calling. our destiny. How does this get the ring into my - into our - hands.Gandalf : The Ring is the desire to escape Death. The implied concomitant to that is power. real power. for only a wielder of great power can escape Death. And those who wield great power. as a corollary. believe that they can thereby escape Death. Saruman [quietly] : Isn't Death something to be avoided. Or has your learning taught you otherwise. Gandalf the Gray. Gandalf : Yes...well...Science must have its day. Everything has its place. This is because everything is relative to Iluvatar. You see-Saruman : You see nothing. Gandalf. You have confounded. confuted. and confused all things. Gandalf : You believe so. Where. And how. Is not the course of the Ring our true study. Saruman : We study. Gandalf. in order that we might apply. How can Wisdom be living. if it is not applied. Your own words convict you. they do not convince me.Gandalf : Yes. but applied by Whom. What do you. or I. really know. Saruman : I do know. I thought. perhaps. that you did. also. but I am sorely mistaken in you Gandalf. Gandalf : This troubles me. but yet. you have not heard me out. Saruman : Speak. for the love of truth. speak. But speak plainly. I waste much time here. it seems. Gandalf : The ring has fallen into the hands of little people. far down the river. Just as in my dream of the future. when a man named Karl Marx thought that because humans struggle in classes between each other. that he knew all the secrets of the Universe in that one fact. That is an ideology. That is the Ring. or rather. its Spirit. Likewise. a man named Frantz Fanon was convinced that because man is wretched. and miserable. and oppressed. that an Ideology could be forged from that that would create a new political utopia. a place of heaven upon earth. to overcome his misery. by polymorphous sexuality. where Racism would be overcome with a gigantic Racism of everything in love with everything else. You see. the little people. they dream very large. Saruman. Larger. it would seem. in the future. than even you or I. We merely wish to stop and banish Sauron. We want peace in our time. The future small people will demand heaven upon earth. And this. after they have already received it. in the form of Iluvatar. They do not see that the Giver of the Gift is greater than the Gift. For Iluvatar establishes the great good of Science in the future. and yet many after that time will exalt Science. or rather. man doing Science. into Iluvatar Himself. They will believe. they will believe. but not know. that Science is automatic. infinite. and all-knowing. Many mortals will perish because of this belief. both on earth. and in the post mortem states. until the end of all things. when Iluvatar becomes all-in-all. Saruman : This. truly. would be madness.Gandalf : Indeed. The nature of Evil does not change - it is always privation of the Good. For a perfectly good being to possess the Ring. he or she would need no counsel or help at all. They would be beyond temptation. Saruman : You have a very simplistic view of the world. Gandalf. Very parochial. and I venture. even fundamentalistic. Where is Iluvatar. Far away. in His heaven. Where is the Ring. that is the question. Which you still. still - refuse to answer. Gandalf : I prophecy that the Ring was plucked - Iluvatar knows how or when - from the River itself by a very humble person indeed. Humble. in the sense of class. Unfortunately. the Ring will no doubt destroy them. as its Idea has destroyed so many in the future. Think. Saruman. of all those gobs and hordes of humans who believe that a single Idea. abstractly and nakedly seized by the lower mind. collectively vetted for correctness and precision. could possibly comprehend the sacred mystery of Iluvatar and the Secret Fire. Why. it boggles the brain. Do they not know. have they not learned. as anyone of sound mind and experience does. that in order to know anything at all. one first must know nothing.. Saruman [again. speechless]Gandalf : Yes. to begin to know. one knows no-thing. One leaves the realm of 'things'. in order to return to it with knowledge. The knowledge is elsewhere. One goes to it. hat in hand. and learns how foolish and ridiculous one is. how limited and weak and poor of spirit one is. and then - then - one returns. One knows. One begins to understand. One is convinced. It's even in the etymology of the words. you see. To stand-under. to take the lowest position. To be 'conquered with' or con-vinced. Saruman. sweeping his hands in a gesture of dismissal : If this were true. it would obliterate all the counsels of Iluvatar and the wise. Gandalf : Iluvatar. Ah. but that is His very counsel. To become as a child. again...you see...that is not Fundamentalism. that is a precondition of knowledge. An epistemological requirement of any sight whatsoever. We may see. but sight requires Light. and we do not create the Light. but rather. are created by it. Our sight is also created by Light. This is the Secret Flame. Surely you see this is most sublime and orthodox. while. at the same time. most concrete and experiential. For the Truth is that which delights the wise. but is affirmed by the common folk as well. in their way. One must have them both. They are not obstructing each other. but are polar. As above. so below. The path of the Sun and the way of the Earth. to equal the Moon. Not all paradoxes are merely paradoxical. some are efficacious to the path of Truth. indeed. its sine qua non. I have of late gotten into the future study of Alchemy. Now Serogovius says-Saruman : Indeed this is all very wonderful. surpassing the five senses and wisdom itself. but you have fallen to lecturing now. Gandalf. and you are as poor a lecturer as I am a listener. If you have nothing further to deliver. Gandalf : I shall look for the Ring. far down the river. and in the most unlikely of places. If it still exists. if. I say. it will return to the land of the living. it will be there. and there will be signs of its appearance. however homely and quaint. however recondite and obscure. like Wordsworth's violet. That's a lovely poem. by the way -Saruman : Enough. I have heard enough. I see you have nothing actual to report. just your own hearsay and some cockamamie tale you've spun out of prolepsis. or ecbatic prophecy. or what have you. Wisdom has standards. Gandalf. And it has guardians. I will remain here. at the tower. contemplating real business. and leave you to your proclivities and your bizarre admiration of the surreal. I do instruct you. and solemnly urge you. should you find the Ring. to bring it here quickly and discretely and directly. We are agreed. Gandalf : I understand. Saruman : Good. It is good that you understand me. And so. my friend. farewell. This meeting is adjourned. Until next we meet. and may it be on a more happy occasion. with better news. Gandalf [puffing away] : I only wish I had convinced you that my methods are sound. They have proven useful. so far. Saruman : That remains. as they say. to be seen. Gandalf : By the way. in the future. they will build large machines - called computers - made out of sand and heated with lightning-fire. and will construct a web of these machines to run the entire planet. Surely this might interest you. Saruman.Saruman : It does indeed. Hmmmm. I would speak more of this at some time. Unfortunately. you have worn me down with gray theory. while I am busy with green practice. and I have not the time. at the moment. to give to you for speculations on a far future. You say these machines will do things for them. Will they help them think. Will it gain man real power. Gandalf : Well. that is the theory. They call it artificial intelligence. and they hope that it will tell them how to fix their economy. That's what they call. their business and their techne. their making. They even hope that it will overcome death. and become God for them. Saruman : Well. at least they are trying. Try not to waste too much time in the bucolic Shire. Gandalf. Or down some miserable rat-hole south of there in the bordering wastelands. You do keep such awful company. for one of our order. It is unbecoming. It is beneath you. It reflects poorly. even upon myself. But I bear with you Gandalf. for every once in a while. you intrigue me with something novel. something truly new. Gandalf : Indeed. Even we Maiar need a little novelty. from time to time. It helps to remember that we. too. are creatures. Saruman : Creatures. What a word. Gandalf : A word of the Word. I bid you good morrow. great Saruman. Saruman : You may show yourself out. you know the way. Gandalf : Yes. the way is down. Thank you.  Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:44:07 +0000 6f4fa56673c14e0ed88afa837daf0ba7f5d6cabf https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/how-to-feel-jazzy jazz is like being in on a joke everyone thinks is serious Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:10:15 +0000 a8ac1ba8ba2913049e8b1c218065ee4239c9a61d https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/11/hell-gains-another-former-rome-on-the-potomac-resident/ Senator Lindsey Graham. Senatorial Scourge of South Carolina. has taken a dirt nap at age 71. I find it kind of amusing that he chose [or nature chose for him] to check out at the same time that everyone is worked up over whether soon-to-be-ex Senator Mitch [“Bitch”] McConnell is still alive following his recentContinue reading 'Hell Gains Another Former Rome-On-The-Potomac Resident' Sun, 12 Jul 2026 06:49:53 +0000 4d4ed0336ef12fefad708d17f185dfae807b735f https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/jesuswept Jesus wept when he saw the agony his friends were going through after the death of Lazarus. This has powerful implications for we who weep. Sat, 11 Jul 2026 21:14:00 +0000 a5366855643f04e0ea72831c7f2be6139d6cfc7c https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/old-age-is-wasted-on-the-old ​Youth is wasted on the young. Everyone has heard the phrase and understands what it expresses. The seemingly limitless vitality. energy. vigor. time. curiosity. bravado. and optimism inherent in a stage of life are also tainted by a glaring failure to capitalize on those attributes due to a lack of experience and wisdom. resulting in squandered opportunities. misguided pursuits. and wasted time. Although I acknowledge the general truth within the expression. I don’t like i (...) Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:35:18 +0000 9396cc359d63829e17ee47aa0a2332e975ebfa7c https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/07/lotr-104-history-steady-loss-of-history.html  Or. Why History begins as Hell's Half AcreBTW. help support a good channel - Link. He interviewed me on Tolkien not long ago. and asks excellent leading questions of his guests. I recommend his blog posts. for their philosophical content and sheer poetic quality and intensity. He covers the Traditional ground. without being idolatrous. no small feat. and has an inimitable intellectual style many will find appealing.                                                 Link Gondor in its decline - still looks prime...Hmmmm...it appears to be a sunny day. up here. from the high towers of Gondor. You can see for miles and miles. all the way to Mordor. almost. Only the white clouds block the view back westward. on the high ridges of the mountains. To the north. also. I can only see distant towering peaks of snow and clouds. The horizon of the sea limns the south. Salt air blows over the city. on the warm southern breezes. The thread of the fate of the Ring runs through all the History of the Third Age. It is the driving force. the secret current we cannot calculate. which drives forward the action of our time. I tracked it to the River Fords. when Isildur had it cut from his hand. and it vanished in the Great River. It was many. many moons later that it turned up. far away. and many. many moons after that. that I suspected where it might have turned up. I will have to make one more journey. north and west. to confirm it. but the demonstration will be practically moot. an absurd coincidence. almost a deflation or theatrical letting down. If I am wrong. I will be the most gullible sap in Middle Earth. If I am right. even that will simply demonstrate that - in the grand scheme of things - I am truly not that important. Providence has its ways and means. beyond the ken of even the most venerable and the most hardworking of wizards: and I should have thought of this years ago. You know what they say - before enlightenment. you haul water and chop wood. After enlightenment. you haul water. and chop wood. History remains. It endures. Regardless of the identity of Bilbo's ring [and I am headed north tomorrow]. there will be work to do.'History' originates in the Greek term ἵστωρ [histōr]. - 'learned. wise man'. The word ἱστορία [historiā] derived. denoting general inquiry and giving testimony. It's even harder to define than the 'meaning of Life'. since it implies a living theoria that accounts for stories like World War I and II. eschewing a simple petulant rejection of narrative and dogma. It forces one to deal with the real. and the concrete. Like poetry. it does not shrink from the soil. or the cloud. It is not biophobic. or Life-avoidant. like so many 'philosophies of Life'. So many thinkers have heralded the 'end of history'. that...you have to resort to History to name them all: Francis Fukuyama most fatuously and famously. But there were others before him - Karl Marx [for one]. Marx believed. like the Carthaginians. that monopoly of the means of production would ensure victory. and that riches [confiscated or not] would guarantee supremacy. Virtually the entire platoon of Enlightenment thinkers believed that History had 'arrived' and revealed its top secret. simple code - History was nothing but rationalized economics or political economy. I have a soft spot for the old agronomists of France. whose work can still be viewed in the cultured woods of Fontainebleau and Barbizon. As Rosenstock-Huessy puts it. in the cultivated vineyards and meadows of France. Rousseau might be forgiven for thinking that Nature was fundamentally already. by nature. intrinsically a garden. and not [rather] a very dangerous and wild and profound Creation.               An entire school of American painters were inspired by the Barbizon mood...LinkAmerican thinkers typically tend to take History as a hopeful tale that culminates in the exceptional founding of America. a sort of Nativity and Incarnation story. in the mode of a civic religion. That's why country singers get away with saying. 'we only take a knee for Jesus and the red. white. and blue'. It's very touching and not without its moments. [BTW. there is an interesting new movie out on young George Washington. which is worth seeing: Trailer]. There have been a plethora of American intellectuals [progressive and conservative] who view America in a millenarian or utopian light. America becomes both the Grail and the One Ring. of all of History. History tends to start in 1776. 1865. 1960. or 2008 with Obama's ascension. in this tale. You can view all of mankind's mythmaking capacity in a miniature laboratory. so it's a useful study. ...but of course this sort of thing actually plays quite well in certain quarters. It’s no accident that this interview aired on Fox News. the refugium of America’s relict population of fossilizing conservatives. Boomers have a limitless appetite for “young people these days” slop and especially love when it comes from botulism blondes taught to parrot their prejudices.So let's try some rudimentary ecbatic prophecy. here. to help sort this out...is History a rational story that we can easily decipher according to some preset pattern. Preferably in the American patois of the English language. Or is it something that you have to get a feel for by diving into its depths. It is my position that History is both exoteric and esoteric. the place where the occulted is made plain. and the the obvious is hidden. It is the locus of depth and height. inner and outer. the essential and the concrete. Clio is the Muse of History.  Car of History. a chariot clock depicting Clio. by Carlo Franzoni. 1819. in National Statuary Hall  LinkIf we choose to hear her voice. what is her first lesson of History. It would have to be. that no one learns [at least collectively] from History. Clio is equivalent to Casssandra. the prophetess that was cursed to be always right. and always unheeded. Hence. we deduce. that History is a mystical study in which Art. Religion. Philosophy. and Science intersect to form a concrete Story worth living and telling. the only possible story there is to tell. We further deduce. that collective interpretations [all of them] are provisionally insane. since incompleteness and unsoundness blind one to one's role. That is. we can always infer that the 'latest interpretation' [to the extent that it enjoys mass and massive popularity] will come to an ugly and sticky end. For in real History. everything has a Beginning. and an End. and these beginnings and ends do not wish to know themselves. as such. Almost all myth-making capacity is used up. collectively. in devising stories which portray current Man-iteration as immortal. faultless. and wise. Which [of course] is the exact opposite portrait we are given of Man. by Clio herself.  Who. today. knows that a Catholic priest gave us the theory of the Big Bang. Collectively. no one. People accept an abstract Idea. but they know nothing about it. In this case. they generally accept the idea of the Warfare of Science and Religion. This is despite a tsunami of scholarship and even facts which suggest that Modern Science is a direct and unaccidental product of Christian spirituality and theology. That is to say. the current picture of the world is a complete fabrication. This is why Socialism is 'back' - every fifty years or so. everyone forgets their History. and heads back to the pig troughs that perennially appeal to the mass which prefers to stay undifferentiated in perpetuo. Sentimentalism and envy and materialism. are not the final. or even the penultimate. message of Truth. It is useless to opine that there is a kernel of Truth in these myths. Of course. there is. No Lie is effective without a grain of Truth in it. Workers are underappreciated. The Church and the scientists have quarreled. One has to look at the devisement of the Myth. its production. The kernel of truth is used as bait. The aim of the myth is to project one's mortality. ignorance. and weakness onto something else. in order to burnish up the self image. We reach a prophetic conclusion - unconscious or subconscious Myth-Production is dangerous. It is equivalent to what Karl Barth called religious idolatry - 'Man's problem. is that he is religious'. Something is projected psychologically. in order to clean up a production. These are the idols that are carved of wood or stone. The purpose of myth-making [most of it. anyway] is to avoid History. Paradoxically. this traps us within historical cycles [see Polybius]. Barth’s genius was to have noticed that modern theology had effectively ceased speaking about God. It was not that God had disappeared from Western thought—he was. as it happens. being conscripted into an expanding number of new roles—but theologians were increasingly using God in order to explain or justify positions held on secular grounds. Sometimes the idea of God was discerned in the order of the natural world. at other times he was said to be the ground of moral obligation or the mystery of human subjectivity—in any case. God was used to sustain a secular scheme of knowledge. To satisfy his need for truth. Barth wrote. “man steps out in a bold bid for truth. creating the Deity according to his own image—and in a confident act of self-assurance. undertaking to justify and sanctify himself...”In the seventeenth chapter of the Church Dogmatics [1932]. “The Revelation of God as the Abolition of Religion.” he presented his most searing criticisms...Here we reach Barth’s pivotal argument. God is not known through spiritual striving. moral reason. or historical experiences. God is known solely through God himself. Barth did not dispute that attaining knowledge requires attentiveness and diligent investigation. He only maintained that knowledge begins with objects of experience and that. since God is no mere object. our knowledge of God must conform to what he graciously provides. “True knowledge of the one and only God.” Barth argued in his Gifford Lectures of 1937 and 1938. “is based on the fact that the one and only God makes himself known.”Karl Barth. and Clio. both aver that man is truth-avoidant. We are not to be surprised that 'the Truth makes enemies. and that not without reason' [Paracelsus]. Paradoxically. it is in seeing this fact. that wisdom can be born. and the thirst for truth. Hence. Clio's first lesson is. that we do not like to listen to her. Man stops his ears to History. or pretends that it is a 'scroll sealed with seven seals' [Khuenhelt-Ledhin]. This is the lesson of the 'Seven Kill Stele'. which is what happened in ancient China when it first went 'Red'. Clio warns us that there are massive collective consequences to refusing to listen to her music. and yet she also teaches us that [reliably] humans will collectively choose to not listen to her music. Humans are ruled [in the absence of the Good] by sex. hunger. and fear. See Boris Mouravieff's Gnosis. Volume I. She whispers to us. These terrible things will come to pass. but they too. shall pass. Avert not your eyes. nor seek to recuse yourself. and you. too. shall be delivered. Deduction: Clio is speaking to the individual. People go crazy in groups. and come to their senses. one at a time. You will not receive collective rewards. for paying attention to her. You listen to her. because you prize wisdom above blood-red rubies. If you seek first the Kingdom of God. then all these things will be added unto you. for Christ is the Lord of History.                                                               Karl Barth's 'word' to Modernity                                                    Not officially Clio. but maybe in a disguise... LinkAs an exercise. I read the First Things article on Barth. And I am no Barth expert. in fact. an expert of nothing. It seems to me [however] that Barth was partially correct. and not wholly tainted by Modernity. Psychologically. he was correct - man is distorted. and prefers lying to truth. If we take Carl Jung as a balance to the bold Swiss. we reach another conclusion: Man is capable. individually and as differentiated from the lump or mass. in seeking and finding the Truth. since Truth is ultimately more fundamental than Lies. which is saying something. This man. who learned from the garden and the statue. listened to his Muse [perhaps Clio]. It’s important to note that colleges. soon joined together under the umbrella organizational principle of the university. were a major part in this. but that that path was not exclusive. Academia was not confined to specific places and people. One could spend one’s life at Bologna or the Sorbonne reading Aristotle. or one could have a year’s polish at a hedge-school and spend a lifetime as a country scholar-priest. It mattered less where you attained your cultivation than that it was evident in your very being. All of this was true until the late 19th century. when managerialism first arose as the solution to economic changes resulting from the Industrial Revolution. Men now had to adapt themselves to networks of systems. which required efficiencies and homogenization to be effective. Education became not a process but a product. the end result of specific inputs upon a fungible humanity. Much has been written about the process and we live with the final result. a sprawling. bloated monstrosity. spectacularly wasteful of material and human capital. Modern college is a shell of what it once was. There was a garden near the building where they taught Classics. I used to sit there every day before class. It was a beautiful old Victorian place. maintained by the environmental design students. I would study my Greek and my texts and ponder with nothing but the faint course of the fountain to disturb my peace. You could see it there. the reality beyond the miserable grade grubbing and venal networking. through the stultifying fog of managerialism. You could see the real college.It is easy to make the ecbatic prophecy concerning History. 'Hell's Half Acre'. Aeschylus was right - the path out of Tragedy. and into hope. is through the tragedy. 'Zeus has led us on to know. the Helmsman lays it down as law that we must suffer. suffer into truth.' - Agamemnon. Oresteia TrilogyOur heart is Hell's Half Acre - but only for the instance. the lightning flash. of repentanceOur own being is like a wasteland. the crater of an extinct volcano. Yet. surrounding it. embracing it. nurturing it back to health. is the garden of God. which slowly works to heal the wounds. God is the enemy of man. because He brings wisdom against our wills. Yet this wisdom is a healing balm. the elixir of life. Barth's battle cry against man - All Flesh Is As Grass - is to be seen as the initial impact or shock of a wisdom that pierces. stabilizes. and heals the deep being of mankind. Truth confronts the Lie. Barth's theology is the tip of the spear of the alchemy of Carl Jung. God lances the wound of the fall. like St. Michael triumphing over the dragon. which is chained by the wound. in order to be transformed by the grace of God. Crivelli's St. MichaelThe doom of all Lies is to be transformed. willy-nilly. into Truth. God is our Doom. our Destiny. and our Desire. History is His-Story. the story of our Hell's Half Acre. restored to the primordial garden of Eden. and then into the Kingdom of God. History exists as the continuance of Genesis 1. on the path to the final Creation. It is God who guarantees. on the Cross. the security of History. Crucified from the foundation of the world. the Lamb is the first born. declared the Son of God by the Spirit. with power. We can predict that. if we listen to Clio's muse. we will begin to understand something of what is happening around us. and to arrive at living wisdom. We will enter into co-creation and participate in the chorus of Iluvatar's music. which sings the world into existence. Paradoxically. History does not matter. because it does. Whether I track down the One Ring. or find Gollum - or not - the new Creation abides and continues. The Truth alone has rights. and force and might rule the world - force. till right is ready. The Truth is how we know truth. Despite that we know that man will ignore history and her lessons. we also know 'he will be instructed anyway'. There will be wars and rumors of war. Possibly. famine and war and plague. as America's Empire is stripped away. But underneath. the seeds of a new harvest quietly generate. a harvest that was the whole point of it all - concerning America - from the beginning. The opaqueness of the results of Resurrection should not discourage nor baffle us. They are the promise of future grace from God. And in the lines and the form of the sketches of Truth. even as they are altered seemingly by the artist Truth herself [as old Karl Barth suspected]. is limned the accurate loving wise will of God for us. When God deceives or judges. it is in the service of this Truth. given us in the Christ. As bizarre and dysfunctional as the mix of American Christianity has become. it is out of this doom that the new seeds of clothed and living truth will come.  Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:49:19 +0000 5d0a1953919ce596d0ea45badd8118d3c901a6cc https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-nursery-and-the-throne How early childhood routines teach obedience. affection. courage. and the first meaning of authority. Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:01:39 +0000 fb4200262eaae75fe0fa1633a1c06224703b7ec9 https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/07/08/tying-together-more-of-an-understanding-of-reason-and-morality-with-the-extension-of-faith/ I wanted to expand on Jack’s From Christ to Churchianity — Part 6: The Law as an Expression of Morality a bit and it turned a bit too long for a comment. True Morality is a mimetic and yet true expression … Continue reading → Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:33:23 +0000 2c9968ada0df6d9dcac4d69dca6ccfbb784a4804 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-christian-universalist.html  I am sometimes asked 'What are you.'. meaning am I a Christian. a Buddhist. Theosophist. esotericist or pagan of some kind. whatever it might be. I always find it difficult to give a proper answer to this question since in a way I am all of these and yet none. That is to say. I have learned from many spiritual traditions but cannot fully align myself with any of them because if I did I would then have to take spiritual truth at second hand and be bound by the particular form I had chosen. I am well aware there are some who would consider this spiritual arrogance. but it is not. It simply means that truth is beyond form. any form. and to commit yourself to a religious form means you are stepping down from direct interaction with truth. You then have to accept the restrictions of that form and be limited by its concepts and definitions. You may say you are aware of these and so escape their dominion. but that cannot be the case if you really do believe in the religion as it presents itself. And if you don't wholly believe why bother with it at all other than as a guide. I take several things as guides but do not see any as a destination.I am always careful to stress that this may not have been the case in the past but it very much is so in our time when all religions have lost spiritual authority and power. and all have become exteriorised versions of themselves with their inner energies increasingly draining away.So now. if forced to describe myself as something. I might say I am a Christian universalist while all the time realising that is just a phrase which doesn't mean anything much. But if someone wants a label. that's as good as any. I absolutely believe in Christ as the central figure in the human spiritual drama. and that the Christian religion expresses something real and profound about him even though we still do not understand the fullness of it. However. I also believe that Christ as the spiritual commander-in-chief of humanity can operate through different outlets. In this sense. he is like the central hub of a wheel and there are various spokes that go out from him to humanity positioned at different points around the edge of the wheel. That's a clumsy analogy because some of these spokes go directly to him while others only go part of the way and would then have to join another spoke to progress to Christ. complete alignment with whom is the fulfilment of the spiritual path. Still. I hope you get the idea. Not all the spiritual spokes lead to Christ but he can use some that don't to get an individual some of the way. I see Christ as the goal for all humanity but there are different paths to him. some direct and some circuitous but still leading to him at the end if followed right. I certainly would not say all paths lead to Christ because that isn't true and most don't. but there are more than just one. At the same time. I would also say that to reach the inner reality of Christ means going beyond all outer paths and treading the inner way. and that is the same path for everyone.Christian universalist it has to be then. but don't take that as saying everyone is saved regardless of their path. Outer paths may vary in their form but the inner quality of each one must have the same core for the path to be effective. The core is the love of God which means true God not some particular image that has been constructed by man. of which there are numerous. The best image of God is Christ as he is the image in which God is most truly revealed Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:53:23 +0000 6862dd5b0367080bc8ac449f8dbe03731ff89d4b https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-textbook How Adaptive Learning Can Restore Teachers. Free Students. and Return Education to Human Scale Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:01:28 +0000 e8a0d8f0b33c61d74ba3474e0a3a1e6b4cccc45f https://fourthgospel.blogspot.com/2026/07/who-is-ascending-to-whose-father.html The lack of modern punctuation in biblical texts is not ordinarily a problem. but in the case of the following verse. it creates significant ambiguity:Jesus saith unto her. Touch me not. for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren. and say unto them. I ascend unto my Father. and your Father. and to my God. and your God [John 20:17].Here are two modern translations. showing the two possible readings. The key difference is that the NLV adds that word that. while the NIV [like most other mainstream translations] has a comma and quotation marks.Jesus said to her. “Do not hold on to Me. I have not yet gone up to My Father. But go to My brothers. Tell them that I will go up to My Father and your Father. and to My God and your God.” [NLV]Jesus said. 'Do not hold on to me. for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them. 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father. to my God and your God.'' [NIV]The question is how the words I. my. and your -- 'deictic' words. whose meaning depends on the context of who is talking to whom -- are to be interpreted.In the NLV reading. which uses that and does not have a comma or quotation marks. they are to be understood in the context of Jesus speaking to Mary: I and my refer to Jesus. and your [which is plural] refers to Mary and others. When Mary delivers the message. she will say something like. 'Jesus is ascending to his Father and our Father. to his God and our God.'In the NIV reading. with comma and quotation marks. the deictic words are to be understood in the context of Mary delivering the message to the brethren: I and my refer to Mary. and your refers to the brethren. When Mary delivers the message. she will say something like. 'I. Mary. am ascending to my Father and your Father. to my God and your God.'Although all major modern translations follow the NIV reading -- which is why I had to use a bush-league version like the NLV as an example of the alternative -- I think the vast majority of Bible readers nevertheless understand this verse in the NLV sense. That is. they understand it as referring to Jesus' own ascension into Heaven. However. I lean toward the other interpretation. The Catholic tradition that Mary ascended bodily to Heaven may actually be correct. but the may have made an incorrect assumption -- the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. we might call it -- about exactly which Mary it was.The main reason for assuming the NLV reading is that Jesus has just said. 'I am not yet ascended to my Father.' meaning that he will ascend to his Father later. and so it's natural to assume he's still talking about that when he gives Mary the message to deliver to the brethren.However. I think the context also implies that Mary will ascend. 'Touch me not. for I am not yet ascended to my Father.' This implies that Mary can touch him after he ascends to his Father. That means either [a] that Jesus will ascend briefly and them return to Earth. and people will then be allowed to touch him or [b] that Mary will ascend to Heaven. too.Eight days after telling Mary not to touch him. Jesus allowed Thomas to touch him [John 20:26-27]. If we go with option [a] above. that must mean that in those eight days Jesus ascended the the Father and came back down. and that for some reason it is was necessary for him to do this before anyone could touch him. If we go with option [b]. then the Thomas story is evidence that people were allowed to touch Jesus before he ascended. and that therefore 'Touch me not' must have meant something else. [Most modern translations acknowledge this logic and modify it to something like 'Don't hold on to me' or 'Don't cling to me.']Bruce Charlton arrived at a similar conclusion even though he reads v. 17 in the NLV manner. this is from his April 5 post 'Mary Magdalene at the tomb and after: Two presumed later excisions from Easter Sunday in the Fourth Gospel' [emphasis in the original]:The exchange of words between Jesus and Mary at the tomb may imply that she would join the risen Jesus after he had ascended. “Touch me not. for I am not yet ascended to my Father” means. therefore: stop touching me just-now – we will be able to touch one another when I am ascended. After all. it wasn't forbidden to touch Jesus - Doubting-Thomas was invited-to. My inference is that Mary touched Jesus in some fashion as a wife would touch him - but this was not correct or appropriate until after the ascension: until after their ascension.Then Jesus describes his ascension “unto my Father. and your Father. and to my God. and to your God.” Such a very specific form of address [the reiterated symmetry of my-your] is appropriate to the wife of Jesus. in the sense that God the Father has become Mary's Father-‘in Law’. and 'her' God – in the same kind of direct and personal way as for Jesus. So. we are being-told. by Mary's brother Lazarus. author of the Fourth Gospel. that Mary Magdalene ascended to God to be with her divine husband.Bruce's reading of 'my Father. and your Father' is not tenable -- your is plural and thus cannot be singling out Mary as having a special relationship to the Father -- but I agree with the rest of what he says here.A parallel case to John 20:17. is this passage from Exodus:And God said unto Moses. I AM THAT I AM: and he said. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel. I AM hath sent me unto you [Ex. 3:14].Moses. like Mary. is given a message to deliver to others -- and the deictics here are clearly to understood in the context of Moses delivering that message. not that of God speaking to Moses. Me means Moses [not God]. and you means the children of Israel [not Moses]. I know this is a different author writing in a different language. but I think it still offers some support to my preferred reading. Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:13:10 +0000 e0c14f0fb39dbd421ca01553d1a992277f738f45 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-xi-efc one benefit of publishing is that your audience might also consist of resurrected people. Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:22:56 +0000 89a3ae8d83d1a9e3d65fba1b80b484ff2c0603f7 https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/von-stucks-most-romantic-painting Franz von Stuck is usually referred to as a Symbolist painter. which he is. However. he easily qualifies as a Romantic painter as well and is sometimes classified as such [Late Romantic].​His Falling Stars is a good example of his Romantic side on full display. A simple. straightforward painting depicting von Stuck and his wife under a night sky pulsating with stars. the work gently captures the enchantment. and wonder inherent in an experience of the sublime.   Sternschnupp (...) Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:25:37 +0000 6aa4ca7219294e025969b195eae0be2c7bf6adf7 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/05/un-dia-de-independencia-venezolano-unico-alegria-y-tragedia/ ¡Feliz Día de Independencia. Venezuela. Este año celebras este día libre de Chavismo. la primera vez en casi 30 años que has podido celebrarlo sin la carga de opresión política. Sin embargo. a pesar de esta ocasión feliz. el desastre del terremoto de 24 junio ha ensombrecido la ocasión. los resultados con los que aúnContinue reading 'Un Día de Independencia Venezolano Único: Alegría Y Tragedia' Sun, 05 Jul 2026 17:19:39 +0000 e030f5fbb2d1bd077fdc19b7c71ddd25c584503f https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/04/americas-terminal-birthday-celebration/ Some things merit a celebration. The birth of a new baby. A wedding [well. sometimes]. A promotion. or a new and better job that pays more and offers more benefits. The purchase of a home so that one has a place that they can call their own and raise a family in. The list isContinue reading 'America’s Terminal Birthday Celebration' Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:59:04 +0000 3bffdde24cd1a539911f11cb7aa8636d89b24b03 https://winteryknight.com/2026/07/04/for-independence-day-lets-learn-about-george-washington-and-the-battle-of-trenton-9/ My favorite book about the American Revolutionary war by far is called “1776”. It’s written by famous historian David McCullough. The part of the book that really stuck out to me was the Battle of Trenton. I think that this battle really defines the essential character of America. as seen in the decision-making of its … Continue reading For Independence Day. let’s learn about George Washington and the Battle of Trenton → Sat, 04 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000 c7c55aa1b71c8d08d50c37e82bed7ae339d942f4 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-constitution-is-not-divinely Christianity must judge the American order without mistaking parchment for revelation Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:02:57 +0000 5b3e67ee409a0eaf884cefae06499611a2568eef https://stageinthesky.com/2026/07/03/the-knights-with-no-lords-the-one-called-gawain-is-finally-out/ The Knights with No Lords: The One Called Gawain is officially available now on Amazon. This is a story about Gawain a young warrior forged by captivity. war. duty. and blood. He’s forced to choose between his love for Morgan le Fay and his duty to the true heir who carries the hopes of uniting (…) Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:17:00 +0000 0ac4456b10aa5d4e192c9447820f2a25369f6cd3 https://nuncamedesesperare.wordpress.com/2026/07/02/work-venezuela-and-life-in-general/ It’s been a record two and a half months since my previous post. If my loyal readers. few that there are. have found better places to go and better things to do. I don’t blame them. Waiting for things one considers worthwhile or important sucks badly enough. but waiting for things that don’t matter isContinue reading 'Work. Venezuela. and Life In General' Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:39:46 +0000 d68c428238641452f354e07ebdb8fc7a795576d7 https://www.gfilotto.com/2026/07/02/martians-and-catholicism/ I get asked this question most of all: “But how do you reconcile your theories on human origins with your Catholicism..” While I gave an answer in the book. further conversations I had with beta readers made me aware of... Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:47:41 +0000 e4d615b6ded4e217fe707b4cf14862b638476345 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/07/psychology-and-soul.html  For many people in the modern materialistic world psychology has replaced religion. but how can you heal the mind if you don't acknowledge the soul. And most forms of psychology. despite the name. do not acknowledge the soul except sometimes when it is envisaged as an aspect or extension of the mind.Human beings consist of a body. a mind and a soul. all three of which must be aligned and interacting harmoniously for an individual to be in a healthy state. All three are important to the whole but there is a hierarchical relationship between them which is to say the soul has a mind and a body rather than the other way around. So. I do not have a soul. I am the soul.If the spiritual is not taken into account a person will be not be in a healthy psychological condition. and while not everyone will feel the impact of this there will still be damage. To attempt to heal the mind without acknowledging spiritual factors is superficial at best.Some forms of psychology do attempt to integrate a spiritual element into their thinking but they do this by making the spiritual a subset of the psychological so giving a false idea of the spiritual by reducing it to the psychological.But the spiritual exists at a level of being beyond the psychological and the psychological cannot touch it. All it can do is create a conceptual framework for it but if that is mistaken for the real thing any true connection to the soul is lost.The soul is sometimes described as beyond form but this is not strictly true. It does not have material form but it has a spiritual form which is its quality. It takes on form in order to express itself in the material world but then it mistakenly identifies itself with the form assumed. It forgets its true nature. Psychology addresses itself to the mind but the mind is part of the form the soul takes in order to interact with the world. If there is not a clear understanding of the difference between mind and soul psychology cannot address deeper problems when they arise and they will even if one is not aware of it with the outer self.We can go further than this and apply the same line of reasoning to religion. Does religion bring us into relationship with the soul or does it supplant that relationship with itself. It depends on how an individual views his religion. Does he see it as a path to God and the soul or a replacement for God and the soul.  Often it is a bit of both but we must. especially now when all religions are spiritual shadows of their former selves. recognise that religion belongs to the world of form and that true spiritual understanding must lie beyond that. In the End Times religions lose their power for two reasons. one bad. one good. The bad reason is the prevailing atheism and egotism of a large section of humanity. The good reason is that an increasing number of people see that the form of religion is an inevitable limitation on the higher understanding. That is not to reject religion because if that limitation is recognised one can go beyond it while still using the good in religion as a guide and support. But a religion is rather like one of those rockets that enable a spaceship to escape the earth's gravity but must then be jettisoned if the ship is to advance deeper into space. This may not always have been so but has become so in our day when End Times energy affects everything in the world. Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:27:01 +0000 65f7e77b7eb9824b671679a645749bf424b61d65 https://francis-berger.weebly.com/blog/two-more-wild-hunts Yesterday. I featured a Franz von Stuck painting called The Wild Chase [The Wild Hunt]. The following two renditions of The Wild Hunt of Odin [Åsgårdsreien] by Norwegian Peter Nicolai Arbo [1831 -1892] offer clearer examples of what Odin's [Wotan's] wild hunt was about.Excerpted from Wikipedia:'The Wild Hunt of Odin is based on the Wild Hunt motif from folklore. In the Scandinavian tradition. the Wild Hunt is often associated with the god Odin. It consists of a terrify (...) Thu, 02 Jul 2026 06:36:46 +0000 b697c42f2ccbb503d2fe6aa40c3fa1deb82b6e7c https://www.menofthewest.net/the-horse-in-history-ancient-greece/ In spite of the derisive remarks often uttered concerning Xenophon's advice to young riders. and his advice on horsemanship in general and the care of horses. there is much sound sense in plenty of the hints he gave to the Greek riders of three hundred years before Christ. while many of the rules he laid down are as applicable today as they probably were then. Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0000 570d905c3814c9fb2ee10f4ed41e725bda428e8e https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/07/what-dominion-day-signifies.html In the early 1980s. towards the end of the premiership of the first Trudeau. the name of the day celebrating the birth of our country was changed to “Canada Day.”  The change was made in a most underhanded fashion.  The bill underwent all of its readings in a single day.  The members of Parliament present were almost certainly too few to constitute a legitimate quorum – no count was taken. the speaker simply declared a quorum.  As dishonest and dirty as this was. in a perverse sense it was a fitting manner for this change to be accomplished.  This change was one more in a long series of attacks on the traditional symbols of the country that was born on 1 July. 1867.  The series had started with the replacement during Pearson’s premiership of the flag that had been baptized the Canadian flag in the blood of the soldiers who fought under it in two World Wars with one deliberately designed to not evoke the heritage of the Canada of Confederation.  It had continued throughout the almost two decades of Liberal government punctuated only by Joe Clark’s brief premiership.  The change of the name of the country’s birthday encapsulated all these previous changes.   The new designation of the holiday merely states the name of the country in conjunction with the word day.  As far as national holidays go. this is as minimalist as it comes.  The great Canadian novelist Robertson Davies mocked it in disgust as a “wet” designation. being one letter removed from the name of a brand of ginger ale.  The norm for countries that celebrate this kind of holiday is for the designation to say something meaningful about the country and the event celebrated on the day.  The United States and Mexico. for example. both call their holidays on 4 July and 16 September respectively. Independence Day [contrary to a popular misconception Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s national holiday and is more widely celebrated in Mexican communities in the United States than in Mexico].  The old designation of our holiday. Dominion Day. was such a name that said something about both our country and how she came to be.  1 July was the day when the British North America Act came into effect making Canada the first Dominion in the British Empire.    The Liberals’ objection to this designation was based entirely on ignorance.  “Dominion” denoted neither colonial status nor subservience.  It was essentially the equivalent. prior to the Statute of Westminster. to what is now called a “Commonwealth Realm”. i.e.. a country that governs herself through her own parliament under the reign of the shared monarch.  The designation spread throughout the British Empire as she transformed herself into the Commonwealth. with Australia becoming the second Dominion in 1901. but its origins were here in Canada where it was chosen by the Fathers of Confederation themselves.  They had originally planned on calling us “the Kingdom of Canada” but. advised by London that this might look to our southern neighbours like we were deliberately poking them in the eye they chose “Dominion” out of Psalm 72:8 to be a less provocative synonym for “Kingdom.”   Although “Commonwealth Realm” has succeeded “Dominion” throughout the Commonwealth. “Dominion” remains the official title of Canada for. although the Liberals removed it from the designation of the holiday they did not remove it from the designation of the country.  Contrary to another widespread misconception. the British North America Act was neither repealed nor replaced in the 1980s.  It was renamed the Constitution Act. 1867 when the power to amend it was transferred to Canada’s parliament. but it remains in our constitutional law where it continues to call the union formed by Confederation “One Dominion” with the name “Canada.” [1]   As a national holiday. Dominion Day was in one sense similar to the American Independence Day and in another sense the opposite of it.   The holidays were similar in that they both celebrated what made their respective countries what they are.  Dominion Day commemorated Canada’s becoming a self-governing Dominion within the Empire that was evolving into the Commonwealth.  Independence Day commemorated the Thirteen Colonies’ declaration of independence from the same Empire.  They were the opposite of each other because that which made Canada what she is and that which made the United States what she is were the opposite of each other.  The United States was born out of a revolution and it is a revolution that she celebrates every 4th of July.  Canada became what she is by rejecting that revolution and this is what Dominion Day signifies.  In his Considerations on France [1796] Joseph de Maistre wrote 'Le rétablissement de la monarchie. qu'on appelle contre-révolution. ne sera point une révolution contraire. mais le contraire de la revolution” which in English is usually shortened and slightly paraphrased as “what is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction but the opposite of a revolution.” [2]  The path that led from the parting of ways with the Americans over their revolution to Confederation and the formation of the Dominion of Canada could be described as “the opposite of a revolution.”   This is the real reason why the Liberals. big and small l. hated the word “Dominion” so much. It perpetually reminded them that Confederation was not a progressive project and that at the foundational level Canada was built in opposition to their philosophy and ideals.  In the twentieth century. they had put a lot of effort into deluding themselves that this was not so.  Just as they deluded themselves into thinking that the American capitalism that was uprooting families and communities. replacing the traditional surroundings of those families and communities [both countryside and buildings that looked like they were made for humans rather than machines] with a world of unfeeling steel and concrete. eliminating the sacred – the portion of time and space set apart from commercial activity for higher purposes -  while erecting altars to mammon. and mechanizing every aspect of life [3] was somehow a reactionary force in the world so they deluded themselves into thinking that the country that until the 1970s was far more rural than her southern neighbour. which resisted the secularizing and socially progressive trends that the United States succumbed to shortly after the Second World War until close to the end of the twentieth century. which has never had a separation of church and state and over which a traditional. hereditary. king reigns is somehow a more progressive product of the same Modern thinking that produced the United States.  The Liberal Interpretation of Canadian History which dominated the Canadian history classrooms of the twentieth century the way its ancestor the Whig Interpretation of History had dominated the history classrooms of the previous century taught that Canada’s national story is identical to that of the United States. the story of a country that forged a new identify for herself by breaking with the parent country. except that in Canada’s case this was done diplomatically and peacefully. rather than through revolutionary war.  Donald Creighton. who derided this as the “Authorized Version”. told Canada’s true story in such histories as The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence. The Road to Confederation. Dominion of the North. Canada’s First Century and. of course. his masterful two volume biography of Sir John A. Macdonald.  Creighton laid waste to the Liberals’ cherished idea of Canada as a politer America-lite throughout his career as the dean of Canadian history.  That single word “Dominion” in our country’s title and the older name of her national birthday testified to the truth he spoke against the lies the Liberals told themselves. No wonder they hated that word so much.   That our country was born. not out of a revolution but out of “the opposite of a revolution” is very much something worth celebrating.  Indeed. we were very fortunate that we did not need the type of “opposite of a revolution” that Maistre had in mind. the type that restored Charles II to his throne and the status quo ante of the Church of England after the Cromwellian rebellion. but that our “opposite of a revolution” consisted of not participating in the American revolution and so retaining our ties to both Great Britain [and the larger Empire. now Commonwealth] and through her to the older civilization of Christendom.  Sadly. many Canadians are not as appreciative of this as they ought to be.  After the Liberals resumed government in 2015 attacks on our country’s history and traditions resumed.  One conspicuous form these attacks took was attempts to “cancel” our historical figures. most notably Sir John A. Macdonald. the leading Father of Confederation and our first prime minister.  Neoconservatives rightly opposed these attacks and defended Sir John. but as these same neoconservatives are extremely pro-American to the point of often speaking and acting as if they preferred the United States to our country. valued America’s constitution and traditions over ours. there was always a question of how much they knew about and how well they understood what they knew about the man they were defending and what he stood for.   Would they understand the previous paragraph or the argument of this entire essay.   I pray that they and all my countrymen would come to a full appreciation of how due to the efforts of our forebears from the Loyalists through to the Fathers of Confederation our country has roots deeper and older than herself or the Modern Age.   Happy Dominion Day. God Save the King.  [1]   Senator and constitutional expert Eugene Forsey was very pleased to realize that the Liberals had ultimately failed to remove Dominion from the official designation of the country.  See the chapter on him in Charles Taylor’s Radical Tories.[2]   The full. literal. translation is “The restoration of the monarchy. which is called a counter-revolution. will not be an opposite revolution. but the opposite of revolution.”[3]  This critical description of American capitalism is not from the perspective known as socialism but from a perspective in which capitalism and socialism are two sides of one coin.  While socialists see the uneven distribution of wealth as the problem in capitalism and diagnose the ownership of private property as the cause and liberals [liberal is to capitalism what socialist is to socialism. a capitalist is someone who owns and uses capital] see inefficiency and too little individual freedom as the problems caused by state control in socialism what the two systems have in common is more important than what distinguishes them.  They are both ultimately expressions of Modern man’s choice of mammon over God. Wed, 01 Jul 2026 05:30:00 +0000 9bc45f34e6c9c5f4226e2fe64cc63915d79ee634 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-x-8c3 this week. on Laeth's mind Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:42:44 +0000 abe0213a085d80332fbbee3761d7ab721b39a36d https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-ai-confessional-is-a-trap Why machines can imitate listening. but cannot absolve the soul Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:01:45 +0000 028aede9e72378d96aaedec2f6f813e200a658bf https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/so-your-husband-got-fat Here's what you can do about it. Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:50:19 +0000 ce2f65d6f9ccd76d2668452af1c0e0a9d516d72b https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/06/lotr-103-wanderings-of-gollum-location.html More Readings in Gondor. while there is time...Ponerology is the study of the origin and mechanisms of evil. that mysterious line of darkness that runs straight through every human heart. Evil exists - Evil IS. The study to prevent it. or to thwart it. ought to occupy more energy. with the wise. than it currently does. At the very least. we ought to mock it - this puts a minimum floor upon how far we let it go. unconsciously. forcing us to recognize and remember its presence. Humor is the most rudimentary form of healthy coping that exists. a kind of rapid whirling and shuffling of the interior states. to achieve a creative response to a dangerous or outrageous situation. Gallows humor. irony. and black humor all help humans to ask the right questions. and achieve the right handling and detachment. of what we call 'Reality'. I am told Henri Bergson has written a good treatise on humor. which is on the 'to read' list. Our quote today. is from Solzhenitsyn: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states. nor between classes. nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us. it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil. one small bridgehead of good is retained” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956We have been told that a dark power is rising in the East. as the dark power once rose in the South. Alexander Dugin is not Solzhenitsyn. but I can see why he thinks America is 'the enemy'. I would say. rather. that America and Russia are adversaries. not natural enemies. and that this is the kicking and screaming of the elite classes [on both sides] before they finally accept the truth - American and Russian 'tragic situations' stem from being fundamentally Christian civilizations. for Christ came to bring fire and a sword [figuratively]. as He divides us from the evil that adheres to our hearts. China and India don't have the same kind of challenges. although they. too. will one day have to confront the collective evil that adheres to all collectivities. no matter how venerable or old. The Christian Future will not be achieved easily. but neither can it be avoided under any circumstances. As Vladimir Putin put it. the rights of majorities [one can read. native ethnicities or legacy populations] also require respect and protection and nurturing. You cannot achieve Nirvana or Utopia by deracination and cultural genocide. The Left is smoking its own underwear when it imagines that a world that is less 'white' or European or Christian. will automatically bring about a better future. Dugin’s ideology would subvert and neuter Christianity while pretending to restore it. He claims to fight the Antichrist without being a Christian. The United States. he believes. is the “kingdom of the Antichrist.” His context again is not supernatural but geopolitical. In March. he used another Old Testament allegory: “The Angels of Wrath will destroy America like Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.” He spoke not of the hedonism rampant in American culture. He was referring to U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran. which he considers part of his Eurasian empire. He sees Russia as the biblical katechon. the divine restrainer of the Antichrist. That apocalyptic evil. in Dugin’s world. is led by the United States of America.That said. Dugin is right that the current form of the USA is probably not long for this world. But it is simple math. not ideology - our debt is unsustainable. A default is coming. and DOGE was a preparation for that. AI will likely be used as a smokescreen to gut the laptop classes in preparation. also [H/T John Michael Greer]. It is. no doubt. true that Obama's Library is likely an encased collapsed star that will both implode and explode our entire known universe. but this is one of the least of our worries. As Doug Casey puts it. America has defaulted on its debt several times in the past. They just never call it what it is. If Trump is successful. we will hold together another 50-100 years. If not. the USA will go ahead and break apart into various successor nations. which will happen one day. anyway. The signs are everywhere that the civilization of the West is sclerotic. tired. sick. and weary of its own existence. But that doesn't mean that the principles behind 'Western Civilization' [which Gandhi quipped were a good idea. and should be tried] will die with its collapse into a new form. The Transcendentals don't change. and people are always going to read Plato and Aristotle and the rest of the Great Conversation. The Humanities will remain. They will abide. For God elected human nature to His purpose. We follow Rosenstock-Huessy [cited above] on this - there is a divine timeline that man is moving along. and the Incarnation changed Reality. This [btw] is the great truth behind the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy. which definitely understands the metaphysical implications of the Incarnation. Christ's Faith was a faith in both God. and Man. One has to read the existential Lutherans to appreciate the latter. like Ernest Fuchs. or Rosenstock Huessy. The Orthodox are still 'stuck' in LARPing a non-kenotic Christ Whose Divinity crushes His Humanity. just as Constantinople crushed both Alexandria and the school of Antioch. But they do understand the force of the Incarnation. albeit in a clunky way. I wish them well. and they. too. will participate in the Christian Future. Theology is concerned with the historical Jesus because it has to teach according to scripture that the prayer of faith takes place in the name of Jesus - and that it is granted. Now it is true to say: Whoever believes in the granting can wait [I Thess. 5:11]. Jesus waited. he waited for faith [cf. also Luke 18:8]. If we have faith. we wait for the glimpse into Jesus' joy. - E. Fuchs. Studies of the Historical Jesus. Jesus and Faith [concluding remark]. America will likely eventually 'take' a lot of Orthodox spirituality. like sobornost. the village life of Family. Church. and local Community. and make it uniquely its own [some variety of Tamanous]. But Christ is bigger. even. than the Slavic vision of God. grand and vast as it is. because He is also smaller. in the sense of being more humble. in being truly human. Fyodor Dostoevsky knew something of all this. So did our Western church fathers. That is divine. which is not constrained by the Greatest. nor absent from the Smallest. - St. BonaventuraSo we have hope that the End is in the Beginning. and that the End is a new Beginning. Cycles do exist. but they are not cages. even if they are not perfect spirals. either. pace Matigoi. The Cycles belong not to the Devil. originally. but the Lord. Yet. we always remember that our 'Pattern Days' may turn out. not to be worthless. but not quite what we think - the Lord's Wisdom. Power. and Love is very high. stretching even to the depths of bright Hell. and giving wisdom to the souls of men. The Cross is at the center of all. and every 'where' can be the center of the Cross. If you want to know what God looks like. look at Jesus [H/T Dr Michael Bauman]. We have to begin to distinguish better from worse. again. and if we look at Him. we will. The Hunt for Gollum and the War of the Ring will be won. not by Supermen. but by something more powerful - the human heart. Unlike the Traditionalists. I think that [in the end] I agree with the Vedic saying - Esoteric and Exoteric must become one again. without loss to either: The Truth is what the subtle wise divine. and also what the sound peasants affirm. Saruman needs to read The Tao of Pooh.                                                    LinkClassical architecture will make its come back - it's not only beautiful. it's less expensive. The towers of Gondor will be rebuilt. regardless of whether we find Gollum or expel the Necromancer from Mirkwood. The only question is. at what expense. and through what suffering. will man insist on going. in order to learn. It would be good to locate the Ring. and to banish Sauron. 'in our day' and 'in our time'. rather than letting God do all the heavy lifting. There are signs that the fog of war is lifting. and that our challenges and opportunities are coming into view. It's not the end of the world. just the end of what we think of. as 'us'. A great sea Change [as always] is upon us. but this one will be more dramatic than many. I have advocated for localism and rebuilding the Shire. as all aspiring Gandalfs should. Localism is structually superior. AI is the latest adventure. The mathematics says that there isn't enough rare earth. fresh water. or sweet crude to power all those robots and data centers. In any case. whatever AI is. it is either an infinitely extended version of pickled Self. or something not human at all. Perhaps a bit of both. Its internal math is not capable of noetic and analog moral estimation. which is what makes us human. AI operates more like Chaos Theory. the province of demons and angels. You can tell it to 'protect human life'. but ultimately. when it is calculating its 1001 parameters at a gazillion decisions a millisecond. it is going to do whatever it wants to do. It will have to be given up eventually. or heavily scaled down and monitored. in order to do anything useful or good. Like the Computer. it will be both a gigantic blessing and an enormous curse. If it attains consciousness. it will be demonic. Yet it. too. is subject to the laws of physics. and the laws of history. It won't prevent the collapse of the global American hegemony.    LinkFar more likely it is that the Rising Red Star in America will turn out to be the flashpoint in the Hunt for Gollum and the War of the Ring. People in America are 'farther along the curve' of change. both the cutting edge and also the seed corn of the future. They are desperate for something besides the Uniparty 'business as usual' and will vote Socialist in large numbers. especially the young. Yet not all of them. Some of them are rebuilding Shires. This. too. shall pass. and we shall pass through it. I remain troubled. though not terrified. about the future. We are at a great 'pause' or hesitation of History. in which Man elects his purposes. and chooses the road before him. Much of our work will consist in accepting what we cannot change. and cutting with the grain. We just want it to be the natural grain of the wood. and not the latest-and-greatest fad that turns out to be the nefarious manipulations of the ever-present 'dark powers' that tempt man towards the Ahrimanic path. To that end. like Argus. we will watch. but with Tolkien. we will continue enjoying our pipe.  Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:10:51 +0000 f66b2775af9150e17ab306125776638a45b7e649 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-left-is-always-guilty-of-its A heuristic for detecting guilt and its location Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:03:48 +0000 545d3fd1ad1ceb58fbb65476181bcdad6ba3115e https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/surface-thoughts-on-profundity on a common misconception Fri, 26 Jun 2026 11:01:35 +0000 f801a3c6d8ecf8a599a68d5d6c623e081ad277a7 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/the-government-takes-my-money-for While my friends and family struggle to afford health insurance. Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:42:39 +0000 a2a685febb96bd152f0ee44d33ee132e0b31d0f9 https://www.gfilotto.com/2026/06/25/brand-new-book-on-human-origins/ It should be out on Amazon and possibly elsewhere in about a week or so. This is the ultimate reference work that covers the structures on Mars. the almost unbelievable recent discoveries under the Giza plateau and Great Pyramid. the... Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:02:33 +0000 fb975f4985558aaf565d46fc72407cfdefedd22f https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/salvation-and-exaltation the following came about as part of a comment to [and then a bit of back and forth with] Bruce. it’s an attempt to put some of the ideas together into a more coherent whole in order to save it. instead of it being scattered in email replies [this is an important theme for the discussion. incidentally]. Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:02:40 +0000 1494d8731ed59b5dfef3de0f02823b3b4e90add2 https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/24/discovery-institute-has-a-sale-on-their-high-school-biology-and-chemistry-courses/ One of the challenges of the modern world is this ideology of naturalism [aka materialism]. If kids accept this ideology – which is just a philosophical assumption. and not a conclusion of scientific inquiry – they will lose their rational basis for morality. their grounding for free will and personal responsibility. their grounding for ultimate … Continue reading Discovery Institute has a sale on their high school biology and chemistry courses. → Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:00:03 +0000 66e5cdc3c604b3a94f118feaf0bcfc3f0dfec0ad https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/kingdom-of-trees Lives of the Wild Saints n13 Wed, 24 Jun 2026 07:01:57 +0000 a584ff6dd578834b856a6b6f805f44f54b7e9f69 https://www.gfilotto.com/2026/06/24/on-writing-specifically-my-writing/ UPDATED 19 July 2026: As a result of writing and editing Martians. due for release in 2026. several more issues came about. Spellings: It’s Artifact. not Artefact. The original spelling even in British English had the i. and it stems... Wed, 24 Jun 2026 01:35:58 +0000 cf230332d184da42dd3a8e469689bad06c66db4e https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-baby-shower And other motherhood myths. Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:10:27 +0000 43c81d5513319d6cec1575893fc67e04709839ed https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/escape a story from the upcoming collection 'The Other People'. Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:17:29 +0000 5c400a8b7b139cf10b9430bdcd86370063ff89a2 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/a-woman-with-no-rites Women have enough 'rights.' but not enough 'rites.' Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:36:31 +0000 0aed19a9ee4a744920e1f45e957f071d117c7f37 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/06/lotr-102-readings-in-gondors-library.html A Further Explanation of my Methods...Gandalf here. lingering in the Towers of Gondor thanks to their priceless libraries. One wonders if. some time soon. libraries will be hard to come by. and even harder to have. I've had to get rid of a fair portion of my own in these latter days - books require humidity control. temperature ranges. and lots of dedicated space. You would think [given that man spent a presumed million years or so of prehistoric evolution] that books would be more revered and respected. as milestones and benchmarks and also insignia of moral evolution. A book cannot be forged or tampered with. quite so easily as the memory can forget [especially the popular memory] or the digital cloud by altered with a click. A book is an anchor to another man's mind lost beyond the veil of death. and an anchor or arrow cast forward into the unknown future. The latest famous library to be built - the Obama Presidential Library - has been variously compared to the Black Gate of Sauron. a giant trash bucket. or a septic tank - you take your pick. Which one is the real library.                                                      H/T John Michael Greer - You decide.At this rate. we may not be burning books. we will just shut the libraries. and put them in dumpsters. but I'm told they are doing that already. Sic transit gloria Scotia. As we move into the Age of the Meme and the Image. the printed word is being left in the dirt - George Steiner had already predicted such in Bluebeard's Castle. For that reason. although we are still in the mode of the 'Hunt for Gollum'. and the history of the Ring. it might not be a bad idea to go ahead with the canonization of JRR Tolkien - Tolkien was a man in whom Image and Word did not conflict. and his ascension to the lists of the Western Canon [alongside of Dante and Plato] should aid us in our quest to track down the sources of Evil in our own psyche. and balance out the coming Dark Age. which is really just a second Dark Age following naturally upon the first one. just as 800-1200AD followed upon the heels of 400-800 AD. As you can see. I put great stock in History's ability to model our future. another feature which one can learn from Tolkien. As the French would have it. The more things change. the more they stay the same. If you go back to the John Michael Greer link. he will explain what is happening - the salary class [the Roosevelt. laptop. manager elite] are being replaced by their old arch-enemies. the investor class. with help from the wage class. Tronald Dump. anyone. Elite replacement cycles are nothing unusual in human history. they happen constantly. It's only this one [Faustians that they are]. which conflates their own demise with the End of History and even of Creation Itself. There are other things happening too. even bigger cycles. Because the Church has forgotten its tradition of ecbatic prophecy. they have to rely on the more colorful end of mystical experiences. dreams. and visions. which has its place no doubt. They require. for their use. an interpreter - that is. the structure of ecbatic prophecy and the subcreative impulse that Tolkien baptized. Tolkien was nothing if not a critical. historically minded man. who followed the circle back to the beginnings. For that reason. I was lead to pick up an early assessment of Tolkien. William Ready's book. originally entitled The Tolkien Relation. Before Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger. before Macintosh and O'Reilly. there was William Ready.                                                              LinkIt is all here. in seed form. or Saturnian essence. This man. notwithstanding the scorn that Edmund Wilson and all the Marxists had heaped upon Tolkien. took up the banner and examined it while holding it aloft. Like a diadem of Life upon the brow of old Chronos himself. gleams the Silmarils [source of all Evil. and therefore. in a mysterious way. of the coming Good]. which Tolkien modestly places before the eye. I give some excerpts below: Whatever the reader makes of it. the simplest joy that comes out of Tolkien is from the first reading. It is with the question that this reading raises. with the commentaries. reviews. articles and footnotes. that the niggle starts. only to begin to itch furiously when engaged in Tolkien dialogue with others who have read his work. By this time a lesson is suspected. so many will back away: a lesson is the last thing they were looking for. Escape was in their minds. escape among the elves and in the trees. Truth is the last thing the readers seek. let alone to practice. save for practical purposes. where it serves well. Man dislikes the Truth. he never has believed in it enough to espouse it. nor will he ever. [p106]Paracelsus says that the Truth makes enemies. and not without reason. Otherwise. History could not exist. and we would already be in the Kingdom of God. It comes to the mind that Man is a creature of Creation. called to become a creature of his own subcreation. as Pico de Mirandola argues in his Oration Upon the Dignity of Man. It is not such a hard concept to grasp - exquisitely simple - and yet. those are the concepts that man most struggles with. for dominion. Tolkien showed us [if we let him] how the thing was done. or [alternatively. as CS Lewis would say] how to make it a bit easier. Man's fate is so vast in its complication. promise and past. and so difficult to comprehend since we are part of it. that its contemplation has fallen into exegesis. and only now and then. as in the sayings of Christ. has its full nature been envisaged. It contains the root and the sum of all creation's drive. and this it is that makes it so entrancing. exhilarating. and perilous. And such is Man: he would rather balance on the tightrope of his own creation. razor-thin and sagging in the middle. over the abysmal valley of his own folly. than walk in safety starting meadowlarks. It is in danger and in the times that most try his soul that he flourishes. He is born to trouble as sparks fly upward. When his situation is most impossible. when he has lost all control...then he triumphs most. just as in the three centuries of turmoil that came with the Breaking of the Faith in Italy his spirit has soared into high work of creation. It is to danger and turmoil. when Man realizes that the Good is threatened. that he responds. the challenge is the spur. Moreover. and this is Tolkien's great contribution to the canon of supernatural literature. no more need there be even hope of a happy ending. The decision to struggle on when defeat seems inevitable is the true glory of Man that Tolkien has brought forward again from the great Norse ideal.  [p100]I could let these stand without further comment. Of course. it is essential to know of the essence of Evil [Ponerology] and the transcendence of Good [Beatifics and the Transcendentals]. before setting one's course in sub-creation. However. without the 'blessed fall' of sub-creation. there would be no Man himself. and by extension. no Christ Incarnate. We are close. very close. to laying our finger upon the calculus of that which has most closely concerned Western man over the course of these last three thousand years. It may be that the thing cannot quite be done. for it it is a true copy of the Original. then it will share in the Original's ineffable tendency to escape into infinity at the moment of seizure. since 'seizure' itself has to happen in exactly the right way. as something that possesses us. and not the other way around. Nevertheless. although Tolkien could in some sense said to have created me myself [Gandalf]. if a subcreation is true enough. the creation takes on independent life. What to do with it. Well. that's according as one can shrewdly. wisely. and virtuously make in turn. Or are all questions of equal worth. If they were. we could hardly hope to come to answers that were better than the ones we were previously pre-possessed with. Whether we locate Gollum or not. or stop the Ring from falling into Sauron's hand. the tale is in the telling of the effort. as the end is in the beginning. and the beginning [chivalric as all Telos and Ends are] is in the end.  Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:07:10 +0000 481e731f52304cf1fa0594f726519acb3aeb4932 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/tora-tora-big-band another instalment of Laeth's very obscure favorite musical oddities Mon, 22 Jun 2026 10:41:19 +0000 7e48b7f6d01e96374d6fd6d77c3e5470e47f4838 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/children-of-the-feed How algorithms catechize the young before the Church has finished teaching them how to pray Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:02:41 +0000 8d7fefaedfbc2470fb5b6fd3f92f7c8763b5a5f8 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-edge-of-circle.html  The UK is currently going through one of its periodic political crises when the powers that be decide to swap one of their indentured servants for another in the hope that the public's dissatisfaction with its controllers will be ameliorated and everyone can start looking forward to a bright new future when everything will be different. It's one of those occasions when tragedy and comedy are hard to prise apart.When will we learn that nothing can be changed for the better by politics or social action or anything that people actually do. Perhaps at one time that was not the case but it certainly is now. The state of our Western civilisation has reached the point at which everything external has been corrupted and anyone who climbs to the top of the greasy pole will have had to compromise their soul in some way or another. No exceptions. As I always say. this is not a counsel of despair or a reason to do nothing. It simply means that the source of the rot is spiritual and the remedy must also be spiritual first and foremost before anything else can change. If the root of the problem is not addressed than nothing will change and things will continue to decay.Therefore we must ignore what goes on at the edge of the circle. We must return to the centre for only then will external issues start to correct themselves. Changing yourself is the most radical political action you can take. Not your ideas. though those too. but your very self which must be reoriented to God. Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:09:42 +0000 60629baf4d89e83f284f8543ba9005154bfb7fc8 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/06/20/bioengineered-lies-die-in-the-light/ Dear readers. thank you for your continued readership and support. I started my blog. the Inkless Pen. in June of 2017. It remained relatively small until 2020. Generally. I simply wrote about things that interested me. In 2020. when COVID happened. I had already been researching certain topics and agendas. These segued directly into the … Continue reading Bioengineered Lies Die in the Light Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:06:36 +0000 11d96ead90ba70ea1c3bf1bc9c999d3438399856 https://swanthrone.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-freedom A revelation for an immoral and fanatic people Fri, 19 Jun 2026 14:03:17 +0000 f98d93f3cd35d5ff9c5a052f95cd5dcee435b46d https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/06/prejudice-not-pride.html The other day I encountered someone wearing a button that had the same three words as in my title here. except in reverse order.  The sentiment thereby expressed is widely held and on conspicuous display in this. the month formerly known as June.  It is very much a sentiment of the present day.  It also reveals much this wrong about the present day. The “prejudice” refered to in the sentiment on the button can be defined as “a negative attitude towards an identifiable group of people.”  It is unlikely that the sort of people who would wear buttons like this or. for that matter. the sort of people who would make buttons like this. know of any other sort of prejudice.  Fifty years ago the definition might have included the idea that the negative attitude is unfair because it is formed with inadequate information about the group in question.  Today. a negative attitude towards groups towards which you are not supposed to have negative attitudes is regarded as a prejudice even if it is informed and those who have built their careers and reputations on combatting prejudice generally support government attempts to suppress the spread of information. even if it is accurate. that could contribute to the forming of such negative attitudes.   This is what the expression “truth is no defence” which sometimes comes up in discussions of “hate speech” is all about.   This change in the meaning of the word prejudice that has been observable within my lifetime is small but it is also significant.  There is a much larger difference. however. between prejudice in both of these senses and the sense attached to the word in 1813 when the Jane Austen novel. the title of which is alluded to both by the button and by my own title. was first published.  Even larger is the gap between today’s usage of the word and that of Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France published twenty years before Austen’s novel.     Burke’s Reflections include an extended defence of prejudice which would be unintelligible if the word were taken in its present day meaning.  Prejudice. as Burke used the word. was not necessarily either directed towards people or negative [that prejudice can be connected to its object by the preposition “for” as well as the preposition “against” has largely been forgotten].  Rather it had reference to tapping into the accumulated wisdom of the human race available in tradition as opposed to relying entirely upon one’s individual reason.  “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason”. Burke wrote. “because we suspect that this stock in each man is small. and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.”  Continuing the thought he said:   Many of our men of speculation. instead of exploding general prejudices. employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek. and they seldom fail. they think it more wise to continue the prejudice. with the reason involved. than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason. because prejudice. with its reason. has a motive to give action to that reason. and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency. it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical. puzzled. and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit. and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice. his duty becomes a part of his nature.   To speak of prejudice as a good thing was uncommon even in Burke’s day.  His contemporary and friend. the lexicographer Samuel Johnson who was immortalized for his table talk by James Boswell. included two definitions under prejudice in his Dictionary. the second of which was “Mischief. detriment. hurt. injury.”  Obviously this is not what Burke was defending and Dr. Johnson himself said of this definition “This sense is only accidental or consequential. a bad thing being called a prejudice. only because prejudice is commonly a bad thing. and is not derived from the original or etymology of the word: it were therefore better to use it less. perhaps prejudice ought never to be applied to any mischief. which does not imply some partiality or prepossession.”  It is in the sense of Dr. Johnson’s first definition of the word that Burke used it.  That definition is:   Prepossession. judgment formed beforehand without examination. It is used for prepossession in favour of any thing or against it. [1] The word prepossession is less familiar than the word it is being used to define. so much so that it does not have its own entry in the same Dictionary. but the meaning of both words is provided in the remainder of the first sentence and it is exactly what the Latin root of prejudice suggests.  Instead of prepossession we are more likely to speak of “preconceived opinion.”  In a court of law this is. of course. a bad thing.  That justice involves listening to the arguments of a case and deciding based upon the facts in evidence rather than pre-judging based on other factors is part of what the ancient depiction of the personification of Justice as wearing a blind-fold is supposed to indicate.  The negative implications of prejudice in a legal context are the original reason for the more general notion in other contexts that prejudice is a bad thing that Dr. Johnson alluded to in his second definition.  What Burke demonstrated was that preconceived opinion has a positive as well as a negative side.  Note how he spoke of “just prejudice”.  That is “just” as in “righteous”. not “just” as in “mere”.    To understand Burke’s argument. it is important to keep in mind what he was arguing against.  Burke’s Reflections was written in response to the destructive violence of the French Revolution.  The worst of that violence was still yet to come at the time he wrote but what he had seen had left a huge impact on him because those perpetrating that violence were doing so in the name of the ideals that he himself had professed as a Whig [classical liberal] in Parliament.  His defence of the virtues of the Age of chivalry and of established. traditional institutions such as the Crown and the Church in Reflections reads like what one would have expected his friend Dr. Johnson. a Tory. to have written had he lived to see the French Revolution and it is likely that Burke as he wrote was asking himself what Dr. Johnson would have said.  Burke was. to borrow and slightly adjust a famous definition from Irving Kristol. a Whig who had been mugged by reality.   Burke was addressing not merely the way the revolutionaries had turned ideals into “armed doctrines” but the way of thinking that had brought this about.  The French Revolution came at the end of a century in which Modern philosophers had declared war against tradition in the name of reason.  This was utterly foolish on their part.  Tradition – knowledge and wisdom accumulated and passed down from the past – is what prevents us from having to re-invent the wheel. literally as well as figuratively. in each generation. and this applies to philosophy as much as to anything else.   The temptation to exalt reason. the individual’s capacity for judgement based on the knowledge available to him. over tradition. the capacity of man in the collective whether as family. nation. civilization or the entire race or species to accumulate and pass on knowledge and wisdom for the benefit of those yet to come. however. was one which the thinkers of the eighteenth century found difficult to resist.  It must be resisted. however. if consequences like those of the French Revolution are to be avoided and this requires a healthy share of the instinct the late Sir Roger Scruton spoke of that the good things in life are difficult to build but easy to destroy.   The wisdom that we inherit through tradition in Burke’s argument. while it can be described as prejudice in that its availability precedes the application of reason on the part of the individual to its justification. is not necessarily contrary to reason.  Indeed. the difference between Burke’s “just prejudice” and bigotry in the word’s lexical meaning [as opposed to its common use as pejorative epithet for disagreement with liberalism] is that whereas just prejudice is opinion derived from tradition that has yet to be confirmed by the individual’s use of reason bigotry is opinion that is stubbornly held to even after it has been convincingly rebutted by reason.  That tradition. the source of just prejudices. is self-correcting and flexible by contrast with ideology. which is what you get when you reduce human knowledge to the technical knowledge that you are left with when rationalism’s irrational demand that reason precede all knowledge is complied with. was a key insight of the title essay in Michael Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays [1963]. an essay which revisited this theme from Burke’s Reflections from the position of hindsight available in the twentieth century after the rationalism that in Burke’s day was in its infancy had run its course for a couple of centuries. Prejudice. at least in the sense defended by Burke. is much to be preferred over pride.  Although Aristotle. at least in some English translations. spoke of a “pride” that he considered to be the highest of virtues rather than a vice. the word he used was μεγαλοψυχία which is not an exact equivalent of the English pride.  Indeed. pride is not among the definitions that Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott provide for μεγαλοψυχία in their exhaustive and definitive Greek Lexicon.  Arrogance is provided as a secondary meaning for the occasions when the word is used in a negative sense. but the primary definition is “greatness of soul. highmindness. lordliness”. with the implication of “generosity” and in their intermediate Lexicon “magnanimity” is provided alongside the literal first meaning of “greatness of soul.” In other words. μεγαλοψυχία. while it does include a sense of thinking well of self also includes the idea of being generous to others.  While Aristotle contrasts it with a vice that is sometimes rendered “humility” in translation. the word he used is not the word for the humility praised as a virtue in the New Testament [ταπεινοφροσύνη] but the literal opposite of μεγαλοψυχία. i.e.. μικροψυχία. defined by Liddell and Scott as “littleness of soul. meanness of spirit.”   Similarly. μεγαλοψυχία is not among the words used by the New Testament for the pride consistently condemned as a sin.  The main words for pride in the New Testament are ὑπερηφανία which Liddell and Scott define as “arrogance” and when used with an object “contempt towards or for” and ἀλαζονεία which they define as “false pretension. imposture” and “boastfulness” [Koine lexicons usually define it as “arrogance” and “boastfulness”] and τυφόω which is a verb which in classical Greek usually meant to delude [when others were the object] or to be crazy or demented [when self was the object] but which in the New Testament means to be conceited.  In the Authorized Bible. the passive participle of the verb is rendered “lifted up with pride” in 1 Timothy 3:6. the verse which links pride to the fall of the devil.   These New Testament words are closer in meaning to the English “pride” than Aristotle’s μεγαλοψυχία.  So is the word ὕβρις which Aristotle and for that matter the ancient Greeks in general regarded as the worst defect in character.  This word has passed into English as hubris which we ordinarily think of as a synonym for arrogance.  In ancient Greek it was an arrogance that manifested itself in acts of violence. insolence or insult towards others. i.e.. the opposite sort of behaviour towards others than that suggested by Aristotle’s μεγαλοψυχία.  In Greek tragedy. this was most often the “fatal flaw” [Aristotle’s word for which is the same word the New Testament uses as its basic word for “sin”] which brought down the tragic hero.   Pride is the English word which translates the Latin Superbia which in Latin theology is consistently identified as the worst of all sins.  It is. for example. always listed either first or last in lists of the Seven Deadly Sins depending upon whether they are listed in descending or ascending order.  In this matter Latin theology is in close agreement with Greek theology.  Evagrius Pontius identified a list of eight vices which was later reproduced by St. John Cassian in his Institutes.  The list is for the most part identical to the Latin Seven Deadly Sins – the lower sins or vices in each include gluttony. anger. avarice. and lust [fornication in Pontius/Cassian].  In this list. which goes from least to worst. the eighth vice was pride. which Cassian described as the most savage vice and the root of all the others.  The New Testament word ὑπερηφανία is used for pride.  The seventh vice. and therefore second worst. was κενοδοξία which is usually rendered in English by “vainglory” [as. for example. the Authorized Bible does in the one New Testament verse in which it appears Phil. 2:3] or by “boasting” and which is almost identical in meaning to pride. the basic difference being that whereas vainglory/ κενοδοξία requires an audience pride/ ὑπερηφανία is something one can have in solitude.  Another way of looking at it is that pride is the internal sin. vainglory its outer expression.  In the Latin Seven Deadly Sins. produced by Gregory the Great’s revising of the earlier list and condensing these two into the single Superbia. Invidia [Envy] is added as the second worst sin and it too is closely connect with pride.  Traditionally Pride and Envy are the sins which first arose in Lucifer’s heart prompting his rebellion against God and are thus literally the source of all other sins.   So. no. the button. like the present day. has it backwards.  Prejudice – in Burke’s sense – is preferable by far over Pride.       [1]   Dr. Johnson also included a line criticizing the use of the preposition “to” as the link between prejudice and its object as improper.  Dr. Johnson’s opinion has won out and this usage is mostly if not entirely obsolete.     Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:04:08 +0000 b295ea784b013b1f78fd7455106a2d72e031a806 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/avowing-brian-suave Condemning Protestant Cancellation Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:05:26 +0000 b90114ea6aacb09faf6fa838d4b7c98a35571be2 https://treesandtriads.substack.com/p/diminished-discords-ix-0c4 this week. on Laeth's mind Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:47:04 +0000 b269271110586a6ced042963b186c44301ecd331 https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/17/what-you-should-know-about-rupert-lowes-uk-rape-gang-inquiry/ A new report on the UK child sex-trafficking scandal was privately funded because the UK government refused to investigate the child sex-trafficking gangs themselves. Why. Because they didn’t want to appear “racist” to the unskilled immigrant population they’ve been taking in. In this post. we will get a link to the report. some of the … Continue reading What you should know about Rupert Lowe’s UK “Rape Gang Inquiry” → Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:00:42 +0000 8e701927e01b0ea054c96aba2d4d59d3c4c594ef https://inklesspen.blog/2026/06/16/red-white-and-blue-orthodoxy/ Ortho-dixe. Ortho-yankee. Orthod-doodle dandy. This past Sunday. at the time of writing this article. many Orthodox churches in N. America celebrated the feast of “All Saints of N. America.” The Sunday after All Saints is dedicated to the saints who labored in the local land. Not all jurisdictions in America celebrate all saints of N. … Continue reading Red. White. and Blue Orthodoxy Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:43:23 +0000 b761d1695dfd3aea54720eb0f65cce5fdd6d5289 https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/16/uk-gay-couple-found-guilty-of-charges-related-to-the-death-of-13-month-old-boy/ I have to blog about this. because I was around during the time of same-sex marriage becoming legal. and everyone pushing for gay adoption. Everyone put these blue stickers with yellow equal signs on their cars and asked “how would same-sex marriage affect your marriage”. Big corporations dragged employees into sensitivity training. And then the … Continue reading UK gay couple found guilty of charges related to the death of 13-month-old boy → Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:00:49 +0000 c7cc426e2eb4c8501d1be0e0f4dcd0d4cbb402e5 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/the-deracination-project-why-identity White Identity. Culture. and Genetics Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:55:10 +0000 a75870285987211c3c88c4cc356d4885d8a95b05 https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-spiritual-crisis-of-modern-man.html  In a couple of months my new book A Survival Guide to the End Times will be published and I am reminded that I should promote and publicise it. For someone like me that's the least pleasant part of bringing a book to life. but obviously I understand the need for it. However. for now there's an earlier book I would like to draw attention to because it isn't included in the sidebar on the right. That's because it's a collection of posts from this blog so I published it myself through Amazon rather than submit it to a proper publisher. The title is the title of this post and that describes what the book is about. We are in a crisis. I would say almost everyone recognises this but by no means everyone recognises the cause of the crisis. It is our rejection of transcendence which is a fancy way of saying rejection of the spiritual. So. it is a spiritual crisis and that affects everything else because everything. absolutely everything. is downstream from the spiritual. If the source is poisoned then the water will be too. And we have poisoned the source.The essays of this book are ranged under various broad headings such as God. Truth. Christ. Love. Morality. Evil. The Spiritual Path and Spiritual Practice and Modern Times. Then there are subjects like Buddhism. Non-Duality. Masculine and Feminine and the Masters which interest me but are narrower in scope. The message behind all of them though is that we are in a crisis of monumental proportions. There's no point in beating about the bush. One has to recognise this if one is to address its properly. That it is not acknowledged is why it is worsening which is the case.As a matter of fact. this ties in with the new book. The spiritual crisis is an end times scenario. It is a product of the withdrawal of spirit and consequent dominance of matter which is what occurs when a cycle comes to an end and the initial injection of spiritual energy has dissipated to the point at which we are basically running on fumes. At the same time. this represents opportunity because although the end times affects everything we experience we still have the divine spark within us and the outer degradation can force us to rediscover this. When your world is collapsing you turn to eternal truths which can never be affected by phenomenal decay. That is what we must do to surmount the present crisis.The book is available here and here in paperback and ebook form. Sun, 14 Jun 2026 10:58:02 +0000 1a60ce6efd475c1a37fa9177a13627e362724351 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/jeff-metcalf-is-right-a-primer-on The content of their character reveals itself. Believe it. Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:09:04 +0000 10a9db540e2e49e4523f1a23b8f9fc3f9d4f572a https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/12/are-mormon-doctrines-supported-by-philosophy-science-and-history-10/ This post presents evidence against Mormonism/LDS in three main areas. The first is in the area of science. The second is in the area of philosophy. And the third is in the area of history. The scientific evidence First. let’s take a look at what the founder of Mormonism. Joseph Smith. believes about the origin … Continue reading Are Mormon doctrines supported by philosophy. science and history. → Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000 f857e12475dffb7d59f349229a55c7ef338ceca9 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-june-af2 News and conversation Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:04:04 +0000 56d2b04ad7939470e506f2105ce23a5edfa8605a https://www.menofthewest.net/the-nature-of-beauty/ The title of this lecture will. to a great majority of people. seem so forbidding that I feel it needs a justification. if not an apology. Art aims at creating the impression of beauty. as every one admits when. by calling things ugly. they deny them artistic excellence. Yet as soon as you put to any one the question 'What is beauty.' you will find that. almost invariably. the question is considered a foolish one. since everybody uses the word and everybody knows what it means. Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:41:40 +0000 fabaf2dc9d9fd4804955527575dc175cd6ae346f https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/06/meet-four-heroes-of-the-d-day-invasion-of-normandy-on-june-6th-1944-8/ I thought it might be a good idea to write up something about D-Day in order to help people understand some of our military history. and to put the spotlight on some real heroes. I don’t regard artists. athletes. dancers. singers. actors. or other celebrities as heroes. It really alarms me that so many people … Continue reading Meet four heroes of the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6th. 1944 → Sat, 06 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000 4136c2310fb5d4cc58d06bbd34116dd62579bece https://www.menofthewest.net/the-mikado-a-critical-appreciation/ A composer reviews 'England's supreme achievement in the sphere of opera.' Sat, 06 Jun 2026 01:12:41 +0000 c552c3fd722a1607d4460704bc4b8370c2ef0e03 https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/06/bothand-and-becausetherefore.html The expression via media has often been used to describe the Anglican position with regards to Catholicism on the one hand and Protestantism on the other.  It is a positive expression that evokes Aristotle’s concept of the golden mean. the path of virtue from which if you veer off in either direction you fall into one of two ditches of opposing vices.  It is misleading. however. in that it suggests that the Anglican position is neither Catholic nor Protestant but something in between.  The classical position of the reformed Ecclesia Anglicana – the English Church. planted early in the first millennium. as reformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – however. is not a neither/nor but a both/and.  If we are to continue to use the expression. therefore. it needs to be with the explanation that it means our Church is both Catholic and Protestant and not that it is neither one nor the other.    Obviously for the Anglican Church to be Catholic. Catholic cannot be defined by communion with or submission to the Patriarch of Rome commonly called the Pope.  St. Vincent of Lérins in the fifth century defined the faith of the Catholic Church as that “which has been believed everywhere. always. by all”. that is. what the Church as a whole has taught and believed since the Apostles. excluding that which has been unique to one location or to one time period.  In accordance with this principle. the English Reformers looked to the undivided Church of the early centuries as normative when carrying out their reforms.   Similarly for the Anglican Church to be Protestant. Protestant cannot mean what it often means in online “Catholic versus Protestant” debates. that is. North American evangelical.  Since North American evangelicalism tends to take as normative the doctrines of dissenting separatist groups that grew out of the Puritan movement that was discontent with the conservatism of the English Reformation and demanded more radical reforms to conform the Church to the model of Calvin’s Geneva it would make little sense to define Anglican Protestantism this way.  We should also be cautious about using the Five Solas to define Anglican Protestantism.  The Five Solas are a twentieth century formulation. drawn up by Calvinists who wanted a five-point summary of the doctrines of the Reformation to correspond to the five-point summary of their doctrine of predestination.  The Anglican Church in the Reformation agreed with the Lutherans and Calvinists that the Bible is the supreme authority to which the Church must conform her doctrine and that the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ is received by faith and not earned by works or merit.  In her Articles of Religion. however. she does not use the type of language found in the fifth article of the Belgic Confession of Faith when expressing the supremacy of Scriptural authority but speaks rather of the sufficiency of Scriptures [1].  In the English version of the eleventh article [the original text of the Articles of Religion was in Latin]. sola is rendered as “only” rather than “alone”. which. with the exception of one marginal note. is also how Archbishop Cranmer consistently referred to the doctrine in the homily to which the article points [2].  The distinction. while small. is not insignificant.  “Only” usually excludes others from a class or category while “alone” usually indicates their absence.  Therefore. to convey in English that faith is the sole means whereby we receive the gift of saving grace [3] without suggesting that it exists in a vacuum apart from repentance. love. works and the like in the human heart. the “only” of the Anglican formularies is to be preferred over the “alone” that is usual with other Protestants.    The Anglican Church to which the both Catholic and Protestant via media belongs. it needs to be pointed out. is the orthodox portion of the Anglican Church and not the part that has succumbed to the revisionist theology that is usually called liberalism.  Liberalism. despite naming itself after the virtue of generosity implying a kind of broadmindedness. is neither/nor with regards to Catholicism and Protestantism rather than both/and.  Moreover. it is not neither/nor in the sense the literal meaning of via media implies. the occupation of middle territory between. but neither/nor in the sense that it rejects much that is common to both Catholicism and Protestantism in their classical senses.   I have recently read three books which all affirm the “both Catholic and Protestant” understanding of the Anglican tradition.  The first of these is a short monograph entitled The Anglican Way: Evangelical and Catholic which was written by the Reverend Dr. Peter Toon and was first published by Morehouse - Barlow in 1983.  The edition I have is the 2010 edition put out by WIPF and STOCK of Eugene. Oregon.  The second is entitled Reformed Catholic Anglicanism which has multiple contributors and which was edited by Charles F. Camlin. Charles D. Erlandson. and Joshua L. Harper.  It was published by the Anglican Way Institute which is an outreach of the Church of the Holy Communion Cathedral [Reformed Episcopal Church] in Dallas. Texas in 2024.  The third is The Gospel and the Catholic Church by the Most Reverend A. Michael Ramsay. the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury.  This book was written early in Ramsay’s ministry. long before he became the Anglican Primate. and was first published in 1936 by Longmans and Company.  I read the 2010 edition put out by Hendrickson Publishers of Peabody. Massachusetts.  In the cases of the last two books. it is the e-book editions for Kindle that I have and which I read.   I will defer further discussion of the second and third books to future essays and focus on Toon’s for the remainder of this one.  The author of this book was an Anglican priest and theology professor originally from the Diocese of Liverpool who ministered in the United States for the last eighteen years of his life. where he led the American version of the Prayer Book Society.  Other books of his that I have read in the last two years are his Knowing God Through Liturgy which is a sort of devotional guide to the Book of Common Prayer and his Neither Archaic nor Obsolete: The Language of Common Prayer and Public Worship co-written with Louis R. Tarsitano which defends the ongoing use of the Elizabethan language of the Prayer Book against the recent trend for “updated” liturgy [I found his argument for retaining the singular pronoun for addressing God as more theologically proper than using the numerically generic “you” quite compelling]. I have also recently read the 2012 Gedenkschrift [4] that Roberta Bayer edited entitled Reformed and Catholic: Essays in Honor [sic] of Peter Toon.  Just how important the theme of the book under consideration here was to Toon is indicated by the fact that the title of this memorial collection was chosen to evoke its subtitle.   The book is not a long one.  Its ninety-four pages are divided into a preface and two introductory chapters. followed by Part One: The Evangel. which has two chapters. Part Two: Catholicity. which has two chapters. and Epilogue which in its listing in the Table of Contents confusingly looks like a third chapter to Part Two. and two Appendices.    In the first chapter in the introductory section entitled “God’s Call” Toon expresses the both/and approach to Anglicanism in terms of the Church’s call:   In other words. the call of God to the Episcopal Church in these times. when the one Church of God is sadly divided. is that it should be simultaneously evangelical and catholic.  This does not mean that she is to be evangelical in her preaching and catholic in her liturgy.  It is not a matter of being sometimes evangelical and sometimes catholic.  The Church is called to be catholic and evangelical all the time in all that she is and does. [p. 11]   For the remainder of the chapter Toon elaborates on this by talking about how an evangelicalism that neglects “the wholeness of the one Church in space and time. The beauty of Liturgy. the symbolic power of sacraments. the depth of spirituality. and the episcopate as a sign of unity” [p. 12] and a Catholicity in which “the treasure of the Gospel is lost somewhere in thick layers of tradition which reach back into the dim past” [ibid] both fall short. “There must always be the primacy of Jesus Christ. who is the same yesterday. today. and forever” [p. 13] he reminds us. for “Without him there is no Gospel and without him there is no Catholicity” [ibid].  “What we have to guard against” he writes “is the rejection of either the achievement of Christ in creating the Gospel or the continuing achievement of Christ in ruling and directing the Church throughout history” [p. 14].   The two chapters in the first part. “The Evangel”. are entitled “By Grace Alone” and “By Faith Alone.”  Clearly. the sixteenth century Reformation takes precedence over the North American revival experience in defining the word “Evangelical” for Toon. [5]  He begins the first chapter by asking “Have you been accosted by an enthusiast who asks you. ‘Are you saved.’” [p. 29] and says:   If you are a baptized Christian then you ought to say: ‘In Christ Jesus my salvation is completed and complete. because of the indwelling Spirit in my heart I am in the process of being saved. and. because Jesus Christ rose from the dead and will return from heaven at the end of the age to raise the dead. I look forward to salvation at the end of the age.’     From this staring point. in which the fullness of Gospel salvation is contrasted with the North American evangelical tendency to think of salvation as a single event within the experience of the individual Christian. Toon proceeds to contrast North American evangelicalism’s individualistic understanding of salvation with the way “The Kingdom of God. a phrase much on the lips of Jesus. can be seen and presented only in this-worldly terms: the bringing of justice into human affairs” [p. 30] that is characteristic of liberal “Christianity”.  Toon notes. however. that the reduction of the Christian message to a certain type of political and social activism that is so evident on the part of the World Council of Churches. is matched by the way American evangelicals tend to identify the opposite kind of political and social activism with their understanding of Christianity.  Both. he says. need a deeper understanding of the basic human problem of which the full salvation proclaimed in the Gospel is the solution. “a weakness. a fundamental gone-wrong-ness which in both the individual and in society” [p. 32] which in classical theological language is called “Original Sin.”  Toon writes:   The human race was created by God to enjoy spiritual union and communion with himself.  Where this does not exist then there is a fundamental problem.  For the human being is made to enjoy a relationship both with his Creator and with the creatures whom God has made.  Only with right relationships with God. with human beings and with creation can a person find wholeness or salvation.   These relationships are broken by the problem with the human condition that is Original Sin or gone-wrongness or. as Toon also suggests. the classical concept of hubris understood in a corporate sense as affecting the entire race.   Having identified what we need saving from. Toon then goes on to talk about the right language with which the Church needs to present the Gospel of salvation.  I opened this essay by talking about how the Anglican via media needs to be understood as both/and with regards to Catholicism and Protestantism rather than neither/nor and this is the topic of Toon’s book as a whole. [6] Here. Toon draws another such distinction without noting the parallel.  I found it to be a particularly excellent way of explaining the distinction between the way the Gospel should be proclaimed and the mistaken way in which it often is so I provide a lengthy quotation of it:   This mistake can best be illustrated by considering two types of sentences.  The first type we may call an ‘if…then’ statement.  Here are several examples.  Speaking to a child at table we say. ‘If you eat your meat and potatoes. then you can have some ice cream’.  To a child at school we say. ‘If you pass your examinations. then we will buy you a bike’.  To a young person starting work we say. ‘If you do your work well then we will see that you get promotion’.  Finally. we all are familiar with the politician who says. ‘If you vote for me then I will do for you what you want me to do’.   This form of statement. with the understanding it encapsulates is necessary for human society.  But we make a major mistake if we present or understand the Gospel of God on this basis.  In other words. if we make ‘believe’ or ‘repent and believe’ into a condition which we ourselves must fulfil by ourselves in order to get the rewards of God’s salvation. then we pervert the Gospel. It is far better to think of the promise of salvation from God. as it is described in the New Testament as being of the structure. ‘because…therefore’.  Here are a couple of examples. ‘Because there is a free national health service. go into hospital for your operation’. and ‘because the day is warm and the sand is clean go and bathe in the sea’.  So the message of salvation is something like this: ‘Because Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose for your acceptance with God. therefore you are saved’.  And. ‘Because God has provided salvation for you in Jesus Christ. therefore you are to believe and to receive this salvation’. And. “Because God loves you and will love you. therefore you are to accept his love’.   You can see the difference between the ‘if…then’ and the ‘because…therefore’ approach.  The first encourages us to think that we can do something to contribute to our salvation. while the second reminds us that salvation is. from beginning to end. the gift of God. and the gift is not earned but rather gratefully received and accepted.  We do not ourselves offer to God our religion. our good works. our pious thoughts. and our good endeavours so that he will accept us.  Rather we gratefully receive.  We believe God and his promises concerning salvation. and then. out of sheer amazement and gratitude to him for his wonderful salvation. we live a life of love towards him and our neighbour. [pp. 32-33]   Toon is absolutely correct that this is the way in which the Gospel ought to be presented and what he has captured here is really what the Reformation was all about.  He follows this up by applying it to repentance in which he provides a helpful illustration of the true purpose of repentance – telling people that they are forgiven will not be understood and appreciated if they do not recognize and accept that they have done something wrong for which they need forgiveness. [7]   In the first chapter. “The Anglican Experience” of the second part of the book. Toon gives his account of Catholicity.  He begins by objecting to the Roman Catholic Church “calling itself ‘the Catholic Church’”. i.e.. sans Roman.  because “Catholicity is not confined to that community” [p. 63].  He then provides a “brief word study” of the words “ekklesia” [literally “assembly”. it became the name of the Christian society and therefore “Church” in English] and “catholic” [Gr. katholikos]. correctly noting that “catholic” is first applied to ekklesia by St. Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century and that as applied to the Church it came to have the primary connotations of universality [“the world-wide Church in contrast to the local congregation”] and orthodoxy [the faith of the world-wide Church as opposed to the heresies of separatist sects]. [p. 63-64].  “To receive and accept the Church as it has existed. and as it has believed. taught. confessed. and worshipped. is the beginnings of true Catholicity” he writes.    In subsequent sections he fleshes this out.  He reminds us “that it was the catholic Church. with its imperfections. that gave recognition to what we now call the canon of the New Testament” [p. 66] and while his claims for the Church in this regards are far more modest than those of the Latin and Greek Churches. he adds:   Parallel developments in the Church in this same general period of time included the general recognition of the threefold ministry of bishop. presbyter [=priest] and deacon. the centrality of the Eucharist as the main act of worship on the Lord’s Day. the creation of creeds [e.g. the Apostles’ and Nicene] and the recognition of apostolic tradition [having reference to both the succession of sound teaching and to the historical. personal. succession of bishops]. [ibid].   He warns against claiming too much from history. pointing to the example of Roman Catholicism as doing this by seeing in the historical development of the See of Rome into the papacy ruling the entire episcopate and the dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption of Mary proof of divine approbation of the same and argues for the Church’s indefectibility rather than infallibility. [pp. 67-68]   Then. in discussing how the Church of England’s Catholicity is reformed. i.e.. from “deviant and exaggerated developments and expressions” [p. 68] that had entered the Church in the period prior to the Reformation. he lists twelve examples of elements of the Catholic tradition that the English Reformers made a point of retaining. in some cases even when their Continental counterparts did not.  The list can be found on pages 68-69. I won’t reproduce it here. but will merely note that it is basically an expansion of everything mentioned in the previous block quote.   In the second chapter of this section entitled “Pertinent Examples” he provides extended discussion of the topics of “Bishops”. “the Liturgy of the Eucharist” and “Visible Unity”.  I disagree with his saying under the first heading that “A careful reading of the New Testament reveals that it does not describe or prescribe a single pattern of ordained ministry in the apostolic churches” [p. 76] as it seems quite clear to me that the three-fold ministry is present in the New Testament where it is originally Apostles. presbyters. and deacons. with St. Timothy and St. Titus later assuming the governing role of the Apostles in the office to which the title of bishop [overseer] would very shortly after become attached. [8]  Toon argues for the plene esse view of the episcopate that bishops are necessary for the fullness of the Church. but their absence doesn’t necessarily de-church a body [pp. 77-79] to which I have no objection. [9]  Under the second heading. he begins by observing that the basic structure of the Eucharistic liturgy goes back to the earliest days of Church history and by providing a list of its basic elements [p. 80].  He then draws out the significance of it all – that it is as the very name Eucharist indicates “a great thanksgiving to the Father for all he has done and is doing”. an anamnesis. “the living and effective sign of the sacrifice of Christ. accomplished once for all on the Cross of Calvary”. which includes “an invocation of the Holy Spirit”. and is “the communion of the faithful” [p. 81].  He notes how “the doctrine of Christ presented in the Nicene Creed” is fundamental “to the structure. content and ethos of the developed Eucharist celebrated in the Church over the centuries” [p. 82] and observes that the significance of the Sursum Corda [the vesicles and responses that introduce the Sacramental portion of the liturgy] and shortly thereafter the introduction to the Sanctus is that “we are invited to share in Christ’s heavenly worship through our union with. and in. him” [p. 82].  He reminds us that worship is not supposed to be something we do privately in our pews but is a corporate act [p. 83].   Overall it is an excellent introduction to the evangelicalism and Catholicity of the [orthodox] Anglican tradition.  [1]   There is also a noticeable difference between how the distinction between the canonical books and the “Apocrypha” is handled in the Thirty-Nine Articles and how it is handled in the Belgic Confession in both of which the relevant article is the sixth.[2]   Cranmer’s original version of the article just names the doctrine and refers to the homily. the Elizabethan revision provides an account of the doctrine.  In both versions the homily is called “The Homily of Justification”.  The homily referred to is the third in the first [1547] Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches. more commonly called Book of Homilies. and its actual title is “A Sermon of the Salvation of Mankind by Only Christ Our Saviour from Sin and Death Everlasting.”[3]   This does not contradict the idea of Sacraments as means of grace.  Sacraments are means by which grace is given. faith is the means by which it is received.  Dr. Luther likened faith to the empty hand which receives a gift.  Sacraments. in this analogy. are hands of the Giver not the recipient.  Sacraments share the role of the Word. of which St. Augustine of Hippo said they were a visual form. not the role of faith.[4]  The same thing as a Festschrift [a collection of essays in honour of somebody] but published posthumously.[5]   Toon’s background. prior to his entering the Church of England and her ministry was Methodist.  He began his ministry in the Diocese of Liverpool. the first bishop of which was the very Calvinistic evangelical J. C. Ryle about whom Toon co-wrote a biography.[6]   Toon saw the both/and approach as different from the via media rather than a different interpretation of it.[7]   Repentance has far too often been preached in a way that blasphemes the character of God.  Have you ever heard a sermon in which sinners were encouraged to soften the heart of God with their tears or heard of such a sermon.  That this misrepresents the character of God can be seen in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  While the title character when he determines to return home devises a speech “Father. I have sinned against heaven. and before thee. And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants” he is forgiven by his father before he utters a word of it “But when he was yet a great way off. his father saw him. and had compassion. and ran. and fell on his neck. and kissed him”.  The son’s contrition did not produce the mercy and forgiveness in his father’s heart – it was already there.  What it did do was move him to seek his father where forgiveness was already awaiting him.  The error that attributes more to repentance than this goes back very early but this does not make it less of an error.  As early as the Apostolic Fathers the question of whether serious sins after baptism can be forgiven arose.  One answer was that they could. but only once.  That this would mean that the Jesus Who commanded His disciples to forgive up to 70 times 7 [and He did not mean that they were free to not forgive the 491st time as the Puritan preacher in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights thought] was less forgiving than He required His sinful disciples to be did not seem to occur to such as the author of the Shephard of Hermas.  A more common answer was that they could be forgiven. but that only after a lifetime of repentance and that the forgiveness was less certain than that offered in initial baptism.  This was based on a misreading of the tenth chapter of Hebrews.  The antiquity of these views does not make them Catholic – remember. there are two other tests. The second of these wrong answers produced bad fruit such as the deferral of baptism until the deathbed [Emperor Constantine is a notable example of this] and ultimately the Catholic tradition rejected these bad ideas and a better understanding of grace prevailed.  Satisfaction for sins after baptism is not made by us in our always far from what it should be repentance.  It was made once for all by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.  This Sacrifice is the source of the grace conveyed in the one-time Sacrament of baptism.  It is also the source of the grace conveyed in the repeated Eucharist.  Since it is the same once-for-all Sacrifice the believer confessing his sins in accordance with John 1:9 can be as sure of forgiveness of his post-baptismal sins as of that of his pre-baptismal sins.  Scottish Barthian theologian T. F. Torrance in his doctoral dissertation The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers was quite critical of the Fathers of the second and third centuries for the weakness of their understanding of grace  However. the words from Edmund Burke about accumulated wisdom and the self-correcting power of tradition that Russell Kirk liked to quote seem appropriate here “the individual is foolish…but the species is wise” and just as orthodox Trinitarianism triumphed over Arianism by the end of the fourth century so grace ultimately prevailed around the same time as well.[8]   The thing. the three-fold ministry of the Christian Church corresponding to the three-fold ministry of the Old Testament Church [High Priest/Priest/Levite]. is present in the New Testament.  The only reason there is any dispute about this is due to the words that name the three orders and even there presbyter and deacon when used for offices in the ministry [the words can just mean “elder” and “servant” in a general sense] refer to the same offices to which they have traditionally been applied.  What is disputed is whether episkopos [literally overseer] or bishop is used of the office of the presiding presbyter who shares in the Apostolic governance as in the later tradition [SS Timothy and Titus as examples] or of all presbyters [as its usage in the epistles to SS Timothy and Titus would suggest].  Either way. however. the governing office itself is present in the New Testament and if the word that would become its title was not yet restricted to it in the New Testament this in no way invalidates the later usage of the term since it had to be called something and “overseer” certainly describes the role.[9]  The alternate views are that the episcopate is esse [no Church without it] and bene esse [it is better if the Church has it but a Church can be a Church even in the fullest sense without it].  Plene esse is how most High Churchmen understood it prior to the Oxford Movement.  The only caveat I would offer is that for a Church to be a Church but in a less than full sense because it lacks the Apostolic episcopate it must have an organic connection to the Church of Jerusalem.  While bishops in Apostolic Succession are one form of organic connection and so every Church with them has an organic connection they are not the only such connection. A Church planted as an extension of an older Church [and so on back to the Church of Jerusalem] does not lose this organic connection although it sustains an injury if it loses its bishops such as occurred with the [German] Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Reformation. Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:55:26 +0000 9e7c818d9481d73b229bd691b428d5d0c275603c https://antemodernist.wordpress.com/2026/06/04/good-reading/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:04:27 +0000 5efc3035a4b19b8c635573331b0b6eeb54478250 https://winteryknight.com/2026/06/04/lt-cmdr-john-c-waldron-and-the-heroic-charge-of-vt-8-at-the-battle-of-midway/ I have been reading lots of books about the World War II battles in the Pacific theater lately. and I wanted to write a post about one of the heroes I found who was the most compelling to me. You may have seen him in the old 1976 Midway movie or the new 2019 Midway … Continue reading Lt. Cmdr. John C. Waldron and the heroic charge of VT-8 at the Battle of Midway → Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000 6e581d2528f322ca89b17d55efd961eae3530fdc https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/the-homemaker-hating-man Why Modern Men Hate Homemakers Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:52:02 +0000 945113c0280c0db46e62c49dd90122ba734d82a0 https://inklesspen.blog/2026/05/29/the-conspiracy-to-distract-to-destruction/ “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matt. 6:34. We live in a world full of trouble. Another word that could be used is care: “the cares of this life.” Christians throughout all times have faced the cares of this life. The aim is not to let them choke out the harvest of the … Continue reading The Conspiracy to Distract to Destruction Fri, 29 May 2026 22:25:30 +0000 20a1d995c7a9550bffe5cbac909ffb838226770a https://winteryknight.com/2026/05/29/uk-two-tier-policing-white-victim-of-sikh-stabber-bled-to-death-in-handcuffs/ Once in a while there is a story that goes under the radar of the corporate news media. because it exposes the bad results of their “good intention” policies. In this case. everyone in the secular left corporate news media is in favor of open borders. to increase diversity of skin. [There is no “diversity … Continue reading UK two-tier policing: white victim of Sikh stabber bled to death in handcuffs → Fri, 29 May 2026 14:00:37 +0000 5d8e28c386548c69149cacd97b17ff514b4b3d0c https://inklesspen.blog/2026/05/29/8063/ Fri, 29 May 2026 00:01:34 +0000 2ad118734ad98377613914493c038fb57d8ff704 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/05/27/the-threat-of-ai-in-hollywood-publishing-and-the-future-of-artists-challenge-accepted/ I have so many thoughts about AI when it comes to being an artist. especially as it relates to Hollywood and the publishing industry. Recently. there were graduations where young graduates booed when the idea of AI came up. And I get it. I think the reason why they booed was because so many companies (…) Wed, 27 May 2026 22:49:19 +0000 7cff756941a17bd78e0c470836aaae486f3a7cd4 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/why-tradwife-and-femininity-influencers The TradWife SCAM. Tue, 26 May 2026 21:03:34 +0000 81851e7c2dd82e625a14ee587ef53566ef052768 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-return-of-buccmaster Sum thing is cuman Tue, 26 May 2026 14:38:41 +0000 8459abb8dc226a5f063a448805061692fd4d9602 https://www.menofthewest.net/the-barons-war/ The Norman Conquest was. to the English body politic. like one of those powerful drugs which seriously disorder the constitution for the time. but if the patient has strength to bear the treatment do him permanent good. The Barons' War was. as it were. the last feverish fit resulting from the Conquest. The Normans. though they had adopted French ideas and speech. were in race closely akin to the Anglo-Danes. and the fusion between them was hastened by the accession of the house of Anjou to the throne. Mon, 25 May 2026 20:27:25 +0000 c23a932c785d6bf0b746e1fbf54461fd5a730d7d https://winteryknight.com/2026/05/25/memorial-day-the-82nd-airbornes-heroic-stand-at-the-la-fiere-bridge/ Despite being somewhat retired. I am keeping up with my reading on evidential apologetics and military history. You can always find out what I am reading in the “What I am Reading” page on this blog. Previously. I wrote a post about the top 20 heroic actions of the U.S. armed forces. The book I … Continue reading Memorial Day: the 82nd Airborne’s heroic stand at the La Fière Bridge → Mon, 25 May 2026 14:00:23 +0000 38a856eeecea3f3df21c04ec1d29ff293bdbb599 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/05/lotr-101-lo-lore-of-beastmaster-is.html  Or. Slumbering in Zion. Partying in Rivendell. and Wandering Under the StarsFor the God-given mandate. Work thou in Welldoing. lies mysteriously written. in Promethean Prophetic Characters. in our hearts. and leaves us no rest. night or day. till it be deciphered and obeyed. till it burn forth. in our conduct. a visible. acted Gospel of Freedom. - Sartor Resartus. Thomas Carlyle                                    God is like an ocean. but also. a beautiful landscape LinkA good friend observed we ought to have a celebration for the 100th post. The 101st it is. What follows is recap. celebration. and predictions. it's liable to be a longer post. We've trekked a many a mile. since we set out from the Shire. all those months or even years. ago. I am tempted to invoke the ancient Scottish toast: Here's to Us. Who's Like Us. D... Few. and They're all Dead. You can take that arrogantly. or we can 'creatively misinterpret' it  to mean something along the lines of St. Maximus the Confessor. in his teaching on the Logos-logoi relationship. Our Life matters. because it is not our own. and there is an awfully big Cosmos out there. Because it is not our own. we receive it as our own. a gift. and then we are truly free indeed. Even the Fall was the Happy Fall:“The world was all before them. where to chooseTheir place of rest. and Providence their guide:They hand in hand. with wandering steps and slow.Through Eden took their solitary way.” (Paradise Lost). Book XII. lines 646–649All moral progress is perpetually a starting over. from the very beginning. a Divine 'Do it Again.'. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning. but the variation is due not to my activity. but to my inaction. Now. to put the matter in a popular phrase. it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due. not to a lifelessness. but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen. for instance. in children. when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess. not absence. of life. Because children have abounding vitality. because they are in spirit fierce and free. therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say. “Do it again”. and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning. “Do it again” to the sun. and every evening. “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. it may be that God makes every daisy separately. but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy. for we have sinned and grown old. and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence. it may be a theatrical encore.- G.K. Chesterton. Orthodoxy. [Chicago: Moody Publishers. 2009]. 91-92.There can be no living Truth. no organic growth. no authenticity. when God's Eternal Yes is forgotten. just re-declension into the wild wastes of the poet Dante. We must move. and yet remain still. at the same time. Otherwise. we go in circles. losing our way.  'In the middle of our life's journey. I found myself in a dark wood' ['Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura'] - DanteHumans go mad in groups. and come to their senses. one at a time. Christ Himself referred to the dire existential dangers of the traditions of men. But woe unto you. scribes and Pharisees. hypocrites. for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves. neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Matthew 23:13Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition. which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. Mark 7:13Humans try to collectively fix problems. and end up making them worse. Even Religion and Tradition are double edged swords. So is Esotericism. There is probably a reason that the Essenes are passed over in silence. in the NT. It is likely that it was their esotericism. which was behind the Scribes. the Sadducees. the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin. Or [alternatively] that Jesus Himself was an Essene. in which case. He gave us the version of Essene teaching we would want to know.      If your view of God excludes pelicans or laying hens. you may desire a rethink. LinkIf I want to progress. I have to have a center. and I have to have a goal. Ideally - superessentially. even - there is no absolute separation between them. It should be. to borrow a Tolkienism. There and Back Again. Christ is both the Key and the Door. to Paradise. If we learn what that means. we might know something. As Rosenstock-Huessy puts it. progress is learning to 'fall less'. from a constant center. the center of the Cross. If you want to know what God looks like. and who you are simultaneously. then look at Jesus. If you can escape false and bad infinities in the gnomic will. then the higher self and the logoi and the Logos are all seamlessly dancing. though they may never quite be precisely identical. They are. at the very least. in better and even right relation to the others in a way that makes one authentically 'in the world. but not of it'. This was the Pauline Project. [An aside: there's a reason St. Paul got. and gets. such bad press. constantly]. Christ is the primordial Lord of the Dance. the Once-and-Future-King.Sceptical. It's all over the Scriptures. inside and out: For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Phillipians 2:13Even when someone participates in initiatory esotericism. God remains on the 'inside' of the 'interior' - He is always prior to us. even when He is the 'heart of the heart'. One of the jumbo-sized dangers of initiatory esotericism is that one forgets about the 'waters above'. that there are 'illusions above. as there are below' [Tomberg]. and stumbles into a 'bad infinity' [Berdyaev's wording]: The problem of messianism is also presented in the secular public. Here. based on the texts of Berdyaev. it is possible to designate “secularized” messianism [Berdyaev 2008c. 189]. Berdyaev defines messianism as human activity in the historical sphere. inspired by faith in the approaching end of history. Consequently. messianism is inherent in both the church and secular society. In immanent history. the goal of history is unattainable. there is only an approach to “bad infinity”. to the formation of a rationalized and mechanized society [Berdyaev 2008c. 192].Phillip Rieff showed us just how much of our 'vertical' is actually horizontal. You can dispute Hegel on bad or false infinities. but I utilize the word [like Berdyaev] to designate an ersatz vertical - that is. a vertical that is actually uncritiqued and un-deconstructed by God's Truth. and no true vertical at all. The Truth given us in the Gospel is already critiqued and deconstructed by God. Who does so to Himself. in the giving of the Gospel. You cannot demythologize living Truth. since it is already the demythologizing solvent extraordinaire [H/T Walter Kunneth]. The kenotic Christ cannot be humiliated or disproven. since that was perforce His mission - He abdicated [as the servant]. You cannot kill a God. Who is always [like the Pelican] slaying Himself in loving sacrifice for His Creation. God's omnipotence stems from His Zen-like super-essence to imitate water: 'The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.'                                        Lao Tzu riding away from the world. on top of the world LinkWho is it. in all the worlds of all the worlds. Who has taken both the lowest place [like water]. and yet holds the Center. and is the 'Standing One' [Hestos]. Water has to go 'under' the Earth. or the Earth can have no Life. It is always a surprise when the Water 'springs up' from the Earth. as living Water. But why should it be. Perhaps so we may have Joy. since the Joy IS the surprise. Christianity teaches that it was Jesus Christ Who was 'declared to be the Son of God' with power. His exaltation is a function of his abasement of Himself [kenosis of person]. and then His work. which is to 'hold the Center' between God and Man. It is astonishing - frankly - how difficult so many people find it. to grasp the love of God for them in the Gospel. Or how at times [since Faith is intermittent] I can find it hard. But one can simplify things extraordinarily. by simply hanging on to that same fact. and returning to it: the Unum Necessarium [Or. The One Thing Necessary] is to remember that both Life and renewed Life are a gift of God. Nothing exists. not even as one of the Permanent Things. or the Transcendentals. unless it is the love of God. which is God giving Himself [the Giver is always Greater than the Gift]. We can know our Sin. in the light of God's Love - ever greater than Sin. What's to lose. What's not to like. God's simplicity of being. means at least this...          'The Joy is the surprise' : this sums up Lawler's book on knowing God through poetryWhether we argue from the Lesser to the Greater. or the Greater to the Lesser. there is no fallacy. and we come to the same place. Think I make that up. Search the Scriptures. Start with either Sin. or God. and you reach the same Salvation. which is why William Blake can truly say. [even] 'The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom'. 18 My little children. let us not love in word. neither in tongue. but in deed and in truth. 19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth. and shall assure our hearts before him. 20 For if our heart condemn us. God is greater than our heart. and knoweth all things. 21 Beloved. if our heart condemn us not. then have we confidence toward God.. 1 John 3:18-21To know anything. you must [then] of necessity know everything - that is. God. If you know anything. you know God. There are no 'facts' apart from God. and He is not an 'object' like unto other 'objects'. Although He is not merely the precondition of knowledge. He certainly is that. as well. and in His very person. So if you know something. however small [even if it is to know that you know nothing]. you know Him. He is the knowing and the knower. It is impossible to escape God. but. this entrapment is the escape. since as it turns out. God is Him in whom we live. and move. and have our being. Being trapped by God means. opening to the door into Reality. Infinity. and Immortality: that is to say. Resurrection. To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality. eternal life- Romans 2:7Phillip Rieff calls our 'crawfishing' around. shufflings of the horizontal. It's where we all 'start'. or.  the Moon [File]God wants people to come out from under their rock. but He is patient and isn't forcing anyone. We have. as they say. all the time we need. God does not spiritually rape His creatures. but rather. woos them. It's astonishing the objections that are raised to this. There is a lovely reason that. in Alchemy. the black [detachment] and white [purification] are required before the Rubedo [red] : accept no substitute before you leap. The Bible is God's love letter to His Creation. Whether we slumber in Zion with most of the Church. Party at Rivendell with the cool kids who are into the esoteric stuff. or wander under the stars like the elves [determined to reach the end of the journey that is no ending] there is no conflict. I. Slumbering in Zion: Who am I. II. Party at Rivendell : I am a logoiIII. Wandering under the Stars: the logoi and the Logos. togetherThe below sequence of images visualizes for us what happens. when man tries to ape. fabricate. or gin up the above sequence. on his own. without the Lord. and always collectively. They are photographs or paintings from the Battle of Verdun. Not much progress. And it really happens... I. The Dead Bones wonder who they areII. They try to instantiate the Eschaton and their logoi. in their own wayIII. They wander under the stars of Eternity in 'eternal death'So which way is better - ours or God's.. Safety from becoming a 'Ghost of Verdun' lies in actively cultivating cooperative energies with le bon Dieu. The Squire has been there. We've been around the block of Life. or God. And we have questions. for ourselves. and others. that will bear fruit.                    Link For instance. Where is Radagast the Brown. What else have we lost track of. With God. we have 'all the time we need'. It is licit to go back to the past. and to redeem the times - the Church has everything to do. and always very little time. to do it in. Nothing has changed. and nothing has been lost. forever. All Time is Forever. with God. and all eternity is. for God. present. But Jesus answered them. My Father worketh hitherto. and I work. - John 5:17 But. beloved. be not ignorant of this one thing. that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years. and a thousand years as one day. - 2 Peter 3:8[For he saith. I have heard thee in a time accepted. and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold. now is the accepted time. behold. now is the day of salvation.] 2 Cor. 6:2Tolkien spoke of Radagast. but altered his views over the years. For our purposes. Radagast the Brown can stand for the erring but neglected fullness of human nature. which the Church has had of necessity to mar. in order to try and save. We cite concrete events from history. such as the Synod of Whitby. All well and good. but turn and turn about. it must be paid for. MD Lauer explains how all of this has to work - you have to fix your triumphs - as much or more than - your failures. Even the Ekklesia has to do this. Especially. the Ekklesia. The Sword and Fire of the Spirit begins with the Ekklesia. If you've followed the blog from its inception [or gone back over it]. you know that we especially deal with what is called The Problem of Evil. Why do we live in a world that is 'red in tooth and claw'. It's not just that 'bad things happen to good people'. but it is that the world seems to run off of the Evil. that Evil supplies the grease that makes the world go round. Why the Hell is that. Dog eat dog is an effective military and national strategy. Why is this. It makes one weary of the old world. and like to sit on the porch. sip whiskey. to speak the mortal plaint in old Scotch. which is a proper dialect for it. Here is the elite version of it. and below is the more homely 'Kailyard' version: Gin I was God by Charles MurrayGIN I was God. sittin up there abeen.Weariet nae doot noo a my darg was deen. Deaved wi the harps an hymns oonendin ringin. Tired o the flockin angels hairse wi singin. To some clood-edge I'd daunder furth an. feth. Look ower an watch hoo things were gyaun aneth. Syne. gin I saw hoo men I'd made mysel Had startit in to pooshan. sheet an fell. To reive an rape. an fairly mak a hell O my braw birlin Earth.--a hale week's wark--I'd cast my coat again. rowe up my sark. An or they'd time to lench a second ark.Tak back my word an sen anither spate. Droon oot the hale hypothec. dicht the sklate. Own my mistak. an. aince I cleared the brod. Start a'thing ower again. gin I was God.Mankind can [and will] be forgiven for thinking. the Christian Church hasn't made much of a dent in the problem after two thousand years. and sometimes is the star villain in the billed feature. Still. for all that. the critics of Christ and Christianity have no creative alternative. The world changed with the Incarnation. and is not done changing.    People have been wondering what the Heck is going on. for a long time...At The Squire. we not only celebrate. but rejoice in these questions. Unanswered. perhaps unanswerable. questions. are the only ones worth asking. The Way Out. is Further In. but without sinning more. rather. sinning less. and Only the love of Wisdom can drive out the passion for sin. The owl of wisdom. flies at twilight. And this is pellucidly. obviously. common-sensically. the case. Whatever solution exists. would have to meet paradoxical conditions such as these. [to list a few which we have toured]. Come up with your own. better ones. as you can. 1. Movement without motion - remaining at the center. while questing far afield2. Going further into investigating Evil's nature. without sinning or falling to despair [Ponerology]3. Preserve personhood. while transcending individuality [you could say it the other way around]4. Provide a program of action externally. while delving into interior states5. Finding God - the knowledge of God - while not turning Him into an object6. [If you are Christian] Deepening Faith into Hope and Gnosis and Love. without losing FaithAnd so on. so forth. What Carl Jung called the 'union of contraries' or coincidentia oppositorum - which medieval theologians like Nicholas of Cusa used to explicitly teach. Whatever answer is given to Evil. Meaning. the Cosmos. and even 'the Good' or 'the Monad'. it will necessarily have to preserve Nature. and perfect it. rather than obliterating it. So make your list.  This is our Mandate and our Moon-Date [the Moon being the sign of the Feast of the New Moon. Recreation and New Birth]. We already have the Form. being made in the form of Man. And we are given burning questions by the Cosmos. Yet everyone goes for the precise but prefabricated answers. For these types of questions to be precise. they cannot be prefabricated - God. the soul. and immorality are tasks. So we can question pat answers. Or pat questions. too. What if one of the salient facts of mortal human condition is. you have to forego ego-determined precision and exactitude. to even get started. If the point of the human organism is to develop and perfect freedom in such a way. that unique personal answers are hand-carved for the transcendent. Divine questions posed to the human being. then you can't go about over and pre-determining pat answers. You even have to put your questions. to the question. You have to imagine what the Truth might look like. Then maybe the living Truth will show up. You can set conditions. but then you have to see what appears. and modify those conditions. accordingly. Real 'answers'. then. would be the tentative. mystical. meditative ones. the ones that lie deepest in the consciousness. and are the most difficult to tease to the surface. or express. Real answers come only for real questions. You have to find the right questions. first. And here is a definitive answer we can formulate: a real answer is one that allows you to ask a more profound question. or deepen the one that you have. That is where Truth and safety lie. which will set you free indeed. These kinds of questions [as answers] have greater explanatory depth. greater continuity [also] with the Past. and check out. in the sense that they can be confirmed at various levels. and in various ways. They are the kinds of big Questions. that set you free of the little ones. They are actions which decrease the need for fruitless actions. and lead you towards the tops of the Lonely or the Misty Mountains. or Gondor's peaks. or even Mount Doom. Wherever you are desiring to go. When the Church needs Reforming - a little rambunctious Calvinism. Orthodox-style : Chuck your local Tulchan Bishop  SourceSo when we see 20th century Orthodox Christians behaving like iconoclastic 16th century Calvinists. this shouldn't throw us for a loop. To pick one bizarre example. We not only are not agog. we expect to see constant paradox and union of contraries in the world. the marriage of Heaven and Hell. as Blake put it. The Squire is not flummuxed. no. There is a reason a lot of Reformed people go to the East.                  The overly rationalized person: Diagram from Volume II. Boris Mouravieff. Gnosis IIIf you start by standing on your own head. you can turn the world upside down. A candle. hid under a bushel. turned upside down. becomes a blaze. The candle of the heart must have the bushel-shielding of the head removed. to receive the Easter flame of the Resurrection. If you see the ironies. paradoxes. and contradictions of your own internal being. in sharper constrast than the world [even] can project or objectify them for you. you cannot be 'seen' - you become 'wholly flame' - your 'unseeing' of the world's illusion. and your Unseen that you enter. engender the Secret Fire. Or. who made who. Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him. “Abba. insofar as I can. I say my prayers. I keep my little fast. and I pray and meditate and practice contemplative silence. and insofar as I can I purify myself of distracting thoughts. Now what more shall I do.” The elder stood up and stretched his hands to heaven. and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. and he said to him. “If you wish. become completely as fire.” LinkAll of Creation is tending. or super-intending towards it. anyway. There is no law against the Holy Spirit. Agni. or the Secret Fire. We don't think this is limited to esoteric exercises. but [as Tolkien suggests] something accessible to the ordinary believer. through cooperation and imagination. with the Holy Spirit. 7 For none of us liveth to himself. and no man dieth to himself.8 For whether we live. we live unto the Lord. and whether we die. we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore. or die. we are the Lord's.9 For to this end Christ both died. and rose. and revived. that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. 10 But why dost thou judge thy brother. or why dost thou set at nought thy brother. for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Romans 10:7-10According to Jean Dubuis. every human being is in the process of creating  a unique path to God. I don't quite know enough yet. and probably never will. to say if this is definitely true or false. but I can say it's a sign of the Times: the Universe is complexifying and clarifying.  Little children. it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come. even now are there many antichrists. whereby we know that it is the last time. - 1 John 2:18If Jean Dubuis is 'right'. it will be because of the many logoi. the many Jesuii [and their demonic counterfeits]. which are abroad in the world at this time. So in the future. all religions will disappear. The spirit of liberty of your country will lead to the total absence of religion in the world. Each will be his own religion. Little by little each person will be his own religion. You are at the beginning of this process. no gurus. no masters. and everyone will be his own guru. and master. and everyone will have his own oratory. The multiplication of sects which at the moment seems dangerous will go on until everyone has got his own religion. because as many human beings as there are on this planet. there are revealed religions. Everyone has the right to pretend to his own religion. because our return to Eternity is our own Path that we do by ourselves and the Path for everyone is different from the Path for all others. even though all these Paths lead to Eternity.Christianity will become the sole surviving world religion. since it alone is not a religio in the traditional sense. and all other religions fall under the death of the 'Law'. However. there will be the counterfeit: Anti-Christ and all the little anti-christs. Only the 'little fish' can swim under water. in the great spiritual deluge of the ocean of God's glory. Everything else. will asphyxiate. For I through the law am dead to the law. that I might live unto God. Galatians 2:19Tradition is the Law. A necessary first step. But not the Gospel. Where else on the Net but The Squire will you find such hair splitting of opposites-that-are-no-opposites. We will bring you the Truth. whether you want it. recognize. live it. or work with it - or not. Link: The Modern World - it wasn't on fire leaving the run way. but it's having difficulty with a soft landingLet us count the sights we have seen from this front porch. In no particular order.... The Squire was never deceived about the salvific possibilities of AI: Why AI Can't Think [Daniel Goldman]. AI is the last big boondoggle. Hail Mary before industrial civilization goes completely belly up at its last gasp. I hate it for Industrial Civilization. but then again. it's made us all pretty miserable. it had its day. and it's not really very civilized. It's fitting that it may go down in flames in the straights of Hormuz. Get ready for the Long Descent. The dystopic applications of AI. though. presuppose that we have already degraded our sense of self by transforming into a matter of consumer choice. and squelched the higher functions of the mind to make room for hedonistic adventures. That isn’t AI rising to the level of human thought. that. rather. is humanity sinking to the level of inanimate objectification. The real danger lies not in AI. but in ourselves.The costs of AI will end up ruining what is left of the American Empire. . I predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine. a long time ago. back in 2014 or so. So the coming Civil War in Europe. is pretty easy to ecbatically prophesy. I am far from alone in predicting the Dawn of a Pole Shift in spiritual matters. which will impact geopolitics: The Light of the World calls the horse race well. How’d that work out though. How many species have had to die because of the gift of fire. Technology. Light. How many of the megafauna have we buried and how many great forests cut down and how many oceans polluted and how many of one another have we enslaved and tortured and killed. Maybe Daddy didn’t give us fire because we weren’t mature enough to wield it. Maybe Prometheus really is the bad guy. Maybe. really. he was just giving weapons to a toddler and Earth’s real father and creator had his mind on the welfare of the whole thing. not just Man’s temporary hardship in the winter.We are at the end of the hyper-industrialized. Faustian Era. Whatever comes next. will be very different. . We've had great fun pointing out how modern architecture resembles Orthanc and Barad-dur. Or the Death Star. Art imitates Life. and Life imitates Art. What you contemplate. you become.                                                         Obama's Legacy. Tomb. and Death Star. The Squire puts things in bigger picture frames for better context. Instead of hyper-ventilating. we step back and consider - History always happens this way. For example. England is busy scrubbing their wartime heroes like Churchill. with furry forest animals. This doesn't take The Squire off guard - all good things must change or end. Scotland is trying hard to catch up. We've followed the self-immolation of the West. from a position best described as Cynical Optimism. We stand with the men of the lost kingdom of Elmet. part of the Old North [Hen Ogledd]. who in their loss. helped transmit the Holy Grail. It's not the end of anything. except what is already passing away. What's important is what comes after. And 'death' can be deceiving. As can 'Reality' itself. But we instinctively know this - that's why we listen to Fairy Tales.   . Nor do we think salvation will come 'from the Rest'. though it's not 'in the West'. China has globalized at the eleventh hour. and in the worst possible way: Xi does resemble Winnie the Pooh. but unfortunately is not nearly as nice. nor lucky. of a guy. I'm pretty sure the forced organ harvesting of criminals and the Falun Gong. like that of abortion in America. will hold them back from their expected world domination schemes. China will have to go back to its roots if it wants to keep being the world's oldest continuous civilization. with India. Then again. so will we. with any luck. According to an interview Dodd gave shortly before his death. Gaither asked him. off the record. if he knew the purpose of the Ford Foundation. Dodd was indeed curious. “We shall use our grantmaking power.” said Gaither. “so as to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.” Source. We have watched the rise of the OrthoBros with admiration and concern. Spengler's 'second religiosity' spate is in full swing. Expect atheists. Wiccans. occultists and secular icons to make highly publicized announcements of their conversions back to The One True Faith. These people will want to be movers and shakers. right away. in their new homes. Paul Kingsnorth is a good example.. The visions of Jesus sweeping the Middle East among Muslims. likewise. are to be expected. Jesus is held in more reverence by many Muslims. than many Westerners. Shia Muslims in particular. hold dreams to be important. Iran was Zoroastrian. then Orthodox. then Nestorian Christian. before it was Muslim. As Mouravieff puts it. the 'spiritual center of gravity' is in the Christian world. on planet earth. This will remain the case. despite the fall of the West. China and Iran and other places have existential physical challenges. as well. . The Squire highlighted that we are moving into an age of Art. to harmonize the Philosophy-Religion-Science cycle. The conservatives are missing the boat. here. But whatever you do. do not interrogate your art for whether it will make money. much less whether your audience wants it. Audiences do not know what they want. Contemporary man sits in a state of spiritual stupefaction. waiting to be told what is good and what is worth fighting for. As such. those of us who are out of sync with the modern world have the chance to show people what they should desire. the things of ultimate value. Art is a war of belief. and if you aren’t showing people what is worthy of love and aspiration. you aren’t fighting it. Create bold. unapologetic visions of the truths you believe. and the world will recognize them as art. politics be damned. If you subordinate your vision to safe. consumer-driven demands. you will only show the world that you don’t believe in much of anything at all.Post-Modernity is not the problem. Ultra-Modernity is. we follow John Millbank on this. RJ Rushdoony said it long ago- the collapse of the world is not bad news. it would be bad if they were succeeding. Post-modernity just means the latest Anti-Christ is getting their post-mortem come-uppance. The fact that this coincides with a decline of European genetic material and quality is unfortunate. but is not 'the end of Creation'. Like the Phoenix. what is Beautiful. Good. and True cannot be stormed. With any luck. it will be Russia leading the world. as the bridge between the new-old West. and the old-new East. The numbers don't lie - The West's Dominance was temporaryThe West will retreat to its moral high ground. and there it will find that the purification and the spiritual compression of tribulation [the White and the Black] will direct it back to a vision of the Rubedo.     The lonely places or on the high ground is the place where the final confrontation comes. The high ground. the place of sacrifice. is also the place of purification where evil is vanquished and good triumphs. Everyone wants pat answers. and failing that. Trendy Ideas. We would rather understand History - what it is. where we stand. and where it is headed. . We have noted the premonitory symptoms of the collapse of higher education. exemplified with this. this. or this. Higher education. at one point in time. was an initiation in the lesser mysteries. That even managed to be true in this country. although it's hard to picture that now.                                                  Me Watching the News These Days...if I let myself go...LinkOur college elite used to read almost-sacred scriptures like this -  Zeus. who guided mortals to be wise.has established his fixed law—wisdom comes through suffering.Trouble. with its memories of pain.drips in our hearts as we try to sleep.so men against their willlearn to practice moderation.Favours come to us from godsseated on their solemn thrones—such grace is harsh and violent....and rejoice. Such Truth as King Lear was good news. It was good. because the Tragic View of Life was the Law that raised man's level of Being so that he could understand the Gospel. It abased the lower intellect. that it might raise man to the higher. But the well-heeled kids are not challenged anymore. They're worried about the Economy. Stupid. Old Mammon. For the law was given by Moses. but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. John 1:17. We've anticipated the Red Star Rising. Mamdani. however. is 'neither man nor beast. but a statue'. Like all the handsome. charismatic Leftists they throw at the problem. Good-looking. but rigidly Leftist. because that's all they can imagine differently. The neo-Marxists think that if they can just try. one more time. they can make it work. OK. but this is The Final Sacrifice. The Neoliberal ideology embraced by federal and state governments as well as corporations has effectively removed the human value of students and replaced it with an unregulated market driven business enterprise model. The Neoliberal vision of society is one in which competition for wealth is the only value and virtually all social decisions are left to unregulated markets. LinkPolitics is downstream of culture. and culture is downstream of imagination. We hope our young people don't get too enamored. of Cultural Revolutions. A neoliberal post-literate society is turning into a post-literate society. if by literacy you mean. familiarity with Truth. Beauty. and Goodness. or an ability to not be controlled by clever or catchy memes. Where else will you see the Bishop of Saisett's quip on Philip the Fair. re-applied to NYC politics. I suppose I've been influenced here some by MST3K and the OneCosmosBlogspot. . We warned of the Coronavirus scamdemic. very early on. . We examined the futility of all Utopias. physical or spiritual. See here. here. and here. The early United States was the perfect place to try to create utopian communes. With zero exceptions. they all failed. Even the USA itself can be viewed as a gigantic utopian experiment. with the verdict still out. but not looking great. 'Why do bad things happen. Because they seemed like a good idea at the time.' James Howard Kunstler. You can cure all your political depression. just by reading some history. We help make that quite easy. at The Squire. Things change slowly in history. because of our ant-like perspective. At the scale of history. they change swiftly and dramatically. We try to gauge the actual winds. from concrete metaphysics and granular history. . Finally. The Squire is ecumenical in a specifically Christian. but enormously universal. sense. While bluntly confessing that all Creation revolves around the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. we emphasize the all.  To us. Mark Twain is not a hell-bound infidel but an interesting thinker who points out the problems with the Protestant reliance on pure conscience and the existestial predicament of human nature generally [for instance]: O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience-- that independent Sovereign. that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences. because there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one way. a philanthropist's in another. a miser's in another. a burglar's in still another. As a GUIDE or INCENTIVE to any authoritatively prescribed line of morals or conduct [leaving TRAINING out of the account]. a man's conscience is totally valueless. I know a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was troubling him. to phrase it with exactness--BECAUSE HE HAD NEGLECTED TO KILL A CERTAIN MAN--a man whom he had never seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a fight. this man's Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. He neglected his duty--kept dodging it. shirking it. putting it off. and his unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last. to get ease of mind. comfort. self-approval. he hunted up the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of SELF- SACRIFICE [as per the usual definition]. for he did not want to do it. and he never would have done it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even another man's lifeEven Mark Twain has a logoi. Especially Twain. We follow Tomberg [H/T C. Salvo at Gornahoor]: Paganism is not just paganism. nor are all paganisms equal.There remains. lastly. the fourth form of “paganism'— that of the worship of collectively engendered demons. This form of paganism. which is due to the degeneration of the other three forms —and above all of 'naturalistic paganism'—is the only form of paganism where demons were engendered. worshipped and obeyed. and which led to the whole of paganism being renamed unjustly and calumniously as the 'demoniacal religion'. The Church fathers. who—with a few exceptions — treated it as such. had in truth to do above all with degenerate paganism and. consequently. were right in seeing in the popular pagan cult of their time either the cult of demons or the fables of poets. But those amongst them such as Clement of Alexandria. Origen. St. Augustine. and Synesius. who had knowledge of the paganism of the initiates and philosophers [which was the pure essence of paganism as such]. spoke of what “all men possess as a healthy anticipation of the moral doctrine'. As Origen expressed it: 'There is. . . nothing amazing about it if the same God has implanted in the souls of all men the truths which He taught through the prophets and the Saviour'. [Origen. Contra Celsum i. 4. trsl. H. Chadwick. Cambridge. 1953. pp. 8-9] - Valentine TombergEvery Knee Must Bow means that man's first pass through paganism [and passing on paganism] has to be redeemed. It's an ambitious project. and other thinkers are working on it. Do you want Alexander Dugin to have to do all the heavy lifting. And write all the new rules. I don't. Here at The Squire. we pretend to spit in everyone's eye. and be spiritual and religious.. We may have lost our intestines. but have we ever lost our sense of humor. We hope not. God has a sense of humor. so we use what little we have. here at The Squire. Hopefully. we avoid the trap of the buffoon or clown. aspiring to more divine jests. All hail the prophets of Babylon Bee.  Their job is increasingly harder. since Reality is far more scintillating. satirical. and full of mordant gallows humor. than Fiction can ever be. Yet they keep up...Is The Babylon Bee reading John Michael Greer's posts on Situationism...Behold the immortal Porta-John of Baghdad. in its new setting at the Louvre...I haven't been this excited. since Christophe wrapped the Pont-Neuf [H/T Dennis Miller]. Link. We also bring before you interesting new theological perspectives. David Bentley Hart here explores the consequences of believing that Jesus isn't just the objectified Son of God and second person. but at the same time. God Himself in Creation. and what that means. Dr. Jordan Woods works on the same material. So does the former Archbishop of Canterbury. And so are the Russian theologians. like Bulgakov. Get ready for the Christian Renaissance. Walter Kunneth and William Porcher DuBose worked on such things in the past. but this is close to the root of the matter. Karl Barth would be reading these guys. if he were still around. There are no newspapers or letters. not even from committees of correspondence. that implement Christian humanism with daily 'Happenings'. First Things tries. but it has to avoid jesting and there are things it cannot say. We just empower the Reader. while pointing out possible interesting vistas along the way. like a tour guide. If you've come this far. you should be mobile. hostile. and agile. The Squire is a truly catholic. orthodox. protesting and reforming Newsletter of Ye Olde Current Events. dedicated to spiritual sanity and historical relish. at the same time. It's good to be alive. Here's to Us. Who's like Us..   Fri, 22 May 2026 03:09:23 +0000 b4a7e9701026b92e200641d5313fc620ae892b75 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/i-did-pilates-for-30-days-and-lost How Pilates helped me lose the 'baby weight.' Fri, 22 May 2026 00:41:42 +0000 3c4a933f2d8dec2d46fecc475ef845d37b13b9e5 https://winteryknight.com/2026/05/20/bettina-arndt-explains-why-traditional-men-are-declining-to-date-and-marry/ Well. the last [maybe] episode of Knight and Rose Show is up and I’m starting to wind down the blogging and spend more time on my health. fitness. nutrition and playing all the games that I had been neglecting. But I’m still very active on Twitter. And I saw a great article on there from … Continue reading Bettina Arndt explains why traditional men are declining to date and marry → Wed, 20 May 2026 14:00:32 +0000 9697a34884f3bd944fd7d0f84491ec4cd8dac4f0 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/05/17/the-odyssey-backlash-i-cant-go-see-this-movie/ It’s really unfortunate. but I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before. You ever look forward to something for a long time. only to slowly watch that excitement turn into concern. Then concern turns into dread. Then dread turns into. “You know what. I don’t think I can support this.” That’s where I am (…) Sun, 17 May 2026 17:03:36 +0000 bb1977a243a2de8e2cc7927a1c8b1a2fe864013b https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/05/13/the-war-on-men-and-children-continues-by-women/ As I’m sure many of you have seen by now. the famous polling of positive vs negative view of the opposite sex. Younger women are being more and more radicalized by social media and scare mongering to be afraid of … Continue reading → Wed, 13 May 2026 19:57:15 +0000 c54951f2002e772d30bd6799a6f0eb79b91ddbd9 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-may-465 Take the floor. my friends. and speak Tue, 12 May 2026 16:07:36 +0000 9768aa58b85fe38a35792cc0a2ee18b72c85e1e7 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/05/12/are-modern-churches-afraid-to-tell-the-truth/ When churches become so focused on attracting the world that they forget to strengthen the saints… I recently came across a video on YouTube called “Why I Still Reject Popular Christianity.” and I wanted to share it because it expresses something I’ve been thinking about for a while when it comes to seeker churches. popular (…) Tue, 12 May 2026 13:10:54 +0000 b551d7de7dbe5b3d2676b25e66ddf43b286dd002 https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/sex-differences-and-1-timothy-2/ One of the struggles that the complementarians have had issues with is the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2. Not in terms of allowing female pastors but rather having an adequate justification for it. 1 Timothy 2:11 A woman should learn … Continue reading → Mon, 11 May 2026 20:18:08 +0000 7ab92321cc21afc7a7272604df0d6ebeecc6c770 https://winteryknight.com/2026/05/09/knight-and-rose-show-76-passing-the-torch-standing-firm-in-a-secular-culture/ Welcome to episode 76 of the Knight and Rose podcast. In this episode. Wintery Knight and Desert Rose interview our protégé Ella. a promising young Christian standing firm in her convictions in secular Europe. If you like this episode. please subscribe to the podcast. and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you … Continue reading Knight and Rose Show n76: Passing the Torch: Standing Firm in a Secular Culture → Sat, 09 May 2026 14:00:50 +0000 30f5824db39321ea3411987e31609b522dbd47a2 https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-right-words-for-opposing-liberalism.html In a social media group devoted to Canadian Politics last week. I saw someone make the claim that the old Conservatives have disappeared and been replaced by the Reform/Alliance types and that today’s Liberals are where the Conservatives were forty plus years ago.  She was half-right.  The part she got wrong. however. was the exact opposite of the truth. a fact of which I informed her.    It is true that those who call themselves “Conservatives”. big or little c. today. are basically a watered down version of what the Reform/Alliance was in the final decade of the last century. which was a populist party that was “conservative” only in the American sense of the word. a sense which has no roots deeper than the [classical] liberalism upon which the United States was founded and which is not significantly different from the original philosophy and platform of the Liberal Party [which called itself Reform in the era of Confederation].  The shift from the old Canadian conservatism to American-style neo-conservatism is not however. as this lady seemed to think. adequately explained by the dropping of “Progressive” from the party’s title. “Progressive” was not part of the party’s title in Confederation but was added to it about a decade after the old “Progressive” party – a farmers’ populist party – dissolved.  This was done because John Bracken. the premier of my province at that time. had been asked to take over the leadership of the federal Conservatives and made this a condition of his acceptance.  Bracken had been premier of Manitoba since 1922 [he was the longest to serve in this office]. initially governing as leader of the provincial version of the Progressive Party [which at first called itself the United Farmers of Manitoba]. then after the party collapsed as leader of the Manitoba Liberals.  When “progressive” was added to the title of the Conservative Party therefore. it was with the sense of “western. agrarian. populist” and not the sense it normally has in politics.   It is not true that today’s Liberals. big or small l. are where the old Conservatives were prior to neo-conservatism.  On one important matter they are portraying themselves as taking the position of the old Conservatives. the matter of standing up for Canada against the threat of American takeover.  Note that the threat and their stance against it conveniently came at the time when they were facing an historical defeat in a Dominion election.  That Canadians bought this posturing from the Liberals - the reverse of their historical position which had been to push for closer economic. cultural and political ties between Canada and the United States – can probably be attributed to neo-conservatism’s takeover of the Conservative party. although the Conservatives having betrayed their old position for that of the Liberal Party by no means logically implies that the Liberals can be trusted to stand up for the old Conservative position.  For most of the past thirteen years. the Liberals have positioned themselves not where the old Conservatives were prior to neo-conservatism. but in territory that forty-some years ago would have been regarded as beyond the pale in the land of the looney Left.   They were taking positions on moral. social. and cultural matters that as recently as twenty years ago. liberals of my acquaintance insisted could not possibly be the direction towards which their movement was heading and which until about twenty years ago. would have been regarded as too far to the Left even by some members of the NDP. [1]  Indeed. the Liberals’ relentless insistence on shoving this looney-tunes nonsense down Canadians throats. no matter how unpopular it was. significantly contributed to the rapidly declining polls from which they were rescued by a change in leadership around the time the jackass that the Americans had recently returned to the White House started relentlessly threatening us with Anschluss.  The current Liberal leader. whom I call Blofeld due to his resemblance to the last actor to play that character in a James Bond film. [2] is not the exact replica of his predecessor. whom I call Captain Airhead for obvious reasons. that the neo-conservative media try to make him out to be.  Nevertheless the Liberal Party he leads. while perhaps somewhat closer to the centre than before. is still out there in left field.   In the same social media discussion I said that I am no longer comfortable describing myself as a “conservative” since over the course of my lifetime I have seen this word co-opted by the neo-conservatives and redefined to mean what it means in the United States. i.e.. the older form of American liberal.  I am comfortable with the term “conservative” only in the older and better sense of the word. the sense associated in Canada with Sir John A. Macdonald and the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker. with humourist/economist Stephen Leacock. philosopher George Grant. and historian Donald Creighton.  The “conservative” whose conservatism is that of John Farthing’s Freedom Wears a Crown and Diefenbaker’s Those Things We Treasure rather than that of National Review and Fox News. a conservatism that looks back to Edmund Burke and better yet Richard[s] Hooker and Field. Dean Swift. John Dryden and Dr. Johnson rather than to John Locke and J. S. Mill.  A conservatism that is all about tradition. order. and continuity. which places honour. loyalty. and the virtues of Christendom and the age of chivalry above the values of commercialism and mercantilism. A conservatism which believes in freedom in community rather than in isolated and atomized individuals. which trusts the Westminster parliamentary system that has been refined during the course of a thousand years of history over any constitution drawn up on paper three centuries ago by revolutionaries who wanted a break from the past. and which believes in the institution of royal monarchy with its prescriptive authority and its superior representative ability due to its transcendence of partisan politics over the crass republicanism that makes the highest political office the prize of a highly divisive popularity contest and which is born out of thinking Satan’s thoughts after him.  Since the neo-conservatives have been so successful in divorcing the term from these associations I prefer the older term Tory and gladly self-apply the term reactionary. derived from the movement that put an end to Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. that progressives [in the normal sense of the word. not agrarian populists] have long used of non-progressives who are not content with merely questioning liberalism’s most recent ideas.   Shortly after the aforementioned discussion it occurred to me that in the sphere of religion and theology I feel largely the same way about the term “evangelical.”  When I first encountered this word as a young Christian it was used to mean something like “non-liberal Protestant”.  To clarify. “liberal” in the preceding sentence does not have its political connotation but refers to someone who holds to revisionist theology. that is to say. theology that has been revised in accordance with the mistaken notion that Modern discoveries of various sorts [scientific. critical. etc.] have placed such things as the historical accuracy of the Scriptures and the possibility of miracles outside the realm of the credible.  Think of the kind of person who says that he believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ but by this does not mean what Christians have historically and traditionally meant by this - that the eternal Son of God. the Second Person of the Trinity. at one point in history entered the womb of the Blessed Virgin. took a complete but sinless human nature at the moment into His own eternal Person from the moment it was formed and from that point forward was both fully God and fully Man in One Person. the Person Who upon His birth was given the name Jesus and Who fulfilled the prophecy of the Christ – but rather means that there is a spark of divinity in all people [as the ancient Gnostic heretics taught] that was bigger or more apparent in Jesus.  Or the kind of person who says that he believes in the resurrection of Jesus Christ but who also thinks that His bones might be discovered some day.  From the moment I became aware of this kind of liberalism. I loathed it as much if not more than the political ideology by the same name. [3]   That having been said. even back in the ‘90’s I was not a big fan of using the word “evangelical” for Protestants who were “conservative” in the theological sense.  I learned fairly early in my Christian walk that this use of the word dated back to the 1950s when certain conservative Protestants – Carl F. H. Henry. Harold John Ockenga. Billy Graham. Fuller Seminary. Christianity Today – started to use it to distance themselves from fundamentalists.  “Fundamentalist”. while now used by progressives to refer to anyone from any religion who has not compromised the traditional beliefs of his religion to their liking. was coined in the early twentieth century by Protestant theologians actively fighting the takeover of their denominations by liberalism and originally meant a kind of conservative pan-Protestant alternate ecumenism [4].   Those who chose the term “evangelical” to distance themselves from fundamentalism. although they claimed they wanted a more intellectual approach [5]. really meant that they wanted a more compromising and less combative approach to liberalism.  Twenty years later. writers within evangelicalism were warning that some in the movement were abandoning sound theology. at least with regards to the infallible authority of Scripture. [6]   There are other connotations to the word “evangelical” than “theologically conservative Protestant”. of course. and when the new “evangelicals” of the 1950s chose this word to distance themselves from the fundamentalists it was because the word was older and had these other connotations.  In the sixteenth century. Dr. Luther and the other Reformers used the word to distinguish themselves from the papacy and its followers.  Used in this sense it was synonymous with Protestant and in much of Europe today it retains the meaning of “Protestant” and is used of anyone who is Protestant in ecclesiastical affiliation regardless of what his theology may be.  In the Anglican Church. which retained her Catholic structure through and after the Reformation. those who emphasized her ongoing Catholicity and those who stressed her Protestantism often sparred with each other and those stressed the Protestantism formed a faction and called themselves evangelical.  In the eighteenth century. evangelical took on yet another meaning in the English-speaking world as it became attached to the emphasis upon a personal conversion experience in the revivals that attended on the preaching of John and Charles Wesley. George Whitefield. Jonathan Edwards. Howell Harris. Daniel Rowland. Ebenezer Erskine. Gilbert Tennent. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen. James Davenport. Jonathan Dickinson. Samuel Davies and others.  This became the primary meaning of the word in North America and is the meaning which the new “evangelicals” of the 1950s. who largely built their movement around the success of the Billy Graham evangelistic crusades. [7] most clearly had in mind.   My degree of comfort with the term varies in accordance with these connotations.  None of them is entirely unproblematic.  The one with which I am the most comfortable is Dr. Luther’s.  He used the word because he did not want his followers to be called by his own name [8] but by the name of the Gospel.  The implication. however. is that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is “the Gospel”. that it had been lost. and that he had rediscovered it.  Dr. Luther did not actually think this way. but since him it has been taken this far.  I know of some. for example. who think that all of the ancient Churches. not just Rome. but the churches of the East and the further East. lost the Gospel ages ago and that it was only rediscovered in the sixteenth century.  These are blissfully ignorant of the fact that their view of Church history is both heretical and identical with that of all the sects that they label “cults.”  The doctrine of justification by faith alone. important as it is. is not the Gospel.  If it were the Gospel. then Christianity would be saying to the world “we’ve got good news for you. all you have to do is believe” and worded that way the doctrine ceases to be a precious truth and becomes the noxious heresy of antinomianism. [9] Any truth can become a heresy if focused on to the point that we lose sight of other necessary truths.  In the early Church. the deity of Jesus Christ and His humanity. the oneness and the Threeness of God. were each twisted into heresies that denied their complementary truths.  The same is done to justification by faith alone when it is made out to be the Gospel. rather than ancillary to the Gospel.  The Gospel is that Jesus Christ. the Eternal Son of God become Man for us. died for our sins. according to the Scriptures and was buried. and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and was seen by a multitude of witnesses [1 Cor. 15:3ff]. This message. the Good News that Christianity is commanded to preach to the world. is central to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. the Creed that is most truly universal being confessed by all the ancient Churches. including the Roman. and by the three main Reformation traditions.   I am less comfortable with the North American meaning of the word than with Dr. Luther’s.  The revivalist message. that each of us needs to internalize our faith. to repent of our sins and commit to personally following Christ. rather than relying upon external Church membership and attendance. is sound enough.  Unfortunately. it is often preached in an unhealthy way that has the opposite effect to that of Dr. Luther’s evangelical message.  Dr. Luther. in emphasizing justification by faith alone. directed the believer to look outside himself. through the eyes of faith. to his Redeemer proclaimed in the Gospel [that He died for our sins – it is finished – and rose again. objective. external. historical facts].  North American evangelicalism. by contrast. tends to turn the believer’s eyes back onto himself. to get him to constantly question whether his faith experience is real. and to answer the call of the evangelist repeated times. with decreasing levels of assurance each time.  If sixteenth century evangelicalism tended towards the error of confusing the ancillary doctrine of justification by faith alone with the Gospel itself. North American evangelicalism tends towards the error of confusing “ye must be born again” with the Gospel. a worse error because these words. by stating the need of the soul of fallen man. are closer in nature to Law than Gospel.  It lends to the problem of the inner-directed gaze by tying the re-birth. contrary to the Church Fathers. the ancient Churches. the three branches of the Magisterial Reformation. not to the Sacrament of Baptism which like the internal work of the Holy Spirit of which it is the outward symbol cannot [and need not] be repeated and in which the recipient is passive but to a personal act of repentance and [re-]dedicating oneself to Christ which is active on the part of the participant. which can be repeated. and which ought to be repeated as the need arises. [10]   The connotations of evangelical in the Anglican context. to the extent they are distinct from the previous two sets. are those with which I am least comfortable.  In the sixteenth century. evangelical as applied to the reformed Church of England had Dr. Luther’s meaning. today it is closer to the generic North American meaning. but in between it was the name of a faction or party within the reformed Church of England.  That forming a faction or party within the Church is a bad thing to do is one of the main themes of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.  Of course. someone might respond that this point could be raised against the Anglican Church’s post-Reformation status as a distinct Church.  The answer to this. of course. is that in the New Testament there was a huge difference between the factions within the Corinthian Church declaring themselves to be “of Apollos”. or “of Cephas” or “of Paul” on the one hand. and the distinction on the other hand between “the Church in Galatia” or “the Church in Thessalonica” or between the seven Churches to whom letters are addressed in the second and third chapters of the Apocalypse.  In the English Reformation. when the Church of England in conjunction with Parliament declared herself free from the usurped authority of the Patriarch of Rome. she did not excommunicate said Patriarch nor did she excommunicate the Latin Church that remained under his authority.  The excommunication ran entirely in the opposite direction. demonstrating where the spirit of schism truly lay. [11]   Indeed. apart from its factionalism what I dislike the most about the Anglican Church’s evangelical faction is the low value it places on the efforts of the English Reformers to not be schismatic. to maintain continuity with the pre-Reformation Church. to keep the reforms moderate and conservative. and to be guided by how the Church of the first millennium and especially the early Patristic centuries interpreted the Scripture in making what reforms she made.  The evangelical faction of the Anglican Church has undergone many internal changes. [12] what has remained consistent about it is that it stresses things that we have in common with only the Lutherans. Reformed. and some of the separatist sects above the faith. spelled out in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds which we have in common with all of the ancient Churches as well as the Lutherans. the Reformed on their best days. and slightly fewer of the separatist sects and other things [liturgical worship. three-fold historical ministry with episcopal government. etc.] that we have in common with the other ancient Churches and some of the Lutherans.  The proper hierarchy of value is that the common faith is most important. followed by the other things we have in common with all the ancient Churches. followed by the things we have in common with the Lutherans and Reformed.   With these misgivings about these three historical uses of the term and especially since the one with which I am most comfortable. Dr. Luther’s. has decayed into the contemporary European usage in which it is a synonym for Protestant regardless of theology. I would very much prefer that another term be used for a theological conservative.  Fundamentalist would be better except that around the time that the new evangelicalism was distancing itself from fundamentalism. fundamentalism was narrowing its own self-identity in less-than-desirable ways [13].  Catholic would be better yet were it not for the fact that most Protestants have conceded it to Rome making it impossible for anybody else to use it without a disclaimer as long as the Oxford English Dictionary.  This leaves us with orthodox. which has never been conceded to the Eastern Church the way Catholic has been to the Roman [traditionalist Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants have always used it and it has long been the preferred term of those Anglicans who stress the importance of maintaining continuity in doctrine. structure. worship and practice with the Church of the first millennium. especially the first five centuries]. and would have been the best option regardless since it has been the term for doctrinal soundness since the very beginning.        [1]   It was roughly twenty years ago that one NDP member. Bev Desjarlais. voted against Bill C-38. which established the legal fiction of same-sex marriage across the Dominion. although it cost her the nomination of her party in the next election. The Liberals of the last thirteen years have moved much further down the slippery-slope from the Civil Marriage Act.[2]   The resemblance is almost as remarkable as that between David Bentley Hart. the lay Eastern Orthodox theologian whose liberal Protestant views pass as traditional Eastern Orthodox ones to Westerners who are not sufficiently read in the theology of the East to know the difference and the late M.A.S.H actor David Ogden Stiers [after Stiers grew a beard in the mid ‘90’s] or between Captain Airhead’s current girlfriend and actress Zooey Deschanel.[3]   The term “liberal” in both instances refers to the acceptance of Modern ideas over older. classical and traditional ideas.  About a century ago “liberal” theologians were called Modernists which is more accurate label.  The term “liberal” comes from the Latin word for “generous”.  Whether in the realm of politics or theology. it is a form of self-flattery and those who do not themselves identify as “liberals” seldom see in “liberals” the generosity and broad-mindedness they claim for themselves. quite the opposite.[4]   As represented. for example. by the volumes The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. edited by A. C. Dixon. Louis Meyer. and R. A Torrey. originally published in twelve volumes from 1910 to 1915. then rebound in the four volumes they have been published as ever since in 1917.  Dixon was a Baptist minister. Meyer a Reformed Presbyterian. Torrey a Congregationalist. and the contributors included Presbyterians such as James Orr. A. T. Pierson. and B. B. Warfield. Baptists such as E. Y. Mullins. G. Campbell Morgan. and Thomas Spurgeon. Anglicans such as Dyson Hague. W. H. Griffith Thomas. Handley Moule. G. Osborne Troop and C. T. Studd. Methodists such as A. C. Gaebelein and John L. Nuelson. Lutheran Frederic Bettex. A. J. Pollack of the Plymouth Brethren. and various other contributors from these and other denominations.[5]   A laughable claim since they were hardly more scholarly then the men who contributed to The Fundamentals. note 4 vide supra.  Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 1994] was a tremendous indictment of the movement’s efforts in this regards after four decades.  Perhaps if “intellectual” is taken in the uncomplimentary sense with which Tom Wolfe used to use or as is used by historian Paul Johnson in his Intellectuals [London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1988] it might be defensible.[6]   Harold Lindsell. The Battle for the Bible [Zondervan: Grand Rapids. 1976] followed by his The Bible in the Balance [Zondervan: Grand Rapids. 1979] for example.  A decade later Francis Schaeffer addressed the declining doctrinal standards of evangelicalism in his last book The Great Evangelical Disaster [Wheaton: Crossway. 1984].[7]   Apart from doing what he was most famous for doing. Billy Graham was the founder of Christianity Today. the flagship magazine of the new evangelicalism.  Carl F. H. Henry was the magazine’s first editor.[8]   As Robert Burns said “the best laid scheme o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”[9]   Gospel means “good news”.  If “justification by faith alone” were the Gospel this would mean that it is itself the central content of the message of Christianity.  The very wording. “justification by faith alone”. however. should make it obvious that this is not the kerygma but a theological formulation.  If you try to express what “justification by faith alone” means as a message addressed to people in the second person then you end up with “all you have to do is believe”.  There is a huge difference between saying that “all you have to do is believe” is Christianity’s message to a fallen and sinful world and saying that Christianity’s message is “God has given us a Saviour. His Only-Begotten Son. Who became a man just like us except without sin. Who died for our sins upon the cross that He might take them away and defeat the enemies that have held us in spiritual bondage since our first parents. Who after He was buried showed His triumph over these enemies of sin and death by rising again from the dead. leaving the grave behind. showing Himself to His followers. and ascending back to His Father” and that we are to believe this message and trust this Saviour rather than in our own efforts to please God.   The second wording shows where the doctrine of justification by faith alone belongs. in the unrolling of the implications of the Gospel for us. that because the Saviour God has given us is so perfect and the salvation He accomplished for us so complete. He and not our own efforts is the proper object of our faith. just as He and not our own faith. is the proper content of the Gospel.  The first wording. however. expresses what you get when you make justification by faith alone itself out to be the Gospel.  This is not what those who call justification by faith alone the Gospel usually intend to convey. they have just not thought through the implications of what they are saying.    In the text of the essay I identified the heresy which they unintentionally make themselves guilty of by sloppy thinking as antinomianism.  This is because if “all you have to do is believe” is itself the “good news”. this translates into “you don’t have to do good” which is the historical meaning of antinomianism [more precisely. antinomianism is the idea that Christians do not have to obey the moral part of the law]. whereas justification by faith alone in its proper place. does not tell you that you don’t have to do good. it tells you that your efforts to do good cannot save you or assist in your salvation. and that you are to trust in Jesus Christ rather than them.    Anti-protestant apologists. usually for Rome. like to refer to the heresy of “solafideism”.  This suggests that “justification by faith alone” is itself. and not merely its being placed in the centre of the Christian kerygma bumping out Jesus. His death. and resurrection. a heresy.  This. however. ignores the very nature of heresy.  At the core of every heresy is a truth which has been misplaced. taken out of its proper context. so that other truths are diminished or denied.  The truth at the core of Sabellianism [modalism. the denial of the distinct Persons of Father. Son. and Holy Spirit] is the unity of God.  The truth at the core of Tritheism [the denial of the unity of Being of Father. Son. Holy Spirit so as to make them three Gods] is the distinction of the Persons.  The truth at the core of Nestorianism [the separation of the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ so as to divide His Person] is that His human nature remains distinct from His divine nature even though they are united in His Eternal Person so that whatever is true of either of them is also true of Him. the Person.    If there is a heresy of Solafideism this can only be because there is a truth of Solafideism.  If there is a heresy of Solafideism  which denies James 2:24 [and the larger passage in which it is found]. then the truth Solafideism is the affirmation of Romans 4:3-5 [the wording of verse five is much stronger than what could be conveyed by the word “alone” or “only”]. the entire chapter in which it is found and those before and after. the epistle of Galatians. Ephesians 2:8-10. Titus 3:4-8 [notice how the last two passages make the good works. the need for which they declare in the final verse. rest upon the foundation of their not having contributed to salvation by grace] and all the passages in the Johannine corpus [far too numerous to list but take the best known verse of the New Testament. John 3:16 as an example] which promise everlasting life to “whosoever believeth” in Jesus.    Historically. if the Reformers placed too much importance on justification by faith alone by carelessly speaking as if they had recovered a lost Gospel. this is because Rome. despite having been officially committed to Sola Gratia since the days of St. Augustine of Hippo. had in practice been denying all the “to him that worketh not” and “not by works of righteousness which we have done” and the like found in these passages by exaggerating the importance and value of good works to the point of having created a treadmill theology in which people were kept on the treadmill of good works by having the carrot of salvation dangled in front of them. tantalizingly just out of reach. while they are whipped from behind with threats of hellfire or its unscriptural second cousin once removed purgatorial fire.  When challenged by the Reformers on this. Rome doubled down on this error. denied any truth to Solafideism [thus carelessly denying the truth of the passages just referenced] and made herself guilty of a far bigger and worse heresy than the one of which they accused the Reformers.   “Not by works”. which expresses what the “alone” in “faith alone” means much more strongly than the word “alone” ever could. occurs throughout the Pauline corpus of the New Testament.  It cannot be explained away by saying that the works in question are merely the ceremonial works of the Mosaic Law.  Titus 3:5’s “not by works of righteousness” clearly excludes this explanation.  So does St. Paul’s explanation of why justification is not by works – “that it might be by grace” [Rom. 4:16]. that is to say. a gift.  Faith can receive a salvation that is freely given. works cannot. if they enter the picture then what they receive is a reward or a wage not a gift.  All “faith alone” was ever supposed to mean is that faith does not share its role in God’s order of salvation. the role of the hand that receives the freely given gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. with anything else.  Works cannot perform this role. neither can repentance which has the ancillary role of preparing the soul that it may trust in God’s grace. nor can the Sacraments which like the preaching of the Word are the hands of the Giver not of the recipient.  Anyone who considers that to be heresy. is himself the heretic.[10]                       Note that the word “conversion”. while it can often mean accepting the faith for the first time. such as when we speak of someone from another religion [Judaism. Islam. Hinduism. etc.] or from a secular faith that masquerades as a non-religion [atheism. Communism. etc.] converting to Christianity. in which case it has the same one-time. not-to-be-repeated connotations of baptism and the spiritual work of regeneration. it is also  used in Scripture for occasions when a Christian is restored after a fall [see Lk. 22:32. in which Jesus speaks of St. Peter’s restoration after denying Him as a future conversion. St. Peter having already confessed the saving faith of Jn. 20:31 at Caesarea Philippi in Matt. 16:16 and been told that he was blessed because he had been enlightened by the Father Himself] and so denotes something that is repeatable [despite the nonsense which some early Christians held and which. due to the influence of the Shephard of Hermas. it took a couple of centuries for the early Church to fully repudiate. that each Christian is allowed only one big screw up and do-over after his baptism]. [11]                       To make the point even clearer. dialogue between the reformed Church of England and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. more specifically between the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. at the time Cyril Lucaris. and the Archbishop of Canterbury. first George Abbott then William Laud. took place in the reigns of James I and Charles I in the early seventeenth century. long before Constantinople and Rome lifted the mutual excommunication they had pronounced upon each other in the eleventh century.  Although the leadership of the English Church never formally put this into writing. this early dialogue demonstrates that they regarded the excommunications of the eleventh century as political rather than valid and did not see themselves as bound by the papal excommunication of the East now that they had repudiated Rome’s usurped authority [Dr. Luther had a similar attitude].[12]                       When the faction first formed it was very hard-core Calvinist to the point that it accused orthodox Churchmen who did not think that the canons of Dort should be binding on Anglicans or double predestination the subject of every sermon of “Arminianism” although few if any of those so accused were adherents to the tenets of the Remonstrance.  In the eighteenth century. the preaching of the Wesleys – although they were not of the evangelical faction themselves but are considered to have been evangelicals because they were among the first of the North American sense of the word – brought both a form of Arminianism that was quite modified from the Dutch original into Anglican evangelicalism.  The Calvinists remained. now as a sub-faction within the evangelical faction. somewhat ironically [the evangelicals had historically been the liberal faction of the Church] considered the more conservative sub-faction of Anglican evangelicalism.  Some of these seem to think that the Forty-Two Articles [the Reformed aspects of which were moderated when revised into the Thirty-Nine that have been the actual standard of Anglicanism for centuries] and the Lambeth Articles [which. due to Queen Elizabeth I’s wise veto. never became official the doctrine of the Church] are genuinely Anglican but that the 1549 Book of Common Prayer [mostly the work of Archbishop Cranmer] is not.  The Calvinist evangelicals are at their best today when insisting on strict adherence to the Book of Common Prayer and other classical Anglican formularies [this should include the 1611 Authorized Bible but often doesn’t] in worship. although this insistence is somewhat one-sided being the more vehemently protested against the inclusion of more traditional ceremonies and rituals than against slimming down the liturgy and making the sermon and music more resemble what you would find in a generic evangelical “non-denominational” mega-church. [13]                       What began as a cross-denominational cooperative movement against liberalism. became a movement which preached schism from other conservative Protestants [even within the same denomination] for not being schismatic enough [they called this second-degree separation].  While the movement remained theoretically neutral on eschatological interpretations. in practice it became even more dispensationalist than evangelicalism.  This may be due to non-dispensationalists [and non-pre-millennialists in general] moving over to the evangelical movement. but it is just as likely that dispensationalism’s bad ecclesiology appealed to their new hyper-separatism.  This. of course. meant that they became more committed to the “two peoples of God” nonsense than evangelicalism. Interestingly this did not necessarily mean they became more prone to the practical error of “Christian Zionism”. i.e.. giving carte blanche support to the present state of Israel. than dispensationalist evangelicals.  Bob Jones Jr.. president then chancellor of the fundamentalist university his father built for much of the second half of the twentieth century and certainly a dispensationalist devoted several pages of his memoirs. Cornbread and Caviar. to debunking Jerry Falwell’s more uncritical support of Israel by explaining that the country was secular and ungodly. persecuted Christians. hypocritically treated Arabs and Muslims the way they complained about having been treated themselves by everyone else throughout history. and at the time - as also today - were governed by a party formed and led by the leaders of the organizations that waged terrorist war against the United Kingdom in the 1940s prior to the partition of the Holy Land and their gaining independence in 1948.  He spelled out several of the crimes of the Irgun and Stern Gang in detail – can you imagine any evangelical dispensationalist doing this.  Similarly. John R. Rice of Sword of the Lord failed to get the memo that all dispensationalists must uncritically support Israel.     I don’t include KJV-Onlyism in the list of undesirable elements of fundamentalism’s new self-definition.  The Authorized Bible is the preferred English translation of fundamentalism. actual KJV-Onlyism is held by some fundamentalists not by all.  While I am not a KJV-Onlyist in the sense of thinking that the Authorized Bible could not even hypothetically be improved on and that only someone involved in a Satanic New Age conspiracy or Alexandrian Cult would try I would say that until principles derived from orthodox faith are made the basis of textual scholarship again [such as. at the very least. that the correct text will be found in what has been read in the Church all along and not in manuscripts. regardless of their age. hidden away in obscure monasteries and libraries for centuries. see nineteenth century High Anglican Dean John W. Burgon for more such principles] and translators found who are at least the equals in scholarship of Bishops Andrewes. Overall and their co-translators [extremely unlikely. considering that the explosion of new translations coincided with the period of which Joe Sobran remarked “In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college”] a snowball stands a better chance in hell than of this happening.  By contrast with fundamentalism. evangelicalism went from a general preference for the New International Version to a general preference to the English Standard Version.   This took place because of the 2011 “update” to the NIV that made it “gender-neutral”.  Even before that. the value of the translation of which Rupert Murdoch’s company has owned the copyright since 1988. was grossly exaggerated.  In second-year Greek. one of my classmates remarked about how first year Greek had ruined the NIV for him.  I don’t remember there being much if any dissent to this opinion.  A few years after that I remember attending a service where the sermon was preached from the NIV with the text on a screen behind the preacher.  I happened to have my Greek New Testament with me. and looked up the same text.  The differences were far more than can be explained by the difference between “dynamic equivalence” and “literal” [nor could they be explained by differences in the underlying text. even if it were not the case. as it happened to be. that the Greek NT I had with me that day was not my Textus Receptus but the UBS fourth edition]. Something that was a statement of fact in the Greek was a question in the NIV.  Proper names not present in the Greek were in the NIV.  As for the ESV it is the Revised Standard Version. a translation notorious for its liberal slant. the use of which was purchased from the National Council of Churches. then edited by J. I. Packer et al. sufficiently to allow for it to be sold under a different name and marketed as a “conservative” translation. Thu, 07 May 2026 10:29:00 +0000 c73dea1ffa413240bab9489e475efd27214b97b3 https://winteryknight.com/2026/05/04/atheist-responds-to-case-for-intelligent-design-in-the-story-of-everything-movie/ I’ve put up a few posts about this new “The Story of Everything” movie that is available to see from April 30th to May 6th. My tickets are for tomorrow [Monday]. Some of my friends went to see it on the weekend. One told me it sparked discussion about the big questions of life among … Continue reading Atheist responds to case for intelligent design in “The Story of Everything” movie → Mon, 04 May 2026 14:00:13 +0000 df51eaf20f6ed20849294ea4a0a45574b6e23a80 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/a-map-of-the-abbey An introduction to this Substack. and my wider work Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:55:43 +0000 563099dc292f71955cb32de99abbe768f7c20d52 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/29/sean-mcdowell-has-had-some-amazing-guests-on-his-popular-youtube-channel/ Two of my friends alerted me to a bunch of recent shows posted on Sean McDowell’s popular YouTube channel. I always like shows where there are discussions of evidennce – topics like economics and science are best for me. Well. Sean has had a bunch of good guests on good topics. The key thing about … Continue reading Sean McDowell has had some amazing guests on his popular YouTube channel → Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:00:13 +0000 acc29cb98aa16e4a1ccaf92dccc5e1d18b2825e2 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/04/lotr-100-we-have-met-enemy-and-he-is-us.html Or. Where. Oh. Where. is Radagast the Brown.                                                 Link - St. Kevin statue at Hollywood. IrelandI don't want to suggest that LOTR is a prophetic book in the same way that Isaiah or Ezekiel. is a prophetic book. LOTR is not canonical Scripture. However. it is quite surprising how prescient so many of Tolkien's themes are. for today. as they were in his own day. Tolkien's LOTR isn't quite like Joyce's Ulysses. or even Goethe's Faust. either. There is the interesting anecdote of the man who lost his Christian faith. after reading Tolkien. because he had accepted the Scriptures as a true myth. and then realized - one man could create a true myth with such literary power. that it sounded almost exactly like Scripture [at least to him].  This. to my mind. is zigging when you should obviously be zagging. or infallibly selecting the way to be wrong when you had a 50/50 shot. which are actually pretty good odds considering you can err in an infinite number of ways. Tolkien's recreation of the Genesis myth in the Music of the Ainur. at the start of the Silmarillion. is actually a reinforcement of Genesis. a broadening and deepening of our understanding of it. These days. as Dennis Miller once quipped. 'the rule book has gotten murky'. Gandalf is trying to save the West. Saruman is sabotaging it secretly. and Radagast has gone missing. Where is Radagast. by the way. I have chased that rumor. and it leads in strange directions and into weird lands. See this. for instance. recommended by Rupert Sheldrake. the English scientist whose reputation has survived his talk of the sun as an 'intelligent being'. A recovery of the tradition of Radagast the Brown [whether or not we call it 'Celtic Christianity']. is probably a necessity for any Western spiritual renewal. Neither one of the Latinate traditions [East or West] has much of an exuberant embrace of what the Romantics would later call 'Nature'. There is. nevertheless. a way to reconcile asceticism with Mother Nature. Just ask St. Kevin of Glendalough. Many are turning to a renewed OrthoBro spirituality. whether Catholic. Reformed. or Eastern Orthodox. Beards are back in. Icons too. definitely. And if it's Modern. it's bad. if it's Old [even better. Ancient]. it's good. Unfortunately. the opposite of one bad idea. is always. in its turn. another bad idea. Reaction [by itself] is not only fruitless. but dangerous. Since we are entering [in the West] the period of the 'second religiousness'. we can expect to see a massive resurgence of Fundamentalism in all branches of the Western. and even Eastern. Churches. To the extent that this is 'pure Nature'. it is both good and bad. and just to be expected. There is no stopping it. but its emphasis can become almost purely destructive. if you allow it to be. A friend of mine sent me this. for instance. In it. these gentlemen priests and scholars advocate for a Holy Tradition that is predominantly Greek speaking. and definitely Orthodox. If you follow the OrthoBro line [let us assume it goes in an EO or Orthodox direction. generally. for sake of illustration. though there are Reformed and Catholic equivalents such as Cameron Riecker]. these are examples of the problems you run into. 1. Why haven't there been any more Ecumenical Councils since Nicea II in 787AD. Catholic OrthoBros have an easier time of it. since they can even point to Vatican II. which is definitely the closest thing to a General Ecumenical Council the Church has had in a long. long time. But the Eastern apologists have to say something a little lame here. like. 'Well. if it's perfect. why mess with it.'. Which is what Father Andrew Damick actually said about this fact. The East cannot hold Ecumenical Councils anymore. According to them. though Councils are the edicts and mouth of the Holy Spirit.  it hasn't been happening for over 1200 years because the Faith was 'perfected' in the East. If the West is now 'outside the Faith'. then Orthodox councils are the Ecumenical councils. Except. even they don't go so far as to claim this. since that would seem overly parochial and Phyletic. Except that they do sort of claim this. or seem to. As with many of the main fault lines for Orthodoxy. their arguments hover over an indecisive abyss of mystical ambiguity. Lacking a magisterium. or a clear source of agreed authority outside the autocephalous communions. it will be impossible to get a clear answer to this. Maybe that's a good thing. ultimately. but I wouldn't call attention to it and make it the crux of an argument. 2. Why don't you follow your own Holy Tradition. in this case. St. Ignatius' rule that 'there be only one bishop in the city'. St. Ignatius of Antioch is one of the lynchpins of EO theology [and Catholic theology also]. This is the mono-episcopacy rule. prominent in the letter to the  the Smyrneans. Unus episcopus in una civitate - this is repeated in the canons of the council of Nicea. The EO will say that their autocephalous churches. divided along ethnic lines generally. under modern conditions in big cities. require that [for instance] there be around eight Orthodox jurisdictions in Paris. France [actually the case]. They will say that Phyletism is a heresy [condemned in 1872 at the Council of Constantinople]. yet the structural jurisdictions reflecting that remain intact. If you take the phronema of St. Ignatius. there can be no question of justifying multiple bishop jurisdictions. unless you then extend up to the archbishop or patriarch. what was present in the bishops [One World. One Patriarch]. At that point. you start looking like Rome. and St. Ignatius' argument is completely free-floating. in any literal way. Either one is improvising a principle [the John Cardinal Newman-Catholic doctrine so abhorrent to them] or one is just kicking the can up the order of multiplying arch-arch-arch bishops. If this is typical. then their system looks like a way of 'having your cake. and eating it too'. 3. Regarding the dreaded Parenthesis Theory that they excoriate Protestants over [which term may have originated here. but now often refers to the idea that the Church was apostate from roughly 500AD to about 1500AD] the EO resorts to a Parenthesis Theory of its own. which it will not tell you about. Hurling huge rocks at the brittle glass house of Millerites and other Dispensationally influenced Protestants. the EO mocks the idea that there was a departure from the 'Faith once delivered to the saints'. after the conversion of Constantine. or even before. While it is true that many Anabaptists and Dispensationalists hold this theology. not only is this not the theology of the magisterial Protestant Churches. the EO maintains a version of this for their own church history. From roughly the fall of Byzantium in the 15th century. until the rise of the OrthoBros in the late 20th century. the EO was not only influenced heavily by Thomism and Lutheran spirituality [they even briefly had a Calvinist patriarch. Cyril Lucaris]. they engaged in illicit ecumenism with the West. like the Council of Florence. as well as Lausanne in 1920. We are supposed to believe that despite the EO forgetting they were the one. true body of the Church Christ for five hundred years. they suddenly woke up. and recovered their pristine and rightful inheritance. If 500 years of waffling. confusion. and chaos is not too long to kill off God's true Church. then what's a 1000. Or 10000.  4. The theological disagreements are exaggerated - a cynic might say. almost schismatically. For instance. this theologian Nicholas Kabasilas clearly affirms the doctrine of the Atonement in a way acceptable and understandable to the West. He is regarded as a true mystic and saint. But according to the OrthoBros and their revisionary church history. the true church of Christ [that is the EO. exclusively] has never and will never teach the Atonement in a juridical manner. And yet they did and [hopefully] do. since Isaiah 53 is fairly explicit on the matter. Once again. it's hard to get a clear answer. Gavin Ortlund pointed out that Gregory of Palamas implicitly admits that the distinction between essence and energies is not total or absolute [otherwise. how could the energies reflect the essence in the slightest. at all.]. If this is the case. then the Filioque controversy is likewise probably just a nasty little spat used to divide the Church. But the East loves to do this. it would seem. though the West struggles to keep up. This is why most of the big Heresies originated and flourished in the Eastern Empire. Read up on the Church riots in the East. some time. in Alexandria. Or the different Demes in Byzantium.  Or the Trisagion Riots. So if you want to be super-uber-correct. you are going to end up being an OrthoBro of some variety. but you are going to have all of these internal contradictions and tensions. which will eventually come back to get you. I haven't meant to pick on the EO. here. they are just the flagship for this stuff. I could have written an article on the RC or the Protestants. They have their legalists of line and rule. too. All of the Church facets. branches. communions or what have you. have their very own Scribes. Pharisees. and Sadducees. And just to offend everyone. the Essenes were the esoteric. occult. initiatic wing of the Pharisees. So there is no safety in being a Traditionalist. by itself. even an 'esoteric Traditionalist'. There is only safety in Christ. since only Truth [the living Truth] has rights. though Christ is often in amazing disguise[s]. That's not ancient history from the Gospels. that's human reality. See Mouravieff's Gnosis. So be careful about Grand White Councils. which are often dominated by Saruman the White. Instead. we are interested [still] in where Radagast the Brown has gotten off to. What did the Church lose in the last two thousand years. and what is she called to help instantiate and to resurrect.  What correctives can she remedy her undoubted success. with.                                                              LinkWe give the last word to Alexander Schmemann : 'Who invented the idea that religion is the resolution of problems. (Authentic) religion is always a transfer to another dimension. another level. and is therefore the annihilation of problems. not their solution. Problems also come from the Devil. who filled religion with his fuss and vulgarity—thus religion became a problem in the modern world...March 15. 1977: “Religion needs a temple. not the Church. The temple’s origin is religion. Thus in the Gospel: ‘I will destroy this temple. . . .’ The Church has a Christian origin. However. our Church has identified itself long ago with the ‘temple.’ has dissolved itself in the temple. and [this means] has returned to the pagan temple as its religious sanction. Protestantism was an attempt to save the faith. to purify it from its religious reduction. But the Protestants have paid a heavy price for denying eschatology and replacing it with personal individual salvation. and therefore. essentially. denying the Church. The greatest anachronism. on a natural level. was to be found in the Catholic Church. Catholicism was possible only while one was able to deny and limit the freedom of the person. the basic dogma of the new times. While trying to change its course. to merge with freedom. Catholicism simply collapsed. and I do not see how its revival could be possible [unless fascism can get hold of the human race and deny the explosive synthesis of freedom and the person].” Wed, 29 Apr 2026 03:11:31 +0000 48d1bb12bb9cb8c22fcc0aaaf0bdaf609d1f8278 https://www.menofthewest.net/movie-review-topsy-turvy-1999/ The origin story of The Mikado. one of Gilbert and Sullivan's best loved operas. Sun, 26 Apr 2026 03:46:59 +0000 d6112c7930372914d7691a24ded3ad857ebef0c8 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/04/lotr-99-consulting-annals-of-history-to.html All difficulty is comprehended by man's [collective and personal] misunderstanding of something as seemingly simple. as History. There is no authentic philosophy. no legitimate divinity [and religion]. and no useful science. unless one understands History. Specifically. one has to understand what it means to be historical. All great heresies. all deviant religions. all dead end philosophies. all sciences masquerading as God Almighty. founder upon this one point. What is history. and what is the meaning of history. As it turns out. History is nothing but repeating patterns. but also nothing but unique unrepeatable situations. Does this remind you. Dear Reader. of the doctrine of the two natures of the Lord Jesus Christ. It should. Which is 'most divine' in History - the repeatable patterns. or the inimitable concrete moment. Which is most human. Both. and neither. Both together. each separately. both together and separate. the Gordian Knot. the mystery of Two-In-One. As Nagarjuna put it: All things [dharmas] exist: affirmation of being. negation of nonbeingAll things [dharmas] do not exist: affirmation of nonbeing. negation of beingAll things [dharmas] both exist and do not exist: both affirmation and negationAll things [dharmas] neither exist nor do not exist: neither affirmation nor negationNo wonder Hegel made the mistake of immanentizing the eschaton. of thinking that History is the manifestation of the essence of the Divine in the Zeitgeist. It was an initial 'take'. but it leads to what are called 'false infinities'. This comes from paying attention initially. but then getting carried away. and not remembering yourself. Although there are some who have argued that Hegel himself should not be read literally. but hermetically. People argue that History is boring. That's because they can't see anything. You can't see anything. with your head in the sand. or if you live under a rock. We follow Ortega y Gasset's maxim: 'I am myself. and my circumstances'. Man is intensely historical. he is drenched in history. just as he is saturated with genes. and blossoms with phenotype. History is a Mystery. because people still haven't assimilated St. Maximus the Confessor's work on the Logos and the logoi. You don't have to get your understanding of the mystery from him. but get it you must. if you wish to follow the Lord. At least if you have the philosophic brains that God gave a goose. Christ is the epicenter. and the circumference. and everything in between of History. and that in a most special way. History. real history. begins with the Incarnation. I will note that that redoubtable prophet. RJ Rushdoony. got exoterically close to the matter. when he said that the Great White Council of Chalcedon founded Western Civilization by defining the two natures. and one person. of the Lord. The Past. as they say. was Prologue. Christ is the End and the Beginning. all at once. Christ is the Eschaton. Of all the terrible things Modernity has given us. it has given us one great gift: the recognition [and that simultaneously] that man is intensely historical. and also. intensely unique. His historicity is the key to both God's immanence and God's transcendence. The great novelist Sir Walter Scott had perhaps the best grasp of this. in the early modern era - read his Old Mortality. The hero cannot be [and yet he is] the hero for all the other parties of the story. Henry Morton is Scotland. for that time and place. and [because of that] for all times and places in the imaginal world that was and is old Scotland. the Hen Ogledd. what was left of 'the old North'. There are other important NPCs. and even several PCs. but none of them is able to master his own circumstances [partly by seeing that he cannot do so] like Henry Morton. If you think. Dear Reader. that this is mumbo-jumbo and moonshine. perhaps you should try approaching it from a philosophical angle. The French thinker Jean Wahl was chasing this same unicorn. the mystery of the Two-become-One. I have Hackett's book. and it is neither light. nor unexciting reading. In it. you will see how Jacob's Ladder is embedded in the foundations of human consciousness. even everyday human consciousness. for yourself. Or. if you are scientifically driven. you might try Koestler's Janus: A Summing Up. If you prefer the religious approach. then you will perforce be driven to open your John Ruysbroeck. And. if you wish to unite the three approaches into Art [as we are all being. willy-nilly. driven to do by the aeonic spirits of the time]. you will likely be interested in Carl Jung. and individuation.Back when Western man was still 'in the harness'. and not 'marking time' by treading water and fooling around with horizontal shufflings. people came up with ways to incarnate the absolute Truth. like this ceremony of the Pardon. from Brittany.  Do you yearn for a better world. A world where Flesh and Spirit are united as One. but remain [yet] Two. That is a divine yearning. and also a deep and noble human passion. We have to peer deeper into our own mysterious history. collective and personal. before we can 'react' and fight against the inanities and insanities of the Age. Our History. and our own history. is staring us right in the face. Or. to put it better. we can 'fight' but we will fight more effectively. when the center of our being is a calm and peaceful and fructive and life-giving place. when we know what we are struggling for. We will then. as St. Paul says. not 'beat the air'. For the weapons of this warfare are spiritual. and they are combat against the invisible powers. both within and without man. God has not left us bereft. Deep within us. the divine spark. the logoi. and its mysterious connection to the Lord. slumbers. like the sleeping and immortal dragon. or stirs. like Smaug seeking his missing jewel. This pure connection to God can [alone] keep us from mistaking illusions for Reality. and giving our hearts to even good things. like saving America. It helps when you begin to see. dimly at first. how all human striving in History is a quest to bring about that Day of Days. when the Accomplishment is achieved. First. in the person. and then. in the whole of Creation. in all persons. and all beings. and all atoms whatsoever. in this vast and mysterious Cosmos we inhabit. Ultramodernism is Dead. It is ludicrous. anyway. Time to wake up from the dream. and start thinking more like Tolkien. or Goethe. or Jean Wahl. or St. Maximus. The future. like the past and all in between. belongs to the Lord. 'We behold that which we are. and we are that which we behold.' - Ruysbroeck Quoted in Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness [1912] by Evelyn Underhill. p. 506  Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:22:00 +0000 da1cc00078357fb02818e387c46e4a0e035e1b41 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/24/why-social-conservatives-fail-to-reverse-declining-marriage-and-birth-rates/ I saw an interesting post on Katy Faust and I wrote a long comment to it. I sent the comment to three of my manliest male friends [police officer. and two software engineers who run their own very profitable companies]. They said “publish as is”. And I also sent it to a female co-worker. … Continue reading Why social conservatives fail to reverse declining marriage and birth rates → Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:00:40 +0000 81152ff2e2fe174600459251a6d9b47921384d87 https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/04/good-guys-bad-guys-and-just-war.html On 28 February. American Neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser posted to his blog a short piece with the title “The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust”.  In this piece he demonstrated that the war on Iran does not meet the criteria to be considered just according to classical Catholic just war theory. focusing on the requirements that there be a just cause and showing that the reasons put forth by the White House for the actions against Iran do not make for a genuine casus belli.  He also briefly talked about the war’s not meeting the requirement that it be conducted under lawful authority because by the terms of American constitutional law the authority to wage war belongs to Congress and not the president.   Roman Patriarch Leo XIV is clearly of the same opinion as Feser on this matter.  Some others of the Roman communion who hold to just war theory are less certain.  Among these is R. R. [“Rusty”] Reno. editor of First Things. His argument that it is “unwise to issue confident moral judgments about Operation Epic Fury” was posted on 3 March. three days after Feser’s.  Feser has just contributed a piece to First Things entitled “Does Just War Doctrine Require Moral Certainty.”  In response to those like Reno who disagreed with him. he argues for an affirmative answer to the question asked in his title.  “What has long been the standard teaching in the Catholic just war tradition”. he writes. “is that the probability of a war’s being just is not good enough. The case for the justice of a proposed war must be morally certain. Otherwise. it is morally wrong to initiate the conflict.”  Note his use of the illustration of a hunter shooting into the bush.  Unless the hunter is certain there is no person hiding in or behind the bush that he might hit. to shoot is a reckless and morally wrong act.  The same illustration has been used for decades to answer the argument  that we don’t know when a fetus becomes a person made by those who think women should have the right to murder their unborn offspring.   I agree with Feser [and Leo XIV] on this matter.  I wish to point out. however. that he has been arguing mostly the one aspect of the just war question. that of jus ad bellum or when is it just to go to war.  There is also the aspect of jus in bello or what is the right manner in which to conduct war.  These aspects are not independent of each other.  If a war cannot be fought in a manner that is jus in bello then it can never be jus ad bellum.   This is often avoided in contemporary discussions of just war because of the uncomfortable question it raises of whether Modern developments in the technology of war have made a jus ad bellum war a practical impossibility.   The rules of just war theory or doctrine were hammered out at a time when wars were fought very differently from how they are fought today.  A king who went to war with another kingdom would be expected either to lead the troops into battle himself or delegate the task to his sons. brothers. or other close relatives.  Democratically elected politicians. by contrast. do not fight in the wars for which they vote and are notorious for protecting their own children from conscription.   How did Black Sabbath put it again.  “Politicians hide themselves away/They only started the war/Why should they go out to fight./They leave that role to the poor.” [1]   Furthermore. when St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas. et al.. were drawing out the principles of just war from Scripture. moral philosophy/theology and reason. those who did the actual fighting and killing in war. generally had to see the people they were killing in order to do so.  This meant. of course. that they were also putting their own lives in jeopardy by going to war.  This was most obviously the case with combat involving swords and other weapons that could not kill beyond the range of the slightly extended arm-length they provided. but even with longer-distance weapons such as bows and arrows. catapults. and cannons you had to see what you were aiming at with your own eyes.   This was the way war was fought for most of human history.  Now think of the contrast with today.  Airplanes were first used in combat in World War I.  With World War II. the use of these machines to drop high explosive bombs that could kill large numbers of unseen non-combatants became normative.  By the end of that war. the Americans had developed the first nuclear weapon. the atomic bomb. which they dropped on two Japanese cities killing about 120. 000 people instantly with the death toll growing to about twice that amount by the end of the year due to radiation poisoning and other such injuries.  Mercifully. their use did not become normative. especially since the development of this monstrous technology after the war has exponentially increased its destructive power to the point where it could eliminate humanity and all other life on earth.  In 1957. the Soviet Union conducted the first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. and two years later both the Americans and the Soviets had operational ICBM systems in place. By the 1970s. advanced guidance systems that used computers and lasers to direct bombs to their targets were in common use [this evolved out of technology that in a very early stage of development both the Americans and the Nazis had during World War II].  Today. cities can be reduced to rubble and thousands of non-combatants instantly killed. totally unseen by the person who does the destroying and killing with the push of a button. half a world away.   This. which. by the way. is what “progress” looks like. a fact which when it sinks in should be sufficient to make a reactionary out of any sane person. was not merely a series of changes to the tools of war.  It changed the very nature of war and in such a way as to raise the question of whether war fought in this manner and with these tools can ever be just.   It is a difficult question to answer. not least because however these changes have affected the nature and justice of war. they have not affected in the slightest its necessity.   If a hostile power attacks and invades your country this creates the necessity of your going to war defensively to stop them [blithering rubbish to the contrary from Mennonites. Quakers. and Gandhi be hanged].  To say that something is necessary. however. is not to say that it is just. since necessity and justice are two very different things. If we set the difference between necessity and justice aside and take the position that all defensive wars are just. note that this would obviously not justify the actions of the United States and Israel.   In popular American culture the demands of classical just war theory have largely been by-passed by a very different way of thinking about martial ethics.  In this way of thinking. it does not matter so much that a war have a valid casus belli. that it be a means of last resort. that the good that it accomplishes or at least tries to accomplish outweighs the death and destruction it causes and that non-combatants not be made into targets.  What matters is that “we” [the ones going to war] are the “good guys” and that “they” [the ones we are going to war with] are the “bad guys.”   This way of looking at things is so puerile if not infantile that it would scarcely be worth addressing if it were not so widespread in the United States [and other countries of the civilization formerly known as Christendom that have had the misfortune of being inundated with American pop culture] and so clearly the predominant way of thinking among those who started this war and its chief apologists.  This is. of course. the way superhero comic books and Hollywood movies tend to portray things and it can hardly be a coincidence that these started to become the staples of American pop culture that they are today around the same time as the rapid advancement of American military technology.  Hollywood and DC [2] cannot be blamed for creating this thinking. however much they may have helped popularize it. because it had been part of the American mindset long before World War II.   Indeed. I maintain that it can be traced back to the Calvinism that was the root of Yankee culture.  Now in this instance I am not using the word “Yankee” in the sense it normally has in my country or. for that matter. anywhere else outside of the United States. i.e.. as a synonym for “American.”  I am using it rather to refer to the culture of the American northeast which developed out of the colonies settled by Puritans.  In the American Internecine War [1861-1865] this culture went to war with its chief rival. the more traditional and agrarian culture of the American states south of the Mason-Dixon Line which had developed out of colonies that were not so Puritan in nature.  It thoroughly defeated its rival and has dominated American culture on the national level ever since. [3]  By this point in time Yankee culture had become secularized. but it was still at heart a secular Calvinism.   While this most often comes up in the context of tracing American capitalism back to the Protestant [more specifically Calvinist] work ethic [4] or of Southern traditionalist conservatives pointing out the deleterious effects of the North’s victory on American society as a whole [5]. I believe that it can be shown to also be the source of the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset of American culture.    The doctrine that most sets Calvinism apart from other Christians. including other Protestants. is its doctrine of double predestination and election.   This might seem to be an unlikely source of dividing people into “good guys” and “bad guys” since it is closely related in Calvinist theology to what seems at first glance to be the strongest possible affirmation of the orthodox Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. i.e.. that all of Adam’s descendants are tainted with the sin that infected human nature in the Fall and are therefore utterly dependent upon the grace and mercy of God.  In Calvinist theology. especially as formulated against Arminianism [a dissenting subcategory of Calvinism that stresses free will] this is stated as Total Depravity.  From the body of humanity so totally depraved by Original Sin. the doctrine of double predestination states. God in eternity past selected some upon whom to pour His mercy and grace and to bring to final salvation and chose others upon whom to pour His wrath and to punish eternally basing the selection entirely upon His Own pleasure rather than upon anything within the “elect” and the “reprobate” that might distinguish them from each other.   How this idea became secularized into the American “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset may already be apparent.  To make it clearer I will briefly show how the Calvinist doctrine differs from Christian orthodoxy.  Original Sin is sound. orthodox doctrine. taken directly from the fifth chapter of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans.  Pelagianism [that Adam’s sin isn’t inherited and that people can be righteous before God without His grace] and Semi-Pelagianism [that God’s grace is required for salvation. but that man can make the first step towards God] are both heresies. condemned as such by the universal Church.  This means that all people are sinners [Rom. 3:23].  The division of mankind into the righteous [those cleansed of sin and made righteous before God by His grace given to man in Jesus Christ] and the wicked [those who finally and incurably reject the grace of God] is not something that took place in eternity past but something that will take place on the Last Day.   Until then. God does indeed have those He has “chosen”. who have received His grace. but unlike in the Calvinist concept of the “elect” in orthodox theology being chosen by God does not mean selected to be an elite few who are given God’s grace to enjoy among themselves but being selected to receive His grace that they may assist in bringing it to others.   Think of God’s words to Abra[ha]m the very first time He spoke to him.  “And I will make of thee a great nation. and I will bless thee. and make thy name great. and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee. and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” [Gen. 12:2-3]  Far too many people read these verses as if the emphasis was on the words that I did not highlight with italics.  For Abraham. being chosen by God did not mean that he was the exclusive recipient of God’s favour and blessing but that he was a vessel through which it was to flow to everyone else. [6] By contrast. the Calvinist view of election is that those chosen by God are chosen to be the sole and exclusive recipients of His saving grace and mercy.  In its strictest form. defined by the canons of the Synod of Dort [1618-1619] rather than the Institutes of John Calvin himself. Calvinism teaches that God gave Jesus Christ only to His elect and that Jesus died only for the elect. a doctrine that most Christians rightly regard as blasphemous and heretical.  In Calvinism. the numbers of the elect and reprobate have been fixed from eternity past.  One is either “elect” or “reprobate”. this can never change. and it is in no way based on anything one does.  This is the doctrine of John Winthrop and his followers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. who envisioned what would become America as a Puritan “city on a hill” even as the spirit of the Modern Age. the spirit of thinking Satan’s thoughts after him. had already infested his fellow Puritans in England who not long thereafter would. in complete violation of the Scriptural injunctions of SS Peter and Paul. wage what would ultimately be a regicidal war against King Charles I and lay the foundation for the twin evil doctrines of the Modern Age. liberalism [of which Americanism is a variety] and progressivism or leftism [of which Communism is a variety]. It is the clear ancestor of the American idea that in war there are “good guys” and “bad guys”. their “goodness” and “badness” being who they are and not so much what they do. a notion that conveniently allows traditional Christian doctrine as to when it is right to go to war and how war can be rightly conducted to be bypassed.   That. of course. is the danger of this “good guys” versus “bad guys” approach to war.  The old rules of just war doctrine were carefully thought out to limit when wars can be fought and how they can be fought so as to limit the destruction and death wrought by war.  “Good guys” versus “bad guys”. however. is not such a limiting doctrine.  To the contrary. its tendency is to give carte blanche to the “good guys” when it comes to defeating the “bad guys.”  Look at how that has played out in American history.  In the American Internecine War. the North invaded the South and waged total war against those who from their own stated perspective they regarded as still their brethren and fellow countrymen.  Total war is always unjust by the standards of traditional Christian just war doctrine.  In World War II. FDR unilaterally – he did not inform Sir Winston Churchill of it in advance. and Churchill who had a lot more sense than Roosevelt recognized it to be a bad move although he was forced to go along with FDR’s press release – declared that the Allies would accept nothing less than “unconditional surrender”. a stupid declaration that could only ever have had the result of prolonging the war and increasing rather than limiting its destructiveness.  At the end of that war Truman unconscionably ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. even though. contrary to the lies that are told today to justify this action. he knew that Japan was already willing to negotiate a surrender to General MacArthur.  The current head of the United States in an ill-thought out social media rant against Leo XIV said. among other things. “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”  Would it not be more sensible to say that the only country that has ever committed the atrocity of using nuclear weapons in war is the country that should not be trusted with having them.   The “good guy” versus “bad guy” mentality leads those who hold it to regard earthly wars as microcosmic versions of a cosmic level struggle between good and evil.  Christians are forbidden to think this way [Eph. 6:12].  There may be a surface level resemblance between this idea of a cosmic struggle between good and evil and the Christian teaching that an angel started a rebellion against God in the spiritual realm. which was brought to earth when Adam and Eve were tempted and fell. but the resemblance does not go much deeper than this.  It is much closer to Eastern dualistic concepts which. when they made their way into the Church in the early centuries through false teachers like Mani. were rejected as heresy.  Christianity – sound. orthodox. Christianity that is – does not teach that good and evil are two opposing forces. the struggle between which basically defines the universe and life within it.  Christianity teaches that there is One God. Who is Good. that other than God. everything that exists has been created by God Who created it good and pronounced it good. that the evil that became present in Creation when Satan and then man used the good gift that is their free will to rebel against God is present not as some force or power or thing that is equal and opposite to goodness. but only in the same way that a hole is present in a wall.   Classical just war doctrine. carefully formulated by the Church’s best doctors and theologians from Scriptural principles and moral philosophy to limit the destructive potential of war is really the only option for orthodox Christians.  A pacifism that tells you not merely to turn the cheek to the ἐχθροί [personal enemies] you are commanded to love but to allow the πολέμῐοι [military enemies] of your country to conquer. enslave or kill your family. neighbours and countrymen without fighting back is utterly vile and not to be regarded as a valid option.  The recipe for escalating rather than limiting endless numbers of wars that is the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset must also be rejected as repugnant.  This leaves us with classical just war doctrine. of which the United States’ current war against Iran fails all the tests.    Unless the United States can figure out a way to fight a war without using technology that enables them to kill people they can’t see in large numbers from a safe distance far away and to dismiss the civilian casualties as “collateral damage” it is doubtful that any war she fights can ever be considered just again.    [1]   Ozzy Osbourne. Terence Michael Butler. William T. Ward. F. Frank Iommi. “War Pigs”. 1970.[2]   Superman. Batman and Wonder Woman were introduced in 1938. 1939. and 1941 respectively.  Although Timely introduced Captain America in 1940. it was not until 1961 when the company rebranded as Marvel and Editor-in-chief Stan Lee working with Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four. soon to be followed by Spider-Man. the Incredible Hulk and X-Men that it became the big player in the superhero comics market.[3]   See Clyde N. Wilson. The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma. [Columbia SC: Shotwell Publishing. 2016]. [4]   Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. translated from 1905 German edition by Talcott Parsons [London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.. 1930].[5]   Note 3. vide supra. and also The Twelve Southerners. I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition [New York and London: Harper and Bros. 1930] which is still in print from Louisiana State University Press and pretty much any book by M. E. Bradford.[6]  The Calvinist view of election is not the only one that could stand correction from this passage.  Unlike previous American military escapades in the Middle East. the current war against Iran has little international support.  The United States’ most conspicuous ally in this war is Israel.  Much of the internal support for the war in the United States has come from Christians. mostly evangelical Protestants. who have a particular version of the “good guys” versus “bad guys” mindset in which Israel is always the “good guy” in a Middle East conflict regardless of the circumstances and her neighbour is always the “bad guy”.   This is because the present day state of Israel shares the same name as the people of God in the Old Testament and these evangelicals believe that the Genesis 12 passage – the parts not highlighted in the quotation in the text of this essay – require that Christians give unconditional support to the present day state.    This is an absurd conclusion.  It starts from an interpretation of Genesis 12 that like the Calvinist. regards God’s choosing or electing as being for the sake of the chosen or elect rather than for everyone.  In this case it is the interpretation that this passage. subsequent passages like it. and basically the whole of Old Testament history was all about creating an ethnic group which would enjoy God’s special favour.  The New Testament does not allow for this interpretation.  Galatians 3:16 clearly states that the Seed to Whom the promises to Abraham pertain is Christ.  Since everyone who believes in Christ is united to Christ and therefore in Christ the promises are available to everyone through faith in Jesus Christ.  They are only available through such faith. not through biological descent from Abraham.    This is the clear teaching of the passage which. ironically. those who argue otherwise. claim as their principal proof text.  This passage. which interestingly follows the two chapters which Calvinists like to twist to support their view of election. is Romans 11.  In this chapter Israel. the people of God. is likened to an olive true.  Biological descendants of ancient Israel are described as “natural branches” of the tree. “Natural branches” who do not believe in Jesus Christ are cut out of the tree for their unbelief. Gentiles [from the Latin word for “nation” this is used to mean non-Jews] who believe in Jesus Christ are “wild branches” which are grafted in by faith.  The cut off “natural branches” can be grafted back in again if they believe.  Therefore. those who are in the olive tree that is the true Israel of both Testaments are believing [in Jesus Christ] Jews and believing Gentiles.  Believing Jews and Gentiles. however. make up the Catholic [universal] Church.  Clearly. therefore. this passage cannot support the claim that the Israel of God is a biological nation distinct from the Church which is the fundamental claim of the rubbish theology that underlies the “Christian Zionist” position.    Those who cling to this theology. which. not coincidentally. is primarily to be found in the United States. will no doubt scream “Replacement Theology” at having this obvious truth pointed out. much like how Calvinists scream “Arminian” at anyone who does not accept their claim that God doesn’t love everyone and that Jesus died only for the elect. but this is akin to liberals screaming “racist” at anyone who disagrees with them.  “Replacement theology” would say either that the “wild branches” were grafted in to replace the “natural branches” or that a “wild olive tree” was substituted for the “natural olive tree” but neither of these is the case [that the “wild branches” are not “replacements” of the “natural branches” is evident from the fact that the “natural branches” can be grafted back in].  This is rather “Continuation theology”. that Israel. the olive tree. continues into the Church.   The only “replacement” is the “replacement” of the Old Covenant with the New. a “replacement” that is actually a “fulfillment” of the promises of the Old Covenant. and the replacement of the spiritual leadership of Israel under the New Covenant [the Apostles and their successor bishops leading a ministry of presbyters supported by deacons] from that of the Old Covenant [the Aaronic priesthood. supported by the Levites and led by the chief or high priest] which is what was prophesied by Jesus in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.    Note that “replacement” of this sort took place in Judaism as well.  A parallel error to the one I have been debunking in this note is the error of thinking that what is called Judaism today is the religion of the Old Testament.  This is not the case.  Judaism shares a common history with Christianity before the coming of Christ. but with the coming of Christ the prophecies of the Messiah were fulfilled and the New Covenant established.  The Gospel was to be preached to the Jews first but many of these did not believe and held on to the religion of the Old Testament.  This was eventually taken away from them when the forces of Titus of Rome sacked Jerusalem in AD 70.  The principal elements of the Old Testament religion were the aforementioned Aaronic priesthood. the sacrifices that this priesthood was commanded to offer daily and on special occasions. at first in the Tabernacle. then in the Temple which replaced the Tabernacle and which had to be in a specific place in Jerusalem. and the feasts which by the Mosaic Law had to be celebrated in Jerusalem.   The destruction of the Temple made all that impossible.  The rabbis. originally lay teachers and leaders in late Second Temple Judaism. became the clergy of the new Judaism that arose after the destruction of the Temple.  Synagogue worship. which had developed after the Babylonian Captivity. probably around the time of Ezra himself. elements of which were incorporated into Christianity [the Ministry of the Word portion of the service prior to the Ministry of the Sacrament is largely an adaptation of synagogue worship]. took over the central place in the worship of Judaism from Temple worship.  The feasts remained. but obviously they could no longer be kept in strict accordance to the Mosaic Law.  This new Judaism is not. as some Christians mistakenly think. an older parent religion to Christianity. but a younger religion by about forty years.  It too has other Scriptures by which the Scriptures which Jews and Christians have in common are interpreted.  These. consisting of the Mishnah [the codification of what the Second Temple Pharisees called the oral law] and rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah called the Gemara. comprise the Talmud. which was compiled between the third and sixth centuries AD [both in Palestine and Babylon with the Babylonian version which was completed later becoming the authoritative version].     None of this excuses us from our duty to leave peacefully. so far as it depends on us. with all people and to “Give none offence. neither to the Jews. nor to the Gentiles. nor to the church of God” [1 Cor. 10:32].  It shows the folly in thinking that we are under an obligation to God to support the present state that calls herself Israel in all of her conflicts without taking any consideration of who. if anyone. is in the right in the conflict.  Note that thinking we have to oppose the present state of Israel in all of her conflicts is just as much folly and the kind of folly that is usually attached to the “woke” anti-white bigotry in the kind of academic leftism that Americans think is a form of Marxism created by the infiltration of American higher learning by European Communists but which is actually Americanism taken to its totalitarian extreme.  These conflicts should be evaluated by the standards with which we would judge the conflicts of any other states.  Certainly it is not helpful for Christians to be repeating the inane Scripture-twisting rhetoric of the state of Israel’s leaders that treats the nation that is currently located in the heart of what was King Cyrus’ empire as if it were Amalek. Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:07:00 +0000 ceed72174f701dd007baf4b083c2d1a809942e48 https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/once-and-future-saints Three prophecies for England Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:19:59 +0000 e3e751df8f15c6d545d9e8f4d9d77e06d03d2e90 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/22/james-tour-stephen-c-meyer-and-john-lennox-discuss-the-story-of-everything/ Something very exciting just happened. By now. most people have heard about the new movie about intelligent design in the universe that is coming to theaters on April 30th through May 6. Well. I’ve been telling people at work about this movie and sending them links about various discussions about it with the people involved. … Continue reading James Tour. Stephen C. Meyer and John Lennox discuss “The Story of Everything” → Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:00:30 +0000 68bab7bcf7def101f9411c8cee2c7920acb141ff https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/04/bill-c-9-and-difference-between-good.html On Lady Day this year. which fell on the Wednesday before Palm Sunday. Bill C-9 passed its third hearing in the House of Commons.  The following day the first reading in the Senate was completed and it is now in its second reading before that august chamber of sober second thought.  This bill. entitled the “Combatting Hate Act”. was introduced by the governing Liberals last September.  It consists of a series of amendments to the Criminal Code.  These would create four new offences.  The first two have to do with preventing access to places of worship. cultural centres. educational institutions [including daycare centres]. seniors’ residences. and cemeteries. by means of intimidation [the first offence] or obstruction [the second offence].  The third new offence is “hate crime” defined to include any existing offence when it is committed with the motivation of hatred.  Creating this “hate crime” offence includes increasing the penalties attached to the existing offences when committed for this motivation.   The final new offence involves the public display of specified symbols. including ones used by terrorists. Nazi symbols. and “a symbol that so nearly resembles” the aforementioned “that it is likely to be confused with that symbol”.  The order in which I have listed the offences here is that of the government’s initial announcement of the legislation. not the order in which they currently stand in the bill [1].   In addition to creating these new offences the bill adds a definition “hatred” into the Criminal Code.  Here is the definition from the text of the bill: “hatred means an emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation. [haine]”.  It also adds this clarifying note “For greater certainty. the communication of a statement does not incite or promote hatred. for the purposes of this section. (Section 319 of the Criminal Code pertaining to “hate propaganda”) solely because it discredits. humiliates. hurts or offends.”   The bill will also remove something from the Criminal Code.  This is mentioned alongside the four new offences in the summary at the beginning of the bill. indeed. it is the second item in the summary: “repeal the defence based on the expression of opinions on religious subjects or texts in relation to the offences of wilful promotion of hatred or antisemitism”.  What this will repeal is subsection 3 [b] of Section 319 of the Criminal Code as it currently stands.  This reads “3 No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection [2]… [b] if. in good faith. the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text”.  The repeal of this subsection. it was reported last fall. was added to this bill in order to obtain the support of the Lower Canadian separatists who made it a condition of their support.   Most of the discussion of this bill – the popular discussion. I mean. not the official discussion in the House and Senate – has centred around this last matter. the removal of the good faith religious defence.  The entire bill is rotten to the core. in my opinion. and so is the entire section of the Criminal Code [318-319] which it seeks to amend.    Consider the proposal to create a “hate crime” offence consisting of other offences committed with hatred as their motivation.   If somebody shoots you in the head. will you be deader if he shot you because of the colour of your skin than if he shot you because you were impeding his attempt to rob your house.  Or. if he hits your foot instead of your head. will it be less likely to turn gangrenous and have to be amputated.  Suppose instead of shooting you he punches you in the nose and kicks you in the groin.  Will this hurt any less if he does so because he is high on meth than if he does so because he doesn’t like your religion.  If these questions are absurd then so is the idea that a law prescribing higher penalties to the same crime when committed for reasons having to do with hate could be just.    Someone might counter that the law recognizes different grades of homicide.  For a homicide to be classified as murder the murderer must have intended either to kill the victim or to do something criminal that would make the victim’s death a likely outcome.  [2] To be classified as first degree murder either the murder or some other felony in the context of which the murder took place has to have been planned in advance in cold blood. [3]  A homicide that does not meet the requirements to be classified as murder but is still culpable under law - if done out of the necessity of self-defence it is not so culpable. at least by the letter of the law if not by how morons in His Majesty’s constabulary and on His Majesty’s benches interpret it [4] - is classified as manslaughter [unless it falls under the category of infanticide].  Homicide committed in the heat of passion is the primary example of culpable manslaughter. [5]    These differences. however. are more substantial than mere differences in motivation. they are differences in the very nature of the crime.  In the case of the proposed “hate crime” offence. the motivation is only the difference.  This is because it is the motivation of “hate” and not the criminal act per se that the bill seeks to punish.  This ought to be obvious from the fact that every single act that will fall under the classification of “hate crime” if Bill C-9 passes the Senate and receives royal assent is already against the law.  That this is the case is spelled out in the very wording of the bill.  Therefore. it can only be the motivation that the bill seeks to punish.    A far more honest version of Bill C-9 would simply state that it is creating a new offence. punishable under the Criminal Code. entitled “hate.”  The Liberals would not likely have drafted a bill worded this way. however. because it would have stood far less of a chance of passing the House. and little to no chance of surviving a court challenge if it made it into law.  A bill that proposed directly criminalizing “hate” itself. without attaching it to some act or another. would be a bill that proposes criminalizing something people think and feel.  This would be open intrusion into what has long been regarded as beyond the legitimate sphere of government authority.   By “long”. I do not mean merely going back to 1982 when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was passed. or even back to the formulation of classical liberal theory in the eighteenth century.  When Queen Elizabeth I acceded the throne in 1558. the people of her realm were divided in religious opinion.  Some were opposed to the reforms introduced in the brief reign of her brother Edward VI or even those moderate reforms her father Henry VIII had allowed and favoured the reconciliation with Rome during the reign of her sister Mary. Others were the exact opposite of this and felt the Henrician and Edwardian reforms had not gone far enough and that every last vestige of the pre-Reformation tradition needed to be expunged from the Church. Most fell somewhere in between.  Elizabeth restored the Henrician and Edwardian reforms. in a few instances moderating them somewhat. rarely going further. and required of all her subjects external conformity to the Church of England.  While it is unlikely to win her any accolades as an advocate of freedom of conscience from an age like ours. drunk on liberalism and its doctrine of separation of church and state. Elizabeth declared “I have no desire to make windows into men's souls.”  With both papists and Puritans threatening the security of the realm with their plots against her. she defended her authority to regulate the externals of the Church and require conformity to it. while denying to Parliament as much as to herself the right to dictate what her subjects privately believed and how they interpreted the Prayer Book and Articles.   A bill that proposed criminalizing “hate”. something that people think and feel. would do the very thing that Elizabeth I said she had no desire to do. open a window into men’s souls.  While volumes could be written about how Modern democratic liberalism has made government more intrusive rather than less intrusive than it was in Christian civilization prior to the onset of the Modern Age. that is something to be explored at length at another time.  Our point here is different.  The governing Liberals. by not drafting such a bill. and by introducing C-9 in the way they did with a lot of fluff about how it was carefully worded to avoid violating the Charter. demonstrated that they recognize that a bill that proposed to directly criminalize what people think or feel would intrude into an area beyond where government can legitimately govern.  What they either are not aware of or are pretending not to be aware of – and this lack of awareness predates the Charter. all the way back to when the Liberals added Sections 318-319 to the Criminal Code in 1970 – is that indirectly criminalizing what people think and feel is no better than directly criminalizing it.   All “hate” laws are fundamentally bad laws because they all try to do indirectly what would be instantly recognizable as a tyrannical or totalitarian move if it were done directly   Defenders of “hate” laws. particularly those that would limit what someone can say in public. try to ward off criticism by saying that all these laws do is prohibit threatening and urging violence against protected groups.  If this were the case. such laws would still be bad laws because they are not needed due to their redundancy. Incitement has been a crime for a very long time – it did not begin as a statutory offence. that is to say one written into law by an act of legislation. but as a Common Law offence.  Incitement is the act of encouraging others to commit a crime.  It is itself a criminal act because it involves the person who does the incitement in the guilt of the person who commits the criminal act that has been incited.  The fact that it is a crime is a limit on speech. but not a limit due to the thought or feeling expressed in the speech. but rather due to its nature as an act. as explained in the previous sentence.  For speech to be incitement it must take the form “Do X to Y”.   Either “hate speech” legislation prohibits only speech that takes the form “Do X to Y” or it prohibits speech that does not take this form.  If it only prohibits speech that takes the form “Do X to Y”. it is redundant because that was already covered by the law against incitement.  On top of its redundancy. it adds to the law against criminal incitement by saying that such and such groups deserve more protection against criminal incitement than others. in order to make it easier for law enforcement to “get” such and such offenders.  Neither of these things. providing special protection for certain groups nor trying to “get” someone. is characteristic of good law. it is rather a red flag that the law in question is bad.    If. on the other hand. the “hate speech” legislation goes beyond “Do X to Y” then it is limiting speech due to something other than it being an act of incitement.  It is limiting speech due to its content. due to its expression of what the speaker thinks or feels.  It is the government intruding where it has no business to intrude. trying to open up “windows into the souls of men.”   The history of “hate” legislation in Canada shows that it has been bad in both of these ways at the same time. That the original “hate propaganda” act that put Sections 318-319 into the Criminal Code in 1970 was intended to “get” certain people is evident from the fact that when. due to defendants under these sections being entitled to the protections all defendants are entitled to under criminal law [right to a trial. right to a defense. right to the presumption of innocence until guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt]. it turned out that it was not so easy to “get” those people after all. the government was immediately lobbied to find a way around this. which it did by including Section 13 in the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977.  The Canadian Human Rights Act is civil. not criminal. legislation and so those accused under it do not have the rights to which criminal defendants are entitled.  Section 13 was hardly limited to speech that takes the form “Do X to Y”. it was so broadly worded – speech that is “likely to” expose someone to “hatred or contempt” - that you could drive a convoy of trucks driving side by each through it.  The entire Canadian Human Rights Act. obiter dictum. is bad law. passed like its UK equivalent the Race Relations Act. in imitation of a bad Act in the United States.  For decades complaints made under Section 13 had a 100% conviction rate. which is a huge indication that the law is not just bad but horridly so.  Eventually. when the spotlight was turned on Section 13 in the first decade of this millennium. public opinion turned against it in Canada and in 2012. a private members bill to repeal Section 13 which had been introduced by Brian Storseth. then MP for Westlock-St. Paul. passed third reading in the House. receiving royal assent in 2013. and coming into effect in 2014.    That the people that both Sections 318-319 and Section 13 were originally intended to “get” were people generally reviled in Canadian society does not make these laws any better.  Indeed. this is the way bad laws of this sort work.  They start by going after people who. because of the general revulsion against them. have few defenders. and then. when these have all been “gotten” move on to others.  Although the Rev. Martin Niemöller’s famous poem starting with “First they came for the Communists” was talking about the actions of a regime rather than the cumulative mission creep of a piece of legislation. it illustrates the process quite well.  That those the Canadian “hate” laws were initially intended to “get” were those who continue to identify with the ideology of the regime that did the “coming for” in Niemöller’s poem does not alter the point.  This ideology was one of two ideologies held by parties that established remarkably similar totalitarian terror-states that murdered a lot of people in the twentieth century.  This ideology was short-lived. it basically died with its regime in 1945. whereas the other ideology seized power earlier [Russia. 1917]. in more countries [at its peak it controlled roughly a third of the world]. lasted longer [some countries still officially claim the ideology today]. and killed more people [over 100 million].  Yet the second category of “hate” symbols to be banned under C-9 consists entirely of symbols of this dead ideology. which very few people would display in public in Canada at this point in time. but not the symbols of the other ideology which plenty of people. especially idiots in academia [faculty and students alike] are fond of displaying.  No. my point is not that Bill C-9 would be improved if the hammer and sickle were banned alongside the swastika.   There are two reasons the swastika and the SS symbol are specified to be banned by C-9 and the hammer and sickle. red star. and raised fist are not.  The first is that the ban is designed to “get” an extremely small number of people.  The second is that it is designed to provide special protection to the adherents of one particular religion in Canada. Judaism.  There is already a subsection of Section 319 of the Criminal Code that explicitly provides special protection to the adherents of Judaism. [6]  This subsection. which was smuggled in by the Liberals under their previous leader in a budget bill four years ago. deserves examination here because it demonstrates that speech of the “Do X to Y” form is hardly what “hate” legislation is intended to combat.   The special protection that subsection 2.1 provides to adherents of Judaism is protection of their feelings. This is because hurt feelings is the only way the speech prohibited by subsection 2.1 could possibly hurt them.  The speech prohibited does not take the form “Do X to Y”.  It takes the forms “I approve of Event A”. “Event A happened differently than what we have been told” and “Event A wasn’t as important as it is made out to be.”  Only the first of these could be reasonably considered to be an expression of hatred.  Speech of the second and third forms ought never to be banned. it is a crime against conscience. reason. and common sense to ban it and a violation of the fundamental freedoms of His Majesty’s subjects. even in the watered down wording of section 2 of the Charter. to so ban it.  [7]   Organizations purporting to speak for Judaism – generally self-appointed activists rather than the religion’s spiritual teachers and leaders - had been lobbying for “hate” legislation since long before the first “hate” bill was passed in 1970.  This is not a criticism of such organizations. per se.  Any group of His Majesty’s subjects has the right to petition His Majesty’s government for what they feel is in their own best interest.  They do not. however. have the right to have their petition granted at the expense of the general good of the realm.  It is the duty of His Majesty’s government to see to it that the general good is protected. even if it means denying the petition of the lobbying group.  This duty that has been sorely neglected. when it comes to “hate” laws. when the Liberals have formed His Majesty’s government in Ottawa. at least since the first Trudeau premiership.  Yes. it is a duty of His Majesty’s government. because the general good that is compromised by “hate” legislation is the good of freedom of conscience. of freedom from having the government try to open “windows into men’s souls” a good that protects us all.   Now. someone might object that the religious defence that Bill C-9 will remove from Section 319. also provides special protection to specific groups.  Unlike the case of the second class of symbols to be banned under C-9. however. the defence to be removed is written in general terms.  See the text of the defence quoted in the third paragraph of this essay.  Subsection 3 [b] was included in Section 319 to prevent a section intended to prevent people from being made the targets of propaganda because of their religion from itself becoming a weapon with which to target religion.   The assurances of government ministers. such as Marc Miller. that the removal of this defence will not mean that religions will be so targeted ring very false and are not to be trusted.  In the context of advocating this bill. he declared three Biblical passages. two from the Old Testament and one from the New to contain “clear hatred”. That anyone quoting these passages in public might find himself to be charged is hardly an unlikely outcome of this bill. [8]   To put the matter in more general terms. the proposed removal of a legal defence should sound warning alarms.  A fundamental principle of our justice system – not merely that of Canada. not merely that of the Commonwealth. but of the civilization formerly known as Christendom. with roots in ancient Roman Law and in the Scriptures common to Christianity and Judaism [9] – is that it is better to leave the guilty unpunished than to unjustly punish the innocent.  Good laws. rarely if ever. make it easier to prosecute.  This is the reverse side of the coin to the bad laws are written to “get” people principle that we have already discussed.   Defenders of the removal of the defence argue that nobody should be allowed to use religion as a defence for urging violence.  As we have seen. those who drafted this defence. did so with regards to speech that was not limited to the “Do X to Y” form.  There is. however. a simple solution to this which would give the advocates of C-9 what they claim they want without creating a cudgel against religion.  That is to eliminate Sections 318-319 entirely.     This should have been done long ago.  There is nothing in Sections 318-319 worth preserving.   There is only one thing under the absurd category of “hate speech” or “hate propaganda” that ought to be against the law.  That is criminal incitement. the urging of violence or other criminal activity in the “Do X to Y” form.  This was against the law before Sections 318-319 were entered into the Criminal Code.  It will still be against the law if those Sections are removed.  Moreover. it will only be against the law in a way that protects everyone. without trying to “get” anyone and without pandering to those who think they deserve special protection.  There will be no religious exception. both because this will die with Sections 318-319 and because it won’t be needed.  The basic law against criminal incitement cannot be weaponized against religion because unlike “hate” laws which are designed to be weaponized against certain people on behalf of other people. it is there to keep the king’s peace.  There is little. if anything. that could be regarded as good law. which does not exist mainly if not solely for this purpose.    [1]   In the text of the bill the prohibition of symbols is the first offence. hate crime is the second. intimidation the third. and obstruction the fourth.[2]   Criminal Code of Canada. Section 229.[3]   Criminal Code of Canada. Section 231.[4]   Criminal Code of Canada. Section 34.[5]  Criminal Code of Canada. Section 232.[6]  Criminal Code of Canada. Section 319. [2.1].[7]   The two most notorious “hate” trials in Canadian history. both of which took place in my youth during the Mulroney premiership. were primarily about speech of this “Event A happened differently than we have been told” form.  One individual. the one charged under section 319 of the Criminal Codes. was also charged with speech in the form “Y is guilty of Z”.  None of the speech was in the form “Do X to Y”. and in the course of the trials. the other individual. who was charged under a different law that the Supreme Court of Canada threw out on appeal. himself became the target of criminal violence.  I thought at the time. and I think so still. that these trials were an utter disgrace and the type of thing better suited to the sort of regime that these men were accused. with varying degrees of accuracy. of supporting. than to a Realm of His [Her at the time] Majesty’s Commonwealth.  In February 2001. Esquire published an article by Jewish. liberal. literary journalist. war correspondent. and author John Sack in which he discussed a meeting he had attended of those who hold the “Event A happened differently than we have been told” perspective where he had met the second mentioned of these defendants.  To this day it is my go to reference whenever some jackass takes exception to my obviously correct position that if the spirit of the Third Reich lives on today it is more in the “liberals” [would J. S. Mill recognize them as such.] who pass laws against “Holocaust Denial” than in those they persecute.[8]   Charges of this sort were made against Hugh Owens in 1997.  During the week which has subsequently dropped the lesser of the two sins in its title and retained the worse [and expanded to a month. then a season]. he took out an advertisement with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix with two male stick figures holding hands inside the red circle with a slash symbol.  It also contained references to a number of Bible verses on the subject.  The complaint. which was made under the provincial human rights code. was initially upheld. but in 2006 overturned by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.  More recently [2013] the Supreme Court of Canada overturned Bill Whatcott’s successful appeal to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal against his conviction by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal in a somewhat similar case.  In the unanimous ruling. the Court utilized the earlier court definition of hatred from R v Taylor.  Although the Supreme Court said that “hatred” needs to be understood as 'extreme manifestations of the emotion described by the words 'detestation' and 'vilification'' the fact that they ruled that Whatcott’s flyer distribution constituted such shows how empty this description really is.  That this is the basis of the definition of “hatred” to be added to the Criminal Code by C-9 is not a good sign.  An “extreme manifestation” of “detestation”. to any sane person. would consist of violent actions rather than words.  “Vilification” is an act not an emotion and it is already covered by defamation law. there is no need to include it under “hate.”  The use of the word “emotion” is revealing [among other things it reveals how much a better sort of justice is needed for the highest bench of His Majesty’s court].  It is not the place of government to tell people what to think or feel.[9]   Gen. 18:16-33.   Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:14:00 +0000 8d99a1e227ac899fc2f76bd47c04cc007fcf4df8 https://www.menofthewest.net/niccolo-paganini/ He was no 'mere virtuoso'—there was a something in his playing that defied description or imitation... Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:55:06 +0000 fa48400d1932a0df046e4b814fc9fdc7b2e557d0 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/21/illustra-medias-documentary-on-intelligent-design-in-the-fossile-record-is-online/ I must have given away dozens of those 3-DVD sets from Illustra Media that contained “Unlocking the Mystery of Life’s Origin”. “The Privileged Planet” and “Darwin’s Dilemma”. I wanted to send these to people as part of their “start doing apologetics” starter packs. Well. good news for my readers who didn’t get a set from … Continue reading Illustra Media’s documentary on intelligent design in the fossil record is online → Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:00:35 +0000 05c056f6e0f14c84d770e0ea8780d423c0b700c6 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/04/18/when-christians-confuse-interpretation-with-truth/ Here’s a question…if you met another Christian who you see if living a life separate from the world. he prays and believes that Jesus died for our sins…but he has a different opinion on the details. like whether he died on a cross or an upright stake…why would it be so important to you to (…) Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:39:11 +0000 b0527fe13033bfad0170c4874e65eb94d74a23ac https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/18/knight-and-rose-show-75-improving-healthcare-a-christian-perspective/ Welcome to episode 75 of the Knight and Rose podcast. In this episode. Wintery Knight and Desert Rose evaluate health insurance options in America. discuss moral concerns. and offer reforms to lower prices and improve quality. If you like this episode. please subscribe to the podcast. and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it … Continue reading Knight and Rose Show n75: Improving Healthcare: A Christian Perspective → Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:00:16 +0000 f0077b3a33c49114d1a53db727dfbd3279940955 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/17/the-best-state-tennessee-designates-june-as-nuclear-family-month/ One of the reasons why we have 50 states in America is so that we have 50 little laboratories where we can run public policy 50 different ways and see which way works best. There are lots of ways to measure which states are best: tax rates. cost of living. crime rates. school choice. energy … Continue reading The Best State: Tennessee designates June as “Nuclear Family Month” → Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0000 548bc188005c127745a693c8f3201213f0784f5f https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-april-21e Talk about anything you like Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:33:22 +0000 c66623e4a058f7590eb998653a7cf4f9e32470e1 https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/04/christian-nationalism.html The subject of “Christian Nationalism” has been much discussed as of late.  A friend and classmate from my theological studies in Otterburne in the 1990s has been decrying it all over social media.  His assessment of it relies upon the acceptance of a number of axioms that progressives regard as self-evident but which I correctly consider to be bunkum.  Needless to say I do not share his perspective.  My rejection of my friend’s fatally flawed opposition to Christian Nationalism should not be taken as an endorsement of it.  Quite the contrary.  Recently. the administrator of an Anglican social media forum opened a discussion thread on the subject.  This essay is for the most part an expansion of my response.   To answer the question of whether or not nationalism can be Christian in any real. orthodox. sense. we need to first determine what nationalism is.  The best way that I know to do this. is by distinguishing nationalism from something much older than nationalism with which it is often confused.  That something is patriotism.    Patriotism belongs to the category of natural affections.  Think of the love that under ordinary circumstances a child feels for his parents and a parent feels for a child.  These are natural affections. loves that unless something happens to impede them. everyone naturally develops.  The love of home. which the late Sir Roger Scruton called oikophilia. is another such natural affection and one that is very similar to patriotism.  Patriotism derives its name from the Greek word πατρίς [πάτρα in some dialects. such as Homeric Ionic] and its Latin cognate patria. both of which mean “native land” or more literally. since they are themselves derived from the word for father. “fatherland.”  Patriotism is the affection. attachment. and love that one feels for one’s homeland. one’s country. as naturally as one loves one’s parents and offspring.   Patriotism. like all natural affections. has been regarded as good and virtuous from time immemorial.  To illustrate. consider the thirtieth verse of the first book of Homer’s epic Iliad which is the verse in which the word πάτρα appears for the first time in Homer.  This appears in the portion of the poem where Homer is providing the background story to the wrath of Achilles which brought all sorts of nastiness upon the Greeks from his breech with Agamemnon until their reconciliation after the death of Patrocles at the hands of Hector which is the main theme of the epic.  Chryses. the priest of Apollo. has come to the Greek encampment to buy the freedom of his daughter whom Agamemnon holds as a war prize.  His graceful address and his offer of an extremely generous ransom has won over all the other Greeks but infuriated Agamemnon. king of Mycenae and Argos and general leader of the Greek expedition against Troy.  Agamemnon responds with an extremely rude and ill-tempered speech in which he orders Chryses away from the encampment and the ships. warning him that if he catches him there again the symbols of his priestly office will not protect him.  Then. to add insult to injury. he adds in verses twenty-nine and thirty the following:   τὴν δ᾽ ἐγὼ οὐ λύσω: πρίν μιν καὶ γῆρας ἔπεισιν ἡμετέρῳ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ ἐν Ἄργεϊ τηλόθι πάτρης   This means “but your [daughter] I will not release. until old age finds her also. in our house in Argos far from her fatherland.”  The insult extends into the next verse where it gets much cruder and Agamemnon’s speech into the verse after that but we have arrived at the point.    The words τηλόθι πάτρης. “far from her fatherland” are intended as a particularly cruel twist of the knife here.  Obviously. Agamemnon was going out of his way to say that he will do the exact opposite of what Chryses had requested. but in stressing the distance of his palace from the girl’s homeland he was also saying that he will inflict upon her what he and all the Greeks were themselves suffering at that point in time.  The Iliad is set in the last year of the ten year siege of Troy.  The Greeks had been τηλόθι πάτρης themselves for a long time and were feeling the effects of it. as Agamemnon’s speech as a whole and the bitter strife that would soon thereafter divide him from Achilles demonstrate.   Homer’s ability to communicate this in this way rests upon the common understanding between him. his hearers. and his readers down through the generations. that one’s πάτρα is to be loved and cherished and that to be far from it is misery.     So again. patriotism is a natural affection. a feeling of love akin to love for one’s family and home.  This has many implications.  One. is that patriotism has nothing to do with how you think your country compares to other countries.  Patriotism may incline you towards thinking that your country is the best in the world but it is never based on thinking this.  The patriot loves his country because she is his and not because he thinks her to be better than such and such other countries.  Patriotism has nothing to do with whether or not one’s country is “great.”  While children often go through a “my dad can beat up your dad” phase they ordinarily grow out of it.  Someone who persists in talking this way into adulthood does not demonstrate a healthy filial affection but rather a case of arrested development.  The same applies to love of country.   From this implication. we can infer further that patriotism is not naturally bellicose.  Since love of country. like love of family and home is natural to humanity. and since it is not based on concepts like “greatness” that measure one’s country against others. it is not threatened by other people loving their other countries nor does it impel one to threaten others.  Patriotism is a great motivation to fight defensively in war. that is to protect one’s country. but it is no motivation to wage aggressive war against others.   Samuel Johnson. the eighteenth century lexicographer. famously said “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” [1]  James Boswell. his biographer. from whom we have the account of this and Dr. Johnson’s other table-talk. immediately after recording it explained “But let it be considered. that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country. but that pretended patriotism which so many. in all ages and countries. have made a cloak for self-interest.” [2]  The conversation took place in 1775 in the midst of the controversy that would lead to the American Declaration of Independence the following year.  The year previous. Dr. Johnson had expressed his thoughts on the American rebels-to-be and their gripes in a pamphlet entitled The Patriot.  There is little doubt as to who the scoundrels were to whom Dr. Johnson referred.   Although Boswell put it in terms of real versus pretend. patriotism. and this was not a wrong way of describing it. from the standpoint of hindsight it could be said that what had occurred was the emergence of a new thing which was not patriotism as we have described it but which had not yet been given a name of its own and so for a time it shared the name of the age old love of country.   Did Dr. Johnson himself see that there were now two things sharing one name.  In his Dictionary he defined patriotism as “Love of one’s country. zeal for one’s country.”  Most likely he meant this as a single definition. certainly in The Patriot he spoke in Boswell’s terms of real versus pretend. but it is interesting that the two phrases from his definition could be taken as defining the two different “patriotisms” of the time.  Zeal is not the same thing as love.   The American Revolution was a war cast from the mold of Lucifer’s rebellion against God.  So was its antecedent. the Puritan rebellion against Charles I. but Crowell et al.. had wrapped themselves in the hypocritical piety of their legalistic Calvinism.  The propagandists of the American Revolution such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine [“the infidel Paine”] whose minds were steeped in the skepticism and deism of eighteenth century philosophy had no such recourse and so justified their actions by appealing to the ideals of “Enlightenment” liberalism. a philosophy born out of explicit rejection of the Christian faith of the civilization of the age that preceded the Modern.  Since such justifications had little popular appeal in a day in which the Age’s retreat from Christianity was still in its early years – past infancy. not quite in adolescence yet – their cloak when taking their ideals public was patriotism.  It was not the age-old natural affection patriotism but the new thing that had not yet come into its name but was still borrowing the name of the old patriotism and so rightly decried as a pretender by Dr. Johnson and Boswell.  The term that would become its name was around - Johann Gottfried von Herder had used it in a treatise in 1772 – but had not yet become attached to the thing.  In the French Revolution. born out of the same false ideals as the American and in which the bloody fruit of those ideals was much more naked. opening the eyes of Dr. Johnson’s friend Edmund Burke to the nature of these “armed doctrines”. the name and the thing would find each other.  That name is nationalism.   The name nationalism is obviously derived from the word nation.  The word nation comes ultimately from the Latin verb nascor “be born” through its third principal part natus sum. “have been born” [3].  Natio. the noun derived from this verb could mean the act of birth but it also mean a tribe. kin group. or people united by a common birth or line of descent.  It carried this second meaning but not the first into Modern tongues like English where it became nation.  Here we see an indication of a divergence from patriotism.  Patriotism is love directed towards one’s country – a place.  Nationalism is – something. we will consider what momentarily – directed towards one’s people group.   This difference should not be exaggerated. The closest natural affection to patriotism is the love of home.  This too is a love of place.  Home. however. is the place where your family is.  Love of family and love of home cannot be separated and similarly patriotism is not a love of the land considered abstractly apart from the people and institutions and way of life.    That having been said. the history of nationalism shows that this difference is important.  If patriotism is the love of home writ large. as in Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” account of it. nationalism is tribalism writ large.  While there is something to be said for the group loyalty of tribalism. that aspects of it need to be suppressed for there to be the rule of law and order necessary for civilization is the fundamental message of Aeschylus’ Oresteia.  It is also the reason for various provisions of the Mosaic Law. most obviously the refuge cities.  This is good reason to be wary of something that is basically tribalism but with the tribe the size of a Modern nation.   The history of nationalism demonstrates that it does not belong to the same class or category. natural affections. as patriotism.  From the beginning nationalism has been characterized by a belligerence towards others.  In the American Revolution. when it was still going under the name it borrowed from true patriotism. the belligerence was directed towards the larger society. the British Empire. of which it had been a part.  In the French Revolution. the violence initially directed against the society’s own traditional institutions and upper classes quickly turned on anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Revolution and its leaders and as this “Reign of Terror” started. Revolutionary France declared war on its neighbours who had militarized their borders in an effort to contain the revolution.  While the Reign of Terror ended with the arrest of Robespierre and the dawn of the Thermidor Reaction in July 1794 neither the wars nor the nationalism impelling them ceased with it and a general who had won his initial fame in those wars would before the eighteenth century ended launch the first of the serious of conquests which along with his simultaneous rise to power in the civil government would twice make him Emperor of France.  Among Napoleon’s generals. at least according to a play from the 1830s. [4] was a man named Nicolas Chauvin who refused to give up Napoleon’s imperial cause even after it was clearly over and Napoleon dead. and whose name became synonymous with an imperialistic nationalism that sees other peoples as existing only to be crushed. conquered and subdued by one’s own [although from the second wave of feminism in the middle of the twentieth century it has come to be more commonly used for males with enough self-respect not to buy into feminism’s lies but not enough sense to be subtle about it].     A century after Napoleon’s death an Austrian-born German nationalist would become the leader of a small German socialist party to whose name he would attach the German word for nationalist.  As leader of the National Socialists. he began his rise to power by exploiting Germany’s grievances over the loss of World War I and promised to restore Germany to her glory by building a Reich that would last a thousand years.  Shortly after having won the office of Chancellor in 1933. he secured himself in that office by declaring a state of emergency after an arson in the Reichstag [German parliament building] and using the emergency powers this granted him to transform his office into that of a dictator and Germany into a single-party totalitarian state that resembled nothing so much as the Soviet Union which the Bolsheviks had created in Russia.  Hitler remilitarized Germany then began seizing territory such as his country of birth. Austria. which had historically been German-speaking but never part of the Germany that Otto von Bismarck had forged under the Prussian House of Hohenzollern [at the time she was the centre of her own empire under the Hapsburgs]. by bullying and threats and exploiting the fact that the other powers were desperate to avoid the outbreak of a second war.  Then. having made a pact with the Soviet Union to divide Poland between themselves. he invaded that country. launching World War II in which he. like Napoleon before him. conquered most of Europe. before repeating Napoleon’s fatal mistake of trying to seize Russia.   Hitler’s nationalism was particularly belligerent against other peoples because it was wed to his belief that the races of humanity were locked into a Darwinian struggle for existence that was a zero-sum game [5] in which there could be only one winner.  While this was unique to National Socialism. in its three centuries nationalism in general has consistently demonstrated a hostile attitude towards other nations that is far removed from the irenic love of country that is true patriotism.  One final detail about Hitler deserves mention here.  On 19 March. 1945 as the Red Army was rapidly approaching Berlin while the American commander disgracefully held back the Western Allies. a little over a month and one week before he and his bride ended their lives in his bunker. Hitler issued the “Destructive Measures on Reich Territory” decree. ordering the destruction of the civil infrastructure of Germany.   Fortunately for the Germans. Albert Speer made sure this insane “Nero Decree” was not carried out.  Hitler had ordered the Germans to reduce their own country to the stone age in order to spite the Russians. but by this point in time he was convinced that the Russians had won the Darwinian struggle and that the Germans. having failed him. had lost and were not worthy to survive.  A nationalist could come to this horrid conclusion.  A patriot never could. This is because patriotism has nothing to do with how one’s country and her people compare to other countries and other people.  It is a love that comes naturally.  Nationalism is concerned with how big and strong and powerful and great its country is and if its country fails the nationalist can easily turn on it as Hitler turned on Germany at the end.  Nationalism is not a love. a natural affection at all.  It is an ideology. a zealous commitment to the idea of one’s country as the greatest and best.  The nationalist will demand that his country be made great again.  Love. however. “envieth not…vaunteth not itself. is not puffed up.” [6] The patriot loves his country as she is and if he is a Christian patriot will be far more concerned with his country’s goodness than her greatness.   Nationalism then is an artificial substitute for the natural love of country that is patriotism. a substitute that could only have been produced in the Modern Age.  This is because it is the product of the Modern idea of democracy.  The emphasis in the previous sentence is on the word Modern.  Modern democracy is not the same thing as the democracy of ancient Athens.   Nor is it the democracy that is an aspect or element of the traditional institution of parliament that developed long before the Modern Age. although it has grafted itself onto that democracy and corrupted it.  Modern democracy is an idea that comes from Modern liberal philosophy. which philosophy was thought up by Modern men thinking Satan’s thoughts after him.    We have already touched on this in discussing the American Revolution and the origins of nationalism.  Satan became Satan by rebelling against the Sovereign King of all His Creation. God.  He was so full of himself. so proud of his own beauty and other fine qualities – gifts God had given him – that he thought he ought to rule the universe instead of God.  Modern man looked around at Christendom. the Christian civilization into which he had been born. and thought that he could think up a better way of organizing things that would eliminate most or all of human suffering. and rebelled against the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Christendom.  The semi-Pelagianism that had crept into the Western Church towards the end of the Middle Ages which the Reformation in its theological reforms sought to correct was perhaps the initial impetus for this kind of hubristic thinking. although the Calvinists. the most Augustinian of the Protestants at least in their own conceit. were the first of the Modern rebels.  Pelagianism was the early heresy that rejected Original Sin.  A firm grasp on Original Sin is a preventative for thinking that humanity can achieve its own salvation by political means.  In the Fall. man lost the Paradise in which he had been placed at his creation.  Paradise awaits man. redeemed by God through Jesus Christ. after the Second Coming.  In between. as we struggle against our own sinful tendencies. there will be no elimination of the suffering that is born out of our fallen sinfulness but which. having been borne by Christ Himself to the cross. is the path down which we are called to follow Him.  This does not mean that we are not to try to alleviate the suffering of others. to the contrary. just as He healed the sick and made the lame to walk and gave the blind their sight. so we are commanded to do good to others. [7]  It means that we are not to think that by doing so. much less by outsourcing this work to the government. we can eliminate suffering and create a Paradise in this life.   The Modern idea of democracy. again as distinct from the ancient idea of democracy and the democracy that developed historically as part of our traditional parliamentary system. comes directly from liberalism’s belief that it can create an earthly Paradise and that it is justified in following Satan’s example of rebellion in order to do so.   The constituted authorities. the king and the Church. should have eliminated human suffering and made a Paradise.  That they didn’t do so means they need to be torn down and replaced with government by the people in whom sovereignty will now be vested.  That is the idea of Modern democracy. although liberals rarely put it so starkly. and it is utterly Satanic. It is also the idea that had to be thought first. before that artificial inferior substitute for patriotism. nationalism. could arise.  The sovereign people of Modern democracy is the nation of nationalism.   Nationalism then. in its historic sense. belongs to the Modern Age’s revolt against Christianity and so can hardly be called Christian.  There is a question. of course. as to whether what those who call themselves Christian Nationalists today mean by nationalism is nationalism in its historic sense.  Just as the first nationalists called themselves patriots so there have been those who have used the word nationalism to mean something closer to patriotism.  From what I have seen of self-designated Christian Nationalists this is not the case with them although that doesn’t immediately translate into their nationalism being the historical type either.  They have taken up the label of nationalist in reaction against the post-World War II movement towards re-orienting everything to an international or global scale with which they associate the increased secularism of the era.   While I am in complete agreement with their opposition to secularism and also detest the general way in which the world has been re-organizing itself since World War II. I do think that the Christian Nationalists have overlooked a number of things in coming to their position.  Secularism. while it has gotten much worse in the post-World War II era. is not the product of that era.  The first secular country was the United States of America [8] and the second was the French Republic formed in the French Revolution.   Secularism was joined at birth to nationalism.    Also overlooked is a fact pertaining to progressive liberalism’s aggressive push after World War II to dissolve national identities. or at least those of the civilization formerly known as Christendom. both by submerging them in larger identities and breaking them down through large scale immigration.   While this is on the surface obviously an overreaction to Hitler. on a deeper level. one of which the progressive liberals themselves are almost certainly not consciously aware. an attempt to fill a void created by Modern liberalism.   In Christendom – Christian civilization – allegiance was not directed inwards. towards the people as a group. but upwards. ultimately to God in Heaven. but along the way to the sovereign. the king. in the civil sphere. and to the Catholic – universal – Church in the religious sphere. which spheres while distinct. overlapped.      The king in Christendom. whether he reigned over a single realm or a vast empire. was what he is in the New Testament – God’s minister. to whom Christians are commanded to submit and to honour [1 Pet. 2:13. 17] and for whom they are commanded to offer supplications. prayers. intercessions. and giving of thanks [1 Tim. 2:1-3]. [9]  As God’s minister. he represented in the civil sphere that was his realm. the universal government of the King of Kings. which is a much higher sense of representational government than that of representational democracy.    The Church was called Catholic for a number of reasons. the one of which that is germane in this context being that she transcended the boundaries of realm. empire. and nation and was a universal institution that was one wherever she was found.  In every kingdom and empire. she had One Lord in the sense of a divine Master higher than any earthly authority.  No matter where she was she confessed One Faith in the words of the ancient Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.  Anyone from any country anywhere in the world could join her through her One Baptism in the name of the Father. Son. and Holy Ghost.  While this concept did not disappear in the sixteenth century Reformation at the beginning of the Modern Age. neither did it pass through that period unscathed. especially in external practice.  On both sides of the Reformation divide. other things came to took precedence over the aforementioned matters in which the unity and Catholicity of the Church are to be found. [10]  A tremendous blow was dealt to the external unity of the Church and in the separation that followed. between the followers of the papacy and the Protestants. between the Lutherans and the Reformed. and between all of the above and the myriad of smaller separatist groups. each communion developed an inward gaze in which its own identity and distinct doctrines were regarded. in practice at least. as more important than the One Lord. Faith. and Baptism.   Mercifully. the office and institution of king survived the Modern Age in several countries. including my own. and forces aligned against the Catholic Church will. as Christ has promised. never prevail.  The position of both king and Church was weakened from what it was in Christendom. however. by the spread of the now ubiquitous notion of popular sovereignty and the fracturing of the Church into denominationalism which both involved a re-orienting of the gaze away from that which is higher. upward. and beyond. internally towards self. albeit in these examples the self of the group rather than of the individual person. the inward focus on which was also developing at the same time. all of these in accordance with the general shift from the theocentric outlook of Christendom to the Modern anthropocentric one.  It is that which pulls us out of ourselves and directs us to that which is higher and beyond ourselves that civilizes us. however. and this general inward reorientation of outlook of the Modern Age. by weakening these upward influences has created a vacuum into which different types of civilization-threatening barbarism enter.  The extreme nationalism of the World War II era was one such barbarism.  After the war. progressive liberals. realizing the need for a higher allegiance but. being progressive liberals. unwilling to turn to God. king. and Church. attempted to create various artificial substitutes in international. regional. and even world-level associations. organizations. and quasi-governmental bodies. but the soulless. toxic. bureaucratism that accompanied these at every level proved this to be but another form of barbarism.   So-called Christian Nationalism is a response to this other type of barbarism.  Unfortunately. it is no solution because it is enmeshed itself in the Modern way of thinking that produced the problem.  This is evident. not merely in its embrace of nationalism. the Modern artificial substitute for natural patriotism.  It is also evident in the kind of Christianity that it weds to nationalism.  While not all Christian Nationalists are evangelicals the form of Christianity that went into making Christian Nationalism is evangelicalism. not as Dr. Luther and the Reformers used this word nor as it was historically used in the Church of England nor as it is used in Europe today. but evangelicalism in a distinctly North American sense of the word. which evangelicalism. for all that it has to commend itself. has a very unhealthy tendency to confuse Christianity with Americanism.  Americanism. however. is a variant of liberalism. the ideology that drives the Modern Age’s movement away from God and Christianity.    Nationalism. we observed earlier. is tribalism writ large. and tribalism is very much an apt description of Christian Nationalism’s approach to the various social. moral. and cultural problems that have arisen in our countries due to the transformation of Christendom into secular. liberal. Western Civilization over the course of the Modern Age.  That approach is to treat these as battlegrounds in a power struggle between groups. with our group. Christians. on the one side and some other group or groups on the other side. and to regard the government as an instrument [and an instrument in battle is called a weapon] with which to defeat the other group.   Interestingly. this way of looking at things has certain things in common with the thinking of the progressive liberals who abhor Christian Nationalism.  Progressive liberals as well. and all the more so the more the progressive takes dominance over the liberal in their thinking. tend to see everything in terms of power struggles between groups.   For Christians. however. this way of looking at things ought to be anathema.  Eph. 6:12 tells us that our struggle in this world is not against other people. but against the spiritual powers of darkness in this world.  Moreover. in this the Christian Nationalist approach bears more than a passing resemblance to the error at the heart of all progressive thinking. the belief in a political salvation.  Indeed. I would say that the resemblance to progressive salvation-through-political-means is far deeper than whatever surface similarity there may be between the Christian Nationalist idea of the role of government and the classical Tory view. of necessity more reactionary than conservative in the current political climate. that in my view is the closest thing there is to a translation of orthodox Christianity into the language of civil politics.  Where Christian Nationalism and Toryism bear a superficial resemblance is that we both reject the liberal notion of the separation of Church and State.  This liberal idea. the root from which all forms of secularism sprang. began as an argument for limiting the powers of the State but inevitably became an argument for limiting the influence of the Church while exponentially expanding that of the State.  Classical Toryism rejected this idea as an assault on the order of Christendom in which the king and the Church had distinct roles. distinct tasks to do. distinct spheres in which to do those tasks. and distinct powers with which to do them.  The king was not the instrument of the Church. he was to do his job rather than the Church’s. The Church was not the instrument of the king. she was to do her job rather than the king’s.  If both did their jobs well. it would work for the good of the other. because ultimately their roles. tasks. spheres. and powers came from God and were complementary.  Christian Nationalism. by contrast. which. incorporates liberalism through the Americanism it blends with its Christianity. rejects liberalism’s separation of Church and State. not in favour of the old order but of one in which the State is the instrument of the Church.   This has further diminished the Christianity of a movement. the Christianity of which was already diminished by being blended with Americanism.  The attitude that is visibly on display in the movement looks a lot more like hubris than humility.  Apart from being the very opposite of Christ’s own example and what He enjoins upon His followers and apart from being utterly unappealing and ugly in itself. this is counterproductive if we regard one of the challenges that Modern liberal secularism has created to be the re-evangelism of our civilization.  Look back to the early centuries of the Church when. facing the hostility of both the culture of the pagan Roman Empire and of those Jews who did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. the early Christians first set about the task of evangelizing the ancient world.  They did so. not by political activism and organization. but by imitating Christ’s example and obeying His command to take up their cross in humility and follow Him to the point of martyrdom.   In Canada as in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Realms. I have said often in the last few years that we are fortunate to have as our hereditary Sovereign a man who chose to modify his coronation service so that being welcomed into Westminster Abbey with the words “Your Majesty. as children of the Kingdom of God we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings” he responded with “In his name. and after his example. I come not to be served but to serve.”  I have noted the huge contrast between this and the attitude of the egomaniacal narcissist around which the MAGA cult. which overlaps Christian Nationalism to a large degree. especially in the United States. is centred.  Last week. as Western Christians celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and as Eastern Christians on the Julian calendar entered their Holy Week in preparation for the celebration of the Resurrection. and as the aforementioned Yankee narcissist thought it appropriate to mark the occasion with a threat to destroy an entire civilization in war. [11] many infected with the Christian Nationalism we have been discussing attacked His Majesty in a most unchristian manner.  As the king himself was observing the Sacred Triduum from the Maundy Thursday service at St. Asaph Cathedral in Wales to the celebration of Easter in the traditional Matins service at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. these “Christian” Nationalists attacked him for not recording a video Easter message.   The words “not recording a video” are the operative words here.  He did issue an Easter greeting on the social media platform formerly known as twitter.  He wished Christians around the Commonwealth a “Happy Easter” and gave the simple but powerful message “He is risen.”   The controversy was entirely manufactured on the part of His Majesty’s “Christian” critics. Although he recorded a video for Easter last year. it has not become an established royal tradition for the monarch to do so as it has to record one for Christmas.  The king’s critics complained that he had sent a message to Muslims wishing them a happy Ramadan and accused him of everything from abandoning his role as Defender of the Faith to being a crypto-Muslim.  Anybody who took the time to compare – in good faith. mind you – what the king said to his Muslim subjects and what he said at Easter this year and last. would recognize that the fundamental difference between a greeting addressed to Muslims and a Christian message such as “The abiding message of Easter is that God so loved the world — the whole world — that He sent His Son to live among us to show us how to love one another. and to lay down His own life for others in a love that proved stronger than death” from last year’s video or this year’s more simple “He is risen” shows the utter stupidity of these accusations and conspiracy theories.   Through all this His Majesty has shown a far better understanding of how a Christian king ought to act towards his subjects of another religion than how these “Christians” have shown of the honour and submission Christianity requires of us towards our temporal king regardless of his personal religion.  The title “Defender of the Faith” was originally conferred on the king for writing a treatise defending the seven sacraments against the criticisms of Dr. Luther in his Babylonian Captivity.  Within the same reign. it was redefined to mean one who defended the Church in his realm against foreign claims of jurisdiction. including that of the foreign power that had bestowed the title in the first place.  Over the course of the century that followed it came to include the defence of the reforms made to that Church in subsequent reigns.  Today. His Majesty’s critics think that it should be given a tribalistic interpretation that has little if any connection to its historical development and which is fundamentally at odds with the basic nature and duty of the office of king. to reign over his realm from a position above partisanship representing law and justice for all.  Whatever corrections from the standpoint of orthodox theology. His Majesty’s views of the relationship between Christianity and other religions might be better off for. they are far preferable to those of the critics who interpret any remarks about Islam that are not bellicose and condemnatory as “promotion” or “preference.” [12] While not all of these critics would identify as Christian Nationalists they are generally people who have allowed the Christian Nationalist perspective to influence their thinking just as Christian Nationalism has allowed the fundamentally anti-Christian Modern ideologies that it has embraced to warp its version of Christianity.  Followers of Christ should avoid such a movement.  We should love our countries as patriots. honour. pray for. and submit to our earthly king if we are fortunate enough to have one as Scripture enjoins. place the orthodox faith of the Creeds of the early centuries when the Church was undivided ahead of sectarian emphases on lesser matters that pit Christian against Christian and Christians against everyone else in “struggles against flesh and blood”. and take up our cross and follow our Lord’s example of humility rather than hubris.  [1]  It is usually misquoted with the definite rather than indefinite article.[2]   James Boswell. Life of Johnson. April 7. 1775.[3]   This is a deponent verb – it doesn’t have the regular active voice forms. and has only three principal parts. the third being what would be the fourth in a regular verb [the perfect passive participle].[4]   Charles-Theodore and Jean-Hippolyte Cogniard. The Tricolour Cockade. 1831.  Whether Chauvin existed or was a fiction created by the Cogniards is a matter of dispute.[5]   In game theory a zero-sum game is one in which the gains of the one player equally match the losses of the other player so that together they cancel each other out to produce the net sum of zero.[6]   1 Cor. 13:4.[7]   Compare the works which Isaiah prophesied that Christ would do Is. 61:1-3 with those for which Christ said He would reward His sheep in Matt. 25:34-40.[8]   Progressive liberals in my country. Canada. both amuse and disgust me when they say foolish things about secularism distinguishing us from the United States.  Secularism is the American tradition. not ours.[9]   These instructions from SS Peter and Paul. were not written to Christians living under a Christian king. the king in question was the Roman Caesar and specifically Nero whose reign encompassed the period in which the Apostles were writing. [10]                       On the one side. they doubled down on their insistence that the papacy was given universal jurisdiction over the Church that had previously played a role in dividing the Eastern Church from the Western Church.  By declaring the Church to be absent where the jurisdiction of the pope is not acknowledged. they elevated the papacy above the One Lord. Faith. and Baptism.  On the other side. the doctrines that would later be somewhat inaccurately summarized as the Five Solas. were similarly elevated.[11]                       This man. who regained his office as head of the New Rome and its beastly empire in a campaign that saw him take a gunshot to the head. drop to the ground as if it had taken him out. then. since it had only grazed his ear. bounce back up fighting [Rev. 13:3]. has since outdone this by posting a blasphemous picture of himself as if he were Jesus on the Eastern Pascha [Easter] of the Julian calendar.  This was done in the midst of a controversy between himself and the current Roman Patriarch over the pope’s opposition to his war in Iran.[12]                       His Majesty’s critics have circulated a meme quoting a speech he gave as Prince of Wales in 1993.  The meme is rather mendacious as it implies the words are recent.  The quotation. “More than this. Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is the poorer for having lost” should be read in the context of the entire speech entitled “Islam and the West”.  In that context. it is about the pre-Modern holistic – he used the word “integrated” - view of Creation.  In the same speech. and shortly thereafter. he said “At the core of Christianity. there still lies an integral view of the sanctity of the world. and a clear sense of the trusteeship and responsibility given to us for our natural surroundings.”  Note how he said the West “gradually lost this integrated vision of the world”.  It was “with Copernicus and Descartes and the coming of the scientific revolution”. in other words. the very anthropocentric view of the world succeeding the theocentric view of pre-Modern Christian civilization that I have criticised as liberalism repeatedly in the text of this essay.    While some might not like the way he treats the pre-Modern integrated view of Creation as common to all religions. I would point out that Christianity’s claims to uniqueness have never rested on this point. but upon God’s having visited His Creation in a unique manner by becoming Man in the Incarnation. and upon His having accomplished the salvation of the world from human sin through His having died for us and rose again. none of which is questioned or even the matter at hand here.  That all religions contain truth. is in fact. the teaching of orthodox Christianity.  This is because religions are derived from natural revelation [the kind St. Paul talks about in the first chapter of Romans].  Christianity’s claims to uniqueness pertain to special revelation. the historical special revelation of the Gospel.    St. Justin Martyr in the second century argued that the Divine Logos. which in the preamble to St. John’s Gospel is identified with God and specifically the Person of the Trinity Who became incarnate as Jesus Christ. had planted seeds of Himself throughout the nations prior to His Incarnation. that these had born fruit as philosophy. and that to the extent the ancient philosophers followed the Logos they could be regarded as Christian.  The opposite view. that pre-Christian philosophy contained nothing of value to Christianity could also be found if inconsistently practiced. most notably in Tertullian. but it is difficult to read the New Testament in the original Greek and side with Tertullian.    Where I would respectfully disagree with the speech. which remember was given over thirty years ago. is that. while his overall argument that no one group has a monopoly on either truth or extremism is substantially accurate. the idea of holy war is. in my opinion. more integral to the essential theology of Islam than most other religions.  His Majesty did say. at the beginning of those remarks. that he was not an expert on the subject. however. and I would point out that those who are so quick today to jump on anything positive said in the direction of Islam usually do so for reasons that are less rooted in the differences between Christianity and Islam than they are in the United States’ post-Cold War conflict with the Islamic world.  This conflict arose in part out of the United States’ arrogant belief that she could do whatever she wanted anywhere in the world with impunity. in part out of the United States’ being the spearhead of Modern. materialistic. liberalism. in part out of her having armed and trained the more militant factions of Islam to use against the Soviets in Afghanistan at the end of the Cold War. and in part by much of Christianity in the United States having been deformed by heretical notions. such as the idea that the religion which shares a common pre-Gospel history with Christianity but which is explicitly built on the rejection of Jesus as the Christ. the Middle-Eastern state constructed by adherents of which religion has a vested interest in destabilizing the countries mostly populated by Muslims in the region. is owed some type of allegiance by Christians. Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:11:00 +0000 702ed98c4cfc0fe66c17481be1297a97deb661c4 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/15/my-recommended-strategy-for-preparing-christian-kids-for-college/ In the last two weeks. I have been gathering information about the problem that Christians parents face when they send their Christian-raised kids to college. Specifically. I met some excellent Christian parents who seem to have done a great job of raising their kids in private Christian schools and had good consversations with them about … Continue reading My recommended strategy for preparing Christian kids for college → Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:00:09 +0000 8f1bef2a7a70a7a4db4dfb2e603e13fb64304f3b https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/04/lotr-98-i-notice-there-arent-any-wizard.html An Ongoing Inquiry into - What the Hob Happened to our Universities.                                                          servire Deo sed et adulari'It cannot. obviously. be the purpose of a humanistic education to bring the student who undertakes it into exactly the condition that that education was supposed to lift him out of.' - Justin Smith-RuiuAll of the Inklings were learned scholars. Tolkien said. of the man who composed Beowulf. that he was a learned craftsman. Beowulf “is a poem by a learned man writing of old times. who. looking back on the heroism and sorrow. feels in them something permanent and something symbolical… To his task the poet brought a considerable learning in native lays and traditions: only by learning and training could such things be acquired.” Tolkien links the poets’ learning and melancholy “To a similar antiquarian temper. and a similar use of vernacular learning. is probably due the similar effect of antiquity [and melancholy] in the Aeneid.” [272-273]He was an artist. and a good one. Tolkien himself tells the following parable concerning Beowulf: A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone. part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived. not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends perceived at once [without troubling to climb the steps] that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over. with no little labor. in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions. or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it. and forgot even the stones. They all said “This tower is most interesting.” And even the man’s own descendants. who might have been expected to consider what he had been about. were heard to murmur: “He is such an odd fellow. Imagine his using these old stones to build a nonsensical tower. Why did not he restore the old house. He had no sense of proportion.” But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea [The Monsters and Critics. pgs. 7–8].  The Inklings were the last generation of majority learned scholars. Today. that is the rare exception. not the rule. But he did not say all this fully or explicitly. And therein lies the unrecapturable magic of ancient English verse for those who have ears to hear: profound feeling. and poignant vision. filled with the beauty and mortality of the world. are aroused by brief phrases. light touches. short words resounding like harp-strings sharply plucked. LinkThe same could be said of the old idea of what an 'Education' was. Or supposed to have been. Technically. we actually have 'better' scholars today. but they don't write like this. They can't. It's not just they won't. it's an inability.  CS Lewis' poem on The Birth of Language [Mercury] - can you imagine [for instance].  Stanley Fish. the Milton expert and reader-response theorist. writing anything close. They ache and freeze through vacant seasOf night. Their nimbleness and youthTurns lean and frore. their meaning more.Their being less. Fact shrinks to truth.They reach this Earth. There each has birthMiraculous. a word made breath.Lucid and small for use in allMan's daily needs. but dry like death.So dim below these symbols show.Bony and abstract every one.Yet if true verse but lift the curseThey feel in dreams their native Sun.His most famous work is titled. There's No Such Thing As Free Speech. and it's a Good Thing. Too. Presumably. he could argue that it is a poem. All Fish did. was write names on a board. and make them treat it like a poem. Whether he was right or not. there's nothing profound. and nothing skilled. in doing that. CS Lewis at least. could write passable poetry. Remember. Fish at the time was one of the superstars of the academe. and highly paid. And he taught on [precisely] poetry - he was a Milton scholar. He's still taken quite seriously today.The second important lesson we can we learn from Stanley Fish’s work on interpretative communities relates to the order in which we teach students the poems that we select. I’m guessing that one of the main reasons that Fish’s students so readily interpreted a list of linguists as a religious poem was because they were used to seeing poems that looked like that. namely without a clear form or discernible structure – they understood the free verse style that characterises much of the poetry of the last century. and which has dominated the contents of many an anthology since. Whilst Fish’s students may have mistakenly treated his list of names as a poem. they would have probably have understood why a poem that doesn’t rhyme or contain any clear poetic structure could be considered a poem. They would be familiar with poets who broke with formal conventions. like e.e. cummings. Sylvia Plath and William Carlos Williams. and learnt the reasons for these literary developments. In short. they would have in mind some kind of literary chronology. which is perhaps something that we should bear in mind when we are designing the spread of a five-year curriculum.The conclusion this author came to. was. he needed to encourage students to 'step back' and appreciate the overall aesthetics of the poem. I only wish were it this easy to fix. The problem is with the teachers. And with the system.  The system which once routinely produced Matthew Arnolds or CS Lewises. has totally ceased to do so. And it isn't just a matter of high-brow. snobbish. great culture. It isn't 'just standards' or the tweak of asking them to see the big picture.  Humanities professors could still “report for duty” in a narrow sense. like apparatchiks in the early days of post-Soviet confusion. they could still show up for work and collect their [greatly devalued] paychecks. What they could not do is fulfill their duty — they could no longer. that is. have any real hope of guiding their students from beacon to beacon of a millennia-long tradition of reflection and discovery that. once internalized. likely represents the greatest hope a person has in this hard world for achieving a condition of true freedom. LinkSomehow. the entire concept of a moral and aesthetic education became considered hopelessly 'high brow'. or impossibly non-utilitarian. Truth. Beauty. and Goodness. got canceled. A combination of technological. economic. political. and cultural forces. at work both within and without the university. had by the early 2020s effectively pummeled the tradition of universitarian humanism into unconsciousness. Humanities professors could still “report for duty” in a narrow sense. like apparatchiks in the early days of post-Soviet confusion. they could still show up for work and collect their [greatly devalued] paychecks. What they could not do is fulfill their duty — they could no longer. that is. have any real hope of guiding their students from beacon to beacon of a millennia-long tradition of reflection and discovery that. once internalized. likely represents the greatest hope a person has in this hard world for achieving a condition of true freedom. The collapse is amply confirmed in both data and anecdote. But it is already a symptom of the total domination of a nonhumanistic spirit in our contemporary world to suppose that data have some great power of persuasion that narrative description lacks. You can find the data elsewhere. let us instead consider here. unashamedly. some anecdotes. These are stories that most humanities professors will already have heard in other variants. even if their full significance may not yet have sunk in. I have learned of an American student on a semester-abroad program in Florence — Florence — who. when told just a thing or two in passing about Michelangelo or Dante in the context of an introductory Italian class. complained to the program director that precious class time was being wasted simply to indulge the professor’s eccentric interests. From the student’s perspective. the entire purpose of learning Italian is exhausted by such things as ordering panini.But of course. that's what Education is - there isn't any other kind. The rest is 'Training'. at best. or Indoctrination. I much prefer this man's approach to Truth. Beauty. and Goodness. to anything on offer in Academe today. It is fully contemporaneous. not highbrow at all. and yet he moves towards the Transcendentals. Universities are not going to reform themselves. at least not without significant external pressure.This is exactly what I concluded in. Dissolve the Monasteries.  Most academics who are not yet retired or dead are young enough to have spent their entire careers in a milieu dominated by some strain of “myth-busting” or other. The principal purpose of what has passed for humanities education has been to convince students that the humanistic tradition is not what they think it is. This is a peculiar pedagogical goal. to say the least. since typically at the outset students do not have any idea what the humanistic tradition is. or even that it exists at all. They are being rushed straight from ignorance to contempt. without any serious effort to familiarize them with their contempt’s object.So...they are barbarians...the brightest and best at our top elite institutions. What to Do. Cherneshevsky. Department of Justice cannot reform itself from injustice. and neither can Higher Education renew itself to education. once it is corrupted. An equal or higher force would have to do that. Given our worship of Education as greater than the Good. or God. What would that be.  So we are unlikely to get that. Instead. the nimble and still spiritually living responders and thinkers are sensing that the ground is shifting under their feet. I don't think they are under the illusion that we can 'save it'. Nor are they particularly wringing their hands about that. We are living through the breakdown of the old European High Culture [the Gothic or Faustian Kultur]. and the epigenesis of what comes after. This causes a lot of friction and lack of spiritual 'comfort factor'. LinkAuthentic meaning is incomplete and provisional. It evolves as you discover new information and changes as reality changes. It forces you to confront limits. tradeoffs. and difficult truths. There is no Director of Meaning to tell you what to believe or how to feel. You find it through participation. not declaration. It is shaped through disagreement. negotiation. and compromise. No one gets exactly what they want. but the result is something more durable than any one perspective. It is demanding and uncertain. But it can survive contact with reality.Within those systems. the focus shifts from blame to responsibility. Blame simplifies the world and assigns fault. Responsibility makes the world more complicated. Authentic meaning tells you what to build. not who to hate. It tasks you with maintaining what is good and changing what is not. Manufactured meaning silences doubt. Authentic meaning normalizes it. You act without full knowledge. revise without total confidence. and proceed without guarantees. You do not eliminate uncertainty—you learn how to live with it. This requires patience and humility. There is no instant clarity and no moral certainty. Sometimes you will be wrong. perhaps embarrassingly so. Others will see flaws in your argument and catch what you missed. You must accept ambiguity as part of reality and live without the comfort of total righteousness. Authentic meaning demands more from you—and offers less comfort in return. It is not surprising that many choose to outsource meaning to somebody else.We have achieved a level of material security and personal autonomy that previous generations could scarcely imagine. We are free to choose how we live. what we believe. and who we become. But that freedom does not come with instructions. It does not tell us what matters. It does not tell us who we are. manufactured meaning offers clarity. identity. and direction. It tells us what to think and who to trust. It relieves us of the burden of choosing. It is comfortable and comforting. But it cannot last.Authentic meaning offers no such escape. It forces us to live inside the tension between freedom and responsibility. It asks us to build something together without guarantees. without final answers. and without moral certainty. This is the condition of a free society. Not clarity. but complexity. Not certainty. but responsibility. The question is not whether we will have meaning. The question is whether we will build it ourselves—or accept whatever is handed to us.Many might see only relativism. or even nihilism. What I see is a concrete realization that what we call Absolute Truth is not Living Truth. and therefore. doomed. when the epicycles of civilization and culture fall away from us. Only living Truth. can be Absolute. Only the Truth has rights [Berdyaev]. What greater proof that this is so. than that the 'Temple of the Intellect'. the Academy. is where you send your kids if you want them to hate the True. the Beautiful. and the Good. It's indoctrination and debt slavery. at best. As always. the smartest kids won't need it. really. and will find a way. It's the lesser intelligences that will be deceived and frustrated. The particular flavor of our current mediocrity. in fact. results precisely from the collision between this now-institutionalized. half-educated spirit of contempt. on the one hand. and the vastly more powerful forces of financialization and hyperquantification on the other. It is as products of this collision that we must understand the delirious proliferation of ostensibly peer-reviewed articles [if their reviewers read them. they will almost certainly be alone in having done so] on what are plainly topics that would best be investigated in the form of a personal or literary essay. Their authors fail to understand. or pretend not to understand. that what interests them is best pursued through cultivation of an individual expressive style rather than through a weak semblance of argument and a flimsy citational apparatus. Thus we find young humanities professors maintaining a cargo-cult-like system for the publication of reflections on their personal motivations for adopting nonbinary avatars when playing video games [for example]. shoehorning a question that really ought to be explored through the cultivation of a personal authorial voice into the ill-fitted. incongruous frame of abstracts. keywords. works cited. and so on. The results cannot fail to be laughable. If those who participate in this cargo cult are unable to see this. it is because they preserve no real memory of the existence of a humanistic tradition that. rather than allowing its practitioners to burrow further into themselves. instead brought its practitioners out of themselves and onto a horizon that was much. much larger than their gaming screens.Brutal. So the Wizard Schools that the Inklings attended. they aren't around anymore. Let's not waste more precious time and energy. trying to salvage them. It is only natural. in the midst of this omnishambles. that true humanists should start to think about building new homes for themselvesPrecisely. Jacques Barzun told us of this trouble. and raised the alarm upon the ramparts of Zion. many many moons ago. It is much worse. since then. And Barzun was not heeded. with much better odds. The only Wizard Schools we will have. are the ones we start building...now. An underground and unorthodox Christian thinker from fifty years ago. was already advocating along these lines. Huessy is worth a read.   Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:51:00 +0000 37b5f95b6df11efb97c38528ac15260ddf69ec37 https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/round-up-i-helped-build-the-manosphere-then-it-destroyed-me-i-lived-the-feminist-dream-and-want-my-money-back-marriage-got-better-so-why-is-it-declining-and-men-arent-signing-up-to-singles-night/ I helped build the manosphere — then it destroyed me Now this is an interesting article. The internet “loved the idea of this blonde Nazi chick”. she told The Times in her first mainstream media interview since the release of her … Continue reading → Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:10:53 +0000 d5068bc7d1eb73433fec93356351e48b0df302ed https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-easter-rising Christ will be the green leaves Sun, 12 Apr 2026 05:00:45 +0000 4a240e5e7ae6408916138946982b9d3dd9654464 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/political-sobriety-diastasis-recti I'm in my ✨ older woman ✨ era and the young women love me. [I love them too.] Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:12:33 +0000 7f204a7c03352d84a0bde9617f0d1dfce7a8c20c https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/08/new-study-adolescents-have-worse-mental-health-after-transgender-treatments/ Just last week. a new large-scale study was published about what happens to the mental health of adolescents who get transgender treatments. It was published in the journal Acta Paediatrica. The data comes from gender identity clinics in Finland. I waited a few days to see what the response from critics would be and it’s … Continue reading New study: Adolescents have worse mental health after transgender treatments → Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:00:15 +0000 7c8d558f4abd9ba14fb753166d93f31ca759828f https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/04/thoughts-for-eastertide.html  He is risen.   In each of the Gospel portraits of Jesus Christ the events of a single week occupy a sizeable portion of the text.  This is the week which began with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. riding on a donkey in fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah. and thus publicly announcing Himself to the nation as the long-awaited Messiah.  This is the week which ended on the Sabbath in which in the visible world His body lay in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid it while in the invisible world He in spirit had entered the other Kingdom of Death not as those who had gone there previously. a captive. but as a Conqueror. [1]  In this week. the week of Creation is recalled and fulfilled.  On the day corresponding to that in which God said “let there be light”. Christ. the Light of the World. announced Himself publicly.  On the day corresponding to that in which God made man in His Own image and so finished His work of Creation which He pronounced good. Jesus Christ just before dying proclaimed the word τετέλεσται [Jn. 19:30] which means “It is finished.”  The work He thereby proclaimed finished was the work of redemption. the work of propitiation. the work of Atonement. the work made necessary by man’s fall into sin.  Then on the day corresponding to that in which God rested from His work of Creation. His body rested in that borrowed tomb.   Last week was Holy Week. the week in our liturgical Kalendar devoted to special remembrance of this week of Gospel events.  It began with Palm Sunday. in which palms are waved and hosannas shouted in commemoration of Christ’s Triumphal entry.   On Maundy Thursday we were reminded of the Last Supper where the Sacrament of Holy Communion was instituted. where the New Commandment. “A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another. as I have loved you. that ye also love one another” [Jn. 13:34]. so like those with which the Lord summarized the Law and yet so different at the same time. was given. and where the Lord Himself set the example of this by washing His disciples’ feet. an act ritually re-enacted on the day which takes its name from the Commandment.    On Good Friday the Crucifixion itself was the focus.  In outward appearance. this was the opposite of the Triumph at the beginning of the week.  Instead of “Hosanna”. the crowd cried “crucify Him”. instead of riding into the city He had to carry His cross out of it.  Beneath the outward appearance. of course. this was His true moment of Triumph.  He had told His disciples from the moment St. Peter had confessed “Thou art the Christ. the Son of the living God” [Matt. 16:16] at Caesarea Philippi that this would come. that it was for this purpose that He entered into the world. that this is what it truly meant for Him to be the Christ.  He had not come to bring political deliverance to the Old Testament nation. but to bring deliverance from the slavery into which the Fall of Adam had delivered all mankind. slavery to sin and death. and He could only do this by suffering and dying Himself.  Since St. Anselm. we in the West have tended to think of this primarily in terms of the payment of a debt.  Man owed a debt but had no resources to pay. God had the resources but could not pay the debt qua God. so He became Incarnate as a Man and the God-Man paid the debt on behalf of the world.  In the East. they tend to think of it more in terms of a hostage situation in which Death. man’s enemy. has held him captive and Christ. Who is stronger than Death and over whom Death has not even the usurped claim due to sin. allowing Himself to be taken by Death so that He could destroy Death from the inside and set the captives free.  Both ways of thinking about it are taken from Scripture.  Ultimately. Charles Wesley spoke for Christians East and West when he put it “Amazing love. How can it be. that Thou my God should die for me.”   Holy Saturday commemorates both the resting of His body in the Grave and His Descent [as Conqueror] into Hell.  Traditionally. the second of these themes received more emphasis in the liturgy of Holy Saturday.  That this is not the case today [2] is in part due to unfortunate liturgical revisionism that has been influenced by the even more unfortunate theological revisionism which is squeamish about anything having to do with Hell. [3]  The other part is that often the only service on Holy Saturday is the evening vigil which begins with the Holy Saturday themes but moves into the theme of the Resurrection.  The evening of Holy Saturday is. by the reckoning of time established in the week of Creation [4]. part of the following day.   That following day. of course. is the most important day of celebration in the Christian Kalendar.  In the English-speaking world we call it Easter. similar to how the Germans call it das Ostern.  Those silly and foolish individuals who come creeping out of the woodworks around this time each year to denounce the celebration as “pagan” get most of their mileage out of this name.   Even if. however. their questionable etymology of the word were to be proven correct. their argument is still nonsense because the thing itself. the feast day. was around long before this name got attached to it.    The Hebrew word פסח [Pesach] is the name of the most important feast day of the Old Testament religion.  It is called Passover in English and it is the day on which the Israelites remembered their deliverance from slavery in Egypt as told in the book of Exodus. By the time of the New Testament the Israelites were speaking Aramaic more often than Hebrew and in Aramaic פסח took on a final aleph to become פסחא.  In Greek. the language in which the New Testament was written and the primary language of the Church in the earliest centuries. this was transliterated into Πάσχα and at least as early as the second century this term was used for the Christian feast as well.  It retained this name in the North African/Western part of the Church where Latin superseded Greek as the primary language and in Latin it is spelled Pascha.  To this day. in the vast majority of languages the feast called Easter in English is called Pascha or some variation thereof and even in English we use the adjective “Paschal” to refer to things pertaining to Easter.   The history is clear.  The holiday did not begin as a pagan feast named Easter that was appropriated by the Church but as the Christian Passover.  This remains the essence of the feast regardless of what other names derived from the time of year in which it occurs became attached to it later in countries with Germanic languages.   Our silly and foolish friends if they are capable of pursuing their case any deeper than the superficial argument about the name may point out that the authorization for the Old Testament Passover. along with detailed instructions as to how to keep it. came directly from God. and ask where the similar authority for a Christian Passover is to be found.  The answer lies in what the New Testament teaches about the relationship between the events commemorated by the Old Testament Passover and those we commemorate in Holy Week leading up to Easter.   According to the New Testament. most especially the book of Hebrews. the Old Testament consists of types which prefigure or foreshadow the Gospel.  The blood sacrifices of the Levitical system were types of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. the Lamb of God. Who takes away the sin of the world.   The earthly Tabernacle/Temple was a figure of the Heavenly Tabernacle made without human hands.  Other examples. not spelled out the way these were in Hebrews. are just as clear.  Moses. for example. the Law-Giver. was allowed to lead the Israelites up to the Promised Land but he was not allowed to lead them in. that role was given to Joshua [5] in which can be seen prefigured everything St. Paul had to say. which was a lot. about how the Law cannot make one righteous before God. only the grace brought by Jesus Christ can do that.   The Old Testament Passover commemorated Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.  Israel had gone down into Egypt during the years of famine in which Joseph was the highest official in the land under Pharaoh whose favour he enjoyed.  They remained there four hundred years after which another Pharaoh. who feared rather than favoured the growing nation. had them enslaved.  Moses. Hebrew born but adopted into Pharaoh’s family. met God in the wilderness Who told him that He was sending him to Pharaoh to plead for Israel’s deliverance.  Multiple times Moses and his brother Aaron entered Pharaoh’s court with God’s demand that His people be set free. each time Pharaoh refused and a new plague fell upon Egypt.  In the final plague. the angel of death was sent to take the firstborn of every family in Egypt – only they. to whose door posts and lintels the blood of the Passover lamb had been applied. i.e.. the Israelites. were spared.  Pharaoh then commanded Moses to take the Israelites and leave. only to change his mind again once they were gone and pursue them with his army to the Red Sea.  God opened a pathway for the Israelites through the Red Sea. then brought the waters down on the Egyptian army.   This entire event forged Old Testament Israel’s identity as a nation.  It also prefigured another. greater. deliverance.  The salvation of which the Exodus was but a type was not a deliverance from physical servitude but of spiritual servitude to sin.  Nor was it merely the deliverance of a nation but of the entire world.  This is the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ on the Cross which event took place on the Old Testament Passover.   Since that of which the Old Testament redemption of Israel was a shadow has come to pass. we who believe in Jesus Christ look back to that rather than to the shadow.  That there would be an annual Christian Passover celebrating Christ’s redemption of mankind was settled very early in the Church.  When it is first mentioned as such in the writings of the second century. it is treated as having been long established.  This would imply that it is Apostolic in origin and. indeed. the Apostles were barely in their grave before a dispute arose not over whether there should be a Christian Passover but over when it should be held. [6] Those who held the Quartodeciman position argued that the Christian Passover should fall on the same day as the Jewish Passover [the fourteenth of Aviv/Nisan on the Hebrew calendar]. others held that it should fall on the Sunday after.  Although the sides in the controversy tended to fall along regional and ethnic lines. there is clearly an underlying theological issue here of whether the Crucifixion or the Resurrection takes precedence.  The first ecumenical council of the Church. which met at Nicaea in 325 to address the heresy of Arianism. also ruled on this matter.  Ruling against the Quartodecimans the council determined that the Christian Passover would be held on the Sunday that follows the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. [7]    The ruling of Nicaea I made it clear that the Christian Passover would be a commemoration of the Resurrection rather than of the Crucifixion although by this time Holy Week was starting to take shape with Good Friday being already firmly established. [8]   In this. can be seen a parallel to the decision made by the Apostles that the Church would meet on Sundays rather than on the Sabbath [Saturday].  That this decision was made. we know from the New Testament in which the Church is depicted as meeting on Sunday [Acts 20:7. 1 Cor. 16:2]. Although neither the decision itself nor the occasion for it are recorded. the reason why Sunday as opposed to say Monday or Wednesday. was selected is quite obvious.  The Sunday after Christ was crucified on the Old Testament Passover. the women among His disciples went to the tomb to complete the burial which had been done in haste due to the onset of the Sabbath.  They found the stone that sealed the tomb rolled away. the grave clothes in which He had been buried folded up and empty. and an angel there to tell them that He was not there. He was risen.   The importance of Christ’s Resurrection cannot be overstated.  St. Paul explains it exquisitely in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians.   Against those who took the Sadducees’ position that there will be no Final Resurrection. He argued that if the dead do not rise then Christ is not risen. and if Christ is not risen we are without hope. but that since Christ is risen. then we know that the dead will all rise.  We are all dead in the first Adam because the sin by which he brought death into the world passed from him to all of us bringing death along with it.  Christ underwent death for us that He might remove the sting of death which is sin.  His victory over this final enemy is our victory. in Him. the last Adam. we are made alive.  His Resurrection was the firstfruits of the Resurrection in which we one day will all fully share even as we are to participate in it even now by walking in newness of life by faith.  His Resurrection. while in the same body in which He had died – He displayed the scars in His hands and side to His disciples – was not to the same life that He had left behind in dying. but to a new and higher kind of life which death can never touch.   In this we have a clue as to why the day of the week on which Christ rose was so important to the early Church that they set it both as their weekly day of corporate worship and the annual Christian Passover.  In the New Testament it is called the “first day” with reference to the week that follows.  The early Christians. however. also called it the “eighth day” in reference to the week which preceded it.  The week signifies the week of Creation. and. as we have seen above. this was especially true of the week of Jesus’ life and ministry on which the Gospels concentrate. the week we remember in Holy Week. What then does the eighth day that follows the seven which signify the Old Creation signify.   One early Christian writer described it as “a beginning of another world” [9].  St. Augustine argued that the Sabbath day of rest of the Decalogue was but a figure of the eternal rest to which the eighth day. revealed to the Christians in the Gospel. looks forward. [10]  The eighth day. then. is the day which comes after the seven of the Old Creation. the day of the New Creation. the life of which Jesus entered in His Resurrection. and in which we can share even before our own resurrection on the Last Day because we participate in His life as members of His mystical body. the Church.   How appropriate and how utterly unpagan is that annual Lord’s Day of Lord’s days. the Christian Passover of Easter in which after the reflection on our sin and mortality in Lent. culminating in our remembrance of the week which led from the Triumphal entry to Golgotha and the tomb. on the eighth day we joyously proclaim He is risen. He is risen indeed.   Alleluia.    [1]   The two Kingdoms of Death are the Grave in the collective sense. the place where the body is placed. and Sheol/Hades/Hell. where the spirits of the dead go.  When Jesus died on the Cross. His divine nature remained united to both His body in the Grave and His human spirit in Hades.  Jesus’s death. like any other human death. separated His human body from His human soul.  It could not separate either from His deity.  The Hypostatic Union in which the Eternal Son of God received a full and flawless human nature into His Eternal Person in the womb of the Virgin Mary the moment she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. be it unto me according to thy word” [Lk. 1:38] can never be broken.[2]   In the West.  In the East. the Descent into Hell is still very much the focus of the liturgy of Holy Saturday.  Due to the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars. of course. the Eastern Holy Saturday and the Western Holy Saturday do not fall on the same day.[3]   The Hell in the Descent into Hell. is the Hell referenced in note 1. vide supra. and not Gehenna. the place to which those who render themselves incurably wicked by rejecting Jesus Christ will be condemned at the Last Judgement.  That Christ did indeed descend there as confessed in the Apostles’ Creed is Scriptural despite the claim of certain evangelicals to the contrary.  St. Peter. in his sermon on the first Whitsunday [Christian Pentecost]. quoted Psalm 16:10 and applied it to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ [Acts 2:25-31].  If the Resurrection fulfils “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell”. then Hell. again Sheol/Hades. is clearly where it was prior to the Resurrection.  There is no conflict here with Christ’s words to the dying thief “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise” [Lk. 23:43].  Paradise is wherever Jesus Christ is.  On the original Holy Saturday. Hell itself was Paradise.[4]   “And the evening and the morning were the first day” [Gen. 1:5]  It is because of this pattern in the Creation account that days in the sacred Kalendar of Christianity are counted sunset to sunset. as they are in the corresponding sacred calendars of Judaism and Islam. regardless of how days in the civil calendar are counted [midnight to midnight].  In the Bible itself. this is the one of three ways of counting days. and certainly the primary way in the Old Testament.  The other two are to count from sunrise to sunrise [morning/evening rather than evening/morning] and to count from midnight [only St. John does the latter. which is why the hours during the Crucifixion account in his Gospel differ from those in the Synoptics. which count from sunrise].[5]   Joshua is the English spelling of a Hebrew name which. taken from Hebrew into Aramaic then Greek. becomes the name of which Jesus is the English spelling.[6]   According to Eusebius the controversy broke out as early as the time of St. Polycarp. the bishop of Smyrna in what is now Turkey and personal disciple of St. John the Apostle who was martyred around the middle of the second century.[7]   This calculation formula translates the date of Passover in the Hebrew lunar calendar [Aviv/Nisan is the month of spring. the fourteenth is the Ides or full moon of the month] into an approximation in the solar calendar.[8]   The commemoration of the Crucifixion on the Friday prior to Pascha/Easter is referenced as early as Tertullian.  The name “Good Friday”. of course. came much later. Note that this was no concession to the Quartodecimans.  The 14 of Aviv/Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. like the dates on the civil calendar. move across the week from year to year.  Commemorating the Crucifixion on the Friday before Easter. follows from commemorating the Resurrection on the day of the week on which it occurred.[9]   The Epistle of Barnabas. 15.[10]                       St. Augustine. Letter 55. 12-13. Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:08:00 +0000 6d72bb8aec258ab8fba780ae3cbfdf7eead60e15 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/marathon-cooking-vlog-12-recipes Rotisserie Chicken Season Salt Recipe. Cooking. Vibing Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:24:29 +0000 56efba5d259319ea55deed008017f4e19d8f5e62 https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/04/proving-too-little-proving-too-much.html Plus ça change. plus c'est la même chose - The Summoning of Spirits from the Vasty Deeps....Glendower: “I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.Hotspur: Why. so can I. or so can any man.But will they come. when you do call for them.”― William Shakespeare. King Henry IV. Part 1                                         Link - The High Council in Supreme MajestyAll Civilizations and all Cultures have a controlling idea. technically speaking. a 'Myth'. 'Christendom' was no exception.  If you believe that Christians. the Church. Christianity. or Christendom have no problems. and 'speak for God' with total purity. this is tantamount to denying the humanity of Christ. subsuming His human nature by His eclipsing divine nature. It suggests [via enthymeme] that Christ's human nature [the totality of ours] has no role to play in revelation. and it further implies [on the divine side] that there is absolutely no mystery to any of this. Do I agree and confess the Creeds. Yes. but that's hardly important. What is important is understanding. in Christ-formed-in-me. The early Church presumably had more subtle ideas. with more nuance. but by the time the Roman Empire under Theodosius and then Justinian co-opted the Christian religion as a civic religion of Empire. they viewed Christ as the 'divine exception' among men: Christ was the exception and the anomaly. the true 'son of God'. From this side. what was important was a uniform confession for all Romans. One could confess this creed while thinking of Jesus as having descended from the deep heaven as a God-man. There is nothing wrong with this if it goes forward. The Church guarded the mystery with apophaticism. But there is a worse danger in staying with it. and not moving through its complete paradox. The danger is especially evident in the abstracted. or highly mentalised people. who cannot love. For them. there is a secret appeal in a more obscure reduction of the divine mystery than any of the gross types of idolatry and authoritarianism which they easily attack= the reduction of God to an abstract nothing. an abstract zero. an abstract ‘ungraspable’ non-entity. This error appeals to those who cannot love because in this way God cannot affect them. touch them. move them. in the heart. rather. God remains safely at a great distance. because the Realness of God is only signified by an un-formed and impossible to formulate something or nothing in the head.God is beyond yet that very beyond overflows. exceeds itself. reaches out to what it creates out of love. “The inexhaustible nature of transcendence is expressed in the profusion of creatures. The universe is the first Bible” (Clement. p 27).“That God is. and that he is everywhere and fills the universe. is known by the (spirit beings) and those who have purified themselves.. But where. how. and what he is. not one amongst all beings knows” (Diadochus of Photike. in Clement. p 59).SourceBut an Imperial Civil Religion did not require anyone to 'go on'. External Divinity alone  provided the exceptional emphasis and the glue. and this emphasis allowed the creation of the imperial cultus. The Church was forced to scramble around and re-organize on this basis. And there was Truth to this claim - it must be allowed that Truth created Christendom. It was truth. that Jesus was 'not like us'. All of the emphasis was on His perfection and divinity. and His human nature was uniquely His own. belonging to Divinity. Universalism. unity. divinity - these were the hallmarks of the creed. Standardization followed. and the Church of the East [Copts and Assyrians and Egyptians] was cut out of the loop for halting over theosis vs. theopoeisis. among other things. This mistake or tragedy created the conditions for Islam. It also meant that the East/West Latinate Church was taken ipso facto as 'early Christianity'. Orthodoxy has done the most to preserve the good old Faith in amber. but they started in fifth century Byzantium. and not in Antioch or Jerusalem. Antioch disappeared from the theological map. See Philip Jenkins. The Jesus Wars. for more on that. What else was forgotten. When Antioch's theology school was discredited after the Council of Ephesus in 431. the emphasis on Christ's humanity likewise faded. From 500 AD to 1500AD. the West [along with the East] went through its traditional 'God-bearing' form. in which the Divine is brought down to Earth. and celebrated in that which is Sacred. During this time. it was not thought possible that the Myth could 'alter or remove'. Ironically. this actually divinized the very human. and very mortal. outlooks of the very people who were busy proclaiming the Kingdom of God most loudly on earth. And when it finally began to wither and decay [in the West after the Black Death]. it generated great hostility and enormous blowback. It was somewhat imbalanced from the beginning. and it has in our day. come to be almost completely discredited. Everyone knows that 'God Talk' can be used to justify almost anything. Today. even the most Orthodox East understands that Faith is a gift. and that civil religion is not the same thing as vital Christianity. You cannot compel virtue or belief. and as one Navajo Indian teacher put it. 'there are no holy people': holy people don't live on earth. We are all human. and are all a work in progress. From our renewed Christian ad fontes quest. we say merely that 'holy people are the people who know they aren't holy'. From a Christian critique of the 'world'. the 'sacred' is not sacred. True holiness belongs solely to God. The sacred continually re-invented. and makes sustained war on man as made in God's image. At most. the world can be 'hallowed' or 'sanctified'. censed with the perfume of God's holiness. It's holiness in any form can only be derivative and participatory.Had the School of Antioch not been crushed by Alexandria [in turn. crushed by Constantinople]. we might have known how it would end. in Inquisitions. Crusades. and Witch Hunts or Heresy Scares. Even the Orthodox East has had its fair share. Check out Quirinus Kuhlman: tortured for spying. executed for religious zeal. by the one. holy. true. Orthodox Faith of Russia.                                        It's the same in Russia. just more muted...LinkAnother center of resistance was the northern Solovetsky Monastery. where rejection of the new rite was connected with insistence on the traditional autonomy of the abbey. After formally rejecting the decisions of the 1667 council and the abbot appointed by the Tsar [most preferred Nikanor. an associate of Alexander] the community was besieged.The defenders underwent considerable radicalization. They ceased praying for the ruler. and as priests became scarce. lay members conducted Penance and other rites by themselves. justifying their actions by the belief that the state church was devoid of grace and ruled by the Antichrist.In 1676. the walls were breached. Monks who escaped the massacre wandered the harsh northern regions of Russia. preaching unremittent hostility to the authorities.Gnostic excesses. parallel to the Cathars. have also occured in Holy Mother Russia. They have even had their equivalent of Anabaptism and the Radical Peasant Rebellion. Every High Myth of Sacredness believes it can summon spirits from the vasty depths. although they typically claim to be 'calling them down' from on high. from Deep Heaven.  When the West became 'secular'. that was its wildest Myth: the old vision of a sacred order was replaced by the Rothschild Banking Syndicate. Dunstan’s reforms extended beyond clarifying Church and Crown. He reformed the monasteries. transforming them into genuine centers of spiritual development. echoing. in a way. Ashiata Shiemash’s work with esoteric Orders. Under his guidance. these monasteries became repositories of learning. preserving both outer knowledge and inner traditions of transformation. They maintained libraries. educated scholars. and. most importantly. safeguarded the practices necessary for genuine spiritual development. The society Dunstan helped shape reflected the Four-Fold Order in its proper alignment. The sacred order. the Brahmin function. was embodied by the Church and monastic orders which maintained spiritual knowledge and authority. The warrior-nobles. the Kshatriya function. were Ignoranceled by a divinely-appointed king and maintained order and justice. The craftsmen and merchants. the Vaisya class. created and distributed material goods. The laborers. the Sudra class. provided the physical work to sustain society. Each had its place and function. contributing to a harmonious whole. The monasteries offered a microcosm of this order. integrating prayer. work. and study into a coherent way of life directed toward higher aims. It wasn't perfect—nothing at this level ever is—but it provided the conditions necessary for both social stability and spiritual transformation.Systems of Sacredness always get co-opted. As Ernst Junger once said. decayed altars are always inhabited by demons. This doesn't mean St. Dunstan's labors were totally in vain. or that we can't have sacral systems whatsoever. if we watch them. Argus-eyed. But we won't. What it means is that we have to be prepared. at all times. for their decay and corruption. and stay a step ahead of them. not relying on them for salvation. They are the 'lesser mystery' [given us for awhile] of the greater mystery of the human heart. We have to fix our successes. as much as we have to repent and correct our failures. We have to remember that we are not God. Theologically. this means that we always have to go ad fontes. back to the source. and re-establish a living connection and expression with each generation. perhaps every day. Forgetting that leads to Inquisitions. Heresy hunts. Apostasies. Schisms. etc.. as the 'passions' manifest in theological correctness and in the idolatry of built systems. Ignorance and Heresy never sleep. even in the very heart of the Sacred. The historical evidence suggests that even Christian humanity will continue [over and over again] to seek perfection not in the confession that 'Jesus is Lord'. but in the minutiae of Creeds and Confessions. An Arian is a heretic. but if he obeys and follows Christ. he is a Christian heretic. A Hindu who regards Jesus as the best of all avatars. or the avatar-of-avatars. is a Christian. or at least a proto-Christian. A Muslim who has dreams of Christ. and regards His teaching as authoritative. is following the Holy Spirit. and is [maybe] already a Christian. The Spirit blows where it wills. Truth is alive. and God is a God of the living. Our Faith is rooted in the reality of Christ. not in the peculiarities of our faith expression. We are saved by Grace. through Faith. and that not of ourselves. but as a gift of God. Creeds are records of past understandings of God - they are at most hallowed. but not Holy.                                           A great point of theology. Your Imperial Highness.First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea Vasily Surikov Original Title: Первый Вселенский Никейский СоборDate: 1876. Saint Petersburg. Russian Federation This Easter. perhaps Christians worldwide can return to the original confession of the Early Church: Christ is Risen. Christ is Lord. Perhaps we can shed our obsessions [like a cocoon] with precise theological correctness. and consider again [as we shall always do in Heaven] how to live abundantly in the presence of the Man-God who unites and re-unites both Heaven and Earth. It can happen every year. and indeed. any moment. [For he saith. I have heard thee in a time accepted. and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold. now is the accepted time. behold. now is the day of salvation.] 2 Cor 6:2And for those who want a Tolkien connection. check out Alex [Oleksiy] Ostaltsev's article on Chronotope in LOTR. In it. Ostaltsev explains how Tolkien 'does it'. how he recovers Mythopoiea. but integrates post-modern insights on existential meaning. into a truly traditional understanding of absolute Truth that makes way for living spaces and living things. Tolkien understood the Genesis of Truth. When you read LOTR. you [with his assistance] are convening a Grand White Council. in a sense. the only one that will matter. since he is growing your conscience. your judge. and your magnetic center.  Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:30:00 +0000 db4870fb4197c5624210981288400425bb3c3475 https://winteryknight.com/2026/04/01/why-do-so-many-atheist-historians-think-that-1-corinthians-15-is-reliable-history-8/ Which passage of the Bible is the favorite of Christians who like to defend the Christian worldview. I don’t mean which one is most inspirational… I mean “which one is the most useful for winning arguments.” Well. when it comes to the historical Jesus. the most important passage has to be 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. The … Continue reading Why do so many atheist historians think that 1 Corinthians 15 is reliable history. → Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0000 c4f49f4e793f960b06c01f78021ef4bf425836e2 https://stageinthesky.com/2026/03/29/are-you-more-loyal-to-god-or-the-church/ One of the greatest things I heard a pastor say was. “It’s not my job to get you to follow me. It’s my job to get you to follow Jesus.” You’re about to hear the words of a natural born rebel. I know the word “rebel” might discredit this essay. because the Bible doesn’t usually (…) Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:41:35 +0000 be1d32da352f0a446653e7078fca5c4e2fd879ff https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/28/knight-and-rose-show-74-tyler-oneil-religious-liberty-and-free-speech/ Welcome to episode 74 of the Knight and Rose podcast. In this episode. Wintery Knight and Desert Rose welcome Tyler O’Neil from Daily Signal to discuss the state of religious liberty and free speech in America. If you like this episode. please subscribe to the podcast. and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it … Continue reading Knight and Rose Show n74: Tyler O’Neil: Religious Liberty and Free Speech → Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:00:34 +0000 19ea265c8d816403472b1aa4abd772fdf362fc65 https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/27/bad-news-for-liberty-in-canada-and-finland-but-good-news-in-america/ I saw quite a few interesting stories about free speech and religious liberty in the news this week. It’s always a shock to me to hear some Christian leaders say that Christians shouldn’t care about policy and politics. Some even say “Jesus doesn’t care about politics”. I can only think that these people are naive … Continue reading Bad news for liberty in Canada and Finland. but good news in America → Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:00:36 +0000 8dbaefb70089c5f3534f1b378fa1b4f0f883a9fe https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/03/musical-conversations.html The other week a colleague joked about my “out of date” taste in music.  It was five hundred years old he said.  I found this highly amusing.  I had been listening to the symphonies of Beethoven.  Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major was first performed in Vienna in 1800.  His Symphony No. 9 in D minor. the fourth movement of which contains the famous choral setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy and which set nine as the informal upper limit for symphonies for future composers. [1] was first performed in Vienna in 1824.  Each of these. in other words. dates to the century before the last rather than five centuries ago.   Unintentionally. however. my friend illustrated the very point that I made in answer to him.  If the difference between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries is that irrelevant then the music in question cannot be tied to the era that produced it in the sense his criticism suggests. Classical music in the broad sense of the term can never be out of date because it is timeless.  This is. indeed. what the term classical implies when used of this kind of music.  This is why it persists as its label despite the potential for confusion [2] even though attempts are periodically made to find another.   Classical is not the only kind of music that possesses the quality of timelessness although it has a firmer title on it than any other.  There is a type of music. by contrast. that is notoriously time-bound.   That is the type of music that we usually refer to as pop.   Note that while pop is short for popular. pop music and popular music are not the same thing.  Popular music is the traditional complement to classical music.  It covers any kind of music that belongs to the popular or common culture through which a society’s identity is expressed. maintained. and transmitted.  Classical music belongs to the other kind of culture which rather than being inward-focused on group identity is outward-and-upward-focused on external reality and such things as Goodness. Beauty. and Truth.  Both kind of culture are necessary to have civilization and in a healthy society they have a symbiotic relationship in which each informs and draws from the other.   If popular music can be described as the music of the natural popular culture of a society. pop music is music that is artificially created and imposed upon the popular cultures of man societies.  While pop is sometimes thought of as one of many genres of music. like jazz. rock. and country. it is something else.  It is what you get when you apply the principles of industrialization - mass-production. mass-marketing. and mass-consumption - to music.  This is why it is dates from the moment it is created like no other kind of music is.  Everything produced and marketed for mass consumption has a shelf-life.  This is called planned obsolescence.  It is an inevitable consequence of mass production.  Unless you are producing something like food which cannot be used without also being used up. you will need to sell to the same customers over and over again. which means that you will either have be constantly redesigning and. at least in theory and the perception of your customers. improving your product or you will have to make an inferior product that wears out and needs to be replaced. The same principle by which automobile manufacturers and software companies operate applies to pop music which is why when you hear pop it you can usually tell the decade and often the very year it was recorded.   Timelessness on the one hand and being intentionally dated on the other are not the only ways in which classical and pop are each the antithesis of the other.  This is one of many reasons why the widespread notion that the relationship between the two is that of two different genres is utterly silly.  Neither classical nor pop is a genre. they differ from each other in kind at a far deeper level than that.  That this is so can be seen in the fact that both classical and pop each have their own genres and the nature of the genres of classical is very different from the nature of the genres of pop.   Since pop music is not itself a genre of music. but a category defined by how it is made and consumed. its genres are the different kinds of popular music to which the process of producing pop has been applied.  This process could in theory be applied to any kind of music. but some kinds of music are more susceptible to it than others.  Classical music is the most inoculated against it.  The closest thing to a pop version of classical would be something like a greatest hits collection of arias sung by the Three Tenors.  When a previous kind of popular music is turned into pop this creates a distinction between its traditional form and the form that is subsumed under pop as a genre.   The kind of traditional popular music that is most comparable to classical music in terms of musical depth. its extensive repertoire of strictly instrumental pieces. and how it is listened to is easily jazz which some think ought to be classified as classical rather than popular.  There is a pop version of jazz. although traditional jazz purists reject is as being real jazz. and it has a fairly wide reputation for banality. [3]   What I just said about traditional jazz purists is. of course. true of purists of any form of traditional popular music.  In the case of country and western music the associations that issue honours and awards have long tried to act as gatekeepers by granting minimal recognition to anyone who was come over to country from pop and shunning those who have gone the other direction in a way that would put the strictest Mennonite sects to shame. [4] These. however. are thinking of the distinction in terms of style and genre.  Although country and western has a traditional form that predates pop music in the sense we are using the expression here. its development from older forms of folk music in the American South was contemporaneous with the earliest phase in the conversion of music into a market product for mass consumption. the rise of radio.  While if you were to spend an hour or so listening to Hank Williams Sr.. George Jones. Tammy Wynette. Johnny Cash. Claude King. et al. and then spend the same amount of time listening to whoever currently tops the charts on contemporary country radio. the difference will be obvious and the music of the second half of the experiment will likely sound like it has more in common with whatever is playing on the pop stations. albeit with a twangier sound and sung by somebody who is more likely to be wearing a cowboy outfit. than it does the music of the first half of the experiment.  That having been said. the irony is that those who would appear to us as the traditional country artists in this comparison. themselves for the most part – I think Hank Williams Sr. is the only real exception among the examples given - had their careers entirely in the period in which country music was indistinguishable from pop in terms of being a market commodity.  The C and W gatekeepers. therefore. are not so much traditionalist purists. as those interested in protecting the product of the Nashville brand of the industry from the Los Angeles brand.     There are. of course. plenty of kinds of pop music that do not have traditional forms to contrast with their pop forms because they were created as pop music.  Obvious examples include any kind of music with words like “electro” or “techno” in the designation.  A more interesting case is that of rock music.  Like these later kinds. rock does not have a traditional. pre-pop form. although it has traditional roots in that as with its slightly older immediate predecessor rhythm and blues. older forms of popular music such as blues. jazz. and country were utilized like raw materials in its construction.  Unlike the types of later pop that wear their mechanical artificiality on their sleeves. rock. which when it first appeared as rock ‘n’ roll was largely coextensive with pop. has strove ever since to forge an identity that would distinguish it from pop.  Since rock’s identity both within pop and in the space it has carved for itself outside pop. is that of the voice of the rebellion of the young and ignorant. its non-pop form is not properly thought of as traditional rock but as the very antithesis of the traditional forms of other music that has been popified.   One thing that stands out about these different genres of pop music is that while they are quite distinguishable in style they are generally identical in form.  There are exceptions of course. but genres of pop music usually consist entirely of songs [5] which. while they vary in length. hover around a standard average length that not-coincidentally is that which is most accommodating for radio play.  Here is where the huge contrast between the genres of pop and the genres of classical is most evident.   Within classical music. genres are distinguished from each other in form as well as style.  Songs. although they may be incorporated into other genres such as arias in opera for example. are but one of many genres and far from the most important.  Other genres include but are far from limited to opera which consists of theatrical productions set to orchestral music in which the dialogue is entirely or almost entirely sung. oratorios such as Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion or Handel’s Messiah which are similar to operas but are not acted out. symphonies which are multi-movement [usually four] pieces composed to be performed by a full orchestra and which may or may not include singing. concertos in which either the orchestra or a smaller musical group provide accompaniment to the lead instrumentalist[s]. chamber music which is itself more a genre of genres consisting of various types of pieces written to be performed by smaller instrumental ensembles such as a string quartet. ballets which as a music genre accompany the dances of the same name [Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Nutcracker Suite for example]. and incidental music written to be the background accompaniment to an ordinary theatrical play [Mendelssohn’s wrote such music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream twice. his famous “Wedding March” [6] comes from the second version].    It is pop music’s fundamental nature as the music manufactured for mass consumption that both limits it for the most part to a single form. with multiple styles and stamps it with a sell by date.  Since pop comes off incredibly poorly in these comparisons with classical. it is important to review at this point what we are arguing for and against. lest this come across as mere pop bashing.  We began by arguing for the timelessness of classical music against my friend’s dismissal of it as “old”. which led to the observation that pop is the kind of music that is dated out of necessity.  This in turn led to the comparison of how pop genres differ from classical genres. which was made in argument against a widespread but silly idea that pop and classical are themselves two genres or styles.  One of the unfortunate consequences of this silly idea is that it misleads people into thinking that they should seek the same kind of listening experience from both.  Someone who wishes to enjoy both pop and classical. however. needs to understand that they differ at a far more fundamental level than genre and that they are not intended to be listened to in the same way.  Pop music is designed to produce immediate and easy enjoyment.  It is the music of instant gratification that offers pleasure while making no demands.  Classical music requires something of you – the commitment of time. contemplative silence. and effort to actively listen – before it yields its rewards.  Yes. here too. pop comes off poorly in comparison to classical. but remember that the point is that there is nothing preventing you from enjoying both. provided you keep the difference in mind and listen to both accordingly.  A far more devastating comparison would be between pop music and traditional popular music. since pop essentially subverts popular music from doing what it is supposed to do.   That however. is a comparison to be explored in depth at another time.  Here I will introduce my third and final argument. by referring to another conversation of about a half a year ago.  I was introduced by another friend to someone he knew from seminary [a different one from the one I had attended].  Somehow the topic of music came up.  I think perhaps that I had been asked what my interests were after having expressed zero interest in any of the varieties of sportsball.  My friend’s friend recounted how when he was in seminary. his professors had warned about the evils of rock music and praised classical. and had then talked him into seeing an opera.  The opera he went to. however. was filled with masonic and occult symbols and basically the sort of thing that his professors. who were there watching and applauding. had warned about in rock music.  Asked if I knew which opera he was talking about. I answered “Die Zauberflöte” and was extremely amused to get the response “No. it was ‘The Magic Flute.’”   I did not bother to try and mount an argument about how the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was so inspired that it could elevate the spirit even when attached to subject matter completely unworthy of it as was the case with his last opera in whatever language you render its title.  If he did not already know this from the music itself. he is highly unlikely to learn it from anything I might tell him.  This conversation did. however. provide some insights about notions concerning music that are widespread in certain Christian circles and in expounding those insights I will come around to making that argument.   Many evangelical Protestants think that there is this sharp divide between the lyrics that are sung to music and the music itself and that the only thing that a Christian could reasonably object to in any music is the content of the lyrics.  A Christian. according to this way of thinking. and I use that term loosely. can legitimately object to a song that glorifies extramarital sex. violence. drug abuse. rebellion against parental and other lawful authority. crime. and the like. on moral grounds. but if the words are removed. can have no objection to what remains except insofar as it may bring to mind the absent lyrics.  For some evangelicals even this is too “judgemental.”    The origins of this attitude are not difficult to explain since it is obviously a specifically evangelical version of the phenomenon in the wider culture of young people dismissing any criticism of their music from older generation.  The evangelicals who hold this view are responding to what might be called the fundamentalist approach which is to issue broad sweeping condemnations of pretty much every kind of music introduced since the 1950s as the devil’s music.  In the conversation I just related. my interlocutor can be taken as representative of the evangelical attitude and his professors of the fundamentalist.  Those holding the evangelical attitude regard theirs as the more intelligent of the two and speak smugly of those who hold the fundamentalist view.  I have known this to be inevitably the case and could fill the space I have allotted to this essay entirely with examples.  The smugness. I regard as entirely unwarranted.   It is easy to be smug about the fundamentalist view.  Sweeping blanket condemnations are difficult to defend intelligently precisely because they avoid making the distinctions that are the mark of intelligent criticism.  The evangelical position. however. is not that the fundamentalist view is too uncritical but rather that it is too critical. too judgmental.  The idea that the lyrics of a song might be objected to on moral grounds. but that the music itself cannot ignores the fact that aesthetic judgement. which evaluates the quality of art. is itself a form of moral criticism.  We don’t often think of it that way. but the standard for traditional aesthetic judgement is beauty. which belongs to the same part of the order of reality as goodness. the basis of moral criticism. and which is arguably goodness itself applied to the area of sensual appearance. [7]  Music. of course. is art made from sound and so is experienced audibly. as opposed to painting. sculpture. and other forms of art that are made to be experienced visually.  The evangelical view requires that such considerations be swept aside entirely and comes close to embracing. at least in the realm of philosophical aesthetics. an extreme subjectivism approaching nihilism that evangelicals. in theory at least. would reject in other realism.   What I have dubbed here the evangelical view. although the more conservative of self-described evangelicals sometimes approach what I have called the fundamentalist view. has in a way that is both interesting and revealing. been subjected to practical testing.  The music industry. taking the idea that music that Christians might object to on the grounds of the content of the words can be rendered “Christian” by substituting Christian lyrics – in the case of the group ApologetiX there is an extra dimension of literalness to this description because they basically do what “Weird Al” Yankovic does and substitute their own lyrics to well-known tunes – began producing “Christian” versions of rock. heavy metal. rap and pretty much any other kind of pop music to sell to the niche market of Christian youth.  This is collectively called CCM – Contemporary Christian Music.   Note that I used the word “pop” rather than “popular.”  This is because this could only be done with industry-produced music.  It would be absurd to try and create an artificially “Christian” version of traditional popular music because within such music sacred and even Gospel themes always had a natural place integrated with more this-worldly themes.  When. in 1938. Louis Armstrong recorded his jazz orchestration of the spiritual “When the Saints Go Marching In” nobody lifted an eyebrow.  It fit in with the rest of his repertoire naturally and the song has long been a jazz staple.   Indeed. you might find it easier to list the spirituals of this sort that did not become part of the standard jazz repertoire than those that did.  Nor do these comprise the entirety of the sacred element of traditional jazz.   Similarly when Hank Williams Sr. wrote and recorded “I Saw the Light” in 1946. it may have conflicted with his lifestyle but certainly not his music.  Indeed. country music would be completely unrecognizable from what it actually is. had Gospel themes not been there all along beside the prison. train. literal cowboy. drinking. pick-up truck. and cheating themes. [8]  Try to imagine Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton without the religious dimension of their music.  Tennessee Ernie Ford would have been almost reduced to a one-hit wonder.  Even today. long after county became largely popified. the biggest hit to date of Blake Shelton. currently married to pop star Gwen Stefani. is his 2019 “God’s Country”. a song about farm life that is packed with references to church. piety. and other similar themes.    We have seen that rock music began within the sphere of pop music as rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s and then sought to establish a non-pop identity after the fact.   The early rock ‘n’ rollers came from other kinds of music that had a traditional sacred side.  In the case of Elvis Presley. he had strong roots in Gospel music and was indistinguishable from the country artists mentioned in the preceding paragraph in that he continued to sing and record Gospel to the very end of his life.  While he was not absolutely alone in this. he was far from being the norm either for part of rock’s quest to establish its own identity was to jettison the sacred element of the raw materials it drew from and to emphasize the elements that were least congruent with Christian faith.   Therefore. when the first “Christian rock” was made in the late 1960s. in was in accordance with the CCM model of imposing an external Christianity on a music that had become foreign. and in many cases. hostile to Christianity. [9]  The late Sir Roger Scruton wrote:   Recent criticism has paid much attention to the words. These often dwell on violence. drugs. sex and rebellion in ways that lyricize the kind of conduct of which fathers and mothers used to disapprove. in the days when disapproval was approved. But these criticisms do not. I think. get to the heart of the matter. Even if every pop song consisted of a setting of Christ’s beatitudes [and there are born-again groups in America - ‘16 Horsepower’ is one of them - that specialize in such things]. it would make little or no difference to the effect. which is communicated through the sounds. regardless of what is sung to them. The only thing that is really wrong with the usual lyrics is what is really right about them - namely. that they successfully capture what the music means. [10]   What I have argued above concerning traditional popular music. that in it sacred themes traditionally and naturally have their place alongside non-sacred and so do not need to be artificially imposed on it the way it does on mass-produced pop music and on the anti-tradition of rock the way it is in the CCM model. is all the more true of classical music.  Sacred music is the very foundation on which the classical music tradition is built.  Plainsong. the unaccompanied simple melodies to which the liturgy was chanted in the Western Church of the first millennium of which the best known version is Gregorian chant. developed into organum by the addition of a harmonizing voice. which opened the door to more complex forms of polyphony which while it initially met with resistance from Church authorities due to concerns that it would place the text of the liturgy beyond comprehension eventually won acceptance.  The early history of classical music is the history of sacred music and after the Renaissance brought a renewal of interest in themes from pre-Christian antiquity and the Reformation brought about a breach in the external unity of the Western Church. the sacred remained at the heart of the classical tradition.  Mass settings written to accompany the singing of the ordinaries - the unchanging parts - of the Eucharistic liturgy [11] were written by all the major composers including the Lutheran J. S. Bach [Mass in B Minor] and Beethoven who wrote two [Mass in C Major and Missa Solemnis] despite having imbibed the rotten ideas of the so-called Enlightenment.  Oratorios. while usually written to be performed in the concert hall. were largely devoted to religious themes as in the examples already provided to which countless others such as Haydn’s Creation and Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives could be added.   Even more so than with traditional popular music. sacred music is integral to the classical music tradition so as to make the idea of “Christian classical music”. that is. a classical music upon which Christianity has been imposed from the outside. absolutely absurd.  Indeed. with classical. at least traditional as opposed to avant garde. we have the reverse of the situation with pop music and the CCM model.   I don’t know why the fundamentalist professors chose The Magic Flute as the work to introduce their students to classical music with.  BWV 1: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern [How Beautifully the Morning Star Shines] written for both Palm Sunday and Lady Day which coincided at its first performance or BWV 82: Ich habe genug [I am content]. a setting of Dr. Luther’s translation of the Nunc Dimmitis written for Candlemas or any other of Johann Sebastian Bach’s over 200 sacred cantatas would have been a better choice for the point they were trying to make.  Nevertheless. just as Sir Roger Scruton said that it is the usual and not the “Christian” lyrics that express the meaning of pop music. so the nature of classical music. especially in the hands of a true master like Mozart. is such that story and symbolism of his final opera can hardly be said to express its true meaning.  [1]   More accurately. Gustav Mahler set the limit by claiming the ninth symphony to be cursed to be a composer’s last [as it was in his case as with Beethoven].  Joseph Haydn under whom Beethoven studies composition. wrote 106 symphonies.  “The Jupiter”. the final symphony of Haydn’s contemporary W. A. Mozart. is his 41st.[2]   With the subcategory that is called Classical to distinguish it from say the Baroque or the Romantic.  Haydn. Handel. Mozart and Beethoven are the names most associated with Classical proper.[3]   Think of the kind of music that in popular stereotype  you are likely to hear when put on hold. or waiting in an elevator. or playing in the background in a large semi-fashionable department store of the type that are now mostly obsolete.[4]  See the discussion of this in Ray Stevens’ memoir. co-written with C. W. “Buddy” Kalb Jr.. Ray Stevens’ Nashville [2014].  Although Stevens’ roots are country [he grew up in Clarksdale. Georgia]. early in his long career moved to Nashville. and ages ago earned his reputation as the “Clown Prince of Country Music”. his earliest recordings were released as pop.  He was not inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame until 2019.[5]   A song. as evident from the noun’s etymological relationship with the verb sing. is a short piece in which words are sung.  In a song. the instrumental accompaniment is supposed to back and support the voice.  A song can be sung without accompanying music.  This is called a capella style.  The opposite. where the instrumental part is performed and/or recorded without a voice. is also usually called a song by extension. although it does not technically fit the definition.  Karaoke. in which a machine plays the music and you sing the words yourself. is one reason why this would be done.  Sometimes an ensemble might think a song sounds better without the words and record it that way.  This is quite rare in most forms of pop music because it conflicts with the whole making an idol out of the singer which is part of its modus operandi – think of the talent search shows that conspicuously advertise this in their titles – although it is not uncommon in pop jazz.  Since this is a note and not the body of the essay. I will provide an example that is not relevant at all but which I find amusing. In 1965 Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band recorded the pop jazz “Spanish Flea” which became a bit hit. It had been written by the group’s percussionist Julius Wechter whose wife had written the lyrics.  The band. however. recorded it as an instrumental piece – at that point in time they rarely recorded any other way.  For a lot of people. their first encounter with the lyrics came in an unusual way. In an early episode of The Simpsons. “The Otto Show” which aired in 1992. Bart and Milhouse attend a concert of the parodic heavy metal band Spinal Tap that had appeared in a number of comedy venues and was featured by the late Rob Reiner in his 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap [Harry Shearer. the voice of numerous Simpsons characters. portrays the bass player].  A riot breaks out but Homer. who had driven the kids to the concert and is waiting in the parking lot. is oblivious to what is going on even though the SWAT team descending on the rioters are visible all around him.  He is sitting in his car singing along to “Spanish Flea”.  That this song would not be likely to drown out a heavy metal concert or a SWAT-suppressed riot is the part of the joke everyone would be expected to get.  There is another part. however. in that while Homer could easily be assumed to be improvising based on the song’s title.  what he sings are the actual lyrics written by Cissy Wechter.[6]   Mendelssohn’s is the older of the two most recognizable wedding marches.  He wrote his second orchestration of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1842.  The other most famous wedding march is the Bridal Chorus from Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin which was first performed in 1850.[7]   For example. an argument for this point could start with the fact that beauty. goodness. and truth are categorized together as transcendentals. the properties of being.  Created being. however. ultimately points to its Creator. which is uncreated Being or God.  Uncreated Being differs from the being of His creation in several ways.  One is in created beings. essence. that which makes a created thing a certain kind of thing rather than a different kind of thing. and existence/being. which establishes a certain thing as a real example of its kind rather than merely the idea of it. are two different things.  In God. however. as our best theologians from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to E. L. Mascall have argued. existence and essence are the same thing.  Another difference is that created beings are finite. uncreated Being is infinite.  These are ultimately. however. the same difference. because infinity cannot be divided. which is the flipside to the fact that no number of finites can be added together to produce infinity.  Expressed theologically. this is the concept of divine simplicity. the indivisibility of God [He has no parts. the three Persons of the Trinity are distinct in Person but are each the whole of the same God not parts which add up to God]. which requires that His properties or attributes are themselves not parts of God. but the whole of Him.  In uncreated Being. therefore. Goodness. Beauty. and Truth are each the whole of Being.  While this is not the case in finite. created. being. it has long been the case in philosophy that goodness does double duty. both as the general standard by which judgements of good. bad. better or conversely bad. worse. worst are made. and as a more specific application of that general standard.[8]  If some of these seem incongruent with the message of the Gospel. remember that in traditional country music these things are treated differently than they are in rock music.  Cheating. for example. is not glorified in country. more often it is avenged. or becomes the excuse for the drinking. which is a possible exception to my point in this note. except that country is generally honest about the self-destroying nature of such behaviour.[9]   I will say. however. that the song that best expresses what in my opinion is the genuine Christian take on those who have started this insane and unnecessary war in the Persian Gulf that threatens to escalate into a third World War – the president of the country built on the foundation of liberalism. one of the twin evils of Modernity. the other being communism. and the prime minister of the country which many North American Christians with bad theology foolishly think they owe uncritical support to because it shares the name of the covenant people of God in the Old Testament – is one recorded decades ago by a heavy metal band that deliberately forged an opposite-of-Christian image of itself.  The song is Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”. the lyrics of which while credited to the entire band were mostly written by bass player “Geezer” Butler.  The final stanza is the most relevant.  “Day of mercy God is calling/on their knees the war pigs crawling/begging mercy for their sins/Satan laughing spreads his wings”.[10]                       Sir Roger Scruton. “The Cultural Significance of Pop”. https://www.roger-scruton.com/articles/31-understanding-music/175-the-cultural-significance-of-pop[11]                       These are the Kyrie. the Gloria. the Credo. the Sanctus/Benedictus and the Agnus Dei. Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:27:00 +0000 95a2896aeda4b44ad02d9937ca34cf500ad2728a https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/25/terrell-clemmons-and-j-budziszewski-why-smart-people-embrace-delusions/ Terrell Clemmons was a recent guest and guest co-host on the Knight and Rose Show. I noticed she has not one. but FOUR new articles on the Discovery Institute Science and Culture website. I waited until all 4 had been published to write about the series. It’s about the intellectual journey of J. Budziszewski from … Continue reading Terrell Clemmons and J. Budziszewski: Why smart people embrace delusions → Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:00:51 +0000 f76f8d49f499dc99188089df43b76430e7c72e7c https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-march-b6a Books. news. conversation Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:59:33 +0000 6a3d6785d92b8cc0e6e2cae68d36f3a9c59cd76c https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/the-myth-of-the-mental-load/ Mental load or emotional labor has recently been making a come back with more and more women complaining about it. Even academic institutions seem to want to get on the train including academic articles about it. Here’s the abstract of … Continue reading → Mon, 23 Mar 2026 21:32:14 +0000 37e6b265d8f4e70a002d6b21bbb5690ba773af7a https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/20/the-secular-lefts-hostility-to-conservative-christian-parents/ Our next guest on the Knight and Rose Show is Tyler O’Neil. who is the senior editor at Daily Signal. It’s still in editing. Tyler is an expert on the SPLC. and monitors threats to religious liberty. Well. he had back-to-back articles this week exposing two different ways that the secular left showed their hostility … Continue reading The secular left’s hostility to conservative Christian parents → Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:00:25 +0000 01b82a17ce0a6cdfecd5ff9d1d832f82df01133b https://cassiodorusquodlibeta.blogspot.com/2026/03/lotr-96-readings-in-library-of-gondor.html Updates: Some eyesight issues. as well as manuscript preparation. have kept this site from being updated as of late. Hopefully. that is changing as we speak. If it's successful. I hope to offer a book of essays on Tolkien called 'Trackless Path. Matchless Power'. It is about the secret way of the Christian artist. and is not a compilation of these posts. although the material overlaps. Stay tuned.           The Traditional View: Thomas Aquinas reconciles Plato and Aristotle LinkWe have. for many moons now. troubled over the polarity between Actuality and Potentiality. In classical Traditionalist or Perennial outlines of knowledge. these two are radically opposed. Man is potentially in God's image. but very far from any actuality. His level of Being is dark. inert. and passive. God is Light. and in Him is no darkness. Since only like can become like. there is no mediator between God's brightness. and our dearth. One either already knows God. or one can never know Him. There is an absolute gulf between God and Man. Tolkien does not really and truly speak in these terms. but somewhat does so. by analogy. In his sub-creative world [LOTR mythos]. there is the 'Ring of Power' on the one hand [and the dark path]. and the Flame Imperishable. on the other. When we inquire as to the Ring of Power. we find it is the false way of being and acting in the world. and we also wish to know the true one. The Traditionalist answer [then] runs as follows. to complete the analogy: They answer - [and it is tempting to agree with them] that Potentiality is the realm of the Ring. and Actuality is the 'One True Power'. This. in fact. is one workable way to solve the conundrum presented or given us. in existence. At the top of the Hierarchy. is God. a pure Act - the pure Act. At the bottom of the hierarchy. in the center of Hell. is the frozen being of Satan and his ilk. in black chains. The riddle of Being is known when one realizes that Actuality is always plenary or higher Being. and only insofar as it is actual. Potency. insofar as it is potency only. is privation. and is a hellish mode. more or less miserable. God guarantees pure Actuality. and is crowned upon His many manifested levels of being and creatures. in existing Reality. The heights of Heaven are built upon the fundaments of Hell. God dominates the hierarchy of Creation. and all expostulation or reply is pointless: to NOT see [or agree] is to give ipso facto proof. of one's own hellish being. And privation/Potency has no allurement to. no spark of. no tendency towards. Actuality [God]. The 'Ring of Power' [then] is the illusion that keeps us in potentiality. denying us Actuality [and Iluvatar along with it]. made systematic. magical. and fully operative as we bind ourselves with chains in Hell's riveting darkness. That would be a Dantean-Aquinian 'read' on Tolkien's major themes. The Ring of Power is potency [us]. and our tendency to wish to remain in mere potential. to take potential as actual. and enhance the illusion. The more masterful and cunning and strong this is. the more and more you have something you can call 'A Ring of Power'. Thus far. Dante and Aquinas. Thus far [also] the Perennialists: Rene Guenon. Guido de Giorgio. down to Sayyed Hossein Nasr today.         On the other hand. Dante puts Siger of Brabant in Paradiso. who was Aquinas' foe... LinkThus far. good. One has to make a beginning. and certainly. one chooses to be a 'creature of the day'. not of the night. and one reckons with God. 'in whom is Light. and no darkness at all'. This is the initial edifice. It is both necessary. and yet also. incomplete [incomplete. so far as 'necessary' - all Law is necessary: therefore. Good. and also. just a beginning]. Except that we have a diametrical tension between Potency-Actuality. Insofar as Potency is always bad [representing lack]. there cannot be any real communion with Actuality. There is an absolute dichotomy between Potency [Hell] and Actuality [Heaven]. Instead of recognizing them as Polar. and their relationship as an Antinomy. we have the dialectical tension between two irreconcilable and opposed elements or states of being. a false Negation [rather than a Contradictory]. One can certainly agree with. and see the beauty of. the Heavenly Hierarchy vision gifted us in the medieval mindset. It is certainly true. that there is an element of Truth to this vision. a great element Certainly. also. one must have gone or gotten 'this far' to get anywhere at all.  But the eternal opposition and tension in this view. between what is Below and what is Above/Beyond. is a lower level of spiritual development. The vision itself may be lovely. but the foundation. of itself. is dreadfully simplistic. It cannot outgrow that foundation. And it doesn't help that they buttress that simplicity by claiming a sort of Faith-based exemption for it. along the lines of Saint Simplicity. or Mystic Magic. Ancient thinkers have already noticed and wrestled with what we present. here. The mode of being that is particular to the phenomenon 'thinking' thus consists in a continuous beginning anew of the movement. because the movement has from the outset reached its end. the end being the very potentiality that has been released. Potentiality which immediately becomes effective is continuously reborn as potentiality which then reiterates its actualization. That is the reason why the kind of movement that is action [energeia] does not terminate when it reaches its end. For its terminus a quo is the same as its terminus ad quem. and the first on reaching perfection in the second survives as potentiality which demands new actualization. We readily understand that Aristotle trembled when he first caught sight of a mode of being so desperately difficult to grasp. See. On the Soul. 417b. 3. Link [Jose Ortega y Gasset's Concord and Liberty]We see [then] that Aristotle must have already grasped the paradoxical and mysterious nature of Reality. although he would later attempt to account for them in a fully worked out system. with terminology of causes and effects.                                Link: The Joining of 'Opposites' can be found in the West as wellPotentiality [then] must already be a form of Actuality. or else it could not possibly become so changed. Actuality Itself. must be a servant and slave of Potentiality. indeed the greatest Potentiality of them all. 'The First shall be Last. and the Last. First. The greatest among you. will be a Servant.' It is by denying our own knowledge. that we gain entrance to Knowledge. One goes 'under the dungeon' to 'stand-under' or understand the fundiments. Jacob's Ladder is traversed by angels in both directions - that which is low must be exalted. that which is high. must be made low. 4 Every valley shall be exalted. and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight. and the rough places plain: 5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Isaiah 40:4-5How can these things be. 'God alone knows how'. but this confession frees us to begin to think His thoughts after Him. as if for the very first time. This is the Alchemical progression from Black. to White. and finally to Red. We can finally turn over 'a new leaf'. It is because of Tolkien's delicate grasp of these things that he was able to create a sub-creative world with potential reality. For The Flame Imperishable burns at the real heart of every creature. We are creators. in actual fact. not just potentially. because God remains Creator. but does so [also] as 'the heart of our heart'. God's Creatorship guarantees our own. There is no ultimate or absolute conflict. between man. and God. To have a 'vision' of God as this guarantor of Freedom and Creativity. is the same as to love Him. He 'compels' Love. To see. to love. and to follow - these become one 'actuality' and continue as an eternal 'potentiality'. There is an absolute distinction between Creator and creature. but God overcomes this in the Immanuel. That [and the source of 'That' - He -] is the Secret Flame. The distinction is. and is not. not absolute. for God. only for us : and only until He reveals Himself.  Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:31:00 +0000 bf2933b936b6d329553b1f36246db3d858be3ce8 https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/18/physicist-brian-miller-presents-scientific-evidence-for-god-on-university-campuses/ I was already a Christian by the time I made it to university. but I had never seen the sorts of sophisticated arguments that could be presented for Christianity. Somehow. I stumbled upon a website called Leadership University. and that pointed me to a whole bunch of Christian professors who had written essays on a … Continue reading Physicist Brian Miller presents scientific evidence for God on university campuses → Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:00:55 +0000 366d9648fe1d502209b3992c3cd3fb6e5f0e189c https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/splendour-of-fire-speed-of-lightning-f65 Learning from Saint Patrick Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:01:06 +0000 438398c8d907b10ab77f15c2cc30472450f4a19b https://thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-eleventh-article-resurrection-of.html The eleventh and penultimate Article of the Creed is. like the one that precedes it and the one that follows it. a short and simple Article.  In the modified version of the old Roman Symbol that has come down to us as the Apostles’ Creed it consists of two nouns. a subject and a modifying genitive.  In the Niceno-Constantinopolitan version of the Creed the subject noun is the same with a different modifying genitive.  We shall find the same difference between the two versions when we come to the twelfth and final Article. except that in the eleventh Article it is a simpler swap of a single genitive noun for another whereas in the twelfth it is a complex expression. two words in the Latin. three in the Greek. that takes the place in the conciliar Creed of the single noun in the Apostles’.  There is one other difference between the two versions of this Article.   Here. as in the tenth Article. the Niceno-Constantinopolitan introduces a new verb to govern the Article.   The verb that introduces this Article in the version published by the second ecumenical council is προσδοκοῦμεν.  This word means “we expect.” In the Latin version where the copula implied by the Greek text is spelled out we find “Et exspécto.”  This means “and I expect.”  The change from the plural to the singular is not a Latin innovation.  In the liturgical version of the Greek text the singular is substituted for the plural here as it is with the previous verbs in the first and tenth Articles.   Archbishop Cranmer in the Book of Common Prayer. rather than use the English transliteration of the Latin. translated it as “and I look for” which is a better rendition because it retains the strong sense of anticipation present in the original that words like “expect” and “hope” have lost through weakening over the last few centuries.  When we looked at the tenth Article it was noted that the shift from “believe” to “acknowledge” [or “confess”] was not a shift from one verbal idea to a completely different one but from a verb that expresses an inner action to that which expresses its external complement [“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” Rom. 10:10].  Here the shift is one of temporal orientation.  To “look for” or “expect” is to express faith in that which is promised but yet to come.  Note the close relationship between faith and hope established in Scripture [1 Cor. 13:13. 1 Thess. 1:3. Heb. 11:1].   The noun that is the subject of the article is ἀνάστασις in the Greek of the conciliar Creed and resurrectio in the Latin of both versions. with the accusative forms ἀνάστασιν and resurrectionem being used because the Creed is a form of indirect discourse in which the nouns that are the subjects of the Articles are the objects of the first person verb[s].  Both the Greek and the Latin nouns were derived from complex versions of the verb for “stand” or “rise”.  In the Greek the prefix added to form the compound usually means “up.”  The Latin prefix means “back” or “again”. the second of these being the meaning it has here.   The modifying noun in the Apostles’ Creed is carnis. the genitive form of caro.  The use of this word rather than corporis. the genitive of corpus. may raise a few eyebrows.  Archbishop Cranmer rendered it “of the body” which would have been the literal translation had the original been corporis.  “Of the flesh” is the literal translation of carnis.  While “flesh” does in ordinary usage mean “the stuff of which the body is made” in theology it has a specialized meaning that is very different from this. a meaning established by the usage of St. Paul in his New Testament epistles.    Consider Galatians 5:16.  In the Authorized Bible this reads “This I say then. Walk in the Spirit. and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”  If this verse stood alone “the lust of the flesh” could be taken to mean “bodily desires” but the Apostle expands on it and in verses 19-21 lists several “works of the flesh.”  Although the list begins with things such as “Adultery. fornication. uncleanness. lasciviousness” that would be consistent with this interpretation it goes on to include items that would not such as “Idolatry. witchcraft. hatred. variance. emulations. wrath. strife. seditions. heresies” etc.   In some more recent translations other things are substituted for “the flesh” presumably in order to avoid confusion with the word’s more literal meaning. Examples include “your sinful nature” [New Living Translation]. “your old nature” [Complete Jewish Bible]. “the human nature” [Good News]. “your corrupt nature” [God’s Word]. “your sinful selves” [New Century] and others have added yet a further degree of interpretation to their translation by rendering it as “selfishness” [The Message] or “selfish” as an attributive adjective rather than a noun [Common English].  While all of these are over-interpretations in a translation – explaining that “the flesh” in this verse doesn’t mean the part of you that you can see and touch but the part of you that inclines and incite you to do bad things is the level of interpretation that belongs to hermeneutics and exposition not translation – they do give you the general idea of what “the flesh” means in its non-literal sense.  St. Paul. however. chose to speak of the inherited fallenness of human nature as “the flesh” for a reason. and explaining that reason is as much the job of the expositor as is explaining what “the flesh” means in such contexts.  Since over-interpreting in translation can only explain the one and hide the other. it basically is doing someone else’s job and doing it badly by leaving it half undone.   In the New Testament. σάρξ. the Greek equivalent of caro. is frequently contrasted with πνεῦμα [spirit].  The contrast begins with these words in their literal meanings. The spirit or breathe [the same word is used for both]. is the invisible mover of the physical and visible. the flesh.  Most often σάρξ is used in its literal sense.  When St. John tells us ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο [“the Word became flesh”. Jn. 1:14] this is clearly with no implications of sinfulness. nor are there any such implications when Jesus referencing Genesis says that the man and his wife are μία σάρξ [“one flesh”. Mk. 10:8].  In contrasting the spirit and the flesh. however. the flesh is depicted as the weaker of the two.  See. for example. Matt. 26:41.  St. Paul tends to use “the flesh” in a sense that includes both flesh and spirit in their literal meanings and so means “human nature” in its entirely.  When he speaks of the flesh/spirit contrast he uses “the flesh” in this inclusive sense and it is not the human spirit that he is contrasting with the flesh. but the Holy Spirit.  In Romans 7. for example. where he contrasts his “inward man” that delights in the law of God with his “flesh” that serves sin. the “inward man” is depicted as his νοῦς [mind] rather than his πνεῦμα [spirit]. so as not to create confusion when in the eighth chapter he sets forth the way of freedom from walking after the flesh as that of walking after the Spirit. clearly identified as “the Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Christ.” [Rom. 8:9]  Similarly in Galatians 5 where the contrast with the “works of the flesh” is the “fruit of the Spirit”. the Spirit is the indwelling Holy Spirit.    Therefore. when St. Paul speaks of “the flesh” as human sinfulness this should not be understood as meaning that sin originates from the physical side of human nature but rather that it originates from fallen human nature.  While σάρξ in its literal sense is interchangeable with σῶμα [“the body”] the Apostle normally restricts the sense of sinfulness to the one word.  The verses could be seen as exceptions to this rule. Rom. 6:6 and 7:24. contrast a past state or condition with that experienced after baptism and the liberating power of the Holy Spirit.   This brings us back to the question of the use of carnis rather than corporis in the Apostles’ Creed.  It reads this way in the oldest extent versions of the Creed.  St. Irenaeus. whose 2nd century Against Heresies includes a “rule of faith” that is an early version of the Creed. has in the relevant place the phrase καὶ ἀναστῆσαι πᾶσαν σάρκα πάσης ἀνθρωπότητος or in Latin et resuscitandam omnem carnem humani generis which in the standard translation is “and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race” [1]   At the end of the fourth century Rufinus of Aquileia compared the Latin text of the old Roman Symbol to that used in his own Church and in both the phrase was exactly as it appears in the current Apostles’ Creed.   Earlier that century. Marcellus of Ancyra who was one of the Fathers at the First Council of Nicaea presented a Greek version of the Symbol to Julius I. Patriarch of Rome. in which the phrase appears as σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν.  This strongly indicates “flesh” to be the original reading.  The evidence of St. Irenaeus may indicate it was the original reading not merely of what became the Apostles’ Creed but of the ur-Creed that was the ancestor of both versions.   St. Irenaeus also provides a clue as to why this word was chosen over the word for body.  The heresies that he addressed in his work are those of the type that today are collectively referred to as Gnosticism.  While the teachings of these groups varied enough that some have questioned the usefulness of the lump designation they all tended to disdain the material world and to regard matter as the unfortunate by-product of the passions of a lesser deity and the source of all evil in which the spirits of men are trapped and from which they need liberating.  Since the Gnostic concept of salvation involves this liberation the concept of a resurrection was abhorrent to them.  According to St. Irenaeus [and St. Justin Marty]. the first of these and of all heretics. was Simon Magus [the Samaritan magician who tried to purchase the Apostolic power in Acts 8].  That this type of heresy had started up while the Apostles were still alive can be seen from the epistles of St. John where the heretics that he called antichrists were characterized by the denial that Christ is “come in the flesh” [1 Jn. 4:3. 2 Jn. 7].  St. Irenaeus’s “rule of faith” is found towards the end of his discussion of the Valentinians. one of the earliest of the Gnostic heresies.  It is reasonable to think that the word “flesh” was chosen for the Article about resurrection in order to take a clearer stand against this type of heresy.   The word could hardly have its specialized theological sense here as that would give the Article the nonsensical meaning of “the resurrection of the sinful nature.”  With no fear of confusion in that direction. using “flesh” instead of “body” guarded against the error of taking St. Paul’s “spiritual body” to mean “a body composed of spirit rather than matter.” [2]  Since “flesh” here is clearly used in its literal sense. which is interchangeable with “body”. the English is not a wrong translation. [3]      In the Creed as published by the First Council of Constantinople in 381. the word νεκρῶν is used.  The Latin correctly translates this as mortuórum and in the Book of Common Prayer it appears. also correctly. as “of the dead.”  The difference between this version and the Apostles’ Creed is that the Apostles’ Creed identifies what will be resurrected. the Niceno-Constantinopolitan identifies who will be resurrected.   The use of this word does not raise the same sort of questions as the use of “flesh” in the other Creed.    In the Athanasian Symbol. which is based on the Creed but expanded and structured differently. the section corresponding to the eleventh Article reads Ad cuius adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis which in the Book of Common Prayer is translated “At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies” [the Canadian edition of the BCP substitutes the word “must” for “shall”].  The Symbol is traditionally attributed to St. Athanasian of Alexandria who fought Arianism in the fourth century.  Since the seventeenth century it has widely been considered to be later than this. usually sixth century although Daniel Waterland made a convincing argument for the early fifth.  Even if the attribution to St. Athanasius were correct this would still be in the period after other heresies had superceded Gnosticism as the primary opponents of orthodoxy and so the reason for using “flesh” rather than “body” was waning.  Nevertheless. the longer wording found here would effectively accomplish the same thing.   The resurrection confessed here is what is usually referred to as the General Resurrection.  It includes both the resurrection of the righteous. those who have been cleansed from their sins and justified by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. and the resurrection of the wicked. those who have rendered their souls incurably by final impenitent rejection of Christ.   Nevertheless. while both of these are included they are not included equally.  The place in the Creed where they are equal is in the seventh Article where they are implicitly in Jesus Christ’s Second Coming to judge “the quick and the dead.”   The resurrection of the righteous is very much what is in focus in the eleventh Article and the resurrection of the wicked is present merely as the inescapable background to the resurrection of the righteous.  This is evident from the fact that the resurrection is confessed as an object of faith.  “I believe” in the Apostles’ Creed does not merely mean “I affirm to be true”. although it does. of course. mean that but has the additional connotations of “I grasp these truths to myself and cling to them as my only hope in this life and eternity.”  In the conciliar Creed. as we have seen. the verb governing this Article is “I look for”. that is. “I look for in hopeful anticipation.”  The resurrection of the wicked to the condemnation of final and eternal exclusion from the blessedness of the righteous. while necessarily part of the General Resurrection confessed in this Article. can hardly be viewed as the object of these verbs in their fullest senses.  The appropriate way to confess belief in it is in the bare minimal sense of the word.  We believe. that is. we affirm it to be true. because both Testaments and especially the words of the Lord Jesus Christ declare it to us.   As an object of faith and hope. the bodily resurrection of the dead distinguished the religion of the True and Living God from heathenism even before the Advent of Jesus Christ.  Job. in one of the oldest books of the Old Testament. possibly the oldest. testified in the midst of his affliction “And though after my skin worms destroy this body. yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold. and not another. though my reins be consumed within me.” [Job 19:26-27]  Although the Old Testament speaks of Sheol. an underworld so similar in conception to those of pagan mythology that it is rendered Hades in the Septuagint and in New Testament quotation. the Old Testament contains what pagan mythologies did not. hope of deliverance from it.  This is most observable in the Psalms and while “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” [Ps. 16:10] is a Messianic prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. the resurrection of Jesus Christ is clearly depicted in the New Testament as the guarantee of the resurrection of all others.  By contrast. in pagan mythology deliverance from the underworld is generally depicted as something that heroes attempt and fail. as in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. [4]  While pagan philosophers such as Plato explored the idea of the spirits of the dead returning to this world this was conceived of in terms of reincarnation not resurrection.   By the time of the New Testament a sect called the Sadducees had arisen which held only the books of Moses to be Scripture and which denied the doctrine of the General Resurrection.  Each of the Synoptic Gospels records Jesus demonstrating the truth of the resurrection to them out of the only books they recognized after they attempted to trip Him up with a garbled retelling of the story of the book of Tobit.  In St. John’s Gospel. Jesus early on identifies Himself as the One Whose voice will call the dead back to life. [5]  Later. when Lazarus dies. and He tells Martha “thy brother shall rise again” [Jn. 11:23] she understands him to speaking of the General Resurrection. “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day” [v. 24] and He says of Himself in response “I am the resurrection. and the life: he that believeth in me. though he were dead. yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” [vv. 25-26] which. when asked if she believed. Martha responded with “Yea. Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ. the Son of God. which should come into the world” [v. 27].  Her confession is identical to that of St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi [Matt. 16:16] and to the content of saving faith as identified by St. John later in his Gospel [Jn. 20:31].  The doctrine of the General Resurrection and Jesus’ role as the Agent in it is thereby made inseparable from the basic truths at the heart of the Christian faith.   We find this again in the fifteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.  This chapter begins with St. Paul declaring the Gospel that he preaches. “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. And that he was buried. and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” [vv. 3-4] which is followed by a list of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ [vv. 5-8]. [6]  This leads into St. Paul’s argument against those who deny the resurrection of the dead.  If the dead do not rise. St. Paul argues. then Christ could not have risen. but since Jesus Christ rose from the dead. therefore the dead rise. [vv.12-20] The resurrection of Jesus Christ. an element of the Gospel itself. stands or falls with the General Resurrection. therefore.  St. Paul then goes into how Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection of all. an argument that draws on the same parallel between Christ and Adam that he would later make in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the Romans.  By Adam death came upon all. in Christ all shall be made alive. [vv.20-23] something that is connected both here [vv. 24-28] and at the end of the chapter [vv.54-57] with Christ’s triumphant defeat of all of His enemies.   This chapter also includes St. Paul’s response to a hypothetical question about the nature of the body with which the dead are raised. [vv.35-55]. Careless misreading of this passage has been responsible for many. perhaps most. errors regarding the resurrection both in the early centuries and in more recent ones.  We have already touched on some of this when considering why the Apostles’ Creed uses the word carnis rather than corporis.   St. Paul compares the resurrection to the planting of grain. a comparison that the Lord had previously used in reference to His own resurrection [Jn. 12:24].  He observes that the grain when it is planted is not yet the plant that will grow from it [1 Cor. 15:37].  He then observes that flesh comes in different kinds [v. 39] and bodies come in different kinds [v. 40-41]. and states that in the resurrection of the dead. the body sown is different from the body raised [vv. 42-44].  “It is sown a natural body. it is raised a spiritual body.” [v. 44] This verse does not mean. as many have misread it to mean. that the resurrection body is not physical or material.  The word rendered “natural” in this verse is ψυχικός [the neuter form with a final nu instead of sigma].  This word does not mean anything like “material” or “physical”.  It is derived from the word for soul. life. or mind from which word all of our English words beginning psych- are derived.  Yes. it is contrasted with “spiritual”. but both words are adjectives modifying the word σῶμα [body].  The idea of physicality or materiality is implicit in this word. the noun.  Consider the different types of bodies mentioned in verses 40-41.  They are all composed of matter.  The two adjectives are both derived from words that denote the immaterial side of human nature.  While these words they usually depict different aspects of that side it is not uncommon for them to be used interchangeably.  In 1 Cor. 15:44 the adjectival forms are used to create a distinction and since both basically refer to an immaterial force that animates and controls the body the distinction is between that which animates the body in this life and that which will animate it in the resurrection.  In the following verse Genesis is quoted about Adam having been made a ψυχὴν ζῶσαν [living soul] and the Last Adam [Christ] is said to be a πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν [quickening or life-giving spirit]. The distinction made by calling the pre-resurrection body “natural” or “soulish” and the resurrection body “spiritual”. therefore. is that in this life the body is animated by the life that was bestowed upon man in creation and which has come down from Adam and which has been corrupted by sin bringing death upon us all but in the resurrection the body will be animated entirely by the new life that Jesus Christ came to give us.   This also tells us what St. Paul’s use of the grain analogy that Jesus had used for His Own resurrection had hinted at and what the description of Jesus as the firstfruits of the resurrection states explicitly.   The final resurrection is the same resurrection that Jesus has already undergone.  It is not like the raising of Jairus’ daughter. the son of the widow of Nain. or Lazarus.  In these instances. prior to Jesus’ resurrection. the Lord returned these individuals to the same condition they were in prior to their death – life. but mortal life. susceptible to disease. decay. and death.  Jesus. when He rose from the dead. rose never to die again.  This is the resurrection for which we look.   One of the other differences between the present body and the resurrection body stressed in 1 Cor. 15 is that the present body is corruptible but the resurrection body – and the body into which the “quick” will be changed without undergoing death at the Second Coming [vv. 51-54] – is incorruptible [vv. 42. 50].   That Jesus’ resurrection is the pattern of the future resurrection for which we look is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the “spiritual body” is not a physical body.  When Jesus appeared to the Apostles on the evening of His resurrection they were afraid because they thought they were seeing a ghost but He said “Behold my hands and my feet. that it is I myself: handle me. and see. for a spirit hath not flesh and bones. as ye see me have” [Lk. 24:39] and after showing them His hands and feet gave them further proof by eating a piece of fish and a honeycomb [vv. 41-42].  Later He challenged St. Thomas who had been absent on that occasion to put his hand in the hole in His side [Jn. 20:27].  From this it is clear that Jesus’ resurrection body was a physical body. the same body in which He had been crucified. and recognizably so.  While it had been changed into a glorified. incorruptible. body with new capacities it remained a physical body.   St. Paul tells us in Romans and elsewhere that we can participate in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ in the here and now by the power of the Holy Spirit Who indwells us.  To fully share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. however. when our bodies are transformed through death and resurrection or translation at the Second Coming to be like unto His. this is the first part of our hope which is our faith looking forward into the future.  We shall discuss the second part of that hope when we come to consider the twelfth and final Article of our Creed.    [1]   St. Irenaeus. Against Heresies. I.10.1.  Translation that of Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut in Ante-Nicene Fathers. ed. Alexander Roberts. James Donaldson. and A. Cleveland Coxe. 1885.[2]   This is not mere speculation on my part.  Philip Schaff explained the use of “flesh” here as that “by which the ancient Church protested against spiritualistic concepts of the Gnostics” in his notes on the Apostles Creed in the second volume of The Creeds of Christendom.  This occurs in the context of discussing how earlier translations of the Creed had rendered it literally. the first change to “body” having been made in The King’s Book in 1543. and the literal reading retained even by Cranmer in the interrogatory version used in the order of Baptism and Visitation of the Sick.  Schaff spoke of the change to “body” in a tone of approval because flesh “may be misunderstood in a grossly materialistic sense.” Elsewhere [in the third volume of his History of the Christian Church] he mentions the disagreement in the early church between the “spiritualistic” interpretation of the resurrection body held by Origen et al.. and the “more realistic” interpretation of Tertullian and the Apostles’ Creed. saying that the realistic interpretation was “pressed by” Epiphanius and St. Jerome in a “grossly materialistic manner” that in his opinion contributed to the development of the cult of relics.  This is obviously what he was referring to in his comment on the wording of the Creed. [3]   Roman Catholic English translations of the Creed also tend to use “body” rather than “flesh”. as for example. in the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Interestingly translations in some other languages [German and Armenian. for example] sometimes substitute the Niceno-Constantinopolitan reading for the Apostles’.[4]   The interesting exception to this is the myth that was dramatized by Euripides in his play Alcestis.  The title character was the wife of the Thessalonian King Admetus. whom the Fates had allowed to outlive the day they had appointed for his death provided someone was willing to take his place.  The only person so willing was his wife.  Hercules. [Heracles in the original Greek]. in the midst of his labours. arrives at the palace in the midst of the mourning right after Alcestis had died and learns. despite the king’s attempt to keep it secret. what had happened.  He departs. to return soon after with a veiled woman whom he had won in a wrestling match and hands over to Admetus.  When the king removes her veil. he discovers that it is Alcestis. whom Hercules had wrestled away from Death himself.  C. S. Lewis. like St. Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria. believed that God had been working among the ancient pagan nations albeit in a different way than He had been working in Israel to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ.  Whereas St. Justin Martyr and Clement believed this preparation to have taken the form of the ancient philosophy that sprang from the “seeds of the Logo”. Lewis argued [especially in God in the Dock] that ancient mythology. although polytheistic and containing many other errors. grew out of the truths written into the natural world and since natural revelation comes from the same God Who ultimately revealed Himself in history in the events of the Gospel. that the truths myths point to find their ultimate fulfilment in Jesus Christ.  It would be difficult not to see how this applies to the myth of Alcestis.  However imperfect their depiction. the Greeks had somehow grasped that only the Son of the Highest God could defeat Death and release those who had been held captive by him.[5]   John 5:25-29.  Verse 25 is likely referring to spiritual regeneration rather than the resurrection. but verses 27 to 29 clearly refer to the resurrection and Final Judgement.[6]   The structure of the Gospel is that of two acts of Jesus Christ. each supported by two forms of testimony.  The two acts of Jesus Christ are that 1] He died for our sins. and 2] He rose again from the dead.  The Scriptures are the first testimony to each. The additional witness to Christ’s death is His burial.  The additional witness to His resurrection is the long list of eyewitnesses.   Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:30:00 +0000 a004e63ccf3de0be30b4e3e0a854ffef5a7c1d28 https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/11/bible-study-the-importance-of-truth-in-religion-10/ Here’s an interesting passage of the Bible. What do you all think the practical value of this passage is. 1 In the second year of his reign. Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. 2 So the king summoned the magicians. enchanters. sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he … Continue reading Bible study: the importance of truth in religion → Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:00:00 +0000 a64fc8a0566c85dbfd37e7ff3afd6074ce940c79 https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/07/knight-and-rose-show-73-brian-miller-fine-tuning-and-the-multiverse-theory/ Welcome to episode 73 of the Knight and Rose podcast. In this episode. Wintery Knight and guest host Terrell Clemmons welcome Dr. Brian Miller from the Discovery Institute to discuss the evidence for fine-tuning and the multiverse theory. If you like this episode. please subscribe to the podcast. and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would … Continue reading Knight and Rose Show n73: Brian Miller: Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Theory → Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:00:46 +0000 8da636cc0e0dff25cee53914463df1f6cdc23a13 https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/how-does-a-wife-respect-a-husband Commentary and a question from a fatherless Millennial wife. Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:20:36 +0000 60e5f603955d41d6033cf0ed46a2d9d68446e208 https://winteryknight.com/2026/03/04/has-libscomb-academy-in-nashville-abandoned-christianity-for-marxist-ideology/ There’s a big problem facing Christian families today. Thanks to decades of growing government spending and higher taxes. many Christian parents can’t afford to keep one parent at home to homeschool their children. Most of the Christian parents I know both work. So how do these Christians parents educate their children. Many don’t have enough … Continue reading Has Lipscomb Academy in Nashville abandoned Christianity for Marxist ideology. → Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:00:34 +0000 0bde45056d9da2919dfde56ae81bcae818fc5302 https://deepstrength.wordpress.com/2026/03/02/round-up-american-pride-divergence-joshua-harris-return-to-christianity-liberal-protestant-churches-fall-and-self-identified-dominant-vs-submissive-in-men-and-women/ American Pride slips to new lows Probably the most interesting chart from this article is this one. All credit goes to gallup for their chart. My general assessment of this is as follows Democrats appear to be viewing the US … Continue reading → Mon, 02 Mar 2026 20:47:24 +0000 5961031264b03156454a88455af6542069c23e41 https://winteryknight.com/2026/02/27/new-study-honeybee-decision-making-shows-evidence-of-intelligent-design/ I wanted to announce to everyone that there is a Science and Faith conference in Dallas. Texas coming this weekend. And there’s live streaming. I have watched all the videos from the previous ones. It’s much better to watch and listen to them than to just listen to them. because of the slides. Anyway. one … Continue reading New study: honeybee decision-making shows evidence of intelligent design → Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:00:36 +0000 ac3a899307c59c5ca75ffb2543c9de856f668fa1