Visualizing Death

Andy Warhol, Orange Car Crash (5 Deaths 11 Times in Orange) (Orange Disaster), 1963 

 It is as a further result of his ability to travel in the supernatural worlds and to see the superhuman beings (gods, demons, spirits of the dead, etc.) that the shaman has been able to contribute decisively to the knowledge of death. In all probability many features of "funerary geography," as well as some themes of the mythology of death, are the result of the ecstatic experiences of shamans. The lands that the shaman sees and the personages that he meets during his ecstatic journeys in the beyond are minutely described by the shaman himself, during or after his trance. The unknown and terrifying world of death assumes form, is organized in accordance with particular patterns; finally it displays a structure and, in course of time, becomes familiar and acceptable. In turn, the supernatural inhabitants of the world of death become visible; they show a form, display a personality, even a biography. Little by little the world of the dead becomes knowable, and death itself is evaluated primarily as a rite of passage to a spiritual mode of being. In the last analysis, the accounts of the shamans' ecstatic journeys contribute to "spiritualizing" the world of the dead, at the same time that they enrich it with wondrous forms and figures.

—Mircea Eliade, Shamanism

With Warhol, we encounter the radical de-spiritualization of death, its banalization. The flat orange background showing through the transparent photographic reproductions arrests attention on the surface: the painting is formally and connotatively superficial. Repetition transforms the image into visual noise.

The genius of Warhol was to have intuited that the profanation of the world facilitated by photography and its mechanical reproduction is best conveyed by reproducing reproduction. To the extent that one can find elegance, if not beauty, in Warhol's work, it derives from his having discovered the perfect means to frame banality, to make modern vacuity palpable.

Rainbow Bridge

 

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c. 1438-47, photo: Steven Zucker

It is always by way of the rainbow that mythical heroes reach the sky.

Though indirectly, these myths refer to a time when communication between heaven and earth was possible; in consequence of a certain event or a ritual fault, the communication was broken off; but heroes and medicine men are nevertheless able to reestablish it. This myth of a paradisal period brutally abolished by the "fall" of man will engage our attention more than once . . . 

Shamans and magicians ... simply restore—temporarily and for themselves alone—this "bridge" between sky and earth, which was once accessible to all mortals.

The myth of the rainbow as road of the gods and bridge between sky and earth is also found in Japanese tradition, and doubtless existed in the religious conceptions of Mesopotamia. Further, the seven colors of the rainbow have been assimilated to the seven heavens, a symbolism found not only in India and Mesopotamia but also in Judaism. In the Bamiyan frescoes the Buddha is represented seated on a rainbow of seven bands; that is, he transcends the cosmos, just as in the myth of his Nativity he transcends the seven heavens by taking seven strides toward the north and reaching the Center of the World, the culminating peak of the universe. The throne of the Supreme Being is surrounded by a rainbow, and the same symbolism persists into the Christian art of the Renaissance. The Babylonian ziggurat was sometimes represented with seven colors, symbolizing the seven celestial regions; he who climbed its storeys attained the summit of the cosmic world. Similar ideas are found in India and . . . in Australian mythology. The Supreme God of the Kamilaroi, the Wiradjuri, and the Euahlayi dwells in the upper sky, seated on a crystal throne; Bundjil, the Supreme God of the Kulin, remains above the clouds. Mythical heroes and medicine men ascend to these celestial beings by using, among other things, the rainbow.

It will be remembered that the ribbons employed in Buryat initiations are called "rainbows"; in general, they symbolize the shaman's journey to the sky. Shamanic drums are decorated with drawings of the rainbow represented as a bridge to the sky. Indeed, in the Turkic languages the word for rainbow also means bridge. Among the Yurak-Samoyed the shamanic drum is called "bow"; the shaman's magic projects him to the sky like an arrow. Furthermore, there are reasons to believe that the Turks and the Uigur regarded the drum as a "celestial bridge" (rainbow) over which the shaman made his ascent. 

—Mircea Eliade, Shamanism

Almost all erotic poetry

can be interpreted as expressing a longing for mystical union. The most notable example is the biblical Song of Songs. Why not a Lana Del Rey song?

The Art of Ecstasy

Art originated as a means of representing the sacred. It originated to make visible what cannot be seen, to represent what is unrepresentable.

And as long as art was tied to the sacred, it had purpose and vitality.

The modern profanation of art was its undoing. Without a sacred purpose, art has no purpose. 

The history of modern art is the history of the sterilization of art. Modernists went so far as to make the uselessness of modern art its distinguishing virtue.

Inexorably, art was forced to stage its own degradation as its purpose, incorporating into itself everything that was once foreign to it: ugliness, banality, artlessness.

But even in this fallen world, the sacred lingers. 

Like the gravity well of a black hole, at once massive and invisible, the sacred inclines toward an abyss. It is a fall into ecstasy.

The closest to sacred art today is art that expresses a longing for self-extinction.

 

Music does this best, music that inspires trance and abandon. 

In visual art, the ecstatic is misidentified as "expressionism,” but the truly ecstatic art is always about the obliteration of the self not its expression.

When painting, Jackson Pollock was not himself; he was channeling something biger. 

Van Gogh's Starry Night is a samadhic vision. 

Contemporary shamans must learn to fly on their own. 

Many crash.

This is what happens

 when social media reduces discourse to an exchange of memes and one liners.

America’s economy isn’t working for many people who grew tired of being gaslit about how great the economy was, so there is a nihilistic sense that we should just burn it all down. Understandably, people who have been fucked over or sidelined want revenge against those who did well in the economy under the previous system. Despite this mentality among a large segment of Trump supporters, Trump primarily respects people who are winners under capitalism and has contempt for the less well off people who support him.

Liberalism and populism are the crest and trough of an oscillation that is tearing apart an arrangement that has come to the end of its life and can neither go forward or backward.  The is how the modern project comes undone. We could talk of a crisis of capitalism but that would be to reduce what Guenon called the crisis of the modern world to a purely economic/political crisis. Neither side in this exchange of barbed inanities has the language or breadth of vision to grasp the metaphysical import of the situation. They trade blows in a gladiatorial arena soon to be buried under the rubble of an extinct civilization.

The postmodernist revelation is

Group Gelitin, Vorm Fellows Function

that to endure banality (the default condition of a desacralized world) we must find a way to endow banality with a hierophantic aura, finding depth in nonsense and heroism in profanation (the secret of Duchamp's readymade).

Postmodernism is the idolatry of the profane, the consecration of desacration, the aestheticization of the anti-aesthetic. It is the ideology of a society that has reached the limit of profanation and can only alleviate its self-disgust by turning disgust into a higher-order aesthetic category.

In the same vein, Deleuze made madness chic. For how else can a disordered society, uprooted from its foundational traditions, incapable of centering or grounding itself, countenance its madness? Only by turning madness into an ideal.

Calling

In primitive man as in all human beings the desire to enter into contact wi!h the sacred is counteracted by the fear of being obliged to renounce the simple human condition and become a more or less pliant instrument for some manifestation of the sacred (gods, spirits, ancestors, etc.).

—Mircea Eliade, Shamanism

This is why every authentic prophet is a reluctant one.

Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1600.

Of this kind of "interpellation" Althusser knows nothing.

Individualist Ugliness

One of the most tenacious of the typically modern prejudices is the one that sets itself up against the impersonal and objective rules of an art, for fear that they should stifle creative genius. In reality no work exists that is traditional, and therefore "bound" by changeless principles, which does not give sensible expression to a certain creative joy of the soul; whereas modem individualism has produced, apart from a few works of genius which are nevertheless spiritually barren, all the ugliness—the endless and despairing ugliness—of the forms which permeate the "ordinary life" of our times.

—Titus Burckhardt, Sacred Art in East and West

The First Shaman

Certain legends explain the present decadence of shamans by the pride of the "first shaman," who is believed to have entered into competition with God. According to the Buryat version, the first shaman, Khara-Gyrgän, having declared that his power was boundless, God put him to the test. God took a girl's soul and shut it up in a bottle. To make sure that it would not escape, God put his finger into the neck of the bottle. The shaman flew through the sky, sitting on his drum, discovered the girl's soul and to set it free, changed into a spider and stung God in the face. God instantly pulled out his finger and the girl's soul escaped. Furious, God curtailed Khara-Gyrgän's power, and after that the magical abilities of shamans markedly diminished.

— Mircea Eliade, Shamanism

I notice there is a huge interest in associating shamanism with psychedelics. 

Sledgehammer

The metallurgist, like the blacksmith and, before him, the potter, is a "master of fire." It is by means of fire that he brings about the passage of the material from one state to another. As for the metallurgist, he accelerates the "growth" of ores, he makes them "ripe" in a miraculously short time. Smelting proves to be the means of "acting faster" but also of acting to make a different thing from what already existed in nature. This is why, in archaic societies, smelters and smiths are held to be masters of fire, along with shamans, medicine men, and magicians. But the ambivalent character of metal—laden with powers at once sacred and demonic—is transferred to metallurgists and smiths: they are highly esteemed but are also feared, segregated, or even scorned.

In many mythologies the divine smiths forge the weapons of the gods, thus insuring them victory over dragons or other monstrous beings. In the Canaanite myth, Koshar-wa-Hasis (literally, "Adroit-and-Clever") forges for Baal the two clubs with which he will kill Yam, lord of the seas and underground waters. In the Egyptian version of the myth, Ptah (the potter god) forges the weapons that enable Horus to conquer Seth. Similarly, the divine smith Tvashtr makes Indra's weapons for his battle with Vritra; Hephaestus forges the thunderbolt that will enable Zeus to triumph over Typhon. But the cooperation between the divine smith and the gods is not confined to his help in the final combat for sovereignty over the world. The smith is also the architect and artisan of the gods, supervises the construction of Baal's palace, and equips the sanctuaries of the other divinities. In addition, this godsmith has connections with music and song, just as in a number of societies the smiths and braziers are also musicians, poets, healers, and magicians. It seems, then, that on different levels of culture (an indication of great antiquity) there is an intimate connection between the art of the smith, occult techniques (shamanism, magic, healing, etc.), and the arts of song, of the dance, and of poetry.

 —Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas

 

Initiation

usually comprises a threefold revelation of the sacred, of death, and of sexuality.” (Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane) The initiate emerges from the initiating mysteries as one who knows. 

The symbolism of death and (re)birth figures prominently in these mysteries. The initiatory ordeals impress upon initiates the full import of assuming the position of man or woman. 

In a desacralized society, the symbolism of death and birth is unavailable, as is symbolism in general, and rites of passage no longer exist. This leaves each individual to “choose” his or her own identity. Today, this has extended to each individual acquiring the “right” to choose his or her gender identity. But because these identities are self-conferred with little effort, they carry little weight and are as easily cast off as they are put on. Under these circumstances, one never attains the position of one who knows. One remains a perpetual infant, not to say an embryo, arrested in a lifelong condition of fragile identity, anxiety, and bewilderment.

Initiatory death reiterates the paradigmatic return to chaos, in order to make possible a repetition of the cosmogony—that is to prepare the new birth. Regression to chaos is sometimes literal—as, for example, in the case of the initiatory sicknesses of future shamans, which have often been regarded as real attacks of insanity There is, in fact, a total crisis, which sometimes leads to disintegration of the personality. This psychic chaos is the sign that the profane man is undergoing dissolution and that a new personality is on the verge of birth. (Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane)

Religious man conquers the fear of death by assigning death the symbolic meaning of passage: what dies is the profane man, to be reborn as consecrated man, free from the fear of death and, therefore, enabled to live a noble life. Secular man shrinks from death and is, therefore, condemned to live a cowardly, compromised, half-life.

Today, the West appears at war with itself, demolishing its own traditions and monuments. A desacralized and diminished civilization cannot tolerate the memory of its sacred origin. The legacy of the past becomes an embarrassing encumbrance putting to shame the spiritual poverty of the present.  But the willful erasure of the past does not prevent it from haunting the present. In the modern, the sacred persists as a haunting, as the always possible return of the irrational.

Consciousness of a real and meaningful world

is intimately connected with the discovery of the sacred. Through experience of the sacred, the human mind has perceived the difference between what reveals itself as being real, powerful, rich, and meaningful and what lacks these qualities, that is, the chaotic and dangerous flux of things, their fortuitous and senseless appearances and disappearances. . . . In short, the " sacred" is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness. On the most archaic levels of culture, living, considered as being human, is in itself a religious act, for food-getting, sexual life, and work have a sacramental value. In other words, to be—or, rather, to become—a man signifies being "religious."

—Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas

Numerous sources are lamenting

the end of "deep" reading.

What exactly is being published today that requires "deep reading"?

Italian Primitives

 

Duccio, Jesus Opens the Eyes of a Man Born Blind, 1308–11, egg tempera on poplar, 17 1/8 x 17 3/4 in, National Gallery, London

Most of the art-historical literature from the 20th century that addresses Italian Renaissance painting follows a much earlier tradition according little respect to the early schools. Many writers still perpetuate the hierarchical construction of artistic development during the Renaissance that Giorgio Vasari expounded in his Lives of the Artists (1550 and 1568), which was the most influential discussion of the history of Italian Renaissance art . In the three prefaces that frame the chronological sequence of the lives of the great Italian artists, Vasari presented a view of the progressive development of art that appears remarkably biased in hindsight. As Erwin Panofsky explained in an essay of 1930, Vasari reestablished the supremacy of the classical style during the High Renaissance by tracing its emergence from a constructed antithesis: the primitive Gothic past. Vasari outlines a model of artistic progress through quasi-biological cycles of development and renewal. He draws on the idea often expressed by classical historigraphers that the evolution of a state or culture corresponds to the ages of man. There was the cycle of ancient times that reached its peak in the Golden Age of classical Rome, after which art declined and then virtually disappeared during the darkness of the early Middle Ages. But then, as the Renaissance gradually dawned, a second cycle began. According to Vasari, the cycle of the Renaissance developed toward its zenith in three stages or ages, compared metaphorically with infancy and childhood, adolescence, and adulthood or maturity.

The first age, or childhood, began with the appearance in the late 13th century in Tuscany of talented artists including Cimabue and, most significantly, Giotto. Vasari describes these childlike artists as eventually “weaned” and brought up beyond the stage of infancy. Through increased study of nature, the arts then climbed to a second age, or adolescence, in the 15th century, exemplified by Masaccio and Donatello. Finally, by turning not only to nature but also to the ancients, and by striving not just to equal but to surpass them both, the arts arrived at a second Golden Age during the early 16th century in Florence and Rome. Vasari believed that absolute perfection was embodied in the art of the divine Michelangelo, and to a lesser degree in Leonardo and Raphael.

This construction of the development of Italian Renaissance art continues to hold sway. It reached us with the help of Heinrich Wölfflin's often-reprinted Die Klassische Kunst or Classic Art of 1899 and 1903, in which Vasari's concept of artistic progress is given fuller stylistic description and also associated with notions of class. For example, Wölfflin conceives of the transition from 15th-century to High Renaissance painting as a movement from “a bourgeois art” to “an aristocratic one.” Domenico Ghirlandaio's Birth of St. John the Baptist of 1485, in Sta. Maria Novella in Florence, presents fussily detailed settings with many overtly gesturing figures in a manner suited to “middle-class” tastes. By contrast, Andrea del Sarto's Birth of the Virgin of 1514, in the forecourt of SS. Annunziata in Florence, is noble, elevated, dignified, and “aristocratic”. Like Vasari, Wölfflin glorifies the High Renaissance by denigrating that which came before.

The early Italian artists of the late 13th and 14th centuries were, accordingly, often seen to be lower class. In fact, Vasari's metaphor of childhood was translated into a conception of these artists as simplistic and, therefore, primitive. As the enduring label i primitivi suggests, they were associated with a complex mixture of other “primitive” artists from as yet infantile or uncivilized, typically non-Western cultures. In turn, the childlike simplicity seen in their art could be interpreted negatively, as reflecting an ignorance of learned conventions and, therefore, as naïve and rude, although in some instances the freedom from learned conventions was viewed more positively as unaffectedly truthful and unconsciously expressive. Several decades before Wölfflin's discussion of High Renaissance style, Charles Eastlake, then director of the National Gallery of London, explained, in this negatively charged way, the inclusion of some very early Tuscan panels as part of a larger purchase of paintings from the Lombardi-Baldi Collection:

The unsightly specimens of Margaritone and the earliest Tuscan painters were selected solely for their historical importance, and as showing the rude beginnings from which, through nearly two centuries and a half, Italian art slowly advanced to the period of Raphael and his contemporaries.

Even the members of mid-19th-century purist movements essentially followed Vasari's model, though they assessed the simplicity of the early Italian painters quite positively. Tommaso Minardi, the most active Italian advocate of purism, elevated Giotto's art—believing the Assisi frescoes to be by Giotto—because of the natural simplicity and intensity of expression. He was then compelled to heap even greater praise on the artists of “the period of highest rewards, the period of perfection”.

Painters from various centers in Italy, working in the period ca. 1180–1400 or even later, were known collectively as the “primitives” as late as the 1970s; this fact reveals much about prevailing attitudes toward early Italian art. The label “primitive,” with its dual associations of “rude” and “unconsciously natural,” set the early schools apart as different and less polished than “classic” artists. But the implicit contrast was there: these distinctive, rare, and often exquisitely crafted paintings, instead of being appreciated on their own terms, were devalued through a historical comparison with the muscular superrealism of Michelangelo or the robust idealized figures and soft landscapes of Raphael. Vasari's notions of High Renaissance classicism, subsequently elaborated upon in the definition of “fine art” within the French academic tradition, formed the enduring touchstone of artistic perfection against which early Italian painting was measured and was consequently found lacking. Indeed, the post-World War II literature continues the currency of expressions such as “the dawn of Italian painting,” thus perpetuating the belief that these works represent the earliest stages in the artistic evolution that produced the high noon of the High Renaissance. Alistair Smart chose that image of the dawn for the title of his early Italian survey, first published in 1978, and elaborated on the analogy in his poetic introduction:

The glow of dawn leads on to the blaze of noon, but its quality is quite distinct. And if the full light of Renaissance painting can be likened to a noonday amenable to the objective scrutiny of the natural world, the rise of the early Italian Schools suggests, rather, a slow dawn whose spreading light, while gradually revealing the forms of things, retains its mystery.

Although Smart celebrates what he sees as the distinctly mysterious or otherworldly quality of early Italian painting, the metaphor of the rising sun betrays his acceptance of Vasari's paradigm.

—Cathleen Hoeniger, "The Restoration Of The Early Italian “Primitives” During The 20th Century: Valuing Art And Its Consequences," 1999

Metaphysics of Perspective

Semantically important gestures and objects, as a rule, are presented in close-up shots, a departure from the laws of linear perspective. This may be seen in the Archangel Gabriel’s gesture of blessing in icons of the Annunciation, or images of the scroll St John of Damascus holds in medieval Russian O Tebe raduyetsya [In You Rejoices] icons, with the opening words of the hymn in honour of the Mother of God. This emphasis shows that the text of the song composed by St John of Damascus was at the very heart of the icon’s composition. The same may be said of depictions of the outer clothing (the "mantle") which the prophet Elijah leaves to his disciple Elisha on icons of the Ognennoye vozneseniye Ilyi Proroka [Fiery Ascent of the Prophet Elijah]. The materiality and the miraculous power of the "mantle" turns it into the central device of the composition, uniting heaven and earth.

The Fiery Ascent of the Prophet Elijah (sixteenth century), tempera on wood, 124 x 107 cm. State Historical Museum, Moscow.

Florenskii also linked the absence of shadows in the artistic space of the icon with the system of reverse perspective: "The absence of a definite focus of light, the contradictory nature of illumination in different places of the icon, the effort to bring forward masses which should have been overshadowed–yet again, this is neither coincidence nor a blunder by a naive craftsman, but artistic calculation, which imparts maximum artistic expressiveness."  Florenskii clearly follows Plato and his symbol of the Cave in the determination of people’s knowledge, since, in his works, light and shade acquire gnoseological meaning in the context of the metaphysics of reverse perspective. Platonic Ideas are "shadows," "the negative of things," "intaglio experiences;" a turn towards the light is a transition to a new level of cognition, and symbolizes our drawing closer to the truth. From any viewpoint, therefore, iconic images exclude shadow; when perceiving inscriptions, figures, architecture and landscape depicted on the icon, a turn (which also suggests a mobile gaze) may well convey gnoseological meaning. The icon is a transfigured reality, which knows no shadow. 

Novgorod School, The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1497), tempera on wood, 71.5 x 58 cm. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

—Oleg Tarasov, How Divine Images Became Art, 2024

The Masculine Triad

As men begat both sons and daughters, and as the former were much more desired than the latter, it was natural that a reason for this should be sought so that, if possible, the sex of the offspring could be controlled. As the phallus was the great object of veneration, it was, no doubt, carefully scrutinized and closely examined in all its peculiarities; but no marked difference of size, form, or condition was found that would account for the difference of begetting sons in one case, and daughters in another. It was observed, however, that men who had diminutive testicles, as a rule, lacked in virility, and that those who had none naturally—or who had lost them—were unable to become fathers. This was a revelation that the tests performed an important part in generation; and hence led to closer observation of their peculiarities. A marked and uniform difference was easily discovered. The right test is the more prominent, and hangs at a lower level than its smaller and less pronounced fellow on the left. The dimmest traditions of the remotest past, therefore, brings us the theory that the larger right testicle has the honor of giving the world its men; while the lesser one on the left has the minor distinction of being responsible for the weaker sex—a belief which is quite general at the present time in nearly every civilization.

How soon after the recognition of the phallus as creator—or as the instrument and representative of the Creator—that honor was divided with the less conspicuous, but equally necessary testicle appendages we have no means of definitely determining; certain it is, however, that the generative supremacy at first accorded to the phallus was in time divided with the tests—thus recognizing cooperation in the masuline organs of generation. The phallus was called Asher, which signifies to be "straight," "upright," "the erect one," "happiness," "unus cui membrum erectum est, vel fascinum ipsum"—"the erect virile member, charmed in the act of its proper function." Anu, probably from On, meaning "strength," "power"—especially "virile power," the male idea of creator, was the name given the right testicle, which, as the assistant in the generation of male children, was held next in rank to the phallus itself. This will readily explain why Jacob calls his son Benjamin—"son of my right side;" while the mother called him Benoni—" son of Anu," "son of my On." Hoa, or Hea,—while of obscure origin, and of doubtful meaning, is clearly feminine—and was the name applied to the third in rank—the left testicle.

The first sacred creative trinity, as recognized by the Assyrians, was, therefore, Asher, Anu, and Hoa—three distinct entities (principles or persons), each perfect in itself, each necessary to the other, working in harmony as one, towards one end—a veritable three in one—and one made up of three. In this—as in all subsequent trinities—and in fact, as in all polytheistic cults—the different organs, principles, or persons were of relative rank. One was the superior—even supreme—among the others. Their names, when spoken of or written together, were arranged in the order of their rank, beginning with the one considered as the Lord of the others—Lord of Lords. When they were spoken of as a whole, sometimes this trinity—again, like subsequent trinities—bore a name distinct from the three members, but frequently the collective unity was referred to under the name of the one recognized as highest in rank.

In comparatively later times the Jews knew and recognized this masculine triad, giving the testicles joint honor with the phallus; for their law made them sacred, so that even a profane touch was punished with death, and a man who had lost the one, or who was wounded in the other, "could not enter the congregation of the Lord." That is, a man whose creative triad was imperfect was an abomination. Even a descendant of Aaron could not be initiated as a priest if he was sexually imperfect. This rule was not confined to the benighted and licentious past, for, even in the present age of superior intelligence, one who is sexually mutilated, and, therefore, "not a man," cannot be consecrated as a priest, or promoted to a bishopric, much less, exalted to the Papal throne until an examination, both interrogative and occular—which is a part of every ceremony of ordination or promotion in the Catholic hierarchy— proves him—"a man—perfect in all his members."

—R. A. Campbell, Phallic Worship, 1887

Lares

Compared to Rome's major deities, Lares had limited scope and potency, but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). Despite official bans on non-Christian cults from the late fourth century AD onwards, unofficial cults to Lares persisted until at least the early fifth century AD.

Lifeforce

is verything.

Mesmerized by Chris Robinson in this video. I can't watch it enough. Recorded more than 30 years ago, and I only stumbled on it recently.

The gods reveal themselves

to poets and mystics, rarely, if ever, to philosophers. The hierophany may well be nothing more than a little disturbance in the ordinary, a glitch in the Matrix as it were. For Cavafy, the sight of a beautiful youth is enough.

One of Their Gods

When one of them moved through the marketplace of Selefkia
just as it was getting dark—
moved like a young man, tall, extremely handsome,
with the joy of being immortal in his eyes,
with his black and perfumed hair—
the people going by would gaze at him,
and one would ask the other if he knew him,
if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.
But some who looked more carefully
would understand and step aside;
and as he disappeared under the arcades,
among the shadows and the evening lights,
going toward the quarter that lives
only at night, with orgies and debauchery,
with every kind of intoxication and desire,
they would wonder which of Them it could be,
and for what suspicious pleasure
he had come down into the streets of Selefkia
from the August Celestial Mansions. 

C. P. Cavafy

Marx as Conservative

Marx's hatred of modernity is, I think, insufficiently appreciated.

"Everything solid melts into air, everything holy is profaned . . ." he declared in the Communist Manifesto.

No contemporary conservative mindlessly prattling on about the toxicity of "cultural Marxism" can fathom the revulsion against modernity that colors Marx's writing from beginning to end. 

The idea of a Hegelian Aufhebung that would that would, like the monster in Alien, burst capitalism from within and usher in a latent communism was just cope. Someone who understood as exquisitely as Marx did the depth of capitalism's ignobility was in danger of drowning in despair. Instead, he found in Hegel a means to invert pessimism into a synthetic—one might say almost manic—faith in the inevitability communism and the restoration of the world. Of course, he insisted that he had turned Hegel on his head, that his dialectic was grounded in a materialist logic. But the very notion of a dialectical unfolding is metaphysical and owes its origin in the belief that the universe is animated by an ineffable divine purpose.

Then too, I wonder how much Marx's belief in proletarian revolutionary agency was unconsciously a recreation of the Jewish consoling myth of the golem. Like the golem, the proletariat is an inert mass until it becomes imbued with class consciousness and changes from an "in itself" to a "for itself."

The anti-bourgeois, anti-liberal, and ultimately, amti-modern orientation of Marxism hidden beneath its revolutionary rhetoric helps explain how communism protected the societies in which it was victorious from the worst consequences of modernity, for ultimately communism quarantined these societies from consumerism's relentless liquidation of traditional norms.. And this is why even after the dismantling of the old Stalinist systems, the decadent and now economically and culturally senescent West has not lost any of its antipathy for the East.

Whether God "exists"

or not is a triviality.

What matters is what kind of life and what kind of culture issue from faith and from faithlessness. Modernity supplies the answer. Without God as center, life and culture degenerate. Neurosis and madness proliferate. Freud did not sufficiently appreciate what he himself observed, that religion protects against neurosis. Like all moderns, he could not abide "illusions" and this blinded him to the fact that "fictions" and "illusions" are the stuff out of which culture is spun and are needed to protect human beings from the sterilizing effect of consciousness. 

Consciousness has to produce something that protects against its own death-dealing radiation. That is what produced religion.

Everything that needs saying has been said.

At this point, blogging or writing ought to be no more than the compiling of a commonplace. G.K. Chesterton is a particularly rich source.

We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.—G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

If this was true in 1908, how much truer is it after 1968 and the intellectual ravages of deconstruction?