Saint Silouan

 This is a good book about the Russian peasant and Orthodox saint Silouan (1866-1938) who after military service lived as a monk in Mount Athos.

Just one little extract where a presumably learned priest was mystified and perhaps affronted by the growing impression this unlearned man was having on others, and particularly visiting scholars:

“I can’t understand how a scholar like you can take pleasure in going to see Father Silouan, an illiterate peasant. Haven’t we anybody cleverer than that? . . . I wonder why you all go to him? After all, he reads nothing.”

“He reads nothing but fulfils everything, while others read a lot and perform nothing,” was the reply.

Though while he obviously was not centred on intellectualism, I presume he was literate. Another extract I see from the previous page to the above, when Silouan was asked by a priest about something he’d been reading about in a newspaper:

“What do you think, Father Silouan?”

“Batioushka, I don’t like newspapers with their news.”

“Why not?”

“Because the reading of newspapers darkens the mind and hinders pure prayer.”

“How odd. We live here in the wilderness seeing nothing, and gradually the soul forgets the world and becomes shut up in herself. But when I read newspapers I see how it is with the world, how people suffer, and that makes me want to pray, I entreat God for all mankind, for the whole world.”

“When the soul prays for the world,” said Father Silouan,”she know better without newspapers how the whole earth is afflicted, and what people’s needs are. She can pity men without the help of papers.”

“How can the soul know of herself what goes on in the world?”

“Newspapers don’t write about people but about events, and then not the truth. They confuse the mind and, whatever you do, you won’t get at the truth by reading them; whereas prayer cleanses the mind and gives it a better vision of things.”

“I don’t quite see,” said the father-confessor.

We all waited for Father Silouan to reply but he sat on in silence, head bent, not suffering himself to explain in the presence of a father-confessor and older monks how the soul can, in spirit, know the life of the world and the needs and tribulations of men when, remote from things, she prays for the universe.

Father Silouan was too unassuming to do more in general conversation than give an intimation of what he thought; and because of this his great wisdom and quite exceptional experience often escaped the notice of those who talked with him.

Le Pont de Mantes

 

By Camille Corot. What a beautiful, rhythmic balance to the painting. Calm but not static.

The Narrow Path

 Matthew 7:13-14

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

 

I’ll try to take a quick look at those lines. I have seen in Orthodoxy, teachers speaking of the errors of going to the right or the left of truth, falling into error for example into a self-righteous Puritanism on let’s say the right hand of the narrow path, or indolence and sloth regarding discipline on the left side. One absolute key aspect of the incarnation of Christ into the world is the sacralising of the life within the material world, of the reconciliation of spirit and matter. Let’s say on the right of this path is the idea of life in the material world as a painful embarrassment to the spirit, which cannot come to terms with something so fallen; i.e. so obviously full of sin and error. Life is so considered Maya or illusion, a contradiction to truth, the creation in gnostic thought of even of an evil god at odds with he true god, and so truth is in a sense disembodied, we have to somehow disincarnate ourselves. Here a term like ego can be shallowly thrown around as a justification for escapism from incarnation. This overall ethos plays even into things like abstract art, where initially at least this was considered a means of escaping the fallen material world. By abstracting ourselves from it, we can return to disembodied perfection.

On the other hand, what I’ll call the left hand of the narrow path away from reconciliation with incarnation - not just Christ’s but our own incarnation in this life - is falling into materialism, a shallow rationalism leading to atheism. Whereas the right side of the narrow path falls into sacrificing life as spiritually superfluous and false, the left side sacrifices the spirit as superfluous and false. This leads onto all kinds of horrors of lack of faith in life, with everything crumbling to dust in its hands, 

I haven’t time now to go any further into this so I’ll just post it as is. But anyway, the narrow path is the true path!

What Happened to Feminism

Why would people of either sex who considered themselves advocates of women’s rights, of feminism in general, then bow down to allowing men compete as women in women’s sports, of males saying they are female and using female’s restrooms and changing rooms, and so on? 

One story lately regarding sports is of Aspen Hoffman who finished 72nd in  Seattle cross-country league finals as a boy. He then switched to competing as a girl for his school, Seattle Academy, and finished first, breaking the school’s record for girls at that distance, though if competed as a boy, with that same time Aspen would apparently have come 48th. 

There’s other obviously inevitable stories of girls being sexually assaulted in their own restrooms, with their being put in danger seemingly of no consequence to the former typical advocates of women’s rights. Being an advocate of women’s rights of course must recognise the considerable discrepancy physically between the two sexes, and hence the safeguarding of girls’ and women’s vulnerability in this regard. This safeguarding has however by the vanguard of the modern left or liberals or progressives has been simply discarded, and a toxic position of supposed equality adopted, and a male just having to say he’s a female, and oh well, so much for the women’s rights we were championing a minute ago.

So why has this been happening and allowed to happen? I’ll try and be simple and brief. The fuel for the furthering of leftist ideologies has always been to employ a dynamic of victims and oppressors. Even though the origins of intellectual theories of socialism is from the educated bourgeoisie, for instance in the first wave of socialism in the Soviet Union, it was all supposedly about workers’ rights, who were by definition absolutely good, while the “decadent bourgeoisie” were absolutely bad. The ideology is intentionally utterly opportunistic however, and so we saw recently in Canada how the truck drivers were utterly demonised by the liberal left, their bank accounts frozen and so on. So much for the formerly sanctified workers whose cause was the highest of causes. The working classes have long ceased to be considered useful fuel and apt “victims” for the movement, whose goal is a state of totalitarian rule with no opposition tolerated - hence “cancel culture”where opposition is cancelled. Demonise the opposition, silence them, freeze their bank account, send them to the gulag - that kind of stuff. Of course there’s loads of misguided, well-intentioned proponents of the cause, but let’s say there’s a car going somewhere; we’ll the thoughts in the heads of passengers about where they might be going doesn’t change the nature of the destination!

So, as said, it’s a completely opportunistic ideology where the ends justify the means - the ends being total rule with no opposition permitted. So the media for example is intentionally a propagandist tool, not a truth tool, in their hands. The cementing of power is always the reason for everything. That is “truth” within this system. Think of a factory producing packets of corn flakes. So “truth” here, the whole meaning of everything in the factory, is the efficient churning out of packets of corn flakes. A worker can’t imagine he can in this environment strive to produce cans of beans instead, Within socialism, the one party totalitarian state is “truth”. That’s why a relatively apolitical writer like Boris Pasternak after writing Dr Zhivago could and did find himself in trouble for deviating from that truth. An artist should of course be serving truth, striving for it, but that’s not “truth” within a progressive, leftist state! 

So anyway in the dynamic of victims to be championed and oppressors to be demonised and defeated, workers were useful, now discarded as not useful - and of course there is little more unpleasant to the typical bourgeois liberals than actual contact with the working classes! So race is especially of late, massively pushed as fuel in the dynamic. And here we come back to the starting point of this piece. Women and their rights used to fit like a glove in the victim/oppressor dynamic, but in this utterly opportunistic ideology or mode of being, transgenderism is now considered, for various undermining reasons, the more useful fuel as victims, and so tough luck to the female athletes at Seattle Academy. We used to love you but now we don’t give a shit. And so the feminism advocates recognise, perhaps subconsciously, that females have been superseded in the hierarchy of victimhood, and so they roll over and stay quiet, or even champion the beauty new cause.

Interview

I am delighted to be able to show an interview with Bill Gates about one of the great contemporary issues below.

“So Bill, this is a great honour. As one of the great medical pioneers and are here of course to talk about viruses, vaccines and such like. First of all, could you explain to everyone your medical background and credentials. Why have you been placed in such a prominent position regarding people’s health? Where did you study, what fields of  research have you engaged in, and so on - those obviously are the kinds of questions our audience will be interested in.”

“Well actually I’m more of a computer guy. I don’t really have any medical background as such.”

“Are you serious? So why the hell are you positioned as some kind of medical expert?”

“I’m not sure. It just kind of happened and I went along with it.”

“And there wasn’t any kind of mix up where you got confused with some actual medical expert also called Bill Gates  - an epidemiologist, a biochemist or whatever?”

“No, there was nothing like that.”

“Ok, we’ll wrap it up there so.”

Holmes

 For evoking or bringing on a kind of traditional Christmas feel, I think this is great.

Bellver Castle at Night

 

By Joaquin Mir Trinxet.

United Front

There are few sights more heartwarming than a collection of celebrities displaying a united front in support of a worthy cause. Before I got any further, I better explain why that sentence ended where it did. Those words were initially intended to lead onto the main point, with the sentence continuing on in that direction, but actually, now that I’ve written it, I see that it’s an important enough observation to stand autonomously in its own right rather than merely be the prelude to some other truth or fact. 

Anyway, as this year winds towards its close, it is the turn of the music world to awaken our individual and collective consciences, and so it is that icons of the industry - old, middle-aged, and some even quite young - have joined forces and are releasing an assault on the charts that will no doubt unite us all. The song is called Vaccinate the Shit Out of Me. 

As well as the army of musical legends, Michael Jackson’s still living former pet chimpanzee Bubbles features in both the audio recording and the video, in which we see Bubbles humbly lining up to receive his vaccine booster shot amongst a queue of ordinary but still valuable Americans. “Even with all these musical legends on board, the presence of Bubbles lends an air of gravitas and solemnity to the song and message that it may otherwise have lacked,” explained a Rolling Stone journalist who compèred the launch of the single.

The Polish Rider

 

Generally considered to be a Rembrandt painting from the 1650s.

Happy Announcement

In an unexpected announcement, Bill Gates has revealed he is pregnant with who he believes to be the antichrist. “This is a great honour for Microsoft, myself and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” declared a masked employee of multiple and indeterminate genders speaking on behalf of a clearly elated Gates.

Insiders say George Soros, the oldest man in the world, is the likely father, though Klaus Schwab, another ancient fuckwit, is said by some to be an alternative paternal possibility. 

Moonshine

 

By Paul Klee, 1919.

Book Launch

Bill Gates has just launched his new autobiography, titled Not a Psychotic Nerd. In case you don’t know who this modern messiah is - shame on you if this is the case - a little snippet from yesteryear featuring Gates giving a very strong impression of, let’s be honest, being a psychotic nerd, but an impression which is of course entirely misleading. He’s not a psycho; he’s in fact astonishingly benevolent.

In the book, Gates describes how he intends to save the world from various threats such as too many people living on it, and how to actively reduce their number. (Fortunately for Bill, he doesn’t seem to include himself among this “too many people” problem.)  

Jeffrey Epstein is described tentatively in the book as “ahead of his time” and “misunderstood.”

Re-Release

In a powerful response to Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter and its new belligerent policies regarding certain behaviours, Deep State Cabal have re-released their song from late last year, Leave Our Pedos Alone.

New Radical Art

“Have you done much painting since your last exhibition?”

“I’ve actually just started on something new. I think it may be my most important work yet. For me anyway it’s very exciting.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It just came to me in a flash of inspiration. Basically it’s a painting of a big cock.”

“You mean like a large penis?”

“Precisely. And the best thing about it is the title. Can you guess what it’s called?”

“Big Cock?”

“No.”

“Toxic Masculinity?”

“No.”

“This is all very intriguing. Tell me.”

“It’s titled Woman.”

“Oh that’s wonderful! How liberating! You’re being so daring and cutting edge!”

“I am, amn’t I. To me it all feels very radical and challenging and revolutionary, but also comforting and inclusive.”

“Yes, yes. This will sort out the philistines from the rest of us.”

“It certainly will.”

Great Sporting Moment

This above is almost certainly the single standout highlight of the current football World Cup, as well as one of the great eternal sorting moments. On the right are standing the men representing the African nation of Senegal, ethnically as one can see all black. On the left, kneeling, but internally standing up for the rights of the black people of the world, are the more diverse but mostly white English side. A great achievement by the English side there. The sociologically backward black men of Senegal may be hopelessly ignorant and lacking in their duty to stand up for the black lives of the world, but not so the benevolent Anglo-Saxon warriors, whose captain Harry Kane and stalwart defender Harry Maguire  each earn about 200,000 sterling a week (€233,000), defender John Stones 250,000 sterling a week (€292,000) while Raheem Sterling, who came on as a late but ineffective substitute in the game against France where England and their universal compassion sadly left the tournament, earns a hard-working weekly wage of 350,000 British pounds (€408,000). You can afford a very good level of social awareness with that kind of solid income. Not only are you unlikely to go hungry, you’re also unlikely to go stupid.

Obviously the English players, though filled presumably with a warming sense of righteousness, are just mindless obedient puppets with these displays, and with the “thinking” going on behind the scenes - but the level of condescending, narcissistic bourgeois bullshit going on here! 

(Just to add, I feel I should apologise to any sensitive soul offended by the lack of diversity displayed by the Senegalese in fielding such a mono-cultural side.)

Hunter

 

This changes everything.

New York Times Response to Balenciaga Child Abuse

 Child porn is surely for most sane people one of the darkest of phenomena. Well this is a little example of how mainstream media fake news bastions like The New York Times responded to the vile Balenciaga child abuse furore. I’ll just let the words in the two photos speak for themselves (just click on the photos if the writing is too small), but just to add, suddenly for these people all the concern with social justice magically disappears when child abuse comes to the fore. Instead they become protectors of the perpetrators, trying to ward people off from taking a closer look, implying only conspiracy loons would take it seriously. I wonder why that is.

And underneath I’ll put a short video of the unusual sight of a tv anchorman taking a very different and powerful line to the New York Times’ diversion piece.

Gravity, Truth

I’m very far from being scientifically minded or knowledgeable but anyway, allowing for my ignorance, think of gravity, and where from a centre of gravity a force is ceaselessly exerted drawing surrounding physical phenomena to itself. Each physical phenomenon has its own centre of gravity, but the greater the mass the greater the force, and of course here it is the earth itself and its gravitational pull that is the determining factor that regulates and makes possible the system of balance where life can stability can dwell and prosper. Without this centre obviously there is chaos. I don’t know if it can be spoken of precisely from where this gravitational force is being exerted, the location where this mysterious, invisible pull towards itself emanates, but anyway it’s obvious enough roughly what I’m talking about here,

From there then onto truth as a whole. Why are things true? In the physical sense; in the broader intellectual sense, from the intrinsic truth of language whereby we can communicate intelligently to each other; the intrinsic truth of mathematics, and from where all kinds of depths flow into seamless relation to the wider universe; and onto moral truths, and deeper again. Just as with gravity, all these individual truths of life, aren’t just floating around in some kind of hazy neutral environment. The reason, with gravity, we have stability in the earthly domain, is the gravitational pull of the earth towards itself, and thus things aren’t floating around aimlessly and chaotically. The same with truth as a whole. There is an immense pull towards truth in the greatest sense, and without this ceaseless pull, it would be that chaos. 

I don’t want to go on too long so I’ll try to make more short points rather than argue this out. This can’t just be some abstract, hazy force. This is an enormous exertion. Why is it so powerful. The centre of this immense force isn’t simply a force, it’s the person of God. That’s where all this truth emanates, and where it is being drawn to. Just as with the earth though and its gravitational pull also including each lesser physical phenomenon having its own centre of gravity within that greater balancing field of energy, we are granted free will and have our own “gravitational pull” in terms of freedom of movement. We are not coerced into obedience or enslavement to the centre of truth, just as we have within limits, freedom of physical movement on the earth, even while the earth’s gravitational centre and force provides stability.

Constantine Zalalas

At this Orthodox site run Constantine Zalalas is a large audio collection of his talks which I think is excellent. This one series of talks under the title of category title of Kyriakatika, while the entire audio collection is on the left hand side of the page. http://www.saintnicodemos.com/content/kyriakatika.php

Dracula

“You know that place Transylvania?”

“Was that where that whole transgenderism thing started?”

“No, no, no. That’s some other place. Transylvania is where your man Dracula came from.”

“Who was he again, Dracula? Was he some fella made out of bits of machines from out of a bog or something?”

“No. I don’t know who that was. Dracula was the man who used to drink people’s blood and live in a coffin.”

“He was a bit extreme, wasn’t he?!”

“Don’t be so quick to be so judgemental. That’s the kind of life he wanted to live and how he identified himself.”

“I was only saying it was a bit extreme. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Watch yourself there now. Be very careful.”

The Belldog

 

Eno, Moebius and Roedelius from 1978. Eno being Brian Eno, and Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius who made up the band Cluster, and were also members of Harmonia in the early to mid 70s.

Balenciaga, Fashion, Sick in the Soul

 

Satanic pedos and the “elites” have gotten a little more coverage lately I think, due a little to fashion house Balenciaga coming to notice for their use of themes of child abuse in their advertising - of which goings-on of course they were completely oblivious. There, that’s explained away. You’d have to be very cynical to not accept that. Anyway, above is a video on Balenciaga and their apparent but in fact innocent interest in satanic child abuse, which I’m sure the devoted little army of shitkicking fact-checkers have entirely explained away long before now. Because the video is on YouTube, it’s not going to be too graphic.

Slightly Blurred

 

Slightly blurred photo of another unfinished piece.

Fact-checking Shitkicker

Solid hardworking music industry outfit, The Fact Checkers, formed of artistically minded former Facebook employees, have just released their newest song, a somewhat melancholic number, titled Fact-checking Shitkicker. A sample of the lyrics below:

I know what I’m doing is right

But it seems I’m just a fact-checking shitkicker to you

I’m checking up on truths all night

But still I’m just a fact-checking shitkicker to you

Without me there’d be

Endless hate crimes and misinformation 

But it pains me to see 

I’m nothing but a fact-checking shitkicker to you

You’re so beautiful.

Sower with Setting Sun

 

By Vincent van Gogh, 1888.

Spirit of Rock n Roll

“Why do you think so many supposedly counter-cultural or anti-establishment musical artists ended up such utter servile arseholes in perfect sync with the establishment, and all their disingenuous totalitarian bullshit? They should surely be the most sceptical about bowing down in docile, gullible servility to the establishment - big pharma, the media, big government, etc - they were supposedly so proudly against.”

“Well maybe the most classically perfect arena of servility is the bourgeois mindset - a symbiotic feeling of success in sync with society. Your material success within the establishment marks you out as a winner in life. So spiritually they identify seamlessly with the establishment, or society as is, and its success is their success. Total symbiosis. Well most of these musicians, however countercultural they might superficially seem, were basically from the middle-classes. To be from the middle-class isn’t at all to necessarily be bourgeois in one’s spirit, but it is a very natural progression. So with these musicians, they departed a bit from the expected middle-class pathways, instead went down a kind of bohemian road, but then with the famous ones we’re talking about, they then became very successful, very wealthy, very famous and their egos pampered enormously, and so this was their journey to becoming bourgeois to the very core,p. And so now when you see their being servile mouthpieces for the sociopathic establishment, you’re just seeing the servile, cowardly bourgeois soul in motion. Any threat to the establishment is also a felt threat to them.”

That dialogue might be a bit harshly put, but I think the whole phenomenon is very much covered far deeper in the parable of the sower, which I’ll paste below. I don’t think it needs anything from me to point out the pretty obvious connections.

“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

— Mark 4:3–9 (ESV)

And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”.

— Mark 4:10–20

Apple, Twitter, China

Apple have been apparently threatening to ditch Twitter from its since Elon Musk took over - presumably they dislike Musk’s alignment with free speech as well as perhaps his success in implementing a strong anti child-porn policy on Twitter. If someone identifies as a pedo, who’s to argue with their inclinations? I presume that’s the progressive, woke position. One love. 

Anyway, the CCP, Chinese Communist Part, by contrast to Musk and in tandem with Musk’s many establishment foes are also not the biggest fans of free speech. Who knows what kind of lies and misinformation the plebs might end up saying if not completely controlled from above? A specialist in viruses might for example say something about viruses that a vaguely educated shitkicking fact checker knows to be wrong. What a mess that kind of scenario would be.

But instead fortunately within a state governed by Marxist principles, like China, the people are the property of the state - thus the real meaning of the phrase “the dictatorship of the people” i.e. the people are governed and owned by a dictatorship. And so below we see Apple CEO Tim Cook, who you can see elsewhere sycophantically praising communist China to the heavens, when asked about the CCP and their brutal behaviours, and lo and behold, unlike his attitude to Twitter and Elon Musk, Pool hasn’t a bad word to say about them. In fact not any words at all. Musk bad, CCP good. I suppose if you’re into totalitarian ideologies, suppression of free speech, slave labour and the like, what’s not to like about the CCP?

View of Semur

 

By Emile Bernard, c. 1906-1908.

Twitter, Children, Hollywood Icons

 Elon Musk within one month of owning Twitter had apparently reduced child porn on the platform by 75 per cent after it had something like free rein under the social justice brigade who used run it. And people are upset about the new direction of Twitter - like Jim Carey. They just don’t like this new ideological  direction the formerly child-porn friendly Twitter is going down. It’s just so wrong. Where’s the tolerance? The inclusiveness?

Abstraction, Banality, Huxley, the Personal Self

I find it almost astonishing how banal and uninteresting the work of most exalted figures of abstract art is, particularly American figures within the parameters of Abstract Expressionism, but very much abstraction as a whole, including people like Mondrian, Kandinsky, etc. This was dealt with in an off the cuff piece here: https://wwwinabstentia-andrewk.blogspot.com/2022/11/rothko.html.

Regarding all this though, something that came to mind is a passage from Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, about his first experience of the psychedelic drug mescaline. In it, the principal effect he experiences is the transfiguration of the visual external world, where “the doors of perception are cleansed”, and the infinite or divine is revealed in ever more miraculous depths. At some stage Huxley closes his eyes, also expecting the transfiguration of this internal world into the mystical realm, but instead he was very sorely disappointed as what changes there were were not particularly beautiful or interesting. Huxley’s view of things was essentially that with the external world, or world of nature, he was in a sense independent of what he was seeing, he was being granted entrance, in some much deeper sense than normal, into the glory of God. However when he closed his eyes, he was forced to see that he was now back in his own untransfigured personal self, and its mediocrity. He experienced it as a painful but helpfully humbling experience! This isn’t to say the inner world can’t be also transformed, but generally the ordinary personal self and its psychological dimensions is a far less interesting phenomenon than the realm of nature. Were nature the outpouring of the human personal self it would be a very banal phenomenon!

With abstract art, the artist separates themselves from the natural world, and is left with their personal world and its outpourings. There may be elevated notions of the spiritual floating around at the start of the movement, as there was with artists like Kandinsky, but the reality very quickly asserts itself that the personal self is left with little but itself, and cut off from its greatest resource, the external world, it descends into repetitive sterility. But of course there is the vanity connected need to believe in and exalt both the personal self and the surrounding culture, and so vast sums of money may be paid for banal works of abstract expressionism, supposing to prove to all participants involved their mutual exaltation. This was touched on in the earlier linked piece.

All He Wants

Bill Gates has embarked on a musical career with the release into the human environment of his debut song, All I Want for Christmas is to Ban All Hate Speech. Gates, who admits to “not getting music”, expects the song to unite everyone this upcoming holiday season.

When asked isn’t hate speech the kind of very nebulous term that can typically be exploited for authoritarian intent, Mr Gates responded that nebulous is a big word.