Here is a theory that I came up with – I won’t say that I necessarily fully believe in it, nor the “spiritual entities” that I reference as real entities in the sense as we understand them (perhaps they are projections of human consciousness and human cultural progression), but I believe it’s food for thought. This is a follow up to my “Cultural Death of Orthodox Values” post that clarifies some of the implicit thoughts in there.
Basically there exists a spiritual dualism (whether or not it’s real is another question, but we humans perceive it to be real) that represent two opposing values:
1. One set of values seeks to destroy the ego, and to detest selfish “in the now” or “carnal” desires and sensations so that we can purely love others and become pure manifestations of compassion
2. One set of values seeks to eternalize the ego and to become physical embodiments of carnal desirements, becoming pure manifestations of dominance and power, being a pure manifestation of “the flow of life”
This set of cosmological dualism is not only defined by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work “On the Genealogy of Morals” I referenced in my initial post “Death of orthodox values” (which he refers to as Priestly / Decadent morality and Warrior / Aryan morality, respectively), but also is found in the Western Occultic Traditions – namely, the “Right Hand Path” and the “Left Hand Path”, respectively. Both opposing “paths” have the same spiritual goals – deification or “theosis”, but different spiritual methodologies of achieving them. The “Right Hand Path” seeks to destroy the “self” or the “ego” and become one with “God” and others, thereby becoming divine (by virtue of your very hypostasis, or personhood, being merged with divinity), while the “Left Hand Path” is about eternalizing the self (thus rendering your hypostasis permanent). If an analogy is appropriate, the “Right Hand Path” would be like one becomes burned into the sun, thus becoming one with the sun; while the “Left Hand Path” would be becoming a brand new star in the night sky, glistening for eternity. In the end, you become a “star”, but through opposite means.
This duality is in an eternal cosmic opposition – yin and yang, the ouroboros, etc., and there are spiritual / cosmic entities progressing from merely spiritualized earthly entities (ghosts, angels, etc.) all the way to entities that are omnipresent and eternal, almost if not synonymous with existence itself, that attempt to be embodiments (or are embodiments) of one of these values or the other.
As this eternal war takes place, human existence goes through cycles where one set of entities in our plane of existence seizes power while the other goes into hiding, and vice-versa.
For a while, going back to at least several thousand years before around 150 A.D. (give or take), the “self” entities had complete domination in the form of various religions, with these religions worshipping deities that were embodiments of the self polarity. This includes the Pre-Hindu Indian religion, the Germanic Pagan religions (Odinists), the Roman-Greek Pagan religions, the Near-Eastern Pagan religions, Shintoism and traditional Chinese pagan religions (for example, Wu), the Aztecs, Pre-Second Temple Judaism, etc.
All the deities in these religions represent various manifestations of selfish inclinations.
As an example, the Greek pantheon.
Zeus represents pure power and being able to have dominance over others (Lightning, being King of the Gods, cheating on his wife and her not being able to do anything about it, etc.), Aphrodite represents beauty and lust, Ares represents war and victory over opponents, Dionysius represents drunkenness, songs, and sex, think of him as one night stands with chicks in a bar except a god; Artemis and hunting other animals for fun and subduing them, Poseidon and dominance over the sea, sailing, and fishing, etc.
All these gods were manifested in different forms or in different deities / different philosophies in different religions. Many of these gods were also embodiments of nature – that is to say, live in the here and now, thrive in the jungle, don’t focus on some abstract goal of denying the self, etc.
Most mainstream traditional religions nowadays (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Second Temple Judaism, Islam, etc.) , at least on paper or in their traditional practices, were selfless religions; many of them had very little focus on deities or spirits, and if they did (for example, Hindu Demi-gods, Buddhist devas, Christian Saints), they all were de-emphasized in their importance and represented some selfless virtue, that all pointed to some incomprehensible greater cosmological principle that could only be experienced, where one realizes the illusion of the self and the interdependence of your existence on some binding universal force. This “selflessness” is usually personified into a single perfect, omnibenevolent, incomprehensible and non-physical, eternal entity with a deity who guides you to perfection where you become one with it and align your will in perfection to that deity’s will, being a manifestation of perfect compassion and selflessness (for example, Divine Union, or Theosis, in Christianity, Islam, and Second-Temple Judaism, with Yahweh, aligning your will with God; Nirvanna or the Pure Land in Buddhism, where you align your will with the Buddhas and become one with the non-self of the universe, either becoming a Buddha yourself or becoming an Arhat; Moksha, where you become one with God and all of the universe, realizing that your self is identical with everything (and is an illusion), etc.)
All of these religions are ascetic in nature and are utterly hostile towards self-indulgence (any form of food, sex, religious worship, idleness, dominance, etc. that involves gratifying yourself is looked down on), and have various forms of monasticism, that are almost always seen as the most pure way to achieve the goals of the religion (for example, Buddhism and Hinduism are self-explanatory, with Gurus and Bikkhus guiding the religion; Orthodox and Catholic priests have monastic requirements, St. Francis of Assisi thought the Franciscans were “restoring the simple lives of the Apostles”, the monks on Mount Athos are expected to be spiritual guides for laypeople, experts as it were; both Catholic and Orthodox ordination vows involve rejecting the world and following Christ, Protestant Amish people living pure and simple lives, etc.)
Also, the goal of selflessness is never allowed to be portrayed in artistic form (for example, the Divine Essence in Christianity, Brahman in Hinduism (except Brahma, who is a personification of Brahman), Nirvanna in Buddhism), etc.
Well, anyways, all the Indo-European pantheons tell a tale of some primordial “evil entity” that they overthrew through dominance and brute force, in some kind of war, with those “evil entities” now and then coming back to try to overthrow them.
For example, Zeus and Kronos (Father Time, the ruler of the Golden Age), Odin and the Frost Giants, Indra and the dragon named Vritra (a dragon who “obstructs human happiness”, the personification of drought (which stops flow of life onto the Earth), etc.), Anu and Tiamat (Tiamat being a dragon, the “glistening one”, “the deep”, etc.)
For me, the gods overthrowing this primordial entity is a symbolic statement of the “self” entities overthrowing this cosmological goal of pure selflessness on human earth; Kronos, Vritra, and Tiamat are identical with Brahman, Yahweh, and the Primordial Buddha (Adi-Buddha or Amitahba Buddha).
These “self” entities ruled the earth in the spiritual consciousness of humanity until about 150 AD, where bit by bit they were gradually eroded by these “selfless” religions.
Whenever anyone of these “selfless” religions began spreading, they are immediately heavily persecuted in almost obscene ways. For example, the Romans persecuted the Christians in ridiculous ways, burning them, skinning them, beheading them, starving them, rolling them over with spikes, feeding them to lions, etc. Apparently, at various times, the Roman gods communicated to their priests to do such a thing to the Christians, as they threatened the Empire; Julian the Apostate was apparently told by the gods to murder the Christians as he did. The Viking pagans violently murdered and tortured British and Celtic Christians. The Buddhists were heavily persecuted by the Huns (nature worshippers) the Tibetan Bons, and the Pre-Modern Hindu Indians. etc. etc.
Those who belonged to these “selfless” sects had to go into the underground, into hiding, and through secret communication to avoid detection, in order to practice their religion, in the hopes that one day, their religion would be triumphant and the persecution would pass.
Well, they did, and the selfless religions obtained power all throughout the world, destroying much of the nature-worshipping and self-religions, who themselves had to go underground, sometimes manifesting their secret religions in new ways (for example, secret Satanic cults in Europe and the Middle East). This represented a period where the selfless entities / “God” seized power in human consciousness and seized political power. Although there were still societies here and there that popped up that embodied the “self” entities at various points (the Aztecs, the Renaissance which saw a revival of Roman pagan values), they were quickly suppressed when people discovered what they were (the Conquistadors killing off the Aztecs and replacing it with Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation reacting against the Renaissance corruption, etc.)
Well now, we are at the end of that cycle. I argue that the Industrial Revolution was the period which marked the beginning of the end of the reign of the selfless entities / “God” and the empowerment of the self entities. And this is because philosophically, there has been a shift in consciousness away from ascetic ideals into pure materialism, naturalism, and hedonism (a reversion back to nature worship, disguised as purely objective methodology). Traditional ascetic governments were overthrown one at a time by societies which were, philosophically, non-ascetic and non-religious, only focusing on the flow of nature and self-pleasure (for example, the Soviet Revolution and all the governments overthrown; the Fascist revolution and all the governments overthrown; all the religious monarchies overthrown, etc.).
The way the entities have furthered their agenda is also, nefariously, subverting all these traditional ascetic religions, either by redefining their values and what they represent to a more materialistic lens, or by caricaturizing these ascetic religions in extreme ways to utterly discredit them in ways that they weren’t.
Buddhism and Hinduism have been utterly subverted by Westerners, where they exist completely disconnected from their spiritual, mythological, and cultural existence, (see Buddhist Modernism and Neo-Vedanta). The “gurus” of these sects act as social philanthropists rather than truly ascetic figures, who encourage practitioners to be vapidly materialistic and politically active for their own materialistic, “selfish” causes.
And even figures like the Dalai Llama contribute to this subversion just being a Socially Liberal philanthropist rather than teaching people the legitimate spiritual goal of Enlightenment.
Likewise, Christianity has been totally and utterly subverted as well. The traditional liturgical and cultural worship which you found in Catholic Churches, Orthodox Churches, and even Anglican and Lutheran Churches, is totally gone or only exists in smaller sects / churches; now, there is no longer any contemplation of God in the services itself through silence and liturgical chant, instead it’s a community gathering where we all chat with each other and share a meal, with total iconoclasm (In fact, Pope Francis recently suppressed the Latin Mass, and most Catholics are completely ignorant of the Eastern-Rite Churches and the Anglican Ordinariate); most of these religions have also been subverted either in the sense that certain preachers have become total caricatures of what the religions once were (for example, Ken Ham and Kent Hovind who reject any kind of traditional Jewish or Patristic interpretation of Genesis where Eden was a place of spiritual communion with God, and the Serpent was an angel; nope – they lived with Dinosaurs who were vegetarians, snakes could talk back then; Pastor Steven Anderson has stated that people who have homosexual inclinations are incapable of repentance and should kill themselves; etc.),
or their values are totally subverted (most Protestant “Churches” teach LGBT ideology and other social justice ideas which value hierarchy as an end in of itself (“self” entity values), teach their practitioners to value social status as a goal, teach their practitioners its okay to have sex outside or marriage or masturbate, etc.); same with Islam (similarly subverted as above, caricatures in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda), etc.
Most of these religions which exist as minority groups now that you have to really go out of your way to find (for example, the SSPX or Latin Mass or Anglican Ordinariate for Catholics, Eastern Orthodox or orthodox Oriental Orthodox Churches, traditional Muslim Mosques, Orthodox Jewish Temples, Traditional Buddhist Temples, Traditional Hindu Temples, etc.) all seem to be aware that they are spiritually on the same side and that some kind of bad persecution, or bad period of spiritual faithlessness, is on the horizon, where they will have to go into hiding.
Judaism – do I need to say anything about the state of Judaism? Just watch any Orthodox Jew talk about the state of Judaism in the world today.
Not to mention the development of self-sects that are increasingly growing in popularity – New Age sects, Satanist sects, Thelema sects, Wicca sects, and in fact, even a revival of Odinism, Hellenism, etc.
But most of all, culturally, we are spiritually / consciously shifting away from ascetic values into pure self values. People who don’t have money are laughed at as useless; people who don’t have experience getting drunk are laughed at; people who are virgins are laughed at; any kind of romantic love not based on lust and sex is laughed at (Tinder is the most popular dating app – it’s shocking), people who don’t have a lot of friends are laughed at; people who aren’t in physical shape are laughed at; people are increasingly more superficial when it comes to beauty and appearance, people are more sexually fluid, etc.
It’s clear we are in the age where the “self” entities have power once again; Kronos has been overthrown, and true practitioners of selfless spirituality will have to go into hiding / will be socially excluded; and this may be the case for a few thousand years, or until the end of the world.
Some anecdotal comments about the spiritual reality of all of this:
– The Order of Nine Angles, a Satanic “Self” secret sect, encourages its practitioners to take leadership positions in Radical Islamic terrorist groups; see David Myatt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Myatt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
– Pope Francis literally worshipped an idol of Pachamama, or “Mother Nature”, an Incan goddess of fertility
https://novusordowatch.org/2021/06/no-idolatry-pachamama-tim-staples/
– There is a person I met online who lived in Saudi Arabia who worshipped the traditional Greek pantheon of gods and got benefits from it; apparently he began worshipping Allah in Mosques and Christ on his own time, and these gods appeared in viscous, angry forms in his dreams telling him to not worship the “Moon God” or worship the “Cross God”.
If it weren’t obvious, my values are right-hand, selfless, ascetic, etc.
Insane ramblings of a man with undiagnosed schizophrenia or a personality disorder? Or perhaps a speech on some deeper spiritual truth about our existence, regarded as manifestations of our internal animalistic contradiction between the desire for dominance and social altruism which exist in diametric opposition to one another? Or perhaps Belial and Melchizadek are pulling and tugging Moses’s father, being divine judges of humanity? Or all of the above? That’s up to you to decide.
The Orthodox Gentile 