The nature of giants

A giant helping to build Stonehenge

As I have previously noted; the original inhabitants of Britain were said to be giants; and there is considerable 'documentary' evidence for the reality of giants. 

But if we accept that there once were giants, then of what nature were they? Presumably not gigantic Men - since that seems biologically impossible - but if not that, what were they? 

Bearing in mind that the age of giants was also the age in which magic was a part of everyday life; one interesting idea comes from John Michell in his beautifully-written superbly imaginative New light on the ancient mystery of Glastonbury (1990) - edited excerpts of pages 51-2 follow:

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The giants of old undoubtedly symbolized natural forces, but we are repeatedly informed by early historians that sometimes they were visible in monstrous and grotesque forms. They belonged, therefore, to the cryptic category of beings which includes the yetis, Sasquatch and Bigfoot.

These creatures are occasionally seen and heard, but essentially they are phantoms. They represent an aspect of the 'genius loci'; the indwelling spirit of certain mountains, lakes and wild places. Their forms are fluid and adaptable, being determined by the collective imagination of local people. 

In traditional societies, magicians and shamans know about such things, and are sometimes able to invoke them. 

It is often easier to produce phantoms than to dissolve them. Like all 'technologies' they had unwanted side effects. In the course of time, they become more solid and may even bleed when wounded. 

Therefore, not all the spirits raised by magicians were properly laid to rest, and some lingered about the countryside to establish a breed of monsters. This may be the origin of the giants which were apparently still to be found in Britain in the second millenium BC. 

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The nature of historical Giants

My speculations are over at Albion Awakening.

An excerpt:

The original inhabitants of the island of Albion - or Merlin's Enclosure, as it was first called, Merlin being the presiding deity - were a race of Giants. Indeed, the name of Albion comes from their king.

When the island was first settled by normal-sized Men (Brutus the Trojan and his followers - great grandson of Aeneas) - it was necessary to defeat resident Giant population. Gogmagog was the most famous of these - apparently a small and weak example of the race. However, a remnant of Giants continued as an occasional menace for a very long time afterwards.

Giants crop-up in many historical, religious, legendary and mythical sources, from all over the world; so there is no good reason to doubt their reality - except that we don't seem to have any nowadays. Much the same applies to the races of elves/ fairies and to dwarves - there is ample evidence for their existence in earlier time; far more evidence than for most supposed facts of history.

But of course, that does not mean that Modern Man would be able to perceive Giants, fairies or dwarfs, even if they were present - since we are self-blinded to much of the primary reality of this world; and furthermore treat as dogmatically-real many things which are imperceptible and undetectable (except by long chains of insecure and labile inferences). 

Ragnarok - what's going to happen?

The Norwegian TV series Ragnarok on Netflix (yes, I know...) I find to be a very powerful and memorable drama, operating on a deeper level than apparent. Now in its second series.  

In the Norse myth of Ragnarok the prophecy is that, at the end, the gods will fight the giants; and will lose. So why do the gods fight?

The gods fight because that is how they win.

The gods are Men - the giants are demons. 

Ragnarok is the final battle of the spiritual war on earth. 

And Men will lose the last battle - on earth. 

(How could it be otherwise? The giants are just too powerful.)

But choosing to fight against the giants, the demons; we win in Heaven, and eternally.

So - like the Norse gods; we prepare for Ragnarok.  

Giants and Albion (the British)

Nightmare fuel for kids

I have already posted on the subject of historical Giants in relation to the British Isles - according to some classical authors Giants seem to have been the original (or first recorded) inhabitants of this island. 

I found another piece of evidence that might be taken to support this assumption; in that (according to some notes in John Rateliff's excellent History of The Hobbit) the only two fairy tales that are considered to be probably native to England; are Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Beanstalk (which also has a Giant as the baddie). 

I decided I owed myself a chance to read these stories in their earliest and definitive versions; which I found in Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie. 

My impression of these Jack stories, especially of "the Giant Killer", was of crude and shallow narratives without any detectable trace of that faery enchantment, which is (for me) the only magic really worth reading about.   

The Giants existed only to be stupid, ridiculous, repulsive, and terrifying; their fate only to be tricked, laughed-at, tormented, and slaughtered. 

I conclude that these tales are likely to be exact examples which Tolkien referred as "impoverished chapbook stuff" in one of his letters:

"I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff."

The Giant Killer seemed to encourage nothing more virtuous than greed and Schadenfreude; while the Beanstalk Jack larded on some unconvincing moralizing about his later repentance and reform of character.  

All I can say in defence of these un-enchanted and uniquely English Fairy Stories is that I find a similar deficit of enchantment in most other tales from other nations - such a the courtly French stories of Perrault, or the sentimentality of Hans Christian Anderson. 

It is really only the German forest stories of the Brothers' Grimm - such Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White - where I find enchantment of the kind I like...

A sense of faery; that parallel and uncanny, perilous, eerily-beautiful world of magic; just off the path or waiting outside of the woodland clearing. 

Harry Potter illustrates that the sides of Good and evil are primary; and that personality and behaviour are secondary

The original Harry Potter series of seven books, completed by the superb "Deathly Hallows" volume, is probably the major Christian fantasy fiction since the Lord of the Rings; because (as well as its many incidental delights) it has a deep moral structure, and this deep plot concerns depicts matters of primary and transcendental importance for Christians.  

As such, the Harry Potter (HP) books can illustrate and clarify some of the most important questions of value that confront us in the world today. 

One such is that the single most important choice a person makes is which side to take: the side of Good or that of evil - and there are only two sides. 

In the HP books, Voldemort is a picture of Satan, and his side includes both a cadre of Death Eaters (analogous to demons), and a great mass of people who just go-along-with the agenda of evil for various motives - serving its overall goals, and passively absorbing and adopting its core beliefs and motivations. 

In life, as in Harry Potter, there is no value-neutral position, and sooner-or-later it seems that everybody (even the non-human magical 'creatures such as House Elves, Centaurs, Goblins and Giants) is compelled to pick his side, and choose one way or the other.

And also as in life; in the fictional world of HP - some nice people chose the side of evil; while (more or less) many of those on the side of Good are (more or less) nasty people   

This aspect of Harry Potter has particular value in these times, since our situation seems to be that most of the nice (decent, sensible, hard-working, intelligent, kind..) people are on the side of evil; while many of those on the side of Good are more-or-less nasty.

Perhaps the major nasty person on the side of Good is Severus Snape; who is represented throughout as a thoroughly nasty man - yet one who by his great courage and genuine love (for Lily Potter, Harry's mother) has heroically chosen the side of Good. 

Another less obvious example is Dumbledore; who emerges as a greatly flawed character, with a strong tendency towards deception and manipulation and who struggles with a temptation for power and an almost paralyzing sense of guilt for his past affiliation to evil and its consequences; yet who is more solidly on the side of Good, and working-for Good, than almost anyone. 

An even less obvious example are the Weasley Twins - Fred and George. These share a tendency to callous cruelty, indeed sadism, which is a serious character flaw. In general they are hedonistic and manipulative without regard for the consequences for others, although because they are charming and 'cool' they are generally well-liked. But Fred and George are always staunchly and courageously on the side of Good - because they are sustained by an indomitable fraternal and familial love, which is their bottom line. 

And while the Death Eaters are almost always very nasty people, there are several on the side of evil who would be regarded as 'good guys' in terms of everyday social behaviour. 

For instance, Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic (in the earlier books) is a kindly and avuncular character, and his faults would seem to be mostly minor: cowardice and untruthfulness, unacknowledged incompetence, and wilful blindness to the reality of evil emergent. Yet these faults are unrepented such that that he ends-up working for the triumph of Voldemort and against those who oppose him; this despite believing himself to be motivated towards Good. Fudge is a type seen frequently these days - heading-up major social institutions of all kinds (including leaders of the self-described Christian churches).

The later Minister of Magic - Rufus Scrimgeour - also ends-up on the wrong side despite his admirable courage and staunch opposition to the Death Eaters; because he subscribes to various Big Lies, and becomes corrupted by the doctrine that the end justifies the means.  He wants Harry to participate in various official lies, tries to blackmail and bribe him; and attempts to make Harry subordinate his 'chosen one' mission to the current 'needs' of propaganda and the magical bureaucracy. He also dishonestly imprisons (with torment) the naïve and innocent Stan Shunpike, on the pretense that SS is a Death Eater, because Scrimgeour believes this will help the cause.  

Ludo Bagman - the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports - is another 'type' seen among the nominal leaders used by the Global Establishment nowadays (e.g. Boris Johnson). A charming, popular man - for whose incompetence and stupidity people are usually prepared to make excuses because they find him likeable. "Ludo" emerges as a self-interested gambling addict and defrauder; one who bought his position by providing secret insider information about the Ministry to a Death Eater; and who abuses his position for his own pleasure and profit. Bagman (the name implies a criminal go-between) overall, in many ways, aids the ascent of Voldemort.  

JK Rowling is clear that the determinant of a person's status of Good or evil is which side they take; and also that the two main virtues that most matter in this choice are love and courage. 

Love is, of course, the core Christian virtue which 'drives' all that is Good - while courage is necessary for that virtue to remain dominant, and to resist the insidious, pervasive and powerful forces of corruption when evil becomes dominant - when "The Ministry has fallen".   

Lack of courage - cowardice, represents a lack of faith in the cause of Good, and concern with the expediencies of this world rather than fundamental values; so that fear unrepented and unopposed is the root cause of a great deal of corruption. 

Self-sacrifice is required of all the Good characters at some point in the series; and this is not possible without the right motivation of love, and the key virtue of courage in that cause. 

Harry himself is naturally the greatest moral exemplar. A very flawed hero; throughout the books he comes to a clarity and conviction of what matters most - what must not be given-up; and eventually he makes the ultimate sacrifice by which the world is saved from evil. 

Mitternacht quartet from Flotow's Martha - little known gem

Not much need be said but that this is a perfect performance of a perfect gem of the operetta repertoire - once a well-known concert piece, but now I suspect not.

The tenor is perhaps my favourite ever singer - Fritz Wunderlich (I first heard this on a compilation album of his). His earnest, ringing tone, and the way his voice opens-out as a musical phrase rises, brings tears to my eyes.

Anneliese Rothenberger was a wonderful lyric soprano. The dark-voiced bass, Gottlob Frick, was best known for playing giants in Wagner's Ring; here supplying a very low bottom note in the final chord (C-sharp or D perhaps - I don't have a score).

It is also amusing how German singers of this era (1961) really 'rasp'-out the consonants in 'nacht'! Almost a national pride at work, I fancy. And so different from the Italian operatic tradition, where the consonants are so elided that it sometimes sounds as if there are only vowels. 

Humphrey Carpenter as a Tolkien/ Inklings scholar

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I have been re-reading Humphrey Carpenter's authorized Tolkien biography, which I have read many times before - but not for quite a while.

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Although more than 30 years old, Carpenter had access to private papers (such as diaries) which has not been granted to anyone else; and the biography therefore remains essential, indeed definitive.

HC also edited Tolkien's letters (with Christopher Tolkien) - an exceptional job of work; and published the definitive study of The Inklings (very enjoyable, but deeply flawed by permeating assertions of the triviality of the group).

In sum, the Tolkien connection launched Humphrey Carpenter on a successful career as a man of letters, and he naturally became regarded as a Tolkien and Inklings expert (which indeed he was) - yet he never seemed comfortable in this role, and he is most memorable for his carping and sniping remarks than his for his insights or enthusiasm.

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Carpenter's greatest achievements in the Tolkien biography are technical: he is completely in command of the information and imposes shape on it, he compresses a lot of facts into a small span, and he does this with an easy and readable style.

And, as it turned out, HC became (more or less) a professional biographer, turning his hand to a wide range of subjects, always producing something factual, well-organized, understandable and readable (and doing so remarkably quickly).

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But there are problems.

The main is that Carpenter was no more than lukewarm about Tolkien's work, and as a person was not on Tolkien's wavelength. Tolkien was a reactionary even among reactionaries - but HC was a very mainstream, flexible, left-liberal intellectual pundit - often to be heard on the radio as a presenter or interviewer, comfortable in  the fashionable world of The Arts.

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Humphrey Carpenter was highly competent and professional, but he didn't really have anything distinctive to say - or rather his own views were simply those of his class and time, hence come across as shallow and predictable.

(For instance HC wrote Secret Gardens a 'group biography' about the authors of children's stories, terribly disappointing, a book which harped on the note that the characteristic feature of children's book authors was that they never grew up...)

The HC Tolkien biography is therefore always at its weakest when it moves away from facts to their interpretations.

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Like many or most modern biographers, Carpenter tries to explain enduring adult traits in terms of childhood events: distinctive childhood events are causally linked with distinctive adult traits.

e.g. HC asserts that the death of Tolkien's mother left JRRT a pessimist. This sounds reasonable, but is nonsense; HC has no way of knowing any such thing, and there is no 'scientific' evidence for a link between maternal death and pessimism and plenty of exceptions (not least CS Lewis).

Then again - due to his being deeply leftist in assumptions - HC tries to explain things which should be assumed.

For instance, Tolkien's delight in all-male company in The Inklings is normal in global and historical terms, and it is the modern tendency for mixed sex groupings at work and in leisure which is a first time experiment.

Mystifyingly, much is made of Tolkien's 'ordinaryness' - and HC tries to excuse this, or explain it. The solution to the mystery is probably that moderns have developed an expectation that 'writers' should have sensational biographies - but it is precisely this 'post-romantic' expectation which is at fault, and there is no reason at all why writers should have vivid lives (and many reasons why they should not).

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These faults in Carpenter stem, ultimately, from his insufficient sympathy and liking for Tolkien.

The mammoth labour of working with difficult primary sources, the years of note taking, the difficulties of collation, the relentless focus on a specific individual - all this will swiftly become a hated drudgery - a job of work - unless sustained by genuine interest and affection; a commission done for money and career is just not the same thing at all.

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The process of writing a full scale, official biography of somebody whom you do not actually love therefore tends to produce in writers a growing resentment against the biographical subject; which leads to petty (or not so petty) acts of revenge - or at least to using the subject as a means to advance the biographers career (by false emphasis and distortions (rather than trying to write the best possible biography).

The most extreme example is Lawrance Thomson's biography of Robert Frost; and Humphrey Carpenter's Tolkien and Inklings books are very mild by comparison - but there is animus at work, albeit in the background.

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The Inklings biography has distorted scholarship for decades because it continually asserts that the Inklings were nothing but a group of Lewis's friends who met for a while. This is contrasted with the straw man (apparently derived from a writer called Charles W Moorman III) of a group of homogeneous and selected people self-consciously and strategically engaged on some activity such as Christian evangelism.

Both alternatives are false. Carpenter's Inklings biography is absurd in its self defined task of writing a book about nothing but the ephemeral and trivial; a book trying to prove there is nothing to write a book about!

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Carpenter regards the Inklings primary concerns as either absurd or mistaken, and simply cannot believe that serious people could believe or want what Tolkien, Jack Lewis or Williams believed or wanted - but if he did believe it then he would loathe it.

So HC can therefore only explain-away or excuse or ignore the core features of Tolkien, and of Lewis and the other Inklings.

And after he has done this, there is indeed not much left: just a group of Lewis's friends meeting to entertain each other. Nothing more. Silly to mention it really...

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On the other hand, people such as myself recognize and want to understand what was going on in that last generation of strong and distinctively British Christian spirituality and major literary achievement.

Williams remains enigmatic, but Tolkien and Jack Lewis are towering giants that are for many moderns our main link with a lost world of honesty, beauty and virtue; the world of myth; the world of real Christianity.

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But for Humphrey Carpenter this was not the case. He was a pleasant and likeable personality; a well adjusted member of the intellectual and arts elite; he was clever, hard-working and efficient; but not a man of great insight, nor of heroic stature, nor of great integrity.

And HC was a man whose motivations, life and ideology were essentially hostile to Tolkien and the other Inklings.

So despite his crucial contributions, Carpenter's position among Tolkien scholars is modest: and the real exemplars are deep and non-mainstream writers with a positive personal affinity with Tolkien, enabling them to attain to major interpretations and insight - Christopher Tolkien, TA Shippey and Verlyn Flieger.

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Atheism is the libertarianism of spiritual ecology

Atheists and Libertarians are both on the side of the mainstream of public discourse; that is, on the side of the Global Establishment, the mass media, and the interlinked bureaucracy - with their agenda of a single, totalitarian System of value-inversion.

Taken seriously, atheist assumptions would lead to paralysing despair - perhaps as the terminus of a brief phase of psychopathic hedonism.

But atheism never is taken seriously in public discourse; because all atheists are hypocrites - at root, because that there is no such thing as the sin of hypocrisy from an atheist perspective. In sum, there are no sincere atheists.

(Any atheist that did take atheism seriously would not participate in public discourse, would - indeed - keep his atheism secret; and would soon be dead. So we would never know about him.)

This is the same as libertarianism: there are no sincere libertarians. All libertarians are either hypocritical and self-contradicting; or else (usually, nearly always) they sell-out, as soon as it is expedient for them to do so. Why not?

(Libertarianism is just a career strategy - a bit like forming a start-up company in hope that you will become successful enough to be bought-out by one of the industry giants.)  

I think these facts are widely known - but come up against the question If Not, Then What? It seems that most modern people have pre-decided the answer must be 'Anything but Christianity' then they have painted themselves into a corner.

Until they recognise that Christianity is the answer, and set about finding out just how it is the answer; they are stuck in a hopeless trap, forever.

Note: I have been both an atheist - most of my life; and a libertarian - late 90s to mid-2000s.

Modern man: the ethical giant...

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CS Lewis often pointed out the Christianity was added to and a completion of natural law and good paganism.

Therefore much of The Good, most, was taken for granted as being obvious, spontaneous, inborn.

The anciently conceived Good was a unity of virtue, truth a beauty.

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So modern 'thinkers' arrive on the scene having rejected the vast submerged iceberg of the natural and the spontaneous, and having isolated virtue (ethics) from the true and the beautiful; and they tackle an issue like the death penalty, or war, or marriage by considering it on the assumption that all previous generations were evil fools and a few minutes of sensible consideration by people such as themselves should easily be able to supersede them...

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And so we discover that the death penalty is evil, and pacifism is imperative, and marriage is just a convenient contract... and all of humanity before a few decades ago, and ninety something percent of humanity now, was and is wicked or stupid or both; and we ourselves, our generation, are in fact and in deed the most virtuous ever - modern enlightened humans are nothing less than ethical giants who colossally bestride human kind: evaluating, judging, laying down the law...

Wow!

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And yet.

I look around at the world of careerists, expedience merchants and intellectual pygmies who make these amazing moral discoveries such as the intrinsic and universal evilness of the death penalty; these sold-out academics, media pundits and pub debaters who claim to have superseded the justice of the ages (the great philosophers, the Saints and martyrs) - and am simply stunned at the mismatch.

It really is bizarre that the most self-indulgent and hedonistic generations to inhabit the planet should regard themselves as moral experts and exemplars - of all things!

Untrammeled pleasure-seeking, unbridled self-expression and changing the rules to facilitate these are one thing - but to preen oneself as an ethical giant?

Did Caligula and Nero regard themselves as moral authorities?

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The question is not which side will win, but which side you will choose (and how you find the strength of belief necessary for making the right choice)

Wise words, edited from a blog post by John C Wright:

In the Christian worldview, no final victory here in this world is possible, but final victory when the world is remade is inevitable. 

Hence, in Middle Earth, the men of the west struggle onward without any glimmer of hope. The hopelessness of the quest is emphasized in many places (including in the true meaning of Strider’s true name). In Narnia, nothing done by Tirion can halt the Last Battle or the final downfall of night. In both cases, the protagonists are humble: schoolchildren or hobbits... 

For the Christian worldview the question is not which side will win. In Christian stories, evil is strong, but evil destroys itself. The question is which side will the protagonist cleave to. 

Lucy (particularly in Prince Caspian) was loyal; Edmund was not. Sam was loyal, and gave up the Ring; Boromir was not... 

Another example is the story of David and Goliath. From a pagan point of view, the story of David and Goliath is absurd. Hercules kills giants, not shepherd boys. There is no drama, no conflict, because a boy slaying a giant with a lucky shot is ridiculous. 

But this is a story as oft retold and as dramatic as anything in literature: because the drama is in the fact that the army of professional soldiers, and David’s own older brothers, are terrified, and will not fight, and David will fight. 

There is no mystery as to who will win: God Almighty is on David’s side. The mystery is why and how David finds the strength to believe that impossible, unlikely, unearthly truth.

Read the whole thing at:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2017/01/hope-in-secondary-worlds

Speculations on the history of Christianity and Empire

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The grand strategy of Christianity in relation to the world is something that I find myself speculating upon from time to time.

Given the long wait of the ancient Hebrews for Messiah, it would seem that there needed to be social preconditions for the Incarnation to stand its best chance of achieving its goals.

Because human free will is real, and Men are and were free to reject salvation; so social conditions - specifically the state of Mens' minds - is important; thus God must work with society, as best as may be.

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It would seem that the pagan Roman Empire provided the best chance for the Gospel - since it was both multi-national and highly religious (multi-religion): providing the optimal possibilities for the new faith to spread (i.e. the best chance that many Men would choose Christ).

It is to the credit of the many individuals who embraced Christianity under the pagan Emperors, that the Empire swiftly became Christian with the foundation of the Second Rome at Constantinople.

The Christian Roman Empire endured for over a thousand years; after which a Third Rome (self-consciously so) emerged in Moscow - to end utterly in 1917.

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Always it seems that God works to spread his Gospel; and Empire is one way this may happen - but only if Men will it.

Many Empires have arisen in Christendom, and it is as-if some were hoped, or perhaps intended, to become the site of the Fourth Rome and a new Christian Roman Empire.

Medieval and modern Western Europe as a whole had opportunities, but in the end Men chose schism and warfare over the possibility of Christian Empire; and the individual states rejected Christianity as the focus of their societies, hence incipient Empires were not primarily Christian and missionary, but at best the Gospel would follow-behind commercial and military priorities.

Perhaps Madrid, or Paris, or Amsterdam, or London, or Berlin was meant to be a Fourth Rome - but no, it did not happen.

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Meanwhile, a New World was found; and North America became a focus of Christian hopes, then a place where the ground was prepared by phases of revival.

Perhaps there was the divine intention of a North American Christian empire with Philadelphia as the Fourth Rome?

But the US people en masse, as a whole, chose otherwise; and descended into civil war, materialism, another civil war, and modernity.

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The emergence of Mormonism was another chance, with great possibilities and remarkable achievements emerging rapidly and very obvious - but the national response was instead to seek extermination of the budding movement; again, and again, and again.

Extermination of the Mormon religion was the national, indeed, international, choice of Men.

The policy of extermination failed in that objective; but the policy nonetheless successfully prevented what might, perhaps, have become a Mormon Empire; with Salt Lake City emerging as the Fourth Rome.

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Behind all this I imagine Jesus Christ working tirelessly to expand the possibilities of spreading His Gospel - often aiming at the 'ideal' of a Christian Empire - a Fourth Rome, a Third Byzantium; but always, necessarily, working via the free choices of Men.

Also, I imagine the workings of His Adversary Satan and his minions; also tireless in his spreading of lies, encouragement of hatred, selfishness, short-termism; destruction of beauty and virtue...

...focusing his destructive efforts often on any budding hopes of Christian Empire...

...aiming to subvert, destroy and invert; aiming to infiltrate and convert any existing Good Empire into a Demonic Empire.

(...such as The West has now become - reaching-out internationally to attack Good, to destabilize and foment civil violence and war. The demonic Empire of the West may seem to be a failure - and by conventional military standards it surely is - but in the past fifteen years it has triumphantly succeeded in facilitating, enabling and concealing the torment and killing of millions of Christians worldwide; especially in the Middle East and Africa. Clearly, at some level, that is its primary strategy.)

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It really is much, much easier (requires less time, effort, resources) to destroy than to create order.

It is easier to pursue short-term and selfish goals than to love patiently.

Hence Good is always swimming against the stream of natural resistance.

In the end, the prophecies are of utter failure, on this earth - with destruction of the world.

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This world is doomed as surely as Ragnarok seemed inevitable to the Norse pagans; and the Giants of disorder and destruction shall eventually triumph despite the courage of the heroes.

Yet Ragnarok will be (and is being) delayed; for so long as fresh souls are being saved. 

Ragnarok will happen, the pagans were correct about that; but Christians know there is another and better world to come after Ragnarok - and that makes all the difference.

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Britain - a holy land under enchantment... by John Michell

Mrs Maltwood looked with a geomancer's eye at the Somerset plains and understood in a flash the secret of the zodiacal giants hidden in the landscape. 

Alfred Watkins, envisioned on the Bredwardine hills, perceived the veins and arteries standing out clear against the Hertfordshire fields. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson and many others sought the vital spots to penetrate the layers of time that cover the face of the country. The feeling they shared was of some forgotten secret. 

They glimpsed a remote golden age of science, poetry and religion in which the vast works they saw in the landscape were accomplished. 

Each of these English visionaries knew that what he saw was but a fraction of the great mystery, the key to which had been lost. 

Britain, they felt, was the holy land under enchantment. 

At the castle of the Grail King certain things must be asked before the spell is broken, so must the right question be found to lift the veil that hides the form and spirit in the landscape. 

From The View Over Atlantis - by John Michell, 1969.

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John Michell was probably the most influential 'New Age' thinker in Britain over the past 50 years - it is his (evolving) synthesis which forms the basis of most work since. The basis for his ideas, the 'evidence', was numerology and geometry - and I personally find this dull and unconvincing; but when he simply wrote from his intuition and love of England he could be genuinely inspired and inspiring.

The Neo-Orthanc cult of Saruman

A simple household candle... or is it?

Few have yet noticed the sinister resurgence of those who revere the name of Saruman.

I became aware of the problem some years ago when a shiny black pillar was erected near to my place of work, and I realised it was a coded reference (a 'dog whistle' as it were) to the Tower of Orthanc. All easily deniable, of course - indeed the pillar was topped by a signpost - yet the dark sympathies were obvious to the sensitive eye, trained by years of being the unacknowledged victim of microaggressions.

We all know that Saruman was the Worst Person Ever; but to hear these cultists, he was a man 'ahead of his time', with 'some good ideas'. 'At least he was aiming in the right direction', they will say - pleading that the man was 'misunderstood'.

That, at least, is as far as they will go in public; but in private it's another matter. There is, indeed a covert Neo-Orthanc party; meeting in shady corners of the internet and seedy corners of our universities. Here, in what they imagine to be 'private', some of the more extremist (or perhaps just more honest?) will exchange their real feelings about their hero.

For these fanatics, Saruman's only 'fault' was that he happened to be on the losing side; and was defeated by an unsavoury coalition of tree giants and reactionaries. But so far as his visionary politics goes? Well, that they believe was wholly A Good Thing.

They will cite his 'advanced' ideas on destroying the 'Nordic' peoples, such as the Rider of Rohan, and replacing them with his mixed Master Race of the Urak Hai - who blended (according to these misguided but dangerous cultists) 'the best' qualities of Dunlander Men and Orcs. Hence the symbolism of the severed White Hand and the cloak of 'many colours'...

Although wanting to cleanse the world of militaristic pale males is - obviously! - laudable; eugenics is an absolutely unacceptable method.

But evil is evil. Saruman employed a nondiverse workforce due to his antidwarfism and dwarfophobic hiring practices; and imposed a glass ceiling on trolls. He practiced unsustainable forestry. He polluted the Isen with the extinction of several rare beetle species. And Isengard had By Far the largest Carbon Footprint of the Third Age.  


If you have been unaware of all this, then I am sorry to disturb your peace of mind; but it is necessary to know what is going-on if we are to resist, and hopefully, defeat it.

Once you realise, you will see the signs everywhere, crudely disguised - not only (albeit most explicitly) white-ish hands in various positions and poses; but black shiny long things, things with shifting colours, endless visual references to their hero's hat (pointy triangular things), or his soothing seductive voice (soothing, seductive things)...


The reason I raise this is that me and some mates have started to organise riots and beatings of people we suppose to be in some way connected with the Neo-Orthanc tendency. We have a cool name - Antisa - and there seems to be no shortage of money to pay for our costumes, bike lock batons and coach rides to city centres.

Some foreign guy with a funny accent always foots the bill and is very encouraging - although the single red eye in the centre of his head is disconcerting until you get used to it.

Don't worry about getting into trouble: Antisa all wear masks or headscarves (I told you it was cool!) and nobody ever makes us take them off.

Nor will you be ignored; the mass media are always there before we are, and they are always on our side and can relied upon to conceal any (rare) instances when brothers or sisters get over-enthusiastic or indiscriminate in a good cause.


Remember: when it comes to Neo-Orthancs, they are everywhere and they are evil; and anyone who hates them is therefore, by definition, Good.

Magic Flute and Rhinegold - magical and symbolic operas

It is significant that three of my favourite - the most enduringly interesting, as a whole - operas should share an archetypal and 'Jungian' feel. These are Mozart's The Magic Flue [I mean Flute]; Wagner's Das Rhinegold (Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage is another, albeit musically inferior*). 

Perhaps this is because these are dramatically (situationally, as regards plot) is as high as opera can reach as an art form? 

After all, most operas are dramatic contrivances to produces scenes of strong and essentially 'populist' emotion - love at first sight, a love affair or the start of a marriage, the misery of broken love, pathos at loss, anger and vengefulness. Perhaps Verdi did this better than anyone - and his operas are composed of primary colours, black and white. 

It is the music which sometimes (and there are very few really successful operas - a couple of dozen perhaps) raises an opera above farce and melodrama and sometimes to sublimity. The plots of Mozart's Da Ponte-written operas -The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and (especially) Cosi Fan Tutte - are essentially horrible, shallow, facetious comedies of manners; which I would find intolerable as plays. It is the music of Mozart which raises these stock situations to the Heavens. 

The Magic Flute is my favourite opera, perhaps my favourite music. And this has to do with the fairy tale and archetypal aspects; but also the Masonic symbolism. Now, of course, Freemasonry is ultimately an enemy of Christianity and indeed probably an instrument of strategic evil. Yet here it is, structuring perhaps the greatest music ever written!

This is not uncommon in the arts; including the arts of genius. We are all sinners, including geniuses; and the greatest human creations are tainted with sin. But it is not the sin tow which we most deeply respond in the music of the Magic Flute - it is the Good. 

Because, after all, all evil contains some Good - and early Freemasonry (at the time and place of Mozart) had many good aspects - which rendered it a suitable and effective vehicle for the Magic Flute.  

Das Rhinegold has an extraordinary grandeur and symmetry - really marvelous orchestral writing and effects; and in general Rhinegold is a convincing and enchanting example of world building in opera. 

We feel we are inside the Teutonic legends - living in the heightened reality of gods, nymphs, dwarves, giants - indeed I merely need to think about the opera to get a halo effect on my lived experience. 

Yet, the 'message' of the work is again dubious. The plot is permeated with deception, greed, resentment, lust... and these are not really balanced by any great Goodness or nobility of purpose. It is, of course, the music - and not so much the singing (which is pretty arbitrary) but the orchestral part of the score - that makes the difference. 

In opera it is the music - not the play - which may reach the heights; and the music which can go beyond both the limitations and the explicit intentions of the composer. 

The lesson can be applied to other art forms, and other periods - even nowadays when the evil intent of art, literature and even music is very evident. 

When any artist (and artists nowadays are almost-never genuises, not even minor ones) taps into genuine creativity - he expresses the divine. Which is why there is good that may (with proper intent) be derived even from evil works - and most works (and all modern works) have a far greater admixture of evil than these three operas. 

* The Midsummer Marriage by Michael Tippett is another symbolic and magical opera - indeed, probably the last such to be written in a way that is (just about!) potentially accessible to the intelligent layman (rather than the professional musician). 

While the Wagner and Mozart are susceptible to Jungian analysis (as performed by Robert Donington) - Tippet actually wrote his opera from an explicit and deliberate Jungian schema.  

I would have to regard this Jungian schema as ultimately evil! - because it regards good and evil as light and dark sides of a personality; and aims not to acknowledge and repent sin, but it integrate it in the 'whole' Man. 

Yet, there is enough positive value in Jung to make it an effective basis for a Good opera. In particular - it addresses the problems of alienation and divided mind (the mundane and the enchanted worlds, materialism and spiritual); and the protagonists attain a kind of healing which is a positive outcome. 

With the Midsummer Marriage it is the music which (in parts of the score) raises the whole to greater heights than its flawed plot, clumsy language and (mostly) unmelodic vocal writing; and even than its explicit (wrong) intent. And, as with Rhinegold, it is the orchestra (not the singers) that has most of the musical good stuff.  

If hobbits were still alive... What then?

When I first read Tolkien in my early-middle teens; I had a yearning desire that hobbits, elves, dwarves should still be alive in the world. I felt that - if this could only be the case - then life would become magical and beautiful... or would it? How exactly?

Nowadays, I regard this as one of the traps of materialism. When half of us 'knows' (because we are materialists) that there are no other speaking peoples than man, no giants or dragons, no magical wizards or ghosts... 

Then the other part of us - which remains spontaneously and naturally spiritual - automatically concludes that If such things were real For Sure, our world would be magical, re-enchanted, romantic...

And in this half-way house of hope-less yearning - we Get Stuck. 

Because, it would not really be the case that hobbits would make a better world - not unless our way of thinking also changed. 

Because the reality of hobbits somewhere in the world would not transform our condition any more than the reality of the pygmies; the reality of magical sorcerers would just be a different kind of 'science'; the presence of invisible fairies would be just some novel electromagnetic phenomenon... 

Because we are so materialist, so mundane in our way of thinking, that these would be just more facts about the dull, thin, alienated reality which we perceive asif looking-out at a TV screen from inside our brains. 

This, indeed, is exactly what happened with New Age spirituality - it just became another (mundane) alternative-science - based on consciousness understood as vibrations, frequencies, energies or fields (a quasi-physics, mostly); and a branch of 'therapy' - but using acupuncture, crystals and shamanism instead of surgery, drugs and counselling.   

Even meditation - which used to be regarded as the most advanced form of mystical spirituality - is now materialized to the mundane activity of 'mindfulness' (and taught with state approval by mega-bureaucracies). 

Fundamentally; the problem is not in the world, but in our-selves; or rather our lack of real-selves. 

It is because we-our-selves are self-aware at a superficial and externally-imposed level of thinking: our personality, our thoughts, and even our thought processes are passively assimilated from our environment; and our environment in one that is officially dead, meaningless, purposeless; and operating on the basis of some mindless mixture of causality and randomness. 

We take the world, ideas and concepts, and our experiences; and we make them mundane.  

The first step in escaping this Black Iron Prison is to cease assisting in its construction and maintenance. Every thing, all knowledge and understanding, entails mind; so our miserable and pointless world is mind-made; made (partly, and essentially) by our own minds. 

We are our own jailers and tormentors. It was we who painted ourselves into this corner from which we perceive there to be no possible escape. 

Habits are hard to break - especially when it is habitual thinking - as such - from-which we need to escape. 

Yet it can be done; and we can recognize and value when it is done - and repent when it is not. We can understand our lives as the best times when we know the world to be alive, conscious, created; and that the other mundane materialist times are an evil spell with which we collude. 

The materialist mundane miserable reality is real; but only because we help to make it real. The enchanted romantic reality is also real, but only when we acknowledge it as such. 

As usual, it is a choice; and nowadays (and increasingly - for most people) a binary choice. 

Cease hoping for rescue

By hobbit and elf, 

By dragon or spell;

And repent our complicity

In the thinking of-Hell. 

It seems that all actual religions are honest about what they themselves offer (but wrong about other religions)

*

I find it very striking - although I don't know of anybody else who does - that actually existing religions seem to be honest about what they offer their adherents.

*

One might have supposed that the easiest thing would be to offer adherents 'the moon', or 'pie in the sky' - wondrous, extravagant rewards in return for their adherence; and yet this seems very seldom to have been the case.

*

For instance, life for a Roman Stoic seems to have held nothing to look-forward-to.

The Norse pagans depicted life as a grim and hope-less struggle against impossible odds; victory was temporarily glorious and admirable, and defeat could be delayed - but defeat was inevitable and the all men and the gods too would die - and the world destroyed and ruled by 'giants'.

The Eastern religions offer their adherents very little, except avoidance of something even worse. Hinduism offers escape from the horror of perpetual reincarnation; Buddhism offers escape from suffering but at the cost of annihilation of the self (i.e. death of the individual).

*

In general, Christianity seems to offer more, far more, than any other religion - greatly more than the ancient Judaism it displaced; we must die but after this there is resurrection in a perfected body, forgiveness of all sins, and eternal life in communinion with God and in His presence.

And the most recent Christianity, Mormonism, offers even more than mainstream Christianity: not only eternal resurrected life with God, but to live this life in a marriage of total spousal love and with a perfected family community; also the possibility of eternal spiritual progression after death, perhaps including full divinization.

*

It is striking that even secular atheists are honest about what they offer: i.e. nothing at all in objective terms and in the long run; only short-term and subjective feelings, enhanced pleasure and diminished suffering (which indeed they do offer).

*

If the human grasp of truth is always, to some extent, partial - then maybe our rewards will be commensurately partial.

Thus: if you are a good pagan, your destiny and reward will be pagan. And the closer you are to the truth, the greater will be your destiny and reward.

*

Why this should be, I do not know - unless it be that God constrains things thus: that He will not let any actually-existing religion claim more than it offers...

At most it seems a religion can falsely claim that the offers of other religions are false, and that its own meagre offerings are all that could be expected or wanted - or even that its promised horrors are in fact delights!

But the bare factual basis of religious claims seem always honest - so far as I can tell.

*

The error of most actual religions is not, therefore, in what they promise, but what they threaten. The error is to deny the validity of what others say, and to assert that others are damned to hell.

The reality is, perhaps, that the other are damned just as they are rewarded, according to their own criteria of what constitutes their destiny and reward - therefore, the best hope of a pagan is not very far from a Christian's idea of hell. An atheist's best hope is annihilation of the self, much like a Hindu...

*

But there is no reason for a Christian to assert anything more horrible as the destiny of non-Christians than other religions already describe as 'what happens'.

And, maybe, the best religion (among actual religions) - the true-est religion, is that which offers the most...

*

Alternatives after deplatforming - or, what to do when you are banned

(Sooner or later the following will happen - or else we will have yielded to the dark forces...)

Sooner or later those who dissent from The Program will be deplatformed from major social and communications media; it has been happening for a few years, this continues and the rate is increasing.

So what are the alternatives? - especially considering that when  somebody attempts to provide a social-communication media alternative, they are swiftly defunded by the finance tech media giants, or suppressed by the watchdogs of the Establishment (after all, it is The System that is evil; as a whole, and not just in parts).

Therefore, if what you want is the convenience of major mass media communications but without the totalitarian monitoring and control; well... that is exactly what you can't have. 

The alternative is therefore Not to use the platforms but instead deploy direct interpersonal communications.

I mean, simply talking with, or writing to, people. That - or nothing.

Sooner or later, this will happen; it pretty much has-to happen - but when it does happen, we probably won't hear about it - unless we are doing the direct interpersonal communicating.

And if you can't be bothered, if you are deterred by the inconvenience; well, then you are on-your-own - and that is also something you need to be prepared for.