A Survival Guide to the End Times

 My new book will be published in July this year.  Here is the back cover blurb.

Almost from the beginning, Christians thought they were living in the end times. It didn’t happen then, nor did it later, when subsequent generations believed that they too were living at a time of universal decline. Now we are faced with a similar dilemma. The signs of spiritual decay are everywhere, with atheism and materialism rampant, and even non-religious people are seeing a future of growing poverty and cultural loss. The end times have finally arrived.

 

This book discusses how to survive a time when the spiritual is either banished or corrupted by the material. Survival means spiritual survival and involves building an inner defence of understanding for the preservation of what is truly important: your own self. A Survival Guide to the End Times explains the processes that have brought us to our current state, and it details how to negotiate these times successfully from a spiritual perspective. As all aspects of the modern world are affected by the prevailing influence of dissolution, this book examines several areas of life from an end times point of view.

 

And here is the cover.

and here's the list of contents.

Introduction

 

Part One: End Times

A Body of Slag 

Space is Contracting 

The End Times is the End of Term 

A New Creation

The Paths of Peter and John 

The Destruction of the West 

How to Save the West

What is the Solution? 

Saving the West 

World War Two and Its Aftermath 

Not Going Along with the Aquarian Flow 

The Secular Corruption of Spirituality 

Satanic Feminism 

Divine Femininity 

The Cassandra Syndrome 

 

Part Two: Spiritual Tradition

Introduction on What Tradition Is

Temptation of the Esoteric 

Buddhist Atheism

Heaven, Hell and What’s In Between 

Astrology, A Signpost to Creation 

The Gnostic World View 

The Guru in the End Times

Jesus Was a Refugee 

The Wisdom of the Left

Who Is Sophia? 

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Tradition and Technology 

The Fox’s Prophecy

 

Part Three: God and the Soul

Meditation and its Limitations 

Consciousness and Christ 

The Root of Reality 

The Omnipotence of God

What is the Soul?

The Expansion of Consciousness 

The Human Form 

Male and Female 

Hierarchy and Complementarity 

No More Sea 

 

Part Four: Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Routine 

Illusion and Sin 

Empathy and Love

What is Evil? 

Give Them Your Mind

Celibacy

Psychedelics and Religion

Is Equality a Spiritual Principle?

St Michael

Christians and the Esoteric 

Don’t Worry 

 

Conclusion

 

The book, like some of my previous ones, expands and develops ideas linked by theme that began life as shorter essays here. There are also several new chapters. The sense that we are indeed living in a period that corresponds to the End Times is widespread now and not just among religious people. An awareness of cultural breakdown is everywhere and will only become more intense. Even those people who outwardly ignore or deny it feel in their hearts that something is amiss in the world, and it is likely that soon denial will no longer be possible. Those who are inwardly prepared for what is to come will be best placed to survive it, survival in this case meaning preserving one's spiritual integrity for that is all that really matters.

Things Are Breaking Down

  Mainstream media hasn't noticed it yet but what is called the post World War Two consensus is drawing to a close. It will be interesting to see how this plays out though it will surely lead to initial disruption and maybe even societal disorder which will be blamed by the mainstream on extremists whereas it is really the reaction of normality to the enforced extremist ideology of the establishment elites. 

The Western world has been bullied and demoralised by its elites for decades now. Europeans and Americans have been told that any pride they have in their civilisations, any love they have for their people or their countries, is dangerous and should be outgrown. It belongs to the bad old days when there were such harmful concepts as better or worse. 

Intellectuals and political leaders decided after World War Two that such a thing must never happen again. They determined that the way to ensure this was do away with all things that might potentially cause division which included sovereign nations, religions and even the idea of the father as the figure of authority.  All these had to be weakened and, if possible, dismantled. We should become empathetic and diverse with nothing better than anything else. All equal. That might have sounded good at one time but when everything is regarded as equal standards inevitably fall. It is a purely quantitative approach to the problem of different types of human being, and as an experiment it has clearly failed. Now, people are beginning to feel they are losing their countries and could soon even be minorities in their own homelands. Having been lulled into docile slumber for so long, drugged by money and entertainment and sexual liberation, they are starting to wake up.

The West has been undone by liberalism along with its subsets such as feminism and anti-racism and all other egalitarianisms. Liberalism is now being seen as the civilisation destroying ideology it always was. That is not to say there is nothing good about it, but it should be seen more as a medicine for when a society gets sick. It should never be the main diet as it has been for almost 100 years for then its poisonous aspects will take over. Excessive freedom, of and for the self, becomes a form of slavery.

It cannot be a question of going back to the 1980s or 90s as some younger people who recognise the problems seem to think, a time before mass immigration. Spiritual decay had long set in by then. People like Guénon and Evola were writing about it before the war. Come to that, the Romantics were writing about the disenchantment of the world in the early 19th century while Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre were eloquent opponents of the French Revolution which was a key event in the formation of the modern mentality. But there can be no question of going back anywhere or to any time. Life has simply moved on and consciousness has changed. Institutions set up in the past to maintain a civilised culture are no longer fit for purpose. They have been captured and deformed to the point where they are beyond saving, but even if they could be saved they are not suitable for humanity as it is now or as it will be in years to come. We cannot go back. We should learn from Tradition but we cannot return to it as it was. We must reject the whole of modernity as it has worked out in the world but take care while doing so not to dismiss the core of good at its heart which is a greater sense of freedom and self-awareness. Growth is the law of life. That is why we cannot go back.

Leftism, which is what liberalism has morphed into, is fundamentally about destruction. Ostensibly, it seeks to create something new and better but really the impulse to destroy is paramount. It seeks to destroy religion because loyalty to a higher power robs it of its power. It seeks to destroy all natural hierarchies because that undermines natural order and a harmonious society which, being a spiritual disease, is what it wants to do. And it seeks to destroy healthy relations between the sexes because that foments distrust and societal breakdown which is the objective underlying leftism when viewed from the spiritual angle. Any historian should be able to tell you that civilisational collapse inevitably follows the liberation of women from masculine authority. This may be an unpleasant truth for the modern mind but not only is it rooted in Christian scripture, it is known by all properly functioning societies because it is written into the fabric of the cosmos that the relationships between the two poles of being should follow a certain pattern, one in which they are spiritually equal but have different functions in terms of created being. To mess with this is to mess with a basic law of creation.

And that, of course, is why it is encouraged. We must recognise that the destructiveness, specifically the spiritual destructiveness, of leftism does not come out of nowhere. Human beings, due to their propensity to sin through pride, greed, spiritual rebelliousness resentment and general egotism, put it into practice on the earth plane, but the impulse behind it, the energy driving it, comes from the dark world that exists between the earthly and the proper spiritual. Fallen spiritual beings are engaged in driving a wedge between God and humanity. They can then exploit human spiritual energy for their own ends. We are protected by God and his angels but because we have free will and evil is subtle if we open our hearts and minds to it, the spiritual protection can be overridden. The dark powers can only lead us astray if we allow them to which is where temptation comes in. It can prompt us to invite evil into our own hearts where it forms a canker that will spread unless uprooted by repentance and prayer. Evil cannot affect us unless we do so invite it in but we have collectively done so.

There is also the matter that these dark forces work over long time spans so if we are not watchful we can gradually stray further and further from God in small degrees. The slippery slope is one of the main weapons in the armoury of these powers. It's relatively easy to get us from A to B and then eventually to Z whereas we would never do that all at once. This is why we must stop the spiritual decline at source which requires a proper recognition of God and his created order from the very beginning. No compromise.

The evils of leftism must be acknowledged. But the danger is that when they are the reaction will bring its own evils unless it is rooted in spiritual understanding. I would say understanding of Christ were it not for the fact that even this has been degraded by false religion and ersatz spirituality in which Jesus has been turned into a drippy humanist whose primary consideration is that people should just get on with each other. Is that why he said he brought a sword rather than peace? He did bring peace but it was the peace that passes all understanding, a peace not as the world gives peace but one that comes from overcoming the world. However, along with this spiritual peace there must be the sword that divides and separates as it cuts away untruth from truth. The sword-wielding Christ is the one to whom we should turn for understanding of how to combat the world and how to overcome it. This sword is wielded with love but it is a sword of flame that burns away falsehood and darkness wherever it strikes. 

And so when we reject the left, as we must, it should be for the right reason which is love of the good, love of God and of truth, and without allowing the evils of the left to darken our own hearts as we reject it. If we do let that happen then we have become absorbed by that against which we fight. This is hard but possible if we keep the vision of the risen Christ before us at all times.

The latest tactic of the dark forces in their attempt to sunder man from God is AI. This mechanical, materialistic, absolutely quantitative device is so obviously contra all things spiritual that any right-minded person should be able to see through its spurious allure instantly. But we have been tempted into its arms by all the miracles (pseudo-miracles) of information technology over the last 30 years. We have been corrupted, and many of us are ripe for the picking. This means we start to see AI as a benefactor or, just as bad, as inevitable rather than something that hollows out human thought and creativity leaving behind just the dry husk of it. AI will stunt our own thinking, blunt our creativity. It will make life duller, flatter, falser, thinner, more empty and rob it of meaning. Without meaning we are dead and that is the point. AI is the most advanced phase yet of the attempt to separate man from the spiritual and deny him contact with God and his angels. That means he is as good as dead.

One part of the evil forces at work in the world at this time wants to impose an iron control over humanity that separates it from God and the spiritual realm. AI is the latest weapon used in that battle. But there is another part that comes from a deeper level and this is simply about destruction. We currently see it most obviously in the Middle East operating through both sides of that conflict. But it is not just about physical destruction. Elsewhere, here in our Western world, it is about spiritual destruction for when humanity loses all sense of the soul as we are doing as a society (not so much on the individual level but collectively, we are) then it opens itself to exploitation by the dark powers. These powers can no longer access pure spiritual energy but need it in a downgraded form which they can access through the negative emotion of human beings, anger, fear, hatred etc. This is why they seek to engender such states and to cut us off from the higher worlds. 

The chaos of destruction is a feast for these degraded beings. There is no point in sugarcoating the pill. Humanity is in a perilous state at the present time, but God does not leave us defenceless. He and his helpers surround us at all times, and all we have to do is turn to him in humble acknowledgement of our spiritual failure. To turn our life round is not easy but nor is it that hard once we open our eyes to reality. That truly is all we have to do and then, though the journey back may be long, at least we will be on the right road.

Mankind's rejection of God is a global phenomenon. We are most aware of it in the West because that is where we are and that is where mankind has fallen further, having risen higher. But it is everywhere. That having been said, many scriptures point to this time so it was probably an inevitable phase in a long cycle which means there is nothing to fear. The collapse is inevitable and cannot be avoided outwardly but it can be robbed of its power to hurt and even used positively by inner spiritual attunement. Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25-26). This is the holy truth if we understand belief in Christ to be not simply intellectual assent but complete reorientation of the heart.

 

A Trip to Ootacamund

(My Indian story continued).

After Saroja and Krishna, our first maid and gardener, left we employed Muthu as a new gardener but didn't bother with a maid as there really wasn't enough work to warrant one. The only reason we had one in the first place was because it was expected of us. However, when the guesthouse was ready to open we did need a cleaner and general house servant and so we hired Jane, a spinster in her forties. Jane had the advantage of speaking English but the disadvantage of being very bossy though she was also kind-hearted. She regarded it as her job to make sure no one took advantage of us, and many people tried. She herself was honest but had a low opinion of most of the rest of humanity whom she regarded all to be on the make in one way or another. When Michael's cousin came to visit us in 1981 he described her as a female cockerel which was a little cruel but not inaccurate. Even so, I liked her and she liked me. She called me Chinna Durai which means little master in Tamil, Michael being Periya Durai or big master. Here is a picture of Jane and me. It was taken when I returned to Yercaud briefly at the end of 2003. I was just walking through the bazaar and she came up and greeted me. She hadn't changed much in 18 years. I was pleased to see her even if we had eventually had to sack her for reasons I will come to at some point.

I look like a giant here but that's because Jane and the woman behind us were very short.

Here is a picture of Muthu on the top lawn with what I called his snake charmer's basket, actually to collect grass cuttings. We had no mower and he cut the grass with what was effectively a pair of scissors. Those were the days.

I mentioned Michael's cousin. This was Hugh Christie, a retired army colonel 12 years older than Michael so aged 73 when he came out to visit. Michael and Hugh were both only children of two sisters, one of whom, Hugh's mother, had left her husband, while the other, Michael's mother, had been abandoned by her husband after he had an affair with the actress Gladys Cooper when Michael was only about a year old. Neither of these two cousins had known their fathers, and because there were no other family members they were closer than cousins normally are. I liked Michael's cousin but he was unsure what to make of me at first which was understandable. Once we got to know each other he was friendly enough even if he clearly could not comprehend what Michael and I were doing together. But then nor could most people, and even I found it odd on occasion. On the face of it, it made no sense. The Masters told me it was intended for a while in my life but they only said this after I had made the decision to do it and it had become a settled thing. There was no coercion. I could not expect anyone else to understand the rationale behind it, and although I tried to explain it to my family they didn't believe my explanation that there was a spiritual justification for it and I couldn't blame them for that. In the context of a human life being about worldly achievement and success it seemed a terrible waste. Meeting the Masters goes into this in greater detail.

Colonel Christie, as I first called him or Hugh as I was permitted to call him after a while (he was, after all, 15 years older than my own father), came out to India to visit us in the spring of 1981. He had been in India for several years during and just after the war, but when we met him in Madras it had been 34 years since he was last in the country. It had still been a British colony then though was about to gain independence. To put it mildly, he was not comfortable with the changes. The noise, the smells, the dirt, the chaos, all the usual things. These had been there before but, according to him and I'm sure it's true, they were controlled by the British presence. Now they had been let loose. While we were in Madras you could see he was questioning the wisdom of his visit, but once we left the big city and went to our bungalow in the hills he could relax as the assault on his mind and senses abated somewhat. Here is a picture of him in our garden in Yercaud.

And here's one of Michael and a bit of me taken at the same time. Michael is in a planter's chair which has extendable arms on which you can put your feet which might seem a good idea but is actually very uncomfortable.

Here is one of Hugh, Muthu, Jane and me.

There was no point in Hugh coming all the way to India just to sit in our bungalow for a couple of weeks so we planned a trip to Ootacamund as it was then known. Now it's been renamed Udagamandalam but everyone calls it by its traditional abbreviated name of Ooty. Ooty was one of those hill stations developed by the British as an escape from the heat of the plains. It had a racecourse, a golf course, an artificial lake and there was even a hunt with imported hounds chasing local jackals. The cream of Indian society visited it in the season which would have been during the hot weather, and it is still popular though down on its luck from its British heyday. Situated in the Nilgiri Hills (Nilgiri means Blue Hills) and around 7,000 feet above sea level, it is also known for its extensive tea plantations as well as eucalyptus and pine, all introduced by the British.

Hugh hired a car and a driver and we drove the 150 miles to Ooty. The climb up the hills was similar to the one from the plains up to Yercaud though grander with 36 hairpin bends as opposed to a mere 21 and with tamer monkeys who would come to be fed bananas when we stopped at one of the rudimentary halts along the way. As always when ascending, the air became fresher, the temperature dropped and the light acquired an intellectually invigorating clarity. Michael and I had been to Ooty before so knew what to expect when we arrived at the town but poor Hugh was once again disappointed, having been raised on the idea of Ooty as the Queen of the Hills and a shining light of civilised elegance. Now much of it was little more than a shanty town but there were bright spots such as the Ooty Botanical Gardens, still beautiful. However, our hotel, a recently built government tourist affair, clean but basic, was not to Hugh's taste, and on the first morning immediately after breakfast he went off on his own without informing us where he was going. He came back just before lunch with a triumphant look on this face. He had managed to get a room at the exclusive Ooty club. This was a members only place but he had talked his way in by flaunting his colonial antecedents which seemingly still carried some weight. He graciously invited Michael and me to dinner at his club that evening, and we grateful accepted.

The Ootacamund Club was founded in 1841 for the planters and convalescing soldiers who came to the more salubrious climate of Ooty to recover from whatever might have been ailing them and there was a lot to do that for Europeans in the tropics in those days. It's been described as a relic of the Raj and certainly was that in 1981. You still had to wear a jacket and tie at the bar which Hugh, being an English gentleman of a certain era, had no trouble in doing. Michael had a tie but no jacket and I had neither. But they let me into the restaurant which looked exactly then as it does in this recent picture from their website.

Below is a picture of the Club lounge, also unchanged since I was there and no doubt from long before then also.

The most famous story relating to the Ooty Club is that this was where the game of snooker was invented, and the Club Secretary kindly let me knock a few balls about on the very table it was born or so he said. Perhaps he was persuaded to let me do this by the fact that Michael too had been a Club Secretary, in his case of the Carlton Club in London between 1960-1969, and they could swap notes about difficult members.

I also remember visiting the old church of St Stephen's, now rather forlorn as though the tide had gone out and wasn't ever going to come back. It was heart-breaking to see the number of tombstones in the cemetery marking the graves of children who had died young, often very young. One forgets how illness and disease laid low the Europeans of those times who are now denigrated as exploiting colonisers but who made many sacrifices, including of their lives and those of their women and children.

Ooty is famous for its tribal communities. These were the original inhabitants and their remoteness left them untouched by general Indian culture from far back, never mind the more recent British incursion. The main tribe is that of the Toda for whom the buffalo is sacred. We went to a Toda village and Hugh chatted to an elder who spoke basic English. It was funny to see the two men together, chalk and cheese in terms of their human types but bonding by being of a similar vintage and getting on well. I wish I had a photo of the two of them but I don't.

I do, however, have one of me and Hugh on the steps of the Ooty Club.

and another of just me.

and one more of Hugh and the club servant who was assigned to him during his stay.

I think they appreciated having someone from the old days there.

After a few days we left Ooty to go to a nearby national park called Mudumalai which was (and still is) a wildlife sanctuary covering about 120 square miles, and home to a wide range of flora and fauna. There were leopards and tigers, elephants, gaur (Indian bison), chital and sambar deer with sloth bears and wild boar among the larger species. Then there were dhole (wild dog) and jackal as well as mongoose, pangolin and porcupine. Various types of monkey were also present, including langur and macaque. The list of birds is even longer, 266 according to Wikipedia. Having had a bird-watching grandfather these interested me as much as the animals. After a bumpy ride we arrived at the visitors' camp in the early afternoon, and at sunset did the first of our two trips into the jungle. For this excursion we went out in a jeep and saw mainly deer and monkeys, with hornbills and eagles among the birds I can remember.

The next day at sunrise we went out again but this time on an elephant which was much better. The three of us sat on a howdah with the mahout perched just behind the elephant's head guiding the animal by pushing on its ears with his bare feet. Hugh sat on one side of the howdah with Michael and me on the other and off we went moving in a slow and stately fashion through the forest. This was a far superior way to experience the jungle as you became part of it. With no engine noise you could hear the sounds of the forest undisturbed, and sitting on the back of an animal that was a natural product of this environment you too became attuned to it in a way that wasn't possible in the artificial confines of a motor vehicle. You didn't even need to see any animals to feel a sense of participation in the natural world around you.

Luckily though we did see some animals, and the first we saw after more deer and monkeys was a male gaur, a magnificent beast packed with muscle that paid no attention to us as it grazed on a mouthful of some vegetable substance. Looking at it you could understand why primitive peoples might have worshipped such an animal as a god. It exuded an imperturbable calm and grave dignity, as if it were an incarnation of archetypal male power and authority from the time when the bull was regarded as a divine being. Many early religions worshipped animals in some form which we now regard as superstitious nonsense, but we don't understand that both the world and the mind of man were different in the past. There may well have been some basis to this approach to the immaterial worlds on some level. Who, even now, would deny that certain animals carry a spiritual force of some kind, the lion, the eagle and the bull to name three of the most eminent?

As we proceeded into the jungle I noticed I was getting a better view of the canopy than the floor. There was a reason for this. Hugh was a big man. I was 6 foot 2 back then (less now), and Hugh was an inch or two taller than me. He was also quite a burly fellow whereas I was already slim and had lost quite a few pounds since arriving in India. Look at the photo of the two of us on the club steps. Michael was of average height and build but Hugh's weight had been more than enough to pull the howdah down on his side to the point where what should have been lying flat had tipped over to a sharp angle. The mahout jumped off the elephant and tugged it back into position before Hugh fell out and we carried on with him leaning back and Michael and me bending forward to balance the thing. I have to say if it had been attached properly in the first place this wouldn't have happened but that's the charm of India.

We didn't see any tigers but we did see elephants, lots of birds and more deer but the most exciting part of the trip was when a wild boar came crashing through the undergrowth heading straight towards us at speed and changing course only at the last moment. Even the elephant was alarmed by it and had to be calmed by the mahout. It was much bigger than any pig I had ever seen and its coarse hair, fierce eyes and prominent tusks gave it a savage appearance. British army officers in India used to hunt these animals on horseback with lances in the sport known as pig-sticking and, though it's easy to disapprove of such practices now, the fact is the wild boar is a ferocious and dangerous animal and the sport requires both great skill and courage. If you came off your horse you would be in trouble.

Pictures from Wikipedia which has a good article on the wild boar

Fortunately, despite the loose howdah, we stayed on the elephant and made it safely back to camp.

Christmas Is Real

 Just as there are holy places, sites of pilgrimage imbued with the presence of an angel or a saint or special in some other way, so there are holy times and Christmas is among the holiest. Whether or not Jesus was actually born on December 25th is largely incidental. This is the time he is deemed to have been born. The proximity to the winter solstice when the sun appears to come back to life in the Northern hemisphere is important but that is not the whole story. The incarnation of the divine light in the world is the main reality and the solar phenomenon is but a reflection of that in the physical dimension. The spiritual always precedes the material, not the other way around as our benighted age generally assumes. The Incarnation was at a special time and it gave a special quality to that time by its very nature.

In the past the church understood the idea of holy times very well with her feasts and festivals, all celebrated liturgically and acting as focal points in the year, stations on a railway line one might almost say. But it is not just the association with an event in Christ's life that is significant here. There is a real quality of time involved, an extra abundance of spiritual presence. Other religions have their festivals too but I have the impression that these do not travel well despite the fact that we are now required to give them almost equal consideration. Maybe it takes time for time to acquire sacredness. That and the energy of human devotion. At any rate, in the Western world the time around Christmas has a special holiness which even the materialism of the present era has not been able to destroy.

Time and space are the vessels in which God creates. They are his pen and paper. I am not Catholic but my wife and children are and over Christmas I had the choice of either going to a service at Westminster Cathedral on Christmas Eve or to the local Catholic church on Christmas Day. I was told that the church you go to doesn't matter. What matters is celebrating mass. Fine-sounding words but in my opinion wrong. They remind me of a time I visited Downside Abbey, a beautiful Benedictine monastery in the Gothic revival style in Somerset. This was in the 1980s and an ugly modern building, a library, I think, had just been tacked onto the side of the abbey. "What a horror"(or words to that effect), I tactlessly said to the monk who was kindly showing us around. "Not at all," he rejoined "if you have spirituality in your heart the outer conditions are unimportant". He had quite misunderstood that beauty within requires outer beauty. That doesn't mean it should depend on outer beauty but nor should it treat the beautiful and the ugly as equal. That is an insult to God and a desecration of creation. I chose to go to Westminster Cathedral rather than the late 20th century concrete pile in my vicinity. In such surroundings the spirit is elevated rather than diminished and crushed.

All this to say that although God is present at all times and in all places, there are certain times and places when he is more present or when more of him is present. Christmas is one of the times he is most present because that is when he really did become present in the world.

Humility and Love

 Humility and love are considered two of the primary Christian virtues. They are present in other religions, of course, but not emphasised to the same degree. It is this insistence on humility and love that sometimes gets Christianity accused of being an effeminate religion that promotes a slave morality, a religion that makes men less manly.

But what if there was a deeper reason behind this? What if the emphasis on these two virtues was because Christianity was a religion intended for a masculine people with a strong sense of self? Then, far from being an effeminate religion, it would be a spiritual corrective, something that counterbalanced innate tendencies and raised the qualities of its destined group of people to a spiritual plane. Christianity is often claimed to be a universal religion but really for most of its existence it has been a European one. Even the near Easterners and North Africans of its early days had a strong European component in their makeup, and for the bulk of the last 2,000 years Christianity has been an almost exclusively European religion, lived and developed by people of European origin wherever they might be in the world.

Religions are not the same but most have similar recommendations for behaviour. None, though, stress humility and love as Christianity does, and certainly not the Judaic religion from which Christianity emerged. I believe that Christianity was always intended for the European people, and though these people adapted it for their purposes, the core of it was fundamental. Firstly, the focus on Christ the resurrected Son of God, and secondly, the essential teachings of humility and love. These were there partly because they are true, that goes without saying, but also because they could temper the warrior spirit of the Europeans and transform that into a spiritual energy. The blood stained sword of battle becomes St Michael's gleaming sword of light. St Michael may be an archangel but he is also a chieftain or war leader in the Indo-European style. Warriors become soldiers of God who battle against evil and we see this in various groups throughout the Middle Ages from the Templars onwards. Believers are not just monks who retire from the world. They are also active in the world to a degree you do not see with Hindus or Buddhists or even Muslims. However, their activity is under the aegis of God, and it is the religious focus on humility and love that transforms the fighting mentality of the pagan Europeans into that of a warrior for truth.

The Heliand is an epic poem from the 9th century written in Old Saxon. Heliand means saviour and the poem is a version of the Gospel story that presents Jesus in a form acceptable to the Northern European mind so he is something like a chieftain while his disciples are the band of warriors that surround and support him. For example, the unknown author used the word treuwa to describe faith. This word must be related to our word true and it means faithfulness rather than faith or loyalty rather than belief. So the poet is saying that you are saved by faithfulness to Jesus not simply by believing in him. This would appeal to the pagan mindset of the time much more and, to my way of thinking, is a better way of describing how spiritual transformation may be brought about. 

I mention this to show the type of person early Christianity had to deal with and, so to speak, bring to the table.  If Jesus had been presented as a soft pacifist who was captured and crucified by his enemies that would not be appealing, but show him as a king and warrior who voluntarily underwent torture and death to redeem his men and you make him worthy of being followed and, if necessary, of dying for. Once your leader is revealed as a valiant hero you are more open to his teachings of humility and love.

 The trouble now is that humility and love have been weaponised and used to undermine a more complete or properly developed spiritual consciousness. The victim becomes the hero and the hero the oppressor. Humility and love are certainly primary spiritual virtues but so are wisdom and strength, and the former must be seen in the context of the latter if you are to reach a true spiritual state of being. The soft virtues without the hard ones become spiritually corrosive.

Christ came as the revealer of divine love. He, the greatest of all, humbled himself, allowing himself to be killed on the cross, a shameful end. His teaching of humility and love is the key that opens the door to heaven. But that does not mean that we should focus on these to the exclusion of other qualities which are equally important. Besides, all real love derives from love of God which is love of truth so you cannot use supposed love to deny truth as often happens in these times. As for humility, that is only there to remove pride. It is not a matter of encouraging weakness but points out that true strength is in God.

Humility and love were enjoined on the Europeans not because of any defects they might have but to balance their positive qualities which were to do with a developed sense of the individual self. This is then lifted up to become a creative contributor to spiritual life. The European type is not interested in passive absorption into oneness but wants to be an active participant in the glories of creation, but for that to be his ego must be made clean. Hence humility and love.

Who Was St John?

 Christine Hartley (1897-1985) was a pupil of Dion Fortune and an important figure in the revival of the Western Mystery Tradition. In later life she even wrote a book with that title. There, nestled among stories of Merlin and Arthur and the Tuatha da Danaan and the Druids, there is a short chapter called St John the Kelt. When I first read this many years ago I felt that rush of recognition you experience when something you knew but don't know you knew breaks through into the realm of conscious thought. It made complete sense.

Christine Hartley gives some reasons for this, on the face of it, unlikely assertion, and while they are plausible they certainly don't prove that the beloved apostle really was a Celt. But that is besides the point for this is more an inner plane reality than something that is factually true in the outer world - which is not to say it is not outwardly true as well. She says that the original Celts came from the mountains around Ararat and Persia and migrated westwards, but that there may have been some who remained behind at various stages of the journey. I don't think this is currently accepted by modern scholars but the Celtic people were certainly travellers and there is no reason why some may not have ended up in the Holy Land. More to the point, she says that the Celt is a mystic who thinks symbolically. He is a poet and a dreamer. His spirituality is shot through with magic and mystery, and his view of the created world is that it still shines with God's glory if you look at it right. All of this is in St John. None of it is in the rest of the New Testament nor is it part of the Jewish religious temperament which is based on law and the hard reality of this world. 

St John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation stand apart from everything else in the Bible. Their spiritual approach is mystical in a way that makes other parts of the Bible seem prosaic and earthbound. They glisten with an inner light that is typically Celtic. The imagery of the Apocalypse, its expansive visionary quality and prophetic fire, might have partial roots in the Book of Daniel but, as Christine Hartley says, "Here is the poetry and imagery of the Kelt from the first word to the last - the whole of the great Vision lies before us in a glowing tapestry of Angels and Jewels and Riders upon Horses...so superbly described...that it is almost possible to catch a glimpse of the reality that lies behind them".

Nowhere in traditional Jewish writing is there a sense of the spiritual nature of God one finds in the opening words of St John's Gospel. This is unprecedented and separates him from the other Apostles who, for all their qualities, seem dull and heavy in comparison, unable to transcend the material nature of the world and see spirit in the pure form conveyed by St John. And then, as Christine Hartley points out,  John "invariably writes 'The Jews', as though they were to him foreigners" implying that he is, at the very least, from another background.

Then you have the traditional representation of St John. Obviously, the images we have of him and St Peter and Jesus himself were not drawn from nature, but they might have come from oral tradition and, if we accept that Christianity is a divinely inspired religion, we should have no difficulty in believing that these images could also have been inspirational in origin. Peter is always a burly, bearded, rather fierce man of passion and energy, practical and tough, and somewhat bullish. St John is almost the opposite. He is youthful, sensitive and often fair-haired. A dreamy, almost ethereal quality comes from his pictures as in this one from the 19th century. This is a Celtic poet.

If Christianity was destined to spread beyond the Jewish world, as we must assume it was, then it would make sense to have a non-Jew as one of Jesus's closest disciples, someone who would then write about him from the perspective of an outsider to the very insular Jewish world. This writing would appeal more to the imagination of the intended audience and help bring them on board with the new, what was intended to be, universal religion. Its internal content and unstated but inherent cultural signatures would resonate with them and help make Christianity a European religion not a Jewish one which was its destiny.

None of this can be proved as the world seeks proof but I maintain that on the level of myth and intuition it shines out with the clarity of real truth. St John was the primary medium through whom the Christian message was transmitted to the Indo-European people, and he was one of them. The Christ he revealed was the warrior king of Revelation, the Lord and Ruler of all Creation whose face shines with the glory of the sun, the incarnation of a solar God much more than the Old Testament Jehovah.

If You Do What is Right You Can Never Lose

Naive, sentimental, careless, self-hating, jaded, nihilistic, decadent, downright stupid, all these and more are words that can be used to describe the current state of the West which has signed its death warrant with its embrace of mass immigration. Certain sections of the populace are realising this and refusing to be cowed by the usual epithets of racism and fascism that are thrown around to shut down serious debate and reflection. There are even calls for deportations in England and the USA.

But what if there really were deportations on a mass scale which may seem unlikely at present but is theoretically possible? Where would the West be then? Would it have solved its problems? It might redress the overwhelming of the indigenous population by alien people with very different priorities and loyalties, something that is apparent as their numbers increase so removing any need to assimilate. However, without a serious spiritual revival the countries of the West would simply be back to where they were 30 or 40 years ago with all the spiritual sicknesses they had then. They might have saved themselves as ethnicities, and even from potential civil wars, but they would be still suffering from all the problems that brought them to where they currently are.The faults, both spiritual and intellectual, that caused their current plight would still be in place and their state would be little better.

Things have come to such a pass that no secular approach can put off the day of reckoning for the West. Intelligent political action would bring some benefits but cannot address a more deep-seated malaise. At the same time, it is certainly better to try to do something even if you think that will only scratch the surface of the problem. Defeatism is weakness by another name.

Nevertheless, the truth is civilisations run their course, and ours has. We still have choices though. We can go with the decay, be part of it, or we can see it and resist it even if we know this resistance may be too late because the rot is too deep. Even if that is the case there is still much to play for in spiritual terms. Outer circumstances will be what they are but fighting against them, even if that is only within your own soul, will bring results. In fact, for most people the focus should be inwards. The benefit of living at a time of spiritual collapse such as now is that by standing apart from it you fortify your soul. You develop your spiritual muscles by having to swim against the tide. In a Golden Age you are spiritual by default. In a Dark Age you must earn your spirituality but that means it is yours and cannot be lost.

However, watch that word spiritual. One of the problems of living in an age of materialism and atheism is that when people do turn to the spiritual they often turn to all kinds of false spiritualities, and now there are many. As alway, it is your motivation that matters. A pure heart and a love of truth will guide you to the right place. If you seek the spiritual for personal benefit, you will not be so guided and may end up down one of the many blind alleys that seem to promise enlightenment, wisdom and power but only offer shallow imitations of these things. 

Is it worth fighting when you know you are going to lose? Absolutely it is, because although you may not gain the outer victory, if you fight for truth you cannot lose. The victory will be in your own soul. Furthermore, resisting darkness creates a light of its own which light will shine out for others, inspiring them to fight and gain their own inner victories. The outer always passes but the inner remains. If you fight for truth, ultimate victory is assured.

The moral of this story is that ongoing decline is inevitable because of the nature of these times but that does not mean we should do nothing to try to arrest decline. It may be that we plant the seeds for eventual rebirth.