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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:15:46 GMT -5
This is a thread for articles and discussions how the "errors of Russia and the Eastern Orthodox" go much deeper than Atheistic Communism.
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:21:22 GMT -5
catholickulchur.com/page/4/MASONRY BEFORE MASONRY We are all familiar with the standard history of masonry and secret societies that is oft present among Protestant researchers. The story usually begins in the 12th and 13th centuries with the Knights Templar who discovered a secret teaching while dwelling among the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Knights brought Lucifereanism and its attended teaching of ritualistic sodomy, demon worship, and Gnosticism into Christian Europe. This teaching is, in turn, passed down through the medieval craft guilds which transformed into Free Masonic associations, which, in turn, are later infiltrated by Zionists. While this story is largely false and typically seeks to tar the Catholic Church as being an incubator of paganism (which it will be later), the impulse to uncover a hidden teaching passed down from antiquity and ancient Egypt or antediluvian human history is largely correct. It is my contention, as I hope to demonstrate over the next couple of days, that this magic tradition was brought into the West 100 years later by Eastern Orthodox intellectuals fleeing crumbling Constantinople as “Platonism” but was in fact an occult teaching embedded in Platonism. Benozzo_Gozzoli,_Pletone,_Cappella_dei_Magi Those Orthodox thinkers who attended the Council of Florence (1438-1439), including Gemistus Pletho (1355-1452) who actually advocated a return to paganism, did not simply bring Greek poetry and philosophy but actually pagan religion with them. This first entrance of Hellenistic paganism continued throughout the 15th century. John Argyropoulos (1415-1487), an Eastern Orthodox scholar-refugee from Constantinople who fled to Italy instructed his students in the “secret teaching of Plato,” which was actually a form of occultism. This paganism was picked up by Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, and others who embedded pagan and gnostic teaching in their texts. These thinkers gave a wink to readers “in the know” by telling them that there was a hidden teaching buried in their seemingly orthodox or at least orthodox-sounding works. In his discussion of Parmenides, Ficino discusses how both numbers and poetic figures are “‘veils’ that hid the nakedness of truth from the vulgar gaze, or as a ‘rind’ that protects its sweet kernel;” these figures could also serves as “intellectual baits that will lure the subtle into the paths of righteous inquiry….There are veils that need to be drawn aside but only the adept, the Platonic philosopher-interpreter, is in a position to do with success: only he can reveal the naked purity of the truth…” In his preface to his translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, a key gnostic text, Ficino writes, “The ancient theologians covered all the sacred mysteries of divine things with poetic veils, that they might not be diffused among profane people.” This notion of a hidden teaching in the work is found in other Renaissance Magi as well, including those who embraced magic openly. cornelius Agrippa Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) who drew from Ficino’s teaching, was the Renaissance magus par excellence—both Christopher Marlowe and Goethe used Agrippa as the basis for their Faust, and Shakespeare’s Prospero from The Tempest was as much drawn from Agrippa as from the English John Dee. Like Ficino, Agrippa writes of hiding the true teaching behind veils. Corresponding with Agrippa with whom he “conferred together of diverse things concerning chemistry, magic, and Cabalie, and of other things, which as yet lie hid in secret sciences, and arts…,” Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), the Abbot of Sponheim Germany, a notorious occultist, writes, “Yet this one rule I advise you to observe, that you communicate vulgar secrets to vulgar friends, but higher and secret to higher, and secret friends only. Give hay to ox, sugar to a parrot only; understand my meaning, lest you be trod under the oxens feet as often times it falls out.” The fact that an abbot of a monastery in fifteenth century Germany would be an occultist should give us some pause and cause for reflection on the relationship between these secret societies and the Reformation. William Thomas Walsh’s magnificent biography of Philip II presents evidence of coordination among “reformers” as well as those who would benefit financially from the Reformation via secret lodges. Regardless, the abbot of Sponheim clearly is “in the know” of some teaching that is actually hidden in Agrippa’s De Occulta, which, although being a manual of magic, actually leaves some essential ingredients and rituals for magic buried in his text—the actual formulas for magic are not explicitly stated in the text but must be somehow uncovered by the reader. Agrippa himself in his letter to his “Judicious Reader,” published at the beginning of his book of magic writes, “There is the outside, and the inside of philosophy; but the former without the latter is but an empty flourish; yet with this alone most are satisfied.” Agrippa also writes of his veiling in Book 3 of De Occulta, “For we have delivered this art in such a manner, that it may not be hid from the prudent and intelligent, and yet may not admit wicked and incredulous men to the mysteries of these secrets, but the leave them destitute and astonished in the shade of ignorance and desperation,” and “we have folded up the truth of this science with many enigmas, and disperse it in diverse places, for we have not hidden it from the wise…” The same language used by Ficino and others indicates there is a hidden teaching for those who know buried in the text. It is my contention that this is the Luciferean-gnostic religion derived from some ur source in what the Greeks called Orphic and Eleusian mysteries, which themselves are rooted in the religion of Cain and demonic, near eastern paganism. The question then is especially pertinent to contemporary geopolitics. Contemporary Russia under the helm of Vladimir Putin has been presented as a burgeoning Christian utopia. However, Putin seems very close to Kabbalist groups such as Chabad Lubavitch, and one of the key thinkers of the Russian Renaissance is Alexander Dugin who was influenced by the teachings of the notorious Satanist Alastair Crowley. If it is true that some Orthodox monks in the Renaisance (and perhaps earlier) were gnostics and Lucifereans, and they brought their teaching to the West, which inaugurate the Renaissance, and contemporary Orthodox nationalists themselves are practicing forms of Satanism and Kabbala, which are essentially the same thing, this may suggest cells of Lucifereanism and Satanism in Eastern Orthodoxy. Thus, if this is true, both the Masonic-Zionist West and the Orthodox East are part of the same controlled dialectic.
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:22:12 GMT -5
A NOTE ON JOHN ARGYROPOULOS
In my last post, I suggested that the transmission of the ancient pagan mysteries, which later were to bloom into the poisonous flower of Freemasonry in the Enlightenment was not accomplished by the Knights Templar, but was transmitted to Italy from Greek Orthodox philosophers and theologians who brought Plato and other Greek pagan works to the Medici family who, in turn, had Marsilio Ficino translate the works of Plato as well as the Corpus Hermeticum. Today, I would like to take a look at John Argyropoulos a forgotten Greek scholar who became a critical figure in the Florentine Renaissance and helped to transmit the “hidden teaching” of Plato into the West.
Appointed by the Medici family to the Florentine Studio, John Argyropoulos (1415-1487), who although today is largely forgotten, was among the most famous philosophers and humanists in Florence, lecturing on the language as well as philosophy. In fact, it is Argyropoulos’s coterie of students who formed the Platonic Academy that, in many ways, gave birth to the Renaissance. While Marsilio Ficino is rightly best known as the great translator of Plato, the famous Florentine humanist, Donato Accialiuoli praised Argyropoulos for bringing Plato to Italy, but, again, it was not a purely rational and philosophical Plato that Argyroplous brought, but rather the Plato of the occult. Accialiuoli stated that Argyropoulos not only taught philosophy but revealed the hidden teaching of Plato to his students: “With great elegance and manner of the ancients, he has taught and is teaching moral and natural philosophy. Many books of Aristotle he has translated into Latin, and he has diligently opened up Plato’s beliefs, and those secrets of this and the hidden teaching as well, to the great wonder of those who hear him lecture.” Argyropoulos himself similarly wrote of a hidden teaching that existed before the flood that Deucalion survived (which was a pagan Greek retelling of Noah’s ark), and which was being revived, “One should also realize… that the sciences had a beginning, not only in our opinion but also in that of the pagans, who nevertheless held that he sciences have continuously sprung up: because at one time things were lost through a flood (one which did not cover the whole world), and at another time things were recovered…” Argyropoulos, like Plato himself as well as the author of the Corpus Hermeticum and occultists from the Renaissance forward, held that there was a pre-flood wisdom that was lost (during the Christian Middle Ages) but can be recovered. The history of the West in the past three hundred years is the history of the recovery of this information as the pre-flood Satanic civilization is being built into the New World Order.
This discussion of the transmission of occultism from the Orthodox East to the Catholic West is especially pertinent to contemporary geopolitics. Recently, I have been revaluating my perspective on Putin, Russia, and Dugin as well as the post-Vatican II view of Eastern Orthodoxy as what John Paul II called the Church’s second lung. It is clear that the perception of Russia in the West as a bastion of traditional conservativism is largely false, and the views of Alexander Dugin are Satanic and totalitarian in origin. Furthermore, while I do not know if Orthodox apologists and Russophiles in the Alt Right community such as Jay Dyer (on whose show Dugin appeared), Mark Hackard, and The Soul of the East crowd are paid by the Kremlin, I do strongly believe they are at least useful idiots in the advancement of a Russian totalitarianism, which is a key building block in the emergence of a New World Order and about which Our Lady of Fatima warned us.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:42:38 GMT -5
mauricepinay.blogspot.com/Russian Nationalism is a masonic contrivance; a Russian counterpart to British 'Atlanticism' Freemason, Nikolay Ivanovich Novikov was Director of Moscow University Press beginning in 1779. His extraordinary output of Masonic journals and books was supported by masonic lodges, the Russian Orthodox heirarchy and Russian monarchy. Russian Orthodox Archbishop Platon wished that, "in the entire world there would be such Christians as Novikov." From, Novikov: From Masonry to Orthodoxy, by Adam Drozdek
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:44:57 GMT -5
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:48:53 GMT -5
Post a Comment On: Maurice Pinay "Russian Nationalism is a masonic contrivance; a Russian counterpart to British 'Atlanticism'" 6 Comments - Show Original Post Collapse comments 1 – 6 of 6 Blogger apsterian said... Hello: I've been looking for the work u mention, this blog article, and I find on Amazon there is indeed an Adam Drozdek, author, listed, but I find no listing for the work entitled, "From masonry to orthodoxy," though there are some titles listed for this Drozdek on theology and Greek philosophy--is this title, "FM masonry to orthodoxy," perhaps a chapter heading? Thanks for ur help. A. June 11, 2017 at 9:35 PM Anonymous Anonymous said... It's quite well known that Peter the Great visited England and Holland in 1698, invited by William III, to learn about the art of ship building. ("To gain practical experience in the largest shipyard in the world, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months.") en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great#Grand_Embassyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Embassy_of_Peter_the_GreatSupposedly he was initiated into Freemasonry in London by Christopher Wren and after he returned to Russia he allowed Franz Lefort and his Scottish officers to establish a lodge. Peter the Great was associated with a few Scots from early on: Patrick Gordon ("helped to decide the events in favor of Peter in 1689"), Robert Bruce ("first chief commander of Saint Petersburg") an his brother Jacob Bruce (quotes from Wikipedia.) While in 1714 Peter brought one Jan Acosta from Amsterdam into his court. He was likely related to the Da Costa family which name can be found mentioned in quite a few places. Mentioning this because a Da Costa is mentioned in a quote in your previous post. Another Da Costa was Moses Da Costa who is noted to having petitioned for admission into the English "Russia Company" in 1727. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_da_Costa(Of course I don't know to what degree were the Da Costas in different countries really related.) June 11, 2017 at 10:24 PM Blogger Maurice Pinay said... Dear apsterian, its an academic paper dlibra.umcs.lublin.pl/Content/21581/czas17868_32_2014_8.pdfJune 12, 2017 at 1:32 AM Blogger Maurice Pinay said... Dear anonymous June 11, 2017 at 10:24 PM, thank you for that data. Centuries earlier, Tsar Ivan iV invited Elizabethan occultists, including John Dee to his court and in 1555 established international trade relations with the British joint stock "Muscovy Company" which was a model for the later infamous East India Company. Tsar Ivan IV reportedly proposed marriage to Elizabeth I. Whatever the case, their correspondence is a matter of record. June 12, 2017 at 1:38 AM Blogger Maurice Pinay said... Also, In,1700: Tsar Peter the Great appointed the apocalyptic Kabbalist Stefan Iavorskii as most powerful cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church books.google.com/books?id=3nKoFMo3ECoC&lpg=PA232&ots=BYlQdL5B8I&dq=stefan%20iavorskii%20cabbala&pg=PA211#v=onepage&q&f=falseJune 12, 2017 at 1:43 AM Anonymous Anonymous said... Tsar Feodor Ivanovich (or Boris Godunov?) invited John Dee to enter service in his court in 1586. And John Dee is described as mathematical advisor for the Muscovy company in the following article: extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-2/kochruli.htmBut John Dee's son Arthur Dee was actually court physician to Tsar Mikhail Romanov for almost 14 years, arranged by James I and at the request of the Tsar in 1621. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_DeeJune 14, 2017 at 9:09 PM
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 12:54:54 GMT -5
callmejorgebergoglio.blogspot.com/search/label/Russian%20Orthodox%20ChurchVladimir ‘defender of Christianity’ Putin 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 WARNING 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 STRONG LANGUAGE & GRAPHIC IMAGES 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 WARNING 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 “Russia originally evolved as a multi-nationality and multi-confessional state. You know Orthodox Christianity and some theorists agree with this, it is much closer to Islam than to Roman Catholicism.” — Vladimir Putin, 16 December 2010 —
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 13:03:55 GMT -5
catholickulchur.com/page/6/WHAT THE DEVIL TOLD DR. DEE 13 Feb 2017 Leave a comment Dee 2.png Dear Reader, As you and I know, the historical narrative of modernity is predicated upon the notion that the past five hundred years have been one of continued moral, technological, and scientific progress. However, what is interesting is to look at the writings of Renaissance occultists who helped summon modernity. Marsilio Ficino famously refers to Florence of 15th century as a “golden century”, which has “brought back to light the liberal arts, which were all but extinguished: grammar poetry, oratory, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, the ancient chanting of songs to the orphic lyre…” Clearly, no one will argue that the art and music of the Renaissance were beautiful, but that last little tidbit that Ficino adds is especially interesting. Marsilio Ficino, a Catholic priest, would strum hymns in honor of the pagan gods and writes that this rebirth of ritualistic paganism as an example of how a golden era, which had been extinguished by medieval Christianity, is now reborn. Ficino 3.png Elizabeth I’s court magus and spy, John dee also believed that this golden age could be brought about through a magic symbol, the Monas Hieroglyphica, which was the key to bringing about a renewal of human knowledge, the creation of a new reformed, ecumenical Christianity, and a world empire. A spirit that Dee and his conjurer, Edward Kelley, summoned spoke of a new world being created in which the conjurers were helping to discover along with explorers like Sir Humphrey Gilbert; the spirit allegedly said that in this new world, “The corners and straights of the earth shall be measured to the depth: and strange shall be the wonders that are creeping in to new worlds. Time shall be altered, with the difference of day and night. All things have grown almost to their fullness.” So, we see that those who were deliberately or at least half deliberately were fashioning the Renaissance as a rebirth of pagan mysticism and occult arts thought they were building a new golden era. This, friends, is the era in which we live. The spirits that these magi conjured, also, seemed very keen on ushering in this new age and were also very serious about England getting the upper hand in the new world. In my mind, these revelations only confirm the traditional Catholic view that the period from the Renaissance and Reformation has been one long march of evil, eroding the order of Christendom. We have the confirmation of the devils themselves.
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 13:05:30 GMT -5
REEXAMINING THE RENAISSANCE “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils” Psalm 95 “But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with devils.” 1 Corinthians 10:20. botticelli-primavera One of the most staggeringly beautiful works of art ever composed by a human being and the most definitive icon of the Renaissance is Sandro Botticelli’s La Primavera. The painting is a stunning freeze of the garden of Venus. At the center of the masterpiece, poised with a cautious but confident look and robed in surprisingly modest attire is Venus, the mother goddess, of Venus genetrix who is heavy with her child Amor. To the left are the three dancing graces indifferent to the immediate presence of Mars who is pushing away some troublesome approaching clouds. Flanking the right of Venus is the west wind Zephyr, capturing the springtime nymph Chloris who herself is changing into an enwombed Flora. While much of the deeper meaning of the painting is uncertain, it is clear that La Primavera indubitably is an allegory of Neo-Platonic love (blended with Stoic, Epicurean, and even Christian themes). But on a deeper level, Botticelli’s painting is about the birth of a new springtime, a new age, and a new world order. Catholics who live in the liberal democracies that emerged during the Enlightenment have gotten used to the idea that the word “Renaissance” denotes unqualified goodness. However, we must remember that the Renaissance gave birth to a new era that envisioned itself as a break with the immediate past of the Middle Ages. While Christians may grimace when secular thinkers refer to the Middle Ages as the “Christian era”, we should not. The Middle Ages was the Christian era in as much as it was definitely and proudly Christian. The Renaissance, however, was marked by a departure from subordination of the classical culture to the moral and aesthetic norms of the Church. Thus, Catholic parents and educators looking to draw from the classical tradition must take a cautious approach to appropriating classical culture and not make the same mistakes made in the courts, workshops, and studies that birthed the modern world. With glowing pride, Catholics often uphold the Renaissance as a great flowering of Catholic culture. In fact, this is one of the key periods to which Catholic historian and economist Thomas Woods, with some justified reservation, points in his work How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization as being one of the great cultural triumphs of the Church. In apologetic debates with Protestants, Catholics often proudly point to the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s Transfiguration, and St. Peter’s Basilica as irrefutable evidence that the Catholic Church is so much prettier than the dour Germanic Protestantism and Anglo-American Puritanism in which many of us live. And, for the most part, these Catholics are correct. There is no question that the Renaissance is one of the high points of artistic creation—especially in the visual arts, architecture, and poetry—in the West. There is further no question that many of themes of Renaissance art are Christian in general and Catholic in particular. The artists such as of the Renaissance overwhelming identified as being Christian and were often very devout—Michelangelo was tormented with worry for his own salvation, Bernini cultivated a deep Ignatian spirituality, and even Botticelli destroyed some of his paintings in a moment of religious enthusiasm. But there is a key difference between Christian artist and a Christian work of art, and many Christian artists in the Renaissance unwittingly (most of the time) open up a Pandora’s jar of evil when they midwifed the glorious return of classical culture and civilization. While images of nude images of gods and goddesses are given free passes as “art” by Catholics hoping to avoid the dreaded appellations of “scrupulous”, “puritanical” or, o nefas, “traditionalist”, a closer examination of the historical record reveals that one of the principle driving forces for the creation of visual arts in the Renaissance was the appetite for pornography. Although the printing press is lauded in contemporary textbooks for providing the Gutenberg Bible to enlighten every late medieval peasant, printing, like the contemporary internet, was used for more nefarious purposes: making pornography cheap and private, and one of the favorite themes of early modern pornographers was classical mythology. Giulio Romano, along with Pietro Aretino and Marcantonio Raimondi, created I Modi, depicting gods and goddesses in the act of love—Raimondi was rewarded with prison for his cooperation. This did not stop the same publisher from releasing Loves of the Gods, with designs by Rosso and Perino. Even the great Catholic champion of the Counter Reformation (whose troops, yes, sacked Rome and kidnapped the Pope Clement VII) received Coreggio’s Loves of Jupiter in 1530 as a gift from Federico Gonzaga. In fact, the most scandalous images of Jove’s loves were condemned, vandalized, and/or destroyed by zealous Catholics—Anne of Austria had Michelangelo’s painting of Jove and Leda destroyed. The masterpiece of French Renaissance architecture, Fontainebleau, was a staging ground for the emergence of the presence of the female nude in France and Italy. And finally there are the seemingly innumerable reclining Venuses of painters such as Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, and Paris Bordone, which are little different than Playboy centerfolds—Mark Twain surely expressed a deist equivalent of a sensus catholicus when he suggested that Titian’s Venus d’Urbino “the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses.” These paintings represent the essential problem of trying to replicate the Greek Roman illustration of a deity, one of whose primary purpose was to inspire eros and amor—even Plato had condemned the story of Mars and Venus being lewd and unnecessary—there is no question of the alluring beauty (often magnificent) of these paintings, but there is no doubt that they are pornographic. botticelli-birth-of-venus-detail On the other hand, Venus was not only used for lewd paintings and crude jokes. Among the pagans, Venus could also serve as the goddess of love marital procreation. The son of Venus, Amor, in Virgil’s Georgics is the procreative as opposed to merely sensual impulse, and Lucretius, the Epicurean poet, also has a hymn to Venus as impetus to procreation. It is this Venus whom Christians in the Renaissance attempted to appropriate as an image of marriage and fertility, decorating bedrooms and baths and furniture with her image. Even the stories of Venus’s infidelity to Vulcan with Mars were appropriated by artists such as Van Mander to serve as warnings against adultery. The tenuousness of these attempts at allegorization and moralization of what are, quite frankly, ornate but crude jokes was made evident in humorous attempt of the poet Battista Fieri to present the adulterous Mars and Venus as an image of Isabella d’Este and her husband—Fieri was forced to apologize. Perhaps not aware of their sacrilege and drawing from the Roman Virgilian and Augustan tradition of Venus Genetrix, Renaissance artists also attempted to link the goddess of love with Our Lady. While many of these attempts were sacrilegious and vulgar, they represent, more than anything, a clumsy but well intentioned attempt to create a beautiful and sophisticated culture that could coexist with Christianity. Mythological imagery undertook a standardization during the rise of the notorious Leo X in 1513 and Rome, which was littered with the literal ruins of antiquity became a hotbed of renaissance, and in northern Italian cities like Genoa, Mantua, and, of course, Florence, appropriation of mythology took off after 1530. As the sixteenth century progressed, mythology became a language throughout Europe—although the use was largely nonacademic as universities tended to avoid study of mythology. In a certain sense, it seemed that an educated audience could discern the difference between the Jove of Virgil and the Jove of Ovid. Leaders of the Catholic Counter Reformation like Charles V and Philip II utilized images of Hercules and Jupiter to symbolize their might, justice, and burden of reconquering Christendom for Christ’s holy Church. Strong female leaders took Diana as their icon, emphasizing her poise and purity. Mythology thus became a sort of lingua franca in which the stories were stripped over their obvious cultic and pagan associations. However, by the seventeenth century the divide between serious and sober classicism had dissolved and more and more there was free reign given to a “pure paganism.” However, there were some heroes who had always been and continued to be amenable to Christian interpretation. hercules While there was some caution exercised with classical deities—especially in the patristic and medieval period, the demigod Hercules largely got a “free pass.” Hercules was heavily allegorized as a pre-Christian Christian. Even the early medieval Boethius, living at a time when Christianity and paganism were still in open warfare with one another, celebrated Hercules’ labors as a model for Christian imitation. In Florence, Hercules was compared to the heroes of the Old Testament, and Petrarch celebrated Hercules heroics. One of the most definitive Renaissance icons of Hercules is Annibale Carracci’s Choice of Hercules; the painting draws from Prodicus’ story retold by Cicero: when Hercules was a young man, two women, Virtue and Vice, appeared to him offering a choice of a way of life for him. As Robert Frost later will, Hercules chooses the better path and thus becomes of model for Greeks, Romans, and even Christians of a heroic and virtuous life in pursuit of excellence. Hercules, however, was largely the exception to the rule as many of the Church fathers noted themselves noted but Renaissance artists seemed to forget. While Patristics like Tertullian, who famously asked what Athens has to do with Jerusalem, and St. Augustine of Hippo, who was thoroughly stewed in classical education, considered the pagan gods to be demons, there were innumerable attempts in the Renaissance to “baptize” even the most demonic of the gods and the most vulgar acts. According to the Dutch theologian Gerardus Vossius, the Thyrsus waved by the mad, blood thirsty Bacchantes in Euripides Bacchae resembled the staff with which Moses struck the rock in the desert. In the late medieval Benedictine Pierre Besuire’s Ovidius Moralizatus, one of many attempts to redeem Ovid’s violent and vulgar Metamorphoses, the Christian monk attempted to baptize crude stories like Diana’s transformation of Actaeon, a hunter who sees the goddess bathing, into a stag who is violently consumed by his own dogs. Besurie suggests a variety of moral allegories, including making the violent goddess of the hunt into an image of Our Lady and the foolish hunter Actaeon an image of Our Lord devoured by the Jews. In the most famous desperate attempt to moralize the Augustan poet of violent change, Ovid moralisé, Pentheus as well is presented as an image of the Christian soul and the Bacchantes are, of course, the Jews out to kill Christ and his followers. The sixteenth century Prior General of the Augustinian Order Egidio da Viterbo tried to allegorize Jupiter monstrous affairs as being images of God’s love for humanity. According to Fulgentius, the Judgement of Paris, rather than being a beauty contest, was actually an allegory for the choices that the soul must choose: the contemplative, active, and sensual life. The absurdity of such attempts reflect not so much malice on the part of Christians but rather confusion. sacred-and-profane-love It is this sense of ambiguity, which is paradoxically both careless and deliberate, that marks that great works of the Renaissance and which makes them so alluring and dangerous. Even Titian’s Neo-Platonic masterpiece Sacred and Profane Love is ambiguous. Depicting a confident, majestic and chaste Venus pudica robbed into white (with a bit of flaring red adorning her arm) on the left and a dumb sprawling and undignified Venus vulgivaga on the right, the work is a key icon of the superiority of chaste intellectual love over vulgar, sensual desire. However, at the same time, Titian clearly did not want his reader to ignore the disrobed Venus on the right, which in the view of some scholars, in fact, forms the center of the painting. Like the Puritan radical poet Milton’s attraction to Satan, Titian similarly seemed torn between creating a didactic allegory of chaste Christian love and simply displaying the female form for gratuitous enjoyment. Even the most talented and erudite Renaissance artists could not avoid being allured by the excesses of pre-Christian art. michelangelos_david_-_63_grijswaarden There are thus two Renaissances and thus two ways of appropriating classical art and literature. No two works of art present this contrasting view of the Renaissance more than Michelangelo and Donatello’s opposing sculptures of the deeply flawed but nonetheless divinely favored King David. While Michelangelo’s depicts the male form in its entirety, his marble masterpiece is an emblem of Stoic, Herculean and Virgilian calm. Drawing from the best of the classical tradition, Michelangelo’s David is a Titanic image of the male soul in a state of grace and the male body prepared for combat against God’s enemies. However, drawing from the softer Ovidian and Epicurean classical tradition, Donatello’s David, like an early modern Justin Bieber, is irreverent, effeminate and debauched, displaying his pampered body in an arrogant and pouty poise. He is a satyr or a cupid, a child of profane love and example of the worst of the Renaissance. Finally, and most weirdly and dangerously, we must also understand that the Renaissance is a period of the rebirth of the worship of the pagan gods—literally. Suspiciously, those in the Renaissance who were interested in the occult, like the Hapsburg Rudolf II, seemed the most interested in mythological themes—whether erotic or not. In fact, the sophisticated white or theurgic magic that influenced the Romantic period and then developed into popular occult organizations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century like the Theosophical Society and the Golden Dawn was drawn from the scribblings of renaissance magi. Oddly, many of these Renaissance occultists such as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Marsilio Ficino, and the Elizabethan magus John Dee considered themselves Christians in good standing. At the heart of Renaissance Neo-Platonism is the concept of exaltatio or the raising of human nature to the state of divinity and repairing the fall of human nature through science and magic (clearly scientists from Descartes to Bertrand Russell are also in this tradition). Like our own contemporary new agers, hippies, and members of the charismatic movement, these Renaissance wizards sought ecstatic states that they could ignite through the summoning of angels and the study of the esoteric wisdom. An example of this attempt to blend paganism is found in the preface to Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology in which Marsilio Ficino blended together pagan Neo-Platonic prayers with references to Bacchus with Christian prayers to the Most Holy Trinity. Thus, so much of the poison of contemporary occultism and magic that is now seeping through the ruins of Christendom was literally conjured in the Renaissance by well-intentioned Christians. The longest standing obelisk (among the thirteen total in the city) in Rome is located in the center of St. Peter’s Square. This obelisk, known as the “Vatican Obelisk,” in contrast to Botticelli’s La Primavera, is a symbol of sober and truly Catholic appropriation of pagan culture. Brought to Rome by Caligula, this Egyptian war prize was held by the Romans as sign of the triumph of Rome over Egypt: a gilt sphere was placed on top, which contained the ashes of Julius Caesar. Kept in the Vatican circus, this Romanized Egyptian artefact witnessed the gruesome martyrdoms of Christians, including St. Peter. The obelisk was later moved to its present location in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V. In place of the orb (from which, ironically, the ashes of Julius Caesar were missing), the Holy Father erected a cross top of the obelisk containing the a relic of the true cross; on the base of the obelisk is the triumphant inscription, Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. The Vatican obelisk is the definitive symbol of how Catholics should view classical and Renaissance art. Christ has triumphed over the pagan world, and whatever is good in the pagan world—whether it be Greek, Roman, Japanese, Egyptian, Chinese, or Polynesian—should be harvested and baptized and put into the service of God’s Holy Church and the advancement of the greater glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Catholic home should be, as Pope Pius XII of happy memory called it, “a domestic Church”; it should not be a bordello or a house of demons. What we read and hear and see shapes who we are, and the Catholic mind, for it to be truly Catholic, must be adorned with virtue and modesty. Much of the literature, art, and philosophy of the Renaissance (and the classical literature rebooted by the Renaissance) has been essential in shaping young Christian men and women for centuries. However, at the same time, the modern world in which we live and struggle under every ideology and anti-Christian ‘-ism’ imaginable was born from the same seeds sown in Botticelli’s garden. We are at a “world historical” period in both the Church and in the West. With a level of moral corruption in the Church that hasn’t been seen since the Renaissance, and a level of doctrinal corruption among the leaders of the Church that has not been seen—ever, there is a certain sense in which the best of the classical virtues are needed now more than ever. However, in this, the Second Catholic Counter Reformation, there is a need not to repeat the same mistakes of the Renaissance. There is no need for more display of the male and female nude form (even in the name of art and celebrating the beauty of nature and God’s creation). There is no need for Catholic children to read poems about adultery, incest, and horrific, sadistic violence even in the name of classical education. While Catholic parents and educators have a grave obligation to shape and mold their children into militant soldiers of Christ and defenders of the faith as well as the patria, we have an equally grave obligation to censor any material—however beautiful and smart it may be—that may be an occasion of sin. We can be confident that Our Lord Himself was not merely using the enigmatic and allegorical method cherished by Renaissance Neo-Platonists when he sternly said, “he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs bet scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh.” catholickulchur.com/page/6/
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 13:06:31 GMT -5
THE STRANGENESS OF THE SIDNEY CIRCLE
Dear Reader,
It is commonly and rightly assumed that the English Renaissance is one of the cardinal high points of artist achievement in the history of the world. It is also further assumed that this period, rightly also called “early modern” for its introduction of trends that came to define modernity, was strange combination of Protestantism mixed with some residual Catholicism as well as an emergent but subtle secularism. However, what is often forgotten in the popular imagination is the tremendous presence of occultism in this period. It has been the focus of my (albeit on again, off again) research to uncover the presence of this occultism in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Today, however, I would like to share some material I unearthed surrounding Spenser’s contemporary and friend, Sir Philip Sidney.
Like the occult-saturated French group of poets, the Pleiades, Sir Philip Sidney’s “Circle” Areopagus was a group dedicated to the practice of magic. In his highly informative work, John Dee: The World of An Elizabethan Magus, David French remarks, “It seems unlikely that men like Sidney, Spenser, Dyer, Greville, Daniel Rogers and Dee did not have more to discuss than counting syllables” (134). One of the critical members of the circle was John Dee, the occultist and spy whose symbol famously was 070; Dee, in fact, was the original 007 on which Ian Fleming’s James Bond was based. In addition to summoning spirits in mirrors and crystal balls, Dee seems to have worked as a spy for Elizabeth, traveling throughout continental Europe.
dee
John Dee
Spenser himself seems aware of the intricacies of Dee’s magic. French also points to a letter from Gabriel Harvey to Spenser that indicates that both men were both clearly acquainted with “the mysticall and supermetaphysical philosophy of Doctor Dee” (136). The famous historian of Renaissance magic, Dame Francis Yates, in her The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, further lumps Spenser and Dee as being part of the movements of occult Neoplatonic reformers deliberately fighting against the Counter Reformation, which was “powerfully aided by the Jesuits” (77). Thus, Yates seems to view the author of one of the most important and influential poems in the English language as being joined with John Dee as part of the same intellectual movement. Yates is right on one level: both Spenser and Dee sought to create a new British Empire (Dee was the first person to use that very term) that would reform the world. Dee was especially keen on getting to the New World and even participated in Martin Frobisher’s journey to Canada. Both Dee and Spenser further believed in the possibility of restoring the lost Golden Age of antique innocence through art, magic, politics, science, and war.
spenser
Edmund Spenser
Dee further taught Sir Philip Sidney “chemistry” (aka some form of alchemical magic) in the 1570s. What is more, Sidney was married to Frances Walshingham the daughter of Sir Francis Walshingham, one of Elizabeth’s spymasters. So it seems that at least two of the most important poets of the Renaissance were surrounded by both occultism and spycraft.
Certainly, all of these people involved (including Dee) considered themselves good Christians; however, at the same time, they were also practicing magic that they hoped would not only unveil scientific secrets, but would help with the establishment of a new British Empire, which would later give birth to a New Atlantis: The United States of America.
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 13, 2017 13:58:46 GMT -5
MARSILIO FICINO AND SPIRIT COOKING
WARNING: SENSITIVE MATERIAL
[1] Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? [2] And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: [3] But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. [4] And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. [5] For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3.1-5
Dear Reader,
Another hiatus, another apology, another incomplete sentence. I have been knee deep in the muck of Renaissance occultism as part of my “scholarly” academic research, but I have resolved to share the most interesting information on my blog and have determined to write for one hour (and one hour alone) for my blog every day. Thus, please forgive any errors in the text or a lack of polish to the style you have come to expect from your humble author.
You, dear reader, are, I assume aware of the “Spirit Cooking” and “Pizza Gate” scandals that ultimately sunk Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I, for one, believe the scandals, but I am open to the possibility that some of the stories are exaggerated, twisted, or even ironically down played. Certainly, the Spirit Cooking scandal as well as Pizzagate could very well be attacks strategically launched by Roger Stone and the dirty tricks department of the Trump campaign. Nonetheless, it was shocking and disgusting to many Americans that the campaign manager of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, may have been drinking human bodily fluids with the performance artist and honest to goodness witch Mariana Abramović.
800px-abramovic
However, interestingly the Renaissance Neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) (who famously translated Plato for the West), calls for a similar recipe as Miss Abramović in his Three Books on Life (De vita libri tres), a medical-astrological guide book for scholars. In Chapter XI of Book II, Ficino reflects on the need for those who over seventy or, for some, after sixty-three to replenish their youth by stealing from the bodily fluid of the young, for “this human tree must be moistened by a human, youthful liquid in order that it may revive.”
The first source of rejuvenation is, you guessed it, breast milk. Ficino instructs his aging scholar to “choose a young girl who is healthy, beautiful, cheerful, and temperate, and when you are hungry and the Moon is waxing, suck her milk: immediately eat a little powder of sweet fennel properly mixed with sugar.”
Now, not only is breast milk an essential ingredient to Crowley and Abramović’s rituals; there is also a need in Ficino’s spell for harnessing the power of the moon, which is worshipped as Diana-Artemis by contemporary Wiccans. Also, the need for a pretty young girl present sounds strangely apropos to the accusations of child sexual abuse and human trafficking that have surrounded the Podestas and Clintons.
Even more gruesome, Ficino recommends the drinking of human blood as well—this blood drinking, of course, does not come up very often in scholarly literature:
Careful physicians strive to cure those whom a long bout of hectic fever has consumed, with the liquid of human blood which has distilled at the fire in the practice of sublimation. What then prevents us from sometimes also refreshing by this drink those who have already been in a way consumed by old age? There is a common and ancient opinion that certain prophetic old women who are popularly called ‘screech-owls’ suck the blood of infants as a means, in so far as they can, of growing young again. Why shouldn’t our old people, namely those who have no recourse, likewise suck the blood of a youth?—a young, I say, who is willing, healthy, happy and temperate, whose blood is the best but perhaps too abundant. They will suck, therefore, like leeches, an ounce or two from a scarcely opened vein of the left arm…
It should sound very weird that a Catholic priest is recommending the drinking of human blood. It should sound even more weird that this Catholic priest is one of the seminal fathers of the Renaissance. Finally, what is most weird are Ficino’s qualifications that the youth be willing and that only a little bit of blood be taken from a little wound. Ficino is definitely hiding something with his careful assurances that he is not a mad pagan witch himself, which are found throughout his works.
This view of desiring eternal life is not just as old as the Garden of Eden; it is integral to the occult tradition, which has now become mainstreamed and normalized in the 21st century. Ficino’s views also parallel those of another critical early modern, Rene Descartes, who wrote in his Discourse on Method:
It is true that the science of medicine, as it now exists, contains few things whose utility is very remarkable: but without any wish to depreciate it, I am confident that there is no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing in comparison of what remains to be discovered; and that we could free ourselves from an infinity of maladies of body as well as of mind, and perhaps also even from the debility of age, if we had sufficiently ample knowledge of their causes, and of all the remedies provided for us by nature.
These ideas clearly sound like Ficino’s desire for increasingly life even to the point of immortality–thus overturning one of Adam’s punishments in the Garden of Eden.
We thus are faced with a deeper hint that more than just being a useful idiot for the Lucifer in the construction of modernity and the reintroduction of occult ideas into the west, Marsilio Ficino could very well have been part of a secret society (like Descartes who was attracted by Rosicrucianism), and he knew exactly what he was doing when he introduced it. We also see a much deeper pedigree for Abramović’s Spirit Cooking than simply Aleister Crowley. What the ultimate big picture is I hope to find out.
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Post by Voxxkowalski on Jul 14, 2017 11:01:13 GMT -5
Some really interesting stuff. The question remains why is Heaven so interested in the conversion of Russia?
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 14, 2017 11:25:39 GMT -5
I believe because its miraculous conversion would lead to other great conversions.
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Post by Voxxkowalski on Jul 14, 2017 14:05:36 GMT -5
what would this conversion look like. Couldnt some of what is going on be the laying a foundation. And a corollary question: couldnt the USA be considered worse?
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Post by micah1199 on Jul 17, 2017 8:18:03 GMT -5
All that occurs is in God's providence. I believe both countries are currently ruled by the devil. I can't quantify the number of mortal sins committed in Russia vs the USA to decide which is worse. I would argue that Thier are more true Catholics in a state of grace in the USA, so in that regard the USA is actually better. I could be wrong. The only true evil is sin.
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