[annatar1914]

When the Greeks discovered Buddhism, they took to it like a duck to water. Gandhara became one of the great centres of Buddhism in world history; some scholars even suspect that the monk who brought Buddhism to China was a Greek from Gandhara. Ancient Greek paganism was like an intellectual and spiritual straitjacket; it held them back for centuries, until they discovered first Buddhism and then Christianity. But the Greek concepts of Fate, of the Platonic “spindle of necessity”, these ideas had pre-adapted them to accept the later, Dharmic religions (and ultimately Christianity, of course, in which Christ’s sacrifice transcends Arete, cuts the Norns’ thread….)


And I think it’s no accident that in Gnosticism, the Creator God is downgraded to a wretched demiurge, unworthy of worship. Gnosticism almost took over Christianity in its first couple of centuries. This was only narrowly averted, and would likely have destroyed it in its cradle.

@Potemkin :

Yes indeed, on your first point, given that there were numerous Greek colonies that formed states in Bactria after the withdrawal of the Selucids from the region.

It is a different sort of place these days to be sure.

On your second point concerning Gnosticism, again very correct. And into the Middle Ages the sects of the Bogomils and Cathars and Paulicans were serious attempts to form new societies on a Manichean/Gnostic basis. And who is to say that these kinds of sects cannot experience a revival?

[annatar1914]

There's an interesting article at Katehon.com that I read about " the Hidden Imam and the 'Prophet Jesus " and a Western/Israeli effort to hunt down the " Hidden Imam".

Since this is not a thread imbued with the spirit of cultural relativism, but rather of describing things from an Orthodox Christian perspective, I must show some bias that for me confirms the eschatological dimension of this article, just not from the perspective of a 12ver Shia Muslim.

That is to say, that rejecting the Western Faustian civilization which is from Satan, does not mean an embrace of other non Western beliefs simply because they have " traditional " roots in other pre modern cultures. Rene Guenon is almost as abhorrent to me with his perennial tradition worldview almost as much as with Julius Evola.

But all that being said, there is a Great Lie that is close to the Great Truth, and so both are from the Magian and Monotheistic traditions. One is true and the other false. Some believe in Islam and others believe in Orthodox Christianity. At this point, the focus hereafter will be on these two religions, particularly in the Eschatological aspects of the religions. Only these will survive this post Modern era, all other beliefs will perish except the Jewish for a time.

[annatar1914]

Deep dive into Giambattista Vico and also Hegel. We live in serious times profligate with rather unserious people, but the natural swing of the cycle of things soon sets things to rights.

[annatar1914]

@Potemkin , @Verv , and @Political Interest , dear friends:

Deep within the collective consciousness of Western man, is the Archetypal symbol of what can be called the " Wall of Alexander ", holding back the hordes of the Barbarian " Gog and Magog".

The Barriers holding back the Barbarian, and thus preserving and deepening Civilization, consolidation of its gains and furthering of its " Progress ".

The present phase of the modern conflict of determination of where the barriers and boundaries will be put down, is ongoing right now. As this new Iron Curtain goes up, the U-Kraijina or Borderlands will finish its role....

Not only is the Divorce final after over 400 years, but the supporters of one party or the other will show " traitors " and " Barbarians " the door. The new European Order will be one without Monotheism, no Jews or Muslims or Christians. will be part of Western Civilization any more. No more " Barbarian " and Alien creeds will be welcomed, forever and for good.

Part if not the complete core of the Great Reset

Not what I want, but it is what I see. A re-paganized Europe.

[Tainari88]

@annatar1914 I never could understand why the USA always portrays Russians as these cold, unfeeling people who have no creative energy. I think the Russians are very far from cold people. Enormously artistically inclined and feel everything deeply.

That is the impression I get. I also think they are anchored to the land. That vast landscape is huge and deeply personal to many.

I have never visited Russia? Could you tell me your opinion about it? Please?

[annatar1914]

@annatar1914 I never could understand why the USA always portrays Russians as these cold, unfeeling people who have no creative energy. I think the Russians are very far from cold people. Enormously artistically inclined and feel everything deeply.

That is the impression I get. I also think they are anchored to the land. That vast landscape is huge and deeply personal to many.

I have never visited Russia? Could you tell me your opinion about it? Please?

@Tainari88 :

Thank you for your comment!

Russia is Home. Home in a way that a country arising from an Idea never could be, for anyone. She is Mother. Almost like the whole World, the Soul of the World, herself, Mother Earth. Sophia, Holy Wisdom.

She is herself, and like no other, full of Being. I lack words, but thank you.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88 :

Thank you for your comment!

Russia is Home. Home in a way that a country arising from an Idea never could be, for anyone. She is Mother. Almost like the whole World, the Soul of the World, herself, Mother Earth. Sophia, Holy Wisdom.

She is herself, and like no other, full of Being. I lack words, but thank you.

I have been seeing lately films about St Petersburg. It is without a doubt an incredibly beautiful city. Enormous beauty in every way.

The food impressed me in those films. Videos about the long tradition of breadmaking, and how dark the bread was. The earth is almost black and incredibly rich and produces great wheat, potatoes, barley and a lot of great quality of grain.

Great forests.

Mexicans always tell me in Spanish, the Russians have a deep sense of camaraderie and they love being together especially among friends. They like sharing their lives even with simple things like a hot drink and a slice of bread with cheese or butter. They are kind of like us in many ways. I found that interesting. I have never met a Russian who did not like Mexico. It is very interesting indeed.

[Potemkin]

I have been seeing lately films about St Petersburg. It is without a doubt an incredibly beautiful city. Enormous beauty in every way.

The food impressed me in those films. Videos about the long tradition of breadmaking, and how dark the bread was. The earth is almost black and incredibly rich and produces great wheat, potatoes, barley and a lot of great quality of grain.

Great forests.

Mexicans always tell me in Spanish, the Russians have a deep sense of camaraderie and they love being together especially among friends. They like sharing their lives even with simple things like a hot drink and a slice of bread with cheese or butter. They are kind of like us in many ways. I found that interesting. I have never met a Russian who did not like Mexico. It is very interesting indeed.

When Sergei Eisenstein discovered Mexico, it changed his life. He filmed (but failed to complete, for various reasons) the movie ¡Que viva México!, which is now regarded as a classic of Russian and Mexican cinema. Russians seem to find something in Mexico for which they have been searching all their lives, even without realising it....

[annatar1914]

I have been seeing lately films about St Petersburg. It is without a doubt an incredibly beautiful city. Enormous beauty in every way.

The food impressed me in those films. Videos about the long tradition of breadmaking, and how dark the bread was. The earth is almost black and incredibly rich and produces great wheat, potatoes, barley and a lot of great quality of grain.

Great forests.

Mexicans always tell me in Spanish, the Russians have a deep sense of camaraderie and they love being together especially among friends. They like sharing their lives even with simple things like a hot drink and a slice of bread with cheese or butter. They are kind of like us in many ways. I found that interesting. I have never met a Russian who did not like Mexico. It is very interesting indeed.

@Tainari88 :

I've been to Mexico, and have Mexican friends and family by marriage from both sides of the US/Mexico border.

In Russia, there are terms not too easily translated into English for the kind of camaraderie we have: " Sobornost " and " Bratsvo". Family and friends are very close. Strangers are assessed and then made welcome as part of the whole. Quiet and serious, but with bold and blazing fiery hearts, we have a broad and deep culture buried under a Westernized and in fact colonized veneer. St. Petersburg is the very Symbol of that duality. Its like a city of magic, arising from a magician's spell: Tsar Peter and Pushkins " Bronze Horseman"...

They do not understand Russia, nor do they want to, they hate and fear her. Too long have we tried to love the West and change for the West, with a sense of inferiority. But you understand that: and I recall that we have both read writers like Franz Fanon who express all this.

I've been to San Juan, I remember the warm nights and sounds, the food and the people, ocean and sights, it was lovely. I do not want those people to lose their identity either.

[Tainari88]

@annatar1914 colonialism is a very horrible reality for many.

Russia has two influences. I think Russia is both Asia and Europe. Combined. But the heart of Russia is about the people who have lived there for millenia.

One gets to know a nation through its art and its ambitions. And I think Russian art is sublime. All of it. The Hermitage, the paintings, the sculpture, the architecture, the music, the dance, the song, the literature. Everything is absolutely stunning. The scientific achievements too.

What I think happens is that it has a troubled past. So does Mexico. Puerto Rico does too. I happen to think deeply spiritually centered cultures tend to have troubled pasts and histories that come back to haunt them.

Russians have two poles, and two forces fighting all the time internally. So does Mexico.

I think the USA is also getting that internal conflict because it has to do with egos and wanting to control.....

I worry about war. I want peace for all nations. It is the only sane thing to want for other human societies and people.

It is immoral to dehumanize any nation and its people over politics.

There are always politicians making horrible decisions and it is rarely about the people who are the common people and have to pick up all the broken dishes in these wars.

Do not think I don't read you Annatar. I always have.

I love reading a whole spectrum of points of view. No matter if I agree or do not agree. It is the smart thing to do. Read everyone.

[Tainari88]

When Sergei Eisenstein discovered Mexico, it changed his life. He filmed (but failed to complete, for various reasons) the movie ¡Que viva México!, which is now regarded as a classic of Russian and Mexican cinema. Russians seem to find something in Mexico for which they have been searching all their lives, even without realising it....

I watch a blogger, a beautiful Russian girl who makes videos in Mexico. She said she envies Mexicans their fruit. She loves tropical fruit more than anything else in the world. For a Russian tropical fruit is true exotica of the best kind.

I agree. No one values fruit the way they should.

[annatar1914]

@annatar1914 colonialism is a very horrible reality for many.

Russia has two influences. I think Russia is both Asia and Europe. Combined. But the heart of Russia is about the people who have lived there for millenia.

One gets to know a nation through its art and its ambitions. And I think Russian art is sublime. All of it. The Hermitage, the paintings, the sculpture, the architecture, the music, the dance, the song, the literature. Everything is absolutely stunning. The scientific achievements too.

What I think happens is that it has a troubled past. So does Mexico. Puerto Rico does too. I happen to think deeply spiritually centered cultures tend to have troubled pasts and histories that come back to haunt them.

Russians have two poles, and two forces fighting all the time internally. So does Mexico.

I think the USA is also getting that internal conflict because it has to do with egos and wanting to control.....

I worry about war. I want peace for all nations. It is the only sane thing to want for other human societies and people.

It is immoral to dehumanize any nation and its people over politics.

There are always politicians making horrible decisions and it is rarely about the people who are the common people and have to pick up all the broken dishes in these wars.

Do not think I don't read you Annatar. I always have.

I love reading a whole spectrum of points of view. No matter if I agree or do not agree. It is the smart thing to do. Read everyone.

@Tainari88 :

Spasibo, again, for your contribution. And the way friends and family have experienced both Russia and Mexico, the similarities are most interesting, fitting that pattern of two poles, and thus of the tension between a "Comprador" elite tied in with Western management, and the regular people who want to live but don't want to lose sight of who they are and where they came from, either.

[Tainari88]

I wish @annatar1914 that there was more of an understanding in the USA about other cultures wanting to stay their own culture. The USA cultures are built on immigrants assimilating and wanting to change who they are and start anew. Almost a manic level of wanting to forget their roots. It is damaging to preserving history and to identity.

I get it a lot being Puerto Rican. The USA mainland Americans used to come in to the tourist shop I worked in Old San Juan and they would tell me--I thought it would be different. People speaking English and after all this is an American territory. I thought you would have learned English and forgotten the Spanish by now?

They expected assimilation and or a reproduction of Mexico. Lower prices, tacos, and things that did not exist. I found it profoundly ignorant. Why should people change because the US decided we were American citizens and needed to become Anglos overnight? It is not a good thing.

It made me think about what composes an ethnic identity. People find their identities worth preserving. Their history too. Their language. Their land. The US is basically a very undefined country because it is composed of people who come from all over the world, and they need to recreate or reinvent themselves from scratch. The glue that binds them is an old document from 1776. About a series of freedoms and so on that are supposed to transform your life. But there is so much shame attached to being from a group that is not really dominant or accepted in the USA.

The vast majority of nations in the world? Have deep roots. The nations usually have people that lived there for thousands of years. And have strong sense of ethnic identities.

I think the USA has issues with accepting that other people in other cultures are uninterested in getting rid of who they are to become some new identity in order to become wealthy or powerful.

It is part of the madness of the USA today. The working class don't seem to understand that the plutocracy is not representative of them. It never was. You only understand that if you grew up in cultures where your class identity is deeply rooted and not confused with images of instant success and dropping your ancestral traditions into the hole of consumerism.

[annatar1914]

With what is very clear to me as being the end of Modernity (1492-1992), is so now because not only do we see the end of ideology, but of politics itself.

We are almost all " Idiots" now, in the original Greek sense anyway.

" conservative Christians " in the USA talk as if Christianity preserves these things vital to civilization, and more besides, such as the " traditional family ". It most emphatically does not, just as modern pagans of a more rightward bent say and have been saying since Edward Gibbon.

[Potemkin]

With what is very clear to me as being the end of Modernity (1492-1992), is so now because not only do we see the end of ideology, but of politics itself.

We are almost all " Idiots" now, in the original Greek sense anyway.

" conservative Christians " in the USA talk as if Christianity preserves these things vital to civilization, and more besides, such as the " traditional family ". It most emphatically does not, just as modern pagans of a more rightward bent say and have been saying since Edward Gibbon.

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” - Luke 14:26.

So much for Christian “family values” then. Lol.

[annatar1914]

“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” - Luke 14:26.

So much for Christian “family values” then. Lol.

@Potemkin :

On that note my friend, is why I have come round to believe that the natural religiosity or Spenglers " second religiousness " of the West will come back around to the Papacy.

It recalls the chapter in " Brothers Karamazov ", Ivan Karamazovs " Legend of the Grand Inquisitor ". People don't really want Freedom, and certainly not with a conscience to go with it. They don't want Truth.

They only want questions of the technological multiplication of earthly bread, wrapped in the flummery of " magic, mystery, and authority", answered.

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin :

On that note my friend, is why I have come round to believe that the natural religiosity or Spenglers " second religiousness " of the West will come back around to the Papacy.

It recalls the chapter in " Brothers Karamazov ", Ivan Karamazovs " Legend of the Grand Inquisitor ". People don't really want Freedom, and certainly not with a conscience to go with it. They don't want Truth.

They only want questions of the technological multiplication of earthly bread, wrapped in the flummery of " magic, mystery, and authority", answered.

If Christ returned, in all his Glory, he would be killed again, and for the same reasons he was killed the first time around - for being a seditious enemy of authority, a subverter of family values, an enemy of traditional values, and a disturber of the peace. Dostoyevsky got that right.

[annatar1914]

If Christ returned, in all his Glory, he would be killed again, and for the same reasons he was killed the first time around - for being a seditious enemy of authority, a subverter of family values, an enemy of traditional values, and a disturber of the peace. Dostoyevsky got that right.

@Potemkin :

In any case my friend, as a Christian when He returns I know that they will not succeed in that. But they will try....

Because of the Alien/Extraterrestrial myth of the Modern age, they will be deceived into thinking that they can kill again the Lord of Glory, but cannot. But they will try...

[Potemkin]

@Potemkin :

In any case my friend, as a Christian when He returns I know that they will not succeed in that. But they will try....

Because of the Alien/Extraterrestrial myth of the Modern age, they will be deceived into thinking that they can kill again the Lord of Glory, but cannot. But they will try...

And the ‘Christians’ will be first in line to try. They will feel they have no choice….

[annatar1914]

And the ‘Christians’ will be first in line to try. They will feel they have no choice….

@Potemkin :

And an even simpler scenario to salve any doubts when He returns: " the government has learned that the race of advanced but hostile extraterrestrial beings originally mentioned by our Space Brothers when they first arrived to advance our evolutionary progress, is maliciously planning on hoaxing the Second Coming of Christ in their quest to exterminate humanity, to disguise their main and final attack. This attack must be resisted!" And so forth...