However, it is now false to say the West is Christian and indeed its present morality is only a cherry-picked bastardization of the most consequence-free Christian teachings, and of those only the meekest, most irresolute or changeable. Our current morality is more truthfully a kind of bizarrely amorphous yet strangely militant non-judgementalism, which is of course much like Modernism itself, really nothing at all — just a ‘tear-down’ stage of a previously strong ideology. Contemporary artists tend to spend much of their time mocking and provoking Christians, treating our dissipating religion with anger and contempt. This is favourite pastime of the regressive left and disrespect for native belief systems are generally an indication of an egalitarian enterprise.
Some of the few aspects of Christianity which have passed into our new worldview are equality and passivity values. These new post-Christians have a rigid system of being morally ambiguous in every way (apart from cheek-turning and equality, for which they become positively puritan). The unquestioning belief in innate, magical equality is probably the highest virtue of the new faith. These new, daytime TV-friendly moralities are no longer enforced by superstition or doctrine (though certainly indoctrination) but by a false education system, a determinedly egalitarian media propaganda machine facilitated by the illusionary free market, and by typically feminist social coercion (shaming, social ostracizing, bullying, etc). Anything that sounds like it attacks the equality-myth will illicit a hysterically emotional response – even violence.
Similar to how only select values carried from Christianity to progressivism, at one time only certain of the older religious ideas passed to the Christian tradition from our native paganism. Those ancient ideals, misunderstood as purely superstition, are now largely abandoned altogether, or adapted by mercantile morality into something that can be understood in a purely materialist sense — like the crass commercialization of Christmas. Pagan art and Christian art retained many core motifs, thought they were also radically different and each equally fertile and varied. And so we can say there has been a slow transformation of traditional belief and philosophy in three stages, the first two being a sort of continuation, arguably altered with the Reformation, with the third being an imposed dead-end.
Paganism (in variation) →Christianity → Modernism.
This final stage (Modernism) is still in the process of completely abandoning all deep tradition for the few facile remnants of Christianity it still has use for. As stated already, these are namely those ethics based around equality, universalism and forgiveness, which is anti-self and only sustainable in times of plenty. If we don’t find a new belief system, based on deeper traditional values, it seems likely a new one will be forced on us in the form of Islam, which seems somewhat impervious to what is called Postmodernist belief. Unless things change, we face a grim choice between Islam and anarcho-communism as our two most likely future belief systems, with the latter leading directly into the former, and in both options our historic art, literature and music meets the bonfire.
To try to focus on the true purpose of religion, Postmodern belief (post-Christian equality-belief) should be understood as completely different from the virtues that were originally expounded with the conversion from paganism to Christianity. When Europe became Christian, certain values that existed already but were of lesser importance gained new prominence, virtues that had a strong unifying ascetic that Europeanized what was not a regional religion. Ideas such as piety, humility and charity came into focus. A new dynamic emerged with the devotion and fundamentalism of the new monotheism, with the stark division of the world into two clear paths: to heaven or hell. Gothic art of this period usually exudes this duality, the constant threat of evil on one side and angelic purity on the other. Gothic architecture in particular exudes this feeling of drama, it being a style we do not know the specific origins of while also being the very height of human architectural achievement. While the written tradition or vocabulary of the core classical Roman orders had been somewhat lost at that time, their root principles were still instinctively obeyed in this new Gothic style. The flying buttress, the pointed arch, the ribbed vault were all new and exciting developments of the new spiritual expression.
The early Gothic Christianity was merged with surviving pagan beliefs, such as proving worth through sacred combat, respect for hierarchy and death before dishonour. This organically occurring spiritual grafting spawned an Arthurian age of chivalric vigour — culminating in a strong and creative Feudal Age. Medieval chivalry existed according to an honour code system based on humility and asceticism, a code granting us many of our still existing noble concepts of gentility and integrity. Proud knights of this early Ghibelline period lived to test themselves by a set of laws that existed as an anti-materialist inner life, as a measure of personal greatness. There were Christianized adaptations of folkloric heroes like Beowulf, as well as legendary monsters, wizards, witches, giants, elves, dragons. These elements, originating in older legend, nourished this muscular early Christianity, which was not so focused on pacifism and turning the other cheek but perfectly happy to fight and die for honour, the faith and dominion. The unique art of this period, which we mistakenly call the Dark Ages (through to the late Middle Ages), was a return to a primitivism, possibly in part due to the Semetic anti-representational aspect of the old testament, which would recur again in the Reformation. This unique art is exemplified in Dark Age motifs and designs, in monks rendering highly detailed lettering, in tapestries and gargoyles. The medieval Christians preferred bright, primary colours and while some Roman-era art techniques were lost until the Renaissance, the medieval æsthetic remained undeniably European. Eventually, medieval philosophers grafted pre-Christian Platonism on to the intriguing starkness of the Gothic Christianity and this too came to be expressed in art, as the merging of monotheism with Platonic idealism gradually created new artistic and philosophical ideas. The Renaissance was largely fuelled by a rediscovery of pagan texts and philosophies forgotten by the masses but kept alive by Christian monks. These works of Plutarch, Herodutus, Aristotle and many others seemed for a time to only strengthen and juxtapose this Christian society and influence the art styles towards a beautiful but sadly short-lived Renaissance of hybrid Gothic-Neoclassicism.
The Hohenstauffen dynasty and the early popes and emperors had tumultuous struggles in the name of preserving ‘sacred regality’. They often acted as though they believed God wished them to commit outrageous acts, to be themselves to the extreme. Again, this early Christianity was less the simpering equality morality we see today and more akin to a warlike continuation of Indo-Aryan mannerbund. The popes themselves were for many centuries much closer to fierce, marauding warlords than the soft-spoken public speakers we generally see today. But now that muscular Christianity is fading away. What is left (certainly institutionally) is trite egalitarianism, pacifism and the arrogant sense of supersedence over nature. Modernist churches designed and built today are no longer Gothic masterpieces but the same obtuse carbuncles as are typically built for civic structures or tourism centers: the vitality is missing, the unity has dissipated. The strong compassion element of our dwindling faith has been warped into endless sentimentalism. The only virtues we can express socially or in our controlled corporate work environs are tolerance and forgiveness. These are the tenets of what Nietzsche would have called a slave morality and this same slavish constraint is what keeps us from making meaningful art.
Darwin and Nietzsche may have successfully dispelled much of what could be called superstition but it is widely accepted that to embrace traditionalism is to accept a religious attitude to the divine mystery. A culture of transcendence and community cohesion demands it. One positive aspect of our age is its somewhat hyper-rationalism, which requires a practical metaphysic that worships the mysteries with reason and philosophy but not scientism. Full knowledge of our religious history and the practical, healthy reasons for worship and idealism (beyond contemplating the mysteries) must become part o
f the new canon. The impulse to create art is rooted in the non-materialistic.
2) Pre-Christian faiths.
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.
– Hávamál, Poetic Edda, where Odin sacrifices himself, to himself, by hanging on a tree.
There are many interesting comparisons between paganism and Christianity, in terms of reflecting what is best in each. Most interestingly, older pagan belief saw the gods as bound within the confines of nature, not outside, above or encompassing nature, as Christianity teaches. The gods were certainly divine beings but there was a further, unknown tier of mystery within which they were confined with the rest of us, meaning they were not wholly omnipotent. Zeus and Odin did not know the outcome of all battles or the fate of all Gods and humans. Zeus had to consult the fates to know the outcome of the Trojan war and is not above nature (all-knowing). Above Zeus there is the world-soul and between them, possibly unknown hypercosmic gods (according to Iamblichus). The gods could even be challenged by other giants and Titans. Zeus himself took control of the universe from Chronos, who wrested it from Ouranus. Odin, Thor and many other Norse gods actually die (most unusually) at the foretold end-battle of Ragnarok. The Gods are representational of the seasons and human passions, bound in mythos but feared and respected out of what can only be described as a sophisticated understanding of selfhood and the necessity of cycles. Art was supernaturally entwined with this wisdom and the rules of art orders were delineated as components of religion. This defensive, preserving knowledge was hidden and maintained within ritual, descending from our even older and more mysterious Indo-Aryan (what I romantically call Hyperborean) progenitor ancestors, who inspired all of the world’s major faiths. Religious and mythic themes are themselves spiritual high art, which becomes implied cohesively in craft and handmade common objects.
The gods-as-within-nature view is quite alien to our Christian religious conception of an all-powerful figure who knows all and for whom all things play out as designed – and only once. However, this idea of the omnipotent God is alluded to in pagan literature as pure soul (all-soul, the Whole) or pure reason, unconcerned with lesser gods and beyond the understanding of ego. Plato and Plotinus expounded upon this in much detail, the rational and reverent study of which should be reinvigorated in place of the narrow, Dawkins-esque15 nihilism of scientism, which is another feeder route to anarchy and egalitarianism.
The other interesting and artistically influential aspect of paganism that is difficult for modern understanding is the licence it gave to eccentricity. While the gods ultimately controlled human affairs, there were less restraints on the naked pursuit of personal interest and power. This was occasionally by pacifist or intellectual means, like the pursuit of goodness in philosophy, but more often by wits and violence — making true pagans almost the polar opposite of many of our effete equality-loving neopagans today. The individual had more free choice because nothing had that sense of Christian certainty. Even their concept of the afterlife included more adventure, risk taking, battles and yet more extremes of glory or torment. In reading pagan thought and experience, there seems to be less of a feeling of an omnipotent safety net, yet almost paradoxically a more intense sense of civic duty.
Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
– C.S. Lewis
This more expansive hyper-personality in our pagan and early Christian ancestors (which makes a mockery of our bovine modern faux-individualism) ensured individuals were more capable of following outrageous passions and pure unrestricted opinion in thought and action. They did this to perhaps greater extremes of good and evil than we are accustomed to, in artistic passions exemplified in their few surviving remnants: chiefly literature, statuary and architecture. But the possibilities of action, or even of what is good, were more interpretive, while showing respect and observing custom was sacrosanct. It can only be described by the axiom ‘tradition’ because we cannot fully understand their motivations, given all the lost knowledge and gaps in our understanding due to the lapse of time. And yet their myths, artistic accomplishments and accounts of their actions still resonate with us and shine a light on our current impoverishment. Their art was varied and in all ways excellent. There came not unto them any desire or excuse to revere splatter paintings and abstract ‘installations’. And we must remind ourselves again that the most esteemed of their art vocations was, bardic storytelling, the poet who sang and recited the exploits of cultural heroes.
Part of Christianity’s success over paganism was its openness to everyone irrespective of race, tradition and caste – a disaster for Roman order and hierarchy. By positing faith alone as the only route to salvation, over heroism and spiritual ascension, Christianity appealed to the plebeian classes with promises of life beyond death above Roman values of duty and sacred hierarchy. While this was not an improved situation, Christianity also provided certain moral advancements, such as sexual restraint, patience and a greater focus on the idea of ascetic religious sacrifice as an inward self-sacrifice. All these pagan and early Christian philosophies have their representational art styles and all are beautiful in different ways, including in their admixture, and none have anything resembling the degenerative beliefs of Greenberg’s Modernism.
“What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.’”
– Marcus Aurelius
3) Classical philosophy & NeoPlatonism.
“I read Proclus for my opium; it excites my imagination to let sail before me the pleasing and grand figures of gods and daemons and demoniacal men. I hear of rumors rife among the most ancient gods, of azonic gods who are itinerants, of daemons with fulgid eyes, of the unenvying and exuberant will of the gods ; the aquatic gods, the Plain of Truth, the meadow, the nutriment of the gods, the paternal port, and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric quoted as household words. By all these and so many rare and brave words I am filled with hilarity and spring, my heart dances, my sight is quickened, I behold shining relations between all beings, and am impelled to write and almost to sing. I think one would grow handsome who read Proclus much and well.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Greek pagan myth has the most surviving literature, as well as being, among all the early cultures, the one that most predicates the art that we call Western. Hellenism has a fundamental set of religious principles. However, its structure, like that of similar religions, has an unusual and indefinable pattern compared with the worldview we are accustomed to. Its roots lie in the Orphic or Dionysian Mysteries, which form a tree out of which sprout the lessons of Pythagoras and sacred mysticism concerning Harmony, as the prime principle of the Cosmos.
The Orphic and Pythagorean are different yet harmonically bound in Platonic theology, which layers and relates complexity.
Epicureanism (founded in 307BC) and Stoicism (founded in the early third century BC) were
both prominent Hellenic philosophies. Epicurius’ view was that there were Gods but they lived in a perfect state of ataraxia or indifference, unconcerned with evil in the world or the affairs of men. And so Epicureans believed that men should strive to share a similar detachment. They believed Gods, matter, souls and even thoughts are made up of atoms and the Gods inhabited metakosmia: empty spaces between worlds in the vastness of infinite space. Epicureanism resembles Buddhism in its temperateness, lack of divine interference and its atomism, as well as its belief in constraint or moderation.
Stoics had no definitive belief in an afterlife but conceived of themselves as being members of a divine being. The living universe was thought to have an eternal cycle of change and eventually this universe would evolve into a penultimate period, when everything is converted to the divine fire, becoming soul only. This fire in turn becomes a kind of fertile mass, from which the seeds of reason sow a new universal cycle. Stoics were champions of the idea of ignoring heedless passions and fears for full acceptance of the here and now.
Neoplatonism was the surviving ‘living’ philosophy of Hellenism that was integrated with Christianity. One can be a Neoplatonist pagan or Christian, and indeed the Europeanization of Christianity is thought of to be in large part its anchoring to Platonic thought. To Neoplatonists, what is eternal in us is reason and we get closer to this eternity (the Whole) the less attention is paid to pleasure or pain, and the more we engage in philosophical contemplation. The goal of human life is to seek spiritual ascension with an aim to reconnecting with the Whole, or first divinity, the totality of all beings. Plato and Plotinus identified the ‘Whole’ (the One) with the concept of ‘Good’ and the principle of ‘Beauty’, that contained no division, multiplicity or distinction. Neoplatonism is related also to Gnosticism and Hermeticism, though it is more rational and all its precepts based in reason and philosophy.
The Decline and Fall of Western Art Page 17