For several months, in the Fall of last year (2009) – as in some previous months – rumors began circulating, on the Internet, that Myatt had returned to his much revised mystical philosophy, The Numinous Way. Prior to this, The Numinous Way Foundation had, in April of 2009, issued a collection of new and revised essays about The Numinous Way under the somewhat un-original title The Numinous Way: Empathy, Compassion and Honour.

In the Introduction to this collection, the author – a certain DW Myatt – had this to say:

” This book is a collection of essays related to The Numinous Way, which essays attempt to elucidate this new ethical philosophy, based upon empathy, compassion, and honour, which I have developed, and refined, over a period of many years, and which philosophy – which Way of Life – thus expresses my own conclusions about life. These conclusions are the result of a four-decade long pathei mathos: the result of my many and diverse and practical (and, to many others, weird and strange) involvements (political, and otherwise), and my many and diverse and practical quests among the philosophies, Ways of Life, and religions, of the world. The Numinous Way is, in particular, the result of the often difficult process of acknowledging my many personal mistakes – many of which caused or contributed to suffering – and (hopefully) learning from these mistakes.

The essays presented here represent the culmination of my own thinking, and thus supersede all other essays of mine about, or concerning, The Numinous Way, and what I, previously, called The Numinous Way of Folk Culture. For there has been, for me, a profound change of emphasis, a following of the cosmic ethic of empathy to its logical and honourable conclusion, and thus a rejection of all unethical abstractions, including those of the nation, of what is termed “race”, and what I previously, in more unempathic days, referred to as “the folk”. It is empathy, compassion and honour which are paramount – the living of an ethical way of life by individuals which is important – not some outward, causal, form, nor the classification and (unethical) judgment of individuals according to some abstraction, some stereotype, some dogma, some ideology, or some theory. “  The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion, and Honour

This rumored return, by Myatt, to his own – if revised – rather mystical, and somewhat pagan, philosophy – or Weltanschauung – was privately confirmed in several letters, and e-mails, which he sent me in late January of this year, and which he later confirmed with the distribution of a new autobiographical essay, dated 2455227.753, where he, with a rather admirable honesty and candor, writes:

“There [was] a stubborn clinging to doing what I conceived to be my honourable duty, and it is only in the last month that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion…..

For almost four years – since Francine’s suicide – I struggled with this dilemma of honour and duty, believing that it was my honourable duty to stubbornly adhere to the particular Way of Life I had embraced in the previous decade; and stubbornly adhere despite the conclusions of my own thinking regarding compassion and empathy, manifest as these conclusions were in the ethical, and non-racialist, Numinous Way that I had continued to develope. Thus did I during this period, and several times, publicly and in private re-affirm my commitment to that particular Way of Life, striving hard to forget my own answers, born from my thinking, my experiences, and especially from that personal tragedy, for surely these things were only a test, a trial, of my belief, my honour? Was it not therefore my duty to just humbly submit to الله, to thus acknowledge that my own thinking, my own conclusions based on experience, were flawed, the product of error and pride?

But, to paraphrase TS Eliot, here I am now, in the middle way I have devised for myself, having had many years, often wasted, the years between two wars within myself

Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Thus, I have declared a still rather shaky new truce, a compromise: based on a treaty where I have (re)defined personal honour as a practical manifestation of empathy, of the desire to cease to cause suffering to living-beings, with such empathy and the compassion deriving from it a guide to living that awareness of ourselves as but one nexion to all Life and to the Cosmos, and which awareness, which Cosmic perspective, expresses both our true human nature and the potential we possess to change ourselves into higher, more evolved, beings.

I would like to believe that this new truce I have manufactured will hold, but I have believed that before, and been mistaken, and even now it occurs to me that my theory of ethics, my new definition of honour, is just that: mine, and that I may be wrong. Yet my experiences – my feeling for, my empathy with, the numinous (manifest for instance in sublime music or in a mutual personal love) – tell me I can only live what I feel, I know, I empathize with, and this now is presenced in my developed Numinous Way. ” DW Myatt: A Change of Perspective

Thus, he admitted that,

“The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past year or so – represents my true nature: the hard, difficult, re-discovery of what I had controlled, and lost; and, perhaps more importantly, an evolution of that personal nature as a result of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.

Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do.”

It is, perhaps, worth emphasizing that the Numinous Way which Myatt has returned to is a very much revised, ethical, and apolitical development of his own mystical philosophy where, as he importantly states in several revised articles (such as Questions About Race, The Folk, and The Numinous Way) both “nationalism” and the concepts of race, and “the folk”, are rejected, being regarded as unethical abstractions, and thus have no place in his Numinous Way.

Furthermore, Myatt is, in my view, to be commended for honestly revealing the details of this difficult process of personal transformation, as detailed especially in his (now published) private letters, and several essays, written between 2006 AD and early 2010 AD. He might also be commended – minor reservations regarding “sinister rôles” aside – for his spiritual and rather mystical odyssey this past decade or more; an odyssey which has taken him from being a violent neo-nazi street activist – the “most evil nazi in Britain” – to being a Muslim; to embracing multi-racialism, and propagating violent Jihad; to finally returning to the humanity evident in his new ethical, “numinous”, philosophy of empathy and compassion.

However, I am inclined to agree with Myatt that he will not be understood, in his own lifetime, and that, as he says somewhat ponderously, he -

“…will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, and involvements, which beliefs and involvements the majority of people, un-enlightened and un-empathic as they remain, still describe by some un-numinous abstraction or other and which they have to categorize as either political or religious, or both, forgetting or unaware as they are of the numinous and personal and undivided reality beyond which can only be felt, discovered or known through a personal knowing of, a personal empathy with, the person they are talking and/or writing about…”

Certainly, the majority of people, curious about, or interested in, David Myatt, for whatever reason, almost invariably make some pejorative comment about Myatt’s outward peregrinations among various religions, and about his change from neo-nazi to Jihadi Muslim, believing as they do that all these peregrinations reveal Myatt to be at best “weird”, and at worst “psychological unstable”, or having a dysfunctional personality. Thus do they, in my opinion, reveal not only their own superciliousness, but also their own lack of detailed knowledge of Myatt, his life, and his works, basing their opinion as they do almost always on either the prejudiced opinions of others or on just a cursory reading of perhaps one or two Myatt’s works, or even just the Internet entry in Wikipedia about Myatt. For, as a perceptive young English lady recently (January 2010) wrote:

[Myatt is] a complex man, and one who it’s impossible to understand without considered and prolonged study. Reading wikipedia will only obfuscate, given that the way information is structured and determined appropriate there is mutually exclusive with any expression which provides understanding of his character. The Wikipedia article simply isn’t useful in forming any intelligent opinion of him.

He would say that you are being dishonourable by passing a superficial-causal judgement without taking the time to either meet and discuss matters with him or, at least, seriously attempt to understand things from his perspective before making an empathetic judgement, and not reactively judging in accordance with emotive-abstract labels.

At least read his poetry if you’re going to post about him (not any points he’s made or his Philosophy on their own merits). That’s where you can see the man as he is, and come to some limited appreciation of the kinds of things that motivate his actions; instead of seeing him as he plays at being for the sake of understanding. (Yes, understanding– how dedicated would a person have to be that they would be prepared to immerse themselves in violent subcultures such as radical Islam for the purpose of understanding that which is heretical from the inside? You’d have to want understanding more than anything else. You’d have to be a martyr to wisdom, doing that in the knowledge that you’d forever be instantly rejected upon the basis of some label you’d voluntarily taken on. Bear in mind that he’s alternated between the Numinous Way, radical Islamism and other positions for years now. That’s not the behavior of a self-identified ideologue or true believer. )

As someone else wrote, last year, and also on the Internet:

” [Myatt] appears to have been on a multi- decade intellectual/spiritual journey that has taken him far beyond his NS/supremacist origins, through all sorts of twists and turns (his writings on “numinosity”, NS ethics, Islam, Buddhism, etc.), and finally ending up somewhere near the opposite place from where he started. I would call that an admirable and even noble journey.

Very very few people are capable of real change. They seize upon some ideology or orientation or other, and NEVER LET GO. No matter what. So, when someone DOES change, I respect it — apart from the consideration of what, specifically, they changed from or to. To be able to change, from the strongly-held convictions of earlier years, shows character and deep commitment to truth — regardless, again, of specifically what one is changing from or to.

This guy Myatt is, I submit, a man of quite some (inner) accomplishment…..”

Thus, a few enlightened individuals now, at last, seem to be able to perceive the real Myatt – the poet, the mystic, the seeker after wisdom – behind his many and diverse, and sometimes outré, involvements (again, minor reservations about sinister Insight Rôles notwithstanding).

However, no doubt this latest return by Myatt to further developing his own mystical philosophy, leading to a rejection of what he circumlocutiously describes as a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion, will just give Myatt’s many detractors and opponents more fuel with which to stoke the fire of their own often impassioned prejudice.

JR Wright
Oxford
February 2010 AD

Source:  http://www.davidmyatt.ws/biog.html

Mitchell's Fold, Summer Solstice, by Richard Moult

Another beautifully warm and Sunny day, bright with the light remembered from childhood years in Africa and the Far East: so different from the normally dullish light of temperate England.

Thus, here in the warm Sun and as so often, there is a time of reflexion; a stasis as life becomes reviewed through memories. And it is occurring to me more and more that this is all that there is, beyond the immediacy of the moment: only memories of moments past.

So many memories which slowly fade as bright colour exposed to Sun: as the bright checks of my Tweed cap have slowly faded over the years, unrenewed as the greens of the grass, the bush, the tree, become renewed each year, through Spring. Only memories, as of Fran; to be savoured but perhaps now not too much to be dwelt upon in almost unbearable sadness, for thus is – for thus has the – a type of balance returned; that balance, that dwelling in immediacy, which I from learning feel and know is the essence of wu-wei.

This is a change within me, regarding the life and death of Fran, and the life and death of Sue; regarding my own diverse journeys and explorations. A change toward a being-settled that has partly arisen from at last forsaking abstractions and partly from accepting that it is immediacy and remembrance of memories which convey the only correct meaning we human beings have or can find and which is numinous. No projection, thus, of an abstractive life-beyond this mortal life; no need for a religious type of faith; no battle or desire to strive to be in accord with any abstraction; and even no need to believe in, or even un-numinously desire, some-thing. No depth of unfathomable wordless sadness to bring that ultimate life-ending despair such as I assume Fran felt in the last hours of her own mortal living.

For there is only the bright Sun; the slight breeze in bush and tree; the verdant, living, green of grass; the yellow Buttercups that are profusely sprinkled there in the old Orchard of old Apple trees whose lower branches have been windfallen, or become broken with age, or stripped of bark by the two Goats who roam there, where Chickens range, food-seeking. Only the passing billowing fair-weather white Cumulus clouds below the sky-blue of Earth’s earthly mortal life.

Across from where I sit – at the back of the Farmhouse – that Barn whose Summer Swallows swoop in and out to feed their still nesting young who gape and chatter as their food is brought. And I am only this moment, only this moment, as the young Farm dog who comes to lay down in the grass beside me is only the young Farm dog. He looks up at me once – three times – tail wagging, before settling down to sleep.

There is no world beyond, for us here; for the life here. Only the weather; only the changing weather; only some natural need to move us, slowly by our limbs.  A need for shelter, water, food. Only the Seasons changing as they change. Only the gentle companionship of a gentle acceptance that lives, grows, changes, slowly, as all natural life lives, grows – changes – slowly, as Sun through cloudless Summer sky.

My decades long mistake of unbalanced stupidity has been to be un-rooted; to be of unnatural uneedful haste. To cease to dwell within each immediacy of each moment. To be swayed by, persuaded by, in thrall to – to even love – un-numinous and thus un-ethical abstractions. To be thus that which we human beings have become: a stage between animal – talking – and compassionate, empathic being aware of and treasuring each small pulse of life that lives near, within, us because there is no separation unless we in hubris and by abstraction create such separation.

Thus are we now but Homo Hubris, struggling, halting, wasting ourselves and all of Life around us; infected now with the virus of abstractions so that, upon this living Earth, we – in our new de-evolution – despoil, disrupt, destroy the Life that is our Life and the genesis of The Numinous, often in the name of that un-ethical abstraction called “progress”. And yet we have a cure for our millennia-long debilitating sickness; have always had a cure, although so many for so long, as I, have failed in our blind stupidity to see it.

So, this is all that there is: only the bright Sun; the slight breeze in bush and tree; the verdant, living, green of grass; the yellow Buttercups that are profusely sprinkled here where, now, The Numinous lives, on another beautifully warm and Sunny day, bright with light remembered…

DW Myatt
June 2008 CE

Another beautifully warm and Sunny day, bright with the light remembered from childhood years in Africa and the Far East: so different from the normally dullish light of temperate England.

Thus, here in the warm Sun and as so often, there is a time of reflexion; a stasis as life becomes reviewed through memories. And it is occurring to me more and more that this is all that there is, beyond the immediacy of the moment: only memories of moments past.

So many memories which slowly fade as bright colour exposed to Sun: as the bright checks of my Tweed cap have slowly faded over the years, unrenewed as the greens of the grass, the bush, the tree, become renewed each year, through Spring. Only memories, as of Fran; to be savoured but perhaps now not too much to be dwelt upon in almost unbearable sadness, for thus is – for thus has the – a type of balance returned; that balance, that dwelling in immediacy, which I from learning feel and know is the essence of wu-wei.

This is a change within me, regarding the life and death of Fran, and the life and death of Sue; regarding my own diverse journeys and explorations. A change toward a being-settled that has partly arisen from at last forsaking abstractions and partly from accepting that it is immediacy and remembrance of memories which convey the only correct meaning we human beings have or can find and which is numinous. No projection, thus, of an abstractive life-beyond this mortal life; no need for a religious type of faith; no battle or desire to strive to be in accord with any abstraction; and even no need to believe in, or even un-numinously desire, some-thing. No depth of unfathomable wordless sadness to bring that ultimate life-ending despair such as I assume Fran felt in the last hours of her own mortal living.

For there is only the bright Sun; the slight breeze in bush and tree; the verdant, living, green of grass; the yellow Buttercups that are profusely sprinkled there in the old Orchard of old Apple trees whose lower branches have been windfallen, or become broken with age, or stripped of bark by the two Goats who roam there, where Chickens range, food-seeking. Only the passing billowing fair-weather white Cumulus clouds below the sky-blue of Earth’s earthly mortal life.

Across from where I sit – at the back of the Farmhouse – that Barn whose Summer Swallows swoop in and out to feed their still nesting young who gape and chatter as their food is brought. And I am only this moment, only this moment, as the young Farm dog who comes to lay down in the grass beside me is only the young Farm dog. He looks up at me once – three times – tail wagging, before settling down to sleep.

There is no world beyond, for us here; for the life here. Only the weather; only the changing weather; only some natural need to move us, slowly by our limbs.  A need for shelter, water, food. Only the Seasons changing as they change. Only the gentle companionship of a gentle acceptance that lives, grows, changes, slowly, as all natural life lives, grows – changes – slowly, as Sun through cloudless Summer sky.

My decades long mistake of unbalanced stupidity has been to be un-rooted; to be of unnatural uneedful haste. To cease to dwell within each immediacy of each moment. To be swayed by, persuaded by, in thrall to – to even love – un-numinous and thus un-ethical abstractions. To be thus that which we human beings have become: a stage between animal – talking – and compassionate, empathic being aware of and treasuring each small pulse of life that lives near, within, us because there is no separation unless we in hubris and by abstraction create such separation.

Thus are we now but Homo Hubris, struggling, halting, wasting ourselves and all of Life around us; infected now with the virus of abstractions so that, upon this living Earth, we – in our new de-evolution – despoil, disrupt, destroy the Life that is our Life and the genesis of The Numinous, often in the name of that un-ethical abstraction called “progress”. And yet we have a cure for our millennia-long debilitating sickness; have always had a cure, although so many for so long, as I, have failed in our blind stupidity to see it.

So, this is all that there is: only the bright Sun; the slight breeze in bush and tree; the verdant, living, green of grass; the yellow Buttercups that are profusely sprinkled here where, now, The Numinous lives, on another beautifully warm and Sunny day, bright with light remembered…

DW Myatt
June 2008 CE

David Myatt, 1993, Spain

Ah, the wikipedia character-judgement.

He’s a complex man, and one who it’s impossible to understand without considered and prolonged study. Reading wikipedia will only obfuscate, given that the way information is structured and determined appropriate there is mutually exclusive with any expression which provides understanding of his character. The Wikipedia article simply isn’t useful in forming any intelligent opinion of him.

He would say that you are being dishonourable by passing a superficial-causal judgement without taking the time to either meet and discuss matters with him or, at least, seriously attempt to understand things from his perspective before making an empathetic judgement, and not reactively judging in accordance with emotive-abstract labels.

At least read his poetry if you’re going to post about him (not any points he’s made or his Philosophy on their own merits). That’s where you can see the man as he is, and come to some limited appreciation of the kinds of things that motivate his actions; instead of seeing him as he plays at being for the sake of understanding. (Yes, understanding– how dedicated would a person have to be that they would be prepared to immerse themselves in violent subcultures such as radical Islam for the purpose of understanding that which is heretical from the inside? You’d have to want understanding more than anything else. You’d have to be a martyr to wisdom, doing that in the knowledge that you’d forever be instantly rejected upon the basis of some label you’d voluntarily taken on. Bear in mind that he’s alternated between the Numinous Way, radical Islamism and other positions for years now. That’s not the behavior of a self-identified ideologue or true believer. )

Lyra
January 2010 CE

Source:  http://intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=5839

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Confusion Will Be My Epitaph

In your article The Downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, you state quite clearly that the downfall of the West begins, and I quote, “with peoples external to the West, and with those of non-White ethnicity within the lands of the West.” Why do you say this, and isn’t this a complete turn around from your previous advocacy of European, or “Aryan”, culture and traditions?

One of the fundamental problems – as I understand it as a result of almost four decades of reflexion upon the problem, and following four decades of varied practical experience and engagement – is that of the innate character of the peoples of the West. It is this character that has allowed The White Hordes to descend to become Homo Hubris, and has allowed themselves to be the allies and servants of the Magian. It is this basal character that has caused The White Hordes of Homo Hubris to destroy by ruthless force the few rebellions, in the West, against the mechanistic, usurious, un-numinous status quo. It is, importantly, this innate character that has led to this status quo, that is manifest in this status quo, based as it is upon the manufacture of un-numinous abstractions and upon the spread of these contagious abstractions, by The White Hordes, throughout the peoples of the world.

It is thus this character that needs to changed, and this requires a new ethos; a new perception, a new attitude, a new perspective; an entirely new way and new ways of living. This change is not going to occur quickly – it will take decades, if not a century, or more probably, many centuries. That is, the current status quo – the perfidy of the nation-State with its tyranny and its tyrannical abstractions will not only remain, but get much worse, and “the people” will, for the most part acquiesce in this, and acquiesce in the increasing tyranny, manifest as this tyranny is in, for example, increased government surveillance, in a lack of personal honour, in compulsory and increasing taxation, in a lack of empathy, a lack of personal manners, in more and more laws in the name of “security” and “peace”, in restrictions on people’s freedom of movement, and in a lack of, or the suppression of, critical debate about certain matters, especially certain recent historical events.

In previous decades, I had hoped that it might be possible to bring about this change of character, from within the West, by “shock and awe” – by creating a revolutionary situation; by precipitating System Breakdown. But my practical experience revealed to me that this just could not be done, for several reasons. Firstly, because The White Hordes, en masse, were mostly quite content with their lot; secondly, because the Magian ethos, the new Magian mythos, held them in thrall, and when it did not there were always, always, willing servants of the Magian and of their ethos to re-enforce their conditioning, to re-educate them, or to arrest, convict, and imprison them, or to inform on those few who were genuine heretics, genuine revolutionaries, genuine outlaws against The System. Thirdly, and perhaps most distressing of all, the fundamental character of even those who claimed to rebel was, for the most part, flawed; with such individuals not being personal examples of the values we and they championed and claimed to be fighting for. That is, they were often, themselves, dishonourable; were often dis-loyal, and mostly did not do their duty.

Thus, my conclusions came to be: (1) that the peoples of the West in general, or even those of one nation, would not revolt, and could not be persuaded to revolt against their masters and against their wage and salary slavery. (2) That they had become so corrupted by the ignoble, un-numinous, ethos that permeated all the societies of the West, that it is was impossible, or seemed to me impossible, to re-awaken them, to imbue them with the virtues of honour, loyalty and duty in their service of their own culture and their own ethos, and that when these noble virtues were shown, by them, it was more often than not only and ever in the service of the Magian; for Magian goals; for and on behalf of the Magian ethos, so imbued had the majority of peoples of the West become with that ethos. (3) That one of the fundamental and important problems was that the Magian ethos itself was an almost alchemical blend of the abstractions, half (or more) from the peoples of the West, and half (or less) directly from the Magians themselves.

But perhaps most important of all, in those previous decades, I had worked on and indeed lived by the assumption that the problem was a simple one of “us” and “them” – of the Magian ethos being just that, purely Magian; purely manufactured by the Magian; that, expressed simply, we had become “infected” by a virus that was Magian in origin and in design; and that thus that “we” just needed to return to “our” own, pure, ethos, our own values, our own ancestral ways, in order to liberate ourselves, in order to cure ourselves of this infection, this Magian distortion.

However, I came to realize, to crucially understand, that “we” ourselves were part of the problem; if not a major cause of the problem. That it was the White peoples themselves – and especially their abstractions – which originally gave rise to and which imbued this ethos with so much vigour, and which has allowed it to so take root among the peoples of the West.

Now, I consider what I term the Magian ethos as something other than simply something manufactured by some other people, such as Zionists, and which thus expresses the ethos, the Zeitgeist, of that people. That is, this Magian ethos is theirs, but crucially also “ours”; an alchemical mixture of ideas, abstractions, and mythos, deriving from both “us” and “them”. Thus, while currently the main beneficiaries of this Magian ethos are the Magians themselves (and especially their new State entity and its satellite entity, Amerika) its origin, its existence, and its continuing vigour and power are now insolubly tied up with the peoples of the West.

In addition, my assessment of the basic character of what I regarded as my own people had been hopelessly idealistic, ridiculously romantic, and thus flawed, and I came, from direct experience, to know their flaws, their faults, so evident in a genuine understanding of their history, their deeds past and present. I also came to know, to understand, my own flaws, my own mistakes. In brief, the situation, the problem, was not as simple as I had naively believed it to be, with the truth being that the Magian ethos has naturally become the ethos of the West since it was to a large extent the creation of the peoples of the West, with some important input, some quite important changes, from and made by the Magian themselves.

So yes, indeed, this is almost a complete reversal of my former position – but one based on, deriving from, my own practical experience. Based upon the realities I encountered and had to deal with. That is, I learned, from experience; and I especially learned from my own mistakes. I also lost that somewhat immature idealism, that romanticism, that I had somehow managed to retain even after decades of revolutionary activism.

Hence, in order to bring about the downfall of The System, we must look to those who have a different character from ours, and different from the Magian, and learn from these peoples of diverse and non-White ethnicity; and change ourselves (inwardly, in character) and encourage these other peoples to understand our flaws, to value themselves, and free themselves from “our” ethos, that is, from the Magian ethos which now dominates the West and has spread over the entire world. They should free themselves of direct control by the West, and rid themselves, wherever they are – even if residing in the West – from any and all Western influences, for the West has now naturally become synonymous with the Magian, synonymous with the Magian ethos, with the un-numinous and tyrannical abstractions of The White Hordes.

Introduction
The downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, the destruction of their nation-States, of The West itself, is something not only to be desired, but also striven toward by all practical means.

Why? Because as mentioned in Chapter Two of The Mythos of Vindex, “The White Hordes of Homo Hubris…have consistently and for many centuries been the destroyers, par excellence, of The Numinous.” In addition, it is and has been The White Hordes of Homo Hubris (Footnote 1) who are and who were the natural allies and the footsoldiers of the Magian, and who are responsible for the present triumph, in the West, of the Magian and the Magian ethos, which triumph has enabled the creation of the tyrannical, dishonourable, modern nation-States with their abstract laws, their materialism and their mechanistic so-called “progress”. For is The White Hordes of Homo Hubris who – doing the bidding of their Magian masters, knowingly or unknowingly – have used brutal force and war to fight and destroy each and every attempt to resist the control of the Magian, just as it is and has been The White Hordes of Homo Hubris who have brutally and ruthlessly put down each and every rebellion against the Magian ethos, and who at the time of writing are engaged in yet another war against those who seek to free themselves from Magian control and who desire to live in communities free of the stifling, un-numinous materialistic, mechanistic, Magian ethos.

Why have The White Hordes of Homo Hubris done this? Why are they, and why have they been, the allies, servants and footsoldiers of the Magian? Is it because of their ethnicity – something innate? Or is it because they themselves have enthusiastically adopted, or became infected with, the Magian ethos itself? Fundamentally, it is combination of both these factors.

The Character of The White Hordes

The White Hordes have, and have had for at least two thousand or more years, a certain innate character (Footnote 2). This character is one of arrogant aggression; of arrogant interference; of cunning; and especially of hubris – that belief, that instinct, that impatience – often born from some feeling of “Destiny” – that “they know better”, that they are somehow “more civilized” than others, and that “progress” or change is in itself desirable. In addition, they seem to have some innate desire to manufacture and to identify with – and some kind of addiction to – causal abstractions; to impose categories, -isms, and -ologies upon themselves, others, the world, and the Cosmos itself.

Basically, they are and have been for thousands of years, restless, and have either (1) never managed, en masse, to establish a balance within themselves and so have been unable or unwilling to manufacture – for long – stable, communities and societies which express, manifest and continually presence the numinous, sans abstractions; or (2) have never been able to control, for very long, their primal instincts, their lack of respect for the numinous, and their innate bullying savagery, although they have managed, or rather connived, to convince themselves, and sometimes others, that they, and their ways, are somehow “civilized”, although this so-called “civilized behaviour” of theirs that they have often been so very proud of is and only ever has been at best a thin veneer, and at worst mere pretence, for while showing to others, and the world, a civilized and “honourable” public face, they have hypocritically continued to act, in private, in an altogether different way, as was for so evident, for instance, in the days of the British Raj in India, and of British control in places like East Africa, where the private lives of the individuals did not match the hypocritical high standards they preached about in public and which they attempted to convince people they were examples of.

This utter hypocrisy, this lack of control, this cunning, this aggression, this hubris, this insolence and disrespect of the numinous, this desire for the illusion and the security of abstractions, is so evident, also and more recently, in the behaviour of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris in places like Afghanistan, which they have occupied by force in order to impose their ways, their abstractions, upon the peoples there. Thus, they have yet again disrupted and are attempting to destroy the ways of life of others; and are yet again using force, terror, cunning, lies – and all the other tactics of the insolent – in order to get those peoples to adopt some mythical idealized way of life, which idealized way of life does not even exist and never has existed even in the Western lands of The White Hordes.

Thus, The White Hordes of Homo Hubris are yet again bringing death, destruction, disruption, hunger, and suffering, to others in the name of some mythical un-numinous abstraction. In the case of Afghanistan, it is in the name of the un-numinous abstraction “democracy” and in the name of “peace”, by which the sly White Hordes mean, of course, the so-called “peace” that arises when one surrenders to a bully, that is, surrenders to them.

The character of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris is also evident in their desire to control, to restrain, to “organize” – to try to dominate – Nature. The character of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris is evident in their obsession with causal Time and with “planning”, which obsession anyone who comes from, or who has lived for any time among, other non-Western communities and cultures and cultures, will recognize. For example, individuals who belong to The White Hordes of Homo Hubris will expect others to share their attitude that “causal Time” is valuable, a kind of commodity, and can be measured out, and, indeed, The White Hordes of Homo Hubris have gone to great lengths – as part of their cultural colonialism – to impose their causal Time and their schedules (based on some abstraction), and their causal orientated mechanistic “planning”, on other peoples, world-wide.

Most other cultures, however, have or had an understanding of life as it is – as a slow flow of slow change, in rhythm with Nature, which slow flow of slow natural and local change those individuals accept and which they do not, for the most part, attempt to struggle against. But, for The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, it is constant struggle – for they desire to impose themselves, their “Time”, their abstractions, upon others and upon Nature. For instance, for them, mañana is an irritation, an inconvenience; just as wu-wei is, and just as “InshaAllah” (as commonly used, for example, by Egyptians) is. For The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, a delay of a day, or a week, or more, is unacceptable, just as for most of their kind the subtle delicacy of chadō is a “waste of time”, an irritation, or something “quaint and touristy”; just as the intricacies and meanings of Ram thai – evolved naturally and locally over periods of natural Time – are and were lost on these impatient “foreign devils” and for whom such things are at best something they can momentarily gawp at. For The White Hordes of Homo Hubris have always ridiculed, or dismissed, or seem as inferior, or wanted to change, the natural practices and ways of every single people they have ever come into contact with, from the Native Americans, of North and South America, to the tribes of Africa, to the lands of Khmer and Tai, to the islands of Nihon.

Given their character, their impatience, their hubris and insolence, their desire for an almost instant gratification, their addiction to abstractions, it is no wonder then that The White Hordes of Homo Hubris came to destroy the culture, the communities, the tribes, of others, and have imposed upon other peoples their own unfeeling, their own causal and un-numinous, abstractions, manufacturing thus modern abstract nation-States in place of the subtle numinous culture of Bushido and Samurai, in place of regional small ancestral kingdoms such as Tai, Khmer, and Mon, and trying to destroy and replace the tribal ways of the Ashanti, Afar, Hopi, Tsitsistas, Ndee, Siksika, and the many, many, others whom they often ruthlessly uprooted from their ancestral lands and whom they demanded, often by force, adopt the ways and abstractions of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris.

Now, of course, they and their savants pretend, for the most part, to “treasure and recognize the importance of the world’s cultural diversity”, but what remains of this diversity – after century upon century of military and cultural colonialism by The White Hordes – is for the most part now rootless, not derived from a thriving, living, numinous and tribal way of life which owes little or nothing to the ways, the abstractions, of the West. Such “cultural diversity” is now often only some “tourist attraction” for the tourists of The White Hordes “to enjoy” and gawp at, or something the Western-style governments and nations of other lands have appropriated and which they promote in order to foster a kind of artificial national unity, and a Western-style nationalism, among the citizens of these more-often-than-not Western created new nation-States, over which the West still retains control, directly or covertly, by the threat of military force, by usurious loans, through “aid”, through political and economic blackmail, or by others means.

Furthermore, what The White Hordes and their Magian masters will not tolerate, in the modern world, is another land, another country, other peoples, being free from Western control, free from Western abstractions, and having a way or ways of life that place their own numinous ancestral culture, their own numinous laws, and a tribal way of living, before the mechanistic material “culture” of the West, before the abstract laws of the West, and before the soul-less abstraction of the usury-driven, debt ridden, tax-demanding nation-State. Any and all such attempts by other peoples to free themselves from Western abstractions, Western control or influence, have been and are ruthlessly put down, with the sly bullying White Hordes of Homo Hubris, and their even slyer Magian masters, always manufacturing some “excuse” for their actions, for their intervention, for the crippling sanctions they impose. (Footnote 3)

Adoption of the Magian Ethos

Long before they devolved even further to become – during and after the so-called Industrial Revolution – Homo Hubris, The White Hordes of the old Europe had begun to undermine and disrupt our natural and slowly evolving connexion to the Numinous, based as this connexion was on tribal communities and the law of personal honour. That is, based on a human, individual, scale of things, on personal knowledge of and interaction with and respect for, others, and upon an awareness, often only instinctive, of ourselves as an integral part of Nature. This connexion thus gave rise to a natural and balanced and fundamentally pagan attitude toward life where the individual for the most part had or could strive to have power over their own affairs or at least the basic freedom to defend themselves with weapons and where the only authority was a local, tribal or clan, one, with those in possession of such authority being personally known to the individual and almost always respected by the individual by virtue of being, for instance, clan or tribal elders.

This undermining and this disruption of the numinous by The White Hordes occurred because of their innate restless insolent character, and because of their manufacture of various un-numinous abstractions which – from the times of Ancient Greece – they interposed between themselves and the reality of the Cosmos and which they increasingly began to adhere to or see as “ideals” to be striven for. These abstractions included, of course, the Platonian “ideal” itself, the notion of potestas tribunicia, and the abstraction of a codifiable law, which established the Imperium Romanum. In many ways, it was this abstraction of a codified law, together with the imposition of a remote, impersonal, authority – often maintained by force and almost always sustained by mandatory taxes – which began the unfortunate dominance of The White Hordes and which marked the real beginning of their de-evolution, of their increasing distance from, and disruption of, the numinous. Of their, in brief, wholesale adoption of and belief in profane abstractions over and above the ways of the Numen. For they began to make this abstraction of a codified law and a remote, impersonal, authority, sustained by mandatory taxes, an ideal to be striven for.

However, it was their outward and inward adoption of the abstractions of what became the religion and dogma of the Nazarene that began not only their great and rapid descent back toward barbarism, and thence ultimately toward and into the new subspecies Homo Hubris, but also and importantly led to an alliance with the Magian, which alliance in its beginnings had more to do with usury, avarice and the power of so-called Kings and rulers, than it had to do with changing the world for the worse based on some messianic abstraction or on some prejudiced desire to “civilize the natives”.

Even so, there were times – several times – when some of the peoples from The White Hordes of the old Europe forsook the ways of abstractions and of profanity, and returned to the old ways of balance and a natural paganism. But every time such a natural balance was restored within some communities of the West, it became undermined, and was ultimately destroyed, by the restless insolent abstraction-loving character germane to the White Hordes themselves, often because of the desire to pursue, to believe in, to implement, some un-numinous abstraction; some dogma, so -ism or some -ology, be these -isms or these -ologies deemed to be “political”, social, or “religious”, which terms themselves (politics, religion, social) are of course just more examples of the un-numinous illusive causal abstractions imposed upon the numinous reality of our organic, acausally-imbued life.

What we have now – manifest in The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and their Magian masters, with their modern tyrannical nation-States – is the result of The White Hordes having: (1) adopted and adapted what became the abstraction of the Nazarene (Magian-derived) way of life; (2) having adopted and adapted the Magian principle of usury; (3) having manufactured from the Nazarene abstraction and from their own other abstractions (such as a codified law and a remote, impersonal, authority, sustained by mandatory taxes) new abstractions; and (3) from them striving to implement, because of and using their innate character, these new abstractions, such as modern “democracy”, the modern nation-State, and the mythical desire for so-called “peace” to be established, of course, by and under the aegis of the armed forces led by or dominated by The White Hordes who have manufactured for themselves a world mandate, courtesy of their creations such as the so-called “United Nations”.

Thus was the rough beast – our mortal enemy – born, to slouch toward Bethlehem, where it helped to bring about the Zionist entity, which entity has come to believe that its messianic hour is almost here, at last.

The Tyrannical Abstraction of The State

One of the fundamental problems of our times in the un-numinous, the tyrannical, the impersonal, abstraction of The State, maintained as this abstraction is by mandatory taxes, by an increasingly bullying Police force which increasingly relies upon surveillance and paid informers, and imbued as this abstraction is with a mechanistic materialism, a capitalistic ethos, and the ever-present threat of individuals being incarcerated in some barbaric prison if they break some law which some servant or servants of The State have manufactured in order to ensure the survival of The State and the survival of those oligarchies who control The State and who benefit from its existence.

The modern State – wherever in the West or in the world it is located – seeks to imbue its citizens with either some sort of abstract national pride (for which it has manufactured a lifeless un-numinous so-called national “culture”) or with a belief in some other abstraction of a political, social, or religious nature, just as it assigns a high priority to other abstractions such as “national security” or “national defence”, and just as it uses all the means at its disposal – from the Media to entertainment to sport to manufactured celebratory events to worthless so-called “traditions” to promises about “change” and “progress” – in an attempt to keep its mostly debt-ridden wage and salary slaves reasonably content, knowing that it needs the taxes it steals and extorts from them in order to maintain its existence, and the existence of the parasites who feed upon it and who benefit from it.

For the modern nation-State is, in truth, a large legalized protection racket, demanding you pay “protection money” or you will be visited by their “heavies” (the Police and the other agencies they control) and then either asked to pay even more protection money (a “fine”) or be imprisoned for however long they deem appropriate in their barbaric prisons, which prisons they maintain as a means of persuasion and control. for the so-called “justice” of the State and its flunkies is an abstract, impersonal, “justice” wholly unrelated to the natural and numinous (and real) justice which derives from personal honour – for their abstract so-called “justice”, and their Police forces and their laws, take away the freedom and the ability of the individual to make their own judgement of others, to be responsible for themselves, and to seek honourable redress in a personal, direct, manner.

What all this amounts to is that The State makes the individual rootless, powerless, and undermines and destroys the connexion of the individual to the numinous, for it destroys that natural, numinous, culture which arises from our natural, tribal, human, way of living. It takes away the ability of the individual to evolve in a natural way, for it replaces the natural perspective of Nature and the Cosmos with the perspective of various lifeless abstractions, all of which abstractions have their own lifeless, un-numinous and ultimately causal and mechanistic goals. Even what passes for “religion” or for a non-material Way in such States is lifeless, un-numinous and ultimately meaningless because it is either an abstraction itself (some -ism, some -ology) or because it demands subservience of the individual to its dogma and does not recognize, promote nor accept either personal empathy or personal honour as a basis for insight and for living.

In contrast, a true numinous way of living is never “religious” and never supra-personal; it is never impersonal and dogmatic, and never demands subservience to some impersonal authority. Instead, a true numinous way of living: (1) always arises from, and is part of, a natural tribal or clan-based community who live, who work, together in some locality and who thus know each other personally or know of, or are related to, the others in such a locality, and (2) always allows for, and indeed often insists upon, the importance of individual empathy, of individual experience, of individual change, never ever thus negating those three most fundamental principles of genuine freedom, of our humanity itself: empathy, personal honour, and a learning from direct personal experience, which personal learning builds noble character and which personal, practical and direct experience is far far more valuable than the abstract impersonal “learning” and the “knowledge” and the “experience” obtained in and enforced by impersonal Institutions and by mandatory State schools.

For the birth of this beast, The State, we have to thank The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and the influence of the Magian ethos, and for the continued existence of this beast and its modern progeny we have to thank the alliance of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and the Magian. However, what began as an alliance has now become, in the last several decades, almost total control of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris by the Magian, and an almost total reliance, by The White Hordes, on not only The State, but also on abstractions, which abstractions now include the new mythos which the Magian and their willing helpers among the White Hordes have developed as one means of control (Footnote 4).

The Downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris

How can we, how should we, deal with this beast, The State, and thus re-establish our connexion to the numinous? First, we have to accept that the peoples of the West – the vast majority of whom are still part of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – will not, and cannot, suddenly change their nature, and what has now become their character, and neither will they, at least not in the next century or so, free themselves from the control of the Magian and from their subservience to The State. For this State still provides them with, and will continue to provide them with, a reasonable materialistic way of life, and the Magian will ensure that the troops and minions of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris will fight for, and/or obtain by whatever means, whatever resources are needed, wherever in the world they are, in order for their lackey Western States, and their own beloved Zionist entity, to survive.

Given all these things, it is reasonable to suggest and expect and to work toward one or both of the following. (1) That the societies of the West have to broken down and disrupted from within by those who understand the perfidy of the abstraction of The State and who desire to live in either a new numinous, and evolutionary, way, or in a way consistent with their own, non-Western, culture or way of life. (2) That those, external to the West, who have suffered most at the hands of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – and who have somehow managed to maintain at least some of their own numinous culture or some of their own ancestral tribal ways, and who may not yet be infected that much by the Magian ethos and the new Magian mythos – should begin to free themselves from Western control and Western influence by practical and/or by “spiritual”/cultural means, which practical means includes the use of armed force, rebellion, and insurrection, and which cultural means include embracing a tribal way of life, ancestral or otherwise.

In both of these, the emphasis needs to be moved away from the traditions, the history, the past culture, the current ethos, of the indigenous peoples of the West (the White “foreign devils”) and instead directed toward either (1) that of other non-Western peoples or (2) toward a new numinous and tribal way of living for peoples of any ethnicity, White and non-White. (Footnote 5)

Thus, it is time for a genuine new beginning, away from the West of today and yesterday. Time for the crimes, the oppression, the tyranny, of the West – of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – to be exposed, to be understood, and for Western ways, values and abstractions to be rejected in favour of the ways, the traditions, the culture, of other peoples and in favour of our new and numinous way. It is time for other peoples to cease to regard and cease to view the West, and The White Hordes of Homo Hubris, as examples to followed and admired, and for the so-called progress and the current prosperity of the West to be understood for what it is: the bloody result of centuries of colonialism; the result of centuries of exploitation of the peoples and resources of the world; the result of centuries of blackmail, extortion, plunder, war, and atrocity after atrocity; the consequence of real holocaust after real holocaust.

Indeed, it is correct to state that the barbarian peoples of the West – despite their sly propaganda to the contrary – are the most blood-thirsty people in human history, having been responsible, during their recent “Second World war” alone, for the killing of over seventy million people, which is equivalent to exterminating more than the whole population of a country such as modern day France. In addition, if one considers the slaughter that the West have been responsible for in the past one hundred and fifty years alone, it is equivalent to exterminating far more than the whole population of a populous country such as modern day Pakistan.

Therefore it is indeed time for Western ways, values and abstractions to be rejected, and for the West itself to be brought down. For the West, with its abstract nation-States, with its White Hordes of Homo Hubris in thrall to the new Magian mythos and fighting for and on behalf of that mythos, is the greatest obstacle to our further evolution; the greatest tyranny to have befallen us in our history, although few among The White Hordes realize this, so brainwashed have they been by the sly propaganda of their nations, and so unaware as they are and have been of true, the evolutionary, purpose of our individual lives. For this modern profane mechanistic materialistic tyranny has taken away from us our numinous tribal ways, taken away our numinous living culture, our empathy, and our personal honour: our freedom to live numinously.

Furthermore, the foundation, the basis, the essence, of the change required to bring about the downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris and their nation-States, is the change toward creating new communities; the change toward new tribes and tribal ways of living, whether these are urban based or rural, and whether or not – in the case of non-Western lands – these are based on or inspired by surviving traditions and surviving ancestral ways. That is, there is and must be a rejection of the abstraction of The State itself, and a desire to embrace the natural, the numinous way, of tribes and clans. The way of the tribe is the way of the future; the way toward a conscious and a continuing evolution, while the way of The State is the way of restriction, of tyranny, of impersonal control.

Hence, the downfall of The White Hordes of Homo Hubris – and of their most perfidious abstraction, the nation-State – begins with peoples external to the West, and with those of non-White ethnicity within the lands of the West. That is, it is time for the non-White peoples of the world to free themselves from the power, the influence, the control, the abstractions, the ethos, of The White Hordes, and to assert themselves; to reject the nation-State in favour of tribes; to either rediscover their own ethos, their ancestral ways, or to develope for themselves new ways, a new ethos, independent from all the un-numinous abstractions of The White Hordes.

In conclusion, the change, the evolution, that we seek to bring about is a natural one; an evolutionary return to what is numinous; a restoration of the balance that has been lost, and this is, in essence, a return to a tribal way of life, a return to and a development of empathy, and a return to the law of personal honour in place of the abstract law of The White Hordes and of the Magian.

This is an evolutionary return because it derives from a knowledge and understanding of the perfidy of abstractions – and especially the perfidy of The State and of conventional religions – and from a knowledge and understanding of ourselves as a nexion. That is, it is based on an appreciation and awareness of the numinous, and is a conscious choice to change ourselves in a natural and numinous way. It is evolutionary because there is no desire to tro to re-create some idealized past or some mythical past way of living, tribal or otherwise. Instead, there is a striving to evolve, to become part of, to bring-into-being, new tribes, to form new communities from these new tribes, and to allow the development of new and numinous and vibrant cultures from these new communities.

Then – having awoken from the abstractive illusions that currently hold most people in a dream-like sleep – we can evolve, change, and develope; we will cease to be children, and instead become mature human beings who can leave their childhood home, this planet we call Earth, evolving thus to become an entirely new species of being.

David Myatt

Notes:

(1) For a general description of Homo Hubris, see (a) Homo Hubris and the Disruption of The Numinous and (b) The Ethos of Vindex In Historical Context (Part Two of The Mythos of Vindex)

(2) A good example of their type of character is the figure of Alexander of Macedon, who was ruthless, cunning, ambitious, vain, arrogant, restless, insolent, who believed himself to have a “Destiny”, and who set about disrupting the ways of life of other peoples, and imposing his own way upon those he conquered, thus destroying their tribal ways and thus upsetting the natural balance which those peoples had attained over long periods of time. In place of their ancestral tribal ways – which maintained for them a connexion to the Numinous – he imposed his own lifeless abstractions.

In describing the nature and character and thus the personality, the persona, of the collective White Hordes, we are, of course, generalizing, based as this generalization is upon a study of the history of the old Europe, and upon the deeds committed by the collective White Hordes in the past thousand years, including their colonialism.

Since it is a generalization, some or indeed many individuals belonging to, or deemed to be belong to, The White Hordes may have a character, a nature, a persona, different from, or even quite distinct from, that of the collective White Hordes themselves.

(3) Communism – and all forms of political socialism – are just more un-numinous abstractions manufactured by The White Hordes and by the Magian, with all or most of these forms requiring some State for them to be, in theory, implemented or tried. Similarly, all forms of modern democracy are un-numinous abstractions and most if not all also require some State for them to be implemented or tried.

Thus, all these forms, all these abstractions – like capitalism and fascism and all conventional religions – do not and never can liberate the individual or a people and return them to a numinous way of life, but instead only serve to enslave them further to un-numinous abstractions.

(4) This new Magian manufactured mythos slyly combines several elements. The first element is the almost mythical belief that the so-called “West” (and especially America) is a bastion of “reason, justice, and freedom”; that “democracy” means “freedom and peace”; and that those who do or who may oppose the nation-States of the West (for whatever reason) are “enemies of freedom, and enemies of reason and democracy”. The second element is that the way to prosperity and “freedom” and happiness lies in accepting the values, the ways, the abstractions, of the West, such as “democracy” and usury. The third element is that the Western created “United Nations” – over which the West maintains control by means of the so-called Security Council – has a mandate to intervene in the affairs of any country, by force if necessary; impose punitive sanctions, and is generally “keeping the peace”, although of course this so-called “peace” is really submission. The fourth element is that the West – and whatever allies it deems suitable (such as the Zionist entity) – has a right, and even a duty, to possess vastly superior weapons, including nuclear weapons, which it can and which it should deny to whomsoever it chooses, so that its military power can never, ever, be challenged by conventional means.

The fifth element – and perhaps the most sly element – of the new Magian mythos is the one that binds all the others together, and this is that the West, and those chosen to be their allies, have in the last hundred years fought and won several hard, difficult, wars for their “freedom” and their “rights”, which “wars for freedom” most importantly include what is called The Second World War, where the forces of “good” (the West, their allies and friends, including the Magian) narrowly defeated the forces of “evil” (the German National-Socialists and the warriors of Nippon) with the German National-Socialists accused of being responsible for the worst atrocity in human history (the so-called Shoah) and which so-called atrocity led to the necessary establishment of the Zionist entity, which entity should therefore be supported at whatever cost, and is itself a bastion of democracy and freedom.

The final element of the new Magian mythos is the belief that the West must defend itself, “whatever the cost”; that threats to “freedom” exist now or will exist; that the security of Western nations and of their allies are vital to freedom itself, and that its people should be and are expected to make sacrifices to ensure “our continuing freedom” even if this means going to fight in some war somewhere, or supporting whatever Western security organizations do and whatever laws governments may manufacture to “protect their freedom and their national security”.

Most if not all the peoples of the West accept and believe in most if not all of this modern mythos.

(5) Basically, the White peoples of the West need to cure themselves of their addiction to, and their desire to manufacture, abstractions, as they need to reform their own character by developing empathy, by re-engaging with and respecting the numinous, and by returning to and embracing the individual way of individual honour. Fundamentally, they need to reject the abstractions of the nation-State, of conventional “religions” and the causality of all “politics”, and instead embrace a new and tribal way of living.

Thus, it is not a question of ethnicity or of ethnic conflict – but rather the opposite; bringing-into-being in the West new ethnically diverse tribes. It is a question of all peoples – but especially the White peoples of the West – rejecting lifeless abstractions and adopting instead numinous ways based upon a new tribal way of life.

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Homo Hubris and the Disruption of The Numinous

The Genesis of Homo Hubris

Homo Hubris is the name given to that new sub-species of the genus Homo which has, in the last three hundred or so years, become the dominant species inhabiting the industrialized countries of what is called “the West”.

The genesis of Homo Hubris lies in the rise of abstract concepts such as that of national-identity – over and above regional, tribal, differences and local (“clan”) identity – which began to emerge in Europe, and especially in Britain, some time before what has been termed “the Industrial Revolution”. This concept of a national, somewhat impersonal and always abstract, national identity, is prefigured, for example, in the speech by Queen Elizabeth the First of England, given at Tilbury, in 1588 CE, and in the dramatised speech, on St. Crispin’s Day, given by Shakespeare to King Henry V in the play (c. 1599 CE) of the same name, where the “nation” of England is eulogized. A more overt expression of this particular abstraction is the Commonwealth of England, established by Oliver Cromwell in 1653 CE, which in many ways was the forerunner of the modern concepts, the modern abstractions, of nation and State theorized by people such as Hegel and Fichte and brought into being after the French Revolution.

It was, however, what has been called “the Industrial Revolution” – which began in the early to middle 1700’s (CE) – which led to the rapid growth and spread of this new mostly urban-dwelling sub-species, Homo Hubris, in thrall to, and manipulated by others with, such abstract notions as “the nation” and “the State”.

Homo Hubris, by nature, is naturally rapacious, and rather war-like, and can often be distinguished from Homo Sapiens Galacticus by their profane “lack of numinous balance” (that is, their lack of empathy), by a lack of knowing of and feeling for the numinous; by a personal arrogance, by a lack of manners, and by that lack of respect for anything other than strength/power and/or their own gratification. One particular feature of the life of Homo Hubris is their dependence upon, and their need and often respect for, machines and technology, which machines and which technology have at best disrupted our balance with the Numinous, and, at worst, have severed our connexion to the Numinous and thus to Nature.

In outward appearance, Homo Hubris – that denizen of the Western megalopolis – is often distinguished by their lack of ancestral costume or genuine cultural apparel. Instead, they almost always either: (1) garb themselves in mass-produced products of consumerism (which more often than not sport some manufacturing logo or some manufacturing name, making them walking advertisements for such consumerism), or (2) garb themselves in what they regard, or have been informed (by some arm of the modern mass Media) is “trendy” or “fashionable”; or (3) garb themselves in the apparel, the outfit, of some modern urban abstract and un-numinous “sub-culture” which they identify with, which sub-cultures interestingly include the modern Armed Forces of the West, with their anonymizing uniforms.

The majority of Homo Hubris dress thus because essentially they have no personal, individual, style and generally possess a herd-like mentality, being unwilling and/or unable to be different from their pees, or “their mates”, or their friends, or their colleagues.  Thus, even when some of them regard themselves as being “rebellious” they are more often than not outfitting themselves (outwardly and often inwardly) according to some “trend” or some passing “craze”, which “trend” or which “craze” are always urban-based, always disconnected from the realness of their own ancestral culture (which ancestral cultures are always rural) and which outward signs of “rebellion” almost always become commercialized, given time.

This outward appearance of Homo Hubris may be said to be an outward sign of their true inner nature, for it is in the nature of Homo Hubris to conform, and to belong to that-which is un-numinous and which lacks a feeling for that natural and dignified humility born from personal experience and/or an innate empathy and sense of honour. Their conformity is most often to some abstraction; to some-thing – such as an idea, a dogma, a creed, an ideology – manufactured by someone else or by some established Institution.

Thus, Homo Hubris is essentially rootless, and prideful. Their “home” is what they make for themselves, and/or for their own family, and this home can be anywhere, for it does not really matter to them where they dwell; and more often than not their sense of belonging, if they have one, is to some modern abstraction, such as some modern nation-State, or to some religion, or to some -ology or some -ism, or to some un-numinous idealized urban place, such as some city or some large national region where they were born, which region is almost always denuded of real tradition and real rural living and culture, and more often than not has been manufactured in some past by some government functionary or some committee and made “real” by some abstract law of some abstract nation-State.

The individuals of Homo Hubris have little or no genuine ancestral culture; nothing that ties them to a real, living (and thus small), ancestral homeland; no sense of belonging to a specific local place or rural area which they have a natural empathy and love for and which they personally know through dwelling there for a length of time of many years. They have no feeling for, and little or no practical experience of, the natural Time – the natural rhythm and cycle – of Nature, but instead only have experience of the abstract measured out causal and urban Time of “clocks”. They have little or no awe of and respect for Nature: of their own smallness and impotence compared to the power and longevity and fecundity of Nature; instead, they exhibit that innate prideful and arrogant attitude of Homo Hubris where they believe or feel – because of some machine, or because of some technology or because of some abstract idea or some ideology or some dogma – that they are “powerful”, or “important”, or have some “Destiny” or can “make some difference” or, worse, that they must and should and can “change things for the better” according to some idea, some ideology, some dogma or some -ism.

They have little or no experience of the slowness and the numinosity of regular manual toil or of manufacturing things using only their hands and hand-tools. Instead, they only have experience of using powered machinery and powered machines which serve to distance them from the materials they are using or which they use to manufacture something which someone else wants or desires or which someone or some oligarchy or some product of capitalism has decreed is necessary for “change”, or for “progress” or from which someone somewhere can make a profit.

They have little or none of that genuine learning and personal knowledge that arises slowly from direct practical personal experience extending over many years and from extended contact with those of a previous generation who have practical skills and practical knowledge to impart, individually, in a natural and slow way. Instead, their knowledge and their learning are abstract, learnt in groups in classrooms or in lecture-rooms or from books or other material published by others, or, now, from the Internet (See Footnote 1) – and is almost always of no immediate, and pressing, relevance to themselves. That is, knowledge, learning, have not grown out, slowly, from within they themselves, and are not rooted in a numinous locale, in an area where they belong by virtue of ancestry and culture and toil. Instead, such knowledge and such learning as they possess are abstract, and have been imposed upon them, by some Institution, or some nation-State, or which they have imposed upon themselves because of some abstract interest or some enthusiasm or because it will help them “get on in life” and enable them to earn more money by toiling in some abstract profession or in some industry or some concern connected to some modern-State or some megalopolis.

In essence, therefore, the fundamental distinction is between: (1) a living, rural and ancestral way of life – which living (and which culture arising from it) always derive from some dwelling in a certain small area by some tribes or some clans – and (2) the artificial, manufactured, living of Homo Hubris: the living exemplified by industrialized cities and towns which towns and cities are now part of some large nation-State.

In the former, there is a knowing of and a respect for Nature, born from personal experience and the often harsh nature of a rural working life, which working life is one of reliance upon hand-crafts, hand-tools and the work of animals.

In the latter, there is a prideful ignorance of and a disrespect for Nature – except, perchance, when Nature touches some individual, bringing thus some misfortune – and a reliance upon powerful machines and machine-driven tools and technology, which powerful machines and machine-driven tools and which technology enable individuals to rapaciously and arrogantly destroy Nature and to rapaciously and arrogantly manufacture and build what is lifeless and abstract and barbaric, inhuman, and urbanized.

Machines, Technology, and The Disruption of The Numinous

Fundamentally, all machines and machine-driven tools – those things which extend the power, the reach, the ability, of a single individual beyond that which they could do, by themselves, during a day of work, with or without the help of other living-beings, such as horses or oxen – usurp the Numinous. That is, they possess the potential to: (1) re-inforce and extend the natural pride and natural arrogance and natural hubris of human beings; and (2) distance the user from Nature and that natural rhythm and natural way of life which encourages empathy and from which genuine (numinous) culture arises. Technology takes this usurpation of the Numinous even further.

However, what is wrong, what is un-numinous and un-ethical, are not such manufactured machines, tools, and technology, per se, but rather, the use to which they have been put, by human beings. Let us consider, for instance, two examples: the automobile, and the agricultural tractor.

1) The automobile – or hubrismobile – has profoundly changed the way of life of not only the countries of the West, but of most of the world. This machine – and similar machines, such as the railway engine – has made travel easy, and often affordable. With the building of roads, and bridges, previously inaccessible areas have been opened up, and developed. A journey that might have taken months on foot, or weeks by horse, could be accomplished in far, far, less “time” and without the rigours and difficulties previously encountered. Isolated communities have been “connected” to towns and cities; and people no longer had to live near where they worked, for they could “commute”, by hubrismobile, by train, by omnibus. People from the cities and the towns could, without much difficulty, swarm into and “enjoy” the countryside, and seek out ever more “remote” places where they, without much effort, could indulge in “leisure activities and pastimes”.

Modern-nations – their people just as much as their governments – enthusiastically embraced these, and associated, new machines. The result has been devastating for rural, isolated, often clannish, communities, their way of life and their culture. Furthermore, the hubrismobile – and similar machines – has distanced modern human beings even further from the realness of Nature and from that slow, natural and necessary toiling effort that walking and riding provided, and which effort enabled the cultivation of empathy and that attitude to life from whence true numinous culture arises. That is, things have been made “too easy” and too disconnected from their realness, from their natural place of dwelling, and as a consequence the haste and the profanity and arrogance of the city and the town have spread, displacing the slowness and toil of walking, the symbiosis required to work with and ride a horse, which slowness, toil and symbiosis engendered a certain numinous attitude to life, a certain natural respect and thence a real human dignity. And it is dignity which is so woefully lacking in Homo Hubris.

2) The agricultural tractor – and associated agricultural machines – have transformed agriculture, leading to the decimation of small diversified family farms, loss of work for farm labourers, and to increasingly large “agri-businesses” which specialize in one, or perhaps, two crops, and which crops are grown for profit and resale and not for the consumption of those growing and tending them.

That is, the emphasis has shifted totally away from small family owned farms whose diversified crops and stock were produced and reared for the consumption of the farmer and his family, with whatever surplus, if any, being sold locally for usually a very small amount of money, or bartered for needed items. Instead, there is now the cult of mono-culture and the agri-business (often employing only a few people and cultivating hundreds if not thousands of acres) which depend on making enough profit to buy and keep (often through usurious loans) the expensive farm machinery required to run such concerns, and which profit motive has required the use of fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and genetically engineered crops, to artificially increase yields. The result – in places such as rural English counties – has been devastating for both Nature and for the rural way of life, and while it is true that such a machine as a small agricultural tractor can and often has made farming easier on the individual undertaking such work, it has led to unchecked and un-numinous change, and to the spread of the arrogance and the ways of Homo Hubris.

An example may illustrate this. This example concerns a village in a rural English county; what it once was, and what it is now. Less than a hundred years ago, this village was a small collection of cottages and farms. The farms themselves contained apple and pear orchards, and many fields of various crops. These crops had been found to be suitable to the type of soil in the area, and each year several fields were left “fallow” so that the fertility of the soil could be regained following a harvest. Naturally, given the orchards, the village and the surrounding area produced cider and perry – with every farm making its own. Indeed, cider was the regular and preferred drink in those days when the water itself was often suspect, and before tea drinking became common and affordable. The surplus crops, when harvested, were taken to the nearby small town, where there was a thriving market. At this time, most of the villagers worked either on the land itself, or in trades or crafts connected with them. For example, there was a village farrier, and a wheelwright, and thus a relative and local self-sufficiency, for most things the village, the farms, needed for their daily life were made of wood, locally cut, shaped, and crafted: carts, fences, gates, doors, even pumps. And what was not so made and crafted of wood, was more often than not made by the local blacksmith, or of stone quarried from somewhere nearby.

There was a sense of identity among the villagers – they were, for the most part, proud to be from the area, and proud of their local ancestry.

Of course, it is easy to idealize such village life. But there was an awareness of and a real sense of belonging. Life, for most of the villagers, was often harsh, sometimes cruel. But there was real individual and local character in the people. There was a real, living, community which, despite the hardship – or perhaps more correctly because of the hardship - slowly prospered over the centuries. There was a real balance with Nature – with the seasons, and the soil for the most part understood and respected, partly because old ways of doing things were carried on, with these old, ancestral ways having been found to be effective. (See Footnote 2.)

Today, however, in this village, this balance, this understanding and this respect for Nature no longer exist, even on the two farms which still remain. The village itself has grown tremendously. Over three score new houses have been built on land once owned by two of the farms. Dozens of trees have gone, and scores of hedges removed, to make way for these new arrivals. One of the other farms is no longer a “working farm” – it is occupied by a “townie” family, and its Barns have been converted into houses, lived in by other “townies” who commute to the nearby city in their cars. The orchards themselves have gone (save for some apple trees in the garden of one of the farms on the edge of the village) as have the fields of crops. Nearly all the fields now grow the regulation wheat, in large fields made by removing boundary hedges so that machines can plant, cultivate and harvest more. And the tragedy is that this wheat often ends up stored in an enormous warehouse where it forms a tiny part of the great and never used European “wheat mountain”.

Furthermore, even the few farmers who remain seem to have lost their respect for and understanding of Nature, ploughing as they do almost to the hedgerow, spraying the fields as they do with dangerous chemicals, and tearing the heart out of their remaining life-sheltering hedges as they do when they recklessly flail away at the wrong times of year with mechanical flails: stripping the berries and buds off in Autumn and decimating the surviving buds in early Spring. Farming has become a business at worst, and at best an occupation. No longer is the land farmed to provide food for the people who farm, with the excess produce being traded for essential items. No longer is there an understanding of husbanding the soil: of caring for it, treasuring it, for the benefit of future generations.

Nearly all of the new villagers work in the nearby city and the nearby towns. They have little knowledge of, and even less understanding of, Nature and the land around them shielded as they are by their centrally-heated, electric-light houses with its running water and flushing lavatories, and conveyed as they are from place to place by their heated, rain-shielding hubrismobiles. To such people, the place where they live is really irrelevant, as long as it is convenient. One of the few remaining attractions of the village is its lack of street lighting, on even the new estates of intruding houses. Thus can the beauty of the stars still be seen, at night, as there can still be a feeling of rural isolation in the darkness. But of course, the majority of people find this darkness – this intrusion of Nature – dreadfully “inconvenient” and have petitioned the local Council to install street lighting, which doubtless the unfeeling townie technocrats will, in time. Meanwhile, many of these village residents have installed intrusive high-power “security” lights on their houses, so keen are they to dispel anything which is natural, and fearful as they have become due to recent spates of burglaries, often by louts from nearby cities and towns who, of course, have easy access to such “rural” places by means of their hubrismobiles.

In particular, the lives of these new “village-dwelling” people are not connected to Nature: they do not depend on Nature, on the soil, the land, around them. Instead, their living depends on the business, the industry, the commerce, of the towns and cities, with such business, such industry, such commerce being for the most part unnecessary and unnatural, existing only to provide more and more unnecessary luxuries and goods, or existing only to implement abstract political and social policies totally unconnected with the land, and the way and traditions of their ancestors.

The truth is that we still are, and have been, too immature, as a species, to use machines and technology wisely; we have let ourselves be overcome with the power, with the capacity for change, with the pleasure and the ease, that they have imbued us with, just as we have forgotten the natural wisdom that we are and should be toiling, working, human beings who, through the natural toil of our work with our hands or with the aid of other living-beings, such as horses with whom we form a symbiotic relationship, can achieve, can establish and can maintain, a natural and a numinous balance with ourselves, with Nature, and with the community where we dwell. We have forgotten that such a simple rural life, such a way of living, does not need to be harsh if we exist in balance – if we co-operate with – others local to us in an empathic and honourable way for our mutual benefit and for our local needs, accepting that we need a little, but not too much, and eschewing out of choice a life of material wealth and luxury, preferring instead a less materialistic, but more satisfying, numinous way.

Machines, and technology, have undermined and then destroyed this balance, and as a result we have now all but lost our natural connexion to Nature, to other human beings, to other life, as we have lost that natural, slow, rural local way of self-sufficient living which slowly grew, century after century.

Machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living have grossly allowed us to place profit before individuals, and luxury and personal greed before a natural balance with Nature, a natural balance with ourselves, and with the place where we dwell.

Machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living have done almost irreparable damage to Nature and to our very humanity. One man with just one machine can now decimate and almost effortlessly destroy in one day acres upon acres of living countryside, of a centuries-old forest, just as one pilot flying one aircraft can in a few seconds, and effortlessly, fire and drop missiles and bombs enough to kill and maim hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, of human beings.

That is, machines and technology have made us more arrogant, more prideful, and far more inhuman than we ever have been, as they have given us the capacity to be far more barbarian than our so-called “barbarian” ancestors, which barbarity we have, in the past hundred years, shamefully and zealously embraced, as witness the hundreds of millions of people that we have killed, injured and maimed, in our wars and our conflicts these past hundred years, which wars and which conflicts used and use a multitude of murderous weapons and in which wars and conflicts our much vaunted modern technology plays an increasing role.

Allied to the use, and important for the spread and acceptance, of machines and technology, has been the abstract idea of “progress”, which particular abstraction is, along with the abstract concept of the modern, and now increasingly tyrannical, nation-State, one of the most profane and destructive and un-numinous abstractions ever manufactured.

The Destructive Abstraction of Progress

The modern Western abstraction (idea) of progress is inseparably bound up with: (1) a desire for and a belief in “change”and continued “growth”; (2) with the belief that we human beings can and should set ourselves abstract goals, unrelated to anything natural or numinous, and strive to achieve these goals;  (3) with the belief that such “change”, such “growth”, and such goals will enable us to achieve such things as “happiness”, “wealth”, “contentment”, “freedom”, and so on etcetera; and (4) with the belief that we can manufacture various “things” (abstractions) – such as, for example, a State, an economy, some laws, some government policy or planning – which will lead us toward the attainment of the aforementioned “happiness”, “wealth”, “contentment”, “freedom”, “equality”, and so on etcetera. For instance, Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Marx’s Das Kapital, and Comte’s Système de politique positive, contain all of these concepts, in greater or lesser degree, concepts eulogized by individuals such as John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer.

Furthermore, one of the fundamental tenets of the Zeitgeist of the modern West is that machines, technology and science can aid, ensure and even achieve the abstract progress that is desired, and that some new “invention” will enable us to make even more “progress”.

All these concepts – like all abstractions – usurp or limit or constrain our own individual judgement, which individual judgement – to be numinous and thus ethical – should and must be based upon empathy, that is, upon: (1) a direct and personal knowing of other individuals, of other life, and of Nature; and/or upon (2) a dwelling in a particular area or locality which we directly know, and have experience of, and where such changes as are made, are undertaken by us or others dwelling there in a natural harmonious way with as little disruption, with a genuine respect for the locality and Nature, and in the knowledge that we are but one small and transitory emanation of Nature. All abstractions distort or destroy our correct, and of necessity our individual, perception of other human beings, and of Nature.

In essence. the abstraction of “progress” disrupts, undermines, decimates, and then destroys our natural connexion to Nature, to other individuals, to our past, and to the Cosmos.  For instance, this abstraction of so-called “progress” often or mostly requires or involves the rejection of the old, tried, tested ways of the past, which ways have slowly evolved in a natural manner from personal and local experience. In their place, there is some new fangled idea or some new theory or some new, “more progressive”, more “enlightened” way of doing things, all of which derive from somewhere other than direct local experience and local personal knowledge, and all of which disrupt or severe our numinous connexion with our ancestral past, with others, and with Nature.

For instance, this abstraction of so-called “progress” replaces the slow rhythm of Nature’s own Time with the abstract “Time” of some abstraction, such as “achieving prosperity and material success” through change and growth, be this individual, regional or national. Thus, and for example, in the name of such material achievement and prosperity, industrial, or commercial, or retail, or some other type of, development is undertaken, and justified as being “of benefit to the people” and a sign of “commitment to the future”, which development and its associated infrastructure almost always disrupts, displaces, or destroys some aspect of Nature, and often encroaches upon, or undermines, or displaces or destroys, small rural, and often locally self-sufficient, community or communities, with the peoples of such communities then becoming dependant upon or part of the new (often local or national government planned) developments and their infrastructure, effectively making them rootless and severing what was often an ancient connexion with Nature and an ancestral way of living.

Thus is the abstraction of so-called “progress” – and the concomitant change and disruption – either imposed upon individuals, by some abstract entity such as a government, or individuals mistakenly impose it upon themselves, singularly, or in collaboration with others, believing that it is “necessary”, or that some other concept, said to make such progress achievable, will improve or otherwise enhance their own life.

However, the numinous reality is that true “progress”, true and numinous change, is only and ever individual and only ever arises – like wisdom – slowly in a natural way, and only “exists” as a greater presencing of the numinous, a reconnexion of ourselves with The Numen, and an enhancement, and evolution of, that connexion. That is. genuine progress – that which is real because it is not a human-manufactured abstraction we have imposed upon ourselves and upon life – cannot be created or achieved by anything other than an inner change within an individual; by the natural evolution of the individual; or by those small, local, and incremental and generally non-disruptive outer changes (for example to our locality) that work with, and which balance, and which continue, what already-is, based as such small and local changes are on the respect for such natural balance that arises from a knowledge that we are but one small and transitory emanation of, and thus a connexion to, Nature.

Conclusion

What, therefore, are the numinous solutions to the problems of the destructive abstraction of “progress” and of the disruption of the numinous caused by machines and technology? What is the numinous way to proceed to restore the natural balance that Homo Hubris has upset?

The solution – the way – is to return to a more rural, less materialistic, more clan-based, way of living. To return to the slow and natural toil of manual labour and a working in harmony with animals. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to honourably co-operate with others who feel as we do in order to slowly bring-into-being new rural and clan-based communities where we can live such a way that our natural balance with ourselves, with Nature, is restored.

It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to restrain and control ourselves, and control our lust for comfort and for luxury, and to place empathy with and compassion for all Life at the centre of our own lives. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to distance ourselves, internally and externally, from the profane, materialistic, egotistic, profit worshipping, machine-worshipping, societies of our age. It is a consciously-made – an evolutionary – decision to appreciate, understand and know our place in Nature and in the Cosmos: as but one small nexion of life, which small nexion affects all other living beings and which small nexion has the opportunity to evolve to be the awareness, to be part of the-being, of Nature and of the Cosmos itself.

It is, in summary, the decision to restore, and to then enhance and to evolve, that connexion to the Numinous which machines, and technology, and the abstractions and artificial goals of modern nation-States and modern ways of material living, have severed, and which connexion has its foundation, in genesis, in empathy, in personal honour and in those small clan-based communities where such empathy and such honour can thrive.

David Myatt

Footnotes:

(1) The Internet itself provides an excellent example of (a) the mis-use of technology by Homo Hubris, and (b) of how such technology enhances the profanity and arrogance of Homo Hubris, and disrupts the Numinous itself.

Genuine learning and a genuine wisdom arises from a reflexion born from personal, direct, practical experience: from an alchemical, inner, symbiosis; from that personal and very individual growth that requires a long period of causal time, often in one place. The Internet, however, encourages and easily facilitates two Homo Hubris like things: (1) the dissemination of abstract, rootless, “knowledge”; and  (2) the immediate dissemination of the mostly fatuous, often ignorant and almost always dishonourable opinions and views of the Homo Hubris hordes. In addition, it is increasingly used, and often covertly censored by, functionaries and flunkeys of modern nation-States to spread their grossly un-numinous abstractions and their propaganda; and now possesses a commercialized Media-infested nature.

Thus, there is the availability and the encouragement of the worthless, the profane, the abstract, the lifeless, the un-numinous, the propagandistic, allowing for and encouraging as never before a pretentious pseudo-intellectual type of “knowledge” and of “knowing”, and an immediate spewing forth of personal dishonour.

Thus, instead of being primarily used – as it might have been – as one new means of communication between rational, empathic, enlightened individuals, it has been used and is being used in the service of Homo Hubris, and of those oligarchies and interest groups which have a vested interest in the continuing profanity of Homo Hubris and in the continuing existence of the un-numinous abstractions on which the modern West is based.

As with many things modern, machine-based and technological, the disadvantages of this Internet now far outweigh its few remaining advantages. In addition, and in particular, the truely empathic, the truely wise – those connected or re-connected to The Numen – have little or no need of the immediacy of such a modern medium. The only minuscule value of the medium of the Internet is that it still currently allows the free dissemination of items contrary to the material, un-numinous Zeitgeist of the modern West, enabling those few who might be interested in more numinous matters to reflect upon such matters, and, after such reflexion, if they consider it suitable, to act upon them, in their own species of causal time and in their own individual way.

(2) As I wrote some years, in a letter to a friend:

The toil of earlier times was often much harder than it is now; but the toil that is necessary, now, to live simply, frugally, is not that hard – although it will be so for those who have never done such work! I remember how many people – especially young people – started work in the fields at my previous place of work. Some lasted a few hours; some lasted a week; a few lasted a few weeks. None lasted longer, leaving us two [old farm hands] with our hoes, our taciturn ways, to knowingly smile.

(3) This particular tenet – this particular abstraction – may be said to have its modern origins in the writings of Francis Bacon.

The clouded sky of most of the daylight hours has given way at last to breaks of blue, and – another day’s work over – I sit by the window that overlooks the hills beyond where trees begin that turning of colour which so marks the downward part of an English Autumn – and my very being is moved as there plays within this room Bach’s so numinous Aria Ich habe genug.

Thus does beauty live, again, and somewhere, here: as if I reaching out can almost touch its very being as one might reach to touch one’s nearby gentle loving lover. But: there is instead only that ache, that sighing, that knowing of a loneliness, clinging – kept small, undepressing, by only memories of so many times, pastly shared, which in their dwelling bring some solace, as out beyond such a presencing of beauty here we still in our, in this, moment feel so many people of this world subsumed in folly, lostness: hubris hiding compassion, a personal love hiding somewhere between dishonour and desire.

Yet, and yet – we have to hope; to cling to such a wistful dream of ours as the early mist of yesterday’s sun-full morning clung to the meadow fields of the Farm as I alone walked among the trees, by hedges, while the light of Dawn broke to reveal a clear sky which sucked away that mist from dewy ground, mist-fully rising only feet, only a few feet, above where the tops of the still growing grass, now only sparsely flowered, gave way to the still cold air seeping up toward the horizon of my dreaming brightening so slowly warming sky.

Thus are there tears as one man’s so small being seeks a Cosmos where belief knows, learns, cares and yet still so honourably desires. But this is not, yet, that death where one might so easily so peacefully pass to that which awaits, beyond – for there seems, feels, so much more living still to do; so many more spaces of causal Time to so drearily fill with ordinary life until we again can be taken away by such sublime perfection of another numinous moment such as this…

DW Myatt

A Brief Analysis of David Myatt’s Philosophy of The Numinous Way

Introduction: Mystic Philosophy of a Modern Gnostic

The Numinous Way is the name given, by David Myatt himself, to his own particular Weltanschauung, his own perspective about life, which he has expounded in a recent (April, 2009 AD) collection of essays entitled Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life, writing that these particular essays “represent the culmination of my own thinking, and thus supersede all other essays of mine about, or concerning, The Numinous Way, and what I, previously, called The Numinous Way of Folk Culture.” Thus, the majority of my references are to the chapters, and appendices, of this work (1).

Significantly, Myatt states that:

“As for The Numinous Way, I do now incline toward the view that this ethical Way of Life, which I have developed, is now independent of me, a complete philosophy of life, and can and should be judged as all such Ways, all such philosophies are judged, on their merits or their lack of them, independent of the life, and wanderings and mistakes, of those individuals who may have brought such Ways into being, or rather, who have presenced something of the numinous in the causal, just as the life of an artist, while it may or may not be interesting, does not or should not detract from or colour an artistic, aesthetic, judgement of his, or her, works of art.”

Myatt’s particular perspective, or philosophy of life – or apprehension, as Myatt himself calls it – is, in my view, fundamentally a mystical one. That is, it is based on a personal intuitive insight about, a personal awareness of, the nature of Reality. This personal insight is that “individual human beings, are a connexion to all other life, on this planet which is currently our home, and a connexion to the Cosmos itself.” (2)

According to Myatt, this awareness is that arising from empathy; more, precisely, from the faculty of empathy, which he explains is an awareness of, and a sympathy with, other living beings (3), and which he defines, in a somewhat technical way, as “a manifestation, an awareness, of our relation to acausality, and in particular as an awareness of the related and dependant nature of those beings which express or manifest or which presence acausal energy and which are thus described, in a causal way, as possessing life” (4). His other, more simple explanation, is of empathy, in relation to human beings, as “our ability to know, to be aware of, the feelings, the suffering, of others.” (5)

This mystical insight of Myatt’s led him, over a period of a decade, to develop and increasingly refine The Numinous Way, and this development and process of refinement was, according to him, inspired and aided by his own personal experiences and by his quest among, and experience of, the religions of the world. As he states (6), his conclusions are:

“The result of a four-decade long pathei mathos: the result of my many and diverse and practical (and, to many others, weird and strange) involvements (political, and otherwise), and my many and diverse and practical quests among the philosophies, Ways of Life, and religions, of the world. The Numinous Way is, in particular, the result of the often difficult process of acknowledging my many personal mistakes – many of which caused or contributed to suffering – and (hopefully) learning from these mistakes.”

These conclusions have led him to reject all the beliefs and views he formerly adhered to, and which he is publicly known for. Among the beliefs and views he has come to reject, as a result of what it is, I believe, accurate to describe as a life long gnostic search for knowledge, and wisdom (7), are National Socialism and its racialist policies, which he had practical experience of, and a personal involvement with, lasting many years.

As Myatt himself claims, his philosophy of The Numinous Way is emphatically apolitical, rejects the dogma prevalent in established religions; rejects nationalism, racialism and racial prejudice; emphasizes and embraces tolerance, and is fundamentally an individual way of life centered on the virtues of empathy, compassion and personal honor (8).

As Myatt states:

“There has been, for me, a profound change of emphasis, a following of the cosmic ethic of empathy to its logical and honourable conclusion, and thus a rejection of all unethical abstractions.” (9)

A Complete Philosophy of Life

In order to qualify as a complete, and distinct, philosophy – in order to be a Weltanschauung – a particular philosophical viewpoint should possess the following:

1) A particular ontology, which describes and explains the concept of Being, and beings, and our relation to them;
2) A particular theory of ethics, defining and explaining what is good, and what is bad;
3) A particular theory of knowledge (an epistemology); of how truth and falsehood can be determined;

It should also be able to give particular answers to questions such as “the meaning and purpose of our lives”, and explain how the particular posited purpose may or could be attained.

What follows is a brief, and introductory, analysis of how Myatt’s The Numinous Way deals with each of the above topics.

Ontology

Myatt, in the essay Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way, states that, according to The Numinous Way, “there are two types of being, differentiated by whether or not they possess, or manifest, what is termed acausal energy”. That is, he introduces the concept of a causal Universe, and an acausal Universe, which together form “the Cosmos”, or Reality itself.

This causal Universe is the phenomenal world known to use via our five senses, and knowledge of this causal Universe is obtained through conventional sciences based upon practical observation (10). The acausal Universe is known to us via our faculty of empathy, since the acausal is the genesis of that particular type of energy which makes physical matter “alive” (11). That is, according to Myatt, all living beings are nexions, which are places – regions (or, one might say, “bodies”) – in the causal Universe where acausal energy is present, or manifests, or, to use Myatt’s term, is presenced. Hence, according to Myatt, “The Numinous Way adds empathy to the faculties by which we can perceive, know, and understand the Cosmos… Empathy is an essential means to knowing and understanding Life, which Life includes human beings…” (12)

In his earlier essay, Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal, Myatt gives a little more detail as to the nature of acausal being, that is, the nature the acausal itself and of acausal energy.

Ethics

The ethics of Myatt’s Numinous Way derive from empathy, and in the section Ethics and the Dependant Nature of Being of the chapter Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way it is stated that:

“The faculty of empathy – and the conscious understanding of the nature of Reality – leads to a knowing, an understanding, of suffering. Part of suffering is that covering-up which occurs when a causal denoting is applied to living beings, and especially to human beings, which denoting implies a judgement (a pre-judgement) of such life according to some abstract construct or abstract value, so that the “worth” or “value” of a living-being is often incorrectly judged by such abstract constructs or abstract values.”

From a knowing and understanding of suffering, compassion arises, and:

“Empathy is thus, for The Numinous Way, the source of ethics, for what is good is considered to be that which manifests empathy and compassion and honour, and thus what alleviates, or what ceases to cause, suffering: for ourselves, for other human beings, and for the other life with which we share this planet. Hence, what is unethical, or wrong, is what causes or what contributes to or which continues such suffering.”

Furthermore, Myatt defines honor (or, more precisely, personal honor) as an ethical means to aid the cessation of suffering (13) and thus as “a practical manifestation of empathy: of how we can relate to other people, and other life, in an empathic and compassionate way”.

In addition, it is worth noting that Myatt views what he calls ‘abstractions’ as immoral, since abstraction obscures, or cover-ups, the essence, the being – the reality – of beings themselves. That is, such abstractions undermine, or replace, or distort, empathy, and thus distance us from life, from our true human nature, and lead us to identify with such abstractions instead of identifying with, sympathizing with, living beings. (14)

Epistemology

In Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way, Myatt writes:

“For The Numinous Way, truth begins with a knowing of the reality of being and Being – part of which is a knowing of the dependant nature of living beings.”

Furthermore,

“There is… a fundamental and important distinction made, by The Numinous Way, between how we can, and should, perceive and understand the causal, phenomenal, physical, universe, and how we can, and should, perceive and understand living beings. The physical world can be perceived and understood as: (1) existing external to ourselves, with (2) our limited understanding of this ‘external world’ depending for the most part upon what we can see, hear or touch: on what we can observe or come to know via our senses; with (3) logical argument, or reason, being a most important means to knowledge and understanding of and about this ‘external world’, and a means whereby we can make reasonable assumptions about it, which assumptions can be refuted or affirmed via observation and experiment; and (4) with the physical Cosmos being, of itself, a reasoned order subject to laws which are themselves understandable by reason. In this perception and understanding of the causal, phenomenal, inanimate universe, concepts, denoting, ideas, forms, abstractions, and such like, are useful and often necessary.” (15)

Hence, Myatt conceives of there being two distinct types of knowing. That of the causal Universe, which derives from our senses and from practical science, and that of living beings, which derives from our empathy with such living beings, from a knowing that we are not separate from those living beings, but only one manifestation of that acausal, living, energy which connects all living beings, sentient and otherwise. (16) This second type of knowing derives from empathy, and is one means whereby we can apprehend the acausal, which is the matrix, The Unity, of connexions which is all life, presenced as living-beings in the causal. (17)

According to Myatt:

“The error of conventional philosophies – the fundamental philosophical error behind abstractionism – is to apply causal perception and a causal denoting to living being(s).” (18)

Praxeology

The primary goal is seen as living in such a way that we, as individuals, cease to cause suffering to other life. This means us using, and developing empathy, and thus changing – reforming – ourselves.

“How can we develope this faculty [of empathy]? How can we reform ourselves and so evolve? The answer of The Numinous Way is that this is possible through compassion, empathy, gentleness, reason, and honour: through that gentle letting-be which is the real beginning of wisdom and a manifestation of our humanity. To presence, to be, what is good in the world – we need to change ourselves, through developing empathy and compassion, through letting-be, that is, ceasing to interfere, ceasing to view others (and “the world”) through the immorality of abstractions, and ceasing to strive to change or get involved with what goes beyond the limits determined by personal honour.” (19)

Why should we pursue such a goal? Myatt answers, in a rather mystical and gnostic way, that:

“Empathy, compassion, and a living by honour, are a means whereby we increase, or access for ourselves, acausal energy – where we presence such energy in the causal – and whereby we thus strengthen the matrix of Life, and, indeed, increase Life itself. Thus, when we live in such an ethical way we are not only aiding life here, now, in our world, in our lifetime, we are also aiding all future life, in the Cosmos, for the more acausal energy we presence, by our deeds, our living, the more will be available not only to other life, here – in our own small causal Time and causal Space – but also, on our mortal death, available to the Cosmos to bring-into-being more life. Thus will we aid – and indeed become part of – the very change, the very evolution of the life of the Cosmos itself.”

The Acausal and The Cosmic Being

Myatt’s concept of what he terms the acausal is central to understanding his philosophy of The Numinous Way. He conceives of this acausal as a natural part of the Cosmos, which Cosmos he defines as the unity of the physical, causal, Universe, and of the acausal Universe. This acausal Universe has an a-causal geometry and an a-causal time, and there exists, in this acausal Universe, a-causal energy of a type quite different from the physical energy of causal Space-Time, which causal energy is known to us and described by causal sciences such as Physics. (20)

This acausal energy is, according to Myatt, what animates physical matter and makes it alive, and thus he conceives as life in the causal, physical, Universe as a place – a nexion – where acausal energy is “presenced” (manifested) in causal Space-Time. Hence, all living beings are, for Myatt, a connection, a nexion, to the acausal itself, and thus all living beings are connected to each other. This connectively is felt, revealed to us, as human beings, through empathy (21). Compassion is knowing, and acting upon, this connectivity of life, since “our very individuality is a type of abstraction in itself, and thus something of an illusion, for it often obscures our relation to other life…” (22)

The acausal is thus the matrix of connectivity, where all life exists in the immediacy of the moment, and where causal abstractions, based on finite causal thinking, have no meaning and no value.

Myatt conceives of what he terms a Cosmic Being, which is regarded as the Cosmos in evolution, becoming sentient through the evolution of living beings. That is, the Cosmic Being is itself a type of living entity, manifest (or “incarnated”) in all living beings, including ourselves, and Nature. (23)

“The Cosmic Being….. is not perfect, nor omniscient, not God, not any human-manufactured abstraction. That is, it is instead a new kind of apprehension of Being: a Cosmic one, based upon empathy, and an apprehension which takes us far beyond conventional theology and ontology.” (24)

Thus, this Cosmic Being is not to be viewed in a religious, theological, way, as some kind of deity, for we are part of this Being, as this Being is us and all other life, changing, evolving, coming-into-consciousness (25).

Pathei Mathos

One phrase which frequently occurs in Myatt’s writings about his Numinous Way – and which he often uses in his private correspondence and his autobiographical essays – is the Greek term πάθει μάθος. Myatt, in his own translation of The Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translates this as learning from adversity. Pathei Mathos is how Myatt describes his own strange personal journey, his gnostic search for knowledge, wisdom and meaning, and his ultimate rejection of the various beliefs, ideologies, and religions, he studied and embraced in the course of this four decade long journey.

A large part of this learning from adversity is, for him, firstly an acknowledgment of his personal errors in adhering to and identifying with various “abstractions” – which he admits caused or contributed to suffering – and, secondly, the sometimes painful and difficult personal process of learning from these mistakes and thus changing one’s outlook and beliefs in an ethical way.

As Myatt states:

“In essence, there was, for me, pathei mathos. Due to this pathei mathos, I have gone far beyond any and all politics, and beyond conventional religion and theology toward what I believe and feel is the essence of our humanity, manifest in empathy, compassion, personal love and personal honour. Hence, I cannot in truth be described by any political or by any religious label, or be fitted into any convenient category, just as no -ism or no -ology can correctly describe The Numinous Way itself, or even the essence of that Way. Therefore, I believe it is incorrect to judge me by my past associations, by my past involvements, by some of my former effusions, for all such things – all the many diverse such things – were peregrinations, part of sometimes painful often difficult decades-long process of learning and change, of personal development, of interior struggle and knowing, which has enabled me to understand my many errors, my multitude of mistakes, and – hopefully – learn from them.” (26)

In addition, he does not make any claims for his Numinous Way, other than it represents his own personal conclusions about life.

“The Numinous Way is but one answer to the questions about existence; it does not have some monopoly on truth, nor does it claim any prominence, accepting that all the diverse manifestations of the Numen, all the diverse answers, of the various numinous Ways and religions, have or may have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose – that of bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to cease to cause suffering, to presence the good, to be part of the Numen itself.” (27)

Conclusion

This short overview of Myatt’s Numinous Way reveals it as a comprehensive and, in my view, rather original, moral philosophy with an ethics and a praxeology which, while having some resemblance to those of Buddhism, are quite distinct by reason of (a) how Myatt relates, and defines, empathy and honor, and how such honor allows for the employment, in certain situations, of reasonable (“honorable”) force (28), and (b) how Myatt views human life in terms of the acausal, and as a means for us to “reform and evolve” ourselves.

The goal of The Numinous Way is seen as us, as individuals, becoming aware of and having empathy with all life, and this involves us using and developing our faculty of empathy, being compassionate, and thus increasing the amount of life, of acausal energy, in the Cosmos, leading to not only the evolution of life, but also to a cosmic sentience, which we, when we are empathic, compassionate and honorable, are part of and which we can become aware of.

In addition, as his many autobiographical essays and his published letters reveal (29), The Numinous Way – as outlined in the recent compilation The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion, and Honour – has no relation whatsoever to any of Myatt’s previously held political views and beliefs. Indeed, Myatt is quite clear that he regards both race, and “the folk”, as abstractions which, like all abstractions, obscure and undermine the numinous and which are detrimental to empathy and compassion and, ultimately, unethical and therefore dishonorable. (30) Thus, and rather confusingly given the terminology, this new apolitical Numinous Way – with its emphasis on personal, ethical, change and the cessation of suffering – is completely distinct from his much earlier, now rejected, philosophy which he first called “Folk Culture” and then called The Numinous Way of Folk Culture.

Thus, The Numinous Way, as expounded recently and as developed by Myatt in the past two years, is not only a rejection of all of those previously held beliefs and views of his, but possibly also, as he himself claims, a new moral way founded on his own learning from his experiences and errors.

JR Wright
Oxford
April 29, 2009 AD

1) This work (currently an e-text in both html and pdf formats) appears in some editions under the alternative title The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion, and Honour. In addition to citing this work, I have, on occasion, referred to recent private correspondence between Myatt and myself (both written, and e-mail) where he elucidates certain matters in response to a particular question, or questions, of mine.

Myatt admits that, after his conversion to Islam, he did continue to develop and refine this Numinous Way, spurred on by his experiences in the Muslim world, and it was these experiences – and his study of Islam – which significantly contributed to him expunging what he called the “unethical and dishonourable abstractions of both race and the folk from this philosophy.” Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, January 7, 2009

2) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
3) In Compassion, Empathy and Honour: The Ethics of the Numinous Way
4) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way
6) Introduction, Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life
7) A Gnostic is someone who seeks gnosis - wisdom and knowledge; someone involved in a life-long search,a quest, for understanding, and who more often than not views the world, or more especially ordinary routine life, as often mundane and often as a hindrance. In my view, this is a rather apt description of Myatt.
Refer to Frequently Asked Questions About The Numinous Way and An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
9) Introduction, Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life
10) Refer to the section Ontology and The Numinous Way in the chapter A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction, and also to Myatt’s earlier essay Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal which is referenced in that chapter.
11) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
12) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
13) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
14) Refer to Myatt’s recent essay, A Change of Perspective, dated 2454949
15) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
16) Refer to An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life and Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way and also Presencing The Numen In The Moment
17) A Change of Perspective. Also, private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, April 23, 2009
18) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
19) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
20) Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal
21) Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, January 29, 2009
22) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life. See also The Numinous Way and Life Beyond Death
23) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way. Also, private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, February 2, 2009
24) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way
25) Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, February 2, 2009 and private letter from Myatt to JRW, which he dated 23.iv.09 (CE)
26) Presencing The Numen In The Moment
27) The Empathic Essence
28) Refer to An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life and also The Principles of Numinous Law
29) Among his dozens of recent autobiographical essays are the following:

So Many Tears
Love, Deities and God: Redemption and The Numinous Way
An Allegory of Pride and Presumption
One Simple Numinous Answer
The Empathic Essence

I have collected some of his personal letters in a pdf file entitled The Private Letters of David Myatt, Part 1
30) Refer to Frequently Asked Questions About The Numinous Way, where Myatt writes that “such a concept as “the folk” now has no place in The Numinous Way…” See also The Development of The Numinous Way and Other Questions and especially Questions About Race, The Folk, and The Numinous Way where it is stated:

Over the past decade there has been, for me, a complete change of perspective, for I have gone from upholding and violently propagating the racialism of National-Socialism – and encouraging the overthrow of the existing status quo through revolutionary insurrection – to the acceptance of empathy and compassion, and to that gentle, quiet, desire to cease to cause suffering, which form the basis for what I have called The Numinous Way, with this Numinous Way being apolitical, undogmatic, and considering both race and “the folk” as unethical abstractions which move us away from empathy and compassion and which thus obscure our true human nature.

Why unethical? Because The Numinous Way uncovers, through empathy, the nexion we, as individuals, are to all life, thus making us aware of how all life – sentient and otherwise – is connected and part of that matrix, that Unity, which is the Cosmos, and it is a knowing and appreciation of this connexion which is lost when we impose abstractions upon life, and especially when we judge other beings by a criteria established by some such abstraction. For this knowing and appreciation of our connexion to other life is the beginning of compassion, and a presencing – a manifestation – of our humanity, of our knowing of ourselves in relation to other life, and the Cosmos itself; and, thus, a placing of us, as individuals, in an ethical, and a Cosmic, perspective.

This change of my perspective – this personal change in me – arose, or derived, from several things: from involvement with and belief in, during the past decade, a certain Way of Life, considered by many to be a religion; from thinking deeply about certain ethical questions whose genesis was reflecting upon my thirty years of violent political activism; and from a variety of personal events and experiences, two of which events involved the loss of loved ones, and one of which loss involved the suicide of my fiancée.

However, this change was a slow, often difficult, process, and there was to be, during this decade, a stubborn refusal, by me, to follow – except for short periods – where this change led me; a stubborn refusal to-be, except for short periods, the person I was shown to be, should-be, by and through this alchemical process of inner change. Thus was there a stubborn clinging to doing what I conceived to be my honourable duty, and it is only in the last month that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion.

During this decade of inner reflexion, of great outward change – of lifestyle, occupation, belief, place of dwelling – there was a quite slow rediscovery of the individual I had been before my fanatical pursuit of a political cause became the priority of my life: the person behind the various rôles played or assumed, over more than three decades, for the purpose of attaining particular outer goals deriving from some abstraction, some ideal, or some other impersonal thing. That is, I gradually, over the past decade, ceased believing in a certain principle which I had formerly accepted; which principle I had placed before my own personal feelings; which principle I had used, quite deliberately, to change myself; and which principle I had stubbornly adhered to for almost four decades, believing that it was my honourable duty to do so.

This principle was that in order to attain one’s “ideal world”, certain sacrifices had to be made “for the greater good”. In accord with this principle, I considered I had certain duties, and accordingly sacrificed not only my own, personal, happiness, but also that of others, including that of four women who loved me; and it is perhaps fair to conclude that it was this principle which made me seem to others to be, for three decades, a political fanatic, and – for many years after that – a kind of religious zealot. Indeed, it is probably even fairer to conclude that I was indeed such a fanatic and such a zealot, for, in the pursuit of some abstraction, some ideal, some notion of duty, some dogma, I deliberately controlled my own nature, a nature evident – over the decades – in my poetry; in my wanderings as a vagabond; in my initial enthusiasm as a Christian monk; in the tears cried upon hearing some sublime piece of music; in my love of Nature, and of women. That is, there were always times in my life when I reverted back to being the person I felt, I knew, I was; always times when I stopped, for a few months, or a year or maybe longer, interfering in the world; when I ceased to place a perceived duty before myself, and when I thus interacted with others, with the world, only in a direct, personal, empathic way sans some ideal, some dogma.

Now, I have finally come to understand that this principle of idealism, the guiding principle of most of my adult life, is unethical, and therefore fundamentally wrong and inhuman. That is, it is a manufactured abstraction; a great cause of suffering, and that nothing – no idealism, no cause, no ideal, no dogma, no perceived duty – is worth or justifies the suffering of any living-being, sentient or otherwise. That it is empathy, compassion and a personal love which are human, the essence of our humanity: not some abstract notion of duty; not some idealism. That it is the impersonal interference in the affairs of others – based on some cause, some belief, some dogma, some perceived duty, some ideology, some creed, some ideal, some manufactured abstraction – which causes and greatly contributes to suffering, and which moves us far away from empathy and compassion and thus diverts us from our humanity and from changing ourselves, in a quiet way, into a more evolved, a more empathic and more compassionate, human being.

Thus, in many ways, The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past month (See Footnote 1) – represents my true nature: the hard, difficult, re-discovery of what I had controlled, and lost; and, perhaps more importantly, an evolution of that personal nature as a result of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.

Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do. For, during all the decades of my various involvements – of my arrogant interference based on some abstraction – I sincerely believed I was doing what was “right”, or “honourable”, and that such suffering as I caused, or aided, or incited, was “necessary” for some ideal to be born in some “future”.

But now my inescapable reality is that of a personal empathy, a personal compassion, a simple, quiet, letting-be; a knowing that such answers as I have, now, are just my answers, and that I have no duty other than to be human, to gently strive to be a better human being through reforming myself by quietly cultivating empathy and compassion. Of course, I do not expect to be understood, and probably will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, involvements.

So I rest – tired, awake, exhausted, from days of work,
Worry, Dreams, and Thought
Resting while the hot Sun flows
And the fastly flowing nebulae of clouds, wind-spaked,
Grow tendrils to shape themselves with faces
Here:
One planet gasping as it gasps
Since the slaying by Homo Hubris never ever seems
To stop.

Too late the empathy to set us flowing
Back to love?
So much promise for so long undesired
I am left sad, warm, sleepy
While the Summer Sun brings peace enough
To sleep-me
As the circling Buzzard
Cries.

So There Is Warm Sun

David Myatt
2454949.773

Source: http://www.numinousway.info/pathei-mathos/change_perspective.html

Footnote:

1) See my revised essays collected under the title The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion and Honour.