Transcending the Political

Pure Metaphysics - Going Beyond Application and Dualism

The Necessity of Hierarchy

Before we digress into the fullness of this topic, we will mention that we draw heavily upon Rene Guenon’s work here, especially his Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, with regards to the relationship between the Metaphysical and the Political positions respectively. To make this more apparent, we must assess such factors in detail.

First, we must make evident the Traditional Doctrine of the Four Estates or Castes (see our The Esoteric and Cosmological Significance of Four), of which there is the Priestly (Brahmin) which is the sacred authority, the Warrior Elite (Kshatriya) which is the temporal power, the Merchants and Craftsmen (Vaishyas) which provide materially for the realm, and the Worker (Shudra) which provide only their bodies for labor. The hierarchy between them operates from the top to the bottom respectively. It is important to note that all of humanity is unified in the spirit, and that this often predisposes people to focus on the equality of humanity with respect to this notion, but true equality does not exist with respect to hierarchical organization in physical manifestation, and the same is true with regards to ontological levels of reality, as well as the beings within them. Each hierarchy is necessary to either support or direct others beneath them, but one clearly must inform the other and claim superiority with respect to its own domain. The supremacy of any estate above the sacred authority only leads to consequences and the degeneration of political manifestation.

With respect to the Four Estates, with the Priestly having supremacy in the organizational hierarchy, whose domain is the sacred and spiritual in the mode of contemplation, this will naturally lead to a Theocratic government, since the focus of a Traditional civilization will be with respect to its religion, in accordance with esoteric non-opposition and true spiritual vitality, and these metaphysical truths will bear out in practice in the application of its government. If this relationship begins to be inverted by putting the Warrior Elite, whose domain is the temporal powers in the mode of application and action, above that of the Priestly, this causes the manifestation of a more so Monarchial government, in which temporal affairs take supremacy over eternal focuses and principles. However, the temporal power is heavily dependent and receptive upon and towards the universal knowledge obtained through the spiritual disciple of the sacred authority, that which has measure and knowledge of eternal truths of a higher order. If the temporal authority is receptive and of a lower hierarchy to the priestly, they will better know how to use this knowledge in the domain of application in politics and government, whereas the absence of this universal knowledge will necessarily lead to imperfections that predispose it to being usurped by the lower estates or degenerate into a state in which the lower estates predominate. Conversely, only the Merchants and Craftsmen are adequately able to provide for the realm, without the predisposition to push the masses towards purely economic, or, rather, secular focuses, insofar as the Temporal Powers are carrying out their proper duty, and the Worker class can only be properly provided for, physically and spiritually, and add to the maintenance of the realm if such hierarchy is maintained. It is clear, stemming from the modernized West and corrupting the East away from its Traditional character, that such hierarchical organizations no longer truly exist in their proper orientation.

This devolution is in accordance with the Traditional Doctrine of downward cosmic manifestation, in which the course of humanity is progressively stepping away from Tradition in which spiritual authority and universal truth is supreme, moving towards materialization and then dissolution, the latter of which is the current state of affairs in most of the world. This process can indeed be noted in the political domain as well. The revolt of the Warrior Elite against the Priestly naturally leads to the revolt of the Merchants and Craftsmen against the Warrior Elite, which causes the transition from Monarchy to Democracy. It should be no mystery to many that the neo-liberal and democratic mindset goes hand in hand with capitalistic activity and speculation, i.e. economics divorced from higher principles. This gives rise to the importance and predominance of banking, corporations, and, by association, the Merchants and Craftsmen being in control of temporal affairs by proxy, which is well evidenced by the practice of lobbying and special interest groups, on top of corporations heavily being involved with the governmental organizations and politicians within democracies across the world.

This democracy will, naturally, devolve into the creation of Tyranny, in which the lowest estate of the Worker will assume supremacy, either by having a tyrant at the top that extends from this milieu, having an inversion of metaphysical principles of governance, or by having the workers, i.e. proletariat, taking charge and abolishing all hierarchy of social order, through which a tyrant will naturally take charge. This Tyranny can only be understood as the manifestations of Fascism and Communism respectively, though there can indeed be manifestations of Tyranny outside of these ideological frameworks, and this is perhaps why Julius Evola in particular was so critical of both Fascism and Communism for similar, yet divergent, reasons, and that the two are very much “two sides of the same coin”.

It is evident that the 3rd Estate, i.e. the Merchants and Craftsmen, have had the lion’s share of global control in the macrosphere of human activity since the colonial and imperial Western eras, stemming from the impulses that caused merchants to focus on greater international trade leading into the Renaissance, another symptom of modernity well noted (see Crisis of the Modern World, Ch. 5 “Individualism”). It stands to reason then, evidenced by the emergence of Communism, Fascism, and other totalitarian regimes that have emerged in the last 100 years, that a time very well may come where Tyranny via the 4th Estate becomes the predominant global force before the End of Days, and we all very much may be pushing in that direction over time, progressively marching towards the eventual conclusion of the lesser possibilities of cosmic manifestation that is most indicative of the reign of the Anti-Christ. We leave these speculations here, and progress towards furthering the core element of this work.

The Symbol of the Sphinx

The Traditional symbol of the Sphinx confuses and mystifies many of the current age, due to their incomprehension of sacred symbols and esoteric symbology, subject to purely profane points of view that are evident of the signs of the times. To best understand the significance of such a symbol, certain considerations must be taken to elucidate such truths as clearly as possible.

We must first start by considering the evidence shown by the Great Sphinx of Giza, one of the most impactful artifacts from the ancient world. It is a reclining creature with a lion’s body at rest, all with the head of man looking outward towards the world, upright and stoic, gazing into eternity. The head, in this instance, is reflective of the sacred authority of man fully realized within the divine order with knowledge of universal truth, reflecting his divine nature in his ideal mode. In contrast, the animal nature of man in the physical is symbolized by the lion body, a lesser nature that is subject to mastery by man’s higher nature, while also simultaneously being symbolic of potency and being the apex of the creatures of the wild, and this is also symbolic of the temporal power of man’s application of divine knowledge in the domain of the political. Do note that, given that the sphinx is the fusion of the divine man and human animality, when divine knowledge is properly applied in the temporal that the sphinx is indeed at rest — man is effortlessly able to maintain political mastery without the need for action, though the potential for action is still there.

We will also say in passing that the symbol of the sphinx is manifest from spiritual impulses that extend from the previous cosmic cycle of the spiritual Bronze Age, in the domain of contemporary pre-history, and a vestige of certain aspects of Atlantean spirituality. The greatest cause behind such considerations for some is that, through recent research and speculation, it has been noted that the Sphinx of Giza, as well as the Pyramids of Giza, very well may actually pre-date the Egyptian civilization entirely. Though for those with more Traditional considerations this may not be all too surprising, considering that in Plato’s Timaeus, the core text that speaks about the existence of the Atlantean civilization before the Great Deluge that ushered in the current Iron Age of spirituality, it was the Egyptians that retained the knowledge of Atlantis and their period of colonization, and the Egyptians very much viewed the Greeks “as children”, with the latter possessing the same gods as the former but simply with different names.

Such evidence of this Traditional symbol can also be seen in the Major Arcana of the Tarot - X - The Wheel of Fortune:

At the top of the wheel is the sphinx, evidencing the supremacy of divine animality, with the wings added in tandem to emphasize this upward tendency, at the height of the cosmic order which is symbolized by the wheel (take, for example, the Wheel of Dharma in this context, or the consideration of “celestial spheres”). The fact that the sphinx is also holding a sword, a symbol of temporal authority, should also further solidify the concordance of the lion’s association with temporal mastery. Regardless, it is obvious to many, however, that man in general participates in a fallen state as a consequence of the Great Fall, as attested to especially within the book of Genesis as well as the Kore Kosmou (i.e. Holy Virgin, or “Holy Pupil”, with “pupil” taken in the context as both student and as the part of the eye, the pupil taken as the center of focus or center of the world, a true “spiritual center” - of which Egypt was considered, given the fact that most ancient maps center themselves around Egypt).

The downward tendency of cosmic manifestation is shown by the monkey on the left, with primates being symbolic of a degenerate form of humanity. For example, St. Augustine refers to Satan as the “Simius Dei”, the “ape of god”, a poor imitation of the Imago Dei, i.e. the image of God — of which man is a reflection. Conversely, the upward tendency towards the ideal of divine animality is the dog on the right, with the canine not only being “man’s best friend” but also cultivated from the wilderness as wolves and wild animals into the companions of man, just as man is the companion of God (see Meditations on the Tarot).

The wheel turning in the constant flux of these downward tendencies, best understood as “chaotic” or “centrifugal” forces, and upward tendencies, best understood as “order” and “centripetal” forces, is symbolic of the great drama of cosmic manifestation with respect to divine law. It should be noted that this Major Arcana of the Wheel of Fortune is the 10th, with 10 being the sum of all the divine years of the four cosmic cycles added together, and 10 being symbolic of temporal order (see again our The Esoteric and Cosmological Significance of Four). We will also note in passing the “Fortune” understood here should be identified as “Necessity” which extends from the Providence of God’s Divine Plan, since that which is natural is, by convention, necessary.

If only were humanity to rise back to its divine station, through contemplation and remembering of the fullness of supra-human wisdom, would the spiritual sphinx of humanity be restored and allowed to be at rest.

Contemplation over Action and Against Duality

To further emphasize the importance of hierarchy, with respect to the Sacred Authority having a necessarily higher station than Temporal Power, contemplation is and needs to be superior to action, since the former is reflective of the activity of the Sacred Authority and the latter with Temporal Power. Just as essence is superior to substance, quality over quantity, purusha over prakriti, etc. — the same must be with respect to contemplation over action, since the former informs and is superior to the latter. Just as pure substance without essence is an illogical impossibility and more so symbolic of a tendency towards “matter”, pure action without contemplation would be meaningless agitation and chaos, a veritable flailing about of ineffectual seizing (see Guenon’s Crisis of the Modern World, Ch. “Knowledge and Action”).

As such, action within the temporal, i.e. the secular domains of the social, political and economic, cannot be the prime aim of human activity. Instead, focus on contemplation ought to be the primary focus of the collective whole of the modern man going forward, so that contemplating the eternal truths and deep mysteries of being and life borne from Tradition will draw us back upwards to attaining that which has been lost to us since the Fall, and will likely only bear itself out as being fully manifest towards the end of the age. The focus on the purely temporal can only lead towards dispersion and dissolution, as a result of its association with change and becoming, as well as chaos and centrifugal force. Therefore, contemplation on the supra-mundane can only allow for a proper reorientation and centrality of spiritual intuition to draw us back to the proper station to properly allow for application, ideally within the new Paradise that will be borne from the age to come. We will emphasize that this is not a purely passive process, that our agency, both with respect to contemplation and action that is informed by it, is required, for as the Lord’s prayer tells us: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done/On Earth as it is in Heaven”.

Despite the fact that existence within the physical necessitates duty and action, with respect to Dharma in Hinduism especially as the Bhagavad Gita tells us, we must rescind our attachment to the outcomes of such action and plant ourselves firmly within the eternal, and this simply cannot be done without reestablishing the supremacy of contemplation. Contemplation, the activity in and of itself, also leads towards the process of progressive spiritual realization of purely esoteric truths, regardless of faith, that are beyond opposition since they all extend from the same One, since all extends from and is within the One True God — Being is synonymous with He, and, since He is eternal, so Being is eternal, as is Truth.

“I am that I am.” [Exodus 3:14]

Note: 3.14 is the first 3 digits of π, necessary for the calculation of the circle, an eternal symbol of that which is without beginning or end, with God being a Trinity.

With a reintegration into the unicity of universal truths in complete concordance with Traditional Metaphysics, all opposition and duality disappears, since duality is reflective of multiplicity and divergence within manifestation. Wherever we look in this day and age there is nothing but disintegration in secular, and arguably some religious, spaces. From a purely cosmogonic point of view, God is the fusion of subject and object, since He is the primary object of all real knowledge, as everything extends from Him, and He is the only true subject, with the concept of the individual “self” being but an illusion, which the Advaita Vedanta school of thought in Hinduism of Sri Shankaracharya shows by identifying the self (atman) with the supreme reality (Brahman) — note the etymological association with Brahmin (priest) and Brahman here — best symbolized as the individual being but a virtual reflection of the sun, the symbol for the divine reality which illumines all, in a mirror.

We will further the truth of this symbol by noting that Kant recognized that the Categorical Imperative of the Self is supra-individual and beyond pure logic, as evidenced in his Critique of Pure Reason, because the self extends from and is identified with divine reality. We must also relate that St. Augustine identified the original sin of man with the transgression of man viewing himself as separate from God, by the effect of divorcing man’s will from God’s Will and defying Him. Even though it is universally possible, via the existence of the Freedom of the Will, through God’s gift to transgress against Him, it is never and will never be truly desirable for one to do so.

As such, duality in the domain of application, without adherence to Traditional Metaphysics, is not only eventual but also leads to a greater degree of multiplicity. The reason why dualism is the primary mode of such factors is that the focus in the domain of action and application leads to the natural consequence of focus on the natural, i.e. secular, domains, as previously stated, and this naturally leads to division via an adversarial, i.e. “us vs them”, mentality, emblematic of the way in which people view the world purely through physical factors of outward manifestation, i.e. appearance and the exoteric alone. It’s no surprise that Nationalism, a decidedly modern ideology, is the key impetus that creates a focus on physical mastery, i.e. dominion, which causes competition for physical resources, which only leads to the oppositional force of stripping resources away from others. It should be noted that this leads to an exceedingly materialistic mindset, and that there may be no ideology more materialistic than Communism and Fascism, since their primary focus is the acquisition and allocation of resources with respect to some perceived equity and state supremacy. Additionally, this dualism steeped in heterodoxy and modern principles causes fracturing, both within Traditional and modern spaces, and the break-up of various sects and denominations within religious and political orders.

We need only cite the examples of the plentitude of Protestant churches that exist today, many of which have split off into various factions and are even subject to dissolution entirely, perhaps not surviving past this century when demographic principles are taken into consideration, and similar impulses may be seen in Islam with the Salafi movement going forward. The political domain is also decidedly fractured. Despite the fact that many two party systems emerge to form compromise and consensus, to achieve a majority in the electorate, these parties are also ideologically fractured and turn into different factions, with the greatest mutability being present in the parliamentary, multi-party democracies of the world. There are even many parties that form for a specific purpose and then subsequently dissolve when that end is achieved, purely focused on seeking a temporal goal without adherence to any higher principle, even of a lesser, profane modern ideology.

Therefore, to transcend the political we must also transcend the dualistic mode that subjects humanity, both in the microcosm and macrocosm, to division and dissolution, or else run the consequences of being used to ends that are against our best interests, either physically, mentally or spiritually. For example, in the Book of Revelations [20:7-9] it states that the Satan will be loosed upon the world to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ, and the latter will bring the nations of Gog and Magog from the Four Corners of the Earth to participate in the final battle. The same process is mentioned in the Qur’an as well in Surah Al-Anbiya [21:96] when Al-Dajjal (“the deceiver”, taken as Anti-Christ in the Christian Tradition) will release the nations of Yajuj and Majuj for the final battle as well.

It is important to note that these nations of Gog and Magog, Yajuj and Majuj, are global, and that they are opposed to one another. They’re not localized from a particular part of the world but are present throughout it, and that all these people are anti-thetically separate from one another, even inside their own local nations. People in their own places are made to hate one another by participating in the worldliness of the world, in the modern deception of secular politics, and this causes divisions that would have family kill family, child kill parent, and all other manner of atrocities. What could this not be more emblematic of than the current divisiveness in global politics between Left and Right, Democratic and Totalitarian, and West and East? Additionally, both parties serve as controlled opposition, bearing out the same ultimate goal, that is the creation of the reign of the Anti-Christ.

Etymologically, it must also be noted that these aforementioned peoples are very similar, and that they very well may be seeds for the other, and that their opposition is the fuel that feeds the fire of the hatred that maintains the reason for their existence. Gog and Magog, in particular, and by association Yajuj and Majuj, were associated with barbarian peoples, at the time period in which the respective works were written, that did not have their own Traditions, putting the Traditional world under threat of destruction and separation from God (see Charles Upton’s The System of Anti-Christ). What could be more reflective of this than those that participate in a purely secularized worldview, divorced from anything and everything eternal and universally true?

People can choose to identify and separate themselves for all manner of reasons, in accordance with secular identity politics or otherwise. However, as Guenon states, every identification is a limitation, and this limitation separates the contingent from the universal, due to closing oneself off from that which exists and extends beyond the individual mode. The more that one identifies with one aspect of identity — whether national, political, racial, ethnic, linguistic, etc. — the more one is separate from that which is beyond all opposition. If one engages in opposition, one participates in an adversarial mode, and there is none more adversarial and causes adversity than that which is the Great Adversary, Satan himself.

Time and Space — Seeing the Eternal —Against Utopianism and One World Governance

In Guenon’s The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times, Ch. 23 “Time changed into Space”, the idea of how Traditional and modern societies deal with time and space is fundamental to our understanding here. Traditional societies, especially those that were nomadic and travelled over great expanses, before the degeneration into sedentary agriculture that focuses on the aforementioned mastery of the physical (a veritable stepping away from the fullness of the Primordial Tradition), necessarily had their focus on the great expanse of the space before them. The Traditional focus on space, by association, consumes time. Conversely, with modern societies focusing so much on time, the economy of time and culture of economics focusing on the hyper-quantification of all metrics, the inverse is true for this profane point of view. The modern focus on time, by association, consumes space.

This is a refined and nuanced position of metaphysical truth recognized here. Due to the fact that peoples and civilizations that are Traditional focus on that which is eternal, focusing on traversing space and not trying to control it, time is consumed with regards to the permanence of such spiritual influences. For example, the Egyptian, as well as many other Traditional civilizations, have the greatest staying power in the context of human history, with both monuments and spiritual impulses that extend from ancient spirituality manifesting and prolonging into later generations. In contrast, modern civilizations of a more than limited character are incredibly ephemeral and have very little lasting impact on different aspects of current era contemporary society, which extends from the fact that the ideological precepts of a modern character from earlier time periods are not the same as they are today, subject to further becoming and degeneration as time goes on. Not only is humanity vastly different in organization and mentality today than even 100 years ago, but the gap of separation between modern man and Traditional man from 1000 years ago is vastly greater, without even taking into consideration earlier forms of man that existed in the pre-historical spiritual Bronze Age 6,300 years ago and beyond. Much of this is due to a gradual and progressive process of collective “forgetting”, but to explore this in detail would take us too far afield.

The contrary effect for modern civilization is the creation of impulses that foster globalization, since, with the focus on time, space is consumed. Take for instance the technological components created in the domain of application to improve quality of life and save time, with each of these serving to increase the rapidity by which tasks can be done, only to further accelerate the tendency towards more confused activity. The natural outcome of such “innovation” is a contraction of the perception of space, due to its relative lessening of barriers that separate different peoples across the whole of the earth. The internet, of course, is the primary facilitator of this, with regards to financial liquidity, as well as the transmission of worryingly large amounts of psychic information of rather dubious origin (see our The Demonic Nature of Memes, the Internet and AI). It’s akin to the symbol of a boulder going down hill, getting faster and faster until it reaches the bottom by which it meets with a calamitous crash, which can only be understood as the end of the age.

This consumption of space leads to a false and inverted sense of unity. These modern forces of globalization serve to destroy and force unity in all domains. Whether its corporations growing by acquisition and taking over other firms, nations invading other nations for land and resources, destroying biodiversity in favor of larger numbers of a few species of plants and animals to consolidate and use for consumption, or in the destruction of Traditional cultures, peoples and languages in favor of modern popular culture, the outcome is the same — a Luciferian inversion of false unity. From a purely ontological point of view, since everything extends from the One and returns to the One, true unity can only exist at the highest ontological domain which is Beyond Being, and any attempt to manifest unity through these modern processes in the physical is an inversion of this truth.

It is a natural law that diversity exist within the physical, since the physical and substance are inherently adhered to multiplicity in manifestation, regardless of the spiritual unity that is to be striven towards. Therefore, it is natural law, and by association Divine Law, that there should be a multiplicity of life, peoples, languages, and even Traditions, taken into the context of the Transcendent Unity of Traditions (see our Metaphysics - Esotericism - Universality). With this recognition, this is why it indeed is true that the modern world is anti-thetically opposed to the Traditional and outwardly anti-Traditional by association, by virtue of the fact that it transgresses against natural law by association.

Even further, the modern world participates in utopian tendencies, with its “myth of progress” creating evolutionary theorizations that posit the supposition that, as time progresses, contemporary life and the world at large will naturally get better and improve dramatically. This is a fundamental inversion of the Traditional doctrine of the downward tendency of manifestation and just goes to show the complete incomprehension of the moderns. Perfection cannot exist within the purely physical domain of activity, because that which is physical is a mixture of quality (essence) and quantity (substance), and the latter necessarily implies limitation, and anything that is limited and not self-sufficient in itself is necessarily imperfect. As stated elsewhere, essence can exist without substance, but substance cannot exist without essence, just as the temporal cannot exist without the sacred — essence, just like truth, is eternal, while substance is contingent and limited in the domain of becoming and constant change.

The natural conclusion of such globalist utopianism is a one world government, in which everyone is drawn into a false unity and fully divorced from universal truth, under the yoke of a uniform standardization of all secular domains. It is said that the reign of the Anti-Christ and his victory will occur, but that it will last only for a day, for that which is purely divorced from the eternal must only lead to dissolution and ephemerality. Evil, by association, is really only the privation, i.e. absence, of good, since that which is good is indicative of presence, just as vice is the absence of virtue. Therefore, evil has a tendency towards non-existence and cannot be subject to its own destruction. Comparatively, Eternal Truth shall always reign supreme forever and always everywhere, for truth cannot but exist wherever it may be found, and there is nowhere where truth is absent, since wherever there is Being there is also Truth because the two are the one and the same.

Therefore, transcend the political mode — go beyond dualism, application, and the temporal. Seize eternity through contemplation of the mysteries of Tradition, so that only then the Truth can be manifest from the mountaintop once more for all to see, and no longer hidden within the cave.

We shall leave off here with a quote from the Book of Isaiah to see how the temporal shall be when the world is set aright once more:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse (the father of David),
and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Creation of the Christianity)
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, (Christ, descendant of David)
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; (Esoteric Wisdom)
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. (Sacred Authority)
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins. (Temporal Power)

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. (Geniality of Spiritual Oneness)
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain; (Beyond Opposition)
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Truth Manifest over the “Lower Waters”)

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Isaiah 11: 1-10 (parenthesis mine).