Amerika

A few weeks ago, a debate began boiling on the Alt Right social media interzones about the role of Christianity in the future Western Civilization that we are building. Some see it as the only source of salvation for the West; others want it dead; still others see a reason for agnosticism or at least partial acceptance of Christianity.

Riffing around a bit, writer Grimvera from Madot Media expressed a desire to take one side of the debate. This detailed and penetrating take on the topic precedes my own ramblings upon this question.

Grimvera

First, we should look at a handful of objections to the presence of Christianity in European territories:

• Though adopted, Christianity still leaves a lingering feeling of being conquered.
• The high emotional content of Christianity, while providing an answer to questions regarding the afterlife, leaves behind an irresponsible world view that desires a post mortem jubilee, and a decreased importance of bettering the mortal world for our offspring.
• Pagan beliefs place a focus on complex riddles or philosophical problems within the mythos, and answering those riddles helps provide not only a learning in lateral thinking, but an answer to what happens after death. The answer is one of reincarnation as one’s own descendant, who can “remember” their past incarnations using rituals reminiscent of modern methods of addressing amnesia.
• Despite Christianity’s long subjugation of much of Europe, many places (and points within Christianity itself) remain distinctly pagan such as the role of saints, holidays, and imagery. For example we can look to the Norwegian Church Burnings of the early 90s and Norway’s relatively low rate of embracing Christianity on a non-official level. More distant in history (again in Scandinavia) was a war in which the Church decided that the Norsemen weren’t “properly Christian” and sought to convert the region entirely by force. In Iceland, there was an effort at conversion that is not unlike what we witness with Islam today.
• If Islam were to conquer Europe in the same fashion as Christianity, would Muslims 1000 years from now be able to justly claim a “Indigenous Muslim European Heritage” in the same fashion Christians do today? Would the Jews be able to make such a claim? Where is the line drawn?
• Christianity has claimed many Pagan practices as its own, including what is seen as its “positive contributions”. These include Nationalism, purpose, and faith. In no way are these things unique to Christianity. In fact, the Church has historically acted against such interests when it was inconvenient to have them around (keeping washed, and the fallout of the plagues that swept across Europe).

The dogma of Christian universalism opened the door for many liberal positions such as Civic Nationalism. When Christianity spread across Europe, points of heritage and customs and faith were wiped out as the Church sought to homogenize the wide array of European cultures under Christendom. The established feudalism in Christendom is the greater extension of the mindless consumer culture, since it started this process of “domestication” of humans. Paganism endorses a return to more tribalist ideas, in which this domestication process is reversed, as the focus isn’t on what’s wanted, but what’s needed. Autonomy from strangers is a pillar of European Paganism. The secular state is the ultimate antithesis to what Paganism demands, whereas Christianity seems to have no scruples to leverage the state when convenient.

While Democracy existed prior to Christianity, its presence seems to uniquely appear in Greek and Roman regions (whilst Gaul and Germania maintained more tribal functions). Argument over if democracy appeared before or after the Southern European peoples encountered the Jews is irrelevant, as the very functions of this form of government is what ultimately allowed the Kakistocratic mob to riot in favor of early Christianity. Had these regions remained more xenophobic in their relations, and had Rome not sought to expand to include so many alien peoples, then Christianity (and later Islam) would likely never have been able to get a foot in the door, as Jewish ideas would have remained isolated from the Empire.

When anyone tries to insist on a literal interpretation of any theological mythos, it shows they miss the forest for the trees, and don’t understand the deliberate riddles of the stories and their function to evoke thought. For instance, the Hellenistic Goddess Athena, represents war and the logical thought required for sound stratagem. She is a being born from Zeus’ head, and her name even means “head.”

Rather than a hottie with a shield who can whip some serious butt, she is the personification of cognitive ability and lateral thinking. Both things are required to wage a successful war. Likewise, the god Odin represents the Northern European person. His domain over wisdom, war, and death illustrate the cyclical truth to the human life cycles. Even his story of self sacrifice upon Yggdrasil is signatory of the life cycle, though in a more nuanced fashion that will be returned to later.

To discuss any matter of theology seriously as it pertains to racial identity requires that allegory and symbolism be understood. To be ignorant of the symbolic truths represented by Pagan pantheons, and to ascribe them the same sense of “Deity” that is present within both Catholicism and Protestantism alike, is to spiritually bury ones head in the sand.

While such allegory does exist in Abrahamic theological spheres, all three Semitic faiths lend themselves to a more literalist interpretation. Few Christians see the identity of Christ as allegorical, just as few Muslims see Mohammed as such. All three sects see Yahweh as a literal omnipotent, omnipresent cosmological entity that exists apart from time. This partiality to grand literalism has a dramatic effect on the world-view of a people. Arguably, the effect is cataclysmic.

The Abrahamic view of the world is one of absolutes, and finality. “Good” and “evil” are often seen in the binary, which causes much debate in seemingly unrelated matters such as motives for murder, the death penalty, and even the matter of abortion. It is a world-view that can best be described as “spiritual procrastination.” Paradise and utopia come after death, but only if you sing the glory of god, and seek to bring more people to prayer in his name. A near half-gross of Virgins await you if you die in battle butchering infidels. Absolute beauty and perfection does not exist on the mortal plane, only the realm of God… but only if you make yourself subservient to him in some fashion.

The Catholic view becomes even more interesting in this concept of absolutism when you consider the idea of “original sin,” the idea that all people are inherently upon creation, and that to have access to the heavenly realm, they must regularly confess their sins. Does this mean that stillborn children, or those who die soon after birth, are damned to eternal torment? Does this mean that the billions of people who do not believe in the Abrahamic god for whatever reason is likewise damned? The deep-jungle tribes of South America? The Buddhist monks of Tibet? The Dali Lama? Does this mean that all of these aforementioned people are absolutely damned, while a murderous crime-boss with blood on his hands gets past the pearly gates just because he confessed his deeds to a so-called “Man of the Cloth” every Sunday?

The other end of this debate is not atheism, but the polytheistic worldview present across indigenous peoples in every country. This isn’t to say they are all the same thing, with aesthetic tweaks, as they most certainly are not. However, there are overlaps in the Pagan faiths of Europe. It is these that are relevant to the topic of European theology.

Returning to the figure of Odin, we see a complete worldview that is not only removed from the Abrahamic idea of deity, but one that places at the forefront the concept of “enriching the now for the later.” The complete story of Odin’s fate, from his nine days hanging from Yggdrasil, to his demise during Ragnarok (and indeed the fate of the world itself during Ragnarok), is one of reincarnation, of rebirth and eternal growth of the “self” as it pertains to the spirit. There is no eternal spiritual realm per se. Instead, the persistent part of the spiritual self places itself down a lineage. In this philosophy, the allegory of Yggdrasil is one in reference to the placenta, whose veins and umbilical link resemble a tree. Odin looks down into the waters to find the Runes, or his past selves, and all of their wisdom. He remembers who he was in past lives, and has effectively retrieved the knowledge and wisdom of countless generations.

I mention this to familiarize to the would-be outsider in order to make sense of this world view that is very different from the Abrahamic one. As opposed to the idea of post mortem utopia, an emphasis is placed on sustaining and growing what one has in this life, be it quality of the home, the education of the children, the health of the tribe, the accumulated wisdom of the one iteration. All of this is focused on in order to enrich who an individual will be born as in the future. Additionally, this places honor on the forefront instead of the binary, Abrahamic idea of morality. When you die and are reborn, and retrieve the knowledge of your past self (through rituals that are not unlike modern methods of curing amnesia), you bring to bear the honor of your past as well, and all the acclaim and humiliation that goes with it. There is no “final destination” to look forward to or dread. There is only the future of you and your kin, reborn again and again, just like Odin. As all of the Pagan gods are metaphysical manifestations of the self and the universe around us, they are not groveled to, or worshipped in the Abrahamic sense. They are honored and respected, as they are embodied in our ancestors, ourselves, and our children.

In this worldview, you are not eternally damned simply because you happened not to be born within Christendom. You are not damned for dying before you could even talk to be able to confess your sins. What becomes the central part of the spiritual concern is the race, which is your bloodline and your culture. It is one that is distinctly native to your very blood. Teutonic, Celtic, Hellenistic, Slavic, and Finnish Paganism are all unarguably indigenous to European peoples, and are the roots of all major festivals, aesthetics, language, and identity. This is something that Christianity (or any form of Abrahamic theology) cannot attest, at least as it relates to non-Arabian/Persian peoples. Of course, even in regards to the spiritual evolution of the Middle East, this same thing may hold true, as that region was likewise polytheistic.

In fact, are there not countless theories as to the origin of even Judaic theology as it relates to these Pagan precursors? Does this not mean that even the aesthetic and foundational beliefs of the Semitic peoples predate the arrival of the Judeo-Christian Yahweh? What were the major festivals and traditions embodiment of before their metamorphosis into what is later identified as Jewish and regional Christian and Muslim sects? Does this imply that Judaism, and subsequently Christianity and Islam are, to put it crudely, methods of imperial domination of the spirit reminiscent of what Christianity perpetuated in Europe in the past, and what Islam seeks to accomplish today?

The Pagan influence upon Christianity must also be addressed, as there is substantial claim (and plenty of evidence) that most of what Christians believe is originally Pagan in origin. Festivals are predominantly appropriated and transferred towards the ends of glorifying a foreign god above all else. The Catholics even believe in a sort of “soft polytheism” with the functions of the Saints, though the recognition of what makes one a saint is quite detached from what the pagan gods represent, and their inherent riddle-tales that (quite accurately) describe the very functions of the larger universe within and around us.

For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that what is left of Christianity is about 10% non-European in origin. This 10% would be the figure of a singular god, and his representation in an Earthbound avatar (such as Jesus, or the individual that Jews believe is yet to come), who is linked to the Tribe of Abraham, a man from ancient Sumer (or at least a demographic within this region). In all the respective sects within Christianity, this small fraction of the theological structure dominates. In a sick bit of irony, this is very close to which the Jewish population manages to dominate western society. Since this non-European portion is what is the dominating force, then you must ask the question: Is Christianity actually European at all? Does its spread across Europe mean that it is European by default?

There is plenty of history to point to that indicates the spread of Christianity was anything but peaceful, and/or openly accepted. There are plenty of events to point to, going at least as far back as Christianity’s legislation as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 314 AD. The initial spread within the Empire was very much akin to the atrocities perpetuated by Islam today. Pagan temples were ransacked, innocent people were publicly humiliated, mutilated, and executed, and Hellenistic holy sites were replaced with not only churches, but brothels and stables as well. In this way, the initial foundation of Christianity in Europe is identical to the Muslim practice of tearing down perceived power-centers in non-Islamic lands, and replacing them with Mosques.

This trend continued well into the establishment of the Papacy, with Pope Gregory I describing in a letter, “Let altars be built and relics be placed there so that [the Pagans] have to change from the worship of the daemons to that of the one true God.” There are also notable wars waged by Christianity to dominate Europe. In Scandinavia, the Catholic Church bought off Danish and German kings in order to help fight against the (officially) Celtic-Christian region of Norway. Just as the Sunni and Shite Muslims infight, Christianity fought over which sect was “proper” (though in truth, most common-folk in Scandinavia were predominantly pagan even a recently as the 1800’s). Unlike the battles for land and resources engaged in by Pagan pre-cursors, war became the tool of the theological elite. In Iceland, there is historical record that the Christianization of the island happened using the same methods Muslims use to start insurrections in non-Muslim lands. It was a slow process of demographic shift and moving the goalposts on “tolerance.”

If we circle back to the original assertion that Christianity is about 10% Semitic in origin, and reflect upon the fact that that same 10% is what drove historic events to acts such as Christianity all but abandoning it’s front against Islam so it could instead focus on putting down Pagan revolts (which let the Muslims take Constantinople). If we make the connection of the Christian Inquisitions against perceived non-Christians, and the Muslim persecutions of all people who aren’t Muslim, can we not safely assume that such acts are likewise a part of the 10% that comes from Judea?

Certainly, we cannot claim that “Traditional Family” is unique to Christianity either. Several points within the New Testament itself provide evidence that this is not true. In fact, Jesus consistently tells his followers that they ought to abandon their kin.

Matthew 10:35

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Matthew 19:29

And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Mark 10:29-30

And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

Luke 14:26

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Luke 18:29-30

And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

Not only are there “anti-family” values present within the new testament itself, but the practices of Christianity all throughout the middle ages reflected this. We can begin with the “softer” instances of this no-family idealism by looking at how convents and monasteries were kept populated. These institutions, which hold the Christian ideal of virginity and solitude as the pinnacle, were populated by devout Christian couples who would, at the very least, dedicate every tenth child to the Church. When young girls were donated to convents, their marriage dowries went with them. These girls would go through mock deaths, and “reborn”. When this rite was complete, they would be given entirely new identities, entirely removed from the legacy of the family they came from.

This anti-family mentality extended well into the high-ranks of the Church as well, with Pope Urban II reading from scripture the passages of Matthew 10:37 and 19:29. Pope Innocent III decreed it was the explicit right of husbands to abandon their families, without the need for giving a reason at all. This was seen as emulating Jesus’ earliest disciples. In addition, Saint Bernard bragged in a letter to the Pope of his success in rallying men to fight in the crusades to take the “Holy Land” of Jerusalem, that, “I opened my mouth; I spoke; and at once the crusaders have multiplied to infinity. Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you will see widows whose husbands are still alive.”

Since pre-Christian pagans depended upon strong families to survive year after year (not to mention the spiritual bonds of reincarnation along family lines), can we not safely assume that the above facts of history point to “family Values” being a non-European part of the faith? In fact, what are seen as “Traditional Christian Family Values” did not come about until the 1960’s, when sexual depravity and “liberation” took off as a rebellion to the “virtuous virginity” ideal of Christianity. Of course, in order to maintain a look of rationality in the face of this “sexual revolution” the Pre-Christian idea of familial coherency was the sensical view to adopt.

Now this all begs the question of why hold onto the non-European parts of Christianity at all? If the ethnically European person desires to uphold and ensure the survival of his European heritage and blood, then why does it make sense to hold onto there small, but dominant portions of Christianity that is decidedly non-European in origin? Why are even these minority portions held on to?

I would argue that the answer to that is simply “paranoia”. So long has the domination of Christianity told generation upon generation that to turn away from the Abrahamic God means an eternity of suffering at the hands of creatures of absolute evil. Pair this with countless examples of Christian fear campaigns that saw the inhuman torture of innocent White men and women, and even children. From the Crusade campaigns mentioned above, to the Inquisition and the Puritanical Witch Hunts, the primary methods of ensuring compliance has been threats of suffering on the mortal plane, as well as the spiritual. So called “tests” were utilized by the Puritans that condemned an individual to death, even in the proof of innocence. This same paranoid fear over “witch craft” likewise opened the door for political maneuvering of prominent families to subvert one another’s power over townships.

By and large these physical threats are no longer used (save by Muslims and Israeli Jews). However, the spiritual blackmail is still present to keep the Semitic sourced pieces of the dogma aloft. The God of the Desert Semite people that hail from ancient Sumer is still pushed as the end-all-be-all, everything else be damned. The spiritual paranoia runs so deep, that you can lay out historical facts, and biblical evidence, and all you will be met with is biblical counter-signaling and threats that ultimately translate to “you’re going to burn if you don’t accept Him!” It comes around to paranoia, that even I, a Pagan that stands beside my ancestral Teutonic Gods, still grapple with the paranoia of my Christian upbringing. That gnawing doubt that whispers in the back of the mind; the hushed threats of damnation by an omnipresent spiritual tyrant that is by his own admission, a jealous creature. While I ignore these spiteful whispers the best I can, the fear always lingers. My own instinct tells me that most say they are Christian out of the fear of “what if” , should they stray away from putting a faceless thing from the desert at the forefront of all else, no matter what.

Even if swells of people begin to reject Christianity, it will be predominantly those who were not entirely committed to it to begin with. It will be those who only payed lip-service out of the gnawing schizophrenia of generational indoctrination. Rather than fret and wring their hands, the Churches of the thousands of different Christian sects would not shed a tear over these “Lost Lambs of Christ’s Flock”, but rather take advantage to sow the ever-present fear of damnation to strengthen their own stance. They would tighten the collars on those that remain, pulling on their leashes to drag them into deeper submission to a foreign god, rather than a devotion to their own blood-kin.

So why hang on so desperately to this small fraction of Christianity that has so much power? Why, instead of preforming mental gymnastic to justify continuing onward with it, do we not just discard it, but for fearful mental-sickness? Does this non-European fraction of Christianity, once you cast aside all the misunderstandings of supposed benevolence,  really help the positions of Whites in recovering their own place in the world? Why hold on to this small bit, if everything else that is legitimately GOOD about it is Pagan to begin with?

Let us look forward to the hypothetical future of this theological fracture, one in which Christian, Pagan, and Atheist work side by side to secure our existence. Would the paranoia of “heresy” grip the minds of Christians (as alas, it does to some of the better known people of todays pro-White movement), and start yet another round of persecutions in order to solidify Whites under “the One True God”? Would the repetitive nature of history realize once again wars across White lands for the glory of “Christendom”? Would we be best suited to putting the Christians to a religious “shit-test” to make sure they would always put their fellow whites above other races, theology aside?

Or should all whites completely dismiss the small, but overwhelmingly influential portion of Christianity aside, and essentially return to Paganism entirely?

Brett Stevens

In the course of trying to save the West, it becomes necessary to ask why Europe remains Christian. After all, science and reason killed God, we are told, and Europe has moved on to a cynical senescence where we do not believe in anything, least of all ourselves except as social phenomena. Few understand why Europe has not abandoned this seemingly superstitious faith, if not simply in order to excise its foreign influence that, when we adopt it as our religion, makes us feel like a conquered people.

The more we try to deny this foreign nature — that Christianity, despite large portions of it being borrowed from Indo-European sources, was written by Jews for Jews — the more we simply serve to highlight it. Even if we can prove that Jesus was a 6’5″ Norwegian with a 160 IQ, we still have the problem that he spoke to and represented a tribe very foreign from our own. Even if the original Jews were, say, Danes, what replaced them became alien enough that we can feel no comradeship with it except as literature, which is how most appreciate the Old Testament at least.

If Christianity were a story of Europe and the European people coming into being and bonding with their gods, we might feel more kindly disposed to it because it would have emerged from us for us and by us, sort of like The Odyssey or The Elder Eddas. Instead we have a glitzier, Hollywood-style restatement of metaphysical ideas in something more like popular culture than the esoteric and cryptic texts of the ancient Nordic and Greco-Roman pagans, in which a line can take weeks to understand within context, its meaning unfolding from that moment onward.

On the other hand, Christianity remains eternally popular because it is relatively simple, has high emotional content, and addresses deep human fears like what occurs after death. I think most of us realize that in order for life to be beautiful, it cannot end in complete destruction of unique consciousnesses, but the pagan vision of what occurs after death is vague and does not appeal to personal immortality. In addition, Christianity states strong rules for things like sexual morality that ended many of the conflicts roiling societies in Europe.

Further, at this point, Christianity has been among us for a thousand years, and we have thoroughly crafted an interpretation of it that seems, mostly at least, to be ours. At the same time, the Greeks and Romans have fallen more distant in years from us, so we find it harder to see our kinship to them, especially when today’s Greeks and Romans look more Turkish and Arabic than like the Western Europeans they once were. Christianity also gains historical status, making it seem less like an occupier and more like a choice from among the ancient texts.

We can also point to many positive things done by Christian churches in the past, like charity, that were interrupted by Leftist government. Since most on the Right are minded toward conserving tradition instead of chasing trends, they also tend to participate in religion and most are Christian, or at least defend Christianity. We like religion, because we know that several pillars — aristocracy, nationalism/culture rule, caste, purpose, and faith — are necessary in parallel to make a health nation.

With the rise of the Left and its mania for a secular State instead of organic things like culture, customs, heritage, and faith, people have also seen adherence to Christianity as a bulwark against the advancing technocracy which hopes to convert all of us into socialist-style “workers” who do nothing but attend cubicle jobs, buy stuff, pay taxes, and vote for the latest State scheme no matter which party endorses us. Christianity like other aspects of culture and customs is defiance of the deep state, or entrenched bureaucracy that hopes to run our lives and use us for its power and profit.

These reasons, however, are tangential. To elect to do something means to find value in it for its own sake, apart from using it as a means to other aims, and so we have to look more deeply into Europe’s continual adoption of Christianity, even at a time when most European-descended people are secular or “vaguely spiritual” but not attending church. This causes those of us who want to restore Western Civilization to ask some pointed questions: Is it good? Is it necessary? Do we tolerate it? If so, in what role?

Among the Western Restorationists — a broad group of monarchists, conservatives, far Right, traditionalists, perennialists, deep ecologists, and libertarians who seek to restore Western Civilization — two general viewpoints exist. One holds that Christianity is vital to the restoration of Western Civilization, or that Western Civilization began with Christianity; the other believes that Christianity is an invader that brought Leftism to us, made us weak, and has caused us to go quietly insane in that way which makes things like diversity seem sensible.

We can dispense with both of these by looking to ancient Greek, Nordic, and Roman civilizations, or even the wandering Indo-Europeans who ranged from Siberia through the Americas centuries before even the Greeks were founded. Someone invaded or originated in India with a complex language and cosmology, and then thousands of years later appeared in Greece and Rome. To those with classical educations, Christianity existed within this context, i.e. as “footnotes to Plato” as well as The Odyssey, The Aeneid, and the Nordic myths and folktales.

Even more importantly, speaking of the Greeks, all of the ills of our modern time existed in ancient Athens, before inbound contact with Jews or Christianity existed to any significant level. To wax Nietzschean and claim that Christianity is the origin of our weakness is to overlook the presence of democracy and the execution of thought-criminals in ancient Athens, paralleling the behavior we see today, as described by Plato and others. Nothing modern is new, or even all that unpredictable, in that context.

In this light, we can see that Christianity is neither the doom nor the salvation of the West. It is merely another religion, one that we can choose because of recent (post-Roman) tradition, or one that we can reject in favor of an older tradition. As with all choices, what we choose reveals who we are, and the choice is thus both arbitrary and entirely bonded to reality, as results will speak for themselves. Our reasons for choosing, then, make our choice clear before we have even made it.

We should start by distilling our questioning down to a simple focus: is Christianity good for the West?

Let us here first upgrade our thinking. “Good” and “bad” are human categories, just like all religions are descriptions of a spiritual truth, not that truth itself. Fundamentalism is idiotic, like atheism converted into a religion, since the words on a page become more important than the living connection between gods and men.

In this life, very little is “good” in the sense of “purely good”:

In the tragic vision, individual sufferings and social evils are inherent in the innate deficiencies of all human beings, whether these deficiencies are in knowledge, wisdom, morality, or courage. Moreover, the available resources are always inadequate to fulfill all the desires of all the people. Thus there are no “solutions” in the tragic vision, but only trade-offs that still leave many unfulfilled and much unhappiness in the world.
— Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, p. 113

With Christianity, we find something that is mostly European, usually retold in a more dramatic style, especially the new testament. We can trace influences of ancient myths and legends from the region, combined and streamlined, in the Jewish and Christian texts as if someone or some group were compiling information and presenting it in a form that was easier to read. Given that the rabbinical tradition is one of recitation and commentary, this makes sense as an approach that ancient Jewish authors would have taken.

Onto this they grafted the story of their own people and its learning, mostly for practical value. The Old Testament strikes us as a work of imaginative or mythologized history, but provides a useful record of large events, how people reacted to them, and thus why certain types of actions were avoided or proscribed in the ancient world. This in itself has great value and the experiences of these people are instructive, coming to us from a time when we have fewer records of our own people, who were splintered into different groups in the most profound diaspora in history.

Then we see Christian morality. As Nietzsche told us, it has a downside: “turn the other cheek” is not good advice in a world where everyone wants to conquer you. However, it was good advice for those resisting Roman occupation, and may have had more nuance than its modern reading allows. More troubling, we find the universal nature of Christian morality — the idea that all are the same through a religion or ideology, erasing ethnicity — to be destructive to any group that embraces it.

However, these are mostly misinterpreted as are all things over time. Humans are lemmings, built self-destructive from our inner desire for power, since we have minds that seem godlike to us but bodies of vast insignificance in the wider scheme of things. Knowledge makes us strong, but it also makes us feel weak, and so people develop an addiction to “wishful thinking” which makes the human world more important than the broader world of nature, logic, and possibly metaphysics. When people get together to confirm this human world, which is entirely a social token, they rewrite history and reinterpret everything they find in order to support this illusion. They express their ideals as egalitarian because only by offering the same license to others that they demand for themselves can they get the crowd on their side. This pathology, which I called Crowdism almost twenty years ago, corrupts everything it touches by turning it all into the same message, namely that what humans desire alone is good and real. Clearly most churches and Christians today are Crowdists, but then again, so is almost everything, especially after democracy and Leftism have touched it!

Christianity possesses a great strength in its simplicity, but this also makes it prone to being assimilated from within by those who want to use it to advance Crowd doctrine. The history of some Christians — burning pagan temples, destroying pre-Christian European history, executing heretics — suggests that this ease of comprehension is balanced by an ease of misapprehending, leading to religious fanaticism of an unproductive outcome.

On the other hand, Christianity did much good for Europe. It may have been chosen for its strong sexual morality which became essential as lower echelons of society grew in number and it became desired to limit their wanton reproduction so that stable family units could emerge. On the other hand, humanity has always made the mistake of fixing that which by nature would not succeed, thus promoting incompetence in the place of natural selection. Civilization is its own worst enemy in this regard.

Across Europe and America, elegant churches stand in tribute to the inspiration of Christianity; great works of science and art speaks of its appeal; the worn footholds in the stone of ancient cathedrals shows us how integral and beloved it was in the lives of normal people. If nothing else, it has been sanctified by years of practice and trust, even if we re-interpret parts of it to fit our own vision, as is consistent with the pre-Christian texts like The Odyssey.

One factor that seems to bounce back in our faces time and again is the simple truth that religion exists not just worldwide, but throughout history. No matter how enlightened, or even how skeptical, populations adopted some form of religious mythos. Perhaps this fits with the role of religion as a type of philosophy that seeks to explain not just how to live, but the origins of existence, and the importance of the metaphysical within the physical world in which we exist.

This by itself fails to constitute an argument for religion, as if something else takes the place of religion, then religion is not necessary and thus as an added burden becomes a transfer of effort from the useful. However, nothing else seems to take up the role, despite philosophy, politics, and social movements having tried. This leaves us with the knowledge that, most likely, our society will have some religion, and if we do not provide one, whatever strikes the fancy of the population will take that place, which will most likely result in a dumbed-down primitive religion like the New Age pseudo-faiths.

Since we will likely have a religion, we must choose wisely! Our task faces complications because religions do not exist in the sense of being 100% representative of some clear and absolute pure reading of a holy book or idea, much like few things are 100% true or 100% good, and are internally varied instead. Religions exist in the forms of interpretations, which are understandings of those texts — themselves understandings of a metaphysical reality, more like descriptions than translations — that become practices, which are then upheld to varying degrees.

This means that talking about one “Christianity” is about as silly as talking about a universal human being, or any other universal truth. Interpretations of reality vary with intent, ability, experience, and the gumption to seek out the roots of complex problems. Just as in life, where there are a top 1% of virtuosos in a field, another 9% who are very good, and 90% who are less powerful in varying degrees from merely competent to outright incompetent, in matters of religion and philosophy interpretations vary.

Add to this the Dunning-Kruger effect, which tells us that people can only understand that which they have the intellectual circuitry to understand, and anything else will seem not incomprehensible to them but simply wrong, bizarre, and ludicrous. Interpretations vary widely, with some being closer to a full understanding of metaphysical reality than others, and these cannot be communicated directly, only hinted at with individuals then able to pursue them and discover them through a series of learning experiences.

Aldous Huxley wrote convincingly of what he saw as the discoveries of metaphysical reality which were held in common by the major faiths, something he called The Perennial Philosophy:

More than twenty-five centuries have passed since that which has been called the Perennial Philosophy was first committed to writing; and in the course of those centuries it has found expression, now partial, now complete, now in this form, now in that, again and again. In Vedanta and Hebrew prophecy, in the Tao Teh King and the Platonic dialogues, in the Gospel according to St. John and Mahayana theology, in Plotinus and the Areopagite, among the Persian Sufis and the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance–the Perennial Philosophy has spoken almost all the languages of Asia and Europe and has made use of the terminology and traditions of every one of the higher religions. But under all this confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor, which is the Perennial Philosophy in what may be called its chemically pure state. This final purity can never, of course, be expressed by any verbal statement of the philosophy, however undogmatic that statement may be, however deliberately syncretistic. The very fact that it is set down at a certain time by a certain writer, using this or that language, automatically imposes a certain sociological and personal bias on the doctrines so formulated. It is only the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.

The original scriptures of most religions are poetical and unsystematic. Theology, which generally takes the form of a reasoned commentary on the parables and aphorisms of the scriptures, tends to make its appearance at a later stage of religious history. The Bhagavad-Gita occupies an intermediate position between scripture and theology; for it combines the poetical qualities of the first with the clear-cut methodicalness of the second. The book may be described, writes Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in his admirable Hinduism and Buddhism, “as a compendium of the whole Vedic doctrine to be found in the earlier Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, and being therefore the basis of all the later developments, it can be regarded as the focus of all Indian religion” is also one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind.

At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness–the world of things and animals and men and even gods–is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.

Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.

Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.

Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

In Hinduism the first of these four doctrines is stated in the most categorical terms. The Divine Ground is Brahman, whose creative, sustaining and transforming aspects are manifested the Hindu trinity. A hierarchy of manifestations connects inanimate matter with man, gods, High Gods, and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond.

In Mahayana Buddhism the Divine Ground is called Mind or the Pure Light of the Void, the place of the High Gods is taken by the Dhyani-Buddhas.

Similar conceptions are perfectly compatible with Christianity and have in fact been entertained, explicitly or implicitly, by many Catholic and Protestant mystics, when formulating a philosophy to fit facts observed by super-rational intuition. Thus, for Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, there is an Abyss of Godhead underlying the Trinity, just as Brahman underlies Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Suso has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting between Godhead, triune God and creatures. In this very curious and interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one of two choices. They can either live the life of the outer man, the life of the separative selfhood; in which case they are lost (for, in the words of the Theologia Germanica, “nothing burns in hell but the self”). Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond they Trinity, to the ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.

This brings us to the core of the issue: if religions describe metaphysical reality, and fully interpreting any religion leads to similar revelations, then what matters most is religiosity itself, not which religion we choose. This at least concerns spiritual matters; the related concern of shepherding the population into moral awareness is a political use of religion, and perhaps is best kept in the realm of politics, or even disregarded, allowing our population to sort itself out.

We might in fact see the error of Christianity in assuming that we can “control” people who have a will to do otherwise. Darwin says we should let them reveal themselves, and then allow them to suffer consequences, so that the best rise and the worst fall, gradually breeding out whatever genes code for those defective behaviors. This seems more likely than people suddenly experiencing enlightenment or wisdom from reading the Ten Commandments.

In this way we see the link between religion and biology. Every group will have its own interpretation of metaphysics, but the majority of this is an attempt to use religion to keep a civilization together; it is no wonder religions are written down during the declining days of civilizations and not their vital times, when the revelations were not alien to people and most understood them intuitively, and could easily pass them along as an oral tradition.

Even more, we can see this religion-biology link as showing us the link between ethnicity, politics, and spirituality. Every group has its own specialization, or customs, which enable it to adapt to reality in a way that allows it to preserve the core values that make it distinct. When these emphasize function mated to aspiration toward goodness, as in the early West, the civilization rises. Religion is used to enforce these by linking them to metaphysical truths, but this link is where things get dicey, since as society fragments, institutions such as religion, government, and learning diverge and become conflicting special interest groups.

In addition, religion serves as a signal for membership in civilization, much as Samuel Huntington would have told us. Even our Leftist news sources admit this when they refer to “Muslims,” using that term as a code word for third world people whose faith in Muslim; they are not worried about native Swedes who read the Koran and became Muslim on their own!

With this in mind, we — those who want to restore Western Civilization and nurture it to greater heights than ever before — can see that our task involves not just finding a religion, but finding a religion for our people. In this regard, Christianity needs work, and may never overcome its foreign origins, despite the fact that it is a source of great joy and strength to many. For that reason, a sensible policy involves accepting Christianity as part of the framework of our original pagan faiths, instead of seeing the two threads as opposite.

Indo-European thought from the Mahabarata through The Odyssey proves remarkably consistent, and this extends into the New Testament much as its forebears undoubtedly influenced the Old Testament which came centuries after them. Since Jewish people by heritage are about half-European, it would be unlikely that the flow of Europeans into Israel did not bring their pagan faiths, including the Nordic, Greek, Roman, and even old Indo-European faiths.

If we look at the Bible through this lens, we see something that is mostly pagan, a truth which our forebears acknowledged. In more organized times in the West, educated people were expected to be familiar with the Bible, but only in the context of the Greco-Roman and Nordic works and histories, and as interpreted by priests and writers who were intensely familiar with the length and breadth of Indo-European religious thinking. In other words, Europe unofficially incorporated its own gods and prophets into the church, albeit as history and philosophy instead of literal gods.

This fits with the European notion of God not as a personal relationship or character, but omnipresent force which pervades all life, not judging and sorting us individually so much as increasing order and beauty wherever possible against the constant onslaught of entropy, human stupidity, and doubt. To the European mind, God is a warm force like the sun, bringing life to all, but also bringing death to some. Life runs in cycles, and these cycles fit into a larger order, much as we all have roles within a vast framework where unequally we work to maintain order within the physical and metaphysical worlds.

My gut instinct says that our ancestors chose Christianity for a reason. It tapped into something ancient, even older than the written pagan tales: that life is continuous beyond our bodies, and that physical existence is the effect caused by patterns in a much larger space which encloses physical reality, and which can be said to be at the very least informational or mathematical, and most like metaphysical or having a biology- and thought-like essence which feeds back into the patterns of life, learning from our simple examples and increasing its own complexity as a result.

Christianity made an error in interpreting this, my gut instinct adds, because it shifted to dualism or the notion that there are two worlds, an imperfect Earth and a divine Heaven. Dualism mirrors materialism by insisting that our world is unique, and therefore that it is the cause of itself, instead of noticing the cause elsewhere, and this muddied the waters a bit. The study of metaphysical origins posited by Platonism however tells us that our world is simply a manifestation of something more vast and complex going on in an informational or metaphysical space.

This view, if inserted into Christianity, would work better than the “neo-Platonism” which advocated dualism, and would be closer to the original pagan meaning. Over time, if it survives, Christianity surely will go this way, and the centuries-old trend of steadily incorporating Greco-Roman and Nordic ideas and figures into Christianity may continue, bringing us closer to the Roman ideal where as the empire expanded, it added more gods to the pantheon as a means of compiling religious knowledge, much as Jewish scholars added content to the texts that would become the Bible.

If we accept that the scientific view is agnosticism, not atheism, and that Christianity is 90% pagan and therefore religion in general has discovered different interpretations of the same vital truths, we can use this philosophical viewpoint to re-interpret Christianity as having a place among the faiths of Western Europe, and eventually make it even more European. In the meantime, it makes sense to have multiple faiths in the West but to have these faiths be of a Western nature, for example encouraging paganism, Christianity, deism, and agnosticism to thrive as branches of the same basic notion.

In this way, we can restore the “European-ness” of our faith without abandoning an old friend to many. For that reason, those of us who seek to restore Western Civilization can cease worrying about whether to defend or defeat Christianity, and focus on how to interpret it such that we eventually arrive at this balance. Our goal remains the restoration of the West, and while religion alone cannot do that for us, having a balanced and fair view of religion will get us closer than fractiousness.

Tags: christianity, customs, faith, paganism, religion, restoration, spirituality