Ultraculture Journal One

Era Vulgaris and editor Jason Louv have published Ultraculture Journal One, what many of us in the marginal community hope will be the first in a long series of journals devoted to some of the most important esoteric ramblings presently available. From the authors...

Ultraculture Journal One collects under one cover the most volatile
and direct magickal writing currently available in the English language. It will change you at the cellular level. You have been forewarned.

Bold assertions, to be sure. I have been perusing the articles, and with my limited understanding about this material must say that much of it is highly advanced, hence the above warning that it "will change you on a cellular level."

Check out the review section toward the end, where Louv covers some recently published books. He gives a good overview of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. For those who haven't heard of his work, you can see an amusing interview of Pinchbeck by the illustrious Colbert here. Colbert gets his grill on, as usual, but Pinchbeck dodges the fire well enough. Be sure to check out part two of the interview here.

Also in the review section is a fascinating look at Victor & Victoria Trimondi's detailed exposé of the Myth of Shambhala and the politics of Tibetan Tantra, as seen in the life and times of the current Dalai Lama. The work is titled The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic, and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism", and was published in Germany in 1999 by Patmos Verlag. Though not yet published in book form in the English language, it is available in English online. I must say, beware the writing, as it might shake your faith in Tibetan Buddhism (being a acolyte historian, I am still trying to independently check some of their sources). From the introduction...

The practice and philosophy of Buddhism has spread so rapidly throughout the Western world in the past 30 years and has so often been a topic in the media that by now anybody who is interested in cultural affairs has formed some sort of concept of Buddhism. In the conventional “Western” notion of Buddhism, the teachings of Buddha Gautama are regarded as a positive Eastern countermodel to the decadent civilization and culture of the West: where the Western world has introduced war and exploitation into world history, Buddhism stands for peace and freedom; whilst Western rationalism is destructive of life and the environment, the Eastern teachings of wisdom preserve and safeguard them. The meditation, compassion, composure, understanding, nonviolence, modesty, and spirituality of Asia stand in contrast to the actionism, egomania, unrest, indoctrination, violence, arrogance, and materialism of Europe and North America. Ex oriente lux—“light comes from the East”; in occidente nox—“darkness prevails in the West”.

We regard this juxtaposition of the Eastern and Western hemispheres as not just the “business” of naive believers and zealous Tibetan lamas. On the contrary, this comparison of values has become distributed among Western intelligentsia as a popular philosophical speculation in which they flirt with their own demise.

You can find the Trimondi's resume here. As the authors were saying, this stuff might start morphing your nerves, so beware the words, as they have a tendency to become swords. Here is Louv's assessment of the book...

1. The entire PR campaign of Lamaism in the West masks, and furthers, the goal of the fourteenth Dalai Lama to become the Adi Buddha, the totalitarian ruler in which all secular and spiritual power is concentrated.
2. The Kalachakra Tantra (the central practice of Vajrayana) focuses on the concentration of the universe (both sexes, all planets, time and space) within the androgynous body of the Adi Buddha, so that literally all internal processes of the Dalai Lama thereby effect world events (as above, so below—and how!).
3. Sexual and ecological politics in Tibet have always been far away from what is publicly presented (Mahayana “peace love tolerance” public mask, Vajrayana “dominate the world” reality). Sexual politics have been the systematic oppression and hatred of women and their continual use as power batteries, with their energy being farmed and alchemized into political power via sexual magick. Ecological politics have been the same—the suppression and violation of the mother earth goddess (srinmo).
4. Tibet and Nazi Germany, or Esoteric Hitlerism as it is today, were and still are bedfellows. (Hitler as Kalki as Kalachakra.)
5. The Kalachakra is a process by which the entire world (especially Islam) will be purified by fire and transformed into a Buddhocracy by the twenty-fourth century. (Same old scheme that Christianity, Islam, etc. are running and that the Dalai Lama pretends to be above.)

Yes, beware, but also be amused. You can download the entire 419 page Ultraculture journal from the like above. Happy reading!

Namaste.

The World of Bede

The impact of the Anglo-Saxon migration upon England’s socio-religious history is undisputed. What is perhaps surprising in the Anglo-Saxon case is how rapidly their religious conversion took place. We hear from the Venerable Bede (c.672-735), writing shortly after the Northumbrian conversion, how when King Edwin (son of Ælle) converted in 625, a pagan priest named Coifi rushed off to desecrate his own temple by throwing a spear into it. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxons appeared only too eager at times to take up the religion they so often defeated.

Bede was the father of English history. He gives us the history of his people; we see the life of Cuthbert, the Synod of Whitby, the life of Aidan, letters from Gregory to the new mission in Kent headed by Augustine; indeed Bede exposes for us dates and names, primary sources of current events. His accuracy is astounding, his learning triumphal. In the preface to his celebrated work the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, he warns that “should the reader discover any inaccuracies in what I have written, I humbly beg that he will not impute them to me, because, as the true law of history requires, I have laboured honestly to transmit whatever I could ascertain from common report for the instruction of posterity.” This preface, notes Donald Logan, “has almost a modern ring to it.” It is sincere to a scientific method, surprising in the current early medieval atmosphere.

While residing at Biscop’s monastery in Jarrow, Bede had access to a phenomenal body of work which he used to write his Ecclesiastical History and numerous other scholarly, historical works. It was in Jarrow that Bede lived the bulk of his life, and it was there that he popularized the anno Domini system of dating, ending the older Diocletian reference which was outdated, as it established time from a point of persecution. “It is one measure of Bede’s greatness that he was the first writer to adopt it as the regular chronological basis of a major historical work.” Indeed this system of dating can perhaps be viewed as one of the greatest and most lasting achievements to come out of Jarrow, again because of Bede. The way we consider time influences the way we relate to it; marking zero with the point of Jesus’ birth was likening history itself to the life of one man, or God if you see it that way. It was a constant reminder of the consciousness they shared.

The ‘renaissance’ surrounding Bede’s world was the culmination of numerous factors. Its primary influence was Roman, but the Celtic/Germanic force acted like Wayland himself, forging a new ring out of the gold of nations. This new ring was the prodigious nature of Bede’s work; it was the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. It was the interlaced birds, as Hunter-Blair pointed out, surrounding the illuminated gospels. It was Bede’s life of St. Cuthbert, in 46 chapters, representing a perfected hagiography.

Of course, it wasn't Bede who produced the illuminated manuscript called the Lindisfarne Gospels, but its creator, a monk named Eadfrith, was his contemporary and lived only a few miles north of Jarrow on the isle of Lindisfarne. Here are some sample pages of the text itself.






For more about Bede and the Northumbrian renaissance, check out the work of Bede himself, as he is the primary source for the events of his age. His Life of St. Cuthbert is extremely enjoyable, and is highly recommended.

Book of Hours

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Numerous illuminated manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages, but none have the charm and artistic precision of the 'Very Rich Hours' of the Duc de Berry. For three hundred years, from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, Books of Hours were the pulp paperbacks of Europe's literary elite. Most were artistically simplistic and utilitarian, performing the function of prayer manual and designed to conform to the canonical hours of the day. Those hours were:

1. Matins
2. Lauds
3. Prime
4. Terce
5. Sext
6. None
7. Vespers
8. Compline

In the case of the Très Riches Heures, this was only the beginning. The paintings contained in this illuminated manuscript go well beyond the traditional measure used by most artists of the middle ages, and included some of the brightest and most beautiful work of the middle ages. A few examples.



This picture is heavily influenced by zodiacal symbolism. You'll notice rising through the body of the facing female the twelve signs, and surrounding the picture, we see these twelve signs again dispersed through the calender.



Color and symbolism are seen throughout the work, as is evidenced here in the Baptism of Christ.



Typically in medieval manuscripts, one artist was responsible for the text, and another for the imagery.



You can explore the manuscript further here