Monday, January 31, 2011

The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site
http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change
http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.  * text between [ ] is not part of quote.
The 4th Awakening

40 John to be Mocked Again? (2)
© Eso Anton Benjamins

For over twenty years now Latvia has endured a failed statist government disguised as a parliamentary democracy. In the preceding blogs I have traced some of the cultural and social mechanisms that have been contradicted by the current statist model, which has necessarily resulted in a schizophrenic and thus sick and failing state.

One of the chief hindrances to cooperation between the state and the citizens has been the surreptitious destruction by the state of the rural habitat of the nation in favor of one or at most a few urban centers.

The mass exodus of Latvians in search of jobs elsewhere not only illustrates the abandonment of the traditional “land” of the people, but the Latvian statist government at work. While on the one hand the government has painted itself as a supporter of Latvia for Latvians by exclusionary activity against those who cannot pass a test that proves that they can speak the Latvian language, which spells the government as jingoist, said jingoism has serves the government as a tool in the consolidation of its urbanite orientation.

The loss of possibly half a million people in twenty years [I am counting not only the 300,000+ emigrants, but the demographic loss due to dramatically lowered birth rates (1990=38,000 vs 2010=19,000) and increasing number of pensioners] has virtually guaranteed that by 2050 the total population of Latvia (baring an influx of ‘guest’ workers) will be 1.3 million or less in place of the current 2.2 million inhabitants.
One frequently hears that about a hundred years ago, Riga, the current capital of Latvia, was the third largest city in tsarist Russia. This statistic is brought out by many as if to forecast the future of the now dilapidated and shrinking Riga. True, this glorious past of the city was not brought up (as far as this writer knows) at the extremely boring “foreign policy debate” at the Latvian Saeima a few days ago (27/1/2011). On the other hand, no one suggested that growth is something that Riga could expect. At best, a former Prime Minister Shkhehle (Šķēle) argued for a federalized Europe. No one brought up the possibility that in the future, Riga could be the capital of the European Union instead of Brussels—if the EU were to include Russia.
In short, the statist (and static) government of Latvia is preparing the future of Latvia by imagining itself as the periphery of Europe rather than its centre. To bring its policy of failure to its abysmal conclusion, the Latvian people have to be in effect destroyed. The Latvian government—incidentally with the cooperation of Brussels—is rather successful from this point of view.

How can Latvians overcome the fears instilled in them by their statist government and forge themselves another, a more creative future?

In my previous blog, I spoke of Karlis Ulmanis failure to close the “sacrificial crisis” brought to Latvia with the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union. [The earlier sacrificial crisis was closed by the sacrifices of Latvia’s soldiers during WW1.] I suggested that President Ulmanis failure to sacrifice himself in protest of the Soviet occupation failed Latvians not only seventy years ago, but failed to look into the future which is now. Now Latvia has lost its sovereignty in a financial sense, the people in the countryside are preparing themselves for yet another mass exodus (if the rest of the European economy holds up), the country is demoralized to the point where policemen are turning robbers and shooting other policemen dead, debates in government circles are a safe bet to be duds, and people have been ‘dumbed down’ to trust a parliament that in its myriad self-contradictions is both statist and inert.

The ongoing “sacrificial crisis” (failure to lead by example among others) may of course be seen as an opportunity. If such an opportunity is to become real, there has to occur a major earthquake within the statist government. How is this to be done, when the parliamentary Saeima, the popularly unelected ministers and president, all appear to be of the belief that government is modeled on now proven failures, re: Plato’s “earthborn” ruling class, the boyars of the countryside seizing the city for themselves; or Aristotle’s kinship originated State by way of family to community to State. Neither of the two philosophers suggests that the State is the result of freedom in a state of chaos (libertarian?) brought together into a community by self-sacrifice, what I have argued to be not-violent self-sacrifice [see esos chronicles].

The failed presidency of Karlis Ulmanis, which left behind a demoralized people, nevertheless points the way to the solution, because the failure of self-sacrifice by the president is as evident as are evident the horrific consequences to the Latvian people and the State.

In other words, the piece of coal in the pie that in the days of old chose the one who would sacrifice appears to point at the milquetoast president of Latvia today. When Karlis Ulmanis seized the reigns of Latvia by coup de tat in 1934, he took upon himself all the consequences of that deed. His failure to meet all of the demands of his Presidency (which from a theoretical point of view may also, paradoxically, be called the rule of a Monarch, not impossibly a Sacred Monarch) now rests with the head of the Latvian State. That is to say, the saying “One for All and All for One” today rests with said One. The alternative is that of a federalized state, an administrative periphery of the EU, stripped of its identity much the way it is stripping itself of its citizenry.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3
(…story begins at blog 15)

Clever John fell for a long time it seemed. He finally fell on a large sandy dune by the sea. He was quite knocked out. However, wouldn’t you know it; he had fallen right on top on a large hoard of gold. Moreover, his fall had dug a large crater, which is why the gold was there all shiny and bright for his eyes—as soon as he woke up.

How did the gold get there?

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* text between [ ] is not part of quote.

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a context which I hope will become apparent. No, I do not yet know where it is going to lead. This is a story with no end. If it began in the past (it must have), it is now moving parallel to the day we live in. Watching the film may or may not contribute to your understanding of my meaning. Put this clip as a tail to your communication so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWaLL9Gyees&feature=related others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site
http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change
http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.  * text between [ ] is not part of quote.
The 4th Awakening

39 John Mocked Again (1)
© Eso Anton Benjamins

Following the removal in 1940 of the K. Ulmanis regime by the Soviet Union and Ulmanis’s failure to self-sacrifice himself in the name of the Latvian community (or state), the authoritarian president

1.     failed himself;
2.     diminished Latvian confidence in themselves;
3.     mocked the resurrection of Johns by confirming their death;
4.     confirmed the continued rule of the pseudo democratic elite;
5.      kept the idea of monarchy as government in continued disgrace though
        made a step in its direction.
All of the five points above are closely related, which is why the word “mocked” is the active verb that unites them all.

This blogger has already argued that John was long ago mocked and diminished by the secular elites, when they called him “pagan”, which word derives from pa-Yan, a word that attempts to diminish the meaning of Yan (John), the son of the Goddess Sun. The mocking tone brilliantly shows its colours in Mozart’s opera “Die Zauberfloete” and the well known song by Papagena and Papageno.

If it is true that the Herrnhuters, also known as the Moravian Brotherhood, taught proto-Latvians (~1729 - ~1740) choir singing in order to recruit them to their ranks, it is more than likely that they found among the war (Great Northern War, 1700-1721) demoralized proto-Latvians preexisting cultural and social infrastructures on which to base their efforts. The moral rebuilding of the proto-Latvians, while no doubt changing their perception of themselves (they largely forgot the Sun as their Dearest Goddess), brought back into the light many old traditions. Therefore, the now nearly forgotten Johns Songs (YouTube  stands as an example of their dearth), once as special to the Latvian Midsummer Johns Festival as Christmas songs are to the festival of the winter solstice, were not only preserved, but implicitly continued the Arch-Christian tradition of Christianity here and now rather than in a Neo-Christian no-place called heaven.

During the life time of K. Ulmanis (1877-1942), Johns Songs were still widely known and widely sung. One did not yet have to have a “cultural organizer” to misinform the celebrants that the Johns Festival was better known as Lihgo Festival (literally a “halleluia” festival) at which no one felt like halleluing. Though the Bear Wrestler had replaced John during that time as the Latvian hero, the new hero still had enough of the old one left in him for a full throated song.

In any event, when Karlis Ulmanis felt that Latvians had to be rescued from tearing themselves apart in a parliamentary and “democratic” Latvia by presuming himself to become their leader, he took upon himself the responsibility of a community generating self-sacrifice. Alas, he had never heard of such a thing, because no Western head of state—ever since the guillotining of the French KingLuisXVI during the French Revolution—had ever even thought of leadership that way.

Therefore, when Soviet leader Stalin challenged Ulmanis and “his” Latvian-Latvians, Ulmanis failed himself and the Latvians. In fact, such a failure of leadership was repeated by the “bloody” Stalin, who on his death bed yet tried to kill his doctors rather than sacrifice himself. Hitler did no better, because he killed himself only because he wished to avoid being hung by the Western Allies. The idea of the Sacred King was only a memory limited to poets. Even among them, he is more often remembered as the Fisher King, one lamed by a wound in the groin and unable to move unaided.

What is it that lamed not only Ulmanis, but has for so long (way before the French Revolution brought down Louis XVI) lamed all governments East and West?

Though Rene Girard argues so perceptively about the phenomenon of the scapegoat, and how human beings have no built in mechanism that checks violence (as it operates among some animals)—which is why there is a need for one time “generative violence” to establish rituals of peace—his failure to perceive Neo-Christianity (in his case Catholicism) as the institution that inhibits and lames men’s minds and forces them into inaction through the exercise of permanent violence (the hidden mailed fist), short-circuits his own break-through. Girard condemns Arch-Christianity in no less severe terms for its practices of self-sacrifice than did his Neo-Christian forebears whose violence instilled such fear in common man of the governing “elites” that it stopped the proper functioning of the mind of even the elites themselves. While the Neo-Christians have “apologized” for the violence of their “religion” and have promised to do so no more, the damage inflicted enabled the now long ongoing catastrophe of military-secular rule.

The pseudo or romantic democracy that has ruled the world, the West particularly, is a devastating farce for the planet and humankind. Of course, no major power or empire is going to shift their thinking until their ship of state falls and shatters. It is different and so much sadder when the small powers, the small communities and states such as Latvia, buy into the Western mindset. It is absurd of the Latvian politicians to insist that they are oriented toward the West, not the East, when the East is as Western as the West, and there is no threat from either, but the romantic system both now cultivate.

The Vatican is a monarchy, and so are Anglican England, and all milquetoast Lutheran archbishops. As Rene Girard writes: “What might be [is] concealed here is the desire to sacralize oneself and make oneself godlike—which quite clearly harks back to the illusion traditionally created by sacrifice.” In other words, fear the illusions of your enemies and let a few more million men die, which is all the more reason to procreate irresponsibly.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3
(…story begins at blog 15)

Clever John looked down and replied: “As large as a dead horse’s eye.”

As soon as Clever John had finished the words, the raven flipped on her back, and despite the hold that Clever John had on her feathers, he fell off her back.

Clever John fell for a long time it seemed. He finally fell on a large sandy dune by the sea. He was quite knocked out. However, wouldn’t you know it, he had fallen right on top on a large hoard of gold. Moreover, his fall had dug a large crater, which is why the gold was there all shiny and bright for his eyes—as soon as he woke up.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* text between [ ] is not part of quote.

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a context which I hope will become apparent. No, I do not yet know where it is going to lead. This is a story with no end. If it began in the past (it must have), it is now moving parallel to the day we live in. Watching the film may or may not contribute to your understanding of my meaning. Put this clip as a tail to your communication so http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 
The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site
http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change
http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.  * text between [ ] is not part of quote.
The 4th Awakening

38 The Incomplete Reawakening of John
© Eso Anton Benjamins

When Karlis Ulmanis failed to activate the synonymy that would enforce the self-sacrifice of the not-violent and rebirth the Johns of the Children of Johns (the proto-Latvians), he failed in more ways than one. His response to the Soviet occupation in a radio speech was: "I will remain in my place and you remain in your places”. The declaration acknowledges an event, but does not indicate the nature of the event. The military occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union began on June 17, 1940.

The submission of Latvia to the Soviet ultimatum to allow an unlimited number of military forces into the country activated a new “sacrificial crisis”. The community renewed its search—albeit unconsciously—for the synonymy of “sacrifice” and “community” (though some may prefer the word “state”.) It is a challenge that faces the Latvian government to this day, but from which challenge the government runs away, because like all governments of our day, it is but consortium engaged in Neo-Christian rhetoric and presumption that humankind is born to community as handily as a hand is to a hand.

In blog 36, I wrote that Soviet Communism was—when all is said and done—a form of fascism. For a long time the Soviet regime of Stalin has escaped such a linkage, because the political left has been making apologies for Stalin’s violence as more justifiable than the violence of Hitler. But by putting both Communism and Fascism under the umbrella of the Arch- vs Neo-Christian conflict, we are able to bring the two under a single roof. One of the scholars that helps make the link is Anatoly Fomenko, the Russian mathematician-statistician, who reminds us that the Romanov tsars of Russia were westernizers. For all we know, they were western agents preparing Arch-Christian Tartary for Neo-Christian occupation beginning with conversion to secularism.  

In any event, while K. Ulmanis was in all probability sincerely miming whoever he may have believed John to have been, it escaped him that along with the role of John, he inherited its responsibilities unto death. Ulmanis’ failure to make a sacrifice of his life to the Latvian community, tragically cost the community its self-confidence.

Following fifty years of Soviet occupation, the easy victory of what is now known as “a Singing Revolution”, “hands cross the Baltics”, and “Days at the arricades", the post proto Latvians reemerged from the homus Sovieticus remake machine as post-Sovieticus Latvians. The Latvians found themselves almost instantly in need of the charisma of not-violent sacrifice, though, not surprisingly, they ignored this, and left the doors wide open for the stormy winds the post-Latvian era to destroy them.

When a tool and dye maker from Jelgava made the life offering (Buķis, 1993), the government, the target of the sacrifice, questioned his sanity. As a result, twenty years after getting out from under the Soviet yoke,the nation is closer to falling apart than it was under the Soviets. The presumption of politicians in a parliamentary democracy is that they have been selected for a semi-divine office. He-she is untouchable and secure in his-her secular theology (law) as a result of law that is enforced by the police. There is a presumption that no one will step over the red line and dare be violent, because the word belongs to Neo-Christian nonviolence (nonsacrificial order supported by the police) and not to Arch-Christian not-violence.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3
(…story begins at blog 15)

The raven flew higher and higher into the air and soon was flying over a large sea. Clever John could readily see the sea shrink in size. For all the crickets that he had ever bathed in the sea, he had never seen anything like this before. No wonder the raven is known as a wise bird, he thought to himself.

Just then the raven turned its large head toward Clever John and asked: “Tell me, Clever John, how large is the sea below us?”

“It is as large as a large lake,” answered Clever John. He was feeling the air getting cold and drew his bearskin coat a little tighter around himself.

“Kra, kra,” cawed the raven, “we have a while before getting there.”

The raven flew yet higher. Clever John saw the sea shrink all the way down to the size of a puddle. It was here that the raven turned her head and again asked: “Tell me, Clever John, how large is the sea now?”

Clever John—a clever wit as we may have by now noted—answered: “It is as large as a puddle made by a horse pissing.”

The air became doubly cold. Clever John was more than happy now to have the bear skin coat that the Sun had given him. Upon deeper reflection, it also occurred to him that he might have been wiser not to go looking for a princess, but bed down with Crazy Jane. Unfortunately, it was too late to do anything about that now.

Then just as he made the reflection, suddenly, before Clever John’s eyes there appeared Crazy Jane again. As before, she simply floated up before his eyes. “Yes, Clever John?” questioned Crazy Jane. “I thought that you would be dead by now.”

Clever John was surprised to see Jane. What did she want now? Then he realized that he had inadvertently rubbed her ring against the bear skin.

“Think what you will. I’m a touch cookie,” answered Clever John. At the very same instant the raven again turned her head and asked: “Clever John, how large is the sea now?”

Clever John looked down and replied: “As large as a dead horse’s eye.”

As soon as Clever John had finished the words, the raven flipped on her back, and despite the hold that Clever John had on her feathers, he fell off her back.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* text between [ ] is not part of quote.

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a context which I hope will become apparent. No, I do not yet know where it is going to lead. This is a story with no end. If it began in the past (it must have), it is now moving parallel to the day we live in. Watching the film may or may not contribute to your understanding of my meaning. Put this clip as a tail to your communication so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmIha8B8To&feature=channel others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 

Friday, January 28, 2011

The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site
http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change
http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.  * text between [ ] is not part of quote.
The 4th Awakening

37 God at the Drop of a Hat
© Eso Anton Benjamins

If one looks at history from the point of view of the concluding stages of our occupation of planet Earth, the settlement of Europe may be viewed as among the last. Of course the occupation of America, South America, and Australia happens subsequent to that of Europe. However, these latter continents, thinly settled before arrival of the Europeans, received a people of already secularized minds and, therefore, a people predisposed toward living in a mercantile, i.e. urbanite environment.

The “empty” continents, occupied by a scattering of “prehistoric” communities, received a people who had experienced a second birth of barbarism. Though this is not a commonly held view, this writer believes that the regressive maneuver was the result of a combination of rising living standards among an increased number of people, which led to confidence that did not hesitate to reject all things aboriginal and all civilizations immediately arising from it. The communities that formed before the second-birth barbarians came into being, generated themselves on the basis of a perception that a community comes into being only if it overcomes the sacrificial crisis that keeps it a rapidly disintegrating group. Indeed, the evidence of the beneficence of the sacrifices of the aboriginals and post-aboriginals was their very community.

What the barbarians of the second coming (second time around, so to speak) did was to impose themselves on the aboriginals through violence, and then insisted that the community was not the result of the sacrifices by the aboriginals, but the result of the violence exercised by the “moderns”. Thus, “violent” and “modern” became not only synonyms, but synonyms believed to be superior to the synonyms of “sacrifice” and “community”.

Some will say that sacrifice is a violent activity, and that one cannot therefore create a second coming for barbarism. One may reply that it depends on what one perceives as violent. It may be argued that there is a difference between nonviolence and not-violence.

Nonviolence is a romantic notion perpetuated by those who live in an urbanized world that has become unreal (i.e., alienated from nature), whereas not-violence suggests that violence is not—it is not turned against others. In other words, when one turns violence against one’s self, one creates a charisma that potentially bonds the witnesses into a community with no less strong bonds than overt violence. While the self-sacrificial act cannot be called nonviolent, it is for all that a not-violent act. It awes the witnesses into making peace with each other. It is for the sake of peace and the avoidance of war that a self-sacrifice dies.

Of course, there are sacrifices that are not self-sacrifices, but are sacrifices "sacrificed" by others for whatever reasons of their own. These other sacrifices may not be thought of as self-sacrifices (i.e., submissively accepting their fate), because even if they are such (by some tragic set of circumstances), the fact that another takes their lives (persecutes them) makes the other a murderer. Therefore, what this writer is arguing is that of violence became a synonym of nonviolence, but that the synonymy was (is/must be) enforced by the self-sacrifice of the not-violent.

It happened (sometimes between the 9th to 12th centuries) that the synonymy was destroyed as a result of the imposition of a world order through violence, what is here called the second coming of barbarianism. This rough and violent beast destroyed the memory of the not-violent order. We therefore have what we know today as the “new secular order” (Novus Ordo Seculorum). The old secular order, the day-to-day not-violent law of the times, is in our day believed to have been impossible and is therefore impossible now. This is why we delude ourselves into believing that we have succeeded in becoming “modern” by way of a nonviolent ideology and war, yet are finding ourselves imprisoned in an unchangingly violent world.

Likening the old secular order to Arch-Christianity and the new one to Neo-Christianity may be controversial, some may say provocative. One has to agree, but  suggest that the comparison is a not-violent act. It is a challenge. It asks why the Neo-Christian Johns, today known as Jesus Christ, is sitting in a non-place called Heaven and on his hands no less. Would the Arch-Christian Johns not have done better?

Incidentally, this is known as the religious schism between the Eastern and Western churches. While at this time the Eastern Church appears (to this author) thoroughly westernized inspite of its insistence that it is not, the tradition certainly suggests that at one time in history the schism was the result of polar perceptions of what religion is about.

This is where the proto-Latvians and Latvians come into the picture again. Interestingly, the cultural space in Latvia—even media people call on God at every opportunity—is as if there is no other. This compulsive presumption inhibits, above all, the ability to recall the past. What modern Latvians fail to do is to recall the traditions that once bound them as a community of Arch-Christians. 

The failure by Latvians to recall the past results in the present cultural, economic, and financial crisis, which is so severe as to threaten the death of the Latvian language in about fifty years or sooner. One of the primary causes of this crisis is the lock-step meme that was grafted unto a now dismembered Arch-Christian mindset by secularizing Neo-Christianity. The current government, literally possessed with itself, has hitched its wagon to a short-term past, while it never intends to welcome back an in-depth history. It is the Spinach Man, Popeye, dragging a wagon full of the unemployed, nonexistent forests, destroyed dunes, near empty countryside regions, and an endless discussion over whether one of the politicians in the Latvian Saeima (elected by the people of his district fair and square) speaks or does not speak Latvian.

The meme that set the forgetting of their language into motion was first officially inscribed on the Latvian mindset with the opening song to the First All Latvian Choir Festival. It was the neo-Christian Lutheran Hymn. Though removed from the repertoire a long time ago, the meme of Neo-Christendom continues to sit on his heavenly hands wherever Neo-Christendom is found and preaches “nonviolence”. John lies dead before its feet, but he no longer stinks, which apparently is a good enough reason not to remember him.

Nearly 150 years ago, one of the first Latvian books that openly expressed a nationalist bent by putting on the inside leaf a picture of a priest of the Children of Johns (Jāņu bērni) officiating at a forest altar, was burnt by the tsar. One may say that the tsar succeeded in his intent, because no one today in Latvia knows much about John or cares. While it appears that the defeat of John is complete is sitting on hands in Heaven an acceptable alternative?

The 1st Awakening of Johns (a resurrection of sorts) occurred in 1934 when Karlis Ulmanis did his “soft” coup de tat and made himself president and prime minister of Latvia. Ulmanis lasted as President until the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union (1940). As one of the founders and now authoritarian ruler, he was Latvia’s semi divine leader.
John the Reawakened failed at the task that moved him to imagine himself a monarch. To say this does not bring him dishonor. After all, in his time and ours, the disremembrance of the need for closing on a “sacrificial crisis” with a not-violent death has been forgotten. Substituting that forgetting with military action would have been futile. The first attempt at resurrecting John was aborted when K. Ulmanis failed the Soviet challenge to offer himself as a not-violent sacrifice. He died in a Gulag instead.

The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3
(…story begins at blog 15)

One of the hanged men looked up, and Clever John saw that it was the same man with whom he talked while on his way to Sun Mountain. He had not yet hung himself then. “You are a liar, Clever John,” yelled the man now, “the Sun said that we could stop hanging ourselves after you went hang yourself, but then did so no more.”

“Yes, I know. I am worried,” answered Clever John.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* text between [ ] is not part of quote.

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a context which I hope will become apparent. No, I do not yet know where it is going to lead. This is a story with no end. If it began in the past (it must have), it is now moving parallel to the day we live in. Watching the film may or may not contribute to your understanding of my meaning. Put this clip as a tail to your communication so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm96MZS48lA others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ 

Sunday, January 23, 2011


The following blogspots center on a variety of subjects, which I have initiated. You are invited to look and respond.
http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/ Not-Violence main subject
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/ Temple of Janis (John) site
http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ Arguments for systems change
http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/ Sacrificial crisis in Latvia

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.  * text between [ ] is not part of quote.
The 4th Awakening

36 The Arrival of the Naïve Gods
© Eso Anton Benjamins

Among the first of the naïve Gods to arrive in Latvia ready for the box whence the naïve Gods of a fictive “pagan” past could be drawn was Bear Wrestler (Lāčplēsis).
Not that the Bear Wrestler had always been fiction. A long time ago, when the forest was Alma Mater of not only proto-Latvians, but of all of humankind, the Bear Wrestler had the role of what modern anthropologists call the scapegoat and religious people call the sacrificial lamb. Later, when secular and violent neo-Christianity replaced not-violent arch-Christianity’s real sacrifice (click here herehere, and here) with a fictional one, the Bear Wrestler became an arms bearing military hero (here, and here.)
To explain the difference between the use of naked hands and a sword or a spear or a gun, I will refer to Rene Girard, from his book “Violence and the Sacred”. Writes Girard: “As long as violence remains present among men, and as long as men pursue it as an absolute, as a kind of divinity, it will continue its devastating oscillations.” In his text, Girard discusses violence in terms of Greek kudos, a term used by Homer. As the Greeks understood it, violence brings a fickle victory. Victory through violence will, too, be overthrown by violence, and, thus, peace established by violence will be short lived. Seen from this perspective, the Latvian Bear Wrestler with a sword in his hands cannot and does not bring about a permanent peace.

After Latvia declared its independence (1918) other former erstwhile Latvian Gods are added to the box of the naïve Gods. All are become bloodless. It is likely that the Gods lost their blood in the long trek through the swamp of history that began with Bishop Alberts humiliation of the king and kingdom of Jersika in 1209 and the year 1873, when the tsar burnt the “Lihgo" book, the cover of which became the flag of the yet proto-Latvians and their song festivals.

Laima, the Goddess of Fate, one whose theological name translates as “Dearest Goddess”, the superior equivalent of God (who with no little violence usurped the Sun), becomes but a Goddess in a linen shirt with folk design embroidery. The Goddess who was the midwife to the newborn and took the baby into her hands on a towel is not remembered in any Latvian maternity hospital now; never mind that Thunder (Pērkons) passes overhead without a show of real anger, and no one knows who John is or Johns were.

Even so, in our time Bear Wrestler covers for the bloodlessness of the others Gods or demi Gods, because his name has been sacralized by it becoming identified with Latvia’s defenders and war dead. The Bear Wrestler is a badge of honor and it has every Latvian’s respect. However, this fact does not allow us to forget and forgive that he is used by a unipolar government as reason not to offer John (Jahnis) the right to be either the firstborn or second born of twins if Bear Wrestler and John may be so regarded.

What may be classified as “the naïve gods” (I am not sure what anthropologists call them) of Latvia are largely inventions of one man, one E. Brastins. While the membership of Brastins native church (projected as serving on behalf of Latvian Latvians) never had a huge membership (the count at this time is said not to exceed more than 1000), its audience in the late 1920s and the 1930s was most of Latvia. Brastins Gods served to fill the vacuum left by the dismissal (through secularization) of the Children of Johns Midsummer Festival and replacing it with what is known today as Midsummer Picnic where an occasional “lihgo” song (a ululation forgot) may still be sometimes heard.

As already mentioned (see previous blogs), for the Latvians the way to the present leads through the puritanical straight jacket of the Lutheran and Catholic churches on to a puritanical secular shoal of ethnic nationalism, a term that translates as fascism. This running aground of the ship of state was not only traumatic, but intolerable. In the 1920s and 30s a number of such ships—bled white by the devastating oscillations of the swords of violence of World War 1 and lobotomized of all memory of not-violence through self-sacrifice—were in great dread of being overrun by an Apocalypse. Russia (disguised as the Soviet Union), then Germany (disguised as Deutchland uber Alles) joined by Italy, France, and, yes, Latvia, and others, began to check the break-up of their respective communities by checking extreme individualism with reciprocal violence. Then with internal order temporarily reestablished, they all vied with each other for “semidivine prestige, of mystical election attained by military victory.” That Latvia would be a loser in this game was almost a foregone conclusion.

Latvia’s semidivine leader became Karlis Ulmanis, one of the founders of Latvia as a secular neo-Christian nation. Could Ulmanis save Latvia? As it turned out, the President played an evolutionary role. He was another phase in the relay race among the bloodless secular Gods.


The Story of Crazy Jane and Clever John, Part 3
(…story begins at blog 15)

Clever John then buried Crazy Jane’s child, and the raven flew down from the tree to the ground and offered for John to climb on its back. Clever John wasted no time and lay down between the raven’s wings and buried his hands deep into her black feathers.

The raven rose into the air and Clever John raised his head to see where they were flying. They were just over the Ahdere River.

Clever John looked down and saw Crazy Jane still standing in the river and bailing empty buckets of water. It was only then that he remembered that he had never told Crazy Jane that the Sun had released her from her abortive labors.

“Hey, Crazy Jane,” yelled Clever John, “you can stop doing that. The Sun said so. I asked Her.”

“Thank you, Clever John,” answered Crazy Jane. She had raised her head and was looking up at Clever John. It was then that Clever John saw that that Crazy Jane was crying real tears and that the water she had been bailing from the river was not water but tears.

By then the raven was flying over the great oak tree where earlier on Clever John had seen all the people go hang themselves. They were still doing so. Clever John saw, too, that the Ahdere River began nearby and was from all the trickles of tears the people shed.

“Hey, you all,” yelled Clever John, “you can stop go hang yourselves. The Sun said so. I asked.”

One man looked up, and Clever John saw that it was the same man with whom he talked while on his way to Sun Mountain. “You are a liar, Clever John,” yelled the man back at him, “the Sun said that we could do so only after you hung yourself and would do so no more.”

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* text between [ ] is not part of quote.

Unchanged Feature: What is reality, what is myth?

Changing Feature: In the preceding posts, I started a compilation of video clips, which when seen as a linear sequence tell a story in a context which I hope will become apparent. No, I do not yet know where it is going to lead. This is a story with no end. If it began in the past (it must have), it is now moving parallel to the day we live in. Watching the film may or may not contribute to your understanding of my meaning. Put this clip as a tail to your communication so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4w3o80Vlj0&feature=fvw others may see. The origin of this post is at http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/