Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The 4th Awakening. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/

I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of the argument.

The 4^th Awakening

13 The Proto-Latvian View of the Here and Now (I)

In order to discover the proto-Latvian view of themselves and their future, we need to reconstruct an ever so brief spiritual history of our forebears. As argued in my previous blog (12), the zionationalist “mythical historical narrative” of Latvia that prevails in our day is actually a story of how one history is murdered to substitute it with another. How did this come about?

The mythical historical narrative of Latvia originates at about the same time as Zionism. Though the histories of Zionist Israel and zionationalist Latvia are distinct stories, both nationalist groups originate in the abandonment of their respective early religious backgrounds, which are substituted by a secularist orientation.

Since the ideal of a secularist orientation is global in outlook, once the secular entity was separated from its religious base, and in order not to dissolve in its own all materialist plasma, it needed to find something to anchor itself to and then provide itself with a new body, a new singularity. That “something” to which secularism attached itself was the geo-political state—re Israel and Latvia. However, the body or singularity discovered itself in a newly created fictional community—ethnicity, known also as ethnocentricity or ethnocentrism.

Since the story of the Bible and the presumptions that go with it are well known, this writer will concentrate on the religious origin of the proto-Latvian people instead.

Earlier blogs of this series argue that indeed the proto-Latvian Children of Johns have more in common with the Herrnhuter-Hussite-Lollard-Cathar-Bogomil religious orientations than the fictions of Dievturi (Believers in Old Gods), a fetishistic and pseudo-religious movement that arrived to zionationalist halleluiahs (though not to state recognition) in post-foundation Latvia, c. 1925.

To give the Children of Johns reality as a religious community (something the current cultural ethos denies them), this writer argues that contrary to the presumptions of our day, Christianity consists of two Christianities. The first Christianity, of which the Children of Johns or proto-Latvians were a part (and likely would still be part of if Johns were not repressed), is called Arch-Christianity. The second or currently prevailing Christianity may be called Neo-Christianity.

The origins of Arch-Christianity are buried in the strata that form the beginnings of civilization. However, the Children of Johns—as all Johns related religious communities (think Dionysius and more) were once known—are grounded in the religion of sacrifice, said sacrifice commonly known as the scapegoat. I will touch on some of the specifics of this ritual practice of the Children of Johns in due course.

Starting about a thousand years ago (some say the 9^th, some the 13^th centuries), Arch-Christianity was beginning to be repressed by a new form of Christianity, re Neo-Christianity. This assumption is not shared in by Neo-Christian officialdom, which believes that its form of Christianity is all inclusive. Be that as it may, it is nevertheless likely to be true that there was an Arch-Christian entity. The Neo-Christians—born of secularism and brought into being as an exclusive entity by non-sacred princes—were destined to change the nature of religion for the worse.

The foundation stone of the beliefs of the Children of Johns was that if there was to be a non-violent community, personal sacrifice was as unavoidable as it was essential. Contrary to Rene Girard (see link to “scapegoat” above), it is likely that the original scapegoat was one’s own self rather than some arbitrary victim, whether human or animal. After all, it is not the scapegoat or lamb, but the charisma that comes to whoever overcomes the fear of death that enables a group of loose knit people to focus their attention on the sacrifice and allows it to become the core armature for a newly founded or reconstituted community.

A community built on a foundation of self-sacrifice is necessarily a pietistic community, because piety is the reaction of an audience to charisma. And interestingly enough, the piety of the Latvian Children of Johns is imprinted in the Latvian language. One cannot say “dear” in Latvian without thinking “dearest”. At the same time, our out synch “modern times” continues to repress the endearing word with a zeal Luther might be proud of. To illustrate the point a little further, all we need to do is take a look at the treatment the Latvian language receives from its media in our own day.

The language of the Latvian public media (newspapers, television, internet news platforms, etc.), communicates only a small fraction of what is communicable by the language as a whole—if besides the presumed objectivity of the media, one takes into consideration also its subjective potential as expressed by the endearing word. The denial of a public function to the endearing word denies the Latvian language its populist hypothesis, which has been imbedded in the speech of proto-Latvians for perhaps thousands of years. It is nothing short of nihilistic contempt for the language it uses by the Latvian media, or to put it in another way:  Latvia’s media impoverishes the language it presumes to be a function of through repressive disuse.

The subjective potential of the Latvian language (and no doubt many other languages) is left a cold room on the north side of the building. Not surprisingly, advertising with a capital “A” has taken possession of all the rooms facing east, south, and west.

P.S. Examples of the endearing word:

John < Johnny

Bird < birdie

Mouse < mousey

Alas, the endearing word in the English language has been in disuse for so long that it feels cramped and immature. In the Latvian language, the endearing word is every noun, including my computer, re kompihts.

(To be continued.)

Asterisks & Links of Interest

Posted by Jaņdžs at 2:57 AM 0 comments

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The 4th Awakening. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/

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.

The 4^th Awakening

12 Lihgo, John Whoever !  (1918)

If in 1873 a Latvian artist could still believe that when drawing a representative figure of a Latvian, he could do no wrong by portraying Latvis as John, by 1888 this was no longer true.

Came 1888, the Latvian poet Andrejs Pumpurs published the pseudo epic “Lāčplēsis" (Bear Slayer). Borne on wings of fictitious history (composed 1872-1887), Bear Slayer soon replaced John, Son of the Sun.

The origin of Pumpurs’ Bear Slayer figure is uncertain. While Latvian schoolbooks claim that the origins are to be sought in Latvian folk tales, it is more likely that the folk tale is a variant of mythological figures popular in the middle ages. One such figure appears in Martin Luther’s illustrated Bible, another is an illustration by the famed medieval artist Lucas Cranach. In both instances the figure is named Samson, the Lion Slayer.

Following the example of Pumpurs, another Latvian poet, Rainis, wrote “Uguns un Nakts” (Fire and Night), a play in the sing-song style of Latvian folk songs. The political function of the play, published in 1905, was to confirm Bear Slayer (see Prologue) as a true figure of Latvian mythology. Because Rainis was a member of the Socialist Democratic Workers Party, he, like Pumpurs, had little use for the religious notions of Latvian pa-yans (pagans). Pumpurs, an officer in the Tsars army, who fought against the Turks alongside the Serbs, was declared by Rainis to be a Latvian “peoples’ soldier”. Thus, it came to be that on the symbolic level the first Bear Slayer Medal of Honor (Lāčplēša ordenis) was awarded by a poet to a poet, by Rainis to Pumpurs.

Rainis subtitles his play “old songs sung to new melodies”. In fact, the play is anything but an old song. The name of John or Johns (Jahnis in Latvian) does not make an appearance. Instead, the Bear Slayer is Pumpurs’ and Rainis’ version of the German Siegfried.

As soon as Bear Slayer is invented, he makes haste to take John’s place. This happens with less ado than when Jacob tricks Esau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esau out of his birthright. All that is remembered of Johns by Pumpurs is “Lihgo”. Indeed, Pumpurs has Bear Slayer and Laimdota (Good Fortune) marry—would you believe it?—on Johns Day without John ever being mentioned. Instead of the name of “John”, we hear “Lihgo” and “Lihga”.*

Privileged by hindsight, we see today that though Bear Slayer had the brawn to jump on the wagon of history (however Pumpurs-Rainis, et al perceived the trend of events at the time), it did not take long for the cart to spill Bear Slayer into a ditch.

In terms of long-term history, Bear Slayer, a man not reluctant to use violence, brought with him disaster. Not that this was perceived at the time of Bear Slayer’s creation. The failed Revolution of 1905 was nursed back to health by the intelligentsia using as salve not words of love, patience, and wisdom, but words full of patriotic gore urging violence. The disconnection between the psyche of the Latvian people (which was and remains embodied in the endearing word) and the intelligentsia was near total.

Following the failed revolution of 1905, the critical mind ought to have perceived that the Latvian “New Current” movement had constructed (on the heels of repressed Herrnhuters) a nationalist monster called “Mythical Historical Narrative”. There ought have occurred a return to the narrative of actual historical events. However, the failed revolution helped the nationalist wagon to uncouple itself from the long-haul train moving toward an educated and critical society. The uncoupled wagon was soon romanticizing violence and hurtling down a sidetrack toward renewed social chaos. The spark that ignited the Pandora’s box of the Western world arrived with the outbreak of WW1 (1914).

Baumanu Kahrlis, the Latvian artist who drew the first Latvian as John (1872) and wrote the Latvian national anthem (also 1872), gives clear evidence that his mind was divided between choosing John or God. Not surprisingly, God was the winner. Since the secularist military forces with neo-Christianity in their tow had succeeded in putting up God (no one quite knew what God was or stood for) as their leader [I am thinking of the Wehrmacht belt buckle on which we read “Gott mit uns” (God with us)]—the secular forces, military or otherwise, could do whatever they wished. Apparently intimidated, Baumanu Kahrlis stopped using the name of John and used the name of God in place of the unknown travelers (see Blog 11).

The repressions encouraged by the Lutheran (and Protestant) zeitgeist guaranteed that the name of John would not recover. The name remained in use only in so far that it identified the midsummer festival as an event specific to Latvians. But because the origin of Johns was wilfully mystified and its sacred function denied, today the festival is little more than a picnic on midsummer’s day. The neo-Christian churches, having blended their respective institutions with those of secular power, deny that they have anything to do with the murder.

The great fortune (or could it be misfortune?) of the nationalists who fell out of their zionationalist wheelbarrow was that they lost consciousness the moment they fell to the road. When the zionationalists recovered consciousness, they did not wish to recall the catastrophe (the long-term social disorder that followed the 1918 declaration of independence) and were only too happy to forget that God had once been known among Latvians (and many other people) by the name of John or Johns. Moreover, the Children of Johns (Jāņu bērni) and their leaders, the latter once known as Krstjans (Krišjāņi) or Keyjohns, too, had by this time lost consciousness of themselves as an organized community.

The Johns whom we once greeted “Good day, John”, and who answered “A good day to you, John, too!”—that John (or Jane-Zhane) was you and me. It was through the murder of these Johns that a trans-nationalist culture was murdered. This is why the holy snake known as “zalkts” (the common grass or garter snake) of the Balts is twisted around itself in a knot of pain to this day. It is not allowed to be itself.

More specifically, the reason “John” was not written across the first Latvian flag was because the tsar, the barons, and the neo-Christian church forbade it. They knew that the Children of Johns were not only loyal to their own community (nation), but transcended it, and could encompass and be encompassed by a much larger entity. In effect, the Children of Johns were proto-Latvians with a mission.

One should not be surprised if the penalty the tsar rendered anyone recollecting the name of the Children of Johns was to send them to Siberia. Of course, by this time the Russian tsar was described as the very opposite of what the name “Ivan” meant to his early forebears. By a process of inverting the sacred into the secular, Ivan the Sacrifice became Ivan Grozny.

The Latvians celebrate their Independence Day on the 18^th of November. As happy as the Latvians may be over their forebears’ success at establishing a space for their community, they remain very much under the sway of supernationalists, political powers who are heirs to the zionationalist abandonment of their forebears’ religious orientation. The worship by the Latvian zionationalists of the superficies of the Latvian language, all the while ignoring the substance of it, is the knot laid across the road and prevents the Latvians of our day to succeed to a better day.

Asterisks & Links of Interest

* Pumpurs, Bear Slayer, Fifth Canto, first 4 lines, re:

Par gadskārtu Līgo nāca/ Savus bērnus apraudzīt -/Tad pa visām latvju ārēm/ Līgo, Līgo skanēja!

Every year Lihgo comes/ to see his children./ Then all over Latvia/ one hears sing Lihgo, lihgo! Etc.

Posted by Jaņdžs at 2:57 AM 0 comments

Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The 4th Awakening. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/

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.

The 4^th Awakening

7 Metamorphosis of the Trojan Horse

The ferocity with which some Latvians cling to their Trojan horses (no doubt because the history of Latvia in practice is no older than 150 years) is of some interest. I am referring to the massive state sponsored song festivals that for all these 150 years have stolen recognition from village choirs. It speaks volumes about the exposure to the risk and, unfortunately, loss of community spirit in Latvia.

The argument for state sponsored unity is that the shallows of the Baltic are filled with pools of amber and antique folk designs. All one needs do is take off one’s shoes, come wade, and stir up the sand.

Unfortunately, the shipwreck of arch-Christi-yanity which necessitates these fetishistic objects to wash to the surface lies buried deep below the sand. Neo-Christianized, that is to say, Lutheranitized spectrs of proto-Latvian Gods fill the space of museum walls.

In the days when there were only horses and oxen, and the blue sky contained only clouds, swallows, larks, storks, and ravens—in short, when only things that were marvels of life energy alone ruled—a country man or woman looked down the road and saw in the person coming toward them various possibilities of who it might be. One possibility was that the stranger was a God or Goddess. Then again, it might be the neighbor coming for a visit. Then again it might be John the Messenger.

To be agreeable, you greeted the unknown, yet unrecognized traveler and said: “Labdien, Jāni!” (Good day, John) or “Labdien, Žane!” (Good day, Jane!) It was the custom of the proto-Latvians to address those they did not know by these names: John or Jane. [I realize that most readers have not thought of this possibility. Nevertheless, it was (let us allow that it was) a clever way to address a stranger. John and Jane (or Jānis and Žane) were names-addresses that by inflection of voice embraced a God (Dieviņš), a friend, or gave a friendly nod to a passing stranger who just might be John as the incarnation of the guide to the Land of the Dead.

Imagine that after a few thousand years of such a custom (because it was such a good custom) the stranger no longer greets you as Jānis and Žhane (Ivan and Zhena, Johann and Johanne, Jean and Joan, Ian and Jane), but said: “Sveiks, payan!” (Hello, payan!) You might protest. You might even block the road and ask just what the stranger means by addressing you in such a manner. You explain that this is “strange talk” in your part of the world.

Perhaps your challenge goes unanswered the first time. However, by the second or third time, the stranger blows a whistle and calls for his body guards. They wrestled you to the ground, and the stranger says to you: “Hence your name is for ever ‘pa-yan’ (No šī brīža tavs vārds ir Pa-yāns.) If you protest, we will give you a knock on your head and your name will take another drop in esteem, and you will be known as a ‘pagan’”.

This is about how the names of John and Jane (or perhaps before Jane it was Laima) went out of business. Yanis > pa-yahnis > pagan. Once the name change was securely instituted, the name was ready for further changes: it could become paisan (or perhaps “gentile”, re ‘yentils’), and sometimes came to mean a heretic, hence ready for the burning. In the days when persecution by burning was popular, you were burnt the moment that the name “John” (Jahnis) came to your lips. Joan of Arc’s fate is a good example of what those who honored the name of John and Jane or Joan endured.

After losing “Good day, John” as its daily custom, the community lost both God and man. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with names such as Idzis or Tanya, or yours and mine, whatever the name may be. It is simply that when I address you, my address no longer has the breadth it once had. Today our response is likely to be “friendly, but cautious and reserved”, in other words, impersonal. The stranger is probably only a Japanese tourist lost visiting the Latvian “sights” in Sigulda, saying “Hi! Hi!”

The name “pa-Yan” may well have been used as the generic name of proto-Latvians (and other Europeans) for a long time. The implicit slur of it was one of the psychological burdens that pushed the proto-Latvians into the mud. No doubt, soon “pa-yan” became “pagan”. One can hear many Latvians to this day proudly claim themselves to be pagans.

Livonia, the Land of the Endearing Word and the folk song in which every other or third word was an endearment, has become a land where the name Idzis has replaced John. John may be still in use, but he is certainly never entertained to be a God. To imagine such a thing is beyond us. We much more readily think of a person as a heretic or heretical (ķecerīgs) and, for that matter, play at being subservient: “How may I serve you” (Kā varu jums pakalpot? A sus ordenes!)

Even if the above explains the evolution of “John” and how it fell and became nearly indistinguishable from the word “pagan”, we are yet to touch on some of the other meanings of the name. We need to grasp the embrace the name-word has.

 “John” was once also (as already suggested) identified with Death. John, It/He, meant the horrible Other. That is, it was our Other alright, but we kept this part of ourselves in check by an annual sacrifice of a goat or sheep. John were the shepherd went with the sheep. When sheep no longer sufficed as a sacrifice, and neither did children, the Johns sometimes offered themselves in sacrifice. In Turkey the jannisaries were known as particularly fierce, death take care, adversaries. Gendarmes, the police, still know that sometimes their job may put them at risk of their lives in the service of the community.

The enemies of John (and there were many of them and of all kinds) did other unpleasant things to him. They sent out criers throughout the land who told the people that Johns Songs were no longer to be sung anytime one pleased or when John came to town, but were to be collected and limited to the day of midsummer. Like Christmas songs, the songs of Johns were henceforth to be sung only during Midsummer festivities.

In due course, the Johns Festival would be (and was) renamed “Lihgo Festival”, and the songs would (did) become subject to easy manipulation and degradation. The “Lihgo Songs” of Soviet times were newly written, with just enough traditional songs left in the book to presume antiquity.

Even with such humiliating burdens, the Children of Johns held on. The Eucharist (? Yan-charist) of the Latvos—a slice of caraway cheese and a mug of mead—accompanies the celebrants of Johns Eve to this day. The trouble is that this Eucharist is no longer made at home, but has become a tasteless commercial product. Few remember (actually no one remembers, though a few may speculate) that Johns Eve and Day are arch-Christ-Yan and not pagan holidays.

Asterisks & Links of Interest

 Posted by Jaņdžs at 2:57 AM 0 comments