Category: Boris Mouravieff
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Man’s Place in Nature
The noble man is one who dominates himself. The noble man is one who masters himself and loves to master himself; the base man is one who does not master himself and shrinks in horror from mastering himself.
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Inner Meaning of Augustinianism
Before we proceed along the Arcana of the Meditations, it might be helpful to point out a link between “gnosis” and the “arcana”. In the very first chapter of his Meditations Tomberg highlights the truth that arcana represent “enzymes” or “ferment” which make the soul fruitful by awakening the deeper, ever deeper layers, and which…
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Nature’s Lessons on Interior Friction
Cologero has beautifully highlighted the central paradox of “he who wishes to rise” or “the aspirant”: It is clear in fact that if persuasion sharpens itself to a pure, unrelated sufficiencyy—i.e., to a statey—rather than to sufficiency as denial of an insufficiency—i.e. to an act, to a relationy—the antithesis certainly has a value and is…
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The New Warrior Monk
The Role of the Knight In Gnosis, Vol I, Boris Mouravieff describes the Knight of the Middle Ages: The elite man of the Middle Ages was the knight. Chivalry formed the nobility, the ruling class in that epoch where money did not yet hold the reins of public and private life. To be noble still…
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Western Social Order – Part 3
In the Philobiblon, Richard de Bury (Bishop of Durham) justifies his love of books in a Christian framework by pointing out that Plato is said to have paid 10000 dinars for a rare scroll of Philolaus. Philolaus‘ work was most likely a transmission of the teachings of Pythagoras, who had gone to Tyre and to…
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The Christian Social Order & Pythagoras
Christopher Ferrara gives a very basic, but nonetheless interesting tour of Western civilization here. I hadn’t heard of Werner Jaeger, but I’ve ordered his three volume set. One sentence really springs to mind: “The State was the atmosphere within which the soul breathed”. This was the common link or identical conception that joined Hellenism with…
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The Twelfth and Final Labor
Cerberus We have finally arrived at the last leg of the journey in the Dodekathalon. Hercules is given a final test, as he “cheated” on two of the earlier ones, and this one is meant, not to test his mettle, but to ruin and destroy him. There is a chance, if he truly goes to…
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The Labors of Hercules, Part 3
The Third Test, The Ceryneian Hind For the third labor, Hercules was given a retrieval task instead of a slaying to accomplish. Since Hercules could not be overcome with guile & brute force, it was hoped that he could be made to trespass against a god, & have divine fury invoked upon him. Specifically, Eurystheus…
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If You Like, Esoteric Christianity
Tomberg criticizes Gurdjieff’s aims in Meditations on the Tarot as being without grace, and aimed at building a resurrection body apart from Initiation-from-above, although he freely admits the possibility of doing such, tacitly. In Ouspensky’s The Fourth Way, we are given a more detailed, in depth treatment of Gurdjieff’s views, which Ouspensky turned into…
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A Higher Imagination
Typically, as Mihai has pointed out, the imagination functions to degrade man. It offers him pornography, violence, and all other species of lust: a 24/7 cinema strip of running images. If it’s not doing this, it’s running narcissistic movie clips of nonstop happy endings for the engrossed slave, who lives in the Matrix and desires…