Orestes and the Ἐρινύες
°°°
It is the hour before Dawn on the Spring Equinox, dark outside, with
the Blackbird in the tree at the edge of the garden already singing.
No other sounds, as yet, and there arises within me questions I have
felt several times in the past few years.
Which are: is what we in a land such as this – a modern Western land
such as England as Spring dawns even within, upon, urban
conurbations – have acquired, developed, manufactured over the past
few hundred years worth the suffering that has been inflicted upon
other human beings, upon our forebears, and upon Nature? Is that suffering the price of such societies as we have developed and now seek to
maintain?
Numerous overseas conflicts; two World Wars with millions upon
millions dead, injured, traumatized, and cities, towns, Nature,
destroyed. Numerous invasions and wars since then. Poverty,
homelessness, injustice, inequality, crime, still within our lands.
Has anything in terms of our humanity, of we being self-controlled,
rational, honest and honourable – of ourselves as causes and vectors
of suffering – really changed?
It is not as if I am exempt from having caused suffering. My past decades long suffering-causing deeds are my burden and will be until I die.
My personal, fallible, answers born of my pathei-mathos, is that
unfortunately we as individuals have not as yet en masse
changed sufficiently so as to cease to be a cause and a vector of
suffering. Tethered as we still apparently are to causal
abstractions, to -isms and -ologies, and thus to denotata and the
dialectic of opposites, to the conflict that such denotata is the
genesis of.
Perhaps we need another hundred, two hundred, or more years. Our
perhaps we will continue, en masse, are we mostly now are,
the eventual extinction of our sometimes stable causal societies of
human beings acausally inevitable, fated; until the planet we call
Earth finally meets its Cosmic end as all planets do, with we human
beings never making real the visionary dream of a few to venture
forth and colonize the stars. And even if we did somehow realize
that dream, would we venture forth as the still savage,
dishonourable, war-mongering species we still are?
Yet all I have in answer, in expiation for my own past
suffering-causing deeds, is my weltanschauung of pathei-mathos; [1]
so insufficient in so many ways.
David Myatt
March 2023 CE
[1] The
Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos
Sarigthersa
(pdf)
°°°
A compilation of some philosophical and autobiographical essays, and extracts from private letters, 2014-2015. It was first published in a printed edition in 2015 and for this reformatted gratis Open Access version I have corrected some typos and updated the references to my translations of and commentary on tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum.
°°°
Image credit:
κρατῆρ ἡ μονάς, Tractate IV, Mercvrii Trismegisti Pœmandres, Paris (1554)
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Visiting A Catholic Church, 1995
°°°
A Summer 2022 Interview
(pdf)
The interview was conducted by Rachael Stirling in England in early August 2022.
°°°
Orestes and the Ἐρινύες
°°°
Understanding And Rejecting Extremism
(pdf
°°°
A new pdf of my 2013 text Understanding and Rejecting Extremism has been issued to improve its readability with sub-headings added to the headings of parts two and three to clarify the content, and the Creative Commons license updated. Otherwise, the work is unchanged.
David Myatt
August 2022
°°°
A Non-Terrestrial View Of Planet Earth
(pdf)
°°°
Image Credit:
NASA: Earth and Moon as seen from the departing Voyager interplanetary spacecraft
Orestes and the Ἐρινύες
°°°
A Personal Uncertitude of Knowing
(pdf)
°°°
Although the above essay was written in 2012 and formed the second part of a text titled Some Notes on The Politics and Ideology of Hate, since it expresses my personal learning and feelings in regard to my extremist past (1968-2008) and in regard to ideology and extremism in general, it perhaps deserves to be republished especially given the recent distribution of the monograph A National-Socialist Ideologist which summarizes those extremist decades of mine.
Other than adding a glossary of terms and slightly amending a footnote to mention the glossary, the essay is as originally published almost ten years ago.
David Myatt
December 2021
°°°
A National-Socialist Ideologist
(pdf)
Although I have some reservations regarding the above 2021 public document, particularly in relation to the last section of Part Three, it does present a reasonably balanced résumé of my various ideological and philosophical peregrinations and errors over the past forty or so years. Peregrinations and errors which absorbed me for years in the practice and the weltanschauungen of what have been termed National Socialism and then in the practices of the Muslim way of life, with such absorption over decades contributing to the pathei-mathos that was the genesis of my own weltanschauung and my rejection of all types of extremism, with – as a result of practical, personal, experience over some forty years – my understanding, as expressed in Understanding and Rejecting Extremism, being that “an extremist is a person who tends toward harshness, or who is harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some objective, usually of a political or a religious nature. Here, harsh is: rough, severe, a tendency to be unfeeling, unempathic. Hence extremism is considered to be: (i) the result of such harshness, and (ii) the principles, the causes, the characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is considered to be someone with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or for some cause, is intemperate. In the philosophical terms of my weltanschauung, an extremist is someone who commits the error of hubris.”
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Part One 1984-1998
° Preface
° The National Socialist Ideologist
° Polemical And Early National Socialist Writings
° Later NS Writings
° A Change Of Perspective
° Ethical National Socialism
° The Galactic Empire
° Conclusion
° Appendix I David Myatt: Islam and National Socialism
° Appendix II David Myatt And The Occult
Part Two: 1999-2008
° Prefatory Note
° 1998-1999
° The Mythos Of Vindex
° Islamic Writings
° National Socialism and Islam
° An Inner Struggle
° Appendix: An Open Letter to Martin Amis
Part Three: 2009-2017
° Preface
° Exegesis And The Culture Of Pathei-Mathos
° The Philosopher Of Pathei-Mathos
° A Modern Philosophy
° Criticism Of Hitler And National Socialist Germany
° Kalos Kagathos And Western Culture
° Ethical National Socialism And A Modern Spirituality
°°°
In the now still warm air of an approaching English dusk, in middle of the month of April, I can hear the birdsong of a Thrush while I sit, outdoors, near a blossoming Cherry tree.
Nearby, the garden of an Inn – a Tavern, a Pub – is eerily silent because deserted. At this time of year there should be, there was for decades, the laughter, the bustling, the joy, of human beings.
Such human silence is, for me, unprecedented. Making me aware of how transient we as a terran species are on this planet we have named as Earth. Were we all to die – from some future pandemic or other – would Nature, presenced in such life as birds and trees, endure? Possibly. Probably.
Were we as a species to survive some future pandemic or other would we humans as a species learn from such a pathei-mathos and change our Nature-destroying, our unemphatic, ways? Are we capable of learning from such a pandemic as currently affects our human species?
Somehow, I doubt that we in our majority would – or even could – change our ways. Yet – and at least in my experience – there is a minority who would, who could, learn, and an even smaller minority, a pioneering few, who already if only intuitively foresaw such a Nature-born human calamity as now affects us, our societies. Foresaw, and changed their ways of life accordingly.
Perhaps, as I myself intuitively feel – listening as I now do in the burgeoning twilight to the birdsong of a Thrush near a blossoming Cherry tree – those pioneering few are or should be our future. For they are those who, with families or alone, mostly live, often in rural or wilderness areas, “off grid” and thus disconnected from modern means of communication and striving to be self-sufficient in terms of food and other essentials.
For such pioneering few there are no ideologies; no politics; no interfering desire – political or religious – to change what-is into what others passionately believe should-be. Instead, there is only their family or an individual desire to live in a more natural, a more intuitive, way with Nature, with the Cosmos. Only an awareness of how we – as individuals, as a family – are a nexion to Nature, to Earth, to the Cosmos and thus an awareness of how what we do or we do not do affects or can affect Nature, Earth, the Cosmos.
Is this understanding – this intuition – the essence of a modern paganism? Personally I believe that it is.
David Myatt
April 2020
Image Credit: Roscosmos / NTSOMZ
°°°
Concerning Humility, Tolerance, Islam, and Prejudice
The two texts below were both written in 2012 and both concern Islam and ethics. The first text is “from a reply sent, in November of 2012, to a personal correspondent living in America who enquired about my peregrinations among various religions [and] about why – as mentioned in previous correspondence – I still respected the Muslim way of life.”
The items in the second text “developed from – and in a many places summarize and/or quote from – replies I sent to various correspondents between February and November of 2012 and which correspondence concerned topics such as prejudice, my views concerning Islam and anti-Muslim groups, [and] the use of the terms culture and civilization.”
As I noted in the second text, both texts “present only my personal, fallible, opinion about such matters, and which opinion reflects the weltanschauung and the morality of my philosophy of pathei-mathos.”
I republish the texts since the problems and the attitudes described in them six years ago are still relevant – if not more relevant – now.
°°°
I. Humility and The Need for Tolerance
With Reference to Islam
Contents
° Prefatory Note
° Of Learning Humility and Tolerance
° Of Respect for Islam
° Terror and Al-Quran
° Of Islam and Violence
° Conclusion
Humility and The Need for Tolerance
(pdf)
Extract from the chapter entitled ‘Of Learning Humility and Tolerance’
“As someone who has lived an unusual and somewhat itinerant (but far from unique) life, I have a certain practical experience, over nearly fifty years, of various living religions and spiritual Ways of Life. An experience from which I have acquired the habit of respecting all those living religions and spiritual Ways: Christianity (especially Catholicism and monasticism); Buddhism; Islam; Taoism; Hinduism; Judaism; and the paganism manifest in an empathic appreciation of and a regard for Nature.
Due to this respect, there is a sadness within me because of the ignorance, intolerance, prejudice – and often the hatred – of the apparently increasing number of people, in modern Western societies, who disparage Islam, Muslims, and the Muslim way of life, and who thus seem to me to reflect and to display that hubris, that certitude-of-knowing, that lack of appreciation of the numinous, that at least in my fallible opinion and from my experience militates against the learning, the culture, the civility, that make us more than, or can make us more than, talking beings in thrall to their instincts who happen to walk upright.
My personal practical experience of, for example, Christianity, is of being raised a Catholic, and being a Catholic monk. Of Buddhism, of spending several years meditating and striving to follow the Noble Eightfold Path, including in a Buddhist monastery and with groups of Buddhists. Of Islam, of a decade living as a Muslim, performing daily Namaz (including attending Jummah Namaz in a Mosque), fasting in Ramadan, and travelling in Muslim lands. Of Taoism, of experience – in the Far East – a Taoist Martial Art and learning from a Taoist priest. Of Hinduism, of learning – in the Far East – from a Hindu lady and of over a year on my return to England continuing my learning and undertaking daily practice of Hatha Yoga according to the Haṭha Yoga Pradipika. Of paganism, of developing an empathic reverence and respect for Nature by time spent as a rural ‘gentleman of the road’, as a gardener, and by years doing outdoor manual labour on farms…..
Following a personal tragedy which suffused me with sadness and remorse and which – via pathei-mathos – ended my life-long desire for and enjoyment of practical Faustian peregrinations, there arose a years-long period of intense interior reflexion, and which reflexion included not only discovering and knowing the moral error of my immoral extremist pasts but also questions concerning the nature of faith, of God, and our desire, in times of personal grief and tragedy and remorse, and otherwise, to seek and often to need the guidance, the catharsis, of a religion or a spiritual Way.”
°°°
II. Concerning Islam, The West, Prejudice, and Islamophobia
Contents
° Prefatory Note
° Prejudice, Extremism, Islamophobia, and Culture
° Toward A Balanced View Of Islam and The West
° Concerning Islamophobia
Islam, The West, Prejudice, and Islamophobia
(pdf)
°°°
David Myatt 
Memory Of A Beautiful World
0
°°°
One of the pleasures I have found in old age – beyond my three score years and ten – is recalling alone or reminiscing to others about times past. One especial memory is of when a younger version of me was cycling home from work one Summer in Shropshire [1] when I chanced upon someone – a celebrated cycling time-trial champion whom I seem to recall at one time held every RTTC record from 25 miles to 12 hours – while he was out training. We chatted as the comradeship of cycling decreed, and together cycled along together for many miles at over 20mph. A pace I intuitively knew from years of competing in local club and RTTC Time Trials.
But then he gradually increased the pace up to almost 30mph until after a few miles I made some excuse and turned left onto some minor road to collapse onto the grass verge. But it was wonderful, lying there, in the quiet isolation of a country English lane with only the breeze rustling trees and birdsong for company. Then, in those moments, that was my simple, my entire, life. If only – if only – it had lasted; if only – if only – I had somehow in some way managed to make it last so that it and similar moments became my life thereafter.
But it was not alas then to be, for I soon, so soon, returned to the world of extremism, of causal abstractions with its dialectic of opposites which so engendered a supra-personal certitude of knowing and the inevitable suffering of others. And it would take some twenty years for me to recall that – and similar – moments again following the most traumatic incident of my life: the unexpected suicide of my then fiancée, genesis as that incident was of my weltanschauung of pathei-mathos.
Mea Culpa; Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. But even now saying that, and Κύριε ελέησον, out loud does not help in these twilight years of my life. For there seems to be no expiation for my extremist past with its certitude of knowing. A certitude of knowing which is glorified even unto this day by others with their -isms and -ologies and the causal abstractions, the often suffering causing dialectic, on which they are based.
[1] I was riding my hack work-bike; a Mercian 531 frame, Cinelli bars and stem; TA double-chainset; Mavic G40 rims with Campag Record hubs; and – a concession to comfort – a Brooks B33 well-broken in saddle.
Filed in David Myatt, David Myatt: Pathei Mathos, David Myatt: Personal Comments, DW Myatt, Extremism, Letters of David Myatt, Pathei Mathos, Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, Weltanschauung of Pathei-Mathos
Tags: David Myatt, David Myatt: Pathei Mathos, Extremism, Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, Philosophy of The Numinous Way, The Numinous Way, Way of Pathei-Mathos