Excellent stuff. I hadn't realized the tripartite division was thanks to the work of a frog frog. There's a whole lost tradition of rightist scholarship that left-wing boomers have suppressed either through appropriating them while remaining carefully silent on their politics, or ignoring them entirely.
Indo-European scholarship, like Classics, tends to attract odd minds, and many of them gravitate to the right if they don't already start there. The boomer take on the IE migrations for the longest time was, "did not happen; sources are just repeating legends; pots not people." The idea was that the various nations of Europe were descended from peaceful Middle-Eastern farmers occasionally enriched by immigration. They kept that up until 2015, when a study was published that used DNA evidence to prove that a mass movement of people surged into Europe around 5,000 years ago, replacing a whole bunch of Y-Chromosomes among the natives. https://www.shh.mpg.de/36925/Nature_02_2015
The 1920s and 30s were a golden age of RW thought across the spectrum. Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Evola and Guenon, Lewis and Tolkien, Belloc and Chesterton, Coughlin and Mencken, Dumezil and Eliade, etc. I plan to write about the latter as well.
Do not forget the flowering of pulp fiction - Howard, Lovecraft, Burroughs, and many others since forgotten were at least implicitly reactionary in outlook. In sharp contrast to the unreadable and self-indulgent narcissistic modernism pushed by New York City critics as "American literature", their works were quintessentially American in their vigor and inventiveness. It's no accident that they've either been forgotten or are dismissed as mere genre writers of no literary significance.
Stone Age Herbalist has written extensively on the earthquake that happened in anthropology and archaeology due to the genetic studies that showed that the Blonde Beast was quite real. It seems significant to me that the resurgence in popularity of the writers I mentioned above, as well as renewed interest in the intellectual tradition of the right - which is really just the intellectual tradition of Europe - accompanied this scientific defenestration of cherished liberal mythology.
I'm a big fan of Stone Age Herbalist; I have his book and have lent it out to students. One kid who just graduated is in Alaska learning Haida based on what he read in Berserkers, Cannibals and Shamans.
I fondly remember the Sword and Sorcery fad from my youth in the 80s and have since gone back to look at the source material in greater depth. I've read the entirety of Howard's Conan stories, and that was my gateway into Lovecraft. Looking back now its interesting how Lovecraftian so much of 80s adventure and fantasy was. Ghostbusters and Big Trouble in Little China are essentially about men dealing with cosmic forces beyond their comprehension that intrude upon the normal world. I think the optimism in those stories gives scope for heroism, which in turn makes them more compelling and relatable than undistilled Lovecraft, which is why I think they are more popular and characteristically American than either HP or the modernists.
I will say that I need a broader grounding in pulp; my knowledge of Burrows is limited. I have read a great book on the narrower S&S genre, Flame and Crimson by Brian Murphy. It's worth checking out.
You *must* read Rosemary Sutcliff and Alfred Duggan.
Duggan is perhaps the most learned of historical novelists that I know. His books are great for (older) kids but not *for* kids. John Derbyshire on Duggan: "...a superior alternative to G.A. Henty, who is apparently a staple of the home-schooling people."
This of course ties in neatly with your series on education. I was thinking the other day that there would be no better way of getting students interested in military strategy than using one of his battle descriptions from, say, 'Count Bohemond' and having em draw it on a map--then discussion, expansion on the history etc.
Rosemary Sutcliff was a life-long cripple who plainly worshipped masculine vitality and nobility; no ressentiment in her. The stories--there's one set in the Bronze Age(!)--are written for...late pre-teens (? can't imagine many kids that age being able to handle Sutcliff now)...but adults can get a great deal out of them too. They are very affecting, all the more so when you think of Sutcliff's own infirmity--must have been a wonderful woman. 'The Eagle of the Ninth' is her most famous, but I've read just about all of em *as a full-grown man* and they're all great.
It makes sense that one must be the binder while the other punishes those who break contracts.
If one vows to do something, then doesn't carry through, then punishment must be enacted.
In my digging into the ancient gods, I came across Ananke, who is described as:
Ananke is a primordial deity in Greek mythology, known as the personification of inevitability, compulsion, and necessity. She emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation as an incorporeal, serpentine being whose outstretched arms encompassed the breadth of the cosmos. Ananke is considered the most powerful dictator of fate and circumstance, respected by mortals and gods alike.
Greek myth is the least IE of IE bodies of myth, largely due to the long association between the Greeks and the various cultures of the Near East, including Easternized fellow IE peoples like the Lydians and Phrygians, and the various Semitic-speaking peoples like the Phoenicians. Zeus, for example is largely Babylonian Marduk by way of the Teshub-Tarhunna of the Hittites and their successors. In purer strains of IE myth like the Norse, the thunder god is a second function deity connected to war, not the father of the gods.
I suspect the Ananke the goddess was likewise an import from the Near East and Semitic religion. Ananke is associated with Orphism, and thereby Dionysus and Thebes, and Cadmus the Phoenician; along the same lines, Orphism is the cult ancestral to the Pythagoreans, with his Eastern associations. The name derives from a Greek word but the word itself is of uncertain derivation. I read at least one theory that it is related to the Semitic 'Chanak,' but I have little direct knowledge of the relevant research.
The personification of Ananke is late (the name appears in Homer, but not as a divinity) and there is no mention I can find in Hesiod, which itself is heavily indebted to Eastern sources. My guess is that Homer was the inspiration and the Orphics filled in the narrative gaps with elements of Eastern goddesses (note the snakes and associations with Aphrodite, Eastern goddess par excellance) with some IE ideas about fate added in. The law god/magic binder god sovereignty duo is absent from Greek religion and only vestigial in Rome; the original IE ideas lasted longest on the fringes (hence the similarities between Norse and Celtic myth and Vedic lore).
This is absolutely fascinating. I've always been interested in ancient myths. That's why I was so drawn to Homer, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Illyrians, etc. I found Egyptian Mythology particularly interesting, which has only grown with the Mesoamerican mythos.
Excellent stuff. I hadn't realized the tripartite division was thanks to the work of a frog frog. There's a whole lost tradition of rightist scholarship that left-wing boomers have suppressed either through appropriating them while remaining carefully silent on their politics, or ignoring them entirely.
Thank you for the praise and the shout-out.
Indo-European scholarship, like Classics, tends to attract odd minds, and many of them gravitate to the right if they don't already start there. The boomer take on the IE migrations for the longest time was, "did not happen; sources are just repeating legends; pots not people." The idea was that the various nations of Europe were descended from peaceful Middle-Eastern farmers occasionally enriched by immigration. They kept that up until 2015, when a study was published that used DNA evidence to prove that a mass movement of people surged into Europe around 5,000 years ago, replacing a whole bunch of Y-Chromosomes among the natives. https://www.shh.mpg.de/36925/Nature_02_2015
The 1920s and 30s were a golden age of RW thought across the spectrum. Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Evola and Guenon, Lewis and Tolkien, Belloc and Chesterton, Coughlin and Mencken, Dumezil and Eliade, etc. I plan to write about the latter as well.
Do not forget the flowering of pulp fiction - Howard, Lovecraft, Burroughs, and many others since forgotten were at least implicitly reactionary in outlook. In sharp contrast to the unreadable and self-indulgent narcissistic modernism pushed by New York City critics as "American literature", their works were quintessentially American in their vigor and inventiveness. It's no accident that they've either been forgotten or are dismissed as mere genre writers of no literary significance.
Stone Age Herbalist has written extensively on the earthquake that happened in anthropology and archaeology due to the genetic studies that showed that the Blonde Beast was quite real. It seems significant to me that the resurgence in popularity of the writers I mentioned above, as well as renewed interest in the intellectual tradition of the right - which is really just the intellectual tradition of Europe - accompanied this scientific defenestration of cherished liberal mythology.
I'm a big fan of Stone Age Herbalist; I have his book and have lent it out to students. One kid who just graduated is in Alaska learning Haida based on what he read in Berserkers, Cannibals and Shamans.
I fondly remember the Sword and Sorcery fad from my youth in the 80s and have since gone back to look at the source material in greater depth. I've read the entirety of Howard's Conan stories, and that was my gateway into Lovecraft. Looking back now its interesting how Lovecraftian so much of 80s adventure and fantasy was. Ghostbusters and Big Trouble in Little China are essentially about men dealing with cosmic forces beyond their comprehension that intrude upon the normal world. I think the optimism in those stories gives scope for heroism, which in turn makes them more compelling and relatable than undistilled Lovecraft, which is why I think they are more popular and characteristically American than either HP or the modernists.
I will say that I need a broader grounding in pulp; my knowledge of Burrows is limited. I have read a great book on the narrower S&S genre, Flame and Crimson by Brian Murphy. It's worth checking out.
You *must* read Rosemary Sutcliff and Alfred Duggan.
Duggan is perhaps the most learned of historical novelists that I know. His books are great for (older) kids but not *for* kids. John Derbyshire on Duggan: "...a superior alternative to G.A. Henty, who is apparently a staple of the home-schooling people."
This of course ties in neatly with your series on education. I was thinking the other day that there would be no better way of getting students interested in military strategy than using one of his battle descriptions from, say, 'Count Bohemond' and having em draw it on a map--then discussion, expansion on the history etc.
More by Derbyshire on Duggan: https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/alfred-duggans-past/
Rosemary Sutcliff was a life-long cripple who plainly worshipped masculine vitality and nobility; no ressentiment in her. The stories--there's one set in the Bronze Age(!)--are written for...late pre-teens (? can't imagine many kids that age being able to handle Sutcliff now)...but adults can get a great deal out of them too. They are very affecting, all the more so when you think of Sutcliff's own infirmity--must have been a wonderful woman. 'The Eagle of the Ninth' is her most famous, but I've read just about all of em *as a full-grown man* and they're all great.
I will have to give them a look. I unfortunately don’t get to read much fiction, but when something great comes along, I try to make time.
I don't read much fiction either, but these two are well worth it and not at all taxing.
My favorite is 'Archaic Roman Religion'.
Awesome, thanks for informing me about this. The work seems particularly interesting to me as it seems to tie into many ideas that I had intuited.
It makes sense that one must be the binder while the other punishes those who break contracts.
If one vows to do something, then doesn't carry through, then punishment must be enacted.
In my digging into the ancient gods, I came across Ananke, who is described as:
Ananke is a primordial deity in Greek mythology, known as the personification of inevitability, compulsion, and necessity. She emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation as an incorporeal, serpentine being whose outstretched arms encompassed the breadth of the cosmos. Ananke is considered the most powerful dictator of fate and circumstance, respected by mortals and gods alike.
It seems that she fulfilled all the roles.
Greek myth is the least IE of IE bodies of myth, largely due to the long association between the Greeks and the various cultures of the Near East, including Easternized fellow IE peoples like the Lydians and Phrygians, and the various Semitic-speaking peoples like the Phoenicians. Zeus, for example is largely Babylonian Marduk by way of the Teshub-Tarhunna of the Hittites and their successors. In purer strains of IE myth like the Norse, the thunder god is a second function deity connected to war, not the father of the gods.
I suspect the Ananke the goddess was likewise an import from the Near East and Semitic religion. Ananke is associated with Orphism, and thereby Dionysus and Thebes, and Cadmus the Phoenician; along the same lines, Orphism is the cult ancestral to the Pythagoreans, with his Eastern associations. The name derives from a Greek word but the word itself is of uncertain derivation. I read at least one theory that it is related to the Semitic 'Chanak,' but I have little direct knowledge of the relevant research.
The personification of Ananke is late (the name appears in Homer, but not as a divinity) and there is no mention I can find in Hesiod, which itself is heavily indebted to Eastern sources. My guess is that Homer was the inspiration and the Orphics filled in the narrative gaps with elements of Eastern goddesses (note the snakes and associations with Aphrodite, Eastern goddess par excellance) with some IE ideas about fate added in. The law god/magic binder god sovereignty duo is absent from Greek religion and only vestigial in Rome; the original IE ideas lasted longest on the fringes (hence the similarities between Norse and Celtic myth and Vedic lore).
This is absolutely fascinating. I've always been interested in ancient myths. That's why I was so drawn to Homer, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Illyrians, etc. I found Egyptian Mythology particularly interesting, which has only grown with the Mesoamerican mythos.