The Primitive is Not the Primordial

In one of the very few items of writing by the darling of heroic capitalism, Ayn Rand, that the present writer has ever bothered to read – let us stress here that he has not usually the slightest affinity with Mrs Rand and her philosophy – she makes a useful distinction between two dominant cultural tendencies in contemporary Western civilization. She cites the year 1969 as a watershed, and points to two great defining moments in Western culture in the summer of that year: the moonlanding of Apollo 11 in June and the Woodstock Music Festival in August. The moonlanding, she says, was a great moment of cultural optimism and was celebrated by those who look to science, technology and reason as the path forward for humanity. Woodstock, however, was the inverse of this: the hairy hippies who assembled there and wallowed in the mud were, she says, representatives of cultural decline who embraced a regressive, anti-modern, anti-science ideology that celebrates the primitive and the irrational, cowers from the future and retreats into the poverty of the past. In her essay, if not elsewhere, she proposes that the contemporary West is a battleground between these two opposing visions, one characterized by triumphant science and other by a backward-looking back-to-nature flight from reason.

In itself, it seems to this present writer, this is not an inaccurate analysis. Mrs Rand has successfully identified an important cultural polarity, a key tension, that remains to this day in occidental culture – there is, on the one hand, a strong drag towards scientific optimism and the ideology of progress, and against this there is also a strong drift towards what we might characterize as a modern primitivism typical of but not isolated in the so-called ‘counter-culture’. Both tendencies can be observed all about us. They pervade our culture. They are like counter-weights to each other. The present writer, in any case, has always been acutely aware of this polarity because it has appeared to him as an unhappy dilemma, a Scylla and Charybdis, a dichotomy of evils through which one must navigate as best one can.

Mrs Rand, the atheist ‘Objectivist’, of course, was a dedicated, wholehearted proponent of the merits of blind scientism. She was a self-appointed high priestess in the religion of materialist progress. It is not a religion to which the present writer has ever subscribed. At the same time, however, Rand’s critique of the Woodstock generation was certainly not unfounded. There are those who, rejecting scientific optimism and the progress narrative, would rather wallow in mud instead. This takes many forms but always involves an attraction to those phases of history, and pre-history, most remote from modernity. One of the paradoxes of modernity is that it includes a revival of the primitive. At Woodstock we saw a new tribalism. Its personal emblems - nudity, barefootedness, uncut hair - are all a rejection of the marks of civilization. In Australian sociology those that populate this tribalism, which has developed and mutated in several directions since Woodstock, are called “ferals”. They display a comprehensive rejection of civilization and its norms – which they denounce as a mistake from the outset - and typically embrace forms of neo-primitivism instead. It is, indeed, a powerful and widespread movement with many manifestations in fashion, politics, art, music and social relationships. We today find it in diverse forms and fads – the paleolithic diet, the tattoo craze, New Age shamanism, Ayahuasca retreats in the Andes. But it is, as Mrs Rand rightly says, pathological: regressive, defeatist, irrational, self-destructive, decadent, deviant, escapist, vandalistic. 

The problem for this writer, anyway – a problem that has occupied much of his life – has been to escape from this choice of evils and to find another way. In part, this quest was answered by so-called ‘perennialist’ perspectives (or, as he prefers, and more accurately, ‘primordialism’.) In such perspectives the heroic capitalism championed by Mrs Rand, along with its godless Prometheanism, is also deviationist and, finally, luciferic. Modern man has, at his own peril, turned away from a perennial and indeed primordial heritage of wisdom and is drunk on his own pride. Modernity, in this perspective, is recklessly anti-traditional. The great truths of human civilization embodied in traditional orders east and west are being cast aside. Man himself is threatened by his own machines. But the perennialist/primordialist perspective is not, for all of that, a retreat into the irrational, the unintelligent and the primitive. Instead, it is a recapitulation, a re-statement, a re-visiting of, a re-attunement to a metaphysics and wisdom found in such pre-eminent thinkers as Plato, Shankara, Ibn Arabi, Lao Tze, of a spirituality found in the great religious traditions, and patterns of life and cosmology typical of the great, mature, historical (grain-based) civilizations of the world – a mode of civilization shattered by industrialism. It proposes not retreat but continuity, while seeing modernity as a rupture and a betrayal.

Unfortunately, many of those who have identified with or been influenced by perennialist/primordialist perspectives have not always navigated clear of the pitfalls of primitivism in their aversion for modernity. There are those who, turning away from Scylla, have fallen into the embrace of Charbydis. The present writer has witnessed, over his lifetime, the increasing confusion of the primitive with the primordial. It is a confusion and a conflation which is today quite advanced. Largely, if not wholly, it is the product of the life and teachings of the French-Swiss perennialist Frithjof Schuon. Monsieur Schuon began his spiritual career as a student and follower of Rene Guenon and like Guenon found a home in Mohammedan Soofism. In large measure Schuon’s core doctrines are a reworking of the Saracen sage Ibn Arabi. But at a certain point in the 1980s he relocated to the mid-west United States and, pursuing a childhood obsession, engineered a syncretic amalgam of Soofism with the lore of the American Plains Indians. More and more his teachings became imbued with the naturalist pagan perspectives of the Indians until the Soofism gave way to so-called ‘primordial gatherings’ in which his followers would sit sky-clad (naked), or dress in quasi-Indian outfits, participating in quasi-Indian rituals. In his writings Schuon proposed that the pre-literate red man was just as much a spokesman for the ‘sophia perennis’ as Plato or Thomas Aquinas.

Thus did Schuon fuse together the primitive with the traditional. It was a fusion that would never have been entertained by Guenon, and indeed it was not long before many of Monsieur Guenon’s associates and students cut their links with Schuon entirely. Guenon was, arguably, the most astute and vicious critic of modernity in the XXth century. His Reign of Quantity is a devastating account of the ways in which the modern order violates the traditional world-view. But at the same time he was not in any sense an advocate of the primitive. The Guenonian view is starkly different to the Schuonian. Guenon once wrote, for instance:

The sociologists pretend to assimilate [the ancient mentality] to that of the savages, whom they call “primitives” when on the contrary we regard them as degenerates. If the savages had been always in this inferior state that we witness, it would be impossible to explain the multitude of customs they possess (without comprehending them anymore), which cannot be but vestiges of lost civilizations…

For Guenon, here and elsewhere, “savages” and their cultures are “degenerate” forms – he hesitates to call them “primitive” because he does not regard them as “prime” - and it is from “lost civilizations” that they have degenerated. He admits that there is a “multitude of customs” that they possess, which amounts to a residual body of tradition, but they do not comprehend such customs anymore. For Guenon, then, the primitive is residual, not integral. To explain this he invokes the idea of “lost civilizations” such as, say, the traditions of the lost civilization of Atlantis.

We must hasten to add at this point that it is doubtful if the luminous Monsieur Guenon believed in “lost civilizations” in a crude literal sense; his view of history and historical processes – more a heiro-history - is no way literalist and mechanical at any point. But he did subscribe to the traditional view – it is even a Biblical view – that the “primordial” has its roots in an antediluvean order (literal or symbolic) of which tribal groups, ‘primitives’ and ‘savages’, the uncivilized, are “vestiges” or, as Guenon elsewhere puts it, “debris.” What we find in the primitive, then, is the mere traces, the ruins, the dregs, of something once great and vast that came before. This is not a matter for anthropological or archaeological objections either. The point is that this is, indeed, the traditional narrative. It is a view found again and again in traditional sources. Let us be clear about this. The traditional trajectory of history (not a profane history, to be sure, but a sacred history) is this:

1. The world comes into being.
2. Great civilizations come into being.
3. Cataclysm: [Flood] Great civilizations are destroyed.
4. New civilizations emerge.
5. Primitives etc. are the remaining degenerations from the civilizations prior to the cataclysms.

Again: it makes no difference to us if this is or is not a narrative that can be sustained by anthropological or archaeological evidence. It is not a point of science. The question is: what is the traditional view of the lore and customs of primitive peoples? The answer is: it is (or is as if it is) a residue of something that was once whole and integral. 

"Primordial gatherings"

This, assuredly, is very different to the more Rousseaean view propounded in the work of Frithjof Schuon. He elevates the primitive – specifically the red man, but by extension indigenous, tribal and ‘First Nation’ traditions generally – to the first rank of Tradition with an upper-case T. It is among these tribal peoples, he says, that we find the primordial and he accords these traditions with an integrity lost in later traditions. In Islam, to cite the example relevant to Schuon’s own life, there was but one Prophet, Mohammed, but among the Plains Indians, he says – before the arrival of the white man – every man was, as it were, a prophet, such was their dignity. Schuonianism makes much of the ‘Feminine’ and of ‘Nature’ and he regards the primitive man to be nearer to these ideals than not only modern man but civilized man per se. The primitive is elevated in Schuon. In Guenon, and other ‘perennialists’, we find the repositories of Tradition to be rather the great religions and the great civilizations prior to the modern deviation. 

Among Schuonians, the 'feathered sun' of the Plains Indians - not the Aum symbol of the Vedas or any other established symbol of Tradition - became the symbol of "perennialism". 

This innovation in Schuon’s thinking is, in some respects, a perverse outcome of the perennialist critique of evolutionism and its reassertion of the more traditional doctrine of de-evolution. Guenon, Schuon and many of their followers offered a strident attack upon the theory of evolution, both in its biological and social forms. Instead, they drew attention to the fact that in the traditional world-view – such as in the Yuga doctrine of the Hindoos - the qualities of man and the cosmos decline over the ages, the world winds down, it does not get progressively better. The traditional mind-set, found throughout and across the great civilizations, is fundamentally conservative: it cannot conceive of the son being greater than the father. But does this then mean that a headhunter in the New Guinea highlands is spiritually superior to St Francis of Assisi? Some perennialists – convinced that we are in the grip of the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age at the end of a cosmic cycle – have sought the mythic Golden Age in the jungles of the Amazon, the deserts of Australia and the bushlands of Africa. Such identifications are usually guided and informed by the profane ideologies of Marxist anthropology, romantic ecology, feminism and similar, which have all sought to valorize and idealize the primitive for strategic reasons of their own and which form the intellectual edifice of modern neo-primitivism.

What then is the primordial if it is not to be found among “savages”? In large measure the error is a mistake in categories and labels. The pedantic Guenon was perfectly right to insist on a more careful use of the term “primitive”, for it should only be applied to what is truly primary. Let us recall that in the Biblical narrative what comes first is the Garden of Eden. What is primary is Edenic. And this is a cultured garden, an order, and should not in any sense be confused with “wild nature”. The Biblical narrative is very clear on this. Wilderness, like the “savages” that populate it, is a falling away from the pristine and original order. What is primordial, properly speaking, is Edenic, and it is only by confusion of Rousseaean proportions that we can mistake the primitive tribesman to be living in Eden. Tradition, properly speaking, is a golden thread that goes back to the Garden of Eden, not to a group of aborigines in Arnhem Land. Such people may well be “nearer to nature” than modern man, but the primordial, properly speaking, is not concerned with “nature” but with a transcendent Source, and this is a very different thing. Eden bears the imprint of Heaven. Nature, however pristine, is nevertheless a falling away.  It is a crucial distinction.

The New Age is characterized by combinations of eastern spirituality plus either scientism or primitivism (or both). That is, typically, one or both of the two tendencies identified by Ayn Rand are mixed with oriental religion.

Recently, the present author was reading the commentaries on the I Ching by the XVIIIth century Taoist master Liu Yiming. The Master refers to the “primordial” throughout, and in exactly the Edenic sense. The Tao is primordial, and it would be a grotesque miscalculation to suppose that the Tao is nature.

The quality of strength in people is original innate knowledge, the sane primal energy. This is called true yang… This energy is rooted in the primordial, concealed in the temporal. It is not more in sages, not less in ordinary people. At the time of birth, it is neither defiled nor pure, neither born nor extinct, neither material nor void . It is tranquil and unstirring, yet sensitive and effective. In the midst of myriad things, it is not restricted or constrained by myriad things. Fundamentally it creates, develops, and brings about fruition and consummation spontaneously, all this taking place in unminding action, not needing force.

The I Ching, in its primordiality, looks back to a mythic China, not to the primitive China of the anthropologists and archaeologists. The primordial is the Original, the Source, the Beginning, the Root, what is innate from the outset. It is lost and found and lost again and again, as TS Eliot wrote. But it is certainly not the same as the primitive. Who would ever had guessed that the primordialism of which Rene Guenon was such a lucid and sober representative would one day degenerate into middle-class children of Woodstock sitting around naked in “primordial gatherings” – the sorry spectacle of perennialist hippies?

The path through the era in which we live – whether it is the Kali Yuga or not – is assuredly narrow. On the one side is the dehumanizing pitfalls of technology. Millions fall into that pit every day. But on the other side, awaiting those who flee from that, are the degradations of the new primitivism where people think that imitating the imagined lifestyle of the Noble Savage brings them nearer to the primordial and the Real and the True. It is as false a dream as the pursuit of the exotic under the same delusion. Primitivism is not a legitimate response to modernity. It is part of the same disease. Of the two opposing visions identified by Ayn Rand - triumphant science or the flight from reason - which is akin to the perennialist or primordialist perspective? Neither. The real quest is to escape from this false dichotomy altogether. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Regarding Homeopathic Potencies

It is a matter little known concerning the author of these pages that in a former life, long before he embarked upon a lacklustre academic career and then a pseudonymous lifestyle as an itinerant blogger in obscure corners of Asia, he was an ardent student of homeopathic pharmacy. This is to say that he had a passion for poisons - toxicology - and studied the same through a German company then based in South Australia. He was not, it must be stressed, a practitioner of homoeopathy. His interest was rather in the homoeopathic materia medica, the toxins deployed in homoeopathic medicine and the means by which such toxins are prepared. This topic has been broached once before in these pages some time ago, in the article entitled Succussion in Alchemy, here. This current post is in some respects a companion to that article, or at least it adds to matters discussed therein.

Specifically, the purpose of this post is to explain in simple terms the nature and purpose of homoeopathic dilution, or what homoeopaths are inclined to call "potencies". For many, of course, this is a matter of some humour, because homoeopathy is routinely ridiculed and rubbished by the skeptical and has been for over two hundred years. What homoeopaths call "potencies" the skeptical call "water". There are many excellent jokes on the subject. Here is one:

Readers will probably be aware of the reason for the mirth. Homoeopathic dilution - potentization - consists of diluting the original substance (usually a toxin) in graded steps, shaking or "succussing" the dilution at each step, until, at length, there is absolutely no trace of the original substance remaining. Undetettered by this physical fact, though, the homoeopath swears that he has made a "potency" of the original substance, the essence of which has somehow been imprinted upon the neutral medium of dilution (water or alcohol). The homoeopath calls it a "potency" and claims that it has curative properties - the rest of the world calls it "water" and claims that it is nothing more than quackery.

It is not our purpose here to mount a defence of the homoeopath's position, or to rehearse the evidence for the powers of homoeopathic dilutions, nor to rebutt the dreary predictability of the skeptics who have rattled on with the same objections ever since the days of Samuel Hahnemann, modern father of homoeopathic medicine. Instead, our single purpose is merely to clarify why it is exactly that homoeopaths make and use "potencies" and to elucidate for skeptic and believer alike the basis upon which a homoeopath selects a potency in any given case. There are many potencies that might be used. There are several different scales of dilution. The most common is the so-called C scale, whereby the original substance (tincture) is diluted by increments of 99 to 1 (centesimal). Others use a decimal scale of 9 drops of dilutant to one drop of tincture. Thus: 

In any particular instance the homoeopath must select not only the medicine to be applied to the patient but also its potency. Such potencies are usually referred to as "low" or "high". A low potency means that only a few dilutions have been made. For example, a common low potency is called 6x. This means there have been six steps of dilution on the decimal scale. Similarly, 6c is regarded as a low potency on the centesimal scale. But often medicines (remedies) will be chosen at so-called "high" potency - 200c, for example, which is to say one drop to 99 has been taken and succussed (shaken) in two hundred steps. There are potencies as high as M, one million dilutions, CM, one hundred million, and so on. Generally, the point at which there ceases to be any physical substance remaining in a dilution is about 12c. Conventional science, therefore, supposes that all potencies "higher" than that are necessarily inert, and potencies as high as M or CM are simply ridiculous. 

Practising homeopaths are sometimes divided on the question of potency. Some are low potency men and some reach for the high potencies and swear by their powers. Others will use low or high potencies according to various criteria and according to the perceived needs of a given case. Ever since the beginning of modern homoeopathy, though, the entire question of potency has never been very clear and has often been a cause for controversy and dispute. In some jurisdictions - such as France - the low potency advocates have been successful in getting high potencies banned by law. In other places, such as India, high potencies are the norm and low potency prescribing is deemed dangerous because low dilutions are still likely to contain traces of actual toxins that can harm patients. Homeopaths deal in very nasty substances: snake and spider venoms, toxic metals, poisonous plants. These toxins will still be active ingredients in low dilutions. Peddlers of low potency homoeopathy are condemned as reckless by their high potency colleagues. 

Other questions arise too. Some homoeopaths suppose, for example, that high potency medicines act upon the mind while low potencies are centred upon the physical body. Some suppose that very high potencies act upon the spirit or soul - and it is here that homoeopathy, much to its detriment, adjoins spiritualism. Others suppose that certain potencies are suited to certain remedies. It is commonly held, for example, that white arsenic (Arsenicum album) is most potent at a dilution of 200c, or that the venom of the cobra (naja tripudians) is best at 30c. Still other practitioners select potency according to the so-called 'constitution' of the patient. A patient with a cold, sluggish constitution might require higher potencies than someone of a more sanguine and reactive temperament, for instance. 

All of this, in fact, amounts to a certain degree of confusion. Indeed, no other aspect of homoeopathy causes more confusion and less agreement than the question of potency. In any given case, a dozen different homoeopaths might all agree upon which remedy is required, but none of them will agree on potency. Let us, therefore, try to set the matter straight. What is the guiding principle for selecting potency in homoeopathic medicine? When does one use low potencies and when does one use high potencies? What are the particular uses for particular potencies? 

* * * 

The basis for selecting a homoeopathic remedy is much clearer. The basis is: similitude. Medicines are selected according to the similitude that exists between their known properties and the symptoms displayed by the patient. Belladonna poisoning, to cite a crude example, will include fever and dilated pupils. If a patient has these symptoms then the homoeopathic medicine is belladonna. The law of cure in homoeopathy is: like can cure like. That is the whole basis of homoeopathy, both ancient and modern. When a person is sick, the homeopath tries to find a substance (toxin) that will create similar symptoms in a healthy person upon the assumption that like can cure like. This is a much more defensible aspect of homoeopathy. The power of substances to cure the very symptoms they induce has been known since the ancient Greeks, at least. It is the issue of dilution and potency that invites the ridicule of skeptics.  And, frankly, it is confusion on the question of potency, more than anything else, that has brought homoeopathy into wide disrepute. It is a matter than needs clarification. 

Despite what its sundry critics propose - and indeed despite the fact that it often attracts the harebrained and the half-baked and deserves all the criticism it attracts - homeopathy is remarkably rational and systematic. It is one of the great ironies of our age that such a rational system of medicine, a product of the Enlightenment, has come to be associated with quackery and spiritualism. It is constructed from careful axioms and a systematic empiricism. The selection of potency, as much as the selection of remedy, is a matter of science. In fact, the two things are directly connected. 

To understand, we need merely to realise what it was that led Hahnemann to dilute medicines in the first place. Because in the beginning he used raw tinctures. At first, experimenting with the principle like can cure like, he tried administering raw toxins to his patients. Not surprisingly, this made them sick. He therefore - very sensibly - started using smaller and smaller doses. Even so, however, he observed the following: if there was a near similitude between the patient's symptoms and the chosen remedy, even a small dose will aggravate the patient's condition before it begins to cure. Hahnemann observed aggravation. Thus, for example, belladonna might cure a patient with fever and diluted pupils, but before it cures it will aggravate. The more similar the toxin is to the symptoms of the patient the more the toxin will aggravate. Let us say that again: The more similar the toxin is to the symptoms of the patient the more the toxin will aggravate.

This is what led Hahnemann to experiment with succussed dilutions (potencies) - sometimes called Hahnemanian dilutions. He was looking for a way to avoid the effect of aggravation. There are, of course, degrees of similitude. Some types of fever are very similar to the fever typical of belladonna poisoning, other types of fever less so. Again: Hahnemann noted that the greater the degree of similitude, the more likely a toxin was likely to bring about a cure, but also the more likely it was to first aggravate the condition. Similitude is the principle of cure, but it is also the basis of aggravation. If you select a remedy the toxicology of which is very similar to the symptoms of a patient, then you have found an agent for cure, but that same agent will - for the same reason, namely similitude - aggravate. How do you retain the curative power but avoid aggravation? This is the problem that led Hahnemann to develop so-called "potencies". 

The whole point of "potencies", that is to say, is to avoid aggravation. The objective, always, is to cure without aggravating. The greater the degree of similitude, the greater the danger of aggravation. This makes plain sense. If someone looks like they have belladonna poisoning and you give them ten drops of tincture of belladonna, you are going to multiply (aggravate) their symptoms: like plus like. Hahnemannian potency is an attempt to retain the curative effect of like can cure like but avoid aggravation. And this fact reveals the basis for selecting potency. That is, one selects whatever potency is likely to cure without aggravation. And in general, one selects the potency according to the degree of similitude. The greater the similitude, the higher the potency. Potency is not magic. Or spiritual. The whole purpose of potency is to avoid aggravation. 

Homeopathy rests on this demonstrable foundation: the organism is super-sensitive to the similar remedy. If the homoeopath can locate a toxin that is very similar in its effects to the symptoms of the patient, then the patient will be super-sensitive to that toxin. If you have the symptoms of belladonna poisoning, you will be very sensitive to belladonna. Thus, very little of the similar remedy is needed. But conversely, only a small amount will trigger an aggravation. This is the art of choosing the potency. In any given case, the homoeopath must choose a potency that cures without aggravating. Too low a potency will aggravate. Too high a potency will either have no effect at all - other than placebo - or else will distort the symptom picture of the patient in question. 

This is the guiding principle of homoeopathic potencies. The mistaken idea that high potencies are for mental symptoms arises from this, because - in most cases - mental symptoms will only be present where there is a high degree of similitude. Belladonna again: one of its mental symptoms is delirium. If delirium is present, as well as fever, and diluted pupils, then there is a deeper level of similitude between the patient's symptoms and the toxicology of the poison. In most cases mental symptoms, so-called, indicate a deep level of similitude. Thus mental symptoms typically call for higher potencies (in order to retain curative power but avoid aggravation.) 

Whether or not this principle can be extended beyond the limits of physical substances into imponderable dilutions is another matter. Even if we concede that the organism is super-sensitive to the similar remedy, does this make it super-sensitive to a remedy in which not a single molecule of the original substance is present? This is the mystery of Hahnemannian dilution. Thus far, we must admit, the homoeopathic fraternity has not been able to provide a rationale for the action of such dilutions consistent with known physics. But at least we can be clear as to why it is homoeopaths use such dilutions: they are looking for a dose of the similar remedy that will be sufficiently large to cure but sufficiently small to avoid aggravation. It is unfortunate that homoeopaths are rarely clear about this important facet of their art.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Some Notes on Islam & the Chinese Tradition

In most translations of Mohammedan works, such as the Koran, into Chinese, the name of God, Allah, is rendered by two Chinese characters meaning "True Lord".

* * * 

THE BIFURCATION OF THE CHINESE ORDER

In several short works, but specifically the essays in Insights into Islamic Esotericism & Taoism and Confucianism, Rene Guenon applies his usual clarity to the seemingly diverse religious phenomenon of both Islamic and Chinese civilization. This is of concern to the present writer as he makes his way through South-East Asia – specifically the Chinese areas of the Malay peninsula – and heads towards western China and the far end of the silk road. It is difficult to find even slightly useful reading material on the essential features of the traditions that converge in these regions. Guenon’s essays, as usual, are remarkable for their perspicuity, precision and authoritative insights. There are shortcomings in the Guenonian perspective, sure enough – a Masonic preoccupation with initiatory organizations and secret societies, for example – but it is always a relief to encounter his stern, unadorned, mathematical prose and to appreciate his utter indifference to sociological and other profane considerations. His disdain for Boodhism is refreshing too. 

When all is said and done Guenon deals with religious traditions as though through a series of geometrical models. These are sometimes simple and sometimes complex. In the present case – Islamic esotericism, or Soofism, on the one hand and the Chinese traditions, Taoism and Confucianism, on the other – the schema is relatively simple, at least in the first instance. It is an essential feature of Guenon that religions manifest both inner and outer dimensions. There is externalism – popular forms - and then there is the inner or esoteric – hidden or secret or elite - aspect of the tradition concerned. In comparing the Mohammedans with the Chinese, he proposes that there is an all-important contrast in the way these two dimensions, inner and outer, are arranged in each case. Leaving aside all the details and whatever complexities arise, this is the key to a Guenonian study of these traditions. 

In the Guenonian perspective, the Mohammedan order is concentric with the esoteric (tariqah) within the external casing of the Law (shariah). It is a model of kernel and protective shell. Thus:

But as Guenon explains, the Chinese order does not work in this way. Rather - for reasons that we need not discuss at present - the two spiritual functions, inner and outer, have been effectively bifurcated. Taoism is the esoteric function and Confucianism the external or exoteric function. Their relationship in the Chinese case is parallel rather than concentric. Thus:

This, for Monsieur Guenon, is what is crucial to appreciate about the nature of the Chinese tradition, especially in contrast to such a tradition as Mohammedanism. We should add that this model is quite separate to and distinct from the imposition of Boodhism upon the Chinese tradition. The model described here was established and settled long before Boodhism arrived in China. Boodhism adds nothing and takes nothing away from it. Often in modern studies the Chinese tradition as a whole is described as the 'Path of Three ways' - Taoism, Confucianism, Boodhism. But Boodhism, as Guenon insists, is not integral to the Chinese order. 

* * * 

THE ANALECTS & THE HADITH

The Prophet Mohammed said, "Seek knowledge, even if it is in China." 

There are some rather obvious parallels – at least in form – between the Analects of Confucius and the Hadith of Mohammed. In both cases we have short, pithy sayings and examples of word and deed as recorded by disciples and companions. And in both cases these records act as exemplars or patterns of behavior. The Hadith are the recorded words and deeds of the Prophet – supposedly – and they function to guide and shape all the patterns of Mohammedan life. They establish Mohammedan ethics as well as manners. The Prophet is True Man, the model for all men.

In the Chinese tradition this is exactly the function of Confucius. It becomes conspicuous to anyone who spends more than a little time among the Chinese, even in this day and age, that there is a common model, a common ideal, of behavior among them, and this ideal is set by Confucius. Confucius is the exemplar, the Master, the standard of all that is proper and correct. This is especially evident in the Analects which, indeed, take a form very much like the Hadith found in the Mohammedan tradition. Confucius is the True Man, and we learn of his deeds and words through the analects recorded by his immediate followers in the form “The Master said…” or “The Master did…” Moreover, the circumstances in which he lived as well as the disciples and people around him are regarded as paradigmatic. They set examples to be emulated by everyone thereafter. Thus do the (traditional) Chinese say “Confucius says…” and cite some analect or saying in exactly the same manner as Mohammedans habitually cite the Hadith with “The Prophet said…” Chinese life is textured in this way just as is the social life of the Mohammedans. It is a close parallel between the two traditions.

Anyone familiar with any of the Hadith (traditions) of Mohammed will recognize the form, if not the content, of the following examples of the traditions of Confucius:

The Master said: “When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are shameful. When a country is poorly governed, wealth and honour and shameful.”

The Master said, “One should study as though there is not enough time and still feel fear of missing the point.”

The Master said: “In the morning hear the Tao. In the evening die content.”

The Master said, “I have yet to see a man who loved virtue as much as sex.”

The Master said, “There are shoots that never come to flower, and there are flowers that never bear fruit.”

Ji Wenzi always pondered matters thrice before acting. The Master heard of this and said, “Twice is enough.”

Though the Master’s meal was only greens and vegetable congee, he inevitably offered some in sacrifice, and always in ritual reverence.

When the Master was at home in his neighborhood, he was warm and courteous, and seemed as if he found it difficult to speak. In the ancestral temples or at court, he was articulate, his speech merely showing signs of caution.

When the Master was at leisure, his manner was relaxed and easy.

When sending his greetings to someone in another state, the Master would twice bow low as he sent the messenger off.

When mounting a carriage, the Master always faced it squarely and grasped the mounting cord. Once in the carriage, he did not turn to look at those standing behind him; he did not speak rapidly; he did not point.

The Master said, “Be devoted to faithfulness and love learning; defend the good Tao until death.”

The Master said, “Extravagance leads towards disobedience; thrift leads towards uncouthness. Rather than be disobedient, it is better to be uncouth.”

When the Master slept, he did not assume the position of a corpse. When at leisure, he did not ornament his dress.

The Master was vigilant about three things: fasting, war and illness.

When the stables burnt, the Master returned from court asking, “Was anyone hurt?” He did not ask after the horses.

The Master taught by means of four things: patterns, conduct, loyalty, faithfulness.   

* * * 

The concept of the One is not absent from Chinese thought. And the concept of the Nothing - a metaphysic of emptiness - is not absent from Mohammedan thought. The Confucian classics speak of “the all-pervading One” (i kuan) and Taoism refers to “holding onto the One” (shou i). The I Ching refers to “heavenly Oneness”. Unity of the absolute, in fact, is a constant theme in both Confucianism and Taoism. But, as Guenon notes, the bifurcation of functions within the Chinese order mean that the purely metaphysical and the personal never meet. Thus the Absolute is not usually presented as a “God” in the Semitic and occidental manner. The negative conception of the Tao is more like Aristotle’s unmoved mover, although in other respects it is, in function, like a creator. “The Tao produces the ten thousand things,” says the Tao Te Ching.

It is entirely possible to reconcile this with Mohammedan metaphysics. It is only externally that the Mohammedan deity is a personal god, or even a “god” at all. This is the contention of Toshihiko Izutsu’s powerful study, Sufism and Taoism, where he draws parallels between the Soofi metaphysics of Ibn Arabi and the metaphysics of the Tao. Despite Islam’s positive theology, in Soofism there are strong apophatic themes, and it is there that Mohammedanism may meet the temperamental preferences of the Far East. It is possible to read the confession of faith in an apophatic manner. The exclusive tribalism of “There is no god but (our) God” can be read, instead, as “There is no god. Only Allah.” Allah, in that case, is – like the Tao - beyond all conception, beyond personhood, too great to be any god of human understanding. The god of the externalists is an idol. Let us remember also that the Kabba in Mecca is empty. Finally, the only symbol that fits Allah – the Real - is nothingness.

* * * 

RAMADAN IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

While Mohammedanism has a long presence in China – especially western China – the Chinese authorities are, very wisely, fully aware of its potential to disturb the equilibrium of Chinese society. Precisely because the Mohammedan model is different to that of the traditional Chinese, and there is no neat bifurcation of the religious and the social, it may – if one is not alert to the inherent dangers – operate as a political ideology under a religious cloak. In contemporary China, the authorities in Peking are understandably anxious to prevent this and are ever on guard against religious movements that act as political agents.

An acute issue amongst China’s Mohammedan communities is the fast of Ramadan. Every year the authorities are at pains to downplay and restrict the extent of the fast. This usually earns them the ire of so-called ‘human rights’ groups, but it is an entirely justifiable strategy in the context. In areas where Mohammedans obtain demographic density, the fast of Ramadan becomes a de facto political instrument. It enables the Mohammedans to completely close down an entire region, to completely disrupt the ordinary machinations of life, for an entire month. This becomes a very potent method for imposing Islamic control upon commerce and government.

Quite properly, the Chinese will have none of it. They have passed regulations insisting that all schools, transport and government services will continue as normal throughout Ramadan, and eateries and cafes must remain open too. People are free to fast if they wish – you cannot stop people from not eating or drinking – but Chinese Mohammedans will be prevented from disrupting services and normal social functions, from shutting down society, in the name of Ramadan. Far from being an abuse of ‘human rights’, this is a wise policy that should be adopted wherever pernicious and troublesome concentrations of Mohammedans exist. You can fast, but you cannot shut down civil society. The difficulty, always, when dealing with Mohammedan minorities is that the inner and the outer, the spiritual and the political, are almost impossible to separate. This, as the Guenonian model above illustrates, is in the very structure of Islam. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

A Journey into Taoist Hell

Following poorly printed maps labelled in broken English and handed out by auto-rickshaw drivers at Thai flea markets is a hazardous undertaking at the best of times. The present author recently set out on a foot march through the suburbs of Trang - a Chinese city in southern Siam - following the instructions on one such map in search of a certain Chinese temple that he was assured was worth the journey. It proved to be a major undertaking.

Trang is not a particularly large city and is very orderly, but when you are not sure just where you are headed then it might as well be a sprawling labyrinth. After a few wrong turns you find yourself thoroughly lost, and since the road signs are all in Thai script there are few useful landmarks to help you on your way. Soon you are wandering aimlessly through industrial estates and semi-rural allotments. Moreover, setting out after lunch is a mistake in the 'Mad dogs and Englishman' category. The humidity starts to soar in the early afternoon. Rain clouds gather but no rain arrives; just an inpenetrable wall of humidity shimmering under the blazing sun. You go on regardless, though, and buy some water off a man on the roadside who, you think - if his hand signals are to be believed -, indicates that yes there is a temple, or something, somewhere on ahead. Eventually you decide that you'll give it five more minutes before turning around, and then - suddenly - as you come around a bend, there it is! Temple gates in the distance! It is a small miracle, and an ordeal, but you've made it!

* * * 

The temple in question is undoubtedly one of the strangest this author has seen in all his travels. It is sacred to the great Chinese war god Guan Yu who is honoured with a full-sized statue, along with his horse, just outside the temple portals. Thus:

The grounds of the temple are very colourful, with numerous small buildings and service structures with the whole space centred on a very tall and prominent dragon pillar, which indeed is the emblem of the temple as marked on the map the author has been following. The temple is known for this tall pillar. Thus:

The temple itself is large and spacious and features a dragon pool below the open aperture in the centre of the ceiling such that the pool and its dragons shine within the gloom of the space. Few other temples make such dramatic use of the light of the oculus. The effect is very pleasing, giving the whole a sort of mystical, luminous ambience. Dragon symbolism - always standard in any Chinese temple - is especially accentuated here, both in the grounds and in the temple, and it is done very well. Thus:

. 

Beyond the temple, through a side door, is an opening onto a quite extensive covered space with tables and chairs for dining. It is a space intended to accommodate a large congregation, especially during the famous Trang vegetarian festival each October during which crowds of Chinese travel from far and wide. It is perhaps relevant to this function, and to vegetarianism specifically, that at the far corner of the dining area is a small temple to the Hindoo deity Shiva. It is remarkable because it is entirely in the Hindoo style. Its whole iconography is Hindoo, an entirely Hindoo gesture within an otherwise completely Chinese temple complex. Thus:

The Shiva temple is the small building in the distance. Its function is directly related to the dining area. It is arranged, evidently, so that diners can easily access it.

None of this, however, prepares the visitor for a further section of the complex back towards the main gates and to the left. There is a small temple to Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, and a large statue to the laughing Boodha, Boodai - a great favvourite among the Chinese. But then, without warning, one encounters an outdoor garden scene that features a bridge and life-sized, lurid efigies of poor souls being tortured by a vicious demon. Thus:

Then, in a shelter beyond this - back out into the heat and following the pathway - you come to an extraordinary scene: an extensive, explicit diorama depicting the many tortures of Taoist hell in all their gruesome detail. It is an unexpected and arresting discovery. The author had been told the temple was worth the visit, and the tourist literature made much of the dragon pillar in the courtyard, but no one had mentioned a full-scale rendering of the torture chambers of the Chinese underworld in pornographic naturalism! Thus:

Some dozen explicit tortures are depicted. Here are a few:

Pounding

Bisection

Dismemberment

Bed of Nails

Eaten alive by Dogs

Wok fried

The agents of torture are feirce crazy-eyed chocolate-brown demons, each of them wearing tiger-skin underpants with tiger faces on their behinds. Thus:

Commanding the demons are the various ministers of hell. There are, firstly, the two guides to the Chinese underworld, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, who in this case are standing guard at one end of the display. By tradition these are the first beings the dead soul encounters after crossing the bridge into the Underworld. They carry pitch-forks and deliver the souls to the torture chambers where each soul is punished according to their failings and misdeeds. Here they are:

More menacing, though - and a successfully macabre feature of this particular display - are the two figures called the Heibai Wuchang, the black and white 'Ghosts of Impermanence'. They are watching on as the demons do their work. Here they are:

Images of these two ghouls also feature on the altar at one end of the display. Thus:

The purpose of the diorama, it is clear, is to remind visitors to the temple complex of the terrible purifications that await them in the afterlife as a consequence of their sins in this current life. The scenes are lurid and ghoulish in order to frighten and terrify.

Westerners very often have entirely sanitized views of Taoism - Boodhism too - and have a corresponding bleak and prejudiced view of the occidental traditions, and Catholicism in particular. They are surprised, even shocked, to find that the eastern religions have such graphic and violent depictions of a terrible afterlife. ("I thought terrifying people with tales of hellish torment was the stuff of the medieval Church. Alan Watts never mentioned this!") 

In reality, Taoism - by which we mean popular, practical, religious Chinese Taoism and not the secularized philosophical version, or coffee shop Taoism, known in New Age circles - proposes a complex afterlife featuring purifying tortures prior to reincarnation. Numerous Taoist texts describe the hell-realms and their denizens and the torments thereof in shocking detail. They are a commonplace in Chinese folklore. To a great extent this has been appropriated into Taoism from Boodhist descriptions of the 'Naraka' (realms of punishment) since - contrary to Western misunderstandings - Boodhism too has conceptions of otherworldly punishments every bit as grisly as any ever imagined in Catholicism. 

Indeed, the present author can think of no depictions of the torments of hell in Christian art - not even in Heironymous Bosch or Dante - that are quite as graphic and quite as extreme as these. The diorama at Trang illustrates the perverse depths of the oriental religious imagination. A journey to this temple - the Guan Yu temple on the northern outskirts of Trang - is worth the effort just for this. It is a sobering and confronting reminder of a dimension of oriental religiosity about which many Westerners know nothing. Taoists, like Boodhists, are threatened with terrible punishments if they misbehave. The fact that hell is a temporary phase of the afterlife in the eastern traditions and not an eternal damnation as it is in the West is, in context, small comfort. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Loose Thoughts on the Vegetarian Spectrum

The Trang vegetarian festival

The provincial town of Trang in southern Siam is known, amongst other things, for the vegetarian festival observed by the region's Chinese population during a full-moon every October. The festival is Taoist in origin but now includes many Boodhist appropriations. It is said that the Chinese, who came to the Malay peninsula for tin mining, temporarily lapsed from their ancestral customs and that, because of this, a visiting opera troupe was stricken by disease. To make amends, the Taoist priests instituted a nine day period of purification featuring abstinence from meat-eating as recompense - the disease was allayed, the opera singers healed and the period of abstinence has been observed ever since. The rules of purification are: those participating wear white garments for purity for the duration of the festival, they abstain from meat, animal foods and the pungent vegetables (onions, shallots, garlic and tobacco). 

The present author has encountered vegetarian customs throughout his recent travels through Hindoostan and Farther India, and his most recent sojourn in Trang has brought many matters concerning the whole spectrum of vegetarian practices, east/west, traditional and modern into focus. The following are some loose - which is to say unedited and unarranged - thoughts on the topic, along with relevant scattered observations from his travels. The main point to be made, however, is this:

Throughout the Asian traditions (and there is no reason to think occidental traditions would be any different) vegetarianism is, first and foremost, a purification and specifically a purification of the life force (chi, etc.) as manifest in the breath (spiritus, pneuma). This is why in vegetarian traditions abstinence from meat eating very often goes hand in hand with abstinence from onions and other pungent vegetables. The breath is the life force of the organism. Onions, garlic, tobacco etc. stain the breath and are therefore believed to impair the life force. 

Similarly, meat-eating causes bad breath as well. Meat is therefore believed to be polluting. Purification consists of abstaining from all things that stain the breath. This is the whole basis of vegetarianism in traditional oriental culture. It has very little to do with 'compassion to sentient beings' and similar constructions typical of Boodhist modernism and neo-Hindooism. On the contrary, throughout these traditions - let us call them the 'dharma' traditions, Hindooism, Jainism, Boodhism and so on - animals are universally regarded as 'failed human beings' and one abstains from eating them so as to not be dragged down to their level. Animals are inferior and unclean. Eating meat is an impurity. One abstains from meat-eating not out of love for animals but out of a horror for the lowness of the animal state. 

Accordingly, traditional vegetarianism has a completely different foundation and motivation than modern, Western vegetarianism, and the real basis of the traditional doctrine - purification of the life force - is forgotten in the West.

* * * 

Rubens - Pythagoras proclaiming vegetarianism

Some meditations on the vegetarian spectrum:

*In most eastern traditions, and elsewhere, vegetarianism is rarely a 'lifestyle' but is only practiced at certain times for the purposes of prufication.

*Even where Indians advertise ‘Pure Veg’ you might often find fish on the menu. This is especially the case in places like West Bengal and Kerala. Many Hindoos do not regard fish as animal flesh. The present author was told with confidence on several occasions that “there is no karma attached to fish” – the Hindoo piscatarian. Note that eating fish (and other white meats) does not stain the breath like eating red meat and accordingly fish and white meats are often exempt from traditional vegetarian strictures.

*Even where the Boodhists of Siam – a kingdom where a good 95% of citizens count themselves Theravadan Boodhists – proclaim themselves ‘vegetarian’, everything is nevertheless soaked in fish sauce.

*The traditional Japanese had no word for ‘vegetarian’ – it is an English loan word. This is despite there being a genuine vegetarian tradition in Zen Temple cuisine. Again, vegetarianism is a seasonal practice, not a 'lifestyle' or an identity. 

The Zen Temple Cuisine, especially as preserved in Kyoto

*Outside of Jainism, the oldest form of vegetarianism in the Hindoo world seems to come from Udupi. Thus 'Udupi' restaurants are found throughout India. It is further adapted in the diet of the Hare Krishna and related movements and is spiritually anchored in the incarnationist spirituality of Vishnoo. Avoiding the 'pungent vegetables' is as important as avoiding meat. 

*The idea that the 'pungent vegetables' and meat are to be avoided because they 'stir the passions' is a moralistic rationale. The real basis for such practices, however, lies in alchemistic vitalism (which is much older than such moral explanations and is now largely obscured or forgotten.) 

*In certain parts, the sign ‘Pure Veg’ outside a restaurant or street stall in India might often mean specifically “Muslims not welcome!” In the Indian context – and in general - Mohammedans are meat-eaters by definition. Quite apart from more mature considerations, contemporary Hindoos will eat vegetarian (or some version thereof) in order to distinguish themselves from the Musselmans, and the Musselmans will eat meat (in copious quantities!) in order to distinguish themselves from the Hindoos.

*In the Hindoo spectrum you meet many people for whom ‘vegetarian’ just means ‘no beef’. So you can find ‘Pure Veg’ eateries that serve chicken and fish. For the average Hindoo beef-eating is the great dietary sin that incurs karmic retribution. Thus many eateries specify ‘No beef’ on the menu. Again, note that red meat impairs the breath to a far greater degree than does fish or white meats.

*In deference to the Hindoo, of all the creatures it is an affront to slaughter for meat, it is surely the cow, the most serene and most beautiful of animals, emblem of the contemplative soul.

*Forms of vegetarianism found through Hindoostan and nearby are often not especially diverse or healthy. Meals will often consist of over-spiced lentil dishes (dal) and rice or bread, with vegetables, as such, conspicuously absent. The most common ‘vegetable’ is aloo (potato) and sometimes a wrinkled up old gobi (cauliflower) but there are few, if any, green vegetables in sight. Fresh leafy green vegetables are rarely seen at all. Carrots are commonly eaten as a sugared dessert (halva) in season. The contemporary Indian ‘vegetarian’ diet is surprisingly degraded, notably by sugar and potatoes and a dependence on spices rather than substance to provide satisfaction.

*The Hindoo knows absolutely nothing about salad. (Something called a 'green salad' appears on menus throughout India. Do not be fooled! It's not green and it is not a salad.)

*The Chinese culinary tradition (and variations thereof found throughout Sino-Asiatic civilization) is essentially omnivorous – albeit without dairy foods - but its ancient roots are better preserved than that of the Indian tradition and it is more easily adapted to a satisfying vegetarianism and especially a viable veganism in a modern context.

*Important to note: One of the lost keys to ancient ‘vegetarianism’ is a deep cultural abhorrence of cannibalism. In the first instance, meats that taste like human flesh are made taboo. Thus in Japan, for instance, eating monkey flesh was made subject to the death penalty, and in the Semitic order swine flesh was forbidden. (Noting that the instinct to avoid the cannibalistic was less developed in the Chinese world, in itself a spiritual failing of that civilization, although it remains more ‘primordial’ in other respects.)

*As Roger Sandall observes, the deconstruction of the ‘cannibalism narrative’ by the post-colonial counter-tradition is the cornerstone of the new barbarism, the anthropological toxin of our age. we have almost completely lost all understanding of this great theme of tradition now.

*Regardless of what certain New Age manifestations of Soofism propose, a legitimate vegetarianism is a theological impossibility in Islam. The sacrificial order of Abrahamism prevails among the Mohammadans. Islam very specifically does not end the institution of animal sacrifice. There is no way around this fact. Muslims are theologically bound to partake of the sacrifice at least once a year (on the Eid). Christianity, on the other hand, has abolished all sacrifices (or subsumed them in the sacrificial flesh of Christ – noting the primordial cannibalistic theme inherent in the Christian perspective) – Christians are free to be vegetarians, or indeed omnivores, so long as they eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. A Christian vegetarianism is a legitimate spiritual possibility, but in that it has no distinct merit.

*Vestiges of the ‘primordiality’ of a vegetarianism scaled according to an abhorrence of cannibalism is found today in the so-called ‘macrobiotic’ cuisine as reformulated in a modern guise by the Japanese alchemist George Ohsawa. Thus the flesh of mammals and higher order animals is avoided but those lower on the evolutionary scale (fish, shrimp, moluscs etc.) might be eaten sometimes. The less an animal tastes like human flesh – which is to say the further it is from the human on the evolutionary scale – the better.

*In all religious traditions the avoidance of animal foods is associated with a spiritual vocation; it is priestly. In traditional cultures it is never a question of ‘ethics’ and even less of ‘ecology’ or some sort of smug political stance. What modern Westerners rarely appreciate is that a vegetarian (or vegan) diet without spiritual application can be destructive and the cause of psychological and other imbalances. That is, a secular vegetarianism is a nonsense, an aberration, a usurpation, a spiritual danger.

*Vegetarianism is often supposed to be alien to the occident, an oriental affectation, but let us recall that it was a feature of the Pythagorean tradition, and to an extent the broader Platonic tradition too, since ancient times. It is as natural to the West as Pythagoras and Plato.

*Although adored by countless simpering vegetarians and vegans in the West, His Holiness the Dalai Lama – that sanctimonious old phony – is a bad-breathed carnivore. He claims it is “on doctor’s orders.” Sure. (In all fairness, though, the entire Tibetan Boodhist tradition, of which this celebrity Lama is erstwhile leader, is resoundingly carnivorous , which makes the fact that most Western followers of Tibetan Boodhism are vegetarians all the more bizarre. The modern Western cult of Tibetan Boodhism is a strange phenomenon indeed!)

*Aside from vitalism, the whole metaphysical basis for oriental vegetarianism is dharma and hence reincarnation. (This is also true of occidental Pythagorean vegetarianism which has no other basis than metempsychosis.) Without such a metaphysical underpinning it is merely ‘ethical’ and sentimental. In general, if you do not believe in reincarnation/metempsychosis there is not likely to be a firm (deep) basis for your vegetarianism.

*The critique of vegetarianism that begins… “Science has shown that plants are sentient too…” is an instance of a corrosive scientistic relativism. It is increasingly common and we can expect more of it in the future as relativist deconstructions dismantle all reasonable norms in the decadent West. There is a clear and obvious difference between a plant and an animal; it is an abdication of reason and a sinister mischievousness to suppose otherwise.

*While we today associate a vegetable diet with health, in the past, in both east and west, meat was regarded as remedial. If you became ill you ate meat in order to get well. (The idea persists, especially among Jews, in the proverbial remedial powers of ‘chicken soup’.) There are amusing stories from the Middle Ages in whole communities of monks would regularly feign illness in order to get a feed of meat. This might seem contrary to concerns of purifying the vital force (breathe) but it is a question of animal energies. In such cases, one eats meat until one has recovered and then returns to a vegetable basis diet. We should not confuse animal 'health' with ethereal 'purity'.

*A lacto-vegetarianism arises naturally from the Hindoo world. Veganism is more natural to the Sino-Asiatic universe. The Hindoo diet has paneer. The Chinese diet has the soy bean. Milk is alien to the Chinaman. Soy is alien to the Hindoo. These differences are not accidental; they reflect profound differences in spiritual temperament and go very deep. A lacto-vegetarian will have a more Indo-Asiatic temperament, a vegan a more Sino-Asiatic temperament. We might generalize: a lacto-vegetarian will do yoga; a vegan will do tai chi. 

*The compromised 'objectivity' of science in the West - and especially in universities - is on display in the ridiculous reports that seem incapable of conceiving of a viable diet without meat and dairy foods. People are right to hold these judgments in contempt. These scientists only serve the meat and dairy industries - as if the Indian and Chinese civilizations were deficient for their vegetarianism and lack of dairy foods respectively. Western food science, so-called, is Eurocentric in the narrowest possible sense.

*Whatever merit might be attached to it the popular New Age vegetarianism of urban elites, social justice warriors and eco-spiritualists in the West is deeply sentimental and decadent. It is symptomatic of cultural collapse. Its motives are perverse and its manifestations cultish. We cannot overlook the fact that so many vegetarians are dissipated social degenerates. There is an honesty, a sincerity, a simplicity, an integrity, a wholesome attachment to tradition and history, a truthful aversion to fads of cultural vandalism, in the confirmed meat eater. Apart from our notes on Pythagoreanism above, occidental man is essentially and temperamentally a hunter.

*It requires a particularly vulgar insensitivity to not be appalled and disturbed by utilitarian industrial meat production. In no other age has the slaughter of animals for meat – on such a massive scale – ever been conducted without a sense of moral danger and a corresponding need to avoid Divine judgment for such a transgression. Factory farming is clearly an abomination. So secular vegetarianism on ‘ethical’ grounds is understandable in the first instance, but otherwise it fails to meet the depths of the case; it does nothing to appease Heaven and so is finally just self-righteous and narcissistic.

*Industrial halal meat production - where an imam says a quick 'bismillah' before pressing the 'on button' of massive assembly-line slaughter machines - is an especially obscene hypocrisy. The obsession with 'halal' meat among contemporary Mohammedans - absurdly Pharisaic - is one of the most advanced symptoms of spiritual decay in contemporary Islamic externalism. 

Vegetarians in white during the nine days and nights of the festival in Trang. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black