torsdag 29 februari 2024

Preussisk ordlista

God morgon. Dagens bloggpost listar några preussiska ord.




Härmed en kort preussisk ordlista.

Dessa ord måste man kunna i Det nygamla rikets verklighet. För det "nygamla rike" vi bygger, det arkeofuturistiska imperium vi ska skapa, vårt "vita rymdimperium", är preussisk rigorism en av beståndsdelarna. Det är uppdragstaktikens, eld-och-rörelsens och förintelseslagets evangelium helt enkelt.

Nu börjar listan...



AUFTRAGSTAKTIK -- "här är uppgiften, lös den fritt". Ett fundament i germansk krigskonst.

FELDGRAU -- uniformsfärg använd av Tyskland 1910-1945. Se bild, med 1914 års variant.

GENERALSTAB -- fristående organ som ständigt planerar för krig.

HERBSTÜBUNG -- arméns höstövning, en tradition grundlagd av Fredrik den store.

IMMEDIATVORTRAG -- den preussiske generalstabschefens rätt att direkt meddela sig med kungen. Denna princip rådde från låt säga 1700-talet och till det tyska imperiets undergång 1918. Sedan, med kungadömet borta, försökte Ludwig Beck som generalstabschef att propsa på en dylik "direktkanal" till Hitler, men då var läget förändrat.

KESSELSCHLACHT -- "kittelslag", inringningsslag, förintelseslag à la Cannae, Fraustadt, Sedan, Tannenberg, Minsk-Smolensk 1941.

"KRIEG MOBIL" -- ordagrant den order, i juli 1870, som satte den preussiska armén på krigsfot mot Frankrike.

KRIEGSAKADEMIE -- den tyska krigshögskolan i Berlin, inrättad under tidigt 1800-tal.

KRIEGSPIEL -- spel som lär officeren att fatta beslut.

SCHWERPUNKT -- tyngdpunkt, platsen där man kraftsamlar.

SETTELBEFEHL -- kortorder "ur sadeln", kompletterande order som ges under slagets gång. Man måste alltså inte satsa allt på en stor, allomfattande, alltför detaljerad order i början som täcker in alla eventualiteter. Den ska i princip bara ange riktlinjerna; kortorder efter hand korrigerar skeendet.



Relaterat
Clausewitz
Gösta Borg
Det vita rymdimperiets grunddokument
Trotylstorm i öster på Logik.se, 249:-
Den omöjliga friheten (novell)
Frankrikes stagnation och tillbakagång gentemot Tyskland
Bild av tysk infanterist 1914 ur Military Uniforms -- The Splendour of the Past (1973)

tisdag 27 februari 2024

Astral War -- presentation på svenska

Härmed en presentationstext på svenska. Det rör min, i skrivande stund, senaste bok Astral War. Den kom 2023. Boken finns att köpa här och där. Till exempel på Bokus.




Köp boken på Adlibris.

Köp boken på Bokus.

Köp boken på Amazon.se.



Ett slags "osynligt krig" rasar på jorden idag. Det kan kallas propagandakrig, infokrig, kulturkrig, frekvenskrig. Det kan även kallas astralkrig. Eftersom din astralkropp ("själ") är i skottfältet.

Således astralkrig = "astral war", som är det engelska konceptet. Och som min bok fått sin titel av.

Och på svenska blir det astralkrig.

Boken finns bara på engelska. Detta är en presentation på svenska av innehållet.

+++

Astralkriget gäller din astralkropp. Din själ. Din själ är slagfältet.

Astralkrig handlar om hur du reagerar på omvärlden -- hur du reagerar på nyheter, ja allt omkring dig. Det handlar om att utsättas för manipulation, känslomanipulation, och genomskåda densamma.

Detta är regionen för "psy-ops" och "4:e generationens krigföring". Dvs. läget där stridshandlingar IRL är underordnade. De ska istället bli grund för propaganda, synvinklar, "spin".

Detta är den kulturkamp som dagligen äger rum på nätet, i media, överallt. Det är kriget mellan globalism och nationalism, modernism och traditionalism, 2024 års läge.

Detta är ett mindful krig. Det är ett krig om din själ. Din själ är slagfältet.

+++

Boken har kapitel om övermänniskan. Om holism. Om konstens roll i detta. Och om "od, ka, chi, prâna". En del av terminologin är baserad på min livsfilosofi, Actionismen. Dvs. termer som "rest in action, action as being, movement as a state of mind" etc.

Där har ni stilen. Actionism skapades med engelska språket som uttryck. Även den aktuella boken, Astral War, är en produkt av det angloamerikanska sättet att uttrycka sig. Därför är det futilt att vänta på en svensk översättning. Den finns inte på kartan idag iaf.

+++

Förlaget som gett ut boken är detsamma som för Rigorism, Commanders, Jüngerboken från 2014 et cetera. Dvs. Manticore Press i Australien.

Sidantal: 170. Format: 13 x 20 cm, lite mindre än den sedvanliga trade paperbacken. Väldigt elegant med andra ord.

Omslaget föreställer Sagittarius = Skytten. Dvs. mitt stjärntecken, astralkrigaren i sin prydno.

Berömda tänkare och författare som det hänvisas till i boken är annars Mishima, William Blake, Bertil Malmberg, Jünger, Albert Pike, Bulwer-Lytton, Thoth, Flann O'Brien, och många fler.

Detta är en klassiker i vardande. Ingen annan bok behandlar det rådande propagandakriget, infokriget, psykkriget, så som denna bok gör det.



Köp boken på Adlibris.

Köp boken på Bokus.

Köp boken på Amazon.se.



Relaterat
Actionism (2017)
Rigorism (2022)




måndag 26 februari 2024

Ernst Jünger -- Germany's greatest author since Goethe

Most people, be they right-wing, left-wing, or plain vanilla, seem to have some knowledge of Ernst Jünger, the German author who died in 1998. But aside from knowing that he wrote Storm of Steel and had a (marginal) role in the Stauffenberg plot, what do people really know about him? In this post I will try to give my view on the man and his works, focusing on traits that might be controversial even to people who otherwise hold him in esteem. -- If you want to learn more of Jünger's life and work, check out this book. It is my Jünger bio from 2014, hailed as "a biography of the very highest caliber" by Living Traditions Magazine. -- Buy the book on Amazon.com -- Buy the book on Bokus.com.




1.

André Gide said about Storm of Steel that it was ”completely credible, for real, honest”. I can agree on that. This debut of Ernst Jünger’s, his Western Front of WWI memoir, can be read by all and sundry, even by heartfelt pacifists. As for Jünger himself he was something of a warlover but that doesn’t in any way cloud the narrative. It is crystal clear, bordering on the pedantic, but as for action you can’t complain. Jünger didn’t sit idle during his three and a half years in the combat zone.

As a combat soldier Jünger was in his right element. In a Prussian, stiff-upper-lipped way he loved to fight. There is no question about that. And that energy, that enthusiasm translates well into his first book. As for his other books on the first world war, they are possibly even better. Their ambition to interpret the battle experience in metaphysical terms is a worthy enterprise. Feuer und Blut and Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis are still worth reading. They are daring essays trying to formulate how a fight has to be fought internally in order to suceed. This is zenbuddhism, western style.

In the 1920’s Jünger became a nationalist critical of the Versailles Peace Treaty, advocating a sort of military-style eternal revolution. Later on he left politics entirely, having lost out to the southern right wing faction, ”the München school of thought” (i. e. Hitler and his circle) which had a more racialist, populist agenda. Details aside Jünger wasn’t too unhappy with having the Nazis in power, since they finally scrapped the Versailles Treaty and rebuilt the army to its former glories.




2.

From the early thirties we find a remarkable piece of work by Jünger’s hand: The Worker (Der Arbeiter), a curious mixture of analysis and prophecy. The growth of industrial sprawls and urban technotopias is here depicted with ill-concealed satisfaction. The vision is rather clear-cut and transparent -- but -- as a reader you might ask, what does Jünger himself actually feel about it all...? What does he feel about quaint old fountains and winding streets being replaced with parking lots and tower blocks, about traditional society giving way to this ”bulldozer-modernism”? Between the lines he actually seems to like it, seems to revel in this coming world of industrial armies led by The Worker, the new, cold, indifferent Homo Faber. Later on Jünger distanced himself from the all-too chauvinistic aspects of The Worker – but the analysis itself is still valid, that of the Faustian spirit organizing and mobilizing the whole world and its resources just in order to make it profitable, dominating every single aspect of nature and transforming it into energy and goods.

The thirties was a decisive phase in Jünger’s development. It saw the drift from the old Jünger to the new, from the worshipper of force and violence to the quiet student of insects and plants. The books on war and pain, on technocracy and mobilisation of the whole of society, could be seen as his Old Testament (he did so himself once) -- while the post-war books on beetles, tropical travels, and Heliopolis-in-the-sun could be seen as his New Testament. And this dichotomy, this development from ”a fire-eater” to a more mellow figure might be fundamental for the understanding of Ernst Jünger.

I shall return to draw some more conclusions on this, adding that there is more to this than simply going from good to bad, from Darkman to Angel. However, as for now it can be said: Jünger experienced some transition from Old to New, from Young Turk to Wise Man. And it is mirrored in his work.

The transformation came about. And, in a way, it was made possible by the language, the style, and the high level of abstraction and reflectiveness in Jünger's works. He could live through the transformation, could endure the changes in attitude because of the many-faceted nature of his works. They were not simple pamphlets, they were ambiguous works of art. He was a true German thinker in that he tried to get to the core of each phenomenon. He never took the easy way out, never resorted to the common sense way of thinking.




3.

I have already mentioned The Worker. Its theme of industrial landscapes, technocracy, and engineering heroes could make you think of novels like Huxley’s Brave New World and Zamjatin’s We. So why didn’t Jünger just a write a science fiction novel on the themes in question, thereby creating a work of more lasting, symbolic quality? But Jünger wasn’t a fiction writer by then, he didn’t picture himself as one. But he more or less had to go in that direction in order to enduringly capture the mood of the times, in order to freeley express what he felt about the world. The first step as a fiction writer was taken by the short novel Storm (1923), depicting a combat zone First Lieutenant, his conversations and experiences. It is a rather advanced piece of work, abounding in reflections and clever observations; the trench scenery serves as a framework for ”everything under the sun”, everything that the author deemed fit to tell about in this jewel of a book.

More free form improvisations, curiously anchored in the pedantic Jüngerian style, was offered in The Adventurous Heart from 1929. Here we find memories, dreams, nature studies, and stories, all of it clever and eye-opening, studied and, in a way, breath-taking -- breath-takingly original in a both everyday and metaphysical way. He was both a down-to-earth scientific obeserver and a mystic with an en passant far-fetched interpretation of the cosmos. Some traces of the solider-writer and Arbeiter-author can be found here but mostly this is a Jünger pointing ahead to future vistas, future playgrounds and future haunts, embodied in the southern travels he begun at this time: Dalmatia, Italy, Spain, and South America were his destinations. From tender age he had collected beetles and the interest for plants and ”things Linnéan” went with the territory. Even during his trench days he had collected coleoptera and noted geological traits and horticultural details around him –- and now, slowly and with the guidance of his poet brother Friedrich Georg Jünger, he was supposedly led from a vita activa to a vita contemplativa.




4.

In practical terms this was shown in the mid-to-late thirties when Ernst Jünger left Berlin, having respectively turned down an offer of becoming a Nazi member of the Reichstag and a seat on the Goebbel's Deutsche Akademie der Dichtung. Jünger was happy to live with his family in an old parsonage in Kirchhorst outside Hannover, where he lived when war broke out in 1939.

As I’ve tried to show you Jünger had his Kehre these years, going from a nihilist to a more life-affirming point of view. Then again, the goody-good, ”hippie” traits shouldn’t be over-emphasized. He was still a traditionalist and conservative, still an officer in the Army Reserve. The traditional, metaphysical and slightly pagan/slightly Christian strains in On the Marble Cliffs are at the same time enough to render him ”Fascist” in the eyes of a scholar like Thomas Nevin (q v Ernst Jünger and Germany – Into the Abyss, 1997). And this might be a touchstone of Jünger’s originality, of the difficulty to peg him down as this-or-that. I mean, the textbook view of Jünger held even by conservative observers usually sounds like, ”Then Nazism came and it was Bad, but Jünger was against it so he was Good”. Now if you’re a staunch Liberal and modernist like the aforementioned Nevin, then you dislike both Hitler and Jünger, the latter because he opposes Hitler in the wrong way, not offering the trade-mark cosmopolitan resort to Democracy, Free Trade, and Tolerance. Liberals seem to dislike Jünger because of his mystical side, his esoteric leanings in both On the Marble Cliffs and later novels like Heliopolis and Eumeswil. They are too obscure, too discomforting to a transparent world view, a creed within the pales of Darwin, Freud, and Marx.




5.

We needn’t stay on the left to find voices critical of Jünger. I have no names to reel off here but I have a slight impression of people on the right being uncomfortable with the name of Ernst Jünger. In the literary and philosophical canons aired among "radical conservatives" I seem to find, concerning German names, a lot of Spenglers, Schmitts and Nietzsches, while the monicker ”Ernst Jünger” sometimes conspicuously absent. And that, I guess, has got to do with him being a mystic and an esoteric, always going for the hidden meaning in natural phenomena, poetry and philosphy. But if the Right is going to conquer and persevere it has to have some metaphysical foundations, whether they be Christian, pagan or Jüngerian. Economism and human biodiversity, political science and epistemology just aren’t enought to build a consistent world view on.

To fight the darkness within you isn’t easy. Or the darkness around you for that matter. You don’t go from worshipping Death to worship Life in the wink of an eye. The WWII diary of Ernst Jünger (Strahlungen, some 1000 pages, selections in English are available) for its part is a journey to the heart of darkness, sprinkled with that ever present light in the form of nature’s healing qualities, the solace of art, the company of good friends, and the presence of Eternity. If you find yourself in Dark Times you have to suffer through it, let the crisis reign before it can be defeated. Jünger served in the Nazi German Army most of the war, treading on the fringes of the Stauffenberg conspiracy, visiting the Eastern front at the time of Stalingrad and walking around in Paris and visiting Braque and Picasso and Parisian high society, dining in La Tour d’Argent while the people were starving. He wasn’t blind to the world of concentration camps and chambers of torture, to the suffering and misery; we get that too in his diary. But that doesn’t count in the eye of the PC critic who can only be enraged at certain passages capturing the allure of war, like when the author is standing on top of Hotel Majestic, seeing a group of American bombers approaching in the sky, catching the fiery bursts through the glass of bourgogne he holds in his hand. Clearly a breech of the code that says war should only be caught in dull brown, black and grey tones.

Jünger could be seen as a sort of militarist, adoring the world of uniforms, organization and heroism which is the army life. How odd then – or how fitting, you choose – that his son Ernstel at the end of the war was sentenced to combat duty because of some snide remarks against Hitler. And, finally at the Italian front in 1944, Ernstel fell in combat. He was weak from his previous prison term and hadn’t had much soldiery training, so this death of his was more or less an execution. This hit Jünger in the nerve, in the essence of his being. His post-war diary always mentions how he commemorates the death-day of his son. There’s pain in those lines.




6.

Pain and suffering and redemption: this was the time for Ernst Jünger’s New Testament, remember. Without becoming outright Christian (although he converted to Catholicism at the end of his life, in secret) there is an authentic, heartwarming sense of spiritual belonging, of metaphysical goodness, of more or less Christian creeds in his 1949 Heliopolis. In this future city-state we find political intrigue and power struggles, and essay-like reflections on art, history and mythology. But above all there’s the ambient light, the appropriately named City of the Sun where it all takes place. Its lush and fecund surroundings truly catches the reader, making a memorable scenery for all that the author has to say – which is, as always, a lot.

The post-war Jünger fought for a creed, a system of belief, a system that became a sort of tapestry of life, traditions and the joy of being here right now. Nihilism and atheism was his prime enemies, as seen in the essay Über die Linie (1950). There he talks about the neccesity ”to seek out the oases around which Leviathan circles in anger”. If we find our essence, our true self in our own being, within us – then nothing can stop us. If we just abandon Titanic before the collision, then we can seek out our tropical island and watch the fall of civilisation in peace and quiet, in relative safety. That was one of the themes of his essay Der Waldgang from 1951. The message isn’t exactly original – but it’s there and it’s centered on the individual. Unlike Carl Schmitt and Oswald Spengler the post-war Jünger doesn’t resort to ”meta-narratives”, to sociological and other explanations. He boils down everything to the person, the ”I”. This is, so to speak, the existensialist attitude.

And so, to sum it all up: beyond his rightist leanings, his traditionalist outlook you could call Ernst Jünger a solitary figure, a writer and thinker beyond cathegory. In other words, a Great Writer and a classic. He was up for Nobel Prize considerations several times but was, of course, dismissed every time for political reasons. The Swedish Academy spokesman Per Wästberg admitted as much.

Jünger and his works are beyond cathegory. But he’s an exciting read, he challenges you intellectually. Translated into English are for example The Adventurous Heart, The Worker, Eumeswil, On the Marble Cliffs, and his diaries from world war two.




7.

There you have it. So what have we to add?

Well, we could mention this and that.

Like the Goethe thing. The headline of this piece says that Jünger is the greatest German author since Goethe.

OK then, so is he...?

I'd say he is.

Some hundred years ago and more, the German author towering above the rest was Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Some fifty years later, it was Franz Kafka.

And now it is Jünger...!

This is the literary landscape, cathegory, "what German icon to worship," right now.



8: Coda.

The summation of this article is: if you want to learn more about Jünger's life and work, check out this book. It is my Jünger bio from 2014. And it is still in print, still selling. Many have read it and liked it. For instance, on Amazon.co.uk there's a review with the payoff, "Buy!"




Buy the book on Amazon.com

Buy the book on Bokus.com

The Swedish version of my Jünger book



Related
Ernst Jünger -- A Portrait
In Swedish: Heliopolis
Astral War
Rig Veda 10:129 -- An Interpretation

lördag 24 februari 2024

Inlägg, 24 februari 2024

Lyss, lyss till profetens röst...




De mytiska krafterna regenereras...

Vad stort sker, sker tyst...



Relaterat
David Nessle (1960-)
Stig Wennerström
Arnäs kyrka
Botniabanan
EuroCon 2011: sf-festival i Stockholm

fredag 23 februari 2024

Preachment 1: Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Greetings, disciple. This is my preachment. Beginning February 2024.




Om shânti om...
Om shânti om...
Om shânti om...

Triple time...

Like Odin, Vili, Ve...

Like Har, Jafnhar, and Tridji...

Like Künstler, Genie, und Held...

Like Panzer, bomber, panzer...

You get the drill... 1-2-3, rock around the clock...

+++

O shânti om...

Om bhûr bhûvah svaha...

Sambhâvami yuge yuge...

Yuga after yuga, I return...

Year after year, month after month, week after week, I return to this blog... to preach...

So welcome, my disciples... I am Magus Maestro...

I lay down the rhythm, and you are bound to follow it...

I create magic... I shape reality by my very being... by osmosis...

+++

I write and publish... and the ensuing book becomes a magical object...

Like this one... Astral War of 2023... a very pertinent example of my magic endeavour...

But I do more than preach and teach in my books...

I am also a story telling shaman... giving you works like this novel... Third Reich... panzer--bomber--panzer... holy, holy, holy...

+++

The magical forces are regenerated...

Stellar Storm approaching... brainstorm, psychic storm... your soul is the battlefield... as you all know...

Elite soldier of the psychic war... a warrior cherishing the psychic storm, the brainstorm... the prospect of propaganda war 24/7... if you only know that it's raging, you can have a field day... in your innermost being unperturbed, just watching the forces of nihilism combating each other... and at the end of the day the new elite steps in... the Aristocrats of the Soul... cavalcare le tigre.

Tomorrow's slave, shudra, and serf, will be the atheist nihilist.

Tomorrow's ruler, aristocrat, and king, will be the mindful magician.

+++

There you have it.

Live like a Hadean flower under Burning Magnesium.

Fight the Astral War with dedication and verve.

Don't be afraid of insanity.

"You're seeing now a veteran -- of a thousand psychic wars"...!

This I preach today -- 23 Februay 2024.

Says Svensson... story-telling shaman, MC of magical realism, jester of the new infinities.



Related
Burning Magnesium: platoon and company level combat on the Eastern Front
Astral War: Your Soul Is the Battlefield (2023)
In Swedish: about Evola's Ride the Tiger
A presentation of this blog
C. D. Friedrich. The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–1810)

Poem: "I'm still alive"...

Poetry time...




When Curt Cobain died Eddie Vedder sang,
“I’m Still Alive”...

A celebration of life in a time of despair.

In the same way, when my brother died,
I was – after receiving the news,
ruminating over it,
internalizing it – glad to be alive.

“I’m a survivor”...

And, “Angie, ain’t it good to be alive”.

That feeling, the sadness at someone’s death
and at the same time, a quiet
joy of being alive oneself.

“To exist is nothing insignificant,” as Frithjof Schuon said.



+++



I spent some time browsing the internet for “authors having
killed themselves” – this leaving me in the same state – of sadness –
and also a quiet joy – of being alive. An oxymoron.
Not arrogance, not haughtiness, not vindictiveness,
not smug self-satisfaction. Just a mixed sense of
sadness and serenity.

Sylvia Plath, gassing herself to death because of depression.

Virginia Woolf, drowning herself because of depression.

Karin Boye, taking an overdose of tranquilizers because of depression.

Vilhelm Moberg, drowning himself because of depression: he went “to seek
the waters,” “jag går att söka sjön”...

Hemingway, shot himself because of depression.

Otto Weininger, shot himself because of his magnum
opus Geschlecht und Charakter not having made an impression.

David Foster Wallace, hung himself because of depression.

Stig Dagerman, gassed himself to death with car engine exhaust
because of writer’s block and depression.

Norwegian writer Leonard Borgzinner:
he shot himself, hard to know why... He even said
in 1980 that his only ambition was to live another ten years.

The list of authors killing themselves goes on and on.

Writing is a high-risk occupation.

Angie, oh Angie, ain’t it good to be alive...



Related
Cars and stars
Art by my late brother
In Swedish: Karin Boye
In Swedish: Leonard Borgzinner

torsdag 22 februari 2024

Poem, 22 February 2024

Greetings, dispciple.




We will today give you a poem. A short one.

The shortness aside, the poem says everything about the situation today.

Here it is.

++++++++++

Living in Dharma Town, looking down on Clown Town,
faith is like a tower, for those who believe...



Related
Bibliography of Svensson
Ernst Jünger -- A Portrait (2014)
Science Fiction Seen from the Right (2016)
Actionism (2017)
Painting by Robert Svensson

Lästips februari 2024 -- en-radsrecensioner

In Swedish. -- Det har åter blivit dags för några snabba lästips. Idag är de extra snabba; de består bara av en rad per bok.




Bengt Abrahamsson. Avfällingen – Lawrence efter Arabien. Lund: Celanders, 2015. – Denna boks porträtt över Lawrence kan sammanfattas som: ”det var synd om honom”... en överpsykologiserad studie alltså, läs den ej; läs istället Lawrence' egen Vishetens sju pelare eller se David Leans film.

L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetik – hur tanken påverkar kroppen. Köpenhamn: New Era Publications, 2007 (orig 1950). -- Diverse kan sägas om denna bok -- som att det var en av de första Hubbard skrev i ämnet mindfulness -- och att den än är relativt läsbar -- och positiv i tonen: människan är god, psykosomatiska sjukdomar kan lätt botas liksom neuroser och psykoser... och för att bli clear krävs bara att man avlägsnar spärrar såsom engram, dvs. kodordsliknande präglingar som styr vårt undermedvetna.

Thede Palm. T-kontoret. Några studier till T-kontorets historia. Luleå grafiska, 2007. -- Roligt i denna bok var t.ex när Palm berättar hur han förbjöd sina anställda att när pensionen nalkades skriva sina memoarer... han gav stilistisk motivering, de var inte tillräckligt bra skribenter för att skriva nämnvärda memoarer, ”det skulle ha blivit journalistisk lekskola”... så man kan säga att detta var en elegant parering av ett stående problem: medarbetares önskan att skriva memoarer (= mänskligt perspektiv) visavi det betänkliga när detta sker inom den hemliga u-tjänstens domän (operativt perspektiv).

Prousts Récherche au temps perdu... påminner en del om Huysmans À rebours, som skildrar en liknande typ: hyperkänslig pedant som ägnar oändlig möda åt trivialiteter av det estetisk-emotionella slaget -- en platt materialist alltså -- bögig nonsens som älskas av dagens mainstream.

Rolf Jonsson. Mahabharata - ett urval (H-ström, 2013). – Jonsson har översatt ur sanskritoriginalet till detta mäktiga epos; vi bjuds 18 kapitel med alltifrån mytiska scener i himlen till mänsklig dramatik och inskjutna legender... synnerligen läsvärt... i stort sett läsbart också... fast jag retar mig på Jonssons term "maktglans" som han anser måste till för att täcka betydelsen av skt. tejas -- helt onödigt, ty "glans, strålglans, karisma" räcker bra som översättning av detta begrepp.



Relaterat
Bertil Malmberg hedras i Härnösand
Boye: Kallocain (1940)
Gedin: Verner von Heidenstam -- ett liv (2006)
Ballard: War Fever (1990)
Bild Robert Svensson, min framlidne bror

måndag 19 februari 2024

Creating a face

Good morning, adept of magical realism. Today's lesson is about creating a face.




1.

Let me begin by quoting Halévy's Nietzsche biography.

It is about an event in 1886. Nietzsche was then at the height of his creativity. The Zarathustra book had been published some years before. He was in high spirits. He was, in short, approaching supermanhood.

Halévy paints the scene thus. Nietzsche's comrade Paul Lanzky was meeting Nietzsche in Ruta, near Genoa:

Paul Lanzky rejoined Friedrich Nietzsche at Ruta. Not having seen him for eighteen months, he was struck by the change which he observed in him. The body was weighed down, the features altered.


In other words, Nietzsche is becoming superhuman.

And it shows in the face. The face is a sign of the ultimate opus, the alchemical work, the statement of being “more than what you are”.

And a similar instance can be seen in the life of Carlos Castaneda.

+++

Castaneda's doctine per se is rather pertinent for a superman primer. It is about memento mori. About raising yourself with selfless action. And about going to knowledge as you go to war – wide awake, with fear, with apprehension, and with absolute determination.

Castaneda, as a disciple, embraces all this. Then, in the exam as a nagualist shaman, he has to jump off a precipice and, via the so called “assemblage point” on the astral body, assemble a new world, so as not to be crushed to pulp at the bottom of the gorge. – This is an elaborate shamanic test and it has to be done with firm guidance by a guru – or two, actually, as it was in this case. Conversely, to simply jump off a cliff and expect “magic” to ensue is said to have led one reader of Castaneda’s books into certain death. He jumped from a bridge and of course couldn’t assemble a new world, since he had no shamanic guru around to coach him (the source for this tragic episode is Wallace 2003).

However, Castaneda, for one, managed to jump of his cliff and not land at the bottom of the vale – no, in mid-flight he assembled a new world – several, in fact, in succession – before he ended up in his Los Angeles apartment.

Castaneda has told of the “jumping off a cliff” and what followed in several books – like Tales of Power and The Second Ring of Power. The below version is based on The Active Side of Infinity (1999).

After the event he was, of course, a little surprised to be alive. But he gathered himself, got out of bed, went to the bathroom. And sat in the bathtub for a long time, water from the shower besprinkling him while he was “recalled to life,” so to speak.

And “the face”? What has this got to do with “creating a face”?

I’ll come to that.



2.

Having recovered body and soul Castaneda finally went out for a bite. He went to the usual diner nearby and had a meal. Then a drifter he recognized from before entered the restaurant. And after a while he went to Castaneda’s table. But when he saw Castaneda he screamed and ran away.

In Castaneda’s own words, this is the story:

When he [= the hobo] entered the restaurant, he sat at his usual place, and then he looked at me. Our eyes met. The next thing I knew, he had let out a formidable scream that chilled me, and everyone present, to the bone. ... The man jumped off his stool and ran out of the restaurant, tuning back to stare at me while, with his hands, he made agitated gestures over his head.

[Castaneda 1999, p. 271-272]


Castaneda runs after the man, overtakes him in the street, asking him what made him scream. But the man just covers his eyes and screams again. So Castaneda leaves him and returns to the diner – and the waitress asks him what happened and Castaneda says he just went to see a friend. A friend, really? she says but he means it, musing that this guy was someone who had “seen through the veneer that covers you and knows where you really come from” [p. 272]

The hobo had seen something in Castaneda. Probably his altered features. The features of a superman.

For, magic practices aside, the exact “way to do it” – if you have jumped off a precipice and survived, ending up some hundred miles from where you started – then you are superman.



3.

We shall say a little more about the magical way to supermanhood.

We don’t teach magic per se. No ceremonies or such. But it has got to be said that the magician approaches the superman role.

For instance, they say that among Etruscan magicians there were some called “fulguriators”. They let themselves be struck by lightning (Lat. fulgur) and thus became changed into something more than ordinarily human. The event of course was preceded by “Hyperborean initiation”. You had to have will-thought united in your being, and be prepared to die, before letting lightning struck you. But with the right mindset, and right condition, you could let the thunderbolt hit you and then end up as a supreme being. As a shamanic superman.

And as for the mere possibility of surviving a lightning strike, it is said to be about 90%.

Thus, the fulguriator practice is a probable usage.



4.

You needn’t jump off a cliff or be struck by lightning to raise yourself. You can test your strength in other ways.

You can go to war. You can go hiking in some strenuous way. You can fast, live on a limited diet for a while. You can meditate, focus your mind on the Absolute.

There are many ways of skinning a cat. There are, beyond the basic initiation, many ways to supermanhood. All of them might, in the end, lead to a change in your appearance – a different face, a face exuding both “innocence and experience”. Your face will change, have an appearance like it is made of metal – not iron, in this case, but bronze, the bronze of a statue, come alive by the different shades and highlights given by the shifting sunlight during the day.



Literature
Castaneda, Carlos. The Active Side of Infinity. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1999
Halévy, Daniel. The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche. London: T. Fischer Unwin, 1911
Wallace, Amy. Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda. New York: North Atlantic Books, 2003



Related
Castaneda: words and concepts
Ascended masters: some notes
History of Atlantis
Lule river with Langas, Svensson pic from 1981

torsdag 15 februari 2024

Mina engelska böcker på Bokus

Mina engelska böcker finns på Bokus.com.




Jag har en del böcker utgivna av Manticore Press. Ett australiskt förlag, internationellt verksamt. Och med engelskspråkig utgivning, inget annat.

Jag är sedan 2014 utgiven av Manticore. Det är närmare bestämt åtta böcker. Och alla finns till salu i Sverige, på Bokus.com.

Priserna är högst rimliga. Vad sägs till exempel om SF Seen from the Right, på 378 sidor, för 299:-?

Alla mina åtta böcker på Bokus finner du här.



Relaterat
Svensson-böcker på Bokus
SF Seen from the Right på Bokus
Litteraturens lättmatroser

onsdag 7 februari 2024

Vintage pod: The Hero's Journey

A pod episode still online after six years, that's rather unique. I am talking about this one.




In March 2018 I was interviewed by Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice Radio. Here it is. The first hour is free, the second hour needs membership of Red Ice.

In the interview we talked about my then latest novel, Burning Magnesium. Then the discussion segued into a look at another book of mine, Actionism. For, they do have things in common, the war novel and my personal philosophy. Like action as being, movement as a state, memento mori, and all that.

This was my second interview at Red Ice. In 2017 we talked about my essay on sf. It, too, is still online.

So I'd say, check them both out for a closer look at my preachment.



Related
2018 Interview: "The Hero's Journey -- War, Responsibility and Actionism"
Burning Magnesium
Actionism
2017 Interview