The Greek World Vision

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Table of contents About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 CHAPTER ONE The Hellenic Religion 1. The concept of the Cosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2. Cosmogony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3. The Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 4. Psychogony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 5. The course of the soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 6. Excursus: The Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 6. Theogony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 7. The Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 8.Excursus: The incidents at Daphne in Antioch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 9. The Higher Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 10. The unity of the traditional religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 11. The Mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 12. The logical structure of traditional religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Basic Principles of the Greek Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 CHAPTER TWO The Cosmopolitan Religions Part One: The society of Late periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 1. The Bourgeoisie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2. The Megalopolis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3. The Political crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4. The Cosmopolitan converting ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 a´. The New Nationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 b´. Linear and short History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 c´. The Apocalyptic end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5. The absolute separation: The faithful and the unbelievers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 6. The Cosmopolitan World-view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 7. The Coomplete hate: Good viz. Evil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 8. The faithful do not think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 9. The necessary monotheism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Part Two: The complete contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 1.The inevitability of cosmopolitan dogma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

3 The lack of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 The lack of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The lack of Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 The condemnation of Theatre and Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 2.The acute cultural contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 3.The antisocial life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.The lawless State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5. Excursus: The ‘success’ of Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6. Hellenism & Monotheism, two opposed worlds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

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About the author Panayiotis Marinis has been born in Cephalonia, Greece, in 1947. Professionally, he is a medical doctor (venereologist-dermatologist). His lifelong interest in the spiritual matters, in the comparative study of religions and in the study of Prehistory culminated in: a) The formulation of the theory about the role of Cosmopolitan Religions in the shaping of Late Period Societies. b) The theory about the Golden Age of Humanity and its destruction by the Great Cataclysm that took place before 12.500 years! c) The formulation of the basic tenets of the Greek Religion of Dodecatheon in accordance with the Sacred Oral Tradition! He is the founder of the non-profit society: Societas Hellenica Antiquariorum. He is President of the «Committee for the Greek Religion». He is editor of the quarterly publication «Hellinikon Pantheon». He has written a number of books in Greek; amongst them: «Commentary on the Oracula Chaldaica» «The Greek Religion» in two volumes. «The Antediluvian Civilization» in a large format luxury edition. «Nation and State», a sociological study about national identity. «We need a wholesale change!», about the social changes that our society needs. «The Greek Worldvision», the basic book that describes the greek religious tradition and the theory about the Late Period Societies. English translation: The general interest two first chapters of «The Greek Worldvision» (the present volume)


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Prologue In the chaotic field of the relations between society and religion where are mixed religious ideas, philosophy of History and the complex social phenomenona of “Late periods of civilizations”, it is difficult to find one’s path. This is the purpose of this book, to attempt, along with the reader, to take short root through this mazy forest. Our travel will not be a detailed one in its every aspect. However, it will fully initiate the newcomer in this complex environment and help one acquire a wholesome and true picture of its most essential constituents. What are the constituents that make up this field? Why do they belong to a single source? Let us say at first that human societies function as organic wholes. Indeed, Philosophy of History is concerned with the study of societies as entities and organisms, under the full literal meaning of the words. These living organisms while they are in their young or mature stage do not encounter complicated problems. However, when they begin to crystallize into their final form then there appears a destabilization process which is the result of an exceptionally morbid phenomenon having been developed. It is the creation of the Big-city, the megalopolis. A Big-city not being merely a large city. It is a city where the economy is dominated by trading, stock exchanging and where a large part of the population consists of foreign people alien to the civilization that has created the city. Only then dœs the whole group of destabilization problems appear, a trend called Big-city or megalopolitic pathology. The ruling class is that of the quick profit while the complete lack of morality makes the struggle for success ruthless. Also, in this destabilized society many power groups ruthlesly compete for the control of the state. This struggle demands an association with the masses, and so at this point appear the real means of devastation and destruction of any civilization, namely the power groups called cosmopolitan religions or universal churches according to Arnold Toynbee. Our field of study will be chiefly the megalopolitic era of Late Antiquity. Our times are also megalopolitic, we are living in a megalopolitic society where analogous proccesses are in operation. So we can understand the forces at work in the late Græcoroman society and inversely the study of this society enlightens our own social conditions. Thus we can indulge in many interesting comparisons. Thus this is what makes up our scene: the destabilazed, chiefly by the invation of foreigners to the cities of the Græcoroman or Hellenic (according to Spengler) civilization, society of Late Antiquity and the sorry outcome of un uneven struggle. Uneven, because the vast majority of the people that was adherent to the traditional values was unable to understand what was going on: The traditional ideas under the malevolent attack of the cosmopolitan religion.

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6 We are living at a later time. What dœs the future hold for us? We are describing events of a similar age that signaled the end of our Græcoroman civilization and which are still burdening us. The similarities are astounding but this time we have the knowledge of history and the general awakening of humanity that leads to a Renaissance of the traditional ideals. All these make up the theme of our book: what are the traditional Hellenic ideals, what do their opponents stand for, which is the way to the future? Because, in this book, the reader will come across a multitude of concepts, theological, sociological and philosophical, every possible attempt has been made to present them in a simple and clear way. Nevertheless, it dœs require of the reader a careful and concentrated reading as well as a delight in the aforementioned subjects. Hoping that the readers will be rewarded through an expansion of their spiritual horizons, we thank them beforehand. P. Marinis Written in Athens During the Boufonion celebrations Two thousand, seven hundred and seventy three years after the first Olympic Games.

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 CHAPTER ONE 

The Hellenic Religion The Cosmos is all that we see around us, the land and the seas, the stars and the galaxies, the universes. The Cosmos is everlasting, æonian, uncreated and unbegotten, the one that has been and will always be, without a beginning or end, self-existent, self-contained and self-supporting, master and provider of itself. The Cosmos dœs and will always exist. But how do we see it? How do we perceive it? We perceive our surroundings according to the ideas we have about them, depending on our education. This perception of ours could be right but it could also be completely wrong. Every theory about the world, every religion uses its own premises and tenets in order to explain the Cosmos, namely, sees it in from its own viewpoint, i.e. has its own World-view. Every theory about the world explains in its own way what the Cosmos is, where it comes from and where it is heading, what is man, what is his origin and what is his destination, how one ought to lead one’s life, and how society ought to be organized. This is the Worldview of each theory about the world and, vice versa, each system that has such a complete view of things is called a religion. This is the definition of religion. A religion is every World-view that gives answers to these basic questions: What is the Cosmos, what is man and how ought one to lead one’s life. From all the spiritual systems that have tried to answer these questions the Hellenic Religion, the Hellenic World-view, stands out for being the only one that provides complete and fully scientific answers, which modern science just now rediscovers. For this reason the Hellenic World-view has been characterized as wholy scientific. Regarding the question, where did those great people, the creators of the Classical civilization, get their higher and complete answers from, the reply is simple. They were people extremely intelligent who did their best to systematize the knowledge which comes from the science of an advanced and spiritual civilization, namely, the antediluvian civilization of the Golden Age of Humanity and carry the torch of civilization higher still. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

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¨ 1. The concept of the Cosmos What is the Cosmos then? For the Hellenic World-view the Cosmos is the only thing that is, there is nothing else, nothing beyond the physical system of the Cosmos, nothing outside the frame of Nature. The Cosmos, for all those that adhere to the traditional religions of the Golden Age, constitutes the Absolute being, a system, infinite in space-time, within which matter, life and consciousness develops. What is there then within the natural framework of the Cosmos? Within this framework there is only matter (with its wider sense: everything that can be researched by the science of Physics). It has been said that the philosophy of the classics and especially that of the Stoics is materialistic monism (newer term: Physicalism). This is absolutely correct, monism means that there is one and only type of substance within the Cosmos and not two different types of substances, which is called dualism. Dualistic are the monotheistic religions because they believe that there are two completely different kinds of substance and two completely different realms of existence: The extramundane God and the material universe created by him “ex nihilo”. So, in this monotheistic World-view there is an immaterial intelligence which produces the material Cosmos, which turns bad and from it the ethical dualism in these kind of religions is created, namely the forces of good and evil. It is the Hellenic World-view then that is monism since it adheres that there is only one substance, this of the physical system of the Cosmos. At this point we will hold and explain that by matter we do not merely mean the matter of the chemical elements, like the Physics of the 19th century, but in its wider concept, matter and energy, chemical elements, electromagnetism, radiation alpha, beta or gamma and in generally including all that we call fine states of matter. In a few words we can define it simply and say that material states are the ones that can be investigated by the science of Physics. Only those states dœs the Hellenic World-view consider to be in existence, nothing else. So, between the various elements of the Cosmos, namely inorganic matter, living organisms and the Higher Worlds of the Gods, there is consubstantiality. The Cosmos then within which exists the entire natural framework of matter, for those that adhere to the Hellenic World-view, has no beginning or end. There has never been a time when there was no Cosmos and neither will there be a time that will see the end of the Cosmos. The Cosmos is maintained by its own forces, it dœs not need any outside help to exist or to expand or to function harmoniously and that is why it is called self-born, selfsupporting and self- propelled, in order to emphasize its absolute self-sufficiency and to keep away any doubts and thoughts about the existence of an intelligence outside it, which brings to perfection or maintains it. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

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¨ 2. Cosmogony «Cosmos, the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in measures going out». Heraclitus (Fr. 36) says that the world order is the same for all gods, men and for all things. This world order is a work of nature: self-made or self-grown; thus becomes explicit that the Cosmos itself is invested with the attributes of divinity: ‘it ever was and is and will be’. The same is echœd in a famous fragment of Euripides: «the ageless Cosmos of undying nature» (Fr. 910). It is a denial of any fundamental duality between a generated world order and the eternal source from which it arises or the ruling intelligence by which it is organised. Insofar as the Cosmos is made, it is self-made; insofar as it is organized, it is selforganized; insofar as it is generated, it is identical with its own eternal source, everliving fire. Then Heraclitus declares the cyclic life of a universe, the alternate cosmogony and cosmic conflagation (ecpyrosis). How dœs matter is contained within the Cosmos? According to the Hellenic World-view, that, you must notice, is in harmony with the latest scientific views, the Cosmos, vast and mighty, contains an indefinite number of concentrations of matter particles called universes with their own initial configurations and at different stages of development. They illuminate the profound darkness of the cosmic space, some appearing as bolts of light, like stars, others shine like mighty galaxies, and some are invisible. If one could stand thirty billion light-years away, our universe would appear as a round galaxy. This very picture of a whole universe, spherical-elliptical and with a denser centre, like un round-eliptical galaxy, is called by the Classic writers, the macroscopic Orphic Egg. The various universes are all self-contained units and do not influence other universes. The Cosmos contains also a four-dimensional space-time vacuum which, similar to our own universe, is a rich environment, dense with virtual particles, probing to become real and an active space topography in the small space cells of 10-33 cm or superspace. The physical laws which govern our universe are also dominant in the Cosmos –a logical conclusion to the work of Nature. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ How then is each universe been born as part of a Cosmos, the home of an indefinite number of universes? How dœs this process take place, which the Greeks call Cosmogony? Please note that the Cosmogony is called cosmogony because in the Classics the terms are used in the opposite way from how modern science employs them: the whole of what is, KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

10 i.e. the Cosmos, is called Universe (Ùe ÄÓ - Û‡Ì·Ó) while each of the individual clusters of matter is called Kosmos (Cosmos). Naturally matter is not born out of nothing, nothing can be produced out of null dictates logic and the self evident thought of the Classics: «Ex nihilo nihil» has said Lucretius. The particles of matter that will make up the future universe are themselves, naturally, made out of matter which is more fine and which is produced by the two cosmogonical (= meaning giving birth to the cosmos) elements. But let us see first what lies within the Cosmos, what forces are in play: Firstly, the system of the Cosmos consists of, as expected, Space. It plays a major role in creation and has existed in the Cosmos long before even the first universe was born. Space is infinite in size, which means that the dimensions of the Cosmos are also infinite. Another element of the natural frame of the Cosmos is Time, which is one of its basic constituents. Time, for the Hellenic World-view is not only the one that has been and will always be, i.e. without beginning or end, but has also real existence. Time is not an expression or a function of other parameters. It is a primary and necessary factor of the Cosmos. That is why the antediluvian sacred texts called Orphic Pœms (Fragmenta Orphicorum, ed. by Otto Kern, Heineman, Z:yrich) are occupied with the definition of time and insist saying that Time gives birth to matter (Orphic Egg) and, therefore, exists before it. The first triad of the Orphic cosmogony consists of the two cosmogonical elements and Time. This for the science of cosmology entails a lot. It means that the Time pre-exists the creation of each universe and that the two cosmogonical elements react in Time. The third necessary and everlasting element of the Cosmos is the natural Law. Here it has to be underlined that the Classics teach that the natural Law has and will always exist as it is now. It has never been different nor will it ever change. The authority of the Law, for the Hellenic World-view, is absolute and that is why the most ancient missal texts, the Orphic Hymns (english translation: Thomas Taylor, The Hymns of Orpheus, various reprints), characterize him, inter alia, as «Nature’s firm basis», «the righteus seal of all», «Preserving laws eternally the same». Empedocles writes (B 135) «the universal law extends throughout the air’s broad realm and the enormous light». Hence, the framework of the Cosmos, consists of infinite Space, Time and the natural Law, and besides them the two creative cosmogonical substances. Here it should be made clear the meaning of the word substance: substance is something which is self-existent, it exists out of its own power and has no need for outside interference in order to be or act. The Stoic Zeno gives another valid definition: «Substance is the prime matter of all existing things». So, the stage of cosmogony is set: within the infinite Space, at a given Time and in conformity to the natural Law, act the two creative cosmogonical substances in order to bring into being a new universe. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

11 Which is the first of them? It is the vacuum of Space: The vacuum of space according the 19th century Physics is considered to be a void, lacking all particles of matter and free of all thermal and other radiation. Today, there is no doubt that vacuum, even at absolute zero and void of all particles of matter, is far from empty or featureless. It has been established experimentally that when all matter is evacuated from the vacuum of space and all thermal electromagnetic radiation dissipates to nil when the temperature is cooled to 0K, a residue fluctuating electromagnetic field remains in the vaccuum. This electromagnetic field, called zero-point radiation, is not the blackbody background radiation found everywhere in the universe as the remnant radiation of the primordial fireball during the creation act.

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12 Quantum mechanics introduced moreover another dimension. The vacuum of space, which appears simple and flat to macroscopic observations, is a very complicated and active system in the microscopic world of quantum mechanics. We are speaking here of areas of space of unimaginably minute dimentions in the range of 10-32 cm, called the Plank length (superspace). Here, the geometry of the vacuum undergœs dynamic changes. Space in this minute world expands, vibrates, attains maximum dimensions, followed by contraction and collapse. We speak of quantum fluctuations in the geometry and topology of space. This property of being curved, hilly and distorted is continually passed from one portion of space to another, similar to waves. Empty space is not empty; it is the place of most violent physics. As a result of these fluctuations, matter can appear spontaneously. In fact, the vacuum is filled with an enormous number of virtual (to be) particles such as photons and other bosons, pairs of electrons-positrons, muons-antimuons, and others. The virtual particles can be defined as would-be particles that appears spontaneously as vacuum fluctuations, as shown schematically in Figure 1. For example, an electron and positron appears as a pair; however, they are anihilated or rathher vanish into the vacuum almost as soon as they appear. This phenomenon can be explained with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which is expressed in the energy-time equation. This implies that energy conservation can be violated over a very short time, perhaps as little as 10-23 sec before it must be repaid. The total amount of energy remains constant at the 0 level before and after the short appearance of virtual particles, and the energy conservation law is not violated. If, however, a source of concentrated outside energy is fed into the tiny space of 10-11 cm or smaller, equal to at least twice the rest mass energy of an electron of 0.00102 GeV, a pair of virtual electron-positron particles will become a genuine and detectable electron-positron pair. This phenomenon is observed routinely in high-energy particle accelerator experiments. What takes place is an instantaneous, direct transformation of electromagnetic energy into matter, following the equivalence formula of Einstein E=mc2. The mass to the particles was given by the outside energy field. The pontential density of virtual particles in the vacuum of space is enormous. It is estimated at 1094 g/cm3. This density represents a potential capability of producing 5.4 ×10120 of electron-positron pairs per 1 cm3 of space. the entire universe, however contains only 3.05×1080 electrons or 1041 less than potentially 1 cm3 that space could produce. We can calculate that an energy level of 1012 GeV available in a space of 1 cm3 could transform at least 1.002×1018 virtual particle pairs into true electron-positron pairs. As we can see, particles of matter in the universe represent, percentagewise, a negligibly small part of the enormously large vacuum potential as a source for particle creation. The vacuum of space is always ready to be transformed into particles of matter in the presence of powerful energy fields. Therefore, it seems logical that this phenomena are certainly an essential ingredient in the creation process of a universe in the cosmic vacuum of space.

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13 Plato, immortalizing the knowledge of the Golden Age, describes this substance in Timæus (50-52) as «invisible and shapeless, receiving all things, partaking in some bewildering way of the intelligible and hard to capture… indestructible». Its nature and function are «to be the Receptacle and so to speak nurse of all becoming» (49); hence «mother and receptacle» (51a) go quite naturally together. There is also a distinct trace of the Pythagoreans, with their association of the Unlimited with the female, and the Unit with the male principle. In the Philebus we have seen it put plainly and succinctly (23): «for anything in this world to exist, there must first be, as its constituents an Unlimited element and the principle of Limit». Plato, after the foregoing, refers to the Receptacle as ‘space’ and says that it provides a ‘seat’ for everything that becomes. It is in constant irregular motion, swaying, and shaken «like grain in a winnowing basket» and «no part of it is in equipoise, but it is everywhere swung and shaken unevenly» by the powers of qualities that pervade it (52). How the commentators have understood the notion of Receptacle? Writes W. K. C. Guthrie (A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1978, vol. 5, p. 268): «It suggests the concept of space, not empty space, but ever full of a primitive kind of bodies, moving in every sense of the word kinesis –changing, generated and perishing, toppling over each other in their lack of homogeneity and balance and communicating the motion to the Receptacle itself. That the Receptacle itself should be agitated, and communicate its agitation back to its contents, is the strongest argument for supposing that Plato meant what he said when he called it not only space but a matrix, ‘stuff without property’ compared to Anaximander’s Apeiron (=Boundless)». Indeed, the above picture is so accurate as can be without the modern knowledge of quantum mechanics. «They put the case well who say that Plato, by the discovery of the element underlying all created qualities, which is now called ‘Matter’ and ‘Nature’, has relieved philosophers of many great perplexities», said Plutarch (Plutarch’s Moralia: Obsolescence of Oracles, 414). Because this substance produces the basic particles it is called the genetic substance or the substance that splits into particles. That is why it is called the Particulate Substance (Meristi Ousia - MÂÚÈÛÙ‹ √éÛ›·). The Classics think of it as female and, also, use many other names: they call it ‘matter’ or ‘substance without structure’, meaning it dœsn’t have any particular characteristics rather it allows each particle to develop its own set of characteristics. According to Stoics who call it qualityless matter or passive substance it is the substance and matter of all things. Pythagoras names it Unlimited (Apeiron) and Indefinite Dyad (=indeterminate pair. That reminds us strongly the momentous appearance in the superspace of the pairs of virtual basic particles that move irregularlyindeterminately —as can be seen in Fig. 1— before they vanish again); Plato calls it ‘Substance which is transient and divisible in bodies’ (Meristi Ousia – MÂÚÈÛÙ‹ √éÛ›·) Receptacle,Unlimited and Other (=that can be differentiated); The Orphic Pœms call it Orphic earth, Chaos and Chasm.

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14 Which is the second of them? The second substance is the primordial electromagnetic radiation: This concept of an omnipresent primordial, electromagnetic, radiation field flowing through the interuniverse cosmic space at velocities greater than the speed of light entered the contemporary cosmological thought with the research work of A. Karel Velan (The Multiuniverse Cosmos, Plenum Press, N. Y., 1992). This powerful, basic energy field of the cosmos in the form of super-high-frequency radiation, at energy levels of 108-1011 GeV, is the fundamental tool of cosmogony and together with the vacuum of cosmic space, carry jointly all the seeds of matter of the four forces of nature responsible for particle interactions. All are unified, waiting to unfold their individual identities at different levels of energy, temperature, and optimum chemical and physical conditions. The cosmic, primordial electromagnetic radiation field can interact occasionally with the inherently rich environment of the vacuum of space and turn, in combination with violent fluctuations of superspace, virtual particles into matter. A pure transfer of energy into matter. Direct detection of this all-powerful cosmic, primordial radiation has not been possible as it flows only in the perfect vacuum of the ‘interuniverse’ space of the Cosmos. but it can reasonably be assumed that remnants of this radiation are contained in the present universe as g rays that have been discovered, at enormous energies of up to 1011 GeV, as powerful bursts which are isotropic over the skies and, therefore, indicate that they are of cosmological origin. The bursts may indicate scattering by large masses of matter in the early universe, preventing the escape of this powerful radiation. Its main characteristic is that flows through the interuniverse space [Classics call this space intermundia] at velocities greater than the speed of light and with an turbulent, spinning and spiral movement. That is why it is called by Orpheus «unceasingly flowing paternal ground» (·ÙÚÈÎe˜ ‚˘ıe˜ àÂd Ú¤ˆÓ) and, more characteristically, «torrent unruly and furious» (ùÌ‚ÚÔ˜ àı¤ÛÊ·ÙÔ˜). Orpheus also calls it ‘water’. Classics have given it many names according to which of its properties they were trying to describe: they think of it as male and call it the Continuous substance (synehis ousia - Û˘Ó¯c˜ ÔéÛ›·), because it dœs not split, in contrast to the particulate substance. The Stoics name it: ‘the active principle’ and say that it extends throughout the Cosmos and that is the shaper of matter. It is also called the ‘creative fire’ (technicon pyr), to emphasize that it is the basic constituent of the creation of each Universe, acting throught the production of colossal amounts of heat. It is also called ‘warm breath’ (pneuma) or Aether (Aither) in order to note its great ability for penetration. The Continuous substance is also called Logos, in order to underline that within it lies the sperm of a purposeful and logical creation and that the produced Cosmos will continue to evolve through orthogenesis, namely the creation of well arranged, inherently logical and beautiful forms. Aristotle calls it ‘species’ (Eidos) and Plato KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

15 ‘Substance which is indivisible and remains always the same’, Same, in contrast to Other, namely the Particulate substance, which is why, like Pythagoras, he also calls it Un (En) or Limit to contrast it with the Particulate substance which he calls Indefinite Dyad or Unlimited. Let us summarise: For the Classics what exists is matter qualified, that is, matter exhibiting the features of the active and passive elements. How is a Universe created then? On rare occasions, cosmically speaking, the two vital elements instrumental in the particle creation process interact in a unique and optimum manner: the primordial, intense radiation field and the vacuum of the ineruniverse cosmic space, which simultaneously experiences large fluctuations in its topology and virtual particle activity. This marks the birth of a Universe. The traditional cosmogony has been described eloquently by the Stoics, Plato, Epicures, Pherekides, Pythagoras, the Emperor Julian etc. but its most perspicuous and ancient account lies in the truly holly and pre-cataclysmic text of the Hellenic World-view, the Sacred Oration (Hieros Logos) of Orpheus which is part of the Orphic Poems, which describes cosmogony with celebrated and momentous phrases. It describes the certain yet random incident of Cosmogony with the stunning phrase «it occured once» (Fr. 55). It describes the self mobility of the Continuous substance, in order to reject any notion about the existence of another substance or intelligence that might be responsible for setting it into motion, through the absolute statement «the unceasingly flowing paternal ground propelled by its own momentum» (Fr. 55), which simultaneously states the continuous movement of the substance as well as its presence throughout interuniverse space. Let us see some sayings of the Fr. 54 (Damascius Princ. 123): «Originaly there was water, Orpheus says, and mud, from which the earth solidified: he posits these two as first principles, water and earth… The great Unaging Time… the father of Aither and Chaos… Indeed, Time has offspring, three in number: moist Aither, unbounded Chaos, and as third, misty Darkness (Erebos)… Time fashioned an egg– this tradition too making it fashioned by Time, and born ‘among’ these because it is from these that the third Intelligible triad is produced. What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it (male and female), and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly Phanes with golden wings …» Misty Darkness (Erebos) is the interuniverse space [intermundia]. Orphic Egg in the microcosm is the basic particle of matter (which consists of the two cosmogonic substasnces: ‘the dyad of the two natures inside it’) and besides it in the macrocosm,generally, is the universe, but in the technical description of cosmogony the Orphic Egg stands for the fireball (see below the description of the creation of a universe). KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

16 Time fashioned an egg is tantamount to saying that ‘in the course of time’ the materials assumed the form of an egg. As Proclus writes: «the egg is born from Aether and Chaos». Phanes, ‘the one who makes (or is) Manifest’, «when he came forth through the Aether and misty Chasm he irradiated the air with unimaginable light from his dazzling body». Phanes is the newly expanded universe that is luminous, in contrast the fireball is dark because of the great gravitational thrust photons cannot escape. Let us see in detail the act of cosmogony: The vacuum of space in a given area of the cosmos violently fluctuates. The tiny 10-32 cells of space undergo unusually violent dynamic changes intheir geometry. Space vibrates, expands, and explodes. At the same time there is an unusual activity and massive appearance of virtual particles, ready to be transformed into particles of matter. Due to the high density (1094 g/cm3) of the virtual particles in the vacuum of space, the potential for creation in the presence of a powerful energy source is enormous. The unusual activity of virtual particles may have been triggered by the intense vacuum fluctuations of the topography and geometry of space. The intensive fluctuations of the superspace created a sort of tidal wave, disrupting the virtual particles. When conditions reached critical levels, the omnipresent, primordial cosmic radiation flowing throught the interuniverse space at velocities greater than the speed of light was suddenly slowed down and compressed by the unusual fluctuations in the geometry of space. Its energy level intensified to creative levels of 1012, 1013 GeV and what followed was a massive transformation and release of the virtual particles into the real world. Pairs of quarks-antiquarks and electrons-positrons were created in an instantaneous gigantic direct transformation of electromagnetic energy into matter. The powerful primordial radiation energy gave the virtual particles their mass. A new universe was created. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Less than a second after the creation of the primordial cloud of particles of matter and radiation, intense gravitational forces appear simultaneously with the appearance of matter and collapse the cloud into a fireball that is subjected to continuous and rapid implosion. The kinetic energy of the infalling particles at velocities close to the speed of light and the powerful collisions between particles and scattering of photons all turn into heat, energy and pressure, counteracting the gravitational forces. Radiation and the particles of matter are in full thermal equilibrium - particles are equally as hot as photons. The photons cannot escape. They move with the speed of light between collisions with electrons and quarks, are scattered and contribute to the largest extend to the ever-increasing temperature in the fireball. Implosion continues at a rapid pace. At the center, due to more intensive gravitation, a denser core of particles and radiation is being formed. Events are depicted in Figure … This is the formation of the Velan Fireball which is called by the Hellenic Worldview the primary Orphic Egg. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

17 Gravitational energy, instrumental in imploding the newly created fireball, is counteracted by thermal forces of matter and radiation. The implosion continues at a rapid pace. At a certain point and for a very short period of time, may be 10-10 sec, the gravitational forces are in equilibrium with the thermal forces. Shortly after the equilibrium phase the fireball reached the quark-electron density (1.3×1015 g/cm3) and the explosion was nearing. At that moment the radius of the fireball is approximately 1.17×1014 cm. For comparison, the radius of the Sun, which is a small star, is 7×1010cm. The highest level of energy achieved just before the explosion of the fireball is 1018 GeV, with an average temperature is 3.95×1026 K, which, however, on the core is considerably higher, reaching 1028-1030 K. By the time the entire fireball reached the quark-electron density, the core was compressed far beyond this density level. All of the electrons, quarks, and other particles in the core merged to form a sort of single gigantic nucleus. In this form, particles of matter show a powerful resistance to further compression. By that time the thermal energy of particles and radiation reached a level higher than the total gravitational energy and exerted considerable pressure against the gravitational forces. While the internal pressure in the center of the sun’s core is 1010 kg/cm2, the pressure in the interior of the fireball was about 1031 kg/cm2. The core, after the ‘maximum squeeze,’ bounced back like a rubber ball that was compressed. The bounce set off enormous shock waves, which, together with the overpowering internal forces created mainly by the energy of the electromagnetic radiation, resulted in a titanic cosmic explosion. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ For as long as the thermal forces last the matter of the hot sphere will expand, organise and become a Universe. When the thermal forces die out the expansion rate is gradually decreasing and the universe will eventually come to a halt. The contraction cycle which will start will be a reverse in time of the previous expansion period and it would be approach the state of a fireball, very similar in content and structure to the primordial fireball. Soon after, a big bang explosion will set up the universe on a new cycle of expansion and glorious creativity. Hence when a Universe has been created it never disappears again but follows a circular life span. As was indicated by Aristotle and presented in detail by Theophrastus (D.L. IX.8): «The Cosmos is generated from fire and is ignited again according to certain periods through all eternity». The phase of expansion the Greeks call Diacosmesis (adornment) while the contraction is called Ekpyrosis (conflagation). All these terms and many others were deliberated thoroughly and defined in detail by the Stoics, whose studies in cosmology will never be surpassed. How long dœs each Universe life cycle last? KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

18 Scientists judge that for our universe the expansion phase lasts 35,6 billion years and that the same gœs for the contraction phase. This entire process the wise men of the Orient call ‘the Universe’s Breath’ while the Brahmans of India call it ‘the night and day of Brahma’. The Lord Brahma is the highest divine entity that supervises and aids the creation of a Universe, corresponding to Uranus of the Greeks and Chinese or Khnum of the Egyptians. Finishing our exposition let us point out again that the Hellenic World-view and also every philosophy or religion that belongs to the traditional group, rejects any outside intervention on the Cosmos and flatly denies even the mere hint that there might be an extracosmical intelligence that creates a Universe. This fact establishes the essentially polytheistic nature not just of the Hellenic religion but also of all the traditional religions.

¨ 3. The Evolution What happens when the Universe starts to expand? Then it becomes adorned, as the Classics say, namely several natural laws spring into action shaping matter. The cardinal one is the Law of Evolution and according to it Nature and the Cosmos have a purpose. The purpose of Nature is the continuous production of more complex and higher forms and then at some point there appears, through evolution, consciousness, which develops further to higher consciousness. Therefore one can say that the purpose of nature is the development of higher consciousness. The action then of the Law of Evolution is synthetic, hence as soon as the expansion of the Universe begins it the adornment of matter also commences. The basic particles join together and organize in nuclei, initially of small molecular weight elements and later into that of the entire range of chemical elements: An early generation of stars must form to convert the primordial light elements of hydrogen and helium into such heavier elements as carbon and oxygen. The first generation of stars must explode in supernova fashion to provide the ‘dust’ of heavy elements for the second generation of stars such as our own sun and planetary system. It takes a minimum of a few billion years of evolution to achieve this state of development. The chemical elements then create larger groups of matter, entwine in crystals, unite to form macromolecular chemical compounds and when the conditions ripe there appear the large macromolecular organic compounds and living matter. Living matter constitute a necessary evolutionary stage, there exist everywhere in the universe and there appears wherever the natural conditions are favourable. There is already sufficient evidence that the clouds of interstellar dust are indeed mostly comprised of frozen KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

19 bacteria. Life advances, more and more complicated and perfect life forms are produced. Gradually consciousness appears. When those beings that manage to perfect their consciousness achieve to develop higher consciousness they rise into the Higher Worlds, which are nothing but the physical plane of existence for the supreme beings which we call Gods. There they continue for ever their evolution and their accumulation of higher and more perfect knowledge. The creation of all these forms of the Cosmos is also supported, besides the Law of Evolution, on another main law, which is called the Law of Form. This law, which is supervised by the Goddess Aphrodite (Venus), regulates all things so as every emerging form, from the shape of a chemical element’s atom to the human figure, will be well arranged, racional and handsome. This fact, that Nature produces only forms of matter, living or not, which are completely racional and in perfect harmony with each other forming smoothly running ecosystems, which is one of the main characteristics of the Cosmos, today’s science calls orthogenesis and orthœvolution. The Stoics call it Logos and Orpheus’ Sacred Oration Metis. Therefore within the possibilities of the natural laws there develop evolutionary the various forms that matter is feasible to get. This is what, for example, the science of Chemistry analyses, searching for the possible chemical compounds that there can be. This entire range of possible forms that, despite whether they appear or not, exist in principle as possibilities of the natural laws is what the Hellenic World-view calls the World of Forms. These are the renowned Platonic Ideas: the blueprints of possibilities within which it is possible to be achieved a change of Form, whether this concerns the production of a chemical compound or the creation of a large and complicated living being. This infinitely regulating function of the natural law which has foreseen for all that it is possible to happen providing for the well balanced operation of the Cosmos, dœs not give latitude for disorganising incidents that would unsettle the cosmic order. The absolutely perfect function of the cosmic order is supervised by the most exalted divine personalities such as Themis, Dike and the Eumenides. The study of this side of the natural law and orthogenesis gives answers to many practical questions such as the recent worries about the laboratory developments in the possibilities of intervention on the genetic material, i. e. the chromosomes, which are known as cloning. The Hellenic World-view is not worried by any scientific progress neither is possible for any scientific progress to shake the order of the Cosmos and the reason is quite simple: If the produced hybrid lies within orthogenesis it will live, if it hadn’t been produced in the lab it would have occurred one day anyway, either automatically or after a cataclysmic flux of mutations, i.e. the laboratory merely assisted the evolution. On the other hand, if that hybrid is a monstrous growth and lies outside the scope of orthogenesis it would only be able to survive within the laboratory environment and as soon as it is let free on its own in a natural environment its maladjusted nature will exterminate it. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

20 In summary, we have examined the Hellenic Cosmogony, i.e. how a universe is born and evolves, realizing that the Greek thought has elaborated in a complete manner the first principles of the Cosmos. Certainly, all the traditional religions are based on these same principles but, due to historical reasons, only the Hellenic World-view managed to preserve in a detailed and complete manner all the teachings of the Golden Age. Therefore it is right and fair to declare unequivocally that it is the Greek Classic thought which has expressed fully and conclusively the first principles of the Cosmos, namely the first principles of religion and philosophy. The Hellenic World-view considers cosmogony and generally the first principles very important because upon them builds up, in an inductive manner, the entire system of ethics, namely whatever concerns mainly the human being. By saying ethics we mean the answers to the questions: how ought humans live, what should ones aim in life be and which is the most excellent system of government.

¨ 4. Psychogony After our brief account of the Hellenic view about cosmogony, i.e. about the first principles of the Cosmos. let's see what is the opinion of the Hellenic World-view about the soul, the human being and the Higher Worlds. The Greeks not only accept that there is a soul but also declare that the soul is that which is imperishable and truly everlasting. On the other hand the monotheistic religions accept practically only the body and are occupied with its preservation and resurrection while the traditional religion regards that the soul is the bloom of man’s essence as Proklos says. We have mentioned before that for the Hellenic World-view there is only one physical reality, there are no other imaginary and immaterial worlds. Therefore for the Greeks the soul is not something peculiar, it is completely natural and real, it is a basic material particle which has functions, parts and it is receptive to recordings. This view, completely logical, scientific and within the frame of nature that we all know, leaves those raised with the now common ideas about imaginary, immaterial extra-cosmical spirits, stunned. Researchers are dumbfounded when Plato breaks their narrow fields of reality by referring directly to the subject in ‘Timæus’, despite the fact that in classical times cosmogony, psychogony and Theogony were regarded as Mysteries secrets which must not be taught to the uninitiated and that is why the classics used adjectives and circumlocutions when describing the two cosmogonical substances. So Plato says, in the celebrated passage of Timaeus’ 35a, that the soul is created from the mixture of the two creative cosmogonical substances, the Same and the Other: KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

21 «Now as regards the Soul… He made her of the materials and in fashion which I shall now describe. Midway between the Substance which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Substance which is transient and divisible in bodies, He blended a third form of Substance compounded out of the twain, that is to say, out of the Same and the Other; and in like manner He compounded it midway between that one of them which is indivisible and that one which is divisible in bodies. And He took the three of them, and blent them all together into one form, by forcing the Other into union with the Same, in spite of its being naturally difficult to mix…». The Stoics persistently insist on the matter, Chrysippos and Kleanthes note that whatever exists is a material body and that the soul is a such a body. As soon as this soul particle is created, which the Hellenic World-view calls the psychic corpuscle, it lives forever, it is immortal by its own nature and since it is a basic particle it dœs not get destroyed, not even during the contraction of the universe. The psychic corpuscle is enveloped in energy tissues that form several [to be precise: seven] ‘sheaths’ or ‘bodies’ or ‘vehicles’ or ‘envelopes’ or ‘veils’. This energy system that envelops the psychic corpuscle is named, collectively, ‘adornement of the soul’ or ‘psychic envelopment’ or ‘peripneuma’. All these together constitute the psychic complex or spiritual organism, or simply, psyche or soul. It should be made clear at this point that the psychic corpuscles created by a process that is wholly natural and its immortal nature is an automatic quality which dœs not rest with any other entity. This establishes the self-existent status of the soul and ascertains its selfdominant nature. We like to emphasize this because the monotheistic religions have spread queer ideas claiming that the soul is created by some god, and its immortality depends upon his will. For the traditional religion it is the exact opposite: souls are self-existent and by their own nature everlasting.

¨ 5. The course of the soul The psyche from the time of its birth commences a long evolutionary voyage which will lead it to the threshold of the Higher Worlds. When we say that psyche follows a long evolutionary process we do not mean that the psychic corpuscle changes shape rather it concerns a functional whole, just as the functional whole of a computer is ready to receive recordings and create complicated mechanisms for processing information, so the soul will proceed this way until reach the level of knowledge and consciousness that it will allow it to produce what we call higher consciousness. The soul gradually acquires the quality we call consciousness. This is achieved by going through various evolutionary forms, starting from the mineral world it then moves on to plants, to animals and eventually to humans. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

22 Consequently, the evolution of the psychic corpuscle is achieved through its link-up to the dense matter while the accumulation of experiences, knowledge and moral character is achieved through the necessity to adapt to the demands, circumstances and the challenges of life. Because the soul is imperishable and immortal and the aforementioned process is very long while our life span is short it follows from the above that this course and learning process is achieved through the mechanism that the Classics call, among others, metempsychosis, cycle of births, transmigration of souls or reincarnation. As the Classics say, the soul leaves its old clothes back and dresses with new ones. Empedokles characteristically tells us (Fr. 117): «Thus, I myself was once a boy and also a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a voiceless fish in the salty flood». Notes the renown Cambridge philosopher J. E. McTaggart: «Not only because the time is so short, but because there are so many things which are incompatible within a single life. No man can learn fully in one life the lessons of unbroken health and of bodily sickness, of riches and of poverty, of study and action, of compradeship and isolation, of defiance and of obedience, of virtue and of vice. And yet they are all so good to learn. Is it not worth much to be able to hope that what we have missed in one life may come to us in another?» The advantages of reincarnation to the completion of the goal and destiny of the soul, which is the gradual evolution to a higher consciousness, are obvious. At each moment the soul has at its disposal, in order to act, an organism of intellectual complexity and capacity which is analogous to its currently evolved status. When consciousness has developed, the loss of memory after each lifetime is most beneficial for it prevents the person from getting stuck, evolutionary or psychically, from the memory of an intense experience, whether a negative or positive one. Otherwise someone who was done wrong or who did wrong would be forever tormented from the memory of that experience. Someone who had a high social status in ones previous life would find it immensely difficult to adjust to a lower one. One who succeeded in some profession would hardly pick a different one in ones next life and hence, evolutionary speaking, he would not progress. To this last case do child wonders belong, who from a young age display high intelligence and unusual knowledge in some field of science or art. For example, they remember and skilfully execute known musical pieces or display knowledge and abilities incompatible to their age even in purely artificial areas, and we emphasize this so that it won’t be claimed that these are natural skills. Such an example is the frequent emergence of children prodigies in chess, given that the geometry of chess is completely artificial and unnatural. Here it should be noted that even though the person will not remember his previous life, ones skills, nevertheless, are inherited and do reappear. Hence it becomes obvious that a child who is a music prodigy will tend to follow the profession of the musician again and again. However, this will hinder its evolution because for the spiritual development of the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

23 soul contact with various creative jobs and social circumstances is demanded. To combat this potentially serious problem as well as various other dangers such as the acquisition of political power by people malevolent, ambitious and without moral principles who can destroy the fabric of society in their path, the ancient mystics like the legislators of India devised the hierarchical system of the casts. The loss of memory then has only beneficial consequences for the spiritual development of the person and the mechanism of reincarnation guarantees that nothing positive is lost. What makes up our psychical and mental world? It is our skills, our moral character and our emotional experiences. Even during our present lifetime we hardly remember the circumstances that have led us to acquire a particular skill like playing an instrument or being good at mathematics. That information is irrelevant and as such it is rejected form conscious awareness. What is important is the skill itself and it is this that reappears in subsequent lifetimes. Similarly no one remembers, neither would it had any use to remember, each incident that contributed to the creation of one’s present moral character, what is important is the character itself. A person’s character, what gives one ones uniqueness, not only dœs not get lost but it reappears, all of it, in the next reincarnation and so a man may carry over his next life the dispositions and tendencies which he has gained by the moral contests of his life. This process explains the fact which every pedagogical theory is unable to interpret correctly, and thus sloppily covers, namely, that children raised within a specific family environment are out of character with one another having not only dissimilar tastes, diverse interests, unequal capabilities on different technical skills, disparate ways of acting and reacting, but also displaying from a young age completely organized different and individual personalities. An insertion for those readers who are aware of the current pedagogical views: The modern standpoint is that the environment alone shapes one’s character and upon this has been based the view, that it dœs not matter if the societies are becoming multi-ethnic. That, for example a colored man raised in England will not differ at all from a native Englishman. Thus they are unable to explain the completely different personalities within the same family and try to find other arguments, which contradict their previous views, such as that the various personality traits are due to different chromosome combinations. Do they realize what they are saying? If within the chromosomes of a single ethnic group lies the possibility for such variety then what on earth is going to happen from the mixed marriages that Unesco recommends? How can they claim that the colored man despite his completely different chromosomes will develop the character of a native Englishman? Do the chromosomes play a part? Well, if so then the homogeneous, multi-ethnic societies is impossible. We have to unequivocal about it and dispel all this confusion which was not created by scientists but politicians. The human races are widely distinct from each other and there are indeed specific chromosome differences. For example, Mongolian race is so distinct from other races that they have a peculiar anatomical formation, a flat organ called MongolenKEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

24 falte that gives the characteristic appearance of obliquity to the eyes. Likewise the mental chasm between races is astonishing and it is impossible for a Greek to acquire the mentality of a Chinese. That is why it sounds as a bad joke or as a death omen the view coming from certain political quarters that race is not important, that mixed marriages are fine and that it is possible for any civilization to continue to exist in multi-ethnic environment through the foreigners living and being educated on the land! Hence, it is not possible for different races to converge to similar civilizations. It is not possible for the Greeks to continue the Chinese vase making tradition and neither is it possible for the Chinese to continue the Hellenic Literature. Here we have to be unequivocal, Nature and the divine Law of Evolution never go backwards, they constantly lead to greater and greater differentiations and production of new species. The divine Law of Evolution dœs not accept any backward movement, dœs not tend to create from, let’s say, Greeks and Chinese a common hybrid and that is why it has established the mechanism of paragenesis (see: Baker, Race, Oxford Univ. Press, London,). What dœs paragenesis or paragenesic hybridity means? If an experimenter breeds GreekChinese pairs the first filial generation will be fertile, however, if he attempts to breed from the second generation he will realize that it is impossible, the members of the second (or the third) generation are infertile among themselves and fertile only with one of the parental stocks. His experiment will have failed, no new hybrid race will have been created because even the first generation of hybrids is incapable of repeated reproduction, generation after generation. If hybridism was possible then because the various races have had so much contact over the ages because of the interbreeding (interracial miscegenation) at the racial boundaries (clines) there should be only one ‘grey’ race, as anthropologists say, by now. Nature moves the other way creating further separate species. So we ought to be unequivocal about it, whœver dœs not allow ethnic groups, races, nations, to follow their evolutionary path, within their own country, traditions and mentality, not only dœs he robs them of their evolution but he is also an enemy of the divine laws, enemy of Nature, an adversary to the rhythm of the Cosmos. Writes Alain Daniélou interpreting the traditional Indian thought (p. 177): «Every race, each animal or human species, functions as an entity which progresses through time, and their qualities and virtues are handed down and accumulated. The mixing of races, and the degeneration which results from it, is always a regression, a dissipation of the ancestral heritage and a risk of diminishing the same for his descendants. This is a thing no responsible man has a right to do ». The people, then, within a nation have approximate spiritual evolution, mentality, temperament and manners. It is known that it is due to this that the people of a nation display the same basic attitudes. This aroused the curiosity of psychologists and they have called this phenomenon the racial unconscious, however, they were unable to explain it satisfactorily. The racial unconscious is explained as follows: obviously by being of the same racial KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

25 group people share a basic character because of the common base of chromosomes that they have. Nevertheless, that is not enough in order to explain those peoples common mentality and one have to appreciate it in conjunction with the thousands of lives that people have shared into the same society and the common experiences that this entails, in order to justify that people within a nation cherish similar ways of viewing reality and reacting to it. This explains why nations are real entities with autonomous growth and character. For example, it is true that Chinese and Japanese have created nations that have many similar characteristics due to the similarities in their chromosome make up that belongs to the Mongoloid race, but these nations have autonomous and separate characteristics which class them as obviously independent entities. Here let us point out that one of the main tenets of the traditional religion is that a person dœs not evolve autonomously by means of ‘personal salvation’, like the ones recommended by monotheistic religions, but as part of a group, a society, a town, a nation and by following the general spiritual evolution of his society and employing as a main way to his spiritual progress social action. Therefore it gœs without saying that a person is always born within his nation or even within his hometown because this not only solidifies the racial unconscious but makes his evolution much easier. This is not only natural but it also represents the efficiency of the natural law. Could you imagine a Greek being born as a Swiss? That person would have to spend his entire life trying to adjust to the Swiss mentality. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Coming back to our main subject, we have touched upon that a person carries on to his next life not only his skills and moral character but also the third part of human psychic life, our emotional world, dœs not get lost either. Nobody remembers all the things he has experienced with his circle of friends and family, yet it is the sum of those experiences that contribute to one’s affection for his beloved. In a similar way, when in our next life we meet a person which used to be close to us there spring up our old affection and we grow to love him even more. Says McTaggart: «There remains love, The problem here is more important, if, as I believe, it is in love, and in nothing else, that we find not only the supreme reality of life, and, indeed, of the universe… Much has been forgotten in any friendship which has lasted for several years within the limits of a single life– many confidences, many services, many hours of happiness and sorrow. But they have not passed away without leaving their mark on the present. They contribute, though they are forgotten, to the preent love which is not forgotten. In the same way, if the whole memory of the love of a life is swept away at death, its value is not lost if the same love is stronger in a new life because of what passed before…» About the above point the sacred tradition are unanimous, the law that regulates human circumstances, what in India is called Law of Karma, ensures, and it could not be otherwise, that in almost every lifetime we meet our beloved, all those with whom we have spiritual KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

26 ties and a serious intellectual and spiritual task to fulfil. Empedokles writes: We see then that reincarnation is designed in such a way as not only to be a unification factor in the long evolutionary process of the soul and the personality, but also to ensure that each human effort is not lost or remains incomplete. Whatever we did not manage to conclude in one lifetime we will continue in the next. Whatever sacrifice we have endured or goodness we have promoted in our previous life it will be rewarded fully in the next. Each new lifetime is what we all want: a bran new start, having forgotten about the past, in a new body but equipped with the skills, experiences and the more mature character we have accumulated. «And though the way is long, it can be no more wearisome than a single life. For with death we leave behind us memory and old age, and fatigue. We may die old but we shall be born young. And death acquires a deeper and more gracious significance when we regard it as part of the continually recurring rhythm of progress– as inevitable, as natural, and as benevolent as sleep»; says McTaggart. Many other distinguised person in our Western culture have declared their belief in reincarnation; here we will reproduce only some memorable phraces of an interview (Hearst papers, April 27-28, 1938) with Henry Ford the renown industrialist: «When I was a young man, I, like so many others, was bewildered. I found myself asking the question… ‘What are we here for?’ I found no answer. Without some answer to that question life is empty, useless. Religion offered nothing to the point… Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. Then one day a friend handed me a book. That little book gave me the answer I was seeking. It changed my whole life. From emptiness and uselessness, it changed my outlook upon life to purpose and meaning. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock… Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more… The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease… write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us». ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ It has been often asked whether the course of reincarnations and spiritual progress is a smooth forward process or whether there are regressions too. This question shouldn’t even put forward at all, for a continuously forward linear process would characterize a mechanistic world or a form of teleology, it would be a form of the repulsive monotheistic concept of Predestination. People would have to follow willy-nilly their predestined course and any struggle or effort to acquire true knowledge and virtues would be the result of an automatic and mechanistic process and instinct. The evolutionary process of the soul varies and often regresses. Plutarch clearly indicates that even when the person enters the Higher worlds it is possible to regress. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

27 Because of these facts reincarnation is symbolized by appropriate symbols. One of them is the Labyrinth, it has wide use as mystic symbol because it depicts lucidly the voyage of the soul that sometimes approaches its destination and others moves away from it. The mystical labyrinth has no dead ends, and this is good news for us all, it has however repeated approaches and departures from the centre. The second of those symbols is the Swastika, which has several hieratical levels of interpretation and thus is the most sacred and most eloquent of all symbols. In terms of the evolution of the soul it depicts how man standing upon an arm and although it is possible to walk towards the centre it is also possible to wonder away from it, aimlessly, into featureless space. In this manner proceeds the course of reincarnations which are also called birth cycles and that is why those initiated to the Sacred Eleusinian Mysteries wish to each other: «Let us end the cycle!». For the Hellenic World-view, and generally for the traditional religions, reincarnation is a positive chance while the Buddhist attitude towards it is one of gloom and pessimism. Buddhism, being a spiritual system of Later Times, although maintains many traditional elements, it is nevertheless, unacceptable because it has as part of its basic principles the anti-traditional and detrimental views about personal salvation and salvation through inaction and the monastic life. For the Hellenic World-view reincarnation is a necessary step to the evolution of the soul, it is the school courses in which we have to progress, to move on to higher levels and to graduate without undue delay, this is what the Mysteries taught. But the process itself has nothing bad, it is a finely tuned school whose goal it is to give us cognitive and moral perfection so that at the end of it the light of higher consciousness can shine within us and help us cross over to the Higher Worlds. As Empedocles says (Fr. 132): «And at the end they come among men as prophets, minstrels, physicians, and leaders, and from these they arise as gods , highest in honor» When one reach the desired end, besides higher consciousness one also regains full memory of all of one’s previous lifetimes; a fact which was proven conclusively through Formal Logic the aforementioned philosopher McTaggart. That very moment we will realize that the Law in its irreversible and firm necessity brings an absolute and complete justice since between the persons that have reached that level there is an equality of memories. Indeed, everybody then will have lived through every human condition possible, everyone will remember on one occasion having been sick and in another healthy, once dying young and some other time dying old, sometimes being a prince and occasionally a day labourer. Hence the greatest crowning of all those efforts, i.e. the entrance to the Higher Worlds, is followed by the required justice, the equality of memories. Therefore there will be no bitterness for whatever we have gone through; and then, as higher entities, we shall be able to help people effectively because we shall have a complete understanding of all human conditions. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

28 That is why the Gods of the traditional religions, namely the only true ones, are distinguished for their infinite love and understanding towards the human condition, which is why they are described by the ancient mystics as compassionate aids of people; because they know firsthand all the difficulties, temptations and hardships of life being formely and for a long chain of rebirths humans themselves. Let us lay emphasis here on one of the basic logical contradictions within the monotheistic religions’ creed, which dogmatize about there being only a single lifetime, a heaven and a hell. No matter how much one is enjoying oneself in paradise it will not suffice to overcome one's bitterness for the difference between his experiences during that single lifetime and the experiences of the others. Remembering, for example, one the hardships he had to endure as a poor labourer while the other the honours that have been bestowed on him being a wealthy prince. Let us not leave aside the fact of how they advocate that the extra-cosmical God incarnated into a man in order to understand for himself, through the same experiences what it is to be human but immediately add that he never experienced al those things that define human nature. He never grew old or sick, never had any family burdens, never worked for a living, never cared for his social standing, never felt any sexual desire! Hang-on! these are all the obstacles that people have to overcome! If he never experienced all these things then what on earth did he experience? They say he was God so he could not have sexual desire or a family. Then what did he experience while on earth if not the struggle of the parent to raise his children and to meet his responsibilities? Apparently he must have managed to learn next to nothing (!) about the human condition in direct contrast to the Greek Gods who are mature personalities, having gone through every single human struggle and suffering possible, having learned what the great psychological and other true obstacles that real people have to overcome, who in each lifecycle also has to face physical calamities, work, sickness, old age and the urge for the satisfaction of his instincts. During a person’s last lifetimes upon earth he receives special names. Firstly that of Hero, then Demi-God and in one’s very last human incarnation he is called God-upon-earth or Man-God. Evolution at those last stages is achieved only through social action and contribution to the community welfare.

¨ 6. Excursus: The Golden Age Because we are talking about the Golden Age of Humanity we should explain which that is. Of course it’s not the first time these words have been heard, they are well known from the study of the Classics. The Greeks knew about it and described it. We are not just referring to Plato who, in his great works Timaeus and Critias, described it and, in all detail, KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

29 analysed its tragic end, but also to the entire classical literature starting from Hesiodus (transl. by Hugh Evelyn-White, The Lœb Classical Library): «Golden race of mortal men… And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and wiyhout stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed Gods». The Greeks had the Golden Age as a template and it was this that inspired all their actions and ideals. But what was the Golden Age? It was an era during which civilisation, in general, developed in the most high and complete way. That civilisation reached the heights of scientific perfection and managed to discover in a undisputed manner the first principles of cosmogony, psychogony and Theogony which are also the first principles of all sciences. These first principles constituted the basis for the development of the religion of the Golden Age. That religion was not merely the most perfect that could be but, because it was based on the scientific truth about the Cosmos and the human being, it was science itself. In this way it protected people from the mental disturbances caused by the strange chasm between religion and science that is created by the monotheistic creeds, because these creeds are based on axioms and principles which are arbitrary and unscientific. The civilisation of the Golden Age besides its high and perfect science had also managed to realise that the purpose of society ought to be to ensure man’s spiritual evolution and thus the political organisation of the Golden Age was orientated accordingly being so a perfect system of government. Technology wise, as the buildings of the post-cataclysmic era and the few other remnants show, theirs was infinitely higher that ours, using sources of energy that neither polluted nor destroyed the environment. It is certain that this energy was taken from the earth’s electromagnetic field and the respect for nature was developed to a high point so that everything was made to look nice and decorate the surroundings instead of destroying it; a such example is Stonehedge, which although is of a later time, continue to uphold the tradition and hence while its stones are elaborately treated the work is such that they still look completely rough and natural. What did survive from the civilisation of the Golden Age? From the gigantic megalithic constructions, from the granite monoliths, from the magnificent statues of ancient kings and lawgivers, from the temples with the imposing terraced pyramids, from the colossal propylæa and the cyclopean breakwater constructions where the sun reflected, from the arcades and the labyrinths of the Shrines where solemn philosophers and venereable priests KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

30 walked to, from the luxurious monuments of the seafarers and the explorers of the far ends of the universe? There remained enough things, more than we imagine. There survived, into the teachings of the traditional religions, the ideas about the first principles. Priceless literal works survived also, such as the Sacred Oration of Orpheus and the Orphic Hymns, which alone suffice to prove the greatness of the Golden Age. There survived all around the world and especially in Oceania several remains of megalithic buildings, walls and surfaces. There survived the Great Pyramid or more correctly the pyramid complex of Gizah. There survived the sacred religious colours of the Golden Age, black and red, and the sacred symbols which decorated meaningfuly the great pre-cataclysmic architecture. We are talking about the primeval symbols of the World order, the volute, symbol of the continuous substance, portraying its continuous spiral movement. Also the wavy moulding, which represents the lines and undulations of the energy field of the particulate substance. Finally the most sacred symbol of the rhythm of the Cosmos, that of the four main forces in nature and the preserver of the Cosmos, Law of Motion, the clockwise and anti-clockwise Swastika. Proof of the high importance of these symbols is their absolute and universal antediluvian spreading. Furthermore it should not escape our attention that the Classics preserved the entire spirit and meaning of the civilization of the Golden Age and instilled it in classical architecture, in classical pœtry, in classical theatre and in general in the Hellenic World-view. Many times the question has been raised: what was the social organisation and system of government of the Golden Age? In fact, it was a self-evident system that any thinking man would end up with, if only the propaganda that bombards us would cease. It was a meritocratic system of government where knowledge prevailed. For each matter the opinion of those proficient in the subject was taken into account and all people had an opinion for that which they knew about, about the issues regarding their city or their profession. There were laws that had reached the highest degree of perfection, completely adjusted to suit the idiosyncrasy of people and nations. It gœs without saying that those laws were permanent and did not change from day to day so that it would be possible for people to adjust and plan their lives and professions within a set frame, having the assurance that it was not going to change the next day. The problems that plague today's societies were non-existent. Work was not only considered everybody's right but from a young age education detected the needs and skills of each person and every effort was made to ensure that each job should be creative and beneficial to the spiritual evolution of the person. The spiritual growth and happiness of the citizens was the purpose and aim of the state and if anyone suggested things like ceasless economic growth or investment in further production or complicated economic indexes that must do well while economic recession spreads, he would not be understood. The antediluvian civilization never fell so low as to allow to spring within it exploiting and KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

31 domineering mechanisms of commercial-economic nature. The citizen was not treated as the servant of an impersonal and monstrous economy machine or as the compulsory consumer of an incomprehensible and greedy production mechanism of useless goods that were enforced through an almighty and irresistible advertising campaign. The citizen was treated as a spiritual being which the state had to respect and protect and provide the means to develop. There were no unemployed or destitute while the state took care of the young and the less mentally able. In the antediluvian civilization respect for institutions and meritocracy were considered to be as standard social values. Power was nobody’s to own and no one imagined that it would be possible that some tyrant or some much advertised ‘leader’ or just the populace could govern. The nation was considered to be an entity defined by its history and hence that nobody had the right to make decisions without taking in mind the opinions of the herœs of the past or of the generations to come. That is why the laws regulating the state were stable and sacred for they had been established by the wisest and validated through the experience of time. From this comes the political view of the Classics that there is no greater evil than the fraudulent anarchic state and that a state can only be worthy of its name when there is absolute rule of the Law, where the Law is considered despot and master. Many people wonder how did the antediluvian civilization deal with the great matters that concern modern societies such as racism or feminism. The subject is simpler than it sounds for these are not real problems rather they are due to a social pathology that has its roots in monotheistic attitude. For example, in the Golden Age it was self-evident that each ethnic group, each nation, had the inviolable right to its colour, religion, traditions, manners, customs and the soil of its homeland. No one could even imagine of racist missionaries destroying nations by telling them that their morality, mentality, idiosyncrasy, customs, manners and religion are inferior and that it is they who are going to provide them with the right religion and attitude. Also no one could ever imagine heinous exploiters, merchants and colonialists taking advantage of the wealth of people, forcing out people from their homeland, piling them up in the big western cities, making them people without a home who hate the big city where they are so that the exploiters can use them as a means of extortion and destruction against Western nations. But mostly no one could conceive that these heinous masters and racists would change even the truth and accuse as racist each poor European that dared protest that he dœsn’t want foreigners in his home town, rejecting compulsory ethnic group mixing. The right of each race or nation to live free in its own country with its own traditions, designed to fit its spiritual level and idiosyncrasy, was considered self-evident in the Golden Age and towards that strived the most evolved, spiritually and mentally, nations. It should be noted here that these opinions of the Golden Age was fully inherited by the Hellenic World-view and a prime example of this is the so called Hellenistic Age. When the Greeks became masters of Asia and Egypt they did not say to the peoples of those KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

32 nations that their traditions, manners or religion are inferior. On the contrary, the Greek administration declared that the native cultures were the ones that most suited them. The Greeks in Egypt implemented a wide range of programs intending to restore and repair the Egyptian temples, while in Persia they established a system of self rule. They did not conquer them but they civilized them and we must be with this term: The Greeks gave them the chance to further develop their own civilisation. For example, this was the case in Egypt and that is why the Egyptians greeted them as liberators, because, except others, during the Hellenistic Era there occurred the so called Renaissance of the Egyptian Religion. Indeed, it is a fact that the Greeks, following the example of the Golden Age and the rules of the Hellenic religion, did indeed protect and refined the cultures of nations, as, for example, did Antiochus the Great who found the Jews not doing well and proceeded to give them tax reductions, benefits and high amounts of money and luxury goods like Lebanon wood to restore the temple of Solomon. This attitude: love towards other nations with respect for their peculiarities is a basic characteristic of the Hellenic World-view. Additionally Feminism has been mentioned. In the Golden Age it was considered selfevident that the female, which is responsible for the reproduction and the future of the nation, for the birth of a new spiritual being, for the upbringing of tomorrow’s citizens, for the implementation of eugenics which is necessary for the evolutionary future of society and the joining with the Law of Evolution, is equal to the male of the species. But it is more than that, it was known that females have, by nature, greater capability for spiritual development and progress and consequently held a place of honour in spiritual matters. Indeed for every society that is based on reason are incomprehensive conditions such as these of Late Antiquity, when strange systems called monotheistic religions have declared their hate against the physical world, against its order and evolution and, consequently, against women who have been hated for being a means to its reproduction and consequetively ordered to be concealed, to wear a kerchief or a yashmak and were classed as inferior. For each right-minded society situations like the ones we are facing today and which are a continuation of the ideology of these even today prevailing monotheistic religions, are unthinkable and unacceptable. Women are rewarded and acknowledged only when performing male tasks while the raising of the children is considered an inferior deed. Consequently, any concerns about the future of the nation and its reproduction is left to the masses of imported foreigners. No, in the Golden Age everybody followed the commands of the natural law and the opposite took place: Above all the most honoured woman was the one that had raised fine children and she was declared: mother of the nation. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ How did the pre-cataclysmic (antediluvian) civilization end? As Plato notes clearly in Timaeus there was a variant, namely a change in the orbits of KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

33 the planets, which had as a result a shift of the earth's axis. This chain of events can be identified as the capture of Moon by earth's gravity and the subsequent elimination of the previous satellite system. The following great geological upheaval, which is known as the Cataclysm, had destructive consequences. Those include a high worldwide volcanic activity, gigantic tidal waves of two kilometres high and of speeds round 400 Km/h, widespread folding of the earth's crust and mountain formation. Within this wildly destructive situation not only did the civilization of the Golden Age disappeared but also thousands of species of the animal kingdom, because besides the tidal wave the climate changed rapidly and in many areas there was suddenly freezing temperatures, which in turn explains the death and instant freeze of the great woolly mammoth. As expected the few survivors quickly lost most of the technological knowledge of the Golden Age, despite the fact that another civilization quickly developed, because it was local and vulnerable it could not resist the great natural disasters that followed. Thus we reached the dawn of history following a declining course and not an upward one. This explains how the most complete philosophico-religious work is the most ancient one, i.e. Orpheus Sacred Oration. Naturally, the first thing that will survive a disaster of this magnitude is religious, ritual and philosophical texts about the first principles. Through these texts and traditions the Classical civilization was created, and it makes quite an impression that the Hellenic traditions maintained intact the largest part of the antediluvian philosophico-religious knowledge. Nowadays that we rediscover the true prehistory, we understand the true value of the Hellenic traditions. For example, we see how truthful were the Arcadians, who defending their native origins, called themselves pre-moon people (preselenites), explaining this way that they were living on the same land from a time before the arrival of the moon.

¨ 6. Theogony «Blessed was he, while he dwelt among men, and therafter a hero worshiped by the reople» «Ì¿Î·Ú ÌbÓ àÓ‰ÚáÓ Ì¤Ù· öÓ·ÈÂÓ, ≥Úˆ˜ ‰\ öÂÈÙ· Ï·ÔÛ‚‹˜.» Pindar, Pythian Ode V 128

So, what happens when man reaches that higher stage? Then man crosses over to the Higher Worlds and no longer having the need to posess a gross human body continues his evolution, being elevated to the ranks of the divine hierarchy, becoming Hero, Dæmon, God, Olympian God etc. Indeed, whoever manages with the help of the Mysteries and the assistance of Dionysus, the supervisor of the human soul’s task, to develop a higher state of consciousness, he leaves KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

34 behind the world of gross matter and, having won the immortality of his soul and making soul’s adornement luminous and bright, continues his spiritual evolution as divine spiritual organism raising to higher and higher levels of spiritual growth. Let us clear up an obscure point: the psychic corpuscle is immortal by its own nature but in order to maintain its psychic envelopment it needs to take energy from the gross body. It is, indeed, true the assertion of Galen, the great philosopher and physician, that «nourishment of the psyche is the blood». Therefore, when we speak about to win the immortality of our soul, we mean to reach that stage where the spiritual organism could maintain itself without taking energy from a gross body but by using the energy of the enviroment. When this level of development is reached, then the function of the psychic ‘bodies’ would become perfect, having been achieved the integration of the psychic centers, and consequently there appearance would be brilliant and luminous. This soul that transcended the threshold of the Higher Worlds we name ‘newly born divine spiritual organism’ or, simply, ‘divine spiritual organism’. Let us clarify also the word spiritual. For the Hellenic World-view the word spiritual dœs not refer to other strange or immaterial worlds or other dimensions, like those of science fiction novels, but rather it refers, on one hand, to the fine states of matter known today as electromagnetic energy and, on the other hand, to those mental states that are known as higher consciousness.

¨ 7. The Mysteries There is a constant interest in what the Mysteries are about. The Mysteries are divine institutions in which man takes refuge inquiring about his evolution, whether he is on the right spiritual path. The Mysteries provide directions for man’s further spiritual development and the attainment of his ultimate aim, namely, the achievement of immortality of his soul and subsequently the ending of the reincarnation cycles and the admission in the Higher Worlds. To be precise, the Great Mysteries of Eleusis were a stage performance of a dramatic play presenting in a solemn and sacred manner the life story of the Goddess Persephone (Prosperina); her abduction by Pluto, the descent into Hades the underworld, the ascent to light for a semester, and finally her elevation to Olympian mansions by Dionysus (Liber). This play has high symbolic meaning so that the spectator, depending on his spiritual level, can understand whether he is on the right spiritual path. This help that the Mysteries provide to the person who strives to improve his spirituality is invaluable and that is why the Hellenic World-view rightly declares that the greatest curse to Humanity has been their destruction by the triumphant monotheistic religion. The Hierophant of Eleusis, the most KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

35 respected person during the Classical era, has always and by definition been a Man-God, which is why he was always able to help not only the simple folk but also the nearly perfect mystics. Let us urge on the fact that the divine spiritual being has not lost or changed anatomicaly its psychic corpuscle but only restructured its adornement which has been made immortal and bright. That is what the fresco in the central apse of the Pythagorean basilica near the Porta Maggiore in Rome suggests, picturing a chrysalis turning into a butterfly. Please note that in Greek the name for butterfly is psyche. The new divine being then maintains in full its psychic corpuscle and this is expressed with the theogonic Orphic allegory where the Orphic egg-psychical corpuscle becomes bright and radiant, acquires golden wings and turns into the new divine being, otherwise known as Phanes of the Orphic theology or as the Pythagorean butterfly. The Orphic egg-psychic corpuscle, while remaining the same anatomicaly, continues intact its further evolutionary course. This fact (of the preservation of the psychic corpuscle) has great consequences: Firstly, it establishes in an absolute manner the Consubstantiality of all forms of life. Secondly, it guarantees the absolutely material nature of the Higher Worlds. Thirdly, it confirms the polytheistic nature of our traditional religion explaining how the Gods are not only individuals but distinct personalities as well: the Gods preserve their psychic corpuscle and its recordings, they maintain their memories and their own personality traits. The evolution of the divine being follows the stages that have been well described by the Classics and the first of those are that of hero, dæmon and God. says Plutarch (Plutarch’s Moralia: Obsolescence of Oracles, 415): «Hesiod was the first to set forth clearly and distinctly four classes or rational beings: gods, daimons, herœs, in this order and, last of all, men; and as a sequence to this, apparently, he postulates his transmutation, the golden race passing selectively into many good daimons, and the demigods into herœs… so from men into herœs and from herœs into daimons the better souls obtain their transmutation. But from the daimons a few souls still, in the long reach of time, because of supreme excellence, become, after being purified, gods». One should take note of the similarity in terminology: demigod or hero is called the man who has reached his last lifetimes and hero is also called the man who has entered the first realm of the Higher Worlds. It is characteristic of the Hellenic World-view that the name hero applies to the deified man who enters the divine hierarchy but also to the one achieving great military deeds. This is not by accident. Between all kinds of social welfare the highest form is the armed defence of one’s homeland. One of the primal requisitions of the traditional religion is that man, acting in accordance with the divine evolutionary plan, must primarily take care of the future of his group, town, nation, understanding that there can be hope for the spiritual advancement only when one is part of a stable land based nation. Says Heraclitus (Fr. 24 & 25): KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

36 «Gods and men honor those who fall in battle» & «Greater deaths are allotted greater destinies» It is truly a mortal sin, according to the Greek religion, for someone to contribute, whether intentionally or through negligence, to the diminishing of national authority or sovereignty. It leads straight to Nameless (ôÚÚËÙÔÓ). Plutarch writes commenting on the life of wicked souls during their residence in the Idermediate State, namely at the time between death and rebirth (Plutarch’s Moralia, The Divine Vengeance, 564): «Adrasteia daughter of Necessity and Zeus, is the supreme requiter; all crimes are under her cognizance, and none of the wicked is so high or low as to escape her either by force or by stealth. There are three others, and each is warden and executioner of a different punishment: those who are punished at once in the body and through it are dealt with by the swift Poinê in a comparatively gentle manner that passes over many of the faults requiring purgation; those whose viciousness is harder to heal are deliverd up to Dikê by their daemon after death; while those past all healing, when rejected by Dikê, are pursued by the third and fiercest of the ministers of Adrasteia, Erinys, as they stray about and scatter in flight, who makes away with them, each after a different fashion, but all piteously and cruelly, dropping them in the Nameless and Unseen». What is Nameless? The Classics, like Plato or Plutarch, clearly state that the deadly blasphemers are taken by Erinys and thrown into Nameless– because its description is superfluous– since those people have been enemies of the order of the Cosmos. On the other hand those that who fought in a heroic manner, without taking into consideration the number of the enemies or the uneven status of the fight or the loss of their own life, with that great act and by coming to consciously realise the higher and divine laws they were led to achieve the great leap into the Higher Worlds. That is why, among many others, Leonidas and Timoleon were deified, temples were built to their honour and were publicly worshipped as herœs until the end of the Greek civilisation when the Greek religion was banned by the christian authorities of the Roman state. The word Dæmon (¢·›ÌˆÓ) comes from dáimê (‰¿ËÌ·È) which means to know and dæmon mean the one who has achieved knowledge. That was the ancient and correct name of the Gods, while the word God (Theos–£Âfi˜) is derived from the verb théo (ı¤ˆ: run) and was originally the name of the Continuous substance as the most suitable to describe its main characteristic, namely its extremely high speed. Indeed, nowadays it is thought that the speed of the Continuous substance (primordial electromagnetic radiation) in the interuniversal space exceeds that of the speed of light. It was the Stoics that used the word Theos in order to state its high velocity, while its fine nature they called spirit, its ability to produce heat technical fire, its orthogenetic ability Logos, its exclusive ability in producing form Nature, etc., which is why they state that «God runs, flows and pervades everything». Later though because of the admiration of people towards this amazing substance they used that particular word for the Gods; however, it always maintained its original meaning and it KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

37 is always used as an adjective with a predicative notion. Thus it differs completely from the European word ‘God’ or ‘Got’ or ‘Dios’ which is always a noun. The Greek language never became monotheistic. While other nations say, for example, that God is love, the Greeks say, love is God. This did not escape the attention of distinguished classical scholars like Grube and it is one of the arguments that they used against foolish propagandists who in order to support their views dared to claim that Plato tended towards monotheism. No, Plato did not even considered the monotheistic view, no Greek ever adopted them. The Greeks were not, after all, looking to discover the correct first principles. Whatever there was to be said about the first principles had already stated during the beginning of known history in the Orphic poems whose a new edition by the supervision of Pherekides had been made in Athens, jointly with a new edition of the Homeric Poems, by order of Peisistratus c. ***. Whatever was to be said was stated once and for all and no one can add anything else. Plato, as happens with all his definitions, is especially careful with the use of the word God and this is the key to understanding his work: when he mentions the word in singular he is referring to the Continuous substance and in particular its cosmogonical action. However, when he mentions the word in plural he means the Gods of our traditional religion. Therefore, the evolutionary course of a divine being towards the attainment of complete knowledge is not just very long but never-ending. The deified personality dœs not remain idle but in order to progress in this long evolutionary path it chooses various duties. The Greek religion and mythology presents the entire voyage of the soul under the description of a human life and names the evolutionary stage from the mineral kingdom to the threshold of the Higher Worlds as infancy in order to make clear that there is a longdrawn-out evolutionary field waiting ahead in the Higher Worlds. That is why Dionysus, the God of spiritual peaks, the hunter of souls who, with great generosity, has taken up as his main responsibility the work of assisting the mature souls to achieve immortality, is called infant-killer and the Force-centers (chakrams in Sanskrit) of the psychic envelopement that the perfected initiate has to vivify and link up together are called in the allegory of the Great Mysteries of Eleusis toys of Dionysus and as such are presented as the content of the sacramental chest. Here we touch the great mystical truths that lie behind the secret code called the Mythology; a happy man whœver has seen them, as is said in the most sacred of Mysteries, that of Eleusis. What are these duties that the divine spiritual beings take up? The most common duty that herœs take up is to remain in their own town and try to help it, these are the patron herœs. In general, in the Greek religion all things that have to do with the order of the Cosmos are worshiped. The evolution and development, the living and beautiful are such things. On the contrary, it is considered blasphemy against the Cosmos the worship of anything dead. Hence any worship of graves, mummies, body remains, bones etc., as well as KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

38 the use of any objects that have been linked up with the dead is prohibited. Thus the traditional Greek religion nowadays also prohibits the use of dark colour candles because other religions have associated them with their funeral ceremonies. Please, note the difference between us and christianity that officiates and celebrates only upon graves and hence when a church is built they move bones there in order to make it a martyr’s grave. The only occasion of a ceremony upon a grave or a tomb, is the tribute of honour at the grave of a patron hero and this takes place only because it is considered that the hero remains there in his now higher form and is present at the celebration.

¨ 8.Excursus: The incidents at Daphne in Antioch

Why is contact strictly forbidden with any mortuary conditions, why dœs Apollo orders that this purity must be extended to a large distance? Why when the emperor Julian wished to re-officiate the holy temple of Apollo at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, Apollo ordered the removal of the cadavers? How is it then that dead remains were found inside the sacred precinct ? Let us narrate from the beginning this sad story: The following should be noted: a place of divine service and gathering, a temple in today’s terms, is for the traditional religions an open area, a wood which has been sanctified and cut off from the surroundings by a wall. This is what in Greek is called a ‘temenos’, from, the verb ‘temno’ which means cut, in our case a part of the forest which is then dedicated to the Gods. Such ‘temenos’ are the Sacred Precinct of Delphi, the Altis of Olympia and the whole hilltop of the Acropolis of Athens. Within this temenos are statues, altars and one or more temples into which the devotees do not enter, only the sacred statue of the God has been roofed there. In Late Antiquity the following took place: at +313 Constantine becomes emperor and publishes the edict of Mediolanum, which has been falsely and shamefully claimed that it was supporting the religious tolerance of the state. In fact the traditional religion dœs not need any edict of tolerance because the freedom of every man to search for and worship the divine in any manner he chooses is something assumed for granted. In Rome there were countless temples of all the known religions of the world, hence the proverbial phrase that in Rome it is easier to find a God than a man. At the most holy and sacred place of the Greek religion, the island of Delos, there were temples of, at least, 28 foreign religions. Some people doubt the findings of archæologists which indicate that there was a Jewish synagogue on Delos. Of course there was, and not only one but two, one of orthodox Jews and one of Samaritans, with votive offerings to mount Garizim. That is the greatness of the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

39 Greek religion and the Greek psychological make-up, the complete respect of human rights, the tolerance, the understanding, the high regard of others’ customs, and the tolerance even towards the utterly alien, even if it gravely offends our conception of the Divinity of the Cosmos. Apollo within his own Holly Island, in the sacrosanct place where Latona gave birth to Pan-royal Phœbus and illustrious Diana (Artemis), orders respect and freedom to everyones religious idiosyncrasies. Please, compare this conception with today’s revers situation. We are inundated by an avalance of declarations, treaties and laws which proclaim as the foremost human right that of religious freedom. From the Atlantic Chart, Stalin’s statement in Moscow radio that he has to win the war otherwise religious tolerance is in danger, U.N. declarations, to the treaty of Rome. However, reality is completely different, each one of the established monotheistic religions is entrenched behind a series of laws ‘against conversion’ setting aside any notion of religious freedom. Try, for example, to built a temple of any religion in Mecca! In United Arab Emirates Greek employees in vain requested permission to built a Christian church and yet this country continue to be member of the UN. In Isræl any kind of religious mission is strictly forbidden. In U.S.A., which is considered a religiously tolerant country, Protestant organizations, in co-operation with the state authorities, have managed to deport, and according to some allegations to exterminate, the well-known Buddhist teacher Osso. In Italy the Vatican opposes in any way possible, legal or not, the growing pagan movement of return to the traditional Roman values which seeks the religious, national and political Renaissance of Italy. In the Baltic states and especially in Lithuania there are the followers of the traditional religion of the Nordic Gods. They wish to shed the religion which were forced upon them and return to their own traditions, the glorious religions of their fathers, the Dodecatheon in its northern version. These people suffered greatly in the hands of the Soviet regime. The Soviet regime relentlessly persecuted those people who were asking for nothing more than the freedom to practice their ancestral religion, customs and manners. These poor people were hunted down, shoved into the infamous Gulag camps while others were simply exterminated while used as guinea pigs in nuclear experiments. Luckily, enough people survived and the traditional religions of the Baltic are once again growing strong! Let us stress this interesting point: In the former Soviet Union there was a vast network of facilities where, thousands of people worked on nuclear technology. These are the ‘nuclear cities’ where thousands of poor Gulag inmates were used as guinea pigs in order to be studied the effects of radiation on the human organism! In Tibet, the ancient land of religion and culture as soon as the Chinese occupational army arrived it devastated and turned into ruins the monasteries and the temples, manhandled the monks and molested the nuns, but first of all, systematically searched for libraries in order to destroy them. Buddhism was banned and no one says anything about that. No one, indeed, not even the dynamic peace lovers or the various peace organisation KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

40 or the democratic students nor the very "sensitive" in human rights democratic and socialist governments, demonstrated or were in the least disturbed when China invaded the only country that was truly peaceful, unarmed and not a threat to anybody: Tibet. Why? How is it possible that such a country, which simply devours without consideration any weak neighbour, is not only member of the UN but also holds a seat in the all-important executive body within it, namely the Security Council? Let’s return to our subject, the pseudo-edict of Mediolanum, which meant nothing but the surrender of the empire to the political organisation of the christians. This was followed by an odd interval of few decades until the accession of Great Julian to the imperial throne. This great man and protector of the Greek civilization not only restored the previous legal status of true toleration of all religious creeds but also positively helped all of them. Pitying the Jews he send a large amount of money as well as a high rank state official in order to rebuilt Solomon’s temple. Pitying the, persecuted by the previous Arian emperors, Catholic christians he allowed them to return from exile and restored them their confiscated property. Let us point out that important historical fact: In contrast to the absolute religious freedom professed by the traditional religions, the monotheistic religions develop even immediately after their formation the notion of ‘heresy’ that means a serious offence in which falls whoever has even a slightly different opinion on even the minutest theological topic. This difference of opinion is not dealt with counterarguments but by judicial action, namely there is the penalization of opinion. After Julian’s few blessed years of reign his succesor, Jovianus, actually enforces Christianity. As a sign of faith the chistians asked him to destroy the library of Antioch which he did. Hence, it is no longer important that the Olympic Games scraped along until +394 when Theodosius banned them or that the systematic destruction of temples was orchestrated by Arkadius or whether the School of Athens, which had already to go underground, was officially banned by Justinian. In the interval, between 313 and 361, there was not official prohibition of the Greek religion but also the state provided no protection for it by not upholding its own laws of order. The temples would come under attack daily without the authorities doing a single thing to guard them or arresting and punishing the criminals. Writes Lane-Fox (p. 679):«The torturing of prophets in Constantine’s reign must already have weakened Apollo’s willingness to continue speaking: by the 360s, little shrines for the bones of Christian martyrs had impinged on Apollo’s ancient precinct at Didyma and were interfering with reception on the old pagan frequency. The walls of the great pagan temple are scratched with Christian crosses, spidery signs which neutralized an older presence. By the late fourth century, it is doubtful if any maintained pagan prophet could be found at the major sites». Furthermore, because it was known that no traditional ceremony could take place near dead remains, the first Christians started placing their burial grounds within temple KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

41 grounds and often next to the very buildings, like that of Daphne or the one discovered attached to the temple of Apollo in Delphi. That is the reason that cemetries were situated there. What are the reason for none of the Greek temples is able to officiate if it contains or there is close to it cadaverous remains. Why dœs Apollo demand ætheric purity and the removal of the cadavers? We shall explain this briefly: It has been established beyond doubt that thought produces an electromagnetic cloud and that during events of intense violence there are produced strong electromagnetic clouds on which there are electromagnetic ‘prints’ or recordings of the events. Furthermore, such electromagnetic clouds with ‘prints’, coming from the biœlectric field of the body or produced aboudantly at the last agony, continue to remain upon the bones and the cadaverous remains after its death. Also, a part of the electromagnetic envelopement of the psychic adornement full of ‘prints’ remains with or near the corpse. These remnants are called ætheric rags– or if the whole of the ætheric psychic envelope is concerned, ætheric wraith. These electromagnetic ‘prints’ also stick on the surrounding surfaces filling the space around the source and remain active for quite a while. That is the meaning of miasma, about which the Classics claim that is wholly material and that it attaches upon people who have witnessed, even by accident, a violent event thus being infected too. They also insist that this electromagnetic ‘print’ can be removed only through purely material processes which are called purifications (katharmos). Modern researchers use this theory to explain various parapsychological phenomena and call these electromagnetic ‘prints’ epipsychedion, a term coined by the Greek physician and researcher of the parapsychology Angelos Tanagras. The Classics call them ætheric rags because the electromagnetic field of a place is called by them ‘the ætheric of the place’. Why dœs Apollo require complete ætheric purity then? Because when a person within the sacred area attempts, clearing the field of consciousness from everything else, to meditate, then these ætheric rags come into his consciousness disturbing it. So, instead of capturing the rays emanating from the Higher Worlds the initiate come in touch with the cadaverous remains. This suggests, moreover, that the religions which hold within or near their places of congregation, temples and monasteries, tombs and cemeteries have never been able to draw near the simple truths about the mental apparatus and none of their followers ever endeavoured to approach the divine through meditation of any kind. Now, let us see the outcome of the events that took place at Daphne: Great Julian permitted christians to exhume and carry away with the appropriate honnours the remains of their dead. But at the following night unidentified arsonists set fire to the sacred precinct and the great and magnificent edifice of the temple was burnt down.

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42

¨ 9. The Higher Worlds Besides patron herœs, the most common duty a divine being undertakes is the supervision of a small part of the natural law, while other divine personalities commit themselves in taking care of other elements of nature such as great trees, lakes, woods etc. Divine personalities of the highest level undertake important elements of nature such as rivers, seas, stars. This concept that we come across while studying the Classics, namely that nature in its entirety is sacred and living, as well as the definite statement in Plato’s ‘Epinomis’ that the stars are Gods, of the highest honours, is a belief commonly held by all traditional religions.

The Dodecatheon What do we mean by the concept of the Dodecatheon? The tradition regards that the entire body of the natural Law divides into twelve major branches, twelve laws, six of which regard the applications of the Particulate substance and six regarding the applications of the Continuous substance. Each law is supervised by a sublime divine personality and thus we have six female Goddesses supervising the laws of the Particulate substance and six male Gods supervising the laws of the Continuous substance. Are there any gods above the Dodecatheon? Of course there are and that is why we speak about a long hierarchy of divine beings. Just as there is the Dodecatheon of our Earth, likewise higher Dodecathea supervise entire galaxies, universes and above them there are even higher and most ancient beings which supervise upon the adherence of the entire set of the Law. Because those levels exceed human intelligence Orpheus calls them Night and says that Zeus is brought up and taught within the cavern of Night. That class of divine beings includes Dikê, Themis, the Eumenides. Why do the Eumenides and other most ancient divine beings are pictured, especially in archaic vases, with a non human form? Why do the Dodecatheon and Zeus are sometimes pictured fighting against these ancient Gods? These exalted and high divinities are pictured with a non human form in order to put emphasis on the fact that they are beings so ancient that have reached their divine status before the appearance of man upon earth and come from bygone ages when natural conditions where such that promoted the development of intelligent life and higher consciousness in non human forms of life. Thus the fight of the Olympic Gods against them is nothing but the struggle of the younger Gods for spiritual evolution and progress towards the higher places in the divine hierarchy which the ancient KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

43 Gods represent. As it should be clear by now, the Divine Beings of the Higher Worlds do not remain stationary but climb up the ladder of spiritual evolution, changing on the way their duties, which poses an important theological question. What form dœs this journey of acquiring, continuously, higher consciousness and more perfect and complete knowledge have? Dœs it ever reach an end? If we could graph the ratio of this divine evolution towards time then the line would climb fairly fast in the beginnings but as it progresses it would slow down so as to become almost parallel to time; it would be identical to the curve of a quadratic equation. This view of the Hellenic World-view safeguards that no divine being will ever be able to reach absolute qualities because then, according to Logic, conquering the so called ‘Absolute’ he would be able to be master of Nature. For the Hellenic World-view the only absolute being is Nature, the framework of the Cosmos, and within this frame there is all that exists, by definition non-absolute, the shapeless matter, the living creatures, the Gods the higher in honours. If a divine being ever conquers the Absolute then it would be equal to the framework of the Cosmos, it would be able to change or use it according to its will, i.e. it would become free from it, an extracosmical being which controls all that there is. This is not possible, no being can exceed the prime being, i.e. Nature. That is why the ancient mystics represent the spiritual evolution of the soul with the logarithmic helix, where reaching near the centre is achieved fairly fast, however, the entire journey is infinite. On the contrary, the qualities of the absolute are the ones attributed to the monotheistic God. From the above it follows that the polytheistic nature of the traditional religion is real, complete and indisputable, while the Gods or in general the members of the divine hierarchy are beings wholly real, exalted individuals and complete personalities of material nature, as everything else that exists within the order of the Cosmos.

The form of the Gods Many people accuse sculpting and ask whether it is possible for the Gods to have form. Of course the Gods have form, they are bright, enlightened beings, while when they appear to people they assume various shapes. Let’s analyse this: A God cannot, for various reasons, appear directly in his current form, hence he takes on a form suiting the occasion, as for example, Demeter appeared sitting on the Holy well of Eleusis as an old lady. Usually however, because they have to be directly recognizable, they appear before mortals by their real form. As said in the Oracula Chaldaica, in favour of mortals they assume the shape of their older bodies. So what is their real form? It is the form which they had during their last life upon earth as Man-Gods. Therefore if we accept that the great artists, like Fedias, were divinely inspired and saw the forms of the Gods, then KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

44 we can conclude that those statues are an authentic representation of the true form of the Gods.

¨ 10. The

unity of the traditional religions

We have mentioned that the myriads of religions which can be found in religious dictionaries actually fall under a few categories. If the group of regional religions is excluded, its main representative being the Jewish religion, and Buddhism, which is a peculiar branch of cosmopolitan religions, there remain only two major groups, namely the traditional religions and the cosmopolitan religions. Here we shall take up the question of what differences or similarities the traditional religions have, i.e. what do we mean by the term traditional religion. During the pre-cataclysmic Golden Age of humanity there was a religion which had reached a complete and absolute development. Its first principles were the answers to the latest questions of science, which had also reached to true and stable views. The first principles of that religion were in complete alignment with science, sociology and psychology since that religion was the very science of sociology and psychology: the answers to matters of everyday life, how people ought to live, what the form of the government should be. The best (ariston) form of government was its main concern, as the ancient mystics tell us, it was the golden top of this Great Pyramid of Science, of knowledge, of theology. After the cataclysm and the subsequent isolation of groups, of Races and sub-races, the traditional religions were reproduced with the remains and fragments of the ancient knowledge that had survived. Some of these particular religions managed to maintain intact large parts which others lost, some lost the interpretation of some rituals, while some lost small or large parts of the ancient knowledge. Unfortunately some, during the decline of the post-cataclysmic era, acquired superstitious qualities. In the long post-cataclysmic course of the recovery of knowledge the following occurred: Man-Gods adapted many rituals and ceremonies, as well as general worshipping views, to the evolutionary, mental and spiritual level of their group, However, all traditional religions maintained their basic structure, their basic cosmological knowledge, their clear polytheistic nature and the main pivot of their ethical views. At this point it should be noted that the Greek Religion presents the most complete and perfect expression of those religions because it managed to maintain intact the main body of the ancient knowledge. All this did not escape the attention of the Classics, who reply to the question: what do KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

45 the different names of the Gods between the various religions mean? As far as the higher Gods are concerned they are merely different names of the same Gods, hence Herodotus, for example, identifies fully the Greek Gods with the Egyptian ones, saying for instance, that Osiris is Dionysus, as well as that various ceremonies and festivities such as Anthestiria. Julius Cæsar describing the religion of the Celts, which the Druids presided, he identifies it in absolute manner to the Greek religion, such that he refers to their Gods only with their Greek-Latin names, and as a result we still do not know the Gaulic names of the Gods of the Celtic religion. Regarding the rest of the Gods it is obvious that they are patron herœs and gods supervising local elements of nature, as for example the crocodile-head master of river Nile Lord Sobek, whose worship among Egyptians and Greeks was so strong and widespread that the Christians were forced to worship and include Him to their church calendar as «Saint Nile». It is amazing that this identity, similarity and common ancestry that there exists between the traditional religions and which we perceive through literary and theological research, the simple and uneducated people perceive instinctively. Glazenap mentions something most moving: when Hindu soldiers, who had been used by the English in the war of Sudan, during their return they travelled through Egypt, upon visiting the archæological sites of Egypt and seeing the ancient statues they fall on their knees and paid homage to them saying that those Gods were the same with the Gods of Hinduism, despite the complete and utter differences in the technique and style of the Egyptian and Hindu picturing and depicting art.

¨ 11. The Mytholog y Another subject that demands clarification is what is the mythology? Indeed, besides the Greek mythology, which is an enormous, multifarious, lurid sum of myths, all the traditional religions have, as one of their basic characteristics, extensive mythologies. Mythologies consist of a sum of individual myths. Myths are stories which refer to events of the natural world like, for example, myths about the Cataclysm, or, usually, about life, birth, passions and the relationships between the Gods. The myths describe either imaginary or actual events, to which however it is a given a theological, mystical meaning. The myths were created by Man-Gods in the Mysteries temples in order to present through mental images the great theological truths. These mental images have been created so that the persons in possession of the interpretation key will be able to immediately see before them an entire pantheon of scientific and theological knowledge. For people without the interpretation key they are incomprehensible but they are still attracted to them due to their KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

46 lurid, imaginary and catchy texture and thus voluntarily study them, illustrate them, spread them. During hard times, the enemies of the religion being attracted to their storyline, which is designed to have that particular effect, underline all the elements that seem funny, fantastic, outside current moral codes and report them as examples of imaginary minds and immorality and thus achieving their original purpose, which was to spread them. In Polynesia nothing was saved from the extensive libraries of wooden planks and "papyrus" made out of banana leaves. In the Greek civilization, as with the Polynesian civilization in our days, the now dominating cosmopolitan authorities have destroyed and disappeared every theological, ritualistic, hieratical text of the traditional religion. In the domain of the Greek civilization there survived only passages of Orphic Poems which were included in Damaskius’ work which survived through the Arabs. Also survived the most part of the Orphic Hymns whose survival is such a miraculous feat that has to be attributed to intervention from the Higher Worlds. However, Mythology was judged to be not only harmless but the weak point of the Hellenic World-view and the books that dealt with it like, The Library of Apollodoros, were spared. Nowadays, and this underlines the depth of ancient wisdom, illustrated and attractive books making a pleasant reading, are given as gifts to children from people with a different religious background who otherwise would have never picked up a philosophical text of the Hellenic World-view. Additionally, there circulate very exciting books about the mythology of Egypt, India, Polynesia and of the northern European people. Whœver is interested to seek for the interpretation keys will be able, even from a few certain mythological images, to represent the entire traditional – theological knowledge.

¨ 12. The logical structure of traditional religions

From the above one can draw important conclusions about the logical structure of traditional religions. To begin with, by declaring that nothing exists outside the natural frame of the Cosmos, denying the existence of any extra-cosmical or immaterial form, remaining within the iron rule of a strict material monism, it lies in every single point in harmony with science, being its peak and very essence. No strange conditions are created causing dangerous and pathological splits in people’s mentality, like the contradictions that the illogical monotheistic dogmas of our times cause, which instead of being combated have ended up as the norm. As a result, it is impossible for intelligent people to make sense of the facts and their experience of the world. Hence the speak nowadays about the chasm KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

47 between science and religion or religion and the state as if it is something wholly rational. For logical people these matters are exactly the opposite. The modern and scientific conclusion about how the World–Cosmos was created is one and the same with the Greek Cosmogony. The correct and deriving from the true first principles answer to the question, what is one’s purpose, what is ones true inner nature, defines fully the answers to social matters. However, the most important conclusion is this: The firm logical order of the Hellenic World-view is proven by the fact that all the elements that make up the religious core, Cosmogony, Psychogony and Theogony are indissolubly linked and present a consistent and continuous logical order. Through the action of the two cosmogonical substances within the frame of Nature, which is ever existent and never ending, there is produced the basic particle of matter which undergoing a particular process transforms into the psychic corpuscle. The psychic corpuscle evolves through repeated incarnations, gains consciousness and eventually higher consciousness, rising to the Higher Worlds where it continues its evolution endlessly. Therefore the basic question of humanity, what is its destiny, becomes one with the basic question of Theogony, where from and how do Gods come about. The destiny of the human kind is the birth of Gods. The composition and production of the most basic forms of matter, the spiritual evolution of the person and the origin of Gods are unbreakably connected so it is not possible to create arbitrary distinctions and statements. Here let us compare this with the monotheistic religions of Late periods and observe that they comprise of disjointed pieces. They talk about a God who hasn’t got a determined relationship to the person, other strange immaterial beings, hordes of angels, or even, satanic beings, which in way beyond reasoning introduce evil in creation and tramples on the absolute rule of God. To them no person has necessary existence and future, is able to claim self existence, but each one is, according to their most suitable expression, a ceramic vessel, a toy in the hands of God. In an even stranger manner the entire world of living beings lacks a soul and bears no evolutionary connection to man or God, which in turn creates the theoretical base for any form of desecration and destruction of Nature, for any kind of barbarism against animals, for any anti-ecological behaviour, even for the total destruction of Earth. Towards this end we are already heading because while for the traditional view the Earth has a soul and is a living being possessing a function and physiology, to them it is only a sum of chemical substances, which they imagine, in line with the naïve attitude of the past century, as dead globules. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ We conclude this chapter with the official declaration of the basic principles of the Hellenic Religion of the Dodecatheon:

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Basic Principles of the Greek Religion of Dodecatheon ORIGIN The Hellenic Religion is time-honored and indigenous. It belongs to the category of primary, traditional religions, whose basic theoretic principles are closely related to one another. It has been systematically cultivated in Hellas (not exactly corresponding to modern Greece); it is in accord to the stages of historical development of the Hellenic Nation and fits the idiosyncratic characteristics of the Hellenes. THE COSMOS The natural system of the Cosmos is composed of all that exists; conversely, it perpetually produces all that exists. The Cosmos is self-generated, of the the whole of its substance, that contains its purpose in it; it is the father of itself, has no beginning and no end. Nothing exists out of the natural system of the Cosmos. Any ontologic category and/or class, including that of the Gods and everything else, to inorganic matter, exists within it. Any extra-Cosmic God and creator, any powers, good or evil, residing out of the whole of the Cosmic ÓÔÌÔÙ¤ÏÂÈ· do not exist. The primary substances of the Cosmos are Time, the Law and the two Cosmogonic Substances. They all are eternal. The infinite Space is full of the two Cosmogonic Substances, that can mutually react and compose Matter, which has real and objective existence and forms an infinite number of Universes. The infinite set of Universes constitutes the physically existent Cosmos.The purpose of the Cosmos is a buil-in feature; it is the development of Higher Conscience, a process governed by the sacred Law of Evolution. T H E P S YC H E The Psyche is a material corpuscle, specially processed. New ones are constantly generated physically, within the natural setting of the Cosmos. By entering into beings of coarsely material constituency, they give life to them, severally and differently. The Psyche is nondivisible, non-perishable, immortal and eternal. P O LY T H E I S M Above the system that contains the order of mortal species, exist the Higher Worlds of the Gods. The Gods share the same constituence and are kin to all other beings. They can only be conceived as individualities, without mortal component; this is made possible due to the maturity of their psychic formation. They possess personnalities, and their consciences are of a higher than human order, which also applies to the potential of their minds, as well. Despite that, they are subject to perpetual evolution too.

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49 The Gods are not in need of anything, coming from lower orders of evolution, be that material offerings or worship. Man offers divine worship to them for the purpose of honoring them as beings of a higher order and as high commissioners and observers of the orderly, harmonious and well-governed function of the Cosmos. MAN As applies to all elements of the Cosmos, every Man possesses a particular and personal Psyche (Soul), that can be distinguished from any other Psyche, on the grounds of its constituence. Man evolves through a protracted course of reincarnations, the end of which is the development of Higher Conscience. Evolution of Man can only be achieved in the social setting, not in private. The preservation of national-historical-racial identity of each, is a vital prerequisite of uninterupted evolution. Equally important is the observance of each man’s traditions, manners and customs, religious beliefs and rituals, the language, sacred history, Heroogony and sacred literature. Above all, the preservation of the native land, which is considered sacred by far, being the cradle and the nurse of the Nation, is considered mandatory for the evolution of society. The evolution of Man is connected to positive social activity and political involvement. An outstanding point of reference of such activity is preservation of the national character of the State and the institution of legislation observing the precedence of the Law. It follows that hermitism and the monastic ideal, as well as any other practice leading to individual salvation are contrary to the traditional Hellenic Religion and worldvision. H O L I N E S S O F T H E C O S M O S - t h e e t h i c a l c o n s e q u e n c e s t h e re o f Holiness of the Cosmos is self-evident and absolute; any abuse of its elements constitutes a hybris (blasphemy). It is the duty of Man, being a simple but self-conscious member of the natural setting as a whole, to respect the Cosmos. The ethical code of the Hellenic Religion is expressly stated; it is consequential to the Natural Law, that dictates the way of understanding of the Good; practising of the Good is mandatory for the evolution of Man. Wisdom, Justice, Moderation, compliance with the Law are also mandatory for the well being, the progress and the harmonious development of Man and Society. Respect of each personnality is conceivable only in the social setting,and is a very important part of ethical behavior; it guarantees the development of solidarity among citizens and the observance of human rights. Equality of the two genders, male and female, is based on theological grounds, is recognized by all, and stands in the religious hierarchy and ceremonial practice as well. Sacred and holy locations of the Hellenic Religion are, in the narrow sense, the Hellenic territories; otherwise, any location of the world is considered holy. Some Hellenic locations KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

50 are considered to be specially sacred, because of their traditional connection with epiphany of the Gods and because they were so recognized by the Panhellenic Society of antiquity; such places are: Delphi, Olympia, Delos, Dodoni, Samothrace, Eleusis, mount Lykaion, mount Olympus, the Acropolis of Athens etc.




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 CHAPTER TWO 

The Cosmopolitan Religions Part One

The society of Late periods The intelligible unit of historical study is neither a nation state nor mankind as a whole but a certain grouping of humanity which can be called a society or ‘civilization’. A ‘civilization’ has genesis, growth and maturity. This period of maturity is characterized as Late period [it is a term coined by Spengler; Toynbee prefers instead, ‘Times of Troubles’ — which is identical to the traditional term of Indian philosophy: kâlî (=conflicts) yuga (=age) — that be followed by the establishment of an ‘Universal State’ that shelters the elements of this society]. To begin with, what dœs Late periods are? Late periods are those where the social progress has reached the level of world-wide communication and exchange of people, ideas and goods. An ‘Universal State’ as that inaugurated by August in the realm of Hellenic civilization gives not only political integrity and universal peace but also boosts commerce and industry providing for secure communications, standardized calendars, weights and measures, and common commercial language and judiciary system. Thus society has reached its cosmopolitan stage. We have already refereed to the cosmopolitan religions of Late periods. We shall examine, in brief, the Late period societies trying to explain this most curious phenomenon that is also their more prominent feature; being the principal beneficiary of the institutions maintained by the universal state the cosmopolitan religion grows within its bosom as a social cancer that finally exterminates the civilization.

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¨ 1. The Bourgeoisie The aforementioned cosmopolitan state has been achieved through increased trading and the creation of the retailing (non-creative) professions. The class of these people is called ‘bourgeois’. This class dœs not coincide, as is commonly and wrongly thought, with the higher or middle social classes. And neither dœs it coincide with the class of the creating, self-employed artisans, for they consist an entirely different and opposite class to the bourgeois. The bourgeois is the class of retailers, importers, bankers and of all those, in general, who earn through the various ways of handling money, whether that is the direct profit of interest charged on money lent or profiteering through buying and selling currency, precious metals, stocks, bonds, etc. But (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Knopf, N.Y., vol. II, p. 357) neither dœs this «new money-aristocracy of deals and speculations» coincide with «the old merchant-nobility of the type of Medici and the great Venetian and Genoese houses — to this type, too, must be assigned practically the whole of the patriciate of the Hellenic colonial cities — had always something of aristocracy in them, race, tradition, high standards, and the nature-impulse to re-establish connexion with the soil by acquiring lands». This class is called bourgeois because until the end of the Middle Ages the social scene consisted of the rural countryside, the small town, where lived farmers and the rest of the creative classes, the castle of the ruler and the religious foundations. Additional to all that there appears a novel construction, the retailing market, a centre of imported commerce and artisanship that later became the first industrial centres as, for example, the spinning factories of Flanders. Because the engaged in those businesses also lived in this trade point town, which was called ‘burg’, they were named ‘burghers’. Hence the word bourgeoisie is a technical term used to describe this specific class and dœs not concern town people in general. Thus the labourers, wage-earners, the artisans, the creating, self-employed folk of the traditional occupations are not the bourgeois. The bourgeois is the people engaged in non-productive occupations. Later periods are those during which the bourgeoisie develops as its obvious consequence, the world-city, the megalopolis or cosmopolis, which also represents the main characteristic of this era. The Hellenic civilisation mainly after the era of Alexander the Great entered its Late period era. We say ‘mainly’ because in some parts the bourgeois condition appears earlier as in Classical Athens, in Syracuse and in Corinth. A consequence of the growth of the bourgeois is the enforcement of its values upon the other classes and the complete destruction of the existing system of traditional values. Thus by the end of the Middle Ages are ridiculed and rejected by the bourgeoisie: the knightly KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

53 ideal of personal military value and, along with it, the ideal of religious life as well as, and, this is most important, the two main ideals of the traditional society of farming and artisanship: Firstly, there is the rejection of the ideal of the indissoluble bond to one’s land, which in turn scoffs the concept of the homeland and, secondly, the consequent upon it ideal of ancestral pride and racial purity, i.e. the idea that one’s race is of the same breed since ancient times and indigenous, having been living on its land from time immemorial and hence having the right of biological inheritance to it, as Pericles says in ‘Epitaphius’ (Thucydides, ii, 36): «I shall speak first of our ancestors, for it is right and at the same time fitting, on an occasion like this, to give them this place of honour in recalling what they did. For this land of ours, in which the same people never ceased to dwell in an unbroken line of successive generations, they by their valour transmitted to our times a free state». Writes Spengler ( ibid. p.119): «A race has roots. Race and landscape belong together. Where a plant takes root, there it dies also. There is certainly a sense in which we can, without absurdity, work backwards from a race to its ‘home’, but it is much more important to realize that the race adheres permanently to this home with some of its most essential characters of body and soul. If in that home the race cannot now be found, this means that the race has ceased to exist». Why is the concept of the home land being scoffed? Because the bourgeois class has developed on importing and international trading, as happened in France. It not only thrives on an activity that is sometimes deleterious to national production but also every measure of protection of the national economy disrupts its functions. This, researchers claim, is what the bourgeoisie desired e.g. freedom of commerce, when it was masking its actions during the French Revolution with the word ‘freedom’. It was freedom from import/export duties, freedom to squeeze to extinction the small independent businesses and the traditional, creating professionals. This very type of economic activity moulds a character that is the exact opposite of the regal ideal of direct confrontation or the fine and time consuming ideal of the artisan of the production of a single masterpiece, or the farming ideal of connecting to earth, to nature, to the rhythms of the Cosmos and to the patient adaptation to the seasons and the times. The man whose character was built from the ideal of the quick and easy profit feels, really, inferior and alien to all other social groups; so he reacts by despising the learned people, the guardians of traditions, the intellectuals, the artisans, the warriors and whœver, in general, dœs not buy their overseas imported luxury products or their massively produced, standardised, cheap artefacts. He also despises all those who do not want to borrow money and are satisfied living according to the traditional ways. The bourgeoisie realises that it is lacking compared to them and that is why he vehemently opposes national traditions and national language, in other words he has developed a new nationalism, it has become cosmopolitan. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

54 Indeed (Spengler, ibid. p. 155), the «rise of the city changes the language… there appears the language of the bourgeoisie, which is true script-speech, reasoned and utilitarian, prose in the strictest sense of the word.… its inner essence is of a mercantile nature. It feels itself frankly as a class badge… With the final victory of the city the urban speech absorbs into itself that of elegance and that of learning. There arises in the upper strata of megalopolitan populations the uniform, keenly intelligent, practical ÎÔÈÓ‹, the child and symbol of its civilization, equally averse from dialect and poetry — something perfectly mechanical, precise, cold, leaving as little as possible to gesture. These final homeless and rootless languages can be learned by every trader and porter and for their comprehension talk has no importance or meaning. And if we inquire what really created these languages, we find not the spirit of a race or of a religion, but the spirit of economics». As Carlyle says, the lowest of all things that a person can be proud of is his financial wealth. The bourgeois knows this and that is why it is positively trying to level all social values and, as Spengler notes, feels comfortably in any world-city of the world but never on the soil of his own land. Hence the known proverb ‘money has no country’. We should note here that the bourgeoisie is the first constituent of a powerful, explosive mix. Briefly, the bourgeoisie, because of their cosmopolitan ‘national’ identity, are quick to support any conspiracy that promises to do away with national languages, national traditions and borders.

¨ 2. The Megalopolis (or cosmopolis = world-city). After the description of the first constituent of the explosive mix, which has great importance in the progress of events for it holds in its hands the reins of economy, let’s investigate the place where this total devastation is going to take place. Bourgeois activity creates the most distinctive feature of Late period, namely the worldcity, «rootless, dead to the cosmic, irrevocably committed to stone and to intellectualism». The world-city creates, by it own nature, disrupting social elements (Spengler, ibid. p. 400): «In the great cities a mass of rootless fragments of population stands outside all social linkages. These do not feel themselves as attached either to an Estate or to a vocational class, nor even to the real working-class, althought they are obliged to work. Elements drawn from all classes and conditions belong to it instinctively — uprooted peasantry, literates, ruined business men, and above all (as the age of Catiline shows with terrifying clarity) derailed nobles. Their power is far in excess of their numbers, for they are always on the spot, always on KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

55 hand at the big decisions, ready for anything… The bourgeoisie looks at these masses with real uneasiness, defensively, and seek to separate itself from them… but wherever the bourgeoisie throws into the scale against the older orders its weight of aggressiveness this mass has forced itself into their ranks, pushed to the front, imparted most of the drive that wins the victory». These all are the people which Toynbee calls internal proletariat. ‘Internal’ with the meaning that they live within the state and ‘proletariat’ with the meaning of their alienation from the reigning civilization, not economically speaking (Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Abridgement, Oxford, 1970, p. 377): «When we first made use of the term ‘proletariat’ we defined it, for our purpose, as a social element or group which in some way is ‘in’ but not ‘of ’ any given society at any given stage of that society’s history… The true hall-mark of the proletarian is neither poverty nor humble birth but a conciousness — and the resentment that this conciousness inspires — of being disinherited from his ancestral place in society». To begin with, in any world-city there are many unhappy elements: a pool of unemployed, which, as the economists claim, are a necessary element of the capitalist system for the suppression of wages at low levels. From this pool feeds not only the economy but the underworld as well. A lower-middle class which has received a secondary and even a university education without being given any corresponding outlet for its trained abilities. More general and most important is that the mass of workers that arrived from the rural areas. They discontinued abruptly their traditional way of life, suffered ‘deracination’. The link to the traditions and the natural way of life was severed. The younger generations especially know nothing about life, nature, the seasons, have no connection to the cycle of animal life nor to their own human community. This not only makes them prone to any barbarity as well as to any anti-natural teachings but mostly it alienates their soul. They do not enjoy any of the benefits the world-city has to offer. They do not feel part of it, life to them is boring, just like their work, which is no longer creative. From being creative people connected to the rhythm of the Cosmos they have become worthless puppets of an economic machine. They live in a society which they do not understand and which dœs not represent them. Thus they are ripe to follow the prophets of the cosmopolitan organisations that show up at their slum and preach about the end of all there is. And there you are, another constituent of the explosive mix is ready! ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ There is another, third, important constituent resting in side in the world-city. It is the educated people, the pœts and the writers, the media people, who either hate society for not having recognised their talent or they are just hirelings of some cosmopolitan organisation. These literary men continuously produce works of great propagandistic significance. Their literature is pessimistic, constantly highlighting only the negative aspects of society as well as magnifying its usual marginal aspects. This silly and pointless literature has a significant influence on the large, half-learned masses of the world-city. This is the class of men of KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

56 letters that Spengler has defined as the ‘intelligentsia’ (ibid. p. 184): «But in the world-cities, besides a minority which has history and livingly experiences, feels, and seeks to lead the nation, there arises another minority of timeless a-historic, literary men not of destiny, but of reasons and causes, men who are inwardly detached from the pulse of blood and being, wide-awake thinking conciousnesses, that can no longer find any “reasonable” connotation for the nation-idea. Cosmopolitanism is a mere waking-concious association of intelligentsias. In it there is hatred of Destiny, and above all of history as the expression of Destiny… It ends with the apostles of world-peace… Their success means the historical abdication of the nation in favour, not of everlasting peace, but of another nation». This literature can be spread only by effective promotion which costs money and here we find the co-operation of either the bourgeoisie or any other source of finance. Intellect rejects, money directs — says Spengler. Let us note that the Soviet propaganda mechanism invested, during the pre-war years, heavily in this method and successfully managed to corrupt Western public opinion. Also the Soviet propaganda mechanism selected it as its main means of expanding into Spain. This did not escape the attention of those fighting in defence of their nation, and that is the meaning of the well known catchword coined by the general Millan Astray: «Abajo la intelegencia!». ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ In the world-city, however, there is another group of people, which is also the majority, namely the foreigners who come from the edge of the known world. They bear no relation to the civilisation that created the world-city which hosts them and so the great majority of them by nature join the internal proletariat. «The numbers of the Hellenic internal proletariat were vastly swollen by the Macedonian wars of conquest which swept the whole of the Syriac, Egyptiac and Babylonic societies into the Hellenic dominant minority’s net, while the later conquests of the Romans swept in half the barbarians of Europe and North Africa (Toynbee, ibid., p. 378)». Juvenal, describing the influx of semi-Hellenized Syrian Orientals into the Rome of his day (early in the +second century), wrote: In Tiberim defluxit Orontes = The Orontes has flowed into the Tiber. These foreigners have absolutely no relation to the ideas of that civilisation. Those ideas are completely strange to them, hence what we have here is utter alienation, even positive, unbearable hate and a desire to raze that civilisation to the ground. In that case it dœsn’t matter whether the foreigner is a homeless worker or a mighty rich bourgeois, the hate is the same and, in a strange way, it revives and fortifies their own traditions. These foreigners react in the presence of an alien society by adhering to their own traditions and customs so as to annihilate any effort for assimmilation. Observe, for example, how in today’s France the assurances of the French authorities, about the smooth function of an ideal multicultural, multi-ethnic state, have foundered on the rocks of the complete and utter intolerance of the Muslims who insist on wearing a kerchief to school in order to state that KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

57 they have a different religion and on closing the streets when is praying time. The dream of these alienated foreigners is the complete destruction of the society that hosts them, not any kind of assimmilation or peaceful co-existence. Such an example being the bombing of the New York Trade Centre during peak time by Muslim activists. In the Hellenic civilization an example of such strengthening of the adherence to the natinal traditions are the Jewish communities. But there is another and much more important type of reaction that have on their disposal the alienated foreigners: The cosmopolitan organizations are waiting to take them into their bosom and to provide them with what they want, namely a spiritual shelter, an alternative community. A fourth constituent then is ready in our explosive mix!

¨ 3. The Political crisis A fifth element of our explosive mix appears during the Late period. Firstly, aristocrats disinherited and uprooted or merely overambitious and with corrupt megalopolitic ideas: «The most Satanic of all the dark figures that stand out in sinister silhouette against the glare of a world in flames are the Roman revolutionary leaders who had been flung headlong, by some unusually violent turn of Fortune’s wheel, out of the Ordo Senatorius itself: a Sertorius, a Sextus Pompeius, a Marius and a Catiline (Toynbee, ibid., p. 379)». Secondly, puppet politicians and military men that do not understand what is going on. The ‘bourgeois revolution’ has corrupted all social values, public offices are bought and sold every day. The bourgeoisie dœs not like powerful rulers, ‘powerful’ meaning having a well founded array of ideas based on true knowledge of social phenomena. They prefer puppet politicians whom they can control through their money and who in order to remain in power require unstable political alliances or military backing. An obvious such example were the short term and based on opportunistic alliances emperors of the late GræcoRoman period (Late Antiquity) and a lot of today’s political situations. These kind of leaders are indeed ambitious and with a strong will, like Constantine or Bonaparte, but unsophisticated and uneducated (not to say illiterate), so they become easy pray to the dark conspiracies which promoted them. If, on the other hand, they happened to come to power through chance then they regard the support of such cosmopolitan organisations as Godsent, never truly comprehending its essence nor its aims nor, naturally, that it leads the civilisation to total extinction. Thus the stage is ready and it is not required a great deal of an effort in order this entire civilisation to be destroyed. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

58 Writes the renowned Classical sholar professor Revilo Pendleton Oliver about the gradual erosion of the Græco-Roman society (America’s Decline, Londinium Press, 1982, p. 231 & 273): «The decline in a civilization is always accompanied by a change in the composition, and deterioration in the quality, of the population. We know that the great Roman families died out from sheer failure to have enough children to reproduce themselves, and we have reason to believe that all classes of responsible Romans, regardless of social or economic position, followed the fashion of race suicide. Since the Romans had the preposterous notion that any person of any race imported from any part of the world could be transformed into a Roman by some magic in the legal phrases by which he was made a Roman citizen, the children that the Romans did not have were replaced by a mass of very diverse origins. Some of the importations uhdoubtedly brought with them fresh vigor and talent; some were incapable of assimilating civilization at all and could only imitate its outer forms without understanding its meaning; and some, while by no means inferior in intelligence and energy, had a temperament which, althought eminently suited to some other civilization, was incompatible with the Hellenic. »Rome, too, had her “intellectuals,” who became permanently intoxicated with “ideas” and “ideals,” so that their beffuddled minds had no more comprehension of the real world than has the chronic alcoholic who, as he staggers homeward, petulantly complains that the lampposts are always jumping into his path. A typical purveyor of verbal hootch was Blossius of Cumæ, the teacher and mentor of the notorious Gracchi, who, it should be remenbered, were the sons of a distinguished Roman statesman and, throught their mother, grandsons of the great Scipio Africanus. Blossius probably infected his pupils with contempt for the Roman constitution and enthusiasm for democracy, the political folly that, as any sober man could have seen, had ruined Athens and Greece. »At Rome, as with us, the kind of political corruption that is invariably fatal began, of course, when the public treasury was used to bribe voters. The bribery was carried on with thoroughness on all levels, from the mass of indolent and shiftless proletarians, supported by doles and “welfare” so that could breed more voting parasites, to wealthy businessmen, bought with fat government contracts and economic privileges. The sophistic excuse for such corruption was that the Roman state was so powerful and wealthy that it could afford it. In that sense Sallust was right when he said that Rome was ruined by prosperity». ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Let’s see what the possible ways out of this crisis are. One possibility is the already impending total levelling under a cosmopolitan conspiracy, which takes over power. The second and truly only alternative and practical solution is the intervention of the forces that represent the large majority of the indigenous population that wish the immediate return to the ancient and true values of their civilisation. Only then will there occur important changes: the economic power of the bourgeois will be reduced and so will their political and cultural influence. The institutions will be purified and will start KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

59 functioning smoothly again, at which time the judicious will govern and all access to political power will be cut off from destructively ambitious elements. The laws will regain their primacy and will protect creative professions with the intend to return to a producing economy, of agricultural sufficiency, away from opportunistic economic practices, parasitic, borrowing and overcharging. The spiritual life and the cultivation of the national language will be declared the prime goods. This model of a concious archaism and crystallization of the civilization was very well known to the ancients: it was theoretically developed by Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon; also, Katon Jr, Agis and Cleomenes tried to apply it. This model was successfully established and managed to preserve, in a positive manner, for thousands of years the Hindu and Chinese civilisations. Unfortunately the course of the Hellenic civilisation was different because it succumbed to the malevolent blows of an alien cosmopolitan ideology. But the outcome of our own Western civilisation has yet to finalised, despite the mighty influence of various cosmopolitan movements. Note that we are using the term ‘civilisation’ under Toynbee’s definition, in order to describe societies that develop in an autonomous and singular manner. Let us observe more closely the Late period of the Hellenic civilisation (under Toynbee’s definition) e.g. the Late Antiquity. Christian propaganda say that the ancient ethos, traditions and the Græco-Roman religion were no longer being respected. This is a great misconception. If all these things were not respected, then why was necessary to impose very severe suppressive measures for a very long time of many centuries in order to be succesful the destruction of all the elements that constituted the Hellenic civilization? In fact, the customs and manners, the traditions and the religion were thriving, as was science and technology. During the second century, at the time of the great emperors, Hadrian and Trajan, there takes place a true renaissance of philosophy and of the Græco-Roman and Egyptian religion. What was happening then? It is certainly true that the traditions, the customs and manners and the Græco-Roman religion were not being respected by the myriad fringe groups of foreigners that flocked in the great cities of the Empire, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Rhodes, Alexandria, looking for a better life, coming from the deserts of Syria, Arabia, Palaistine and Transjordan, from the highlands of Cappadocia, Pontus (north coastline of what is now Turkey) and Armenia. An entire world approaching the Hellenic civilisation with hostile intentions and feeding the underworld with all kinds of elements dealing in business that could net easy profits, usury, procuring and smuggling. The traditions and the morals were being scoffed also by the Bourgeoisie, by malevolent theatrical and other kind of writers who thought that would become famous this way or who simply hosted a pathological hate against that civilisation, but also by perverted KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

60 emperors, little-minded and simple-minded pathetic puppets in the hands of dark interests. It was these generally marginal circumstances that the propaganda of the winners took advantage of and which Christian writers are using nowadays when talking about degenerate Classics, about the death of the ancient ethos and the Græco-Roman religion. The message these writers are trying to get through is quite simple: do not accuse us about the murder of the Hellenic civilisation, it was already dead when we came to the scene. Of course it was not. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of the people remained traditional-minded and spiritually healthy. Let us examine here what was the composition of the christian body social (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, Viking-Penguin, 1986): «Significant evidence lies in the gem of early Latin Christian literature, the Octavius (c. 230). This charming dialogue reports the conversion of a prominent pagan… who begins by complaining that Christians assemble the ‘lowest dregs of society’ and ‘credulus women, an easy prey because of the instability of their sex,’ the Christian Octavius cannot entirely refute him. He merely answers that everybody is capable of thinking and arguing, that the ordinary man can discuss theology too, that a rough literary style does not obscure clear thought amd that ‘poor people of our rank have discovered the true wisdom.’ …The hard core of these churches’ membership lay in the humbler free classes, people who were far removed from higher education and at most controlled a very modest property of their own (p. 301)». «A simple theory of ‘social compensation’ will not stand up to the evidence. The link between Christianity and victims of worldly oppression was neither simple nor obvious. The Church was not primarily a haven for slaves and least of all for slaves in the mines or dependent workers on the land, yet on these groups the burdens of the towns and the Empire lay most heavily (p. 317)». «…by the 260s, Eusebius could name only one senator who was a Christian, a man who had been particularly prominent near Eusebius’s own Caearea. But modern studies of the senatorial order are unable to pin down any other (p. 303)». «In both cities (Rome and Alexandria), it is plain that the upper class [at the time of Constantine’s reign] had remained firmly pagan: there was no question of a socially fashionable drift to Christianity which Constantine merely followed (p. 589)». Let us return to the aforementioned silent majority, which stayed away from juntas, prætorians, dark businessmen and usurers, people of Cæsar’s circle, and had as a natural representative the Roman Senate. This body, which consisted of land owners who had lost their former economic power, had, from the times of the roman democracy, little true authority, however, with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people it managed to withstand several attempts to do away with the state, attempts orchestrated by dark cosmopolitan powers. In a similar way it managed to overcome two powerful, malevolent and dark conspiracies against the state, the conspiracy of the Bacchanalia and the conspiracy of the Isia. In these conspiracies one can observe something truly evil. These conspirators utilised a religious veil to cover their intentions while they used as a KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

61 means of conversion common meals and drinking which would result to sexual orgies, a recipe that would be used again and again by cosmopolitan organisations. This way they covered their tracks and at the same time slandered the traditional religion, which today’s propaganda takes advantage of: «As early as -186 the Senate, by a still extant decree, tried to regulate the Bacchanalian rites of a cult that had been imported from Etruria and used “freedom of worship” as a cover for nocturnal orgies of promiscuity and perversion. Investigation disclosed that the alien “religion” was really a secret conspiracy that worked systematically to entrap and corrupt young men and women in adolescence, and practiced, in addition to sexual profligacy, such associated arts as the forging of wills and murder by poison (Livy, 39, 8-19)». The Roman people were amazed and perhaps incredulous when investigation of the Bacchanalian cult showed that a majority of the physiologically male member were homosexuals, althought the cult made available to them a copious supply of young and libidinous women ready and eager for anything. So, the public awareness of such depravity leaded, on the recommendation of the Senate, to the enactment of the Lex Scantinia ‘de stupro cum masculo’. This law provided a heavy penalty for perversion and there were procecutions under it as late as the Second Century after August and perhaps later. Even in the last years of the Republic, the Senate tried five times (in -59, 58, 53, and 48) to suppress the conspiracy that had as religious camouflage the worship of Isis and then came to light that the man who most lavishly endowed that pseudo-cult was the Q. Qurius who was one of the leading accomplices of Catiline. But, unfortunately, the judicial inquiry never succeeded in uncovering who were the dark minds that actually directed those well organised conspiracies. The last act of resistance of the Roman Senate was against emperor Theodosius, a man of dark origins who never masked his hate against all the elements of the Hellenic civilization. He never hesitated to kill eight thousand Thesallonikans in the race course of the city nor did he hesitate to officially ban the Græco-Roman religion and the Olympic Games, which already from the time of the death of emperor Julian were under relentless persecution. The Senate then at 394, in a last desperate attempt to save the ancestral traditions, restored the statue of Goddess Victory, gathered as many troops as possible and confronted Theodosius in Rome having as a symbol of their cause the golden statue of Hercules. The resistance of the Greek people continued unabated, finally during the tenth century Peloponesse was lost, however, the resistance went underground and at the direst moment of the Byzantine ‘drama’ there appears the Greek ideology wishing to give through the philosopher Plethon a helping hand to the moribund Byzantine empire. Unfortunately the dying Byzantium not only refused this helping hand but also murdered the Plethonians, a work which the Ottomans finished. Scholarios, the first Patriarch of Constantinople unter the Ottoman rule, in his reply to KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

62 Plethon is quite clear, he states that the Muslim view of the world is closer to the Christian while there is a chasm between the Hellenic World-view and Christianity. It tragic that even in its dying breath the Byzantine empire remained stubbornly unrepentant. The Byzantine theocracy rejected the Greek Renaissance and instead accepted the Turkish turban. Cyril Mango, in his work Byzantium (‘Ethniki Trapeza’ publications, p.150) writes about the attitude of the monastic community of Mount Athos (Hagion Oros) against the Ottomans: «The monasteries of Hagion Oros gained significant benefits when they came under the rule of the Serb king Stephan Dousan. When a few decades later the Ottoman Turks first appeared in Europe the monasteries did not even wait for the Turkish rule to be established. They went straight to the Sultan, offering him their subordination and managed to have their land titles validated even as early as 1372. In the confusion that followed afterwards they actually managed to increase their property and get involved with other profitable ventures». Let us come back to the Late Antiquity. Within the confusion of the cosmopolitan environment it is natural that there be many different cosmopolitan groups competing for the control of the state. To that purpose there are two choices; let us take careful notice of these things for they also apply to our times. One can either maintain the institutions as ghosts and govern behind the scenes or completely destroy that civilisation and replace it with a cosmopolitan propaganda that will attract the aforementioned groups. The second option seems to be the preferred one because by destroying and turning the values of Hellenic civilization into a crime and blasphemy any spark of resistance would cease and the new type of cosmopolitan ‘national’ identity would reign supreme. Also by destroying the indigenous race of that civilization, namely the Greeks, the political conspiracy which orchestrated it all could dominate completely and without resistance the future cosmopolitan state. Indeed, national minorities scattered in every great city of the Hellenic world were in a most favourable position should they decided to intervene and take over power. These minorities were able to fund, organise, support, protect, a political organisation. However, they were not able to convert successfully to their own national ideals so they needed to mask their political organisations with a converting, propagandistic veil of a cosmopolitan type.

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¨ 4. The Cosmopolitan converting ideology A´. The New Nationality «But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, …who once were not a people but are now the people of God». (1 Peter 2 —all the Bible quotations are from the New King James version of the Biblical Society) How dœs this veil have to be made? To begin with, since it will be calling the aforementioned people to gather under its flag abandoning thus their previous nationality, it will have to provide them with its own artificial national identity and at the same time demote, scoff, abuse the known, existing nationalities : «A nation of this type is the community of co-believers, the group of all who know the right way to salvation and are inwardly linked to one another by the spirit of this belief. Men belonged to a Classical nation by virtue of the possession of citizenship, but to a cosmopolitan nation by virtue of a sacramental act — baptism for the christians. …The Classical nation is linked with the city, but the cosmopolitan knows neither fatherland nor mother tongue (Spengler, ibid. p. 174)». What did Constantine do? «He changed the nationality of the Empire… in 312 took place a change of nationality without change of name (Spengler, ibid. p. 178)». Likewise nowadays whœver insists on his natural nationality is abused by the cosmopolitan organisations and called a nationalist or a ‘right wing extremist’. In the Byzantine era whœver insisted on being a Greek was abused, called a ‘Hellene’ (‘Greek’ in greek) in a pejorative, insulting, scurrilous and, eventually, a penal manner. At the end defending anything Greek became a crime which was punished with the death penalty. Indeed the persecution started early «Christians in the Christian Empire would insist that Manicheans should be put to death for their beliefs (Lane Fox, ibid. p. 571)». About 326, with Constantine’s toleration Christians attacked the famous Apollo’s Oracle at Didyma of Asia Minor, seized the prophet and tortured him to death. [prophet is a greek word meaning whom ‘announces sth. in the presence of ’ and is the title af the High Priest of an Oracle because he anounces the oracle to the questioners]. At Antioch, too, the prophets were duly tortured. They were not humble people, but civic notables, as Eusebius asserted proudly: they were people of «wonderful and noble philosophy, taken from the magistrates of the city». At Aigai, in Cilicia, Christian razed to the ground the shrine of Asclepius where the famous Apollonius of Tyana had founded an Academy. Also, Christian razed to the ground the shrines of Aphrodite at Phoenician Aphaca, at Mambre, because it was an Old Testament site, and the world-famous shrine at Jerusalem, because they claimed it as the alleged site of the Holy Sepulchre. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

64 «In the early 340s, we find the first surviving Christian text which asks for something more, the total intolerace of Pagan worship. It was addressed by a recent convert, Firmicus, to Constantine’s sons (De Errore, 16.4, ed. Budé)… Nonetheless, contemporary bishops were already turning temples into churches, and by the 380s, we find them taking the initiative openly, abetted by monastic leaders and their followers. From St. Martin in Gaul to the fearsome Shenoute in Egypt, there is a robust history of Christian temple- and statue-breakers. The laws could never move so fast: They relied for application on a class of governors who were often pagans themselves (Lane Fox, ibid. p. 672) … [although] Constantine, said Eusebius, sent his emissaries into ‘every pagan temple’s recess and every gloomy cave’». ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ This new ideology will explain in an attractive manner that all people are equal and all that is required of them is to join the organisation and unite under the common cause of levelling the known civilisation. This is the only common ideal that connects all these people which Toynbee calls internal proletariat. «…the Mass, which rejects the Culture and its matured forms, lock, stock, and barrel. It is the absolute of formlessness, persecuting with its hate every sort of form, every distinction of rank, the orderliness of property, the orderliness of knowledge. It is the new nomadism of the Cosmopolis, for which slaves and barbarians in the Classical world, Sudras in the Indian, and in general anything and everything that is merely human, provide an undifferentiated floating something that falls apart the moment it is born, that recognizes no past and possesses no future. The mass is the end, the radical nullity (Spengler, ibid. p. 358)». In this mental and not economic mass is the very carefully chosen slogan of the modern cosmopolitan religion of Marxism, ‘proletarians of the world unite’, addressed. These slogans suggest a reality which they hesitate to express directly and clearly, namely that these ‘proletarians’ have abandoned their natural nationalisms and now have adopted a new nationalism which is Marxism. That is what the cleverly invented theory of the class struggle suggested, namely that in reality there are only two kinds of national identity, the Marxist nationality of the labourers and the nationality of the capitalists, against whom there is moral duty, that they must be exterminated. At this point we will insist on the nature of the cosmopolitan religions because it is the key to understanding a multitude of events: So let us put it clearly: what are the cosmopolitan religions? They are national identities, artificial nationalities. This observation enlightens immediately abstruse historical events. For example, why did the Christians opened the gates of Rome (+410) to Alaric? Because he was of the same nationality as them and it was a unique chance to do away with the majority of their fellow citizens who were of a foreign nationality as they were faithful to their native Roman nationality. «The Christians felt themselves from the outset as a nation of the cosmopolitan cast, and, moreover, the others, Greeks and Jews alike, regarded them as such. Quite logically the latter KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

65 considered their secession from Judaism as high treason, and the former their missionary infiltration into the Classical cities as an invasion and conquest, while the christians, on their side, designated people of other faiths as Ùa öıÓË.… This nation-consiousness, derived from particular and defined world-feeling and therefore self-evident with an a priori sureness, cannot be ignored if we are to understand the later events (Spengler, ibid. p. 177)».

B´. Linear and short History «…know that the kingdom of God is near. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place (Luke 21,29)». This proletariat is by nature impatient and that is why the cosmopolitan ideology has to explain that History is short whatever may happen, that they will not continue to suffer for long, that it is necessarily linear and that it is coming to an end. Focusing on this last point the cosmopolitan propaganda, produces a lot of laborious analyses proving the inevitability of the historical process, like the analyses of many Marxist economists which ‘prove’ that the end of capitalism is near or the apocalyptic literature of Late Antiquity when the proletariat of the time were informed how ‘Babylon the Whore’, a pseudonym for Rome, Corinth, Alexandria, the Hellenic civilisation and the Græco-Roman religion in general, would devoured by the ‘flames of hell’.

C´. The Apocalyptic end «For these are the days of vengeance… woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people… And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; mens hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory (Luke 21,25)». It is obvious that the fast coming end of History has to be ‘apocalyptic’, violent, bloody, levelling. It has to be made clear that the inferno will forever burn whœver dœs not bear the sign of the right cosmopolitan nationality, i.e. the capitalists in Marxism, the pagans or the Greek thinking people in the Christian world, and so on. There has to be no doubt about the definitive nature of this ‘clean up’ because any doubt would undermine the converting power of the ideology, which is why there is always stated, in an absolute manner, the everlasting nature of Hell. After these anomalous but necessary events of the ‘end of History’, the faithful are KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

66 entitled to enjoy the rewards they were promised by this ideology. They will live in eternal happiness in a classless society in a miraculous place called Heaven which, the faithful are assured, will be completely real and, of course, with their physical body, since the world-city masses understand only the corporeal, apt reality. Here the reader should take notice: one must not repeat what are common arguments e.g. sayings like: «for the Christian faith Hell is not everlasting, or, the torture is nothing but the guilty conscious of the sinner, or that the resurrection and heaven are meant to apply to the soul». Beware! The Oecumenical Councils have excommunicated such views. The ‘Dogmatics of Eastern Orthodox Church’ (Asteros publications 1956) writes: «(p.443) It is obvious that there is complete identity to form and matter of the resurrect bodies because, as the Church Fathers clearly state, it is necessary for the meaning of a true resurrection". »(p.495) The result of the final judgement is the eternal life of the just and the everlasting punishment of the sinners, of the ones inheriting the Kingdom of God and the others being thrown into the fires of Hell, respectively. This truth is stated clearly in the Bible and in the Holy Tradition which, both, insist on the everlasting nature of inferno’s fire». The author of Our Orthodox Christian Faith expounding the Orthodox dogmatics (publ. Sotir, Athens, 1996) elucidate: «(p. 251) Indeed, the wicked shall not perish as the Jehovah’s Witnesses contend, nor shall they be tormented for a certain period of time, after which they shall supposedly repent and be saved, as certain other heretics maintain. The punishment and lot of the unrepentant sinners is everlasting (bold in the original) punishment, and Holy Scripture employs fearful images in order to depict the horrors of damnation. Scripture calls damnation ‘outer darkness’, ‘eternal fire’, ‘the worm that sleepeth not’, ‘a lake of fire burning with fire and brimstone’, where there is ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. It is therefore something incredibly fearful. And this fearful condition shall be something eternal and everlasting, unending, without any hope of change or betterment of the condition of those punished». This dogma is in full accord with Scriptures: «Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlating fire prepared for the devil and his angels’… And these will go away into everlasting punishment (Matt. 25,42)».

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¨ 5. The absolute separation: The faithful and the unbelievers «Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: …“Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you (Isaiah 52,11)” (2 Cor. 6,14)». Let us insist on this point: Who are the ‘just’ and who are the ‘sinners’? In the view of cosmopolitan religions, a fact which promotes converting action tremendously, the various nationalities acquire a cosmopolitan definition and are reduced to only two. For example, in the language of the Marxists nobody is Polish or Chech, one is either a proletarian or a fascist-nationalist. Likewise for Muslims one is either a believer or a unbeliever. The same gœs for Christians, to them people are either faithful or pagans. To be absolutely clear and precise, because of the great importance of the analysis of the parameters of this artificial nationality, in the above views there is also a third kind of national indentity. It is that of the ‘fellow-traveller’ nationality. It is how the Marxists treat socialists or social democrats etc., i.e. as if they are all members of the greater family while themselves are the elder brothers who act as the unbending guardians of the pure ethos. As far as the Muslims are concerned there are two religions from which they originate, namely, Christianity and Judaism. That is why during their conquests while they destroyed everybody else the Christians and the Jews were given the right to maintain their communities. This also took place in Greece during the Turkish occupation when the Ottomans allowed the Christians to be ruled by the Patriarch of Contantinople who was given the title of Millet-i-Rum Basi, and they were merely collecting a 10% tax. Hence the reason why Toynbee regards the Ottoman empire as the height and crowning of what he calls ‘Eastern Orthodox civilisation’. Similarly the Christians regard the Jews and the Muslims as theirs next of kin. That is why despite that hundreds of thousands Greeks have fallen victims to Muslim violence the Christians still consider Islam as a higher religion. In Byzantium and in western Europe while the Greeks and in general the followers of any traditional religion were being persecuted and murdered on the contrary the Jews could not only maintain their communities but also the synagogues were somehow considered inviolable and in a very strange theological interpretation it was decided that only Jews could perform banking activities. As a result they were able to accumulate all wealth thus making kings and rulers KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

68 depend upon them for borrowing. Why did we say ‘in a very strange theological interpretation’? Because the Old Testament is a holy book for both Jews and Christians and its commands sought to be met by both since it is the base of their dogma. Deuteronomy mentions clearly, through the word of God Jehovah directly, that «to a foreigner you may charge interest» (Deut. xxiii, 19). Why should this not apply to Christians while all the rest commandments of the Bible should? The Bible says ‘You shall not commit adultery’ and Christians abide by that, however, a few lines further down it also says ‘you may charge interest’. Why didn’t they follow that too? Not being able to find a logical answer we leave this question to the reader’s judgement (He can ask the local Bishop!). Here we should underline the absolute racism of cosmopolitan religions, which by reversing the term call a racist whœver declares that one dœsn’t want a colony of foreigners in their town, forgetting that they would never tolerate a community of unbelievers or even a community of ‘heretics’, forgetting the ‘St. Bartholomey’s nights’. Would the Soviet Union accept a colony of Africans or Chinese or Pakistani that would settle there and yet continue to be self ruled and live according to their own customs and traditions? But let us stress on another peculiar phenomenon, in the Soviet Union there was also a strange racial discrimination developed: no colored people were allowed in the country. Yet there were scholarships given to African students with the intention to be used as preachers of the Marxist religion in Africa. These students did not study in common universities but in a specially built university called ‘Patrice Lumumba University’. Furthermore, it was strictly forbidden to leave the university grounds, not even for a walk in the town. Did you know that? why do the progressive political parties and media never mentioned it? That is another interesting question! Intolerance, is the order of the day for the cosmopolitan religion; writes Bertrand Russell (Why I am not a Christian, Allen & Unwin, 1957, p. 36): «At all times, from the age of Constantine to the end of the seventeenth century, Christians were far more fiercely percecuted by other Christians than they ever were by the Roman emperors. Before the rise of Christianity this percecuting attitude was unknown to the ancient world except among the Jews. If you read, for example, Herodotus, you find a bland and tolerant account of the habits of the foreign nations he visited. Sometimes, it is true, a peculiarly barbarous custom may shock him, but in general he is hospitable to foreign Gods and foreign customs. He is not anxious to prove that people who call Zeus by some other name will suffer eternal perdition and ought to be put to death in order that their punishment may begin as soon as possible. This attitude has been reserved for Christians. It is true that the modern Christians is less robust, but that is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who, from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

69 teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians. Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 B.C.; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime. My great-great-grandfather, after observing the depth of lava on the slopes of Etna, came to the conclution that the world must be older than the orthodox supposed and published this opinion in a book. For this offence he was cut by the county and ostracized from society. Had he been a man in humbler circumstances, his punishment would doubtless have been more severe. It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers». The historical account of the racist and pettifogging attitude of cosmopolitan religions has no end. For example, there were Greek kingdoms in what is today Afganistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Iran. The Muslims have suppressed these populations and only a handful remain nowadays, isolated in the mountain regions of Pakistan. However, in that country the Pakistani have located them, abused them greatly and have managed to convert a great number of them. Thus we have reached today’s situation where the few remaining kaffir (as the Muslims call them. kaffir=unbeliever) Kalas are under tremendous pressure, economic, administrative, all kinds. Within their communities the Muslims have built mosques from where they abuse the locals by having the Muslim prayers broadcast through loudspeakers. On the other hand, through a 1967 Greek government law tens of thousands of Pakistani have been allowed to permanently settle in Greece whilst freely maintaining their religion. Imagine what would happen if the Greek government pressured them a little. Pakistan would revolt and throw on our heads its atomic bomb. Thankfully we remain apathetic to the ethnocide and genocide against the Kalas people. Let us observe something very timely about the peculiar racism that cosmopolitan religions display. The Greek Christian Orthodox Church converts freely Koreans, Hindus, Kenyans and these people come to Greece along with Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, they marry, get registered as Greek citizens and settle permanently. While on the other hand a Greek cannot marry another Greek if he/she happens to be Roman Catholic. This underlines a major characteristic of these religions which as Spengler has pointed out: «An unbeliever is for a cosmopolitan religion’s folk what an alien was for a Classical — no intercource with him, no connubium… He who belongs to the Faith belongs to the Nation — it would have been blasphemy even to admit any other distinction (ibid. p. 174)»; i.e. while according to the traditional ways nationality is defined by the city, now the nationality of the religious community has developed, the assembly of the city has been replaced by the congregation of the fellow worshippers.

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¨ 6. The Cosmopolitan World-view Let us return to our subject, namely what characteristics should a cosmopolitan ideology have in order to be attractive. The under conversion parts of the population are not only indifferent to the sciences or literature but also dislike learned people, hence it is natural for the cosmopolitan religions to declare the demerits of science and literature and to set as their aim the degeneration of language. While the city educates its citizens, cosmopolitan religions use populism as a means of conversion. They propagandise that the illiterate, the ignorant, in some strange way actually know, for example, mathematics, so they do not need to learn any. Likewise the people also speak the best language, i.e. the language of the masses, the koinê. That is why in Byzantium there were no schools while the study of the sciences was forbidden. All sociological phenomena are explained away by oversimplification and so history is viewed with naïve one-sidedness. Writes professor John Allegro (The Dead Sea Scrolls, Penguin, 1982, p. 144): «The moral issues of the world take on their ‘true’ colours: no longer do the greys and halfwhites plague man’s decisions, but he is confronted with blacks and whites, and the choise is clear-cut: “He that is not with me is against me (Matt. xii, 30)”». In human relations the code is simple, there has to be absolute solidarity between members otherwise the entire organisation is threatened with complete break up and, conversely, absolute hate against everybody else, so much that merely the accusation ‘pagan’, ‘bourgeois’, ‘shiner’, ‘Greek’, ‘non-believer’, ‘kaffir’ is enough to bring terror. As far as the relations between the sexes is concerned there is an absolute anti-feminism; a fact which can be clearly attributed to the very psychological principles that govern the function of mass movements. Since cosmopolitan religions come under the category of mass movements the entire relevant psychological theory applies to them as well. The relations of the two sexes becomes destructive for the mass movements; as Freud says, love is a mass movement for two. Women are accepted and honoured only as long as they don’t occupy themselves with female deeds but instead excel in male tasks. It is even better if it dœsn’t show that they are women. That is why women have to wear a kerchief, veil, yashmak or, as it was instituted in socialist countries, a male work uniform and hobnailed boots. She has to hide her femininity and if possible never use it, hence the reason why women who live the ‘ascetic life’ and devote themselves to God or to the ‘building of socialism’ become saints. All these explain many remarkable similarities that exist between very distant, both in space and time, cosmopolitan religions. Notice how much the young Chinese of propaganda films, who declare that they are virgins, not interested in girls but in building KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

71 tenement houses with stones taken from the Great Wall of China, have in common with the monks who rampaged through Athens destroying the art wonders of the Classical era in order to build the insignificant military wall of emperor Justinian. How much do the monks who rampaged through Alexandria burning the libraries have in common with the Chinese Red Guards who, crowbars in hand, destroyed all great Chinese artefacts in every museum of the country. Indeed, it is mainly in the domain of civilization that the hate of this new nationality, against the defeated old one, shows. The more vibrant and higher the defeated civilisation was the more violent its demolition will be. As Lenin said, nations with strong traditions, like the Greek one, have to completely wipe their traditions in order to become proper communists. The internal proletariat is consistent by definition of the unassimilable elements of the society that cannot cope with the difficulties of This World. So the cosmopolitan Worldview already formed in the fellah-world of the disintegregated civilizations of the Middle East (Sumeric, Babylonic, Syriac) caters for them supplying abundantly the Other-Worldly and driving them to worlds made of the wildest illusions: «In this Magian world-feeling… all trembled before revelations, miracles, glimpses into the very fundament of things. Men now lived and thought only in apocalyptic images. Actuality became appearance. Strange and terrifying visions were told mysteriously by one to another, read out from fantastic veiled texts, and seized at once with an immediate inward certainty. …Everyone knows those angels and devils, the ascent to heaven and descent to hell of divine Essence, the Second Adam, the Envoy of God, the Redeemer of the last days, the Son of Man, the eternal city, and the last judgment. The Last Day was at hand. Men expected it and knew that on that day ‘He’ of whom all these revelations spoke would appear. (Spengler, ibid. p. 213) …Of Classical thought and feeling not a breath reached this Magian underworld. »Prophets arose. …John the Baptist, almost emancipated from Judaism, and filled with a mighty hatred of the Jerusalem spirit, preached the end of the world and the coming of the Barnasha, the Son of Man, who is no longer the longed-fornational Messiah of the Jews, but the bringer of the world-conflagation. …Already in the old Persian apocalyptic, the Saoshyant, the Saviour of the Last Days was said to be born of a virgin. »The world of Magian mankind is filled with a fairy-tale feeling (italics in the original). Devils and evil spirits threaten man; angels and fairies protect him. There are amulets and talismans, mysterious lands, cities, buildings, and beings, secret letters, Solomon’s Seal, the Philosophers’ Stone. And over all this is poured the quivering cavern-light that the spectral darkness ever threatens to swallow up. If this profusion of figures astonishes the reader, let him remember that Jesus lived in it, and Jesus’s teachings are only to be understood from it. …Already in the Book of Enoch we have the crystal palace of God, the mountains of precious stone, and the imprisonment of the apostate stars (p. 237). »The cavern-feeling requires a surveyable history consisting in a beginning and an end to KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

72 the world that is also the beginning and the end of man — acts of God of mighty magic — and between these turns, spellbound to the limits of the Cavern and the ordained period, the battle of light and darkness, of the angels and Jazatas with Ahriman, Satan, and Eblis, in which Man, his Soul, and his Spirit are involved. The present Cavern God can destroy and replace by a new creation. The Persian-Chaldean apocalyptic offers to the gaze a whole series of such æons, and Jesus, along with his time, stood in expectation of the end of the existing one (p. 239)».

¨ 7. The Coomplete hate: Good viz. Evil «Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith (1 Peter 5)». Another problem, the most important perhaps, that mass movements face is that in order to function efficiently they have to unite and solidify their disparate crowds and for that to happen there is only one way. They have to embed in society the sole element that unites all people, namely the common hate against one and only enemy who has to seem all mighty so that the faithful has to be always alert and in touch with the ideological direction of the party. This enemy is the ultimate evil, consequently there appears the Dualism: good-evil, which is unheard of in traditional societies or religions. «For a start, this system introduced the converts to Satan, a novel ‘explanation for misfortune’. Through his demons, it explained what we have identified as the living heart of pagan religiousness: the oracles and epiphanies and accompanying anger of the gods. Paganism was reclassified as a demonic system: it was most misleading when it seemed to be most effective. To deceive people, these demons worked mischief by curing and occasionally predicting the future… Since Jesus’s mission, God’s old accusing agent had been cast out of heaven and left to wander as his adversary on earth (Lane Fox, ibid. p. 326)». Really, Christianity inherited this conception from Judaism: «the kernel of the prophetic teachings is one god who is the principle of good, and all other deities are either impotent or evil. To this doctrine there attached itself the hope of a Messiah, very clear in Isaiah, but also bursting out everywhere during the next centuries, under pressure of an inner necessity. It is the basic idea of this type of religion, for it contains implicitly the conception of the worldhistorical struggle between Good and Evil, with the power of Evil prevailing in the middle period, and the Good finally triumphant on the Day of Judgment. This moralization of history is common to Persians, Chaldees, and Jews. But with its coming, the idea of the localized people ipso facto vanished and the genesis of cosmopolitan nations without earthly homes and boundaries was at hand. The idea of the Chosen People emerged (Spengler, ibid. p. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

73 207)». For socialism the enemy was the international bourgeois and in the Soviet Union the crime of being an agent of the international bourgeoisie reached a frenzy and became so widespread that had acquired metaphysical proportions. It was possible to accuse and convict on that charge anyone! As Solzenitsyn says, there was even a deaf-mute convicted on that charge in some village in Siberia. Why dœs that fail to surprise us? Because another characteristic of cosmopolitan religions is that they do not live in reality but in a illusory world full of imaginary beings, angels and Devils; it is a metaphysical world which attaches an other-worldly explanation to reality. This shouldn’t sound strange. The Church can convict anybody of ‘having signed a pact with the Devil’. We think ourselves as civilized but we still live in the illusory world of the internal proletariat of Late Antiquity! Anyhow, it is just more likely that an Intelligence Service or CIA agent is lurking in the corner of the insignificant Siberian village than that exists the Devil, this sad, imaginary abomination of the weak, from the self-imposed hardships, sick, raving minds of the desert ascetics. This is not funny, it is very serious. Whœver says that he sees ‘agents’ everywhere is led to the mental hospital, while one who sees ‘devils’ everywhere remains free, writes anti-heretical books and possibly becomes a saint. Why? We have to face the bitter truth, our societies do not live in the present. They live sunken deep in Middle Age attitudes towards the world! Perhaps a reader might say ‘but I have seen people worshipping Satan, to commit crimes and get condemned for them’. Congratulations! Of course you have! And who created these kind of people? Where did they find Satan? Did they just made it up out of their heads? Who talked to them about it? This very serious subject has a simple explanation. In society there are many people with a hysterical, paranoid, raving nature, who have a tendency to live in an isolated world of fantasy. These people seek archetypal images in order to concentrate upon them their raving fantasies. Naturally, these people require psychological help. In traditional societies these deteriorating symptoms are restrained, because these vulnerable individuals lived in a sane society, think for example, that everywhere they turned their eyes on, the market, the sports halls, the squares, had magnificent statues of great philosophers, literary men, great leaders and Olympic Champions to look at, thus focusing their existence on higher ideals in the most beneficial manner both on a personal and a social level. Compare this with what is happening nowadays and since Late Antiquity. Young people are being taught by lively preachers about the wild adventures of the good against evil. From there on things follow their own way and, for example, a number of young girls become attached to the ‘divine’. This young woman states, in full honesty, really living her ravings, that she is being visited by God and that she cannot possibly withstand the intensity of his love. Thus she collapses to the great hysterical crisis (Grande Hystérie). This woman becomes an object of religious veneration, a saint. The known psychiatrist James H. Leuba (The Psychology of Religious Mysticism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972) has analysed many such historical KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

74 examples. Another great number of hysterical girls, perhaps a much larger propotion, becomes attached to the imaginatively described by the preacher satanically sinful deeds of the Devil. This young girl confesses, in full honesty, what she has lived in her frenzy, which is exactly what the inquisitors are expecting to hear, since it is them who have instilled all that non-sense in her mind in the first place. Naturally she gets condemned as a Satanworshipper, as a witch, she is burned alive! And we shouldn’t forget here the direct social consequences of this, because these unfortunate people perform antisocial acts, murders, etc., since they have been taught that this is what Satan demands of his followers. Our society has to face the truth some day: All these people have to be treated in a scientific manner, i.e. not as Satan or God worshippers but as hysterical and paranoid patients. Furthermore, and this is the more difficult, all these preachers teaching these utterly imaginary worlds to children, thus leaving their young, vulnerable minds permanently impaired, ought to be silenced. The antisocial dogma of evil and Satan that spreads feelings of fear and paranoid ideas must be condemned by the civilized countries. We must not let to consider that belief in Devil is a social phenomenon of the Middle Ages only, it is a basic tenet of the monotheistic religion. Writes professor John Allegro (The Dead Sea Scrolls, Penguin, 1982, p. 144): «Demon possession is a necessary corollary of this doctrine, and of course occurs time and time again in the gospel stories, particularly in the healing miracles. Jesus used his authority as one abudantly ‘possessed’ of the opposite Spirit, to cast out the powers of darkness in the mentally sick». Therefore this belief can be seen most clearly in monotheistic religion’s more purified forms: «The Reformation abolished the whole bright and consoling side of the Gothic myth — the cult of Mary, the veneration of the saints, the relics, the pilgrimages, the mass. But the myth of devildom and witchcraft remained, for it was the embodiment and cause of the inner torture, and now that torture at last rose to its supreme horror. Baptism was, for Luther, an exorcism, the veritable sacrament of devil-banning. There grew up a large, purely Protestant literature about the Devil. Out of the Gothic wealth of colour… there remained black.… now for the first time the battle against the Devil, whose bodily nearness they all felt, was fought with a dark and bitter fury. In the seventeenth century more than a million witches were burnt (Spengler, ibid. p. 302)».

God and world’s evil The premise of a world full of evil but created by a God who is both good and omnipotent creates a strain in the mental and moral field. Writes B. Russell (p. 30): «The fundamental doctrines of Christianity demand a great deal of ethical perversion before they can be accepted. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

75 and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children’s ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery». We have already mentioned that the most common feeling cherished by the internal proletariat is the unbearable hate against the civilization. The cosmopolitan organization provides for it and fuels it (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, c. 30): «You are fond of spectacles, expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers…».

¨ 8. The faithful do not think A mass movement, in order to be effective, demands that its followers should never think, never discuss, never debate anything. There can be only one absolute truth, which is not under discussion, otherwise the mass movement might end up as a discussion group, as a gathering of philosophers and theologians. That is not desirable because such religions are by nature and by creation purely political organisations, with the single aim of destroying the opponent. We emphasise this again, cosmopolitan religions are not a way of seeking the divine but mere political organisations. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

76 Therefore, from the above it follows that the anti-heretical conflicts, the relentless persecution of whœver disagrees even about the tiniest detail (which is why religious discussion and disagreement over details is also called byzantinisms) is a necessary element of cosmopolitan religions. Against the heretics they are particularly hostile, more than towards the enemy because they break up the common line and, more importantly, because they bring into the organisation something forbidden, namely discussion and investigation. This explains peculiar events such as the fight to death, in the beginnings of Christianity, between Orthodoxy and Arianism. Certainly an inexplicable event not suiting to men of high spirituality, to kill literally each other over a single, incomprehensible difference in their approach of the Divine. But the hostility is everpresent, the same today as in the old days: Says the aforementioned author of Our Orthodox Christian Faith (p. 246): «Let all Orthodox be aware of this and let us not be deceived, nor imagine that in the name of love, we can put aside these grievous errors of the heretics and bridge the gap separating us for the purpose of union. We can never unite ourselves with heretics unless they renounce with true repentance their impious and blasphemous false doctrines». The discussion and theoretical investigation is prohibited then in cosmopolitan religions, which is why there is an ultimate expert, a Holy Book and a college of experts and only it is able to validly judge and interpret the Book: the Holy Synod, the Supreme Soviet, the Archbishops, the party cadre. The masses have to obey because, as the Muslim theologians state, the birth of doubt within us, about the truth of the statements of the Holy book or of the interpretation given to them, dœs not merely mean that we doubt, question, disagree or even that we lack faith. No! It means that we are under the possesion of Satan. «If Satan was the source of error and evil, false teaching and wrongdoing were not merely mistaken: they were diabolic. The division between a Christian community of goodness and an outer world of evil could easily become too pronounced. The idea of Satan magnified the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false’ Christians and between Christian sinners and saints (Lane Fox, ibid. p. 326)». Any illogical, incomprehensible, contradicting phrases and dogmas are not only to be refrained from any discussion but the believer should not even be made aware of them. ‘Indeed’, states Tertullian with pride ‘I believe because the dogma is illogical - Credo quia absurdum est’. After this long but not complete analysis, which due to space and difficulty of the subject was merely indicative, we reach at a major junction of this theme. All the above mentioned principles, necessary in order a cosmopolitan religion-mass movement to be created, are simple to supply, however, in this entire construction there is a weak link, namely its first principle. How are the masses going to be convinced that history is linear? That the prophets were not wrong? That indeed the mighty Empire will be destroyed? How will we be persuaded by the preaching of the Marxists that the capitalists are falling apart when they seem perfectly fine? KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

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¨ 9. The necessary monotheism At this point there is a need for a metaphysical cover. At this part Marxism definitely lacks, it created the metaphysical and extra-cosmical being ‘Course of History’, however, this is insufficient because it is very difficult for us to imagine that it can do miracles like destroy within a day the thriving capitalist economy. On the contrary, the preachers of the other cosmopolitan religions by adhering to an extra-cosmical God of anthropomorphic intelligence find themselves in a most favourable position because they don’t have to give sociological and economical analyses. They simply say that so functions divine justice: while all is going well, suddenly and swiftly the Judgement Day comes, while the unsuspected capitalists are enjoying their whiskey, the great star ‘Wormwood’ (Revelation vii, 8) will fall onto their heads! This extreme and irrational thinking puts you out of words simply because it is completely illogical! Therefore we conclude that there is an absolute necessity for these organisations to assume a religious cloak. This religious cloak has to include one and only statement: one divine being who has defined all other dogmas. This premise is absoluteky necessary because these dogmas conflict with the observed laws of the Cosmos and of Logic. For example, it is not possible that the entire physical world with its infinite and multi-morphic nature has to be short-term or an antechamber of some other imaginary life. Or, sociologicaly speaking, how is it possible that all the people which we see around us, with their weaknesses and faults, to be transformed under the guidance of the President of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet into the perfect ‘angels’ of the communist paradise of the classeless society unless he has a magic wand? Hence there is need for a ‘super’ being who has to be above and beyond the Cosmos. It has to be the one creating worlds and laws at will but also breaking them: «the religions of the internal proletariat incline to subordinate the majesty of the Law to the omnipotence of God», writes Toynbee. A necessary condition to all this is that there must be no self-existent matter, for this super being has to be the one creating any matter that exists and defining it, so that he cannot be bound by its qualities. If so one could easily wonder whether the qualities of matter do allow the discontinuation of the Natural Laws, which is taken as a sign of divinity and called a miracle. This super being has to have the feature of absoluteness that theology ascribes to it, it has to be the Absolute. Thus a necessary condition for the support of the cosmopolitan religion’s ideological foundation is the statement that there exists an extra-cosmical, absolute, intelligent being. That is the god of monotheism. Therefore, we have concluded by induction that a mass movement of cosmopolitan KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

78 nature must necessarily be based on certain principles, which arise also from the nature of mass movements and that a cornerstone of those principles has to be the faith in a single extra-cosmical being. In addition to this conclusion we have to stress also on the opposite argument: Only an deracinated internal proletariat can be be captivated by the strange idea of an extramundane god and a desacralized nature. Justly stresses on Spengler (Spengler, ibid. p. 223): «Paul’s missionary journeys were all directed westward, and the East he ignored [there is not an internal proletariat]. He never left the domain of the Classical city. Why did he go to Rome, to Corinth, and not to Edessa or Ctesiphon? And why was it that he worked only in the cities, and never from village to village? …the Church later could describe the remaining heathen as ‘pagani’, country-folk …it was the fellah-world of the Classical cities that grasped at it with both hands, and the marks of that grasp are visible to-day …For there arose the cult-church of Christian nationality». «Before Constantine Christianity has been confined to the towns: it has been characterized as a ‘cockney’ religion, which clung essentially to the humbler members of big cities (Lane Fox, ibid, p. 287)». Therefore, these are the conditions of the birth of the cosmopolitan religions, which is alternatively named monotheistic religions, religions of the city, Late period religions, etc. Monotheism was something unheard of in the traditional society; no-one even dreamt of such an unprecedented conception. So the inevitable question runs: How the monotheistic speculation was originated? Writes Alain Daniélou (Shiva and Dionysus, Inner Traditions, N.Y. 1984): «(p. 223) Among the characteristic phenomena of the Times of Troubles is the appearance of false religions which lead man away from his rôle in creation and serve as an excuse for his depredations and genocides, finally driving him to collective suicide. The religions of the city take precedence over the religion of nature. According to the Purânas, the struggle of the city religions against the gods of Nature took un evil form by creating illusory religions which corrupted the true interior religion. …The monotheistic illusion is one of the characteristics of the religions of the Times of Troubles. …monotheism is an aberration from the point of view of spiritual experience. …Such simplification is part of what Hindus call ‘the metaphysics of fools’. …The monotheistic simplification appears to derive from the religious concepts of the nomads, a people who wish to assert themselves and justify their occupation of territories and their conquests. God is imagined in the image of man. He is reduced to the rôle of a guide, accompanying the tribe during its migrations, and giving personal instructions to its chief. He is only interested in man and, among mankind, only in the group of the ‘chosen’. He becomes an easy excuse for conquests and genocide, and for the destruction of the natural order, as can be seen throughout history. To begin with, he does not exclude the gods of the other tribes, or ‘false’ gods, but this is only in order to oppose and destroy them and to impose his own domination and that of his ‘chosen people’. The passage from polytheism to exclusivism, and then to monotheism, can be followed in the religious evolution of the Hebrews. KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

79 »…It is the so-called ‘prophets’ who are the principal artisans of the deviations of the modern world. They claim to communicate directly with a personal and only god, issuing rules of conduct which are in reality nothing but social conventions and which have nothing to do with religion or the spiritual domain. Monotheism is contrary to men’s religious experience: it is not a natural development, but an imposed simplification. The notion of a god who, having created the world, would wait several million years — a delay which is difficult to excuse — before teaching man the way to salvation, is a patent absurdity. »The starting point for all monotheistic religions is always the thought or teaching of one man who, whether he claims to be so or not, considers himself the messenger and interpreter of a transcendental power which he calls ‘god’. Such religions express themselves in dogmas, and in regulations concerning the life of man. They inevitably become political and form an ideal basis for the expansionist ambitions of the city. Among these religions, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are theistic, whilst Jainism and Marxism are atheistic. »Adopted by Judaism, which was not originally monotheistic, the concept of an ‘only god’ in human form is largely responsible for the disastrous rôle of later religions. Moses, probably influenced by the ideas of the Pharaoh Akhnaton, made the Jewish people believe in the existence of a tribal chief, whom he called the ‘one god’ and from whom he claimed to receive instructions. Later on, Mohammed behaved in much the same way. These impostors are the source of religious perversion in the Semitic and Judeo-Christian world. This ‘god’, whose intentions so many other after them have claimed to interpret, even in the most relative fields of life, has served as a pretext and excuse for the domination of the world by various groups of ‘chosen people’, and for the arrogant isolation of man in relation to the rest of the divine work. »The impertinence and arrogance with which ‘believers’ attribute to ‘god’ their own social, alimentary, and sexual prejudices, which moreover vary from one region to another, would be comical if they did not inevitably lead to forms of tyranny of a purely temporal nature. The obligation to conform to arbitrary beliefs and modes of behaviour is a means of degrading and enslaving the personality of the individual which all tyrannies, whether religious or political, right-or-left-wing, know only too well how to use (p. 229)».

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Part Two

The complete contrast

¨ 1.The inevitability of cosmopolitan dogma Here we have to observe something very important. If we set up from our last conclusion, namely that there is an extra-cosmical, absolute being, reversing our reasoning, we will realise that all the principles rising from that statement are necessarily the same that we used in order to reach it. So, these syllogisms operate necessarily both ways, without branching off to anything else. Which statements necessarily derive from this first principle? The natural system of the Cosmos depends upon and is inferior to God, it comes to existence at some point in time; the natural laws are fleeting not constant, even when given by God one cannot be certain that they will always apply since God can tamper with the physical world. This very type of action from God and his influence becomes a dogma and is called ‘a miracle’.

The lack of Science Thus such a society will have no interest for scientific research and development of the sciences, since one cannot possibly employ them in order to reach the first principles. «Truth is for him something other than for us. All our epistemological methods, resting upon the individual judgment, are for him madness and infatuation, and its scientific results a work of the Evil One, who has confused and deceived the spirit as to its true dispositions and purposes (Spengler, ibid. p. 235)». That society will either never develop any science like the Jewish and the ByzantineMiddle Ages societies or it will develop merely enterprise technology as is the case with today’s western society, which having as its ideological base, despite the bloody resistance of the freethinkers, the Judaiochristianic view of the world can only value and fund scientific research according to its enterprising potential. The scientist is a low member of a Jewish or Byzantine society since the answers to all scientific question is sought in holy books. That is the reason why, until recently, scientific research was considered the work of the Devil. Calvin burned the renowned doctor Servettus who discovered blood circulation because he was scientifically researching human

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81 physiology. Writes Bertrand Russell (Why I am not a Christian, Allen & Unwin, 1957, p. 45): «The church’s conception of righteousness is socially undesirable in various ways — first and foremost in its depreciastion of intelligence and science. This defect is inherited from the Gospels. Christ tell us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease. To acquire such knowledge is no part of our duty, according to the church. The church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma». Even nowadays our Western society that is still embeded into the monotheistic milieu and, peculiarly enough, as far as the first principles are concerned, do not ask cosmologists or biologists but christian priests who, naturally, can only reply with quotations from the Holy Book! Therefore, in monotheistic societies there will be no true science while science and the scientists themselves will always occupy a lesser place among citizens, since by studying science it won’t be possible to discover the first principles. Nevertheless, what will eclipse completely though is Art.

The lack of Art The fleeting and inferior quality of matter and the world, the aversion to all its forms, which are not only fleeting but also, standing in the way of reaching the Absolute, they distract us from the kingdom of God, is an article of faith. Thus Art is condemned for being not only useless and dangerous but also a deceiving work of the Devil. This is why the Jewish society never developed any art and in the Byzantine-Middle Ages era Art was banned and artists acquired a derogatory fame which has still to be shed. In our era, after the brief Renaissance, the swift comeback to internal Christian logic and its rejudaisation through Luther, has had important consequences on Art. Mimesis of the world, the picturing Art was considered inferior, depicting something unworthy of imprinting. It was thought that those forms had no essence and hence artists were urged to display the ‘real essence’, not the one of forms. So these considerations lead to the abstract and the decorative. Through the same intellectual path the other monotheistic religion, Mohammedanism, led up to the arabesque creations. In the post-war era these trends crystallised in clear political, institutional positions and it was officially stated that the only Art fitting the post-war society was the abstract Modern Art, while pictorial painting, realistic sculpture, the classical architectural orders, the classic symmetry of lines, were absolutely condemned as decadent, long gone by, ‘fascist’. Why? That is simple. The society which rejected the classical Renaissance ideal having reverted to KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

82 Judaic values has rediscovered the old monotheistic command ‘do not make yourself idols’. Idols would have never been placed in Solomon’s temple, while the abstract geometrical lines of Mondrian or Kadinsky would have served its decoration well. The form was considered unworthy while people insisting on imprinting the forms, even if they were surrealists, like Dali, are tarnished as ‘fascists’. Here a parenthesis should open. What dœs the word ‘fascism’ mean? Obviously not the socio-political ideology of fascism. Anyhow, when we blame Marxism-Leninism for all the suffering that the Soviet regime inflicted, the police state, the Gulag camps, the incredible poverty, Katin forest, the genocide of seven of the Soviet Union’s nations by Stalin, they say: ‘What dœs ideology have to do with each specific regime? It has not. Therefore fascism had nothing to do with Mussolini’s regime. The word ‘fascism’ is part of the wooden language of the media and it simply indicates any nationality opposed to the cosmopolitan ones or, generally, anybody standing against the establishment. Naturally the media are not interested on the true ideology of the inflicted person, ‘fascism’ is rather a pejorative and insulting term, replacing the other pejorative monotheistic expression ‘the nations’. What dœs the word nations mean? In the Jewish language there is the word goym, which means:1. whœver dœs not have the Jewish nationality. 2. the Greeks specifically. 3. wild dogs. The Septuagint, for the translation purposes of the Old Testament, gave in it the name ‘nations’ (öıÓË). So this word no longer has anything to do with the true meaning of the word nation but only with the above three definitions and it is an absolutely derogatory term. Under Christianity the word ‘national’ was used in a specifically offensive, insulting manner, stating all opposing nationalities. Nowadays there is a peculiar phenomenon observed, Greek thinking people in Greece adopt this very term in order to state their religion and call themselves ‘national Greeks’. It is a mistake, they should just say that they are Greeks and, if necessary, explain that they live according to the traditional, indigenous Greek religion and ethos. What do Jews all over the world say: ‘I am Jewish in religion’. Likewise so should Greeks all over the world do, namely say: ‘I am Greek in religion’. Let’s return to Art. The main way to imitate the Cosmos, its forms and matter is sculpture, because the object in hand is of tangible matter and three-dimensional. Hence the reason why sculpture, already banned in Judaic society, was also absolutely banned in Byzantium as well. This prohibition essentially persists even nowadays where the instilled aversion to sculpting, both in Byzantine East and in the Protestant West, remains strong. Statues are considered suitable only for cemeteries. The reader might reply that he was under the impression that emperor Constantine and his successors moved the Greek statues in Costantinople (Istanbul) in order to decorate the city. No, this is an utter misconception. But what is the truth? The statues of the Gods and the belongings of the temples, as well as the precious marbles of the inner sanctuary of the temples, were being systematically gathered then placed in the markets of the towns so that they should be humiliated continuously by the abuses, canning and expectoration of KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

83 Christians, while the precious floors were placed on the path of donkeys and mules so that the animals would step and excrete on them. Another trick of Late Antiquity should be noted: someone in the market would intentionally start caning, spitting and abusing the statue of a God, daring it to punish him if he really was a God. Naturally insulted Greeks would attack him and at that point his coconspirators lurking in the corner would come out and a general fight would break up. Afterwards the instigators would claim that the statues of the Gods offend the public and request that they be removed. In a similar manner sometime later when at the Age of Constantine and his successors the Christians held power, the most sacred artefacts of the Greek temples were provocatively damaged and then removed. In Alexandria the exposure to ignominy of the sacred artefacts of Dionysos caused the desperate revolt of the public (although that might have been the purpose all along…). In any case that was the excuse the imperial army needed in order to intervene, in favour of the Christians of course, siege Serapeion, take over and burn the library of Alexandria which was housed in it. Indeed, that was when the library of Alexandria was burned! The Great Hellenic Encyclopædia (volume C, p.594) writes: «In 391 bishop Theofilos set on fire and destroyed Serapeion… for the rabid destruction of the stone monument of paganism from Christianity we have irrefutable evidence in the GræcoRoman Museum of Alexandria. The fierceness by which our national monuments were destroyed is easily discerned. The statements of the first Church Fathers about the traditional wisdom and their objecting replies display most eloquently what their attitude over maintaining and publicly using all those documents was. The ending of Hypatia is a tragic such example [The renown philosopher and mathematician has been killed and cut to pieces by a christian mob after a fierce preaching by St. Cyril, the Patriarch of the city]». Naturally this destruction was not the first one, the infamous Jovian, the Christian emperor who followed Julian, after burning the library of Antioch he took action in Alexandria as well: «in 364 Jovian burned down the glorious temple constructed by Hadrian to worship his father Trajan and which Julian had turned into a library… He burned it with all its books and, actually, the prostitutes cheered the flames».

The lack of Literature A society which scorns the worldly life, besides science and Art will also condemn literature and refined language. The most cockney language suffices for their needs: «We might think that no Christian encountered the Scriptures until after his conversion, as their Greek was too repellent to outsiders’ taste (Lane Fox, ibid., p. 333)». There will only be holy, apologetic, propagandistic and archival works allowed. This is why the Jewish people have no literature besides their holy scripts; the people of the Book KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

84 have no books. Likewise in Byzantium there was no literature developed apart from imperial records and theological interpretations. One type of literature that did develop in the Middle Ages was popular writings, which derived from the suppressed soul of the people, both in the East and the West, producing the Chronicles, the romans de Chevalleria, which glorified the completely ‘pagan’ knightly virtues, the compilations of ‘pagan’ legends like those of king Arthur and Nybelungen. This popular literature, of course, had be condemned by the state and the Church.

The condemnation of Theatre and Sports More than science, literature and Art, such a monotheistic ideology will oppose all actions imitating the rhythms of the Cosmos, i.e. Theatre and Athletic events. Theatre is a ritualistic and recreating (with the true meaning of the word) and initiating mimesis of the cosmic rhythm. That it why it was completely banned and actors were defamed. In Byzantium, while theatre was banned, debased spectacles such as those of the infamous night clubs that were near the Hippodrome (race course) were promoted. Here one cannot claim that such spectacle were merely public entertainment for the lowest elements of society. No, they were just places where princes and the would be emperors were spending their time and consequently where female ‘artists’ of a level similar to the spectacle were promoting their lack, and some of them, as for example empresses Theodora and Theofanô and possibly others that escape my memory, mounted the imperial throne. Even nowadays theatre is thought off according to Byzantine standards, namely a superficial type of entertainment. Athletic events mimic not only the rhythms of the Cosmos but also honour the matter of the body. Through these events the person tries to harmonise himself to the Divine Law of Evolution and improve his health. For purely philosophical reasons then these events held a primary position in traditional societies. In Jewish society not only were sports and Theatre prohibited but in Hellenistic Age any Jews spending time in Theatres and Greek type sports clubs (Gymnasia) received the aggression of their fellow nationals. In Byzantium exercise was held in contempt and on the contrary the race course was promoted, which is not a sport but a spectacle. The Classics through the athletic events promoted the ideal that we should all exercise, take care of our bodies and participate in games for the spirit of noble competition and also to honour the order of the Cosmos and the Gods. The Olympic Games are actually the foremost religious festival of the Greek world. In the race course professionals just do their job and spectators merely watch passively. Here the following should be noted: in cosmopolitan religions the person is not only deprived of opinion but of autonomous action, too. In the temples of these religions the congregation has to stay still while watching the priest. On the other hand, in traditional KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

85 religions the followers act and participate in the ceremony through hymns and circular dances. Similarly, in spectacles like the race course people stand still while watching the professionals. It is easily discerned that modern sports is anything but athletics; it is the Byzantine race course. Nowadays a few millionaire professional athletes entertain many millions of passively sitting couch potatœs. Compare this to the classical ideal: exercise and sports are honoured because they promote fine health, necessary for a sound mind, while nowadays sports feed the need of the establishment to prevent people from thinking, not to become citizens but remain individuals who are only concerned with ‘sports’.

¨ 2.The acute cultural contrast «I detest your public festivities, because there occur general rejoicing and satiation from the inumerable foods in abundance, and singsonging to melodius flutes, and extraordinary perfumes, and crowning with flower wreaths, and refined dancing… (St. Justin, Oration to Greeks, 4)». Let us pause here in order to compare the cultural side of cosmopolitan religions, and of monotheistic societies in general, to traditional societies and religions, especially the Greek one. For the Hellenic World-view the clear understanding of the world and its scientific research is a purely religious act, one which gives a person knowledge, spiritual evolution, leads him in understanding the first principles. Let us not forget that when the people of Delos complained to Apollo about their financial sufferings he provided them with the famous mathematical problem known as ‘Delian’, he did not perform any miracles nor did he give any bread away, instead he just set the record straight: People become able to deal with life’s hardships by developing their intelligence, increasing their knowledge and cultivating the clear philosophical view of pure mathematics. Notice the following: it has been said that Apollo’s Oracle was not divinely led. Is it possible for a human, calculating, rational institution to give the Delians, when they inquired about their economic difficulties, such an outrageous reply? Also notice that while science nowadays is merely a means to promote technology and economic agrandization, the classical ideal of the Golden Age is that of a purely theoretical science, one which researches and clarifies the basic principles of all sciences. Have you ever thought the volumes of theoretical mathematics that the Greeks produced? From these texts we only preserve a fraction today, which as if by miracle were saved, because mathematical works were thoroughly destroyed during the Byzantine theocracy, since the science of mathematics was banned for being the work of the Devil (so far the Devil has given the forests, the rivers, the springs, now we learn that he has also given us pure scientific logic. What has God given us then?). How were those few mathematical treatises saved then? KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

86 They were saved because the Persians had copied them and later the Arabs from them, who later spread them back to Europe where not only did they initiate the European Renaissance but no one was ever able to improve upon them. The Greeks were also familiar with technology but they limited it to the lowest possible levels, as in the Golden Age. In Alexandria Heron used to make steam machine toys. The Hellenic civilisation would have never conceived the industrial revolution, i.e. replacing the creative labour of the farmers and craftsmen with machines and creating the sad, sunless, english-type industrial cities, where all the tribulations and the shortcomings of the worldcity thrived and still do, as a result of the boring and unhealthy industrial labour. Modern science, on the other hand, instead of enhancing people’s intelligence and open up his mental horizons, it has become a research lab for the unwholesome protestantcapitalist morality and attitude. Man has been degraded to the level of a mindless being which has to work night and day to earn the money required in order to live according the consuming ideal. The ideal life is promoted as being that of consuming industrial products, which are either base, cheap and useless, not covering any true human needs or luxurious and expensive in a barbaric, clumsy and inelegant manner, which insults our æsthetic view. Compare all this to the classical ideal of tranquil, creative work and of the development of true artistic judgement, which is expressed in the highest æsthetic manner through simple and plain materials like stone and clay. Compare the classical garment, visit a museum and observe the fine æsthetic result being produced by the pleats of a classical veil. It is a simple rectangular fabric, which proves that simplicity is beauty. Compare this garment to the barbaric dressing of the Byzantine high class (as can be seen in the wellknown Ravenna mosaics) where an inelegant one-piece straight tunic is decorated by sewing on it chunks of gold, pearls, diamonds and cameos. It is true that the barbarity in Art has conquered the world through cosmopolitan religions. Compare the architecture of Marxism: although its buildings try to be neoclassical they are simply wholly barbaric, voluminous, depressing, silent. Observe the modern architecture of western society, which represents the world born out of war and its World-view. Observe the depressing skyscrapers, the æsthetic of the peeled, like the Lloyd building in London. The æsthetics of lacking a front and walls, of buildings with the electrical and sewage pipes gaping in full view, like the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The æsthetics of buildings which were designed to give the impression that they are falling apart before the eyes of their viewers, like some recently built state buildings in EUR in Rome. Compare the architecture of the Classical period, which was designed to defy time, to modern short-lived buildings of our times, where on the framework structure of cement (which has a maximum lifetime of eighty years) are added garish facades of plastic material imitating marble or granite. Why do these differences occur? Because between the two ideologies there lies a great chasm. For the Greeks the Cosmos is sacred and divine, hence architecture is not a means-to-anKEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

87 end Art but an act of worship. We admire the world, the Nature and, adjusting our mind and senses accordingly, we offer divine worship by decorating it. For example, in the Greek countryside you would see a single building by the bay, a temple, it has been designed so as to decorate the place and to be also a place of worship for the God of that bay and the sea. Likewise, the Greek classical city decorates the bare valley while the buildings on the acropolis of the city become the crown of that rock, itself a creation of the Titanic geoforces. A building can only be thought of in an ecological, sacred, decorative manner and to these priorities its possible practical uses have to adjust. Architecture connects us with the sky, as Leon Krier observes, and the first thing that a classical architect calculates is how the building will match the sky. He studies the domes, the gables, while on the flat roofs of our houses we place our useless items. Why dœs this happen? Because monotheism isolated the world from its sacredness, it demoted it to a level unworthy of even talking about it. That is why there is not Jewish architecture, nor dœs Byzantine apart from un inelegant and bulky church architecture. Heir to these Middle Age ideas, with the exemption of the Renaissance glimmer, is Western architecture where ugly enterprise jerry-buildings are not only irrelevant to their surroundings but also destroy them. Those buildings are fleeting constructions of a culture which is not interested in tomorrow, dœs not build for eternity. They are products of a civilisation which dœs not really believes that it has a future because it is deeply embedded in Judaic-protestant-capitalist view and since it is monotheistic it dœs not believe in the eternal nature of the Cosmos but in the uncertainty of the Judgment Day and, naturally, putting those principles to practice is indifferent even to the pollution and destruction of the whole planet. For the Hellenic civilisation literature, painting, sculpture are considered undertakings contributing to spiritual evolution, been an analysis and an instantiation of the physical and divine laws, having as a purpose the setting of examples and serving through æsthetics the uplifting of the spiritual level of the people. Let’s focus now on Theatre and the athletic events. What are they? Why is it that in tragedy competitions the High Priest of Dionysos presides? Why dœs the High Priestess of Demeter preside over the Olympic Games? Here we should note the following: a ritual of the traditional religion differs in many ways to analogous of cosmopolitan religions. Traditional religion ceremonies are communal, the entire community participates in them. What is the purpose of traditional rituals? The union of the person to the order of the Cosmos through the mimesis of Its rhythms. One of the ritual acts is the circular dances which are usually performed by a group, recalling by their rhythmic figures the movements of the stars and the rhythms of creation. According to Lucian (Peri Orcheseos, xv, 177) «it is impossible to find a single Mystery in which dancing had no part». Important was the highly symbolic labyrinth dance: According to Plutarch (Theseus, 22) «at Delos, Theseus, together with the young people, performed a dance which, they say, is still in use among the local inhabitants; it imitates the twistings and windings of KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

88 the labyrinth, and develops in a rhythmic movement formed by continual evolutions and turnings». The labyrinth dance of the Romans is mentioned by Virgil, Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Similar spiral dance are performed in India. «In the Shivaite temple, the dance area is an essential element. Sacred female dancers form part of the temple personnel… (Daniélou, ibid., p. 200)». The circular dances always imitate the movement of the world and that is why they are always anti-clockwise, following the rightwise Swastika imprinted on the floor. It should be noted here that there is no symbolic difference between the clockwise Saouwastika and the anticlockwise Swastika. Both these symbols represent the rhythm of world movement. We know that the movement of planets and of the objects is anticlockwise, hence when we mimic it we follow the Swastika, while when we observe it from a distance it looks like the Saouswastika. Other basic religious ceremonial acts are the Theatre and the Games. In the Greater Dionysia the very ritual act is the theatrical act, the tragedy and comedy competition; while in Olympia the sacred Ritual in honour of Zeus is the Games. These are religious conceptions following ancient divine laws from the dawn of History; so we remember Homer who constantly describes athletic events taking place upon the burial place of herœs, as an epitaph ceremony or Memorial Service.

¨ 3.The antisocial life After the cultural side let us observe some other main characteristics of the cosmopolitan religions derived from their monotheistic view of things. Because the world is considered a creation, it follows that its basic principles cannot be discovered by the scientist but by the one contemplating about the extra-cosmical being. This thesis must be added to two other basic theses. Firstly, there is the notion of personal salvation in contrast to the traditional notion of communal-social spiritual and intellectual progress and evolution. Christianity laid the unheard-of concept of personal holiness as something independent of beneficent action. Writes B. Russell (ibid., p. 33): «Social virtue came therefore to be excluded from Christian ethics. To this day conventional Christians think an adulterer more wicked than a politician who takes bribes, although the latter probably does a thousant times as much harm. The medieval conception of virtue, as one sees in their pictures, was of something wishy-washy, feeble, and sentimental. The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting for the Holy Land like St. Louis. The church would never regard a man as a saint because he reformed the finances, or the criminal law, or the judiciary. Such mere contributions to KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

89 human welfare would be regarded as of no importance. I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calender whose saintship is due to work of public utility. …Christian ethics has made itself completely individualistic. I think it is clear that the net result of all the centuries of Christianity has been to make men more egotistic, more shut up in themselves, than nature made them; for the impulses that naturally take a man outside the walls of his ego are those of sex, parenthood, and patriotism or herd instinct. Sex the church did everything it could to decry and degrade; family affections was decried by Christ himself and by the bulk of his followers; and patriotism could find no place among the subject populations of the Roman Empire. The polemic against the family in the Gospels is a matter that has not received the attention it deserves. The church treats the Mother of Christ with reverence, but He Himself showed little of this attitude. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ (John ii, 4) is His way of speaking to her. He says also that He has come to set a man at variance against his father, the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law agains her mother-in-law, and that he that loveth father and mother more than Him is not worthy of Him (Matt. x, 35-37). All this means the breakup of the biological family tie for the sake of the creed — an attitude which had a great deal to do with the intolerance that came into the world with the spread of Christianity». The dogma of personal salvation leads to the rejection of social voluntary action, which the Pope recently criticised as «the heresy of action». This should be noted well. The social action of cosmopolitan religions is a means to conversion, in order to bring closer the final judgement. It has nothing to do with improving society. Secondly, there is the notion that not only is the world rapidly coming to an end but also it has no value, hence there is no merit in the world, as it is said «Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world , the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is not of the father but is of the world. And the world is passing away… (1John ii, 15)». These three dogmas put together lead with certainty to the ideal of asceticism. This ideal is to be found in the Scriptures stated with great force: «But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already commited adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell (Matt. v, 27). For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it (Matt. xix,12)». The ascetic ideal when it became known in the classical world caused great upheaval since it was a conception utterly incomprehensible and foreign to the traditional view. Since this ideal is contrary to the natural law it is thoroughly rejected by the Hellenic World-view. J. Vasilís writes (Ilisos Epilogi, 1970, p.45): KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

90 «But the saddest instantiation of our society, which despite its nature is considered a sacred tradition, is the incomprehensible theory of the ascetic life, which is promoted as necessary in order for man to unite with the Divine! But I reckon that whœver follows it dœs not believe in God who created nature, life and its Laws. Because then they would not come and violate the laws of life which God has created. Hence I ask, is it possible these puny minds can rise above Nature and God? These people, guilty against God, should not forget that the merciless law of cause and effect will one day enforce upon all those despising life the necessary repercussions. Not, of course, out of revenge but from kindness, in order to teach them to live according to their nature. In order to learn to follow, respect and not violate nature’s eternal Laws. »I am very much afraid that these derailed people instead of saving their souls, as they claim, they are losing their minds, destroy their health, follow an unnatural life and consequently one day they will lose even that soul of theirs. »These anti-natural acts of man are guided by inspirations coming from dark and negative sources combating man’s mental stability, the spiritual and intellectual progress, the joys of life, which redeem any person when one follows Virtue, i.e. when one reconciles and follows the Laws of divine Creation». The belief in the demerit of the Cosmos and the strong desire to end it, «But the end of all things is at hand (1 Peter 4)», so that the kingdom of heavens would come leads to positive hate against anything which perpetuates it. This is the reason why in all monotheistic religions anti-feminism is absolute and complete. It is regarded that Evil, the Devil, has an interested in perpetuating the world, which is why the female is considered his instrument. The female is regarded as the instrument of desire which leads us to sin. What is the true meaning of these words in the Byzantine monotheistic vocabulary? Desire is the trend towards reproduction and sin is the reproductive act. «We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make (Russell, ibid., p. 27)». The «Apostolic Rule» clearly demands the covering of women with kerchiefs and their public silence. The christian attitude against women is characterised by undisguised rage: «It sufficed to open her mouth once in order to destroy everything» says St. John Chrysostom meaning that she has set reproduction in motion and has reaped the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Here is where the theology becomes funny. How should a person be then according to this dogma? A silly pet wondering in Paradise without a fig leaf and, not knowing the difference between good and evil, acting unreasonably and bestialy in order to entertain, causing hilarity, the not clearly defined lords of the garden, since the Septuagint are hesitant and confused between singular and plural? However, this Genesis myth hides also great truths. To begin with, this myth is not Judaic but a traditional Middle East myth which has inumerable symbolic levels. The desire for the myth to be interpreted literally, by people who have no connection to the traditional wisdom, has led to hair-raising misunderstandings, similar to the misinterpretations of the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

91 myths concealing highly initiating truths over the perfection of the soul in the Greek Mythology that talk about Gods fathering mortal children. Because this work is not meant to interpret mythology let us interpret merely a single level of the aforementioned myth. The snake stands for the Hierophant who helps the evolution of the soul and also for the higher evolutionary forces, which will be employed in order to perfect the soul. The Hierophant, acting upon the human psyche symbolized as wood, perfects the already ripe fruit of self-knowledge and higher consciousness. Why will the woman enjoy this first and then prompt her husband too? Because, as the Greek World-view explains, the female is by nature more keen to quicker spiritual development, she is endowed by Nature with intelligence and intuitiveness through which she is more receptive to spiritual and initiating truths, since, as modern science admits, from the two sexes it is the female one which is closer to the essence of the Cosmos, whose rhythms she feels intensely and intimately. «The female is herself Destiny and Time and the organic logic of the Becoming… Whenever Man has tried to give Destiny any tangible form, he has felt it as of feminine form, and he has called it Moirai, Parcæ, Norns. Primevally, too, woman is the seeress, because she is the future. The priest merely interprets the oracle; the woman is the oracle itself, and it is Time that speaks through her. …Woman, as Time, is that for which there is history at all. The woman with race in her feels this even when she does not know it. She is Destiny, she plays Destiny. The play begins with the fight of men for the possession of her — Helen, and the tragedy of Carmen, and Catherine II, and the story of Napoleon and Désirée Clary… — and it is not a human play only, for this fight begins down in the animal world and fills the history of whole species. And it culminates in her swaying, as mother or wife or mistress, the Destiny of empires — Hallgerd in the Njal saga, the Frankish queen Brunhilde, Marozia who gave the Holy See to men of her choise (Spengler, ibid., p. 328)». This is why in all the Greek temples there are High Priestesses, as in Eleusis. If we had to elect one of the two sexes to take on hieratical duties then that certainly would be the female; we would had Priestesses. Dear reader, compare that with the androcracy, the exclusively male priesthood of all monotheistic religions. They claim that monotheism raised the female status, how did it do that? By condemning women to silence? By regarding the mere consideration of a woman priest as the utmost blasphemy? In all traditional societies the female was considered of high intellectual and spiritual idiosyncracy and therefore was venereably accepted in the supreme of sacerdotal offices: that of Hierophant. On the contrary, the jurisprudence of the monotheistic religion not only orders the female to stay mute behind the bars of the specialy set apart quarters of the church, but also considers as a dreadful sacrilege even the mere thought of a female priest or bishop. Why? You have to ask the preachers who speak about the equality between the sexes. Their past and present dœs not allow them to make any such claims. So Christians had better to remain silent about women! Why do we insist on exdposing these monotheistic views? Because the ideal of the ascetic KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

92 life and the condemnation of reproduction are detrimental to the biological future of nations, upon which the monotheistic religions attach themselves. A prime example is the Byzantium where the existence of thousands of monasteries led the country to disaster. A serious effect was the economic stagnation because of the acquition by the tax exempted monasteries the best part of the arable land but more disastrous was the demographic problem that developed and greatly reduced population. Therefore the country became vulnerable to invasions of nomads from the East and the Bulgars and Slav language speaking people from the North. It should be taken into account that in Asia Minor the population had reached record low levels due, besides the aforementioned reasons, to the anti-heretical conflicts which culminated in the extermination of 200.000 Paulicians in Anatolia; hence there was a continuous, gradual and quiet infiltration by various nomadic populations, chiefly armenoid, from further east into the very thinly populated Anatolia. So Asia Minor at the eve of Turkish invations was already populated by elements alien and hostile to the Empire that islamized swiftly and easily. As the cosmopolitan religion is not concerned with safeguarding the national identity of the people it has dominated, it dœs not bare arms in order to protect the independence of that people nor dœs it rule directly so as not to suffer from the corruption of power. Instead it enforces its will on puppet emperors or ministers who rule under the constant threat of excommunication. Let us see in more detail this basic, for our argument, concept of the ‘foreign body’. What happens when a military junta or a political party takes over power in a country? The members of that company become ministers and start to govern. What happened though in the Soviet Union and in other ‘socialist’ countries? The Bolshevik party remained clearly separate from the state, a state within the state, a power group acting as a leach. That organisation sucked dry the society it had conquered, acted as a parasite and the more the society declined the more powerful and richer it became. The more hunger and misery spread the more obvious the differences became: In every train station, even at the smallest ones, there was a special luxurious room for the party members as well as special luxurious cars on the trains. On the coasts of the Black Sea there were super-luxurious resorts with everything their perverted heart could desire. Shops with access according to each member’s position in the hierarchy of the party. Villas with all the western goods, servants, chauffeurs etc. A situation which had reached the limits of absurdity: In an international congress taking place in Poland, as the president of the Greek Pharmaceutical Association, who participated, wrote, the participants visited a polish pharmacy. On the shelves there were only eastern produced drugs, however, the person in charge opened a locked cabinet which had every product of Western companies and explained that those were only prescribed by doctors for the party members. In the Soviet Union the party remained away from state administration. However, next to all the ministers, municipality presidents, as well as military commanders there was the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

93 one having tyranical power, the one having the power to send to the Gulag camps anybody with a single sign, namely the political commissar. As Solzenitsyn writes, he had seen veteran generals, with their chest full of medals and wounds, saluting fearfully and with shaky hand a rude and insolent youth who had been appointed as the unit’s political commissar. The members of the party did not come to any risk, they were never really drafted. This is important to notice: although every single person was compulsory ‘baptised’ as a communist the party considered as communists (and provided the respective privileges…) only those that it approved as his members. Should the reader take these characteristics and place them upon the Byzantine theocratic system he will realise that they match perfectly. So perfectly that we could describe this one and then simply by changing the word ‘Soviet’ with the word ‘Byzantine’ describe the other. However, in the Byzantine regime things were worse, undisguised, and the chasm in the social body was openly provoking. The archbishops and the Œcumenical Councils enforcing their will upon the emperor was the least. Just an Byzantine snapshot: an obscene monk, just like the rude political commissars, was abusing the memory of emperor Theofilus with untold, vile language in front of his mourning wife, who rushed to apologise for her husband’s rule, realising who really run the state. What should one describe first? The extend of the so called church real estate? Attention, they took over the state but did not identify with it. Although there is state property, which ought to be used for the needs of the state, they posses the church estate which remains intact. How about the golden cowls, golden cups and other golden items that now appear in the museums as part of the history of the Greek civilisation? They are anything but that. How about the self-indulgent lifestyle of the priesthood? A small quote from the charges of the anonymous writer of the Greek Jurisprudence, which many investigators identify with A. Korais. Note that he describes the social situation at the final years of the Ottoman rule on Greece (1453-1821) when the Orthodox Church had administrative authority and governed the christian population: «How did the archbishops live in their metropolitan palaces… They eat and drink like pigs…and when they didn’t eat or drink they performe things so degrading and vile that no one could have imagined, and despite their intemperate character they become wealthier all the time, while the suffering sigh of the population are to them cool sea breezes. The bishops of Arta, Grevenâ and Jannina are the prime traitors of the tyrant, as everybody knows… The bishop of Arta betrayed the herœs of Souli. All three of them are lustful, debauchees to the extreme, whoremongers, adulterers and openly homosexual». Let’s come back to our topic, the non-drafting. «In spring 313, Constantine wrote again to the pagan governor of North Africa, exempting the clergy of the recognized Catholic Church from the burdens of civic office, what a pagan called ‘love of the home town’. …the Christians’ prayers, said Constantine were intimately KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

94 connected with the safety of the state …This enormous favour was an open encouragement to false pretence: by 320, Constantine had to legislate against rich pagans who were showing a fascinating ingenuity and were claiming exemption as alleged Christian priests. This grant was accompanied by other, positive legislation whose full scope and dated origin largely eludes us (p. 623)». That is what gave the Byzantine society its final blow. While hundreds of thousands of young people were in monastery cells the army comprised of Catalans and mercenary Turks, who were allegedly fighting against the other Turks. Because we do not want to expatiate upon this subject, we suggest that the reader investigated the classic book on the subject The Catalans in the East by Stamatiades (Karavias publications, Athens, in Greek). At which point we reached the fall of Constantinople (Istanbul) where the emperor managed to gather less that five thousand combatants since no monk or priest, not even the masses of them living in the city, accepted being drafted. This sounded the end of the Byzantine state but not of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which had already made its choices and instead of shrinking it grew bigger, and acquired complete political power, the Patriarch of Constantinople becoming Millet-I-Rum Bassi. This explains the rabid reaction of the Church against the National Uprising of 1821: The disgraceful text of the church circular under the title Paternal Teaching, to which Korais was forced to answer by issuing the Brotherly Teaching. The continuous attacks of the most known Christian scholars, like St. Athanasius Parios, who did not hesitate to shower with abuse the memory of Rigas who betraided by the Austrian government which delivered him in the hands of Turks died by torture in Belgrade. Rigas was one of the most important persons of the Revolution and the Greek Religion has proceeded to raise him to the status of Hero. Parios wrote: «The Divine Providence has shown mercy on the Christian kind… and all these who prepared their vulgar knives against their own masters, they perised by knife receiving the due payment for their raving intentions». Notice the words ‘the Christian kind’. Athanasios Parios was not an half-educated man, he was the most distinguished and eminent Christian orthodox scholar, head of the Chios School. It would be a mistake to treat him simply as a collaborator, a mere renegade in the service of the Ottoman empire. No, he was nothing of the sort. He had grasped the essence of his cosmopolitan religion. He had realised what with great effort we are trying to make the reader understand, namely that cosmopolitan religions are nationalities. He had perceived that which in order to become fully apparent it was required to appear the works of Spengler, Toynbee, Fraser. Rigas was not opposed by a bunch of illiterate and bought off orthodox Christians. The Orthodox scholars were serious advocates of orthodoxy who realised that they made up a nationality and that, to use Toynbee’s terms, the universal state of ‘Eastern Orthodox Society’ was in serious danger by anyone like Rigas who preached awareness to their great enemy, namely the traditional Greek racial nationality. We should also note the following, which shows the high and heroic intelligence of Rigas. He was no KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

95 ordinary rebel, he addressed all Balkan people in order to remind them of their own racial nationality, he was preaching in favour of the creation of a national spirit, he had realised that his enemy was the cosmopolitan circumstances. He knew that if those nations were to survive they would have to reaffirm their nationality. His superior intellect had perceived what only nowadays top intellectuals are beginning to understand, namely that peace in the Balkans and the entire world would come only through the equal partnership of completely independent national and racial states. Let us explain simply then what was happening at Rigas time, or at that of emperor Julian or at any other such time of conflict: two opposed nationalities were fighting one another, the ‘Christian kind’ vis-a-vis the Greek (or any other physical) nationality. Returning to our basic topic, the ascetic life, let’s see what is happening nowadays. It is not possible for a nation to have as an official religion one which considers the ascetic life as the highest ideal. That religion endangers the very future of the nation. We put the matter directly to the theology students of Athens University during the meeting about the relation between Byzantium and Hellenism which took place at the Philosophy Department: «Are you interested to have Hellenism future? Let’s answer this question with plain language. You support the opinion that the perfect, full of spirituality man, the one that you name in your language ‘philosopher’ is the one who enlightened by the grace of God follows the life of a monk. Tell me, please: You are very proud because as you say: 'Nowadays the grace of God is plentiful filling up the monasteries'. What will be the outcome if the grace of God decide to fall even more abundantly on me, on you and on the girl sitting beside you? There will engage in the procreation of children only the Mohammedans of Thrace? And we shall have an army composed by Mohammedans just like in Byzantium?». A nation cannot base its survival on the view that despite the basic ideals of the official religion there will be many foolish people, non-spiritual, weak to desire, village idiots who will wish to have children and be drafted. A nation cannot base its survival on the view that the official religion should be considered by its sane minded citizens as an absurdity, a leftover of a begone age. Let us get serious, this concerns the biological future of nations, it is not funny. Nations have a future only when there is embedded in the citizens the sense of national value and this demands a religion which considers society and its propagation sacred and not one which leads its best citizens to isolation. The sense of national value demands a religion which proclaims the national literature sacred and it has indigenous Gods who have walked and acted within that land. I do apologise, but in order to be a good Christian I must not defend my own country from foreign invasion but instead wear the cross of the crusader and go to defend from the Unbelievers the Holy Lands of the Middle East, mount Tabor, Bethlehem, the Golan heights. I am sorry, why have I to defend Delphi, for example, are they sacred places? Apparently not. They are merely archæological, historical, tourist sites, nothing else, as the secretary general KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

96 of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece replied when this question was put to him. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Another subject which follows from the extra-cosmical nature of the god of monotheistic religions is that it is not possible for one to become aware of him unless the God chooses to reveal himself. There is no other way but for him to reveal himself directly or through one of his representatives (Angels, Archangels etc.) to his chosen saint or prophet, as is the case for Abraham, Ezekiel or Muhammad. A necessary element then becomes Divine Revelation. This revealed knowledge is recorded by the ‘chosen’ man in a book, the Holy Book of that religion. Obviously that book becomes indispensable as the only means to finding out the first principles and the essence of the Cosmos. That book becomes, as it is easily understood, the cornerstone of monotheistic religion, there is no other way, which is why they are called religions of the book. Therefore prophets are necessary. Who are they? They are people whom the extra-cosmical God chooses to communicate with. They are held in high esteem not only because they are vehicles through which the holy book is dictated, but, most importantly, because they are able to reveal with validity and in detail when and how the final Judgement is going to come, hence supporting indirectly this religious foundation in its entirety. This ‘apocalyptic’ literature, which, as we have already said, has been produced in great volumes during Late Antiquity, when a lot of different ideologically Judaic groups fought each other for domination, is one of the main weapons of cosmopolitan religions. It assumes great influence over the masses and it always resurfaces when the cosmopolitan religions are in decline or in danger, because they just bring up ‘apocalypses’ as they bring up Satan, Satanists, Antichrist, 666 and other such paraphernalia in order to create contrariety, hatred and social polarization. Furthermore there is a strict hierarchical structure created, a clergy. It is comprised of those who have spoken with God and carry forward their experiences to others, endowing them with the apostolic succession but most importantly with the authority to interpret validly the Holy book. So, as we have shown, the very claim of an extra-cosmical God leads to there being a Divine Revelation, a Holy Bible, prophets and a strictly structured clergy. Consequently, from all the above we can infer that the viewpoint of the cosmopolitan religion about History and Society, it’s Creed, will not be based upon reality, upon scientific, historical or social analyses. Its articles of faith will be ‘apocalyptic’ and will interpret sociopolitical events as revealing circumstances whose cause and purpose lie outside the Cosmos. To them the Historical events are nothing but the pale shadowy portrayal of a giant death struggle between the invisible, immaterial, gigantic forces of the good and evil. To decipher the various human and social situations they do not seek the advice of psychology or sociology but consider them, too, as the product of the struggle of opposed forces for the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

97 control of society and men, namely Angels and Satans, Archangels with swords and Devils with tails or horns. In fact, they engage in this method of interpretation which reminds one of paranoid delirium or paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. This interpretation remains with us even nowadays (see the newly put on sale book of the Archbishop of Athens: «Battle against Satan»). However, it has also acquired its socialist side in the Marxist religion, where failures are always due to foreign intervention, for anything going wrong it is the Americans’ –instead of Satan’s– fault. The teachers in Albania preached to the little children that the enemies of socialism are everywhere, trying to initiate them to capitalism and that they should not talk to them for they will make them sign a contract. Hence they should watch carefully and report any strangers who shows up in their home village because whatever the pretences of their presence there they have come to steal their military secrets. The contract with the Devil in another more improbable version. But, perhaps it is easier to believe that there is Satan than agents interested in the secrets of the non-existent Albanian army. That is the paranoiac and irrational nature of cosmopolitan ideologies!

¨ 4.The lawless State Let us come to the subject of society and the system of government. It is obvious that each political system is a result of the pattern of first principles which society is following. Monotheism leads to monocracy, while the unsettling of the stability of the natural laws is reflected in a society without a stable system of jurisprudence. Cyrill Mango writes about the Byzantium (Byzantium, Ethnikis Trapezis publications, p.258) and the institution of the emperor: «As God rules the universe, so dœs the roman emperor rule humanity. As we have already underlined, the incarnation of Christ was designed by Divine Providence to coincide with the foundation of the roman empire which gave an end to dispute and wars, i.e. to the disorder which was caused by the division of power between many independent states. God not only determined the existence of the empire but also appointed each emperor, hence the lack of defined human laws for his election. This dœs not entail that the emperor would be always good: God in his wisdom could have selected in purpose a wicked emperor in order to punish people for their sins. The alternatives to the legal imperial rule is the usurping of the throne (tyranny) or anarchy. Tyrant is he who attempts to become emperor against the wishes of God and therefore fails. If he did succeed, God must have been on his side, hence he ceases to be un usurper. The lack of a single source of authority, namely the power of the masses (democracy) equals to chaos. »God rules humanity by inspiring the fear of hell and by promising rewards in heavens, i.e. with threats and promises. The same dœs the emperor, he governs his subjects by inspiring fear: KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

98 his enemies are thrown into jail, are exiled, flogged, blinded or killed. Even innocent people ‘serve him quailing with fear’: he can send them to war or give them unpleasant duties, but no one dares disobey him… »The emperor was as a saint and in his portraits he was pictured with a halo. His palace was also sacred (domus divina) and it was surrounded by a protective belt of seclution. His public appearances were taking place with a ceremony which was meant to symbolise the harmonic function of the universe – it also had that very name: taxis (= order). His subjects would communicate with him only by shouting rhythmically repeated acclamations, as in the Mass, and when would get an audience with him they would kneel on the floor… »The emperor transferred some of his authority to the noblemen he appointed. It is worth noting that the term archon (=potentate) defined all the people to whom there was administrational – military, political and in some cases even ecclesiastical, power given. The duty of the subjects to obey their rulers is stated clearly in the Holy Bible (Romans, part 13, 12). The Church Fathers emphasised the necessity of such an obedience for the sake of order and as a sign of respect to the one who appointed the nobility who, come to think about it, ultimately was God acting through the emperor… »The slaves, the lowest of society, had an inviolable duty, as the Holy Bible repeatedly observes, to obey their lords even if they were cruel»

¨ 5. Excursus: The ‘success’ of Christianity Let us examine the question: was Christianity a successful social movement? It was by its irresistible impetus and continuous aggrandizement that it succeeded to become the official religion of the Empire? We think that the answer is ‘no’; it had exhausted its potential and its eventual success at the time of ultimate stagnation was due to conversion of the emperor Constantine. Let us cite some remarks of R. Lane Fox (ibid.): «Although we have so much incidental material for life in the Empire, the inscriptions, pagan histories, texts and papyri make next to no reference to Christians before 250: the two fullest histories, written in the early third century, do not even mention them (p. 269)». «…its total membership was still small in absolute terms, perhaps (at a guess) only two percent of the Empire’s total population by 250 (p. 317)». «…we have only one statistic. A staff of 154 ministers of varying rank (including fifty-two exorcists) and ‘more than fifteen hundred widows and poor people’ were said by the bishop of Rome to be supported by Rome’s Christians in the year 251. The statistic does at least derive from a letter which the bishop wrote himself. From these figures Gibbon guessed that the Christians in Rome numbered 50.000 in a city of a million inhabitants and suggested a general ratio of one Christian to every twenty pagans. The guess was too high, not least because KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

99 widows and the poor were strongly represented in the Church’s membership. Even if the figure is more or less right, we cannot project a total for Rome, the capital, onto other populations in the Empire. Rome was an exceptional city, a magnet for immigrants and visitors, where Christians had rapidly put down roots. Elsewhere, Christians were distributed patchily, if at all: in the mid-third century, there was still no bishop and no church in Split and before the 250s no Christians in Libya or in the villages in the Mareotic district, connected by a road to Alexandria, which they almost adjoined. …in the 240s, Origen, the Christian intellectual, did admit that Christians were only a tiny fraction of the Empire’s inhabitants (p. 269)». Indeed, Edward Gibbon writes (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, DentEveryman, 1978, vol. i, p. 494): «The most favourable calculation, however, that can be deduced from the examples of Antioch and of Rome will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the empire had enlisted themselves under the banner of the Cross before the important conversion of Constantine». «(Lane Fox, p. 586) To Eusebius, with hindsight, Christianity had enjoined high favour in the years from 260 to 300. Connoisseurs of his history may note that he cites no details for a view which he presents as a rhetorical question. He names no Christian senators or governors and, as usual, gives no idea of the scale of increase which he assumes. The same reservations apply: the restraints on ‘mass conversion’, the long history of Christians in high places, the familiar fact, by 300, of Christians who had had a good education. If we look ahead to the first Christian councils of Constantine’s reign, we do not find Church leaders who are accustomed to a great rise in Christian numbers. They are concerned to restate the same cautious limits: there are to be no mixed marriages with pagans, if possible, and there must still be a long progress through two or three years of teaching for apprentice Christians. The need to reassert these principles may show that sometimes they were being disregarded. But it is extremely significant that the official view had not altered since c. 200. These rulings are those of a Church still caught unawares by its sudden promotion, not of one which has grown accustomed to a rising swell in the tide of conversion ». »Statements by Christians about their ‘growth’ should be read with a very critical eye… At Dura [the great border town of the East], during the 240s, the space for a Christian meeting increased from a capacity of thirty persons to one of sixty. Menbers, no doubt, were impressed by their ‘great’ advance. …[In the ‘life’ of Porphyry, bishop of Gaza, the great seaport] the text was concerned to emphasize the wonders which amazed pagan Gaza between 392 and 420, eighty to a hundred years after Constantine’s conversion. A first miracle is said to have won 127 converts in the city, a second, 64… and later wonders brought another 200 people to God. It is not too important for our purpose whether this text is historical: what matters is that its author thought the scale of conversion was suitably remarkable… If one or two hundred converts were an amazing harvest from a miracle, we can only wonder how many were won where miracles were less obliging». «…These arguments from silence may seem fragile in a period when so little is known KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

100 about everything. In one province, however, we can apply some control to it. In Egypt we have the evidence of papyri, and if Christianity was a triumphing presence in the years between 260 and 300, we might expect to find it reflected in this small but random sample of evidence: …the harvest is very thin indeed. …between 260 and 310 there is not a hint of any Christian ‘triumph’ in what evidence we have. …On this evidence, the great expansion of Christianity belongs where we would expect it, after Constantine’s victories, not before (p.290)». «[Just before 312] The Christians were not so numerous that their support had to be courted. In the total population of the Empire they were only a small minority, significant in some cities, most incospicuous in other. Since 250, their numbers had probably advanced, helped somewhat by the general hardships of the age: the advance is significant against the rate of growth of any other cult, but it shows no sign of triumph or even predominance. We may be dealing with only 4 or 5 percent of the population (p. 592)». Then, why do Constantine put all his weight to support Christianity and to impose it upon the people of the Empire? «To us, as to contemporaries, the conversion of Constantine remains an entirely unexpected event. …His conversion occured at the least auspicious moment for christian unity. In Rome itself, the Church has been without a bishop for several years in a series of disputes… In Africa, a ‘true’ Church of uncompromised Donatist Christians has broken away from their treacherous brethen. In Egypt, rigorist followers of Meletius had begun to organize a Church of their own. …in Alexandria, Arius began to pose the insoluble question of Christ’s nature in terms which appeared to debase his relation to God. …These divisions showed Christian intolerance at its worst… Never had the Church been so fatally divided (p. 609)». Constantine took a humble and disintegregating religion and elevated it to imperial status: «Constantine soon gave the Christian God the spledid material setting which his cult had lacked. In Rome, God received endowments for two particularly fine shrines, St. John the Lateran, from Constantine himself, and a palace-church, the Sessorian basilica (subsequently S. Croce in Gierusalemme), from Helena, his mother, who was already, then, a Christian. …In the 25 years between his victory and his death, Constantine ordered a sequence of huge church buildings, from Rome to the Holy Land. All were built largely at the Emperor’s expense. This deluge of Christian publicity exceeded any other programme in precious stone which was realized by a ruler in antiquity. These enormous gifts were accompanied by language in his public letters which rapidly went beyond mere toleration …in public statements since 313, Constantine had stressed how he himself, the ‘servant of God’… (p. 623)». «Pagan shrines, meanwhile, lost funds and tresures which were diverted or melted down to pay for the Christians’ publicity. …the Christians received and redistributed huge donations, some from Constantine himself. …prominent citizens were already willing to make a show of being Christian… Even so, the pagan cults were not quick to die away: they had been the religion of the majority at the time of Constantine’s convertion and not for another century did the KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

101 balance tip decisively in the Christians’ favour (p. 669)». Why then? «Constantine referred his conversion to a type of epiphany whose broad outlines were familiar in contemporary religiousness …that he and ‘all the troops’ had seen a ‘sign of the cross’ in the noonday sky… A man only sees in the sky what he is predisposed to notice or recall: evidently, Constantine was already guided by Christians in his interpretation. It is not suprising that we hear nothing about the vision until Eusebius wrote on his life, even though the event was supposed to have occured in full view of the army (p. 617)». What was the view of pagan Greek writers? «Some ascribed it to greed: to pay for Constantinople, Constantine, they say, became a Christian and plundered the pagan temples. Others ascribed it to guilt: Constantine, they said, converted to Christ after murders in his own family in 326. …other ascribed it to disease: Constantine, they said, had been a leper and had converted to Christianity when he learned that it did not exclude lepers from its company (p. 627)». Some historians think that is genuine the speech, which Constantine inscribed ‘To the Assembly of the Saints’, which is quoted in Eusebius’s ‘On the Life of Constantine’. Pehaps it is genuine, as the impression given by this document is, in reality, Constantine «believed that God’s personal Providence had guided history and was backing his own role as Emperor. God’s Providence cared for Constantine, his servant, while God’s anger beset the ‘worthless usurpers’ who had perished during his rise (p. 662)».

¨ 6. Hellenism & Monotheism, two opposed worlds At the end of this exposition, we are hopeful that the differences between traditional and monotheistic religions have been made clear. Indeed, there are not just a few differences, actually they constitute two completely opposite ideological systems. Take any statement of one of these two ideologies, reverse it and you will have a statement of the other one. This should be noted because nowadays spread a malicious piece of propaganda: While all the historians, philosophers, theologians, archæologists, agree that the Greek ideals, the Hellenic civilisation and the Greek Religion are the opposite of religions of Late Antiquity, that between the Ancient world and the christian byzantine regime there exists a complete mental and cultural chasm, a non-continuity; nowadays there appear most peculiar articles and books, distorting ancient texts or using the known Jewish forgeries of the Alexandrine times of the Orphic texts, the Judaic Orphica, to show off what those ancient fanatics wanted to prove: that the Greeks had stolen their wisdom from Moses and the Mysteries or KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

102 the philosophers, like Plato or Chryssipus, actually taught monotheism. These calumnies are so outrageous, silly and obviously propagandistic that they are not even worth answering. Whœver has fallen victim to this propaganda due to ones profound ignorance on this subject should think first that the point here is not to win over a piece of text, this is a conflict between two completely different worlds, attitudes, worldvisions. The reader can consult any work dealing with Late Antiquity, any encyclopædia, is there any doubt that two worlds collided? It wasn’t even two civilisations, in Toynbee’s terms, but two prime worldvisions. There were two separate prime fundamental principles, the principle of the Divinity of the Cosmos (as Athenagoras accuses Plato: «Plato thought of the world as God and that is what he inherited from Orpheus») and the principle of the existence of an extra-cosmical intelligence. These two principles are so different that they created two different kinds of civilisations. The principle of Divinity of the Cosmos created all the traditional civilisations, while the principle of the extra-cosmical intelligence created the Judaism, the monotheistic religions of Late Antiquity, Christianity in all its offsprings and Islam. We believe that the reader has realised that Marxism is a religion and no long discussion is required about that. Besides, in Marxism there is no lack of worshipping elements, the worship of tombs, the adoration of martyrs, of remains and mummies, the working out of a complete church calendar, the literary production mimicking medieval legendaries of saints and the open aggression against the world for obscuring the ideal Beyond. Toynbee writes: «The belief that what I have called the spiritual presence in and behind the universe was concentrated in a single transcendent humanlike god, involved the further belief that nothing else in the universe is divine… God placed the whole of his nonhuman creation at the disposal of his human creatures to exploit in any way that they might choose… The salutary respect and awe with which man had originally regarded his environment was thus dispelled by Judaic monotheismin the versions of its Israelite originators, and of Christians and Muslims… Communism is an outcome of Christianity… I diagnose Communism as a religion, and specifically as a new representative of the Judaic species, in which the Judaic mythology has been preserved under the disguise of a monotheistic vocabulary (‘Choose Life’, Oxford University Press, p.179, 1978)». ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ Let us end up with the epilogue of the story: In the first chapter we have seen what the traditional religion and the traditional values are. In the second chapter we followed up the circunstances of the birth and growth of a cosmopolitan religion and we stood especially to Late Antiquity and to the course of KEIMENA TOY ¶ A N . M A P I N H A¶O TO ¶EPIO¢IKON « E § § H N I K O N ¶ A N £ E O N »

103 Christianity. We discern three stages in the full development of the organisms that we call cosmopolitan religions: The period of the birth and the growth of the cosmopolitan religion we label as its first stage. On the second stage the cosmopolitan religion succeeds in conquering a state and so becoming a state within the state. Then razes to the ground all the elements of the previous civilization, and so comes to third stage of its development in which every other religion, ideology or adverse opinion is banned and reigns in a absolutist byzantine state of complete censorship.




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