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On being a pagan

Like my previous article (Against the modern world?), the title refers to a book (the English translation of Comment Peut-On Être Païen of Alain de Benoist). Also again I do not (entirely) agree with the content of the book. The title is slightly ironic and suggestive, that is all. I think you will not be surprised when I tell you that I do not call myself ‘pagan’ and even less ‘heathen’. I don’t like these terms that Christians in past decades (and sometimes still) used to separate people with another religion from themselves. The terms were and are mostly used in a degenerating manner. Some people have taken the terms, and transformed them in ‘geuzennamen’. This is an (as far as I know) untranslatable term which means that people use a degenerating term to discern themselves and the term becomes ‘good’ or a name to be proud of. In this… Read More »On being a pagan

A Western Tradition?

“…We think that if a Western tradition could be rebuilt it would be bound to take on a religious form in the strictest sense of this word, and that this form could only be Christian; for on the one hand the other possible forms have been too long foreign to the Western mentality, and on the other it is only in Christianity – and we an say still more definately in Catholicism – that such remnants of a traditional spirit as still exist in the West are to be found. Every ‘traditionalist’ venture that ignores this fact is without foundation and therefore inevitably doomed to failure; it is self-evident that one can build only upon something that has a real existence, and that where there is lack of continuity, any reconstruction must be artificial and cannot endure.” Thus says the primal “Traditionalist” René Guénon on pages 26 and 27 of… Read More »A Western Tradition?

Slang

Maybe you don’t immediately realise this, but slang or dialect is about the only remaining regional/local tradition that is left in our modern age. It is also rapidly fading away. I was so fortunate to be raised in a small in village and in a family that still spoke (speaks) the local dialect. On elementary school we of course did speak “general civilized Dutch”, because you had to be able to speak it, especially when you would go to work in a city. Actually, dialect was already looked upon with ‘a skew eye’ as we say and many parents no longer taught their children the local language. Of course this was also due to the fact that many people who work in Eindhoven (and may have come from anywhere in the Netherlands), wanted to live outside the city and ended up in ‘my region’. But then again, as soon as… Read More »Slang

Against the modern world?

The non-Traditionalist Muslim Haji Muhammad Legenhausen has written a very nice essay called Why I am not a Traditionalist which is online on a few places on the internet. Legenhausen gives a lengthy and critical comment on the Traditionalist School and some leading Traditionalists. On a few occasions, Legenhausen surely has a point, but his overall critique is fairly easy to shoot holes through. That is not the purpose of my article though. “Traditionalism [and] its rejection of modernity” Legenhausen writes: “The basic point is that nothing should be accepted or rejected merely because it is modern and likewise, nothing should be accepted or rejected merely because it is traditional. There is much that is good in modernity, and much that is good in traditional societies. There is much that is bad in modernity, and much that is bad in traditional societies.” Personally I didn’t get the idea that Traditionalism… Read More »Against the modern world?