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Passages: Studies in Traditionalism and Traditions – Volume II (journal)

In February 2025 Volume II of Passages was published. Again it is an almost 400 page journal. 12 Authors contributed their essays. Many have been translated to English by Prav owner Jafe Arnold.

The authors include familiar names such as Evgeny Nechkasov (Askr Svarte) and Alexander Dugin. The only other name that is familiar to me is Veleslav Cherkasov. Of the rest I may or may not have read something before.

The theme for Volume II “the language of Tradition”, a subject familiar to Nechkasov and Dugin, but obviously also to other authors. Another theme is contemporary Traditionalism. In more than one essay critique is expressed on Traditionalism as it was presented a century ago (but also praise), so you not only get repetitions of familiar themes, but also ‘updates’ of Traditionalistic thinking so to say.

As with most Prav publishers, the level is academic, subjects often difficult yet mostly interesting. Symbols, language, music, theology, but also native faith, metaphysics and critique on the modern world. It is all here. Less ‘political’ than the first volume too.

Certainly an interesting publication, but not exactly easy reading.

2025 Prav Publishing, isbn 1952671248

Passages: Studies in Traditionalism and Traditions – Volume I (journal)

Looking for contemporary Traditionalistic writings, I ran into a recently published (December 2023) first volume of a new journal. The editors have seen the coming and going of journals such as Luvah, Sophia, Sacred Web, Tyr and The Initiate. None of them is currently active, so it was high time for a new journal.

The foreword seems to promise a contemporary, spiritual approach to Traditionalism. The content is actually more political, Evola-like in approach with a lot of philosophy, mostly that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), some psychology even.

The contributors are mostly from the Slavic and Italian ‘spheres’. Even though the chief editor is American and we run into Collin Cleary and Troy Southgate, most essays had to be translated to English. There are familiar and unfamiliar names (to me). Alexander Dugin is probably the most famous name, but we also find a text by Askr Svarte / Evgeny Nechkasov (not unexpectedly).

There is a lot ‘against the modern world’, Heidegger (philosophy), the social/political side of the ideas of Guénon and Evola and similar subjects. Not uninteresting, but I would not have minded to read more from and about Traditionalism today and/or the more religious side of it.

The journal has almost 400 pages. It makes an interesting read, it does indeed fill a gap, but I would like a wider (other?) approach to Traditionalism in a future volume.

2023 Prav Publishing, isbn 1952671159

Traditie Jaarboek 2024

15 Years after the last Traditie magazine a few people picked up the idea to once again create a physical publication. Not a magazine, but a proper journal, one to publish annually. Here is the first issue of the new incarnation now called Traditie; jaarboek voor traditionele erfgoedbeleving in de Lage Landen, or ‘Tradition; yearbook for traditional living heritage in the Low Countries’. Like before, it is written in Dutch.

Like the publication of days past, the new journal has A4 size, but this time 120 pages. Within the covers you will find full colour glossy pages filled with 23 texts differing in size from half a page to 17 pages. For those who know (or remember) the previous incarnation, there will be some familiar names. Herman Vanhove (still chairman), Benny Vangelder and Koenraad Logghe, to name a few. Good to learn that there are also new names to be found.

The subjects go from the symbolism of the knot (Logghe), heralds and guardian spirits (of the late Aat van Gilst), building symbolism (Wolf Pyck), Midsummer and Midwinter (Axnot Wedasunu), fate and magic (Lianne Kooistra), sacred kingship (Vangelder) to interviews, poets and songs. I myself contributed a text prompted by the publication of the English translation of Arvid Ystad’s book The Freemasons in the Viking Age, but I enlarged the subject based on my Masonic Heathens website placing Ystad in the context of other authors who have dealt with similar themes.

As you can see, a varied publication, available for € 20,- plus shipping costs. Click on the cover to get your copy.

2024 Traditie vzw

The Fenris Wolf 1-3 – Carl Abrahamsson (2020)

“Occulture” author Abrahamsson used to have a journal which are now made available again. Here we have the first three volumes original published between 1989 and 1993. The total number of pages is well over 300.

Within the pages you can find texts of Abrahamsson and range of author authors, but also interviews. There are a lot of noticeable name. Genesis P-Orridge, William Buroughs, Kenneth Anger, Freya Asswyn, the Order of Nine Angles, Anton LaVey and more.

There is too much satanism here for my liking, especially towards the end, but ironically it are a few of the texts of LaVey that I found most amusing. Much of the other texts are too serious. The background information about people such as P-Orridge and Anger is interesting though.

There are short texts, poems, but also very long essays. Overall, there was not a whole lot that I found very interesting, so I do not think I am going to catch up with the next reissued issues. At least not any time soon.

2020 Trapart Books, isbn 9198624253

Aristokratia IV – K. Deva (editor) (2017)

I think I am about back up-to-date with the Manticore journal publications. Contrary to the previous two reviews of this publisher “Aristokratia IV” is indeed a journal with an editor and essays of different authors.

Being a Manticore publication there is a lot of Nietzsche of Evola. Being an “Aristokratia” this journal is of a more political / sociological nature. The texts are about a variety of subjects. The opening article is about revolutions in Russia. Then follows Gwendolyn Taunton with a text about the “more Nietzschian than Nietzsche” Italian author Gabriele D’Unnunzio; an interesting text about Nietzsche’s philosophy in practice. Other more biographical texts are about Max Stirner, Emile Zola and Neville Goddard. Further there are sociological and philosophical texts that usually have a slight Traditionalist undertone.

The book ends with a collection of quotes (or so it seems, aphorisms at least) and a couple of book reviews.

The “Aristokratia” series of Manticore is not my preferred line of books, but they usually have a couple of nice texts and going a bit off the paths of my usual literature does not hurt.

2017 Manticore Press, isbn 0994595859

Acta Macionica volume 27 (6017)

Even though the latest volume has been available or a couple of months, it took some effort to get hold of a copy. #27 Is again a massive journal of almost 400 pages with 21 essays. As we grew used to, the first texts are written-out talks held at the Ars Macionica research lodge. This includes the only text in English, one of David Harrison about Lord Byron.

The opening text in in Dutch and from the hand of the current Worshipful Master of the study lodge Koenraad Logghe. The author investigates how Freemasonry fits in the research of esotericism of scholars such as Antoine Faivre, Kocku von Stuckrad and Wouter Hanegraaff. Logghe ends his lengthy text with a very interesting Traditionalistic take on Freemasonry which is not entirely unlike the books of Fabio Venzi that I recently reviewed.

After this we alternately get a text in French and Dutch (and one in English), but towards the end the texts in French start to prevail. As I said before, I can read French, but not too well, so I simply tried to see how interesting the French texts were to see if I should put in some effort. One of the more interesting of these is about Paulus Riccius, the Christian Cabalist (hence the cover of the book) which seems to contain mostly fairly common information about (Christian) Cabala but with some links to Freemasonry. I would not mind a translation of this text!

Other texts contain one about doors and inside versus outside, 18th century Freemasonry, Der Zauberberg of Thomas Mann, women in (adoptive) Freemasonry by the Dutch scholar Jan Snoek who wrote in French, again some texts about Freemasonry during WWII and other subjects.

As always Acta Macionica makes a nice read, but only the texts in languages that I master I read attentively. The publication is not too expensive, so that is not too bad. Many of the 27 volumes are still available, so just have a look at the tables of content to see if any of them might interest you.

2017 Ars Macionica

Aristokratia III – K. Deva (editor) (2015)

I guess I am quite at a loss trying to follow Primordial Tradition, erm… Numen Books, or was it Manticore Press? Also the website changed a couple of times and there are several channels on Facebook. So by the time I heard of Gwendolyn Taunton’s latest book called Tantric Traditions, I discovered that by then I had missed two volumes in the Aristokratia series and a book called Operative Traditions. Time to catch up!

Aristokratia is the more political branch of the series of journals. This third volume is subtitled “Hellas”, so in most essays you will run into Plato and Greek democracy, but there is also a lot of Evola, Nietzsche and a few texts that have nothing to do with either Greece or politics, probably texts that fitted better in this journal than in any of the others.

Politics, not entirely my subject. As expected there is a lot of criticism towards democracy, contemporary culture and society and, as the title of the journal suggests, a (new) aristocracy that has to be built in order for the world to survive.

The most interesting article is one of the ‘out of place’ texts and speaks about how Mircea Eliade actually saw Traditionalism, Guénon and Coomaraswamy. Eliade is often seen as a Traditionalist (light), but this is a bit of a one-sided view on the man it seems.

From ancient politics to more recent ones and even a manifesto to build a new form of society, these are the subject that you will find in this journal. The more ‘practical’ side of contemporary Traditionalism so to say.

As I said, not the most interesting of the Manticore journal series to me, but it is always nice to read newly written texts of living persons with unpopular ideas. Volume IV lays ready to be read, so await a review of that one later on.

2015 Manticore Press, isbn 0994252536

Aristokratia II * K. Deva (editor) (2014)

It is good that Amazon recommended me this book, because I do not recall having heard of it before they did. It becomes a bit blurry. Like the first Aristokratia, this journal is published by Manticore Press. Since it looks like the journals that are nowadays published under the name of Numen Books, I simply ‘tagged’ this book ‘Primordial Traditions’, the precursor of Numen Books. But, Numen Books will remain Numen Books and Primordial Traditions seems to come rising from its ashes, so I might have to divide them afterall.
In any case, “Aristokratia” forms the more political arm of Primordial Traditions. The journal comes with 320 pages consisting of 17 essays and 7 book reviews. Three articles are from the hand of Gwendolyn Taunton (another reason to see the link) who delivered some very nice texts. Especially her “Emperor Of The Sun” is an interesting read. Taunton takes the theories of Dumézil a step further and more practically (in contast to Dumézil’s theoretical approach) applies it to far Eastern polics in the past. In another article Taunton aims to portray Julius Evola’s actual ideas by going beyond the characterisations of supporters and opposers. Some other authors we know from the first volume of this journal. Like I said, “Aristokratia” is a more political journal and some essays not only describe the state of contemporary politics, but also offer new insights and ideas. Not all essays are political though. Some are more philosophical and/or tradionalistic.
The journal starts off wonderfully, but in the last third there are a couple of texts that I did not find too appealing and did not read them very attentively.
All in all another interesting journal though and a good addition to the ‘Primordial Traditions series’.
2014 Manticore Press, isbn 0987559834, Aristokratia website

Heidens Jaarboek 2013

The 11th ‘heathen yearbook’ is again around a 100 pages, but to reach this, a large part is printed in a smaller font. This large part is a translation (into Dutch, the language of this publication) of several paragraphs of Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Relgionsgeschichte. Indeed, not every Dutchman likes to read German. Besides, the books of De Vries are not easy to find (or expensive) and there are some Dutch heathens who like make translations. Their current project is the massive Altgermanische. The paragraphs printed are about giants, ghosts, goblins and the like.
The next text is a heavily illustrated investigation of the heart symbol by Gerard. He found the symbol in two forms all over the world and reaches some surprising conclusions.
Editor Boppo Grimmsma wrote a text called Runes In Frisia or ‘Frisian runes’. Not many rune-inscriptions have been found in Frisia, but Grimmsma argues that the Frisian ‘Futhorc’ is not entirely the same as the often compared Anglo-Saxon ‘Futhorc’. Some investigators even distinguish between the two and speak about Frisian runes found in the UK. Grimmsma tells us about the development of the runes and the differences between the two mentioned Futhorcs.
Now follow three very different stories of 999 words that were based on the same photo and read at the Friday-night of the 2012 Yule weekend.
A nice peek into the daily, heathen lives of previous king Gerard and (by now also previous) queen Weorþan is granted in the form of an interview with the two.
The last article is of Axnot van Fivelgo. He initially intended to write an article about his investigations into faerytales, but when he found out that most people have to background whatsoever in this subject, he turned his article into an introduction into this field of investigation. His nice text refers to authors and methods that I have come accross in the comparable field of comparitive myth. Lots has been catalogued and structured in both fields in the past century. The author also gives a few faerytales to illustrate his search, starting with a Dutch faerytale that is older than the books of the brothers Grimm.
As always the ‘heathen yearbook’ is a nice publication with scientific and lighter material. It comes nicely printed and is not expensive. The availability is limited though, so if you want your copy, click on the cover and order it rapidly.

Aristokratia * K. Deva (editor) (2013)

You probably heard the story before, but in case you do not, once upon a time there was a magazine called Primordial Traditions. The best articles were published in a book with the same name and later Primordial Traditions became a series of journals, intially all with the word “tradition” in the title. The publisher changed names to Numen Books and now publishes both journals and ‘normal’ books. Besides Northern, occult, etc. traditions there was initially the plan to make a really Traditionalistic issue. This idea was later taken into a larger subject so now we have “Aristokratia”. Also it is presented as a journal of its own, not published by Numen books and not under the name of Gwendolyn Toynton/Taunton, however her hand in the project is clear. Aristokratia, that rings Nietzsche does it not? Indeed, the German philosopher is present in virtually every essay in this journal. Taunton opens the journal with ‘the real Nietzsche’ and his “aristocratic radicalism”. The article also clearly shows how aristocracy is looked at in this journal. There is a variety of essays to be found. Articles about philosophers such as Emil Cioran and Azsacra Zarathurstra (of the Shunya revolution), (of course) a text about Evola and some about Guénon, anti-modernists and writing not about someone, but of someone such as the amusing aphorism-style (and therefor very ‘quotable’) “Confrontation with nothingness” by Brett Stevens. Especially towards the end the texts are more Traditionalistic than philosophical or political, like my own “Traditionalism vs Traditionalism”.
All in all the journal became twice the size of earlier journal in these series and it again became a nice collection of texts, some of which are more interesting than others, but like its predecessors, “Aristokratia” is a good buy if you like not too academic, but also not too loose a book about subjects that matter to only a few of us.
2013 Manticore Press, isbn 9780987158185, Aristokratia website