Fascinating stuff.
Indeed, thanks for posting.
I can only find the 1875-following videos, would like to see the period from the late 17-th century onward… oh well.
They only made those four episodes.
JJ posted this. Which got me looking into the Great Books of the Western World and led me to Adler. If you drill down into his page, you will come across this list, his list of the 102 “great ideas” (he explains elsewhere what he means by this) which have constituted the core ideas of the “great conversation” that hs been going on since the dawn of history.
I think this is awesome but I also think it is deficient. This list is to “what you need to know to live life to its fullest” what a librarian’s index is to everything you know. It is wider and deeper, yet less relevant, than “what you need to know to live life to its fullest.” The idea of an astrological approach to knowledge is to avoid the “librarian’s index” approach to organizing knowledge. What is the sense and order of his top-level topics? There isn’t any order I can detect. It just happens to be the blocks into which he found he could most conveniently arrange the atomistic ideas that be started out with.
And please note that my criticism is offered with respect - Adler is clearly a broadly-based scholar. Neverthless, I think there is a lot of missing and “useless” knowledge represented in the encyclopedic approach to organizing human knowledge. A more correct method of organization must begin with introspection, metaphor and deductive extension of these metaphors, at least to the point where they are less useful than the direct study of particular facts and deductive arguments based on reason.
In fact, I think this illustrates my point of why the mystical should not be banished. It’s always there, whether you acknowledge it or not. The only difference is that refusing to acknowledge it simply handicaps your ability to really organize your approach to acting, that is, living life. But I definitely agree with Adler’s goal as illustrated by the Aristotle quote on his homepage, “If there is some end of the things we do…will not knowledge of it, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.” Indeed.
Clayton -
Mostly propaganda but at least you get a crystal-clear picture of the public image they intend to project.
And, for whatever it’s worth:
Clayton -
The Bourbon would become king of France if the monarchy where to be reinstated tomorrow? What about the Orlean and Bonaparte Houses?
Yet, surprised they managed to mention Crown Prince Leka ahead of the Italian guy. Let’s delight in such small acts of revenge.
@Merlin: Yeah, I don’t think the list was exactly constructed by a scholar of European monarchy… but I thought it might be eye-opening for folks unfamiliar with the fact that there even are still pretenders to the unoccupied European thrones… 
Clayton -
Regarding the second the video, I had not realized that Wilhelm II was the granchild of Queen Victoria. So, in reality, WWI was a war between cousins, most of which were descendants of Queen Victoria, who apparently kept them in check while she was alive. Her descendants were, from the Central Powers, Wilhelm II (Germany) and, from the Allies, George V (Great Britain) and Nicolas II (Russia).
But why would cousins go to war against each other?
EDIT: From what I have been able to dig up, Woodrow Wilson had royal blood, but I do not know if he was related to the cousins.
They didn’t. They were puppets obviously.
Note the last sentence: ‘A “flurry of telegrams” between the Kaiser and the Tsar led to the cancellation of Russian general mobilization by the Tsar on 29 July, but this was resumed two days later.’
LOL - if you watch the first video series on aristocracy I posted above, there is a beautiful remark from one of the commentators on a book about class power in Britain (can’t remember the title) and it contains an illustration showing the familial relations between Lloyd George (PM), the monarch, foreign secretary, etc. etc. The commentator was around when the book was printed and he remarks that he thought to himself that the pinnacle of power in Britain really was startlingly small in terms of blood relations, but then, he notes that most of these people couldn’t be in the same room with one another because they hated each other so bitterly. So, it just goes to show that sibling rivalry (and its extensions) is every bit as powerful a motivating force as kin loyalty. With an army in hand, I suppose that blood relations means next to nothing, or worse, only stokes the rivalry.
Clayton -
I didn’t say that intra-family conflict was impossible, I merely said that it wasn’t the motivating factor in the beginning of the Great War. If you think the desire for that war had anything to do with the policies of the heads of state or ‘national interests’, you are missing a great deal. Just look at what happened to the monarchs as a result of the war. All - except for the insignificant George V - were deposed (the Bolshevik coup should be considered part of WWI - in fact it was probably the main purpose of the war).
If that is the case, then I wonder how many times Prince Harry has tried to kill Prince William.
@The Muff: Listen carefully to this story.
Clayton -
Are you referring to this?
Prince Charles: I imagined they tried to kill me so they could walk off with my ponies.
Everyone: LOLs.
Prince Harry: And the rest.
Yes. I feel like it’s a bit of a peek behind the curtain. I don’t know if they actively tried to kill him, but it’s a rather odd remark isn’t it? Especially after the way Charles underscores the “used to” at the beginning of the segment. We used to play polo together. Implied: never again. Perhaps it’s just a story of an aging Dad unable to keep up with his sons. But at the very least it is revealing of the tension. He specifically calls out and ridicules Harry for thinking he was “snoring.” Perhaps he felt that their response to the mishap was unduly lackadaisical and that their unenergetic response to his accident was indicative of antipathy. Or perhaps there’s more to the story than is publicly known. Either way, I think it is a peek behind the curtain.
Clayton -
The magic of inbreeding. Perhaps if the European Houses had been more open- (or eugenic-)minded in their choice of spouses (or at least in their choice of actual biological mothers) most would still be around.
@Merlin: It’s a tough one. The history of monarchy is replete with the (material) successes of inbreeding. The British seem to have invented a new model - marry someone of lower rank, produce offspring, then have her bumped off. I wonder if Kate ever wakes up in a cold sweat.
Clayton -
Yes, the effects of WWI and WWII on European monarchy are remarkable. In light of the experience of the monarchies during the French Revolution, it is impossible to believe they were all so naive as to consider deposition or even regicide impossible and ignore them out of sheer hubris.
There is a rule of history that I think Rothbard mentions somewhere to the effect that the aggressor usually wins… and this tells us that most wars are started for a purpose and the outcome of the war is evidence that indicates its ultimate purpose.
You remarked above that Nicholas and William were puppets - I LOL’d because that is definitely not orthodox history. My question is: whose puppets? Who could possibly have the leverage to turn a man commanding a vast army into a puppet? Can you point me towards articles/books along these lines or provide your own summary?
I’ve always been intensely interested in the back-story of WWI, in particular, but also WWII. I took a college class just covering the history of WWI and I was absolutely stunned by the grotesque brutality of that war. WWII gets all the History channel coverage but WWI was far more brutal - the difference in the makeup of civilian vs. soldier deaths is also telling of the degradation of European culture wrought by WWI. The young men who fought in WWI were also the ones who died - they were the product of a chivalrous and decent culture however grotesque and evil their leaders were. But that war changed Europe forever and the young men who fought WWII killed many more civilians than fellow-soldiers, again at the behest of even more grotesque and evil leaders. Here is Hoppe delivering a eulogy for that lost culture.
Clayton -
Those key in establishing the Federal Reserve were the same people who financed Trotsky and co. and essentially controlled the US government during WWI. They were also linked to the financiers/oligarchs of the governments who pushed for war - Britain (by influencing Russia) and Austria-Hungary. They had been financially supporting war against Russia and formenting its downfall for at least a decade before WWI. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course, and it all extends into WWII also.
I’d suggest you begin with the following if you haven’t already read them:
Anthony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution - http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/ Don’t ask me why it’s on a site for Reformed theology!
Albert Jay Nock, The Myth of a Guilty Nation - available on mises.org, deals with the machinations of Britain in pushing Russia towards mobilisation and war.
I also suggest you research the Young Turk Revolution, in particular just who those so-called ‘Young Turks’ were (see also the German and Hungarian Revolutions). If you want to know more, PM me. This is all just a part of various conspiracies far more extensive than the operations of the Order of the Garter.
Also and especially in regard to your comment about turning someone who commands vast armies into a puppet: those vast armies could only be effectively mobilised through access to the sums of money controlled by this -and other - group of financiers. Thus who was it that really controlled the ability - or inability - to call upon vast armies? With respect to the monarchs, Franz Joseph and to a slightly lesser extent Wilhelm II were beholden to these interests for finance. The UK government was in the same situation, and it was through their insistence that Russia began to mobilise its military and by doing this pushed the Central Powers into war (who, in accordance with the Schlieffen Plan and like Hitler against the USSR, knew that if they wanted any chance of victory they had to strike ASAP). Thus the continental monarchs were either directly (Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II) or indirectly (Nicholas II via the British government) puppets of the same interests.
I don’t have to ask, I can tell you in one word: post-millenialism.
Clayton -
Playing Cards, Astrology and the Virtues
So, I bought a deck of Tarot cards as I mentioned some time ago. After scrounging around through used bookstores, I have come out a bit disgruntled as there isn’t really any rhyme or reason to the deck. The closest thing is to split the deck into two sub-decks, the first (Minor Arcana) being very close to an ordinary playing card deck and the latter being tied to Jewish Q’balah and the Sephiroth (Tree of Life) which is based on the Hebrew alphabet and Jewish mystical associations with that alphabet.
The latter is fairly uninteresting to me as it is rooted in the particulars of Jewish culture, which I am not a part of, so I can’t “connect” to it. However, the similarity of the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana to a standard playing deck piqued my curiosity.
There are four suits as with standard playing cards but 14 cards in each suit instead of 13 as with the standard deck. The extra card is the “Knight”, an additional face card to the King, Queen and Jack (or Page). Many sources associate each of the nine “pip” cards in every suit (36 total) with each “decan” in the astrological calendar. But this arrangement works just as well with the standard deck, so my curiosity was really piqued and I dug further.
There are a lot of beautiful associations between a standard playing deck and basic astrological metrics:
- There are two colors - red and black. These correspond to the astrological polarities: Male/Female, Day/Night, and so on
- There are 13 cards per suit. There are roughly 13 sidereal months in a year (the Moon returns to the same position with respect to the fixed stars 13 times in a year). There are thirteen weeks per quarter (season).
- There are 52 cards in a deck. There are 52 weeks in a year. A week is seven days, each day corresponding to one of the visible planets.
- There are 4 suits. There are 4 seasons in a year. There are four astrological elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water)
- There are 12 signs and 3 “decans” within each sign. By arranging Ace-3, 4-6, 7-9 of each suit with a sign from the zodiac, all the “pip” cards can be matched to the entire zodiac. There are roughly 12 synodic months in a year (there are about 12 new moons in a year)
- This leaves the face cards. Each of the face types (King, Queen, Jack) corresponds to one of the cardinalities: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable
Surprisingly, this led me to the connection to the four cardinal virtues. Each of the virtues can be associated with an element (I have found a source that associates Fire:Fortitude, Earth:Prudence, Air:Justice and Water:Temperance. Still looking for an antique source for this.
The association of the elements with virtues, however, is really the crucial step to understanding the Zodiac. The original idea of “astro-liberalism” is that the basic “lay of the mental landscape”, so to speak, that is contained within the various astrological traditions is a map of the human heart itself. At the center is the Sun, the self, being-qua-being. It is connected to its planets (means) in order to satisfy its own ends (its connections to the rest of the Universe). Surrounding us at great distance are the “fixed stars”, the Miky Way, the Primum Mobile, the “unalterable facts of reality”. These are the laws of reality, the fixed background against which our life is orientated. This is no less the case in terms of social facts than it is in terms of astronomical facts.
The four cardinal virtues (Plato and Aristotle roughly agreed on the content of these virtues) were so named by St. Ambrose because all other virtues depend or “hinge” on these. Without these virtues, the development of other virtues is hopeless. Virtue is the “ruler”, “guide” or “heuristic” by which an individual can structure his life so that he is automatically oriented to almost always make the right decision in any given circumstance. The old aphorism, “Honesty is the best policy” is a construct that really captures the essence of virtue. “ is the best policy.” Virtue is the boiled-down, compressed version of the life-lessons that exist in the corpus of social knowledge handed down to us on the backs of the billions and billions of anatomically modern human beings who have lived out their lives before us, stretching back at least a few hundred thousand years.
So, we have now formed the foundation for a positive moral philosophy! At the center of this philosophy is satisfaction in a technical sense; ataraxia. It is the state of peaceful repose and fulfilment in which no regret, anxiety or unease exists. Happiness, in the most general sense. To this center, the upright individual is always striving. Arranged around this center at four cardinal points are the cardinal virtues: Fortitude (endurance, courage in the face of difficulty), Prudence (wisdom, right-thinking), Justice (regard for uprightness in self and others, disdain for corruption), Temperance (self-control). By applying these virtues in the past (memory), present (behavior) and future (planning) and by applying these virtues in how we initiate action, how we maintain our affairs, and how we adapt to circumstances, we have what is essentially a Zodiacal chart of a positive moral philosophy.
But why bother with the Zodiac? Why not just expound the virtues on their own merits? Well, there is no necessary reason to tie it to the Zodiac except the reasons already mentioned - astrology is a kind of metaphorical switching-yard where all areas of human knowledge can be slammed together in a gigantic particle-accelerator of metaphors, tying together many fields of study, with the hopes that something insightful and new might come out of it. In addition, it acts as a very useful mnemonic, aiding in the memorization and adaptation of this scattered knowledge to particular circumstances in one’s life. What’s the point of reading Plato’s exposition of the virtues if you rarely actually apply any of it to life decisions because it’s lost back there in the unorganized recesses of your mind?
Since we have begun with the very fount of human action itself - ataraxia - we are really talking about the most important facts that an individual should learn and know. Unlike most of the other things you might read and study where a loosely organized, sloshing-about in the skull is sufficient, this is something that deserves to be carefully organized and self-inculcated so it is at least as ready at hand as your knowledge of day-to-day tasks at work. There are other, valid ways of organizing the virtues. This is not an attempt at moralistic imperialism, trying to squeeze out other points-of-view. The idea is that - as a practical matter - the Platonic virtues are no worse starting point than any other exposition of virtue, hence, it is as good as any other for memorization, with the added benefit that the mnemonic has already been worked by others.
Clayton -