Wolves & the Wild

Aristocracy for Our Time

Spiritual Desolation

The gods have long abandoned us. We will make them return.

If modernity was characterized by spiritual sobriety, our present condition is one of spiritual autism. Just as autistics interpret, say, status, to be an article of blind faith, and earnestly attempt to mathematically model the dynamics which underly it, so too do we grope with sterile philosophy and theology at the meaning, significance, and experience of imminent divinity which our ancestors matter-of-factly promise us they knew.

Perhaps status is just an explicit desirability ledger, the autist thinks to himself, they don’t *really* intuitively feel it when they see others, that’d be absurd!

Achilles didn’t really hear Athena’s voice in the heat of battle, it’s just a colorful hallucinatory metaphor for the rush one feels in the heat of battle.

Some of us, in our hubris, assert that the religious experience is merely a sentimental indulgence for simpler minds. Others recognize their loss and fumble to restore what time has wrested from them. We need to return to tradition. We need to emphasize local communities. We need to read Muh Great Books. We all need to get along and love. This is cargo cultism; these activities naturally attend spiritedness, not vice versa. We need to kill individualism, materialism, capitalism, Marxism, postmodernism, ___. Just as pornography does not cause but rather is a cope for sterility, for a lack of embodied desire, postmodernism is a cope for spiritual deadness. Foucault didn’t kill meaning, he’s with you at the funeral, striving to lift your spirits. Postmodernism’s sin is not that it kills, but rather that it draws out death. We need to rediscover the spirit in the unconscious mind with meditation, psychedelics, and talk therapy. An autist will find emotional texture in his C++ Bayesian model before these things yield soul to you.

The spirit of the West is in fact dead, long dead. Mechanical inertia drove its corpse, the material and sociological order which grew in and on this spiritual matrix, to march on for a century or so, but the rotting flesh is rapidly falling off.

Such a process is hardly unique to our time and place; it is, I daresay, normal. We are not the only men the gods have abandoned. The gods of Babylon, Mycenae, and the Andes all walked as men, then spoke through idols, then kings, then sober priests, then entranced oracles, before eventually fleeing to the heavens. Abandoned by their gods, these great empires crumbled in the span of years.

Pizarro and a handful of Spaniards conquered a golden empire whose Incas had forsaken their gods, and had been forsaken in turn. Scattered invaders from the North and across the sea crushed a mighty Greek empire whose Wanax was no longer a god among men. Godless Assyrians stuck entire Bronze Age theocracies alive on sharp stakes.

Men desperately begged their gods to return. They never did. Why do gods leave and orders fall? Better: whence do gods and their orders come?

The Sun Smiles on Cuzco

Let us prepare to meet Uscovilca, my Lord. It will bring us honor to die in defense of this, the city of our grandfathers.

Not long ago, you sparred together with your companions with blunted maces as boys. Now, the dozen of you are the only souls in all of Cuzco. They are good men, and follow you to a certain death solely out of fear of the gods and love and loyalty for you, their captain, who have distinguished yourself in virtue.

You know that you must die for Cuzco, but it still pains you to look into their eyes, knowing how shortly the light will be snuffed out from them, and how needless it all is. Your coward father, hiding in his mountaintop fortress with the population of Cuzco, refuses to join you, and has given the city up to the invader, Uscovilca. Your coward banners, idling in their districts, refuse to join you — until you prove yourself, so they say.

The cowardice of the weak and wicked condemns the good and true.

You set off beyond the city, to avoid discouraging your companions with your rage and despair. Just outside of earshot, you fall to your knees and yell with all your heart

Lord God, who gave me a man’s form, come to my aid, not on account of myself, but on account of these good men who have come to die for you.

You designed me to serve only you. Do not give me into slavery to an enemy who insults you. Give me the strength to defeat him. Lord, give me strength to resist him.

Make of me whatever you will, for I am yours.

Suddenly, in the twilight horizon a man shrouded in the light of the Sun comes to you, saying

My son, whom I love, do not despair. The day you go into battle, I will send multitudes to you, and you will taste victory over your enemies.

You return to your companions with hot blood in your veins.

Companions, the Sun smiles upon us. We will fight at the vanguard of great armies the day Uscovilca falls upon Cuzco.

You spend the days in prayer and fasting and war planning with your companions, who take heart in being blessed by the Sun. On the seventh day, the Sun once more visits you.

My son, tomorrow your enemies will come to do battle.

And so as day breaks, just as Uscovilca’s forces begin to march down from the hill on the path to Lima, from every road appear strange legions unknown to you and your companions. Their captains surround you, saying 

Let us go, our only king, and we will defeat your enemies, whom you will take prisoner today.

With you and your companions at the head of these forces, you rush out to meet Uscovilca’s army. Not a single enemy who enters the fray escapes, and before long the enemy’s tail is routed. Victory is yours; Cuzco preserved by its god, the Sun.

Secure in victory, your banner men come to your aid just as the armies of the Sun return to the hills as abruptly as they came. 

You go on to succeed your father as Inca, expanding his realm beyond the kingdom of Cuzco to stretch across the continent. You bring order to men, fertility to the land, and bespeckle the realm with golden temples dedicated to the god who so smiled upon you. The Sun shines brightly on your Empire for centuries after your death, gifting its people peace, virtue, and prosperity.

Fire and Blood

In their foundation, all great paradigms, cultures, and peoples are alike. A man of uncommon virtue and strength, who finds himself in the midst of hardship and moral chaos, encounters a divinity which reveals to him a new order, and grants him the inspiration and charisma to bring it about.

It’s Joseph Campbell !!1! Right, one pattern recalls the other, but you cannot understand the foundation of empires as simply an extrapolation of the quotidian psychological process of individuation. It’s not about growth, but rather a radical reorganization of the mind and spirit.

The analogous process is not the hero’s journey, but initiation.

I have a good friend who grew up at the edge of the world, in a tribe that still holds on to its old ways. When he came of age, the men in his village masked themselves and ripped him and the other boys his age from their mothers’ homes, beat them bloody, made them crawl through brambles organized into a thorny birth canal, and introduced them to certain gods and truths which he could not reveal to me. Such a practice is hardly unique to his tribe; in fact, initiatory practices are the rule across peoples.

Inevitably, Western anthropology discovered such ubiquity, and, for a few decades in the 20th century, wondered why modern man was excepted. A satisfying answer was never found; some men attempted to recreate the rites by venturing into the woods together to bang on drums sitting naked around a fire, but — surprisingly — this didn’t seem to work. The matter was subsumed into the therapeutic paradigm, and then forgotten.

Where Robert Bly et al went wrong was in assuming that initiator educes Man from within a boy, that the patterning was within all along. Instead, initiation entails the introduction of an ambient spiritual mystery into the mind. I was dead, and now I have new life is the inevitable refrain of the newly initiated. Shamans crush the boy and breathe into the chaos a man in the image of their divinity. Without a living spirituality around which to reorganize his spirit, he remains disintegrated. Hence the futility and even danger of drum-banging in a soulless world.

Under such conditions, which presage the foundation of all great paradigms, men — or rather, a man — must breathe into the world an entirely new spirit, must be initiated simultaneously by the gods and himself. Such a founder must possess a character unblemished by corruption: any weakness would cause him to be blinded by fear when met with chaos and strife sufficient to open his eyes to the gods. Any man can be initiated by priests; only the best can initiate himself.

The preconditions for societal spiritual renewal, then, are the emergence of a modern wanax, an upright man beloved by the divine and chosen to serve as conduit for a fresh spiritual paradigm. Consequently, it requires the establishment of a new aristocracy, virtuous men bound by love and devotion and a striving for life-beyond-life, whence a king might be chosen.

The Stars Flare over Tokyo

The throttle slips in your greased hands, so you wrap it in your undershirt. Your little sister is going to kill you when she does the laundry. You twist once more; this time, your grip obtains. The four rotors begin to whir.

Bmmmmm. Bmmzhooooo

The black heels of your boots are pulled from the garage concrete. You pick them up, and neatly rest them on the pedals. You press right, and watch the rotors tilt counterclockwise and your bike clockwise, further and further until you nearly fall out.

I’ll need to use the straps. But this feels much smoother now with that we’re using Junichiro’s Navier-Stokes solver. Let’s give it a try.

Your grip loosens, the bike drops back onto its props. You bend down to strap your legs in, press your index to your watch and whisper:

Test I, Test J, Test K-through-M

Your heart pushes against your ribs. The rotors whir and you lift off, suddenly this time. The pedals depress under your feet of their own accord. The bike tilts forward. Test I passed, your watch reports. It tilts right, then left, then back. Test J passed. Test K passed. Test L passed. You hear the axels rotate and hold your breath, squeeze the grips for dear life.

The bike lurches to the left and you’re hanging by your ass, warm zephyrs pushing your hair to the ground, just a leather strap across your thighs confounding them.

Test M passed. All tests passed. The bike lurches again. Your elbows are back at your side.

Junichiro. We’ve passed all the safety checks. She’s flight ready.

The Navier-Stokes algorithm I sent you worked? You’re brilliant, Hirata. I’ll be over in a moment, I can complete the differential equations problem set tomorrow morning. Fuck the exam, I didn’t think we’d be done in October!

You pull the other model into the center of the garage, and begin transferring the updated software.

---

It’s a cold autumn night in Azabu. The air wet, the sky as grey as always. Junichiro arrives already donning his helmet, shining black eyes piercing through the translucent visor.

We’ve waited so long, Hirata.

You both hop on the bikes. He squeezes the throttle, and jumps off the alleyway asphalt.

Are we allowed to fly these in the city? Your earphones bark.

Your bike jumps up beside him. I don’t know who’ll be able to catch us.

Junichiro’s bike begins to rear like a horse from the movies, its rotors stolidly parallel the ground. Then, the rotors roar. It drops for a moment and shoots ahead.

You squeeze the throttles back yourself, and, just before he turns the corner out of sight, push them forward. We’re off.

You’re at the corner in a heartbeat and think to yourself. Right. Right. Left. Right. Dancing on your pedals, you turn make the 90 degree turn with a few trashcans as the only casualty.

Junichiro, are you sure you should you want to go this fast? I haven’t shown you all the controls.

It’s like riding a bicycle. You don’t learn it from books ... have you tried high-altitude yet?

From 10 meters back you watch his rotors turn to the ground once more, pushing leaves off the sidewalks. Then, he launches.

You’re captivated, watching him soar along the profile of the city’s jet black skyscrapers. Until you feel the bike buzzing with warning underneath you. You look forward and see that one of those skyscrapers is dozens of meters in front of you. Reflexively, you click the blue button with your pinky, pull the throttles all the way back, and push all your weight into the balls of your feet. Your bike’s nose tips up, up, up, and then you’re on the parabolic arc, office windows inches from your rotors.

You need to see it up here.

You realize as you overtake the top floor that you’d been holding your breath. You catch it as you search the skyline.

Where, Junichiro, I don’t see you.

Up here, Hirata. Look.

You see a blue light flash in the clouds above.

I … I didn’t simulate flight that high up. The software’s not ready for that.

Forget about the software, just get up here. Trust me.

You swallow, and dip the motor bike down. Button, throttles, pedals. You shoot through the clouds, flying blind as water streams across your visor. You press the button with your left pinky and see diffuse red light shoot out ahead of you.

Stay out of my way, Junichiro. I can’t see for shit.

Don’t worry, I’m under you at this point, you’re already above them. Start cruising and wipe the water off your visor. You need to see it.

Button, throttles, pedals. Your elbows are back at your sides. You wipe off your visor with your leather sleeve, and look up.

The stars, they’re just like the poets in Ancient Lit class say they’d be, right, Hirata?

Koryonos and Kingship

The European aristocracies we know best were assemblies of warriors, nobles originally being little more than men who by virtue of their martial distinction had won possession of the devotion of other men. History confirms that blood and iron reliably produce the aristocratic type, yet I am not so sure it is necessary. Inca Yupanque, as I’ve recounted, won the favor of the Sun before, not after, his first blood. Perhaps you might recall other instances where men founded great spiritual paradigms with virgin swords on their belts.

Instead, I believe that warriors most often are beloved by the gods on account of what preparation for battle demands of them: cultivation of and reliance on the flesh, mental focus and attentiveness, rejection of ensnaring abstraction and devotion to a transpersonal reality. Because the chaos of war wipes away the tangle of linguistic half-lies that govern the life of a merchant, the warrior must learn to rely completely on his intuitive body and spirit, to ignore his mind. As all virtues take root in the flesh and flower in the spirit, a life of otium et bellum is the perhaps most conducive to the production of an aristocrat. Yet, it may not be sufficient.

As you likely know, the Indo-Europeans hardened their boys by casting them out to live as koryós, to prove their body and spirits through years of raiding and rapine. While surely some of the neighboring settlements these pirates of the steppe harried fought back, I do not believe that it was blood of farmers alone that sculpted men from the koryós. Instead, the koryós encounter with spiritual chaos — for all moral sanctions were lifted, the boys free to kill and plunder outsiders as they pleased — required them to trust completely in bonds of love and loyalty, to seek out foundations for new moral systems, to test the world as they found it and not as their fathers knew it, to push their bodies and minds to their limit and seek their fate in the far horizon.

Plunged into chaos, the koryós had to lean on natural hierarchy and the gods to survive. Those gods, by way of lots, chose who would be their koryonos. Such a king would naturally draw on the traditions of the mother clan where they aided him, but would be forced by necessity to invent others where they did not. When the paradigm which they inherited was strong and lively, they might change little. When it was weak and dying and godless, he would be driven to discover a new path forward. Upon returning to the community, such koryós and their koryonos would naturally assimilate their order into old paradigm as they grew into positions of power and influence. If it was faltering, they might replace it wholesale, raising up their koryonos as king of the tribe. In this way, men were renewed with vitality not just sculpted by martial ethic, but inspired by the gods and directed by youthful enterprise.

The frontiers have been exhausted, arenas of sanctioned moral exception extinguished, most men will never see the field of battle. The koryós of today will not look exactly alike to the koryós of ages past. Instead, men will need to cultivate within themselves a spiritual wilderness and moral chaos, will need to establish a new cult of the body and a true fear of the divine, will need to seek out and grow bonds of love and loyalty amongst themselves from which a new king might be chosen, a new order established. Rather than being disciplined by steel and enticed by plunder it wins, such men might be inspired by the characteristic dynamic of our time — speed and disruptive venture, striving ad astra. The entire world is a plane ride away, men of good blood congregated together in densities never seen before, mathematics and machine intelligence put at each’s disposal. The world is a tinderbox ready to be lit by the passions of adventurous men, the gods impatient to walk once more amongst us.

Men needn’t wait for the apocalypse, for a top-down sanction of moral reorganization to permit them to begin. Such is a narcissistic defense against cowardice. Likewise, there is no need to delay on account of mercenary electoral calculations; spiritual reorganization prefigures political upheaval, not vice versa. Politicizing the problem of spiritual rot is little more than another cope, another excuse for inaction. It might be upsetting to acknowledge that nothing and no one is preventing you from escaping the misery around you, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

The path to spiritual renewal, a transvaluation of morals, and a new horizon, a higher acme for man, lies before us, not in the past. Neither I nor any mortal can promise what it will look like, how silicon and steel and Apollo and Dionysos and Nietszche and Heraclitus and all the rest will recombine to form this future. But, I know it will be formed by men ready once more to hear the call of the gods, men with spirits, minds, and bodies sculpted by long striving and love for beauty and glory, men who will have struck out from our milieu of anodyne spiritual sterility, who will have long titrated themselves with moral chaos.

Men who will have re-wilded themselves.

The Moon Shines on New York

You hang your coat and jacket on the hook, slip off your loafers, and loosen your tie. Your suitcase dropped by the desk, you sit back in your swivel chair as you check your phone.

Hey babe, Anne said she and John want to try out George’s, this cute new spot in SoHo. For the holiday. I told them we’d meet them there tonight at 9, so meet me at the subway in 45 — love you.

Hot air breathes through your nose, and you nod approvingly as you read the reviews for George’s

Not bad, although Anne … I wish Constance’d ask next time.

The tea kettle begins to boil as you hear a knocking at your door.

Constance? Ok, I’m coming!

The knocking grows steadily louder as you walk over, until it doubles right as your hand alights on the apartment door handle. It begins to grow frenzied, the muffled rapping mixed with sharp rasping. That’s not Constance.

You run to the kitchenette to find a knife. As you turn to open the silverware drawer, the door begins to shake at the hinges. You find the wooden grip and the door flies through your living room into the wall. Knife in hand, you turn to face the leaping shadow, but it knocks you backwards before you even set your feet straight. Leather-gloved hands seize your own, and you’re knocked back onto the hardwood.

It’s pushing steam out of its nostrils into your eyes. You try to move your legs but can’t. You’re completely immobilized. Its breath begins to slow. You mentally sign the cross, and open your eyes. It’s … a dog?

It bares teeth too large for even the largest shepherd. But, there’s no malice in its yellow eyes, which bely a sublime intelligence.

Its left foot jumps up to press down your hand, and it draws its claw to your face. With its right, it seizes your knife hand in its glove and draws it inexorably near, pausing so that the blade rests a few inches above your neck. It’s going to kill you with your own hand.

It draws its head back, and your vision becomes a mess of fur. What dog plays with its prey? Its yellow eyes stare into yours kindly, and it takes your right hand and cuts into its palm. You feel its ropy flesh resist the serrated steel, which is now dripping crimson blood onto your neck.

You look back at the wolf. Its fur recedes, its black skin begins to lighten, its muzzle receding into its face, until it becomes … your father, only much younger, a ghost from an old photograph. The knife cuts deeper, and to his right appears the spectre of your grandfather, their hands superimposed on one another, their cuts pouring blood that’s now bright red. To his left appears a man you don’t recognize, then another, the knife draws to the bone and at once you see a multitude before you, each yielding his hand to the blade. You see pain in their eyes, but they don’t wince, their countenance remains unflinchingly stoic.

They close their eyes, and lift up their hands, so that hardly all you can see is torn flesh, and then together squeeze them into fists. You’re showered in the blood that drips between their fingers. It’s warm and tastes bitter, and it stings your closed-shut eyes. You see coming into contrast in the eddies of red on your eyelids a vision of a great pyre arranged like a pyramid, piled high with heaps of oiled herbs and spices arranged at the base. Cloaked men come with torches running red, and set it ablaze. The sweet-smelling fire roars as its flames lick the clouds, rising to meet the full moon. You feel the muscles of your body pull at your tendons all at once, and then

Haroooooooooo. Harooooooooooooo

It’s quiet for a second. And then you hear the city join in.