Helm's Deep - How did I get between the Anvil and the Hammer?
The Squire Hopes it Stays all Metaphorical, and Stuff
King Theoden awakened not a moment too soon. The boys were ready to be rounded up, just waiting on the King to come back to his wits. As a Frenchman once said, “If they pass this Law, the muskets will go off by themselves - there is no need for a Revolution”. A Revolution? No - the opposite of a Revolution: Restoration (Joseph de Maistre, H/T Cologero Salvo).
Restoration isn’t turning back the clock, or re-instituting something that failed. It is incorporating the best of the Old, into a New Form. It is the only Law of forward motion that Life knows, of preservation. Life is Life, thanks to this Law. If you don’t know about “An Age Undreamed Of, and the Rise of the sons of Aries” (and how to fit that into Genesis), then it’s harder to make sense out of the Ukraine, for example. Tribal loyalties are not eradicated, but they can be sublimated and elevated (despite remaining present), in subsequent ages (eg., The Axial Age). Or they can be re-awakened and subverted to very explosive ends, especially in polite, liberal circles. We have noted before how the Right prefers Force, and the Left, Violence. How else do you explain our helping The Azov Battalion, except that the Left has decided to use violence and mobs like dynamite? Grace ought to perfect Nature, not destroy it. By their fruits, ye shall know them.
Saruman has been building stuff like this:
It isn’t a watering system for a field, no, sorry. Various groups are ponying up. Crows are gathering. Covid is over, so now we have to have (gasp, get ready to use your imagination, here)…perpetual war in Asia (or the Ukraine)!
Well, a free people has the right to bear arms, speak their mind without retaliation, tell the Truth, assemble peacefully and openly, worship in the manner they are accustomed, be secure in their persons and effects from seizure or unreasonable searches, etc., etc. The over lords may not like that, but it’s right there in the Introduction and Preambles. Bolded. Underlined. Gonna be hard to go too far Left on those without massive blowback. Unless they just starve, breed, and propagandize the entire Heartland out of existence, which does seem to be one of their options. Blackrock and Bill Gates want to buy up the Heartland, since they cannot buy it off. It’s hard to remember when you’ve forgotten, or there’s just no one around that can recall, and living memory fades of how “it once was”.
Do you ever feel like God has to have a lot of patience, training humans?
Perhaps, at least, we can be more like a hunting bird, and less like a hamster.
I’d at least like to be “mannish”.
You have to be the man? - No, I don't have to be the man, but I would like to be mannish. (Monk and the Paper Boy) Source
Maybe it’s time to dust off the Jolly Old England and Robin and his Merry Men Tropes.
I have always felt that the Robin Hood Mythos was a “little echo” of the Arthur/Grail Mythos - there’s a failure and sadness in both the myths, as well as great depth, and an open-ended ending, that leaves room for the reader: the modern re-makes seem designed to trivialize them or ruin them with special effects. In this last day of the “Christ Haunted South” and the “Sunset of the West”, could we re-write the ending to these Myths? Or add on to them, in a powerful way? We may need to get comfortable with the fact that, eventually, at some point, we are going to be considered Outlaws or Deplorables. Or, at least, Knights on a Quest that No One Else Cares About. Come to think of it, that Errol Flynn movie does re-write the Myth (no more the sad ending of bleeding to death, Orthodox Robin!).
By riding to Helm’s Deep with the Muster of Theoden, a declaration of War has been made. In reality, Saruman has already declared war, and emptied Orthanc - we are just beating them to a stronghold we can last in. We accepted.
Erkenbrand of Westfold had real foresight, and had Helm’s Deep repaired: Support Your Local Sheriff, it may save the Realm, which may save the Empire, which may save Middle Earth. More thought should be given to hiding Helm’s Deep or Nargothrond, but in plain sight. What is Helm’s Deep, if not a refugium? Curing the sick, feeding the hungry, and building up the downcast constitute Helm’s Deep. It was around the monasteries in crumbling Rome that the new civilization took shape, monasteries doubling as hospitals, granaries, and centers of learning.
They get there just ahead of the Orcs, and during the night march there, a host of rustling Shadows passes them (no one knows who or what they are). There are Omens. Maybe you can think of some personal Omens, or just watch the news, these days.
"Canst thou bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her sons?"- Job 38:31-32
We may not be able to read the Bones exactly, but we can certainly get a feel for what might be coming. The pale & monstrous presence of objectified “Evil” is going to get some folks. We suspect that even Sauron has his “white whale”: in fact, particularly mummified and twisted Good (“Evil”) is vulnerable to an attack from the Theodicy of God, the White Whale. Gandalf, after all, is now the White. Was the movie Jaws a re-telling of Moby Dick? We think maybe so…the greatest sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost. But all we need to do to avoid this is…confess our sins & put our faith in God, rather than man.
“Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be… And thou, O Lord, art more than they.” ―Alfred Tennyson,In Memoriam
The greatest Evil comes out of those who believe that the line of Good & Evil doesn’t run through their own heart, but is “out there”, solely. The West was fine being an Easter-Christmas sort of Christian. We were forgiven for not having exact Greek philosophical terms for procession and Being. But we just had to supersize ourselves. We Forgot That We Are Not God (Vaclav Havel).
Were I to compare democracy to life-giving radiation, I would say that while from the political point of view it is the only hope for humanity, it can only have a beneficial impact on us if it resonates with our deepest inner nature. And if part of that nature is the experience of transcendence in the broadest sense of the word, that is, the respect of man for that which transcends him, without which he would not be and of which he is an integral part, then democracy must be imbued with the spirit of that respect if it is to have a chance of success. First, this internalization of democracy today can scarcely take the form of some new doctrine, that is, a collection of dogmas and rituals. Such a thing would probably have exactly the opposite effect: To all the mutually distrustful cultural currents there would only be added others, ones that would be very artificial because they would not have grown out of the nourishing soil of myth-making eras. If a renaissance of spirituality does occur, it will far more likely be a multi-leveled and multicultural reflection, with a new political ethos, spirit, or style, and will ultimately give rise to a new civic behavior. And second: Given its fatal incorrigibility, humanity probably will have to go through many more Rwandas and Chernobyls before it understands how unbelievably shortsighted a human being can be who has forgotten that he is not God.
Alas, the Orc-followers have burgeoned beyond wildest expectations into half or more of our population, in the West. Yuval Noah Harrari (Klaus Schwab’s right hand) openly proclaims that we are to become God. And he finds apt pupils, eager listeners, ready accomplices, everywhere. So as we ride to Helm’s Deep, we have to know…a large contingent of Orcs, a very large army, is closing in behind. We are going to Earth, under Sky, over Water. The Fire we bring in our hearts.
(Tolkien’s models)
The Battle of Helm’s Deep is Phase One of Beleaguered Conservatism, and it’s lasted awhile. In Tolkien’s world, Good is always weak (relative to Evil) precisely because it is Good - it is not predominantly interested in the Ideology of Liberalism and the Power of the Ring. Conservatives have largely avoided the great political sin of black magic: Libido Dominandi (the equivalent of the Evil Eye). Sometimes, this is evinced in such a powerful form, that it appears that Good is Dumb. Our enemies seem to believe this about us.
Good people cannot as a rule understand wicked people. They do not wish to be wicked, and cannot understand why anyone else would wish to do so. American Christians cannot fathom the kind of wickedness that accounts for the bulk of the butchery in world history, born of the pessimism of dying races who will kill without compunction to delay the hour of their demise. But hasn’t Christianity slaughtered without pity in the name of the faith? Cardinal Richelieu’s France offers the worst example, prolonging the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants until nearly half the people of central Europe had died by violence, disease or starvation. This exceptional case of Christian brutality proves the rule. Seventeenth-century France under Cardinal Richelieu first devised the ghastly idea that God had chosen one particular nation as the bearer of Christianity, justifying the most hideous means to achieve its ends. Narcissism at the level of the individual as well as the nation is the French disease, which the rest of Europe caught.
Liberalism (a late and decadent form of the Age of Pisces) replaced the Age of Ares and Taurus (Warband/Glory Culture and Tribe/Blood), but it, too, is now ailing, for its God is Ideology, its own Thought-Forms, which are mistaken for the Real. Thomas Hobbes (and John Locke) directed Liberalism away from Thymos, & centered it on fear of death and love of comfort in The Leviathan. Beyond fear and greed of comfort, a great temporary psychological advantage (as we can plainly see) is that many, many people “like orders”. They like tightly coupled, overly socialized, and impossibly Byzantine-complex systems that were really on fire before they left the runway. The masses yearn and pine to stand in lines. The British know how to queue. But what if the mass abundance that motivates this, just disappears, or worse, fades gradually?
There are few men who doubt that motorcars will in five years’ time be more comfortable and cheaper than today. They believe in this as they believe the sun will rise in the morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes that it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly-endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice. - Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
The Conservative Thought World is independent of GDP or material prosperity -that is its great long term virtue and great short term weakness. Of course, the dark side to this is that one has to have a Tragic View of Life, an appreciation for the mortality of man, that is not easy to come by, in these days.
When the count turns 1,000, a study comes out that contradicts his understanding of human nature. This study has a sample of a couple hundred college students, a p-value of 0.05, was conducted by a professor who proudly claims a political cause, and the results just happen to line up with that cause. Would the vampire throw out his 999 years of experience and believe this study? No, he would stick with his prior beliefs and laugh at the puny humans. College students are only good for dessert, not for generating knowledge. Typical social science studies, which nowadays pass for serious evidence, are immensely weak in comparison to knowledge accumulated over human history. There are probably very few studies that are strong enough to contradict a vampire’s beliefs. If modern people disagree with the vampire about human nature, it’s most likely that the vampire knows what he is talking about and the humans are just wrong
Or, consult a modern day Sage, Don Colacho (Nicholas Gomez Davila), our “Vampire”.
In their childish and vain attempt to attract the people, the modern clergy give socialist programs the function of being schemes for putting the Beatitudes into effect. The trick behind it consists in reducing to a collective structure external to the individual an ethical behavior that, unless it is individual and internal, is nothing. The modern clergy preach, in other words, that there is a social reform capable of wiping out the consequences of sin. From which one can deduce the pointlessness of redemption through Christ.
To have a Tragic View of Life doesn’t mean (as JH Kunstler nails it) that you believe the worst that can happen, will happen. What it means is that you believe that Man is prone to error, and the consequences of those errors are independent of the dignity of his better state, full of pathos: this is sad. With great Wisdom comes great sadness. There are greater things in heaven & earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Yet as Dante shows, Life may have a tragic cast, but a Comedic End.
The banner of the Conservative “Forces” in the Field is likely to be a very colorful & surprising number of banners, under the High King. It will be, as they say, a motley crew. This is because, Good drinks the last Cup, & comes into her own, like Sir Gawain at the end of the Green Knight Tale: things will look terrible until the very end of the Test. Yet Gawain meets and endures the challenge every step of the way, in a kind of suffering. So Tolkien gives us in LOTR a foreshadowing of glory on the way. Good becomes totally separate, from Evil. For this it is necessary to undergo the challenge of the Christmas Game-
No, I seek no battle, I assure you truly:
Those about me in this hall are but beardless children.
If I were locked in my armour on a great horse,
No one here could match me with their feeble powers.
Therefore, I ask of the court a Christmas game...– The Green Knight addresses Arthur's Court in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Helm’s Deep is won through the cooperation of the High Prophet, the High King, the Ents, the Huorns, & the valor and vitality of the people of Rohan. And Erkenbrand’s foresight to rebuild an Ark. There are a lot of disparate forces and variegated circumstances which come together. And still, it is almost not enough.
And there may be a lesson, here, somewhere, Pogo son. Conservatism is in its infancy. It may, in fact, be an enfant terrible. It is currently a ragtag orphan. Liberalism grew swiftly, naturally, beautifully, and to full manhood, and then on into senility, all in the space of several hundred years (1700-2000, R.I.P.). Conservatism has grown slowly, painfully, and (in some ways) grotesquely, deprived (as it is) by its rival sibling of all love and nourishment. Yet, to the everlasting horror of the senile older sibling, it is still alive. It was not aborted. It has not perished. It has, perforce and of necessity, been required to take on an assortment of borrowed raiments, and assemble within itself by slow and tragic harmony, a variety of inner forces.
Even these outer struggles, these Helm’s Deeps, that come thick and furious, heaping upon our head disaster and scrape and perilous trial, one after the other (which we always survive), are so much more grist for the inner mills, which grind slowly but exceedingly finely. We have not the luxury, we conservatives, of taking “a holiday from history”, as Liberalism has done. And their disaster, which approaches on swiftest wing, is one that we share in, as a hostage. Passive hostage no longer, we now share in it as witness, brother, healer, and (if need be) adversary.
After Helm’s Deep, it is no longer possible, in these days, to pretend that “everyone is on the same page”. Putting us between Hammer & Anvil has forged a new conservative identity, winnowing out the chaff, slagging away the impurities, and hardening the steel to take a very fine edge.
The forces arrayed against us are Nothing. They are destroying themselves, even as they strive, all the harder, to destroy us. We have seen how it is impossible for Evil to create, let alone sustain. Melkor’s dream is futile.
Evil is a Nothing, perverted & degenerate Good which mistakes its way, projects its abject inner fears & terrors, and (like Oedipus), in avoiding its Fate, brings its own Doom about.
Our stage we are reaching: We fear neither Saruman, nor Sauron.
First we fear Them.
Then we are purified by persecution
Then we do not fear Them.
Last, comes…being purified by victory.
Isn’t this the Biblical sequence?
Raro antecedentem scelestum deferuit pede poena claudo.
Justice, though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight. - Cicero (loose translation, often cited in English)
Or, rarely do (I, Adrastia speaking) overwhelm the previously wicked, (but) pursue them with pained punishment on steady feet.
