Both your visual examples of “praeternatural evil” could be metaphors of the social (society), especially for those who are its victims. A tentacular totalitarianism bereft of any ideological ordering other than its own insatiable appetites.

“Then every thing includes itself in power,/Power into will, will into appetite;/And appetite, an universal wolf,/So doubly seconded with will and power,/Must make perforce an universal prey,/And last eat up himself.”

But … only a metaphor? Sheesh. You take all the fun out of life!

Perhaps the coldness is the numbness of despair?

There’s certainly a lot of it about. L’Chaim!

And there can be a coolness wherein ‘love’ contemplates the carnage, the kaliyuga, and prepares to steer a different course?

For sure. Keep calm and don’t lose your head.

Regards.

New perspectives are required, from which new understandings can ensue. They might even be very old understandings that are forgotten.

Indeed, and conversely it may be that old perspectives yield new understandings.

the West is in panic. It’s a panic formation, are you guys falling into that trap?

The West certainly is in a panic, isn’t it? When gripped by panic one temptation is to put a bag over one’s head. Case in point: Dr Carolyn Porco, director of something called CICLOPS, which sounds like a sinister politico-criminal organisation but in reality is just a NASA-connected science group. Dr Porco seems a genuinely nice little piggy and swaddles herself in her shiny foil space blanket for comfort. (“To love nature and to fear it and to rely on it …” – The Wicker Man)

An alternative strategy is to try to save one’s skin by swearing fealty to the big bad wolf, whether it be middle-class liberals adopting the argot of violent urban underclasses or philosopher-artists bending the knee to receive the wolf’s pelt and transforming unguent from the Lord of the Forest. (“… and to appease it where necessary.”)

Alas, this type of magical thinking ultimately proves no more efficacious: “For you have said: We have entered into a league with death, and we have made a covenant with hell. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come upon us: for we have placed our hope in lies, and by falsehood we are protected. … And hail shall overturn the hope of falsehood: and waters shall overflow its protection. And your league with death shall be abolished, and your covenant with hell shall not stand: when the overflowing scourge shall pass, you shall be trodden down by it.” (Isaias 28:15-18)

“Well they started it. XD”

lol. Who started what is no easy task to discern, Alex. New perspectives are required, from which new understandings can ensue. They might even be very old understandings that are forgotten.

“BOO!

But seriously folks … it’s interesting that the cultural decline of Christianity has not seen a corresponding decline in popular fascination with the demonically monstrous. One might have expected such bogies would melt away like snow before the blazing sun of the Enlightenment, yet — I believe to Professor Dawkins’ considerable chagrin — modern Western adolescents are probably exposed via film, TV, magazines, video games, the internet etc to more and more viscerally intense representations of praeternatural evil than any medieval peasant. All that has happened is that these representations float free of the old restraining cultural tropes. Once upon a time, Dracula wilted before the Crucifix or consecrated Host. Now, as a character in Blade put it, “crosses don’t do squat”.”

Yes, you’re absolutely right! It’s something I’ve noticed playing out for a while now. Might have to do a post on this. Demon production is definitely on the increase. It’s part of a larger movement that is going on: the West is in panic. It’s a panic formation, are you guys falling into that trap?

Both your visual examples of “praeternatural evil” could be metaphors of the social (society), especially for those who are its victims. A tentacular totalitarianism bereft of any ideological ordering other than its own insatiable appetites.

“refrigescet caritas multorum”

Had to look this up.
Alex, it’s a difficult time. Perhaps the coldness is the numbness of despair? And there can be a coolness wherein ‘love’ contemplates the carnage, the kaliyuga, and prepares to steer a different course?

You do tend to focus on the harsh bits.

Well they started it. XD

Don’t really like the horrific.

BOO!

But seriously folks … it’s interesting that the cultural decline of Christianity has not seen a corresponding decline in popular fascination with the demonically monstrous. One might have expected such bogies would melt away like snow before the blazing sun of the Enlightenment, yet — I believe to Professor Dawkins’ considerable chagrin — modern Western adolescents are probably exposed via film, TV, magazines, video games, the internet etc to more and more viscerally intense representations of praeternatural evil than any medieval peasant. All that has happened is that these representations float free of the old restraining cultural tropes. Once upon a time, Dracula wilted before the Crucifix or consecrated Host. Now, as a character in Blade put it, “crosses don’t do squat”.

It’s a shame ‘niceness’ is so unfashionable.

refrigescet caritas multorum

You do tend to focus on the harsh bits.
Don’t really like the horrific.

It’s a shame ‘niceness’ is so unfashionable.

” Is it conceivable that our host is aligned, wittingly or unwittingly, with hostile trans-dimensional mantids??”

We can get the weltan-shrikes on to it.

The drumbeat of savages is fading, despite everything that romanticizes on its behalf, because nature sets exacting standards of competence.

I jolly well hope so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk6wr7cKAjY

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”

– Belloc, “Survivals and New Arrivals”.

Much survives through Milton that civilization can only shudder at.

All the same, a Milton — or at any rate a Paradise Lost — can only exist within the matrix of a highly developed civilisation. To say Milton justifies civilisation is to acknowledge that he requires it, which means he requires Johnson and, by extension, all the numberless souls who labour to support Johnson. They are the muck from which the lotus of genius rises!

But what is any of that to nature? Can a tribunal that makes no distinction between Palestrina and the drumbeats of savages really be the highest court of appeal?